i heart communist ghosts

you see if i had it my way and i might make a fanfiction about this at some point ffxiv shbs alphinaud storyline wouldve centred more on how hades sees hythlodaeus in alphinaud similar to how hades sees hythlodaeus in ryne & there would've been a whole scene dedicated to it but the closest we get is alphinaud i believe is one of the first people to believe hades is genuinely trying to be kind. i will write something. at least for myself

i love that as the wol i get my dad who loves me and calls me dear girl and cares for me deeply even though he cant express it fully at times because he is stoic and awkward. & father figures of main protagonists in videogames are always healing for me if they are truly kind

ffxiv shadowbringers is about ambiguity & accepting ambiguity & accepting being uncomfortable as a core theme. this does make it fundamentally opposed to being understood within a fandom context because fandoms hateeeee ambiguity & being uncomfortable. which is good! ffxivs theatre of cruelty expansion best expansion

in shadowbringers several men are creeps to various degrees and hades being on the lower end of that spectrum is very funny to me. he's not the lowest but he is one of the lower candidates and one of the only characters to tell thancred to stop being a creep!!! in any other story hades would like. be the worst creep. but you put him against the crystal exarch and thancred & he loses. so he's like... shadowbringers' perfect median?

ive done a lot of soul searching about the crystal exarch i will have to formally put in a post but the funny way to say it is that the crystal exarchs characterization is too tied to him being a romance in my opinion and that he occupies a very specific fantasy that is very inherently predatory and the game assumes you will find it hot and attractive and appealing and therefore to some degree youre supposed to find him not creepy but if youre like me (made uncomfortable by him) its just horrifying and the game doesnt account enough for the player who doesnt find graha tia attractive. like he emotionally manipluates and essentially babytraps you and kills almost everyone you love and outside of that there isnt enough substance to him to make him appealing to someone who isnt into that. and i dont take moral issue with the predatory evil wizard fantasy (which the game does point out he is predatory it is intentional) but i do wish it was better executed

everybody please clap ive made it to the point on my slow ass replay character where i can play heavensward knowing i got through all the ARR content i wanted/needed to

my notes for fanfiction are like incredibly detailed copy and pasted messages from discord in the google doc itself where i put a draft and ideas and formatting and then me setting an alarm that says "sharlyan" in hopes i remember what that means tomorrow