#ffxiv: social conventions

[ainyan]

🛁 : A bathing headcanon

I headcanon that most bathing facilities within Eorzea as well as the Far East, Thavnair, and Doma are Roman-style bathing with the genders bathing together. This is especially in places like The Waking Sands or The Rising Stones, where space (and water) are at a premium and they can't really have separate bathing rooms by gender. Public baths are common and private bathing rooms are often only found in the manors and estates of the wealthy and powerful.

#meme: emoji headcanons #etheirys #ffxiv: social conventions

[brineffxiv]

Sweet. Bozja is gonna let me fight Varis even though he's already dead.

...

On second thought, perhaps I shouldn't have done this as a Samurai...

#ffxiv liveblog #rhesh'a tag #varis zos galvus #actually he's varis YAE galvus here #but I ain't messing with my tags for one post #slowly figuring out garlean naming conventions #it goes in reverse alphabetic order for social standing right

[escentia]

Hello!

I love your art, especially your FFXIV stuff, and was wondering if you sell prints anywhere?

Thanks for taking the time, and thank you so much for sharing your art, your style is lovely, and your short FFXIV comics are make me laugh a lot. Hope you have a great day!

Hi, thanks for the kind words. And sorry for the very delayed reply! Have been taking a break from social media.

I very occasionally and erratically sell prints at conventions in whichever country I'm living in at the moment. At the moment I don't have any boothing plans, sadly :')

You're always welcome to download and print my art for your own enjoyment! I know how difficult it can be to find official prints of art you like.

[wandringaesthetic]

what's a convention or other similar big social gathering would you like to attend that you haven't yet?

I thought about this for a long time and I don't think there is one. Going to Star Wars Celebration that one time kind of burned me out on big conventions. If you've been to one music festival you've kind of been to them all unless there happens to be a bunch of artists you want to see one year. I might go to FFXIV fanfest if it was ever convenient, but that's unlikely and I'm not going to go far out of my way. I feel like I ought to go to DragonCon sometime like every other nerd in the southeast US, but also..... Ugh. I don't know, just feels like a big carnival to part me from my money and of that's what we're doing I'd rather go to a theme park. If I lived in a bigger city where I could more casually drop into a convention for one day I might but it's not worth making a whole big trip for.

[macarensesangles]

rant about het shit under the cut ig

part of me wants to stop being SUCH a hater about these fics ive read btw like. im beginning to realize a lot of this is ocd, but when something gets me irritated or angry it's difficult for me to leave it alone in that like, if i don't continue to engage with it (effectively doomscroll 90% of the time) i experience this mounting anxiety until i satisfy the compulsion to Continue Looking At It. i could not really tell you why i feel this way. but it sucks. bc i get stuck in these loops of like staring at writing that makes me mad or authors' social media that makes me mad and it's like, Why am i doing this this is deranged and weird (the compulsions is why).

i think part of why it gets to me so much is like. maybe this sounds silly but bc so many of the people i interact with are also queer and very conscious about heteronormativity i am very comfortable a lot of the time. and i've had decent luck in being involved in hobby activities and fandoms that are similar; selfshippers are overwhelmingly lgbt, FL as a source material is very queer-positive and thus so are many fans, etc etc.

so like. getting back into ffxiv and encountering this kind of very very intense heteronormativity and like, implicit homophobia, i was kind of shocked? it's not that i'm not conscious it doesn't exist, like, i grew up in the fucking midwest, of course i've had to deal with homophobia. more that like, it was such a big thing in a space where i'd kind of expected to feel safe on that front, especially in terms of fandom for emet specifically given that as i've said he's very obviously gender-nonconforming in appearance and mannerism and dress beyond the dictates of genre convention (even if part of that is homophobic queercoding).

like it's one thing to encounter homophobia in your workplace when everyone there is a 40+ year old conservative from a town where there are frequent commercials for agricultural pesticides on television. like yeah, of course you're homophobic, you live here in this cornfield-blasted hellhole, so i get it. but like. From a bunch of fellow video game dorks who like the same flamer as i do? that one kind of stings. and especially when you feel like because you're gay your input is kind of unwanted or regarded as sort of a damper on all the fun within that space. idk. it just is rough. i've never fit in in Real Life and have long made my peace with it because i just don't live in the right location for someone like me, but it sucks to seek out like-minded people and still get left out, i guess.

and for a long time i'd never really thought about how homophobia has affected me. like with a lot of things i just kind of ignored it or bottled it up or minimized it because i thought "well that's just the price of entry! haha it doesn't get to me! fuck those losers!" and like. idk. being in this space all of a sudden where such a high value is put on like, how much more legitimate it is to be straight, it hurts. like that's how i feel when people make emet more masculine or when they import these really highly gendered narratives and ideas into the story and create these characters who are so effortlessly and perfectly feminine and then acting like the value and legitimacy of the relationship rests on how well emet and wol perform cishet ideas of manhood and womanhood respectively, and that anything otherwise is just unconscionable and gross, like. man! it really opened the floodgates and made me realize i've been dealing with a lifetime of fucking baggage about all this and it actually does hurt a lot to be viewed as disgusting and less than legitimate and this shit is 100% why i grew up ashamed of liking boys and thinking it was something wrong that i'd done.

so like it's hard for me to look away from it and put it down and not keep picking at the scab bc like. idk. i'm at the point with all this where i feel like if i just keep picking this stuff up and turning it all around one day something will click in my head and i'll stop wanting people like this to make provisions for me or stop being disgusted by me. like i am very frustrated that i still want this sort of approval, to be seen as legitimate by society or even just by the subsection of ffxiv fandom that writes like this. i know i'll never get it and that people this married to such conceptions of gender are never in their lives going to stop being grossed out by me or my interest in other men. it's just like, fuck! idk!

i think sometimes about how like, when i was a kid my dad used to think it was funny to insult people by saying they were gay or just outright calling them fags and faggots, and like, how uncomfortable and scared it used to make me when i was figuring out i wasn't cis and straight (there were a lot of labels, the specifics aren't important). it really sucked, it was awful and scary because he was such a violent capricious jerk. i think about having to grow up seeing the wbc protests and "GOD HATES FAGS" on tv all the time, and other kids talking about how if they found out their friend was gay they'd beat the shit out of him in high school. actively, "i am demeaning gay people in front of you in class" level homophobic teachers. i used to cringe at fag and faggot every time i read them and feel my stomach drop like i was being punched. emet being so like, loudly and admirably GNC and out there and me feeling like he would use those words as a point of pride helped me overcome all that and make it way less painful and make me feel way more comfortable with myself.

people in this fandom only like emet if they can make him as conventionally masculine as possible. all that stuff that helped me feel better about myself is so ugly and gross to them that they have to erase it entirely in order to enjoy him. it really feels like the worst kind of slap in the face, to me. so i guess that's part of why i can't let it go, too.

#tag for complaining

[crasherfly]

PSO2: NGS is Terrible. Yet I Can’t Stop Giving Sega Money

Everyone has that friend who bugs them to play an MMO like it’s their evangelical mission. Whether WoW, FFXIV, Warframe, Star Citizen, etc, chances are there is someone in your life who is trying to get you to join at least one of those games.

However, one game that you are likely not being asked to play is Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis. And there’s a simple reason for that, really, one that its players dare not utter aloud-

New Genesis is actually pretty terrible.

It’s true, it’s true. And I’d argue most of us trapped in Sega’s wallet bleed world know it.

The gameplay of PSO2: NGS essentially amounts to holding an attack button and juggling a few cooldowns. The enemies amount to varying configurations of the same few amorphous red and blue blobs whose only intent is to kill you. The story is a slow burn of nonsense that might hold meaning to longtime series fans, but will not make an impression on newcomers to the series. The loot grind is long and unforgiving, demanding you play the same handful of raids and boss fights dozens, if not hundreds of times to obtain what you might otherwise buy in a shop were it not for the game’s extremely stingy three currency system. And many of the game’s systems and stats go unexplained, demanding dives onto wikis and youtube channels to figure out the way the opaque Battle Power score is calculated (only to learn that really, per the metal, only one or two of the many stats actually matter).

It’s a joyless loot grinder, a snoozer of a game (I literally fall asleep during raids some nights) with updates that make generous use of the term “drip feed”. This was made all the more clear with the big Episode 5 update, which included quality of life adjustments that should have appeared months ago, more of the stiffest rendered cinematics I’ve ever seen in a modern game and story missions that were, save for one encounter, just rehashes of the same fights we’ve been subjected to for months. 

And yet.

AND YET.

I keep giving Sega money for doing exactly two things right-

>The game world is gorgeous, so much so that even devoid of context or reason to exist, it is a joy to escape to.

>The near infinite fashion options for your character creates the perfect social platform to project yourself into- and a safe space to explore and push norm boundaries for gender, identity, sexuality, etc.

I love building my wardrobe in PSO2. I can spend hours in the salon crafting looks. Even at level 1 there is nothing stopping a player from spending real world money on scratch tickets, trading in the personal shop and crafting imaginative looks. There’s no bar of entry to this, no cosmetic items tied to actual level or time played. Because of this, PSO2 blocks often feel less like an MMO lobby and more like the floor of a convention, with a mix of cosplayers and character actors, with the occasional sprinkle of monstrosity to round things out. 

This community has a passion for a good outfit- and with the clothes often comes a moment of self-exploration. I think it’s safe to say I entered PSO2 with a fairly masculine view of what clothes looked good on a masculine model. But over the past year that has morphed and changed, and many of my looks shifted from classic “edgelord” male to something more middle of the road, with looks that incorporate many feminine accessories, show off more skin, or even make use of pieces like sweater dresses, garters and tights. In turn, it has expanded my view of what a masculine individual in 2023 can wear, and just how much of that expectation is molded by the culture around me. And that’s just the clothing conversation- the discussion of players experimenting with an in-game gender other than their own is another important facet worthy of note.

In PSO2: NGS, there’s a joke often repeated- Fashion is the true Endgame. In NGS, the clothes don’t just make the character- they arguably make the game itself.

And because Sega’s most substantial updates continue in the form of scratch off tickets for fashion items, it’s clear that the developers have an understanding of where the community’s heart lies. While I’m sure actual effort goes into the combat and story sections of PSO2: NGS, it’s undeniable that often these updates feel like an excuse in service to a fashion simulator.

It makes me wonder what could be if Sega, or another savvy developer, just yeeted the pretense of gameplay and story altogether in favor of a true social simulator. There’s clearly an appetite for high fantasy anime. PSO2 blocks are lively enough to suggest most players, especially and endgame, prefer to sit around with their friends in beautiful digital spaces. Why not lean into that with an experience that is both less grift-y and more honest about what the players are actually here for.

Of course, we know the answer, which ties back to a set of articles that came out recently from a Sims developer who noted that men who played The Sims in tests often lied about how they spent their time. Which is to say- the gameplay likely exists so that men do not have to admit that they are investing in what they are actually investing in. As long as you can call PSO2 a roleplaying game/action game, and not a social simulator/fashion simulator, there’s some plausible deniability there for those still clinging to a dated vestige of masculinity in 2023.

But maybe someday soon that changes. I’d hope so. The deeper I get into PSO2, the more I realize that it’s not the grind or gameplay that I’m craving from an MMO, but the social connections and self-exploration that can only happen when lost in a crowd of thousands doing the very same thing. The sooner we can agree that’s what we really want, the sooner the next great digital experience can arrive to give us just that.

Until then, I guess I’ll pass Sega another check for my digital fashion needs :(

[phantom-miria]

Your WoL is so cute- can you share more about her? (This totally isn’t your fanfiction exchange assigned gifter trying to subtly stalk you. Noooo. Not at all. Shifty eyes.)

👀👀

I'm so flattered! And also I love talking about her! I actually filled out a "meet my WoL" chart a while ago that I never posted here, so I'll post that in a bit for you as a separate photo post! But I think the basic run-down is that she's a Keeper Miqo'te whose name doesn't quite match the naming conventions mostly because I carried her over from a different game I rp'd in, so uhh...Astrid Voll, Astrid Vholl, Bustle, and ANGERY CAT are all equally accurate names for her because I've just shifted a bunch of things over time. Bustle is a nickname/pseudonym for her tailoring work, and for the name not exactly matching Miqo'te syllabic patterns I mostly just figure she grew up separate from a clan and lived in Limsa instead and was named there, and apprenticed as a tailor when she was young.

