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secret-engima · 4 years

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Lunafreya Nox Fleuret DoTF Characterization Rant

OKAY, ME RANT RAMBLING ON LUNA’S CHARACTERIZATION IN DAWN OF THE FUTURE IS A GO.

This is … likely going to get messy, but I’ll try to keep it at least moderately coherent. Lemme start by saying that- for the most part- I did actually enjoy Luna’s chap. I’ve been enjoying the book (kinda-sorta-mostly, I really liked Aranea’s chap at least) and I don’t think it’s like- a BAD book? Necessarily? But I feel like it is extremely telling in regards to how the characterization/lore is treated that my brain is automatically filing this thing under “fanfic that’s not my HC but is okay-ish” rather than “canon I will be gleefully tweaking as I please”. My brain is literally looking at this officially licensed book and equating it to fanfic. To fanfic that NEEDS EDITING.

With that out of the way, lemme attempt to summarize my (main) issues with Luna’s Characterization and then I’ll expand on them from there. Get ready for the salt.

1. Luna’s backstory is inconsistent. She herself states multiple times that Oracle training is grueling and involves both physical and mental trials as well as things like fasting for long periods of time WHILE doing said training, yet she is mostly treated like a well-meaning but overall pampered, naive princess who is only now being forced into hard circumstances and has to adapt accordingly. She is also treated like she doesn’t know “common people” that well and doesn’t know how to interact or pick up things like lies (????). A common example is how she treats Sol as trustworthy but reserved when according to Sol’s POV she is literally debating shooting Luna as a possible threat. And Luna supposedly doesn’t pick up on this danger. But we’ll get back to that.

2. Luna is characterized as being oblivious to how people outside Rich Oracle Circles live. That despite traveling all over the world she has never really seen it’s “ugly” sides because she’s always traveled in fancy guarded processions with the sick brought to her. Pretty sure the book specifically mentions at one point that she’s never “considered” what it would be like to be anything other than an Oracle. Admittedly this issue could go under number 1 or 3a but I’m putting it here because I’m salty.

3a. This and the next problem are heavily intertwined and, not going to lie, I could make an entire rant just about these two issues all by themselves, not just in Luna’s context. The first is that Luna is portrayed as not being able to make her own decisions, not even wanting to make her own decisions, until she is forced to or has her “eyes opened” by Sol, our jaded Long Night survivor character. The author treats Luna’s sense of duty as some form of social brainwashing she needs to “get over” and spoiler alert I hate it with every fiber of my being.

3b. Playing right off the whole “Luna is incapable of making her own decisions and that’s why she does her freaking job until someone ‘opens her eyes’” is the idea that Luna’s faith is a character flaw. Lemme reiterate. The story treats Luna’s faith. As a character flaw. Rather than the entire cornerstone to her character and one of the big reasons she’s as amazing as she is. Her faith is treated as foolish and shortsighted, something that has only survived for this long because it has never been challenged and, heads up, the rant I am going to go into on this one specific thing is going to be long and extremely salty.

Alright I think I’ve covered the basics. Starting from the top, BRING ON THE SALT.

…

1. Luna is pampered, well-meaning but naive and bad at reading ulterior motives of people.

….*slow, deep breath* Luna. The Oracle. Who became the youngest Oracle in history. Because her mother was murdered in front of her while her home was burned down and conquered by the people who then proceeded to rule her country, subvert her brother to their cause, and generally control and monitor every aspect of her life that they could. Luna, who was fully prepared to take a single suitcase and escape her own home and run off alone to get to Altissia and had to be stopped by her own brother (who you’ll note brought a bunch of soldiers with him, which indicates he did not expect a submissive response if he came alone).

This girl who was canonically physically abused as a child by a Niflheim officer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZHzBtIfpdg slow this down if you need to confirm, but she is grabbed and manhandled and hit by an adult man when she only looks to be twelve, around the age Tenebrae first fell), who has spent twelve years living under the rule of a nation that is not only aggressively atheist but has willfully attempted to kill one of the very beings she serves and openly plans to do so again. The woman who successfully survived the fall of Insomnia with only one magic-less glaive as her backup for most of the event, then evaded the search efforts of an entire empire with only her own wits, a dog, a Messenger who has only ever been shown to talk rather than fight, and the extremely grudging on-off help of her brother who works for said empire. All while waking up the Astrals and forging covenants that were slowly killing her from the strain, which is the exact thing the empire was trying to prevent her from doing. Then, when it became necessary to complete the last covenant, turned herself in to the very same empire that has imprisoned her since she was a child and has been actively hunting/trying to stop or kill her since Insomnia’s fall.

That girl. Is pampered. Is naive. Is bad at reading people and telling when they have ulterior motives or are lying.

Pull the other one. I’ll kick you.

But seriously, how are we supposed to believe this? Luna’s life post Tenebrae’s fall to Niflheim is only pampered in the sense that she was given fancy clothes and fed regularly (outside the grueling fasting periods mentioned in this same book). She had no freedom, no privacy, her guards were all either men who wore the same uniform as those who killed her mother or were monsters infected with the very scourge she is sworn to purify. The Oracle is famous, is revered by the people. To keep the people on their side, the Empire would have flaunted her, would have taken her to all the shiny events. Luna would have had to dine with, converse with, even dance with the very same people who ordered and condoned the murder of her mother, her own imprisonment, and the brainwashing of her own brother to the enemy side. She would have been the epitome of a bird in a gilded cage or a dog on a silk leash and humans are not meant to live like that.

