#stormblood spoiler

[veliatra]

[swtorramblings]

Wait, did she just jump out a window, land on a flying vehicle, and escape?

Now I kind of want her to live.

[anneapocalypse]

I deeply appreciate that FFXIV did not bother with trying to give us some kind of underwater breath-holding mechanic with a timer, and instead simply went, "A turtle guy did a magic blessing and now you can breathe under water forever. Don't worry about it."

[tritoch]

the other thing I find very funny about trying to write a canon compliant wol is taking all the wolship hints extremely seriously.

I don't really wolship because I'm just fundamentally not that kind of fan. But I know for those who are, the sheer number of romance hints FFXIV throws at you can be overwhelming to parse in a context where you have a preferred/intended wolship, particularly if you're not attracted to the gender the hints are coming from in the first place (a particular tip of the hat to wlw fans navigating the g'raha of it all). I've seen plenty of people write around them or write them out or be like "no aymeric was for real inviting my wol to a nice platonic zero-subtext dinner," and God bless all of you.

But it's really funny to imagine them all as all-too-real but unreciprocated or perhaps unreciprocatable. The sheer scale of it is comedy. Spoilers for all of FFXIV follow.

Oh God, the Lord Speaker wants to have dinner, just the two of us, at his family estate and not a government building. I hope he doesn't bring up his crush on me. Thal's balls he's about to bring it up—oh thank God there's an emergency. Oh no someone got hurt! Oh no it's the teenage girl with a crush on me.

Your life is a cosmic joke. You watch the Sultana get poisoned and all your friends probably die to save your life and it's kind of all your fault in some ways, I mean at the very least you should've spoken up when they gave the teenager a private army, and then the teenage boy speaks up and is like, "hey, I guess we have at least one ally. What about if we go visit that guy who is really obviously down unbelievably bad for you and wants to lick the sweat off of you." and you have to be like, yeah, Alphinaud. Great idea. Let's do it. I'll call him.

(brief interlude: also haurchefant's DEATH hits so good if you don't reciprocate. It's okay. He gets it. You're going through a lot and even if you had time to sort through your feelings maybe you're just not into him. That would be okay! You can love someone, or the idea of someone, without needing it to be romantically reciprocated. That's chivalric, even. Knightly. So he won't ask you to lie to him and say you love him as he lies dying in your arms. He's not so low as all that. But could you smile for him as you used to? That true hero's smile of yours. And you do, and he dies. And you both know he died for a lie, in a way, or a flight of fancy. And he's okay with that. Are you? Should you be? Should he?)

Then you're into Stormblood and it's like wow, okay. That last part was all high fantasy, of course there were loyal knights and elegant princes. But this is war. Imperialism. Grim business, surely there's no way—oh no BOTH handsome young revolutionary leaders seem to have a special interest in you?! And so does the Crown Prince of the Empire? Come on, man. I should get to do the whole horrors of war thing without having to also deal with this. Gaius sucked and it was weird that he let his foster daughter run around being openly obsessed with him but at least he never made it my problem.

You can't even get away from it across dimensions. Shadowbringers is a horror story about going on a teambuilding camping trip with your work colleagues for some reason except they all suddenly got really hot and they keep touching you affectionately on the shoulder and being like "I care for you and your happiness. Truly." And also you're being stalked for the whole camping trip by two old men who are obsessed with you. The false climax of the story is that the one old man tries to betray you and give a dramatic monologue about how he loves you but the two of you are doomed by the narrative and then the other old man shoots him in the back like "no actually its MY turn to betray them and give a dramatic monologue about how our love is doomed by the narrative." Then the real climax is old man #1 backstabbing old man #2 in the middle of said monologue before old man #2 dies and gives ANOTHER wistful monologue about his doomed love. Then for the patches they're like okay so we have this even CRAZIER old man who's gonna strike when you're weak and give a dramatic monolo—

and that's without even getting into the literal soulmate ghost only you can see

my warrior of light never felt more betrayed than in that scene where Y'shtola is like "haha Alisaie and G'raha have crushes on the warrior of light." Like I thought we were COOL, Y'shtola! I work here! This situation is already in such a delicate balance! Right when I got here I met Alisaie's "friend from work" who was like oh haha so YOU'RE the one she can't stop talking about and we never followed up on that because the woman died horrifically like five minutes later right in front of us! Then when Vauthry got away and we had to do all that shit with the dwarves, G'raha kept pausing every ten minutes to be like oooooh I'm so old I'm gonna die soon...at least I got to spend some time with some people who are really important to me...in fact here's what I'd tell the person who's most important to me...actually u know them really well haha. And I just had to sit there and be like wow, dude, crazy.

even in the face of apocalypse you still gotta go back in time like 12,000 years and there's somewhere there who makes you sit and listen to his story which is that the purpose of his whole godlike immortal life was to be in a throuple with you and old man #2 from the camping trip. and you just gotta sit there the whole time knowing you/your past life is the one who broke up the throuple over politics. He's like come help me harangue the old man into streaking in public, he'll do it if you ask.

then you meet and fight and kill God and you gotta turn to the team and be like hey sorry guys can you give me a sec. I'm gonna call God by her real name because we met one time for like four days and after that the promise of meeting me again was one of the things that sustained her through her millennia of suffering. Not like that but like. Idk. Just gimme a sec!

