MAKE YOUR MUSE AS A BUNNY !   ( Lunafreya And Selene )

Send ‘K’ for a kiss from my muse.

* 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐂𝐑𝐘𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐋 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔 ?

𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐊 𝐎𝐏𝐀𝐋 // there is strength in softness and no one knows this better than you. no one knows cruelty it took for you to learn to be so vulnerable. your sensitivity is your armor. you refuse to let the world crush you. you refuse to stop seeing beauty in broken things. you will always look for the light in the darkness. people underestimate you. they think you are far too delicate. but they don't know your gentleness was forged from hardship. there are depths beneath your smiles no one will know. when was the last time you did let someone know, though ? when was the last time you let yourself cry, when was the last time you didn't bury your anger ? you're more than what you give to others.

Tagged by: @reginrokkr Tagging: whoever wants to do this !

𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐋𝐎𝐆𝐔𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒 .    //    ACCEPTING .

‘  the handsome fellow that’s trying to rescue you from a hideous fate is never wrong.  ’   //    @asterites​​​

𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐘 𝐀 𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐊 𝐋𝐄𝐅𝐓 𝐄𝐍𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇 𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐌 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐀𝐑𝐆𝐔𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍.    that said, while the wit with which it was conveyed, and the context thereof, robbed her embarrassingly of all her excuses, it contradicted with each principle an oracle absorbed and internalized.  hence, her first impulse was to dismiss  —   but what exactly provoked it ?  that her fate threatened a hideous undertone ?  that he, the silly hero, had all intentions to rescue her ?    (  or that he was ... handsome … ?  )    none of these points were untruths and, still, she argued.  still, she made a case for dispute  :    “ he is wrong.  i needn’t be rescued from a particular destiny that i have not chosen  — ”    but with the lakes of fire in their home of darkness, with the heads of conquered children at a gunpoint, and their betrayed roots, had it been a free decision, or unsought necessity ?   ‘ i chose this ‘    on repeat and with effort, the line transformed to conviction, did it not ?  a conviction as real as one to serve an empire which, more than once, manufactured tools out of the flesh of loved ones.  a conviction of devoting to a life of conserved rite.  a conviction that, rather than following survival instincts, there was a choice, at all.

notice, a frown pinching into pallor and a crooked line that ought to resemble a smile, but did it terribly so, marred her pretty visage as her spoken point dilated to the nonsensical.  the denial so outstretched, it portrayed no longer her own instilled thought.    “ it is not that i want him to do this for me, or that he should continue it.  moreover, he is quite hypocritical ... ”    you see, every day, solheim’s high priestess lied through her teeth.  about a good, giving godhead and redeeming salvation under the throne of his mercy ;  about worship and a cause greater than the worshipers.  every day, she lied about picking up the skeletal remains of a dormant faith, and promised to her subjects a myth cased in crystal.  in turn, she lowered her secrets into the coffin of her past, in hopes the valkyric goddess would find and care for them behind valhalla’s fog and the rotting dreams of sorrowful mwynn.  then she smothered that memory, until her woes emptied and interchanged with robes and a scepter invoking divination, forgot what other purpose her hands served than to reach for the voided universe.  for this reason, she lied again, and again, and again ;  until she believed she wanted the barren holiness, and found herself utterly bemused by the absolute ease it required to welcome festering love to creep through the spaces between her gilded ribs.

“ …  he is so …  stubborn, and foolish.  he does not listen, and i  —  ”    oh, look at her.  poor, wretched woman.  suddenly, her hands were meant to touch the heart of another, and the lies were mouthed with naught more than displeasure ;  for there was this man who learned to know her beyond them, as well as she acknowledged his reckless, careless, endearing whimsicality.  his clumsy struggles and lovable qualities.  and, truthfully, resistance could only be considered an impossible effort.  the thought of such alone torturous enough that she preferred to be snapped out of it by the curious impressions within the glance of her starry sibling  —  the sheer tease radiating off of the silent expression suggested full awareness of the remaining contents within the muffled sentence.    “ don’t you look at me like that now.  besides, something tells me a similar experience plagues and blesses you. ”

  *  𝐎𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐋𝐄𝐒    //    𝐀𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐘𝐒𝐈𝐒 𝐈  :    𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐋 .

