#vayne writes stuff

[bitterflames]

Hello Langya friend - Your answer to question 4 was correct - Xiao Jingyan is the best! Full credit. For question 5 I noticed you are a Jingsu shipper, so, would Xiao Jingyan feel some angst about kissing MCS before the reveal?

omg, i love this question, thank you anon! i, uh, have A Lot Of Feelings about jingyan and his lin shu-related grief and how all of that colours his relationship with mcs and... for reasons i ended up writing out my response as an r/AmITheAsshole parody. as you do.

Posted by u/WaterBuffalo 3 minutes ago

AITA for still being hung up on my first love?

I (31M) lost my best friend/cousin/first love (it's complicated) to a tragic incident twelve years ago, and was convinced I would never feel the same way for anyone else. I'm basically married to my work anyway, so it's never really been an issue.

Until I met this guy (30?M) - I guess you could say he's a work friend? We see each other regularly; we practically live in each other's back pockets, and I don't think I'm being delusional when I say there's a spark there.

Except… I don't know why, but whenever I'm around him, my thoughts keep going astray. They don't look alike, they're opposites in every way - one was outdoorsy and full of energy, a little fireball even in the dead of winter; the other is a fragile scholarly type who's always cold. But all these little mannerisms he has, the way he clenches his hands in the hem of his sleeves, they remind me of my first love so much I think I'm going crazy.

And last night, one thing led to another, and I kissed him in the secret tunnel between our houses (don't ask). It was just a brief kiss, but I could tell he was into it - the way that he shivered and clung to me with those long, elegant hands, even called me by name (which he never does).

And then he left in a hurry. Since last night he hasn't returned a single one of my messages, and I'm alone with my thoughts, and worst of all I can't stop thinking - they even kiss the same way.

I know it's not fair on either of them. Not to the memory of my first love, or to my new friend. Maybe it's just wishful thinking; maybe I'm just seeing the ghost of a dead man in places where he doesn't belong, because I miss him so badly. I don't know.

AITA?

[bitterflames]

gonna ramble about those wips a little actually (on here instead of main bc it's quieter). congrats to those ocs i've been spamming the dash with for like a straight week (sorry) for sweeping this thing.

the thing with them in it is shaping up to be a short comic and probably a fair bit less romantic than it sounds (unless you think "your life and death belongs to me and only i can kill you" is a romantic sentiment, which, okay, i do).

runner-up (insufferable foreplay) is probably the closest to finished out of any of these things and it's... lin chen/mei changsu pwp oh god (sorry again). idk "pwp" is a bit of a misnomer maybe but: dicks are touched. feelings are alluded to in a roundabout fashion. they bitch at each other the entire time. not much else happens!

out of context WIPs game

rules: pick a bunch of your WIPs and summarize them as badly as possible, then ask your followers to vote on which one they’d be most likely to read. multiple/all/none options are completely optional.

tagged by @thebansacredbanned, tyty! 🥰💜

tagging! @toadmancer @sunriseverse uhhh literally anyone else who's writing stuff and likes doing these things PLEASE tell me about your wips 🫵 this is a threat.

[vayneoc]

[shimmerbeasts]

So, I gave this situation a lot of thought and given that it is the end of the year, that marks the ideal time frame to basically reshape the way, I wanna handle the blog and my muses, going forward. These changes include how my roster functions, certain limitations I am going to give myself, concerning the amount of drafts I have, and changes in verses and some alterations on the ask box. Basically, quality instead of quantity is going to be the name of the game, so hopefully, I can better organise my hobbies and interests and hopefully also my eventual career as an author.

That means first of all: Every single thread I have is dropped. I want a completely clean slate thread-wise, however, dynamics, which we established, can absolutely carry over. I am not gonna flush all the hard work, I did with so many of you (you are all amazing) down the drain.

Now, onto what changes. Let's start with the formal bullshit. I am going to limit myself to twenty drafts and try to adhere to this limit. Those drafts will preferably be plotted. That way, I hopefully can avoid getting overwhelmed, but also really dig into the meat of our threads.

That does not mean casual stuff or crack does not happen. It can still happen, but it will occur with less frequency and those things likely won't carry over much. If I happen to send you an rp related meme, then please just have fun with the drabble. I will try to limit how much I continue those threads.

When it comes to my ask box, I will prioritise unprompted asks and scenarios over rp memes. However, I will always accept headcanon-related memes or memes for me the writer. Again, all these changes will be done to limit the effects of being overwhelmed and to keep my rps at a manageable medium.

When it comes to my verses, I am going to do a massive cut in what types of verses I have. Specifically, I am going to stick to the verses, which basically form a narrative throughline. For most verses, this will basically be the pre-canon, the default and the post-canon verse. Ergo the past, present and future of a muse. This is done so I can focus on what I wanna explore instead of spreading myself too thin. After all, it is better to explore an idea and its ramifications in detail as opposed to expanding and adding five half-baked ideas at once.

My muse roster will have a bit of an update on its purpose. Because of the fact that I will lean even more into the concept of storytelling and character development, the split between primary, secondary and tertiary muses still exists. Except, there is going to be a crucial change now. The tertiary muses will now be rebranded as supports and are not technically muses on the blog. Let me explain what I mean.

Because of my desire to be more story-driven, certain characters will serve as the supporting cast for other muses. These characters help propel the plot forward but also give your muse a different perspective on the muse they roleplay with. They might also reveal information, you would not get otherwise. Think of them a bit like NPCs but due to the big role, they play in the muse's life or what they represent for the muse, they have a bigger chance of emerging. Your muses might even meet them before they meet the actual muse. There will also be other classical NPCs, which your muse might meet under very specific circumstances.

Now onto the actual muse roster:

My primary muses (who will be focussed on the whole Zaunite lore and story) are going to be Silco, Jinx and Vi. They are the ones, whose plotting will come the most naturally and easiest for me. Their supports are Sevika and Warwick/Vander.

My secondary muses (who have different thematic stories and lore as they occur outside of Zaun/Piltover) will be Naafiri and Ahri. Writing them might potentially require a bit more plotting and forethought. Naafiri's supporting characters will be Nasus and Rek'Sai. Ahri's supporting characters will be Yasuo, Evelynn and to a lesser extent Vayne.

I hope that these changes I am making will lessen some self-made stressors. Again, I do apologise for basically dropping everything right now. I promise, I still want to write with everybody here. I just need to sort out how I wanna make things work. So please, everybody do not be intimidated by those changes. I promise, that my enthusiasm for writing and roleplaying remains unbroken.

[solar-eclippse]

Since I'm gonna be joining this WIP project, I thought it would be a good idea to actually plan out what I'm going to write, for my own reference! (After I'm done, I promise I'll start publishing stuff again. It's been too long)

First priority: JonElias week~! - Day 1: No Powers/Try Again - Day 2: Royal - Day 3: Sick - Day 4: Hurt/Comfort / Last Words - Day 5: Firsts - Day 6: Time Travel/Old Memories - Day 7: Entity Swap/Fatal Attraction

Second priority: Finishing oneshots I've been putting off - Descent: Arcane, Jilco, sort-of-continuation of A Shimmer In The Dark - Arcane time loop AU - League of Legends, Vayne x Evelynn soulbond fic - League of Legends, Anima Squad Jinx x Seraphine - The Magnus Archives/Protocol, Jonathan x Gwendolyn fluff - Maybe more if I end up finishing all of that but I don't want to bite off more than I can chew

[mistdrinkersblade]

((I need to write OC/Zero stuff i like Vayne and Zero))

[sevikasangel]

. . .𝐑𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬 + 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭 ˖ ࣪ . ࿐ ♡ ˚ .

firstly, this blog is a safe space for everyone. racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism and any sort of hate will be deleted and the sender will be blocked on the spot. don't be a dick :3 .

