The Endless Garden

/OOC/: Hi. I'm trying this whole tumblr thing again. I'm a FFXIV writer who likes writing lots of roleplay and headcanon-building, who loves crossovers with other fandoms, who's looking for more like-minded tumblrs to follow.

I made an Eorzea Collection page!

You can find the items here

Eastern Iceland, 2015

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Where was your OC born, and where did they grow up?

How does your OC remember their childhood? Is this an accurate reflection of what their childhood was actually like?

If your OC could revisit their childhood, what would they want to change about it, if anything at all?

Describe three of the most important photographs your OC owns.

What is your OC's gender identity and sexual orientation? Is this also what they identify as in canon, or are they not (fully) aware?

How comfortable is your OC in their skin? Do they like who they are? What would they want to change about themself?

What is your OC's occupation?

What does your OC's family look like?

Describe a mundane day in your OC's life.

Does your OC have any physical scars? What is the story behind them?

What does your OC carry around in their pockets? What about their bag?

What is the worst thing that has happened to your OC? How has it affected their behavior, their health, and their life in general?

What is something your OC does (to others) that they would not like if others did to them? Are they aware that they do this?

Does your OC hold grudges? How good are they at letting things go? Do they believe in second chances?

What is your OC's fatal flaw?

Is there anyone your OC has lost contact with? What happened?

What are some of your OC's coping mechanisms during stressful or overwhelming periods in their life?

What are your OC's bad habits?

How does your OC handle preparing for and initiating a difficult conversation? How does the conversation itself go?

How quick is your OC to shift blame? Do they own up to their mistakes, or are they prone to start pointing fingers at others?

How does your OC handle criticism?

How good is your OC at apologizing, if they do this at all?

What is your OC like when they're angry?

What is your OC like when they're upset?

What is your OC's deepest desire? Would they ever ask for this?

How quickly does your OC reach their breaking point? What are they like when this point has been reached?

What are some assumptions others make about your OC? Are any of them true?

What does your OC think others are saying about them behind their back? Is any of this true?

What are three traits your OC has that can both have positive as well as negative qualities?

How paranoid is your OC? How does this affect their daily life?

Are there any places or people your OC is avoiding?

How does your OC handle rejection?

How does your OC handle jealousy?

What would be some of the signs your OC is starting to push people away?

If your OC had to kill someone, how would they do it? If killing is a near-daily occurrence to them, what is their preferred method?

Does your OC believe they deserve it when bad things happen to them?

What is the most common feeling or emotion in your OC's life?

What is the most recurring theme in your OC's nightmares?

What is your OC's pain tolerance like? What is the worst pain they have ever felt?

What is your OC afraid of?

Has your OC ever hurt someone, either physically or verbally?

How easily influenced by others is your OC?

What are common things your OC worries about?

Do others consider your OC to be scary or intimidating?

Does your OC keep their promises? Have they ever broken one before?

Does your OC carry any guilt with them?

If your OC had to pick a new identity and skip town, what would they come up with? Where would they go?

What would your OC do if they knew that this was their last day alive?

Does your OC fear death?

I don't really wolship because I'm just fundamentally not that kind of fan. But I know for those who are, the sheer number of romance hints FFXIV throws at you can be overwhelming to parse in a context where you have a preferred/intended wolship, particularly if you're not attracted to the gender the hints are coming from in the first place (a particular tip of the hat to wlw fans navigating the g'raha of it all). I've seen plenty of people write around them or write them out or be like "no aymeric was for real inviting my wol to a nice platonic zero-subtext dinner," and God bless all of you.

But it's really funny to imagine them all as all-too-real but unreciprocated or perhaps unreciprocatable. The sheer scale of it is comedy. Spoilers for all of FFXIV follow.

Oh God, the Lord Speaker wants to have dinner, just the two of us, at his family estate and not a government building. I hope he doesn't bring up his crush on me. Thal's balls he's about to bring it up—oh thank God there's an emergency. Oh no someone got hurt! Oh no it's the teenage girl with a crush on me.

Your life is a cosmic joke. You watch the Sultana get poisoned and all your friends probably die to save your life and it's kind of all your fault in some ways, I mean at the very least you should've spoken up when they gave the teenager a private army, and then the teenage boy speaks up and is like, "hey, I guess we have at least one ally. What about if we go visit that guy who is really obviously down unbelievably bad for you and wants to lick the sweat off of you." and you have to be like, yeah, Alphinaud. Great idea. Let's do it. I'll call him.

