#i can get to the other one later! probably i'll do ffxiv for that one

[graha-stan-account]

Things I learned from Encyclopedia Eorzea III

Do with this what you will, ffxiv fandom.

G'raha and the tower appeared about 15 years after the Flood of Light. Ardbert and team were all already dead. "Our" Minfilia had already dissipated.

At the time, he looked like his normal self. He is described as a Mystel dressed as a mage, so we can assume people knew he was a "Mystel" at the time, vs. later when his appearance is only speculative.

A bunch of refugees clamored to the Crystal Tower when it appeared. He said yeah you can hang out here, the tower defenses will keep you safe.

And then fucked off for 4 years to survey the damage of the Flood of Light.

When he got back he knew shit was really fucked and ASAP started trying to figure out how the hell to get the WoL over for pizza

At some point he figures out he needed to address the WoL verbally for some reason for the summoning to work properly???

It doesn't.

He decides this shit is gonna take 5ever and I'm already having a quarter life crisis. I'm going to bind my aether to the tower. It's the one secret anti-aging trick that has doctors PISSED

It'll be great, like, he'll almost never age.

Downside, his body slowly becomes necrotic with crystal.

More time lost because he has to use aether to discretely animate his crystallized limbs and digits to keep their use.

At some point, early Crystarium dwellers get tired of asking him for his name (he won't give it) and him rejecting the crown they offer him so they start calling him the Crystal Exarch.

Exarch says OK and wheels out some Allagan nodes to help build what would become the Crystarium. Go ham, guys.

Since no one really recalls what the Exarch looks like in present day, G'raha likely began wearing a cowl after returning from traveling Norvrandt, or when his body begins to change. Those who remember are likely dead (age or sineaters) or sworn to secrecy.

The developing crystal, which he did his best to hide, prevented him from truly connecting with the others.

Sometime after this, an infant Lyna falls into his care.

Well technically the Settlement Council (because he was like hey let's have a representative government [not because I grew up in one or anything!]! I'll just be over here.)

But he was very involved in her upbringing.

Probably because he was close friends with her parents.

Who die tragically while serving in the Crystarium guard (Meaning that the guard is at least 30 years old, likely more, as her parents were known to have served in the guard since inception basically and Lyna is 33 in SHB)

G'raha was probably in his mid-eighties at this point, judging by Lyna's age in SHB (33) and that we know G'raha had the Crystal Exarch title for 9 decades + the 24 years he had lived before he entered the tower. (He is likely slightly older due to the intervening time between being awakened in the Bad Timeline and heading to the First.)

He FINALLY gets summoning to work something like 90 years later!!!!! Except it still doesn't! Five years before he could nab the WoL, he nabbed Thancred instead (oops). It took another 2 years for it to successfully transport a soul again.

[triumphantbass]

Dawntrail Retrospective

Okay, it's been two weeks since Dawntrail launched, a bit over a week since I've cleared it and have had time to think things over, wanted to do a big dump of my thoughts, a non-scored review of it all.

Full spoilers after the break.

So, I want to give this all a nuanced look; I know this has been a polarizing expansion; I did very much enjoy my time while still having some qualms, and I'll try to highlight both sides of that here.

Overall, while it would be low in my expansion rankings, that's not to say it's bad. Just as I probably bump Heavensward up a bit in my rankings because it did so much with so little (in terms of budget, gameplay tools available, story to build on, cast, etc.), Dawntrail takes a hit because I know what they're capable of these days.

But a 10 year saga is a tough act to follow, and I know if this was my first FFXIV experience (it might be a lot of people's one day, if the 'second saga starting point' for new players they mentioned ever gets implemented), I'd be going 'oh wow'.

Anyways, before I pick things apart, I'd like to highlight what really worked for me.

Sphene was my problematic fave. I know Artificial Intelligence tropes can be overdone, but I have a fondness for them because when done right, an AI is clearly authored by someone. Just like a biography, even an autobiography, paints the subject in a certain way, an AI really reflects the creators' biases.

Just as the soul technology was shown as a mechanical version of the aetherial sea, Sphene really felt like a sort of digital primal for Alexandria, the people's desires latched on to her, sort of a vtuber Zodiark.

I loved the development that her compassionate personality (taken from the OG Sphene) was distinctly incompatible with her unsustainable primary directive, protecting and preserving Alexandria's way of life (the directive from the people)

And I appreciated that part of the thesis statement of her character is "a Garnet who never traveled with Zidane would become a tool of Alexandria, her kindness taken advantage of as a figurehead''. Which makes it nice when Wuk Lamat breaks through during The Interphos to appeal to her.

She can feel like a bit of a rehash of Hades and Metion, but I do enjoy the contrast of her valuing life too much to Metion not valuing it enough; it's important to know how to live in spite of despair, but it's also important to accept that even memory is not forever.

Also while I'm here I have to say I absolutely respect the zone change of Living Memory from stunningly beautiful to hauntingly somber. I hope that change is not reverted in patches, as it's absolutely the starkest environment change in the game.

I like the idea of casting aside nostalgia to care for the living, and I thought this zone was a welcome surprise from the "Golden City" imagery a South and Central American expansion invokes.

(PS, massive Simulated Twilight Town vibes)

And I thought Cachuia was well done in this zone; I was a bit antsy earlier with how they made her into just a drone, but I liked the resolution between her and Erenvelle

But one thing I want to stress as I sing the praises of the last zone and change, is that neither half of this expansion works without the other, because unlike other split expansions (SB having the Gyr Albania and Yanxia halves, EW having Islabard then the Ancients), it felt clear in why it had both halves, and that was for the contrast of the same theme, Namely, the ideas of culture, tradition, and history, and how they affect the living.

When Wuk Lamat is giving her speech during her ceremony, she notes one of the societies taught her "they believe death is not the end, and we live on so long as we are remembered", which Sphene says almost verbatim of her people later, menacingly polite as that same belief is twisted.

There are some roots of this conflict in the first half too, with Koana's disinterest in culture and tradition, before realizing progress and culture weren't incompatible.

While Alexandria instead takes it to a logical, Black Mirror extreme, discarding culture and history, literally forgetting anyone who passes (while assuring themselves anyone who is lost still lives on) and living purely in the present moment; death itself removed from the public circle.

I don't think the Alexandria half, the modern, present-focused society works without first setting up a region with a rich culture and history.

In the first few regions, you see how those who walked before led those who walked after, while in Heritage Found... you see a heritage lost. On both sides of the divider there are abandoned buildings; a sidequest in the graveyard has the keeper note that memorials have fallen out of favor due to regulators, Alexandria had a perfect record of history (data, people, all stored in the cloud), but didn't use it; specifically keeping it away to prevent painful memories from affecting the present. While Yok Tural had an imperfect history (a lot in legends, retold/inconsistent oral history), but that history distinctly affected their day to day; even the painful memories, the tragedies, all played a part in shaping the present.

Even though it could make the pacing clunky at times, I did like that Wuk Lamat's basic setup of "learn about these people and understand why they make the choices they do" extended to Solution Nine and even Living Memory.

Garool Jaja was also a very good character, loved his performance, do kinda wish his solo duty where he confides the true nature of the contest was the very start of the expansion; I feel like it would have set the tone for this being the "The WoL is a mentor arc" better.

Also to wrap up the good side: every single dungeon and trial was ace. Dungeons finally hit a good level of difficulty for normal content, and were well designed and very pretty. Vanguard and Everkeep in particular were delights, as was the postgame dungeon Tender Valley.

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And on to my more mixed feelings.

Wuk Lamat- I don't hate her, but I don't like her that much either. I tried to keep an open mind for the full MSQ, but ultimately she's not a character I really vibed with; I do get the shonen protag/Naruto appeal, but it's really not for me. She's been described as 'Lyse 2.0', and while I admit I have similar feelings about Lyse, I do think Wuk Lamat has a more natural progression. Lyse started Stormblood feeling like a 20 something on a mission trip, while Wuk Lamat feels like a reasonable candidate who just needs a little encouragement.

