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multijoe posted:It doesn't though. The Garlean empire is a classically imperialist empire in the shape of Rome or the British empire and Zenos is just a nihilist who doesn't believe in anything past the next combat high. Neither have the characteristics that distinguish modern fascism from any other type of expansionist empire through history and it just leads to people making interminable self-righteous tracts about what good anti-fascists they are for wanting to see every Garlean launched into space or whatever The fact that people have convinced themselves that playing this game is revolutionary praxis never ceases to astound me.
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May 6, 2021 12:19
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Ibram Gaunt posted:The fact that people have convinced themselves that playing this game is revolutionary praxis never ceases to astound me. Who has claimed this?
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May 6, 2021 12:53
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SirSamVimes posted:Who has claimed this? Every single little weirdo in these threads who talk about how we should execute Hien cuz monoarchies are bad, or how Gaius' children deserved worse fates because "bash the fash"
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May 6, 2021 12:54
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Ibram Gaunt posted:Every single little weirdo in these threads who talk about how we should execute Hien cuz monoarchies are bad, or how Gaius' children deserved worse fates because "bash the fash" SirSamVimes posted:Who has claimed this? I don't think those (Possibly imaginary) people wanting the story to deal with things differently think they're doing real politics.
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May 6, 2021 13:11
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It's actually been quite a while since I saw one of those posters genuinely act like that so it was stupid for me to invoke it and just made myself out to be an rear end in a top hat. Sorry.
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May 6, 2021 13:35
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The Hien one you do occasionally see, although it's less often 'Monarchy Bad' and more often 'Hien is a bad person because he isn't as staunchly anti-slavery as I, a person on 2021 Earth, think a fantasy-feudal Japanese lord should be'. Which is a... little bit less dumb, I guess? It's still being disappointed that this fantasy RPG isn't depicting a modern 21st-century worldview, but at least it's arguing something in the game. The Gaius one I haven't seen since the Weapon storyline concluded, and I feel like it was people being stupid and insensitive while trying to say that they wanted Gaius to face the consequences of his actions. I haven't seen that one since 5.5, which I think is testament to how well they did Gaius--even though he's deliberately still a controversial figure, he's written in a way that makes it very clear he has a deep knowledge of the reasons why. The worst political opinion in all of FFXIV is, was, and always will be that, in the scene where he met the Alliance, Varis 'destroyed them with logic' instead of making it clear he was the craziest motherfucker in that tent by a LONG way.
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May 6, 2021 14:05
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Yea I've seen that last one a couple times (in other communities, not this thread) and it's always wild. Like, that scene was super explicit in showing him just kinda flailing with a bunch of 'ah but you too have flaws, so how can you say my genocide is bad?' nonsense and near instantly going full 'aw suck my dick you fucks we're going to turbo-murder you all anyway' the second he got more pushback. Like, it was a good scene because A) before Emet stole my heart I enjoyed Varis as the cold hearted very frank 'yes, I am your bad guy here in this story, I'm here to do bad guy things' thing and B) it did lay the groundwork for the city states to begin to examine their own relations with the 'beast' people independent of what the insane imperialist has to say, but yea it was 100% 'oh this guy's crazy'.
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May 6, 2021 14:16
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Step 1: Do exactly what the Ascians want every step of the way Step 2: ??? Step 3: THE REIGNS OF HISTORY ARE BACK IN THR HANDS OF MAN
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May 6, 2021 14:22
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That conference sticks out to me as one of the worst, most hackneyed plot scenes in the whole of FF14. There were so many idiot balls to go around it was an idiot ball pit.
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May 6, 2021 14:26
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multijoe posted:Step 1: Do exactly what the Ascians want every step of the way I loved that reveal so much. "WE SHALL GIVE THE POWER OF FATE BACK TO MAN, NOT THESE COSMIC BEINGS THAT SEEK TO MAKE US SLAVES" "What's this about you spitting the same poo poo the Ascians say about rejoining?" "WE SHALL TAKE FATE INTO OUR OWN HANDS." "Oh this dude's fuckin crazy crazy, poo poo that's gonna be a problem."
