#this is why no one likes garleans

[fell-court]

The team is all here together at last, for what feels like one of the first times ever!~

From screen left to right: Omen (@ex-garlean), Lorenza (me, @fell-court), S'ria (@snow-system-wol), K'pheli (@crystal-verse), and Nimda (@soothingmind)!

[windupaidoneus]

now some people may not like to hear it but even the worst people who exist are still people & there is no human being who has More right than others to decide whether others deserve to live or die (does not mean i personally condemn murder in self defense or anything of the sort or killing fascists or whatever i'm just saying as a baseline This Is How it Is) & this is why the death penalty is not a good thing no matter how good & trustworthy the people in any government might be. people on average also deserve the chance to learn to do better. & no, someone who's been forcefed propaganda their entire life will not let go of that deeply entrenched mindset so easily, it's not particularly unrealistic & it absolutely sucks to deal with but in the context of tangibly working toward world peace it's also not an issue to try & help such people both in material ways & in helping them learn better rather than cut them down or abandon them to a grim fate. all this to say that's why i don't think garlemald is written badly, as unpleasant as the experience might be. walks off the stage

[meowww-ffxiv]

I make a single OC who's 100+ years old and I'm already oooo oooooo we can fit so much shit into this guy.

I think vieras who lived among other races and who outlived many of them would develop a kind of strange in-between of being a tired old person and being...well, their age, in viera years. And then if they had partners who passed before them...

Cooking, cooking.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

oh also i started playing ffxiv again. had 2 keep myself sane while i argued over email with these people. anyway they did NOT have to ramp up that hard in the last two expansions but i'm confusedly clapping i guess??

[thrainswife]

welp i've got a genshin url ready to go if this new hyperfixation really has dug its claws into me that deeply

[desertdragon]

The saddest thing whenever I visit Forgotten Springs is how uncomfortable you can tell most U Tribe are having their isolation disturbed and their land forcibly opened by outsiders, "put up with their grasping ways" as U'mollpa says, and then in the distance of the skybox is the giant Saucer casino that they don't even see profit from despite it being on their ancestral land

[onwesterlywinds]

I've been thinking a lot again about the implications of the title of "viator" translating to "traveler" (prompted by Writing Things), and while there's been a lot of discussion about its relation/parallels to Azem, I feel like I've seen a lot less, if anything, on how "viator" plays into the overarching narrative of Garlean imperialism as well. For a relatively small detail, it's honestly one of the things I really think Endwalker did really well in its portrayal of Garlemald and Zenos.

Throughout XIV's history, we've been shown countless perspectives for why the Garleans invade and occupy other nations, whether it's [insert Nael's Bahamut tempering], Gaius' claims that peace can only come from a strong leader, the racism we see entrenched in Garlemald's colonial rule in Stormblood, etc. Endwalker, however, doubles down on the role of Corvos in Garlemald's history and elevates it to a founding narrative: the idea that the Garleans are justified in invading other nations because they themselves were driven from their own ancestral land thousands of years ago.* This is by no means the full scope of Garlean history (as just one example, Return to Ivalice posited that many other Garleans are likely descended from the technically-minded people of Goug), but it's still very consistent lore-wise and thematically for Endwalker to present the Garlean people's expulsion from Corvos as a creation myth for their empire, and the way this plays out in 6.0 MSQ lets us see the extent of the damage that that myth has done to those who have made it their worldview.

And introducing the term "viator" at the end of that arc as the name for the Empire's most loathed, reviled, and shunned class - the exile - ties into this idea so well: the greatest punishment the Garleans can give for one of their own is to make them a wanderer - to ensure that person is forever denied the home that they prize so highly in their society. This is a classic example of scapegoating, which has deep connections to empire throughout history and Western literature.

