between drops

Star trails and the Night Sky

😍😍😍😍😍😍i just cant girls and boys😍😍😍😍😍😍

You wanna know who else I find super attractive?

Ignis scienticia.

“I haven’t really gone outside much in the past couple of months.“

“I don’t have parties. ‘Cause I think the world is a sad place.“

“…Instead I see it’s monuments, Gazing in awe over the relics of our past. I’m filled with pride when I see how far the civilization that is my life has grown because of our empire. My heart has but one wish for you, its hope: that you have grown too.” —Lillia (2014)

i didn’t mean to make this so long but i wanted to both analyze my own style and give other people a look into it! I hope someone can find some use for it! 

ECCE HOMO

photo and artdirection: Evelyn Bencicova

but i think about the game, especially the early game, where his friends tease him for going from ‘prince’ to ‘delivery boy,’ and how his response to “guess the royal title doesn’t hold much weight outside of crown city” is “glad it’s not weighing me down,” and how he never really seems to mind losing his privilege. he minds the weather and he minds being used and he minds walking a million miles when he’s spent his whole life in tokyo crown city, but… it’s not just that he likes being a nobody for once.

he doesn’t mind (likes?) working for his dinner and sleeping in shoddy motels. it’s important to him to go fish up a meal for a stray cat on the dock, and not even in a ‘cats are better than people’ way. he likes helping people.

like, sure, game mechanics, but in-universe he spends time catching frogs for science and looking for dog tags so families can know what happened to their loved ones. most of the jobs only offer exp (which he doesn’t know about) and a few healing items or trinkets that he can just as easily purchase from a seller. vyv pays well and some of the sellers start giving him discounts for his help, but he doesn’t always know that. he just goes ‘oh you need someone to track that down? sure, i guess.’

as much as he’s a spoiled prince, he’s also dedicated and kind and selfless. and from the hints in the game, he thinks it’s a relief to be running errands and helping people. not like this is something he wanted, precisely, but that it’s freeing for him, even though he can’t “just go back and… play video games.”

(“you’re really getting a hang of this ‘being a commoner’ thing!” “really? i guess, in a lot of ways, it’s easier than being royalty.”)

he expects people to get out of his way when he walks, but he’ll travel all over the country looking for the last two cactaur statuettes for this sad kid’s collection. he’s got an ego, but “don’t sweat it, we owe you” and “‘preciate it” are both pretty familiar phrases to players. he expects to be respected and obeyed, he’s comfortable in his role as decision-maker, and he’ll scour lestallum for leaky steam valves because the person in charge of that got a bad back.

it’s not quite ‘humility’ because he isn’t putting aside his pride. it’s not ‘one good deserves another’ or ‘paying it forward’ either, because there’s no sense of obligation involved. morality doesn’t really factor into it—he’s not any more concerned with doing the ‘right thing’ than the average joe.

he does it because he seems to like it. he likes and finds it a relief to help out and make people happy. doesn’t mean he’s any less of a prince or a nerdy college kid or anything like that, it’s just who he is.

The reason why Noct was able to meet Prompto at school and become friends with him was because Regis sent him to public school instead of having him tutored or taught at a special royal prep school.  It’s not clear whether this was Regis’ idea or Noct’s, but Noct clearly seemed uncomfortable around people who saw him as a prince rather than a person even back then.

As a teenager, Noct asks for and gets his own apartment because he wanted to be away from the palace.  It’s strongly suggested that he feels uncomfortable being reminded of his royal heritage because of what the responsibility is doing to his father.

There’s some optional dialogue in Insomnia where Noct talks about having an after-school job at a restaurant serving sushi or something.  Even back in Insomnia, it seems, he tried his hardest to pretend he was just a normal person.

It’s clear that there’s more to it than that, however, because the radio mentions at one point that he got top marks in school and did a lot of community service.  His English VA, Ray Chase, headcanons him as working in a soup kitchen.  It’s not that hard to imagine that Regis was the one who taught him to value such things.

If he did start out selfish and spoiled, his character arc could demonstrate him taking responsibility by simply putting others first.  But that’s not who Noct is.  Noct is already altruistic and willing to help others when it doesn’t cost too much.

If I had the energy right now I’d go into more detail, but since I don’t I’ll just refer to the fact that, well: the point of the entire FFXIII trilogy is to disagree with such a defeatist message.

You change your fate, you don’t bow to it.

In any case, when it’s taken on its own terms, FFXV isn’t defeatist at all.

The trick is, FFXV’s worldview is completely different from FFXIII’s.  FFXIII operated under the existentialist assumption that “existence precedes essence” – human beings have no purpose beyond the purpose they invent for themselves.  And, if that’s the case, then “destiny” is a lie – an imposition of selfish gods who must be overthrown for the sake of human freedom.

N E T F L I X   S E R I E S ↳ FINAL FANTASY XV

“Off my chair jester, the king sits there.” - Noctis Lucis Caelum.