#and of all the things to happen in EW I really think Zenos did the most trauma and lasting damage to her

[tsunael]

WoL Think Thonkers

#5 How do they feel now that "it's all over" (the story of Hydaelyn and Zodiark)? What do they plan to do next? Or is their story finished - and if you're retiring them, what does retirement look like for them? Do you have someone else taking the stage going forward?

A part of me would love to retire her now just because I am so satisfied by the 'ending' of XIV and subsequently the growth I've written for her (and continue to write) but I know I won't be able to do that for several reasons-- most of them personal.

To steer away from the meta, Tsuna, herself is very ready to retire. I want to say it's the first moment where she truly wants to quit, but as I'm writing this I realize she probably had a moment post-Heavensward where she entertained thoughts about it.

Tsuna does actually 'quit' in 6.1. I have a vague ideation of her 'retirement' either having influence on, or coinciding with, the disassembly of the Scions. Though, of course, circumstances end up bringing her into the fray again. I didn't really want her involved too heavily in the 13th arc but I found her and Zero to be Interesting.

Regardless, Tsuna feels burned out. She is tired. Her mother is confirmed dead, and though she reunites with her father only for him to be gravely injured during the attack of Palaka's Stand. The injuries that Zenos inflicted on her were also severe, and a few had long lasting effects.

There's a lot of psychological and (now physical) issues she suddenly has to contend with now that the fate of the world isn't on her shoulders. She never got to properly process the events of 'In From The Cold', for instance.

There's also her *waves vaguely* love life which finally comes to a head around this time for better or for weird and worse.

For a woman whose life has become only what she can do for others, and to have her worth based on the measure of her deeds, that downtime during her hospital recovery was excruciating. She has a need to keep busy and work but she's bedridden for (possible) months.

There's a moment where she contemplates ending herself because of it all-- and I'm still questioning if its out of character considering the whole point of EW is not to do that-- but there is just so much pressure on her at that time in her life that I think would bring her to those kinds of depths. She feels so utterly worthless and alone while also having every eye in the world on her.

Needless to say I've been enjoying the current theme of 'wol needs a vacation' because boy! Does Tsuna need it.

Y'all know any good therapists in Tuliyollal, or...

[maybevillage]

my really really long rant about endwalker

i'm not kidding this is really long. spoilers ahead of course, like immediately upon entry. sorry i sound so angry the whole time

unfortunately for me and for anyone reading this, endwalker is one of those cases where i like/d so much of what happens that the many weak moments make me more critical of the whole than i would be if it was just wholly bad like stormblood, bc it's a waste of potential. a lot of the time the moments i liked would even be happening simultaneously with the things i find so problematic: cheap storytelling decisions, cheap moments that only serve as fanservice or for shock value that only detract from a characters’ pre-existing complexity, poorly done rehashing of elements from shadowbringers, a lot of hollow pseudo-intellectual arguments, rushed and underdeveloped writing in one instance and then meandering wastes of time immediately after….these issues are so consistent that rather than try to break up endwalker's story based on these things, i will just try to run thru the whole thing chronologically and hope i don't get too repetitive. that's why this isn't an essay with some pretense of structure. i'll do my best.

what's crazy to me is i thought endwalker was going to be my second favourite expansion. this was despite not caring about its original main conflict--i thought fandaniel just wasn't a compelling or even interesting villain. he comes out of nowhere. and he's also asahi so that association is hard to break away from bc i find asahi silly. and he suffers from the same writing issues zenos does, where nearly every cutscene with them did little to develop their characters further from the baseline, only reiterated what i already know bc they literally never say anything else: zenos wants to fight wol, he's bored with everything life could possibly offer, fandaniel will ensure zenos can fight wol through his towers bc he no longer plays to the tune of his unsundered masters... even though what fandaniel was promising to cause were the final days i just didn't really care. in the wake of shadowbringers the final days are like a pretty big deal, but something about reviving a catastrophe i had just finished wrapping up--i thought, naively--made bringing them back seem really thoughtless. i don't really need to see anymore final days...like how much more do i need to understand how bad it was? i mean i think shb did a pretty good job????? of making the final days seem pretty fucking bad. why not come up with something new because this is endwalker and not shadowbringers haha? the only fresh thing about this new uncooler final days was the motivation behind them. fandaniel wanting to bring about the final days bc he wants to die and thinks everything should die with him vs emet-selch's unwillingness to die no matter what bc the final days took everything from him and he needs to bring it all back. still, recontextualising the final days from a past event into a present issue ruins them to me. whatever, i thought, there's no way we're letting the final days happen so what does this matter anyways. there's no way.

so yeah post-shb into ew was starting to lose me plot-wise. not the end of the world (LOL?) though bc the atmosphere in the beginning was so subtle and fresh and rich like dew in the morning that i was willing to look past it. going to old sharlayan i liked a lot. i liked going there not as a more typical homecoming for your friends but to instead uncover the sharlayan forum's cryptic behaviour. this kind of intrigue was what i really wanted after the grandness of shadowbringers and i really do think endwalker gave me that for a while. i liked the opening scene on the ship a lot bc it felt exciting and uncertain and new, especially talking to hydaelyn. i liked how she had become such an unstable variable after originally being the most anchoring presence in the entire game: learning she's a primal, whether she's actually “good” after listening to emet-selch’s explanation of her origins and actions in shb, and the fact that her appeals to her champions have been fewer and fewer… i thought her meeting with you at the very beginning of endwalker was cool and foreboding. i also really liked the emet-selch narration btw, i thought that was a fun choice. who better to guide you into the final stages of your adventure than the person who left you with that final, most important task. i wish this had been the only callback to his character at all. 

so a big part of why i like/d endwalker so much is all that atmosphere. and something i can't really put into words. it just felt cool and cohesive at the start. old sharlayan is one of my favourite locations now; i like that despite its rigidity and (to me farcical but w/e tangent) pursuit of rationality/knowledge, there's the quaint island charm and fresh winter sea and overgrown greenery and forest paths. i liked that the game enhanced the usual hubworld tour chore by having g’raha and krile follow you around to give you more personal anecdotes of the place, really gave it a more lived-in feeling, which really added to both them and the location. i also really liked all this charm and familiarity in tandem with the secret hostility of the place bc of the forum, having to sneak around and so on, sharlayan citizens not really recognising you somehow? but being very aware of a warrior of light threat to their way of life, even if i find that non-intervention way of life silly.

i also really liked labryinthos. it's a really creative place. i liked its uncanny false sky and controlled environment, and yet all the people scrambling about inside. and the music felt kind of magical like i had encountered another fairy area or something idk it all felt very whimsical. thavnair i really liked as well but i feel like my immediate impression of the place was kind of poisoned by the stereotypes, like the huge focus on trade and the first impression being undercutting foreign tourists but then i started to really enjoy the part where you run around with matsya and help him sell fish. i liked the mundanity and slow pace of that exercise bc it felt like a much more involved way of learning about thavnair and its current issues through conversations rather than the fetch quest slog, and this is one of the things i like a lot about the beginning of endwalker. the gameplay really improved i think bc they found more creative ways of having you interact with your surroundings, rather than having the usual running between npcs to fetch things for them or other chores. like rather than doing a string of quests and then being rewarded with development of the story, the gameplay simultaneously develops the story. like turning into frogs i thought was fun, testing nidhana’s aether lamp was fun, etc. it felt like they had better ideas about how to progress the in-between parts.

thavnair quickly started to upset me though bc it started to feel like the only relevance the location had was what they could give you for your military cause, that is, the scales. like alchemy is this place’s big highlight and its just the scales the scales the scales and the tower aughhhhhh!!!!!!! the tower!!!!!!!!!! i wish they had focused on something but i guess this is just to be expected with ffxiv...any interaction with a foreign ("foreign" as far as square enix eorzea is concerned) culture really boils down to how they might bolster your military efforts, the azim steppe for eg. so it felt like my concern for an individual (matsya) and the experience firsthand trying to help him with his day to day; the idea that every single person on earth is important and shouldn't be made to suffer, and helping that single person... was like overshadowed by something more focused on a “greater good", that is, the construction of the scales to defeat the towers to save the world ad infinitum. but if you played endwalker then you would know how this idea of only concerning oneself with a "greater good" and this diluting of the importance of an individual's life for the sake of this idealistic whole causes some problems for a certain someone..................so why didn't the game focus more on these themes? probably because at the end of the day it's a video game by square enix and you need a big boss to fight or something or bc this expansion is insanely unfocused i don't know. i feel like this concept about the importance of the small things that can add up to one life and how that one life is beautiful and important crops up with the significance of weeds despite its importance overall. i don't know if i think this is one of the main underlying themes of endwalker just poorly executed so as to not even be there or if i just wish it was one of its main themes. anyways i'm getting distracted, what i mean to say is thavnair gets dehumanised throughout the entire expansion in the most horrific ways possible so i guess this was just the start

moving on... i liked the part in garlemald a lot, which i didn't expect bc i don't expect this game to handle anything regarding imperialism well. i liked that the garlemald you finally experience, after it being one of your main enemies and this very proud nation, was just this dead quiet and ruined place. the quest where you follow that girl is another eg of how the gameplay was a bit more immersive, i think it helped me feel the loneliness and the danger of the place, that i could be a danger to this girl. that i really had to try if i wanted to help her. what i didn't like was alphinaud's and alisaie’s babying attitude towards the garleans? like ok yeah of course we’re gonna have patience and grace for GARLEMALD meanwhile lyse was losing her head at the ala mhigans whenever they disagreed with her. like sure arguing won't get anywhere but it felt like the twins were reckoning with children sometimes, it was so strange. but i did like that the game didn't shy away from making the garleans just unpleasant to be around at best, and an actual danger to you at worst. it's just better to me to make them harder to reconcile with so that there's no frustrating cheap shots at redemption but rather a good, sobering look at a society that's been totally and willingly misled. and i liked that alisaie's and alphinaud's attempts to help those garlean kids ended so badly, even though i'm not usually a fan of such cruel outcomes. it felt like we were seeing a garlemald not necessarily being punished for its actions more than we were seeing a place built on shitty ideals crumble bc of those ideals. i thought jullus was a good char and helped to carry that idea of disillusionment forward. i didn't care so much about sympathising with what he'd lost, but i did find it interesting how they contrast him with the legatus he's working under, who even while the place is in ruins is still more concerned with war than providing for the people relying on him. i don't think the part in garlemald is perfect by any means, like it doesn't do anything too brave, but ig it was a lot more subtle and complex in its storytelling than i expected. and it wasn't meaninglessly cruel. like i'm glad those shock collars put on the twins were only used to gauge jullus' emotional growth or something like him not wanting to activate them rather than them actually being fucking used which would have just made me close the game and not look back.

from here on is where i struggle to lock in for the rest of the story. starting with when zenos kidnaps you in the midst of the fighting at camp broken glass--i don't think i have ever been more immediately mentally locked out of a story. endwalker is darker than usual, trapping people in fleshy towers, two young girls lying dead on the ice, tentacles erupting out of tempered garlean soldiers... and so on. and while i don't personally like things that are overly dark or cruel, it's not that i think they're bad, just that with moments like that it's a lot better imo that a point is being made or they add something to the story, and that it doesn't feel soullessly random or disrespectful. unfortunately this stops being the case for the rest of the expansion..... like something about the weird eldritch feeling of fandaniel pulling you out of your body and putting you in a random soldier's was throwing me off immensely. it felt like i was playing a different game, like so disconcerting i found it distracting, because why would he not just do this to screw you over more often? i didn't understand them having access to such an unrestrained power. at the same time it was also just too wacky to really take seriously despite the apparent gravity of what was happening. zenos inside of my bunny girl's body??? i don't even understand why they did it? to piss you off?? the duty where you play as the imperial soldier was interesting i guess but i couldn’t understand what the meaning behind being made to struggle through that experience was... like didn't we just spend all that time sympathising with the garleans and wrap that section up already? why do i now need to sympathise with/experience firsthand what its like to be a garlean footsoldier? and it annoyed me because these parts felt emotionally rich, like stumbling across those garleans fighting that machine and trying to do your best to help them; dragging yourself across the ground to get to your friends before something bad happens to them, and running towards them before zenos hurts them while in your body--i thought all of that could've been really poignant if not for the actual situation being so silly?? they could have just kept some of those ideas, wol dragging themselves across the ground for eg--the extent to which they're willing to stop harm from reaching their friends (which reminds me of what vrtra says to you about the importance of protecting your friends the first time you meet him. but that was such a one-off moment that goes nowhere... i just wish ew would pick something, anything, to be a poignant message about love on planet earth if they want nihilism to be the main villain, and just stick to it)--and do something that felt a lot more relevant to the established story thus far? just felt totally pointless

what makes this worse is this ridiculous part is iirc right after fandaniel reveals that the entity tempering all of the garleans is varis reanimated as an ancient oh-so-important primal...?? like here's (what i thought was going to be) an actually important point in the story being sidelined for a moment that just goes absolutely nowhere. they certainly made it seem important for a moment, and i think this would've rounded off what was being said about garlemald well; the garleans are so taken in by the farce of their homeland that they think varis is calling them to reclaim their country over the radio, but all along what's actually causing their nation to fall apart is this monstrous version of their late emperor. the irony would've been interesting but they just do nothing with it... (i think desecrating a dead person's corpse by turning it into a monster is really weird btw, even weirder that they do it for no reason. whatever ew is weird.) i thought, considering that this plotline was being established from before endwalker started, that anima was going to take some time. not so. ffxiv would rather have you and zenos enact tropes from a disney channel movie. you merk that guy at the end of the tower of babil and from then on every important plot point the expansion could possibly have moves at fucking mach 567472838758745745

