#sildih

Because what happened was you treating my partner and I like a captive audience for all of your personal grievances with FFXIV’s narrative direction. We knew you were unhappy with the portrayal of Ala Mhigo and Ala Mhigans. We knew you massively resented non-Highlander characters for their popularity and resented your own non-Highlander characters for their popularity, and you resented how the story gave any time or attention to Doma. You hated that Garleans were permitted sympathetic portrayal. I say this because you told us this repeatedly. On tumblr. On twitter. In Discord chats. Over voice chat. Over our FC and linkshell chats. It was the only thing in the game you more or less talked about other than your favorite NPC since the launch of Stormblood, and while I can respect the fact that you were deeply displeased with the way the game handled your favorite setting and subject, this was what caused Jo and I to reach the point we did with you.

The point we tried to make was that you’re not obligated to play the game. You’re not obligated to try and enjoy it. Neither of us were here to tell you that your takes on the game were wrong. But that the fucking game was making you miserable for months, and you were getting so little in the way of enjoyment out of it that we genuinely thought that you ought to have stepped away from it. God knows that it’s possible to fall out of love with a work of fiction. And what you could have done was unsubscribed. You could have networked with other dissatisfied fans of Ala Mhigo and actually talked to them about your shared thoughts on how the game handled the narrative. And despite what you might think, they do exist in the community and I’m pretty sure you are or were mutual followers with at least a few of them. You could have focused on a work of fiction that you actually enjoy and don’t find miserable or problematic to engage with on the level that Stormblood did, but you didn’t. You didn’t seek out people who felt similarly.

You treated Jo and I like a captive audience. Because we were trying to be friends with you, and help you deal with your loneliness and alienation from the community. But as it turns out, it became increasingly hard to enjoy spending any time around you being incessantly negative about nearly everything in FFXIV. We didn’t want to turn conversations into arguments. It’s not something either of us enjoy! I don’t know if you did. I don’t think it matters. But I don’t think the fact that you became a constant presence of negativity and passive-aggression in our lives is something you even considered. We tried so fucking hard to be polite for so fucking long and you didn’t consider the fact that you digging yourself into a hole of misery and sourness about the game in more or less every social media post and conversation for months was something that could have been unenjoyable or alienating to your friends. Considering how quickly you dropped us, it’s a little hard to feel like you ever saw us as friends to begin with.

But I guess it’s easier to paint my partner as an evil, racist harpy who told you that you weren’t allowed to be upset about Ala Mhigo anymore, instead of a human being who finally decided she’d had enough of being treated as an open forum for all of your Stormblood criticism with zero room for her own thoughts on the matter, lest you get even more upset that the person you opened up to not treat your word as law. That was never the fucking point. The fucking point is that we were tired of being what felt like your sole audience for all of this commentary, that you couldn’t step away from the game and focus on something else that could actually make you happy for once, and that you openly resented the fact that we enjoyed Stormblood. That we liked it more than Heavensward- don’t think that I haven’t forgotten you getting passive-aggressive when I opened up about my Heavensward criticism on my twitter! I genuinely could never tell if you saw us more than a couple of goddamn wooden posts to talk at to validate everything you had to say about the game, regardless of what we might have thought.

Also, really cool that you call Jo out for having a black character in-game while not being black herself- I suppose it’s only bad when it’s a person who isn’t vocally critical of Stormblood, and not when it’s one of your “good” friends?

Just, bye. I don’t even have anything to say to you, Teg and Chesca. But I see you there. And I haven’t forgotten how you abused my trust and confidence and used me for emotional support that I couldn’t afford to provide with my life circumstances. I know you’re not fucking unbiased.