proto-carbuncle was so funny. no lore. no lead up. welcome to the cage match. this is what your magic hamster looked like as a first draft, apparently. they put it in creature jail. it bites and also looks like that.
whenever arr era alphinaud says some shit about ordering the wol around like a personal attack dog im like "whats wrong with you. who raised you." and then I remember the answer is fourchenault and it all makes sense
I still think we were onto something when we said that the crystarium looks like oz and that it is also a story of a guy pretending to be a wizard using technology who is from the same world as the protag and theres a sorcerer villain and winged animals attacking you constantly.
I love that the game was like "the wol wouldnt visually change if they went sin eater mode" and deductive reasoning says "they'd look like a pretty statue bc most of them do" but half of us were like "my wol would be enormous theyd have six heads and 200 eyes"
forgot they added that garlean gorilla robot mount to the game and one soared past me on the moon the other day and I said "winston?" outloud like a child catching a glimpse of santa claus
I think the wol owes ardbert everything for that time they walk into the pendants and he is like *grips your shoulder* "you do know the exarch can see you all the time. right."
I think for me the game really did peak with the reveal that hydaelyn's hear feel think routine wasnt a heartfelt and direct conversation with a higher power but basically like god's answering machine message running on repeat. it was unnerving and I loved it.
19 yr old varis being like "peepaw why do you hate me so much 🥺" and emet going "idk youre just kind of like ugly I guess." is one of my top ten favorite emet moments actually.
the thing abt zero is that she's a character with androgynous facial features who uses male movements and borders on masc. Im not surprised that no one expected her to be popular in a game where it is virtually impossible for a pc using a f model to be androgynous w/o m*ds.
au where v*nat gets to return to the sea so she can put a hand on hades' shoulder and say "honestly I underestimated the psychic damage you'd get from seeing your model-esque fem top husband be shattered into a 5'9 ala mhigan twink. my bad."
I think the point of Endwalker's theme was actually that they made Hyth very pretty even though they didn't need to do that. Hope that helps everyone navigate these challenging points of media analysis.
this outfit from minfilia's concept page is one of the most perfect outfits ive ever seen a woman in this wretched game put in im going to go smash through a wall with my bare hands.
honestly I went into watching my partner play SHB pretty blind like I knew emet was popular but beyond that all I knew about him was that tumblr post that was like "I can't believe the villain of SHB makes you go to the dmv to get a permit to go fight him haha"
Emet-Selch reportedly repeated a homophobic slur during a meeting less than a month after apologizing for using it:
“There is an air of fa****ness in the Convocation.”
I know the "mankind's first hero" line is probably meant to refer to the ancient warrior of light stories that exist on the first but I choose to hc it as elidibus referring to his own role as the heart of zodiark.
I know theres an implication that the moogles remember the sundering but I think they need to go the extra mile and just say outright that those things are UNsundered and they act like assholes because they know their souls are more complete.
5.3 was like. chock full of agonizing "he loved you btw. if you even care." bits that culminate in his ghost saving the wol during SoS after they hold the crystal to their heart and call out for aid. and then the scions don't even believe them when they relay it. I love it.
its sooo awkward when you reunite with thancred and three minutes into the convo hes just openly berating his adopted daughter in front of the wol and the twins
the reveal that hydealyn actually isnt rlly talking directly and the echo isnt special and that this shit has all been smoke and mirrors, theres a man behind the curtain, god isnt home weve just been talking to his answering machine, still is SOOO GOOD. best reveal of the game.
sid's backstory is kind of an insane thing to only get if you're playing drk. I know there's other in game (maybe?) stuff that alludes to "some scholars assume the au ra are dravanian, but this is false" but that's very different from "ishgardians massacred xaela refugees."
>running lvl roulette
>ask the game if it will be a fun & memorable dungeon or mt gulg
>game doesn't understand
>pull out diagram explaining what is fun & memorable and what is mt gulg
>game laughs and says "its a good dungeon, sir"
>queue pops
>its mt gulg
the best lines of endwalker to me actually are that insanely doom filled read of the wol's fate that vrtra gives early on. the whole like, "you will kill everyone around you" was so good and I hate that it doesnt follow thru narrativelyyyy but w/e
shb is good bc the bosses in holminster use attacks named after real and apocryphal early modern torture devices and bc that one boss in the amaurot dungeon is called a bellwether so huge respect to the english localization team for those decisions.
