#there's a lot of hypocritical dialogue with pen and b/c of these wild inconsistencies

[majorpepperidge]

Hiii, it's me. The writing anon. Come to ramble about more Pen. Heeho.

SO-

As one can guess based on my self-imposed title, I like to write and in turn means I like to very normally (okay not really) delve into characters and how they tick. So Pen has been a fun case of reading his dialogue and not knowing if I wanna punch him or like the fact there are cracks of being genuine. That said, I wanna like discuses two of Pen's piece of dialogue that make me scream at pathea for not doing more with this.

Dining, asked about his favorite things: "We're supposed to use teachings of the Light to solve issues, not weapons, so I prefer not to own anything that could hurt anyone. Although, not everyone in the local Church agrees with my stance..."

Rejected, but the player is married: "You are teasing me, no? Do you not already have a family? Protect your loved ones, do not dare break that trust!"

I'm screaming internally because something about these just adds so much to Pen? The fact that Pen, the guy who claims he has many lovers, who gets giddy when the player divorces their spouse and asks how good it felt and more, point blank goes "Do not break your family's trust". Something about that just gets the gears a whirling. It makes me wonder if Pen comes from a broken family and or something similar. I know people have given their own headcanons, saying Pen is the emperor of Duvos's son for example. So that just gets the gears turning but also that dining dialogue. Pen, tthe man who CANONICALL OWNS A RELIC OF DESCTRUCTION SAYS HE PREFERS NOT TO OWN ANYTHING THAT COULD HURT HIM-I???

It honestly makes me wonder if Pen, prior to the player coming to Sandrock, was already cracking. Maybe playing the role of enforcer for the church and seeing what the church taught made him start questioning stuff or he being outside of Duvos's toxic mindset and more started making him question everything, only shoved deeper into what he was taught as a child in Duvos by Matilda.

Anyway! Food for thought.

Sidenote: Love how Pen offers to just deck Yan for the player, that's sweet of him fhdjkf

I've never heard the 'son of Duvos Emperor' headcanon, that seems a bit...well, it ain't for me. Personally I think he was purely a genetic experiment/test-tube baby and was treated as such; lacking in a lot of love growing up and essentially told to 'fight for Duvos or be left to rot' (I'm not entirely privy to Duvos' setting/lifestyle, but I'd imagine it's p close to the Garlean Empire of FFXIV, so that's kinda what I'm basing a lot of this on lmao).

Everything abt his life up to Sandrock has been fighting, learning a very skewed history of the world, being trained in deception, etc etc. But then coming to Sandrock and having a lot of those preconceptions shattered slowly but surely and making him second-guess some things. To me, it feels like there's no love lost between Pen and the Empire as a whole; but he doesn't know anything but being loyal to it. All it takes is someone treating him genuinely and not being put-off by his loud persona for those cracks in belief to quicken. But he can't take back what he's done, ofc. So there's the main crisis, for him it'd be 'What's the point? I may want this but I can't escape Duvos' but snap him out of that and you're gonna have The Most Loyal Man Ever cuz now you're his entire world, oops!