Dis tew much for me
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We can make a new one.
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with him 
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Ewwwwwwww
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If that Stan is better than my own kingdom, I’d gladly let him kill everyone I know.
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By popular request at that, which… baffles me a bit. I’m not saying the guy doesn’t have his points, but literally every interaction you have with him is him preparing to or attempting to kill/undermine you and your entire bloodline.
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We’re always told to practice forgiveness. And that’s literally making up for what you lost
In case anyone’s for real curious why anyone might romance Stan:
Summary
Stan works super well as a RO for a MC who dislikes their family, since there are options to play it just so. I kinda wanted him as a RO for my first MC after establishing that they were unhappy with their parents, hated their sister, and wanted to push for peace talks vs their family’s handling of things. There’s a moment before That Scene at the beginning where you can talk to Stan and have a bit of a moment as someone with (seemingly) similar values.
It’s been a minute since I played but iirc he mostly targets the sister since she’s the important one so if your MC doesn’t like her I imagine it as lowkey satisfying in a twisted way LOL
To be on topic, and as a little twist, Defiled Hearts’ Marcus is a RO I just can’t seem to get on board with fully no matter what type of MC I try. idk what it is about him, clearly it’s not the family killing that’s a deal breaker for me haha, just something about his smugness drives me up the wall every time I try.
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Damn I feel like I’m the only person on this planet who genuinely likes Will more than Cyril… Still, I at least I’m not a Stan fan lol screw that guy
It feels like those memes about pineapple pizza fans and pineapple pizza haters teaming up against those horrible cursed pizzas with like kiwis or something HELP
(Yes, you guessed it, I’m a pineapple pizza liker too)
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I’ve been planning to playthrough with Will, but he seems to be of exactly the same school of thought that’s led to the discontent in the first place. I don’t know if I’ll complete it.
There is no reason to put kiwi fruit on pizza. Pineapple forever.
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I’ve actually been thinking about this quite a bit–the concept of “enemies to lovers” has always been fairly popular, but in the IF fandom–at least on Tumblr and for a variety of different WIPs–it’s as popular as breathing. Even when the Enemy does something theoretically unforgiveable–genocide, war, murder of all your loved ones, etc–people generally want to make out with the Enemy.
I don’t think it’s so much a lack of rage or self-respect in their protagonist, but more so that frankly, a lot of games don’t really put any energy into developing the dead loved ones, or the conflict, or the actual impact that these things could have on the protagonist. It doesn’t feel like something that happened to the reader, and instead is just something that we’re told happened. It’s kind of like how we’re all cool with Anakin’s redemption death even after he blows up Alderaan on screen and bums Leia out for a minute or two and she gets over it in time to be snarky at Luke. The crimes of the baddie don’t matter in the long-term because we don’t really care about who they’re directly doing it to.
Stan the Man killed our family, yeah, but we only met our mom and dad in that very scene, they’re kind of being nags, also they’re assholes, and your sister is also an asshole, so sure, whatever. He killed our family. Kinda lame. But he’s hot, so let’s at least take this downer situation and turn it into our new 30k-word enemies-to-lovers fic #angst #hurt/comfort #slow burn #forgiveness. I want to romance Stan as well, don’t think this is me making fun of people lol.
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I think that if we did care about the loved ones the enemy killed/harmed, or they were portrayed as people caring and doing their best by PC before their demise (whether PC agrees that they were doing their best is up to the player), then the enemies-to-lovers route with said enemy would lose much of its appeal.
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He also promised to kill us though, and I’d assume most players care about their MC’s continuing existence.
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Yeah, I clearly remember playing the demo when it first came out, getting this scene, thinking ‘huh, this clear traitor is giving RO vibes, that’s my kind of shit’, playing the rest of the demo and being a bit meh about the two ROs, then seeing that Stan wasn’t a RO, and just being a lot less interested in the game.
I haven’t played the full game yet, but last time I played the demo, it still ended without the ROs getting to feel very fleshed out or interesting, and the pacing was generally a bit slow.
It’s yet another case of the exact things that makes a RO a big NOPE for some readers, being exactly what makes them interesting for other readers.
I like when ROs goes from planning to murder the MC to being really into them.
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As someone who tends to make at least two mc’s per game not really
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that kind of adds to the desire for him in my case LOL. The thrill of conflict in him wanting the MC dead, but also wanting to kiss them? Yeahhh buddy 
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How dare you insert logic in this, that’s illegal. But seriously, put that way it does make sense why people would want him. I still refuse to see him that way but i suppose i understand why other people do.
The way I see it, every character is a combination of pros and cons, and when you have a more complicated RO who does bad shit, an author tends to jack up the appealing parts to counterbalance that, even without realizing it. It’s why so many Villain ROs tend to also be incredibly charismatic.
Every reader brings to the table their own threshhold of what’s a minimum amount of appeal they need and a maximum amount of flaws that they’re willing to tolerate. If you have a high tolerance for flaws ranking all the way up to where fictional murder isn’t a dealbreaker, then you’re able to enjoy the full appeal of the RO; the higher the stakes, the greater the emotional payoff, so cat-and-mouse murderous ROs are like a big prize for the people who can stomach them. It’s not necessarily the appeal of being murdered, it’s the appeal of the delicious drama that comes from the threat of being murdered. But if you can’t tolerate that kind of stuff from an RO, or to the extent presented in the text, or if you don’t find the intended appeal to be appealing enough anyway, then they just don’t do it for you.
On the flip side, some people just don’t go for nice guys/gals in games, because an author may not have made them appealing enough because there weren’t enough flaws present, and thus it doesn’t meet their personal interest threshold.
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Okay, I played Arcadie (and yes, I romanced Stan), and having played it now, I can say that beyond the usual ‘forbidden romance’ and ‘moral conflicts’ aspect of it, there’s also the fact that imo Stan is just the most interesting out of the three ROs.
It’s probably just me, but while I enjoyed Cyril and Will as buddies and allies, I couldn’t really get into them as ROs, unlike Stan. And honestly, what makes Stan himself really interesting is that if this had been any other story, he’d be the hero for wanting to start a revolution and trying to overthrow a lineage of warmongering monarchs.
Even though I don’t agree with his methods, I actually really clicked with his ideals and his preferences for more peaceful, diplomatic solutions that don’t default to completely subjugating nearby countries. So idk, I liked the moral conflict and all, but I think this is one of the rare cases where I would’ve liked him even if he hadn’t been the villain of the story.
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No, pretty sure using corpses for literal blood magic so you can kill more people to use THEIR corpses for literal blood magic automatically disqualifies you from heroism.
This is a lie. Stan doesn’t actually want this. I know he doesn’t want this, because he literally blows up the civilian council that does all the diplomacy near the end of the game. Joke’s on him, those people didn’t like me, but boy oh boy, after his stunt the survivors were REALLY keen on being on my side.
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