#is bc i can see the POTENTIAL in a ship like that but its not smth id actively pursue

[b4kuch1n]

fuck it sk8 sketches from da sketchbook. get sk8ed idiot

[suntails]

Hiya!

I saw your SilRuggie post and I feel you on the "Silver and his many boyfriends" part.

Idk what it is about Silver but he's so... Shippable?

Like I ship SilVil, KalimSil and JadeSil which are kinda popular. But it's also stuff like RidSil and LeoSil (oh so much brainrot currently about LeoSil,) Which aren't as popular.

He's probably my most shipped character like... EVER.

(I may have gotten some ship names wrong)

IT’S THE CHEMISTRY IT’S THE WAY HE HAS CHEMISTRY WITH SO SOSOSO MUCH OF THE CAST!!! he’s so deeply just…good, and he cares so earnestly, and he has examples of interactions with almost fuckgng everyone at this point. like i can understand why someone would ship just abt any silver ship, i GET it, bc theres so much potential. i think i have like…3? that im neutral on? maybe?

also hearing u associate silvil with the kinda popular ones, im fuckign weak at the knees. that is incorrect but im pretending ur right bc it makes me oh so happy

[microwaving-tesilid-argente]

hi guys, may i introduce you to the concept of ailette/hestio

If hesphael is ephael giving in to hestio with some jibes that have little to no heat behind them, then ailette/hestio is ailette returning hestio's energy even more and hestio not being able to take it. Ephael teases hestio with a ☺️ or 😄 face while ailette is like >:)) and she does not pull punches. she would embarrass him happily and watch him combust. They compete on a bunch of inconsequential things and hestio loses 80% of the time because ailette is just too cool like that.

[findafight]

as someone who doesn't ship stancy or jancy, i admittedly do have a preference for jancy, but for very different reasons than the ones you mentioned in your previous, i was wondering if that was something you'd be interested in hearing? i know that post was a vent, so i didn't want to assume

ohhh yeah I'd be down to hear! I am not against Jancy at all I just think canon refuses to let them be interesting even when they're being messy. to me they are a neutral ship I guess? fine either way.

It was mostly a vent about how some people are so viciously anti-stancy that the just completely ignore the exact issues in the ship they like that they bring up for stancy? and while that applies to...a lot of ships honestly, it is pretty glaring discussing jancy and specifically the discussions of the future. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[waywardsalt]

.

[onthecrescentofthehill]

it’s funny when ppl talk about the harpy omelet scene and say things like “why did he do all of that? he didn’t need to. JUST doing that for laios???” (seen these nearly verbatim on posts i’ve made.)

i don’t really get how you can hear his backstory & not understand that every decision he makes within the dungeon is fueled by a profound trauma borne out of horrific, structural negligence. of course he would do fucking anything to enact his plan? if he computes “getting in laios’s favor = proxy control of the dungeon” and he has very limited time to do so, he will jump at the chance. he’s already DIED for this.

kabru has maybe the clearest possible motivation that a character can have. he has a Protagonists Motivation, and it guides him forward in a very coherent way in the beginning of the story. things get more complicated in later acts that directly address how that motivation manifests itself/gets contradicted, bc ryoko kui is great at exploring this, but it’s still extremely present.

and as a labru fan i strongly dislike the implication i see from some ppl that his interest in laios is mostly personal or romantic (posts that range from pure joke to actual ship meta.) even when taking the “confession” at face value, where i think he was telling the truth, there’s still a lot more to it than that. i think at first kabru does see laios as a means to an end in a way that’s impersonal, partly because he tends to keep everyone in his life at arms length. but that “end” (preventing history from repeating itself) is something foundational to his psyche, and we should consider that potential sense of safety getting mixed in with his warring fascination/apprehension towards laios. he’s drawn to him for visceral reasons, and his stated motivations are so intertwined with his sense of self that untangling this push-pull is much more interesting than boilerplate Yearning, to me.

it’s just confusing when any meta or basic discussion of kabru diminishes the weight utaya has on his inner world and i’m really surprised every time i see it? like i understand that different types of meta will put other lenses on things intentionally, and in most cases i think it’s an interesting tool to work with. but it’s a massive disservice to his character to put the most foundational experience of his life on the back burner ESPECIALLY when it’s in favor of shipping. dissecting character relationships, romantic or otherwise, is at its best when you have their full personhood in mind!!

[silk-stocking-soil]

🗣️FIRST🗣️YEAR🗣️GANG🗣️i chant calmly

with all the bs theyve dealt with they gotta be friends alr

and im saying ALL of them:

Ace

Deuce

Jack

Epel

Ortho

Sebek,

Yuu/MC and grim (1 student thing yknow)

big ass friend group of troublemakers with trauma. you don't see overblots and don't get traumatized i refuse to believe that. All the upperclassmen may not have for support groups, honestly doubt the first years would care either, obv the teachers dont.

But the new spotlight troublemakers of the school compiled together alr idk what to tell you blame magic. its a makeshift support group, fucking up class is therapy.

I dont have writing ability at all let alone drawing a stick man but i have will power (i dont)

also can we plz have a platonic first years gang tag or smth bc i have been searching and searching. I dont have anything against ships or 'x readers' and things like that but sometimes ur not in the mood for it yknow

guys harness the POTENTIAL. the POTENTIAL ANGST, the BRAINROT, CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.

