when eos was announced i joked "ah asteria, give me one last otp art for the road…" and, well, this isnt SHIPPY but they really said “chal is to leon as sorey is to mikleo”. asteria was truly the mobile game of all time…
you know i was going to take jazz zaveid in my asteria->rays transfers because its my fave asteria alt outfit, but ive GOTTA actually take tod anni leon bc thats the TRUE spirit of asteria to me: inexplicably, chaltier and leon are having a moment (Note from the future: I did not do that. I took the unit I ran as my mystic arte in guild co-op instead.
every 6 months we get social media posts blaming Societal Ills on shipping and i guess. we were due for that??? christ. people not valuing platonic relationships is not the fault of people enjoying shipping (bangs my head against the wall)
my hot take is that if you ever want to blame Something on "shippers" or "fujoshis" you need to step back and consider that you've misidentified the root of the problem tbh...
now that they wont be master and mirrite anymore, they should get married inste--
isnt having two beds in there instead of one big one a waste of floor sp--
i did actually think to myself, a while back "ah since mirrites have to stay close to their mirrists it would make sense to share a bedroom regardless" but since kocis has no real tether... i was thinking of markphil lol... why these two lmao.
actually there's a remark in the asteria collab that implies kocis has his own bedroom so. is this recent? huh!?
Spoilers for Tales of the Tempesti joke about how quickly and enthusiastically lukius and caius end up... embracing being siblings but. the plot of that game just torpedos through ALL of their other living family members lol... it's no wonder they're so eager to embrace having a long lost brother...
Being a fan of soft taboo is so hard like wdym this kidnapping fic doesn't have fluff :( and that he loves her so much and could never hurt her he just wants her to himself and thats it :( wdym ( https://x.com/HiYamyamsHere/status/1636282162830868483 )
me trying to have my age gap ships be cute in peace while everyone shouts enthusiastically about grooming or whatever
jp fandom seems more likely to write stuff like that fluffy so i wonder if its partially antis' influence back-firing...? like "if i'm going to be shouted at i might as well go all the way" or whatever
when i was more into the ffxiv story i tracked the alisaie/alphinaud tag and i was always boggling at how turbo-horny and sometimes even fucked up every single fic was. what if we just did normal twincest instead ?
(yes i know i should write it myself. 😔 i have things i care more about though so the tag will simply stay as it is)
April 2023 addendum:
like if they’re fucked up in canon i do often want to see them be fucked up in fan content too, or some mixture of that and being fluffy. but people will automatically jump to like. Everything Must Be Awful Or It’s Irresponsible or Bad Writing or w/e and it’s kinda. ehhhh…
really more than strict “i want it to be cute!!” its more… i want things that are true to the canon dynamic (which has a good chance of NOT being Super Ultra Fucked Up…) i hate how people act like “bad irl” has to Instantly become The Worst Content Possible completely erasing any semblance of the original characters…
ehhh. bamco took down the rays 4th anni site... that was a long time ago, yes, but the art assets weren't elsewhere other than the merch (which isn't the same because they form a full illust together, but the standees are just individual characters....)
though, granted, why am i surprised then the crestoria websites all disappeared the literal SECOND the game ended service >>
there are a lot of reasons mobile games are bad, but as time goes on one of the biggest complaints i have is that the MOMENT something doesn't benefit the company running it, they throw it in the garbage and set it on fire.
yeah yeah capitalism, but with other media the company doesn't exactly have the power to do that :(
...well at least for asteria they decided to warn us in advance, sighs.
lol i found myself wibbling that i feel self-conscious when people are mad about people who only care about shipping bc i tend to prioritize my ships over my faves... sorry past me you just need better faves you care more about. get back into tales dude.
like i still agree that usually people saying that are just being assholes
but also sorry i dont have that problem anymore because i found characters i care about!! bye.
ngl i hate that bamco acts like the r versions are replacements for the original games so much. they cover the same major plot beats but theyre not really the same story narratively... it's like the games got adapted into the same medium instead of a different one
the slow onset of me loving phantom is Awful. i want to pick him up and shake him. i want him to be happy. he's awful. i want to pull on his stupid braid. i want-
honestly though i just kinda love characters who get a bad hand in life and handle it poorly
also he's actually kinda bad at being a villain it's really funny. not like, that he's not willing to commit to being evil or whatever but like. he's. bad at it. he sucks at taking hostages. and his plans arent. great (fond)
Spoilers for Tales of the Raysanyways i said this on my old account but im still so happy the epilogue is letting him have a happy ending... sometimes its uplifting for people to get happy endings they dont "deserve", actually.
