May the 4th Be With You Fanworks Exchange

My house recently suffered from severe damage, with a falling tree damaging the roof and the subsequent rain destroying some of the attic panels, *another* tree smashing some of the fence and damaging my raspberries (they will get better, raspberries can survive being moved down, I known from experience), new toilet being installed so poorly that not only was it not functional but also having some elements destroyed and having to be bought again, and the recurring instances of the animals I am taking care of escaping because my parents cannot fucking keep the doors shut even though they know what can happen, not to mention that one cat is capable of opening unlocked doors himself!!! Alas.

I’ve finished Avatar: Seven Havens and honestly I’ve given up on the series. The pacing of the story is atrocious, stretching into a full cour what should have been a three episode long miniarc or at most a feature movie. The story also lacks any of the philosophical depth its predecessors had, and the supposed South and South-East Asian inspirations provide some decorations in the first episode only to be ultimately utterly swallowed by what I like to call silver age of comics aesthetics but worse. Also the human conflict of the season relies on characters passing the idiot ball between themselves, which in the last few episodes becomes painful to see. I liked the premise and the twins are genuinely cute and interesting characters with a good dynamic (prime subjects for some siscest lol), but the series is firmly a Voltron 2.0 rather than Avatar 3.0. I have no new thoughts on the few anime I am following, and judging from Wikipedia episode summaries and internet backlash, I made a good choice in ignoring Helluva Boss.

Before I move to Slow Damage, I would like to mention that I become obsessed with Pepsi recently – to be precise, the summer limited sugarless triple berry parfait version (supposed to taste like an ice cream dessert with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, strawberries, raspberries, sweet and sour cherries – which are considered distinct fruits in Poland). The drink works wonders in lifting my mood, but it started to be replaced by a similarly limited sugarless pumpkin spice Pepsi, which I don’t really like. It’s a sure sign that the summer is behind us, even if I am trying to pretend it isn’t. There are barely any flowers left in my garden, and majority of leaves start to turn various shades of yellow, red and orange. But we were talking about Pepsi. The only drink that has a somewhat similar taste is strawberry Monster, which gives me headache after drinking so it’s a hard nope. I just hope it returns next summer.

Finally, I would like to say a lot about Slow Damage. I *love* this game. It’s by far the best Nitroplus Chiral game, dethroning the previous masterpiece Lamento Beyond the Void (though Lamento has better written romance in my opinion). I also hate this game. It’s insanely long, took me eight days to fully read, and even considering my poorer condition it’s longer than Gore Screaming Show, itself a very long game. What’s worse, the narrative is visibly uneven, not to the degree of Togainu no Chi, but still we spend a lot of time following the protagonist around the city and having mundane conversations (that are necessary for gameplay purposes but not very interesting to read through), and then in the secret/true route reveals that genuinely should have been shown as LENGTHY flashbacks are provided as exposition drops, which is jarring when we’ve spent so much time reading about boring shit!! Towa’s past is the core of the story, but we never actually see it, only have characters talk about it, which is extremely frustrating. Slow Damage spent years in development hell and the general route and two starting routes are very polished, third route somewhat less, and the most important fourth one feels remarkably rough, to the point where a shocking plot twist doesn’t really hit as hard as it should due to the characters being barely developed. But that’s heavy spoilers!

Nonetheless, the story is excellent. The main character is a fascinating specimen rarely seen in fiction in general – an amoral detective who wants to solve mysteries to satisfy his curiosity rather than to bring justice of any kind – in fact, in most cases he enables the preparators to become even worse. Towa seems like a version of Akira who managed to grow up and mature – most readers compare his promiscuity to the Akira from Shiki’s bad ending, but he also displays intelligence from Motomi’s route, assertiveness and drive from Rin’s route, and emotional intelligence from Keisuke’s route, as well as much more self-awareness and introspection our autistic teenager was ever capable of. Towa is in a sense the realized form of the person Akira was at juvenile stage. In general, Slow Damage feels like an AU of Togainu no Chi (Lost Blood in its English release), with characters starting as obvious equivalents of their counterparts from the other game before developing in their own unique ways while being thematically linked. I cannot keep wondering how much of the characterisation from Slow Damage should be retroactively applied to Togainu no Chi characters. Would adult versions of Keisuke and Rin be like Taku and Rei? Was Dog, whose perspective is never shown in Togainu no Chi, as loyal to Arbitro as Eiji was to [redacted for spoilers] instead of being a victim conditioned into obedience? I would love to know that.

(And having said all that, I hated two of the romantic options presented, had my perspective of another love interest sour after the revelations from the true route, and while I genuinely liked both the character and romance of the fourth love interest, I didn’t really agree with the conclusion of his personal growth arc.)

The entry is already long and it’s getting late here! I plan to cap my holidays with writing fanfiction over the weekend. I’ve already written a short story I posted on AO3 shortly before it went down and have plans for at least one other story that will be patiently waiting for the site to return. See you next week!