#I was going to do something else set in ARR at first

[otherworldseekers]

I've seen so many people express disinterest in Dawntrail by saying something along the lines of "there's nothing in it for me". And I'm going to be honest, I don't really understand this sentiment.

When I began playing ARR, I didn't know anything about the world or the people or the characters or why my own character should care about any of it. I was set down in an unfamiliar world and expected to just walk around doing generic quests waiting for something interesting to happen to my character. With Dawntrail, the WoL is a well established character with a characteristic love of travel, discovery, and the world and people at large. The WoL is traveling with well known companions, and has clear goals to pursue while getting to explore a whole new continent. Comparatively, there is far more "in it for us" in DT than there was at the beginning of ARR. (Unless you played 1.0, but the majority of players have not.)

You never have investment at the beginning of a story, whether it's a game or book or movie or anything else. You become invested over the course of the story, as you learn more about the world and characters. Going into Dawntrail, we have the advantage, first, of knowing that the devs have an excellent track record of creating complex characters, fascinating worlds and compelling stories. And second, we have the advantage of having been shown a great deal of the world we are about to enter.

Personally, I have found all of the images and information about Tural hint at some amazing worldbuilding. It's a completely different kind of place from what we're used to and I find that very exciting. I love diverse regions and intricate cultures and getting to explore them in game. If you don't... well I have to wonder why you're playing this game.

Similarly, if you've developed your WoL to be someone contradictory to their canon characterization, someone who doesn't like to travel and experience new places and people and who would not be interested in Wuk Lamat and Krile's goals... Well, it's kind of on you if you don't feel there's anything "in it for you" in this expansion. Because it's clearly been purposefully crafted to appeal to the canon WoL, the one that SE is telling their story about.

And while I completely understand the desire to develop characters that deviate from the msq and experience the world of FFXIV in other ways, I don't quite understand playing the game but not wanting to experience the story as the devs have made it. You can so easily do both.

Getting to experience the devs' story, to explore their world and meet their characters, is always what's most exciting to me about new expansions. I can enjoy the story for what it is and then decide how I want to apply it to my WoL's development. And I appreciate how much work they put into creating this experience for me and the fact that they do encourage us to create alongside them.

Of course, it's not wrong to feel that there's "nothing in it for you" in this new expansion. But they've been very clear about the fact that this is the beginning of a new story full of unfamiliar elements. So I'm just not sure what some people expected.

[sunderedazem]

okay so, I finally finished Dawntrail, patch quests notwithstanding of course! And now I have some thoughts, though they're probably kind of disjointed? Because- I have a lot of opinions on this expac, and some of the dismissive attitudes of other people I've seen floating around are just. Really annoying to me. Anyway. It's under a readmore, Dawntrail spoilys abound, I am talking about the WHOLE thing but rambling

So! I liked Dawntrail better than A Realm Reborn, (which I think is the accurate measuring stick/expac to contrast it against). It's very clearly setting up future expansions and story, introducing new characters and plot devices and generally giving us something to pursue in the future. The world is fun and beautiful, the music SLAPS, the characters are mostly well rounded, especially Wuk Lamat and Koana - their arcs were very well done and I genuinely enjoyed them far beyond anything in ARR lol. Or Stormblood, to be honest. The initial plot of about level 95 and below makes sense and is well-executed. But while I *like* it more than ARR - I think it's much less well executed in one regard - the sheer lack of tie-in to what came before.

ARR goes to great lengths to preserve pieces of 1.0's story- a story that is literally inaccessible to new players except in video or privately hosted servers and etc. Louisoix's sacrifice, though never seen outside of 1.0, is constantly referenced, even up through Endwalker! It sets up the bones of a story that is very clearly built on what came before, even though most new players will have no ability to experience that story whatsoever.

In contrast- Dawntrail has ten years of worldbuilding to sprinkle throughout, mostly in regards to previously-established global phenomena - like stories of Turali Warriors of Light with the Echo, the Umbral Calamities, the loss of an entire second moon now well over five years ago, the Final Days manifesting (surely not just over Eorzea and Ilsabard?), the Blasphemies - and it ignores all of that, to the detriment of FFXIV's worldbuilding. And look- I get it, it's a new story, the writers want to distance themselves from the previous ten years I guess, but the result is that this feels disjointed as hell to me. It's like the previous ten years of still-playable story has been completely discarded, and for what? Marketing? Like, we know the Echo wasn't just an Eorzea thing, that Warriors of Light exist across every reflection, and yet- we hear nothing about the Turali ideas and mythos about these? Not even in passing, when it would make sense for it to be discussed?

I get that some people disliked the previous story and thought the WoL thing was overdone but- it was the central story for ten years. It is central to the worldbuilding here now. Tossing it out so easily feels sloppy as hell, and it's a choice that even ARR didn't make despite how easy it would have been for them to do so!

That all being said- I didn't really have much of a problem with this during the first half of the expansion. It was the promised low-stakes vacation, Wuk Lamat had a fantastic arc showcasing her growth, the WoL kind of gets to hang out and let Someone Else deal with the plot - and it's all honestly pretty great. Yeah, I was really feeling the lack of cohesion with the previous expansions, but the worldbuilding in Tural was making up for it, with how diverse the different regions were and how cohesive everything felt within itself here was actually fantastic. (I am still mad that kitty girl never got to eat her tacos! Let Wuk Lamat eat her tacos! Taco cat!)

I also really liked that she was going to the different homes of the people she knew from Tuliyollal and learning some of their ways as well. Because she definitely knew them from her life in the city, but clearly lacked familiarity with some of their more traditional beliefs, and seeing an aspiring ruler interact with and value those parts of her communities was really well done, I think. And I think it also was a really important point to make- that to rule over (elected or otherwise) and make decisions for a people, you really have to make the effort and keep making the effort to know them.

And...and this is all where the second half falls apart, for me.

Solution Nine and Everkeep and Alexandria, and the lightning-drowned shard are really cool setting ideas, and they're gorgeous as hell, but the plot stops making sense to me here, like at all. Wuk Lamat leading the charge into the dome initially I can see, as it's a Turali village that's been swallowed up, but the moment it becomes clear that not only has thirty years passed inside the dome, but this is an entirely separate world and nation that has somehow fused with our own Source- it...I'm sorry, but it doesn't make sense for her to take the plot lead role. She's a national leader - but she's not an expert in dimensions and reflections and world ending catastrophes. The Scions are (Y'shtola or Krile are right here). The WoL is. And I definitely agree that she should have been along for the ride - these are her people, after all, at least in part! Tuliyollal was attacked by these people, she needs to be there to negotiate - and I get that the WoL as a character very, very rarely actually initiates plot, but this very much felt like we were entirely just along for the ride instead of a member of a once-again secret organization whose entire job it is to deal with shit like this and the person that literally saved the star by facing down Meteion.

This second half of the story would have been the perfect opportunity, imo, for WoL references and Ascian references and Echo references, because this is all a set of circumstances that aren't too far out of the WoL's wheelhouse of "just another Tuesday. Damn" crazy happenstances. We known the Ascians were working to unbalance the shards and maybe still are, we know that levin sickness and the sin eater transformations likely have the same cure, we KNOW that we managed to stabilize the First (and in Eden quests even helped restore it!) and could probably help Sphene do the same and- none of this is mentioned. It is literally a golden opportunity to tie in what we know from previous expansions (because this is the same overarching setting. let it have a cohesive story!) even in a momentary mention of just "oh, we've helped with something similar before, if you want our assistance."

But we don't really get that. What we get is this- kind of half-assed attempt at making Sphene and Wuk Lamat foils for each other and also friends?, and meanwhile the WoL is sitting there with the answers to at least some of the questions being asked, and just not saying anything about them. And it's very clear - at least to me - from the get go that this is going to be more learning about the Alexandrians' way of life to try and reach a common understanding (which don't get me wrong, it's fun). But even from the outset, I can tell that was never going to be the issue here. The conflict here isn't actually between the people of Alexandria and Tural, it's between Zoraal Ja/Sphene and Tural. The Alexandrians are pretty neatly stripped of any agency in this with the memory modifications of the Regulators (re: those few lines about the resistance twins' father being dragged off after a minor incident with the military and then forgotten. if that's not a guy getting Disappeared....yikes), and it's clear that most of the living people don't really know or care what Endless are.

And so when we follow Wuk Lamat around as she wanders about learning about Alexandrians, like how we did with the villages in Tural, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Not because we're learning about the people here, but because this is held up to be somehow relevant to defeating Zoraal Ja and Sphene - and in the end, we won't learn enough to actually understand the Alexandrian people anyway. This isn't the same thing as a princess from the capital city visiting the traditional villages of the people she's grown up alongside in order to be a better leader for them, this is two madmen (one an AI bot, the other...apparently having lost his inner motivations in the last 30 years in favor of proving himself better than his father? I dunno, I wasn't sure I understood this slide for him) using their people as a crutch to further their goals. And in between all this, we have like, four quests where we cooperate with an Alexandrian resistance, tops. And that resistance isn't even against Sphene, it's against Zoraal Ja!

But in Living Memory, we're still forced to erase the memories of (probably) hundreds of thousands of Alexandrians, with zero provision made for their preservation somehow - like would it have been impossible to record them on floppy disks or allagan tomestones somethin, or even just some of them - with zero provision made for the return of the memories of the people of Alexandria so that these simulacrum people aren't just. deleted from history. The people of Alexandria- are they ever told that they were harvesting souls from other worlds to maintain a simulation of everyone who had ever lived and died in Alexandria? Not to maintain their current lives in Everkeep? Are they ever told that Sphene was an android, that she actually died hundreds of years ago? Are the Alexandrians ever actually given the opportunity to remember their own people?

Because- not from what I understand of the current story? We get hamfisted into following Cahcuia's wishes (and she's not even Alexandrian) and shutting down the terminals wholesale (which probably condemns all the preserved and living plants in that conservatory to withering away and dying, too). And the most we get in passing is a "we will remember them" from Wuk Lamat and....no. we won't. We've barely met these people, barely comprehend their way of life. This isn't our or Wuk Lamat's culture, it's the Alexandrians. And this isn't the last plea of a dying relic (a la Emet-selch in ShB) this is- we're outsiders coming in and erasing massive chunks of a people's history. This isn't us promising to remember that they existed after they've been wiped from history, this is us actively erasing them.