Mostly sticks to magic classes (WHM main, I'm really into RDM for DPS, I also have AST as one of the main classes I cycle through and not magic but I LOVE Dancer too; I'm working my way through SCH/SMN now) but recently started dabbling with PLD, mostly because I thought the Castrum Abania paladin set was REALLY pretty and wanted it. And it's probably the sparkliest tank job :D

Palette wise, mostly sticks to reds, whites, blacks, golds, and pinks. You can't fight crime if you ain't cute, so lots of different flashy pretty aesthetics. I've cycled through a few hair styles, the big sticking point is usually if they have bangs I like :') Sidebangs for Bustle always.

Backstory and personality-wise, she lost her girlfriend in the Calamity and is a bit quieter and more jaded these days as a result. She can be bluntly rude at first and is a little afraid of getting close to people, because if you don't get close to people then losing them won't hurt so much! But then she's lonely from pushing people away, so it's kind of an ugly push-pull of social needs, and what she settles on is an uncomfortable compromise between being rude to people and testing boundaries to see if they stick around while having a very soft heart underneath it all.

But I think the WoL is such a source of hope in FFXIV's story that her journey throughout it would be a re-discovery of how much hope she still has, and ofc she ends up developing ties to everyone in the Scions, Ishgard, the Resistance, the First, etc. The story really puts the WoL through the wringer! (I'm still working my way through the story and am currently in post-patch Shadowbringers after taking a three year break, but have thoroughly spoiled myself over everything (and cried over certain parts of Endwalker that I've watched on Youtube at least 20 times) so no need to worry about spoilers or leaving parts out, I love the whole game and want content set at any part of it, no holds barred.)

Also I just love the idea of her with Aymeric because he's SO in awe of the WoL and everything they do and the idea of him being so starry-eyed over this little shit of a Miqo'te is very funny to me. And I think he's so earnest and kind that she would want very much to protect that in him, and he would be fun to tease but not fun to be rude to, so he'd be one of the only people to end up mostly exempt from her habit of needling for no particular reason (alongside some assorted Scions, but not all, because some of them it would be great fun to insult/provoke for no particular reason).

But Aymeric would get right to the soft nougaty center of her that's just filled with love. I think he'd bring out the better sides in her because he does that with everyone who isn't 100% evil because AYMERIC IS SO GOOD ; u; I think Aymeric hits a really fun balance of intensely composed and take-charge and intense about what he believes in. He's got an aura of confidence but really looks up to the WoL too, and I think he's just like. The goodest boy. And he deserves good things. Or to be hurt and then comforted with good things. And I think WoL/Aymeric in general has great potential to have these two super important people find someone they can lean on, even if the distance can make it really hard.

Anyway uhh aside from what I linked in my signup, you can find pics of her in my tag on this blog: https://phantom-miria.tumblr.com/tagged/character:%20bustle

Unfortunately it covers the versions of her I've played in other games too, so here's a few FFXIV specific posts of her appearance, including art drawn by friends. My most recent hairstyle for her is the shorter bob with the braid that's in some of the imgur images in my sign up:

and a text post that I think about sums her up: https://phantom-miria.tumblr.com/post/150662998775/byrneing-my-heart-is-guarded-but-like-very

and uhh I guess I'll go post that rp meme I filled out, and thank you so much for your interest and I hope ANY of this babbling was helpful and just aaaaa I love talking WoLs

#character: bustle

[semi-imaginary-place]

when I first started playing ffxiv it was just a couple months after finishing an campaign with Alaris and I was in withdrawl and went "what if i made alaris a catboy lol" and thats how aurele started. You can see that they share a conceptual origin, yet have become distinct individual characters. the reason alaris has soo many more bubbles filled in that aurele on the character sheets is that alaris is like 40 years older than aurele and has had more time to pick up skills.

what's funny is that they're both perpetually poor. Alaris because things just keep falling out of his pockets and he doesn't care and Aurele because gig economy. Both would probably be decent at seduction if they tried but neither really care. Alaris probably accidentally seduces people (because high cha bard) but I'm not counting that. mmm perhaps i should cross out seduction and write charm, both are quite charming people. Aurele being illiterate is still very funny to me but like aurele's just a farm boy. i mean do you really think eorzea has a functioning universal education system? Aurele (like Alaris) actually likes new things and learning and in time line C (out of A-E) when he joins a certain adventuring party and goes side-questing, he probably does get bullied into literacy. Aurele probably learned to write his name and not much more.

aurele novae is more like a professional name, its not quite a fake name but tis not quite his real name either. its what he signed up under for the adventurer's guild. aurele's not stupid but he does have a soft heart and wants to do things for other people (this is central to his character arc), so he's easy to bully but you'd feel bad about it afterwards. funfact! He uses "Aurele Novae" because his friend was in thd middle of an elf weeabo phase at the time. in ffxiv the elves/elezen are french, so aurele novae is using french orthography. you actually meet an elf aurel in game later. His birth name is pronounced the same but under conventional eorzean standard orthography it would be rendered N'uuhrel Tia. also its technically Aurèle but ffxiv doesn't allow diacritics. Out of universe he's names Aurele for his heart of gold. So after Aurele took the fall for his little sister and received a dishonorable discharge from the maelstrom he decided to get away from it all. Izaikil is a traveling magic scholar and also a character that i made when i was 12. the two of them initially met in limsa, aurele was on shore leave and izaikil was studying at the arcanists guild. when aurele was looking for where to go, izaikil was in gridania studying history and conjury so feeling a bit lost aurele decided to go to gridania on a whim. so while he's from la noscea, he signs up for the gridanian adventurer's guild.  Elezen are the only race native to eorzea (canon) so in studying eorzea's history izaikil learns a lot of elezen history and ends up picking up some Old Elezen (this language(french) was eventually replaced by Eorzean Common(english)), so when Aurele mentions that he's thinking of signing up under a slightly different name, Izaikil proposes transcribing it using Old Elezen(french) orthography.

so aurele's hometown is a little isolationist and xenophobic which is why his generation wanted to spread their wings and see the world. his village wasn't traditional in the miqo'te sense. they were sedintary, they did some hunting but also fishing and a lot of agriculture. and the village didn't have a traditional social structure. so his two moms (1) did not bring him up with a lot of traditional cultural practices. so as an adult meeting miqo'te who live their cultural heritage, there's an awkwardness amd a sadness that this is his heritage too, its a sense of loss for something he never had. its more like a vague acknowledgement of the different paths life has led us all on. Aurele doesn't have a big dramatic character arc like say the disaster lesbian duo have, he's just some dude there's nothing special about him, he's like a level 15 archer npc. I'd say he mostly deals with the same types of things most people in their 20s deal with, settling into one's own self, a solidification of identity, deciding what one wants to do with their life. He balances out his desire to take on the burdens of others with a wider perspective, and his ability to bring people together and build community really starts to shine. exactly what happens to him depends on the timeline. he mostly becomes a botanist, maybe he picks up some conjury and magic, maybe he builds a life in gridania, maybe he moves back to la noscea. he loves adventuring and meeting new people and seeing new places but i do think he settles down eventually. not quite sure exactly what he does. maybe he takes over his villages orange orchards? starts a vinyard? community farm co-op? who knows

mmmm how do I describe it... Aurele has very pretty eyes, very clear and bright, so while that green is the base color  they appear brighter/lighter in real life (fiction real life that is). And he has gold flecks in his eyes too, from afar his eyes are a light yellow-green (chartreuse???) but close up you can see they are green and gold. also he's got tareme eyes. Noyu's the one with tsurime eyes. Alaris has unusual eyes too now that i think about it. i may have a character design quirk... Alaris takes pretty strongly from the human side of his family but his eyes are brighter and more jewel like than a pure human's. I guess you could say his eyes are hazel but like an extreme elf-y version so they shift around different combinations of green, turquoise and gold depending on the lighting

#ffxiv #ffxiv ocs #aurele #alaris #dnd #the two gay idiot catboys

[stagnantmako]

i’m still so new to ffxiv, the more i fuck around in it and consider verses for it the more i like the idea of nero and weiss having the most complicated family tree. all because their mom was a scientist and a thot who really didn’t care about social conventions she just wanted powerful children.

mom: xaela weiss’ dad: raen nero’s dad: miqo’te

weiss took after his father. two of them barely look related because their horn/scale colors are completely different. and on top of that nero got saddled with fur, scales, and lost out in the height department.

#ooc. #nero's a black mage or a mechanist #weiss is def a paladin #rosso is a dark knight #azuls a marauder who never equipped a soulstone #shelke's the party's healer because SOMEONE HAS TO BE #argent makes their equipment #none of them know what they're doing and if they do dungeons they just run through and aggro everything and then kill it all at once #shelke is overworked and underpaid

[mouse-of-light]

Sociability and Love Life (FFXIV Edition—Sorta)

(copied from @fair-fae)

Bold all that apply

Out of the following, what does your character most want in life? (In other words, which of these are they most focused on achieving?)

To feel loved, needed and appreciated

To be successful and admired

To discover themselves and their significance, to find their identity

To be capable and competent, and have everything figured out

To have security and support, to be safe from danger

To be happy and free from pain, and explore what life has to offer

To be in control of their own life and destiny

To have inner peace and live in a harmonious environment

To better themselves and the world around them

Are they an introvert or an extrovert? (Introverts need to spend a lot of time alone to feel at their best. Extroverts need to spend a lot of time interacting with people to be at their best. Ambiverts need equal amounts of social interaction and alone time, and must balance these to feel at 100%.)

Extreme Introvert

Introvert

Ambivert

Extrovert

Extreme Extrovert

What sorts of humor does your character usually use when joking around?

Sarcasm

Puns and wordplay

Dark humor

Gross-out/Toilet humor

Sexual humor

Deadpan humor

Offensive humor

Topical humor

Pop culture references

Intellectual/Nerdy humor

Self-deprecating humor

Physical/Slapstick humor

Schadenfreude (laughing at other people’s misfortune)

Other (please explain)

What kinds of humor does your character most amused by when they hear it?

Sarcasm

Puns and wordplay

Dark humor

Gross-out/Toilet humor

Sexual humor

Deadpan humor

Offensive humor

Topical humor

Pop culture references

Intellectual/Nerdy humor

Self-deprecating humor

Physical/Slapstick humor

Schadenfreude (laughing at other people’s misfortune)

Sexual Orientation

Heterosexual (Attracted to opposite gender)

Homosexual (Attracted to same gender)

Bisexual (Attracted to 2+ genders)

Pansexual (Attracted to all genders)

Asexual (Attracted to no one)

Questioning (Unsure of orientation)

Other (please explain)

Is the character monogamous or polyamorous?

Strictly monogamous

Mostly monogamous, but willing to try polyamory

Fine with both monogamy and polyamory

Mostly polyamorous, but willing to try monogamy

Strictly polyamorous

Neither, they don’t have relationships.

What social skills is your character more proficient at? (If the character can’t do something at all due to a physical or mental limitation, select N/A. e.g., a mute person who cannot sing.)

Public speaking

Fashion sense

Reading other people

Manipulating others

Working with others

Following social cues and conventions

Lying

Flirting/Seduction

Maintaining friendships

Maintaining romantic relationships

How many sexual partners has the character had in their lifetime?

01

2-4

5-9

10+

Unknown

How many languages is your character fluent in?

1

2

3

4

5+ 0 (she doesn’t talk,if at all possible - only when there’s no other way to communicate)

How many other languages is your character proficient in but not fluent in?Meaning that they can at least hold a basic conversation in it.

01

2

3

4

5+

Is your character a couerl kitten person or a wolf pup person?

Couerl person

Wolf person

Can’t pick, they’re both so great (though she typically prefers her tiny rat)

Can’t pick, both are awful

Is ambivalent about pets

Your character sees their neighbor (or other friendly acquaintance) hiding a dead body in the straw of their chocobo stable. What do they do?

