I think its important to remember with Wuk, the main thing we see her struggle with early on is a dislike of water, not being in control of her physical movements, and heights. This to me makes a lot of sense for a girl that as a child was kicked down a well.
An interesting parallel imo is that Wuk Lamat's attempted assassin tried to drown her (the hope of the tribe) in the same way thousands of attempted "hopes" for the Mamool Ja were buried in the Skydeep Cenote.
@@jade_harley413 I like the parallel, but without statement I mostly think 'how regularly do people drown in cenotes, that seems like a present concern around here'.
So Yak T'el is basically the Yucatan. 66 million years ago when the meteor that wiped the Dinosaurs hit earth, it crash landed where the Yucatan (Chicxulub crater) is and even today the Yucatan is known for it's Cenotes. Xibruq Pibil is basically Cochinita Pibil, a native Yucatan pork dish (FFXIV MSQ uses Black Ibruq, which is a catfish from spear fishing; although there is a boar-like beastkin known as a Ibruq just outside the quest area which is closer to the irl dish) that is marinated in spices, wrapped in banana leaves and cooked in the ground. And of course the the Yok Huy activity within the area before the Mamool ja, the Yok Huy act almost like the Olmecs which irl existed around 1200 B.C.E - 400 B.C.E. The Olmec's cultural disappearance are attributed with tectonic upheaval and the rerouting of rivers that had caused the low lands of their heartland to become uninhabitable. In the days of the Actecs, they referred to a certain group of people as "Rubber people" which is what Olmec means in Nahuatl. Both the Mayans and the Aztecs have a record of revering and reusing certain Olmec artifacts throughout history.
Whewwwww Skydeep. As a mom who's dealt with a loss in the past, that had me feeling all sort of ways when the reveal happened. And even though BJJ told us how long it was going on, it wasn't until that first cinematic that you go "oh. Oh shit. THAT long."
I think Bakool Ja Ja's VA (Javier Prusky) absolutely sold it. The reveals here really were' like that missing puzzle piece of his entire character. Everything just slid into place so neatly Also as a Roegadyn player, I was real excited every time Ketenramm showed up. Since he's the only Roe around on this side of the world.
I never thought about how there weren't roegadyn, but yeah, he is the only one! I think it's a deliberate call to pin the roegadyn as a clear type of 'foreigner'; they do the same with the lalafel, but to more... explicit ends. And honestly I think every new voice actor in Dawntrail killed it, it's just that some like Javier and Ulysses absolutely owned singular scenes, while others are just batting a solid game all expansion.
So yeah... THIS is the part of the story where I just turned into the Always Sunny meme with the guy in front of the corkboard with the red strings. Everything leading up to the Skydeep Cenote was an absolute treat (though I compared the cooking to Chopped more than Iron Chef, but both work). And the absolute gutpunch to the feels with the reveals in the back half with regards to the Blessed Siblings. And while there is a lot of plant life a lot like the Amazon, Kozama'uka felt more like the Amazon basin around the river. Yak Tel... well, I'm fairly sure it's in the Etheris version of the Yucatan Peninsula, and more specifically, around the equivalent of the Chicxulub crater. The whole split in elevation, the north-eastern (rough) positioning on the zoomed out map, and the fact that there's a massive crater looking thing in that area? I could be wrong, but I feel like there's something there. Particularly with all the other meteor story stuff. Mind... that's all stuff that came well after the first few days of playing that part of the story, and actually doing some serious eyeing up of things. But then we get to the dungeon proper, and it continues the assaults on the feels. Fighting spooky ghosts was an expected result, and we sure got it, right after that stunning showpiece of an entrance cutscene. And then that first boss... yeah, very goofy, very playful, and feeling like it's a problem and should make everyone else feel that way. That's one that hit me hard in retrospective considering it's likely the ghost of one of those failed blessed siblings, who's short existence was effectively a problem for others. Big oof. Then we start seeing the giant's architecture and it's... Ronkan. It's subtle at first, more being the Incan style we saw before, but close to the first boss, we start seeing the similar runes. And enemies that we've seen before. Then the second boss and the whole back third of the dungeon. Notably, the runes here were less the yellow orange of the Ronkan civilization (save the golden portion), and more purple... the color of lightning aether. Yeah, seeing an echo of Ronkan stuff, mixed with an element that we know from previews is related to Solution 9, my brain went about seven directions while fighting Razorface (my nickname for that final boss). I'd have almost called this my favorite arc of DT, but well... Xak Tural happens to still be a thing.