ʀᴜʟᴇꜱ

❥๑ i only write wlw stories. in my stories, it's always going to be afab/f! reader. do not request male characters!!!

❥๑ character x reader only

❥๑ minors do not interact. you will be blocked.

❥๑ this blog contains nsfw and dark content. i always properly tag my works and write trigger warnings, so stay safe, make sure you read them.

❥๑ do not translate/repost my work in any other platform.

❥๑ some requests might take longer than others. it's all a matter of inspiration. so please, do not rush me to get yours out.

x will write — bdsm, breathplay, somnophilia, dub!con, cnc, pet play, stepcest...

x won't write — non-con, pxdo related stuff, gore, wound fucking, scat, fisting...

x dni — transphobes, homophobes, maps (aka pedo), terfs, radfems, proana, minors, men, proshippers

ꜰᴀɴᴅᴏᴍꜱ — ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀꜱ

𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐞: caitlyn, vi, cassandra, sevika, ambessa, grayson, jinx

𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐠𝐮𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐥𝐞𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬: vayne, samira, irelia, elise, renata glasc, camille

𝐤/𝐝𝐚: evelynn, kai'sa, akali, ahri

𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥: kayle, sona

𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭: viper, sage, fade

𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐥 𝐯𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐠𝐞: alcina, bella, miranda, donna

𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐚: carmilla, lenore, lisa, sypha

𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐧𝐞𝐲: vanessa (human ursula), maleficent, cruella, lady tremaine, gothel

[frankensteined]

i can’t do graphics, but i wanted to throw up some of my loosey-goosey character ideas that i’ve come up with so far anyways, in case anyone would like to plot some stuff in advance, or get an idea of what i’m working on ♥ (names are also loosey-goosey, if they clash with anyone else’s ideas!)

HENRY SAINT-GEORGE - idk exact age yet bc: Old - vampire

fc: idris elba

henry’s an old OC of mine that i’ve repurposed about six or seven times over the years (????). i made him back in...2015? 2016? and he used to be a werewolf, but i’m really digging the vampire ideas here so i’m trying something new with him! 

(also because immortal idris elba is the best idris elba, lbr)

his bloodline is TBA 

he doesn’t remember much about his life before he was sired, just that it wasn’t pleasant, and he doesn’t feel like it’s been much of a loss to put it behind him; that said, every now and again he’ll meet someone that he gets a sense of deja vu over, and he’ll assume they remind him of someone he knew way back when, and he’ll be begrudgingly invested in them

because he barely remembers his own origins, he’s taken it upon himself to try to remember all that he can about other people. this has served him pretty well over the years, both as an attentive and considerate ally, and as a ruthless and daunting adversary

he loves the written word, and has definitely, 100% written a whole slew of novels over the years under various pennames. and, yeah, absolutely has written some terrible supernatural romance novels over the decades. he’s not sorry about it :’)

huge dorky fan of museums and art galleries; he spends way too much money in the gift shops of every one he’s been to

manners are capital-i Important to him

as is honesty. don’t lie to him, he’ll take it personally.

can’t help his paternal ~vibes~, and has definitely sired some bby vamps before, so if you’re looking for a vampire dad: *finger guns* lemme know

lived in england for most of his life/existence, but headed over to salem for funsies after the revolt happened; liked it so much that he stayed!

idk what his official occupation is right now, but he’s definitely still writing, and has a shelf of a lot of the books he’s written under various pseudonyms

MAURA VAYNE - 37 - witch

fc: rebecca ferguson

she’s a new character i’m working on, so there’s a chance that some of these things will change, but i’ve got a pretty good grasp of her right now!

her witch type is also TBA

she’s a native of salem, and has been living her best life since the revolt

honestly, before, when she needed to hide her magic, she was quiet and reserved, and considered a bit of an eccentric oddball, but since then she’s broken out of her shell (like a selina kyle in batman returns kind of readjustment), and she’s now more assertive and playful (and a bit meddling, too, tbh)

owns an equally eccentric oddball shop that’s half antique store and half is pawn shop

used to be married/ in a long-term relationship, and is still sore about it falling apart, even though it’s been a while (so if anyone needs a literal witch of an ex-wife, lemme know!)

a huge supporter of vengeance; ironically, not in her own life, but she’s definitely that friend who encourages you to get revenge against someone that hurt you, bc You Deserve It!

loves games of all sorts: cards, chess, board games...even the dreaded Uno: Destroyer Of Friendships

loves coffee, but collects teapots *shrug*

definitely also has a collection of all sorts of like...traditional “witchy” things you’d find in a salem giftshop, or a spirit halloween store, because she has always found them amusing and endearing, in a misguided kinda way

could use a familiar? so, if anyone needs a witch for their shifter...!!

???? - ??? - ???!!

honestly, just knowing that i can have one more face claim reserve is Haunting me, so trust that i will eventually have a third character as well

i just have a mess of ideas and none of them are settled yet

so if anyone needs has any characters that they need, i’m also open to suggestions! i’m mostly interested in playing characters in their thirties and up, but could be nudged to playing someone in their late twenties if the plot is right! 

this is basically one big TBA space because i’m indecisive but love plotting: a deadly combination, tbh

if anybody would like to plot, or even just chat, feel free to shoot me a mesaage on here, or on discord: frankencourt#8865

@cihrp

[bitterflames]

no takebacks | li lianhua x fang duobing, postcanon

Li Lianhua is teasing him about his supposed upcoming marriage to the princess again, in that way he does sometimes that’s more of a defensive mechanism than anything. Pushing people away before they've had enough of him, or — or something. It's sad, and it's infuriating, and Fang Duobing is having none of it. He'd go crazy with boredom as a spoiled consort anyway, he insists.

"Unless I was yours, maybe," he mumbles under his breath. "That wouldn't be so bad." A quiet admission, almost unintentional; never intended to be overheard.

Despite the lingering effects of the Bicha poison in his system, Li Lianhua — old fox that he is — still has excellent hearing.

"Oh?" Suddenly he's right there, behind Fang Duobing's shoulder, warm breath raising goosebumps on the back of his neck. "I do seem to recall you saying... aiyo, what was it now? If I could truly raise the dead, you'd take my surname?"

"Hey! That— that was just—!"

"And here I am, a dead man walking. So how about it, then," Li Lianhua smirks lazily and leans in close, his voice dropping to a sultry purr, "Li Xiaobao?"

Before he can change his mind, Fang Duobing tackles and kisses him breathless.

"No takebacks," he pants, in between furious kisses. "Don't you dare." His arms wrap tightly around Li Lianhua's waist, backing him up against the wall as though he could keep him here with sheer force of will, as though to say: I'm not going anywhere, so please, please stay.

(Beneath him, eyes wide and face flushed, Li Lianhua shivers and clings back just as fiercely.)

