#its why i liked ffxv so much

[toestalucia]

i rly like these LOL theyre cute

[prynacle]

FFXV || UNUSED EP. ARDYN ENDING

Commentary by the dataminer Youtube@Luthus Nox Fleuret

This unused scene was supposed to be the very last cutscene in EPISODE ARDYN but it was seemingly taken out after all the other upcoming DLCs were cancelled which would have formed an entire new alternate storyline. Since Episode Ardyn is the start of that story line it would probably have been a bit confusing to tease something like this and only have it resolved in the novel - as the actual game content got cancelled. Its also worth noting that after this scene the score board will appear, fully ending the game. I dislike this DLC and the alternate storyline developed in DotF. In my view, DotF undermines previously established characterization/story and directly contradicts the original theme of FFXV replacing it with something entirely else. I do not view its content as canon in any form. I am, however, committed to uncovering and documenting the many secrets of FFXV. Hence why I have decieded to upload this online regardless of my personal opinions on the matter.

My thoughts under the cut:

So the sound files from this scene were not an isolated leftover thing? Cool cool we get to see this :D It never ceases to amaze me how far the datamining scene of the game has come after all these years ✨ I'm loving Lunafreya's posture/walking animation here hehe I also partially agree with Luthus commentary. I'm not fond of the alternate story and ending DotF offers because of the lore changes, but It's been long since I decided to simply ignore it/let others have their fun and relish in the little things that surface from it, like Luna scenes and dialogues in the book, or in this case, a datamined scene.

No point in marinating in the things we don't like from a videogame's alternate ending when there's so much more to like from the actual game, me thinks.

[flowers-of-tenebrae]

Random DotF musings pt. 1

(spoilers for the whole book)

A Savior Lost - Ardyn:

So I uh totally forgot there was an "animated prologue" to Ep Ardyn. I did watch it...back in 2019. That means between Episode Ardyn, the animated prologue and DotF, his story has been told thrice in three different forms. Huh. (Well it's par the course for FFXV tbh)

It starts off rough tbh, but I like how the author reminds us of Noct's "shaggy hair and wayward nature" in the opening paragraph. Then you realise it's set in chapter 13 so any slight amusement - at Noct's expense - becomes 😭

I've had DA brainrot, so the justice (Somnus) vs. vengeance (Ardyn) themes stood out. In executing his ideals of justice and governance, Somnus corrupts Ardyn's purpose (his calling) and leads him on the path of vengeance... Culminating in Ardyn doing unto Noctis/Somnus what Somnus did him: 1) Somnus slaying Aera before Ardyn vs. Ardyn stabbing Luna in Altissia, and ofc 2) Ardyn vowing to destroy Somnus' entire legacy and lineage (through Noctis), much like how Ardyn's past as the "savior healer and future king" was demolished/buried and how his wondrous future (as king with Aera by his side) was cut short. This all seems v obvious, but it sounds cool to me when framed with DA's concepts of spirits vs demons - i.e. "if you see them as a demon, they'll become demons and reflect your expectations back at you".

Also obv Jesus/Judas parallels

The last line goes hard ✍️🔥🔥🔥

Now, the train has clearly steered off the rails of canon and into new territory

Not a fan of them casting Bahamut as the big bad antagonist (so cliché). Like the way his speech (as an Astral) is formatted though

It's easier for me to accept the Noctis/Somnus and Luna/Aera parallels in 2024 than it was back in 2019. But even more important than those are the Ardyn/Luna parallels, which we can see taking shape in this part.

Verdict: A slog to read, denser than expected, less exciting bc I've experienced Ep Ardyn - and the animated prologue. Certain parts felt more like reading a "dry impassive timeline" than a story. (I still question Aera's judgement in telling Somnus.) But this chapter does set the stage, so I can see why they still included it. And it's worth re-treading for that last scene alone.

The Beginning of the End - Aranea:

There's anti-food promotion for once, too much of it really. (Ew stale popcorn)

We learn a little bit of Niflheim's past state and its decline. Cool

Omg mentions of Aranea's parents!? Do we know more about her parents than Iggy's?? 😂

Wow they have an aerial safety net system in Gralea (for dragoons...?) Also, Gralea 🔄 Garlean empire - yeah the ff devs weren't subtle (it's a FFXIV ref)

Aranea's penchant for nicknames strikes again -> Tiny = Diamond Weapon

I liked seeing more of Aranea's dynamic with Biggs and Wedge and learning a bit about the latter two. Not as much Aranea + Sol in this ch as I'd expected, but that's okay for now.

While not quite as impressive as [ME2 spoiler] Miranda giving her resignation to the Illusive Man, Aranea going "I really can't stand you" to Ardyn, winking, then diving off the edge of Zegnautus Keep is still pretty awesome

The ffxv devs keep trying to make me care about Loqi but it's never worked

BONUS: FFVI ref spotted! (dancing mad) + minor Tenebrae lore drop (they were a tourist trap /jk)

Verdict: Some parts were repetitive ngl BUT this was more engaging than the prev ch bc 1) it's new content, 2) ARANEA!! - however the action scenes would've been more exciting to play through vs. reading. I'm going to sound like a broken record here; I feel robbed we didn't get to play as her (DRG ladies ftw) and see her wink on screen 🥲

[enden-k]

ngl you got me into wuwa, it's been super fun despite the flaws and lag 😭 thank you enden!!! i cant wait to get the limited guy (i am still learning the names) and i love love love encore and lingyang so much.......... my children............ holding them gently

its rlly fun and i love it sm!!!!! feels sm like a mix of nier, FFXV and HI3 to me so thats why it feels so frustrating it lags sm bc i rlly wanna play but im getting denied aughh.....

im happy to hear you enjoy it tho!!!! good luck on getting jiyan, hes so strong and pretty

[paracosmicparadox]

So I finished FFXV ages ago, but I've been thinking about it lately bc you know, I elaborated the chocobros' story far further than it was meant to go and got way more attached to them than I should have. So here're some things that the game did really well and some of the things it didn't. (you don't have to agree w anything here; I'm not trying to corrupt y'all w my opinions; I just feel like talking)

Let's start with the bad to get it out of the way:

CINDY. I swear to everything holy her character had the potential to be So Cool if she hadn't been so overtly over-sexualized. Like, I'm a woman-liker too and I get it, lady mechanics are hot af, but you know what else is attractive? Safety in the workplace. Cindy's outfit was not something any mechanic would be caught dead wearing. Yeah, it was designed to be sexy, but do you know how many burns she would've accumulated from the hot oil and metal she works with? There's a reason mechanics typically wear clothing zipped up when they're actually working on something. If anything, Cindy's character design just made me uncomfortable. Her character itself? Great. No qualms there. Her design? Please acquire more than two square feet of fabric I'm begging you. I just feel like Cindy deserved to be so much more than fan service.

Luna's brief time on-screen. Yet another potentially incredible and deep female protagonist who got short change from this game. People joke a lot that Luna wasn't at all an important character because the game never really treated her like one. She was MEANT to be important, clearly, but it felt like she existed just for her tearjerking death scene? Like there was SO MUCH overlooked potential to bring her into the storyline as more than Tragic Love Interest In White, and yet?? Idk it frustrated me.

