[ChicletPrime]

see subject line.

BUT.

I think he might be The One.

He's your brother. Sort of. Yes. Possibly no. Brother-shaped. Best friend, protector, comfort object. He leaves. You give him a gift to remember you by. You leave. He comes back sometimes. So do you. You miss him. He comes home again and then he's just... gone.

That's as far as I am in the story, but THEN I SAW THIS when I was trying to look up stuff for the game AND I AM WILDLY IN AWE. Did they... did they suicide-pact? Is that what that was? We can't do this anymore, and we can't escape, so let's just go together? In some other world or time or maybe this is where it all ends up no matter what?

Well, that's right up my emotional alley, ffs.

[Coldsaturn]

see subject line.

BUT.

I think he might be The One.

He's your brother. Sort of. Yes. Possibly no. Brother-shaped. Best friend, protector, comfort object. He leaves. You give him a gift to remember you by. You leave. He comes back sometimes. So do you. You miss him. He comes home again and then he's just... gone.

That's as far as I am in the story, but THEN I SAW THIS when I was trying to look up stuff for the game AND I AM WILDLY IN AWE. Did they... did they suicide-pact? Is that what that was? We can't do this anymore, and we can't escape, so let's just go together? In some other world or time or maybe this is where it all ends up no matter what?

Well, that's right up my emotional alley, ffs.

Caleeeeebbbbb!!!
Ok here's our first of many issues: translations. Or cultural differences. You pretty much have the choice to pick up your own favorite interpretation, but just for the sake of clarity: he's MC's adoptive brother. In all the Asian versions he's called "big brother" but in the western version he's MC's "childhood friend"
You can pretty much decide which version to consider, because if we go by the original version, it's still not considered incest by them since they're not blood related and adoption can have different connotations compared to our adoption. So what ends up happening is that you have someone you grew up with and are very close to, and on the western side you have someone you grew up with and are very close to. So you can call him "brother" in chinese/japanese/korean or "childhood friend" in english and it's the same, right? More or less. What gets entirely lost in translation is the fact that as MC's big brother, Caleb feels he's responsible for taking care of her. That's his entire role in life. And as much as I'm a sucker for childhood-friends-to-lovers tropes, childhood pals don't bring the same sense of "it's me and you against the world, I'm your family, I'm all that you have and you're all that I have, no man will ever care for you as I do" etc. There will be a few translated lines he'll say that to me felt jarring until I replaced his (temporary) friendzone box from "child pal" to "brother"
So it might be obvious by now which translation I go for lol but the choice is yours.

And yes starcrossed lovers suicide pact! His myth is so good and so juicy! If you watch the whole myth story (it's on youtube and it doesn't give you spoilers for the main storyline since myths are either past or future/alternative future timelines), the context is even better.

(I haven't checked your other posts yet but we might need a topic where we can keep track of which chapter you're on because I don't want to spoil anything and at the same time I want to know your reactions as you find out more about the story!)

[ChicletPrime]

so i DID read it right -- suicide pact, together in life and in death - if we can't * be *, i don't want to be here at all.

le HEAVY SIGH. god, that was a cathartic moment in the video, let me tell you.

I am going for the nuance here in my head along with you, in that pseudo-brother is the best situation possible and "childhood friends" does not in the least have the right level of obsession and duty to make it compelling. As I mentioned on the tumblr thread, I am an "older" and am not caught up in puritanical hand-flapping virtue signalling - nothing is black and white, everything is a murky shade of smoky gray at best and the best moral quandaries are ones that have real bite. this is fiction, of COURSE it should reach for your innards and twist.

(EDIT: maybe i should put it out there that EVEN IF Caleb was the main character's actual blood sibling, I wouldn't have a problem with it. This is fiction, stuff is allowed to happen. well, maybe not in a PG rated gatcha otome game...)

So while I haven't "met" Caleb for longer than about three episodes where he showed up, there was dinner and then a bomb, I have really high hopes for the guy because everything hurts worse when its family.

