(EW Spoilers) Tales from the Dawn #5 - Days Gone By, Days Yet to Come

[Cleretic]

This story's focus was specifically stated as being chosen by player poll though, so those that like Azem and the Ancients must be in the majority (I'm one of them ).

Yeah, if there's any time for nostalgic glurge it's this, and it's the reason I left my complaint of 'this is the fifth goddamn short story about the Ancients' aside. But as someone who didn't vote for the Ancients, I feel like I'm allowed to feel a little annoyed that I'm not listened to at all here, and it's just Ancient reiteration with nothing new at all.

It's not even that I wanted 'lore bombs' that majorly reassessed how we look at everything, I just wanted anything at all. Like, consider the Jullus short story just as a random pick: that didn't re-evaluate everything we knew about Garlemald, it's very plausibly missable, but it gave us windows into the Garlean way of thinking around death, and the Solus royal family; it was neat. Hell, it's even true about every single Ancient short story we've had before, which is genuinely kind of impressive for how little they actually had to work with. But this just gives us nothing. It wouldn't even be that bad in a whole batch of stories, because at least you could go 'well, maybe next week's will be better'/'at least last week's was good'. This is the only thing we get, and it's not exactly a pleasing meal for a lot of us.

And the worst part is, they had to have seen this coming, right? Like, we all knew that poll was gonna result in an Ancient story involving Emet-Selch, we've seen the character popularity polls. They painted themselves into a corner where they had to know they had nothing that wasn't a rerun.

[Lunaxia]

Well, that was terrible.

There was simply no reason to post that, except to say "okay, now they're really, really, really dead", when it doesn't offer anything we haven't heard before on multiple occasions.

And do they think we'll be breathing into brown paper bags if they don't reassure us of Emet-Selch's approval of us at least three times in any given story that mentions him? It's almost patronising at this stage.

[SannaR]

I liked it. We learn why Igeyorhm was the only other person to notice a difference in Lahabreha. That they mention Byregot a few times without giving us their ancient name. We also gain a time frame for when this story takes place. The meeting has a high chance of being post Pandeamonium. I do wish we got mention of the 5 Convocation members we don't know a lot about still. Though I guess we do get some role definements from the EE III. That Mitron is technically transsexual and we get cute fan art of them. I love that Byregot and other senior staff knew to not go by procedure whenever Emet-Selch or Azem dropped by. That poor Hermes threw himself into his work to the point of almost collapsing. I'm not sure if we knew they took their meetings without their masks on. As I want to say the last post meeting snippet they had their masks on?

[Cleretic]

That Mitron is technically transsexual and we get cute fan art of them.

Well-meaning bit of correction here: 'transsexual' is a pretty outdated term that fell out of use starting around the late 90s-early 00s, 'transgender' is the more recognized and acceptable one. (Or just 'trans', everyone gets what you mean there too.)

I'm not necessarily sure I'd ascribe that to Mitron, though, just by lack of information; we don't really know how they felt about being in a male body post-awakening. They're definitely somewhere in the gender-diverse ballpark, it's just hard to tell exactly where without some direct input from them.

If only we could've had a short story with enough focus on them to clarify that! Alas.

[Jonnycbad]

This has nothing to do with trans.

Female Artemis was a biological Ancient and the dialogue in the short story uses female pronouns. Male Artemis (Eden) uses male pronouns and is a sundered biological Hyur of a completely different birth name who happened to reincarnate on one of the shards with Artemis's soul and had Artemis's memories awakened by the Convocation Crystal given to him by an Unsundered. Rememeber, it's been 12,000 years since the Sundering and there have been potentially hundreds of people on each shard, both males and females, who have been born, lived, and died with Artemis's soul. Only one at a time was acting as the Ascian "Mitron", and one of them was the one we meet in Eden (dark-skinned, blond-haired male). Emet said he had to replace the Sundered over the years as they fell, so we don't know if Eden's Mitron is the first ever shard of Artemis or the 83rd Reincarnation of Artemis on The Eleventh. Moreover, your WoL can be created as either a male or female, yet Ardbert is always a male. Therefore, souls are not sex-linked and can reincarnate as either male or female bodies.

