I'm the final boss!!

nico/they/he/25+

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the lovehate mini figures are v cute but i wish ivan still had his stone-faced expression from the original standee like that merch is so good in part bc of how inscrutable and intense ivan's expression is and how overwhelmed and fearful till is in the face of it

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the thing w/ alnst and zomst is that while i do think there are nuances specific to the individual circumstances of each universe, the core of the characters are still consistent enough that i believe you're meant to understand these traits as existing in both versions. it's just that the specific contexts make certain characteristics more or less prominent in their individual storylines

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ivan is my fave by far but sua and till are tied for second. if that wasn't obvious by now

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sua's love is simultaneously so selfless and selfish like. selfless in the way that her own wellbeing doesn't factor in for her at all, all she cares about is mizi and mizi's happiness and she welcomes any kind of harm mizi might give her with open arms because it makes her feel closer to her. but also selfish in the way that it's ultimately a dynamic that brings sua satisfaction and she's so insistent on this specific dynamic even when it's enabling tendencies in mizi that she herself seems uncomfortable with. like it's so selfless it's smothering

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reminded of the mzsa cure cover where instead of getting assigned one character's full verse the lyrics are distributed so that sua gets both till's part about asking to be hurt physically and ivan's part about it being fine if he's hurt verbally

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sua wants to be the vessel through which mizi can express and take out all her feelings while ivan wants to assert his own existence through till

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it's kinda funny how i was drafting a post abt the differences between ivan and sua and my summarized description of how sua loves was that she's "pathologically self-sacrificial" and then this comic came out ifuehskdk like yeah exactly

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a lot of ivti's relationship is marked by a mutual cowardice when it comes to being vulnerable and honest with each other resulting in neither of them understanding that the other cares but i feel like it can't be overstated just how big it was for someone as risk-averse and pessimistic as ivan to try escaping with till and i don't blame him in the slightest for not wanting to risk another genuine rejection after that

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it makes sense for till to feel guilty for not understanding ivan when they were kids bc ivan's dead so he has to bear that grief and the "what if" for the rest of his life but that doesn't mean he was actually at fault for not somehow magically developing the emotional maturity and presence of mind to puzzle out why the guy he had a convoluted unspoken companionship w/ also spent half his time doing shit like lighting his hair on fire and prodding at his still bleeding wounds

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before i got into ff7 and my only knowledge of the series was a compilation of zack&cloud scenes from cc i didn't understand why some ppl seemed to hate zack so much. now that i've actually played the game and been exposed to the fandom, zack stans regularly make me want to beat him with hammers

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ivan gluing till's flower to his head dtejrkfsk he's such a jackass i'm obsessed with him

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i think a straightforward "ivan lets till win" storyline for their zomst round would 1) have too much overlap with sua and mizi and 2) wouldn't track as much with ivan's motivations in canon like. this was basically the darkest most morbid take of sua's desires from canon: mizi is permanently blind to the realities of the world around her and sua can exist in a perpetual cycle of shielding her from further harm by letting mizi win and she can watch mizi and perform on stage with her forever! (at least until she has nothing more they can take) that's a happy end for her!

but for ivan, since they're already undead and winning doesn't mean "living" in the same way anymore, i don't feel like he'd do the same thing bc all it would accomplish is perpetuating a cycle where till is still made to perform as a spectacle against his will with no end so i think his actions would lean more toward trying to free him in some way rather than just take losses for him?

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a bug flew into my eye and now it's swollen 💀

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my one wish for the anime before i try to forget that it's even a thing is them showing ivan's manipulative tendencies toward the other anakt garden kids bc it's something that's been mentioned before on the patreon and in the artbook and we got a bit of a glimpse of in his adoption day lore dump comic but a lot of ppl still deny it's a real part of his character but it's an aspect of him that i love a lot and think is an important part of understanding him and the way he interacts w/ the world and others

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ngl the only thing that the news of alnst getting an anime adaptation makes me feel is nervous lol

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"ivan can't be possessive bc he likes till's rebelliousness and tried to give him freedom" wow heaven forbid the character whose feelings are largely defined by how tangled and contradictory they are in the series largely about the contradictory nature of human emotions and relationships has feelings and desires that are contradictory in nature. next thing you'll say is that he both loves and resents till at the same time oh wait

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you can never say that you don't believe till exhibits the kind of toxicity ppl insist was present without someone immediately on your ass going "you can't accept that he has flaws and isn't an innocent baby" like yes till has flaws he's a flawed person! he was also intentionally written to stand out among the cast as someone without a warped perception of love or any ulterior motives to his behavior