because why all of a sudden are you getting beamed up to the moon? and fighting ZODIARK? i was so confused when asahi i mean fandaniel was punching shit into that fuckgin allagan computer like fandaniel what the fuck are you talking about... i couldn't process anything that happened here. like i'll willingly put aside boring practicalities like why anyone can breathe on the moon, but not so much how fast this all happened and how out of nowhere--is this the reason fandaniel is also amon btw? so that he can use their allagan computers to do this? bc i honestly can’t find any other reason why him being amon is relevant when they revealed that in the tower of zot...like i dont get why that's important

and it doesn't get better after this is the sad thing to me. it doesn't pick itself back up. it is just extremely unfocused right until the endwalker. i was willing to move past getting rid of zodiark so quickly because it's not that i hold standard storytelling rules so dearly in my heart that i need the biggest final boss of the entire series to get a bit more gravitas. it actually ended up being a pretty interesting decision--dispatching the largest villain at the heart of the game being the catalyst for the biggest catastrophe you've ever heard of. like i like that wol gets played. but the entire mare lamentorum section that follows is disrespectful. this expansion suffers from some extreme tonal dissonance, bc how does wol learn that the final days are now upon them and then proceed to spend their time leisurely touring the moon rabbit facility to tell them that the clothes they’ve made for humans to wear isn’t fashionable? why on god's green earth does that matter at this current juncture? this part is one of the worst story-writing sinkholes in the expansion to me, bc why are the discrepancies between what the loporrits know of humanity vs what humanity is actually like something the story chooses to grapple with? we're building an ark to save humanity, and instead of approaching this in a contemplative or emotional way, the point of conflict they choose is logistics? in the expansion about nihilism? at best this conflict was overly realistic..... mostly it's just boring, and at worst the FINAL DAYS are now upon us, so why am i taste-testing carrots? how could the sharlayans, the most focused group of people on the entire planet, have been collaborating with the loporrits for decades and not even have one of the most basic aspects of staying alive squared away? i’m supposed to not only believe that nobody knew after all that time the lopporits think people only eat carrots, but also waste time on fixing this? whyyyyy would they even devote any time to this at all when there are so many more complicated and interesting ideas that they let flounder bc they rush through them at breakneck pace constantly? we just fucking killed zodiark! is this why they stick urianger up there to do all the fixing actually? to save time offscreen? maybe that's why they chose this asinine chunk of the story to start processing his character? though why they would choose to add more to a plate they can barely balance i don't know. i don’t even feel like getting into what they did with urianger bc it will just piss me off. i think only my love for rabbits and how i will never ever not find urianger precious were stopping me from putting a hex on square enix

the following section of the story is easily the worst part to me in the entire game. like i would rather replay stormblood multiple times in a row than ever sit through the final days coming to thavnair ever again. i've already said bringing back the final days would just be bad; a disservice to the time spent on it in shadowbringers. what more is there to say on that front? nothing. and the way ew utilises the final days tells me that the answer is nothing. it just wanted to unleash the violence of that event on the non-white area and spends an insane amount of time doing it. i can think of no other time in this game where there is so much wanton death and destruction for no useful storytelling reason other than to relish in the cheap shock of witnessing violence, violence they are unwilling to inflict on its white areas, because even in garlemald you only see the aftermath of what happens rather than being in the midst of it. it was actually making me feel fatigued. it was just so much of the same thing over and over with no real meaning to any of it. and that's not to say that meaning justifies suffering, but this is a game.....with a story... first and foremost? there needs to be some kind of reason to move the story forward? but nothing new or inspired is being said, just "the final days are really bad"

i’m actually not even sure where to begin so i’ll start with a glaring issue: i hate that people turn into abominations. people “randomly” turning into monsters just feels too unwieldy--how could there be any sense whatsoever that that situation is controllable? even learning that it's caused by feelings of despair is shit because emotions are so vague, how could there be any worthwhile attempt to control your emotions, let alone while watching your loved ones turn into/be eaten by monsters? this entire part felt so wildly out of hand/unpredictable to me that every single moment onward that wasn't more or less focused on maintaining this extremealy volatile situation felt like an unforgivable lack of priorities. it was extremely distracting to have it hovering over everything; everything else felt absolutely inconsequential in comparison. bc what the fuck do you mean people are randomly turning into monsters?? also the stakes were already really high just knowing the final days were coming, so raising them that much higher felt unnecessary to the point of it being hard to believe. and then bc you know there's no way any character important to wol is going to turn into a monster, subjecting commonfolk npcs to this just feels absurdly cruel, and also just made it obvious how much of a cheap scare it all was, bc it can't have any real narrative importance as a result of only happening to random npcs. it was all so blatantly fake-deep. there was no meaning behind them originally being people except for the useless horror of it--the scions still referred to them as monsters to be put down rather than as the people they used to be, just like any other monster in this game. dynamis was more of a retroactive explanation for why people turned into monsters, rather than people turning into monsters bolstering any understanding of dynamis. in shb the sin eaters had some method to them that made them more believable. you fight them throughout the story rather than them just being dropped on you midway through, they helped provide a picture of what kind of world the first was, they were emotional diving boards for characters like alisaie to develop personal goals and so on and so forth... the horror of the sin eaters had a narrative purpose. in endwalker it feels like they didn’t know what to do but wanted to replicate parts of shadowbringers, but didn't know why those parts worked so well bc they're too obsessed with trying to shock their audience. this part just sucked beyond description.

and it just continues to get worse. how can you be the one writing the parametres of a situation and you create something that's literally unmanageable, so that when its only manageable bc you need it to be, it's just so obviously shit writing? my sister described endwalker's writing as really contrived, like when they need something to happen (and that thing is often a really bad idea) they just shove it in there at the cost of keeping their characters in character, or having their story threads--both the interesting ones and the stupid ones--fall totally flat. she says they shortcut the writing. and it's true. for eg, the characters literally don't feel like themselves at times, or get utilised in really moronic ways. like when wol just watches the satrap die, another cheap scare btw he literally gets grabbed an eaten in a way my sis (i was ranting to her a lot about this game ok) described as straight from attack on titan. just gets grabbed and eaten. and this happens to him for such asinine reasons: 1. so that this random asf plot point of vrtra revealing himself as the true satrap can bear fruit. for some fucking reason. i struggle to understand why this is important at all but i guess it's yet another little sideplot that ew just can't seem to resist adding to its already towering plate at the plot buffet, like whatever is going on with urianger and moenbryda's parents/the loporrits, or zenos who now spends most of his time offscreen, or the twins and their father, etc, bc ew likes to waste time 2. so that g'raha (???????????????????????) out of fucking nowhere can have a big boy moment and direct the scions and the people of thavnair in their time of need. what on earth was that scene supposed to be? fanservice? a reminder that g'raha was a leader back in the first? which blows my mind bc mere moments before he had a scene i really enjoyed despite the circumstances, where after a man witnesses his son get turned into a beast and then stepped on by another beast because endwalker is literally jacking itself off to suffering and expects me to be doing the same... g’raha goes up to this man and stops him from panicking and turning into a monster himself. while i don't think any of this should be happening, i thought it was a nice take on his character to have a more sensitive moment in such a harrowing situation. i don't know, have a character demonstrate some emotional skills instead of the usual fighting ones. ofc all of this i thought mere moments before disaster. why was any of this necessary? literally why not just have the satrap, i don't know, take charge of his country when he's needed most, even if he's only been a figurehead the whole time? why let him go out so horribly when he obvious loves his people with his whole heart just so that vrtra can step in without any sort of conflict? i don't understand the focus on vrtra at all

and it actually just keeps getting worse.. the following part where you have to find matsya's friends at palaka's stand was awful. the friends have a newborn baby, so it's obvious that only that baby is surviving bc ew is convinced you don't know how harsh the world is yet. that must be why this part is so long? i'm repeating myself but so many other things that shouldn't be rushed get rushed, only for ew to devote a lot of time to sections like this where nothing changes or develops except for compounding how bad it all feels. i think it was at this point actually, that i realised endwalker actually had some underlying point it was trying to make. it would've been impossible not to realise bc of how heavy-handed it is. i'm not even going to try and paraphrase bc it was so random the way it was introduced i thought i had missed some lines of dialogue or something when it happened:

the suddenness of this felt like when a writer forsakes trying to show what a story is about and instead opts to speak to their audience directly through poorly disguised self-inserts. like i know things are bad right now guys, but the preaching tone of this is jarring. like maybe if you spent some time trying to develop your themes you wouldn't have to be doing this endwalker. i know you need your final villain to literally parrot these ideas for the rest of the game, but if this was supposed to be such a core point of the story why wait all the way until now to just beat me over the head with it? was watching a child be crushed underfoot supposed to make elderly man of palaka using the phrase "at journey's end" seem profound?

anyways then you go and try to save matsya’s friend (the mother bc the father has now died, of course). this leads us to another forced decision that doesn’t make any sense: alisaie and alphinaud fail to kill a single abomination--just the one solitary abomination that was stalking the poor woman--so that we can see it fling her into the water and her corpse dangling on the surface. in what fucking world do alisaie and alphinaud, who have single-handedly dispatched numerous abominations prior to reaching this point, fail to kill just one of them between the two of them in a way reminiscent of a cartoon, one being knocked into the other and them both falling over? how is that fucking possible? and then to somehow make things worse, because that's still possible, despite the fact that wol spends this entire segment in palaka’s stand being told by alisaie and alphinaud not to leave matsya alone because he can’t fend for himself, the twins suggest sending him back on his own to deliver the baby to palaka's stand? why??????????????????????????????

this is what i mean when i say the characters get used in the most bullshit ways for the most bullshit reasons. it's like the game needs as much suffering as possible to happen so that it can make a worthwhile point on this later on (spoiler: it doesn't) so it pulls shit like this. why would the twins, who we just watched try to spoonfeed the garleans cereleum straight from the tank, leave matsya on his own if not solely bc the story needs the doomerism of the Resolute Citizen to ring true? and this is also what i mean when i say the scions try to manage a disaster that is just not manageable, bc they for some reason believe that bc they've taken care of the abominations they saw in the area, that means the area is safe enough for matsya to go back on his own? like are we just suddenly pretending the nature of these creatures doesn't imply that anyone can turn into one at any moment? everyone is ALWAYS in danger? we're just going to mill around while matsya weathers the most potent fear of his life running back to the village on his own, with the baby of his friends who just died moments before, while we all know that extremely negative emotions cause people to turn into the monsters? why are we doing this after we just went to so much trouble keeping people safe (or failing to, really)? forget turning into monsters for a sec, why are we even letting him experience such painful emotions at all? anyways the fucking baby starts turning into a monster because this is endwalker.. but i will say that matsya running and chanting that little piece up there about how life is suffering to try and convince me it's true calm himself down was one of the cutscenes i liked the most from this entire part, maybe endwalker in general. it was another one of those emotionally poignant and well-executed moments that just suffers from how much i wish it was happening under totally different circumstances. i don't even remember why one of us doesn’t go with him, like i don't remember what we were busy doing bc it was that unimportant--no wait, i remember! we were waiting for matsya to reach the total end of his rope so that when all things seem lost, when those monsters obviously show up on his path back to the village out of nowhere like they've been doing the past painstaking quest after quest of this entire part, estinien and vrtra can get this really cool moment of jumping into save him! it all makes so much sense now. i've never seen estinien do anything really cool before like diving down from the sky with his lance, so i understand how this was a really important moment that the game needed to make happen. also how vrtra really needs to prove to the people he can be a good satrap bc ahewann just died and all. yeah, i totally get it. perfect. just great. 

what is the message behind despair turning you into a monster? we're about to get into it with meteion and try to convince her she's wrong--come out championing the idea that suffering is just one of the many aspects of life we need to accept, and yet we're going to preface that with a part where to feel despair is bad? you get punished if you do it? honestly?

whatever. elpis...we go here because we need to learn about the elpis flower. i'm thinking we're definitely just going to ask the watcher, right? like the guy on the moon who told us the name of the flower in the first place? and time is of the fucking essence here, so surely we just go back to the watcher and ask him what we need to know and come back? wrong. we're going back to the first. to talk to elidibus. i thought we killed elidibus? does nobody truly die in this game except for my favourite character? so wol gets sent back to the first, and there's this upbeat tonally dissonant little section where you catch up with some old friends like beq lugg and those kids you helped back in shb bc now is just the perfect time for pleasantries and remembering how good shadowbringers was. ew trying to relive shadowbringers was already something i was feeling out in thavnair fighting leagues of "terminus" creatures and not "forgiven" ones, and watching the carefully constructed horror and gravity of the final days get reduced to an average apocalyptic shitshow. so i can't say i appreciated this part. also people are indiscriminately turning into monsters. i can't help but have that hang over everything constantly until the end of the expansion.

anyways we go to the crystal tower and drag out elidibus even though i personally prefer when characters have their final moments and are properly laid to rest. like i hate to not only beat a dead horse but also reanimate said horse and then drag its corpse around. well fuck what i want. so elidibus willingly does this favour for us i guess and sends us to the past somehow with some useless warnings about how we won't be able to interact with our surroundings or change the past. i say useless because the former is just untrue, i'm not sure why he bothered to say it. the moment we step foot on elpis you get a nice gift of aether from emet-selch that renders you tangible and now you can proceed to live love laugh with him and hythlodaeus on elpis even though people are indiscriminately dying back home. and the latter warning, well. i don't know, that just seemed obvious. i'm kind of just a hater.

