#‘ﾟ & . wield the power of the right hand ▸ ignis / v. one .

[gamesover]

a stolen moment of time that is basked in tender flame.            the heart is a broken muscle that cannot cease,      every suffocation wrought upon ignis,      rhythm of endless misery.      it is a shrouded secret that he broadcasts with each beat,      enigma so resonant he fears the entire world will hear of these affections.      this gilded prison,      across the span of noctis’ apartment,      arcadia in clandestine disguise.      he gazes upon the prince,      𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒇𝒍𝒊𝒄𝒌𝒆𝒓 𝒍𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒌𝒊𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒆𝒂𝒄𝒉 𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒆𝒌,      iridescence that dusts the long of midnight lashes.      he would pray upon the sovereignty of austere divines to rid him the humanity that marks him for such punishment,      chest - muscle laden with   restrained turmoil   that he will not submit to.

[      to feel is to know reality.      to love is to lose the essence of oneself.      and by the six,      he has long since cast away the atlas of his desire,      irreversible,      to trace silhouettes   and want for all that he cannot have.      doomed to admire upon the visage   of the sun   and combust alive.      ]

he stands here,      precipice of the unbeknown,      fingers flinching along the rim of marble countertop.      water drops slide down the curve of plates washed clean.      a breath,      then another.       smile and laugh as he means to,      a meal passed with shared pleasantries even   as he yearns beyond hope:      indeed,      what a clever charade!      for a clever man who has forfeit forth his clever mind.      very well.      if he cannot be allowed peace for his sake   then he shall offer it for noctis      —      a call for attention,      lips curled around the syllable of   that name   which he swallows back.            ❛❛      would you like to see the stars tonight?      ❜❜

                                             ⌜  ღ  ⌟            @sacrificedhe​

[xadoheandterra]

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, Ardyn Izunia | Ardyn Lucis Caelum, Verstael Bisithia Tags: 10 years older!Prompto, Prompto and Gil the ongoing comedy, Noctis wants to fix it, angst and hurt and probable comfort, miscommunication effectively for EVER, Ardyn is Ardyn, Ardyn is not a happy trash man, Ardyn and relationships 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.

“We need to find Ardyn,” Prompto said into the tense air the following morning. Noctis eyed him blearily with a pillow hugged tight to his chest; Gladio sweat-soaked from his morning run, leaned against the door with his arms crossed and Ignis seated in one of the chairs with a can of Ebony in hand.

Cor sat next to Ignis, leaned away from Gilgamesh who cleaned a blade on the second bed in the small caravan. Gilgamesh didn’t even look up as Gladio and Ignis traded looks, or how Cor watched him with lips pressed together. Prompto waited for someone to say something—anything. No one spoke up, and so with a groan of frustration Prompto threw his hands into the air.

“Come on!” Prompto cried out. “Don’t you guys have any shit to say?”

Nothing—until Cor sighed heavily and mumbled something about Lucis Caelum’s and bullshit and then clearly uttered, “He’s the Chancellor of Niflheim. You would put Noctis at risk.”

Noctis shrugged and buried his face into the pillow. What he said was muffled enough that no one could quite understand him, but Prompto still tilted his head in the blue-black haired man’s direction with a faint frown.

“Noct…” Prompto said, voice soft, and Noctis raised his head lightly to look back with his face just the slightest bit pinched and Prompto—Prompto couldn’t identify the feeling that curled in his gut, but he didn’t quite like it.

Gilgamesh set the blade down and breathed out heavily enough to flutter the long white locks of his hair and spoke his words with care. “Ardyn is not the man we knew.”

“Bullshit,” Prompto snapped out. “I refuse—”

“He changed,” Gilgamesh uttered sharply and Prompto went silent. “He changed, Silver. The Gods gave him his Path and he walked it willingly.”

Prompto shook his head, forcefully, and hissed between his teeth, “Yeah, he saved lives but I refuse to believe some nonsense about him changing from it.”

“Even you saw—”

“I saw a man grow sick!” Prompto snapped out, loud enough into the silence and loud enough to draw Noctis fully away from the pillow with brow furrowed. “I saw a man grow tired! I saw a man suffer under his ideals and suffer from the points of difference from his brother! I saw a man who felt so assured that the Gods would provide him aide—that his marriage would be the catalyst he needed, that the Crystal would keep him safe—and I saw a man who had no idea he would walk into his Confirmation alone and betrayed!”

Gilgamesh quieted, and then look away for a moment. It was odd for Prompto to see the normally stiff man for all his talk of duty seem so contrite. Prompto breathed heavily, and startled when Noctis reached out and grabbed his arm. For a second Prompto stared at the young face of his friend, stared at a face he could barely remember, and then Noctis bowed his head.

“We’ll make it right,” Noctis said, voice soft and firm and Prompto felt something in him choke. “It needs to be made right.”

Cor sighed heavily and leaned forward, onto his knees. After a second he scoffed and gave a bitter sort of laugh. “If only Regis could hear you say that.”

Noctis looked to Cor. “Why?”

Cor looked back and said, “Because you sounded just like your mother.” For a moment no one said anything and then Noctis straightened his back.

“See, Prom?” Noctis said with a grin not quite as forced. “We’ll make it right.”

Ardyn frowned lightly at the reports Verstael forwarded his way. He grabbed a hand around the Atissian wine that he’d taken as a drink within the confines of his room at the Leville as he worked through the data and the reports from three separate MT Technicians. All of them lined up together and sold the same sordid tale—and it had to be a lie. Ardyn’s hand tightened on the wine glass hard enough it could crack.

“I’ve had them interrogated separately and still their story remains the same,” Verstael’s voice rang out from the phone that Ardyn had laid out onto the table, the call settled into speaker so that he could read and focus at once.

“Yet they do not describe this unmentionable, ancient horror,” Ardyn drawled out, voice faintly edged in bitterness. On the screen Verstael rolled his eyes, the wrinkled face pulled tight into a scowl, but Ardyn did not care.

Three days; for one week the boys remained in Lestallum by all reports, and then nearly five days earlier they moved from Lestallum to Old Lestallum and there they remained until the past three days. They’d begun to move, finally, and yet it remained so frustratingly far from Cape Caem. Ardyn could not tell what the blasted boy-king thought he was doing. What motivated this new tour of the Lucian countryside? A drive around Duscae and Cleigne, up into the Vesperpool—yet not south toward Cape Caem with the ship that inevitably awaited them.

“What of the dear Commodore?” Ardyn questioned. “Has she had anything to say?”

Verstael sighed heavily. “Ardyn, you know that I have no inclusion or control over the army or it’s mercenaries. You will have to ask that boy you’ve taken to traveling with for answers from her.”

“Jealous?” Ardyn questioned, tone light, even as his gaze tracked to Verstael’s horribly old face with sharp golden eyes.

“Hardly,” Verstael scoffed. “What you deign to do in your time is upon you. As long as it does not interfere in my work I could care less.”

“Are you certain of that, my dear?”

“Completely.” Verstael’s gaze was a baleful one, full of age and frustration that brought a smile to Ardyn’s face. “When will you return to Gralea?”

“Once my work here is completed, you have my assurance,” Ardyn said. “I will be back in time for your little pet project. Promise!”

“If that is all, then? Or do you have more things to waste my time with?”

