#namikka

[abimee]

mama :]

[knightskuld]

|| a trail neverending.

opening dawntrail : final fantasy xiv

[windupaidoneus]

oh yeah theres also an old lady who dies in dt & like she was relevant for maybe one quest where she tells wuk lamat that she supports her then the only thing we see of her is her dying during the attack from zoraal ja & krile seeing the soul absorption thing & going what the HELL was that... then its never brought up again that this specific old lady died. So in my timeline she didnt die. because i like random npc #784 you see & i think wuk lamat wouldve said something. & because she didnt it means ms old lady didnt die. got it? thats how we roll here

[tritoch]

i have seen people be like "if you think what the dawntrail protagonists do in zone six is valid you have to conceded emet's approach/perspective was valid, what you do is basically what he does" and it's like...nah. it's obviously intentionally very similar ("it's like poetry, it rhymes") but there's some key differences:

emet is disgusted by sundered life, which he sees as inhuman, and longs to return to the unrecoverable past. so he does seven(ish) planet-wide genocides. the endless aren't new life, their ability to grow and learn is specifically in question (at the very least they are fundamentally incapable of taking in new sensory experience of certain forms), they're shades from the unrecoverable past, and you are destroying them in favor of those still alive.

also, we aren't disgusted by them nor do we think anything is fundamentally justified if done to them (everyone pretty much no-sells cahciua "we aren't alive so it doesn't matter if you kill us :)," in fact). we don't have like 12,000 years and the most advanced magic known to anyone alive. we are forced by serious exigency to destroy them due to a political impasse with their leadership's policy re: resource extraction. this tonal difference is in fact extremely important.

the endless themselves seem pretty ambivalent about the whole deal. they're bored or they're wary of the way their world keeps shrinking, and it's very explicitly neither a functioning society by any recognizable human terms nor a paradise.

related to the above, basically every named endless turns to the person most relevant to them (cahciua to erenville, krile's parents to her, namikka to wuk lamat, otis to you) and is like, huh, i really appreciate having this moment of grace at the end of my journey to see that it was all worthwhile and to resolve my lasting regrets, but i understand what you're here to do and yeah, it's probably time for us to go. (does the writing put a finger on the scale by doing this? sure, but the writers also designed and built the scales and everything they're weighing on them, so i find it hard to discredit any one aspect for being the writers' invention.)

finally uh no one in the party has kids with the endless or lives a full human lifetime as one of them lol.

it's important to remember that emet was definitely at least somewhat lying about not seeing the sundered as real people. the fact that he has "lived a thousand thousand of your lives . . . broken bread with you, fought with you, grown ill, grown old, sired children and yes, welcomed death’s sweet embrace" makes everything he did soooooo much crazier than what you do. if i managed to convince an endless to fall in love with me and i had a kid with them and i loved that kid so much that their death threw me into a permanent grief spiral then like. yeah i guess i would have to be like "well hats off to emet, folks." but luckily the game doesn't make you do that.

even if you insist everyone in living memory was a full living person that we killed, you're still weighing like a city of people versus 7+ planet-wide mass murders. you do not under any circumstances got to hand it to him.

living memory absolutely is evocative of everything that happens in shadowbringers. but rather than placing us in emet's shoes, it forces us to relive what we already did, to really fully face up to what we have done by promising to remember emet's culture after destroying any chance of its return. after two games going hard on the hope part of the game's central theme of hope arising from grief, now we're doing grief. we are forced to see the past of our memories not as a cold, ghostly art deco cubus-plagued socratic method hellscape but as the most beautiful technicolor theme park where everyone's happy and no one's sad and there's parades every day and your parents are alive and they love you so much. and then the game's conclusion is, yeah, you were still right to let go. in fact, you were and are morally obliged to let go. the living were and are worth more than the dead. our grief in letting go of them may be immense and turns our world to bleak nothingness for a time, and that is important to recognize, but at the end of the day our most pressing duty is to those we can yet save, not those we have lost.

[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #6: Promise

Prompt: halcyon || Master Post || On AO3

A/N: Spoilers for Dawntrail.

---

There are days when Gulool Ja Ja misses when his children were small, precocious things.