i.    priesthood and prophethood go hand in hand within the fleuret line.  the magic of oracles is relatively distinct from that of the lucian kings or their warriors.  they receive the word of the gods and the divination of time, understand the astral tongue and the language of the broken heavens, decipher the encrypted vocabulary of the celestials.  they heal, they hear and know, for they and the messengers are closer in relation than gods and man. 

ii.    the practice itself is a form of sacred shamanism    (  derived from seidr of norse society  )    which invokes the shaping of the future, the oracular foresight, incantations that beckon the dawn of tomorrow and the sunlight it bestows, to deliver eos from the grim-reaping plague which worsens in waves as the millenia pass by.  if an oracle is not present to spellcast, and to cure, the night grows rapidly longer and daemonification has free rein.  their healing is absorbtion as they consume the plague with touch.  the absorbed scorge eats on and corrupts the cells, expands to feast on internal organs to activate a decaying process, twist them into the darkness of the night    (  shown by the way ink-like blood leaks both out of ardyn and lunafreya  )

for this reason, oracles normally do not officially carry on the role from their mothers before they reach circa 26-30 years of age and have given birth to children to continue the bloodline before that.  a later succession is common custom in order to avoid any damaging of sexual organs resulting in miscarriage, or daemonification of the fetus nestled in the womb.  however, they haste to become young mothers when they are legal of age.

lunafreya’s early succession at 16 is an abnormality and unusual, hence being the ‘youngest oracle in history’, and as such she decreases the likelihood immensely to bear children herself.  had she not prematurely died from a dagger’s injury, she would either be rendered infertile, or be incredibly hesitant to procreate.

unlike ardyn lucis caelum, fleuret prophets are not bound to become immortal.  rather, their mortality increases quite a bit, and the oracles of yore had since the genesis of their traditions always led shorter lives and they pass away before any mutations can occur.  their average lifespan entails roughly 50 - 60 years.  lunafreya, following her calling like she did, would have potentially died at 40 - 50.  

iii.    astrals and messengers are not the only spiritual entities the oracles commune with.  man being a work of astral hand, and their essence consisting of stardust, the oracles can partly see and speak with the fading particles of souls, soothe the dead, and purify them if necessary.

iv.    traditional / ceremonial gear, as we can see here and here consist of lily-white gowns and matching veiling hats.  a description of seidr sorceresses / seeresses describes one wearing a blue mantle with a staff in her hand.  the blue mantle is worn by the queens, and the staff is represented by the trident.  a parallel to freyja, the goddess associated with seidr, should be also noted in sylva’s feathered mantle, for freyja is in possession of a feathered cloak that grants one the ability to fly.

v.    the role itself is primarily reserved for women of the fleuret house, as the people of tenebrae honored their first queen posthumous.  while as per nature of heritage, male members of the bloodline are capable of practicing, it is socially inacceptable for them to claim the right to it.  nonetheless, some had to become oracle under special circumstances, such as the mother or sister prematurely passing or falling ill via other diseases or disablements, or the male being an only-child, although that would be rare ;  thusly he aids the people instead, sings to the slumbering gods to receive their blessings and rule the queendom, albeit immensely critizised by his subjects.  women who never were able to use this magic were seen as incomplete and dysfunctional, and their brothers who were able, were seen as bad omens or false prophets.

vi.    sólarljóð / the song of the sun is preached and popularized via ceremonies to worship and materialize the sun light into the future.  other types of song probably include the stars, moon, dawn, and the world.

" 𝐀𝐇 , 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐇𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐍𝐄𝐃. how was your day, sephiroth ? would you indulge me with your tales ? " // @wingedcruelty

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐌𝐈𝐑𝐊 𝐑𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐀 𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐄𝐃 𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐌𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐇 ;   neither sincere enough to show teeth or gums, nor sharp enough to paint a scoffing picture, although she did manifest scoff in the one-second frown pinching between her flaxen brows, for between humility and glorification would doubt cast its long shadow.  regrettably, oracles observed the shadows too intimately for comfort, the silhouette of vedrfolnir stretching distortedly wide it became its own line, the line that warned of what happened when you overstepped.  the foreboding signs of degradation, of grace melting off the halo, of aether dripping out of the pores.  it was a sight incomprehensible and eldritch, a premonition so terrible it may as well be sacrilege to spell it out, and each coming day announcing its own uncertainty brought along the crumbling of her own self-control to hold her tongue.

