I'll start with the first one and it's the fandom sacred cow, Emet-Selch

just take him out of Endwalker

that's it

He should not have been in Endwalker and if there's one big criticism I have about Endwalker/Ishikawa's writing it's how much Emet-Selch is her obvious pet character and she forced him really hard in Endwalker

and she only got away with it because Emet is at top 3 favorite character of the fandom

Emet was an amazing character in Shadowbringers but Endwalker was his like "wow you like Emet huh? If you didn't, you will like him now"

"I'm going to force you to like him"

"Wow isn't he so adorably tsudere"

like I don't like mentioning this because again, Emet is the untouchable sacred cow character, but he was a character I liked that I ended up hating because of Endwalker

Take everything everyone says is bad about Wuk Lamat and it's actually Emet-Selch's Endwalker scenes

the game is trying so hard to force you to like him and then he shows up at the very climax of the story to take out all of the tension and emotional weight of the story to give really awkward fourth wall breaking quips

The WoL making the field of Elpis flowers was like the obvious culmination and perfect resolution to the Meteon story but having Emet do it completely ruins the entire emotional impact

This is like the one writing sin of FFXIV I will never forgive

ok end rant, sorry Emet fans but this is literally the only part of of all of FFXIV's MSQ writing that actively pisses me off

The second and more serious one here is Fordola

I really like Fordola as a character but holy shit everything about her is a narrartive mess

She has a really solid foundation for a character but everything leading up to it/surrounding it is just massive question marks

Ok the one big gripe I have about Fordola in Stormblood is her saying that Ala Mhigans will be liberated through service through the Empire, but none of her actions seem to support this belief

Stormblood has a sort of secondary theme about traitors and the reasons why they turn against their countries to aid the enemy

For Yotsuyu, it's because Doma, the entire fucking nation, treated her so badly that helping the Garleans was frankly, a no brainer

This isn't a Yotsuyu analysis, but I don't think people recognize how much of what happened to Yotsuyu was not just her evil family, but the culture and society that Domans live under

Everyone knew what was happening to her and who was to blame and no one did anything to help her even a little bit.

We don't fully explore just how dysfunctional Doman society is and that Hien has, frankly, probably one of the hardest tasks of any nation leader to try to fix his country

it's like Gridania-tier messed up

anyway back to Fordola, her actions honestly make more sense of you view them through a similar lens as Yotsuyu: Ala Mhigo betrayed her, so she betrayed Ala Mhigo in return

it was fellow Ala Mhigans that murdered her family, and yeah the Garleans didn't do anything to help like they should have (seeing as they were supposed to be an important diplomatic family on their way to meet with Garlean officials) but Fordola was a literal child who could only see her fellow countrymen kill her parents in front of her

like that alone would make any kid side with the enemy

Anyway Fordola and her Skulls do nothing to try to convince Ala Mhigans that becoming part of the Empire is Good, Actually, and they instead actually seem to kind of enjoy oppressing their own people

Maybe they thought this was too similar to Yotsuyu, but I'd argue it was different enough

Yotsuyu was someone who fell through the cracks and was harmed by Doma's indifference to her suffering

Fordola was actively rejected by her own people

We don't really know what her parents were going to discuss with the Garleans, only that the other Ala Mhigans killed them just for going, but it was entirely possible that they were going to try to negotiate for better conditions for the Ala Mhigans, or they really were traitors we don't know

But it honestly doesn't matter, Fordola's family were killed by an angry mob

So she goes to the Garleans, gets an Imperial education, joins their military and rises up in their ranks despite the immense prejudice against her

it probably wasn't great for her there, but it was obviously the better choice for her

If we see everything she did in Stormblood as her getting back at the people who everything away from her, it makes much more sense

*took everything

Anyway a small motivation change, which admittedly does a lot, is not the only fix I'd do for Fordola

I'd give her a higher place in the chain of command in the Ala Mhigo arc

she doesn't have to be Viceroy-tier like Yotsuyu was, but I'd probably give her a little more power within the Garlean army, just to make her look a little less like a middle management lackey

like yes Zenos is the head honcho in charge of Ala Mhigo, but he should have more obviously made Fordola his second in command

like she gets that five minute promotion in that one scene but it doesn't really have much of an impact

and it's not like it would be out of character for Zenos, he is the one who put Yotsuyu in charge of Doma after seeing her boundless hate

It would make her look stronger and lend a stronger credence to her "Garlemald is better" stance

and we would better see the "yeah Garlemald is the invading bad guys, but these countries created their own worst enemies" theme better

Ala Mhigo was already a hot mess after all of it's everything, granted

It really does bring to mind the Bozja story and how it kind of feels like a redo of Fordola's story

Bozja was a dysfunctional nation and Garlemald took advantage of it by offering something better to its disenfranchised citizens

Anyway this leads into post Stormblood where I do want to bring up something that I don't think has ever been brought up by like anyone

no one in the story ever really acknowledges the wrong that was done to Fordola

we get an acknowledgement that Doma treated Yotsuyu badly, but not Ala Mhigo with Fordola

because I guess we just want to forget about Ala Mhigo until we need a convent launch base to Garlemald/Ilsebard I guess

I would have liked for someone, anyone to be like "I know this will probably sound hollow but sorry your parents were murdered in cold blood"

And this could be the start of Fordola's healing journey

Because she doesn't have that same undying hate as Yotsuyu and she can't hold onto that forever

And that while the harm that was done to her will never be reversed, she can let go of her anger and stop taking it out on an entire nation, the perpetrators of the actual crime are probably mostly long punished/dead by now

She can be, in essence, the Yotsuyu who wants to/can be saved

and like yeah she never actually wanted Ala Mhigo to be destroyed

she doesn't hate Lyse and Arenvald as much as she acts like she does, and grudgingly accepts that they're the first ones in a long time to actually try to understand her

And what Ala Mhigo and Doma can't just be freed, they need to change

oh yeah I totally forgot but uhhh we need to tackle the Resonant issue like for what sounds like a big deal in an Artificial Echo we sure have gotten a big fat nothing from it

It's an imperfect copy of the echo and Fordola was presumably not the only one to receive it so

It lets you fight Primals safely and has been made redundant on that front with the warding scales but does it have any other effects

You can't handle huge surges of aether as well as even normal people because your sensitivity to it is apparently hypercharged

are there any lasting issues or side effects with it

otherwise man this thing just kind of was used to give you a gimmicky solo duty boss fight and a big fat nothing else huh

I think it's worth exploring to understand the nature of the Echo better and how this imperfect knockoff Echo is different from it

and can it be useful/helpful

It was also specifically made from Krile's Echo and while her affinity with Hydaelyn is kind of useless on account of Hydaelyn being dead is there anything we can learn about Krile's brand of Echo from it?

but yeah man as far as "dropped plot threads" go, the Resonant is definitely up there

The Resonant is so depressingly overlooked HAHA I don't think we'll ever get back to it unless they hardcore revisit Ala Mhigo which press X to doubt

I love Fordola

World needs more Fordola love

screams

I completely forgot the Resonant was a thing until this plurk...it was such a weird, thinly explored gimmick that I almost dont blame them for pretending it didn't happen

I also doubt we'll go back to it even if we return to Ala Mhigo because there just kind of isn't any point

We now have a way for normal people to resist Primal influence and the visions aspect of the echo is just for putting flashbacks into the narrative HA HA

Like they really did invent this thing just to make one (1) gimmick fight with Fordola