This year, every day is themed around an opposition. You can use the opposition itself, only one of the two side, or one of the sub-prompt feature for something a little more specific. Have fun interprating it however you want!
The last day is a free day (the theme is "Light & Darkness", the game's subtitle) where you can post an extra piece, completing an unused prompt or adding a little extra!
I hope everyone have fun! Remember, when posting time comes, you can use the #ffivweek2025 tag on here and the collection on AO3.
And if you have questions about the event: check out the informative post.
December 15 2025 - December 21 2025
15/12 - The future & the past: Timeskip, sci-fi, Regrets
16/12 - Near & Far: Crossover, Travel, Home
17/12 - Death & Birth: Bad Ending, Undeads, Youth
18/12 - Truth & Lies: Delusion, Confession, Disguise
19/12 - Love & Hatred : Wedding, War, Family
20/12 - White Magic & Black Magic : JobSwap, Studying, Recovery
21/12 - Light & Darkness: Free Day
Slowly going through these for my ffiv week~ I ended up switching up my idea last minute because of me turning my Azura (FE Fates) crossover art into a solo piece. I wanted to do a little redesign for my young Rydia anyway and thought “who should I draw with my little summoner?” , well none other than my baby CELEBI of course!! All the greens reminded me of the original Celebi movie and I wanted to pair them together. I have other reasons why I paired them together but I’ll save that for another day.
I know I’m super late to our FFIV week this year but I still wanted to participate, so I’m trying to do some sketches before the year ends. I saw so many lovely pieces and they all were so GOOD and I just had to add to the angst pile.
It was nice to celebrate ffiv with other fans this year too during this week, thank you to the friends who could participate, those who couldn’t, I hope you’re okay and that you can join next year.
I’m relieved that the solstice is over, winter short days are a difficult thing for me. Now, days can only grow longer.
I didn’t do this one for the ffiv week : I didn’t have time to draw something for the last day, but this old one fits the description. I had this idea that Rydia had a punk period when she lived with the eidolons in the underworld. A very dark place, but here lives the queen of white magic, Asura. An other paradox in the ff4 story.
A massive thank you to everyone who participated through art, writing, headcanon and theories... seeing such a variety of styles, themes, tones and character has been a delight. I'm so happy this could bring out a beautiful range of what is loved about this game.
Thanks as well to everyone who shared and commented all of this work. You're making this worthwhile.
This event is properly becoming a celebration of all the things to love with FFIV and I couldn't be happier !
We might be out of the week itself, but posting under the tag and in the collection is very much welcome. I'll keep the ao3 collection open (go check it out at some point if you haven't!) and will monitor the tag for a while after. That being said, I might have missed some works posted on this website. If something you posted hasn't been shared here, please let me know ! I don't want to miss out on anything.
Thank you everyone, I hope this has been as fun for you as it has been for me, i cant wait to prepare next year. See you again under another moon 🌙
just a thought I had after reading the word "fingering" roughly ten billion times while practicing harp
FFIV Week Day 7 -- [free] (Cecil, Edward)
"Won't be long," Edward explained, holding his hand to the strings of his harp to still them. "She's just used to drier air, so she's a little out of tune."
Cecil had heard it enough times by now that he couldn't help but ask. "Why do you call it that?"
"Call it what?"
"'She.'"
Edward shrugged. "I don't know. Why do people name swords?"
"Just...makes it sound like you're talking about a woman."
"She's a harp, I assure you," Edward said with a laugh, before turning his attention back to the instrument.
Edward had the harp between his knees, its arch nestled gently into his shoulder. Cecil's eyes drifted to Edward's fingers as they seemed to find the strings by instinct, sliding into the space between to pluck out a few slow, deliberate notes. As the last one resonated he leaned in close, eyes closed to better listen, and twisted one of the pins on the bridge ever so slightly. The harp's voice shifted upward, like a gasp, and when Edward's fingers touched the strings again it sang out clear and bright.
"Are you all right?" Edward asked. "You look a bit flushed."
I managed to complete just one thing for FFIV week. It happens to coincide with Day 5 (Love & Hatred: Wedding, War, Family)
The king of Baron tries to convince Cecil that he should marry for the sake of the kingdom. That he should marry someone other than Rosa.
He isn't successful, of course.
locally and on AO3
(warning for a familial argument, homophobia, misogyny, and slutshaming. Have you ever had a terrible conversation with a parent about your love life? Because boy, I have.)