Have ramshackle be the meet up dorm and go out to town, teaching eachother random things, brawling bc its nrc but actually still getting along, and STUDY GROUPSSSSSSSSSSSS

[cowboy-robooty]

PruPan (Prussia x Japan) For the grid

I know who sent this. I can smell your prupan and self-ship wif japan from a mile away **heart eyes emoji** thank you for being the only mf who wants to hear my opinions. anyways so i thought about it and realized actually prussia and japans dynamic is the greatest thing ever. Because see i believe in cuck japan romantically FOREVER. i think japan has like best broship in the platonic dating style (if you experience that shit you know what i mean) with america and like hes emotionally fulfilled from that but also he desperately wants a boyfriend or girlfriend or oysterfriend just anyone to have that shoujo romance and tentacle freak sideways tango with. but the thing is that he literally always fails and is in one-sided crushes Forever and always and its always japan crying to his best bro america about his fail ass love life and america is like lol couldnt be me! but it's fine because he still has his best bro and like yknow... its like how family and friendship is two different things that are both need. like moral orel about the f words (family, faith, friends) but with b. bros, booty, and bazinga... like idubbbz! (as long as you have one of those you won't be lonely). but anyways see i believe japans biggest crush of all is on italy and obviously prussia has his huge ginormous crush on italy too but like i think that actually they are aware of eachothers crushes but dont care because they dont see eachother as threats at all bc theyre like "omg this dude is so cooked he aint even competition lol i feel bad for him" towards eachother.

and i think its actually really funny because see prussia is a desperate motherfucker and honestly not hard to pull at all. like if you have sex with him hes the type who goes "uhmm youre my boyfriend now right?" or if you confess to him hell take your feelings genuinely seriously and think about it and 90% of the time end up saying YES!!! I LIKE YOU TOO!!!!!! and japan is also desperate but he would literally date anybody Except prussia. like it's like how italy will fuck anybody Except Prussia. LIke japan could potentially get together with anybody under the right circumstances except prussia lol even if they were trapped in alkatraz together for 18 years he would never be prussia's prison boyfriend he just doesnt have the capacity to love him. and its really funny because prussia is literally the only mf who has the capacity to feel romantic love towards japan in a twist of horrible fate because japan pissed off cupid in his past life and will never ever fucking win at romance. The only conceivable way is if he asked out prussia but prussia is the only mf he would rather die a virgin with while stranded on an island for 3000 years with than fuck and try to repopulate the planet with yaoi babies. so yeah they compell me a lot in this sense because this is fucking hilarious and amazing and I'd like for them to act pitying to eachother about their crushes on italy bc they're like "mhm mhm yeah you have a chance (lying)" even though they both strapped in the same jigsaw trap lawl. but I dont think i ship them because of what i said above. thank you for sending this though this was some really good shit to think about and i think ill draw them interacting more because this is an incredible discovery.... best discovery since alfred wagner and the tectonic plates !

[sitp-recs]

top 5 rare pairs? :)

Hi lovely, thank you so much! As you know I love babbling about these, kind feel bad that I didn’t include any femslash but I wanted to keep this short and include some sneaky recs as always :D hope that’s ok, would love to see your picks too!

1. HARRY/TEDDY MY BELOVED, sometimes I feel like I love them as much as Drarry as my adoration for Teddy Lupin (and Harry’s too, I’m sure) goes beyond this life, and the next. as always a big shoutout to @lqtraintracks for single-handedly seducing me into this ship back in 2012, thank you for your service 🫡

2. Harry/Ron, things like this fic by @writcraft and this post suggest that friends to lovers might be in fact the ultimate trope. it took me so long to get into the idea of them as a romantic ship, and even longer to start reading it because I’m picky af, but after I did they started living rent free in my head and there’s no way back. rip liv 🤡

3. Harry/Ron/Draco because I really wanted to include a triad, also a bit picky about them but @tackytigerfic’s foundational Aim For My Heart punched me in the solar plexus with feelings (ugh!!!), and I can’t really resist the pull now that @dronarryfest exists. I’ll take this chance to also mention my love for Dron which has superb fics like this and this, a really fun and refreshing ship with its own brand of humor and angst.

4. Harry/Sirius, look I’m a simple woman with simple fandom needs and age gap covers most of them lol I don’t read it very often but I ache for the angst potential of those hotdirtywrong vibes & delicious want x guilt moral dilemma that our Sirry champion @lqtraintracks explores so well. orrr we can go the hot & sweet route and still get ruined by tender wall sex, how dare you @maesterchill

5. Draco/Albus Severus is on this list solely bc of birdsofshore’s invaluable contribution including my all-time favorite pwp, and also my pal @sweet-s0rr0w who gifted me this breathtaking T-rated gem, how lucky am I!!!

Bonus: special mention to Sirius/Draco which I hadn’t considered before being slapped in the face by this gem by @ruinsplume and this gem by one @citrusses you might have heard of her 😌

ask me my top 5/10 anything!

[mae-i-scribble]

I rewatched a few of the early episodes of spyfam today bc getting to see the movie gave me an itch to scratch, and in particular episode two made me finally able to conceptualize what about fandom twiyor that irks me so deeply. If you like widespread fandom interpretations of them I would uh, look away bc none of my opinions on it are positive.

Episode 2 of the spyfam anime remains one of my favorites because of all the little flourishes the studios add to sell you on Yor as a character while also expanding a bit on the manga's original commentary on the stigma that follows older single women. What draws Yor and Loid together as a family is that neither of them are capable of having conventional relationships. Both of them are war orphans forced to grow up far too soon and who threw away aspects of their humanity to fight for what they believe to be a better world. While Loid's position as a spy and mastery of deception allows him to avoid the stigmas that would come from the ordinary person discovering what he does, that is not something that holds true for Yor, whose weakest point is that she simply cannot understand "normal." She's aware of the way her coworkers demean her and insult her but can do nothing about it because her only conflict resolution skill is murder. She is constantly reminded that she is an outsider, hence why Loid's declaration at the party is so meaningful to her, and what convinces her to ask him to continue the facade as a married couple.

Underneath it all however, is a quiet showcase of amatonormativity that drove both Loid and Yor to their arrangement. Eden requires a student to have a perfectly nuclear family. Societal conventions dictate that Yor, happily single at 27, is someone pathetic (to her coworkers) or someone in need of help (to her brother). Marriage is an expectation that Yor is pressured to commit to, and a societal requirement that Loid must uphold for the sake of his mission. And while this showcase begins in episode 2 it is something that spyfam continues to highlight when it comes to the expectations both Loid and Yor struggle to meet when they try to hard/become to anxious over what is "expected" as a married couple vs what the other person is actually thinking/feeling.

