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unwiltingblossom · 4 years

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Code: Realize Route Review - SHIRLEY EXTRA ROUTE

We INTERRUPT YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED ROUTES WITH A SHIRLEY GORDON ROUTE REVIEW. Note, I’ve since done Finis’ route and much of Sholmes, but Shirley...Shirley can’t wait her turn.

Spoiler alert: There’s three good things about this route, unless you’re saving it for the last blast of nostalgia (don’t do that); Victor Frankenstein is present, Saint Germain is wonderful, and the boys all wear different clothing that, while more plain, makes them pretty hot.

Every single part of this route other than that is awful, terrible, and should feel terrible.

Oh, Delly and Passy are cute, I guess. But they’re too good for this route. Spoilers for it, I guess, but I’m doing you a favor if you don’t read it. There’s also spoilers for some of the main routes, chiefly Germain’s and Victor’s. Mostly Saint Germain’s.

This one is more in-depth than usual routes, because...well...I hate all of it, so it’s not just jumping around to different points that I either love or hate or find frustrating.

If other reviews feel more like reactions to you, this one is more than thorough enough to be a review.

First thing’s first: Yes, Sholmes is in this route, but he’s not in it long enough to be able to pull it out of the muck and garbage that is this route.

Second: Yes, the boys all get cool BDH moments, but again, not even that can save this travesty of a route

I could have included those as small concessions at the start, but that wouldn’t fit the rule of three, and frankly those three things are the only stuff that’s present consistently enough to matter.

So the route opens with an amusing little scene where Lupin disguises himself as Sholmes (weirdly, Lupin flexes a skill that Sherlock Holmes would normally possess, but whatevs. Code Realize struggles a little to keep up with Sherlock. It happens.) and steals a statue, presumably sticking this story around the point where Lupin stole all the vamp treasures back for Delly. (It’s not, because later they establish it’s definitely after Victor’s chapter, and I think the airship race is referenced once as well, placing it in an alternate universe where Finis doesn’t ambush them at the lab and Lupin is like ‘whoops, I said I got everything but I forgot the most important treasure of all’)

He runs into some mafia who try to kill him to get the statue back, but if Lupin is anything, he’s bullet proof. You might expect this mafia stuff to loop back to the festival place that Lupin inadvertently wrecked, the sky pirates that he pissed off, or the black race they participated in. You’d be wrong. Those stuff are barely mentioned, and the only purpose they solve is a brief scene where The Demon flexes her skills.

So the Twilight are super hard looking for Cardia at this point and they may possibly even have narrowly escaped a Twilight raid at that lab without killing Finis (we know he’s not dead, because Cardia would never miss an opportunity to remind us of how scary Germain was when he killed Finis had it happened), and this naturally means that Impey decides to go ahead and send her off all on her own for a drive through Lowtown with just Sisi to defend her, because testing the automobile can’t wait and Van Helsing is about to create a bioweapon in the kitchen. Why doesn’t he send Delly with her? Because Delly doesn’t want to be in this story, don’t force him.

While on that test drive, where Cardia would be unable to fix the car if it broke down, making the test drive totally pointless except to needlessly endanger her and open up Finis’ route, The Demon appears. The Demon being the girl in the photo, and who the route is about, Shirley Gordon. Shirley. She’s the 13 year old daughter of a mafia boss who simultaneously just wants to be normal and wants to go on a murder spree.

Shirley makes a habit of running away from her ‘crime’ family. There’s no reason for her to do this, actually, because they dote on her, never make her do anything bad, and are really better considered vigilantes than mafia. They’re so virtuous that the Lawful Neutral Sholmes that explicitly states he only cares about what the law says, not about the morals behind those laws, thinks they’re a-okay and will help them without hesitation.

Anyway. Shirley runs away to do...something. It’s never clear where she thinks she’s running to, other than maybe hoping to find a different crime boss and murder the heck out of him. Along the way, she spots a random woman driving in an automobile and is like “Yes! That one! I’m going to drag her into this escape, knowing full well that it’s not just endangering her but everyone around when I make her SPEED through the streets running away from my family, even after she says ‘I can’t control the car any faster than this, I’ll hit civilians’!” She also tries to get her father killed by flinging him off of a car at high speed into a street full of other cars and horses. But it’s okay, cuz he’s sturdy.

Impey planned ahead for some danger that would inevitably befall Cardia, the most danger-attracted person in the kingdom (and I mean ‘attracted to danger’, because this is the woman who at one point is warned about a mass murderer and immediately decides she should go ahead and wander in the sewers until she gets lost because it’s raining) - he made a button that activates a transmitter that warns him if she’s in danger. And that’s it. He doesn’t even tell her what it is, so by the time she tries to use it, it’s too late to do anything effective. Imagine if instead of a band of vigilantes cornering her, it was Twilight. “Oh, gee, but I put a transmitter on her car! Where could Cardia-chan have GONE? She turned it on, but this is just an empty alleyway with the car, no Cardia.”

Everyone scolds Impey about it, but that’s mostly because of a sudden uptick in mafia stuff (which to be fair would also be bad, because had it been actual mafia they’d have gotten there in time to find Cardia’s bullet-ridden corpse instead) and not because he let Cardia go unsupervised while Twilight is still looking for her.

