18 - Which card would they be from the major arcana of tarot cards? (If you're more well read in tarot, you could also do minor arcana.)
I mentioned this in a previous answer but for me, out of all the Major Arcana cards, it's got to be Strength, and when I see it in my head it's specifically Gisele in her Phoenix winged Primal form crowned with roses and gently cradling Shinryu's head, which is resting on her lap.
It's because the type of strength represented in this card is rarely about pure physical strength, but the type of strength I always talk about most when it comes to Gisele: compassion, love, courage, emotional influence, etc. Inner strength, as opposed to outward displays of violence, no matter how damned good she is at that sort of thing.
As Minor Arcana go I think this is a toss up between the Queen of Cups and the Queen of Wands. Both are very strong Gisele cards, representing deep emotional IQ/intuition and outgoingness/confidence respectively.
I'll go one further and talk about the Deck of Sixty since she's an Astrologian and reads with it (note: this is all actual canon, I didn't make this part up)
The Deck of Sixty has a concept called Divine Duplicity which means each Major Arcana is actually associated with 2 gods of the Twelve, and since there's 6 Majors that adds up to 12. (everything is 12s with this deck; either half of twelve in the form of six and twelve itself) I mention this because part of why The Balance is Gisele's card is because it's associated with Nald'thal and Azeyma, being mapped to the Heaven of Fire which is their domain. Nald'thal's blessing makes it prosperous while its equilibrium is maintained by Azeyma's judgement. Balance being a major theme of Gisele as a character (capable of great healing and great destruction, wielding Light and Darkness, etc), as well as the fact that she was under Nald'thal's protection and Azeyma has the connection to her ancient incarnation.
this is the single card that comes up most often to represent herself in readings, whether done by her for others, or for her by others (Gisele never reads for herself, ever. It's not that it's taboo it's just that she believes she's too prone to reading what she wants to see in them rather than celestial truth as it stands in the moment. Urianger generally reads for her, but sometimes also Leveva.).
As Minor Arcana goes, I would say the Lady of Cups, as I hc it has a similar meaning to the irl Queen of Cups (the Minor Arcana mostly lines up with real tarot Minor Arcana, except because of that 12 quirk there's 6 suits instead of 4, and each of those only has 6 pip cards, with 3 face cards to round it out)
20 - What word/phrase is central to their character? (It can be something they say or something that summarizes them meta-textually.)
"There are many kinds of healing" has sort of been her thesis statement as a character for years and years.
There's physical healing, of course, w her magic and herbalism and alchemy, but also emotional, and psychological and spiritual, on the microcosm between individuals and on the macrocosm when it comes to entire societies and systems
of course then there's the wham question Haurchefant presents to her as a sort of response: who heals the healer?
because while all of these kinds of healing Gisele provides a catalyst for, they're also kinds of healing that she desperately needs herself at times
Gisele's story is fundamentally one about healing, when you get down to it
MORE MEME 27. Describe a situation where curiosity got them in trouble.
There would be that time when they were all in Rak'tika, when she accidentally created sex pollen incense out of a sacred herb the Night's Blessed used in their rituals, because she wanted to know if it had additional medicinal properties.
Granted it wasn't "trouble", it was honestly a lot of fun (just ask Haurche and Ysayle and Urianger and Y'shtola) but that was. Very unexpected hfjsdls
6. Favorite Scion out of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn?
Going strictly by the canon ones it would have been Thancred until ShB fucking finally made Estinien official. The truth is I love all of them to death with 1 exception, it’s just that I love Estinien that much more. Like listen my first fictional crush was Kain Highwind when I was like 10 so I was primed to be obsessed with Estinien, but I can truly say Estinien’s the most worthy heir to Kain I could have ever dreamed of. And he’s become so much more than the Kain expy he originally was. He really is The Dragoon in the franchise to me now, the defining one. I can’t even say that about Haurche as a Paladin.
There’s a very good reason he was a Scion in Gisele’s verse long before canon and it’s not just because she’s married to him. Yes, he’s one of my comfort characters, yes he’s a total badass, but he’s got the best character arc of them all and it’s not even close to me, as much as I adore Thancred’s development. He is such a complicated character with so many layers to him and always has been, I’m just thrilled he got a chance to shine the way he did in EW after being put on a damn bus for so long. And he adds so fucking much to the team, he fits in seamlessly for such an alleged lone wolf. Love love love Scion!Estinien and the only thing I don’t love is that in canon he doesn’t get to be one with Ysayle and Haurchefant, because that dynamic adds even more to it in Gisele’s verse. But that’s what fic is for.
cutting this for the sake of y’alls dashes because i’m having essays in here hfdksfsd
10. Favorite dungeon?
Paglth’an with Amaurot being a solid #2
Even setting aside Gisele specifically, I can’t emphasize enough how fucking meaningful that dungeon is for a WoL who started in Ul’dah. How far you’ve come from nearly getting sacrificed to Ifrit. It’s incredible from a storytelling standpoint, especially when juxtaposed with Estinien’s story arc and how far he’s come--I still get chills thinking about him finally becoming a true Dragoon, not Ishgard’s bastardization of it, but the ancient legacy of kinship and brotherhood with dragonkind that was nearly lost. And the music goes so fucking hard, like way to remix the best damn tribal theme in the game to something even better homg. Soken fucking outdid himself on that one. And this is the one opening flyover CS in a dungeon I never ever skip, even now, even having seen it 9 million times, between Estinien flying in on fucking Tiamat, the chaos of the battlefield, and imo the coolest power walk in for WoL & co in a dungeon.
