#and my friend who is currently getting into ff7 i'm like. this is so relevant JDFKJHK

[icharchivist]

you should tell us the tale of how you first got into gbf

Ooouh boy what a tale what a tale!

Under the cut because i rambled but the short story, is, my two best friends lured me in with one of my fav trope, with gorgeous men, and with indulging into my seiyuu madness.

the longer story:

The two main culprits in getting me into Granblue are two of my bestest friends, @/nalhegrande (Suzu) and @/baconplasm (Bacon). We've been friends since 2015 or so, we met via the dgm fandom revival of the time, and we've been tight knit ever since. Also at the time my blog was very ff7 themed and my url was a reference to it, which also got the two of them interested in it (relevant to the story)

anyway back in 2019 was my major Hypmic phase, so i was starting to really be into seiyuu then (and i was a huge huge fan of Saito Soma as a result). Suzu and Bacon both were playing Granblue a lot.

First thing that happened was around Granblue's 5th anni, March 2019, when 000 came out, and Suzu was reading Paradise Lost in preparation. Because Suzu busted into my DMs going "ICHA YOU WONT BELIEVE IT, SAKURAI AND SUZUKEN ARE DOING LIVING LEGACY STUFF AGAIN". Because Suzu, knowing me from my "living legacy" url days, knew exactly how to hit me with a truck, as i've been obsessed with over a decade with that trope i saw in ff7 of "the person you looked up to and cared about died in your arms and the only way you can cope is to become their legacy, to become them. But you need to find yourself again.". Which was originated by characters Suzuken and Sakurai voiced at the time.

(Suzuken and Sakurai who themselves were also there during the dgm days. the rabbit hole runs deep. dgm also has Living Legacy tropes to it btw to express how on brand it is for me. And while their characters are super important to me (my current url is a reference to the character Suzuken used to voice, it IS one of the most important character in my life), i did discover them with their roles in ff7, who genuinely shaped my life, so telling me they were replaying the same dynamic somewhere else was a siren song.)(yes that's why i never lived down the Sakurai incident lol.)

Anyway because i'm a sucker for those plots, Suzu explained it to me in major details and in tears, of Paradise Lost AND of Zero and i couldn't help but be invested, so i definitely developped an affection for Sandalphon and Lucifer just then.

(Suzu killed me by mentioning that one of my fav song, that i associated to my Living Legacy pair over here, also fit Lucifer and Sandalphon, and it immediately won me over. Stream Saturn by Sleeping at Last.)

But at the time i wasn't really fan of gacha on principle, so i didn't want to get into it, and everything to get into seemed tedious (i was seeing them tweeting raid battles everytime and all i thought was "yeah no i do not want to be perceived, hard pass"). So eventually while i thought about checking it out, i didn't actually feel like it.

Flashforward a few months during the Summer season. I see the two of them regularly lose their mind over their favorite characters. (at the time Suzu was mainly focusing on Heles and Cain. I say "at the time" because Wilnas is now one of her main husband and he wasn't even a raid battle back then. And Bacon is a Vane stan through and through and a fan of the Knights by extension.). Both of them also really like Percival!

(also yes they posted about Belial once i a while, and i knew more or less his deal then, but i admit he didn't do anything to me then. this might be the most shocking part of this story considering literally everything about this blog, and also the fact he started haunting my dreams before i officially read wmtsb, and i haven't caught a break since.)

anyway Summer 2019 was the year of LanVane SR Unit AND Percival's EX summer art. And of Summer Sandalphon while at it.

so all of those things were flooding my TL on twitter. Just couldn't scroll anywhere without seeing those.

I cared for Sandalphon thanks to Suzu at this point so i was *points* everytime i was seeing him. I've identified Vane as Bacon's boy so i was fully seeing him as a Blorbo in law at this point.

But it was my first time running into Lancelot and Percival.

And i fell in love with Percival in this one singular art.

Like i looked at it thinking he was the single most gorgeous man that had ever graced my screen. Everytime my friends were retweeting this picture i would freeze a second and stare at it mumbling "it can't be right".

Eventually i shot Bacon a message about it especially since she was the one posting most about it. But i did one slight mistake when i told her "yeah that guy you keep posting? i think i have a case of the down bad, can you tell me more about him" -------- i mixed up Lancelot's and Percival's names.

