Imaginings

My FC got to talking about the Scions a bit today and when the subject turned to Thancred and his radical change in personality between ARR and HW I ended up writing a whole essay about it so.. that's what this is. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: I did not play 1.0 so my understanding of that version of the character comes entirely from watching youtube videos going over the story and cutscenes. Also all of this is just my own interpretations of the character based on how I was reading and reacting to him while playing.

Ok. So. First thing. I did not ever view the dynamic between Thancred and Minfilia as romantic. I think there for sure were some romantic undertones to his dynamic with Fhlaminn. But she remains entirely devoted to her dead husband and Thancred, I think, never attempted to pursue any kind of romance with her for the same reason he was always hesitant to actually claim Minfilia as a surrogate daughter. He doesn't feel like he deserves that because he still blames himself for both women losing the men who previously filled those roles in their lives.

And like.. he really does not have any reason to be doing that. When I first played through ARR with no prior knowledge of 1.0 I was left with the impression that Thancred must have been heavily involved in the whole goobbue incident. The planning and whatnot. But no. He just wasn't quick or strong or lucky enough to save every single person in the city when the beast broke loose. And he spent the 5 years between then and ARR carrying around the guilt for failing to meet the impossible standard he set for himself.

And goes on setting impossible standards for himself through ARR which is what gets him possessed by an ascian. Because he was busy beating himself up over not being able to be everywhere and help everyone at once. Again. And threw himself into just trying to carry all the weight alone extra hard and that's the state Lahabrea caught him in. And then he gets to carry the guilt for everything that was done with his body while he was shoved into the back of his own mind and puppeted around.

And yet, none of that managed to break Thancred. Because the guilt is something he's used to. And he can hide it behind a mask. Throw himself back into work with a vengeance and just push through it. Until the banquet. Where he tried to sacrifice himself to save Minfilia. And failed.

And I think that what actually caused him to break in Heavensward and Stormblood wasn't the guilt. It was anger. And not anger at himself this time. Which is another familiar and easily pushed down emotion. No. I think this time he was angry at Y'shtola - because the spell she employed to save his life is the same one that ended up also taking Minfilia off to join Hydaelen in the life stream. And he's angry at the WoL for not stopping Minfilia from turning and running back into it. And angry that the disability he suffered as a result of that spell prevented him from being part of the group that got to hear her reasons and try to talk her out of that choice. Or even just say a proper goodbye to her. And angry at Urianger for his part in the plot that pulled her off to the First and away from all of them for good.

And he knows that anger is unfair. And inappropriate. But he can't help feeling it. So he closes himself off. Pulls on a different kind of mask. makes himself the job and nothing else. For as long as it takes for him to start forgiving. And it's clear that it's the WoL he manages to forgive first. Sometime right after that anger finally boils over and lashes out and he punches Emmanellain in the face about it. It's the WoL he's able to go back to being kind of light and jokey with during the tournament.

THE FACT HE'S EMOTIONALLY STUNTED IS THE FLAVOUR!!!! YOU GUYS WILL ONLY LIKE VILLAINS IF THEY GO BY THE USUAL FORMULA OF SAD BACKSTORY LEADS TO EVIL DRAMATIC WORLD ENDING PLAN

I'm not here to bitch about Emet since I also like him and I like the way he was written and even how it makes you question yourself: if you too had to live while everyone you know and love had to die, would you not go to some great lengths of trying to bring them back IF YOU COULD? Would you not also be stuck in the past in some sort of melancholy and nostalgia and would you not also feel like every time you presently believe you're getting better, you're only proven wrong by your peers and find them lacking and imperfect, and then that plan of bringing everyone back starts ringing back into your ears?

Cool, cool, but Zenos having the also very human backstory of despite being born into the most privileged family and class of his country, ending up as an emotionless husk of a person because he was not even RAISED into an adult, he was merely allowed to exist only by Empire rules and FOR the Empire's goals, is apparently not enough and only gives him the "emotionally stunted" tag? That's the whole fucking point!!

The whole fucking point is nature vs nurture, the whole fucking point is showing that the Empire was so rotten from within it wouldn't even support its royal class, the whole fucking point is lack of any kind of human connection WILL bring you into this state. We've had this guy on and off for 2-3 expansions, reaching a boiling point in EW where he gets that one moment of epiphany, given to him by a teenage girl no less, where he turns around, thinks on it for a while, then COMES TO OUR RESCUE ACROSS TIME AND SPACE. He could very well let us die there since he himself talks about how much he doesn't like being alive. He even tells you you can walk away from him at the very end and that he won't force a fight on you anymore (not my fault that the game still pushes you to fight after cause duhh script).