Confront him

Call the authorities

Ignore it and pretend they saw nothing. Start secretly watching them to figure out what’s going on.

Help him hide the body better

Take vigilante justice into their own hands

Steal the body

Let’s face it, they’re probably the body in the stable

What kind of drunk are they?

Happy

Sad

Sentimental

Reckless

Philosophical

Flirtatious

Comedic

Angry

Violent

Drowsy

Loud

Calm

Don’t drink for other reasons

They are physically incapable of getting drunk

Does your character ship their friends? (If you don’t know what shipping is, Google can tell you but how do you not know this by now?)

Yes, and they interfere to make their OTPs come true YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE

Yes, but they don’t interfere

Only a little bit, I swear!  >.>

Not at all

They don’t have friends

How many romantic partners has the character had in their lifetime? (A romantic partner is anyone who the character has dated, publicly or not.)

01

2-4

5-9

10+

Unknown

On average, how often do they develop crushes on other people? (Only count times when they are outside of a closed monogamous relationship.)

Never (or only once or twice in their life)

Once every few years

Once a year

A few times a year

Monthly

Weekly

Daily

Has your character…

Been kissed?

Dated someone?

Had sex?

Kiss someone new?

Date someone new?

Have sex with someone new?

Kiss someone they’ve kissed before?

Date someone they’ve dated before?

Have sex with someone they’ve had sex with before?

Was your character in a relationship with someone prior to the events of 2.0?

Yes, and they’re still together by the end

Yes, but they are no longer together by the end

Yes, but that person died

No

It’s complicated

Was the character in a relationship with someone prior to the events of Heavensward?

Yes, and they’re still together

Yes, but they are no longer together

Yes, but that person died

No

It’s complicated

How many love interests does the character have over the course of their life so far (pre-Heavensward)?

01

2

3 or more

Unknown

Which of the following methods of expressing love does the character use the most?

Words of affirmation (compliments, saying “I love you”, encouragement)

Quality time (going out together, one-on-one conversation)

Gifts (giving gifts, remembering special occasions)

Acts of service (assisting with chores, acts of kindness)

Physical affection (hugs, kisses, hand-holding)

Which of the following methods of expressing love does the character use the least?

Words of affirmation

Quality time

Gifts

Acts of service

Physical affection

Which of these best describes how the character likes to have love expressed to them? (As in, which of these do they respond the best to when someone does it for them?)

Words of affirmation

Quality time

Gifts

Acts of service

Physical affection

#get to know my wol #ffxiv #romance #friendship #love style

[092219archive]

i’ve been watching ffxiv cutscenes for the main story (pushing thru heavensward right now) and i’ve been thinking of stuff for my wol lately so i guess now’s a good time to introduce them a bit :-)

here’s a link to the og meme: Self Insert Development Meme

1. Does your insert have a name that’s different from yours? Does the name reflect their character in any way, or is it just because it sounds nice? How did you come up with it?

wol’s currently nameless... i can’t use with the usual “eren” as per the naming conventions of each ffxiv race (i will use wol!eren to indicate, well, My WoL). maybe if i wanted them to be a hyur i’d be able to, but i’ve been hopping back and forth between aura (raen) or viera (veena)...

edit (8/4): i keep forgetting to update this lmfao,, but my wol’s name is momo and they’re an aura (raen)!

2. Does your insert have a very strong relationship with a f/o, maybe more than one? Tell us a little about the dynamic they have! This can be a bond that’s romantic, familial, or platonic, anything - even an enemy would count as a strong relationship!

there’s only maybe one person who’s aware of the character(s) that i’m maybe. MAYBE. maybe. looking at (eros Do Not Interact). no names as i refuse to acknowledge/perceive them in any manner.

but, the relationship’s still in the works,, i’m thinking it’s a lot of it’s gonna have to focus on positions of power/hierarchies... maybe a bit of slowburn... for spice.

i feel like any rom relationship i could build might. be slow burn. oops!

3. Who in their canon are they closest to? Who would they drop everything to come help, if anyone? Who’s the person they’re least close to? Who would they most likely not get along with, if anyone?

in terms of story, i think wol!eren’s really close to alphinaud; i get familial vibes from him (and actual wol spends a very large chunk of time with him as well)... but personally, i’m thinking estinien. yea he’s a bit of an asshat but he’s cool (but ig that makes wol!eren a bit of an asshat too)

when it comes to who wol!eren’s not close with... honestly, anyone that abuses their position of power for selfish and harmful reasons at the expense of people go on the hit list. but even then, if the character’s one of the main characters/shown often then it’s like... i’d have to think about it a little more. happens a lot

4. Does your insert have a backstory? Tell us about it! How does their backstory, if any, define who they are? How does it reflect their relationships now? Their hopes and dreams?

hmm much like my other s/is, wol!eren delves on their past often despite their preaching of looking forward. a hypocrite they are!! (/s) a lot of my self ships also delve on like. “same hat” so... honestly they’re just kinda going with the flow and walking wherever they feel is an easy path. they’re a pretty passive person despite the role they’ve been given.

5. Does your insert have any magical talents or otherwise special abilities? Are they passive, like the ability to befriend animals, or dangerous power that the villains want? Or if they're evil - any powers the heroes want to stop?

as per the narrative, they were chosen by hydaelyn and have the echo. however, they’re also extremely perceptive. they can typically tell whether someone has good intentions or not. the issue is that it’s always a feeling and they usually don’t have anything to prove their claims. as a result, they rarely say anything about it. it's not really a “power” but it can certainly be helpful.

6. Do they fight? What’s their weapon of choice? Do they stay on the sidelines? What would it take for them to get off the sidelines? Revenge? Saving a loved one? What’s the motivation for them to fight, or to stay OUT of a fight?

i plan on wol!eren being a summoner! or maybe not exactly a summoner, but something to do with magic being used offensively. they hate getting their hands dirty so they’ll just blow you up instead.

they mainly fight because it’s their duty/obligation to fight, but had they not been in the position they were, they’d have sooner leave combat and live off the grid. nobody really knows this because they never voice it -- it also wouldn’t be good for a warrior of light to say “yea i hate my job and i don’t really care about some of you”, you know?

(7/18) edit: with the help of my ffxiv mutuals, i’ve decided to make wol!eren a black mage :) it’s definitely fitting for their character.

7. What kind of clothing style do they like? What would they never be caught dead wearing? What’s likely in their closet right now?

REALLY DARK CLOTHING. if they show any skin when they don’t have to, they’ll Perish. i intend for them to wear the void ark clothing for magic users but much like everything else, that’s subject to change. clothing that’s aesthetically pleasing and easy on the eyes is good.

8. How do they fit into their canon world? What’s their role to play, if any? Do they have a big destiny? Or do they more live as a side character that’s helpful for the protagonists/antagonists?

literally the protagonist but very much desires to be a side character. because they like playing a supporting role more than the main role, they live in “anonymity.” kinda. it’s just hard when the group you’re apart of and gods?? know literally just about everything you’ve been doing.

9. Their favorite foods? Colors? Activities? What do they enjoy in life? How do they express their joy for things they like?

they will. eat just about anything they’re given, even if the food’s not super great (like a raccoon.....). they don’t really have any particular favorites and if they do, it’s likely to be meat or basic, easy-to-make dishes.

just anything that’s dark/muted. color colors (blues, purples, etc.) are their favorite.

they very much enjoy doing absolutely nothing, especially now that they’re so busy with working. if they’re free from work even if it’s just for a few seconds, you will find them sleeping. Lazy

if they like something, they’d never say it out right. extremely private and closed off person, so unless you’re really close with them, you’d never know if they truly liked something.

10. Their least favorites? What don’t they enjoy in life? How do they deal with being presented with things they don’t like?

literally just anything that inconveniences them. they want things to run smoothly so they don’t have to deal with anything they don’t have to. when something arises that stops them from fulfilling their duties, they’re get irritated. they also just, not the biggest fan of people and socializing.

11. How easy is it to make your insert angry? Sad? How easy is it to twist their emotions into negative things? By contrast, how easy are they to cheer up? What can brighten a bad day?

they’re easily prone to negative emotions, but it’s not “major/serious” since they’re mostly out of touch with their emotions anyhow. if it gets really bad, they kinda “shut down.”

one way to get under their skin is confront them about personal matters, but you can cheer them up if you have a good sense of humor! alphinaud’s helped with that, albeit unintentionally more often than not.

12. Is your insert a loner, or do they prefer crowds? Do they warm up easily, or do they tend to take longer to befriend others? What kinda people do they get along with? Who are they likely to be uncomfortable with?

i think i did mention earlier that wol!eren really doesn’t like crowds. it takes them a very long time to genuinely consider someone as a friend. sometimes they might not even acknowledge someone even if said person tries their hardest to befriend them. and there’s not really a type of person who they’re really “uncomfortable” with (spoilers they’re always uncomfortable with everything asjfhsd), but i guess if i had to answer, it’s just anybody with potentially harmful intentions?

they have. Trust Issues™, if you will.

13. What are your insert’s goals? Their hopes and dreams for the past/future/present! Do they intend to achieve no matter what? Could anything stop them, big or small?

in the past, they wanted to live a comfortable life as a recluse where they can do things without the eyes of others watching... and they still do, but now they’re too accustomed by the presence of people to truly achieve that. after their duties as a wol (if they’re ever completed honestly), they’d probably pull a cloud final fantasy and start a delivery service or something like that LOL

14. Does your insert have any family relations? How do they get along? How do they disagree? Is it a biological family? Adopted? Or is it found family? How did this family come together, if it was one of the last two?

sssomething like that? so far i’m thinking they come from a family of arooound 5. 2 siblings + parents. they have a younger sibling who’s a miqo bard mercenary and an older elezen (?) astrologian currently working somewhere in ishgard. debating on who their parents are but all of them were kinda... “picked up” and put into a family.

the “parental figures” were desperate to have a family but they had little knowledge of how to care for children. needless to say, the environment was not one to flourish in.

miqo brd is kinda like robin hood where he steals from the upper class to give to the poor because he refuses to allow people who’re in need suffer due to a lack of resources. on the other hand, the ast is the elezen who wants nothing but peace. the downside is that he’s very aggressive with his ideals and follows people like the archbishop, thordan.

edit (7/18): wol!eren wasn’t tied to their family biologically, but due to their questionable actions and words, they cut ties with their family and started traveling alone. it was extremely difficult but because they didn’t stay in confines of their own home, they were able to meet the scions and the not.

alphinaud and alisaie are like their siblings. they share a surprisingly a deep, unspoken familial bond with the three because of all the adventures they went on together. wol!eren’s been caught acting like an older sibling to the two.

15. Does your insert have any enemies? What’s that dynamic like? Why are they enemies? Did they ever get along in the past? Is patching up differences out of the question for the future?

much like the actual in-game wol, i’d imagine that anybody that wants to stop the wol in their tracks are considered “enemies.” i haven’t gotten that far into ffxiv to really name characters though,, tba.....

16. Free question space! Ask whatever you want to know!

if ur into ffxiv and u’ve gotten this far down... thank u :) and talk to me abt ur wols or ur ffxiv faves in my inbox maybe?? 👀

#eren chats #long post #<that is not a joke this got really long #info subject to CHANGE but i wanted to throw what i've been brainstorming here #i'm gonna go continue heavensward now #gonna start 3.1 :~)

[vaelir-alatori]

Ache - FFXIV Write Prompt #15

(CW: Eye injury, wound care)

Each night before bed, Natsuki knelt in front of her bedroom mirror and removed her eyepatch to care for the wound beneath. It was an ugly thing; a scarred mess of mangled skin around a foggy eye that no longer functioned. 

She remembered the compliments she would receive on her eyes before her injury. ‘Like the moon on a clear night’, ‘like light shining through a sheet of ice’. No one ever told her anything about her eye anymore; social convention often kept people from bringing her eyepatch up at all. 

Natsuki was never vain, but part of her missed being told that she had lovely eyes. When she looked in the mirror, she no longer saw the moon; she saw the first mark that the land of Eorzea had made on her, a reminder of her failure.

