#all of that after everything in endwalker too

[impossible-rat-babies]

I wanna like. gpose eyrie and zero

[noxtivagus]

i will never shut up about ffxiv huh

[charulein]

OUGH I'm at the convo with Vrtra after you get rid of the tower,,,,, and I'm just,,,,,,

driven mad by loss,,,,,,, like Nidhogg did,,,

[iron-sparrow]

Has your journey been good?Has it been worthwhile?

We will find our way.

feat. @ahollowgrave, @hazelkjt, @this-is-ris & @nolanel-corbeaux

Final Fantasy XIV certainly isn't my first MMO, and I've been alive enough decades to be way too jaded about everything. Yet here I am, crafting these images of my friends (virtual representations of them) and feeling all kinds of ways the entire time.

I met Hazel and began raiding with him back in Shadowbringers. That's actually when I met Nolanel, too; I initiated our friendship when I messaged him privately for Paladin advice. He was the only other Paladin player I knew at the time, and I wanted to become a better raider.

We got along almost instantly.

In Endwalker, Hazel and I ran a second static to clear for Nol and some other friends. This is when we met Ris, who was recommended to us as a DPS by someone in our main static. She grew on us immediately, and I eagerly roped everyone into the RP-GPOSE-tumblr pipeline. Sorry, not sorry.

Come Dawntrail, Ris will be running her own static while Hazel and I go back to our main group, with Nol coming along as a fresh DPS. We've already made plans to reconvene after Savage, though, to get our DSR clear together.

I hope, too, that Pigeon will keep listening to our bullshit. She mentioned once that no matter how many times she watches us prog, she still has no idea what the fuck the mechanics are. Still sticks around though, giving us moral support (and watching us play with cursed objects in Phasmophobia). So there, in those images, is Odette greeting our tired asses after raid and asking us how it all went.

Fuck. It's been a real fun time.

I've really loved getting to know all of you. I really look forward to traumatizing developing our OCs more in Dawntrail together.

(Oh, and a very special thank you to @thefreelanceangel for the beautiful divider. Seriously, she's amazing and super talented.)

[plounce]

rob plounce's ffxiv fic reclist

this will update as i continue to find stuff i enjoy. (it also exists as a page on my desktop blog!)

disclaimer: this is just stuff i’ve read that i’ve enjoyed! i have my own favorite characters and pairings, so my reclist skews heavily towards those. i’m not super into in wolshipping, so there won’t be much of that, sorry! i have not read everything in every pairing and character tag, so don’t take this as a comprehensive guide. these are just things that i liked and think are worth reading.

fics are noted with wordcount, pairing (or as gen), and rating (e = explicit). * means it's been recently added to the list.

spoilers ahoy!

scions

*flight of an anorak (17k+, G) gen - urianger childhood backstory fic with transfem urianger! incredibly well-characterized urianger narration. breaks my heart and brings a smile to my face with every update.

lost and found (8.8k, T). gen, light moenuri - you know how moenbryda’s parents basically adopted urianger after they basically abandoned him? this fic is about that. also urianger autism :)

while eating (2.2k, G) gen - more baby autistic urianger with bastard parents. sob. at least moenbryda’s parents are there.

foster (1k, G) gen - pre-canon, thancred overhears fourchenault and louisoix talking about him.

second impression (4.8k, T) gen - fourchenault is a bit more of a classist bastard than in canon and is a dick to thancred, but gets past it. mostly. thancred does his best.

the stars in their abundance (2.7k, T) gen - pre-canon from the perspective of g'raha’s mom in corvos!

cross (1.1k, G) gen - minfilia and thancred clean up the mess of thancred’s possession.

your song, carried onwards (4.9k, G) gen - thancred’s rescue of alisaie from the WoD in the hvw patches.

a stranger in the woods (4.3k, E) thancred/marcechamp - you know, the guy from tailfeather in heavensward? they hook up. thancred gets taken care of.

dust in your eyes (8.8k, T). background ships include wolchefant, wolcred, and haurchefant/urianger, but is mostly about thancred being a sad bastard who is always too slow, too late, and trying to be his best self but not totally succeeding. and haurchefant being a great guy. good character stuff.

how massive is the spirit in us (2.2k, G) gen - ryne character introspection… makes my heart hurt.

testing the waters (1.8k, G) gen - thancred teaches ryne to swim.

the shimmering light (2k, G) gen, light thanuri - urianger settling into the bookman’s shelves. fun il mheg worldbuilding.

almost crystal, almost ascian (10k, T) gen - minfilia and the exarch meet up a few times over the course of a century. their parallelisms. the horror of being “minfilia.”

off the hook, provisionally (974, G) gen - y'shtola talks to the exarch in the wake of 5.0 about his deception.

among the shelves (5k, G). gen - the twins and ryne hang out and talk about the other scions.

portentous news (842, G) gen - urianger’s first morning on the moon in the middle of endwalker.

adventures in unlikely friendship (23k, T) gen - wol+cred friendship! i really like these. the bozja one is delightful. passively-suicidal bestiessss

void parsley sojourn (4k, T) gen, light thanuri - urianger hotboxes the rising stones. very charming depiction of urianger as a weed nerd. makes me laugh and smile every time i read it!

there is (maybe) an ascian among us (11k, T) gen, minor side pairings - post-endwalker, the scions try to get to the bottom of a conspiracy about thancred, who just wants to grill for gods sake! comedy.

two scions walks into a bar… (26k, T) gen, but eventually thanuri - a series where the author intended to just analyze and write about thancred & urianger’s relationship as gen, but then slid into shipping lmao. covers ARR-early STB with a bit of post-SHB. great character work for both of them!

respite, despite (25k, T) thanuri - urianger pining from pre-5.0 to the close of endwalker… good pining, good urianger misery, good romance. wagh!

erasing all the lines in the sand (30k, E) thanuri - mutual pining, miscommunication, coparenting! bookman’s shelves fic.

(in parantheses) (9.9k, M) thanuri - thancred's rescuing of minfilia, time in the first, and the mental stress that emet-selch gives him due to ascian trauma during shadowbringers. also getting together with urianger.

sleepy-eyed soldier (4.6k, M) thanuri - elidibus puppetting ardbert's body brings thancred’s ptsd over having his body used by lahabrea roaring back to the surface in the form of nightmares and hypervigilance. (mind the CWs)

trouble in paradise (2.3k, E) thanuri - transfem urianger!!!! :D :D :D great kind-of-an-asshole thancred character work. hurting each other but trying to fix it.

sole conundrum (412, G) thanuri - pre-edw garlemald scouting mission. urianger autism :D

three of swords reversed (3.2k, T) thanuri, moenuri - urianger dealing with grief over moenbryda and thancred in the later half of endwalker.

another sunrise (5.8k, T) thanuri - post-edw wanderings - urianger deals with a mystery, sudden solitude, and a crisis of doubt! ends happily.

take root in this barren soil (and grow back stronger) (7.4k, E) thanuri - thancred shares what the training regimen of a sharlayan spy entails, not expecting urianger to react so strongly.

to wander is a dream (46k, M) thanuri - post-edw. i don’t tend to enjoy hanahaki fics but this fic is so so so good. thancred being an emotionally stunted asshole, urianger being the world’s most beautiful martyr (for better or for worse), lots of fae stuff, both of them struggling to not be repressed.

why do we forbear? (9.3k, E) thanuri - modern au fake dating, which would usually not appeal to me but this one’s real cute. (currently unfinished)

*to care for those we love (11k, T) ryne and her parents, thanuri - ryne drags thancred to the bookman’s shelves and does her best to administer first aid in urianger’s absence. each chapter is from one of the trio’s pov - i’m usually not super into 1st person, but this fic uses it really effectively in imparting each character’s mindset. it’s very sweet!

ancients

on call (2.5k, T) hythades - emet-selch goes out of town, and hyth is asked to step in for a soul-seeing duty. and he futzes with emet-selch’s office.

mail run (840, G) hythades - “A young archival intern keeps finding completely legitimate reasons to do all the deliveries to a very specific Bureau of the Architect clerk. For no reason at all.” young love!

as stars to a sky (1.8k, T) hythades - little vignettes about life in the pre-sundered world.

the seat of destruction (13k, M) hythades - canon-divergent au where hythlodaeus is the one to take the seat of emet-selch, and the sundering still happens. my favorite ascian!hyth work.

affective memory (9.3k, T) hythades - pov from the shade of hythlodaeus as he wanders around emet-selch’s reconstructed amaurot.

for good health and opportunity (14k, T) pre-emetexarch - emet-selch visits the crystal exarch numerous times over the course of a century. frenemies!

other characters

“nero tol scaeva did nothing wrong”… (5k, G) gen - a bunch of job npcs try to arrest nero for driving without a license. goes about as well as you might think.

biohazard (1.1k, G) gen - nero hates valens’ ass. not because he has “morals” or anything he just thinks valens is a dogshit project manager.

left in the dust (3.9k, T?) cidnero - ARR nero finds amnesiac marques working in the lichyard. miserable little man.

adrift in memory’s fog (16k, T) cidnero - cid’s frequent bouts of amnesia have led to a patchy memory - enough where he forgets that he and nero were betrothed as teenagers. (trans cid!)

the troubled envoy (1.3k, T) gen - maxima’s diary entries during the stormblood patches, including his thoughts on his weird boss.

the last abandonment (1.9k, M) gen - maxima wanders the ruins of garlemald and reflects on his time in the garlean left. by the same author as above - i really rec all their maxima fics.

this cathedral where your face stains the windows (2k, G) ysayle/igeyrohm - “Someone had to teach Ysayle summoning.” great ysayle heresy stuff + toxic yuri.

this blessed day (80k, M) gen - lucia’s journey from a captured garlean spy to aymeric’s right hand. lucia……

cadavre exquis (6.4k, T) gen - emmanellain helps pack up haurchefant’s things at camp dragonhead ft ishgardian homophobia and an underground queer zine scene.

the lantern jar (19k, T) cirisadu - OH MY GODDDDDDDDDDD. this fic is so good. cirina and sadu growing close. lots of development of steppe spiritual traditions and beliefs.

duet (13k, T) estivrtra - estinien encourages vrtra to live more fully as a dragon. cool dragon stuff.

a view of you (14k, M) estivrtra - estinien gets fatally wounded, and vrtra keeps him alive via a great sacrifice (sadly unfinished, but what’s there is a great read)

veteran advisor (15k, E) vrtra/estinien/gaius - really great gaius character work here where he and allie are on vacation in radz-at-han, and the impact that has on both of them. but also? it's mostly about big!varshahn getting railed. good for him!

this home wrested forth (2.5k, T) gen - sidurgu from DRK quests and alaqa from WHM quests meet up and deal with some gridanian wrongdoing.

a fervent desire (111k+, E) sanson/guydelot - an incredibly in-depth retelling of the BRD quests. great work developing these characters and giving them really in-depth motivations!

and love you shall find (9.8k, E) sanson/guydelot - BRD quests, but what if sanson journals as an accommodation for short-term memory loss?

