who-receivesmany

[who-receivesmany]

The best sound in all of Stormblood.

#;he who presides over the dead (hades) #(( HE LIKES SHEEP OKAY SO SUE HIM ))

[who-receivesmany]

He is not, actually, expecting her to take this seriously. Oh, she can insist on a debate, certainly, but he really had not expected to hear anything new or worth listening to; he had tried, long, long ago, at the beginning of it all— tried plenty of times to speak sense into the sundered. But none ever listened, none ever cared to try. And their arguments had been petty at best, selfish and ill-thought out, and callous and cruel at the worst.

So he is…pleasantly surprised.

He cannot deny there is some small logic in her mention of Sharlayan— ah, yes, that’s right, the little Archons are from that city of learning. He…appreciated the attempt, that city. But it is still corrupt, no matter how they try to learn— after all, why else would they hoard it all for themselves and share it with none? Selfish and petty, like all the others. But she is making a very good argument, he supposes, in fairness— better than what he had expected. He can do her the honor of taking it seriously, himself. Perhaps there is merit to convincing one of them this close to the final tick of the clock.

“Oh, certainly, I shall concede one point of yours: you do live, and love, and laugh, and do all those things heedless of your tiny little lives, unaware of your fragmented existence. Your sundered kind have created many a wonder in the eons since the worlds were shattered, I have seen it. Some of them even impressed me, I’ll admit! You can be clever little things, at times, even if half of it is rediscovering things we already knew.” If his voice falls easily into the familiar patter and cadence of an Amaurotine in a spirited debate, he does not notice; he is fixed upon his points. “However, I have also seen them all fall. Even in times where our hands were not at play, even when one of us had nothing to do with it; your wonders fall by your own hands. Surely you cannot imagine we are behind every ill your societies have committed? No, no— some, perhaps, and certainly the Calamities, but not all. With or without us, you will all eventually devour one another. I see little worth in people that are so quick to fall upon and tear down every masterpiece they create.”

He is pacing, but not at length; three steps, turn, three again— those who once knew him (all gone now, all but one, and he is devoured by the Darkness) would recognize it as a habit of his from long, long ago. “And I suppose that you have misunderstood me— I must needs correct that, I suppose; give you a fighting chance. It isn’t very fair if I let you build your argument on a misconception.” He smiles faintly, sharp and crooked and with the ghost of real pain, staring at that soul of hers, tiny fragment of light that it is. And above her is the Lifestream, diminished and weak, a too-fast too-thin ribbon of light flowing among all things. “I have described us as eternal, yes, that is true— but that is only true of us Ascians, those of us who survived the Sundering or were raised to join us. But when I spoke of my people, our people, the people you lot were meant to be— I said, and I believe it was ‘nigh for eternity’. We were not immortal, my dear girl. We knew death, just as any other. Oh, we certainly did not know it to the extent your fragile little lives do; a stiff wind could send your souls back into the flow, shatter them like ill-made glass. But we knew it. Did you think the Lifestream, as you call it, came to being after the Sundering? No; it has ever been. All souls flow towards it eventually, and all return from it anew. The only difference here is in how quickly you return to it, and what you fill your fleeting little lives with.”

He gestures briefly, not quite so grand as usual but with a ghost of it in the movement. “So yes, you have done wondrous things, I will concede. Allag, Mhach, Amdapor, Nym, Sil’dih, Belah’dia, Ivalice, Skalla, and so on. I could name more than you could ever recall. And yet— they have all fallen. Some by our hand, yes, but just as many without us. For every single incomplete, fragmented little soul who builds a nation, builds a mountain, builds anything worth keeping, there are a hundred more willing to tear it all down in the span of a blink, to our eye. Things of beauty and wisdom appear and disappear faster enough to make one’s head spin. So perhaps— perhaps I could see the inklings of a point in your words. But for all that you tiny little things bring to these shattered worlds, you destroy it just as fast. Where is the worth in that? It is not your swift and inevitable ends we so despise, dear— it is all that you bring to an end along with them.”

And the floor returns to her, with a flick of his wrist.

Continued from the ask with @who-receivesmany

His invitation made sense; it was only good manners to allow one's challenger the first move. House always played black. Home always stood on the defensive end of the strip. If she only thought of this as fencing instead of an academic exercise, surely she would be fine... Right?

Engage.

"When I stepped foot past the magickal barrier, I did not expect to see Sharlayan." Feint. "Not as it truely is, mind you, but as it exists within my mind. The tops of buildings just end because, really, past the seventh story, it all just keeps going in the same way, but it has to end somewhere. All the buildings important to my daily life - our daily lives - are placed together because that is how we think of them, even if they were not so in actuality. An Aetheryte because there must be one, but tucked away somewhere because all of the shards just blend together and you really cannot place where they go. Familiar faces of friends and loved ones - Ismene, Pyramus, Menelaus, Lysander, Madea, the list goes on - all in places you think they would be.... but without the subtleties that allow them to truely be present."