Zoraal Ja had had a solemnity about him from a young age, even then the pressure of the court’s expectations hanging heavy on the shoulders of the son of Blessing Siblings. But he had still smiled, rare, precious things, every small tilt of his lips and crinkling of his eyes a treasure to Gulool Ja Ja, as he treasured, too, the little trinkets Zoraal Ja brought back for him from his adventures. His eldest thrived most in the training arena and both Resolve had delighted in teaching Zoraal Ja to wield twin blades, gently guiding him through his first practice motions with wooden practice swords as a hatchling, sparring with him as a stripling when he was finally old enough for live steel. Zoraal Ja had beamed with pride in those days with every word of praise from Resolve or Reason or every congratulatory pat on the head or shoulder.

But despite Gulool Ja Ja’s love, and praise, and the assurances that Zoraal Ja needed to be nothing save himself, the expectations continued to pile on his son’s shoulders, that he needed to be more.

Those had been the days where Tural had been as newborn as Zoraal Ja, too, and Gulool Ja Ja regrets the time taken away from his son that being Dawnservant demanded. Now Zoraal Ja is a young man whose smiles had long since vanished and whose compassion had seemingly withered away, and Gulool Ja Ja can only hope the reserved but happy little boy, the one who had proudly handed him a rock shaped like a wivre, still lives within him.

Koana had also been a reserved little boy, almost painfully shy when he first came home to the palace. He had been Gulool Ja Ja’s faithful shadow, the unspoken fear that he would be left behind once more lurking in his big purple eyes. Teaching him to read and write had seen Koana begin to blossom, however, and Reason had never hesitated to reach for a scroll or book just out of range of the little boy’s chubby arms or answer any question Koana had about what he had read or learned from a tutor or heard around the palace. Always Koana had questions—though never about his people among the Hhetsarro.

It wasn’t until even Reason struggled to keep with Koana’s voracious appetite for learning that Gulool Ja Ja was faced with the knowledge he would need to let his son leave the nest in order for him to thrive. Resolve had fretted, and Reason had soothed, and he had sent many a letter to his old friend Galuf to assess the Studium as an adequate institution for his brilliant boy. But he had seen Koana off to Sharlayan at the docks with pride and an enthusiastic wave and known he would be fine.

His son had brought home many wondrous things to improve Tural, and Gulool Ja Ja is as awed as any of his people by dirigibles and steam engines. Koana had gained confidence in his time away, but Gulool Ja Ja worries his son was blinded by the newness of technological and magical wonders and had lost sight of the brilliance Tural’s own people, that he had not done enough to impart the belief that the past still has wisdom aplenty to guide the present into the future.

Wuk Lamat—his sweet, big-hearted Lamaty’i—had come to be his daughter in secret sorrow, entrusted to him by an old friend. And even as a full grown woman, he would never forget how small she had been as a kitten, nestled in the palm of his hand. She had been such a happy child, and that happiness had followed her into adulthood. Rambunctious, energetic, the terror of the palace; if it hadn’t been himself chasing after his wayward daughter through the halls as she shrieked with laughter, it had been Namikka. Lamaty’i had been a bright ball of sunshine, dragging her older brothers and Cahcuia’s quiet little boy into her games whenever she could.

She had taken to the axe with an enthusiasm that had almost made him leery. But for all her talent and hard work in the training yards, Lamaty’i did not rise to the same level of martial prowess as Zoraal Ja. She made friends easily, effortlessly charming many of the people she met, and she knew the names and families and histories of many of the citizens in Tuliyollal. But empathy and a willingness to listen paled before the intellectual brilliance of Koana.

Gulool Ja Ja should not have been so protective a father with his daughter, should have encouraged her to explore the wilds of their beautiful nation rather than keep her sheltered within the safety of Tuliyollal’s walls. Lamaty’i needs confidence and worldliness still, a deeper understanding of why the elders she listens to so love the Tural of today, of what Tural means.

Gulool Ja Ja misses being able to carry his children in his arms as if they were but little quetzals perched on his shoulders. But the future looms ever closer; age nips at his heels, and as Reason fades and fights with every part of his will to stay with his brother for just one more day, he knows he cannot hold onto the image of his sons and daughter as little innocents. And so he writes to his friends and their own children in Wachenpelo, and Ok’hanu, and Earthenshire, and Iq Br’aax, and Mamook, crafting a Rite to not just test his children—and whomever wins the contest he has planned—but to teach them. To guide them. To mold them.

Gulool Ja Ja is a father, but he is also a ruler, imperfect at both, and he cannot let down the people of Tural anymore than he can his children.

The Dawnservant’s children are called the Promises for a reason. The Promises for an ever better and brighter future.