And so instead she mostly shared Lancelot and Vane stuff, and i didn't realize it was because i was wrong on the name, i just thought she went on a tangent. But because i was interested suddenly Bacon tried to grapple me in by doing what Granblue Fans do best: "if you think he's pretty WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT HIM--" and she shared pictures of various characters, including, of course, Mister Sieg's Yukata art. (while i was losing my mind because i knew his VA (Kakashi from Naruto's fame, Angeal from ff7) so it was also a thing)

Anyway also this was the funniest bit of this exchange:

screenshots taken before a disaster.

you'll notice that because she just called Percival "that bitch" and because i mixed up the names causing a misunderstanding well. She couldn't properly exploit my thirsting on Percival's summer art. And Belial had to insert himself in this conversation first.

... and that's the day i started the game. or, at least, made an account.

I got very lost at the time, so the three of us made a group chat then to keep discussing gameplay stuff, and well, about anything under the sun.

They held my hand through it slowly, i participated to the summer free pulls (falling in love with Summer!Rosetta this way) and all... but i didn't play long enough to be hooked so i ended up falling off, but with the promise to my friends i'll get to it eventually.

Percival, most gorgeous man on earth, was slipping through my fingers.....

(though eventually misunderstanding was cleared lmao and friends were like "yeah actually that tracks, but we won't say a word, just come and see him")

Anyway i was hard in hypmic at the time, and especially into Saito Soma's career as a singer because of it. So my friends were also trying desperately to hook me in with various characters that shared those seiyuu, the biggest catch at the time being Shiva.

Because Soma's character then only had a SR and very little important contents. It took a few years for Feather to get some serious stories after all :). (plus he is in a total different range than i'm used to when it comes to that) (also ironically i kept pulling Randall's units over Feather's units, which originally annoyed me but then i found it really funny i kept pulling the guy who wanted to see Feather and couldn't find him. the irony of the fact i had songs by the two of them (and Lu Woh's VA) on my phone at the time escaped me for about a year (bc i admit i wasn't a major fan of the music unfortunately), where Randall was still my underrated R/SR fav character, not ready to handle the fact his seiyuu was going to play my favorite a3's character and definitely ruin my life the moment i realized he was there in gbf being a fav all along.)

On this journey, because i listened to a lot of others Soma's bands, one of the major draw ended up being the fact i listened to another band he was in with Eguchi Takuya, so when Bacon started to talk about Vane's seiyuu, i was here and armed with "oh yeah i have flirty songs by him" and having this torture device (affectionate) was a huge motivation to get into gbf even more to bully my dear friend.

then in September/October A3 came out and it ate my life away so it halted me getting more into gbf at this point (and EguTaku being in it i could still continue my torture agenda)(we all kinda got in it so it was still madness.)

Anyway then again in my usual fashion of "i don't get into hyperfixation, hyperfixation gets to me (by hunting me down for sports)" i ended up randomly having a dream about Percival, which i totally forgot about, but i was so worked up about it i grabbed the game again in November 2019 and just binged a chunk of the main story and the Dragon Knights events.

This whole mess was its own long story, because it turned out i didn't end up liking Percival in his first event appearance and i was betrayed as hell, but BFAF made me reconsider everything about him and now i'm a Percival expert and lover. But my friends were then allowed to see me in full downspiral.

But it sealed my fate. After that, i was too hooked and i didn't want to leave anymore. And while i took some breaks here and there bc of burn out, i've been playing Granblue daily ever since.

then in December or January (right in time for Light GW then) Suzu dragged me into her crew, and Bacon joined in eventually - and since both of our crew had the same problem (half of our crew was inactive, the other half was tight knit though), we ended up merging the crews' active players together, and now here we are and we've been at it for years.

(and i've read wmtsb around February/March 2020 for the full timeline - since 000 and the maydays weren't in the sidestories i had to watch them on youtube then too. I know it was the date bc it was right in time for Seeds of Redemption, the 6th anni event, and it was the most emotionally overloaded period for me as a result lmao. But it basically sealed my fate then, no way i turn away from this game after just how emotionally packed this one month was.).

so that's the long story.

the short story:

My two best friends informed me of a lovestory's trope similar to the one story that destroyed my life, of the most gorgeous man on earth, and fed right into my seiyuu madness, and now i'm stuck here with all of you to discuss Belial's balls.

the more you know, and now you know who to blame. (be nice to them, or else 🔪.)

i hope the read wasn't too tedious ahah

Take care ;D