[bumofthewild]

my really really long rant about endwalker

i'm not kidding this is really long. spoilers ahead of course, like immediately upon entry. sorry i sound so angry the whole time

unfortunately for me and for anyone reading this, endwalker is one of those cases where i like/d so much of what happens that the many weak moments make me more critical of the whole than i would be if it was just wholly bad like stormblood, bc it's a waste of potential. a lot of the time the moments i liked would even be happening simultaneously with the things i find so problematic: cheap storytelling decisions, cheap moments that only serve as fanservice or for shock value that only detract from a characters’ pre-existing complexity, poorly done rehashing of elements from shadowbringers, a lot of hollow pseudo-intellectual arguments, rushed and underdeveloped writing in one instance and then meandering wastes of time immediately after….these issues are so consistent that rather than try to break up endwalker's story based on these things, i will just try to run thru the whole thing chronologically and hope i don't get too repetitive. that's why this isn't an essay with some pretense of structure. i'll do my best.

what's crazy to me is i thought endwalker was going to be my second favourite expansion. this was despite not caring about its original main conflict--i thought fandaniel just wasn't a compelling or even interesting villain. he comes out of nowhere. and he's also asahi so that association is hard to break away from bc i find asahi silly. and he suffers from the same writing issues zenos does, where nearly every cutscene with them did little to develop their characters further from the baseline, only reiterated what i already know bc they literally never say anything else: zenos wants to fight wol, he's bored with everything life could possibly offer, fandaniel will ensure zenos can fight wol through his towers bc he no longer plays to the tune of his unsundered masters... even though what fandaniel was promising to cause were the final days i just didn't really care. in the wake of shadowbringers the final days are like a pretty big deal, but something about reviving a catastrophe i had just finished wrapping up--i thought, naively--made bringing them back seem really thoughtless. i don't really need to see anymore final days...like how much more do i need to understand how bad it was? i mean i think shb did a pretty good job????? of making the final days seem pretty fucking bad. why not come up with something new because this is endwalker and not shadowbringers haha? the only fresh thing about this new uncooler final days was the motivation behind them. fandaniel wanting to bring about the final days bc he wants to die and thinks everything should die with him vs emet-selch's unwillingness to die no matter what bc the final days took everything from him and he needs to bring it all back. still, recontextualising the final days from a past event into a present issue ruins them to me. whatever, i thought, there's no way we're letting the final days happen so what does this matter anyways. there's no way.

so yeah post-shb into ew was starting to lose me plot-wise. not the end of the world (LOL?) though bc the atmosphere in the beginning was so subtle and fresh and rich like dew in the morning that i was willing to look past it. going to old sharlayan i liked a lot. i liked going there not as a more typical homecoming for your friends but to instead uncover the sharlayan forum's cryptic behaviour. this kind of intrigue was what i really wanted after the grandness of shadowbringers and i really do think endwalker gave me that for a while. i liked the opening scene on the ship a lot bc it felt exciting and uncertain and new, especially talking to hydaelyn. i liked how she had become such an unstable variable after originally being the most anchoring presence in the entire game: learning she's a primal, whether she's actually “good” after listening to emet-selch’s explanation of her origins and actions in shb, and the fact that her appeals to her champions have been fewer and fewer… i thought her meeting with you at the very beginning of endwalker was cool and foreboding. i also really liked the emet-selch narration btw, i thought that was a fun choice. who better to guide you into the final stages of your adventure than the person who left you with that final, most important task. i wish this had been the only callback to his character at all. 

so a big part of why i like/d endwalker so much is all that atmosphere. and something i can't really put into words. it just felt cool and cohesive at the start. old sharlayan is one of my favourite locations now; i like that despite its rigidity and (to me farcical but w/e tangent) pursuit of rationality/knowledge, there's the quaint island charm and fresh winter sea and overgrown greenery and forest paths. i liked that the game enhanced the usual hubworld tour chore by having g’raha and krile follow you around to give you more personal anecdotes of the place, really gave it a more lived-in feeling, which really added to both them and the location. i also really liked all this charm and familiarity in tandem with the secret hostility of the place bc of the forum, having to sneak around and so on, sharlayan citizens not really recognising you somehow? but being very aware of a warrior of light threat to their way of life, even if i find that non-intervention way of life silly.

i also really liked labryinthos. it's a really creative place. i liked its uncanny false sky and controlled environment, and yet all the people scrambling about inside. and the music felt kind of magical like i had encountered another fairy area or something idk it all felt very whimsical. thavnair i really liked as well but i feel like my immediate impression of the place was kind of poisoned by the stereotypes, like the huge focus on trade and the first impression being undercutting foreign tourists but then i started to really enjoy the part where you run around with matsya and help him sell fish. i liked the mundanity and slow pace of that exercise bc it felt like a much more involved way of learning about thavnair and its current issues through conversations rather than the fetch quest slog, and this is one of the things i like a lot about the beginning of endwalker. the gameplay really improved i think bc they found more creative ways of having you interact with your surroundings, rather than having the usual running between npcs to fetch things for them or other chores. like rather than doing a string of quests and then being rewarded with development of the story, the gameplay simultaneously develops the story. like turning into frogs i thought was fun, testing nidhana’s aether lamp was fun, etc. it felt like they had better ideas about how to progress the in-between parts.

thavnair quickly started to upset me though bc it started to feel like the only relevance the location had was what they could give you for your military cause, that is, the scales. like alchemy is this place’s big highlight and its just the scales the scales the scales and the tower aughhhhhh!!!!!!! the tower!!!!!!!!!! i wish they had focused on something but i guess this is just to be expected with ffxiv...any interaction with a foreign ("foreign" as far as square enix eorzea is concerned) culture really boils down to how they might bolster your military efforts, the azim steppe for eg. so it felt like my concern for an individual (matsya) and the experience firsthand trying to help him with his day to day; the idea that every single person on earth is important and shouldn't be made to suffer, and helping that single person... was like overshadowed by something more focused on a “greater good", that is, the construction of the scales to defeat the towers to save the world ad infinitum. but if you played endwalker then you would know how this idea of only concerning oneself with a "greater good" and this diluting of the importance of an individual's life for the sake of this idealistic whole causes some problems for a certain someone..................so why didn't the game focus more on these themes? probably because at the end of the day it's a video game by square enix and you need a big boss to fight or something or bc this expansion is insanely unfocused i don't know. i feel like this concept about the importance of the small things that can add up to one life and how that one life is beautiful and important crops up with the significance of weeds despite its importance overall. i don't know if i think this is one of the main underlying themes of endwalker just poorly executed so as to not even be there or if i just wish it was one of its main themes. anyways i'm getting distracted, what i mean to say is thavnair gets dehumanised throughout the entire expansion in the most horrific ways possible so i guess this was just the start

moving on... i liked the part in garlemald a lot, which i didn't expect bc i don't expect this game to handle anything regarding imperialism well. i liked that the garlemald you finally experience, after it being one of your main enemies and this very proud nation, was just this dead quiet and ruined place. the quest where you follow that girl is another eg of how the gameplay was a bit more immersive, i think it helped me feel the loneliness and the danger of the place, that i could be a danger to this girl. that i really had to try if i wanted to help her. what i didn't like was alphinaud's and alisaie’s babying attitude towards the garleans? like ok yeah of course we’re gonna have patience and grace for GARLEMALD meanwhile lyse was losing her head at the ala mhigans whenever they disagreed with her. like sure arguing won't get anywhere but it felt like the twins were reckoning with children sometimes, it was so strange. but i did like that the game didn't shy away from making the garleans just unpleasant to be around at best, and an actual danger to you at worst. it's just better to me to make them harder to reconcile with so that there's no frustrating cheap shots at redemption but rather a good, sobering look at a society that's been totally and willingly misled. and i liked that alisaie's and alphinaud's attempts to help those garlean kids ended so badly, even though i'm not usually a fan of such cruel outcomes. it felt like we were seeing a garlemald not necessarily being punished for its actions more than we were seeing a place built on shitty ideals crumble bc of those ideals. i thought jullus was a good char and helped to carry that idea of disillusionment forward. i didn't care so much about sympathising with what he'd lost, but i did find it interesting how they contrast him with the legatus he's working under, who even while the place is in ruins is still more concerned with war than providing for the people relying on him. i don't think the part in garlemald is perfect by any means, like it doesn't do anything too brave, but ig it was a lot more subtle and complex in its storytelling than i expected. and it wasn't meaninglessly cruel. like i'm glad those shock collars put on the twins were only used to gauge jullus' emotional growth or something like him not wanting to activate them rather than them actually being fucking used which would have just made me close the game and not look back.

from here on is where i struggle to lock in for the rest of the story. starting with when zenos kidnaps you in the midst of the fighting at camp broken glass--i don't think i have ever been more immediately mentally locked out of a story. endwalker is darker than usual, trapping people in fleshy towers, two young girls lying dead on the ice, tentacles erupting out of tempered garlean soldiers... and so on. and while i don't personally like things that are overly dark or cruel, it's not that i think they're bad, just that with moments like that it's a lot better imo that a point is being made or they add something to the story, and that it doesn't feel soullessly random or disrespectful. unfortunately this stops being the case for the rest of the expansion..... like something about the weird eldritch feeling of fandaniel pulling you out of your body and putting you in a random soldier's was throwing me off immensely. it felt like i was playing a different game, like so disconcerting i found it distracting, because why would he not just do this to screw you over more often? i didn't understand them having access to such an unrestrained power. at the same time it was also just too wacky to really take seriously despite the apparent gravity of what was happening. zenos inside of my bunny girl's body??? i don't even understand why they did it? to piss you off?? the duty where you play as the imperial soldier was interesting i guess but i couldn’t understand what the meaning behind being made to struggle through that experience was... like didn't we just spend all that time sympathising with the garleans and wrap that section up already? why do i now need to sympathise with/experience firsthand what its like to be a garlean footsoldier? and it annoyed me because these parts felt emotionally rich, like stumbling across those garleans fighting that machine and trying to do your best to help them; dragging yourself across the ground to get to your friends before something bad happens to them, and running towards them before zenos hurts them while in your body--i thought all of that could've been really poignant if not for the actual situation being so silly?? they could have just kept some of those ideas, wol dragging themselves across the ground for eg--the extent to which they're willing to stop harm from reaching their friends (which reminds me of what vrtra says to you about the importance of protecting your friends the first time you meet him. but that was such a one-off moment that goes nowhere... i just wish ew would pick something, anything, to be a poignant message about love on planet earth if they want nihilism to be the main villain, and just stick to it)--and do something that felt a lot more relevant to the established story thus far? just felt totally pointless

what makes this worse is this ridiculous part is iirc right after fandaniel reveals that the entity tempering all of the garleans is varis reanimated as an ancient oh-so-important primal...?? like here's (what i thought was going to be) an actually important point in the story being sidelined for a moment that just goes absolutely nowhere. they certainly made it seem important for a moment, and i think this would've rounded off what was being said about garlemald well; the garleans are so taken in by the farce of their homeland that they think varis is calling them to reclaim their country over the radio, but all along what's actually causing their nation to fall apart is this monstrous version of their late emperor. the irony would've been interesting but they just do nothing with it... (i think desecrating a dead person's corpse by turning it into a monster is really weird btw, even weirder that they do it for no reason. whatever ew is weird.) i thought, considering that this plotline was being established from before endwalker started, that anima was going to take some time. not so. ffxiv would rather have you and zenos enact tropes from a disney channel movie. you merk that guy at the end of the tower of babil and from then on every important plot point the expansion could possibly have moves at fucking mach 567472838758745745

because why all of a sudden are you getting beamed up to the moon? and fighting ZODIARK? i was so confused when asahi i mean fandaniel was punching shit into that fuckgin allagan computer like fandaniel what the fuck are you talking about... i couldn't process anything that happened here. like i'll willingly put aside boring practicalities like why anyone can breathe on the moon, but not so much how fast this all happened and how out of nowhere--is this the reason fandaniel is also amon btw? so that he can use their allagan computers to do this? bc i honestly can’t find any other reason why him being amon is relevant when they revealed that in the tower of zot...like i dont get why that's important

and it doesn't get better after this is the sad thing to me. it doesn't pick itself back up. it is just extremely unfocused right until the endwalker. i was willing to move past getting rid of zodiark so quickly because it's not that i hold standard storytelling rules so dearly in my heart that i need the biggest final boss of the entire series to get a bit more gravitas. it actually ended up being a pretty interesting decision--dispatching the largest villain at the heart of the game being the catalyst for the biggest catastrophe you've ever heard of. like i like that wol gets played. but the entire mare lamentorum section that follows is disrespectful. this expansion suffers from some extreme tonal dissonance, bc how does wol learn that the final days are now upon them and then proceed to spend their time leisurely touring the moon rabbit facility to tell them that the clothes they’ve made for humans to wear isn’t fashionable? why on god's green earth does that matter at this current juncture? this part is one of the worst story-writing sinkholes in the expansion to me, bc why are the discrepancies between what the loporrits know of humanity vs what humanity is actually like something the story chooses to grapple with? we're building an ark to save humanity, and instead of approaching this in a contemplative or emotional way, the point of conflict they choose is logistics? in the expansion about nihilism? at best this conflict was overly realistic..... mostly it's just boring, and at worst the FINAL DAYS are now upon us, so why am i taste-testing carrots? how could the sharlayans, the most focused group of people on the entire planet, have been collaborating with the loporrits for decades and not even have one of the most basic aspects of staying alive squared away? i’m supposed to not only believe that nobody knew after all that time the lopporits think people only eat carrots, but also waste time on fixing this? whyyyyy would they even devote any time to this at all when there are so many more complicated and interesting ideas that they let flounder bc they rush through them at breakneck pace constantly? we just fucking killed zodiark! is this why they stick urianger up there to do all the fixing actually? to save time offscreen? maybe that's why they chose this asinine chunk of the story to start processing his character? though why they would choose to add more to a plate they can barely balance i don't know. i don’t even feel like getting into what they did with urianger bc it will just piss me off. i think only my love for rabbits and how i will never ever not find urianger precious were stopping me from putting a hex on square enix