[vayneoc]

🎭 4 Vayne >:3c

Hi cookie (｡･ω･)ﾉﾞ

the ask this is all about

🎭 Have they ever pretended to have a different personality from their own? Why? To seem cooler? Blend in? Maybe to stab in the back when least expected?

To respect.

Vayne's personality initially is doing well with corporate world, but not with... people?

Starting to work with Padre means listening to the experience, from time to time leaking from the aged person's mind. As if a mortal body cannot hold it anymore.

And Vayne is not one for heart-to-heart conversations, yet she is with respect. She cannot find herself in his speeches, but surely knows how to pretend. So it turns into the old man's heart... monologue? With Vayne's making efforts to listen.

Although, slowly, it starts to throw in a word or two. Make notes. Find resemblance. And meaning.

A respectful lie taking it's rightful, calming place in Vayne's personality. The experience not lived, but well learnt.

[edgyspooks]

To-do list

Those are all the asks in my ask box that I’m working on. The order doesn’t indicate anything because I work on a whim, and sometimes I take more time to write some stuff than I take to write other things. 

Alien psionic being insulting Victor’s technology

Sejuani and Ashe’s reactions when their hunters bring in a magical ice-bending elf 

Jarvan, Vayne and Lux meet a fey being who tells Jarvan to free the mages

What would cause Draven to actually make a move on Tamara?

Darius as a war prisoner

Ahri having snow adventures (NSFW? I guess? I don’t know? It’s complicated)

Sentinel reader x Akshan

Draven x Tamara where Tamara gets pregnant

Odyssey Kayn as a dad

Draven beaten by a tall woman headcanons?

NSFW I with Tryndamere/Ashe and Sylas/Sejuani

Draven and Tamara with a prodigy kid

Braum content

Kazuha, Rosaria, Childe and Itto love languages

NSFW B,M,O with Sivir

SFW J with Kai'sa, Sejuani, Illaoi and MF

Master YI headcanons

Poly relationship with Lucian and Senna

Rosaria x nun!reader

[smokeybrand]

Incandescent Rage

The second season of His Dark Materials has completed and, as with the first, it was truly excellent. I reviews the first season and since this is mostly just a return of that level of excellence, my opinion of it hast really changed so, if you wan a proper reviews about this show, search for that one. I will say this; The second season is much better. The first was excellent, don’t misunderstand, but the return to this world of Dust and Daemons really felt like everyone understood who their characters were, where they needed to be. Seriously, this second season solidified the pure love, passion, and reverence, hinted at in the first season. Since i can’t really be objective about this show any longer, it’s just too good, here are the things i loved the most from this exceptional second season.

Dafne Keen comes through with another devastatingly inspired performance. Her lyra Silvertongue has been a standout for this show and it would absolutely not work if Keen wasn’t up to the task. She’s stealing all of the scenes and this is HER show!

Amir Wilson was excellent as Will Parry. The little bits we saw of him in season one seeded a level of confidence in the kid for the character but he rely gets to show his ability in this new season. People are talking awards for said performance and, while i agree he was very good, there are just too many other people, just in this how, who overshadow him. Still, he was much better than in the first.

The very best thing about this show, for me, is Ruth Wilson. She is brilliant in everything she ever does but her take on Marisa Coulter is just scathingly horrifying but, at the same time, desperately heartbreaking. She was my favorite character in the first season and that love was proven true with this second. That scene she shared with Miranda? I felt that. The rematch between Daemons she lost against Lyra? I felt that, too. That look of utter disgusted malice when she made it to Will’s Oxford and talked to Mary? That one cut stupid deep. very revelation, every realization, every devastation, conveyed beautifully, depressingly, despairingly, by Ruth. F*cking chef kiss, all season.

Marisa was my favorite character in the first season. I identified with her aloof calculation and focused resolve. Underlying that was someone with real passion, even is she dd everything in her power to keep those volatile emotions in check. I knew that archetype and i knew it well It reminded me of me. Her interaction with Lee in that cell explained to me exactly why. She’s a product of abuse, just like me. Her parents were cruel to her, for a long time, and she coped by turning into a monster. Just like me. Marisa is a sociopath. She is cruel. She is inhuman. All of that stems from the inhumanity she suffered as a youth. Marisa isn’t unhinged. She knows exactly what she’s doing to the letter. Marisa is, however, unbound and when you have no moral compass, can justify anything through your smothering intellect, and have absolute control over creatures that eat souls, a reckoning for all those who have slighted you, is on hand.

Andrew Scott makes a fleeting but memorable appearance as John Parry, Will’s long searched for father. Scott is, of course, great in the role, as he is in most things, but we don’t get to spend enough time with him to really see him build this character. It’s a small but integral part but i just wanted more. Andrew Scott is as good as Wilson in their craft an it seems like a missed opportunity that he was only around for such a fleeting amount of time.

While I'm gushing about performances, Lin-Manuel Miranda actually surprised me in this season. In the first, it felt like he was stage acting, probably because this thing is shot on a sound stage and he fell back into the training he was familiar with. That as not the case this go around. No, Miranda’s Lee Scoresby was a full realized person an he played well off Wilson, Scott, and Cristela Alonzo. I actually felt bad knowing how this season was going to end.

I understand that this is the second book, the All-Falls-Down moments. This is when everything spirals out of control an our protagonist take massive losses. This is the part where the obstacles that need to be overcome, finally crystallize and impede our heroes. That said, Lee and Hester died. I am incensed.

Imagine feeling such malice toward the divine design for man that you manifest a means to cross into heaven for the sole purpose of punching God in the face with your own two hands. This motherf*cker Asriel has that Vayne Solidor energy. He got that Sosuke Aizen focus and I am here for all of it. Lord Asriel Belacqua, the man who showed up on god's doorstep and sh*t on his porch. This guy is my f*cking hero.

I have to say, His Dark Materials makes Christianity far more palatable than Christianity on it's own. It' no secret I'm a man who lacks the capacity for faith so i approach this religion stuff like a narrative, a myth, not the Word. In that regard, the Jesus folk have one of the best mythological narratives out there. His Dark Materials does an extremely good job kind of grounding that theology in a workable, understandable, fringe science. i am very impressed with this level of writing and am having a blast with all of these second season revelations.

[mamthew]

A Final Fantasy Ranking

Over the course of the quarantine, and because I had such a good time with the Final Fantasy VII Remake, I've ended up blazing through a ton of Final Fantasy games. Since April, I've played IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, and XIII. 6, 7, 9, and 10 I'd beaten before. 4, 12, and 13 I'd played to some capacity before. 5 and 8 were completely new experiences. I had no interest in going further back than IV, since it was the first one to really put any effort into character work, and I didn't play either MMO because MMOs don't really appeal to me (I'm planning to try XIV whenever this new update drops that makes the story mode more accessible, but it keeps getting pushed back so oh well). I also didn't replay XV because I've played XV three times and watched other people play it in its entirety twice, so I have a much better handle on it than any other game in the series.

Anyway, I didn't really have any plans for what I'd do with this, besides get a better understanding of the series as a whole, but I was kinda inspired to do my own Final Fantasy ranking. I'll probably be a bit more detailed than I should be because I tend to overanalyze my media and end up having too much to say. I’m actually not placing VII Remake in this ranking half because I regard it as a spinoff and half because it’s not yet a complete story, even though Part 1 is unquestionably a complete game. If I were to put it somewhere, it would probably be close to the top, possibly even in second place. Also worth noting that this is gonna have SPOILERS for every game I discuss here. I really just wanna use this as a place to nail down some of my thoughts on these games, so they’re pretty stream of consciousness and I didn’t bother avoiding any details from the plots.

