Comment on Ad Vitam Aeternam

  1. Riddle78 on Chapter 3 Tue 02 Jul 2024 05:40AM UTC

    And the universe cleaves into two timelines. A bittersweet ending, and this.

    Tidus-Alexander's demiform sorta reminded me of Metatron from Shin Megami Tensei, or Innocence from FF14.

    I wonder what those closest to them would think, if Tidus and Rikku told them about their new natures. Sure as shit ain't healthy, keeping a lid on it.

    I skipped the lemon. Not what I'm here for, but it is very much in character for both of them.

    A Pseudo-Braska... That's a rather disquieting thought. Memory given focus.

    I want to deck Cid and put Berrik in the ground. Revisionist false history's bad enough, but mixed with revanchist ideology? That cannot work. It's all gonna blow up and everyone's gonna be worse off for it.

    Huh. Eden ain't small. She'd sure as shit show up on radar. So that means she either flew under the radar, or came in from so damn high that she flew over the radar, practically from the Karman Line. Alternatively, Rikku's Pyrefly composition gives her the radar cross section of a bumblebee, shape of Eden be damned.

    Hi. Dropping that teaser in Memento Vievre was a fabulous move.

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    1. Enkida on Chapter 3 Tue 02 Jul 2024 10:07AM UTC

      Sechs is Sechsy

      Hey, thanks for leaving a review! Questions, theories, answers!

      I hadn't been planning on writing a sequel until I got convinced to do it by another reader, and then I sorta came up with the rough outline for what might happen in about 2-3 days. So a lot of this continuation is very much flying by the seat of my pants and having plot twists and ideas crop up naturally as I write out the characters and then stop myself and think, 'But why did they / would they do that?' Which admittedly, is how I usually write, but this is even more so than usual.

      Anyway, I believe Tidus and Rikku keep their true natures hidden from their (human) loved ones for one simple reason: they both want to hang on to the illusion of humanity for as long as they can, and also, they don't want their loved ones to suffer. I've explored this sort of thinking more fully in other fanworks I've written featuring what are basically immortal characters who outlive their loved ones (Vincent from FF7, Rufus from Valkyrie Profile 2), and it's just like Queen wrote: "Who wants to live forever?" Leaving people behind in any context tends to suck. That would include the feelings of the people who grow old and die all around them while watching their family stay "young" and "healthy" forever. So you could say, they don't tell the others of their true nature so that the only ones who will have to suffer their true nature is themselves; Rikku and Tidus are trying to protect everyone else, not just physically but also emotionally. It's even more important to Tidus for Yuna, who already lost her dad, Auron, and Tidus once. He just wants the girl to have a normal life from now on, and he unfortunately happens to be abnormal. But he's much too invested in her to leave her.

      You know, I wasn't sure about writing a lemon, but I figured this is the gift-story for filling out holes people felt were missing in the original, and I absolutely know from the amount of commentary I got that a lot of people very much wanted Braska to fill a hole during the original story. LOOOL. Well, there you go, folks. Yes, back in my Livejournal days (and still in my TTRPG days) I'm infamous for my crude sense of humor. Sorry! XD

      More on topic, Braska remains an interesting character for me for entirely different reasons now. He's no longer himself, but he's also more than just RIkku's subconscious. I think the strange nature of his existence might actually develop into a plot relevant point in a few chapters, though I still have to consider how I'm going to handle it a bit more carefully.

      Hey! I want to deck Cid and put Berrik into the ground, too! Maybe it'll happen! You think they would've learned their lesson after the Guado kind of annihilated themselves doing the same thing, but ... you know, history repeats itself and all that. Even in Spira.

      Rikku touched down in Bikanel in her exosuit, not her Eden form. I wonder if she'd even fit in Cactaur Valley as Eden, haha. But yeah, she kind of figured Bikanel was going to be a risky place to visit, she just didn't realize how risky. Gippal was always better at the tech than she was. ;-)

      Again, thanks for leaving a thoughtful review! They're always fun to read. :-)

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