Liddol-babee - L’iddol And Crew

underrated part of the early DT MSQ was

• finding out that the super epic trailer solo fight in a super epic ancient temple against a supervillain two-headed mamool ja while everyone else was out there enjoying their vacation was actually the wol equivalent of having a piña colada on the beach

• because said two-headed mamool ja is actually an honest-to-gods hero and also the literal king and he invited you to a friendly duel because he's got the Mamool Ja zoomies and can tell you've got the wol zoomies as well (or. nyaswell. for our miqo'te and hrothgar wols)

• the whole thing acted as the somehow non-creepy equivalent of conservative dads wearing shirts that go like "whatever you do to my daughter i will do to you. act wisely"

• directly followed by a very earnest "what do you think of my daughter so far. shes a bit cringe right? but i believe in her" and "please protect and guide her well" speech combo

• which was interrupted by said daughter, very angry at both her dad and you for secretly fighting behind her back (peak teenager moment) in a way that suggested (especially considering the ongoing "dueling as a metaphor for sex") she was actually doing her utmost to not go

at the wol to their face

AND HOW COULD I FORGET

• learning like three weeks later that estinien not only did the same thing, at the king's behest, but that he was paid for his services (😏) and so generously at that that even estinien "it's only one hair tie, alphinaud. what could it possibly cost? 9,800 gil?" varlineau thought it was A Lot. while all we got was a parent-teacher conference post-sexually charged nonlethal duel

12/10 funniest duty ever

A bunch of art from the past 3 months LMAO

Thinking of G'raha Tia, only 24 years old and simultaneously beyond and behind his peers because of how the archon accepted the fate of locking himself away in the Crystal Tower. Thinking of him, with the optimism of a 24yo and the attention span of a 24yo and the life goals of a 24yo who just realized that the world is a lot bigger than all the books he studied and slept on could ever describe. Thinking of him, telling his new friends and his old friends and his scared inner self that he's not going to die, that he's just going to sleep, knowing full well that he will likely never wake up.

Thinking of G'raha Tia, only 124 waking years old and carrying the memories of people that never lived because of what he did after waking in the Crystal Tower. Thinking of him, with a heart shattered by experiences and with the careful plotting that comes from experiences and with a pure self-destructive goal forged by those experiences who just realized that he is going to have to live in a world that never was but is now and is greater than all his hopes and fears ever conspired to put together. Thinking of him, telling his old friends and his new friends and the one person that he is scared of losing that he is going to be okay, that he is going to not sleep on life, knowing that this is the world he was ready to die for, knowing that he will likely never discover everything about it but is ready to die trying.

Thinking of that moment when G'raha Tia the 24yo meets G'raha Tia the 124yo in the landscape of their unifying mind. Thinking of them, when the life goals of a 24yo collides with the life goals of a 124yo and how the century of experiences between them makes them completely separate people. Thinking of them, telling his younger self that the ambition was fulfilled and it's time to wake up, telling his older self that there is still ambition more and the dream has just begun, telling each other that this is not a type of death but just a change and both of them knowing full well that they are going to die to each other so that G'raha Tia may yet live for one more adventure with their friend.

Thinking of G'raha Tia and that moment of ultimate surrender of self to self.

Thinking.

what's funny about the ending of endwalker is that, depending on who you are, it CAN be the likely-intended all-out victory of saving the universe and how even if none of the people who started this conflict are still around, you evoke your own will to survive and you finish it because your lives are worthwhile and anything that can exist is worth saving.

or it can be about how there's never gonna be a sunset to ride off in, and how the fight is never going to end because it's baked into the fabric of existence, and how given time and distance another hermes will ask another question and another meteion will fall to the depths of hopelessness and another You will have to rise up and kill them and it's all such a fucking waste, isn't it? because eventually the other You is going to lose. and even though your friends are worth the fight, your enemies are worth the strained empathy, and everyone you've never met can fit in your heart, isn't it exhausting to hold them there?