Alisaie took a deep breath, this state of being so damned wordy being new to her. "Alphinaud does not see it. He is too blinded by pride to let himself do so. However, he also does not pine for our homeland as I do. Especially since my time in the First began. An intense longing for a home I barely remember, people I see only shadows of, and cannot go back to."

En Garde.

"But Amaurot and Sharlayan are, ultimately, different. You will never see my homeland as yours, nor the othe way around. However, those differences are what make us who we are. It is the beginning of our diverging psths, and makes us special. To you, we are imperfect, and thst is compounded by our inability to know how imperfect we are. And yet, we preservere. We do all that you did: live, thrive, love. But, we die. That is, perhaps, our greatest physical flaw. But we live with the expectation of our mortality, and thus, by embracing it, we are all the stronger.

"I would postulate unto you, Emet-Selch, that this work in defiance of our mortality is our greatest strength, and as such, we are deserving of our fleeting existences. Our differences from our Utopian predecessors make we who exist in the here and now just as worthy to continue on until our natural, unaided end, unhindered or altered by Rejoining."

Advance. Beat. Recover.

#lcvcillcur #;v: one brings darkness one brings light (shb) #(( this gon b good ))

[who-receivesmany]

"Emet-Selch." Is was absolute follish recklessness that brought her to him without others at her side... and yet, here Alisaie was, chin up to hide her unease. "...I wish to talk to you. Perhaps... even to debate." Did his people not love to debate? Besides, no one else would listen to him, and after her experiences, would she not be the perfect person to do so?

Amaurot, his city, is silent. Of course it is— the shades speak, but they are few, and have their scripts. He could not populate it entirely; that is too much a tax on aether he will need later. These are enough. Enough to show them, to convince them, perhaps, at the last, that he is right. He doubts it’ll work, to be frank— these foolish little fragments have proven stubborn in their refusal to hear him out. The hero…maybe. But they will fight to live, he supposes, and there goes that.

He isn’t expecting to be approached, honestly, let alone by one of the little Scions. Perhaps the Oracle, if any of them besides the hero— but certainly not this one. Spitfire, if he’s been paying attention. One of the twins. Not the one fond of words, either. He likes her. (It’s a shame they all have to die, really; he does like her. Twins are so very rare, too, and with white hair…)

He isn’t expecting her to actually— he blinks as he looks down at the tiny little Elezen, her reddish-orange soul so weak and small and broken. “Oh?” He asks. “Well, color me surprised, Scion! I had thought none of you wished to hear me out. And a debate, too, you have been paying attention.” She’s seen the Hall of Rhetoric, then? Well, good to know one of them explored.

He steps back to turn and face her properly, throwing his arms wide in invitation. “Well, my dear, I will cede you the floor to begin. Ask your questions, make your points. You are a guest in my home, after all; it’s only polite to let you go first.” Will she have anything of interest to say, this time? That will be the test.

#(( SO READY FOR THIS ROLLS UP SLEEVES )) #lcvcillcur #;v: one brings darkness one brings light (shb)

[who-receivesmany]

Emet-Selch: Illness and Accountability

I’ve seen some posts where people are trying to argue that no compassion/sympathy/remembrance should be paid to Emet-Selch because of the total annihilation of multiple worlds he participated in.

People gonna feel how they’re gonna feel lol, but my opinion has a bit more gray I think. Buttloads of analysis and some psychobabble under the cut, spoilers up the wazoo.

Keep reading

#;ooc #;headcanon #;he who presides over the dead (hades) #(( i have to put this on my rp blog because OP nails so much of what i've been trying to articulate about emet and the way i see him )) #(( as so so deeply traumatized by it all and unable to cope )) #(( and forcing cognitive dissonance on himself just to be able to do what he's doing )) #(( just ALL of this ))

[who-receivesmany]

“μέγας γὰρ Ἅιδης ἐστὶν εὔθυνος βροτῶν ἔνερθε χθονός, δελτογράφῳ δὲ πάντ᾽ ἐπωπᾷ φρενί.”

—

Aeschylus, Eumenides 273-275

“Hades is great, Hades calls men to reckoning / there under the ground / sees all, and cuts it deep in his recording mind.” (Lattimore translation)

#;musing #;he who presides over the dead (hades)

[who-receivesmany]

To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.

