#g'raha maybe

[warlordfelwinter]

[kicks down your door] FIVER AND G'RAHA, 46!!

[intimacy prompts]

46. making a blanket fort

"Fiver, I'm—"

G'raha turned, closing the door behind him, and immediately having his train of thought derailed. His entrance was enough to startle Fiver, who was standing on the sofa. He dropped the pillow he was holding and destabilized the rest of what was apparently carefully constructed architecture, turning it into just a pile of what appeared to be every cushion and pillow they owned, plus a few G'raha didn't recognize.

"...home," he finished. He blinked and smiled, bemused. "What are you doing?"

Fiver dropped down into a lotus on the sofa, thinking about his answer for a moment. "I'm bored," he decided, eventually.

G'raha laughed quietly. He walked past into the kitchen and set the groceries he'd been carrying on the counter. He couldn't blame Fiver for being bored. He'd been on chirurgeon mandated rest for nearly a week, recovering from his horrific injuries after Ultima Thule. Healing magic had been enough to stabilize him and save his life, but he had to do the rest of the healing on his own, which was driving him insane. He was healing quickly, but G'raha knew it wasn't quickly enough for someone who liked to be on the move as much as Fiver. He counted himself lucky Fiver hadn't climbed out a window yet.

He went back into the main room and found Fiver methodically rebuilding. G'raha thought for a moment and then trotted past him into the bedroom, gathering up the blankets from the bed. He came back out and Fiver looked at him curiously. He placed the blankets on the sofa and held one up over his head demonstrably.

"For the roof," he said.

Fiver grinned and G'raha joined him in stacking and angling cushions, holding blankets up with chairs and weapons. It collapsed more than once. Far more than once they found themselves distracted, hands and lips finding bare skin as they gave minimal effort to disentangling themselves from blankets. G'raha suspected Fiver sabotaged their efforts several times so he could find himself conveniently underneath the other man.

But, after several hours, G'raha laid down on a pile of cushions in the soft darkness of the overly complicated and architecturally sound fort they'd constructed. He flicked a hand, summoning a bit of aether to release in dimly glowing balls of light that floated up near the blanket ceiling. Fiver flopped heavily down next to him, immediately rolling to wrap G'raha up in his arms and snuggle up against him. G'raha laughed as Fiver shoved his face up into the crook of his neck, murmuring something he couldn't quite hear, but could guess.

"Mmh, I love you too," G'raha said, returning the embrace. It wasn't long before Fiver dozed off, still easily tired as he healed. G'raha tucked his face down against Fiver's hair, closing his eyes, more than content to nap here in his arms.

[twinkle-art]

ephemeral is the flesh

[nuclearanomaly]

He didn't get the memo...

[drag00ni]

his head is so round very nice to draw

[jqupohtia]

HIM

[wildstar25]

MiqoMarch Day 30 - Of The Seventh Dawn

"When I was very young, my aunt would often put me to bed with stories of her adventures with my late parents. They explored nearly all of Aldenard together, just the three of them; getting through every obstacle as a team, and caring for one another like family along the way. As I closed my eyes and drifted to sleep, the same question echoed in my mind: "Would tomorrow's dawn bring someone with whom I can do the same?" After so many lonely years I had but nearly given up on finding such things for myself. How lucky am I, that at the very last moment I was finally given an answer."

[sae-mian]

boop #1: resounding success!

[raidenfanclub]

this was funnier in my head

[blood-orange-juice]

ok so ive never properly played genshin and don’t plan to but i know a bit about it’s lore and characters and i think it’s really neat. however i have thousands of hours on ffxiv. on that note please explain why graha and childe are similar. i only have very basic knowledge on childe and i gotta know

Fellow ffxiv enjoyer. <3

(anyone asking me about G'raha has a 100% chance of getting a wall of text and I'm not apologising for that. enjoy your wall of text)

I'm not entirely sure I'm not a case of a person with a hammer to whom everything resembles a nail, but I do think they are the same archetype.

Sweet characters who could have been perfect sidekicks (who still are perfect sidekicks) but listened to too many epic tales as kids and found themselves in a wrong place at a wrong time and now have to play a key role in some universe-changing story.

Both are defined mostly by their stubborness, they are not very suitable for the roles they've chosen and fail over and over again until they do it somewhat right (barely).

No matter how badass they look, their power is not their own, G'raha is a glorified technician of someone else's miracle and little else than a living key, Childe wields an art of old Khaenri'ah without fully understanding it. It's all borrowed from someone else who needed them to achieve a goal.

They do look badass, but mostly because they larp. I'm honestly not sure which one enjoys theatrics more.

Civilisations that created the magic they use specialised in perversion of the natural order of things. They try to use it in relatively noble ways and mostly hurt themselves but the flavour is there.

Both are unbelievably tragic and both somehow make their stories seem almost lighthearted. Complete absense of self-pity. I think that's what makes them both so charming, it's a rare trait.