Ardyn waved a hand with a murmured, “No, no, Verstael. I will call you if I have need of you.” The line disconnected as Ardyn returned his gaze back to the empty reports with a frown. The best he could get out of the mess had been that this ‘ancient horror’ wielded too many blades to be human, or so the Technicians thought from what little they could see in the distance.

“I wonder…” Ardyn tapped at his lip and leaned back in his chair, coat around him like skirts and wings as he stared at the map that accompanied the reports. All of the attacks had been around Taelpar Crag, within at least twenty miles of the place all told. Ardyn swiped one finger across the screen to toss aside the map and the written reports in favor of the few photographs they had captured. These were grainy, pathetic sort of things with poor visibility, but then Niflheim seemed to lack much of the same technological advances of the Kingdom of Lucis.

One picture forced Ardyn to pause, finger hovered over the screen as he stared into the grainy image of a being with spectral arms that fanned out from a back like wings. “Ah…” Ardyn breathed, golden eyes suddenly bright as every part of him seemed to still and writhe all at the same time. “Gilgamesh.” His hand squeezed reflexively around the wine glass until it shattered as ichor black tears dripped from his eyes, skin suddenly too-pale too-sick. His voice had a much more guttural quality to it, too, more of a growl than anything.

“I wonder what drew you out of your little cavern, old friend,” Ardyn said, tone light, even as his lips curled up with a snarl. He let go of the ruins of the wine glass and shook out his now soaked hand. The other grasped his hat and tugged it low and onto his head as he ducked his gaze downward and pushed himself up from the plush chair to stand.

Atissia and the Tide Mother could wait. Ardyn had a cave full of the dead to interrogate.

Ardyn could remember the room in which they stored the Crystal in Civitas Lucii. A tall tower that Somnus would spend decades building upon, that his descendants would build upon, until it formed the foundation of Insomnia’s Citadel. Then it was stone and marble and near thirty years of work, blood, sweat, and tears with carpets in pale reds and blues with a view of all Civitas Lucii, open archways that were to eventually house windows and furnishings. Ardyn could remember how he stumbled into the room, limp controlled and back stiff. He could remember how the people whispered—how Somnus leaned hunched in the shadows alongside a marble pillar, head ducked low and brow furrowed.

Aera stood before the Crystal with Gilgamesh at her side. She smiled when Ardyn entered the room, yet now thinking back upon it he wondered if that smile ever reached her eyes. When Somnus revealed his treachery, that the kindness in his brother’s heart had fully fallen into the bitterness and fighting that they devolved into over the years, it hurt in the ways that it didn’t hurt. Ardyn could remember feeling faint enough as it was; he’d traveled the time from Steyliff Grove in the Vesperpool all the way to Civitas Lucii alone, with barely any chance for rest in the dark as his blood burned black and his pains increased tenfold.

What Ardyn couldn’t remember was Aera’s face. Had she known? Had Gilgamesh? His Shield had stood with hand on Aera, held her back—or had Ardyn imagined that? Perhaps Gilgamesh played to the hold of his beloved Aera, played to keep her away until it was time for her to fall into unnecessary sacrifice—to spill her blood and her magic so that they could be the catalyst for his chains in the darkness. At any case the memories were a mess, swamped in inconsequential things from the people he’d devoured in fits and spurts after he found himself awake from Angelguard.

“And what does it matter?” Ardyn murmured to himself as he flung a wrist covered in purple-black magic infested Scourge at the Spirit that stood in his way. He watched near dispassionately as the bones crumbled to dust and the body it inhabited forced the spectral form into release. He watched how the Spirit flew backward and into the wall, then crumbled and burst into little lights, only to disappear into the aether. “He made his choice, did he not?”

Three more came at him, and Ardyn tugged his blade free from the armiger and moved with a mix of warping, phasing, and slicing through the creatures. Gilgamesh had abandoned his duty as Shield, his Oaths and the whispers he’d made in the dark when Ardyn found himself at the lowest. Ardyn couldn’t be certain if the man had even abandoned Somnus in the end, although given the supposed exile Ardyn didn’t doubt that. Such a traitorous friend, Gilgamesh. He scoffed as he rendered the next three skeletal opponents to dust and ashes and Scourge.

“And now he deigns to walk the land he’d forsaken? What oddity, Gilgamesh, has attracted your eye I wonder?” Ardyn flicked his blade away as he moved further into the caverns. No doubt something drew the beast of a man out of his saturated home. Gilgamesh was inordinately stubborn—it made him a good Shield, until that fateful day with the fateful Confirmation on Ardyn’s shoulders, sham that it was.

Finally Ardyn reached the point past the bridge where Gilgamesh made his little foundling home. Ardyn wrinkled his nose and pursed his lips at the sight of the mess, at the cold river that ran past half and the slope half caked in shit and debris. It took him a moment to gather up the strength to push past what amounted to nothing more than squalor—and the disgust and bitterness that welled up at the thought of one of his left to rot in something so destitute. Inside faired no better, although Ardyn noted how Gilgamesh took to looting the dead given the varied trinkets that littered the man’s hovel of a home.

“How…quaint,” Ardyn mumbled. His Shield had become a hoarder of things, so utterly unlike the man from the years before. Gingerly Ardyn picked up a few small trinkets to inspect, to see where the mind of the man he’d once cared for had gone in the intervening years—and he noticed a pattern.

Lucian finery and jewels adorned in subtle skulls littered the place; Tenebraean signatory and Oracle Ascension coins from the lapse in time were piled together, separated by year. Ardyn ran his fingers over a few with wide eyes, surprised to see items that went back as far as Civitas Lucii—coins stamped with Somnus’ visage, with Aera’s—and then others with familiar faces. Ardyn stopped at one Ascension coin that held a face so similar to Aera’s, one he knew just as well.

“Nubis…?” Ardyn murmured, surprised. He had not realized that Nubis had been crowned Oracle; the boy had barely bested twenty last Ardyn saw him and seemed to have not a lick of the magical talent of his older and Chosen Sister. In fact if Ardyn were to be certain the young man had been utterly besotted with—“Ah,” Ardyn set the coin down as the thought crossed his mind.

Nubis had longed after the young Stella Nox, the Lady Tenebrae. Ardyn couldn’t believe he hadn’t quite seen it before—but then there was nearly two thousand years and who knows how many generations between them, and how was Ardyn to know the manner in which the Mils Fleuret came the Nox Fleuret? Let alone how they came to occupy a land whose name derived from the very vassals he’d once grown surrounded by. He’d long slept through that sort of history, and it wasn’t a history the world deigned to remember. Much how the world forgot him….

Ardyn stepped around the piles of trinkets and cocked his head in mild surprise at the sight of hoarfrost that coated what looked to be an otherwise mid-cooked stew. For a second Ardyn wanted to trail his fingers in the mess, feel the bite and sting of the dead that signaled Gilgamesh’s favored brand of magic, but he restrained himself. If Gilgamesh were still the same man underneath it all he’d not leave food untended for long—unless whatever called him forth from his cavern of exile held far more sway than the dinner he froze solid in the urge to catch it.

