#the stars are blind my love

[anneapocalypse]

The ship dynamic of "I love you but I will always choose the world over you. I love you but my conscience binds me to the greater good in a way I can never escape. I love you but I would sacrifice you to save the world if I had to, even though it would kill me and I would never forgive myself. I love you and a part of me wishes that I could be the kind of person who would sacrifice everything for you. But I'm not, and I never will be, and if you're going to love me I need you to understand that."

[anneapocalypse]

How it started:

It's fair to say that neither Ariane nor Urianger took particular notice of one another when they first met! He was a Scion. She was a new recruit. They worked together on primal business and were friendly enough but they certainly weren't close, despite having a fair bit in common under the surface, until a certain confluence of events brought them a lot closer to one another. (Which is the subject of the fic project I'm currently working on!) But to sum it up:

Urianger lost Moenbryda, his oldest and dearest friend (and, in this universe, a relationship that was romantic for a time), and subsequent spiraled into much deeper isolation.

Ariane fled to Ishgard where she fell in love with Haurchefant, and had a whirlwind affair with him ending with his sudden and tragic death.

Ariane, in the wake of the Warriors of Darkness incident, coming to terms with the losses of both Haurchefant and Minfilia, and haltingly trying to reach out and connect with others again, recognizes in Urianger someone also experiencing grief and isolation... and in that, they find a point of connection from which they discover other common interests, and grow to be close friends.

In Shadowbringers, those feelings turn romantic, but it's not until after the First is saved that they finally come to fruition.

How it's going:

(Sneak peak from a Wolianger Week set, under a cut for Dawntrail glam and location.)

They're doing pretty good. :)

Hey... hey anyone with wolships or other FFXIV ships (since I know not everyone's characters are WoL).

Show me your "How it started // How it's going" can be gpose, art, writing. I just want to know about your ffxiv ships. Can be OCxOC, OCxNPC, Polyships, multiships, or anything else I didn't account for.

[mroddmod]

tried the blind color palette challenge a few times with some suggested characters :))

[bamsara]

being an adult means we can buy or make as much self-indulgent shit (as we can afford) and unironically have trinkets of our fave things cause our teen years was bullied for liking things and hiding/denying we were ever neurodivergent to the point of suicide. sucks for anyone that thinks its weird cringe but I'm going to try and allow myself to love myself in little ways now

[carouselunique]

Introducing the one taking the place of Sunburst in the AU: Bon Bon! She still thinks about her old friend Lyra and hopes she's alright...

[anneapocalypse]

Ariane isn't really "strictly" anything; she's only been in monogamous relationships and that's probably the way she's most inclined, but she'd be open to polyamory under the right circumstances. After Haurchefant's death she finds out that Aymeric has feelings for her and she's too deep in her grief to accept them and has to let him down, but had things been different and Haurchefant lived, I think both she and he would have been 100% on board with Aymeric simply joining them; unfortunately due to circumstances it just didn't work out that way. Also somewhere there's an AU I'll never write where Minfilia lives and returns to her mortal life and is in a throuple with Ariane and Urianger. But in her canon storyline, as of now, she's monogamous.

Is your WoL polyamorous or strictly monogamous? Or are they simply uninterested in the whole thing?

[puppyeared]

my brothers been playing elden ring recently and he let me draw his character ^_^

[wwillywonka]

jim getting angry at bones for blinding spock in operation: annihilate versus one half of jim's glasses shattering after spock dies in wrath of khan

[anneapocalypse]

I have a few ships for Ariane (she has a big unrequited crush on Minfilia before her disappearance, and a brief but intense love affair with Haurchefant up until his death; yes she has had very terrible luck), but her "endgame" ship is Urianger. They have a long friends-to-lovers slow burn, and Urianger was kind of a slow-burn fave for me as well! It was in the Heavensward patches that I really began to love him and pay more attention to him, and I truly had no idea at the time how well that was going to pay off later with how much wonderful character development he gets. He has become one of my favorite characters in FFXIV, and I find him both deeply relatable and fascinating to dig into in terms of the lore surrounding him. Also he's just an absolute delight to write, and I'm really looking forward to sharing more of what I've been working on.

I mostly prefer NPC ships for my character because I can write what I want for them and indulge as much as I like without having to depend on someone else's interest in the ship remaining as strong as mine. I'm a mostly solitary writer and while I'm not totally opposed to collaboration, or RP, when it's a ship I deeply love, it's nice to have it be my own space.

My husband and I do have an AU where our characters are together, but we haven't done all that much with it; he has NPC ships for his character as well, which I love for him.

I had toyed with the idea of Urianger as a ship for Ariane for a while, but it took some time to figure out how it would happen and when the timing would be right. It definitely couldn't have happened for them any earlier than it did, because neither of them would have been ready for a relationship. Ariane is grieving Haurchefant for a long time, and Urianger is grieving Moenbryda, and they both have a lot of complicated feelings about themselves tied up in that, with Urianger blaming himself, and Ariane blaming Hydaelyn. But in many ways it's that grief that draws them to one another.