His father requested that Cecil dine with him alone that night. Supper at the castle was often the last item of the day in the king’s work, a call to entertain—and keep an eye on—his knights and lords. Or else the king was more literally still working, hashing out one plan or another with one advisor or another, in which case Cecil ate what he liked where he liked, usually with Kain. For King Odin to request Cecil alone with no special occasion was unusual. The king turned away the servants after they had set the table, more unusual still, and Cecil noted, as he ate, that the meal consisted of many of his favorite foods. The king said nothing unusual during the meal, however, and by the time Cecil was licking the last bits of flan off his spoon he was wondering if he had somehow forgotten that it was his birthday.
“There is something I need to discuss with you,” the king said.
“I thought as much,” Cecil said warily, settling his spoon on his plate.
“I wish for you to consider a marriage alliance.”
Cecil’s blood went cold. Of all the subjects he might have expected his father to broach with him, some matter of state, of the knightly orders, of the Red Wings, that was the last. “Oh?” Cecil said.
“Yes,” King Odin replied.
“You wish for me to consider some lady in particular?” Cecil said apprehensively once his father failed to elaborate further. “Or marriage in general?”
“I wish for you to consider a bride with strong ties to some of the older knightly families, one that could have stronger ties to the house of Harvey.”
“To strengthen your position,” Cecil said, looking down at his plate and wishing he had eaten less, because he now felt rather nauseated.
“I am glad you understand so well.”
“No,” Cecil said, his gaze snapping up to meet that of the king. “I don’t understand so well. Am I not a bit… young?” He was of an age that many peasants married, but it was more common among the nobility for a young man to marry closer to thirty than to twenty, with his bride likely to be a decade younger.
“Not too young to make the promise. There are four I wish you to consider. The youngest would need a few years yet to become ready.”
Which meant that she was probably ten years old at this present moment, Cecil thought. He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the heel of his palm. Perhaps it was she he should pretend to consider, to buy himself time. How was he going to talk his way out of this? He had considered asking the king for his leave to marry Rosa, was now meant to be the time?
Yet he hadn’t asked precisely because he knew what the answer would be.
“I thought perhaps at your upcoming birthday feast, you might consider—”
“Must we do it on my birthday?” Cecil asked. “Perhaps it would be better to consider them each on their own instead of… I would really rather simply celebrate my birthday on my birthday.”
“Then perhaps at the solstice you might—”
“I would really rather--”
“I know of your dalliance with the little white mage girl,” the king said.
Cecil slowly raised his head. For a moment, he was a stunned prey animal. As the gears of his brain began to turn once more it occurred to him that if his father knew about his relationship with Rosa, then either he had seen them together or someone else had seen them together and reported what they had seen to the king. If that were the case, he likely knew exactly what he and Rosa had been up to when they had been witnessed. He could feel himself flush.
“I’m not scolding you. Though you should know you’ve not been half as subtle as you think. It’s heartening, after a fashion. I was half afraid you would come to prefer men.”
Cecil made a weak, scoffing noise, unable to comport himself into responding in any other way.
“Nevertheless,” Odin went on. “Don’t pour out too much of your affection on her. If anything, it might be well if you took two or three other lovers. A little lordling is half expected to be a slattern, but dote on her too much and your future wife will know that she’ll need to compete with a mistress. And know well that there is a reason they call them that.”
Cecil’s mind reeled as he looked to his father’s smirk. First, at the fact that the king knew of his love affair, second, at the implication that he thought him perhaps insufficiently manly to have a love affair with a woman at all, and third, at the suggestion that he become more debauched. Yet what unbalanced Cecil most of all was that his father, knowing of his and Rosa’s romance, believed that Cecil might yet marry anyone else.
“If you know about Rosa and myself, then I may as well tell you that I will not take a wife. I will not marry anyone but her and I will not pretend otherwise.”
Odin laughed humorlessly. “You will if you want to inherit the crown, boy. That’s part of why I’ve tolerated this little love affair. It will cure you of such romantic notions on its own soon enough without my intervention.” He narrowed his eyes at Cecil. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone and done some damn fool thing like marry her in secret.”
“No,” Cecil said, looking away. “She told me no.”
Odin laughed. “You poor little fool.” Cecil felt an uncomfortable mix of shame and fury. “And what reason did she give you?” the king asked.
“...she said she’d marry me before the kingdom or not at all.”
Odin laughed again. “Then thank the stars that she is either very wise or very foolish.”
