#this IS extra funny if your wol is a mage. like dude what the fuck do you MEAN

[unionizedwizard]

one of my favorite (minor?) things about g'raha tia's characterization is that he Doesn't know what a wizard *is*. Like historically he plainly has no idea about the history of magic and how it works (fair, he was not a mage before and his studies have relatively little to do with magic. phd specializing you know how it is). Which is what the absolutely baffling, "blink at him in confusion"-style line he says (as the Exarch!) in post-SHB ("I am not a skilled mage, just making use of the crystal tower's boundless aether reserves") implies. He seems to labor (still!!) under the impression that the *actual* great mages of the past (or present) just Did That all by themselves and without relying on extra sources of aether, Because They Were Just That Good, which of course is patently untrue especially if you play magic classes yourself. The Mhachi raids and the BLM quests both establish that black magic was refined by great sorcerers of eld mages who were extremely skilled......... at finding new ways to exploit aether: 1) summoning and enslaving voidsent and 2) siphoning aether from the environment (with the consequences that we know). All the great feats of magic in history have been supplemented with concentrated aether from one source or another, no matter how clever or skilled the mages might have been otherwise! Actually, like 50% of the feat seems to be about figuring out new ways to acquire sufficient stores of concentrated aether (and this is a highly conservative estimate). But somehow this doesn't register to him, and because he "merely inherited and perfected" the summoning spell from his ironworks comrades and "merely inherited" the crystal tower's command, he doesn't "count" as a "real mage" in his own mind....... impostor syndrome king & #biased narrator alert

[astroellipse]

hhhhhhhghghhh i hate heavensward man i don’t wanna do the vault :(

I’m already tearing up this is so stupid!!! One of the main reasons I’m replaying is to try and figure out why people think HW is good but! It’s even worse the second time around! WHY would Aymeric do something so reckless? He doesn’t even make a contingency plan! It’s ridiculous! Goddammit man. And the foreshadowing. Fucking Haurchefant. I’ve only grown more attached to him this time around, especially because I’ve made a point to talk to every NPC for extra dialogue. He says, right now before The Vault, “My arm will not falter; my shield will not break. I promise you: we shall prevail!” He’s half right. And half literally wrong... the direct reference to his broken shield... this is evil. This is just so so bad. I’m going to sob like a baby a second time when he dies again. I love this dude.

Yes this is me procrastinating. I’m not sure if there’s another time after this when he’s loaded into the overworld. He and that moment in The Vault are perhaps the best part of this stupid expac. Genuinely feels like SB took a bunch of the core ideas but gave them actual depth and made them Good. Or at least Better. At least it all made sense for the most part. And had a villain I had literally any interest in. I do not care about the Heavens Ward. Ok I care about Zephirin but that’s just because I do continue to want his head on a pike. But the rest of them? And Thordan? Completely uninterested. They really should have expanded on Ishgard’s religion more, earlier, maybe instead of some of the silly bullshit we go through on our journey with Estinien and Ysayle. Like, they set it up later, which lets me see what they were trying to do now, but when I played the first time I didn’t understand that Thordan was trying to use his peoples’ faith to turn himself into a primal until I was crossing blades with him.

I just. This sucks. After seeing how good the story can be this undeniably is bad. They should have leaned into the WoL being a tool, because they absolutely are for this entire expac. The reason I love Haurchefant so much is because he actually gives a damn about the WoL as his friend, and not just a capable fighter. That entire journey before could have been so good if the story had at least attempted to create/expand some sort of emotional connection between the WoL and Estinien/Alphinaud, maybe Ysayle though for how quickly she becomes irrelevant it wouldn’t have mattered much. They had the foundation there! They put that seed of doubt in your mind, and then never do anything with it. I swear, they don’t touch on it much in the later expacs either. I’ve talked about this though, how there isn’t really anywhere for that thread to go without serious story implications if the answer is anything other than “I choose to do this, serving as a tool is my will.”

My personal answer, for both of my WoLs, is “I enjoy this.” Much more fun to play around with in my head, that secret selfishness. Both of them could care less about the fate of the star, as long as they’re still around to fight bigger and badder enemies, currently to destroy Zenos and hopefully Zodiark and Hydaelyn along with him. Granted Doran does share a will with Secret, so it’s really just her that wants this. Made ShB really fun, when she was struggling with actually starting to care about the world and her friends, since they... at least sort of appeared to care for her, as a person and not just a weapon. Will also be fun with Doran, who struggles with distinguishing himself from Secret, even as a shard of her, willing himself to care for those around him, to take more than just a passing interest in the world. Although with some knowledge from Secret, he’s seeing some stuff from a different perspective. The big one, currently, is Aymeric’s ridiculous plot here. Where Secret blamed solely herself for Haurchefant’s death, Doran also sees that it was Aymeric’s recklessness that got them into the situation in the first place. He is also, I think, a bit more prepared to accept his death as what Haurchefant wanted, which would give Secret some measure of peace.

Since I know I’ll look back on these eventually anyways, I’ll explain shortly. Secret Dusk is my primary WoL. Doran Stokes is one of seven souls joined to her from a past Rejoining, in addition to Ardbert’s and of course her own soul originating in the Source. Secret has been doing a hell of a lot of reflecting in between action (me writing about her and reading through old quest logs, and doing dark knight stuff), and... sort of unconsciously started to relive things. The world recreated within herself, from the beginning of her journey though a little different, for one of her shards to experience. And Doran, being the first to be rejoined to her, was the lucky winner.

He is, of course, deeply attached to Secret, and is delighted to be able to interact with this world as she did, even if he’s having some separate experiences. He retains some knowledge from Secret, with just enough missing for things to still be dramatic to him. Both Secret and Doran exemplify things I like to imagine of Azem, Secret being primarily their analytical and accommodating nature, and Doran being a carefree traveler. Both are reckless in equal measure, willingly or no, though Doran leans into this a bit more. He keeps up with 3 classes, all DPS: Bard, Red Mage, and Dragoon. All have the capacity to make him fly off the edge of arenas which I think is funny. All have a penchant for wandering.

Bard is his, I suppose, canon class, or at least his most favored one. Dragoon he picked up simply because he started in Gridania and it was there, and kept up with it in HW because when in Rome and all that. And Red Mage is there because he wanted to try his hand at magic, though... I think I’ve realized that I just don’t like playing casters. At least not in solo play. Way too squishy. Love playing DRG in a dungeon and the tank overpulls and dies and suddenly *I* have the aggro, so I pop arm’s length and bloodbath and AoE my heart out while praying the healer can keep up. Feels even better on the off-chance it works!

That was not a short explanation at all. Oh well. Guess I’ll go shower so I can prepare myself to sob about fictional men.