#musing .

[zhuchef]

//  a’ight  but  this  has  not  right  giving  me  so  many  bajie  vibes  it’s  horrible  actually-

[fromdeadstars]

sorry . sorry im still crying about azem sorry -

also. no g'raha is not and cannot be a shard of hythlodaeus because he was never sundered in the first place but hythlo reminds me so much of g'raha, to the point i was getting their voices confused when hythlodaeus first showed up + i think they've got similar themes going on. anyway. for this reason i think my azem was a little a lot in love with hythlodaeus but it was something they never talked much about / their relationship was always ... it escaped definition, both from outsiders looking in and from each other. azem struggled with ... staying - a wanderer at heart, their journeys often took them to the farthest reaches of etheirys for months at a time. she was also ... she was undoubtedly a warm and affectionate person, but actually kept herself at a distance from most people, hythlodaeus included. so if there was anything there that wasn't entirely platonic, it wasn't something they ever discussed.

and yroh'a is not azem, obviously, but ... i think if she could see her successor, the bearer of her soul, she'd be very happy to see that yroh'a loves so loudly and directly. i think azem was a little afraid of doing so - platonically or otherwise. afraid of the potential pain that could accompany a decision to be open about her feelings, to declare just how deeply she cared about her people. emet-selch being The Way He Is and wanting to live up to his example certainly not helping, as well as being part of the convocation.

in fact, i think azem joining the convocation was similar to yroh'a joining the scions. the culture shock left both feeling like their true selves - playful, loud, affectionate, rough around the edges selves - would not be accepted. they had to make themselves smaller. they had to sacrifice some of the things they cared about - or sacrifice their own needs.

azem didn't get to live long with her choice to abdicate her seat before the world was sundered. but yroh'a would eventually, generations about generations later, inherit the consequences of the choices made before the world's collective memory.

and though yroh'a went through those same struggles, those real and perceived demands to quiet himself down, to not love so loud, he came out of the other side loving so loudly and fiercely. her supposed last words before her Heroic Sacrifice™ were i love you. to her friends, who she had loved and lost and brought back, who put their lives in their hands to forge her a path ahead. she would not leave room for doubt that she loved them. and when she lived past the point she thought she would, when she survived the moment where she thought her death was assured, she made sure that they knew she meant it.

and i think he gets up to a lot of things after 6.0 before 6.1 - i don't care how long the game says it is, in my mind it's at least a year, because jesus they need that long. there's so much hurt and pain they never addressed, old wounds that scarred over, reopened, scarred over the old, scars upon scars. and that ... that choosing of herself, is about love. love for themself. love for the people that got her here. the people she lost. the people she loved and loves.

and it - has to start with herself, i think. her friends go off on their separate paths, and it isn't goodbye forever, they're only a letter away, and she knows where they are if she wants to drop in on them. and she does. but i think they also spend so much of that year on their own, like how they were in the beginning. re-falling in love with the world, with the perspective of how utterly unique and fragile it is, and knowing the choices that led to this world and its reflections.

and then, when she feels like she's finally, finally back inside her body again. when she can feel the earth beneath her feet and smell the dust and soil in the air, and when she opens her eyes to the view from her campsite or inn room window, and all the colors of the world overwhelm her eyes and it brings her so much joy, it's ... she crawls back into her friends' lives, like she never left at all.

and this is where i get back to the original point of the post and talk about g'raha because no i didn't forget what i was talking about. hythlodaeus and azem were characterized by distance. hythlodaeus saw himself second to azem and emet-selch - they were beautiful, worth admiring, and he was content to be the one to "help them realize their dreams" (he even called it his "greatest contribution to our world" and i'll frow up about it)

and did the exarch not see things the same way? he would save the warrior of light, even should they hate him for it, for his deception, but he would die happy, knowing he saved them and the world and all worlds. but he lives, and more than that, he has to decide what he wants to do with his life he didn't expect to have.

yroh'a and g'raha get to do with azem and hythlodaeus never did - they get to see the world together, hand in hand.

yeah yeah g'raha goes to help the students of baldesion, and yroh'a will absolutely lend a hand, but. listen. grips knees. yroh'a made him a promise, didn't she? and she's always kept her promises to him. i'm gonna frow up.

