shadowbringers and the art of grief 

Shadowbringers is, unsurprisingly, also my favourite because I, too, am a sucker for stories about grief. Now look at this scrunkly little man with 12,000 years of depression.

Alisaie acting appropriately like the one after whom she was named - STEALING THAT LIMIT BREAK

That scene with Magnus always makes me cry. You can just feel conflict between wanting to smash the thing he feels took his wife from him into tiny pieces and his desire hold onto it as a last, unexpected, cherished gift.

shadowbringers was integral to helping me deal with my lingering grief in a both literal and figuretive transition period of my life, i played it at a certain "new beginning" stage. i lost my father at a young age and now and again i'd get into low points of "oh god just how am i supposed to live without this guy. why feel anything good if he isnt here" and this game was 'the' thing that got me out of that (Hopefully) last slump. the game hits just as hard as it did a year and a half or so later. this is, without exaggeration, my favorite piece on this game i've ever seen. not just shadowbringers, final fantasy 14 as a whole. immensely happy you got some enjoyment out of it. had a lump in my throat for pretty much the entire runtime, fantastic work (also Real for the tim rogers mention) (also keep drawing that little freak i oughta dub more of those comics)

I'm glad someone else loves Thancred here. Him constantly wrestling with the desire to have *his* Minfilia back knowing that sacrificing the young girl isn't fair to her & it wouldn't be something Minfilia-Prime would want him to force on her. He knows it's wrong but it doesn't quell how much he still wants the person he cared about most back. Side note, between Magnus & Lyna they brought their absolute A game when it comes to voice acting for Shadowbringers

16:14 shoutout to the best example of cat naming I've ever seen. Truly an alisae move if I'd ever seen one

This is one of the best videos I've ever seen, and it's an accessible mirror to why Shadowbringers is one of my favourite pieces of fiction ever. Truth is, even if I was spared the pain of physical abuse in my lifetime, the amount of emotional suffering I've endured for the sake of betterment of others is... hard to put into words. The most fucked up thing about grief, in my opinion, is that it's so distant from normality, that to be understood, you have to blow people's minds and hope, just hope, that they will not be too preoccupied with their own horror of realisation about how... much invisible pain is there in the world. I, too, constructed temples in memory of the worst moments on my life, to prove the point to onlookers, that I'm not weak-willed, cowardly, hysterical. But the problem is, doing that has made me stuck emotionally. My care for others never went away, but it became a performance of genuine kindness without my ability to emotionally connect with it. I think it's about time I stopped reciting age-old books for the sake of people that don't care about me, and pass on the torch of hope to yet another person, now in earnest thank you for this video

The whole bit where you came out in full blown cosplay and explained quite amusingly that you would not be able to be impersonal about Emet and everyone around you knew that before you even played the game was perhaps the finest cover for the deeply affecting bits to come. Thank you for this essay - I cannot imagine it was easy emotionally. You spoke towards the end about retreading the same ground can't create the same experience. Sure you see more and the machinery reveals itself to you but our brains are boundless and incorporate especially impacting information quite well. I have always evaded replaying or rewatching or rereading whatever media because I felt that it would be better to preserve the memory of the original experience than gain insight into how it was made, but recently I have been going away from that, for reasons you've outlined here. Sometimes it is worth it just to reach the conclusion that yes, what you saw was a whole experience despite the pieces. I'll likely do the same with this very video.

There is something so uniquely powerful about a game painting the most utterly beautiful and real picture of grief and suffering, and then telling the player to "Yes and?" It. This world is dead, but there are still people here. My loved one is gone, but there are new people to love. My friend has changed, and is now my enemy, but they are stilll possesed of the things that made them your friend. For me its the scene with Ardbert and Feo Ul on the watchtower, telling you to just take a moment to breath. They remind you that its not past, present, or future that matters, but all three at once, anf none of them at all. The offer to take the role of Titania amd lock yourself away in a depression nest, not because its healthy but because your loved ones would rather protect you in pain then let your suffering actually kill you. This would have been a beautiful essay if only for the script, but your editing, cinematography, and cosplay were perfect. Even your damn thumbnail is Peek. Heres hoping you enjoy Dawn Trail.

