#my original point is he wasn't even from France. Which is really funny. I'm not that invested in vindacting him as being from my country

[anglerflsh]

Considering he was born just fourteen years after corsica got indipendence from Genoa in 1755 (and barely 15 months after France bought it in 1769 - the dates of acquisition from one republic to the state are a bit different) I'd say he himself was of italian descent at this point lol. It's also pretty obvious by looking at his surname but both his parents were born in italian-ruled Corsica

[murfpersonalblog]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Carol Cutshall (@carolcutshall)

IWTV S2 Musings - Romania BTS deets! (Pt2: Tentative Timeline Revisions again)

So, a few days ago I stumbled upon Carol Cutshall's Instagram posts about Daciana, Emilia, etc, which I discussed in Pt1. I didn't have the brain capacity, time, space or energy to also address this other post she made even earlier, back in July, which also includes Louis & Claudia's Eastern European itinerary!

The text is SMALL AF so I can barely read anything, but already I see major discrepancies:

Everything up until 1944 makes sense AFAIK, it's not contradicting any of the dates mentioned in 2x1 which I laid out here (x x):

I REALLY wish we could read that list in full, cuz I had wondered what was going on with the Nazis calling them "Black Ukranians;" and if they were trying to enter OR leave Ukraine.

Funny enough, AMC seems to have forgotten that in 1x4 Claudia's diary also says they were in Romania on September 8, 1941--not that that means they couldn't've been there; just that the itinerary doesn't mention it (was that a mistake/oversight, or was the itinerary made before 1x4 was written/aired? 🤔).

So yeah, I'm fine with the 1941-1944 dates.

So here's another revised timeline for anyone interested:

(EDIT: I dunno if we should consider this (old? obsolete?) itinerary as CANON, since the show itself never mentions them in any of these places/dates--this is a truly meta revision; so I'm keeping my original timeline as-is until we're told differently.)

Apparently, the "circuitous routes around the mad army" Louis said they traveled took them from:

Bouras, Bulgaria: they arrived via boat from Greece (so they probably crossed the Mediterranean via the Straits of Gibraltar, and bypassed Western Europe entirely)

Winter 1941 - Crimea, Ukraine: went northeast, crossing the Black Sea

Fall/Winter 1942 - Roslov, Russia: northeast

Winter 1943 - Kiev, Ukraine: northwest. Something about a church, but I can't read the rest *squints.*

Spring 1944 - Tiraspol, Moldavia: was the "ruined castle" supposed to be Cezare Romulo's!? that's super interesting if so, cuz that means at some point he lived in Romania near Daciana, to have killed that circus troupe IN SIBIU (Romania) & stolen their show bear, LOL. Why did he move to Moldavia? My headcanon says he wanted independence (like the IRL Moldavans), to break away from the Romanians/covens in the west and do his own thing out east--Daciana said "he was always a droll one." 👀 Vampire beef!? 😂🤣 Regardless, this might support my suspicion that although AMC filmed Cezare's castle at Tocnik, that was just for convenience's sake--we're probably not supposed to take any contextual clues from the IRL castle, the way I did for Daciana. So Cezare could be from ANYWHERE, really. Very cool!

Spring/Summer 1944 - Botosani, Romania: northwest

But it's as soon as we hit 1945 that a few snags appear.

While it's very cool that we now have an exact location for where Emilia's factory & Daciana's home would've been located (Biertan, Romania--so I was right that AMC was pulling inspo from Biertan!), there's a BIG problem:

Louis & Claudia couldn't've been in/entering Biertan, Romania in Fall 1945, and in France's Saint-Jean Lespinasse in Winter 1945, based on what we saw in the episode itself--namely:

In 2x1 Lou & Claudia were on the convoy delivering the Venus de Milo to Paris, which was already back in the Louvre by July 2, 1945. It had been hidden away with the rest of the Louvre's art for safekeeping during WWII in Château de Valençay (x x)--which is in a totally different commune from the Saint-Jean commune (which is much farther south). But the truck they were on would've still been IN France during the Spring/Summer 1945, NOT way out in Eastern Europe during the Fall/Winter 1945.

(What's interesting is that a famous art piece was indeed (temporarily) hidden in Saint-Jean, at the Château de Montal, but it wasn't Venus de Milo. It was THE Mona Lisa, which was also returned to the Louvre even earlier, on June 16, 1945.)

So there must've been a change at some point where the writers decided to add Venus and just ignore this itinerary--they even make a point to have Louis reunite with Venus later on in 2x4:

So it's not as if it was just an accident that Venus kept showing up in post-war Paris--just as Louis was starting a new romance with Armand under THE Goddess of Love/Lust's auspices.

