tbh one of, if not my absolute favorite part about ffxiv, is the small little moments/sections where nothing super big or like. Plot Important happens, but that give both the characters and us, the players, some much appreciated down-time to just. Feel things. And to process what's happened and what's going on or to just. Let us exist, in the moment. In a much more grounded and human way than when there's Big And Important Things happening.
The biggest(imo) and earliest example of this is right after the Waking Sands get raided in ARR, and WoL turns to the church for guidance. The entire section of us helping them gather and bury our fallen comrades, and especially bringing Noraxia home to Little Solace so she can be laid to rest in her homeland, by her own people and in their own cultural ways, was so so important to me.
Because it wasn't just replacable allies cast aside for shock value anymore, it was real. These deaths were real and meant something. I got to actually process what just happened, and I got to watch Banana go through it right with me. And not only did it make it feel real, it also gave me a sense of closure. These people, these friends, are dead, but they also got to be treated with the respect they deserve and laid to rest properly.
And that, more than anything else, made me want to save the world. It's grounded and grounding. This world, and these people, meant something to me, the player.
And there's tons of stuff like that throughout the game, especially in shadowbringers and endwalker.
In shb we have, for example, Lyna venting her anger and frustration after the sin eater attack in Lakeland. She's on her knees yelling on the verge of tears while punching the ground, so furious at her helplessness and powerlessness, at everyone having come so far yet set back because some megalomaniacal tyrant deemed it so.
In ew we have Urianger being approached by Moenbryda's parents, who confront him about not confiding in them about his grief. When Bloewyda starts to scold him, he of course reacts guiltily, believing they blame him, only for him to be completely caught off guard when she instead goes in to hug him, telling him he should have let them grieve with him. And he just. Breaks down. He's been holding these feelings, this grief inside him all this time, and now that he is not only told it's okay to let it out, but by her very own parents at that, he just can't keep it in anymore. He cries for Moenbryda, right then and there, being held lovingly by her family.
And the thing is, these scenes aren't necessary, strictly speaking. The plot at large could go on without them, the events that happen around them are not changed by these moments in any way.
But still, they are so so important, to the world, to the characters, to the players. Everything feels real and impactful now, every death means something, every tragedy, every person, feels real.
And that, to me, is what makes this story so special.
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OKAY OKAY but the way Louis is split in two with both Claudia and Lestat trying to vie for his attention, for his love, but Claudia is able to jump into his mind, to ask him to come with her without Lestat hearing, and that’s the moment Lestat calls him Lou, because he sees him looking towards her and he has no idea what she’s telling him but he knows he’s losing him to her. And how that desperation immediately turns to rage, to blame, to accusation. By turning them both, he’s turned them both against him, he can’t read them, can’t understand them as deeply as they understand each other, and it’s only when Claudia says out loud so he can hear exactly what she wants him to: Come with me. Let’s be vampires worthy of your love. That he truly snaps.
Lestat knows he’s lost. Has known it for all the time Louis had spent searching restlessly for Claudia’s mind.
And the conclusion to this rage, with Lestat and Louis flown out far into the sky, so far away that Lestat hopes no other mind can reach Louis’. So that Claudia can’t hear. So that they’re truly alone. And he finally admits just how deeply his love for Louis reaches, and just how fine a thread he’s been clinging to coming to terms with the fact that perhaps Louis doesn’t love him, may never have loved him, in the way that he loves him.
And yet even in that moment with Louis half drained and gasping the frigid thin air, with Lestat begging him to just admit it, that he doesn’t love him, Louis... doesn’t. Instead he says let go of me. And I wonder, perhaps, what Lestat hears in that, what those words connote for him. Is Louis only asking to be put down, or is he asking Lestat to let go of this obsession with him? That change in Lestat’s eyes, the bitterness of not getting a solid answer but still coming to some sort of conclusion sells it for him. So, when he drops Louis, it’s as performative as any other gesture.
He may want Louis to feel that he is done with him, but that will never be true.
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There's nothing in this transcript that doesn't say that although Jon is pissed at Elias, he's still sitting in his lap. There's definitely nothing here to refute that with every counter Jon gives him, Elias is still running his fingers through his hair because he missed him. Jon's leaning into the touch, because he missed Elias too.
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I think one of the reasons KF is so delightfully devastating is that Henry is literally sidelined in the narrative and in his own life. It’s genius. He is pushed aside to let his mom talk and explain herself and develop her character, but he stays silent, just like how he was taught to push himself aside and devote himself entirely to his mother’s goal.
It makes me think- what would Henry have been like if he wasn’t twisted and corrupted and coerced from youth? Maybe he was a fantastic artist and drew the most beautiful portraits or painted the most vivid landscapes. I can definitely see him drawing his mom a lot. Painting pictures of her like a pure prodigy. Or maybe he was an absolute mathematical genius. Maybe he would’ve went on to make groundbreaking discoveries in aerospace science or chemistry or physics. But his poor little wasted life will be spent in prison.
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