The first step was to gently dab at the scarring with a warm washcloth. Though the wound was no longer fresh, keeping it clean was paramount. Natsuki was especially diligent about ensuring cleanliness; she hated being dirty, even when the risk of infection was not a factor. 

The second step was to rub the area with medicinal oils. Ishgard was a fine place to procure the stuff, with its warriors having a long history of slashing and piercing injuries from their draconic enemies. She hated the smell, but it was not meant to be liked; it was meant to be endured. 

In many ways, the eye was a symbol, and Natsuki could not help but see it as such. She was blind in Eorzea; blind to the societal customs, blind to the lay of the land, and blind to the way that its people fought. Her overconfidence had cost her an eye, and the scars left behind would always remind her of the price of hubris.

The third step was to apply a poultice to the eye, to be secured and worn while sleeping. She was thankful to have her own room because of this; though her pride was towering and unwavering, the true state of Natsuki’s left eye was a great embarrassment to her, and to show it to another was a task she dreaded. Within her own little world, she could safely care for the wound without having to share the intimacy of an act with another.

With her poultice secured, Natsuki settled into her futon and blew out her beside candle. In her window, she could see the moon nearing its zenith. Perhaps one day she would be compared to the moon once again..

#ffxiv #ffxiv writing #FFxivWrite2020 #Natsuki Uematsu

[schalaasha]

Favourite Games of 2019

I don’t like making ranked lists anymore. So here’s a bunch of games old and new I played in 2019 because I was busy catching up due to not playing FFXIV as much as in previous years.

 Ciconia When They Cry Phase 1: For You, The Replaceable Ones

I think going in, and even starting to play it, I felt like maybe the game would abandon the WTC mystery game conventions. It ended up not doing that, because the game leaves you with far more questions than answers at the end. The A3W World (“after World War III”) is still trying to deal with political issues and social issues that existed prior to World War III. A global stalemate exists due to the military implementation of the Gauntlet weapon. Eventually things happen where different countries need to deal with a shortage of resources, territorial conflicts, etc which sets off a chain reaction to World War IV.  However, the children who grew up in the A3W era, settled into new ideologies and views of how society currently works are at odds with what the older generation wants and requires of them. Along the way, they need to deal with other groups and conspiracies in order to maintain the Walls of Peace.

 So in essence, R07 still crafts a mystery for readers to figure out, but it isn’t a murder mystery. It’s an international conspiracy mystery and I am more than okay with that. I think this chapter required a lot of worldbuilding to set that kind of story up and coming out of Phase 1, I understood why the first chapter wasn’t exactly like Umineko’s. I thought that it was handled well, despite some of the purple prose (but if you’ve played a R07 game before, you’re likely used to it).  I also thought he really tried to introduce and incorporate themes including gender, generational differences, societal tiers, geopolitics disguised as sports events (possibly mirroring the 2020 Olympics in Japan), etc. as well as he could throughout the story through the game’s cast. Even if the game meanders a bit (and it definitely feels that way towards the start), when it actually starts to roll, I felt compelled to keep reading.

 And truly, the game has an incredibly large cast of characters. The TIPS section handles introductions well, and while some cast members don’t have as much time in the spotlight as others, I can see them getting their time eventually in subsequent chapters. Clearly Phase 1 exists to focus more on the children from the Arctic Ocean Union (the “AOU”) as evidenced by the additional stories unlocked at the end of the game so hopefully other chapters have the same amount of character backstory for the other factions.  I also genuinely enjoyed that the big international cast of characters allowed for many different types of designs with characters with different types of hairstyles and hair texture or characters wearing hijabs and still managed to make them retain adorableness or a sense of style. I do not recall seeing it as often in Japanese media and I’m very happy to see it here.

 I think Ciconia Phase 1 is a very good start to this subseries’ planned four episodes and I hope to see more sociopolitical commentary. It feels as though R07 looked at everything happening in Japan and social media/how news is consumed and decided to write a four-part SFF series about it. I’m eagerly looking forward to the next chapter.

  Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

I backed Bloodstained when it got put on Kickstarter a few years ago.  It was shipped to me at… possibly the worst time since Shadowbringers was coming out very shortly after.  My fiancé and I played ours for a short bit, felt very positive about the game, then dropped it to play Shadowbringers.  We didn’t return to it until maybe September/October?  Both of us ended up getting our Platinum Trophies for it so we both played through everything the game had to offer.

 Bloodstained is a good experience, but not without its issues. I played on PS4 and I’ve had a few outright crashes or some glitching into walls early enough that I couldn’t come out of them again due to not having the required skill to try to get out of it.  I also felt like the game meandered or had a bit of padding in its earlier stages). Later on, you realise you have to put in the farming work to have a better and faster time not unlike its Igavania counterparts, but I did feel like the drop rates prior to actually working towards higher luck stats/drop shards were low enough almost to the point of unfair or deliberately wasting my time.  I also felt as though there were too many weapon types; with adequate shard use and shard grinding eventually you can settle into one weapon type that suits your playstyle or eventually use the gun for everything when you get the special hat quest reward).

 However, I’m speaking about this game as someone who platinumed it which requires a lot of farming and synthesis.  As a player going through the main campaign, I think the maps are adequate. The backgrounds are very lovingly crafted, and the music is absolutely one of the best of the year. Boss design is also fun and rewarding, requiring the player to learn how all the different weapon types work, adequate backstepping and closing in, and boss patterns. If you suck, the game will show you that you suck very quickly and deliberately.  Essentially towards the end, I felt as though Bloodstained tried very hard to cater to fans of the metroidvania style of game, and the classicvania style of game. I personally don’t think it completely succeeded but for a first time experience of trying to combine the two into one, it did its job with preparation for another game.  

 I also feel like some criticism was lobbed towards the game’s narrative for being told in library/book entries, and while I understand that (I actually couldn’t open all of the books for fear of my game crashing), I don’t think elaborate cutscenes and continuous dialogue would work well with this game’s flow. Bloodstained prioritizes gameplay elements and player exploration over anything else, and to be honest, I’d rather it happen that way than with long elaborate cutscenes.  I also felt as though I got more out of the game because I’d played the 8-bit prequel as well.

 Overall, Bloodstained is a passable experience. I’m glad I played it, and I’m glad I put the work in to try to make the game a better experience. I got what I wanted out of the game for as much as I backed it and I hope they try again with a similar formula because this is a very good first step.  

  The Touryst

Sometimes when I see a game with voxel graphics, I feel pretty compelled to pick it up because it looks so darn lovingly rendered and it usually ends up being fun.  The Touryst does a good job with its graphical style and visiting new islands is a complete delight because of it. It looks like a game with style, and performs super-well on the Switch. It’s also one of the freshest games I’ve played in a while.

 Basically you’re playing a blocky dude with a moustache who just wants to have a good time but when he gets to TOWA Monument, he’s told he has to find monument cores to unlock the world’s secrets. And then you can do whatever you want. The different islands have their own little personalities: there’s an island called Fijy which is volcanic, there’s Ybiza with a bunch of dudes chilling on the beach and passed out on their chairs, there’s Santoryn which is just Greece, and a few other places that are essentially recreations of real-world places.

 As you explore, there’s a lot of stuff to do. A variety of things to do.  There are puzzles and mechanics that don’t necessarily overstay their welcome, you can play footy, you can play spelunker, you can take helicopter rides, you can take pictures, get stuff for a museum, surf, play rhythm games…. It’s your vacation, do what you want. It’s a little like Vegas. Unlike Vegas, you can use your ever-increasing money and diamonds to get new moves for your moustached character to reach new objects.

 As a little game where you can do whatever you want little by little, and makes for a smooth experience, I’m glad I picked up the Touryst after asking another person what they thought of it. It has great puzzles, lots of stuff to do and explore and see, and ton of minigames for whatever mood you feel like you’re in. The game is fairly short, but I’m very glad the holiday doesn’t overstay its welcome.

  A Short Hike

A Short Hike places you in the shoes of a bird who is utterly determined to walk to the top of Hawk Peak to get signal for her phone.  I totally understand; sometimes you’ve gotta do what you gotta do.  

 But the game allows you to undertake that journey however you want to. You can go right away and finish up and get that darn signal. Or you can take your time and we’ll build that bridge when we get there. There are different types of terrains to explore if you opt to take the scenic route… and it’s rewarding to do so. You can find treasure, you can water a flower, you can talk to the Animal Crossing-esque characters to do some sidequests, you can do whatever you want.

 I’m sorry to say that when the game introduced fishing, I spent a lot of my time doing that. Fishing ruins me. The completionist in me wanted to fish. But the whole thing is that you don’t have to do any of this. If you want to finish the game, you can absolutely positively focus on that and the game doesn’t pressure you for it.  

 And that’s one of the things I like about it. It’s just whatever about the whole ordeal. I don’t feel like I’m completely and utterly missing out if I don’t decide to do something. Even the task of getting Golden Feathers to progress is fine since you only need eight for it, and the game easily gives you enough rewards to get four or five before sidequests or exploration is factored in.

 Sometimes you just need to take a walk and kind of think of nothing just to clear your head. And A Short Hike accomplishes that very well.

  Worldend Syndrome

In my effort to try to find other games to play in 2019 because I’d fallen a little out of love with FFXIV, I realised that taking baby steps with visual novels and bite-sized games would be the best idea to try to get back into traditional games (particularly since I was, and am, still questioning whether I like games as a hobby or not). On a whim, I decided to download a boatload of visual novel demos one night and tried a bunch of them out. Worldend Syndrome’s demo didn’t exactly grab me until perhaps halfway through the demo when I a) realised that this demo was long af, and b) nothing appeared what it had seemed as I kept going through it and the characters were enjoyable.

 So I decided to get the game and dragged my fiancé along for the ride. It’s one of those standard decision-making/pick which girl you want and go down her route VNs but it didn’t really feel skeezy or ecchi other than one particular point in each girl’s story where you get confessed to.  You go through the VN as an unnamed protagonist who is visiting his cousin over the summer, and you and your friends get dragged into a school club whose focus revolves around folklore. The town the protagonist finds himself in is haunted by the Yomibito, spirits of the undead who look exactly like regular people but are eventually driven mad enough to kill.

 One of the things that drew me to this visual novel was its assortment of animated backgrounds. They colourful and gorgeous. Every CG looks nice and coloured well, and the backgrounds for each area you visit are so beautiful and makes every single location easy to settle into.  The cast is also surprisingly decent, where I expected to hate a few people but I ended up being okay with them because they were written well and weren’t as tropey as I had expected.  I was also very pleased that the character that you were roleplaying as wasn’t skeezy when put into situations where he could have been, and that he treated the girls very well (though I won’t deny that there are some spots where behaviour was questionable but it doesn’t happen as often).  Because the characters were written adequately enough, the game’s true ending route comes together very well and very naturally to a point where I could seriously believe that every character got along with one another to make sure the emotional impact of the mystery was satisfying.

 In order to finish Worldend Syndrome, you have to do each route. A few characters’ routes don’t get unlocked until halfway through the game or even until the very end. The game also remembers everything you’ve done when it autosaves the system data on the world map, so if you need to reload a save to figure out someone’s schedule or if you mess up, it’s relatively easy to come back to something you’ve missed. I’ve played a lot of multiple route VNs before and Worldend Syndrome is easily one of the better VNs that allows the player to skip through to something they’ve missed or skip through previously-viewed text for another route.

 As it is, Worldend Syndrome doesn’t really try to do anything spectacular, nor does it try to stand out like other visual novels of 2019 have (ie: Ciconia, presumably AI but I only tried the demo and I hated parts of the script, sorry). It does its job and tells its story which has a very good payoff in the end.

  Judgement

I bought my fiancé Judgement earlier this year, as I had retired from playing Ryu ga Gotoku after Dead Souls/Ishin, and he was still playing the series religiously.  I watched him play through part of it and I felt compelled to get my own copy because the combat looked nice, and the characters were compelling enough that I felt comfortable picking it up.

 Judgement follows former lawyer Takayuki Yagami who is now a detective.  His tale is one of redemption and conspiracies, reminiscent of some Phoenix Wright games (which this game gives clever nods to when the protagonist is in the courtroom). Yagami is more serious and down-to-earth than Kiryu is so the tone of the game feels quite different than other RGG games (or at least the ones I’ve played).