The emotional aspect of the game felt rushed. There were a lot of emotional scenes covered throughout the plotline ranging from King Regis's death to the deal with Prompto at Zegnautus Keep. I feel like the game TRIED to cover them realistically and show the characters' grief, but it didn't quite get there. It was just sort of an "Oh, how sad. I'm so upset and angry. Hm, what's that? My friends believe in me without truly understanding and I can kill someone to ease my pain? Oh okay I'm better now." I get that realistic healing cycles are kinda hard to portray within a set timeframe, but having some lingering effects of the blatant trauma inflicted would've been nice. You don't recover from shit like that in a week's time.

Character personalities tended to be one-sided. Noctis was edgy, Prompto was happy-go-lucky, Gladio was tough-guy, and Ignis was... nevermind, Iggy was great--- HE had some on-screen depth. Personally, I've developed these characters myself far more than what the game gave us, but I wish we'd gotten more canon depth beyond their surface-level traits. I love them with my whole heart and they deserve genuine complexity.

Now the things I actually really enjoyed:

The graphics were on-point. The amount of detail put into character design and into monsters was insane. You could zoom in and see individual textures on skin and hair and feathers, bringing a level of realism to the game that I personally enjoyed.

All of the Latin and Norse mythological references!! As a Latin nerd, I found little gems everywhere in this game. Esp in the names--- (Noctis Lucis Caelum = Of-the-night Sky-of-light (the genitives in there make the literal translation kinda a mouthful ik) Gladiolus Amicitia = Sword-flower Friendship (the gladiolus is an actual flower that gets its name from the Latin word gladius, meaning sword, for its sword-like shape) Ignis Scientia = Fire Knowledge; Prompto Argentum = Ready Silver (the word prompto is actually in the dative (possibly ablative), making the literal translation nonsense, but if they'd made his name Promptus, it would've sounded awkward, so I can see why they picked the dative/ablative form of the adjective for stylistic reasons and I put the rough translation instead)) WOW THAT WAS A LOT OF PARENTHETICAL INFO WHOOPS

Ardyn's character. I'm not saying this bc I'm one of the fans who fawn over him---Ardyn is DEFINITELY NOT MY PREFERRED FLAVOR OF MAN, but character-wise, he made an excellent antagonist. He was witty, slick, and classy in an I'm-gonna-outstep-you-like-it's-hopscotch sorta way. He was a poetic villain done well, which made him an antagonist you could both sympathize for and absolutely detest given the situation. He was both the master manipulator and the pawn one space away from the edge of the board. He can sway a crowd, but you know deep in your gut just by the cunning greed in his eyes that You Cannot Trust The Man. He was definitely Not a good person (tragic backstory isn't an excuse), but he was a good villain.

I loved the bond between the chocobros?? This is probably bc I'm a sucker for the found family trope, but their interactions were so amazing to me?? Like, not even the cutscene stuff. Just their little sidebar conversations during fights or while you're walking around or driving the Regalia. They're Roadtrip Buddies™ and I think that's excellent.

THE FOOD. By god, the food in this game looked absolutely scrumptious and I would like to partake. The Daggerquill Soup? Give it to me I'll pay you. The Creamy Crustacean Omelet? Stop it right now I'll eat that so fast it'll be a criminal offense. Like I know I touched on the graphics earlier, but broski I was not kidding. I guess I know why the game took so long to make it to the market bc the detail that went into these recipes is absolutely mouthwatering.

[mamthew]

This review of Final Fantasy XV: Dawn of the Future by Jun Eishima sort of by design contains spoilers for FFXV and all of its tie-in materials.

Final Fantasy XV is a kind of fascinating game. It's a mainline Final Fantasy game that's been in a weird state of incompletion literally throughout its entire lifetime. It was announced in 2006 as Final Fantasy Vs. XIII, then was in development hell for literally a decade after its announcement, when it finally released as Final Fantasy XV in 2016, alongside a movie that filled in a pretty big chunk of its lore, an animated OVA that filled out some of the characters' backstories, and several crappy side-games. It released alongside a season pass that promised three single-player campaigns and one multiplayer campaign that all filled in missing pieces of the story that otherwise felt excised from the game's story as it was at launch.

In FFXV, Gladio leaves the party for a time and returns with a facial scar, refusing to tell the group why. Ignis is separated from the party during a battle and in the aftermath is revealed to have been blinded in the altercation, with no explanation as to how. Prompto is kidnapped and when the group rescues him, he mentions offhand some pretty mind-boggling backstory he has discovered, with no time to explain what that even means. Near the end of the game, there's a ten-year time skip, the interim of which is barely explored. Each of these missing pieces was slowly filled in over the course of 2017, and only for those who had the money to shell out for the extra content and the time to play the kind of tediously long Comrades DLC.

But even after these holes were filled in, many fans were unhappy with the final game. FFXV's entire back half feels incomplete, like it was rushed despite its at least ten-year development cycle. Its final dungeon is pretty short, and its ending is…divisive…which is a nice way to say that it's a downer and most gamers especially circa 2016 couldn't handle a game having a downer of an ending. Throughout 2017 and 2018, the developers kept patching in more story beats, more quality-of-life tweaks, and more side content, in an effort to both make the game feel more complete and cater to fans upset about the less-than-rosy story elements.

This culminated in the release of FFXV: Royal Edition in March of 2018, which packaged in all the previous patches and DLCs and completely reworked the final dungeon to be much larger, more detailed, and to present closure on several plot threads originally left ambiguous. Royal also promised the release of four more story DLCs, based on the results of a fan survey, which would combine to give the game an entire alternate happy ending. But in October of 2018, three of the four DLCs were canceled and director Hajime Tabata left the company. The first of these DLCs, Episode Ardyn, released in March of 2019, a full year after Royal Edition's release. The Episode Ardyn DLC honestly kind of makes the original ending (as in, the only ending we'd gotten) worse by making the villain, Ardyn, aware from the beginning exactly how the game's story would play out and ascribing the entire thing to a fate that no one escapes. It even presents a newer, bigger villain who never gets his comeuppance.

In July of 2020, we got this book, Final Fantasy XV: The Dawn of the Future, a novelization of the story the canceled DLCs would have told, had Tabata been allowed to cook. A friend gifted the book to me the month of its release, and I immediately started graduate school and had too much work to get to it. Four years later, I dug through all my still-packed boxes of books to find it and finally get some closure on the game that dominated three years of my life so long ago.

Dawn of the Future isn't great as a book. It's written well enough, but the pacing of a video game story is pretty different from the pacing of a novel, since so much of the pacing and so many story beats are presented through the language of combat, the primary means of interacting with a video game world. Plus, as an alternate ending to a preexisting story that exists across a game, a demo, a movie, two OVAs, four DLCs, two years of updates, and several weird side projects, the novel assumes the reader is familiar with its world and characters. I was, so it worked for me, but I can't imagine how confusing it would be to try to read this book as someone who had never played FFXV before, or even as someone who had played FFXV but hadn't seen Kingsglaive or maybe hadn't played the Royal Edition of the game. FFXV exists across too many parts for any one story to stand alone, and that's especially glaringly obvious when I'm reading a novel - a medium I usually engage with as self-contained.

Dawn of the Future is interesting, though, as an attempt at recreating a clear plan that was shut down early. It seems to take very few creative liberties with the events as they would have unfolded in the DLCs. Part of why the pacing is so weird is that it details every boss fight and tries to make each of those fights take up as much space as the fight would have taken time in the DLC itself. It takes time to describe what clearly would have been the gameplay loop of each DLC. It's trying to convey to the reader what the playing of this story would have felt like. For that reason, this attempt to bring closure to fans is also, at least for me, a reopening of the wound it's trying to heal. I would have loved to drive a motorcycle across the wastes of the Gralean Empire as Luna and Sol, setting up campsites along the darkened road. Aranea's sci-fi dragoon combat style sounds fun as hell, and chasing Diamond Weapon across the burning city of Gralea would have been up there with the fall of Altissia for spectacle. I'd love to play a boss fight against Bahamut using two different characters in two separate planes of existence - that sounds rad. I'm reading a game I don't get to play, and games generally are more satisfying to play than to read.