It's also such a fitting conclusion to Zenos' relationship with the Garlean Empire, too! One of the reasons I've loved Zenos as an antagonist since 4.0 is that despite treating the workings of imperialism as beneath him and irrelevant to his true desires ("Ala Mhigo and Doma and Garlemald be damned!"), he has a sense of entitlement to the peoples and lands of Ala Mhigo and Doma - and to you, the Warrior of Light! - that is extremely Garlean. The fact that (to paraphrase Lyse) he did all that just so he could feel something is what makes him such a perfect antagonist for Stormblood in my book. But to the Garlean people, that lack of care for his homeland - be it because (their own) people were tempered/killed from his actions, or the very sexy patricide/regicide, or that he caused the Empire itself to fall into ruin when he "should have" succeeded Varis - was to them the greatest crime he could commit. To put it another way, he probably would not have been named Zenos viator Galvus if he had first been Zenos zos Galvus.

And despite me forever lamenting the fact that the 5.X-era plot thread of Zenos having dreams about Amaurot never actually went anywhere, even that ties into his eventual role as viator: the only place with which he has ever had any real connection is gone forever.

Which makes a grave at the end of the known universe feel almost fitting in its tragedy.

(*On a serious note: While I do think the writers were intentional - and, mostly, thoughtful - around leveraging imperialist rhetoric, the fact that this particular framing is often used to justify an ongoing genocide is one of many reasons why I would be very happy for future Garlemald stories to stay on pause for the next few years.)

[picaroroboto]

Do you remember that NPC in Garlemald who, when you approach them, seems to have war flashbacks to the WoL killing dozens of their fellow soldiers at the Praetorium? I don't understand why some people make light of this moment, or brush aside the fact that in canon the WoL has killed a lot of people. Yes, it's usually Garlean soldiers or Beastmen or others who intend to harm others, and it's almost always in the name of justice, freedom, protecting others, the greater good, etc. But they do still take lives.

Chances are some of those soldiers they've killed are ones who believed the Empire's espoused goal of controlling the world in order to protect it from greater threats like Primals and Ascians. It's a disgusting and patronizing idea, but if you're someone who's grown up in a war-like nation you might have no reason to question it. Hell, Varis believes it wholeheartedly even though Emet-selch repeatedly tells him that he founded the Empire only as a trigger for Calamities and Rejoinings. The thing is that the Garleans believe they're doing the "right thing" too. So do the Ascians, if only for the "greater good" of their own people to the exlcusion of everything and everyone else. And everything that the Garleans and Ascians did in the name of their beliefs and greater good is wrecked by Fandaniel and Zenos, who proudly claim not to believe in anything and scorn ideas of right and wrong.

In the end, what makes you "the hero" and them "the villains" - what, if anything, makes you better than them? It's not that you don't kill or harm people, because you do. It's not just that you kill presumably less than they do, because measuring lives as numbers is a disgusting thing. We could say that it's simply because the narrative always sides with you in the end, but that's a really boring and unsatisfying answer.

The answer for me and my WoL at least, is to understand that he's not so different from his enemies. Having a "good reason" to kill doesn't make you justified, and believing you're on the right side of history doesn't make you the hero - that understanding itself is what makes sure that he won't make the same mistakes as the villains.

[tinolqa]

god I haven't mentioned it enough here. Myths of the Realm is my enemy. easily my least favorite 24-man- or rather it's my least favorite raid series of either type.

probably made worse by pandaemonium being genuinely very good? the contrast was stark.

weak answer to the question of the twelve's nature, very unambitious and mediocre visual designs that were largely too married to visual fidelity to boring statues and card designs. some real disney's hercules shit. there were some innovative or appealing elements here and there: nald'thal was genuinely great visually and conceptually, I actually respect the concept of making menphina a magical girl instead of a generically hotsexy love goddess, byregot's halo of nails, uh... the models for thalaos and perykos looked good? but overall they were a bunch of very boring idealized humans.

and my god eulogia is the ugliest thing. eulogia might actually be the most hideous execution of a concept in the game yet, you might as well just clip all of the models of the twelve into each other and play their animations at once and get the same effect. zero elegance, zero thoughtful design. it's actually shocking to see in a game where we got perfect omega as a raid boss once upon a time. even eden's promise, while superficially a hot mess, is a hot mess because it pays homage to extant depictions of artemis! art history is why it looks like that! eulogia looks like the artists were asked to recreate knife dad from monster factory using ffxiv assets.

