#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.

[ghostkingshenwei]

Wuk Lamat saying basically "I can't depend on other people because I have to be a good leader" is an extremely funny thing to say to the WoL, who is the #1 person on every single Eorzean leader's speed dial when they run into an issue they can't deal with.

[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!!

[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.

[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

[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.

[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"

[salty-dracon]

Honkai Star Rail 2.0 Trailblaze Mission Liveblog

Everything I write includes four things- cool cities, found family, the most horrifying plot points I can possibly squeeze into a story, and angels with dubious intentions. Naturally, I'm PUMPED for Interstellar Fantasy Cool City Vacation with Found Family + Dubious Angels + Player Tears. Liveblog under the readmore to keep people unspoiled.

---

Foreword

This is not my first liveblog rodeo. I've liveblogged plenty of murder mystery games. But I promise to make this an entertaining experience for anyone who wants to read this.

You're probably wondering why everything I write is about killing angels. It's been a running theme in my work ever since high school, where the villain of a superhero story I wrote was a man who built himself metal wings. He was themed around control- if not by breaking bodies, by breaking minds through mind control powers. He was fucked up like that.

And I've written a lot of angels since then (a lot of them just straight up divine beings), most of which in some way have powers that are used to control others, with the protagonists fighting against them to free themselves from control. So yeah, killing angels, whether they're child-kidnapping supervillains, instigators of amatonormative authoritarianism (fellow aroaces this one's for you), or digital gods who have killed millions and would kill millions more for the sake of vengeance against everyone that hurt their human pets- it's basically standard for me at this point. No doubt whatever WIP I write next is going to involve kicking the ass of another angel.

(I didn't keep up with marketing. I have no idea what Robin and Sunday's personalities are like. Going by the trailers, Robin seems like the nice and friendly sibling and Sunday's the less nice one who has to keep her out of trouble.)

Anyway, I keep hearing theories that Firefly and/or Himeko will die, and if that happens, I'll be sad. Firefly is the closest thing Trailblazer has gotten to another girlfriend (the star rail trio are siblings, ride-or-die besties, or a polycule depending on what's funniest at the moment) and Himeko is just right up my alley being a tall, beautiful woman with red hair in a big dress and a black leather coat who beats up enemies with a CIRCULAR SAW. Still, they can't hype Firefly up as Trailblazer's closest thing to a planet BFF and not kill her, right?

Also if this happens I'll laugh, but if Welt dies. Like they're saying it's Himeko but what if.

Other theories I have, for other reasons:

Someone will attempt to steal or acquire the Astral Express, and they will succeed until a later patch.

There will be a quest involving breaking down the Family's supposed hivemind.

Social media will explode with outrage over a specific enemy that felt intentionally kept out of marketing (it's the one with the blue head sitting on a dice box, only briefly visible in certain scenes in the music video).

With Genshin being my first HYV game I was really surprised to see Tingyun die also. Unlike many other gacha games (Epic Seven comes to mind) Genshin has a really clear criteria for which characters are and aren't going to become playable, and those criteria are basically just "be alive and have a reason to aid the Traveler for the foreseeable future" to avoid plot breaking. HSR has proven that that criteria really does not apply, w/ Tingyun, canonically dead, being a potential party member, and Dan Heng having both a 3-star and 5-star version that can be in the same party if the player feels like it. (there has to be someone out there who runs "team plot breaker".)

Also, I have been spoiled on exactly ONE thing due to leaks, and I will say nothing more on that fact.

Begin Quest!

Let's get started squeeeeeee

I'm not sure whether Dan Heng just typed "..." to show that he's around, or because that's actually what he would say if they were all together and they needed to talk.

I'm having flashbacks to FFXIV Endwalker's "You may exhibit a light touch of VIOLENT AETHERIAL SICKNESS".

Oh, that's exciting. Some of the Nameless went on to live here. Tiernan the guard, Legwork the mechanic, and Razalina the surveyor.

I'm imagining the final preparation for this vacation was March zipping all over the Express gathering all of her necessary (unnecessary) things, Dan Heng diligently packing his suitcase neatly and carefully, and Trailblazer filling up a plastic bag until the other two scold them for it and tell them to at least pack a backpack or something so their stuff doesn't get thrown out with the trash. Meanwhile Himeko and Welt have had their suitcases packed for a few days already.

WHATTTT. NOOOOOO. I was really excited for the whole Astral Express family to let loose together. Noooooooo. (I mean if my theory that someone will try to steal the Express is correct, at least he'll have someone to hit with a lance.)

