#selfship: in a land forever strange (zero/lorenza)

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I wanted to put together a quick selfship picture with Zero ^-^

I'm still getting to grips with the intricacies of posing in FFXIV, but I like to think I'm improving bit by bit! Lorenza and Zero may be voidsent, but.. we can still admire each other in the light of Eorzea too~

(comments/reblogs are appreciated, but never required!)

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This is such a lovely concept for an ask game! May I please request a flower for Zero?

Born during the Contramemoria war, Zero grew up harbouring Darkness in her veins, and was eventually near-fully corrupted into a voidsent during the Flood of Darkness that destroyed her home world (the Thirteenth) ten thousand years ago. With her original form, appearing human but still half-voidsent, restored to her by a Crystal of Light, she accompanies the party for the post-Endwalker storyline, tentatively experiencing humanity again after so long spent only knowing a ruined world without trust.

💐Flower Reblog Game💐

Hiiii this is my first time doing this type of game so please be patient with me!! ^^ Divider by saradika-graphics

For this reblog game, please provide a picture of your s/i or f/o I'll assign them a flower! A description of them, short or long doesn't matter, would be greatly appreciated but not required!

For example, I assign my f/o Dimitri the flower.... Forget-Me-Nots!

Proshippers DNI

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Lorenza has SIX DIFFERENT SELFSHIPS how have I managed this

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"Darkness is love. There's nothing to fear."

Hello! My name is Void, or Astral; friends can also call me Aria. I'm a sapphic ace selfshipper who uses she/her(?) pronouns. This is my selfship blog! ^-^

I selfship in a lot of different game series, from Pokémon to Final Fantasy to Xenoblade Chronicles to Kingdom Hearts (and more!). I'd love to get to know more people who selfship in things I know and love!~

For more information, please feel free to check out my carrd, or send an ask if there's anything more specific you'd like to know. I'm happy to answer any questions!

Thank you kindly for reading this, and I wish you a wonderful day! ^-^

(reblogs are okay and appreciated, but never required!)

[flowering-darkness]

I made it back I made it home I made it back to her

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I once again have done nothing today (so far), but it’s because I got distracted by finally trying to get Zero’s broken scythe model out of the game files and turning it into a black mage weapon

AND I MANAGED IT!!!

I’ve wanted to try and do this for so so long (because Lorenza canonically wields Zero’s scythe as a black mage staff after the blade gets broken and Zero uses a sword again), and I actually got it working without needing to dive into Blender or anything!! So I’m very proud of myself for being able to pull this off given my lack of experience!~

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How Lorenza feels about food

This is one of four rambles to answer things I was asked by a friend of mine (hi Sea if you see this). I thought it made sense to also put them here, so.. here it is!

Lorenza has a very limited range of food that she actually enjoys as food. She likes the concept of eating food like humans would (like she used to as a human before the Flood of Darkness), but in practice, the range of things she actually eats in this way is extremely small. This is because she can’t eat something if she doesn’t like it, and she doesn’t like most things, either because of the taste or the texture not being something she can tolerate. It’s just how she is.

Thankfully, she has a way around this by just directly taking the aether from food she is given, and this is a useful way for her to get around those constraints (since, while some voidsent do use the term “taste” to describe the quality of aether they consume, it isn’t quite the same thing, and as such Lorenza is able to tolerate a wider range of aether’s tastes). However, the process of doing this basically just decays the food as it’s there in front of her, which isn’t exactly viable or polite to do in most others’ company!

Potions, however - or even just liquid aether in potion bottles - form a good middle ground; they’re a normal enough thing to be drinking, especially since she’s a mage, so no-one would think anything odd about her for always having loads on her (and the other Scions including the light party are very caster-heavy anyway, so someone’s always got some). And they usually contain aether in a usefully concentrated form for her to consume whenever she needs to, without having to deal with the same texture issues food might bring (and often without taste issues too, especially if it is just a potion bottle filled with aether instead of an actual potion). Also, since Brynblyss is an apothecary - and therefore very used to potion-making - he’s able to help her figure out the best ways for her to get what she needs once he gets closer to her as a person. So, overall, her reactions and dynamics regarding food and eating can be accommodated well in the end!