I'm also of two minds on the story from the perspective of a fan. Much of what it adds are either things the original game definitely needed more of or fun riffs on previously established gameplay loops. Aranea, Sol, and Luna all being important playable characters would have helped to fix the lack of female characters in the original game, for instance. That's sorely needed. Going on a Mad Max-style motorcycle ride through the post-apocalypse was an inspired twist on the low-stakes road trip that made up the first half of the main game. That's creative and much appreciated. But the ending itself is, in my opinion, weaker than the ending we got. It's a much more traditionally Final Fantasy ending, in that the characters all survive and defeat a cosmic enemy that would otherwise destroy the world, so I'm sure there are fans who see it as a much-needed alternate ending, or even maybe "the ending we should have had if the devs had made the game right the first time." But it loses so much of the ambiguity and ambivalence that the original ending holds.

Noct and his friends dying to wipe out the royal family and cleanse the world because the notion of royalty was a trap that existed only to set right a great evil his ancestors perpetrated was darkly ironic. Instead, Noct and his friends and his fiance all survive while the ancestor apologizes to those he hurt, resulting in the continuation of the royal family. That's thematically inconsistent from what the game tried to do up to that point and is also…just…limp. But I say that knowing full well that if this ending had released with the original game, I'd have no issue with it. I wouldn't have finished the game and said "well, it was all ruined at the end when all the characters didn't die." It's through the act of papering over what was messy and thematically interesting about the original that the inadequacies of this ending are made apparent.

This is a strange book that left me feeling two ways about the game it's based on; FFXV is both lesser and greater for the loss of these DLCs. But that's always been true ever since the game's initial release. FFXV has always been in a state of flux, reliant on tie-in media and promised future updates to bring it to the state where it will be what was promised. Now, with those promises broken and its director pushed out, it's a game that's been refinished just about every month for three years and will forever be unfinished despite it all. The Dawn of the Future is a reminder of a future that never will be, a testament to the ugliness of AAA game development, and a fascinating look at the refinements and setbacks that would have come from chasing fan expectations.

I enjoyed reading it. I would have enjoyed playing it more. It is not the ending we should have gotten, either in form or in contents.

[makapatag]

random screencaps of my current ffxii tza rerun

(i lost my old save file but only really finished the great crystal, now i'm hunting down espers and got Chaos!)

i'm already a huge huge fan of FFXII and Ivalice as a whole, from its non-european-centric fantasy style to its slipstream weird fantasy esque vibes and feelings. it's not so much fairytale as it is "utmost fantasy historia" in a way. its political story captures and it does the classic ivalice thing wherein its political story eventually gives way to earth shattering conspiracies but the best part about ffxii's conspiracy is that even the subject of the earth shattering conspiracy are also having their own conspiracy. it's wild and it's so fun to play through. i'd put its narrative somewhat on the poetry side (alongside things like elden ring or legend of zelda breath of the wild, focusing on the world, immersion, and the moment-to-moment) rather than the narrative prose side (in the vein of things like baldur's gate 3 or mass effect or whatnot, where the writing goes to the characters and is more overt and drags you along with it), though of course being a JRPG it has to conform a bit into prose gaming (forgive the terms i am a literature person first and foremost)

on the gameplay side as someone who loves character action games and simulation rpgs (tactics grid rpgs) i really started out not liking it. but then when i started treating it essentially like ogre battle or unicorn overlord, a somewhat slight autobattler with constant menu pausing to issue different commands, viewing it a bit more like a strategy game, everything really clicked. figuring out everyone's builds with self-imposed challenges (such as having every job in the game be used) is so so so fun as someone who is a sucker for buildcrafting (it's why Final Fantasy Tactics and Elden Ring are the few games I replay!). nothing is more satisfying than seeing a really good build and team comp soar through a grueling boss battle, where you still have to micromanage, casting Dispels and upkeeping Buffs and switching Gambits (and even weapons!) on the fly.

one of the things that FFXII really turned me around on is the whole "you have to both unlock this spell/technick/weapon/armor and acquire it out in the world to equip/use it!" at first i hated it: i already spent time grinding LP to unlock the license, why did I have to still find it in the world?

then i kind of just figured, whatever, i'll explore and just try to find everything if i can. and it worked. exploration in this system was fiercely rewarded: things like Bravery (ATK UP), Faith (MAG UP), and Protectga (AoE Protect) could only be found in chests in the nooks and crannies of the Necrohol of Nabudis. now i have a care for these places i'm traveling around. oh, the nabreus deadlands are called that because nethicite was used here and now it's fantasy fallout new vegas? shit dude that's all you had to say. sorry i wasn't paying attention at first. i wasn't aware of your game. now hand me Silencega and let me get Chaos as a summon

now i can't just rush through the story or whatnot (well, you can! but it's no fun if you do that but it's totally doable and not too difficult which is honestly very accessible). i have to go around the areas i travel around, and exploration is fun because with the gambits system i don't have to keep fiddling with these menus, i can just let my smartly built team do the work. its as if the game rewards you for taking the time to build up and setup your characters! this is a game that rewards team composition and party management, something i feel is sorely missing from modern ffs (ffxv and ffxvi)

to top it all of it's kinda diegetic and immersive. of course these spells and technicks you don't just get. the jobs in this world (also diegetically) only get you to unlock the License to use these things, which are proven by adventuring (and thus, gaining license points). they don't automatically get you that thing. now you have the license, you can use Scathe sure, the most powerful black magick spell in the game, but you have to get into subquest blocked areas of a deep mine to even find it in the first place, and its blocked behind Gilgamesh! so now you're looking for these things and you're interacting with Ivalice and Ivalice feels so alive and lived in because it compromises so little for the player

it's not all perfect of course. so many of the higher spells and technicks and weapons straight up need guides to get, while others are at the whim of RNG. fuck that, but i can't help but completely respect it. it's such an ivalice matsuno choice to do. so many things in this game need guides to do, to the point that while i'm doing it i'm hearkened back to my first elden ring playthrough or my first demon's souls playthrough were i'm partway dependent on those that have come before me to be satisfied with my game. and i don't think that's a bad thing, i think that's something video games are uniquely able to do as a medium.

also i can't help but wish the UI was just a tad bit better, but FFXII was of course made during the menu jrpg era and the PS2 was no doubt already struggling handling so many things that FFXII was bursting with the seams with (something it has in common with its distinguished grandfather vagrant story)

and finally, so many of the things i like about FFXII only really came about in the Zodiac Age (specifically the Switch Version): being able to respec Jobs, finding rare items in the world instead of just buying them from the baknamy merchant in the necrohol of nabudis lmao... but despite all this these are minor detractions to the overall peak experience

though to be fair to the OG it was on a whole a different, perhaps easier game. and i kind of liked the fact that everyone had the same license board. it had that non-self interpenetration buddhist vibe, but also meant that you can go with almost whatever gear and spell setup for whatever team you end up with

what a good game,,, characters are so great too. i love vaan and penelo because they really are both an audience stand-in as well as a masses representation in a cast of knights, princesses, sky pirates and forest shamans

[oveliagirlhaditright]

I saw an article about how one of the things Final Fantasy XVI had in common with some other FFs--to make it a FF (which is still a silly argument that we even need to have to me, but whatev)--is flower importance in the story. And that's certainly true. So I decided to make a post about that... And prepare for the longest post in the history of the world, because I may have gone overboard in screenshotting some of these. I also decided to include Kingdom Hearts here, since it's a Disney and Final Fantasy crossover (with its own story, of course).