54:16 This bit right here. MASTERFUL editing. I had never put the two and two together that Thancred is a scaled down scope Emmet. And him being the one to break though the barrier, to see though the layer of grief that Emmet has surrounded himself with because he KNOWS the answer to the questions he's asking is just SO poignant

The hours of gposing in Shadowbringers is so real. You are a lovely human being. I can't articulate words even half as well as you, but baring your soul to us strangers on the internet was really brave and heavily amplifies the overall message of your video essay. Thank you so much for the experience!

Thancred/Emet parallels aside, the side story for Ran'jit shows a similar mirror. Like Thancred, Ran'jit knew a "greater" Minfilia, and like Minfilia Warde, she is lost in sacrifice towards a greater good. Despite great inner turmoil, Thancred is ultimately able to separate his love for Minfilia with his love for Ryne. Ran'jit cannot. It's possible that Ran'jit spent more time in the company of the 'first' Minfilia than Thancred spent with Warde. He has, in all likelihood, the longest tenure in all of Norvrandt of combat against the sin eaters, and I doubt honeyed promise of luxury or bliss from Vauthry could tempt him. Ran'jit aligns himself with Vauthry not out of ideology or a means to an end, but as an end to his pain.

As someone who also experienced shadowbringers in the wake of grieving i too felt the quite rudely outspoken portrayal of grief and the madness of focusing on it. I also see the companion scene in endwalker of Emet-Selch going "you believe any of this? That mad with grief i would turn the world inside out to bring someone back?" And all the knowledge of Amurot and the moon thinking "that i know the guy at the table with you at all means i know how bad you regret his departure." Just stunning poetry of story telling on display.

What amazes me still is the voice actor for Magnus not only did an amazing job for this relatively minor character but he also voices fucking Barnabas/Odin from FF16 which has a 180° turn on the energy.

how does this only have 700 views. literally the best ffxiv video i’ve seen on this site

First of all: CAT! Second... The algorithm gut punches. Giving me this as a suggestion to watch as i struggle with my own emotions and trauma in the last zone of Dawntrail, to a point where very few others will feel the same due to why i'm feeling the way i am - yes being vague as we have yet to even touch launch outside early access. Grief and pain are some of the most difficult things to deal with, that heavy weight under your heart that persists for weeks on end that you just learn to live with, how quickly your emotions churn again when it's even vaguely prodded. The writers did an amazing job. I love them for it. I hate them for it.

30 minutes in and i'm crying over how much you get ardbert. you've laid out every single reason why i adore him and his role in the story and as a mirror to the wol... also god i love how you've covered thancred's messy and difficult grief and i'm crying over minfilia and thancred and how grief has shaped them both (literally her whole existence is defined by ranjit's grief and then thancred's until she breaks out of her shell!) i'm not normal and i AM sobbing

Shadowbringes and Endwalker break me as a person. They shatter through that fourth wall constantly, as if the writers speak directly to you. To come to an understanding. There is this strange fine line that Final Fantasy 14 is able to straddle where even though our character is *not* us... but is us. And in so doing, is able to tell us poignant messages about grief, despair. Hope, and gallantry. To be brave isn't inherently staring into the face of a monster, but to stand at all in the face of it. It speaks to something so inherently human within any of us, that it's hard to out right dismiss what the story is saying. They both break me. But then remade me into someone I didn't realize I could be. And that is powerful. And also why they are memorable. They are from the heart.