time to be positive again for a short moment, if you can believe it? emet-selch is one of my favourite characters. i enjoyed this new light cast on him...for a short while. i like his relationship with hythlodaeus and i really like hythlodaeus; i’m really fond of the faceless simulacrum version of him you meet in shb and i'm really fond of him now. learning about the unsundered world in person rather than through hearsay was interesting, and although i can't lie and say i don't think this all kind of felt like a huge tangent despite the important aspects of the plot that come out of it, i still like it. i guess it feels this way because a lot of big plot points have already been established, like the ark on the moon and the sharlayans' involvement and the final days, so this was all kind of too big to me to be coming this late into the story. it doesn't feel all that relevant to prior parts of the expansion either except for hermes, who has been poorly developed throughout, so okay, i get it. it's time to give one of the main villains some depth (i want you to guess if this is successful or not). hermes has a lot of qualities i really like. has a child, secretly nurturing a potent sadness, thinks differently from the world around him because at his core he’s too deeply empathetic…. even though i was still largely aware of the insanity happening back at home which i'm going to keep repeating, i still enjoyed elpis At The Start. the exposition of this part was easily better than its resolution. it was taking the time to develop hermes’ character so that you could see if the game was written well anyhow how he became the fandaniel of the present. i really liked his relationship with meteion too. it's getting hard to talk about what i like without simultaneously talking about what i don't like so i'm going back to criticising now, positivity over, sorry....

personally, i’d have been totally fine without any more development to emet-selch’s character. i think it was nice to see a fresh perspective on him and all, really rounds out who he is from what you know and what he talks about in shadowbringers. and i actually like a lot of the things he said throughout, not all of it, but a good amount of it was fun and sorely needed whenever hermes was being annoying, which was often. but there was a lot of times wehere i thought, i don't really need to be hanging out with emet-selch right now? i don't need my wol and emet-selch to be friends? considering who he is....? .............and what's going on back home? how many more moments showing how endearingly prickly he is do i need to see? like sure, i can enjoy this emet-selch fest in isolation of what's going on because me love emet-selch like it's not like i think these moments are bad or anything but i don't know, don't we have other things to be doing? i'm not diametrically opposed to fanservice, i like when things are kept fresh and lighthearted. but. well you know by now. about the people turning into monsters. i guess i just both enjoyed this part and wished it happened under different circumstances or in a different way or something, or maybe not at all, bc as things progress his character just gets more and more diluted.

i actually really liked meteion. i will say i’m really tired of non-human, overly childish girl children creature characters who become villains, because i think there's this concept where…idk how to say it? i wish i could find something that talks about this more... it's like the dehumanisation involved when non-binary characters or non-white characters are often not human (not that these things are done in the same way). but i feel like women or females ig are often the ones chosen to be non-human in this particular way...? like, when emotional labour is involved. or when it needs to be some taboo evil entity. it's like a guy and his part-animal female second lead or part-alien love interest or female-voiced ai system or android or abandoned girl he finds/rescues. it's kind of like the born sexy yesterday trope but without the blatant sexuality (i don't want to go on a tangent). quite often this weird quirky alien and playful girl child is a harbinger of destruction. take drakengard, for example, or fire emblem engage, or cc from code geass iirc, or veronica from fire emblem heroes.. there's apparently something about childishness and girlishness and innocence and corrupting that innocence or being fooled by that innocence that seems to incite fear of the unknown enough in people for villainous children to be a trope in general regardless of gender, but it was just something i was thinking about in regards to meteion's character, especially when she becomes evil. and this blurry line between her as a "being" with a consciousness and free well as GIVEN to her by hermes, and her as a "tool" to be used by him as well, doesn't really get addressed in any meaningful way at all. like sure, she doesn't need to eat but she can still enjoy candy apples and flowers, and can empathise bc often of her own volition she wants to cheer hermes up, but actually her ability to empathise is programmed; so let's send send her, this highly empathetic being (with consciousness and free will and tastes and personality) into the cold expanse of space for as long as it takes for hermes to find his answer, that's totally fine. why did he make it a girl? why couldn't they address the fact that the loneliest bastard in this entire game made himself a child? like i'm not saying there needs to be clear-cut definitions on what meteion is or why she or hermes take certain actions, but it feels like a lot of things regarding their characters are really complex and implied to be really deep, and then just don't go anywhere or are completely ignored or unexplained? and because these things are so present yet passed over, it leaves me genuinely confused about most of what happens on elpis and how these two specifically reach any of the conclusions they do once things start going south

like i thought what she and hermes were going to add to the story was going to be a lot more interesting and complex than what it turned out to be.....a banal mantra on the "mercy" of nihilism. i can barely reconcile what bothers hermes in the first place with what meteion concludes from her sisters' expeditions, like they almost feel irrelevant to each other. he's upset over man's lording over who deserves to live and the callousness of making and unmaking life. he feels sadder about the coming death of his friend than the average ancient, and doesn't want to accept meaningless platitudes about dying for the good of the star. ok, i agree with that. so he wants to know what meaning there is to life, if it can be so easily judged and discarded...? okay. so his answer is to....secretly create creatures without any of the rigourous testing they usually go through to prevent them from being dangerous, and then send them on a potentially dangerous and traumatising mission to answer his vague philosophical questions? like.......? so when she reports back traumatised and tells him every single society out there is suffering (which i just find so unbelievable btw), then the answer to his question must be that suffering is the meaning of life--which she figures bc she's an entelechy so i imagine she's highly susceptible to her emotional surroundings, and because his pseudo-intellectual question is so poorly framed (something only emet-selch points out in a throwaway line btw). and this alone spurs him on to allowing meteion to unmake their entire society in the most violent way conceivable? you literally tell him that the final days are coming as a result of his actions, but he's fine with it because he'd rather that than enact some policy changes at his workplace, or talking to someone? everyone seemed to listen and respect his decision when he suggested helping that creature learn to fly instead of just killing it, i'm sure he could've talked it out? isn't he in charge of the place? this entire section was so hard for me to follow bc i kept thinking something more complex was making everyone behave the way they were, when it was actually just totally senseless.

as an aside, i hate how they chose to make the way meteion reports information so cooly technological btw, it felt not only anachronistic but corny. i’m sure there's a better way to have her impartially report things without making her sound like she's reporting weather conditions on some distant planet in star trek. anyways, when you frantically search for meteion after she receives her transmission was another part that took up a lot of time for no reason. it just made everything feel so dire when i could barely understand why any of what was going on was such a big deal. and i’ll never be one to say that any bureau of anything should “detain” anyone, but why hermes was so frantic to prevent meteion from being brought to the convocation i just don't know. like he goes on the run with her so that he can hear the end of her report? is that really it? i just find it hypocritical that he doesn't want her to be sent to the convocation where they'll limit her free will or fucking whatever but he's totally fine with ordering the meteia into space? why am i being made to guess what the convocation is going to do to meteion when hermes is making it seem like such a big deal?? what fucking sense does that make? what on earth was he afraid of? their judgment? the convocation members deciding whether meteion is good for the star or not? could they not have just reasoned this out? aren’t they a "highly advanced" and "reasonable" society? like okay he sees through the veil of his utopian home but i just did not get a sense of how much it was bothering him at all, like i cannot stress enough how him going turbo feels like an insane jump from what his problems seemingly were. why did nobody stop to think this through or communicate to each other? is it because of the bullshit time paradox this game has trapped us in so that nothing we do will amount to anything anyways so we might as well make the most confused villain of all time be responsible for the biggest event in this game's history?

but it annoys me because meteion and hermes felt like such a waste of potential, maybe the biggest waste to me in the entire expansion. i was really intrigued by their wholesome relationship at the start, knowing that hermes was a main villain. and that he can't find connection or meaning in an otherwise "perfect" society, so he has to create it for himself and try to find it elsewhere, as far as the reaches of outer space... he wants to make what's hurting him stop hurting him. i like that he approaches such human desires with meteion despite her non-humanness, and that she can return those feelings to him. he wants to signify meteion’s return with a flower because they both like flowers… like those things we can’t put into words but share with others, moments, emotions, connections……..but nope. nihilism beam. it feels like the worst sort of retroactive writing ever. they didn't even think too hard about dynamis--this hugely important thing, except nobody has ever heard of it, aside from nidhana back at home? while members of the highest office in the most advanced society earth has ever had are left squinting.

and the entire section after you fight hermes just pissed me off. we kicked his ass so that we could stop him from inciting meteion any further, and yet we just let him hear her out anyways? he's yelling at you during the entire dungeon that he just wants the time to hear her out, we're chasing after him so that we can stop him from doing that, and then we just let him hear her out anyways? and then even when we do that she doesn’t even say anything different? she just goes right back to reporting on different worlds and how self-destructive they are and That's All She Really Proceeds To Say For The Rest Of The Expansion But Fucking Who Cares Anymore. so we let her repeat herself. this sends her into a spiral, because she's an entelechy who just got hit by a high frequency nihilism beam, but subjecting her to all that despair is only ever addressed by one of the scions in a throwaway line near the very end of the story in ultima thule... and then hermes...captures venat, emet-selch and hythlodaeus??? he captures two of the strongest characters in the game? did we not just kick hermes’ ass??? what is going on?

emet-selch: that's bullshit, and you know it's bullshit

hermes: *says more bullshit*

i really think hermes might be one of the worst villains in the game. it's a shame bc i think he's such an interesting character. i'm not sure why he started behaving like such an incel when he was right to be troubled by the things he was? why did they even bother have wol relate to him over experiencing sadness from loss if that just went totally nowhere? why does he behave so hypocritically? being saddened by loss leads to him setting the stage for the final days? him hating man's jurisdiction over other lives leads to him wiping emet-selch's and hythlodaeus' memories, and subjecting the entire planet to the worst test ever? he's not even morally grey or anything! just annoying! i saw someone say that it's even worse that he wants the ancients to prove that their life is meaningful to them, bc it's true, they do??? like isn't that what venat interrupts them from doing in the answers cutscene, calling back for that lost life? isn't that what you learn in shadowbringers? didn't an entire half of their population sacrifice themselves so that the other half could live? what the fuck else did they need to prove?

this part was pissing me off even more because i never even wanted hythlodaeus or emet-selch to learn about where wol came from or about the final days coming in the first place. i thought that was an awful writing decision. telling them just felt weirdly cruel to me considering elidibus explicitly told you there was nothing you could do to change it. maybe this is just my opinion, but why would anybody want to know that their planet is going to go up in flames and there is nothing they can do to stop it? telling venat i was like sure, she becomes hydaeyln so this makes a little more sense to me, but the other two…….? this is around when i was getting tired of the emet-selch cameo, because i don't really care to know what he thinks of his future self? i couldn't really understand what the point of any of that was? so it annoyed me even further that it amounts to nothing anyways when they get their minds conveniently erased. it felt like a fucking joke. why did we revive these characters, develop them, and then just treat them like tools...? like now that we're done using their powers and creation magicks--i thought, naively--we just toss them aside? like ohhhhh noooooo now they won't remember all the fun we had on elpis this is so sad......but at least before he got his memories wiped emet-selch, even though he definitely totally doesn't believe a fucking word i say, renews his shb vows to wol and leaves the future in my hands again? yeah, i totally wanted to hear him say that a second time. forget how deeply affecting and important a moment that was at the end of shadowbringers. i really needed to see him do that one more time in this shittier, more contrived context. that's really what i needed from endwalker. also i've been on reddit reading what people have to say about endwalker out of curiosity (ppl make a lot of good points that i haven't) and someone pointed out that moments before all this happens venat literally pulls memories from the aether around you so that we can watch hermes send the meteia to space. what on earth is stopping anyone from doing that for hermes, hythlodaeus, and emet-selch? but whatever, i already know the writing doesn't care how silly it is anymore. two of the strongest ancients get bound by a weakened hermes, only break out after the story conveniently needed meteion to start flying into space, and then venats lets her escape somehow even though doing so essentially dooms their entire planet. ok

so we’re back home and we have to go immediately help the thavnarians who are being punished for not being white again. the sharlayans were going to bring them to the teleporter to the moon in garlemald to start getting them on the moon, but oops, the final days have come to garlemald, so now we can't use the teleporter, so if you're thavnarian your life sucks. who saw that coming? absolute waste of time. so then we have to get rid of more beasts because we need to waste even more time doing something we already spent an agonising amount of time doing in thavnair. and then immediately after this we need to......wrap up yet another asinine plot thread endwalker is so obssesed with adding to it's already convoluted story: fourchenault excommunicating his children...? it seemed really important when he did this in post-shb, but materially nothing for alphinaud or alisaie really changed, everyone still gets into sharlayan no problem. ultimately i just didn’t really know why they chose to pursue this mini-plot at all because how many more pushes does alphinaud (i'm saying alphinaud bc he does not share that spotlight with alisaie lmfao) need to become resolute in his goals? he already does this throughout the series? they ruined arenvald's legs in post-shb so that alphinaud could become more resolute in his goals, why keep dedicating time to this? just keep juggling endwalker, just keep juggling. anyways we’re in garlemald, we calm the final days for now, zenos shows up out of nowhere to remind us he’s still in the game. and to be fair to him that was one of the most interesting cutscenes he’s had the whole time, and, get this--they have him randomly answer hermes' question? about the meaning of life? while talking to jullus? like jullus gets mad at him for not giving a fuck about causing what happened to garlemald, and zenos responds by saying: "ask any creature of this star and those above for answers, and they will tell you what suits their fancy. and they would be right to do so. what meaning there is to be found in the petty vicissitudes of your existence must be gleaned by you and you alone." like......? he just provides the answer right there in a conversation with jullus? did this expansion have any interest at all in putting any of its different parts in conversation with each other, or are we supposed to just try and build a good story like a puzzle, where the pieces, albeit interesting, don't actually fit together? weren't zenos and fandaniel working together at the beginning of the expansion? he should have just posed this question to zenos because the answer was apparently right fucking there, with the flattest character in the entire game, this whole time? whatever, i still liked this scene. alisaie putting a curse on zenos was very cool of her. so we're back in garlemald and....….tonal dissonance! puddingway shows up. cute scene where g’raha’s ears perk up also bc he's the one who hears the loporrits coming. just in case you forgot about g’raha, which is an oxymoron. and then maybe the second worst segment of endwalker...........we go back to labryinthos. 

