#shadowbringers spoilers

[absolem0]

Didn't have electricity in the evening, so I drew G'raha in that time

[arianwen44]

‘Rejoice and revel, for the Kingdom of Rainbows is forever young.’ 🦋✨🌈

[goburinboo]

Can't get enough of the crystal catboi!! <3

[valena-nedela]

Though Valena is mostly a healer, caster, and ranged fighter, she does have training as a Rogue and Ninja, and has also had some foes who aren’t content to let her remain at a distance. She has a number of minor scars and scoring on the scales of her arms where she’s relied to them to catch a blade and keep it from biting any deeper — many of these were courtesy of Karasu, but the worst of her scars were nearly always given to her by Zenos.

The largest single scar on her body is a diagonal line across her stomach, from the scales on her right hip to under her left breast, where Zenos’s blade finally reached her after he shattered her last barrier at Rhalgr’s Reach. There’s a certain degree of frustration she associates with this one - that if she’d been able to face him then instead of months later, so much damage could have been prevented. Though Lyse has tried to reassure her in the past that some good came out of it, as well.

Finally, her most elaborate scar is actually a web of scarring up her right arm — the product of an ill-conceived attempt to use conjury when the Light threatened to overwhelm her on the First. She hoped she could channel enough light aether away from herself in this manner to keep it under control, but it caused her arm to be the first point aether erupted from when the sin eater transformation began. She’s rather glib about her other scars, but these she doesn’t really talk about. In part she feels foolish for the attempt, in part because they represented her nearly losing her humanity, and in part because of just how close she came to an absolute disaster.

Does your WoL have any scars? How do they feel about them?

[crystallinekitties]

hello graha artists and scholars: graha's hair discussion! (partial hc in here)

i simply noticed his braid was thicker and longer in enw than the character creator hair he had in arr so i needed to discuss why.

the arr hair and the exarch hair are the same hair, but for whatever reason the exarch was given a different highlighting pattern than the CC hair, which would make you think the hair model itself would be different but it is not!

arr graha:

a note i didn't make on the image was the fact that because the arr braid is more one whole polygon, i'd say it is more akin to a fishtail braid. how he did a tight fishtail himself, good question, man's dedicated to making his hair much more complicated than it needs to be if his oh-so-cool warrior of light will see it. he makes it tight for bow/arrow retrieving practicality.

(and a personal hc is that he also goes for a braid instead of a ponytail because a braid can be a lot less tension on the scalp/ more evenly distributed tension, being a reliever for his chronic migraines) -- ((im sure i will eventually make a text post just going in depth about all three grahas' disabilities because i feel people see it obviously in the exarch but forget the invisible disabilities enw and arr graha have as well)

moving onto his bangs though, why keep them long if he's a bowman? he says he was bullied for his odd colored eyes, hence he covers the more jarring color with his bangs.

enw graha:

looking at the way his enw braid is sectioned off more and looser makes me think it's a standard three strand braid. it makes sense he's being a bit more practical, he doesn't have time to do a fancy braid but still wants to look nice. he doesn't need to worry about a bow and arrow anymore so he grows his hair out a bit more, likely puts it in a ponytail on lazier days.

he puts his hair into fancy little pins and pushes it from his eyes: this is more a character design choice to show he's opened up more since being a cloistered scholar. he looks wide awake! in universe though (hc) it was absolutely a tataru fashion choice that he adopted.

exarch graha:

now do i think the exarch is doing a fishtail braid in the morning? no not really. i don't think he honestly has the finger dexterity for it in his crystal hand. it's visually the same as the arr braid though, so what? fishtail on days lyna helps him cause he needs to look cute for his warrior -- twist or ponytail any other day. he doesn't need to worry about it being tight or short, i think he just leaves it short because it's easier to manage and stay under a hood.

why keep the bangs long if he's trying to keep his hair from coming out under the hood? that's a good ass hood tbh he's good at keeping it from peeking. but beyond that, i believe it's still his attempt to hide. he covers his eyes so if anyone peeks under the hood they see white hair first, not the blaring red eyes. he's supposed to be a warm and inviting (if not mysterious) figure to his people and to the scions. looking back at arr graha, he covers his red eye because it's jarring, so he continues to cover his eye even after losing the hood to maintain some of that warmness.

ok thanks that's all - add your own HCs i would love to hear them <33333

[mimble-sparklepudding]

20. Roevember - Chase.

If you mean to give chase, I will not stand in your way. But you would do well to tread warily. For your quarry goes to a place where even Eulmore dare not bare its steel… Il Mheg, the faerie kingdom.