I don't think I could overstate how wonderful this essay is if I tried. I've been playing this game since I was arguably too young for it, and it's narratives have in no small way shaped my taste in media ever since ARR. When HW first dropped, it was unlike anything I'd experienced in a story up until that point. Imagine my shock when ShB came about and turned that on its head. I'm not very in touch with my emotions, and its rare for any media to make me cry, but I bawled throughout the entirety of ShB.

this was so beautifully made and the part about your personal grief. god. that pain and heartache is second to none. I also lost my father at a young age, was forced to stand by a podium and announce my feelings of sorrow and loss when i hadn't fully comprehended them. Now life goes on and there's a big gaping hole in my life that i don't know what to do with. But if FFXIV has taught me anything it's to not let grief weigh you down and that you should keep on living. shadowbringers is such a painful and beautiful story of loss ( and fire and faith), and ardbert as a character will never fail to make me ugly cry. This video might be. the video of all time. holy fucking shit its so very beautiful. i hope the algorithm spreads this video far and wide because this deserves tens of thousands of views. amazing video 11/10 would cry again, shoutout peakbringers i love found family !!!!!!!!

A fantastically stunning, and rightfully gut punching recount of shadowbringers. Its never been an easy thing for some people, myself notably to voice how a story like this effects everyone on their first, rather raw experience of it, but if I ever have a need for it, this video will be a cherished memory that I'll find one excuse after another to come back to.

I've had to endure a lot of grief from the time ShB came out, to now. Hell, it hasn't even been 24 hours since we had to get our dear elderly cat put down, so the timing and poignancy of finding this video today is remarkable. Sometimes, with the rate of people and family pets lost, it feels like I'm drowning in a neverending sea of sorrow and loss. It's hard to talk about it when it's this raw. So instead, I'll talk about the game. I loved Emet-Selch from the first moment I saw him (much like I did with Ardyn from XV), and ShB as a whole expressed so much that resonated with me. Of course he wanted desperately to be with his loved ones. Of course you have to protect not just yours, but all of the shards. It's just a beautiful, gut-twisting story.

Shadowbringers, at least replaying it, unironically helped me grieve the loss of my cat whom I had for 12 years. Its still my favorite expansion to this day

God I loved Lythes voice acting in that first scene. It’s just so well done you can feel, not just hear, feel the grief in her voice, and her desire to just cry

Phenomenal Essay in both your delivery and its contents. Even after all these years, Shadowbringers and my first experience with its story remains among the frequently remembered moments in my head. Shadowbringer's themes are relatable to anyone affected by the shadow of grief, and i cant help but feel a welling of emotions when viewing grief through a lens as grandiose as this expansion. The context endwalker provides to a lot of the story beats in Shadowbringers makes the two expansions feel so closely connected, on a much deeper level than "this is just the next expansion". Thanks for putting this out there! It definitely brought back very fond memories.

1:01:10 effectively perfectly describes how I felt when my own father died, almost word to word. If I stopped grieving, then I simply wasn't broken enough over it. It was inherently wrong to stop. Then, after that, I stopped crying one day, and never really cried since. It's a corruptive concept, but one shared by so many almost intuitively.

After listening to this essay, I think I can put words to why Amaurot, the map zone, is one of my favorites. Especially the map theme "Neath Dark Waters"; that ticking clock. Emblematic of both the forward march of time and a man for whom time has not meaningfully moved forward for literal millenia. Amaurot is a tribute to the past and a monument to one man's descent into maddening grief and his refusal to accept his loss for what it is.

i just finished this video essay and like many of the other people in the comments started crying or almost crying every 10-15 minutes or so, especially about ryne and thancred. thank you so much for making this video.

39:00 “The poems and platitudes of wiser men. Musings on sadness and loss... Studied and memorized... and meaningless in the moment.” Ironically, my favorite quote about grief is about the uselessness of quotes about grief when you’re in the midst of it

Absolutely fantastic essay. I don't know if I really have quite the words to explain why, but this piece of writing got to me like few others have. Thinking about some of the parallels that I'd missed has me looking forward to a second play of Shadowbringers on a second character I've been leveling on the side. I'll probably be back to write something more when I've had more time to marinate on this (and probably watch it again). Thank you so much for making this ❤

Another great word for the Shadowbringers/Endwalker duology is *Legacy*. The Ancients, Ardbert, the failed timeline. What mark do we leave on the world? How do our actions inform the actions of those that follow?