┈୨୧┈ Give them reasons they CAN'T be together that aren't just manufactured drama. Not miscommunication. Not love triangles. Not arbitrary "I push people away" trauma with no real exploration. Give them REAL obstacles: they're on opposite sides of a conflict, timing is wrong, there are actual consequences to being together, they have incompatible life goals, there's a power imbalance they need to resolve first. The obstacles should be meaningful and require actual character growth to overcome, not just a conversation.

┈୨୧┈ Make the friendship foundation SO STRONG that readers ship them before the romance even starts. They should genuinely LIKE each other. They should have inside jokes. They should seek each other out just to hang out. They should trust each other. They should have fun together. When the romantic feelings start developing, it should feel like "oh no, I don't want to ruin this friendship" because the friendship is genuinely valuable. Readers should be able to believe they'd still choose to be in each other's lives even if romance never happened.

┈୨୧┈ Let the tension BUILD in layers over time. First they notice each other. Then they start seeking excuses to be near each other. Then they start getting jealous. Then they start having Moments. Then they start thinking about each other constantly. Then comes the almost-kisses. Then the accidental intimacy. Then the barely-hidden feelings. Each phase should have time to breathe before moving to the next level. Slow burn means SLOW - readers should be desperate for them to get together LONG before they actually do.

┈୨୧┈ Show how they change each other gradually. He starts smiling more because of her. She becomes braver because he believes in her. They adopt each other's habits and phrases. They start to see the world differently because of the other person's influence. Slow burn is about showing two people gradually becoming essential to each other's lives. They should be woven into each other's character development, not separate from it.

The Scions of the Seventh Dawn -almost all of them lol Here is what they look like almost completely finished! They will be this circle for the stickers anyway, but there will be more for the print version c:

The main border is a play on the frame around Tupsimati, found in the Waking Sands, and the tile patterns are the eye symbol some scions have as tattoos, and tiny mother crystals for the interior circle. The tile/rocks motif hearkens back to the Rising Stones base of operations.

starting a collection

Just some guy, kind of the weirdest thing is that they know the WoL

Just Some Guy, but like. There is something distinctly off about them, like maybe they have been living in the wilderness alone for 15 years, who knows, but like. They do the job!

An expert in the field. Makes sense, you probably run into those saving the world and whatnot.

A world-renown expert in the field. Still makes sense, but wow you were not expecting that for your silly problem.

A world-renown person. Like, everyone’s heard of Cid Garlond by this point, what do you mean you have him on speed dial.

A world leader. You thought the Elder Seedseer never left Gridania except in times of crisis, but ok!

A dragon, quite possibly of the first brood or otherwise quite old. This feels like overkill.

Something you weren’t even expecting to be sentient, like the plushy chocobo and its robotic friend. Extremely weird.

A literal cryptid or person you thought was entirely mythical. Sure, this might as well happen.

You never meet ‘the guy’, because apparently ‘the guy’ lives in a different world/dimension. Somehow still gives excellent and applicable advice.

I keep seeing commentary going around about the Scions definitely disbanding at the end of Endwalker. Based on the line in Alphinaud's letter writing voiceover:

"We are disbanding the Scions of the Seventh Dawn."

What people seem to miss, or willfully ignore, or completely forget, is the actual final line of that voiceover, after Tataru calls him to the foyer:

"At least...that is what the story will be."

As they collect the entire order in the main room, Urianger puts it best:

"Meanwhile, we shall return to our erstwhile ways. Retreating from plain sight to take our place in the shadows once more."

("erstwhile" means former or previous)

Tataru is going to stay in the Rising Stones, as she says:

"Someone has to keep the Rising Stones in proper order, and even a super-secret organization requires a super-secret base of operations."

Ephemie also mentions it, while reminiscing of her initial time as a Crystal Brave:

"'Tis a shame the Scions are disbanding─even if only in name."

Y'shtola spoke to Lyse, and used quotes around the word as she divulged to the secret to our former comrade:

"I took the opportunity to explain our plans to “disband,” and she understood our reasoning immediately. Once a Scion, always a Scion, it would seem."

