Aphelli

That information leads to only two possible conclusions: 1) Sariah and Geara are a "villanous" ship redeemed by The Power Of Love 2) Sariah is Geara's conscience incarnate, corrupted and in a different body because Geara's villainy.

Full disclosure (I can but answer honesty with honesty): I didn't actually play the game, I just watched playthroughs (just like for Rejuv, I got restless after watching Reborn, I probably wouldn't have been able to control myself after playing Rejuv). So my memories of it are quite fuzzy. Thank you for refreshing it. Yeah, I think that's more or less intended. And it struck hard, in mode "well, now bad news got real". Again, when I watched it, it took me a while to realize that something was off in these battles -- like, why were the Pokemon nicknames... familiar? Why were they all shiny? And why Naganadel on the MC's side? And then I freaked out so much I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to think of counter-measures, of what Aelita should/could have planned in-story as soon as she got wind of that accursed woman's power, to put her down hard and without any restraint whatsoever the second she met her (and which now the main cast should prepare for as well). Worst is, I'm not even done thinking about that.

... Well, that's a pretty optimistic worldview. I don't know if I'm willing to condone eternal torture, even to such a foul mockery of a person, but I do agree with you when you say she's too dangerous to be left alive (which somehow no one in the cast seems to understand). ... And I'm sure we'll get a somewhat sympathetic backstory and motives for her, which will ruin any celebration of her demise.

Think about it as (however repellent it may be) as mind-altering manipulator. You have a puppet who unlocked as intended (note that she still needed someone with enough "purity of heart") a tremendous artifact/place of power (whatever it actually does, which afaik is still mostly unknown). So his role is complete -- but pure-hearted people are dangerous. They tend to be whole and uncompromising, with a strong moral sense, or whatever, so Kenneth is really now only a liability. What does a manipulative chessmistress (?) devoid of morals do with liabilities? She disposes of them. But she can't get her hands dirty -- she has rivals, enemies, and so on, who would be ready to catch her in the act and frame/kill her. So the easiest way to do it, of course, is to alter his mind significantly to kill himself. So you make him haunted. You go subtly enough after the rest of his family, giving, eg, his jerkish brother a seriously dangerous component -- Rift Matter -- again, whatever it is. Once the brother gets killed -- if the Rift doesn't rid you of them both by some sort of accident, you can arrange another one, or simply nudge Deagan to dislike Kenneth even more -- you got a new weapon to haunt your target with. Make him depressed, make him weak, make him haunted, break his ties with life, and sooner or later he'll get an accident or take his own life. Also, note that she's a time-traveller, so she probably has a different view of people's lifetimes. Waiting a decade isn't that much to her, she can fast-forward or skip it entirely. You can't expect a weird sage hidden deep in a mountain with unearthly powers to have a fully human attitude. They'll usually have their own morality, their own pride, and so on. But I'm not sure she had the power to halt him nonviolently when Kenneth started attacking her in his madness. She also couldn't foresee that Team Xen would get involved (I think at that point they're a minor force).

Well... Ruining a person's life is already a pretty nasty action. I'm going to explain in detail, so spoilers.

That part indeed is intended, as far as the dev team has confirmed. In some way it's the very first teaser for E19.

I should probably apologize for answering in text instead of the poll, as you intended. At least, this way, if the reasons I give don't apply for you (or sound nonsensical), you can just ignore my two cents. (also, I may like being more verbose than necessary) In my opinion, you shouldn't wait for V13 to start writing. I don't think there is going to be massive early-game changes now that the plot is settled. At worst you'll have to redo a few battles (and you can even handwave it by explaining that the characters diversified their teams later on), but I don't think anything will mandate a larger-scale revision (of course, I have no information but what's publically available on this topic, so it's a guess). Also, you're probably aware of it, but it's easier to get going once you've started. Of course, it depends on your way of writing -- perhaps you're planning everything first very cautiously before writing a single word, in this case perhaps you can go on planning. Parts aren't mandatory, but given the scale of Rejuvenation's adventure, it sounds pretty likely that there are going to be many chapters. Grouping them into parts should help the reader keep the larger picture in mind. As for the fights -- why force yourself to more consistency than necessary? If your fights are recordings of the game, play at a level you're about confortable with. If you tell them instead of showing them, you can keep the broad ideas but be considerably more flexible. About basing it off 100% of Rejuv's story... I don't like writing it (difference and originality bring value, I heard), but you're going to need to be very careful with your plot modifications. I'm confident that you can twist Reborn's plot to not fit the Big RevealTM (or Big RevealsTM) the dev team is planning for us, because you probably can also twist the ending -- and character relationships are well-established enough that we know what could conceivably happen in a barely alternate universe. But Rejuv has an insane amount of unknowns, which makes significant plot deviations very dangerous because you don't really know what you break. Some examples off my head, there are probably others: (I don't have any subtler examples in mind but I'm qute sure they exist if you're imaginative enough).

