This will be a long one. To begin with, a little context. While I do not roleplay my characters, I enjoy exploring their stories. My characters are pretty much my babies and I am awfully fond of them all. Back when I first started playing XIV, like any seasoned altoholic, I spent hours in character creator before I emerged from it with several new characters of different races and backgrounds.
After a few days of running around as miqo and elezen, I settled on a female roegadyn by the name of Fair Rowan. In my head I imagined her to be an orphan raised by a mercenary company. Although I was tempted to violently retire the mercenaries and make her a sole survivor (in the spirit of the main character of another game), I figured that was too much trauma for my very first adventurer in the world of Eorzea (I KNEW NOTHING, OK). And so the mercenaries retired "peacefully" due to old age and the last fledgling of theirs was left to fend for herself. My lady roe was strong, beautiful, full of life. Her voice boisterous, her grip strength smashing... I digress. In some ways she was my emotional support during a rather difficult time in life, where I myself also needed to be strong, both physically and emotionally. Her adventure lasted all the way to SHB, during which I had to take a break for about half a year due to irl commitments.
Upon my return, for the first time in years I felt that it was time to make some changes. After many hours of agonising and staring at the fantasia potion, I finally convinced myself with "worst case I'll be buying another fantasia" and soon my main was reborn as Remi, a gorgeous elezen lady with a charming smile. I imagined her to be well-read, skilled both in magics and martial arts, and stalwart in her convictions. While I originally intended for one to pick up the adventuring and all that Warrior of Light business after the other, I did not have the heart to retire Rowan permanently and settled on pretending each of them existed in their own version of this universe. A promptly created alt with her appearance softened the blow.
For Remi, the backstory was a little more elaborate. Having completed HW, enamoured with Ishgard and its many characters, I liked the idea of Remi coming from a minor destitute Ishgardian house, which she would have fled from with her parents and older brother prior to the events of ARR. After a terrible accident at sea, Remi was then picked up by a Limsan pirate ship and brought to the marine city-state. Suffering partial amnesia, separated from her brother (who ends up in the Shroud but that's a story for another day), and not even fully aware that their parents are already dead - she drifts around until she becomes entangled with the Scions.
What I loved about Remi's character the most was that my headcanon was slowly beginning to overlap with the characterisation of the WoL in SHB/EW, in particular during the MSQ cutscenes. I remember feeling amazed by how well animated and alive the WoL seemed during the latter part of the SHB cutscenes. The facial expressions where like nothing we've seen before! And with each cutscene the animation was getting better. It fit so well - as she progressed through the story, Remi was beginning to piece together her memories - rediscovering herself, becoming whole again. The roller-coaster of EW that followed took her to places and people she wouldn't dare to forget. It was truly a beautiful journey, full of regret and longing. And at the end there, right after the cutscene in Revenant's Toll, I had a faint feeling that Remi, too, was getting ready to retire.
I loved her so much! How could I even entertain the notion of retiring her? After nearly a month of agonising and listening to a friend who kept encouraging me with something along the lines of "go bun, you'll love it" I finally caved in. Honestly, viera weren't even on my radar at first. They were pretty, for sure, but somehow did not strike me as particularly interesting. Until one night when I sat down to seriously think about what kind of character my WoL would become this time. I didn't want to simply use fantasia and call it a day - I wanted to know their background and purpose first. The result of this mental exertion was Soren, a mild-mannered quiet viera male who smiles mysteriously and laughs under his breath a lot.
He's gone through a few updates as far as the colour scheme goes, but in terms of story he came out pretty solid right off the bat. While the painfully limited viera lore left a lot of room for interpretation, I wanted to give him a lore-appropriate background but also a valid reason to be outside the Skatay Range. I also wanted to incorporate the fact that I myself am no longer a novice player into his backstory. I have about a thousand words written expanding on his background, which I will share another time. Soren came to Aldenard after spending ten years living in seclusion as a Wood-warder. Although it wasn't a decision that he made lightly, he left his birthplace in search of his exiled mother, hoping to fulfil his father's promise to her in his stead. This search eventually leads him to her last known place of residence, the city-state of Limsa Lominsa, where he later learns that she died during the Battle of Carteneau. Now, this is a very brief summary and it may seem like pretty standard fare, but the extended version contains more details, in particular with regards to his parents and their motivations. I'm hoping to expand on his story through a series of short memory recollections. Sort of, him looking back at the journey so far. A chapter on his youth, a chapter of his time spend in solitude, another on his journey to find his mother's whereabouts and several more during the ARR-EW timeline. I'm planning to go through new game+ just to relive those with him as the protagonist.
It's pretty obvious by now who the favourite child is. While I've only known him for about nine months, Soren grew on me so much that I am even considering throwing out all those unwearable hats that are taking up so much space with my retainers. No, I haven't gone mad. Don't look at me like that. This will be the first time I'm sharing anything about my characters outside a small circle of friends. I keep wondering, will I have the courage to share the stories when they are ready? Or will I keep stashing them away into folders with dubious names in some forgotten corner of my hard drive as usual? Would anyone even be interested in reading this? As much as I like to write because I enjoy the process, some vain part of me wants to share the results hoping someone would find them curious or entertaining. So if anyone manages to get through this post, do let me know your thoughts on the matter.
One thing I missed about tumblr is how multipurpose the tags are. External search, internal search, filtering, reactions - all done with tags. You can’t get that anywhere else! Not at the same level anyway.
I’m also very pleased to see people tagging modded content as such. That had always been one of my biggest issues with the bird app - there was virtually no way to separate modded content from the rest. In fact, any manner of filtering was close to impossible.
Sure, you could somewhat edit topics and interests via the “content you see” settings, but all it did was give you an illusion of control. The results were never precise and the algorithm was constantly fiddling with these based on your activity. You liked something that randomly showed up in your timeline? Next thing you know your entire timeline is filled with random crap on topics you never subscribed to simply by association with the account from where that one liked tweet came from. Lack of control over what you see always made me uncomfortable and reluctant to commit to using twitter on a regular basis.
Being back on tumblr feels a bit surreal. I see some things have changed since I’ve been here last, but much has remained the same. I had a photography blog back in the day (well, it still exists, but I haven’t updated it in YEARS). At some point it just became too daunting to manage both a portfolio website and a blog and I didn’t quite like the idea of posting the same things on multiple platforms anyway.
I remember having a love-hate relationship with tumblr. Through it I discovered a world that was much wider than my own - got to interact with all kinds of people, felt inspired and uplifted, and sometimes even needed. But at the same time, being here felt awfully high maintenance! And at the fresh age of 22 I had better things to do - or so I thought at the time. A decade later now (feels like a lifetime). Somewhat ironic too - now that I have far more responsibilities and even less time to spare than I did at 22, I am more inclined to put what little energy I have left at the end of the day into hobbies and silly things.
Whether I stick to it or go back to being a passive lurker - remains to be seen. Being social is anything but easy, despite the convenience of tools and algorithms.
