For the longest time, I thought this story was the holy grail of FNF mod lore and a step forward into uncharted territory for the better of the hololive fanwork scene. If you look at the big picture, all the pieces are there, really.
There's contributions to the lore from other mods, works, and third-party VTubers in ways that make sense, build up a larger world, and populate the running narrative with seeds for interesting interactions and conflicts.
A Stealth Sequel was set up wherein the lore sets a terminus for BF and GF's adventures, requiring Aloe to take up their mantle to resume the fight against everyone's favorite demon dad.
It dares to approach a topic that most Holofans would be well within their right to stay as far away from as possible, and resolved to do it in a way that would be as tasteful as possible without exploiting a real person.
So when I learned the story was being taken away, I practically kicked and screamed, making little micro-protests and insisting a victim of clout-chasing had turned up.
Oh, how painful it is to wake up one day and realize that not only are you wrong, everything that rightfully undermined your argument was right there.
This right here is the black hole that consumed all of the good things about the story and left only a heap of insensitive writing outside the event horizon: the plot simply can. Not. Stop. Talking. About Aloe's graduation and all the nasty circumstances behind it in the real world. If you think Iofi having to chew out chat for calling her Happy Synthesizer karaoke a tribute was bad, you haven't seen nothing yet.
Sure, it sets up a degree of removal by having this Aloe graduate due to a complicated string of events involving the mob, dead parents, and a missing brother, all of which are made up for the setting. Logically it makes sense: stick a regular anime character's life over the cold, harsh oppressor that is reality, and you get a fictionalized account that avoids being realistic where it shouldn't. If we stop there, you could even tack on an "any resemblance to events or persons are purely coincidental" and mean it, unlike most uses of the disclaimer.
Unfortunately, consider this wiki's explanation for how Muse Abuse comes about: both creative genius and Creative Sterility alike will compel writers to pull from the real world without realizing it. I mention both because I'm honestly not able to tell which is which in what I remember of 5.0.0's writing, if only because it all ends in the same damn thing anyways.
Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is the more this story adds to that above foundation for Aloe's new life, the more it becomes an eerie reflection of the one in the real world with an added side of revenge fantasy through subtext, if it can even be called that with how unsubtle things are to those in the know. Pico is here, and his opinion of Aloe (and life in general) sounds a lot like how an anti would think, using disingenuous rationales and mocking what is basically her character design and her personal life. A big chunk of Aloe's life has uncomfortably close parallels to the life of the real one, to make a long story short.also... Aloe's current online identity was supposed to show up, but there's no specifics on what this entailed available so I have nothing to say besides "this is not a good idea." Several of Aloe's problems are clearly meant to be resolved with violence — a sympathetic carnal desire, but man, oh man, if it was really that simple. Last but not least: Narumi Midoriyama. I have nothing against self-inserts and Author Appeal characters from a literary criticism perspective if done right, but please don't tell me curing a real person's real traumas through them is the least bit sensible. Any further discussion would border on author bashing so I'm going to move on.
But this is definitely what a story about moving forward would take its sweet time writing about: paragraphs upon paragraphs that take us back to the past.note And even that flubs its execution; you'd think it's trying to illustrate how you can do everything right and still fail, but several key points in Aloe's life were the result of preventable mistakes! Which is its own nasty can of worms — that implies the real deal didn't do enough for herself. All those other original ideas mentioned above? You can see a few relevant Mythology Gags, and a few interactions, and some clear setups, but it feels... subsumed by everything else. Which is also its own problem — so little time is given towards proper reconciliation with Hololive that it just... kinda ceases to be what the mod this story was made for is marketed as. That's the central issue with all of this, really: its priorities are essentially flipped relative to its objectives. The real world past is too ingrained into subtext to properly move forward; any semblance of interesting plot free from that lacks adequate momentum compared to what isn't. So ultimately, you've got some good stuff that takes too long to pay off, and some bad stuff that's also dragging its feet in the foreground. Not a great combo.