That's clearly a red herring. Nostra is the E4 member, and Anna is simply the illusion Nostra's real Jirachi creates for itself.

Elias is a servant of Solaris, and was assisted by Meteor grunts when kidnapping Luna. It seems a reasonable step to assume some sort of porosity between the organizations. What is unknown is how Elias is sensitive to the Lin faction. (Maybe we'll see in E19 that El was actually a mole all along) Reborn has some sort of technology, so the letter could be typewritten, and Laura's signature be forged by any technique (eg have a random guy ask an autograph on paper that is actually the cleverly folded resignation letter). E18 plot hints at a better explanation, though. Also, I don't expect anyone in the E4 to be a phony -- they wrongly fired someone to get the job, maybe, but they're all going to be good (and yes, I'm scared too because I'm very bad). I do agree with you about Shelly and Victoria -- the latter could even get the battle delayed by simply asking us to notify Ame of Corey's death before Shelly did. Because you don't want to see pictures of a corpse that fell at least 100 meters. Even less when they're the father of a "friend", and said "friend" is all alone and doesn't show up. Even less when you're an already traumatized 12-year-old with serious family issues.

Interesting discussion about role reversal for Ren/Reina. But I have another Crescent suggestion — she’s actually the MC’s time-travelling future teenage daughter (born after the plot ended, of course). For good measure, we can even say that she kicked the plot in motion by setting Indriad free after striking a deal with him about the MC’s revival from an untimely car crash. So Indriad betrays her anyway, she flees and gets herself sheltered by the Stormchasers.

What I am also interested in is how the devs feel when they read through all this theory-crafting. How do they refrain from wanting to answer, to talk about their design, how they see their characters?

Time for the next chapter -- we're properly starting the finale of Part 1! My plot is more advanced than that -- I'm working on the Orphanage part , as I'm trying to figure out how to make Gabriel carry out such a blatant and risky breach of the rules. Chapter 23: Friends and Foes Character ratings:

Crescent being edgy, secretive, manipulative and cruel is indeed well-shown. It doesn’t mean that she’s an antagonist (or villainous) in the grand scheme of things. In general, I’m wondering if Crescent isn’t working on a level of her own — the “Celine” level (whichever side) which eg Madelis was unaware of. Maybe V13 will shed some light (or maybe it’s delayed, who knows?). There’s some sort of not-too-bad explanation for a lot of her actions anyway. Melia’s faked death: discourage Team Xen from searching further or keeping hope while protecting the Stormchasers. Ren’s joining the Xens: she gave him a good reason to join Team Xen to be a mole. Sharon: (very cynical/angry) At least, that would be one less blood stain on your clothes for you to wash — or did you consider extending mercy to any Xen after what happened to your mother? Nim: okay, I don’t know for that one. I also note that Madame X made direct death threats / ordered our deaths each time, while Crescent didn't resort to inflicting physical harm, so I disagree a bit with your ending.

Depends on your story set. That Beeheyem (as well as a few powerful/weird characters such as Karen and Crescent) are the only mind-altering entities in the game. Remember, you’re not paranoid if they’re after you! I wouldn’t be so sure, as Erin was protected by the Archetype. However, maybe Cassandra has a robot body like Ren (as a Xen).

No question about that. Valarie doesn't remember us, quit her Gym Leader office to be a journalist in GDC... Obviously her mind got seriously tampered with. This happens somehow after the gang gets attacked (in Delpha's memory) by the surfers. So we even have suspects! (although, it could have happened before -- Crescent has repeatedly urged a lot of the cast to not intervene, and changing the people's minds fits this). One weird thing though: why exactly would the gang not similarly alter the Eldest or Aelita?

