Answered Question: Pre-!! Era Days
Hey hey, I was wondering: when !! Wasn’t a thing and players didn’t know what was going to happen with the game and story, were you there to live it? What were your thoughts about Ryuseitai’s story and Midochia content?
Sent and answered in August 2024. tweet link of the answer
yess i was! i came into the fandom late 2016 so i experienced a bunch of stuff
i’m trying so hard to remember when they announced the ! era to !! era advancement, but i can’t exactly remember nor find the exact date/time… i looked into my archives and the earliest i could find of me talking about it is april 2019, since that’s when operetta came out…? but then i also found me discussing it in a "wait it’s really happening??" way in august 2019, so maybe that’s when they made it clearer that it’s a permanent switch-over GAHH been too long to remember…
it doesn’t help that my memory is getting foggier since it’s been so long now, thankfully i do have tweet archives of those days so i can jog my memory with them
with that being said, is there something specific you’re curious to know? like what my vision of ryuseitai’s future was before we even knew !! era was gonna be a thing? or is it my thoughts about the timeline advancing? it might make it easier for me to recount my memories if it’s something a bit more specific since even back then, my whole life was ryuseitai…!! LMAO
midochia is a bit easier though so i’ll answer that at least! midochia content back then was mainly The Big Three (climax, sweet halloween, and zodiac. a tinsy bit of strawberry picking too) with a bunch of stuff in between being cute fun content for them (birthday, orihime and hikoboshi, stuff like that). i used to be a chiaki multishipper back then with midochia being one of my top ships, but i’d mainly consume the fanworks rather than make my own ideas… especially because the fandom would come up with the most amazing ideas just through The Big Three so i felt content just consuming the fanworks…
and gosh back then, the post-grad midochia ideas were endless… it was such a fun part of them to explore, how chiaki would work solo post-grad (while living in an apartment alone) while midori is still in school and tries to stay connected with him despite the distance. you still see ideas like this sometimes but obviously not as much anymore. I STILL LOVE THEM SOOOO MUCH since it was based off of the potential of climax midori and his desire to repay him ueeeh i’m weak…
midochia was my Very Cute And Super Fun Ship, and was one of the potential endgames i thought was perfect for chiaki because i really loved everything midori offered for chiaki and vice versa… they were always so fun to dissect since it was mainly about digesting The Big Three for their relationship, ALL OF WHICH WERE SUCH AMAZING STORIES TO GO BACK ON OVER AND OVER!! i went from "wow midochia is funn and cute" when i first got into enstars to "UWEEEEH MIDOCHIA… SO CUTE SO CUTE LOVE LOVE… I LOVE WHAT I SEE FOR THEM" in 2018 (thanks to The Big Three)
then meteor impact happens in 2019 and i start to hardcore ship midochia as The Chiaki Endgame because i was like "MIDORI. IT HAS TO BE YOU WHO SAVES CHIAKI. PLEASE" and i’ve never gone back since. and then !! era rewarded me for being desperate and now i’m definitely loyal for life.
i feel like i didn’t answer the question properly though, so yeah if there’s anything specific you were hoping to know, feel free to ask!!! my thoughts about ryuseitai and midochia were definitely a lot different than the thoughts i started having of them when !! era started though so there is a Lot i can say, but also a little too much that i don’t even know what to narrow down to AHH…
if you’re interested in more fandom history, i’m compiling all my answers in the fandom history category ❤️