Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward – #16 – The Excelsior

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The “fly to Azys Lla without blowing up and/or dying” plan nears completion!

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0:00 – Introduction

0:34 – Special Thanks!

3:23 – QUEST: “An Eye for Aether”

14:00 – QUEST: “Hour of Departure”

19:51 – QUEST: “The First Flight of the Excelsior”
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Edited by Daniel Floyd

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https://lnkfi.re/pray-return

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26 thoughts on “Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward – #16 – The Excelsior”

  2. If you'd rather read this as an essay, PDF here:
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZXc-t5UPAXAiOi_MX3c7qInqklh2JZ_L/view

    Hi there! Sara Winters- slash- Eos Fuyu, the director of DTC here, and I’d like to offer a counterpoint to Dan’s comments on how they handled Y’shtola and her blindness. DTC members (and those of you who came to Dan via his prior Youtube presence) will know of me as someone who is visually impaired/legally blind (if you’ve seen that video, by the way, I’m actually still legally blind- games absolutely helped my hand eye coordination, but my albinism and light related factors have kept me on that side of the divide as an adult in my mid 30’s). I’ve taught at a school for the blind. I’ve been helping small indie video and board game studios with accessibility for literal decades now. I’ll even be teaching a panel on blind accessibility in FFXIV on July 30th during LunarCon- check the streams schedule! And as such, I’d like to think I’m a bit more qualified than Dan to talk on this specific subject.

    To put it bluntly, the narrative handling of Y’shtola’s blindness is one of the worst depictions I’ve seen of it in games.

    Full stop.

    Before I move into bloviation, note that I will be discussing both some major late game Final Fantasy 15- yes, the one with the pretty boys and expensive car- spoilers, as well as some MINOR later Final Fantasy 14 spoilers from here on out. The 14 spoilers will be only as much as needed to make my point, and will not include any plot spoilers, I promise, but should you wish to go into the rest of Dan’s playthrough absolutely as blind as possible (pun fully intended), stop here. I will only be mentioning things Y’shtola can and cannot do while blind, with no context, and I’ve thrown this little essay to Dan in advance to assure I’m not spoiling anything beyond things like “Y’shtola can still dance” or “Y’shtola can’t cook”.

    Cool?

    Cool.

    Let’s start with disability in a narrative in general, and its purpose in said narrative. This can be handled, broadly, in one of two ways. Either the character is disabled before you encounter them in the story (whether the reader/narrator knows it or not), or they gain their disability through the course of said narrative. If it’s the former, the character could just… be a person with a disability, in the same way a narrative not about a specific place could ‘just have’ people of varying ethnicities, ages, genders, or anything else. Disabilities are just things people have. Their disability might be mentioned in passing, core to the story, or something between, but that’s unimportant. In fact, long before we are reintroduced to Y’shtola, now blind, there’s someone who fits this perfectly, and, incidentally, is also blind!

    Shamani Lomani is blindness done correctly. You might remember him as the former Company of Heroes member turned vintner in the 30s stretch of quests back in ARR. He’s just chilling in Wineport making wine. It’s not a surprise to the player he’s blind, even if he didn’t wear sunglasses his requests and speech make it quite evident. He smells and tastes and listens. He doesn’t have superhuman powers, no more than any other Lalafell in the world. He’s likely quite strong- former rogue in the Heroes after all- but nothing beyond what we know people in this world can do. He can probably cast some magic too, as that’s normal in this world. None of these qualities have anything to do with his disability; he’s a vintner, and he happens to be blind. There’s hints that adventuring is what cost him his sight, so he wasn’t born this way, but it’s been years, at least 5 but possibly 10 or 20 where he’s adjusted. His blindness is present, in the same way that Miqo’te bear their social structure right in their names, but its neither remarkable nor providing him with any superhuman advantages/subhuman disadvantages. It just is and it’s something he lives, deals, and works with. Did the writers have to make him blind? No, none of the other Heroes have any disability, physical or mental, far as we can see. None of them have PTSD or night horrors from their work, though there certainly are former soldiers in this world that do, we even meet one through Shamani’s own quest chain, and they certainly aren’t the last.

