#ffxiv has superior writing and you can quote me on that

[elliewiltarwyn]

FFXIV Write 2024 | #9: Lend an Ear

Word Count: 867

Third Umbral Moon, 22nd Sun

So much has happened, yet there’s only one little touch that has overtaken my mind.

Zenos lies dead by his own hand, even after channeling the might of Ilberd’s primal, Shinryu. The Empire has been driven from Gyr Abania by the combined forces of the Resistance and the Alliance. Ala Mhigo, at last, is a free nation once more.

But there are multiple things that haunt me even as the dust settles. First… Zenos. Even as we came face-to-face and crossed swords, the look in his eyes was hungry in a way I have never seen in my enemies before, continuing this strange yearning sensation that I had begun to pick up on when he defeated me in Yanxia. He spoke of the connection he and I shared even as he held Shinryu’s yoke…and he even invited me to join him. To partake in our shared interests together.

I rejected him, of course. But even so…at the end, as he held his own sword to his throat, he met my eyes…and he bade me, “my first friend. My enemy,” farewell.

I can’t untangle what that means - how his definition of friend somehow became so entwined with that of enemy. What sorts of horrors within me that he saw and empathized with.

Because it’s not quite the horror displayed by Aulus mal Asina, whom we confronted mere minutes before Zenos himself. The engineer who kidnapped and tortured Lily and Krile, who put both Fordola and Zenos under the knife to experiment with an artificial Echo.

Mia’s father.

She showed no hesitation, only grim determination and…maybe even a bit of the darkness that Zenos purported to see in me. She brutally, efficiently dismantled him, saving us from his soul-jacking maneuver and completely wrecking his mobile weapons platform. She bore down upon him as he scrambled back against the wall with a hardness in her face I’ve never seen before. And when he tried to lash out, when he blasted Lyse with some secret gadget as she tried to cuff him…

Mia stabbed him through the heart without even flinching.

None of us asked her to - but she still took it upon herself to bear the burden of patricide.

For all my messy feelings about Zenos, can they even begin to compare to what she must have felt as she looked upon the horrified face of her own father, impaled on her own blade?

I didn’t think she’d want to speak with anyone, disquieted by those feelings as much as I am with Zenos. But at the celebration that night, in the shadow of Rhalgr’s frame carved into the cliffside of his Reach, she sought me out, more soused than I’ve ever seen her and grumbling about how she definitely didn’t want to think about it, that she specifically looked for me to spend the party with because I am, to quote, “a good nonthinking buddy - I know you won’t ask me a bunch of annoying questions. Nothing about my absolute… fucker of a dad…”

So, knowing full well how much we’re both wrestling with ignominious, complex thoughts, I told her “I won’t ask, but if you need to talk… I can lend an ear.”

…and she did. I learned a lot about her past. About how little she saw her parents, how she sort of filled the void with the next-door neighbor Jullus and his family. How she didn’t realize what she was missing until she escaped Garlemald. How she had never known how starved for touch and affection and care she was until right now, right here - when she’s nestling herself into my embrace.

If you had told me when I first joined the Scions that I’d ever end up holding Mia Longhart in a caring embrace as she drunkenly unburdened her troubles, I would’ve laughed you out of the room or accused you of spinning wild faerie tales. Fuck, you can see in this very journal, in my entries from years ago, how annoyed I had been at her self-righteousness, her weird moral superiority. Yet here she was in my arms tonight, now one of my closest friends, breaking into a flood of tears as she cursed the monstrous father she had, lamenting that he couldn’t have been like mine, or Lyse’s…

And when she had worn herself out… she thanked me for being here, for listening… for showing her what she was missing. And then she kissed my cheek. And then passed out on my shoulder.

It’s been, I don’t know, maybe two hours since then; I carried her to bed and left her there to write this while watching people celebrate outside. And even with all this tumult inside me, over Zenos’s words and Lyse’s departure from the Scions and everything else… I can still feel the touch of her lips on my cheek, and I am very conscious of how tightly I’m holding on to that sensation like a port in a storm.

…Funny that I did get to comfort her about her father after all. That flame of jealousy isn’t nearly as strong anymore, at least.

Like that’s really the important issue here. Ugh.

[rainofaugustsith]

It's been a year

It has been about a year since I tucked Viri and my other characters into their favorite strongholds in SWTOR and turned off the lights.

I don't miss the lack of content. I don't miss the devs' obvious contempt for most of the playerbase. I don't miss the playerbase that was so toxic. I don't miss the bugs. I don't miss the "story" that was inconsistent, sad and to quote Eddie Izzard, "collapsing on itself like a flan in a cupboard." I don't miss the nasty little group of misogynistic, lesbophobic "fans" who tried so desperately to get the only wlw main character excised from the story and shrilly screamed like Veruca Salt when said wlw character had a line or dared to appear on screen. Definitely don't miss them.

But I put a lot of time and money and effort into SWTOR, and letting that all go - has been a lesson in letting things go for me. I worked on getting as many achievements and datacrons with Viri as I could, and getting the strongholds and such. I'm still very proud that I soloed several things that aren't easy to solo, such as the Fleet datacrons and the Seeker Droid finale. I'm proud that I made it through the Macrobinoculars speeder jumping puzzle, since those were the bane of my existence. I'm proud that the speeder I wanted came up in the Uprising I wanted.

I've always said that Viri in FFXIV - who goes by Rigel in my stories for sake of not confusing things- is who Viri is in that universe. And frankly if you've been through Shadowbringers, it's entirely plausible for me to even think Viri - STWOR and Viri - FFXIV coexist, given shards of souls and such.

I think FFXIV is a far superior game. In FFXIV you get the distinct feeling that the devs genuinely give a fuck about the playerbase, that they actually play the game (Yoshi apparently is a black mage…respect, man. Respect for getting that to 90), and that when problems arise, they try to solve them. Even though there is some unavoidable group content like the trials, they do seem to go out of their way to make it as painless as they can.

Story wise, in FFXIV Viri can be who she wants to be, without the backdrop of a story that doesn't know what the hell it's doing anymore and a very rigid, black and white THIS SIDE BAD!! THIS SIDE GOOD!! mentality coming in from every angle. She's in a far more nuanced, far larger, far more interesting place with a lot more to do. And while I originally was like "oh Lord, don't give me medieval dragons and elves, ugh," she's very ironically running around with a dragon familiar now and considers the medieval-styled city populated by elves to be home (also the Crystarium).

Romance wise, I also think that FFXIV does things better even though they have no official romances. They certainly leave a lot of open doors, but they also structure things in such a way that characters can plausibly never walk through those doors. Your character has dinner or a heartfelt talk with an NPC? Hey, that could be romance or could be two platonic friends, and both work. They set up things like All Hallows Eve where players can do photo shoots with NPCs they like. And it's more or less accepted that everyone in FFXIV's lands could have fluid orientations and fancy your female or male player character. They are incredibly LGBT+ inclusive and have non binary characters that use they/them pronouns too. It's better here, I think.

Having said that…I miss running around with Lana and Viri. Not doing anything in particular, just running around with them. I was able to finish The Eternal Wrath but it's been rough trying to write about them since then.

[herssian]

the bioware games -> ffxiv pipeline is deeply real