I made the "mistake" of reading some of the high-kudo-count stories on Ao3 and had to stop myself after a dozen or so. Without spoiling too many spoils, Caleb is often written as very obsessive and I can't tell from this early peek into the game whether that's a canon thing, or a fanon thing? Would love to know just how much is actually expressed in game if at all possible since it's gonna take me a bit to get there and I am a dessert-first kinda gal.

I mean, all the boys are going to be attached to us regardless, they're kind of written that way, but I didn't come across any stories that, say, had Zayne losing several mental gaskets and supergluing us to his trophy wall. I mean, he MIGHT, but I would expect his mental gasket expression to involve vivisection or something.

I am waffling on whether to look up the myth stories at some point (since the likelihood of getting the cards myself is slim and more slim). I have a feeling I will park myself on a video with popcorn to hand at some point but right now I am just trying to keep away from it other than watching the trailer vids on the official website because a girl has to feed herself * something *, yanno?

I will post somewhere on chapter completion / story synposis per me, good idea!

[Coldsaturn]

so i DID read it right -- suicide pact, together in life and in death - if we can't * be *, i don't want to be here at all.

le HEAVY SIGH. god, that was a cathartic moment in the video, let me tell you.

I am going for the nuance here in my head along with you, in that pseudo-brother is the best situation possible and "childhood friends" does not in the least have the right level of obsession and duty to make it compelling. As I mentioned on the tumblr thread, I am an "older" and am not caught up in puritanical hand-flapping virtue signalling - nothing is black and white, everything is a murky shade of smoky gray at best and the best moral quandaries are ones that have real bite. this is fiction, of COURSE it should reach for your innards and twist.

(EDIT: maybe i should put it out there that EVEN IF Caleb was the main character's actual blood sibling, I wouldn't have a problem with it. This is fiction, stuff is allowed to happen. well, maybe not in a PG rated gatcha otome game...)

So while I haven't "met" Caleb for longer than about three episodes where he showed up, there was dinner and then a bomb, I have really high hopes for the guy because everything hurts worse when its family.

I made the "mistake" of reading some of the high-kudo-count stories on Ao3 and had to stop myself after a dozen or so. Without spoiling too many spoils, Caleb is often written as very obsessive and I can't tell from this early peek into the game whether that's a canon thing, or a fanon thing? Would love to know just how much is actually expressed in game if at all possible since it's gonna take me a bit to get there and I am a dessert-first kinda gal.

I mean, all the boys are going to be attached to us regardless, they're kind of written that way, but I didn't come across any stories that, say, had Zayne losing several mental gaskets and supergluing us to his trophy wall. I mean, he MIGHT,  but I would expect his mental gasket expression to involve vivisection or something.

I am waffling on whether to look up the myth stories at some point (since the likelihood of getting the cards myself is slim and more slim). I have a feeling I will park myself on a video with popcorn to hand at some point but right now I am just trying to keep away from it other than watching the trailer vids on the official website because a girl has to feed herself * something *, yanno?

I will post somewhere on chapter completion / story synposis per me, good idea!

I'm right there with you. I don't know how old you are, but I grew up in completely different fandom communities, long before I started seeing purity culture explode in our face. And okay, it wasn't all good, people had weird obsessions with canon straight couples and you'd get kicked out of forums and chats for daring to write slash, but it felt more insular and manageable than this.
I wouldn't have had any problem if Caleb had been presented to us as an actual brother by blood either. I like stories and I like well-crafted conflicts, I don't care how far down the rabbit hole one reaches in fiction in order to explore something. More power to them, if I can I'll be there with popcorn or with a pen myself, ready to join.

LOL at those fics. OK I can't tell you much without spoiling you and I'm going to hold back as much as I can until you give me the explicit "I like spoilers" greenlight. I can tell you that fandom has a bit of a habit of mischaracterizing a few of the LIs, whether it's because they don't like them, they like them so much they forget what is fanon and what's not, or they're missing important canon info. I won't tell you if those fics are accurate for his character (they might be, might not), but enjoy fanon content while keeping in mind that it might go in a completely different direction from canon personalities.

If the implicit question was "how dark does the game get?" then I can tell you: I don't know how infold is avoiding censorship and keeping that rating lmao
It can get deliciously dark when you least expect it.

