newhorizonsxiv

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I'M DOING MY FUCKING BEST, OKAY?! IT'S TIME FOR:

⭐"DOES THIS CHARACTER KNOW WHAT SEX IS?" THURSDAY⭐

THIS WEEK: ZENOS YAE GALVUS (FFXIV)

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HUGE thank you to Robert Vernon for accepting my silly meme request. It's finally real.

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a while back i asked luke allen-gale (zenos' VA) to read this dumb comic i drew and i don't think i ever posted it here lolol

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An RP group that I used to belong to did exactly this. It was a bi-monthly roulette where you'd submit a character and choose from a little list of possible scenarios which ones you were ok with being assigned and then got randomly matched with other people who'd picked at least one of the same scenarios. We used Google docs for the applications and then DMed people their chosen partner and scenario w/ relevant contact info and it was up to them to schedule it between themselves. It led to some fun RP. Doing it on a larger scale might be cumbersome but at least you could crowdsource the scenario ideas. In practice coming up with a fresh list of those every other month was the hardest part. But you could set up a thing to have people submit their own ideas for future scenarios and that could be fun too.

Someone stop me, I am having thoughts and they are dangerous.

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its always "youre cute" and never "you have bewitched me body and soul and i love, love, love you."

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For me it's the love for my characters and above all it's RP and the friends I've made through it. I'm starting to build a nice little community of like-minded RPers to run longer form plot with and it's been waking up creativity that lay dormant for a long block of chronic illness and accompanying depression. Lately the game has been the thing making me want to get out of bed and I'm so grateful for that.

Dear FFXIV community,

What keeps you going? What keeps you logging in and playing? What makes you want to be on the game?

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Do you ever write a sentence and then realize “Nah, that’s too self aware for you” and backspace a bunch of times.

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I said I was going to do a new drive for the New Year! It's a teensy bit late, but it's the thought that counts.

Hi! My name is Sea, and I like to collect things. 💙

Specifically, as of February this year, I have made it my mission to collect as many resources for the Final Fantasy community as I can; including, but not limited to: Communities, Events, Free Companies, How-To Guides, Lore, Tools and more! I have compiled them into Sea's Community Compendium for FFXIV Creatives, a venture I hope will service as a directory for new and old FFXIV players alike to find places and things they might not otherwise know about, and I'm proud to say that the Compendium has over a hundred individual entries!

...But I want more.

Specifically, as much as this is a call to introduce new people to the Compendium, it is a call for anyone who might know of specific resources/communities that not in the document to take a moment's time out of their day to let me know about them. You can submit specific resources via:

My tumblr dm's.

This handy google form.

Or SEAFLOOR, my support and social community for the Compendium and adjacent projects.

You do not need to be a resource/server owner to submit; there just needs to be a publicly accessible link. ✨

Projects like mine equally cannot survive without the support of the community. If you like what I do, please reblog this post or share it with your friends; post it in your community servers or link it on your social media(s). The more visibility I get, the larger the Compendium becomes and the more likely you are to find a resource or community to suit your needs.

Okay, but really, Is my space suitable for the Compendium? Most of the time, yes! Below the read more is some more information/stipulations. This is all publicly available on the document.

Below are the following things I do not accept on the Compendium:

Personal/Single-Character LFC ads. (Though these get posted to the SEAFLOOR Tumblr Community when I find them!)

Content intended for or can be used for bullying, harassment and OOC gossip. E.g. ‘Secrets’ blogs, receipts, callout posts, etc. This does not include IC tabloid blogs or other ventures used to generate roleplay.

Communities that do not have an RP/writing element (large-scale exempt).

Modding outside of general how-to guides and compendiums of a similar spirit to this. This is for no other reason other than I do not want the document to be drowned in mod-related links.

Anything I find personally distasteful or goes against the spirit of this project.

Common-sense rule applies.

I want to put my community on the Compendium but we have an application process. Is this okay?