@@brendant.4493 There's parts of the expansion I like more, but taking a detached objective view, Yak T'el is probably the best part of the expansion. Plausibly up there with the all-time greats of FFXIV.
hahaha, the moment the Blessed Siblings from Wanderer's Palace Hard were mentioned I was like... "Oh... OH..." Then Immediately Headcanoned my WoL raising his hand meekly and going "Uhh.. Sorry, My Bad..?" Also, the biggest thing going through my head when I learned what was going on with them were the kinds of *societal* changes the Mamool Ja of Mamook had to endure. Especially the women. Fuck.
I have to disagree with being grouped with Koana being the expected one. I expected us to be paired up with one of the "villainous" contestant and it leading to further drama.
Bakool Ja Ja post reveal got really interesting and even compelling... I just wish they had set him up as a bit less cartoonishly evil Dick Dastardly type beforehand, with some hints that there is actually more to him than just being a jerk.
I'm of two minds about this. Yeah, it would've been nice to have more to him for when he's a main character, but I also think that a big reason Bakool works is because they play to the extremes for his big spotlight scenes.
I'm glad you seem to be enjoying DT. I have some issues with it but I genuinely enjoyed it. Some people are ripping it a new one but almost all of their points are either not true or trash but I guess opinions are subjective right. I do agree with some of the writing and pacing opinions though.
@@HikingFeral To the pacing issue complaint I mostly think 'sure, but every expansion is paced weird'. I actually think Dawntrail is mostly well-paced for what it is; it's a pitch that's always gonna be weird, but they executed it as well as they could've. Meanwhile most other expansions I look at the pacing issues and think 'you can do better'.
A slight quibble with your analysis of the Feat of Repast; Bakool Ja Ja and Zoraal Ja didn't fail because they disregarded the xbr'aal/hrothgar aspect of the dish. They failed because they didn't have the mamool ja contribution to xibruq pibil: the ja tiika banana leaves.
@EinDose From a purely practical standpoint I can understand why Zoraal Ja didn't give the banana leaves any more of a thought for the dish; he was told that the way to the Ja Tiika Heartlands, where the bananas grow, was blocked because of debris from the storm, and as such didn't give it any more thought because the ingredient was, to him, no longer relevant because it could no longer be conventionally obtained in a reasonable time frame for a time sensitive task. Best to simply carry on with what was at hand, namely the method of cooking it, and the ibruq that could be found just outside of Iq Br'aax. Bakool Ja Ja was more concerned with contingencies (namely ambushing Wuk Lamat to take more keystones) that his focus wasn't entirely on the task and how he might best accomplish it. Zoraal Ja was operating as a soldier might, working based on known intelligence at the time and adapting his plan to accommodate that information, and Bakool Ja Ja didn't bring anything new or meaningful to the team. Zoraal Ja failed because he didn't think about getting outside context that seemed extraneous to the task. Wuk Lamat and Koana meanwhile went to learn about things that seemed unrelated to the task itself, and as such were rewarded by being gifted the other ingredient from a secret stash. Sareel Ja's indignation at Hunmu Rruk is understandable in that context, but the electors stated multiple times that they were given leave to determine their challenges as they saw fit.
I’ll state my thoughts on Bakool Ja Ja later but I do like how we at least call him out for using his siblings as an excuse. To him going from basically setting off a nuke in the mountains to this? Yeah someone had to tell him that what he’s doing won’t make his siblings proud.