We'll never know how similar or not Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy XV's stories are or were to each other (after Tetsuya Nomura, director of Versus XIII, got kicked off the project and the game got a new director and became FFXV, and the story did at least slightly change)--even with Nomura now putting some of his Versus XIII ideas into Kingdom Hearts. It seems here, though, that even when it was Versus and Noctis and Stella, instead of Noctis and Luna, there was at least one flower scene with them. Perhaps this is the aforementioned Noctis and Luna flower crown scene (maybe originally it happened with Noctis and Stella, and that was then repurposed for Noctis and Luna). Like, for whatever reason, something upset Noctis' childhood friend here (the responsibilities her mother had to endure, perhaps, if this part of the story was still very much like XV's. Mayhap that hurt Stella to think about), and Noctis comforted her with the sylleblossom, and then we got the flower crown scene Luna alluded to in XV... or maybe it was something totally different from that with Noctis and Stella. Maybe sylleblossoms didn't even exist in Versus. Like I said, we might never know. But here, at least, was another couple (again: how similar they were to the later Noctis and Luna: who knows?) where flowers were at least important to them for a hot second.

Kairi likes to pick flowers, as we see here and in a scene in the BbS credits (that I'd show, but picture limit is keeping from doing it [I'd show a lot more pictures for a lot of these girls, if it weren't for picture limit)].

She also has a flowery Keyblade, of course, surely because of her love for flowers:

And I guess part of her Keyblade's design is that a king chess piece--which Sora's chess piece was the king one in KHIII, of course--is attached to a red string. And we all know about the red string of fate (I bring that up, because another common theme in all of this, is that all these gals with the flowers are part of a star-crossed lover pairing).

Kairi's heart is also in the shape of a flower in Re:Mind and Melody of Memory?

Yep.

Edit: Oops. I forgot Squall and Rinoa: Squall's promise to Rinoa that if she comes to Edea's orphanage--that is full of flowers outside, giving us our flower connection--that he'll be waiting for her, so she'll find him.

Also, I think Yeul gave Noel a flower in Lightning Returns for some reason? Though I don't remember why. I've only played Lightning Returns once--and only watched the cutscnenes once, in said playthrough--many years ago at this point. I really need to replay Lightning Returns again, as I actually love the Lightning Trilogy and found the gameplay in Lightning Returns very enjoyable. I also know that one of the Yeuls in FFXIII-2 loved flowers.

[silver-wield]

Yeah, you heard it here first, Cloud Strife is apparently English and somebody summoning KotR in their gameplay is a "secret ultimate ending" and not just somebody using the materia in the game.

Sorry not sorry but I just gotta blow holes in this shit one insane tweet at a time.

Kingdom Hearts is not canon to ffvii. It just isn't. It's not the "canon game for a summon" and are you out of your fucking mind for thinking Kingdom Hearts is making some canonical link between a summon and Disney's Sword in the Stone?! Jfc this is already sounding crazy af 🤦‍♀️

No. There's no "secret ending" to ffvii. You chose a playthrough with a player summoning KotR. Literally every player can do that. Unless they're like you and never played the damn game, you insane carrot. I'm gonna assume you think ffxv's ending where Noctis calls up the kings of yore to defeat Ardyn, which has been confirmed as a callback to ffvii's KotR but at no point did anybody say the endings were identical or that KotR is a mandatory or secret speshul ending appearance. Cloud, at no point in KH, is ever intending to or looking for king Arthur. He is always searching for Sephiroth so they can settle their shit. He never becomes a KotR. Again, you're confusing ffxv with other games. Noctis's father becomes a King of Yore at the end of ffxv and helps defeat Ardyn. I mean, if you can't keep basic plotlines straight why are you even talking in the first place?

Show me where Cloud's an "Englishman"? Show me where England and Germany are on the map of the planet. He's no more English than he is German and you need to stop listening to that nutbar Calli and her made up garbage based on her own HC fap material. King Arthur wasn't a real person, dumdum. Plz don't talk about English history if you haven't ever learned it in school.

Strife isn't a last name. It's a bloody noun. And Strauss is the German word for ostrich.

He's the fucking player character. He doesn't know how to get the materia. You know how to get the materia.

Kh isn't canon to ffvii or the KotR. Kh1 and 2 leaned heavily on squareenix to grab a player base and build its following. Once kh became established in its own right they began to phase out the FF cameos because the characters aren't needed to keep real players interested in the plot. You aren't a real player, so shut up.

You're an idiot who can't accept an in game email talking about things characters have seen and done isn't canon compared to WoFF, another game that isn't canon to ffvii.

Again: WoFF is not canon to ffvii. Serah isn't married at the point her character appears. Zack isn't with Aerith. He's a soldier 2nd class. I know it's hard for your small brain to comprehend but SE takes characters from different points in their own lives to mix and match in cameos for fanservice. Cloud appears in multiple titles as OG soldier Cloud and post AC Cloud. Tifa appears in WoFF as cowgirl Tifa at age 15 before she's traumatized. Get a fucking clue.

Again: Zack is single at that point in his life.

Aerith is lying and sucking as much copium as y'all do. The translation is also shit in OG because she doesn't call him a ladies man in JP, she says he's a friendly guy.

Idky you think kh, WoFF and KotR are some weird ass "canon" link that proves your garbage ship or disproves Zack is a decent guy, but you need to shut up.

That's all. Don't bother trying to educate yourself, just shut up. We don't want to hear from you. At all.

Shut up.

[tifacaelum]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐍𝐨𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐬, 𝐓𝐢𝐟𝐚 & 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐭

Noctis & Tifa are chosen by the gods & the planet in their respective worlds for the planetʼs own salvation.

An analysis.

The mythological relationship that they have with their respective worlds:

Gaia is FFVIIʼs planet. Gaia, in Greek mythology, is Mother Earth. She had several children, the Titans. Among them Thea, mother of Selene We know that Tifa is Selene, therefore, Gaiaʼs granddaughter.

FFXVʼs planet, Eos. Eos is also daughter of Thea & is the goddess of Dawn Noctis is the Champion of Light. The one who must bring back the Dawn.

It is poetic to know that Noctis, meaning Night, must end, that is, die, so that dawn can break once again.

Eos & Gaia are alive, & count on certain beings for their defense & protection:

The Astrals in FFXV & the Weapons in FFVII Both Astrals & Weapons are the corporal manifestations of their respective planets.

These creatures therefore represent the will of the planet.

Noctis & Tifa are their 𝐂𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐧 𝐎𝐧𝐞𝐬.

Here is why:

Tifa falls into the lifestream under the protection of a Weapon. This Weapon represents Gaiaʼs will to protect Tifa. It is striking that Tifa appears in a fetal position inside the creature, as if she were a baby in her motherʼs womb.

Remember how Gaia is Seleneʼs grandmother.

Since that event, Tifa becomes intimately bonded with Gaia. She is the only one who recognizes & hears the voice of the Weapon.

While the others seem irritated at the Weaponʼs voice, Tifa listens as if it was a melody. For her it is a different sound.