(But that does not mean, late at night, hunched over the enormous desk in his office, as Reason fights growing weariness and Resolve shifts the stylus from his left hand to his right and moves the lamp closer to his side, that Gulool Ja Ja doesn’t wish he had a tiny, sleeping Lamaty’i  squished into his chair next to him on one side, Koana on the other with a book in his small hands, and Zoraal Ja leaning against his shins while tending to his new blades.)

[makersruin]

i really like gulool ja ja and his role in the grand narrative and im not trying to slander my bestie like that but i think its not too far-fetched to assume he mightve been an absent parent. if cahciua can leave her kid at home to do adventuring, it doesnt feel like too big of a stretch to assume that gulool ja ja also had to prioritize running tulliyollal over taking close care of his kids. wuk lamat and koana might've been fine and understood that he couldnt always be present (and more willing to accept this, as koana often talks about being grateful to be adopted at all and wuk lamat had namikka for a mother figure) but zoraal ja's behavior just makes a lot more sense if i can imagine it being a product of feeling neglected in the way erenville did, especially since their insecurities both manifest as if they need to accomplish something to be worthy of their home and family. gulool ja ja and cahciua both obviously love and adore their children, but sometimes it just isnt enough if you arent there.

[mrslittletall]

Thinking about Dawntrail's final zone and how you normally don't get to say goodbye when someone dies. I know movies and TV shows love to show you tearful goodbyes, but that is normally not a thing in real life. When have you ever hold a loved one in your arms being able to say your final words to them? No, normally you are getting a call. A call with the bad news. Or you wait outside the hospital room and the doctor comes out with a grave face. And even if it was a slow process and you expected it... The person who dies normally is so out of it that you can say goodbye to them, but they don't ackknowledge that you are there at all. And we see that in Dawntrail. It starts with Namikka. When we find her, she is so old that she barely recognizes anything around her anymore, slowly dying of old age, not even recognizing Wuk Lamat who she loved like a daughter. And then she dies. Wuk Lamat has just talked to her a couple days ago and now she's gone. And that is how losing someone in real life feels. You are not getting prepared for it. And I know what I am talking about. While I didn't lose him, I was told that it could be over in minutes, so I had to prepare myself for it... and I tell you, it feels AWFUL. And now let's look at Erenville. While he finds his mom again, she is already an endless. And he learns much later that she died. Now imagine she would never have been an endless. He would have come back and would have to learn that his mom is dead. He has been away for a couple years, looking forward to get back home and then this. It is no surprise he is an emotional mess in the last two final zones. And then we have Krile's parents. She never knew her biological parents. She came to Eorzea as an infant. She got raised by Galuf and that was the only family she knew. She never had a chance to know her parents... And Living Memory, it made it possible for these goodbyes to happen. It is the one positive thing about the zone. It gave those characters closure. Wuk Lamat could have closure with Namikka. Krile could meet her parents for the first time and come to terms with them being dead already. And Erenville could get closure about his mom's death, as messy as their relationship was. Yes, there is also Otis, but it is his other version. The one on Tural was the Soma Otis (if you don't know the game Soma, please play it or watch a LP, it's fantastic) and the one up there is Endless Otis. So I didn't talk about him because he feels like two different characters. I am thinking about that because in my WoL's lore, he lost his mom to a slow sickness and him being in Living Memory, he had to think about her, knowing that she is not an endless and won't be there. And that he stayed with her as she died, but it wasn't a tearful goodbye, it was him holding the hand of a person who doesn't even recognize him anymore. And that hurt. That hurt more than her dying ever could. That she never said goodbye to him. I think Dawntrail, especially the final zone, is a deeply personal story about some of the writers having to cope with the death of a loved one. Because it feels so REAL! It is the most real I have seen death and grief seen depicted, even with the whole "forever in denial" phase of the Alexandrians. And I see this all the time because the people who hit Dawntrail the hardest have lost someone or almost lost someone. I think it is beautiful that Dawntrail doesn't shy away from the narrative of death being a neccessary part of life, but also, what the death of a loved one does to the ones who are left behind.

[elizabethrobertajones]

How did they feel about the Endless?

While I, Lizbob, was wracked with existential torment about the whole thing, Frog was like "Oh, they're just complicated ghosts. We've dealt with ghosts before, I know what to do!" ... which was also pretty much how she handled Elpis as well, treating Venat like the only alive person she talked to the whole time because no one else had any forward agency on the story (SHE THOUGHT - Ultima Thule with the steel chair etc).

