me, 2 weeks into playing ffxiv: i dont respect any of these mfs whose names i cant even remember. i will probably uninstall later when i get bored
me, half a year into ffxiv: ok so the botanist questline in which the farmers at camp cloudtop get accused of heresy for infiltrating a non native crop into the country was PROBABLY a cover for house dzemael wanting to cause further stress on house haillenarte bc by destabilizing them, (the weakest link) this means house fortemps (powerhouse but kind of against the holy sees policies) will also be weakened by default. and fortemps controls the literal entry point to ishgard. its dangerous if they ever rebeled or revolted bc that can cut off ishgard from the rest of the continent. so it makes sense that the church would want them to have less influence or power overall, using house dzemael to do so bc we later know that house dzemael were the ones that tipped the fucking church abt the fucking vegetables. and house dzemael is the only house with active members that belong to the heaven's ward (grinnaux, violent guy whose murders were covered with coin & paulcrain, formerly of house fortemps. coincidentally the mfs who also arrest alphinaud and tataru of heresy)
i think my favorite ff14 narrative gimmick is that the savage raid unlocks are explicitly just the WOL having adhd daydreams about the cool shit they've done. the omega raids are even explicitly about cid trying to put on an ASMR tibetan meditation spotify playlist to calm them down but the WOL is unmedicated so it really only makes the problem worse
And if you’re out long enough that night falls and you need to remember which side of the ship the red and green navigation lights are on, you’ve got “There’s no red port left.”
being so fr but the only reason why I even remember starboard is because ffxiv used "larboard/starboard" and I just remembered that larboard starts with L so it's left
the warrior of light as a game-breaking force of violence
there's a moment, relatively early in dawntrail, that establishes succinctly how out of place the warrior of light (as the savior of eorzea and main character of four successive final fantasy game plots) is in what is essentially the story of fresh new final fantasy protagonist wuk lamat. and it sets up quite nicely how the framework of fantasy video game conflict pulls the warrior of light forever towards violence as the expansion goes on.
spoilers through 7.0 follow
consider wuk lamat's kidnapping and rescue. bakool ja ja holds his blade to wuk lamat's throat, taunting you. his lackeys line up against your party in neat little ranks suspiciously reminiscent of a classic final fantasy encounter screen.
and it simply does not matter to the warrior of light. you stride right through their combat setup because you are beyond that by now. the warrior of light has absolutely no respect for the "we are about to do ATB combat" lineup. the camera even jumps the line for you in one continuous rotating shot, crossing the axis of action as though to emphasize through the disruption of visual convention how far outside the game's boundaries you are.
this is how far you are above the problems of dawntrail's first half. you cannot even be bound by the normal rules of cinematography and video game combat. everyone else here lined up for a good old-fashioned scrap and the warrior of light said haha nope actually. i'm going to stroll through here like a god of war astride this tiny battlefield. your henchmen cannot even raise a hand to me. i don't even have to engage in violence directly anymore. my mere presence is enough.
in fact, not only can bakool ja ja's henchmen not raise a hand to you, he's not even worthy of your direct intervention. he kidnaps wuk lamat and steals her keystones and frees valigarmanda and kidnaps hunmu rruk and none of it warrants the warrior of light so much as raising a finger. he's wuk lamat's recurring villain, that's not your problem. you're just here to take in the scenery.
zoraal ja spends his whole life aspiring to be thought of as his father's equal and a worthy successor to the dawnservant as the "resilient son." all it takes for gulool ja ja to acknowledge you as a warrior on his level is like a five minute sparring match. the acknowledgement from gulool ja ja that zoraal ja hungered for his whole life and would eventually go full cyborg supervillain to get via regicide is something the warrior of light receives casually in a throwaway line after their level 93 solo duty on the way to more important plot conversations.
it really seems for a second, in the first half of dawntrail, like you are strong enough and the problems simple enough for this to be a clean and easy adventure. bakool ja ja? power of friendship'd. mamook? successfully reintegrated, no worries about the crimes against humanity. rite of succession? handily won. nothing can stop you. even duty finder queue times have been conquered: you can do all your duties with trusts now.
all of which only makes it better when the second half has sphene ask you and wuk lamat directly: could your strength have been enough to save alexandria? could you have found a different way?
i know some people get very annoyed we don't intervene in the gulool ja ja fight. now personally i think if you see arthur and mordred squaring up it's rude to intervene, but beyond that, it simply wouldn't have mattered. by the time zoraal ja's forces arrived in tuliyollal, alexandria and tural were already on a collision course and doomed to conflict. your hands alone could never have averted this conflict. sphene was always bound to do what she did—and certainly a gulool ja ja without his reason would not be any more inclined to peace than wuk lamat and koana were.
