#stellarfatalism

[morocosmos]

📓

Put "📓" or some other version of a book emoji into my inbox and I'll explain the plot of a fanfiction that I haven't written but daydream about.

I had a specific fic in mind when i reblogged the prompt post, this ask gets that one. under a readmore because it's MSQ spoilers (SHB onwards) all the way

I think this might be my most ambitious fic idea to date? it involves g'raha, and to some undecided degree of relevance, deryk. i don't think i've talked much here about the messy, rocky, patched up thing that exists between moro'a and g'raha, so for quick context: there were signs of mutual attraction during the CT quests, which g'raha took with him when he went to sleep in the tower; on the first, the exarch yearned™️ while moro'a felt something that could perhaps have gone further, except! it all fell apart when g'raha returned to the source, for reasons that boil down to desiring a version of each other that didn't really exist. there was a fight, regrettable things were said, and what followed after was an awkward arm's length throughout most of ENW, then a tentative armistice after ultima thule.

This fic was supposed to explore g'raha's feelings after moro'a and leofard got together just before leaving for tural. he's full of FOMO and so jealous of leo that he could hurl, and winds up leaving old sharlayan shortly after, using baldesion work a an excuse to self-isolate. at some point he runs into deryk, who's having a harder time being mortal than he'd expected, and the two become traveling companions for a time.

He wrestles with some truly difficult and ugly emotions, and he and deryk supposedly work through some of their unresolved feelings together, juxtaposed with reflections on faith, idolism, love, and personhood. i don't quite remember how the idea first sprung up when it did, somewhere between the end of 2024 and the early months of 2025, but i do clearly remember that it was spurred on by the deep, hurt envy i was feeling at the time about various things. and maybe injecting those feelings into g'raha was a convoluted way of processing them, through the lens of a character i've struggled to make peace with, years after the whiplash that patch 5.3 gave me.

It's a charged and deeply personal story, and idk if i have it in me to write it since i wound up working through my feelings outside of it lol. but it's still an interesting idea nonetheless.

[hoppips]

1 & 17 for Avrant but like. flop era because he enchants me. if I may.

thank you for letting me talking about my strange guy. i love mr flop

What was the original thought that led to the creation of this character?

i wish i was joking but it's because i couldn't think of a sage glam so i ended up slapping the pince nez on something and then my friend said he looked like an ace attorney witness named Mal Praktiss LMAO so i started thinking about an au where he ended up taking the alchemy thing potentially too far and somehow... flop era was born.....

17. Are there any motifs or symbols associated with the character? How are they represented, in their design, personality or in some other way?

oh!! yes i have a few for him :)

there's of course his pince nez shkdfj they take the place of the mask an ascian would normally wear, serving the same purpose of obscuring his eyes but doing so in a way that marks him as apart from the rest of the ancients. i like to think in true anime fashion they get completely opaque when hes hiding something (whether its from others or himself). or when he makes a particularly bad joke (he is unfortunately partial to awful puns)

and then as part of his "contract", i guess you could say, with hydaelyn he serves as a kind of psychopomp/reaper figure and was tasked with intervening in any threats to the cycle of life/death/rebirth. so i like to interpret the azem symbol as an ouroboros for him, which is why he has the snake earring. well that and since he has all of his ancient's memories, there's more than a bit of lingering grief over his relationship with elidibus so the snake is also a bit of a homage to ophiuchus.

and then finally, regardless of timeline, his azem orpheus has always had a connection with birds (she was responsible for making the concepts for a lot of songbirds and corvids primarily). i tried to lean into that by giving mr flop a connection to the starbird. like meteion his colour scheme goes from black/grey --> blue/white when hes released from his duty and makes the choice to Live. after ultima thule, all his outfits include feathers Somewhere. usually the pagos circlet dyed blue or gold, zero's hat, or those eden/lapis manalis earrings that have the feather on one side.