For a moment Ardyn wanted to reach into the core of himself, to grip tight along the bond to Gilgamesh and then rend it asunder—coat it thick in Scourge and tear it into twine no matter the pain he’d feel. Only one thing could draw Gilgamesh out like this, and since he’d been seen in the presence of Noctis—Ardyn ground his teeth together and turned. With a storm at his feet he moved swiftly from the cave, through the walls. Halfway mid-step he slipped into the Scourge and let it drag him along, out and away, until the burn of the sun touched him and staggered him back into form.

He could deal with this, Ardyn realized in the heat of the sun as he returned to the drop ship that carried him here. If Gilgamesh desired to bind himself to another King, while still within the service of Ardyn for a given means of that service, Ardyn could use this. It meant a few changes to the grand plan, but oh, perhaps he would even enjoy this better. A chance to live out more than revenge through surrogacy and the hated bloodline of his hated brother—here, now, Ardyn found himself being given a gift. If Gilgamesh desired to step into the world once more, let him. Ardyn would happily break the man apart at the seams.

[vanilla-blessing]

Yu-Gi-Oh! Spirit Companions, Ranked

As I’ve been watching Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS, I’ve been thinking a lot about how characters like Ai are represented and used within the franchise. For lack of a better term, these spirit companions show up in each Yu-Gi-Oh! series as a guide for the protagonist, someone they can talk to and confer with in and out of duels. They play a slightly different role than the main character’s group of friends, often sharing a mental or spiritual connection that elevates their relationship to something closer to kin. Ai is one of the most active deuteragonists throughout the franchise, and so I wanted to take a look at all six of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series and talk about how they play into the story and whether their inclusion helps to further the themes of the series.

6. The Crimson Dragon, from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s

The Crimson Dragon is a being made of sacred fire that, along with the six legendary dragons (the titular 5 D’s), fought against the evil Earthbound Immortals and sealed them in the Nazca Lines. He is the source of all the main characters’ powers, which include energy manipulation, psychic powers, and creating miracles. Although he is the reason the cast gathered together and were able to become a team, the Crimson Dragon otherwise only appears when the plot demands it.

When I first started thinking about this list, I wasn’t even sure if 5D’s had a spirit companion of some kind. It’s really downplayed within the series, since all of the main characters have to share parts of the Crimson Dragon, and it doesn’t really play into the series outside of its role as a plot device. Unlike the other characters in this list, the Crimson Dragon doesn’t talk or interact with the cast, acting more like a guardian than a proper character. There’s no personality there and nothing to real talk about, besides it being kind of a lame design for a dragon.

5. Yubel, from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX

Yubel is sort of a weird case compared to the rest of the characters on this list, since her first appearance is over halfway through the series as an antagonist for Jaden. She was originally a magical guardian meant to protect an individual known as the Supreme King, who wielded the power of Gentle Darkness. Thousands of years after this pact was made, her spirit was placed into a Duel Monsters card, and eventually the card ended up in the hands of Jaden. As it happens, Jaden is a descendant of the Supreme King, and so the spirit within the Yubel card promised to protect Jaden from any and all threats. Unfortunately, Yubel considered any sort of friendship with others as a threat to their relationship, and so everyone who dueled Jaden fell into a coma. In the hopes of helping her find the “power of justice”, Jaden sent the Yubel card into space in a KaibaCorp satellite, but she ended up encountering The Light of Destruction which only corrupted her further. Eventually the satellite crashed back onto Earth and Yubel was freed, allowing her to take revenge against Jaden for betraying her. She does this by torturing all of his friends via Shadow Duels and eventually doing the same to Jaden, equating their shared pain as a sort of love. But, thanks to Jaden’s incredibly large heart, he is able to eventually forgive Yubel and accept her, which allows the two of them to fuse together and free Yubel from The Light of Destruction.

I’ve never really been able to come to terms with Yubel as a spirit companion. She’s an extremely out-of-place element in the otherwise goofy series, to an uncomfortable extent. Between her weird sadomasochism fetish and her overly possessive relationship with Jaden, the whole thing comes off as a strange thing for a kid’s show to do. There’s no real conclusion that effectively explains why Jaden would suddenly forgive her outside of him being such a stand-up dude and destiny-bound to be with her. This is several steps above GX characters talking about “playing solitaire” with their favorite sexy cards from the classic memetic shared video, and I’ve always found it uncomfortable on reflection.

4. Astral, from Yu-Gi-Oh! ZeXal

Astral is an extra-terrestrial from the Astral World, which is a thinly-veiled sci-fi allegory for Heaven. He is initially sent to Earth in order to garner enough power to destroy the Barian World, which is a thinly-veiled sci-fi allegory for Hell, but is intercepted partway and attaches himself to Yuma Tsukumo, a third-rate duelist with big dreams. When he reaches Earth, Astral’s memories scatter in the form of 100 “Number” cards, and now he’ll need to help Yuma learn how to duel so that they can win back all of the Numbers and Astral can complete his mission.

Astral’s just a real weenie, and a pretty boring character overall. His only narrative purpose for a majority of the series is to bail Yuma out when he makes a bad play, and to talk about how weird human customs are compared to his pseudo-angel alien customs. And there was that one time Astral felt so betrayed when Yuma kept a secret from him that he went crazy and almost killed the both of them via a corrupted fusion. It’s nice that he’s part of the show from the beginning so the plot starts right away, but that ends up leading to another problem, thanks to the Number card gimmick. Because only Number cards can destroy other Number cards in a duel, the way that he’s integrated ends up making almost every duel go the exact same way, all the way up to the very end of the series.

3. Yuto, from Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V

Yuto is one of three characters from an alternate dimension, called the Xyz Dimension, that shares the same look and build of protagonist Yuya Sakaki, who is from the Standard Dimension. Initially believed to be a villain, the truth is eventually revealed that he comes from a world that was decimated by an army from another alternate dimension, the Fusion Dimension, and he’s come to the Standard Dimension to get his revenge on the Fusion invaders. Although he ends up dying in a duel, his soul fuses with Yuya’s, and so he begins to explain more about this dimensional war to Yuya, in the hopes that Yuya can succeed where he failed in stopping the Fusion forces.

Yuto isn’t the most exciting or memorable companion, but I think he’s ultimately one of the ones that was best integrated within his franchise. From his original role as an uneasy antagonist to his revival as a spirit companion for Yuya, he consistently helped push the story forward and provide background information on the main conflict as it became important, which helped further to expand the world and the narrative as a whole. While I think all of the Yuya clones in Arc-V ultimately contributed to the story, Yuto was the one who solidified how the series was going to develop.

His Phantom Knights deck is also cool as hell.

2. Atem/Pharaoh, from Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters

Atem is the spirit of a pharaoh who ruled in ancient Egypt, remembered for stopping a great catastrophe that threatened the future of the entire world. His soul was sealed away in one of the Millennium Items, a set of ancient artifacts that granted great powers to their wielders, and locked away his memories so that they couldn’t be used to threaten the world ever again. Thousands of years later, after his grandfather excavated the Millennium Puzzle, Yugi Moto completed the puzzle, and the pharaoh’s soul was fused into Yugi’s body. Although their relationship was shaky at the beginning as they learned how to handle their shared body, eventually the two were able to work together to help the pharaoh recover his memories and pass on to the next life.