10: Final Fantasy VIII.

I don’t think there’s another game in the series with a more obvious corporate hand in it than VIII. It’s kinda the Fant4stic of FF games; there are the bones of a substantive game in there somewhere, but every aspect of the game is such a bald attempt at checking off a 1999 list of “things gamers want” that the whole affair feels hollow and sickening. A major trend I’ve noticed throughout this series is the extent to which FFVII’s success pushed the architects of almost every subsequent game to try to recapture whatever it was that worked about VII, and VIII got the worst of it. It’s got the sullen guy with a special sword. It’s got the sci-fi. It’s got the terrorists with hearts of gold fighting against an oppressive state. It’s got the train scenes. It’s got the case(s) of amnesia that hides the true premise of the story. It’s got the ability to give any character any loadout.

Besides that, they kinda crammed in just a bunch of stuff popular with kids at the time. Jurassic Park? It’s in there. Beauty and the Beast? Here’s the ballroom scene. Hunchback of Notre Dame? Here’s that carnival. Alien? Now you’re alone on a spaceship running away from a horror monster. Saving Private Ryan? The party shares brains with war veterans and dreams of their experiences at war I guess. Half of anime? It’s all about a high school for mercenaries and the party is trying to get back in time for the school festival.  Fandom culture? Zines are a collectible item, and each one you find adds an update to Selphie's Geocities page. It also has astronauts, and transformers, and a haunted castle, and a prison break, and Rome, and Alpine Wakanda, and war crimes, and lion cubs that have attained enlightenment, and there’s almost no connective tissue from one idea to the next.

Also the junction system is convoluted and terrible, using magic makes your stats worse, all enemies level up every time you do, and I couldn’t tell you which character excelled in what stats. The characters were all very flat, and the first time I felt like I was seeing the characters interact in ways that helped me to understand them was in the cutscene that plays during the end credits.

Also the female lead’s role in the story changes entirely with no warning every five hours or so. She’s a terrorist, oh no she’s aristocracy in the country she’s terroristing against, oh no she’s jealous of the others because they grew up together and she didn’t, oh no she’s Sandra Bullock in Gravity, oh no she’s the villain and it’s too dangerous to let her out, oh no it’s actually fine and they were bad for locking her up.

It’s an absolute disaster of a game. However, the music and background art is absolutely beautiful. Maybe they never gave me a good enough reason to be in an evil time traveling haunted castle, but damn is it a gorgeous rendering of an evil time traveling haunted castle.

9: Final Fantasy XII.

I’ve known for years that FFXII had issues in development. The writers came up with a story for it, and execs got scared because there were no young characters and they’d convinced themselves that young protagonists are what makes games sell. So two more characters - Vaan and Penelo - were added, one was framed as the protagonist of the story, and the entire story was rewritten so it could feasibly be from his perspective.

While the two characters they added are egregiously tangential to the plot, XII honestly has no protagonist. The writers originally wanted Basch to be the protagonist, but his entire arc is really just following Ashe around and being sad about his evil twin. Ashe is probably the most important to the story, but doesn’t have much presence for a good chunk of the story, and makes her most character-defining choice offscreen before having it stolen from her by a side character. Balthier has the largest presence in the story, and is most closely related to most of the events of the story, but has pretty much no role in the ending.

Honestly, if I were writing FFXII and told it needed a young protagonist, I would have aged up and expanded the role of Larsa, the brother of the main villain, who shows up as a temporary party member from time to time. The entire game is about family ties, and a journey spotlighting Larsa could have involved his learning about Ashe, Basch, Balthier and Fran’s family situations and using their experiences to grapple with his own. Damn, now I’m sitting here thinking about how good that could have been.

As it is, the game feels disjointed and aimless, and the ending is so bad it’s farcical. When I reached the ending, I watched Basch and Ashe forgive Basch’s evil twin for his villainy rampage, harking back to the moment earlier in the game when Ashe turned down the chance to gain powers that would have allowed her to avenge her country because she realized that those powers could also drive her to hurt innocents in the crossfire. In this moment, I realized how Vaan fit in as the protagonist of the game. “Oh, he’s going to realize that violence begets violence, and that he must break the cycle by forgiving Vayne for the death of his brother. He’s going to let go of that hatred he’s been trying to push onto someone for so long, and it’ll finally allow him to heal.” I realized that even though the road to this point was rocky, the writers had managed to craft a satisfying ending from the seemingly disparate pieces of this uneven plot.

And then Vaan picked up a sword and screamed AAAAAAAAAAA and charged Vayne down and stabbed him, and Vayne turned into a shrapnel robot dragon and exploded all the star wars ships and I threw my controller aside and laughed uncontrollably while my characters beat him up and completed the game on their own without any further input from me.

Oh yeah, the battle system is also incredibly boring. Instead of battling, the player writes up an AI script for each character, then lets them act based on those scripts. I would straight up put the controller down and watch youtube videos whenever a group of enemies showed up. I was pretty excited about the job system, but then there didn’t really feel like much of a difference between jobs, and my characters all behaved pretty much the same as each other.

The hands-off battle system, unfocused story, lethargic voice acting, and tuneless music all left me pretty uninvested in the whole affair. The art style and locations are beautiful, though, and it did make me want to eventually check out some of the Tactics games, which take place in the same universe but are supposed to have excellent stories and gameplay.

8: Final Fantasy XIII.

I’m not sure I’ve ever had two such opposing opinions of a game’s story vs. its gameplay. This game is the only one that plays with a bunch of story elements from FFIX, which did a lot to endear it to me. It’s sort of a game in which the protagonists are Kuja, the villain of IX. Like Kuja, they are created as tools by an uncaring god for the purpose of fighting against one world on behalf of another world, and are subsequently forced to grapple with the horrors of having an artificially shortened lifespan.

The story actually has a lot of Leftist themes, too. The gods of that universe spread ideology among the populace, and the people unquestioningly believe these false stories, as the gods have provided for them for as long as there has been written history. Much of the character arcs center on the characters being forcibly removed from their places within those ideological frameworks and having to unlearn what they’d always believed to be objectively true about the world.

So the story actually is pretty good, but it’s held back by some really clumsy storytelling; it constantly uses undefined jargon, has almost no side characters with which it might flesh out the world, actively fights against players trying to glean information from environmental details, and maintains (at least for me) a weird disconnect between the characters in the gameplay and the characters in the cutscenes. I think this partly stems from Square’s original failed plan for FFXIII to be the first game in a much larger series of games sharing themes and major story details. Despite these issues, however, the characters are all likeable and (mostly) believable, and their interactions are grounded in real emotional weight even while their universe feels intangible.

This all got dragged down by the gameplay, which is total dogshit. It’s got the worst battle system I think I’ve seen in an RPG. The game only stops being doggedly, unflinchingly linear about thirty hours in, the whole game took me about fifty hours, and I spent the last fifteen hours beating my head against each individual battle, waiting until the system hiccuped long enough to accidentally slide me a win. That meant I had about a five hour window of euphoric play, convinced that I actually loved this game, thrilled with every new experience it gave me, and excited to see what would happen next. I guess those five hours are what pushed this game over XII in my ranking.

