#also i just think minfilia was so ambitious

[rigil-kentauris]

Prompt #15: Free Day

here is the second thing about minfilia warde:

she wants, so badly she's scared it is seeping from cracks in her skin. she wants a world where her walkers are treasured. she wants a world where the moon hangs calmly in the sky. she wants to save eorzea from itself. she wants to lead. she wants to stride. she is antecedent of the scions and she wants that position of power to be so high and so potent that the air, she thinks, would starve her should she ever attain it.

the warrior of light walks into her world and that, she wants too. to have. (to hold.) to use. (to be used).

the warrior of light is the most powerful weapon in the span of an age.

her smile makes minfilia want to put her head in her knees and cry.

minfilia wants more than this world would ever agree to give her... but she has lived with the empire at her back.

she knows what power will do to a person.

she boxes the want up, and keeps the fire closed behind her teeth.

Prompt #13: Butte

here is the thing about minfilia warde:

she has collected broken pieces around her like a shroud. her echo marked her, yes. isolated her. alienated her. no one cast her from her home - not for that reason, anyway. no one called her a freak and drew back all while casting about for something to throw.

no one tried to kill her over a short, stark superstition.

she loves her fellow walkers so fierce it makes her eyes sting, sometimes. she will weather anything for them.

louisoix will die. the world will end. the world will face its end again.

minfilia will hold on to the talus around her hard enough to break her own fingers, if need be.

her echo is a gift.

her people are loved.

she will not allow it to be otherwise.

[likemosaic]

✏️ zenos n yotsuyu but also maybe. minfilia and ryne LOL

send in a ✏️ for quote(s) for our muses from the incorrect quotes generator! / @aetheryic

FOR MINFILIA & RYNE (feat dadcred) -

Ryne: Bottling up negative emotions is bad for your health, so you shouldn't do it. Minfilia: I know, that's why I bottle up all my emotions, both positive and negative, so it cancels out. Ryne: Th-that's not how that works-

---

Ryne: Hostage or not, sometimes it’s nice being held. Minfilia: Are you okay.

---

Minfilia: You ever see something that changes your life and you're just like "huh.." Ryne: I saw you. Minfilia: Honestly that's so cute and sweet but it kinda makes this awkward because I was gonna show you a picture of Thancred in a turkey costume.

---

FOR ZENOS & YOTSUYU:

Zenos: Are you ready to commit? Yotsuyu: Like, a crime or a relationship?

---

Yotsuyu: Do you think sex without love is a sin? Zenos: If it is, I’ll see you in hell.

---

Zenos: What are you in the mood for? Yotsuyu: World domination. Zenos: That's a bit ambitious. Yotsuyu: You are my world. Zenos: Aww... Yotsuyu: Zenos: Yotsuyu: Zenos: OH.

[redwayfarers]

1, 9 & 10 your choice what you wanna yell about

ooh ty for dropping by!

q1. the character everyone gets wrong

D'ARTAGNAN. i didn't have much of an opinion about him before reading the book but after having read it... i think that a lot of people get d'artagnan - and also the whole fucking book - WRONG. fuck any interpretation that doesn't portray him as ambitious, self-centered, vengeful, prideful and violent. he has his good sides but like. he's not a nice person, not in the slightest, and this is the hill i wanna die on.

fandom-wise, though, i think people are not seeing minfilia as they could - i personally prefer darker readings of both her and artoirel - which. i need to see her acting like a political animal she could be, regardless of her noble causes.

9. worst part of canon

canon of what? this is heavily context dependent but since i'm stuck on three musketeers and ffxiv...

three musketeers: character of constance bonacieux. i get her role but i desperately wish she got the same interesting factor milady winter did, and instead she just ends up as d'artagnan's love interest who... dies. literal damsel in distress. i appreciate any attempt to try and give her more of a role.

ffxiv: listen, i think the game has a lot of good, but i'm really not that huge on wol as a character? individual wols are great, both oc and design wise, but wol as they are in the game... and i get it, the game needs a protagonist, but i think they'd appeal more to me if they were 1) voiced, 2) not reduced to stoic nods, 3) literally not all powerful* (i am only on stb, sprout levels, so don't judge too harshly.) i have a wol, sure, but canon!wol isn't selling it for me personally.

there are other things to do in that game though, so this is only one facet :)

10. worst part of fanon

three musketeers: not in this fandom per se bc i'm afraid i'll see things i don't wanna see. i just have opinions on the book.

ffxiv: haven't been in the fandom long enough to see anything i can put here tbh

[corvidis-ff]

blorbos :confetti:

Do you ever just pick an EXTREMELY minor character up off the ground and go, “I’m going to make you integral?”