the following section of the story is easily the worst part to me in the entire game. like i would rather replay stormblood multiple times in a row than ever sit through the final days coming to thavnair ever again. i've already said bringing back the final days would just be bad; a disservice to the time spent on it in shadowbringers. what more is there to say on that front? nothing. and the way ew utilises the final days tells me that the answer is nothing. it just wanted to unleash the violence of that event on the non-white area and spends an insane amount of time doing it. i can think of no other time in this game where there is so much wanton death and destruction for no useful storytelling reason other than to relish in the cheap shock of witnessing violence, violence they are unwilling to inflict on its white areas, because even in garlemald you only see the aftermath of what happens rather than being in the midst of it. it was actually making me feel fatigued. it was just so much of the same thing over and over with no real meaning to any of it. and that's not to say that meaning justifies suffering, but this is a game.....with a story... first and foremost? there needs to be some kind of reason to move the story forward? but nothing new or inspired is being said, just "the final days are really bad"

i’m actually not even sure where to begin so i’ll start with a glaring issue: i hate that people turn into abominations. people “randomly” turning into monsters just feels too unwieldy--how could there be any sense whatsoever that that situation is controllable? even learning that it's caused by feelings of despair is shit because emotions are so vague, how could there be any worthwhile attempt to control your emotions, let alone while watching your loved ones turn into/be eaten by monsters? this entire part felt so wildly out of hand/unpredictable to me that every single moment onward that wasn't more or less focused on maintaining this extremealy volatile situation felt like an unforgivable lack of priorities. it was extremely distracting to have it hovering over everything; everything else felt absolutely inconsequential in comparison. bc what the fuck do you mean people are randomly turning into monsters?? also the stakes were already really high just knowing the final days were coming, so raising them that much higher felt unnecessary to the point of it being hard to believe. and then bc you know there's no way any character important to wol is going to turn into a monster, subjecting commonfolk npcs to this just feels absurdly cruel, and also just made it obvious how much of a cheap scare it all was, bc it can't have any real narrative importance as a result of only happening to random npcs. it was all so blatantly fake-deep. there was no meaning behind them originally being people except for the useless horror of it--the scions still referred to them as monsters to be put down rather than as the people they used to be, just like any other monster in this game. dynamis was more of a retroactive explanation for why people turned into monsters, rather than people turning into monsters bolstering any understanding of dynamis. in shb the sin eaters had some method to them that made them more believable. you fight them throughout the story rather than them just being dropped on you midway through, they helped provide a picture of what kind of world the first was, they were emotional diving boards for characters like alisaie to develop personal goals and so on and so forth... the horror of the sin eaters had a narrative purpose. in endwalker it feels like they didn’t know what to do but wanted to replicate parts of shadowbringers, but didn't know why those parts worked so well bc they're too obsessed with trying to shock their audience. this part just sucked beyond description.

and it just continues to get worse. how can you be the one writing the parametres of a situation and you create something that's literally unmanageable, so that when its only manageable bc you need it to be, it's just so obviously shit writing? my sister described endwalker's writing as really contrived, like when they need something to happen (and that thing is often a really bad idea) they just shove it in there at the cost of keeping their characters in character, or having their story threads--both the interesting ones and the stupid ones--fall totally flat. she says they shortcut the writing. and it's true. for eg, the characters literally don't feel like themselves at times, or get utilised in really moronic ways. like when wol just watches the satrap die, another cheap scare btw he literally gets grabbed an eaten in a way my sis (i was ranting to her a lot about this game ok) described as straight from attack on titan. just gets grabbed and eaten. and this happens to him for such asinine reasons: 1. so that this random asf plot point of vrtra revealing himself as the true satrap can bear fruit. for some fucking reason. i struggle to understand why this is important at all but i guess it's yet another little sideplot that ew just can't seem to resist adding to its already towering plate at the plot buffet, like whatever is going on with urianger and moenbryda's parents/the loporrits, or zenos who now spends most of his time offscreen, or the twins and their father, etc, bc ew likes to waste time 2. so that g'raha (???????????????????????) out of fucking nowhere can have a big boy moment and direct the scions and the people of thavnair in their time of need. what on earth was that scene supposed to be? fanservice? a reminder that g'raha was a leader back in the first? which blows my mind bc mere moments before he had a scene i really enjoyed despite the circumstances, where after a man witnesses his son get turned into a beast and then stepped on by another beast because endwalker is literally jacking itself off to suffering and expects me to be doing the same... g’raha goes up to this man and stops him from panicking and turning into a monster himself. while i don't think any of this should be happening, i thought it was a nice take on his character to have a more sensitive moment in such a harrowing situation. i don't know, have a character demonstrate some emotional skills instead of the usual fighting ones. ofc all of this i thought mere moments before disaster. why was any of this necessary? literally why not just have the satrap, i don't know, take charge of his country when he's needed most, even if he's only been a figurehead the whole time? why let him go out so horribly when he obvious loves his people with his whole heart just so that vrtra can step in without any sort of conflict? i don't understand the focus on vrtra at all

and it actually just keeps getting worse.. the following part where you have to find matsya's friends at palaka's stand was awful. the friends have a newborn baby, so it's obvious that only that baby is surviving bc ew is convinced you don't know how harsh the world is yet. that must be why this part is so long? i'm repeating myself but so many other things that shouldn't be rushed get rushed, only for ew to devote a lot of time to sections like this where nothing changes or develops except for compounding how bad it all feels. i think it was at this point actually, that i realised endwalker actually had some underlying point it was trying to make. it would've been impossible not to realise bc of how heavy-handed it is. i'm not even going to try and paraphrase bc it was so random the way it was introduced i thought i had missed some lines of dialogue or something when it happened:

the suddenness of this felt like when a writer forsakes trying to show what a story is about and instead opts to speak to their audience directly through poorly disguised self-inserts. like i know things are bad right now guys, but the preaching tone of this is jarring. like maybe if you spent some time trying to develop your themes you wouldn't have to be doing this endwalker. i know you need your final villain to literally parrot these ideas for the rest of the game, but if this was supposed to be such a core point of the story why wait all the way until now to just beat me over the head with it? was watching a child be crushed underfoot supposed to make elderly man of palaka using the phrase "at journey's end" seem profound?

anyways then you go and try to save matsya’s friend (the mother bc the father has now died, of course). this leads us to another forced decision that doesn’t make any sense: alisaie and alphinaud fail to kill a single abomination--just the one solitary abomination that was stalking the poor woman--so that we can see it fling her into the water and her corpse dangling on the surface. in what fucking world do alisaie and alphinaud, who have single-handedly dispatched numerous abominations prior to reaching this point, fail to kill just one of them between the two of them in a way reminiscent of a cartoon, one being knocked into the other and them both falling over? how is that fucking possible? and then to somehow make things worse, because that's still possible, despite the fact that wol spends this entire segment in palaka’s stand being told by alisaie and alphinaud not to leave matsya alone because he can’t fend for himself, the twins suggest sending him back on his own to deliver the baby to palaka's stand? why??????????????????????????????

this is what i mean when i say the characters get used in the most bullshit ways for the most bullshit reasons. it's like the game needs as much suffering as possible to happen so that it can make a worthwhile point on this later on (spoiler: it doesn't) so it pulls shit like this. why would the twins, who we just watched try to spoonfeed the garleans cereleum straight from the tank, leave matsya on his own if not solely bc the story needs the doomerism of the Resolute Citizen to ring true? and this is also what i mean when i say the scions try to manage a disaster that is just not manageable, bc they for some reason believe that bc they've taken care of the abominations they saw in the area, that means the area is safe enough for matsya to go back on his own? like are we just suddenly pretending the nature of these creatures doesn't imply that anyone can turn into one at any moment? everyone is ALWAYS in danger? we're just going to mill around while matsya weathers the most potent fear of his life running back to the village on his own, with the baby of his friends who just died moments before, while we all know that extremely negative emotions cause people to turn into the monsters? why are we doing this after we just went to so much trouble keeping people safe (or failing to, really)? forget turning into monsters for a sec, why are we even letting him experience such painful emotions at all? anyways the fucking baby starts turning into a monster because this is endwalker.. but i will say that matsya running and chanting that little piece up there about how life is suffering to try and convince me it's true calm himself down was one of the cutscenes i liked the most from this entire part, maybe endwalker in general. it was another one of those emotionally poignant and well-executed moments that just suffers from how much i wish it was happening under totally different circumstances. i don't even remember why one of us doesn’t go with him, like i don't remember what we were busy doing bc it was that unimportant--no wait, i remember! we were waiting for matsya to reach the total end of his rope so that when all things seem lost, when those monsters obviously show up on his path back to the village out of nowhere like they've been doing the past painstaking quest after quest of this entire part, estinien and vrtra can get this really cool moment of jumping into save him! it all makes so much sense now. i've never seen estinien do anything really cool before like diving down from the sky with his lance, so i understand how this was a really important moment that the game needed to make happen. also how vrtra really needs to prove to the people he can be a good satrap bc ahewann just died and all. yeah, i totally get it. perfect. just great. 

what is the message behind despair turning you into a monster? we're about to get into it with meteion and try to convince her she's wrong--come out championing the idea that suffering is just one of the many aspects of life we need to accept, and yet we're going to preface that with a part where to feel despair is bad? you get punished if you do it? honestly?

whatever. elpis...we go here because we need to learn about the elpis flower. i'm thinking we're definitely just going to ask the watcher, right? like the guy on the moon who told us the name of the flower in the first place? and time is of the fucking essence here, so surely we just go back to the watcher and ask him what we need to know and come back? wrong. we're going back to the first. to talk to elidibus. i thought we killed elidibus? does nobody truly die in this game except for my favourite character? so wol gets sent back to the first, and there's this upbeat tonally dissonant little section where you catch up with some old friends like beq lugg and those kids you helped back in shb bc now is just the perfect time for pleasantries and remembering how good shadowbringers was. ew trying to relive shadowbringers was already something i was feeling out in thavnair fighting leagues of "terminus" creatures and not "forgiven" ones, and watching the carefully constructed horror and gravity of the final days get reduced to an average apocalyptic shitshow. so i can't say i appreciated this part. also people are indiscriminately turning into monsters. i can't help but have that hang over everything constantly until the end of the expansion.

anyways we go to the crystal tower and drag out elidibus even though i personally prefer when characters have their final moments and are properly laid to rest. like i hate to not only beat a dead horse but also reanimate said horse and then drag its corpse around. well fuck what i want. so elidibus willingly does this favour for us i guess and sends us to the past somehow with some useless warnings about how we won't be able to interact with our surroundings or change the past. i say useless because the former is just untrue, i'm not sure why he bothered to say it. the moment we step foot on elpis you get a nice gift of aether from emet-selch that renders you tangible and now you can proceed to live love laugh with him and hythlodaeus on elpis even though people are indiscriminately dying back home. and the latter warning, well. i don't know, that just seemed obvious. i'm kind of just a hater.

time to be positive again for a short moment, if you can believe it? emet-selch is one of my favourite characters. i enjoyed this new light cast on him...for a short while. i like his relationship with hythlodaeus and i really like hythlodaeus; i’m really fond of the faceless simulacrum version of him you meet in shb and i'm really fond of him now. learning about the unsundered world in person rather than through hearsay was interesting, and although i can't lie and say i don't think this all kind of felt like a huge tangent despite the important aspects of the plot that come out of it, i still like it. i guess it feels this way because a lot of big plot points have already been established, like the ark on the moon and the sharlayans' involvement and the final days, so this was all kind of too big to me to be coming this late into the story. it doesn't feel all that relevant to prior parts of the expansion either except for hermes, who has been poorly developed throughout, so okay, i get it. it's time to give one of the main villains some depth (i want you to guess if this is successful or not). hermes has a lot of qualities i really like. has a child, secretly nurturing a potent sadness, thinks differently from the world around him because at his core he’s too deeply empathetic…. even though i was still largely aware of the insanity happening back at home which i'm going to keep repeating, i still enjoyed elpis At The Start. the exposition of this part was easily better than its resolution. it was taking the time to develop hermes’ character so that you could see if the game was written well anyhow how he became the fandaniel of the present. i really liked his relationship with meteion too. it's getting hard to talk about what i like without simultaneously talking about what i don't like so i'm going back to criticising now, positivity over, sorry....