I don't mind too much our WoL taking a mentor role and taking a backseat, while downplaying their powers; but what I struggled most with was fatigue. Wuk Lamat was always there, like the memes of "Talk to Wuk Lamat" say. Like Shadowbringers was the expansion where Graha was the main character, and a lot of the time he was away doing city stuff or being mysterious. Wuk Lamat would have benefited from more time to breathe, especially in the back half of the game. She should still be there in the back half for sure, for the expansion to work she needs to be a player in all this, but I'll admit I sighed when I got to Solution Nine thinking I'd explore by myself (probably bumping into her at one of the locations) but instead needed to escort her. As I noted earlier, I don't mind the Interphos interruption (though I did appreciate the chance for the WoL to be at full strength) because Wuk Lamat appealing to Sphene's humanity fit the expansion themes well.

Succession- I'm happy this didn't go into my worst fear: a retread of the Azim Steppe where we actively interfere in another nation's politics by being their champion; but it left a bit to be desired. Notably, while I knew the Scion Civil War was a bit of a misdirect, it felt kinda pointless? Like Thancred and Urianger are here helping an alumni from their university out as he applies for the same job, but they're totally chill with you. And honestly there are no stakes to him getting the job, he's the only other qualified candidate to the point where you hire him later yourself.

I didn't want any longstanding inter-scion conflict, but for a character as frequently duplicitous as Urianger and driven as Thancred it just felt like a waste.

Also, GJJ clearly told the WoL that the keystones didn't determine the victor; he would pick a successor that was worthy- I kinda wish they just stuck to that. Having the "good' rulers and "bad" rulers paired together for the cooking challenge felt like a bit of a cop-out, , plus needing to win back a stolen keystone, etc. just felt like missed opportunities.

Zarool Ja and Bakool Jaja - I get what they were going for in the end with each of these: ZJ being the "impossible son of an impossible son, the weight of expectations causing him to shun those around him, and that loneliness twisting him", BJJ being desperate to help his people, feeling the major survivors guilt of his own life costing so many others.

but neither of their narrative arcs are smooth, and in the first half, especially during the trial, they seem to be doing comically evil Wacky Races Dick Dastardly behavior with no regards for a continuous arc. BJJ releasing Valigarmanda was the icing on the cake for me. He could have done this in a reasonable way, weakening the seal in an attempt to sabotage the trial, then feeling guilt over what he did in desperation, but no he walked up to the gate keepers like 'no I'm evil, I'm gonna destroy that now' any hints of ZJ sympathy come like, during his trial and from the Wandering Minstrel, who even notes most will see him as a one dimensional tyrant

I also think they could have distinguished both more from just being warmongers; in the same way that Wuk Lamat and Koana are somewhat aligned but have different visions, personally it would have made more sense to me if BJJ had a different brand of conservatism; putting a stronger emphasis on defense and isolationism rather than world conquest. It would fit his background better too, as someone who wanted to protect his homeland

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My most negative thoughts are really just pacing. I would like to not have so many quests just running around talking to people, not learning much of note. I know there are only so many things you can do (stand in purple cloud and kill 3 enemies isn't great either), but at this point I'd honestly just take a shorter MSQ if it meant better story pacing.

I know the first half is meant to be like an abbreviated ARR, and I don't mind it being low stakes, just wish it had a bit more polish.

I will also say I felt a lot more limited in my dialog at times? Like I don't need every box to have "I'll kill your god if I have to, maybe even if I don't", but there felt like a lot of instances where you had two ways to say the same sentiment. I like it when the game lets you have opinions, even if the opinions are objectively bad (you can straight up tell Noah the Allagans were visionaries) A lot of that pacing was more actual story content than the quests though; the first three zones could feel like extended allied society quests (solid enough ones), which wasn't bad for a 'fresh start', but Shalooni is where things felt off. I liked the vibes but frankly the quests left barely any impressions at all.

(loved the trolley dig though)

------------------------------------------------------------------

Overall, like I said, I enjoyed my time. While it may not be a favorite expansion, it sets a good baseline for another ten years, and I hope they can refine it in the patch series and beyond.

There's a lot more I could probably say, I realized I didn't have a chance to touch on Erenvelle (very glad he tagged along) and Krile; but I feel I'll have more thoughts on both of their plotlines after the patch series.

P.S. though I rolled my eyes at some of the running jokes I genuinely got a chuckle out of Wuk Evu always freaking out then snapping back to polite with "well I won't overthink it then" and similar. Felt very Chocobo Racing GP.

P.P.S. Wood-carved owl nouliths are the best idea. A+ weapon.

[nothingxs]

FFXIV Write // Third-rate

Celica leaned on the counter and turned the sign aside, peering at the goggled man for a few moments. She smirked at him. "Right. You said you had something for me?"

The man on the other side of the crowd pumped his fist forward, clenching it tight. "You bet the flames in your godsdamned hair I do. You kept coming around and saying you couldn't find something that'd scare the shite out of your enemies, lass. Well, lass, I've found just the thing!" He scurried over and started to go through some crates, pushing them aside to go to the weapon rack.

Even Celica could see it from here. On that very weapon rack: some sort of… heavy object, almost as long as she was tall, wrapped thoroughly in leather and then again in cloth. The man picked it up with both his arms, having to squat first to really get under it—as heavy as can be, it seemed. Celica almost seemed ready to hop the desk to help before he waved her off with a quick shake of his head. "I got it, I got it. Let me just…"

A few steps a bit of a laugh later, and the package was unceremoniously dropped with a heavy clunking thud on the counter, balanced on its midpoint or so. He beamed a huge, stupid grin at her from under his goggles and brushed his bangs to the side, swallowed some of his exhaustion down, and nodded. "Here she is! Feast your eyes on this!"

He untied a buckle that kept the cloth bundled up, and revealed what could only be reasonably described as a massive, sword-shaped, indelicate slab of heavy, wrought metal. A full metal piece, with a haft of metal, heavy metal guard—the entire thing looked as if it had been cast from the same single piece. One could wonder just how exactly the thing was meant to be used, by anyone.

"You're shittin' me." Celica folded her arms under her chest and sighed.

"No, no no no!" The man shook his head and pat the slab several times. "Listen to me, lass. Every time you've commissioned something from us, yeah? It's been increasingly bigger. Wider, heavier, more imposing, whatever you want to call it, we've given you a piece every time. And we love trying out your new ideas. But then… someone brought this to sell back to us. Now the forgemaster, see," he waved over in Brithael's direction, who was standing where he usually was, poring over something or other, "he just wanted to melt it down. Said the craftsmanship was shoddy, the balance was absurd. That it's JUST an imitation! It's just meant to look good hanging from somewhere."

Celica nodded. "Yes, well, he's probably right."

"But lass. Lass! Look at it. The design of it, the heft of it. So much of it clearly just needs work. I'll tell you what: we'll work on this, reforge it, make it lighter, make it sharper. We'll work on the balance. And I had an idea that I'd much like to keep a surprise, which I think will make it worth your while." His huge, stupid grin got even bigger, and he clapped his gloved hands together and rubbed them. "But it will need you to be present tomorrow for much of the forging. One of our smiths is dead set on trying this out. If it works, you could have one of the finest things we've had the pleasure of working on here in the smith." He patted the weapon one more time and stuck his hand out to shake on it.

Celica looked at the sword, looked at the outstretched hand, and then back to the man, shaking her head. "Randwulf."

"Yes, lass?" Grin still up, hand still outstretched.

"You're tryin' t' sell me a third-rate copy of some… I don't know who would wield a sword like this. And it's with th' promise that you'll make somethin' out of it that you're insistent I'll love."

"Yes!"

"And you just expect me t' go along with it."

"Of course!"

Celica looked down at the sword, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. She shook her head, reached her right hand out for Randwulf's outstretched hand, took it and shook it firmly. "You shrewd shite. Damned, if th' thing doesn't look imposin'. I'm goin' t' be eatin' bread and scraps for weeks."

Randwulf smiled a proud smile, and then nodded enthusiastically. "Lass, when you get the finished product, they'll taste like bloody victory."