[helio-tropy]

icon comms from the last round! i don't usually post these on here (you can find em over on my twitter) but i'm really proud of how this round turned out

(tags for who i'm aware of on here: @hythlodaeus-mynewoldfriend, @stellarfatalism, @ofthetorch)

[morocosmos]

Moro'a - 8

Moro - 17

8. What is the origin of their personality? And let's be honest - how much of it is projecting?

Oooohh so moro'a's very first personality was almost a carbon copy of my da:o warden and another original oc, i.e. a grumpy healer lmao. but not long after i reached HW and started fleshing him out properly i wanted to change that, i'm not really sure why except that this was when his personality became heavily influenced by OG healer obsession cho hakkai; he became much more mild-mannered and polite, with his darker qualities buried beneath that surface (most of the time) rather than at the forefront. everything after that has been tweaks and adjustments, or inspirations that only became clearer in hindsight like ashitaka and yuuri katsuki

As for the projecting, uh. initially i was adamant about pushing for certain qualities of his to be very different from me, purely as a product of it being wish fulfillment (which is honestly a kind of projecting in its own way) or because it was funny. over time though adding things to his story purely so i could explore the stuff i wanted has made him a lot more like me than i intended lol. the religious trauma, especially

17. Are there any motifs or symbols associated with the character? How are they represented, in their design, personality or in some other way?

The sea was an early motif i picked for moro, i think this came about from an old (and retconned in just about every way) fic i wrote about moro'a in terncliff, and the ocean view there reminding him of her. it's loose, but there's something there about distant horizons and the unknown that works for her. but of late i've been focusing a lot more on her daggers and her roguish personality/aesthetic. she might also wind up being more sun/fire-coded, after my latest gpose for miqomarch

[morocosmos]

Leofard 👀

Send me a character and I'll answer these!!

1: sexuality headcanon

Honestly, i haven't settled on this yet. if i had to give an answer right now i would say pansexual, but the ftm leofard myste headcanon rabbit hole goes deep, and there are implications to that which i haven't thoroughly worked out the details of, like how he navigates casual sex and relationships in tandem with the sort of reputation he carries. please look forward to it.

2: otp

Leofard x a certain blue catboy...i am not biased at all...if we're talking about NPC/NPC though, none at the moment. aymeric/leofard is fun to explore, albeit within a pretty limited sandbox.

3: brotp

Stacia...when i found out about how he offered her a new life in a way that essentially amounted to "hey. would you like to sail away with me and leave this shithole" (and doesn't that sound so much like what raimille offered to him when he was still a street urchin. what if i felt sick). and then they spent a decade adventuring together before establishing the redbills. i think they fight often and frustrate each other a lot, but they'd also cut off a limb before letting the other die.

4: notp

Lmfao, also stacia. i have this tentative headcanon that they both considered it at some point into their adventuring, when they were still in the process of growing close and figuring each other out, and things built into a kiss...which put them off instantly because it was so weird.

5: first headcanon that pops into my head

I don't think he and stacia settled on the idea of establishing their base of operations in the sea of clouds right away. they would've travelled to other parts of eorzea during their adventures, maybe even further, and i can see leofard wanting to put as much distance between himself and ishgard for several of those years for many reasons, especially raimille's passing and her final wish for him. so it isn't until he's much older that he considers going back.

6: favorite line from this character

"The nerve of some people, eh? Makes me mouth water…" they were crazy for this by the way. who wrote this so i can send them a letter of thanks and maybe also a choice box of chocolates.

7: one way in which I relate to this character

We're both big fans of zero effort haircuts that go too far into our eyes <3

8: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character

He needs to eat his fucking vegetables

9: cinnamon roll or problematic fave?

Problematic fave, and personally to a degree that wider fandom might not deem acceptable <3

[morocosmos]

Actually fuck it. Also sends you Hien.

Send me a character and I'll answer these!!

