#i just think it's fucked up fascinating that a guy whose people suffered a genocide indirectly contributed to another genocide

[maulfucker]

do you ever think about Maul's impact on Mandalore and its fate during and after the empire. if it wasn't for him, Vizsla's coup would likely have failed (or never happened at all), and the power struggle that caused Mandalore to side with the empire wouldn't have happened. in fact, if it wasn't for him the republic wouldn't have a reason to interfere with Mandalore and send clones there. Mandalore would probably be one of the first rebellious worlds, and a big target from the very start, so I don't think it would've had much chance of surviving the empire either way, but it probably would've died differently.

[militant-holy-knight]

Using Tragedy For Political Gain For the Nth Time.

I am torn as to whether or not I should have written a personal take on this so soon. When I woke up in Friday morning to see the news about the Christchurch terrorist attack I was alarmed. Yes, I saw the footage and yes, I read his manifesto - it was nothing short of absolutely grotesque and degenerate. Plain and simple. Make no mistake, this was an racist attack whose perpetrator is indeed a terrorist. In fact, I won’t even dignify him by referring to his name - he will simply be called henceforth the NZ terrorist. On Tumblr I shared a few articles and reblogged a few posts calling for moderation. But as I see the events further develop I can’t help but address this situation which I believe will make things worse unless if we talk about them anyway.

We don’t often get the luxury of having a mass murderer explain himself such as the Las Vegas shooter (whose motivations are still a mystery to this day and will never be explained). And while the NZ wrote an extensive manifesto and made it clear what his positions are. I’ve struggled (and I still do) on whether or not saying his manifesto should be read by people so that people can draw their own conclusions, but I’ve questioned how much he is a point he would have when the doc is filled with so much misdirection, shitposting and trolling. I’ve questioned if he really is world-traveled as he claims he is since his manifesto drips with the words of someone who never left his parents’ home and decided to go on a shooting because of death... Until I saw there is evidence he visited at least Pakistan, with video and passport to confirm it.

As far as we know, his manifesto was made to misdirect with only one thing for certain that we can assess: he wants to further cause division between the left and right and escalate the culture war. Unfortunately, many individuals have either mindlessly fallen into his trap and started heaping the blame on the wrong kind of individuals for allegedly “radicalizing” this criminal or even more insidiously, forming some sort of unholy ideological alliance with the terrorist because he knows his crimes will play into a certain course of action that he hopes they will take and they are grateful that someone did actually did it so he could use the tragedy as an convenient excuse.

A good example that comes to mind is the dictator of Turkey, Reccep Tayip Erdogan, (who is name dropped in the manifesto and who the terrorist calls for his death) blamed the attack on the “rise of Islamophobia” and went on to say the Hagia Sophia will never be a church again so long as there are Turkish people. Very typical behavior from him and to say so no surprise, but this time he is surely alarmed because the terrorist dared to paint a target on him. He is in pure hostility mode because that is how he operates. He is overly emotional, engages in divide and conquer tactics like the terrorist and makes no bones about how much he hates not just his political rivals, but also his allies too. He earns to revive the Ottoman caliphate so that he can take over the West and the Arab world. He is an absolute PR nightmare for anyone who wants to show an example of a liberal Muslim government, which Turkey used to be held up as the example the MENA countries should follow, but now is hardly any better. The only time I remembered he tried to present himself as a paragon compared - which is hard to do when you are jailing journalists and critics - except during the Jamal Khashoggi affair. For one, trying to pretend like you are a better human rights example than Saudi Arabia really isn’t that hard to achieve since they are just Islamic North Korea. For another, people have rightfully pointed out that he is full of shit and he was merely using that for personal agenda.

But Erdogan is a dictator so of course he wants his critics silenced and his opinions don’t earn any serious merit in the discussion. What really is concerning is the kind of discourse we will see in the Western world. Journalists have either consciously or not laid the blame at the feet of Donald Trump, Candace Owens, Pewdiepie, Christians, Jews, memelords, guns and others for supposedly radicalizing this individual. It’s ironic he said denounces Trump and conservatism in his manifesto, but since the public will be discouraged from reading it out of fear of radicalizing themselves, it creates an convenient opportunity they can paint a monster that must be put down.