“ and if nothing lasts forever, soon then, i hope, what comes to an end, too, is your bad habit of praising your brother too much, and you, yourself, not enough.  a man can lose grasp of his own humanness if he indulges the spiritual pursuit for too long, and i much prefer an anchor to stay grounded. ”  because the call of the sky for me, my body’s festering desire growing like a tumor, it scares me and no one wants to be scared.  no one wants to be scared of touching something as romanticized as the stars.  “ well, then, if i am not to worry about the subjects i pick for our exchanges, let me ask this :  why are you here, dáinsleif ?  i do not mean here, in this moment, next to me, nevermind that i do enjoy your presence.  i mean why are you in the position you are in, where all you do is look up to someone or something, but not meet them eye to eye ? “  have you not been more than this, once ?

Indeed, what she says is cryptic— ominous even, as it speaks volumes of the knowledge she professes through what couldn't be considered less than an universal truth. For the long living such as them, this may look like the same sights as any other year's whenever the inteyvats bloom for two weeks before they find repose in the abode that is the stellar graveyard at their roots. Dáinsleif shakes his head slightly, meant to reassure and put the oracle's mind at ease. ◜Worry not. I may not be as profound as my brother is in the realm of spirituality, but I find truth in your words, nonetheless.◞ That's right, for he is far more detached than Vedrfolnir would be as the Visionary. Being a vessel for visions of the future to come to the present can do as much to a man, he can only hope that the sights he has of times to come aren't horrifying nor paralyzing enough to interfere in his daily life now. Only realizing now that he was back at admiring his older brother's prodigy and the traits he had gained from it thereafter, Twilight Sword proceeds to clear his throat awkwardly. ◜When you talked about the unchanging nature of a scenery for the long living, I mean. The ephemerality of these moments serve as a reminder that all must come to an end one day.◞

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

John Banville (via quotemadness)

* 𝑳𝑼𝑵𝑨𝑭𝑹𝑬𝒀𝑨 // 𝐀𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐘𝐒𝐈𝐒 𝐈 : 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐁𝐀𝐓 .

this is an old, re-worded headcanon regarding luna's behavior in battle. it is noteworthy to keep in mind that she is physically ill, chronically so. do not expect me to nerf down the effects of her illness and the strain of the covenants.

lunafreya is very much able to be ‘ destructive ’ even without the trident. she is manipulative and ruthless in order to get something or someone out of the way and uses tools or her environment to her advantage. ( exploding airships and luring luche to wear the ring of the lucii, burning him in the process, were good demonstrations for that ) on other hand, with the trident and her magical prowess, she practices light-elemental attacks. defensive barriers, offensive range spells, and supportive medical treatment or stat boosts. they are powerful, yes, but they eat her MP extremely, slowing her down, which is why she uses those spells wisely and not in a wasteful fashion. her strength lies within strategy & calculation, she would have been able to craft effective strategies with ignis.

while she can engage in close-range combat with the trident as her weapon, and is trained specifically with pole-arms, this is a last resort. she is aware of her own physical and mental limitations, and requires support of allies on a long term basis, especially after the awakening of the first astral whenever she escaped insomnia with the ring. she is indeed a loner by heart, but is not dull enough to not consider her own weakness which does come from how healing seasons and the covenants drain her vitality as well if we pay attention to the flashbacks. it’s no condition that suits to actively and repeatedly be involved in fights. due to those restrictions, that not only spike her fatigue but evoke flares of pain especially within the torso area due to the scourge coursing through the system of vital organs, she thinks twice about engaging in battle - and more or less retreats in most cases to avoid wasting any precious time and energy.

this does depend on the verse, though. after her ascension to godhood via her death she is naturally stronger than ever in contrast to her frail mortal form, so no one should be moronic enough to fight her and think they come out alive. battling selene won’t be funny and is most likely leading to immediate death. the only way you can win is having plot armor, or being an eldritch abomination from space. whilst selene is a titan goddess who is as passive as luna, she is also overwhelming, using her enormous power due to gravitational force more than anything. she can shake the world via magnetism and control the tides, therefore makes her very dangerous by sheer will.

by the way, guys, for those who only watched a playthrough of ff16 or those who don't want to constantly boot up their ps5 to re-check the lore, someone assembled the archive entries here. i notice it is still incomplete in some areas, but it's better than nothing and helpful if you want to have a read.