Man, all of the criticism for the story of Final Fantasy XIV that tries to be substantial I end up encountering is either generalisation or bad faith readings or plain poor reading comprehension.
(Spoilers for the story here.)
I haven’t felt this invested in my frustration with poor critical thinking skill in a while because I think XIV has so much fantastic nuance in its writing.
So when I see a character that I think is clearly meant to not be put in a specific box being put in a box I die a little inside.
There is so much room for nuanced conversation with so many characters here.
And my often most favourite part of all of this is in here, too – the flaws I see in the story are interesting, too. (Except for pacing issues. That one’s I think pretty much never been all that interesting for me with any story.)
There is a very clear division in those who are invested in my experience: those who really, really love it all, which in my eyes seems to be a majority or the minority that just deeply hates the game.
And I think both are such painfully simplistic, unsubstantial perspectives.
You’ve got all of these fascinating scenarios and individual stories and all you get is ‘this is great’ or 'this is the worst thing ever’.
And I truly haven’t had a stronger sense of 'i hate it here’ in a long while.
This is obviously another example of where particularly internet criticism has ended up and the general trends of tribalism and division of everything into binary systems that has also seeped into literary analysis, but you’ve got complex villains/antagonists with complex circumstances like Emet, Hermes, Fordola and Yotsuyu and all you see is generalisations like 'grumpy old man/sadboi/poor victim (or shallow evil villain) uwu’ when I think all of them are so much more.
And the nuances are so clearly brought out, too. FFXIV is so deliberate with so many of its writing choices.
But I suppose this just shows nuances are exactly that – nuances.
They are exactly the thing that creates simple readings of complex stories. It’s much easier to grab on to a set core and put that in a box.
Which is why we also have stuff like people putting Venat into a archetypal goddess of light box eventhough a huge point of her character is that she is flawed and driven by a very specific perspective herself. Just like all of the other characters, she is driven by her character perspective and what she thinks is right.
And that’s an extremely important complexity that is also really easy to just bury if you just really really want to push the story in a box for whatever reason.
Thus lots of 'i hate it here’ energy from a lot of the discussion I see around the story.
There is a whole bunch of nuances I didn’t go into here, too because I wanted to focus on this specific trend I’ve personally noticed when looking for discussion and criticism.
But seeing the FFXVI discourse I woke up to this morning also confirms this. It’s like this series erases all critical thinking ability in a certain group of people.
(Fuck yeah for the game doing its own thing by the way. A part of the identity of this series is that it keeps changing identities even if it isn’t always something people will like.)
The eastern emerald elysia (Elysia chlorotica) is a sea slug that steals and absorbs chloroplasts from the algae it eats, a behavior called kleptoplasty.
Hunter x Hunter is like this is Alluka her incredibly abusive family that doesn’t treat her like a human refers to her as a boy but Killua, the only member of her family that loves & cares about her, explicitly refers to her as his little sister. & some fans are still like What could Togashi have possibly meant by this. We will never know
Idk you guys Togashi was being way too subtle I don’t think we will ever truly kn
i hate the “on average a user only sees 25 posts per session so they have to be good and varied” bullshit on that staff post. if i open tumblr and the 25 posts i see are nothing but a single mutual mass reblogging their favourite thing that i couldn’t care less about. well. that’s what i enjoy
If my beloved mutual needed to reblog a thing 25 times then by all things sacred I am going to read it once and then scroll past it 24 times as they intended me to!
Emergency aid for bestiana! They caught strep from their job and won’t be able to work for the next week, and will need help paying bills. They asked for $200, but I know them, and I think $300 will be a better bet!
We all know how violent police are to queer people. Nigeria is no different.
I’m trying to help a Nigerian trans femme named Lola with survival funds, but donations have seriously slowed down over the last few months. She’s sick, she’s hungry, her job isn’t paying her well at all, and she’s just been attacked by the corrupt and violent cops in Nigeria. SARS (Nigerian police/special task for basically) is notorious for harassing the shit out of people, especially queer Nigerians or anyone who doesn’t look cishet.
Lola needs funds for food, medicine, and her HRT since she’s been inconsistent on it due to a lack of money. The cops robbed even though she begged them not to because she was sick.
This isn’t the first time she’s been attacked and it likely won’t be the last. Please help in any way that you can. We’re not starting at zero, but we’ve got a long way to go.
If you want, you can donate to her GFM, which is pinned.
Lola is sick and needs to go to the hospital. She’s been puking up everything she tries to hold down, including water.
Lola is on Twitter @/Afreau_Deity in case anyone wants to be sure she’s a real person.
I know that the amount we’ve amassed seems decent, but be aware that it always has to be spent immediately because she’s starving, she’s on E, and now she needs to go to the hospital because she’s really sick.
408.92/1400 USD
Lola has typhoid and she’s got zero money again.
Again, she needs money for food, HRT, and transportation to and from the hospital.
