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TL;CR MEME
1. Comment with your character.
2. Receive comments from others.
3. Reply to their comments with long ballads and explanations of your characters' relationship throughout the game.
4. Suffer as we have suffered over your CR.
1. Comment with your character.
2. Receive comments from others.
3. Reply to their comments with long ballads and explanations of your characters' relationship throughout the game.
4. Suffer as we have suffered over your CR.
no subject
1/2 jfc i'm so sorry
I came into the game ready to get cr with you this time around crystal, I was like "it's been two games it's time!!!" and also I figured they'd at least get along because of the fact that Hansa really wouldn't be out of place in Gangsta -- like... I've said this plenty of times but I'm really not kidding when I say he is kind of an amalgamation of Worick and Nic in a number of ways, with the ridiculous strength, and the kinda laid back and funny attitude. And even if he doesn't have half the hidden-trauma Worick and Nic have, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing?
And then, like. Everything happened so much? The mod's RNG was so powerful this game, I'm genuinely scared. I woke up on Monday Week 1 to your dm like "hey they're affection week partners!" and was like "neat!!" and then we smash cut to Sunday and both of us are just staring into the distance with Mii Music blasting in the background as we descend into hell, only stopping two weeks later to grab teej and marie by the necks so we can all drag each other down Together.
ANYWAY.
There are actually a number of points where things might have gone wrong -- and I think this why I'm constantly so amazed by how well this all worked because every point where things could've gone South or not been as happy as they ended up being... was, well, there? But by the time they reached it someone had already done something that would guarantee a positive outcome? There were a lot of emotional landfills with Alex that could've just collapsed out under her but Hansa especially, but also all the boys, just did things that re-enforced her and her emotional stance on things. It's amazing.
So week 1 was just... literally all that foundation work, really. In canon, Alex starts with a healthy and understandable fear of Twilights, so while she's appreciative of Nic, she's also terrified of him when he's being especially blood-thirsty, or fighting something. Her mother was killed by a Twilight, so she's understandbly wary of them in general, but also acknowledges that she's scared of them because she doesn't understand them, and takes steps to change this herself. So by her canon point she's comfortable with the Twilights she knows.
Something like... Hansa's cyborg-ness could've been that? Like there could've been an uncertainty to their interactions knowing just how strong he was, but... he immediately told her. It made sense he did because she hit him and he clanged, but it worked out in his favour because he was just immediately honest with her about that part of him, as much as he was willing to be. So she was able to process that and then... he spent the rest of the week never, ever causing her any kind of harm. Even if he had just admitted he had the kind of power to snap someone like a twig. He really established himself as someone comforting to her, because they, well, we know they just kept touching each other whenever they could. Scared? Here's Hansa, he's holding your hand. Uncertain? Here's Hansa with a comforting hand on your shoulder, Alex. Worried, nervous, upset because your son just got yeeted out an airlock and slit his own throat? Hansa! He's here to hug you. This was also her CYOA week and there's something to be said about going through Shinra HQ with a teenaged boy you desperately want to protect, passing out not knowing if you're going to live or die, and then waking up back in the plaza and--- Hansa's there. Everything about this week really turboed things for her, and Hansa went from basically a stranger to someone she held very dear, and she was incredibly grateful for all his support that week. And any fear she might have had was sort of negated by the fact she spent her whole week around him in the most vulnerable situations and it would've been no big issue to do something that could physically hurt her, when she was that close so frequently, but he didn't.
Also, like. She's not dead. It's not the end of the world to have an attractive, friendly guy keep showing up to dispense mutual affection at random intervals during the week. It's actually pretty nice, she absolutely did not hate that.
Annnnd then week 2 happened and they couldn't touch anymore. Alex is the sort of person who, if you gave her an Ikea cabinet to build, would read the manual through first, so I couldn't swing her accidentally touching him and shocking them both first thing that week -- also she'd already had something like that happen with Hua Cheng when they woke up, but I am glad we managed to work it in somehow. Going from constantly being affectionate with someone to literally nothing was... actually pretty tough for her? Alex's "love language" for lack of a better phrase is very much non-verbal and touch based, and having that taken away was pretty isolating. She missed him, and that was surprising in and of itself, because it wasn't like they weren't still talking to each other? And seeing each other? And then there were all the emotions being flung around, and it was impossible to hide that she was incredibly fond of him at that point because her emotions were just out there in the wild.
He still kept looking out for her as well? Emotionally, when he talked her out of the panic attack she was having as it was becoming more and more apparently she was really losing her memories again. And even hurt himself to help her in the mini-event -- she was pretty conscious of not touching him after the electricity + metal body parts thing really seemed powerful when they did accidentally touch, and then when she was injured he just... grabbed her and got her out of there, and was apologising to her afterwards because he'd shocked her? ... Boy.