At the tender age of 5, Noctis was chosen by the Crystal. From that moment on, his destiny was to awake  the Astrals (Eosʼ manifestations) & save the planet from the darkness.

Noctis, just as Tifa falls into the Lifestream, falls into the Afterlife.

There he also adopts the position of a baby & sleeps for ten years until he gains enough power to accomplish his duty. Upon awakening, he is ready to save Eos.

Now comes the part I love the most.

Gaia communicates with Tifa, yet she does not know how to help it, how to protect it.

Noctis, on the other hand, cannot communicate with the Astrals, that is, with Eos. That mission does not correspond to him. But he has the power to save & protect it.

Noctis & Tifa complement each other in their role in protecting & saving Eos & Gaia.

Astrals/Weapons communicate only with those who are touched by their power. Tifa is the chosen one in VII & acts as an oracle by transmitting to the planetologists the true situation Gaia is in.

* This is also why I BELIEVE Tifa cannot contract Geostigma, which literally means: Earth-scar.

She is inmune to it. Gaia herself would never let this disease affect Tifa, her chosen one.

Noctis, meanwhile, must travel throughout Eos & win the favor of the Astrals by passing a series of Trials much like the Greek mythological heroes. But he needs guidance. Someone who can establish a first communication, just like Tifa does in FFVII.

Summarizing, Noctis is the defender of the planet while Tifa is the one who listens to its voice & transmits it to the rest.

Neither of them were born with this power. They were expressly 𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐧 by Eos & Gaia.

To conclude, I would also add that itʼs damn beautiful the way Noctis symbolizes the Night & Tifa represents the Moon.

A hero & a heroine intrinsically bound together just as the Night is with its Moon. A Savior & his Angel/Light to guide him through his divine path.

Both chosen by the planet for its salvation. Both with angel wings imagery.

Noctifa is beautiful. Noctifa is peak 🤍

[ertrunkenerwassergeist]

I finally finished Final Fantasy XVI

Holy shit that game was good. And that ending. I cried. Multiple times.

After the game was done I had to go for a walk to get over the ache in my chest. It’s hot as balls outside, but thankfully I did not melt into a puddle. Heat aside, it helped me get some thoughts in order.

The characters, the plot, the music and the world will live in my brain rent free for a long, long time. (Cid for favourite character, in case anyone was wondering.)

There was emotional weight behind every character.

The world feels lived in and crowded. As much as I love FFXV, one of the criticisms I have towards that game is that its world feels woefully underpopulated. Here, in FFXVI, this was very much not so. There are people and it feels like their decisions have weight. It’s not just the protagonists and the antagonists, but also the secondary and tertiary characters.

I’m a sucker for political fantasy stories, and this one absolutely hit the sweet spot for me. In its politics it made sense to me. The fight for resources, the religious aspects, the very human pride that can make everything so much worse.

And the slavery, well...

This might actually deserve its own post, but imo it lent everything an extra devious note that you couldn’t distinguish a non-magical human from a bearer (that is the English word, right? I played the game in German), if the latter didn’t have a brand on their cheek. Humans can be cruel to each other no matter how they look like.

Bearers are objectified, not considered human. And with objects you can do what you want. They don’t feel pain, and when one breaks, you can get another. Logic like that is scary, not only because of its cruelty, but also because of how plausible it can be. In the sense that it has happened before in history.

I really appreciate it that this story is, in large part, a tale against this type of thinking. Against slavery, against greed and senseless pride.

It’s about learning understanding and appreciating the world around you.

The only thing that missed its mark a bit imo, is that by the end of it all, magic is gone. I can see the sense behind it, a little bit, but I don’t like it.

Clive associates magic with greed and pain. His trauma has in large part to do with magic. He was born a bearer and hated by his mother for it, he thought a Domini murdered his brother in cold blood and was branded himself soon after, to be pressed into military service for 13 years. Only then to learn that his brother’s murderer was himself. All of that, all that pain and misery, because of magic.

So yes, I can see why Clive would think humanity would be better off without magic.

But

Wouldn’t it have been more impactful, if the people had learned to use magic responsibly, that it isn’t just an easy shortcut? What if they had found the wonder that lies in magic?

That would have gone against everything Ultima thought magic was.

Imo erasing magic is an easy cop out, but that might also be fit for a post of its own.

And it also invalidates the development the people of Valisthea went through. As well as Lubor’s whole quest line. Which honestly frustrates me a bit.

Oh yeah. The side quests are amazing. I did every single one and many build on one another into whole mini quest lines. The stories they tell make the world so much richer.

All in all, I love this game. It’s not perfect. But then again, nothing ever is.

[sleepyowlwrites]

Happy blorbo blursday! I was thinking recently about how I have very few outright villains in my writing and I got curious about other people's. So tell me about your villains (or your most villain-adjacent antagonists)! - @void-botanist

here is my incomplete list of villains/antagonists:

Masryune from Summon Story

his real name is Petirik Ov'Rine

somebody once told him the reason for why summoners stay away from the Field of Teeth and he was like "sounds like an invitation"

has some delusions of grandeur but from like. a business standpoint. he thinks a great business idea is to start a war.

he summons some shidha - the type of spirit summoners are warned against ever summoning - to possess dead dragons so he can start this war

he monologues a lot

in my head he's a cross between Ardyn from FFXV and Jan Van Eck from Six of Crows, two antagonists that are fun or interesting for a hot minute before you're like PLEASE GO AWAY

he has no idea that the reason his plans keep getting tripped up is literally just a group of nobody summoners accidentally interrupting them

he throws temper tantrums but the consequences are that people die and there's blood in the streets so that's great

Alexander Gold from Magick Story

he's the calculating, calm type of antagonist. he's playing the long game and he's very good at it

when he's through, all magick in TOWN THAT STILL DOESN'T HAVE A NAME TWO YEARS ON will be linked back to him and he can live forever and control everything. that's the plan

it's not a terrible plan but it's also not a great one because magick is lowkey almost sentient and it literally can't be coerced into a single intention so this is a doomed enterprise but also while it's on its way to doom it's causing a lot of havoc so there's that

he's got this weird fling with Heidi Chorus, his partner in crime, sometimes, and they flirt super weird and torture people together

he's suave and interesting but he also kills animals so we hate him

Max (and Cam) from City Story

he's my least favorite, I hate him so much

his crimes include: abuse, coercion, blackmail, drug dealing, running an illegal fight club thing, abuse, arranging a murder, being an asshole to everyone he meets, brainwashing his brother, abuse

he hasn't even shown up in the story yet because I don't want to touch him with a ten foot pole

he sends people to hurt Rune because he believes she's his property

Cam, the brainwashed brother, wasn't always awful but now he just agrees with whatever Max says and this isn't a Jang Hanseo situation, he is OK with hurting people as long as Max doesn't hurt him. we can feel a little bad for him but that's it 'cause he is willingly terrible

and Max is just the worst

he's slimy and my least favorite and I hate him so much

I dunno who the villain/antagonist of Mercenary Story, Guild Story, or Rain Story is/are. I do also have some evil/antagonistic girls, don't worry.

Rhea from Summon Story

she's Shae's half-sister and bent on revenge

Shae is happy to be reunited with her but Rhea just wants to kill things now and doesn't care about the collateral damage

she's not all bad. maybe. I don't know if she succeeds in killing her father. yet.