(Her Heavensward outfit is the ramie coat of casting because not only does it look very warm, but it also has little potion bottles hanging from the belt, which I can definitely envision as something she carries on her to access readily. Especially since that’s still quite early on in the story, and also a point in the story where it’s important not to do anything that would bring suspicion or dissent to her or the others given how fractured the Scions are. Like trying to "eat" normal food by rotting it to extract its aether directly.)

To contrast this with a later example of food: Lorenza would not be able to eat Zero’s curry, to the point that even the smell of it is too overpowering to her, especially from how much actually gets made in the game ;w; she's a bit bewildered that Zero would choose such a thing, just like a “how.. are you enjoying this..” sort of weariness that's judging-but-not-actually-judging.

She actually puts this vast difference in preference down to the light that still remains within Zero, especially after her form is restored by Hydaelyn’s crystal. Because Light is umbral, and Zero also retains more balance/humanity than most regular voidsent due to the circumstances of her birth, Zero is more of an “umbral-aligned voidsent” by comparison to Lorenza, who is very much an “astral-aligned voidsent” (as are most other voidsent, because Darkness is astral). And one way in which that manifests is that Lorenza can better handle plainer/blander/“more static” food, whereas Zero better enjoys spicy/flavourful/“more active” food.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this! If anyone has any questions or comments, feel free to let me know~

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How Lorenza feels about sunlight

This is one of the long rambles I wrote to answer some things I was asked by a friend (hi Sea if you see this) about Lorenza, my FFXIV self-insert. I hope that it's alright to put here!

The whole thing tells a story, but it’s sorted by expansion, in case anyone wants to avoid any later-game spoilers.

A Realm Reborn

When she first comes to the Source, Lorenza is absolutely not used to how much light is present in it. She's had ten thousand years to adapt to the darkness of the Thirteenth, so to be back in a world that actually sees the sun and the day.. Well, it's enough to give her a migraine. Constantly. Which she despises for how debilitating that is to her. It's so bright in daylight, by comparison to what she's used to, that she can actually still see quite clearly with her eyes bound underneath a blindfold - which is what she ends up doing, in conjunction with wearing her robe's hood up, for the sake of not being overwhelmed by it all. On the rare occasions where she isn't wearing it, her eyes appear pitch-black to others; letting light into them directly makes them coat themselves in Darkness as a mitigation tactic. And is also quite painful, which is another reason she keeps them covered.

Heavensward

As time passes, and Lorenza spends more time living on the Source, she does however adjust to the light levels present there. She still keeps her new hood tightly pulled over her face as the party enter Ishgard, for the sun's glare off the Coerthan snow can get blinding even to non-voidsent, but there isn't a blindfold underneath it anymore. It also helps keep out the cold, which isn't something she enjoys. Alphinaud and Tataru, and maybe also Tsutsuji, are short enough to see underneath it that her eyes are now a tentative pale lilac, and she does explain that they're naturally purple. (During this time, Lorenza has also realised that keeping her face - "her" face - hidden as she does is also advantageous for ways other than lessening light overload. It keeps her at something of a distance from those around her, allows her to see more of others than they do of her, and so on and so forth. Tataru respects this while creating the new custom-made outfit for her post-Heavensward, which is why the hood doesn't change between the two outfits.)

Stormblood

When the party arrive in Kugane, Lorenza realises that her outfit now stands out. It suits her, but she stands out. So, when Tsutsuji drags everyone round on a shopping trip, she purchases a new set of clothes for herself to support a local Hingan business and blend in a little bit more. She also starts wearing just a blindfold by itself, just to minimise the risk of things getting as bad as they were at the start if she went directly into prolonged sunlight exposure. She does get more accustomed to lifting it in darker conditions when around the other three, though - they can see then that her eyes are a slightly stronger purple by this time than they were in Ishgard. Tataru described the colour as “soft like mallow flowers” back when she was taking Lorenza’s measurements.

By the time that both Doma and Ala Mhigo have been liberated, and the tale of Asahi and Tsuyu has reached its conclusion, Lorenza probably doesn’t need to keep covering her eyes anymore. She might get migraines if she didn’t take precautions when it was particularly bright, but she probably didn’t need them under most ordinary conditions. Even so, she was hesitant to change this, because again - as discussed above - the precautions she had to take to mitigate brightness initially had also become a way of setting her apart from others. And a part of her liked that. She wasn’t even from the same world as them, after all, nor was she human anymore.