I'd say, if you're resisting watching the myths already, you might as well get a proper feel for the characters in the main storyline so that you can then be punched in the face when you go and watch the myths. Pretty much every player relies on seeing the cards online because unless you want to spend ridiculous amounts of money, we're all missing important cards which means missing important facts. User Lavender on youtube has every single card known to man, so you can go there to watch the entire movies (some of the cards are 1 hour long) when you decide to do that.
You'll end up watching them at some point though, because they're necessary for the LIs.

[ChicletPrime]

never give your ASL on a public anywhere, but I can cheerfully say that I pretty much grew up on and with the internet. I was there, GandalfSaturn, when fandom was personal websites and then the collection websites that sprung up after that to consolidate everything into one place instead of scattered everywhere, webrings, email rings, email lists and forums.

It was absolute full of cliques and camps and people yelling at each other over the dumbest things, but if one place blew up into grenade fragments over some inter-personal issue between the two people running the place, there was always somewhere else to land, even if you had to build it yourself.

[pointedly looks around the bare walls]

Hah, I remember one ... I wanna say it was an email ring for fanfiction in the anime I was into - and you could get yourself banned for daring to write anything painting the one lone female character as anything other than besotted with the main lead. you'd get banned AND tarred AND feathered if you dared suggest maybe she was lesbian and didn't much care for any of the guys at all. ah, good times. You could write slash fic for the two male leads, but it had to be the webmistress' level of 'tasteful', lord knows what that was.

Please hold back on the absolute spoilers, like "this happens and then your character says this and then he says that and this proves that really, he's definitely foreshadowing this other, upcoming event and anybody that can't see that is brain dead". But general "character" stuff like which general archetype each boy falls into, or what vibe you think fell flat somewhere is fine for discussion although I'm not going to be able to contribute much until I get caught up and maybe have differing opinions worth hashing out.

I guess err on the side of caution, I don't need to know everything now! Some of the fun is definitely in the confusion and suspicion. I am really pleased to know that the boys aren't just cookie cutter nice all the time. I am REALLY pleased that you're wondering about if the game is rated correctly for its content! Honestly, seeing some of the ads where the love interest actually kisses you kind of made me want to play, back in the times when I just couldn't due to technical limitations. Its nice for once to actually have an "adult" romance that isn't restricted to G rating and implied hand holding.

I mean, jeez! Xavier GRABS you in the first two minutes! Color me bemused and happy.

[Coldsaturn]

Oh yeah absolutely, you won't get me asking for identifying info!
Just as I thought about spoilers, so that's all good. If I accidentally cross the tolerance line warn me so I can adjust immediately~

The writing on the boys is actually solid and gives lots of juicy stuff for theorists and writers and fanvid editors and fanartists etc. I'm curious to know what you'll think of them once you'll start piecing together more and more info!
You can choose to focus only on your fav LIs and ignore the others, of course, but do know that if you want to understand the world building you'll have to read about all of them. There are players who genuinely only read their main LI's cards and nothing else, and then get surprised when it turns out they actually don't know what's going on /shrugs

[ChicletPrime]

I will not be focusing on just my "main" love interests, lets be real. But resources are already a squeeze at level 40 so can't get too involved with everybody all at once or I'll be here forever. I will not however be somebody who finds their guy and just squats - if I can have them all, by golly, sign me up for the love pit full of pillows.

I am very much looking forward to more story / lore - other than the inclusion of decent combat (for once, in a gatcha game) that has been the most surprising thing of all. The lore IS really good, rough edges and quibbles all, even at the beginning beginning. I've definitely experienced worse in games that purported to be better. This is coming out of left field and its so great.

[Coldsaturn]

My sibling in christ pretty much nobody is able to pull for all the guys and buy all the needed resources (I mean, there are some who do but they have stupid amounts of money to throw in there). It just isn't feasible. What we do is try to get the cards we really really want, and for the rest we look them up on youtube in order to fill in the gaps.

Main story line, World Underneath, Anecdotes, Abyssal Chaos. These are things that every player can get their hands on f2p. All the content from the cards (including myths) and things locked behind insanely high levels of affinity will be consumed on youtube. Embrace it, join us.