I first encountered ShB at a point where I had healed… as much as I probably ever will, from crippling grief that froze me in place for a decade and defined my adult life even beyond turning the corner and fully healing. That doesn’t change how deeply affected I was and am by it the first time through nor in going through again on multiple alts and an NG+ run during a personal project to record the entire MSQ in the wake of Endwalker as a refresher prior to starting Dawntrail, when I no longer had any jobs below 90 and had flight everywhere and all the aetherytes and so on. Trivializing the difficulty of the fights didn’t lessen the power and catharsis of the story. Familiarity didn’t render the raw powerful emotion of the writing and character portrayals meaningless. Even the snippets included in an essay video like this still affect me, and I treasure that. ShB and EW are my favorite expansions and while I am enjoying DT even more than I expected, it doesn’t have the incredible weight of buildup that lent so much meaning to these segments of the story. It inherently can’t, because it’s the beginning of a new arc rather than the culmination of a decade of plot. ShB flipped what we thought we knew about the calamities, the ascians, the sundering, and pretty much everything else on its head in the space of a couple of cutscenes. I absolutely adore when a writer can do that and make it actually work. Thank you for expressing this intrinsic aspect of the story in such relatable fashion.

Honestly one of the best FFXIV videos I've seen in a long while. And as per usual whenever anyone forces me to look too long or hard at Emet and his motivations (i.e., anything longer than about 3 seconds), my eyes are once again leaking. Something about his very specific circumstances resonates SO. HARD. with me, it's like it just unlocks everything I tend to keep bottled up inside of me all at once. It can be both good and bad, depending on circumstances... though I'm sitting alone at home right now, so that's okay. I'm glad you got to the part about Graha at the end as well. They're essentially both my WoL's husbando's, in game... one I know is bad for me and that I can and should never have, and the other one that makes me smile the second he walks in the room and that I know will support me unconditionally, no matter what. Two sides of the same coin, indeed. I honestly don't know if anything will ever top my emotional connection to this particular expansion in terms of video game experiences, ever again. I don't know if I want it to... I don't know if I could handle it, tbqh. Shadowbringers connects with something so deep and visceral in me that I kind of actually don't WANT anything to go any harder than that... I don't think I could actually handle it.

This video is the best piece of media that I have ever seen to explore the link between art, video games, grief, and loss than I think I will ever see. I love your work. And it is incredible.

I rejoice at someone that knows and understands Cylva! There are dozens of us players that know and care about her.

"this is alisaie! i named her after the elf girl-" and she's living up to it too!

Spent a lot of this video thinking you write like Tim Rogers. Then you quote Tim Rogers. This video was excellent.

I just finished the main Shadowbringers MSQ this week. Thanks for spending so much time digging into its themes :)

"The rains and have ceased and we have been graced with another beautiful day. But you are not here to see it" Above all the other lines in the story I think this one has stuck with me the most simply by how much grief it conveys. Sometimes in spite of how beautiful life can truly be our grief can blind us to the hope that tomorrow can promise. And yet it is for tomorrow we will have to learn to live for again and again. Shadowbringers will always be special and I love that Endwalker serves as true continuance of its theme in the face of overwhelming despair. Thank you for the video and the Emet-Selch fan club has another great member for sure.

watched this as I near the end of Endwalker and MAN some of the connections you made here blew my mind. Mainly the connection between Thancred's and Emet's speeches and how Emet sees us as children.

So I just made it past Interlude 2, paused it right when the ticking of Amaurot's theme began, and I only include that to give the next sentence some weight: This is one of the best essays I've had the pleasure of experiencing. You've nailed it, everything I enjoyed about Shadowbringers and its themes is included as well as details I hadn't thought critically about. I cannot wait to hear your thoughts on Emet Selch and to watch your other videos once this is over. You've more than earned this sub. Also Alisae, the cat (and please pardon my likely misspelling of her name), is ADORABLE.