Okay, that’s a lot of words harping on one thing, but it’s the vital starting point of this entire story. It’s important, and it is ridiculous. Anyway, moving on. Stuff happens that isn’t important except as a plot framing device. Cardia talks with Shirley and her dad, and immediately accidentally reveals her poison. As one does. Because the mafia looks at a living weapon and doesn’t immediately recoil in horror, Cardia instantly latches on to them to the point that she almost forgets Lupin’s crew exists for a few seconds. (Elaine and Etty, too)

She remembers that ‘oh, you kidnapped me and you kept me in London and not in a super obvious landmark like St. Paul’s Cathedral or some apartment in Baker’s Street, you screwed up!’ just in time for the rescue party to make their explosive entrance. The crew sans Saint Germain (because Germain would be murdering people and that would be unfortunate under the circumstances) arrive in a blaze of glory that is, frankly, pretty fun and has a cool CGI. It’s a bright spot that’s only slightly dragged down by Cardia koalaing the first second third (fourth counting Sholmes just being surprised on the train and then discounting it) group of people who don’t see her as a monster (in a timeline where she never saw her 665 past versions) immediately upon seeing her alien acid--I mean poison.

Saint Germain arrives home just in time to feel a bit awkward for missing Cardia’s monthly kidnapping and hints at plot stuff. Delly is also there and is cute enough that Saint Germain can’t help teasing him a little. Some time later, no one seems particularly hurried, confirming this is either right after Victor’s chapter or an AU where Finis didn’t show up in the lab and everyone ended up at a dead end related to Isaac. Sholmes shows up at the mansion because for some reason a case that has his name practically written on it is too much for him to handle on his own and he feels he needs Arsene’s thief-y mind to help him with it (maybe he’s suspects it’s a trap and is looking into the Certain Person he’s hunting?) - For no reason in particular, he goes ahead and leads the Gordons to Germain’s mansion as well.

Because Germain is there, it’s a pretty okay scene despite that. Sholmes and Germain are very alike and understand each other extremely well, and it sucks how little they get to interact.

Alas, the good scene can’t last, because while there’s a bunch of adults in a room talking, they unfortunately dragged dead weight into it, and it’s just a count down before Shirley blows her top. THIS HERE IS THE FIRST INSTANCE OF SOMETHING THAT REALLY BOTHERS ME.

Everyone, Cardia included, keeps crowing about how Shirley is Cardia’s first/only friend that is “Her age and gender”. Shirley is 13. At the end of this route, they will make a point to show that she’s about Delly’s age - Delly who is like a little brother/son and who never gets a route even two fandiscs in, because he’s too young. Cardia (although actually like 6) is in the body of someone who’s 17-18 years old. She’s a ‘young lady’, but not a child. She’s old enough that it’s not weird for thousands of years old Germain to be in love with her, nor is it creepy that Impey wants to sex her like a day after meeting her, and anywhere from 6 months to a year from the end of the plot each route she gets married. She’s old enough that Jack the Ripper considers her a legitimate target. She is NOT 13. Shirley isn’t her age, Shirley doesn’t act like her age. She’s basically a kid Cardia constantly has to babysit and who drags Cardia into trouble with her childish antics. It’s annoying that the game conflates a prepubescent child with an adult just because they’re both teenagers.

Anyway.

Shirley, in all her infinite wisdom, throws a temper tantrum because REASONS, and decides to drag Cardia out of an important meeting to go ‘have fun’ around town. And not only that, but she demands to do it without a single guard. While there are drug crazed killers wandering around town, and more importantly Twilight soldiers still looking for Cardia. Lupin gang comes to the absolutely deranged conclusion that Cardia will be fine ‘if she only runs into one or two Twilight’ as if that has ever been the case.

Remember how they all berated Impey for letting Cardia go on her own because dangerous mafia was out in the town? And then Cardia IMMEDIATELY GOT KIDNAPPED? Well, they don’t, because they all come to the same conclusion that Impey did and completely forget there’s still a group of killer mafia out there who probably are all the more likely to target Cardia when the daughter of a rival family is with her. If they wanted Shirley to shut up/Cardia to have some girl time, but they weren’t willing to send any adults out after her because it would be a bummer to catch that guy up on what he missed later, they could have sent Delly off to secretly tail her. But, again...Delly has his statue and now wants NOTHING to do with this route. As well he should.

Obviously, Cardia gets kidnapped immediately.

But first:

Shirley drags Cardia all over the place like an over-excited puppy, until she makes it to the mafia controlled festival place. Evidently it’s not her mafia, because while people are polite to her she still has to pay and play the games to get prizes. The cliche ‘she’s so good at shooting that an intentionally broken gun at a carnival game is no match for her’ thing plays out, complete with the ‘begging her to stop or they’ll go broke’ thing. What happens if you win too much is that the owner just says ‘mmkay you’re done for today’, that’s all. Also, even if you won the whole inventory from him, chances are he’s already made so much from failed attempts that it’d just be an annoyance.

At their last stop before they go home, Shirley finally realizes they’re being tailed (great reflexes, Shirley), and naturally her 13 year old, no-gun, no backup self immediately sprints after the person she’s sure killed her mother. Cardia, instead of picking up the girl with her superior strength and speed and carrying her home, foolishly decides to go off into the alleyways - which she KNOWS she shouldn’t do - after her.

