rar "too many AUs" sneezes

thinking about my headcanons for anna irving's family.................. thought fuck it i'll write up a lore post

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been thinking a lot about that "i'm writing fic" "no that's the genre what are you writing ABOUT" post and subsequently themes for my fics so here's all my major fics focusing on their themes / explaining them to someone w/ no familiarity with the fandom

24.8 / artificial aegis project / soup

It’s about surviving abuse long enough that you can escape it, with a side of murdering your abuser, and also the kind of friendships that are forged in surviving the same abuser when you can only trust each other and no one else.

B plot of four scientists being imprisoned and forced by the government to create artificial intelligence to be used as a superweapon and their struggles in realizing they are doing the wrong thing and trying to get away with doing the right thing even though they are under threat of death, ft the grief of losing a child and terrible coping skills, because who can possibly be prepared to cope healthily with sudden house arrest after your child was murdered.

 

YWKON

Vignettes about people caught in an oppressive system that is built inherently into the world’s magic system; surviving it, fighting back against it, freeing themselves from it. In the end culminates in the plot it was building up to: talking a well intentioned extremist down from uselessly destroying himself to undo the unjust system—and then bullying the answer for how to fix the system out of god.

With a side of focus on the love between siblings, the struggles of living after surviving trauma, learning that your worth is not determined by whether or not you are a successful super weapon for a country at war.

 

dywc

Crossover series that’s set out to explore how characters from different worlds play off each other when forced to work together towards a common goal. Comparing and contrasting similar characters, watching their needs merge and clash. With a dash of exploring healthy coping mechanisms post trauma, being realistic about boundaries, and reuniting with long lost loved ones when you didn’t have the chance to through normal means, and getting to say to them things that you didn’t get to say before.

 

FtPverse

An abuse survivor learns that what he went through was deeply fucked up, that he deserves better, and also that he inherently deserves love and has worth on the sole basis that he is a Living Being. Or as the tagline says: its about living, choosing to live, even when living seems like it’s the hardest thing anyone’s asked of you. It’s about learning the purpose you were created for doesn’t define you. It’s about learning that the only thing that defines you is you and your own choices.

It’s also about a war, though it’s less about the war itself and more about living in the war, the quiet nights and moments in between battles, and its’ about living after the war, coming to terms with the scars in your soul and carving out the rest you need, finding what normal looks like for you when the war is over.

With A Side Of Learning To Be Comfortable In Your Own Skin Again After Being Brainwashed And Nearly Killing Your Best Friend, Whoops. (This is almost definitely not about the character you think it is unless we’ve spoken about this before!)

 

 

ykwon2

About your crazy ex from a previous lifetime deciding the best way to contact you is by kidnapping your son?? Exploring that things are not clear cut, black and white, and that there is always, always, a lot of grey. Explores the lengths some might go to to help and protect their family. And Also Going On Adventures When You Aren’t Neurotypical And The Journey Is Kind Of Shit On Your Mental Health.

 

Timeloop

About refusing to accept sacrifices as the only answer. About doing things over until you are satisfied with the result, about having the power to do so, versus the exhaustion that comes with literally rewriting the fabric of time itself. About compromising with a grieving mad child god. About him seeing sense before he’s quite all the way off the deep end. About the different choices one makes when they know what the ending looks like, versus when they have no idea at all.

 

25 lives

About two souls bound across lifetimes because the god who created the world loved his wife so much he accidentally cursed the world to reincarnate her forever. About all the different ways they can meet in, or not meet in. It’s about yearning for someone you go four hundred years without seeing even though you don’t know their name. It’s about the grief you carry from lifetimes you can’t remember.

And most of all, it’s about trust earned and trust freely given because a relationship is as much about putting in the time to make your partner feel safe and respected around you as it is the falling in love part.

oh dear god why did i translate so much of this

ft
> zelos outed as traitor
> kharlans vs martel go
> COLETTE ADDRESSING THE SAD CHOSENS.....
> yuan gets to say his wedding vows after 4000 yeras :')
> lloyd and kratos convo that has me ON my knees
> mithos being the perfect shithead little brother

alright let's go

oh yeah you can check out my whole thread paraphrasing these quests here


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i'm a bad rar i don't even have the quest number or anything this cutsene is tied to but FIRST KHARLAN HEROES INTERACTING ALL FOUR OF THEM IN RAYS!!!!!!!!!!! YEEHAW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!( Read more... )

[inhales deeply] AND ANOTHER THING

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I started writing this as like some fancy schmancy article but honestly who gives a fuck??? let's not do that!!

I wanna talk about Tales of Symphonia's affection system, some neat details I know about it, and why I made what choices I did for it in my playthrough of Symphonia, which I recorded with ENG text and JPN voiceover, because no one else had done that and I'm fond of the JPN voices

let's talk a little about the affection system first, I guess?? Symphonia gives you a lot like minor dialogue choices that affect the game in no way other than to boost (or subtract) characters' affection for Lloyd, which ultimately gives you three to pick from at Flanoir (in the GC version of the game, Kratos is also available to pick regardless of his affection points, but this is only the GC version, for some reason, it was taken out of later releases!) and from there the soulmate chosen at Flanoir is your soulmate for the rest of the game, regardless of affection values.

you probably already know this about Symphonia?? I wouldn't blame you if you didn't (there is no ingame indication that it exists, certainly not one that would be noticed on a singular playthrough, and certainly not if you did not tell your initial visitor at Flanoir no), because the game is VERY good at railroading you into Colette soulmate. On the flip side however I'm pretty sure everyone has some kind of inclination of it because Kratos is ending is just so big that you can't not know it exists, and that this game has some kind of alternate ending feature, even if you don't understand the intricacies of the affection system

honestly I don't even know the full intricacies of the affection system!! but I know a lot because I mad to record at least all of the variations on major scenes that were 1) interesting to me 2) feasible for me to get without more than one replay (and even then I beefed that and had to replay the whole dang thing for Zelos, slkdjemd,)

anyway a comprehensive guide of all the dialogue options and how they boost (or hurt) the party members' affection levels can be found here!! this guide solely covers affection values and doesn't talk much about alt scenes, but it's a very handy resource if you're gunning for a particular soulmate route, especially since, again, there is no in-game indication of these values at all. (there is a fortune teller who will judge your relationship with every party member, but the most she does is tell you which three you're going to get at Flanoir, and that's it, and I've tested. Top three all get the identical "wow! you guys are soulmates!" dialogue response.)