The girl on the right (in red) is my 1.0 WoL, Thalia, my current main’s predecessor and older sister. The girl on the left (with the moon staff) is Una Tayuun. She is a background character and 1.0 survivor that’s completely missable if you never talk to anyone in the Waking Sands.

[readmore cut]

I got interested in her because I AM that person who talks to all of the npcs and of course noticed that she had the same weird amnesia that all of the other canon NPCs have about the 1.0 adventurers while also, apparently, being one of those adventurers or at least related to them.

(https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Una_Tayuun#Dialogue)

“Who was this character in 1.0?” I wondered. “what was she like?” but information about 1.0 is scarce and mostly lost. I would look it up eventually, I thought. But never got around to it... always held a fondness for her though. I have a soft spot for background characters that nobody talks about.

Then a few months ago I got the very silly idea to make a WoL fanfic. But before I could talk about my main, I had to think about his predecessor. Who were the people she would have known? who would have remembered her? What would be the significance of these relationships?

And eventually decided I really wanted to make Thalia a bigger part of the story than I intended, and start with *her* journey, in 1.0. We’re always saying we wish we could see the story of 1.0 right? What if I just novelized it! Simple.

...Well turns out that’s a bigger ask than I anticipated lmao, but. Trying to weave the unfinished and largely-retconned lore into the current storylines to make a cohesive (and hopefully interesting) narrative is the kind of overly-ambitious challenge that activates my dopamine receptors. 

So wtf does this have to do with Una?  Well, how do you make a story memorable? give your themes a name and a face. it’s not just the story of a world, it’s the story of a person, a life. and their relationships play a big part of that life.

Una has a “rough around the edges”, “IDGAF” personality. She talks like a lominsan (or just lowborn), curses, talks with her mouth full, she’s confident and a little abrasive. She’s an adventurer. She was a member of Minfilia’s Path of the Twelve. We’re not sure if she had the echo or not. She hangs out with a couple of guys who are kind of standoffish rough assholes. She’s a miqo’te seeker of the sun with a keeper of the moon name and she’s a conjurer. This is all we know about her canon, that leaves a lot of flexibility to fill in details. She’s just the right age (according to encyclopedia eorzea 1), and has enough presence to hook into the narrative easily.  

Thalia is stubborn, impulsive, and fiercely independent. She has a big sense of responsibility, but at the start of her journey is very much rebelling against having an overwhelming burden of responsibility forced onto her. She awakens to the Echo at 13 years old which, in addition to the usual Echo things, gives her the ability to tell when people are being deceitful. 

In 1562 of the 6th astral era, quite a lot of things happen. It’s when the world starts to really fall apart, though most people won’t realize it for many years. In the midst of all the Inciting Incidents(tm), Thalia gets into a huge argument with her mom and runs away from home.

She ends up in Gridania, where she meets Una, a novice conjurer. (still hammering out the details on how Una got there). They bond over them both being “outsiders” in a time when Gridania is, arguably a lot more insular and xenophobic than usual (which is saying something). Una appreciates Thalia’s direct approach to problems and unwillingness to do as she’s told, and Thalia appreciates how Una is willing to call someone an idiot to their face (and honestly likes having someone of her own age around for once). They are young teenagers and they are -so- annoying.

They’re friends for over a year, through a bunch of canon happenings, before the puppy crush manifests.

Around 1564ish, Thalia is 16 and Una is 15. They’re each-other’s first kiss. They start dating officially. They leave Gridania together, and Thalia introduces Una to her family (it goes...complicatedly). Then they go to Limsa Lominsa, which is a lovely place for two unaccompanied teenage girls, but there’s a new Admiral in charge and a bunch of -stuff- happening. They get into and out of so much trouble. 

