ファタモルガーナの館 // The House in Fata Morgana: Door 5 (Visual Novel Informal Club)

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Pace

Everyone is welcome to read at their own pace and post any impressions, theories, or questions at any time within this thread. Those of us starting together may loosely informally stick together, but please feel free to chime in any time!

Guidelines

  • Please use spoiler tags or collapse where needed and describe, indirectly, what point in the chapter they are a spoiler for!
  • When asking for help, do your best to provide context. Pasted text, screenshots, descriptions, etc. Unlike book clubs we can’t flip to relevant pages, so we may need a little help identifying exactly what is being discussed.
  • Feel totally at ease to ask questions or give your thoughts, any time! Clubs live and die by participation, and asking whatever question you have, no matter how silly it may seem, helps others who are reading it and even the answerer themselves.
  • Have fun, and do your best to interpret anything said with as much good faith as possible :slightly_smiling_face:

Door 4

Door 6

I think I hit a point where it’s hard for me to control my pace to stay in line with others, because I just am that hooked. Just finished door 5 yesterday…

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Glad you’re enjoying it! I’ll try to get the next thread up in a bit – slowing down even more cause I got a Switch 2 yesterday with its launch :sweat_smile:

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Enjoy the new switch!
Although I heard the games for it are seriously expensive, make sure you’ve got money left to eat lol.

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It’s ice soup for me from now on! Luckily I’m working on losing a little weight right now too so that works out :innocent:

Been at least for now turning my attention back to Fata Morgana, working on things that I can finish in a reasonable time to reduce what I’m doing, and as much as I’m still going to take a while here I think this is the shortest thing I’m doing now.

God this is a big one (spoilers)

I mean not crazy out of the ordinary size-wise but I feel like so much has happened.

I feel so horrible for Giselle with all the dark stuff in this one, repeated sexual assault and PTSD following that. The VN does a good job of showing how that haunts her afterwards. Harrowing stuff.

It feels hard still to come up with what I want to say with it, for me it all more or less lands how it’s trying to – Michel really is a paranoid ass for a while, but then their relationship building is sweet, with a lot of traumatic stuff in between and seeing it almost immediately ripped back away. Can’t have anything nice in the house of fata morgana. Until that happens it’s nice seeing them together as two people so mistreated by the rest of the world. Once again this is loaded with problems caused by people not properly communicating and trusting, literal and figurative witch hunts, love stories happening amidst the depths of a lot of the worst of humanity’s cruelty.

The stories are still kinda flowing together at this point so it doesn’t as nicely split itself like the first 3 doors.

This little village backdrop is so pretty. There’s some of the best music throughout this door, too.

Time to brace myself for more :downcast_face_with_sweat:

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For the eyes only of those that have finished door 5

Alright sorry @Daisoujou and @Starzor but I guess I have finished the game first :slight_smile: Got both ending 1 and ending 2 :smiling_face_with_sunglasses: (what do you mean that’s not how it works :joy: alright alright I’ll keep on reading)

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Door 5 reply

Not gonna lie, the first few words made me think you used some sort of magic to actually end it lol.

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Door 5

Well apparently you never know with this game, doesn’t seem impossible. It just made me go back to door 4 again! Exciting!

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Wow this door is longer than the previous one. 80k so far and it doesn’t feel like it’s close to the end. And you say the last ones are even longer? :grin: I’m much impressed with your reading speed @Starzor and @Daisoujou !

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Thanks!

If jpdb can be trusted, 5, 6, and 7 are all very close to the same length. It’s just 8 that is a massive jump in size.

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サンキュー。
Yup, just like @Daisoujou said.
As for time spent reading, steam says I’m like 62 hours in, of which 10% is probably just idling, so really like 55-56 hours spent reading. I’m probably somewhere in the half of chapter 8 now, I think.

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Waw! I already have quite a big draft of impression for this chapter that I will post when I’m done. Looking forward to getting to read your post too!

I like your approach of take 10% off, I think it’s probably around the same for me, maybe even a bit more, of idle time. My total time says right now 56.6 hours.

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This is actually remarkably close to where I am, too. When I subtract the time I spent on playthrough 1 (lucky I mentioned it in the first thread so I can check :sweat_smile: ) I come out to about 64 hours. I’m definitely idling some as well.

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Alright done with door 5 :slight_smile:
Char for this door: 89939
Total char so far: 318942

I’ll just post my impressions first, and then go read the other posts and reply to them!

Door 5 impressions (with spoilers)
Went for choice 2 first, 提案を拒否する

Hm, after the witch just promesses to Giselle that she would be reborn for ever until she can meet Michel again, she tells her to just forget about him?? Felt a bit weird to me. That’s why I refused her proposition.

She also says that she will always protect her but I feel like she has failed to do so in 4 lives already (okay maybe door 4 doesn’t count). I always saw the maid as someone on the side of the girl with white hair but now I am beginning to have trust issues.