Ariane wasn't close to Urianger when Moenbryda died, and felt there was little comfort she could offer at the time. The Warriors of Darkness incident was a sort of confluence of things happening for her. In saying goodbye to Minfilia she accepted that Minfilia had made a choice, had not been taken against her will, and that Haurchefant had made a choice too. And in seeing how long Urianger had labored alone and in secret, she realized he really wasn't okay and hadn't been since Moenbryda, and she thought, maybe somebody better like. Check in with him, now and then.

So from then on, and throughout Stormblood, every week or two when she could she'd take the aetheryte to Western Thanalan and stop in at the Waking Sands. "Just checking in" turned into "Wilt thou stay for a cup of tea?" and they talked about magic and books, and Ariane started bringing little gifts like a new variety of tea or a new translation of Far Eastern poetry, and it turned out they had a lot in common actually: both big readers and students of magic, both inclined toward the healing arts, both fond of poetry, both socially awkward nerds with complicated relationships to their families who treasured deep friendships but did not form them easily, and of course both having experienced great loss and grief in their lives.

When Urianger got pulled away to the First, they both realized how terribly they missed each other, and of course things got a bit complicated in Shadowbringers, and they might have confessed their feelings for each other a lot sooner had the Exarch's secrets not driven some distance between them. Ariane needed some time to be okay about it, and Urianger gave it to her. But they worked things out, and on the eve of the Scions' risky return to the Source, they did finally confess their feelings for one another and have been together since.

What I love about them is that even with how much they have in common as people, I don't think they would ever have ended up together if not for connecting over certain shared experiences. Both of them have loved and lost (my headcanon is that Urianger and Moenbryda were on-again off-again romantic, they definitely loved each other but it was complicated), and those earlier loves were no less real to either of them because they were ended by tragedy. Neither of them could have been with somebody who expected their love to eclipse all others in their life, or to heal all the wounds of the past just by existing. Love, and life, are bigger and more complex than that.

Almost forgot to add pics!

Chatting in the Waking Sands:

Making eyes at each other in Il Mheg:

Staying warm in Garlemald:

Another random WoLQotD/OC question

I thought I'd ask this while I worked on my other questions. :)

If you're a WoL x NPC shipper, what drew you to that ship and why? What makes that ship the pinnacle for you and your oc? Is it that you love the canon character you write them with, you find their dynamic interesting or something in between?

If you're not a WoL x NPC shipper, but you have a ship with another person, how did that come about? What makes that ship fulfilling for you? Has the ship impacted your relationship with that other person? Feel free to gush, I wanna hear it!

Oh, and pictures are a must (if you have them).

[anneapocalypse]

Astrologian problems.

[nyatbinary-81]

@vulpixisananimal sifstem art jumpscare!! more specifically i got bored and decided to mess around with sif and mal's outfits.

[pearl-crystals]

Ive been slowly playing through In Stars and Time and Siffrin needs a dang minute and a hug man. So I'm drawing him getting a hug that he could get with only some possible razzing and/or scalding.

Ive also added a couple other drawings as a treat for myself hahaha.

[anneapocalypse]

Very happy. Urianger's moved in with her, they survived an apocalypse, things are good. Ariane's a little reticent about traveling again so soon, but seeing new places without the end of the world looming over them does sound nice.

Have a wolqotd:

How would you describe your OC's relationship status as of where they are right now in 6.55? How are they feeling?

[blackthorn-faerie]

He’s been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty

[seabunnieart]

a tiny briar for myself after the work week.

[feroluce]

So I went to the wiki page for the henghill Bullet & Brain mission of 2.2 looking for some dialogue I had missed and

a) I found something incredibly tasty that slotted into some other thoughts I'd been having, more on that on another day, and

b) I saw this super fun little trivia at the bottom, which!

I knew Penacony characters like Boothill took a lot of inspirations from old movies, but I didn't realize it was even in his and Dan Heng's relationship, that's so cool!!

It fits them very well, it's such a fun reference. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" was an old buddy Western film (from 1969- nice) about a pair of outlaws. Butch Cassidy was the leader of a gang, and described as clever, affable, and talkative. Meanwhile, his closest companion, the Sundance Kid, was known as a man of few words.

Cassidy's original birth name was much more plain, but similar to Boothill, he took on a new moniker when he became an outlaw. "Cassidy" had been the last name of his beloved mentor, who taught him how to shoot and ride. And Sundance Kid was known as he was because Sundance was the name of his hometown, and it was the only place that had ever managed to catch and jail him, back when he'd been younger (also similar to Dan Heng, but ouch).

These two stick together like glue throughout the length of the film- through Cassidy's leadership of the gang being challenged, through a train robbery gone wrong, through being pursued by mercenaries, and even through fleeing to Bolivia and trying to start over together.

I don't want to say too much more, since the mission title is referencing one specific movie that I've never seen. I kinda wanna watch it now, though, just to see the inspiration that went into Boothill and Dan Heng and how they get along. I just think it's really sweet that these two were literally made to be the best of bros, how lovely is that. 💕