#character study;

taken from @loyaltyworn​ .

❝ I’m going to have to say that’s a lie ... ❞ 

 ❝              I’m made of way more sin than that.  ❞

Edit :

              oh? you’re approaching me?

              alright, anon. you wanna go? let’s go.

              i will say first off that, yes, i am biased towards aizen. that’s a fact i admit to openly and freely and yet, i very much am willing to compare aizen against yhwach. the thing is is that both of these characters are broken in terms of power, so to speak. but aizen, in the end, is more powerful and far, far more broken than yhwach is. that’s not just me saying “lol aizen is so op hurr durr he’s the strongest of them all” because i write him. it’s me going by the literal canon of bleach itself in terms of aizen being a skilled and capable villain, far more than yhwach ever was.

i need to make more detailed headcanons ( including ardyn’s imprisonment at angelgard before his escape lmfao square will take his walking eos for two thousand years OUT OF MY COLD DEAD HANDS ) about this but it boils down to this, basically:

after his escape, ardyn tried repeatedly, for many decades, even a few centuries, to reintegrate with human society. he genuinely tried to have a life again. to have a lover, a family, friends. he tried, very hard, to cling to the love of life he had before his execution. and it slowly drained out of him as he found himself unable to properly reconnect. between the superstitious nature of people in those days, his bizarre mannerisms and appearance, and just how humans are in general, ardyn repeatedly failed to reconnect to people. so he just closed himself off as time went by until he gave up trying after, oh.. anywhere from the third to the eighth century of this. i’m not decided.

the fact remains that ardyn just gave up trying with people. he genuinely would not understand someone reaching out to him with compassion anymore, especially not someone that he has grown to care for in any fashion. he fully expects there to be a catch of some kind. or that they’ll realize that he is what he says he is, a monster, and leave.

it’s happened before, after all.

so for someone to deliberately choose to stay with him? for someone to deliberately show that they love him, even in the wake of the truth of who and what he is?

it’d probably shatter ardyn entirely.

that is why i’m in pain and why he just fucks around with people and flirts terribly all the time and why i stare at him and realize how awfully lonely he is, for humans are social creatures, and think of all the times he’s left society to walk eos time and time again, trying to find a place to fit in.

and it’s why i realize that he’ll happily sleep with someone, in a heart beat, because he’s trying to dig into them for some kind of connection, for some spark of intimacy, because that’s the only way he understands the human connection anymore. he goes into sex unattached emotionally but interested in the physical act and yet he is prone to cuddling and talking afterwards and yet he’ll cut that off as fast as he can, despite yearning to find someone to wrap around and who will hold him and murmur to him and settle those restless dreams and nightmares of his down and why he tries again and again with so many people to try finding some kind of spark to warm himself with. it’s why he’s cold all the time.

ardyn doesn’t remember what it’s like to love - or to be loved. 

someone come punch me in the face.

61% Royal

When the Royal walks into a room, they command attention. They are the one in charge, and they enjoy reaping the rewards of their hard work.

28% Advocate 

The Advocate is the one everyone wants on their side. In the name of justice, they are not afraid to challenge authority or speak up for others.

11% Athlete 

The Athlete's focus and drive are unparalleled. Staying healthy and being fit are paramount to them (as for winning, that doesn't hurt, either).

tagged by: @survival-is

you want to know why he’s hurting me this time? i’ll tell you! there’s no escape if i have to suffer SO DO ALL OF YOU.

i’m thinking about the fact that he deliberately cultivates dislike in people. he does that. he does. i’ve noticed it in canon and in my roleplays. ardyn actually goes out of his way to be antagonistic to ensure that people won’t like him and anyone that actually does do the opposite of liking him? oh, it baffles him. and then i started thinking about why he does it. i mean, it might be easy to sit and say that ardyn is a misanthrope. that he doesn’t like people.

that’s not it.

ardyn is actually supremely lonely. he would never admit it sober, but he craves contact and interpersonal relationships and to just be with people. over the centuries of wandering eos, he tried over and over and over to rejoin humanity and society and he got pushed away for it time and time again. he tried to have relationships, even just friendships, even just casual contact with people, and he kept getting rebuffed for it.

so at some point, he just gave up. he just gave up trying.

if people have that concept of him, then so be it, it seems. very well, he seems to say. if that is what they expect of me, might as well not disappoint them. 

he sees how people treat him and he never, ever bothers to correct them anymore.

after all - no one’s bothering to look past his behavior, are they. why bother to change what they think of him? is it the scourge that helps to unsettle people? is it himself? his social skills aren’t that rusty, he knows that much, but he still doesn’t bother trying to change things. 

if they want a bastard, a monster, a fiend - then he’ll be everything that they see him as.

why bother trying to be anything else, after all?

ardyn hurts me.

this time, i’m thinking about ardyn and how sheer fucking lonely he is.

you know, i think about how he goes out of his way to bother people and then it kind of dawned on me that he does it for one purpose: to get attention. 