And the question this particular expansion asks, via Sphene and Cahcuia and in other ways is "could you have found another way, if it were you?" and this is a question that the WoL has already answered! With Ardbert, with Meteion - but we're not allowed to give that same answer here. We're not allowed to say "yes, and here's how we helped start fixing the First and Thirteenth, do you want in." Instead, it feels like we're backtracking on one of the core themes of Endwalker (i.e. letting the memory of those you lost push you forward and keep you going - for those we have lost. for those we can yet save). Hell, G'raha's conversation with the Omicrons in Ultima Thule is all about if they can still count as living people- and then we're reneging on that here, and destroying the Endless and being told they're not living and not even given the chance to treat their memories with dignity in trying to memorialize them somehow.

Not to mention in the very end where the ruler of the neighboring country you were just at war with (you think, do you even remember or know that?) turns up having just murdered your beloved queen (who was maybe an AI, you heard, but you're not sure?) with a small boy who looks like your tyrant king from That World that just Slaughtered all your people for their souls and- you're told he's the new king now? what the fuck. and what the fuck kind of international incident-

Like, I get that the Endless needed to go, because they did. That Sphene was who Wuk Lamat was getting to know so she could be remembered (versus the Alexandrian people) even if I think that they really did not have enough time to end up as friends. I get that this is an expansion After the Other Story is Over. But the Other Story Still Happened and affected things including worldstate (and reflectionstate, lol) and it feels like that was just ignored. The memories of the people the Endless became still deserve tribute, somehow, still deserve preservation - the Alexandrians deserve to have much more agency in the decisions made about their way of life. This was still a global threat that should've probably had the Global Threat Ending Organization acting at bit more hands on about it, while Wuk Lamat did a bit more actual diplomacy.

Overall, the expansion is fun. There's a lot of fun questions I'm wondering about the answers to. Wuk Lamat is a bean, and while my WoL probably isn't calling her Lamaty'i (it took him like three expacs to be that relaxed with the Scions) he's nevertheless a friend of hers and is very willing to play pranks and cause mischief around Tuliyollal with the excuse of "yeah well I know the Dawnservants :3." The setting design and Turali internal worldbuilding is fucking incredible - honestly HW-levels of hella. The entire first half of the expansion was awesome. It's all WAY more fun than ARR, or StB in some cases. But - especially the second half - it's much less narratively cohesive with the rest of the game, and appears to backtrack on or ignore themes that really hit hard for me in Shadowbringers and Endwalker and that's frustrating to me.

I guess in the end my reaction boils down to- I got an expac with the internal worldbuilding work of HW, but with less of an explicit connection to the rest of the game than ARR had to 1.0. And as someone who's invested in the overarching story...that's last part is disappointing to me. Probably won't NG+ the second half like how I don't NG+ ARR, and I'll hope the patch quests will resolve some of the upset I felt about just. deleting giant swathes of Alexandrian history.

I definitely like the expansion, from an "is it fun?" perspective. I don't know if I like it from a "does it make sense?" perspective. And I honestly I think I would have enjoyed it more if it was all more like the first half of the expansion.

[trans-peridot]

FFxivWrite Day 4: Reticent

Saw this prompt and immediately knew it would have to be Urianger. Didn't know what, just knew who. In the end I settled on Tayfun's perspective of a certain scene in post-ARR. Spoilers for that, naturally. Urianger's dialogue is verbatim from the game, everything else is my writing.

Tayfun had never seen Urianger cry before. Perhaps simply because he’d never had cause in her presence, perhaps because of the dark goggles always obscuring his eyes. But more importantly than either of those reasons, because he went above and beyond in playing his emotions close to his chest. She had never seen him happy before, or angry, or really show any emotion. Alright, there had been one time. When Moenbryda first arrived in the Rising Stones and tackled him with a hug, Tayfun had gotten the briefest of glimpses to a rare Urianger emotion: flustered. Oh, Moenbryda...

Tayfun had never seen Urianger cry before. And even as he was speaking his soliloquy on her death, his voice remained as level as ever. But she could sense the effort he was putting into keeping it that way. “...Knowingly did I deny my friend the comfort she craved. And now she hath gone to her rest with doubt still in her heart.” Tayfun finally realized why he spoke like that. If every word was so strategically selected, emotion couldn’t sneak into one’s delivery.

“Urianger, you may wish to know what she said in her final moments. She spoke to Louisoix, said she finally understood his choice. She said, ‘In death there is life.’ I think she made her choice because she had cleared away that doubt.”

“Speakest thou in earnest? Did Moenbryda truly come to understand Master Louisoix's will before the end?” Tayfun had never seen Urianger cry before. On his face must have been the legendary Goggles of Reticence. “The realization hath set her free. She may now find the peace which hath for so long eluded her.” He remained stonefaced. “Oh, Moenbryda... My dearest... How I shall miss thee...”

“But her very last words weren’t to Louisoix. The very last thing she said was... She said, ‘Farewell, Urianger... you daft old coot.’ Her last thoughts were of you.”

Tayfun had never seen Urianger cry before. But as she studied his face, she could have sworn she saw a single drop of moisture slip past his defenses. “My lady Minfilia. I would mourn Moenbryda in mine own way. I beg your permission to return to the Waking Sands.” Tayfun knew that quaver all too well. He couldn’t hold it in forever and he needed to get out now before they saw him feel something. He didn’t even wait to hear Minfilia’s reply in the affirmative before he turned to brisky escape the eyes of his comrades.

For a moment Tayfun considered going after him, offering a shoulder to cry on, telling him he didn’t need to hide his feelings from his friends. But Tayfun had never seen him cry before, and that was clearly on purpose. Though it pained her to admit it, the best thing she could do was allow him to grieve alone. There were enough scions still in the room with her who would want her help, anyway.

[rowanul-tyr]

So. Dawntrail.

I finished the 7.0 MSQ roughly a week ago, during the early access period, and overall I had a great time with it! My thoughts on the expansion as a whole have been marinating in the brain pot since then, and I wanted to touch on some of those thoughts and why I think this has been such a great expansion so far, at least story-wise. All under a cut for spoilers, and I’ll honestly be talking mostly vaguely about plot stuff anyway. And I’ll mark anything specific that is spoilers, and dividing things zone by zone.

Anyway.

First and foremost, since I feel like this will help put my overall opinion into perspective, is my ranking of expansions so far.

1: SHB will forever be king to me in a ton of ways; part of it is this was the expansion I started with, but I also just love the story it tells so much and even if I have little gripes, they’re all so minor that it doesn’t really matter

2: a tie between HW and EW, actually--both are excellent, and while I have some issues with parts of them, the positives for the most part outweigh my issues

3: another tie between STB and ARR--I think both of these are good, but have some issues that really can’t be ignored. And they’re only at the bottom because that’s how lists work.

DT is not perfect in my eyes (not by a long shot), but it is giving SHB a true run for its money in terms of how much I liked it. Like I said initially, I don’t think it’s without its problems (no expansion is, even SHB no matter how much I love it), but overall there is just SO much good stuff here that I am 100% willing to forgive it.

Before I get into the details, I want to say: making it clear from the pre-order stuff and Viper and all that this is the FF9 expansion really is important. FF9 begins fairly bright and cheery and its aesthetic lends itself well to hiding what subject matter it tackles, but then it eventually starts dealing with a LOT of heavy topics--and Dawntrail is very much living up to that in my book.

Expansion Start

Going into this expansion I really had no idea what to expect. I admit that the 6.X patch cycle really threw me for a loop once DT was announced, and it felt kind of pointless to be doing so much with the void? I was like, “Why are we spending so much time on this, when we should be looking at things that are relevant to Dawntrail??” because none of it made sense to me.

One of the issues I had with STB for a long time was Lyse. Don’t worry, I’ve come around on her, but it took a while. The biggest issue I had was that the devs tried to take an existing character and turn her into something other than what we knew, and it threw me entirely. I think they learned the lesson from that, which is why the focus is on Wuk Lamat, a new character, and on Krile, an older character we know so that we feel more invested in what is to come.

Another aspect of STB that kind of threw me off was…how little focus it got after the HW story ended? Like we get two patches worth fo story to lead into it, and I 100% think the Ga Bu stuff is important, and obviously the Warriors of Darkness story is important to set up part of SHB, but…everything to set up STB felt…not there? And we meet Lyse properly during 3.55/3.56, just like Wuk Lamat. We don’t have time to get to know her as this new person before we’re dropped into STB proper. And that didn’t help me when it came to bonding with Lyse--it took until the Lakshmi trial before I realized how I was supposed to feel about her my second time playing through Stormblood.

Wuk Lamat won me over really fast, thankfully--she has a certain kind of charm to her that endeared me to her pretty quickly (she’s very Sora from Kingdom Hearts coded in my eyes), and I was quietly interested to see what would happen with her character arc going forward. To be frank, I was more excited about how much better my character looked in game than in the updated benchmark than what little of the story we knew! I also was more invested in Krile than anything else story-wise; she’s always been a low key fave of the Scions for me so it’s nice to see her be much more involved in MSQ this time around.

But then we hit the first city and actually got into the story. Tulliyollal is such a lovely city, and its inn room was the first to make me go “wow” since the Pendants (since the Baldesion Annex was fun but still feels way too cluttered for me). I loved meeting Gulool Ja Ja, and his vibe as a character was excellent. I was surprised by what the rite of succession was shaping up to be, but once you see the Saga monuments and hear the story behind them it pretty quickly clicks as to what the Dawnservant wants the claimants to the throne to learn about during the rite. That was when I rsaw the mentor-type role my character would play, and once I knew what role the WOL plays for Wuk Lamat and in at least the start of Dawntrail’s story, I was in. I was determined to embrace that role in a way I had issues doing when I played through STB initially for Lyse.

One other thing: I was super surprised by Zoraal Ja being the one Wuk Lamat was prioritizing as a threat, and that he was the one who couldn’t be allowed to be Dawnservant. I guess I’d been anticipating the aloof/stern but decent older brother from him based on what I assumed was one of his lines in the launch trailer, so that was a fun surprise.

Zones 1 and 2, first visit

Urqopacha absolutely blows Kozama’uka out of the water for me, but I think both zones do a pretty good job with their first of two feats.

I started with Kozama’uka. The HanuHanu felt straightforward enough, and their feat set Koana up really nicely for what exactly his views are. I was glad to hear that he and Wuk Lamat were on friendly terms right before we left Tulliyollal to start the rite. One of my first thoughts when seeing how he and Wuk Lamat both handled the feat was, “He’s not going to win the rite, but I want him to either be advisor to his sister or for her to invite him to rule together.”

Bakool Ja Ja was fine as the zone’s antagonist, the writers did a good job of setting up his rivalry with Wuk Lamat in the intro so I wasn’t surprised by him trying to cheat his way through things. Wuk Evu was also…um. Not my favorite. I wasn’t super into the “behead me for being rude to the Third Promise” joke being reused over and over and over again…but maybe that’s just me.