Atem, the OG companion and (in)arguably a more relevant character than Yugi after the first season. While in some ways he stole the spotlight whenever arcs weren’t directly centered on the pharaoh, his mysterious connection to the game of Duel Monsters and the expansive world of Yu-Gi-Oh! was interesting to watch develop and grow over the series. He definitely has the best rapport with his series’ cast, and I like the way the relationship between Atem and Yugi was built up, all the way to the end. The original series was really well connected, and the bond between Atem and Yugi was a big part of that.

1. Ai, from Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS

Ai is an Ignis-class artificial intelligence, meaning that he has free will, and he lived along with other Ignis AIs in a digital world called the Cyverse. After a shadow organization known as the Knights of Hanoi tried to capture the Cyverse and its power, Ignis was able to steal information from the Cyverse and hide its data within his AI body. Since then, he’s been hunted by the Knights of Hanoi, as well as SOL Technologies, a company that had used the Cyverse to power its virtual reality Duel Monsters program, VRAINS. After a widescale attack on VRAINS by the Knights of Hanoi, the hacker protagonist of the series Yusaku Fujiki was able to capture Ai, only knowing that he would act as a trump card during his fights against the Knights of Hanoi. So begins the shaky friendship of Yusaku and Ai.

I guess this is a little unfair since the series isn’t over, and the true nature of this character has yet to be revealed, and he’s an AI, but Ai has been the only source of whimsy in a series that otherwise lacks it. VRAINS is a very self-serious series with some heavy themes and crushing implications within its narrative, and Ai plays an important role to help keep the series fun with his flippant attitude, providing some well-timed bits of comedy. He’s very much the comic to Yusaku’s straight man, creating this fun dynamic between the two of them, both in and out of duels. Ai is definitely the most like a mascot of any character in this list, as a lot of his interaction with the world is through exaggerated reactions and mischief that Yu-Gi-Oh! as a franchise has never really leaned into. I also think even the way he interacts with Yusaku within duels is interesting, since granting Playmaker the ability to pull new cards from raw data storms helps keep the main character’s deck fresh and exciting from duel to duel.

-ChorpSaway, Card Game Tycoon

[cryptowavesxyz]

How the Steem Saga Exposes the Dangers of Staking Pools

Over the last few days, the centralization versus decentralization row has erupted in earnest. In case you missed it, the activities of Tron founder Justin Sun following his takeover of blogging site Steemit have been pivotal to the controversies.

Let’s briefly recap. Earlier in February, it emerged that Sun was further expanding his crypto-empire with the acquisition of Steemit, which runs on the Steem blockchain. Steem was developed by Daniel Larimer, who also introduced the delegated proof-of-stake governance model, or dPoS, to the blockchain sphere. Larimer later went on to build EOS, which also runs on dPoS.

Related: Steemit Managing Director on Partnership With Tron — Exclusive

The clash came about due to a conflict between Sun and the Steem “witnesses” — nodes elected by token holders to act as block producers. The entity Steemit Inc., which operates the blogging site, holds a large quantity of STEEM network tokens, which it had previously never used to participate in voting. Once Sun took over the company, the witnesses moved to implement a soft fork that would have effectively frozen the Steemit tokens and ensured they couldn’t be used to influence the network in the future.

Don’t play a player

Evidently, Justin Sun leveraged his significant weight in the crypto community to persuade exchanges, including Binance, Huobi and Poloniex, to vote against the soft fork that would have diminished his voting power. Not only that, but the vote also ousted the existing set of witnesses in favor of a new set, replacing 20 out of 21 witnesses. All the newcomers had accounts that were created in the days immediately preceding the vote.

Related: Steem Community Stands Its Ground Amid Tron Takeover

At the time of writing, the issue appears to be ongoing, with the Steem community attempting to pool their voting weight as a means of replacing Sun’s stooges with the original witnesses. Nevertheless, Sun’s actions led to cries of foul play from those who believed that before this, Steem (and even Steemit) was a decentralized, democratic system. 

But, to be fair to Justin Sun, he didn’t actually do anything wrong. He played the witnesses at their own game, using the rules of the system. What happened is simply an out-in-the-open play of the same scenario that many have long speculated is happening behind the scenes in EOS.

Challenges with collusion resistance

The issues with EOS are illustrative of the flaws inherent to the delegated proof-of-stake governance model, flaws that were highlighted in a recent report from Binance Research. The report assesses the practical effectiveness of the EOS governance model against three goals that decentralization is supposed to achieve: collusion resistance, fault tolerance and attack resistance.

Of these three, the most fundamental failures are around collusion resistance. The more revenue that block producers earn from producing blocks, the more influential they become over the network as a whole. By pooling that influence in votes, they can begin to exert dominance over the network.

Combine this with tokens stored on exchanges, where the exchanges also wield similar clout in the votes, and it’s evident that the control of the network rests in the hands of a small number of very powerful voters.

Related: The Steem Takeover and the Coming Proof-of-Stake Crisis

Aggregating power in crypto

Many would say that the exchanges shouldn’t use their influence in this way. In fact, it’s being used as an argument against Justin Sun’s recent actions regarding Steem, leading to both Binance and Huobi withdrawing their votes.

However, the case highlights the voting power that token holders are giving to exchanges. But the entire crypto community is also — inadvertently or otherwise — encouraging the aggregation of power through the use of staking pools.

Staking your tokens via a pool is essentially the same as putting them into an exchange, for voting purposes. As the saying goes, “not your keys, not your crypto.” Once users start putting their tokens into staking pools, they’re handing over their dPoS voting rights to the staking pool owner. This means that the exchanges and staking pools can easily control who is producing blocks in any dPoS blockchain. 

Now, having seen that control being exerted over Steem, token holders may think twice about leaving their holdings on exchanges or putting them into staking pools. After all, if the tokens are in a private wallet, or staked under one’s own name, the voting rights remain intact.

DPoS is an unnecessary complication

There’s already a sound solution that works as good as dPoS. The merits of classical PoS have been proven in the case of long-running PoS blockchains such as Nxt. The added complexity of voting rounds introduced by dPoS does not increase security in any meaningful way and may increase risks of collusion and centralization.

The rights and wrongs of the Steem and Justin Sun saga are likely to be debated for some time to come. Either way, Sun is unlikely to relinquish his voting rights conveyed by the Steemit tokens, given that the community has already moved against him. 

However, true advocates of decentralization should consider removing their dPoS tokens from centralized exchanges and staking pools, thus ensuring that they own their votes and their voices are heard.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Lior Yaffe is co-founder and director of Jelurida, and has 20+ years of experience in design, development, and deployment of enterprise applications for large organizations. Lior has his B.A. in computer science from the Technion in Haifa, Israel. Before establishing Jelurida (the company powering Nxt, Ardor and Ignis), he led the development and product management of a leading mainframe integration product at Software AG.

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The post How the Steem Saga Exposes the Dangers of Staking Pools appeared first on Crypto Waves.

from Crypto Waves https://ift.tt/2W2NwfC

[coinfirst]

How the Steem Saga Exposes the Dangers of Staking Pools

Over the last few days, the centralization versus decentralization row has erupted in earnest. In case you missed it, the activities of Tron founder Justin Sun following his takeover of blogging site Steemit have been pivotal to the controversies.

