#rai's ffxiv crisis

[kaijubluedreams]

Cassiel Helisande

Cassiel is my Warrior of Light that I write bad fanfic with. She's technically an alt character (that I still need to take through EdW!), but based off the fem highlander I started my main on (because I really loved her). I don't RP with her, just daydream about her and Estinien.

Cass is 27/28 at the start of ARR and my canon has a couple years passing before EdW is over. She's from a small mining village in Gyr Abania and she escaped to the Black Shroud before Garlemald restarted their Eorzean campaign (a couple years pre-calamity). While blessed (or possibly cursed?) with the Echo, she originally comes to Gridania to be a botanist and miner, only picking up the lance incidentally. She soon finds herself fighting primals and meeting Ishgard's Azure Dragoon. She's a DRG and DRK canonically.

I'm not sure if I'll ever publish stuff I've written. I have previously published a very early, now completely rewritten version on AO3, that has since been deleted (I do still have an ShB piece that's just a bit of creative writing that I'm still proud of! Read it here). However, I will probably ramble about her, at length, given the chance. Her tag is #the abyss (Estinien's is #the song, their combined tag is #the song and the abyss).

See under the cut for some more screenshots! I have yet to play/look at her much in DT, I wasn't very happy with the changes in the benchmark, so I'm not sure how I'll feel.

[wsancho]

Very nice! 👌🏼

And the FFVI articles are a great read, go check them out, people! 👀

I'll drop my list without taking 30 days or replaying anything because reasons. I'll just go off the top of my head; my gaming experience is scarce and overly homogeneous, and by the look of things, I expect it to stay that way. Biased bias is biased. 🫡

#1. Your First Video Game: Some game on Atari where you had to drop soldiers in parachutes from a helicopter at the right moment so they would land on solid ground. 🤷🏻‍♀️

#2. Most Hours in Game: Final Fantasy VI. I don't keep count, I've spent years on that one.

#3. Hardest Boss Fight: Mortal Kombat 9, Shao Kahn. Brutal motherfucker.

#4. Currently Playing: Nothing... So, the game of life? 🥴 (Boo that woman!)

#5. Game That Deserves a Remake: Final Fantasy V. On the one hand, I'd love a remake of FFVI, but it's already a masterpiece. I would like a fix for all the story problems in FFIV, but that one has gotten too many remakes already. I think FFV could benefit from some Squeenix attention.

#6. Best World Building: Super Mario Bros 3. Everything in this thing is nonsensical, and yet we get it while we play in it, no tutorial needed. Masterful design. 👏🏼

#7. Favorite Multi-Player or MMO: Never played one of those. FFXIV has cool fanart. 🥴 (BOOO!!)

#8. Favorite Protagonist: Mortal Kombat 9, Scorpion. I always liked him and in this iteration he gets to be the protagonist 🤷🏻‍♀️ (I can't think of a protagonist I really like).

#9. Favorite Antagonist: Metal Gear Solid, Psycho Mantis. He showed me his power. 😐

#10. Underrated Game: Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core. Best Final Fantasy VII.

#11. Comfort Game: Journey. The word "comfort" has never been more appropriate to describe a game.

#12. Most Annoying Character: Final Fantasy IV, Edward. They got me to sympathize with him so deeply, but it couldn't prevent me from getting fed up with his fucking useless ass.

#13. Best Voice Acting: World Of Final Fantasy, Edgar (Ray Chase). There are many voices I could listen to all day and night (Dissidia has great VA), but I think Chase totally nailed the characterization. 😍🌹

#14. Favorite Class or Fighting Style: A good striker. I need the contact! I prefer swords and blades over other types of weapons, and black magic over other spells (only if I must use magic, because I don't like it). I like to cause tangible damage. 😤

#15. Overrated Game: Final Fantasy VII. Biggest disappointment in my gaming experience: graphics, story, characters, mechanics; across the board, the franchise remarkably lowered the quality.

#16. Best Plot Twist: Final Fantasy IV, the first one. This game is carelessly littered with plot-twists that obliterate themselves, but that first one broke my heart every fucking time. 😢

#17. Favorite Cinematic: Dissidia Final Fantasy, Opening. Makes me wanna kick some ass!!! 😤😤😤

#18. Worst Mini Game: Final Fantasy VI, the one where you have to look in the dark for stuff to feed a treasure chest. Unnecessarily annoying.

#19. Favorite Game Mechanic: Final Fantasy II, mastering weapons by equipping them. Seemed like a good idea at the time. 😅 I guess I didn't play FFII enough to get to the point where it becomes annoying. 🤷🏻‍♀️

#20. Easiest Final Boss Fight: Final Fantasy VII, Sephiroth. He was in a predictable loop.

#21. Best Character Customization: Final Fantasy VI, Edgar as dragoon. His tools suck in the second half and Mog sucks all the way, so it's an easy and very rewarding choice.

#22. Favorite In-Game Quote: Final Fantasy VI: Anything said by Kefka. Every fucking line of his is iconic. 😆 I'll go with the first one that got me: "Ahem... there's SAND on my boots!"

#23. First Pre-Order: PS4 with a FFXV demo. I drank the Final Fantasy kool-aid.

#24. Best OST: Final Fantasy VI. Enough said!

#25. Favorite Supporting or Side Character: Final Fantasy VI, Edgar and Sabin. The devs say "there's no protagonist, anyone can be the protagonist" (get outta here, Terra is the protagonist 🤨). The devs also say "the main character is Kefka", so we all get to be butthurt in unison about our heroes being side-characters. With that said, mah precious bois are a package deal: one soul split into two bodies, so no, I have not made a plural choice. 😌

#26. Favorite Series: Final Fantasy. Too obvious, but it is what it is.

