#I hope we don’t see hyth and emet

[impossible-rat-babies]

yes live letter important but also. thinking about pandaemonium!

[yuri-cocaine]

6.2 msq thoughts under the cut!

WIFE CITY WIFE CITY WIFE CITY

ZEROOOOOOO AND IIIIIIII WILL AAAAALLLWAYYYYSS LOVE YOUUUUUUUUU

idk anything abt ff4 so i did some research: zeromus/zemus is actually manipulating golbez in that game. zero...zeromus......whats goin on.......

i also got to thinking about pashtarot, one of the MIA ascians that’s still supposedly alive after ew. in ff12, pashtarot is the scion of light in opposition to the esper zeromus, named after the ff4 zeromus

pashtarot’s title is also knight-star, and the golbez of the 13th is referred to as a knight. idk if there’s any connection here 

completely unrelated trivia, but knight-star is the name of a kind of lily, and the flower that grows out of zero’s eye in drakengard 3 looks like a lily 

primals in the 13th are called eidolons bc summons in ff13 are eidolons!!!!!!! yeahyeaheyah ff13 refrances my beloved

the voidsent are all so endearing and cute ;w; the sin eaters are way scarier bc they’ve become 100% feral, but the voidsent still retain a bit of humanity and the low-rung voidsent act like cartoon minions hehe

is scarmiglione’s mortal form a catboy bc he hisses??? also he’s cowardly, which makes him a.....scaredy cat!! :3

also LMAO at the debuff scarmiglione gives us being called “brain rot”

the blobby quests show the backstory for scarmiglione and barbariccia and it looks like scarg comes from somewhere that looks like lakeland and barbariccia def comes from the 13th’s version of the black shroud. there’s even the same heavenspillar trees!

barbariccia is hot af wlw stay winning this patch

im so enamored with zero i hope she’s not an azem shard bc then wol might absorb her and we will never see her again like ardbert

speaking of azem, the azem crystal entry in unending codex says emet-selch made the crystal out of “lingering affection” ;w;

who is the ancient golbez was killing in the flashback???? i can’t think of any significant ancients in plain weenwoon robes that aren’t already accounted for. there’s some theories floating around that it might be versions of the watcher on the moons of other shards, but if golbez was killing the watcher to free zodiark, why is he making big moves now AFTER zodiark is already dead? 

he mentions a “prison of passivity” which sounds like the moon? is there something else worth getting at on the moon other than zodiark?

he also says “how ironic that the blessed damned should set us free” during the still image of him about to kill a weenwoon so blessed damned could refer to A) memoriates B) echo bearers C) ascians/ancients???

this patch left me with more questions than answers tbh but!! im so glad we met zero i got lonely thinking that the wol doesnt have scions with her all the time and also new old friends hyth and hades are still in the aetherial sea

also re: hades, zero’s meditation so she doesnt forget herself reminds me of how emet rarely took over bodies and if he does he has to mold them to look like how he looked in the ancient world so he doesn’t forget himself. 

Pandaemonium thoughts:

themis is so cute and cool! “say my name” you’re elidibus!!!! 

oh....but then knowing what his fate is.....it makes me so sad again ;-; 

pandaemonium showing up in the present day lifestream makes me think we’ll see elidibus in the aetherial sea for the last segment of the raids! 

also azem is becoming more and more like their own character and less of an extra oc that we can have. they do a ton of stuff outside of player control, and it’s confirmed that they have tabs on wol the whole time

so what was azem doing during the final days???? there’s no way they’ll simply let it happen in order to preserve the timeline and ensure wol’s existence. they must have tried to find a different way, and i think there’s a definitive answer to what they were up to, bc at this point i don’t think we can simply imagine it for ourselves. azem is like.....a fire emblem MU now lol we can headcanon what they look like but ultimately they are their own character

so athena was the shittier parent all along............boi

both the msq and pandae have a theme of how merging yourself with others makes you lose individuality. the voidsents become influenced by other voidsent souls they devour, and lahabrea was infected by athena’s mad scientist proclivities 

we also finally get to see an ancient child! child erich looks just like every other kid npc in the game but now hopefully we can finally end the themis is a minor discourse. themis is young, but he’s not a child!!!

lahabrea seems very.....okay....with wol being azem’s weird familiar. he just stated that creating souls is nigh impossible and yet here we are lying that we’re azem’s familiar. if i were lahabrea i’d go back to amaurot and shake azem for answers 

themis also mentions a belief in gods, but i thought the ancients only conceive of gods purely for the sake of debate ?_? regardless, this is cool and gives more insight into their culture

claudien looking for the crystal that resonated with the one he found and then going missing in azys lla is worrying D: azys lla is where our lahabrea got killed. he’s going to get possessed isnt her

i still think claudien is an erich shard. erich is the “perfect test subject” so if he got away in pandae, then lahabrea/athena will just have to nab his shard. 