Let’s briefly recap. Earlier in February, it emerged that Sun was further expanding his crypto-empire with the acquisition of Steemit, which runs on the Steem blockchain. Steem was developed by Daniel Larimer, who also introduced the delegated proof-of-stake governance model, or dPoS, to the blockchain sphere. Larimer later went on to build EOS, which also runs on dPoS.

Related: Steemit Managing Director on Partnership With Tron — Exclusive

The clash came about due to a conflict between Sun and the Steem “witnesses” — nodes elected by token holders to act as block producers. The entity Steemit Inc., which operates the blogging site, holds a large quantity of STEEM network tokens, which it had previously never used to participate in voting. Once Sun took over the company, the witnesses moved to implement a soft fork that would have effectively frozen the Steemit tokens and ensured they couldn’t be used to influence the network in the future.

Don’t play a player

Evidently, Justin Sun leveraged his significant weight in the crypto community to persuade exchanges, including Binance, Huobi and Poloniex, to vote against the soft fork that would have diminished his voting power. Not only that, but the vote also ousted the existing set of witnesses in favor of a new set, replacing 20 out of 21 witnesses. All the newcomers had accounts that were created in the days immediately preceding the vote.

Related: Steem Community Stands Its Ground Amid Tron Takeover

At the time of writing, the issue appears to be ongoing, with the Steem community attempting to pool their voting weight as a means of replacing Sun’s stooges with the original witnesses. Nevertheless, Sun’s actions led to cries of foul play from those who believed that before this, Steem (and even Steemit) was a decentralized, democratic system. 

But, to be fair to Justin Sun, he didn’t actually do anything wrong. He played the witnesses at their own game, using the rules of the system. What happened is simply an out-in-the-open play of the same scenario that many have long speculated is happening behind the scenes in EOS.

Challenges with collusion resistance

The issues with EOS are illustrative of the flaws inherent to the delegated proof-of-stake governance model, flaws that were highlighted in a recent report from Binance Research. The report assesses the practical effectiveness of the EOS governance model against three goals that decentralization is supposed to achieve: collusion resistance, fault tolerance and attack resistance.

Of these three, the most fundamental failures are around collusion resistance. The more revenue that block producers earn from producing blocks, the more influential they become over the network as a whole. By pooling that influence in votes, they can begin to exert dominance over the network.

Combine this with tokens stored on exchanges, where the exchanges also wield similar clout in the votes, and it’s evident that the control of the network rests in the hands of a small number of very powerful voters.

Related: The Steem Takeover and the Coming Proof-of-Stake Crisis

Aggregating power in crypto

Many would say that the exchanges shouldn’t use their influence in this way. In fact, it’s being used as an argument against Justin Sun’s recent actions regarding Steem, leading to both Binance and Huobi withdrawing their votes.

However, the case highlights the voting power that token holders are giving to exchanges. But the entire crypto community is also — inadvertently or otherwise — encouraging the aggregation of power through the use of staking pools.

Staking your tokens via a pool is essentially the same as putting them into an exchange, for voting purposes. As the saying goes, “not your keys, not your crypto.” Once users start putting their tokens into staking pools, they’re handing over their dPoS voting rights to the staking pool owner. This means that the exchanges and staking pools can easily control who is producing blocks in any dPoS blockchain. 

Now, having seen that control being exerted over Steem, token holders may think twice about leaving their holdings on exchanges or putting them into staking pools. After all, if the tokens are in a private wallet, or staked under one’s own name, the voting rights remain intact.

DPoS is an unnecessary complication

There’s already a sound solution that works as good as dPoS. The merits of classical PoS have been proven in the case of long-running PoS blockchains such as Nxt. The added complexity of voting rounds introduced by dPoS does not increase security in any meaningful way and may increase risks of collusion and centralization.

The rights and wrongs of the Steem and Justin Sun saga are likely to be debated for some time to come. Either way, Sun is unlikely to relinquish his voting rights conveyed by the Steemit tokens, given that the community has already moved against him. 

However, true advocates of decentralization should consider removing their dPoS tokens from centralized exchanges and staking pools, thus ensuring that they own their votes and their voices are heard.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Lior Yaffe is co-founder and director of Jelurida, and has 20+ years of experience in design, development, and deployment of enterprise applications for large organizations. Lior has his B.A. in computer science from the Technion in Haifa, Israel. Before establishing Jelurida (the company powering Nxt, Ardor and Ignis), he led the development and product management of a leading mainframe integration product at Software AG.

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The post How the Steem Saga Exposes the Dangers of Staking Pools appeared first on Coin First.

from Coin First https://ift.tt/2wOdTv7

[coinretreat]

How the Steem Saga Exposes the Dangers of Staking Pools

Over the last few days, the centralization versus decentralization row has erupted in earnest. In case you missed it, the activities of Tron founder Justin Sun following his takeover of blogging site Steemit have been pivotal to the controversies.

Let’s briefly recap. Earlier in February, it emerged that Sun was further expanding his crypto-empire with the acquisition of Steemit, which runs on the Steem blockchain. Steem was developed by Daniel Larimer, who also introduced the delegated proof-of-stake governance model, or dPoS, to the blockchain sphere. Larimer later went on to build EOS, which also runs on dPoS.

Related: Steemit Managing Director on Partnership With Tron — Exclusive

The clash came about due to a conflict between Sun and the Steem “witnesses” — nodes elected by token holders to act as block producers. The entity Steemit Inc., which operates the blogging site, holds a large quantity of STEEM network tokens, which it had previously never used to participate in voting. Once Sun took over the company, the witnesses moved to implement a soft fork that would have effectively frozen the Steemit tokens and ensured they couldn’t be used to influence the network in the future.

Don’t play a player

Evidently, Justin Sun leveraged his significant weight in the crypto community to persuade exchanges, including Binance, Huobi and Poloniex, to vote against the soft fork that would have diminished his voting power. Not only that, but the vote also ousted the existing set of witnesses in favor of a new set, replacing 20 out of 21 witnesses. All the newcomers had accounts that were created in the days immediately preceding the vote.

Related: Steem Community Stands Its Ground Amid Tron Takeover

At the time of writing, the issue appears to be ongoing, with the Steem community attempting to pool their voting weight as a means of replacing Sun’s stooges with the original witnesses. Nevertheless, Sun’s actions led to cries of foul play from those who believed that before this, Steem (and even Steemit) was a decentralized, democratic system. 

But, to be fair to Justin Sun, he didn’t actually do anything wrong. He played the witnesses at their own game, using the rules of the system. What happened is simply an out-in-the-open play of the same scenario that many have long speculated is happening behind the scenes in EOS.

Challenges with collusion resistance

The issues with EOS are illustrative of the flaws inherent to the delegated proof-of-stake governance model, flaws that were highlighted in a recent report from Binance Research. The report assesses the practical effectiveness of the EOS governance model against three goals that decentralization is supposed to achieve: collusion resistance, fault tolerance and attack resistance.

Of these three, the most fundamental failures are around collusion resistance. The more revenue that block producers earn from producing blocks, the more influential they become over the network as a whole. By pooling that influence in votes, they can begin to exert dominance over the network.

Combine this with tokens stored on exchanges, where the exchanges also wield similar clout in the votes, and it’s evident that the control of the network rests in the hands of a small number of very powerful voters.

