#so i finished stormblood and started shadowbringers

[last-flight-of-fancy]

listen i know the reason you cant actually carry people and hug the characters is due to game coding and the wide range of player characters sizes but. in my head it's WoL who picks up alisiae. why am i big and strong if i cannot pick up my new baby sister. this is a travesty. also i am emotionally compromised.

started shadowbringers and wow i can't beleive how fast that chemistry developed

Update:

so uh. that happened.

[sjofn-lofnsdottr]

Then & Now

I was TRAPPED in NEW JERSEY when I got tagged for this and it had me rattling my cage. But now! I am home! And I can go hunting for some THEN. And I'm gonna ramble.

Please enjoy my LIVE REACTION to Dusk standing up in a cutscene, so very long ago, in February, 2019:

As I've said here and there, Dusk was kind of an experiment for me. I thought elezen looked weird as hell, but in a way that intrigued me, and it made me try to make one I liked the look of ... and Dusk was the result.

I BELIEVE this is my first attempt at a real glam, although I was still getting a handle on how to dress his goofy ass. I also had no idea gpose existed yet. Hiding UI for me, baby!

PS: he was an arcanist for his starter class, something everyone, including my husband, usually forgets. And for good reason, I rarely play SCH or SMN any more. Although I do have warm memories of Stormblood-era emerald carbuncle welcoming me to the game by aggroing 9868356386 sheep in an attempt on my life.

It took until me getting into Stormblood content before I started trying to do gpose things! And I did it pretty rarely, I was busy trying to finish the MSQ so I'd be ready for this expansion that was coming out soon. Shadowbringers or whatever.

It wasn't until I finished 5.0 that I got consistent with him wearing his glasses 95% of the time, but aside from that and some new white highlights that you couldn't really see, there was basically no change between baby sprout Dusk and Big Boy Current Content Dusk. It cracks me up that I lost my sprout when I finished HW, btw, knowing when sprouts go away now.

And in Endwalker, his big changes?

He got his EW GNB suit I use constantly and changed his ear clasps to something brassy instead of silver. Oh, and got a husband. I also started messing with crime, finally.

I thought he'd be basically the same in Dawntrail, since I had gone so many years barely changing him at all. I thought he'd just get graphical upgraded to sexier ears and otherwise just be Dusk as we always knew him. But I was wrong!

Behold, current Dusk:

He grew his hair out SLIGHTLY. I assume it'll be another 4-5 years before I change him again.

If anyone reading this wants to be tagged, consider yourself so, I live in perpetual fear of leaving people out and like to take that cop out instead.

Thank you for the tags, @amalthea-felsblood and @alicelufenia!

[displaykitkats]

Renoux Luna: Then (2021) & Now (2025)

Here's possibly one of the first pics I took of Renoux that I have on hand (there might be earlier pics of her but I can't get to them since my PS4 is packed away). I actually started playing XIV as a miqo'te when A Realm Reborn came out on the PS3, but I went on a hiatus during Stormblood. When I came back to the game post-Shadowbringers I rerolled on a new server as a viera. While I really liked my viera, I was missing my miqo so I fantasia'd Renoux after finishing up Endwalker MSQ.

Left is one of the last pics of my ARR character (the inspiration for Renoux's overall appearance). Right is vanilla Renoux before the graphics update.

And this is Renoux today, still mostly vanilla except hair and make-up. Her journey was long (I actually had to use a few fantasias) but she's finally here!

This was a lot of fun going through all my screenshots from console -> Mac -> PC and seeing how my pictures have progressively changed. Thank you to @drowxiv for tagging me on this! Tagging @turpalauri @neriyon @juweldom @candycryptids @captainqster and encourage everyone else to share their "Then vs Now" stories/pics if you haven't already done so!

[aotopmha]

I have finished Dawntrail!

I will have a spoiler-free post (this one) and a spoiler-y post (probably one of my following ones) of my very general thoughts.

If there's a wish to avoid even this kind of post, then the warning is here.

For spoiler-free impressions, I will say that I did notice a bigger inconsistency in terms of the voice work.

The final boss had straight-up flat delivery that didn't exist in most cutscenes for ALL voice actors.

Everyone is also mostly fine when talking normally, but when yelling or stronger feelings are needed, especially the newest actors feel strangely off.

Wuk sounded absolutely fine and consistent in 6.55, but there were points where she just sounded really flat in the actual expansion.

I'm also in the camp that the credits theme sounded off. The chorus was fine (and the same track was completely fine when used in a couple of other cutscenes), but the main vocalist sounded really off. It took me out of what was otherwise a very solid final stretch of story. And the singer has done some great stuff before!

It's all really odd and I didn't think I would have these complaints ever again after A Realm Reborn because the voice work since then has ranged from good to amazing.

I'm really curious about what's going on behind the scenes.

FF14's vocal tracks have been weak at points to me, but not once have I felt a vocalist sounded absolutely awful.

Otherwise this expansion is up there in terms of the soundtrack, might be my favourite so far. Incredibly strong all the way through aside from the vocalist in this single track.

The graphics update has done wonders to endear me to the world and this will be the first expansion I will absolutely max out the FATEs for perhaps even just this reason alone. It's a miracle how much more strongly you can sell a world with better lighting and just a little bit more object density.

The content itself is also absolutely fantastic - if the story really bores you, I at least recommend skipping through it to do the dungeons and trials and maybe go back for the story via New Game+. The encounter design is refreshing, from a whole bunch of new mechanics to more interesting fodder enemy usage.

The class changes, while feeling relatively minor have felt like really good smoothing out of awkward elements.

I especially feel this with Dragoon, and as much as I miss Plunge, Dark Knight's new ability animations alone go a long way to add to that smoother feel, as well.

i also adore Viper, which I think is my favourite melee out of the ones I've played. Simple, but speedy and satisfying to play.

I will absolutely still remain a DRK main in a general sense, though.

Will be running dungeons to get everyone along all of the game.

Finally, I think the story came together really nicely by the end, with some interesting threads left behind.

It is much more simple than Shadowbringers and Endwalker, but I think it was still effective. As I've said in previous posts, it's just really thematically strong and followed that strength right to the end, even if I have varied opinions on all of the characters.

In terms of immediate impressions, content-wise (dungeons and trials in particular), as far as base expansions go, I'd place it above ARR, Heavensward and probably Endwalker (Endwalker's solo duties rocked and narrative and gameplay integration is still unmatched, but the encounter design itself isn't as distinct).

Story-wise I'd probably place it above A Realm Reborn and Stormblood because it has a similar spirit of exploration with much better pacing within its individual areas. Every time I felt the story started dragging in its own ecosystem, it moved on and the answers by the end were satisfying and made sense while ARR and StB actually didn't have that many mysteries to even think about, so had much less impetus to at least seek those out.

It had no Labyrinthos, Ruby Sea, Moogle quest or Mt. Gulg setup. But it wasn't as complex in terms of character writing as Endwalker, Shadowbringers and to some extent even Heavensward and Stormblood.

Though, as said, this is only speaking in terms of the base expansions, the only comparison I can make. Because the patch content did amazing narrative things for both Heavensward and Stormblood in particular in my eyes.

(I actually have no idea what to expect from the Dawntrail patches. Which is, once more, both super exciting and scary because the threads left behind are pretty much a complete mystery.)

So in a general sense, I'm an early Dawntrail defender. I enjoyed it a lot. It truly felt special as my very first on-content expansion, too.

Now on to the optional dungeons!

(Have heard some great impressons on them!)

[aethercurrent]

If you've been around, I just finished Time Travel AU. If you're from AO3, you know what this post is and you can skip further down to read more. If you don't know what Time Travel AU is, it's a long FFXIV fanfic I've been working on for the better part of six years. Five and a half of which it's been online to read.

This post is to document some of the early plotting that I never talked about written down into a coherent-ish(?) post. Mostly to get it out of my system and to hopefully stave off the absolute breakdown I'll have once that "it's finished after six years" thing settles in.

Let's start this off with something funnier, because this a looooooooong post: the name.

(That isn't a word, for the record. I just mashed two nouns together to be funny.)

And then, finally, being a class clown at heart, I follow that up with:

It wasn't too long, and that joke that took me half a minute to come up with stuck around. It still makes me chuckle.

But, I suppose now we go back to a couple months before that conversation took place.

~

The first idea for the AU started rotating in my head a few days after finishing Shadowbringers. I’m kind of a sucker for time travel of any sort (a good chunk of my favourite media of all time includes it somehow!), and another thing I enjoy is enemies to “unfortunately, we’re on the same side for a while”.

