#gulool ja ja: i am going to set up a public tournament and a rite of succession because Anyone Can Be King.

[tritoch]

sometimes u think about Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail and u just have to laugh. what's that? a story about an ailing and quietly elitist gerontocrat who holds on well past the death of his reason? who fails to properly invest in developing and uniting his nation or in healing the damage wrought by long years of empire and colonization and racial oppression? who instead holds his nation together and its simmering internal resentments together by appealing to visions of his past glories?

and what's that? his failings have quietly nurtured a festering resentment in his once-lauded favored son? who is unable to grasp the reality of his father's rule and its faults because it does not fit into his vision of how the world works, precisely because his father crafted that vision for him? oh, is his pride wounded not due to any real loss, but due to the painful distance he feels between his own accomplishments and the accomplishments of his forefathers? is he unable to reconcile the incredible (and textually racialized) privilege he receives from the mere accident of his birth with his own internal feelings of worthlessness? does this drive him to find purpose in violence against the Other, both at home and abroad, in the name of recovering his personal pride as well as the nation's? are older and more wizened advisors constantly whispering sinister things in his ear to goad his pride and drive him toward their own ends? will they find themselves cast aside when he achieves power, because in truth they were never in control of the monster they made?

will this monster of wounded Oedipal pride seek to exploit and conquer his own fellow citizens just to satisfy his empty sense of pride? will he, say, strike a dark bargain with technologically-advanced forces whose only ultimate goal is the exploitation of all resources everywhere for their personal enrichment? will this alliance of festering racist macho resentment and cold exploitative technocapitalism first seek to subjugate and exploit and commodify people it sees as Other to power its own hollow paradise? will that alliance wear a smiling face and encourage enfranchisement of the colonized, so long as they will buy into a deal that consigns their history to oblivion and captures their souls? will this have no other goal than the creation of the ultimate utopian paradise: a technicolor theme park where every day is your birthday and nothing is bad ever and nothing ever has to change from how it was in your childhood and your parents are alive and they're proud of you? will we be existentially threatened by nothing more than nostalgia and an algorithmic inability (refusal) to recognize when a system that demands constant exponential growth leads inevitably to resource depletion and oblivion?

wow. what a droll piece of escapism. and we beat them you say? haha. wow. so fun. what an idea.