Am I really expected to think she survived a situation that oppressive, that toxic, that actively hurtful, for years by being naive and bad at reading people? Am I really expected to believe that she cannot tell when people are out to use her or hurt her or are lying to her? Am I really expected to believe that she is pampered and doesn’t have, at the very least, PTSD from seeing her mother murdered and her brother join the very people who did it, let alone everything else that would have followed over those years?

Really?

Luna didn’t have a pampered life. She suffered abuse. Longterm emotional abuse, likely sporadic physical abuse until she learned to play along well enough to escape such punishments, and almost certainly gaslighting (again: religious leader being held captive by an aggressively atheist nation that wants to kill the pantheon this religious leader communes with).

Luna would have learned to navigate the canonically cutthroat politics of Niflheim while being at best an outsider and at worst a target because of her beliefs, her nationality, and her loyalties to the Lucians (nobody was surprised when Luna went on the run. Nobody. Her continued devotion and loyalty to the Lucians -Niflheim’s enemy- was absolutely a well known factor). She would have learned to pick truth from lie and when to pretend she hadn’t noticed in order to survive. She would have lived twelve years knowing that any mistakes or misplaced moments of trust would be paid for in either her suffering of the suffering of the people close to her like her servants, or just the citizens of Tenebrae in general.

And none of this is taking into account her Oracle training, which the book does not elaborate on but repeatedly states was hard and grueling and she completed it years earlier than any Oracle in history.

There are a lot of words I would use to describe Luna, but pampered and naive are not among them.

…

2. Luna is oblivious to how people outside her rich circles live and has never considered being anything else but an Oracle until Sol specifically points it out.

The book states that she mostly travels in procession (ie, with tons of servants to serve her every need and bodyguards to keep the masses at bay) so clearly she can’t go anywhere too dangerous, otherwise her servants wouldn’t be able to come. Right? Oh boy where do I start with this.

I know! Let’s start with the fact that Luna canonically maintains the blessings on Havens! You know those things. They’re your only safe place to camp at night and they can be found in all sorts of nifty locations like the middle of the wilderness where cars can’t go, chocobos won’t go, packs of wild animals will literally leap out of the bushes to eat you (Voretooth packs can get up to twelve or more members all trying to eat you at once, fun fact), and poor choice in clothes will lead to broken ankles at best? The ones that can be found in the depths of locations so dangerous that even the Hunters are leary of going inside and are actively forbidden from approaching unless they are a very high rank?

Off the top of my head some of the Havens that come to mind is the one in the middle of Malmalam thicket, the top of an active volcano, multiple spots in the middle of the voretooth and coeurl infested desert, two up in Vesperpool aka the home of all demon crocodiles and flocks of cockatrice that are bigger than the average car and can literally turn you into stone if you aren’t careful.

Yeah those places. She maintains those. Depending on how often Havens need to be maintained and if the weather/nature shortens that time then she might also have to periodically enter the dungeons Noctis explores in game that also have Havens hidden inside where it is always dark all the time and infested with daemons.

The book also states that the sick (who are highly infectious and not supposed to be touched by people who can’t heal the scourge and in the later stages of sickness become extremely violent and prone to biting in order to infect other people) are … brought to her…

By whom? Exactly?

Moving on from that giant and obvious plot hole to the “never seen or considered other lifestyles” bit: Luna has traveled literally all over the world. In her duties of healing the otherwise incurable she has gone all over Niflheim, Tenebrae, and Lucis. She has walked through the streets of cities filled with lights and glamor and stood on the dirt roads of towns so small they have to go to the next town an hour or more away to buy groceries or check their mailbox and who’s royal hotel suite is just a caravan with a new coat of paint and “welcome Oracle!” sign. Luna’s work is to cure the Starscourge, which is a disease that I can almost promise the rich don’t get. Because the rich and fancy do not risk their lives by going into daemon territory (Prompto, a middle class Insomnian, didn’t even know what wild animals would be like, you expect the rich and famous to be any better?).

The vast majority of Luna’s patients would be people like Dave the Hunter, or Sania the scientist who wades into the wilds. The truck drivers and the farmers and the electricians risking their lives to repair power lines in the middle of nowhere. She wouldn’t be going to cities except to talk to the refugees who fled there from the outside and thus picked up the Scourge. Her only two social circles would be Niflheim’s cutthroat nobility and the “unwashed masses” who come to her for healing. Guess which ones she’ll be more invested in getting to know on a personal/friendly basis and interacting with.

Of course Luna has interacted with and understands “common folk”. Luna is a caregiver, not just physically, but emotionally. She is beloved by the people because she is kind. That means she talks to them. More importantly, she listens. She has held the hands of the farmer as he begs her to heal him, because the harvest season is so close, and if he can’t work, if he dies, then what will become of his wife or the people his farm feeds? She has embraced the sobbing refugee mother as the other breaks down in gratitude for a child who’s skin is a healthy shade and who’s veins no longer bulge a sickly purple. She has met people who are not rich, but who are content. Who have lives that do not hinge on the razor thin dance of staying true to self and not exposing weakness to those who want to eat her alive. Who can laugh with their neighbors and kiss that nice boy down the street just for the fun of it, who can defy curfew to dance in the rain with the person they love and risk, at most, a lecture and a weekend grounding.

