#ysayle can not help but be similar to shiva. it’s how she’s written. it’s what she is.

[thefandomexpert]

this exactly, except I feel, perhaps because we have yet to meet Azem themselves in flashback or otherwise, perhaps because the WoL is really the player, who has no former connection to this world in reality, that the WoL is the exception. And in fact that it is the WoL’s narrative job to stand up and say I am not something hollowed or cut down or in place of something else. You think I am, maybe. But really I am Me, and I am exactly who I am Meant to Be

so much of ffxiv is about feeling that you've been scooped out and replaced by someone else. ysayle with shiva. minfilia with hydaelyn. lyse with yda. ryne with minfilia. graha with himself. gaia with loghrif. elidibus with zodiark, with his duty. venat with hydaelyn. the watcher. amon with fandaniel. the wol, maybe, with azem. imposters and replacements and transformations, often brutally. such as it is in a cycle of rebirth + suffering