bubblytardigrade

[bubblytardigrade]

Ultimate Showdown of Eorzean Destiny

with apologies to Lemon Demon -_- ENDWALKER SPOILERS

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Titan, the primal, was hopping around Eorzea's cities like a big playground When suddenly the Warrior burst from the shade And hit that primal with a big Cascade

Titan got pissed and began to dig in But didn't expect to be blocked by Pipin Who proceeded to stab him with a Plunge that struck true When Ysayle and Midgardsormr fell out of the blue

And they started beating up poor Emmanellain And nobody stopped them cos he was such a pain But before Artoirel could intervene Merlwyb Bloefhiswyn arrived on the scene

She pulled out her pistols, and she raised them like that Sent his brothers off to Haurchie with a rat-a-tat-tat But she ran out of bullets and she couldn't reload; She got squashed by a massive gigantoad

This is the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny Good guys, bad guys, and explosions as far as the eye can see And only one will survive, I wonder who it will be This is the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny

Emet-Selch got bored and he stifled a yawn Urianger started casting Death of the Seventh Dawn And it hit Emet-Selch for a full KO Sent him smashing into Lahabrea watching the show

Thancred was injured, and trying to get steady When Curious Gorge showed up, war axe at the ready But suddenly something caught his leg and he tripped-- That goobbue from 1.0 with its arm whip

Then he saw Kan-E-Senna sneaking up from behind And he reached for his gunblade which he just couldn't find 'Cause Nanamo stole it and she swung and she missed; Sadu Dotharl had blocked it with her fist

G'raha Tia jumped up and he did a somersault While Estinien Varlineau tried to pole vault Onto Hildibrand, but they collided in the air Then they both got suplexed by Godbert up there

This is the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny Good guys, bad guys, and explosions as far as the eye can see And only one will survive, I wonder who it will be This is the ultimate showdown

Sin eaters sang for their Immaculate leader But down from the heavens descended Moenbryda Who delivered a kick, (with a punch to the skull) Into the crotch of Fandaniel

Who fell over on the ground, insta dead As Lahabrea tried to shapeshift into Lahabread But Y'shtola grinned, seeing through this clever ghost And she triplecast Fire, made him into Lahatoast

Then Raubahn the Bull and X'ruhn the Red And Louisoix even though he's super dead Venat, Erich, Themis, Hermes, Hyth and Nashu Thirsty girl Aenor and the Blue Bird too

Papalymo, Jandelaine, Lyse, the Warrior of Light Alisaie, and Alphinaud, and every single Temple Knight Gaius and Rammbroes and Nero tol Scaeva Noraxia, Tonaxia, Lucia, Slowfix, and Leveva

All came out of nowhere Levin fast And they kicked Prince Zenos in his Juicy a-- 'Twas the bloodiest battle that the world ever saw With civilians looking on in total awe

The fight raged on for a century Many lives were claimed, but eventually The champion stood, the rest saw he was more: Masayoshi Soken with a death metal score \m/

This is the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny Good guys, bad guys, and explosions as far as the eye can see And only one will survive, I wonder who it will be This is the ultimate showdown Of ultimate destiny

#my brain just does this #usually when i want to sleep #ffxiv #ffxiv urianger #ffxiv thancred #ffxiv a lot of random characters

[bubblytardigrade]

ok like. thancred isn't my fav character I'll say that readily. he's like up there, top ten I think, but not a fav. however, I DO really like him, particularly because he's a more mature version of the character type I enjoyed growing up - that is to say, self confident, flirtatious, and overly sarcastic. in fact he's easily all of these things in a:rr. - which honestly, having played it as an adult, made me dislike the character at the time.

with that said, I think the reason he appeals to me NOW is because while I was annoyed by him at the beginning of a:rr, he actively is given the chance to mature. he's clearly traumatized by what happens to minfilia, he blames himself for it constantly, and it's that look into a deeper character, one who isn't just surface level, and isn't just self focused, that makes him more appealing to a viewer.

this is all to say that I think his growth as a character is what makes him and urianger work well as partners, in my opinion. they both over went tremendous growth over the course of the story - thancred learning to accept that his minfilia was gone and it wasn't his fault, and then by the end of shadowbringers being a proper father to ryne, and urianger learning to process his grief and find the courage to open himself up to his friends and others - and in a way that distinctly parallels the other. at the crux, a large part of both character arcs revolves around processing grief. I think, that after endwalker, once they've gained new outlooks and new experiences, then their travelling together is only natural. they just Work, in much the same way a puzzle snaps together.