Shock. Shirley runs into a blatant trap, because she is a child. She barks and yaps at the mafioso because she could do literally nothing else when she’s not even armed, and then Cardia is kidnapped alongside Shirley. Good job, Shirley! Your father was part of a three-part collaboration to take down Avido, but you bravely marched yourself into his arms and gave him ultimate leverage against not one but two of those groups!

Instead of instantly being killed to send a message, or even immediately used as effective leverage, they’re fortunate enough to just get stuck on a ship. It’s a good thing Avido has no connections to Twilight, because it sure would suck if he kept Shirley for leverage and then sent Cardia off to Finis. Fortunately, Impey learned from his previous mistake and this time put the tracker ON Cardia. So they can find her dead body more easily, if she ran into literally anyone who didn’t decide to just keep her safely locked up somewhere instead of killing her.

Shirley tells her sob story, it pales in comparison to even Lupin’s past, but Cardia feels terrible for her anyway because she hasn’t heard any of those stories yet on this route. Shirley, who wouldn’t sound out of place as Leon’s daughter, screams and tantrums about how she’s definitely gonna kill Avido while trapped in a cell who-knows-where with no actual way to kill him. She nearly just kills herself instead, slamming uselessly into the door like a rabid dog. Cardia has to jump in the way just to stop her.

Because, despite her rampant kidnapping, Cardia is actually competent most of the time, once Shirley stops causing a ruckus Cardia manages to spring them from the cell. The escape doesn’t last, because Avido uses ‘infinite footsteps’ jutsu, and Cardia and Shirley are surrounded. Remember in the Train Robbery chapter where Cardia remarks that Van Helsing taught her it’s really hard to get overwhelmed in an enclosed space like a tight hallway?

Yeah, forget that.

Anyway, in a charming semi-callback moment, the wall explodes nearby, letting Van Helsing and Germain into the hallway, chattering pleasantly with each other. Germain looks dapper AF while walking through the wreckage of the wall, as usual. It’s a nice moment. And, you know, if you get rescued by Van and Germain you’re pretty much set. Not much is gonna overwhelm that.

EXCEPT WHEN IT DOES, HAH. Avido pulls the ol’ “I have your friends and if you don’t want them to die, you’d best come with me peacefully” and so naturally the noted war hero whose family died because he went along with such a demand and the hostage taker killed them anyway, and the multi-thousands of year old assassin who has not just seen every trick in the book but probably written the book, immediately fall for it and go along with Avido.

Everyone, including the trickster thief and the other mafioso, also fell for the trick and so everyone ends up gathered in one place at the ballroom as Avido wants. Fortunately, Avido didn’t bring them all together to easily execute them, because their total lack of trust for each other’s skills really would have bitten them all in the butt then (except Germain, who would have egg on his face shortly before he killed all the mafia on board in revenge, I’m sure). Instead, he just wants them to...be there.

No, he doesn’t have any specific purpose for them. He just wants them there. He also wants Cardia dressed up for no particular reason. Fortunately, the Gordons gave Cardia a fancy dress right before she got kidnapped, and Victor has the poison proofing down so well now that he can just go ahead and treat a complex ensemble like that while riding in a car speeding its way to Liverpool. Because...well, there’s no actual reason why he’d feel it was an emergency to treat that clothing, nor why he’d even have brought it, but it’s a good thing Victor really wanted to see Cardia in that dress.

I guess you can argue that Lupin decided it was a part of his plan to make Cardia strip down and swap clothes when they found her so she could sneak out, but...that’s a stretch and a half. Especially when they were exploding walls to get in and find her. Stealth is gone when you use explosions, boys.

Anyway, the outfits Lupin made for the boys are great. Yes, they’re a little plain and not nearly as quirky as their normal ones...but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some annoying things like Impey’s always half-off sleeve are gone, and both Victor’s questionable color scheme and Lupin’s atrocity are replaced with a suit meant to make them look good. Still the pointless top hats though. Always the top hats.

Unfortunately, though Shirley’s also meant to change, the plot and game itself instantaneously forgets this and it’s never mentioned or shown. Even more unfortunate: you might see Cardia in a beautiful new outfit and hope for the boys to give some kind of impressed, breathtaken, or blushy response.

They won’t. No one even comments on how she looks beyond maybe Shirley. Not even Impey, noted horndog, makes a comment. Lupin who presumably is the reason they brought the dress at all makes no comment, In short, Cardia looking pretty is just for you, the player. It won’t make any difference except that she gets a CG or two dressed up in it.

Avido flexes that all the sketchy mafia and questionable nobility who attend a black market cruise are in danger if Lupin or Gordon makes a move. Fortunately for his plans, everyone except Shirley actually cares about that, and so their hands are tied. Again, not really sure why Avido would threaten his customers so that people who want to take him down and provide him zero benefit won’t do anything when he even says later he could gun them down in full view and none of his customers would find it weird.

When the gang and mafia are all put into an extravagant room that Saint Germain had previously booked for himself (because he’s a bit of a cad that loves his antiques, dammit, the fact that it’s illegally acquired is really not that important!) Shirley realizes it’s been practically a whole half hour since she’s made a nuisance of herself, and so she starts screaming and tantrumming because her father didn’t shoot Avido dead back when there were countless bystanders around and each one of her allies - herself included - had guns pointed at them.