 It still feels like a regular RGG game where you’re still wandering through Kamurocho, you’re still getting into fights with randos and Yakuza dudes, you date girls, you go to buy food, you play minigames, etc. But it isn’t as big as a standard RGG game; because you stay only in the one area, the cast is smaller, you get a job board to get your sidequests from, and the story itself is fairly short and sweet.  I actually prefer that as a lapsed RGG player since it’s easier to get back into the games this way.

 Judgement, however, disappointed me just a little in how little you spend in the courtroom.  You’re given opportunities to present evidence, do some suspect tailing, use your smartphone to catch a cheating husband, or use a drone to search for evidence. I felt like when you had to use the drone to search for evidence, it ruined the pacing a little. The tailing missions are also reminiscent of Assassin’s Creed, and no that isn’t a good thing! Due to this, I felt like Judgement was not necessarily a great detective game but it did a decent job of trying to mold the RGG experience to a different main character.

 Yagami can… fight… for some reason so he can beat up whatever randos come up to him on the streets. He’s actually more acrobatic than I remember Kiryu being in previous RGG games. He can kick off objects, he’s hard to back into a corner, he can do wall-flips, etc. It’s also much easier to earn XP where it’s all in one bar so you can do whatever you want to fill it up like play darts and just put stuff into his lockpicking. As a lapsed fan, the streamlining feels okay. The streamlining for combat also feels good because if you fights go on too long, the popo can come for you and you’d get fined, so emphasis is on finishing fights cleanly and quickly.

 Overall, as a lapsed RGG fan, the way Judgement looks and feels and wraps up its twists and turns was really exciting for me. It may not have as many things to do as other RGG games, but honestly I think being a leaner experience was better and thus didn’t make the game overstay its welcome.  I also am eagerly awaiting RGG7 since I enjoyed the demo a lot and I think the new protagonist can carry the series the way Yagami carried Judgement.

  Cadence of Hyrule

Sometimes, after my fiancé and I bought our Switch, I’d wake up, go brush my teeth, and return to bed just to see my fiancé awake and playing Cadence of Hyrule. I was perplexed as it’s been ages since he’d willingly played a Zelda game, and his hands are super-huge for the joycons so he doesn’t like using them much.

 You can easily say that Cadence of Hyrule is just a Crypt of the Necrodancer reskin with Zelda stuff all over it, but feels pretty clever in that it uses stuff from roguelikes and a rhythm game and makes the A Link to the Past world feel incredibly fresh. Bosses, especially, feel very fresh. Enemies move according to the rhythm and have a unique pattern that’s easily memorized so you can fall into the rhythm and take advantage of. If you’ve played Necrodancer, you’ll probably feel at home in this aspect, especially since the maps are also randomised (which leads different playthroughs feeling fresh).

 The Zelda feels comes from recreating tunes from older Zelda games in puzzles, the magnificent sprite art, the great Zelda remixes, a simple-enough story, and a standard set of things to find in each procedurally generated dungeon. You also find a variety of traditional items like the bow, the bombs, boomerang… and a spear? It’s a nice blend of Zelda and Necrodancer.

 The caveat is that it takes a little getting used to, since you’re not exactly used to not being able to freely move in a Zelda game. But when you do get used to it, it feels good. Everything is pretty expendable and if you die, you don’t feel like you necessarily lose a lot since you can accrue it all easily enough again. It’s unpredictable and that random roguelike nature is something that makes the Zelda experience feel fresh.

  Spirit Hunter: Death Mark

My fiancé and I were trying to find spooky games to play for Halloween that wouldn’t make me squeamish because despite my profession dealing with analysis of body parts and human body fluids, I can’t see that kind of stuff on TV or in games in a realistic sense. It grosses me out. At least when it’s in front of me, it’s already out and off someone’s body and in a fume hood/biosafety cabinet and I didn’t have to see how it happened. My fiancé picked up Spirit Hunter: Death Mark on a sale we went through it together.

 Death Mark is a tale about horror-themed urban legends and a curse that needs to be broken.  People get marked with a crimson bite mark in the game’s H City and they eventually develop amnesia and die. A group of people live and gather at a spirit medium’s mansion (who is dead upon arrival).  The only hint to break the curse in this mansion is a little talking doll named Mary. The protagonist eventually goes through several mysteries in an effort to break his curse and stop others from dying.

 Death Mark does some surprisingly well-crafted worldbuilding. Each spirit you deal with has a well-told backstory, sometimes especially ghoulish (particularly the bonus post-game episode, the first episode, and the one episode with the telephone booth). The game excels with psychological horror and the enemies involved in each boss battle assist in making the player feel that way as well. The backgrounds also lend well to this as while they are simplistic, the shading and colours used help to execute a sense of dread. One particular chapter harkens back to Japan’s Aokigahara, and the backgrounds used connect very well to that particular location so that it feels super-eerie.

 Regardless, Death Mark relies a lot on its text to establish its atmosphere and as someone who reads stuff like R07 VNs and other regular VNs with a lot of text, I was okay with that. The localization was well-done, albeit with some issues that would have been caught in editing but overall it carried the story very well.

 There are boss battles prior to the end of each chapter, where you must use each item you find in your exploration segments. You need to use specific items in a specific order (even with the correct party setup) in order to achieve a good ending for that particular chapter (and thus eventually the game). I thought this was an interesting mechanic and while it got a little tired depending on the spirit, it showcased how creepy some of them can be on your screen.

 Unfortunately, Death Mark does not have a variety for its soundtrack and it’s almost disappointing that the same piano tunes and boss themes played repeatedly as I felt it detracted from the experience.

 Otherwise, I felt like Death Mark was a short and sweet horror experience that played into urban legends and folklore experiences. I loved the little vignettes that eventually ramped up to a central story point. I hope the sequel is good when we get around to it.

  Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

So my fiancé and I are doing this thing where we’ve started buying one copy of a game so we’d both own it together and go through it together. Sekiro and Man of Medan were two of those games this year.

 Sekiro isn’t really like Souls. Eventually you’ll come to learn that very quickly when the game throws a boss at you and if you try to play like Souls, you’re not going to get the job done.  It will show you that you never learned how to parry properly and you’re going to have to go back and learn it.  Or if you didn’t grab a prosthetic that will make the job easier, you’re gonna have to do that too.

 The game is interesting in that you aren’t exactly whittling down health bars all the time; you’re striking properly so you can overwhelm their posture bars, find an opening, and go in for the kill. Enemy health bars are essentially secondary to that posture bar. You have your own posture bar so you’ve got to learn how to parry properly. Sometimes you need to parry complete combos in order to deliver posture damage back to an enemy. It’s all about getting into the flow and rhythm of combat. And you must beat bosses in order for you to get a stat boost, so being able to beat a boss lies in your skill, and not necessarily your level/equipment.

 Sekiro is Souls-like in its storytelling and worldbuilding. You can run around rooftops and areas to find secrets off the beaten path. You go back and forth between areas and speak to different NPCs to find out their backstories. The plot is also told via NPC conversations with the main characters. At first it’s a little dry but the story opens up eventually. It also has some great voiced NPCs for quests (one quest in particular had voicework that made me feel so sorry for the character that I was like “we need to get the proper item for this guy please don’t make him suffer”).

 It feels rewarding to put in the work in order to beat the bosses, make it so you don’t resurrect as often to make people sick, and meet whatever standard Sekiro is throwing at you. It lets the player know that they’ve met that standard, and then throws another boss phase at them so you have to get even better.

 Owl I’m looking at you.

  Super Kirby Clash

My fiancé and I bought a Switch together this year (which, outside of dinner and movies and clothes, etc. was one of our major purchases together).  We downloaded a few demos to try the control scheme out, including Super Kirby Clash.  I am aware that this game is probably old, but hey it’s still going and it’s still being supported and I’m catching up.

 I’m probably putting it here due to bias, but I think It’s really cute and the hats are super-adorable. I love getting new hats and new weapons for my little Kirby.  It’s fairly standard as far as a “mobile experience” is concerned and playing it a little when I have the time to and hacking away at it little by little is rewarding when I get a new hat or new gear. My fiancé and I played it in multiplayer as well, which felt a lot like Kirby’s Return to Dream Land.

 It’s pretty inoffensive and I haven’t paid real-life money for anything in it, and I still feel like I’m progressing. So as a Kirby game with light RPG elements (ie: something I’ve wanted for years and years), it’s nice to finally see realised.

 Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom

An artist I commission very often from convinced me to move this game further up in queue than I originally had it when we were talking about games we were playing after finishing Shadowbringers’ main campaign.  

 Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is the spiritual successor inspired by Wonder Boy III, with the formula being modernized for a new era. It feels fast, and it looks soooooooo pretty. The tracks are bumpin’ too. It’s also a little tough but with every difficult section successfully platformed through, you feel really good about it.

 You play as a plucky boy named Jin whose uncle is an insano who turns everyone in the kingdom into animals. After you experience sweet freedom as a human boy platforming across things easily for like 15 minutes, Jin’s uncle turns him into a pig. Whoops. From there the platforming gets a little harder and you need to learn how to manipulate different forms and different spells in order to get across various sections.

 Different animal forms give you different skills. Pig form allows you to sniff out secrets literally, snake form lets you cling to walls and go through tiny passages, frog has a sticky tongue for swinging, and lion form lets you go through obstacles. You need to use these forms well to platform well enough to get through each area and finish the game. Being successful at platforming in this game feels good and fulfilling and satisfying. As you unlock more, platforming experiences get more and more complex with more obstacles put in your way, so in essence it feels like the opposite of a standard metroidvania.  Playing both Bloodstained and this in one year felt like playing polar opposites. That said, the checkpointing in Monster Boy is really good. Game Atelier knew what they were doing.

 The bosses by contrast were really easy and it’s nice to take the time to look at the art for each boss. All of the effects are also super-nice. Playing Monster Boy on a 4K TV is quite a visual treat for its boss sections, its town section, and its platforming sections. The colours are off-the-charts. Each animal sprite has its own set of unique animations: the piggy farts and looks like >_>, froggy looking at flies, etc. And the music is so good. If this game were a 2019 game I’d definitely put its soundtrack on my list, but it isn’t. It’s a nice blend of new and old stuff and it’s a delight to hear in-context as encouragement to keep going when you fail a platforming section.

 Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is a faithful representation and homage of the old Wonder Boy games. It’s filled with references and secrets and awesome art, and I’m glad to have been convinced to move it up my queue for this year.

  Most Disappointing Game: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

I love Final Fantasy XIV. It’s brought me closer to so many people in recent years and I’ve met so many more through it. Playing this game means so much to me and I want the best for it for years to come.  It’s one of the reasons why I’m so critical about it. If I hated this game, I would stop playing and honestly, I wouldn’t care about its future.  I will say this before getting started:  I like Shadowbringers’ story so far (we aren’t going to be finished with its story until 5.3).  I don’t think It’s necessarily as consistent as Heavensward, but I think Shadowbringers’ story is the most Final Fantasy story we’ve gotten since perhaps FF10. Truly, it’s the best we’ve seen for the series this decade.  

 I had a lot of hopes and hype for Shadowbringers.  I hated Stormblood, for a myriad of reasons: social reasons, gameplay reasons, and narrative reasons.  The direction Shadowbringers was going and all the trailers made it seem like it was going to be fresh and exciting and new.  My fiancé and I (and a few others) swapped servers+data centers in advance of the expansion for a fresh start, to boot. I watched the Job Actions trailer over and over and tried to decide what I was going to eventually main and gear up because I didn’t really have a main in Stormblood due to the combat changes and how easy things became for certain things.

 During a live letter, they mentioned that they’re changing how things work in battle, and that’s when I became a little cautious. I was hoping for the best leading up to release and then I saw the scholar/healer changes and got very worried.  I changed mains in Stormblood because playing Scholar was freaking horrible at the start of Stormblood.  

 I eventually had to change mains at the start of Shadowbringers because I was not having fun playing Scholar. For people who didn’t bother to level a healer at all, the writing was on the wall for healers during Stormblood. Essentially, it introduced an age of healing where you barely ever used your GCDs to heal. You mostly used OGCDs and preplanned shields. 90% of the time if you wanted to be a good healer, you’d mostly DPS. I don’t think I’ve cast a GCD heal at all in SB and ShB content unless things were going super-wrong.

