#also beat FFXIV Endwalker

[voidscarredadjudicator]

Hey y'all, sorry for the silence - as you can imagine by the last post, things have been a little stressful. The short version is that it's worse than what we thought, and I'm gonna need surgery - but I will recover! All I need (other than surgery) is physical therapy, time, and ibuprofen. And whatever industrial strength painkillers they give me, because holy fuck the procedure will leave me sore. Despite this news, I'm staying pretty positive about things, so don't fret for me. If you're interested in the finer details of the nuclear bomb that exploded in my knee, I'll elaborate past the keep reading thingy - but if you're not interested in or unsettled by descriptions of injuries or surgical procedures, I'll simply tell you that this is an injury common among football players, and the procedure I will undergo is what they give to said football players with the intention of getting them back to the sport that caused the injury to begin with. Frankly, my doctor might be overqualified for me.

And for those of you who aren't so squeamish, I've got a combination of a complete ACL tear, meniscus tears, and a fractured tibia. The way I fell not only twisted my leg to tear a ligament cleanly in half, but my femur jutted down into my lower leg bone hard enough to crack it - which is actually why I feel so much pain when attempting to put weight on it. Initially, I was a little panicked, because the folks at the clinic I went to said I could put "weight as I could bear" on the leg, but the amount of weight I could bear at the time was a fat zero, and continued to be as such for weeks. Didn't help that initial X-Ray didn't show anything wrong, so I had no idea my bone was even in that shape until just a few days ago. On the bright side, the fracture itself doesn't require any surgery - it'll heal naturally over about 2 months (which one month has passed already since the injury so we're halfway there). No, the elephant in the room is the torn ACL.

It's fucked beyond repair. In the picture of the MRI scan I got, it visibly just. Ends. The ACL, or 𝓐𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓸𝓻 𝓒𝓻𝓾𝓬𝓲𝓪𝓽𝓮 𝓛𝓲𝓰𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽 is one of two ligaments (the other one being the PCL, or 𝓟𝓸𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓸𝓻 𝓒𝓻𝓾𝓬𝓲𝓪𝓽𝓮 𝓛𝓲𝓰𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽, of which mine is completely fine) that basically stabilize the knee. Keeps the bones from moving too far apart from each other, basically. So, pretty important! Right now, my physical therapy is just trying to get my leg to move how it did before the injury again in preparation for the surgery, with the logic being that doing so will both speed up recovery post operation and minimize potential for complications.

What they're gonna do is take a piece of one of my tendons, drill a hole through my femur and tibia, stretch the piece of tendon through the holes where my ACL was at, and secure it in place with bone screws, where that bit of tendon will become my new ACL. As far as the torn meniscus, they'll take care of that during the ACL surgery as well - depending on how it's torn, it'll either need stitched up or the torn bits removed. They have no way of knowing until they're in there. After that, it's more PT to keep it in working order. For sports folks, it takes about 6 to 12 months to get back to playing. My hobbies aren't really active though, so that'll be a breeze for me.

So uhh yeah. Ao3 writer's curse is real. But I'll be fine. Sore, but fine.

[frenchy-and-the-sea]

Tritchet is not the WoL and thus never goes to Elpis canonically, but I couldn't resist grabbing a screenshot of her in her new robe, dyed its usual iris purple. I think she makes it look good!!

[supermarioterrarium]

I've got a pet theory for the ongoing story in FFXIV.

There are lots of little bits and pieces that alone might just be cute nods, but together make me think that FFXIV is and has been laying the groundwork for an eventual Chrono Trigger-inspired expansion or at least a more significant plot beat.

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR FFXIV THROUGH DAWNTRAIL

One of the key elements is the infamous "keening from the earth" mentioned in relation to the Final Days by one of Emet-Selch's Amaurotine simulacrum Ancients. I say "infamous" because come Endwalker, it felt like a dropped detail -- Meteion didn't really fit that description, and nothing we're told about how those Final Days played out really brings it up again.

But I think another plot element is being hinted at in other places that could very well provide us with the source of that "keening".

It's a little odd that we got another Ronka-esque dungeon at the end of Tender Valley this expac, complete with its own serpent! The Yok Huy simply.. finding the ruins suggests that this ruin and the Ronkan ruins on the first share a common origin -- meaning their inspiration probably comes from before the sundering -- perhaps even from before the Ancients themselves, considering its architecture doesn't really share any similarities with structures we know the Ancients built. That period is a blind spot for everyone.

We learned about something else that existed prior to the Ancients in Endwalker's patches -- The Heart of Sabik, AKA the Black Auracite. It came from somewhere not of Etheirys -- somewhere else in the Sea of Stars -- from, or at least from the same place as, the being known as Ultima.

It's interesting, then, that when Pallas Athena manifests, her arena / realm is not only wreathed with the eye motif from the previous fight with Athena, but also with.. what seems to be the body of an unimaginably large serpent.

To rephrase the idea here, through P12S, the concept of the Serpent is connected both to the Ancients -- beings who lived and worked in places like Elpis, which shares more than a few similarities with the Kingdom of Zeal -- and with a dread being that hails from outer space.

That's what I think is "keening". A great serpent that, long before the disaster of the sundering or even before the Ancients' civilization was the dominant one on the star, burrowed its way deep beneath the crust of the planet.