So, as one does after a game thoroughly rearranges their brain, I started throwing darts at random points and saw what started sticking.

The first major things decided for the fic at that early conception stage were the following points:

the time travellers are WOL, Exarch, Ryne, Elidibus

the Final Days were caused by the star itself

Hythlodaeus (shade or real deal) is involved (maybe as 14th?)

Hydaelyn and Zodiark are non-violently undone by the end

it ends with a city by the Crystal Tower on the Source

I started drafting a few ideas for it over a couple weeks while waiting for 5.1.

Initially I genuinely wasn’t sure if the WOL in the story was going to be Meteor or my own WOL (every iteration of her has been in this fic, but when it started she was actually still a male Seeker… he’s the jumpy conjurer tagging along in the Praetorium; and the Dunesfolk, Highlander, and the Hrothgar are all obvious or hidden in the background, too). It took me a while before I settled on Meteor, mostly because I don’t want to ship her with NPCs, really. Also, Catboy Lahen was extremely jumpy and wouldn’t have been able to keep him being a time traveller and an Ascian secret for long. I needed someone made of sterner stuff, sorry Catboy Lahen.

The party was a proper light party at that stage, too, even before I settled on Meteor (Meteor / Ryne as tank, Exarch as healer, Ryne / Lahen and Elidibus as DPS)… and then dropped that once I started getting into the more detailed part of plotting.

By the time 5.1 rolled around I begrudgingly accepted that the WOL was going to be the 14th member of the Convocation, but I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t like that. I still don’t like it, actually. I would’ve liked the WOL being a genuine random soul choosing the road and becoming modern day Azem just as Venat and her successor were before them, instead of having it just be Venat’s successor 2 electric boogaloo.

I also finally accepted the clown’s nose and admitted that my favourite Ascian was Lahabrea because he was a good villain back when I started in the last couple days of 2014. I was disappointed that after how much Emet-Selch and Elidibus got and were getting throughout the end of Stormblood and Shadowbringers, Lahabrea still hadn’t gotten much of anything else. Yes. The first time I met one of my now better friends, she joined call for Endwalker fanfest and the first thing she ever heard from me was me straight up bursting into tears over FFIV references and Pandaemonium.

A few more plot points were also starting to come together:

I wanted Emet-Selch and Lahabrea as POV characters

Hythlodaeus definitely was going to be one as well

he was going to have sat by and watched all of history

he was going to be tempered by Hydaelyn and Zodiark

Unukalhai, if not a POV character, was going to be somewhat important

the party was going to try saving some NPCs who died (success rate varying)

Meteor’s characterisation started to crystallise a bit more

because of that, they were going to try and substantially alter the Steppe section

Lahabrea would be explosive early on, leading to him being taken out of 2.55

Minfilia vanished before she could catch on to Ascian shenanigans

Ysayle would catch on to that, though

It’s glossed over in the finished fic because it’s mostly irrelevant, but as I worked on on the plot draft more and more, I noticed that the party accidentally fit into the elemental chart rather neatly:

Lahabrea as lightning; most volatile and destructive party member

Emet-Selch as fire; also fairly temperamental and not easy to work with

Elidibus as wind; easier to handle but still fairly dangerous

Meteor as earth; unmoving object that can bury a lot of things if they want to

Exarch as water; that one was mostly a “river of time” joke, I won’t lie

Ryne as ice; it’s the closest to light and once she’s determined she’s unyielding

Hythlodaeus as light; absolute stasis due to his circumstances

Unukalhai as darkness; always on the move and always thinking

A lot of the character dynamic comes from that! Emet-Selch and Lahabrea don’t get along, Elidibus manages to get along with both of them. Ryne as the most interesting mortal out of the bunch as far as Emet-Selch is concerned stems from a fire and ice joke that ran away with me; him and the Exarch butting heads is a water and fire joke. The reason why Ryne was the one to surprise Elidibus comes from the fact that she’s a solid ice wall to his wind, and so on and so forth.

That’s also why Unukalhai remains closer to the Ascians to some degree, while Hythlodaeus has absolutely no qualms whatsoever interacting with mortals as long as his restrictions are adhered to even if he doesn’t like them in the end.

It became extremely less relevant as time went on, but a lot of the early fic can be traced to that elemental balance.

Along with the elemental balance of the team, I started working on the magic system for the Ancients. I was extremely stuck on the sidequests in Amaurot and how two of them dealt with the WOL not being able to use creation magicks. I thought it was interesting that it seemed as if the one making clothes didn’t use a concept crystal, while in one you were handed one to summon those funny slimes.

The final point was that you had to catch a cubus for one while you didn’t for the other.

So, eventually I came to the magic system in the fic. Three classes of magicks (body, soul, environment), and differing levels of innate ability and trained skill. Ironically, the three antagonist Unsundered all fit into three out of four extremes of that latter scale…

Then there was the question of what was considered “dark arts” before the Sundering. It wasn’t necessary, none of the main characters would be students of the dark arts, but it was a fun thought experiment. Eventually I came up with the idea to animate something inanimate with malicious intent. Living weapons, defensive automatons, sentient traps, and so on and so forth.

I started applying that to all of the relevant Ancients, and it was a lot more fun than I want to admit here.

Essentially what the concept crystals thing came down to in the end was a certain level of intricate casting and preservation. Lahabrea can create a flock of his birds effortlessly because he knows the concept inside out with all its details and intricacies, while someone trying to summon it themselves would have to use a crystal to get the details right. That’s also why most of the time the Ascians don’t seem to be using concept crystals—they aren’t creating much, and when they are it’s things they already know how to make.

Actually, I dug out the notes on the innate/trained scale. There’s a lot of things that are irrelevant for the fic on that, but let me write down the most relevant ones:

Emet-Selch: soul; high innate/low trained

Lahabrea: body; high innate/high trained

Elidibus: environment; low innate/high trained

Hythlodaeus: soul; high innate/not trained

Alexis (Meteor’s ancient): environment/dark arts; low innate/medium trained

Igeyorhm: body; medium innate/high trained

Minfilia: body; low innate/low trained

Venat: environment; medium innate/high trained

Rafael (previous Elidibus): soul; low innate/high trained

There was also the question of what to do with Ancients in general. True, we had the shades in Amaurot as a general idea, but just like with Azem above, I wasn’t a fan of the featureless or just “human” thing. I still am not, for the record. I think it’s goofy to have everyone be proto-Hyurs and then post-Sundering we suddenly have Hydaelyn give some people a goddess-assigned fursona. And that’s coming from someone who previously played a Hyur, for the record!

But just like how magic focused on the elements specifically instead of the broader strokes, I decided that in ancient times there would be one term for the different tribes. I tried to handwave the shades away with making the region around Amaurot the ancestral home of proto-Hyurs… and then only had one of them in the party. Oops!

Overall, my thought process was to address the weird lore bit that apparently interracial relationships are frowned upon in Eorzea. I mostly wanted to… not… have that apply for ancient times because it’s fucking weird. Not gonna call it anything other than that.

From there, it was as simple as… naming everything and everyone, giving them a place they come from, and… oh god I wrote so much stuff that never came up just so it stayed internally consistent y’all, I almost don’t want to talk about it.

The main notes on that are in Astral Scions, Umbral Sinners I, but to recap:

Hyurs were Amaurotines

Elezen were Atlanteans

Miqo’te were Children of Sirius

Lalafell were Saronian Marchers (Saro)

Roegadyn were the Galg

Viera were Lunarians

Hrothgar were the Watchers

Au Ra were white-scaled Steelhearts and black-scaled Flareseekers; formerly the Volcana

Specifically the Au Ra have a lot of background history that gets mentioned due to Lahabrea being a Flareseeker. Long story. Too long for this already long post.

Speaking of Lahabrea, though; there was rhyme and reason behind why the Ascians were what they were.

Lahabrea (Flareseeker+Amaurotine) is a renowned scholar who also is something of a social outcast both in Amaurot due to his Flareseeker heritage and in Bodhum due to his Amaurotine heritage, which leads to him being quite hard to deal with thanks to bad experiences way in the past

Elidibus (Child of Sirius+Saronian Marcher) is both very quiet and observant and still relies on company if not community and is rather lost without the support of those he deems his family

Emet-Selch (Amaurotine) is the one who misses home the fiercest out of all of them because that’s where his family and he always belonged, that’s where everyone he ever loved was

Hythlodaeus (Atlantean+Amaurotine-Lunarian) feels all over the place and cuts out his paternal home under the waves and his maternal home high above ground to find his own home

Venat (Amaurotine+Lunarian) grew up on her father’s stories about how the star looks from the Floating City of Babil and wanted the more grounded people of her home to see that as well

Another fun thing about ancient times was the fact that I could do whatever I want. It’s not that glaringly obvious with their names, but when it comes to their cities and settlements in general, I got to go a bit wild with it.

