waterscroll

Okay, this was the route I wanted. Definitely different from others, and much more enjoyable than the last couple of routes I've played.

( If you want to know how, click here. But it might be worth reading the route unspoiled, there were twists that genuinely surprised me )

And oh, I never mentioned that I finished the Ieyasu route. I thought it was ok but for some reason I couldn't connect to it. Maybe because I am so much Team Mitsunari in every (fictional) universe and especially this one. (Not making any RL historical arguments here! Just how they are written.)

In other fannishness:
I'm still watching Guardian slowly, I'm up to episode 22. I don't really have much to say about it at this point, except that I like Ye Zun a lot and I'm glad to see that he gets a lot of fanfic.
In genderbent Hakuouki, alias_sqbr gave me a good idea for the next Kazama piece, so I'm working on that now.

I see alias_sqbr is starting this route and will likely post one of their excellent and detailed reviews soon, so only a few notes from me.

( I found it kind of kind of meh but worth reading )

Not sure which I'll do next. Maybe Koujiro? Shigezane? Nobuyuki? Ieyasu? Or maybe I'll replay Nobunaga's act 3 to see the other ending?

Meanwhile in other fannishness I stayed up all night last night reading the Guardian webnovel, and damn. It definitely met my needs in terms of worldbuilding, lots of religion and myth and supernatural and epic world-transforming love. I can't imagine writing fic for it because the worldbuilding might be too intricate for me to really get a full handle on it through the translation, the tv show simplifies things enough to be more manageable. It's also more of an ensemble story, so more points of entry for fic. But I might not need to write fic, this show is so remarkably labor-saving in the way that it shows onscreen the emotional beats that I want to see, plus the fandom already has so many great stories in it.

...to be updated as I complete the routes

( Hotaru and Sakuya )

( Hanzo )

Meanwhile for my main route I chose Kyoichiro. Two chapters in I'm still not sure if it's a good choice but I'm liking ninja MC.

Inspired by a conversation with Scytale...

I think SLBP and IkeSen are intentionally coy about MC's age to allow us to self-insert better. In IkeSen I feel like the MC really could be any age from early 20s to early 50s. She's about to start her dream job, so she could be right out of school or at the peak of her long career. As a fashion designer she could be stunning at any age. I didn't see a lot of 'youthful innocence' tropes with her. So she could be young, or not. Since the warlords don't have canon ages, you could imagine them as younger or older depending on the age you give to MC.

With SLBP, we get a few more clues.
( mild spoilers for Mitsunari, Hideyoshi, Nobunaga and Shingen routes )

Do you have headcanons for MC's age? If so, are they the same across routes or different for different routes?

Three chapters in and so far this is pretty amazing. ( spoilers )

IkeSen Kenshin was enjoyable but I don't have a ton to say about it. Like most IkeSen route it was highly fanservice-y, serving enjoyable tropes while doing its best to respect MC's agency and consent. Here the trope was yandere and imprisonment. I didn't overthink it too much, but it did some clever things to run those tropes in a consent-y way. ( mild spoilers )

Now I'm replaying Mitsunari's route. So far I'm not finding the replay worth it, the scenes from his POV haven't added much. But I'm only on chapter 5 and we'll see.

Meanwhile, SLBP Kenshin is very much not like IkeSen Kenshin. He's gentle and very sweet, and though he also has traumas he mostly deals with them by being a hoarder and obsessively finding the beauty in everything. It reminds me of Mitsuhide's route in how slow and subtle it is, but I'm not liking it as much, possibly because Mitsuhide was more religious and Kenshin is more about aesthetics. In some ways it's even slower, I just finished chapter 8 and it's ony sort of begun to occur to MC that she might have feelings for Kenshin. It's mostly slice-of-life getting to know Kenshin and his retainers/extended family. Some of them are lovely characters, although none have routes yet. It looks like Kaegie will get one soon, but I would really like to see a route for Kanetsugu, Kenshin's no-nonsense practically-minded retainer who is an extremely devoted single dad and goes around with his daughter's name in big characters on his helmet.

I'm thinking I'll finish up this route around when Nobunaga's act 3 comes out, since it looks like it will be out March 8. Can't wait!

Meanwhile one PSA about the current event story - you don't get free energy hearts (and closet space) for reading. (ETA: This was fixed, you get the things now.) So I did my normal strategy of burning 50-60 energy hearts in the double points and coins fever at the beginning, because that way I end up with more in the end, and whoops, wrong strategy. As far as the stories themselves - I thought the Shingen one was ridiculous and he was acting like a caricature of himself, but I like the Saizo one, I thought it was an unusual take on him.

This was some of the best writing I've seen in the game, but it's hard to summarize because not a lot happens.

( spoilers, death and sadness )

Next up: Kenshin, since that seems to be the obvious one to do next.

The fun gender stuff in the prologue quickly turned into un-fun gender stuff, unfortunately, although there were still fun moments throughout. It's still an interesting route, though, and a fascinating study of a man living in changing times.

CN: illness

( spoilers )

So we'll see where it goes. Shingen is a mess, but all the SLBP dudes are, and he does try his best for people so I can see why MC likes him.

Kenshin and Shingen have a lot in common. Both practice random acts of kindness, both are bad at consent, and both (it seems) fall for the MC thinking she's a man.

( and there are definite gender games going on with both guys. )

This was my first time reading through a SLBP epilogue without using chapter tickets and I don't like it, the cliffhangers towards the end were really a bit much. It was ok because I already knew everything that was going to happen from Scytale's summary, but I think I'll need to buy some discounted chapter tickets next time there's a good sale and keep them for late in a route.

Anyway, I thought it was very powerfully written and I liked it a lot. I'm not going to write a full summary because Scytale did (1, 2), but a few thoughts:

( Why am I liking Nobunaga this much I don't know, since he never really stops being a jerk. )

Next up: Shingen. I'm bracing myself, this is gonna be a ride.