[enarei]

my main problem with FFXIV currently is that the levelling experience is both too steep and not steep enough in terms of the pace at which you unlock new skills and when the game expects you to learn how it interacts with the rest of your job. as you're progressing through the MSQ any player that actually *enjoys* the gameplay is going to be doing duty roulettes outside of just the ones the story sends you to, but with the way they're configured the probability of you being confined to ARR dungeons at lvl 50 is disproportionately high compared to those of later expansions. not only does ARR have the most dungeons, a much larger share of the player base has them unlocked.

the problem is that at 50 you're stuck with the bare minimum amount of spells for your class to not feel utterly disjointed, and the boss encounters are very leniently designed around this fact. there's no meaningful dps or heal checks at any point and the vast majority of mechanics can be safely ignored. which is like, not terrible in itself, leveling dungeons don't have to be hard, and I'm sure people will say there's content specifically made to cater to that playstyle (locked behind like 4 expansions lol), but whatever.

the problem is that as you get new abilities through the expansions, you NEVER get to practice using them in the dungeons you've already been to and are already comfortable with, only in the new dungeons that come few and far between through the MSQ, which you likely aren't going to see very often in the duty roulette, and you're less prone to experiment in them, as you're not accustomed to the mechanics yet. as a healer this sucks specially because I can't even use my shiny new abilities in the overworld, I must be in combat to generate resources, and I have nothing to spend them on besides myself.

there's such a disparity between the point at which I get a new button to press and the point at which I'm actually allowed to press it, because more often than not they're wholly dependent on other skills which are still locked behind several more levels, and so they just sit in my hotbar unused. and I'm like genuinely worried about what I'm going to do once I get close to current content, because I'm forced to rely so much and adapt to a playstyle where I don't have 50% of my job's core buttons, it feels like I'll be forced to do all of the learning once I'm actually inside a difficult raid, to the detriment of other players.

[azems-familiar]

🥤🐇🦷🍅 for the writer ask? :O

🥤 ⇢ recommend an author or fanfic you love

i'll do ffxiv for this since that's the fandom we share. this is a pretty popular emetraha fic but i'm obsessed with how it's written. i also have to, obviously, highlight @thewitchofelpis for their DELIGHTFUL hythazemet and hythwolemet!

🐇 ⇢ do you prefer writing original characters, reader inserts, or a mix of both? 

i know reader inserts are all the rage for some people (and i respect that) but i hate reading them and i will never write them, lol. ocs on the other hand....sometimes i wish the oc printer in my brain would turn off. what am i supposed to do with all these guys. they're not even paying rent.

🦷 ⇢ share some personal wisdom or a life hack you swear on

so this isn't a trick i use anymore, because i've mostly outgrown the need for it, but when i was a new writer doing nanowrimo for the first time (an event which focuses on word count/quantity over quality/get the novel written so you can edit it later) (as a side note i no longer endorse them given everything that's happened but the event was an important part of my life for multiple years so there's that), something i really struggled with was constantly writing and erasing things. some advice i was given was if i found a sentence or a paragraph or a scene or whatever didn't work, instead of deleting it, turn the text red (or another color), leave it there, and move on. you could probably also cut it out and stick it on another doc, if you preferred doing that. but that let me write without fear of deleting everything, or fear of fucking it up, because i had that stress-free option, and sometimes i could come back to those bits and pieces and use them for something else. even if i didn't, those were still words i wrote to be proud of and worth keeping around because i wrote them!

🍅 ⇢ give yourself some constructive criticism on your own writing

i'm not going to answer this one, and here's why: i struggle deeply with self-image and one of my worst issues that i'm constantly working on is my own tendency to consider everything i write bad, to not see the positive elements in it, and to need to be talked out of erasing whole swathes of story when i'm not happy with them. (you see why the above tip was helpful for me when i was younger.) while concrit is an incredibly useful thing, it's something i only personally engage in in specific mindsets, and the constant critical urge is something i'm attempting to train out of myself - and so since i already read my own writing through a heavily critical lens, this is something i'm not going to encourage in myself further!

[adventures-in-asexuality]

End-of-year ramblings

Video games

Yeah, okay, let's start here. Obviously I played a truly inexplicable very explicable amount of FFXIV this year, and will continue to do so (can't believe Dawntrail will be dropping next year; we've stuck at it through all the waits between patches).

Baldur's Gate 3 was fun; I didn't expect to play it, but so many people I know loved it that I had to try, and I'm glad I did.

The same really goes for Cyberpunk 2077; honestly most of what I like about the game is the experience of it, rather than the stories. Whoosh! Zoom! Neon and doublejumping!

The other major new game this year for me was Mask of the Rose; I really loved it! I think the post-release patches helped it a lot as a game, but honestly I was hooked right from the beginning. (This was probably the start of the series of events that got a friend playing Sunless Skies/me replaying Sunless Skies/me returning to Fallen London and accidentally convincing some friends to also do so. No regrets.)

Music

Big album this year has to be Bury the Lede by Dessa. I was going to listen and enjoy it no matter what, but I really do like the way a lot of the songs resonate with growing older, still having all the same big feelings, but being way too tired to deal with them in any kind of high-octane way. What if I'm Not Ready in particular really tugs at something in me.

I'm not sure I have more new music this year; I've been a bit disconnected from everything, mostly listening to music when someone hurls links my way. Maybe next year!

Books

I read a lot of books this year, as ever, but the vast majority have been rereads; I've been quite low on book recs again. Here's a few of the new ones - I won't cover all of them because I don't have that kind of patience. (Counted - 33 new ones - which, compared to the sheer number of rereads, is low.)

She Who Became the Sun/He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan were a fun pair of books, about a girl who steals her brother's name and destiny when he dies so that she can shape the world/become the emperor. I liked some of the gender vibes you get in this - Zhu Yuanzheng's gender is never really defined, but also never at all fits in a binary mould. A lot of the second book, however, felt a bit extraneous and a bit gratuitous in various directions. Overall, I think this is a rec for reading the first one and skipping the second.

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle - everyone reading this probably already knows, but yeah, this is good. There's always something special to me about stories about queer kids in fundamentalist Christian churches - sure, it's usually American churches, but it's still a commonality that resonates powerfully with me. Read it.

Somewhere in summer I read all of Tana French's murder mysteries. I quite liked the Dublin Murder Squad books - nothing special but fun - but I honestly really disliked her two later standalones. The politics in them just set my teeth on edge a bit - The Wych Elm's protagonist is so dismissive about disability that, while I know it's part of his characterisation, it still left a bad taste in my mouth; The Searcher's protagonist has some views on politeness and morality that just make me sigh. (Rec for the murder squad books if you, like me, just really like murder mysteries.)

The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson: every year I'll read one more of her books, I guess. They're always good. They always haunt me.

Translation State by Ann Leckie was good; of course it was. I think it comes with my biggest overall caveat for an Ann Leckie book (I really wish Qven and Reet's subplot had ended differently; I know it was written as a metaphor for something else, but I read and resonated with it as a metaphor for aceness, which the ending doesn't leave space for) but it was still great. And we saw Sphene again!!

TV/film

Not much this year; my brain hasn't been in the right space for it.

Watched the Evangelion rebuild - I still haven't seen the original series so this was an interesting experience. I'm not really sure what my takeaway from it was, or what exactly I watched (apart from giant photorealistic Rei - we watched the fourth film in the cinema, so it was truly giant) but hey, I get more references now.

That same group of miscreants has been watching Lexx - seriously, do not watch this. It's rancid. It's so bad we have lost the ability to evaluate media, because everything else is good compared to it. Awful. Terrible. 15 more hours to go until we're free. I'm not going to describe it because the descriptions sound interesting and it is a terrible show. Never watch it. Strangle anyone who tries to make you.

Almost forgot, but I think this was the year I watched Yellowjackets - phenomenal even when your point of comparison isn't Lexx. I'm waiting for the third season with bated breath. It's so good. It's so awful. It's breaking my heart. Please watch this immediately and then come scream with me.

I'm also making my way through Young Pope, which - I don't know if I'd say that I'm enjoying it, but it is certainly doing things to my brain. It resonates with me in a similar way to Camp Damascus; even though they're on very different areas of the right-wing Christian spectrum, the fundamental beliefs and desires and angers and fears and reactions are the same.

Heaven's Official Blessing Season 2 finally happened!!! I'm still working my way through it - the friend I watch with has had no time this year, so we're using the holidays for it - but, oh, I love this book and these characters so much.

More personal stuff

Work has actually been quite bad this year; I've largely been on a project that's gotten worse and worse as the year goes on, in a way I fundamentally cannot fix but have to try to anyway. I've been circling between 'I hate this, I should job search' and 'I'm so bad at everything, only this job would put up with me' and 'at least wfh doesn't mean I'm in danger of losing it'. By Easter or so, I should be free from it at last, so I'll keep an eye out and hopefully things will even out again.

Home has, however, been a lot better. I moved towns at the end of last year to somewhere that has more friends and a more walkable town centre (and much cheaper rent) and it's been an excellent choice. Only having to walk five minutes or so to get to a shop or see a friend has meant that I've been able to practise walking five minutes or so (whereas in my last place, it was a walk then a twenty-minute bus ride just to the town centre) - and that in turn has meant that I've been able to build that up bit by bit, and occasionally run headlong into my limits in the process.