That's a thought, though: what about the sundering? If this serpent existed beforehand, it would be in a similar state to the one we ultimately find Zodiark in, right? Well, before Dawntrail, we know that the star's been rejoined to its reflections seven times, meaning it's 8/14ths of the way to being "whole" again. And now in Dawntrail, we have Heritage Found, a partial "dimensional fusion" between a shard and the Source.

If this counts as a rejoining without a corresponding calamity, then perhaps in the coming expansions, Preservation will use Dimensional Fusion in their conflict with the WoL and, inadvertently, rejoin the serpent as well. Zero and Golbez's efforts to rebuild the 13th, in combination with Dimensional Fusion, could mean that a total (partial) rejoining actually becomes possible!

So, if you've played Chrono Trigger and you're convinced by all of this, why don't I just come out and call the serpent Lavos?

Well, I'm not sure if SE's going to be quite that explicit.

After all, Krile's parents were named Alayla and Robor, not Ayla and Robo. They have the good sense to obfuscate it at least a little.

[tritoch]

the witch of the cave: matoya, y'shtola, and the night's blessed

long rambly and extremely unedited post about y'shtola and matoya, two characters i really feel like we don't talk about or take seriously enough. i think the popular (and in many ways intended) perception of FFXIV as a game about dramatic high-tension moments and attendant emotional catharsis makes it easy to overlook the fact that there's plenty of subtext to mine from, especially for characters like these two who can come off as somewhat reserved and also have very little screen time together. i find the night's blessed very helpful for thinking about them both. spoilers through endwalker below. tl;dr version of the post can be found by reading the bolded text below.

on my first playthrough the whole rak'tika thing felt very underdeveloped, and i still think a lot of the story beats are weak. here's y'shtola she's your last member to rejoin she has a new village now(?) and OH she's dead again WAIT she's back and then we're off into "zodiark and hydaelyn are primals" land and there's no time to think anymore about the night's blessed. but on reflection i think this works out okay imo because the night's blessed are only just barely there for plot reasons. they serve instead, like the outfit redesign, to establish the game's new baseline concept for who y'shtola is going to be as a character going forward. the night's blessed let the writing shorthand a lot of y'shtola's off-screen development and set her up as a powerful and extremely self-actualized person, using matoya as her foil.

in brief: matoya is implied to have lived her life prior to the sharlayan exodus constantly at odds with the (imo obviously sexist and hide-bound) forum. as a result, she was pretty isolated from and in conflict with much of sharlayan society, to the point that while y'shtola leaves with everyone else in the exodus to presumably matriculate at the studium and earn her archon's marks, matoya stays behind, with no company but her familiars.

and this is agonizingly sad, i think. 15 years alone in a cave. dravania's isolation means she has no one to talk to but frogs she has magic'ed and trained into familiars. little to occupy her but her work and her memories, and her memories of y'shtola are so painful to her she locks them away. even when y'shtola returns to eorzea after ten years away she can't find the time to see her until the scion's issues demand it (to be fair to y'shtola, getting to matoya overland means traveling through ishgard and dravania, and prior to the calamity they're totally occupied with that and afterwards there's the whole dragon thing).

(hey also this whole thing is even SADDER when read in light of the encyclopedia eorzea text that "the day [Matoya] begins to remember her students fondly will be the day that her work ends." she won't let herself take these memories back until she retires!)

they barely talk at their reunion, and while there's some brief honest fondness from matoya early on they soon turn to their characteristic deflecting and sardonic back-and-forth for what little time they get to talk, before matoya delivers a poorly-translated and confusing warning on aethersight and exits the 3.0 story. even by the time of shadowbringers, y'shtola can't bring herself to admit that when alone in a foreign land, she took on her master's name, and neither will straightforwardly admit to missing the other. in a game full of effusive and warm relationships between master and pupil or guardian and ward, matoya and y'shtola's relationship is warm, but specifically characterized by distance and deflection, consistent with how matoya has rejected (and/or isolated herself from) others her whole life.

that's not to say there's not love there, obviously, and not all expressions of love look or the same. but this is not how y'shtola behaves elsewhere. when she visits you at the annex in endwalker, she's quite sincere and direct there, coming to you with her concerns and stating plainly that doesn't want to see you harmed, making it clear she was actively worried about how you were doing. she even pre-emptively apologizes when she fears she's inappropriately joked about your misfortunes. she's also obviously much more direct and deflects less with the night's blessed themselves, or runar, or urianger after rak'tika, or zero. she can be funny or glib or arch, but she makes no effort to conceal how much these relationships mean to her, or how she feels at any given point.

y'shtola can be sharp, she can be sarcastic, she can go for the throat or be dismissive and imperious, but she's generally not those things with people she cares about in private conversation. for a woman who makes it quite clear that she cares a lot about the image she projects to others, she is never ashamed of her own feelings or afraid to voice them, but neither is she harsh or cruel. the one time she does the matoya-style thing of being so honest and brusque it tips over to backbreakingly blunt, it's to thancred in rak'tika, over her concerns that as the sole guardian of an isolated young ward, he isn't doing enough to affirm her as her own person or to be emotionally honest and supportive of her. i have some thoughts as to why that might be; you may be able to guess what they are!