Actually, I think UT hit Frog harder than me, and Living Memory hit me way harder than Frog. It was very strange sobbing my eyes out over something while knowing Frog was way more likely to be concerned entirely with her friends and the ongoing pressures of the plot. I wanted to loiter for ages in the zones before they got deleted and she was just "End of the world imminent, gotta moooove".

So, that said. I think she immediately rationalised pretty much all of the Endless as ghosts, and only had a bit of uncertainty over Otis because she couldn't quite tell from his telling of it if he was his whole soul in a robot suit or if he was also a stripped down and re-uploaded blank soul. Of course the way to deal with ghosts is to treat them like the living and respect their wishes and listen to them, but always with the thought of "how can I help you in the long run to not be like this any more, but to move you on back into the Lifestream and get things going normally again?"

She's encountered more than enough times things which should not have souls in the most technical sense which did end up seeming to live so fully or to show so much spark it was hard to deny they felt real - from her Anima doll from the HW relic quests (still travelling with her on all the MSQ!) to meeting the Twelve and learning they were extremely juiced up constructs of memory. The thing that made her pause most was comparing the Endless to Amaurot!Hyth, who had a little sparkle based on Emet Selch's creation putting too much into it, and he felt far more real than any of the other shades. But he was still a recreation.

Once she knew they were blank souls with a memory pasted over, it felt SO wrong because the first soul could have been anyone, and the memories over the top were a copy adding the personality layer. Even if they were wholly authentic to the person whose memories they'd once been because a whole soul was powering a complete set of memories, they were still just ghosts which weren't the contiguous version of their old selves; the older ghosts like Krile's parents had probably had their souls burned out long ago, and who knew where the ball of energy that had once been Cahcuia was now? Was she in Zoraal Ja when we fought him?

So all Frog's time with the Scions and other travels had given her a rather detached scientific thought process about the Endless themselves. It was all for her friends and their response to the Endless that she felt pained, because it was real enough to show them how their loved ones would be in that situation, and to even get emotional closure for the living and answers from their memories. But she wasn't even sure that when the Endless were deleted, their true souls in the Aetherial Sea, if they had made it, would even know they had that closure. And she couldn't even say anything like that because it would be entirely heartless to deny that it was real in a way that mattered to those who had known them. Wuk Lamat DESERVED to feel she'd said goodbye to Namikka properly, you know? And that's entirely depending on if the souls used in regulators were actually released to the Aetherial Sea on death and that was where the entropy was coming from, and not destroyed in the process. In which case there was even less hope of any of this having meant anything more than something the living could cling onto.

I think in the end it was just a horrible ache in her heart, but mostly for the living, and a sense of needing to end this whole process :(

The weirdest thing to her was making people forget the dead, and even denying them being able to visit and hang out. If the living could take weekend trips to the Great Funfair In The Sky and have the grandkids play with great gammy as she was as a fellow 6 year old that would utterly blow up the concept of generational family in such a fun way and she thought it would be MORE of a balm to the living, having seen how her friends reacted to their ghost family, that anyone should go visit them and know that death wasn't the end and their loved one had merely gone onto a new stage of life. She wouldn't have agreed with it ethically but as a culture living with such a technology it would have made sense emotionally and been MUCH harder for her to think about tearing it all down with no hesitation, because it would have at least been emotionally sustainable even if it wasn't energy sustainable. The utter cloistering of the dead and the refusal to let the living have grief was what did it for her. She did the side quests in Heritage Found, she saw immediately how fucked up the people were without memories of their loved ones and how much it had damaged them. The regular people were all suffering in such a profound way. She was feeling on a crusade for the living before they set foot in there.

(Meanwhile, Lizzy, watching Erenville get called Fussy Little Bun Bun: WAAAAH AHOO HOO HOO BLURRRRR HOO HOO)

[chilope]

wol: i will go get your bracelet back npnp

namikka: oh please dont put yourself in harms way on my account!

erenville: im actually way more concerned about her brutally murdering an entire bandit camp full of people and getting us permanently banned from the region

[sunderedazem]

I know i already have a dawntrail reaction post here with a genuine take but i am going to bitch again because i saw some condescending shit and got annoyed. So yeah. This is a vent. If it's not about you then it's not about you, you know? I'm not naming anyone b/c it's an aggregate annoying not a That Person Is Annoying.