And with “wild” I mean I had some fun picking settlement names across the Final Fantasy series. I hope people who know the series a bit outside of XIV itself had some fun with the interludes; I know I had a lot of fun with it. I think if I had to pick a favourite it’d be the Floating City of Babil, the underground city Insomnia, and Archades on the mountains by the sea.

Again, I think having everything, apparently, be Ancient Greek Mythology is… stifling. I admit that even in my more canon-compliant other works I struggle with it. There’s a lot of myths to draw inspiration from; I for one would’ve loved Hermes to deal with a mfing Wolpertinger. Creature of all time.

But… at that point I was writing two different drafts. One where Unukalhai joined shortly before Hythlodaeus as POV character (which also was a joke about the darkness-aligned character joining before the light-aligned one because darkness is active), and one where he remained a non-POV but important character. Kind of similar to what Minfilia became after she was saved! It was the same for both of them up until he joined the party for good.

If I had gone with 7 POV characters instead of my full party set-up, there was a bit of an act dedicated to unravelling his feelings on this nonsense. Specifically a non-POV Unukalhai wouldn’t have spent as much time with everyone else and would have gone down a different mental rabbit hole of eventually struggling with not being able to get his revenge on Igeyorhm while also starting to feel like a replacement heist from an alternate timeline self is extremely creepy considering how the “heroes” of the Void all changed until they were effectively replaced by alternate versions of themselves. He’d have tagged along for Meteor’s Regula mission and would have gotten to hear their version of the replacement heist after they escape from Garlemald together. (Meteor taking over this timeline’s version of themself grew much less important overall as the drafting continued, so it never really came up again beyond Titan where the alternate self died during Living Dead).

After that Unukalhai would have mellowed out a bit until he would join the Ascians and Cylva on the First to deal with the Flood of Light. That would’ve been the last of him until the part where Meteor and G’raha come to the Empty.

Overall, a non-POV Unukalhai would have been less gloomy but also would have been a completely different beast. He remains fairly introspective and reclusive across both drafts, but the reclusion gets the better of him as non-POV character.

The setting itself was also becoming rather rigid—part of having so many things set in stone while adding more and more. It would be extraordinarily hard to integrate whatever canon proceeded with. I couldn’t add or remove characters because that led to a ripple effect throughout the whole plot, and the ending was admittedly the first thing I decided on after I got the idea for the premise. It was the only thing I couldn’t negotiate myself out of.

I can work with that! I’ve worked with that before!

But unlike previous longfics, something about TTAU felt daunting in ways I couldn’t articulate at any point. Still can’t. I guess I just really wanted it to be everything I’d want to read at any given time, and I really am my own harshest critic. Great going, Ms aethercurrent née vanitaslaughing, now you’ve made yourself anxious about disappointing the target audience (yourself).

I also struggled with not only making it fun for me but also for readers; I wouldn’t have posted it if I didn’t want to share it with people. I hope I did a good job in the end, but really I can only speak for myself here. If you read it, even partially, I hope you at least had some measure of fun before you dropped that absolute behemoth of a fic, and if you finished it entirely there are no words in either language I speak to convey how happy I am that my silly big baby entertained you to stick through with it until the end.

I eventually reached a point where more and more details were starting to form that were needed to keep things straight while probably never coming up.

Every member of the Convocation before the Sundering has a name and was assigned a race. Most of them are mentioned in an Interlude, but in most cases there’s some sort of underlying joke to them. Similarly all of them received titles similar to Speaker, Emissary, Architect, Seer; I attempted to keep it somewhat balanced and/or in line with a fantasy government. Messenger Mitron and Listener Loghrif sound a bit redundant with the Emissary Elidibus around, but those two specifically mostly stick to Amaurot and the more immediate surrounding settlements—specifically calling back to that one city mentioned in the sidequests in Amaurot where you deal with the debating shades. Something akin to a national relations minister, an international relations minister, and one specifically for the neighbouring countries.

At around that time the Twelve were also decided to be actual genuine deities of the star. A bit of inspiration comes from Sailor Moon (nothing concretely 100% similar, but the Twelve are effectively the star’s Sailor Scouts who also have the ability to become a new small system if they decide to leave), but I mostly just wanted them to be, y’know. Gods. Coming back to the issue I have with canon going “everything’s Amaurot”, I can’t say I love how the Twelve are in canon but I do adore them as characters. It made me choosing Menphina as the one to speak with the group all the more sweeter since I think out of all of them she’s my favourite design-wise.

There was also the thing with the Seer position that needed to be tackled at this point. I’m morbidly fascinated by characters who know the story they’re in but can’t do much to influence it because they can only tell what path they’re on depending on the ending.

I think the biggest struggle especially towards the end was the fact that I often drafted at least two possible POVs for a chapter. I often went in expecting to write one POV, got stuck irreversibly on it somehow, steamrolled the whole thing, and wrote out the other draft. I’ve cannibalised previous drafts into complete rewrites of the same POV a lot more than you’d think I have. And I only save a copy of a chapter that reached a certain word threshold or if there’s something integral written to a degree I like.

One of the worst offenders of the bunch was Chapter 78… which became Chapter 79 when I posted it. Yeah. It got so bad and frustrating that I had to make dealing with Hythlodaeus future me’s problem. Thankfully it didn’t cut too much into the pacing thanks to Act XI being extremely slow due to how introspective it was.

In the earlier days one of the other struggles was formatting. Something about my documents went haywire when pasted, leading to endless strings of completely superfluous <spans> that added strange spacing issues between all that mess. It was something that my older works struggled with too, which became a non-issue over the years (thankfully. I shudder thinking about possibly having to deal with that issue while already spending 48 hours formatting Eden Rewrite correctly).

The documents just eventually started to bug out because they were so damned long. I never expected them to be in one, but I have five documents holding all of this fic. It’s rather funny to see four chilling and the fifth on top with a 00 as its first characters in the document title so I see it first.

It's... really bittersweet to remove that 00 and seeing them all together now.

That's... about it for the fic as it was posted there. Whether you read the fic or just read this post, once again: thank you.

Thank you for sticking with me for six years, or for reading about the earliest of these six years!

~

For those who remember at a certain point I was considering overhauling the fic and implementing canon from Endwalker at that time, there's a bit more post to go specifically relating to that idea!

You’d think I’d struggle with keeping the canon characters and the fanfiction versions apart as someone who prefers staying canon compliant, but over the years those guys became their own beasts. Ophion could never have been Themis, but why would I want them to be the same? I needed Ophion for this fic to work, after all.

A lot, and I mean a metric shitton of stuff, breaks and changes there. It’s been a fun thought experiment at the very least. I’ll be the first one to admit that I don’t like the Warrior of Light being a reincarnation of Azem’s sundered soul; I just like them being a nobody with no preconceived notion that they’re bound to adventure no matter what because that’s what their soul always did… but Hythlodaeus likewise can’t replace them in that case.

The solution to that first massive hurdle? I suck up the Azem thing, and instead of an Unsundered Hythlodaeus, the one that joins the party is the Shade. His plot stays surprisingly intact through all of that, but instead of dealing with forced indecisiveness it becomes more of a plot about identity and what to do when you’re a creation on the path to freeing the real deal you were based on.

Out of all of them, Lahabrea changes surprisingly little—I wrote him like a stern father to Igeyorhm in this, and you can mostly mix and match a lot of that onto Erichthonios. Instead of dealing with her ascensions and the fact that she needed to be taken out, Lahabrea gets to see his son reincarnate and die over and over again.

Honestly? I could even keep the dual Elidibus approach. Instead of Ophion (the previous one’s student) and Rafael (the Zodiark sacrifice), it would be Elidibus (the Heart of Zodiark) and Themis (the rest of the Heart still remaining with Zodiark). There would be a lot of overlap with the Shade here but in the end the Shade and Hythlodaeus would exist independently from one another while the Heart of Zodiark reunites and becomes Themis again.

I think the parts where I would have to genuinely start rewriting it entirely is where to integrate canon Venat over TTAU Venat and the Endsinger. TTAU Venat is a lot more mellow than canon Venat—a shitty mother but an excellent politician versus canon’s all-loving hero with an understanding of but no love lost for politics. The Meteia as a villain are a lot less vague and distant than the Star Itself. Instead of a journey to the innermost reaches it’s to the edge of the universe. Doable, yes, but marginally harder to do. Honestly, thinking about it as I’m writing this, I think I would have to do an arc where at least Meteor if not all Sundered go to Elpis in the past to learn something while the Unsundered+Shade remain in the present to deal with the Final Days…?