((sidenote: if this affection guide ever goes down or the forum ever becomes inaccessible, let me know, I do have a backup copy of it saved and I can make that available if needed))

SO LIKE, WHAT DOES THE SOULMATE GET? WHAT DOES THIS CHANGE??
> Flanoir, obviously
> the Heimdall conversation before Lloyd and Kratos duel for Origin
> soulmate gets a unique dialogue declaring their faith in Lloyd before said duel, as well. (If Kratos is soulmate, Lloyd gets a unique dialogue instead)
> soulmate gets kidnapped by Mithos (unless Kratos is soulmate, in which case Colette is taken), though from that point on only Kratos and Genis get unique dialogue re: the events of rescuing them from Mithos and so on. I'll talk more about Genis, later
> I will also talk about one interesting Zelos thing later
> and Kratos ending, because, holy shit, Kratos ending
> there's other minor things, like a bit in Shadow's temple where Lloyd splits off from the party to do a puzzle and current soulmate briefly says a thing telling Lloyd to be careful.
> lowest affection character also gets a few, minor, unique scenes, such as luring the Desians' attention in Remote Island Human Ranch, and a dialogue box about escorting the Flanoir doctor to Altessa. I bring this up because in my playthrough, Genis fucking hated me, somehow, like worse than even Regal or Presea (who are notoriously hard to boost affection for) and other than "I kept shitting on Mithos to make Zelos happy" I'm not sure how this happened
> and more, a lot of which is transcribed in this lovely gamefaq! ((and if it's not there, try this game script. both of them have things the other does not!)) (I also have backup copies of these as well)


All of that out of the way, let's talk about what alt scenes I picked up for my playthrough / recorded otherwise

My playthrough was a weird blend of Kratos and Colette soulmate routes-- Kratos was my soulmate (with a whopping +2400 affection, compared to Colette's +1500), but because Kratos isn't in the party for the second two acts of the game, the game basically treated Colette as my soulmate (as I wanted it to) except for the scene at Dirk's house, which I didn't even fucking realize was a soulmate thing until I got it when I replayed for Zelos content and was like HOLY SHIT ((I had to then go through and activate and rerecord Colette's-- thankfully bumping her affection up and Zelos' down wasn't difficult, and I had the save files available to go back and do so-- in order to include hers in my main playthrough))

Since Colette is "default", I obviously chose her at Flanoir for my main playthrough. (And... had to turn Kratos down because he asked first and I felt bad and edited it out of my footage slkjdfdsf) There's nothing real special to talk about here.

In my playthrough I also did a handful of sidequests (the ones where Kratos trains Lloyd, the one for Yuan's wedding ring, and the one where you can track Kratos collecting materials for the eternal ring, which is why my Kratos affection is so high slkdfj), as well as picked up some overworld skits (optional skits you can use to hear a short convo between Lloyd and the character involved, granting an affection boost, each character has five) ESPECIALLY!!! the Kratos ones!!!!! They kill me, god, have y'all seen the boat skit? you need to see the boat skit. The Kratos one by Flanoir is ALSO incredibly good

So, yeah: my playthrough is Colette ending, with a side of as much Kratos content as I could fit onto the table without doing Kratos ending.

And then there's the alt stuff I recorded

Genis ending - also aptly named Mithos Fuckor Ending becuase there is just SO much genis/mithos content packed in here. not only is Genis' Flanoir scene spent mostly worrying about Mithos, Mithos also has unique dialoguefor possessing Genis!!! It wounds me!!

Kratos Ending - this is two hours long, because Kratos ending has the most comprehensive changes, seeing as Kratos replaces Zelos in the party for. oh. you know. I also included a lot of Kratos exclusive sidequests in this video, such as him and Raine putting on the play (and the famous lesbian/thespian mixup), his Altamira scene, and. Actually those might have been the only two. Also there's a few Kratos ending exclusive skits in here as well, including this skit which neither the skit transcript faq nor Tales Stuff's entire collection of ToS' skits include.

Zelos ending/soulmate route - I don't have one single video for all of the Zelos content, because everything after Heimdall for him is kind of boring, and I ended up uploading all of his content separately anyway, but I do have for you
- Zelos' scene at Dirk's house, ft "oh god, being the Chosen sucks"
- Zelos showing up at the dad reveal, which he and ONLY HE does if he's highest affection, otherwise it's just Colette and no one else
- Zelos' Flanoir (we all know what this one is)
- Zelos' Heimdall in which he just gets really pissed at Kratos (he's valid) (and gay)
- Zelos' Altamira, because it's gay as hell

I thought about recording other Altamira scenes, but I already did Kratos', and no one else's is really that exciting to me? I even recorded Colette's and then went well this just smacks of unnecessary heterosexuality and never bothered to edit it.

I probably won't record anyone else's anything, except maybe Sheena's Flanoir (it's really only her Flanoir I care about,,,) but I keep. Putting that off. One of these days though!! One of these days!!

AND THAT'S EVERYTHING, I GUESS. I'VE ALREADY FORGOTTEN WHY I EVEN CARED ABOUT MAKING THIS