#but fourchenault doesnt know that

[last-flight-of-fancy]

#also another note on the Twin Mixup Occasions that i note:#the only occasion i can think of where Alphinaud gets Mistaken#is when Matoya calls him ‘louisoix’s granddaughter’#… you know. matoya. who is completely cut off from the world and last hears from anyone 15 years ago.#so with this hc/interpretation. from matoya’s perspective louisoix DID have two granddaughters.#its just that that changed when she wasn’t looking

(tags via @tobyfoxmademeascaly ) I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THIS THANK YOU FOR REMINDING ME

like matoya's a grumpy hag of a woman (<3) to be sure but she doesn't strike me as the sort to be so... careless? i guess would be the word? she obviously knew there were twins, if she also knew one was male and one was female, why would she automatically assume the one standing before her now was one or the other? more likely (i think) she would simply go 'one of louisoux's/fourchenault's progeny' or something along those lines. (supported by the fact that iirc she didnt name him right away- which is her Grumpy Old Woman way ofc, but doubly so if she wasn't sure which twin she was talking to).

imo trying to explain this as her not being able to tell them apart or not caring (bc grumpy old woman) doesnt reaaaaaally hold up. she IS grumpy and frumpy and has no time for the bs of the outside world, but she's not in the business of mocking people for existing (she's in the business of mocking people for their actions, which is different, tyvm)

(i went and watched the scene again just to refresh my memory of it and man... the way alphinaud is uncomfortable but completely unsurprised by her assumption kinda speaks volumes to me. logic boy knows she would have no idea, and quite smoothly corrects her, but its still uncomfortable for him. weh ;-;)

(also credit to matoya she doesnt bat an eyelash at the correction, and even affirms it in her own curmudgeonly way by calling him 'boy' as she's telling him about his grandfather)

(TO WHICH ALPHINAUD THEN GOES 'and [you knew] my sister too then, i gather' which under this reading is him ever so slyly slipping in that it's just him who's transitioned, so if she should meet alisaie later on (entirely probable, given their lives) she'll know how to adress her. WHAT A SMART BOY I LOVE HIM.)

I would love to hear your trans alphinaud and lesbian alisaie headcanons or more about the subtext you see! Especially alisaie.

AHHH oh gosh i would love to answer!! Though I must admit that these are built from many (MANY) small moments across the whole game more than a few easily pointed at examples, which means its.. kind of difficult to pull up (and remember) all the evidence.

That being said, i do still have Many Thoughts about it :DDD

First off trans Alphinaud was set into my mind very early on by one simple fact: identical twins are almost always born the same sex. like almost invariably, with the very rare exceptions needing some wild extenuating circumstances. and you cannot tell me those two are fraternal.

now ofc this is fiction, and a fantasy world besides. who's to say the writers knew that particular fact? well good news! alphinaud presents a *lot* of other common trans experiances, which are scattered throughout the msq and optional side dialogue.

(shoutout to me for having the exact same thought four years apart before and after playing the game myself. i have absolutely no memory of the first post at all because i also have no memory of watching my partner play shadowbringers even though i definitely did. rare adhd memory loss win! i got to experiance my favourite thing for the first time twice!)

post 1: dated 2019, talking about how alphinaud is extremely trans coded, being an identical twin of a different gender to his twin, cannot swim, is body shy and *extremely* hesitant about using public showers, and having interests that are traditionally coded as feminine in fiction.

post 2: dated 2023, the same thing but this time talking about how wonderfully alphinaud and alisaie are made to complement each other in opposite ways.

he cant swim: related to the body-shyness and hesitance around the showers, its VERY common for trans people to experiance these things due to dysphoria and societal perceptions. i myself started experiancing this (even though i LOVE swimming) when pubescence started to hit. (it sucks!) alphinaud was probably one of those ones who realised VERY early what he was (logic boy who is too dang smart for his own good) so he just.. never learned to swim at all. kept his nose buried in books instead.

traditionally feminine interests/abilities: sure it could be trope subversion, but personally i think theyre also things he just enjoyed before transitioning and thus continued to do.

and one more that i can remember off the top of my head: alisaie's reaction to estinian mistaking her for alphinaud.

"but alphinaud has no problem with being mistaken for-" let me explain, i swear it makes sense.

see, alphinaud is a little logic boy at heart, we know this. he knows he and alisaie share their features, that is simply a fact. alisaie though? alisaie is ruled by feeling, and reacts accordinly. most notably the Incident when she first meets estinian.

what i find especially interesting about this is that prior to that moment with estinian, neither of them appear to have much issue with their similarities. it's only after shadowbringers that alisaie reacts with such contempt

(probably not helped by her not liking estinian much in general lol)

what this says to me is that some time before or during ShB, alphinaud told alisaie that the way people mistake him for her does bother him, but he can't blame them for the mistake considering the circumstances, so he just doesn't mention it.

alisaie however can and will blame them and thus the next time someone mixes them up (rip estinian) she EXPLODES. because it's not about her. if it was about her i honestly dont think she would care nearly as much. but it's about her brother, and how dare you hurt her brother's hidden feelings by not being able to tell them apart.

(completely seperate headcanon but i do think that estinian is faceblind as fuck, which means he never stood a chance on this one, poor guy)

okay now for lesbian alisaie <3

what WAS it that thancred said about battle scars and maidens? and whyfor are you thinking about this alisaie? :3

also: Tesleen.

also also: Emery (A Malm in her Shoes short story)

fr tho alisaie pays attention to and talks about girls a lot. in a way she never does about boys. bringing up my complementary opposites wrt the twins thought from before, it honestly could've been another way the writers COULD have done that, having alisaie attempting to impress boys with her athletic skills the same way alphinaud tried to impress girls with his artistic ones (something he is teased about repeatedly). like the absence of this potential parallel is almost suspicious tbh...

once again, any one of these things in isolation is probably simply a choice in writing, but all these things together spell out to me one thing: alisaie likes girls. exclusively.

(im sorry you wanted lesbian alisaie thoughts more and i have less of that than the trans alphinaud ones, but if you come back in 3-5 years when i've finished my second msq run i will have compiled a far more complete list of evidence for both complete with screenshots, probably lol)

[apocalypsegay]

you know, i’ve said that for endwalker to truly have shined we should’ve become enemies of the sharlayan state. thinking about it, we should’ve also become enemies with hydaelyn.

i’m not saying “hydaelyn evil” arc but i feel if venat herself had had a very real, actual crisis of faith oh that would’ve been raw. her fighting us not as a test - not because she has faith we’ll make it past her but because she DOESN’T. hydaelyn genuinely, desperately trying to beat us back from confronting meteion because here, now, at the very last moment, she finally chokes, she tells us stop antagonizing sharlayan, stop pushing, there’s only one way out of this. after 12000 long years, she’s truly at the end of her rope she sees this moment as a repeat of all those thousands of years ago, of her having to do something terrible again for the good of all. and the last thing the warrior of light does before she’s gone is reassure her that itcan be, will be different this time. that now, we’ve Got this.

it wouldn’t change much but i feel just a little shift in mood would’ve given it so much more Oomph u know (especially cuz i also like thinking abt fourchenault having an arc that doesnt suck ass and also involves his own crisis of faith regarding the sharlayan government etcetcetc)

[haunted-xander]

Underrated Estinien moment tbh. He has no idea how much emotional damage he just inflicted upon this man