And no, they aren’t rich, no, they aren’t influential or powerful, but they are peaceful. They are happy.

Am I really expected to believe that Luna has not looked on these people’s lives from afar, listened to their rambles as they try to distract themselves from the sickness she is drawing from their veins, and not yearned to be the same? That she hasn’t thought over and over again about running away and being free from her gilded cage? That she doesn’t know anything about the lives of the people she heals even as she walks down their streets and steps into their houses so she can heal those who are too sick or too violent to be safely taken out of their room? That she has never thought about what life could be like if she wasn’t an Oracle as she watches the landscape roll by and walks through the wilderness to find the lonely farmsteads that the townsfolk tell her has sick children that cannot be let out of the shed for fear they will bite?

Setting all of that to one side, what human hasn’t thought of being someone else? What person on this planet, hasn’t looked at another person’s life that is so very different from their own and gone “huh, I wonder what that would be like” even if only for a moment before moving on and forgetting about it? Humans are creatures that dream by nature, that are curious by nature. To assume that Luna is not just because she gets to have the fancy dresses and servants is stupid.

…

3a: Luna is unable to make her own decisions and is only the dutiful Oracle because she doesn’t know any better and needs a “wiser” rebellious character to “open her eyes”.

Okay buckle up. I have tried to suppress the salt until now but over these last two points I don’t care. I will be salty. I will be sarcastic. I will be mean. I will reference Real World faiths (tho I’ll try to keep that to a minimum).

Both 3a and 3b are actually systemic issues in storytelling (particularly noticeable in movies/shows but maybe that’s because I’m pretty lucky with my book choices) that I despise with a passion. Specifically 3a relates to the chronic issue writers seem to have with characters not being allowed to be happy with their role in life. There’s this persistent thought, this narrative push, that if a character is following in the footsteps of their family, is entering the “traditional” profession that their parents (or grandparents, or entire generations of predecessors) have been in before them then they must be unhappy with their lot in life. That this is clearly the character being “repressed” and that if they are content then they are either a bad guy (see: every antagonist from a proud military family or every ruler who thinks they are better than everyone because of bloodline ever) or they are just blind to their own unhappiness.

Now, the basic idea of “character discovers they are unhappy in current role and seeks a new one” can actually be done really well. But those stories that do it well have a lot of internal conflict, a lot of self-reflection and searching and choosing to take a new path after really giving it some thought. Maybe they have help along the way, or encouragement, or another character to show that it’s possible by example and that’s okay.

What is not okay is infantilizing a strong, intelligent character by saying “oh it just never occurred to them until they are told that they are unhappy by this much more worldly wise character and then they went and did it”. That is not okay. It not only trivializes the efforts of every real person who has proudly followed in a parent’s footsteps to become something (a doctor, a missionary, a soldier, an actor, even an electrician, pick a life goal and I promise someone has been inspired to do that by their parent being one before them) but it also takes an otherwise strong, dedicated character and implies that they are too stupid to think for themselves or have any free will until the plot and a Shinier Character demands it.

Lunafreya Nox Fleuret is an Oracle, as her mother was before her, and her mother before her, and all the way back two thousand years to the very first Oracle we see in canon. Possibly back even farther, depending on if any of Aera’s ancestors were Oracles too. That isn’t a suffocating tradition, that is a heritage, that is a culture, that is a necessary, life-saving service that canon proves literally kept the world from falling into eternal darkness (Luna was the last Oracle, the day after she dies is literally the last time we players see sunlight until the end of the game when Noctis dies to restore it). Luna is not stupid or repressed for following in those footsteps, she is breathtakingly strong for shouldering her heritage as the Last Oracle with pride even when the forces controlling every other aspect of her life want her to be ashamed of it and give it up.

The empire that took over her home when she was twelve are actively anti-magic and anti-Astral. Luna is someone who speaks to the Astrals and is born with a magic that can heal the very sickness they want to weaponize. They couldn’t outright forbid her from training to be the next Oracle because that would cause the people to riot, but they could and absolutely would try to make her give up in any way they could. They would have insulted her, demeaned her, hurt her, and imprisoned her. They wouldn’t have wanted a “real” Oracle, they would have wanted a puppet who said pretty promises and then did nothing to stop them.

It would have been so easy for Luna to go down the same path her brother did. To give in to the empire and it’s propaganda that she would have been forced to listen to every single day of her life for twelve whole years. It would have made her life so much easier to be a puppet Oracle who didn’t have to walk miles through the wilderness to maintain Havens, or defy the empire by maintaining loyalty to Lucis, or leave her manor home to heal the sick that could not come to her themselves. As a puppet Oracle she could have stayed in the Manor and only treated cases that could reach her doors and were vetted by the empire. She could have eaten the finest foods and worn the best dresses and never had to worry about a pack of hungry Voretooths or a rogue Behemoth tearing her apart. Most of all, Niflheim wouldn’t have been nearly as oppressive or violent. They would have gladly given her the illusion of freedom and control as long as she played along rather than been fully willing and prepared to run into the jungle with a suitcase just to escape as seen in the movie.