Estinien also can mention it based on dialogue options when discussing future plans with the main Scion allies:

"You talk as if the Scions' dissolution was more than mere pretense. There may be fewer calls to action, but we should be compensated as before."

It's also funny to me that straightforward Estinien is perhaps the one having trouble maintaining the ruse, as in the "patch quests "Buried Memory" quest when talking to Zero and Varshahn, he says:

"But we Scions─former Scions, begging your pardon─have a habit of not leaving well enough alone."

And there's a few other examples among the members, core and secondary, as they converse in the Stones that last time, or afterward around the world.

So the devs aren't "backtracking" or otherwise "forgetting", nor are the Scions of the Seventh Dawn actually defunct. They returned to the (poor) secrecy they had pre- and during ARR (as even back then people knew of them), in order to let Eorzea stand on its own feet, take a break, and keep an eye on things from the side.

...At least that's the plan, and most of the secondary crew seems to be sticking to it. But the core group, being made up of main characters for the last decade, have some trouble keeping their noses out of trouble, and tend to call on each other's expertise at any reasonable excuse.

It perhaps weakens the lie (if anyone believes it to begin with; imagine the conspiracy theories in the various newspapers), but also...they've been friends and colleagues for years. They went to the end of reality and returned together. Is it any wonder they (perhaps overly) rely on one another?

Master Louisoix looms so large over all the Scions, and I feel like it's really given nearly all of them a complex where they feel like they have to be willing to sacrifice themselves should the need arise--and they're all just waiting for that moment that happened to Louisoix, that realization that there is no other choice. It might be death, it might be something else, but they're all so ready to take the bullet, literal or figurative.

We see it with Moenbryda, who says that she finally understands the choice he made seconds before she gives her life to defeat an Ascian. We see it with Yda and Papalymo, Thancred and Y'shtola, and finally Minfilia as one by one they stay behind, urging the others to go on, until only the Warrior of Light is left. We see it again with Papalymo when he gives his life to contain the primal summoned by the Griffon. We see it with Minfilia's willingness not only to hand herself over to Hydaelyn to be her voice, but to travel to a far-off star, maybe never to return, to help save a world she has never seen. We see it in Urianger acting alone to spare his friends the burden he carries for what he believes to be necessary actions. Even Alphinaud basically doesn't allow himself to be just a teenage boy and over and over keeps trying to take the world on his shoulders because he believes it's what he's supposed to do as Louisoix's grandson. Lyse in Stormblood is so ready and eager for revolution but over and over again we see the true cost of war and of resistance to overwhelming imperial power, and we are confronted with the question of what level of sacrifice is fair to ask of people who have already suffered so much and are just trying to survive.

They made the Scions live through those initial moments of believing that WoL had sacrificed themself. They touched the edges of that pain.

But they survived. They came back. Barely.

And I think that may have made all of them take a moment to really think about what "sacrifice" means. What it does to those left behind. Because it's one thing to watch your friends fall one by one, waitibg for your turn. It's another to have fought. - to have *won* and then be confronted with the potential loss of a dear friend anyway. Not for something meaningful, or world-saving.

For a single mans adrenaline rush. After all theyd done. All theyd achieved, all the battles fought and times theyd beaten the odds... to be lost in a battle to distract one man from his ennui.

I think - I hope - that moment before the WoL returned, made all the Scions think about what it means to sacrifice yourself.

The fights where WoL's canonically alone, not calling in help, tend to be rough but also have some kind of limiter (Tsukuyomi never had to be a powerful summon, just had to happen at all; it's theorized Zenos's control of Shinryu may have made the primal less effective).

The thing about Shadowbringers is, it's not merely a story that flips the concepts of Light and Dark on their heads and makes us question what heroism and villainy are. It's a story that takes the concepts of fate and destiny and stomps them to death.

It begins with Ardbert back before Stormblood. The Warriors of Light, chosen by the Crystal, fated heroes of the First failed. Their triumph over the Ascians plotting against their world caused its destruction, and when faced with that horror, they fell. They turn into villains to try to save it.

And that fails, too! Doing everything they were supposed to do was the wrong thing, and doing everything they weren't supposed to do was the wrong thing. And in the end, their world is saved by Minfilia -- who is very pointedly not a Destined Hero. Even at the moment that she agrees to go to the First, she's an oracle. Her job is speaking. She does it anyway, and it works.