No. She literally throws a shrieking tantrum that involves flinging things across the room when he sends her off essentially ‘to her room’, and then spends the rest of the night sobbing into Passy’s arms. This, the person who keeps whining and complaining that no one will treat her like an adult, that people keep sheltering, that Cardia bafflingly keeps trying to compare herself to. She has a childish meltdown when she’s told ‘no, we can’t just kill Avido right now’.

Amazing.

Her dad, Darius, tells his sob story. It’s basically the same as Shirley’s, nothing really to write home about. Honestly, I kept expecting some kind of twist where Shirley’s mother actually betrayed them and he’d been forced to kill her to save Shirley, or her mother was actually on the cruise ship working with Avido. That’s how boring and unimportant the backstory is. You think Impey and Lupin’s stories are limp? Shirley’s story is just a big old ‘so?’. Even the last detail Darius later adds is like ‘and? You got angry and wanted to kill someone for murdering your wife. But you didn’t.’

Imagine for a moment if Germain’s story was that he got to know that little boy, got attached, and then even though he desperately didn’t want to do it, he killed him like he was supposed to. And then nothing happened after that, he just went on continuing to Idea Apostle

YEAH! THAT’S RIGHT! EVEN THAT WOULD BE MUCH WORSE THAN DARIUS’ STORY.

I’m getting sidetracked here, but this is a brutal part of the story that’s hard to get through, because Shirley is so beyond obnoxious, screaming and throwing a literal fit because no one listens to her, while they play the sad music that means you’re supposed to care.

Anyway, because Avido was too dumb to kill the people who are determined to stop him, Lupin and the others immediately start plotting to stop him. There’s a drug plot that’s designed to make the statue Lupin steals matter and give Victor something to do. Cardia is a competent nurse and Victor looks hot while he saves someone’s life, but man did I think it was a trap when someone ran in saying Victor was calling for her. That would be giving this route WAY too much credit.

For reasons that aren’t clear, there’s a room that has a bunch of counterfeit treasures of everything that’s up for sale. They bad counterfeits, though, and couldn’t possibly be mistaken for the same item, so it’s not like it’s an art theft swap or something. It just serves to show where a small part of the drugs are hidden. Not all of them, mind, because that would give the room a reason to exist. Just some of it.

The crew split up. Impey and Van Helsing both go to the engine room so they can seize it and turn the ship around before it can go to international waters. Because for some reason crimes committed there would cause a war or something. Cardia probably could have mentioned to them that she took out the whole engine crew on her own, so using up the vampire AND the living weapon on that assignment isn’t likely to be necessary, but that’d require some kind of sense, which this route doesn’t have.

Victor, Lupin, and Germain do...stuff. I think Germain goes off to seize the drugs in the food, Victor goes off somewhere nondescript to make an antidote, and Lupin farts around for a while to waste some time. What’s important is that even though Cardia’s there to see all the assignments go out, Lupin secretly also told Germain to find all the valuables in the ship and set charges on them. Probably because it would take .5 seconds for Germain to overpower some cooks and mafia boys and everyone knows it.

Cardia, bereft of plot, goes back to the room to wait to be important, and finds out that Shirley realized she slept through her half hour and forced her way through a window...I guess to the outside of the ship? And scaled up the outside of the hull like the demon beast she is, to escape confinement in her room. So she can run off and be a waste of space and oxygen not in her room, but somewhere actively detrimental to all the plans everyone’s made without her.

Presumably because everyone is as sick of Shirley as I am at this point, no one even tries to look for her this time. Maybe they all hoped she fell off overboard, I dunno. You’d think they’d all know she’d make a beeline to Avido and go collect her there, banking on the fact that Avido doesn’t know they’re planning anything (effective) and is determined to make them play the part of innocent passengers right now. But nah. She’d just screw up any plan they made anyway.

Lupin showboats around and disseminates the antidote to all the passengers during the auction via a fancy champagne tower. Then, long before all of them could actually have drank their cups, he goes ahead and tells Avido exactly what he’s done, forcing them to move onto the next step. The step that definitely involves most of the passengers dropping their glasses in a blind panic.

Avido, by the way, is a human traficker. The reason he keeps Cardia alive and kidnaps her instead of leaving her be or killing her is because he thinks she’d sell for a high price. It’s not a secret that he does this. Mafia apparently do it all the time, to the point where the no-crime Gordon family casually discuss the possibility of selling Cardia until another person has to remind the first that ‘yo we don’t do that’. Avido also traffics drugs. Drugs which inevitably either kill the user or turns the user into a violent zombie akin to a Hidden Strength victim, meaning that he’s causing a lot of deaths. Avido has personally killed a whole lot of people. He murdered one of his henchmen just because they failed to get a statue he doesn’t even care that much about.

Got that? Avido’s a bad boy. Objectively, Avido is worse than just about anyone else in the game other than Victoria - who at least has her ‘greater good’ reasons - Isaac - who is insane with grief - and Azoth. Hidden Strength victims are out of their mind, and while Nemo is callous toward human life in the face of science, he doesn’t go out of his way to murder for kicks and giggles. He’s also insane. Omnibus, also, is a question of personal morality vs greater good. Avido? Stone-cold sane, no greater good involved, he just wants power because he thinks it sounds fun.

