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sylleblosscm · 1 year

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You know, there are a lot of aspects of Luna that feel really strange to write, because they're key points about her character, but not really the point, if you get me. Obviously she occupies that "tragic woman, too pure to live" trope but I'd argue that it's mostly superficial because, at her best, Luna functions not in opposition to that trope, but rather in spite of it.

The hardest thing about writing Luna is walking that line of exploring the breadth of her experiences and personality without falling into the trap of fetishising her inexperience. Not just in a sexual or romantic sense, but in other ways too. In Dawn, Luna actually has a hard time befriending Sol - and you would think making friends is easy for her because she's such a compassionate and welcoming person, but the truth is she's spent so long in this perfect Oracle persona that she has no people skills outside of that. That, in turn, is the result of a traumatic upbringing and years of brainwashing that is difficult and painful to untangle. Again, the pure virgin-ness of her is a point, but it's not the point. There's a greater cause to it, and a much greater narrative.

I was in a similar position with my last, really big years-long muse. My Baby Boy Baby, if you will. He was presented as this antagonistic presence in his source material, and did a lot of really outlandish things. He was iconic enough to be reduced to a sum of a few memorable quotes and memeable actions, which ultimately obfuscated the semi-consistent, deeply rooted personal philosophies that underlied everything he said and did which in turn, like Luna, came from an incredibly tragic series of events. I'm not saying tragedy is necessary to make a good character, or that it should be the source of everything they do, just that it's a real waste to reduce a character to a small facet of the whole when the whole is so enormous.

In Luna's case, I mostly blame Square. They just don't care what she thinks or how she feels. If you want the good stuff you really have to go out of your way, so it makes sense most casual players will never see the full potential of her as a character. Even liking her as much as I do now was an entire journey, and not one everyone should feel obligated to go on. Sometimes I see common assumptions about her like "she knew what was going to happen to Noctis and was therefore Bad, Actually" or "she just sits around all day drinking tea and braiding her hair and her only character trait is being nice which makes her Bad, Actually" or "she was a simpering mary sue who couldn't hold her own in a fight which makes her Bad, Actually" and I can't even be mad because it's hard to construct a complete person from what we see in-game. But I also think there's an inherent knee-jerk reaction to the Pure Good GirlTM to assume she must be inherently vapid and empty because media is very good at pigeon-holing women, and we are all very jaded by it. (There's also something to say about the role of a woman whose strengths are defined through mostly traditional feminine qualities and how we respond to that and why, which....it's a whole can of worms in and of itself; but I don't need to tell anyone here that both "woman are forced into showing those qualities and that's bad" and "some women naturally embody those qualities and that's fine" are two things that can coexist.)

That sort of brings me to the topic of characters who are fundamentally "nice". Nice is typically the compliment you give when you don't know what else to say about someone because it's a nothing word, and being designated the "nice character" is never a good thing. It just means there's nothing else anyone can say about them. It's hard to imagine, but in the beginning of B.uffy, Tara wasn't a well-liked character. (And, if you've been keeping up, it should come as no surprise that she's my favourite). The Gay Stuff aside, she was perceived as boring when paired alongside the rest of the women on the show. She couldn't fight, she didn't use her magic to fight very often, she just wasn't the type to be on the front lines. And for a show that was deemed progressive for the time (despite certain...creatives' involvement) on the merit of its women being able to fight for themselves better than the menfolk, she seemed to derail the message of the show. But I'd argue that characters like Tara, Luna, and a dozen others I can think of who are branded as "too nice" for their roles have another kind of strength. Tara's compassion and kindness wasn't a passive quality, but rather an active trait. She often went out of her way to be considerate and empathetic of others. Even as she came into her own and learned to set boundaries and stand up for herself, retained that compassion all the way until her final moments. As a result, she became the heart of the team. In a lot of ways, she held the team together all through season six, and when she died, everything immediately fell to shit. A bit like Luna if you think about it. She didn't even interact with most of the cast on-screen, yet her death - albeit through Noctis - destabilised the core characters and set the stage for some of the darkest moments in the game.

Of course, I really wish these characters would be centred more. They hold a special place in my heart, and they don't deserve to be killed off all the time to make way for other peoples' character development. I'd argue that, when they're put in the protagonist role with that active compassion as their driving force is when we get some of the most beautiful and poignant storytelling I've ever experienced - certain episodes of D.octor Who, G.host of T.sushima, Noct himself to a degree and the like. And no, it does not escape my notice that these and every other example I can think of off the top of my head are all men.

Anyway, I don't really have any special grand point. I'm just talking here, I think it's important not just to examine how we feel about characters that other people write, but how we feel about the ones we do write and why. And I really enjoy writing Luna. Aside from the fact that all my partners are top-tier and that makes having fun way easier, she's complicated, and motivated, and brave, and she has a rich inner world that I really enjoy engaging in, and at the end of the day she genuinely just wants to make a positive impact on others.

#( in which i yell into the void about several things and also nothing )#( also no proofreading we die like men )#⋆｡˚ ☁︎ ˚｡⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆ i was just in the middle of an inner monologue / ooc

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milktoast-mcgee · 4 years

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the boys and their royal arms

I’ve rambled about this a little bit before on twitter, but I decided to finally sit down and get these thoughts out about noct, his boys, and the royal arms they use!

tldr, the royal arms prompto, gladio, and ignis use during the armiger chain (in addition to the talismans they can get and the boons the kings’ sigils represent in comrades) illustrate key aspects of their characters.

Introduction

Throughout Final Fantasy XV, Noctis and his retinue search for the Royal Arms, the weapons of the Kings of Yore. They're representative of Noct's birthright and his destiny as the True King. He and his companions, Prompto, Gladio, and Ignis, search for the weapons all over the world. As he adds them to his Armiger, not only does Noctis use the Royal Arms, but the boys wield them as well -- notably, in the Armiger Chain combination attack. Accumulating more of the glaives makes the chain last longer, and all four boys use every weapon in the collection together.

Beyond the battle mechanic, the Royal Arms each of them use carry a strong thematic element. Each glaive illustrates something about each young man -- their characters, their strengths, their weaknesses, their character arcs. This idea extends beyond just the Arms to the Kings themselves, present in their sigils in the Comrades expansion as well as the unique equippable talismans each boy receives.* These themes perfectly illustrate just how connected Prompto, Gladio, and Ignis are to Noctis -- they are fundamentally linked, inexorably bound together.

* (These are only present in the Royal Pack/Royal Edition. They are found in Insomnia in Chapter 14, either after completing all the Kingsglaive quests for Cor. I think. I don't remember... shhsdugif)

Prompto

"My whole life, all I ever wanted was friends... but no one ever wanted me back. So when I finally found people who did want me, I did everything I could to make them stay. And ever since then, I've lived my life in fear -- that one day, they'd find out who I really was, and they wouldn't want me anymore."

Prompto struggles greatly with self-doubt and rejection. He knows he's an outsider and feels that outsiderness to his core, even as a child. But in the face of that, he strives to play the mood maker -- he tries to hold the party together, keep the air light, and make people happy. He attempts to remain outgoing and cheerful, even when he's not, or nobody else is. Noctis and the others love him dearly, regardless of his origins, because he is who he is -- sweet, caring, talented, heartful, thoughtful Prompto. While he at once represents rejection and outsiderness, he also stands for unity and togetherness, and these elements are present in his connection to the Kings.

Prompto receives the talisman of the Clever. The talismans accentuate the boy's unique abilities, and Prompto's grants him increased critical hit rate and unlimited ammo for the SMG. Prompto's gunplay is incredible -- acrobatic, precise, and powerful. It's a far cry from how Prompto tends to feel about himself; he is skilled and capable, even if he doesn't believe he is. The Clever is the perfect mantle for him to carry to represent this.

Though Prompto doesn't use the Bow of the Clever in battle, the Clever fits him very well. The Clever is said to have been a king "versed in myriad arts both martial and intellectual." The Clever's weapon easily fits Prompto, but during the Armiger Chain, it's Noctis who uses it -- while Prompto wields the Sword of the Wise, which carries its own significance.

Noct uses the Bow of the Clever, it fits Prompto as a weapon: it's the only glaive that's projectile, aside from the Star of the Rogue, which Prompto also uses. It fires spectral arrows to skewer foes all across the battlefield. In addition, in the Comrades expansion, the Clever's sigil allows the bearer to summon spectral arms at will. It replaces the use of spells to summon eight special armaments to wield at once. It's a form of battle very appropriate to Prompto, isn't it?

The Clever is said to have been talented in many varied ways. The same could definitely be said of Prompto, whether he believes it or not. While a commoner, he keeps up with his royal companions in battle. When he knocks enemies off guard, he can deliver devastating blows to rival even magic. He can take photos in battle effortlessly -- something his companions love, except when Noct is being gnawed on by a daemon. But while Prompto sees himself as incapable, a burden to his team, he's well able to keep up with them, and strives to hold the group together. The mantle of the Clever fits him so well in this aspect.

But while Noct uses the Bow during the Chain, Prompto uses the Sword of the Wise. The Wise is the King who first erected the Wall and established the borders of the kingdom of Lucis. He was a notably mighty figure and protected the realm. His blade represents the foundation of the Kingdom, and Noct's birthright -- and while Noct uses the weapon that most fits Prompto, Prompto in turn uses the Sword of the Wise, a clear symbol of Noct's royal blood. He is more than capable and deserving to wield it, even briefly, despite how Prompto feels about himself.

Prompto also uses the Star of the Rogue. The Rogue was a figure reviled by the people. She "spurned the public eye and took to the shadows." It's a huge shuriken, and Prompto actually briefly wields it against the daemonified Rogue in the Citadel battle. The Rogue is a figure of royal power but rejection -- intensely shunned by the people, choosing to rule away from their eyes. She wears a mask in her armor; it doesn't appear to be a helmet or battle regalia, but rather a means of hiding her face, obscuring herself further.

The queen is a figure of stealth and prowess, but will never quite belong to the public, to her people. Only when she is gone is she remembered fondly by history. Prompto definitely feels he doesn't belong, and likely that he never will. He's a lonely child from a lonely home. He knows he's from the enemy nation, branded by them. For years, he doesn't believe he deserves to be Noctis's friend, and pushes himself to be good enough to finally approach him. Even when he's assimilated into Noct's retinue, he feels he doesn't compare to the likes of them, and fears the day they all reject him... even though the idea is completely unthinkable to them.

This idea extends nicely to the third Royal Arm Prompto uses, the Scepter of the Pious. The Pious is described as a king who "ruled the realm according to divine law and worked hand in hand with the Oracle." It's a weapon that strikes with a blade of light. It enhances magic and is particularly strong against dark elements. The Scepter is a weapon to represent unity, togetherness. The King worked with the Oracle -- a nice parallel to Prompto's correspondence with Lunafreya, and how she gave him the courage to befriend Noctis -- to unite Lucis. It's a weapon that represents strength in teamwork, in united people, breaking down the walls that divide them to live as one.

Prompto's use of the Royal Arms illustrate his biggest fears and greatest strengths. He's an outsider, terrified of rejection. But he's a dedicated and loyal friend, devoted to helping them and keeping them happy. Despite the differences that could potentially drive them apart, Prompto is a vital part of Noct's retinue. Despite his wavering confidence, he is talented and incredibly skilled. He's unique and irreplaceable, and his closest friends know that. One day, Prompto will, too, and he and Noct can knock down the barriers between their people once and for all.

"I owe Noct everything, for standing by me always. And now... it’s my turn to stand by him.”

Gladio

"I swore a vow to do whatever it takes to protect you and the future of our world."

So, let's get this out of the way: Gladio suffers from a tragic lack of character development. While this can be another sad side effect of XV's troubled development **, we can attempt to spin it into something subtle and quiet, illustrating Gladio's softer side. His connection to the Royal Arms shows that not only does he want to be strong, he wants to protect those he cares about above all else. Gladio is ultimately very caring and deeply, truly loyal, even though he's as hard and heavy as blade steel sometimes.

** (Rumor has it, Clarus, Gladio's father, was going to betray the Crown, and Gladio would face deep inner conflict over it, having to choose between his father's ideals and Noctis's journey. Apparently the role was given instead to Drautos/Glauca in Kingsglaive, who has a much more prominent presence in the movie than Clarus. None of this is confirmed, though, and isn't present in any released canon materials... so who knows. It's worth mentioning because it speaks to maybe their taking out Gladio's planned character arc and forgetting to put anything back in its place...here’s the reddit post that compiles the theories pretty well, if you’re curious.)

Gladio receives the Tall's talisman. When it's equipped, it accelerates the rate at which Gladio's valor gauge increases. His valor, in battle, best increases from uninterrupted combos and counterattacks, both appropriate given his nature as Shield, well-trained for battle but focused on defense. It's a simple boon that's incredibly valuable in battle, and battle is an inescapable aspect of Gladio's life. Along with the talisman, Gladio wields the Sword of the Tall. It's a broadsword, Gladio's preferred type of weapon. The Tall is said to have been "built like a mountain, towering over all others." It's a peculiar kind of sword with a chainsaw-like blade, which rips and tears mercilessly through enemies. For its incredible strength and vitality boost, it lowers elemental and magic defenses. This is matched by the Tall's sigil in the Comrades expansion, which greatly increases attack power at the cost of casting spells. The Tall's is a mantle of muscle, not mettle, but it's not the only King's presence Gladio carries.

Gladio also wields the Shield of the Just. His secondary preferred weapon is a shield, obviously focused on defense and counters. The Just is a queen of yore -- she and the Rogue are the only queens of Lucis present ingame. She is not given a name, but her armor has a massive silhouette, her presence immense. The Shield of the Just, as expected, offers Noctis huge defense. It greatly decreases attack to grant significant defenses, both physical and elemental. Its description describes the Just as a queen devoted to peace who was loved by all. Though her phantom visage is imposing, the Just is a strong, steadfast figure of peace, not violence. It's a strong contrast to the Sword of the Tall; if the Tall's is his blade, the Just's is his shield.

The Axe of the Conqueror is the third Royal Arm Gladio uses. While the Tall and the Just represent Gladio's strength and will to protect, the Conqueror represents willpower and moving forward. The Axe describes the Conqueror as a king who "performed great feats of arms, expanded his realm, and made his people prosper." This is all too appropriate for Gladio's role in Noctis's retinue, not just as his protector but his guide. When Noct can't move forward, Gladio pushes him. When he can't think, Gladio thinks for him. When things get difficult, Gladio helps Noctis grow and move on, whether he wants to or not. Gladio is a big brother, after all, and he wants only the best for those he cares about and wants them to succeed, just as the Conqueror did.

Gladio's use of the Royal Arms illustrates his boundless strength both in offense and defense. He carries a broadsword and shield and the needs of his companions. Gladio pushes forward. He is fiercely loyal and cares deeply for those around him, and pushes forward without hesitation, bringing those he must protect with him. Gladio wants to be strong, not only for the sake of power, but for the power to protect the ones he cares about. He cherishes the things he holds dear, and will protect them with all his being.

"You're right, I am afraid. ... Maybe I'm not really cut out for the job I'm expected to do. ... I may be all muscle and no mettle, but I'm gonna keep protecting Noct the only way I know how."

Ignis

"This world means nothing to me. Do with it as you wish. ... But I refuse to let Noct sacrifice his life to save ours. I won't let you take him away."

