#char: l'yara nulah

[magefeathers]

Micro Story prompt #2 "this was a mistake", please and thank-you (and best wishes getting back into writing, fellow Miqo 😺!)

Anxiety tainted Tataru's voice as she spoke, "I do believe this was a mistake."

"I've certainly made worse mistakes," Thancred replied, his shoulders bouncing with silent laughter. "Besides, look at her! She loves it." He gestured with one hand to the large, newly built, tiered shelves that jutted out from one wall of the Rising Stones. Upon the topmost shelf laid one L'yara Nulah, fast asleep, one leg dangling over the side of the shelf along with her tail.

"And what, pray tell, are we going to do if the Warrior of Light falls to her death because she rolled over in her sleep and fell off her perch?!" Tataru demanded, stomping her feet.

Thancred planted his hands on his hips, his features settling into a more serious countenance as he inspected the shelved wall. After a long moment, he answered, "I doubt a fall from that height would kill her. Besides, don't cats always land on their feet?" He turned to Tataru with the beginnings of a smirk upon his lips, only for it to drop as soon as he saw her glowering at him.

"B-but mayhap we should lay out some sort of padding underneath her, just in case," he amended.

-

Thank you for the ask! I hope you enjoy Miqo-Cat comparisons as much as I do <3

Send me a number (and one of my OCs!) and I'll write a micro story using the word or phrase!

[magefeathers]

I’d love to hear about💥 (collision) and 💗(racing heart) for your four OCs!!

Absolutely!! Thank you for the ask!

💥 COLLISON - what emotions do they have trouble dealing with?

Shockingly, from his demeanor, Einar has trouble letting himself be happy. They've always thought of happiness as something that is Out There, Somewhere, and has trouble accepting it and welcoming it when it finds them.

Domitien really struggles with feelings of guilt and failure. It's that healer complex - any time something happens to someone he feels it's his fault somehow, or as if he could have prevented or fixed it if only he were there. If he was there, and couldn't prevent or fix something, the guilt is even worse, and he doesn't quite know what to do with it all.

L'yara has trouble with sadness, and grieving in particular. She learned very young that the world doesn't stop turning just because your world is crashing down, even if you very much need it to. No one wants to hear the cries of an orphaned street rat; no one cares. She learned to stuff her sadness down and keep on truckin', because for a long time, that was all she could do.

Khorchi is a complicated one because she's very repressed lmao. She basically only knows how to channel her emotions through anger, so she has trouble with both happiness and sadness as well, but it manifests differently from Einar or L'yara. She has a more conscious happiness block than Einar, a running internal monologue of, "I don't deserve to be happy yet because I haven't proven myself yet," and while L'yara shuts down to avoid letting herself feel sadness, Khorchi's sadness manifests as anger, frustration, fury - without her even actively realizing that sadness is what she's actually feeling.

💗 GROWING HEART - if they have a crush, is it noticable? what changes when they're in love? (this is the emoji you sent but I'm worried you might have meant the beating heart one "what gets their heart racing" so if I answered the wrong one let me know ;; )

Oh boy. Einar is uh, let's call them easy, so they make no secret of when they wanna be with someone. But they don't really get any crushes until much later in life. He actually goes through learning how to deal with his first crush during ARR and it is very noticeable (there is a lot of trial and error, grand romantic gestures that are not appreciated, flirting that is shut down, etc) but eventually he basically learns to just. be himself. and stop putting on such a show trying to impress the person. And honestly I would call that what changed when they're in love - they feel confident and comfortable enough to show the other person their whole self.

L'yara also sleeps around a bit lol but when she actually has a crush on/feelings for someone she kinda shuts down about it (shocker). The environment that she grew up in, there was never time or even reason to pursue romance, so she's gotten used to not acknowledging her feelings. After she joins the Scions and is doing a bit better for herself, she does try to strike up a relationship once or twice, but it never really works out for her (until much later). And, well, the world still keeps on turning. Even when she does find love, they decide to keep their relationship quiet because, y'know, she's a warrior of light and it would be really easy for her enemies to use her loved ones against her if they knew who they were. But she's abundantly affectionate behind closed doors to make up for the lack of pda!!

Khorchi absolutely peacocks when she has a crush on someone. She's not afraid to walk right up and make conversation (brag) and flaunt how strong/skilled/etc she is. She usually isn't really actively aware that a crush is what she's feeling - even if everyone else can see it - she just knows there are some people she wants to impress more than others. Once she's aware that she's having romantic feelings, she tries to get a little more vulnerable with them than just showing off constantly, but she's very clumsy and awkward about it. And when she's in love, she's the most proud and flashy "look at my partner!! they're so awesome and strong!! they could kick your ass!!" as opposed to L'yara's hiding behind closed doors. (Khorchi and L'yara argue about it lol L'yara thinks Khorchi is reckless and Khorchi thinks L'yara doesn't think her partners can protect themselves)

I'm gonna be real with you I'm still debating this for Domitien!! because he is very Soft and Gentle and doesn't have much worldly experience and it would make sense to his character, in my opinion, for him to be very blushy and get flustered and stutter when he's around his crush, but also he's gay, and while I am a queer person I am not a gay man specifically, and I don't want people to think I'm making him into some uke bottom stereotype of a gay man. I just want him to be very tender because he looks Big and Cool and Intimidating and I like the gentle giant trope :(

[magefeathers]

Tried to send to the writing blog but you seem to have asks disabled there? So anyway: 🖊 🖊🖊🖊 one for each

omg I'm sorry! I always forget you have to manually enable asks on a new blog and it's not enabled by default, I just never enabled them when I made the sideblog o(-( Thank you for letting me know!!