Up until this expansion, I didn't fully appreciate the differences in the day and night overworld themes. That first moment you kill a lightwarden and the day clears out to bring the sky from punishing light to gentle darkness accompanied by a beautiful piano score... It changed something indescribable in me

Shadowbringers was this game's peak. At first i was extremely disappointed that endwalker and dawntrail didn't come even close to it, but not i've happyily accepted that that was just peak and i'll remember it dearly

Holy fuck I wasn't expecting to be seen so hard with this video. As a fellow Father-Loser it's nearly impossible to describe the intimacy of grief and how painfully obvious it is to us- to the point where we often doubt ourselves about whether what we feel is actually grief or if it's just habit born of a suffering that, unless you have been in the position to feel it, you cannot truly comprehend the scope of. Such that when you see it and you try to explain it, it feels like you're insane. But you did, or at least I felt like you did, and I'm thankful for that. Thank you.

im bad with words and i wouldn't be able to express how much i love SHB and how grateful i am that you made this, if anything, I'll say that i was literally CRYING by the end, if that says something. thank you. ❤ im pretty sure this is my favorite thing related to ffxiv outside the game itself.

Disappears for 2 years Comes back and cooks about an expansion to tell the story about the Second most fucked world in FF14 (the first goes to the 13th. If you know you know). Truly one of the videos of all time Yknow what, keep cooking

"This is alisaie~" *proceeds to prove how she got her name*

This was beautifully written and spoken. The Tim Roger’s quote is a hell of a thing. I struggled with grief and depression for a better part of my life (I, too, lost my father as a young teen, though I never got to give a eulogy; a few years later I lost my eldest half sister), deeply affecting me and crippling me, making me resentful about who I could have been had I not been stricken with it, about lost potential. But in that time, I expressed myself through writing and art, and much like yourself, I found myself not only gravitating towards the theme of grief in bodies of work (through somewhat avoidant where I can), but I also have learned to become both poetic and self-critical in pursuit of refinement, clarity, and creating the best version of a thing I could make. Your intermission notes on changes to the essay as reflections of its evolution were particularly personalizing. In a weird and wild way, I find you both kindred spirit and alien to me, and felt that way throughout the one hour and twelve minutes. I simultaneously want to reach out and befriend you, but know that that’s the least of your desire from a video essay you put out on the internet, and moreover, you strike me as the kind of artist and friend who I would inevitably have a falling out with, if not outright rejection. Maybe that’s just my complex speaking. This video, and your channel, has reminded me that I really do need to get back on my creative horse. I need to write, and I need to draw. I have a story I’m still in the middle of telling, and it’s nowhere near done. I have a cathedral to build, and leaving it unfinished weighs on me something terrible. There is art to be made. Thank you for this video. I hope you’re enjoying Dawntrail! I certainly am.

Didn't expect to finish this video with tears in my eyes, jeez. Thank you for this, it was incredibly accurate and hit just right where it hurts (just like ShB did)

shadowbringers will always be my favorite expansion in any mmo because it was one of the first games that made me realize I shouldn't punish myself for feeling miserable nor should I stew in it and instead I should focus on bettering my self and the people around me, and I've played many games that touch on mental health and other serious subject matters but shadowbringers was like staring into a new horizon, I still love heavensward because of its emotional strengths but my respect will always be focused on shadowbringers and how amazingly written it was.

I thought i had processed all of my Shadowbringers emotions. Then i actually did the Keanu Reeves crying meme when you started talking about Seto. Fantastic video.

1:50 I know the feeling. Started playing during ShB out of desperation because I craved story-driven games with emotional impact to help me through the lockdown boredom. I'd tried to get into it years before but couldn't get past ARR, and I supposed that MMOs and a good story were just fundamentally incompatible things. Whooboy. Never been so glad to be absolutely, horrendously wrong about something before.

