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The WOL at the end of Dawntrail

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As I am an FFXIV RP blog, I suppose I may as well share my thoughts about Mare going down. This is going to get pretty long, because I'm honestly kind of conflicted in how I'm feeling, but I'm going to try and lay out both the bad and the good.

For background, I've been playing for just about 6 years now, started early 5.2, and as soon as I cleared MSQ I started looking for the RP scene. There were modders then, mostly sharing screenshots of whatever custom sculpts and glams they used on Twitter or Discord, and as a console (hence, vanilla) player there were times I really felt left out. I got told in my own goddamn FC that I helped found that my gposes were lazy because I didn't use any posing tools, and I had ppl say they wanted to RP with me only to change their minds when I wanted them to just describe their characters instead of letting them send me their mod pack. But there were a lot more people who wrote for the love of the art form - who enjoyed telling stories and playing dolls with other people, and a lot of them I still consider friends.

Then Mare happened. And over about the first six or eight months, I noticed a change in how RP happened. Instead of walking up, checking the search comment in a character's bio, and saying hello if they looked interesting, it became "do you use Mare?" Or later, just "mare?" like that's a complete greeting/question/conversation. Groups started not merely offering but REQUIRING members to join their syncshells- and leaving console players like myself to rot. I still had my own groups, but even most of them would ask me from time to time when I was going to get a decent PC and join the modding game. Like playing vanilla somehow made me less of an RPer than the ones that use mods. And that stings. But I'm still here, because I enjoy the world and I like playing dolls with other people - even if they talk without thinking sometimes.

All that background matters, because for as fucking EXASPERATED as I've been with a lot of the Mare players (with good reason imo), I never hated it. It was a tool, not the cause, and I don't blame a computer program for how its users treat other human beings - that's dumb, and I know it. So please don't take this as some kind of anti-modding rant. The way I see it, there was a confluence of facts that all came together at once, and while I feel for the people who will miss their moon magic, I'm mostly surprised that THEY'RE surprised about it finally going away. Here's why, in no particular order:

Japanese law (which Square-Enix, as a Japanese company, has to follow) prohibits third-party modifications to licensed software.

The Terms of Service to FFXIV that we all agree to in order to make our SE accounts likewise prohibit third-party modifications and add-ons.

Mare saves your data to its own server. Know what else did that- Playerscope. AKA the stalker mod that got SE in so much fucking trouble just a couple months ago.

The page to install Mare had the dev's Ko-fi and Patreon right there on the cover. Money was being made, and as everyone who's ever been on AO3 knows that's one thing a copyright holder can't allow.

The Live Letters have had people asking about third party add-ons at least twice since I've been playing, and both times Yoshi-P basically said "we can't see what you do on your own computer but we ask you please don't use mods." AKA DON'T BRING IT TO OUR ATTENTION. (this point is relevant to the next couple facts)

Party Finder venues have been increasingly advertising "we have wifi" or "ask for syncshell" in their in game description. Not keeping it on a carrd where you at least have the plausible deniability of getting the info from an outside website, but right where everyone and their sister can see it.

Players with some kind of reference to "moon magic" in their character search comment have come to outnumber ones without anything of the sort three or four to one. Or more, depending on where and when you look.

People in Ul'Dah and Limsa have at times just shouted asking for Mare codes.

Those last three were probably the nails in the coffin. Lots of modders charge for things, and Dalamud, Glamourer, or even the content tools that got the world first teams banned aren't being touched. It's only Mare. Because people couldn't remember the first and second rules of fight club.

You don't talk about it

Now, I can't tell you what to do. If you want to go on Steam or the forums and review-bomb the game, I'm not your mom, I'm not here to tell you not to be an asshole. I know a lot of venues are shutting down, and I think that's really sad that they don't trust themselves and their guests to be good enough writers to play dolls when they all have to use the same, out of the box dollies as everybody else instead of their home made custom ones, but each venue knows its own circle best. But I'm going to be here, playing with my doll, inviting the rest of you to bring your dolls and come tell stories with me.

