#spoilers for post endwalker

[marionmaverick]

I saw a very cool post about undead in dnd/baldur’s get being inherently evil, and it made me realize a very fun aspect about Final Fantasy 14 that would keep Calem constantly making weird decisions.

Cause while in Faerun a creature might just be “evil”, literally nothing on The source and it’s shards are. You need every element, whether dark or light or water or fire, and too much of one is just as bad as the other!

Heck, arguably the closest thing they have to angels are worse than the closest thing they have to demons. Cause Sineaters light and stasis corruption can leave no space for personality, they only devour. While Voidsent can at least pretend at their old lives and chat, because darkness is chaos aspected. They are filled with so much life they literally can’t die no matter what the plane.

The biggest culture shock for both sides being the idea that Calem can’t wrap his head around good or evil alignment because *everything* is neutral back home.

Endwalker spoilers (not to mention the gods literally being constructs created by their all powerful past selves and giving up/despair being the greatest threat to their existence. Calem like “gods are just people” not on faerun bud. )

[viiioca]

i love heavensward: a series of bulletin points

your last ally in all the city-states is an elf who would unironically lick the sweat from your armpits in front of the entire congregation. he begs his dad to let you couch surf. one of his brothers admits to your face that he wished you would die

two members of the swiss guard arrest your children so you punch them in the neck until the judge says you're free to go. the pope personally calls you to apologize for the trouble

ilberd tries and fails to hotbox you to death

a hot elf wife takes you on vacation to a nest full of cool bugs

anytime there's a serious moment estinien challenges the tone of the scene by pulling a giant novelty eyeball out of his pants which is played 100% straight every single time. not a single soul questions this or reacts in surprise

the prettiest elf in the world gets arrested trying to yell at his dad

Occupy The Vatican Right Fucking Now!!!!

the pope stances on the deck of an airship and flies away into the sunset after his eunuch traumatizes you

the emperor of garlemald shows up to call you a dipshit, leaves, and then you don't see him personally again for 1.5 expansion packs

we summon a naked catgirl and the first thing tataru does is give her a pair of louboutins and put a bow on her little kitty tail. she is the most deadly serious person in the entire organization

you take a quick detour to visit the angriest woman who's ever lived who calls you and everyone you're with a pointless dumbfuck moron shit idiot (affectionate). then she gives you a gun she invented that sharlayan banned for being too cool

theres a flying allagan war crimes factory full of broken robots who think you're stupid. an entire legion of garleans are abandoned here to form a feral colony with the escaped lab animals. the robots make fun of them

the dad of all the dragons on the whole planet calls you his favorite in front of his real child who he hasnt talked to in 4000 years

an evil wizard tries to get revenge on you for killing his cousin but the pope loads his soul into a bong and takes the fattest rip. the next time you meet him you mostly learn about how much his wife bullied him

estinien picks up a second eyeball. surprise development!: there is an angry dragon ghost living in the eyeballs

thancred gets punched in the face

you watch two dragon brothers fight because one called the other's dead wife a foul and trifling hoe

you save your friend through the power of friendship, and littering. as soon as he feels better he jumps out of a window and doesnt talk to you for two years

the guy from the box art wont stop trying to kill you because he is actually john videogames: astral traveler

after 15 hours of wondering what happened to all the scions and learning just the ones you've been able to FIND were flung into the afterlife, you discover lyse and papalymo are fine. they werent even hurt. they have been playing desert dress up with the ala mhigans while youve been freezing your pussy off trying to end a multigenerational religious war with the dragons and depose a corrupt head of state. they tried to send one letter and then gave up

the consequences of littering catch up with you. in eorzea, the fine is $Giant Dragon

[echristinaarte]

Emet is capable of wonderful things.

[worldformula]

you don’t know what you’re asking for.

[picaroroboto]

One of the typical imageries associated with the concept of "hope" is the image of light amidst darkness. FF14 does a lot of stuff with light and dark of course but in Shadowbringers they made light a thing of horror so they can't rely on the light image all the time.

Another usual image is a bird - "Hope is a thing with feathers..." from the Emily Dickinson poem. Meteion, the bird, was created with hope, but becomes a thing of despair.