I said this in a DM, but looking back now and I can pinpoint when Alex realised "Oh, no. I really like this guy" and it was that moment in the mini-event, but sort of comboed with him putting himself in a situation that hurt him to get her safety? Sometimes it is just silly little things that make someone stop and go "Oh. I like you. I like you a lot." and sometimes that silly little thing is a guy fighting a crocodile and just being unapologetically happy about it afterwards, and she felt all that happiness and it just sort of hit her that she really liked that. Him being happy. And she wanted to see that again, and see him being that happy again. It was also that weekend that he kinda find out about her old line of work -- I think, actually, despite it being one of the first things people know about her in canon and reading up on canon, only Hansa and Blanca worked out she was an ex-prostitute? Blanca because of the context of what they were talking about, when he was telling her about Ash, and Hansa because she was telling him about her cyoa and Barry came up during that, and it's hard to talk about why one man scares you so much without the fact he was her ex-pimp coming up some way or another, but Hansa just put those context clues together and he didn't judge her for it? He was just sorry about what happened to her, rather than dismissing her or judging her like she'd sort of expected people to. It's not necessarily like she's ashamed of it even if she certainly isn't happy or proud about it either, but it's a part of her that she didn't want coming up if she could help it. Telling him as much as she did felt like the right thing for her to go, and the fact he just listened and accepted it and nothing changed... that was important as well.
... [gestures at week 3 tiredly]. Wowie!
Okay, no for real. Again, there were a lot of things here that could've changed things but I'll work through it -- though I will say the fact they just immediately started with the casual touching again, the second the previous week's rule was gone will never not be funny to me. They were worse after a week of no contact as well and I just... guys? Hello? Calm down.
Then cyoa....2! happened and this is another point where things could've gone differently? I'm sorry this is so long and I haven't even covered everything but I need to dip into canon a bit here. Canon-point wise Alex has come from a point where she's literally just had the world she thought she'd built crumble under her feet. Everything's still onging, and some of my takes on her situation and interpretations are my conclusions based on what I know, but it's heavily implied that everyone she knows already knew her, she's just forgotten them. We know she met Nicholas before the start of the series, and it seems like she might've known Loretta too, which implies all Loretta's staff might know her. But no one tells her any of this? They're all just weirdly insistent she needs to leave Ergastulum as soon as she can, and while I interpret that as coming from a place of caring, Alex doesn't know that. So she's just being bombarded by people she's trying to get to know and people she cares about telling her to get out of town because she's not like them, and you can tell it plays on her mind and knocks her confidence more and more as the series goes on and she's just constantly reminded how little she knows about the people she cares for, and how little they're willing to let her know.
She's just had a triple whammy of realising she didn't understand Nicholas enough to help him, not being able to stop Worick and then finding the consequences of Worick's actions bleeding on their coffee table and realising that this place she thought she'd found for herself was a lie and now it's gone, all at once. And there's this wall between her, Nicholas and Worick that she can't really pass? And twenty odd-years of connection there she doesn't understand and she sort of... has this line in the sand she wants to cross but can't?
2/2
If he'd told her he didn't want to talk to anyone on Saturday night she probably would've decided on shelving things and backing off, honestly. Not permanently because she'd want to make sure he was okay after Emet died, but because he lived she might've just stepped back after that. But instead he let her in, talked to her, admitted he was happy to have her there and then told her he cared about her deeply and that was sort of when things changed? From this sort of "oh there's a wall there I can't pass now" to "oh, there's a wall there but he's thrown down a ladder and told me I can come up".
And then Emet survived and she was, genuinely, so relieved. And Hansa was so happy about it and like... that whole Sunday was so much but in a good way. And she just felt so happy, like whatever happened, it was okay? Things had worked out better than she thought they could. It felt a lot like something had gone right, for the first time since they all got here.
Then we got confessions week and we know how that went. She was going to tell him how she felt, no matter what the outcome was, because she wanted to and she felt comfortable enough to do so after that weekend, he just... beat her to it. And this is like... the third part where things could've gone differently but Hansa just limboed past the tripwires to safety -- he confessed to her first, and made sure she knew exactly where they stood and they he wasn't downplaying his feelings at all. He was being completely sincere with her. If she'd confessed to him and he'd accepted and then flung the OT4 suggestion at her, or if he hadn't been as clear as he was that he loved her and whatever she chose wasn't going to change that, or how he felt about her or where they stood, she might've... gone along with it, but not been as happy with it as she was. Her insecurities would have still been there in their own way.