Ignis has served the Crown for nearly all his life. He's been Noct's companion the whole while -- his friend and brother, as designated by King Regis himself. Since he was a child, he's carried royal responsibility. He's composed, precise, and calculating, well-versed in all kinds of matters, political and not. He's a strategist, a royal advisor, and he keeps at Noct's side without hesitation. While he maintains a very cool, thoughtful demeanor, confronting problems with plans and logic, he has a relentless, reckless side. He is willing to resort to violence should the plan call for it, especially if the safety of Noctis and his companions is at stake. Ignis has a very smooth, calm surface with a deep, deep underlying intensity that rarely shows.

Ignis receives the Wanderer's talisman in the fallen Insomnia. When it's equipped, it boosts Ignis's Total Clarity gauge, heightening his senses and deepening his focus. In battle, Ignis uses strategic elemancy -- imbuing his daggers with fire, ice, and lightning -- and counterattacks. He doesn't utilize raw strength; instead, his battle prowess uses his strategic mind. Reaching Total Clarity allows him to unleash a particularly decisive blow. He is a fast, strategic, relentless attacker, perfectly carrying the mantle of the Wanderer. In addition, the Wanderer's sigil in Comrades carries an entirely supportive effect -- it casts Cheer on the party, heightening their abilities. It fits Ignis's penchant for strategy, supporting his comrades and planning instead of rushing into battle and relying on raw strength.

The Wanderer is said to have been "quick like the wind and went where no man had gone before." His swords "rain fury -- together they deliver thundering blows." The Swords of the Wanderer have three distinct forms, interlinked and not, to adjust to the needs of battle. The Wanderer was clearly a versatile, flexible fighter. He roamed the unknown and pressed on into strange territory without fear. "Wandering" implies a lack of a destination, focusing not on the end of the journey but shoving onward regardless.

It's too fitting that Regis tells a young Ignis something he will never forget: "One cannot lead by standing still. A King pushes onward always, accepting the consequences and never looking back."

When Ignis is blinded by his sacrifice and Noct disappears into the Crystal, the Wanderer mantle fits him even more. The light has disappeared from his world, both literally and metaphorically. He can no longer see -- greatly debilitating his extensive prowess -- and his life's purpose, being at Noctis's side, is left to the lurch. He investigates the royal tombs and the ruins of old civilizations to the best of his ability. He pushes on alone, not to prove anything to his friends but to himself. He refuses to burden anyone, even though the boys would never think that of him. He's left without a destination, without purpose, but pushes onward, always. He finds the ability to fight again, delves deep into the history of Eos, and holds onto the hope that one day Noctis will return. And, soon enough, he does, only for the prophecy to snatch him away once and for all.

Ignis also wields the Katana of the Warrior, which couldn't be more fitting for him, especially given his relationship with Noct. The glaive is even found in Fondina Castino in Cartanica, the boys' first stop after the catastrophe in Altissia. Ignis is blind, hating himself for every stumble, hating how Gladio and Noct fight while Prompto tries to stop them. After the retinue finds the Katana, Ignis finds his resolve and tells his companions he will continue, and if he can't keep up, he will not hinder them. He will gladly fall behind if it means they can push on together. "I would remain with you all," he says, "to the very end."

The Warrior's glaive bears a tragic description: "A king was changed forever when his beloved queen was taken from him prematurely. This was his katana." The weapon strikes swiftly, calculatedly, cutting down foes “in a single heartbeat." It carries magical defense but is especially weak to dark elements. The Warrior's mantle couples well with Ignis's losses throughout the story -- he loses his home, his sight, the light of the world, and his most beloved companion. Even then, he pushes on. He carries his sorrows and pushes onward, regardless, knowing full well the pain of losing everything that matters, and what else there is to lose.

The third Royal Arm Ignis wields is the Mace of the Fierce. The Fierce was said to be "gentle before his people but an ogre on the battlefield," dealing massive, crippling blows with his glaive. This weapon in particular illustrates the side of Ignis he keeps carefully hidden. For all his composure, his careful planning and strategic mind, he can be reckless, ruthless, and violent. When planning to infiltrate an Empire base, for instance, he's not above torturing someone to get information he needs. When he needs to get something done, he will get it done. When it comes to Noct's safety, he will do whatever it takes. He will gladly throw away his own safety, his sight, and his life to save him. This duality is nicely represented by the Fierce's glaive -- nice and composed, but cold and relentless when the situation calls for it.

Beneath his calm, placid surface, Ignis is a blazing fire. He's intensely driven, fiercely loyal, and wholly devoted to Noctis as he has been his whole life. He will throw everything away without question, even himself, if it means saving the ones he cares about. He is thoughtful and strong, careful and precise, but has a tendency to be ruthless, reckless, and destructive -- forgoing his own wellbeing to reach his ends. In the wake of tragedy, he pushes on, holding onto unwavering hope, unyielding devotion, unable to ever let go.

"Even if it costs my own life to save him... I will pay that price!"

All for the True King

The remaining four Royal Arms are used by Noct in the Armiger Chain. They, too, carry significance in his wielding them -- especially in the combination attack, symbolizing the unity of him and those he cares about. Noctis wields the Blade of the Mystic, the Bow of the Clever, the Trident of the Oracle, and the Sword of the Father during the Armiger Chain. The Blade of the Mystic stands for the Founder King. The Bow of the Clever is a weapon especially fit for Prompto, who then wields the Sword of the Wise, one of the fundamental figures of Lucian history. The Trident of the Oracle belongs to Luna, and the Sword of the Father belongs to none other than King Regis.

Noct's use of the Royal arms in the chain complements those his boys use, further symbolizing the unity and togetherness between them and the people -- and the whole world -- they care about. The Kings' stories are present in the Prince's friends, showing just how deeply connected they are to Noctis. There's no doubt Noct loves his boys dearly, and their thematic connections to the Kings and their weapons only illustrate how much they care about each other. They travel together, ride together, and rule together with the blessings of Kings past. Even in the wake of trial and tragedy, they remain inseparable, inexorably bound together, standing tall in the face of the dawn.

tldr AND DARLING DARLINGGGG STANDDDD MY MEEEE

screenshots from ardynizunya on twitter and the final fantasy fan wiki -- please let me know if you need credit for any of these! ;o;/

#ffxv #final fantasy xv #analysis #words words words #uhhhhh #how do I tag this #royal arms #comrades is okay and I enjoy it sometimes it's a 6/10 maybe play if you like crumbs of lore like me

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penthepoet · 2 years

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Persona 4 for the fandom asks! ^^

HELL YEAHHHHHH

I'm gonna do Persona 4 and FFXV (because it's a current hyperfixation of mine)

Persona 4

5 favorite characters: - Tohru Adachi - Ryotaro Dojima - Nanako Dojima

- Taro Namatame - Margaret

3 OTPs:

Adajima

I suppose Souyo?

hmmmm. Kanjinao but in a queer way

Funniest character:

Tohru Adachi, for the sheer pathetic little meow meow vibes he's got going on for the first half of the game.

Prettiest character:

Look, I'm just saying, Margaret Pretty.

Most badass character:

People need to give more credit to Dojima for holding up the way he did, but I'd also say Yu Narukami, for dealing with everything and still finding the strength to step away from the community he'd fallen so dearly in love with at the end of things.

Character I’d like as my BFF:

Nanako would give me a cup of soup and ask me to ramble about my characters to her, and that is why I love her.

Character that’s ruined my life:

Tohru Adachi made me write 75k words of sheer concentrated autistic brainrot in the form of Jester, Meet Your Son, The Moon, so we're blaming him.

---------------------

Final Fantasy XV

5 favorite characters:

Love of the lords, Ardyn Izunia owns my soul. The flamboyancy. The VERVE. The anger so deep it almost expresses itself as a lust. His fucking tremendous voice acting by Darin de Paul. That motherfucker had me by the tongue from the moment he first strutted on screen. He is the legend. He is the moment. And by the gods, is he such a fantastic villain.

But Gladiolus Amicitia owns my heart. He's so deeply underrated by the fandom that I attached to him and decided I'd defend him to the death. He's such a sweet guy, and intelligent, and deeply good looking. And his flaws are hella fascinating to delve into.

Lunafreya Nox Fleuret is also very near and dear to my heart. The resolve she has to carry through the game's events is so intense, and she's so much more than the fandom likes to see her has. I hope she knows how much I care about her.

Noctis Lucis Caelum also really stands out as a fascinating protagonist who goes through so much well-done character development by the end of the game. Ray Chase adds so much dimension and depth to every voice line, bringing a sincerity to Noct's words in happiness and sadness that makes me truly root for him.

And then, of course, how could I forget Regis Lucis Caelum, the best dad. We don't get to see much of him, but I'm actually really fascinated in the past time he spent with his friends when he was younger, especially his friendship with Clarus, his royal bodyguard and Gladio's dad.

3 OTPs:

Gladio/Lunafreya/Ardyn is my peak ship out of every single other ship in FFXV, and the fact that it is a rarepair continually makes me cry.

Gladio/Lunafreya is also really good!! I think they both care for Noctis a ton, and would bond over that.

And Ardyn/Lunafreya, for the enemies to lovers dynamic.

Funniest character:

Each of the main four boys (Prompto, Ignis, Gladio and Noctis) get their moments of snark throughout the game, but it's Prompto that really does get me with some of the fuckin best lines. I can't help but snicker every time at him defending his selfie taking with "hashtag sorry not sorry!" or him dropping a hard curse when realizing Gladio's most likely off flirting with girls. It's so good and his voice actor, Robbie Daymond, knows just how to nail that comedic timing.

Prettiest character:

I need Gladio in ways that would get me censored by the Hays Code.

Seriously, his fucking eyes?? That scar??? It's just not fair! It's just not fair! He's so hot! He's so unspeakably pretty!!!!! Sir who allowed this?? Who allowed you to be like this!!!

Ardyn is a close second, but man... come on. Nobody can beat that fucking look.

Most badass character:

Ardyn is badass as fuck for his abilities, the fact that he almost won, just so much about him. I won't go into detail because spoilers, but oh man... he really does earn this title handily.

Character I’d like as my BFF:

All of the Chocobros seem like they would be so fucking fun to hang out with and I'd take the chance to do so in a heartbeat.

Character that’s ruined my life:

Ardyn

And

Gladio.

These fucking two troublemakers have really been shaking my noggin for the past six months. ESPECIALLY ARDYN GOOD LORD THE AMOUNT OF FANFICTION I WANT TO WRITE ABOUT HIM. HE'S SUCH A GOOD CHARACTER. I ADORE THE POSSIBILITIES BOTH CHARACTERS OFFER!! THEY'RE SO COMPLEX AND SO FUCKIN FUN GOOD L O RD S

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lhs3020b · 3 years

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The Ragged Astronauts, by Bob Shaw

Look! A books post!

I recently found myself in a mood to revisit old books (again), so I found myself re-reading Bob Shaw's "The Ragged Astronauts".

It turned out to be rather different from how I remembered. (Content warnings apply below the cut - this is an interesting book, but it’s also a dark one in places too.)

SYNOPSIS

The planets Land and Overland share a common orbit, revolving around a common centre of gravity. In fact the two objects are remarkably close together, separated by only a few thousand miles. In our universe, this would ensure that both bodies would lie inside the others' Roche Limit, and thus would ensure the destruction of both worlds. However, the region of spacetime in which Land and Overland exist is configured in such a way that the value of Pi is exactly equal to 3 (what this implies for the values of 0, 1, i and the base of natural logarithms is never addressed). Given this, we can assume that at least some of the physics is a bit different; perhaps the tidal force declines even more steeply then it does in our universe. Whatever the case, the Land/Overland planetary binary appears to be dynamically stable, and while both planets have problems, neither of them appears to be in imminent danger of gravitational disruption. The arrangement is implied to have existed for a geological timescale, so however they managed it, Land and Overland appear to be in an equilibrium.

However, due to their remarkable closeness, the two planets have ended up sharing a common atmosphere. This is actually not quite as strange as it sounds - in our universe, there is a category of stars called contact binaries, where two extremely-close stars have gravitationally-distended each other to the point where their atmospheres actually touch. (Seen up close, a contact binary would look a bit like a sort of stellar hourglass, with each star being a lobe of the hourglass.)

The novel opens on Land, whose inhabitants are entirely-unaware both of their folly and of the imminent end of their civilisation.

The lead character, Toller Maraquine, is technically a member of the scholarly Philosophical Order of the Kolcorronian Empire. However, with his short temper, muscular physique and his difficulties with reading (he's implied to be dyslexic, though no-one in Kolcorron would know that term), he feels ill at ease in his birth station. He wants to join the Kolcorronian army, but in practise this is out of reach due to both the internal politics of the royal court and also the strictures of the Kolcorronian aristocracy. (The aristocracy is in some ways closer to a caste system than the "classical" feudal system it presents as. While readers will see it through a European lens, the way it functions and is structured feels a bit more similar to Imperial China, given its centrally-organised bureaucratic orders and the absence of any equivalent to the Three Estates system that was common in parts of medieval Europe.)

However, things are about to change on Land, and Toller may well get what he wanted. Whether he realises it or not, he's about to find himself living the classic morality play - Be Careful What You Wish For.

The Kolcorronian Empire has made itself into a near-dominant world hegemon by exploiting the brakka trees. As part of their reproductive ecology, brakka trees fire their pollen high into the air, dispersing it over wide areas. The tree is essentially a sort of photosynthetic wooden canon; the explosive reactions are powered by two crystalline materials called halvell and pikon, which the trees' roots extract from Land's soil. Halvell and pikon are apparently hypergolic - mix them together and you get a very high-energy bang. Brakka wood is extraordinarily tough - with this sort of biology, it has to be! - and so Kolcorron uses brakka wood in all the places where we'd use metals or ceramics. (In addition, Land is said to be a low density planet that is under-enriched in heavy metallic elements, which seems to have discouraged the development of any native metallurgy.) Kolcorron's technology is entirely based around exploiting the brakka, pikkon and halvell. As such they don't map easily to any era in Earth history; while their society has feudal structures they also have a trade network based around pikon/halvell-powered airships. Honestly at times, their society feels closer to a steampunk age than a purely-medieval one.

Only there's a problem: Kolcorron has chopped down most of the brakka.

Kolcorron, you see, is not a pleasant society. The people who run it seem to vary from greedy to outrightly-sociopathic. Its politics are basically a sort of semi-totalitarian absolute monarchy; even people on the King's advisory high council have to be very careful what they say, and ordinary subjects can basically be conscripted, raped and murdered with impunity by the aristocracy. As such, the aristocrats have little time for things like "factual advice". The Philosophical Order has been trying to warn the government that a severe energy crunch is beginning, and this is deeply-unwelcome news.

But worse news is coming.

Land's people share their planet with the ptertha. Ptertha are gas bag creatures, possessed of a hard-to-determine level of intelligence. Ptertha are also inimical to Landians - when they encounter one, the ptertha explode, showering the person in question with poisonous dust. Anyone exposed to ptertha dust inevitably dies soon after. There is apparently no cure for pterthacosis; the normal response of Kolcorronians is to simply behead a pterthacosis sufferer, apparently on the assumption that trying to treat them is futile. (There is no suggestion that this is about saving the victim from suffering; that would involve a capacity for empathy, which very few people in Kolcorron appear to possess.)

