ebonwinged_nova | I Have Finished My Draft

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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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Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean... like, he's not like Rex, who becomes an absolute black hole of narrative agency, both doing nothing and causing everything to happen -- I think both Noah and Mio are given decent amount of narrative agency during Chapter 6 and 7, but the way Noah and Mio are suddenly the only characters whose presence truly matters to the plot in such an ensemble-driven game really left a sour taste in my mouth =__=)

I didn't mean it in a "disliking Noah" sense, I meant it in a "disliking how everyone else got shelved in favour of Noah", because no matter how interesting the ending would have been, it was let down by the characters I cared the most about having almost entirely passive roles. Eunie and Taion don't even get it the worst, tbh -- in fact, I think Sena is probably the worst done by how her presence literally stops mattering the moment she and Lanz try to sacrifice themselves to save everyone from N. If they had died there, it would change nothing about the ending, and that's pretty criminal in a game that is trying to be an ensemble piece.

Both Xeno 2 and 3 having literally nothing for the extended cast to do by the end, compared to Xenoblade 1 where Shulk's lack of specialness was critical to the finale working out the way it did, is honestly just a sign of market-research led writing. I'm sure the first drafts of both these stories came back with "no, no! The hero needs to be More Heroic!" or something, because something something it's not a power fantasy if our hero is hindered by anything in his way. My name for the tendency for the protagonist to eventually dominate an ensemble Special Boy syndrome even outside of Xenoblade. I didn't mean to imply it hurts Noah's character as much as everyone else's character is hurt at the expense of him (and Mio, to a lesser degree, although Noah being the Monado Wielder of this game does ultimately make him the most narratively important character for the ending)

I do like that interpretation of N. Our Noah is so painfully earnest and bad at lying, it's funny to imagine that he suddenly gets much better at literally performing the role required of him once he's out of Morality Juice to tell him it's bad to deceive people XD

Ah, did I sound like I was upset? I was mostly just curious because it didn't come across to me that way at all and I wanted to know where you were coming from. I don't disagree that the other four don't have specific "things" to do anymore (the way defeating the Isurd mudpuppet was mostly a Taion thing and Lanz and Sena sacrificing themselves etc.), I guess it just didn't come across as "they don't matter anymore" to me. I can see how it could though, and since the Origin segment feels a little... thin... to me in the first place it would have been cool if the other four had gotten their own Things to do there just to flesh it out a bit.

(Maybe combined with giving X and Y more Things because you can not tell me that was what they originally planned to do with them in the end lol)

> Rex, who becomes an absolute black hole of narrative agency, both doing nothing and causing everything to happen

Epic description, lmao. Somehow he really does nothing while still making the whole plot revolve around himself. ~~Don't get me started on this though or I'll unpack the "Nia should have been the protagonist and aegis driver" agenda~~

The funny thing is I think N also kind of sucks at it? XD He definitely sells it but also it's... super, super easy to tell that he's just broken rather than actually 100% believing in it even without Riku spelling it out with his "eyes of N were sad" or whatever the actual phrasing is. Although that's also just having the meta knowledge that he's a video game character, I guess.

On that note, I also love how he just projects all of his own experiences on Noah in that jail scene. "That is the hubris of fools who cling blindly to their hopes" and he really just talks about himself, ahah. It's great.

Yeah, like, Lanz' and Sena's lack of a presence in the plot has less to do with them not physically being there or not having lines -- it's about the way neither of them, I feel, gets a truly satisfying character arc for themselves. This is especially egregious for Sena, who gets basically no development in the main plot, and her attempt to sacrifice herself (which is entirely consistent with her flaws! Don't get me wrong, it was definitely a choice both she and Lanz would make in that situation) is dealt with by Mio going "don't ever do that again!!!". It just felt like the writers got bored with having such a big main cast. Taion and Eunie are less worse off because their arcs individually are quite strong, but they're out of the way early and are more solidly written to be supporting cast.

