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tritoch · 2 months ago

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one thing I find neat about Emet-Selch is that his chauvinism is so intense that it actually prevents him from making the strongest possible case for the unique moral goodness of the ancients, and that this same mental distortion ties into his classic final fantasy need to turn into a Horrible Final Form Monstrosity for your final fight

(for my part I think any minor unique moral goodness the ancients possess they have due to their status as demigods living in eden before the fall. even if they really are morally/intellectually/spiritually/magically/etc. superior to every modern eorzean on a 1:1 level it still doesn't change anything because 1) they are mythical and impossible, that's the whole point and 2) even if they weren't, they still have no particular claim to existence that is superior to anyone else's, no matter how good they are. but the point here is the case Emet-Selch is trying to make, which is that they are more "worthy" of life.)

when he's setting you up for the final amaurot sequence, Emet-Selch hits you with this one:

it's a solid line! stops the party cold for a second.

it's also...not that impressive. do I think if we called a big world meeting that half of everyone would just jump up to be chosen? maybe, maybe not. but, sorry: we're having a big world meeting? are we also demigods with their every material need fulfilled in this version? do we have a one world government that almost everyone seems to fully trust telling us that it knows for real a way to stop the meteor heading towards earth? because honestly i think as soon as we start creating structural similarities like that, it becomes a lot more likely. and every step you take towards making the comparison happen on level ground makes the idea that the ancients were possessed of some unique moral fiber that made them capable of this sacrifice (as opposed to the undeniable abilities in magic and global governance that actually enabled it) seem less and less likely.

and especially if you consider it in the context of what actual people are like. human (and presumably eorzean) history is replete with examples of people sacrificing themselves to save others, even though none of us are immortal wizard philosophers. i don't know how the white-room thought-experiment "will half of you die to save the others???" turns out. but do i think, across a grand rolling catastrophe, that half our population would sacrifice itself to save the other half in a million individual acts of sacrifice to save a parent, a child, a lover, a friend, a stranger? that seems significantly more plausible. altruism and sacrifice for others is even pretty frequent in animals! it's not a very unique moral behavior!

(stanford encyclopedia of philosophy on biological altruism)

but that's not the only sacrifice the ancients made. roll the tape, hythlodaeus!

...Yet oh how the star had suffered. So many species lost. The land was blighted, the waters poisoned, and even the wind had ceased to blow. Once more did our people give of themselves to Zodiark. Another half of our race sacrificed to cleanse the world; to ensure that trees and grasses and myriad tiny lives would sprout and grow and flourish.

(every time I read this speech and hit the ff1/3/5 ref about the land and waters and wind i become mylongestyeahboyever.avi)

this is the step beyond, and it's what separates the ancients from modern humans. they viewed themselves as stewards of the star and really meant it; whatever other criticisms you might level, you can't doubt the depths of their commitment. and this i think really does make them morally distinct from modern people, or at least raises that possibility in a much more compelling way than the first sacrifice. half of the living population sacrificing itself not in a moment of duress and apocalypse but in a moment of calm? when the sacrifice isn't for anything but plants and animals and some tiny proto-eorzeans? that kind of cold, calculated, long-term altruism, aimed at people and living beings that are nothing like you...that does feel like something a little more unique, more worth preserving. even in just the text of the game, we can say with real certainty that the ancients were at least more capable of facing their problems and had greater moral integrity and care for the world than, say, the people who made ra-la.

but emet-selch can't ever say that because rejecting and dishonoring the decision the ancients made as stewards of the star is his primary goal.

like, "my people were uniquely morally good. half the living population sacrificed themselves not for their loved ones or for the survival of their people but simply for the world. for the trees and grasses and the wind and the water. for the humblest insects and for the summer breeze and the tides." that fucks! damn, you got me there! i watch enough people throw aluminum cans in the trash on a weekly basis that i find this sincerely moving and beyond the seeming abilities of my own brethren! oh no, i'm being persuaded by the fascist immortal space wizard!

"and therefore, because they are uniquely morally good, we are going to sacrifice and kill the very things they gave their lives to save, so we can have them back :)" well, shit. i'm experiencing some dissonance here.

but you can't actually lie to yourself as long as emet-selch without distorting your understanding of the truth. you cannot choose to see the world falsely half the time and clearly the other half. in committing to self-deceit and willful ignorance regarding the value of the modern world, emet-selch blinds himself not just to the world as it is but to the ancients as they were. if he could describe accurately the ways in which the ancients were genuinely noble and benevolent, he would also have to able to see clearly how he has entirely deviated from that ideal. and he cannot do that and stay on the path he has chosen, so he simply chooses not to see things accurately.