UHHHHHH. WH. WHERE'S THE PLANET. WHY'D WE GET SCLORPED INTO ANOTHER SPACE ENTIRELY. WHY WERE THERE MONADO VISIONS

Acheron: oh god motherfucking dammit how do these fuckheads keep getting in- Come with me.

multiplayer dreaming

Acheron: This is the border between dream and reality, mind and matter...

she's so not impressed with anything the trailblazer does lol

oh look it's everyone we'll meet here.

:/ so looks like the stellaron hunters will actually be crashing the party themselves.

Listen, I don't play that many RPGmaker games or visual novels, but red text is usually a bad and/or scary thing. So am I supposed to take this as bad and/or scary?

"Have you met Acheron before?", "Would you fear losing any of the friends you've made over the course of your journey?", "If you could stay in a dream where you could experience none of this loss forever, would you?", and "If you already knew how the journey would end, in tragedy, would you still trailblaze a path?". Fuck, these questions are hitting. And we're going to witness some kind of tragedy, that much she says.

Black, white, and fleeting red. I'm pretty sure these are the colors in Acheron's splash art. I wonder what that means.

Acheron Casts The Spell: Freshly Chopped Raw Onions.

Wait, so is it a planet, like a round planet, or is it like Asgard from the MCU where it's just a flat plane?

auuuuuuuuuugh front desk troubles i hATE them

aventurine shows up, and himeko and welt just look at each other like "who's this jackass". then himeko expertly deals with the jackass in question. how much experience has she had dealing with ipc assholes if she could verbally square up with two of the stonehearts on a turn of a dime?

I think it's really funny how the marketing keeps saying "listen the IPC aren't bad guys and they aren't unreasonable, they have a reputation to uphold" as though basically the entire Belobog Topaz quest wasn't Himeko, March, and Trailblazer giving a giant middle finger to the IPC for outright lying and manipulating Bronya. And then this guy starts complaining that we wasted ten minutes of his time.

Aventurine: This is Sunday, the most handsome man in Penacony! And that's his sister Robin, the singer renowned across the universe!

Robin: Hehe he called you handsome~

Welt and Himeko: *either heterosexual judgment or just plain confusion*

If you called my OC Grey, the Angel of Illusion and main antagonist of The City of Hands, whose ability is weaving dreams, "handsome", he'd probably just try to ignore you.

Oh, interesting. I sort of assumed that Robin was part of the Family like her brother, but I guess not...

WHICH DAY WAS HE-

There's a hotel in Disney World (World? It's the one in Florida) that looks just like this hotel. But it's supposed to be the super luxury version.

My brain has to do so much of the legwork here (> <) but i'm imagining March and Trailblazer skipping off to their rooms, full of excitement, while Himeko and Welt have a quiet, ominous chat over some drinks.

"Witness the impossible in the realm of dreams, find the legacy of the Watchmaker, Father of Penacony, and thus find the answer to the question 'Why does life slumber?'."

What...? A distress call from one of the Nameless, having arrived relatively recently since both March and Dan Heng were on the Express at the time they received it. YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!!! MISSION IMPOSSIBLE ARC!!!

Based on my knowledge of Genshin, which will be a lot less useful than I hope it to be, I think most of the factions are remaining quiet because they need the help of the Nameless to clean out whatever's causing their societal issues. Plus, I'm not sure how the Annihilation Gang ties into everything. They can't be the ones who sent the invite, right?

Today I learned that Trailblazer is canonically possibly or possibly not old enough to drink! (There's rum in the Galactic Voyager!) Actually wait, I think I've had this drink before.

Himeko always just sits wherever. And she sits so RADIANTLY.

We might as well be plunging ourselves into VR heaven at this point auuuughhghg i'm so excited

We're visiting the Golden Hour first, so that means we'll be separated from the other three noooooooooo. i mean, "history and culture enjoyer", "atmosphere and people enjoyer", and "shopping enjoyer" match the other three to a tee but :(

March you're so right, this is an intergalactic live-action detective saga.

Okay, let me note this down for foreshadowing reasons. Family feuds, tragic losses, worlds torn apart, espionage situations, rivers running red with blood (acheron lol).

THIS IS FINE THIS IS FINE THIS IS FINE THIS IS FINE THIS IS FINE

I don't trust you! :)

(Doesn't TB already have the Preservation's protection? Lance, forward, and all that?)

danger. danger. danger. danger. danger. danger

thabks acheron O_O

Aventurine: How did you make this friend so fast?

Trailblazer: Oh, uh... she called me funny in a dream once?

It will be really funny if Aventurine isn't actually an antagonist here (he's trying to "reclaim" something that's in Penacony, and we all know how bad that went in the case of Belobog) and Acheron is warning us for nothing.