now, everyone and but everyone, including ardyn himself, can agree that he’s a troll. he has fun agitating people. he outright delights in angering them. there’s a very purposeful way to how he behaves and acts and does things, after all. he thrills in knowing that he’s bothered someone to that point and it shows in how he acts around certain people. you don’t like this behavior? chances are he’ll do that behavior. 

he knows that no one is going to bother changing their perception of him, after all. why would they? in two thousand years of walking eos, ardyn learned that people will look at him with preconceived notions and that to change them is a tremendous effort. even when he was still trying to help people after escaping angelgard, even when he was still trying to use his powers as a healer in remote villages and on the road, people would draw back from him; after all, humans are fearful of the unknown and he is, quantifiably, an unknown. a stranger with odd gold eyes and red hair.

that’s why he throws himself out there and has no issue with picking up sexual partners at a whim, only to discard them. it’s why he has no issue just annoying people outright.

it doesn’t matter.

they don’t see him underneath the layers of bitterness and anger and vitriol and loneliness. no one’s seen him in such a very long time.

ardyn’s a contradictory man, being both a hedonist and a nihilist in one. he throws himself into the moment without hesitation because he’s craving something, anything, to touch him. to make him FEEL again. 

ardyn has no issues getting himself drunk by drinking half a bar or an entire one just to numb everything he’s gone through because sometimes, getting drunk is better than screaming; he’s fairly sure if he lets himself scream, he’s never going to stop. he will participate in sexual endeavors to try reconnecting with people in that most basic and intimate of fashions. even a few moments of oblivion in orgasmic bliss is better than the inundation of the years over his own perception of the world around himself.

but he also doesn’t believe there’s much of a meaning to life.

and i just look at how he used to be, this shadow of a man who loved people, who loved life, who tried so hard to save the people he was destined to rule over once upon a time, who took in daemon after daemon after daemon into himself, corrupting his own body and mind and soul, and i just can’t help but see ardyn as this tragic man who only tried to do the right thing, once upon a time, and he was cast into darkness for it.

oh, he’s an outright asshole now. he did what he did. he’s done a lot of terrible things. he’s gone from healer and savior of the people to the right hand of the militaristic power in the land and he relishes it quite a bit, if not outright revels in being able to do what he’s doing.

but i remember, too, that he’s as much a victim of the astrals as luna and noctis are. i remember that he tried for centuries to reconnect with his lost humanity and he failed time and time again until he was finally so bitter and broken and angry that he gave up on it ever again. i remember that he just wanted nothing more than to have a family one time and to be a good king.

i remember a lot about him.

there’s very few times in the game when this mask of his slips away, and i honestly think he’s not even aware of it anymore, not when he’s worn it for so long. he bounces back from emoting by pulling a smile back into place and i think it’s just reflex for him by now. very few people ever question a smile. a smile is easy to dismiss, to not look past, and he figured that out long. long ago. it’s why his moment of genuine emotion come off as so shocking to me. i’m not saying that he isn’t emotive at other times, but even after the truth is out about him, he tends to wear that smile all the same. you see a flicker of his emotions in altissia, between luna and ignis. you see them again on the train. you even see it again in insomnia ( if you have the royal edition with the bonus boss fight. ) and that’s not getting into the emotions he displays during the final showdown between himself and noctis. that’s very, very few times when all is said and done.

i think ardyn learned to hide behind the smile. he wears it so freely that it just is part of him now, part of who he is and how he behaves. true, when he drops the facade of being an eccentric, he is extremely and openly dangerous, but he still wears that smile. it’s honestly depressing in a sense, when thinking about it. he has a moment of shock on the train when he sees gentiana, but in five seconds, the smile is back. he has a moment of anger with luna where he hits her, but again, the smile is back. even when explaining to noctis who he is and what he is, the emotions that he displays are once more masked behind the smile. it’s like ardyn literally cannot express any other emotion and one has to wonder how long it took for that to become ingrained in him. studies have shown the average time to take a habit is about 66 days. ardyn’s been in this habit for two thousand years. it’s why i think he’s so quick to smile in any given situation, even when it’s obvious that that’s not what he’s feeling. he hides behind the curve of his mouth because it’s all he’s able to do anymore.

but to circle around to his range of expressions when he does display them? he’s extremely emotive. and he obviously feels emotions, and deeply so at that. i just honestly feel so sad for him sometimes. it makes me wonder when it comes to ignis being able to tell noctis the story of ardyn, though. how did he learn that? my obvious answer is from ardyn, of course. but how did that happen? what kind of emotional range possibly took place when ardyn told him who he was, of what happened to him? ignis comes off almost defensive of ardyn when that takes place so it just makes me wonder in truth. ardyn hides with a smile, and no one has probably questioned him about it in so long that i think it would shock him if someone did do that. if someone did point out that he’s not showing his true feelings. even after noctis and the others know that he’s not normal, that he isn’t human, ardyn keeps on wearing that amused facade ( though how much is genuine and how much is facade is very up for debate; i know for a fact that he was enjoying tormenting noctis in his journey through zegnautus keep. ) until the end of things.

and while some might see his smile as relieved in the end, when he’s defeated, i find it hard to read as that. it might be relieved. but it could also be something else.