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May 6, 2021 14:28
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Grayshift posted:That conference sticks out to me as one of the worst, most hackneyed plot scenes in the whole of FF14. There were so many idiot balls to go around it was an idiot ball pit. it was extremely accurate to real world diplomatic meetings, to be fair
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May 6, 2021 14:28
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It was really weird since Varis never came across as an idiot to me in the limited screen time he got prior and the first bit of that scene is really good and then he goes completely off the rails but not in a way that seemed logically consistent with what we were shown before.
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May 6, 2021 14:28
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sexpig by night posted:Yea I've seen that last one a couple times (in other communities, not this thread) and it's always wild. Like, that scene was super explicit in showing him just kinda flailing with a bunch of 'ah but you too have flaws, so how can you say my genocide is bad?' nonsense and near instantly going full 'aw suck my dick you fucks we're going to turbo-murder you all anyway' the second he got more pushback. Like, it was a good scene because A) before Emet stole my heart I enjoyed Varis as the cold hearted very frank 'yes, I am your bad guy here in this story, I'm here to do bad guy things' thing and B) it did lay the groundwork for the city states to begin to examine their own relations with the 'beast' people independent of what the insane imperialist has to say, but yea it was 100% 'oh this guy's crazy'. They only ever say it about his exchange with Merlwyb calling her out for Limsa's treatment of beast tribes, which the dumbest thing ever because he's taken aim at the one person that is trying to improve in that, but also that it's extremely blatantly obvious how hypocritical he's being because his response to 'beast tribes clashing with my people' is genocide. I like pointing out that he's clearly awful at real, meaningful arguments and focusing on shallow point-scoring and upsetting people because he doesn't take a proper shot at Gridania. Because it's absurdly easy to call out Gridania's problems if you want to, the Shroud is awful, it just wouldn't get much traction because Kan-e-Senna doesn't really consider much of that fixable problems (or problems at all, sometimes). Cleretic fucked around with this message at 14:37 on May 6, 2021 |
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May 6, 2021 14:31
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Ibram Gaunt posted:It was really weird since Varis never came across as an idiot to me in the limited screen time he got prior and the first bit of that scene is really good and then he goes completely off the rails but not in a way that seemed logically consistent with what we were shown before. I think a part of it was it was post SB MSQ and during the whole Black Rose debacle with Ascian Zenos clearly nipping at his heels, Varis was pretty broken at that point. His empire was hosed and about to be taken over by the Ascians fully and all his grand talk about the races of man ascending was just kinda...cope? Like, maybe I'm being too generous but to me him going so fast to 'you know what, gently caress it, we're Ascians, your asses are about to get Rejoined so hard' was him basically admitting defeat in the power struggle going on and fully going on the side of 'yea, Garlemald is an Ascian empire, and that's about to be your problem because my freak rear end kid and grandpa will probably murder me soon anyway'.
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May 6, 2021 14:33
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Cleretic posted:The only ever say it about his exchange with Merlwyb calling her out for Limsa's treatment of beast tribes, which the dumbest thing ever because he's taken aim at the one person that is trying to improve in that, but also that it's extremely blatantly obvious how hypocritical he's being because his response to 'beast tribes clashing with my people' is genocide. yea him dismissing Kan-e-Senna so generically was a really good reveal of how little he actually understood about the other cities because anyone with a passing history of Gridania could at least play an easy card like 'hey you guys still murdering the forest cats that dare to hunt to survive in your lands because your weird element children command you to? Cool stop talking to me then'. Like, yea Kan-e-Senna likely wouldn't be that bothered by it since she's a freak element thing too but it'd at least be a good way to slap one of the three major leaders in front of their friends, way better than...what does he even say to her in the scene, some generic thing about the old elf empire?
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May 6, 2021 14:35
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Yeah, but that would require Kan-e-Senna to have a role in the story and we can't have that.
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May 6, 2021 14:40
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Has Kan-E-Senna had a single meaty scene since 2.0? She does seem like the only faction leader who's just kind of there without having anything interesting to do at all
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May 6, 2021 14:40
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yea Kan's job is to just kinda show up at alliance meetings and look surprised, which is a shame because Gridania has easily the most fertile ground (eh? Eeeeh????) for similar stories to what Ul'dah and Limsa have been getting but just...nope...no story for you, forest nerds.
