#efksiv

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erenville is so funny to me. everything about his backstory wants him to be a protagonist but he's so effortlessly normal that it just never happens. he worked for the secret government space-ark of noah project. he's childhood friends with the princess of unified continental america. his mother was essentially one of the american warriors of light and told him to find the legendary golden city that nobody ever returns from. his hometown got swallowed by the tokusatsu dimension and that same mother died as part of an underground resistance movement in the tokusatsu dimension but persists as a cyberghost. erenville is normal though. he's a guy with a job and he never learned how to fight. his special skill is being a completely regular wildlife expert and he is far too employed for any of this high stakes sweeping epic business.

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this is a final fantasy fourteen dawntrail post. it speaks incredibly for the desperation of the people of alexandria in its decline that they both couldn't bear to remember the dead and couldn't bear the thought of the dead no longer being remembered, and thus created this contradictory system where the dead are only remembered by something other than those to whom that memory is meaningful. so crushed by collective trauma and grief that they directed every effort to eradicating awareness of mortality altogether and it's resulted in a paradise where everyone is incredibly blasé about dying because the dead live forever in the cloud until they run out of spare souls and are completely paralyzed with fear of their own mortality.

but even more than desperation it speaks of a naive sincerity that the scientists and officials behind the project just actually genuinely built and maintained this giant memory database to preserve the deceased at increasingly large cost, rather than just lie that they totally did that to a populace who won't remember those deceased anyway. they're not harvesting souls to power the war effort while using a recreation of the beloved princess as puppet figurehead, they completely sincerely recreate the dead from their memories and simulate them living happily ever after, started by a sincere desire to not lose their beloved princess. living memory is an eternal theme park that actively goes out of its way to facilitate letting people who remember each other fondly meet again. it's the manifestation of a childish wish for a world where there are no partings, only reunions. it's a theme park rather than an actual city with a dmv and shit like amaurot was precisely Because it's a childish dream. it's fundamentally an artificial experience, but one which sole motive is to bring joy and relief from everyday sadness.

and sphene is the first and most prominent victim of that naive sincerity. she's the mascot of this theme park, and because she's the mascot in charge of providing this artificial but kind experience she can't ever break character. the people of alexandria couldn't bear the thought of her being forgotten, so they created a memory of her that would last forever, but they also couldn't bear to actually remember sphene, so she's a mascot instead of a person. she loves her people, and they love her, but none of them can possibly understand the weight that love puts on her shoulders. the sphene we meet is fundamentally trapped by other people's deeply limited understanding of her.

it's so so so important to her character that she's a small dainty feminine woman that exists to take care of everyone emotionally and be loved by them for being so nice and sweet and loving, and when she tries to arrange some kind of secure future she ends up with an abusive husband who ignores her wants and needs for his own ambitions, and she is fundamentally unable to act outside this highly gendered framework. sphene reads like the commonplace tragedy of the straight woman to me to the point where making her in lesbians with wuk lamat is like. I can certainly understand wanting to grant sphene the sense of liberation and comfort that many lesbians themselves feel at the realisation that they don't have to marry men, so far be it from me to say anyone is wrong to do so. but it's kinda ignoring part of what her deal is for the sake of that comfort I think.

not that lesbians have never ended up in abusive marriages with men but sphene very explicitly does not have other options, part of the tragedy is that you fundamentally cannot actually grant her that liberation and comfort. cahciua explicitly says there's no way to know what the real living sphene would have done because this sphene is a recreated memory of the beloved princess whose job is to sustain living memory. their darling sphene who will always listen to all their troubles and is always nice to them and will always take care of them. she's literally trapped by the role society assigned her, and that role is essentially to be their tradwife mother. the living sphene may have been into women, but the people who recorded her to create the sphene we meet never even considered the option.

do you guys know that tweet thread where OP describes going to a funeral for a woman they didn't know who'd died young of a heart attack, and the husband spent most of the eulogy talking about himself instead of his recently deceased wife, and by the end of the ceremony OP had learned nothing at all about what this woman was like beyond being a wife and mother? everyone fondly remembers the princess and queen of alexandria, but nobody remembers sphene. and just like all OP could still do for this woman was go to her casket and acknowledge that she too had been a full person in her own right before the stress of swallowing everything about herself killed her, all wuk lamat can really still do for sphene is think of her as the full person she must have been.

