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I did a lot of the Tamamo FATE chain back during the start of Stormblood because I really wanted the items you could get for the tokens, specifically the Fox Ear Headband. As I like to explain to my FC mates, my Au Ra has Ear Envy. Everyone else has these cute ears except her, especially the Mi'qote who have furry, twitch ears that wiggle and flick. She instead has bones jutting out of her head, so now she wears the Fox Ears all the time.
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Dec 4, 2022 20:47
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I feel like the elder spawning at the shrine during the world boss FATE is meant to be your way of knowing, "Oh, the FATE is up somewhere in the zone," as opposed to, "Oh, hey, the FATE spawned, I need to hurry over here to get backstory!"
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Dec 5, 2022 00:38
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FuturePastNow posted:Yotsoyu isn't even the worst person in her own family 
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Dec 5, 2022 03:43
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Oh boy Yotsuyu's backstory. So much discourse. So much digital ink spilled. I can remember it like it was yesterday...
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Dec 5, 2022 04:10
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Hellioning posted:Oh boy Yotsuyu's backstory. It probably was yesterday. 
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Dec 5, 2022 05:56
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W.T. Fits posted:I feel like the elder spawning at the shrine during the world boss FATE is meant to be your way of knowing, "Oh, the FATE is up somewhere in the zone," as opposed to, "Oh, hey, the FATE spawned, I need to hurry over here to get backstory!" Oh, for sure, but she has the backstory nonetheless. Its very strange to me that they made the last two big story beats for this excellent little narrative so easy to miss. If they had this lady spawn as a flag warning players that the Boss Fate was going to appear in, say, the next 30 minutes, that'd be a much better design. You get to learn the final revelation of the mystery and you get the time to assemble your crew to do the World Boss. If they were REALLY smart they'd also have Old Lady give a clue to tell you which of her spawn locations the Boss Fate is going to appear so you don't miss the Quest Start event. Having her only spawn after the boss has appeared and thus you've already missed the big plot moment is way dumber.
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Dec 5, 2022 07:59
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Sanguinia posted:Oh, for sure, but she has the backstory nonetheless. Its very strange to me that they made the last two big story beats for this excellent little narrative so easy to miss. In Shadowbringers and Endwalker the FATE super bosses with similar involved chains do in fact spawn in only one location, although the fate itself isn't marked on your map you just have to know the fixed location for the spawn.
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Dec 5, 2022 08:24
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W.T. Fits posted:It probably was yesterday. Despite all of the claims to the contrary, the WoL’s adventures have all happened over a single day, somehow.
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Dec 5, 2022 08:31
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The best way to see those FATE bosses is to be doing unrelated quests somewhere else when a player teleports in, hollers some map coordinates, and teleports out.
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Dec 5, 2022 08:34
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Yeah it's cool when I'm just doing something in a zone and suddenly the chat is full of "lfg fate". Suprise extra content!
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Dec 5, 2022 12:56
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Not every FATE chain ends with a super boss fight, but pretty much every zone after ARR (and a few of those) has a FATE chain that tells a little story.
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Dec 5, 2022 17:38
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Whoops, wrong thread.
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Dec 5, 2022 18:16
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FuturePastNow posted:Not every FATE chain ends with a super boss fight, but pretty much every zone after ARR (and a few of those) has a FATE chain that tells a little story. Good old Alaimbert
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Dec 5, 2022 19:09
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I have some very strong opinions about what they're doing with Yotsuyu. It's interesting on several levels but I feel like I need to hold off on most of it for later. I will say though that at this point Yotsuyu is a weird character because she is, in my opinion, at once a persuasive illustration of how imperial regimes coopt local marginalized and outcast populations and in my opinion undeniably basically playing the ugliest beats of traditional revolutionary propaganda straight. People's revolutions have a nasty habit of indulging in intense misogyny and bigotry - the famous example being Marie Antoinette and how while she was by no means a blameless woman she was singled out for particular contempt and scorn more than her husband or the others who were in charge at the time (or for that matter the ongoing famine) because she was a foreign-born woman, whose supposedly reckless spending, decadence and sexual immorality were blamed for the decay of the (already teetering and long moribund) monarchy and aristocracy. "They're corrupting our women!" has always been a big slogan of populist revolts in patriarchal societies, and placing Yotsuyu as the "fallen" trafficked woman turned quasi-genocidal quisling responsible for Doma's national humiliation and despair is, well it sure is some Loaded Imagery, yo! It's an interesting topic and one I think Stormblood will be doing a lot of examining of.