 The healing changes introduced in Shadowbringers made us think that things were going to change, that things were going to be harder to heal.  I had my doubts, however, because all fights are scripted and if they were to introduce a substantial change to incoming damage, they would have to make it so most people (casual, midcore, hardcore, less experienced newbies, experienced folks) would be used to It and could handle it.  There was no way they were going to introduce more difficulty given that subscription numbers were increasing.

 And so, healers during Shadowbringers got some damage skills taken away, but in their place, they were given more tools to heal with:

-          White Mage came away from this as a very well-rounded healer at launch. It had its damage spells, it had a damage spell with a stun, it finally had long-standing and easily useable mitigation, it has substantial MP recovery, and it has a damage spell that rewards you for using three GCD heals to make up for damage lost. White Mage still making out like a bandit in 5.1.

-          Scholar felt dramatically different and didn’t feel as solid as it used to be. It had most of its damage tools taken away, the usefulness of its fairy was decreased because let’s be honest it was super-overpowered, it got one of its fairies and its AoE esuna taken away, and it was given its PvP move to act as an AoE that doesn’t have another effect. I had to completely unlearn everything I did as scholar in the last 5-6 years in order to play current scholar. Current 5.1 scholar is overpowered as heck and I don’t feel as satisfied to play it in SB/ShB content.

-          AST LOL. All the cards are balance. MP regen is what. Heals are what. Everything is just what. Other fun skills were removed. That said, I really like AST just because it feels like I have to work twice as hard to achieve the same effect the other healers bring to the table.

 So eventually with all of these changes, we had assumed that healing was going to be harder.  It wasn’t. It’s the same experience and all we’re doing is pressing one single button all the time.  I barely have to heal in dungeons.  I barely have to heal in raid unless my party members step in stupid. I just can’t bring myself to play healer every single day anymore, and I love healing in this game. Or I loved it back when it was more dynamic. I just press one button over and over and over and over and over and maybe sometimes another but I just press one button a lot. It’s really sad and it makes me miss old Cleric Stance of all things.

 I like Shadowbringers’ story. I felt rewarded playing through it as someone who’s played the game for years and did everything when it was in-content. So for me, it was like a good reunion.  There were a lot of points where the story dragged or felt rocky. I felt like the start of the 5.0 campaign was utterly boring and poorly paced.  It picked up again, then slowed down again, then picked up again, then got REALLY BAD, then picked up again for a good finish. I don’t think it’s as consistent as Heavensward’s 3.0 campaign, but it was very solid and made up for the 4.0 campaign.

 However, story is only 20% of the experience for me.  The rest of the time, I need to actually play the game. I actually liked the levelling and crafting changes and new skills they brought in during 5.0 because leveling a crafter never felt easier. I felt like I still had to work hard but the payoff came quickly and my macros still worked as well as they did from during Stormblood. I also used my Stormblood melds and Stormblood equipment for the entire levelling experience and had to make concessions for some of my macros as time went on.  I still had to know what my skills did, basically. The 5.1 crafting/gathering changes kind of make me want to craft less since I don’t feel like I have to solve a puzzle anymore and to be honest, everyone crafts now so you make far less money than you previously did.  The desynth changes also made it so that most of my markets tanked since what’s the point of gathering half the materials when desynth makes those materials easily accessible.  I’m not saying to gatekeep at all, but I feel like the experience should have been a little harder (ie: like the Ixali experience where you had to learn what your skills did or desynth shouldn’t be this easy to keep the market fairly balanced). My server is a crafting server so I am more impacted in general from this. That said, I don’t have anything to spend gil on so it doesn’t matter, I guess.  I just feel far less inclined to participate in what was one of my favourite pastimes in XIV.

 I mained Ninja which got killed in 5.0. I was already dealing with the servers moving from East Coast to West Coast, so adding a bunch of stuff to squeeze into your TA window in 10 seconds in Shadowbringers utterly killed the job for me. 5.1 Ninja throws me off as someone who played this game since the time Ninja was introduced, and I can’t make myself play it. The current opener is the Doton opener (which is something I didn’t like in SB at all) and I can’t always rely on my tank to bring the thing to my Doton. That, and making it so you do different things per every other or every third TA just makes the job a little unpalatable for me at 80. I’m one of those people who wants TA to go. I don’t like that Ninja’s become the TA bot in recent years.  I can still do well with it. People still throw buffs at me, but I don’t find enjoyment in the job anymore and I hope we get a proper retool in 6.0.

 I switched back to ranged. Thankfully Bard hasn’t changed as much since SB (though I still prefer HW Bard like a weirdo), and Dancer is one of those “I worked too damn long today and I just wanna do the mindless brainless rotation” jobs.  I miss old Machinist oddly enough.  It felt really good when you played it well and pulled off a decent wildfire. Now it’s a little easier and I don’t feel as fulfilled playing it. That said, it’s probably the best incarnation of the job since it’s sad little introduction in 3.0.

 Even tanking is substantially easier and that’s a mostly good thing. It sucked going into a low level dungeon and having trouble keeping aggro due to the level syncing and your DPS’ stats. Now you can just turn your stance on and go to town without losing any damage potency like you used to. I kind of miss swapping stances after I’ve established aggro though, because you could tell the difference between a good tank and a bad/less practiced tank if they didn’t bother to swap stances in a fight. Tanks came out of this expansion very balanced, though. They might need some work here and there (warrior I’m looking at you), but overall, they came out the best out of the three roles.

 Other than that, you have monks not knowing what they should be, samurai continuously getting buffed and nerfed, black mage staying consistent, red mage being lol, summoner getting changed to the point where now it’s overpowered, among other DPS changes. DPS overall don’t have as much synergy so you can take any job you want to into raid and it’ll get the job done. That said if you want to do as much damage as possible, you’re generally going to take the same few classes into the raid if you’re less educated about them.  And I feel like the lack of synergy or utility between classes or even the loss of something like mana shift makes the whole experience a little boring.  It’s very “f you, I got mine” or the onus is on the player for their own personal burdens and no one’s really helping each other unless you’re a dancer, trick attack bot, dragoon or bard.

 I really hope the other pieces of content are substantial but what I’ve seen aren’t exactly what I had in mind. Boss refights with an alternate version is really neat but I didn’t really want that for this raid tier. I wanted something more original given what we had to deal with in Omega.  I don’t really care for the Nier Automata crossover because, again, I wanted something original to the XIV lore and the First. I think doubling down on Blue Mage is a bad idea and while some folks like its party-based content now, I can’t bring myself to keep doing the content given that it’s clear they don’t know what to do with it (or didn’t know what to do with it). With one dungeon coming per patch I have to question what’s happening internally or what they’re working on. I know SE is weird internally and I really hope that the kind of stuff I’ve read in previous postmortem articles isn’t happening.

 Either way, I’m really disappointed that I want to stop playing XIV so much when it’s the most popular among my friends and followers because it’s so dissatisfying to me and it’s the most accessible that it’s ever been. I hope things get better eventually but going by what I think they have in store and their old reliable formula, I don’t have hope. I’m tired of the formula and I feel like it needs a shakeup. Overall, I’ve been less happy playing FFXIV than I’ve ever been and it makes me feel really sad. 

#goty 2019 #ciconia when they cry #bloodstained #the touryst #a short hike #worldend syndrome #judgment #cadence of hyrule #spirit hunter death mark #sekiro #super kirby clash #shadowbringers

[erahsae-ffxiv]

FFXIV RP Events for the Week of 2019/11/11

FFXIV RP Events for the week of 2019.11.11

Have an event you want to put on the Calendar?

Submit it here or send us an email.

This Week's Events:

Monday - 11/11/2019

7:00 PM to 11:00 PM EST - [M] Lounge at Reverie - [Mateus] The Goblet Ward 8, Plot 60

8:00 PM to 11:00 PM EST - The First Mistake - [Balmung] Lavender Beds Ward 1, Plot 28

8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST - Carbuncles Cup - [Mateus] Mists Ward 10 Plot 53

8:00 PM to 9:00 PM EST - Steppe Ramen - [Mateus] Shirogane, Ward 18, Plot 27

9:00 PM to 11:00 PM EST - Blitzball Lessons - [Balmung] Eastern La Noscea (35.3 ,29.5)

9:00 PM to 11:00 PM EST - Fight Club - [Balmung] Eastern La Noscea (37, 31)

10:00 PM to 1:30 AM EST - Midnight Orchid Night Cafe - [Zalera] Lavender Beds, Ward 5, Plot 15

Tuesday - 11/12/2019

3:00 PM to 6:00 PM EST - Wayward Star Bar - [Balmung] Mists Ward 14 Plot 2

3:00 PM to 6:00 PM EST - Fiera's Elixirium - [Zalera] Lavender Beds, Ward 5, Plot 44

8:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - [M] The Wishing Hour - [Mateus] Goblet Ward 9, Plot 43

9:00 PM to 1:00 AM EST - Gin Mill Backwoods Brawl - [Balmung] Eastern La Noscea - Raincatcher Gully Bridge

9:30 PM to 1:30 AM EST - [M] Hardlight Ventures Fight Night - [Mateus] The Goblet, Ward 18, Plot 23

Wednesday - 11/13/2019

2:00 PM to 5:00 PM EST - [M] The Rose of May Bar - [Balmung] Lavender Beds, Ward 2, Apt 65

7:00 PM to 9:00 PM EST - Crystal Emporium - [Balmung] Shirogane, Ward 15, Plot 45

7:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST - Den of Desire - [Balmung] Lavender Beds 18 plot 35

9:00 PM to 11:00 PM EST - Soul of the Dragon Restaurant - [Balmung] Shirogane Ward 9 Plot 37

9:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - The Burly Barnacle - [Balmung] Goblet Ward 12 Plot 33

10:00 PM to 11:00 PM EST - [M] Voodoo Lounge Open Mic - [Mateus] Lavender Beds Ward 5 Plot 11

Thursday - 11/14/2019

7:00 PM to 9:00 PM EST - Oak's Tradepost - [Balmung] Mists Plot 29 Ward 2

8:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - [M] Lost & Found Bar Night - [Balmung] The Goblet, Ward 19, Plot 44

8:00 PM to 11:00 PM EST - Sultana's Breath Shopping Arcade - [Balmung] Goblet W18, Sultana's Breath Subdivision

8:00 PM to 11:00 PM EST - The Sleepy Nomad - [Balmung] Goblet Ward 6 Subdivision, Apt 70

8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST - The Dark Alements - [Mateus] Shirogane Ward 2, Plot 7

8:30 PM to 11:30 PM EST - Holistic Wellness Workshop - First Aid Basics - [Balmung] Goblet, Ward 9, Plot 35, Room 28

9:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - Seven Seas Smackdown - [Coeurl] Limsa Lower Decks (6, 15)

10:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - Senpai's Bar - [Balmung] Lavander Beds Plot 23 Ward 7

10:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - Velvet Rose Lodge Open Bar - [Balmung] Lavender Beds, Ward 18, Plot 28

10:30 PM to 1:30 AM EST - Uranami Onsen Social Hour - [Mateus] Mist Ward 15, Plot 5

Friday - 11/15/2019

3:00 PM to 6:00 PM EST - Fiera's Elixirium - [Zalera] Lavender Beds, Ward 5, Plot 44

6:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - Maid's Basin Tavern night - [Mateus] Goblet, Ward 13, Plot 13

7:00 PM to 9:00 PM EST - Khuudas Imports - [Mateus] Shirogane Ward 18, Plot 28

8:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - Ala Mhigan Market Night - [Balmung] The Lochs (35, 32)

8:00 PM to 2:00 AM EST - Midnight Orchid Night Cafe - [Zalera] Lavender Beds, Ward 5, Plot 15

9:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - [M] The Ruthless Reign - [Balmung] Goblet Ward 9, Plot 42

9:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - Bar Saisei Open Nights - [Balmung] Shirogane Ward 9, Plot 38