Now, what the fuck does this have to do with fandom you ask? Here's the thing. Spyfam reached the broad range of anime fans when it exploded in popularity, which is when I started engaging with it beyond just comments on the latest manga chapters. Modern fandom already has the issue of classifying ships into tropes rather than actually like, shipping characters as they are. And that's exactly what happened with twiyor. People began going "oh my gosh this is the moment she fell for loid," "oh he's so in love with her just look at him," before we had even reached episode 10. Which was incredibly frustrating to me because clearly Loid and Yor are not anywhere near in love that soon in the story- and the basis for that frustration starts in episode 2 for me. Because Loid and Yor's marriage is one that is unconventional from the very beginning, and it is that factor that defines their dynamic an allows them to function as healthily and sweetly as they do. People don't need to be in love to be married or to be a parental unit. None of that requires romantic love, it is simply an expectation of our society, the same sort of expectation that cripples Yor and makes her think she has to find a partner, then that she has to find a husband to appease those around her. Seeing that completely erased in a large portion of art/commentary/fics written about them angers me because its something baked into the foundation of their dynamic and something I feel enhances them as a potential romantic pairing rather than detracts from it. But we can't have that because of course a man and woman living together and caring for a kid fell in love almost immediately.

And don't even get me started on how people misinterpret Loid for their far more romantic interpretations of his motivations and relationship with Anya and Yor or else I will start losing teeth from how hard I am clenching my jaw

[gold-rhine]

How do you feel about the two big neuvi juggernauts rn, neuvifuri and wrioneuvi

tbh i'm ambivalent about both of these. im simply a dragon protection unit advocating against mistreatment.... bc for some reason ppl ooc neuvi in two wildly different directions to fit into heteronormativity stereotypes for these two ships. like with rizzley they feminize him drastically, and on the other side with furina they make like stoic uber masculine idk hot math teacher stereotype. both are super annoying tbh. let the poor dragon be, magic evolution already yassified him into french man in reincarnation, has he not suffered enough. stop gendering him so badly, hes not even human, hes a lizard.

with furina im also quite peeved how ppl will try to pretend that they loved each other for all these years (no they didn't), how furina was the one who made him love humanity (no she did not categorically), etc etc. bc i think they have very complicated relationship due to power dynamics of archon\ dragon whose power was stolen by this archon, and trying to erase it make them much less interesting. like furina straight up shut down every their argument in archon quests by going "i'm an archon, you should do as i say bc i'm the god". which she probably didn't know has vastly different implications for the dragon sovereign who sees her as false god, ruling with his power. of course now that she knows, she thinks he hates her, just as she said in her story quest. there is an interesting tension there that i think could be fun to explore bc yeah, they also have 500 years of history. they barely talked, but she knows where he would like to be at this time of day, that kind of familiarity. but i think if you wanna see their relationship explored, esp in romantic sense, you gotta start from right now, from the awkwardness and complications, instead of pretending they are already end game in love.

with rizzwolfsley i remember i saw one post that said that its like fleabag vibes, like they know they can't be together bc of Duty, and i can see it tbh, like rizzley is v feabag to me with his trauma that he pretends hes fine with, but obv a bleeding wound in his back, with sarcastic facade keeping ppl from looking too close, the nonchalant attitude covering painful tension. and as he grew up with this dagger in his back literally in prison, around petty human vices and learned to shield in irony-poisoned attitude, i can see him being drawn to neuvi, steadfast, incorruptible, powerful, but never using it for selfish reasons, fresh clear water in the midst of dark muddy swamp, larger than life, inhuman in his mercy. i can see it, the little wow, it works. the bittersweetness of yearning, awkward stolen moments, it has potential

[ekanatsume]

Keeping these here bc istg finding doksoo people is like seeing kdj not sacrificing himself

I dont really ship ship them but like the potential they have as a couple i-

If youre a doksoo person, please lemme know bc like i can n o t for the love of god find people who ship them. I just wanna cry about them like 😭🙏

[ID: Tiktok screenshots of Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint fanart of Han Sooyoung and Kim Dokja overlaid with captions about their relationship. The art featured is by more than one artist, but predominantly by BlackBox. The captions read:

1. han sooyoung once said "me, waiting for someone for decades and decades... you think such a thing is even possible? you crazy fool,"

and then we are told about her endless waiting in kaizenix arc, and how she was fighting her best to stay awake for 13 years in the epilogue, for one person, for someone she thought she never waited for, and then it was revealed that she, again, waited for 4 years for certain someone to wake up from his sleep. she diligently visited him every day during his time in the hospital, making sure he's still alive and well even though his soul has scattered away.

2. orv ebook spoiler?

during kaizenix arc kim dokja wrote a love letter to han sooyoung where he told her "write a'story that's for me andme "alone." little did he know that han sooyoung Would do anything, LITERALLY anything to write a story for him alone. why aren't you by her side when she writes a story for you?

3. kaizenix arc shows how much kim dokja means to han sooyoung. she spent 50 years, literally a lifetime, waiting for him. she hold onto the promise kdj told her, where he said he would find her as soon as possible before they got thrown to kaizenix.

she fought her hardest not to forget him. fighting for 50 years, ALONE. for 50 years, she believed kdj would save her. and she believed kdj would one day read her book to save her. and she never blamed kdj for the 50 years she spent. God. it's a pity we don't talk enough about her struggle in kaizenix.

4. This has to be one of the saddest passages in the entire novel.

I will never shut up about doksoo and their captivating interactions. and how astoundingly excellent Sing Shong's writing is: the emotions, permeated the text, and picturing that particular moment visually came with it naturally.

I was moved to tears by her assumption that it was her fault that he started crying and her quick actions to comfort him because she didn't want to keep seeing him cry

Not to mention how Kim Dokja expressed his emotions, which is as uncommon as him not sacrificing his life for KimCom.

All he wanted was some reassurance; to be told, that he's done the best he could the whole time through

Hsy mghtve comforted him for the wrong reasons, but that completed the job nevertheless.