Now that we’ve established that, does anyone in the room just kill Avido?

No. No they do not. Instead, they waffle about it and ramble about philosophy until he’s able to wrench back the upper hand via sheer numbers (because Van and Germain are otherwise engaged), and backs everyone up onto the surface of the boat.

Sadly, Shirley didn’t fall off the boat, she just jumped into Avido’s arms so she could become his hostage. AGAIN. He doesn’t reveal this at first, even when they’re outside and he has the upper hand. He takes his time before he brings out the unconscious Shirley. Supposedly she got so far as to point a gun at Avido this time, but I don’t think I believe him, because her strategy up until this point has been ‘angrily yap at him hoping he’ll just off himself’. Plus she’s supposed to actually have some skill with a gun and is psychotically enraged at him. She’d definitely have shot him if she ever thought to bring a gun.

Fortunately, there’s still some competent people on board the ship, and Impey + Van Helsing bust through the top of the ship in Impey’s automobile to help turn the tide of the battle. Sisi is there too. Which makes one ask ‘where is Delly, then?’

The answer is ‘not in this route, screw you, he doesn’t want to be here’.

Where’s Germain? He’s busy. It’ll be obvious why in a bit. That said, they have Avido dead to rights once Van Helsing and Impey get there (it’s mostly Van. Impey’s great and all, but Van doesn’t need back up) What do they do? Do they kill this murdering scumbag who wants to rule the entire world just so he can kill people when he feels like it? Who’s sold girls off into slavery? Who’s killed people just because he felt annoyed?

NO. FOR IF YOU KILL ME, BATMAN, YOU WILL BECOME ME.

Now, Impey and Lupin don’t kill. Even when Lupin was like ‘Hey, I love this girl and if you say that again I’ll literally kill you’, he didn’t actually kill the guy when the person immediately said it again. Victor can do it, but it’s pretty deeply traumatizing to him, and he’s pretty firmly in the ‘might doesn’t make right’ camp. But Van Helsing does. Sure, he’s deeply traumatized from the war and he won’t kill unless necessary - pretty much it’s a hard sell to kill anyone not Finis shaped....but he does it. Between ‘crime family compromising its ideals for revenge and becoming criminals’ and ‘man under the protection of the crown killing a violent and horrible criminal he was sent to deal with who has directly endangered his friends’, Van’s gonna just step up and do it.

Instead though, it seems Lupin had told everyone on the team except Cardia about his actual plan, which was to blow all the treasures to hell instead, and let Shirley pull the trigger. because revenge, I guess.

Since the ship is now SINKING, Impey and everyone but Germain (hold pls, he’s busy) drive off of the ship onto the dock in a way that would definitely do damage to the car and the dock, and into the night with the assumption that the Yard will do clean up from there.

In the biggest plot twist of the entire route, when treated the exact same way he was last time he got caught and had his plans blow up in his face, Avido again doesn’t learn his lesson. Instead, he manages to get a mother heckin tank off of his sinking ship and chases the Impeymobile through the streets.

Let me take a moment to say: the insane scientist he got this from had BETTER be Nemo, or else all of Victoria’s dreams of the UK having superior military force to the rest of the world just went up in smoke. Because, fun fact, Germany wasn’t so hard to handle in WW2 because of mustard gas. It was their tanks. (and as another aside: Germany got beaten up in WW1, only to come back dominant in WW2, so Victoria’s entire ‘spark a world war now to ensure dominance forever’ plan wouldn’t work no matter what)

Anyway, back to the subject at hand: I’m not mad that they don’t know how to fight a tank. That’s understandable. Tanks are a big deal. My problem is that the tank is able to plow right through solid brick buildings lengthwise. Not one or two, but just...constantly plowing through the alleyways at a speed so high that an automobile can’t escape. That is not how it works. Another problem is that neither Impey nor Lupin ever realize that the tank can’t turn for heck, and the automobile could spin circles around it if necessary.

But most of all, Avido pops his stupid head out of the tank at one point during the chase, and somehow it continues to be piloted. There’s never any mention or indication that anyone is in that tank besides him, he’s just Mr. Fantastic, and can stretch out and bend his legs infinitely, allowing him to pilot a tank full speed while standing more than halfway out of the thing. Worse than that super power, we have an impenetrable literal tank chasing the Lupin group around, destroying Liverpool, backing them into a corner. Soon they’re going to run out of a place to run, or they’re going to get hit and die.

Why, then, does Van Helsing see Avido pop his stupid head out, and proceed to do literally nothing? Obviously at this point he should just kill Avido, because nothing else will stop him, but just a few minutes before it’s mentioned that Van Helsing is so quick to switch from shrapnel to rock salt that it looks like some kind of a super power, which means he has ZERO reason he can’t just shoot Avido in the face with rock salt and knock the fool out.

Instead...they do nothing and just listen to him babble for a bit until his head pops back in again. Then they discuss jumping over to the tank and probably intend to get in there to get at him. You know, like they could have just done if he popped his head out.

Faced with all possible choices, Lupin decides the smart thing to do is to ram full speed into a renovating hotel and hope Avido is stupid enough to follow in. And, you know, that the falling debris will do anything to a tank that rammed right through an entire alleyway worth of buildings without slowing down or looking at all damaged.

