#corrain meanwhile has been like “🥺 😍 cute boy...” since the Crystal Tower raids lmao

[sunderedazem]

WoLposting on main for what (and how) he's doing after Endwalker-

He's starting with changing his hairstyle from the long braid with bangs to a shorter ponytail/shaggy bob cut after Endwalker because it feels like. The end of an era. And he's mourning losing his friends' constant presence, a little (even if he and G'raha are now courting and being idiot catboys about it). It's just. Cutting away what was out of grief. He's losing the Scions, at least ostensibly, because they're all splitting up and going different ways, and he's. A lot lost without them.

But also the haircut is because he doesn't want to be some folk hero and only that. Like he's cool with it, but also- he wants time to be Corrain, to figure out who Corrain is. He became the Warrior of Light when he was seventeen and has been that ever since, and before that was just a Keeper foundling in Gridania trying to complete a conjurer apprenticeship so he could get citizenship - he hasn't had the time to figure out what he wants. And sure, being adopted by Edmont and House Fortemps helped - he had a home and a family and a nation finally, even if he's sort of in the same sort-of son category Haurchefant was - but he's got little snippets of Azem's memory bleeding through, he knows there's a wanderlust in him that won't settle, and he needs Corrain de Fortemps to be someone who has the space to find out who he is. And for that he can't be clocked as the WoL everywhere he goes!

So he takes a knife and chops off his braid and then Y'shtola and Krile find him sitting in front of a mirror with this awful fluffy mess and help him shape it better, and when it's long enough to put up he just ties it back in a ponytail. And he just- wanders aimlessly. He helps G'raha a lot, they're definitely dating in a Halone-sanctioned way lmao, and he trails around visiting Scions.

And he's almost invisible. The people who know who he is know Corrain and not just the Warrior of Light, and now the bards' stories don't describe him perfectly and- he's got space to breathe. Space to discover he genuinely likes archaeology and researching bygone eras and writing about them, space to go around and record the mechanical particulars of his forays into ancient ruins and alternate worlds and etc, space to polish his knowledge about foraging and botany and learn how to travel with cookware only and make meals from the land rather than carry food with him-

And all of this to say he finds that - outside of being the Warrior of Light - he genuinely likes the kind of adventuring that comes with learning opportunities. He likes studying the things he's found, likes the challenge of discovery in the first place. He likes the kind of work the Students of Baldesion do, likes working with scholars. (especially G'raha. Nobody saw that coming 🙄) And more than all that- he's genuinely good at it. He gets to realize a lot of his own archaeological/adventuring skill, while supplemented by time-period experts, is in fact it's own branch of knowledge.

So by the time Dawntrail kicks off - I think he's fully considering trying to write a thesis on it, and maybe try to see if Sharlayan would give him an Archon's mark about it. Sure- he's not a Sharlayan citizen, he has strong ties to Ishgard in the vein of being an adopted son of one of the four high houses. But he's also openly dancing circles around G'raha and Artoirel is definitely interested in having a no-inheritance-threat adopted baby brother with a foothold in Sharlayan and- well, House Fortemps approved of G'raha already anyway, they're expecting that to happen.

He's definitely found himself in a lot of ways by the time the next expansion will kick off. Of course part of that is being an actual adult and a twenty-something instead of a teenager, but also- coming to terms with being nine-fourteenths of Azem, coming to terms with defining himself rather than letting what he can do define him, coming to the realization that he's allowed to like what he does and who he is.

That the hope he found in Ultima Thule is actually allowed to feel like his own, and it's not selfish of him to feel that way. That he's allowed to live for himself.

And. Like damn. Finally! but also I'm proud of him. He turns out alright in the end.

Excited to start Dawntrail with this version of Corrain. He's just so much less- desperate to prove something. He proved everything he needed to prove to himself already. And now he finally just adventure for adventure's sake.

#ffxiv wol #ffxiv #wol posting #wolposting #corrain gealai #ffxiv corrain #teenage WoLs are. a special kind of fucked-up. babies.... #but he turns out okay. he's okay. and he knows it #post-endwalker plot for the Boy #he's sixteen when he joins the adventurers' guild #and he's twenty-two when he's done recovering from all his injuries from Ultima Thule #i know “canon” says all that was wirhin a year but. nah #five years #anyway this means G'raha meets an almost 18 year old Corrain and is like ??? #and then meets him again when he's almost twenty one three hundred years later #and is just immediately like “Didn't think there'd be a glowup like THIS O////O oh no. thank the 12 half of me is crystal” #corrain #corrain meanwhile has been like “🥺 😍 cute boy...” since the Crystal Tower raids lmao