#and that they're coming from fuckoff nowhere

[madphantom]

The beloved and I went on a day trip and got stranded on the way home. Sat out on some lonesome train station, and I was extremely cold, so he gave me his jacket. I asked if he wouldn't be cold himself then, his answer: "Well, if I wear the jacket you're gonna be cold, so what's the use? Besides, you're probably the only person I know who actually chatters with their teeth when they're cold. It's fucking ridiculous. Who the fuck chatters with their teeth? I don't chatter with my teeth. Okay, I don't have teeth, but, my point still applies. Keep the fucking jacket."

Sat there for a while. I was dead quiet. Finally, he asked what's wrong. "If I hadn't planned this dumb day trip today would've been so much less stressful and we'd be home instead of sitting in fuckoff nowhere freezing to death." He's giving me a side eye. "Are you responsible for the German railroad system? No. The only thing that would've prevented me from taking this trip would've been if the train didn't come, because I promised it. Okay?"

After another twenty minutes, the bus finally came. We went inside, found a seat and within minutes, he leaned on me and nodded off. I sat there, listening to music and looking out of the window, and every now and then he cuddled up to me a little more and purred in his sleep.

I'm so in love with this man, y'all.

[quiveringdeer]

Okay, but hear me out. You're trying to compliment Reiner seriously, but he ends up saying, "Flattery will get you nowhere." in a scolding tone, thinking you're just saying things and being insincere in order to get on his good side. So you furrow your brows and begin to literally lecture him about what a great guy he is despite what he believes. And him not being able to take all those compliments, because no one has ever really been so observant or attentive to him in that way; so he does whatever he can, uses whatever means to shut you up because he can't take it. Feels like his chest would explode, thinking what he did to deserve this; deserve you.

I'm taking this as a personal fuckin attack Nonnie 😤 How dare you get me tearing up this damn early over by babiest of baby boys! 🥺

My determination and devotion to a cause has never been higher than my desire for the opportunity to help Reiner see how truly amazing and wonderful he is.

As much as I love Porco, I hate his comment about how all of the way Reiner acted on Paradis was him copying and manifesting Marcel. Like, he was inspired by Marcel yes, and maybe it started out with even Reiner just acting, but even outside of the implications of him developing DID it was Reiner reacting to people he came to care for. I think the being an extroverted leader is the big thing he took from Marcel. But all the things that made him a good leader, trusted companion and reliable friend were traits that Reiner already had.

Ugh, I just want to wrap him up in a bubble and tell the world to fuckoff and leave my mans alone! Hasn't he given enough! Let him have some vestiges of self esteem and self love damn it! 😭

But for real though, being Reiner's partner would involve patience and lots of energy and care to reassure him often of your --not just love, but even just liking him as a person.

And depending on the point in his life where you two become partners -canonverse or modern au- I think Reiner can objectively see and acknowledge that he's attractive by general societal standards, but his whole self-loathing and lack of self-esteem comes from him thinking he's a shitty person on the inside. Hella imposter syndrome (same baby boy). Probably thinks that he's some how manipulated you into thinking he's a decent person or something. Because how could he be when his dad wants nothing to do with him/reiner thinks himself being born is why his dad left his mom but really his dad is a deadbeat asshole 😒/ and also he thinks that his mom is never really proud of him cause she's never said as much, and has been a single mom dealing with her own heartache and self issues. Not an excuse but it is what it is. And he's constantly trying to "win/earn" her affection--of which he desires words and actions that prove that. But barely gets the later. And yes he has his friends. Mainly Bertholdt and Pieck--I'd say poooossibly Marcel but maybe moreso acquaintances? Like Marcel is valedictorian and captain of all the sports teams they both play on, and Reiner is always falling short behind him? Maybe even a few places behind? I dunno.

But anywho, obviously he's somehow manipulated you into thinking he's worth your time. And he's definitely a self sabotager in that regard. :/ Now I'm really curious about exploring how you'd actually finally get to be dating my interpretation of Reiner. I think it'd definitely have to be a good friends first situation. And you asking him out. So if you want this sad lovable Teddy Graham you're gonna have to make the moves first.