[shalpilot]

last night i had a dream

[wind-up-matcha]

*I can see you're definetly not Minfilia*

*Oh you poor girl.... Vauthry will pay for what he did.*

*I want to make sure you're given a better life and are happy after I leave the first.*

*Adorable and must be protected*

11/19/24

What are your wol(oc)'s opinions on Ryne?

[tritoch]

the other thing I find very funny about trying to write a canon compliant wol is taking all the wolship hints extremely seriously.

I don't really wolship because I'm just fundamentally not that kind of fan. But I know for those who are, the sheer number of romance hints FFXIV throws at you can be overwhelming to parse in a context where you have a preferred/intended wolship, particularly if you're not attracted to the gender the hints are coming from in the first place (a particular tip of the hat to wlw fans navigating the g'raha of it all). I've seen plenty of people write around them or write them out or be like "no aymeric was for real inviting my wol to a nice platonic zero-subtext dinner," and God bless all of you.

But it's really funny to imagine them all as all-too-real but unreciprocated or perhaps unreciprocatable. The sheer scale of it is comedy. Spoilers for all of FFXIV follow.

Oh God, the Lord Speaker wants to have dinner, just the two of us, at his family estate and not a government building. I hope he doesn't bring up his crush on me. Thal's balls he's about to bring it up—oh thank God there's an emergency. Oh no someone got hurt! Oh no it's the teenage girl with a crush on me.

Your life is a cosmic joke. You watch the Sultana get poisoned and all your friends probably die to save your life and it's kind of all your fault in some ways, I mean at the very least you should've spoken up when they gave the teenager a private army, and then the teenage boy speaks up and is like, "hey, I guess we have at least one ally. What about if we go visit that guy who is really obviously down unbelievably bad for you and wants to lick the sweat off of you." and you have to be like, yeah, Alphinaud. Great idea. Let's do it. I'll call him.

(brief interlude: also haurchefant's DEATH hits so good if you don't reciprocate. It's okay. He gets it. You're going through a lot and even if you had time to sort through your feelings maybe you're just not into him. That would be okay! You can love someone, or the idea of someone, without needing it to be romantically reciprocated. That's chivalric, even. Knightly. So he won't ask you to lie to him and say you love him as he lies dying in your arms. He's not so low as all that. But could you smile for him as you used to? That true hero's smile of yours. And you do, and he dies. And you both know he died for a lie, in a way, or a flight of fancy. And he's okay with that. Are you? Should you be? Should he?)

Then you're into Stormblood and it's like wow, okay. That last part was all high fantasy, of course there were loyal knights and elegant princes. But this is war. Imperialism. Grim business, surely there's no way—oh no BOTH handsome young revolutionary leaders seem to have a special interest in you?! And so does the Crown Prince of the Empire? Come on, man. I should get to do the whole horrors of war thing without having to also deal with this. Gaius sucked and it was weird that he let his foster daughter run around being openly obsessed with him but at least he never made it my problem.

You can't even get away from it across dimensions. Shadowbringers is a horror story about going on a teambuilding camping trip with your work colleagues for some reason except they all suddenly got really hot and they keep touching you affectionately on the shoulder and being like "I care for you and your happiness. Truly." And also you're being stalked for the whole camping trip by two old men who are obsessed with you. The false climax of the story is that the one old man tries to betray you and give a dramatic monologue about how he loves you but the two of you are doomed by the narrative and then the other old man shoots him in the back like "no actually its MY turn to betray them and give a dramatic monologue about how our love is doomed by the narrative." Then the real climax is old man #1 backstabbing old man #2 in the middle of said monologue before old man #2 dies and gives ANOTHER wistful monologue about his doomed love. Then for the patches they're like okay so we have this even CRAZIER old man who's gonna strike when you're weak and give a dramatic monolo—

and that's without even getting into the literal soulmate ghost only you can see

my warrior of light never felt more betrayed than in that scene where Y'shtola is like "haha Alisaie and G'raha have crushes on the warrior of light." Like I thought we were COOL, Y'shtola! I work here! This situation is already in such a delicate balance! Right when I got here I met Alisaie's "friend from work" who was like oh haha so YOU'RE the one she can't stop talking about and we never followed up on that because the woman died horrifically like five minutes later right in front of us! Then when Vauthry got away and we had to do all that shit with the dwarves, G'raha kept pausing every ten minutes to be like oooooh I'm so old I'm gonna die soon...at least I got to spend some time with some people who are really important to me...in fact here's what I'd tell the person who's most important to me...actually u know them really well haha. And I just had to sit there and be like wow, dude, crazy.