5. when you realize kim dokja's ■■ is "epilogue" and "eternity" while han sooyoung's ■■ is "neverending story". and towards the end we find out about hsy making a promise to kdj that she will write the epilogue, a story, for kdj until the end of time, for eternity, if that's the only way she could save him…

6. how did you read orv epilogue and think han sooyoung and kim dokja are platonic bc i genuinely thought they were canon after hsy's sacrifices for 13 years, and kdj openly saying he loves her story more than anyone else.

orv theme is basically your story = you

7. the fact that kim dokja had actually fulfilled his promise to read han Sooyoung's "boring" novel that has over 3000 chapters even before they both made promise with each other.. he kept his promise for over than 13 years, without both realizing that fact until hsy regained her memories as tls123, and kdj as od.

8. han sooyoung had seen kim dokja's life at its lowest when she first saw him almost lifeless at the hospital she held his hand, feeling the warmth of the hands that had given up of his life, and she cried. and the first thing. she thought of was how to save him. in mere minutes she decided to damn the whole world for him to live and survive she would never let kim dokja to be in that state ever again, not when she is there for him.

9. the whole twsa is a love letter from han sooyoung to kim dokja. she told him to never give up (ch533), encouraged him to find companions (ch75). described so many disgusting foods as delicious so that he could eat them with ease, and not to mention the whole reason why twsa existed was for him to have a reason to live and survive for another day. she wrote all of this for 13 years, so that he could live BEFORE and AFTER apocalypse. she saved him before anyone else could do it. her love is eternal. End ID]

Thenks to @princess-of-purple-prose I DIDNT KNOW HOW TO ALT TEXT AAAAAA. Thenks for doing this ^^

[toorumlk]

Harry/Ginny

AH HINNY!

oh man, i oscillate between really liking hinny one day and feeling completely indifferent towards them the next.

hinny might be the relationship i like the most for harry, and it's all because because of the family aspect. through marriage w ginny, harry officially became a weasley family member. and, of course he always was one, but he actually is a weasley on paper and i think having that in writing would mean a lot to harry. and my golden trio heart can't not mention that by hinny being married - ron and hermione are literally harry's brother and sister (in-law) now and !!!!! that just makes my heart melt (i know those two were always harry's family but bc of the aforementioned reason, etc. you get it)

so right off the bat, when i try to organize my more positive thoughts on hinny, i'm mostly focused on how the relationship best serves harry, and only harry. and this is where my frustrations with the ship begins: it's so hard to think the other way around because ginny's narrative purpose is just to be harry's ideal love interest, instead of being a fully fleshed character. i really love ginny with all her spunk and feistiness, but she's so underutilized. she had a cute crush on him in the start of the series which was adorable, but her character was inarguably just "ron's younger sister". and after she gets possessed by volde/gets saved from the CoS by harry, she still continues to have a puppy-love crush on harry until OoTP!!! GAAHHHH!!! Apparently joanne said hinny were always meant to be soulmates and i think if these two had a consistent "invisible string" motif throughout the series, it would've been so good (and almost as good as romione's slow burn). So...

here's how i'd fix hinny (lmao):

i wouldve made the ginny a much more prominent character in PoA and beyond.

we get to see hinny actually have heart-to-hearts about the incidents of CoS - for ginny to play such an IMPORTANT role in the titular plotline of the second book, then to just have her blend into the background afterwards just boggles my mind - that was the perfect oppurtunity to make ginny an invaluable character in the cast. she has this huge experience in common with harry - being personally victimized by voldemort - that harry doesn't have w ron or hermione at that point and it would've been so nice to see harry find an equal, a confidant in ginny from then on - like, dont let the readers forget that harry and ginny have this huge thing in common, have it be with us in the back of our heads the whole time!

start the hinny romance subplot fr fr in GoF

the potential of ginny being a maybe date for harry to the yule ball, harry feeling jealousy towards neville for getting to dance and spend time w ginny and harry being like "wait a minute! i'm supposed to crush on cho! im jealous of neville??" that wouldve been FUN - again, they couldve been a less insane version of romione hello

having the hinny subplot unravel in tandem with harry's crush and relationship with Cho in ootp

in ootp, you can argue that the story attempts to make a foil between cho and ginny's characters but if that were the case, it could've done a way better job of it

with harry's relationship w cho - harry likes her bc she's cool and pretty but she wants to connect with him through their connection via cedric and his death, which is off the bat a hugely touchy/traumatic topic for both of them and cho couldn't possibly fathom what it's like to be in the presence of voldemort/tom but guess which other character does ehehe...

now we're at hbp and this is where the good stuff starts bc if i'd had it my way, we'd have gotten their friendship in poa and two books of solid romantic build-up up until now

i honestly had a such a fun time with hinny in hbp, ginny in her OWL year being so cool and harry's hugeass crush on her- harry being a hormonal teenager was hilarious to read like its implied that harry is having increasingly inappropriate thoughts about her throughout the novel and theyre just intercut with "BUT RON-" that's some good shit

my one gripe w hbp's hinny is that i wish we actually got to see their dates sneaking around hogwarts, finding the perfect hideaways for makeout sessions, etc etc i know hp wasn't a romance fantasy by any means but imagine how swoony it wouldve been if we got to actually see these sunset dates instead of just being told about them - it wouldve been cathartic to actually see harry actually live the life of a normal teen boy before everything fell apart lol

if we got all these invisible string moments between them throughout the series, harry thinking about ginny and how good it felt to kiss her lips before he walks to his death in DH would've felt so much more earned

from a storytelling perspective, the case with hinny begs the question of if you can have a love interest for the jesus figure of your narrative? can you make a believable, grounded and balanced love story for the chosen one? i honestly think so but then you'd have to put equal amounts of effort and work into creating two nuanced characters and unfortunately we don't see that effort be put in ginny's character and that's why harry's endgame falls short for so many people. earlier, i said that this is the ship i like most for harry, but honestly that isn't saying a lot - i think with an almost saint-like character like harry, its hard to imagine a satisfying love and partnership for this kid. i like tomarry as a ship for when im feeling a bit insane but other than that, my main harry ship is him with a lifetime of peace and healing.

i also want to argue that hinny was never meant to be a primary romance in this story - the main romance/love story in the series is ron and hermione's and i think joanne's romance prowess all went into romione and i'm so thankful for that because i think it makes for better story (also i'm totally biased)

i also cant not mention the freudianess of it all with hinny, right? like god freud would Love hinny bc what do you mean they look identical to jily, what is going on here. that and the fact they had their first kid at 22/23 years old like my god, WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING you should be at the club!!!!! i do dig the failmarriage vibes they were serving in TCC, also.

