How Final Fantasy XV Saved Me
How Eos threw me back into the world of fanfiction
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Warning: There will be game spoilers.
Summer of 2017 I was twenty-two and had just finished my third year of design school. I had moved back home out of my residence hall and was thrown in the depression of not being able to score a summer job. Plagued by social anxiety I had interviewed for a retail position at Kohl’s and will never forget my interviewers face after I told him I didn’t have any questions about the position. His face dramatically dropped and that was when I knew I had messed up. I had walked out of the department store with sadness in my heart, and thought back to earlier that fall when I had junior review for my major and one of my reviewers told me I should always ask questions. I clearly hadn’t followed that important tidbit of advice (though after that fail I always made sure to have a question ready). I didn’t get the job, and didn’t have the heart to go through anymore interviews that summer.
At that time, I had also been going through the realization that I had been ghosted by a man that I had considered a “friend”. It had been my fault nonetheless for catching feelings, which was breach of our imaginary contract detailing our friends with benefits relationship. He wasn’t interested in a relationship, and I had been broken up with the summer before and also wasn’t interested in one. The joke was on me because anyone who show’s any interest or is repeatedly nice to me I end up falling for. That unfortunately, is my downfall as a socially anxious and awkward person who never got a lot of social interaction or attention.
S and I met on a Korean postcard app. It had been the same one I had met my ex-boyfriend on. I hadn’t thought I would make another connection after being lonely at university one day and re downloaded the app. He and I seemed to click and eventually went off app to message on Kik where we sent paragraphs to one another intrigued by conversation that just seemed to flow naturally. He was a nerdy black guy and I was kind of a nerdy black girl. We both liked video games and at the time I was still pretty into Kpop, and he knew some Kpop groups as well. Our differences to one another were also interesting. He was ex Air Force having retired after a neck injury and wanted to go to college for computer engineering. He was pretty close, living nearby in the next state over so eventually he made the three-hour drive to visit me at my residence hall to hang out one weekend spring semester.
The first visit was great, we walked around a nearby lake, played Smite together for a bit and ate good food at a local Colombian/Mexican restaurant. It finally felt like I had someone to hang out with as I was friendless at my university despite the student population being over 36,000 people. The second visit that next month– which he had been eager to make, had just felt off. It was like he had shut a part of himself off from me and it became evident in his texts which came few and far in between before I revealed I had feelings for him because he seemed to string me along by teasing me that I missed him. Eventually he stopped responding altogether and the school year came to an end.
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I began playing Final Fantasy XV at home for something to do. I had bought it as a Christmas present for myself and played a little bit, but fell out of playing it as I didn’t have time because of class. Little did I know I would actually fall in love with the game after picking it back up. I would see S’s PSN account log in all the time playing Persona 5 and felt awful because he would never message me. I ended up caving and sending him a message through PlayStation because I couldn’t take it anymore. I had been wondering why he had slowly pulled out of my life, eventually turning into a ghost. I had asked him if I had done something wrong to which a day or so later, he replied saying he had gotten a new phone and couldn’t install Kik on it, also he was busy with work and that his roommate was the one using his PS4 for Persona. That message was all it took to kick up my lagging levels of dopamine. I was relieved and revealed to him that I wish he had informed me since we were friends on PSN and that I thought I had done something wrong.
He never replied back.
Rejection hurt, but Final Fantasy XV mended my wounds and pulled my heart strings. The first Final Fantasy game I had played had been X in 2003, which had been rented from the local video store in town. I had been intrigued with the pretty graphics and interesting story line (that opening scene!), though the gameplay had been tough for nine-year-old me to understand so I didn’t get very far. That same year I saw X-2 advertised on TV and wanted it so bad because it looked like such a cool a girl game. I even ended up befriending a boy I sat beside in 4th grade because he also wanted the game and we both got it for Christmas. We talked about it every day until our seats were changed (clearly this was before the social anxiety set in and ruined my life). From there on I got interest in XIII years later because it was advertised with Leona Lewis’ "My Hands" and I loved Leona because my mom had her CDs and we listened to them on car drives. But XIII's storyline just didn’t grab me like X and X-2, and eventually XV.
Final Fantasy XV threw me back into the world of writing fanfiction because I had been so touched by the characters in the story. Despite the lack of diversity in characters, I still fell in love with the Brotherhood. I longed for a group of friends like Noctis’. I envied the relationship between him and Ignis because it felt like the royal retainer cared so much for the Crown Prince. Then there was Gladiolus who gave Noctis shit, but was a shield and protector to the prince. And finally, Prompto, Noctis’ closest confidant that joined the Crownsguard just for him. These guys would give up their life to protect Noctis and it all just felt so wholesome. The game nurtured me where I was hurting in real life, and I poured hours upon hours into it eventually getting a platinum trophy.
In the safe space of my room I bawled my eyes out during the part of the game where Ignis became blind and in gameplay he would stumble around which was heartbreaking (he was my favorite character). I also ended up crying when I finished the game because of Noctis saying “It’s finally over…” at the end because he would die, and everything would be over, and I didn’t know what to do with myself after. I also ended up really liking Nyx Ulric after watching Kingsglaive one evening propped up in my bed with a bowl of popcorn. It became a favorite movie of mine as I delved into the Final Fantasy XV universe more. I even watched the Brotherhood anime and enjoyed it.