*bass boosted* I think it's really funny how the marketing keeps saying "listen the IPC aren't bad guys"-

I can imagine myself walking into this dream pool while fully-clothed. I keep my socks on, the bottoms of my feet touch the water, my face recoils back like I ate a sour grape. Wet socks are the worst, and I have had my fair share of wet sock troubles. Even stuffed plastic bags into my shoes to avoid them.

Mikhail.

Aventurine: Hey, Ratio, where's that bust of yours?

Every single Dr. Ratio/Aventurine shipper: WRITE THAT DOWN WRITE THAT DOWN

... So his endgame is to basically bring Penacony (penal colony) back into the IPC's hands. Or something like that. How is another question entirely.

*stares at trailblazer flying through the air like a ragdoll in dream space* weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

FUCK YEAHHHHHH MIDTOWN MANHATTAN!!! (I should go visit again one of these days...)

ehhh, she's freaking out for no reason, she'll be fine, elio never foresaw a future where she died from falling 100 stories in a dream world- SHE GOT YAMCHA'D!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA

[scene where robin checks on trailblazer who just smashed into bare concrete] my guardian angel and her friend wondering whether they should carry my soul to the afterlife after i drank too many blue raspberry slurpees and passed out behind the 7-11 at 2am

OH THANK GOD DREAM TEXTING SERVICE.

So much of this is just like the Caligula games, I like it.

so today i learned that not only is pom-pom as old as akivili, but he put akivili to task too. also, "broke the train into two pieces"? so is there a second half of the express somewhere??? *soft gasp* can trailblazer finally stop sleeping on the couch

FIREFLY!!! GIRLFRIEND!!!

(this one npc has darker skin than most of the genshin sumeru characters and yes i'm still mad about that)

Thanks, Dad- i mean, man. stranger. with dad vibes

Fun fact about me: The cheat code to designing a male character I will find super cool no matter what atrocities they commit is: brown or red hair, a formal suit, caring dad vibes, and severe mental health issues for which they have very harmful coping strategies. This rarely but sometimes applies to female characters too (makima chainsawman, and a character from a game where the antagonist's file says he likes fireworks). This also applies to Welt. Yes, I do sometimes spend my days wishing I had a better father, how did you know?

Maybe Mikhail is Firefly's brother or something? And she's a local from the Iris family...

this is gorgeous...

going on dates with my girlfriend :)

girlfriend activities :)

girlfriend simulator :)

syrupism??? just sounds like an offshoot of american consumerism to me. like my dad's friend who has a $2m collection of coca cola memorabilia. which is simultaneously the coolest and most cringe thing i've ever heard

can't wait to tell march (my girlfriend) that i have another girlfriend in another server instance

If we go on enough dates with girlfriend we get to hear her tragic backstory.

O_O we're being followed??? *long sigh* okay who is it? rude gambler boy? benedict cumberbatch's sherlock? dad 2? that angel everyone keeps turning into a creepy monster in fanart? a t rex chef?

strong build? silent steps? oh motherfucker it's S A M P O K O S K I

... that is not sampo koski. he always introduces himself with his full name.

oh and he does know who march is, and while march is also my girlfriend, that's not march.

the pepeshi are just moogles. or lalafell.

UM. UM!!!

sampo. sampo what the hell are you doing. is this going to lead us to tatalov

i KNEW IT

i swear some of these trashcan lines were ripped straight from "dog of wisdom"

eris's apple- er, trash can

THERE HE IS! GIANT SAMPO

this is so stupid LOL

i mean i did have a feeling that firefly was lying, i just couldn't figure out how or why. as for how the trash can dream is supposed to symbolize penacony, i'm not sure either.

oh noooooooo i hate walking talking cartoon characters. especially ones that sound like mickey mouse

"innocence kindness, and honesty of a child"? dude, trailblazer murdered cocolia. they have the option to lie all the time. anyway, misha.

no no no no no. i want girlfriend time.

... wait. boss stone. stonehearts? that would make them the ipc, or an expy of them.

a traumatized galactic hero, a bellboy, and a pair of lesbians wake up in a dream world together

DATE DATE DATE DATE DATE

sparkle and aventurine. i guess they have a reason to hate each other

sigonia and avgin. ????

it took me way too long to figure out that "chicken wing boy" was sunday

this entire border section is like a scene 3/4ths of the way through a teenage coming of age movie

MONUMENT VALLEYYYYYYY (you should play it)

the last time i had this much fun with an ingame girlfriend was with kasumi from persona 5 royal. i know a lot of people don't like her because she gets in the way of akeshu action but i couldn't stop smiling every time she appeared on screen, and that's how i feel with firefly. like god, she's just adorable. she's just a treat. ingame protagonist, you'd better treat her well.

firefly is a stowaway suffering from entropy loss syndrome- basically, her perception and actions are slowing down and she's slowly dying on the inside and it's affecting her mentally too. a lot like something from zero escape. she has a dream, and penacony lets her realize it. and she wants to find the watchmaker's legacy.