It's a relief when you finally get to Lahabrea and he's like actually I still don't fuck with your vibe. Like thank GOD.

And my WoL is very obviously dad-shaped so Dawntrail had a very specific energy for me but I understand that for plenty of people your deepening rapport with Wuk Lamat had a romantic subtext (same for Koana depending on how you read a few of his lines). And personally I think it's the height of comedy to be like, noooo, babe, your highness, I know you and your brother the king are in love with me and want me to stick around and support you emotionally through this governmental transition haha. But it's just...the cursed wineglass, babe. I GOTTA go figure out what's up with this cursed wineglass.

It's a running gag in some of the more optional content that people are like "you have an unreasonable number of hobbies and side gigs" to the WoL from time to time. But if every time you tried picking up a new hobby some new elf started baring their soul to you, you too would be like Hey Jessie (or sometimes Krile or Tataru), my good friend who is one of the only people in my life who knows what professional ethics and work-life boundaries are, any chance you need muscle on a gig on the other side of the world? Ideally with only Cid and his ex so all libidinal energy in the room is directed towards machinery or someone who isn't me?

ironically one of the only places you get a break from psychosexual obsession is the nier content

[the-random-tyler]

I made more of them because they're funny

part 1 and part 2

[magitekconveyor]

At long last! Who The Fuck Is Aulus mal Asina The Powerpoint Presentation: The Tumblr Post.

This was a long labor of love, combing over every piece of lore I could find in-game and in the Encyclopedia Eorzea. I initially made this because whenever I mentioned Aulus, I inevitably got met with "who?", so I thought I would have one place that contained all his lore and how it relates to MSQ as a whole.

For ease of access, here is the twitch link. It goes to a clip from 2018 Fanfest where they discuss Aulus. If you listen veeeeery carefully after he says "He's dead", you can hear a faint "Noooooooo!" in the audience. That...was me. I was actually there for that question and let me tell you I've never had so many heads whip around to stare at me all at once.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy and have learned something new about my favorite FFXIV character.

Edit: Coming back since this is gaining a bit of traction to add, if you like what you see here, please check out my friend's FFXIV fangame Indagator , where you can either romance or betray Aulus. It builds off of a lot of the info from above and masterfully expands on it. Mind the tags.

[ciphox]

my sister

[nagunkgunk]

Honestly the whole dragon thing in ffxiv becomes so much more ridiculous when you learn that dragons technically aren’t native to Etheirys, they’re straight up aliens from the literal dragon planet.

yknow when its revealed midgardsormr brought 7 eggs to the star/hydaelyn i thought "oh! they're from another dimension! the dragon dimension <3" since its alrdy established that the void is a different plane etc. and the dragonstar is probably just some magical/important constellation thing for dragons :3

but. no. he flew through space from The Dragonstar. he's an alien. dragon blood turns you into a dragonmutant. (which miiiight be corporeal aether corruption BUT ALSO MAYBE JUST A DRAGON THING?????)

and then their growth/adaptivity is so funny. ehll tou is in ishgard for idk a month half a year however long the ishgard restoration is and grows like 10 times the size and develops DRAGONTHUMBS bc she was hanging around with doh/dol types. she did more growing than a regular dragonet does in a century all because she was friends with nondragons and crafting stuff? leucrotta the azys lla s rank is a "coeurl dragon"? coeurl dragons ditched their wings and just copied coeurls to hunt better in meracydia????

god i love ffxiv dwagons

[chaobunnyarts]

Scion postcards! I’ll have these at Fanfest as part of my Delivery Moogle cosplay. Tell me who your favorite scion is and I’ll give you a postcard from them!

If I’m out of your favorite scion, well, Soroban will always have your back!

[agui-chart]

It was... great...?

[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.

[picaroroboto]

the reason why Zenos is a part of the story in Stormblood is first for plot reasons - to spur action as an antagonist - and second to prompt the player and their WoL to think about violence and their relationship to it, and why they fight, if only to disprove his assertions that they're his "mirror".

why he comes back in Endwalker is of course for plot reasons as well, but the point of his arc and his role in the existential drama of EW is to show that while you don't need a "good reason" in order to live, and living solely for pleasure isn't inherently wrong, but that's going to be an empty and lonely life if you don't try to connect with others. And most importantly he's there to give those questions at the end - "Was this life a gift or a burden? Did you find fulfillment?"

[mosthuggableffxiv]

Bonus Poll: Most Boopable Scion

[diadoesart]

Trying to remember how to draw after a week of being seriously sick with some shitposts

[shalpilot]

it all makes sense now

[drag00ni]

colors are a guessing game