7: Final Fantasy V.

Until FFXV, this game was the last of the “Warriors of Light” games, in which the game follows a party of four set characters for its entirety. To this day, it’s the last of the “Warriors of Light” games to let the player customize which character holds which roles through the job system.

FFV’s job system is the reason to play the game. Its story is mediocre, and its characters are all fairly flat, but there’s something viscerally satisfying about building party members up in jobs that might enhance the role they ultimately will fill. For my mage character, I maxed out Black Mage, Blue Mage, Mystic Knight, Summoner, and Geomancer. Then at the end, I switched her to a Freelancer with Black Magic and Summoning, and she kept all the passive skills for those jobs and also the highest stats across those jobs.

It was super fun and kind of a shift of focus for me, since I tend to place story above anything else in games. Despite the story not being special, though, the game’s writing is actually a ton of fun. It’s definitely got the most comic relief in the series, and I came away loving Gilgamesh as much as everyone else does.

And while it’s nothing special graphically, it does have some really cool enemy designs, and the final boss design is one of the most memorable ones they’ve ever done. Which is impressive because I keep having to look up Exdeath’s name because the character himself is super forgettable.

6: Final Fantasy IV.

This wasn’t the first game in the series to feature actual characters with names and depth, but I have no interest in playing FFII, so it might as well be. I actually played the DS Remake for this game, so it definitely had some quality of life improvements, like full 3d characters and maps, voice acting, an updated script, the ability to actually see the ATB gauge, and the ability to switch to other characters whose turns are ready without using a turn.

Apparently one thing the remake didn’t do was rebalance the difficulty for more modern sensibilities. Instead, this remake is...harder? It requires more grinding than the original? Why??

Either way, though, the story is actually solid! The game opens on its protagonist, Cecil, committing a war crime on the orders of his king, who raised him as a child. The first ten hours of so of the game follows Cecil as he tries to understand why he was ordered to kill so many innocents, turns his back on his country, and works to redeem himself.

This arc is reinforced by the game mechanics, too, which is super clever. His redemption is marked by a change in job from a Dark Knight to a Paladin, which also resets his level. For a time, his life is considerably harder because he’s finding his footing as a new person, which is marked by battles which had been easy becoming much harder for the player for a time.

This game places storytelling over gameplay more than I think any other game in the series. Each character is locked into a job, which I much prefer in my RPGs to games where characters function pretty much interchangeably. I dunno if it’s because I cut my RPG teeth on Tales, but it really bugs me when I can give Tifa the exact same loadout as Barret. I want the lives of the characters to bleed into their functions as gameplay devices.

However, the developers clearly had a ton of different jobs they wanted to add to their game, but hadn’t figured out how to allow for the player to switch in and out party members in standby. To fix this, they increased the in-battle party to five characters rather than or four (or the later constantly frustrating three), rotated the roster a ton, and had a ton of characters who straight up leave permanently. One character dies and never comes back. Two characters die and only are revived after it’s too late to rejoin the party. Four characters end up too injured to continue traveling.

This let the developers make a ton of jobs, but it doesn’t let the player exploit these jobs to their fullest. Characters’ stats reflect their role in the story, as well. One character is quickly aging out of adventuring, so his magic stats increase on levels, but his attack and defense stats actually decrease, signifying his failing body. Another character has already achieved some form of enlightenment, so he gains no stats when he levels up at all. The purpose of IV is the story, over any other aspect of the game, which makes it even more mindboggling that the remake would have increased the difficulty.

Besides that, the biggest issue I had with this game was the overbearing constant drama of it. While there were a few more lighthearted parts, they were mostly relegated to NPC dialogue and sidequests. The characters in this game don’t become friends so much as they become companions who bonded over shared tragedies, and this makes for quite a few scenes of every character separately wallowing in their own immeasurable sadness. I played FFV directly after this game and the light story and jokey dialogue was a much-needed palette cleanser.

5: Final Fantasy VI.

Before the unexpected success of FFVII irreparably changed the franchise, Square constantly mixed up the story formula for the series. IV, V and VI all handled their stories really differently from each other, and what I remember of III also felt fairly different from the games that came after.

Every game from VII on had a very clear protagonist (except XII, whose botched protagonist was still clearly marketed as the protagonist). The concept of the Dissidia crossover series is built on the idea that every FF has a protagonist at the center of its story. FFVI’s Dissidia character is Terra, but Terra is not the protagonist of FFVI.

Apparently while developing FFVI, the directors decided they didn’t want the game to have a clear protagonist, so they asked the staff to staff to submit concepts for characters, and they’d use as many as they could. This game has fourteen characters, each with their own fun gameplay gimmick in battles. Three of the characters are secret, and one can permanently die halfway through if the player takes the wrong actions. Of these fourteen characters, the main story heavily revolves around 3-6 of them, while five more have substantial character arcs.

There’s kind of a schism in the fandom over whether this game or VII is the best one in the series, and I can see why; this game is absolutely fascinating. No other game in the series has done what this game did, which means it’s one of the two FF games I really want to see remade after they complete this VII remake.

The first half is very linear. It breaks the beginning party into three pieces, then sends each character to a different continent, where they meet more characters and build their own parties before everyone reunites. Once the story has taken the player everywhere in the world, the apocalypse hits. The villain’s evil plan succeeds and tears the entire world apart.

The second half of the game picks up a year later with one character finally getting a raft and escaping the island on which she’s been marooned. In this half, the player navigates the world, which has all the same locations, but in completely different parts of the map. The driving factor for much of the second half is to learn from incidental dialogue where each party member has gone in this new world, to track them down, and to try to fix some of the bad that’s been done to the world before finally stopping the villain who destroyed it.

It’s unique and clever and occasionally legitimately tugs at the heartstrings some, which is impressive for a poorly translated SNES game. The final dungeon is a masterpiece all on its own. It requires the player to make three parties of up to four characters, then send them in and switch between them as new roads open. This way, the game manages to feel like an ensemble piece up to the very end.

4: Final Fantasy VII.

As I previously mentioned, there’s kind of a schism in the fandom over whether FFVI or FFVII is the best game in the series. Neither is the best game in the series. FFVII is better than FFVI. Oops.

When I was first drafting up this list, it was before I’d reached my replays of VI or VII, and I tentatively placed them next to each other, with the strong assumption that I’d end up placing VI a bit higher than VII, since it has so many strongly differentiated characters with solid story arcs, beautiful artwork, great music, etc. etc. Then I reached FFVII and not even four hours in, I realized it would have to be higher on my list than VI.

VI has a better battle system, its characters are much more differentiated by their gameplay, its character sprites have aged much better than VII’s character models, and it has four party members in battles instead of three. But I couldn’t overlook VII’s gorgeous artwork, sharp character work, and character-driven story. In the end, I had to give it the edge.

VII is a strange beast. It simultaneously really holds up and has aged horribly. The story is excellent and I love the characters, but the actual line-to-line writing is pretty bad, making the whole experience of the game a bit like swimming upstream; you’re getting somewhere good, but the age of the game is still pushing you back the best it can. Similarly, the background artwork is fantastic and gives the game locations a sense of place incomparable to anything that had come before it, but the character models are so low-poly that the two are constantly at odds with each other.