Wasn’t expecting that that would bring me to Paris, fun :smiley: and to bad ending 2, oops.

Well let's try 提案を受け入れる then

Damn, I knew I shouldn’t trust her!

Well onto choice 3 now!

Hm.. Not sure I got everything from the part with black and red dialog. Then the dialog between “Morgana” (I guess I should call her “the maid” again) and “Unknown” was a bit confusing too. First I thought that we were the girl with white hair, called Giselle, and looking for Michel. But then Unknown (the girl with white hair? the guy from the painting? someone else?) tells the maid that the last door was a lie and to reveal her true story. (note: now that I have played door 5 it makes slightly more sense I guess?)

So then we play door 4 again to see what happened with the real Giselle (the maid). Makes sense why all the dialogs said by the girl with white hair were not being saved properly in the backlog, as they were all lies. :exploding_head: Fun addition to the game. Makes also sense why Giselle was never shown in door 1, except in the CG scene at the top of the tower.

I love it in VNs, when you revisit a scene, but other things have happened, in this case Giselle is a different person (I assume), so it’s fun to compare with the previous dialog and see where it differs. So far it’s following the same script…

I didn’t even notice it with Michel, that they aligned nicely with the wings from the stained glass behind with the sprite of Michel / Giselle.

I liked that line because I was thinking that if the girl with white hair (who doesn’t exists maybe) should have said something in that effect in door 4, to make the intruder run away. (also I only took a screenshot of that part of the screen because on the other part of the screen it’s hard to see anything but a giant boob just being put out there for no reason. I have to say I don’t approve the choice of close for Giselle that door and the extreme boob showing but hey)

#GoodLifeAdvice

I also enjoyed that this door jumped back and forth between Giselle’s and Michel’s point of view.
Especially when they mirrored what they were thinking. A bit of a pity that they went for red for Giselle and blue for Michel (like HAVE YOU NOTICED? THIS IS BOY AND THIS IS GIRL OKAY?) instead of red for Michel and green for Giselle, seeing that they often talk about their eyes color

There was a funny scene, where someone knocked on Giselle’s door, no one was here, but she found a cup of “warm wine” and drank it. I wonder if there will be more to that event and if the “warm wine” could be another red liquid that has a warm temperature…

I only learned about it recently the connection about saying that the moon is beautiful and “I love you” in Japanese. Happy that I have, makes me see this scene in a different light.
(learned about it here on the forum but I can’t remember where it was, so here, have a random link if you don’t know: Why "The Moon Is Beautiful, Isn't It?" Means "I Love You" in Japanese )

Really enjoying this VN. Every time I feel like I have it figured out (after door 3: oh so that’s how it goes, girl with white hair gets tortured at every epoch. after door 4: nope, girl with white hair doesn’t exist. after door 5: …?), it reshuffles the cards and you need to keep going to find out what happens next! Plus enjoying the way it’s written and of course the music.

I feel like I got lucky with where I stopped reading yesterday. It was right after they found out that Michel’s dad had passed away and they were planning their return to the city and how life would be there. Then cue to reading today, Giselle, sees the torches outside, the mood really changed there. And I could read the rest of the door in one session, which was very nice. I feel like I could tell how it would end. On top of the tower, with Michel sacrificing himself to protect her (another option I had in mind was lovers suicide, by jumping out of the window together), but I was expecting a bit more of explanation afterwards (though that’s pretty hard I guess, when Michel is dead).

Unlike the other doors that felt very much like self contained stories, this one leaves so many things unanswered!

  • Who was the lady on the picture in Michel’s room and why did she have a scar on her face
  • What’s up with the witch’s voice talking to Michel
  • What was his curse
  • What was up with the glass of warm wine
  • Who wrote the letter to Giselle telling her there would be someone in the house? (Michel thinks that it’s one of the brother but it’s not confirmed)
  • What happens to Giselle afterwards (though for this one, I think I’m about to find out in door 6)
  • Who is the girl with white hair, will she be back

Excited to find out more!

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Reply

Haha yes exactly. When they finally managed to declare their love for each other (I actually really enjoyed that scene and the back and forth, though in the end when she had snot in her mouth it kind of killed the mood for a passionate kiss lol), but then I knew it wasn’t the end. Things had to get bad again.

Nice backdrop of the village! Also let’s not talk ever of アメデさん, he’s probably in my top 3 of most hated characters now.

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Going back and ruminating over the novel for a bit, I think my favorite scene is here in door 5.

Door 5 spoilers

When Giselle leads the mob of villagers to pillage the 館, Michel driving them away, Giselle being left being with him and going into a complete breakdown.
The writing here is amazing, with the descriptions of Michel’s presence and how this scene leads to being the turning point in their relationship.
This accompanied by the visuals and especially this track playing in the background Portrait of White really comes together to make this scene pretty much perfect in my opinion.

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I think I agree with you :slight_smile: I have yet to play door 7 and 8 but so far door 5 is my favorite!

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