Luna was not blindly fitting into a mold and she was not and has never been incapable of making a decision. The fact that she shows up in canon as a strong, dedicated woman who is in control of her emotions and not afraid to face down a giant sea monster with the power to summon tidal waves with just her words and a glorified pointy stick proves that. The idea that she needs a “wiser” character to come alongside her and “free her” from her own duties is not only stupid, it undermines one of the key things that makes Luna such a strong character despite her relative lack of screentime.

Furthermore, canonically, one of Luna’s main reasons for sticking with her duty as Oracle isn’t because it’s tradition, it’s because of what Niflheim did. In the Kingsglaive movie, when Nyx Ulric is getting angry at Luna for doing really reckless, life-threatening things, she tells him quote:

“I do not fear death. What I fear is doing nothing and losing everything.”

That’s not a woman who is blindly following a path laid out for her. That is a woman who is desperately, furiously fighting against the people who killed her mother in front of her the best way she can: by being the Oracle they cannot stand for her to be.

But sure. Luna is only the Oracle because she doesn’t know better and it never occurred to her to be anything else until some jaded kid with a shotgun made a snide comment about it.

3b: Luna’s faith is a character flaw that has only survived this long because it wasn’t challenged by a worldly wise character who knows better.

Not going to lie but words cannot express how much I hate this trope. This is another thing that shows up a lot in television/movies but also in books too, and that is that a character is not allowed to have a faith in something/religion unless they are 1. Foolish, 2. Brainwashed/tricked into it, 3. A crazy fanatic, or 4. It’s a character flaw they have to overcome by becoming more jaded and atheist and hateful.

Because … that’s not how it works. There are- millions (billions) of people all over the real world who are intelligent, well educated, thoughtful, kind, and religious. And no I’m not just talking about Christianity (tho I am Christian so you can see why this trope grinds my gears so hard). There’s Hinduism, there’s Islam, there’s Buddhism, there’s Judaism, there’s so many faiths and belief systems okay. And no we don’t tend to play well with each other or accept the validity of the others but that doesn’t mean we’re fanatics or brainwashed or stupid. And no we really don’t appreciate it when media introduces a character who follows a religion (even fictional ones!) only to make them an antagonist or rip it away from them in the name of “improving their character”. Just like every other cultural group ever who really doesn’t like their heritage and culture being used as a butt of jokes or is turned into a caricature or used as the basis for the antagonist being Evil™.

But no. We can’t possibly have a character who’s faith makes them strong or gives them comfort in times of hardship unless they are deluded. We can’t possibly have a character who is both intelligent and faithful. We can’t possibly show a character who is breathtakingly courageous and selfless as well as religious unless we point at their faith and go oh look a horrible character flaw to overcome by having non-believer characters open their eyes via sarcastic commentary.

And look. Look. I am well aware that the plot of Dawn of the Future has Bahamut as the Bad Guy™. I am fully aware of that. But if you want to be purely honest and technical, that doesn’t invalidate Luna’s faith because (spoilers) the other Astrals fight Bahamut to save the world. They hear her cries and the come to fight on behalf of Lucis and Noctis and all of Eos and they kill Bahamut even when that ensures their own destruction.

But we’re not actually here to talk about whether the Astrals deserve Luna’s faith in them, we’re here to talk about why insisting Luna’s faith is, by nature of being a faith, treated like a flaw and why it is treated like something so weak it only survived to this point because Luna didn’t face anything “bad” enough to “snap her out of it”.

Spoiler alert, it’s not a flaw and it’s not weak.

Going back to something I have mentioned several times already: Niflheim is an empire run by people who actively want to kill the very beings most of the planetary population worships. The very same people in charge of Luna’s life for twelve years, starting from when she was twelve and very emotionally vulnerable and traumatized, hate the Astrals. I repeat: They hate the Astrals. They have devised weapons to try (and spectacularly fail) to kill them. Half their continent is a winter nightmare-land because they tried to kill Shiva the Glacian and she went “haha, nice try, lemme leave a fake corpse here that constantly pumps out freezing temperatures and blizzards”.

Am I seriously, honestly, supposed to believe that these people didn’t try to tear down her faith at every single opportunity? That Ravus wouldn’t have tried to bully and cajole and harass her into abandoning her faith because he knew that her faith was what kept her walking her chosen path as Oracle and that said path was destined to kill her? Am I seriously supposed to believe that Luna didn’t spend those twelve years having to sit there and bite her tongue to keep from raging at these cutthroat nobles as they gloated and sneered and spat on the names of the Astrals who gave Luna the very magic she uses to heal those in need?

Luna never needed Sol to come along and say “what have the Astrals ever done for you?” because I promise that she’s heard some variation of that exact phrase from everyone in her life. From her own brother to the Emperor himself she has heard some form of this question, this taunt. In the Kingsglaive movie, General Glauca even says something to the order of, “To what god do you pray? The gods do not listen.” Right before he kidnaps her.