It's been a bit of a weird holiday season in particular for me this year, laced with grief and memories. Hosting a Christmas dinner and cooking with several other people felt right in a way it's hard to really put words to, and also reminded me very strongly of my grandmother. Her house was always a gathering place for all the family, as well as a refuge; it's eight or nine years since I last set foot inside it and yet I could still tell you the layout of her kitchen, the mnemonic for the bank of eight light switches in the hallway, the warmest place in winter and the coolest place in summer. Nowhere I've lived before has been nice enough for people to visit often, let alone to cook in or to know their way around; cooking and organising with people, seeing them remember locations and extend tables and understand the hob, soothes something it is difficult to explain.

Next year, then:

I hope to have somewhat more brain and less exhaustion (I've been so tired all year, which is tedious as fuck).

I hope for many of my friends to have considerably better years, and that the rest will continue to have good years. (I am threatening the years with a knife until they are kind to all of you.)

I hope to continue to shape this flat into somewhere pleasant to be, and persuade people to be there from time to time.

I hope to get a better idea of my work situation when I'm not on a horrible project.

I hope that the GIC might at least tell me that I'm on a waiting list!

I intend to find a tangible creative hobby one way or the other (taking suggestions as long as you can present a use case for the hobby; Queenie keeps suggesting knitting in the abstract).

And, as always, I hope to love more freely, be kinder and more helpful, and to try to build a future that has space for me.

[morgan-aleghieri]

People I want to get to know better

Tagged by @janzoo ~ (I did see this one and said "I'll answer this later! and forgot u__u;;)

Last song: I had the Tristram theme song from Diablo on repeat while I was drawing last night 👀 (shout out to the guy on youtube with a channel full of hour loops of Diablo themes)

Favorite color: Purple, ostensibly

Currently watching: I don't watch a lot of things, I tend to just pull up things on youtube to have on in the background while doing other stuff. The Monster Factory playlist gets a lot of replay value from me, Drawfee also good background noise.

Last movie: Oh golly, last movie I saw in theatres was probably the D&D movie. (I might have watched the Muppet Christmas Carol since)

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: ohh that's tricky. I like them all, but I generally need one to balance out the other. If I have too many sweet things, I need something savoury. Savoury you can get away with less sweet things, but it makes a nice follow up. Spicy is also good, but balanced with something more neutral.

Relationship status: Confirmed Spinster

Current obsessions: I've been hyperfixating on stardew valley again at the moment, lowkey getting into baking new things. Also lowkey still on my ffxiv grind.

Last thing i googled: Bonne Maman jam

[thelongestway]

Dawn: Trailed

Now that the spoiler embargo is gone, well...

This is probably my favorite expansion. On par with, if not better than, HW (My personal rating otherwise goes HW>ShB>Ew=Sb=Arr). I went through it without reading anything about others' experiences, and you can imagine my surprise about the incredibly mixed reception!

I was even more surprised, because I was going in very burnt out on FFXIV, and had really been expecting to go in and say "eh, this was ok, sure, but nothing special."

Instead, I got exactly what I wanted or, dare I say it, even needed. That is to say, this:

So this review is going to be reflecting over the type of story this is and what made it so appealing to me specifically.

Tons of spoilers below the cut!

What I thoroughly enjoyed about Dawntrail:

the "not my circus, not my monkeys" vibe

the worldbuilding

the pacing

And I think these things are related. But let's start with the pacing.

My usual way of playing is "do story, do available sidequests as they pop up, a couple of fates along the road, etc". I usually wind up with a class fully leveled and a class half-leveled by the end of the story. My WoL is very thorough and meticulous, and a firm believer in "get the lay of the land" first.

In most previous expansions, that meant there were spots where I went stir-crazy, because something about that flow didn't click; there were many places I was bored but also did not want to skip things, because while it felt bad to do them immediately, it would feel even more out of place to do them later. To wit: Moogles HW (even though I loved the crafter quests later), Ruby Sea SB, Twine etc ShB, Ultima Thule EW (yes, not Labyrinthos part 2 - sorry my friends, I love insane academics, while Ultima Thule really, really did not hit for me).

This was not the case in DT. There wasn't a single moment I felt truly bored. And specifically I enjoyed the vibe that you can come and go at any moment - the fact that the succession isn't really your problem helps with this a lot. This is why the amount of Wuk Lamat didn't particularly bother me - my WoL just went "oh, fantastic, any fallout is your problem, not mine - I'm just here to see the sights and talk to people". He got to have a good night's sleep without being interrupted, for gods' sake - unheard of!

On a player level, this worked wonderfully, because I hate it when writers try to raise the stakes by making it personal. Usually, I have a very visceral reaction to that, which is primarily "you do NOT get to decide what makes it personal for me", and I can count the number of times that kind of bait worked for me on one hand. In FFXIV specifically, Haurchefant and Ysayle in one expansion - and never again (although should anything happen to the twins, yeah, that'll work). Having another character take the brunt of "this has to be personal For Them" is really one of my favorite vibes. That said, I'm very much a worldbuilding-over-story girlie. Give me a world to muck around in, and I'm happy. And if I don't feel punished for taking my time, this becomes even better - I detest time-based long-term gameplay, I have enough of that IRL. Which means that for me, the vibe of this whole expansion was "excellent, I've got an excuse to be here - oh, we're moving on? You go on, I'll catch up". The last time I felt like this was really in HW, while the resolution to the Monetarist plot was brewing in the background. "Yeah, we can't really go back to our three home states for long. Great - let's explore the floating islands and see what the deal with the Dragonsong war is. We've got nothing but time." In both expansions, giving me time to fool around let me develop a personal connection - not to the characters, to the space. And by the time the plot picks up, I am hooked.

So aside from being my favorite type of worldbuilding, the feeling that "the plot is on pause and I have time to breathe" is unironically one of my favorite things in games, and what lets me feel like I've been relaxing while playing a game. And, well, I really needed a vacation from IRL bullshit, and I got just that.

It was one heck of a surprise for me to see that's not the case for most other players. To showcase this, I actually quite enjoyed one of the most controversial storytelling moments - which was "you've found the City of Gold! ...Now before you go in there, the current ruler needs to inform their successor about the bullshit going on down there, and you're not invited". My WoL's reaction was an amused "yeah, sure, I'm not in a rush - we'll get there (not that you can stop me from poking my nose in). Now, what else did you say was here? Xak Turaal?"I know a lot of other players got thrown out of the illusion of verisimilitude here; for a lot of people, the pacing here felt like a jarring stop. For me, though, it felt like breathing space; like a promise - there's no rush, we'll get there. Take your time, relax. It was like the game said "yeah, I see the load you carry normally. You don't have to for a few hours". And that was great.

It was the same with Wuk Lamat. The big cat wants all the bullshit I hate? She can have it, and my gratitude with it! The only time my WoL felt irked with her was the "invitation to be part of her government" - but even that moment was basically fixed immediately by the WoL's reaction! Which is: you stare at Wuk Lamat silently - silently even for the WoL, no gestures or implied responses, she sheepishly goes "you don't have to answer now... also I got you that pass to Xak Tural I promised?.." Only then do you smile. And you have the option of basically turning around after that and walking directly into Xak Turaal without talking to anyone except Erenville, which I found appropriate and more than a little hilarious. Finally, much later, Wuk Lamat even goes "ok, yeah, I get it now, the invitation was kinda stupid, sorry" - which is a big Point for her in my WoL's eyes.

And you get to just walk away! And there are no problems arising from that! And you walk into Shaaloani, doubling down on the "nope. I am On Vacation. Nothing but the wind and the vibes", and it was exactly what I wanted and needed. And then, after Shaaloani, once I've thoroughly relaxed, the plot picks up! I've had my rest, and now I get to do shit! 10/10 hit in the personal preferences, no notes.

All of this would've been enough to bring DT on par with HW and above ShB (which had the "new world exploration" down pat, but was also much more inconsistent in its pacing for me). But what brings it really... Above HW for me was the last zone. Because that zone hit stuff I'd been needing to have a good cry about, and I spent 8 hours doing just that: reading through and sobbing.

Now, this was a very personal hit in the themes. I mean, it was mostly coincidence that it hit that hard. But it was what I needed.