#urithan #thanuri #it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single thancred in possession of a deep character development must be in want of an urianger

[bubblytardigrade]

When my friend was talking about how she ships the boys, her fc was like "what do you mean, they're just colleagues" and like cool all interpretations are valid. Platonic relationships are great, and they're delightful bros too! At the same time, a game that frequently makes pop culture references did a shot-for-shot/similarly scripted riff off a famous, transformational, deliberately coded scene in an expansion where they added more representation, and I struggle to see it as anything but totally on purpose

FFXIV Endwalker/post-EW spoilers!

Legend of Korra spoilers!

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5.55 the best possible outcome for The Boys would be if SE korrasami’d them

6.0 *screaming* 🤩

#urithan #thanuri #theyre gay your honor #theyre gay and in love

[bubblytardigrade]

New computer + FFXIV = totally different game

So I started ffxiv a little over a year ago, and it was a *steep* learning curve. I felt like I could barely keep up, when everyone else kept saying “it’s easy, it’s easy” and I felt awful. Joined a fc of lovely lovely people, but still just felt like a drag on everything I went on with them. I couldn’t understand how they were so quick to respond to mechs when my response time just didn’t add up. I also don’t feel comfortable in roulettes anymore because the targeted malding got so bad. On top of that I’m photosensitive, so I sometimes get physically stunned by the strobing in ffxiv, even though I wear adaptive specs.  WELLP. I finally found a good sale and bought a new computer and solved the mystery. I’d been running ffxiv off an external drive on my old laptop, a six year old touchscreen Pavilion with all effects off etc. I now have an Omen. The game is *completely different* with an adequate processor. Turns out playing ffxiv on an older computer is like trying to do a mud run drunk peering through a paper towel tube. Here’s some ways that played out for me: 

LAG. So it turns out I had an inconsistent lag time of anywhere between 2 and 5 seconds, and it was worse and less predictable the more people were loaded into an instance. This meant that mechs would go off while it was showing me that I still had time to respond. Now that I have a better computer, I have found I don’t know what to do with myself because I have 2-3x as much time to do mechs. So older computer = nightmare mode mechs. I used sprint and corps-a-corps (rdm main) regularly for movement just to do the basics, and have been rescued from short mechs by very patient healers (thank you!!!) more times than I could count because they *never showed up for me* or would blink after the mech went off in realtime.  

Lag also affected my rotations. Every sixth or eighth (inconsistent) button I pushed would skip-- just not respond at all. So I had to direct extra attention to watching whether each spell had taken before hitting the next one. Sooo many times my dualcast would get off kilter, or I’d try to use my auxiliary hotbars and couldn’t get to them for a few seconds. I was slow. Real slow. But I was clicking faster than anyone else. One of the adjustments I’ve had to make with new puter is to relearn not to triple-click every button, because this one responds!

Second: cropping. When you play on a smaller screen or at a lower resolution, the game doesn’t scale, it crops. So while the rest of my party could see mechs on the edge of the arena, I literally had to choose between watching bosses, watching for adds, and watching for side mechs. I’d flip back and forth but it’s easy to miss, especially in raids when things happen in quick succession. My screen was also super crowded with my necessary HUD stuff because it was so small. I shrank HUD elements but there’s only so much you can shrink with lower res and still be able to see. 

Fourth: resolution. When you have to go windowed/low res (I was working on about an 8x8″ screen) some mech markers aren’t legible. Simplest example is Darkened Fire in P3: it looks like white and purple blobs and it’s extremely difficult to tell which order you’re in. It super helps if you have a friend with you who can see what it is and tell you what’s sitting on you. 

Ideas.  If you are new and playing on an older machine and practicing and practicing but feeling like you aren’t keeping up, it is likely *not you but the computer.* Processing speed and graphics card don’t just make a difference in how the game looks, but a drastic difference in how it runs and how you sync with your party. It’s especially okay to pick an easy job like smn, rdm, or dnc, because the rest of your game is in already in super hard mode and it’ll help compensate.

