#i like all the 4 main character tbh | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

skrunksthatwunk · 1 year ago

Text

probably 3 or 5 imo (leaning towards 5). 3 is the first time we really see kiryu out of the dark underbelly of kamurocho and in like. his dream life. he's taking care of his family, it's pretty low stakes, the beach is calm and pretty, he's got friends, the community is nice. he can just take it easy breaking in his dilfy button ups. go crazy

but then this drastic physical distance isn't enough, and when you see that fail, when he has to go back to the bullshit and he still can't protect people which is why he left in the first place it fucking CRUSHES kiryu (re: the death of rikiya and thus the spirit of okinawa, the rude awakening from that dream of an idyllic haven away from kamurocho). like. oughh. it's also just kinda heartbreaking seeing what he's leaving behind and what he can't have because of it (esp majima but even friends like date and yuya and kazuki and whatever). and then. mine. and daigo. fucking OUGHHHGGGHHJZJGGJDJAAAA

5 is kiryu's depression arc and it Shows. he's trying another move, this time without the ppl he's doing it for, and he fucking hates it. it sucks. he's miserable. and it's not enough anyway and then his son shows up and he can't be there for him now and he couldn't be there or wasn't before and he can't fix that and he knows that so just hurry up and get out of here don't make me choose again i can't keep doing this and they won't leave him alone and he keeps shrugging them off and they keep chasing him and why can't they just let him waste away and they fucking. killed majima. they fucking killed majima. and so whether or not he's actually dead he has to investigate. and he puts the suit on again. again. after months away from his family and the only shit he cared about, away from the future he was stupid enough to think he could have, it's worth nothing. people are gonna die again. people who need him.

majima's getting old and saejima's going away again and the tojo's far from worth fighting for and has been for years but they gotta keep going. daigo and kiryu need them. wherever the hell kiryu is. who fuckin knows. and then all the shit with baba happens and fucking MIREI AND HARUKA and i just. oughh. plus shinada's story is sad, though i think it's got a pretty happy ending. but haruka fights her way to the top of a fickle and often poisonous industry knowing that's what's keeping her and her fellow morning glories' only dad/father figure away and it all feels so distant and small and like it doesn't matter at all. and then haruka gives it all up to find him, to seek him out even though he's running away, because more than anything she wants him to stay, even if it's dangerous. and she finds him in the snow, dying. broken. and he can't even believe she's there, it's too good to be true. he thinks he's dreaming. she knows he loves her so, so much he's willing to hurt them both terribly to protect her. but he's back. it's alright. he'll live, and they'll be together again.

but, of course, it's not that simple. and with the hindsight of 6 (though you could argue that's more about 6 being sad than 5, which is fair), knowing it was all for nothing, and that they'd be torn apart again, and that kiryu would once again run away, this time in such a complete and heartbreaking fashion it's just. aghhh

Fuck it, counterpart poll

#4 would be really depressing if it didnt piss me off so much. like saejima's plotline is soooooo. urghh. bawling #6 is fucked up too. agony #one is obviously sad too like. kiryu loses EVERYTHING #sorry this is so kiryu-centric. obviously the depressingness isnt all dependent on how kiryu's doing game to game #but it's alsp literally his saga. like he's the main character for most of the games #hes the most consistent emotional thruline character and we're meant to view events through his lens a lot #plus a lotta the shit that fucks me up the most happens to/around him so. yeah #but saejima's shit in 4 man. agonyyyyy and haruka's in 5. and ichiban's nightmarish situation oughh #tbh 2 and 0 have their moments too. like 0 fucks me up but i dont think of it as depressing exactly for some reason #2's implication of kiryu's suicidality is Rough Shit and some of the stuff with daigo and ryuji and sayama are p emotional #also ishin hurt my feelings. but not that much #anyway. thats my argument for 5 lol #rgg #sorry for rambling but like. IM ILL ABOUT THESE GAMES

49 notes · View notes

elizabethrobertajones · 5 months ago

Note

kriles summer trust top is kinda problematic tho... lalafell r smol and should be wholesome.

Aw, come on.