What the Landers don't know is that the brakka and the ptertha are symbiotic species; the ptertha feed on brakka pollen, and in return they protect the sessile trees from any predator. Predators like Landers who keep chopping the brakka down. While the ptertha never show any ability to communicate, they are apparently at least somewhat intelligent, in some way. They are able to adapt their behaviour and apparently even their own biology to help them attack their ground-based enemies.

Up until now, pterthacosis has been a threat to individuals, but society as a whole has been able to cope. All that abruptly changes on a sunny morning, when the ptertha launch a mass attack against Ro-Atabri, Kolcorron's capital city. Only it's worse then that, because pterthacosis has changed - it can now spread in a viral manner, from person to person. With an economy based around outdoor manual labour and nothing resembling a public health system, the empire is swiftly devastated.

In barely two years, two thirds of Kolcorron's population die. By the mid-point of the novel, the monarchy has concluded that organised society has no future on Land, and they're probably right. In fact the evidence supports the conclusion that their species is facing extinction. Civilisation is tottering, and when it falls, there is no expectation that anything will succeed it. And the ptertha? They just keep coming, more deadly with every attack.

But, but, but ... Overland is just _there_, right above everyone's heads. The two planets share a breathable atmosphere. Perhaps, just perhaps, a migration to the neighbouring planet is possible? This is what the Kolcorronian leadership attempts - an interplanetary migration, via hot air balloon.

As a sequence of societally-catastrophic events take place, Toller Maraquine finds himself at the front of all of them, undertaking a personal journey that will take him from the Philosophical Order to the front ranks of the military, and eventually even to the surface of Overland itself.

OBSERVATIONS

This book was ... different ... from how I remembered it. I didn’t remember it being anything like as dark or as violent as it is.

First off, deary me, Land is a bleak place to live. Even before person-to-person transmission of pterthacosis becomes A Thing, the Kolcorronian Empire is a militaristic, authoritarian, dictatorial mess. The other societies on the planet don't seem to be any better; Kolcorron is bordered by tribal societies who practise virgin sacrifices. The opposite hemisphere of the planet is occuped by Chamteth, who appear to be an isolationist, xenophobic, theocratic empire. Kolcorron's response to the brakka shortage and the ptertha-driven economic collapse is to launch a genocidal war of conquest against Chamteth. This isn't to take Chamteth's land - rather, it's simply to steal their better-conserved brakka forests. As it is, Chamteth would probably have seen them off, but the Kolcorronian forces are followed into Chamtethian territory by the new, mutant ptertha. Chamtethians turn out to be even more vulnerable to pterthacosis than Kolcorronians, and their entire society is essentially destroyed within a matter of months. To his credit, Toller is increasingly-nauseated by the horrors that take place within the Chamteth campaign, though it's also notable that he doesn't attempt to repudiate it.

As for gender and representation, well, you won't really find any in this book. There are two female characters, Gesalla Maraquine and Fera Rivoo, but they're not treated well in the narrative. What happens to Gesalla is grim - Kolcorron's ruling family practise a particularly-twisted version of prima noctis, and the walking bipedal monster that is Prince Leddravohr doesn't miss his chance to inflict some personal misery on the Maraquine family. (Arguably Kolcorron's rot is from the top down - King Prad clearly knows what his depraved son is like, and has done nothing to rein him in.)

As for Fera, Toller actually marries her, then forgets she exists halfway through the book. Yes, seriously. The last mention of his wife is that she apparently moved out of the Maraquine household at some point; Toller is entirely unbothered by this. He doesn't even think about her during the evacuation. Admittedly rescuing her from the chaos in Ro-Atabri as the city disintegrates on its final day would have been a tall order, but he doesn't even try.

There is also a lot of bad sex in this book. Basically, any capital-P Problematic sex trope you can imagine? They're all here. The fail is fractal. It's bad even for the mid-80s, which was when this book was published. (It very much belonged to that period when SFF authors suddenly discovered they could write about sex, and the results were near-uniformly dire.)

As for gay Kolcorronians or ethnic minority Kolcorronians, honestly, being either seems likely to be a good way to get yourself an arbitary death sentence. If any exist, they're keeping their heads down. Like I mentioned above, Kolcorron is horrible; honestly, one unexamined question in this book is whether this civilisation is even worth saving. If the Reapers rolled in and Husk'd them all, I think you could argue a case here for it being an improvement.

To top it all off, it's suggested that all this has happened before; during the novel, Toller receives a peculiar stone, composed of a mineral found nowhere on Land. Later, he is surprised to find a deposity of the same material on Overland. Also, the Kolcorronian state religion postulates an external, cyclical exchange of souls between Land and Overland, which possibly is a folk memory of a previous migration between the planets. Oddly, the book and the trilogy it's part of never really do anything with this idea. The colonists on Overland never find any ruins, or any evidence of prior inhabitation by their own kind.

The positive qualities of the novel are that its viewpoint characters aren't 100% horrible - by the end of the book, Toller has turned into a somewhat-improved person than he was at the start. Lain Maraquine is that rarest thing in Kolcorron, a person who is actually genuinely-sympathetic and who actually does care about the welfare of other people. Lord Glo, while a senile drunkard, is also someone who is able to see the bigger picture and his early insights ultimately hold the key to ensuring that at least part of society survives the ptertha crisis. Gesalla turns out to be different from Toller's initial impression of her - honestly, Gesalla's a more interesting person then he is - and the monster Leddravohr at least ends up dead, so there is that. Also the new regime on Overland winds up in the hands of Prince Chakkell, who appears to be the most-sane of the pre-migration ruling quartet. (Chakkell is still fairly-unpleasant in many ways, but he's Lawful Evil than Leddravohr's Chaotic Evil and Prad's Neutral Evil. In fact, his dislike of Toller aside, you can argue a case for Chakkell being more Lawful Neutral, I think. That seems to be about as "benign" as the Kolcorronian monarchy is capable of being.)

The novel is also a page-turner. Awful as Kolcorron is, there is a sort of nightmarish clarity to its demise. It has that "can't look away from the trainwreck" quality. The book doesn't bore you - it may horrify you, it may appall you in places, but you're not bored. Also the mechanics of the inter-planetary migration are well-realised. The Kolcorronians' desperate struggle to flee their own world feels real. (I will admit some skepticism about whether a society undergoing a freefall demographic collapse worse than our Black Death is going to be able to run any large-scale projects, but perhaps sheer desperation counts for something here.)

The setting is also vivid and interesting. The planetary binary and the sky packed full of stars, galaxies and meteors - even during the daytime - was something that made a deep impression on me when I read it the first time. In our age with its increasingly-decarbonised electricity and the beginnings of an electric car transition, the brakka/halvell/pikon oil analogy does feel a bit heavy-handed, but it would have been timely when the book was written in the 1980s.

The last thing I'll note about the book is that it has some odd pacing. There are some rather-jerky time-skips - at one point, we jump two entire years between paragraph-breaks! There are also some sections that drag on longer than they perhaps should.

I don't know whether I can fully recommend this one - really, that depends on your tolerance for problematic content! - but it certainly does provide a unique reading experience.

#LHS reads #books 2021 #bob shaw #the ragged astronauts

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fallintosanity · 4 years

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Since it's pride month, can I ask you what your headcanons are for everyones orientation in Providence? It's not something I can really see coming up in-story, but I'm curious nonetheless. :3

Hoo boy, anon, my answer to this is probably a lot more complex and in-depth than you were expecting, so BUCKLE UP Y’ALL LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION IN SOLDIER

(Note: I’m only going to talk about the original Compilation material for this, since that’s what TFA was written from and that’s what I’m writing Providence from.

Also all of my headcanons are colored by the fact that I am hella aro/ace myself so all flavors of allo are ??? to me)

First off, major credit to @ageofzero, who got me started down this headcanon path. The short version of their original headcanon is that SOLDIERs lose their sex drives due to the mako treatments, Jenova cells, and intense physical training regimen. After all, mako poisoning is a known Thing, and Jenova is a bizarre alien with no known gender (the original Japanese game never refers to her with any gender, and it’s strongly implied that her commonly-known feminine form is a shape she adopted to get close to the Cetra. Sephiroth only calls her “Mother” because Hojo lied to him that Jenova was his mother).

I find this idea fascinating, and think it makes a lot of sense. Of the SOLDIERs we meet, only Zack seems to have any interest in forming romantic bonds with anyone, and even his relationship with Aerith is remarkably chaste. It’s impossible to know whether this is due to an actual intent to depict a chaste romantic relationship, needing to keep the games at a family-friendly rating, cultural differences between Japan and America in terms of how romantic and sexual affection are shown (especially in the 90s), the limitations of the game engine in terms of having the characters physically interact, or some combination of the above, but the result is that the canon we are shown does not include anything approaching a sexual relationship between two characters.*

Given all that, and given the unsettling implications you find if you so much as scratch the surface of ShinRa’s human experimentation**, I think it’s eminently reasonable to believe that however they might have started life, SOLDIERs no longer have sex drives or sexual desire. Which is all an incredibly long-winded way of saying, I headcanon all the SOLDIERs as some flavor of asexual:

Sephiroth: Extremely aro/ace. I’ve talked before about how I think he sees people and relationships differently than humans do, and that extends to romance and sex. I’m not even sure “aro/ace” is the right label for him under those circumstances, but it’s close enough.

Genesis: Ace, bi- or homoromantic. TFA and its non-canon side pieces suggest Genesis is romantically interested in Cloud (which I’ve been carrying into Providence), and we have no idea if he’s ever been romantically interested in anyone else.

Angeal: Ace, probably either aro or heteroromantic. Like Genesis, we never see him express romantic interest in anyone, but it’s possible he does off-screen.

Zack: Probably would have been bi or poly if he wasn’t in SOLDIER; as is, ace and bi- or poly-romantic. (but really only has eyes for Aerith)

Kunsel: Ace, maybe demi-romantic? He’s eighteen in Providence and has been focused on rising through the SOLDIER ranks; I don’t think he himself knows for sure.

Cloud: A bit of an outlier because I headcanon that he would have been aro/ace even if he hadn’t gotten the mako/Jenova treatments. At no point in any of the original game or greater Compilation does he express romantic or sexual interest in anyone. He cares deeply about Aerith and Tifa both, but at no point says or does anything to suggest that it’s romantic or sexual in nature. Tifa occasionally says things which imply she sees her relationship with Cloud that way, but he never responds in kind. At best, his childhood interest in her could be a bit of a puppy crush, but that doesn’t rule out aro/ace Cloud since so many aro/aces do experience puppy crushes or squishes that aren’t sexual/romantic in nature. Or it could be as simple as, Tifa was the popular kid and Cloud was the outcast kid, and he was interested in her because if she was friends with him, then maybe he wouldn’t be an outcast anymore. (I lied, I’m going to talk about the Remake for a second because I’m intrigued that it appears to have doubled down hard on ace!Cloud, to the point where a lot of people have said “I don’t normally have ace headcanons, but Remake!Cloud is ace”. He’s either completely oblivious to, or visibly uncomfortable with, half the cast wanting to get into his pants. Even when Aerith warns him not to fall in love with her, his objection is to her telling him what to do yet again rather than anything about his actual feelings.)

Noctis: I realized as I was writing this post that I also headcanon Noctis as ace and probably aro- or demi-romantic. Like Cloud, we never see him express romantic or sexual interest toward anyone, which is notable given that he’s supposed to be marrying Lunafreya. He certainly seems to care deeply about her, but - like Cloud and Tifa/Aerith - his affection can be easily read as a close childhood friendship, and depending on which answers you give in the notebook choices, can canonically be brusque and uninterested. He’s also visibly uncomfortable with Gladio’s flirting (with other people) and Iris’s flirting (with Noct himself). Since we do see Gladio flirting, pretty brazenly sometimes, and we hear Prompto chatter about his crush on Cindy, Noct’s silence on the matter is telling. (He also throws an interesting wrench into the works around the SOLDIER castration headcanon, since he did get the treatments but they affected him very differently than everyone else. But I can’t say too much else there without venturing into spoiler territory.)

So anyway hi, my name is Sanity and I have a lot of ace headcanons. ^_^;

* The closest we get is the scene near the end of the original game, with Cloud and Tifa under the Highwind before the final battle. The scene itself is, again, remarkably chaste. Depending on your Affection value with Tifa, it’s not even all that romantic; it reads mostly like two friends who have been through a lot together. The few lines that do shade toward romance all come from Tifa herself, not Cloud. Also, what Tifa says the next morning on the Highwind changes depending on whether or not your Affection value is high enough; if yes, she asks the others, “Were you watching?” and if no, she asks, “Were you listening?”. So it’s possible to get a canon path which suggests Tifa and Cloud did something she didn’t want the others watching, but 1) that still leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and 2) it’s equally possible to get a canon path which suggests nothing happened at all.

** I’m just going to quote @ageofzero here because they put it best: “It might've been an unintended side-effect, of course, but idk how anyone could've thought 'let's put Mako inside human beings' when everyone knows what a powerful burning energy source Mako is and what the hell that might do inside a human when people have likely already suffered Mako poisoning from building Midgar/the reactors. And also considering that Mako is a 'refining' of Lifestream that basically strips away all the benefits of Life within it, there's no way it's not some kind of reproduction dampening substance, among many other negative consequences. [...] ESPECIALLY since a lot of SOLDIERs probably start out in their teen years (Zack, and Cloud's attempt). They're still developing humans, and who knows what effects Mako has on someone who's still passing through adolescence???? Angeal, Genesis, and Sephiroth are all even worse off because they were babies when they were made prototype experiments for the SOLDIER method. [...] I can't imagine mako doing anything but turning the body into a weird toxic mess even if it is controlled and regulated so they don't suffer the loss of their mind. And what the hell does it do to SOLDIERs on a DNA level?? With how much mako (and Jenova cells) there is in their body, it could turn body fluids into burning/glowing/toxic substances. All body fluids. Or at the very least make it Not Good to be exposed to said fluids, if they're not directly toxic/mako-infused. It might very well be the brain turning off reproductive desires bc SOLDIERs are a biological dead end by the time they're strong enough to be considered SOLDIER. What a chilling concept (also hello I like thinking about weird biology).”

#sanity replies #sanity talks a lot #sanity's final fantasy crossover fic #meta #anonymous

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alternatewarning · 4 years

Text

All The Kings Horses Chapter 2 - Whumptober 2020 Fic

Entry Number 14 and 19 for Whumptober 2020: Branding/Fire and Grief/Mourning Loved One

Title: All The Kings Horses Chapter 2 Fandom: Final Fantasy XV Pairing: Gladio/Prompto, Ignis/Noctis Rating: M Trigger Warnings: Major Character Death, Burning Alive, Branding, Racism/Fantasy Racism Summary: Everyone handles grief differently. As he, Noctis, and Ignis recover from the shock of Gladio's death, Prompto leaves to spend some time alone. However, some citizens of Insomnia are none-too-friendly to outsiders.

Cross posted on Ao3

Prompto and Noctis were both released from the hospital with nothing more than scrapes and bruises. However, the doctors could do nothing for broken hearts. Ignis had taken them both back to Noctis’s apartment in an oppressive silence; Noctis in the back, watching his breath appear on the glass of the window, Prompto in the front, unfocused eyes letting the city lights dance across his freckles. The empty seat in the back felt heavy on all of them, a painful reminder of what once had been.