The simplest solution to all of these issues requires a lovely and generous friend or fc member who’s willing to get on voice chat and call when you need to move and where so you aren’t dependent on your own screen. It makes all the difference and can be tons of fun! :3 The next simplest is finding a better computer, if that’s within range of where you are in your life. 

If you are on a good computer, please be aware that especially if you’re in low-end content like roulettes, people may be on slower computers than you, and may not be able to afford something better. Their machine can significantly affect their gameplay, so they may not be ignoring you or playing wrong: they may be responding appropriately to a different situation shown on their own screen. Clues that this might be the issue are: they do something wrong very consistently, are having trouble seeing a marker, or are consistently slow. What you see may be very different from what they see. And I can say as someone who’s been there, when a more successful player recognizes what’s going on and is willing to give me a hand, it makes all the difference in the world <3 

#FFXIV

[bubblytardigrade]

that ffxiv qpr

okay trying this again, since it never went into the tags. This time with no linkies, short terms only, no words Tumblr doesn’t like, etc. we’ll see if it works....

Endwalker spoilers

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While I'm Getting Out All These Thoughts I've Been Mulling for a Year, I want to fling into the aether some thoughts about another thing that I related really strongly to with Urianger: his struggle to figure out what the heck he felt for Moenbryda.

Before I start, let me reiterate that all headcanons are valid. What I want to dig into here is specific to me, and if it's not your hc that's cool too!

So Urianger reads, to me, as aspec, or on the ace spectrum. This can mean A LOT of things and even under the same subcategory people experience being aspec very differently. The Scions are written intentionally vaguely, and in the same way that the game is written to invite you to coauthor aspects of the story, they invite you to coauthor their characterization.

So I will unabashedly admit to projecting my own orientation onto Urianger. I'm demi, and the way that pans out for me is I don't experience traditional attraction at all until I have a strong connection with someone. (For many people different kinds of attraction are totally separate spectra.) In other words, for me bits of people that give other folx the vapors are just where different limbs connect, and I get very confused about the idea of not saying "I love you" until further into a Relationship (I'm using the capital letter to differentiate the amatonormative meaning of dating, not because it's more important) because I can only experience interest in a Relationship with extremely specific people I already love deeply. I'm in my mid-30s, I can count my lifetime crushes on one hand, and I've dated two people—I'm married to the second.

That said, the number of people I have absolutely adored with all my heart is much larger. And for a number of them I absolutely agonized over what I was feeling. English really doesn't have a strong vocabulary for describing a variety of types of attraction or relationships, and the late 20th century white American culture I come from lacks a variety of frameworks to describe them.

So… while I was in denial about my feelings for my now-wife for years because I didn't think it was the right time and I didn't think she'd reciprocate them, I didn't struggle to fundamentally understand what they were. I loved her, in a way that opened the doors to wishing for a Relationship with her.

The number of times throughout the game that they very specifically talk about Urianger struggling to understand his feelings toward Moenbryda resonated with me in a really specific way. It certainly seems that at least some of the writers intended him to have latent romantic feelings, but the difficulty understanding the nature of what he felt reminds me of something else. While recognizing and describing romantic love was relatively straightforward for me, I have absolutely spent ages agonizing over the nature of my feelings toward people toward whom I have felt qpr (see: “The Struggle to Explain Relationships That Transcend 'Best Friendship' But Aren't Romantic....” by Jasmine Rose-Olesco)

In an amatonormative society like mine and possibly like Eorzea where, culturally, on a rough linear scale of closeness you're friends, you're best friends, you're romantically linked, you get married, you're family, there's not an easily accessible way to describe feelings like this person means everything to me. We are so close, not like siblings, but like…I don't know? It feels different from friendship, and it's not romantic… but I want to share my life with them. The [Ace] Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) was founded in 2001 and I wasn't aware of it until about 6 years later. Only in the last decade has the ace spectrum been more widely discussed in the mainstream and broader relationship vocabulary in general become more widespread. (People in qprs can have any orientation.) Growing up without language to help unpack these feelings, I struggled with them, ricocheting all over the amatonormative spectrum of vocabulary. I would very much relate to Urianger having qpr feelings for Moen and his studious little brain, like mine, failing to find good examples for how to describe or understand them. Agonizing over it for a decade makes perfect sense—been there/done that myself. The struggle is real! His relationship with Thancred does read romantic to me (those romcom camera angles tho!) and there’s a lot of really deep and satisfying emotionality to explore introducing romantic love to an aspec heart experienced in qpr love. There’s a lot that is shared, and some that is different. They’re both deep. 