Still, the game is more a good game than it is an old one. I think it’s managed to duck the absurd level of hype around it by actually being very different from what the most popular images of it make it out to be, if that makes sense. The super futuristic techno-dystopia city only makes up a very small portion of the larger game, and most newcomers to the game won’t have seen Junon, or Corel, or Cosmo Canyon. Heck, I didn’t know Cait Sith or Red XIII were characters before I played the game for the first time. One of the many reasons I’m excited for the rest of this remake is to see newcomers to the story learning just how much variety there is to the world, events, and characters of this game.

FFVII also began (and pulled off really well) a number of storytelling trends that continued in subsequent games in the series. Obviously, almost every game since this one has a clear protagonist with a cool sword for cosplayers to recreate, and an androgynous villain whose story is closely linked to the protagonist (or one villain who is linked to the protagonist and a second one whose purpose is to look like Sephiroth), but it’s started broader, more quality shifts, too.

FFVII is the first game in the series to try to give all its characters arcs based on a similar theme, for example, a trend that has helped give it and future games a sense of thematic unity, especially in IX, X, and XV. Heck, that trend was why I almost came around on XII before they nuked it. It was also the first game in the series to have a real ending, rather than closing out with essentially a curtain call featuring all the party members, like they did in IV through VI (and I assume earlier).

Another common feature of FF games that it didn’t start with VII but certainly was canonized with it was the mid-game plot twist tying the protagonist to both the villain and the larger story. FFIV had this as well, of course, but I feel like the orphanage twist in VIII, the Zanarkand dream twist in X, and the time skip twist in XV were all meant to recall VII’s twist of Cloud’s…very complex existence (IX’s two worlds twist actually is a clear homage to IV, but it’d be hard to argue that Zidane’s connection to Kuja - and the character of Kuja generally - weren’t more influenced by VII).

2: Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XV.

Sorry, this one is a two-fer. I’m not gonna spend too much time on why I placed these two together in the #2 spot (I wrote a long thing on it here, if you’re interested). In summary, the games kinda mirror each other, in story and design. Each game can be seen in the negative space of what the other game leaves out, and at the end, the characters react to similar situations in completely opposite ways. For this reason, and that they’re of comparable quality, I think they’re best viewed as companion pieces.

FFX was the first mainline Final Fantasy game I ever completed, six years late. It was the first FF game with voice acting and many fully modeled locations. It also kinda marks the beginning of the series’ constant changes to the battle system.

That’s not to say the previous games’ battle systems didn’t also differ from each other, but they all had the same setup, with levels and an ATB gauge. This was the first game since III not to have any real-time element to its battle system, nor numbered levels gained through experience points. Since X, no two FF battle systems have been remotely comparable, which is cool and innovative and keeps things fresh, but also means I’ve been starved for just a regular ATB FF game for too long.

In many ways, FFX feels like a bridge between the PS1 games and the later games. It feels much more streamlined than VII, VIII, or IX, in terms of both storytelling and design. The game is very linear, pushing the player from one area to the next and not allowing much backtracking until the very end. It also loses the aging look of the PS1 games’ menus and UI, finally updating the classic font and the blue menus with white borders to fully modernized and sleek graphics.

However, movement still feels very similar to movement in VIII and IX, the music definitely evokes the PS1 games more than the later games, and most locations are portrayed with beautifully painted backgrounds, rather than modeled in (which I actually prefer, and I was glad to see that VII Remake has gone back to that in some places).

Voice acting in this game is phenomenal for 2001, and honestly on par with many contemporary games. I can’t think of a voice actor for the main cast who didn’t do a great job. Tidus’s narration, especially, is emotional and evocative in all the right ways. Grounding the plot in a very personal story about Tidus’s difficulty coming to terms with and proving himself to his abusive father keeps the story relatable and real.

Something interesting about my experience with X is that because it was my first Final Fantasy game, I thought for a very long time that the series was about organized religion, and the ways it is used to justify evil acts. This might be the only game of the ones I’ve played that is about organized religion, or even prominently features a religious doctrine, which really sets it apart from the rest of the series.

The game’s thematic unity is on point, even if there is a scene where they state the central themes a bit too plainly. Every character, and even the entire universe of the story, is held back by the past, and every subplot and the main plot revolves around finding ways to move forward and leave the past behind.

I love FFXV. It feels like a return to form after XII and XIII. It’s also probably the furthest any game in the series has strayed from the original formula. Battles are entirely real-time, and the game is a straightforward action game. There is very little time spent with menus, and even the leveling system has been stripped down to a few skill trees. It’s immediately obvious that the game was originally created to be a spinoff, not a main title.

FFXV is also probably too much a product of the current era of microtransactions and payment plans. The full story is spread out across *deep breath* a feature film, an anime series, an anime OVA, a standalone demo, two console games, four DLC story chapters, a multiplayer side game, a VR fishing game, four phone games (though really three phone games because A New Empire straight up isn't in that universe and also is terrible), an expansion including several entirely new dungeons, and finally a novel set to release sometime this year. That’s a whole lot of story. I’ve not played the phone games or the VR fishing game, or read the novel yet, but I’ve experienced all the rest.

But I also played FFXV when it first released, before any patches, before I knew there was a film, just the game all on its own. So you can believe me when I say that without any supplementary material, the game is still great.

It goes back to the FFI, II, III, V “Warriors of Light” system, where the party has four characters who do not change at all throughout the game. While this bugged me at first, I soon came to appreciate having a story where almost all character interactions involved these four characters. It meant I came to understand them well enough to feel like they were my friends, too. Most characterization in this game is understated, presented through small shared moments, dialogue, and body language as they travel the world together. Much like X, the overarching story might be expansive and far-reaching, but the real show is in the personal journeys the friends have.

Much of the first half of the game is spent exploring an open world, driving along the road and getting out of the car for pit stops or to explore the forests nearby. This is one of the very few games where I don’t mind just exploring an area without the promise of an upgrade or a new scene, just to see what’s around the corner, or to hear whatever banter the characters might engage in next.

The entire world of this game is gorgeous, and the orchestrated music is some of the best they’ve ever done. The main plot is beautiful, too. It’s bittersweet and emotional, with a charismatic villain and a twist that blew me away the first time I reached it.

The supplementary material is also mostly really quality. I’d recommend the Royal Edition over the original edition for sure, and to watch Kingsglaive as well. The anime series is quick and fairly fun, and Comrades expands on the universe in some great ways, but neither has as much bearing on the overall plot as the DLC chapters and Kingsglaive. I’m so in love with the DLC chapters, actually, that two years ago I wrote a piece just on how much Episode Ignis affected me (here if you care).

This is definitely getting long, so I guess I’ll move on after saying I’m upset that they patched Chapter 13 to make it easier, and I’m angry at everyone who complained that Chapter 13 was too hard. It was a brilliant piece of storytelling through game mechanics, and it’s mostly been stripped of all that, now.

1: Final Fantasy IX.

It’s IX. It was always IX. I actually did come into this with an open mind, wondering if one of the new games I’d experience (IV, V, VIII, XII, XIII) might end up hitting me harder than Final Fantasy IX, but as I replayed my favorite game in the series I quickly realized that wouldn’t be happening.

There are only a handful of games that make me cry. IX is one of two without voice acting. There are several songs from IX that make me tear up just when I hear them.