Actually, let’s tackle the characters one by one in a canon-adjusted remake.

This would be assuming that there is inter-shard travel so the starting group would still be Meteor, Ryne, and G’raha. The one major major change would be that instead of Elidibus the “Ancient” to go with them would be the Shade.

Meteor would change the least. They don’t care about being Alexis, they don’t care about being Azem either. They’re one of a handful children of a farmer family in La Noscea, not some sort of government freak from ancient times long before they were ever born. They didn’t start travelling because their soul told them to after they got the Echo, they started travelling because they damn well wanted to after seeing the Calamity, get outta here with that “Azem” nonsense.

In an Elpis episode they would do the opening section for the most part. Not much else to say here.

G’raha would be a lot more cheerful once the initial horror stage of travelling through time to prevent the end of the world again faded. He’d still have his struggles with the idea of possibly letting down the future Ironworks and being arguably the least experienced in the adventuring department.

In an Elpis episode, G’raha would likely be the one to deal with Venat overall. She’d be the perfect foil to him; an experienced traveller to his inexperienced adventurer. They’re both old but he’s barely a blip on her lifespan. They’re both incredibly determined to find the reason for why this is happening.

Ryne would feel a bit more resentment towards Ascians in general at that point. Other than that, her struggle was always being the odd one out amongst the Sundered, about being face to face with the woman she was named after and seeing why that woman was so beloved. About finding her own niche and staying there, no matter the people she loses.

I think out of all of the Sundered in a possible back-in-time-again Elpis episode, she would be the one to sympathise the most with Hermes despite also possibly interacting with him the least; she would likely lead the charge right before Ktisis Hyperboreia and her plot in Elpis would mostly be about travelling treacherous foreign terrain just the way Thancred taught her.

Unukalhai’s a bit of an odd case. After all there’s still two drafts, one where he joins the party as main POV character, and one where he becomes something along the lines of TTAU Minfilia. In a rework of that, I’d have to apply a lot of the Void lore since revealed to him, which makes him go from an odd case to an even odder case. He’d… either possibly involuntarily make Azdaja’s predicament worse, or free her before Endwalker happens but she loses her memories and becomes his cool new partner in crime until a completely flabbergasted Vrtra has to drop the facade immediately because no one told him a thrice-damned Warrior of Light had his sister tagging along what the fuck.

The hypothetical Elpis Episode would have a POV Unukalhai likely be the one to help Meteion get a gift for Hermes. His already intense internal hatred coming to the surface to turn a flower from bright white to darkest shadow, mirroring what happened with Hermes and the flowers in the past? Yeah. That’s the good shit.

In a non-POV case he’d stick with the Scions to help deal with the Final Days and his section of the story most likely would have gone to Ryne.

Ophion would likely still be a soul in Zodiark. Other than that, he’s not relevant.

Themis or the Heart of Zodiark… wouldn’t necessarily be the first one to join them. Actually, I think he’d be the last one. Immovable object without memories meets unstoppable force that draws in his allies. Overall he would be a lot colder on account of having no memories, and be rather fiercely protective of the other Unsundered for reasons he cannot recall. He’d make for an excellent diplomat, but it would likewise lead straight into his greatest vice: vague, foggy memories of something other other that might float up to the surface on occasion. Claudien would be an extremely weak spot for him, except unlike Lahabrea in the same position, Themis cannot tell how or why he’s reacting like that.

While the Sundered are off for their Episode Elpis, Themis would likely scour through the Crystal Tower to find a way to interact with the him from the timeline the others came from.

Emet-Selch would be the first legitimate Ascian to “join” their cause.

Mostly out of morbid curiosity, partially because he wants to figure out how in the name of all good graces a recreation of Hythlodaeus with sentience so advanced it can be deadpan sarcastic and have an identity crisis is with there, and it’s driving him just a bit insane. He’d actually be a lot more antagonistic as a result, and he’d be the one mostly bemoaning the Sundered and how Meteor is a disgrace to Azem early on until they have enough of his nonsense and beat him up. That would serve the purpose of actually confirming that they have the strength to kill an alternate timeline version of Emet-Selch and he mellows out a bit. Not much. Just a bit.

Overall he’d be a lot more prickly—which makes for an interesting switch when during the Final Days on the Source he very swiftly drops the antagonism. It’s a bit of a “been there, done that” attitude but since the star itself is in danger he has surprisingly few qualms about saving a few Sundered while he’s at it.

Lahabrea wouldn’t change much like I said, though there would be a lot more ruthlessness behind anything and everything he does. He’s willing to walk over corpses no matter what instead of calming down a little on that once he’s been thoroughly humbled (and untempered).

He’d also be a bit more strangely sentimental internally around Minfilia specifically; he already compares her to Igeyorhm a few times in TTAU proper but in a canon-compliant rewrite the comparison point would be Erichthonios. No matter how ruthless he is, at the end of Pandæmonium he and Erichthonios started the long journey of making up, and Minfilia reminds him of Erichthonios’s best qualities in a quite haunting way. They’re both tenacious and care about everything and everyone from the bystander to the one causing the mess… except Minfilia is a bit more spicy and willing to speak her mind. He wouldn’t be as fond of her by the end, but he’d still accept her terms and teach her.

Lahabrea during the Final Days would likely be recruited by Urianger and the Loporrits as additional quality control.

I’ve gone over the Hyth Shade, but the endgame there would be essentially affirming that he is as much a person as the Sundered are. Sure, he may have been someone else’s creation but that doesn’t make him any less a person on this star, not to mention he was one of the time travellers.

The real Hythlodaeus also would’ve been rather delighted to have an identical twin, and one who’s fighting against the Final Days no less.

Can’t go into too much detail otherwise, since this canon compliant version never quite left the drafting phases for obvious reasons. He’s the one character who more reacted to the plot than being the one to move it along, and without the plot there isn’t much to say.

He’d have stayed behind to deal with the Final Days, and he’d likely have been one of the first to go to Garlemald when news of the skies changing there broke.

The one major departure from canon would be that Zodiark and Hydaelyn aren’t fully slain—Zodiark specifically it put under a complete stasis spell in the middle of unravelling, but that breaks the protective shroud He has over Etheirys and the Final Days start happening again. Hydaelyn created meticulous seals and mechanisms to ensure that despite being bound the protective shroud remains, but under full stasis and while the whole thing is falling apart…

(Hyth Shade was the one to suggest it to the Watcher, Elidibus, and Emet-Selch as an absolute last resort. None of them really wanted Zodiark to suffer; the main goal still remains to bring back those Ancients should it prove possible).

All issues with how wonky and not finished that is aside, I’d also get a lot of extremely fun things to explore. Jullus already is one of my favourite characters introduced in Endwalker, but having him tell his story to Emet-Selch would be super interesting. There’s knowing what you’re doing, and there’s coming face to face with it, and that would genuinely be super cool to do.

Then there’d be the whole Heart of Sabik business—I’d unironically love for that whole mess to unfold with the real Lahabrea and Elidibus there while there’s memory-creations Erichthonios and Themis there as well. That would be absolutely chaotic on top of Athena also being there. Atrocious vibes, ten out of ten.

Likewise, Ryne and Vrtra would also be an interesting pair of characters to interact; they’re both the youngest siblings (of a sort in Ryne’s case), they’re both intensely protective of the people they care about, and they couldn’t bring themselves to hurt those they love even if it were absolutely necessary until someone else confirmed that this was the only way. There’s also that loss of family (Azdaja missing, Ratatoskr/Bahamut/Nidhogg dead; the whole abandoned timeline) that would have them interact in a neat way too, they’re quite similar to each other.

Unukalhai and Zero. She’s effectively everything he was said to be and they both failed. There’d be an interesting dynamic between them because of that—even if getting Zero in on the plot would be rather hard. Unukalhai would definitely try and sympathise with Zenos’s voidsent and maybe try to get them to abandon their master, and through that realise that she might not be there entirely willingly.

But overall, the hardest character to implement would be the Meteia. There’s eight main characters and there’s eight different opinions on this mess, ranging from intensely sympathetic and willing to rebuild burnt bridges (Ryne, Meteor, Hyth Shade, Elidibus if he regains his memories before Ultima Thule), apathetic despite how high the stakes are (Unukalhai, Elidibus if he doesn’t regain his memories), different levels of less sympathetic (Lahabrea, Emet-Selch), and the option where G’raha has such intense issues with being not overly sympathetic and having no sympathy at all that his understanding of the situation is wildly out of control until the very end.

