The most annoying thing about Trails of Cold Steel is that I play it on my Vita. Which is one of the things I love about it, and I love my Vita. But its battery life is only about 5 hours, which when you are playing a game that lasts upwards of 100 hours is nothing. So usually it cuts out in the middle of a battle, or a really important conversation, because I still don't really believe in charging things before they've completely died, and then I have to plug it in and wait another 3 hours or so for it to charge before I can switch it on and continue. When I am trying to play through and finish it, this is doubly frustrating.
It will end eventually. They have to let me go to Nuka World at some point. But at the moment I am mostly playing it to find out what happens to Machias, and I think Machias might genuinely be one of my favourite characters ever? He is one of the members of the school class the game is based on, a class where commoners and nobles were brought together from across the game's social spectrum to learn how to use battle units that let you feel what the people you are linked to are doing, 'every breath they take', so you can fight as one. And mostly make linked attacks in battle. Machias started out as the commoner boy who hated nobles, and whose dad is a commoner who rose to become the governor of their country's capital city. But also he has super good grades, and is a chess whizz who won't let the noble students' habitual playing of chess, and being jerks, ruin the sanctity of the school chess club. The best way I can describe him is 'nerd hothead revolutionary'. And I love him. Because he's kind of a jerk himself sometimes, but he almost always realises and apologises for it when he's calmed down. And he's always the first to just randomly throw himself in when he realises someone is in trouble. He has a healing ability. The only other characters who have those are the literal healers, and the archer character who's abilities are described as 'angel'. HE'S AMAZING? Just for kicks I had him and the archer girl be linked for one of the battles, and whenever they ended a battle with a joint attack, they would say to each other how awesome it is to be ranged, they were like "Team Ranged!", and they didn't high-five and I don't understand why. They all have specific weapons they were found to have the most proficiency with, and his was a shotgun. A MAGIC SHOTGUN. And most of the time they treat it like a rifle, so he can be revolutionary rifle guy. Except way more awkward than that. His ultimate attack is a few shotgun blasts, and then his gun just turns into a GIANT SNIPER RIFLE for the last shot. BUT HE ALSO HEALS. After a while, with someone he likes, he gets an ability where he can just auto-heal someone when they take damage. I LOVE HIM.
We found out that the real reason he hates nobles is that his mum died when he was young, which was sad, but then his female cousin moved in with them to help look after him and his dad, and he always thought of her like a big sister, and called her 'sis'. She and a noble fell in love, and the noble's family was horrified at the thought of him marrying a commoner, and they did everything they could to fuck up the marriage, including harassing her beyond all possible bearing, which she kept to herself so her family didn't suffer, and arranging a different marriage with a noble their son couldn't really say no to. Finally, apparently, the noble told the cousin that they couldn't get married, but if she stayed with him he'd treasure her as his mistress, and she killed herself. And from the looks of the flashback, tiny baby Machias was one of the ones who found her. He told the rest of the class this - or half of them at least, while they were on a group activity - because he'd gotten to know some nobles in the class and realised they weren't all bad. He was way kinder about it all than he really should have been. He said he realised now the noble's family were just doing what they had to, in their position, and that the noble himself stayed faithful to his cousin, really. I think it's more than a good enough reason to light the flame of revolution in yourself and never, ever let it die out, but he decided to settle down about it. He had a match with the Upper Class side of the chess club, to decide whether they or the commoner side had to CLOSE DOWN FOREVER, and he won, and he and the other commoner boy - who was the only one left in the club, after the nobles pushed the rest out - said the nobles didn't have to close their club down, they could all love chess as one. It was all very Stop The Division, Live All Together.
And even more special than that, they gave him a boyfriend. They gave him a cool, blond noble boyfriend who he hates, because nobles and commoners can never be friends, but then it turned out that the noble boy was actually a duke's bastard son, and a lot of other nobles didn't even think of him as a proper noble. Machias overheard this, and decided to be nicer to him. And the noble boy was a dick about it. BECAUSE THEY CAN NEVER BE FRIENDS. The noble boy - who is Jusis - was one of the students who wasn't there when they learned all about Machias' past, and I'm desperate for him to find out about it. Also, the noble boy was the one who Machias had to play in the chess match. Jusis isn't even a member of the chess club, but he's amazing at chess, so the other nobles asked him to fight for them, and he did, and he tried to win by just pissing Machias off so he made mistakes, but Rean, stupid bloody Rean, did a good thing for once and noticed what Jusis was doing, and told Machias to just stay calm and play how he always played, and he could win this. And he did win it. At a sport that's generally thought of as a game for nobles, against a noble he hated, who was amazing at chess. Jusis had to walk away and pretend it didn't happen and that it didn't affect him. Jusis is in the Riding Club, and I forced Machias to do a riding activity with me at the school festival end of the year thing, while Jusis wasn't there, and he said riding was more interesting than he thought and maybe he'd even go to the club sometimes if only Jusis wasn't there. Also there was a scene of the two of them taking care of a 13-year old member of the class at the festival, buying her food because she'd forgotten her purse, even though they were both annoyed with her, and it was just like they were dads. I want a scene of them in battle, with Machias taking shots Jusis calls out. I saw the duet, the duet has at least happened, and it was...more than I have ever dreamed. I love them. A lot. I love Machias a lot.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