Anyway.

Have a certain segment of the people who liked all or most of DT considered that perhaps, some people who disliked parts of dawntrail (especially the latter half) dislike it because they understood and actually just *disagree* with the themes and portrayal of the themes of that portion of the game? I don't dislike it because I didn't get it or because i didn't interpret it correctly (because this shit is subjective too!), I dislike it because it feels like it's spitting on the themes of the previous two expansions to me. Maybe the patch quests will resolve that dislike, i don't know. The Arcadion raids are helping a little, admittedly. If it keeps going like that I might start appreciating things I didn't before.

(Spoilers below here)

BUT- I will never be okay with the fact that all of Living Memory gets deleted, and the people of Alexandria do not have their memories of their lost loved ones restored. To me, that is not moving on, or moving forward, and our characters, the Scions, and the Tuliyollali (?) do not actually have the capability or right to remember these people on behalf of Alexandria when Alexandria's people *still exist*.

The past two expansions have involved uncovering and remembering, or at least acknowledging, a forgotten people, while also protecting the people of today. The Ascians are not an existing society deliberately divesting themselves from their past, they are a nearly-dead people who want the past back. And we choose to remember them, as Emet-selch asks, because we are his last chance of Amaurot not being utterly lost to time. We are literally his last resort. Our win means his people stay dead. He asks us to remember because we're the only people left who even know a little bit about Amaurot.

But Alexandria is a society that is still present! It still has its own culture, its own history, it's own right to keep and change and preserve all of that! But it's people don't appear to know when people die (or if they're killed for their souls, as is implied with Ambrose) or about psychonekrosis. They literally don't remember death. And they all deserve an actual chance to be able to preserve their own culture and history and to remember their own dead! Shutting down Living Memory with NO provisions made for them to be able to preserve the memory of their past *if they so choose to* is nothing like the previous themes of FFXIV and I don't like that. At all.

I am very tired of people acting like a dislike for Dawntrail indicates incomprehension or worse, malice somehow. Or acting like this point of view is completely incomprehensible and means "you're just mad it's not SHB and that's unfair to the devs" or etc. (or the worst- somehow assuming I'm a reddit dudebro who hates Wuk Lamat because I can't handle a leading woman if I ever mention that I thought her character was misused in the latter half of DT.)

I'm really, genuinely happy for you if you loved the latter half of DT. It was visually stunning. The music all slaps. Heritage Found is fucking eerie as shit and the intro to this part of the game with Namikka gave me good heebiejeebies. I can see why people enjoyed it. But to me, the end felt like a series of just...shock value emotional moments. It felt pointless and worse, kind of careless and callous (at least from a Watsonian viewpoint). And I would like that to NOT be called a "red flag lol" thank you. I'm perfectly sure I can hold a normal fucking discussion with people who loved the shit outta Dawntrail about things we mutually enjoyed.

Idk man. This is a vent post, obviously. And I do get that Twitter and Reddit are being Twitter and Reddit. I'm not on them for a few reasons but that nastiness is the main one. But it's also really fucking annoying to keep seeing shit that amounts to "If you dislike or criticize DT at all you're a nasty foul person/stupid idiot who is objectively wrong and you're not worth speaking to ever again." Like dude- can we NOT reactively slide to the polar opposite of the reddit dudebros. Can we just acknowledge that they have viewpoints that are shit *outside* the game that are causing them to have shitty other opinions.

Sighs. Anyway.

[7marichan714]

[7.0] Some time before the claimants gathering, the Dawnservant Gulool Ja Ja wished to speak with a family currently vacationing at Tuliyollal...

-It's been some time since we received visits of esteemed guests, much less warriors of your caliber. I sense formidable souls. Would you grant me the chance to test your mettles. -Gulool Ja Ja requested. -With the condition that someone looks for our children. -Stellaris proposed. -Aye, we need to keep an eye on them. -Estinien added.

Abel, Céleste and Lunette were left at the care of Namikka, one of the servants. The twins looked eager, cheering their parents from afar, while the baby girl remained observant..

-So you wish to fight both of us at the same time? Very well... -Estinien extended his right hand to Stellaris, smirking lovingly. -May I have this dance, milady? I believe we're capable of this and more. -It shall be my honor, milord. -she replied with a soft smile, reciprocating the gesture, holding his hand with care. -It will be Lunette's first time witnessing one of our bouts. -Let us deliver a battle to remember, for our newborn daughter.