For the next few days, Ignis did his best to care for the bleeding hearts, at the very least taking care of their bodies. While he had seen Noctis morose more times that he wanted to admit, seeing Prompto curled up on the side of the couch, his eyes rimmed red from crying was a spear to the heart. He looked like a pale doll, broken and soulless, nothing more than a fading phantom.

“It’s getting late, I think I’m gonna go home.” Noctis looked up from where he had been watching the television with a dazed expression as Prompto spoke. It was the first time since that night that his voice didn’t carry a sob.

“You don’t have to! Stay here.” The prince shifted on the couch as he spoke, getting onto his knees as he reached out to wrap his hand into the fabric of the blanket Ignis had thrown over Prompto a few hours prior.

“I know I can stay. But I kind of want some time alone. Don’t worry.” Prompto smiled even though the pain was still clear across his face. “If I get lonely or something I’ll call for Iggy to pick me up. I’ll see you tomorrow though?”

“Ya, sure, I guess.” The young prince sighed, slowly letting go of the blanket as the blond untangled himself. There was a little more of his spirit than there had been before, a little more sunshine seeping through.

“Would you like me to drop you off at home?” Ignis walked toward the front of the apartment, reaching out for the car keys hanging from a hook to the right of the apartment door.

“Ah, no it’s okay. I want to walk. It’s not too chilly outside so I’ll be fine, really. I just gotta think, ya know?” He patted Ignis on the shoulder with a bit of a skip in his step as he grabbed his bag from beside the door and let himself out. Tension hung heavy in the air as Noctis stared at the now-closed door.

“Everyone mourns in different ways, Noct.” Ignis spoke quietly, as if his voice would shatter something. He locked the apartment door before coming over and sitting in the empty chair across the living room. Prompto’s empty seat felt almost sacred, for now.

“We were almost always together, I’m sure the two of us are just a reminder. Give him some time. Prompto feels everything very deeply.” Noctis huffed in response, which was as good of an affirmative as Ignis was going to get. It was clear that the prince was a rage of emotions right now: fear, hurt, grieving, and loneliness. He had lost not just a bodyguard, but an older brother of sorts, a friend. Ignis had tried to get him to talk about it but so far all he’d gotten were bouts of silence or tearful ‘I don’t want to talk about it’s.

“Fine. I’m going to bed. Don’t wake me up in the morning.” The retainer just nodded in silence, watching the boy go into his bedroom, a blanket trailing behind him. More than anything Ignis wanted to hold him close, tell him it would be okay, heal his wounds. But he knew better than to lie.

_________

It was a little colder outside than Prompto anticipated, but he didn’t mind. The chill of the wind against his face reminded him that he was still alive even if he didn’t feel that way. He didn’t really want to walk home just yet because he knew the house would be empty and lonely and he had enough loneliness to last him for the next few weeks. Instead he just started to walk in any direction, letting his feet carry him through the streets of Insomnia.

As he walked, he pulled his camera from his bag, almost on instinct. The thought of looking through pictures from before made his stomach tie itself in knots and lodge in his throat. But at the same time, he ached to force the memory out of his head, the memory that kept replaying over and over like a broken record unable to skip past the chorus. Every time he closed his eyes, all he saw was that, was Gladio’s broken body shattered on the ground. The blood and the pieces of brain and skull pooling out. The memory made him want to vomit but he just locked his jaw, refusing to give in.

He needed to wash the bitter aftertaste out of his brain. The blond wandered until he found a bench and sat down, dropping his bag at his feet. As much as it would hurt, and he knew it would, he needed something, anything to remember. To remember the man who saw him, who was kind to him even if he had no reason to be. Prompto was nothing, just a pathetic commoner who was more of a mess than any of his friends. And while Noct was his best friend, one of his only friends, Gladio was different. If Noctis was his prince charming, then Gladio was his knight in shining armor. And he had always had a thing for knights.

The camera clicked on with a mechanical clack, the screen lighting to life. In the setting sun, the glare from the display hurt his eyes so he blinked a few times, waiting for them to adjust. Slowly, his thumb tapped over the backwards arrow, pulling up the last picture he took. It was from only a few days ago and yet it felt like a century. The four of them had been visiting a new little cafe that had just opened and the giant coeurl stature in the front had just looked so regal. The first picture was just the statue, the white cat looking up into the cloudless sky. But the very next one was Gladio pretending to punch the statue in the face. Prompto couldn’t help but giggle at the sight, even as his eyes filled with tears.

He continued to cycle through his pictures, stopping on any of them with the Shield. He was always so big, so strong. He looked like nothing would ever stop him. Nothing could stop him. Until it did.

“Hey! Blondie! This ain't your turf, go home!” Prompto wasn’t intentionally ignoring the voices, he was just too wrapped up in his memories to notice the insults. His blue eyes blinked, confused, as a small rock hit him in the face. There was a group of six people standing a few feet away. Everything about them screamed that they were the ‘wrong crowd’ that everyone was told to avoid a child. The one in front picked up another rock and threw it, causing Prompto to yelp as it smacked him in the head.

“Hey, hey! Okay, okay I’m going, jeeze.” He wasn’t sure what ‘turf’ he’d stepped into but clearly he wasn’t wanted. He grabbed his bag from the floor, setting it on the bench so he could safely pack away his camera. It was all he had left, after all.

“We don’t want you Nifs here!” The blond froze mid-motion, as if he was trapped in time. How?! No one, and he meant no one, should have known that he was from Niflheim. His throat felt dry and his bones frozen but he forced himself to keep putting his stuff away. He stood up stiffly, as if he was a puppet with knotted strings.

“Look I don’t want to get into a fight with you. I’m just going to be on my way, okay?” He held up his hands in front of his body, a show of surrender. Slowly Prompto started to back away from the angry pack as the hairs on the back of his neck started to rise. They were watching him but more than that, they were moving towards him.

“You’re the little blond who’s always swooning over the prince, aren’t you?” The man who had thrown the rocks seemed to be the group’s leader as they all followed behind him like a pack of wild dogs.

“Excuse me, I was not swooning. We’re friends, that’s all.” The photographer huffed with a little more indignation than he should have. It only seemed to anger them more.

“So what are you, a spy? An assassin? Doesn’t matter, we won’t take this lying down. Go back home, Nif!” He threw another rock, larger this time, and Prompto just managed to stumble out of the way. Gladio’s training was coming in handy, even if he was still a little too startled to really put it to good use.

“Look, I’m going! To my house, here in Insomnia, where I live!” He turned on his heel, intending to book it down the path and into a more populated area. But just as he started to run he realized that his backpack wasn’t on his back. It was still on the bench. Normally he would just leave it and run, but that backpack had his camera. And that camera had his last pictures of Gladio. He couldn’t let it go.

The gunman bit down on his lip as he suddenly swerved, running back towards his abandoned bag. He should have just left it, just run, just escaped. But he couldn’t. Those pictures, those memories, he needed them. He couldn’t let go of the few things that he had left. Just as he reached the bag, the mob reached him. He didn’t even have time to register exactly what was happening before he was thrown to the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of him and knock the bag from his hands.

“You don’t belong here!” “No one wants you here!” “Fucking scum!”

The words started to blend together as all six of them started to yell and scream. Prompto just curled as tight as he could, protecting his face with his arms and his neck with his hands. Just like Gladio had shown him. Eventually they would get tired of punching him, kicking him, spitting on him, and they would just go away. He wasn’t sure what the Empire did this time to build up such a rage but right now he didn’t care. He just wanted to live through this and go home. Or maybe back to Noct’s house. It would hurt to be with them again but at least it was safe.

One of the group, Prompto had squeezed his eyes shut so he didn’t know which one, had grabbed his hair and was starting to pull. But not just the ‘pulling on his hair because it hurt’ way but the ‘dragging by the hair’ sort of way. Even as he was being unceremoniously dragged through the street by a small mob they kept attacking him, a boot to his face so hard his lip was bleeding, a kick to his gut that made a sickening crack.

“Let me go! I didn’t do anything wrong! Noct’s my friend, I’d never do anything to hurt him, please! Please someone help, help!” Now it was clear they were not going to just ‘move on’. This wasn’t the type of anger where people got in a few good hits, felt like they had the last laugh and then just left. This was the type of anger that had been burning for years and years and wasn’t going to be put out by a young man screaming for mercy.

Prompto kicked and wiggled, trying to pull free of the white-knucked grasp of his hair. His back was starting to burn from being dragged across the cement, a hole already torn open in his shirt. He grabbed the arms holding his hair and tried to claw and pull, anything to get away.

“Don’t do this, please don’t kill me! Really we’re just friends, we went to school together! You can ask him! I’m not a spy, I grew up in Luc-” He didn’t finish his plea as one of the group shoved some sort of cloth in his mouth. He shoved it in so deep that Prompto started to gag, now focused on freeing his throat over escape. Once the gunman pulled out the rag the grasp on his hair dropped, letting his body thud into the harsh gravel. He knew it was his only time to escape.

The blond relied on all the training that Gladio had given to him. He rolled onto his side, keeping low to the ground, and tried to launch into the space between two of the attackers. It worked and he burst free of their circle. For a short moment he felt freedom, the panic pushing his legs to run even as the skin on his left leg was torn open from cement and gravel. In a flash his freedom was taken away with the clang of metal and a shock of pain in the back of his head before his body fell to the ground with as much force as he had used to try and escape. The leader now stood over him, a metal pipe in his hand.

“You’ve killed so many, broken up families, made us hide away behind the Wall. Now it's your turn to be afraid.” Prompto wanted to say something back, to tell him he had it all wrong, but instead everything just faded to black.

The sensation that forced Prompto awake was nothing but pain. A searing, burning pain that tore a scream from his throat even before his consciousness had fully kicked back into gear. His blue eyes snapped open as he tried to twist, pull away, kick, fight, anything. But every twitch, every turn, resulted in nothing. His senses kicked back into gear all at once in a moment of panic. He couldn’t pull away because he couldn’t move, his hands were tied behind hid back so tightly that he couldn’t really feel his fingers. But they weren’t just behind his back, something, a pole or a plank or something, was digging into his shoulder blades and his arms were trapped behind him, the structure in between. His feet were also tied in place with the same sturdy cord, wrapping him to the rod with so little movement that he was sure his feet were going to lose circulation, and soon.

“What are you doing, let me go! Please!” Now acutely aware of how dangerous a situation he was in, his mind was just starting to catch up. He wasn’t in the same place that he had been when he’d been knocked out, now he was surrounded by dirt, sand and ruin. Outside the Wall--there was a small flame flickering in front of him, but not from a magical haven. Just a mound of sticks and dried grass. Something was sticking out of the fire, long, the tip blazing orange. Pieces started to fall into place in his mind. The same six from before were watching him, a sick pleasure across their faces. They were confident that they were cleansing their city of something that shouldn't exist.

The leader grabbed the long handle from the fire and lifted it up. Prompto hissed, realizing that his first thought had been right. The end of the metal stick was twisted into an “L” shape, leaving the tip flat instead of brunt, a molten hot line perfect for branding skin. Slowly the blond looked down, his panic overriding any sense of pain. His shirt had been ripped open, his pale skin now a mural of purple and red, faint bootprints clearly visible. But there was also one vertical long black burn across his chest just about the size of the bar. As the man stepped closer he just closed his eyes and tried to set his jaw.

Even knowing what was coming, Prompto couldn’t help but scream. The red-hot metal pressed against his chest, hissing loudly he tried to thrash away from it. Once the metal started to fade back to black the man pulled it from his chest, the metal nearly tearing the skin that it had melted too. Now the former line was joined by another, starting at the top of the previous bearn and running in a diagonal to the right.

With a haggard scream, the blond let himself sag, trapped in place by the cords around his wrists, feet and under his arms. By his count there were 5 more burns coming. As if on cue, the leader came back, pressing the metal into his skin for a third time, completing the first letter in blacked, charred skin. N.

“Why are you doing this to me?!” Prompto choked out between sobs that were slowly swallowing his screams of pain. “I didn’t do anything to you, I never hurt anybody! Please stop, please!” The fourth round of branding was placed right against his sternum, pressing not only the molten metal into his skin, but forcing his back into the board behind him, an “I” now branded to his skin. All six seemed to be taking a sick delight in his pain, looking among each other with pride instead of disgust. As the iron was pulled away from his skin he let out a heavy groan.

“Noctis! Noctis save me, please! Noct!” He screamed and thrashed, torn between closing his eyes and watching the iron heat up so he would be prepared. “Iggy! Please, save me! Help!” His screeching bounced around the abandoned ruins, fading into nothing but a voiceless echo as it traveled out of the valley.

“Someone, anyone help me! Gladio!” The boy’s voice was starting to go hoarse as he screamed, the metal pressing into him again until all Prompto could smell was burnt flesh. No matter how much he screamed, no one was coming to save him.

_______________

Ignis watched the sleeping prince, his heart torn in two. Did he wake up Noctis to the horrible news, or let him stay in a peaceful dream. His green eyes slowly dropped to the newspaper in his hands. The headline was bold across the front page, dotted with pictures so grotesque they were pixelated for distribution. But if anyone was interested the full pictures, in bright and living color, were easily found online.

The retainer slowly sat on the edge of the bed, reading over the article again as if he could force the words to change.

“Niflheim Spy? Charred body found outside the wall, NIF branded into his chest!” It read like some sensationalist tabloid. The journalist clearly didn’t care about the remains that once belonged to a soft and sensitive boy. Even though the body had been burned at the stake like some sort of historic criminal, there was enough left that one glance at the picture and he knew. Even with the picture pixeled out to hide the worst of it, Ignis knew those freckles, that form, those clothes. All he could do was pray that the boy had died quickly even though his logical mind knew that he likely suffered through almost all of it before either dying or passing out.

He couldn’t bear to awaken Noctis, not for this. He folded the paper in half, placing it on his knees as he leaned forward, the weight suffocating him. They had only been apart for an evening and yet now the prince would wake to a world without his best friend. Without the spirit and smile that could drag even Noctis out of the depths of his own sadness.

Yes, he was going to let the prince sleep a little bit longer. Hopefully it was peaceful in his dreams.

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tarotdeckshuffle · 5 years

Note

Headcanons for the chocobros meeting their future child (4yrs old) with the reader even though they're not even together yet. Each kid has a different quirk like Notcis's kid just instantly falls asleep when held longer than 2 minutes by him, Prompto's is terrified of Chocobo's due to their father's obsession, Gladio's can read way above their reading level, and Ignis's already drinks ebony due to an accident and loves cooking with him! please and thank you! and congratulations on the wedding!!!

Thank you so much, Anon! 😘

Let’s be honest, these are tiny fics, not hcs lol.

There are even some bonuses! I hit some writer’s block and couldn’t think of what to do for the other characters, today. If anyone wants me to do Ardyn, Cor, Aranea, and/or Nyx, just let me know.

Taglist: @idiotflowerex, @laststory1013, @sayaoqueen, @jophinabean

If you like what you read, please consider supporting me on Patreon or buying me a Ko-fi!

Scene: Shiva visits each of the following characters individually in their sleep. She wants to show them the future they’re fighting for, and that happens to include a child. In this dream, they get to interact with their future child, even if neither will remember it when they awaken.