One of the things that ultimately I love about ff (even as it drives me a little crazy) is that very few relationships—straight or not, romantic, platonic, etc—are explicitly defined. In the game, love is love is love, and with the Scions the deep platonic relationships are given the same weight and taken as seriously as the (possibly) romantic ones. You don't often see platonic relationships valued on the same level as romantic ones in media. It's…. refreshing. :3

#Urianger Augurelt #urianger x moenbryda #urithan #thanuri

[bubblytardigrade]

if you have been writing little urithan tangent essays and they don't show up on the tags after like a month what does it mean? pls help ur geriatric millennial

#urithan #thanuri #ive gotten to the age where i need tech support #still not as old as Thancred tho

[bubblytardigrade]

also anyone who think Urianger's fancy speech makes him all neat and tidy and put together: please look around the Bookman's Shelves. It is chaos. That man is a disaster intellectual who furiously blows through tomes and leaves them there to move on to the next one, all in a caffine-fueled hyperfixated haze.

[bubblytardigrade]

♥

[bubblytardigrade]

Wait a second......

(ShB spoilers)

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......when we fight Titania the song is called What Angel Wakes Me, which is what Titania says to...Bottom

Soken are you making fun of us 😂

#ffxiv shadowbringers #masayoshi soken #shakespeare #Titania #midsummer night's dream

[bubblytardigrade]

The most valuable thing I learned doing a Masters degree with depression, anxiety and ADHD was to change my “things I’m bad at” list to “things I can’t do on my own.” Stop thinking of them as things I could do if I tried hard enough, and accept that I can’t accomplish them by effort and willpower alone; they’re genuine neurocognitive deficits, and if I need to do the thing, then just like a blind person reading or a mobility impaired person going up a storey in a building, I need to find a different method.

I’m “bad at” working on long-term projects without an imminent deadline or someone breathing down my neck? Okay, let’s change that: I can’t work on long-term projects without an imminent deadline and someone breathing down my neck. So let’s create an imminent deadline and recruit neck-breathers. Find a sympathetic prof who will agree that 3 weeks before the due date they expect me to show them my preliminary notes and bibliography. Get a friend I trust to block off an hour to sit with me and keep asking, “Are you working on your project?” Write a blog post about my progress. Arrange to trade papers and proofread them with another student.

Accept your limitations and learn to leverage them, instead of buying the neurotypical fairytale that they’ll go away if you just try hard enough.

[bubblytardigrade]

(ny)Azem and Hades

#my fc leader makes amazing art #he's also a giant cinnamon roll #basically irl G'raha Tia #bragging on the awesome people in my fc

[bubblytardigrade]

Running trusts as tank vs. as DPS

[bubblytardigrade]

I see and salute you, Pratchett fan!

Spoilers up through 6.1 Aglaia

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#ffxiv #shadowbringers #terry pratchett #discworld #truth freedom justice and a hard boiled egg #all the little angels rise up rise up #the librarian #ook #Carrot #there's more i just don't have screens of all of them #if the librarian is a person turned into an orangutan is bb opo a person in disguise? #GNU #alsoMargrat

[bubblytardigrade]

I have the best fc leader, or, A Flash Effects Guide to Aglaia

Y’all. I just need to brag on my fc leader @kh-terra for a sec. 

I love ffxiv, obviously, but I’ve struggled since I started playing last year because of the flash effects-- especially the ones on raid bosses. (Eternal gratitude to the devs for the pvp fx toggle! Please please please please add one for bosses and mobs?) I have postconcussive syndrome, and flashing/strobing lights give me really bad migraines. I use a red filter and a pair of special glasses which help a ton, but in all love, ffxiv can really go overboard on the flashing lights in raids. This especially means that new raids, where I don’t know when to shut my eyes, can be especially challenging for me. 