there's a great little moment just before living memory where estinien, champion at reading the room, is like "okay so if thancred and i stay here that frees up you up, aibou, to do what you do best and save the world and have epic fights. woo!!!" and immediately afterwards you basically have to apologize to alisaie because part of the sort of unspoken premise of this whole trip in the first place was that you were, finally, not going to plunge into mortal peril to save the world. you were finally going to take it easy. you were finally done with that. and she has to sort of ruefully be like nah it's fine bro. i was trying to get you to take it easy and not do insane risky world-saving violence. but y'know these things (interdimensional invasions) happen.
by the time you reach the very last trial, all pretense that the warrior of light could have ever been beyond these problems has vanished. you were, very emphatically, not strong enough to hold onto all that was dear without sacrifice. gulool ja ja and otis and cahciua died. yyasulani was irreversibly changed, physically colonized and culturally decimated by another dimension. you systematically shut down each part of living memory, and all its friendly, charming, loving ghosts, with your own hands. with your own clicks.
not even the vaunted strength of the warrior of light is enough to overcome sphene's inexorable logic of conflict. and so, in the end, she plucks you out of the crowd and says, explicitly for reasons of your strength, that you are going to have to do a boss fight now. you are going to have to kill her and you are going to have to do it in a proper 8-on-1 trial, and she forces you to affirmatively state that you understand you're going to kill her.
did you think you were above it all? did you think you could get away from here with your weapon undrawn, with your hands clean? that for you and you alone the logic of conflict comes undone? wrong. wrong. wrong.
your strength cannot redeem you, says sphene. your friends cannot make these sacrifices for you. if you would play the hero then you must play the hero. no half-measures.
I’ve been redoing shadowbringers recently, and there’s something I want you to see.
I want you to look at this sandwich basket the exarch made for wol after returning from il mheg
looks delicious right ? now count each of them, if you count everything that makes 14 sandwiches
in this scene wol talks with ardbert (with the screen fading out), then goes to sleep. when they wake up we see that the whole basket is empty: this implies wol ate a basket of fourteen sandwiches in one sitting didn’t even put some on the side of later or anything do you know how hungry you’d have to be to eat fourteen sandwiches like that.
The thoughts for Retsarra have coalesced a little bit, at least enough for me to come up with a fic idea so I will attempt to express both my actual thoughts on his character in tandem with the fic idea because they're related. Idk I put characters in torture matrices to extract the Sauce from their characters for better understanding. Why am I like this
The tl;dr if you don't want to dive under the break for the full thoughts (which are a lot) is that Retsarra is a wild place to explore both political apathy fueled by late-stage capitalism and feelings of cultural estrangement, not to mention the isolation that a lot of bisexual people feel when they are misunderstood or rejected by both gay and straight people.
The fic is really just my WoL Shura'li having a conversation with him that compares their experiences and differing worldviews that goes wrong near the end because Shura'li is a blockhead who doesn't understand bisexuality. Shura'li cringe compilation. Retsarra cringe compilation. Everyone is kinda cringe, everyone has understandable reasons for being cringe. Life traumatizes people in different ways that brings them into conflict with each other. No one is wrong. No one is right.
Retsarra has a list of identities that also all play into his character so in no particular order, the relevant ones for my fic/analysis are
Alexandrian-born Turali (Parents were forcibly colonized, very likely that he was either the first or second generation of those colonized people to grow up within Alexandria)
Bisexual (He has a thing going on with Hector, he's Eutrope's boyfriend, it's basically canon)
Entertainer/Ring Fighter (Self-explanatory)
Politically Apathetic (I'm extrapolating this based off his actions, where instead of trying to break out of the system that's actively killing him he clings onto it because it's comfortable and defines him. You could also say that he's conservative because of this, but idk if I'd go that far considering he changes his tune pretty quickly after getting his ass beat, like I think he just really needed that push)
Anyways the fic idea is really just a conversation he and the WoL (I'm referring to the WoL instead of my actual WoL's name until it's relevant because I think the interaction is non-WoL-specific and works for pretty much any WoL honestly) are having after the events of the Cruiserweight Tier. They're kinda just drinking together, trying to at least relax a little while they sit around waiting for the Heavyweight stuff to start, and they start talking a bit about each other's respective histories.