and you might ask, well, are the mechanics of the fights better than the boss designs? absolutely not. week one aglaia was a little fun, because there being a chance of failure to people not knowing the trick of the meteors in the rhalgr fight or panicking during the nald'thal scales instead of just deliberately failing the mechanic to waste everyone's time. gear creep destroyed any chance of interacting with most of the fun bits of aglaia, and they didn't repeat that "mistake" in the other two, which were boring and easy from the jump. just an absolute void of challenge or chaos. why even bother putting mechanics into your raid at that point, apparently that's only for savage.

and the rewards... boy I hope you like ugly yellow-gold saint seiya armor and generic draping faux-hellenistic robes and vague suggestions of togas. I hope you fucking gluttons for endless less-problematic rehashes of ancient greek mythology like gaudy costume jewelry and sandals and meaningless neoclassical flourishes. did you want gear that might look like something your character would wear in a city they've visited or that has a connection to a historical aesthetic? I guess if you make believe you can stretch a tenuous bond from this tacky armor to the uniform robes and masks of the ancients. ostensibly. since we all know the ancients didn't have a societal taboo about ornamentation or making your clothes individualized or anything.

so what did we achieve? did we learn anything? turns out the twelve were real all along, but also powerless except in the specific context of having flashy anime duels with the warrior of light. it's VERY important that we say they aren't primals, because primals are only summoned by primitive subhumans like the ixal and the garleans. but we do need you to fight them to return their aether to the star because... they're definitely not primals! no. not primals. primals are fake gods, and the twelve are *aetheric constructs* based on *real people* made by *hydaelyn*, which means they're good and Not Primals. the mechanic by which they visually reflect the beliefs of their followers? definitely not the same as the one that does that for primals. their nebulous dependence on the faith of eorzeans? totally unrelated to primals, because it's apparently important for the ego of the players that *their* god is real and not fake, which makes them ontologically good and righteous.

and it's definitely satisfying to find out that the goddess whose name gave weight and gravity to the reveal of the warrior of light's past incarnation and their name... is called that because she was a failed candidate for that role? she's a consolation prize sun goddess?

for that matter it's definitely satisfying to find out that the twelve are just recreations of venat's boring ancient friends, who are largely nameless and have no significance to you or your interaction with the past aside from a mediocre sidequest. oh it's so thrilling to know that the god of crafting used to be hytholdaeus's coworker. this would mean so much to me if he had any role in the setting beyond a skill name and a rock sitting in an overworld zone.

admittedly it would also suck for the reveal to be "actually eorzea's gods did create the world and are all-powerful, boy it sure is silly that those delusional foreigners are out here worshipping kami and manusya and mrga and primals which are all FAKE, as opposed to us (non-beastman) eorzeans who have the literal mandate of heaven"

but surely there's a more elegant solution (ambiguity, leaving questions instead of a glut of answers, not making this raid series at all). was this really the best they could come up with?

[uldahstreetrat]

Im trying to take note of real world influences in XIV for some projects going forward, like languages used in areas (French names in Ishgard, Roman terms in Garlemald) or like in aesthetics I suppose (like Radz-at-han in particular reminds me of Istanbul), and I'd like to hear others' thoughts about those kinds of influences that they've noticed

