FINAL FANTASY KISS BATTLE 2021!
HELLO FRIENDS????? Remember those fandoms we all used to be in? and producing things for? Well, baby, it's time for a nostalgia run, so buckle up your chocobos and get ready to roll. We haven't done a Kiss Battle in years and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lassarina and I for one think it's TIME TO DO SO.
This event is open to everyone, even if we aren't DW circlefriends! (feel free to friend me too; i promise i'm not crazy that's a lie). If you aren't on DW, you can still play via anon or OpenID!
The Kiss Battle is simple. Players leave prompts in comments under each specific fandom, using generalized fandom nomenclature: a relationship of some sort, and a concept to inspire other players.
- For romantic relationship kisses, we use X / Y
- For platonic relationship kisses, we use X & Y
- Absolutely open to relationships with more than 2 people involved! X / Y / Z (/ A / B ...) welcome to this party!
- Prompts can be a word, a sentence, an image, a song lyric; it's a suggestion, rather than a request
- it's a kiss battle! there will be smooches!
Players then go looking for smoochin' prompts they'd like to fill. Fills can be fic, art, interpretive dance, whatever you're inspired to; they can be filled in a responding comment, or as a link (to AO3, tumblr, etc). FILLS GOTTA HAVE A KISS IN 'EM. IT'S A KISS BATTLE. What counts as a "kiss" is up to you, though -- you can be creative!
- Fills should use the comment header to let people know what the fill is; please use a format like "X / Y, (title), (rating), (any content warnings that might apply)"
- "Aerith/Tifa, memorial, G"
- "Cloud/Squall, just in time, R (blood)"
- Prompts can be filled multiple times! Don't worry if someone got there first; we love Two Cakes up in this event! The more kisses we get, the better!
- You can fill as anon if you want/need for any reason
- You can of course crosspost anywhere you'd like
It's a very simple game, and is meant to be played in good faith without anybody being a shitbag about pairings or characters. We're all too old for this.
FANDOM LINKS Fandoms with compilations and expansions should fall into their titled macrofandom. For example:
- FFXIII also includes FFXIII-2 and Lightning Returns (FFXIII-3)
- FFX also includes X-2
- FFIV includes the After Years
If you need to specify a certain microfandom / singular canon, please do so in the prompt or in the comment header!
FINAL FANTASY I
FINAL FANTASY II
FINAL FANTASY III
FINAL FANTASY IV
FINAL FANTASY V
FINAL FANTASY VI
FINAL FANTASY VII
FINAL FANTASY VIII
FINAL FANTASY IX
FINAL FANTASY X
FINAL FANTASY XI
FINAL FANTASY XII
FINAL FANTASY XIII
FINAL FANTASY XIV
FINAL FANTASY XV
FINAL FANTASY TACTICS
FINAL FANTASY TYPE-0
FINAL FANTASY RECORD KEEPER
FINAL FANTASY BRAVE EXVIUS
BRAVELY DEFAULT
FINAL FANTASY SPIRITS WITHIN
OTHER FINAL FANTASY CANONS
FF CROSSOVER PROMPTS
MAKE FRIENDS! If you're interested in meeting more FF fandom people, this comment thread can be used as a friending meme! Tell us a little about yourself, which FFs you've played, favorite characters/ships, and look around for new friends!
You can also join the Final Fantasy Old Folks Home Discord and come gripe about those kids on our lawn and the old days where you had to level grind by hand lmao. Open to all FF fans!
BLITZ KISSINS If you already know what smooches you want to write, you don't need to wait for a prompt -- just comment into the relevant fandom thread with your kiss!
REMEMBER It's only fun if everybody plays, so if you leave a prompt, try to fill someone else's!
Re: FINAL FANTASY XII
Vayne & Larsa, a kiss before betraying, G ("the night of the hammer")
Afterwards, Larsa wondered how long Vayne had been plotting his scheme.
No—Larsa did not need to wonder. A child wonders, but an adult sees, studies, and understands. And no Solidor could afford to remain a child for long.
So Larsa made himself understand. After his hasty coronation, with the dust around Rabanastre barely settled, Larsa's first act as emperor was to pull every file from Draklor Laboratory, and gather every scrap of paper that Vayne had ever touched. For a week he poured over the files, reading and rereading, while rebuffing his advisors at every turn, who pleaded that the young emperor's attention was urgently needed elsewhere, that his ministers and ambassadors were desperate to speak with him. Not yet, Larsa said each time, not yet, not yet. Not until he understood the circumstances that had brought him here. (He could ill afford mistakes, in his new role. He could ill afford childishness.)
Vayne's own papers and effects revealed little—his brother was as careful in his correspondence as he was with everything. But Dr. Cid Bunansa's records were illuminating as they were discursive, knotted snarls of words that wound and wove and rambled every which way. But once unwoven, over the course of that laborious week, those words made it a simple matter to construe the beginnings of their joint plot. Certainly, Vayne's choice was made by the time the Empire had invaded Dalmasca. Likely before then, when Dr. Cid had first written in his lab notes, excellent meeting with the Solidor boy today!!!—the other sons had been dead, by then, and Larsa had never spoken to the man. So it could only be Vayne.