“In what way?” Cecil demanded. He was going a splotchy pink in his cheeks and his temples in a way that presaged wrath or tears in him. “What could you possibly mean by that?”
“She is either wise enough to know that if she marries you, you’ll never be king and you’ll be a fraction of the worth to her, or she is a fool because she gave up her only chance to lay claim on you.”
“She’s not like that. Don’t talk about her like that!”
“Let me assure you, son, they’re nearly all like that. Which is why you need be sure the lady has wealth and influence enough to be well worth it before you saddle yourself with her.”
“How can you say this?! Have you never loved a woman?” Cecil asked in disbelief. “Have you never been in love?”
“Oh, aye, two or three times. And thank the heavens I never married a one of them.”
“’Oh, aye,’” Cecil repeated back at him mockingly. “I don’t believe you. Whatever you felt, it isn’t what I feel or you wouldn’t speak of it so casually.”
“Perhaps,” Odin said evenly. “I find you are subject to a great many forms of foolishness that I never was.”
“And blessedly I’m not subject to whatever affliction leads you to speak on women and marriage in such terms. Tell me, if they are both so horrid, and if it is well and good that you never married, why must I?”
“Because I came from some of the oldest nobility in Baron and my uncle declared that I should be his heir over a decade before his death. A marriage was always worth more to me as a potential bargaining chip rather than one already traded.”
“You could do the same as your uncle, if you’re so concerned. You could say publicly that you wish me to inherit the throne.”
“That would sway many of the Orders, but not all, and weighed against the fact that you are a foundling, and unblooded... I fear it would not be enough. You may need every advantage you can acquire,” he said soberly, and while he couldn’t convince Cecil of his rightness, he did in that moment convince him of his sincerity. “Which is why I would have you do this, no matter how little you may like it.”
“Surely naming me your heir would help my claim, if you feel it is so weak.”
“Until it is more sure, I’m afraid I would only make you a target by declaring it.”
“Or…” Cecil said slowly. “You wish to control me by holding it over my head.”
Odin leaned back, considering Cecil. “Now where does this come from? Has she put this notion in your head?”
“No,” Cecil said, in a half lie. “Only, I’ve begun to wonder, lately. If you don’t mean to name me your heir, who do you mean to name? Or do you mean to sully your reign by ending it in chaos?”
“There is none other that I would name,” Odin admitted, tapping his empty cup against the table. “But let me remind you that it is not too late for me to sire my own blood heir, or to raise up some other orphan if you displease me.”
“But you’d have to do it soon, would you not? That is, if you don’t want him to be a child at the time of your passing.”
“I’ll admit to you truthfully, Cecil…. I would not willingly marry, and if thinking I could mold a stranger’s child into my son was foolish once, it would surely be even more foolish to try it a second time.”
The two were silent for a long moment, each trying to puzzle the other out.
“Was it that you were desperately unlucky in love?” Cecil finally said. “That does not mean that I am.” He cast about for some argument to make his case with. “If you could but meet Rosa, if you could spend time with her, you would understand why I hold her in such high—”
“You are suggesting that I invite your whore in the castle and sup with her as if she--”
“How dare you,” Cecil said, genuinely shocked. “She has sworn an oath to you! She is a noblewoman, by blood and by vow.”
“One generation of nobility matters very little, though I remind you it’s still more than you have. If she comports herself like a whore, she’s a whore. A lady does not sneak herself into a nobleman’s chambers by night.”
“No, of course not,” Cecil said acidly. “Not unless her father has blessed it and a ceremony has been done.”
“Indeed. You seem to understand a noblewoman’s duty. Would that you understood a nobleman’s half so well.”
Cecil fell silent. The blow stung, though he tried, unsuccessfully, to hide just how much. He stood and turned away. He walked to the window and looked out blindly to the courtyard below. He took several steadying breaths. When he could keep his voice mostly even, he spoke. “In what way, other than this, have I displeased you?”
Odin sighed, standing himself and sauntering near to Cecil. “It’s nothing you’ve done, rather, it’s…. your way about you.”
Rather than reassuring Cecil, this made him feel absolutely wretched.
“You’ve always been soft. Sentimental. Perhaps it’s my fault that I’ve spoiled you.”
“And how am I meant to mend that?”
“I wish I knew,” Odin said wearily. “Perhaps there is no mending it now.”
“I have done everything that you have asked of me. I became a knight, I mastered the dark sword, I took command, and did all well, I thought. Am I somehow mistaken? Is it not so?”