[i-write-sin-not-tragedy]

Do you have any headcanons for radiohuskerdust dynamic?

Im so sorry this took so long to reply to i literally let out a screech of joy when i got it and wanted to wait till i was home for the day so i could properly reply LOL

GOD YES I HAVE SOME♡ I HAVE MANY EEE

Overall i view Alastors role here as some flavor of queer platonic— he has the potential to be a caring partner but doesn't care much for romance specifically (yes my aromantic ass is projecting a lil shhhh)

My personal favorite take for them in canon is that eventually over the course of Alastors redemption he does eventually let Husk go— i have. Many feelings on that whole situation too but this is gonna be long already so SJDKEKDK just know i see them eventually getting to a point where they accept that neither of them are perfect and can let things go. Alastor considers Husk a very dear friend, and does in fact hold a high amount of respect for him, and Husk feels the same (although hes a little more Tsundere about it sksksksk)

Angel is very much so the glue that holds this ot3 together LOL

Like i think both Husk and Alastor fall for him first and through Angel find a way to actually communicate over the strange mix of feelings they've had with each other. Angels good at reading other people, he can tell they have *something* going on and isn't afraid to point it out.

I constantly see people making Angel hate Alastor but sorry no i do not agree at all.

Despite the initial impressions of each other, Alastor and Angel would be FANTASTIC friends. Once Alastor understands that Angels humor is just that, humor, hes not actually expecting anything from Al, he starts meeting Angel halfway on his jokes, adding onto them. Once they start to realize they can bounce off each other and actually bond oh god its OVER.

Alastor finds Angel actually very charming to be around, and Angel realizes Alastor isn't a prude or anything he just has some firm walls up.

God they'd be INSUFFERABLE together

You know that post thats like "i ship this ship but like specifically as a comedy duo" yeah thats radiodust in my heart LOL

They'd be the bane of Husks existence together.

Also Alastor is capable of being a huge gentleman and i can see him treating Angel to fancy dinners and "Dates". Alastor has no care for romance but he knows how to treat someone well and Angel basks in the attention.

They'd just VIBE so well!! Maybe its bc i spent years watching the hunniecast streams but god i think Radiodust make such a fun duo. If they put their heads together they can be a menace to society.

Alastor also gives off cheek/hand kiss vibes. He would do that shit and Angel is a sucker for it (both Husk and Alastor would treat him so well okay spider boy deserves it)

Husk and Angel have the most "Romantic" dynamic of the three ofc, and Alastor is happy to spend their date nights off doing his own thing. Huskerdusts dynamic is pretty much exactly as canon— i don't have many notes to add to it i Genuinely love how canon is handling them so far.

I won't dive off into nsfw here kwkfkwkd but i DO have thoughts on how that would work in this lineup.

I will say overall i see Angel as hypersexual, Husk as Demi, and Alastor as a sex neutral-Ace.

Like he just doesn't GET it but he can find some compromises if one of his partners askes.

[agustdiv1ne]

CONGRATS ON 3K ASHLEE 🥳🫶🏼✨ you’re truly amazing and here’s to many more milestones!!

right so, ik this isn’t a movie, but I was wondering if you could do something along the lines of bridgerton + beomgyu + fluff and smut please 🥹 but if it really is just movies, then titanic with the same member and genre please <3 thank you in advance <3

NOW SHOWING...

pairing: choi beomgyu x fem!reader

genre: historical fiction, romance, fluff, smսt

wc: 4.2k

details + warnings: mdni, beomgyu and mc's characters are jack and rose adjacent but they actually have a happy ending bc i said so <3, mentions of alcohol, no established dom/sub dynamics but gyu takes the lead a bit, soft + romantic sex, fingering (f receiving), unprotected sex (don't do this!!), my big dick gyu agenda makes an appearance, light dirty talk, a little possessiveness, beomgyu calls mc: love, beautiful

note: SMILES!! TYSM <33 you are one of of my longest moots and i appreciate you and your talent so much! i've unfortunately never watched bridgerton (or else i would have used that ;-;), though i do adore titanic so i ultimately went with that ^^

you have found sunsets to be far more magnificent at high sea.

tonight brings one that is, by far, one of your most beloved from the voyage thus far: a sky flushed a deep rose, billowing clouds contrived of fairy floss drifting above your head. the horizon holds clear where the roseate hue melts into the ocean and scatters about the peaks of gentle waves. it's quite a breathtaking sight, almost too good to be true. a painting; that is what it resembles — you wish that you could reach up and brush your hands through it, watch it coat and swirl about your fingertips like smudged pigments on canvas.

leaning against the railing, you inhale a deep breath of fresh, salt-heavy air. it stings as it fills your lungs. despite the beginnings of spring, the weather has remained chilly, growing further frigid whenever the sky fades to black. now, the sun hangs low, sinking closer and closer to the sea that awaits to swallow it whole — you will be forced to return back inside soon.

sighing quietly, your mind wanders to beomgyu, the man who has won over your affections over the past five days. you wish he could be here with you to see this picturesque display. where is he right now? on one of the lower decks, perhaps? should you go find him?

does he miss you as much as you do him?

not even half a day has passed since you last saw each other, but these thoughts swirl within your brain nonetheless. busy mixing with pretentious elites and the potential suitors your mother demanded that you meet throughout the day, you hadn't found time to sneak away and meet with him despite your aching desire to. you just barely avoided your mother's watchful gaze to escape out here and finally be able to breathe.

as naïve as it may sound, you feel as though you've known the charming man your entire life. strangers with a divine connection — you ponder if you must have known beomgyu in a past life, fell for him just as you do now. your typically rational mind supplies you with grandiose ideas of running away, of fleeing this suffocating, predetermined path that you were born into. he is a breath of fresh air after all of the men that you have met who only wish to marry and mold you into a submissive, obedient housewife that they can then neglect. unlike those men — no, you think, those insolent boys, he is not hungry to further his wealth, to fasten his name to yours for the sake of status. he doesn't expect you to change yourself. rather, he takes you as you are, with all your sharp edges and imperfections, and worships you down to the marrow of your bones.

the longing to wander the entire ship until you find him strikes you square in the chest like a sack of flour, knocking the breath from your lungs. your heart aches. you want to see him. you must see him.

