#he's literally built around being a drk if i take drk away from him i don't have a character.

[designsdefiance]

lays on the floor. i really wish i was one of those people who could play Just Anything on their characters and not worry about it being canon or making sense because it would make my life so much fuckin easier

[elfyourmother]

i process a lot of things through fiction it’s true

but like. I had no choice but to fall in love with and stan House Fortemps because Count Edmont literally in your first conversation with him chastises his sons for disrespecting you and treating you like a mule/tool to be used.

Alphinaud really was the most insufferable about this but all the Scions treated WoL like that to one degree or another, and ARR period was full of this shit to the point where I honestly believe the writers became aware of it and the discontent in the players about it and that line and much of the content to follow was intended as course correction (the Dark Knight questline being the ultimate expression of this)

even Cid, who I love to death, was guilty of it, which is why I have to play through the Praetorium with my soundbar turned off. “Don’t go dying, you’re too bloody useful” would be heinous enough on its own but the tone with which that line is said turns it from something that might be a gentle joke from a friend to something really quite vicious and frankly OOC (that also goes back to the Bad voice acting and direction of ARR imo)

and no I’m not the first to point this out or feel a way about how the WoL was treated in universe pre-Heavensward in ARR, but like just about everything in games like this where you make your own PC, it just hits a hell of a lot different when WoL is a Black woman. I look at some of the class and Job storylines that are built on this trope and feel awful. (Working on ARR Monk right now and honestly it’s the worst one to me for this shit)

and it’s why the Dark Knight quests meant so much to me even though I’m still not sure how or if they fit into Gisele’s story. but that Gisele’s anger and resentment over being treated like a weapon/useful tool for literally her entire life, not just as a Scion but literally from the time she was 8 years old and dragged away to be locked up in the Circle, would physically manifest as Fray? deep shit. especially considering how much Gisele considers herself a selfless nurturer, always putting the needs of others before her own. as a Black woman it means something to have the resentment take literal form, and not be scolded for it, but to make peace with that Shadow self. That and the whole “flame in the abyss” thing is why DRK fits her so maddeningly well, setting aside the spiky armor big sword aesthetic which doesn’t (but I found a way around that)

more specifically this kind of thing is also why Heavensward out of all these stories just means more to me than ShB quite frankly as much as I love them both. Ishgard embraces Gisele like nowhere else ever has. Nobody loves her like the Ishgardians do, and I don’t just mean her spouses or immediate Fortemps family. In Gyr Abania every Temple Knight on the front blesses her name. “Ishgard remembers, Warrior of Light!” I didn’t have to headcanon any of this either, it’s literally all in the game. (Sidebar: this is when I could make a rather bitter comparison to how da:i canonically did everything it possibly could to shit all over her, the impact she had on everyone around her, and her very legacy as Heroine of Ferelden largely because of how bad b*oware’s writers are and how they couldn’t manage to write a new hero to stand on their own merits and had to degrade the previous 2 to big up this weak ass fool w a glowy hand but it will suffice to say that it’s yet more proof Eorzea is where Gisele belongs and Thedas never deserved her, or me)

There’s never any doubt how deeply Gisele is appreciated by the people whose lives she touched, in Ishgard. They shout it from the rooftops. And it’s also telling to me, even setting aside shipping considerations and going strictly off what happens in the game, that when Estinien rescued Gisele from Elidi!Zenos at the Ghimlyt Dark, it wasn’t the Immortal Flames camp that he took her to, or the Ala Mhigan Resistance, it was the Ishgardian encampment. Estinien trusted no one else more with Gisele’s safety and well-being when she was gravely injured than the Temple Knights. And who was it waiting for her to wake up, with baited breath? Saulette. Who acted like the sun was rising when she did? Aymeric. Who came to visit her sick bed? Edmont.

In the bad future it was Edmont’s memoirs that kept her memory alive more than anything. And I think about how “home” is Ishgard, for Gisele. The city and its people. And it’s home in a way she literally never had before. Ishgard loves and cherishes her so I love and cherish Ishgard.