"Remember us. Remember that we once lived."
Meet my OCs (left to right), Taiyou the Astral Twin, Iroha of the True Autumn, and Tsuki the Umbral Twin. This blog is dedicated to them and anything FFXIV. The world of XIV means so much to me, and I hope to eternalize the memories I've created my lovely babies <3
WARNING: While this blog is dedicated to my OCs and my love for them, posts MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS, ranging from expansion locations, gear, and maybe even words, names, terms, and events that would otherwise not be known without progressing the Main Scenario.
Mother wanted to run a café out of her own home in Sultana's Breath back when she studied here. Now it is simply a home, one where I hoped to enjoy the occasional moment of solitary respite. "Hoped" because mother instisted that her former retainers remain employed as househands.
*i wonder if sis is even aware of how cute she can be sometimes...*
"let me have this moment okay? it's been a while since we've been on a vacation together anyways!"
*even now when we're supposed to be relaxing, i sense a tinge of pain in her eyes...
won't you please tell me one day what's weighing so heavily in the back of your mind?*
I have just finished the expansion and my heart guys ;; ... I cried so much
I am writing a megapost which I'll upload later, but just wow...
This has been one hell of a journey, truly. An adventure that I'll never forget <3
...not that it's over yet!
All I want to say right now is...
FFXIV has a really special place in my heart now, and man did the first half of Dawntrail leave me wondering if the the writers went on vacation. That's not to say I wasn't enjoying myself by that point! It's just... well...
Let's just say I began to understand some of the sentiments towards the expansion people had on release...
I understood those sentiments up until the Main Scenario Quest "All Aboard".
Marking the 50% mark of the expansion, a literal bomb train had delivered us to the Zoraal Ja's front door, and the writers had returned from vacation. Dear god... I was glued to my chair, ready for what came next. I felt all my apprehensions and criticisms about the story's writing and its characters be forgotten in an instant, fizzling into nothing. And now that it's all over, in a pool of my own tears and with a heavy heart I say...
I fuckin' love this game.
Also I'm Sorry Wuk Lamat. I Will Hereby Respect Lamaty'i and I Will Not Talk Down on The Vow of Resolve.
Much is to be considered when thinking about the Ancients, both from perspectives on their individual characters, as well as their roles in the story. Though, from a conversation I had with a friend as I was progressing through Endwalker story, I had an interesting train of thought that I wanted to share!
Before I begin I want to give a little bit of context. I am NOT finished with 6.0 unfortunately, so I may not have all the pieces of the puzzle, but considering the events of the story that I've experienced so far, I'm inclined to believe that I can make these judgments without needing anymore information.
To put things simply, I have not made it to the final area of Endwalker. I do not know the name of the area, nor do I have any other idea as to what it the area may be. The latest point of the expansion that I have experienced is the cutscene that concludes your trip into the aetherial sea.
Train of thought dump begins!
misconceptions that I want to get out of the way:
* english translation of the game vs. japanese voiceover is how I choose to enjoy the game, and therefore a common misconception is apparently (from viewing ffxiv discourse on forums and such) that hearing the name voiced over as ヴェーネス would lead people to incorrectly assume that the naming scheme does in fact draw an absolute connection to venus of roman mythology. while the writers chose "Venat" to be the name (likely a reference to a certain FFXII character), i am not excusing the similarity alltogether, as FFXIV is an installment in a large franchise, and therefore i think it is more clever if anything to reference both, not Venat of FFXII exclusively.
* an argument about the consistency between translations of names can be made if we go back to Ivalice and "Altima". one would notice the verysame reference to an ancient, ultimate power being made with "Ultima", which is actually pronounced the same exact way in the japanese voiceover no matter which it is referring to. this distinction is only made in writing in the english translation, which leads me to believe that the writers wanted to distinguish between the two while allowing the audience to draw the connection between them.