I think maybe he might end up in some random hookup situations outside this relationship. So maybe it's a repeat booty call catching feelings type deal? Like if he's at a party and someone comes onto him and they're flirting and they wanna hook up, he's not gonna turn it down. Especially with how much this man craves physical connection. Like the sex is great for sure, but he really is just wanting someone to hold on to and they hold him back. If that's while he's pounding them into the mattress or wall, then woop!

Wow this got rambly. I have so many feelings about this man 😩😩😩

[ooc-but-stylish]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[klysanderelias]

so I'm going back to relisten to the twilight mirage season of friends at the table and it's weird because like, the first time I listened through it, it was kind of a slog because it felt like they put forward really interesting scenarios and kind of zagged away from how I thought they should go, or more often, I disagreed ethically and politically with the players/characters in a way that was interesting and engaging but not fun.

Mostly it came down to being absolutely bewildered about some of the choices and priorities of the game, and I have to assume that I missed some key elements of worldbuilding when I first listened (which seems likely, I listen at work where there's a lot of loud machinery AND I sometimes tune out my headphones when there's something more important going on around me) because I just can't understand some of the things that happened.

(spoilers)

Mostly the thing that drives me absolutely bonkers is the way that the New Earth Hegemony is introduced and characterized as aggressively vicious and evil with shades of US imperialism AND 'war on terror'-era sort of narratives re: their footsoldiers, and then the second half of the season all of the NEH npcs just kinda? become allies? and the NEH is treated as a minor problem compared to the Advent coalition, which to me just kinda came up out of nowhere with no real context and seemed like small potatoes comparatively?

Again, I have to assume I missed something, because Austin keeps referring to them in the later half of the season and in the post-season as fascists, and the general consensus of the players is that Advent is irredeemably evil.

It's just wild to me because the opening of the season is basically 'the new earth hegemony has been sending suicide units to attack the divine fleet for hundreds if not thousands of years, slowly killing off the divines, and no one knows why or where they're coming from' and once they meet/capture an NEH soldier, he explicitly confirms two very important things - one, he joined up to go on a suicide mission half a galaxy away to kill people who had never attacked or threatened him or his culture because it would better his and his family's life, and two, the NEH was attacking the divine fleet (again, entirely unprovoked) because it was trying wipe out the divines because it's against their existence ideologically, and to reassimilate the survivors of the fleet.

This gets even MORE wild to me in the back half of the season where the leader of the hegemony shows up in a supermassive battleship with a fuckoff solar beam shooting out of its nose with the explicit purpose of claiming the system, colonizing its worlds, and sucking up the Twilight Mirage (a system-wide cloud of nanoparticles that effectively allow magic to exist in-universe) to use for the NEH's benefit.

I think there's a point in there where they clarify that the NEH isn't taking a sample to reverse engineer, they're literally just sucking the system dry to steal it all for themselves.

And this feels like such a criticism of US imperialism that it's wild to me that the season more or less acts like the NEH isn't really all that bad.

But then again, the season also really kind of kicks off with the last remaining divine of the divine fleet, whose single most important rule was 'never colonize anything', deciding that maybe it's time to colonize something. And as the season progresses, some pretty fucking nuts magic happens and a) the planet they're trying to colonize pulls some shadow jutsu and creates 7 more copies of itself for everyone to live on fight over, and b) the original indigenous inhabitants of the planet are BROUGHT BACK TO FUCKIN' LIFE

And like, the Quire as a species are super fascinating to me, but they're also like the only faction in the second half of the season that has any leg to stand on? And the fact that none of the pcs really commit any time to helping them rubs me the wrong way because it feels like the general consensus of all the factions re: the Quire is just 'tough shit this may be your home planet/solar system but we need it for Reasons'

Just in general a lot of the decisions they made felt weird as hell to me, especially given the general trends of the other seasons, and I don't know if I just like, skipped an entire arc by accident or something?

But yeah it definitely suffers from the general f@tt faction bloat and I think they admitted later on that they started it as a mecha game and very quickly found out they weren't as invested in that style of game as what they eventually transitioned into, but mostly I just found myself mentally shouting at the players every episode because i just couldn't understand what they were thinking

except for grand magnificent, I genuinely think that Art knocked it out of the park with grand mag's characterization and arc, and it was very believable and sympathetic for me, even as shitty as grand mag as a person was.