Related: The Steem Takeover and the Coming Proof-of-Stake Crisis

Aggregating power in crypto

Many would say that the exchanges shouldn’t use their influence in this way. In fact, it’s being used as an argument against Justin Sun’s recent actions regarding Steem, leading to both Binance and Huobi withdrawing their votes.

However, the case highlights the voting power that token holders are giving to exchanges. But the entire crypto community is also — inadvertently or otherwise — encouraging the aggregation of power through the use of staking pools.

Staking your tokens via a pool is essentially the same as putting them into an exchange, for voting purposes. As the saying goes, “not your keys, not your crypto.” Once users start putting their tokens into staking pools, they’re handing over their dPoS voting rights to the staking pool owner. This means that the exchanges and staking pools can easily control who is producing blocks in any dPoS blockchain. 

Now, having seen that control being exerted over Steem, token holders may think twice about leaving their holdings on exchanges or putting them into staking pools. After all, if the tokens are in a private wallet, or staked under one’s own name, the voting rights remain intact.

DPoS is an unnecessary complication

There’s already a sound solution that works as good as dPoS. The merits of classical PoS have been proven in the case of long-running PoS blockchains such as Nxt. The added complexity of voting rounds introduced by dPoS does not increase security in any meaningful way and may increase risks of collusion and centralization.

The rights and wrongs of the Steem and Justin Sun saga are likely to be debated for some time to come. Either way, Sun is unlikely to relinquish his voting rights conveyed by the Steemit tokens, given that the community has already moved against him. 

However, true advocates of decentralization should consider removing their dPoS tokens from centralized exchanges and staking pools, thus ensuring that they own their votes and their voices are heard.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Lior Yaffe is co-founder and director of Jelurida, and has 20+ years of experience in design, development, and deployment of enterprise applications for large organizations. Lior has his B.A. in computer science from the Technion in Haifa, Israel. Before establishing Jelurida (the company powering Nxt, Ardor and Ignis), he led the development and product management of a leading mainframe integration product at Software AG.

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The post How the Steem Saga Exposes the Dangers of Staking Pools appeared first on CoinRetreat.

from CoinRetreat https://ift.tt/2IxWmKz

[noisyunknownturtle]

How the Steem Saga Exposes the Dangers of Staking Pools

Over the last few days, the centralization versus decentralization row has erupted in earnest. In case you missed it, the activities of Tron founder Justin Sun following his takeover of blogging site Steemit have been pivotal to the controversies.

Let’s briefly recap. Earlier in February, it emerged that Sun was further expanding his crypto-empire with the acquisition of Steemit, which runs on the Steem blockchain. Steem was developed by Daniel Larimer, who also introduced the delegated proof-of-stake governance model, or dPoS, to the blockchain sphere. Larimer later went on to build EOS, which also runs on dPoS.

Related: Steemit Managing Director on Partnership With Tron — Exclusive

The clash came about due to a conflict between Sun and the Steem “witnesses” — nodes elected by token holders to act as block producers. The entity Steemit Inc., which operates the blogging site, holds a large quantity of STEEM network tokens, which it had previously never used to participate in voting. Once Sun took over the company, the witnesses moved to implement a soft fork that would have effectively frozen the Steemit tokens and ensured they couldn’t be used to influence the network in the future.

Don’t play a player

Evidently, Justin Sun leveraged his significant weight in the crypto community to persuade exchanges, including Binance, Huobi and Poloniex, to vote against the soft fork that would have diminished his voting power. Not only that, but the vote also ousted the existing set of witnesses in favor of a new set, replacing 20 out of 21 witnesses. All the newcomers had accounts that were created in the days immediately preceding the vote.

Related: Steem Community Stands Its Ground Amid Tron Takeover

At the time of writing, the issue appears to be ongoing, with the Steem community attempting to pool their voting weight as a means of replacing Sun’s stooges with the original witnesses. Nevertheless, Sun’s actions led to cries of foul play from those who believed that before this, Steem (and even Steemit) was a decentralized, democratic system. 

But, to be fair to Justin Sun, he didn’t actually do anything wrong. He played the witnesses at their own game, using the rules of the system. What happened is simply an out-in-the-open play of the same scenario that many have long speculated is happening behind the scenes in EOS.

Challenges with collusion resistance

The issues with EOS are illustrative of the flaws inherent to the delegated proof-of-stake governance model, flaws that were highlighted in a recent report from Binance Research. The report assesses the practical effectiveness of the EOS governance model against three goals that decentralization is supposed to achieve: collusion resistance, fault tolerance and attack resistance.

Of these three, the most fundamental failures are around collusion resistance. The more revenue that block producers earn from producing blocks, the more influential they become over the network as a whole. By pooling that influence in votes, they can begin to exert dominance over the network.

Combine this with tokens stored on exchanges, where the exchanges also wield similar clout in the votes, and it’s evident that the control of the network rests in the hands of a small number of very powerful voters.

Related: The Steem Takeover and the Coming Proof-of-Stake Crisis

Aggregating power in crypto

Many would say that the exchanges shouldn’t use their influence in this way. In fact, it’s being used as an argument against Justin Sun’s recent actions regarding Steem, leading to both Binance and Huobi withdrawing their votes.

However, the case highlights the voting power that token holders are giving to exchanges. But the entire crypto community is also — inadvertently or otherwise — encouraging the aggregation of power through the use of staking pools.

Staking your tokens via a pool is essentially the same as putting them into an exchange, for voting purposes. As the saying goes, “not your keys, not your crypto.” Once users start putting their tokens into staking pools, they’re handing over their dPoS voting rights to the staking pool owner. This means that the exchanges and staking pools can easily control who is producing blocks in any dPoS blockchain. 

Now, having seen that control being exerted over Steem, token holders may think twice about leaving their holdings on exchanges or putting them into staking pools. After all, if the tokens are in a private wallet, or staked under one’s own name, the voting rights remain intact.

DPoS is an unnecessary complication

There’s already a sound solution that works as good as dPoS. The merits of classical PoS have been proven in the case of long-running PoS blockchains such as Nxt. The added complexity of voting rounds introduced by dPoS does not increase security in any meaningful way and may increase risks of collusion and centralization.

The rights and wrongs of the Steem and Justin Sun saga are likely to be debated for some time to come. Either way, Sun is unlikely to relinquish his voting rights conveyed by the Steemit tokens, given that the community has already moved against him. 

However, true advocates of decentralization should consider removing their dPoS tokens from centralized exchanges and staking pools, thus ensuring that they own their votes and their voices are heard.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Lior Yaffe is co-founder and director of Jelurida, and has 20+ years of experience in design, development, and deployment of enterprise applications for large organizations. Lior has his B.A. in computer science from the Technion in Haifa, Israel. Before establishing Jelurida (the company powering Nxt, Ardor and Ignis), he led the development and product management of a leading mainframe integration product at Software AG.

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The post How the Steem Saga Exposes the Dangers of Staking Pools appeared first on For Crypto.

from For Crypto https://ift.tt/335EDmY

[angryconnoisseurface]

How the Steem Saga Exposes the Dangers of Staking Pools

Over the last few days, the centralization versus decentralization row has erupted in earnest. In case you missed it, the activities of Tron founder Justin Sun following his takeover of blogging site Steemit have been pivotal to the controversies.