“Despite some initial missteps…. you have proved yourself as well as I could hope.”
“Then what else could I do? What could I possibly do to be worthy as your heir?”
Odin frowned and lingered a moment in thought. “There remains something childish about you, or it might be more true to say ‘womanish.’ You’d be crying now had I not taught you better.”
“But you did teach me better. You cannot claim to me that I am weak.”
“No,” Odin sighed. “But perhaps it should be no surprise that you proved more vulnerable to pretty words than to swords, or that you were so easily conquered by a woman.”
Cecil turned to face him. “Moments ago you were afraid I’d prefer to be conquered by a man. So which is it? Which is worse? Who am I meant to love?”
“You’re not meant to love anyone! You’re meant to do your duty.”
“My duty? And what is my duty to if not to those I love?”
“To strength, to stability, to survival! Those endure. Long past love.”
Cecil stared at him in disbelieving disgust. “What a sorry life you must have led, to believe that. I’m seeing that I may as well try to convince a stone,” he said, pressing past him, and then spun to face him again. “I’ll have you know I’m going to the woman who has so ‘conquered’ me. Since you’ll not name me your heir regardless, I may as well do as I like.”
“You’ll be back,” Odin said, raising his voice for the first time in their tense conversation. “Your love will fade at the first sight of a challenge.”
Cecil paused at the door, gripping the door frame. He once more turned to face the king, and Odin knew, too late, that he had done wrong, that he had pressed him too hard. Cecil’s lips pulled back in a snarl that spoke of loathing, but his eyes were wounded.
“Would that you were right and I did not love you,” he whispered.
So as it happens, I'm teaching myself to play the harp.
This is not ENTIRELY motivated by advanced blorbo derangement, as I've thought about learning how to play an instrument for a long time, and I really wanted it to be a stringed instrument, since I like to sing and that rules out basically anything you have to blow into. I also wanted it to be something, you know, kind of offbeat, so I held off on getting into guitar or ukelele. Ideally something sorta renn faire appropriate, since that's the kind of person I am. However, musical instruments are OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive if you want something unlikely to turn up in a thrift store.
It turns out you can get a decent-sounding harp for a reasonable amount of money provided you are willing to assemble the thing yourself, though, so one impulse purchase and a lot of sanding/gluing/hammering later, here I am. The harp was also a convenient choice because I learned to play piano as a kid, and as it turns out, the harp and the piano are weirdly similar. A piano is basically a harp turned on its side, and instead of plucking the strings you whack them with a contraption. It also means I can read music a little bit, and harp scores look basically like piano scores.
Green is my favorite color, so it's likely that given free reign to paint the soundboard, it would have ended up green regardless. However, did I match the specific SHADE to the one on Edward's scarf? Yes. Yes, I did.
I'm not very musical, and one of the fingers on my left hand is barely up to the task due to an old injury, so it's slow going and don't expect any sick harp covers any time soon (also I don't really feel like setting up audio recording just to capture me fumbling through a baby-mode arrangement of "Twa Corbies"). But I wanted to talk about a subject I'm sure everybody has been wondering about:
What kind of harp does Edward actually play?
OK, first, the elephant in the room: most of the official art shows Edward with a lute. It's even in the name of his theme song. In-game though he's clearly depicted playing the harp, equips harps, is referred to as a harpist, and his theme uses a harp sound font exclusively. I assume he can also play the lute, perhaps the most bard-coded instrument of all time. But I don't know shit about lutes so this post is about harps.
Edward is usually shown playing a very small harp, small enough to hold in one hand, with only a few strings. The shape is...well, it varies, but I THINK it's intended to be a classic triangular frame harp. Harps like this can have as few as 6 strings, and the Damcyan royal seal depicts a lyre, a close relative of the harp that is typically on the smaller side. So maybe that's what he's playing?
Except! Edward's music is at least partially diagetic:
When Edward plays his harp, this song ("Gilbert's Lute," or "Melody of Lute") is used. I don't know that we're intended to assume these are the literal notes he's playing both times, but to a certain degree I think we ARE supposed to understand that we the audience are hearing Edward's actual music and not just a background track. At the very least you can say for certain that this song is meant to be representative of the KIND of music Edward plays, so I'll take it as a baseline for what the harp needs to be capable of.