MY COMMISSIONS INFO

[radigalde]

Okay, I just can't. I need to rant about a very specific thing from 7.0 main story. Spoilers, ofc.

.

.

.

Playing through Stormblood and post-Stormblood, I thought that Lyse's decision to invite a very openly and well-known tempered snake into the city without any supervision (despite working with Scions for years and knowing about tempering from experience) would be THE stupidest moment of the entire game. And it was, right until the Living Memory from Dawntrail.

Immediately after entering, the gang just... go oh so slowly through this Disneyland, talking with locals, tasting the food, playing with gondolas and whatever else. Under the excuse of "this is an expansion about shoehorning knowing other's lives and cultures, so we must learn about these people and therefore their deaths won't be in vain".

Guys. Those are not real people. They are not even souls of the deceased locked in the limbo. This is literally a simulation made by a generative AI of sorts, which calculates on what the person should look like, do, say, etc. based on the database of extracted memories. And each second of this Disneyland's existence is fueled by burning through the very real souls. Including the very same people whose memories are used for simulation. It's not even "saving dead at the cost of living" or "saving past at the cost of future", it's akin to saving fucking memory NFTs at the cost of everything and everyone.

Okay, Wuk Lamat is dumb as fuck and learned about the whole reflections-souls-aether mumbo-jumbo like yesterday, but what the fuck is wrong with the rest? Are they nuts? Did they loose the last brain cell somewhere in the previous slog? They should have turn the whole thing off ASAP, not take a leisure stroll.

And it's so clear that the writers wanted to make the same dramatic plot twist as with the recreated Amaurot in Shadowbringers, but just as everything else in this MSQ it flopped horribly. Boo hoo, dead Namikka's memory is here too, it's so sad, Alexa, play Despacito while Namikka's very soul is being slowly disintegrated to fuel the illusion, completely unaware of her reunion.

I'm so fucking done, I hate DT's MSQ so much--

[tobyfoxmademeascaly]

Dawntrail Part 19

WHAT THE FUCK? (continued)

well, that explains a certain crafting log recipe.

once again: poor erenville.

sir you are so fucking small

im with you

OHHH I WANT TO RUN THROUGH THAT. MIST MACHINE SUPREME

... fun mist machine aside though. i find Heritage Found to be DEEPLY unsettling. i dont trust this lady.

NOT YOURS. GIVE THEM BACK

(auto-soldier meaningfully crosses through the background)

30 YEARS? oh namikka is LONG dead. Or Mortally Challenged in some way.

HER affection for THEM may be genuine. I suspect its not true the other way around. everyone has those resurrection baubles on their heads and they all seem WAY too okay with the fact that they were encased in a dome of lightning well within living memory

… watch as she actually genuinely IS harmless and im barking at shadows

SUS-picious.

yeah there's ABSOLUTELY mind control or something going on.

… I'm about to watch something existentially horrifying play out, aren't I.

... excuse me?

... i think I have a suspicion as to what powers those soldiers now.

girl, i think this is going to be much less metaphorical.

THE DOODAD UNPERSONED HER

hey what is That.

one of my favorite little character things is how alisaie seems to LOVE climbing on things. she wants to feel tall.

(ominous music playing over the mascot)

Wuk Lamat has just shared my experience of being smacked with the Emotional Trout.

. There's no fucking way. there's NO FUCKING WAY.

if one listens closely, you may hear the faint Pop of a fuse being blown in erenville's head

this is not how erenville imagined this reunion, I think.

also. I note that these guys DON'T have the Doodad on their temples.

... yeah, that's about as existentially horrifying as i was expecting.

... hold on. I saw an auto-soldier pull something like that out of tuliyollal's people.

yeah, I dont trust like that. there's ALWAYS a catch to these sorts of things.

once again. Existentially horrifying.

anyways, I still don't trust sphene. she straight up SAID that she gave zoraal ja the technology to attack tuliyollal. And unless there's something else, even beyond Shard Fuckery, at play... Yeah he's tough but he's just a single guy. He stabbed the other dude he came with and tossed him into the abyss. He's alone and we've already seen him lose to the shade of gulool ja ja. He is NOT unbeatably strong. You could've just said No and used that technology to make him fuck off.

... and, once again, I have hit image limit. Next up: WHAT THE FUCK (cont. (cont.))