Luna’s faith isn’t something blind, and it is not a flaw. It is a cornerstone of her character. Luna’s faith is a bloody, stubborn, tenacious thing that she has nurtured and shored up and been steadied by through twelve years of emotional abuse and physical imprisonment. Luna’s faith is an unshakeable thing that can only come from long nights spent crying into the silent dark of the room and asking “is this real? Am I right? Should I give up? This hurts so much, what do I do?” and finding the answer to be “yes this is real. Yes I am right. No, I won’t give up even though it kills me. Yes it hurts, but what I believe in is stronger than this pain.”

Faith is not optimism and it is not fanaticism. Optimism can be broken by hardship and fanaticism has no room for selfless kindness or acceptance of other people not being as devoted as they are. Faith is personal. Faith is a bedrock, and maybe it’s a bedrock that makes no sense to people on the outside, but it is a bedrock and it can make mountains move.

Just as Luna proves when she runs rings around an Empire to win the respect and cooperation of Titan and of Ramuh, to stand amid the rain and tell an enraged TideMother that “it is in mercy that men offer praise, and in shedding grace that the gods solicit worship” and not flinch because she knows she is right.

Luna’s faith is a fierce, scarred thing that has taken every kind of suppression and propaganda and poison the empire could throw at it and kept on going.

Furthermore. Luna’s faith is treated by Sol as something empty. Because when did the Astrals ever help her or comfort her or save her?

I can answer that. They helped her when they gave her Umbra and Pryna, who kept her company through her life and gave her a way to talk to Noctis. A way to reach out to a person who was not either imperial, warped by imperial propaganda, or too afraid to speak out against the empire for fear of dying. They comforted her when Gentiana became a second mother for Luna after the death of Queen Sylva. A physical shoulder to cry on, a sounding board to bounce fears off of, a well of advice when it was asked of her, a rock to retreat to when Ravus turned away from her and the empire continued to control as much of her life as they could.

Gentiana, who is really Shiva in disguise, has been with Luna since she was a small child.

One of the Astrals themselves has been with Luna for almost her entire life. Has guided her, has comforted her, has led her to safety as she fled Insomnia’s ruins.

Shiva had no reason to do that. The Oracles have done their duty since the time of Aera without her help or company. Shiva didn’t have to stay. She didn’t have to linger and offer comfort and become Luna’s friend. She didn’t have to listen to the last words of a scared young woman who wanted only to see her fiancé one last time and promise to carry them to Noctis in the event of her death. Shiva didn’t have to cry on behalf of Luna. Shiva didn’t have to help Luna remember what it was like to be an ordinary woman (“Yet others need not hide their grief. Is she [Luna] so different from them?”), and in fact, if Shiva had played up to most of the stereotypes, she would have done the opposite and done her hardest to suppress any part of Luna’s personality that wasn’t her Oracle duties.

But she did. Shiva was there, and she remembered. Shiva loved and we as a fandom may yell at the Astrals a lot for not doing more to take care of the Starscourge, but of all of them Shiva gave the most because she came down and she lived, and walked, and loved this Oracle, this scared child, this frightened, weary woman who couldn’t even turn to her own family for comfort. Shiva’s husband Ifrit was betrayed by humankind and yet Shiva still defended them, she kills Ifrit to protect the man (the king) that Luna loved.

And at the end of the game, in those final moments outside the Citadel, when it’s just Noctis and his Retinue against all of Ardyn’s armies of daemons, when Luna calls out to these Astrals whom she has remained faithful to her entire life, even unto her death…

They answer.

Every. Last. Astral. Who is not corrupted like Ifrit, comes down at her prayer and fights. Even Leviathan who’s only voiced lines are screaming wrath against the humanity that forgot her, even Bahamut who otherwise remains aloof in his plane of magic beyond the concerns of the mortal world. Luna calls, and they answer her.

“What have the Astrals ever done for her” indeed.

Luna’s faith is a driving force of her character, it is irrevocably intertwined with her duty, with her choices, with her desire to help people and save the world even if it costs her own life, and in the end her faith is rewarded. Not in the way we want for her, because we love the ultimate happy endings where everyone lives and nobody dies. But Final Fantasy XV was never a story about happy endings. It was a story about coming of age, and tragedy, and sacrifice. Of holding onto hope against all opposition, and of having faith that someday the dawn will return, even if bringing about that dawn requires personal sacrifice.

…

Okay this is over 5k words, I’m tired, and I’m extremely salty so I can’t really figure out how to wrap this up but there we go, my salty personal rant about why I think Dawn of the Future messed up some really critical parts of Luna’s characterization and why it’s Really Bad that they messed up those specific things.

Also I kinda despise them making Bahamut the bad guy in DotF because yes he’s a jerk and yes he really could have done the whole Prophecy thing a ton better, but in the original FFXV one of the things that made the game so heartbreakingly tragic to me is that most of the characters involved weren’t pure evil. They could be greedy, and flawed, and crazy, but in the end the source of the problem was too big to pin on one character.