Noctis

His child instantly falls asleep when held longer than 2 minutes by him

Like, they can sleep anywhere.

But he loves it.

He stands there, just holding them.

Their little arms around his neck.

It warms Noct’s heart that they WANT to be held by him.

In the dream, there’s no hesitation.

The child sees him and walks right up to him, arms outstretched.

Noctis isn’t sure what to do with kids, normally.

He’s one of those “I’ll break your baby” types.

But this kid is easy.

They simply want to cuddle.

Noctis absolutely loves it.

He stands there, bouncing the child lightly and petting their hair.

Their every sound and movement is adorable to him.

Eventually, he would sit down and nap with them.

When Shiva returns to him, beckoning him to the waking world,

Noctis sets the child down in a bed,

It rubs its eyes with little fists, but goes back to sleep.

“Sleep well, little one. I’ll see you when you wake.”

Prompto

His child is terrified of Chocobo’s due to their father’s obsession.

Prompto appears in a child’s bedroom in the dream.

It’s brightly lit, with stuffed animals everywhere.

A little child looks up at him from the floor.

They’re playing with toy vehicles.

“Er…hey there!” Prompto greets.

They’re silent, shyly looking up at him.

Prompto would sit down next to them, asking about their toys.

Eventually they play together.

It doesn’t take long after that before Prom has the child in giggling fits from his sound effects.

“But you know what this game really needs?”

Prompto gets up, looking around the room.

Any child of his HAS to have tons of these.

It takes him awhile, but he finds what he’s looking for stuffed in a cupboard.

“A Chocobo!” He presents the yellow plush with jubilence.

The child looks horrified.

They start to cry!

“Oh no! OH NO! Oh no!”

Prompt is panicking!

He made a kid cry!

His kid!

“What’s wrong? Oh, don’t cry, it’s ok! See?”

He trys to bring the plush closer to the child, but they scoot across the floor away from him.

Finally, it dawns on Prompto.

“Look! No more chocobo! It’s gone!”

The child still has tears in their eyes and looks scared.

But they let Prompto get close.

“Come’ere,” he says, sitting on the floor.

They come over and cuddle up next to him.

“What’s wrong?”

“Chocobo’s are scary!” The child states matter of factly.

“They’re what?!” Prompto is honestly shocked.

“They’re mean and they don’t like me!” The child is full on pouting now.

“Why do you think they don’t like you?”

“Because they peck at me.”

Prompto can’t help but laugh. He was scared of things as a child, too.

“I’ll tell you what, how about we find you a really really nice one.”

“No! I don’t want one.”

“Ok, ok, no chocobos.”

Well, there goes Promp’s dreams of owning a chocobo farm.

But this kid might be worth it.

“I want a moogle!” The child pipes up.

Prompto laughs.

“You like moogles? Tell me more!”

Prompto listens as the child regales him with “facts” about moogles and how much they love them.

He loves their enthusiasm.

When it’s time to leave, the child gives their (future) father a big hug.

Prompto is shocked at first, but hugs them back.

“Take care, bud. I’ll see you soon.”

Ignis

His child already drinks ebony due to an accident and loves cooking with him

Ignis appears in the kitchen of a home.

The sun is rising outside.

A small child is awake, standing in the middle of the kitchen.

“Well, hello,” Ignis greets it.

The child doesn’t even look at him.

Instead, it goes straight to the fridge.

It has to throw it’s body back to open the stubborn door.

At least half of the fridge is just cans of Ebony.

The child takes one.

Using both hands to support the can, they start to drink.

Barely stopping to breathe.

“I doubt that is recommended for a child.”

Ignis crosses the kitchen to them.

“Dad lets me.” Finally! They speak!

Ignis is doubtful.

“I drank his once when I was a baby, now he lets me drink them.”

“Why would your father leave coffee where you could get to it?”

“He didn’t, he gave it to me.” The child finishes the rest of the can.

“What?!”

“He wasn’t awake and put coffee in my cup instead of milk.”

Ignis’s head is in his hand.

Is HE truly going to do that?

“Duly noted…”

They stand in the kitchen, simply staring at each other.

This is not a touchy child.

“Well…Do you want some breakfast,” Ignis asks, figuring he may as well do something.

“Sure! I’ll get ready.” They perked up at this idea.

Iggy is expecting them to get washed and set the table.

Instead, they get out a child’s apron, a stool, and a colorful whisk.

With some struggle, they bring the stool over to where Ignis is standing and set it down next to him.

“OK! What are we making.”

The whole scene is honestly adorable.

Ignis decides to make them pancakes and fruit.

Everything he does is met with, “I want to help!”

The child pours cups of ingredients into the batter and stirs everything.

Ingredients go everywhere, but the child is trying their best.

At first, Ignis won’t let them near the stove.

But eventually he gives and lets them flip one pancake.

He certainly won’t let them near the knives!

Fruit pieces do go missing from the counter as they continue making breakfast.

Ignis’s heart is so warm.

He’s smiling ear to ear when they sit down to eat.

As they finish their food, Shiva returns to take Ignis away.

The child looks scared as he gets up to leave.

They jump up and hug his legs.

“Don’t go!”

The scene breaks Ignis’s heart.

“I’ll return soon, little one,” he whispers as he kisses the top of their head.

Gladio

His child can read way above their reading level

Gladio is in the library of the Amicitia Estate.

In among the towering dark shelves and countless books,

He sees large stacks of random books on the ground.

Small eyes peer out at him from behind them.

He crouches down to be level with them.

“Hey there.”

“Hi,” is all he gets back.

“Whatcha reading,” Gladio asks, taking a nearby book.

“Stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“All of it.”

Gladio smiles. They respond just how Iris used to.

“Cool.” He sits down and takes a nearby book, opening it up to read.

“That’s not a good one,” the books squeak.

Gladio looks up before examining the cover of the book.

“The Metamorphosis…Nope! It certainly is not.” Gladio sets the book down suddenly.

What was that doing in a child’s book pile?

“This one is better!” Finally, they come out from behind their books.

They bring an old red leather bound book to hand to Gladio.

He takes it.

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream, huh? Have you read this?”

The child sits down next to Gladio.

“Yeah. I liked it.” They lean up against him.

“Well…ok,” Gladio cracks open the book and starts reading.

The child is reading over his shoulder.

He smiles at them and starts reading out loud.

He makes all the voices and uses his best dramatic reading skills!

They love it! Laughing often.

They’re to the second act when Shiva returns.

Gladio sighs as he stands, handing the book back to the kid.

“Can we finish it later,” they ask, looking up at him.

“Absolutely, kiddo.” He ruffles their hair, looking down at them lovingly.

He starts to walk towards Shiva when he feels them tackle his leg.

The scene makes him want to cry.

He picks them up, hugging them.

“Daddy will be home soon.”

Bonus

Ravus

Oh baby, this kid has the scowl down pat!

They stand in Fenestala Manor, staring at each other.

It’s a scowl off.

But, just like Ravus, they can’t hold it forever.

They turn from him, suddenly taking off through the halls!

“Get back here!” The High Commander of Niflheim chases after a child through his own home.

They run off towards the conservatory, slipping through the doors just before Ravus.

He pushes the great doors open, stopping for a moment as the feeling of the room hits him.

It is warm and humid with the smells of flowering plants from all across Eos.

It’s silent, except for birds chirping high overhead.

All the eye sees are greens and bright colors from the flowers.

Breathing deeply, Ravus can taste the flowers in the humidity.

This was always one of his favorite rooms.

If this truly is his child, it’s no surprise that they ran here.

Ravus and his mother had tended many of these plants.

It was always a place where he could feel closer to her memory.

The bushes rustle.

Ravus takes a moment to close the great doors, before walking the halls between the great plants.

More rustles.

He follows the noise.

He comes upon a very unique bush.

The plant is massive, stretching from floor to the 30 foot tall ceilings and at least half that in width.

The branches are greenish bark, bushing out from the ground.

The leaves on it are small, especially in comparison to the palm sized white blossoms that appear amply over the bush.

Currently, the bush looks to be more blossom than leaf.

This particular plant is extraordinary and only an expert would know it’s secrets.

Ravus can hear small noises behind the bush.

He whistles. It’s a half second long high note made between the tongue and the lips.

The plant shakes, coming to life.

Swish!

All of the flowers close, the petals folding inwards to protect the pistil.

The child is revealed, their hiding place behind the bush now obsolete.

They look utterly shocked.

“How did you do that,” they demand of Ravus.

He can’t help it.

He smiles at the scene.

Many years ago, he said similar words to his mother when she showed him the trick.

“There’s much you don’t know about the occupants of this room.”

“Show me!” The child creeps out from behind the bush to stand before him.

“Only if you say please.” Ravus can hear his mother saying those exact same words.

“Please…” The child adds.

“Come.” Ravus begins to walk the halls of the great conservatory, stopping at each plant to discuss it with the child.

“What about that bush…will it be ok,” the child asks, looking back on their hiding spot.

“Yes, with a little time, the flowers will open back up.”

As Ravus makes for another plant, the child takes his magiteck hand, holding it.

He’s shocked!

His instincts almost kick in to push them away.

But something else holds him back.

They walk through the gardens, hand in hand. Ravus answers every question the child can think of.

Coming full circle, they see that the bush’s flowers have reopened.

“Look!” The child bounces excitedly.

“I see!” A smile graces his harsh face.

Shiva appears, framed by the great flowers, holding a hand out to Ravus.

“NO!” The child folds into him, gripping his leg. “Please, don’t go!”

You can hear the High Commander’s heart shatter.

Images of his mother’s smile flash in his mind.

He leans over, wrapping the small child in his arms.

“When you awaken, I will be right here, little blossom. I will never leave you.”

Luna

Luna’s child is mischievous, just like she used to be.

Shiva takes her to the doorway of a grand bedroom.

It’s a child’s bedroom; there are toys everywhere.

But it appears no one is here.

“Hello,” Luna asks the room.

Silence.

Luna takes a step forward.

“BOO!” A child jumps in front of her from behind the door.

Luna gasps, startled, hand flying to her chest.

The child giggles.

Then Luna does.

“Gotcha,” they tease.

“Yes, you did!” Luna bends over to greet the child, a warm smile on her face.

The child smiles back.

“Want to color with me?”

“Yes!”

They settle on floor cushions at a low table, crayons and paper spread out before them.

“Here, you can use this one!” The child hands Luna a silver ink pen.

“Thank…” Luna responds before the pen shocks her!

The child laughs at their prank.

“You really are a trickster, aren’t you?” Luna is giving them a mocking side eye.

“Yep!”

Luna does her best to come up with a way to trick the child.

“Do you want a snack,” they ask some time later.

“I’d love one,” Luna responds.

“I’ll go get us one!” They take off running out of the bedroom.

In that time, Luna switches the caps on all of the markers in the box the child was using.

Then, she hides in the closet.

The child returns with fruit.

They’re quiet at first.

“Are you still here,” they call.

Luna watches, waiting.

The child puts the tray of fruit on the coloring table.

“BOO!” It’s Luna’s turn to jump out in front of them!

They squeal.

“You got me,” they shout through toothy giggles.

They both laugh and settle in for snacks.

Luna gives them a look before biting into an apple.

“It’s safe! I promise,” they plead.

She smiles and bites into it.

The child goes back to coloring.

Soon, they dramatically sigh.

“What is it,” Luna asks.

“I have a purple sun…” the child holds up a purple marker with a yellow lid on it and their paper with a large purple circle in the corner.

Luna starts to giggle.

“You did that,” they shout, giving her a fake pout.

Both of them laugh and enjoy the day.

When Shiva returns, Luna stands to leave.

“Wait! Here!” The child hands her their drawing.

It’s of the two of the under a big purple sun.

Luna smiles fondly at it.

“So…you don’t forget about me,” the child says.

“I could never forget about you, little star.” She holds her future child tight.

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synodicatalyst · 5 years

Text

epilogue thoughts part 3

a big part i didn’t like and about which i’ve seen similar complaints is the aspect of taking the “absurd gritty edgy realist” fanfic trope WAY FAR and the more i think about it, the more i agree

because the fact of the matter is that i DIDN’T enjoy reading the epilogue. there were lots of parts i liked and found funny, but it was arduous and horrible in the way that you don’t feel hope, at any time, for any chance of happiness. you feel like youre reading through 180k words of genuine depression, even including the softer moments, the happier ones, the ones that offer development

i say this as someone who has read my fair share of gritty what-if bad-end longfic. an example i’ve been thinking about is the FFXV fic tu fui, ego eris. while it doesn’t share the same meta elements as homestuck’s epilogue, it strikes me as broadly similar, for a few reasons: one, it’s like, MEGA long. and two, we get to see a beloved character (my favourite character, ignis) spiral on his journey to becoming a villain.

here’s the thing about tu fui: i enjoyed every step of the way.

and that’s the thing, really - you CAN write horrible, tragic stories where the gay dude becomes a villain not out of inherent evil but because of Necessity. both tu fui and homestuck did it. but the difference is that i fucking loved tu fui, ego eris because not only was it written spectacularly, but there was an underlying sense of hope.

Throughout the fic, the author states many times that there’s “no going back”, that if you’re expecting a Good End then you’re in the wrong place. (I read it in its entirety, in one sitting, before she started writing a Good End by popular demand.) And i persisted -i still held out hope - not only because i had already read like 100k of it, nor just because i’m stupid and believed in the good of ignis scientia, but because it was ENJOYABLE. i loved being witness to the descent of ignis scientia. i was deeply invested in the outcome of this horrible, hopeless universe - will ignis find a way to accomplish his original goal? will he succumb to the scourge? will noctis still die, despite the horrible sacrifices made? i knew ignis would die. i knew it would be ugly, that he’d have to be stopped. but i didn’t care. even though this was a character i poured my soul into, i needed to see this til its end, villainy or no.

I got to see hardened, sharper versions of characters i loved (much like the epilogue) and even though the end was tragic and made me actually cry, and the whole thing was SUPER LONG with a lot of Plot Bullshit that probably went over my head, i didn’t regret it, i enjoyed every step of the way.

so i’ve been wondering where homestuck left me. and why homestuck left me here. and why i was slogging through thousands of words of jane suddenly being outright xenophobic and dirk Doing Some Bullshit. and why i didn’t fully enjoy reading it even though i am just as invested in these characters as like, ignis from ffxv (btw i know i have bad taste and ffxv is a shame fandom full of pretty videogame boys but that’s not the point DONT @ ME OK)

and i think it mostly boils down to the fact that 1, it felt hopeless the whole way through? like that was the POINT but it was hammered in again and again. tu fui did similarly - there was no Happy Reprieve, no funny jokes except for ardyn being a fucking weirdo - but it did it less absurdly. which i think leads to number 2, that homestuck just...started off 7 years after the end of the game. we didn’t get to witness the characters change into what we saw. we were plunged straight into “jane is spouting actual fascist ideologies now i guess” and “dirk is really purposefully manipulative to the extreme and kidnaps rose and fucks with people’s heads a lot”. we didn’t get to witness the spiral, the descent into feral horror. we just witnessed the outcome

this doesn’t mean it’s BAD to do so, but it is jarring, and i don’t think it was a good choice, character-wise. like this is the precise reason many people said the epilogue reads as OOC - yeah, cuz no-one is the same at 23 as they were at 16 - but like can you BLAME people for thinking as such when going from 16 year old “i want to be the best version of me because i know i can fuck up or slip up really easily” dirk to 23 year old dirk requires a WHOLE LOT OF INTERPOLATION

anyways what i’m saying is it is indeed possible to write dark nihilistic Everything Sucks fic and still have it be enjoyable and i’m sort of at a loss because while i liked a good chunk of the epilogue, i cannot in good conscience say that i Enjoyed it, and i think that’s a shame

#TEXTBOX #epilogue #hexa.txt #epilogue spoilers #NOT TO TALK ABOUT FFXV FIC BUT DIRK REALLY DOES KIN VRISKA!IGNIS #i just needed a good analogy and tu fui ego eris was perfect for this #long post

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pass-the-bechdel · 5 years

Text

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, once.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Seven (30.43% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Sixteen.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

Significantly flawed, and well-known in fandom for it. Unpopular opinion? I still think it’s better than the first Avengers film.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Natasha and Laura pass in a single-line trade. It’s sooo close to not counting.