(little more context on things im working on under the cut)

right now this has a lot to do with things like stamps lmao I have in fact gotten kinda into stamp collecting now and I'd like to design some for XIV areas based on similar irl counterpart countries? like regular stamps and stuff like a sort of Garlean version of US postal war savings stamps? so having irl countries to reference for stamp styles would be helpful to like figure that stuff out

and honestly all of this is just part of making a physical copy of Q'ihnn's journal more complicated than it needs to be but never let it be said that I dont have a love of unnecessarily dense world building

plus by having a list of reference countries I can also build out other kinds of like, souvenirs? in the journal from the places visited across msq - a lot of things I see people keep in journals, especially travel ones, are stuff like wrappers or other packaging, pieces of maps, receipts (that's its own rabbit hole ive gone down), ticket stubs, and other various little paper things along with photos and drawings (which are much easier to manage in comparison)

cause a lot of this shit doesnt extensively exist within the game often beyond a mention in a stray line of dialogue or two so there's advantages to having irl cultural and historical reference to make something that feels real - plus im often off in lala fantasy land in my head because im stuck at home a lot, im not exactly well traveled, so im sure its easy for me to miss especially like language use in certain areas (I didnt even notice how French Ishgardian names were until someone else made a joke about it, it just doesnt occur to me)

like some of these influences are fairly obvious, right, like Doma and Kugane being Japanese inspired and Greek influence around Sharlayan (which the Greek/Roman dichotomy that Sharlayan and Garlemald have going on is its own whole thing I could go into btw they're so similar yet different in such interesting ways) - but places like Ul'dah?? not a clue. Ala Mhigo? no idea. The Crystarium and Eulmore in the first??? oh I'd put my head through a wall trying to thing of a real world counterpart for reference

granted now having said that someone is going to point out something obvious that I just entirely missed some way or another lmao but like that's why im asking, right? anyway if you have nerd ass thoughts too just hit me up

[pillowfriendly]

"the Crystarium isn't what gets Kethry to reevaluate her anti-government stance?" no <- i am hereby inviting you to tell us what kethry thinks about the crystarium. BLEASE. i'll get us both coffee

(guess whaaat i got sidetracked in the middle of writing and sent to my drafts folder and instantly forgor about. SORRY)

☕☕

soooo as you know. maybe. i forget what ive said out loud or only thought about real hard. kethrys about 2 marbles away from losing em all at the end of sb. getting yoinked into apocalypse world where the crystal tower is mysteriously the center of a city lead by a guy who is Not (definitely not! he insists!) G'raha really does not help.

is he a clone. a descendant. an ascian puppeting the body. this exarch guy, who really really seems like he's holding her friends hostage, wont say. and kethry, who has been on the stalemate'd frontline against garlemald for months being the violence incarnate that zenos thought she could be, has HAD IT with city lords throwing her at their problems. this one won't even tell her what's going on!

he does seem to truly care for his city though. and that's leverage. oop there goes one of the last two marbles. she goes to the support structures under the crystarium and slams the shit out of the biggest one she can find to draw the exarch out. she'll make him fight, corner him, beat out all the answers she wants!

turns out the whole place is extremely fortified and also you shouldn't try to fight a nuclear-powered wizard under his own nuclear tower. :/

she doesn't get what she wants out of this; the shb plot moves on. and as she comes to know the people of the crystarium, people sheltering from a harsh and dying world but who are somehow still kind, and generous, and hopeful--the reality of what she tried to threaten sets in. so the main reason why she doesn't re-evaluate her opinions because of the crystarium, is that the guilt that dawns on her about it takes up too much space.

especially in the months of recovery after she kills emet-selch, living with these people who not only had built and defended a home here, but brought as many people as they could in and fed them and clothed them and gave them work and made it their home too--she loves them okay!! and she had tried to crash part of their home into a goddamn ravine because she was frothing mad.

the implications and possibilities of government become more salient in retrospect when she sees how the populace acts in garlemald. the garleans are also living through an apocalypse, but largely abandoned by their leaders, considered a resource at best. this is more what she expects, but there's REALLY no time to be considering all that in EW. so it's not until lion king vacation time that she really considers that the concept of an organizing state body MIGHT be okay. maybe. sometimes. within limits.