The idea here, really, is to just compare and contrast the mindsets of someone who is in a position of power and someone who is powerless through the way they tell their respective histories. The WoL will likely end up emphasizing their struggles and how they overcame them, they'll talk about how they've saved the world from evil despots and world-ending threats alike, and how even though it seemed impossible, they knew that they had to do something about it. And then Retsarra comes along and he has no power, not really. He can't change systems of government, doesn't have the influence to sit at the negotiation table, doesn't have the ability to fight those world-ending threats. His mentality, then, is one of passive critique and acceptance: the world sucks, it's slowly killing him, but he can't do anything about it so he'll just strive to be the best he can within those confines.
To the WoL at first glance this is going to look like pure unbridled cowardice and apathy. What do you mean you can't do anything about the shitty system? Change it! You have to to do something about it, even if it seems impossible. But slowly, over time, the WoL is going to realize that they only have that mentality because they have so many experiences of making the impossible possible. They face off against gods for fun. They have the power, Retsarra does not. And what does someone do when they don't have the power to do the impossible? They do the best they can.
In more political terms, the WoL has the power and influence to enact real and meaningful change within pretty much any state that knows about their existence, if not through diplomatic means then through the systemic dismantling of the fascist system. Politicians fear them, this is like the ideal scenario for anyone who wants to do a revolution. Retsarra, on the other hand, has no real way out of the system. He's stuck in a dead-end job that's actively killing him and is stuck in a capitalist system that has conditioned him from birth to be reliant on it. He genuinely does not see any way out until the WoL comes along to give him the courage to actually do so. So he does his best to hold onto his morals and his ambitions within the confines of the system he was born into.
So at this point I'm introducing Shura'li's name again because in order to properly explore the hellspace this man is in I need someone who is gay and maybe not fully cognizant of the diversity of LGBT people to really show just how isolated Retsarra feels. At some point during their conversation Retsarra (due to being kinda tipsy) offhanded mentions that he loves Hector and regrets not being able to save him. This confuses Shura'li a little bit because clearly he has not heard of the concept of bisexuality (Everyone in his family is either gay, straight, or ace and the straight guy's latent bisexuality crops up very rarely and is effectively invisible to Shura'li) and ends up asking Retsarra why he loves Hector if he's straight.
This. Uh. Does not go over well. Remember that Retsarra is, in my beautiful mind palace, in my conception based off the clues that the writers have been dropping for me, both bisexual and Alexandrian-born Turali. By virtue of both of these identities, he feels very isolated like 99% of the time. He does not relate to Alexandrian culture nor can he comfortably understand Turali culture. When he hangs out with straight people, they find his attraction to men off-putting, and he barely even has a chance to hang out with gay people because he's out here in a (I assume) Very Public Relationship with his girlfriend, like he just kinda passes as straight to everyone. So at this point he just breaks down because this person who he was hoping would understand him, this man who had the power to conquer two tiers of the Arcadion and is intent on saving as many people from the dangerous usage of feral souls as possible with his powers, who told him that he's gay and was therefore at least theoretically a member of one of Retsarra's communities, just does not understand a fundamental part of his existence. And like obviously he's a little bit drunk so he's catastrophizing, but at this point he's starting to think that literally no one will understand him. I mean, the only two people who did are dead and kidnapped respectively, so he just kinda starts crying and it sucks and Shura'li feels super bad but still doesn't quite understand so his little brother (Shura'sae) has to take over and console him. Fic wraps up after that.
The point of this fic is, primarily, to explore the differences between how people with different political power levels conceptualize the world around them and sort of illustrate the difficulties of actually inspiring revolutionary sentiment. Heavensward patch quests touched on this a little bit with the Eorzean Alliance literally having to get their asses kicked into high gear by Ilberd to do anything about Ala Mhigo, but that was a lot more of a birds eye view of things and I want to explore how the average person interacts with a system that they are aware is bad for them. Metatextually (because Alexandria is pretty clearly intended to critique American Capitalism) this is also an exploration of why US leftist politics is in the state that it is and how capitalism ensnares everyone in it. I can't remember which CJ the X video this was but at one point they said something along the lines of "Oh Industrialization, you fickle bitch. You gave us cell phones but took away our souls." and that's basically what I'm getting at here. When you depend on the system that is actively killing you, interesting things happen to your mentality. And Retsarra represents that, I think.