now i love labryinthos. i thought it was interesting we only collected one aetheryte the first time we were there, and i was hoping the place would be as intriguing to me as it first was when we got back. admittedly learning that the sharlayans' secrecy only amounted to contributing to the moon project was kind of a let down, but i thought maybe there was still more to it. i mean, an ark to the moon? the abandonment of one's home planet? it's not like the ideas aren't there. let's go back to elpis for a second. one of the moments that really stood out to me during that part was a throwaway line that emet-selch says to wol after hermes starts freaking it:

he's right. i don't think hermes found society so truly beyond help that he couldn't turn to any one of his peers for help before devising such a reckless plan. but i'm not trying to rehash my issues with hermes, more that i think an interesting parallel could have been made, possibly, with the ark flying to the moon as currenlty the most viable solution to the final days problem? challenging this notion of just throwing it all away as a last resort? especially because it's so obvious to me that by the end of this expansion nobody is actually going into space to start a new life out there; trying to sort out living accomodations and acquaint the lopporits properly with earth is just a waste of time. so why not pose the underlying question of the entire expansion, about what makes life meaningful, to the last bastion of hope in the entire universe--the sole planet amongst millions of dead stars that still believes in itself? would it not just be free real estate to try and connect this story's multiple parts together by ...connecting this story's multiple parts together? the scions say repeatedly how much they'd prefer to protect their planet rather than leave it, and everyone on earth vouches for you because they don't want to leave, either. could they not have made a connection in some way between that ark and the meteia's voyage to outer space? could the writing not have turned around and asked the actual inhabtants of the planet of that we've helped and saved and laughed with and broken bread with or whatever the fuck what they think about the meaning of life, now that they have to leave that life behind? i guess fucking not??? i guess endwalker would rather only highlight civilians when they're being turned into abominations to drive home the same points about life = suffering constantly, and not the points about how despite the suffering life needs to be lived? because they don't actually seem to care about challenging meteion's nihilism when that can just be lazily solved by beating her up at the end. hermes could have been learning to love the world he was on, the smaller things that make it beautiful. because that's what he does, he creates this creature that is built to understand him, and it does and it shares these small joys with him. but nope, time to waste time doing fetch quests in labryinthos. find every single researcher who is obviously losing their mind with stress in labryinthos and give them their government-assigned lopporit while this hectic music with only one minute's worth of loop value plays in the background. go and deliver these papers with alisaie and alphinaud bc if you do a former friend of their father’s will tell them that their father actually loves them duh that’s why he disrespects them publicly every chance he gets. go follow one of the lopporits around while they sample fruits so that they can learn to make food other than carrots. go and watch urianger reconcile with moenbryda's parents even though she died all the way back in a realm reborn. fuck you. also everyone is still just a bad day away from turning into an abomination. just in case you forgot.

that shit where asahi shows up to take fandaniel away for the final time might be top three most bizarre scenes in all of final fantasy fourteen btw. i almost didn't want to mention it, but i need it on record how silly i thought that was. we are in the final stages of this expansion and it still can't stop wasting time. did we see ardbert's thoughts on elidibus using his body? no. but asahi was who they chose to get upset about this? ok.

i liked the trial against mother. you might have noticed i've had very little to say on venat this whole time. that might just have to be its own post or something if nobody is sick of me by now. but anything to do with working together with your friends to overcome a trial is good.

that's what i liked about ultima thule. at the same time, this is where the game finally just loses me forever. i think, somehow, even despite all the things i didn't like, the way the story is told i still enjoyed, even if what it was saying was often. bad. there's still a lot of moments i really liked despite it all. but after ultima thule i was just done. we get on the ark. great. i like that things don't go as planned because meteion intercepts our ship. but now meteion is finally here, which means it's finally time for me to reckon with the pseudo-intellectual nihilism she's been touting every chance she gets. it's hard for me to suspend my disbelief that every single society out in space wanted oblivion, but if that's what endwalker wants me to believe for the sake of its story making sense (oxymoron) then fine. ok. but that's all that's ever said. "life is suffering" "life is suffering" "the final days are really bad"

just the same pseudo-intellectual browbeating about how living just leads to constant strife and the most beautiful thing to do is to just end it all for everyone ever again. like sure, empath hears death cry repeatedly--i can see how meteion could change so permanently. i think that's fine. i doubt that's why she's so repetitive. i genuinely just 't think there's nothing anyone really had to say on this. and the thing is, we've heard this argument before? the idea that humanity is imperfect so they don't deserve to live? it will all amount to nothing, so why let it continue to exist? these are major points of conflict from shadowbringers because it's what emet-selch was always saying. the difference is that emet-selch is just an easily more interesting and fleshed out character whose arguments are largely more complicated, even if they're just as morally wrong. like it's extremely easy for me to answer whatever meteion is saying with a resounding no. and while i feel that emet-selch can also be easily disagreed with on what he believes, bc i do disagree--he at least introduces ideas that complicate the story and his own character. he challenges the scions on their hatred of primals--their god is a primal. he offers visions of a world where nobody has to struggle ever again, where strife doesn't exist, and so on and so forth. while that doesn’t justify his actions, nor do i think they should, i think he at least gives the characters something to think about. he throws their own actions back at them. why would the scions not want a world without suffering? when emet-selch asks alphinaud if he believes half of the sundered world would give up half of their number to save the other half, alphinaud is unable to answer because he knows that the answer is no. i don't think humanity should be tested, let alone with such an insane standard, but i at least think that the questions being asked in shadowbringers were interesting. there's a point to them. with meteion, all she basically says to the scions is that she’s going to fucking kill everyone they know and love in the worst way possible. nothing to chew on that wouldn't better be solved by just getting rid of the threat. i don't know why they even bother arguing with her ever. she doesn't even feel like a character to me in that last section of the game. and they keep trying to have her seem all scary by having her get really close to the screen or move around without warning which is all very silly to me. i at least did like how much of a threat she was, and the way thancred vanished, and then everyone finds themselves in that dark area in front of the ship wondering where he is while the ultima thule music plays for the first time, distantly and quietly. i actually really liked that part. i thought it was really moving. i wish it had stayed that way.

the first area of ultima thule was the best part imo. i liked the immense darkness and quiet and lack of wind and the foul air and  yet, green grass. i liked the strange horror of being the only person at first who could really see the dragons, and then learning that estinien can see them too. i liked how that was the segue for his sacrifice. having those "final" moments with a specific scion each time until that climactic moment that pushes the group forward i really liked. i liked that thancred was no longer with them but still with them, a presence over them keeping them safe from harm. i found that very touching. but i was actually really confused while going through ultima thule becuase of how they visually shows what happens, like while the swirling vortex each scion would stand in was cool, and then standing to face off against that dark bird, i think what those things actually represented i just did not really understand what was actually being done or going on. i think that might be because dynamis suffers a bit from being just too nebulous or underdeveloped. i don't mind how abstract of a concept it is, i mean aether is used to do all sorts of never-explained things all the time.. it's more like... if ultima thule is going to be a place ruled by emotions, with laws different from what the scions are used to, it's hard for me to see how they were able to really draw any conclusions about where they were or what to do. it actually kind of reminded me of the logic of jojo's bizarre adventure where an attack only overrules another attack not becuase of some fundamental power scale the reader understands, but bc of what araki feels like contriving to get the story moving the way he wants. and that's fine because it's jojo. but this is ffxiv, so in my mind ultima thule should have either remained abstract and they don't try to explain the rules of the place so much, or they should’ve just made what was going on less abstract if they were going to try to logic the place out

what i mean is: the scene where estinien argues with that dragon so that he can overcome its despair is really cool. i liked that he turned into a cool wind. i liked that your friends sacrificed themselves for the sake of their home, that the power of their hopes for wol to overcome this final challenge was the only way they could move forward in such a stagnant place, as well as the only way they could be protected by meteion's violence. but after estinien does it--and he admits that he doesn't know how, just that it was the right thing to do--it feels like the writing immediately tries to specify what's going on so that there's some easy way forward the scions just have to follow the rulebook for, so that they can get to meteion. when urianger takes wol and g'raha aside i was actually just so lost. i don't know what it was i wasn't getting. i still don't. like to kind of say that there’s always one "individual" in these fake worlds who is despairing more than the others that can be located if they just identify a certain set of behaviours... this kind of just waters down what the scions are doing and the magic of being at the universe's end or w/e to me. we use language because of our inability otherwise to really express the depth of emotions and sensations that exist in this world, not the other way around--trying to box in something so complex through things like processes and so on...so to try and narrow down this part kind of rung a bit hollow to me. it was somehow both overexplained and underexplained at the same time. this might seem kind of nitpicky but i guess it was just hard for me to enjoy ultima thule when i was genuinely confused almost the whole way throughout. and bc the ea and the omicrons were so goddamn annoying. trying to do this slapdash learning about their societies at the very end of the game was just like...? okay? why bother, all they really care about is dying anyways. and then that final dungeon, ew's final attempt at replicating the wins of shadowbringers (the amaurot dungeon) with meteion's voice over. like who cares now meteion, you are somehow still just repeating yourself. endwalker is almost at it's end girl, i get it. everyone wants to die.

where i actually started to get annoyed though was where y'shtola says in no uncertain terms not to use the retcon crystal hydaelyn gave you to call their spirits back. y'shtola, you shouldn't have bothered, because you know wol is going to do absolutely that. why even have her say it? there is no sense of risk whatsoever because that crystal is involved. i still liked the sacrificing, but maybe they should have framed it in a way where it wasn't obvious that the scions were going to be totally fine. ew literally didn't seem ballsy enough to kill all of the scions, and i don't think it should've either. but then it just makes this all very wishy-washy. and even worse was when wol used it to summon HYTHLODAEUS AND EMET-SELCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHY!!!!!!!! WHYYYYYYYYYYYY?????????????? i was so annoyed. i'm still annoyed. back when their memories got wiped hythlodaeus was like oh yeah by the way emet did you know that in the aetherial sea you can get your memories back haha? and i was like okay cool so when they die they can get their memories back, whatever, still don't think me and emet-selch should've been live love laughing on elpis. i didn’t actually think this game would be so juvenile as to let you get to meet them once more with their memories fully intact. i don't know why ew has to dot every i and cross every t and sign off every single bit of intrigue with the biggest fucking full stop The End ever where emet-selch is concerned, holy fuck man. i hated this decision so much. your friends SACRIFICE THEMSELVES so that WOL can face meteion. they believe that at the very end of everything, hydaelyn believes that at the very end of everything, WOL is the one who can defeat meteion. they all put so much faith in you. and the first thing you do is summon emet-selch and hythlodaeus because what? because you just can't fucking help yourself? just shit all over the importance of carrying your friends’ beliefs in you. christ i hated that. i loved seeing the elpis flowers grow all over that fake sun. why couldn't that have been wol who grew them, wol's turn to use dynamis to overcome meteion's despair, flowers that represent the hopes every single person on earth has placed in them to see their star to safety? why? emet-selch there for what? to set in stone his position as the Tsundere once and for all? is that it? to have him renew his vows to wol for the millionth time just in case you forgot that he wants you to take up the mantle of their future? i wish they would go back to never making emet-selch palatable and less hostile to the warrior of light, it feels like such a disservice to the character he was in shadowbringers and to just their characters in general like i do not want to be canon friends with emet-selch! it's not necessary! it's fucking emet-selch! what's even worse is that for some reason while the flowers are growing, emet-selch is just point blank explaining what's going on. he literally says something like, "these flowers are the hopes of everyone meteion you're washed. by the way, if you didn't catch that, wol. you can summon your friends back now." immersion gone. any sense of playing a game that actually gives a fuck gone. so we call our friends back, only to send them away again with the teleporter because meteion is just too strong for us. to be fair i liked that decision, but why fake me out a second time having me think yes, finally wol is going to face meteion ON HER OWN. and then have ZENOS show up? i actually just stopped playing and went to bed. genuinelly just fuck me. who fucking cares anymore.

and then after you finally get meteion to stop being emo and she offers to reconcile with you by sending you safely back to your friends it's like, actually i can't even accept this meteoin. because i have to go fight zenos now. and then it's crazy to me that after you kick zenos' ass for like the millionth time, we're literally on the edge of the world so i'm finally expecting him to say something worth listening to, he opens his mouth and says "you know, wol, this whole time... i've been so bored... and the only thing that gives me joy is fighting you...” like. stuck record. the writers dragged him all the way out here to be a stuck fucking record

i like endwalker btw. kind of. like i know nobody who reads this is going to believe me but i really do. if it had just, well. i don't even know. there's too much wrong with it. it wastes too much time and just doesn't seem to be able to let go. how is it possible that an expansion can make me tired of callbacks to haurchefant being important to wol? i've never felt that before. like how many more flashbacks to his grave does one need to have to know that when wol is fighting for their world they're fighting for their friends too. but this game just cannot let things go. it NEEDS to make that joke about alphinaud gathering firewood four more times. it makes anything i appreciated the second or maybe even the third time just upset me. they can't let anything go, they have to wave it in front of me like it's a dog treat and i'm a dog. a fucking dog with blonde hair and blue eyes

[farfromdaylight]

OH I AM SORRY somehow i completely did not see that you had already answered some of these lmao. anyway have some more: 9, 16, 20, 21

NO NO i got a bunch at the same time and answered them together, you just happened to double up! not ur fault at all. THANK U FOR SENDING MORE, i shall tl;dr below!