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May 6, 2021 14:42
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sexpig by night posted:yea Kan's job is to just kinda show up at alliance meetings and look surprised, which is a shame because Gridania has easily the most fertile ground (eh? Eeeeh????) for similar stories to what Ul'dah and Limsa have been getting but just...nope...no story for you, forest nerds. I still think this is why the Endwalker alliance raids should be about one of the Shroud's mysteries instead of Silvertear. There's a lot of untapped gold there for one of the big-deal expansion stories, stuff that they're clearly aware of but just haven't touched yet that'd grab a lot of player attention, and it'd give Kan-e-Senna something meaningful to do. Cleretic fucked around with this message at 14:49 on May 6, 2021 |
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May 6, 2021 14:46
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'we have a story we want to tell about refugees from Ala Mhigo trying to assimilate in the alliance and the conflict caused by a leader who's young and inexperienced but has a truly compassionate heart under it all' 'oh cool well Gridania is right on the border there, I imagine this will be a chance for Kan-e-Senna to grow and have to own how Gridania treats outsiders and all?' 'Nope they're going to Ul'dah' '...okay...Yea I guess, they already have a refugee population and all, fine. What's next?' 'Well in the wake of the meeting and all we want to show a city state building bridges with their beast tribes' 'Oh! Great! Gridania has the lizard birds right there, they're even the crafting tribe so there's the element of trade and all, oh that'd be perfect to explore the flaws in Gridania's hardline stances on who's 'worthy' and all.' 'Nope it's going to Limsa' 'Kobolds? Okay...yea we have some roots there already I guess, might as well finish that story thread off I guess? So what's Gridania going to get?' '...Shadowbringers time baby, we're goin to another world!'
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May 6, 2021 14:47
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sexpig by night posted:yea Kan's job is to just kinda show up at alliance meetings and look surprised, which is a shame because Gridania has easily the most fertile ground (eh? Eeeeh????) for similar stories to what Ul'dah and Limsa have been getting but just...nope...no story for you, forest nerds. Honestly, that might be what comes in the patches. 6.0 ends the current plot- what better way to follow a moon adventure than with the fundamental forces of nature being A Problem?
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May 6, 2021 14:48
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multijoe posted:Has Kan-E-Senna had a single meaty scene since 2.0? She does seem like the only faction leader who's just kind of there without having anything interesting to do at all To be fair, Limsa got even less since 2.0 until just recently. Senna at least turns up in Heavensward briefly to play diplomat with the moogles.
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May 6, 2021 14:56
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Ibram Gaunt posted:It was really weird since Varis never came across as an idiot to me in the limited screen time he got prior and the first bit of that scene is really good and then he goes completely off the rails but not in a way that seemed logically consistent with what we were shown before. I think it's mostly because he had no real opposition prior to 3.x in the story - the Eorzean powers were scattered and still reeling from the Bahamut summoning, so the Garleans were free to steamroll everything virtually unopposed and look unstoppable while doing it. Then we unite the city-states, including Ishgard, and start mounting efforts to liberate Ala Mhigo and Doma and all of the sudden he's got a problem that he, by Emet's design, is too stupid to handle. Remember that Emet-Selch didn't want a competent leader at the Empire's helm, he wanted a leader who would panic at the first sign of trouble and mash the WMD button, causing another Calamity. e: Misread post, I think you're talking specifically about the second half of the 4.5 parley. I think my point still stands, though - I think the story intentionally plays him up as a big, scary, unstoppable threat, and he is good at throwing his weight around to a point, but the reality is that he's just a big dumb coward, and faced down by the Eorzean Alliance his facade begins to crack. Chillgamesh fucked around with this message at 15:06 on May 6, 2021 |
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May 6, 2021 14:58
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All of the City States have some considerable baggage that needs dealt with, but Gridania's tends to get swept under the rug way more. Merlwyb has been facing the whole "trying to repair relations with beast tribes who have zero reason to believe she won't let them get hosed over again" thing, plus contending with trying to relegate piracy to the past and get people to embrace going legit. Nanamo is learning how to work with the Monetarists so that even though Uldah is still Super Capitalism Hellscape - The City, she can at least start leveraging into situations that are mutually profitable for them AND the commoners instead of constantly butting heads with them. But yeah, Gridania is just "Lol, Tree Ghosts said no."