Really lovely Fraywol fic. It's an au where the Warrior of Light (Meteor here, not an OC.) takes Feo Ul up on their offer and takes over Titania's throne, so Fray takes over as the Warrior of Light. Use of language is fantastic, feels wholly fresh even though it's a partial retelling of MSQ. relationship is well-developed and sweet even with sparse on-page interactions. https://archiveofourown.org/works/25942720/chapters/63059617
There's a sort of loose sequel in the same universe by the same author, too, "you and me and this bonfire makes three"
I was introduced to a GREAT NEW PICROSS-LIKE today and i think everyone else who likes picross and picross-likes should play it https://lukerissacher.com/battleships
liking a sympathetic antag and then revisiting the story is rlly funny bc youll be like "wow so excited to see my fave again this is their first scene!!!" and then their first scene is them throwing an 11-year-old at the ceiling ♥️
look inside ur job quest & u will find a ship no one else has ever even heard of
honestly xiv fandom is so fucking lonely if you only care about npc/npc and end up reading side content. i can whine about being lonely in tales but at least people actually know who the chars im talking about are (well more often than in xiv fandom which is Just One Game)
and like sure, my doh/dol job quests ships are extreme, cherry-picked examples that i'm not super passionate about but. man.
(lying on the ground) calling velvet and phi siblings misses the entire point of phi's character arc!!!!!! they can have a platonic relationship but it /cannot be that one/
he isnt her little brother and thats. more than okay. it's the point of their arc in fact............
tod2's strength as a sequel lies in its willingness to make the playables from the first game completely unimportant npcs. or like, dead. or like, not even able to be talked to
i think sequels that are too caught up in making sure you get to ~hang out with every character from the first game~ and ~visit all the cool places from the first game~ are, at best, dragged down by that desire for fanservice
like obviously its fine to have the old cast or locations around lol but i think its important to remember you're telling a new story and let that take precedence
+ if you're introducing new characters, they NEED room to breathe and you CANT have the old ones hog that
the way eng tales fandom talks about the mobile games gives me a headache lmfao. excepting rays its NEVER been the global versions that d*e (they just literally cannot outlive the jp ver) and rays is... still alive... the global ver is just dead... please....
bh it feels kinda. self-centered in a way that makes it IMPOSSIBLE to see and discuss the larger picture??? "oh bamco keeps k*lling the global versions" bro........ (its more like "the global ver is never the main money maker so there's nothing we can really do to keep the game itself alive, only ensure a continued official tl for as long as the game lives" which i guess i understand not wanting to accept because it makes everything feel futile and hopeless lol. but there's a reason bamco keeps giving us mobile game locs, you know.)
also whenever someone makes a flat statement rays is dead i lose 2 years off my life. ig it's fine if it's clear from context you mean global rays but PLEASE do not imply asteria outlived rays. its still alive?! its the only mobile game i play?!?!?!
anyways the problem is that bamco thinks jp tales fandom can support 3 mobile games (it cant) and that western tales fandom can support 2 (it cant!!!!)
Note from the future: pour one out for Asteria and Rays...
filling that out i actually realized the sad truth of why i end up with so much m/m... it's because if I feel too lonely shipping something I get less passionate... the only replacement for having other shippers keeping me company is feeling indignant that people hate my ship lol
i still like magivel but the fandom heyday was before i got here and it seems to have had a lot less staying power than elevel... plus a lot of my othr f/f ships are like. its just me lmfao.
ive started reading through the link story and. comparing the arc 1s of link vs rays vs cresty is SO FUNNY bc you can really feel mobage trends changing lmfao
We Are Going To Explain Why There's A Gacha Now vs we're going to allude to why you can summon weapons now vs fuck you the gacha doesn't exist in-universe
what if the gacha existed in universe in cresty... kanata... through the power of being stabbed by vicious... you can summon friends to your side now......
uuuuuuuuu mark/phil....... i still cant believe canon outright gave us phil acknowledging that mark wants to stay attached so theyll die together... _(:3___
previously i was just like "yeah!! theyre kinda cute!" but this event just snuck up behind me and hit me with a rock lmfaoooo
saw someone talking about how all the ads they see are completely worthless and feeling sad about project wonderful, the only ad network that ever gave me useful ads
like it makes sense that it's not feasible anymore because the internet is now just 10 websites but...