Elie Wiesel, Night (via the-book-diaries)

#;musing #;beloved amaurot

[who-receivesmany]

On a less weird and niche headcanon topic, I have new thoughts on Emet’s job back in Amaurot!

I was thinking, and it seems like aside from actually being Convocation members, the Convocants all had...day jobs. Like, a few of them clearly ran their own sections of the Akadaemia, and so on. So it stands to reason that they didn’t just sit in offices at the Capitol all day, they actually had jobs that they did aside from being city officials/government. That, and, well, Hades had to have had a job before he was promoted, given Hythlo was Chief of the Bureau of the Architect. And can we please let that mean the ‘Hades’ title was the Architect’ thing die because it’s not at all canon just fanon and Hythlo was the Architect Chief....

Anyway, allow me to discuss the Bureau of the Archivist. I just made it up but considering we Americans have the National Archives it’s a Thing and it makes perfect sense.

Whenever a citizen wanted to get married, or apply to have a kid, or when a child was born, or when someone passed away--- off to the Archivist. Whenever the Convocation made a new proclamation, or a member stepped down, or a new member was promoted, or in general when a high-ranking position was filled, off to the Archivist. Laws, important documents, treaties with other cities, anything relating to anything historical or relating to the day to day existence of Amaurot and its people--- it was brought to the Archivist, where it would be processed, approved, and then transcribed and filed away into the Archives themselves. It had departments, obviously, for governmental documents, city works documents, patent/concept documents, birth/wedding/death (census?) documents. And it had a department for the maintaining of the Archive itself, the actual transcribing and filing and day-to-day care of all the records.

Hades worked in, and later as Emet-Selch was chief of, the latter department, which means he was Overseer of the Archives, or Chief Archivist. He would oversee the filing and caretaking of the physical Archives, and deal with incoming records from the other departments and other facilities (they did get copies of Concept paperwork and other items from other Bureaus to file within the archives while the originals were on file at the respective Bureau; the only facility that they didn’t get copies from was the Akadaemia, which has its own research archive) to be filed once they were approved and ready to be permanently submitted, checking them over and sending them on to the actual filing staff for putting on the shelves. He would also deal with and approve requests to either visit the Archives for research and study purposes or to remove materials from the Archives temporarily; the latter usually by other Convocants. He would spend half his time at his office in the Bureau of the Archivist, and the other half in the Capitol.

As such, retconning an earlier headcanon, Hades’ official epithet as Emet-Selch was the Archivist. 

#;headcanon

[who-receivesmany]

Favorite Foods 

If anyone wants to listen to me ramble for a whole post on food headcanons because food/culinary stuff is a special interest so i Gotta, because even if he’s an Ascian he had to eat back before the Sundering and had to eat in his mortal bodies, so they do exist. Gonna post it under a cut, mostly bc Lots of talking. 

Back in Amaurot, at least; basing this on a mix of ancient and modern Greek, since we already got a huge dose of that with the names we’ve been given:

Olives; he loves olives, he’ll eat a whole bowl of them himself.

Dakos

Skordalia; would happily eat it on its own or with something else.

He refused (and still refuses, not out of any reason but not liking the taste) to eat poultry or red meat, so he only tends to eat seafood, both then and nowadays in his host bodies.

His favorite types of dishes back then were smaller fish dishes, such as lakerda, gavros, marides tiganites, and atherina. But, you know, he’ll eat basically anything if it’s seafood, actually. He’s really not picky, even if it’s Weird.

Karydopita

Melomakarona

Pasteli; sesame seed candy, this is something he sorely misses nowadays and would absolutely eat his own weight in them.

Loukoumi; would probably also eat his own weight in these, too, he’ll shamelessly admit he was kind of addicted to them.

Would also probably drink way too much wine or ouzo if allowed to indulge. This was no a problem just for relaxing with friends back in Amaurot, but he definitely enjoys it a tiny bit too much as Emet-Selch, even if it doesn’t hit him quite as hard anymore.

He had a hard time keeping up with the --- for him --- fast-changing food cultures in all his empires and with humanity in general, so he never really developed anything close to a favorite in modern terms/regarding modern cuisines. He would just tend to stick to the things he liked, such as seafood dishes, and never really think too hard about picking ‘favorite’ foods out of the new stuff, since he missed the old stuff too much. It was more ‘what’s the most palatable to me’ for the most part, when he was using a vessel. He was probably very annoying to people.

#;headcanon

[who-receivesmany]

#;music #;beloved amaurot

[who-receivesmany]

Are you there? Nothing left for me till I find you because it's All gone The only world I've ever known sleeps beneath the waves But I'm the one who's drowning Without your love I am lost and I can never go back I can never go back home

#;music #;beloved of light and life (kore) #(( hey this came for me unfairly ))

[who-receivesmany]

Hello all! 