i cannot help but link this blindness of his to his trial. here, at what seems to emet-selch to be the last stand of the ancients, he says to you "to be clear this fight IS a metaphor, and in that metaphor i stand in for the Entire Unsundered World."

and yet, in standing against you, he betrays both the customs of the ancients and his very title, itself a direct signifier of the mission he was charged with as one of the convocation of fourteen: "to ensure that all is right in creation, that our star may know a brighter future." contra elidibus, for whom remembering his duty to the ancients is one and the same act as remembering his name, emet-selch declares his own to be mere pretense. and that's before we even reach the matter of his transformation.

emet-selch believes the only way he can save the ancients is to betray their principles, forget their greatest triumphs, and abandon their trappings. he renounces almost everything of the ancients, save for his pale and sad and faceless amaurot, in the hopes of bringing them back.

i am reminded a little of borges's three versions of judas, a short story which uses the lens of fictional literary criticism (appropriate for a story as interested in competing narrative interpretations as shadowbringers is) to recast the betrayal of christ by judas not as the greatest of sins but as the greatest of sacrifices.

The ascetic, for the greater glory of God, vilifies and mortifies his flesh; Judas did the same with his spirit. He renounced honor, morality, peace and the kingdom of heaven, just as others, less heroically, renounce pleasure. With terrible lucidity he premeditated his sins.

and, in turn, the sardonic footnote to that very same line, which unsettles that sentiment as soon as it has been presented:

Borelius inquires mockingly: “Why didn’t he renounce his renunciation? Or renounce the idea of renouncing his renunciation?”

#i say this with a heavy heart but:#emet-selch. you have forgotten the face of your father.#emet-selch #ffxiv #okay now that we're in my tags i can share my little personal secret #i don't really like emet-selch all that much and thought i would never possibly write anything about him #but...but...i'm so annoyed by the execution of a certain parallel character in a certain franchise (let's call it wyvern era)#that i find myself liking emet a LOT more #he's certainly not my blorbo but that's because he's something much better than that (a well-written and dignified villain)#and i have consequently come to appreciate him much more

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scarnatlover · 1 month ago

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You can hear it in the silence

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x Electrokinesis!Reader

Summary: Years ago, Natasha Romanoff and Y/N Y/L/N, a Red Room guard, shared a forbidden love. Y/N helped Natasha escape, but was captured and brainwashed by HYDRA, losing all memory of their love. Years later, they meet again as enemies, but Natasha still recognizes Y/N as the woman she once loved. Determined to uncover her lost memories, Natasha begins a painful fight to awaken Y/N and free her from HYDRA's influence. Will Natasha be able to rekindle the spark between her and Y/N or will theirs be forgotten hearts forever?

Warnings: a little violence, the Red Room, HYDRA, cuts, scars, nightmares.

Masterlist

Taglist

She was just a little girl when she came home. Or what he called home.

She was just over ten and her sister was only six. They had been separated when they returned to Russia, the blue-haired girl had no idea where the younger blonde was. She had no idea where the older woman who smelled of caramel was, who for six years she had called “mom”. She had no idea where the burly man she had called “dad” for six years was, the one who had conspired with the one who had ruined her life and turned her into a murderer from the beginning.

The first time she returned to train with the other girls, as soon as she set foot in the room she immediately noticed other kids. As many as the girls were with her and more or less all the same age or a few years younger. Looking at everyone, her eyes had stopped on one girl in particular. She looked like she was nine or ten years old, definitely younger than her, but taller - it didn't take much -. Her hair was short, but not too short. More or less like hers. She was the only one with a kind of very sturdy bracelet on her wrist, while the others didn't have any accessories. Her eyes darted from y/e/c to yellow.

While the girls in the Red Room observed the other young people in the room with them, the others seemed impassive, motionless, almost like statues. The blue-haired girl couldn't identify the symbol that the guards behind those strangers had on their arms, but she was sure it wasn't that of her "home".

Madame B's voice rang through the room loud and clear, instructing the girls to stand in a row. Natalia had hoped to accidentally end up in front of that girl, but instead she ended up in front of a random boy, bigger and bulkier than her, with shaved hair, black eyes, and arms that looked like those described in the novel Beowulf. But then that annoying female voice spoke again.

She started calling out last names, pausing every two. She was creating pairs, who were then led out of the room by a guard to where Natalia didn't know.

Semyonov-Atkinson; Vasilyev-Medina; Kuznetsov-Hofer; Lebedev-Karjalainen; and so on, until…

Romanov-Y/L/N.

