>>3160120Ignis reminds me of Oerba Yun Fang from XIII, who I don't know if there was any official word on but generally people agree on was in love with Vanille. Also Caius, Squall, and Tidus, which is funny because 2.5 of those couples explicitly had that kind of relationship.
It really does seem like one of those cases where the writers have plausible deniability and a convenient alternate explanation or intention (the "brother" line), but there's so much material there that you don't need shipper goggles to come away thinking he's in love with Noctis or something like it, given all the people I've seen who don't just interpret it that way but are also vocally upset by it and call it pandery, disturbing, or wrong.
If they truly intended Ignis's devotion to be motivated purely by friendship/duty, then they already cocked up that part from the beginning since Brotherhood, Duscae, and the main game make it clear Ignis's greatest joy and motivation in life is making Noctis happy. Whatever it is, it's a lot more than just a job taken extremely seriously. And if he is supposed to come off as a scarily protective big brother, that's perfectly valid too, given his parallels with Ravus. But speaking from personal experience, while there's some of that "who cares about the rest of the world" selfishness with very close siblings, we're not usually so clingy or singularly fixated on each other the way Ignis gets over Noctis. There also isn't any indication Ignis came from a particularly broken family or serious indoctrination like some people suggest to cause him to latch onto Noctis for that kind of reason either.
