rionaleonhart: okami: amaterasu is startled. (NOT SO FAST)
Riona ([personal profile] rionaleonhart) wrote2018-05-09 11:24 am

I Won't Be The One To Leave This In Pieces.

Finished Zero Time Dilemma! This is the stupidest game I've ever played and I love it passionately. At one point the characters have a lengthy, in-depth discussion of Back to the Future. It is genuinely essential to the plot.



From my previous entry:

The versions of Sigma and Diana who did the cloning are still trapped in the nuclear shelter, the only people alive, so of course I want fanfiction where they bang.

I don't need fanfiction where they banged. They banged. It's canonical. There was a half-hour cutscene with the exact plot of a fic I was planning to write.

Well, maybe not the exact plot. I wasn't planning the bit where Diana got pregnant with twins and sent them back in time, and one of them grew up to be Phi. Which is hilarious, because a lot of fans must have abruptly discovered they'd been shipping Phi with her dad for a game and a half.

I think the group hug scene with D-Team was my favourite in the entire game.


I was expecting something ridiculous, but the plot of this game was twice as ridiculous as I could have dreamt. I've hugely enjoyed sending the increasingly bewildered [livejournal.com profile] th_esaurus all the weird plot developments out of context. 'Towards the end, it turned out that the villain was a character who'd apparently been there the entire time, but just offscreen, and all the other characters knew he was there. It turned out he'd set up the whole scenario to make the sixty-seven-year-old and the twenty-something-year-old bang.'

I thought it was hilarious that there kept being revelations that made me go 'yep, Q-Team is full of dicks,' and then the biggest revelation was SURPRISE, Q-TEAM'S EVEN MORE FULL OF DICKS THAN YOU PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT.

I also love that the 'the times on the watches are staggered' reveal explained something that didn't actually need explaining at all. I went 'wait, why aren't all the scenes that take place at the same time next to each other?' and then went 'oh, it's for convenience because each line is a different execution timeline, fair enough' and stopped worrying about it. BUT NO. ACTUAL PLOT REASONS.


Carlos is so in love with Akane and Junpei. I can't get over it. It's hard to keep track of the number of times he ended up sacrificing himself for them ('only one gas mask! better give it to Akane. okay, Junpei, I'm not thrilled that your plan is "the two of us shield Akane with our bodies and get shot to pieces", but I'll go along with it. GET IN THE TRANSPORTER PODS THAT TAKE TEN MONTHS TO RECHARGE WITHOUT ME, I'LL HOLD THE ENEMY OFF'), and then there's the 'I travelled back in time and I could stop Zero's murderplan, but then I wouldn't be able to meet those two' bit.

I just double-checked that scene to make sure I wasn't misremembering his motives. Nope!

Akane: You didn't think of stopping Zero's plan?
Carlos: If I did that, then I couldn't have met you guys, right?

(I was really concerned about the version of Carlos he must have unwittingly left trapped alone in the bomb shelter forever when he 'travelled back' ten months, given that the transporter clones you rather than actually moving your body and consciousness, but then I remembered that Akane and Junpei escaped in that timeline! So they'll probably send help. Happy ending! (You know, apart from the two other teams getting an acid shower.))

I was pretty heartbroken by the way everything fell apart in the 'Carlos sends himself back in time' ending. HE WAITED TEN MONTHS FOR YOU. He died so many times! For you! I can understand that you're slightly annoyed with him for loving you so much he failed to prevent the apocalypse, but - but he loves you so much!

I suppose it's still a better ending for C-Team than the one in which Carlos kills himself in front of Akane, or the one in which he kills Akane in self-defence, or the one in which Junpei kills Carlos, or the one immediately after, where Carlos kills Junpei and yells 'YOU'RE THE ONE WHO KILLED ME FIRST' at him. (Oh, yes, and then Akane kills Carlos.) It's a complicated relationship, but I'm sure those crazy kids will work it out.

I was REALLY UNHAPPY about the scene where Carlos gets all sexually threatening with Akane. I went '!!!! my ship! it's happening!' when he went 'I've been thinking about you, Akane,' and my reaction after that was very much 'NO, NOT LIKE THIS.' It turns out later that he's pinning her down so he can whisper a plan in her ear without the hidden cameras picking up on the fact that they're up to something. I'm sure there were better plans, Carlos! There's probably a certain appeal to the one that involves pinning Akane down and then getting straddled by Junpei (even if he's straddling you to punch you in the face), but don't freak out your friends like that! You're extremely lucky they forgave you.

I do like that Akane is clearly taking great pleasure in saying, 'First, Carlos pushed me down and climbed on top of me,' when describing their plan to the others. You're not getting away with having thought this up, Carlos; she's not going to let you live it down.

I'm so relieved that the three of them are all still alive and on good terms in the final ending. Maybe not canonically in a ménage à trois, yet, but it'll happen.