As I said, Urqopacha was by far my favorite intro zone for the views, the music, and the overall aetshetic. I really love FF10, so getting to spend so much time with the Pelupelu was excellent. I also loved the zone music and this part really was what got me hooked on this expansion. Working with Mablu to make trades for the saddle was such a great showcase of what exactly the player character is to Wuk Lamat, and really solidified how much I enjoyed her. She is SUCH an orange cat (meaning she is “no thoughts, head empty” in a lot of ways but also just impulsive and can be unpredictable) and I mean that in a very kind way.

This was also where we got to see so much more of what Zoraal Ja’s whole deal was, and once I spent more time hearing him speak I totally understood why Wuk Lamat didn’t want him to be Dawnservant. Also, Mablu is the best and my roommate/best friend who is the biggest FF10/FF10-2 fan I know cried when she saw Tobli (since he’s from 10-2 himself) and the music is so good. So yeah, 10/10 zone.

Zones 1 and 2, second visit, and First Trial

Jumping ahead a teeny bit (since you go back to the capital between these visits). I liked this second set of feats overall! It felt like we were finally making some good progress with Krile’s goals to find out more about the city of gold in addition to moving forward with the rite. I also liked jumping right back into zones we’d already seen instead of waiting for 5+ levels to go back.

I liked how the Moblin feat incorporated the Elezen goldsmith from the boat, and seeing once again just how charismatic and magnetic a personality Wuk Lamat is. Her ability to show so much empathy for people is absolutely her biggest strength, and her desire to understand things--something those helping her with the rite have helped her discover--really start to shine, at least for me. That’s what makes her such a great fit for Dawnservant.

Koana also really was a star in this zone, and I really adore his character archetype and the love he so clearly has for his sister. Working together to rescue Wuk Lamat after Bakool Ja Ja snatches her was a nice change of pace from what we’d had so far from the rite, and that was when my initial impression of what would happen with Koana gained a bit more strength behind it. I was about 90% certain at this point that he wouldn’t win, but would stay at Wuk Lamat’s side to help guide her when she needed it.

I LOVED seeing the Yok Huy and honestly just getting to go back to Urqopacha was a delight. It felt like SO much progress was being made for both the rite and Krile’s goals, and the dungeon was excellent. No notes.

As a quick aside, though, I loved that we got to hear the Yok Huy’s take on death--that those who have died will always live in our memory, and so long as that memory remains, they are not truly gone. I loved this because it fits so well with the lore I have for Rowan regarding the way the Echo manifests for him, and how he cherishes the memories of people he’s lost but has come to move on with his own life. It just…is a very good thing to nail home some of FF14’s broader conversations about remembering and honoring the past, but still turning your focus to the future.

I have gripes with the Valigarmanda trial (I wiped twice on Duty Support :( ) but I appreciated that Wuk Lamat, Koana, and Zoraal Ja ALL came together for the good of their nation. I also liked that Zoraal Ja was cooperating because people dying because Valigarmanda would be bad for his own goals in the end if he won the rite, and also it’s good to see more of him before Things Happen (™).

Zone 3

Basically from here on out I loved every zone.

As a person who loves food and specifically enjoys making food for others, the feat in Iq Braax was a delight. Given that we find out the clan’s leader is Wuk Lamat’s father, it is VERY fitting that the people of the village are much more on the nose about not directly helping the team-up between Wuk Lamat and Koana. In addition, the cooperation between the Second and Third Promises was very clearly there to show 1. how well they work together and 2. what it is that Koana still has to learn, which he very much does by the end of the zone.

I’ve seen in the Disc Horse (™) around DT that Bakool Ja Ja turn in the second half of the zone was weird, but I don’t think it was, not really. By the end of the instanced duty after the X’braal feat, he’s a humiliated mess. Seeing the added context for why the Mamool Ja are the way that they are in the second half of the zone and learning the true cost of the blessed siblings among them, you actually have a reason to offer empathy to a person whose whole life has probably not been great. Wuk Lamat putting aside her anger with Bakool Ja Ja to truly help his people is yet more proof of the things that truly make her a good leader and why she really is the best choice to be Gulool Ja Ja’s heir.

The end of Koana’s arc here is excellent. Wuk Lamat reaching out to him when she needs help finding a way for the Mamool Ja to find ways to thrive outside of the blessed siblings--knowing that he can succeed in an area that is not her forte--is yet MORE proof of her ability to see the best in others and understand their worth. And Koana is genuinely a great brother and partner to work with for her, as his generally calm demeanor evens out her boisterousness very well. The instanced fight against the shade of their father where both groups come together was EXCELLENT.

The end of the Skydeep Cenote and actually finding the city of gold is such a good way to close out the first half of the expansion. We’re left on more intrigue for what is to come in the second half of the expansion, and this was when I got the deep sense of “Okay. But when is the other shoe gonna drop”.

Midpoint, and thoughts on the first half of the expansion

I was so happy with Wuk Lamat’s coronation, and how she outright asked Koana to join her on the throne. Finding a way to truly be their father’s successors by embodying both reason and resolve works out so well in Tural’s favor in the end.

I think the only somewhat negative thing I can say here is that…I was totally thrown by the song that played when the stone monument was revealed, haha. The song is fine on its own, but it was SO weird for me to hear that it did actually kinda take me out of it. But otherwise this turning point for the latter half of the expansion was good. I wasn’t sure how to feel about MSQ going forward, though, because I was like “Wait, where’s the rest of it?”

In terms of my overall thoughts on the first half of this expansion… It’s very good as a way to decompress following the end of the Hydaelyn and Zodiark saga that ended in 6.0, and even a good way to relax after everything that happens with Zero and the void.

I know there’s a ton of Disc Horse (™) around this expansion, particularly about Wuk Lamat and the rite and how “slow” the first part is. I have two things that come to mind about it all: this isn’t the Shadowbringers or Endwalker of this next story arc. This is the Realm Reborn to the next arc. Things are definitely going to be a bit slow.

In addition…the WOL may not be the protagonist of this particular part of the story, but that doesn’t mean the first half and dealing with the rite is worthless? The WOL knows by now that they were Azem, the Traveler. Remember, the Traveler part of that convocation title? My BFF/roommate Sarria put it best:

“DT really feels like it's back to our "roots" and I mean like AZEM roots. Being The Traveler, visiting new places and meeting new people and learning about places outside of our known bubble. Listening to people's stories and desires and then being asked to help specifically *because* we listened to and learned from the locals. And I for one really really am loving it. The story doesn't have to be about us - just being there means we have a role. (Also the first half of DT isn't supposed to be about us anyway.)”

I find it so funny that people have such a problem with it--and I won’t lie, I do agree that some of it had slow pacing. But like…I don’t know, this really feels in line for what Azem would do. We are Azem now, we have the crystal and everything. We’re not known in this continent because it’s only been 70 years since the world we know made contact with it--to the point of the guy credited with discovering this “New World” IS STILL ALIVE. There is ample reason why your character is not the focus of the first half of the expansion, and it’s so disheartening to see people just…not get that?

It could be that my overall excitement to explore the new zones laid out before us led me to be much more forgiving of this section, but getting to know the people of Yok Tural was such a treat. I can’t wait for NG+ to come around for 7.0 so I get to explore all of this again.

Okay, back to going zone by zone.

Zone 4, part 1

So as someone who knows the Southwest US fairly well this zone was excellent, I loved the vibes. The overworld music is great.

I will say outright here that I’ve kind of been an Erenville disliker since his introduction in EW. He’s been overhyped for a character who up to DT basically had no personality in my eyes, so I was apprehensive about how this zone would go with him as our only companion. But, credit where it’s due, the writers actually got me to come around on him a little with the background we finally get for him. Not entirely, I still have issues with him, but he’s now more well-rounded.

Seeing the railyard workers actually made me cry, specifically seeing Not!Magnus’ wife. I’m so glad that 1: they were included and 2: explicitly shown to be the exact same as the people we know from the first. My roommate Sarria and I joked several times that this was SHB/Trolleys 2 and it was such a delight getting to laugh about it.

The end point for this visit to the zone was excellent. The dread had been building for me the whole time, knowing that something was around the corner, but no idea what. So the dome appearing and then the aftermath in Tulliyollal was anticipated, but about as brutal as I was expecting.

Tulliyollal revisit and Zone 4, part 2

The destruction of Tulliyollal and trying to aid those we could was done well, to me anyway. The devs handled that sort of thing pretty well in EW, so was glad to see it done again just as well.

Then comes the “cat”valry as I’d like to call it. Honestly, the moment I heard G’raha’s voice and heard Eternal Wind, it was like I could finally breathe. I think that’s the point of him and Y’shtola showing up to give you help for the rest of the expansion--they give a sense of release to all the tension and anxiety players might feel after the attack on Tulliyollal. A mini version of what the low-stakes rite of succession is to the story overall. You have to have a release for tension before building it up again, because building tension with no release just doesn’t work.

The truth of what the golden door is threw me for a loop, because I was NOT expecting it. I imagine it’s what people felt when the SHB launch trailer dropped and the truth about Hydaelyn and Zodiark was given--you’re so shocked that it’s a bit much to process. But I liked the revelations about the golden city and Krile and everything.

The revisit to Shaaloani was a delight, and deciding to blow up the train was exactly the kind of crazy I’d expect from the Source version of the trolley guys from Twine. The song that played during the coronation came back and it felt just as cheesy as before, but I think I’d accepted it by this point? I just let it happen even though it doesn’t really work for me.

And the Vanguard dungeon is SO good. I loved the music--honestly Soken popped off this expansion for the most part.

Zone 5/Second Trial

So I love the aesthetic of this zone in general--thank you for giving us FF10’s Thunder Plains properly this time!!!--but there was a zone where I ever felt like the story was loosing me, it was this one. I wasn’t sure what to make of the time bubble nor the regulators, so it took some time for Heritage Found to find its footing for me.

Sphene also was slightly unsettling, in a way? It was hard to put my finger on whether she was sympathetic or playing you, which I guess is the point.

Solution Nine kind of just…added to my sense of confusion. I was a bit lost on it all, and trying to wrap my head around it. It is also way to big and spread out for my tastes…but oh well.

With all the talk of souls, though, I finally understood why all the Void stuff with Zero in the 6.X patches was actually good to spend so much time with, since it was basically a primer for ALL of this stuff in the latter half of DT. So once NG+ is here for Dawntrail, I may actually start with 6.1 and see how it all flows together.