so shadowbringers sets up a parallel for the player: remember matoya in the cave, having spurned sharlayan politics, left to pursue her research and guard the antitower, a solitary hermit for fifteen years? well here's y'shtola as matoya, in a cave, having spurned the lies and half-truths of two specific sharlayan men. she initially comes off alternately distant and brusque, unable to recognize you and perhaps changed herself. the fact that y'shtola's not just the local cave witch to the night's blessed ends up being a sort of narrative reveal, and her characterization as a beloved and respected leader who feels a deep attachment to the community in turn shows how much she's grown and surpassed her mentor. (and note in turn urianger, over there in fairyland pretty much actually doing the matoya thing except, in accordance with his whole deal, in a way that is both slightly healthier and much weirder).

and there's narrative payoff for this: y'shtola, having been fairly closed-off and mission-focused up until now, flings herself into a fucking pit and casts "hope this doesn't kill me lmao" the very second she learns the night's blessed have been harmed and she has a chance to save them (and that's not a romance thing; she has no idea runar's been harmed. she only knows the villagers of slitherbough have been poisoned, and an antidote exists). and from her (annoyingly obviously fake) death you learn that she isn't just valued and respected by the community, but has formed close enough relationships for people to feel real and deep attachment to her.

y'shtola notes at several points that she and master matoya dedicated their lives to the pursuit of truth above all else. but in the end y'shtola was also a student of louisoix, a man who far valued compassion for the plight of others above all else (and, not for nothing, he's not exactly #1 parent/guardian/mentor of the astral era either). in rak'tika, all the finest qualities of y'shtola reach a kind of culmination. the relentless pursuit of what is true and what is right, but as part of a healthy, caring community, without the isolating and painful pride of her mentor. and she sacrifices nothing of herself to attain this. she is exactly who she was before rak'tika, if anything a little more brusque. she's even still a little withholding about herself, noting that she cultivated an "image of restraint" among the night's blessed. but none of this interferes with her ability to be a powerful and respected and admired leader of a close-knit community.

and again none of this is really a critique of matoya, who i have enormous affection for as effectively the game's only representation (until endwalker) of an older woman in STEM. but she is a product of what her circumstances allowed: where matoya, as a sincere believer in truth, had only rivals in a deeply conservative and isolationist society, y'shtola, carrying forward the same principles, has friends and comrades in an increasingly open and free world. she turns her mentor's unflinching honesty from an alienating political weakness into a pillar of both slitherbough and the scions. matoya's self-imposed exile from sharlayan is, by her own acknowledgement, petty and in some ways goes against her own values. and listen you've gotten far enough in this rambling, we can all be real for a second: matoya is definitely kind of an asshole and went into self-imposed exile and sealed up her research because of a disagreement with the Forum over weapons development. y'shtola's leveraging the integrity and searing honesty she learned from matoya to far more altruistic ends!

i think a lot of players have a vision of y'shtola somewhere on a continuum from badass avatar of destruction to powerful and solitary archmage. and i agree that's cool as hell but i also think ffxiv is a game that believes, at its core, that community is one of the most important things in the world, both in terms of what it can do for a flourishing society and as a critical element for people to find value and fulfillment in their own lives. y'shtola developing her own close attachment to a community in shadowbringers is meant to serve as shorthand for how she has come into her own as a person and found a fulfilling and meaningful life in line with her ideals, living up to matoya's ideal of all knowledge existing to advance mankind. it is no coincidence that this happens at the same time as she goes from "a pretty good mage" to being consistently portrayed as one of the more powerful mages in the setting and the scions' magical powerhouse. the genre trappings and the character arc work in harmony.

i think what this means becomes a little clearer set against characters like thancred (who spends 5.0 getting to "can have a mostly emotionally honest conversation with his surrogate daughter and make her feel loved and valued") and estinien (who, after twenty years living in and dying for one walled city, had one of the worst months anyone has ever had and ever since can't be in the same place for more than two seconds). their permanent states as vagabonds reflect their lack of close ties (what with all the tragic death) and still-healing emotional wounds. by contrast, y'shtola has achieved the wisdom and grace to live life as part of a connected whole, and has found a way to bring her values to bear in all parts of her life and in her leadership of this community, in so doing improving the lives of herself and everyone around her. y'shtola doesn't settle down with the night's blessed as a natural progression of her life or as a precondition to her maturation, but instead is capable of forming this kind of attachment to the night's blessed precisely because she has developed the integrity and emotional honesty to live in accordance with her values. and she can cast LB3 meteor in cutscenes now.

and also, conveniently, this is done in a way that lets them shorthand/off-screen a lot of this arc and do the rest of it with very minimal screentime for y'shtola and it has an associated romance subplot and also conveniently she's immediately severed from this important community so she can stay footlose and fancy-free in the protagonist group and Isn't It Funny How Scion Women Settle Down Or Die While We Keep Accumulating Permanent Bachelors, I Just Think It's Funny. obviously none of this is above critique. but i think the narrative takes pretty seriously the idea that y'shtola is actually the team's most emotionally developed and mature member in a lot of ways and slitherbough is where a lot of that starts, and you can't understand all that without matoya.

[chryza]

top 5 covers of FFXIV songs i am objectively correct because I am the divine arbiter of truth in the universe

5. This cinematic cover of Endwalker by Aeryth 4. This metal cover of Answers by Skar Productions 3. Cinematic La Hee also by Aeryth you dont understand the What the Fuck i felt while listening to this absolute banger 2. This orchestral arrangement of Dynamis by Mikey O'Neil that always manages to destroy me 1. Literally impossible to beat the community cover of Close In The Distance that manages to make me cry every time.

please feel free to fight me by informing me of other covers.