Having worked with them as both individuals and as a hivemind in a couple writing exercises, I honestly would have had a Meteion for every main character, and give all eight of them a proper story on top of what’s already going on there. Narrative foils that lead both parties to Ultima Thule.

Putting that one lightly: that would’ve been a goddamn motherfucking nightmare to write. Fun, but a nightmare.

And that's a lot coming out of Ms Almost Half a Million Words Across Six Years.

[flame-of-tar-valon]

By the way! I keep talking about my ffxiv fic, How to Go Home Again. Here's some info about the series I'm going to make for it:

The series on Ao3 is tentatively called "Balance" because coming up with names is hard.

How to Go Home Again (MSQ Lv 1-17) stars my protagonists Lleidspaer, Nia'a, and Vivimani, plus their comrades/proteges Khadne, Celestinaux, and Laeitia in a secondary role. The entire story is set in three parallel storylines on Limsa, Gridania, and Ul'dah.

Heroism is a Full-Time Job (MSQ Lv 18-50) stars Lleidspaer, Nia'a, and Vivimani again, with the B-team serving as side characters. This fic goes in a very sequential order as opposed to parallel plotlines. It ends at the Ultima Weapon with a timeskip epilogue.

The Prisons We Gravitate Towards (MSQ 2.1-???-3.5) is an absolutely wild fic that deviates SO hard from canon. It bridges the Ultima Weapon fight with the banquet, and then follows Lleidspaer, Nia'a, and Vivimani as they ignore Heavensward entirely and start the setup for Stormblood. It's a lot more low-key and political tension-y than other fics.

And the Fates Laughed at Us (MSQ 3.0-3.3) stars Khadne, Celestinaux, and Laetitia, front and center, for the very first time, as they progress through the ENTIRETY of Heavensward focused on Ishgard, the Dragonsong War, and the Scions. Expect lots of changes!

Forged of Sharper Things Than This (MSQ 4.0-4.5) is Stormblood, starring all six WoLs on roughly equal footing for the first (and possibly only) time. It's split into two or three parallel plotlines.

Retracing Steps We Never Took (MSQ 5.0-5.3) is the story of Shadowbringers from the First, featuring Lleidspaer, Nia'a, and Vivimani. In this fic, Shadowbringers takes a lot more time than in canon, which makes this fic one of the more unique ones.

Forever On the Front Lines (MSQ 4.4-6.0 Lv 83) is everything happening in the Source at the same time as Shadowbringers; it's the Ghimlyt Dark, the 'Meanwhile in Garlemald' stuff, and early Endwalker in this case going all the way up to the Lv 83 Trial. This fic stars Khadne, Celestinaux, and Laetitia.

I'll Be Home Tomorrow (MSQ 5.4-6.0) is the rest of the story of Endwalker, starring Lleidspaer, Nia'a, and Vivimani as the principal protagonists, with the B-team as deuteragonists for much of the plot.

Seconds Adrift on the Wind (No MSQ parallel) is an extended epilogue, starring Khadne, Celestinaux, and Laetitia. I like to think it'll have a happy ending — though that may suffer from the fact that, at the end of the day, it will be my writing, and my epilogue fics have certain... tendencies.

(I do not at present have any intention of continuing the story past the ending of MSQ 6.0. IF I somehow manage to make it that far, I will need a firm stopping point.)

I might also make a fic in the series as a place to put miscellaneous and one-off scenes, maybe including various job quests that don't make sense to merge into the MSQ.

I'm not even sure I WILL make it to the end of Endwalker, truth be told! Or anywhere near it! Right now, all I'm dead set on finishing is How to Go Home Again and Heroism is a Full-Time Job. That alone will likely take a year or two. The big problem that always ambushes me when I want to write things is INSANE levels of Wanting To Write A Goddamn Epic. I read the Wheel of Time series as a kid and now my brain defaults to that in terms of ideal project size.

I'm just making this post because I like the fic titles I came up with. (And I need to come up with a series title that I like half as much...)

[senespera-ffxiv]

also this is the only time I'm gonna post twice in a row but I finished up my thoughts about dawntrail in my media list so I'm posting them here completely unedited

//spoilers for like all of dawntrail

a more detailed rating is that this is like a 4.7/5. It’s a solid story, if a bit boring and cliche for some of the first half. I do enjoy how clear-cut the story is in terms of thematic content, though, and how through and through it is an exploration of differing cultures and the ways in which you can understand them

The second half was also an interesting continuation of said exploration as it gives you a culture that is in direct opposition to you with ways that are so alien, and yet continues to ask that you understand them while also criticizing the more inhumane effects of those cultural practices

making it about me again but it’s basically just my stance about criticizing China. A lot of the criticism becomes extremely sinophobic because it simply rejects the culture without first trying to understand it. It’s a bit easier for me since I’m deeply steeped in said culture, but I do think it’s possible for someone who isn’t Chinese to criticize China in a non-sinophobic way

Idk just a lot of the way Wuk Lamat and the others handled their reactions to Alexandria felt like a good way to do that to me

Like it’s nowhere close to being as insanely character-driven as shadowbringers and endwalker, nor is it as interestingly politically technical as heavensward, stormblood, and certain parts of endwalker, but it’s still definitely Good. Just not as good in comparison to the rest (and even then I’d rank it above Stormblood lmao I didn’t have any moments where I was actively annoyed at the characters for losing brain cells and shit jksdlfhskldjf)

My ranking for the expacs would be something like this

Shadowbringers > Endwalker > Heavensward ≥ Dawntrail > Stormblood > ARR

Gameplay-wise, though, oh my God this Fucks. This Fucks So Hard. Way better than Endwalker.

I imagine this is kind of what it felt like to play this game back in Stormblood and early Shadowbringers where things were much more complex and messy on the player side, except this time the complex and messy stuff has bled into the normal content boss design and I am enjoying it so goddamn much

(disclaimer: I started playing at the very tail end of shadowbringers so while I still remember some shit like old monk back when it had positionals on all of its buttons, I am mostly A Young'un. I did not have to experience the dreaded TP management, nor have I gone through all the stages of grief with Summoner getting reworked every fucking expansion lmao)

Part of the reason why I love doing EX trials is because at that difficulty level they aren’t afraid to do some just batshit things that would cause you to lose it in normal content

and now it’s bled into normal content hell yes

For reference my two favorite EX mechanics so far are the Biting Halberd combo from Zurvan EX (death puddle under boss → giant cone → baited aoes → tank cleave) and the add phase from Hydaelyn EX (both tanks get an add and have to pull them away from the glowing crystals while party dps’s them, rotate once the glowing crystals are dead)

Like obviously I’m biased cuz I’m a tank and those are largely tank mechanics (cuz yes if you forget to move properly in the Zurvan one as MT you just kill your entire party so I kinda count that as a tank mechanic) but more importantly I like them because of how dynamic the movement is.

And they’re dynamic in different ways, like Zurvan’s is extremely rigid. You will dance in this specific manner (back → tank right, everyone else left) or else you die. Hydaelyn on the other hand can be a bit looser and you have at least a bit of room to do different strategies (ideally it’s a “everyone focus down one crystal at a time” situation but the like three-five times I’ve done the fight the positioning has always been very loose as long as none of the glowing crystals are getting tethered).

And a bunch of fights in Dawntrail are doing stuff like this that feels like a dance

Like the first example I can think of is Ar1/R1/whatever we’re calling it when the boss flings out a sequence of like 8 aoes across tiles before hitting you with an uppercut that sends you flying into the air and in order to not die from said uppercut you need to position yourself so that you land on an uncracked tile

The second iteration of this where it’s the clone that does the uppercut and the main boss is hitting you with line stacks is my favorite because that’s where the amount of stuff you do starts to offset how slow the actual mechanic is to make it feel like you’re in a time-sensitive dance and if you step wrong you’ll fuck things up

Another good example is the final boss The Queen Eternal which just. aughhhh I love that boss. There’s so many fun ideas being thrown around in there lol. You can really tell that Zeromus from the Endwalker patches was intended to be a test run for some of the mechanics in this fight because both occasionally devolve into randomized Chaos as you try your best to just Not Get Hit by aoes can you tell I loved the mechanic when she deploys her drones lmao

LIke okay last thing to yell about but Absolute Authority is literally just a mini Relativity mechanic from E12S/Big Bang from Zeromus but more chaotic and I absolutely loved it

Plus the more chaotic nature of the mechanics in this fight serve a bit of a narrative purpose, especially when you consider how desperate Sphene is at this point in time

Like she doesn’t give a shit about keeping up appearances she will kill you as best as she can, “random bullshit go” included

And both of those mechanics also force you to do more dynamic movement, only now it's typically erratic and panicked compared to the more methodical and freeform dances of Zurvan and Hydaelyn EX respectively

We need more insane shit in the gameplay of the normal mode stuff keep doing it Yoshi-P

[winterdeepelegy]

My Thoughts on Dawntrail

So having finished DT, here are some of my thoughts on the expansion as a whole. Expect spoilers below the cut, do not click if you haven't finished. Again these are entirely my opinions, I don't intend to present this from a perspective of fact.