You put in to words why Shadowbringers is such a special story. I also think with how the Amaurot Emet created is forever stuck to repeat the days before the final days hit is another example of how he can't move on from the past even to the day his world changed with the final days hitting yet the reality of it all still looms in his mind

absolutely beautiful, incredible. I have nothing but awe and smiles at this. actually giving thancred the goddamn kudos he deserves for his part too. Soon after shadowbringers dropped, it's very easy to get swept up in all it's glory. to the point where rampant nonsensical praise of emet selch felt weird, ans a bit annoying. Nature of people to be so chaotic. having time away from it now, I'm so glad we can appreciate all of this, at the pace grief deserves. surprisingly I too lost my father at 14, I did not have the time or understanding on how to grieve. he was in the hospital one day and the next he was gone. it was such a shock I didn't cry, despite being so prone to doing that for almost anything. If I can add anything, is that despite all that dark, the game keeps saying hold on to that candle of hope. happiness was lost, but walk forward, find another reason to smile. it's not guaranteed but seek it. Which is why G'raha is my favourite here, he's the loving kindness to a grieving person, to listen, to understand, to help. He is grieving himself already, he's not without pain. 100 years of just sitting and waiting and helping a dying world for a hero he may fail to summon? that may not succeed? a whole damn century? not to mention ready to kill himself at the end for salvation. all of that for a future he won't see. for me shadowbringers is about having that love and warmth by your side. your grief won't disappear, but find your light and hold onto it. and in the end, and to post expansion G'raha gets time to recieve said love and warmth. he's been giving it to everyone yet did not receive any. Which only hit hard when I realized since my father's death I've kept people around me smiling, laughing and lifting their spirits, yet seemingly no one did the same for me. G'raha showed me that warmth and love is worth it. he is worth it, I am worthy. At the time of writing this, my partner lost her mother recently, and has had a tough time grieving unable to move on. I'll be her light and warmth until she can walk again. And maybe someday she'll be able to see this story with me despite not liking multiplayer games, and perhaps feel the same way I did. funny how my takeaway from shadowbringers is Endwalker's catchphrase. Forge ahead.

Your emet-selch cosplay is fabb 😍 and such a lovely essay too!!!

My girlfriend pointed out the burger king crown is what people call the mentor crown.

Had to stop watching this video every like 15 minutes, because I'd start crying, as I thought back to the story, and then would hit play again to listen to your amazing analysis, this expansion is so wonderful and thank you for wonderfully dissecting its narrative.

This has to be one of the best if not THE best essays i've listened to about SHB. Just excellent.

we have reached peak ffxiv video

This is a lovely essay; I hadn't considered that parallel between Thancred and Emet-Selch before.

god this is such a great yappathon. Thank you for not going overboard in editing; definitely helps highlight your feelings & enthusiasm in your wording throughout the video. Definitely one of the best things I've watched in a fat minute and I hope you make more XIV analysis stuff :)

Is it weird if I clapped at the end, alone in my office? I had never realized the parallel between Thancred and Emet's dialogues until you put them side by side. Now I feel the need to play again after almost two years.

I'm not one to really out here writing comments, but this video was absolutely incredible. I wasn't at all prepared for the feelings your analysis brought about in me. I was fighting back tears in the middle of a walmart... kudos

never watched anything of yours before, but this video is unbelievably beautiful

I really shouldn't have played this video at 11:00PM. I don't know what to do with these feelings. I'm filled to the brim with so much grief not just for past tragedies which altered myself as a person in profound and terrifying ways but also a future (whether irrational or not) I can never see as being truly within my grasp. What I'm trying to say is this was an excellent video essay and everyone should replay Shadowbrigers

Thank you for a finely crafted essay, it was a good look back at those aspects that really did enable that narrative to pull my heartstrings so intensely

I think that this is why we all latch on to new players going through the story. It is that we all have our individual pain and experience in life, but the story here gives us all a shared reference for those feelings, be they high or low.