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May 6, 2021 15:20
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Kan-E-Senna is responsible for a lot off screen. The current Eorzea alliance is her doing, for one. But she still hasn’t really had a big event like Merlwyb’s patch or the events with the Sultana. When she is around it’s mostly just diplomacy, although she was one of the leaders fighting along side you in the Gimlyt Dark. Not an honest healer by the way. Her hands are a bit tied with some policy though. Weak as they might be, they still need to contend with the will of the elementals, which are still very much anti Ala Mhigan, and anti poacher. Unless that’s a big cover up.
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May 6, 2021 15:21
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the_steve posted:All of the City States have some considerable baggage that needs dealt with, but Gridania's tends to get swept under the rug way more. the *racist tree ghosts said no guys, that's absolutely what they said, sorry we can't help but be racist
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May 6, 2021 15:26
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:Her hands are a bit tied with some policy though. Weak as they might be, they still need to contend with the will of the elementals, which are still very much anti Ala Mhigan, and anti poacher. Unless that’s a big cover up. We know from, of all things, Stormblood CRP and LTW that what we hear about the 'will of the Elementals' aren't quite true. CRP shows us that there's enough of an Ala Mhigan refugee population in Gridania for them to be a sizeable minority among the Adders, so clearly the Elemental tolerance of Ala Mhigans isn't THAT bad. And LTW has as a major element a conjurer that's just straight-up making up 'the will of the Elementals' to shut down stuff he personally dislikes.
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May 6, 2021 15:33
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Cleretic posted:And LTW has as a major element a conjurer that's just straight-up making up 'the will of the Elementals' to shut down stuff he personally dislikes. Yeah, the LTW storyline in particular is what has made me more curious and want a critical examination of just how Gridania is run in this regard. I don't even think that anything happens to the Hearer who was stirring up poo poo.
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May 6, 2021 15:47
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Gridania is also the only nation where you don't get a training dungeon to fight all the great Gridania characters like... Well okay I found one flaw but I still want it. Maelstrom's was the best but Halatali Hard was cool too.
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May 6, 2021 15:54
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That's something I wouldn't mind the story focusing on a little more down the road. I think at some level the elementals still have some power and influence, but there's the obvious signs of corruption in their leadership. I don't know if it's every been outright said, but I was always under the impression that the elementals were considerably weakened by the calamity. It would make it a good a time as any to even out their power structure a little bit, or just go full Kugane and throw them out.
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May 6, 2021 15:55
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yea the elementals do have actual power, but yea as we see in the LW quests there's really nothing stopping any rando ballbag going 'the elementals say this is bad' as cover for their own thing, and yea as we see in CRP despite the nominal policy of isolation there's enough Ala Mhigan refugees to be a not insignificant minority population in the city. I hope 6.1 on gives Gridania some of the love it needs compared to the other guys.
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May 6, 2021 16:02
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Kyrosiris posted:Yeah, the LTW storyline in particular is what has made me more curious and want a critical examination of just how Gridania is run in this regard. I don't even think that anything happens to the Hearer who was stirring up poo poo.
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May 6, 2021 16:39
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multijoe posted:Step 1: Do exactly what the Ascians want every step of the way Fully rejoined Varis kills Emet-Selch. "I'm so proud of you, grandson" Varis is loving pissed.