Hmm. I don't hate DT, but it's not high on my list: 1. Shadowbringers 2. Heavensward 3. Stormblood 4. Endwalker 5. Dawntrail 6. ARR That said, I don't hate any of the installments of this game, but there are some definitely high and low points. Let's rip the bandage off and get the blanks out of the way: 1. DT has a dialogue problem. I don't hate Wuk Lamat as a character, it was kind of refreshing to see a green, earnest character take center stage while our characters stepped aside and provided a guiding hand. The big problem I have with her is her dialogue. She's basically a shounen character, complete with the 'I'm gonna be king of the pirates'/'I'm gonna be hokage!' schtick, and it really wears on me after a while. That's not the character's fault so much as it is the writing team. That being so, this game is best played in short stints, 1-2 hours at a time instead of trying to marathon the whole thing in short order. Any more than that and it really becomes repetitious. If they want to script it to sound like an episodic anime series, it will be best enjoyed in smaller bites. Sphene suffers from the same problem. I wanted to enjoy her more as a character, but the script made that a challenge. 2. Pacing and exposition. God. The first few hours of EW were enough of a slog with its slow pacing before getting to the first dungeon, this felt like an eternity by comparison. Up to about the level 95 content, it is a long span of exposition and lore stuffing (far be it from me to complain about abundant lore!), so much of which could have been covered in less time and with less repetition. They really wanted to hammer the tribes into our heads, and it felt like too much at times. They wanted us to care about the tribes and the people therein, but few things make me care less than overdoing it. Level 95-ish is when things start becoming more interesting, in my opinion. That's a long way to climb to reach the proverbial cookie jar. 3. The music. I'll be honest, soundtrack wise, this is not my favorite. I appreciate all genres of music, but swing jazz doesn't quite fit the feel of Tulliyolal. I would have liked to hear something closer to a cultural aesthetic to match the visuals and themes presented throughout the areas and civilizations therein. We didn't get that, and it's kind of a weird choice. The main themesong, also? Ehh... I didn't care for it in the trailer. This opinion hasn't shifted since my playthrough. I didn't really start finding enjoyable area music until Shaaloani. 4. 'My people are more important than your people'. This plot point has been done. We just dealt with the Ascians and pretty much got the same shpiel from Hades. They made Sphene and her subjects a little more sympathetic, though, so... good, I guess? 5. Erenville deserved better. Fussy Bunbun got done so dirty in this expack, the very least anyone could have done was give him a hug. He didn't even get that from his mother who, frankly, was the worst character out of all of it. He was also deadnamed repeatedly, which could have been a teachable moment. 6. Wuk Lamat and/or Bakool Ja Ja still owes me tacos. ------------ As for the positives? There are some. Thanks for sticking with me so far. 1. Pretty graphics updates - better over all. 2. No weirdly split zones - thank the Twelve for this. StB, ShB, and EW all had zones that you could only cover in part, and couldn't finish until later. The zones in DT flow pretty well for the most part, and the transition between upper and lower areas of Yak'Tel are nothing short of beautiful, especially in flight. 3. More Reflections - I'm glad to see more of these and I hope this trend continues. 4. For once, I'm not luke warm on the bard AF gear. It's actually a fresh look, but haven't found a dye pairing I like yet.

[nihilnovisubsole]

oh, right, shadowbringers! i'm overdue for another ffxiv bullet point vibe check. i actually finished it a couple of weeks ago, and then my sink exploded [long story] and i wanted to chew on it for a while. it's clear that this expac is an overwhelming fan favorite, so i figured i should formulate some more intelligent thoughts about it.

part of me worries that my shadowbringers experience was colored by how badly i missed the people and places on the source. more than the aether and gods and soul transference and all that stuff, what i really took away was a sense of loneliness. the first isn't my world. its citizens are strangers to me, though i recognize on a philosophical level that i should help them. even the scions - in theory, my closest comrades - have lived for years in the blink of my eye and become very different people. when did thancred become responsible? when did the twins grow up? i wondered what other NPCs were doing without me. all i wanted was to go home.

on the other hand, i read a theory that this is the point. the story wants you to feel cut loose from everything you know. are you still a hero in an emotional vacuum? will you still put yourself on the line to do the right thing? sure, your world will be doomed if theirs falls, but that possibility seems so huge and far-off that it doesn't register in your gut. i don't think that's the writing failing to connect with me or anything. if that's the intent, it's an interesting feeling for a game to evoke.

i may have also exacerbated that feeling by keeping my actual avatar isolated on norvrandt for so long. i mentioned earlier that i play around the game's day-night cycle, running missions based on when they'll feel most immersive. that extends to maps, too: if the story says i'm stuck in a place, i stay around that place until the story carries me elsewhere. i mean, i'll dip out for wondrous tails and daily cactpot and stuff, but i don't take big story vacations to jet around eorzea. i didn't "come back" from the far east in stormblood until doma was free. that's a lot of MSQ to just spend alone with your thoughts.

there's a storytelling paradox at work: the first's problems are so large and so bad that it's smaller and more personal when you become invested in someone's plight. i expected to care a lot about liberating ala mhigo because i'm so fond of raubahn as a character, and i did. i didn't expect to feel the pity that i felt for, say, kai-shirr, or runar's unrequited crush on y'shtola. it comes on slowly and quietly.

i don't know. it's a curious story. it's a melancholy story. it's a lot more experimental than the expacs that came before it. it'd probably be worth it to new-game-plus it at some point to pay closer attention to the individual character arcs.

same goes for emet-selch. he's a curious villain. i don't sympathize with his methods, and i obviously have no romantic interest in him. but i keep mulling him over. he keeps lurking in the back of my mind, which means that his writing succeeds by virtue of being memorable.

to my mind, everything around amaurot contributes to that success. amaurot is where it all starts to come together for me. it's a beautiful, odd place - art deco in final fantasy? who knew? - and the pinnacle of the arc's surreal "this is a dream, but tangible" tone. you can tell the team wanted to go all out with the ascian reveals they'd been building up to for years. i wonder if they had fun designing it.

even if it is. i. hm. no i shan't say it

all right, i'll say it

I AM EMET-SELCH AND I AM HERE TO ASK YOU A QUESTION

there, it's out of my system. on a less ridiculous note, i finally got royce's canon armor! now i can gpose freely. i wish there were an in-engine way to pose with NPCs, but them's the breaks. who knows? maybe we'll get it eventually. it is a live service game.

[eorzeanflowers]

11) What was your inspiration for your OC?

(( A fun one! Ty Rayn <3))

There is always a catalyst for when I make a new character. Some drive, or some impetus. I'll try to remember the main catalyst for each character of mine, let's start from the top!

The Lily - Lily was inspired by Kugane at large and Historical Japanese Fiction. I had already long shifted to Au Ra at the beginning of HW, but when I dipped my toes in the water of RP during the Stormblood lulls, i settled on the exiled Shinobi background, wanting to not make a WoL.

The Azalea - Archie's main inspiration is and will always be, the Tenth Doctor. Its my favorite few seasons of New Who and I wanted an old character that was reborn multiple times. Hence my looks at Dr. Who. XD

The Rose - Benoit is not actually my creation! He is my wife's first and foremost, but she let me play him as her first mate. He's mine now though. :3 General pirate things are his inspiration.

The Sunflower - A'tyla was my thoughts on if a Hyur was raised by Miqo'te. That's it. XD She's long grown past that.

The Gardenia - Yasha is inspired by none other than her namesake, Yasha Nydoorin of the Might Nein. The sapphic nature, falling for a punchy punch girl, her quieter nature with some silly jokes. Yasha was actually a run off of when I made Tatiava. I wanted a Garlean character and couldn't decide between Highlander or Midlander, so I said, Por que no los dos?

The Snapdragon - Tatiava was a direct response to people making villainous Garlean characters. I wanted a double agent who could dip in both crowds. Did I ever actually get a chance? NOPE. XD It is what it is.

