#idk man I'm just in a really weird headspace today and decided that I wanted people to know how important this game is to me

[littlelordalphinaud]

A Lonely Autists Ode to Final Fantasy XIV

This is probably going to be a horribly jumbled up post, and I'd apologise but I don't feel like apologising for stream of conscioussing my feelings.

So, until very recent years (We're talking the last 3 years), I have never really had friends. No one taught me how to be social, and my every misstep (and I assure you, there were many) was met with cruelty from my peers or the adults that were meant to care for me.

As such, from a young age, I got very good at 'making' my own friends. (This habit is actually what got me into writing!) Obviously the part of me that understands the world around me knew that they weren't real. But all I had were the friends I 'made', so I stuck with them.

Five years ago, now, my only real world friend that I had suggested that I try FFXIV. She said I'd love it. She said it would indulge the things I used to love about playing Fable (feeling like part of the world, silly outfits, getting to have an inordinately big hammer and swing it at my enemies with abandon) and I'd get to play alongside her.

Regrettably, my first impression of the game was less than stellar.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the world involved! I fell in love with the Scions (bar Alphinaud. Yes, yes, I am aware of the irony of this statement now!) and the story caught my attention. I didn't even mind the bits of ARR that everyone else complains about because I saw all of it as a chance to learn more about the world I was falling in love with.

I stopped playing because the ARR patches used to (idk if they still do) force you into replaying the Trials to progress. You HAD to do hard mode. And no one explained to me that Hard and Extreme were different things, so I got scared and stopped playing.

Two years later, I'd make a new character (my beloved Fru, who sits in my icon with her younger brother and sits squarely in my heart as an example to me of who I want to be) and try again. Everything I loved was still there, and the characters caught me in a grip even tighter than they had before. And the Scions became my Friends.

I didn't know it at the time, but they would be my last set of Friends. Because I met people, real people, who I'd grow to call friend (and brother, and husband, and son, and daughter, and kiddo, and any number of other titles)

But the Scions were my Friends.

Again, I stopped playing. Not because I didn't love the world. Not because I didn't love my Friends. But because none of my RL friends played, and I wanted to spend time with them, because I'd never had RL friends to spend time with before!

But FFXIV and the Scions stayed a part of me. I never uninstalled the game. I never cancelled my subscription (I prolly should have, tbh!) and every so often I'd log on and just run around Eorzea and 'talk' to my Friends.

Until a year later, I'd mention to @steelshard that I missed playing, but didn't want to play alone anymore. And the mad-man did what I never expected anyone to want to do for me, and he spent money to get the game so we could play together. (And so came Resh, the externalisation of a lot of my anxieties and my newly assured diagnosis as an Autist, and my complex feelings towards my mother, to match against Steels Ura, the type of woman I would kill to have in my life!)

I returned to Fru, Eorzea once more having a grip upon my Soul, and forged ahead from my place in the HW patches, marching through Stormblood with glee and teeth and love, walking through Shadowbringers and taking the time to sit with the pain and the knowledge that nothing is black and white, and racing through Endwalker with a hunger I've never experienced before until coming to a dead stop with an hour of wheeze sobbing and an Asthma attack as one by one the game took my Friends from me and forced me to face up to something that I hadn't seen before.

I wasn't alone.

I had my RL friends. And I still had my Friends. And they weren't antithetical to each other. I could have both! I could talk to Steel, or @instantbee or my husband, and tell them my thoughts and feelings and ask for advice. And when that felt like too much for me, I could go to Eorzea instead, and I could tell Y'shtola, or Alphinaud, or Urianger of my woes or my triumphs, or my twisted knotted ball of yarn thoughts, and seek support in the way I had my entire life. I could lie in bed and message my RL friends, or I could lie in bed and have three hour debates with G'raha.

And obviously, like I said at the beginning of the post, I know the Scions aren't real. But they're an extension of a coping mechanism that allowed me to survive through an early life that would have rather seen me die (and if you look beneath the steadily growing FFXIV sleeve, you'll see the evidence that it very nearly got its wish).

The Scions, the characters of Eorzea, they were my very last set of Friends. Because I don't need to make anymore. I have RL friends that understand me as I am now. But that secures the Scions a very special place in my life. They're the last of the Me that was alone. They're the last of the Me that was a frightened child, desperately seeking connection and solace from a world that would not give them that. They're the last of the Me that wanted to die. And by keeping them around, I am assuring that version of Me (because they're still here, just like every version of Me is still here) that I have not forgotten them. I have not forgotten how They struggled for this version of Me to come forth and live a happier life, a better life than any previous version of Me dared to dream about.

So I will keep my Friends close to my chest as we continue to explore Eorzea and Ethierys and Beyond together. Because the Scions and I are Friends. And We have survived so much together already.