9: worst part of canon

god i could answer this for so many series, i am always full of salt about Bad Canon.

can i say "most of zero time dilemma?" i know this isn't final fantasy but oh my god, what the fuck was uchikoshi smoking on this one. i thought it was okay but not great when i played through it the first time. when @shepherdtostars played through the series she streamed VLR and ZTD for me and man, ZTD does not fucking hold up lol. like all three games have their low points (especially in gameplay/mechanics/traversal but i'm solely speaking about story here). ZTD's conclusion to the series is fucking stupid at best.

to be slightly more on topic, i have not thought dirge of cerberus was good since i was a teenager with no taste and no understanding of Decent Storytelling and Characterization. (and even then i could recognize some shit was garbage, lmao.)

16: you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

my gut answer for this is zenos, lmao. i think @anneapocalypse summed up a lot of it in her similar response (i'm on mobile rn or i'd link). i think zenos is fine in stormblood itself and his ultimate ending at the close of 4.0 is fantastically done, ties together the narrative themes, etc.

i don't feel that way about endwalker. i don't think it's earned. i struggle with it to the point that i am going to replay stormblood (i haven't replayed it since 2020) and really dig into how i feel about it for my wol's story, then extrapolate from there for an ending that makes sense for endwalker. like i'm genuinely stuck on my 80% complete endwalker fic due to The Zenos Problem.

here's the thing, i don't hate his character trope? ennui is fine for a villain motivation and it ties into the themes of uncaring imperalism that stormblood puts forward. by contrast, i really disliked how zenos carried forward after that in the story. fandaniel didn't work for me. EW zenos didn't work for me. i have no desire to replay endwalker but i've reread and rewatched the scenes enough that i don't think it'll ever really work for me.

which is fine. i know i'm supposed to be choosing violence in this meme but it's fine that This Specific Storyline didn't click. there's a lot else i like instead.

20: part of canon you found tedious or boring

FF14 is too easy an answer for this. I love the game but it has some dead boring story and gameplay structure for MSQ. i have nothing against the character (i thought she was fine) but "speak with wuk lamat" illustrates the problem perfectly no matter how you feel about her. you need variance in the actual gameplay of telling your story, or it becomes too obvious to the player.

it works fine in visual novels and in many ways FF14 is very similar to that medium, but... it's not. it's a RPG. FF14 can't really do much of interest with this kind of thing due to the nature of its setup. i don't expect the kind of genuine exploration and discovery you get in other RPGs from it because it's linear by design. but please hide the bones of the structure so i can focus on enjoying the game.

21: part of canon you think is overhyped

final fantasy vii rebirth dev. square enix

lmao.

i really wish i'd liked it. in so many ways i should have liked it. it clearly, CLEARLY worked for many people. but it didn't work for me. remake was solidly middle of the road, but rebirth? good god, what is nojima smoking these days. why is aerith singing. why is zack here. what the fuck is that ending.

sigh.

[ishgard]

iris & zinnia for the botanical prompts!

[from @/icehearts, and sorry for the angst lmao]

Oh that's fine I love angst thank you so much >3 Answering for Ahru and I'll put them under a cut because 1. length and 2. spoilers! All the way through EW.

iris :   if your muse could convey one last message to someone they have lost or left behind ,   what would it be ?  

~Snippets from Letters to the Lifestream~

To Venat: I feel like you know everything already, but if I don't say it I think it'll fester in my lungs. I hated you. Resented you, feared you. I didn't understand you at all. Not until it was too late. I'm so sorry. Thank you for never holding it against me. Thank you for loving me and believing in me. I love you too, so, so much.

To Wilred: I don't know if it means much, but I am so, so proud of you. You may not realize it but you gave me hope and inspiration - to be a better person, too. (there are smudges here, and the lines are scribbled in a more shaky hand) I wish you could see Ala Mhigo now, free and thriving. I'm so sorry I couldn't save you.

To Haurchefant: It's been so long, since I would walk into your quarters and unravel my trials and tales to you. My quill faltered over the paper for so long, remembering how easy it used to be. I never had to pretend, never had to be more than exactly who I was. Thank you. For that, and everything else you gave me. A home, a family, a life. You know, it's not an easy thing, to live after someone dies for you. It's actually really, really hard. But you always believed in me, didn't you? Thank you for that, too. Also, just one more thing. I wish I'd said it then, but I was too foolish to figure it out. I love you. I love you. I love you.

To Emet-Selch: I imagine writing you like this is just going to annoy you. But if anyone actually found these letters it'd be you, I'm sure. Are you having a good rest? The birds are singing, children play, and the star continues to thrive. But what I really want to say is that I miss you. In ways my 'feeble mind' can't fathom but my soul feels keenly. I look forward to meeting you again one day, and annoying you in the next life too.

To Zenos: You godsdamned fool. Why couldn't you listen for once? If you come back again I... Well, I won't kill you again, but I'll do you one worse. I'll make you live. Really live. Oh, you're going to hate it. You're going to love it. (at the bottom of the page, written small) You will come back, won't you?

(on the back of the page, scribbled at a slant in a faster, angry scrawl) You saved me. I hate that you did. But it makes sense that you did, in our special way. I know only you would truly understand it. But here's the thing you won't understand: I love you for it.

zinnia :   how has the loss of fallen comrades and/or loved ones affected your muse ?   has it taught them anything or given them any new perspectives ?

Ho boy. I'm gonna break this down per character (a few, not all). Gonna put the rest under a cut!

Haurchefant: Bad. To summarize, her mindset basically became "I have to keep going for him, I have to keep going for everyone who is still alive, I have to be everywhere, always, and not ever, ever let this happen again, I can't let anyone else die for me." This was a mindset already seeded by the attack on the Waking Sands and the Bloody Banquet, but really took vicious root with Haurchefant's death. She ran herself ragged until basically post-Stormblood.

I want to say she did gain good things from it too in the long run but that's more her own healing done over a long period of time. She did also realize after he died that she loved him (big oofies), which would be the seed that gradually opened her heart and steadied her spirit in the long run (though also reliant on A Lot of Other Stuff).

Zenos: As far as growth-through-others goes, I feel like Hau and Zenos are two sides of the same coin for Ahru. The two little consciences on her shoulders. Wounds Haurchefant left in her spirit Zenos carved on her flesh to bleed out. I wrote this thing post-SB that I think gives at least some impression:

A kindred beast wrapped in war and bitter despair. A cutting pain that leaves her gasping, bleeding - alive. Human. She remembers in the struggle what it feels like to drown, to barely stay afloat, and then, against all odds, to survive. It is the bricks and mortar of who she is, reconstructed in a terrible dance for the heavens to gaze upon. As her teeth bite down on supple flesh, and blood spills down her throat, she is once more the victor. Once more, alone. 

So yeah, Zenos was absolutely her mirror, and losing him (both times) hit terribly hard despite all the damage he did. But she also realized exactly what made them different; all of the love and companionship she had in her life, deep roots that made the whole world her beloved home.

She also greatly embraced the idea of 'being a monster', at first in a kind of rabid way, on the heels of that mindset mentioned in the Haurchefant section, though gradually more in the sense of 'being a monster isn't such a bad thing': She's powerful and strong and can protect her friends.

Venat: Ahru had so many suspicions about Hydaelyn for so long, and then to have them sorta-kinda 'confirmed' by Emet-Selch? Well, it was more complicated than just giving her the rights to be like "Aha! I knew it!" Because that truth of course came with a lot more information, that made everything a lot more complicated.

I think a lot about meeting her on the boat, how once upon a time Ahru would have chosen the option about 'no longer being able to trust Hydaelyn' - because she never really did. But instead, by this point, she felt so much more compelled and asked 'why show yourself now?' Ahru has always been deeply curious (almost not even a strong enough word) about the Ascians and what drives them, about Zodiark and Hydaelyn.

So then to meet her, to share her stories, to learn the truth behind her blessings, changed everything for her. To learn how similar they were, how deep their connections ran. To learn that this Goddess has been standing firm, waiting for her, just. How soul-shaking it was. She had such little faith in Hydaelyn, and Hydaelyn had so much in her.

There's a lot of other complicated feelings between Ahru and her mother, Ahnia, when compared to the sort of warmth and acceptance she realized Venat gave her. Basically, in the course of Endwalker, she gained a sort-of-mother figure who was then taken away from her and it's a really complicated sort of grief she's dealing with there. It isn't, however as debilitating or damaging a grief as some others, for the most part. Rather, she feels more strong and resolute, renewed of purpose.

There's a common theme in a lot of Ahru's loss, of realizing too late what should have been cherished. And that isn't always her fault, either! she's had to realize. But if there's one thing it's all taught her it's to really hold those she loves close, to keep an open heart, and cherish every encounter.

[myrfing]

6.4 msq spoiler thread

YES! YES....ZERO GOURD FEAST BEASTS

i need this buff PERMANENTLY

EW

ESTINIEN

MAN WHAT

HURLING

DIDNT NEED TO SEE THAT

ZERO LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

yshtola is so good at indirectly cheering people up in that shrewd old lady way. not that she's old just well matoya

I like how they put pen and paper in estinien's room like he's literate

dragons are always wanting to pop out their eyeballs

erenville are you...? the golled more...? can i go with you..

can we kiss

god he appeared on screen and SORRY vrtra but i need him to continue and tell me about his life and I need to go with him

now they're blueballing us about a mysterious letter

i like how zero's just been there like well I guess you know everybody on earth then

margrat. i need more of her bizarre behaviors

i forgort

thancred calling it "social struggles" YOU GUYS ARE MAKING THIS AWKWARD FOR ZEROOOO

these drake ass polar bears

the aetherfont is sooo gorgeous also I forgot my codex broke and nearly let thancred die. long time since ive healed a trust party as well but we go slow smell the ice bears

oh my god :U

thancred: just stick stay close to this one

gourd: slowly turning head with his o_o frontal bird face

they just let thancred tag along just beacause. not to be mean but we could also just meet new people

U Guys Are Leaving Gourd OUt of the Conversation Hinting At Something Happening To Come What The Hell So He Doesn't Get Alone Time And You Guys Are Getting Jobs Without Him Anyway

zero voice Idgaf about that

can the garleans get over their magic fear already you live in a world where there are glowing horses

damn that's crazy

msq is always very strangely gentle and thorough relative to others when it comes to dealing with garlean trauma or maybe thats just my hater lens. anyway the whole they are bigoted and small minded because they'd been hurt stuff is getting old and it's kind of crazy how this hurt people hurt people stuff is the limit here

trust me i dont really want 2

a weird bit about the whole garlemald thing is the bizarre angelic benevolence of the ilsabard contingent. not ONE person has been like you know you guys spent the past half century fucking up the entire world and you still demand respect for your gay ass tower because the imperial family sat their asses in it. anyway i have problems with the whole we're actually a totally 100% saintlike patience goodhearted pure intentioned foreign aid group thing We Have To Save The People Of Garlemald on the side of the alliance since the start but whatever

warmachina.

i dont want the thank you from this man LMFAO

zerooo 8[ also so much of what zero recounts explains. Cylva.

aw that's true jullus

LMFAOOOOO THEYRE MAKING THE WOL THINK OF ZENOS BECAUSE OF THIS CONVO? gourd did NOT trust that man unless you mean trust him to be awful. and what did zenos trust in the wol that he'd fight him eventually? I GUESS? MAYBE THEY MEANT HE WANTED TO TRUST US BUT I ALSO DO NOT CARE?

we're not friends just because someone calls you their friend 29083902 times 💀 i think that dude barely had a concept of gourd as a human being with his own life

an act of trade also can be an act of charity. THIS IS WHAT I MEAN THEIR POLITICAL WRITING IS SOMETIMES SO.....garlemald is still absolutely at the alliance's mercy + they still obviously believe in right by might re: that one line from the old dudes so there's no reason for them to not be cognizant of the fact we can just take by force and doesn't handle the hanging But Why Aren't They? question at all. this was a pity deal and everyone's like friendship and hope <3. im not saying goodwill and sincerity cannot exist between groups but this requires a sense of solidarity that we do NOT have with garlemald considering we still have to step entirely around the subject of their imperial affairs

you see as a nation they're not equals. they're the languishing half dead scattering remnant of an empire that built its wealth and prosperity for a time on war, theft, and enslavement of the rest of the world and radz and the alliance absolutely could just turn the tables and invade and probably just wipe out everyone here without breaking a sweat. of course that's abhorrent but it's crazy that THIS particular pain even the mere thought of it is made to not exist while the garleans get to be complicated about it. they want to keep their national name and pride with none of the consequences and we don't even demand that as if a nation is sacred and untouchable even after everything. I don't get it bro

i like the way varshahn says wyrm

THE LITTLE SQUICH SOUND WHEN I TAKE HER EYE?

glitter guy....