Do you pin the entire thing on the god of war for his mistakes in trying to bring about peace, or the god of fire for trying to destroy humanity and no longer being there to do his job and purify the plague? Do you blame the Astrals for their hubris or humanity for theirs, because Ifrit loved humanity until they betrayed him so deeply he went mad? Do you hate Ardyn for causing the Long Night or pity him for being a victim of Somnus’s greed? Can you blame Somnus for everything even though the Scourge was going on long before him and kept spreading long after he sealed Ardyn away? The whole thing is a tragedy because at this point it’s a problem too big to fix without someone paying a price too heavy and we hate that because the characters who pay that price are the ones we grow to love over the game.

But that is an entirely different rant for an entirely different day when I am not so tired and my hands no longer hurt from writing this much in one sitting. Thank you and good night.

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ooc-but-stylish · 6 years

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Now that FFXV is Officially Dead I’d like to reiterate that every good tragedy is earned, not forced through the plot, and FFXV earned absolutely goddamned none of its tragedy throughout its entire story, least of all its “canon ending”.

A well-done tragedy makes sense with the character’s actions; if it has to happen, it happens because of ( or despite ) the character’s best efforts, which requires their best efforts to actually be shown on screen rather than them acting like a bunch of shoddy horror movie teenagers taking stupid action after stupid action. The tragedy makes the audience sad for the loss of a character they’ve come to care for, but ultimately the audience can nod and say “it makes sense”, as the character would have taken no other route because their action is part of who they are and therefore consistent with their character. And again, FFXV has none of that.

FFX had Yuna want to defeat Sin at the cost of her own life because she thought the smiles on other people’s faces was worth the sacrifice, and as she went on her pilgrimage and witnessed the events in Kilika and Mi’ihen, it only strengthened her resolve to defeat Sin so that no more people would die, even if that peace only would last for ten years. Near the end, she turned away from the sacrifice option because she learned it would cost not only her own life but the life of one of her friends, meaning she would sacrifice an additional person that wasn’t aware that they would die beforehand and wouldn’t have made that choice themselves up until that point.

FFX also had Tidus, on a personal quest to return to the Zanarkand he left behind supposedly one thousand years in the past. He learned close to the end of his journey that he was a “Dream of the Fayth”, basically the figment of self-sacrificed religious figures from the actual Zanarkand of a thousand years ago, and that the permanent defeat of Sin would also end his own existence. He was allowed to come to terms with it while he continued to interact with the other characters he was traveling with, then broke the news to everyone in the end and disappeared exactly like he said ( and it was told to him ) he would. Then FFX-2 happens, but whatever.

Noctis, on the other hand, is traumatized and guilt tripped into the sacrifice by a God ( see: BAHAMUT ) that never showed up to help the people/country He was supposedly the patron of ( see: INSOMNIA ) and can’t even land a single hit of its ultimate attack against the One Astral that it’d fought against in a war 2000 years prior ( see: IFRIT ). Then Noctis is held hostage for ten years, unable to interact with anyone else he knows until he “comes to terms” with the fact that he “needs to” commit suicide before ever having actually done anything for his country and the rest of the world. He’s not even doing it to save a specific person in his group that would die otherwise, he’s dying because he owes it to already dead people who gave their lives for him that he’s not even aware of. And even their sacrifices are the result of a lie.

Would Nyx have put on the Ring if he’d known beforehand that Luna would die weeks later anyway in a completely preventable death ( see: GENTIANA ), and the young king he was telling to “rule well” would lose ten years of his life then die anyway not having ruled a damn thing?

Would the citizens of Insomnia have accepted this if they’d known that Regis agreed to a treaty he knew was suspect and sold them out for one person who would die anyway ( see: NOCTIS ) and whose greatest act would come only after the world was turned into a hellscape for ten straight years?

Would Luna have even bothered with all this nonsense if she weren’t being told to do so since the age of 4 by a goddess that proceeded to do absolute fuck all to save her from the worst events in her life ( see: GLAUCA, CALIGO, ARDYN ), and only ever showed up to reaffirm her connection to a boy she first hadn’t even met yet and then later didn’t even know all that well, with all affirmations happening absent the presence of any other adult/elder figure ( see: SYLVA, REGIS, RAVUS, “UNNAMED VIA/NOX FLEURET DAD” )?

I’m not even going to ask about Ignis putting on the Ring, because, here’s the Hellfire take, the “canon” route was him acting a whole fool thereby turning himself into Male Luna, complete with keeping the truth from Noctis about the fact that he’ll die sooner than he thinks, and featuring other hits like letting Gladio act like a socially maladjusted five year old, especially in a train full of people where Gladio’s oh-so-mature rant against Noctis thereby reveals the Prince of Lucis's location among potential enemies in plainclothes as opposed to keeping a low profile. The V2 route was Ignis actually remembering he's the strategist of the group that thinks with his head, bides his time, makes plans, and gathers knowledge before acting, and gets rewarded for that work. Considering he puts on the Ring in both the “Canon” and V2 routes, that he’s willing to give his sight and his life for Noctis is not in question. It’s whether he takes the action too early and effectively wastes it at the behest of Scaly Asshole God and the idle threat of Trash Hobo Jesus that’s the matter.

So in case it needs restating, the “tragedy” in FFXV wasn’t earned in the least and every retcon they kept adding to it, short of negating the deaths entirely, made the “sacrifice” even less sensible.