because of my thinking on how hermes' name is pronounced, it got me wondering about the common motifs of hermes as a greek god, namely wings and flight. hermes himself was in fact a messenger, and if these things are to be considered in hermes' character in ffxiv, i daresay these motifs are given direct representation in how he created meteion to be a messenger to all the stars in the great expanse, as well as her mission to bring messages back from other life. i think meteion's wings signify that she is supposed to be derived from a bird, but the usage of wings in her character design are akin to representation of the wings often given to the greek god hermes in both modern and much older representations as well--aka winged shoes, circlets with wings on the side, etc--which brings me to my next comparison
venat's name in japanese in is ヴェーネス (ve-nesu). if you think about what she represents in ffxiv (the motifs in her character specifically) i think there's a actually a pretty clear connection between venat and venus. for example, the italians named the city of venice after her, and being a goddess born from the sea, it's fitting to associate a city by the sea with a goddess intimately connected to the ocean. venus is the roman mythology name, and in greek mythology venus is actually aphrodite, so with italians adopting venus as a diety, many stories often actually reference the greek aphrodite's stories, rather than roman mythology's venus, as they have slightly different backgrounds.
now, i think in western pop culture, venus is more commonly associated with love and beauty, even just women in general, rather than say, the ocean. ffxiv, however, represents both notions of love as well as the ocean in venat's character. we've got the great flood of the first as well the waves mechanic in the mothercrytstal. alongside this we've got her entire motivation for sundering the world; her deep love for mankind and her hopes that they would persevere and prosper required such a drastic measure with grave costs, yet her love was so deep she did this anyways, "so that man would know the wonders of paradise, that they would struggle and enjoy the simple joys of life". so if we consider these loose connections to in fact be indicators of the inspiration for venat, then lets also consider hermes
hermes is ヘルメス in japanese (herumesu). like venat, both of their names are pronounced quite differently from western pronunciations. let's take the luxury brand hermes as an example. while named after the founder, the brand does intentionally bear the name as a way to evoke the connection in people's heads to the greek god, and if hermes the greek god is the messenger god of trade and commerce, it's quite fitting for a luxury brand that specializes in making bags to have such a name. the pronunciation, though, being of french origin, as a consequence of being the founder's last name, does not have any significance to greek mythology unless we consider what the name means in each of the languages. in french the name means roughly "of the desert" if i'm understanding it correctly, and in greek the name similarly but definitely differently means, "of the rock pile". if we think about how language evolves and how diaspora over millenia gives form to words that represent similar ideas but in different ways, then one might think that since our understanding of history dates greece to be much older, french could have been influenced by greek in this regard. in other words, french may have derived from the greek "hermes" to represent a similar "image" or visual representation of an idea upon its fruition as a word/name, and if we consider the many ways scholars and academics around the world refer to pronunciation of ancient greek, the pronunciation of "hermes" changes all throughout europe. germanic languages lean towards hermes being hur MEEZ, and latin and arabic languages lean towards air MEZ. funnily enough in japanese study of greek mythology people have been long aware of this difference, apparently noting that there is a clear distiniction between エルメス (air-mez)、ヘルメス (hair-mez)、とハーミーズ (her-meez).
interesting note, the third one is noted by the japanese as being exclusively the english pronunciation of the name in the study of mythology, intriguing because, although english is no linguistic minority, and while being outnumbered in terms of the variety of languages in the world today, japanese as a language singles out english's pronunciation of the name as being unique to english alone. the english dub in fact stays true to this and thus hermes' name is pronounced her-meez by the other characters.
disjointly, now if we consider that hermes in mythology is depicted as "a conductor of souls unto the afterlife"... well gosh golly i daresay it's clear inspiration from tons of places is being drawn from...
thank you for reading my insight and ramblings on this topic! take this with a grain of salt, as i'm just a linguist with shower thoughts, not an expert in world mythology. i am so deeply appreciative that i get to experience ffxiv's story in this way though. having started the game during the endwalker expansion, i've been on and off with it, and though i admit to not enjoying it at first, the game has since changed my life. i love deep dives into the writing of such well written stories as this, and hope to share more random thoughts should i have them!
thanks for reading!
<3 iroha
"Taiyou and i used to cast wishes into this fountain all the time when we were younger. sometimes, i envy Alphinaud and Alisaie and their never wavering bond...
but like the Astral and Umbral of eld, perhaps it is balance that fates us to be apart...
'say, do you believe the Twelve will one day heed my wishes?'"
*Tsuki's nouliths hum in unison*