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May 6, 2021 17:38
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Canine Conspiracy posted:Alphinaud outright says "genocide has ever been the Empire's favored recourse". Varis' response is essentially "Yeah, so what?" I think that makes a pretty clear case that this is not an isolated incident, and that once they've seen any of your kind summon a primal, they make sure it won't happen again by getting rid of the rest of you. The very anti-Bismarck Zundu are the ones being rounded up for death by Regula's goons, after all. They're pretty indiscriminate about it. Duly noted. It's not clear if that's just Varis' own policies, though. Gaius certainly doesn't seem invested in genocide. The obvious problem, of course, is that the game also goes and says "yeah the (false) apparently manifest incarnations of these indigenous peoples' Gods totally do threaten the entire world," which muddles the full-throated condemnation necessary. Even the heroes were massacring enemy captives as a standard policy until recently. Vanderdeath posted:You don't exclusively need death camps to be fascist (though I'd argue that the telophoroi towers should count, along with their genocidal handling of the beast tribes). I know it isn't a perfect list to go by by any means, but Garlemald hits nearly every single one of the Fourteen Points of Fascism set by Umberto Eco. Everything about Garlemald is meant to show that it is a continuation of a glorious legacy (Allag), they consider every other society around them (the ones that kept them in check for centuries) to now be lessers. Their first call of action was to go firebomb Dalmasca, Landis and Nabudis and to continue on from there, conquering simply for conquering's sake. They justified their actions by using the Burn as proof that the other races were destructive monsters that needed to be ground under the heel of Garlemald for their own good, etc., etc. The Telophoroi are sort of their own thing, though, just using the Garlean infrastructure. I'm not saying Garlemald isn't evil, or resonant with fascism, I just think in a lot of ways it's a bog-standard conquering empire of the sort you see a lot in history, Fascism kinda, imo, requires modernity.
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May 6, 2021 18:04
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In particular I think the biggest requirement that's missing is the death cult aspect. Namely that war is a purifying force and worth engaging in for it's own ends for the only good are those who are forged in battle and dying a hero. From what we've seen of Garlemand, they more like the Romans, conquering for resources and saying it was in self defense. Even them tying themselves to the Allagans is hard to say is explicitly fascist because....they exist and we see their technology and power constantly. If the Garleans had some fictional beginning instead of a historical one it'd be closer. They're an evil imperialist empire but not fascist to me. And I mean, the British Empire is a really high standard of evil, things don't have to be literally Hitler to be the worst.
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May 6, 2021 18:11
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Eimi posted:In particular I think the biggest requirement that's missing is the death cult aspect. Namely that war is a purifying force and worth engaging in for it's own ends for the only good are those who are forged in battle and dying a hero. From what we've seen of Garlemand, they more like the Romans, conquering for resources and saying it was in self defense. Even them tying themselves to the Allagans is hard to say is explicitly fascist because....they exist and we see their technology and power constantly. If the Garleans had some fictional beginning instead of a historical one it'd be closer. Although the Telophoroi are definitely a death cult, they also don't actually seem to be an ideological movement so much as a gigantic civilization-wide mind virus. Which I guess is a pretty common way how people view the rise of Nazism, even if it's pointedly quite inaccurate. (Of course the real Nazis also largely didn't make pitches to their fellow citizens openly praising a death cult; a lot of Nazi propaganda was pretty disgustingly rural-pastoral and buccolic idealized society....just one made such by purging all "undesirables.")
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May 6, 2021 18:20
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Eimi posted:In particular I think the biggest requirement that's missing is the death cult aspect. Namely that war is a purifying force and worth engaging in for it's own ends for the only good are those who are forged in battle and dying a hero. From what we've seen of Garlemand, they more like the Romans, conquering for resources and saying it was in self defense. Even them tying themselves to the Allagans is hard to say is explicitly fascist because....they exist and we see their technology and power constantly. If the Garleans had some fictional beginning instead of a historical one it'd be closer. Zenos. Remember that every fascist state in history wasn't that blatant about things. Mussolini sold the literal original fascist state on the idea of reclaiming the land that was rightfully Italy's (as the heirs to the Roman Empire).
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May 6, 2021 18:20
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The Garlean Empire transitioned from standard greedy imperialists to straight up being Zeon around Stormblood. The horrific experimentation on living people, violence for violence's sake, suicidal obsession with personal heroism, glorification of death and war, racial purity, religious devotion to the state, it's all there. There's a reason why even Gaius backs off of them lol
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May 6, 2021 18:40
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I don't think Zenos sees war as a purifying force, he just likes fighting to a truly bizarre degree in a narrative that generally wants you to take the idea of violence-as-solution a bit more seriously Coincidentally this is also why Zenos is hilarious and owns
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May 6, 2021 18:43
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Now if only we could get the writers to stop writing so many "meanwhile in the imperial palace" scenes where he sits around, boredly ShB Zenos should have been still vibrating with excitement from fighting the WoL and be taking every opportunity to level up to beat us next time, imo. Really play into the parts of his character that worked instead of the bad parts
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May 6, 2021 18:47
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