1: sexuality headcanon

He is bisexual to me...after reading the chronicles of light side story i'm now convinced that both he and cirina knew that things could have gone further between them if he'd chosen to stay with the mol, but they also knew it would require sacrificing who he was now and that his love for doma would ultimately win out either way (whether in staying the course or abandoning it and having to spend the next several years grieving). and even this is something he'll carry a tiny piece of what if? in his chest for the rest of his life ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

2: otp

Hien x a fandom that treats characters of colour with the same grace and capacity for nuance and flaws that they do for every white antagonist in this game LOL

But also bram/hien forever. uwu

3: brotp

We get to see a lot of yugiri's perspective about hien and their warriors' bond, and i do wish we got to see more of what hien thinks of her too, because if someone chose to follow me and share my life's mission knowing that it would mean being cast out of her homeland for life?? i am shaking the two of them in a jar.

4: notp

This isn't said with any real ire or hatred, but i am very glad that canon has never implied any romantic feelings between hien and yugiri, and i hope that day never comes.

5: first headcanon that pops into my head

Something about hien makes me think he's less of a natural leader and more of a natural "will dedicate himself to the Cause in the way that he deems he can fulfill best given the circumstances". if hien and yugiri's roles had been reversed, i think they would've winded up making very similar choices.

6: favorite line from this character

I wish i had something more poignant on hand but. the line that's stuck with me the most since my first playthrough of STB was when you're looking for the lost karakul lambs in 'For Love of the Moon' 😭:

Where are you, little ones? Your mother is waiting! It is time to come home!

What the hell man. the gap moe.

7: one way in which I relate to this character

I don't knoaw...at a stretch, the way we both get along well with kids? they seem to hint at that in The Burden of Duty.

8: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character

Nothing i can think of rn, only the very first hand embarrassment over how i used to hate on him to an unreasonable extent like a lot of people still do 💀

9: cinnamon roll or problematic fave?

Problematic fave who isn't as problematic as the haters want to believe.

[galadae]

wait hi sorry for the random ask but I just saw the header of your blog with all your wolkids and they're so fucking cute and look just like both of them aaaaaaaaa how wonderful ; ;

omg thank you T.T i've had so much fun coming up with which aspects of each parent they share🥺i need to start posting about them more!

[morocosmos]

11, 22, 27!

Not me seeing this when you sent it and then forgetting to answer it for weeks AAAAAAA

more fic writer asks

11. a WIP you’d like to finish someday

I think you know all about my big ones already haha, like island fic and what used to be HW longfic, which will probably be split into multiple smaller fics. so here's another one — i have a bluebird wip that was meant to be written for last year's rarepair week that didn't go much of anywhere, but i liked it enough to hold onto it. it's supposed to be a collection of snippets from leo's pov as he's slowly falling for moro'a and it makes me want to shake him but also hold him very gently T-T

I suddenly remembered that ellipsus now has a reader view so here it is

22. do you ever worry about public reaction to what you’re writing? how do you get past that?

Only all the time i wish i wasn't so worried about what others think of my writing. the environment i was raised in was terrible for this, absolutely dogshit wombo combo of judgmental opinions re: what was good/bad art, negative reinforcement for failure and inconsistent praise when there was success, all of which encouraged me to hide the stuff i made from public view, so it's difficult to appreciate my creative work in of itself

I've felt better about sharing my writing and other things like gposes on bsky since i downloaded an extension to hide metrics on posts (zen twitter/bluesky on firefox), and i've been trying to focus on having conversations about my writing where i can. reading and responding to comments/replies/discussion has probably been the singular most helpful thing for me so far because i get to share my thoughts and connect with other people in relative safety, and it gets me out of the constant judgment i direct towards my writing in my head somewhat, even if it doesn't solve the problem of looking to others for validation. the beatings will continue until morale improves i guess

27. your favorite part of the writing process

Weaving plot and character together with the setting, something like that? i love researching ffxiv lore and finding things i can use as plot elements, or to strengthen a scene by grounding it within the world, and i love seeing others do the same with their writing. when there's a synergy between all of those things it feels like magic.

Tyyyyyy <3