5 & 7 for Gisele and Ysayle, please ? 💙
5. Favorite canon moment of them?
The Ravana fight is so fantastic for so many reasons, not least of which because for the entire story up until then every time a Primal shows up it’s bad news
but then you have a Primal on your side
And even though ultimately Shiva was bested, because there just weren’t enough crystals for Ysayle to draw from, it was still insanely cool to see Primal vs. Primal action and imo Ysayle would have won that fight singlehandedly had she actually had more crystals to invoke a stronger Shiva. She had Ravana dead to rights at one point.
Obviously things do go a bit differently in my verse--we don’t have the “lol random adventurers just come by out of nowhere to help” conceit, Ysayle and Gisele 2 manned that fight. But they literally became fire forged friends there and it was a major turning point in their relationship.
Like, Gisele yelling “Get up, Dangoulain!” and healing her and then they unload several tons of magical whoop ass--listen I’m a sucker for battle couple antics, ok???
7. Favorite headcanon trope/idea? (Your own or someone else’s)
Absolutely by far that Ysayle becomes a Scion in my ‘verse and fights alongside Gisele vs. Primals. I mean I have her as a Summoner/Black Mage largely because that’s what she is in Record Keeper (with a side of Witch, but there’s no equivalent Job for it in XIV), but SMN!Ysayle is just such a poetically just concept to me
Gisele gives her a legitimate Allagan crystal (unearthed by the Sons of Saint Coinach at the excavation site) and tells her, “hey...you know that horrible shit you were doing before? Here’s a safer way to harness that kind of power.”
the trajectory of Ysayle’s character development through Dragonsong and into Stormblood goes from “it may have been shitty to become a Primal, but the ends justified the means” to “oh gods what did I do???” once she becomes a Scion and fully comes to grips with the extent of the existential threat that Primals pose to the world. And during the early Stormblood part of the story, she struggles with intense feelings of guilt and shame because of it and goes through this period of near debilitating depression that she really only starts to get over with help from the others (esp. Y’shtola, who became a rock of support to her while they were both convalescing at the Stones).
By the time she’s fighting fit again and ready to take on Lakshmi with Gisele, she’s arrived at the point of, “there are ways to harness this kind of power that are not, in fact, grossly destructive” and it’s just so lovely to me
It also means that eventually, she does come to terms with her past, and instead of Demi-Bahamut, her capstone ability is actually Demi-Shiva (she still ends up with Phoenix though, for cheeky reasons). Which means yes she does assume a Shiva-flavored version of Dreadwyrm Trance--this goes to the idea of her making peace with her previous delusions of grandeur and her past actions as Lady Iceheart and coming to see it as a symbol of her resilience, which she does with Gisele’s help.
In general, Gisele helps Ysayle to understand that she wasn’t 100% awful as Lady Iceheart--there were things that were useful to her in that persona, that helped her to survive, and that she doesn’t have to and even shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Summoning Demi-Shiva is the ultimate sign of her healing.
