Sidequest Book Club Episode 3: Endwalker Healer
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- In this episode of our podcast about FFXIV side-stories, Cleretic serves up one of her favorites: The Endwalker healer role quest, where the monster of the week is survivor's guilt and grief, but WE'RE not the one fighting it! Today, we learn all the ways Arenvald and Raubahn are amazing representation, Amaranth tells us about the only Spanish thing in Eorzea, and Cleretic explains why it doesn't matter how you feel about Fordola, what matters is that you feel it strongly.
Find me on / cleretic , bsky.app/profi..., or cohost.org/Cle...!
Find Amaranth at / jazzelves , or cohost.org/ama...!
love this questline, episode, (and the writing for/surrounding Fordola)
I had a lot of fun listening to you both for this topic! Out of the EW role quests, healer was and still is my favorite for its subject matter and how it was handled. Both of you made some pretty eye opening view points I had never considered before, and I'm glad you did!
I would love to listen to an episode about the tank one because I'd like to hear your perspectives on that one.
I get the feeling Tizona is a callback to FFXI where it was one of the mythic weapons (end game weapons that were introduced during Treasures of Aht Urgan). It was for Blue Mage. Kind of like how Tupsimati was the Scholar mythic.
I think that's likely, especially since it was first named in ARR (maybe in 1.0 but I wasn't playing then, so I don't have the data) but it stood out to me immediately since I went through a Famous Swords phase and so had a second of "wait, wasn't that... IT WAS"
Everything involving Arenvald has made me so happy as someone who is also in a similar situation as him, physically, and I really hope we can actually get a wheelchair for our WoLs some day in the future.
Fordola was a force in Stormblood that I despised and loved to see her every second she was on screen. Any time she appears again, she is my sole focus of attention unless Arenvald is also there. All of her slow crawl up the mountain of glass that is the atrocities that she has done to the summit of redemption is more compelling than any other of her character type I've ever seen.
This was one of the high points, for me, in the expansion, as noted Stormblood lover, it was wonderful getting more Stormblood story continuation.
I don't think I said it, but part of what I was thinking about with 'Arenvald's wheelchair would work better as a mount' is that we could also get that mount.
Count me in on team "actually, wheelchairs and canes as "fashion" accessories would be really meaningful to me" as well, along with everything else you've stated!
I really hope Arenvald and Fordola both get more MSQ time in the future.
Up until the EW role quest Fordola has been mostly detached from her trauma, being the second-tier primal slayer was enough of a distraction that she could function as the soldier she was indoctrinated into becoming so long as her discount echo doesn't go off. But the role quest ripped the band aid off and forced her to deal with not only the consequences of her actions but the fall out of being on the losing side of a successful revolution. At the end of it all, she's actually taken a step forward instead of Arenvald dragging the best of her out kicking and screaming. Fordola is a character I love because her road to redemption is a long one full of strife and pain, and she's stubborn enough to reach the end, gods and monster be damned. While I'd enjoy another expansion with her and Arenvald, having the WoL dropping in and out of it just adds to the lived in feeling of the world. The WoL is an important part of the world, but not the center of the universe.
As someone who is Disabled, I love how they handled Arenvald. My only fear is that they could remove his disability with magic... I hope they grow him without fixing him.
also count me in the "my dream questline being "Garlean War Crimes Tribunal" (and that I sort of got Ishgardian Reformation Council, my second-most wanted that won't get made because it's just all the boring talking cutscenes, in the other EW role quest that HW and the Scholasticate side-quest promised me, plus the payoff for noticing that NPC every time I did Custom Delivery turn-ins in the Firmament and noticing his model matching a certain someone means that I like the Magic DPS solely on those two merits else I would rank it dead last. And it still might be my least favorite EW Role Questline, whereas this one I think is my favorite).
Most of what I have to say was in the text, which is probably not surprising given all of the everything, but I'm just sitting here having relistened to it (and honestly, not hating the sound of listening to my own voice, aside from when my tongue gets tangled up, which is a pretty big triumph!) thinking
wow, this is DRK episode length, there was a LOT of stuff in there, even if we do discount tangents and banter! They did a good job with these 5 levels.
Good quest line, good video!
37 tangent warnings, hit all of them, that's my guess as of 13 mins in
I'm sorry I'm leaving a book, because I have a lot to say. It's that or leave like 12 comments.
