Anyway, imo Fordola is one of the most interesting & compelling characters in the game. She's criminally underrated💀

Imo STB is an examination of the concept of empire, & both Fordola & Yotsuyu feel like conscious attempts to explore why collaborators collaborate. I think that idea is so baked into both characters' arcs that I'd be astonished if it wasn't deliberate--but even if not, it's still all over the text

(Despite its flaws, unironically, this is my favorite fic I've ever written. I peaked with the very first one lmao)

I even wrote a fanfic about it✨✨ (The art is old, leave me alone) archiveofourown.org/works/29673303

I sorely need to increase the amount of grey in this man's hair. He's had like, one okay-ish year since Haurchefant died a decade ago LMAO

But yeah, this wasn't my favorite experience💀 Hope this one lasts longer than eight months🙃

I rearranged everything on my crafting hotbars recently, & I thought that was the only thing I had to be responsible. Then I switch over to Alchemist & he's fucking naked, like💀 What the hell is this lmao

*I actually lost $45 in SBCF books I bought two weeks ago & hadn't backed up yet💀 But that's not terrible, considering I didn't lose any art or writing, or anything else irreplaceable

This was functionally the only thing I lost*, because I'm very good at backing up files. Glad to be vindicated; wish it had been several hundred dollars cheaper

To hear me talk about EW is to hear that the music is great; the duties are great; TWO best solo instances; the thematic thrust of the story is my all-time favorite, possibly across any media. Also I have never been more profoundly let down by a story. Truly the highs & lows of human experience

& definitely not in 6.x, when Dieter is halfway mad & generally interested in love or not in a good mental place for it. He could be wooed, but not by Aymeric--& any 6.x romance with Dieter would be fraught, to say the least, so it's probably best not to

He DID fall in hard love with Venat from her first words in Elpis, which is a super funny thing to happen to him specifically, but obviously there's no room for romance in there & the feeling is more complicated than that, anyway

There's no one else I've seriously considered for him, but in another lifetime, he could've been absolutely stupid for Y'shtola. Cid is someone else he could have eventually fallen in love with, but Haurchefant saved him from the fate of being halfway married to Nero

(But without naming names, imo there are multiple writing decisions going back to the end of 4.0 that ONLY make sense with that context💀)

(Also the original plan had been for 6.0 to wrap up the Garlemald arc, & then return to the Ascians for 7.0; but after the overwhelmingly positive response to SHB, they didn't want to lose that momentum & combined them... Again, to very mixed results, imo)

Which is to say, I'm SUPER interested in how you end up thinking & feeling about it👀

My feelings about EW are personally extremely mixed. On one hand, it has probably the highest % of parts I loved vs any other expac; & on the other, I'm highkey still pissed off about basically every OTHER part four years later. I would describe it overall as being less than the sum of its parts