So this just REALLY make me wonder WHEN that itinerary was mapped out, wrt to what we actually got on screen and in the S2 transcript (and ofc whatever was going on with the writer's strike); cuz it just doesn't make chronological sense to hold those last 2 dates at face value; they're just wrong. :\

*sigh* This is equal parts fun & frustrating; AMC, have mercy~! 😅

[tr1ck5]

Hi there. You know, I really hope you don't end up revealing that Rinoa lost her V card to Seifer or something. I mean in Chronicles Chapter 3 you already seemed to indicate that Rinoa had a lot of boyfriends and she may have gotten intimate with them, including Seifer — when the game itself never actually confirms if she and Seifer ever even dated: she tells Selphie (in Galbadia Garden) that she wasn't sure if he was her boyfriend, she wasn't sure if she was in love, and she didn't know how he felt about her; and in the Japanese version when Selphie asked her if she still liked him, she pretty much stated that she did not. Then some Dummied Out content has her admit to Squall (during their romance scene in the Ragnarok) that she hasn't longed to touch someone so much since Julia died and Caraway became too busy for her — pretty much indicating again that she was never intimate with Seifer or anyone else for that matter, and the only person she wants to be close to is Squall.

Then in the various Ultimanias, Squall is the only person who is ever referred to as the person Rinoa loves; Rinoa and Seifer's "relationship" is literally never mentioned.

Plus FF8 is a Japanese RPG meant for young impressionable Japanese teenagers made in the 1990s, the hug in the Memorial was such a big deal that it got its own FMV, and the kiss at the very end didn't even get a close-up (and based on the storyboards, it was almost not even going to be in the game at all). There's no way the Japanese developers were gonna make all these underaged characters* be intimate with other people, especially when the main couple was barely intimate with each other. Eastern views on intimacy were and still are way more strict than in the Western world.

(* And yes, I say underaged because, up until 2023, the age of legality in Japan was 20. So back in 1999, all the main characters, plus Seifer, Fujin and Raijin, Xu and Nida, Zone and Watts, were still considered underage, because they were under the age of 20. Granted, the setting of FF8 is based more on France and an idealized futuristic European society, instead of Japan, but that's a whole different topic altogether.)

I know that Chronicles is your story, but based on all of the above, and solely based on the above, I just don't think it would match up with canon really well if you write Rinoa as having been intimate with anyone before Squall. And please know, I'm not trying to criticize you or the story or anything, that is not my intention; I'm just trying to point out what canon has shown or indicated and what other supplemental materials have shown or indicated. If I came off as too critical, I do apologize, it wasn't my intention to offend you.

Hey anon! Let me just start by saying that, from the beginning of me writing Lion's Oath, I was very honest about changing some aspects of the original story, either to flesh out some interesting dialogues or scenes, deepen some lore and unravel some plot holes, or simply to inject some of my personal headcanons (see the whole soul bond thing, for instance!) So of course some things in it 'won't match up with canon' anymore, it's by design. That being said, if this can help alleviate some of your worries, I'm not planning on writing any kind of big dramatic 'reveal' or plot about Rinoa's past relationships, romantic or sexual. Who she lost her 'V card' to doesn't interest me in the slightest because (and I might be biased here) this isn't something that was ever a big deal for me. I find it a little funny that you mention love and dating (especially regarding Seifer): because sometimes sex is just sex, it's fun and it doesn't have to be soul-shattering or life-changing. As for her relationship with Seifer, I do believe there was something going on, based on the dialogue from the english localization of the game, which is what I'm basing my story off of: Rinoa: "I...really liked him. He was always full of confidence, smart... Just by talking to him, I felt like I could take on the world." Selphie: "Your boyfriend?" Rinoa: "I don't really know. I... I think it was love. I wonder how he felt...? Selphie: "Do you still like him?" Rinoa: "If I didn't, I wouldn't be talking about it. It was last summer... I was 16. Lots of fond memories..."

So I personally think the seriousness of their relationship was left to the imagination, and I mostly plan to keep it that way too.

The whole thing about the context in which FFVIII came out and its target audience just reads a little strange to me anon, because it's not something I tend to keep in mind when writing fan fiction about a 25 year old game. Hell, I'm definitely not the target audience for FFVIII myself. Of course the developers wouldn't write about teenagers being intimate, the game was rated T. And as you said it yourself, eastern views on intimacy were and are generally a lot stricter than western ones, but that is a hurdle of our own world, not the world of FFVIII. So this is where fan fiction shines, as it isn't limited to what is marketable or socially accepted so that profit lines go uppies. Hopefully I'm making sense here. As for Rinoa's characterization... I tend to view and write her as a curious, adventurous and bold woman. She has had to be; running away from your upper middle-class home to join a ragtag resistance group fighting against the tyrannical occupation of a city while being this young is not something that just anyone could pull off successfully. For the most part she is someone who knows who she is, what she likes and dislikes, is true to her beliefs and isn't scared of the unknown. It's for that reason that I also headcanon her as being quite sex-positive and open to experiences; hence her having had a head start on Squall in the romantic relationship/intimacy department. Again I might be biased by my own beliefs here, but I don't think it undermines or takes away from their current relationship at all! Not to mention that with the sorceress/knight bond they're sharing, I DO plan to write some soul-shattering, life-changing stuff, if ya get my drift. So, no offense taken anon! I think we just might have different ways of viewing Rinoa's personality, and that's perfectly fine. Hopefully this doesn't squick you too much out of reading my fanfic, but if it does, it's okay! <3