The story of the black mages gaining sentience, learning that they can die, and trying to force themselves back into being puppets just to lose that knowledge really moves me. The same goes for the story of Dagger no longer recognizing her mother, setting out to find a place to belong, learning that her birth family is long dead, then watching her mother return to her old self a moment before losing her forever. And Zidane’s story, where he has nowhere to call home, finally discovers the circumstances of his birth, and realizes that had he stayed in his birthplace, he would have become a much worse person than he ultimately did.

More than any other, though, Vivi’s story will always stick with me. He was found as a soulless husk by Quan, a creature with the intention of fattening him up and eating him, but each of them awoke something in the other, and Quan ended up raising Vivi as his grandson. When Quan passed, a rudderless Vivi went to the city to find a new home, and eventually learned he was created as a weapon. Other weapons had also gained sentience, but none had the worldliness that Vivi had gained from his loving relationship with Quan. When Vivi discovers that most weapons like him die after only a few months, he grapples with the possibility that he may die at any time, and eventually decides that he can only take control of what life he has by living each moment to the fullest. He ends up becoming an example for the other weapons to follow.

FFIX is a game about belonging: both yearning to have somewhere to belong and learning that the place where you think you belong is actually toxic and harmful to you. Even the menu theme is a tune called “A Place to Call Home.”

IX ran counter to the trends of the series in a number of ways. It was a return to high fantasy after the more sci-fi VII and VIII, and was also much more lighthearted than those games, while still being heartfelt and occasionally bittersweet. Gameplay-wise, it locked each of its characters into a single job, gave them designs based on their jobs, brought back four-character parties, and introduced a skill system in which characters learn skills from equipment. It also had a much softer, less realistic art style, and mostly avoided the attempts to recapture VII that have plagued most other subsequent titles (besides Kuja’s design, I guess).

The story is also structured so well. It regularly shifts perspective for the first thirty hours, allowing the player to spend ample time with each of the party members, and shaking up character combinations for fun new interactions. It introduced a system similar to the skits from Tales games, showing the player often humorous vignettes of what’s happening to other characters at the time. Once the characters have all come together in one party, the game has earned the sense that all of them (except for the criminally underexplored Amarant) have become a family.

The supporting cast are a blast as well. Zidane’s thief troupe (who double as a theater troupe) are likeable and fun. Kuja’s villain arc allows him to be sympathetic without losing his edge. The black mages are tragic without being overdone.

The development team for this game put so much more work into this game than they had to. The background artwork was all made in such high-definition resolutions that the act of downscaling them to fit in the game removed details. Uematsu traveled to Europe to make sure he’d get the feel of the soundtrack right, and has said it’s his favorite score he’s ever done. Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy, says IX is his favorite game in the series.

FFIX is one of the two games I would like them to remake after they finish the VII Remake, but I’m terrified they’ll mess it up in some way. Honestly, the game’s only flaws (which I do desperately want them to fix) are a lack of voice acting, the underdeveloped party member Amarant (and to a lesser extent Freya), the dissonance of Beatrix never getting punished in any way for her hand in a genocide, and the fact that very few of the sidequests are story-related because so many of the smaller story details that would normally be relegated to sidequests are covered in the main plot.

Despite the danger, though, I think revisiting IX is absolutely essential moving forward. It represents so much of what made older games like IV and VI great, and its story is much more grounded in real emotion than many current Square stories tend to be. Remaking VII will be good for getting VII out of Square’s system. Remaking IX would be good for putting IX back into Square’s system.

Here’s a IX song as a reward for getting this far. I’m gonna go listen to it and tear up again.

[shadowlover]

RE: Activity, Verses, and Other Things

hello, peggy here

I have things to write but I have been busy not doing them. I will forever put these replies off until I am dragged by internal organs to do them. I will maybe get to them by Saturday night hopefully.

I am coming up with Verses for Evelynn, so like different plots and universes. It only sucks because her skins all suck as far as like... creativity. Safecracker and Sugar Rush are legit not really writable with people. Masquerade and Tango are both like canon skins, like she actually dresses up like that anyways. Blood Moon is just :( and Shadow Assassin is basically pre-rework Evelynn lore, which is kind of cool but there's already hired assassins. K/DA is okay but my favorite part about Evelynn is the gore and violence, not so much the stuff normally found in K/DA verses (basically most people ship Akali and Evelynn as they do rich people things and I have Evelynn as a compulsive serial killer that tours the world) I'm going to hope an Evelynn skin comes out that's actually like... fun and interesting to write. In the meantime, I'll come up with something. Spirit Blossom Evelynn is technically a thing because Vayne references it, so maybe next year. Idk... (this would be so much easier if there was a twisted fate to ship with)

Last thing before I go: apparently there was some sort of "drama" in the community and people said it happens a lot. I really hope it doesn't because that would suck a lot. I like writing Evelynn and i cant find any other LoL rpc's so I'd hate to have to leave. Idk how you can get so worked up over someone on the internet like... just shut it down at that point, go outside, breathe, interact with real life humans. It's fun to be on the internet but try to remember how humans act and don't act like a heathen pls and ty.

Thank you,

Peggy Peggy Bonito

[ishgard]

SEND ME A CHARACTER MEME for Mr. Gaius Baelsar, if you like :D

> W > Bless you.

First impression

I’ll admit, I don’t really recall what my first impression was, but might have been (insert Darth Vader Theme here). I was just so preoccupied by the game in general (struggling to get even marginally good), and more of my focus was on Thancred, Lahabrea, and the Ascians insofar as the plot went. Gaius was box-cover dude, and overall a vaguely interesting antagonist in his approach to things (iirc might have reminded me a bit of Vayne Solidor at times). I honestly really wish I could go back and pick my brain because it’s all pretty fuzzy.

Impression now

.......The stars in my sky? The breath in my lungs? The rhythm my heart dances to? From what humble beginnings did we come from... As far as actual in-game perception goes, I’m cautiously hopeful that they’ll approach a ‘redemption arc’ with him in a good, proper way. From Ahru’s perspective, she’s honestly willing to live and let live on the simple grounds that he saved Alphinaud and brought him back to her - that’s it, that’s enough for her, even if it’d be absurd to others and extremely self-centered. But this is less ‘impression’ and more ‘speculation’ now. 

Favorite moment

...Lemme just... carefully remove All Of These Headcanons, distinguish fictional fact from headcanon fiction. Really, his first return saving Alphinaud was just -chef’s kiss- Good Stuff.  (At any given time I’m probably quoting something in my head from this specific Larryzaur video tbh.) There were things about the scene where he brings Alphinaud back at Seiryuu’s Wall that could have been done a little better, but it’s also at the top for me because my boy... He brought my boy back ; ; Also from the moment we first saw him again and it was obvious they wanted to keep this ‘mystery’, I knew they HAD to have US, the WoL, be the one to say his name for the first time; to be the one to say “I KNOW YOU” and they definitely did, they gave that to me, and I was SO fucking happy.

Idea for a story

H A H. :’’’’D Okay, all of my many ideas for Ahru/Gaius shippy stuff aside, I actually would love to write some stuff during his travels with Alphinaud and Estinien both! 

Unpopular opinion

...I love him. I think that’s a pretty unpopular one, actually. I want a redemption arc for him, but I agree of course it has to be done well and tactfully. I don’t necessarily want him to just immediately be our Best Buddy, it can be tentative and slow, and no one has to feel forced to forgive him for his obvious atrocities, but I do want that for him in the end.