Female characters:

Natasha Romanoff.

Wanda Maximoff.

Maria Hill.

Helen Cho.

Peggy Carter.

Laura Barton.

FRIDAY.

Male characters:

Tony Stark.

Steve Rogers.

JARVIS.

Thor.

Clint Barton.

Strucker.

Pietro Maximoff.

Bruce Banner.

Ultron.

Sam Wilson.

James Rhodes.

Ulysses Klaue.

Heimdall.

Nick Fury.

Erik Selvig.

Vision.

OTHER NOTES:

Everyone talking about Strucker like we already know who he is...

The “Shit!”/”Language!” gag was funnier before they hung a lantern on it. Not least because it takes almost a full minute before Tony harks back to it (fifty seconds, actually. I checked). If you’re gonna make a Thing out of it, you gotta follow up immediately, not after fifty seconds of cutting around to different character intros and action shots and a whole lot of other dialogue.

Urrgghh, ok, I’m going to break my standing rule about not discussing source material, because we gotta acknowledge the colossal wrongness of re-writing the Maximoff twins - canonically Jewish Romani - as willing volunteers in a Nazi science experiment. It gets worse the more you think about it. There are a few things about this movie which generated significant negative outcry, and this incredibly offensive decision is one of them.

Tony and Thor fighting over who has a better girlfriend does have a certain charm to it. If you’re gonna have a testosterone-off, it might as well be about how great your partner is.

I got a zero out of ten on this out-of-nowhere forced romance crap with Natasha and Bruce. We’ll come back to this later.

“I will be reinstituting Prima Nocta,” Tony declares, as he prepares to lift Thor’s hammer and thereby theoretically take charge of the Nine Realms. Primae noctis (believed to in fact be a myth) refers to a supposed Dark-Ages law that granted lords the ‘right’ to take the virginity of any newlywed peasant woman who lived on their land. So, this is a wonderful little rape joke from Tony (or, y’know, not so little, since primae noctis in reality would make Tony a serial rapist). Ha ha ha ha. Hilarious. Good one.

I’m really mad about the parts here that are total garbage, because mostly, the revels sequence has a nice low-key quality to it, good solid team dynamics.

I can’t fucking believe that they played the ‘and then Bruce falls with his face in Natasha’s cleavage!’ gag. I cannot believe it. Is this a disgusting frat-boy comedy from the nineties?

Honestly, Tony, just shut up and admit that you KNEW from the get-go that it was wrong to try and make Ultron happen (that is why you kept it secret from everyone else to begin with); don’t try to defend the decision now that you’ve got a ‘murderbot’ on your hands. Take responsibility for a bad choice instead of talking shit about how you had to and everyone else is just too short-sighted, damn it!

Andy Serkis is delightful.

The Iron Man/Hulk fight absolutely KILLS the momentum of this film. It goes for way the fuck too long (eight minutes) and has no narrative significance at all. Pro tip for action scenes: they should always be driving the story somewhere. You can pull off eighty minutes of action so long as your plot is advancing alongside/within it.

Also, Iron Man causes a huge amount of additional damage during this fight, in the service of the aforementioned pointless action. His efforts to minimise Hulk’s effects are extremely poor, and calling in his relief organisation to clean up after the fact does not negate that.

Gotta love that throwing a wife and kids at Hawkeye at the same time as we suddenly start pushing this Natasha/Bruce thing. That’s not transparent at all. I also understand this to be a major deviation from Clint’s identity in the comics, and very unpopular with fans for that reason, but regardless; reinventing him as a family man to reset the romantic blather after baiting fans with the possibility of Clint/Natasha in the first Avengers movie is such a shitty move. I was not invested in the ship myself and would have loved to have them reinforce the just-friends relationship between Hawkeye and Black Widow, because there are not enough platonic friendships between compatible men and women in fiction, but 'they’re not interested in each other because they’re busy with someone else!’ is a weak reinforcement indeed. Less forced romances, and definitely less token wifey who exists for no other Goddamn reason at all. This comes out of nowhere, and not in a clever-surprise kind of way.

“You still think you’re the only monster on the team?” Natasha says, after telling Bruce about her sterilisation. This earned a HUGE backlash, and for good reason - despite all arguments about how what Natasha meant was that her being raised to be an assassin makes her a monster, the direct implication of her words as they are phrased and as the discussion is structured is that her inability to have children makes her monstrous, and that’s deeply offensive. It’s also completely in keeping with a narrative which is often played out against women, in which their value as people is attributed directly to their ability to produce offspring, so it’s not even like this outrageous implication of monstrosity - the corruption of what it means to be female! - is that unusual. It’s awful, but not unusual. Add on the fact that 1) Natasha’s nightmare-flashes specifically foregrounded her sterilisation over all other details of her training, supporting the idea that she believes that it’s what makes her irredeemable (instead of, y’know, all the murdering and stuff), and 2) this is Joss Whedon’s work and he is OBSESSED with highlighting the womanhood of his female characters and treating it like their defining trait while also variously punishing them for it, and you’ve got every reason to interpret this terrible fucking line as exactly the heinous thing it (presumably, unwittingly) seems to be.

Steve ripping a log in half with his bare hands is the funniest thing in this whole movie.

Thor’s brief side-adventure with Erik Selvig is pretty out-of-place. He just...goes for a swim in a convenient magic pond that Selvig chances to know about. Seems normal.

Ultron is full of such boring, empty rhetoric. Reminds me of Loki in The Avengers, with all that sound-and-fury.

I love Paul Bettany.

Man, they sure do find Natasha instantly. It’s almost like making a damsel-in-distress of her who needs to be rescued by the team was completely meaningless...

Breaking my no-BTS rule (since I already have done for this movie at this point) because it’s well-known how Joss Whedon ordered Elizabeth Olsen not to show exertion or ‘ugly emotion’ on her face in this film, because God forbid she compromise her attractiveness by being human. Joss Whedon is not human; he’s fucking trash.

The final fight sure does just, y’know, get to a point where it ends. They really did not ratchet up the tension over the course of the Sokovia conflict, it just goes along until it stops (also, they say Sokovia is a country, but then they never call the city anything else, it’s just Sokovia. Is the city conveniently named after the country (very confusing), or is it a city-country, like The Vatican? I kinda assume it’s option three, which is that no one bothered to care because it’s just some fake European placeholder anyway and we’re not supposed to notice such a dumb oversight).

“I was born yesterday.” This is the best quip in this whole thinks-it-is-way-wittier-than-it-is movie.

Helen Cho deserved better than to be a prop rapidly dismissed and then just trotted past at the end for an ‘oh, she survived, btw’.

Back when I reviewed the first Avengers movie, I said that I considered that film to be heavily overrated, so maybe it’s not such a surprise that I actually like this one better. The two primary problems I had with that first film were the overly simplistic plot, and the fact that most of the characters were OOC compared to previous films, and this movie does do better on both scores, so I feel more engaged by it, and less annoyed. That said...this movie has still got a lot of problems, and those include iffy characterisation and a plot with various holes, nonsensical complications, and conveniently ignored or smoothed-down dynamics. When I say I like this movie better than the first one, I mean just that: I like this better. That does not mean I am here to sing its praises.

The tacked-on romance is part of the problem - for Clint as well as Natasha (but especially for Natasha). After Hawkeye was so heavily under-used in the first film (and his slightly-ambiguous relationship with Black Widow was the only human element that made him a character instead of a prop), Age of Ultron attempts to compensate by giving Clint a personal life, in the form of a magically-appearing heavily-pregnant wife and a pair of nameless children. The function of this family appears to be 1) to give Clint a reason to not be interested in Natasha, and 2) to ‘humanise’ him by giving him something to fight for and get home to, because we all know nothing legitimises a character quite like some otherwise-irrelevant dependents. Want a man to seem lovable and important? Give him a pregnant wife. That’s what women are for, anyway, right? To enhance a man’s story? In this case, to provide a man whose purpose in the story has been contested with insta-personality, because ‘he’s secretly a family man, ooh, twist!’ is way better than having to spend time on giving him something to do in the plot that is actually meaningful in some way. Great logic. Makes Hawkeye super dynamic, right?

Natasha, unsurprisingly, is hit much, much harder. As the only female avenger and one of only two prominent female characters in a cast which has seven-to-nine male characters of equal or greater importance/screen time (YMMV on whether or not you think Fury and Vision count for that list), the pressure is already on for Natasha to be served up a quality narrative, because if she doesn’t get one, well...she doesn’t have six-to-eight alternative characters to pull the weight for her gender. The best solve for this problem would be to avoid the ‘Token Woman’ cliche in the first place, but since we missed that boat...not having the personal story of your only primary female character revolve completely around her womanhood and her catering to heteronormative expectations of a love interest would have been a good choice. This weird, forced, chemistry-free thing with Bruce Banner? Was the worst thing they could have used to define Natasha’s presence in the film. It sticks out like a sore thumb every time they have an awkward interaction, and it leads in to that atrocious ‘monstrous infertility’ element (though that particular egregious mistake could have been included with or without a romantic blunder, it...probably wouldn’t be, and we’d all be the better off). Even the Hulk-whisperer part of the relationship - while not awful on its own with all the unnecessary romance and Unresolved Sexual Not-Tension removed - serves to highlight Natasha’s female-ness by making her the soft maternal figure for the team, because God forbid one of the other male members of the team be asked to ASMR-speak to the Hulk while delicately caressing his hand. If Natasha’s presence in the first Avengers film leaned too heavily on her gender identity as a defining trait (and it did), this movie doesn’t fix that problem at all: it doubles down on it.

The good news for most of the excess of male characters is, they by-and-large don’t feel as OOC as they did in the first film. The boorish romantic entanglement aside, Bruce Banner is still a naturalistic character highlight (all credit to Mark Ruffalo, who probably doesn’t know how to turn in a bad performance in the first place), and Thor’s dialogue is way less ridiculous this time ‘round, so he lands a lot closer to his personality from previous films simply by virtue of sounding like the same guy (unfortunately, the plot does not have the faintest idea what it wants to do with him as a character). Steve Rogers is still being written as if being Captain America is his character, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of his identity, albeit one which conveniently allows him to behave in a stereotypical self-righteously bland manner, thus avoiding the need for any nuance in his perspective or actions. This borderline fanfic-flamer ‘Captain America is my least favourite character so I’m going to write him as a boring stick-in-the-mud and then hopefully no one else will like him either!’ approach doesn’t grate quite as badly as it did in the first Avengers, and it can’t cancel out the innate level-headed charm of Chris Evans, so as disappointing as the bias is, it’s still a better balance here than it was last time. The one character who is not so flatteringly handled, however? Also happens to be the one who was arguably handled best last time, and unfortunately, he’s the one who is essentially treated as the ‘lead’.

The big problem for Tony Stark is that this movie is not interested in digging in to the pathos of any character, it’s all-flash-no-substance on that front, and Tony really, really needed a less heavy-handed slathering of ‘afraid of what might come (feat. messiah complex)’ to motivate his actions and reactions in this film, because without any exploration he’s basically just a billionaire kid playing with matches. If this were an Iron Man film (either the first or third one, anyway), we’d get into some tasty deconstruction of Tony’s mental state and confront his hubris, etc, and - crucially, most crucial of all, it’s a mainstay of all his past stories in the MCU - Tony would own up to his mistakes, listen to the advice of those around him, and take contrite steps toward fixing the problem not just in the direct sense of ‘beating the bad guy’, but also in the personal and emotional sense of working on his own flaws and making amends with the people he hurt along the way. This movie offers none of that. To begin with, Tony’s ‘I know best and I will not be taking any questions’ approach to creating Ultron feels like a significant step backwards in his character development so far (Iron Man 3 was specifically about addressing his PTSD and associated tumultuous emotions surrounding the fear of imminent alien invasion, so his reactionary and secretive behaviour in this film feels particularly out-of-touch with a mental reality Tony has been explicitly working on for the past couple of years); Tony is actively aware that it’s a bad call and thus hides it from the other Avengers until it’s too late, and then he’s bizarrely unrepentant about his mistake. Worst of all, he actually attempts to repeat that mistake, only worse, late in the film (the fact that his idiotic ‘mad scientist’ pep talk actually convinces Bruce to help him again is the weakest character moment for Bruce outside of the aforementioned romance crap). The plot rewards Tony’s second, far worse mistake, in the creation of Vision, who turns out to be ‘worthy of wielding Thor’s Hammer’ and whatnot and conveniently provides every necessary skill to defeat Ultron in a deus ex machina so overt you could use it as a textbook example, so even though Tony had absolutely no way of knowing that he’d get a good result this time and almost every reason to believe he’d just compound the existing problem, his reckless disregard for the literal safety of the planet is treated like a good thing because it happens to work out this time, and they just kinda sweep under the rug the fact that Tony is playing God (and being uncharacteristically stupid and selfish about it - in other films, Tony is normally only reckless with his own safety, and it’s when his actions spill out into unintended consequences for others that he realises the error of his ways and cues up a positive learning curve; it’s what makes him palatable). At the end of the film, once Ultron is gone and Tony has thrown some dispassionate wads of cash into ‘relief efforts’, he strolls and quips and eventually drives off into the sunset in his expensive car, with nary a mention of, I dunno, maybe a little guilty conscience? Maybe a hint of having learned a valuable lesson? The closest he gets is just suggesting that it might be time he retires from Avenging, but neither he nor anyone else lets on that there’s a need for serious self-reflection. The Tony Stark in this movie is the nightmarish male-fantasy version of the character, the playboy with the cool tech and no limits who does whatever he wants and then...literally rides off into the sunset in the end, no muss, no fuss. He’s kinda like a complete reversion to his original self, pre-Iron Man, frittering money around and designing weapons of mass destruction while convincing himself he’s bringing peace to the world one explosion at a time, but that Tony has no business here, seven years of character development down the track.