(There's a canonical written epilogue for Carlos, in which his sister brings up Akane and Junpei:

'You're thinking about them right now, aren't you, Carlos?'
'What makes you say that?'
'Because you're smiling.'


MY HEART.)

I originally wrote, 'I'm going to be deeply disappointed in the fandom if it isn't full of Carlos/Akane/Junpei fanfiction,' and then I checked, and there are thirty fics! A very good amount, considering this isn't a large fandom! It's over 5% of the total, which is impressive, given that it's a threesome ship involving a character who only appears in the third game in the series. I'm thrilled to know I'm not the only person who thinks Carlos is deeply in love.

Akane is so much more fun as a character than I was expecting her to be when we first met her in 999. On her first introduction I thought, 'Oh, she'll just be the standard meek character who was only written in to be a love interest,' but she's one of the most interesting characters in the entire Zero Escape series. Smart and caring and absolutely ruthless.



I mentioned in my last entry that, although I'd seen a lot of Zero Escape fans saying they were disappointed by Zero Time Dilemma, I thought it was my favourite game in the series. Having finished it, I can say that it managed to hold on to that crown! I definitely got fannishly invested in it in a way I didn't with the others. Maybe I'll write fanfiction, although the timeline's so complicated it feels difficult to get a foothold.
wolfy_writing: (Default)

[personal profile] wolfy_writing 2018-05-09 11:58 am (UTC)(link)
Wow, that sounds awesomely bizarre!

Yeah, Carlos, that is a terrible plan! See if you can find a non-traumatic way to convey information next time!
wolfy_writing: (Default)

[personal profile] wolfy_writing 2018-05-09 12:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, it was better than some of the other reasons he might have done that, but dammit, Carlos!

(Anonymous) 2018-05-09 05:16 pm (UTC)(link)
C Team's epic jumps through space and time time are my favourite bits of the game! Although particularly when Carlos also runs into the timeline that Diana and Sigma transported themself into. (Eric is totally the voice of the player going "????!!!" in that one, haha.) And I liked the scene that was just Sean and Zero, trapped in the shelter together. It's the only scene that really gives Zero personality in this one and I totally want more fanfic about it. But fandom hates Q Team, so this does not happen.

Did you notice last time than the timeline which leads into the VLR future was the timeline where Junpei and Akane, both characters in that future, have been executed?

Here's some interesting stuff about the big reveal with Zero: That's actually rather a lot of foreshadowing for this. Even down to little details like the shadows. Plus, that was of course the main reason for the game being cinematic: you can't get away with that twist in a text based visual novel style of the other games. (I got the "Perceptive" ending before I had the Q reveal. I feel this is totally the best order to play it in. ("??? I shot the camera man...?!"). I liked Sean a lot, too.

-timydamonkey

(Anonymous) 2018-05-09 05:40 pm (UTC)(link)
Somebody compiled a list of some of the foreshadowing on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ZeroEscape/comments/4rmah9/spoilers_all_the_foreshadowing_in_ztd/

Don't think it's a complete list though - for instance, it misses that there are actually 4 sounds not 3 when Q Team black out between segments - two of them are just very close together.

It really was nice to see all the teams together!

I guess Zero considers him to be a member of Q Team by proxy? Weird comparison, but after the game I always kind of thought of Sean as being a bit like an assistance dog. Zero can't blow his cover by actively doing a lot of things, so he is ensuring that Sean does them on his behalf. Therefore Sean, by that logic, is an extension of Q. I've never heard anybody else think of it that way, but that's always how I saw it!
squeemu: Magpie holding a ring in its beak. (Default)

[personal profile] squeemu 2018-05-10 08:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Smart and caring and absolutely ruthless.

Oh no, this sounds extremely like my type.

GOOD THING I WILL NEVER PLAY THESE GAMES, I don't have the energy to get deeply involved in yet another story. It also sounds slightly bewildering, although also I've never even heard of this series before, so that doesn't surprise me very much.
dracothelizard: Top Gear Dog wagging her tail and being cute. (Default)

[personal profile] dracothelizard 2018-05-11 09:29 am (UTC)(link)
"'Towards the end, it turned out that the villain was a character who'd apparently been there the entire time, but just offscreen, and all the other characters knew he was there. It turned out he'd set up the whole scenario to make the sixty-seven-year-old and the twenty-something-year-old bang.'"

...Was the villain Derren Brown?
dracothelizard: Top Gear Dog wagging her tail and being cute. (Default)

[personal profile] dracothelizard 2018-05-11 09:34 am (UTC)(link)
Clearly it's the alternate timeline where Derren Brown is an actual villain instead of just affably and meaning-well kind of evil.
dracothelizard: Top Gear Dog wagging her tail and being cute. (Default)

[personal profile] dracothelizard 2018-05-12 09:12 am (UTC)(link)
Okay, that 'giving everyone the determination to avert the apocalypse' is definitely a Derren Brown motive.