But he made where they stood clear, and then just... offered her more on her own terms? And then all of them were willing to talk to her and make their positions clear -- and there was the fact that whatever she chose was the "right" answer, too. There was no pressure for her to do something she didn't want, or to force herself to feel something for the others if she didn't. Her own terms and what she was comfortable with was the right answer. And, like... they gave her a place. She'd come to the Realm berating herself for thinking she found a place to belong, and then the three of them just turned to her and said "there's a place for you here, however you want it, at whatever pace you want it" and they all agreed to just be honest with her. Obviously everyone has secrets, but when to came to this and them, they were all fine just being open and not hiding things from her, and that was just... really important. That guarantee that she didn't have to question if she belonged there because they made it clear she did, and the fact that she'd always have a place there -- with Hansa, and with them was probably the biggest game changer for her. They gave a lonely woman somewhere to belong and let her fit in in her own way. And there's something very humbling about someone coming back from ten years away, having formed a whole other life for himself in the process, and saying "-- and I realised I was still in love with you", essentially.
Things just keep happening that hammer home how... bad? It would be if he'd died? Luckily no one wanted to fuck with the cyborg, especially not when he just straight up went feral, but -- she went through that very real fear during the execution in Week 3. Which, side note, I love that your phrasing in that tag sent everyone into a spiral there lmao. But that kind of realisation of what was on the line, like a proper realisation. She'd gone through it a bit when Kano had been executed, but this was like an extra times ten and really hit home how much she didn't want him to die.
She's very much aware that she's very... normal. She's not a fighter, magic, immortal, or anything that she would consider uniquely special. She's a bit stubborn and selfish and willing to throw herself in front of a blade for people she cares about -- but she's not some superhuman fighter or gifted individual, and honestly she worried a lot that the support she got from him was maybe one-sided. Like she kept taking from him and not giving anything back, because she couldn't physically protect him in the ways he did for her, or do what felt like much of anything, really. But after weekend 3 and confessions week I feel like this settled a lot more? She still worries about it, but doesn't feel like something so huge and impossible for her to work back. She can't, and doesn't, ever want to stop him being who is -- but she's also not big-headed enough to think she could change him anyway? Not in huge ways -- but she worries about him, especially here and when the memloss aspect kept taking things from him that were important: his faith, his knowledge of his cyborg parts, and then of who he became after he was adopted and trained as an Executor. But he wouldn't be him if he wasn't doing something ridiculous, or fighting the wildlife, or throwing himself at things recklessly, despite all the grey hairs it's probably going to give her because she can't? Patch up a metal limb and wait for it to heal if he gets, I don't know, bitten by a dinosaur? But this isn't the first time she's been aware of how little she can do and accepted it. She probably accepted it a lot easier here. At least she knows there are plenty of people looking out for him.
It felt a bit like things shifted over time - Hansa spent a lot of the early game looking out for her and propping her up, but that kind of helped her? That, and a lot of conversations she had with other people about her memory loss and her fears meant that by the end of the game she was actually more stable than I'd anticipated her being. At all. And she was able to give something back. Reassuring him when he was all out of sorts in week 6, and trying to protect him in the only ways she could -- listening, emotionally. I really liked realised that was what was happening, as it was happening. Just this slow growth that started with him and grew to cover many more people as time went on. So many of the people who supported her early on, she was able to support in turn and given that she's prone to insecurity and worry that she's not good enough this was such a good step. Especially when it comes to the OT4 for cementing that everything was on equal ground? Or as equal as she could expect it to be after a few weeks and with everything that was happening.
The number of times she might not have been as stable, settled, or happy are really high, but every time she stumbled across one of those points it was already being fixed by the people around her and the support she was getting - especially from Hansa. The shipping was a surprise, but here at endgame there's just this feeling like it's impossible for her not to love him as much as she does. He's such a major factor in why she got through this game without crumbling under the weight of her own fears and insecurities. Gangsta is... still very vague about her past and her background because it's still unravelling, but I do think she's probably been in love before. But I don't necessarily think it's been good for her? This might be the first time she's loved someone who reciprocated and... just treated her like she was someone they loved. Which is a whole overwhelming, and overwhelmingly good thing all at the same time and she's still adjusting and trying to be worthy of all that, but ... it means a lot to her.
To her, he's safety. He's never given her a reason to think she won't be safe with him -- and they've even had this conversation in person, sort of? About wanting the other to be safe. It's a warm and important thing, like she could fall backward and know he'd catch her, and she'd want to do the same for him. And for someone who hasn't had that, let alone from the men in her life, in a long time and in a form that is solid and certain... that's incredibly precious to her.
Also, y'know. Like I said on the hot or not chart. Boy hot. She's not blind?