ali has various interests

My informal rules for AEV Melin:

her lore must be as unobtrusive as possible. avoid taking big lore swings which might conflict with other people's personal canons.

she DOES NOT interact with the Scions, ever.

she doesn't do anything which might imply a WoL didn't do it, i.e. she can't undertake any of the canonical quests or questlines, unless said quests or questlines are of the "we're recruiting anyone and everyone with this skillset to help with this" type, like the Ishgardian Restoration or Cosmic Exploration.

AEV Melin's backstory and life up til ARR remains essentially the same:

he's born in Gyr Abania to a pair of deserters from Werlyt, whose backstories might be different from the Melin canon's if your canon has a different explanation of where Wedge is from (which is fine, Melin and Wedge being cousins isn't exactly load-bearing)

his parents are killed while trying to smuggle magitek into the Black Shroud

he's found by a squad of Wood Wailers led by a Duskwight named Nielie Alamberaux

Nielie and her wife Etyah adopt the orphaned infant and raise him as their own in Gridania

he grows up lonely and isolated due to not being forestborn

he's incapable of finding honest work when he reaches adulthood due to not being forestborn

so, at the age of 16, he departs for Limsa Lominsa and takes a position on a merchant ship called the Full Coeurl

he travels the world for about ten years, seeing places like Radz-at-Han, Kugane, and Tuliyollal

he is not anywhere near Eorzea when the Seventh Umbral Calamity occurs so it doesn't really affect his life much

at 26, hearing that Gridania is more accepting to outsiders, he returns home to try and find work as an adventurer (but obviously not on the same carriage as Alphinaud and Alisaie)

he joins the Lancer's Guild

and here is where it diverges, since Melin isn't the WoL and can't do the things the WoL does. None of the events of the Lancer's Guild quests happen to him (because they might have happened to someone else's WoL) and he doesn't progress through the main quest (because obviously the WoL is the one doing that).

So, instead of doing MSQ stuff, Melin just occupies himself as a regular old adventurer. He does odd jobs around Gridania and eventually joins the Order of the Twin Adder as a private when he hears there might be war with the Empire. He fights in the larger contingent of the battle of the Praetorium while the WoL does their thing, and handles himself reasonably well, though obviously not WoL-level. He comes away with quite a few scars both physical and emotional.

Here's another divergence, and a really big one this time: WoL Melin is given a Fantasia by Minfilia, uses it nearly immediately to become a woman, and remains a woman for the rest of the story. This other Melin is not given a Fantasia, and so he remains a man for longer. But I think it'd be pretty messed up for Melin to just be a man forever, so this is my one big lore swing: Melin acquires a Fantasia in some other manner. Depending on other people's personal canon relating to Fantasia, this might not make sense, but I would say that she scrounged together her life savings and purchased one from the shady merchant that shows up in Bottled Fantasy, the quest that gives you a Fantasia.

Anyway, after she manages to finally get a Fantasia, Melin gives up on fighting for a time after her experiences at the Praetorium. She takes up botany like her other mom, and dabbles in leatherworking and carpentry. When Ishgard opens its doors to crafters and gatherers to restore the Firmament, she travels there to join up and put her skills to use. When the Final Days come knocking, she takes up the lance again and rejoins the Order of the Twin Adder to help all she can, and then returns to botany once the WoL and the Scions save the world. When she hears there are rabbits on the moon who also need qualified crafters and gatherers, she pushes past her discomfort (as a worshipper of Menphina) with traveling to the moon and puts her skills to use there as well.

So that's where AEV Melin is today, I guess — in space. Good for her!

As for personal relationships, I have no ideas yet. Anyone she could know would have to be an OC, because I don't want to step on anyone's toes. Even if I decided she was friends with... idk, Alerot, the mech op guy, I feel like that would definitely conflict with somebody's lore, right? I'll have to think more about it.

Anyway, I know that the basic premise of this post is that the Melin everyone else sees is their universe's Melin, and thus AEV Melin should look exactly the same as regular Melin, but... idk, I wanted to make her look different! Here are some pictures of my ideas.

AEV Melin shortly after the Fantasia

AEV Melin in Ishgard for the Restoration and on the moon for Cosmic Exploration

She has a cute little bun, and her hair parts in the opposite direction! Totally different from Normal Melin.

+ pictures of two totally normal pelupelu, one of whom is @wretchedmog's:

soft launching my "Tataru's homophobic dad" oc

i've spent a lot of time looking through the very small scraps of information we have about Tataru's family and here's literally all of it:

her family were fairly wealthy merchants at the time of her birth

her father made a lot of bad investments and took on a lot of debt, leading to their family's destitution

during this period, they were forced to sell an heirloom necklace belonging to Tataru's mother's side of the family, which was passed down from mother to daughter when the daughter was wed

Tataru apprenticed herself to a lapidary at the age of 12 for very meager pay in order to support her family

while working for the lapidary she met Minfilia

when Minfilia founded the Path of the Twelve, she hired Tataru, who must have been either 15 or 16 at the time given she was 21 in ARR, as receptionist and coinkeeper

some time later, when the WoL returns Tataru's mother's necklace to her (in the Tataru's Grand Endeavor quests), she does not bring up the idea of returning it to her mother, despite being as yet unwed (well, i guess that could depend on your own canon).

in this scene, she also doesn't mention her father other than to explain that her family were forced to sell the necklace due to his business failing.

anyway what I choose to interpret from all that is that, at the very least, Tataru's mother is not alive anymore. in the Melin canon, I decided on that happening shortly after the Seventh Umbral Calamity, from illness (since, due to Carteneau, there weren't very many chirurgeons available in Ul'dah at the time).

as for her father, I am sort of slandering him here, but to be fair, all we actually know about him is that he made a lot of terrible investments, took several loans from dishonest moneylenders, and apparently didn't find other work while his twelve year-old daughter found a job to support the family.

none of that paints him in a particularly great light, so I feel like it isn't that much of a leap to say that he's a bit stuck-up and still puts on airs as if he's a successful merchant despite having had no business to speak of for the better part of two decades at this point. he's prideful, is what I mean. and homophobic, but only indirectly (he's not, like, morally against it, he just wants grandchildren and a dowry because he's Ul'dahn and very traditional.)

in the Melin canon, Tataru does love her father (as evidenced by the fact that she's been bankrolling his living expenses for the last fifteen years), but she's very aware of his personal shortcomings and takes a fair amount of joy from getting a rise out of him, which is why she's bothering to introduce Melin to him at all here.