Both have an incredible capacity for loyalty and love and an incredibly twisted view of what relationships look like. "I'll cross time and space for you, I'll die for you, I'll build a city for you, I'll live for you but please don't ask me to share my plans." "I'll sacrfice my own health and respect of my subordinates to keep my brother's happyness, probably my humanity too, but don't expect me to actually interact with him."

Both have something that looks like self-sacrificial tendencies bordering on suicidality while being, if we are honest, a self-serving trait (partially born out of low self-esteem but still self-serving). They want to live in an old myth and sacrificing oneself is a perfectly reasonable price for that.

Huge egos. And I mean Huge Egos. It's a bit less obvious in Graha's case but I know the type, you see guys like that in PhD programs a lot.

Huge dorks. Both of them.

Both are stuck somewhere between human and non-human and, hmm... their ability to remain human is the most astonishing quality of both. By all accounts, neither should have. They somehow did.

Both are incapable of lying to the point where a third of each fandom headcanons them as autistic. Both are somewhat all right with tricking people without technically lying (although Childe had more practice).

Both are secretive because no one would understand anyway.

FF XIV is a kinder story, so it's easy to overlook, but technically G'raha is a case of body horror, accepts the role of a villain for a while and hides from the player way too much. Hmmm... Where else have I seen it. Hmm. Oh right. That ginger guy from Genshin.

Minor things:

Both are little shits and enjoy annoying the hell out of people they dislike.

Abysmally bad fashion sense. There should be a name for this particular type and level of bad. I don't think I've seen this anywhere else.

And then there's the colour scheme. Red+black+white+blue and red+black+light grey+blue (it's an "anime magician" color profile, I think. black-red-white as alchemy colours + blue as pure magic/something elemental). Childe doesn't quite fit but still the combination is rare.

They way they talk. Dear gods. Who the hell talks like that.

Here's where the similarities end.

One is morally grey but ultimately a good guy (technically. I think the point of ShB was that Emet and G'raha are almost the same), another is a morally grey but still (kind of) a bad buy.

At every step of his story Graha is surrounded by people who love or at least appreciate him, Childe is pretty much on his own and surrounded by people who are either shitty or clueless.

G'raha is kind. Truly and astonishingly kind, in a doomed world he chooses to love everything he touches. Silly little priest of hope. Of all the things he has done this is the most wondrous, I think. Not the time travel, not the city he founded, just being able to remain kind after everything that happened to him.

Childe is... well, Childe. I think he is a deeply decent person (to the point of having a visceral distaste for any kind of unfairness) and he's idealistic but he's indifferent more than he is kind. Empathy usually develops only when someone has shown the person empathy first and, as far as we know, he didn't have much of that in his life.

Also G'raha builds things. Childe breaks things. Childe breaks pretty much everything he touches.

One is an archeologist and a mage and another is a warrior.

I think these differences are caused mostly by the settings they were put into. Childe raised in Sharlayan would have been a very different person. G'raha trained by a voidsent and shipped off to Garlean military would look very much like Childe.

G'raha also has a beautiful character development arc. I love his ShB role. He has this huge ego in the raids and is insufferable and then we see an older and wiser him with a bunch of actual achievements and a bad case of impostor syndrome (trying to do anything real always humbles a person, we all know that real world is held together by sticks and scotch tape. honestly, this change alone is beautiful). And he gets to be an actual hero when he abandons all hope to be Important and resigns to die as a nameless villain if it saves everyone and spares his loved ones from heartbreak.

Childe's character development is yet to happen and I'm not hoping for much but we'll see.

The only difference that definitely isn't created by setting is that G'raha is naturally manipulative. In a kind-hearted way and mostly for the sake of better larp but he isn't that straightforward. Childe is spectacularly blunt for all his mysteriousness.

As a bonus, they both compare main characters to stars, but in completely different ways.

"No doubt your heroism will be the star by which I chart my course," says G'raha to the WoL.

Childe mentions the morning star, which is, of course, pretty and a good companion to a lonely traveler, but also it's not a celestial body you can chart your course by.

It's a guy whose signature weapon is called "Polar Star" and his first artifact set was full of nautical themes, so I think he fully understands what he's saying. "You are my friend but I won't change anything in my life for you."

So I don't think his story will be anything like G'raha's, his life took a different turn very long ago. I do think they used to be similar as kids, bookish boys who dreamed of adventure and being special. So it's fun to compare.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. <3

[sapphire-scarletta-wol]

Was trying to draw my wol for practice again but its not coming out too great, i wasnt liking my skecthes so i decided to just draw kitty raha to soothe my soul.

[didlivio]

crystal exarch icons for anon ++ reblog and credit if using

[remma-demma]

Critically underused part of G’raha Tia’s character that he’s a good singer

[zeearts]

did a little fun artist meme for warm ups and then photoshop crashed on me 😭 but heres baemeric as requested on twitter 💙

[nights-at-crystarium]

Their eccentric nature seeps into their body language as well.

[vastlymushy]

first batch of npcs done, yippee

[wildstar25]

Draw 2b or 2c for the polyam trio art meme!

polyam pose meme

"Not quite sure myself when it started but Shtola and Raha have gotten more affectionate as of late. Only ever in private mind you. I think Shtola prefers it that way."