This is dangerous not only because it validates the far-right’s concerns but also helps no one but further alienate those outside of the fight politically. Lets consider who will be marginalized if the far-left engages in a literal crusade to defend Islam by any means necessary. The first ones to get silenced would be the online memelords that post harmless memes simply because the terrorist used a lot of memes like the Remove Kebab song in his massacre footage, which has been deleted from Youtube as we speak.

Then there are historians like Iniciativa Condor, Real Crusades History and myself that are personally fascinated by the Crusades, the Reconquista and the Great Turkish War. Because the terrorist now used several references like the Battle of Tours, the Battle of Vienna, Skanderbeg, the Russo-Turkish War and many others (though ironically not Vlad the Impaler), I imagined we will be ostracized when discussing such subjects in the open out of fear of another Christchurch. In fact, I’ve been warned by personal relatives that I shouldn’t be vocal about it anymore.

And then on a more serious scale... There are critics of Islam as a religion, specially of Muslim background. Regardless if atheistic or religious, these people were already under enough scrutiny in their home countries who do everything to suppress criticism of Islam even secular societies like Indonesia and Turkey, the former in particular exploits its law Article 301 about “insulting Turkishness” which is misused to arrest dissidents. There is a former Muslim Youtuber I am subscribed, the Apostate Prophet who while deeply denouncing the attack, received messages asking if he was happy about Muslims being killed. What kind of fucked up perspective is this where criticism of Islam is equated with sanctioning the death of Muslims?

Now on the worst case of all. Consider that there is an actual epidemic of rape that liberals have turned an blind eye on Europe because it means tackling a very uncomfortable topic which goes contrary to what works in their agenda.

If what happens on Europe is bad, then its infinitely worse what is happening around the world, specially in the Middle-East where Christians are facing an actual genocide by jihadists and fundamentalists which has been going on for years now, but we have only started paying attention now that the Middle-East began to spill into the West. Furthermore, this attack will certainly result in retaliation since they have found less excuse for. Remember the Regensburg lecture by Pope Benedict when he quoted the Byzantine Emperor Manuel Palailogos for criticizing Muhammed and the entire Islamic world went apeshit with Iraq in particular killing Assyrians in retaliation as if they had anything to do with it. Just because of an controversial statement by the Pope.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not leaving the alt-righters celebrating this atrocity in their echo chambers off the hook either. I’ve seen how static /pol/ users were at seeing the footage of him shooting up innocents, advocating for more terrorist attacks to be called out, trolling users who said innocents shouldn’t be targeted or those accusing the terrorist of being a Mossad agent or a Shia Muslim. Its somewhat surprising you see: /pol/ hates Muslims too they think Jewish people are much, much worse (something which the shooter didn’t do). Hell I heard the Saudi Royal Family is in fact Jewish behind close doors. Consider these are the kind of people who are also in love with Bashar al Assad who portrays himself as the secular side of the Syrian Civil War that protects minorities when in fact this is also a ruse.

Similarly, for all their bitching about Western civilization falling, they are unsympathetic to the plight of Christians around the world because they are non-white and follow a “Semitic religion”. Not a single word about Asia Bibi being on death row, the persecution of Copts in Egypt or explosion of churches in  They have trivialized the word of genocide by comparing low birth-rates with actual fucking persecution, exiling, destruction of heritage that minorities suffer in the Middle-East. Also speaking as a Brazilian even one fascinated with Western heritage, they’d still advocate my death because I am non-white (I hate using the term “POC” because its patronizing) and they’d want us to stay in their shitty lane.

Its frustrating enough that the far-left has a monopoly on social media and journalism (this isn’t up for debate, the purge of NPC memes is evidence of that) and the internet is basically owned by them. Now imagine if they push down even harder? Or Erdogan’s comments will end up pushing someone to actually try to assassinate him (unlikely considering Kurds haven’t been pushed hard enough to consider assassinating him despite all the things they have done to their people, a foreigner will likely have even less motivation for doing so), but I don’t think that man will go down peacefully as he expects. The whole point of this massacre was to literally divide the world into left-wing and right-wing, with the shooter expecting that whites begin genociding foreigners regardless of religion (he simply chose a mosque because it was too obvious, he denounces Latinos and Indians who are majority Catholic and Hindu respectively). I’d argue that in addition to being a national socialist and a fascist, I think he is an anarchist too - because for a guy committed to such a cause, he did a lot of harm to it by killing children and filming it. Nobody sane will advocate for this, only the tiny, tiny minority in /pol/ that agree with his actions, and even they don’t have a back bone to follow his footsteps.