Natalia looked carefully at the people in front of her as she took a step forward. No one else moved. The room fell into total silence, almost deafening. Madame B repeated the two last names and out of the corner of her eye, the blue-haired girl noticed the smirk on the face of the girl she had her eyes on before and realized that Y/L/N was her. One of the guards with the strange mark approached the girl in the row opposite hers and pushed her forward, saying something to her in a language that Natalia -yet- didn't know. The two looked at each other without saying anything and followed the guard in front of them, who was explaining in Russian, perhaps to both of them or just to Natalia, why couples had been made with kids from different “associations”.

That was the first time they met.

---

It took Natalia a few days to adjust to the other girl's presence. The two of them trained together every day, at least four times a day. And when they weren't training, they were still together. While the redhead was doing ballet, the other girl was in the room with her or outside, but she was still watching her through the glass; during their breaks they were together; early in the morning and late at night they were together.

Only for meals were they separated. The redhead in the part of the cafeteria reserved for the girls of the Red Room while the girl with y/h/c hair was at the table where those who had arrived with her were.

And so, days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and those months turned into a year. The two found themselves friends. Best friends, in fact. The training sessions were endless: neither could take the other down, but if they did, it was rarely Nat who was on her back. Despite all the days they spent together, Natalia had yet to see the other girl with a gun or any other type of firearm in her hand, while all her other classmates excelled in that area.

She had tried to ask her why she was never at the shooting range, but the new girl had just shrugged and not answered. They both talked a lot, revealing things they had never told anyone, not even themselves. Natalia had told her about her time in Ohio, the fake family she had formed, the Christmas where she and Yelena only received empty boxes instead of toys, but they were still happy. Y/n, on the other hand, didn’t have much to say, since she didn’t remember anything before HYDRA. Despite this, she never lacked reassurances towards the redhead.

And maybe that’s why Natalia started to feel more than just friendly feelings towards Y/n. She wasn’t sure when their relationship changed, but she started to notice a lot of things changing. From how Y/n tried not to hurt her during practice, to how she managed to steal a piece of bread they kept in their room in case Nat got hungry during the night.

But then the night terrors began. Y/n, as far as Natalia knew, had been away for a few days, leaving the redhead alone. There was no trace of her, as if she had never existed. Her few things were gone: her clothes, her tracksuit, her shoes. Everything.

She came back after three months, but she had changed. Her confident smile was gone, her hair had grown longer, her eyes dull, with dark circles that would have made the spots under a panda's eyes envious. Her hands were full of cuts, her arms of scars. She didn't talk to Natalia that much anymore, just a good morning and a good night and a few words exchanged here and there. But their routine hadn't changed, in fact it had intensified. They trained hand-to-hand for longer and longer, Natalia danced less, and there was still no trace of Y/n at the shooting range.

Nighttime, however, was the worst. Natalia had to force herself not to get up and crawl into her partner’s bed every time she felt her squirm. Usually after a while Y/n managed to calm down on her own, but the redhead would stay awake for a few extra minutes to make sure the other was okay, and then let herself fall into a light sleep, always alert. But all “good” things must come to an end.

The first time Y/n woke up, startled and looking around, disoriented and scared, Natalia was immediately standing next to her, the redhead’s hands gripping the other girl’s cut hands. Calmly, Natalia lifted the covers, looking into Y/n’s eyes to see if the girl was against it or not. When she saw that she was letting her, she slipped into her bed and gently placed the taller girl’s head on her chest, whispering sweet, reassuring words in her ear.

Once calm, the y/h/c haired girl muttered something, unheard by the redhead. When she repeated the phrase more clearly, Natalia couldn’t believe it. Y/n had just said that she was starting to feel something more than friendship for the Russian and immediately, the latter placed her hands on her cheeks and kissed her, their lips moving in rhythm against each other.

That was their first kiss.

---

Natalia learned early on that Y/n wasn't a very affectionate person. No, she was but not physically. Still, Natalia cherished every moment she got with her

A few more years had passed and the two were more inseparable than before. If you met Natalia in the hallways, you could definitely see Y/n walking alongside her or a little behind her, almost as if she were her guard dog. Together they were deadly even on a mission. And everyone had understood this right away.

They had been confined to a small apartment on the top floor of a building in the middle of Galway, Ireland, for two weeks now. Dreykov had sent them there because he had received a tip that some of the girls who had managed to escape from the Red Room were in that very city.

But Natalia was starting to get annoyed with her girlfriend. The most she had gotten these days was a light kiss on the cheek or lips.

It was early in the morning, the golden light of dawn filtering through the kitchen window. The redhead hummed softly as she moved around the stove, folding and stirring the eggs every few seconds with a grace that spoke of familiarity. The smell of coffee filled the air, a silent comfort. Y/n was still in her usual morning state: slightly disheveled, eyes half-closed, and too tired to converse. But as always, Nat’s presence seemed to brighten the room. The girl smiled, looking over her shoulder. The two talked for a few minutes, Natalia continually asking her girlfriend if she didn’t want to stay in bed for a few more hours, but the other kept telling her no. The Russian girl giggled at the answer, turning back to the eggs.

