hypothesis: the Trouble With Eureka has very little to do with grind, dullness, FFXI-esque harsh punishing of errors and weird and esoteric traits, or anything like that. the problem is that eureka is a gameplay mode that necessarily segregates those pursuing its goals from the rest of the playerbase, and its biggest goal (relic) was previously an endeavor that heavily integrated the playerbase, and no similarly integrative goal/pursuit has been introduced to replace it.

let me explain:

so first off, what i mean by segregating and integrating here. eureka (anemos and pagos) is a separate gameplay mode and area; if you are doing eureka content, you’re doing content that is cordoned off and almost wholly separate from the general content base. very little of eureka affects non-eureka gameplay, and vice versa. if you are pursuing eureka-based goals, you are doing so entirely in the company of others with the same goals. it is not the only gameplay mode like this; deep dungeons also segregate like this, or gold saucer chocobo races/triple triad tourneys. nor are segregational gameplay elements of this sort an inherently bad or wrong thing; gameplay tends to be smoother and more fun when players can trust they have the same goals and the same common interests in hand. the problem comes from too much segregational crap, and not enough integrative crap, and thus how chaining relic to eureka replaces incentive to get out and mingle with the rest of the playerbase with incentive to silo oneself in eureka.

because pursuing a relic prior really was an endeavor that integrated its pursuers with people who had no desire whatsoever to pursue relic, and found a way to give them common goals and interests. yes, of course not everyone, i do recall the lunatics who did shit like farm garuda for light for 18 hours straight in order to get the next relic phase before anyone else. but those people were (via pf etc) self-segregating from the rest of the players then, and they’re still that way now--eureka didn’t really do a thing to change that. 

meanwhile, things like the various items for umbrite phase directly encourage gameplay collaborating with players who aren’t doing relic (either right at that moment or ever)--in running combat content, in acquiring various forms of currency, in crafting and gathering and the player gil economy, even in treasure map hunting. a person on the singing cluster phase of HW relic was encouraged to run leveling roulette for clusters--even those players with all jobs at 60 had an incentive to run those now, and wind up partying with people who legitimately needed the leveling exp, people who needed their first-time clear of that dungeon for story advancement, people who were trying to get glamour/minion/orchestrion drops from that specific dungeon, etc. the point is, previous relic modes, for all of their flaws, found a way to make the goals of relic-seekers (and seeking one or more relics in FFXIV is a major investment of playtime, then AND now) align with the goals of non-relic-seekers, so both groups helped each other as a natural, organic matter-of-course. chaining relic to eureka breaks that. now, time and effort invested in a relic is done without either helping or benefiting from the help of players with separate agendas--and vice versa; someone spamming shisui for glamour or kugane castle for the minion or all their roulettes for the tomestones now has significantly less assurance that at least the relic people will be out for this stuff too and might make runs/queues better. people who are grinding eureka 24/7 have minimal interaction with the marketboard economies, which wind up further distorted, because that wasn’t an endemic problem already or anything. 

and this could all be offset by the introduction of other goals/pursuits that encourage collaborative, integrative play--but no such development has developed, and to make matters worse the OTHER big thing in recent developments was heaven-on-high, which as a deep dungeon is another gameplay silo. anyhow, that’s my hot take--there’s not much inherently wrong with eureka, but a lot wrong with how it took an element that encouraged common/overlapping goals amongst the playerbase, transformed it into sets of mutually exclusive goals, and nothing else has been added to promote more collaborative efforts.

look, if you don’t want to hear the history of barber-surgeons and how medicine in medieval-to-early-modern europe changed from something tensely positioned between “lower” work, dirty work, and the reserve of educated men to very much the province of the elite and highly-educated men, as facilitated by the vesalian shift

through alliance chat

for the duration of the final boss encounter

don’t ask why ba’gamnan shouts “the empire is a cancer and i am the barber’s blade!”

ithums replied to your post “ithums replied to your post “so who else thinks elf!zenos, the...”

yes but i will still fite you

so it’s like this--

SB as a whole (ala mhigo and the far east) have a marked dearth of elezen characters (which i think is partly due to out-of-universe reasons; the previous expansion was All Elfs All The Time and xiv players who don’t have elfs as their faves deserve to have Nice Things Too); it being “just a rando elezen dude” isn’t as plausible as it’d be if this shit was going down in ishgard or gridania or wherever, because this region’s randos are usually highlanders, hellsguards, or cattes.

(now, a lot of imperial garlean mobs have been using elezen models in gyr abanian regions, and i expect that in the event this bodysnatched elf IS a rando, that’s the explanation there).

and of the known elezen men who’ve been in ala mhigo, estinien is the only one where if he just fucking VANISHED for months with no explanation, his absence wouldn’t be noticed for a long time because he’s a known disaster who just DOES this shit on his own. if it was almost anyone else, we’d know they were gone because it’d be a big deal.

also, and most importantly

zenos became shinryu, the two became one--and shinryu came into being from nidhogg’s eyeballs, and the last person to have been in contact with the eyeballs was estinien, when he popped ‘em in the epilogue of SB. and considering how much of a big deal it was made out of how zenos Very Definitely Killed Himself/His Body during the end of 4.3, i’m not sure where else there coulda been a bit of zenos lurking in this mortal plane in search of a body to snatch (see: through the maelstrom, the bodyhopping sahagin). so yeah, i think estinien was the most likely candidate for being bodysnatched by the soul or whatever of zenos (bold to assume zenos even HAS one a thems). and yeah, i know zenos!elf doesn’t have esty’s face, but i think that was primarily an out-of-universe choice, so that we’d read his scene as “omigawd this mystery elf must somehow be zenos!!” rather than “estinien, have you lost your GODDAMN mind?!”

