okay, so after i read that mobius/ff14 crossover, i ended up going thru their fics and found they had a tales of arise fic thats time travel. now, ive never played arise, but i basically know the whole story from this stupid long review i watched for some reason

i get thru the fic and you know what? i really do like alphen and the memory+identity stuff with him. i wonder, briefly, if anyone else has written on that

i go into the tag and discover its essentially only shipfic

alphen is here to be romanced, or in the background as someone else has a romance

it is REAL rough out there for a gen enjoyer

sorry you cant see the vision that i, a person who only knows the cliff notes can

its ROUGH

like, i wouldnt even mind the shipfic of it all if theyd just let him have some interiority about his life

me @ mydei tag like can he interact with some other people sometimes please

but no it's the Romance Standees again and again and again

like, either he has no memories, compelling to me, or he has them and hes therefore a relic out of time compared to everyone else

ough....................mydei.............

the romance standees are everyfuckinwhere but

we need to do something about the standees. please im desperate

im glad i dont even bother with hsr, mydei sounds dire

it's not...as bad as that makes it sound, because some of the shipfic isn't romance standees but in fact the characters with something wrong with them

but also I lower my standards so far to have something to read

that ONE time travel fic did more with the concept than anyone else. him casually going "the lions share" and no one knows what a lion is bc all animals are extinct now. that alone was more than the rest of the tag

well at least theres that

and also: real. love to lower my standards and at least get crumbs

uggggh bad

like. I will say that I think arise has the most compelling tales main romance. but that is built on the backs of the characters having character