If you’re curious, what happens when I take a flash to the face is I instantly become stunned/disoriented/dizzy/nauseous for about 6-10 seconds, have difficulty stringing thoughts together, half the time I forget what my controller is for, and have migraines for several days straight. It hurts, and it’s really difficult to do even rotations I have in muscle memory. If the light strobes, it compounds on itself and gets worse and lasts longer. Obviously, want to avoid the side effects as much as possible. 

SO knowing this, I asked my fc to take me on a field trip to Aglaia and call the mechs on voice so that I can play with my eyes shut as needed. They’re taking me this evening because they’re literally the greatest. And my fc leader went above and beyond and LITERALLY MADE ME A PLAY-BY-PLAY FLASH FX GUIDE TO AGLAIA. He’s letting me share it here in case it helps anyone else :3 

In conclusion, @kh-terra is the best and I’m lucky as heck to play with this group of folx :3 

#ffxiv #ff14 #accessiblegaming #photosensitivity #photosensitivegamers #migraine #post concussion syndrome #free company #aglaia

[bubblytardigrade]

Mystery in Radz-at-Han

Endwalker-6.1 spoilers! Also lots of urithan shipping :D

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So background: I love hugs and periodically do little hug circuits of all the Scions (it’s driving me crazy that they’re offscreen after 6.1, lol!) I also run ffxiv on an elderly non-gaming laptop with an external drive, so am chronically laggy. When Endwalker came out I was having a hard time loading NPCs even when I limited the number of players the computer loaded. It was okay except for one scene. 

In Radz-at-Han when we get the scales (lvl 81, The Color of Joy, cutscene 1) you go to the meeting place with Alphinaud and he mentions that you’re running late. When we arrived I went to hug everyone and managed to find all but Urianger and Thancred. I messed with my settings (there was a huge crowd of players!) but still couldn’t find them. Alphinaud and I were late! Where were they?? Finally I gave up and started the cutscene.

And then they strolled in

Casually

Together

And no one said anything. 

Now I realize this is culturally determined and probably varies around the world but where I’m from if you have a group of friends and two of them are particularly close and they show up extremely late to a meeting, the only reason you wouldn't acknowledge it at all or tease them for being late or check if they're okay is you know exactly where they’ve been and what they’ve been up to, and don’t need (or want) to hear details. 

Just saying.

They’ve been doing this since about halfway through ShB, too, often arriving and leaving together in a different direction from everyone else. 

Beyond that, in the Radz-at-Han scene they arrive with their voices sounding a little rougher than usual, almost like they’ve been crying, and seemingly with a plan already in place for what each of them will do next, which involves them being separated for a while. They're not surprised when Y'shtola suggests splitting up the group to cover more ground. Just like when you’re going to Garlemald and Thancred is like “oh yeah we don’t need coats we’re fine” like they’re married.

So what did happen when they were awol? All hcs are valid, and mine is that they were having some couple time with emotional processing, planning out next steps (both their jobs are in espionage after all, they are both used to thinking ten steps ahead), and.... etc. 

Just throwing that out there ;) 

#thancred x urianger #urianger x thancred #urithan #thanuri #ineffable husbands

[bubblytardigrade]

Words, words, mere words

Super glad the Eorzibethean basics infographic is useful! :3 I've seen in a couple of places folks looking for a wordlist as well. This stuff is super relaxing for me, so conscripting @davetheshady once more into helping put a quick Eorzibethean wordlist together. 

The words that follow were selected by the extremely scientific method of skimming Urianger's lines in Dialogue Collection FFXIV and @uriangertxt and being like hey that's a fun word, gimme one of those, yeah I'll take one of them, and that one too…and then sprinkling in a couple more just for the heck of it. If you think of any others please pop them in the comments and I'll add them!

The short definitions are from our heads and my favorite toy a great resource, the Online Etymology Dictionary, which is linked on each for further reference and linguadorking. 