personally, i’d have been totally fine without any more development to emet-selch’s character. i think it was nice to see a fresh perspective on him and all, really rounds out who he is from what you know and what he talks about in shadowbringers. and i actually like a lot of the things he said throughout, not all of it, but a good amount of it was fun and sorely needed whenever hermes was being annoying, which was often. but there was a lot of times wehere i thought, i don't really need to be hanging out with emet-selch right now? i don't need my wol and emet-selch to be friends? considering who he is....? .............and what's going on back home? how many more moments showing how endearingly prickly he is do i need to see? like sure, i can enjoy this emet-selch fest in isolation of what's going on because me love emet-selch like it's not like i think these moments are bad or anything but i don't know, don't we have other things to be doing? i'm not diametrically opposed to fanservice, i like when things are kept fresh and lighthearted. but. well you know by now. about the people turning into monsters. i guess i just both enjoyed this part and wished it happened under different circumstances or in a different way or something, or maybe not at all, bc as things progress his character just gets more and more diluted.

i actually really liked meteion. i will say i’m really tired of non-human, overly childish girl children creature characters who become villains, because i think there's this concept where…idk how to say it? i wish i could find something that talks about this more... it's like the dehumanisation involved when non-binary characters or non-white characters are often not human (not that these things are done in the same way). but i feel like women or females ig are often the ones chosen to be non-human in this particular way...? like, when emotional labour is involved. or when it needs to be some taboo evil entity. it's like a guy and his part-animal female second lead or part-alien love interest or female-voiced ai system or android or abandoned girl he finds/rescues. it's kind of like the born sexy yesterday trope but without the blatant sexuality (i don't want to go on a tangent). quite often this weird quirky alien and playful girl child is a harbinger of destruction. take drakengard, for example, or fire emblem engage, or cc from code geass iirc, or veronica from fire emblem heroes.. there's apparently something about childishness and girlishness and innocence and corrupting that innocence or being fooled by that innocence that seems to incite fear of the unknown enough in people for villainous children to be a trope in general regardless of gender, but it was just something i was thinking about in regards to meteion's character, especially when she becomes evil. and this blurry line between her as a "being" with a consciousness and free well as GIVEN to her by hermes, and her as a "tool" to be used by him as well, doesn't really get addressed in any meaningful way at all. like sure, she doesn't need to eat but she can still enjoy candy apples and flowers, and can empathise bc often of her own volition she wants to cheer hermes up, but actually her ability to empathise is programmed; so let's send send her, this highly empathetic being (with consciousness and free will and tastes and personality) into the cold expanse of space for as long as it takes for hermes to find his answer, that's totally fine. why did he make it a girl? why couldn't they address the fact that the loneliest bastard in this entire game made himself a child? like i'm not saying there needs to be clear-cut definitions on what meteion is or why she or hermes take certain actions, but it feels like a lot of things regarding their characters are really complex and implied to be really deep, and then just don't go anywhere or are completely ignored or unexplained? and because these things are so present yet passed over, it leaves me genuinely confused about most of what happens on elpis and how these two specifically reach any of the conclusions they do once things start going south

like i thought what she and hermes were going to add to the story was going to be a lot more interesting and complex than what it turned out to be.....a banal mantra on the "mercy" of nihilism. i can barely reconcile what bothers hermes in the first place with what meteion concludes from her sisters' expeditions, like they almost feel irrelevant to each other. he's upset over man's lording over who deserves to live and the callousness of making and unmaking life. he feels sadder about the coming death of his friend than the average ancient, and doesn't want to accept meaningless platitudes about dying for the good of the star. ok, i agree with that. so he wants to know what meaning there is to life, if it can be so easily judged and discarded...? okay. so his answer is to....secretly create creatures without any of the rigourous testing they usually go through to prevent them from being dangerous, and then send them on a potentially dangerous and traumatising mission to answer his vague philosophical questions? like.......? so when she reports back traumatised and tells him every single society out there is suffering (which i just find so unbelievable btw), then the answer to his question must be that suffering is the meaning of life--which she figures bc she's an entelechy so i imagine she's highly susceptible to her emotional surroundings, and because his pseudo-intellectual question is so poorly framed (something only emet-selch points out in a throwaway line btw). and this alone spurs him on to allowing meteion to unmake their entire society in the most violent way conceivable? you literally tell him that the final days are coming as a result of his actions, but he's fine with it because he'd rather that than enact some policy changes at his workplace, or talking to someone? everyone seemed to listen and respect his decision when he suggested helping that creature learn to fly instead of just killing it, i'm sure he could've talked it out? isn't he in charge of the place? this entire section was so hard for me to follow bc i kept thinking something more complex was making everyone behave the way they were, when it was actually just totally senseless.

as an aside, i hate how they chose to make the way meteion reports information so cooly technological btw, it felt not only anachronistic but corny. i’m sure there's a better way to have her impartially report things without making her sound like she's reporting weather conditions on some distant planet in star trek. anyways, when you frantically search for meteion after she receives her transmission was another part that took up a lot of time for no reason. it just made everything feel so dire when i could barely understand why any of what was going on was such a big deal. and i’ll never be one to say that any bureau of anything should “detain” anyone, but why hermes was so frantic to prevent meteion from being brought to the convocation i just don't know. like he goes on the run with her so that he can hear the end of her report? is that really it? i just find it hypocritical that he doesn't want her to be sent to the convocation where they'll limit her free will or fucking whatever but he's totally fine with ordering the meteia into space? why am i being made to guess what the convocation is going to do to meteion when hermes is making it seem like such a big deal?? what fucking sense does that make? what on earth was he afraid of? their judgment? the convocation members deciding whether meteion is good for the star or not? could they not have just reasoned this out? aren’t they a "highly advanced" and "reasonable" society? like okay he sees through the veil of his utopian home but i just did not get a sense of how much it was bothering him at all, like i cannot stress enough how him going turbo feels like an insane jump from what his problems seemingly were. why did nobody stop to think this through or communicate to each other? is it because of the bullshit time paradox this game has trapped us in so that nothing we do will amount to anything anyways so we might as well make the most confused villain of all time be responsible for the biggest event in this game's history?

but it annoys me because meteion and hermes felt like such a waste of potential, maybe the biggest waste to me in the entire expansion. i was really intrigued by their wholesome relationship at the start, knowing that hermes was a main villain. and that he can't find connection or meaning in an otherwise "perfect" society, so he has to create it for himself and try to find it elsewhere, as far as the reaches of outer space... he wants to make what's hurting him stop hurting him. i like that he approaches such human desires with meteion despite her non-humanness, and that she can return those feelings to him. he wants to signify meteion’s return with a flower because they both like flowers… like those things we can’t put into words but share with others, moments, emotions, connections……..but nope. nihilism beam. it feels like the worst sort of retroactive writing ever. they didn't even think too hard about dynamis--this hugely important thing, except nobody has ever heard of it, aside from nidhana back at home? while members of the highest office in the most advanced society earth has ever had are left squinting.

and the entire section after you fight hermes just pissed me off. we kicked his ass so that we could stop him from inciting meteion any further, and yet we just let him hear her out anyways? he's yelling at you during the entire dungeon that he just wants the time to hear her out, we're chasing after him so that we can stop him from doing that, and then we just let him hear her out anyways? and then even when we do that she doesn’t even say anything different? she just goes right back to reporting on different worlds and how self-destructive they are and That's All She Really Proceeds To Say For The Rest Of The Expansion But Fucking Who Cares Anymore. so we let her repeat herself. this sends her into a spiral, because she's an entelechy who just got hit by a high frequency nihilism beam, but subjecting her to all that despair is only ever addressed by one of the scions in a throwaway line near the very end of the story in ultima thule... and then hermes...captures venat, emet-selch and hythlodaeus??? he captures two of the strongest characters in the game? did we not just kick hermes’ ass??? what is going on?

emet-selch: that's bullshit, and you know it's bullshit

hermes: *says more bullshit*

i really think hermes might be one of the worst villains in the game. it's a shame bc i think he's such an interesting character. i'm not sure why he started behaving like such an incel when he was right to be troubled by the things he was? why did they even bother have wol relate to him over experiencing sadness from loss if that just went totally nowhere? why does he behave so hypocritically? being saddened by loss leads to him setting the stage for the final days? him hating man's jurisdiction over other lives leads to him wiping emet-selch's and hythlodaeus' memories, and subjecting the entire planet to the worst test ever? he's not even morally grey or anything! just annoying! i saw someone say that it's even worse that he wants the ancients to prove that their life is meaningful to them, bc it's true, they do??? like isn't that what venat interrupts them from doing in the answers cutscene, calling back for that lost life? isn't that what you learn in shadowbringers? didn't an entire half of their population sacrifice themselves so that the other half could live? what the fuck else did they need to prove?

this part was pissing me off even more because i never even wanted hythlodaeus or emet-selch to learn about where wol came from or about the final days coming in the first place. i thought that was an awful writing decision. telling them just felt weirdly cruel to me considering elidibus explicitly told you there was nothing you could do to change it. maybe this is just my opinion, but why would anybody want to know that their planet is going to go up in flames and there is nothing they can do to stop it? telling venat i was like sure, she becomes hydaeyln so this makes a little more sense to me, but the other two…….? this is around when i was getting tired of the emet-selch cameo, because i don't really care to know what he thinks of his future self? i couldn't really understand what the point of any of that was? so it annoyed me even further that it amounts to nothing anyways when they get their minds conveniently erased. it felt like a fucking joke. why did we revive these characters, develop them, and then just treat them like tools...? like now that we're done using their powers and creation magicks--i thought, naively--we just toss them aside? like ohhhhh noooooo now they won't remember all the fun we had on elpis this is so sad......but at least before he got his memories wiped emet-selch, even though he definitely totally doesn't believe a fucking word i say, renews his shb vows to wol and leaves the future in my hands again? yeah, i totally wanted to hear him say that a second time. forget how deeply affecting and important a moment that was at the end of shadowbringers. i really needed to see him do that one more time in this shittier, more contrived context. that's really what i needed from endwalker. also i've been on reddit reading what people have to say about endwalker out of curiosity (ppl make a lot of good points that i haven't) and someone pointed out that moments before all this happens venat literally pulls memories from the aether around you so that we can watch hermes send the meteia to space. what on earth is stopping anyone from doing that for hermes, hythlodaeus, and emet-selch? but whatever, i already know the writing doesn't care how silly it is anymore. two of the strongest ancients get bound by a weakened hermes, only break out after the story conveniently needed meteion to start flying into space, and then venats lets her escape somehow even though doing so essentially dooms their entire planet. ok

so we’re back home and we have to go immediately help the thavnarians who are being punished for not being white again. the sharlayans were going to bring them to the teleporter to the moon in garlemald to start getting them on the moon, but oops, the final days have come to garlemald, so now we can't use the teleporter, so if you're thavnarian your life sucks. who saw that coming? absolute waste of time. so then we have to get rid of more beasts because we need to waste even more time doing something we already spent an agonising amount of time doing in thavnair. and then immediately after this we need to......wrap up yet another asinine plot thread endwalker is so obssesed with adding to it's already convoluted story: fourchenault excommunicating his children...? it seemed really important when he did this in post-shb, but materially nothing for alphinaud or alisaie really changed, everyone still gets into sharlayan no problem. ultimately i just didn’t really know why they chose to pursue this mini-plot at all because how many more pushes does alphinaud (i'm saying alphinaud bc he does not share that spotlight with alisaie lmfao) need to become resolute in his goals? he already does this throughout the series? they ruined arenvald's legs in post-shb so that alphinaud could become more resolute in his goals, why keep dedicating time to this? just keep juggling endwalker, just keep juggling. anyways we’re in garlemald, we calm the final days for now, zenos shows up out of nowhere to remind us he’s still in the game. and to be fair to him that was one of the most interesting cutscenes he’s had the whole time, and, get this--they have him randomly answer hermes' question? about the meaning of life? while talking to jullus? like jullus gets mad at him for not giving a fuck about causing what happened to garlemald, and zenos responds by saying: "ask any creature of this star and those above for answers, and they will tell you what suits their fancy. and they would be right to do so. what meaning there is to be found in the petty vicissitudes of your existence must be gleaned by you and you alone." like......? he just provides the answer right there in a conversation with jullus? did this expansion have any interest at all in putting any of its different parts in conversation with each other, or are we supposed to just try and build a good story like a puzzle, where the pieces, albeit interesting, don't actually fit together? weren't zenos and fandaniel working together at the beginning of the expansion? he should have just posed this question to zenos because the answer was apparently right fucking there, with the flattest character in the entire game, this whole time? whatever, i still liked this scene. alisaie putting a curse on zenos was very cool of her. so we're back in garlemald and....….tonal dissonance! puddingway shows up. cute scene where g’raha’s ears perk up also bc he's the one who hears the loporrits coming. just in case you forgot about g’raha, which is an oxymoron. and then maybe the second worst segment of endwalker...........we go back to labryinthos. 