[semi-imaginary-place]

more job quests

paladin: mylia got friendzoned and solkwyvewrbjn didn't shwo hsi face. a good day. wow they totally pretended the paladin quests just didn't exist (tbf they were bad)

warrior: did we ditch curious gorge who going to be stuck on a ship to the far east for who knows how long. is it me or have the warrior quests gotten progressively more goofy like the maurader ones were pretty serious.

dark knight: esteem totally wrote that letter. are we going to end up in whitebrim? was gundobald one of the one's to witness one of the pc's very public mental breakdowns? *slaps roof of wol* this bad boy can hold so many personalities. fray/esteem, myste, ardbert, the reaper demon, im forgetting someone

monk: oh yeah wasn't widergelt revealed to be a secret prince or something. "please wait for me half way on the other side of the continent" huh weren't they going back to ala ganna anyways. hi lyse. i thought we were setting up a provisional government. how's that going. YES YES YES I am so happy about this, was a little disappointed this didn't happen in sb but i guess it's the structure of the quest system. these are made to be done after 5.0 those were meant to be flexible enough to be done during 4.0. rhalgr's reach is THE temple of the fist of rhalgr and the Resistance is there and I wanted widergelt to go there so badly.

dragoon: baby orn kai

ninja: there's no way this works. karasu better not fake his death a 3rd time. or well tht could be pretty funny actually. spiderman meme. uhh i choose underpants boy. eyyy got that one right i wasn't sure. and the adventures continue. nin is different in that way in the others so way have been about wrapping up loose ends or more like an encore.

samurai: i forgot this storyline.

white mage: a alaqua the worst job questline in the game. what do you mean she wasn't able to take down a treant wasn't the whole thing about how powerful a mage she was. also e sumi still sus af for letting sylphie roam around and take charge of the gatty situation. sooo we're not gonna talk about her dead family at all?

scholar of all jobs is the only one to have combat. i forgot about setoto and h=may have gotten her confused with surito carito

astrologian: so between 3.x and 5.x is less than a year. i'd say this is a deviation from all the politics of 30-50-60 but this did all start with janne's crush on her dad. my aro queen. wish this had more to do with sharlayan as that shows up in 6.0 but well she did fake her death. hope grandpa is ok.

machinist: hilda! I wanted to her to show up in a mch quest. oh hey i have to kill something again remember the bad ol' days where ever job quest was to go kill something

black mage: i feel like the game usually forgets dewlala exists

did the writers forget that cocobuki is like half yayake's age. i don't exactly remember but buki's like 27 and yayake's in her 40s. because buki was never this rude.

summoner once again continues to be the most msq relavent job despite never being featured in the trailers. smh and with the ascian saga ended with ew the devs lost their chance for a summoner meteor. that is the question someone is born (or made in foldora's case also offies zenos also has that implanted echo) to do something well, should they do what they're good at or not?

red mage: still think arya should have minmaxed into thaumaturge/black mage. wow how come its all the magic jobs that get combat. what's to stop other tomb robbers?

wow we really did tell the whole realm that there's multiple worlds and we went to one.

did you know that if you rotate your character near a wall at just the right angle you can see that they are empty inside except for the floating insides of their mouth?

role quest capstone

doing the job capstone. see this is a weird take because up until this point we are led to believe that it was the decimation of the First's native dark aether that unbalanced the shard to light. but here the shadowkeeper is revealed to be from another world (the 13th?). yeh 13th, wasn't that like thousands of years ago tho, well source time who knows about 13th time but that doesn't explain how she's still alive. ah she's echo'd too and friends with unukalhai wonder how he's doing..

these 2 statements seem to contradict each other. is Cyella talking about a symbolic radiance because she was trying to lose. instead of Cylva's death the Flood was triggered by by ardbert killling mitron and longhrif. im assuming cylva was the bait so that the ascians could better control the flood and bring the shard "to the brink" instead of over it as she puts it. ardbert and co then killed themselves and jumped shards. ascians got vauthy to transform the party's corpses into cardinal virtues. time continues to be a mystery. why is she alive. huh her goal was to kill them... uggg i nned to think this over

hmm but the lightwardens didn't have that thrall effect. but then again everyone who came close died. cant tell if sin eater conversion is related or not. oh his dialogue predicts going to the first. should have talked to him earlier woops

[elizabethrobertajones]

1+2

I got asked 1 by someone else so 2! Top jobs :3

Honestly, Sage and Reaper are SO good I have probably used them most since I got them. Joint 1 & 2. I also default to Dancer when I need to do stuff brain-off, OR island sanctuary where the en avants are most convenient so it's become my downtime job. WHM is my default healer when doing stuff with my SCH main brother, and PLD has been my tank of choice for EW. Easy top 5 for Lizzy.

Sage in character feels more abstracted in the sense that Frog would absolutely have picked it up in her eternal learning quest and it would feel pertinent in the same way especially Ast. did for understanding her Sharalayan friends. I like to imagine the job quest pick ups happened like. A week or two before setting off to EW so she knew where they were going and had the vested interest in learning more, but had some time to get into it, even if I really did just pick it up and not start learning it until after I finished EW as AST was 80 already to have a Sharlayan job to use in Sharlayan, and I just wanted to go go go... As a result she was constantly looking over her shoulder for assassins while there, and, honestly, after doing Sage I don't think that would have actually improved her impression of Sharlayan at all if she had this little adventure in her head as well while going through all that.

If you just do the MSQ and no side content you might even think Sharlayan really is a little perfect utopia of learning.

I think for Frog it would be Reaper, Paladin, Gunbreaker, Dragoon, and Arcanist jobs as a shared braincell.

(She'd include Warrior as well but ooops all tanks and also Curious Gorge blatantly is a weird cousin from 1 town over and meeting them out in Eorzea was sooooo cringe for her so even if the job plays well she can't give them that credit :P DRK feels like it should go without saying but also it feels more like something for special occasions for Frog given the emotional burden that comes with it. I think she only cracks it out in the story when it's necessary.)

Reaper really re-wired her brain and she befriended Fransi and was just so disappointed with Zenos when she learned about Zero and how it wasn't even consensual, and then she fell in love with Zero, so like. She's wholly reaperpilled by post-EW.

(Honestly if Zero and Zenos has made an honest pact she probably would have flipped her opinion of him overnight and been very open to character reinterpretations)

Dragoon basically was what Reaper is to her now from the moment she picked it up in the sense that it sort of glued the story together and offered the POV for everything that happened because the dragoon perspective on the story through HW and the way things happen in SB is so different.

I do think also paladin and samurai are sort of equal in Frog's head and she only sees them as two overlapping disciplines but with different origins and weapons, and since both stories have their own silliness we try and ignore the bad and think of it more that the idea of being a wandering knight who helps people is Frogcore to her deepest bones and both of those jobs represent that best to her. But I played through EW to the end as PLD once I ran out of XP to keep up any other jobs I'd been levelling along with it, and did the End Walk as a paladin per the box art, so it's currently nestled deeper emotionally for Frog :D

[carcharsaur]

32 is mad fucking funny, and also 22 and 9

32. Did they trust Asahi right away? Why or why not? 

ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT LMFAOOOO like. aside from him being the shadiest mfer to exist caranar and kozu both fucking hate garlemald extremely and passionately, so even someone approaching under a guise of peace and respect would be given extreme skepticism and suspicion. the only difference is kozu would attempt to have a diplomatic guise about it but even he would be hard pressed. caranar would just be openly critical of him at all times

more under cut once again

22. Do you  have a unique tale for their job class or is it pretty much like what it is in the game?

for caranar the biggest change is the drk quests start before he gets into ishgard proper, so they dump frey outside the gates of judgement and it starts from there. and that caranar has a history (if one-sided. long story) with estinien before doing the drg quests. basically everything else that's a canon class for him though (... just reaper) happens mostly as-is. except warrior I think he just uses an axe I'm not decided on how the class quests pan out for him rn. also he just has a general master-of-arms vibes so he can pick up anything and use it decently effectively, he just specializes in 2-hander weps. and he can't cast spells for shit. for kozu, I think stuff like cnj/whm/mch/sge are all canon questlines for him mostly unchanged as well. big thing with cnj/whm is that he's considered a hearer in gridania so that changes/expedites things a bit. astrology he learned from urianger though, he's an archer more than a bard due to his warder life but doesn't use it as a class anymore really (bad memories), and I think the red mage questline for him was a bit different and less dramatic (or perhaps he was just 2nd fiddle to eryna on her caster main wol journey). I leveled every class on kozu but a lot are non-canon LOL

9. How do they feel about Zenos?

HOO BOY. okay. caranar wanted to rip his throat out with his teeth until zenos was into it. caranar fucking hates him and by sheer fucking coincidence the way zenos acts is like perfectly constructed to push on all of caranar's weak points and self-doubts and it really wheels him into a frothing frenzy. which caranar also hates happening because it feels like he's proving zenos right. but his friends and allies help him reign himself in and be better than that. by endwalker he is sick and tired of him and wants him to just be put down. I think the game as-is is written PERFECTLY for caranar and zenos dynamic I love it.

kozu is just like... mods, crush his skull thank you. he is not playing his games- he wants to give him the quickest quietest death possible to spite his sick hunger. in EW I imagine he'd act/say things similar to alisaie for example. being like you are a SAD PATHETIC man. EAT SHIT. but worded more fancily because kozu is more eloquent than I (the zenos fan)

[darkandlightdance]

Okay, at the end of the 5.2 MSQ. Zenos is not currently physically on the First but he's been dreaming the Final Days, it is literally the Amurot dungeon. Which creepy short guy says is weird.

Creepy short guy is weird. Though probably not an Ascian if he's telling the truth that he's getting his history secondhand. But maybe not the Ascians had sundered in their ranks so, hmm I just don't know. Also I know that robe from somewhere. Did they dye one of the Alliance Raid gear?

Zenos however has shed the armor for a fancy looking coat he's wearing without actually putting it on. The coat-cloak look.

Also why is Y'shtola the one trying to re-power the thing when WoL has more Aether than anyone they've ever heard of? Or am I misunderstanding something. Also WoL has had I think it's half of their soul un-sundered and as such is likely to be able to activate the devices much easier.

As an aside, I realize that EW is going to involve the moon but Square was really laying the foundations for whatever bullshit happens very early if we're already looking at the moon in contemplation.

edit: G'raha's arm is crystalizing more (you can hear it in the cutscene). Now what I want to know is if is grows more the more power he uses? Is is pure aetherical power or whatever Allagan bullshit he's using to try and help us now? Because if it is power and trying to help us is hurting him my WoL is going to clobber him once we're all safe...safe-ish...safer.

[tekutiger]

I'm back to leveling another class to 90, and this time it's Reaper ❤️‍🔥. I'm sitting at level 80 right now.

The last time I did the class quests for this storyline was right after Endwalker launch, on Tobi. I honestly couldn't remember much of it, if anything! I just kept thinking... "I don't remember this...." "Is this really what happened?" "Was it really this traumatic the first time around?". Like, how could I forget all of that? I guess it was around a year and a half ago, but good gods. Mostly what I remember is the Arena area (in the screenie above).

Class Quest at Level 75 has something of a jump scare, imo, and I just... really wish that I did NOT forget about that. I was taken aback trying to cover my monitor screen going "Ew! Ew!". Thanks SE for that one 🫣🫠

I know when I first played through it, Reaper and Sage had a LOT of popularity due to being the new classes with the new expansion. It's possible I semi-rushed through the questline and didn't give it the attention it deserved.

BUT what I guess I'm actually trying to say in a very long ramble-y process; the story for the reaper class quests is really good. I feel like it's something that resonates with me, much in the way that the DRK story quest line does.

There are a lot of classes I feel like I mesh well with, and some I 'click best' with too (which is saying something for an alt-o-holic), but we're talking class quests here, not the classes themselves. Even for my main class, I don't feel like they did the class quests proper justice. Like... Red Mage and Vampires? (They're not actual vampires to any non-FFXIV players reading this, but pretty darn close, lol)

And no offense to my fellow RDM mains who actually like that story line, but, it's sinking near the bottom for me in terms of 'connecting with me' 🤷🏻‍♀️ (this has turned rantyyyy oops lol 🙃). I think some other's feel that way about their fave classes though. Like, I've heard split reviews with PLD and WAR... I personally love SCH's storyline, but I've heard people say they dislike it. So on and so forth... 🤷🏻‍♀️. To each their own, at the end of the day.

I'm gonna put spoiler-y things under the cut now 😊

If you've even reached Stormblood, you might notice something about this guy here ☝🏻. Even more so if you've progressed through Shadowbringers, and MORE so through Endwalker. Most definitely through Endwalker. 100% sure I didn't notice it my first playthrough cause I hadn't finished Endwalker yet...

In so many ways he reminds me of Zenos, and yet he also doesn't. There's even a small portion of this 70-80 questline that dips into Solus zos Galvus. It shares some backstory that includes him but the information is significant to Drusilla's story only, and for the sake of moving the Reaper class questline forward. If you're seeking knowledge about Emet, for the sake of learning more about Emet, it's not going to be much.

Speaking of Emet, I've also been eyeing those skills 'Shadow of Death', 'Whorl of Death' and 'Arcane Crest', they look awfully familiar 🤔. Kind of look like some of his Hades abilities, and his glamour weapons, no?

I could ramble on more about that but I'm sure that's been toppled, explained, confirmed, and I've missed it. Or there's better theories and HCs than what's brainrotting in my head 🫠

I know the first time I played through this class, I told myself NOT to like it, because of how popular it was. The same thing with SGE. I felt getting the opportunity to ever play it was either A) never going to happen, or B) going to take a very very long time to happen- as in, an entirely new expansion would have to drop with new classes.

It's over a year & a half later and I think things have finally simmered down with those two classes. Maybe. I can finally say "Yes! I like this class! \o/". I know that's silly, but so is loading into an alliance raid with like, ALL Reapers and ALL Sages. Does anyone else remember that?!

