1st Rewrite [Text - UN: koko1010]

[scriptwriter]

So doom and gloom aside... I believe that there's a big problem that needs to be addressed here!

Why isn't anyone talking about the awesome gacha games on this smartphone!?

Warrior Stickman. Dragon Odyssey. Blood Empire. Strike Knights. There's so many mobile games around here and I see everyone is just sleeping on them! Do none of these ring a bell?! Have you all lost of your sense of romanticism and adventure!? We just had a tournament with Mario Party for crying out loud! Surely this has tickled your interests in video games a little bit!

For those who don't know... Gacha gaming is the ultimate pass time where you can play video games on your little smartphone here. Pretty self-explanatory, right? But be warn that if you decide to step into the world of gacha... It's a incredible hell that you're walking into. An all-or-nothing bloodbath where the strong live and the weak die. A path of carnage and broken dreams where 1-Star characters are devoured and forgotten by the irresistible 5-Star characters.

In a sense... Our society is no different from a gacha game, no? The strong and beautiful who live in high society are considered the 5-Star characters and we who have been drinking from the gutters and crawling through mud are the mere 1-Stars! But fear not 1-Stars... I, Tennouji Kotarou, the man who rules over common sense, am here to bestow my knowledge upon you! As the chosen "Common Sense Archon" it is my duty to pass on my fruits of wisdom!

So if you'd want a place to start, I can suggest that you play "Glory Kingdom"! It's one that I'm pretty into lately. Ever dreamed of befriending a cute goddess? Ever wanted to build your kingdom from the neck up? Ever wanted to team-up with a crazy tyrant babe who hates your guts, then slowly falls in love with you as you show her the joys of the normal world?!

Then this game is absolutely for you! They're even giving away free gems for new players who join, so what are you waiting for? Don't be a 1-Star, be a ★COOL STAR★ and join in the big sensation sweeping the island nation!

P.S: I was not paid to do this (though I will accept donations since I'm a little low on cash right now from my valuable gacha gaming research)! I simply want to share my joy involving a little hobby of mine! If you have any questions, I'll be more than happy to answer. Thank you. ♥

Comments

[fujimaru]

[ She even used her name in one of those comments! But for now, she's only mildly confused. "Wolfcountry" sounds like the username for some kind of indie band right now. ]

Seriously?????
I mean
On the one hand I think if you can monetize your hobby without hating it that's a good thing
It can pay for itself then
On the other wow

There's no idol named Magi*Mari here, is there?

[impostorsyndrome]

Not that I follow idols specifically, but I keep an eye on crap, and no. Why? Is she your favorite?

[fujimaru]

No way
Let's just say she's a 5★ fraudster

[impostorsyndrome]

What, more than any other monetized web idol?

[fujimaru]

Oh yeah
I had to watch a grown man cry over it when he found out
That was all kinds of awkward, you know?

[impostorsyndrome]

Wait a second

Was this a doctor by any chance?

[Hadn't Dr. Roman been really into some web idol that Kadoc had refused to think too much about at the time because it was creepy?!]

[fujimaru]

Yeah Σ(°ロ°)
How did you know??

[impostorsyndrome]

It's Zemlupus.

[fujimaru]

Σ(°ロ°)Σ(°ロ°)Σ(°ロ°)

[ Is that the only thing she's going to send? For maybe half a minute, it seems like it, and then some comes back with: ]

Okay so
I'm not gonna tell you who that Magi*Mari chick was in public
But remind me later
Because it's just all kinds of stupid

[impostorsyndrome]

What is with all the stupid shit you keep bringing up about Chaldea? It's not even like it's just stuff you're telling me. I dunno if you noticed this, but your Saber is about to learn about Mario porn.

[fujimaru]

Gawain is an adult who is capable of making his own bad decisions

[ Kadoc, please. If the man can work the internet well enough to make himself a username and use the account, he can DEFINITELY find porn on his own. It's just a matter of whether he finds it on his own, or someone (Kotarou) introduces it to him.

And it's not like Mario is his childhood, so it's probably less scarring than it might be for others. Probably.

She doesn't add that, but she thinks it really hard at her phone screen. ]

Anyway
Sometimes you just gotta take the weird with the good
And the stupid with the bad
And all of the above at once

[impostorsyndrome]

It's not about you needing to rein him in, it's about the fact that we're currently witnessing Sir Gawain be offered porn of Princess Peach on the internet.

But what I'm getting is that that kinda thing is just another day to you by now. Hell, the longer I'm here, it is to me too. But your situation goes beyond that.

I don't know how I feel about it.