now i love labryinthos. i thought it was interesting we only collected one aetheryte the first time we were there, and i was hoping the place would be as intriguing to me as it first was when we got back. admittedly learning that the sharlayans' secrecy only amounted to contributing to the moon project was kind of a let down, but i thought maybe there was still more to it. i mean, an ark to the moon? the abandonment of one's home planet? it's not like the ideas aren't there. let's go back to elpis for a second. one of the moments that really stood out to me during that part was a throwaway line that emet-selch says to wol after hermes starts freaking it:

he's right. i don't think hermes found society so truly beyond help that he couldn't turn to any one of his peers for help before devising such a reckless plan. but i'm not trying to rehash my issues with hermes, more that i think an interesting parallel could have been made, possibly, with the ark flying to the moon as currenlty the most viable solution to the final days problem? challenging this notion of just throwing it all away as a last resort? especially because it's so obvious to me that by the end of this expansion nobody is actually going into space to start a new life out there; trying to sort out living accomodations and acquaint the lopporits properly with earth is just a waste of time. so why not pose the underlying question of the entire expansion, about what makes life meaningful, to the last bastion of hope in the entire universe--the sole planet amongst millions of dead stars that still believes in itself? would it not just be free real estate to try and connect this story's multiple parts together by ...connecting this story's multiple parts together? the scions say repeatedly how much they'd prefer to protect their planet rather than leave it, and everyone on earth vouches for you because they don't want to leave, either. could they not have made a connection in some way between that ark and the meteia's voyage to outer space? could the writing not have turned around and asked the actual inhabtants of the planet of that we've helped and saved and laughed with and broken bread with or whatever the fuck what they think about the meaning of life, now that they have to leave that life behind? i guess fucking not??? i guess endwalker would rather only highlight civilians when they're being turned into abominations to drive home the same points about life = suffering constantly, and not the points about how despite the suffering life needs to be lived? because they don't actually seem to care about challenging meteion's nihilism when that can just be lazily solved by beating her up at the end. hermes could have been learning to love the world he was on, the smaller things that make it beautiful. because that's what he does, he creates this creature that is built to understand him, and it does and it shares these small joys with him. but nope, time to waste time doing fetch quests in labryinthos. find every single researcher who is obviously losing their mind with stress in labryinthos and give them their government-assigned lopporit while this hectic music with only one minute's worth of loop value plays in the background. go and deliver these papers with alisaie and alphinaud bc if you do a former friend of their father’s will tell them that their father actually loves them duh that’s why he disrespects them publicly every chance he gets. go follow one of the lopporits around while they sample fruits so that they can learn to make food other than carrots. go and watch urianger reconcile with moenbryda's parents even though she died all the way back in a realm reborn. fuck you. also everyone is still just a bad day away from turning into an abomination. just in case you forgot.

that shit where asahi shows up to take fandaniel away for the final time might be top three most bizarre scenes in all of final fantasy fourteen btw. i almost didn't want to mention it, but i need it on record how silly i thought that was. we are in the final stages of this expansion and it still can't stop wasting time. did we see ardbert's thoughts on elidibus using his body? no. but asahi was who they chose to get upset about this? ok.

i liked the trial against mother. you might have noticed i've had very little to say on venat this whole time. that might just have to be its own post or something if nobody is sick of me by now. but anything to do with working together with your friends to overcome a trial is good.

that's what i liked about ultima thule. at the same time, this is where the game finally just loses me forever. i think, somehow, even despite all the things i didn't like, the way the story is told i still enjoyed, even if what it was saying was often. bad. there's still a lot of moments i really liked despite it all. but after ultima thule i was just done. we get on the ark. great. i like that things don't go as planned because meteion intercepts our ship. but now meteion is finally here, which means it's finally time for me to reckon with the pseudo-intellectual nihilism she's been touting every chance she gets. it's hard for me to suspend my disbelief that every single society out in space wanted oblivion, but if that's what endwalker wants me to believe for the sake of its story making sense (oxymoron) then fine. ok. but that's all that's ever said. "life is suffering" "life is suffering" "the final days are really bad"

just the same pseudo-intellectual browbeating about how living just leads to constant strife and the most beautiful thing to do is to just end it all for everyone ever again. like sure, empath hears death cry repeatedly--i can see how meteion could change so permanently. i think that's fine. i doubt that's why she's so repetitive. i genuinely just 't think there's nothing anyone really had to say on this. and the thing is, we've heard this argument before? the idea that humanity is imperfect so they don't deserve to live? it will all amount to nothing, so why let it continue to exist? these are major points of conflict from shadowbringers because it's what emet-selch was always saying. the difference is that emet-selch is just an easily more interesting and fleshed out character whose arguments are largely more complicated, even if they're just as morally wrong. like it's extremely easy for me to answer whatever meteion is saying with a resounding no. and while i feel that emet-selch can also be easily disagreed with on what he believes, bc i do disagree--he at least introduces ideas that complicate the story and his own character. he challenges the scions on their hatred of primals--their god is a primal. he offers visions of a world where nobody has to struggle ever again, where strife doesn't exist, and so on and so forth. while that doesn’t justify his actions, nor do i think they should, i think he at least gives the characters something to think about. he throws their own actions back at them. why would the scions not want a world without suffering? when emet-selch asks alphinaud if he believes half of the sundered world would give up half of their number to save the other half, alphinaud is unable to answer because he knows that the answer is no. i don't think humanity should be tested, let alone with such an insane standard, but i at least think that the questions being asked in shadowbringers were interesting. there's a point to them. with meteion, all she basically says to the scions is that she’s going to fucking kill everyone they know and love in the worst way possible. nothing to chew on that wouldn't better be solved by just getting rid of the threat. i don't know why they even bother arguing with her ever. she doesn't even feel like a character to me in that last section of the game. and they keep trying to have her seem all scary by having her get really close to the screen or move around without warning which is all very silly to me. i at least did like how much of a threat she was, and the way thancred vanished, and then everyone finds themselves in that dark area in front of the ship wondering where he is while the ultima thule music plays for the first time, distantly and quietly. i actually really liked that part. i thought it was really moving. i wish it had stayed that way.

the first area of ultima thule was the best part imo. i liked the immense darkness and quiet and lack of wind and the foul air and  yet, green grass. i liked the strange horror of being the only person at first who could really see the dragons, and then learning that estinien can see them too. i liked how that was the segue for his sacrifice. having those "final" moments with a specific scion each time until that climactic moment that pushes the group forward i really liked. i liked that thancred was no longer with them but still with them, a presence over them keeping them safe from harm. i found that very touching. but i was actually really confused while going through ultima thule becuase of how they visually shows what happens, like while the swirling vortex each scion would stand in was cool, and then standing to face off against that dark bird, i think what those things actually represented i just did not really understand what was actually being done or going on. i think that might be because dynamis suffers a bit from being just too nebulous or underdeveloped. i don't mind how abstract of a concept it is, i mean aether is used to do all sorts of never-explained things all the time.. it's more like... if ultima thule is going to be a place ruled by emotions, with laws different from what the scions are used to, it's hard for me to see how they were able to really draw any conclusions about where they were or what to do. it actually kind of reminded me of the logic of jojo's bizarre adventure where an attack only overrules another attack not becuase of some fundamental power scale the reader understands, but bc of what araki feels like contriving to get the story moving the way he wants. and that's fine because it's jojo. but this is ffxiv, so in my mind ultima thule should have either remained abstract and they don't try to explain the rules of the place so much, or they should’ve just made what was going on less abstract if they were going to try to logic the place out

what i mean is: the scene where estinien argues with that dragon so that he can overcome its despair is really cool. i liked that he turned into a cool wind. i liked that your friends sacrificed themselves for the sake of their home, that the power of their hopes for wol to overcome this final challenge was the only way they could move forward in such a stagnant place, as well as the only way they could be protected by meteion's violence. but after estinien does it--and he admits that he doesn't know how, just that it was the right thing to do--it feels like the writing immediately tries to specify what's going on so that there's some easy way forward the scions just have to follow the rulebook for, so that they can get to meteion. when urianger takes wol and g'raha aside i was actually just so lost. i don't know what it was i wasn't getting. i still don't. like to kind of say that there’s always one "individual" in these fake worlds who is despairing more than the others that can be located if they just identify a certain set of behaviours... this kind of just waters down what the scions are doing and the magic of being at the universe's end or w/e to me. we use language because of our inability otherwise to really express the depth of emotions and sensations that exist in this world, not the other way around--trying to box in something so complex through things like processes and so on...so to try and narrow down this part kind of rung a bit hollow to me. it was somehow both overexplained and underexplained at the same time. this might seem kind of nitpicky but i guess it was just hard for me to enjoy ultima thule when i was genuinely confused almost the whole way throughout. and bc the ea and the omicrons were so goddamn annoying. trying to do this slapdash learning about their societies at the very end of the game was just like...? okay? why bother, all they really care about is dying anyways. and then that final dungeon, ew's final attempt at replicating the wins of shadowbringers (the amaurot dungeon) with meteion's voice over. like who cares now meteion, you are somehow still just repeating yourself. endwalker is almost at it's end girl, i get it. everyone wants to die.

where i actually started to get annoyed though was where y'shtola says in no uncertain terms not to use the retcon crystal hydaelyn gave you to call their spirits back. y'shtola, you shouldn't have bothered, because you know wol is going to do absolutely that. why even have her say it? there is no sense of risk whatsoever because that crystal is involved. i still liked the sacrificing, but maybe they should have framed it in a way where it wasn't obvious that the scions were going to be totally fine. ew literally didn't seem ballsy enough to kill all of the scions, and i don't think it should've either. but then it just makes this all very wishy-washy. and even worse was when wol used it to summon HYTHLODAEUS AND EMET-SELCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHY!!!!!!!! WHYYYYYYYYYYYY?????????????? i was so annoyed. i'm still annoyed. back when their memories got wiped hythlodaeus was like oh yeah by the way emet did you know that in the aetherial sea you can get your memories back haha? and i was like okay cool so when they die they can get their memories back, whatever, still don't think me and emet-selch should've been live love laughing on elpis. i didn’t actually think this game would be so juvenile as to let you get to meet them once more with their memories fully intact. i don't know why ew has to dot every i and cross every t and sign off every single bit of intrigue with the biggest fucking full stop The End ever where emet-selch is concerned, holy fuck man. i hated this decision so much. your friends SACRIFICE THEMSELVES so that WOL can face meteion. they believe that at the very end of everything, hydaelyn believes that at the very end of everything, WOL is the one who can defeat meteion. they all put so much faith in you. and the first thing you do is summon emet-selch and hythlodaeus because what? because you just can't fucking help yourself? just shit all over the importance of carrying your friends’ beliefs in you. christ i hated that. i loved seeing the elpis flowers grow all over that fake sun. why couldn't that have been wol who grew them, wol's turn to use dynamis to overcome meteion's despair, flowers that represent the hopes every single person on earth has placed in them to see their star to safety? why? emet-selch there for what? to set in stone his position as the Tsundere once and for all? is that it? to have him renew his vows to wol for the millionth time just in case you forgot that he wants you to take up the mantle of their future? i wish they would go back to never making emet-selch palatable and less hostile to the warrior of light, it feels like such a disservice to the character he was in shadowbringers and to just their characters in general like i do not want to be canon friends with emet-selch! it's not necessary! it's fucking emet-selch! what's even worse is that for some reason while the flowers are growing, emet-selch is just point blank explaining what's going on. he literally says something like, "these flowers are the hopes of everyone meteion you're washed. by the way, if you didn't catch that, wol. you can summon your friends back now." immersion gone. any sense of playing a game that actually gives a fuck gone. so we call our friends back, only to send them away again with the teleporter because meteion is just too strong for us. to be fair i liked that decision, but why fake me out a second time having me think yes, finally wol is going to face meteion ON HER OWN. and then have ZENOS show up? i actually just stopped playing and went to bed. genuinelly just fuck me. who fucking cares anymore.

