(Nevermind that the colours are all wrong, it's really hard finding picrews that have her hair colour and even proper skintone. 😭 So in those cases, I default to red hair, since that's kind of the closest? Kind of.)

So in the very beginning, I had a character who was a little rough around the edges, never backed down from a challenge, but was ultimately a good person and had a heart of gold. She was heavily inspired by Gintoki of Gintama back then, so she had mild deadpan goofball tendencies to go with all of that. Her rivalry with Vergil was more playful than it was sinister, with a very mutually understood respect and understanding that no harm was meant. Their fights were more sparring sessions.

But as I thought more about her backstory and her circumstances, and just what her role in her own story arc was, she eventually hardened and became more stoic. She took no shit from anybody, was all business 200% of the time, pragmatic, curt to a fault, and was unshakably loyal. Punchy was always a musclehead, but this is probably when the jock bitch half of the equation came into play. This is when her rivalry with Vergil started being a bit more... honest? They genuinely did not like one another, and though they never tried to actually kill each other, their fights were often violent and uh... seriously getting pretty close to reaching that point. It wouldn't be until later on that they start to , very begrudgingly, respect one another; for the other's strength, for their morals despite their circumstances, and... for some other things too maybe. She doesn't think softness and tenderness is weak, more that she understands that she cannot display such things in her position. She's woman in a place of employ usually dominated by men. Cutthroat men in a precarious balance of power. That's a recipe for disaster (or outright murder) if she's seen cracking. And that's not even really specific to her because she's a woman either tbh, the whole affair is stinky and men have died for less. Just that with her, her position is too important to her to give up. If she can't protect her employer from the wolves, she has nothing left.

iBut that's really only in the context of Crime, since she's... ya know, very involved with Red Grave's criminal underbelly. In the Storm and Judgment AUs, she's almost completely removed from that context, and while she struggles to maintain her sense of self in Storm AU, struggles to live life as a "normal" civilian, she thrives with Higashi in the Judgment AU. She isn't overtly soft, but she cares Just So Much for the people who care about her. With nothing to really lose, she can devote her time to people around her; wordless gestures, fleeting touches, specifically single point of contact touches, like her temple on someone's arm, linked pinkies for psuedo handholding.

And then all of this culminates into her ultimate form... the FFXIV patch update where she not only kisses Urianger daily, but expects forehead kisses from him just as often... who the fuck is this woman I do not know anymore.

OKAY SO. First things first, the only reason I downloaded the free FFXIV trial up to level 60 with no restrictions on play time and includes the blah blah blah, is because a friend made her OC in it, and since I'm always looking for new character creators to make Punchy in (because ya gal cannot draw very well yet), I thought I'd give it a shot too. You know, just to see what she'd look like.

Anyway. From there, especially after I hit Heavensward, it was a slippery slope, and six months later, FFXIV is all I think about. But Punchy did a BUNCH of evolving over the game. She still looks more or less the same (highlander crew represent), but while she went in as her stoic DMC self, she came out of the game with a whole ass found family, two adopted kids, and an eventual daughter of her own?????? She struggled to find a reason for fighting for a vast chunk of the game's expansions, struggled to reconcile the fact that she was chosen as some sort of hero when she is genuinely a shitty person who has done some pretty deplorable things, but through it all, she made friends who believe in her, learned how to grieve, learned what grieving even was, and fell head over heels in love with some lanky ass nerd elf man who, through his gentle, yet no less adamant persistence, kept on going pspsps at this feral stray cat until she was comfortable enough with his presence to eat out of his hand.

And now she can't leave him alone. She will bust down walls to be with him. She will pull half of Eorzea's mobs across the continent to go to him if he needed her that very second. Like helLO

And she has a daughter with him?!?!? Who she was terrified by in the initial stages of pregnancy, because boy is she not fit to be a mother in any capacity, but Urianger is JUST SO FATHERLY. he is a GOOD DAD, and by god she decided to weather the storm just because it made him so happy when she told him??

God I'm sorry this became to unhinged, I just love them a lot, they are the softest Punchy ship by MILES, which is genuinely significant, because I've said that about each iteration of her since I made the Storm AU. How does a bitch go from "don't touch me" to "you may touch me once" to "where is my daily forehead kiss from my husband that I crave so dearly" like she is deadass Jotaro from Stardust Crusaders where she acts like she doesn't like the kiss, but when she doesn't get it, she gets antsy and knows something is wrong. I just

O-|-<

lies on the floor