#stahleon

SHENANIGANS.

LOL SORRY, CHAL.

Oh god I finally drew the dreaded yaoi hands.  sorrynotsorry.

(no spoilers under the cut, just me rambling about context since this is from the AU/crossover:)

Heyy, thank you, Anon! ;u;

Honestly I think it’s a combination of all of the above?  Same goes for a lot of other pairings.  These are Tales games, after all, which are hugely character driven, and character development and relationships are a huge part of them.   As such, there is a lot of good development going on between various party members, so there’s a lot to really give every pairing or combination a very distinct sort of history and feeling and chemistry of its own.  Stahn and Leon do kind of bring one of my guilty pleasure/noticeable trend favorite kind of character contrast- not the only one I’m drawn to. I mean it’s about as opposite of Sorey and Mikleo as you can get.   

But that being the cool, aloof, emotionally damaged/vulnerable and defensive character who refuses to let anyone in- taking that character and putting them with the precious child who can see the good in anyone and staunchly refuses to be scared off by the hostility and eventually manages to attain that elusive friendship.  I like them both a lot as individual characters, often for very different reasons, but together they are amaze. (Or a maze, if you mean the route Leon’s actual feelings take between his heart and his mouth, since he will deny liking some things to his grave, just about.  Like sweets.  It’s precious.)

Not just for my standard ships, but that’s an element I really enjoyed in a lot of the friendships (heck, they can make fun ships, too, though) in Tales.  That’s how Colette and Sheena started out.   Zelos and Lloyd.  Okay, Zelos and EVERYONE.    Ditto Alvin and EVERYONE.  That kind of character development is some of my favorite, and you’ve probably seen that I’m taking that angle with the demon weapons, too.   That’s one aspect that I liked about the dynamic between Wolfwood and Vash.  Or maybe we can call this game “how many secrets does it take to kill a character because he won’t ask for help?”  While tragedy is always good, I do enjoy it when that kind of moment gets to be averted through character development.

That’s one thing I liked about Seraph of the End, too, was that Yuu grew from a prickly loner into someone who would fight tooth and nail to protect his new friends- even if that causes its own brand of different troubles for him.  I like characters that are flawed. I like it when characters with different flaws are able to support each other and cover each others’ weaknesses. I like it when opposites collide and form a new kind of stable, binary orbit after initially veering around in wide, violent, unpredictable ways.  

I drew the most goddamn vanilla shit Stahn/Leon kiss ever. Oops. 

It was supposed to just be practice cos I’m still terrible at face/face contact involving lips and making it not look wooden...