I'm sorry but I have to disagree because within the fiction, lalafell are just as mean, gross and horny as anyone else. Gegeruju is a perv, and the whole Ul'dah Syndicate is full of evil little bastards. On the good side, lala are just as complex and grown up as anyone else - Tataru courts followers and dances in a skimpy outfit in the Forgotten Knight, Giott is a roaring drunk stereotypical fantasy dwarf (not to mention whatever the heck is going on with the Tomra and Komra dwarves in general tbh :P). And Lamitt's story was sweet but it did involve her having adult feelings for Ardbert.

Like, really, I can only think of 4 completely wholesome lala out of a cast of hundreds, and they happen to mostly be the ones we've interacted with a lot (Nanamo; Pipin who is a Heroic Knight archetype; Papalymo, who was a grumpy old scholar man; Krile). But that's more about them being main characters serving roles in the narrative rather than indicative of how lalas behave as a whole. In fact after going through ARR, meeting Pipin and finding One Good Ul'dahn Lala is an enormous relief (since the other one is apparently dead now).

And Krile is a main character now so she's allowed to step out of the shadow of being uwu cat hoodie girl who wasn't written with much depth outside of being serious and earnest and rather spooky; she's actually 22 years old according to the first wiki I found - regardless of if that's totally accurate she's definitely meant to be a peer of the other adult Scions and they all treat her like an adult. Her introduction cutscene has her ribbing Alphy as an older friend laughing at how a much younger one used to behave, so we're supposed to immediately understand on meeting her that she's post-teen since she knew 11 year old Alphy and was of course older than him since he was a freak entry into the Studium at that age. Probably a necessary writing moment because establishing lala's age with hilarious moustaches or deep voices or whatever is a part of how the game has to present them.

Out of the fiction, I know lalas are part of a much wider trope that people do find problematic as a whole (e.g. just because in universe Tataru has babes across the globe and that's normal to everyone involved, who are consenting adults in a world which wholly understands Tataru as a consenting adult, is it actually really creepy that it's happening at all because her body type is toddler-esque? Is it weird in general that lala emotes are SO baby in the same way miqo emotes are SO kitty?

ffxiv definitely goes waaay further into borderline creepy territory than many games with smaller fantasy races in it, when it comes to how lala look, so yeah I know it's a fraught area and can be discomforting to see the game present child-shaped people as having adult desires and a thing some people understandably set aside along with other elements as things they're not happy with co-existing in the game with things they really love.) We can absolutely talk about that on a meta level of how we relate to the game and feel about it, just like things we find racist or uncomfortable in other ways e.g. eng translation Hien's treatment of Yotsuyu being a really problematic point.

But, that's one thing, versus talking about us here in fandom and how we relate to it, and I think your ask is, well, really not very deeply considered on any level, but I think is talking about how we as fandom relate to lalas, based on an inaccurate reading of them in the game, meaning you're really not even analysing a thing about it and therefore your ask comes more in the terms of policing how we should FEEL about Krile's beach outfit, and dictating that we SHOULD find lalas smol and wholesome, and that therefore there's an inherent problem in anyone reacting positively to the outfit, rather than critiquing its place in the game in the first place. Having hit a cognitive dissonance in seeing swimsuit Krile existing you've come to me to complain it's problematic rather than taking any actual meaningful action. Ergo, this is a fandom problem to you, not a game problem. WE should find it problematic and say so, you are implying, shocked that so many people looked at a post about the beach outfits and no one commented as such.

Aside from lalafell being fictional and at no point other than the visuals are they treated as children (and emotes aside, playing through the MSQ as a lala wol you easily fall into seeing them as an adult because of course all the cutscenes share the same level of gravitas no matter what you're playing or what clown costume you have on any player), there ARE actually real humans who are built somewhere closer to lala than not, and would be drawn to playing any of the smaller races in a game (like, gnomes in WoW, halflings in D&D, etc) because that's just their chance at representation. And because FFXIV doesn't have anything other than precious moments doll-shaped people the look might be great in the sense that they have the proportions of a cherub statue and it is a lot harder to meet in the middle than a halfling (notoriously hairy middle aged bastards and much easier to read as adult, though that doesn't exclusively represent people who've had growth developmental differences), that IS still the only representative option some people have in the game and if they want to indulge it rather than play something else with proportions forced on them by many games, then what the hell is wrong with that?