Eventually they start working with the Company of Heroes, and things get ... really, really complicated. Thalia is called more and more towards destiny by The Plot. A distance grows between them. Being a hero and being a good girlfriend aren’t always compatible.

In 1568, they get into a huge fight. They break up. They regret it later, but ... things get in the way. Time and distance and, circumstance.

Una gets a new crew. She joins the Path of the Twelve. She’s sad sometimes, regretting what could have been, but is the type to just keep moving forward and never looking back unless she has to (wounds can’t hurt if you pretend they aren’t there. ironic, for a healer).

Thalia runs with the Ironworks a while but it doesn’t stick. She has a kind of crisis of identity, and walls herself off from the world. She quits adventuring, gets married to a man she barely knows and has a baby, trying to fit herself into a mold and do what she’s “supposed” to do.

And then the damn moon starts falling. It’s 1572. Thalia has a 2 year old, she is not supposed to be in the field. But she *has* to be. It’s what she was called for. What she was chosen for.

Una, as a part of the Path and a longtime adventurer, is of course involved in...everything. They cross paths a time or two, but there’s little time to mend broken bonds in the middle of a pending apocalypse. And, well, Thalia’s married now. No matter how unhappy she seems, that isn’t Una’s place. Not anymore.

Still, they talk a time or two. Maybe if things were different, if they had more time...

It’s not to be. Thalia dies. Una dies too, much later, after (re)meeting Thalia’s little brother. A tragic story like so many others.

... but.

The events of shadowbringers, particularly 5.3 are very strange. Mass summoning across the rift. Many free-floating spirits, and unfortunate fallen bodies. Potentially, a few cracks in reality wide enough for some things to fall through. Or be guided through by a benevolent hand already shown as willing and able to guide souls between the shards. And with strong enough wills, who knows what might be possible? 

[semi-imaginary-place]

albinnaux is like a failed griffith from berserk. both of them committed hard to childhood dreams beyond the reasonable point where everyone else would have given up and albinnaux did eventually give up but not before costing him almost all that he'd worked for. and like asogi kazuma, determination made things worse but continuing past the point where they should have tried another approach and its only after he gave up that things got better.

I was talking about how shipping does not come naturally to me. i don't see any character in a romantic or sexual light until im externally exposed to it, its just not the default. long term exposure or the work works hard to convince me, thats usually what it takes. The only ffxiv ocs that are in relationships are the ones where the core concept im exploring is the relationship itself like noyu and lau or cynng and maud, otherwise while i conceptually know most of them have dated in the past like mathilde or cookie or yvontel i can only really think about it in the vaguest sense unless i put a lot of effort into it.

at which point reversalsun said "I think you should ship alby with Jannequinard" and that caused me so much psychic damage that my brain went into overdrive for like 20 minutes. i love janne he's one of my favorites, what a pathetic man, but he's... yeah.

albinnaux likes competence and janne is ... the exact sort of useless noble brat albinnaux thinks is the scourge of ishgard. also you know they know each other right? its like seeing that idiot you knew in middle school and he's still an idiot. oof yeah im struggling you picked pretty good opposites the one similarity is that neither are traditionalists although albinnaux pretended or at least gave plausible deniability while in ishgard. does he even like men??? i can say that pre arr albi would hesitate being seen with janne because of the possible reputation hit by associating with an eccentric slut. reputation would also be why he never befriended haurchefant. stephanivien's high status makes it less risky. he'd probably like laniaitte actually if privately thinking her not ambitious enough. also in my first draft janne and albi are first cousins. i like half ditched the house durendaire idea though so idk where that stands. this fact i only remembered because i thought about how funny it would be for albinnaux and carvellain to meet in limsa. i originally made albinnaux a durendaire because i thought it would be funny and also for the family drama. but as i build his story i realized i would make more sense for him not to be from the big 4.