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I totally forgot to share him here, but TINY KNIGHT GULOOL JAAAAA inspired by Sarama's amazing gpose! https://bsky.app/profile/saramaburwani.bsky.social/post/3lwa6an5a2k2i

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it's been over a year since dawntrail came out at this point. there is NO reason for me to still be seeing 'wuk lamat didn't substantially grow as a character' takes after all this time when it's so blatantly not true.

do you all remember in the bahamut coil raids when alisaie's character growth is affirmed by her no longer just parroting her grandfather's views because they were her grandfather's and she loved him, but because she had finally taken those views as her own and believed them fully with her own heart? that's also wuk lamat's main point of growth.

there's a reason why wuk lamat doesn't have the strength to stand up to bakool ja ja until after she has that talk with you at your cabin before setting out for yak t'el. in the beginning, when we're talking to her in sharlayan, we are quite explicitly told that she's not participating in the rite because she's got what it takes to be a ruler. she is doing it solely because she knows zoraal ja needs to be stopped or there will be disastrous consequences. but at that point she's still doing it to preserve her father's tural--she has no reference point for what the kingdom is really like outside tuliyollal, even if she thinks she does because of her father's stories.

it is only by undertaking the rite and learning first hand about all the people who live in tural that her love for them truly becomes her own. before that, she was merely reflecting her father's love. this helps her to level up and mature her worldview, to help her Truly Understand what she's really fighting for and why she wants it, and it is this realization, which she discusses with you before leaving for yak t'el, which enables her to finally tap into dynamis and repeatedly limit break bakool ja ja straight to hell.

and that's not the end of her growth! when she comes with you to the dome and encounters sphene, she is faced with a person who holds all the same values she's just spent the first half of the expac developing, but who has nonetheless taken them to a horrifying and dark extreme. she is her mirror and her foil, forcing her to contend with the fact that her newfound resolve based on her reborn worldview will not be enough to make her a good ruler. it will not be enough to preserve her precious peace.

this brings us to a second important way in which she grew: in the beginning, she actually had one of the same weaknesses as zoraal ja--thinking that strength was doing everything on your own. hence why she (extremely badly) pretended she didn't struggle with seasickness, as one example. but your group taught her the value of relying on others when you need help, and that allowing yourself to be vulnerable and show others your limitations wasn't actually weakness. this was probably a motivating factor in offering joint rule with koana, but was also assuredly the key factor that differentiated her from sphene in the end--sphene refused to share the burden and plowed ahead on her own (albeit because her programming compelled her to), whereas wuk lamat had friends and allies she could turn to who could steer her right.

so yes. she did change and grow. this was all information i gleaned about her character arc while i was still playing it through for the first time, so it's particularly disturbing that after this long so many people are not grasping any of it.

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waiting patiently for this to become relevant

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Right, I just finished 7.3 and I have some thoughts.

For the non-spoilery bit, I like it generally but something feels weird missing that I couldn't put my finger on. On a thematic level, Dawntrial up to now does have a different twist on looking at grief and death. In ShB and EW, we have several layers:

Emet-selch who clutch his grief tightly and refuses to let go

Venat who left the loss and grief behind entirely and only moved forward

Hermes who is so afraid of death, even one that came of people's own choice, he became so nihilistic that he condemned all life to end

Azem, and in extension the WoL stands somewhere between Emet-selch and Venat: they chose to remember while moving forward, and rejects that life is meaningless. In addition, the Ancients didn't reject death, they just have a different approach to it due to them being actually immortal. It was being bereft of the choice and ability to prepare for it that drove them to became what they were; the loss of control of their own end, essensially.

For Dawntrail, it's pure avoidance. They choose to forget about the pain rather than living with it and moving foward with it. They also avoid the fear of death with the promise of 'eternal' life, even if it comes at a cost of other lives. But because they're all sheltered from that harsh reality of how their comfort came to be, they are very oblivious to that. And its main antagonist lives with the fear of death due to his illness, he became obsess with the idea of evolution and being beyond human. Reminds me a lot of ideas explored by cyberpunk a bit, a lot of Humanity+, etc. But the problem for me is that, at least on first playthrough, it doesn't differentiate itself enough ideologically from ShB and EW in execution and it feels a bit flat for me. It feels like they're telling us more than actually showing, unlike the previous expansions even with how wordy EW can be. And I have some serious issues with how EW handle some things, to say the least, but the message as a whole still comes across to me regardless of that.