Shadowbringers

Unfortunately, Lorenza’s arrival on the First sets her back to before square one.

She is agonisingly pained by the Light that burns the sky there, and gets a migraine almost instantly just from how it shines overhead out in the open. After a sin eater’s approach outside the gates then causes her to scream and collapse from the pain, the Crystarium (at Clio’s insistence) provide her with a set of robes enchanted to absorb and diffuse the light from around her, allowing her to be shielded from its overwhelming presence there. Even still, she still has to wear a full-face mask to block it out to a point where she’s comfortable; only in regions where the night sky has returned, and only while it is present, can she remove this without being overwhelmed again. Her eyes and wings alike are bleached by the Light, rendering them a near-colourless silver - for as a voidsent, her very form is antithetical to Light and those it has corrupted into sin eaters. It is, overall, not a fun time for her.

After the slaying of Vauthry, the corruption and recovery of Tsutsuji, and the subsequent destruction of Hades, Light’s hold over the First starts to recede, and Lorenza can tolerate it a bit more comfortably again. However, the bleaching effect still persists; only by her enshrouding of Clio at the Seat of Sacrifice does she truly regain her old strength and light tolerance, and her eyes become a more restored and saturated purple to signify this. (And possibly take on a slightly cooler tone than they had before, which would make them more similar to Clio’s..)

Endwalker (and beyond)

From there, as she returns to the Source with the others - and thus into the story of Endwalker - she does so with a much more classical mage’s hat on her head, enough to shade her sight without needing to obscure it anymore. This remains true regardless of location, for the most part - even coming face to face with Hydaelyn’s Light isn’t enough to set her off like it would have done earlier on, and she can fight alongside her friends without issue even in spite of their skills (and her own spells!) becoming even more powerful in turn. However, when the Scions reach the edge of the universe in the Ragnarok, and the Meteia take Lorenza away, the sheer power of their dynamis - and Lorenza’s own natural susceptibility to said dynamis, for several reasons - does cause her sight to darken as she’s corrupted and what remains of her vessel is eroded away. Thankfully, Clio and the others are able to save her, and save Meteion, and so.. when Zenos is finally slain and Lorenza is able to share a moment together with her love - even twisted as she had been by being turned into his avatar - she can look up at her with her natural dark purple eye colour.

Upon returning to Eorzea, Lorenza’s immediate objective becomes finding a way to return home, and she manages it once the voidgate is found in Alzadaal’s Legacy. Yet even in spite of all she has been through - all the adaptations she has attained - when she finally returns to her home of the Thirteenth, the darkness of its Darkness is no less familiar to her, in the end. She needs not have lost to have gained, after all! Upon then returning home to her and Zero’s domain, she takes up a tarnished crown to wear - for she is strong enough to be a princess of the void, if only she cared to rule in such a way. This leaves her eyes, for the first time, completely uncovered - and yet she is no worse off for it.

In the end, Lorenza is still not completely fond of sunlight - she was never going to be, being a voidsent. But by the time the story reaches its current point, she has certainly experienced enough of it to function perfectly well within it, and has gained an appreciation for its warmth as well. While she does still retain some sensitivity to it, it isn’t anything outside the range of what some ordinary humans might experience - and she is more than able to recognise when things might be too much and take steps to mitigate accordingly.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, if you have done so! If you have any questions or comments, then I'm more than happy to answer or elaborate further~

[flowering-darkness]

Update on this!

It still puts my self-insert in the centre now that it’s showing my Zero/Lorenza screenshot!!

I really don’t know how Tumblr decides which part of the image to centre the preview on, but the fact this trend keeps persisting is intriguing if baffling to me .w.

I find it really interesting that, on the post preview thing at the top of my blog (on mobile), it keeps the Cylva/Lorenza render mostly centred since you can see Cylva’s shadow near the middle (and it’s right in the middle of the actual image). But for my most recent render of Clio and Aria, it’s very clearly put Aria in the centre of the preview, despite the fact that’s she’s very off to the side in the actual image because I specifically posed it so Clio was right in the middle of the image

so like, what even determines that???