What finally got me back on loving the plot again was seeing baby Gulool Ja and Otis in the other half of the map, where the ruins of Alexandria are. I haven’t even played FF9 myself, only watched a very abridged playthrough, but the way I instantly knew who Otis was a stand in for made me feel so warm and comforted. Steiner is just so goofy and endearing, and Otis is exactly like him.

Was not surprised by Zoraal Ja making his move, but the cutscene for the defense of Tulliyollal was very good. I was surprised by Sphene both in and out of Solution Nine for that instanced duty, and I think here is where I really started to see the parallels between what I know of FF9 and DT. Sphene is Wuk Lamat’s mirror, at least in a way--loving and compassionate and charismatic (because I’d come to like her quite a bit by the point she outright says she was playing you). She exemplifies the extreme end of Wuk Lamat’s desire for peace, and the need to protect and preserve her people.

The fight against Zoraal Ja is a satisfying one. I am not the person to ask to talk about fight design or anything so will leave that to others. But I thought it was good.

Also liked the revelations after the trial, where Sphene turns on you for real. It did feel like downing Vauthry just to have Emet steal the Exarch again, though maybe not in the same way. Similar dramatic stakes, I guess I’m trying to say.

Zone 6, and the Finale

This zone will always have an interesting flavor to it for me, since I use the Living Memory title for personal WOL lore reasons. But the zone is, I think, such an excellent one for what the expansion as a whole is trying to say.

As I mentioned at the beginning, despite its cheerful colors and friendly looking character design, FF9 is a darker story. It deals with death and the existential. The perfect word to sum up FF9, from what I know, is bittersweet. And I think this zone--and in a way both zones and the city that comprise Alexandria--PERFECTLY handles that bittersweet feeling.

The weather is Reminiscence, bathing everything in this beautiful golden color. It’s full of areas referencing FF9--I recognized Alexandria and the Iifa Tree, but each zone is a call back to 9. The music is this soft, comforting piece that just triggered my nostalgia for a game I haven’t even played. Seeing Otis in his prime again, the tour of the Gardens with Cachuia, letting Krile meet her parents and learn her real name--it’s all so bittersweet.

Every time you turn off a terminal, you get that message of how nothing will go back to what it was. And the part of Living Memory that you shut down is then forever less colorful and lively, and there’s no music (at least when you’re there during this part of MSQ). You’re left with silence. We can always remember it like it was before (or use NG+ to bring it back if you were a dummy like me and didn't gpose there before it went away), but it won't ever be the same now.

I took my time in Living Memory before moving from area to area, and did all aether currents and quests as I could/they became available which only happened AFTER the zone was gone for the quests. So I was doing all this in silence. Left alone with my thoughts on it all and trying to understand what the point was.

Sphene is clinging so much to that nostalgia for a time gone by because of her programming, and it’s sad to have to end it. But to me, she is eerily similar to Emet-Selch: she was clinging to the memory of the dead, desperate to bring them back and keep them alive. But in the end, it was only an imitation that would lead to untold amounts of suffering to others.

All of Living Memory reminded me so much of Amaurot. Sphene letting the Endless explore as they pleased was I think a much kinder version of Emet's magic working on Amaurot, but I couldn't help but see the similarity there.

I did cry in this zone, during G’raha’s talk with the player in the gondola and all the interactions Krile had with her parents. And it’s just…sad. You might feel awful about destroying the Endless once you understand them and their ways, but in the end…they’re only memories of people who died long ago. Their lives continuing are coming at the cost of the future for everyone on the Source and the reflections. It just can’t be sustained as Sphene’s realm continues to grow and more and more is needed to keep things running.

Sphene wanted the best for her people, going as far as she did for them. And I like that she is clearly kind but does a lot of bad things out of love for her people, and the desire to preserve them. But in the end, she had to accept why death is an important part of life.

I loved the Alexandria dungeon, and the trial was excellent. I will say that the intermission was maybe a bit long, but I still liked it tremendously. I’m excited to see what the relic has in store for us, and where the new arc of the story will take us.

Overall thoughts

DT has two very distinct sections, and there are parts I think could be refined to maybe make things go smoother overall, but honestly? I am totally willing to overlook those things because I enjoyed myself as much as I did.

DT, to me, managed to deliver on the summer vacation aspect that was so heavily advertised while also keeping with FF14’s larger ideas about hope persisting in even the hardest of times, and why the connections between people are so important. It also continues to show why it is not just important but also good to remember the past fondly, but it is just as important to keep moving forward in the best interests of all people.

I said it in the part about Living Memory and the finale for DT, but Sphene is very similar to Emet-Selch, and while some of the Heritage Found stuff lost me for a bit, the story did hit its mark where it needed to. The ending zone was not what the Tempest or Ultima Thule were, and I’m glad that it’s not. I’m sad that I’ll have to replay on an alt or when we get DT NG+ to take the pictures I wanted there, but that’s the point. You’re supposed to feel a longing for something that you can never truly get back, and that’s one of the best parts about it. You’re left with this bittersweet feeling as you let go of the past, and these people who are long gone.

DT drove home Venat’s point from EW even more for me. To use Ardbert’s words from SHB, “Joy and sorrow walk hand in hand.” There is joy and sorrow all over the place in Tural’s story and in its peoples, and I loved how every minute went even if sometimes it did feel a bit slow. But not everything needs to be so fast paced, either.

And even in the slower-paced parts, the WOL is really embodying the adventurer spirit we’ve returned to. We’re embracing our Azem roots, and travelling to new lands and meeting new people and coming to enjoy their cultures and presence. That sort of thing is what Venat, the previous Azem, loved so much about the world. And getting to understand her sentiments a bit more was excellent.

All in all, while DT has its faults, I 100% think this a great expansion. I’m excited again to see what is to come from this story, when I was apprehensive at best after 6.X patch story.

[souridealist]

FFXIVwrite day two: 'Horizon'

[800 words or so, gen with maybe slight overtones of WoL/Thancred, set in early ARR. Everyone meet my alt, Bortei Dotharl.]

“Are you spending the night with us?” Thancred asks, deliberately light.

From this angle, only Bortei’s horns pick her out from anyone else in the Scions’ common hall. Just another ragged, faded adventurer lost in thought at the corner table, a drink in her hand and her eyes on the ceiling. She’s so small; he keeps getting caught off-guard by it, as if in his memory she’s always a little larger than she is in truth.

Then she turns to look at him.

“Thancred!” Her voice cuts over the noise of the hall; a few heads turn, then laugh and turn away again at the sight of Thancred with a pretty recruit. She grabs his wrist, dragging him down into the nearest seat with the easy self-assurance of a woman far closer to home. “Sit, drink, warm yourself.” It’s a bit too warm, actually, but from the way she says it, it’s only a greeting. “Yes, I mean to stay here the night. Couldn’t get further than Horizon before dark, and the inn there’s not worth the coin. Piss-weak beer and too much dust.” She rolls her eyes. “I need to get a decent tent, if there’s one to be found in this place. And if your birds of burden can carry one. But in the meantime, I’ll be glad of good company.”

“Not going to make use of the Ul’dah aetheryte?” Thancred slips — offhandedly, if he’s done his job right — into a pause in the good-natured torrent. Bortei shrugs, taking a gulp of her beer.

“Can’t,” she says, and drags the back of her hand across her mouth. She shrugs one shoulder at his bemused look. “Still got my aether all out of balance from when I first came here. I’ll be staying out of the aetherial sea for a while yet, unless I want a good long stay.”

“Now here’s a story I don’t believe I’ve heard,” Thancred says, settling back in his chair. She mirrors him, sprawling: one arm slung on the back of her chair, elbow braced on the table, legs kicked out in front of her and her tail spilling over the edge of the chair. This is why he always thinks she’s bigger than she is. “You’d mentioned you didn’t come to Eorzea intentionally?”

“No, nothing like,” she says. “I was as surprised as anyone. See, there’s this woman back home — we grew up together.”

“Ah.” Thancred stifles both his flare of disappointment and the twinned flicker of voyeurism. “A sweetheart?” He’s not expecting her thunderous snort.

“Sweetheart? She’s no one’s sweetheart, mine least of all. She was my competition.” She grins, sharp as a knife. “She’s leader of the tribe, now — more of her time wasted on other people’s petty squabbles, if you ask me — and she’d won herself some glory in a few good fights with the Oronir.” Thancred’s not sure he knows who, what, or where the Oronir are, but he nods along anyway. “Can’t let her have all the fun, but she scared them off pretty good, so I figured I’d take the fight to them. I tried for their aetheryte.” Her smile turns crooked. “Might’ve been drunk.”

“Tried for — tried to break their aetheryte?” That’s a disappointingly selfish bit of vandalism. Or — “You don’t mean you tried to go through unattuned?”

“Oh, I do mean.” She toasts him ruefully. “Next thing I know —” Her eyes skitter off him, back to the ceiling. Thancred can take a guess; Minfilia has told him a bit about it was like, the first time she heard Hydaelyn’s voice. “Well, next I knew what was happening, I was naked on a rock in southern Thanalan.”

“That’s — damn.” He blows out a breath between his teeth. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Oh, I noticed,” she says. “This is a good life, I’m not done with it yet. I’ll be a long time working it off, though.” She stretches her arms out in front of her, twisting her fingers together. “Had a lot more muscle on me before that. You’ve seen what it did for my magic, though, so I got nothing to worry about.”

“I have at that,” Thancred grants. That’s something of a relief, actually, if there’s an explanation for the sheer blistering heat of her fire. He’s no thaumaturge, but it’s looked worryingly wild to him. “That must be hard. The aetherytes. No good way out of a bad situation, no quick jaunts across town to visit a friend…”

“It’ll come back,” she says with a shrug. “And when I make it home, I’ll be Bortei, Who Crossed the World.”

“And that’s what they’ll call you when you’re, ah, next reborn?” She explained herself and her people, ever-reborn, back on that first night in Ul’dah. It’s most likely not be something he needs to fish about — it’s nothing that would lead to a primal, and beyond that her faith is her business — but he’s curious, in his own right. “Bortei Who Crossed the World, running around at your next mother’s knee?”

“Until I do something finer,” she says, with another offhanded shrug. “At least, as long as I make it home in this life to tell them that I did it.”

“Well,” Thancred says, and he’s surprised by how much he means it: “I’m sure you will.”

[ohorishan]

on the cultivation of figs

PART 1 : Ori has a question unrelated to botany.

~800 words, early canon (mid to late ARR?), oc/oc

-

“Jeannaut–?” Ori starts, as they’re working.

Once a week, he retrieves the contents of his botanist’s pack from the mild stasis within, and the two of them sit down to sort through what he's gathered. Cords of branchwood, bundles of herbs, handfuls of seed– between Ori’s field experience and his retainer’s expert eye, the two of them divide up what to use, what to store and what to sell.