I have lots of bad things to say about Xenoblade 2, but I found the finale of Indol going to war with everyone a very satisfying raising-of-stakes. Xenoblade 3 was kind of the opposite. After the castles are liberated, the kingdoms stop mattering to the plot. Many mandatory characters, like Valdi, Juniper and Isurd, are literally never mentioned again. They do a really good job developing the main six' collective motivations, first from survival to learning the truth and finally to stopping Moebius and ending the war, it's just extremely graceless about the way everything else you put investment in in the game is completely irrelevant to the ending, which is all about the Lost Numbers, N and M, and Origin. The people of the kingdoms feel weirdly disposable to the plot after entering the City the first time, which stands out when the majority of the sidequest content is so focused on building a mutual aid network and liberating the colonies from the Moebius. A lot of the actual things we do in the game end up feeling incredibly incidental to the plot. The stuff about N and M comes in at the very end of the plot and completely dominates it from that point on, and once they're dealt with, the plot is over.

IDK. I feel like Xenoblade 3 could have used at least two more chapters of main plot that are focused on getting everyone the gang frees ready to help them fight Moebius together, since "learning to work together" is the majority of what actually happens in the game. The ending essentially rendering everything that happens in the game null and void doesn't bother me, but it does bother me that it leaves so many threads hanging, and considers the resolution of Noah's and N's character arcs a suitable culmination for a plot that isn't about any one individual, it's about the collective effort to move forward unto the unknown future even when it scares you. Chapter 6 felt like the midpoint of the journey, narratively, the way the battle at the end of chapter 5 was written was clearly meant to demonstrate our heroes were nowhere near capable of taking Z on yet... and then they solve it essentially by going "no, they were, Noah just didn't have his shit together sufficiently", which was really unsatisfying when the story had been about so much more than just Noah. By the time we got Mio back, with her sudden insight into the way Moebius operate, her new powers, I really thought we were gonna go back and finally free everyone from the term system, and build an army large enough to topple Z's castle in the sky and take back fate for ourselves.

And I admit that's getting into the "how I would fix XC3 narratively", but Noah beating N solves less problems than the game seems to think. Even if we ignore FR and assume that N was the first Consul, the only thing that is really special about him compared to other consuls is that he has the Sword of Origin like Noah. The free colonies are still not capable of fighting Moebius on their own, and everything that has been built up with them, every attempt the people of the kingdoms make towards bettering their own situation and getting out of a survival mindset is rendered irrelevant. It's almost like saving anyone doesn't matter, Z never feels threatened by any of the effort the gang puts in and does nothing to reassert control. We could have just as well left all the Kevesi and Agnians to kill each other to death, for all it mattered, which is a very grim conclusion when "I'm tired of other people's suffering" is what breaks Noah out of the false dichotomy of the kingdoms in the first place.

Hmm! I can't actually disagree with most of that. You're right that Lanz and Sena trying to sacrifice themselves doesn't get addressed again. The narrative space of chapter 6 (or more accurately "anything before going to origin" I guess) is the sloppiest part of the game and missing tying together the colonies and the city against Moebius. Moebius just... not... doing much of anything is weird and does come across as Z not taking them seriously, which is maybe kind of in character but also doesn't help the story? Also, that space of the story was where Z, X and Y should have been build and expanded upon too. I'm okay with putting most of the colony building stuff in side content so as to not completely overwhelm the main story with it, but you're right that they should have picked two or three heroes and their colonies to feature more strongly in the main story.

That being said, I don't think Noah and Mio are immune to this problem, because we don't get to see them process what this all means for them either! I think this is why it never came across to me as "the game priviledges these characters more than it should" and more as "this part of the game is unfortunately sloppy in many different ways". Do agree that defeating N to doesn't demonstrate that they're now capable of fighting the colonies, but I don't know if that was the intention? I guess it might be, what do I know, but it felt more like the culmination of Noah's personal arc, and the "let's build what we need to take Z down once and for all" is just absent. XD

But I think we are in broad agreement of the actual flaws of that part of the game, we just have slightly different views on it. Unfortunately, this has now led to me wanting to rewrite the post-eclipse part of the game, as if I don't have enough writing projects lined up. |D