I will repay you with the origin stories for how each of my OCs was made!

L'yara

As my original WoL, she wasn't actually meant to be an OC! It all started with the absolute lack of dialogue options for the player character in ARR, of all things. It made me go, "Oh, so I'm just one of those people who goes along with everything everyone says because I lowkey hope I'll die doing something heroic and be remembered as a hero for it? Okay." Aaaand that actually became the foundation for L'yara's backstory! A lot of her lore has changed since then, but her original reason for joining the Scions is still, basically, because she had a death wish.

Khorchi

So, funny story, I made my account on the free trial, and only the five races were available to play as on the free trial, which is why I picked miqo'te - I knew nothing about au ra or viera or hrothgar. And it took me until Heavensward (like, well past Yugiri's introduction) for me to realize that au ra were a playable race in game on the full version. And by then I had the full version, but by then I was attached to L'yara as a character and already developing lore for her. So I made Kaisuri as an alt just so I could play as au ra. Once I got to Stormblood I fell in love with the Dotharl tribe, because I've always had a fascination with reincarnation mythos, and the next time I logged into Kaisuri I went Holy shit, because she was a xaela with dark, blue-toned skin, like much of the Dotharl tribe, and the dye color I'd picked for her glamors was void blue (commonly used for Dotharl garments) and she (at the time) had white hair, just like Sadu, so I immediately decided that she was going to be an OC from the Dotharl tribe, started giving her lore, and eventually changed her name to Khorchi to make it more xaela-aligned rather than the raen-aligned Kaisuri.

Domitien

Dom SOLELY came about because I wanted to try playing a healer but was terrified of being bad and being judged for it. So I basically made a throw-away alt with a randomly generated name that I didn't hate, so I could start as a conjurer and have the "excuse" of the sprout by my name if I sucked. I got to Sastasha, the tank died, in the time it took me to get him up the rest of the party had died, I tried to move on to res-ing the next person before I'd topped off the tank and the tank died again.... it was a shit show. I felt so terrible and the people in that dungeon with me were so, SO nice about it, but I still literally deleted the character out of humiliation. A few months later and I'm joking with a friend about making a functional light party of OCs, because I already had two DPS's, and technically had a healer since Domitien's appearance data was still saved. By then I had started playing AST on my main and wasn't terrible at it so I had much less healing anxiety, and decided to revive Domitien and start giving him lore!

Einar

Despite them now being one of my favorite OCs, I literally only made Einar because I needed a tank for my (then still hypothetical) light party. It was shortly after male viera were announced, and I wanted to make a male viera OC so badly. The entirety of their lore and personality was formed around me pondering what kind of mindset a male viera would need to have to leave their tribe, which is really funny considering that same train of thought led me to this character identifying as nonbinary and actively seeking to obfuscate their gender.

Thank you for the ask!! <3

[magefeathers]

🕷️ SPIDER - what is their biggest fear? do they have any irrational / mundane fears? for everyone!

First of all thank you for the ask!! Their biggest fears definitely change over the course of the story as they all develop, but since I’m trying to write their story in chronological order and have just started, I’m gonna answer for their fears going into ARR!

Einar’s afraid of getting attached to people. Hitting adolescence and learning they were male and would therefore have to leave their village behind was difficult and made them withdraw from all their female friends. They decided soon afterward that they would eventually leave the forest, once they were trained and capable of taking care of theirself, so they didn’t spend any time getting attached to the other men. Ever since then they’ve been on the move, and they aren’t really consciously aware of this fear, but it certainly manifests in their casual sex and general disregard for deepening relationships.

Domitien’s biggest fear is for his background to be discovered. He was raised in the Redbelly Wasps and masquerades as an adventurer when he goes to Gridania because he’s afraid of the repercussions he’ll bring on his family if he’s found out. This fear continues after he leaves Gridania and joins the Scions as well - he doesn’t want his dark beginnings to cast shade on the good work the Scions are trying to do.

L’yara’s biggest fear is the feeling of helplessness. Throughout her entire childhood she had no control over anything that happened to her, no means of changing or preventing anything that happens to her or her loved ones, no means of defending herself from the cruelty of the world. Once she ‘awakens’ her magical abilities she gets a little high on the power of it, and she vows to never go back to feeling like she has no control or no say in what happens to her.

Khorchi’s biggest fear is, essentially, failure. Her family puts a lot of pressure on her to get stronger, to become a powerful warrior, to earn the glory in battle that will earn her soul the right to return and be reincarnated into the Dotharl tribe in future life cycles. She’s terrified of letting her family down, being an un-satisfactory warrior, bringing shame upon her tribe, and not being able to return to them after death.

Now to lighten things up a bit with some mundane fears!! Domitien is afraid of wide open spaces (growing up underground in the Twelveswood... vast plains or deserts give him a sort of vertigo) especially if there’s no shade (sensitive duskwight eyes. please get this man some sunglasses, I say as if I’m not the one in charge of that), L’yara is afraid of dogs (insert cat joke here, but actually she was attacked by a dog when she was a kid), Khorchi is afraid of frogs (not even specifically the big ones! just all the slimy jumpy boys), and Einar is afraid of ice/snow (they didn't see snow until they were well into their 20s, and I feel like in this universe there aren't many ways to fully understand/comprehend weather like that until you're in it, you know? so it's one of those 'I don't know how you work and therefore don't trust you' things. the ice is deceptive and the snow holds too many secrets)