So. Even before the split second shot of the jars in Bakool Ja Ja's freak out, I was very tense about Blessed Siblings and wondering throughout all of DT just how *dark* was SE going to go with a plot point of an entrenched tradition that depended on arranged marriages producing special children. Because that called for unhappy mothers in forced marriages and a bunch of rejected siblings. I thought that was BJJ's angst going from his taco scene intro - that he had a bunch of one-headed siblings and knew that he could have been rejected and neglected and thus his desperation, facade bigotry, and drive to uplift their status. Then the jars. And I already knew about the connection to human - specifically young child - sacrifices and cenotes. (If at any point a rain god would have been mentioned I would have started screaming). So after that, I was crying. I was crying enough to make myself sick when they introduced the Autarch and there was a female Mamool Ja behind him because I *knew* . All that was going through my head was questioning SE on how dark were they willing to go, whether it would go to wide-scale infanticide or pick the slightly softer option of stillbirth. They went with that softer option but I still needed a few hours break before continuing the MSQ and the dungeon was hard. Had ANY of those ghost mobs started doing the Ga Bu Titan thing and talking, I would have quit. The palpable relief when the boss and rest of the dungeon switched enemies was Immense. Also was initially surprised that Wuk Lamat wasn't paired with a Mamool Ja for the reality show cooking contest- and definitely suspect tribal bias was helping her w/ the villagers' willingness to drop hints.
same, I honestly was thinking "oh, we'll probably be getting introduced to a village full of those those exiles they deemed failures." But then.....no. It was worse.
@@sennaka Yeah when Bakool Ja Ja was talking in his intro about bringing his family out into the sun, I thought, "oh no you have a bunch of slightly older and maybe younger one-headed siblings that your parents mistreat and you want save them and support them and give them happy fun childhoods". And ... 😬 sort of right
@@CH-dr1ds I do love this story's willingness to throw a punch on this. There's a lot of ways they could've made this beat hurt, and they picked one of the hardest ones.
@@EinDose "Killing the soul of your people" was the most perfect way to describe it. Having the side quest with another set of parents also helped to flesh out and deepen the pathos of this beat
Since I didn't pick up on the hints leading up to Ketenramm's reveal, my initial reaction when he appeared was "Ketenramm the Blue came out of the blue!" I feel like I should apologize for that pun, but I won't. One world-building detail that stood out to me in Yak T'el was the names of the Turali Hrothgar. There is a lot of repeating names that are combined in various ways, and it doesn't seem they are determined by clan or parentage. I suspect that their names are based on their namedays (like if you're born on March 7th, your name would be March 7th). Hopefully this will be explained in the future, because I've been thinking of creating a Turali Hrothgar as an Alt char.
@@NoOne-gg5mc I've seen peopel trying to piece that together, and it seems to be 'day of week-day of month'. But we only have 22-ish surnames to go off, so it doesn't entirely line up.
The dungeon boss isnt unique its a reskinned Phase 2 Titan from E4S even using some of the same attacks. Though curiously has Aries symbols on its face
I meant 'new' as in 'not explicitly a callback reference', like how Ihuykatumu's final boss is from FFIX and Worqor Zormor's is from FFXI. I didn't actually recognize the reused skeleton, though!
big agree on most of the video! one thing i like about the yak t'el music is that the wailing female vocals feel like an auditory callback to bozja, the other hrothgar-heavy War Is Hell zone in ffxiv. and now that you bring up rak'tika, that's the other zone with that type of vocal! it feels like it could remind someone of both places, which makes sense for what yak t'el is all about. i also agree that an interesting path not taken would be for wuk lamat to pair up with one of the mamool ja claimants considering the zone's history, but i also think the path it did take was more good setup for her and koana's eventual partnership. personally i was like "oh boy, i hope i get some more endearing sibling stuff from them!" so i was excited when the straws were pulled as they were hahahaha. like most xiv expansions (besides arr and hvw tbh) i find that the more i think and listen about dt, the more depth and texture there is to enjoy, and these videos have been an awesome window into someone's great thoughts! (and great stuff to listen to as i level trusts heheh)
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
I think its important to remember with Wuk, the main thing we see her struggle with early on is a dislike of water, not being in control of her physical movements, and heights. This to me makes a lot of sense for a girl that as a child was kicked down a well.
Ooh, that's probably the angle, yeah
You know how there are tons of Mamool Ja children and happy parents in Tuliyollal? There are no children in Mamook.
I knew about the kids, but I didn't think about the fact Mamook DOESN'T have them!
An interesting parallel imo is that Wuk Lamat's attempted assassin tried to drown her (the hope of the tribe) in the same way thousands of attempted "hopes" for the Mamool Ja were buried in the Skydeep Cenote.
@@jade_harley413 I like the parallel, but without statement I mostly think 'how regularly do people drown in cenotes, that seems like a present concern around here'.