This is getting long, so I'll cut down what I'd fix into two major points if the crossover aspect were to stick:
Let everything else shine if you really want to bring other works into this. But do it in moderation, so you never stray too far from Hololive. Get a Hedge Trimmer if you have to.
While there's little incentive to bring back this version of the mod's story in any form, I do hope someone tries again with a similar premise, this time without all the insensitive stuff. It's just a damn shame this one ended up jumping off the deep end.
VideoGame A promising story squandered by "subtext" and misaligned priorities
(This review also covers material that was written in The Dragon's Pizzeria.)
For the longest time, I thought this story was the holy grail of FNF mod lore and a step forward into uncharted territory for the better of the hololive fanwork scene. If you look at the big picture, all the pieces are there, really.
So when I learned the story was being taken away, I practically kicked and screamed, making little micro-protests and insisting a victim of clout-chasing had turned up.
Oh, how painful it is to wake up one day and realize that not only are you wrong, everything that rightfully undermined your argument was right there.
Because you see that last bullet there? I never actually said it succeeded in doing so. Because it tried to outrun the past and got ran over for its troubles. Oh yeah, and it sorta forgot it was called "Hololive Funkin'," but we'll get into that later.
This right here is the black hole that consumed all of the good things about the story and left only a heap of insensitive writing outside the event horizon: the plot simply can. Not. Stop. Talking. About Aloe's graduation and all the nasty circumstances behind it in the real world. If you think Iofi having to chew out chat for calling her Happy Synthesizer karaoke a tribute was bad, you haven't seen nothing yet.
Sure, it sets up a degree of removal by having this Aloe graduate due to a complicated string of events involving the mob, dead parents, and a missing brother, all of which are made up for the setting. Logically it makes sense: stick a regular anime character's life over the cold, harsh oppressor that is reality, and you get a fictionalized account that avoids being realistic where it shouldn't. If we stop there, you could even tack on an "any resemblance to events or persons are purely coincidental" and mean it, unlike most uses of the disclaimer.
Unfortunately, consider this wiki's explanation for how Muse Abuse comes about: both creative genius and Creative Sterility alike will compel writers to pull from the real world without realizing it. I mention both because I'm honestly not able to tell which is which in what I remember of 5.0.0's writing, if only because it all ends in the same damn thing anyways.
Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is the more this story adds to that above foundation for Aloe's new life, the more it becomes an eerie reflection of the one in the real world with an added side of revenge fantasy through subtext, if it can even be called that with how unsubtle things are to those in the know. Pico is here, and his opinion of Aloe (and life in general) sounds a lot like how an anti would think, using disingenuous rationales and mocking what is basically her character design and her personal life. A big chunk of Aloe's life has uncomfortably close parallels to the life of the real one, to make a long story short.also... Several of Aloe's problems are clearly meant to be resolved with violence — a sympathetic carnal desire, but man, oh man, if it was really that simple. Last but not least: Narumi Midoriyama. I have nothing against self-inserts and Author Appeal characters from a literary criticism perspective if done right, but please don't tell me curing a real person's real traumas through them is the least bit sensible. Any further discussion would border on author bashing so I'm going to move on.
But this is definitely what a story about moving forward would take its sweet time writing about: paragraphs upon paragraphs that take us back to the past.note All those other original ideas mentioned above? You can see a few relevant Mythology Gags, and a few interactions, and some clear setups, but it feels... subsumed by everything else. Which is also its own problem — so little time is given towards proper reconciliation with Hololive that it just... kinda ceases to be what the mod this story was made for is marketed as. That's the central issue with all of this, really: its priorities are essentially flipped relative to its objectives. The real world past is too ingrained into subtext to properly move forward; any semblance of interesting plot free from that lacks adequate momentum compared to what isn't. So ultimately, you've got some good stuff that takes too long to pay off, and some bad stuff that's also dragging its feet in the foreground. Not a great combo.
This is getting long, so I'll cut down what I'd fix into two major points if the crossover aspect were to stick:
While there's little incentive to bring back this version of the mod's story in any form, I do hope someone tries again with a similar premise, this time without all the insensitive stuff. It's just a damn shame this one ended up jumping off the deep end.