[thebratcat]

I’m awake again and back on the computer so let’s have some patch talk under the cut!

I spent so much of this patch in Fear, dear lord.

FFXIV is the kind of game that can hurt me but in a way that doesn’t make me loose hope and quit. And I think this expansion shows why that is, because this is a series based around hope. It’s not afraid to go to some very dark places, but it will always take your hand and tell you it’s going to be ok, you’re not alone.

I spent a lot of time in tears but I think what got to me that stuck with me as a nice, quiet moment was meeting Hythlodaeus again. We learn more about our previous life more about The Convocation (also dude, you did that to a child wtf? no wonder he mentored Unukalhai, he saw himself in him). But also that our past self travelled around helping people much as the WoL does now.

I have my own personal reading of relationships repeating with the Amarot Gang and now. We have the 14th, Emet and Hythlodaeus in the past. Then in the present they come together again only as the WoL, Emet and G’raha and this time it’s WoL and G’raha are fighting on the same side while Emet is seeing shades from his past of his best friends/lovers. Something about Hyth just really reads as G’raha to me in that soft, loves-you-for-you, wants you to be happy and live your life way. But the three of them through time tug on my heart strings like you wouldn’t believe. Emet... EMEEEEET why do you do this to me.

so, end of MSQ patch part coming up:

look at this, look at these dumb magic cats. I don’t need to tell you, there was a lot of crying. Also queue me clapping at the scions like “Chop chop, wrap it up, come on your bodies need your souls back” Like I couldn’t relax not knowing if the writers were going to be cruel or not. (Even though Seto and Ardbert made me start bawling again)

But they weren’t, they were kind

this whole scene killed me, Urianger you giant nerd I love you

And this. I could go on for hours about this.Misto’s blue and G’raha’s red, and Y’shtola, lovely, snarky Y’shtola. It’s like Misto’s finally got a little miqo’te family here after being so apart from other miqo’te for most of his life.

I’m not sure where the story is going to go from here. This is going to be hard to top, but I guess we’ll see.

[kinships]

I should post my thoughts on Endwalker before I do anything. Under a read more for spoilers. In no particular order.

Let me just TLDR tho: Endwalker is an amazing ending to an amazing legacy that, while it had its ups and downs in terms of story, finished off with a bang and made me excited for what new stories that are to come without the influence of Hydaelyn and Zodiark. It was ten years in the making and honestly, was worth the wait. I am glad I was along for the ride.

AZEM LORE. Confirmed they literally just bother tf out of Hades with Hythlo. Speaking of. He pretty. I want his hair. And the eyes the Ancients have.

I have a lot of feelings about Radz-at-han in general, it reminds of Aht Urghan Whitegate, the main hub of the ToAU expac in XI. Its also an aesthetic I absolutely adore.

Vrtra is a good boy :tm: Papa Middy is proud of you son.

Learning about Middys old world, and the world Omega came from was fun. The Ea remind me of humankind finding out about the end of the universe...except taken to a much higher extreme.

Meteion reminds me of The Bluebird of Happiness gone wrong. I love her as a character because she had good reasons to not want to tell Hermes there was literally no one out there for him to get an answer out of.

ZENOS VS WOL FISTFIGHT OH MY GOD. I wanna see a Lalafell fight him.

I love how effective the whole ‘power of friendship’ thing was used in the final primal fight, and how it was used in general. I think the main theme of EW was “Don’t give up hope, even in the darkness of despair.”.

Garlemald was fucked up. I would advise people who are triggered by suicide to be forewarned about one cutscene in particular where a character does just that.

The stable timeloop we did in Elpis??? Like Emet and Hyth forgot about us, but Venat didn’t and that’s what caused the Sundering?? So one day we can fight against Meteion.

Elpis and Ultima Thule are basically my favorite zones because of how they look. Flowers and space respectfully.

The moon was fun! I love the Loporitts and how they just bonded to Uri so much.

That being said, Thancred getting so much screentime made me happy.

Hydaelyn can Sunder me any day of the week ;D