#i’m not coming back atm but i do love butch!ellie

[queeralexcyprin]

To be honest, I actually think Chadwick was my favourite TLAP route!

I like serious, hard-working characters in general (as...I think my favourite LIs bears out......) but it’s easy to let ‘distant’ be read as ‘cold and mean’, but Chadwick perfectly manages to seem genuinely distant and out of touch with his emotions while still being incredibly kind and altruistic. And that part in particular appeals to me - as someone who’s doing a lot of volunteering myself ATM, I really enjoyed how he and the MC bonded over their interest in volunteering. And in all that, there’s still that kind of awkward dorkiness, which was so cute with him. And most of all, the relationship between him and the MC felt really natural - the way their friendship grew, and they became to gain feelings for one another, but their hesitance with acting on it because of their relationship... it all really worked for me!

By comparison, the other routes I played completely were Ellis and Madison. (I also started Felix’s route when TLAP first appeared to check out the setting but he didn’t really interest me.)

I enjoy Ellis as a character, as I like characters who are easy to talk to and nice and friendly, and I’m aaaaalways up for more queer dudes, but his route felt a little... bare. I feel like I didn’t really get to know him very much, beyond ‘charming and flirty, but genuine’ and ‘has dated a lot’ and ‘also knows medicine’. What’s his past like? His family? What does he care about deeply? It felt like the route was almost entirely about their relationship and the difficulties of him being her bodyguard, but... those themes are present in EVERY route, and I don’t think it really examined them deeply enough to really stand out. Also, there was one particular event in his route which honestly just... came across as TOO silly and typical otome game-y, to the point of straining credulity and leaving me kinda :/. Lovestruck stories can be larger than life and I’m fully prepared to roll with it to an extent, but this thing was just too much for me.

On the other hand, Madison’s route had a lot of really interesting themes to do with drugs and policing and politics and gender norms, but it felt too packed and couldn’t really come to a satisfying conclusion of any of them. Out of all the routes I’ve played, Madison’s is by far the most open-ended S1 I’ve ever seen - even the romantic plot doesn’t get a conclusion! And as for Madison personally... she’s a good character, but considering that her route aired at the same time as Mackenzie’s, it was impossible not to end up comparing those two characters, and they’re honestly pretty similar. I mean, both are mature, confident, competent butch law-enforcement women who start off kind of distant semi role model figures for the MC before developing a more personal relationship. And while I enjoy that Madison’s route explores her butchness with more focus, I... gotta admit that if I had to choose between her and Mac, I’d choose Mac for sure. I dunno - overall, I don’t think it’s bad to have two characters like this in Lovestruck (and I’m also 100% for more butches), it was just kind of unfortunate timing for her I think.

I think that overall, the setting itself is an interesting one and does lend well to the building of personal relationships (in fic, I do enjoy ‘for whatever reason these characters have to stick by each other 24/7 for a while’ plots), but I think the LI quality was hampered by the fact that they literally all have almost the exact same job. Like, obviously each game has to have some kind of theme connecting the characters, but even stories like Gangsters in Love and Speakeasy Tonight were able to have each character take on totally different parts of the business they were all engaged in together. But every TLAP love interest is a secret service agent, period, with only minor differences in their specialisations and other skills. It limits what the plots are about and what the LIs can do. (E.g., I really enjoyed how routes like Irving’s or Elliots would come up with really unique ways of applying the LI’s skills to the situations rather than having them all just go down to cornering and shooting people.)

Anyway, I’m kind of not reading much Lovestruck at the moment because my lack of ability to buy hearts regularly is really getting in the way of me fully enjoying it, but I’m still keeping up with it and I really hope I’ll be able to get properly back into it again soon.

#tlap #lovestruck