Secondary point is to explore the very specific sense of isolation that both bisexual and PoC people in America experience. By using "Alexandrian-born Turali" I am purposely calling to "American-born Chinese" (because I'm an American-born Chinese person and I know the feeling lmfao) which I'm not actually sure if that's the actual academic terminology for it or if the graphic novel has just permeated popular culture so much. Anyways. I'm not completely bisexual and (thankfully) all my friends do not fall into biphobia out of ignorance, but I definitely absolutely feel this with regards to whether I consider myself more American or Chinese. Baby me did not have a really good way of resolving this, so I ended up having quite a lot of weird feelings about this that only got weirder as I continued to be exposed to more and more American and Chinese culture alike. It also made it pretty difficult to relate to basically anyone that wasn't in a similar situation as me (which I did have at least one friend similar to me thank fuck lmao) because it's not like I had the typical american childhood experience nor did I have the typical chinese childhood experience. So that sense of isolation, extrapolated to an adult, is interesting to me to explore and Retsarra is honestly kinda perfect for me to do that.
(btw if you're interested in reading more about my takes on this kind of cultural estrangement it was more or less the focus of a post I made a while ago about Yotsuyu that keeps making the rounds tl;dr there's a lot of self-hatred going on)
Bonus observation that I'm not sure where to add into the fic (probably at the end when Shura'sae is consoling Retsarra) but I'm pretty sure Retsarra was intending to kill himself with that fight against Shura'li. The shit that happens in M8S kinda soft confirms this, but like. That's really dark man. His boyfriend died and at that point he still thinks that his girlfriend dumped him so like. He's just in a bad mental state. Like there's this lyric in the M8 theme that's barely audible where he says something along the lines of "maybe I should go with them" and that was the thing that really solidified this interpretation for me. Nefarious, deeply traumatized voice in the back of your head telling you that it would be better to follow your loved ones to the grave than fight to live.
I just went and looked at the official lyrics and I'm going to grab the writers and shake them why are we on the same wavelength with this soggy, soggy catboy
During one of the verses, there are essentially two trains of thought running in parallel. One is observing the comfortable sedation of the capitalist system and acknowledging that it's an attractive option. "Sweet, tender smiles on every empty face/Serene surrounds to keep them safe/Maybe I'll join them and shut my eyes" The other is his suppressed rage at the injustice slowly growing over time. "Someday soon my will is bound to break/All blind to the cage closing/How long can I stand to stay my blade?" And then the two coalesce at the end in agreement. "But how could my pride dare abide? (I can feel my rage growing)"
and it really helps contextualize his choice to actually oppose the system after the WoL beats his ass. He knows he needs to find a way to oppose it and dismantle it, he just needs an excuse to. And since people don't just change overnight, this same kind of conflict between finding this role that slowly kills you comfortable and opposing what you know to be bad for you will still be present in him
The thoughts for Retsarra have coalesced a little bit, at least enough for me to come up with a fic idea so I will attempt to express both my actual thoughts on his character in tandem with the fic idea because they're related. Idk I put characters in torture matrices to extract the Sauce from their characters for better understanding. Why am I like this
The tl;dr if you don't want to dive under the break for the full thoughts (which are a lot) is that Retsarra is a wild place to explore both political apathy fueled by late-stage capitalism and feelings of cultural estrangement, not to mention the isolation that a lot of bisexual people feel when they are misunderstood or rejected by both gay and straight people.
The fic is really just my WoL Shura'li having a conversation with him that compares their experiences and differing worldviews that goes wrong near the end because Shura'li is a blockhead who doesn't understand bisexuality. Shura'li cringe compilation. Retsarra cringe compilation. Everyone is kinda cringe, everyone has understandable reasons for being cringe. Life traumatizes people in different ways that brings them into conflict with each other. No one is wrong. No one is right.
Retsarra has a list of identities that also all play into his character so in no particular order, the relevant ones for my fic/analysis are
Alexandrian-born Turali (Parents were forcibly colonized, very likely that he was either the first or second generation of those colonized people to grow up within Alexandria)
Bisexual (He has a thing going on with Hector, he's Eutrope's boyfriend, it's basically canon)
Entertainer/Ring Fighter (Self-explanatory)
Politically Apathetic (I'm extrapolating this based off his actions, where instead of trying to break out of the system that's actively killing him he clings onto it because it's comfortable and defines him. You could also say that he's conservative because of this, but idk if I'd go that far considering he changes his tune pretty quickly after getting his ass beat, like I think he just really needed that push)
Anyways the fic idea is really just a conversation he and the WoL (I'm referring to the WoL instead of my actual WoL's name until it's relevant because I think the interaction is non-WoL-specific and works for pretty much any WoL honestly) are having after the events of the Cruiserweight Tier. They're kinda just drinking together, trying to at least relax a little while they sit around waiting for the Heavyweight stuff to start, and they start talking a bit about each other's respective histories.
