Erick Gage's RP/Inspiration Blog

[erickgage]

🖊 + Dealbreaker

Erick lay back, enjoying the warmth and weight of his beautiful girlfriend laying across his torso, snuggled on the soft furs of his bed.

"Erick, you've had lots of girls before me..." she muttered, clearly intending to lead into a question.

"None so beautiful, and none who made my heart sing so." he replied, mentally congratulating himself on a smooth reply.

She looked up at him, rolling her gorgeous yellow eyes at him, but smiling nonetheless. "What was the strangest reason you broke up with one?"

Erick's eyes drifted to the ceiling. That was quite the question, but it was one that brought a specific story to mind.

"Well, back when I fought in the bloodsands, there was this cute au ra girl, worked as one of the behind the scenes crew, moving stuff into place, operating the equipment, that sorta thing. We started seeing each other after some lovely talks backstage before my matches, and it was nice for a time. Our first night together was delightful, even with me being comparatively less experienced."

Meya tickled his ribs. "Inexperienced you must have been fun to see."

Erick giggled, swatting at her fingers before intertwining them into his to restrict their mischief. "Hard to imagine, I know. But the dealbreaker came on our second night together. She had a particular kink, you see, and it was one that I couldn't handle."

Meya blinked. "Really?"

Erick nodded. "She wanted me to call her Granny when I was inside her."

Meya blinked, twice. ".... what"

Erick sighed. "I wish I was making this up. She looked me in the eye and asked me to call her granny while I was fucking her. Said that it would help her finish. I don't think I'd ever put my pants on that fast without a pack of angry hounds after me."

Meya looked him deep in the eyes, as if looking for a sign he was telling a joke. Finding none, she let out a breath, then resettled herself in and snuggled close. "Well, I'll do my best not to do the same."

"I appreciate it, my darling," he said, returning to stroking her hair, banishing the thought of the cute eastern girl with the odd kink from his mind.

[moonlit-morphos]

XIV Heatwave Festival- Fun "There are no rules"

Getting the right amount of air isn't a problem when your teammate is the literal Azure Dragoon. 😏 (Also oop, new look for Hecate 🩵)

[carusources]

Send 🖊 + a word, phrase or topic and I'll try to write a short drabble about it involving my muse

[pointyhatspointyears]

Yasumi always looks back fondly at her time in the Dravanian Hinterlands working on her scholarship. No, really, she does.

She didn't get her archonhood, needless to say. But she did make a friend for life. A very belated nameday memory for @robynostornwyn ✨HQ✨

[heyitsjess-art]

Just a quick comic about my wol, Balun, and an FC mate! The amount of times Nola has died over the years to my tank busters because she has moved into them is astronomical.

[healerstail]

Master Matoya vs. The Forum

[healerstail]

Ma'am that bikini o-o

[shatteredworldxiv]

Alisaie 'the determinator' Leveilleur

[anneapocalypse]

I'm about halfway through my Stormblood replay and I just love watching how Lyse is progressing here as a character. I think she says a lot of things that come across as ignorant especially when meeting cultures she's not familiar with, but critically a lot of them are questions; she is trying to learn. And it stands in an interesting contrast to when she was playing Yda and every time she would say something silly or uninformed, Papalymo would be there with a withering remark. And I don't want to come down too hard on Papalymo, because ultimately he was just trying to protect the cover she chose, and would have preferred her to drop it altogether if she was willing.

But as "Yda," Lyse put herself in a position where she couldn't really grow, because she had to pretend to be an Archon. She did not have her sister's education or experience but had to pretend she did, and any time she let the mask slip someone was there to remind her that she was supposed to know more than she did. She couldn't ask too many questions because that would reveal how much she didn't know.

So there's a good reason why Lyse comes across as immature in early Stormblood: she's having to speedrun 6+ years of personal growth she didn't allow herself to have, under high-stress high-stakes circumstances! And it's so important that she's inquisitive and curious and receptive to learning, even if she often puts her foot in her mouth, because that's what it take for her to learn and grow.

[healerstail]

Keja and her favorite annoyance, Rhana.