Everything the terrorist wanted he is getting because of the emotionally driven responses that people are making as such I call for moderation, quit the dick measuring game that you call a culture war and try to find a common ground before anything else. 

[harlothane]

Apparently, I was tagged to talk about Theon a bit, thanks @bluetheon This is interesting, the fact that liking this particular character always seems to demand an explanation. Here’s the moment someone comes at me with a - sometimes accurate - list of his crimes and every morally ambigious thought that crossed his mind. And to that, I answer : okay, he misbehaves and he is a war criminal by our standards and modern laws. Yes. Absolutely.

Still, this is strange that I have to explain it, because I can name a couple of super popular characters-slash-war criminals. Hey, Roy Mustang, people. He’s more popular than both Scar, whose people were assasinated in a genocide that turned him into serial killer, and Edward Elric, the clever, brilliant hero with a heart of gold. I love Roy and his potential as a character, but let’s stop pretending hating Theon has anything to do with his crimes or even with him being a “grey character” - a screwed up moral compass never got in the way of Magneto or Light Yagami. 

This is about Theon being both the victim and the criminal. Those guys I mentioned, sometimes they are victims too (Magneto, hello) but they react in a way that doesn’t make people uncomfortable. They transform into awesome, badass villains thanks to their tragic backstories. It fits with our expectations. And anyway, that kind of super-villain doesn’t exist in real life so we can idealize them, it’s okay. (And gods, who doesn’t like Magneto?) 

But Theon, he is that abuse victim that doesn’t manage to inspire pity. He doesn’t want to. He goes against the narrative, in every way. He’s had that terrible childhood, an upbringing that fucked him up. He’s been despised in his own home for everything he is - a shy, somewhat feminine (at least not conforming to the ironborn ideal of masculinity) boy. And that boy fought back in all the wrong ways. He never resorted to cynism and became that ensemble dark horse we are familiar with. No, Theon is hopeful to a fault, he sees a bright future for him and Robb and he will rule the Islands someday soon. His mind is not wired right, it seems, because when fate throws punch after punch, he smiles back and cracks a joke. 

And I’m not going to lie : he is a strange character. One of the greatest too, because he doesn’t play by the rules we are used to, that’s all. He entertains illusions and he deceits himself. He wants to impress his father but takes Winterfell - a prize that costs so much to his people - on a whim, for glory and for the little boy hostage who dreamt of this home for so long. Pyke will never welcome him back (and does he want to ? this place is nothing to him now, it never was, it was just a dream) so he takes Winterfell, he grasps it to never let go.

Theon misbehaves, plays with the rules, he is both the scared boy and the ambitious young man and the charming friend to Robb Stark. Archetypes tend to reduce even the great character to one of these : the super-villain renounced to be the little boy. He abandoned him, threw that part of himself away. But not Theon. Who is letting Ramsay kill the two children ? Who is deceiving himself to the point he doesn’t acknowledge Ramsay’s ulterior motives ? Who is saying, sorry, screaming : “It’s better to be cruel than weak” ? Is it that well-dressed, smirking pirate, or is it the little boy, terrified of losing everything he has, the only accomplishment he ever got, his almost home - Winterfell ? 

Who jumps to a certain death, to save an innocent girl ?

To answer the question properly, I loved Theon from the start - I loved him because I couldn’t understand him like all the other characters. There was something terribly flawed within him, and I loved that enigma of a character. This doesn’t bother me to see so many readers/viewers hating him, since I recognize he is not a simple character to read. Here’s the thing : most people don’t hate him for rational reasons. Those who actively hate him do so because they can’t reconcile all the parts of his character. But that boy who smiled at all the wrong things ? He has blood on his hands and he’s betrayed a friend and he took so many wrong turns. That wasn’t written, he could have avoided that fate, had he reconciled the scared boy with the ambitious young man. But he couldn’t do that, not in the middle of a war, not in his position as a hostage - a status that meant living in perpetual fear. 