The Dahlia - Lhei was made from what little we knew of Old Sharlayan at the time of her creation, late shadowbringers. I was just getting back into RP again after losing the drive in late Stormblood.

The Strelitzia - Beatrice is from my dnd game! A character I've got the chance to properly play. I think when I made her I just needed the sapphic goodness of her and her partner. T.T Speaking of...

The Tulip - Mai is also from my dnd game! Mai was an npc my players got real attached to and well, she evolved from there. She's always been mute tho.

The Triteleia - Myste just formed fully into my consciousness one day and well, there he is! He is inspired by Dynamis and its crazy applications tho.

The Gladiolus - Jana is near and dear to my heart. I wanted to revisit an old echo idea I had for Lily that had got cut late in her development. And I ran with it. Now Jana is my weird future child that doesn't care about where she is from.

The Linnaeas - Pola and Deta are the easiest to spot the inspiration. They are based off of Popola and Devola from the Nier Francise. Specifically the Automata ones. Later they've been heavily influenced by Ianthe and Coronabeth of the Locked Tomb series.

The Hyacinth - Eulanne is inspired by the Dark Urge of Baldur's Gate 3. I just wanted to remake my sorta good guy Durge (i raided the grove my darling Minthara in that run, but she's been trying to do better since!) and I thought it would be cool to tie it to Reaper/Voidsent lore.

The Amaryllis - Marisol was spawned from the Viper reveals at the first DT fanfest. Nothing more influenced her original development.

The Lewisia - Glifet is anther Dr. Who inspired character, this time based off of a Cyberman. A what if you could say, a rehabilitated Cyberman.

The Iris - Lucca is just Lucca from Chrono Trigger with a bisexual streak. Chronic inventor, not much works right the first few times. Super smart. Those glasses.

The Aconite - Tista-Moa came to me in a work haze. I just had the idea, i wrote down what i thought about her and her very strange journey, came home and made her! I don't have enough villains to scratch that itch so she was a delight to make.

The Dicentra - Cissnei came about cause I am/was interested in playing as a Zenos-like character. Cissnei has evolved past that by now, but that is her start! I got so attached to her I finished the EW story in a single weekend with her. XD

That's all my debuted flowers... now for the few undebuted ones.

The Celosia - Sarel is my main dnd PC right now, and I saw the Celosia flower at the local green house and I wanted to make a character based on it. So I ported her over (somewhat, she is more different than the other dnd based ones) and she has been patiently waiting for months to be debuted. One day I'll that up. XD

The Nerine - Hinoka is Lily's rival from waaaaay back. I just felt like putting a name and face to the standin I had been using for Lily's story. Oh, and a nerine is a Spider Lily. :3

The Jasmine - Kokolai came about because I wanted an RP character to manage my submarines for me. He's just a merchant that loves his surrogate daughter. ^_^

The Protea - Tanzanite is a direct response to Solution 9 and its inhabitants. How fun it would be to have a scientist from there. She also just spawned from me messing with hair on Lily's fromer lady. >.>;

The Snowdrop - Agate just willed themself into existance. Also inspired by the DT story, they were the product of me sitting down to make a Sol 9 character and failing, making a Yyasulani native the wished to return to the sunlit world.

The Belladonna - Jane is, with no shame, directly inspired by Jane Doe of Zenless Zone Zero. That character has me by the throat. XD Add in a mix of Agent 47 and you get my Jane!

And that's everyone! A bit long, but I was on a roll if I'm being honest.

[catboxghost]

ok i saw someone talking about like. how the wol feels about everything going on, whether theyre having a good time or not being on this big adventure and i had some Thoughts, a lot of Thoughts, with regards to my wol and i need to write this down so it will stop bouncing around in my head (and i can finish endwalker)

spoilers for shadowbringers!!

at this point kitali is absolutely fucking miserable. just having a shit awful time. this is a psychological horror game to her. she had a pretty sweet life back in the steppe, doing fuckall, looking after her sheep. and then that was all ripped away from her by the empire, she lost her home and her family and was set adrift before coming to eorzea because it was the only place left to go. she ended up joining the scions because they had ostensibly similar goals to her, fighting back against the garleans and liberating the world, and possibly helping her find her mom and sister, which has been her goal for years by now. and so she gladly lets herself be turned into a weapon and be pointed at the nearest existential threat, and somehow finds herself able to overcome impossible odds again and again, much to her surprise. she even has a pretty good time for a little bit, and the scions really do become her friends. and then eventually she does find her mother and sister: her sister had been pressed into service as a maidservant at doma castle, and her mother married a wealthy imperial lord. she doesn't have to save either of them anymore. it's about at this point that she realizes just how badly she'd allowed herself to be manipulated and used. there's still two whole nations to liberate, but the resentment starts to simmer. post-stormblood she's kinda like "oh wow you guys aren't actually my friends, you're my employers" to the scions and the eorzean alliance. she can't really be mad at alphinaud because he's just a particularly idealistic kid whose desperation and naivete were also taken advantage of, but she's not a soldier, and she never wanted to be, and she's sick of being treated like one. and yet she will continue to be, because at this point fighting is all she knows. this becomes especially egregious in shadowbringers where the whole "living weapon" thing is placed front and center as every enemy she defeats literally starts to turn her into a monster; the more she fights, the worse she gets, and nobody can help her. this culminates in her having a big screaming sobbing breakdown in front of ghostbert and falling into a week-long depressive episode alone in her room. and this is before she starts throwing up blood from eating angels! (as an aside the whole g'raha/exarch "haha i was secretly manipulating you" thing hits so damn good in kitali's story, because he really did only ever know her as an unstoppable hero, and then she actually shows up as this shy, sad girl angry at the whole world, and now he's about to do the exact same thing to her that everyone else in her life did and make her go kill things he wants dead, and it makes him feel guilty!! and so at the end when he's about to make his big sacrifice, he's all like "aha yes, i used you the whole time, you were just another pawn to me" in hopes that she'll hate him, so that she won't try to stop him when he blows himself up. but it doesn't work because she wuvs him <3) post-shadowbringers she kind of starts to accept it, even internalize it, in a nihilistic sort of way. like "yknow what? fine. all i do is kill things. i am the hyper-lethal vector, the gun pointed at the head of the universe, hydaelyn's special little murder machine. my life doesn't belong to me anymore and apparently it never really did, so why fight it?" and so everything that happens in endwalker (so far) just kind of bounces right off of her. this does not improve her mood in any way.

[shinyflareon]

Might as well throw these up here, too

From a prompt on Bluesky, "Post a piece of writing you're proud of!"

This is from the WIP that may eventually become the sequel to my first fic, Valley of Shadow (if I ever finish it). Though the main set of fics is WoLG'raha, it's revealed here that during the events of Stormblood, K'yalwanni had a brief but ill-fated relationship with Lord Hien. This relationship has resulted in a pregnancy, and now K'yalwanni is dealing with discovering this while already on the First during Shadowbringers. In this scene, she has just finished meeting with a midwife, and the reality of her situation is just starting to truly sink in. The tin of tea mentioned briefly near the start was offered by the midwife as a way for her to end the pregnancy if she so chose.

[gardenofballads]

Please note: I am, vicariously, currently up to patch 5.2, having watched my partner finish SHB. I will not interact with EW content to not only avoid spoilers, but will try to tag expansions in order to help others avoid them too!

Welcome to my blog! This is where I document the life and times of my Final Fantasy 14 characters. I have a many that will all be featured here to some degree, but with a focus on my main WoL, Trya Papaya, my Dunesfolk Lalafell! I’m mainly a PS4 player so 99% of my screenshots will be vanilla but I'll do my best! I'm also an artist and plan to draw her and the rest of the gang so that's something you can hopefully look forward to! FAQs and more info under the cut.

Eventually, I plan to write out bios for all of my characters, but Trya will be my starting point!

Trya’s look varies a lot between expansions, so I’ll differentiate her looks in the tags! Also, I’ll answer some quick easy questions in this pinned post for easy access:

What is/are Trya’s main class(es)?

As she is my main I plan to eventually level them all, but her canon classes are currently as follows -

MNK | Main | DPS | A Realm Reborn

DRK | TNK | Heavensward

SAM | DPS | Stormblood

Shadowbringers TBA!

How do I pronounce her name?

Trya: Trai·uh [Pronounced like Try-a]

Papaya: puh·pai·uh [Literally like the fruit!] Starting as a joke, her name is meant to be a play on Try a papaya, while also still following the Lalafellan naming/rhyming conventions!

Is Trya your only Warrior of Light?

