maiji: Armory Fan Club

[image: Cover for Armory Fan Club - a fanfic by maiji. Digital illustration of Dias and Claude back to back, smiling out at the viewer with swords crossed. The kingdom capital of Lacour is all around them in full festival mode, with blue skies, colourful confetti and hanging buntings. Below is a collage of assorted characters from the game in front of crowds of festival-goers. They are: two giggling women waving a fan that says "Lord Dias" with a heart; a woman holding a bowl and handing out flyers that say "CK" with a heart; a pair of blushing guards being amazed at how cool Dias and Claude are; Gamgee and an older Sufia hefting a sword in a scabbard; a laughing Precis; an annoyed Leon; an amused Granny Moor.]The Sorcery Globe is gone. The Tournament of Arms is back.And so are the two most acclaimed swordsmen in its history!Read Armory Fan Club on AO3This is me, having too much fun. (Note: The above is not Remnant Light Claude. I just needed physical descriptions that make it very clear Dias and Claude went through more eventful adventures after the end of the game, so I repurposed most of the design I came up with for that story. The main difference visually is that he still has his red headband instead of a leather headband.) I love how they made festival Lacour look in SO2R and I really wanted to capture that wonderful medieval-party-under-brilliant-blue-skies vibe! Everyone in this illustration is actually a character in the game. Read the story to find out who they are! Or if you figured it out because you obsessively talk to every NPC like I do, yay for you!While working on The Thesis, I made a silly joke about how in SO2R the Armory Contest (remake translation for Tournament of Arms) recovery room got reconfigured so there's only one guard who witnesses The Conversation between Dias and Claude, and now he's gonna be dying until the end of his shift to share the hot gossip. Next thing I knew, I had a fanfic word count of 1,500 that was climbing with great momentum. To the point where The Thesis almost ended up not being finished because writing this nonsense was more fun, and easier, than translating. Until I got to the fight scenes anyways. And then I was like "This needs a cover!" やれやれ… Armory Fan Club is basically me trying to pack in my thesis evidence of everything I think is great about Dias and Claude as a pairing, some metacommentary on fandom, and of course, my usual love for/references to lots of NPCs! The fan clubs in the story are all based on actual stuff from the game too. I took a lot of screenshots in my SO2R playthroughs so here they are! Spoilers for a bunch of people you can talk to during the tournament. This post does double duty for me saying a while back I'd post about the Claude fan club. There are Dias fans in here as well.[READ-MORE][Screenshot of Claude talking to a youth near the registration table. The youth stammers, "Mr. Kenny, I-I just want t-to say th-that you're…you're a real inspiration to me!"]"Isaol": On the cover, he's the soldier/guard on the right. Unnamed in the game, he's a friendly purple-haired youth pacing near the registration table. If you're Claude, every time you talk to him in between your matches, he grows increasingly impressed. His line in Japanese is quite ardent, but I didn't want to make him too over-the-top of a character in the story. He says: クロードさん、ぼくは、ぼくはモーレツに感動しています！ Something like, "Claude-san, I'm, I'm intensely moved/impressed!" Which I don't think fully conveys how intensely moved and impressed he is the way it does in Japanese, haha. モーレツ ("intensely") is probably 猛烈: fiercely, violently. So the English take on it is cute and nicely done to convey his awe of Claude's performance in the tournament.[Screenshot of Claude, Rena and Dias in the recovery room with the guard at the door. 1) Dias is leaving. Claude says, "Will I see you again?" 2) Dias has left. When you talk to the guard, he says, "The Armory Contest's ended. It was pretty good, wasn't it?"]"Garet": On the cover, he's the soldier/guard on the left. Unnamed in the game, he's the guard at the door of the recovery room when Dias goes to see Claude after the finale. He witnesses the conversation between Dias and Claude. Sure, he seems chill about it, but he's actually just putting on a professional front and the memory now haunts his dreams. I mean that in a good way. [Several screenshots showing Rena or Claude talking to a young woman with long dark hair, a red headband and a red dress. 1) To Rena she says: "Hi, I'm Lucy! I saw Claude performing out there. He was sooo dashing! Is it okay if I have a crush on him?" 2) To Claude she says, "Hi, I'm Lucy! I saw your match out there. Is it okay for me to have a crush on you?"]Lucy: A girl with long dark hair pacing the left side of the arena. She was my fave tournament audience NPC when I was little. No matter whose story I played, every time I ran around the colosseum I would talk to her just to see her ask for permission to have a crush on Claude. Of course she would be the president of his fan club![Screenshots of Precis cheering Claude on during the tournament events. 1) Ashton, Precis, Claude, Rena are outside the castle entrance after Claude said he wants to enter the tournament. Precis is saying, "Oh, go ahead, go ahead! I can't wait to see your studliness in action!" 2) Precis, Rena, Ashton in the stands during the tournament. Precis and Ashton (and Gyoro and Ururun) are looking shocked/slightly freaked out. Precis is saying, "Claude's absolutely the dreamiest! I can't believe what's happening!"] Precis: Okay, Lucy aside, Precis was definitely Claude's #1 fan at the Arms. Everyone in your party says nice things, but she is by far his most vocal supporter from the get-go if you have her in your party. Her comments always crack me up, and the SE/SO2R translation is really funny.[Screenshot collage of Claude talking to a group of four young girls in the colosseum. They say in turn (doesn't matter which of them you talk to): "We're..." "...members of the..." "...Sir Glorias Fan Club!" "But he lost in the first round.]The Lord Dias Fan Club: Formerly the members of the Sir Glorias Fan Club. A group of ladies standing around the left side of the arena. Sir Glorias lost his first match, so obviously they need a new obsession to cheer for. If you try to pickpocket them, you'll notice they're all carrying portraits of Dias. Easy shift of allegiances. [Screenshot of Rena on the way back to her seat in the colosseum just in time to see a woman in the audience screaming in Japanese, "Ah! Dias-sama!"]"Lord Dias": You can only see this lady in a Rena story if you don't have anyone else in your party other than Claude and Rena. She just says "Oooh! Dias!" in English. But the "Dias-sama" in Japanese slayed me. The guy next to her is a Claude fan, you can see the full dialogue here.[Screenshot of an NPC in the corner of the bar saying "Dias was incredible, but I was more intrigued by that Claude kid."]More Claude fans: There are a bunch more NPCs in the tavern who were really impressed by Claude. I inserted most of them into this fic, so let the above gentleman represent them all.[Screenshots of Dias at the Front Lines observation deck, Rena talking to two soldiers near him. 1) Dias is not in the party yet. The soldier closest to Rena is saying, "Oh, wow! It's the Armory Contest champion." 2) Dias is now in the party. The same soldier is saying, "The Armory Contest champion is just at another level. You can feel an aura different from normal people."]More Dias fans: A couple of star-struck Dias fans at the Front Line Base. Or rather, one star-struck Dias fan and his patient long-suffering buddy. The soldier on the left squeals a lot more in Japanese (the "Oh, wow!" is actually an excited "Wa wa!"), and his friend on the right is like "wow even you tell the truth every so often", implying that this guy has been going on at length about a Dias sighting before this. It's too bad you can't make Dias the leader at this specific part of the game even when he's in your party in SO2R. Would've been hilarious to see a different response from the soldier when Dias himself is talking to him.[/READ-MORE]There are more fans in the game that I didn't screencap or fit into the story. But if you play SO2R, keep an eye out for them, and have fun talking to everyone before, during and after the tournament!Also, I totally didn't expect this to line up - at least in my timezone - but happy birthday Claude!! (January 23, Space Date 347 - or year 2433 if I didn't mess up my math).