I mentioned Heidi Chorus from Magick Story.

there's also Fawn from City Story, Max's favorite girlfriend. she's awful. not in the annoying, brainless kind of way. she's smart and controlling and that's why Max likes her. goodbye.

there are plenty of unnamed characters in Guild and Mercenary Stories, both good and bad, because I keep not writing them, haha.

in Anxiety Story the antagonist isn't a person, though it briefly manifests as Aiden's father.

in Youth Story there's no plot, just vibes, so no antagonist there.

Train Story is also vibes.

Romance Story has John Rusalo but then he gets redeemed and then Jack Sanderson but we kick him out of the story for being just a terrible cousin and then it's like, English law, I guess.

Apocalypse Story is vibes again.

Space Story is as well.

Hunter Story, Summer Story, Princess Story, and Gang Story barely exist.

Thief Story's antagonist is the bridge they're trying to steal, because I don't know what they're stealing it for.

Dimension Story's antagonist is grief, and the fact that these two kids can't keep ripping holes in spacetime to see each other forever. golly that's such a sad story. no wonder I'm not writing it.

thanks for asking, Sapling

[altschmerzes]

First Sentences Game!

tagged by @disappearinginq (thank youuuu!!!)

Rules: share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics and tag ten people. If you have written less than ten, don’t be shy and share anyway.

putting the rest of this under a cut so it’s not a huge long post! decided to take a leaf out of disappearinginq’s book and use only WIPs that haven’t been posted yet so >:) enjoy. we got 4 ted lasso fics, 2 9-1-1 fics, 2 locked tomb fics, 1 now you see me fic, 1 flashpoint fic, and 1 ffxv fic. yes that adds up to 11. it’s a surprise.

i have included the opening...... Couple Of Paragraphs. Or for these lmao because as always with me, i cannot help it and it is longer than intended.

tagging some folks up front no pressure but if you want an excuse to share your stories or brag on yourself this is your cue. i dont think it matters if it’s posted fics or wips - @heavensenthale @appalachianapologies @bold-and-nosy @nativestarwrites @impossiblepluto @roguelibrarian (and anyone compelled to do this who can go ahead and take this as a sign to say i tagged you and Do It)

1. Love Stuck - ted lasso

the aromantic jamie tartt fic. jamie realizes he’s aro, and this becomes a study of his and keeley’s post-breakup friendship and how aromanticism can open doors and allow for more freedom and personal choice in relationships for non-aro people too.

The only warning that Keeley gets before Jamie shows up at her house is a text message that she knows he sent by voice-to-text because of its use of capital letters and the complete lack of emojis. It announces his imminent arrival and apologizes for the lack of warning, explaining that he forgot to do that until he was almost there, all in one long, run-on sentence without punctuation. She has just enough time to grab a cardigan, because she’d been getting kind of chilly anyway, and pause the episode of Sex and the City she had been watching before he’s ringing the doorbell.

When Keeley opens the door, Jamie bypasses any kind of perhaps typically-expected greeting. While this isn’t exactly unusual for him, what he says is.

“I’ve got great news,” he tells her, smiling like he really does have great news, which helps to somewhat offset the sense of foreboding she’d been starting to feel. “I am not in love with you. Can I come in?”

2. Wriggle Up On Dry Land - ted lasso

au where everything is pretty much the same except for the part where jamie is the fifteen year old groundskeeper’s assistant who works part-time at nelson road. proceeds approximately through the timelines/events of seasons 1 and 2 (and maybe 3 depending on how that goes).

At this point, Ted has been in England for less than forty-eight hours, he’s slept for somehow both too many and not enough of those hours, and people keep saying things to him that are ostensibly in English but have no coherent meaning he can wring from his exhausted, jet lagged brain. This, he thinks, is a reasonable explanation for why it takes him several moments to process what he’s seeing when he reaches the coaching office.

One hand loosely gripping the strap of his backpack, the other holding out his keys in preparation to unlock the office, Ted stands there for a long time and blinks. The office does not need unlocking, it turns out, because the door is already open. The door is already open, and there’s what appears to be a kid crouching next to it, doing… something to the lowest hinge with a screwdriver. The boy glances up when Ted approaches, but makes no direct acknowledgement of him and goes immediately back to whatever he’s doing with the tool.

Now. On the one hand, this is a teenager Ted has never seen before and he is messing with the door of the head coaching office. That feels like bad news. On the other hand, he is wearing a grey zippered jacket with the Richmond logo on one lapel and STAFF embroidered underneath it in cursive. That, and his non-reaction to Ted catching him mid-potential-mischief, seems to indicate maybe this whole situation is above board after all.

“Uh,” Ted says after the silent pause has gone on long enough that he officially feels like he’s being rude. “Good morning?”

3. the bus curse 5+1 - ted lasso

Five Times The Curse Of The AFC Richmond Away Game Post-Game Bus Ride Home (Mostly Referred To Simply As 'The Bus Curse' For Conservation Of Time) Ruined The Night And One Time It Tried To But Couldn’t. tl;dr bus is haunted (roy voice It Is Not) (for fun and profit the chapter titles for this are ‘twitter’ ‘illness’ ‘the heavy existential burden of captaincy’ ‘nightmare’ ‘injury’ and ‘double birthday’)

The most important thing to understand about The Curse Of The AFC Richmond Away Game Post-Game Bus Ride Home (mostly referred to as ‘the bus curse’ for conservation of time) is that it doesn’t fucking exist.

Roy is fully ready and willing to die on this hill and go to his grave still swearing up and down that the ‘curse’ is superstitious bullshit, just like the one on the training room. Sure, he’s experienced two flat tires and a radiator overheating on the way home with Richmond, which never happened with any previous team, but that’s probably because management always hired the cheapest charter possible. Sure, the driver once stopped off for petrol and simply never came back from inside the station, but that’s because the bloke apparently had some kind of epiphany and decided to radically change his life, not because of the bus itself. Sure, there have been some dozen-odd other assortment of events ranging from inconveniences to calamities that have disrupted specifically the return bus journey from away matches, but there are explanations for all of them, none of which involve any kind of curse.

4. Never Been In Love - 9-1-1

the aromantic evan buckley fic. buck has a very rocky time coming to terms with being aro, and then telling everyone about it. ft internalized arophobia, romance repulsion, found family, the power of queer friendship, and the way the episode with red the retired firefighter was the perfect set-up for an aro character realization but of course they’d never go there.

The thing about dates is that, theoretically, at some point they are supposed to go well. And it’s not like Buck’s never been on dates that he has fun on. He has! A lot of them, actually! He’s a people person, he always has been, he likes spending time around others and spending time one-on-one is extra nice - it feels nice to bask in the attention and to focus his attention solely on someone else for a while. However, there always comes a point where the woman Buck is out with starts blatantly flirting and he knows he needs to flirt back, or he just… remembers that he’s out on a date and not just hanging out with a cool person he wants to get to know better, and it all goes sour.

The end of it is, even when Buck’s dates go well, they don’t. The mere fact that they’re dates is enough to thoroughly ruin the experience, either in the moment or in hindsight, particularly once there’s an expectation that there are going to be more dates and, at some point, a relationship. And that… Buck really just doesn’t know what to do with that.

5. One-Way Mirror - now you see me

oneshot set between movies 1 and 2 that gets at explaining some of the shifts in character dynamics and digs into what it would be like for dylan to mesh with the team when they were already a team and he was on the outside. lot of focus on what happened to create such a faith in him from jack specifically.