Dawntrail is an expansion that has two main themes: vacation (break, pause, freedom) and death. Death, while always present as an FFXIV theme, here is discussed specifically in the aspect of "leaving behind stuff for others to take care of". These two themes are bundled in extremely neatly, you keep going back and forth between them, and they reach a crescendo in the last zone, which is a memorial disguised as an amusement park; a memorial whose paperclip-optimizer managing AI was about to try and kill everyone it could reach in order to keep that memorial's lights on. So you walk into a deteriorating attempt to make the "between-space" of vacation last forever, and then you turn that vacation into death, and that comes as a relief.

I won't go into the IRL bullshit that made me cry over this. But the mix of "you can't capture happiness in a gilded cage" and also "you cannot exist in that liminal space where you temporarily leave your burdens - you shouldn't try to actually live there", and finally "someday you will have to leave your burdens to someone else, and you will never solve everything forever" - yeah, I needed that. I needed a good ghost story right now, and I didn't know I did. So the last zone hit insanely hard, and I loved it.

And it hit all the harder because the focus wasn't on me. For contrast, Ultima Thule was my least favorite zone of EW. It was a total, absolute miss for me - the exact kind of "the writers are trying to make it personal" that I hate. I think I have the exact feeling about Ultima Thule that most people have about Dawntrail: if the plot had been moved a few steps to the side, I would've enjoyed it - say, have the Scions lean into "we're building a bridge, and whoever gets to the end will have to handle the rest. WoL, though - you're gonna have to be the last one to go, we need you to bring us back. Let's walk into this with our eyes open" rather than into the "sacrifice" aesthetic. But they didn't, and it didn't hit for me. I felt sort of numb and irritated throughout.

Meanwhile, Living Memory - and its focus on a bunch of NPCs I didn't know, and then Krile, and then Erenville and Cahciua - let me experience what I needed to experience without also feeling like the writers are dragging the requisite emotion out of me with pliers. For once, playing through the story as a Black mage was amazing - I was very much "okay, time to put on my thaumaturge ritual robes and hold a funeral". It was a somber feeling, but also it felt like it should.

And then you get a multidimensional key out of it! And you end 7.0 alone, looking at a map with the key in your posession, and you can see the gears turning in your WoL's head as they plan... That's my personal perfect ending.

As a result, this expansion made me reflect very heavily on my own personal preferences on pacing and plot, and how the niche that I inhabit is probably smaller than I thought. Things that are absolute dealbreakers for other people are barely blips on my radar; while things that are absolutely monumental to me often go unnoticed. Good stuff to know for a writer - and I'm very grateful for getting a story that was written so close to what I like.

[coffeeknife]

blog reintroduction

the last time i used this account was when i was still a teenager. didn't feel like deleting and remaking on this handle though so uh. hey, i'm robin. i'm a married butch lesbian in mn. mostly logging back in so i can archive stuff on here where other people can see if they want

stuff i might post abt (under the cut)

managing physical/mental disability (my wife and i both have eds)

being broke and maintaining sanity/quality of life

it stuff. i have a cluster of servers at home running a lot of stuff to automate life. some stuff replaces subscriptions but i also do some budget smarthome stuff to make our living situation a little more accessible. i've also dabbled in backing up my personal healthcare record

more generally, extending the lifespan of (sometimes much older) tech & bending it to your will

some interests, though i tend to stay out of fandoms: trigun, dunmeshi, pokemon, ffxiv, persona series (but i dont touch that fandom with a ten foot pole) and a few others im sure i cant think of rn

also, feel free to send me asks about random tech things. i'll post some of my stuff later, but a quick rundown of my daily stuff

JUST replaced my phone. i only got my head out of the apple brainrot very recently, but my phone is a refurb'd note20 ultra that i intend to use for a very long time

desktop i built on the cheap. i5 (dont buy intel new, theyre zionists), intel arc graphics for video encoding

working on moving from a 2018-ish macbook air that's somehow barely runing to a 2010 thinkpad i salvaged from an ewaste bin. it's running pretty well on arch with a cheap SSD but it needs a new battery and a better display (and a modern wifi card eventually)

my server cluster that i've built over the last 10 years or so:

the manager computer is a 2017 imac i cut open to put more ram in. it was my primary computer until this year

2 raspberry pis that the manager dishes out tasks to. one is hooked up to an 8tb hard drive that it serves to the other 2 computers. the other has a zigbee receiver to handle cheap smarthome devices

3rd raspberry pi dedicated to networking. outside of the cluster, hosts a vpn so i can get into my stuff from anywhere without exposing it to the internet

salvaged two acer EEE laptops that i really want to convert into parts of the cluster bc i'm running out of cpu. they didn't come with power supplies and i have yet to get them to turn on

part of my goal for being active on here is to put some accessible resources on home servers out there. bc imo theyre insanely useful and learning how to do this stuff in general is good in the age of technological walled gardens

ok bye. follow me if you want ig, send me asks abt it stuff and i'll probably have something to say

[h-a-unted]

𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐍𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐋 𝐂𝐀𝐍 𝐏𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐎𝐆𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐀 𝐋𝐎𝐓 𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐄𝐑. REPOST DO NOT REBLOG !!

NAME : Kuroki (Kuro is fine, too!)

PRONOUNS : I don't mind what I get called, even though I am a girl! I think boys are hella cool, so when I get mistook for a boy, I take it as a compliment instead of an error.

PREFERENCE OF COMMUNICATION : Discord and Tumblr IMs!

NAME OF MUSE(S) : Oh boy... I have a bunch on different blogs, but I'll list the ones here: Butcher, Maeve, Frenchie, Lenny, Emma, Travis, Ethan (E3N), Cpt Price, Adler, Alex, Atom, Chris (RE), and Martha (FFXVI). I'm going to add Legion (ME) and Emet (FFXIV) later.

BEST EXPERIENCE : Joining The Quarry fandom, which allowed me to find my bestie Ladybug, while also making it easier for me to join other fandoms and meet more friends who are so special to me now. I never expected to meet so many amazing people in The Boys fandom, so that's another highlight to me.

RP PET PEEVES / DEALBREAKERS : Being pestered for replies. If I'm rushed in any way, shape or form, my brain just shuts down, and I lose all excitement I used to have. It's one thing to be excited for a thread, that's totally fine, but being purposefully rushed or guilt-tripped into replying is a no-go for me. It has happened to me so many times, I already know how it goes and feel it in the air sometimes, even. I want to write at my leisure and to allow others to do the same. I know I take a lot of time sometimes, but if I'm rushed, I won't ever write for that thread/person again, unless I force myself and throw soulless replies that eventually die. But I'm done trying to be nice to that kind of people and then feeling bad for not being able to keep up, so I'll probably stop outright the next time this happens. Fingers crossed that it doesn't.

MUSE PREFERENCES : Assholes with trauma and/or nuance, himbos, and Artifical Intelligence or a human variant of that.

PLOTS OR MEMES : Both! If I can't for the life of me come up with a random interaction, I ask for plot, but I am mostly more than fine with memes to get things going! Both are excellent!

LONG OR SHORT REPLIES : Both long and short replies are fun! Sometimes it's easier to throw rapid-shot responses, so I go for small, but other times the muse is high and I want to describe more, so I can go for long. Any of those are fine as long (heh, punny) as I have something to reply to.

BEST TIME TO WRITE : Any time my muse is high, or even when my muse is not that high. As long as I can inspire myself enough, I'm game any time. I suppose I usually write during the noon/afternoon onward.

ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S) : I usually like to find something that explains to me why I love a certain character and all that. Most of the time, I think it's just me trying to justify myself or make myself cooler, so I sometimes don't really believe I am like a character more like I want to be said character. Even so, I think Butcher is what I could've been had I not been helped when very young. Maeve feels like kind of a mirror to Butcher. She also seems to think she deserves the bad things that happen to her while showing herself as a really strong, indestructible person, I think I relate to that (and her situation of her romantic orientation and stuff, probably? Idk). Emma's cheery mask, Travis' stoic demeanor during rough situations, also Emma's calm demeanor during dangerous situations... The other characters I just really love for one thing or the other without really relating but probably admiring. And the AIs? I just really adore AIs.

TAGGED BY: tagged by @awkwardcourage (thank you so much!)

TAGGING: @dollhidden @savior-of-humanity @sesyeuxocean @reviresc @rottingkiss @hacker-codeq @arcanumsolitude @phoenix-flamed and anyone else I missed who sees this! Consider yourself tagged and feel free to tag me!

