#anyway heavensward and shadowbringers spoilers within

[ahollowgrave]

Thinking more thoughts about WOL!Odette...

Specifically how she's a young, naïve nun who is crafted into a god killer by a woman who loves her and who she loves in turn. How Odette had been told her whole life in the convent that she was destined to be a saint. Of course she would be 'The' Warrior of Light, of course she's Hydaelyn's chosen, of course she and Minfilia fall in love. How this means she never questions the Scion's motives or care for her. She and Minfilia work so well because they understand their roles perfectly. Not always happily but they are both women of deep faith. Faith in Menphina, faith in Hydaelyn, faith in their comrades, faith in each other. They work so well because neither can place the other and their own happiness in front of their duty, their faith. That total understanding must be so freeing for them, to be able to love as fully as they can and knowing it's enough for their partner. Odette spends most of Heavensward with a knot of grief for a heart. She tries so hard not to borrow grief from the future but it is hard not to when they just don't know about Minfilia for so long. But there is so much going on in Heavensward and without Minfilia to consistently come back to I think she's very adrift. More than ever, this expansion is when she is most like a silent protagonist. I can't even touch that scene at the end of Heavenswards. You know the one. I did already talk about Minfilia in Shadowbringers...

[whatsthisascianbullshit]

I saw the "in my cups over them," so consider this a general prompt to ramble about them! Tell me anything and everything. I have to know more. 👀

Hi @halfalgorithm-halfdeity I struggle to get a lot of my Muireann and Hien thoughts wrangled down because they're tied up in the "chewing through tables over rediscovering your culture after being colonised and the systematic erasure of your culture and heritage" that Stormblood sends me through (truly, an expansion for My Interests /gestures at Ireland's 800 years of oppression BUT I DIGRESS)

Hien and Muireann meet each other at the best possible time to work but also it's the worst time for them to realise it. (on reading back I do not actually explain this - basically if they met earlier Hien wouldn't have made his own plans for sacrifice/rebellion and Muireann wouldn't have been running from her feelings and grief, and if they met later Muireann would have had a chance to fully wall herself off emotionally. But because they meet when they do, Muireann is still wrangling with her emotional mess and cannot admit that she has feelings for Hien and that makes it a mess for both of them)

THIS GOT LONG AND IS STILL SOMEHOW THE CLIFF NOTES VERSION LMAO

Spoilers for ARR through to Shadowbringers intro under the cut, mostly Stormblood.

Muireann is fresh off of Y'shtola collapsing a tunnel on herself at the end of ARR, Haurchefant fucking dying in her arms, then Y'shtola coming back but now they're both different but maybe there are feelings but it's Complicated now, and then Y'shtola getting almost killed by Zenos and Muireann goes with the contingent to help in Doma in large part to avoid all the feelings that seeing the woman she fully changes the course of her life for get cut down right in front of her and she couldn't do Anything. Muireann is going to Doma to harden her heart back up. Because heartbreak causes mistakes in her calculations and mistakes cost lives, and against Zenos that could mean an absolutely devastating loss of life.

Hien has spent the last year-ish of his life recovering from almost dying after watching Zenos kill his father in front of him. The smart move would have been to then flee but he put his people above his own life (also likely a Terrible way to cope with seeing your dad sliced open in front of you but yanno). He knows that what little military might they had before that rebellion is gone. So he makes a plan. One that only works if several extremely unlikely things happen in succession because he has this plan before the Scions turn up.

So when they first meet and Hien's response to "we have spent days changing their minds so the people ask for your sword" was "I will simply win the Naadam even though I am only a little while recovered and have had maybe a few months to attempt to get back into fighting shape" it honestly kind of short-circuited her brain. Because it was the only logical path forward but it was an incredibly risky plan with so many opportunities to go horribly wrong and it was presented as though it was simple. Because it also was a very simple plan. For the best chance of success with the least amount of lives lost they needed more fighters. This is the most efficient way to gain social standing with the most amount of people in order to make this request. It's essentially then just a process of Muireann's own feelings wearing down her bullheaded stubbornness to get her to admit the fact she has feelings to herself after she had decided that she Was Not Going To Care About Anyone Else Like That.

Hien was faced with a pretty elf that was quiet and reserved but when she did speak up it was largely related to tactics and strategy. Someone who clearly knew what she was talking about but that did not align with how she would have been described (powerful mage, vicious witch, breaker of gods). Then he sees her in battle. And she summons a dragon. To save him? Probably her brother. But maybe also him? Maybe just him?

The two proceed to flirt with each other obtusely while internally talking themselves out of the sheer notion that the other person is interested in them. The post-Naadam Doma arc for these two drives me fully insane I am obsessed with them.

When they eventually do get their shit together at the end of Stormblood they continue the trend of internally making assumptions about the other person and what kind of future they want. And so they pointedly avoid any and all conversation about the future and their feelings beyond "enjoying each other's company". At this point they're both fully smitten, head over heels, cannot imagine a future without each other. Neither of them say this to each other.

Then the strange headaches start.

Then people start falling into magic, soul-snatched comas.

Muireann initially continues to assume that she'll be fine because she has the Echo. Then during the fight at the Ghimlyt Dark where Hien, Yugiri and Lyse hold off Zenos until Murieann and the rest of her party arrive Muireann and Hien both have to face the fact that they are in fact In Love with the other person. Do they say this to each other? No. Of course not. (though in their defense this time Murieann was whisked back to Ishgard with the rest of the gang to recover closer to the rest of the Scions).