Then, just as Natalia was plating the eggs for them both, a pair of arms wrapped around her from behind, surprising her. The heat of Y/n’s body pressed against her back, and for a moment, the whole world stopped. Nat froze, her heart skipping a beat. She turned her head slightly, enough to catch the profile of the girl behind her, just a glimpse of something soft in her usual guarded expression. Y/n buried her head in the crook of the shorter girl’s neck, kissing her skin softly as she pulled Natalia closer to her. Her smile softened.

And in that brief moment, surrounded by the smell of breakfast and the sweet, silent exchange between them, the redhead realized that those moments, however fleeting, were all the more special because they were so rare.

That was the first time Y/n took the lead.

---

The apartment was quiet, save for the faint hum of the radiator and the occasional rustle of paper as Natalia rummaged through a stack of mission files on the kitchen counter. She had been working on them for hours, her mind focused on the mission: stealing some kind of appliance for the Red Room, but Y/n was definitely more knowledgeable about the subject than she was. Christmas lights hung everywhere, courtesy of Natalia.

But as the evening grew darker, Nat found her gaze drifting to the small plant on the windowsill. Mistletoe. The idea had come to her on a whim, something mischievous, something completely unrelated to the high-stakes task at hand. She smiled to herself, feeling an unfamiliar, reckless impulse.

Suddenly, Nat found herself standing on a chair, precariously balanced as she attached the mistletoe to the doorframe between the kitchen and the living room. It was thin, maybe too thin, but it was there. A gift, in a way, and a plan. Y/n wasn’t known for grand displays of affection, but she had her ways, and most of the time it was kisses, though not often. So Nat couldn’t help the idea that had taken root.

She took a step back, looking at her handiwork. She thought it was perfect. Now all they had to do was wait for her girlfriend, who arrived shortly after, throwing her coat over the back of the couch and grabbing a glass of water. She had been working with Nat all day, helping out on the mission for the Red Room, and as usual, Y/n was oblivious to anything other than the task at hand.

Nat watched from the corner of the room, her eyes darting to the mistletoe every few seconds. She had to tuck Y/n under. The Russian had read somewhere that it was a tradition, a lighthearted way to get a kiss during the holidays. It seemed innocent enough.

As the younger girl headed towards the kitchen, the redhead made her move. She casually strolled past the mistletoe and gave her a little push. Y/n looked at her in confusion, even more so when Nat pointed out - in a slightly too light voice - the mistletoe above them. Y/n then looked up from her glass of water, blinking in confusion, before humming and wondering if they were actually supposed to kiss now. Natalia’s smile tightened and they took a deep breath. It wasn’t the answer they were hoping for, but she didn’t give up. The other girl smiled absentmindedly, clearly uninterested, not noticing how Nat’s shoulders had slumped, but only for a second.

Finally, the last straw came.

Nat found herself staring at the mistletoe again. The plan hadn’t worked, like the others probably twenty times. Y/n was still oblivious. In fact, Y/n was so oblivious that Nat was starting to doubt that Y/n even understood what the mistletoe meant in the first place.

And then, when her girlfriend walked into the apartment, Natalia couldn’t take it anymore.

Y/n stood there for a moment, then broke into a wide smile. "Well, I'm sorry I missed all the signs, my love. But since you're so direct now..." She reached up, gently caressing Nat's face, and pulled her in for a slow, sweet kiss. It wasn't much, but it was exactly what Natalia had been trying to achieve all along.

That was their first Christmas together.

---

Suddenly, Natasha jolted awake, her breathing labored and her heart pounding in her chest. The dream was still vivid in her mind: every smile, every sweet word, every moment spent with her. It was as if it were all real, as if she were there again, beside her. The intertwined hands, the shared laughter, that feeling of being safe.

She turned, her body tense, hoping to see her there, on the side of the bed that had always been hers whenever they slept together. But her half was empty. The emptiness that surrounded her seemed to swallow her, the air itself seemed thicker, colder. The bed was no longer the warm refuge it had been. Natasha huddled in, her eyes becoming glossy, and for a moment the world seemed to stop, as if the distance between dream and reality was too great to bridge.

Only silence answered her. But in that very silence she could hear it. She was still in love. So in love.

#black widow x reader #natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff x fem!reader #natasha x reader #natasha romanoff angst #natasha romanoff fanfic #natasha romanoff x reader #marvel #soft natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff x you #avengers x reader #Forgotten Hearts

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