# Pastebin eYOAUvUD 11:12 AM <%red3> So what are our initial thoughts on this article? 11:12 AM <+cybersqyd> i'm not sure about it 11:12 AM Honestly I still found it a bit hard to read but I do like how they tried to explain what had happened to Omega-7. It still confuses me about the Bloom and the Thorn they talk about 11:13 AM <+cybersqyd> it's really nicely written but it feels...a little too much like it suffers from a lot of my issues with more slice of life stuff? 11:13 AM <+cybersqyd> where it feels like it really lacks closure in a meaningful sense 11:13 AM <+cybersqyd> i guess it is the closure but *shrugs* 11:13 AM A pretty solid ending to the series. I've read it a pretty long time ago and I remember it was a blast for me, something really cool to read. And it establish well the settings for Res. Plus, I absolutely love the ending. 11:13 AM <%red3> So, there isn't enough story to really warrant an ending like this? 11:13 AM <+cybersqyd> ...lacking closure is maybe not the best way to phrase it; idk. It feels like I got to the end and was like 'mm this was a nice first course but I'd like some more' 11:14 AM <%red3> I can understand that. This entire thing is just one big event which touches on many smaller events, it doesn't feel like there's any major arc here. 11:14 AM <+cybersqyd> yeah 11:15 AM <%red3> BlueJones: From what I understand, the Thorn and the Bloom are the same thing, but there's some time shenanigans going on. I believe the Thorn was the original name for the Bloom? Or maybe the Bloom is the Thorn but from the future, like how a rosebud eventually blooms into a flower, the Thorn blooms into the Bloom? I'm not entirely sure, either. 11:16 AM With all the occurences of Bloom and Thorn, it looks like you can almost do a rap. xD 11:16 AM I see. I guess it is still entirely unknown 11:17 AM <%red3> I liked the dialogue in this. It felt less cliched than other tales, even with the inclusion of "Hey, when did X event happen" and having the other character look shocked because they don't remember. 11:17 AM <+cybersqyd> yeah 11:17 AM <+cybersqyd> i liked the vignettes at the start even if it did, in some ways, feel a touch anticlimactic as a whole 11:18 AM <%red3> But I'm not sure about the ending. I don't exactly know which character it's trying to refer to, exactly? 11:18 AM — %red3 actually uses "exactly" twice in a sentence. 11:18 AM I think it's something that Clef wants to keep unknown. 11:18 AM But I'm one of those who think the man is IRL!Clef himself. 11:19 AM The dialogue is what sells this for me. It is much more finer than the previous parts 11:19 AM <%red3> Hmm, that was another aspect that I didn't enjoy in this, the sudden left turn into metaness. I'm not sure why it was even included because the Bloom was never connected to the metaverse before this point. 11:19 AM It can be a little bit... mystic, but it's why this ending sounded really powerful for me when I first read it. In this really end, I felt like I was seeing a man who made many things, some of them who had failed, some others who had succeeded but in the end, everything made was worth it. 11:19 AM <+cybersqyd> what do you mean by the metaverse? 11:20 AM <+cybersqyd> oh the bit where it talks about RAISA opening series 4? 11:21 AM And it's pretty much how we can resume the "career" of Clef in the website. He tried things, some of them have failed, some of them have succeeded and in the end of the day, he finally felt that in fact, this path was not the worst. And I feel like he was in... peace with everything happened before? 11:21 AM <%red3> cybersqyd: Real life. Like, breaking the fourth wall. Not necessarily RAISA opening up series 4, but moreso just referencing the fact that this is a work of fiction that's being written by someone. Especially with the one vignette of a person sitting at a keyboard writing something, deleting it, and then rewriting and saving it. 11:21 AM <+cybersqyd> ah yeah 11:21 AM That's my take about the end of the Tale. I don't know if I'm understandable, but I bet you see what I mean. 11:21 AM (and excellent, Red, I haven't thinking about that) 11:22 AM (for what you said about meta) 11:22 AM <%red3> Pighead: I feel like that's not explored much in this series specifically, though. If this was longer and was more focused on Clef's entire career instead of just one incident, then I would've found it to be a bit more impactful. 11:24 AM Understandable. For me, it's already impactful, but I see what you're coming from. 11:25 AM This series, while it did indeed have flaws, is still good 11:25 AM <%red3> I also agree with Cyber that the vignettes in this one felt very anticlimactic. In the previous tale, I saw them as glimpses into a world where the anomalous don't care about humanity in the way that Cain or Iris do. They're cold, brutal monsters who don't have the capacity for empathy. But in this tale, they feel unnecessary. The reader already understands the core theme from the previous tale, so why even include it 11:25 AM <%red3> here? It feels like a wasted potential to expand upon that idea or introduce another one. 11:29 AM <%red3> Does anyone have any other opinions they want to get out before we move onto our closing thoughts? 11:32 AM Not really, I did enjoy the series while it did suffer from some flaws in its style choice and story but it was a good... prequel? for the canon that this resides in 11:33 AM <+cybersqyd> i don't have more to say either 11:33 AM <%red3> Right now, I'm pretty much at a novote for this, although I'll most likely downvote it since my opinion of this will most likely worsen with age. The ending especially is something which tries really hard to be impactful, but does so in a really obvious way by outright stating the series' themes. This is also a problem with the vignette section. And there still is the problem of this sounding like just an action movie 11:33 AM <%red3> set in the Foundation universe. 11:34 AM I've upvoted this, back in the day, and it still stands. Still love the series as a whole. 11:35 AM I'm going to say Upvote for the above reason. Plus this being a tale ender is quite nice imo