#27. Favorite Series-Exclusive Species: Final Fantasy, Chocobos. The one part of FFVII that I enjoyed was raising and racing chocobos. ❣️

#28. Favorite Genre: A good story. I mostly played RPGs for this reason, but I'm not a fan of the genre as I am of an engaging story and lovable characters.

#29. Your Most Anticipated Game: Cyberpunk 2077. Great publicity, I still listen to "Bullets" by Archive. 😌 Luckily I ran out of money by the time it came out so I was able to catch up to the bad word of mouth.

#30. Favorite Game Overall (Per System):

Atari: Frogger.

NES: Super Mario Bros 3.

SNES: Final Fantasy III VI.

PS1: Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf.

PS3: Mortal Kombat 9.

PSP: Dissidia Final Fantasy.

PS4: N/A. The games coming out seemed extremely interesting and ambitious, and yet, I no longer cared to play them. I sold the console and games after having them collecting dust for a few years. 🤷🏻‍♀️(BOOOO!!)

Now tag yourself 👀

FGC #698 Klondike Solitaire

I saw friend-of-the-site McClain post this here chart thingy for talking about videogames… And I talk about videogames all the time! So I got in on the action over at my Bluesky account. Now I am reproducing my answers here on my blog. Social media is ephemeral, park your data, kiddies. Also, it gave me an excuse to play a lot of great games to capture screenshots. Yay! Everybody wins! #1: First…

[kaijubluedreams]

need to get good at art so I can draw all these hot elezen men

(this is maybe weird to see after all my bitching about ace/aro but I like fictional men existing in their little games and I can look at them, they will never be real and that's a good thing)

[kaijubluedreams]

and my current main, a very hot elezen lady who defies my usual character quirks (aka exclusively blue hair) but I love her anyway

[kaijubluedreams]

anyway have a cassiel

[kaijubluedreams]

Part 2 of my main through the ages! (Part 1 here) Last we left off, I was a very hot, very tall Roe (I have some very absurd MSQ cutscene screenshots). Next up...

Fem Au Ra! (Aug 2021). I made her as short as possible, which was very fun after being as tall as possible. I did an entire replay of ARR, HW, SB, and ShB with her. And I played EdW with her, I completely forgot that. (To be fair, I was under a lot of stress + pandemic stress, so my memory of that time is pretty shot).

And then I wanted to play the very pretty Viera! (June 2022). I liked her, but probably wouldn't go back.

I went back to fem highlander sometime in early 2023. I wasn't playing the game much around this time. I was doing big fishing and I have a lot of fishing screenshots.

I went back to m miqo for a few months before Dawntrail came out. I don't really have any screenshots, it's the same catboy as last time. Then DT came out and I fanta'd to fem hrothgar! (and got an ultrawide). I played through all of DT with her, but ultimately didn't enjoy fem hroth.

So I switched to fem Elezen, where I am now, and I'm quite enjoying it! I don't have many screenshots of her, I don't really have the patience for gpose anymore. And I have a very bare bones reshade with just LUT in it. And honestly, I think the ultrawide is making it more annoying to take screenshots.

I have 3.9 GBs of FFXIV screenshots, so thank you for taking a look through them with me!

Bonuses! I have/had some alts, including this m Au Ra I really liked for some reason. This character eventually became Cassiel (not in lore, just got a name change and fanta). I have some other alts for my solo FC so I can have an FC house, they're my m miqo, m hroth, and lalafell (appropriately named Wind-up Rai!).

This was from the 2018 valentiones event, my friend is an avid bard and we got our fortunes told as Amon.

When HoH first came out, if you went into gpose when someone was otter'd, they would be huge.

Stupid costumes for Prae runs will always be funny. Back when Prae was an 8 man, 45 minute dungeon!

Building the firmament!

And that's it! Thanks for going down memory lane with me! I'll make a separate post with Cass info

[kaijubluedreams]

My main through the ages! I started in July 2017 as a fem highlander (who you may vaguely recognize as Cassiel...). I played as her up until someone flirted with me/her in a dungeon and I freaked out.

Enter M Au Ra (Feb 2018). He's fun, I liked dressing him up. I took some good gpose screenshots with him when I still bothered messing with reshade. Also the white whittret makes it's first appearance, I got it on my first run and have used it almost exclusively since.

Alas, I missed my girl, so I was back to her around June 2018. And always forgot to hide my dear whittret. And then...

I got the lalafell bug (Jan 2019)! They are so much fun to play, just little balls of chaos. I had a lot of fun playing dress up with her (dress up is 75% of the reason I play this game). This was also when the namazu head came out (I love namazu) so I had a lot of fun with that.

And then hrothgar came out! (June 2019). I really love m hrothgar. They're big and goofy and adorable. They are such a bitch to glam though. It's hard styling a fridge. But I played him for quite a while, through almost all of ShB.

And then I made myself a smaller catboy! (August 2020). I quite like m miqo, especially the /joy emote (ear wiggles!!)

Back to lalafell at the very end of the expac (Jan 2021). I think this was when I was trying for the Saint of the Firmament title and losing my mind in the Diadem.

And then I had another crisis, but in the tall direction (April 2021). I wanted to play dress up and I wanted some boobs, so fem roe it was! I really liked being taller than Estinien for a while. I also really liked taking screenshots with her.

And I think that's about the picture limit for tumblr, so click here for part 2!