In the end, the boy wanted to be safe, a place to call home, a smile for gratitude. and the young man yearned for a crown, a prize, a family name to wear proudly. These desires may be at odds with one another and that’s where Theon’s suffering turns him desperate. He’s so lost but he never stops, not for one minute, he won’t rest until he has anything left to chase. The children who escaped. Winterfell. A crown. His pride. A name. He’s this broken, damaged, unyielding enigma, a closed book no one can read, no even his worst nightmare, Ramsay, who thinks he belongs to him now, no even himself but that doesn’t stop him from trying to understand. 

Let me tell you, if he were as weak as they say, he’d have let himself die. If he were as useless as they say, the writer would have let him die.

He is a fascinating character to observe, all these struggles and that pain and these messy desires... that’s the thing everyone should admit. Love, hatred, that doesn’t matter. He is so fascinating. A ghost now, refusing to dance for anyone else. A broken man, surviving against all odds, still breathing and struggling and joking at yet another captor. He is the product of the world GRRM created, one of the finest example of what war makes of us - not wild beasts, not monsters, but ghosts too eager to forgot our names when it suits us.

His story ends the moment he reconcilled these scattered parts of himself. The moment he remembers the meaning of his true name. Contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t happen in Dance. The gods are not done with him, and I am so, so glad about that.

Let’s hear ... @janiedean, @francisperfectionbonnefoy, @natsumi82

[nerobombs]

Insert Story Here: Ishgard

(Want more? Check out my Writing tag!)

I saw a few posts about Ishgard floating about, and I guess I haven’t actually written that many things on this blog yet, so I’m going to compile some of my writings about a subject I love to hate.

Anyone who knows me or reads my forum posts (a lot of of the content of which will be shamelessly copy-pasted here because what is effort) knows of the disdainful loathing I have for Heavensward’s writing. It’s not inherently bad--at worst it’s merely mediocre, filled to the brim with paper-thin plot vehicles and McGuffins--but the potential for a good story was there. 

Indeed, compared to most video game plots and MMO plots especially, the level of coherence it manages to maintain amidst the plague-ridden retcon carcass of World of Warcraft and the slightly suspicious smells being put out by Guild Wars 2 (whose story content used to be totally absurd, but they’ve been getting better) could almost be called admirable.

Almost.

I still don’t like it, though, in the same way that a disapproving father wouldn’t be particularly fond of his rebellious daughter’s boyfriend showing off a condom shaped like the head of a great white shark to his mates at school. It’s not the object itself, but rather the implications.

If you plan on reading further, put some goggles on, because there’s a lot of debris in a train wreck.

There’s also some crude humour and crass analogies ahead too.

First, I’ll preface this by saying that I firmly believe that Heavensward’s writing was restricted by the game design. This forgives certain things. For example, if the design priority is to have the players go to Azys Lla immediately after the Dravanian Hinterlands, then the writing’s job is as simple as coming up with an utterly contrived reason to do so. It’s frustrating, sure, but there’s a reason for it.

That said, I still have several problems.

-

1). There’s no Ishgard any more!

The things that interested me the most about Ishgard were, well, the things that made it Ishgard. It was unique. Ishgard was a despotic militant theocracy waging a genocidal holy war against a superior force amidst a tumultuous climate of political ambition, religious zealotry, and class warfare. There was something fascinating about the dichotomous nature of Ishgard's politics and culture, being ostensibly built around order and a single-minded goal yet also being unstable without the unifying threat of the dragons and built on the foundations of a lie (or at least, a historical misrepresentation), and all of this was put against a tense backdrop formed by the terrifyingly absolute power of the Church and the Inquisition.

Except, all of that is gone now. Poof.

Ishgard’s not a dictatorship any more. No, Ishgard seamlessly transitioned from a dictatorship to a bicameral republic with absolutely no conflict or resistance in the slightest. Part of the problem with this is that Thordan was absolutely batshit and the story handled Thordan horribly, but more on that later.

Ishgard’s not a theocracy any more. Since Ishgard is now a secular government, the Ishgardian Orthodox Church has been rendered impotent. There’s no war and no enemy, so there’s no Inqusition. 

And perhaps most offensively of all, Ishgard’s not militant any more. The Dragonsong War is definitively ended. Yeah, you can try to make some weak justification of “But Nidhogg’s brood”, but if killing Nidhogg didn’t end the war then the stragglers are completely meaningless. The thousand-year  genocidal holy war that formed the entirety of Ishgard’s national identity for a millennia is just gone.