So Yak T'el is basically the Yucatan. 66 million years ago when the meteor that wiped the Dinosaurs hit earth, it crash landed where the Yucatan (Chicxulub crater) is and even today the Yucatan is known for it's Cenotes. Xibruq Pibil is basically Cochinita Pibil, a native Yucatan pork dish (FFXIV MSQ uses Black Ibruq, which is a catfish from spear fishing; although there is a boar-like beastkin known as a Ibruq just outside the quest area which is closer to the irl dish) that is marinated in spices, wrapped in banana leaves and cooked in the ground. And of course the the Yok Huy activity within the area before the Mamool ja, the Yok Huy act almost like the Olmecs which irl existed around 1200 B.C.E - 400 B.C.E. The Olmec's cultural disappearance are attributed with tectonic upheaval and the rerouting of rivers that had caused the low lands of their heartland to become uninhabitable. In the days of the Actecs, they referred to a certain group of people as "Rubber people" which is what Olmec means in Nahuatl. Both the Mayans and the Aztecs have a record of revering and reusing certain Olmec artifacts throughout history.
Whewwwww Skydeep. As a mom who's dealt with a loss in the past, that had me feeling all sort of ways when the reveal happened.
And even though BJJ told us how long it was going on, it wasn't until that first cinematic that you go "oh. Oh shit. THAT long."
@@sennaka That shot might be my favorite in the entire expansion.
I think Bakool Ja Ja's VA (Javier Prusky) absolutely sold it. The reveals here really were' like that missing puzzle piece of his entire character. Everything just slid into place so neatly
Also as a Roegadyn player, I was real excited every time Ketenramm showed up. Since he's the only Roe around on this side of the world.
I never thought about how there weren't roegadyn, but yeah, he is the only one! I think it's a deliberate call to pin the roegadyn as a clear type of 'foreigner'; they do the same with the lalafel, but to more... explicit ends.
And honestly I think every new voice actor in Dawntrail killed it, it's just that some like Javier and Ulysses absolutely owned singular scenes, while others are just batting a solid game all expansion.
When Koana blasted his tablet to smithereens, dear reader, I cheered SO loud. Let's hear it for the boy!
He coulda just say he resigns. But nooooooo.....
He had to make a statement 😂
@@rajabuta Yeah, but think of the morale boost for Wuk Lamat. "I support the **** out of my sister!"
So yeah... THIS is the part of the story where I just turned into the Always Sunny meme with the guy in front of the corkboard with the red strings.
Everything leading up to the Skydeep Cenote was an absolute treat (though I compared the cooking to Chopped more than Iron Chef, but both work). And the absolute gutpunch to the feels with the reveals in the back half with regards to the Blessed Siblings. And while there is a lot of plant life a lot like the Amazon, Kozama'uka felt more like the Amazon basin around the river. Yak Tel... well, I'm fairly sure it's in the Etheris version of the Yucatan Peninsula, and more specifically, around the equivalent of the Chicxulub crater. The whole split in elevation, the north-eastern (rough) positioning on the zoomed out map, and the fact that there's a massive crater looking thing in that area? I could be wrong, but I feel like there's something there. Particularly with all the other meteor story stuff. Mind... that's all stuff that came well after the first few days of playing that part of the story, and actually doing some serious eyeing up of things.
But then we get to the dungeon proper, and it continues the assaults on the feels. Fighting spooky ghosts was an expected result, and we sure got it, right after that stunning showpiece of an entrance cutscene. And then that first boss... yeah, very goofy, very playful, and feeling like it's a problem and should make everyone else feel that way. That's one that hit me hard in retrospective considering it's likely the ghost of one of those failed blessed siblings, who's short existence was effectively a problem for others. Big oof. Then we start seeing the giant's architecture and it's... Ronkan. It's subtle at first, more being the Incan style we saw before, but close to the first boss, we start seeing the similar runes. And enemies that we've seen before. Then the second boss and the whole back third of the dungeon. Notably, the runes here were less the yellow orange of the Ronkan civilization (save the golden portion), and more purple... the color of lightning aether. Yeah, seeing an echo of Ronkan stuff, mixed with an element that we know from previews is related to Solution 9, my brain went about seven directions while fighting Razorface (my nickname for that final boss).
I'd have almost called this my favorite arc of DT, but well... Xak Tural happens to still be a thing.