[rharyx]

I've been going through all the mainline Final Fantasy games (and such side games as well) since I've never really played that many growing up and felt like getting into them all. Doubt I'll ever play all of the main 16, since not all of them look interesting to me, but we'll see.

Final Fantasy X This was the first one I played, back in 2014. I wanted to have at least one FF under my belt before XV came out, and X looked the most appealing. Played it and loved it. Definitely a 10/10 game for me, and I think the Sphere Grid is one of the most fun leveling systems I've seen. The story is so good, the cutscenes go hard, and the characters are really well-designed and memorable. I think one of the most important aspects of FF is a good main party, and X is one of the best in that regard.

Final Fantasy X-2 I've tried twice to get into this game, and I couldn't do it either time. I love Yuna's development from X to here, and I love the aesthetic and vibe of the game, but I couldn't get into the gameplay or how the story was paced and broken up. Maybe I'll get back to it for a 3rd time someday...

Final Fantasy Type-0 I only got this because it came with the demo for FFXV, and I dropped it pretty quickly back in 2015. I only came back to it a couple months ago (2023) and played it to completion. It was definitely a chore. The gameplay itself can be fun/addicting, but everything else is just outright boring or done in a way that makes things as joyless as possible. Especially the story, which is handled super choppily. The cast was mostly one-note (which I get was intentional, in-universe, but still...) and I only really played as Ace and Cater. Machina is probably my least favorite FF protag I can think of while writing this up. I only did one playthrough, and I know there's more in NG+, but I just have no energy to go through it again. Overall, it's like a 4/10.

Final Fantasy XV To say I was disappointed is an understatement. Not really a hot take, shitting on XV, but I mean...it is what it is. I knew it was never going to be the game I was looking forward to back in 2006, but the final product was just so far removed from anything resembling a coherent thought. The combat isn't fun, the skill tree is so boring, and the "open world" is mostly lifeless. Noct and the boys had potential, but they're barely developed or given much to do -- and don't even get me started on Luna and the rest of the side cast. There's a really good story and setting somewhere underneath all the issues, and it's impressive they released anything at all, all things considered. But man, is it just disappointing. 6/10.

Final Fantasy VIII As someone who really loved Leon in Kingdom Hearts, I was always interested in seeing the origin of the character, but just like Type-0, I could just not get into this game. I tried it in 2019, after Kingdom Hearts 3 came out and let me down -- I wanted to pivot to something in the same ball park of Square Enix, so I tried seeing if other Final Fantasy games were up my alley instead. But unfortunately, I didn't click with the gameplay, and the writing felt all over the place. From the bits of it I did play, I did enjoy Squall, Rinoa, and Selphie at least. I plan on getting back to it later, but for now I just don't see myself completing it. And after dropping X-2 and Type-0, and being let down by XV, this was the moment that made me go, "Oh, maybe Final Fantasy just isn't for me."

Final Fantasy XIV The game that made me love Final Fantasy. I've never played an MMO in my life before, but I remembered watching Ray Chase (Noct's VA) stream FFXIV once or twice before and thought it looked cool. In 2020, I got Covid and was pretty much bedridden for the next nine months, so I figured then was as good a time as any to invest myself in an MMO world to whittle away the days. "If I can't live in this world, I way as well live in another," my thought process basically was. And it ended up being a great decision. I love so much about this game, from the stories, to the characters, to the world building, to the music, etc. It's just magical through and through, and I can't wait to see where the next story arc takes us. 11/10.

Stranger of Paradise Jack Garland is an amazing protagonist, and this entire game is so fucking cool. Anyone who hates it doesn't like fun. Chaos/10. The DLC is some of the worst DLC I've ever had the displeasure of paying for, though -- never managed to finish it.

Final Fantasy XVI After XV, I was reasonably hesitant to expect much from XVI, and I remember being turned off by the aesthetic and general art direction from the first trailer. But I was really surprised by how good the game ended up being. It does feel like they're sometimes overcompensating for what they got criticized on with XV -- like having so many cutscenes to the point it feels like a movie, as opposed to how chopped up and bare boned the story in XV was, for example. But the cast is likeable, the gameplay is fun, and boy howdy some of those boss fights will live rent free in my head for the rest of time. Also, the voice acting is on another level. I really didn't enjoy the ending, though, but overall it felt like a step in the right direction for future entries. 7/10.

Final Fantasy VI Man, I just love this game. It was after XVI that I decided to play the older games and finish as many as I could, and I started with VI. I didn't expect a game from 1994 to win me over so badly, but everything about it is so fantastic. I love the whole opera vibe where it's almost like the characters are actors performing a stag play, and it has some of my favorite characters in the franchise. I love Cyan, Terra, and Celes so much. I love the scene at the opera house, the phantom train sequence, the dream world, how some dungeons and parts of the game have you split up and utilize multiple parties in tandem. The music is great. I love Kefka. And dude, the ending is my favorite ending to a Final Fantasy game that I've played so far. It basically took everything I hated about XVI's ending, but did the opposite, and it was beautiful. It was exactly the kind of ending that I needed to see after all the previous games I'd been playing. 10/10.

Final Fantasy IX Another masterpiece. If VI was like an Italian opera, XI felt to me more like a post-renaissance Disney movie. The art direction is so good, and the story is really well written. That said, I don't really care for a good chunk of the main party (Quina and Amarant especially), and like I said above, a good party is one of the most important aspects of a FF game. Zidane, Garnet, and Vivi are all amazing, and I really like Freya as well, but beyond that...meh? I wish Beatrix was a party member. I will admit though, I cheesed it by using the handicaps on the Pixel Remaster version (dealing 9999 damage by default), so I can't actually say if I like the gameplay or not, but it seemed like standard FF gameplay, and the Trance system looked cool at least. But I was just super invested in the story, and didn't want to spend a lot of time fighting. The locations and cities in this game were noticeably good, I do want to say. Overall, a solid 8/10 for me.

Final Fantasy VII I almost didn't want to play this one. It's by far the most popular one and I already knew so much about it through two decades of cultural osmosis and Kingdom Hearts, I was almost content just continuing to be the guy who could say, "Yeah, nah, I've never played FF7" just to be a hipster or whatever. But I did play it. And I can see why it's so loved. The story is so good, and unlike with IX, I actually didn't use handicaps (besides the 3x speed for grinding), and I really enjoyed the gameplay. Probably one of the more addicting gameplay loops from a FF game. The main cast is really good, even if it does have its weaker links (Cait, Yuffie, Vincent). My only real complaint is the translation felt really stiff, like even the translators didn't know what they were reading sometimes. It's probably just because it was the 90s. Still, not a big enough nitpick to not give the game a 9/10.

And that's where I am now.

I want to play Crisis Core and the 7 Remake now, since I have context for what's going on due to playing the OG 7.

And then I think IV is the pixel game I'll tackle next.

I really want to play the XIII series, since I don't believe it's as bad as I remember people claiming it was back in high school. But they're not on PS5, so that'll have to wait.

[greenery2x]

American Football LP1 (FFXIV version)

This was my first major project with my barding practice. I had already arranged "Never Meant" when I started playing FFXIV and "Honestly?" around the beginning of last year; however roughly a year ago I started working on "The Summer Ends" out of boredom and got the idea to do the entire album.

I did most of the other songs within a week or so (if you were early for the art party at LunarCon last year you might have caught me playing them near one of the party locations), and about two months later I finished "But the Regrets Are Killing Me". The last song, "I'll See You When We're Both Not So Emotional", took the longest to realize: the original song is by far the least FFXIV-friendly out of all of them, and I went through several revisions before finally arriving at the current version in January of this year. Ultimately, however, it's probably the one which I'm the most proud of, as it's far less of a straight transcription than the others and it really forced me to get creative about making it work within FFXIV's limitations.

The next step was to record the video. I spent a long time thinking about how to go about doing it but ultimately I settled on one of the half-submerged buildings in Il Mheg as the location and positioning Phoebe and the camera in a way that would mimic the original album's cover as much as possible Originally I was going to do it in one take and with some friends emoting beside me; however I soon realized that wouldn't work out so well and ended up recording the songs separately and later splicing them together. I then recorded the trumpet parts at the beach near my FC house in Mist; looking back, this might not have been the greatest idea, as I later discovered (and as you can see in the video) that the trumpet recordings don't actually line up with the lute recordings all that well.