especially with the context of the thirteenth story right after. this fugly-armor jackass is proof that no matter how final your victory seems, tomorrow someone is going to wake up and kill their neighbor and someone is going to wake up and start a war. it's never over. you never rest. there's never peace. and you have to believe that it's all worth it despite that, and you CAN believe that because you couldn't have killed the endsinger otherwise, but isn't it tiring? don't you want to rest?

or it can be about how the only person who could possibly have surmounted those trials has to breathe them like air in order to live. you've been desensitized to challenge so much that you can dance through a war and come out unscathed, and all it elicits from you is a sad sigh. your ability to produce serotonin has been limited exclusively to saving all life in the universe. everything else is dull. and you didn't even get to bury him this time.

or it can be about how no one should ever have shouldered all that, and how there's no other way to return except broken. the scions pray you back to life and you kind of wish they hadn't. and now there's a glint in your eye that you can't see in the mirror but you see reflected in the faces of everyone you know that says you're a hairsbreadth from snapping clean in two. you should be locked away, you're too strong and too close to the edge, but who's left to lock you up? you killed your masters and gods and then you killed the thing your gods couldn't kill. you're alone at the top of existence and who could possibly trust you with that summit? you don't want to, but one day, like a beaten mutt, you're going to bite a kid and they're going to have to put you down. you're just too close to the end of your rope.

or it can be about operating a colonizer's paradise on a private island full of robots. i guess.

wol fumbles . and hilda

need more fic exploring the hilarity of Bruce being the one to pilot the JL planes and spaceships when Hal Jordan is RIGHT there. or perhaps the inherent sensuality of Bruce painstakingly building a prototype plane and then handing it off to Hal who’s salivating in the corner.

.* 𝐅𝐅𝐗𝐈𝐕 𝐒𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐇𝐈𝐂 𝐓𝐎𝐁𝐄𝐑 *. Day 13 - Ryne

What is "the occult" in FFXIV?

Ever since I first laid eyes on the EE3 bit about Urianger's parents I have been noodling on one thing in particular. Encyclopedia Eorzea volume 3 refers to "the occult" as Urianger's parents' field of study (and the reason they were so absent from his life). Every since that discovery, I have been curious what that actually means. What is "the occult" in a universe where magic is real, measurable, and a highly legitimate and prestigious field of study?

So, where else is "the occult" referenced in the game?

Thanks to this invaluable searchable transcript, I've found a few other references in MSQ.

The first use of the term "occult" in MSQ that I've found is way back in the Gridania starter quests when some Ixali "Occultists" are trying to summon Garuda at the Guardian Tree. In isolation I'd take this one with a grain of salt since it's very early in ARR, but I think it's consistent with other usages. The description for Whorleater Extreme also uses the term, referencing "the occult knowledge of the Ascians," so from the start there is an association of the occult with Ascian magicks and specifically with summoning.

The only other mention in MSQ comes from Alphinaud in Endwalker, where he and Krile are giving us the tour of Sharlayan, and specifically Phenomenon:

Alphinaud: As the center of what would later become the Studium, it was established to promote the study of aetherological phenomena, hence the name. Alphinaud: Though with aether being a fundamental aspect of nature, its scope expanded to include every conceivable facet of life and even the universe itself. Alphinaud: And then, in the four hundred and thirty-second year of the Sixth Astral Era, Phenomenon was decreed complete and the Studium officially opened as a place of learning. Alphinaud: With a long and storied history, it is without question the world's leading authority in aetherology, the arcane, the occult, astromancy, and countless other fields, standing proud as─ Alisaie and Krile: ...Sharlayan's foremost educational institute!

Okay, so "the occult" clearly falls within the general field of aetherological phenomena and magic, though that we could have guessed already. Something that catches my eye is how in more than one place, "occult" is contrasted with or referenced as distinct from "arcane." This is the case in Alphinaud's speech above, as well as in the Blue Mage quest "Everybody Was Fukumen Fighting," wherein Bluehood says, "No occult tricks or arcane incantations can contend with the all-surpassing might of blue wizardry!"

