#that isn't to invalidate their own struggles but how they transition will look very different from someone who does have to wait

[spacehusbandsks]

I interrupted M's daily top surgery spiral and told him he needs to start telling people 'I'm a man that happens to have massive tits, so what? Got a problem with it?' Cause at the end of the day if he never is able to get top surgery, he's still a dude. People can respect him or shove it. bUT WhY nOt bInD aT lEaSt? First off, try having bigger than average breasts (that's AFTER a breast reduction even mind you!) now let's add chronic pain from a list of different conditions, oh and hot flashes too, can't forget debilitating anxiety, plus sensory issues. Go on, see how simple it is to bind now. 🙄Fuck. You. Guess what, even if he simply wanted to keep his breasts for any reason, he's still a dude. End of story.

[aotopmha]

And I'm done with the lvl 87 Endwalker quests, ending on the Venat cutscene.

The very first thought that jumps out to me is actually an annoyance: I really don't care for when the story uses jumpscares.

The only time during the game I have thought it was effective happened to be with Edda and it's because the mood was built for it in different ways.

It didn't work with Titania's introduction and it effectively annoyed me with Meteion.

Her transitioning to a grown woman's voice and listing off the dead worlds in a robotic tone was effective enough.

But they just keep doing the jumpscares with her and the more they do the less effective it is for me.

But to transition to some more character thoughts, I love how Hermes's words towards Meteion are also relevant towards Hermes himself.

"Though I gave you these wings to soar the heavens, I did not teach you how to walk the earth."

In the end, as Emet said, Hermes could not see anything good right in front of him on Etheirys. He simply could not find happiness or purpose in his own world, so he hoped to find it in others.

And so it lead to his flawed question and the painful result of it for the rest of the world and Meteion.

He hoped he would find the answer for his quest for meaning in other worlds. Perhaps use those discoveries to pave the way for a more empathic world that did not deny negative feelings. Perhaps to convince the ancients all lives had value. Perhaps to find companionship in his sadness and loneliness.

It was a two-sided issue, as the ancients also worked to not look at negativity, which probably would have had some bad consequences on a bigger scale eventually, no matter how you look at it.

Again, we go back to the idea of mental illness creating tunnel vision. All Hermes could see was the flaws of the society, but the society itself also did not address the issues within. (Or did they, looking at some of the side quests in Elpis?)

Across all of Endwalker, the idea of emotional resillience has popped up over and over again.

And when I first reached some of the parts about emotional resillience while watching someone else's playthrough, I really wasn't sure about the story leaning into the idea of "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger".

Thavnair especially felt this way.

And that perspective is incredibly hostile towards the individualised nature of emotional struggles. What doesn't kill you does not, in fact, always make you stronger.

But Elpis and everything afterwards put in a lot of effort to make it much more nuanced than that.

"As fragmented, imperfect beings, yours is a never-ending quest. A quest to find your purpose, knowing your end is assured. To find the strength to continue, when all strength has left you. To find joy, even as darkness descends. And admist deepest despair, light everlasting."

Might just be the most important quote of Endwalker.

In reality what the game says (at least what I think the writers aim to say and I read the story as) is that we should try to appreciate the good when we have it because it isn't eternal.

And yet we should not look away from the bad and instead digest it in a healthy way.

As I touched on a few lines above, I think the point of the characterisation of the ancients is that negative feelings hurt, but burying and invalidating them will end up hurting more and more and eventually lead to some sort of issues.

Therapy good.

And as the Ascians show us, their tactics just lead to more and more sacrifices, to the point where it started feeling worse and worse and the rift between the two sides of the ancients happens.

The world of the ancients treats mental illness just like our world does and this story is simply commenting on the current mental health crisis, which was even worse during Covid times.

I'll touch on it more in my upcoming posts because I know that Alisae has a few really important lines regarding this idea, but I know I had this criticism for a while and I was really happy the story addressed it.

Another criticism I see Endwalker given is related to precisely the idea that by creating this causal loop the game implies all of this suffering HAD to happen (and that is why it is okay), everyone had to be sundered to survive and thus it fully also excuses Venat's actions.

But to me the nuance here is that while the game agrees with Venat, it never says what she did was "right".

"I create a world of suffering to mire and plague."

She created so much suffering by sundering the world.

And to me that's what makes it interesting. The Goddess of Light, image of "all good" was driven by her own very human beliefs to save humanity, which also lead to much suffering.

Neither side is completely right or wrong and to me that's the most interesting part of this.

Even if affinity to Dynamis was necessary for humanity to survive.

Even if the 13th is an useless void so the full Rejoining was never possible to begin with.

Even if the Ancients just kept sacrificing themselves and were on a path of unsustainable self-destruction, Venat still caused untold suffering with her choice.

And she takes full responsibility for it.

And to me that's a super cool element to the struggle between the two sides of the ancients.

Because on the other side, the Ascians absolutely were driven by love for their people. This was true all the way through.

Duty, love, desire to get back their paradise. There WAS so much beauty and actual kindness in the ancient world, it just had its own struggles, just like the present world gas its own.

Both sides were literally fighting for the same thing.

One looking to the past. One looking to the future.

And I just do not get why people have the need to appoint the right and wrong in this conflict when I think both having their own flaws is the entire point (and far more interesting to me).

I think Venat's manouvering after Hermes uses Kairos goes under this, too.

Her decisions are all driven by her personal perspective as a character (what she believes in, what she gleaned from Meteion's words etc). I've seen her judgements and the memory erasure be criticised as too wishy-washy on a writing level, but I like it because it is so tied to the characters of those affected.

To me her caution and hesitation makes sense considering what is at stake, especially.

I think Emet is the shaky one because I feel he would look into this as deeply as he could. He accepts his memory being gone a little too easily, I think, but I take it considering the biggest tangible loss we see is two familiars (Meteion and WoL).

Finally, I'll comment on the dungeon.

I think Ktisis Hyperboreia is probably my least favourite of the Endwalker dungeons up to this point.

But that also doesn't mean I hate it. I just think we've had so much cooler set pieces and also much cooler bosses with cooler mechanics in other dungeons.

This IS a dungeon in the ancient world with you exploring an ancient facility and you get the ancients as Trusts, which is super cool, but outside of the final third almost being space, it didn't feel particularly unique or interesting to me as a set piece.

I did notice a bunch of bird cages in a room and the notes, but setting aside, the first two bosses in particular were nothing special to me mechnically, either.

The Hermes boss fight did cause some wipes, though. The beams had a very particular pacing a positioning, which caught me off guard and others in the team also had forgotten the fight so we had 4-5 wipes at the Hermes fight, I think.

Overall, though, once again, a very solid bit of story in my eyes.