we're not told anything about what sphene was like as a leader, what her policies were, how she actually did her work, her vision for the future of her country before she died and was reconstructed. they only tell us everyone loved her so dearly because she was so kind to them. we're shown her dying moments and it's her using her airship to shield a civilian, so we can assume her love for her people was indeed true. but none of sphene's history that we're shown and nothing of how otis (who knew the living sphene) talks about her tells us anything about what she was like outside her role as beloved princess. her memories from after her "revival" are dissonant and corrupted and possibly not even real, and her policy of preserving living memory no matter what is a wish implanted in her by the people who reconstructed her. we don't even get to see what she looked like when alive. the only sphene the people know is the theme park mascot of living memory.

cahciua was exactly as erenville knew her and was true enough to herself to be able to turn against the system, so we're not given reason to believe any of the endless were tampered with. but sphene was already dead by the time they even tried to figure out how to preserve her memory, her actual soul and memories definitely long gone by the time the technology worked. we're explicitly told that nobody in everkeep really cared who or what sphene was as long as she adequately fulfilled this role of loving them all so much. she can't even tell you her favourite food, none of the people who labored so intensely and sincerely to bring her back bothered to write down even her most basic personal preferences when they reconstructed her. she has to deflect the question with "when I think of the people who make the food I can't pick just one" because the only preference she's allowed is loving all her people equally. she's completely thrown off that wuk lamat would even ask.

and it's precisely because she is remembered only as this kind loving woman who gave everything for her people that she is weak and powerless to actually do whatever it takes to keep them safe. she does not have the freedom to assert herself, let alone to be cruel or violent or take extreme actions. society does not give her that freedom, because she is a small dainty woman and (therefore) the only role allowed to her is to be their tradwife mother. so while her desire to protect her people is as real and true as it can be part of her plan to lobotomise herself in order to become someone capable of violence and cruelty also reads to me as that specific female frustration of wanting to destroy the sweet babygirl image of yourself by doing something extreme. like britney spears shaving her head. but in sphene's case destroying the babygirl image amounts to destroying herself completely, because the babygirl image of her is all that comprises her. and so when all is said and done the only fragment of sphene that is restored and lingers just a bit longer after that image is destroyed is the sphene that wuk lamat sincerely wanted to get to know.

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the funniest thing about emet-selch is that he is extremely annoying on purpose and then acts like it's your fault when you find him extremely annoying

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[with full understanding that the reason for viera all wearing high heels is "unga bunga hot"] i like to think viera are evolutionary freaks of nature who basically convergently evolved with the other humanoid races rather than sharing a common ancestor because they're all but begging evolutionary biology to do some cocomelon shit to them by being so secluded and uniquely long lived, so they're all wearing heels because their musculoskeletal structure is optimised for a digitigrade gait because they're the result of prehistoric rodents moving into the niche of primates, and while they Can walk with a heel-first gait it puts comparatively more stress on their joints and tendons

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I wrote an article comparing fordola and yotsuyu's arcs you should read it❗

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THING IS i think shadowbringers as abortion narrative (post being referenced) has some basis as genuine read but you have to take it in the context of emet selch being an abusive paternal figure absolutely seething that the future belongs to his children instead of him (note how almost all the shades in amaurot talk about how all the work adults do to improve the world is for the sake of the children that will inherit it) and trying to use wol('s body) for his own goals of rebuilding and maintaining the illusionary glorious past (=fascism), which extends into vauthry (emet-selch's creation, his child metaphorically albeit not literally) showcasing the worst most self serving aspects of that belief the world should belong to him, abandoning and looking down on all the people who relied on him as a leader the same way emet-selch looks down on the garlemald that he raised for behaving the way he raised it and throwing a huge bitchfit the moment someone even slightly disagrees with him because can't they see he alone is the chosen one, and ran'jit raising generations of girls to offer their lives (bodies) to eulmore then saying young girls are simply tragically doomed to giving their lives(bodies) and denying ryne all self-determination just because her body happens to have traits of [the mother goddess], and of course contrasted with exarch as someone who is a loving if distant paternal figure to lyna and so convinced that the world belongs to the people that come after him that he has to be reminded there's room for him in it too, and thancred eventually setting his own hangups aside to support ryne's autonomy. and ardbert is the coat hanger for wol's light abortion yeah.