Overall I think this was a really fun experience for me and definitely the most ambitious thing I've done within FFXIV to date. I'm currently trying to one-up it with some original music projects: an EP centered around Phoebe herself (among other things) that I'm in the planning stages of, and a full-length themed around the wind-elemental Twelve deities (Llymlaen and Oschon) that I will start working on in earnest whenever 6.5 and its accompanying Alliance Raid is released. As fun as it was to pay tribute to one of my favorite albums, I feel like working on original material would allow me to avoid some of the constraints that come with working with that of others, such as accuracy (I did take some creative liberties with the songs here e.g. some of the chord progressions in "The One With the Wurlitzer"). But still yeah; finally doing a larger scale project with barding after having worked within this practice for over a year felt really good, and I look forward to doing more of it in the future.

[lovecorebutch]

🎥(cinematic)🎶💔🏳️‍🌈💎💢

sorry i keep meaning to do this and then get distracted/i accidentally closed out once T_T thank you for sending!!!

anyway! for league! this got long so it’s under the cut hehe

🎥 do you have any favorite scenes from your hyperfixation?

the leona and diana cinematic... just the sheer Longing and how it’s clear both of them want things to be different. also the parts with leona and ahri in a new dawn, how leona is so brave and protective. i also love awaken and warriors. that one shot of camille racing towards jhin as he bows is amazing.

🎶 if your hyperfixation has songs/an ost, what is your favorite song from it?

so many good songs so i’ll pick a variety! nami’s theme, light and shadow, dark cosmic jhin theme, aphelios theme, villain, the mako remix of piercing light.

💔 tell us about one of your LEAST favorite characters and why you dislike them.

personally i have the fight reflex towards thresh and hecarim, because i’m really attached to senna and kalista and also just... they are so shockingly cruel in general. thresh tormenting so many people for so long. hecarim murdering someone who trusted him, someone who was just trying to do the right thing. i like a compellng villain every now and then, i’m fond of aatrox for an example from the same source, but... i just can’t seem to feel any positive emotion toward either of those two.

🏳‍🌈 do you have any headcanons (lgbt, race, neuro, etc) that are important to you?

i wish someone would outright say leona is wlw. that’s... ambiguously canon but my specific headcanon/me being a kinnie for leona is that she’s a butch nonbinary lesbian. they also should confirm taliyah is trans. possibly xin zhao is intentionally implied mlm especially in “what once sailed free” but i’m not sure. for less heavily implied, i love nonbinary wlw soraka, trans man braum, and nonbinary bard.

for neurodivergent stuff... honestly kindred is a copey kin for me, i relate to them because i have dependent personality disorder and have (had to varying degrees of intensity over time) dissociative traits; their backstory of intense loneliness and being created from the pain of one being gets to me; i still get teary thinking about their conversations in the event earlier this year. i also view older lore soraka (where she was attacked by warwick) as having ptsd, this is important to me. i like that version of her story better- the way she holds onto her compassion and desire to help people even after such a betrayal is very moving.

💎 are there any fun facts or trivia that you would like to share?

YES i could ramble so much but here’s some interesting things about the star guardian/magical girl setting!

zoe’s eye mark, starry/diamond-y actually most closely resembles soraka’s! neeko also has unusual eye marks, but they’re more rounded. these three are the only ones to have different pupils/etc. soraka also intentionally has an eight point star, and the rest of her team has 4 point stars. neeko does have small eight point stars in part of her outfit, but the most prominent one is only eight point in her prestige edition, where she is more powerful/reached more of her potential. Much to think about

another thing is that poppy is the only star guardian to have no familiar shown so far! lux’s familiar has been shown in art but is commonly in staff form, and the others have one or more familiars (multiple familiars = more of a wild card star guardian, such as jinx and syndra) shown, but poppy’s familiar is always just the hammer. some speculate that the pig star guardian little legend might be her familiar, but i’m more inclined/hopeful to believe that one is a familiar for a sejuani star guardian skin in the future.

💢 what do you NOT like about your hyperfixation? is there something you would want to change about it?

players go afk/get toxic too often, it’s frustrating. also i keep hoping for better, more widely diverse representation. i think there’s slow progress i just... get tired of waiting and want more than the crumbs of lgbt representation. + specific things like how when they replaced xin zhao’s old splash art he was shown with significantly paler skin, and the swain rework handled his physical disability uncomfortably, like... idk. it rubs me the wrong way that you can’t really tell in game anymore, especially with what they said about it. i still love the game overall, and want them to keep moving in the right direction and change existing harmful stuff. 

[miqo-tales]

6.Island Sactuary

No one's gonna read this cause they're all too busy on their new island vacation home, but no matter! We push on!

MSQ

Aw, Varshahn/Vrtra got a gift, how cute.

Aw, Y'shtola you got me a gift too?

"Here, you should carry this symbolic reminder of Venat and Hydaelyn's sacrifice and all the emotional baggage that goes with it!

....yaaaaaay a gift

Immediately into the dungeon we go!

Estinien: "Yea, yea, c'mon! You want some of this? You want some of this too, eh?

Y'shtola: "Dude, don't taunt the army of aether-eating darkness-warped monsters."

My opinion of pretty much all demons and void monsters in FFXIV has been completely ruined by the flying armored knight screaming "OH GOD DON'T EAT ME I'LL BE GOOD".

"Are you the friend?" For a very, very, very, VERY loose definition of "friend", sure.

For most of the second Scarmiglione fight, I was expecting Zero to consume the monsters for us to stop them respawning. And I was a bit confused why she didn't. And it's a little annoying that -- to jump ahead a bit -- they don't explain why until much later in this patch. And it's only in something that Zero says a bit off-handedly and none of the characters react to it.

I like that the creature you use to leave Troia is something you can see flying around in the distance while you're in the upper part of the castle.

Zero's Home for Imaginary Friends.

At this point I'm wondering how voidsent would perceive a DRK like S'era.

Wait Zero has a bed? Does she actually sleep... oh ok, she answered that pretty quick. Alright.

I am genuinely sad we are killing Barbariccia already, cause I like her voice. And other things about her.

All the Radiant as we exit the Atomos: "Yay, you're back safe!"

None of the Radiant as we exit: "OK WTF are you actually bringing someone BACK from there?"

Man this 13th storyline is just chugging along, huh?

Little surprised at Rubicante and Cagnazzo working together for the next part. Are we gonna fight them together? Rubicante in FFIV was the honorable, respectable type, so I wouldn't expect that he's going to betray Cagnazzo or trick him into fighting us alone.

Fell Court of Troia

I love the music. If anyone doesn't recognize it, it's a slower, more somber version of the Castle Troia music from FFIV.

The M.C. Escher stuff at the start is pretty wonky.

That first boss is annoying.

I'm not familiar with FFIX because I never played it, but was there a Troia in that game too? Cause I know there was a Beatrice, and sorta curious if they've tossed in some IX refs too.

I want the glowing hedges for a furnishing.

I genuinely did not expect to fight Scarmiglione here. Neat fight.

Storm's Crown

Hot damn this fight is fun. The second phase goes on a bit long, but it's enjoyable. It's fun to have to do lots of quick dodges.

Are all the archfiends gonna have swords?

Super love Barbariccia's design. She looks so good in both forms.

Pandaemonium Abyssos

Honestly not much to say about this. I like these fights more than Asphodelos, though I think I prefer the fourth circle over the eighth.

Story is kinda whatever to me at this point. Elidibus is one of those characters that I don't care too much about, and Lahabrea even less. So a storyline focusing on them doesn't interest me that much.

At this point I'm just curious who Ascian-Lahabrea was. I've been expecting that it turn out to be Erichthonios, but now I'm wondering if it could be fake-Hephaistos.

Honestly, I was hoping this storyline might give some Azem details/closure, but it's looking like I'm not gonna get that.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Man, if you are a fan of FFIV, you are having a good day this patch. We finally get a rendition of Battle 2, and a lovely version of the archfiends fight theme as well. I think Golbez could use a little more personality beyond "I'm evil and I probably need a throat lozenge", but maybe that'll change as we keep fucking up his plans.

I dunno about Zero yet. I really like her design. But I know the whole "I don't know what a friend is" means at some point we're gonna get the same speech I've heard in 1000 other media already. So not looking forward to that, but hey, who knows. Maybe they'll do something interesting with it.