While we’re talking iffy characterisation, we should also segue into plot, and that’s something we can do easily enough by looking at our villain, Ultron. Calling Ultron an actual character feels...ambitious. He’s a CGI robot full of empty rhetoric and, you guessed it, more of those quips that this movie has in place of any meaningful dialogue. I’d call him self-fellating, but he ain’t got nothing to fellate, so instead he just blathers a lot in a manner that sounds vaguely poetically intelligent but is, upon a moment’s consideration, just vapid nonsense (much like Loki in the first Avengers, as noted above, but at least Loki had the benefit of a flesh-and-blood actor delivering his lines with conviction; James Spader does solid work as the voice of Ultron, but trying to make a CGI robot who spouts a school-kid’s attempt at edgy philosophy sound like a genuine menace is an uphill battle). Speaking of genuine menace, I assume the reason the film is called Age of Ultron is because A Couple of Days of Ultron Causing Disturbances in a Handful of Specific Locations was too much. For all the big talk (and there is..so much), Ultron doesn’t get up to all that much trouble, most notably in the sense that he apparently has his code all over the internet and yet he doesn’t bother stirring up a single ounce of chaos with that ungodly power. Why bother including this as an element of the character if it achieves zero story? Is it purely to make Ultron seem ~unstoppable~ because he keeps downloading into new robots? Because it didn’t really land, y’all. They try to play it like a big victory for the good guys when Vision burns Ultron out of the ‘net, but in context it’s meaningless because he didn’t do anything while he was there. Pretty much everything about Ultron was all talk, little to no action - even a whole bunch of the trouble he did cause happened off-screen, with Maria Hill just popping in to let us know that ‘there are reports of metal men stealing shit’. Cheers, cool. And you know, Ultron makes a song and dance about how he’s going to save the world by ‘ending the Avengers’, but then he...does not pursue that at all. He tries to make himself a pretty body, the Avengers thwart him, and then he enacts a doomsday machine to destroy all life on Earth. Like every other aspect of the character, the whole ‘end the Avengers’ schtick is just white noise, there’s no meaning in it. Ultron is just a same-old-same ‘What if Artificial Intelligence wants to WIPE US OUT?!’ cliche, and maybe that’s what he was in the comics too, I don’t know, but it’s the job of the film to tell that story in a dynamic way, and they had two and a half hours to do it. And yet.

There should be more to this than a nondescript placeholder villain concept and a series of action set pieces that just kinda happen until they stop. At least the first Avengers had some variety in each of its action sequences, using the location and the different skills and weapons of its antagonists, whereas this one is just ‘there are robots and the good guys punched and shot them until they were all broken, the end’. Even making the city fly in the end doesn’t actually make it interesting, not least because the characters spend most of their time running around the (weirdly, perfectly stable) streets not having to deal with any consequences of being up in the air anyway, and the doomsday device is too nebulous to ratchet up any real tension about figuring out how to deal with it. The conflicts with the Maximoff twins have at least some spark of life in them, but the characters themselves are treated to an over-simplified and very contrived narrative arc that uses what they do and what they know more as plot devices than as details of actual people’s lives, leading to a cheap death for Pietro so that Wanda will be distracted enough to abandon the big ol’ doomsday button, and it’s just all so convenient. There’s no heart in any of it, and it makes the moments that try to have heart all the more embarrassing and out-of-place (don’t even get me started on what a prescribed attempt at tugging the heart-strings it is to have Hawkeye name his magnificently well-timed newborn after Pietro, because DAMN). When I said I liked this movie better than the first Avengers, I meant just that: I like this better. That’s not to suggest that it is significantly better in any sense, because it isn’t, and I can’t even argue that this one has a better story, because honestly, it doesn’t. The first film made more sense, it was just less interesting to watch, and the things about it that were contrived were contrived in different ways. The first film was weaker and more irritating on character, and character is always the most important part of a story for me, so as annoyed as I am by the major character blunders in Age of Ultron, I’m still not as annoyed as I was after The Avengers. That is damning with the faintest of praise; this is just not a particularly good movie, it makes a poor use of its cast at the best of times, delivers a sub-par action extravaganza, and the script is not half as witty as it gleefully convinces itself that it is. It comes as no surprise, I’m sure, that I am very glad a certain writer/director departed the franchise after disappointing everyone with this outing. I say I like this better than the first Avengers, but gee, it’s a close call.

#Avengers: Age of Ultron #Marvel Cinematic Universe #Bechdel Test #female representation #MCU #Age of Ultron #Avengers

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sylleblosscm · 3 years

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@strictomiles x

Thank you

*deep breath*

I don’t understand how they did such a phenomenal job with Iggy and Prom, but dropped the ball so badly with Gladio, I really don’t.

Because the thing with the guys is that they all serve a different purpose in the group, right? Promto’s very much the heart and soul, keeping everyone upbeat and motivated; Iggy is everyone’s singular collective braincell. And it’s fine and good and I could talk all day about why. They’re Noct’s support; both relaxed, chill people. But Gladio? Gladio is his foil. Every bit as stubborn and hotheaded, there to challenge Noct and be challenged in return. That’s why they butt heads so much: they’re the same.

It was everything from the train scene to the Malboro that broke me, but the problem goes way back. Gladio has arguably more going for him outside the main cast than Iggy or Prompto. Prompto doesn’t have many other friends, isn’t close to his adoptive parents; Iggy has thrown himself wholeheartedly into taking care of Noctis and the bros. And there’s a lot of nuance and layers and it’s all very well done without feeling myopic. Gladio, however, is more sociable, with an implied romantic history - and most importantly, a family. He lost his Dad that day too, along with his home, and many of the people he was ever close to. For a while, there was a big question mark over whether or not his baby sister was still alive.

And how does he deal? By throwing himself into his work. By not feeling; again, playing that role of foil to Noctis, who feels it very deeply and breaks down. This is even stated with his whole, “When you can’t think, I think for you, that’s my job” speech.

When he starts to doubt his ability to do his job, rather than sit with those doubts, he’s compelled to deal with them immediately, and that’s how we get the weakest DLC of the bunch. I mean, it’s not horrible or anything. I just feel like they could have done more. There’s an effort to compare Gladio to his father, which could have been useful further on if they really went ham on it, but mostly it’s just about him wanting to be ““strong”” which….okay. It was the first DLC out the gate, I guess I can’t get too mad. There’s just no effort to explore his inner world or life, the way there was with Ignis (where we come to the conclusion that his dedication to Noct isn’t just him doing his job, but rather taking care of his very first friend, and how the bros really are his whole entire family) and Prom (where they carry on with the thread of him feeling not good enough, and wanting to stand alongside his friends and yeah I have a lot of thoughts on this episode). So actually, yes. Yes I can indeed get Very Mad, it turns out. Why did they have to do him like this?

To me, the natural conclusion of this arc should be clear. Gladio looks up to his Dad, a seemingly stoic man who always did his job perfectly. Slowly learns that his father was human, and had fears, and that Regis was to him more than his charge - he was also his best friend, and therefore it’s okay for Gladio himself to be human too. There absolutely should be conflict between him and Noctis after Altissia. After all, Gladio knows as well as anyone what it means to lose someone he loves, and have a heavy burden dropped onto his shoulders. He would have soldiered on, so why shouldn’t Noctis? I don’t hate that in a bubble, I hate that it went nowhere.

This would have, could have, should have (in my humble opinion) culminated not in a moment where Ignis scolds them like children (as good a character moment as that was for Iggy) but rather, one where he and Noctis - these two wonderful, stubborn, emotionally stunted men bearing impossibly heavy destinies - might have come to an understanding. They’ve both endured horrific tragedy and inconsolable trauma. They’ve both internalized it all; they’re both suffering. But they can also understand one another in a way nobody else can. They can learn that there is strength in vulnerability, and their bond with one another is the greatest gift they have. That it’s good they can push each other and challenge one another, but that they can support one another in other ways too. It’s okay to grieve. This, rather than the borderline hostile atmosphere they had, would have been their final dynamic going into the Crystal portion of the plot, and would have tied in better to the overall themes of the story about brotherhood and what have you. It would have been a strong moment for them both, worked better within the narrative, and given Gladio more depth and nuance, and imbued him with a great deal more humanity.

……Or, you know, they could have Gladio yell at his friend while he grieves the love of his life for seemingly no reason, to seemingly no end. That works too, I guess.

#( aljasklfas apologies for the rant i've wanted this off my chest for m o n t h s #honestly i could go on forever i have too many feelings about how they failed my boy )#⋆｡˚ ☁︎ ˚｡⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆ -- i was just in the middle of an inner monologue / ooc

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xadoheandterra · 5 years

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Series: The Burning of Solheim Title: The Path Untrodden Fandom: Final Fantasy XV Chapters: I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | XIII Characters: Prompto Argentum, Ignis Scientia, Cor Leonis, Gladiolus Amicitia, Noctis Lucis Caelum, Gilgamesh, Monica, Cid Sophiar Tags: 10 years older!Prompto, Cid ain’t taking your shit, Introspection and Revelations, Prompto breaks everyones hearts, Gilgamesh Knows Something, Cid Is Special Summary: Solheim was the height of civilization long enough that their ruins were ruins over 2000 years ago, and still had the power to function in the time of the King of Light. They should’ve realized something was very wrong the minute Prompto remarked on the lights being on, and yet no one was home.

Cid took one look at the gathered people from where he lounged with a mug of coffee and uttered a short, “What the hell, kid? I thought ya up an’ stopped draggin’ yer ass into bullshit twenty years ago.”

“Fuck you,” Cor said bluntly in response, dropped into a chair, and grabbed Cid’s mug of coffee and drowned it.

“At least tell me the old girl’s still runnin’ right,” Cid harrumphed tiredly while the kids exchanged glances.

“The Regalia is fine,” Cor said.

“Six hours from Ravatogh?” Cid huffed, even as Cor gestured for everyone to settle down and Monica disappeared behind the half-wall of the kitchen to grab drinks. “Ain’t never taken six hours jes t’drive down from that hell pit.” Cid glanced at the group, and then side-eyed Cor a second later before he said, “Although I’d be surprised she fit you all well an’ good.”

“We didn’t break the car, dammit,” Cor grumbled.

“I’ll be the judge o’ that one, brat. Now give me back my damned coffee,” Cid reached out for the cup but Cor kept it deftly away and drained the last of the dregs before he handed it back with a curled smile full of teeth. Cid huffed, then accepted the new mug from Monica with a, “Thanks, sweet’eart.”

Monica calmly passed out drinks for everyone, although she skipped Cor who frowned and looked half-a-second ready to demand a cup for himself, then thought better of it. Cid snorted. Clarus chose well when he made that girl in charge of the boy, and he shared a bit of a commiserating glance with her as she settled herself down, took a sip out of her own mug, and then settled it between her knees. “So.” She looked at them each in turn, enough to make all the boys squirm and Cid found himself with his own sharp grin at the thought.

Yes, Clarus chose well, Cid could admit. At least that kid had a decent head on his shoulders—and the sting of loss still felt a bit like a bitter thing; each of them boys were his, even if they hadn’t spoken in a good almost twenty-odd years. Cid sighed heavily and quickly tore the room’s attention from Monica, who would undoubtedly dither about the whole mess and he’d rather get to the root of the first problem before anything else.

“Well?” Cid said, tone short and leading. “You okay, boy?” He looked at Noctis as he spoke, but the words were for both Noctis and for Cor really. The last time he’d seen Cor the man had blown through Hammerhead looking like death warmed over, covered in cuts and more blood on the outside instead of his insides. He’d taken stock of the few curatives Cid kept around, already gone stale without Regis’ magic to hold them together, and then waltzed right back out of Cid’s life.

Noctis frowned, brow furrowed, and eyes narrowed at some point not on Cid’s face, which was all well and good, sure. At least the boy seemed to be thinking about shit, which was good, but that didn’t tell Cid anything worthwhile, really. Lucis Caelum’s were a hard bunch to read for normal folk, and sometimes you had to just drag the truth out of them like fighting with a wet couerl kitten hissin’ and spittin’ lightning in your face.

“Ya don’t jes up an’ recover from a broken bond,” Cid said slowly. “An’ while I can see Cor’s little stray all well an’ good, that don’t mean shit unless you speak up boy.” Cid ignored the way Monica jerked her head in his direction; if the women wanted to be blind about the little Niff stray then that was her problem. Cid had no reason to ignore the truth bare in his face.

“I—” Noctis started, but the words cut off and Cid nodded sharply.

“You ain’t the first t’go through this shit,” Cid said after a moment. He stared down at his coffee with a frown. “I remember yer granddaddy an’ the wreck he was after he lost his Shield an’ Hand.” Cid breathed in deeply; he hadn’t liked remembering Mors back in those days, and he didn’t like remembering Mors in that aftermath even now. The Mors after the death of those closest to him—where the only reminders had been Regis and Clarus after all was said and done—lead to some shit decisions and choices.

Mors without his Shield and his Hand had been like a man without his conscience. Cid accepted the job to keep watch over Regis and Regis’ lot because of that. He saw what Mors became, and hoped to keep Mors’ boy for becoming his daddy. He thought he succeeded for a while, only for Regis to spit it all in his face at the end. Cid tightened his grip for half-a-second on his mug of coffee.

“Cid…” Cor said, voice soft—and just the barest hint of pain that thrummed under it. Cid looked to Cor and the way the kid looked stricken. Cid knew he never spoke of it—of how Mors changed, of how the broken bonds had utterly ruined a man he’d up and respected and almost swore his own Oaths to—just as Cid knew Cor never spoke of his time as Mors’ bodyguard, his Shield in all but title.

“What?” Cid huffed. “I’m old, Cor. Ain’t no beatin’ ‘round it, and ain’t no reason to keep hidin’ it after what you boys said.” Cid turned his gaze back to Noctis. “Well, little King?”

Noctis swallowed, and heavily said, “I’m fine.”

“Bullshit,” Cid said sharply, but Noctis merely straightened his spine stubbornly and repeated himself. Cid shook his head and grumbled, “Too much of yer ma in ya,” under his breath before he turned his gaze onto the one armed behemoth and the Cor’s little Niff. “An’ you, boy? Whaddya say fer yerself? Ain’t no Shield or Hand, but that shit hurts don’t it?”

Cid watched how Prompto nibbled at his lip, and then glanced over at the behemoth beside him who seemed to be trying dissect Cid with his eyes. He dismissed the man a second later because he could see it on the boy, clearly, where he couldn’t see it on Noctis because Lucis Caelum’s were a special brand of stupid. He waited for Prompto to take in that shuddering breath, waited for the young man to settle himself.

“I had time,” Prompto said, voice soft. At his side his behemoth tightened the grip onto Prompto’s wrist and Cid glanced to him.

“I can see that, but I ain’t askin’ ‘bout yer tie to yer King,” Cid said, and his words were only marginally soft because as much as this kid was Cor’s stray Cid could see himself plain as day in that freckled face. He’d once been as young, refugee in a strange city-state with Niff-blond hair and freckles to his face. It wouldn’t surprise Cid in the least to find that Prompto came from some prominent Niff family somewhere—he had that touch about him. Cid waited for the boy to stiffen, then glance to Cor with surprised eyes. “No Cor ain’t said no word ‘bout nothin’. It’s plain on yer face, boy. So?”

“Cid,” Monica interrupted, and Cid wanted to cuss her out but refrained when Dustin came up behind her. There went any chance of getting any of those boys to speak up, least of all the behemoth who seemed to contemplate Cid’s words with the weight and gravitas they didn’t exactly hold, but implied. “You are speaking of things that—”

Cid growled and shoved himself to his feet with an angry huff. “If yer too damned blind to see that boy for who ‘e is it ain’t my problem. I’ve said my piece.” Tiredly Cid began to shuffle himself out of the shack. “Ya know where t’find me.”