[viiioca]

ok i gotta ask does estelle have any particularly strong feelings or judgments on hien? i know a lot of people find him pretty one-dimensional but im imagining estelle would have something to say about the way he views his duty, specifically when he agrees to destroy doma castle. just the contrasts and parallels between ishgardian and doman nobility.

oh that's a great question that i haven't really thought much about (SORRY HIEN I LIKE YOU I JUST DONT THINK ABOUT YOU OFTEN). apologies to doma & hien fans who have a strong grip on them because i'm not going back to check lore and dialogue and thinking about this super hard so we're flying by the seat of my pants. we are in vibes town. long ass answer under da cut

i think estelle certainly has some strong opinions about doma (she has strong opinions about mostly everything) that would transfer over to hien as the presiding head of state. it's a high-context society that is strongly conservative, patriarchal, hierarchical, and standing very much at the precipice of significant social and political change, so it's easy for her to draw parallels between the two. and i think that while hien is similar to aymeric in both personality and role within the state, there is a passiveness to hien's politics that she would find frustrating as well, because the state has subsumed a significant portion of hien's identity, which is partially cultural (the expectation that a good and honorable leader submits wholly, body and spirit, to the needs of his people) and partially personal (being raised under a garlean boot means that identifying as doman and being as doman as possible was critical to resisting oppression).

it makes him reactive rather than proactive, and while he can rise up with a ferocious set of teeth to protect his people, he seems to be leaving matters of social & cultural rebuilding up to the people themselves, who are struggling for stronger guidance beyond their immediate material needs. the people are his foremost concern (in a way that is genuinely quite progressive for a conservative culture, sacrificing tradition and artifice for continued human life and spirit), which is an admirable and genuinely desirable trait in a leader, but it comes at the expense of a coherent and cohesive vision for the future that he can lead his people towards.

which is to say: when it comes to droving the herd, he is more of a sheepdog than a shepherd. that temperament works fine (??) for established city-states like gridania and ul'dah, but as we see with ala mhigo and ishgard, states in active recovery require a willingness to aggressively pursue solutions. (i think it helps ala mhigo, too, that raubahn is balanced with lyse; like hien, raubahn is very much a sheepdog type of leader projecting strength for ala mhigans to look to, but it's lyse who has a genuine vision for ala mhigo's future that she actively pushes towards. hien doesn't really have a similar council he can look towards for the same sort of perspectives and division of labor, which is possibly why he taps on foreign contacts for guidance, e.g. the side-story where he invites g'raha to doma to discuss corvos & its recovery from garlean rule.)

estelle likes hien, so she would be diplomatic about this. but her concerns are plain. doma produced yotsuyu; it was not strictly an act of particularly villainous individuals (though they were), but also a culture that is perfectly complicit in the abuse of women and children, and a state that afforded no protections for them. what are his plans for this, then? how can he use his power and status to enact policy to minimize the chances of this happening again? what are his plans for future governance now that the threat of garlean reinvasion has passed? for a man who loves his people, and for a people who have spent the last few decades with no voice in government nor any power over their own futures, would it be proper to restore the monarchy and its layers of nobility where the smallfolk again have no hands on any lever of power? -- not quite needling, but more than clear about her Certain Political Opinions, and her displeasure about particular injustices that might find themselves repeating without a stronger plan. she's certainly not shy about her own politics and would absolutely press hien to become much more certain in his own.

[eemamminy-art]

You have turned me from a Zenos hater into a Zenos ambilaventer keep posting and you might manage to turn me into a Zenos lover

If you already hated him though is me drawing him really going to make that big of a difference? 😩 Like I know I give him a fat ass and extremely delicious nose in my artwork but now I feel compelled to give you my tedtalk on why I like zenos lmao

This is about to be really long and also contains spoilers for stormblood, shadowbringers, and endwalker

This might surprise you but I like Zenos for his characterization and storyline in the game itself! The fanart is just kind of a bonus. He's one of many examples in Stormblood of a character that is shaped by their experiences, though I think it's not told as successfully as it is for like, Fordola, Arenvald, or Yotsuyu, because a key part of his backstory was locked to a short story in a print-only book (which I think is out of print now). The most you see of it in the actual game is this blink and you miss it line from Lyse at the very end of 4.0:

(Dialog from the quest "Stormblood", patch 4.0)

What really, really appeals to me about Zenos though, is that he is the personification of depression and that really resonates with me. He has anything he could possibly want, he has accomplished a great many things, but he feels completely hollow inside. He's miserable. He slaughtered countless Domans including their leader and felt nothing, commanded to do it by his father because (as shown in that short story) he only ever was acknowledged to even exist to his father when he practiced violence. So it's a given now, that's what's expected of him and that's all his life is. He's completely desensitized.

