#loreposts

[bluberryffxiv]

lalafell gender dynamics: mages or merchants

crossposting a thread from bluesky i made a little bit ago bc i think i should start doing that more. but lets talk about lalafell gender dynamics based on a wizard ↔ merchant scale that is about learned skill as much as societal disposition. its not something explicitly named like that but its very common expectation in lalafellin families that children will grow up to either become mages or merchants, regardless of birth gender. its more apparent among dunesfolk but still observable with plainsfolk

the terms used arent actually defined as their modern conventions imply. being a wizard just means one focused more on honing ones skills, they dont have to be magical in nature. and being a merchant means having a penchant for socializing well, not actually selling things. and these arent hard definitions either. you can be an extroverted wizard, or an artisanal merchant. but it is considered something of a social faux pas to not fit either category at all, and those who dont often get pressured to try otherwise. bonana is a merchant. sasabe is a wizard. thanks for coming to my ted talk

more thoughts on this: part of why this isnt explicitly named is because the terms used are a modern understanding of an ancient system that can be traced to distant southern seas history. a loose translation of the historical terms would be "one who leads" and "one who is lead". also i should be clear most of this im kinda bullshitting but not really because i Do think a lot about how lalafell are commonly defined as merchants or being really good with magic, as well as them being incredibly social and open to intermingling with other societies. gender dynamics are really just about power, and defining who owns it. so for a race where men and women physically arent very different, obviously they would define power differently. and my answer is to them everything is about social connections, either through charisma or brute force. of course lalas are often still subject to regular gender dynamics too, especially in areas of higher racial diversity. so you do end up with muddied expectations of like, i want my kid to be a mage but shes a girl so itd probably be easier for her to marry one instead and inherit his power. also its very common for "wizard" to be seen as feminine and "merchant" is masculine

[what-manner-of-beaft-poll]

Lorepost: Early Cambrian

You are a Protostome in the early Cambrian. Things have been changing rapidly in your environment. There has just been a mass-extinction event, of which you are one of the lucky few survivors. scientists are unsure of the exact cause or causes but the extinction did come after a long period of global glaciation, ending several million years prior, which could have had an effect.

The rapidly changing times demand your rapid evolution. The three cell-layers your ancestors had (like Kimberella from the previous poll) will no longer suffice. You need more complicated tissues with more complicated functions. Animals from other lineages are more suited to filter-feeding (like the suck tubes) and suspension hunting in the water column (like the murder assholes). Another lineage of note has bilateral symmetry and three tissue layers like you do, but is differentiated mainly by a softer body exterior but with a rod of harder tissue inside its body, protecting its nervous system. That and the fact that their embryos form their butt-hole before forming their mouth-hole. Disgusting. These "Butt-First Soft Speedsters" are probably irrelevant anyways. They may be faster and more mobile, but you brought protection. That protection may not be armor in the strictest sense but it does still protect you and enable you to form more complex internal organs.

Speaking of which, how would you like your protection? as you see it there are two options:

Carry it all with you, all the time, and only grow in one direction, or

when it comes time for you to grow bigger, ditch it and grow a new one.

The first option, we will call....

"Uzumaki", by Junji Ito

So called because your embryos develop in a spiral pattern, like in this diagram:

Not all of them even have "armor" so to speak. some of them ditch the idea of having a thick protective layer pretty quickly in favor of swimming in the open ocean because they were so jealous of the Butt-First Soft Speedsters. They looked a bit like this:

The ones that keep their armor generally wear it as a funny little hat or a backpack. this means that it can only cover part of their body, and they add to it as they grow. they kind of looked like this:

This may look like a snail but it's not, i promise you. Snails are a lot more complicated.

The second option is....

"Fuck this shit," *peels off my own skin*

This one is hopefully more self-explanatory. The drawback of this strategy being that you can only grow in bursts, it takes more energy to constantly make new skin which is generally weaker than permanent armor and when you grow you're vulnerable. The benefit is that you don't get heavier as you age and are generally more mobile and flexible. One big thing to note is that these all have some sort of hard mouth part for biting. Kind of like teeth. Some of them live their lives digging in the dirt like this ugly son of a gun:

.... yeugh....