Favorite relationship

...again, headcanons aside, *cough*Ahru*cough* I am thriving on his interactions with both Alphinaud and Estinien. They’re so brief, and we really didn’t get to see a lot of either, but I would love to see so much more. It’s funny I was just looking back through his tag way before him and Esti partnered up and I’d already made some mention about the two of them and WoL lamenting their fool genius son and now I’m just thriving. I need the three of them and Thancred and Sidurgu to go get drinks sighing over their adopted children.

Favorite headcanon

...The one (thousand) where he smooches Ahru a lot. Also he likes sweets - not a lot, just a little, but enough to be marginally surprising. And less a HC than a vision of him sitting at his desk pouring over reports with ceruleum-light blocking glasses. Also less a HC and more a whole speculative hope is him becoming part of a council overseeing the re-established republic of Garlemald. But if not that he just fucks off like (or with?) Estinien and becomes a hunter of Bad Things in general.

(Send me a character)

[raven-writes-requests]

A promise

Rating: Everyone Word count: 1,3K Fandom: Bungou Stray Dogs Pairing: Arthur Rimbaud x Celes (not my OC) ft. Vayne (not my OC either) Genre: Fluff, just fluff. I might be motivated since I’ve been working in 4 different fics for the last day and a half. Also, thank you so much Frankie for waiting for almost four months for this (and also for letting me write about this beautiful family)

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It was around midday when Vayne woke up, not because of the sun that had been directly hitting him in the eyes for at least two hours already, but because of his parents laughing from the kitchen.

It had been a few months since his mom had decided to move in with his biological father, Arthur Rimbaud and honestly, he couldn’t have been more happy with his mother’s decision. Ever since meeting his father, he had felt a strong wish to have a bond with him.

And, even if it was really hard at first, thanks to his father’s awkwardness, it was his mother’s reassurance that he was doing perfectly fine that actually encouraged him further to keep trying. And now, they were a happy family of three.

With slow movements, he got out of bed. His eyes were still half closed as he walked up to the kitchen, where his dad was hugging her mom as she was trying to teach him how to cook.

They were happy, at least she was as happy as she could be. And he couldn’t really remember another time when he had seen her so happy.

“Randou, Vayne is here!” she said, suddenly self conscious now that their son was in the same room as them. His father looked at him with a huge smile on his face and walked towards him. “Good morning!” he said as he played with his hair, things like that were the things that made obvious that they were father and son.

“Don’t you have classes today, dad?” he asked, confused as to why his dad was still at home.

“It’s Sunday…” he said, trying to hold back a laugh. “And, we have decided that we could do something together, as a family. What do you think?” he sat down with a cup of coffee between his hands to keep him a little bit more warm.

Vayne’s eyes immediately lit up. He loved days like that, when they could spend all day together playing and just doing nothing, just like his parents loved to do the same.

“Well, I was thinking that maybe we could do something for your mom for once and visit Yokohama’s museums. What do you think?” Rimbaud asked his son.

In the back, Celestine’s eyes lit up as a child’s. It had been a while now since her husband had suggested they do something for her, their activities were mostly focused around Vayne.

The boy was silent for a while. Then, he spoke with an excited tone of voice. “Yes, let’s do it!” Celes ran to them and hugged them tightly. She wasn’t expecting it, but she was excited to hear that they were doing something for her.

“Celes, you know I’m cold all the time and stuff and that I don’t mind you hugging me, but you’re kind of… cutting my air supply.” Randou laughed nervously as he tried to breathe. “Same here, mom. I love you, but I still want to live! I’m too young to die!” Vayne exclaimed from in between his parents.

“The two of you are exaggerated! That wasn’t that bad!” she exclaimed as she let the two of them go. “Anyways, both of you go get changed. We have plenty of places to visit!” she clapped twice with a grin on her face while she went to sit down on the couch.

The day went by relatively fast as they walked and walked around different museums while Celes rambled on about the paintings and the history behind them to the two men. Randou was glad to see that he had made the right choice when deciding to visit as many museums as he could for the day. As they were having dinner, Rimbaud’s phone rang loudly. “Oh, I’m sorry.” he said as he took his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll have to answer this, is from work.” he said as he got up and left his lover and son. “Yes, what is it?” he asked, sounding bored. The caller took a few breaths before answering his question, it seemed as if he had been running.

“We need you, you have to come back to France immediately.” the man finally said. Randou sighed sadly. “How long will it be this time?” even if he was forced to leave for unexpected circumstances, he was going to make sure he would come back to his family.

“We don’t know for sure, maybe a year.” the long haired man sighed again, he wasn’t sure if he would be able to leave them for so long. But work was work and he couldn’t say no to it.

“I’ll be there tomorrow evening.” he said and hang up, then he walked back to the table. The atmosphere was silent once he came back, probably from them waiting until Rimbaud told them what happened, which didn’t seemed to be happening any time soon.

“Why did they called you?” Celes asked curious as she kept eating. Somehow, by the expression on his face, she could tell it wasn’t anything good.

“I’ll have to go, I’m required back in France.” he answer as he began to eat his dinner. Vayne’s face fell a little at the news. “When will you come back?” her voice remained calm, she didn’t wanted to scare Vayne by panicking about his lover leaving.

“They said that it could be for a whole year.” he was still eating as if he was talking about the weather and not about him leaving for a year.

“You’ll be leaving us again?” Vayne sounded mad at it and Celes was waiting for him to scold Rimbaud. “Then we’ll go with you!”

For the first time since they sat down, Randou actually showed an emotion. He looked as surprised at his son’s outburst as Celes was. “I refuse to let you leave us again! We’ll go with you or you won’t go to France!” After a minute or two, his father laughed. “I would love to take you with me, but I’m sure they wouldn’t agree with the two of you staying with me. That’s why I’ll have to leave you here, but I promise I will come back this time.”

The black haired man finished his food and went to pack as fast as he could. Once he was done, he left his bag on the living room and hugged Celes tightly one last time. “I’m going to miss your warmth.” he sighed sadly as he kissed her one last time, let her go and went to hug his son. “And I’m also going to miss you and your crazy ideas.” he noticed the way Vayne was looking “Hey, don’t look so down!” he exclaimed, trying to make him feel better but failing.

He stopped for a second to think and then he took his hat out of his head and put it on top of Vayne’s head. The boy looked up at him with a confused expression on his face, not understanding his father’s gesture.

“Dad? Why are you giving me your hat?” he lifted it a little so he would be able to look at his father.

“Because, I want you to take care of it while I’m gone.” Vayne’s eyes lit up as he heard those words. “If you don’t trust my words, you can keep the hat. It’s my favorite hat, so you can be sure that I’ll come back for it.” he smiled at his son.

With a proud look on his face, the kid looked back at his dad. “I’ll make sure to take really good care of it while you’re gone!”

Rimbaud smiled one last time at the two of them and took his suitcase again. Then, he turned around and left the house. He was sure he was going to come back to them no matter what.

Vayne was left behind with his mom, but he wasn’t mad at all. His dad had just left, but he was already waiting impatiently until he came back.

“Time to go to bed, Vayne. You have classes tomorrow!” Celes exclaimed and he nodded. 

When Celes saw his son again, he was sleeping in his bed hugging his father’s hat tightly with a small smile on his face.