Mechanically speaking it's got fun, unique boss fights, but even the trash is fun--ffs Aymeric is there again! with Lucia, even!!!--and there’s. God it’s just so fucking fun.
Meanwhile Amaurot is still the best capstone MSQ dungeon we’ve had, period, and that says a lot given how much I enjoy ARF and Ala Mhigo. Emet’s narration is heartbreaking and you really feel the urgency of everything going on around you right from the start. And the deeper you get into it the worst the eldritch horror becomes. The bosses are just--jfc. Therion’s boss fight is probably one of the best examples of what this game does insanely well, storytelling through the actual gameplay mechanics. It’s a microcosm of everything going on in that dungeon up to that point, building panic as it’s unleashing hell on you and you are literally getting backed further and further against the wall with no way out but through this thing’s death. It’s an almost claustrophobic experience and then you realize this is what the Ancients endured, and you maybe begin to understand why such desperate decisions were made to stop it. They were quite literally backed into a corner, same way as you in that fight.
The music helps a lot too, like a lot. Mortal Instants was an instant classic to me (pardon the turn of phrase), and the cello at the beginning specifically reminds me of Emet in a way I really can’t explain. It’s an almost romantic, heroic sort of song that would be oddly discordant with the scenery gorn happening all around you if not for the context--the heroic nature of that song feels a lot to me like he’s urging WoL on in a final test while simultaneously recounting his own heroism and that of his comrades, holding the line against the apocalypse. (There’s a reason it’s Hades' “heroic moments” leitmotif in my head, when he’s a Scion)
In general I think ShB had some really strong dungeons, it started out right out the gate with Holminster Switch and just dropped banger after banger. The only real dud of the lot to me are the mines in Amh Araeng but that’s more so me just not liking mine levels and also being really really tired of that place (i feel like it’s all that ever comes up when I tank on leveling roulette, even now).
The Aery is an honorable mention because until Paglth’an came out it was probably my favorite dungeon solely because of Estinien’s aerial duel with Nidhogg still being some of the coolest shit ever, and then there was the earthshattering Echo revelations to follow...and running it as a healer is absolutely the best to me because you literally have to keep Estinien healed and protect him. My heart
12. Favorite beast tribe?
This is really really hard because I love them all but I tend to really like the weird ones so I’ve got to go Namazu. They’re just so fucking ridiculous and every time I get on the mount I laugh like a lunatic
The pixies are similarly great. An Lad genuinely made me cry.
14. Your garbage favorite character(s)?
ngl talking about characters this way makes me really uncomfortable, y’all know I’m not one for guilty pleasure anything or this whole self-depreciating nonsense so I’m just going to interpret this as my favorite ~controversial~ character or wevs and I will say Zenos, obviously
he’s simultaneously very simple to understand while also having much more to him than people assume (generally his many detractors). But then if they didn’t want me to fall in love with him they never should have made him a bored, neglected & abused gifted kid who suffered a lifetime of anhedonia until my Power of Love and Friendship OC came along.
I don’t say this to woobify Zenos, because he did any number of really heinous things for deeply selfish reasons and I don’t excuse any of it. He was monstrous in a lot of ways. But I genuinely enjoy the way he’s the dark mirror to Gisele, what she could have become had she not had people in her life who loved her, and I absolutely enjoy exploring their dynamic (it’s really not like any other she has with anyone else, even with the other ex-antagonist figures in her life). And while his growth was much more subtle than say, Estinien’s, it was absolutely there and one of my favorite things about EW and I will never ever accept what happened in canon after the trial with him, when all was said and done. Gisele would never have left him there like that.
FOR YON ASKBOX FIRST SCENE MEME: Gisele on the parapet in “A Warmer Hearth”, the celestial healing of Tsuyu in “Collective Unconsciousness”, Gisele chasing Emet-Selch before he demonstrates his method of ~fishing~, Belle the kitten trying to climb Estinien’s greaves much to Ysayle’s amusement, Emet-Selch doffing his hood at the piano and going :3 at Gisele in “I Want to Wake Up in a City That Doesn’t Sleep”. ❤️ There’s more but I have limited space! XD
Gisele on the parapet really seems to have made an impression and I’m so glad.
the shooting the fish fic to be so short is still like one of the top things I’ve ever written imo. the way she runs after him like he’s a cat that’s gotten something he’s not supposed to even before he shoots the damn thing. iconic