The thing about harps is that they don't have frets -- every string corresponds to one note. So, in order to play this piece, Edward's harp would need at minimum 12 strings (assuming some other stuff I'll get to in a second), as it ranges from middle D all the way up to the high G. The size of the soundboard has a profound effect on the timbre of the notes, though, so a lot of smaller harps have kind of a "plink"-y sound and don't resonate as long. I've heard 15-16 string harps that sound great, though often quite different than a larger harp; anything below that has sounded more along the lines of "technically playable" to me, but I'm sure a really nice one is not out of the realm of possibility.
However, there aren't actually just 12 notes in the song. We have to account for these:
Like I said, each string on a harp is tuned to a specific note. If you want to put it into a different key, you have to manually retune some of the strings before playing. "Gilbert's Lute" is in C major/A minor, which doesn't have any sharps/flats in its key signature, but the song features a bunch of accidentals (i.e., sharp/flat/natural notes that deviate from the key signature) and you need a way to play these too. There are a few ways to accomplish this.
The first, and most obvious way: Edward's harp has more than 12 strings, and some of them are tuned to sharp/flat notes. At minimum, you'd need 4 additional strings tuned to G sharp, F sharp, B flat, and E flat, for a total of 16 strings. I've never seen someone tune their harp this way, but you COULD do it. This would mean he was tuning to a specific set of accidentals before playing, well...anything, basically. That seems kind of annoying, so it would make more sense to me personally if there was instead an additional string for each black note on a piano, essentially. This would bring Edward's harp up to a minimum of 21 strings -- still portable (my harp has 22 and I can easily carry it in one hand and sit it on my lap, harps are mostly hollow after all) but starting to get pretty unwieldy.
For reference, his harp in the DS remake and this particular image from an upcoming FFTCG card is closer to the size I'd expect a 16-string harp to be (though much less bulky than a real one, since neither of them feature a normal-sized soundboard. presumably it's magic):
(also this harp has 25 strings, but the high ones are too close together to be playable. artistic license i suppose. also this is a way more accurate depiction of playing the harp, as opposed to the guitar-like strumming usually featured in Edward's animations. Huge props to artist Sara Shimokobe for that)
The second way is closely related: The harp could be double-strung. This is basically the same solution as the first option, but instead of adding to a single row of strings, you have two rows on either side of the frame. You can tune both sets of strings independently. The smallest this type could be is 8 strings on both sides, for 16 strings total. I've never actually seen a double harp that small, so I don't actually know if you'd have enough room on the frame for it, or if the number of strings compared to the size of the soundboard would make the sound quality untenable or something. A harp as large as 15 or 16x2, though, would still be a very manageable size for traveling around, and would give you access to a really wide range of notes. Double-strung harps also allow you to do some cool stuff (like echoing one hand's playing with the other).
The third option is a lever harp. These feature little mechanisms on the bridge that you can flip up to raise the corrosponding string by one half-step (i.e., you would raise the C lever to make the note C sharp). Most modern lap harps are lever harps, and they've existed in some form or another since the 17th century. Levers allow you to easily change the key and access accidental notes without retuning anything. This would technically allow you to play "Melody of Lute" on something as small as a 12 string harp. The drawback is that for accidentals you have to actually reach up to the bridge and engage the lever manually mid-song, which can be pretty difficult to do depending upon what you're playing. As an example of how this works, here's the lever changes that you'd have to do for this section of "Melody of Lute", assuming your harp is tuned in C major and you went into this part with all the levers down:
So, you'd have to flip the levers on two different notes up and then down again just in this little section. The song goes at a pretty fast tempo with almost no pauses, so Edward would have to be fairly skilled to play it seamlessly.
So there you have it. I think I like #2 the best, personally, though just looking at a double-strung harp makes me kind of dizzy.
(for the record, those big-ass concert harps, the ones that are basically furniture, have a pedal mechanism for sharps and flats. obviously not an option for a lap harp!)
Also, as a side note: you can't actually play most harps while standing without a support for it, regardless of how small they are, since you typically use both hands to pluck the strings. Extremely inconvenient instrument if you want to play the regen song while your comrades are stabbing monsters, I'm afraid.
Today is the winter solstice, the longest night in the year... It's also the last day of our event. I hope everyone enjoy the moonlight and all the fanworks we have yet to see!
FFIVWeek2025 - Day 6: White and Black Magic; Recovery 🧚🍳
Of the other drawings I and others did this week, I wanted to do something a little more "funny moment" since when choosing this theme for this penultimate day, I immediately thought of this scene—