The idea here, really, is to just compare and contrast the mindsets of someone who is in a position of power and someone who is powerless through the way they tell their respective histories. The WoL will likely end up emphasizing their struggles and how they overcame them, they'll talk about how they've saved the world from evil despots and world-ending threats alike, and how even though it seemed impossible, they knew that they had to do something about it. And then Retsarra comes along and he has no power, not really. He can't change systems of government, doesn't have the influence to sit at the negotiation table, doesn't have the ability to fight those world-ending threats. His mentality, then, is one of passive critique and acceptance: the world sucks, it's slowly killing him, but he can't do anything about it so he'll just strive to be the best he can within those confines.
To the WoL at first glance this is going to look like pure unbridled cowardice and apathy. What do you mean you can't do anything about the shitty system? Change it! You have to to do something about it, even if it seems impossible. But slowly, over time, the WoL is going to realize that they only have that mentality because they have so many experiences of making the impossible possible. They face off against gods for fun. They have the power, Retsarra does not. And what does someone do when they don't have the power to do the impossible? They do the best they can.
In more political terms, the WoL has the power and influence to enact real and meaningful change within pretty much any state that knows about their existence, if not through diplomatic means then through the systemic dismantling of the fascist system. Politicians fear them, this is like the ideal scenario for anyone who wants to do a revolution. Retsarra, on the other hand, has no real way out of the system. He's stuck in a dead-end job that's actively killing him and is stuck in a capitalist system that has conditioned him from birth to be reliant on it. He genuinely does not see any way out until the WoL comes along to give him the courage to actually do so. So he does his best to hold onto his morals and his ambitions within the confines of the system he was born into.
So at this point I'm introducing Shura'li's name again because in order to properly explore the hellspace this man is in I need someone who is gay and maybe not fully cognizant of the diversity of LGBT people to really show just how isolated Retsarra feels. At some point during their conversation Retsarra (due to being kinda tipsy) offhanded mentions that he loves Hector and regrets not being able to save him. This confuses Shura'li a little bit because clearly he has not heard of the concept of bisexuality (Everyone in his family is either gay, straight, or ace and the straight guy's latent bisexuality crops up very rarely and is effectively invisible to Shura'li) and ends up asking Retsarra why he loves Hector if he's straight.
This. Uh. Does not go over well. Remember that Retsarra is, in my beautiful mind palace, in my conception based off the clues that the writers have been dropping for me, both bisexual and Alexandrian-born Turali. By virtue of both of these identities, he feels very isolated like 99% of the time. He does not relate to Alexandrian culture nor can he comfortably understand Turali culture. When he hangs out with straight people, they find his attraction to men off-putting, and he barely even has a chance to hang out with gay people because he's out here in a (I assume) Very Public Relationship with his girlfriend, like he just kinda passes as straight to everyone. So at this point he just breaks down because this person who he was hoping would understand him, this man who had the power to conquer two tiers of the Arcadion and is intent on saving as many people from the dangerous usage of feral souls as possible with his powers, who told him that he's gay and was therefore at least theoretically a member of one of Retsarra's communities, just does not understand a fundamental part of his existence. And like obviously he's a little bit drunk so he's catastrophizing, but at this point he's starting to think that literally no one will understand him. I mean, the only two people who did are dead and kidnapped respectively, so he just kinda starts crying and it sucks and Shura'li feels super bad but still doesn't quite understand so his little brother (Shura'sae) has to take over and console him. Fic wraps up after that.
The point of this fic is, primarily, to explore the differences between how people with different political power levels conceptualize the world around them and sort of illustrate the difficulties of actually inspiring revolutionary sentiment. Heavensward patch quests touched on this a little bit with the Eorzean Alliance literally having to get their asses kicked into high gear by Ilberd to do anything about Ala Mhigo, but that was a lot more of a birds eye view of things and I want to explore how the average person interacts with a system that they are aware is bad for them. Metatextually (because Alexandria is pretty clearly intended to critique American Capitalism) this is also an exploration of why US leftist politics is in the state that it is and how capitalism ensnares everyone in it. I can't remember which CJ the X video this was but at one point they said something along the lines of "Oh Industrialization, you fickle bitch. You gave us cell phones but took away our souls." and that's basically what I'm getting at here. When you depend on the system that is actively killing you, interesting things happen to your mentality. And Retsarra represents that, I think.
