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https://ift.tt/2P2dZaTYES. Cor has been most of those for a festival I am just now making up, one that developed in the century or so after Ardyn’s reign—a celebration of the Scourge being finally held at bay, which originally involved costumes as a sort of invocation of good luck, an imitation of daemons with the intention of guarding against them. By the time Cor’s a kid, of course, it’s mostly just an excuse to dress up. The tonberry costume, everyone agrees, was a particularly inspired choice that suited bitty!Cor perfectly.
The pictures are definitely passed around for the Chocobros 1.0 to see. It results in so much teasing. Regis arranges for tonberry-themed office supplies to be delivered to Cor’s office instead of the regular ones for two months. Clarus snickers every time Cor practices with knives, and leaves camping lanterns and feathers in Cor’s gym bag whenever he thinks Cor’s taking himself too seriously. Cid sends him a voucher for Wiz’s for his next birthday (it actually ends up being surprisingly useful on an infiltration mission, but Cor will never admit it). Weskham’s teasing is subtle, things like Cor being gifted a very nice, very useful set of kitchen knives with suspiciously unusual shapes and only noticing that they’re tonberry-themed when he looks at the blade-protectors they came in and sees the little shapes printed into the leather.
The one he doesn’t ever wear as a costume is the Solheimr/Old Lucian one—because I have been That Girl With The Costume No One Recognizes far too many times, and it honestly soured Halloween as a holiday for me. But more importantly, because Cor’s knowledge of the significance of that outfit would be limited to ‘this is from my family’s culture, and it makes Ama very sad and happy when I wear it, so it most be Important.’ I think wearing things from his Ama’s culture would be something Cor saves for big, life-milestone-type events because he knows it means something to Ardyn even if he doesn’t know the full details. And the only time I can think of that would merit such a choice of dress while Cor was under the age of ten is…some sort of religious and cultural milestone like a First Communion (I’m not familiar enough with other religious traditions to know what might be a better comparison, and I don’t want to bungle it, so I’m just going to take elements of that and mix it with my headcanons about Astral worship) or an Eos equivalent. A sort of first affirmation of faith but not a commitment, is what I’m thinking of here, concurrent with the tenth birthday. A day when your family and friends rally behind you to support your religious education, when you are formally presented to your deities and your community. And that would be a day Ardyn would be anxious about, I think, because of his history with the Astrals and the faithful, and Cor’d probably pick up on it even if he wouldn’t know the reasoning. So he’d choose to wear something representative of his ties to his Ama, I think.
Ardyn is so proud when he sees Cor in the garb of his past. If Cor’d had a high school graduation, he would have worn it then too, but…well, Niflheim happened.
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