Larsa read all these notes, and he wondered: if Vayne had only told him of his scheme, if his brother had let him in rather than holding him afar—might Larsa have seen good sense in it? might he have been swayed by that unreasonable reason, and thrown his own small might behind the cause? The thought made him shudder. It had been a near thing, after all—Dalmasca's salvation. Had he stood aside in that last battle against Vayne, maybe victory would've come too late, and Rabanastre would've been destroyed, along with any hope of peace.
Larsa hoped he wouldn't have, hoped he would've held fast to all the Solidor name stood for, rather than betraying those ideals for bloodshed, but—no. No wondering, no hoping. He'd stood by mute when Vayne pushed to invade Nabradia, after all, and Dalmasca after. How easily Larsa had swallowed those thin justifications! It was for their own protection, Vayne had said, and he'd believed it. Larsa had hardly ventured outside of Archades, at the time, and he'd been a child; how could he have known otherwise?—but Larsa knew that no Solidor remained a child for long.
And furthermore, Larsa knew it wasn't blind trust that had made him complicit, but a particular trust: his trust in Vayne.
It wasn't that Larsa was sanguine about brotherhood in-and-of-itself. From a young age, Larsa had understood his particular place in the Solidor line: that of the unplanned son. Born a full fifteen years after the others, long after the squabbling over heirs had been settled, he was an inconvenience at best and a threat at worst. His oldest brother spoke to him only with contempt. The next-oldest never spoke to him at all.
But Vayne, Vayne alone, had always spoken to him as an equal, as a brother, as one of his own.
So when their oldest brother had been found guilty of treason, the summer that Larsa had turned nine, and when Father asked that Vayne's sword carry out the sentence—Larsa could not bring himself to feel sorry for his oldest brother at all. He was only sorry that Vayne must bloody his hands with someone so unworthy.
Vayne carried out his duty, as he should. But that night, when the rest of the palace was asleep, he'd come to Larsa's room, alone.
Larsa should have been afraid, but he was not. "What is it?" he'd asked, lighting a bedside lamp, wriggling himself out of the sheets, and sitting himself at the end of the bed.
Vayne sat beside him, then, and pulled him close. He kissed his brow and rested his chin on his head, while Larsa sat mute, struck by the presence of something larger than himself, just outside his understanding.
“How was it, brother?” Larsa asked, a little dumbly, because, what else do you say to a brother who wandered into your room, in the middle of the night, after performing an execution? "How are you?" he managed, a little less dumbly.
Vayne’s hug tightened at that, and his fingers dug into Larsa's shoulders. This is unlike you, brother, Larsa had almost said, but he didn't, because he understood that would be a shade too familiar. So he simply sat there, too stricken to move, and too stricken to even hug back.
After a moment, Larsa whispered: "I hope I should never do anything to force your hand against me—"
"You won't," Vayne said, with quiet ferocity. "That won't happen. You are exactly as you should be, Larsa."
Had Vayne already decided on his scheme, by then? Did he even mean what he had said?
Could the answer to both of those questions be yes?
It was the only bit of wondering he would allow himself, Larsa decided, as he put the last papers away. Everything afterwards would be knowing. Thus the new emperor mustered himself, to greet his first dignitaries, and make the Solidor name proud as he was able.
Re: Vayne & Larsa, a kiss before betraying, G ("the night of the hammer")
This was so good! I love the peek into Solidor family dynamics, and the attention paid to Vayne's past - not excusing it, but contextualising it. Thank you so much for writing this!!
Re: Vayne & Larsa, a kiss before betraying, G ("the night of the hammer")
Re: Vayne & Larsa, a kiss before betraying, G ("the night of the hammer")
perfection.
Re: Vayne & Larsa, a kiss before betraying, G ("the night of the hammer")
Re: Vayne & Larsa, a kiss before betraying, G ("the night of the hammer")
Larsa questioning whether Vayne's affection could have been used to manipulate/turn him (had, to an extent, perhaps even unwittingly!) is such a loaded question and really enriches what we know about Vayne as a character. Larsa coming to the conclusion that Vayne was capable of treachery and caring for him is a terrible thing to have to reconcile, but possibly the best illustration of Larsa abandoning the last of his childhood and coming into himself as emperor. The ficlet comes full circle. Lovely. ;;
pssst if you upload any of your fills on AO3, do share, i would love to bookmark!!
Re: Vayne & Larsa, a kiss before betraying, G ("the night of the hammer")
i was vaguely debating whether to crosspost to AO3, and your comment helped me decide, ty :P i threw this one up https://archiveofourown.org/works/29918790 and the nanaki&aerith one; if i get around to uploading anymore i'll post about it on my dw :)
Re: Vayne & Larsa, a kiss before betraying, G ("the night of the hammer")