and then after you finally get meteion to stop being emo and she offers to reconcile with you by sending you safely back to your friends it's like, actually i can't even accept this meteoin. because i have to go fight zenos now. and then it's crazy to me that after you kick zenos' ass for like the millionth time, we're literally on the edge of the world so i'm finally expecting him to say something worth listening to, he opens his mouth and says "you know, wol, this whole time... i've been so bored... and the only thing that gives me joy is fighting you...” like. stuck record. the writers dragged him all the way out here to be a stuck fucking record

i like endwalker btw. kind of. like i know nobody who reads this is going to believe me but i really do. if it had just, well. i don't even know. there's too much wrong with it. it wastes too much time and just doesn't seem to be able to let go. how is it possible that an expansion can make me tired of callbacks to haurchefant being important to wol? i've never felt that before. like how many more flashbacks to his grave does one need to have to know that when wol is fighting for their world they're fighting for their friends too. but this game just cannot let things go. it NEEDS to make that joke about alphinaud gathering firewood four more times. it makes anything i appreciated the second or maybe even the third time just upset me. they can't let anything go, they have to wave it in front of me like it's a dog treat and i'm a dog. a fucking dog with blonde hair and blue eyes

[myreia]

fic authors self rec

When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Spread the love ❤️

I was tagged by @lilbittymonster to fill this out, thank you so much!

I'm a little late with this, but I'll tag a few folks (I think this is going around as an ask meme, too?). If you've already been asked or tagged, I'd love to see a second selection of your favourites! 💖

@bearlytolerant @tsunael @anneapocalypse @ievaxol @ardberts

@fourteenthz @birues @thewitchofelpis @a-shakespearean-in-paris @thevikingwoman

@impossible-rat-babies @autumnslance @gatheredfates @hylfystt

—01. Divergence of the Heart

Final Fantasy XIV | Heavensward | Wolmeric, Wolcred + background Thancred/Hilda Explicit | 53,996 words | 11 chapters

Aureia Malathar may have made a name for herself in Ishgard, but her deeds come with a hefty personal toll. Despite her victories at the Grand Melee she has never felt more unsure of herself. Her relationship with Thancred—the person she thought knew her the best—is strained, yet she cannot abandon him. Aymeric is falling for her harder with each passing day, yet she cannot bring herself to accept it. All may be fair in love and war, but at least war is predictable. Love, on the other hand…

I wrote this fic last year and it quickly became both extremely personal and also one of my favourite things I've ever written. It's also me poking fun at myself for creating what is probably the worst love triangle based off a couple lines of in-game dialogue from Thancred.

But I think the thing that makes it special to me isn't the love triangle or the emotional entanglements or the drama, it's exploring the different facets of Aureia's asexuality as a sex-positive and greyace person. This is a pretty complex topic and asexuality isn't as straightforward as "no sex ever". I also wanted to approach the erotic scenes with a certain sensibility and pull back the curtain on the romanticism of first times in search of something a little more grounded.

—02. Bound by Faith

Final Fantasy XIV | Shadowbringers | Wolcred Explicit | 28,406 words | 5 chapters

With their enemies defeated, the Crystarium is alive with celebration. Despite the joy around her, Aureia is uncertain about the next steps to take. So is Thancred, for that matter. The puzzle of their lives has sat incomplete for years, but finally this last, precious piece may be able to slide into place.

Okay so. 🥺 This was the first big Aureia/Thancred piece that I finished. I wrote it when I was going through an extremely rough time last year, and I think it was cathartic in a way to have them have all the right things come together so that taking a chance on a relationship finally feels right.

—03. As We Move Forwards

Final Fantasy XIV | Endwalker | Wolcred Mature | 8,140 words | 2 chapters

With tragedy averted and the world in recovery, Thancred and Aureia finally have some time to themselves. It’s nice—good even—to spend time alone, focusing on the things that matter most. But as they depart on a trip across Ilsabard, the question of what comes next lingers in his mind. Where do you go from here? How do you pick up the pieces of something broken and put it back together?

This is a much more recent Aureia/Thancred fic than the previous ones, and I'm enjoying poking at their Endwalker timeline. So much happens. Many things have been said and done, and their marriage has been put through the wringer. It was fun to explore what moving on looks like when they came so close to everything falling apart due to the pressures of outside circumstances. Marriage for them is not a happy ever after, it's just another point on the journey and they both still have a lot of growing to do.

—04. Resistance

Dragon Age: Origins | Tabris x Daveth Explicit, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death | 25,370 words | 7 chapters

Numbed by the events that took her away from Denerim, Rhea Tabris arrives in Ostagar to become a Grey Warden. But as she prepares for initiation and encounters an unexpected person, she discovers she can never truly let her past die.

I think this is my favourite DA fic back from when I used to write a lot of DA stuff. I don't know what it is about the Tabris x Daveth ship, it's such a rarepair but my mind latched onto the possibility and wanted to shake it up and down like a salt shaker and see what fell out. Angst and smut, apparently.

—05. Leave Me At the Shore of the Heart

Dragon Age 2 | Bethany Hawke x Anders Mature | 9,332 words | 4 chapters

On the eve of the Deep Roads expedition, a chance conversation between Anders and Bethany sparks feelings neither of them expected.

This one is special to me because it's the last DA fic I wrote. I'm not entirely sure what possessed me to write this ship, but I was turning a few things over in my head while playing DA2 and I just had a thought about the possibilities of character interactions — tl;dr the conversation I made up in my head was interesting and I needed to follow it haha.

[aotopmha]

Being too exhausted to play has made me think about the Dawntrail story again.

I wanted to take a break, but it occupies my brain too much, turns out and I engaged with takes on the internet again.

(Some of it is really dumb and a negativity void with zero substance, which is, in fact, unfun and exhausting, as it is designed to be, so it probably is better to not engage with, but I also do very much enjoy discussing what I love and it offers fantastic springboards for that.)

Spoilers for the Dawntrail story!

You know the complaint that it's "not as good as Shadowbringers or Endwalker"?

Well, I think a lot of people have actually echoed this, but I really like that Dawntrail is not trying to one-up them.

It's really good that it's not only pulling back the scale, but also lightening up the tone.

In particular, there was a complaint I saw that said HW, ShB and EW were these "deep and dark" stories and had issues with DT not being that kind of narrative and I think a story being Endwalker all of the time would become boring in its own right.

If all you see is positivity, eventually it means nothing, but this is also true in the opposite sense.

If all you see is misery all of the time, at one point, it doesn't mean anything anymore.

Eventhough I myself mostly enjoyed it, I can see the argument that it went too far in the other direction and handled some ideas too simplistically, but I think the general idea to do this is a really good, refreshing move.

It's similar thematically (which is actually my biggest issue), but I really like that it mostly focused on new stories with new characters.

I also like that the Scions are taking a backseat.

I saw an opinion that "you can't have your cake and eat it, too" in regards of the Scions being minor roles and you should either write them out completely or entirely focus the story on them, but personally I don't see any issue with this.

They were set up to be support and behaved as such. I don't understand the take that they were "teased" too much when the setup was that it was not their story to begin with.

Now, I do think the friendly rivalry aspect was underutilised. I feel like getting to fight Thancred and Urianger in good fun would've been great, for example.

I love the vibe of adventure we haven't really had for such a long time, and I really think the mystery of the City of Gold might be one of the best ones in the entire narrative because many of the mysteries so far at least have some aspect of retconning to them.

The gate and everything with it is entirely new and didn't need any retconning to fit within the current concepts of the story, whereas you could always tell they had to slightly tweak everything with the Ascians once in a while.

I think the fact that most of the characters that people do like from this expansion are entirely new or characters we knew fairly little about before Dawntrail says it all.

People actually do want new stuff. I think the mostly positive response towards the actual gameplay content says this, too.

So I hope they don't give up on what they've built here despite some of the really loud negative voices.

Don't start trying to do Endwalker or Shadowbringers again before building a new bigger picture.

We've talked about legacy and memory and loss a bunch of times already; evolve from this and do something *entirely* new with new characters and ALSO entirely new theming.

Don't give up on making content just a little more engaging.

That's my worry in light of these very loud complaints.

And the thing is, during the Endwalker patch cycle and even before, these are things so many people wanted.

People wanted a break from the Scions. People wanted the story to reset and relax after Endwalker because it had been within that dark tone for so long.

People wanted us to go back to being an adventurer.

People were tired of the increasingly same-y encounter design (and lack of stuff to do during patch downtime, which you can also see improved in terms of certain rewards; thing is what I've seen is people loving the new content so much they just like playing it and I feel the same way, so it isn't always even more grinds or rewards people actually want).

And that's exactly what they gave us.

Again, I don't know the overlap between audience groups here, but in terms of sentiment, that's the craziest part to me.

They kind of gave us exactly what we asked for.

And I really hope they stick to their guns and get braver from here because new is fun and even if it doesn't always succeed, you can look at what people like and don't like and go from there in a more nuanced way, rather than leaning on overcorrective decisions as they have in terms of certain aspects of the game. It just stops the game from stagnating and getting boring in all aspects.

[autumnslance]

FFXIV Write 2024: 14 Telling

(Uses a few pieces of dialogue from Endwalker 6.0 MSQ)

“You do not know me!”

But she did.

Certainly, the story she had told did not paint Emet-Selch in a favorable light, so who could blame the man for his indignation? For that was all this was—she was too familiar with his actual fury.

“You haven’t lived through it all yet...Hades,” she said, wearily.

He stared in shock at the familiar use of his name. They all did, Hythlodaeus’s mouth dropping open. He certainly hadn’t shared that.

Emet-Selch stormed out, Hythlodaeus chasing after. She and Venat continued to talk, but her eyes kept returning to Emet-Selch’s half-drunk tea, the contents long grown cold.

It was almost funny, how little his actions and words on this journey had surprised her. Even his giving in—with frustration—to Meteion’s adorable plea, when none of the rest of their entreaties had worked on behalf of the charybdis. Yet she had seen his face, the satisfaction he had taken in the creature’s flight.

She had listened to his conversations with Hermes, particularly after that mess with the lykaones. Had listened to Hythlodaeus speak of his friends. Had observed, and thought about all she had seen.

She remembered how in the First he had helped Y’shtola from the Lifestream. The conversations about the ancient history of the world, the nature of Zodiark and Hydaelyn, reminiscence about the other Ascians, his melancholy and the perpetual weary slump to his posture.

As she had been dying of the Light while confronting Emet-Selch in his phantom Amaurot, she had had the thought that the man he was in ancient times might be shocked and disgusted by the eldritch being he became in her modern world.

Everything she had seen had proven her assumption right, and she hated that it hurt so badly.

“Have faith,” Venat said. “If Emet-Selch is the man Azem described to me, we've not seen the last of him.”

She did not need either Azem’s assurance. She did know Emet-Selch, across time and terrible choices, and knew he would not let this mystery go. She could trust him to appear again, irritated and irritating, just when he was needed.

[astrology-bf]

FFXIV Write 2024 | Day 7 "Morsel"

Master Post | My AO3 | Challenge Info

~ 1.3k words | Teen | Gen | WoL & Menphina | CW: Angst, Endwalker Spoilers

“May I ask you something, my lady?” Ifan asked, gazing up towards Menphina in her majesty. The goddess smiled at Ifan, floating a few yalms above the marble paths of the Omphalos. 