of the npcs albinnaux would most likely date minfilia. she's someone who believed in him at his lowest (patch 2.5?) so it was the right time and place. and i think their personalities are pretty compatible. with albinnaux you need someone who can bend and give to meet him but will also hold their ground when its important. albinnaux is cold on the surface and runs hot deep underneath. minfilia has a mild demeanor and strong convictions so i think she'd be able to meet him where he is. like when albinnaux isnt playing nice to cosy up to someone in power his natural demeanor is a little prickly and not a lot of people can handle it which is why he often hides it. as much as he's been burned and embittered albinnaux has also had a strong moral core so he attracted to people with strong morals and ideals who care about things like justice and the greater good. more generally because of his repeated failures he admires people with strong convictions and high competency. he would never admit any of this. and then on a personal note j just dont really like age gap romances so unless its for a specific purpose i'll usually chose people in the same age range. oh yeah and narratively i wanted albinnaux to get that little spark of hope before crushing it hahahahaha

i also think discussions of spirituality and religion would be interesting between them. albinnaux was raised orthodox halonic but came to disavow church and religion seeing them as tools to oppress the people and keep the highborn in power. minfilia though is very spiritual and religious she's basically head priest to the hydaelyn cult. and him getting crystal mommy visions and powers is uh an experience. so its the first time he sees faith as a non negative though he isnt about to worship anyone ever. cant remember if i told you but in arr albinnaux sees himself as only the warrior of light and worthless on his own. i find albinnaux and minfilia to have compatible personalities but faith and religion just might be the driving wedge between them. idk how it'd turn out. in arr albinnaux would probably find that devoutness off-putting and is generally wary of any overtly religious person being so used to the inquisitors. that its hydaelyn adds another layer to it since albinnaux all at once feels grateful, jealous/power hungry, and resentful towards hydaelyn. and also the twelve are well known but hydaelyn worship is like that weird side cult thing right?

but there's also the fact that personally i don't find minfilia interesting so im not like excited to think about her. im pretty good at taking my biases into account when evaluating things impartially. which is how i came up with minfilia for an answer but that doesn't mean i like it. i also considered haurchfant who i personally like much better. haurchefant's ... a LOT when the player first meets him and i wonder if that might be different if albinnaux is the wol since they know of each other by reputation if nothing else. "the fortemps bastard" and albinnaux had all sorts of gossip trailing him in ishgard (part of why he snapped) and now he's also a deserter. albinnaux also definitely snubbed/avoided haurchefant as a kid so while albi never directly bullied haurchefant i can see him walking away without helping. of course both are professional enough to work together. if haurchefant had acted like he does in game albinnaux would have wanted to run for the hills but would have grit his teeth because he has a job to do.

rocky starts aside hauchefant like minfilia is also that mix of bending and unbending. he's more easy going than albinnaux but will also hold his ground. he has strong convictions and is someone actively moving towards his goals which albinnaux would be similarly drawn too. i also think there's an interesting mix of albinnaux who's been repressing himself in a lot of ways for years and hauchefant who's one of the least repressed ishgardian we meet (stephanivien is probably the other). i think the biggest stumbling block here is that they are fundamentally oriented towards different things. both acknowledge the injustices of ishgard but with minfilia and albinnaux its ideals first and everything else is to back those up, while haurchefant seems more physically grounded in reality with a keen eye for the here and now.

stephanivien was another consideration. he's such a freak i love him. it helps that he and albinnaux are already good friends. they just get along very well. he's his little funny rabbit. they believe in a lot of the same things too though albinnaux rarely said those things out loud. steph said: guns will make knights obsolete and undermine the power of nobility and albinnaux thought hell yeah finally youre so right bestie. i can see them chatting through the night talking about the future. one thing they'd have to overcome is when albinnaux confronts him about something i can see stephanivien dodging and deflecting where albi would have preferred to be met head on. i can also see steph being a little too much to deal with if albinnaux is feeling tired or grumpy. whether he says it or not is another thing but albinnaux really admires stephanivien for being unabashedly himself and wholeheartedly pursuing his own interests and ignoring the expectations for high house sons. albinnaux tried to have both and ended up not achieving either which is something that pains him so seeing steph is like looking into the sun.

this was very challenging since by default i mostly think of these as platonic, but i guess they could work as romantic. oh and there's no conclusion to this or anything its just a thought experiments. shame that i think about 100 faster than i type. and writing things out is such a pain so it usually doesn't happen.