Apparently I’m Writing Now?

For Eliana

💋 — How they show affection

Eliana mainly demonstrates affection via teasing. She also has pretty strict walls, especially with her trainees. They know they’ve made it to a more even footing when she actually smiles at them, and starts inviting them to join in on the jokes. For the ones she’s closest to, she’ll let them be physically closest (outside of the contact needed for instruction, of course) - she’ll clap them on the shoulder or elbow them in the ribs, stand shoulder to shoulder, that sort of thing.

☕ — A small everyday detail about them

She carefully times cat-naps into her schedule so that she can terrify the recruits equally at all times of day. She also eavesdrops on the newest batch to learn new swears, and practices the ones she likes best under her breath until they become natural (usually in time for a new batch who won’t recognize where she got it!), though a fair percentage of her cursing comes from her own creativity.

For Amani

🎧 — A song that fits them

“Almost There” from Disney’s Princess and the Frog

I remember Daddy told me Fairytales can come true But you gotta make 'em happen It all depends on you So I work real hard each and every day Now things for sure are goin' my way Just doin' what I do Look out, boys, I'm comin' through

And I'm almost there I'm almost there People gon' come here from everywhere And I'm almost there I'm almost there

There's been trials and tribulations You know I've had my share But I've climbed a mountain, I've crossed a river And I'm almost there

Look, my life has been filled with kid movies lately because that’s what my nibling wants to watch, so you get a princess song. Amani is the embodiment of the ‘we’re gonna work our way through this problem, too’ attitude of the song. Her response to any crisis is to buckle down to find the most practical solution, and almost always to just work harder. Her dream is similar, too - not to make a restaurant (though she is a good cook), but to make a home, a real home where everyone comes together.

🧸 — How they comfort someone they love

For Helen

🎀 — Tell me a fact about them

She loves the aquarium down by the docks that only shows local sea life. She’s dragged most of her close friends there when she thinks they need some wonder or peace. But never in groups of more than three. Never again, at least.

🌙 — What they’re like at night

For Maria

🛏️ — How they act when they’re tired

The first sign that Maria is tired is that she starts getting snappy. Once she’s up past that stage, she starts talking (and thinking) slower and slower. If they’re in the field, and she really can’t rest or slow down, she starts alternating between the two. If she’s not in the field, that’s when she starts getting cuddly.

🙃 — A weird little habit they have

For Espervier

🔥 — Something they’re passionate about

Eliana really loves puzzles - specifically solving them, the moment when things click into place. She often cycles through interests - mystery novels, model building, sleight of hand magic tricks, basic coding, jigsaw puzzles, woodworking, etc - but at their heart, they all have that “click” in common: the moment when everything works out, and then does it again and again and again. Not just because of luck, but because you found the right method and can now apply it at will. Then when she has a comfortable system, her interest wanes and she moves on to something else, though she does cycle back through every now and then.

🥀 — A memory that still hurts

When she was a young Crownsguard, she caught a little bit of flack because her name is fairly Tenebraenne, but her family has been in Insomnia for so long it was mainly in the form of disparaging comments. Still, with no other frame of reference, she thought the jokes about easy surrender and frippery, and the equally well-worn but quiet discrimination against her as a woman looking for field work, were annoying but about the worst it got in the Guard. Something everyone had to learn to get over as part of the job. So she didn’t notice how bad it was getting for three quiet young recruits a year behind her until they fully crashed out, each in spectacularly different ways within weeks of each other.

Could she have done something if she’d realized what was going on? Supported them or intervened or talked them into just getting out of the Guard or something? No one will know. But she tried to deliberately look out for the quiet ones, the driven ones, and the young ones after that.

For Alexander

🍓 — Something they love

Alexander loves a hot drink. He loves trying different variations as they pop up, even checking different baristas against each other from the little coffee shops in and around the Citadel. He has a couple different coffee makers in his kitchen at home, too, but those are for home. He uses this information to treat himself based on the current mood of the office, demand on his time, and weather outside, but also to strategically deliver treats to people who really need it.

