FFXIV: Shadowbringers as Reproductive Horror
Content warning: discussion of reproductive horror and all its implications, including forced pregnancy
Spoilers for all of Shadowbringers 5.0, long post
Okay so. Shadowbringers is the most horror-genre expansion FFXIV has ever had. Endwalker has significant moments, but it's not as complete. And specifically, a lot of the horror that Shadowbringers evokes is reproductive horror, though it is less visually unsubtle than, say, Alien. A major theme of Shadowbringers is parenting, new generations, and childbirth... and the rejection of such. Eulmore, allying itself with the sin eaters, rejects the possibility of a future, even ceasing to engage in creative labor altogether in favor of outsourcing that duty to the bonded. Even the very land of Kholusia is presented as particularly unfertile, despite not being desert like Amh Araeng. Eulmore is, of course, like this because, behind the scenes, Emet-Selch is pulling their strings. Emet-Selch has entirely refused the future presented by the Reflections, one where the Sundered replace his people, though the Sundered are compared, by him, implicitly to children. (And, as he himself points out, some of them literally are his children. "Look at me! I have lived a thousand thousand of your lives! I have broken bread with you, fought with you, grown ill, grown old! Sired children and yes, welcomed death's sweet embrace." Yet he rejects them all. He may be Hades, but he is also Kronos devouring his young.) The Crystarium, in opposition to Eulmore, has carved out a space dedicated to a potential future. They preserve the knowledge of the old world so that it might serve to guide the new. Parents and heirs, in contrast to Eulmore's unthinking infantile consumption. I think it's also worth touching on the Night's Blessed here, who hide from the Light, parents using their very identities as shields for their children, using heartstones to symbolize the souls of their past generations... heartstones which they later sacrifice to fuel the Talos.
Now. Sin eaters. Malformed creatures born from cocoons formed of the bodies and souls of the living... though as easily as cocoons, one might say "eggs." When Light enters a living being, it is planted, "like seeds in soil," and this combines with a living body to produce something un-living, "triggers the birth of new monstrosities." Tesleen's mother became a sin eater. The Forgiven Dissonance that turns her into one in turn is not explicitly identified as her mother, but it is connected with her nonetheless. It has a feminine figure, and Tesleen's last words as a human are "Mother... mother, I..." As a human, Tesleen sacrificed herself to save a child and passed to Halric the last human words her mother gave to her. She uses her humanity to affirm the new generation, but the world of the First is conspiring to reject the possibility of its own heirs. As a sin eater, Tesleen is not named as a forgiven sin. She is simply "Tesleen, the Forgiven." Her sin in this dying world, in the ideology espoused by Eulmore, was attempting to act as a mother. A sin eater exists to feed and multiply, but it is not a living child. It is a stillbirth.
Let's go back to Emet-Selch for a moment. He is, in the world of Shadowbringers, the ultimate Patriarch in every sense. He is an invading emperor, a past generation, a literal father and grandfather and great-grandfather. He creates Vauthry to be a dead end, an un-heir... and in genuinely one of his worst single acts, he does this by negotiating with Vauthry's father about impregnating Vauthry's mother with a monster, while she can only stand there, silent and despairing. Vauthry will eventually kill her, along with his father. I also think it's worth noting that Vauthry's mother shares the color scheme of the Minfilias. Blonde hair, light eyes, a hairstyle with a pink ribbon, and a pink dress. Upon Vauthry's ascension, the Minfilias are imprisoned. Minfilia tried to create a line of daughters to create a future for the First, but she and her successors cannot do it alone, especially not once the world has rejected the possibility she tries to create. All the Minfilias after the Minfilia of the Source and before Ryne die as children. Even at best, they are exploited and used up by the world they are born into, even as Minfilia refuses to simply overwrite them with herself, as an Ascian would. Ryne thinks she has to die for the crime of only existing at the death of her "mother," but all Minfilia wants for her is that Ryne be allowed to live her own life, to choose her own future. Minfilia is the opposite of Emet-Selch, narratively speaking.
The Crystal Exarch, on the other hand, is not the opposite of Emet-Selch. He arrives in this world as the last heir of the Allagan Empire, imposing its great Tower upon the land, though he means to nurture rather than invade. He and Emet-Selch wear deliberately similar outfits, and though they share scenes, they only speak to each other on-screen when not in the company of others. Prospero is the evil magician, the father, and the author of the story all at once, after all. The Exarch as Prospero (rather than just Emet-Selch) is, I think, most clearly illustrated by Feo Ul, the Ariel of this tale, the spirit combining gendered motifs and bound to serve in aid. The Exarch also notably has a magic staff, whereas Emet-Selch does not, at least until his Trial. The Exarch is, narratively, one of the Patriarchs of this world and this story. The benevolent father of the Crystarium, who seeks to let the First stand on its own, but still exerts the control of someone else's agency inherent in the archetype.
Y'shtola is the only adult woman of the Scions (save for possibly the Warrior) in Shadowbringers. She cannot be a Maiden, she will not be a Mother (and cannot be anyway, not in this story), so she is left with the Crone. Master Matoya (the deliberate mixing of masculine title and feminine name), the witch in the woods, who rejects every Patriarch she is presented with. She left the Crystarium because of the Exarch, she is certainly no fan of Emet-Selch, and she immediately lambasts Thancred for his failures as a father figure. She is seeking Ronka, a primordial past that she hopes will provide a better model... but is disappointed to find a village of only women who are nonetheless sworn to a long-dead Emperor, an Emperor whose designs to hide away and control knowledge she is increasingly frustrated with as the Rak'tika story progresses. But the price of becoming the Crone by choice is that she is excluded from the story until the Warrior arrives with the aid the Exarch has prepared for her. It is no accident that Y'shtola is the one to reveal to the Warrior what everyone else who knows has been concealing: something terrible is growing inside them, an anti-life that threatens to kill them and take the world with it.
The Warrior of Light is the designated Mother of this story, and the fate of the world depends on their ability to transmute dead Light into new life. But the path that has been decided for them is inherently flawed. You cannot create a healthy future through the cycle of sacrificing mothers. I'm not sure you can really say that Shadowbringers rejects patriarchy. It is... a FFXIV expansion. And it is still very concerned with Correct Reproduction. Before the Tempest, the Warrior visits the Umbilicus, the room at the heart of the Crystal Tower, named for the point where the umbilical cord connects to a fetus, and then immediately after finishing that quest, one of the sidequests that opens up is "Welcome to the Future," where the Warrior blesses a newborn baby in the Crystarium. But the fact that the Warrior did not have full knowledge of what was going to happen to their body is nonetheless a wrong that was committed against them. Also, I feel like it's worth mentioning here that the ill-effects of the Light include vomiting and the Warrior clutching their stomach. And that the Light enters the Warrior's torso specifically after each Lightwarden-slaying, rather than a more full-body representation.
So: the final confrontation of the Tempest. The Warrior is out of time. A new Lightwarden is going to be born, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. The Scions have tried and failed. Emet-Selch is victorious. Enter Ardbert. The Warrior is not, after all, alone. With aid and partnership, they can survive what is happening to their body and reject this engendering of Light, of un-life. There will be no new-begotten sin eater.
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