[fromdeadstars]

hey, you know what would be deeply fucked?

i cannot remember if i posted about it on here, but the short of it is that yroh'a's version of dark knight is unique to him - he found the soul crystal of a "dark knight" of eulmore abandoned in the wilds of kholusia. the dark knights arose in the wake of the flood of light and were basically highly specialized hunters of sin-eaters. my original idea is that the bearer of the soul crystal was fray's shard in the first - who i nicknamed shay (for shard + fray) and then it ended up sticking.

but some fanart reminded me that haurchefant exists (/lh) and that some people make haurchefant lives aus and i've never been into them because i think he ultimately serves the plot better, especially for yroh'a, by dying. which sounds morbid but it's true.

anyway. wouldn't it be fucked up if the soul crystal actually belonged to haurchefant's shard. someone yroh'a knew, in a different life, a different world. and this shade doesn't know him, and yet this shade is part of him, because the DRK soul crystal is weird /lh, and i think shay would've taken on some qualities they didn't actually have in life.

and ... there's a lot of themes about grief and loss in the drk job quests, especially in the stormblood quests, and ... sniffles... doesn't haurchefant just Encapsulate that for the wol. with how much his death is brought up. dunno. i just think it'd be really fucking tragic <3

[fromdeadstars]

no one asked me but changing yroh'a's main job to dark knight really was the best thing i could've done because i was already insane about wolexarch/wolgraha but now i'm 20 million times more insane about it because yraha specifically feels so like ... princess locked in their tower and the knight who gets them out. the crystal tower as both a symbol as hope and connection and community for humanity and g'raha's own temporal and psychological distance from himself, spending 100 years pinning himself as a figurehead, and keeping everyone at arm's length. the exarch as his own isolated tower. and yroh'a, a knight out of old fairy tales, who is the reason why he leaves the tower. but the exarch planned to die with it. to save his knight. but thank god for emet-selch <3

and you know what. you know what happens. snifflewhimpers. yroh'a *does* get him out of the tower. his loyal knight, who's slain dragons and wyrms and gods and godmakers, runs to the tower. as soon as he's assured his other friends are safe and given permission to take his leave, he literally books it out of the room. and he runs all the way to the tower because his fucking babygirl princess is in there! fuck! sobs!

[fromdeadstars]

shadowbringers 5.3 spoilers

the exarch is the most character to me. sorry ive been very mentally ill since the age of 12 yes i will emotionally latch onto the suicidal character who spends the story denying his own humanity and turning himself into a monolith and a figure more than a person but it's also important to his self, it's all wrapped up in his values, he's so protective of what he's created, and he takes his responsibilities so seriously. and his whole plan hinges on his death, because if it works, the world he has come to love will have no idea of him anymore anyway. but the plan goes wrong, and he has to live, and he's living in the future he's spent this whole time working toward. he will see the fruits of the seeds he planted, at least some of them. and he finally has to decide what he wants. what does he Want. who is He. and his life literally depends on accepting his past self as still himself. that despite everything, he's still g'raha tia. the old man who raised a city up from nothing and shepherded a broken world into a new, brighter future, brought there by the hopes and dreams and efforts of another broken world (one that will no longer exist - or is some alternate timeline - because the warrior of light is alive and the first is saved) - he's still the same as the young man who wanted to think himself a legend, a hero among men. and he can do that. he doesn't have to stay behind anymore. there's a place for him here. he's wanted here. he's loved here. i'm gonna be sick

[fromdeadstars]

instead of saying literally anything about yroraha (my brain's too scrambled to get it coherent but it makes sense in my brain) im gonna talk about zenos even though i dont even like that guy. y'all know how i've said again and again that i genuinely dont get / enjoy the hunter/imperial agent dynamic at all because it's just Creepy:tm: and i don't really buy into it? zenos and the wol is kind of like that in that i just find zeno's one-sided obsession with the wol really creepy but in a way that works/i find crunchy

part of it is i think there's the removal of something like the mind control stuff that squicks me out so much but zenos still gives me massive obsessed stalker vibes. but again it's ... what he says about the wol at the end of stb does ring incredibly true for yroh'a and between that and zenos having been the first person (since lahabrea) to really fuck yroh'a up ... he loathes that guy. he loathes zenos because zenos scares him, and he hates that zenos wants anything to do with him.

something something . zenos and yroh'a foils but zenos wants him carnally (covered in each other's blood and guts and killing and maiming each other) and the mere thought of zenos makes yroh'a want to throw up. what can i say. i am intrigued by nonsexual/non-explicit harassment/assault imagery and no i dont think that's necessarily the intention of squeenix but that's where i'm taking it.

[fromdeadstars]

the more i let myself think of hyroh (xiv) and hyroh (swtor) as two different guys the more fun i start to have with xiv!hyroh - not that i wasn't already having a good time i'm just having an even... funner time.

anyway something that's randomly on my brain this morning since i was thinking about hypothetical hyroh boss encounters is the different elements the two versions are associated with. swtor!hyroh is heavily associated with fire. he has an affinity for swimming and grew up in a coastal area same as his xiv counterpart but overwhelmingly he is associated with fire.

xiv!hyroh on the other hand, has that same background association with water but is more heavily associated with wind. dragoon combat is based on agility and making great leaps and practically flying through the air; ships at sea depend on the wind to get anywhere; dragons ride upon them through the air.

there are also the winds of change - hyroh's presence anywhere or in any conflict portends great change. hopefully for good, but not everyone sees it that away (coughs ishgard cough).