In the Loporrit Allied Society quests, we also get this odd little quest "Hare-Raising Thrills," in which we're asked to make "Occult Paraphernalia" for a Loporrit called Thrillingway. Depending on crafting job, dialogue with Keepingway will elaborate thus:

"It seems he requires a pair of shears─but not just any pair. No, he desires blades sharp enough to carve fur clean off!"

"He wants a sturdy coil of rope suitable for binding all four limbs of…a 'friend,' allegedly."

"Seems he wants a highly acidic gel for some dubious purpose I did not have the heart to inquire about. Honestly, I think it's best if we don't know."

Which. I mean. Okay. lol. Do what you will with that.

But probably most illuminating is the use of the word "occult" in a couple of Red Mage quests, and in the Sky Pirate raid quests.

In "The Weeping City," Cait Sith says, "Thus did the Mhachi magi construct an occult device that would more securely bind the voidsent to their will..."

And in the Red Mage quests "With Heart and Steel" and "Traced in Blood" we have, respectively:

"The tomes with passages pertaining to the voidsent Lilith are all forbidden occult works..."

and

"...the secrets behind Lambard's occult transformation."

In both contexts, "occult" seems to be connected to voidsent, specifically to Lilith in the case of the Red Mage quests.

And this ties back to the references in ARR as well, since from the beginning Ascians have been connected with the Void, even before we knew what the Void actually was. So it's safe to say at this point, I think, that "occult" can refer to magicks connected to the Void and to Ascians.

There's just one more reference I found that flummoxed me a bit, and that's this description of the Arcanist class, which refers to arcanist weapons as "occult grimoires." I found it odd initially because in most other contexts "occult" seems to refer to magicks seen as illicit, as opposed to the socially acceptable "arcane." But it does make a kind of sense, given that it is from Arcanist that we get Summoner. If summoning of primals is occult, then by extension so is summoning in the arcanist sense, even if it's not truly the same thing. This would seem to be the exception to "arcane" and "occult" being distinct categories, which leads me to believe that the distinction is more cultural than ontological.

So I think from the above, we can consider "occult" to be a fairly broad term that may be used in several distinct but overlapping senses:

Magic related to the summoning of primals.

Magic related to the Void, voidsent, and Ascians.

Magic which is taboo, forbidden, or otherwise outside of that which is socially accepted.

As a footnote, I think this is particularly interesting in the context of Urianger being introduced as our resident expert on primals, despite the fact that that's... really not specifically his field of study but merely adjacent to it. Urianger's primary interest is prophecy, and certainly plenty of prophecy seems to reference primals and Ascians and that's where we see him doing a lot of his research, but it's not the same field, merely overlapping.

Without more information we can't know for certain what his parents were actually studying. Maybe they were interested in primals, or Ascians, or the Void. Maybe they were studying Void-related magics. It's also possibly they were simply arcanists particularly interested in the summoner side and we shouldn't read much more than that into the reference to "the occult." Who knows.

But nonetheless, several of these interpretations would mean that in a way, Urianger has followed in their footsteps despite their making apparently little effort to guide him that way, which I find to be an interesting angle to his character and also profoundly sad in its own way--not that he found his own interests in those areas, but that the Augurelts had a child so naturally inclined toward their own interests and still took so little interest in him.

thanks to all the dawntrail criticism, i’m rapidly learning that what other people think of as “pacing issues,” i think of as necessary time spent getting acquainted with a new environment, its history and the folks that live there. what they felt was a slog, i felt was the equivalent of going on vacation and submersing yourself in rich, previously unknown cultures.

so basically what i mean to say is i have a true adventurer’s spirit and everyone who gripes about this expansion’s pacing is a loser. (SORT OF a joke. but also not really. but also really. but also n)