He finds one thing that makes him feel alive, that is the warrior of light challenging him, and it becomes his sole focus. Nothing else matters but chasing that high, because every single other thing is a low. After being bested by the warrior of light for the very last time, faced with probably prison for his crimes, he decides to die by his own hand on that high note rather than go back to the drudgery and misery that is everything else.

It's why in endwalker he can be swayed to do something good at the very, very end. He doesn't have a moral compass because he was shaped into an attack dog by his father, he sees "righteousness" as an excuse for war. Because I mean, what else is Garlean propaganda but righteousness from their twisted perspective? He asks Jullus if he would be happier had he a good reason to kill so many garleans after killing his own father— he makes it plain that death is death and there is no justice or good or evil in his eyes. He did have a reason, and it was that his father's use of black rose would likely kill the warrior of light, the only person or thing that gave Zenos any joy in life. Later, it was that Fandaniel dangled the idea that the warrior of light would be attracted to the slaughter and would come running to stop him so he killed more people during the civil war after the emperor's death. But he doesn't need to say that that was why. The reason doesn't matter, he knows the action would not change no matter how it was justified. Even if it was a "good" reason, death is death.

(Dialog from the quest "The Time Between the Seconds", patch 4.0)

(Dialog from the quest "As the Heavens Burn", patch 6.0)

I often see people take Alisaie's part in that scene as her convincing him to be a better person but that's really not what happens. He knows if he takes that action that others perceive as good and helps to stop Endsinger, he could have that high again in facing the warrior of light one more time. He could find joy and meaning, even for a fleeting moment. Then once again end it all because he fears returning to the low monotony of life. It's all over his dialog, especially in Endwalker. The dialog at the very end where he asks the warrior of light if they feel fulfilled, I know is meant to be a bit more of a meta question toward the player themselves, but I'd like to think it's Zenos comparing how different his outlook is to the warrior of light's. The warrior of light has many things keeping them going, whereas Zenos is drowning in despair with only one bright spot that he is constantly chasing time and time again.

(Dialog from the quest "Friends Gathered", patch 6.0)

those three tiny lines can hold so much zenoswol yearning in them AAAAAAAAAAAAA I AM not well

I personally still feel like there was room for him to survive that and to be gently guided into more and more good and try to undo some of that conditioning but I think he might be too polarizing of a character for him to become a permanent ally in canon. Much as I would love to see that! I have to wonder if the mentions of him in the 6.X patches that bounced between positive and negative were testing the waters, but I will leave my tinfoil hat aside because this post is already WAY too long lmao

I understand why people dislike him: they think he enjoys murder because he does it without "a good reason", they don't like how obsessive he becomes toward the warrior of light who is an extension of the player themselves, they don't like that in Fandaniel's scheme in "in from the cold" Zenos is the one inhabiting the warrior of light's body. Totally get it, totally understand.

I'm just saying I see the complexity to him and I find it compelling. Just as I found the overwhelming grief and despair that motivated Nidhogg or Emet-selch or Elidibus to be compelling. I think what people miss though when you like an antagonist is that feeling empathy toward them means you don't feel empathy toward the people they harmed, or that you somehow agree with what they did. But really, I just love seeing these characters that are faced with such tragedy or misery that they start to lose sight of right and wrong. They're driven entirely by emotions. For a story where emotions are literally power, I think it's a really interesting angle to take with the antagonists of that story.

Man, where was I going with this? 😂 I just love Zenos... I don't think I will be convincing anyone to like him who doesn't already, and that's not at all my intent. I just thought I'd share my perspective a little bit after getting this ask!

