Five Figure Fanwork Exchange

Title: Steins;Gate

Media: Video Game or Anime (and other stuff but you don't need that)

Approx length: It's about 70 hours to play the visual novel version of Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0. The anime of both games is about 18 hours and is very, very good. In fact, the English localisation is one of the best I've seen.

Where to find it: The games can be purchased on your gaming platform of choice, and the Steins;Gate anime can be streamed (or acquired) at various locations.

What is it, in summary? Over their summer vacation, a bunch of nerdy Japanese college students create a time machine that first allows them to send a message back to the past and later, memories back. The first third of Steins;Gate is the cast creating their invention, testing its limits, and generally demonstrating that they are profoundly not prepared for what is to come. The true story kicks off a third of the way through, and Okabe Rintarou now has to undo the creation of the time machine with the aid of a time traveler from the future, his time machine, breaking the hearts of his loved ones, and a lot of death.

Steins;Gate 0 takes place in one of the other timelines, filling in a gap between the last two jumps back in time that Okabe does. In this timeline, Okabe fails in his self-appointed mission, and it is all about him dealing with his PTSD and finding the courage to try one more time to fix the timeline to find a future where no one dies.

What do you love about it? First up, Steins;Gate is a clever time travel story, that digs right into the horror of travelling through time. Okabe cannot describe what he has done, not because he can't speak of it, but because no one could understand it. It's clever with its paradoxes, and it never forgets that each time Okabe undoes an event that someone really wanted to occur (thus changing the timeline) people are genuinely hurt. It's also about someone who is ill-equipped to save the world, but has to try because there is no one else, and his motivations for doing so are not the grand gestures of "saving humanity" but instead "saving one person". Also it's genuinely funny at times - the English translation is, as I've said, fantastic.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it? Post-canon fic, especially exploring how we got there, and how Okabe adjusted to a timeline that is like his own.

Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests? Not really, though you can skip the spin off games and manga.

Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence) Steins;Gate contains depictions of PTSD and depression, a whole lot of death, body horror, violence, a bit of transphobia towards Luka, and transforming bananas into jello.