That means that there’s no longer any glory gained from slaying dragons. That means the Order of the Dragoon is now completely meaningless. Commoners could become nobles by applying themselves and slaying dragons, but now even that limited and dangerous social mobility no longer exists.

About the only thing that separates Ishgard from the other city states is that they have snow, now. Where it was once an environment ripe for intrigue, it’s now as deflated and as saccharine as any of the other city states.

2). The ending wasn’t earned by anyone

Ishgard becoming a more peaceful state isn’t an inherently bad thing, though. Honestly, that is kind of small potatoes. The problem is how Ishgard got there.

Heavensward’s story had no struggle and no sacrifice. At least, nothing that was meaningful or represented. Literally, Ishgard achieved its peace completely effortlessly. 

Why does Ishgard transition so smoothly to a republic? Why is it that when Aymeric says “Hey guys, the dragons said it’s our fault and they’re totally right”, everyone accepts it unanimously? Why does Aymeric manage to take on the politics of the House of Lords and House of Commons so easily and effortlessly? How come Lucia has absolutely no qualms whatsoever about Aymeric’s aide-de-camp being discovered as Garlean? How is it that the Temple Knights and most especially the Dragoons--in which having a doomed hometown that was completely incinerated by dragons and having lost everyone you loved is almost a requirement--accept the peace so readily?

The most that anyone ever suffers is that Aymeric gets stabbed with a fruit knife exactly one time, and some crazy lady in Falcon’s Nest gets shot with an arrow.

And no, Haurchefant and Ysayle most emphatically do not count. Haurchefant was a one-dimensional character whose death was padded to the brim with arbitrary, ham-fisted melodrama, and Ysayle died in a context that was completely and totally irrelevant to her character arc to the point where her death may as well have not happened and literally nothing in the story would have changed.

I'm not exactly advocating for Game of Thrones-esque levels of character death. But even in light-hearted, idealistic stories, there are struggles. There is an ordeal for our heroes to conquer, and the resolution is earned. Can you imagine if, in the Lord of the Rings, Frodo and Sam really did take the Eagles to Mordor and just dropped the ring into Mount Doom? Pop, just like that?

Estinien's struggle over Nidhogg and subsequently over his own vengeance, then dying in order to keep both of those things from continuing to hurt people he cares about. That's a struggle and sacrifice. That's a price paid to overcome a meaningful conflict, because overcoming all meaningful conflict requires a great deal of effort, sacrifice, or both. But Estinien is just fine too. Turns out, all he had to do to kill his most hated enemy was get possessed by him. Huh! More people should try that.  

Aymeric could have been a really good avatar for Ishgard’s conflict as a whole. Here we have a military man and bastard son of the Archbishop suddenly become embroiled in politics and trusted to lead the future of his nation. I keep mocking his getting stabbed with a fruit knife in 3.1, but there was some actual drama there: the nobility accused Aymeric of being a patricidal heretic and saw his removing Thordan as a power grab. And the reason why Aymeric seems mostly flat is because the world doesn't give him any consequences to deal with, and even if they do, we never see him deal with this consequences. Ishgard becomes a seamless democracy with no problem. He doesn't care about the Eyes of Nidhogg at all or the implication that Nidhogg might come back as long as they're still intact. Everyone respects and follows him without question. He faces no genuine conflict that reflects upon his character besides "He's a nice guy and does good stuff". Why is Aymeric never overwhelmed by the politics? Why do we never see his frustration from having to juggle the wants and needs of Lords and commoners? Why does he never think about the ramifications of his actions (fucking EYES OF NIDHOGG, ANYONE)? There is a lot of room for serious depth that goes wasted because ultimately, Aymeric is a side character. And the thing is that Lucia can have real depth too besides being Aymeric's arm candy. She's a defected Garlean. We can never tell if her experience as a soldier in the Empire colours her perception of Eorzea or Ishgard. We never see Aymeric really rely on her except as a patsy or a messenger. If Aymeric is busy running the country as Lord Speaker, shouldn't she be in charge of the Temple Knights? Shouldn't Lucia have some apprehensions on being found out as a Garlean and being put in a position of authority? She's devoted to Aymeric and Ishgard, but we never see her be relevant except when she's doing something in Aymeric's stead. Is she ashamed of being Garlean?

Oh well, I guess it doesn’t matter. Peace for everyone, yay!