"Remember us. Remember that we once lived."

Wow. I've never seen or heard anyone explain the themes of this story so well. I never even realized half of these things until you pointed them all out. So now I love this expansion more than I already did. So thank you very much for this video!

Finally, a RU-vid video made specifically for me 🥺 I'm gonna watch this while leveling Pictomancer and then I will Return and Report

What an absolutely fantastic essay. Beyond glad this ended up recommended to me.

This is a wonderful essay- thank you for sharing it! I don't have a good comment but wanted to express how touching it was anyway, especially in the vulnerability of how personal it is

Thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed this essay into the themes of Shadowbringers, and your exploration of its main cast and how they approach grief and loss. Both your writing, explaining themes and threads that we may have missed the first time through, and your overall presentation were both clear and entertaining throughout, and while the subject matter may be difficult and trigger challenging memories and emotions within us, I nevertheless enjoyed watching until the end. I expect this took a long time and a lot of effort to put together and appreciate the effort. Should you feel so inspired in the future I would be interesting in hearing your thoughts and insights about other expansions/games.

"Remember us... Remember that we once lived"

This was FANTASTIC. I know Shadowbringers end to end, have discussed the characters to the point where I feel like I've gone over every possible point... but putting the lens of exploration so firmly on grief brings things into focus that maybe I haven't stared at too long because it's too hard to behold. Endwalker is in conversation with Shadowbringers, for sure, and it's Endwalker's explorations of loss and what it means to continue to live are what left me shaken and weepy for days afterwards. I think I'm going to have some things to process the next time I replay Shadowbringers. So thank you.

This video really spoke to me. I thank you for it.

when they needed me most.. i started crying at that point

You deserve the notification bell young lady! I’ll be waiting for your next movie

YOU GOT INTO THE GAME CAUSE OF THE FUCKING EMET MOTHER FANCAM?!?!??! I CANT

Thank you, this was a great watch

in your intro, i thought i recognized the wol, but when i saw the charm at 1:22 i screamed "FORGIVEN WHIMSY." haha. love your stuff sm! the video was really good! 🤍🤧

7:30 This. This is my relationship with my WoL since the vault, and I have been figuring out who she is ever since. And my time with this game has been richer for it. Also FEM ROE REPRESENT!

God I love this expansion, in retrospect it helped me work through some personal issues that a philosophy degree only did a patch job for. This was a great reflection and analysis. I really appreciated the thorough breakdown of the emet/thancred parallels. Also loved the femro rep, mine mostly either smirks or dudebro's her way through the story despite my efforts to attach some sort of inner angst or particularly complex interiority, so its fun to see what trials and tribulations yours and others WOLs go through. Do you think emet would ever smoke weed? I feel like its a no as he's not allowed to have fun, but would be interested in other opinions.

Thank you, I love this.

Wow. This is incredibly well done!

Ill watch this till im through the dawntrail cue

Oh my god the emet cosplay!!! It made it into the video!!!

Sometimes you just gotta watch a video essay about the themes of ffxiv and weep for a while.

Excellent video. Thank you

incredibly, incredibly well put together essay. you should be proud of the art you've created from, well, art. this essay is important to me, and therefore, it holds value no matter what.