Van Helsing is Van Helsing, and he protects the automobile from excessive damage, and lo - the plan works. It incapacitates the tank.

Avido, who could now safely play dead and wait for them to leave, instead climbs out of the tank (uninjured) and comes at them again. At this point although he was initially intimidated by Van Helsing he seems to be aware that no one is ever going to kill him, because he charges Van Helsing again.

Cue long boring monologue involving Avido’s slightly more interesting sob story and Darius absolutely refusing to ever kill Avido because IDEALS.

Currently they looped back around to the port and are near the boat, which may make you say ‘oh wait, where is Saint Germain anyway?’ The answer to that question is ‘not there, because we can’t have a literal time assassin who massacres entire villages of innocent people for the sake of the timeline be here while we pretend that good people don’t kill’. Sholmes also sat this out, because he would have been given permission to kill Avido legally, and we can’t have that.

But yes.

Germain’s busy on the boat threatening to kill people for some sweet art, while everyone is passionately preaching at Avido that they’d never kill him, not ever. Which is good for Avido, because if Germain weren’t busy getting filthier rich, the conversation would have been cut very short.

Y’know.

When Germain just stabbed him through the heart from behind.

As he does.

Also, we’d have to answer the question of ‘if this man is endangering the entire world with his plan, or even all of London, isn’t this a serious concern for the proper path of humanity? Ie; shouldn’t Germain be killing this man?’ if he were there.

Darius is like ‘well, you’re family, so even though you’re a murderous psychopath who purposefully got people nonconsensually addicted to a deadly drug and sold who knows how many innocents into slavery, I’m gonna look out for you’ just in time for Leonhart to show up and flail angrily at Arsene.

He immediately blames Lupin and the gang for the mass destruction of Liverpool, and instead of anyone saying “Well, actually it’s that tank there, It kept shelling the place and mowing through buildings because Avido is a psychopath”, Victor goes “Well, we have no excuse”

yes

yes you do

you didn’t do the destruction. (Except the hotel, but at that point it was ‘damage a rebuilding hotel or die’, so really...)

There’s a vaguely humorous bit where the mafioso realizes that the royal guard isn’t interested in arresting the mafia, just the random band of thieves, and then, wonderfully...Saint Germain finally shows up.

Truly, he lights up everything when he’s around. Aside from the times when he’s obligated to turn his murder blades on Cardia. That’s just sad.

Anyway, left to his own devices, Germain extorted a bunch of mafia into overfilling his automobile full of priceless treasures and cash. He’s shameless about it. It’s adorable. Give that man your art. Do it. It’s not a request, he’s taking your art.

Anyway, since the Impeymobile is wrecked, they all hop into Germain’s getaway car, and zoom off in a pretty cute ending CG, benny hill music playing as Leon chases them and Victor - poor, precious baby - nearly falling out of the car like a dweeb.

Sadly, there’s an epilogue, because this route is bad and it won’t let Germain save it.

Oh yeah, there’s an irrelevant noble who dies right before Germain probably would have killed him anyway. It’s stated that no one really tries to stop Germain from keeping his treasures, because most of them were originally acquired illegally and some are even national treasures of other nations, so even acknowledging they exist would possibly spark a war that Victoria totally, definitely doesn’t actually want for realsies.

Victoria responds to them saving the country and the world by not really responding. Instead, she sends them an invoice for the damage to Liverpool that they didn’t cause. It’s just so knee-slappingly hilarious that the invoice somehow matches the cost of those aforementioned priceless treasures. Because that gag is ALWAYS FUNNY AND NEVER OLD! IT’S SO FUNNY! HAHA THEY MADE MONEY BUT THE COST TOOK UP ALL THE MONEY! HAHA

except you know...

how...

how does the cost match priceless artifacts? Germain isn’t selling them, and he can’t even if he wants to. There’s not even price tags on some of them. How is it they’re ‘in the red’? Just the cash that was in the car?

Yeah, no, it’s stupid.

And to just cap off that bowl of stupid, we get to see The Demon, who unfortunately survived her repeated kamekaze attempts. This time the Lupin gang remembered that Twilight exists, so Delly and Passy go with her and Cardia on the town.

Naturally, because Shirley’s a little shit, she harasses and disrespects Delly.

...Well, it’s supposed to just be ‘two kids playing’, but Shirley’s a miserable little cave troll without a single redeeming iota of her being, so it just comes off as her being unreasonably rude to Delly.

There’s another photographer moment like in the Airship picture, but instead of a cute picture, it’s cropped out Delly and Passy, and just focuses on Shirley and Cardia holding ice cream, while the little brat has five scoops on her cone, which is definitely going to end up mostly melted on the street.

The route ends with Cardia being happy that she’s ‘made a friend that’s her same gender and age’. After establishing RIGHT BEFORE that Shirley is about Delly’s age, and is playing like a child with him while Cardia and Passy watch them.

Also for some weird reason, everyone is convinced that Sisi is a guard dog in this route. Just because.

You might think ‘is there a pay off with that whole statue thing’? no

You might think ‘okay, so what’s the conclusion with Herlock Sholmes? Does he toss some part of his earning for the assignment to Lupin and the others who actually did 100% of the job while he sat back and did nothing?’ no, nothing happens

You may think ‘okay, at least maybe they clarify what happens with the Twilight, or where Shirley is during the epilogues?’ no

no they don’t.

you may even think ‘at least Avido is dead or in prison or something permanently punished for all the horrible-’

it’s a bad route

it’s an awful route

it’s bad, bro.