Yes! Just note somewhere in your application that's a requirement. The only thing that is mandatory for the Compendium is that you must be open to new members or have a public-facing/accessible facet. There's no point advertising a community if no one can join it in some way!

I want to put my Community on the compendium but I only have x number of members —

Also totally okay! People don't start with large communities. Activity is a must but, whether your server has two or two thousand members, if you're looking for new people to join, I'd love to help you find people.

I want to put my community/resource on the Compendium but I worry its too niche?

Okay, and? If your Eorzean Fishing Alliance has four members but you roleplay every second weekend, I still want to know about it. The same goes for resources; if it's relevant to the game, it'll be useful to someone.

How active does a community need to be?

If you find a community has not been active in about two/three months, send me a message and I'll take a look at it. Communities have ebbs and flows, especially event spaces that may take hiatuses depending on member interest/life events. I'm not strict in my implementation provided a space isn't dead. If a link or anything is broken, contact me asap!

I have [insert a question not stated here]?

No drama! Send me an ask or use the #Compendium channel in my Discord!

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Playerscope, modding and the hunt for aesthetic: why you should be more upset about mods and community expectations than you already are.

I love that this sounds like an academic paper but HONESTLYYYY. I need to put my thoughts to paper in regards to my burnout with xiv, otherwise I think I'll go insane. This is a controversial yet brave post. I am well aware that I partake in some of the things I'm going to be critiquing; aka, "thank you, dinklebottom, we live in a society." I'm also not critiquing mods from a space of offering more accessibility to people and/or facilitating representation not currently offered within the context of the game. There is nuance to every discussion and I'm coming at this from an overarching view around mods and community expectations/standards rather than player joy. I hope this makes sense. I'm also predominately writing from a roleplay perspective, though I'm sure a lot of what I end up saying can reflect in the art party/social space. Just know if I haven't mentioned the latter it's because that's not my scene and I don't pretend to know otherwise.

Anyway. For those who don't know, there's a new mod that's causing some strife in the xiv community called Playerscope. Here is the reddit thread about it. I'm not going to be talking too much about the mod in general because that's not the point of this post, but seeing discussion around it today just made me feel more exhausted than I already am when it comes to modding and the xiv community around it. It made me realise... I'm actually really sick to death of mods. I'm sick to death of what they're doing to the community when it comes to gatekeeping, policing and in general the interactions we have with each other in the community.

Let me explain: I wrote a post about the roleplay mod on bsky that kind of articulates at a surface level what I mean.

I think what makes me sad, which I'm sure is echoed by a lot of people, is that mods feel like the standard now rather than an option and that there's a certain expectation for people to have them if they want to engage with facets of the community—whether intentional or not.

Unlike XIV, WoW has a supported mod scene (within reason) and TRP 2 and the like have been accepted for years now. In a space where people can't slap on an RP tag, having that tool readily identifies you as a writer/roleplayer and you can include as much or as little of your character as you like. The general idea is if you have one of these tools enabled, you're a roleplayer to some capacity. You can dress up the profile to a certain degree, you can add links and supported pictures, but you're mostly reliant on what you put to paper in regards to your character. Even then, I find filling out what my character is doing currently and marking the rest as a WIP doesn't necessarily exclude me from roleplay if I want to find it. A lot of people will do that and a super simple description to incite interest around their oc.

These days in XIV... I don't know. I do think communities have gotten more insular—it's why I'm so pedantic about trying to find them for the Compendium—but I also think mods and, to a certain extent, the 'nightclub' scene have gotten in the way of it as well. My argument is such.

I want to go to an event (for example sake, I'll call it Seascape). In order to fully participate, I may need:

Their discord.

A roleplay addon.

A carrd/google site/etc.

Their synchshell (including mods, mare and everything else)

Potentially a mod of some description so people know I can see theirs (and vice versa).

Also that your mod isn't made by a shitty person.

Appropriate understanding of the scene/social space.