Hmmn, in terms of which colonies should get the focus... It'd have to be ones with a commander you're forced to recruit throughout the story. The obvious choice on the Kevesi side is Colony 4 because it's already so prominent, but Ethel's situation makes that a little bit complicated, maybe? I'm not sure if she'd be better off having her post-resurrection stuff in the main story or not. Or I guess take Bolearis as a stand-in for her... Valdi doesn't do much in the actual main story after teaching you how to climb, but he's a fun character so I wouldn't mind taking him.
On the Agnus side, I think Isurd would be the best choice, personally. Juniper is also main story, but more nominally than anything. Isurd definitely has the stronger presence, I feel. Cammuravi post-colony omega is an option, but given that he's all about big epic solo duels in his approach I don't know that he'd be a good choice for a story arc about coalition building and mutual support. XD Plus, I don't think his colony is actually still around anymore, or if it is I'd have to make it up wholesale and that doesn't seem worth the effort.

Honestly the fact that the game just forgets about Isurd is kind of the most egregious part of the general sloppiness of the ending. They literally give us a character who is singled out as the finest strategist of a generation and the gang doesn't even think to fucking consult him on the whole "storming the stronghold of the final enemy." I definitely think him and Bolearis at the minimum should have been more involved with the ending, especially with how Colony 30 can be set to assist either of them, since Valdi is already working with both of them if you do the sidequests.

My ideal would be that all the Heroes you've done the Ascension quests for before completing the Origin metal scavenger hunt get to sit in on that meeting where Monica, Bolearis and Isurd hash out the plan of attack -- maybe something like the City acting as a spearhead, with ground forces (led by Bolearis and Colony 4) tying up any enemies Mobius send out after artillery (led by Isurd and Colony Lambda) knock them out of the sky. Ideally, all the heroes would be there, but if that's too ambitious, let's narrow it down to Zeon and Juniper (if you've finished "Crusading for Taters") and Teach and Ashera (if you've finished "Festival of War"), to signify that the back-of-the-line support and the front-line operations of the kingdoms have effectively been unified for this one big operation. It doesn't even have to change anything about the ending, I don't mean this to be like Galactic Readiness in ME3 because that's not the point of the Aionios Colony Mutual Aid Network, it would just be a nice symbolic addition.

... I, uh. I may have thought about this quite a lot. Can you tell I've thought about this quite a lot? |'DDD The ending we got just feels like the ending we would have got if we did none of the coalition-building mutual aid stuff, and I can't help imagining what it would be like if the Heroes were allowed to band together the way the main six did, getting over their mutual apprehension to see the humanity of their former enemies.

Also, I think you're right that nobody really gets favoured by the ending, and Noah being suddenly so strongly in the focus doesn't really make his arc... any more satisfying or coherent. For example, I think Crys is one of the most mishandled elements of his story, something that could have potentially been plot-defining for Noah, but it's kind of just dealt with as a consequence of getting to deal with the Keves Castle still not being freed, and needing to get that out of the way so the heroes don't have to fight a two-front war. Mio's new powers never being showcased in any way has the same effect (I still firmly believe that the plan was at some point to make Noah capable of breaking Flame Clocks, and Mio capable of freeing people from the term system). There feels like there's just content missing, and we're getting a weird truncated summary of "all the things that went on" while they were doing the preparations for the final attack, rather than seeing the preparations themselves.

The Moebius themselves seemingly not feeling threatened at all and not feeling any motivation to defend themselves also speaks to this, you're dead-on about that. Like, I straight-up don't know what to make of the fact that some Moebius are significantly older than others, clearly, is the idea there that they're Citizens like Shania? Do Moebius age? Why is the triumvirate of X, Y and Z so completely disinterested in the people they have managing the war for them suddenly dropping off? It's... not well-written, it just drops a lot of elements that are introduced early on in a way that speaks to them getting a mandate to wrap that shit up, either because they didn't want to make any more map to explore or because they didn't want there to be any significant plot points that required backtracking, maybe to commit more of the unique locations in the game for sidequests.

Having some optional heroes sit in on a strategy meeting and drop some optional lines that don't alter the scene as a whole would be a good compromise between not being able to involve optional heroes in main story and not showing them at all, yeah.

