#juat venting

So FFXVI came out, right? I hear it's great; looks great, plays great, story's great, XVI is just great.

So, a trend popped up some weeks ago in the XIV community; people began asking what eikon your WoL/OC would be the dominant of. Options ranged from dungeon bosses to trials to raid bosses; no real limit save your imagination.

Now, I pondered this for a while, seeing some folks make connections to things like Shiva, Alexander, Bahamut, etc., and they all have a reason that makes sense for the eikon to be connected to them. And it's cool to see what they come up with! Naturally, I wanted to find one for I'lyanna.

I spent hours looking through different bosses and primals, even trying to make some big creatures from the overworld fit. In the end, after looking over every match I felt could work...

I've got nothing. Not a single answer as to who I'lyanna would be a dominant for.

So why am I writing this post?

Simple: It bothers me WAY more than it should.

I'lyanna is still a major work in progress. I love her so much and want to make the most of her story... but there are days where I really feel I don't know what that story is. As the meme goes, I've got the most basic, generalized idea of a story in my head... but when I try to put it all together, it feels like I have several pieces of different puzzles that LOOK like they should fit, but naturally don't because they come from different places. Is that a bad thing? Not really; it just takes some refinement, some time and patience, and working out the finer details.

So why is something as insignificant as a concept from a different Final Fantasy so crucial to me?

...I guess it really isn't. It just irritates me that I can't find one. Like, on the level of "I want my baby to fit in and be loved, but I can't find out what makes her similar to the other kids."

In terms of character writing and story development, this is probably the least important thing to be spending my emotional energy on. I'lyanna is still a charming, if traumatized, young woman who has plenty of story still to be told. But as far as feeling like I understand her and who her character is...

I want to believe this silly trend could've helped.

Because I'm in a bad place, people. I had just started to drag myself out of my depressed, black hole after living for a year and a half with my miserable mother in law when my husband invited her to live with us again in our brand new home. The house I pressures him to buy so I could kick her out of my apartment and basically flee from her and her toxicity.

She turns me into a person I don't recognize. I'm literally in therapy right now to deal with the trauma she left on me. Not to mention the trauma she caused in my marriage to her son, which we had barely started to figure out how to heal before she started leaving more clawsl marks all across it.

I have no rl friends anymore, because Ioces thousands of miles away from them years ago, and I haven't been in the right head space lately to make new ones. My kids, 911, and writing is pretty much all I have to make me even marginally happy, and I cling to them like a lifeline.

Sometimes I take all my pain and channel it (as in a wip I have going on), and other times I push it all down and just try to forget while attempting to make words pretty.