I have to think about this one carefully... (Radiant Historia)

Spoiler: Stocke cannot relationship

Seriously! He doesn't say anything personal to her, not even "sorry I couldn't keep our promise", because I guess the writers couldn't be arsed to put in an an If-Then statement to check if you'd completed the AJE sidequest.

And if you go with "Stocke/Raynie is canon and Stocke does love her and isn't just going 'okay let's go steady when the war is over'", he never tells her that he loves her during the game. What the hell.
Like, Rosch is a complete disaster and almost ends the world because he cannot buy Sonja a goddamned birthday gift, but even he is able to use the L-word.

Not to mention Raynie has repeatedly lost important people in her life. First her family, then her mercenary troop. You could at least give her a kiss goodbye, Stocke.
[strike]this ship is an utter disaster and the writers did not think anything through and apparently that's why I ship it[/strike]

 

Shipping something because you rant so much about how terribly the writers handled it that eventually you end up more or less adopting it as your own because at this point you've put so much time and energy into yelling about it that it's essentially Your Thing™, and also it sure as hell needs SOMEONE to do it right for once = an extremely relatable feel.

 

Yesss. The opening section is so full of "OOOHHH" moments on replay, I love it. (I love this game in general.)

Spoiler

Heiss is so excited and so obviously has a completely different conception of what his relationship with Stocke is like in his head than actually exists. Than ever existed, really- by far the simplest and most believable explanation for why he mindwiped Ernst in the first place is that he laid out his brilliant plan and Ernst told him to shove off.

Bonus: just how many times do you think Heiss sent him into the meat grinder before he found a timeline that actually worked?

Spoiler

Stocke literally responds to it with, "What about my superior? It's hard to believe he doesn't know about this."

Since we know from the beginning that Lippti and Teo can time-travel too, I imagine that was probably a deliberate correction on their part.

 

Ohhh, that makes a lot of sense. And then he acts like this big mentor figure and Stocke keeps getting more distant and cold toward him even though he's downright desperate to keep him alive and... brrr.

In other news: Reading an LP was the best idea, because I'm seeing bits I never got because I kept jumping timelines the moment I found a way to get around a problem - which means I never saw the hilarity that ensues in the scene where Stocke and Vanoss's troupe try to pass the blockade when Stocke doesn't have any performing skills. Stocke telling Raynie "Quiet, you" is funny enough, but this had me actually laughing:

Spoiler

Teo: It's faint, but I sense black energy here as well...
Stocke: ...... Do I just need to eliminate these soldiers?
Lippti: That isn't the solution to everything, Stocke.
Stocke: Then you'd have me doing tricks? Anything but that.
Teo: Oh, don't be that way... Why not give it a try?

So dour! And not liking to stand out... despite wearing bright red clothes that he somehow doesn't realize are unusual.

... Hmmm. *considers an autistic headcanon for Stocke*

 

I love that scene so much and made sure to get it when I LPed the game. :::PPP Also highly recommended: if you disarm the bombs in the Sand Fortress without ever seeing them go off, he basically goes "WTF why is there a bomb here."

 

It kills me that they thought to put little stuff like that in that a lot of people will never even realize is there, and yet the whole thing with Raynie is completely clunky and hamfisted. I wonder if there was executive meddling involved there.

Spoiler: Kiel is THE CUTEST

Kiel: Right, follow me, Sergeant. I promised Sonja I'd return with you.
Raynie: Oh, really? You made a promise with a beautiful doctor, eh?
Marco: I didn't know you had it in you, Kiel.
Kiel: O-Oh no, I'm just... Well... Please don't make fun of me.

D'awww. That made him go from irritatingly overeager to adorable for me.

It's also funny how so much of what he says to Stocke sounds like he's coming on to him. "Oh, and Sergeant! Would you... happen to have any spare time coming up?" Like, seriously, Kiel? XD Is this where the bisexual puppy thing comes from? >_> :3

 

He lists Stocke as ~someone he admires~ alongside women he explicitly has a crush on. I am unshakably convinced he has a huge crush on Stocke. :::PPP

 

Who doesn't, though? :3 (Dias and Selvan, who are instead horribly jealous?)

 

Back when Seebs posted that article about "estranged parents" forums I read the entire thing partially for fic research. Because in a lot of ways that's basically how Heiss thinks- he's got an idea of how everything is/should be in his head, and deviation from that either must be corrected or is ignored because it can't possibly be real.

Spoiler: *quietly changes user title back*

Stocke dislikes being the center of attention, and flatly and adamantly refuses whenever anyone tries to put him in charge of something.

Just how miserable must Ernst have been?

Given that one bad end, maybe actually just Selvan. :::PPP

 

... NOW I'M REALLY SAD. :'(

I was going to ask which but then I realized, the 'Assassination of' quest's bad end? Because oh. Ohhhhhh. Oh my. (And I just got an idea for a delightfully horrible fic along those lines. Y'know, when I'm well, and if a zillion others along those lines don't already exist. In which case I'll just read those instead, because Writing Is Hard.)

 

Thaaat's the one. :::))) And yes, that bad end is ripe for terrible, terrible fic. (I doubt Selvan would be interested in being a creep because Stocke is intensely untrustworthy, but Dias? Very possible.)

 

There's not a zillion of anything in this poor, tiny fandom. :::(((
#five people and a shoelace

 

Poor tiny fandom! I'll end up writing at least one thing for it for sure - it's SUCH a good story and it's all about possibilities and potential - it's practically made for having fic written about it.

(I wanna know just why Sonja is so concerned for Stocke in particular. For Rosch it becomes obvious, but Stocke, not so much. And she isn't concerned about him for Rosch's sake, but specifically for his own! What's up with that? The game never tells us, so...)

 

Yay! :::DDD (please help us, we are starving)

 

So if Stocke is spergy, are the belts a stim thing or a Special Interest?



(yes, that's official art)

Like I said, welcome to the fandom. >:)

IIRC, there is no horrible fic along those lines! We have Rosch/Stocke dubcon for some reason, but no Dias/Stocke dubcon.

 

Well, the art part is. The red lines I added in MS Paint 2 years ago as a snarky response to an anon, and now it's one of the highest-notes posts in the Radiant Historia tag.

 

Those belts are something else. Nomura has clearly had a massive negative impact on a generation of concept artists. Quick, someone go back and stop him! (What do you mean time travel doesn't work in real life?)

WELL. I'll just have to fix that, won't I. (The lack of dubcon with characters who are likely to fit the bill, not the retroactively preventing questionable fic choices.)

 

The game apparently first got pitched to Squeenix, and I decided the belts are a lingering side-effect of that which they were unable to correct because "oops we ran out of art budget" is a very obvious influence on the game. :::PPP

That was my reaction too. "Why would you pick THAT pairing for weird dubcon?"

 

'Best friends who are devoted to and respectful of one another' just does not seem like a ripe field for weird dubcon. If they had weird boundary issues I could see wrangling it and making it plausible with quite a bit of work, but as it stands... well, it just seems like an awful lot of work to twist the relationship into weird dubcon when there's all sorts of possibilities that are right there. (Like Heiss/Stocke... but that's Dead Dove levels of problematic, so maybe not?)

Why am I so verbose when I need to go to bed. Maybe I'm getting better...

 

Or Dias. Hell, even Garland/Stocke makes more sense for weird dubcon than Rosch does, and that's not a villain pairing.