[fujimaru]

You get used to it after a while

[ Is that comforting? Probably not, but that's what she has to offer. ]

I think even my tamest story would be pretty wild by the standards I used to live by
And now it's all just like
Well ok
Just another day at the office, I guess!!!

[impostorsyndrome]

[He just stares at this for a while—he's flopped on the couch at his place with his tablet—reading it and then just looking at the screen without reading it anymore. It brings up all kinds of complicated feelings in him that he hasn't had to unpack and sort through yet while being here, and might have gotten away with leaving shoved in storage forever. The things she's talking about like this are . . . not actually the things he'd wanted, no. That's part of the twisted emotion of it. It's like spending all your childhood dreaming of becoming an astronaut, not making the cut, and then listening to an actual astronaut talk about how much it sucks to get sick in your space suit. There's no one way it makes him feel—just a lot of ways at once.

And all of them are more dulled than they were back in Russia, by far, which is a whole other feeling, a metafeeling. A feeling to have feelings about.

And also also? It feels stupid to be having these feelings in the middle of a conversation that also includes Sir Gawain and the Pink Princess (rated NC-17)! Fuck!]

You're gonna fit right in here.

[fujimaru]

[ It takes long enough that she's swapped to playing a phone game--just a puzzle thing, not gacha--when the reply comes in. While she doesn't drop the phone on her face, it's a near thing. Score at least half a point for Russia, there. ]

I guess?
I'm pretty used to adapting to new places
Not that I've had the chance to look around a lot
I think I've spent most of the whole last... I dunno?
Week?
Asleep

[impostorsyndrome]

Recovering from the situation back in our world, huh? I don't even know where you came from when you ended up here.

[fujimaru]

[ It's her turn to pause for a while this time. No one who knows her has asked where she's been, or what the last thing she remembers is, and Kadoc especially has no reason to be worried for her well-being. He knows very well what she's doing and what the consequences are--he just doesn't know who she's wiped out, at this point.

There are blunt ways of saying it--Ophelia's dead. Hinako is a Servant now. None of them feel right. Does he even know what Hinako is? Was? Did he even vaguely suspect about Roman? Surely not, since even Beast I had been shocked at the revelation, but...

None of those things are her secrets to tell, anyway. In the end, she types two words: ]

Novum Chaldea

[impostorsyndrome]

[Novum Chaldea, huh. This is new to him—though it probably didn't have to be this way. The odds are decent that one of the Servants from Chaldea who's been here a while, like his own roommate, could have told him about this. And it's not like he hasn't wondered. It's just . . . awkward is an understatement. There's no word he can think of for the specific kind of awkward that encompasses casually inquiring as to what's become of people who'd stood on the opposite side of the battlefield. There would not have needed to be a Novum Chaldea at all if not for Kadoc Zemlupus.

But now that it's out there, he needs to know. The one thing he can guess from this much is that she comes from later in the timeline.]

I don't know anything about that.

Sounds like you came here later than I did, by our timeline's standards.

[fujimaru]

[ There's another longer pause as she considers this. He's not wrong, but--when he puts it like that, she doesn't even know how long it's been for him. How long has he been in this strange Avalon? If he'd survived that creepy priest stabbing him, how long had he been--wherever he'd been taken, after?

She might as well ask. ]

Probably?
I don't know how long you've been here
I don't know how long you were... Not dead, before you got here either
It's been about a year and a half since Russia for me

[impostorsyndrome]

A year and a half???

I've been here six months. And before that, I was Not Dead for like half an hour at most. We didn't even get back to Atlantis.

This is a pretty backwards way to have this conversation. We don't need to go airing all this in a post about how much money people spend to jerk off to art on their phones.

[fujimaru]

We lose time during Zero Sails??
So I don't actually know how accurate my calendar is but
Yeah it's been a year minimum, probably longer

Anyway who's gonna be reading this anyway
I know you implied you did but
That's so much work for a forum post???

[impostorsyndrome]

You never know when something you read's gonna come in handy later.

Also, sometimes I get bored out of my mind and wanna kill a few braincells, which reading too much of the network here will definitely do to you.

But I was serious. If we actually wanna compare notes, we shouldn't do that here.

And if you don't, that's fair. I wouldn't in your shoes.

[fujimaru]

I don't mind
It's not like I can tell you exactly where Novum Chaldea is located or anything
(Because I don't 100% know either???)
But... yeah
OK
When's good for you?

[impostorsyndrome]

Tomorrow, if you want. I'm not gonna twist your arm.

[fujimaru]

I already said yes mister wolfman