The nice thing about setting yourself up to look like the lawman who got duped by a team of criminals just a little too smart for him is that, when you announce your intention to take a sabbatical, nobody really asks too many questions. Dylan must have played his role effectively, because not an eyelid is bat when the Agent who got too invested in fugitives that ultimately eluded him decides to take off for a while. He has the leave accrued, it’s a matter of putting in the paperwork. Fuller is a little concerned but Evans waves it through with barely a thought. Cowan swans around the office dripping smug satisfaction, and Dylan keeps his head down and swallows it.

He goes to France to visit Alma first. While things are still white-hot in the fallout of the case, the Horsemen are laying low in the area. They’ll take off for a house the Eye has arranged soon enough, but in the handful of days intervening Dylan gets on a plane to Paris. Alma deserves some answers after everything she went through on this case with him, and if it means he’s going to get arrested after all, well, so be it. The others are set up, they’ll be okay.

6. untitled fic about mercymorn and augustine in a doc labeled ‘rotates them’ - the locked tomb series

this is simply me losing my mind about this dynamic, getting somewhat at how they came up with the plan they attempted to enact in ht9.

“Do you love your brother?”

Augustine stops in his tracks, facing away from her. His body twitches in a horrid, disarticulated little spasm, like a marionette that’s been electrocuted. The question has hurt him, and she can tell.

Good, Mercymorn thinks. Pain sharpens the senses.

“How dare you ask me that.”

Mercymorn does not back down. For one thing, she does not, as a rule, back down. Ever. For another, she’d caught up to him here and brought up the subject for a reason, and it isn’t just to torment him with it.

7. One Right Move - flashpoint

time loop of the episode one wrong move where lou young died. spike relives his best friend’s death over and over and over until he can figure out how to make it stop.

This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends.

This is the way the worst day of Michaelangelo Scarlatti’s life ends - not with a bang, but with the echo of one.

Explosions have not been an unusual occurrence in Spike’s world to date. Moments of ground-shaking thunder and fire have come and gone for him the way a lawyer conducts depositions or a surgeon draws a dotted line indicating where they plan to cut - something that is an incomprehensible oddity to those outside the profession, but as familiar as the tree on the corner of the street you drive down every day to those inside it. While the detonation of a bomb may be the worst or most shocking thing to happen in the life of just about any random person you grabbed off the street, it’s Tuesday for Spike. Even when they go bad, they still ultimately go. He doesn’t spend hours reliving them after the smoke has cleared.

This time, he does. Laying on his side on the couch in Greg’s living room, the moment that mine went off replays again and again. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if he’s imagining it or if something is still actually exploding, because Spike can still feel himself shaking from the percussive force. Or maybe shaking from something else. It’s hard to tell, now, in this diluted, slipping evening that doesn’t feel remotely real.

8. Can’t Grow A Proper Branch - 9-1-1

5+1 of five times someone got one of the pieces indicating that buck’s childhood and family were Really Fucking Bad and one time he just straight out told someone.

Man plans and God laughs.

When Bobby was growing up, the Nash family’s next door neighbor had been a Rabbi and his wife whose older daughter had been his age. Often, when his parents were working late, Bobby would end up at the Rose house, playing with Sarah Rose or doing homework with her at the kitchen table under Rabbi Rose’s quiet supervision. Man plans and God laughs. A Yiddish proverb Rabbi Rose had been fond of. Even though it’s been decades since he’d lived in the house in St. Paul next door to the Roses, decades since he’d last spoken to the man at all, the phrase he’d used so often still pops into Bobby’s head sometimes. It even makes its way out of his mouth now and then.

From the moment they meet, it feels to Bobby like Evan Buckley is God laughing at his plans.

9. Game Over. Try Again? - final fantasy xv

the first time noctis had to use a phoenix down on each of his friends. exploring game resurrection mechanics from a narrative standpoint.

Gladio has been twenty years old for all of nine days when he dies in an assassination attempt that leaves Noctis without a scratch. It all happens so quickly that there’s no time to feel the energy in the air change before the shooting starts.

A second before the first bullet shatters what had been a perfectly fine, unremarkable afternoon, Gladio’s hand closes around Noctis’s arm, the other plants in the square centre of his back, and he’s being shoved so hard it propels him several feet forward. He’s all ready to be pissed, to whirl around and demand that the big dumb bastard explain what, precisely, his issue is when a chunk of concrete explodes from the waist-high wall he’s landed behind. Noctis isn’t really sure what he thinks is happening at first, but ‘someone is shooting bullets at me because they are trying very hard to kill me’ is not it.

10. baby heist au - ted lasso

the one where bex decides to leave rupert, rebecca decides to help her, an extremely unlikely friendship forms, and i cast spell of ‘hold a baby’ on the entire richmond greyhounds roster.

The first thing that enters Rebecca’s mind when she gets the initial message is suspicion. She stares at her mobile, squinting at the text from the number - unattached to anyone in her address book - and trying to piece together who it could possibly be from.

Hello Rebecca. I was wondering if you might have time for a coffee and a chat soon. I have something I’d really like to discuss with you.

It came through just as she was walking to her desk upon first arriving at the office, and caught her so off-guard that she’s still standing there in the middle of the room looking at the screen when the second message arrives.

Oh, this is Bex by the way. Bex Harper.

A third, not a moment later.

Well. Bex Mannion I guess.

bonus 11. baby heist au 2: 2 heist, 2 baby - the locked tomb series

modern au (i know, but bear with me) where it’s like pov. you are ortus nigenad. you are in your very early twenties. you have come to the unfortunate realization that you are in a cult and you have Fucking Snapped and you cannot be here one more moment longer. on your way out, you decided to take a pair of toddlers with you. pov. you are abigail pent. you are a professor and you live with your husband in the top floor of a duplex. a young man with a pair of little girls just moved in downstairs, and you’ve got the feeling there’s something Going On with them.

The bottom unit of the building has been empty since before Abigail moved into the upstairs of the duplex on Primis Street. She’s never met the person who owns it, and so there has never been an opportunity to ask after this curiosity, despite her desire to know if there was a reason for it. Magnus tells her that it’s probably just not a keenly desired neighbourhood, especially for the university demographic comprising most of their area, but still she has always wondered.

When someone does move into it, Abigail doesn’t notice at first. It’s such a shock the first time she hears a sound and looks out of her unit just in time to see the downstairs door close behind someone that she nearly calls after him on the spot. She manages to repress the instinct, but she calls Magnus immediately upon going back inside.

“What? Since when?” he asks when Abigail tells him they’ve finally got neighbours.

“I haven’t the faintest idea! I just saw him coming home. Didn’t see much, just the door closing behind him, but I think he’s young. There’s not even a car out front! It’s all quite mysterious.”

Things do not clear up from there, especially not once Abigail catches her first glimpse of the children.

[madeimpact]

👽👨‍👨‍👧‍👧🗝🥂

It is Munday, my dudes || @vitrumbra

👽 AUs

Dude are you KIDDING??? I love AUs so much that back before I shortened my alias to not be an embarrassing Google Translate mishap, a running joke with my friends was (in the voice of "randy your sticks") NEGAU YOUR AU!!!!!

I'm a sucker for them. I love them. ESPECIALLY ones that stick guys from one fandom in the universe of another. My Madoka AU for the Evangelion kids is my precious baby brain child that I will cherish for the rest of forever and hopefully one day actually finish a fic or doujin or SOMETHING of. Bonus points if I can take the lore and fucking run with it like we're doing with the FFXV guys in Pokémon :^)

👨‍👨‍👧‍👧 fankids

Again: are you kidding? Not to put an RP partner on blast here, but @novuscaelum is a joy for me to interact with and bounce off of. Fankids are great! Just...with the caveat that it's mostly (not entirely but mostly) on the fankid to make sure that they're not forcing the parent to compromise too much on their portrayal. A little give and take on both ends makes for a happy RPing, but chances are if you're the fankid, you came up with your OC based on some preconceived notions you have about the canon parent(s) which you may not share with the person you're writing with. TL;DR: Communication is key!