Jeannaut looks up from his work, although his long hands don’t stop moving. Most weeks, Ori near matches him for efficiency– today, his stack of paper packets of seeds is noticeably smaller than Jeannaut’s collection of herbs neatly tied with twine.

“...Yes, sir?” he prompts, when the rest of Ori’s sentence fails to materialize.

Ori looks back at him for a moment. “Never mind,” he says with a sigh. “We’ll have to take most of this saffron to the market, I can’t possibly use all of it. I don’t know why I gathered so much.”

“Perhaps your thoughts were elsewhere,” Jeannaut suggests gently.

Ori blinks at him, as if just returning to the conversation. “Hm?”

“I believe,” says Jeannaut, “you were about to ask something?”

“Oh,” says Ori. “That. No, it was a silly question.”

“Then perhaps it will provide us both a much-needed diversion.”

He makes a face. “Oh, fine. I was going to ask– well– have you ever been with another man?”

There’s a moment of silence, spooling out like the twine. Jeannaut ties off another tidy bundle.

“I told you it was silly,” Ori says, turning faintly pink, and quickly goes back to his pack. “Let's see, what else– figs. Plant them, do you think, or sell the seeds?”

“I recommend selling,” says Jeannaut. “Figs thrive best under an expert hand, and such an interested party would likely consider the cultivation as great a reward as the fruit itself. And the answer,” he adds, perfectly composed, “is yes.”

“Ah,” says Ori, and clears his throat. “Is it… very different?”

The other man sets his shears down at last. “If I may speculate,” he says, “I expect your first consideration will be one of– scale, shall we say, not necessarily experience.”

“I didn't say who it is,” Ori protests immediately.

“Nor, indeed, that any such specific suitor exists.” 

Ori winces, caught out, and the pink in his cheeks rises higher. “I'm predictable, aren't I,” he says.

The expression on Jeannaut’s face is something approaching a smile. “You are a man of consistent taste, sir.”

“That's a polite way of saying I'm predictable.” He turns his attention back to the table, to cover his blush if nothing else. “I shouldn't have asked, it's not my business. I'm sorry, Jeannaut.”

“I pray you think nothing of it, sir. An honest man takes no offense to an honest question. If you'll allow me–” He slides the little pile of figs carefully out of Ori's hands and toward himself.

They work in silence for a while, Jeannaut as steadily as before, Ori determinedly busy. They're near finished before Jeannaut speaks again.

“If you would like,” he says, “I would be happy to offer a practical demonstration.”

He says it so calmly, so much like any other matter, that it's several moments before Ori realizes what he meant. When he does, his head snaps up immediately. “No, I didn't mean– I just couldn't think who else to talk to, I would never ask you to do something like–”

“I know,” Jeannaut says. It's rare for him to interrupt, and even rarer to offer physical contact– but that's exactly what he does, placing a steadying hand over Ori's own. “I know you well enough, sir, to know that it is not in your nature to attempt such an imposition. If I thought it were,” he adds, “I would not have offered.”

“Ah,” says Ori. “Yes, well.” The blush has taken over his face completely, but he sets his shoulders with determination. “All right, then I accept. Tonight?”

Jeannaut raises one eyebrow. “The matter is that urgent?”

“Not at all,” Ori says, “but longer than that and I may lose my nerve.”

“I see. In that case–” He considers what remains of their work. “Why not allow me to finish here, and attend to any other duties you may have? The sooner discharged, the sooner at leisure.”

“Not to mention, that'll keep me too busy to worry?”

“As I said, you are–”

“Consistent, right.” Ori sighs as he slides down from his chair. “I'll ring when I'm finished? Not that it's– official business, you know, but–”

“I quite understand,” Jeannaut says. “Try not to rush– whenever you feel yourself ready.”

“So to speak,” Ori can't help adding.

At the door, he turns back. “Jeannaut–?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Why?” says Ori.

Once again, that expression that’s almost a smile crosses his face. “Call it a botanist’s curiosity, if you will,” Jeannaut replies. “You are a charming, capable, and rather determined young man, Orishan, and I should like to observe this cultivation of yours. I believe it will prove just as interesting as the result.”

[anneapocalypse]

Writing Wrap-up and 2024 Goals

It's a weird year to be doing a wrap-up, because I did not post a whole lot this year and I'm not sure I even set any goals last January thanks to having covid and being sick and exhausted for weeks, which still kind of feels like it threw off my whole year even though that sounds dramatic. Whatever. I've moped enough about it being a bad year for writing; now, I want to look forward.

2023 Wrap-Up

In case you'd like to read the one fic I did post this year, it's "Before You Go", a Loghain/Maric fic for Dragon Age (3022 words, rated E), which I am still quite happy with! And though it's not writing, I also made a podfic of RosellaWrites' gorgeous fic "let them not make me a stone (and let them not spill me)" (and if you're not interested in podfic you should still go read Rosella's fic, seriously, it's great).

While November 2022 was the last time I made substantial progress on A Hero Sleeps in Gwaren (my Briala/F!Tabris longfic for Dragon Age), I did make a few attempts to chip away at the draft this year. I didn't keep any records of what progress I made, but lucky for me Scrivener has a writing history feature that can at least give me a ballpark, and... it says I added 17,326 words to the draft this year (all in the first half of the year), which, not gonna lie, seems unreal to me. The first half of this year is mud in my head, so the fact that I did in fact get some writing done is really encouraging.

Over the summer, FFXIV started to really consume me as I had finished ARR by that point and my investment in the story was growing, and I also started taking a more active leadership role in my tiny free company, and so for the back half of the year I've mostly been writing little snippets about my Warrior of Light Ariane and her adventures and relationships, some of which may become part of actual fics later. This totals out to about 19,500 words at the moment.

So I only posted about 3000 words, but in total I wrote almost 40K this year. Is that a fantastic year, no... but honestly, it's a lot better than what my brain has been telling me I've accomplished this year, which is nothing. :P So I'm glad that I sat down to actually find the numbers!

Onward and upward.

So what's next?

2024 Goals

Fandom:

Finish one longfic.

Write and post a one-shot.

Do one exchange.

Original:

Outline an original novel.

Write a poem.

Send out one piece.

Tentatively my immediate plans are to get started outlining and then writing my Ariane/Haurchefant fic. I'm on the fence about February. On the one hand, it would be great to come back to my Briala/F!Tabris longfic for Femslash February, but on the other hand there's a high probability I'm going to be playing Endwalker by that point and I have no hope of keeping my head in Dragon Age during that time, so it's probably best not to commit to it. Dragon Age fic might be best saved for after I've caught up on MSQ when there are (hopefully) a few months still left to wait for Dawntrail and I can take a little break to let it marinate while I work on something else. My enthusiasm for the Briala/Tabris fic has not waned despite the long hiatus, and just yesterday I was reading bits of the draft and getting excited again, so I do hope to finish that this year and get to share it with you.

The alternate candidate for February is either keep working on the Haurchefant fic or in the case of a miracle in which I actually finish it this month (hah!), move forward with the next one I have planned, an Urianger/Moenbryda. That's unlikely but we'll see. I know I still have things to learn about Urianger in Endwalker, which I'm very excited for.

As for what exchange(s) I might do this year, I'm not sure yet! I haven't seen any announcements yet that Chocolate Box is running this year. Black Emporium and FemslashEx are both strong candidates for me. We'll see where I am when those roll around, or maybe something else will catch my eye!

Edited to add: Oh, yeah, also at some point we're supposed to get that final season of Red vs. Blue. I have a few outstanding projects in RvB but the main one that really matters to me is Radio Silence, my Carolina lost years fic. I'd love to use the series' send-off as a kick in the pants to finally finish that one, whenever that happens. We'll see!

Finally, I am making a conscious effort to reclaim my writing time, which traditionally has been the morning between 9 and noon because that's when my mind is the sharpest, but over the past I basically let that slip entirely and be taken over by either housework or gaming, just writing on the fly when something came to me. I'm not morning gaming anymore unless it's for a good reason (timed event I need to catch, etc, which is rare, and finishing yesterday's roulettes is not a good enough reason because the queues are slower in the morning and it just ends up eating more time than it needs to, they happen every day, it's fine).

On to 2024. Looking forward to it.

[candycryptids]

58. How many hobbies have they attempted to have over their lifetime? Is there a common theme?

For whomever you please! Multiples of 'em if you like! Give us the hobby lore!

>:3!!!!!! Rolling this ask around my enclosure like a pumpkin full of ground beef! So I actually covered Mochiie’s hobbies earlier today- [Here] so I’ll cover some others ùwú! (Full of mischief)

Ishi’li’s hobbies are messy because of his origins: they enjoyed solving Sudoku’s, and playing games, which I’d count as hobbies, but in Eorzea his old hobbies don’t hold up, cos…. Nobody makes Sudoku puzzles… and Games straight up don’t exist, to my knowledge. But he DOES learn to haggle and trade and help run business numbers. He actually genuinely enjoys math (it’s why he picks up Arcanist XD) ….. hm.. He picks up painting, after visiting the First, and subsequently Elpis, and possibly photography (Me and Zombiesock are toying with creation magic making essentially a Sheikah Slate, because due to how we shook out events Ishi is the only one of the cadre of WoL’s to actually be able to go to Elpis and they get frustrated at an inability to show it to everyone else, lmao.) … There’s not much of a common theme, they just like Learning stuff, especially if it can be applied to helping the team, (like Astrology, which is picked up, but kind of as a side gig to everything else that’s going on.) … and honestly it leans heavily into Magic, because it’s unique and interesting even if there’s a constant battle to keep up enough Mana to use it lmfao.

Tuesday likes reading (History, Cookbooks, Travel Guides, YA Short Story Romance), and cooking, even if he can’t like… taste the food he makes for some time (not sure when he gets taste but ah! He shall someday :) ) which means he’s always in need of taste testers- but not Chuu. Who is a walking nightmare for food. (If it’s not easily eaten one handed in some fashion she’s not eating it. She’s been TRYING to care more about what her food tastes like but mostly the fact that she’s gaining weight and eating 3x a day + snacks is an improvement. She LIKES archon loaf. Anyways-) he likes experimenting with textures and smells and spices, so finding people that will eat it and provide feedback is. Nice. He also finds lots of joy in little repeating tasks like, spinning/weaving, and learning to make his own fabrics and garments opens up a whole other world. He’s already out gathering stuff, or shopping, so. Making clothes is it’s own sort of rewarding (and it makes Keathan. So excited, actually. That Tuesday is creating something. For himself???) … I think most of his hobbies stem from a desire to. Find? He’s grasping for what it means to be an Individual and trying stuff and customizing himself in little ways.

