Quote Originally Posted by Kozh View Post
Okay first of all, that's kind of unfair. It's a rewrite but we're not allowed to create new character or add something to the lore? You might as well kill a big portion of fanfics on ao3. And speaking of that, I remember that EW does introduce us to a major new character with no prior build-up or mention at all, which is Meteion. And no, the morse code on CT isn't meteion.
Meteion was meant to be a "come from nowhere" character by the writers and apparently they had that idea going back to 2019 after ShB released. I don't agree with that or Meteion's everything but at least she shows up at the end of the expansion under the context of us going to Elpis to find the cause of the Final Days.

Aveyond's fanfic expansion just starts with Gaius randomly calling up a random Garlean noble's name who normally couldn't even be in consideration for the throne and Thancred immediately leaves the party to go hunt her down and rescue her because she's Aveyond's super special OC and everything in his rewrite from the beginning revolves around her.

People are allowed to make their own fanfics as long as they admit they're fanfics. But the difference is that Aveyond treats his rewrite as objectively better than what we got so his writing is going to be looked at with a different level of criticism.


Quote Originally Posted by Kozh View Post
Now to a more sensitive topic, I'm guessing people have problem with some states depicted as being better under the Empire rule? As seen with Bozja, it's not too farfetched I'd say. We know that not all garleans are evil, as seen with Maxima and the Populares. Gaius is pretty respectable guy too, a shame that ARR can't exactly explore his chivalrous side. To make the Empire all evil is boring to me. And in real life, we do have people who think their nation was better when they're still under other nation's rule.

I have no problem with that and the Bozja storyline also talks about that. But Bozja's capital was also accidentally disintegrated due to Bozjan rule so I don't think you can say they were better after the Garleans came. The field records go into the fact that the new Bozjan government will encounter resistance from those who liked the way it was before better so it's not ignored. But the rebellion was made with the specific purpose of letting Bozja's people determine their own path forward

We don't know the extent of the popularity the Populares had, but most of them who were active with their discontent ended up getting gassed so I don't think they were very influential or powerful unless Varis was willing to kill a large chunk of his government, though I wouldn't be surprised. The reaper storyline has the Lemures flee Garlemald after a failed assassination attempt on Solus for steering the empire into the ground. So there are "good" Garleans from the perspective of Eorzea, but it doesn't mean that the empire as a whole isn't a bad thing just because there are some good people and some of the provinces end up better than they were before. Besides the act of conquering and all the death and destruction that comes with it, all provincials are treated as second-class citizens compared to pureblood Garleans and get conscripted and sent to the other side of the empire to fight their expansionist wars. Miqo'te and Roegadyn are assigned the surnames "captured" and "fat" respectively. In Landis, magic-using knights were hunted down and killed after the country fell. Religion is banned and culture is erased wherever they go.

The problem with them goes all the way up to the leadership and the creation of the empire. As we all know, they were created by an Ascian, who cared nothing at all for the Garleans themselves, and kept expanding and molding the Garlean culture to be what it is with the goal that it would cause strife and set up a Calamity, as he had done with the Allagans before. He had such little regard to his creation that he left a parting gift of a civil war behind and even he was surprised with how violent and destructive it was. His successor's goal was to destroy the whole world over and over and in the 8UC timeline his first attempt at a Calamity destroyed Garlemald there too.

The issue with suggesting that some of the provinces are better off under Garlean rule is that not even the Garleans are better off under Garlean rule. Even with Bozja's capital melted and Rabanastre bombed to rubble, the Garleans have probably ended up being the most badly affected by the Garlean Empire and now exist as refugees in their own homeland.