So what's left as the image of "hope" in Endwalker is this:

From the cutscene "Live, Die and Know", where Venat monologues about hope and light everlasting while the camera cuts back and forth between her, blackened with blood, and the WoL succumbing to the Light corruption, both limping and stumbling along their paths. This is the face of hope in FF14 - broken, dying, bloodstained, yet defiant. That's what makes playing the hero in FF14 so damn magnetic.

Early ARR, I was cringing at the cliche chosen one, light vs dark type concepts. Further along I began to doubt Hydaelyn, given her ineffectiveness and the cruelty of the fate she bound the WoL to. But from Elpis to the end of Endwalker and beyond, I was proud, for the first time, to be called a Warrior of Light.

[thegodthief]

Thinking of G'raha Tia, only 24 years old and simultaneously beyond and behind his peers because of how the archon accepted the fate of locking himself away in the Crystal Tower. Thinking of him, with the optimism of a 24yo and the attention span of a 24yo and the life goals of a 24yo who just realized that the world is a lot bigger than all the books he studied and slept on could ever describe. Thinking of him, telling his new friends and his old friends and his scared inner self that he's not going to die, that he's just going to sleep, knowing full well that he will likely never wake up.

Thinking of G'raha Tia, only 124 waking years old and carrying the memories of people that never lived because of what he did after waking in the Crystal Tower. Thinking of him, with a heart shattered by experiences and with the careful plotting that comes from experiences and with a pure self-destructive goal forged by those experiences who just realized that he is going to have to live in a world that never was but is now and is greater than all his hopes and fears ever conspired to put together. Thinking of him, telling his old friends and his new friends and the one person that he is scared of losing that he is going to be okay, that he is going to not sleep on life, knowing that this is the world he was ready to die for, knowing that he will likely never discover everything about it but is ready to die trying.

Thinking of that moment when G'raha Tia the 24yo meets G'raha Tia the 124yo in the landscape of their unifying mind. Thinking of them, when the life goals of a 24yo collides with the life goals of a 124yo and how the century of experiences between them makes them completely separate people. Thinking of them, telling his younger self that the ambition was fulfilled and it's time to wake up, telling his older self that there is still ambition more and the dream has just begun, telling each other that this is not a type of death but just a change and both of them knowing full well that they are going to die to each other so that G'raha Tia may yet live for one more adventure with their friend.

Thinking of G'raha Tia and that moment of ultimate surrender of self to self.

Thinking.

[the-random-tyler]

I made part 2 to this post because I had a lot of fun doing it

and there is now a part 3

[snail-fever]

[x]

[varethane]

Alzadaal's Legacy was fun u_u

[remma-demma]

Thinking about people not liking what happened at the end of dawntrail like… hmm.

Did you not remember the stuff with the Yok Huy. Nobody is gone if you remember them. The phrase that’s been with us for nearly the entire game, “For those we have lost….” Emet Selch entrusting us not only with the legacy of humanity in general but specifically with the memories of the Ancients and Elpis.

Just because people are gone doesn’t mean they aren’t still with us.

But the people of Neo-Alexandria are kept from that. They can’t remember anyone they’ve lost because their memories were stolen and locked away in an eternal purgatory, unable to move on or be reincarnated. The quest where you go to the graves in Heritage Found was a big moment where I was like. Huh. This fucking sucks actually.

The endless are just computer simulations, and they exist because Sphene can’t bear to let them go. Can’t even let her living citizens mourn or carry on legacies.

And that’s not even mentioning the fact that she needs the souls of innocent *living* people to power this all.

I think it’s a really good metaphor for the digital age, becoming disconnected from our irl communities, uploading your entire life on social media. Profiles of loved ones who have passed on. AI chat bots providing temporary comfort but no real human connection. All of that technology requiring enough energy to slowly but surely contribute to the destruction of our planet.

It all seems pretty clear to me as an allegory but like, I guess some people just didn’t make that connection? Or maybe they just don’t think about all the AI stuff in the same way I do.

[thecrystarium]

Wuk Lamat: *through a mouthful of meat* I LOVE IT HERE!!! Erenville: *head in his hands* Twelve forfend...

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for this disagreement with some of my friends/colleagues?