[nihilnovisubsole]

i think i followed you Back In The Day, seven years and seven blogs ago, for something related to mass effect (zaeed? maybe? who could say) and it's wild to come back to this site years later and find you thriving, surviving, growing-- playing ffxiv! love that game. curious how you'll feel about some side characters in shadowbringers, but i won't spoil which ones.

i do have real questions, though; writing tools. not pens or software, but personal structure tools and/or guidance. what does a beat sheet look like, for you? do you have a favored way of outlining or note-taking on your own thoughts when putting a story together?

and... i'm really curious how you hold a big story together in your head while you work on it in pieces, especially for something like dangerous crowns. there's this larger story i've been chasing around for a while, and I can't quite wrap my head around how to write the political/espionage plot for it without feeling like i've actually written a children's pantomime. the best i've got so far is "research real life events and use those as my outline" but after a point it becomes hard to keep track of all the variables of who knows what about whom, who is planning x when y, etc, etc. the characters don't need to know all that-- and may never know some things-- but i feel like /I/ need to understand what's happening on the macro level so i can move the world around them appropriately.

short version: how do YOU wrap your head around writing complex plots?

hey, anon! i started endwalker this week after a long... uh... glamour detour, so don't worry about spoiling things. i spoil myself for a lot of stories on purpose anyway. let's just say i've been attached to one too many characters who got killed.

anyway. writing. i've always handled plots the same way: clear documentation. if i don't note it down, i'm not going to remember it. i've used the same table outline since around 2014. it varies in detail for different projects, but the core format stays. i know it's kicking around in my blog archive somewhere, but it's worth reposting once in a while because people like to ask about it. here's what it looks like, featuring plot points cribbed from an endeavour episode:

i used this format for an outline at work a while back, and the team found it easy to follow, which was a big day for my ego. keeping track of plot structure is even more chaotic at work because we have multiple writers who all need to stay on the same page. we have very meticulous notes on what the player should know at which point, when we're introducing new information, and what we know, but shouldn't tell. we're also not above leaving notes like "this character has to convey X," "this character has to learn Y here," or "this is a clue that they're planning Z." it can be super on-the-nose. all that matters is that it makes sense to you. because you're right - if you get too lost, you can write yourself into logic holes of tremendous proportions. ask me how i know!

[as a sidenote, researching real-life events as a starting point has really grown on me in the past few years. my lead on coh3 had me do it. he said we were dealing with real people's history, so we couldn't be cheap or play fastball - we had to be accurate to pay it respect. even if you're not writing historical fiction, it just gives you insight into how people behave.]

i would argue that the plot of dangerous crowns is actually not that complicated, maybe to its detriment. there's kind of a genre struggle going on. at voltage, we were taught romance fans came for the relationship beats and valued them above all else. in fact, leadership told us players got irritated - which meant less sales - when the plot was too complex and took time away from the making out. political thriller fans, by contrast, expect relentless twists, high stakes, and harsh consequences, and sometimes see the relationships as superfluous.

but whatever. the point is, when you look at dangerous crowns' structure, it's a pearl necklace: a chain of anchoring events. the "pearl" scenes are where Big Plot happens. they're the reason you want to write the story, and probably the ones you have the most vivid daydreams about. the scenes in between are the string. not flashy, but important because they connect the pearls. they build tension and add logic, cohesion, and context. take the opera and hector's failed assassination. those are pearl scenes. that's a burst of drama i really wanted the story to build up to. i also had other flashbulb visions. livia by the fountain questioning herself, marcus' macbeth moment, the temple riot, things like that. so the question was, how could i believably travel between these pearl scenes? how could i make these big showcase moments connect smoothly?

if you're having trouble holding the story together in your head, i would ask, "what are your pearls?" what are the anchor points? outline those. it might not look like a necklace yet, but you'll sort of see it taking shape. and then, once you can see where your heart's-desire milestones are, you'll have a clearer idea of what can't fire until you set it up first. two other neat things can happen here. you could find the rhythm of your pacing, or realize you have a lot more plot meat than you thought you did. even if you don't, you have some road. and if you can't think of the string, sometimes you just have to start writing the pearls and see what comes to you.

good luck!!

[currymaker]

honestly endwalker was the end of my desire to play ffxiv partially also because it like peaked. 4 expansions of the player character having zero actual actions in cutscenes and then in the basically final expansion you beat a long running antagonist to death with your bare hands fully animated. it was like wow so you CAN animate my character doing things other than punching her hand and nodding

[flame-of-tar-valon]

Help me pick a Phys Melee DPS for Lleidspaer

In FFXIV, I'm playing as Lleidspaer Grymhaswyn (from my fic series). Obviously the Lleidspaer from the game canon is different than in the fic canon, but most of the fanfic character was informed by my decisions in the game, so there's a lot of bleed back and forth between the two.

As a strategist/tactician, Lleidspaer is a Scholar main. Tactical skills are also in Machinist, so that's my phys ranged for her. Of the tanking options, Gunbreaker is the least bulky and/or traditionally armored, plus it shares some aesthetic with Machinist. Red Mage is the spellblade duelist archetype that fits Lleidspaer perfectly.