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Dec 5, 2022 21:03
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Jetrauben posted:I have some very strong opinions about what they're doing with Yotsuyu. It's interesting on several levels but I feel like I need to hold off on most of it for later. I'll say this much, and I'll surely say it again in the next chapter: that Echo vision certainly made Gosetsu's taunts pretty horrible in retrospect. Like, she's the worst person ever, literally Hitler, AND she's torturing you at that very moment. I get it. But my god man, you're better than that. Maybe he didn't have the full picture? I dunno, suffice to say there's going to be a LOT of ground to cover with Yotsuyu and Gosetsu next time.
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Dec 5, 2022 21:12
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Sanguinia posted:I'll say this much, and I'll surely say it again in the next chapter: that Echo vision certainly made Gosetsu's taunts pretty horrible in retrospect. Like, she's the worst person ever, literally Hitler, AND she's torturing you at that very moment. I get it. But my god man, you're better than that. One of the big chestnuts of Stormblood is this question: do horrible things happening to you make it at all understandable, reasonable, or forgivable to do horrible things to other people in turn?
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Dec 5, 2022 21:16
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Sanguinia posted:I'll say this much, and I'll surely say it again in the next chapter: that Echo vision certainly made Gosetsu's taunts pretty horrible in retrospect. Like, she's the worst person ever, literally Hitler, AND she's torturing you at that very moment. I get it. But my god man, you're better than that. Well that's what I think is interesting and extremely loaded. Independent of Yotsuyu's specific qualities in the story - although I'm not sure I'd specifically call out Hitler as her parallel; Doma's occupation is awful but it doesn't yet have things like death camps or death squads - it sure is a Writing Choice to go "ok, so, making the embodiment of imperial degradation and cruelty, the quisling viceroy who literally gets off on the humiliation and slaughter she causes... a sex trafficking survivor? Doma's total abasement embodied in elevating a trafficked victim to rule over them and brutalize them?" Like good lord is that an ugly writing choice! And to play it (seemingly) so straight and unquestioning? And it's particularly ugly because FF14 certainly isn't without its flaws in this topic, but usually it tends to portray sex work in a somewhat more nuanced light, with some being trafficked victims and others simply working it because it's a job. Yotsuyu is an extremely loaded character and as you pointed out when you first introduced her, she's definitely evoking some ugly conservative screeds with things like her faux-glamorous attire juxtaposed against her rough, base accent and coarseness.
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Dec 5, 2022 21:17
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Somehow, I didn’t realize the love letters were for the Sekiseigumi members as part of a reference to that genre of fiction. Maybe I misread something at one point but I had always thought the love letters were for Tataru.
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Dec 5, 2022 21:29
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Zetetica posted:Somehow, I didn’t realize the love letters were for the Sekiseigumi members as part of a reference to that genre of fiction. Maybe I misread something at one point but I had always thought the love letters were for Tataru. I mean, I'd write her one, she's cute as a button in that kimono
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Dec 5, 2022 21:36
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I think they are for Tataru, but the hot Shinsengumi is a very popular trope (says the person with the Gintama avatar).
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Dec 5, 2022 21:46
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Jetrauben posted:Well that's what I think is interesting and extremely loaded. Yeah Yotsuyu is even just from what we know now saddled with some extremely Weird At Best choices in her writing. I do genuinely like her as a character but oh boy will I have Words about her writing in totality later.
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Dec 6, 2022 11:51
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I think this conversation requires a lot more talk when we get to it later, but I think a big reason why Yotsuyu's story is played straight is because it has a backdrop of being a cautionary tale against ignoring the plights of the most vulnerable. It's also intended to show that it is incredibly easy to get wrapped up in that ignorance when you are busy with other causes or beliefs. It is a bit odd when those themes have been previously shown in a sympathetic light (we've seen those from all the interactions with the victims of war), but I do think the writing choices actually make sense when taken from that viewpoint. I just think there's some issues with not enough time being devoted to it at this current moment, since Yotsuyu is still incredibly evil and we haven't had time to develop her much at this point.