“i should’ve known i’d find you out here.” 

it's quite strange, how the hand of fate plays its cards. you whip your head around, and there he is, with his sun-kissed skin and wind-tousled hair, as if he had somehow heard your thoughts and rushed to meet you. the upward quirk of his lips conveys both fondness and mischief while he moves closer to you, gentle hands wrapping around your waist. you mirror his expression, relief flooding your system at his well-timed arrival. sliding your hands over his shoulders, you link your fingers together around the nape of his neck.

“gyu,” you whisper while you surge forward to embrace him, pressing your face into the junction between his neck and shoulder. he nearly stumbles, but quickly regains his balance, returning the hug. “i missed you.”

“we saw each other this morning,” he chuckles, but the way his arms tighten around you betray his true emotions. 

you deliver a light pinch to his neck in jest, mumbling against his neck, “you’re impossible.”

this simply makes him laugh harder, his chest shuddering against your own. he curls a hand under your chin to remove your face from his neck, and his chestnut-colored eyes find yours. “and you love it.”

“unfortunately, yes,” you admit with a sigh. he smiles wider at that.

a peaceful silence fills the air between you. only the sounds of the ship cutting through the sea fills your ears. turning in his hold until his back presses against your chest, you look back out to the horizon. the pink sky has faded into a muted indigo, the sun barely a semicircle along the horizon. the air has grown colder now, but the warmth that beomgyu exudes wards off the chill that runs deep beneath your skin. your place one hand atop the ones looped around your stomach, the other reaching up to play with the ends of his soft hair.

“where’d you disappear off to today?” beomgyu breaks the quiet first. he feels the way you stiffen within his hold, how your fingers stop toying with his hair, the deep breath you exhale. you can that he immediately regrets asking.

“my mother,” you begin to explain, a bitter, sour note in your voice. “she dragged me from party to party today. they weren’t even parties, really, just excuses to flaunt wealth and peacock about. it was absolutely ridiculous.”

you hear the small giggle he allows at your choice of words, and your lips turn up again. teasing, you say, “i’m glad my misery amuses you.”

“no, never,” he hastily says, oddly serious. your fingers rubbing soothing circles against his scalp is a silent confirmation that you know. a few beats of silence pass once more, your eyes trained on how the sun continues its descent below the horizon.

the ocean's maw has fully consumed the sun when he pulls you back against him, his warm breath caressing the shell of your war and causing you to shiver. the quintessentially impish lilt of his voice returns, a smirk rich on his lips.

“wanna go to a real party?”

and to a real party he takes you. a gathering on a lower deck, the tunes played by the instrument-wielding passengers brash and loud. others sing, some dance, many drink. it's as if you are walking into a brand new world, seeing colors you have never seen before. it is so disorienting yet exhilarating at the same time.

your hand enveloped in his, beomgyu guides you into the sea of noise and moving bodies with confidence towards two men who cheer his name at the sight of him. they each hold a glass of amber ale, eyes glazed over as they spot you behind their friend.

“you finally made it! thought you weren’t comin’,” the slightly taller of the two calls, his words slurred. his fox like eyes meet yours again, and he grins. “you must be the girl he’s been ravin’ about! y/n, right?”

you offer a shy nod and a polite smile, nerves apparent in the way your eyes dart across the room. next to you, beomgyu grows a bit red in the face, but holds you closer to him. how easily he picks up on your emotional state is beyond you, but appreciated.

beomgyu moves to introduce the two men, and you learn the taller one is named yeonjun. the shorter man, his eyes as round as a doe's, is named taehyun. he is far more reserved compared to the other two, but welcoming nonetheless. you converse with them for a considerable amount of time, growing more comfortable the longer you stand with them. none of them seem to care that you come from a wildly opposite walk of life as them; they treat you as a friend all the same.

the conversation soon turns to their history and how exactly they came to know beomgyu. they happened to meet while in paris, yeonjun explains, bonding over their shared heritage and quickly developing a close friendship.

“it’s a miracle we even got on this ship!” yeonjun laughs before he takes another swig of his drink. “gyu won a game of cards back at the port just before she set sail. lucky guy, ain’t he?”

“yeah,” beomgyu responds before you are able to utter a word, looking down at you with fondness coloring his gaze. “i really am.”

the two men soon depart on a search for more alcohol, leaving you and beomgyu alone. he does not take long in snatching your hand to drag you towards the makeshift dance floor.

“beomgyu, wait, i can’t—”

“c’mon!” he exclaims. “dance with me!”

he pulls you close to him as soon as you reach the space. chest to chest, hand in hand. your eyes widen, frantic.

with haste, your voice strained in order to be heard over the music, you say, “beomgyu i don’t, i don’t know this dance, i can’t do this!”