Okay, I guess it wasn't that bad. I'll be honest, I was the first to laugh very loud whenever I got those groups. Mainly cause I'd be the sole RDM and legit felt like a black sheep 😅

Now I get to level 80-90, and go bug Emet again in Ktisis Hyperboreia when I reach level 87, haha 😄. This poor man can't get rid of me 🥰

[queenofnohr]

Im not gonna be able to sleep until I post up what I’ve been cooking

Anyway she still doesn’t have a name but she is a character to play with ishgardian lore more

Her basic premise is that she’s 27 layers of repressed and is a perfect, good Sister of the church, but in reality her kindliness is because she views other people as animals that need to be shepherded. Also when she doesn’t get her way, Violence Is The Answer.

She’s a special case though because I think Stormblood comes before HW for her………. Like. The timeline is she leaves Ishgard -> ARR happens and she learns from Gaius that might makes right. Then she goes to StB and tbh vibes with Yotsuyu (since she too was horribly abused in Ishgard as an Au Ra until she literally hid her identity a la Yugiri in ARR) a little. Zenos takes one of her eyes because if there’s anything I respect about him it’s the fact he collects unhinged women and makes them worse so he sees the repressed hatred and fury in this min height Au Ra woman in the role of an all loving Sister and says “no, no, that simply won’t do.” So he takes one of her eyes to see her actually get *furious*. The Yotsuyu stuff post StB disgusts her because tsuyu very much is not Yotsuyu and seeing Yotsuyu fulfill her vengeance by killing Asahi makes her go “Maybe Every Emotion I Am Now Feeling Can Be Quelled By Murdering The Pope, Who Is Surely The Origin Of All The Suffering I’ve Experienced Till Now :)”

So she goes to Ishgard on the war path and is Actually Kind Of Cool with Nidhogg murdering everyone until she realizes that she would’ve suffered at his behest as well for being an ishgardian.

The thing issssssss. About the pope killing……… I think she’s probably an Astrologian and I think she was maybe prodigious at reading the dragon star and so I think, once she hid her identity, she was kept protected - which is also what allowed her to pose as a perfect good Sister of the church - *by* the pope and probably the Heaven’s Ward. This, of course, means the people closest to her that actually got to see her face and stuff whom she got to interact freely with is also the people she is later on the earth path towards. Anyway at the end of HW it’s her going *shion sonozaki voice* I did it! I killed everyone I wanted to kill!!!!

ShB I can’t say anything much rn other than her vs Emet-Selch is literally a showdown of egos in whose “right” it is to guide the star

EW same idk although this woman does not have a shred of hope in her body.

All I can say is that when Pandae rolls around, she looks Athena right in her white woman gaze like You Wish You Were Me

At some point she probably goes DRK but instead of like grief and the burdens of being a hero etc her storyline is all about confronting her fray who is……….. yes it’s her “evil” side but more than that it’s her killing the little girl who was scared and alone (and who eventually lashed out at everything, including the people she loved)

Myths of the Realm is also a doozy for her because she hunts Halone for sport, killing her with her own two hands while Halone apologizes, telling her she really is one of her children (i.e. of the Fury)………. And with truly nothing else left to kill, no one left to blame anything on, she’s forced to accept that her abuse was like, actually a societal problem.

Anyway she probably owns horribly oversized shirts that read shit like “Halone wishes she were me” “Tyrants love me, gods fear me” “Hydaelyn’s favorite child”

what kind of vibes are y’all sniffing from this woman

[gobbie-boom]

ive wanted to make a coherent post about my ew feelings but that coherency is not gonna happen, SO:

1. endwalker utilizes my FAVORITE plot: an immortal/nonhuman entity decides that killing humans/mortals would be the merciful thing to do because of all the hate and sadness, and humanity is like "yeah it sucks sometimes, but other times it doesnt, and the good times are worth fighting for!"

2. i didnt really cry cry until moenbryda's parents showed up. i was SO worried her mom was mad at urianger for not protecting moen, but when she hugged him and talked about how she wished they could have all mourned together, and he hugged her back... god!! the waterworks!! shb and ew have been SO good to urianger and he's DESERVED it!!

3. my favorite lines in the game are "for those we have lost; for those we can yet save" and "have faith, and all will be well" and all the variations, but "Henceforth, [man] shall WALK." is SO raw 😳😳😳

4. HYTHLO AND EMET SYNCH THEIR LBs IF THEYRE BOTH DPS 🤧 MARRIED! HUSBANDS! VENAT AND WOL ARE THIRD WHEELING!

4. zenos was the LAST person i expected to show up in sharlayan, like i wouldve thought it was somehow ilberd or someone from the 1st before zenos lmao, but that + his genuine confusion about why endsinger wasnt dead yet was SO good. ew really made me like him a LOT more than i did (which is like, going from least favorite character to hes ok i guess, id run a trust with him)

5. alisaie!!! my darling baby girl!!! she's so brave and so strong and she just wants wol to not have to save the world every week! she and fray would really get along, i think :)

uuuh ok thats all. maybe i'll think of some more later

[captainqster]

All right, some actual thoughts on Endwalker below. Spoilers galore so beware. 

I did love it. Someone asked me if I loved it more than SHB or if SHB were better, and I couldn’t really answer. I’d say EW is a solid continuation that respects SHB’s success and pushes a little more at what made it so memorable, but the vibe was different for me. SHB has an atmosphere of hope enduring, while EW (in part thanks to its music) really impressed on me the weight of despair.

Starting with Garlemald. NGL, I spent a good amount of time thinking “where is Zenos, does he not sense us here, come oooon!” and then my wish was granted beyond my wildest imaginings. In From the Cold blew me away. I laughed SO HARD at first, at the romantic dinner with the candles, at Fandaniel’s butler outfit, it was just so anime that I could barely breathe and THEN the body swap. Holy shit SE, thank you. This is exactly the kind of fucked up thing I wanted to see. I am a big fan of Hot Evil Villain Does Morally Reprehensible Thing for Hero’s Attention and this was exactly that, followed up by a solo duty that quickly had me panicking. I’ve seen people complain about the zone being hard to navigate but that was the point, that was the story they were telling: WoL’s desperation to get back to their friends before it was too late, and at the end when you’re crawling, oh man, that got me. And of course Alisaie and G’Raha are the ones to run to Zenos-WoL, delighted that their friend is back, and of course they immediately recognize that something’s amiss because they are your biggest, most adoring fans and you are their most elevated role model. I could go on about this quest forever.

Then the moon and Zodiark. It was at this point that I started thinking “okay, where in the hell is this going” because it happened so early. And it was a bit of a whiplash going from the gloomy severity of Garlemald to the moon bunnies, but then we get ANOTHER whiplash with the Final Days starting in Thavnair. I saw a post saying “can’t have shit in Thavnair” and that really summed it up. Everywhere you turn you’re losing: you weren’t fast enough to save this person, couldn’t be there to save that person, just on and on, and I really enjoyed it (in a horrified, depressing way). You can’t experience an appropriate sense of despair without failure and loss, and you can’t keep that spark of hope lit in the back of your mind without a small win, namely the baby and Matsya.

Now, I won’t talk too much on how I felt about getting to spend time with Emet-Selch, Hythlodaeus and them, because it dragged on a little too much for me and I just wanted to get back to the Scions, but I did love doing the dungeon with them. And I love that Hydaelyn is not the villain everyone expected her to turn out to be. Her cutscene was a big “wow”, and the way she invited suffering upon mankind so that he could strive for and deserve a brighter future rather than having it handed to him left me feeling a certain way. I’m not sure what that way is but I dig it.

As for the end zone, I’ll liken it to something else before breaking down my Top Moments and Things I wanted to See. As soon as we lost Thancred I was filled with nostalgia for Sailor Moon. The sixth zone was so like Sailor Moon’s season 1 finale: the hero’s friends sacrificing themselves one by one to open the way forward, to get the hero where they need to go, and the hero having to shoulder this great loss while marching towards the fight of their life for the good of mankind. Maybe that nostalgia is why I don’t mind that none of the Scions actually died permanently. It’s generally important to me that writers allow consequences to happen in their stories, to trade a win for a loss, but I’m happy with how things ended. Ultimately I walked away satisfied. NOW FOR LISTS...

My Top Moments:

Sicard and Emmanellain. The “take that back!” “make me” banter. Sicard stole my heart, and so did Sadu, who I liked before but sincerely love now. “Out of my way, you preening fool!” had me dying and I have joined the Sadu/Cirina camp.

Estinien showing up to your room at night in LEATHER PANTS AND A V-NECK. After his obstinacy with wearing his armor regardless of the climate he’s in, this had me wheezing. The little smile as he waits for you to open the door. The flirty head toss as he says “it can all be a bit much, can’t it?”, the close-up as he puts his boot up on the grate outside your window followed by the over-the-shoulder “til the morrow”. This was like Urianger’s “what dost thou thinketh of mine appearance” but about 125% hornier. He really saw the other NPC’s thirsting after WoL and decided to obliterate them all.

In the same quest, G’Raha FINALLY showing some affection and concern towards the WoL. He was such a delightful, besotted little simp in SHB and I love him for that, so it was nice to see him doing his nervous shuffle outside your room again. And Alisaie saying her peace before promptly running away because she’s embarrassed. Adorable.

Urianger’s moment with Moenbryda’s parents. I love seeing characters hug and physically interact with each other, and Urianger’s growth being talked about openly was such a beautiful moment.

Hydaelyn calling Estinien out for being full of love and, upon being talked to by WoL, Estinien saying “yeah I love, so what? You’re shocked?” and specifically referring to not knowing peace since meeting you and Alphinaud. None of the other Scions, just you two. Oof.

G’Raha’s talk with the WoL immediately before sacrificing himself. I chose the “I can’t. Not again” dialog because I live for drama and pain.

The final fight with Zenos. How it went from a DBZ-style battle to a fistfight, which for two super-powered beasts was like the equivalent of a fistfight devolving to hair pulling, Absolutely magnificent.

Waking up on the ship with the Scions crying over you. Y’Shtola and Thancred lecturing you, the way Estinien pauses and smiles when he says “my friend”, just the raw emotion overall. God damn.

Things I Wanted to See:

More of a reaction when the Elpis flower crumbled. It was this big plot point, and when it falls apart in WoL’s hands no one really..says anything? This could have been a great chance to address the growing weight of responsibility and grief that the WoL is dealing with.

Tied to that, WoL killing Zodiark undoes the laws of nature and results in the Final Days. I would have loved some time to address the guilt this would cause, even to have an NPC or two blame WoL for everything and see WoL struggle with knowing he was baited into it by Fandaniel while having to witness the suffering his actions inadvertently caused.

More concern from the Scions after WoL was body-snatched. After you get your body back I felt the response was very “that was weird, okay let’s get back to business”. A little more horror and fear that this could happen at all would have felt appropriate. The Scions never really talk either on Zenos’ obsession with WoL. I would have liked it to be addressed more.

More moments of barely-contained grief as the Scions sacrifice themselves. More anger, more frustration, as the dwindling group has to cope with losing their friends. I would have liked a moment for WoL to drop and show some anguish, and I know SE is hesitant to allow much emotion for fear of stepping on people’s headcanons, but I would have liked it. A tear, punch the ground, something.

Unless I somehow missed it, we still were not told what Zenos’ deal was. In prior expansions it’s vaguely mentioned that he may be some sort of experiment, that he’s dreamt of the Final Days all his life, and we still don’t know why. Part of me suspects he’s not dead. He didn’t dissipate into aether or anything and, after the SB experiments, he has some Ascian powers. I guess we’ll see.

There’s so much more I could say on a million subjects but this is long already. I’ll leave it at that and would be glad to engage in any discussion.

[demi-chimera]

OK, take two.

It’s been just over a week since I finished Endwalker’s MSQ, so my initial hype has calmed, and I’ve mulled over the experience a bit. Unfortunately, I don’t have anyone I can talk to about it yet as I’m the only one in my very small group of friends who has finished. So my opinions might not be as well-formed as normal. That said, I wanted to make type up my general view on the story. I’ll try to avoid specific spoilers, but I will be giving some overview, so skip this if you want to play it yourself first.

Unfortunately, I think there are a few weaknesses, which I’ll be going over first. The main one is pacing, some sections of the story didn’t delve in deep enough and felt rather rushed as a result. While others felt like they were dragging on, adding little despite the length. Garlemald for example feels a little anticlimactic, the empire has been the big bad of the setting since ARR and when you finally get to the capital the story spends all its time hanging around the outskirts of the city and practically no time in it. There is only really one or two cutscenes that establish any sense of the ruins being anything more than just there. Could have used more time in the middle of the zone exploring the city proper. What was there was decent enough at least, just very lopsided making the area not feel fleshed out enough.

On the flip side, the moon just drags on for far too long. Specifically the part after the Loporrits are introduced, up until then is fine. They are pretty one note and you get the gist of what that note is after only the first few cutscenes, however the story drags this part out for a what feels like hours. Cutscene after cutscene of the same thing happening basically. I think this was mainly due to them trying to make each zone last for roughly the same amount of time and the moon only having the first trial and the loporrits really go over didn’t have enough to fill the time, resulting in it being very stretched. Outside of this one section though not much time is wasted. These is too much going on for that.

Zenos suffers from this as he winds up not really doing much of anything for most of the run time despite being hyped up as a major player through the tail end of the Shadowbringers patches/ Endwalker promos. When he does actually get some time it’s basically over. The slight hint of some development for him is just passed over as there isn’t really any time left for it. I hope/ suspect he will return in the patches and what was started will continue, but as it stands he was underused.

Finally, the amount of time spent reading textboxes vs the amount of time spent actually doing anything active is very high, I think even higher than the rest of the game. If you’ve played through ARR to ShB you’re pretty much used to a lot of text, so it’s not that big a deal? Shouldn’t put you off playing at least.