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Dec 6, 2022 20:21
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AncientSpark posted:I think this conversation requires a lot more talk when we get to it later, but I think a big reason why Yotsuyu's story is played straight is because it has a backdrop of being a cautionary tale against ignoring the plights of the most vulnerable. It's also intended to show that it is incredibly easy to get wrapped up in that ignorance when you are busy with other causes or beliefs. Oh I get what it's arguing. But at the same time I think Stormblood very pointedly plays the conservative national redemption narrative straight here. It's too honest a story to not have its rebellion engage in the most blatant ugly tactics of such populist movements as a motivating factor. At this stage Yotsuyu is entirely in the mold of the beloved populist Ultimate Symbol of National Humiliation: the Fallen Woman Handed Power. It's especially loaded given her foils on the heroic side, all of whom are National Virtuous Women who find in their national culture sources of strength and who are often explicitly or implicitly chaste and respectable - Cirina, Yugiri, and to some extent Lyse. There is a lot of specifically gendered and sexual baggage being evoked with Yotsuyu, and at this stage the cast have done it in universe as well as the writers outside of it. Ultimately there's a good chunk of Doman resistance whose hostility to the invaders is not just their rapacity and cruelty but their disruption of traditional ways of life and values, and those ways of life and values would see Yotsuyu's power and prominence as the ultimate insult. It is of course (to this bigoted view) an inherent result of Yotsuyu's being elevated to power that she is fundamentally unsuited to and malevolent in its use - as Sanguinia observed, the dissonance in her elegant costuming and power undermined by her coarse accent and unsophisticated manners, the simultaneously sexualized and joylessly contemptuous manner with which she approaches everything, are meant to show she is "wrong". (Note also that so far Yotsuyu is the ONLY major leader we've seen who is explicitly shown cowering from violence. It's true that Nanamo is not a warrior, but she's undeniably courageous. Yotsuyu having no martial abilities or courage whatsoever is implicitly contrasted with the majority of world and national leaders who face danger with bravery and may even be martially gifted themselves, yet another telegraph by the writing that she Does Not Belong in such a position.) It's a Lot and it's drawing on really nasty undercurrents! Jetrauben fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Dec 6, 2022 |
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Dec 6, 2022 23:13
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This plot point just popped up. Maybe we should chill a bit on things? No spoilers have shown up yet, but the longer this goes the more likely that happens, whether they'll be oblique or not.
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Dec 6, 2022 23:19
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Onean posted:This plot point just popped up. Maybe we should chill a bit on things? No spoilers have shown up yet, but the longer this goes the more likely that happens, whether they'll be oblique or not. Yeah. Sorry!
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Dec 6, 2022 23:21
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Onean posted:This plot point just popped up. Maybe we should chill a bit on things? No spoilers have shown up yet, but the longer this goes the more likely that happens, whether they'll be oblique or not. Agreed - especially since the arguments against the viewpoint people have been taking of the writers intent are all rooted in things that are enormous spoilers at this point.
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Dec 6, 2022 23:28
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the part of it that works, which is not all of it, is that being part of an imperial program of subjugation makes you a worse person we have now learned that the only positive reinforcement Yotsuyu's gotten for... anything, really, was the Garleans saying "hey if you help us beat down the Domans there's money and power in it for you." most of the time, people don't even get the payout, they just die for the glory of the empire like a sucker. but for the chosen few, who demonstrate the right kind of talent, initiative, and willingness to not blink at doing truly horrendous poo poo, there is actually some reward. it's just that the person they will have become, after a decade or so of promotion being reliant on getting regular attaboys from your bosses for excellence in peasant-torture, is a person who has been defined by her work. over in the part of the story we left behind what, six levels ago? Fordola is currently in the early stages of this process! she's been promoted for how good she is at running a peasant-torturing crew, and while we have seen the Skulls are conflicted about their role, they have developed the traditional coping mechanism: do more peasant-torture, to the peasants, for the crime of making the Skulls torture them. leave that mix percolating for another ten years, maybe give her a nice revolt to crush, and you are going to get Yotsuyu 2: Less Horny, More Personal Violence. the empire is not just a bunch of atrocity-doers led by bad people, it is a machine that makes more of them.