“But of course, my child,” she said, her tone a silver tinkling of icy bells. “I shall do my utmost to answer candidly.”

The Warrior of Light smiled back, but there was hesitation in it. 

“You said you heard every prayer, right?” he asked. “No matter how small or distant?”

Menphina nodded gracefully in answer. “That is so. Though we are bound to nonintervention, our children ever have our ears.” she said.

Ifan paused as his lips pinched in a sheepish look.

 “...You must have heard some pretty nasty things, huh?” he speculated, with an off-handed tone. 

“Indeed. To varying levels of vulgarity.” she said, with a light laugh. 

Though he chuckled along with her, Ifan’s face grew somewhat grave. His mouth twisted as he looked off to the side, and his right hand went to his left wrist to try and stop himself from fidgeting.

“Guess that means you’ve heard my prayers too, then?” he asked, quietly and after a short silence.

The sheen moons of her unpupiled irises remained affixed on him, and her face and voice took on a sad edge; an uneasy night after a bloody day. “...I have, my child.” she answered.

Ifan let out a soft breath, his gaze shifting to the ground. “Well…” He wet his lips, and nodded without looking up. “I asked you to judge me kindly, and here I am. So… judge away.”

Menphina gazed at Ifan carefully, her face still sad but carrying a firm resolve. Her eyes went to the faintly pained expression on his face, a reflex from the memory of having cried so much his eyes began to sting, as well as to his throat where he kept swallowing. Though he said nothing, his voice was still as clear to her as those dark moments by the homespun altar Ifan always set up in his inn rooms where he prayed every morning and each night. 

Fairest goddess, wandering the night, in your name I bear my heart… Judge me kindly for my sins. I ask no forgiveness. I don’t deserve it. Just… take care of them, please. The men I love… the men I hurt… Give them happiness. Give them peace.

The goddess closed her eyes, and nodded slowly.

“I judge you to be human, Ifan.” Menphina stated, clearly. Then she opened her eyes, and smiled softly at the Warrior of Light again.

Ifan inhaled sharply, looking up at her. His eyebrows fell towards the ends, and his face became beseeching. 

“What kind of human? The sort that-” The magician cut himself off, taking in a shaky breath before shaking his head as he gazed off towards the side again. 

“...I sleep around too much,” he continued, “I fall in love too quickly, and it messes everything up. Things might feel better after Ultima Thule, but…” Ifan shook his head again, closing his eyes as he struggled to put thought to words.

Menphina tilted her head sympathetically, a quiet smile on her face as she let Ifan wade through the mess of feeling in his head and heart. “Take your time, dear.” she said.

Ifan paced himself; focusing on steadying his breathing first, then working up his courage to admit to one of the Twelve themselves the true feelings of his heart… which was easier than he expected, but not surprising as he’d done it all his life.

“...It frightens me that I have the capacity to do that sort of thing at all,” he said, quietly. “To treat people as badly as I did. It.. it feels like if I forgive myself for anything…” Ifan’s eyes were closed, and he took in a pained gasp as if afraid to finish what he wished to say. Menphina waited for a little while before assisting him. 

“You may err again, yes?” she supplied, gently, “That is your fear?”

The magician exhaled. He nodded, then looked up at her again. “Aye.” he admitted.

Menphina gave a little hum as she considered what to say, her smile growing more thoughtful and sedate. Then it widened again, and she nodded down at Ifan gracefully once more. 

“You have no need of my permission to forgive yourself, Ifan,” she said. “Yet if you need it, then it is yours. Wholeheartedly.”

Ifan’s lips parted, then he swallowed before smiling up at her with a faint wetness in his eyes. “...Thank you, my lady. I’m very grateful.” he said.

Her smile widened yet further as she canted her head down towards him, peering at him pointedly. “As am I, for having had the chance to speak with you.” Menphina said, with that same brightness she had used when greeting him. Then it took on a softer and more reassuring quality as she went on. “Be at ease, my child… Truly wicked people have no fear of wickedness, thus how can you be so?”

The Warrior of Light’s smile faded. His chin lowered and his lips pursed into a faintly fearful, disbelieving frown. “...Do you really mean that?” he asked.

Menphina nodded. “I judge you to be a kind man, my child,” she said. “And one in sore need of some company from his friends, and love, as well.” Her eyes glanced up in the direction of the center of the Omphalos for emphasis, followed by a knowing smile.

Ifan’s frown began to fade at the reminder that he wasn’t by himself. A small and amused breath escaped his nostrils as he smiled. 

“Aye,” he agreed, standing upright again. “I think you’re right.”

He didn’t turn to leave, however. Instead, Ifan kept on looking up at her - and his smile faded again by half.

“...It can’t be easy. Listening to all that heartbreak.” he said, voice almost a whisper.

Menphina gave no answer, nor did her expression change. She was still smiling - but Ifan got the sense it wasn’t an expression of her choosing, but one of necessity for sanity. 

Smiles better suited gods, as well, it seemed.  

Ifan nodded up at her, taking a long breath and doing his best not to feel foolish trying to offer sympathy towards one of the Twelve. “I don’t have a right to speak for everyone on Etheirys, but… thank you. For all you’ve done for me, for us. Even if it’s just listening.” he said, with pure gratitude.

The goddess let out a small breath, blinking once before her smile took on a thankful lightness - and then she floated down towards the Warrior of Light, leaned forward, and pressed an oversized but gentle kiss to the right side of his face. 

Ifan went totally still as if frozen in ice, but his face was burning ruddy bronze when her lips left his cheek. He swallowed, pouting up at her with an expression that elicited a silver laugh from her.

“You have my heartfelt gratitude in turn, my child,” she said. “Our faith in you, in all our children, has proven out. You exceeded expectations, and done what others only dreamed. That the star lives, and loves, is living proof of how our trust has been rewarded. Thus, do I have faith that you will continue to exceed your own.” ” 

Menphina gestured with her armored hand, indicating their surroundings. Not just the Phantom Realm, nor even all Eorzea, but what she and those who came before the world was sundered called ‘oikoumene’ - the habitable world, a known world to its inhabitants, but unknowable in its totality. The place where love and stories live.

Her hand then gestured at the Warrior of Light; to his scarred chest, and to the heart which still beat strongly in it.

“Follow the moonlight, Ifan,” she said her face bearing a warmth which rivaled Azeyma’s. “Fear not what you find, and go with grace.”

[anneapocalypse]

I have joked before that Stormblood feels like the writers thought they maybe went too hard on Major Character Death™️in Heavensward and so almost nobody gets to die. But looking back over the arc of the Scions as a whole, I think Stormblood through Endwalker are really the Scions learning (if slowly) that Heroic Sacrifice is not always the answer, and also growing closer to one another as people as a result. Especially for those of us who didn't play 1.0, I think it's so easy to forget sometimes that these characters just survived an apocalypse--and lost the guy who was the glue holding them all together. I think a lot of what feels like the Scions being cavalier with their comrade's life in ARR is the fact that they are all waiting, consciously or unconsciously, for their own Louisoix Moment, and they're so deep in that mindset that they probably don't even realize how it feels to an outsider, that understanding that they're all ready to die. Because when that moment does come, they all take it. Moenbryda takes it, Minfilia takes it, Papalymo takes it... and the rest are left to pick up the pieces.

And what do they do with those pieces? After Moenbryda's death Urianger goes on a very long arc where he starts mired in isolation and self-flagellation, but ultimately comes to see that turning to his friends for help is better than suffering alone. Alphinaud faces down the arrogance that made him so easy to manipulate and becomes better at working with others and not over and around them. Alisaie comes to terms with her grandfather's death and pushes those around her to see alternatives to sacrifice. Lyse decides to stop hiding, to live as herself, and to fight for what she believes in, ultimately becoming a leader in her newly-freed homeland. Thancred learns to better respect the agency of the people he loves while still acting as a protector. Y'shtola begins--slowly, and haltingly, but she does begin--to share her struggles with her friends instead of keeping everything to herself. G'raha, after years of secrecy and preparing to sacrifice himself, finds himself given a second chance and a new life to share with the people he loves. Estinien finds deeply meaningful friendships with people he would have once considered his enemy, and lets go of a life of solitude in favor of joining the Scions.

There's a reason the Scions don't really feel like a family in ARR. There's a reason that, to me, they do feel like one by Endwalker. Sometimes media will try to force a found family dynamic between a group of characters who don't even necessarily like each other very much; FFXIV lets the cracks in the Scions show early and then shatters them, then brings them back together in a long journey of reforging those bonds and making them stronger than they ever were.

[whatsthisascianbullshit]

16. Doing a chore for your partner when they're too tired to do it themselves (let Muireann rest pls)

Thank you @lilbittymonster ^^ I've been on a witch girlfriends kick so another Endwalker era one

Y’shtola promptly swatted Titan away from the collection of glasses and bowls that had accumulated around Muireann.

"You were told to rest."

"And I am! I don’t – ”

“Conjuring and commanding constructs is not resting.”

“It is and all, I’m still in bed see?” Muireann gestured to the veritable fortress of pillows and blankets that had been constructed to keep her body supported and in as little pain as possible while she recovered after the flight back on the Ragnarok, “Resting.”

“Now you’re just being cheeky.”

“Oh no~! Does this mean you’re going to try an’ punish me~?”

“Why, yes.” Y’shtola walked calmly over towards Muireann, slowly dragging her talon ringed finger along the bed before plucking the grimoire from it, “No more magic. That shall be your punishment.”

She ignored Muireann’s grumbled protests as she collected together everything that needed cleaning. For a mercy, Muireann at least remained in bed.

“I had better find you exactly as you are now when I return.” In truth it was only half a threat, quick as Muireann was with her words Y’shtola could hear her dropping the façade whenever she turned her back. Rustles of fabric as Muireann rested properly back down. A sharp sigh of relief as she let the reassuring smile fall. It was much too close to how she had behaved on the First and Y’shtola did not trust it at all.

The kitchen was not too far from Muireann’s quarters and empty when she opened the door. No opportunity for her embarrassing summoning ritual to be spotted, or for her to get pulled away into a different conversation.

With the assistance of Nixie the last few days of dishes were back to sparkling and Y’shtola was carefully creaking the door open. Muireann was already asleep, the glyph for Selene scrawled on a regular journal and no fairy in sight.

She sighed and fluffed up her own blanket in the chair beside the bed, ready for another evening of casting regen and watching over the enthusiastic arcanist that still held fast to her heart though they were malms and years beyond the grotto in La Noscea.

Non-verbal "I love you" prompts

[yzeltia]

FFXIVwrite2024 8. Wedding Vows

Characters: U'rahn Nuhn, Postmoogle

Expansion: Endwalker(Timeline Wise, Otherwise Irrelvant)

Rating: G

Summary: U'rahn practices for his big day with his biggest antagonist.

Notes: Freeday prompt given to me by @beyond-mortal-limits

*Based on Shakespeare's Sonnet 18

**Based on George Michael's Father Figure

“Alright! Have we started? Now remember, only write the stuff down that I’m saying for the vows. You don’t have to write it all down…you better not be writing this down…Augh. Anyway. My Vows….My vows….Let’s try:

“Nyx, I’ve loved you since you first took your hand and led you to go do all the stuff Zoissette didn’t want me to do with me…-

“Yes it was a date for someone else? Why? What do you mean that’s lame. Don’t you kupo at me! I’m paying you to write stuff not give me dating advice! Let’s try again. …Maybe traditional?”

“I, U’rahn Nuhn, take you, Nyx Blackmoon, for my eternally bonded spouse, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do…well, until death do I part. I will love and enrich you all the days of my life.

“How’s that? What do you mean ‘lame, kupo?’!? It’s traditional! …Okay …Nyx is not a traditional bride but that doesn’t matter cause they’re going to be the most beautiful and special brrride there’s ever been. Don’t ‘Sure, kupo!’ at me! It’s trrrue! But you’re right…Nyx loves me for my orrriginality and that I enrrrich them…Maybe poetry? I can be poetic! Urianger taught me sonnets after Nyx taught me Haiku!!…Can too! Oh yeah!?

“Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s Night?