G'raha back in ARR, following the course of destiny laid out for him by Princess Salina, doing what his bloodline was fated to do, sealed himself inside the Crystal Tower so that it could one day be a beacon of hope. And it worked! When the tower was opened, it absolutely was the embodiment of all of the Eighth Umbral Era's hope. Because the world was dying. That was his destiny. To be the hope left trapped in Pandora's box.

The Ironworks sends him back in time explicitly to defy fate. To make sure that everything that was supposed to happen didn't. But even as he goes about it, G'raha still doesn't fully reject the notion of destiny. The Fated Hero has to be the one to save the First. A destined sacrifice has to be made to save the future.

Throughout Shadowbringers, we see events diverge more and more from how they were supposed to be. Whoever slays a Lightwarden is supposed to become one. Whoever kills Titania is supposed to become the new faery king. Vauthry is supposed to be the hope and salvation of the First. Destiny is being averted, the Eight Umbral Calamity is maybe being forestalled, but there's still this overarching sense of fate. The Warrior of Darkness, long awaited by the First, has come at last to set things right.

And then there's Ryne.

She is very literally the embodiment of destiny. Minfilia will return. That's the prophesy, and over and over again it is fulfilled. Until Ryne, who has never been allowed to fulfill her destiny, the first Fated Symbol of Hope kept in a cage, finally reaches Light's Edge and makes her choice. And what she tells Minfilia? "Coming together, providing for one another--that's the only way forward I can see. Since all our heroes are gone, we'll just have to make heroes of ourselves." That is an explicit rejection of the Great Destiny she was promised. We are our own hope. You and all our other great heroes are in the past. Together we have to rise to the occasion.

And with that choice her destiny ends. She ceases to be Minfilia. She no longer has the crystal eyes and blonde hair that marked every one of her past reincarnations. She becomes her own person. She's free of fate.

In some ways the importance of the moment gets buried behind the continuing quest to find and kill all the Lightwardens, but Ryne is the turning point of Shadowbringers.

After that moment, the fated Warrior of Darkness begins to noticeably break. The triumph over the final Lightwarden is fleeting. The noble sacrifice doesn't happen. Ryne intervenes when the Light overtakes you, and your destiny doesn't arrive. We spend all of the Tempest in a liminal state--neither the monster nor the hero but both, in a city that does and does not exist, witnessing scenes of the past that will become the future.

Ryne is the last to fall to Emet-Selch, and when she does, she's the only one who calls out to us. Not to Emet-Selch. She's not trying to argue with or fight him. He's not the real adversary to her. She wants us to fight against what is supposed to happen next.

Urianger is surrounded by clever things offering him worriless immortality.

Alphinaud is offered a chance to be known for his artistic vision instead of his calculation.

Y'shtola is offered a people who do not care where she came from, whom she could properly belong to.

Thancred is offered a do-over for his biggest regret, to make it right and attone by protecting a very literal facsimile of the girl he hurt.

Allisaie is offered the chance to put her great big heart into gentle comfort.

And the WoL is, of course, offered the chance to just let go.

Theoretically, each of them could've taken that offer. The first would've been doomed, but they'd live out the rest of its time in peace. A sort of Elysium for their heroics.

Obviously, the story doesn't work if they take it, but each of them, in that rejection, becomes something new. Urianger's is fairly obvious, but I think my favorite is Y'shtola's, actually. Up until that point, she's been catty, sure, but there's a level of reservation to it. It's a little bit between edgy and haughty. Aloof, maybe. A line that's been derided, in my experience, but I think really marks the shift in her mindset is her little Dommy Mommy moment. It's a little weird, sure, a touch out-of-pocket. It's also intimate, biting, but not vitriolic. She's sassy, but not picking a fight and not shaming the WoL. It's ACTUALLY playful, which up until that point she really hasn't been.

We know from Matoya that she's always been a little dour, a little grim, a little serious, a little combatative. We see that in her behavior throughout the story, as well. By the third act of Shadowbringers, though, by "None of that sass, or I shall have to take you over my knee," she's letting loose. Not to mention, this accompanies a shift in her magic, as well, where it becomes less Conjurer Lite and more Legally-Distinct Black Mage.

This shift is necessary, putting her in the state to stand in front of the Forum by the time of the Endwalker trailer and not just defy and admonish them, but practically laugh at them.