[nianeyna]

I kept a bullet-pointed liveblog in a notes document as I played the new ffxiv expansion. now I have finally finished the story so I can share with the class without fear of someone responding to me with spoilers. speaking of which everything below is dawntrail spoilers, for the entire expansion, in case that wasn't clear.

⬇️ SPOILERS. FINAL FANTASY XIV DAWNTRAIL SPOILERS BELOW. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED ⬇️

Dawntrail Liveblog

- ok so the mean claimants are obviously not going to win, but catboy promise is a dark horse. also not ruling out "nobody wins"

- Urqopacha is super cute

- CAMPFIRE SCENE!

- Erenville's deal continues to be very mysterious no matter how much he contrives to appear to be telling us about it

- lol Erenville dialog: "I spoke too much" YOU BARELY SAID ANYTHING BABE

- Kozama-uka is sooooo pretty

- I like how the entire first dungeon was totally unnecessary since we would have got there FASTER if we'd just stuck around and helped Alisaie and Erenville repair the boat lmao. but that's not how the WoL does things!!

- CAMPFIRE SCENE!

- erenville lurking in the background... siddown boy lmao

- unknown dude: hey you uh... forgot something. yeah back there. come with me and get it this is definitely not a trap

- oh no it was a trap! who could possibly have predicted this??

- awwww, Koana. wasn't sure about him at first but he's just a cute little muffin isn't he

- wuk lamat getting all excited about eating the xibruq pibil was so cute omg. she just likes food!!! I appreciate that in a woman

- oh shiiiiit wuk lamat origin story?! dun dun dun...

- aaaaaand solo duty... ulp

- haha get wrekt

- CAMPFIRE SCENE!

- the mamool ja should look into tourism... this place is pretty as hell

- ok koana shooting the tablet was a pretty cool move

- have my doubts about the golden city being in yak tel... like if it was there why'd they go to xak tural then

- ok, I guess it... was there? or... the *entrance* was there... according to gulool ja ja, anyway...

- road trip alone with erenville be still my heart!

- out of context erenville quotes: "this is your first time, so let's take it slow"

- no need to apologize erenville... you can drag me into anything you want

- oh wow this is really fucking sad. wow. I wasn't expecting that!

- the ridiculous train plan is cheering me up a bit thank god (editor's note: it didn't last)

- sigh... there always has to be at least one zone per expansion that's all dark and gross-looking. did they sign a contract to that effect or something??

- I can't believe how mean this plotline is to erenville

- this is fucked up... this is so fucked up

- npc: "sorry to darken the mood" NO THAT'S FINE I DON'T THINK THE MOOD CAN GET ANY WORSE!!

- I want to rip Spene's crown off and push her off a cliff. her little I'm so cute and innocent and helpless act makes me want to puke.

- CAMPFIRE SCENE!

- if any more parents die in this story I am really truly gonna lose it

- YES finally we get to fight these horrible people. machine army. whatever.

- I hope the next trial is sphene... I want to kick sphene's ass SO bad

- well there goes otis which brings the fucking dead parent toll to at least 4

- finallyyyyyy made it out of heritage found... *collapses onto the floor of tuliyollal like a shipwrecked sailor reaching land*

- (ok obviously I've technically been back to tuliyollal while I've been doing these godforsaken quests but THIS IS DIFFERENT!)

- we didn't fight sphene but the prospects are looking really good for me getting to punch her in the face soon. probably not literally like we got to do with zenos, but I guess you can't have everything :(

- wow sphene really BELIEVES she's just a helpless little girl. fucking incredible.

- next expansion let's have a final zone NOT populated entirely by ghosts. change it up a little

- so should I count namikka and cahciua's deaths twice on the parent death toll scoreboard or what

- you know what I still don't get. is why the yok huy went to xak tural to look for the golden city. *why did they think it was there*? I mean heritage found is there *now* but it definitely wasn't hundreds of years ago!

- that face on the tower looks more like meteion than sphene tbh

- two more dead parents!

- I can't. believe. sphene erased herself before I could beat her ass. this is the most unfair thing that has happened in this expansion, and it is up against some STRONG contenders

- it's just not satisfying to pummel a weird robot that has none of her memories!

- oh sphene's SORRY? *loudest fart noise ever*

- it's a good thing wuk lamat is here to be nice cause if I had to do it I'd throw up

- "their lives remain unchanged"? uh.... we shut off the afterlife. which was a real physical place you could go to. I feel like that changes things a bit!

