#silly product designs of the blorbos from time to time

[0ffisially0ll0]

so how we feeling about,, dca tamagotchis...

[wildstar25]

How did you decide on Arsay's romantic partners? Did it happen as you played or did you plan in advance based on spoilers/osmosis/etc?

OO thanks for asking! I will be rambling about this haha It was a little bit of a mix tbh! I saw cute g'raha tia art on my TL all the time but aside from knowing he at some point gets covered in crystals, I had 0 sense about what his character was. I just really loved his character design and I was ready to play the whole game just to meet him! I was pretty much blind about everything in the game aside from seeing character designs via fanart. (the MONTHS i spent thinking people were rting master xehanort fanart... smh) My friends were adamant about not spoiling things for me either so I was able to come across things naturally and form my own opinions on the characters! I did instantly love G'raha the moment he showed up during the CT raids but I was actually on the fence about shipping Arsay with him for a long time!! He was always there in the back of my mind but I was waiting for some other character to come in with the steel chair and become the blorbo that I never expected to love. Unfortunately all the male characters that I could potentially throw at Arsay were too dead, had a shitty personality/gone from the msq for way too long, or get table scraps of content which I didn't really feel like dealing with this time around. (> had just came out of a years long stint of making content for myself for side characters iykyk) I was legitimately hetcomp-ing Arsay which is insane of me!! smh at my past self. Y'shtola was literally running at me, chair in hand, ready for the knock out. I have no plans whatso ever to ship Arsay with her. At MOST I thought they could be friends. Me shipping them together was absolutely a product of slowly going through the game, figuring out Arsay's character, and realizing how perfectly it compliments Y'shtola's. Y'shtola was coming across as the type to keep walls between herself and others, meanwhile Arsay was becoming the silly bean who does not know what personal space is. It was the perfect grounds for a "bright character lights up the moody character's life" situation!! And so I thought, "well Arsay's still waiting for g'raha (maybe??) but her and shtola can at least be besties!". But literally any time I put them next to each other all I could think was that they both are in love and are too dumb (arsay)/stubborn(shtola) to do anything about it. Arsay wormed her way into y'shtola's heart and Y'shtola became someone who Arsay always looked forward to seeing.

I really did need to know everyones vibes in ShB before I could make the final choice of what to do wolship wise. I herd that a lot of changes happen in that expac and I was worried the characters would no longer be compatible. I also did not realize the exarch shows up IN ShB and not in the ShB patches. (my friends kept saying G'raha comes back in 5.3, I did not realize they were being very specific in the language there haha). It was the day after I finished the greatwoods section in ShB that I was actually like "oh Arsay has been going through it I think she needs a girlfriend in these trying times" and pulled the trigger on that front. I had already been teasing the idea to some degree but didn't want to make it official right away. I half wrote a "Arsay finally figures out she's in love with her best friend actually and panics" fic. I still havent finished it since incredibly brilliant me decided that her confidant through all that turmoil would be Urianger and writing his dialogue requires knowledge of Shakespearean english that I do not posses.

I did kinda put myself in a corner cause then I had to figure out what to do about G'raha now. I still hadn't fully committed to any prior romance between them in the CT raids so it wasn't like that was an issue. however, as I continued to play through ShB I knew I couldn't not ship Arsay with him too. He was WAY too in love with her. They had WAY too much synergy together. THANKFULLY she has two hands and its not uncommon for Miqo'te to have multiple partners. I don't generally do OT3 or poly shipping myself, but for my catgirl to be the happiest she needs both of them in her life! And I'd like to believe she would make their lives happier too! The three of them all have their own experiences with loneliness and isolation, it warms my heart to imagine them finding a forever family in each other!

tl;dr: I was tweeting "who can I possibly ship arsay with 🥺" twice a week for 9 months despite in my heart knowing the answer and just waiting till I got far enough in the story to confirm things could work out.