I’m going to post this here because I have nowhere else to talk about this but this has spoilers for post Endwalker and the allied race quests and some trigger warnings and content warnings for various horrible things. Everyone who knows me knows I’m the loporrits’ biggest fan, I rescue bunnies in real life and my husband calls me his Lovingway. The Loporrit allied race quests -regardless of how much I love them- are the ones that speak truest to me and have shifted my life in a wonderful way. SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT after the final days and the death of Hydaelyn the loporrits are absolutely lost, devastated now that they cannot fulfill their single task of saving and helping the people of Etheirys; some take it in stride and others’, like the black loporrit, have been driven to the point of despair that they are contemplating the loporrit equivalent of ending themselves in the form of eternal stasis. TW from here out. My family was extremely abusive, I was raised and groomed to be one thing and one thing only, a wife and mother, and I was expected to do it by the time I was 16. I was exposed to vivid descriptions of what I should be doing to my future (much older) husband when I was still in the single digits of age. This led me to be sexually abused by my partners. I had been sheltered from the outside world. Isolated from people my age. And gaslit for everything. Told I was lying when I told the truth. Told I was not bulimic but just cared about my body. There are many other far more disgusting things but those are the most relevant and don’t want to make people miserable just to air my grievances. I ran away the moment I was legal with a man I had met online. He kept me safe and told me that I could be myself now except I didn’t know who I was. My only purpose was stripped away, the family I knew was gone, the looming threat was gone, and I had never wanted to disappear more than then. Everything hit all at once and I didn’t know WHO I was. I was lost. I was scared. I knew who I WANTED to be but I didn’t know how to get there. It seemed like to grand of a task to even attempt, like climbing Everest with no materials or time to prep. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to just be absorbed by the earth and decompose for the earth to use my body better than I was. I got help after a lot of fighting against it, I went to therapy, I found friends who liked me regardless of my boisterous, loud albeit clumsy and sometimes naive personality, I ended my eating disorder and learned to accept my body even when I drastically changed. And then I got Covid. I was bedridden for 8 months, and after those 8 months I waited a year and a half more before going to the hospital for a severe chest pain that had been there nonstop, it was a pulmonary embolism that could have killed me anytime but waited for me to find it. I have had to relearn how to do many things because my brain is permanently damaged now and I’ve had to learn to live in this much more broken body. I’ve had to completely restart my life from everything I knew, just like the black loporrit. My WOL is me. I made her to be the me I’ve always wanted to be and that me never gave up on the black loporrit. No matter how much they wanted to disappear, no matter how much they fought and scoffed and cringed while we tried to find worth and value outside of Hydaelyn’s single task left for them I never gave up helping them find a dream. And finally something changes, they open up about their pain, they ask for help, and they find something new and beautiful without having to leave all of their dreams behind. They change their name and they open their hearts to new love, new friends, and new dreams. So I did the same. I changed my name and despite the horrors I knew of the world I knew I wanted to be a dancer and an artist and that dream never left, so I scrapped everything and started creating again. I found my dreams again. And I found happiness and the path that will lead me to the myself I want to be. The loporrits changed me for the better and have inspired me to BE again.

The writers who touched FFXIV have done damn good jobs writing all of their antagonists, yet Emet-Selch stands apart to me. He's the one I relished the defeat of the most, but also empathized with the most, and understood the motives of the most (even if I disagreed with his methods). The extra character development he gets in Endwalker just furthered this in my mind. I do disagree with his actions (sacrificing those he did to try to summon Zodiark), his ultimate downfall at the hands of the WoL became all that much sweeter, but I also felt sympathetic to his motives even more.

awesome video!

As soon as I saw your cat behind you I knew what she was about to do little darling she is ❤

This was really good! ...I should play through this game again. Sometime soon, after Dawntrail.

the way thancred and emet mirror each other's grief as it's still fresh for him... ough

The man so burdened with grief he walks with a literal slouch.

Beautifull essay

This video essay might be your cathedral, but damn- what a beautiful cathedral it is!

God this expansion is absolutely art. Somehow I hadn't made the full connection between Thancred and Emet Selch that you did, probably because I didn't stop to think on that one. I was so engrossed in thinking of the connection between him and G'raha, which is his perfect foil in the macro. I didn't see how Thancred is also a perfect foil in the micro. Wow. Also your cosplay of Emet was great. And I did something similar. I dont wear my fandoms on my sleeve. Dont buy trinkets or paintings. Dont wear clothes for it. But I have not one, not two, but three displates for this game. All are up prominantly on my wall. All are around the ancients or endwalker themed.