- I DID IT I'M OUT CREDITS ROLLED UP I'M DONE THANK GOD

First half I rate: 9/10

Second half I rate: 3/10

Overall I rate this expansion: 5/10 I guess

Up until the lightning dome appeared I was having a blast. after that the gameplay experience became one of gritting my teeth so I could get out and be done with it. all the alexandrian zones are dark and unpleasant to be in, which would have been bearable except the plot was literally nightmarish and any new characters I didn't hate either died or were already dead (except gulool ja, who's cute of course, but his story was still pretty upsetting in a different way). This is not to say the writing was bad, because I don't think it was. In the alternate universe where I was LOOKING for a tragic existential horror game I might have even really liked it. However I really really wasn't looking for that at all, so in the real world I feel pretty betrayed and upset. There's a line between "plot twist" and "false advertising" and I think they left it behind in the dust.

But hell, at least we got 4 campfire scenes.

[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #27: Fragments

Prompt: memory || Master Post || On AO3 (coming in October)

A/N: Spoilers for Dawntrail.

---

“Would you wear one?” Wuk Lamat said. “The regulator.”

Synnove immediately shook her head. “No,” she said. “Never mind anything about souls and how they use them as currency here in Everkeep, that’s bad enough. No, I would never wear one, not if it meant forgetting the dead.”

Grandmother.

Uncle Tyr.

Grandfather.

Noraxia and Wilred and Moenbryda and Haurchefant and Ysayle and Papalymo and Meffrid and Tesleen.

Minfilia.

Ardbert.

“No, I wouldn’t either,” Wuk Lamat said. She slid further down the wall they were sitting propped against and rested her head on Synnove’s shoulder; Synnove dropped her head atop hers. Wuk Lamat continued, “It’s not just them we’d lose, it’s all the pieces of them that live inside us and how they’ve shaped us. I wouldn’t just lose Papa or Namikka, I’d lose all my understanding of who I am, and why I love Tural, and why I fight for the peace and happiness of my people.”

Synnove hummed. “That’s exactly it,” she said. “Even if they only touched our lives briefly, they’re still important. The good and the bad and all the in-between. We are ourselves, but we are also the reflections of those around us.”

Wuk Lamat nodded and together they stared out in the neon and electrope of a city that never slept, and claimed to never forget.

[ammyamarant]

I'm going to make a new post so I can properly spoiler tag this. Dawntrail spoilers, specifically for Living Memory, from the viewpoint of your everyday death positive and death adjacent witch.

Okay, so.

The biggest defense I've been seeing is Living Memory is about grief, and it resonates with people who want just one more moment with someone they lost. And I know how that feels. I cried at Namikka and how much I wanted to talk to my mother in law again, just once.

And then stopped as soon as I realized how little weight was put on the entire section and how little respect they had for death and honouring the dead.

Here's the thing. It's horrifying what Sphene did. She made it so she's the only one who remembers her people, and the system put in place was never going to be sustainable. There just simply isn't enough aether to keep these memories alive, no matter how many reflections she kills. Eventually, the system will fail from lack of aether.

And here's what I realized: Sphene's actions have brought about a true death, and the fact we're aiding it without realizing how many people we fully killed.

Imagine this is real. You just talked to your loved one and felt closure. But you still need to get to Sphene, since her programming means she's going to destroy everything to keep her people safe. So you go shut down the terminal in the area.

You now have permanently deleted people you don't know ever existed.

This is insulting to who they were, and to any closure anyone else would have had. You are the only one you allowed to have that closure, and gave people whose stories cannot be told because of the system a true death.

And you have Cahcuia smiling at you the entire time and the weight of all the people we murdered in droves is brushed aside.

Yes, we murdered them, and we can never count how many it was.

We took the choice out of everyone's hands and said it was okay because we got closure, and fuck you I got mine. I got my closure, so fuck anyone else who wants it, anyone whose memory was taken but would have met them in Living Memory and had the closure we got. You can't have it.

And we are denied the weight of that.

True death for me is when someone's story can never be told again. They are forgotten to time.

Sphene set it up that this true death was always going to happen because the aether required is unsustainable.

We forced it to stop Sphene.

But we aren't given the weight of our actions and how we had to murder an untold and uncountable amount of people to save everything.

Sphene is making mockery out of death. We help her in that, out of necessity, but we still help that.

And the defense for this is "fuck you I got mine."