Luna held Ardyn’s hand for an entire half-minute in Altissia while she was talking to him. Ardyn didn’t seem the least bit affected and slapped her. She died. Then later she showed up from nowhere, despite no evidence or foreshadowing that she would be in the Astral Realm/the Beyond, and touched Ardyn for only one second, which seemed to be enough to significantly weaken him. Again, no evidence she would be there or that that realm was someplace she was allowed to have an actual presence. Then the Retcon Edition decided that she would appear in the realm of the living with her powers perfectly intact, to summon all of the Astrals, even the ones she didn’t personally meet or awaken ( see again: BAHAMUT ).

So uh, what gives? How is Luna more powerful as a spirit than she was when she was alive? If she could show up on Eos instead of being confined to only the Astral Realm, why didn’t she show up while Ardyn was laid out after his and Noctis’s Battle of Kings to purify him then? Or couldn’t she die earlier than Chapter 9 ( say, during the Invasion of Insomnia? ) and remain in ghost form the rest of the game, if she can do the exact same things in either state anyway?

No problem, she shows up, summons the presence of Astrals she isn’t actually needed for since Noctis had all their Marks already and could call upon them himself. Disappears conveniently, doesn’t show up for anything else her powers could actually sensibly be used for, allows her betrothed to undergo an overblown suicide ritual by ancestor. The game tells us this sacrifice absolutely needs to happen, not really because Noctis wants to and he decided to for the good of everyone, but he’s told he owes it to people. He’s obligated to pay a blood price brought about by actions and events prior to his even being born.

Did this suicide-by-ancestor need to happen at all? Until “Episode Ardyn” comes out, the general consensus ( I su-fricking-ppose ) was that he was supposed to give his life the same way Noctis eventually had to, and simply chose not to and circumvented the sacrifice with unintended use of whatever special Oracle-like gift he had on him. Evidence doesn’t bear that out, though, because the Starscourge was not as bad then as stated in the official timeline of Eos ( “Epidemic disappears with the King’s success” / “the plague subsides by the King’s hand” ) and the fact that the Scourge comes across as a “new life form” to the people of Eos. That, and the Kings that Noctis needed to perform elaborate suicide-by-ancestor literally did not exist in Ardyn’s time for him to be killed with. One of them is his brother, and all the other ones are great/grand/nieces and nephews of his thereafter. So it would be impossible for him to have sacrificed himself like Noctis, but the Scourge was still reduced to such a negligible phenomenon that it needed to be rediscovered in some ancient ruins almost 300 years prior to the start of the game and it still wasn’t weaponized or a huge problem until around 30 years prior to the start of the game, at which point the plague spreads rapidly to the extent that the very soil is infected and mutating frogs and other local wildlife, according to one researcher studying the Scourge ( see: SANIA YEAGER ).

But then Ardyn also has a plethora of Royal Arms, including the Sword of the Father, and Arms that Noctis doesn’t get at all, so he must have acquired them after all those respective Kings lived and died and were buried with their Arms, but before Noctis could embark on his own trip to gather the grand total of 13. It’s already acknowledged that there were more tombs scattered around Lucis but that they and their Arms are lost for whatever reason. But there’s really no way Ardyn could have had the time to do all that--

oh no, wait, Episode Ardyn’s trailer shows that Ardyn was discovered by a young Verstael about 30-something years ago, and from that point he was free enough to make the presumable trek across Lucis to get all those Arms and vandalize the tombs so that Noctis couldn’t get the same, awaken Ifrit despite not being an Oracle, infect Ifrit with Space Malaria ( see: STARSCOURGE ), and eventually challenge Regis in a Lucian standoff, the same Regis who then has a senior moment in Kingsglaive and forgets who Ardyn is and needs an introduction ( ????? ) to the guy that attacked him years ago when that same guy traipses into the throne room and makes an impossible demand.

The gods allowed that to happen because of bullshit “Prophecy” instead of letting Ardyn rot or leading the Oracle and King of the time ( see: REGIS AND SYLVA ) toward Ardyn’s prison so they could purify him while he was still weak and emaciated. The gods let the Accursed Enemy fall into the wrong hands ( see: NIFLHEIM, VERSTAEL BESITHIA ), come into power, awaken one Astral ( see: IFRIT ) and kill another ( see: SHIVA ) and gimp their only chance to save the world they claim to care about so much -- again, Ardyn has more Royal Arms than Noctis does, even ones Noctis couldn’t acquire and the player is unfamiliar with ( dat scythe ). Niflheim’s control over the daemons was also bolstered enough by Ardyn’s presence and his contributions to their research, that they released the Marilith to attack Noctis when he was a child and give him a near-fatal injury, which crippled his ability to harness the Crystal’s power to its full potential. This isn’t even speculation, you guys. This is actual ( extended ) canon. Ardyn was allowed to make shit worse for everyone.

Anyway. Noctis had to be stabbed by his ancestors to take in their spirits and then painfully get them out of his spiritual form when he made it to the Beyond … except for the fact that he already had their Royal Arms within him ( he acquired them painlessly the first time around, I should add ), and that the Ring should have all their spirits already within it ( including the Mystic/Somnus who is the Founder King/Ardyn’s Brother and part of the Old Wall ). They shouldn’t even need to enter him twice– they did it the first time when he got all of their Arms, and the weapons are as ghostly ten years later that they were in the beginning, so how are they actually killing him, again?