SELFIE! SELFIE WITH GIRLFRIEND! AAAAAAA

Okay, March found Ratio in the shopping district, Welt's had some weird things happen himself, and it's back to reality for us.

fuck off sampo, i'm going to have an angsty goodbye scene with my girlfriend

yeah i knew you were sparkle. cool transition though

we've entered salvador dali street

"the real dreamscape"... i really have no inkling as to what it might be

OH. Origami bird. That's one of Clockie's friends, and if I'm right that "Boss Stone" is meant to be an expy of the IPC, then that means that the watchmaker themselves lost Mikhail.

THIS SI FINE THIS IS FINE THIS IS FINE THIS IS FINE THIS IS FINETHIS IS FINE

THIS IS FINE THIS IS FINE THIS IS FINE THIS IS FINE

such a cool monster design

hi black swan

MOM DAD BESTIE I MISSED YOUUUUUU

Huh. Black Swan wants to ally with the Trailblazers. In exchange, she wishes to experience memories. The dreamscape is collapsing, potentially exposing a lot of danger as well as the Watchmaker's Legacy. The person who sent the Watchmaker's invite is likely behind the collapse as well. The various factions on board- the Trailblazers, IPC, Family, Masked Fools, the Stellaron Hunters, the Galaxy Rangers, the Garden of Recollection- one of them is the culprit. The IPC is the most obvious, but... where is the Annihilation Gang in all of this?

Okay. Stellaron Hunter Sam is the one Welt saw suspiciously wandering around.

Acheron!!!

Acheron is so angry all of the time. I love her.

FIREFLY!!! At least she's okay! For now!

There she is! Hug girlfrie- OH NO

FIREFLY!!! FIREFLY!!! OH NO OH NO OH NO

OH MY GOD SHE'S DEAD

D,:

Moving on...

Let's see, someone killed a lot of monsters in one strike with a blade slash, and that blade was superheated.

Firefly was betrayed by a companion after tracking down some information about the Watchmaker. That companion, probably Sam since I know he's a boss fight.

oh my god that's a boss fight that's a boss fight

DID ACHERON JUST THROW HER FUCKING KATANA AT HIM-

you, you CAPITALISTIC BITCH

actually, if aventurine was the one behind firefly's murder, which he very well could be- no, no, i'm just not going to entertain that rn

BLACK SWAN WAS THE BETRAYER?! HOLY FUCK

or, they were both trying to save the trailblazer?

Acheron's an Emanator of Nihility? Who gives a shit? I'm friends with an Emanator. Her name's Herta. She has puppets.

wHAT. Do you mean. Ifrit is dead.

... Listen, I thought it was lowkey insane that they'd drop a character design as awesome as Dubra's and then drop absolutely nothing else. I began joking in chat about how badly they'd animate Ifrit's skull. But if he was never actually meant to be an ingame character in the first place, that's crazy.

I mean like, realistically I don't trust any of these people. I really don't trust the IPC since they have a vested interest in reclaiming Penacony. But Acheron stealing her invitation is interesting, since I thought she was the most trustworthy.

Yeah, thanks for putting it mildly, Black Swan. Everyone could be lying. It could be you. It could be me. It could be Mom. It could be Dad. It could NEVER be Bestie.

Okay. Let's go. Let's see the "truth" behind Penacony.

OH NO. OUT OF ALL OF THE PEOPLE TO DIE, I DID NOT EXPECT HER!!!

Hey. Hey what the fuck. What the fuck is happening what. WHAT

oh he is NOT happy about someone disguising herself as his sister

the people here are way too horny for sunday

he's pulling out the capitalized pronouns. in christianity those are the big guns.

Final Thoughts

they told me i wouldn't be ready, and i wasn't. i wasn't even ready for how not ready i was

Also my favorite kind of Big Reveal is when you know something big is going to happen, because it's being foreshadowed (Firefly death) but that completely keeps your mind off the true reveal (Robin death) until it's time, and then the true reveal hits you like an avalanche.

You really can't trust anyone in this hotel. I have a vague idea of who's allied with who, but what they want? I have no clue.

My head hurts.