🤔 Hobby lore… I’m tryna think if I got anything else interesting knocking around up here. Oh!

Tangy used to have a hobby doing whittling, nothing too crazy, cos she was v small, but it was practice using a knife so she could be more confident later in life when she’d need to skin+ clean game, y’know. …. aaaand then it got lost in the haze of everything Pre 1.0, so she hasn’t done it since, but I like to think if she picked up a little knife in NOT kitchen settings she’d feel some muscle memory kick in for it. Nowadays she likes bird watching, and sooometimes fishing, though there’s not much to catch outside the waking sands that’s suuuper worth eating, she catches lots of small fry… and sometimes a sunburn. Right across the bridge of her snout. Dreadful. I like to think sometime between ARR and Heavensward she starts making little woven jewelry pieces- bracelets and hair ties mostly, but, it keeps her hands occupied and she can always unravel them again and do it over later. So long as she doesn’t give it to someone- if she catches someone leaving she’ll tie a woven bracelet around their wrist and very seriously tell them to come back in one piece. (🤔 Training in hand-to-hand doesn’t really feel like a hobby in Eorzea, where it can be your whole job…. And sorta IS, her job… it’s her main class anyways ahaha. So I’m gonna leave that one off.) …. I don’t think there’s a common theme here aside from being time-fillers that a person can do anywhere without a lot of stuff to do it with 🤔

[Oddly Specific ?’s for if you wanna take a crack at it!]

[ofdarklands]

ooooooooh. torture, break and betrayal for mitr'a? 👁👁 apologies for the way it sounds like.

wishing ill things upon my cat....

torture: Has your OC ever been tortured? Would your OC ever torture someone else?

if we go by the story, no i don't believe he's been, beyond maybe what fighting through pain and the various effect that afflict us in combats would count as torture

regarding torturing others, he's not done anything to a captive except scaring them, i think. not his job or interest. BUT. does a tendency towards playing with his stalked prey and a failure of understand that others truly fear combat and death count as torture? perhaps. *looks at The Fic which i consider canon* was this guy tortured to death via panicked futile running and deadly mushrooms? uhhhh can't say he had a good time, really. it's up to you. mitr'a's definitely not feeling any remorse about it in either case

.

break: What would cause your OC to break down completely? What do they look like when that happens? Has anyone ever seen them at their lowest?

i don't know! i truly don't. what would break him to the ground? we'd be getting into territory that the game does not and will never get into for that, i feel. it would require a lot of setting dismantling and bad endings though, probably. maybe something actually destroying the shroud in some way, for starters

for an emotional moment, him realizing what venat was going to do/did before the sundering made him need to take a moment. the 12 millenia of lonely, loving service on his word got to him i guess. like any wounded animal, he went off by himself when he did

.

betrayal: Has your OC ever been betrayed by someone they thought they could trust? Has your OC ever betrayed someone who trusted them?

in the story, i don't think anyone he truly trusted in the first place betrayed him. ilberd and the crystal braves were just some guys to him, for example. thancred's 'betrayal' in arr was more 'huh, who knew' than anything until the ascians were actually explained to him. perhaps in his backstory i'll eventually add someone...

it might be a boring answer, but he's not in the business of making life hard for himself by scheming complicated things that require proper betrayals and stuff. if someone else(coughemet) considers what 'he' did or did not do a betrayal is a different thing

[hyrtwynwrites]

Yensday #1 - 31 January 2024

Hello, and welcome to the inaugural Yensday! This is the start of a (hopefully!) long-running tradition of doing Q&A and little tidbits about Light's Falle (abbreviated to LF for future use)!

<><><> Q&A <><><>

@purplenidoqueen asked:

I'm sorry if this is heavy, but there's one thing that's really been bothering me about FFXIV, and it's surely been Yenifer's problem. How does she contend with all the negative sentiment and microaggressions and bigotry against Ala Mhigan refugees? What keeps her working for the betterment of a society that largely does not want her?

(picture sent by purplenidoqueen)

I think, unavoidably, we have to mention how much FFXIV uses race as a set dressing before the question can be answered. A great deal of the bigotry portrayed in the game and its setting is never seriously confronted. Square Enix's primary use of it is to provide backdrops for conflict or "flavor" to the world, but at very few points is resolving these inequities seriously discussed by the MSQ. Gridania is the most sterling example of it, and remains set in stone throughout the story (excluding the laughable Stormblood Carpenters' questline where you solve racism with a tea table!). Race and racism aren't themes in FFXIV; they're things that occur to drive plots.

Yenifer's story is one about diaspora; she is the victim of several great and horrible crimes committed by powers beyond her individual ability to control. The exact scale of what was lost is not something she fully understands yet, and her own relationship to her people is something that will evolve and be tested. She is, and always will be, Ala Mhigan, and that is something defined onto her as much as she defines for herself.

Yen's response to what you mentioned is going to change over the course of LF as she comes into her own and gains new understandings, both about the star and about herself. At the beginning, Yen mostly has to bottle up her own feelings for survival, obscuring her fear and anger in order to gain any amount of forward momentum. The outbursts she has stems mostly from either her having a rare position of power (which is fragile and held aloft mostly because she has yet to seriously challenge the status quo), or from her losing her temper. In the latter case, she immediately realizes how dangerous letting these feelings out is, and beats a humiliated retreat for fear of being targeted for violence. She is not, and cannot be, comfortable.

At this stage, she isn't working for the betterment of these societies; her goal is, instead, to protect her people, who are the victims of those societies. Above all else, Yen is an Ala Mhigan, and her mission is ultimately that of liberation, though she doesn't think of it that way - at least, not during ARR. She is going to view much of the existential threats posed in the first volume through the lens of them ultimately threatening her own people. This isn't to say she is stone-hearted, of course. Individual suffering matters immensely to her, because she possesses, for lack of a better term, human decency. If things were phrased more in terms of "this will be good for Ul'dah," or "this would hurt Gridanian interests," she would be significantly more apathetic. That inaction would lead to suffering and death is what stirs her to throw herself into harm's way.

Beyond this early scope, and to truly answer your question: Yen weathers it because she knows she has to, and she presses back as hard as she can with as much authority and support she can muster. Her actions alone cannot break these systems of oppression, but her confrontations of them will lead to others following suit. I think it's farer to say that, rather than Yen acting to better these societies, the societies better themselves because of her. While she will repeatedly save Eorzea and its people from destruction, the only people she frees is her own. Eorzea - and the rest of the star - frees itself.

<><><> Tidbits & Errata <><><>

While Q&A is the focus of a Yensday, I'd be remiss not to toss something of my own out there. I'm not sure if calling it an offering is wise, but it is a little amusing.

Yen's primary adventuring outfit is based around the hyur starting gear, though with some amount of modification.

For one, she abstains from wearing the gloves that come with the outfit; this is mostly because I repeatedly forgot about them! During Gridanian Prelude's rewrite, I realized my error, and had to make a final decision, in the end opting against.

For two, the dagger that appears on the model also does not exist for Yen, initially for similar reasons (I have a bad habit of going off of memory and then needing to revisit and fix things during editing passes). However, the dagger does become a story element in White Towers, Deep Waters! In the end, it all came together rather nicely in a serendipitous kind of way.

I want to thank everyone for reading and for putting in questions! I really enjoyed having to throw all my thoughts in order, and hopefully the additional context that process created is useful and interesting to you all. Next week will be another Yensday, so feel free to start throwing questions in now!

Until then, may you ever walk in the light of the Crystal!

-H

[theimperialnuisance]

FFXIV Write 2023 || FFXIV Write info\\Prompt list\\Character info \\Master post ||

Prompt 20: Hamper

 to hinder or impede in moving, progressing, or acting

Character(s): Ciel Fyth, Malek Fyth (belonging to @holy-halone) Cw: none Word count: 765 Notes: Woo! I finally did a prompt with Ciel! This was literally the first thing I thought of when I saw this word :3 I plan to go back and clean it up as this is just the first draft but I wanted to submit what I had since I finished before the deadline. Set around pre-arr timeline! Enjoy <3

When morning arrived, the rainfall had stopped. 

The Fyth siblings were eager to continue their journey through the Shroud, their progress no longer hindered by the violent thunderstorm that had forced them to camp out in the shelter of an old stable the night before. Ciel hadn’t been too enthused to do that as he was never a fan of loud storms but his older brother knew exactly what to do to keep him calm and distracted so that sleep was easy to come by.

With the sun rising again in a clear blue sky, Ciel was back in high spirits. He hummed happily, a few paces ahead of his brother who was occupied with trying to find any sort of sign they were heading in the right direction. Malek didn’t want to admit it out loud but he somehow managed to get them both way off course in his inner panic to find shelter when the storm had suddenly rolled in. The torrent of rain made it difficult to see so Malek picked a direction and ran, hoping to get lucky. Now that it was daylight, he realized with a pang of frustration, they backtracked quite a bit. Gridania hadn’t been too far the last time he had checked a map--if they kept heading north, they were bound to see something familiar. 

Malek had just hoped nothing else would prevent their progress nor that his brother would catch on to the fact they may or may not be lost (he really ought to buy a map of the area one of these days). Though even if he knew, the younger didn’t seem to mind it as he continued to bounce along the trail and soak in the sun. 

“Ah!” Ciel l came to a sudden halt, his ears flickering a bit. “I hear running water! The river!” He practically skipped forward in eagerness and Malek had to jog a little to keep up. The river meant they were nearly there which brought relief to the older sibling–they hadn’t gone too far off course like he thought they had. 

His younger brother came to a stop at the rock, looking at the water and then turning back to his older brother with an eager smile, bouncing on his toes. Malek came to a stop next to him and looking at water below with a frown. 

“That’s just great,” Malek huffed as he placed one hand on his hip, and carded the other one through his hair in annoyance. The rainfall had caused the river to rise significantly and there was no sign of a bridge to cross which meant that somehow, the aftermath of the storm still managed to hamper the way forward. “We’ll have to find another way across.” 

“That’s okay!” Ciel turned, smiling brightly at his brother. “We can just swim across!” He didn’t wait for Malek to answer the question before slipping off with the intention to dive into the rushing river. 

“Hold on,” Malek was quick to catch him, practiced hands reaching out to grab the back of his younger brother’s hood in order to hold him back. “There is no way we are swimming across that,” he pointed at the water to emphasize his point. “Do you see how quickly that water is moving? You’re going to get pulled under, even if you are a strong swimmer.” 

