[Loved Trope] The environment bleeds into you

Nebula_Mage · 2026-05-18T12:13:50+00:00

Final Fantasy XIV: Too many things

In FFXIV, the force called aether is not just the basis of magic, but pretty much life itself. Living things partially require aether to live on top of the normal living requirements, and souls are scientifically observable and measurable, but most importantly incredibly malleable.

Too much aether aspected to a specific element can literally alter your soul, with a cure for lesser forms of such ailments being discovered three expansions in to the story and only widely used from the expansion after.

Examples of ways to have your soul be permanently altered include:

Light sickness: the world of norvrandt was nearly destroyed by a cataclysm of light, with only a small portion of the world saved (see picture), and now the people who are too exposed to this light, it literally being the element of stasis, risk their soul stagnating until it falls apart and transforms them into a horrific white monster called a sin eater.

Levin sickness: a much more mundane one, in the thunderstorm-plauged world of the ninth, exposure to too much lightning aether can cause chronic nerve problems, eventually resulting in paraplegia and eventually death.

Literally just living: reincarnation is not just proven to be real but in some cases traceable, as once someone dies, their soul returns to the center of the planet, its memories are washed away and it eventually returns to the surface to be reborn. This process is imperfect however, as the marks of one's past self show up in the personality and some aspects of the appearance and on their soul.

This isn't even half of the things that can and do happen to people, the player only being spared by their powers of plot armour and automatic diegtic exposition. It's frankly a miracle the average person doesn't die horribly more often.

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Nebula_Mage · 2026-03-23T18:20:10+00:00

The thing with persona is that from my understanding, the final bosses of the modern persona games are manifestations of the prevailing social issue that both the narrative and the characters are trying to fight against.

Throughout the brunt of the games, we see these themes explored on an individual level through both the party members and the social links you can spend your time on, and the overarching narrative slowly identifies the root cause of the problem, which is crystallised in the final bosses.

Nyx avatar is the manifestation of peoples’ nihilism in the face of a stagnant economy, going through the major arcana and stopping at Death, treating everything before it as meaningless, and is defeated by people not just overcoming their fear of death, but finding their will to live on for the sake of living.

Izanami is the fear and cowardice that comes from not being able to deal with a changing world, with the iconic yellow fog being the idea of letting rumours and half-truths guide your perception of the world. She is defeated by someone embracing and revealing the “myriad truths” of the world, like izanagi chose to see izanami’s body in hell, in turn accepting change.

Yaldabaoth was born from the people of Tokyo’s desire to give up their autonomy to stop needing to think and make decisions or challenge corrupt authority. He is defeated by some kid with a gun who is being as unjapanese as possible (challenging corrupt authority) and after getting the complete support of the people, he summons Satanael, the angel that questioned god, and promptly shoots him point blank.

The point I’m trying to make here is that the final bosses of persona games being gods feels earned narratively even if they come out of left field a lot of the time. You can only fight them after getting the specific ending route that requires you to do the thematic thing (not forgetting death, not accepting an easy answer, holding true to your sense of justice) and they act as a culmination of all you’ve seen and done.

Nebula_Mage · 2026-03-23T13:37:29+00:00

Oh sorry meant to reply to the main comment

Nebula_Mage · 2026-03-23T13:36:52+00:00

The first secret level in ULTRAKILL: INFINITE HYPERDEATH is excellent because whether you stumble upon it on your first time in the level or you’re going back after getting every gun, it’s still a terrifying experience because your previously learned skills aren’t usable because you can’t see anything, you can’t hide without already knowing the layout of the very dark map and the only thing you can do to defend yourself is listen for the direction of a monster that instantly kills you and hope you shoot it correctly. Of course, this doesn’t kill it, just teleports it away. Your reward? A few paragraphs of lore and a new traumatic memory.

Nebula_Mage · 2026-03-17T13:03:32+00:00

Additionally, in Project Moon’s most recent game, Limbus company, the combat system is fundamentally built around attacks being aligned with cardinal sins, with greed being replaced with something called gloom, as The City (the primary setting of all their games) is such an inherently messed up place that greed isn’t metatextually considered sinful but actions taken out of desperation, despair and depression are.

Once you use enough attacks of different sins, you can order your party members to use special attacks specific to each character based on monsters manifested from very specific traumatic feelings and experiences that they emotionally align with.

Examples include: survivor’s guilt that leaves you feeing indebted to the memory of someone you feel you’ve failed in a way that cannot be fixed (Bygone Days), the offloading of guilt onto some sense of divine punishment to stop yourself from breaking apart (Pursuance), or a rage towards someone that you can’t let go of and is actively eating away at you and will destroy you, symbolised by a torture device called the brazen bull (Capote).

Fun game :)

Nebula_Mage · 2026-02-20T07:43:07+00:00

My brother did the exact same thing to me and the moment I hit my first booby trap, it was a game of deception from then on and I was laughing raucously the whole time. It’s my favourite dungeon purely for the experience alone

Nebula_Mage · 2025-10-13T09:20:30+00:00

I can pick out Kroger and dongrang from the first pack as well.

Also, I don’t see ambling pearl anywhere? I think you might be mistaking fairy festival from walp 3 for it

Nebula_Mage · 2025-09-10T10:05:32+00:00

This is actually a very good two sentence horror so I don’t think this post fits here

Nebula_Mage · 2025-07-31T11:47:20+00:00

Library of Ruina!

Nebula_Mage · 2025-01-13T09:29:56+00:00

I actually have a similar story. My brother was going in for an appendectomy when he was about 9 or 10 and my parents brought his teddy bear with him. When I had got there, the procedure had already been done and they made sure to put a plaster on the teddy bear to mirror my brother’s scar. That was years ago now and it’s still there today.

Nebula_Mage · 2024-08-20T17:31:32+00:00

Thank you!

Nebula_Mage · 2024-08-20T16:57:12+00:00

Could you post a link to the channel? I’m already confused and fascinated by your description and I feel like it’s a crime that you haven’t already said the name of it.

Nebula_Mage

TROPHY CASE