3). The focus of the story was Fucked with a capital F

Maybe it’s just me, but I am not on board with the game's fetish for the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. I get that they're essentially the "main" characters and the vehicle our characters use to travel all over the place and beat up primals, but the characters are flat and completely uninteresting. I don't care! I want to see Ishgard. I want to delve into a conflicted theocracy undergoing rapid, sudden change. I want to see more Aymeric, more Lucia, more Ysayle and Estinien. Hell, I want to see more of those fucking Fortemps brats more than I want to see the Scions.

This is also where I kind of start to get a little mad.

I get that the main conflict is between the Scions and the Ascians regarding the revival of Zodiark. Fine. I just don't think that the pacing of a far more interesting storyline (the Dragonsong war) should have been completely butchered in order to make room for the Scions and Ascians who really don't even do anything besides show up in the background and remind you that things are going to happen. Not that they are happening, but that eventually there'll be some kind of payoff.

The Scions get a ridiculous amount of screen time considering how little they accomplish and how irrelevant they are to Ishgard, and it is astounding how little effort the game puts in to make us care about them. I don't care about Thancred's missing pants. I don't care about Krile being Minfillia in all but name. I stopped caring about Alphinaud when he had the audacity to tell the Warrior of fucking Light to hand out T-shirts to the Crystal Braves because there’s no Eorzean word for “delegation”.

The Scions are the main characters, fine. This wouldn’t be such a problem if any of them had more personality or dimension than a piece of drift wood. We had the perfect opportunity to explore in-depth this new land of Ishgard and Coerthas, and instead it was wasted on...the Scions.

Here's why I don't like any of the writing for the Scions: they do display a measure of depth, consequence, and respond to consequence, but the thing is that their writing is built on more bad writing. Let's take for example Thancred, who actually has some real weight among the Scions. He felt responsible for Minfillia since he got her dad killed and feels guilt over being unable to save her. He's grieved over Minfilia becoming the voice of Hydaelyn and is much less snarky and less of a womaniser, becoming more stoic as a result. There's some actual development there. Except, the subject of his dramas was a cardboard cutout who was more useless than a DVD rewinder (Minfilia), the whole reason for her death was absurd to the point of raving madness (the entire Ul'dah conflict in 2.5 that started Heavensward...jesus shit), and interactions with Thancred are mostly just exposition. Thancred is always an observer and never a subject. Urianger is about the only Scion I actually like because there is actual emotional depth there that is revealed after the death of Moenbryda and the subject of his affections wasn't totally incompetent. Alisaie got a lot of focus in the last patch, but her character is so transparently a blatant plot device that it's hard to take seriously. She appears and disappears as needed. She had a good arc during Binding Coil where she defrosts but in 3.4 she goes totally Scion-brand flat. And in 3.4, her whole drama was that she wasn't willing to kill a kobold kid who might be tempered. Our teenaged heroine might have a problem with killing children? Stop the presses, Square Enix!

Also, think about this: Moenbryda got introduced in one patch and killed in the next, and she was written way better than most of the Scions, and that was with most of her backstory being delivered via exposition dump. Square Enix can do it, they just choose not to.

4). What is pacing? Can you eat it?

Ugh.

Like I said, I don’t find it especially problematic that Ishgard underwent radical change. I do have an especially HUGE problem with how it happened, though.

If they really had to pull off the "Nidhogg comes back to life" plot device, then Heavensward should have ended with Nidhogg's first death followed immediately by Estinien's possession. 3.1 Aymeric acting in direct opposition to Archbishop Thordan in order to secure peace with Hraesvelgr's brood. 3.2 would deal with Aymeric and Co. working towards securing said peace amidst the chaos about the Dragonsong War, and still end with Vidofnir getting shanked just after a tenuous peace had been agreed upon. 3.3, Nidhogg dies. 3.4 would deal with the conflict of Ishgard's reformation and hint at Thordan’s plans to become a primal, and the expansion ends with 3.5 as Thordan become a Primal in a desperate bid to secure the theocracy's power after peace had been achieved with the dragons.

You can completely write this off as me complaining that the story is bad because I didn’t write it, sure, whatever. But let’s examine what actually happened.