finally:

getting possessed by a genocidal baddie AGAIN will cement beyond a shadow of a doubt estinien’s status as the ultimate kain expy. thus...

so, one thought i have been returning to frequently over the past several weeks is concerning zenos

and it is that not since og sephiroth has squeenix presented a villain so totally sexlessly and yet wound up with a very large and incredibly thirsty and eroticized fandom for them, and it makes me wonder if, since 4.2 and especially the 4.2 stinger is what it is, sephiroth’s meta trajectory over the compilation might be an informative and useful thing to consider

now, let me clarify my terms here

first off, what i mean by “sexlessly presented.” i do NOT mean anything about the character’s attractiveness, nor do i mean to say said character is asexual, nor do i say anything about the validity one way or another of sexy fanart/fanfic concerning the character. what i mean is that the creators of the work went to some lengths to avoid either presenting the character as sexual or in an eroticized way, positive or negative. just a big “mu” there on the topic of character sexuality. this is very much a doylist (out-of-universe) analysis rather than watsonian (in-universe) going on here, so i’ll go in further, and in doing so bring up the other final fantasy villains whose presentation cannot be described that way as counterexamples.

so! sex in the presentation of a character can refer to one of two (or both) facets, i’m going to phrase here in the form of questions: “does the work care to inform the audience about that character’s sexuality/sexual interiority?” and “does the work invite its audience to consider the character’s sexual attractiveness to them personally?” if the answer to either of those questions is “no,” that indicates the character was presented sexlessly. do note that all of this is concerning how the creators intended the character to be read, which is not the same as audience reaction; “i think [character] is hot therefore they were presented sexually”/”i think [character] is ugly therefore they were presented sexlessly” are not valid responses here. --in fact it’s important to note that presenting an “ugly” character in a sexual way is a common tactic to increase audience revulsion; presenting a character sexually doesn’t have to mean titillation or pleasant fantasizing. also important to note is that, for those questions, the answer to one can be “yes” while the answer to the other is “no,” and to further elucidate this, i’mma grab two other final fantasy villains as counterexamples, ultimecia and seymour.

ultimecia is, i would say, an example of the answer to the first question being “no” but the second question being “yes,” due to her character design and the long history of male gaze in visual works. cut of outfit, posing of character, angles of shots, yadda yadda, y’all should know this please don’t ask me to redo the past sixty years of film criticism in a tumblr post for free. and despite the eroticization of ultimecia’s character design, in the work there’s basically nothing regarding what she thinks and feels concerning sex, who or what she’s interested in if indeed she is interested in anything at all. (do note: for the purposes of this analysis, i do count explicitly confirming a character to be asexual as presenting them sexually; essentially because in so confirming it does inform the audience about the character’s sexual interiority). meanwhile, seymour is an arguable example of the reverse situation; the audience isn’t invited to think sexy thoughts about seymour (most of FFX fandom considers him ugly/repellant) but we do have something of an idea of the character’s sexual interiority because of how plot-relevant his marriage proposal and his relationship (such as it were) with yuna are. so yeah, in summary both characters are presented sexually though in very different ways. 

i would say that zenos is presented in such a way that the answers to both questions are “no”: the work offers no insight regarding the character’s sexual interiority, nor does its presentation of the character encourage sexual consideration in the audience. yes, zenos is handsome, with his long blond hair and striking features, but that is not the same. all we ever see of his skin is his face, he is always clothed in armor bulky and concealing--its silhouette obliterates that of his own body, disguises it to look like a Scary Monstrous Thing rather than anything sensual or fleshy. his motions and poses are intended to make the audience fear and be awed by him--his slow walk is to inspire dread and impress the audience with his power, not to seduce, when he stands he looms intimidatingly. within 4.0 itself, no other character is shown as thinking or feeling anything sexual about him--indeed, that’s explicitly shot down in the scene where nameless characters we understand to be bitter and jealous of fordola accuse her of gaining her position via sexual favors to zenos, which we know did not happen and have further reinforced later in her post-experimentation scene, with her in her underwear with zenos and aulus and it being totally serious and focused solely on the surgical aspect. similarly, zenos as a being with a sexuality is unaddressed--yes, there is fandom interpretation of his feelings towards the player character as potentially sexual, but 1) fandom does that with literally everyone and 2) thanks to characters like haurchefant and aymeric, we do actually have something of a model for what it can look like when romantic/sexual interest towards the player character is textual, and zenos don’t do it. so--strictly in the context of 4.0 text, yes, i would say zenos is presented near-totally sexlessly, both as a character for audience consumption and as an in-universe person whose sexual inner life is left unaddressed. 

and yet, like the last time squeenix made a villain a handsome man and presented him sexlessly, he’s gotten an enormous and enormously horny fandom. now, the compilation of ffvii has acknowledged and capitalized on this response, but it remains to be seen if the same will happen (or happen the same way) in the patches in the 4.x series. it’s interesting to me then that not only has zenos been “brought back to life” (i remain unsure if it’s the genuine article or some manner of magitek/ascian fuckery), but the same installment that did so also introduced asahi, frighteningly devoted zenos fanboy extraordinaire. this could go a lot of directions, it remains to be seen which one will be chosen.