So I(40s F) used to work in local level government. I quit to pursue other career opportunities because of burnout, but they asked me to stay on in an official-unofficial advisory capacity, and I'm still pretty close with the current office holders, particularly the current occupant of my former office (A, 30s X). Their boyfriend (H, 30s M), who also works there, isn't fond of me but more or less tolerates me when they're around, which is okay enough. Both their job and my current one necessitate a lot of travel, so it's not often an issue.

Things run pretty smoothly, overall, and I do think the entire city council has the people's best interests at heart. However, recently a natural disaster devastated our area and caused a lot of disagreement over how best to deal with it, and frankly the proposal that was eventually put forward was an awful one that would return a privileged few (about 25% of the population, after estimating numbers) to a semblance of normalcy while neglecting the other 75%. Neither A nor I are willing to back the group's play on this one, for what I feel are obvious reasons. A has gone completely no contact with all of us and I don't even know where they are right now, which aside from worrying me a lot, also hurt my position in the discussion since I officially hold no office anymore.

So I took pretty decisive action to stop them, and now three of our original council (H, plus other members E and L) are extremely pissed off at me and are trying to rally the rest to oppose me, while making some extremely shortsighted and harmful moves in the process that will hurt a lot of people. They don't seem to care, however. It's like they consider the majority lesser human beings and only care about that privileged 25%. I don't think I did everything right, but I did my best. We have to let go of the past and make the best of what we have now, for everyone's sake. No more shall man have wings to bear him to paradise. Henceforth, he shall walk.

AITA for sundering reality into fourteen reflections to stop my coworkers? Or should they have accepted that their paradise is gone, and ceded the reflections to their new fragmented, imperfect inhabitants?

What are these acronyms?

[viiioca]

i think my favorite aspect of the dynamic between emet-selch and venat is the fact that emet-selch's domain is the underworld. the lifestream. venat knew this. EVERYONE knew this. and when she became hydaelyn, her first order of business after putting zodiark in his moon hole and sundering everyone, is to go down into the lifestream and just sit there for over ten thousand years.

this is a "your mortal enemy takes your parking spot every single day" tier rivalry. venat takes over his domain. venat grabs emet-selch's bestie's soul and marks them with her blessing. venat looks emet-selch deadass in the eyes and goes, "mine now. what are you gonna do about it lil bitch boy? lmao"

venat bullied this man so hard that by the end of it he'd rather explode into glitter and die than suffer the indignity of living by her magic, even though she's already gone. i can only imagine their dynamic when she held the title of azem and he had to deal with her during business hours

[bara-izu]

[ ffxiv ┃ Patch 6.2 ] Keir meets Zero

Bonus: Y'shtola fashion advice

Double bonus, her actual glams (tho i've changed her shoes in her sage fit to the bonewicca boots...

[flamebunnyy]

Lunar Aetherology

[picaroroboto]

WRT the Garlemald portion of EW: I'm sure that for a lot of FFXIV's history players have been wondering what it would be like to reach Garlemald proper in-game, and daydreaming of epic battles, maybe a sense of "conquering the conquerers"

And it is so, so genius of EW to not give you that.

You don't get any glory or revenge in defeating the evil empire, they already self-destructed on their own. You can't really revel in it. If you're feeling particularly vindictive you might look at the rubble and silently think "Serves you right!" or "Good riddance to bad rubbish." but no matter how much you may have hated the Empire in the past it's hard not to pity what's left.

See, the thing about Garlemald is that in their prejudice and conquest they treated everyone who isn't them as subhuman. But in the end you are all human beings, and so are they. The Empire isn't a nameless, faceless evil, it's a war machine created by the beliefs of humans who saw other humans as inhuman. By helping the survivors you are not only doing the right thing, the human thing to do, you are also disproving their prejudice in the process by reminding them that you're all human. (I'm using the word "human" in abstract sense here, not to refer just to the Hyuran race of FFXIV, but all the races of sentient beings, all deserving of rights, respect, etc.)

I'm trying to shine a light on the significance of this part of the story because it seems like some people have conflicted feelings about helping citizens of a facist former empire, but it would be sheer Reading Comprehension Stat: None to assume that that means FFXIV is condoning their ideology. In fact, it would be antithetical to FFXIV's optimistic, pro-humanity, love-and-peace, a-better-world-is-possible -type philosophy if we instead left the survivors to starve.