I feel like Ul'Dah managed to get by without the final days because it's a boom time. The war ended, merchants are making a killing resettling Ala Mhigo and charting ventures world wide to take advantage of foreign wars, the Sultana and Syndicate are finally seeing eye to eye, and the thaumaturges' guild just got a new toy from a certain shadow bringers quest. Everyone is too busy to deal with despair, and also let's face it, the people willing to give up don't end up in Ul'dah, there's always a carrot dangled somewhere, even if it can be a cruel one.
I love the discussion of gender dynamic and Rauban's popularity. If this game were more male dominated the three most popular characters would be Merlwyb, Rauban, and Thancred. Probably also Y'shtola, but I don't get why she's as popular as she is. I see the appeal I just can't see how there's so much of it.
I like that we miss Arenvald's development, not because I don't like the lad, actually quite the opposite. His role in XIV from the beginning has been "This is the /other/ warrior of light." He's the scion who most regularly gets sent on your style of missions. He has the echo, he goes through at least two arcs before Strom Blood's patches make him a main character. We've NEVER gotten to see his dev first hand, only ever chat with him about how he's handling his latest issue. My favorite instance of this is when he and Fordola crash one of the shadow bringer's job stories, and instead of you telling people about your time on the first, they tell you about their time on the source. You are their quest npc. You think that's going to change now that he's in a wheel chair? It would be nice to be there for him, and it's not like we aren't, but he doesn't stop being the protagonist of his own story just because he's disabled. That story keeps on like it always has.
14 actually has a lot of great subtext, I'm just glad they don't make the mistake of thinking that's enough, so instead it becomes texture like it's supposed to be, something to enhance the story like a fractal of meaning. And then yeah, sometimes we get an expansion pining for the good old days, and wallowing in defeat where the final boss is a sad man you confront in his model train room.(I've built enough gundams, that joke isn't punching down)
"Even before the gundam story line we were in gundam territory" you can't go three feet in 14 without hitting something gundam related. The ending of base ARR with Minfilia calling out to use is straight out of 0079. A lot of garlean soldiers feel like zeeks, and just look at Nero. Look at how he starts the crystal tower rairds. His magitek armor is red and called the red baron.
As for Fordoloa, I think she's probably my favorite character in ffxiv. You don't get into it here, but it's really important that her "redemption journey" comes at the same time Yotsuyu's doesn't. We're asked "can you blame Tsuyu for things she can't remember" and the answer is ultimately no, because she can't hide from it forever, and that redemption is an unearned foul taste in her mouth, at the same time as we are shown Fordola, a woman who literally cannot forget. I really hope at some point her and Gosetsu can just sit down and talk over some drinks, even though they likely never will.
I can't believe you're advocating giving Fordola a mask instead of the Zeta Gundam Quatro aviators. Ida got away with about as much coverage.
I think it's fair to say Nanamo's disguise is fairly well known, but not the full scope of it. Lilira is specifically a very important nobles daughter, and I have to imagine enough people know there is no parent for that child, to know that she is important, just not how.
It's fine we know what the seed seers would say "The elementals are recommending an Ala Mhigan purge. They can't turn if they are dead. Obviously we don't condone this, but have you tried wiping the relation to the Crania Lupi form their families ritually?"
From a lore perspective do you think the rapid enlightenment of figuring out the colonialism and social change thing, is at least in part of this being a new astral era. Like The calamity was just a big come to Jesus moment, and now that the aether is stabilizing and the ascians aren't sewing chaos, people are ready to get back to that modernism that's manifested often enough to be recognized as recurring golden ages?
Rule of Acquisition Number 286: When Morn leaves, it's all over.
The long term solution coming first is very important to me when dealing with the blasphemies, because you cannot combat specific despair with blind hope. You can kill existential dread with the vague notion of hope, but specific forms of hopelessness need to be able to see those seeds of a better future, that knowledge that things can get better.
Oh hey that was me I was bitching about the condoler healing. Put Rauban in the party list you bastards. At least it's still solo duty easy.
As an inveterate book-reader, I appreciate books. Also: MORN REFERENCE DROPPED, HUTTAH
Might want to fix the title
This is what happens when I'm not forcing myself to make jokes in titles, I forfet to edit them at all! Fixed now.
@@EinDose Exactly every title should be a joke, or one line poem