Also, important to note that the Convocation crystals do not restore all memories to the individual. The Convocation Crystals were created by the 3 Unsundered after the final days and contained THEIR memories of the Convocation. They are biographical, not autobiographical, thus the details of the lives the convocation lived are somewhat vague and limiting. It would be like if you were reincarnated with amnesia and your best friend restored your memories using THEIR memories of you, which leaves out any memories you never shared with them, your internal thoughts, etc.

[SannaR]

Well-meaning bit of correction here: 'transsexual' is a pretty outdated term that fell out of use starting around the late 90s-early 00s, 'transgender' is the more recognized and acceptable one. (Or just 'trans', everyone gets what you mean there too.)

I'm not necessarily sure I'd ascribe that to Mitron, though, just by lack of information; we don't really know how they felt about being in a male body post-awakening. They're definitely somewhere in the gender-diverse ballpark, it's just hard to tell exactly where without some direct input from them.

If only we could've had a short story with enough focus on them to clarify that! Alas.

Yeah I just went with a term that everyone would mostly be fine with. As I'm not part of that community and thus do not keep up with what the current widely used term is. It would be nice if we did get some glance into that, but then I know many in the playerbase wouldn't have liked it. Along with that the game can't really explore that considering who is making it and what sort of things they can't include due to how strict China's guidelines are. I just like that even if it is a sliver of showing that pairing that it now has even less ickyness to draw on. When I mean ickyness I mean how Mitron comes off as a possessive jilted lover during the Eden raid. As people shouldn't be romanticizing toxic relationships even if it is a form of representation.

[Cleretic]

When I mean ickyness I mean how Mitron comes off as a possessive jilted lover during the Eden raid. As people shouldn't be romanticizing toxic relationships even if it is a form of representation.

I mean, I don't think the game does 'romanticize' that relationship, Mitron is very clearly painted as the one in the wrong--and crucially, never gets the luxury of point-of-view in the way Ryne and Gaia do. If you're gonna do 'The Toxic Ex' as an antagonist, Mitron's basically how to do it.

[SannaR]

I mean, I don't think the game does 'romanticize' that relationship, Mitron is very clearly painted as the one in the wrong--and crucially, never gets the luxury of point-of-view in the way Ryne and Gaia do. If you're gonna do 'The Toxic Ex' as an antagonist, Mitron's basically how to do it.

I'm not saying the game does it. I'm saying that even if I haven't seen many or anyone celebrating the toxic ex we do live in a world where there are enjoyers of Joker and Harley Quinn's relationship and feel that they make a cute couple.

Anyway I find that the reason why they removed Azem still dumb as many were already thinking it was. Azem wanted to go and science the crap out of the problem. Where it looks as the rest just wanted to summon Zodiark and then either not bother to find out what Azem's progress was. Or they forgot about it at some point. At least I would like to think some of them even if Azem was labeled a deserter would want to keep tabs on a possible troublemaker. I know that the Zodiark plan was scienced. Just that it now comes off as a let's solve for the symptom and not the root cause of the problem.

[Veloran]

If you're gonna do 'The Toxic Ex' as an antagonist, Mitron's basically how to do it.

Is that why Gaia says they'll be together again after he reincarnates?

Anyway.

The Convocation themselves had called for willing participants, and so Emet-Selch was in no position to deny any the right to volunteer.

[reginleif-]

Seeing a sable soul as Fandaniel's description, I thought the color of his soul was revealed. But in other languages, the description means only a dark unit, a dark figure: 黒の塊 (JP), masse noire (FR), ein schwarzes Etwas (DE). A dark color was possibly implied but wasn't stated.

Another lesson to myself to mind the poetic spirit of the English translation…