man its been a week since i finished dotnw and im still chewing on my feelings lol. i think i wasnt supposed to get horribly attached to rata, but im the type to find that sort of character endearing
i spent like half of the game calling rata cute lmfao. not emil (though hes not NOT cute) but rata!! he's short-tempered and is just in general easy to upset but he seems to try his best and it makes me want to pat his head...
the fact that i ended up caring about at least one antag in every tales game ive played since coming back to the fandom (besides cresty but TBF i did NOT read their character room stories bc i got lazy) after spending years going "why the fuck does everyone hype up tales antags" is so funny. i just played the WRONG GAMES sorry. only half of the series has fun antags (tho tbf absolutely no one is picturing mercuria or lukius when they talk about tales having compelling and likeable antags.)
Thinking about it, it's poetic that in the end Omega decided perfection involved imitating humans when the race that created it had shed their own humanity, isn't it.
It's just such a cute characterization detail that vrtra speaks human language even from his main body. All of the other dragons, afaicr, speak dravanian. but vrtra loves his people so much! he learned their language!! its cute! i love him!
actually i also need to get further in rays bc kocis/ix is good so far... i think its [really fun] to see the chance to trade being in more pain for someone being in less pain and then they get made bc they're worried the two of you are less ~connected~ now
theres so much fun stuff with the mirrites and thats the real thing im playing rays for-- (but i also like that the way they "redeemed" most of the villains is just domesticating them)
hot take: a version of the eizen sidequest where you somehow manage to turn him back would, if well-written, be more depressing than what we actually get in zesty :)
because he's already done shit hed regret while not under control of his mind AND it's inevitable it'll happen again if he lives life how he actually wants to :)
i think its fine to want to live like that but Eizen Clearly Does Not lol
somehow i just now realized that leon's scramble to be respected as a knight and chal's anxieties about being respected in the ground troops are Kinda.
Man.
under the terrible circumstances they're under, those two are good for eachother because they both need Someone and they both reeeeeally care, but uhhhh they're not exactly helping each other's flaws lmfao
people hold them up as an example of Perfect Flawless Friendship but really they're a co-dependent disaster duo [affectionate] [this is very genuinely my otp lmfao]
i actually genuinely like misella and while i think itd be cool and good for her to get more depth i do, in fact, enjoy her being a terrible little bitey yandere.
im sad symonne feels like the writers just kinda shoved her into that "female antag whos really weird in an unrequited way about the main male antag" mold they do too often bc i think her whole thing could be really interesting in the right hands
i just like her fixation on lashing out and making sure others in the same situation also suffer...? shes not a good person but, makes me wanna pick her apart despite there not being much there
shes also like. the only char shoved into this mold that grabbed me in aaanyy way lol. a waste, do something else with her... maybe they would've if the dlc hadn't bombed but Man i dont want to live in the world where tales of releases post-release story dlc
i think itd be nice if they did like. a post-game novel or drama cd instead... itd never get translated but i prefer it over dlc lol.
i still cant believe i got dragged into [misevici] by a fucking party-as-poly fic and then it escalated into (points at lines no one would ever see as romantic) isn't it romantic to promise that the next time you hurt someone will be on purpose :) <3
(though also i think vicious's amusement at her trying to hurt him is Fun. i'd call him a masochist except like. im not sure if someone who survived being stabbed through the chest and seemed mostly unbothered is uh, going to feel much pain...? maybe thats why its fun for him, to see if she can actually succeed somehow lolol)
this is pretty uninformed mumbling though, ive not uhhhhh reread the story since the first playthrough other than opening up yuna's segment to torment a friend with her written-out accent + seeing screencaps from other people of random out of context bits and bobs
id be like "wanna replay d2 for her..." but she shows up at like the fucking 75% mark lmfao... aaaa shes so interesting but they don't flesh her out nearly enough because she joins so laaate.....
i guess her role in the skits might get old for some people if she joined earlier but...
honestly id go into actual analysis but im eternally holding out hope on more people playing d2
i just think the contrast between her batshit moral code (like not in the sense of immoral in the sense of... "not even god is allowed to do that") and her more human reactions to [redacted] is Neat and in general i want to dig deeper into how she thinks a--
people made fun of the hearts r loca "the power is in my... nipples?" line but now there's an internet meme like that......... it was just a reference to a meme from after its time (nods) //n
oh revisiting it i suppose it's the OPPOSITE of the meme bc sydan is saying his heart needs /work/ rather than being his asset but. you know.