🗝 selectiveness in the RPC

I think there's a tendency to equate selectiveness with elitism, which. It's just Not. People have boundaries, and it's important to make your own clear and respect those of others. I've been the person who didn't get followed back or got softblocked before, and it sucks!! I know it does!! But nobody on this website owes you RP interactions, and for every one person that passes on you, there will be five others that are more than willing to write with you.

🥂 my favorite part of the canon

I'll go with KH since that's one of my main things right now and you didn't specify LOL /nm

It's hard to pick one favorite thing no matter how I interpret this question. I could go with meta-wise what's my favorite thing about KH as a series, or in-universe what's my favorite plot beat, lore, etc. I'll go with the latter interpretation for the purposes of this meme, and for KH...one of my favorite things is how very not chosen one Sora is. The story goes out of its way to say that Sora is an ordinary kid who likes taking naps on the beach and is content with his life on the islands, if anything mostly going along with Riku's hunger to see what else is out there. For fuck's sake, the Kingdom Key was meant to be RIKU'S at first, and it chose his heart instead in the wake of what happened to the Islands. "I know that the Keyblade didn't choose me, and I don't care. I'm proud to be a small part of something bigger — the people it did choose."

The fact that he's just a kid who, through sheer force of will and desire to protect what matters to him, strong armed his way into being the hero is way more powerful than the Chosen One trope will ever be, in my humble opinion. It's why I'm so scared of the murmurs of theories that Sora will have some grand ties to some UX / ML era characters or be reincarnated or some shit, that would be such a massive shit on everything that the previous games set up and I hope to GOD it doesn't end up happening.

[savage-rhi]

6 Questions Game

Tagged by @seradyn

1. Last Song? - I went through Prince's albums "Purple Rain" & "Parade". I had a LONG commute today into town and it was rainy on and off. The music got me out of a bad funk from the weather. Left off on his song Kiss. That one's fun! I know he's got controversy even in death as a person, but I like Prince as an artist.

2. Last show? - I don't have cable/network and use streaming services mostly. I'm not into too much at the moment. Nothing has really got my attention TV wise. Last Sunday I did catch The Last of Us on HBO Max. Wasn't a bad ep.

3. Currently watching? - I've been re-watching True Blood. When I was in high school and everyone was on a Twilight craze, this was my jam, my peanut butter, and my bread. After season 4 it honestly tanked for me. I wish it ended on better terms or was more aligned with the books. It's been fun though revisiting and remembering why I liked a lot of the characters as a kid, and remembering how my mom lost her shit at me watching this but my gram was like TELL ME WHEN THE NEXT EP IS OUT I LOVE IT! 😂

4. Currently reading? - I finished reading Dinosaurs: A Novel by Lydia Millet, and I'm currently on The Fictional Man by Al Ewing.

The first novel centers around the main character healing through his traumas and finding purpose in life again by connecting with others. The book is literally the embodiment of "enjoy the little things". The plot isn't too deep but its enough to give you pause and think about irrelevant moments that actually mean you're living. There's some good dinosaur metaphors in here too.

The second one is hella interesting (arguably too if you're into fandom stuff or have fictional crushes). From my understanding of the world thus far, "Fictionals" are created humans (either by cloning or advanced robotics idk yet) that represent, well, fictional characters that people love. Once the novelty wears off, many get discarded. I'm not sure if the main character is one yet, but it's been a fun read so far. Makes me sad too cause if this kind of tech was possible, I could definitely see abandonment being a thing.

5. Current obsession? - I don't think it's any surprise I've been on an FFXV binge for several months (and splurging on a crush on a fictional 2000 year old garbage pimp jesus dude). I've been playing a lot of Hades on top of it, and revisiting Death Stranding.

6. Unrelated obsession? - Pokemon, Resident Evil, FFX, FF7, FF8, Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, Gundam, etc. I have a lot for fandom. Stuff outside of it I'm obsessed with are paleontology, space, and herpetology.

Thanks again Sera! Gonna tag @astrandofgold and see if they want to chime in what they been up to! 💙

[stephicness]

Okei I have to ask... Last day I see in Youtube comment in 'Ravus Aeterna' video someone writes 'Ravus is so interesting but he doesn't have scenes. If he has more scenes he will be the Artorias of FFXV'' I don't play Dark Souls but I knows a little of Artorias so my question is... What's your opinion about that comment?#GiveRavusmorescenesplease

Oooh, that is a really cool comparison, actually! Funny that you bring up Artorias, because he’s one of my favorite Soulsborne icons across the FromSoft games. Have a little figurine and everything that I love and cherish. 

I can see a lot of similarities between the two of them overall, but contrary to thought... Artorias only had, like, 40 seconds of screentime. But the major difference is that you got a crap ton of lore hidden throughout Dark Souls – something that Final Fantasy XVI should have done to really cover its bases when it comes to plot holes. I definitely would have made me log another 20+ hours into the game just meandering to find little juicy secrets and lore pieces hidden within items and locale details, you know? 

But I digress. The similarities between Artorias the Abysswalker and Ravus Nox Fleuret the High Commander Butthead, is kinda cool! Both are knights who are badasses with a single sword, both like dogs, both turn into gooey abyss boys, both get wrecked by the MC after they wrecked you seven-hundred times (no? Just me?) --- the list of similarities goes on! 

Okay, I joke a lot when I simplify it, but legit – the deep dive into the lore of these two is rad, so the comment really does hold up a little bit: 

Both were, of course, knights and soldiers. But both also have groups that, in a way, serve/follow them – with Artorias commanding Gywn’s army before eventually inspiring the Abyss Watchers and Ravus eventually leading the Niflheim army. Artorias may have had a much more pleasant group of supporters, but Ravus too had his own influence as time passed. 

Both wield the power of darkness on their side due to some aspect of corruption to them when they fight – before they turn fully corrupted, that is. Artorias's sword is cursed by the Abyss after travelling in and out of it. Meanwhile, Ravus’s arm is supposedly corrupted, as it’s realized that Magitek stems from Daemon power and scourge magic essentially. 

Speaking of arms... Both have crippled LEFT arm. Ravus of course had his burned by the Ring of Lucii and Artorias had his broken when trying to protect Sif from the creatures of the Abyss after being defeated by Manus. It’s why you see Artorias in his signature fighting stance – as he used to wield the Cleaning Greatshield before that. 

They both have some sort of closely associated canine companion – with Artorias having Sif and Ravus having Pryna and Umbra (to a degree). 

Both ultimately succumb to the darkness/abyss at some point, and yet both were still recognized as heroes after their death. Artorias was killed by the Chosen Undead after becoming fully corrupted, but he was still honored as a hero by most – enough to allow the Abyss Watchers to use him as their inspiration of sorts. Meanwhile after Ravus’s death, Noctis and the others found themselves with a great deal of respect for Ravus – especially when knowing he was attempting to help Noctis and the others before he was ultimately killed. 

In general, I think Artorias’s lore in Dark Souls is fantastic. And when you compare Ravus to it, it’s rather interesting to see overall. So yes! I can’t help but nod with that comment and go ‘Yeah... That sounds aight.’ -u-