I did wish the game focused more on Noctis’ and Lunafreya’s relationship as I had trouble connecting the two. Their storyline and connection just seemed so distant to one another other than what was shown to us about their childhood. I also wished there was a bit more of characters like Aranea, who was badass. But the main focus of game of friendship strengthening through the road trip despite there being roadblocks along the way was successful.
While playing the main game I also ended up getting back into writing fan fiction after stumbling on Archive of Our Own and falling in love with fics there. I ended up writing my own the next day because the ideas were flowing, and it was stemmed from Ignis putting his hand on Noctis’ back as I wanted to travel in Regalia at night and he warned of daemons.
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It was such a simple gesture, but I just went with it and wrote my first fic.
I spent the majority of my days that summer on my computer listening to music (a lot of Leona Lewis) while researching more into the games and characters and then working on writing fic. Then in the evenings into late night I would game. Researching more and reading fiction as I delved further into the game I began to uncover more information about the characters I didn’t notice at first. I even ended up changing the game language to English instead of Japanese to hear the differences in accents and it just stuck. Mixing the game and fics really gave depth to the characters personalities and backstories which made me appreciate the game more. Not only that, but uncovering the world of Eos was quite a treat. Altissia ended up being one of my favorite areas in the game as it was a beautiful city that you can clearly see was based on Venice. It was fun exploring and taking pictures of the architecture in game. Then when the gang traveled to Niflheim and seeing Gralea and then Shiva's corpse from the train was also cool.
I was always too shy to post my fics which one turned into two, three, and so on until I had a folder filled, but I would only post comments on ongoing stories as support for the authors. I loved the little fandom and looked forward to updates of chapter stories and oneshots from certain authors.
I also ended up writing a fic after a Dawn Richard song called "The Louvre" because I thought it was so fitting for the relationship between Ignis and Noctis.
I stare at you like you're a work of art
You should be on a wall instead of hanging in my heart
But I'm too greedy to share your wonderful parts
So I'll frame you with me in hope that's enough
It was a super emotional fic because I had just finished the game and wondered what Ignis would do after losing Noctis. I never finished it as it was a bit morbid with a bit of Dorian Gray vibes, but I loved it and thought it was my best. I had continued writing FFXV fanfiction through my last semester of design school and I remember all too well the mornings I spent typing away in a word document on my phone before setting off for my twenty-minute walk to class. At that point my ex-boyfriend rammed himself back into the picture and we exchanged our writing through e-mail and I sent him that particular story which was half written at the time and he hadn’t been impressed- despite the fact that is own writing is quite juvenile. His opinion of my writing slightly shattered my already fragile confidence in my writing, but I'll share an excerpt of it here:
Ten years ago, before they had infiltrated Gralea, through his blindness he had mapped out the contours of Noctis’ face with his hands, fingers tracing over bumps and ridges. The pad of his thumb moved lightly over a smooth plane to the soft thin gathered epithelial of lips. Through the nothingness that clouded his eyes, his memory painted a picture of the Crown Prince’s face. A face he had always admired and thought was so beautiful.
It was a time where their relationships were all strained. Lunafreya had passed and they had lost Prompto from their party. Noctis was hurting, and Ignis had felt as if he had failed his duty to protect the prince with his sudden blind state. The smooth and recessed scar tissue that surrounded his left eye always a reminder of his mistake. Of the miscalculation of his actions that resulted in his impairment. He had made the best of it throughout the years until it became normalcy within his life. He wouldn’t be able to see any time soon, but his memories were still in his heart. Though he was afraid that one day those memories would fade and he could not remember the blue of Noctis’ eyes, or the pink of his smile and dark hues of his hair that contrasted at the expanse of creamy skin.
His hands had become his sight, mixing somatosensory and his improved auditory skills he had come to a point where he could manage to get around without need of much help. Despite it all, he still didn’t have a full grasp of his surroundings.
Ignis wished he could have really seen Noctis for the last time.
Looking back at my older writing I feel I was really one of those writers (it feels weird even addressing myself as such as it was just really a hobby I enjoyed and still do) that tend to add to many details to everything. I really feel as if I've strengthened since then, but it's still nice looking back on work that I actually completed. I even managed to finish a 100+ page 60k word fic where the idea came to me out of nowhere and wrote a nice bit of it while on my bed one night.
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My tie to the game eventually ended with the completion of Episode Ardyn. With that episode I unfortunately didn’t get all trophies for it for the fact I couldn’t get the Return of the Founder King trophy that was grade based throughout the duration of the episode gameplay. I had come to like Ardyn’s character despite being an obvious antagonist in the game. His character was quite original and through the episode you feel pity for his story and understand his descent into madness and hatred of the Lucis Caelum bloodline.
At the time of the DLC release in 2019, I was living with my husband and played it in the attic of his parent’s house as we were looking for our own place to stay. My husband didn’t understand the appeal of the game as he thought that it was just a bunch of “douche-y looking guys”. I did explain my personal connection to the game and why I liked it so much and how much it meant to me, but I do feel like his early judgements of the game still have a lasting impression on him. Despite the superficial, the game goes very deep delving in personal connections and predestination when it comes to Noctis’ and Ardyn’s fate. It’s a sad tale, but ultimately helped me cope in a hard time of my life and ended when my life took a major turn for the better. Though while writing this and looking back at my old fics, AO3 bookmarks and Youtube videos of the game, it brings up good memories of a time of excitement I strangely miss.
XV also has a quite awesome OST. Here's one of my favorites:
About the Creator
Esmoore Shurpit
I like writing bad stories.
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