Instead, more than half of the initial expansion story and the subsequent 3.1 and 3.2 patches is spent fucking around with the Scions and watching the Ascians and Warriors of Darkness twirl their bad-guy mustaches going "Guys we are totally still relevant to the story". Then Regula van Hydrus shows up to join the mustache twirling by going "Please don’t forget the Garleans, we put a lot of effort into recycling the Judges from Final Fantasy 12", and seeing Square Enix completely fucking bomb any potential that Ul'dah had to be interesting by not going through with killing off the Sultana.

Side note, what in the flying fuck was the point of the Sultana’s poisoning and the whole Ul’dah thing besides making it so Raubahn now has to put magazines on his lap to turn the pages? If you can legitimately answer this question--and no, getting the WoL to Ishgard does not count because the WoL already had a gazillion reasons to go there that weren’t idiotic--then I’ll buy you a Night Pegasus mount.

I’m going to highlight all of my subsequent issues with addressing the train wreck that is Archbishop Thordan “Wasted Opportunity VII”.

Like I said, I somewhat understand that the writing is constrained by the game design. But that doesn’t really excuse the fact that Thordan’s entire character was completely bonkers.

He locks up Aymeric, runs away from Ishgard, ninja loots the key to Azys Lla, goes to Azys Lla and becomes a primal for about twenty minutes before dying. His entire load blown in the span of a couple of days at best.

And part of this problem is how easily the majority of Ishgard accepts responsibility for starting the Dragonsong War. Thordan's response to Aymeric threatening to reveal the truth shouldn't have been to lock Aymeric up, but to say "Who would believe you?" 

The Ishgardians have been the subject of a measured genocidal war that was deliberately transformed into a war of attrition for a thousand years. Are they really such easily manipulated little worms that Aymeric and some foreign wahoo who may or may not have actually killed primals can sway a population from the entirety of their millennia-old tradition and heritage with a couple of speeches?

In addition, the main conflict between Thordan and Aymeric's ideologies in the game is implied to be order versus chaos, except Thordan's idea of "order" is completely batshit and nonsensical.

Thordan's whole deal should have been that Ishgard needs the Dragonsong War, or at least the dragons as enemies, to remain stable and to retain its heritage and national identity. For one thousand years, Ishgard's been throwing themselves at the dragons, and to completely undermine the last thousand years of war would do nothing but sow chaos and breed discontent and destroy the unity that's kept the city together all this time. That is the idea of order that Thordan should have been trying to adhere to: the status quo is god, or ends on favourable terms.

Instead, Thordan for some reason decides that the path to peace is a world of absolute order at the cost of all freedoms and the destruction of anyone who opposes him. He becomes more one dimensional in motivations than Sauron. This is some insane hypocritical thinking since he opens the gates so the Heretics can assault the foundation to fuel the prayers to become King Thordan, and this hypocrisy completely robs him of any legitimacy. There's no escalation. Thordan immediately jumps to fire the nuke that is becoming King Thordan. There's no buildup. And that's most of Heavensward's writing in a nutshell: the pacing is awful, so all these characters either fix things flawlessly in an incredibly short time with no consequences (Aymeric), or immediately become insane (Thordan) to move the plot along.

--

I don’t trust Stormblood’s content to be compelling at all. Anything that was interesting about Ala Mhigo will be resolved with maybe five lines of dialogue,  tops, if Heavensward is any indication. At best, there will be an offscreen resolution that maybe makes sense if you just don’t think about it.

Ala Mhigo has the potential to have a lot of interesting themes and conflict. I just don't trust the writers to actually explore any of that, because who bothers exploring interesting themes and conflict when we can watch Yda be a princess or some shit? Look, Papalymo is hitting someone with Tupsimati! That's interesting, right? Thancred lost his pants again, uh oh! No. The Warriors of Darkness were pretty decent, but the conflict with the Ascians should really be a background thing, a sinister undertone that adds to the gravity of the Warrior of Light going around and saving the world. The instant you shove the mysteries in our face--repeatedly--it stops being a mystery and it takes all the proactivity away from our characters. Here's how we currently handle the Ascians: we sit on our happy asses and wait for them to do something, then react. And maybe we'll save Ishgard on the side if we feel like it. It should be the other way around. We should be proactively going to stop the Dragonsong war as our main motivation. We should be going to liberate Ala Mhigo as our main motivation. I don't think we should be going there with the Scions, waiting for the Ascians, and "Yeah cool the Ascians aren't doing anything, I guess we should liberate Ala Mhigo".

TL;DR i don’t like FFXIV’s story