Pretty much everything else was great. The zones themselves were all fantastic this time around, in fact there were two times during the story where I didn’t realize I was in a new zone until the narration begun, which is an achievement. All of them had something new to see and were generally enough to keep you wanting to continue.

Going in I wanted to see characters like Kryle who had been largely left out up until now get more screentime, and I was not disappointed. Pretty much every scion gets a good amount of time and role to play. In fact, pretty much every character in the game period did. They did an excellent job bringing characters from every location into the story and tying everything from the ARR to present together. The sense of everyone coming together throughout the EW story was really well done. It really feels like the whole of FFXIV is being built on and utilized incredibly well. What you get off the back of it is a very stratifying conclusion to the FFXIV story/ setting so far.

I expected Fandaniel to be very annoying, but they actually did a decent job giving him so development and he winds up not sticking around any longer than he needed to. Not the best villain in the game by any means, but he was fine in his role.

The music ranged from around what you’ve come to expect from the game to some really outstanding, emotional music, the latter showing up very appropriately towards the end of the expansion. The last zone’s music in particular is one of the best in the game.

So all in all a very, very well done expansion all round, despite some wobbly pacing in the middle. It manages to capture both the breadth and depth of FFXIV which after a decade of build up. Combined with some of the best sound and visuals we’ve seen so far, and you’ve got a more than worthy conclusion to the story that leaves you highly satisfied.  In the end I’m very thankful I decided to try FFXIV out, it’s been a beautiful ride and I can’t wait to see what comes next.

[itsblorbotime]

THEY EAT PEOPLE?????????????? like okay did we ever. get confirmation of this from previous expacs that "beastmen" EAT PEOPLE?? bc uhhhh THAT SLIGHTLY AFFECTS THE POLITICAL SITUATION THERE DOESN'T IT??? like if the sahagin are fucking chowing down on PEOPLE and not just defending their territory from invaders?? this has gotta be retconned right????

anyway,

christ if this were endwalker this would have been one of those god-awful "follow the npc and don't be seen, teehee!" quests that they're clearly so proud to have coded but that absolutely fucking suck. fuck all iterations of escort quest from ew

oh here's our first glimpse of fordola's fuckin sourpuss

meffird is really pretty lol idk if this is just some Crime i have installed, possibly the eyebrows? highlanders don't usually have them right?

theeeeeeere she goes. you know, i'm starting to suspect people judge lyse based on where she /begins/ her character development and not where she ends.

It's Heem :) let's Hear It For The Boy :)

see i missed this detail the first time i played -- that this is the /ala mhigan/ national anthem that garlemald has taken and changed the lyrics to be about themselves. fuckt up!!!

also p sure this is our first actual look at zenos?

... welp

why is fordola the only one who doesn't wear pants LMAO

oops, sidequest time! one /super annoying thing/ about ng+ is that you can't have more than one active quest at a time, so when the game requires you to do a bunch of simultaneous quests to advance the msq, you have to do them one by one.

anyway, thinking about how zenos is out there being an absolute freak while valentine, his greatest rival, is out here in ala mhigo as a healer, being very gentle and beloved... zenos has nooooo idea he's about to meet someone who is going to rewire his entire fucking brain to the point of singular obsession... just running around a resistance camp, doing errands, fetching things...

idk i like the imagery of the other scions doing whatever and out of the corner of their eye there's the wol, trotting about the camp, gathering herbs, writing things down in a notebook, talking to recruits...

nooooooooooo :( pretty boy :(

zenos' golf bag full of katanas has always been funny

lol it was almost lyse. lol. lol

IMAGINE IF THEY HAD KILLED Y'SHTOLA HERE. LIKE. THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD. they keep fake killing her and it's annoying but also like, if they had just let ANY major character die IMMEDIATELY to zenos, god... instead it was all minor npcs we had like, /just met/ lol

amiajoketoyou.png

the attack on rhalgr's reach happening so quickly into the expac (we haven't even seen the first dungeon yet...!) is imo a good story beat in terms of quickly establishing stakes. also i do like the solo duty here, especially on ng+ very easy where valentine arrives at the camp and just IMMEDIATELY lays waste to scores of imperial soldiers. i think this is the first time a lot of these resistance members have seen the wol fight and imagine you just see them run into camp and cut down entire units of imperial soldiers, turning the tide (seemingly) of the battle...

... until zenos turns up.

i do like this solo duty. i remember doing it for the first time when it was current-ish, and it was really funny because it lasted A LONG FUCKING TIME. i don't think i realised it wasn't a winnable fight, or i realised it was but wanted to see how long i could keep going. anyway, he kept fighting me but he couldn't kill me because i'd just keep healing myself. i got his hp fairly low when the fight ended. that's canon, for me -- zenos wipes the floor with the resistance, then he encounters /you/, the wol, the only person who actually stood up to him for more than .2 seconds. he has to unleash his full power to finally put you down, the rest of that fight was him toying with you.

my headcanon is that zenos is used to fighting warriors -- like, warriors, paladins, samurai, dragoons etc. this is the first time he's gone up against a powerful healer. healers generally not being too adept at combat he's used to just cutting them down, but this one not only stands their ground, but fights back. an assize that laid waste to an entire unit of imperial troops barely scratches zenos' armour, /but he should not have been able to do even that/, so even though zenos walks off the victor like it's not worth even killing you, that encounter lingers in the back of his mind and he can't stop thinking about it.

raubahn's the only one with a brain cell who just saw the wol lose and went "...maybe i won't try this guy."

I HATE THIS LINE i know a lot of people were like "yay, the msq finally acknowledges you're a healer!" but it's SOOOOOOOOO OUT OF CHARACTER FOR VAL JFSKLJfkdlsjla he didn't just STAND THERE STARING STUPIDLY when he noticed y'shtola and conrad were on the ground bleeding out he was /already there/. (and i think his recent fight with zenos drained him of being able to heal as effectively as he should have and that really shook him.)

i think a lot of people have beef with lyse being named resistance leader, but i think this is where conrad realised it had to be done. he's given up here.

also, hi, i'm brave and stupid :)

(also i think a lot of ppl really dislike zenos bc his part of the msq REPEATEDLY refers to your defeat at his hands as "humiliation" which. is a tough pill to swallow for the player, who doesn't want to see their special mary sue look foolish or weak.)

i like that the msq allows this to be /your/ idea, that's a nice touch! normally in a game the character would have said something like "yes that's exactly what i was suggesting good job you get a cookie" but nah they fully just let it be your idea.

aaaaand we're off to doma.

woowoo stormbloog ng+ time

as an introduction: i started playing ffxiv around patch 4.2, so… oh my god six years ago what the fuck?? SIX?? IVE BEEN SAYING FOUR THE WHOLE TIME –

anyway i felt a lot of pressure to hurry through the msq to get to endgame to do content with my fc, so i wasn’t paying as close attention to the story as i probably should have; plus, a lot of plot threads introduced in arr, hw, and stb would later be re-contextualized by retcons and additions made in shb and ew that were not present at the time i was playing through them. i’ve also changed characters since then; i started on a catgirl with an entirely different backstory to my current main, who is a dalmascan refugee with a more personal stake in the activity of the garlean empire. (i’ve also changed my opinion on zenos as an antagonist and character.)

i’m a stormblood apologist. i don’t think it’s a bad expansion, not even the msq, which a lot of people rank the lowest of all in terms of story quality. it’s definitely the most divisive of them for a reason, but i think it’s really important because of the way it tightens up and really starts to solidify some of the worldbuilding of previous expacs, dives back into the garlean stuff which becomes VERY important in endwalker, and provides some pretty crucial character development, especially for alisaie.

i think people are too hard on it because 1) they don’t like lyse, and 2) they expected an expansion that laser-focused on ala mhigo and got a large swathe of the msq pivoting to focus on doma/hingashi/yanxia instead to the point of neglecting the ala mhigan side. i’ll talk about lyse probably because i honestly do not remember what beef people had with her, it’s been SIX YEARS SINCE I PLAYED THIS??, but i do share the majority opinion that ala mhigo kind of got robbed in this expansion and that’s frustrating.

anyway i’m gonna go unsync raubahn’s wall (extreme)

[myrfing]

not very established/final but closing thoughts about endwalker and ffxiv in general. immense msq spoilers ahead of courase

ok there were a lot of things I didn't care about and then a lot of things I cared immensely about and so in my first walk catharsis addled brain I will elect to mostly weigh the things I care about and uh those things were. incredible. there were moments while playing where I thought "this is great but maybe not my favorite overall" (which I was okay with, I never worried about whether or not EW would "measure up" or anything) and then that finale swept me up and hit me in the guts multiple times zenos style so what can I say.

My absolute favorite things:

1. Getting to meet Venat/Hydaelyn eye to eye and thank her and tell her YES it was all worth it and that the world is beautiful. and how it is emphasized she has always walked with you. is my god lady creepy and/or wet. I CANNOT SAY HOW MUCH EVERTHING ABOUT HER MEANS TO ME and I'm going to miss her so much. also she's just fucking cool

2. THE FINAL AREA especially getting to know the dragons/omega deal up close. and this whole area's theme of emptiness and suffocating sorrow but even in each of these ghosts you could feel a faint glimmer of the things that made them beings that could be hurt in the first place because of how human they were. their curiosity or love or fear or doubt. also it really sunk it in how you really cannot save everyone and everything and yet you still have to just acknowledge all these things that are totally lost and keep going. but also just by having witnessed them even in their final and most despairing hours you kind of carry them with you for every happiness that you find then onward. by the way I thought the OTHER COSMOS i.e. omega's origins were not going to be touched upon in this expac and thought they would save it for whatever comes next so imagine my fucking surprise. also can I say the music building up from a disorienting ambiance and then there's a wind to carry the song and then everyone else and it turns into one of the best themes in the game I CANNOTTTTTTT STRESS how deeply I marveled when I realized what was happening

3. Getting to explore and meet new characters HAHAHEA. Thavnair is absolutely beautiful and getting to finally...LIKE. SEEING HOW MUCH LOVE WAS PUT INTO ELABORATING ON HOW PEOPLE LIVED AND WHAT THEY DID DAY TO DAY AND WHAT MATTERED TO THEM even garlemald who I feel...no less general dislike towards I absolutely ate that shit up. i just wanted to know everything about this world they made. AND WITH EACH EXPAC I AM SATED I will say I think the Sharlayan portions are some of the weakest in the expac but even then there were a lot of things I loved about it as well and I'm very glad we finally get to know where so many of our beloved characters are from. The environment designers outdid themselves again also; there were multiple moments where I just stopped to behold...the skybox the dirt on the ground the rise of ridges and EVERYTHINGGG

4. i habe to mention the wol treats. seeing your wol do stuff. now when does that ever get old. re: Gourd specifically like I wanted he's the most human he's ever been and getting to see him make certain choices or be happy or elect to be close to others and also be angry and sad and to offer his heart and to have people offer this back and wish for his happiness I DID NOT THINK IT WAS POSSIBLE TO LOVE THE WOL MORE

5. A lot of the ways I interpreted things were validated LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOO YES I ENJOY THE VINDICATION. I'm happy hermes existed. & yes he was a megavegan overthinker destroyer of worlds but the fact that there were imperfections and that the ancients were really just....exactly human but lifted by their magic capability and resulting sense of duty and purpose. I'm happy that even back then someone said "who are we to judge if other people are worthy of existence" and—EVEN though it is unmistakably a devastating and tragic end—brought the whole thing crumbling down. I'm glad that emet-selch made it clear if it were his choice he would never have given up and that he would always have that fierce narrowminded devotion to his people but that he could not reconcile it with the way he connected to mortals still especially in his ever growing loneliness and guilt and longing. im happy hythlodaeus humored me and remembered me and was such an openhearted friend & well we will find out more about baby elidibus but *pointing* he looks like how I .

There were again a lot of moments where I felt disconnected to the values or narrative presented because of Who I Am & What I Think aka my little opinions but even then I think it was worth seeing. i do not believe in sacrifice and suffering as heavily as the writers do, I don't believe that your pain always means you should come out stronger nor do I imply that people are weak or unworthy for not being so, and I'm too like shit-hearted to be wholly on board for the themes of complete absolution and acceptance and whatnot that they wanted to get across here. a lot of the garlemald and even to some extent the idyllic elpis portions predictably (if you've listened at all to my rambling on twitter in the past 2 years LMFAO) annoyed me the exact way you & I would think they would. everyone knows I don't care about zenos, and I hate the special attention afforded to hades in the sense that I would have been much happier if he was treated as just another person you'd naturally remember on your journey in all the good and bad and not as someone so important to my wol. and these dudes took up a LOT of runtime.

...but also I was kind of at peace with that? And it did help that I do let up/consider it out of place to sit too heavily on my judgements when something is...already dead, the way garlemald kind of is, the way the ancients are, the way all those old civilizations are. So I was still enjoying myself even in those moments. the way I think about certain things will always be different from the xiv writers in particular but there are still points where what they mean not only gets across to me vividly and clearly but I can also acknowledge they wrote it trying to struggle to come to an answer themselves. & I'm glad so many people so wholeheartedly love this game and that we read this story and become invested in it and hope for it openly and appreciate it without undue reservation because I don't think it would be possible for anyone to write a story like this if they did not know it would be received thus.

errr yeag. I've said this about very few works but I genuinely think xiv is a masterpiece. maybe with far more polish towards the end but the entirety of it has been an honor to know and I would not cut a single fucking potion out you know me I've loved it since I was dying to shitty little tube rats in la noscea with ruin and because of my utter fascination with the universe...like just for having loved this game I feel rewarded. so thank you 2 CREATIVE BUSINESS UNIT III LMFAOOO I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY'RE STILL RUNNING WITH THIS NAME LEGENDS ONLY