even in the face of apocalypse you still gotta go back in time like 12,000 years and there's somewhere there who makes you sit and listen to his story which is that the purpose of his whole godlike immortal life was to be in a throuple with you and old man #2 from the camping trip. and you just gotta sit there the whole time knowing you/your past life is the one who broke up the throuple over politics. He's like come help me harangue the old man into streaking in public, he'll do it if you ask.

then you meet and fight and kill God and you gotta turn to the team and be like hey sorry guys can you give me a sec. I'm gonna call God by her real name because we met one time for like four days and after that the promise of meeting me again was one of the things that sustained her through her millennia of suffering. Not like that but like. Idk. Just gimme a sec!

It's a relief when you finally get to Lahabrea and he's like actually I still don't fuck with your vibe. Like thank GOD.

And my WoL is very obviously dad-shaped so Dawntrail had a very specific energy for me but I understand that for plenty of people your deepening rapport with Wuk Lamat had a romantic subtext (same for Koana depending on how you read a few of his lines). And personally I think it's the height of comedy to be like, noooo, babe, your highness, I know you and your brother the king are in love with me and want me to stick around and support you emotionally through this governmental transition haha. But it's just...the cursed wineglass, babe. I GOTTA go figure out what's up with this cursed wineglass.

It's a running gag in some of the more optional content that people are like "you have an unreasonable number of hobbies and side gigs" to the WoL from time to time. But if every time you tried picking up a new hobby some new elf started baring their soul to you, you too would be like Hey Jessie (or sometimes Krile or Tataru), my good friend who is one of the only people in my life who knows what professional ethics and work-life boundaries are, any chance you need muscle on a gig on the other side of the world? Ideally with only Cid and his ex so all libidinal energy in the room is directed towards machinery or someone who isn't me?

ironically one of the only places you get a break from psychosexual obsession is the nier content

[galacticsabc]

Let's haunt the narrative together!

[demilypyro]

This is my favorite FF14 npc btw (gay alcoholic dwarf girl)

[purple-cat-demon]

Haven’t gotten to meet Sphene yet but this is really cool!

see no evil || hear no evil || speak no evil

[nephiieatsuranium]

With your unbeating heart, wish them well.

[celestial-bl00m]

I love when Emet-Selch enters a scene and all the scions are just like

[ikeimen]

custody battle (shadowbringers in a nutshell)

[thecottageinthedark]

Lightwarden Bad Endings:

I'm not sure about what Hjld would end up like. I do, however, have ideas about Hannu and Bion.

Hannu's virtue is Clarity-seeing things as they are, recognising both enemy slanders and comforting lies as false, looking past the haze of myth and propaganda to the bare reality. The Lightwarden Diaúgeia is a complicated mass of constantly moving, circling and overlapping crystal-glass lenses around a core of brightness; when the lenses line up right, it attacks with a focussed brilliant-white beam that either scorches to the very bone or burns away everything but Light to leave its victim a new sin eater. Its lair is in the Tempest, in a replica of a lost city that it's bleached to paleness with its own light; he who crafted that city was the first to fall to it. Bion's virtue, of course, is Charity, the principle of radical compassion they learned at Father Iliud's knee. The Lightwarden Agape, then, descends glorious and terrible on Kholusia-on the villages falling apart from neglect, on the shanty-town outside Eulmore proper. Some part of it maybe finds them familiar, dimly remembering the refugee camps of Thanalan where the little church cat ran errands for their foster-father, giving what aid they could. The Lightwarden is more golden than white-(divinity is the colour of gold)-and its many arms and many wings reach out to enfold any being that doesn't get away fast enough, granting them the terrible mercy of mindlessness.

...Either way, either Warden, the First's not going to last much longer.

Bad endings? Bad endings anyone?

What if they got consumed by the light? What if they became a primal? Any and all bad endings!

I think mine most likely would've become a lightwarden because she didn't get to Emet-Selch fast enough. "Obsession" would be its name, due to the fact it would be obsessed with the idea of saving others and changing the world, probably leading to either the Scions killing her or to her consuming the First in Light.

.