Crys... Crys Crys Crys. I love the IDEA behind Crys and Noah facing off like that but it's so unceremoniously rushed through and then never mentioned again that it really does a disservice to their relationship. At minimum they could have like... brought it up in the cutscenes with N in Origin or something, considering that Crys mentoring Noah as an offseer was one of the key pieces that made Noah not turn out like that? Or at least that's what the framing during the mist vision scenes suggested to me...

That being said, I think freeing people from the term service while still in Aionios would have been a misstep. It would have taken out so much of the urgency in having to free them from Aionios, because while the annihilation effect will eventually eat all of the world that's... not going to happen anytime soon and having that strict time limit (made a little less strict by Mio not having her mark anymore) propel the plot forward is a good thing in my book. (They just should have propelled it with more care, lol.)

Also, my understanding is that Mio effectively doesn't have Moebius powers anymore after the eclipse because Z turned it off. I think she says something to that effect while they go to the Cloudkeep.

They should have made X and Y personally involve themselves in the war at this point, I think. It would have been an escalation (we know they're Z's right hand people, we know they're special in some way so it presents a ramp up from fighting "just" regular moebius) and it would have given them the opportunity to add more meat to the two, plus expand on Z a little more. Bring Isurd back into the story (I think closely involving him right after chapter 3 would have been difficult, because while dragging sidequest characters around in ways that don't make sense is something I can overlook*, him immediately abandoning his colony to go search for the city with Ouroboros would have been weird). Valdi and Bolearis, as discussed. The aforementioned strategy meeting could have been here as well. Then I think Crys could have presented another ramp up in personal tension for Noah when he makes himself known, and defeating him could have served as a sort of reversal in this "war intermission" before they go on to defeat X and/or Y, removing one of the final obstacles presenting the colonies from focusing their attention on storming Origin. Something like that.

I have a strong feeling they had to make cuts due to dev constraints, honestly. Finding the origin metal for the ship feels INCREDIBLY uninspired for a game that largely avoided mindless fetchquesting with no story bits attached, and you absolutely can not tell me they intended to have X and Y go out without so much as a cutscene. I really do think they had things planned that they couldn't follow through on, and that is so very disappointing, to think about what they could have made of this all if they'd just had more time and budget.

As for some Moebius being older, I think K (you know, the grunt in colony 4) is from the City for sure. Reasoning being that I think real world swears are actually City slang, as evidenced by Matthew using them fairly liberally and Noah only ever saying shit after coming into contact with them; and K also says that Taion's vaunted intuition is full of shit. Don't know what to make of Triton though, when he moves to the City I had the impression he's not from there...

*(Yes, I did drag Isurd into jail with me.)

(lmao. I decided to deal with the mental dissonance byelecting to think that if they're not required for a mission, they weren't there. IIRC I also had him along for the batshit chain attack skill he has, but the plot would simply be too much of a mess if any of the heroes besides Riku and Manana went missing for an entire month like that)

You might be right about the plot losing in a sense of urgency if the term limit was removed, but a) that could have been easily addressed by making X and Y way more active, and starting an all-out war with the Moebius firing off Annihilators and accelerating the production of soldiers a la Miyabi, Cammuravi, in an attempt to reset the playing field b/c if they just kill everyone sufficiently uppity,things will calm back down and b) I... Already kinda felt like the tension regarding the term limit ran out after chapter six >>); Even if we assume Mio was _the oldest amongst all the characters, by the time the eclipse was over, a bunch of them were also tent-term and would have logically been a few weeks at most away from Homecoming.

Honestly, what I really would have wanted was a Xeno 1 style hard line of no return that completely locks you out of doing the Affinity quests for Heroes who died during the time the gang was in prison, like how you could miss out on a bunch of quests in Alcamoth b/c the quest givers get Telethia'd, with a secondary way (perhaps Z's lab in Camp Omega) to raise the level cap for their classes?

Would it be sadistic? Yes. Am I probably gonna incorporate it into a fic for funsies regardless? hehehehehehe

Hmm, I think we may just have to agree to disagree on the term limit removal idea. XD Personally I don't think X and Y getting involved would provide enough tension to replace it, but YMMV.

As iffy as time limited quests can be in video games, for fic material that's a goldmine ahahaha.

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I Have Finished My Draft

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