Definitely my favorite part of the expac. The music when we walk into the door that leads to another door had me in chills.
@@brendant.4493 There's parts of the expansion I like more, but taking a detached objective view, Yak T'el is probably the best part of the expansion. Plausibly up there with the all-time greats of FFXIV.
hahaha, the moment the Blessed Siblings from Wanderer's Palace Hard were mentioned I was like... "Oh... OH..."
Then Immediately Headcanoned my WoL raising his hand meekly and going "Uhh.. Sorry, My Bad..?"
Also, the biggest thing going through my head when I learned what was going on with them were the kinds of *societal* changes the Mamool Ja of Mamook had to endure.
Especially the women. Fuck.
I have to disagree with being grouped with Koana being the expected one. I expected us to be paired up with one of the "villainous" contestant and it leading to further drama.
Bakool Ja Ja post reveal got really interesting and even compelling... I just wish they had set him up as a bit less cartoonishly evil Dick Dastardly type beforehand, with some hints that there is actually more to him than just being a jerk.
I'm of two minds about this. Yeah, it would've been nice to have more to him for when he's a main character, but I also think that a big reason Bakool works is because they play to the extremes for his big spotlight scenes.
I'm glad you seem to be enjoying DT. I have some issues with it but I genuinely enjoyed it. Some people are ripping it a new one but almost all of their points are either not true or trash but I guess opinions are subjective right. I do agree with some of the writing and pacing opinions though.
@@HikingFeral To the pacing issue complaint I mostly think 'sure, but every expansion is paced weird'. I actually think Dawntrail is mostly well-paced for what it is; it's a pitch that's always gonna be weird, but they executed it as well as they could've. Meanwhile most other expansions I look at the pacing issues and think 'you can do better'.
A slight quibble with your analysis of the Feat of Repast; Bakool Ja Ja and Zoraal Ja didn't fail because they disregarded the xbr'aal/hrothgar aspect of the dish. They failed because they didn't have the mamool ja contribution to xibruq pibil: the ja tiika banana leaves.
@@BlazeIgnitus that's a bit of a deeper reflection of the same thing, I like it. They approached it as JUST a xbr'aal dish.
@EinDose From a purely practical standpoint I can understand why Zoraal Ja didn't give the banana leaves any more of a thought for the dish; he was told that the way to the Ja Tiika Heartlands, where the bananas grow, was blocked because of debris from the storm, and as such didn't give it any more thought because the ingredient was, to him, no longer relevant because it could no longer be conventionally obtained in a reasonable time frame for a time sensitive task. Best to simply carry on with what was at hand, namely the method of cooking it, and the ibruq that could be found just outside of Iq Br'aax.
Bakool Ja Ja was more concerned with contingencies (namely ambushing Wuk Lamat to take more keystones) that his focus wasn't entirely on the task and how he might best accomplish it.
Zoraal Ja was operating as a soldier might, working based on known intelligence at the time and adapting his plan to accommodate that information, and Bakool Ja Ja didn't bring anything new or meaningful to the team. Zoraal Ja failed because he didn't think about getting outside context that seemed extraneous to the task.
Wuk Lamat and Koana meanwhile went to learn about things that seemed unrelated to the task itself, and as such were rewarded by being gifted the other ingredient from a secret stash. Sareel Ja's indignation at Hunmu Rruk is understandable in that context, but the electors stated multiple times that they were given leave to determine their challenges as they saw fit.
I’ll state my thoughts on Bakool Ja Ja later but I do like how we at least call him out for using his siblings as an excuse. To him going from basically setting off a nuke in the mountains to this? Yeah someone had to tell him that what he’s doing won’t make his siblings proud.
@@LightbladeRiulo After so many villains who do use their tragedies as an excuse, it'a really refreshing.
Enjoying the videos! 33:20 "Indigenous futurism" is a term people use sometimes I believe.
So. Even before the split second shot of the jars in Bakool Ja Ja's freak out, I was very tense about Blessed Siblings and wondering throughout all of DT just how *dark* was SE going to go with a plot point of an entrenched tradition that depended on arranged marriages producing special children. Because that called for unhappy mothers in forced marriages and a bunch of rejected siblings. I thought that was BJJ's angst going from his taco scene intro - that he had a bunch of one-headed siblings and knew that he could have been rejected and neglected and thus his desperation, facade bigotry, and drive to uplift their status.