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insane that shadowbringers introduced a character whose entire identity is defined by the dead mothersisterdaughter other people keep seeing in her, and she's convinced her adoptive fatherbrother who taught her most of what she knows and whose footsteps she'd like to follow only cares about her insofar she makes herself useful as either a tool for saving the world or a replacement for the woman he's grieving and can't help seeing in her because her entire identity so far has been defined by this dead woman others see in her, and the man who actually raised her keeps insisting she is a small frail girl who shouldn't even think about self-actualising, and when she eventually works up the courage to establish her own identity and changes her hair she's worried her fatherbrother will reject her for no longer looking like the woman he's now truly completely lost, and when she awkwardly presents her new look to him she quickly rattles off all the ways she's still useful as a tool and he cuts her off and says he's glad to have her back and gives her a new name. and yet her pronouns stay the same. that's a boy.

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Another thing that's... kinda odd about the English translation is in the DRK quests, Myste says "A reckoning will not be postponed indefinitely", which is a big line in basically a secret route of the browser game Fallen London. and yeah, it is a cool line and neat to hear it in FF14... it also doesn't really work for Myste? In it's original context, it's about the remains of a dead demi-god-like being, which was cast into a well, seeking a reckoning and leading the player down a route which will irreversibly destroy their character in pursuit of dark secrets.

Which is not what the Myste sections of DRK were about at all, lol.

oh I could rant for hours about dark knight translations. that questline is actually why I first went to scope out the german script, because I heard drk wildly differs between english and japanese and that german generally stays closer to japanese than english does. I translated some of the fray parts here actually, though you'll note I'm a lot more forgiving of the english script in that one because i hadn't reached sidurgu's parts yet löl

german fray and myste are just completely different characters from english. german myste is upbeat and energetic. he loves people who help others and feels a strong urge to help them in turn. he spawned from the dark knight crystal in response to the loneliness of countless dark knights stored within it so he could console them and be their friend, he's basically the will of the soul crystal itself. he tries to alleviate that loneliness by facilitating reunions with lost loved ones but grows frustrated that this only leads to more partings, so he tries to expand his powers to maintain his illusions forever, because more than anything he just doesn't want to leave his dear friends the dark knights alone. he represents the childish wish at the core of every dark knight for a world where nobody has to lose anyone again.

in the part of the quests where you take myste to the sea of clouds there's this bit where in english he talks about his guilt complex and lets slip that this is also your guilt. in german he tells you that he was always with these people who fight hard for others, watching from the sides, until one day he heard a cry of loneliness and since then he's been trying his best to help people too. that's the moment that for me really hammered it in that these languages fundamentally disagree on what it even means to be a dark knight.

in english myste is desperate to atone for everything he's ever done and fray is your self preservation instinct who is kinda mad that you let it get this far, but they have to forgive him because you're all you have as you walk this lonely and bloody path that you have to believe is right. in german myste is your ideal, the desire to comfort those who have no-one else, crying that maybe it's better to forget altogether if partings can't be avoided and fray is your human heart who agrees that parting will always hurt but that is exactly where you find the strength to continue the fight, because it is worthwhile even if it never ends, and the path may be lonely but you will never walk it alone when there are people who came before you and who will come after you who all share this same dream of a kinder world. of course you won't have to leave us, you're our ideal, you're what we do it all for, as long as we remain dark knights you'll be with us. this all flows very naturally into drk-as-shadowbringers-class and ardbert's deal too but since I haven't reached shb in german yet I don't want to say anything extensive about it yet

i still think english drk was cooking with even your repressed feelings being repressed + the part of yourself that wants to protect itself obviously trying to protect itself and thus not wanting to show vulnerability so en fray postures as the stronger one who will protect you instead, and that fray writing in the journal (and only being able to be honest in a place where you're unlikely to look unless you don't know where to go) is incredibly clever. but in the context of how english treats sidurgu and just the way they handle the entire rest of the game really i also don't think that they were intentionally going for this kind of subtlety, it feels to me more like they just thought sincerity is cringe like usual and decided to make everyone cool and edgy (and thus needlessly mean to each other) instead.

and yeah english fucking loves to just yoink lines from other media whether it's appropriate or not. they turned zenos' final words to wol into a hamilton reference in english, "my first friend, my enemy" is a hamilton line, he doesn't ever call you his enemy in any other language (in german he calls you his hunter though which yes is incredibly horny of him). I'll admit I'm not in a good position to judge whatever epic references the german script makes because I'm unfamiliar with german language popular media so I won't spot them unless someone else points them out but I do know that when german fray quotes fight club it just enhances their characterisation as trying to sound cool and intimidating but failing because they're really kind of lame and awkward and can't hide how stoked they are to hang out with you.