Just enjoy the boys - particularly Germain - being cute. That’s all you get.

But not Delly.

Delly didn’t want to be a part of this crappy route.

#code realize #code realize future blessings #code:realize-future blessings #code: realize-future blessings #shirley gordon #code realize review #ooc #spoilers #SHIRLEY GORDON IS A GOBLIN MADE OF NOTHING BUT SUFFERING EXCEPT ITS YOURS #SHE EXISTS TO MAKE YOU SUFFER AND WONDER WHY YOU BOUGHT THIS GAME #long post

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theharellan · 4 years

Text

Expectations

My first play-through of DA:I I was playing a dwarf Inquisitor (who I write on @ourdawncomes) and as it happened Solas was her first friend, and also happened to be one of her best. However, the way the friendship scene plays out with Solas as a dwarf is never quite what I had in mind for how it would play out with Thora, so this is my rewrite of it.

I am using canon dialogue in places where I feel it fits, especially for Solas. And yes, I’m posting it on this blog because I have more followers, even if it’s from Thora’s POV. Don’t @ me.

Thora squints against the sun as she steps onto a balcony bathed in midday light. The wind from the Frostbacks is cold on her cheeks, but it’s a welcome relief to stand under an open sky after the high, windowless walls surrounding Solas’s study. He paces along the edge, his fingers running along the ridges of the stone balcony, feeling the grooves beneath their tips. The walk up here had been quiet, at least by their standards, with only polite inquiries as to her health. Now, whatever he had brought her here for weighs visibly upon his expression, brow wrinkled with thought.

“You had something on your mind, Solas?”

He sighs, hand lifting to press against his head, ironing out the lines in his forehead. There’s something familiar about the way Solas conducts himself when his emotions finally get the better of him: the pacing, the gesture of his hands, the way his eyes always look away before they find hers. It’s almost amusing to see him that way, considering who she knew him as when they first met. Amusing, until she remembers Wisdom. “What were you like,” Solas asks, hand falling to his side, “before the Anchor?” Thora’s eyes are drawn to her hand, fingers unfurling to stare at the green crack that glows along her lifeline. Whatever answer he seeks, she does not give it quick enough. “Has it affected you? Changed you in any way? Your mind, your morals, your… spirit?”

“What?” she laughs, looking up, expecting to see mirth in his face, but he meets her gaze with stony eyes which kill the sound in her throat. So, he’s not kidding. “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to know that.” She feels the same, mostly. Dreams are new, but Solas knows that already. “I don’t think so. I’ve always been this way, more or less. People are just… more likely to look at me than over me, now.” All the things she says now are what she said before, the only difference being she has a title to make them count, but that answer doesn’t seem to satisfy him. Solas’s ears angle back against his head, lips curving in a reluctant smile that she thinks is meant to assuage her doubts about the direction this conversation is heading.

“I see,” he says, “an excellent point.” It’s not disappointment she sees when she looks at him twice. It is familiar, though. She’s seen it in the eyes of everyone she’s ever told she’s no Herald, like she’s confirming something terrible they already knew was true.

“Why do you ask?

His eyes drift, skirting the same mountains he’d led them through to get here. They seem to wander, farther and farther, perhaps back to Haven, as they had done in her dream. He had said it was important to her, but it was to more than just her. Haven was where desperate survivours became an Inquisition, Solas among them. It had changed things for the both of them, whether he would admit that or not. “You show a wisdom I have not seen since…” His voice trails, sentence losing itself as his gaze drifts across the horizon. In the space of a second they’re on her again, grey eyes bright with a familiar passion. “Since my deepest journeys into the ancient memories of the Fade. You are not what I expected.”

A refrain she’s heard before. In part, anyway. With Solas it’s different, most everyone else had heard the title ‘Herald’ a dozen times before ever clapping eyes on her, he saw her back when she was known a prisoner, harbinger of their doom. Blackwall had put it best, his cheeks red with embarrassment when he admitted he thought she’d be taller. Human, more like. “What did you expect?” she asks, bracing for his answer.

“Dwarves are practical. They do not dream, they cannot even imagine a world beyond the physical, but you have shown subtlety in your actions, a mind for the metaphysical. A wisdom that goes against everything I know of your people.” His words hit her like a blow to the gut. Yes, it’s refrain she’s heard before. That doesn’t make it any easier.

“Oh,” she says, voice small. That’s almost where she leaves it– oh. It’s easy, letting it slide, she’s taken enough hits to pretend this one doesn’t hurt. She laughed with Sera, laughed off Blackwall, and it won’t cost her nothing to laugh Solas off, too. Only, she can’t quite seem to bring herself to. Something inside her steels itself, and she breathes in through her nose so she doesn’t stumble over her words. She’s speaking to her feet, but she knows he’ll hear well enough. “I guess you haven’t known too many dwarves, then.”