Secondary point is to explore the very specific sense of isolation that both bisexual and PoC people in America experience. By using "Alexandrian-born Turali" I am purposely calling to "American-born Chinese" (because I'm an American-born Chinese person and I know the feeling lmfao) which I'm not actually sure if that's the actual academic terminology for it or if the graphic novel has just permeated popular culture so much. Anyways. I'm not completely bisexual and (thankfully) all my friends do not fall into biphobia out of ignorance, but I definitely absolutely feel this with regards to whether I consider myself more American or Chinese. Baby me did not have a really good way of resolving this, so I ended up having quite a lot of weird feelings about this that only got weirder as I continued to be exposed to more and more American and Chinese culture alike. It also made it pretty difficult to relate to basically anyone that wasn't in a similar situation as me (which I did have at least one friend similar to me thank fuck lmao) because it's not like I had the typical american childhood experience nor did I have the typical chinese childhood experience. So that sense of isolation, extrapolated to an adult, is interesting to me to explore and Retsarra is honestly kinda perfect for me to do that.
(btw if you're interested in reading more about my takes on this kind of cultural estrangement it was more or less the focus of a post I made a while ago about Yotsuyu that keeps making the rounds tl;dr there's a lot of self-hatred going on)
Bonus observation that I'm not sure where to add into the fic (probably at the end when Shura'sae is consoling Retsarra) but I'm pretty sure Retsarra was intending to kill himself with that fight against Shura'li. The shit that happens in M8S kinda soft confirms this, but like. That's really dark man. His boyfriend died and at that point he still thinks that his girlfriend dumped him so like. He's just in a bad mental state. Like there's this lyric in the M8 theme that's barely audible where he says something along the lines of "maybe I should go with them" and that was the thing that really solidified this interpretation for me. Nefarious, deeply traumatized voice in the back of your head telling you that it would be better to follow your loved ones to the grave than fight to live.
doing an apology video with genuine tears sobbing and wailing ripping my hair out and clawing at my face until i draw blood but i simply cannot describe what i did without laughing
I'm still organizing my thoughts on this so something more coherent will be coming later but Retsarra in the second tier of the Arcadion raids is making me lose my goddamn mind (spoilers below the cut)
like idk there's something about his intense desire for self-determination within the confines of a system that is actively killing him. Something something the problems with attempting to stir revolutionary sentiment in people under a system that comfortably kills you. Shura'li would be beefing with him so fucking hard.
Also bisexuality. Something with bisexuality idk look at these lyrics
Also also, and this is actually the main fucking point but I got too lost in the tragic yaoi sauce because that's like kryptonite for me but THIS MAN IS PROBABLY PART OF THE FIRST GENERATION BORN UNDER A SOCIETY THAT COLONIZED HIS PEOPLE. The experience obviously has gotta have tons different from the experience of a first generation child of immigrant parents but there are still definitely similarities and I Can See Them. Something about the tension between wanting to retain your ancestors' culture and being inevitably subsumed into the culture you were steeped in growing up. Something about always feeling like you're in between, never actually belonging anywhere because you aren't fully Turali or Alexandrian. Never actually finding acceptance anywhere because you aren't fully gay or straight Do You See My Vision
We stan a politically apathetic bisexual gay trucker catboy or something idk, he makes me feel insane there's like five different things I want to explore so in summary I'm just gonna list them out
Bisexual experience
Cultural estrangement experience (whether as the child of people who were colonized or people who immigrated to a different country)
How capitalist systems breed political apathy
The merits of finding agency within confines you cannot possibly hope to break because you simply do not have the power
Why The Fuck Doesn't Anything In Dawntrail Talk Explicitly About The Discrimination That Is Most Likely Happening To The Turali People Who Are Stuck In A Society Of Mostly White Hyurs That Colonized Them (I actually do need to confirm this but I swear I do not remember that many PoC there that weren't pretty clearly from Tural)
Okay but seriously why is it that like 90% of the fighters in the Arcadion have been Turali so far there's something there I just don't have a good handle on it. Something something exploitation and objectification of minority groups while simultaneously "elevating" them in order to hide the racism (see: "model minority" stereotypes about asian americans in the US)
It's like 1AM so apologies if this sounds like I'm doing this
>ffxiv dev team saw the mixed response to Wuk Lamat and their takeaway was "we didn't do good enough of a job to show how great she is, we need to give her even more screentime so everyone will like her"
stormborns
dailybridgerton
areudirty
titsay
andulkaphoto
annaxmalina