While others specialized in swimming around in the water column once again, probably because all the cool kids were doing it and they wanted to feel included. These guys were usually WAY smaller than the other ones doing it.

Sometimes almost microscopic. Finally, Some of the skin-yeeters decided they wanted legs for walking on the sea-floor. Some of them also had spikes.

some of the art is really spooky looking but i think these guys look kinda cute in this one

[askferalshiloh]

A series of voice messages, found on a lost phone.

"You haven't been on campus for a while. Your bed is still made from the morning you left, before breakfast. I remember seeing you make it, and how particular you are about it."

"It's weird, how that sticks out to me so much. It's such a normal thing for you to do, that it never crossed my mind that it could be the last time I saw you do that."

"We went to the cafeteria to eat breakfast. But you left early. You said you were going to your classes, and we parted ways. I didn't see you at lunch, but maybe you were busy."

"We had fourth period together that day. You never showed up, which was weird. Then, at dinner, nothing. By the end of the day, I was talking to the school security guards about it."

"You haven't texted anyone at all. Not even me. It's been a month, and they're starting to think they need to find a body instead of a runaway. This isn't like you to do, please, please just call someone."

"It's been terrifying, since you left... I don't know what's wrong with me. I've been seeing shadows out of the corners of my eyes, I can't sleep, I can't think anything at all. Lately, I feel like someone's been sneaking into our room and just staring at me... My skin feels so itchy. I'm scared."

(sent a week after previous) "It's getting worse. My skin has bugs in it. I've been prying them out by hand. They keep disappearing."

"Did you know they tried to take your sheets. Your sheets. Your sheets your sheets. I've kept everything of yours safe."

"No one ever goes in the school basement. No one ever travelled the tunnels underneath. I'll keep them from getting musty, I promise. Just please come back."

"Please, please come back. I know you have to be out there. Please. Please. Please. Pl-"

The last message cut off abruptly, as the phone completely shut off after that message, despite its connection to a charger. Any subsequent attempts to retrieve data failed.

[frutavel]

Mistveil people on my mind today: goblins

The goblins are small, extremely resourceful creatures. The bulk of their population is concentrated around tropical forests, but there's goblins everywhere in the Mist, from the coldest mountains to the hottest deserts and all places in between. They can survive pretty much anywhere.

Goblins are said to have little self preservation instinct, with good reason - they heal fast and are one of the hardiest life forms in all of the Mistveil. One folk tale told around goblin villages is of a goblin adventurer who was caught in the jaws of dragon and dropped from a great height into a forest - as the legend goes, the warrior not only made it back home with no issue, but also caught a rabbit along the way.

Whether that story is true or not, one thing is known for sure - goblins are extremely durable. They can afford to be careless.

This durability leads towards goblins taking risks and chances other races would not. Goblin society is generally structured around trial and error, with the overarching culture encouraging exploration and curiosity.

They come in a wide variety of skin colors, ranging mostly from blues, greens and yellows. They have a high ratio of bioluminescent spots accross their bodies, but the light they emit isn't very bright - that combined with their small size makes for a relatively low light emition. They compensate for this by filling their cities and villages with lights, as is already common for all peoples of the Mist, and by also wearing small lanterns and lights on their bodies, as well as glowing paints and dyes on their skins and hairs.

They also have tails and sharp claws on both hands and feet. They can quickly climb vertical slopes, which makes it very useful for general foraging and exploring.

Though goblins are well spread and many goblins live in non-goblins cities, the same can't be said for other races living in goblin cities - this isn't due to any prejudices however, but simply logistics- many of the greay goblin cities are built underground, made of wide tunnels which reach far down into the earth. Most other peoples of the Mist are simply too big to fit in the tunnels, or aren't built for life below ground.

It's believed that the first goblins started building below ground to avoid the dangers abovr - nowadays, the goblins of the Mistveil have no reason to fear the surface, and so, they don't:

They cherish it.