(brief interlude: also haurchefant's DEATH hits so good if you don't reciprocate. It's okay. He gets it. You're going through a lot and even if you had time to sort through your feelings maybe you're just not into him. That would be okay! You can love someone, or the idea of someone, without needing it to be romantically reciprocated. That's chivalric, even. Knightly. So he won't ask you to lie to him and say you love him as he lies dying in your arms. He's not so low as all that. But could you smile for him as you used to? That true hero's smile of yours. And you do, and he dies. And you both know he died for a lie, in a way, or a flight of fancy. And he's okay with that. Are you? Should you be? Should he?)

Then you're into Stormblood and it's like wow, okay. That last part was all high fantasy, of course there were loyal knights and elegant princes. But this is war. Imperialism. Grim business, surely there's no way—oh no BOTH handsome young revolutionary leaders seem to have a special interest in you?! And so does the Crown Prince of the Empire? Come on, man. I should get to do the whole horrors of war thing without having to also deal with this. Gaius sucked and it was weird that he let his foster daughter run around being openly obsessed with him but at least he never made it my problem.

You can't even get away from it across dimensions. Shadowbringers is a horror story about going on a teambuilding camping trip with your work colleagues for some reason except they all suddenly got really hot and they keep touching you affectionately on the shoulder and being like "I care for you and your happiness. Truly." And also you're being stalked for the whole camping trip by two old men who are obsessed with you. The false climax of the story is that the one old man tries to betray you and give a dramatic monologue about how he loves you but the two of you are doomed by the narrative and then the other old man shoots him in the back like "no actually its MY turn to betray them and give a dramatic monologue about how our love is doomed by the narrative." Then the real climax is old man #1 backstabbing old man #2 in the middle of said monologue before old man #2 dies and gives ANOTHER wistful monologue about his doomed love. Then for the patches they're like okay so we have this even CRAZIER old man who's gonna strike when you're weak and give a dramatic monolo—

and that's without even getting into the literal soulmate ghost only you can see

my warrior of light never felt more betrayed than in that scene where Y'shtola is like "haha Alisaie and G'raha have crushes on the warrior of light." Like I thought we were COOL, Y'shtola! I work here! This situation is already in such a delicate balance! Right when I got here I met Alisaie's "friend from work" who was like oh haha so YOU'RE the one she can't stop talking about and we never followed up on that because the woman died horrifically like five minutes later right in front of us! Then when Vauthry got away and we had to do all that shit with the dwarves, G'raha kept pausing every ten minutes to be like oooooh I'm so old I'm gonna die soon...at least I got to spend some time with some people who are really important to me...in fact here's what I'd tell the person who's most important to me...actually u know them really well haha. And I just had to sit there and be like wow, dude, crazy.

even in the face of apocalypse you still gotta go back in time like 12,000 years and there's somewhere there who makes you sit and listen to his story which is that the purpose of his whole godlike immortal life was to be in a throuple with you and old man #2 from the camping trip. and you just gotta sit there the whole time knowing you/your past life is the one who broke up the throuple over politics. He's like come help me harangue the old man into streaking in public, he'll do it if you ask.

then you meet and fight and kill God and you gotta turn to the team and be like hey sorry guys can you give me a sec. I'm gonna call God by her real name because we met one time for like four days and after that the promise of meeting me again was one of the things that sustained her through her millennia of suffering. Not like that but like. Idk. Just gimme a sec!

It's a relief when you finally get to Lahabrea and he's like actually I still don't fuck with your vibe. Like thank GOD.

And my WoL is very obviously dad-shaped so Dawntrail had a very specific energy for me but I understand that for plenty of people your deepening rapport with Wuk Lamat had a romantic subtext (same for Koana depending on how you read a few of his lines). And personally I think it's the height of comedy to be like, noooo, babe, your highness, I know you and your brother the king are in love with me and want me to stick around and support you emotionally through this governmental transition haha. But it's just...the cursed wineglass, babe. I GOTTA go figure out what's up with this cursed wineglass.

It's a running gag in some of the more optional content that people are like "you have an unreasonable number of hobbies and side gigs" to the WoL from time to time. But if every time you tried picking up a new hobby some new elf started baring their soul to you, you too would be like Hey Jessie (or sometimes Krile or Tataru), my good friend who is one of the only people in my life who knows what professional ethics and work-life boundaries are, any chance you need muscle on a gig on the other side of the world? Ideally with only Cid and his ex so all libidinal energy in the room is directed towards machinery or someone who isn't me?