#but one of its biggest crimes against me personally was introducing two cool complex empathetic villains

[pangolinheart]

How does Rhiki feels about Zenos? How does she reflect on her relationship with him? or any other villain, doesn't need to be Zenos precisely. How does she feel about them?

Hahahaha....

Rhiki's feelings on Zenos are: complete and total apathy. Rhiki looks at Zenos' face and feels Nothing. She doesn't resent him, she doesn't hate him, she doesn't relate to him. She has No Strong Feelings. To her, he's just Some Guy - a garden-variety psychopath in ugly armor, functionally indistinguishable from any other Garlean Legatus.

He met her a total of 3 times and on the third time started monologuing about how they were inextricably linked, two sides of the same coin, bound to forever clash, reveling in the thrill of the hunt, etc., etc., to which Rhiki's reaction was essentially, "Sir, this is a Wendy's."

It took her an exceptionally long time to be able to put his name and his face together - the names of Garlemald's elite are long and in the long run not very important to her. I imagine strategy meetings during Stormblood going like:

Alphinaud: Before we can act, we will need to ascertain Zenos' location. Z'rhiki, raising her hand: Which one is Zenos again? Alphinaud: Rhiki, Zenos yae Galvus is the crown prince of Garlemald. Z'rhiki, staring blankly: ... Alphinaud, increasingly exasperated: The son of emperor Varis zos Galvus? The leader of the XIIth Imperial Legion? Z'rhiki: Uhhh... Alisaie: He's the one in the ugly maroon armor with the horned skull helmet. Z'rhiki: OH! That guy!

There are some villains she has stronger feelings about, though. During Stormblood she felt a lot of sympathy for Yotsuyu and especially Fordola. They had both been through some terrible things, and Rhiki had gotten a taste of what that kind of pain and anger can do to a person. She was glad when the Alliance decided to spare Fordola's life, even if Fordola wasn't. She really hoped that "Tsuyu" would never remember her life as Yotsuyu and could live out the rest of her days in peace, andwas a little heartbroken when the whole thing fell apart.

Z'rhiki also had sympathy for Emet Selch at the very end. Not that much, given all of the... everything he'd done up to that point, but definitely some. He was grieving for his friends and his home, for a place and a time and a life that would never exist again, even if he had succeeded in rejoining Etheirys. It was something that she could understand.

(Before that, though, she mostly found him condescending and annoying, and generally just acted as if he wasn't there most of the time.)

The only villains Rhiki ever really hated were the Knights of the Heavens' Ward, for reasons that are, I'm sure, fairly obvious. I don't think Rhiki had ever really hated anyone before that. Disliked, been annoyed with, been upset with, sure. But not hated. But whooo boy she hated Zephirin and Thordan enough to make up for all of the hating she missed out on. It may have also been the first time she felt real rage. She was so angry that it scared her. Triumphing over Thordan's primal was extremely unsatisfying, and afterwards she realized it was because she didn't just want to defeat them, she wanted them to suffer. She wanted to tear Zephirin's heart out with her bare hands and make him eat it. She had never known that she had that sort of anger and violence inside of her before, and it was really difficult to come to terms with.

#ffxiv #asks and answers #rhiki tag #stormblood had a lot of problems #but one of its biggest crimes against me personally was introducing two cool complex empathetic villains #and then expecting me to give a single solitary fuck that Zenos exists