This is a BRAND NEW masterlist blog for muses within the FFXIV fandom. Please reblog this post if you are a muse in the FFXIV fandom, and you shall be added to the MASTERLIST. OC’s and CANON MUSES both welcome! Multimuse blogs are also welcome to reblog this if you have a muse in the FFXIV fandom. Please dont reblog this if you are a character from another fandom with a FFXIV verse, or a fandomless OC with a FFXIV verse. Check the GUIDELINES for more info! 

When reblogging, please write your muse’s NAME, if it’s a CANON MUSE or an OC MUSE, and which NATION your muse comes from. Thank you! 

#;ooc #Emet-Selch/Hades; Canon

[who-receivesmany]

It do be like that.

#;he who presides over the dead (hades) #;a temper to fit the forge (hephaestus / lahabrea) #;pictures #(( it them ))

[who-receivesmany]

Hearken unto a requiem for a hero fallen. A man who lived a thousand thousand of our lives clinging desperately to faint hope, never shirking his sworn duty to his long-lost brethren. A man who stood proud and did avow his true name on the threshold of the battle that would see him fall to his rival─the light to quench his shadow. Borrowing liberally from the funereal rites of the Night's Blessed, the minstrelling wanderer weaves an elegy in that hero's honor─the tragic yet triumphant tale of a man and a battle that ne'er shall be forgotten.

---Minstrel’s Ballad: Hades’s Elegy (from the Patch 5.1 Site)

#;ooc #;he who presides over the dead (hades) #(( i am vindicated and yet deceased )) #(( A FALLEN HERO )) #(( preserves this for eternity ))

[who-receivesmany]

OKAY SO NOW THAT IM ON MY LAPTOP

Notes from the story that i’m not going to stop screaming about:

WHITE HAIR??? HE HAD WHITE HAIR!!! So the white streak is Hades’ presence exerting itself on Solus’ body...cool. (Did I pick a faceclaim for Hades, yes, yes I did, not sorry.)

The entire bit about the Underworld came for my life! Given my ship fic! But it’s very interesting, so that means that he really was unique in how he could see souls, he and Hythlo. To be that powerful, to see the flow of life in everything, the souls passing on, the color of individual souls....phew.

That being the reason he was promoted lends itself to me thinking his title as Emet-Selch is Chronicler --- as in Chronicler of souls, of their lives and death, of their history.

HE WAS SO GRUMPY AND HYTHLO WAS SO TEASING AND IT WAS SO CUTE. LET HIM NAP HYTHLO

Hythlo telling him he should go tell “them” about it made me lose my entire shit. Hello ship fuel.

But seriously all of that stuff about how powerful he is and the flow of souls that he could see, it was impressive and interesting and mmmyes. More headcanon on that later potentially.

The phoenix was absolutely to show us a bit of how Zodiark worked later on. 

But also that he could sense its anguish and pain -- @thanalansunglow pointed this out -- means that god, could he sense the pain and anguish of the dying during the Final Days????? OUCH. That’s its own kind of trauma and it would make sense how desperate he is to bring them back, if they all died in such pain and fear and he felt that.

I WAS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT I WAS SO RIGHT ABOUT VARIS, I had a feeling that there was some genuine love Solus had for his eldest son, because the lorebook said it, and I was right, and I was right that Solus resented Varis for being a reminder of that lost son/not being the same type of person as him.

God, to have been able to see the Underworld and the flow of souls so clearly back then, to have everything be so bright and blazing with light and life, and then....our worlds, which are still alive but so diminished...no wonder he hates it so much. No one can see better than him how much it’s changed, and it hurts him.

Just. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

#;headcanon #(( i can't think of more stuff rn ))

[who-receivesmany]

IM DYING IM DYING CALL BACK LATER ABD I MIGHT BE ABLE TO BE COHERENT BUT RIGHT NOW AAAAAAA

#;ooc

[who-receivesmany]

amaurot, ascians, and FF9 references

Oh, what’s this, is it my turn for a giant meta post about XIV? Yep, it sure is. Here I am, having just finished a rewatch of FFIX, and hoooooly shit. Forget Zanarkand, we have a real winner on what our sweet ancients (and the Ascians!) are referencing, no contest. And not only them! Granted, this is also just speculation, but there’s more than enough clues here. 

HUGE SPOILERS FOR FINAL FANTASY NINE BELOW THE CUT, I MEAN HUGE, I’M TALKING ABOUT THE ENDGAME. But if you don’t mind that, let’s get into it.

Keep reading

#;ooc #(( reblogging my meta here too bc relevant ))

[who-receivesmany]

#;music #;beloved amaurot #(( o w ))