ebonwinged_nova | I Have Finished My Draft

Clocks in at about 45k words right now with one scene missing; the content itself should mostly be fine and only require some details editing. That took way too long, but sometimes that's just how things are. It's a postcanon xenoblade 3 fic with a twist, namely:

Click for ending spoilers

The worlds still separated, but instead of everything resetting to pre-Intersection, Origin dumped everyone into the corresponding world as they were at the end; also N is there because I wanted him to be.

I wrote the first draft before Future Redeemed so it's not compliant with that, but even if I hadn't I wouldn't have made it compliant, given my extremely mixed feelings about the entire DLC.

I'll be letting it rest for some time and draft something else before going back to it. In practice that'll be either the "I hurt N a lot" fic or the "Z hosts cutthroat kitchen" one. Languagefic, despite being much older than either of those ideas, apparently still needs time in the mental oven before I can knuckle down and actually write it (why do I keep insisting on writing slice of life, why do I do this to myself, I know I'm not good at it) and the FR rewrite... may or may not happen but I don't think I'm in the mood for that right now.

I'm leaning towards the cutthroat kitchen one. Despite being a more complex story (yes, there's a story to it) with a larger cast I have a clearer idea for how it'll go down.

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Also, I wanted to split talking about Torna Org and Blade's rights to a different comment because oh boy I have a lot of feelings about Blade Personhood and I think Xenoblade 3 making all Agnians part Blade was... well, on the one hand it was pretty much the only way to deal with how the lore around Blades was set up, and I'm glad they didn't just completely abandon the streak of considering Blade personhood a thing, but at the same time... in the lore... Blades are literally self-aware computer programs, and I don't think Monosoft realised that they wrote a story about AI rights, because Blades are also supposed to be an angel allegory, making flesh eaters a fallen angel allegory.

Like... going full geth and granting every Blade a full ability to self-determine? Probably the best way to address the fact that even in-game it's not clear whether or not and to what degree any individual Blade is capable of self-determination. The fact that their personalities do not stay consistent between when various Drivers use them points to Blades like Jin, Brighid, Pandoria and the Torna flesh eaters who are fully self-aware being in the minority, especially since we don't know if forcing a Blade to become a flesh eater forcibly causes them to become self-aware, also. It makes sense for older, more unique Blades, to have developed stronger personalities, but how that relates to them developing self-awareness rather than following their programming to gather, refine and reproduce data is very unclear, and further obscured by the Blades most fervently discussing their right to self-determine being, like... the elite of the elite.

It's just all really messy, the most charitable interpretation is that since every Blade has the potential to grow into a Jin or a Nia, they all should be granted the individual rights to foster the ability to grow. This would also be consistent with the themes of... I guess mentorship? I don't want to say parenthood because I don't think the majority of Blade-Driver relationship make sense interpreted through that lens, but the implication clearly is that Blades grow into the versions of themselves through continued influence from their Drivers over the various, and by extension not all Blades are or want to exist independent of Drivers. Because, y'know. They're angels. They're servants of God meant to guide and assist humanity and also be the armies that God does battle with.

All in all I want to say I also think Torna Org was wasted, everything around them was incoherent, their plans seemed to pivot on a whim and they also seemed to have no respect for the personhood of their fellow Blades... while at the same time making perfect sense in their initial professed goals which weren't followed up on because Monosoft couldn't stand our heroes actually being wrong about anything ever >_>)

I always felt that it was a bit... weird that they were all part blade? I guess you can say Origin Did It because who knows how any of that even works (good on the writers for not even trying to explain it, nothing good comes from explaining metaphysical tech mumbo jumbo of that degree too much lol). It just doesn't feel like it matches up with the state of Alrest, because we *know* the Intersection is not that long after the end of the first two games, certainly not long enough for everyone in Alrest to somehow be part blade.

Honestly I think a subplot like that was what the game earnestly needed. It gives a much needed character arc to Rex; hook into Vandham owning him in Uraya because he was reckless with Pyra's power and the whole "you gotta learn to be a responsible driver" and make him ACTUALLY learn something by digging into the way society expects blades to be, including Pyra even though she's definitely one of the self aware ones. It gives a coherent goal to Torna. It fleshes out what Amalthus was doing; I interpreted his cleansing thing as being the cause for "generic" blades and preventing them from developing into unique selves, which slots nicely into this. It lets you dig deeper into the nature of blades being influenced by their drivers, something that comes up and then never gets resolved or addressed arrrrghh why is this game like this it's so frustrating.

(I like xenoblade 2, I should say... I just wish it was BETTER. XD)

I Have Finished My Draft

Re: (This is gonna be a wholeass essay lmao)

Re: (This is gonna be a wholeass essay lmao)