Island Sanctuary is cute. I'm looking forward to messing with it more, but it's pretty much impossible to get into it during the hours I can play. So I'm gonna have to wait for people to burn out on it before I can really get into it.

[aliatori]

A Fanfic Writer Interview

Thanks for the tag, @runicmagitek. <3 Sorry I'm slow at responding to this one, it's been A WEEK (a month, a year, two years, etc.)

This got long, so it's under the cut.

Name: You can call me ali!

Fandoms: Forever interests that operate like run-on-startup background processes in my mind: Mass Effect, Dragon Age, FFXV, Sailor Moon, Kushiel's Legacy, Legend of Korra, Transistor, the Wheel of Time (though tbqh I mostly love the worldbuilding from WoT and applying it to my own nefarious queer purposes). Current full speed ahead hyperfixations: Hades, The Locked Tomb series, Mass Effect gets a double mention because ME:LE violated the fandom's DNR order, and original work (does it count as fandoms if I am the creator in one case and co-creator in another case? I'm going to be kind to myself and say yes).

Two-shot: A one-shot with two chapters, says Google? I don't have any. I DO frequently write things with the intention of it being one and done and then continue them.

Most popular multichapter: Artificial for sure, a.k.a. that one cyberpunk AU no one asked for that will probably only ever get finished if it's re-tooled for original work, but who knows.

Actual worst part of writing: FINISHING. I have a million ideas and almost as many started Google docs or Word docs, but having the focus and commitment to finish is an actual struggle. I have the utmost respect for people with multiple longfics marked as complete.

How you choose your titles: If I manage to write a line I love that fits thematically with the story, that. Sometimes I'll come up with a title reflecting the story that isn't a direct quote. In all other cases... so many song lyrics. So, so many.

Do you outline: Yes! As a reformed pantser... who knew having a game plan of where your story is supposed to go helps? My outlines typically don't look like the structured, roman numeral style formal English jams, but rather me writing in a document as if I am screaming enthusiastically to a friend about what will happen in the story and where it's going. My worldbuilding outlines are more structured simply because I want to be able to find and reference information easier.

Ideas I probably won’t get around to, but wouldn’t it be nice?:

The transmasc Kaidan Alenko/Shepard canon-adjacent thing I have sitting in my drafts

A Hades Megaera/Aphrodite E rated one shot involving a bratty Aphrodite, Meg having a lot of emotions despite herself, ambrosia consumption as a sex-pollen adjacent thing, inappropriate use of whip handles, and so, so many orgasms.

Transistor!AU, but make it Megthanzag. You get to guess who is the traumatic weapon.

A Gen FFXIV fic with a conversation between the WoL (my WoL, even though I know how fandom feels about OCs) and Emet-Selch about the burdens of carrying a world, a people, a cosmic fate on your shoulders.

An Amos-centric fic for the Expanse exploring one of the significant relationships later in his life (book Amos, not show Amos)

Callouts @ me: You can write fic all you want, but you are not allowed to post ANY multi-chapter thing until it's done. Also, a reminder fic is for fun, damn it. Relax.

Best writing traits: I have been told I am a deft hand at characterization and action scenes. I like to think my prose is improving and that I have a style I can fit into multiple genres. And of course, I feel like I'm known for obsessive worldbuilding at this point, which I am glad people enjoy as much as I do.

Spicy tangential opinion: I will borrow several bullet points from Runic first because they have some great ones that align with my views (which shouldn't be considered spicy, and yet!):

"Unless the author explicitly asks for feedback, no one gives a shit about your ~profound critique~ on a fic you actually didn't enjoy at 3am on a Sunday" - x1000. I have betas and critique partners when I want critical feedback; I do not need or want it from strangers on the internet (with the exception of not minding typo corrections or other minor stuff).

"If at any point you feel the need to be hostile towards another human being online over Fandom Things? Just turn your computer off, walk outside, and find a new hobby." - I get we are all a passionate bunch in fannish communities, but fictional characters are not worth hurting real people's feelings over, full stop.

"You don't magically abandon all the things you love when you turn 23 or whatever people think is old these days. Honestly? The best fics I've read are from "older" people, probably because they have more experience with both writing and life."

"If I take the time to put up tags and warnings on my fic, it's not my fault if someone stumbles on it and doesn't like it." - with an addendum that operating on 'don't like, don't read' and 'your kink is not my kink and that's okay' will save you so much heartache in the long run.

You get out of fandom what you put into it. If you spend most of your time obsessing over your kudos/hits/notes/engagements, tearing down other creators, and ranting/venting about what you don't like instead of supporting what you do like... you're gonna have a bad time.

I'm a multi-shipper at heart for every fandom because exploring a variety of character dynamics excites me. In addition to wishing fandom would sometimes take the shipping goggles off, I wish some monoshippers wouldn't take the existence of every other ship besides their OTP as a personal threat to both their personhood and fandom experience.

Not gonna tag anyone but if you made it this far, write fic, and want to answer, please do so and consider me tagging you!

[whmguidetoffxiv]

A White Mage's guide: G-Pose and the Art of the Perfect Shot

you've probably heard of G-Pose in your travels around Eorzea, even if you've never used it yourself. You've seen examples of beautiful vistas and epic battles captured in beautiful frames and filters. "How do I use this magnificent tool?" you may have asked. Well, ask no longer!

You can either activate G-Pose (Called Group Pose Officially) here in your actions and traits, or by typing /gpose in the chat bar. WARNING: The Game does not stop when using G-Pose. WHM's Guide to FFXIV does not recommend using this feature in combat.

When you first open Gpose, your HUD will disappear. You will be left with your subject, your background, and the menu.

On the left is your camera movement guide. On the right, the menu with the various settings you can use to manipulate your photos. Take some time to manipulate the camera to learn how it moves. The above photo is the exact same pose and location, I've just moved the camera to the right.

When positioning your subjects, it's important to keep the Rule of Three in mind. That is, your photo should be balanced across three different 'portions' of your photo. This is harder when you are doing a G-pose shot with multiple people, but it's doable if everyone coordinates. I've demonstrated here with a couple of models, and a frame that conveniently breaks the photo up into three segments. Unless you are deliberately planning to add extra effects or text later, there should be no empty spaces that focus on nothing.

The top is an example of poor balance; there's too much empty space on the top with no purpose, one character is cut off and is standing too far away from the others. The bottom is an example of good balance; while there is 'empty' space with no characters, the trio on the left are all looking the same direction, directing the viewer's attention to the old ruins in the distance on the right. Empty space in a shot isn't bad; it just needs to have purpose.

You also need to consider the positioning of your subject in relation to the camera. On the top, while it is balanced, you can't see the person's face on the left. On the bottom, you can. You may want to take the stylistic choice of not seeing faces, and that's okay! But be aware of where your characters are facing. This is somewhat adjustable in G-pose, but only for yourself; you can't adjust other players' positions, only where they look. You can also 'hide' unwanted players, minions, and NPCs from your shot, if you wish to prevent unwanted photobombing.

Before I get into the fun filters and stickers you can add, I want to talk about lighting. You may have noticed that there's an option to add extra lights to your shot. Here's how it works; when you activate each light, it will appear in the spot the camera is currently in. You can give each of your three lights three different intensities, and a wide array of colors via color mixing. Keep in mind that mixing lighting colors is not like mixing paint; your three primary colors are Blue, Red, and Green. This is additive Color mixing, adding other colors to your primary to get the desired color. The second shot is subtractive color mixing; starting with either Cyan, Magenta or Yellow and removing color as needed. Taking all three colors to full will give you a clear white light. When you add lighting to your shot, you will need to move your camera to the desired spot for the light before turning it on.

It's also important to keep your lighting in mind when using filters. Filters like Sepia or Monochrome will benefit from extra lighting, while filters like Bright or Pastel will not. Time of day is also a factor; while you can 'stop time' while in G-pose, if you're taking a shot at night you still want to make sure your subject is well lit.

Last but not least is Depth of Field. This is how clear your background is in relation to your subject. There's no right or wrong way to use this tool, but it can make all the different in establishing a subject.

From there, the world's your Oyster! There's plenty of Frames, Filters, Emotes, and stickers that you can use to build your shot. I'll leave these for you to discover and play with; after all the best way to learn G-Pose is to use it! You can also saved 'preferred' settings so you don't have to rebuild your favorite look from scratch.

And that's it! Have fun with G-Pose, and See you around Eorzea!