[ali-dot-txt]

yannow not to be a gridania defender or anything but it rubs me the wrong way when people are like "gridania is the only one of the arr city-states which never solved its very obvious social and organizational problems and thus it's the Evil Racist One that it's fine to hate" because like. you understand that that is fully a result of the plot giving literally nothing to gridania ever, right? you understand that gridania's internal politics are never ever given the attention that ul'dah and limsa get? you understand that huge portions of post-arr and post-heavensward and post-stormblood and post-shadowbringers are dedicated to limsa and ul'dah's social issues and npcs and their relationships to each other? you understand how kan-e-senna's second-in-command, who is literally gridania's equivalent of raubahn, does not have a fucking name?

you understand how the two scions you're introduced to in the gridania start are important for at most two expansions, one of which they barely appear in, before disappearing from the story forever aside from cameos? as opposed to the scions you meet in limsa and ul'dah, who remain important for the rest of the game up til today???

yeah, i would fucking love for the main story to start questioning gridania about its institutional racism and trying to fix it, because that would mean that the main story gave a single fuck about gridania. give us some duskwight and seeker main characters please. give us duskwight and seeker lore please. give us SOMETHING. you can't even learn how gridania's government works without reading side stories, which has led to this weird misconception that kan-e-senna is like, a fascist despot who used the calamity to consolidate power!!! Give Gridania ANYTHING!!!!!

[shizucheese]

The most infuriating part is that Gridania absolutely should have had more of a spotlight in Stormblood. It shares a border with Ala Mhigo. It shares history with Ala Mhigo. That history resulted in some people in Gridania not wanting to help liberate Ala Mhigo because they're still upset over them invading the Twelveswood and the Autumn War, but you wouldn't know that if you didn't do the SB BRD job quests. Also, the Elementals got severely weakened during the 7th Calamity, which is why we haven't really had to deal with much related to them in ARR, but I feel like people don't really take seriously exactly what the Gridnians are dealing with if they want to continue living in the Twelveswood and why they live the way they do.

I'd also love to have the story take us to a Duskwight settlement/ whatever remains of Gelmorra because like...the reality is that the origins of a lot of the issues they deal with in Gridania are sorta self inflicted. They don't live in caves and resort to banditry (hence the distrust in Duskwightes that Gridanians have) because they were ostracized and had no choice; when everyone else left Gelmorra to found Gridania, the ancestors of the Duskwights refused to leave and insisted on *continuing* to live in caves and refused to integrate into society, to the point where they'd rather resort to banditry rather than live in Gridania.

This is the context in which Valdeaulin (Gaius's duskwight companion) referred to the people of Gridania as "city dwellers" as a derogatory term in the Werlyt quests, which is the only glimps of that side of the dynamic that we really get.

But again, because Gridania gets so horribly shafted in MSQ, most people won't know any of this and because they only see the Gridanian side of things (which yes, is problematic; completely innocent people are being punished for the actions of their ancestors/ other people within their cultures which is completely wrong), and we never see the prejudice from duskwights that lead to that whole dynamic, and MSQ doesn't touch on the fact that in the past Ala Mhigo instigated a war with Gridania, and we never see what could happen if the Elementals really got pissed off at people, people just kinda see how the Gridanians treat Duskwights, Ala Mhigans, etc and brush them off as Evil Racists when the reality is way more nuanced than that.

Honestly I'm convinced someone on the writing team just really likes Ul'dah over the other two starting city states because like...even Limsa doesn't really get the spotlight shown on it in any meaningful way until post-Shadowbringers.

[healerstail]

Forgot the extra leggy angle

[healerstail]

Dreaming of Costa Del Sol

[johnnylandslide]

Oh Tataru, we're really in it now...

[bitcrushblues]

a small serotonin boost for your day

[healerstail]

Eden

[dapperpea]

Can you imagine what Lumull's day is like, though.

Everything outside the barrier is bad and will McMurder You. You went to trade with the other city one day and there was just a giant hole in the ground. Where did it go? No idea. It's just Gone. You try to make the best of it but your city is slowly dying and there's nothing that can really be done. There's been the storm of the century, and wave after wave of monsters is coming in to eat the local civilians.

And then, through this crazy storm you'd be insane to go out in, the storm that would kill you quickly if the wild beasts didn't get to you first, comes this little band of weirdos you don't know, you've never seen, somehow busting in completely unharmed, and they start running through streets killing monsters like it's nothing.

And then they say they want to go *back* out into the Murder Storm and go fight the mother of all monsters, and you go y'know, what the hell! It's been a crazy day! Why not! What's the worst that could happen!

So you go find *another* train so these weirdo strangers can go fight the *first* train. You have no idea what they're going to do or how they're going to do it, but you drive your train and then the other train starts *eating* YOUR train, and you're asking what the hell they're doing back there, and they just kinda go "WE'RE BUSY YOU'RE DOING GREAT JUST KEEP DRIVING"