    In short, people who fall into this category of disabled characters in media are there simply for the fact that disabled people- we- exist in the world and will always exist.

    (note this is part 1 of 3, more below)

    Reply

  4. Today, Playfriends, we go to that floating land. No, not the Sea of Clouds, the other floating land, the Allagan one. We head to Azys Lla. And your spoiler free lore comment is here to tag along!

    But first, because I've been neglecting to keep this count: it has been 6 episodes since Estinien has bathed. He's a stinky stinky dragoon.

    5:31 – Remember that the use of a Sun Seeker Miqo'te's personal name, without the tribe letter, is very personal. Matoya and Y'shtola have known each other a long time.

    23:55 – Because we couldn't call her the Enterprise-A! Good news is that The Excelsior hasn't had a propulsion upgrade. We know those transwarp engines don't work. But would it kill Cid to make the ramp foldable? it looks weird to have stairs just sticking out of the side!

    So, uh, when you kick down the defenses to a place, it turns out that anybody can fly in. The last time Garlemald launched an airship with this much firepower, it took Midgardsormr to bring it down. Today, they're going to have to contend with a Primal. How Ysayle convinced Hraesvelgr to assist her, I don't know, but her intervention is timely. While Shiva can't outright destroy such an airship, she does force it back. And so passes Ysayle Dangoulain, Lady Iceheart, who believed, even when all was against her, that mankind and dragon could find peace once again. With her death, who will champion an armistice? Estinien talks of ending the war, but has he spared a single thought of what peace really looks like? Does he know how to foster it?

    Ever since The Vault, the political situation is weird in Ishgard. Their head of state is absent, and Aymeric, who was previously jailed by the Heaven's Ward, is able to roam free and do as he will. It generally feels like everyone is on edge, waiting to see what occurs with Durmin's adventure. Waiting to see where the coin will fall. Will the Archbishop return with what ever he seeks to find in Azys Lla? Or will Durmin & Aymeric prevail, thrusting the nation into a uncharted waters? But the important thing is that nobody in Ishgard is trying to stop Durmin.

    Reply

  6. You know, there are a lot of places that an independently hovering/flying entity can take refuge near a giant flying battleship in the event that it needs a breather.

    Directly in front of the big, heavy, single-shot-at-a-time artillery cannons? Probably not the best place to be.

    Even landing on top of the ship would offer more cover.

    But, ultimately, she died as she lived: slow moving and unable to dodge.

    Reply

  10. Oh geez, I thought it looked like her eyes were different after she came out of the Lifestream. Hopefully that loss of life-force that Matoya mentioned isn't dragging on her too hard….

    Reply

  13. Noooo, Ysayle! Tol IceFriend! We're losing too many friends!

    Estinieeeeeennnnn, you're being genre blind about the Eye, stop that! It's bad enough you haven't washed your armor!

    Reply

  18. And there is the last scene of my dearest wife Ysayle. Now that I’ve relived this, I’m gonna go raid AO3 for fixit fics where she became a Scion djahsvdhdjsbhsd 😭

    Reply

  20. Urianger: "To mine amazement, it lay hid amongst Moenbryda's last effects. 'Twas but blind chance, or providence, that I did hap to spy it."
    Me: "Yeah, it sure is a good thing you happened to be rifling through them in a totally non-creepy way."

    Reply

  22. Honestly, as beautiful as her sacrifice is, I kind of hope they somehow bring Ysayle back in the future and she becomes a Scion! I think it would be really interesting to see her interact without having to be Lady Iceheart and to see her grow and become a more well-adjusted person, someone who finds something more to live for than just her beliefs and the war she seeks to stop.

    Reply

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