That leaves phys melee DPS. In the early game, I went with Rogue as opposed to Lancer and Pugilist, because Rogue as covert operative fit Lleidspaer well enough. Lancer was too stereotypically knight-like, and Pugilist was too much a rough-and-tumble brawler for the archetype I was going for. However, those three have long since upgraded to Ninja, Dragoon, and Monk; I also have Samurai, Reaper, and Viper.

Since I plan on leveling one of each role throughout Endwalker and Dawntrail, I need to choose one. Ninja and Viper use accessories of Aiming, which feels a bit redundant to me with Machinist, so I'd rather pick something else, although Viper is tempting in some ways (more on pros and cons below).

Criteria I am considering are: Does it use accessories of Slaying? Do I like the way it plays on controller up to level 70? Does it fit the sort of vibe I have in mind for the character?

Now, onto the pros and cons for each of the options:

NINJA: This is what I've been using up through the end of Shadowbringers. I'm not totally into the whole Ninja aesthetic; I still use rogue/pirate-based glamours, but the moveset doesn't fully mesh with it. I'm not into the whole Ninja/Samurai thing, and that's a substantial detractor. On the other hand, I think I'm pretty good with the job mechanics up through Level 80 -- although I do find the mudra to be a bit annoying. Also, as mentioned, it uses accessories of Aiming.

DRAGOON: It's all about jumping and dragons, neither of which are extremely synchronous with Lleidspaer's character -- but it's fairly inoffensive too, all things considered. Spear-based combat is fine. Classes of Maiming tend to have the heaviest armor options of Melee DPS, which is a small downside. Also, Lleidspaer has basically no (positive) emotional connection to Ishgard at all. Mechanically, I've got a pretty good hang of the class up to level 70 and I like how it plays.

MONK: Lleidspaer might be a Lominsan through and through, but she does have connections to Ala Mhigo. Her dad was a Lominsan Sea Wolf, and her mom was an Ala Mhigan Hellsguard. I picture Lleidspaer as more of a dex build -- a fencer with a rapier and offhand pistol -- so although the hamon holyfist "let's beat each other up until we're bruised!" school of pugilism isn't very lore-compliant for Lleidspaer, I can see her being an effective acrobatic fighter like Ty Lee from ATLA. Mechanically, on the other hand, I'm not sure I'm the best at Monk. The basics are ok, but the whole Perfect Balance -> Solar and Lunar Qadi is less easy for me to remember.

SAMURAI: Man, I'm probably going to be harsher on Samurai than I should, but I hated the Job Quests. Yeah, let's put a moral lesson that violent revolution against a corrupt status quo is bad, in the "violent revolutions" expansion! Anyways, I never had a ninja/samurai fan phase, so it falls flat in some places (like having all the attack names in Japanese -- I never remember what does what). I do like that it uses swords. Mechanically, though, it's hard to get all the skills to layout elegantly on controller. Maybe I'd be good at Samurai if I found a better controller layout.

REAPER: Ughhhhh. Reaper is creative but it's also not my style at all -- and, more importantly, not Lleidspaer's. Lleidspaer's approach to magic is usually more of the arcanima or alchemical variety, not the binding-voidsent-to-your-will variety. Anyways, scythes don't fit for Lleidspaer, and the generally-heavier Maiming armor doesn't either. Also, I'm not a huge fan of the way the combos work for Reaper.

VIPER: This one unlocks at Level 80, meaning I wouldn't have to level grind for it. Aesthetically, it's pretty perfect -- it's roguish, and it uses swords! But, like Ninja, it uses accessories of Aiming. On top of that, I'm not sure I like how it plays on controller. There's so few actions, and the same two buttons just keep transforming. It doesn't seem difficult necessarily, but I don't know -- after all, I'm still just the level it starts at. But for now I don't really enjoy playing it.

...I was going to attach a poll where I asked followers to help me decide, BUT I can't see more than one or two people reading this long rant and being invested enough, PLUS by typing it all out I think I've talked myself into using Monk, SO I guess I'm going to see how quickly I can powerlevel Monk to Level 80 in order to start Endwalker.

[fury-brand]

zenos for 1, 25, 26?

1. Why do you like or dislike this character? / 25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

I disliked Zenos through to Endwalker because I thought they were angling at some kind of redemption arc with him, especially because a lot of his fans tried to emphasize that he was a tragic Sephiroth-alike and he got an unfair amount of screen time and second chances especially compared to my babygirl Ysayle.

And then in Endwalker they did so much hype shit with him honestly but the turning point was when he dips into the moral nihilism and asks if anything he's done would have made others happier if he had a good reason. Just a full-throated repudiation of all the poor little meow meowisms a full lean into "still murder" and away from "cool motive" (which he never really had) and I was like. Fully on board from that moment onward because it just eliminated the thing that was most annoying me about him, and all of his scenes in Endwalker were just so worth it.

Ironically, it also let me empathize with him a little more in the end, and I did feel for the guy during his final scene. I felt by then he had done me enough of a good turn to have earned his fight and it was a nice moment to send him out in a blaze of glory, plus I started to feel like he was working much better as a foil WOL-alike during Endwalker which so much was the culmination of all of FFXIV up to that point and which I had a lot of personal feelings about, since I played from beta and my life just looked completely different from when I started and where it finished.