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Dec 7, 2022 00:20
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I think Yotsuyu is in a mold that's been cropping up occasionally and regularly in media over the last five years or so: the ambitious, driven girlboss character making her way in a man's world. Specifically, the world of fascism where she's as enthusiastic and career-driven in the pursuit of sadism, tyranny, and bloodshed as any of the men she's stepped on to get there.
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Dec 7, 2022 00:29
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she broke the glass ceiling (and used the shards to as a means to torture the underclasses)
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Dec 7, 2022 00:34
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Cythereal posted:I think Yotsuyu is in a mold that's been cropping up occasionally and regularly in media over the last five years or so: the ambitious, driven girlboss character making her way in a man's world. Specifically, the world of fascism where she's as enthusiastic and career-driven in the pursuit of sadism, tyranny, and bloodshed as any of the men she's stepped on to get there. This definitely isn't how I see her but I'll be interested in having a discussion when we get there.
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Dec 7, 2022 00:53
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There's much more to come, so I don't want to go into anything at length either... but I remember it was somewhere around here (or maybe a bit past it) that I was struck by one of the points the story really seemed to want to make. Cruelty begets cruelty, and the Empire's cruelty only creates more of the same sort of thing. Rather ironic, given the Empire's true believers claiming they're bringing civilization and salvation to all of these poor savages, hmmm? The rest of what I think is going to need to wait. We're definitely heading into a lot of really interesting stuff, though!
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Dec 7, 2022 13:57
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FeatherFloat posted:There's much more to come, so I don't want to go into anything at length either... but I remember it was somewhere around here (or maybe a bit past it) that I was struck by one of the points the story really seemed to want to make. Cruelty begets cruelty, and the Empire's cruelty only creates more of the same sort of thing. Rather ironic, given the Empire's true believers claiming they're bringing civilization and salvation to all of these poor savages, hmmm? To me, Stormblood felt like a pointed rebuke to the people who, back then, held the opinion that Gaius was right and the Eorzeans should have accepted Garlean rule. This expansion showcasing what Garlean rule actually does to conquered territories seemed to be the storyteller replying "No. No, you do not." Pooncha fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Dec 7, 2022 |
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Dec 7, 2022 16:00
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Yeah, it all feels very directed at a very specific subset of the playerbase; something to keep in mind that many players miss is that a Lot of the atrocities committed in Ala Mhigo were under Gaius's rule—Zenos is a relative newcomer and was only given the job after Praetorium back in ARR, and while he's turning the screws much harder than Gaius did most of the imperial infrastructure he's using was already there when he showed up. Which means Ala Mhigo is what Gaius wanted to do to Eorzea! This is his enlightened Imperial rule!
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Dec 7, 2022 16:25
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Yeah, the fact that the Skulls exist as an individual group that is allowed to use Ala Mhigan armor and the like is Gaius trying to be nice. He's saying 'see look if you work with us everyone wins, you get to keep your culture and work with your countrymen while working up the ranks of our military and becoming a citizen'. Except, whoops, as it turns out most Garleans are still racist as hell and won't accept them, to say absolutely nothing of what the Skulls actually do.