Reborn isn't exempt from this. After all, the game gives us Kricketune almost from the start.

How much do you trust whatever evidence that you may remember backing this claim? And why would Freya only have one when she can use several of them? Come on, the Beeheyem Crest can’t only grant such unsignificant advantages. I suggest something more up to scale: the crest creates within a 100-foot radius of the Trainer a permanent and indestructible field of “1984”-absolute power. This means that through the Beeheyem, the Trainer acquires full awareness and complete control over any and all of the people’s perceptions of reality, including thoughts, emotions and memories.

To be honest, that choice baffled me when I first saw it, and the “Game Over” was chilling... But when you think of it, it makes actually sense that the “do nothing” choice leads to the best consequences. The situation is a manipulation of Spacea and Tiempa to teach Melia a lesson about her meddling in matters she didn’t understand (that’s not exactly the alleged reason, but can you actually believe their word?) for the sake of her morals. So to show that she has learnt her lesson, Melia needs to make the choice she wasn’t able to do with Vivian: stand back and let do, in other words, do nothing. Okay, that sounded much, much neater in my head. Now it sounds like a crackpot theory.

That makes 100. What next?

I didn't answer the poll because I find that, however fine they seem to be, there never is one that reflects just my position. So I'll give my two cents in text. About your fanfiction: it probably needs some improvement, but what fanfiction doesn't? I may be much too keen on that but at the very least, you should proof-read your texts very carefully, as random mistakes sort of slip in (there's a Ruby which sorts of awakes out of the blue in the second chapter). As a suggestion, you may also want to explain how come that Ame and your protagonist know each other so well (specific mentions of family, "I never knew you could draw so well" which sounds surprising if it's a stranger you've just met in the train) (or maybe I'm just interpreting it all sideways, I wouldn't be surprised -- especially if you're seeing your characters in a cultural setting very different from what I'm envisioning). I'm very interested in the AU aspect, as you'll probably retain the interest of your readers better if stuff doesn't happen quite as they thought it would. Having new characters on screen, new interactions, new plot lines (or plot digressions)... From that point of view, I wouldn't object if your adaptation of the plot doesn't follow the chronology of Reborn -- I'm all for chronological order within your story, but I think it's a plus if you can have events happening differently from the vanilla game, given the changes you've made (or you'll be making) to the universe. Of course, it's probably safer not to -- the butterfly effect works also (especially) with plots. I don't know what lemon means precisely (just like Terra's vocabulary, I think I know the general idea but I'm glad to not know the specifics), but if mature themes work in your story, by all means go for it (with warnings, of course).

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I think that's just the surfers playing a role -- Risa is an actress after all. Why do you expect them to be genuine? It's in their interest to not announce their actual opinions or alignment (if they specifically claim to despise Xens, you can see them as "weirdos but maybe allies at some point" and treat them as such instead of preparing to obliterate them on sight). And it's easier to lie when you're a figure shrouded in mystery that surfs through time.

I didn’t think of a plot point similar to said game, involving some kind of brainwashing, but more something along the lines of: Random (ie out of the blue) mandatory vaccination after a domestic trip = suspicious. Different types of vaccines for different people (without any test of any kind as far as we know) = very suspicious. A golden vaccine for Melia and for virtually no one else = definitely abnormal, as Melia’s life is... unusual (if you don’t know about her time travelling) The city mayor is a Xen = very bad stuff waiting to happen.

Disclaimer: the following paragraph is just my being contrary for contrariness's sake. Vaccination is important IRL. IIRC, vaccination remains effective when the unvaccinated population is small enough. Also, vaccines do not protect against existing conditions. So if Melia hadn't insisted, we wouldn't really have been able to transmit any pathogens -- and the chance of us catching something the rest of the population is immune to is very small. Thus there wouldn't have been any consequences. However, Melia is supposed to know better about authority at that point, isn't she? After Route 1 and Amethyst Cave, and all of Terajuma? A golden vaccine for an extremely rare kind of people, specifically for her? Shouldn't something have rung alarm bells? (I know it's easier to say in retrospect, and after playing Insurgence [select to see the hidden text], but still...)

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