And they WILL go to bat for lalas and get upset when people say that they have to be precious baby characters who act like children. I've seen that on tumblr: there's a whole lala community who keeps kinda low key and away from everyone else by their own admission BECAUSE as soon as they get too much attention they're deluged with hate for playing characters who have adult desires and dress fancy - or, you know, like any other random slutty elf WoL. The fact I wandered onto lala blogs at random and saw that complaint on the first pages should speak to how often they have to deal with it. And, again, within the fiction of the game their characters are completely 100% normal and doing what other lalas who are written by the game do as well. I KNOW those blogs are out there and they'd be scared of getting this exact ask, and it would greatly upset them and ruin their day and put them off having any interaction with the community, which fucking sucks. We're here to have fun!

That said I'm not a weirdo anti all up in others' business, it's also fine to just like lalas and stuff without some huge circumstantial justification like "they look like me" - or - "my IRL wife" or whatever - you can also just play a lala or ship with one and it's like, your business. If that's all you're doing and it's not a hypothetical child molester who also has a whole gallery of lala porn that the cops find when they impound the computer full of REAL CHILDREN stuff as well it's never going to be anyone else's business anyway, ever, and that's like, one hypothetical awful person for a whole fandom of normies who are just surprised by how much idk Pipin's deep voice rocked their world and changed their whole perspective on what a hot character was.

Like, granted, that one HYPOTHETICAL weirdo will make everything rancid because there are people waiting to jump on people who like lalas, but also it still won't actually change what other people are doing into being Evil just because someone who actually hurts children found lalas attractive too. That, again, was the hypothetical awful person's problem and not theirs. And in no way can we just casually imply ALL people who like lalas are just inherently going to be dangerous, like real children, or enacting a private psychodrama teetering on the edge of all that.

They could in fact be completely average and boring psychologically and also have a crush on Tataru. Or, I guess, normal amount of weird for a fandom, but basically average XD In a fictional world where these characters are treated as adults, even normal people will naturally end up drawn to them as adults because, well, that's the story that's we're all engaging in. It's not inherently a thought crime to do so, because, weirdly, thought crimes don't exist.

Also, of course, people will literally discourse that hobbits are child-coded and shouldn't be shipped or seen as sexy, despite the most famous halflings, who made the entire halfling race as a generic brand, all being middle aged, hairy, smoking, drinking, guys with normal adult desires and mindsets. I mean yeah Elijah Wood was 18 when they started filming LotR (over several years so he was Krile's age by the end :P) but also Frodo celebrated his 40th birthday before setting off on the Ring Quest in the book and he was the baby of the group aside from Pippin.

In any case, there's no fucking winning and so I can understand completely that if a fucking Hobbit from Lord of the Rings gets shit for being short, and people are getting called a perv for fancying Sam Gamgee, then why not just embrace it with a Lalafell because you're literally damned no matter what in the eyes of someone who won't meet a LOTR HOBBIT where he stands as an adult man.

There's some DEEP puritanical brainrot going on online and I don't want to be a part of it whatsoever, so it means accepting lala likers for the sake of protecting Merry and Pippin's right to be seen as hot, than like, I know which side of of the line I'm dragging my beach chair. It's not even a question. I'm defending people who think lalas are appealing.

ANYWAY none of this is my business, I don't even find lalas sexy, I just think Krile looks nice in her cute summer top and it's lovely that she's getting fashion advice from her besties, and there's a million reasons to be happy about that and for her as a character, and only miserable bastard reasons to go "aurgh aurgh it's problematic" and condemn the game and everyone who plays it just for enjoying something. Lalas are NOT smol and wholesome, they're short and people, and that's fine.

#ffxiv #rant under the cut :)#I am Pro Fandom first and Anti-Anti because I am also Pro Mind Yer Own.#sending asks like this is categorically not minding yer own #I cast: wall of text #... you all don't need to read this unless you're anon coming back to see if I've humbly grovelled #I may be in a great deal of pain and making it someone else's problem XD

415 notes · View notes