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hi, i made a website to host my various translations of german ffxiv! please check it out if you're interested in the game's localisation differences! every scene I have translated on there comes with the official english script next to it for comparison and it's all color coded and mobile responsive.

most of the scenes on there are from stormblood right now but I have something for every expansion, and I translated the dark knight questline in its entirety since it's the reason I started looking into these differences in the first place

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people will say "I find it hard to feel bad for sphene because of the genocide" and that's a line someone can draw about a fictional character certainly but because I am a hater I often go on their blog to search for emet-selch and it turns out these people rarely find it nearly as difficult to sympathise with the guy that invented genocide

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I think it's interesting that they killed brute bomber forreal, I can't remember any named character deaths with similar context in this game. they've done ally tragically sacrificing themselves a few times and they've done major antagonist beyond help that you tragically have to kill a few times but guy who's only an antagonist in the sense that you fought him once who interprets your attempt to help him as condescending pity and self destructs in response is a new one. arcadion story felt a bit tonally dissonant with the rest of the plot at first but I enjoy how it's approaching the msq theme of destroying yourself to live up to the image desired of you through the lens of kayfabe.

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the thing about everyone saying ffxiv story gets good in shadowbringers is that vibes-wise shadowbringers-endwalker is basically a different game than arr-stormblood, thematically it's all been talking about mostly the same shit the whole time but the tone and presentation is noticeably different before and after that breakpoint. the way I would put this difference is that after stormblood the game shifted from having material political stances with real-world analogues to talking about a more abstracted human condition, and so the later expansions could be tighter in execution because the game was no longer at odds with itself about whether it wanted to have politics or not.

i think it's notable that in terms of how present and involved the scions are it's not until shadowbringers and endwalker that they were actually consistently all there for most of the main story. in arr you mostly work with one or two at a time to get to know them, in heavensward most of them go MIA so you can focus on the expansion's protagonist alphinaud, in stormblood most of them get put on side errands or hospitalised so you can focus on the expansion's protagonist lyse, arguably wol doesn't even really become the protagonist instead of a supporting character on a plot-structural level until shadowbringers. this also correlates with shadowbringers introducing the duty support system, which on a gameplay level necessitated that a light party worth of scions accompany wol any time something is about to happen, so naturally this would have the story shift to be more of a "wol and the scions" thing than "one or two scions and wol" like it was before, together with the more general shift in tone.

so now many people associate "ffxiv being good" with "wol and the scions are there" even though an expansion having a focus character other than wol and only one or two scions present not only is nothing new but in heavensward it literally won awards. gamers love to feel like the most special princess in the world and to deepthroat shadowbringers as the only good thing in ffxiv so it makes sense that dawntrail moving away from wolcentrism back to the more supporting role that they've literally had for the majority of the game would make those gamers explode, and it makes sense that the writers saw coming from a mile away that those gamers would explode if they had the scions disband forreal and that's why they backtracked on that so embarrassingly, but it doesn't make it less stupid. wuk lamat is literally fine.

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just learned wuk lamat apparently didn't make top 10 in the jp fan popularity poll for dawntrail which is insane. wuk lamat hate is insane she's literally fine "she hogged screentime from the scions and wol" the scions were supposed to be fucking disbanded, they're the ones hogging HER screentime. it was supposed to be you wuk lamat erenville zero MAYBE kille and a pina colada.

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If you've ever taken an interest in FFXIV localisation differences you've probably come across the claim that the English and Japanese scripts are written at the same time, so you can't point to either one as the original. I've been sifting through old threads to find a source on that and it's looking like this claim only started popping up after this interview with the localisation teams, probably because of this bit:

●Also, are there ever situations where the FFXIV localization team gives ideas to developers instead of localizing game content that’s already been created? David (German): The English team is actively involved in naming of skills and location names, etc. and the wider localization team is invited to provide ideas and concepts for new creatures from their various cultures. Then there are situations where we do culture checks and flag potential issues in the story to avoid misunderstandings or to cater to contemporary cultural developments. Kate (Lore, English): I do often provide ideas for names we could use for in-game terms, bosses, attacks, NPCs, places, titles, and things like that based on parameters from the team. I’m not sure how much people actually notice that stuff, but I’m always happy when my ideas get used. Like, “I’m helping!! Yay!”

Evidently, "the English team is actively involved in the naming of skills, items, locations, etc" got word-of-mouthed into "the English team is actively involved in writing the game's story" when if the English team was really involved on a story level it would've surely been mentioned here. The actual story and dialogue are written in Japanese first and then translated to the other languages and you can very much point to the Japanese text as the original to determine how effectively each language preserves meaning and intent.