It’s also part of his information network for gossip within the Citadel district.

🌧️ — What makes them cry

Alexander is the kind of person who has a hard time crying about things that are real - stress within the office, the actual situation that Lucis is in. He gets all his crying done for sappy movies and books, because those are safer.

For Alexander! You are so good at creating OCs that feel like real people, I love them all 😍

(Alexander is Cor’s very competent secretary)

Alexander’s favorite kind of humor is pretty dry. He enjoys the sort of jokes that people only figure out days later, and loves watching them be just so exasperated with him. Puns are a passion, predictably.

His second favorite type of humor is tied to how well he knows people. He loves crafting jokes that hit just one person, and he loves to amuse himself by predicting how people will react to things he says or does. An aspect of this is he loves to just anticipate people’s trains of thoughts and needs and get there just before they do - preferably dealing with the problem just as they realize there is one, but even just being able to reach for the phone before he’s going to be told to call someone tickles him just right. Especially when he can get a good reaction for it.

Related to that, he likes to play with expectations, to make himself seem ditzy or serious and then break the pattern when needed.

An important aspect of it, though, for him at least, is knowing when to draw the line, finding the spot where the joke becomes actually aggravating or frustrating. That isn’t to say he doesn’t cross that line sometimes, especially to make a point, but he likes to do it deliberately, not accidentally.

He’s a people person at heart, and humor is just one more way to connect with people - to help deflect a bad mood, deflate an ego, or let people know they are seen.

Maria and/or Helen

Maria and Helen are my glaives from the same class as Nyx, Libertus, and Pelna. Maria is a mage who uses a spear, and Helen a scout who uses daggers. They're my original OCs for this fandom and I love shoving them in the background everywhere.

Maria loves autumn, when things start to cool off again but aren't annoyingly cold, when the stars are starting to get clearer. She loves the changing colors and trying to guess where they'll look best this year, and guessing when the trees she passes on her commute are going to turn. A good excuse to be cozy is always nice, too.

Espervier(I know I'm spelling that wrong, but you know who I mean)

You spelled it right!

Espervier is another old timer, this time from the Crownsguard. She mainly deals with investigations but has been around since Cor was a teen and he trusts her.

I think she would take a trip down to the markets in the older neighborhoods of Insomnia in the morning - food markets, craft markets, clothes markets, whatever is going on that day. It's about the people watching and the colors and the variety, mainly, though she does pick things up occasionally, especially for her hobbies. Then she does the shopping at the stores that have good prices and selections and aren't just open really late.

In the afternoon she indulges the hobbies. I think she likes jigsaw or other physical, solo puzzles, and yarn crafts. Everyone needs good socks in the field, and other little straps and covers, and she likes to hide them as gifts for the kids. She doesn't let herself watch TV - her schedule is too erratic to follow particular shows, and she gets enough news as part of her work - but she puts on music instead. Maybe an audiobook

For Eliana

(Eliana is my potty-mouthed old Glaive trainer with a whole lot of trauma)

This was a good excuse to go reread my works with her, and I found out I'd forgotten she'd talked about this a bit already: "She didn’t put much faith in holy things or the astrals by themselves, but she worked with magic every day by the strength of an oath sealed in magic."

Which actually fits pretty nicely with what I was going to say before the rereads: she accepts the astrals exist and are powerful, and can choose to have influence over the world, but she doesn't expect them to really do anything. Basically she's a deist for ffxv.

She does have faith in magic, and is fairly superstitious (she gets around it by claiming it influences the magic of the world). She has a little ritual for when her newest class "graduates" where she buys a new candle for her shrine and carves their names into it. Then she lights a random candle whenever she's up in the middle of the night and doesn't look at the names and when they melt off. She tells herself that she doesn't remember their names after they're carved in the candle and she doesn't notice when they don't show up at the Perry any more.

