#wolftempest

I’m entirely willing to see what happens with this. But I’ve also really detached myself at this point because I’m over getting deeply disappointed by media. Gotta protect myself. So my entire emotions right now are “slightly let down, but curious what’s next”.I’m not shutting any possibility off and it’s entirely possible the fallout to this could be handled well and go somewhere interesting.

so, like, because of all this gushing (this deeply relatable gushing) i actually put my writer hat on and churned out something complete-ish for the first time in LITERAL YEARS because they do, they deserve the content damn it

It’s not troublesome to ask, but I sincerely doubt I still have that meta. I purged my blog of everything prior to 2015, and I stopped my Xillia playthrough when Shiloh died, which was on January 9th, 2015. (I didn’t consciously stop playing because she died, but it just . . . happened that way.) While I did still write some Tales Series meta after that, it was mostly in response to Tales Confessions, and I just did a check through my meta tag and didn’t see one for Milla being the true protagonist of Xillia. As a result, I’m going to go ahead and assume that meta is gone. That said, I don’t mind quickly summarizing my reasoning since this is an opinion that I still agree with.

Essentially, the protagonist of a narrative is the character that the narrative focuses on, the character that pushes the plot forward. (In the event that there is more than one of those characters, those characters are dubbed the deuteragonist, tritagonist, and so on.) The protagonist of your story is the character that the story is about. Some people mistakenly believe that this character is always good, but this is not true; it is entirely possible to have a villain protagonist (and a heroic antagonist). Some people also think that the protagonist is the character whose eyes you see the story through, but again, this is not always true. Although John Watson narrates the Sherlock Holmes stories, he is not the protagonist---Sherlock is. Watson is an important character, sure, but these stories are not really about him, they’re about Sherlock. Sherlock is the true protagonist.

When it comes to Tales of Xillia, an examination of the narrative reveals that it really only has one protagonist (despite how it has been incorrectly marketed), and that protagonist is Milla Maxwell. The narrative is about her, the story is about her. Her mission is what drives the plot forward, and is what gets the other characters involved. While there is a larger, over-arcing plot, ultimately the story of Tales of Xillia is about Milla, which is why the plot is still driven forward by her even after her (temporary) death. (After all, Jude decided to go after Old Man Maxwell because of Milla. It was still about her. She was still driving the plot, even when she wasn’t physically there at the time.)

By contrast, Tales of Xillia is not about Jude. Jude is an important character, and he has his own character arc, but he does not drive the story forward and it is not about him. He’s not even the deuteragonist. Rather, he’s what we call a supporting protagonist, which is a character whose eyes the narrative is seen through despite the fact that they are not the actual protagonist. To use an example listed above, John Watson is the supporting protagonist of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Ordinarily he would be a secondary character, but since he narrates the stories (that are still not really about him), he’s the supporting protagonist. The same is true in Tales of Xillia. Xillia is not about Jude, and by all rights he fills the same role that, say, Tear does in Tales of the Abyss. But when you choose to play his side, he becomes the supporting protagonist, because you’re viewing the narrative through his eyes even though the story is still not his, but Milla’s.

I had to bring that back, especially since it meant so much the first time Shinichi told Ran that B)

As for the tactile things, it’s a lot of factors smooshed into one. For Ran, there’s not many ways to display affection towards someone physically 10 years her junior, so she uses what she can to express her positive emotions towards him, and he’s slowly getting used to it, not being a very physical person himself in that sense. They did talk about it, sometime after the planned drabble set (due to Shinichi misreading the action and being frustrated as a result), if anything to set Ran’s intention in stone as well as if Shinichi was okay with it.

As for Kazuha, he’s just very cute, so its like seeing a very fluffy cat and you want to touch their fur, even if they might not be okay with it. That and she’s a very tactile person herself (and so is Heiji), so hair ruffling and other roughhousing kind of comes in the package, small or not. Ran isn’t as much a target of this, though. It also has to do with previous relations, it’s hard to stop habits, but at least she usually stops if told to.

Nah, it’s not strange, I understand what you mean. I didn’t even realize I hadn’t included what they were wearing XD 

An Eon. Let’s see, for the pre-canon bit at the beginning, I pictured Héctor wearing what he’s wearing in the first pic of this post (which has some concept art from The Art of Coco,) without the vest which was probably ripped off the moment they got through their bedroom door. Imelda is wearing a white blouse embroidered with red and yellow flowers, and a red and green, ankle length skirt, with a green ribbon in her hair.

For the second half, I pretty much imagined them wearing what they’re wearing in the movie. Which… makes me wonder if that’s what they wear only on Día de los Muertos. I mean, Héctor’s shabby outfit from the movie was probably the only clothing he owned, but Imelda and the other Riveras? Maybe those are the outfits they wear especially for the holiday, and have other outfits for normal days. 

Regardless, I did picture them wearing the outfits from the movie. I wish I’d thought of something a little more creative (like would Héctor start wearing t-shirts if he could get his hands on them, would Imelda ever wear pants, how do both of them feel about jeans or modern clothing in general, or is the thought of wearing stuff from outside their time period horrifying to them????)

lmao. okay but imagine pics of Phoenix subtitled with Kimblee’s dialogue.

Hahaha, I didn’t realize it was you B)

illness caused reversion au sounds too long, so I guess I can just shorten it to sick n cone au for my own tagging in the future B) Donno what anyone else would come up with too