I guess that kind of skimps on what I actually like about him, but... IDK, his whole deal? His obsession and ennui and unapologetic blood knight behaviour. I can call out that I specifically like that he saw something in Fordola (who I like very much) and is drawn to a snarling barking dog trying to rip her way up the ranks more than any of the garlean rank and file. Zenos likes people who burn because he doesn't. That's interesting.

26. What's something the character has done you can't get over? Be it something funny, bad, good, serious, whatever?

turned into a dragon broke through spacetime took one look at the embodiment of existential despair and said "? why haven't you beat it up yet." When people give these kinds of summaries it always kind of feels like they're embellishing things that happened or seeing the story as you would only see it if you paid close attention to blorbo but in this case it just. It just happens just like that. Everything from walking into Sharlayan through to the dodgeball fight at the end of the universe is golden.

[sir-adamus]

i do like how FFXIV re-uses elements and plot beats from previous Final Fantasy games to tell new stories

like the Garlean Empire is a send-up to the Gestahlian Empire from FFVI (though named for Garland from FFI - same with Cid Garlond, who is a more direct reference) with their magitek and general bullshit, but Nael from 1.0 is essentially FFXIV's equivalent to Sephiroth, disenfranchised as a soldier and driven mad by the whisperings in her ear from a higher power, trying to end the world by Meteor. Garlean Legati are also modelled on the Judges from FFXII

Gilgamesh doesn't count because he's just the same Gilgamesh from V that has appeared in numerous other FF games, traveling between dimensions

Crystal Tower, the bosses within, and Doga and Unei are lifted from FFIII

Matoya is an elderly woman who lives in a cave, much like a character of the same name did in FFI

Shinryu and its propensity to come out of bumfuck nowhere to be a problem is from FFV, as is Omega, a mechanical being that lives within the Interdimensional Rift (and his raids basically feature cameos from other games). Krile and her grandfather Galuf also originate from V

Doma, Hien and his father Kaien are all references to FFVI as well (in the localisation, Lord Cyan, a Samurai, ruled Doma, and his son was Owain - they were Kaien and Hien in the original Japanese however)

the Return to Ivalice storyline uses elements from all across the Ivalice Alliance games, from FFTactics to FFXII (though while Ultima resembles her Tactics incarnation she's blended with Jenova from FFVII)

the Weapons from the Werlyt storyline are sendups to the Weapons from FFVII (though instead of being naturally occurring superbeings, these are highly destructive biomechanical super fighting robots)

the entire Eden plotline in Shadowbringers is FFVIII, with Ryne as a stand-in for Rinoa and Gaia for Squall (though with elements of Ultimecia)

the whole post-Endwalker story is Final Fantasy IV, just with Zero in place of Cecil - Golbez, the four Archfiends, all that is just IV

i know all the Alexandria stuff in Dawntrail is a whole reference to FFIX, however the concept of all memories of a person being erased when they die is from FFType-0, where the Crystals of Orience do the same thing

the biggest contribution FFX brings in is Anima - a ghoulish and grotesque Summon created using a dead parent of the initial summoner as a basis (Seymour's mother in X, Zenos's father in XIV)

the Black Mage soulstone is inherited from a legendary mage named Shatotto, who is one-hundred percent a reference to Shantotto from XI (who briefly attempted to invade Eorzea in a crossover event years back). Tenzen, from the Four Lords storyline, is also lifted from XI (his katana is referred to as the Phoenix Blade, and in XI it's what allowed him to summon Phoenix)

[thefreelanceangel]

(Count)Down to Dawntrail: FREE DAY

July of 2019, I downloaded the trial for FFXIV.

Up until then, I'd been in GW2 for over seven years. It'd given me a roommate (ilu Rory) and helped me reconnect with the man who I ended up marrying (ilu honeybun). It'd also become a game I couldn't even look at without sighing heavily.

(That fucking map currency grind... UGH.)

I wanted to try something else, see if I could find a game that'd be fun to play. And as both my "screamy baby brother" (ilu Chaos) and one of the people I'd admired most in GW2 (ilu @mirugaidoesthings) were in FFXIV, well...

I made a catgirl, named her after an old tabletop NPC (RIP the OG Callie...) and started poking around.

I very quickly slid over to Mateus (because up until FFXIV, I was an RPer first, content later... maybe sort of person) and ... well, I fell in love. With C'allie, with Eorzea, with the gameplay and mechanics, and definitely with GPose. (July 10, 2019 is when Chaos told me about the GPose feature and... well I never quite stopped.) And as I dragged my then-boyfriend into playing, he fell in love with Eorzea, too.

It's hard to really explain just how much time, energy, fun, frustration, and enjoyment we've gotten from FFXIV in the years since. Or how much the story of Eorzea came to mean to us. (The Ceremony of Eternal Bonding music was playing at our RL wedding.) We've met some amazing people--the players of Thravnar, Zale, and Targur for instance--and it's given me the chance to reconnect with old friends. (@mirugaidoesthings & @rylen-ooc <3)

Shadowbringers might as well have just been written specifically for me. Monstrous angels, a complex villain, a story with such resonating themes... I'd enjoyed A Realm Reborn and I'd cried over Heavensward (yes, over Haurchefant... who I ended up naming my cat after) but Shadowbringers might as well have been marketed with my name on it.

And then in late November-early December of 2021, Endwalker's release coincided with my soon-became-husband's cancer diagnosis. I played through the first section of the MSQ while he slept off his first round of chemo. I was scared and emotional and trying my best to deal with the stress of keeping our finances together while visiting him during his hospitalizations and juggling everything that such things require.