[bluberryffxiv]

Sorry for the intrusion but your character Bonana has like the Best, absolutely gorgeous character design I've ever seen on a Lalafell what inspired you to make Bonana ? Is there like a Movie or a song that inspired you in the creation of Bonana ?

holy shit anon im so flattered 😭 thank you for enjoying my guy, and im sorry for incoming text wall

theres not really a single source of inspiration for the way he looks but that does remind me i forgot to share this board i made on here which is kind of a mix of personality, appearance, story beats and general themes (and this isnt even the end of them either). basically i take pieces from the things i like or get into and tack them onto his fivehead

and then another aspect of it is to me my wols are living characters, they tend to grow and change in real time because i change them based on the games updates, and obv bonana changes the most since i play him the most. he looks very different from when i first made him! he even had a completely different face, cause when i started playing i didnt have anything going for him except "butch lalafell", and then as i went through msq i landed on him dressing pirate-esque (he is not formally a pirate to be clear) and his blue/red/gold color scheme came together from this specific outfit:

and as i said he has changed a lot over the course of msq due to experiencing the horrors and i really could write an entire deep dive on each look but i will spare you that in this post. i Will say though, his current appearance is taking very heavily from characters like homura, raven, ENA, and howl, as a way of indicating hes fallen pretty hard mentally since the end of endwalker for various reasons.

[bluberryffxiv]

the big 7.2 post

aka bonana fucking dies

lets talk about that one scene in msq

(this is gonna get long and rambly)

ill be honest i thought the zap scene was a bit silly in having the wol just...brush it off and looked annoyed. like i get were powerful but that was plain cartoonish. so i decided bonana doesnt get to walk it off. and the reason why is because since shadowbringers hes had a big aetheric weakpoint on his back due to overuse of the dark arts on the first, and i imagine having it blasted with lightning cant feel good.

so basically when he gets struck it looks pretty fatal. but then after a second....he gets up, and seems fine. and then he goes through the rest of the patch like nothings wrong, though the others do notice after that point he stops talking and seems very stern. similar to how he was in shadowbringers, so it wasnt something out of the ordinary to question. but then after everything was said and done, as everyone was parting ways he collapsed and went completely unresponsive. as they looked through his things they discovered his dark knight crystal had been active, and assumed that after the strike he'd been staying concious under some kind of extended living dead spell.

but thats not the whole story. what actually happens in the moment is a desire. a wish to live. a wish granted, thanks to his dynamis-laden pendant. his soul is displaced from his body into it to weather the blow, and after its over hes able to get up. but when he does he sees his body, moving separate from himself. and it seems like no one can see or hear him, they only acknowledge his silent body. suddenly hes in a scenario very similar to ardbert, except theres no one else for him.

thankfully he still held some sway over what his body did, and could command it through battle, as awkward as it felt. but it was a very shaky control, and by the end of the patch it completely snapped and his body fell comatose. needless to say things got very weird for him as everyone rushed to aid him and figure out what happened, while he himself is left all alone to mull over the days events. watching as if a complete stranger while they whisk his body back to tuliyollal (bc obviously sol9 didnt feel safe).

the next few days after that felt surreal as he watched his dearest friends fret over him like he was dying. o'ranje seemed to take it especially hard, because she'd already been going through it in dawntrail (but thats another post). one night he catches her sneaking in, where she confesses how much she loathes the circumstances theyre in. how much she wishes she didnt have to worry so much for him. that bonana didnt feel like he had to carry the weight of the world still, that they all could just live a simple life away from everyone. but she knows its unlikely to happen, given the kind of person he is (and what he is). keep in mind the context of shadowbringers where they spent 4 yrs building a relationship before she had to watch him throw himself in the fire for the exarchs little quest, then watch him utterly fail to absorb the love she felt for him during endwalker until the final hour

and ill continue this with a part 2 later im feeling it👍

[bluberryffxiv]

i always worry about things being too confusing when i talk abt bonanas system stuff so i made a little chart that maybe helps. some notes:

anemone isnt a literal kid, its just that the first memories they recovered were from their childhood and it influenced the way they act.

i didnt have room but bonana in the present isnt the same as the above. hes actually nemona, having accepted the personality being a part of him as a multifaceted person and merged with him (this doesnt mean hes magically cured though)

[bluberryffxiv]

today i bring you all the gift of lore in the form of encyclopedia eorzea entries, made using the generator that was going around on twitter