i think what i like about zaveid/sorey is that as rare as their interactions are they both bring out sides of each other that i like seeing but are kind of rare; zaveid's desperation to be liked is most visible with sorey and sorey actually gets grumpy at him sometimes...
well zaveid also admits he wants to be liked to lailah a few times but it's not like. Hey Lailah Please Like Me whereas with sorey most of their interactions are like. "hey sheps lets be friends ;p" "what the fuck are you even saying"
i think something vikana related with vicious paying some kind of attention to kanata's [stain of guilt] would be cute-- it's kind of what brought them together in the end, especially with vicious having awakened it for him.
also with it being on kanata's palm its very easy to just, hand-holding... cute...
i wish i could draw bc this is def an idea better suited for art than writing lol... i just think itd be cute for vicious to brush his thumb across kanata's [stain of guilt]--------
i think another reason im caught up on this idea is because kanata keeps it under bandages all the time, so its kind of intimate,
I think it's really funny that everything around dezel and symonne's respective blessings in zesty is so dark and depressing and then in b with eizen its like. hey watch this (flips a coin 100 times and gets tails 100 times)
LIKE. we do SOMETIMES get into it with eizen but he dealt with all of it pre-canon and now he's just a slightly sulky pirate
"dark" does not in any way cover my usage of "problematic" to describe fiction i like... you can plot out how those words relate to what i like as a venn diagram and it's Very Much not a circle; both umbrellas have content that isn't under the other
sickeningly sweet consensual incest/age gap isn't dark but people get uncomfortable or mad about it... a lot of things can go dark and depressing places without hitting up common landmine topics...
i dont think people who take edna's claim about the peanut eating oath seriously understand how many peanuts 1000+ is... if edna was eating over a thousand peanuts a day, we would never see her doing anything other than eating peanuts
this is deadpan but im mostly posting this because the mental image always makes me laugh when i think of it--
so many of my non-incest ships get accused, specifically, of being a parent+child duo and i am nearly always baffled by it... Why?
i do wish people would learn the concept that found family doesnt have to mirror real life family structures i PROMISE saying yamato is riku's dad or w/e just hurts my brain
alternately: i guess this is just my fave ship dynamic (//n--
One of my favorite fanart things is when people draw Iori & Mitsuki sleeping together, but with Iori burying his face in Mitsuki's chest even though that would probably end up putting his legs over the edge of the bed...
TBH it doesn't really ring true for me when I see Mitsuio fanworks where Iori calls Mitsuki by his first name for whatever reason... I just don't think Mitsuki would object to [being called nii-san] (he likes to refer to himself as nii-chan when he's trying to appeal to Iori's inner brocon after all, and there was that one birthday chat where his request to Iori was just to call him onii-chan...) and I kind of doubt Iori would ever just naturally decide to drop a formality level with someone? Especially with the level of respect and admiration he has for Mitsuki.
The ending was translated a while ago, and I read it back then, but I kind of wish Master&Mel had had a short epilogue beyond the diary snippet...? Somehow I just feel like it would've been more satisfying, although, maybe it wouldn't have been.
Maybe I'm just sad to have a series I was following for a decent amount of time end, lol.
the thing about mitsuio, is that they both want to care for each other, right?
buuut! iori views it as an act of service and devotion (like a knight or a servant) while mitsu's view of it is more like an older brother (duh) && this bleeds into their views of the other's actions. so when mitsu looks after iori, while he enjoys it, it feels wrong that someone he essentially worships is serving him, and when iori takes care of mitsu, mitsu feels emasculated bc as the older one he "should" be in that caretaker role
I feel like the way yandere iomitsu would go is like... iori Destroying anyone who inconveniences mitsu in any way, NOT iori forcing himself on mitsu tho 90% of iori's self-hatred is from thinking he hurt mitsu
There's also the fact that when iori gets jealous (espec wrt mitsu) he tends to be sulky and compare himself to the other person rather than angry? like hes not like "I Will Murder Rokuya-San" he's like, "oh... of course nii-san likes rokuya-san better :("
Well, Sometimes he wants to murder nagi, but not out of jealousy wwwwww. bc of shit like "stop grabbing my ass why are you like this"