#gladio negative

Here we have Ignis pulling a Nyx for Noctis’s sake, and there’s every gifset and a half showing Ignis shielding Noctis with his body or running to his aid or making sure he doesn’t get hit by a random projectile or whatever, and yet Gladio is the Shield?

The fact that this Episode is implying Ignis going blind wasn't Ardyn's doing, but Ignis paying a price for the Ring really just fucking makes Gladio look bad, because Ardyn blinding Ignis would lead to, "well, Ardyn didn't ever really attack Gladio, so it makes sense Gladio isn’t put in similar positions. He blinded Iggy, he harassed Noctis, he kidnapped and possibly personally tortured Prompto, but he didn't care about Gladio enough to really do shit" and that's not Gladio's fault. It’s not Gladio’s fault if Ardyn doesn’t care to threaten him and it would be weird if we were hoping Gladio got fucked up by Ardyn because Ardyn is awful and it’s strange to use that as a metric for how useful Gladio is or how strong he is or how much of a threat he could be to Ardyn’s plans or whatever. And I mean, Ardyn stabbed Luna. Luna still ain’t shit. She was the least threatening person to Ardyn’s plans and considering her storyline, him stabbing her was a favor.

But this shit? Ignis blinding himself to save Noctis means Gladio wasn’t in a similar position to risk any part of himself helping Noctis because he literally didn't try hard enough. His worst moment was getting punked out by Ravus, and then he fucked off to who-knows-where to meet up with Cor, fight Gilgamesh, and get a new nifty power that he would never use again in the rest of the game. But for the time he was absent he was very explicitly not being Noctis’s shield like he was supposed to because he wasn’t physically there save for a violation in quantum physics, and if he died outside of his duty before Noctis could fulfill his own quest that would just be stupid. 

Meanwhile Ignis here is apparently choosing between, uh, dying and his body never being found, regular death, joining Ardyn, or helping Noctis at the cost of possibly his own life ( although we know how exactly that will end ) and he chooses saving Noctis at potentially the cost of his own life ( I mean we know how that will end but the characters don’t, for all intents and purposes Ignis is ready to die ). 

Gladio who????? 

Amicitias are the King’s sworn shield what????