Gilgamesh stood and muttered his excuse to the party shortly after Cid left, and Monica let him go with barely a thought. She wasn’t so foolish to consider the idea that she could contain the famed Blademaster, if that was whom he claimed to be. Cor only survived that mess through the fact that the man let him go, and Monica knew that well enough. The fact that the man had taken Gladio to the famed Proving Grounds—which were nothing more than a slaughterhouse in Monica’s opinion—already left her with the frustrating understanding that the man could very well be so. Instead she focused her attention on the other who claimed to be Prompto Argentum.

Ignis had reported upon Prompto Argentum’s untimely demise; Monica had taken to the ruins at the behest of Cor to ascertain the situation with the mercenary Highwind as a guide. She’d seen enough to doubt the boy would return ever again. The fact that the King definitely suffered from a sudden shattered bond, and she grilled Cid on the effects of that when Ignis reported in, left her with the solid opinion that Prompto Argentum was dead. Who this imposter was Monica couldn’t discern, but she doubted that Prompto Argentum had been a one time creature. Cor found the babe in a lab of all things, after all.

“I would like to know how you’ve decided upon the validity of…your identity,” Monica said, tone careful so as not to upset the current reigning Monarch—young, blissfully young and left to his own devices for so long—let alone Cor who seemed determined to believe the lies of this man; this potential threat from Nifflheim.

Cor frowned, pressed his lips together, and said shortly, “You know of the identifying characteristics on the boy, Monica.”

Monica looked at Cor. “You verified it, then?”

“Still the same,” Cor nodded, and Monica wanted to punch the man. Didn’t he—

The imposter sighed heavily and interrupted the tirade that tumbled through Monica’s thoughts. He looked at her with eyes that didn’t fit her face. Old, discomforted, weary sort of eyes that almost reflected purple in certain light, but were bright dark blues in others. He looked at her and said with utter disdain, “This is about—my—tattoo.”

“Yes,” Monica said succinctly, surprised by the imposter’s cleverness to pick up what Monica had insinuated—that she believed the tattoo was not a good way to verify one man’s identity.

The imposter nodded, then straightened out of the slight slouch he’d been in. It gave him two more inches in height and made him impressively confident in his presence. From what Monica knew of Prompto Argentum the boy would’ve hunched further, drawn away from showing his confidence unless Noctis had encouraged him in some way. Another mark against the man, Monica felt, and she tucked it away so that she could use it to explain how utterly idiotic Cor was. The boys it was expected—they were young and new to the war and its intricacies. Noctis and his retinue had been raised behind the Wall and away from the conflict, so how could they know?

“Tattoo’s distort,” the imposter began, tone even, and Monica paused surprised that he would admit such. He stared directly at her as he spoke and a shiver ran down her spine. That was the look of a killer. “Over time they fade, and as skin changes so does the tattoo.”

Monica glanced to Cor, to see if he understood—and yes, the wide eyes and relaxed muscles told Monica that he’d finally started to see. With the next words the man’s brow furrowed in thought and Monica looked back to the imposter who still—stared—at her.

“Given that I’ve had this one since a child,” the imposter raised his covered right wrist, his left clenched tightly against his thigh, and the man’s gaze slid from her to it. Everything tightened about him, coiled down into a tense sort of ball even as he sat up straight. His brow pinched and his lips turned down slightly as he stared at his wrist, turned it this way and that. “It should’ve changed, right?” He glanced to her and waited.

Monica didn’t say a word, but she nodded sharply; curious to see where this explanation planned to go.

“Yet it’s the same,” the imposter said, voice quiet. “The ink is still as dark as it was when I was five. The lines and numbers are still as crisp and legible.” Here the imposter’s gaze flickered to Cor, and then to the retinue and the King. He looked uncomfortable, Monica thought, and a fissure of guilt settled into her gut.

The imposter sighed and began to tug off his glove to Monica’s surprise. “The truth is this is not a tattoo,” he said, and revealed the barcode stamped onto his wrist. As he said the lines were still a pitch black, straight and legible as the day Cor brought him back to Insomnia. “I’ve tried to get rid of it, you know?” the imposter refused to look at anyone as the mark bared free on his skin.

King Noctis sat up straight, spine stiffened in surprise and gaze utterly locked onto the brand on the imposter’s wrist. Gladiolus, Monica noted, slouched just a bit further and kept his gaze off to the side. Ignis sucked in a cut of sharp and quiet gasp, lips parted and eyes wide as he stared and stared. None of them had actually known about the mark—except perhaps Gladiolus. He’d always been a rather smart one, Monica remembered.

“Burned it, cut into it—tried to mar the skin of it,” the imposter murmured. “I was stopped from outright skinning myself, once.”

King Noctis looked stricken. Monica felt just the little bit sick. He’d tried to skin himself to get rid of the mark? It was a good ploy for sympathy, but the sickening thought of it settled wrong with her. She could easily imagine the bright little boy terrified of the mark on his skin trying to skin it off as a child. She didn’t like the thought.

“No matter what I did the skin refused to be damaged,” the imposter looked right to her. “Burns would heal back to perfectly normal skin. Cuts would not leave scars no matter how deep. It’s…” The imposter sighed heavily and closed his eyes. “I know I was made and not born. Figured that one out these past ten years.”

“It hasn’t been ten years since Prompto Argentum died,” Monica said sharply; she couldn’t stand the way the room seemed to be thick with horror and guilt. Although if she were honest ten years could account for the differences. The imposter looked like Prompto in the way a relation might—or someone older, perhaps.

The imposter snorted. ��For you? No. For me? It has been ten long years.” He looked at her again, gaze inscrutable. “I spent time studying Solheim, you know. I’d go into the ruins and look at the marks left behind and learn.”

Curiosity burned within Monica’s veins. It shot up from her lungs and into her spine. They knew so precious little about Solheim; Lucis had a longstanding law that Solheim was meant to be left alone. Supposedly the Draconian had given the command to the Founder King, or so the people of the Citadel whispered whenever anything Solheim was brought up. Given that Nifflheim seemed content to follow in Solheim’s blasphemous ways—building magitek of all things—people wondered on the law a lot more often in recent years.

“Solheim had a way to create life,” the imposter settled, voice shifted to a steady cadence as he set his arm down and seemed to forget about it entirely—except no, his left moved over to grasp at his wrist in a tight grip. “There was a time, brief, that their population dwindled. War, or famine, or divine wrath of the Six it was unclear.” His gaze turned a little distant. “I couldn’t quite figure the meaning of the words. They were—a little off center to typical Solheim linguistics. Potentially a series of loan-words of some sort…” A second later the imposter shook himself out of his thoughts. “At any rate they found a way to create life—to bring about an infant without a mother’s womb or a father’s seed.”

A surprising notion, Monica noted, and how like Nifflheim to follow in the footsteps of Solheim. They too created life—although Monica hadn’t been certain before. As far as she or Cor or anyone thought Nifflheim had merely been experimenting on children. A barbaric, horrifying reality that sickened all of Lucis that knew. To think they could be growing children to experiment on…Monica wanted to throw up. It felt like her stomach was up in her throat and she hated it.

“I don’t find it so surprising that Nifflheim could’ve have discovered the means themselves, too,” the imposter said. “Whatever was done to make me though—whatever they did it—the barcode—” King Noctis sucked in a sharp breath and Ignis looked ready to fall over, “it refuses to be damaged. The skin heals, and it grows with me. The best that I can determine is that this is my skin—this barcode and that somehow—somehow I was designed so that it couldn’t be damaged.” The imposter looked directly at her, and then let go of his wrist and offered it. “Go ahead. See what I mean.”

Monica froze. He wanted her to—what? Try and damage the wrist, the barcode that was on display before her very eyes? She could catch sight of the lettering, just a faint bit of—N-iP01—before Noctis stood up with his teeth ground together and face horribly pale.

“Enough Prompto!” King Noctis said, tone sharp enough that Monica straightened her back stiffly and fought the urge to just stand at attention. Monica could see the way the imposter froze, how the muscles in his back tensed up the slightest bit before he leaned back and looked directly at the King with a pinched face, but one that listened to the Command in the voice without protest. Monica watched the way the imposter took back his wrist and settled his hand down in his lap.

“I apologize,” the man murmured.

King Noctis nodded his head, and then shifted his gaze to Monica and pinned her to her seat with it. “If you refuse to believe Cor, or my retinue, of Prompto’s identity that believe me Monica.” Monica felt a protest bubble up in her throat, and the King must’ve noticed it too because he narrowed his gaze and continued to speak, tone just a smidge cold like how King Regis would get sometimes. “I know each and every bit of my retinue, Monica. I know their very souls. They are bound to me intricately. Do you really think I could be tricked so easily as to Prompto’s identity?”

Monica pressed her lips together, glanced to the imposter, and then back to the King as she puzzled this out. “There is so much we don’t know about Nifflheim’s capabilities,” Monica started, but the King cut her off.

“I know his soul,” the King uttered, tone short. “I feel it against my own—the way my magic is shared with my retinue; how it settles into their bones.”

A sudden thought struck Monica. If the King could feel the imposter then—she whirled around at Cor. “You let him make an Oath?!”

Cor shook his head. “No. I—” He glanced to the King, and then fell quiet before he could say anything else. Monica felt a gaze at her back and turned around to see King Noctis’ eyes taking on a slightly pinkish hue as he ground his teeth together, enraged.

Shit.

“The only Oaths I have,” King Noctis said, voice even although Monica could feel the rumble of fire and lightning just off to the edge under the words, “were made at the Citadel.” He eyed her; Monica felt the slightest bit of relief as that meant the imposter didn’t have a tie to the King. They could handle this. She only needed to get to the bottom of why they trusted someone show heavily—different. “My Oath with Prompto returned one week after it was torn away from me.”

Monica froze. She looked at the King and fumbled her words until she said, “That’s—” Could they even do that? Break and then rebind without—without say-so?

“Impossible?” the imposter—Prompto—the imposter uttered. “I was taken away by fucking Solheim magic—possibly magitek really. Some weird time travel bullshit. Hell, I got to meet the Founder King for all of five minutes—arrogant ass that he was—honestly are all Lucis Caelum’s arrogant or lazy or something?”

“Shut your mouth,” King Noctis said, although there wasn’t any heat in it and the oppressive pressure in the room seemed to ease. His eyes returned to their normal grey blue and Monica felt like she could breathe. Prompto—the imposter—waved a hand at the King negligently.

“Oh come on you’re an arrogant ass too,” the impos—Promp—Monica couldn’t figure out what to call him now. Her thoughts tumbled around and she felt—Gods was this what Cor dealt with when he came back and drank because King Regis wanted to spend time with him? No wonder the man ignored his duties half the time and Monica had to drag him into work if so.

“Doesn’t mean you have to say it,” Noctis whined and dropped back down into the couch. “C’mon, Prom.”

“Don’t call me Prom,” Prompto said.

“I always call you Prom,” Noctis pointed out, dry wit and humor.

“Yeah but like—” Prompto seemed to struggle for his words, and then shrugged. “Only for certain times and places, Noct. Only you.”

Noctis waved a hand, smiled, and then glanced to Monica. “You get it now, right?” he said. “The bond snapped back. This is Prompto.”

He was, Monica thought faintly, utterly correct. The way the King eased in the blond’s presence was the way the King had always eased in the blond’s presence. Prompto Argentum seemed to just know what to say or do to get the King to relax; to stop the rather legendarily known fury that buried itself deep into the Lucis Caelum line—a protective instinct, maybe, that made them prone to acts of violence in revenge for a slight.

Still Monica felt shaky as she said, “I understand.”

The last person Cid expected to come down and find him had been the tall behemoth that clung to Cor’s kid with a worrying intensity. Yet still the man stepped off the edge of the elevator not even fifteen minutes later, and by Cid’s estimate that hardly left enough time for the ensuing conversation that needed to happen upstairs. Cid eyed the man from where he lounged on his ratty old couch, settled with a decent cup of brandy and a picture filled with memories.

“They jes let ya go, did they?” Cid questioned when the man stepped forward, the slightest hint of a hesitance to him.

“My presence they need not for the conversation above,” Gilgamesh uttered, and then tilted his head toward one of the chairs. “May I?”

Cid snorted and tipped back a sip of his glass with a grumbled, “Got yerself full o’ questions, then.”

“Indeed,” Gilgamesh sighed heavily and settled himself down into the chair. “You spoke of Oaths and Consequences.”

“Yeah? Ain’t that hard t’understand.”

Gilgamesh looked down and Cid leaned himself back to regard the stranger. Taller than any man Cid had the pleasure to meet, Gilgamesh honestly looked like he stepped out of some ancient period drama. He wasn’t human, for all he pandered to it—Cid could read that plan. Something Other, like the Messengers that followed around the Oracle’s lot. Yet somehow this being bound himself in Oaths so restrictively tied to the Lucis Caelum line. They tightened like vices around the man, quieted what would normally be loud—choked him in regrets. Cid sighed heavily.

“Ask yer damned questions,” Cid grumbled tiredly and Gilgamesh looked up at him.

“You spoke of the loss of a Shield and Hand, and the Changes this wrought,” Gilgamesh uttered, and drifted forward slightly as he peered at Cid with almost glowing reddish eyes. “I ask you of these Changes—of these Consequences.”

“You ain’t lost no King,” Cid pointed out, and he let a grin cross his face at the utterly blank response he got in return.

“Have I not?” Gilgamesh uttered, voice empty.

“No,” Cid nodded. “Ya ain’t. But ya’ve witnessed one; th’ aftermath an’ madness of it.”

Neither said anything as Gilgamesh lost him into thought and understanding. Cid felt himself a bit pleased about it all; he could see the way memory moved about the man in a way it didn’t about others—how Gilgamesh near utterly relived the moment in contemplation. Cid didn’t know what happened or when, but he could see the moment when the being put together the words into a coherency that most people disregarded.

“Ah,” Gilgamesh murmured. “Yes. A madness it is.”

“An’ what’re ya gonna do ‘bout it?” Cid asked, pointedly. “Let it run its course?”

Gilgamesh hummed and said, “What would you suggest, Prorok?”

Cid barked off a laugh; he said with a grin, “Ya know what’s right ‘n wrong, seelenreisender,” he said, and the words that came from him were rougher than he’d used in a long, long time—yet they came to him as easy as breathing. “Ya gonna sit there an’ let another dictate it t’ya?” When Gilgamesh eyed him, surprised, Cid scrubbed a hand through his beard. “S’what’s wrong in this world,” Cid muttered disdainfully. “Mors ain’t seen passed it, an’ Reggie refused t’—listenin’ like someone on high’s gonna give ‘em all th’ answers. Pah!”

Gilgamesh looked away, and Cid waited for the response—and when the man uttered, “We Forge our own Paths with each breath afore the Gate,” Cid smiled a bitter, vicious sort of thing, and waited for the man’s next question to come his way.

#fanfic #final fantasy xv #ffxv #noctis lucis caelum #prompto argentum #cid sophiar #gladiolus amicitia #ignis scientia #cor leonis #monica ffxv #gilgamesh ffxv #fic: the path untrodden #fic: the burning of solheim

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