First, for Amani

🐺 - How does this oc deal with solitude?

(for those who don’t remember, Amani is my mostly retired former Glaive (she helps out with the books there now) who married Pelna)

Honestly, my first thoughts were, like, metaphorical solitude - retirement from the glaive and loss of contact with that peer group, the isolation that a new mother can face, even being left behind when the glaives deploy - just because true solitude is such a foreign concept to her. Her home and family were very tight-knit, Insomnia is so crowded, and the glaives tend to live in each others’ pockets, so actually being alone long enough for it to be classic solitude just didn’t compute for her.

But whether it is isolation or actual solitude (say, from confinement by the Niffs to study magic or recruitment or the like, or being left behind on a mission or separated during the escape from Insomnia) I think she treats it as something to fight. She fights isolation by intentionally creating networks (like the food-sharing network she introduces the boys to when she meets them), by making rituals of connection with people who are far away (such as making food they like or planning to make it to welcome them back, as a talisman that they *will* be back; writing letters for them to read when they are reunited; carrying something of theirs with her she can touch), by distracting herself with productive things like making sure everything is taken care of for the people she takes charge of. She fights against solitude by doing what she can to escape it, stuffing any loneliness down beneath work, even if she has to make it up.

If escaping it via work fails, she doesn’t deal well at all. Sometimes being so driven means the wheels falling off completely when you are thwarted. And if no one steps in to share the burdens, she can run herself all the way into the ground.

Fandom: Final Fantasy XV Rating: General Audiences Relationship: Cor Leonis/Nyx Ulric Characters: Nyx Ulric, Cor Leonis, Gilgamesh (Final Fantasy XV), Libertus Ostium, Pelna Khara, Clarus Amicitia, Selena Ulric Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Nyx Week 2025, Galahd (Final Fantasy XV), faith, Genderqueer Character, its the mythology okay?, Shadows, Hunters, Poetry, Chains, Selena Lives Summary:

In an early Lucis, the realm of myth where the Six haven’t yet taken their place as the only gods, the echoes of older pantheons still hold power, even if it is slightly altered.

Seven different looks in seven different styles at the myth of Nyx, god of Night and Protection, and Cor Genji Leonis, Hero and Sword of the 14th King of Lucis, Regis Lucis Caelum - how they made a place for themselves together, and held back.

Fandom: Final Fantasy XV Rating: General Audiences Relationship: Cor Leonis/Nyx Ulric Characters: Nyx Ulric, Cor Leonis, Gilgamesh (Final Fantasy XV), Libertus Ostium, Pelna Khara, Clarus Amicitia, Selena Ulric Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Nyx Week 2025, Galahd (Final Fantasy XV), faith, Genderqueer Character, its the mythology okay?, Shadows, Hunters, Summary:

In an early Lucis, the realm of myth where the Six haven’t yet taken their place as the only gods, the echoes of older pantheons still hold power, even if it is slightly altered.

Seven different looks in seven different styles at the myth of Nyx, god of Night and Protection, and Cor Genji Leonis, Hero and Sword of the 14th King of Lucis, Regis Lucis Caelum - how they made a place for themselves together, and held back.

Fandom: Final Fantasy XV Rating: General Audiences Relationship: Cor Leonis/Nyx Ulric Characters: Nyx Ulric, Cor Leonis, Gilgamesh (Final Fantasy XV), Libertus Ostium, Pelna Khara, Clarus Amicitia, Selena Ulric Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Nyx Week 2025, Galahd (Final Fantasy XV), faith, Genderqueer Character, its the mythology okay?, Shadows Summary:

In an early Lucis, the realm of myth where the Six haven’t yet taken their place as the only gods, the echoes of older pantheons still hold power, even if it is slightly altered.

Seven different looks in seven different styles at the myth of Nyx, god of Night and Protection, and Cor Genji Leonis, Hero and Sword of the 14th King of Lucis, Regis Lucis Caelum - how they made a place for themselves together, and held back.