9:00 PM to 11:00 PM EST - Bokh - Xaelic Wrestling - [Balmung] Mist, Ward 19, Subdivision Beach

9:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - [M] The Missed Mark Casino Night

9:30 PM to 11:30 PM EST - The Dragon's Dive Tavern - [Mateus] Shirogane Ward 6, Plot 7

11:00 PM to 1:00 AM EST - [M] The Golden Whisker - Casino - [Mateus] The Goblet, Plot 5, Ward 16

Saturday - 11/16/2019

1:00 AM to 3:00 AM EST - Uranami Onsen Happy Hour - [Mateus] Mist: Ward 15, Plot 5

4:00 PM to 7:00 PM EST - Drunken Moogle Open RP - [Balmung] Lavender Beds, Ward 12, Plot 33

5:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST - Kupocon: Pop Culture Convention - [Balmung] Goblet Ward 6, Plot 5

5:00 PM to 6:30 PM EST - Azure Cafe Cafe Night - [Mateus] The Goblet Ward 5 Plot 13

6:00 PM to 9:00 PM EST - The Garden of Words Book & Teashop - [Balmung] Lavender Beds Ward 8, Plot 27

6:30 PM to 10:00 PM EST - Mandragora Munchies - [Balmung] Goblet Ward 9, Plot 57

7:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST - The Red Lion Job Faire - [Brynhildr] Goblet, Ward 10, Plot 51

8:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - [M] 2nd Annual Community Camping Trip - [Balmung] Outer La Noscea, Hermit's Hovel

8:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - [M] Lost & Found Bar Night - [Balmung] The Goblet, Ward 19, Plot 44

8:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - Festival of Nhaama - [Balmung] Azim Steppe, Reunion

8:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - [M] The Wishing Hour - [Mateus] Goblet Ward 9, Plot 43

8:00 PM to 10:30 PM EST - Azure Cafe - [Mateus] Goblet, Ward 5, Plot 13

9:00 PM to 11:00 PM EST - [M] Open Bar Night at The Other Three Walls - [Zalera] Goblet Ward 15 Plot 5

10:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - Grindstone Tournament - [Balmung] Cen. Thanalan (21, 25)

Sunday - 11/17/2019

4:00 PM to 6:00 PM EST - Three Dzo Moon - [Balmung] Mist Ward 19, Plot 44

6:00 PM to 9:00 PM EST - Yardsale - [Balmung] Goblet Ward 7, Plot 6

6:00 PM to 7:00 PM EST - Azim Bokh - [Mateus] Mist Ward 12, Beach

7:00 PM to 8:30 PM EST - Thavnairian Nights - [Balmung] Goblet Ward 10 Plot 19

7:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST - The Jeweled Cypress - [Mateus] Mist Ward 14, Plot 45

8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST - [M] B-Side Extravaganza - [Balmung] Lavender Beds, Ward 16, Plot 36

8:00 PM to 11:00 PM EST - Spellstone Tournament - [Balmung] Fesca's Wash, Central Thanalan

8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST - The Snuggly Moogle Maid and Butler Café - [Mateus] Lavender Beds Ward 14 Plot 31

8:30 PM to 10:30 PM EST - The Fire Pit - [Mateus] The Goblet, Ward 5, Plot 60

10:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST - [M] Voodoo Moulin Rouge - [Mateus] Goblet Ward 5 Plot 30

View as a Calendar here.

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The FFXIV RP Event Calendar event lists are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License

#FFXIV RP Events #FFXIV RP Event Calendar #FFXIV RP #Balmung RP Events #Balmung RP Event Calendar #Balmung RP #Balmung Events #Balmung #Crystal RP Events #Crystal RP Event Calendar

[sea-and-storm]

KJRN, THE CRAFTY CORSAIR

* Here’s the redone version of Kjrn! Ignore the other profile going around!

[ BASIC INFORMATION ]

[FULL NAME]   Kjrn Fythe.

[PRONOUNCED]   Kee-ehrn Faiythe (rhymes with lithe).

[ALIASES]   None at present. At least, none to which she’ll answer.

[GENDER]   Female.

[AGE]  Somewhere in her 80s-90s, but appears approx. early to mid-thirties.

[NAMEDAY]   21st Sun of the Fourth Umbral Moon (8/21).

[RACE]   Rava Viera

[RELIGION]   Non-practicing.

[LANGUAGES]   Common, Dalmascan.

[ACCENT]   Icelandic, by real world standards.

[HANDEDNESS]   Ambidextrous.

[ APPEARANCE ]

[HAIR]   A mid-back length mess of loose brunette waves, generally pulled forward to drape over one shoulder. Soft and silky smooth, its care obviously involved much love and attention – and vanity.Touch at your own risk.

[EARS]   Short-furred, not overly long, and standing straight upright, with the same brown of her hair giving way into some white dappling towards their tips. 

[EYES]   Pale, rosy pink.

[COMPLEXION]   Medium tan with coppery undertones.

[HEIGHT]   6′2″ (before ears)  -  7′0″ (with ears)

[BUILD]   She’s neither muscle-rippling powerhouse nor dramatically curved bombshell, but equal enough between both to boast both a bit of shapeliness as well as being sturdier than one might expect.

[POSTURE]   Upright, cool, and cocksure are all good ways to put it.

[SCARS]   If she has any scars, she goes to great lengths to conceal them and she’s certainly not going to tell you about them.

[MARKINGS]   A set of three white markings almost always don her face, set in patterns of lines and dots. It’s an odd, almost tribal touch to a woman who for all else seems to rebuke her more traditional origins. She doesn’t seem wont to speak of their meaning.

[MANNER OF DRESS]   Kjrn is quite fond of nice clothing that shows off her wealth, and she has somewhat of a weakness for jewelry and gems. It’ll be a cold day in the seventh hell before you catch her willingly garbed in something drab or of low quality make.

[ COMBAT SKILL ]

[COMBAT CLASS]   Gunslinger.

[MELEE PROFICIENCY]   None  |  Low  |  Intermediate  |  High  |  Masterful

[RANGED PROFICIENCY]   None  |  Low  |  Intermediate  |  High  |  Masterful

[MAGICAL PROFICIENCY]   None  |  Low  |  Intermediate  |  High  |  Masterful

[HEALING PROFICIENCY]   None  |  Low  |  Intermediate  |  High  |  Masterful

[ATTRIBUTES] - - -  STRENGTH:   11 (+0) - - -  DEXTERITY:    15 (+2) - - -  CONSTITUTION:   11 (+0) - - -  INTELLIGENCE:   15 (+2) - - -  WISDOM:   13 (+1) - - -  CHARISMA:   14 (+2)

[WEAPONRY]  A 6-shot pepperbox revolver (mid range), single shot rifle (long range), and a thin-bladed estoc (close range) as a final line of defense.

[ARMOR]  Usually not terribly much. She prefers not to be weighed down, so if she’s going to wear armor, it’s usually in the form of leathers.

[COMBAT STRENGTHS]   Excellent aim. Fights well at mid- to long distances. Quick on her feet, both physically and mentally. Resourceful.

[COMBAT WEAKNESSES]  Struggles in close quarters or when in need of a reload. Not the strongest or most durable, physically. Particularly sensitive to magical effects cast upon her;  too much aetheric exposure, even of the positive variety, may trigger a brief berserk state until the excess aether is expended and exhaustion takes over.

[ EARLY YEARS ]

[HOMELAND]   Good luck finding out, because she’s not telling.

[PARENTS]   Mjra Fythe (mother)  -  Father Unknown.

[SIBLINGS]   Aela Fythe (younger sister)

[CLAN ROLE]   Huntress, tracker.

[CLAN STATUS]   Exiled.

[REASON(S) FOR LEAVING]   Kjrn left her homeland not once but twice, and that’s about as much detail as she will willingly impart on anyone without at least a fair few rounds being bought for her first.

[ LATER YEARS ]

[PAST RESIDENCE]   Dalmasca.

[PAST OCCUPATION]   Magitek salvager.

[PAST AFFILIATION]   Dalmascan Resistance.

[PAST FINANCIAL STATUS]   Moderate, comfortable.

[PAST SOCIAL STATUS]   Respected.

[PAST RELATIONSHIPS]   Pria Atoel, wife - deceased.

[PAST FRIENDSHIPS]  A number of friends and allies from the Resistance, as well as other Dalmascan citizens. (Open to background connections!)

[REASON(S) FOR LEAVING]   Left Dalmasca and set herself to wandering aimlessly once her wife, Pria, had passed.

[ PRESENT DAY ]

[RESIDENCE]   The open skies aboard her own small airship, the Fortuneseeker.

[OCCUPATION]   Some would define her lack of qualms about taking anything that isn’t nailed down (and some thing that are, with enough effort) as piracy or flat-out thievery. Kjrn prefers to call herself a simple treasure hunter and merchant of myriad miscellanea.

[AFFILIATIONS]   None actively, but still sympathetic to the Dalmascan Resistance and occasionally will send a bit of extra coin or goods their way through old contacts.

[FINANCIAL STATUS]   Well-off, or that’s what she’d like you to believe. Even when the money isn’t so good, she certainly won’t let on as if she’s broke.

[SOCIAL STATUS]   Hasn’t really stuck around in one place long enough in recent history to establish any roots, but there’s a few places that she may or may not be wanted by local authorities.

[RELATIONSHIP STATUS]   Widowed, shows little interest in courting anyone.

[PRESENT FRIENDSHIPS]   Keeps in touch with a few people from her Resistance days, but not many that she could call a close friend. (Open to connections!)

[VICES]   You can readily find Kjrn drinking, smoking, and even occasionally indulging in some drug use. But her worst vice of all is gambling. She can hardly turn down a good game of chance, especially when there’s betting involved.

[ ROMANCE & SEX ]

[GENDER IDENTITY]   Cisgender Female.

[ROMANTIC ORIENTATION]  Demi-homoromantic.

[EMOTIONAL ROLE]   Submissive  |  Dominant  |  Switch  |  Unsure

[RELATIONSHIP TENDENCIES]   Her biggest tendency is to just not get herself into a relationship, period. Relationships are like anchors that weigh her down from the skies she’s come to love most of all. 

[LOVE LANGUAGE]  Kjrn isn’t much of a verbal lover. She’ll drop an ‘I love you’ every now and then, but her love speaks through things like lavish gifts and pampering.

[SEXUAL ORIENTATION]   Homosexual.

[SEXUAL ROLE]   Submissive  |  Dominant  |  Switch  |  Unsure

[LIBIDO]   Average. She’s not bereft of want, nor is ruled by base physical needs.

[ATTRACTED TO]   Confidence. Wittiness. Ability to hold a good conversation. Thrillseekers. Fellow lovers of the skies. Physical attractiveness. Money.

[TURN OFFS]   Shyness. Indecisiveness. Clinginess. Jealousy. Lack of intelligence. Anyone afraid of heights.

[ PERSONALITY TRAITS ]

Extroverted / In Between / Introverted

Disorganized / In Between / Organized

Close Minded / In Between / Open Minded

Calm / In Between / Anxious

Disagreeable / In Between / Agreeable

Cautious / In Between / Reckless

Patient / In Between / Impatient

Outspoken / In Between / Reserved

Leader / In Between / Follower

Empathetic / In Between / Apathetic

Optimistic / In Between / Pessimistic

Traditional / In Between / Modern

Hard-working / In Between / Lazy

Cultured / In Between / Uncultured

Loyal / In Between / Disloyal

Faithful / In Between / Unfaithful

[ HOOKS ]

TREASURE HUNTER Kjrn presently makes her living by delving into ruins, tombs, and other such places most folk have no business wandering into in search of anything she might turn a profit on. Want some company on a good ol’ dungeon delving? Or your character responds to a posting she’s made seeking assistance? 

SKY PIRATE Annnd sometimes when the more legally palatable treasure hunting jobs are lacking, Kjrn may or may not turn to a bit of piracy to fill the gaps. She’s targeted everything from small Garlean crafts to merchant vessels, usually trying to avoid violence where she can. Maybe your character was on one of these vessels, or has come to seek one of the bounties placed upon her for said crimes? Or maybe – just maybe – your character is interested in signing on with her?

