>>100642
>It's one of the best explorations of fated lover and rival dynamics, you at least managed to understand that she's meant to foil Shokie, but as a character not just the quest. I love her personality and antics, her tsundereism about her morality, trying to pose as a bad girl despite very well having been permanently influenced by you to be a protector of the weak, it feeds perfectly into the narrative stretch of 2.3 with you saving Shokie and the whole black hole fiasco. Cammy is plenty rich character wise too, how can't you see the lady flora parallels and the absurd amount of posing she does in every timeline, or her desperate mental breakdown about your self inflicting amnesia? You pretty much see her entire development and how you influenced her, saying there's nothing to extrapolate from it is plain wrong, there's even aesthetic thematic consistency and underlying traits if you really want to read between the lines or know a bit of lore, like her being the gardener that makes you bloom, literally saying her "hunter" and rival role was meant to make you stronger and motivate you, which actually is perfectly fitting for the player as well, she's meant to motivate you to be stronger than her in gameplay too, basically the Asuka to Shokie's Rei if it wasn't obvious.
Let me preface by saying Camellya isn't bad by gacha standards, but that she's by no means well written. She certainly isn't good enough to excuse the rest of Wuwa's pre-2.0 writing. (This is the positive note to start on before I rip her character)
I should probably disassemble your post in parts since you said a lot.
>one of the best explorations of fated lover and rival dynamics
I'd be curious to know what else you have read that matches this. For example, one book I read somewhat recently would be Spring Snow, and its exploration of a tragic, fated love is far better than Camellya's, and it's just a short 1st part to a 4 part tetralogy, and contains not 1 but
two separate mirroring themes of fated love (to some degree). The difference is that Kiyoaki and Satoko's love is played with the entire novel, the tension, discomfort, and eventual explosion of their star-cross love is all visible and deeply expounded on. The nature of fate and denying one's love is later directly mirrored in Kiyo's reincarnations and Honda's eventual, identical death at the temple where Kiyo died. It's extreme. It's powerful. It tears at the heart without ever speaking a word of sentimentality—not a single word is wasted on cheap tricks.
I can attribute the lack of depth in Camellya's quest to the game format—you can't really expect a 15 or so minute short quest to convey the sort of dejewsontained in literary fiction; In WuWa's case, the development of her obsession and thus the motivating force behind her is only barely touched—yes, any teenager can write a 25 page essay on how she developed a trauma bond with Rover after losing the people she loved. Okay—show it to me. Make me, the reader, the player, care; It isn't enough in a story to drop bits of lore here and there and expect the reader to do the work.
>I love her personality and antics, her tsundereism about her morality, trying to pose as a bad girl despite very well having been permanently influenced by you to be a protector of the weak,
Me too, this was an entertaining part of her character—it's what drew me in to her story. I am very attracted to damaged girls that need a healer.
>Cammy is plenty rich character wise too,
If you want to interpret her as a BPD girl that has a problem with deep insecurity and performative masking then you can. The problem is that anyone can theorize on a particular set of displayed behaviors. My little sister wrote a 10 or so page essay on trauma in Five Night's at Freddy Fazzbear's Pizzeria when she was a teen. Is FnaF thematically rich? No. Good story? No. Good lore? No. Good anything? No. Is Camellya as insubstantial as Chicorita or the fox dude? Obviously not. But persistent fear of vulnerability, performative bravado and feigned nonchalance, abandonment, trauma, etc., is played with in a very shallow and immature way literature. Ironically, the same book I mentioned:
>He knew that the expansive surge of emotion, the liberating power of his newly won sense of security, enabled him to adopt an alien maturity. Abandoning his characteristic melancholy, he reveled in his freedom. For Kiyoaki knew that he was not at all in love with Satoko.
only to realize
>"I love her. I'm madly in love with her."
Later in the story, plays with the idea
much better over the course of the novel than Camellya's quest. The entire thread deals with emotional immaturity, love, vulnerability, and the consequences of it all. It doesn't do this through ostentatious displays of emotion, but through story telling and character growth.
>or her desperate mental breakdown about your self inflicting amnesia?
Any airport novelist can write a sad and pitiable character and draw tears from a reader. It doesn't really constitute good writing.
>like her being the gardener that makes you bloom, literally saying her "hunter" and rival role was meant to make you stronger and motivate you,
Which she doesn't do, because she is sadly a character that exists to be obsessed and make the player feel aroused. Don't get me wrong, even this can be done well, but in the story she has no tangible effect on Rover and her contributions are diminished to support the gacha model.
It's because of the limitations of a gacha system that I really don't have any expectations for character complexity, and why my post was primarily directed at the overall story and lore of the game itself. The absence of complex characters in lieu of other writing was the complaint. This entire post and yours is a kind of excercise in futility because the fact that Camellya's story isn't sufficient as a literary character is obvious (and I don't think you deny that ofc) and moreover no gacha really has developed characters. This is just how gachas work aside from rare exceptions, and these tend not to be playable characters. I don't expect more.
Not like much can be expected from a very short CQ, and Camellya isn't
bad as far as gacha gaming characters. When compared to most characters, I found her better than usual which is why I mentioned her and Shorekeeper—but she isn't enough to excuse the rest of the poor (probably rushed) pre-2.0 writing.
Also KEK looks like I got warned for the previous post, not sure how it could be any more relevant to /wuwa/