Im sorry I just realized all of your garlean ocs can hypothetically have memories of what it feels like to be carried in from the car when they were kids wtf
I am also. gently reminding people that the name thing is going to be interpreted differently by different people. and a cultural name that you don't use around foreigners and that is clearly coded as a native name isn't necessarily going to read as "a deadname" to everyone.
Im like lowkey a magnai apologist. I have to respect the only guy on the steppe who tells hien "I know what youre doing and you need to knock it the fuck off." hes played way more serious in SB before the patches.
Kor fans did a poll on the character they want to marry and the ones they wouldn't with an explanation why/why not and some of the comments are hilarious (these are all from the ones they want to marry)
I love the drk quest journal entries obviously but "you have done a great and terrible thing" remains, for me, a sleeper hit in the msq entries that summarizes the entire approach to morality that makes shb my favorite expac.
my first interaction with shb was following someone years agowith a graha icon on tumblr who reblogged some jokes about the "villain making you go to the dmv before you fight him" and then a few years later the "villain making me go to the dmv" made me cry real human tears.
finding out that swathes of zenos likers despise ascian fans...finding out swathes of ascian fans despise zenos likers...guys we are all playing an mmorpg with moogles in it we cannot keep losing sight of that. no more fighting. no more fighting over guys in the moogle mmo.
if gaius is canonically allowed to have survived the praetorium blowing up, ur allowed to write an npc back in so your character isn't doomed to wolnpc bed death.
I think the wol owes ardbert everything for that time they walk into the pendants and he is like *grips your shoulder* "you do know the exarch can see you all the time. right."
those patches also brushed this idea that the wol isnt really all that special. the reveal that the echo is just residual pre-sundered power that many people can kinda access if a starshower triggers. fantasy genetic trauma memories from the final days? VERY good.
Im sorry Ive already joked about shb being the story of two wizards obsessed with the wol but it is also funny to me that both ardbert AND emet are implied to be just invisibly following you around for large chunks of the plot.
my partner is a black mage main so I'm just pavlovian conditioned to feel safe whenever there's a black mage in my party at this point. I'm like ohhhh good the exploding magician is here :)
I say this with love but the exarch is such a snake LOL I cant believe the wol can ask "hey are my friends here" and hes like "hmm thats a hard question. lets talk abt it later 🥰" like BRO just say theyre on the first just in different locations omg
I love emet-selch and zenos' english vocal performances I think theyre the product of extremely talented VAs and an immense amount of depth is given to the characters by how they deliver their lines.
Im sorry but it makes me lose jt when someone draws the fiends together because it reveals how xiv monster designs can be varied and fun if youre a guy but the woman is literally just "pretty woman with tits out". one has to laugh.
every wolnpcshipper needs to be allowed a minion of their npc. I want you all to experience the occasional waves of "ohhh god someone's gonna know 🤢" that washes over me when im in radz with aidoneus out.
g'raha. bby. I am sorry I ever made jokes about you. you are the now the only scion who mentions elpis directly and youve done it TWICE. you are my last bastion of sanity.
I loved elpis but I think that it was actually fake amaurot in the tempest which captured the kind of "oh. oh no." sort of strange eeriness / weirdness I've gotten from time travel related elements of other games.
@manaohu
when I took driver's ed the instructor straight up told us "for most of you a car is the most dangerous weapon you will ever operate." still fucked up about it tbh
I want to think of some irl comparison but the closest we're getting is going back in time and being put in a cage match with a hyperviolent theropod labeled "early parakeet"
tbh i think its sooo rude when someone does a ready check bc theres new players but someone who just wants to grind thru their dailies at warp speed pulls anyway.
I keep forgetting to say this but I think its really cute when someone has to brb during a dungeon bc they have to go take care of a pet or a kid ;__; locking replies bc im not interested in hearing disagreements lol I think its sweet!
honestly I have my gripes with EW but the wol barreling into zenos to get him away from the scions and literally jumping in front of hyth when hermes tries to kill him are the two most in character cutscene actions I will probably ever get for elyan.
the thing I like about the encyclopedias, SO FAR, is that its less like "here is lorebreaking information" and more like "these ruins in this place belong to the So And So culture" "the main export from this region is oats and dried cloudberries". its fluff lore!
fray would encourage you to get rhe fucked up subway sandwich u actually want to order and not the acceptable one you get so the subway employees dont think ur crazy
in general a thing id love to see in 7.0 is a move away from genderlocked clothing AND features. there's no reason that really nice hooked nose elezen can have is only available for male elezen.
seeing elidibus drop his smile and do the autism dead eyes as soon as hes done pretending to be ardbert.....the representation I needed in media truly.