Abiding - depending on the context it can mean lasting (“abiding love”) or staying/living/remaining somewhere (“abiding in the town”)

Akin - related/similar to

Amenable - to be okay with something

Anon - soon, in a little bit, right away

Arbiter - someone who sits in judgment making decisions

Arms - weapons

Aught - something, anything

Aye - yes

Begotten - born from, caused by 

Behest - command, urging (“I did it at their behest”)

Benevolent - kind, wanting to do good

Borne - carried, or endured (the present tense is “bear”)

Brazen - to do something in an obvious way (usually arrogantly)

By my reckoning - I think, by my calculations

Cease - stop

Counsel - advice

Curst - ill-tempered

Divest - to take away stuff, to take off stuff

Duplicity - deception, dishonesty

Ere - before

E’er - ever

Errant - wandering, traveling

Fain - gladly ("I would fain have thee accompany me")

Fair - attractive

Falsehood - a lie, telling lies

Forestall - prevent, get in the way of

Forsooth - indeed, truly (see also “sooth”)

Forth - forward

Froward - petulant, contrary

Hark - pay attention to, listen to, listen up! 

Hence - from here

Hie - go quickly

Hither - to here

Howsoever - in whatever way

I pray thee - please (literally “I beg you”)

Impertinent - sassy, rude

Import - importance

Impropriety - being improper, being rude, usually with euphemistic connotations of drunkenness or sex

Inclination - something a person likes

Indolence - inaction

Insidious - deceitful in a sneaky way that might be a trap

Insinuate - to imply, to indirectly suggest (usually something negative about a person)

Ken - to know or understand

Knave - a tremendous jerk, an asshole

Libations - drinks (usually alcoholic)

Linger - to hang around in a place, especially after you know you should go

Morn - morning

Morrow - morning, tomorrow

Must needs - necessarily, important to

Myriad - many, a lot of

Nascent - coming into being, just beginning

Naught - nothing

Nay - no

Ne’er - never

O’er - over

Oft - often, repeatedly, frequently

Parlance - how someone talks

Peevish - petty, ill-tempered

Petitioner - someone who is asking for help

Portents - omens, usually bad or ominous

Predilection - inclination toward something, predisposed to like something

Pressing - urgent

Pretense - disguise, faking something

Proffer - to give something

Provender - food

Puissant - strong, powerful, influential

Quicken - become alive (the moment life was considered to have begun in a pregnancy was "quickening," when the parent could feel movement)

Roused - awakened or energized

Scion - heir to, child of, descendant of

Scourge - a harmful force (the literal meaning is a particularly nasty kind of whip)

Sooth - truth

Straightways - right away, immediately

Suffer it - allow it 

Supplicant - someone who is humbly asking for help

Surpassing - very much, exceeding

Thence - from there

Thither - to there

Thus - in this way, as follows

Unhand - let go of

Unto - to, up to, as far as, until

Varlet - rascal

Verily - truly

Visage - a person’s face

'Ware - beware, be warned about, be careful of

Wend - to travel to a place

Wherefore - why

Whither - to where

Wont to - in the habit of, likely to

Yea - yes, indeed

Yester - yesterday

Yield - to give something, to give up something

Yonder - over there (usually a moderately far distance)

And there you have it, with many thanks to Jen! Hope it helps! If there are any other writeups that would be useful let me know; it's genuinely nice to have fun things to make on insomnia nights.

#Urianger Augurelt #ffxiv urianger #elizabethan english #early modern english #urithan #thanuri #linguadork

[bubblytardigrade]

Coming Out on the First, or, Ramblings On Why I Adore That Big Elf Nerd

Spoilers to 6.1

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What the heck my tumblr has apparently turned into Urianger Thoughts sooooo let’s lean into it and go!  I imagine someone else has probably written this already, but again I’ve been sitting on these thoughts for a year and what is tumblr for if not to scatter ideas like glitter stars across the just-swept floors of fandom? Yes, Urianger’s my favorite character because he is the most empathic and emotionally intelligent of the Scions. He reads as an hsp, neurodivergent, and aspec af kinkeeper like me. Yes, on meeting him I immediately went THIS NERD SHALL BE MY WOL’S BFF because we both escaped from bullying to books, picking up language quirks from our reads (he fantasy-Shakespeare, me Wodehouse) and he is eminently extraverdoptable. Anyone who is excited to gift me a free lecture on interesting topics at the drop of a hat is my kind of people, because this is also how I show affection. I relate to him a ton. And the very clever way the Scions are written encourages you to project yourself on the ones you relate to. But I still have questions.

Where is he from? Who is his family? While the Sharlayan segment of EW was gorgeous and immensely satisfying, I feel like I don’t know any more than I did before. Did Moen’s parents and Louisoix raise him? Is he a Sharlayan orphan? Was he raised in a wealthy family like the Leveilleurs, or more modestly? And how in the heck did such a sensitive soul begin a career in espionage?