“sure you can!” he jovially yells. “just follow my lead!”

the music surges around your bodies as you begin to skip about the room. with beomgyu guiding you along to the fast-paced tempo, your apprehension melts away. you do not have to be in control, you can simply feel and allow yourself to flow along with him. you squeal as your unsuitably formal dress flutters around your legs and your heeled shoes click against the floor rhythmically. both of you laugh unabashedly, growing drunk on the excitement of it all. your heart beats erratically against your ribcage, your cheeks beginning to hurt from how wide you beam.

you feel more alive in this moment than you have in your entire life.

he spins you around and around until you grow dizzy. then, you are off once again, eventually joining a line of people holding hands and snaking about the room. you skip along with one hand held by a woman who speaks to you in rapid french and the other still taken by beomgyu, who attempts to translate her words, albeit poorly.

out of breath, you squeeze his hand, and he takes your hint; you break away from the line. others easily fill the void that you leave.

you stumble, giggling, and beomgyu catches you. harebrained and giddy and every cell of your body positively surging with joy, you are unable to even think your actions through before you are cupping his face in your hands and crashing your lips against his.

whoops and hollers sound around you, but the sole thing that permeates your senses is beomgyu's soft lips melding with your own. the grip of his hands upon your waist fortifies, but only enough to hold you to ensure your unchanging propinquity. hurried, ravenous, you devour each other in the middle of the crowd until you grow desperate for oxygen. pulling away, you draw a breath deep into your lungs, mouth agape just as the full force of what you did crashes into you, a strike of lightning straight to your chest.

and rather than fret, your lips split and their corners rise, and you laugh. you laugh and laugh and laugh until you collapse against beomgyu's chest. he gathers you up to his chest before you crash to the floor, holding you by your cheeks while he comprehends your wild eyes and glowing mien.

“are you alright?” he queries.

i think i may be in love with you, is what you wish could say, but you bite the words back before they escape.

instead, you ask, “come with me, please?”

he nods and allows you to pull him towards the stairs that you first entered from. mistakenly, you briefly meet eyes with yeonjun, who stands across the room with a suggestive smirk, eyebrows wiggling in your direction. though your cheeks grow warm, you continue to push forward, weaving your fingers through those of the man following close behind.

the trek to your private chambers takes far longer than expected. both of you are guilty of pulling each other into dark corners and giggling into each other's mouths at nearly every turn. the situation becomes dire once you reach the upper decks, dodging acquaintances of your mother through roundabout hallways. after what seems like hours, you reach the door of your room, swiftly unlocking it and pulling beomgyu inside.

without delay, he presses you up against the door, forearms caging you in, and crashes his lips to yours once more. gone is the nonsensical laughter and teasing touches — now all that remains is a carnal hunger, a bone-deep desperation to feel and to devour one another whole. his sly tongue sneaks into your mouth, dancing with your own before it retracts and his teeth graze your lower lip. you exhale a breathy whine, hands pawing at the rough linen of his shirt.

he pulls away to momentarily catch his breath before he blazes forward to kiss you once more. your finger pressed to his lips, however, halts his movements. questions dance in his pupils.

“take me to bed,” you whisper. 

biting your lip, you watch as the gears within his brain churn as he processes your words, how his eyes grow impossibly darker once he does. the short journey to your bed is a blur in your mind. hands tug at clothes and undergarments until you lay bare beneath his own naked torso, his trousers low on his waist, though unable to hide the aching erection that strains the fabric.

he reaches up to tweak your nipple, causing you to inhale sharply. he finds great delight in how sensitive you are, his lips ravaging your neck until he locates the weak spot just beneath your ear. he bites down lightly. a shock of bliss jolts down your spine, and you squeal his name — god, how he would give away what little money he has to his name to hear that sound every day.

the combination of his lips gliding down your neck and his thumb circling your nipple renders you speechless, merely able to moan and grip the soft sheets below you as he brings you pleasure that you have never felt before. though his calloused hands against your skin feel much rougher than those of the men that your mother forces you to mingle with, he treats you gentler than any of your desperate suitors ever could. almost as if your body is made of glass, he does not press hard enough to inflict pain, nor does he force you to your knees to take him. no man you have lied with before has treated you in such a manner, putting your needs before his own. your heart pounds at the realization. you pray that he cannot hear it.

deprived of warning, his lips and fingers disappear from your skin. you whine at the sudden confiscation of pleasure.

“why did you stop?” you pant, breathless, trying to reach up to touch him. he captures your hands and links his fingers between your own. he presses your arms back against the sheet before he lets go. 

he stares down at you for a moment, eyes trailing from your heaving chest to the swollen pout upon your lips. with a ghost of a smirk, he leans down to press a chaste peck to the corner of your mouth, his forehead now pressed against yours. eyes hooded, he breathes, “patience, beautiful. i’m gonna make you feel good, i promise.” 

“hurry, then,” you plead. you feel as if you are going insane without his touch. addictive, akin to opium; you want more, you crave it.

“ah, so demanding,” he jokes, though he gives in. he allows you no time to respond as he kisses you again, leaning over you with forearm pressed into the mattress next to your head. a hand slides down your side — drawing goosebumps to your skin — to your thigh, spreading you wider for him. you inhale sharply through your nose when you feel fingers press against your soaking center, one slim, rough-skinned finger sliding slowly past your entrance. the groan he emits rumbles against your own chest. he raises his head no more than a millimeter, shuddering at the wet heat that coats his skin as he begins to thrust the digit in and out. 

“fuck, you’re so tight,” he curses, unable to help himself. clinging to him, you bite your lip at his ministrations, nearly drawing blood when he slips a second finger in, stretching your walls. his thumb finds the aching bud just above to ease the sting.

“g-gyu,” you whimper, the sound singing in his ears like wind chimes, urging him to move faster, curl his fingers against the spongy patch inside you, watching how your face contorts beneath him. he fixates on the spot. your hips involuntarily buck up into his thrusts in response, the cord within your stomach tightening. your gaze meets his, desperate, pleading. “gyu, i need, ‘m going to—”

“let go, beautiful,” he groans, grinding his cock into the crease of your thigh for relief. “you can do it, c’mon. let go for me.”

his deep-voiced encouragement sends you over the edge, warmth flooding your veins as your thighs quake around him, nails digging into his tanned skin. your eyes screw shut.

“that’s it,” he coos as you float back down to earth. he rubs soothing circles against the skin of your cheek. “my lovely girl.” 

“want you, gyu,” you beg, stomach warm from the praise. “want you inside.” 

he freezes, eyes wide. “are...are you sure?”