Now onto the 7.3 SPOILER stuff (under the cut)

By the end of 7.3 for me it's clear that the focus is more on the memories and actually living with the memories, both joy and pain, of those who came before you and accepting that life will end one day. It's a really apt message coming out of ShB and EW for me because WoL had to deal with a lot of huge revalations concerning themself and the true history of their world. They took on the legacy of who they once were and those who came before them, and promised to remember. So like the WoL is probs one of the best person to really shine here, but like, none of those moments were ever called back to at all? Like look, I love Hades/Emet-selch so I will always be a bit biased if I can have a good chance to see him again but not even a thought about Venat???? It's not about preference here, but a call back to the idea of legacy and memories the WoL chose to carry forward. In the core Dawntrail, I understand WoL having the backseat a bit since they just came out of a cosmic ending event and have to be reintroduced into the new adventure, but by the patches, they do really feel very sidelined despite the themes being very tied to them.

The other thing for me is that like ffs we all knew an Ascian is going to be involved from day 1 so like why are they still making this a mystery? WE KNOW. IT'S VERY OBVIOUS. The boss fight was really cool and the chars did acknowledge that if there is a summoning, an Ascian is probs around but like... WHY ARE YOU GUYS SO SURPRISE?? Also if Calyx works with an Ascian, how does he not know what the WoL is capable of by now?? We've been killing primals since ARR. I'm just standing there while Calyx is doing his evil speech like bruh I killed Zodiark, can we just get going please? Like???? I can see why Calyx himself wouldn't know since he just got yeeted to the Source after our EW shenanigans but like surely the Ascian knows this. Whether the mystery behind the Ascian will work or not will depend heavily on who it is. If it's just one of the ones we haven't met yet and then it's kind of redundant, but if they're playing some trick on us and it's someone we recognise then I can see why they're not revealing them too early.

I can see an angle where this is Calyx's hubris, especially since we get the first interesting reaction out of him at the end of the super long cutscene. I actually liked that, the idea that we, the WoL, became death to him. We became his fear personified - death personafied. Especially since generally WoL is very much the hero character. Like I love that horror flash, that was really cool.

Also loves OG Sphene a lot, she is fantastic. So happy we got her on trust. But that is the other thing: they really did not win me over with Endless Sphene, nor do I think they managed to pull off her being sympathetic for me. So when they are trying to have OG Sphene follow in her shadows, especially when OG Sphene proved herself TO BE RIGHT in the way she holds herself vs Endless Sphene who rejected that, it had me a bit like bruh. And because that fell so flat to me, every Wuk Lamat scene also feels flat to me because I just don't feel anything. I'm cheering OG Sphene over here, and I'm like WHO THE FUCK CARES ABOUT ENDLESS SPHENE. Again, coming off antagonist like Emet-selch for both ShB and EW as well (even if he's our ally in EW) it really just doesn't work for me especially with how little time she was given. Emet had like 1 and a half patch to explore. She got like 1/4 patch at best and the expansion really does surface level 'ouhhh she's the BAD GUY' moments quite a lot. We never had time to know her at all to be able to understand the grueling journey it takes for a good person to fall the same way Emet did. We lack the moments we had with Endless Sphene that OG Sphene got for us to see her beyond just a copy of the original that twisted the purpose and wish of the original.

I'm sleepy now so I'll leave it here because brain can no longer word, but I do have a lot of thoughts about base Dawntrail as well. Don't know if I will sit down and write it proper though.

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You know I am pretty sure we have had in the past where people have tried to use the WoL to make something stronger and it never works out, it's almost as if the WoL just gets stronger than your silly creation 🤔

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You mean the lady who eats gods for breakfast? Are we talking about the same Serina here?

^ Serina on a daily basis

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No, you're just baby don't grow up fast!

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Have you ever wanted to completely avoid commendations? Here's how to guarantee you won't get a single one:

Step 1: Play SMN in an eight-man

Step 2: Raise both healers when they die at the same time, thus preventing a wipe

Works everytime!

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One, the key reacted to the Azem stone therefor it's mine.

Two, you're dead, like fuck off you don't get to kill people all because they don't want top be endless

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Shes' right, Calyx is already justifying it all as if this will help mankind evolve. And sadly everyone scared and ready to become endless will probably do the same, because it's easier to believe it's all for the greater good than confront the horrors.

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can we get aymeric back please square

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I hope the WoL and Calyx have a mostly one sided Tom and Jerry esque beef from now on

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7.3 spoilers