if you wanna talk to me about rita which I welcome bc I love rita you gotta use they/them pronouns. I don’t care what you do on your own time but this blog is a they/them rita zone
it’s important to me that rita is a canonically gender neutral character on a kids show who is referred to with non-gendered terms. in English the best way we can express that is they/them pronouns
The thing they do with the dragons in ffxiv is that the sheer oppressive size of them hides the fact that Nidhogg and Hraesvelgr have these pathetic neurotic personalities that would seem completely absurd if they weren’t huge, and then they show you some well adjusted dragons and you realise they’re just absurd, period. Hraesvelgr is depression-nesting in his room until you bring his DAD to come YELL AT HIM to deal with his rampaging brother that is what happens in heavensward
Nidhogg yells across the steps of faith YOUR WIFE’S A HOE and his brother tries to throw him off a bridge THAT HAPPENS
YOUR MAID IS VILE AND YOU SHOULD FEEL VILE
Actually I’m not leaving Vrtra out of this discussion, everyone in the tags is talking like he’s the only normal one in this family but he age regresses into a homunculus body to cope. He’s a Vtuber
Dragons in FF14 are gigantic emotional-nuclear-bomb-carrying drama queens, because dragons do not perceive time the way humans do.
Midgardsormr: Men die, and their children forget. But we are everlasting. To us, then is as now. Midgardsormr: Thou canst not comprehend the violation. The outrage. The fury.
When a dragon has an emotion, they will never stop feeling that emotion the same way going forward. If you pat a dragon on the nose and say you love them and they get butterflies, they will feel those butterflies for the rest of their life. If you make a dragon angry, they will never stop feeling that rage as white-hot as the moment they first felt it, for the rest of their life.
Hraesvelgr: Stubborn child… Thou thinkest in mortal terms. Our perception of time is too broad for thee to grasp. Hraesvelgr: ‘Tis a simple matter for thee to offer thine apologies─thou didst not perpetrate the crime. Despite thy visions, the deeds of history seem distant to thee. Hraesvelgr: For a wyrm such as Nidhogg, however, that history is yet part of his present, as fresh as the blood that did gush from Ratatoskr’s wounds. How could he not be driven mad? Hraesvelgr: 'Tis only by the calming embrace of Shiva’s soul that mine own fury hath not consumed me.
Think back to the moment in your life when you were angriest and imagine never letting go of that moment. Think back to one of your happiest memories and imagine never letting go of that moment. Think back on a moment when you were truly terrified and imagine never letting go of that moment.
Archbishop Thordan VII: Dragons are not like us, my son. To they who live forever, the wrongs of antiquity are as those of yesterday. No reparations shall ever suffice.
It will never fade. It will never be forgotten. You will never think back on that moment and go ‘haha, yeah that was a thing that happened.’ You will always feel that white-knuckle fear as fresh as the exact second you felt it. You will always feel that rage same as the moment it first washed over you. You will always feel that exact moment when someone’s kindness gave you hope.
Varshahn: Azdaja’s answer was silence, as ever.
Heavensward is all about people needing the ability to move beyond the past, and Vrtra’s story in Endwalker deals with it too - not by forgetting it, but by learning to reach out and find people who will help you grapple with your traumas in helpful, healthy ways.
Estinien kills the evil dragon atop the Aery, yay! …except not yay, because he finds no satisfaction in slaying someone who like him had lost his kin and declared vengeance. And more directly, the story provides an object lesson in how it helped no one, because the shade of Nidhogg comes literally roraring back, all blind fury and hate and determination to go on perpetuating the Dragonsong War.
Hraesvelgr needs that verbal slap to the face to pull him out of his indecision - he’s been paralyzed (frozen, you could say) by Nidhoog’s war on one side and Shiva’s peace on the other.
Tiamat was content to lie captive for the rest of eternity, lamenting Bahamut’s loss and her own foolishness in being manipulated by the Ascians.
And Vrtra has spent millennia thinking of himself as childlike and delicate because the big sister who raised him vanished one day, just like that, and he couldn’t cope with the loss.
Dragons in FF14 are big, scaly, feathery fire-breathing dorks throwing themselves on the nearest fainting couch whereby they exemplify the story’s recurring themes of community and friendship being needed to pull ourselves out of the pits we can stumble into during life’s trials.