CAPTAIN OF THE FORTUNESEEKER As mentioned before, Kjrn owns her own small airship by the name of the Fortuneseeker. She claims the title of captain upon her, with a crew of about ten (NPCs) underneath her. Maybe you’re looking to sign onto the crew? Or maybe you just have a more temporary need for someone with an airship to ferry yourself or any goods – legal or otherwise – from one place to the next? The sky’s the limit!

MERCHANT OF MYRIAD MISCELLANEA Naturally, after a victorious venture in dungeoneering or plundering, Kjrn will usually come out of it with a number of items in need of off-loading. She has a particular eye for anything shiny and beautiful like gems and jewelry, but she’s also been known to come back with anything from weapons to magical items to sell to whomsoever is inclined to pay good coin. Come buy something shiny from her!

DALMASCAN RESISTANCE AFFILIATE Kjrn and her wife, Pria, were once fairly respected members of the Resistance, salvaging Garlean magitek to refit and use against them when all was said and done. However, after the former’s passing, Kjrn stepped down from her active position in the Resistance to take on a more auxiliary role by helping support it financially. She still maintains connections to the Resistance to this day, and some still haven’t given up the hope that she might eventually return to the fight.

GAMBLING ADDICT Kjrn’s vice of choice would be a good drink, some good company, and a good game of cards. Or dice. Or anything, really, so long as there are stakes involved. It’s a pretty general and basic hook, but hey! It works!

GOT OTHER IDEAS? Maybe you’ve read through this profile and something other idea than these hooks has sparked your muse? If so, let me know! This isn’t an exhaustive list of hooks, so I’d be excited to hear your ideas!

[ OOC ]

[CALL ME]   Jali, Ghoa, Kjrn.. Anything but weird overly familiar petnames! (She/her)

[I AM…]    A 27-year-old woman who works a full time job and plays multiple tabletop games as well as playing FFXIV, so my schedule can be kinda all over the place. I also love cats and really bad puns and writing drabbles that make people’s hearts hurt.

[AVAILABILITY]    Most weekday evenings from 5PM - 10PM Central. Weekends, pretty much whenever. Not available most Wednesdays, and some Thursdays/Saturdays due to various D&D games! Also please note that Kjrn is an alt character. Meaning I won’t be available for RP on her 24/7! Please be sure you’re okay with this before reaching out!

[IN GAME NAME]   Crafty Corsair.

[SERVER]  Balmung (Crystal), but willing to world-visit for RP!

[PREFERRED RP METHODS]   Discord has quickly become my #1 RP platform because I can post even when I’m busy with something else or when I’m having a slow day at work. I can also do in-game RP, usually so long as we work out a day/time in advance! Sometimes I can do impromptu RP requests, but not often!

[HARD NO’S]  

RP of any sort with real-life minors. Sorry, I just don’t feel comfortable writing with anyone under eighteen!

Characters that are minors ICly are tentatively fine, but I will absolutely not RP any romantic, sexual, mature, dark, or otherwise questionable themes with such a character;  and likewise, I will not RP with anyone whose minor character engages in this sort of RP with others, either.

Fetishistic characters, i.e. “f*ta”, “tr*p”, etc. Actual transgender, agender, genderfluid, etc. characters are 100% fine, but if your character is written not as a fleshed out person but as thinly veiled ERP-bait, I’m not interested.

OOC Romance or possessiveness or clinginess. Just… don’t. I don’t want to date you. I don’t want to sext with you. I don’t want to be up your butt 24/7, and I sure as hell don’t want you up mine. RP partners with reasonable personal space boundaries only need apply, please!

ERP-heavy/only connections.  I’m not opposed to sexual RP coming up, but I ask that it not be the goal of every single or even a good deal of the RP we do. To be entirely honest, I much prefer fade-to-black as opposed to writing out such scenes, anyway. Please respect this! Pressuring for ERP is immediate grounds for ceasing all RP and potentially all contact entirely.

#ffxiv #ffxiv rp #balmung rp #crystal rp #kjrn fythe #cunning corsair #lfrp #here's the redone kjrn! #i'm much happier and excited about this one! #even if she isn't a Super Original OC Concept #but WHO CARES AMIRITE

[hellsbovnd-archive]

LF RP — JANOS JEN RENATA

The third of four sons, Janos has high expectations pushed onto him from a young age. His family name often preceding him (his two older brothers being officers in the military and his father being a high-ranking engineer), it might take a moment to realize that Janos himself is the family’s black sheep. Having failed to even get into the Magitek Academy despite having a passion for working with machines and magitek, Janos instead became an Architectus in the military in order to serve his country and make his family proud.

Unfortunately, bad luck and poor judgement led to trouble following in his wake. Where his siblings are marked as loyal and accomplished, Janos himself is marked as negligent at best, and in six years of service, he failed to earn a single promotion or any recognition for his work whatsoever. He was continually reassigned, never working for too long on any one project and occasionally being moved to different posts altogether, and eventually was relegated to simple maintenance work. Now, as a result of circumstances unknown even to him, he’s found himself in Eorzea: lost, homeless, and scared—but thankfully, not alone.

IN CHARACTER

Profession(s): Eorzean Cover—While Janos tries not to draw too much attention to himself, he often takes odd jobs to make ends meet and help pull his weight in his small circle of companions. Garlean Architectus—He’s loyal to the Empire, still uses his (last known) title in the company of other Garleans, and still believes himself to be in the Empire’s good graces even though “getting lost after being reassigned again” sounds an awful lot like “desertion.” His time in the military was spent primarily in central Illsabard doing maintenance work on weaponry and warmachina, though he didn’t really enjoy the work he was assigned.

Alignment: Chaotic Dumbass. Difficult to tell, but loyal to the Garlean Empire... For now. He had somewhat of a rebellious streak even back home.

Professional Talents: Magitek—Once an Architectus in the Garlean military, Janos learned his way around both conventional machinery and more advanced magitek devices often employed by the Empire. Nowadays, he uses his knowledge primarily to tinker, though much to his dismay he’s only really good at creating weapons... And, well, the quality of those weapons is often limited by the quality of parts he has access to.

Current Residence: Vagrant. He maintains an inn room at The Hourglass, but sometimes he has to move when he doesn’t make enough money to cover the next few days of inn fees.

Likely Haunts: Eorzea at Large—As a vagrant, he can get just about anywhere, provided he has the coin to get there. Unfortunately, as a Pureblood Garlean, he can’t use any magic including the teleportation magicks that make use of the aethernet. Ul’dah—He hangs out around Ul’dah’s markets often, and around Pearl Lane, enjoying the anonymity that blending into crowds there provides.

Hobbies: Tinkering—Janos loves to tinker, and dreams of having a workshop of his own one day back home in Garlemald. But, he’d take Eorzea too, since he’s stranded here for the foreseeable future... Theater—Over the years, Janos has read up on both Garlean and foreign drama, and came to enjoy it quite a bit. While he professes that he would never be able to get up on stage, he has quite a bit of respect for those who can.

MORE INFORMATION: Full Bio WIP | Tag

OUT OF CHARACTER

Hi there! I’m Crow and I use they/them pronouns! I’m generally most active during NA Evenings and Late Nights. I play on Balmung, but I’m open to RP connections from across the Crystal datacenter.

You can find detailed information about my hopes and expectations for RP on my dossier, here. The quick and dirty version:

OOC Communication > All

I am a med/heavy lore-strict RPer. I prefer medium-to-low power levels in RP and character- and plot-driven scenes. I won’t RP with any player under the age of 18 but as long as you’re not making it weird/creepy, I don’t have a problem with underage characters within reason.

I run an FC and an LS, so I can be pretty busy OOC because I have to run a lot of stuff related to that.

I do not really RP on Discord because my attention span is pretty crummy, but I have always been smitten with Tumblr RP as a longform format, so if in-game RP is impossible for some reason, I’m happy to write starters.

In terms of things I’m looking for:

Casual acquaintances and friends! But preferably: long-term plot-focused RP connections! Slice-of-life ain’t really my jam.

Business contacts! Janos is an engineer and a habitual tinkerer and does odd jobs to make ends meet. Maybe he could end up doing something for you?

Pre-established connections based on his background as a Pureblood Garlean born and raised in the capital and as an Architectus in the military (though his situation at the moment is obviously a little complicated).

Recommendations for events to attend? (And company to drag me along since I hate flying solo.)

Discord and Linkshell communities!

DETAILED RP HOOKS UNDER THE CUT!

Thanks for reading! If you’re interested in playing with me then please feel free to send me a message or make a note of it in the tags or comments on this post. My Discord is emet-selch wears prada#5086! If I’m slow please bear with me; I have a habit of getting absolutely swamped with stuff at more or less complete random, and my energy levels vary wildly from day to day and week to week.

tagging for visibility: @balmungrp @mooglemeet @ffxiv-crystal-rp @crystalxivrp @ffxiv-balmung-rp

RP HOOKS

1. Magiteknical Difficulties

Janos is a (former?) Architectus for the Garlean military. While he was generally relegated to maintenance work (and hated every moment of it), he loves working with machines even to this day and would probably be able to fix anything set in front of him given enough time to figure it out.

Given enough time and the right parts, he might also be able to build something for you! Unfortunately, most of his contraptions are dangerous even if they work, with Janos used to cutting corners to make something fast, not necessarily make it good. 

The gunblade he carries is one of his own creations, in fact; dubbed “Bad News,” Janos used misappropriated parts to put it together before he wound up in Eorzea, and has only continued to work on it to this day. It’s held together with proverbial duct tape and it’s a wonder that it works at all, especially because once he got to Eorzea he had to modify its design to make it look less like Imperial models, which involved swapping out some of the better parts he’d slipped under his coat with some shoddier ones he found on Eorzean markets.

2. Eorzeabound

Stranded in Eorzea for reasons unknown to him, Janos has taken advantage of the chance to slow down. After a period of readjustment, he’s settled in to a relatively slow-paced life in Eorzea, and seems keen on treating his predicament like a vacation—although he would like to return to Garlemald one day, he’s enchanted by the local cultures and customs and has taken the chance to reflect on the views that were instilled in him growing up on the teat of Imperial propaganda. 

Janos is curious about Eorzean customs that are entirely foreign to him, such as many of their holidays and their religion. While he remains a staunch atheist (and even lacks belief in any sort of afterlife), he thinks it’s interesting to see how religion has influenced Eorzeans’ day-to-day lives and certain aspects of the different belief systems and cultures of the city-states. 

3. Black Sheep of the Renatas

The Renata family is known for an excellent track record of service to Garlemald in both the military and civil sectors... Except for Janos. Possessed of a rebellious streak that only got worse and more visible after he failed to get into the notorious Magitek Academy, Janos’s track record of service leaves a bit to be desired. With a work track-record that was notably subpar and marked by repeated failures, Janos is regarded as a stain on the reputation of a family that since the establishment of the Empire had been rising through the Garlean social strata.

4. Keeping Up With the Jens

Janos spent six years serving as an Architectus in the Garlean military, though his career was going nowhere fast (something which even at the time he expressed frequent distress over). His track record was marred with failures and he ended up as somewhat of a social outcast, having few friends and mostly being known for being the Architectus who was most frequently being berated by his superiors. It took a substantial toll on his mental health and by the end of his time with the military, he did little but sleep, eat, and work.

Much of the latter days of his service are hazy or non-existent in his memory, a fact which he admits that he “tries not to let bother him too much,” as it’s a bridge he figures he’ll cross when he gets to it. Those who served with him would likely know of some incidents he was involved in, such as an incident wherein several of the magitek bits he’d recently done maintenance on went haywire. After being pressed on it, he admitted that it had been intentional. He also passed out on the job a few times and once locked himself in a broom closet for the duration of his break.

#ffxiv rp #crystal ffxiv rp #balmung rp #ffxiv balmung #ffxiv crystal #ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #balmung #crystal data center #crystal datacenter #hellsbovnd #ooc ( lfrp ) #about ( janos jen renata ) #[ ITS. A. LAD. ] #[ JOKES ASIDE--jan is a serious character and i look forward to watching him unlearn imperial propoganda!!! ] #[ its fake garlean invader zim yall ]