Endwalker hugged me. It told me that life is scary, that life is a struggle, but we do it because we have each other. And I desperately needed that. Endwalker was the story I needed right then and right there. Facing down the Endsinger felt so cathartic, as if I was able to beat my husband's cancer and my own stress and fear with my WHM staff.

And Endwalker is the expansion where I had to make a Warrior of Light, I couldn't separate myself from the story long enough to just experience it anymore. I needed to create a character who changed in relation to the story, who lived it, who could have the same emotions I did about it.

I've met lovely people through FFXIV--a lot of them here on Tumblr--and I've found a creative outlet I'd never imagined possible. (Thank you *coughcrimetoolscough*) I've created characters, written stories, built friendships, and found deep, personal comfort in Eorzea. I cry when I hear "Answers" now and I can list the Scions off without pausing. I've baked Norvrandt's cookie biscuits, hung FFXIV art in my house, and can recognize more of the music than I've EVER listened to for ANY other game.

Dawntrail is the next step in a journey I'm eager to continue with all of you. May we ever walk in the light of the Crystal.

[dragoon-mid-jump]

FFXIV Swap: Relaxation Edition!

A swap gift playlist for @ubejamjar feat. their WoL, Ajisai Kawanami, playing to the suggested theme of Relaxation! I suppose you could call this "Lo-Fi Beats to Rotate Your WoL To"? Because that's what I sure did making this! It's got a little bit of everything I felt would resonate with your WoL, from vibes and aesthetics to shipping.

And below the cut are some brief blurbs on how and why each entry made it into the playlist itself! Thank you much for your patience, apologies for the lateness, and I hope you enjoy giving this a listen as much as I did crafting it!

The Last Stand (Masayoshi Soken): Personally, one of my favorite Endwalker tracks to vibe to. I heard it in my head as I read your ask prompt entry titled "The Perfect Date" with Ajisai and Aymeric. There's something about the acoustic that really resonates with the notion of relaxation, which is fitting considering it plays during downtime moments in Endwalker. I think it also really fits the Aesthetics section of the "5 Character Associations" tag game you did!

I Still Miss You (Bernth): A piece I found from a primarily instrumental guitarist I listen to that I checked out after noticing that you shipped Ajisai with Haurchefant, given his ultimate fate, as well as the "5 Character Associations" at play once more ("Loneliness after your lover goes home" under Emotions/Feelings) while still tying instrumentals to relaxation.

Easier (Crane Wives): Found in an ask while trawling through Ajisai's character tag, so I figured I'd add it in! You also already did the lyric analysis yourself, too, and I can see how it lines up!

Vanilla Twilight (Owl City): There's something about the lyrics of missing someone dear to you that resonates with what I can feel from Aymeric being unable to accompany Ajisai on her travels past Heavensward, save for a few instances later down the MSQ, coupled with the colors blue and purple and starry skies and winter mornings in the Associations post, while also tapping into the more lowkey vibes I'm aiming for.

Rule #1 - Magic (Fish in a Birdcage): A song I found while music-surfing, and after I gave it a listen, it reminded me of your "A Perfect Date" vignette, moreso the latter half after Ajisai and Aymeric leave the cafe they were at and retire to her abode. It's the combination of the more private quarters and the repeated lyrics:

"There is magic in this room I don't know if you can see it There is magic in this room I don't know if you can feel it It's called love Some call it love Love"

as they just spend the rest of the night in each others' presence.

6. Between Twilight (Lindsey Stirling): This was mainly on vibes from the low-key violin that comprises most of this track and resonance with...well, not just her aesthetics, but with some gposes of her general travels and less strenuous MSQ moments.

7. Foreverglow (Lindsey Stirling): It was right under the above song in the album listing, but this time it has lyrics. Still has the same vibes as the above, but the lyrics have the song hone in more on the night sky aesthetic.

8. Starlight Waltz (Ponyphonic): Another find from music-surfing. Pulling from your Wondrous Tales prompt "Lost Together" as well as that starry sky aesthetic. Well, it's a waltz, and it calls to mind the dance in the prompt. It fits both of these separately, but not necessarily together, if that makes sense? Mainly because that particular Gpose isn't shot at night.

9. Twinleaf Town (Pokemon Diamond/Peal/Platinum OST, cover by insaneintherainmusic): Ah, Twinleaf Town my beloved. Your hometown in the Gen 4 games. Comfy and cozy and safe. In Platinum particularly, the climate has turned a bit colder in Sinnoh compared to its predecessors, noted by patches of snow around the neighborhood and the characters dressed warmer. I think all that fits some of Ajisai's softer vibes, aesthetics, and Gposes.

10. Nobility Sleeps (Masayoshi Soken): And for the finishing touch, I just had to add a track from Heavensward to allude to Ajisai having love interests in both Haurchefant and Aymeric! So, I picked Nobility Sleeps, which plays at night in the Pillars in Ishgard! It's a soothing track, imo, which is a given with the time of day you can hear it in-game.

[smol-nevi]

You know...I took the entire last raid tier off from FFXIV. I was so burnt out. I couldn't even look at it. I got to such a peak with what I was doing on an individual level that I've got an orange aDPS parse in P5S (that's the one that's just your damage and your own buffs, mostly good for tracking rotation improvements). For the more common rDPS metric I had straight purples. That was without any parse runs and a not-hardcore group. I literally could not get a better parse under those circumstances and I kept beating my head on trying anyway until I wasn't even tolerable to be around.