The accusation– because that’s what it is, isn’t it?– takes him by surprise. His ears perk forward, then pin back against his head as red steals into his cheeks. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, maybe you should take a second look at what’s around you.” She sees a frown pull at his lips before his gaze breaks from her. His hand sweeps idly over the balcony, and there’s something in his eyes that looks like he’s remembering. What he’s remembering, it’s hard to say with Solas. It could be yesterday’s breakfast, or a moment lived a hundred years ago by someone else, someone who he alone remembers. Thora holds her tongue, waiting for him to say something. Anger, acceptance, denial, but he lapses into sustained silence. Their eyes catch each other’s, just for a moment, long enough for her to trust he’ll listen. “You’ve read Varric’s books, haven’t you? All those made-up names and people, and he’s not the first dwarf to put pen to paper.” Or chisel to stone, as the case may be. “Some were so good at it the Assembly made them Paragons.”

Thora moves to stand beside him, shadow tall next to his. She leans into the balustrade, tucking her elbows upon the stone rail to look upon the distant mountains. “And I don’t know where Dagna’s head is half the time, but I don’t think it was ever with the Stone.” Not the way she tells it. Her sights were set on the Circle before she’d ever seen the sun. “She doesn’t dream like you do– or, like we do, but you’d be hard-pressed to say she isn’t a dreamer.” There had to be a bit of a dream in the head of every dwarf who journeyed to the Surface, to imagine a life beyond the heavy doors that lead into Orzammar. Sometimes she wonders what the dream in her ancestors’ heads were when they left, sometimes she wonders if Solas could tell her, if they went looking for it. Could they have ever dreamt of this, of her? Her hands curl, fists pressed into the stone, fingers touching the mark on the palm of her left hand.

Likely not.

She takes a small, steadying breath, cold air painting her throat, reminding herself of where she’s headed. “Just in this age, dwarves have invented smokeless forges and– machines, just powered by hot air.” She hopes she’s remembering that right. All she recalls is word of some Surfacer in Val Royeaux with a forge that employed a hundred men, and tools that run on steam. “My people can do more than just imagining a world beyond the physical… they make it real.”

Silence falls between them, the sort that curls her stomach into knots. He waits until she’s ready to burst before he says or does anything, a quiet inhale heralding his remark, “You have thought about this before.” Solas’s voice is soft against the wind, coloured by something that sounds like contrition.

“I… I guess I have.” It’s only now she realises the amount of times she’s had this conversation in her head, always after hearing another remark about dwarven merchants. “It’s hard not to, with people the way they are. You… well, you must know what I mean.” She’s heard him say as much before, wondering aloud why people are defined by form and not their nature.

Thora glances at him out of the corner of her eye, scanning his expression. He’s still looking out at the horizon, but something in his face tells her he’s not really seeing much of it. That most of him is turned inward, looking at himself, maybe. “I suppose I do,” he says after a moment. “I am sorry to have caused offense. My intent… I meant only to express how much you have come to mean to me, since that day you first calmed the skies. With each passing day, you have given me new reason to respect you.”

Her lips spread in a smile, but it feels tender and fragile on her face. “You’re my friend, too, Solas.”

He cracks a smile to match hers, looking down at the railing before his eyes slide to meet hers. His skin is still blotchy with shame, pink to the tips of his ears. “Thank you. You have given me much to consider, as I have come to expect. I admit, so much of this world I have come to know through dreams alone, what I know of your people leaves much to be desired.”

“Hm.” She’s reminded of the list she found on Solas’ desk, the page full of books with titles in three languages, all on the Fade and the daunting tasks ahead of them. Giving him dreams is beyond her capabilities, but books she can manage. “I can give you some places to start.” Thora pushes against the balustrade, walking backwards a few steps into her room, knowing just what she’s looking for. It waits for her on her bedside table, a book clumsily bound with coarse linen cords. The kind you resort to when you’re bookbinding, Lowtown style. “Here,” she says, passing it into his waiting hands, “some of those poems I mentioned.”

Lying the spine flat in the palm of his hand, he pries the book open, flipping through the first several pages as though he were touring it. Recognition flashes in his eyes, brow raising in her direction. “This is your handwriting.”

It figures that he’d notice. Her cheeks flush, hotter than the cold air warrants, when she sees she has to explain herself. “I copied it myself. The original I, um, it wasn’t mine.” The polite way of saying Lantos had stolen it for her. She remembers sneaking it back onto the shelf it belonged on, coming closer to getting caught returning the damn thing than he had taking it. “Took a while, but I knew I’d want to read it again.”

Amusement creases the corners of his eyes, but he has the manners not to laugh. “I see.” He parses through it another moment. Without even seeing the page she knows what he’s looking at, a series of short poems by Paragon Lynchcar, written in the breathing space between battles. Oh, she wishes she could read it again for the first time. The book snaps shut with a puff of air, and when he lifts his chin to meet her eyes, the red in his cheeks has cooled. Instead, his expression is alight with the same eagerness she’s seen as they’re standing in the shadow of a long-crumbled home, the prospect of learning shining in his eyes like stars. “Thank you again, but I fear I have troubled you enough for one evening. Besides,” Solas gestures with the book, a smile turning the corners of his lips, “it appears I have reading to do.”

#solas #cadash #inquisitor cadash #( my writing )#show that mercy to me ( thora )#fantasy racism cw #[ sorry for the repost! tumblr not letting my tags function properly ]#[ he apologises again later but it'll prob be another five years before i write that ]

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