“i’ve never been more sure in my life,” you say. thus, his grin returns. he moves to unbutton his trousers, and you help him, grazing the hard imprint in his underwear. he hisses at the sensation, then stands from the bed to remove his remaining clothing. your mouth dries at the sight, and you gulp. he is quite well-endowed, his cock standing tall against his soft abdomen, the tip an angry crimson, the color fading as your eyes travel down the shaft. you squirm at the thought of it being inside you, stretching your walls beyond belief, pressing into every spot within you with every roll of his hips.

he settles between your thighs once again, guiding his cock against your wet folds. your poorly-veiled apprehension is not lost on him.

“i’ll go slow,” he promises, guiding the head of his cock to your awaiting entrance. “don’t wanna hurt you...you ready?”

with a deep breath, you hum in confirmation. he murmurs out a quiet “okay,” directed more towards himself than you, and shifts his hips forward. the first press brings with it a small ache. you wince, and he slows, inquiring if you are okay. 

you nod. “go slow, please.”

“of course, love,” he whispers, distracting your mind from the pain with his lips. inch by inch, he sinks deeper into your walls, soon bottoming out deep inside of you with a strained moan. he stills to allow you to adjust. as soon as you do, you’re urging him to move. he obeys, thrusts slow-paced and tender until you beg for him to quicken them. 

“yeah?” he coos. “y’want more? you, fuck — you have all of me already, s-so greedy.”

the roll of his hips sharpens, canting upward — faster, harder, deeper. all you can think to do is moan, the thoughts ricocheting in your mind now too jumbled for you to decipher and voice. a fire has ignited in your stomach, growing hotter and brighter when swings your legs over his shoulders. the angle of his thrusts causes the head of his cock to brush against a spot deep inside you, a place that has never been explored prior. a sound that is foreign to your ears tears itself from your chest, loud and unabashed.

above you, beomgyu groans. his head is thrown back, mouth agape, his hair a tousled mess atop his head. a few strands stick to his sweat-drenched forehead. a flush has traveled down and stained his chest, his abdomen flexing in exertion as he loses himself completely. his head drops down again, his eyes meeting yours, half-lidded and brimming with heady lust. you attempt to hide your face in the sheets, growing shy at the intensity of it all, but he reaches down to grip your chin, holding your gaze steady.

“watch me,” he orders. in a daze, you obey, glassy eyes barely able to comprehend the bombardment to your senses. his free hand locates your slick clit, rubbing quick circles, breath shaky as your walls flutter and tighten around him. “so good. so good for me, beautiful. no one can make you feel as good as i do, hm?”

“o-only you!” you manage to agree through your cries. he slips his thumb past your lips, and you immediately begin to suck on the digit.

“so pretty, such a good girl,” he mumbles out, half delirious. “will never get enough of you.” 

your high slams into you in a flash, your entire body quivering around him. beomgyu rapidly pulls out, ropes of his release spilling across your abdomen as he jerks himself, gasping at how your empty hole flutters around nothing. your legs drop from his shoulders, as weak as a newborn fawn's. he collapses next to you, mopping up his release with the handkerchief sitting upon your nightstand, before he pulls you to his chest, holding you like you are about to disappear into the air. he cups your cheek gently, kissing you slowly, savoring every second. when you pull away, there lies an urgency in his expression.

“run away with me,” he whispers, searching your face for something, anything. “once this ship docks in new york, run away with me.”

your chest tightens. he feels the same — oh, he feels the same. you battle back the tears beginning to form on your waterline and hold him close, reaching up to envelop the hands on your cheeks with your own and kissing him breathless.

your forehead presses to his as you respond, a watery smile painting your lips, “where would we go?”

“anywhere you’d like,” he breathes. tears form in his own eyes — hope, unbridled joy. “just say the word.”

your blooming love is not star-crossed, but auspicious, you realize while standing on the deck of the carpathia.

you had been separated from beomgyu in the sinking of the titanic that night, in the frantic crowds shoving towards the life boats and the gunshots ringing out to maintain a semblance of order. your mother had found and pushed you onto one, lowered into the sea before you were able to leap out, to search for him. you sobbed into your palms the entire night, unknowing whether he survived the sinking or not.

but now, he is across the deck before you, alive. his clothes and hair are drenched in seawater, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders — but he's alive, so very alive. he has not spotted you, his eyes pointed out to the sea where the so-called "unsinkable" ship met its watery grave. your hands begin to shake. warm, breathing, alive.

you croak out his name, tearing away from your mother in order to sprint over to him, ignoring the weakness of your limbs and the frantic protests from your mother behind you. your calls of his name amplify in volume. he spins around, and his face melts into disbelief. he races across the remaining distance between you, feet thumping against the wooden deck. arms wrap around you as the two of you meet — two souls colliding, winding and weaving around each other like threads on a loom. tears are not lost upon either of you, streaming down both of your faces as you hold each other, skin against skin as you ensure this is not a dream, or mirage.

“i love you,” you sob. “i can’t, i didn’t know if—”

he shushes you, tucking your face into his chest. “i know, love. i know. i love you, too. we’re here now, we’re together. alive.”

you choke back a whimper, crying until you can no longer. as you shift back to look at him, you find that he's smiling. a thought hits you suddenly.

“where is yeonjun? taehyun?” you ask. he squeezes you once, pointing somewhere across the deck. following his finger, you find them: beaten down, weary, but breathing. you have never been a particularly religious person, but you think that something must be watching from above, providing you such unfair luck. they wave. you wave right back.

“we floated on top of furniture until a rescue boat found us,” he explains. “we were lucky. i was half dead when we were found.”

the thought punctures your chest, but he doesn’t let your thoughts run astray for long. “it’s okay, love. you couldn’t have done anything.”

“i know, but—”

“but nothing.” a gentle smile plays on his lips. “we’re here now, aren’t we?”

“yes,” you say, your expression reflecting his. “shall we still plan to flee?”

he grins something tired yet enthusiastic. “of course, beautiful. there's no one else i'd like to see the world with more than you.”

3k event masterlist | masterlist

© to agustdiv1ne. do not copy, repost, steal, and/or translate.

[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