I'm actually excited about Dawntrail? I'm cleaning out my inventory a bit (major feat, I've been playing since ARR and I have five retainers). I did something like three runs of Delubrum Reginae last night with my partner because they want to finish a relic and I just love Bozja that much.

I'm so tempted to spend some time in Eureka farming bunny boxes alone while everyone else is leveling and doing Dawntrail...

It feels nice to be able to be back. I'm not sure if I want to raid yet or not, but I'll play it by ear (aka if someone I know needs a dancer/ranged phys, I'm in, lol). Whatever the case though at least I know I proved whatever I thought I needed to with my numbers, and I'm a lot better at spotting burnout in myself and others now.

See, the difference between burnout and no burnout is that I couldn't even remember what I used to do for fun outside raiding, and it didn't sound fun if I did remember. Then I quit, slept for a while, eventually got my shit back together, and suddenly horked up an entire novel—of fanfic, but that counts—within 4 months, and then another in another 4 months. (Tellingly, both of them plus the third one I'm working on are about a lot of things, but they're all heavily about the devastating mental effects of burnout.) Now I'm like, do I even want to raid, if I could be doing all this other cool stuff? And yeah, kind of. My FC and our friends had a huge photoshoot to say goodbye to Endwalker and it reminded me of what's good about raiding: shooting the shit, laughing when things explode, being social around people on a schedule. I got way too focused on the math and not the people.

Slightly in my defense, it is hard to keep your head up when you run the same content for that many months. We cleared P4S week 31 and P8S week 34, if I'm remembering right. But also, absolutely not in my defense, until I intentionally took a short break during the P8S slog I had missed one single raid day since the second tier of Eden, and that was only because I'd had top surgery the literal day before and couldn't hold the controller yet for long enough without it seriously hurting. By the next raid night I was already back in it. I've never had perfect attendance in anything so that was a very hard record to let go of. What I needed was to let it the fuck go about six months before I actually did.

Anyway I'm literally just rambling because that's what I do, but I'm excited to be back. I think I'll level pictomancer because yeah, everyone is, but that's fun too. Bandwagons can be good or people wouldn't get on them. Dancer has been my main since Shadowbringers dropped and one of my favorite memories is still spending hours rolling over the Gyr Abanian maps with a bunch of half-dancer, half-gunbreaker fate trains like a steamroller covered in blenders and bayonets, laughing with strangers. I'm hoping pictomancer and viper will be that way too. It was good shit and I'm looking forward to it. I'll have a slightly late start because I've got a friend visiting through Friday, but that's fine. The point is friends anyway, and I need to remember that this time.

[arcann]

taigat: a + d + h

A) Why are you excited about this character?

-I want them to go to the thirteenth so bad it makes me look stupid. I hope that in four years or so endwalker goes into the free trail and i can escape the ffxiv stupid ass subscription model with them (deluded). i DO get excited about writing about them despite the irl horrors.

D) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?

-Hmm i think they had outright white tips mixed in with the red but I made them grey to make it look like he has a considerable amount of grey hairs. They also went from red to green to brown eyes tee hee.

H) What trait do you admire most?

-That they beat the shit out of evil people

They do not give up on the people they love and they find a way to help them in the best way they are able to.

[pallisia]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[anticidic]

Saw that you listen to video game music and well *twirls hair shyly* Care to share some of your favorites?

Some days, I find myself humming “Epona’s Song” from LoZ, or sometimes I sing “Fear Not This Night” from GW2 because the first time I heard it, it was like listening to angels sing (huge dramatization on my part, lol 😂).

But I have no in-between. It’s either a super mellow and peaceful song or a warrior song to listen to 💀 What do you listen to?

YOU TOO? Yay~ 😭

But yes, omg!!

I listen to a lot of covers of tracks, like I like NateWantsToBattle and CamSteady for Pokemon songs. CamSteady does pokemon raps of all kinds!! I love his Pokemon Trainer rap, Legendary Pokemon rap, Pseudo Legendary Pokemon rap, and Pokemon Professor raps in particular 💖

I also like Lollia, Adriana Figueroa, GillStudio, and Caleb Hyles for Person 3/5 covers.

For ACTUAL video game tracks I like:

Persona 3, 4, 5 tracks. Particularly Burn My Dread, Your Affection, and River in a Desert. (I also like Whims of Fate, Take Over, and Mass Destruction) Lyn is amazing singer!

(Also, fun fact, Lotus Juice is in a lot of Persona 3 songs and he did some of the songs for the BSD anime 👀 he's a good rapper)

Also since you can vibe with it, so much FFXIV music. So much. The newer tracks post-Endwalker have been some of my favorites I have on repeat a lot. Scream, One Amongst the Weary, and Athena, the Tireless One are bangers!

Some other one-offs I can think of: Hopeless Call (Soul Hackers 2), Devil Trigger (Devil May Cry 5), Death Stranding (Death Stranding), Forced Battle (Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne), Boss Battle (Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne)

ALSO, my current earworm has been Bee My Honey from the latest Dawntrail expansion from FFXIV. You need to listen to it. It's a cutesy beat with some cutesy lyrics to match until you listen closer. 😂 "I really should have said, treat me well or you're as good as dead"