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Dec 7, 2022 17:34
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Jetrauben posted:This definitely isn't how I see her but I'll be interested in having a discussion when we get there. And yet, I feel that it's an idea worth considering now. Women are vanishingly rare as villains in FF14. The only one we've met before Stormblood who I would call a truly significant story presence is Ysayle, a misguided prophet and revolutionary whose secular politics also had a strong though unintentional aspect of religious schism. We know how her story went and ended: with the revelation that the entire basis of her identity and revolution proven to be false and she paid for her sins with her life, even if she ultimately was a major contributor to positive social change in Ishgard after her death. The other relatively prominent woman villain we've met so far is Livia, and she is nothing but a particularly memorable flunky to Gaius, one of his miniboss squad. She had no authority beyond commanding small teams of soldiers, and in the end was just a henchwoman. Fordola, as far as she has appeared in Stormblood to date, is little different from Livia. The role she occupies in the story is already quite different in terms of what she represents, but she's still in effect merely a local captain. Yotsuyu, however, is quite a different kettle of fish. She's the first woman we've ever heard of who has real power within the Garlean Empire. We've already seen how that power is sharply limited, of course, but she's the first feminine face we've ever seen for Garlean authority. We've heard of emperors, yes, and met one of them, but never an empress. We've never heard of a Tribuna or other high-ranking officer, and the highest ranking female officer we do know of was sleeping with her commanding officer, a man himself noted for other reasons to be unusually proactive in enlisting and promoting competent officers otherwise marginalized within the Empire. As such, I think it's very much worth considering Yotsuyu in the context of being a woman who holds a prominent and powerful position within a fascist empire. Fascism is mainly perceived as masculine by most, and the Garlean Empire in this game is overwhelmingly male. So what then of the women, in real life and in fiction, who do climb to positions of authority within tyrannical empires like Garlemald, and how does Yotsuyu compare to her peers? It's a character archetype that I feel has become more and more common in recent years, and the popular reaction to such explorations of women in fascist (or sparking military authoritarianism) governments and roles has been interesting to watch.
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Dec 7, 2022 21:25
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Pooncha posted:To me, Stormblood felt like a pointed rebuke to the people who, back then, held the opinion that Gaius was right and the Eorzeans should have accepted Garlean rule. This expansion showcasing what Garlean rule actually does to conquered territories seemed to be the storyteller replying "No. No, you do not." Yeah, I dunno about that. We don't know much about Ala Mhigo of the past, but the previous ruler was called 'the mad king'. The story is that the masses rose up against him, but that uprising was somehow orchestrated by Garlemald who then moved in and took over. I don't think Eorzea seems that much more of a meritocracy, to be honest. Limsa is more or less an outlaw city-state, Ul'dah will leave you working for scraps off Lolorito's boot, Ishgard's nobles only just learned what equity is after centuries of bleeding their people dry and facing an uprising, and Gridania [mumble mumble something elementals mumble duskwight elves]. That Gaius promoted foreigners to higher ranks who then get disrespected by the Garleans among them suggests he either isn't aware of how bigoted the typical Garlean is, or he knows and is trying to do something about it with the systems he has. Regardless, most of the reason people liked Gaius in ARR is his belief that man should be on top of the food chain, and we should either not suffer primals or else find ways they can work for man rather than the other way around. That even Sharlayan has it's own mythical deity despite their devotion to researching how the world works is proof to him that their leaders (who we've only really heard in passing through Matoya) have a huge blind spot. And since we already know that anything can be a primal if there's enough demand for it (Enkidu) regardless of whether or not it was ever a real thing in this realm (King Mog), it really can't get much worse than to make a primal of a dude called "the destroyer" and "breaker of worlds." Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Dec 8, 2022 |
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Dec 7, 2022 22:27
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Theodoric's rule and Eorzea's city-states may be varying flavors of lovely, but it doesn't make what we've seen of Gaius' rule any less lovely. And Gaius is relatively nice for someone in his role; if Eorzea was subjugated, I doubt whatever viceroy to head it would be nearly as positively regarded.
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Dec 8, 2022 00:17
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Gaius may have been relatively benign compared to other Garlean leaders, but that is vanishingly faint praise considering the monstrosity he represented and to which he gave his full-throated support. His main mitigating development was to look at his peer undertaking a program of indiscriminate genocide and saying "I don't agree with this, I'll sit this fight out."
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Dec 8, 2022 00:24
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Pooncha posted:if Eorzea was subjugated, I doubt whatever viceroy to head it would be nearly as positively regarded. Thundarr posted:His main mitigating development was to look at his peer undertaking a program of indiscriminate genocide and saying "I don't agree with this, I'll sit this fight out." One of the things that is true about how the game presents Garleans is that even the most level-headed ones are loyal to a fault. Anyone we've seen who isn't willing to trust in the Emperor the point of their own destruction has changed teams already. (Think Cid, and LIvia's sister in Ishgard). Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Dec 8, 2022 |
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Dec 8, 2022 00:39
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This might be a spoiler at this time?
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Dec 8, 2022 00:47
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