Let’s briefly recap. Earlier in February, it emerged that Sun was further expanding his crypto-empire with the acquisition of Steemit, which runs on the Steem blockchain. Steem was developed by Daniel Larimer, who also introduced the delegated proof-of-stake governance model, or dPoS, to the blockchain sphere. Larimer later went on to build EOS, which also runs on dPoS.

Related: Steemit Managing Director on Partnership With Tron — Exclusive

The clash came about due to a conflict between Sun and the Steem “witnesses” — nodes elected by token holders to act as block producers. The entity Steemit Inc., which operates the blogging site, holds a large quantity of STEEM network tokens, which it had previously never used to participate in voting. Once Sun took over the company, the witnesses moved to implement a soft fork that would have effectively frozen the Steemit tokens and ensured they couldn’t be used to influence the network in the future.

Don’t play a player

Evidently, Justin Sun leveraged his significant weight in the crypto community to persuade exchanges, including Binance, Huobi and Poloniex, to vote against the soft fork that would have diminished his voting power. Not only that, but the vote also ousted the existing set of witnesses in favor of a new set, replacing 20 out of 21 witnesses. All the newcomers had accounts that were created in the days immediately preceding the vote.

Related: Steem Community Stands Its Ground Amid Tron Takeover

At the time of writing, the issue appears to be ongoing, with the Steem community attempting to pool their voting weight as a means of replacing Sun’s stooges with the original witnesses. Nevertheless, Sun’s actions led to cries of foul play from those who believed that before this, Steem (and even Steemit) was a decentralized, democratic system. 

But, to be fair to Justin Sun, he didn’t actually do anything wrong. He played the witnesses at their own game, using the rules of the system. What happened is simply an out-in-the-open play of the same scenario that many have long speculated is happening behind the scenes in EOS.

Challenges with collusion resistance

The issues with EOS are illustrative of the flaws inherent to the delegated proof-of-stake governance model, flaws that were highlighted in a recent report from Binance Research. The report assesses the practical effectiveness of the EOS governance model against three goals that decentralization is supposed to achieve: collusion resistance, fault tolerance and attack resistance.

Of these three, the most fundamental failures are around collusion resistance. The more revenue that block producers earn from producing blocks, the more influential they become over the network as a whole. By pooling that influence in votes, they can begin to exert dominance over the network.

Combine this with tokens stored on exchanges, where the exchanges also wield similar clout in the votes, and it’s evident that the control of the network rests in the hands of a small number of very powerful voters.

Related: The Steem Takeover and the Coming Proof-of-Stake Crisis

Aggregating power in crypto

Many would say that the exchanges shouldn’t use their influence in this way. In fact, it’s being used as an argument against Justin Sun’s recent actions regarding Steem, leading to both Binance and Huobi withdrawing their votes.

However, the case highlights the voting power that token holders are giving to exchanges. But the entire crypto community is also — inadvertently or otherwise — encouraging the aggregation of power through the use of staking pools.

Staking your tokens via a pool is essentially the same as putting them into an exchange, for voting purposes. As the saying goes, “not your keys, not your crypto.” Once users start putting their tokens into staking pools, they’re handing over their dPoS voting rights to the staking pool owner. This means that the exchanges and staking pools can easily control who is producing blocks in any dPoS blockchain. 

Now, having seen that control being exerted over Steem, token holders may think twice about leaving their holdings on exchanges or putting them into staking pools. After all, if the tokens are in a private wallet, or staked under one’s own name, the voting rights remain intact.

DPoS is an unnecessary complication

There’s already a sound solution that works as good as dPoS. The merits of classical PoS have been proven in the case of long-running PoS blockchains such as Nxt. The added complexity of voting rounds introduced by dPoS does not increase security in any meaningful way and may increase risks of collusion and centralization.

The rights and wrongs of the Steem and Justin Sun saga are likely to be debated for some time to come. Either way, Sun is unlikely to relinquish his voting rights conveyed by the Steemit tokens, given that the community has already moved against him. 

However, true advocates of decentralization should consider removing their dPoS tokens from centralized exchanges and staking pools, thus ensuring that they own their votes and their voices are heard.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Lior Yaffe is co-founder and director of Jelurida, and has 20+ years of experience in design, development, and deployment of enterprise applications for large organizations. Lior has his B.A. in computer science from the Technion in Haifa, Israel. Before establishing Jelurida (the company powering Nxt, Ardor and Ignis), he led the development and product management of a leading mainframe integration product at Software AG.

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from Tip Crypto https://ift.tt/2Q3GX8V

[gamesover]

❛❛      i daresay,      with your talent in photography    —      ❜❜            benevolence is the flow of parsed utterance brought to his lips,      curvature blessed   by ordained amusement as he regards you with such.      dawnbreak makes silhouettes of the universe,      scattered in flimsy shadows that retreat with each inch of celestial light that touches thus.      he is an entreating figure   that follows few footfalls at your heel,      offering you this freedom dome to categorize till your heart’s content.

𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉 𝒊𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒐𝒃𝒍𝒊𝒈𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒍𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒊𝒔𝒎   that sees him play accompaniment in this early morningtide.      memories are but a fickle construct,      touched by the taint of ever - flowing time,      and he himself has never quite mastered the maiden touch of capturing the moment,      any moment.      he would leave that in your fretful fingers that never seem so much inert   than behind shutter lens,      turned skyward.            ❛❛      you could easily make a career out of it professionally.       ❜❜

                                              ⌜  ღ  ⌟            @argxntcm​

[gamesover]

here,      his mind is a corroding death:      the laden threads of anamnesis that entangle at his throat and impose upon him such burdened weight of silence.      so gifted an orator as he,      equivocal in the talent of spoken tongue that he could sunder the very fabric of reality at a whim       —      forsaken upon the precipice of speechlessness,      thoughts tangled and cross  -  woven in a pattern not of his own creation,      as if he were treading through an amaranthine ocean with no land in sight.      [      𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩 𝙞𝙨 𝙡𝙖𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚,      even as yet another hypocrisy fades to nothingness upon his silver  - lined  tongue.       ]      he listens with only half an ear,      but with all his heart,      to the sovereign deity that sits across him at this dining table,      and feels the muttered cadence reverberate right through to the bone.

❛❛      noct.      ❜❜            he is loathe to disrupt you,      infinitely comforted by the growing shrewdness of your recounts and proposals,      knowing full well how adverse you are to embracing any such element of political roulette.      he cannot,      in true objectivity,      presume that he had any hand in this development,      but the possibility warms him nonetheless       —      for all of the five seconds it takes his wayward mind to conjure up a betraying thought:      𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙢𝙪𝙘𝙝 𝙡𝙤𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙧?      it seems turmoil is determined to make a fool of him tonight,      and decidedly with less dignity than he would like,      as he sets aside his cutlery and plate,      barely touched.      [      dinner is a simple course:      a fusion of meat wrap and beloved oyakodon that he had been planning to test for some time.      he would reason,      if asked,      that it is an incomplex logic to combine two favorites into one.       ]      he does not meet your eye,      softness in modulation.            ❛❛      ...   have you heard of the restoration effort   in altissia?      ❜❜

                                     ⌜  ღ  ⌟            @kalaeido​​     .      noctis

[gamesover]

          ❝      what could i become if i stopped worrying about death, about pain,                      about anything?      ❞                               ‹    @isolov​​   :    prompto    ›

ah,      the machinations of a tender mind:              he could envy you so,      in this token moment,      the purity of heart that bleeds so thoroughly and relentlessly.      the polarity of two bodies   stuck within one reality,      it certainly would have never been an entertained thought of his   to ponder such notional hypotheses,      not in the way you bless even the infinitesimal of earthly ponderings      —      and that,      he supposes,      is the language of your sentiment,      to be laid bare before him in judgment.      not in this life,      nor any that may follow,      will he understand,      but he need not understand to succinctly acknowledge the seed of your woe.      suspended in the crease of your mouth,      an incursion mangles betwixt soft - spilt words,      basking sun that draws the last of its breath.        𝒐𝒉,      𝒎𝒚 𝒅𝒆𝒂𝒓 𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒈𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒔:      𝗱𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗶𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸?