[rainofaugustsith]

These lines right here sum up why I feel FFXIV has much more superior, nuanced writing than the Star Wars franchise.

Star Wars has you believe that one side is right regardless of what they do, and the other side is so evil, rotten to the core in every way that their entire people, planets. culture, language, religion - everything - should be permanently erased if they can't be converted to an entirely different culture, language, and creed (And don't get me started on how they conveniently made the Sith alphabet - again considered terrabad - virtually identical to the Hebrew alphabet). It's a very black and white, dogmatic view that IMHO hearkens back to the evangelical belief that only one point of view gets to go to heaven, and if you don't believe that, resist converting and want to hang onto your identity, you're going to hell. And you're certainly going to hell if you point out anything questionable the other side has done.

What you discover in FFXIV is nuance.

Every single job can be used for good; every single job can be used for evil. The heroes of one story are the villains of another. Every heroic gesture comes with a very real price. Nobody is beyond reproach, and that includes the player character. Actions one person takes for the greater good can lead to devastating damage for others.

The "get back to nature" white mages rule a city-state where xenophobia rules the day and the elementals run a reign of terror. White magic executed without proper training can be fatal.

The black mages who congregate in a hall for the gods of the dead have an alliance among the marginalized tribes that spans all three city-states and saves Eorzea from calamity. Black magic executed without proper training can be fatal.

The Dark Knights dedicate themselves to protecting those who need their help, and teach that one's dark side isn't something to vanquish, but something to hear, acknowledge and make peace with.

The Dragoon story shows that one's archenemy can become one's ally - or consume them.

The fearsome reapers who treat with the dead are actually helping the downtrodden.

The community working hard to keep the peace and move forward in a productive way are ex-pirates.

And so on. Nobody is expected to forgive those who have wronged them. Atonement is seen as something that involves work on the part of the perpetrator, not the participation of the survivors. But atonement is there and in several cases characters do better.

Any thoughts that any group in Eorzea needs to be eliminated are eventually dispelled completely. Marginalization of various groups is something that eventually does need to be answered for, and is presented as a problem, not a necessity. When Eorzea finally marches on their nemesis, the Garlean Empire, it is on an aid mission, not conquest. There are no attempts to convert. Just to help.

Both Garlemald in Endwalker and Ziost in SWTOR deal with the issue of murderous possessed people. In SWTOR, the Republic - remember, our "good guys" - response with Saresh is to send an invading army to increase the hurt. In FFXIV, the Alliance's response is to send an army to help, with Scions striking out into the snow and into the smoldering ruins to rescue anyone they can.

If you asked me if I would live anywhere in a Star Wars universe, it would be an emphatic HELL NO. But FFXIV? I feel like they are at least striving for better, with common ground and peaceful co-existence, and everything is nuanced.

[unionizedwizard]

actually to develop a bit further because i Have thought about it. so irma grew up in ul'dah with an adoptive family who kept reminding her of the fact she was beholden to them as an ala mhigan refugee (and in a much better position than any of her peers could hope for). the fact her status & cultural identity were kept hidden from public opinion was considered as a favor they were making her. said family was an arrivist and ambitious merchant couple so they made a huge show of worshiping nald'thal and giving generous alms to the order (while not taking irma with them or allowing her to go, which is why she never officially enrolled at the thaumaturges' guild despite being a full-fledged black mage by now). i also headcanon that due to the political situation & the capitalism-flavored anti-refugee sentiment/xenophobia prevalent in ul'dah until late/post stormblood at the very least, and considering the deep religious sentiment embedded in ala mhigan culture & particularly the refugees we met (the little ala mhigo episode & attempted rhalgr summoning come to mind), rhalgr as a deity has been undermined and disliked in ul'dah - you know how it is with "religious conflicts" - his cult being associated with the lowest classes & basically the undocumented migrants being used as little more than slave labor for the 20+ years of garlean rule over gyr abania, and therefore associated with ideas like "savagery", "foreigners", etc. i also have the feeling that the fact the cult (and order) of nald'thal being quite transparently a political organization (they're in charge of maintaining the roads throughout thanalaan!) makes the very sincere (and somewhat extreme, in certain cases) beliefs of rhalgr's followers a bit "quaint" and "primitive" to them - like the cult of the fury in ishgard might seem a bit "too much" for the average sharlayan whose reverence of thaliak is more of a symbolic & practical thing than anything else. the very idea of "destruction" must appear as unsavory and inelegant to the average ul'dahn by ARR in my opinion, especially when THEIR deity is an elegant metaphor: a double-deity of both death and commerce - everything being passed around in one fluid, harmonious motion, unlike the raw strength and more "basic" aspect of the meteor imagery