Thou art more um…lovely and temperature

Rough winds do shake my darling buddies in May

And Summer’s heat hath all too short a date,

Sometimes too hot the eye of Nidhogg shines

And often is gold and complex and I’m dimmed,

And every faerie from faerie sometimes decides

By chance of nature’s changing course to their whim…d

But thy eternal Summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of thou wanderer’s shade

When in eternal bonds to time thou grow’st

So long as Nuhn can breathe or eyes can see

So long lives this one, and he gives his life to thee-* Stop laughing!

“I swear, moogles are nothing but trouble. That was really good! Yes, I recited it perfectly from the book that Urianger gave me! No I didn’t guess! Just keep your comments to yourself and help write down my vows or I’ll feed you to a sandworm!

“Now…if poems won’t work. How about a song:

“That's all you wanted

Something special, someone enriching 

In your life-

Just for one moment

To be warm and naked

At my side-

Sometimes I think that you'll never

Understand me 

But something tells me together

We'd be happy, oh-oh, baby

I will be your Nuhn figure

Put your tiny hand in mine 

I will be your preacher teacher

Anything you have in mind-”**

“What? That off key? …Yeah, I’m not very good. Maybe if I asked Big Bro Erick or Big Bro Thancred to back me up in the vocals? No? Yeah…no. I can even admit I’m not the best singer. Alright. Fine…What do you think I should do? … … … Ah…I can try that…:

“Nyx…When I’m around you I feel invincible…Not like my normal invincibility, but like, y’know, that I could do anything and everything I put my mind to. Even the stuff that I’m super bad at. I know I’m not the smartest or wisest guy out there but you never hold that against me and when I meet something that I can’t overcome, you let me try until I ask for help. You never judge me or put me down. I feel so seen and loved around you. 

“And…well, it’s no secret my family is super important to me. You’ve fit right in with us in your own Nyx way. I know that if something ever happened to me, you’d be there to watch over them where I cannot. I named my first daughter after you ‘cause I don’t know anyone more strong and beautiful that I would want her to look up to. 

 “So uh, what I’m trying to say is that I’ll always love you…And I promise, as long as I draw breath, to keep enriching you and making every day be filled with new, fun experiences when we are together.

“Why are you crying? Me? I’m not crying? I just got stuff in my eye! It was good though wasn’t it? Let’s stick with that version….C’mon, I’ll get you a kuponut.”

[nihilnovisubsole]

phew! finally a weekend where i can set aside enough time to type up The Promised Endwalker Stream-of-Consciousness Post. i finished the base story... a month ago? but work has been busy, and i think tumblr benefits from me being quiet sometimes. anyway, what a ride. when you've been building up to the end of your arc for a decade, you want to hit it like an earthquake, and that's exactly what they did.

i think people love endwalker because it fires on all cylinders. it returns - in both story and vision - to the eorzea we love, and the dev team gets to show off everything they've learned. the dungeons and boss fights are dynamic and imaginative and colorful and bring the game's epic sense of scope to bear. the story callbacks are juicy. the music is orchestral again. we're back home, and we're saving the galaxy. what's better than this?

i love that we go to garlemald. i don't - i mean, you know, i don't like garlemald. i shouldn't have to qualify that. but it's hugely narratively satisfying to see the face of the enemy we've been fighting since the first few hours of ARR. you don't think about them when you're beating them up in castrum centri or ala mhigo. they're star wars bad guys. then you meet them on their own turf. you observe firsthand how they starve and cannibalize their own people to feed their obsession with state power and military strength. the wintry environment makes it seem all the more barren and desperate. my favorite part by far. i wish we'd spent more time there.

actually, on that note:

there is an argument that endwalker should've been two expacs. i've heard similar about stormblood - ala mhigo should've been the whole thing, and doma should've been either patch content or an expac of its own. the prevailing theory is that, after ARR, the devs are afraid of letting arcs run long. i can't speak to that, but i wouldn't have minded, that's for sure!

i won't pretend not to be biased. i've noted in many xiv posts that it hurries through its political plots to get to the magic stuff. i felt more conscious of it in heavensward and especially in stormblood. i made peace with it in endwalker. with dessert this good, who am i to complain? i can do small character drama on my own time. for now, the game wants royce to be a big damn shonen hero, and that can be fun, too.

speaking of characters, urianger and estinien have grown on me. this is the arc where, for me at least, the scions have congealed. they're all good, but with any large cast and custom player character, you tend to form the meatiest bonds with a few specific ones. i think royce appreciates urianger's cooler, more mature head. they're both so formal. he realizes she's someone he can confide in. i think she sees estinien as a gifted, but hotheaded whelp, which i find very funny. patience, child. stop sulking. do your breathing drills.

i love thancred's MGS sequence and in from the cold too. they're stressful, but i love that the team tried, you know what i mean? the fact that you can fight enemies in a pinch makes those duties way more bearable than some other games that experiment with stealth.

in from the cold as a whole, honestly. If You Know, You Know

all right, i can't avoid referencing spoilers anymore, sorry. there's a sense of classical tragedy to the whole elpis sequence. it's like watching macbeth or hamlet. you know how it's going to end, and you know you're powerless to stop it, but if they'd just made that different choice! but we had to leave eden. the warrior of light had to end up where they are to finish what elpis started. i don't do fate/destiny plots, but this? i'll take it.

i also knew what would happen going into ultima thule and still came away from it moved. it's strong writing. that's all there is to it. sure, the visuals are haunting, but the dialogue has to sell a gauntlet of difficult character moments, and it pulls it off. on the design side, there's some interesting intentional friction that forces you to linger in the zone and sit with its sense of despair. that part where you have to search the empty park for signs of life? oof

with the majority of the MSQ under my belt, i started sniffing around for what else there is to do ingame. i tried ninja. did terribly. i tried sage. did terribly too, but at least that gave me access to the healer role quests, which, ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). the nier raids are gorgeous. i even did the controversial werlyt quests, and terncliff is so cute. i kind of wish we could have another story there!

what's next? i dunno! right now i'm burning through the hildibrand quests before i continue on with endwalker's patch story. the field operation stuff seems interesting to do after the MSQ, in a "hey, you saved the world, but we have more missions for you" way. i've also contracted Triple Triad Collector Disease, so that'll keep me busy for a long time.

all right. one last thing. Real Gamer Moments: i was in a mount-farming party recently, and i said that i sort of collected mounts, but only used the ishgardian chocobo. it's a roleplay thing - it's the chocobo royce took when she ran away from ishgard. one of the party members said "haurchefant would be proud of you." AUGH

[thefreelanceangel]

(Count)Down to Dawntrail: FREE DAY

July of 2019, I downloaded the trial for FFXIV.

Up until then, I'd been in GW2 for over seven years. It'd given me a roommate (ilu Rory) and helped me reconnect with the man who I ended up marrying (ilu honeybun). It'd also become a game I couldn't even look at without sighing heavily.

(That fucking map currency grind... UGH.)

I wanted to try something else, see if I could find a game that'd be fun to play. And as both my "screamy baby brother" (ilu Chaos) and one of the people I'd admired most in GW2 (ilu @mirugaidoesthings) were in FFXIV, well...

I made a catgirl, named her after an old tabletop NPC (RIP the OG Callie...) and started poking around.

I very quickly slid over to Mateus (because up until FFXIV, I was an RPer first, content later... maybe sort of person) and ... well, I fell in love. With C'allie, with Eorzea, with the gameplay and mechanics, and definitely with GPose. (July 10, 2019 is when Chaos told me about the GPose feature and... well I never quite stopped.) And as I dragged my then-boyfriend into playing, he fell in love with Eorzea, too.

It's hard to really explain just how much time, energy, fun, frustration, and enjoyment we've gotten from FFXIV in the years since. Or how much the story of Eorzea came to mean to us. (The Ceremony of Eternal Bonding music was playing at our RL wedding.) We've met some amazing people--the players of Thravnar, Zale, and Targur for instance--and it's given me the chance to reconnect with old friends. (@mirugaidoesthings & @rylen-ooc <3)

Shadowbringers might as well have just been written specifically for me. Monstrous angels, a complex villain, a story with such resonating themes... I'd enjoyed A Realm Reborn and I'd cried over Heavensward (yes, over Haurchefant... who I ended up naming my cat after) but Shadowbringers might as well have been marketed with my name on it.

And then in late November-early December of 2021, Endwalker's release coincided with my soon-became-husband's cancer diagnosis. I played through the first section of the MSQ while he slept off his first round of chemo. I was scared and emotional and trying my best to deal with the stress of keeping our finances together while visiting him during his hospitalizations and juggling everything that such things require.

Endwalker hugged me. It told me that life is scary, that life is a struggle, but we do it because we have each other. And I desperately needed that. Endwalker was the story I needed right then and right there. Facing down the Endsinger felt so cathartic, as if I was able to beat my husband's cancer and my own stress and fear with my WHM staff.

And Endwalker is the expansion where I had to make a Warrior of Light, I couldn't separate myself from the story long enough to just experience it anymore. I needed to create a character who changed in relation to the story, who lived it, who could have the same emotions I did about it.

I've met lovely people through FFXIV--a lot of them here on Tumblr--and I've found a creative outlet I'd never imagined possible. (Thank you *coughcrimetoolscough*) I've created characters, written stories, built friendships, and found deep, personal comfort in Eorzea. I cry when I hear "Answers" now and I can list the Scions off without pausing. I've baked Norvrandt's cookie biscuits, hung FFXIV art in my house, and can recognize more of the music than I've EVER listened to for ANY other game.

Dawntrail is the next step in a journey I'm eager to continue with all of you. May we ever walk in the light of the Crystal.

[tallbluelady]

Oh. Oh man. I never thought about how hard ShB must have been for Urianger, lying to Rowan above everyone else and watching her suffer, knowing he can't say anything. And then when it all falls down... Oh man, the guilt. How did that all go down? What was ShB like for them?

It's great, because Urianger made the decision to start actively courting Rowan while she was absorbing all the Lightwarden's light. The thought process: I can offer my heart as a hideaway through all the trauma of this! This won't end badly at all! What happened after is entirely up to her, and he fully expected to be dumped right after they returned home with the Exarch's death.

Something that I'm kinda looking forward to exploring more is the fact that Urianger underestimates how much his affection for Rowan grows and evolves when they reunite on the First. Like the Exarch, he has this idealized form of Rowan to think about for three years. Then she's back in his life and she's real. And not only is she real, she's more complicated and fun and interesting than a memory could ever be. He's been in love before and he thought he knew how it would effect him. But love is different every time, and with every person. By the time they get to Mt. Gulg (I almost typed Mt. Guilt lmao), he's starting to realize that he's not going to handle life well without her.

He buries his guilt in acts of affection or trying to humor Rowan and Ryne. Urianger is going to tell jokes (Rowan gets his sense of humor) and find flowers and trinkets to put in her hair. He's going to be the attentive healer after battle, and while he can't do much to fight the Light, he's going to do everything else. Because what else can he do? The plan must work. The Exarch worked for over 100 years on it...

But the plan doesn't work. The Exarch can't take the Light into himself and fling himself into oblivion and send them home. And now Rowan is cracking under the pressure that would be too much for any one person and now it's the person he wholeheartedly loves. He picks her up and runs down that mountain, probably teleporting down at least half the distance. The next time she's conscious she's out to get Emet-Selch's head and he can't stand that she would do it alone either.

And then she forgives him. He cannot fathom it, but the release on his heart is such a relief. He's ready to go to the bottom of the ocean to face the villain with her. And if we ask Rowan... that's all she ever wanted. Rowan doesn't back down from the monsters she's asked to slay. She knows she can do it, and she knows she's one of frighteningly few who even can. On the First, she is the only one who can face the Lightwardens and live. She'd just like some support for the other things, you know? It's why she was so receptive to Urianger in the first place - he's doing things, not just raging at the injustice. She's faced injustice before and people ranting at it never did her any good. The romance did comfort and shield her. He gives her White Auracite to vanquish Emet-Selch. He's supported her the entire time they've known each other.

After they defeat Hades they have to have a long conversation about it all. How it wasn't really the fact that she had to face something that could kill her that made Rowan upset, it was the fact that Urianger and the Exarch hid details about that would all entail. He vows to be more open, and luckily that was a thread that the writers decided to continue on through Endwalker. (On top of that, the whole situation colors their sex life as well, which is fun to write about.)

So yeah! I hoped you enjoyed my essay about my Wolship!