“Oh.” Ciel blinked, turning to face his brother with a quizzical look. “Then do we wait another day before continuing on? So long as it doesn’t rain again, I think the water level should go down enough to cross safely…” 

Malek didn’t reply right away as his gaze searched the trees nearby, landing on one that had fallen off its stump–most likely due to getting struck by lightning the night before. How convenient. Malek smiled to himself in victory and wordlessly made his way over to the tree. “Ciel, think you could use a little wind magic to get this thing over the river?” 

Ciel perked up, pulled from his distracted mutterings to himself, mismatched eyes gazing at his brother in innocent curiosity before landing on the fallen log that Malek was still staring at. A smile spread across his face as he pulled out his white mage staff. “Happy to!” 

With the log positioned over the riverbank, Malek and Ciel were able to cross and continue forward, their surroundings slowly becoming more familiar to the older sibling. Gridania wasn’t too far now, they’d reach the City-State by mid-day. He found himself humming quietly along with his brother, finally at ease. 

[littlelordalphinaud]

A Lonely Autists Ode to Final Fantasy XIV

This is probably going to be a horribly jumbled up post, and I'd apologise but I don't feel like apologising for stream of conscioussing my feelings.

So, until very recent years (We're talking the last 3 years), I have never really had friends. No one taught me how to be social, and my every misstep (and I assure you, there were many) was met with cruelty from my peers or the adults that were meant to care for me.

As such, from a young age, I got very good at 'making' my own friends. (This habit is actually what got me into writing!) Obviously the part of me that understands the world around me knew that they weren't real. But all I had were the friends I 'made', so I stuck with them.

Five years ago, now, my only real world friend that I had suggested that I try FFXIV. She said I'd love it. She said it would indulge the things I used to love about playing Fable (feeling like part of the world, silly outfits, getting to have an inordinately big hammer and swing it at my enemies with abandon) and I'd get to play alongside her.

Regrettably, my first impression of the game was less than stellar.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the world involved! I fell in love with the Scions (bar Alphinaud. Yes, yes, I am aware of the irony of this statement now!) and the story caught my attention. I didn't even mind the bits of ARR that everyone else complains about because I saw all of it as a chance to learn more about the world I was falling in love with.

I stopped playing because the ARR patches used to (idk if they still do) force you into replaying the Trials to progress. You HAD to do hard mode. And no one explained to me that Hard and Extreme were different things, so I got scared and stopped playing.

Two years later, I'd make a new character (my beloved Fru, who sits in my icon with her younger brother and sits squarely in my heart as an example to me of who I want to be) and try again. Everything I loved was still there, and the characters caught me in a grip even tighter than they had before. And the Scions became my Friends.

I didn't know it at the time, but they would be my last set of Friends. Because I met people, real people, who I'd grow to call friend (and brother, and husband, and son, and daughter, and kiddo, and any number of other titles)

But the Scions were my Friends.

Again, I stopped playing. Not because I didn't love the world. Not because I didn't love my Friends. But because none of my RL friends played, and I wanted to spend time with them, because I'd never had RL friends to spend time with before!

But FFXIV and the Scions stayed a part of me. I never uninstalled the game. I never cancelled my subscription (I prolly should have, tbh!) and every so often I'd log on and just run around Eorzea and 'talk' to my Friends.

Until a year later, I'd mention to @steelshard that I missed playing, but didn't want to play alone anymore. And the mad-man did what I never expected anyone to want to do for me, and he spent money to get the game so we could play together. (And so came Resh, the externalisation of a lot of my anxieties and my newly assured diagnosis as an Autist, and my complex feelings towards my mother, to match against Steels Ura, the type of woman I would kill to have in my life!)

I returned to Fru, Eorzea once more having a grip upon my Soul, and forged ahead from my place in the HW patches, marching through Stormblood with glee and teeth and love, walking through Shadowbringers and taking the time to sit with the pain and the knowledge that nothing is black and white, and racing through Endwalker with a hunger I've never experienced before until coming to a dead stop with an hour of wheeze sobbing and an Asthma attack as one by one the game took my Friends from me and forced me to face up to something that I hadn't seen before.

I wasn't alone.

I had my RL friends. And I still had my Friends. And they weren't antithetical to each other. I could have both! I could talk to Steel, or @instantbee or my husband, and tell them my thoughts and feelings and ask for advice. And when that felt like too much for me, I could go to Eorzea instead, and I could tell Y'shtola, or Alphinaud, or Urianger of my woes or my triumphs, or my twisted knotted ball of yarn thoughts, and seek support in the way I had my entire life. I could lie in bed and message my RL friends, or I could lie in bed and have three hour debates with G'raha.

And obviously, like I said at the beginning of the post, I know the Scions aren't real. But they're an extension of a coping mechanism that allowed me to survive through an early life that would have rather seen me die (and if you look beneath the steadily growing FFXIV sleeve, you'll see the evidence that it very nearly got its wish).

The Scions, the characters of Eorzea, they were my very last set of Friends. Because I don't need to make anymore. I have RL friends that understand me as I am now. But that secures the Scions a very special place in my life. They're the last of the Me that was alone. They're the last of the Me that was a frightened child, desperately seeking connection and solace from a world that would not give them that. They're the last of the Me that wanted to die. And by keeping them around, I am assuring that version of Me (because they're still here, just like every version of Me is still here) that I have not forgotten them. I have not forgotten how They struggled for this version of Me to come forth and live a happier life, a better life than any previous version of Me dared to dream about.

So I will keep my Friends close to my chest as we continue to explore Eorzea and Ethierys and Beyond together. Because the Scions and I are Friends. And We have survived so much together already.

[motheatenscarf]

Going through more of the story content between ARR and Heavensward, just... DESPERATELY trying to get to Heavensward so I can unlock Dark Knight, it's ALL I WANT, but it's making me do a whole lot of primal killing for this being the "Seventh Astral Era."

The good news is that the Scions are starting to have actual personalities in the writing. The bad news is I don't like most of them :T

One I do for sure like tho is Y'shtola now, and not just by default as the only one with an inkling of a personality with any competence about her. She's making very cogent and correct arguments about why the various tribes keep summoning up primals, which.

Read more, cuz this got long, but-

I've avoided mentioning it before now, but yeah, I don't... love how they call the beast tribes "Beast Tribes", I get what they're going for. This is a fantasy setting, these are fantastical magical beings that are designed to look like folkloric creatures that often embody bestial elements, your fish folk, your pixies, your lizard men, what have you. I even get the point they're, I think, going for, about how there basically aren't real gods in this world. So these people's sense of superiority is something the narrative will punish them for, and it's clearly being written from a sympathetic point of view and well meaning, but it's not great that they're the beast tribes and we're civilization, but I get what they're trying to do even if it's just... unfortunate. It's annoying for me but not a dealbreaker, but I can see it being one for someone else, that's my privilege there.

Anyway, other than that, the big red string conspiracy board I'm building is the most engaged I've been with this narrative for want of characters to care about. Everything is just primals summoned up by belief and desperation from frightened people, it's all primals all the way down. The general public opinion hasn't caught up with that in universe yet, but it's clearly been implied by the Moogle raid I had to do (which I got an AMAZING sword from btw, pics later). I don't for one minute believe the twelve gods of Eorzea were ever real, and the fact that an Ascian rolled up to some Ala Mhigans and told them to summon forth Rhagan is proof of that imo.

Speaking of, I STILL don't fucking trust Hydalen. She's just a primal born out of the biggest fucking aether crystal yet, and there's a lot of dualism going on, so I know that she's supposed to be the primal opposite to whatever that Dark Crystal has going on, and I'm pretty sure Ascians are just tempered by the Dark Crystal and that the WoL and anyone with the Echo is tempered by Hydalen.

Which, again, the tempering is horrifying. I feel BAD for the people who get tempered, I don't know why the game keeps trying to make them out to be villains, they are victims who've had their free will stolen and now exist to worship this being. Even when we kill a primal, it's not like we can kill everyone who was tempered by them, of course people are going to keep summoning them up even if they're not having their territory stolen from them.

But anyway, my conspiracy board.

So if the only way for someone not to be tempered is if a god has already laid claim to them, then I'm pretty sure Hydalen called dibs on my character and Minfilia. I don't think any of the rest of the scions have the echo, or if they do, they've been quiet about it. I thought they all did, when Thancred first recruited me he said he also saw the woman buying the food she was accused of stealing (again, hated that story beat, I hope she did steal it), but I guess it's just me and Minfilia. Which at least makes it a little more excusable that they haven't been lifting a goddamn finger to help me kill these primals, I maintain that the Scions just feel like a brunch club with me, Y'shtola, and Alphinaud, who is a CHILD, doing all the work.

But anyway, yeah, even if she doesn't want anything from me, I don't trust Hydalen for a fucking second, I'm 99% sure she tempered my ass to give me this echo. Which is probably born from my frustration with this game's inability to let the PC have a voice or input any kind of opinion or be anything but a mute automaton whose only function is to use the echo to kill primals. Which, again, I don't trust. If the echo made a little fish priest immortal and able to body hop, clearly that's what the Ascians have going on, so maybe the echo isn't even... good, actually. And also makes me worried because I've been really hoping someone will kill Minfilia, and if she has the echo, and the echo makes you immortal, then she's never fucking leaving and I'm in my own personal hell.

