great googly moogly it's all gone to shit

THANK GOD. THANK GOD. THANK GOD. if venat is in the apartment the rat baby DEFINITELY keeps climbing around in the goo and tracking it everywhere 😔

also if any of the kids are around they are magnetically attracted to him because Pupy (though that *is* completely normal).

the rat baby is nervous at first, mind, but once it figures out that the dog isn't Aggro is pretty soon climbing all over him.

venat insists he is a completely normal dog. nobody believes her.

THE BIG RIDICULOUS DOG IS *ESSENTIAL*

HE DOES NOT FIGHT. HE DOES HOWEVER PROVIDE HELP IN VARIOUS WAYS. SOME ARE WEIRD. HE SEEMS A BIT TOO INTELLIGENT FOR A DOG. STILL LOOKS NORMAL THOUGH. NOBODY CAN DECIDE WHETHER HE'S CHANGED OR NOT.

#ffxivtag #looktag

YESSSSS YESSSSSSSSSS YESSSSSSSSSSSSS

IN ADDITION, CONSIDER. she has a Big Friendly Ridiculous Dog. he may or may not become a party member during her questline

(there will be goop. that's fine. she is worth it.)

if you manage to talk her through that fight and out of suicide, you won't get the mechanical bonuses from her help anymore, but she'll still be Around and you can opt to move her into your apartment so that you and the rest of the party can support *her*.

she tries to pull suicide-by-cop by pretending her *mind* has started deteriorating and attacking you. if you try talking to her, though, and pick the right responses, you can get her to crack and drop the act.

...that if she can't provide enough of a Meaningful Contribution then she's *obligated* to kill herself rather than impose on everyone else. 🥲

and then it comes out that while her desire to help is genuine, the reason she's so stressed and frightened about potentially not being *able* to is that she thinks (due to both monster transformation tropes and preexisting bullshit)...

this starts becoming more and more of an issue as the transformation progresses because it restricts the ways she's logistically *able* to help outside battle. the goop is just very inconvenient. 😔🥲

as time goes on though and the transformation gets worse? increasingly obvious that it's not that she's *willing* to help. she's desperate to.

she is also friendly, intelligent, *seemingly* more or less sensible, and willing to Help in any way she can. you get actual mechanical bonuses from this!

look outside!venat would be one of the people whose transformation is Slowly Progressing (it involves both weird inky black goop and shiny crystals in weird places and is *exactly* as bodyhorror-y as everything else in the game).

DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT, MY BRAIN HAS BEEN TOO COOKED TO BE ON HERE MUCH BECAUSE OF THE HEAT LATELY BUT GOD I HAVE SO MUCH LOOK OUTSIDEPOSTING TO CATCH UP ON

i CANNOT stop thinking about this woman as a look outside NPC okay it has Infected Me. she has the Energy and if i had easier access to pixel art software i would be trying to translate her to its artstyle in a heartbeat

Venat from FFXIV looking beautiful and ethereal, saying 'Wheels shudder and turn. Conflict looms - monumental - which will decide the fate of this world and all life upon it.

Venat again in her form as the primal Hydaelyn, a majestic glowing-white winged woman carrying a crystal sword.

and then she looks like this.

i'll be saying 'she's been going through a midlife crisis since before recorded history, she's lowkey a furry with the aesthetic sense of a twelve-year-old girl, and she's white-knuckling her sanity via a parasocial relationship with the planet's most famous murderhobo'.

Having a favorite character that looks goofy sucks because you’ll say something like “He’s a modern-day Sisyphus trapped in a hell of his own making, convinced that if he tries to improve his life in any way that goes against expected social norms it will be an admission of defeat even if it would make him happier” and this is who I’m talking about [picture of Olimar from Pikmin, a goofy little cartoony guy]

This post is both a mood in itself and but also being a venat enjoyer is the equal and opposite mood because. like.

i do NOT blame you, ffxiv fandom has some great people in it, but it can also a minefield of elephant's foot ass discourse; i've already had people gleefully toss around nazi slogans to spite me saying 'it's cool if you like emet-selch but it bothers me that his fandom has issues w/being a nazi bar'

and i can't overstate enough how much 'people giggling in the breakroom about their coworker's daughter's death bc she was One of the Slave Class' is so very much not that, and it drives me up the wall when people use Understanding People Where They're At to shut down every attempt to WTF at cruelty

RIGHT? LIKE. they were trying to present it as a matter of It Was a Different Time Back Then, and i'm like. there are interesting stories to be told about people trying to do good and failing because they are immersed in the very culture they're trying to do better than! that's why i love hermes!

EVERY TIME. it is Dire out there, me and my bestie are pretty much just constantly staring distrustfully out of our bunker at the Rancid Take Wasteland and wondering whether posting a particular piece of meta is worth the way people will go rabid and/or ostracize you en masse for talking abt Fuckery

I should stop being surprised by "thing I find fucked up and chilling in a compelling way goes completely unremarked in the broader discussion space because it says something unpleasant about a fan favorite guy" but, every time.

it is *absolutely bone-chilling* holy Shit! just some grade-A understated horror honestly! and i've had conversations w/people where i brought this up and they thought it was a point in *defense* of these people that 'they'd have just thought she was the equivalent of a brightly colored zoo bird :)'

like. one of THE central themes of amaurot in general is gaslighting, more specifically the kind of casual everyday gaslighting that the wheels of an unjust society run on, and it figures that a woman having to field 'people constantly assuming you'll want kids one day But Worse' makes chuds Lose It

not only does everyone constantly introduce her as That Weirdo Who Hasn't Gotten Around to Killing Herself Yet, but it is normal and acceptable for complete randos to lovingly narrate to her, unprompted and at length, how she must be so exhausted with living and they'll be happy to see her rest :)

which like, that's bc she *is* a gaslighting survivor and that part is not new to me lol. but in particular that entire bit is just deeply indicative of the mindset of someone who's white-knuckling her own sense of self to stay alive in a society where people casually suicide-bait her on the regular

#ffxivtag

one thing stuck out to me recently while rewatching The Scene That Probably Made a Million Chuds Hate Venat—where WoL is telling her + hyth + hades abt the final days, and she's Adamant abt what she'd be thinking in the future—which is that this woman *acts like a gaslighting survivor*

so itchio has shadowbanned any games tagged with 'nsfw', 'adult', or 'erotic' so they don't show up in searches, and several devs have reported that their r18 games have been removed from the site with no warning