But, sure, let’s assume they needed to get into the Astral Realm/the Beyond, and had to use Noctis’s corpse/spirit as a ferry ... except not really, because Noctis spent ten whole years inside the Crystal, whose realm is identical to the Beyond where Noctis, Ardyn, and Luna ended up in when they died. They only needed to hitch a long enough ride until Noctis went into Crystal sleep, leave him, then wait for Ardyn there whenever he appeared so that they could stab him to pieces instead of being absorbed into Noctis and then ejected painfully. It’s not like their actual spirits were needed for the Ardyn battle in Insomnia; they didn’t do jack shit to help Noctis in the “Battle of Kings” and they didn’t do anything against Ifrit beforehand either -- and the Astrals didn’t do anything for either fight as well, and mobilized better to take down one measly shield over the Citadel! Lazy jackasses.

But sure, let’s assume they couldn’t simply leave the Ring of Lucii while Noctis was in Crystal sleep ... except the ending clearly shows that part of the suicide ritual involves the Astrals’ spirit forms converging into a portal, connecting the throne room to a realm that the deceased Kings descend from ( you mean like a ... Beyond? ) so that they can then stab Noctis to death with their respective weapons. So the Kings came from this spirit realm ... to kill Noctis ... to then go into the spirit realm ... the same realm that they were already in and that the Astrals had access to ( you could call this, the, I don’t know, the Astral Realm, then? ) ... instead of staying exactly where they were while Noctis transported himself into this Astral Realm/the Beyond via some other method, such as… maybe…. going through the exact same fucking portal the Astrals created that bridged the gap between living and spiritual worlds to begin with, seeing as that’s what it does.

I mean, considering these dead spirits were corporeal enough to stab a living person to death, and then both Noctis’s and Ardyn’s spirits could somehow suffer an additional death while there, dying in the same way living bodies would by either disintegration or repeated stabbing and dissolution, it doesn’t matter if the body in their ghost realm isn’t dead going in, because both ghostly and living things have the exact same level of corporeality and therefore physical effectiveness on the environment around them!

But sure, let’s assume they needed to appear to Noctis and kill him so that all of them would meet Ardyn in the Beyond ... except for the part where killing Noctis means his spirit is trapped in the Ring, and in the same place all the other Kings are, which is identical to the inside of the Crystal, which is identical to the Beyond, where Ardyn was waiting. So that realm was already in the Ring to begin with, and somehow the Kings could not go into that realm themselves at literally any point during the game even though their spirits were absorbed into the Ring post-mortem and their Arms were acquired any point before the Chapter 13 time skip.

But sure, let’s assume that there was something special about Noctis that required he be with them– perhaps like the Royal Arm of Regis, the Sword of the Father ... except Ardyn also has the Sword of the Father in his Armiger arsenal even when he left Ravus’s corpse with it for Noctis to get it, and he has more weapons besides, and the Kings apparently let him have it because of their blood relation unless otherwise stated ( I mean, did Ardyn use his Villain Sue powers to braaaaiiiinwash them into giving him their Arms against their better judgment? Why would they do that at all? They don’t seem very cognizant of ... anything, to be honest! ), so ... uh, what was making Noctis special? The part where he’s not Scourged? He was attacked by a demon already and sent into a coma, afflicted by something he needed to be taken into Imperial territory to heal from instead of seeing any doctor ( what doctor? ) or Regis using a King sigil for healing magic ( see: COMRADES ) so he’s not immune to the affliction, but he was healed by an Oracle, which, oh hey, uhm, wasn’t Ardyn eventually purified by an Oracle at the end point of his life anyway? Good golly, a shame that couldn’t have happened at any point prior to any of this bullshit happening!

But sure, let’s assume that Ardyn possessing more Arms than Noctis does isn’t relevant ... so in a hypothetical scenario where Noctis had Ardyn’s Armiger, or acquired more weapons than the 13 he ended up with, how many Kings would he be stabbed with then? Was he meant to hold out against every single one? What if all 113 Kings had Arms, and he found all of them without fail? How long would that suicide ritual take? He definitively died with the last stab out of thirteen, five score more would be ridiculous, and Ardyn could probably revive himself by that point, so ... ?

Or maybe, we can more safely assume that the writing to get Noctis to this point was contrived as fuck and made no sense, where he neither had a real choice to give his own life, wasn’t allowed to live otherwise, no one around him made their best efforts to save the life of their supposed best friend/brother figure/betrothed even if they weren’t actively lying to him by omission or otherwise taunting him into the act, and any alterations to the details of his death or giving it any more thought makes it fall apart.

#ffxv hate #anti ffxv #ffxv critical #ffxv criticism #final fantasy xv #long post #noctis lucis caelum #gladiolus amicitia mention #ignis scientia mention #gentiana negative #this text is NOT for gladio apologists #NOT for luna apologists #NOT for gentiana apologists #NOT for bahamut apologists #NOT for ffxv apologists who think this game was well written #NOT for ffxv apologists that think the canon ending was the best ending #this text isn't even for people who don't think ardyn's powers are getting ridiculous #and that they're coming from fuckoff nowhere #read at your own risk

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