Tales of Friending Meme

[yume_hanabi]

This community has been sleeping for too long! It's time to revive it! With a friending meme because I need more people to follow!

Copy and fill out the template in a comment, and hopefully we can spread some Tales love~

<b>Name/Nickname:</b> <b>Favorite Tales:</b> <b>Favorite Characters</b> <b>Favorite Ships:</b> <b>Other Fandoms:</b> <b>How do you enjoy your fandoms?</b> (Lurk/fanart/fanfic/playlists/roleplay, etc) <b>Anything else to share?</b>

Comments

[shinsengumi]

Great idea! \o/

Name/Nickname: Fel
Favorite Tales: Symphonia, Graces, Vesperia.
Favorite Characters Kratos, Malik, Yuri.
Favorite Ships: Kratos/Zelos, Malik/Hubert, Duke/Raven (not kidding), Shigure/Rokuro, Velvet/Seres, Gaius/Wingul.
Other Fandoms: Dishonored, Nier, Yakuza, aggressively tragic anime, original characters.
How do you enjoy your fandoms? I write a bit of fic at ~vssakj. Otherwise I love meta!
Anything else to share? Quick and dirty threads to get to know me on Twitter: anime bingo, 1 like = 1 otp, and character bingo. I'm a very laid-back fandomdoer with a live and let live attitude. You can browse my other internet places via feltrash.wordpress.com.

[eggsbenedict]

Aaaahhh you're into Nier and Yakuza too!

And Duke/Raven? I'm curious, tell me more!

[shinsengumi]

Yesss, you seem like a pretty cool person and I've wanted to connect with you since you for a while now! Yakuza and Nier and Tales is a hard combo to beat. o9

Regarding Duke/Raven, you'll have to bear with me because I've only played Vesperia through once at this point and I am not the best at remembering place names. /o\ A disclaimer statement about me: I personally don't need a lot of evidence to ship something (I am also a person who lowkey ships Velvet from Berseria with Velvet from Odin Sphere purely because they're both called 'Velvet' and I also consider "because it would be hot" a good enough reason to ship something) but one of the things I most like about Duke/Raven is the fact that they have weird unspoken stuff in common.

Raven's patently bad at coping (for fair reasons!) and puts on a fairly casual face while refusing to really engage with anyone (again, for fair reasons), whereas I see Duke as being quite focused and not too interested in digging when Raven decides to be evasive. Raven can listen to what Duke is passionate about and actually get it because of his own circumstances, without having to go into them himself (I don't think it's unfair to assume Duke knows some of Raven's Weirder Circumstances). I can see Raven going into this expecting to just be using Duke as a source of casual escapism and actually taking way more comfort from it than he wants to. I am in favour of subtle but unhealthy and I think that's the kind of relationship they'd have. Largely dispassionate about each other but somewhat connected all the same.

I jumped on this ship pretty early so I was definitely looking (hooray confirmation bias), but I am fairly confident that almost every time Raven enters a scene after being apart from the party, Duke is on scene moments later. I am particularly sold on the scenes where spoiler dude is talked about with spoiler lady from next point and Raven's comment sounds like "why didn't he tell me?" (can't find a clip of this), right before fighting spoiler lady (here, where Raven is to my eye conspicuously quiet, the way he is when he Already Knows Shit) and on the very end scene, which I won't go into due to spoilers, but the gist is that when you get Raven in the shot, he looks SO UNHAPPY about this (start here!); personally, I think it's because he still believes in what Duke's saying a bit more than what the rest of the party is saying. (Also everyone else prioritises the Adephagos/spirits/other people but Raven's comment is directly Duke-oriented.)

Aside: I haven't consumed any extended/additional canon for Vesperia and I don't really intend to. I tend to be original-source!only for my views of canons (except for Dishonored).

Also pretty sure Duke saved Raven's life in Baction, that is 100% not just me making things up. ALSO Raven is like "hey party, meet Duke Pantarei, my boyfriend". He totally said that. Those exact words. That's how I remember him being introduced anyway.

And that's my TED talk on the Vesperia ship I ship. o> Thanks for asking, it was fun to have an excuse to chatter!

(If you're still not convinced, next year I hope to write a load of missing scenes once we get a hold of the new edition in January and I can make save points for reference. I'm making this ship happen, damnit. o9)

[eggsbenedict]

Thanks for such a detailed rundown and the videos, I'm convinced! (I frequently end up with "you both have nice hair" ships so uuhhh I can't judge anyone.)

I don't remember a lot of Vesperia to be honest, so it'll be interesting replaying it in January with all this in mind!! >D

[alwaysbeenasmiler]

Okay don't worry about responding to my comment, I am reading this over right now!

Oh my gosh, please please please. I want to join this magical ship. I will be looking for Raven/Duke now with my next playthrough, thank you so much for this-- seriously, I love you for this!

Please can we be friends? You've like totally opened my eyes!

[alwaysbeenasmiler]

Tell me more about this Duke/Raven ship-- I am intriqued. (so far have been shipping Raven with Alexei-- and refusing to pair him with Yuri because of ex-girlfriend reminders). Do you even have any fic recommendations so I can delve into this pairing I've never even thought of?

[shinsengumi]

I did a pretty long comment about it upthread, here!

I don't have any fic recommendations, alas. I only read on AO3 and right now there's just one work there. I've no idea if it's anywhere else!