[arcenergy]

Would you be willing to share more info about Drax?? Pwease 👉👈

i have an obscenely long lore document but it's out of date at this point because my brainrot runs a mile a minute but drax tldr

ishgardian but got kicked out (his dad sux)

always pretty good with magic but never got the chance to practice

very quiet, emotionally stunted, didnt think much of himself

wandered around gridania from ~16-26. at first it was just random gigs to have some money but he eventually got into the adventuring gig because he crashed a lot of bars/inns/taverns and the usual crowds ended up squeezing his name/occupation out of him. drax at this point is like the vid of the dude reading a book at the tyler the creator concert

at first adventuring gigs were for the money and the people he traveled with were decent enough but he got more of an emotional attachment after dalamud fell and now he was Actually helping people

got considerably better at magic during his travels also started doing suspicious black magic oOOooOOOoooooooo but he's really good at blowing stuff up so its ok :) ! nothing bad happens i prommy

when hydaelyn gives her blessing of light it turns his brown eyes into that dodge ram bright ass yellow highbeams and it's genuinely unnerving for most people when they first see him and drax hated it until he ends up enjoying being hydaelyn's silliest soldier and sees it as physical proof of her blessing

during ARR MSQ he ends up going a little too hard on the magic and its killing him a little bit so he gets the emo white strips of hair

he's like omg no its ok ill stop <3 and then never stops. at all. he gets way overboard into the insane hero complex and obsessed w hydaelyn bc he didnt feel like he had a purpose until God Told Him So so he continually pushes himself and causes considerable injury to himself until it becomes routine years later

ends up becoming a drk after haurchefart dies cuz he feels bad about the homie and wants to take a more proactive role in protecting his friends instead of being a low life dps player. he also gets a little silly during heavensward (killed a LOT of templar knights)

also during heavensward since he lost the blessing for a lil bit the highbeams got turned off and his eyes were brown again n he hated people seeing it bc it was Vulnerable for him but in reality 99% ishgardians had 0 idea he looked any different and were freaked the fuck out by the pope killing, dragon-slaying man running around ishgard covered in blood and gore from WHO knows what and now he has lightbulbs for eyes. No fucking wonder people thought it was the end of days if they looked outside their window and saw THAT guy

also a set of duo as in Two ! warriors of light with my friends oc risu bc what's the point if there's no crazy homoerotic drama

drax is genuinely nice and kindhearted though i dont think that ever went away even as time went on. there's still a big soft spot in his heart for looking out for people as he gains an immense amount of empathy towards others during his travels/especially after the 'protector of Literally Everyone' role gets forced on his shoulders. he cares so much it's practically his downfall because he'd rather cut off his own hand then even risk the possibility of harming someone else with that hand. it doesnt help that he didnt view himself very highly before turning into a "hero" so now his self worth hinges on everyone thinking he's doing a Very Good Job being Hydaelyn's Specialest Guy at all times even though the light has nearly killed him like 30 fucking times at this point

i think he became more mentally unwell after killing hydaelyn and is trying to exist in a world that she left for everyone to do what they want with but drax never had the opportunity to do anything he ever wanted his entire life (and now hydaelyn essentially dictating the rest of his life by slapping her blessing on him) and he's now trying to fill the void by doing random shit until something clicks. stay tuned if this works out for him

ty for asking about him. ill fix the lore doc eventually (i wont)

[pangolinheart]

Well since you’ve given me a chance to ramble about my boy, you got any little quirks or story things that you want to talk about for Rhiki? I saw some drk stuff, so maybe like how does she handle that whole plot?

Whooo boy I would LOVE to talk about the DRK quests. I apologize if this runs long i will try to contain myself. Behind the scenes, I actually started playing the DRK quests at a recommendation from a friend. Towards the end of HW I had maxed out my DRG levels (before the cap was raised to 90) and didn't want to waste msq exp. I had been telling a friend of mine all of my thoughts about the plot and my character, and in her infinite wisdom she said "Oooo you should unlock DRK I think you'd like it." And she was RIGHT.

I know that "canonically" the first set of DRK quests is set before the start of HW, but for Rhiki as a character I have them set in my head as taking place after HW-proper, proceeding and bleeding into the post-patches. The level 30-50 questline really tapped into a lot of things Rhiki had been feeling since the ARR post-patches. Around the time of Moenbryda's death, Rhiki started to get the feeling that her "friends" in the Scions didn't really know her at all. (Specifically, Minfilia has a line that goes something along the lines of "You're so strong. I can always lean on you for support" which, for the way i had imagined Rhiki as a character, was laughably inaccurate.) It felt to Rhiki like everyone, including the other Scions, looked at her and, rather than seeing her as she was, projected their vision of the perfect hero, the hero they needed onto her. It got her wondering: if she wasn't the Warrior of Light would they even like her at all? At the same time, being treated like the solution to all of Eorzea's problems put a lot of pressure on her. People treated her like a hero, but she didn't feel like a hero - she didn't see herself as any stronger, or smarter, or kinder than anybody else. She definitely didn't think she was qualified to weigh in on complex geopolitical issues like the refugee crisis in Ul'dah or international relations with Ishgard. But she didn't want to let people down (and she didn't want them to be disappointed in her) so she just kind of talked herself into a "Fake-It-til-you-Make-it" attitude. But, even though she never acknowledged it, t little bit of resentment started to creep in. Why does she have to be the one who's strong for everyone else's sake? Who is she supposed to lean on when everything goes wrong?

She kind of held it together until Haurchefant died. Haurchefant had been just about her favorite person for a while by that point, and the two of them were close (they were probably in love but neither of them ever said it in so many words). So his death absolutely gutted Rhiki. She let shock (and a shiny, brand new thirst for revenge) carry her through the the chase to Azys Lla and the final confrontation with the Archbishop, but after that, when the battle was already won and there was nothing left to do, she kind of fell apart. She really struggled with grief and regret, but also with anger. Rhiki had never really hated anyone before - she'd disliked people, been annoyed with people, but never truly hated them. But oh boy she hated Zephirin and the Archbishop enough to make up for all the years of hate she'd missed out on. And the hate and anger didn't go away once they were both dead - they lingered in her even aft there was no one left to be angry at. She had never thought she was capable of those kind of violent, ugly feelings, and it scared her.

That was the backdrop when she found Fray's body (in my head, she spent a lot of time holed up in her room, but would sometimes sneak out at night so she could get some fresh air without having to worry about running into anyone she knew, which was when she heard about the trial). At first, she was totally on-board with what "Fray" taught her - at least this way she could channel all of those terrible emotions into something good. But the more time they spent together, and the more disparaging "Fray" became of her desire to help others, the more she started to think that, hey, maybe this person might possibly be a little unhinged. But, everyone's got their stuff, and in-for-a-penny and all that, so she stuck with it. The confrontation at Whitebrim was REALLY good for Rhiki. Somehow, seeing herself as another person who was hurting, made it much easier to treat herself with the same kindness she would treat someone else. While the negative feelings didn't go away after reconciling with Esteem, she learned to recognize and accept them rather than trying to bury them inside herself.

When she first met Sid, she thought he was kind of a tool. (He was.) But he DID remind her of a certain other tall, dark tool-ish friend she had recently failed to protect from being possessed by a dragon, which endeared him to her a little and made her more willing to hear him out. Then she met Rielle and decided she couldn't not help. While trying to find a way to keep Rielle safe, Sid and Rhiki bickered A LOT, about things like the merits of mercy, but also about how he treated Rielle. She definitely tried to keep Rielle's spirits up and treat her with as much warmth and kindness as she could, though neither of them were really qualified to be in charge of a 12-year-old, so how much good it did is debatable. (Also, she was a little worried that Sid might start rubbing off on Rielle, so she kind of tried to temper his influence when she thought he couldn't hear them. "Listen, I know Sid says a lot of stuff about forgiveness being a weakness and the world being terrible, but you've gotta understand he's working through some personal issues and he's projecting.")

Their encounter with the moogles put into words something Rhiki had been thinking about but couldn't find a way to express: that the root of most pain and anger is love. Love for a person, love for a homeland, love for an ideal, love for the person you were or could have been. When something we love is taken from us that love has nowhere to go, and it twists and grows into sorrow and anger. But it's important to keep sight of the love at the center of all of those feelings, so as not to be consumed by them. Being able to hear that sentiment out loud was something Rhiki really benefitted from. (She did feel pretty bad about what happened with Rielle's mom, and got into a bit of a tiff with Sid about it. She knew it was probably what had to happen, and it was Rielle's choice to make, but... "Did you have to behead the woman right in front of her? What is WRONG with you?!You couldn't have waited for us to, like, turn around, or walk twenty feet away or something?!") Anyway this is already super long so I'll cut it off here and not go into the Stormblood quests (though I'm always happy to give my feelings on those too!) As a side note: if you haven't already, I highly recommend reading the Journal entries for the Stormblood DRK quests. They're good stuff. Anyway, thank you for the ask and, if by some miracle you made it to the bottom of this post, I'm sorry for how long it was!

[redfeatherdaemon]

Relax, my love

Fandom: My Hero Academia

Pairings: Todoroki Shouto/Sero Hanta

Rating: General

Wordcount: 580

Read below!

The sun blazed brightly in the cerulean sky, casting its radiant warmth over the vibrant city of Musutafu. Summer was just beginning, and Hanta was not one to waste a chance to sit out in the sun and have fun. The best part was that Hanta and Shouto had just moved into their first home, complete with a backyard and everything. Everyone knows what has to happen when you move into a house.

"Hun?" Hanta called as he walked into the kitchen. "The guests will be arr-...what are you doing?" he asked, pausing when he saw the kitchen in chaos. Very controlled chaos, that is. The kitchen, across every available surface, was food of all kinds.

"This will be the first time people will see us together in a home we own. It has to be perfect." Shouto explained as he finished mixing a sauce and pouring it into a bowl. He had everything one could imagine eating on a hot summer day. Yakitori, Soba, Hiyashi Chuka, Tokoyaki, Okonomiyaki, Taiyaki, Karaage, Mochi, and Harusame. That was just the Japanese cuisine, not including the food that would be put on the grill. The sheer amount of food greatly worried Hanta.

"How…long have you been at this?" he asked. It may seem silly that he didn't know where his fiance was for the past few hours, but he had a valid excuse. He had been outside setting up decorations and preparing for guests to arrive in their super awesome backyard. He made his way into the kitchen as Shouto was making his way to the pantry, supposedly about to prepare something else. Hanta quickly snaked his arm around the other's waist, guiding him away from the pantry. "How long?"

"Since I woke up," Shouto stated, his eyes diverting as Hanta's face contorted into worry. Now he felt guilty for not entering the kitchen until now…and for losing himself to the music he was playing outside.

"Love of my life, moon to my stars, please stop," Hanta said, letting Shouto lean on him as he leaned his head down to place a kiss on his neck.

"This isn't enough, is it?" Shouto asked, looking around.

"It's only our friends," Hanta tightened his embrace around Shouto, reassuring him with a gentle squeeze. "Trust me, Shouto. This is more than enough. Our friends are going to be thrilled with all this amazing food you've prepared."

Shouto's tense expression began to soften as he leaned into Hanta's warmth. "You're right. I should put some away-" Shouto murmured as Hanta rocked them back and forth.

"Sho, relax. This was supposed to be a fun thing to do with our friends." Hanta hummed, moving his hands to Shouto's tense shoulders. "You did wonderful, but I think it's time for you to sit down with a drink and enjoy this wonderful summer day." Shouto didn't look like he was going to move of his own accord. Thus, Hanta did something he usually wouldn't.

He hoisted Shouto up into his arms and started walking to the living room. "Hanta-"

"Worry not. I will take care of everything while you rest." Hanta interrupted as he swiftly and gently placed him on the sofa to rest.

"There is still a lot to do-" Shouto protested.

"I've got this!" Hanta assured, placing a kiss on the other's lips just as the doorbell rang. The two stared at one another for a moment before Hanta shook his head. "Don't you dare."