Endorph posted:

lulua's father is cordelia

cheetah7071 posted:

Firis livepost: Sophie taught me how to craft and this system seems really interesting. The lines system seems better than L&S' zodiac sign nonsense and this really rewards thinking about the order you place items in. I'm looking forward to trying to do difficult projects in this system.

Endorph posted:

lulua's father is cordelia

Greyarc posted:

Finished Rorona recently. Really sweet game, enjoyed it a lot except the drinking/groping cutscenes, which were out of place and weird. Also Esty is good and doesn't deserve to be the butt of a translator's joke.

Rorona is great and I want the hot gossip on who Lulua's father is. Sterk? They'd be a cute couple if they got together when Rorona was older and Sterk mellowed out a bit. Hope it isn't Iksel, that jerk had no respect for Rorona's responsibilities when he forced her into his competitive cookoff. Even Tantris might be a better option.

Just started Totori, already missing the trimonthly assignments. Having the clearly laid-out goals and subgoals and plotting ahead how to divvy up time was a fun system. Clearly haven't gotten out of the tutorial section for Totori, but hope the main game has a similar goal structure to it.

Jerry Manderbilt posted:

Does it still have that design from Sophie where if you put one component in and it overlaps even a little bit with another component, than that old component is totally erased

Because that sounds really annoying to plan around

Endorph posted:

jokes aside yeah id put money on lulua being a homunculus

which im honestly fine with, because atelier rorona is a thing i played like a decade ago that made me go 'i like when video game characters are gay' even if ostensibly the cordelia isnt explicitly a lesbian ending or anything, its pretty obvious that they were intentionally playing that up. so giving rorona a male partner wouldnt be like, the end of the world or anything, but it wouldnt be my preference.

A Sometimes Food posted:

Man an Atelier game with a serious/elegant/scary looking protagonist who is secretly an adorable moron is something they should do.

Give us an otome villainess alchemist you cowards.

cheetah7071 posted:

Yes


The way I read it, Cordelia was definitely lesbian and into Rorona, and Rorona was a late bloomer who hadn't moved beyond "that person is kinda cute, for their gender", and by Totori she was acting as a teacher and not showing her romantic interests to Totori. And then in Meruru, Astrid hosed her up real good

So I think just about any origin for Lulua fits with canon but I can almost guarantee based on the way this series is written that it will neither confirm nor sink any ships. My money is on Lulua is either created with alchemy or adopted.

cheetah7071 posted:

Yes

Dehry posted:

Jerry Manderbilt posted:

poop

Also Lulua is one thing but who does everyone think Gio had Christoph with ??? years after the end of Meruru

corn in the bible posted:

Astrid, duh

A Sometimes Food posted:

Also Cordy is bi as hell, she is thirsty for Rorona, Sterk, Gio, Esty and Lionela at points.

U-DO Burger posted:

i didn't care before but now im hoping she's adopted just to spite you

Greyarc posted:

I... What?

These are loaded topics we're talking about, yeah, but I genuinely don't get where this hostility is coming from. I've already said this isn't about being anti-adoption, at all.

U-DO Burger posted:

sorry, that was way more venomous than i meant it to be

that said your complaints about moms getting shafted in fiction aren't really relevant to the Arland series because Totori's mom is a total badass adventurer and is not dead

Greyarc posted:

Most of the time I'd say no, it doesn't matter. The reason I think it'd be neat in this case is because there's a precedent of biological moms getting the shortest end of the stick when it comes to stories. I can think of some examples of adoptive moms shown as heroes, but almost no biological moms come to mind without it ending with their tragic death.

Relatedly, there's also the trend that female characters need to be seen as pure, which historically meant they had to keep single, with the only other legitimate relationship option being to pair up with a player stand-in. Rorona ending up in an adult relationship with an NPC and having a kid with them would buck that trend, essentially allowing Rorona to grow up instead of being kept as a pure child-waifu for the player -- something Rorona in particular has had historical trouble with from what I've heard of her role in... Meruru? Whichever turns her back into a literal child.

None of this is meant as a slight against gay relationships or adopting -- those are separate, worthy issues in their own right and unrelated in the context I'm thinking of. This is only about the fact that moms are tough is a joke because of how well it sums up the way most non-waifu women are treated in games, and how this seems like a nice opportunity to show a counterexample.

Edit: grammar

Endorph posted:

I understand where you're coming from but saying 'this character needs to be explicitly paired with a man in order to not come across as a child' is some uhhh, bad mojo. Like, again, obviously that wasn't your intent and this is an extremely uncharitable read but, if Rorona's written like an actual mother - not completely sapped of her personality or anything, just more competent and mature and an actual authority figure for her daughter, even if she still has all her goofy pie traits - then she wouldn't be written like a child. The people who don't want Rorona to have an explicit pairing are people who know their preferred pairings for her wouldn't get confirmed, either because they're gay (Cordelia) or because the character's completely fallen off the face of the earth due to their unpopularity (Tantris), which is a pretty different angle than the 'player self-insert' thing you're pushing.

And the 'non-waifu women' thing is weird because Atelier's fanbase is like 75% women and the atelier series has plenty of decently written adult women. Rorona in this game should be written as a character that the people who played atelier rorona when they were in their late teens and are now adults can relate to, and I feel like pinning all that relation on 'and she hosed a dude' is kind of wrongheaded. Especially in the context of it being a Japanese game, where one of the main political issues of the day is ruling government party pretty much explicitly saying that adult women who haven't had biological children are failing society. Wouldn't it be nice for adult women in that kind of political climate to have a character from their teenage years who also didn't have a biological child but had an adopted child and was very happy with her, and had grown and matured without being subsumed entirely into the role of 'mother?'

Obviously the Atelier series didn't get women the right to vote or anythting but I feel like you're coming at this with a lot of preconceived notions that are only somewhat applicable. Like, the contradiction's even obvious in your post. You say that the series has had issues with making Rorona into a child even when she should be an adult, as shown by the Meruru de-aging thing, but the thing is everyone hated that so much that they had to add in a completely new ending in Meruru's vita port, it had a noticeable impact on sales of future games, and that they're making this game as basically a long awaited apology for that decision. The fanbase doesn't want Rorona to be treated like a child. They want to see her as a cool adult. Rorona being a cool adult isn't predicated on whether or not she gave biological birth to her daughter.

Endorph posted:

I mean, the main thing I'm not getting is the tie into the 'biological' stuff, as if you're more or less of a mother based on that.

Endorph posted:

I mean, the main thing I'm not getting is the tie into the 'biological' stuff, as if you're more or less of a mother based on that.

Jerry Manderbilt posted:

IMO

Tired: Sterk x Rorona
Wired: Gio x Sterk

A Sometimes Food posted:

Like keeping everything subtext so people can project whatever they want onto characters isn't bad, but honestly Rorona being a biological mother would infuriate the people that liked child Rorona more than anything else. And isn't that the greatest good?