❛❛      ...   what indeed.      ❜❜            an ode to syllogism,      he does not quite smile in the manner that he would like.      it must be circumstantial coincidence at best;      you,      who could tread on every landmine with no intention to;      you,      who would never speak these thoughts to mock him so.      the scars of this broken heart will never mend.            ❛❛      the world does not stop after death.      if you do not worry for death,      then you will not know mourning.      but what of those who have passed?      would you be indifferent to the lives that they have lived?      if you do not worry for pain,      how will you know the taste of contentment   to be different than any other?      ❜❜

                  𝒕𝒉𝒆  𝒄𝒓𝒖𝒆𝒍  𝒑𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒄𝒆    /    𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲  𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘁     [   𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻   ]

[gamesover]

𝒏𝒐𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒔   /   𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗲𝘆𝗲   . 

“ – Hey. You don’t have to call me out like that.  "   It’s embarrassing really ,   just how well Ignis knew him ; like Noctis was the back of his hand or merely a part of him, or would it have been more accurate to say that Ignis was part of Noctis instead?    He knew all the things that the prince would forget, just like how he most likely knew in his excitement that he’d forget the coat. ( Later on he’d complain without it, bundled in his blanket but still happy to be there. ) 

Noctis’s lips pursed into a scowl as if he’d been scolded, but he disappeared into his room soon thereafter. There is the sound of his coats in the closet being rustled around before he emerged again, tugging on a comfortable peacoat that hugged his thin form perfectly.    It’s more dressed up than he often liked to be– the coat a gift from his father, but Ignis always preferred him to look more presentable than the usual ratty hoodie he often wore around.

"Well?    Come on."     Impatience in his veins.    Noctis even came closer, his hand laid on Ignis’s forearm to grip ever so lightly and   tug.   "You can’t just take your time after getting my hopes up. It’s cruel.”

it is with such softness in his eyes              that ignis watches the prince make for the bedroom;      no doubt a slight bit touched by irritability at the firm reminder.      surely,      such petulance must have long since worn itself out of hospitability,      now that it is no longer buoyed by the caveat of juvenile boyhood?      surely,      he does not indulge noctis so continuously,      that anything of his dear princely charge would appear charming to him?      𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒚   ...      the rest of that thought remains a mystery,      as he lays eyes on the sight that emerges once more.      he cannot help the smile   that plies itself into existence upon his lips,      artfully hidden behind the hand that reaches up to adjust at his spectacles.      regardless,      it is an obvious tell of satisfaction,      known even to those that are aware of his tastes just a modicum,      let alone noctis himself,      the most frequent source and recipient of such expressions.

❛❛      oh?      can’t i?      ❜❜            perhaps he is taking far too much delight in playing contrary,      if the insistent tugging on his arm is anything to go by.      a click of his tongue;      he reaches out to adjust the collar of noctis’ coat,      a practiced habit at this point,      flattening his palm across the soft material.      a blend of anek and garula wool,      with a hint of spider silk?      or perhaps      —      he blinks,      suddenly aware of the skant remaining distance,      having unwittingly leaned forward in his examination.      the next breath withers to a most painful death within rigid lungs,      and it is with great stiffness that he straightens,      managing only just to transition into ensuing motions with some semblance of smoothness.      car keys?      check.      wallet and phone?      check.      sanity?      𝒎𝒐𝒔𝒕 𝒄𝒆𝒓𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒍𝒚 𝒍𝒐𝒔𝒕.            ❛❛      ...   right.      let’s go.      ❜❜

[gamesover]

𝒏𝒐𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒔   /   𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗲𝘆𝗲   .

What an enigma he is, though Noctis can forget for now that there are parts of Ignis that are well-guarded, tucked away to never see the light of day. Parts that he’d desperately wanted to know, but things have been changing ever since he’s left the Citadel– not all for the better.   [ His thoughts go back to when he’d so stubbornly looked through Ignis’s file and showed up at his doorstep, demanding answers for a problem that he insisted did not exist. ]   But there are silver linings at least; one of them is that he has not lost him altogether like he feared. 

“ Oh, I forgot. “     Birthdays aren’t really that special, not after his father had begun to struggle to make it to them. What’s a party without his father? Without someone he cares for to accompany him? Just empty gifts lavished upon him that mean nothing. None of it meant anything from the wrong people, but Ignis is the right person and his heart swells within his chest. To be remembered is such a small thing, but invaluable– his retainer knows what makes him happiest ; quality time spent together instead of anything else. A moment of respite in a life growing more and more hectic, day by day.

“ Where are we going? “   The Prince does his best to shake off the fatigue and the tiredness that seeps into his bones. Thankfully the later is a result of a full stomach and not exercise, lest he’d have fallen asleep before this offer was extended.       He pulled the blanket thrown over the edge of the couch and tucked it beneath his arm, already excited to get going, the hop in his step when he bounded toward the door endearing.    “   Is it a lake I haven’t been to yet? Something really special you want me to see?  ”

when the inceptive inkling had dawned,              had noctis known?      ignis thinks:      the prince must have felt it,      surely,      the catastrophe that brought such chaos to slumbering wake,      as it had for him      —      how reality itself had shifted and warped before his very eyes,      in frightening clarity,      to collapse within the wrinkle of your laugh,      once upon a time.      and he would ask:      𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒏𝒐𝒕?        but he already has his answer,      with every diversion he speaks into existence,      faced with furtive yet assertive offers to spend some time together,      in between iron - wrought propriety and uncomfortable awareness.      he knows noctis suspects,      though he do not know what of:      and ignis would make sure it would never come to light,      hidden in the chasm that swallows the space between.      a scribbled line drawn in the sand he cannot cross,      ever so crooked and uneven;      deigned by choice,      his choice.

a hum,      amused.            ❛❛      as i’d expected.      ❜❜            he does not utter any words of unheeded condolence,      nor will he play at any pretense otherwise.      his heart is filled with conflict,      opposing interests that cannot coexist in peace.      but even so,      he cannot abandon noctis in this way,      amidst the quiet moments when the prince’s mind is rarely at ease.      the way he traces the figure to the entranceway,      gaze muted in fondness so rich it tugs at his very core.      but he is ignis scientia,      dedicated in his duty to maintain some semblance of decorum on thy person,      as he leans against the counter,      arms crossed   ever so   deliberately.            ❛❛      𝙥𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚,      noct.      we won't be going   anywhere   if you don’t put   a jacket   on first.      ❜❜