Some luck and a prayer that it's an inclusive space and not a closed rp group advertising as being open and/or a mod showcase advertising itself as something different.

Like??? Holy shit you guys. If you are someone who doesn't want to mod because you're worried about repercussions it really just feels like a big 'fuck you, good luck'.

And let me be clear, not every community is like this. I'm incredibly lucky to have found fantastic roleplay within my own rp event/community, I have great friends who run awesome, inclusive events for people of any skill (writing or otherwise) and I do fully believe you can just enable the rp tag and find fun, fulfilling roleplay. But I've also found the above a lot of times, too. I've had people point-blank get mad at my partner because he won't install mods and try to exclude and/or circumvent him in spaces. It's weird. I've been to events where the only time I felt like I got proper interaction(s) was when I joined the aforementioned, even if I have my character's profile linked in my about. It's weird.

Honestly, no wonder new roleplayers feel overwhelmed. Not only do they have to learn roleplay etiquette, they have to be a mod expert overnight? It feels less about what someone can bring to the table as far as a story but what mods they can install to either look cool or pass an unspoken social barrier. As much as I'm down bad for aesthetic and looking the part, I hate it being at the cost of accessibility and fun for someone else.

Arguably it's the same for gposing and the like as well, which contributes to my exhaustion alongside all the graphical changes and I just. I'm gnawing at the bars of my cage.

I don't think it's going to change and arguably it's more of a Twitter/X issue than a Tumblr, one but Tumblr lets me write mini essays and Twitter will tell me to kms.

Ergo, I'll go with the essay-writing platform.

Anyway, I guess this is just a reminder that you don't need 4596419651 mods to be in the community and that people should be more vigilant on including people who don't have them for whatever reason, provided they operate in good-faith and want to contribute. I think we're careening to a slippery slope of expectation for something unsupported and I don't like it.

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It Kwehmas.

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HUH YEAH WHAT KIND OF PIECE OF SHIT WOULD DO THAT MY MAN? WHO COULD EVER?????

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It would be really funny if the Blood Lily is something only the wol can do. No modern white mages have done that one before and Kan E Senna is too scared to bring it up to you

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guy from a generic fantasy world that finds themself isekaid into another, equally generic fantasy world

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Dynamic references to the swinging action of the scythe-like weapons by 止戈zhige

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i decided i wanted to vaguely put out my thoughts on one particular thing on dawntrail

i'm not a good wordsmith or anything so don't expect anything profound lol

not that i think this will reach anyone anyway, it's almost 5am

i'll put it under a cut, that seems polite

generally i liked dawntrail but the thing that particularly bothered me (and, from what i understand, many people) were the scions.

ffxiv spent basically every expansion having you get to know these characters in one way or another until shadowbringers and endwalker where it really started hammering in that these people are supposed to be your very good friends, probably even your family.

well, the wol's but you get it.

like, to me, at least, there was definitely a found family vibe going on at the end of ew. and i liked how much it showed how much they cared about the wol.

but then dawntrail happens and, as my partner put it, they just kind of become like your coworkers? and, in some cases, coworkers that don't particularly like each other.

they sure are there. and you sure do stuff together. but. it definitely doesn't particularly feel like you went to the ends of the universe with these people except for maybe that one (1) scene with g'raha. there were a lot of opportunities to just add a little extra something to acknowledge the connection between the wol and the scions but it's left empty.

and i get it, we're building up a new story arc, we want new characters and backstory and stuff, but i feel like with that, we really could have just... left the scions to do their own thing? maybe call them in towards the end 'cause we need the big guns now but.

idk.

maybe we just go to tuliyollal with krile because she's technically the one we know about the least and she has reason to go anyway and then later in patches we have to find the scions for whatever reason and tell them about all the crazy shit we went through.

honestly estinien can still be there like a fucking cryptid, seems accurate. just maybe give us a bit more lol

doing this weird halfway thing really did a disservice i think and they should've went all in on the scions being there or just not had them come with the wol at all.

buuuut that's just meeee