Then the jars.
And I already knew about the connection to human - specifically young child - sacrifices and cenotes. (If at any point a rain god would have been mentioned I would have started screaming). So after that, I was crying. I was crying enough to make myself sick when they introduced the Autarch and there was a female Mamool Ja behind him because I *knew* . All that was going through my head was questioning SE on how dark were they willing to go, whether it would go to wide-scale infanticide or pick the slightly softer option of stillbirth. They went with that softer option but I still needed a few hours break before continuing the MSQ and the dungeon was hard. Had ANY of those ghost mobs started doing the Ga Bu Titan thing and talking, I would have quit. The palpable relief when the boss and rest of the dungeon switched enemies was Immense.
Also was initially surprised that Wuk Lamat wasn't paired with a Mamool Ja for the reality show cooking contest- and definitely suspect tribal bias was helping her w/ the villagers' willingness to drop hints.
same, I honestly was thinking "oh, we'll probably be getting introduced to a village full of those those exiles they deemed failures." But then.....no. It was worse.
@@sennaka Yeah when Bakool Ja Ja was talking in his intro about bringing his family out into the sun, I thought, "oh no you have a bunch of slightly older and maybe younger one-headed siblings that your parents mistreat and you want save them and support them and give them happy fun childhoods". And ... 😬 sort of right
@@CH-dr1ds I do love this story's willingness to throw a punch on this. There's a lot of ways they could've made this beat hurt, and they picked one of the hardest ones.
@@EinDose "Killing the soul of your people" was the most perfect way to describe it. Having the side quest with another set of parents also helped to flesh out and deepen the pathos of this beat
I can't wait to see your theorycrafting for Tender Valley.
I have thoughts, but I don't have thoughts enough to have a specific place to say them.
love your videos, just need that out there. Also love Sena Bryer's acting as Wut Lamut.
Also getting real sick and tired of right wing haters.
Since I didn't pick up on the hints leading up to Ketenramm's reveal, my initial reaction when he appeared was "Ketenramm the Blue came out of the blue!"
I feel like I should apologize for that pun, but I won't.
One world-building detail that stood out to me in Yak T'el was the names of the Turali Hrothgar. There is a lot of repeating names that are combined in various ways, and it doesn't seem they are determined by clan or parentage. I suspect that their names are based on their namedays (like if you're born on March 7th, your name would be March 7th). Hopefully this will be explained in the future, because I've been thinking of creating a Turali Hrothgar as an Alt char.
@@NoOne-gg5mc I've seen peopel trying to piece that together, and it seems to be 'day of week-day of month'. But we only have 22-ish surnames to go off, so it doesn't entirely line up.
The dungeon boss isnt unique its a reskinned Phase 2 Titan from E4S even using some of the same attacks. Though curiously has Aries symbols on its face
I meant 'new' as in 'not explicitly a callback reference', like how Ihuykatumu's final boss is from FFIX and Worqor Zormor's is from FFXI. I didn't actually recognize the reused skeleton, though!
big agree on most of the video! one thing i like about the yak t'el music is that the wailing female vocals feel like an auditory callback to bozja, the other hrothgar-heavy War Is Hell zone in ffxiv. and now that you bring up rak'tika, that's the other zone with that type of vocal! it feels like it could remind someone of both places, which makes sense for what yak t'el is all about. i also agree that an interesting path not taken would be for wuk lamat to pair up with one of the mamool ja claimants considering the zone's history, but i also think the path it did take was more good setup for her and koana's eventual partnership. personally i was like "oh boy, i hope i get some more endearing sibling stuff from them!" so i was excited when the straws were pulled as they were hahahaha. like most xiv expansions (besides arr and hvw tbh) i find that the more i think and listen about dt, the more depth and texture there is to enjoy, and these videos have been an awesome window into someone's great thoughts! (and great stuff to listen to as i level trusts heheh)
wait, there a side quest that talks about Fantasias?
Yeah, they added a yellow quest with a fantasia as a reward so now it's canon
In Uldah
@@Anadarksoul1701 There's not much it adds story-wise beyond 'yeah they exist', but that's still something!
@@EinDose well that neat either way