I haven’t played 1.0, but according to the wiki (bold mine): “Urianger was involved in the reestablishment of the Grand Companies of Eorzea, which continued to combat this threat. Urianger acted behind the scenes, having been branded a heretic by the Garlean Empire, and their pursuit of him distracted them from doing greater harm to the city-states. In spite of his seclusion, Urianger appeared at most Circle of Knowing gatherings, and even accompanied their leader, Louisoix Leveilleur.” Soooooo he’s been Roadrunner-trolling Garleans then shouting MEEP MEEPETH and running away??

Math time: if 1.0 starts 5 years before ARR, and Urianger is 29 in ARR, he’s roughly 24 in 1.0. In the clips I saw on youtube at any rate he sounds like he’s already experienced in running interference, so I imagine he’s been at it a couple of years or so. And if he finished up puberty with his growth spurt at age 20 (maybe lasting a year or two?) it sounds like pretty much his entire adult life he’s been on the run from the Empire.

It didn’t sound like he had a spymaster, either, which could explain a lot about why he tends to act on his own without telling anyone, why he was so confident playing double agent with Elidibus, and why he managed to pull off the incredibly high-stakes things he pulls off. He’s literally a pro. It also implies that in addition to being reserved he wears the outfit as part of his role, and is just heckin Method about his acting (like when you first meet him and he realizes he doesn’t have to put on the Mysterious Prophet act for you and corrects himself.) 

And then there’s the First. Suddenly he’s whisked away to another world with zero Garleans. No one is hunting him. No one knows his face. For pretty much the first time in his entire adult life, he’s not on the run. And he blossoms. As he starts his 30s he finally has the chance to figure out who he is and what he wants. I don’t know if it was Louisoix who gave him the spy assignment but while he was good at it, it wasn’t a good fit emotionally. We start to see him pull away from it more and more in this beautiful arc where he sets aside clothes that hide him from identification, and magic that can be used as a distraction. He goes full nominative determinism with astrologian (augury = telling the future) and becomes not a spy, but a healer, embracing the soft heart at the center of his character. As he relaxes more we see more of the things that make him him, like that dry, quirky sense of humor. This also reads for my headcanon as the timeframe when he accepts himself enough to fall in love with Thancred.  When Obergefell vs. Hodges came down, I was 30. While there was still more work to do, things felt....different. It felt like a different world full of change and optimism, kind of the sensation of opening a window in a stagnant room. And in that fresh air I was able to come out to myself and start the process of coming out to everyone else. And like... when you come out as LGBTQIA2S+ it sounds like you’re coming out as a category (for me, demipan) but in a lot of ways you're setting aside the mask society's pushed on you and saying here I am, I’m just me. And that’s what Urianger does, and one of the reasons he’s so precious to me. For the first time, he accepts and celebrates who he is, fully, as a person. And his loved ones do, too.

When you meet him on the First he echoes his Mysterious Prophet introduction to you and then reintroduces himself, confidently and mischievously asking how you like the true him. He knows you love him and will accept him, and when someone comes out to you in the knowledge that you'll celebrate them it feels like such an honor, y'know?

And when he returns to the Source, Garlemald is in such a state that it’s safe for him to drop the assigned prophet act and be his true gnc astrologian self. His struggles with “honesty” really sound more to me like struggles between the expectations of this obligatory spy role and his authentic self. I’m still annoyed that when he is excruciatingly hard on himself I can’t just wrap him up in my arms and tell him he’s okay, he did the right thing.  Then in EW we see his rejection of spying and of being who other people ask him to be come full circle, where he honors his own needs (”I followed my heart”) and learns to place healthy boundaries with the Loporrits. (I literally hollered to my wife "OMG Urianger learned to set boundaries!!" and we cheered, haha!) Moen's parents affirm and validate his growth in That Scene. It makes me wonder again who put him up to spying and why he went along with it. Ultimately he comes of age at 32 by accepting himself, asserting himself, and learning to be gentler with himself. And that’s beautiful. 

#Urianger Augurelt #ffxiv urianger #urithan #thanuri #im sleepy here have a braindump