all this to say that, considering this is pretty much all she knew about her origins, irma has always clung very tightly to her religious practices & the worship of rhalgr, mostly inwardly. when she starts practicing thaumaturgy on her own and realizes channeling lightning-aspected spells feels like second nature to her, she (joyfully) concludes that rhalgr favors her and that he has heard her prayers. it also brings a measure of comfort about the fact she can't cast/channel healing magicks, because it seems to confirm her (vague) assumption that she's been chosen to become the destroyer's hand in eorzea. this religious foundation + a similarly vague, unexplained feeling both prime her to become hydaelyn's champion and so she leaps into the role immediately without asking questions during ARR, complete faith & unbreakable devotion, the whole deal

she was REAL mad when the whole "the ascian taught us how to summon rhalgr as a primal :( sorry" plot beat happened LOL. supreme impiety & blasphemy in her eyes, and the fact she can very much understand where they're coming from makes her even angrier out of a feeling of helplessness

[xenodile]

On the one hand, I definitely get the perspective some people take of "the actual adults involved let Alphinaud down" in regards to the Crystal Braves, but I don't like it because it feels like it's trying to minimize Alphinaud's wrongdoing or absolve him of responsibility, and it's kind of insulting to treat him like he's well, a stupid kid that was in over his head.

Like don't get me wrong, he was up to his ears in the politics of Ul'dah and that's definitely a lot to put on anyone, especially someone as young and inexperienced as him, but the reason he was able to get into that situation at all is because, for the purposes of the story, Alphinaud is an adult. Like I see all the time the sentiment "why is this teenager allowed to do all this" and the answer is that in the setting, that's old enough to have independence and make important decisions! As far as everyone else in the setting is concerned, Alphinaud's a grown man that is just as qualified as anyone else to be doing the things he does! If he was just a loud mouthed kid, he wouldn't have the ear of Eorzea's military leaders or the Scions.

Whether you agree or not with the narrative decision to have 16 be the age of adulthood aside, the point is that Alphinaud should have known better. He is genuinely very smart, he knows politics and strategy, he SHOULD have anticipated his enemies trying to sabotage his plans. The Crystal Braves happened not because Alphinaud was ignorant, but because Alphinaud was arrogant. There WERE people telling him something was fishy, Riol was looking into it, the Monetarists' investments were brought to his attention, but Alphinaud didn't do anything about it because he was convinced he was invincible. He believed that if anyone tried anything, his troops were fanatically loyal to him and his enemies couldn't touch him. He had it in his head that he had solved the Primal Problem and created the weapon that would enforce Eorzea's peace forever, and he convinced himself that the Warrior of Light was his personal attack dog that would be there to kill anyone that got in his way. And worst of all is that no one could dispute this! His agents found a Garlean spy in the Immortal Flames, his personal action found Cid, saved the Scions, and turned the tide against the XIVth Legion. It would not have mattered if everyone around him was warning him about the coup, he wouldn't have believed it. The reason it hits him so hard is that he was so deep in his own ego as the savior of Eorzea that he started ignoring the corruption around him, and forgetting that his decisions affected the lives of dozens if not hundreds of people.

Taking that responsibility away from him to blame Thancred or Y'shtola or Minfilia or whoever just because they're older than him does a disservice to his character and the story of XIV as a whole.