In Ishgard Muireann finds out that her brother has fallen into a coma. She's completely distraught both at the potential loss of her brother and also at the realisation that the Echo won't protect her. And she has never told Hien how she feels. She hastily writes a letter because she needs to get it out of her before the fear strikes again, and also because they have a lead at the Crystal Tower that she needs to follow up on. That letter is dispatched and mere hours later Hien is notified that Muireann has also fallen into a magic coma.

Hien then bullies convinces the remaining Scions to let Muireann's body rest in Doma. The offered logic being that if all the Scions and Warriors of Light are resting in the same spot, it would be very easy for Garlemald to blow up one building and be rid of the most persistent thorn in their side. A larger reason is because Muireann's confession letter opens with "I wish I could tell you this in person" and he stops reading. Gets her body safe in Doma. And waits.

Because there is something she wanted to tell him (and something he wants to tell her).

Anyway that's the cliff notes version of Them leading into Shadowbringers. They give me fucking Hives (I am obsessed).

Just two people piecing together what their heritage means to them in the present after attempts at destroying it.

A disaster-sexual wizard and a prince who loves women who can kerb stomp him.

[pallisia]

hello, gg! I had your flower fella in my head while I was gposing around some flowers in Elpis, and it brought a question to mind. How did you feel about the Elpis arc in Endwalker? On my first playthrough, it absolutely blew me away, but on my replay, I feel like parts of it retroactively cheapened Shadowbringers (if that makes any sense). idk, I'm curious to hear your thoughts, if you have any to share. :>

sure. i feel like i mentioned a while back that i'm not crazy about endwalker for this exact reason. like, i had fun playing through the msq and i acknowledge the difficulties of trying to wrap up a decade-long story for a massive fanbase with varying expectations, but it just didn't land for me. especially the elpis arc. this is going to be really long and full of spoilers, so i'll keep the rest of it under a cut.

arriving in amaurot in shadowbringers was easily one of my favorite story beats in all of ffxiv. i loved that the ancients were portrayed as kind strangers, the anxiety about the final days from their dialogue, the vulnerability from the villain; it was all just great. one of the things that helped sell amaurot to me was how little was concrete about it. it was a faint memory of a place that didn't exist anymore. we couldn't see anyone's faces, we couldn't feel like we actually belonged there in any meaningful way. and when you confront emet-selch, it's like, "sure, it's sad that this happened to you, but we're here now, so you have to let it go."

looking back, i feel like elpis is the polar opposite of all that. i smiled at hades' beautiful wife and shitty haircut as much as the next guy, but it just felt...unnecessary? where shadowbringers said "the unsundered world is not coming back, you have to get over it," endwalker said "Bring It In, Guys !!" and showed me more of the ancients than i ever really wanted to see. i didn't need to go back in time and run around with my pal emet to sympathize with him. and again, he's beautiful, but i didn't really need to put a face to hythlodaeus, either. i thought he was much more compelling when i didn't know anything except that he was nice and emet-selch loved him.

this is more personal preference than anything, but i was also let down that the ancients were just...humans? i was hoping that the origin of all the sundered races would have more varied features to reflect that, and the way they were portrayed in shadowbringers allowed me the freedom to imagine them that way. 

anyway, going back to the the time travel... in shadowbringers, i loved the bittersweetness of the doomed timeline continuing even after g'raha tia fixed everything. elpis changed how time travel works within the story to tie everything up with a bow. i know it functions the same way in the alexander raids, but i thought it was bizarre to rewrite the rules within the main scenario right after the expansion where it was a big deal. (using the same time machine, even!)

venat was fine. i didn't really consider her to be the same character as hydaelyn at all, and it felt like a stretch to equate the emotionless crystal god voice to this nice, cool lady we spent an afternoon with. also, explaining the echo the blessing of light as a "traveler's ward" was such a letdown, man. it was a tremendous deal when hydaelyn and zodiark were revealed to be primals, but endwalker essentially threw out the concept of tempering, so it didn't matter at all. again, i get that retcons are inevitable in a decade-long mmo storyline. but the way she'd been built up as a morally questionable figure as early as heavensward made me hope for more flavor than what i got from venat. 

hermes was a pretty interesting character. i liked meeting someone who didn't fit in with ancient society, and even resented a lot of what was considered normal for them. he just didn't get enough time to cook. i probably don't have to harp on the stupid amnesia machine, so i'll skip that part.

meteion was... well, getting back to the point of your question, i kind of hated that the final days ended up being "a bird in space is beaming us with nihilism energy." i'm not sure what i wanted the final days to be, but the mystery of it was so much more intriguing than the explanation. the idea that the ancients' creation powers went out of their control was so cool! but, oh, it was because they were too aetherically dense to transform into monsters, i guess... okay...

maybe that's my overall problem with elpis, that it eliminated all mystery for the sake of neatly wrapping up loose threads, even when the mystery was more fun. every subsequent dev interview really drives this home, to the point where i wish they'd stop explaining things altogether. i'm feeling the same way now with the alliance raid series and its explanation of the twelve. of course, that storyline is still going, but i don't have high hopes for the last part.

wow that was long. sorry. thank you for your question i've been bottling this up for like a year lmao