Trya is a bit of an unconventional case in my book. While I don't see her as the Warrior of Light—that title aptly belonging to my fiancée's character, Tsinaan Do'koor—she is a Warrior of Light that is affected by the Echo, much like Ardbert and his party. We have built the world together where she, and many of my other characters, are strongly tied to Tsinaan and have also been given the Echo to varying degrees. Tsinaan’s Echo is the most powerful or ‘complete’ of the group, but has the most drastic side effects.

The current known members influenced by the Echo are:

Trya Papaya

Cvetko Zorasch Petalpaw*

Zana'tan Chai**

Kinkaze Saizo

Tsinaan Do’koor* *owned by my fiancee **joint character(s) between my fiancee and I

Thank you for stopping by and visiting! Let’s get to know each other and explore Eorzea together, I’m always open to make friends, gush about our silly characters and the FF14 story, and everything in between!

[ahollowgrave]

Thinking about Odette's WoL AU and Prudence's Scion AU and I'm just --

They meet each other for the first time in Ishgard, ofc, when Odette as the Warrior of Light arrives.

Torn between Prudence inserting herself in the storyline from the start as a very obvious spy (for hilda though she's not named until much later). OR!! They don't meet until the Vault, when Prudence joins the group leading the charge there per Hilda's request.

Regardless of how they are introduced it does not go well. Prudence is Like That and Odette is too worried about Minfilia and the others to really care or stand up to her. Not to mention Odette very much meets people were they are -- which isn't to say she should let Prudence bully her, but it's complicated and she knows a wall when she sees one. Either way, Prudence is injured in a bad way at the Vault. As Odette finishes out Heavensward Prudence recovers. She decides she needs out of the city, out of Ishgard ASAP. Basically forces Odette to let her join up. If not as a Scion official, as Odette's retainer. Odette is a known grumpy person lover so I think she would eventually win Prudence over, but it is an uphill battle. I think the thing that helps the most is Alisaie's mutual friendship with both. They form a pretty tight knit little gang with three of them. Sometimes Lyse, sometimes Y'shtola, sometimes all of them causing mayhem (moving Urianger's bookmarks, stealing Thancred's shoelaces, going on missions together where nothing goes to plan but it somehow works out. normal stuff!) But the main trio is Odette/Pru/Alisaie post HW. Stormblood is hard for Odette AND Prudence. Odette, hit with the heavy loss of her first true love in Minfilia, knowing there is no real blame except on the Ascian's which is a convenient foe to hate through Stormblood. Prudence, meanwhile, is struggling to adjust to a new life and a suddenly MUCH BIGGER world while also coping with the constant reminder that she is but a mortal soul in a fragile body of flesh and bone. Odette has 100% given her a safe sex talk (probably while blushing furiously but sex health is important) and buys Prudence a costco sized container of dental dams and condoms, I'm certain. Anytime Odette tries to give Prudence the safe combat talk it goes poorly, though. And the build up to Shadowbringers!? Which sparked this whole thing!? Alisaie begging Odette and Prudence not to leave her too! Her soul getting hoovered up at the end of the ghimlyt dark, reaching desperately for Odette!!!! AHHHHHHH the way pru and Odette can but look at each other over her fallen form. Winners of the day but with only the recent losses on their minds. And then the voice comes again and Prudence drops too.

[aotopmha]

I thought about talking about Dawntrail in detail only once I'm done with it, but I just finished the level 91 dungeon and the corresponding cutscenes some of the vitriol I've seen for the story is so bizzare.

Spoilers for up to the end of the level 91 dungeon!

I absolutely love that Wuk is having such a gradual arc.

The very first encounter of the level 91 quests was great and it was just a conversation where she gains some self-awareness about her own feelings via someone else going through the same. And before then, in the previous areas, she just learned about her limits. About her lack of knowledge and skill.

I saw so much vitriol thrown at the other candidates, as well, where all I see is just a gradual pushing of the curtain.

Every appearance they have is just a little bit more of hinting at their relationship with Wuk and relationships and principles of their own.

I don't know if it is paid off, but to me it comes off as neat set-up and mystery; there are some pretty interesting nuggets with Zoraal Ja in particular to me because his demeanor and his goal contrasting.

It's the contrast and juxtaposition of all of these perspectives I'm interested in the most.

I also love that the Warrior of Light is taking on a mentor role. I didn't even fully think about it, but that's a pretty perfect role for them at this point.

And I like the friendly rivalry angle with the other Scions because I was thinking it would be odd for Urianger in particular to suddenly start being secretive again when his entire arc was about not being secretive anymore. I like that they approach the other group while still having their own principles at play.

And I'm so happy they pulled back the stakes after Shadowbringers and Endwalker, rather than trying to one-up them, since they did want to continue the story and all.

It's so rare to see this kind of restraint with longer stories especially.

Lower-stakes conflicts and character arcs can exist and I like how they are doing it here.

Learning to not fear Alpacas because of a bad experience or learning about the customs of a culture is just as much of a valid moment of growth as coming to terms with the death of a loved one.

It still makes the point about learning to respect and understand what you don't.

The Azim Steppe was about this in spirit, too, and I still think it is the best part of Stormblood. And these two lil stories are good examples of it.

In terms of true issues I have with the story so far, I think the Pelupelu area dragged on just a smidge too long, but that's it.

Do I think this is some mindblowing, revolutionary character writing?

No.

Do I see how it all could come together into something really good in the bigger picture?

Yes, very much. Especially with the tone shift in the second half.

And a lot of these characters are PoC-coded (with PoC English VAs), too.

That's a really cool bonus in my eyes!

The really strong hatred, I do not get at all.

I'm willing to bet Wuk's journey is going to be full of failure and that's where the true vitriol comes from.

(Her voice actress is also a trans woman with a "non-traditional" accent.)

She will not immediately get herself together and will be sad and self-depricating and will get seasick again and people will be mad about it because she said she won't be anymore after she got some worries off her chest.

You do not suddenly start doing better when you just say it. That's not how people work. It's a process and I am expecting one. Because getting rid of preconceptions, prejudices and a unhealthy need for validation because of messy family matters is a process.

So, I don't agree with the super extreme takes at all. It's so funny that I spent like 5 hours playing the game and having fun and then I go on social media and some act like this innocous adventure story about learning to understand and respect other cultures that drags a lil is the worst thing to ever exist.

I mean I hope everyone who hates it will get a better story in the patches or next expac or outside of FF14.

But I've seen so many and much worse stories than this so far.

[sjofn-lofnsdottr]

Top 5 primals or bosses?

God, this is going to be hard to narrow down. Actually, you know what? Someone else asked this too. So for THIS list, I will do only primals, and then answer the other person with un-primals!

It'll probably still be tricky.

In fact, I will do an honorable mention: Shinryu, entirely because that trial has one of my favorite random game memories attached to him. I started during the Stormblood era, and finished 4.0 mere days before Shadowbringers started its head start period. So when I zoned in, I told people I was new, etc. I was assured there was no need to worry, people would carry me through it no problem, as this trial was OLD HAT by now.

So naturally, we immediately wiped when everyone was swept off the platform to their deaths by the first water spout, because no one remembered it was a thing that happens. <3

ANYWAY TOP FIVE PRIMALS GO

#5: Ravana: I love his Phase 1 music so much. Phase 2 is also good, but I wasn't expecting Phase 1 to be a waltz, and the surprise of it made me appreciate it extra. I also enjoy seeing who forgot he has a knockback, and who forgot to make sure they're standing in front of a wall. (And sometimes, that person is me.)

#4: Ramuh: I like that he's mostly a chill primal who just wants to keep his little worshipers safe. His trial isn't my favorite, but I love his vibes. And I do love how his Eden fight can still be a gigantic clusterfuck. (I love the normal content that can still fuck people up, I can't help it.)

#3: Titan: He cares about his little kobold dudes and I appreciate that a lot. And like Ramuh, I really love his Eden fight. I love the question it raised in me immediately: just how many concussions has Dusk had?

#2: Susano: I love how he gets summoned, I love that all he wants to do is have a fight, I love how happy he is the entire time, and I'm a nice tank who always lets the other tank catch the sword, because I am a giver.

#1: Ifrit: Okay, look, I know. I know he is objectively lame. I love his Eden fight, but he's so sad they needed to combine him with Garuda to keep things exciting. His theme is kind of dull and not even unique to him, and no one is happy to see him. I get him roughly 90% of the time I queue for leveling roulette.

And that has turned to love.

Plus in an attempt to take a picture of him where he looks cool, I got a picture of Dusk I super love. Thanks, Ifrit! You're the best!

And thank you for the ask!