#oc: ellie wiltarwyn

[elliewiltarwyn]

a careful understanding

i have a big WIP about Ellie and Ryne's relationship that is still coming together, but this moment is so clear in my mind @.@; this isn't a perfect resolution of their issues with each other but it's some kind of promise to try and be better.

but the WIP extends long both in front of and beyond this shot lmao 🙃

I've pasted some sections from the scene's rough draft below the cut, about 570~ words in total; they're a little scattershot and skip over bits in between because the scene is really long @.@; but i hope it provides decent enough context.

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“I’ve seen the way both of you look at me — and I don’t even blame you. I’m not her, but I bear her mantle. My presence only reminds you both of your loss. Of how the name of this woman you loved has been… perverted into this martyrlike symbol of hope for our realm, one that ensures the fate of Minfilia is to die over and over again.” She sniffs, deeply, and then: “How couldn’t you hate me?”

“Because you didn’t ask for this!” Ellie explodes. “I know this isn’t your fault!”

Minfilia doesn’t budge an ilm. “Do you?”

[...]

“I— you’re just some girl. An innocent girl who’s been swept up into all this — forced to bear a burden you never asked for. I know that. Thancred has to know that.” Her breath has become ragged, and she suddenly finds herself unable to look at Minfilia for entirely different reasons. “…I’ve… done a shite job actually convincing myself of that. So has he.”

A thick silence presses upon the two of them, broken only by quiet sniffs muffled by Minfilia’s knees. Ellie has never felt lower than she does in this moment.

“…This is on us. Thancred and I have been incredibly shitty to you.” She grits her teeth and feels tears brim in her own eyes. “...On some level, I do know that you’re the one most victimized by all of this. You don’t… deserve our treatment. I’m so sorry.”

[...]

“What if I’m not the Minfilia you need, either? Either you, or Thancred… or this realm. [...] After all, gruesome as it was… every preceding Minfilia died to protect the realm. What am I doing out here if it’s not that? Is there some way to help that doesn’t involve doing that… or am I just running away from that responsibility?”

Ellie’s eyes narrow. “Do you think that’s a goal to strive for? That it’s admirable?” [...] “It’s not; it’s tragedy. It’s unjust, monstrously cruel — to yourself and everyone around you. We’ll figure out something you can do — and I’ll be damned if it’s anything remotely in the same arena as sacrificing yourself.” Her voice cracks. “Enough Minfilias have done so. Including the very first one. I don’t want you to join them.”

[...]

“...Th-thank you, Elli—” Minfilia cuts herself off abruptly. “Elilgeim.”

Ellie blinks, then smirks in ironic amusement. Shocking, how long it’s been since she’s heard that. “My friends call me Ellie, Minfilia. It’s okay.”

Minfilia still looks hesitant, her eyes darting back and forth between the hand on her shoulder and Ellie’s face. But eventually she swallows, hoists a nervous smile onto her face, and says, “Okay—thank you, Ellie.”

“That’s more like it.” Ellie scoots a little closer and hesitates for a moment; she’s really unsure about how much she’s pushing here, but she wants to try. So she extends her arm to her side, holding it open and looking at the younger one somewhat expectantly.

And thank the Twelve, Minfilia takes the invitation and fiercely hugs Ellie’s side.

If Ellie had never felt lower than she had five minutes ago, she has in equal measure never felt more relieved now. She’s full aware this—Minfilia’s trust—is a precious gift, and she’s determined not to squander it. She’s starting from a disadvantaged position, given how awful she’s treated the young Oracle so far… she really needs to get her shite together. This Minfilia deserves better.

[elliewiltarwyn]

polyam week day 6: celebrations | holidays

Sometimes she wonders if they'd be happier living elsewhere, but she has to admit out of all the possibilities, Mist likely has some of the best views of Rising fireworks.

[elliewiltarwyn]

polyam week day 3: date night | first dates

Lily feels bad about trying to call in favors with her former boss to get seats at the Bismarck, but Ellie and Mia convinced her the occasion calls for the best cuisine they can afford. Which, as former Warriors of Light, is substantial.

[elliewiltarwyn]

my woefully late side of the collab I did with the handsome fairy prince @eidingate to make my tag about being knighted real! It's fun to get a chance to have Ellie live up to the "Itar" part of her name (Roegadyn for knight), and doesn't every knight need a prince?

(a prince who has her at her mercy and pulls the "tilting your chin with the point of your weapon" thing? tbh I'm not sure what's going on there but it's something 👀)

it was lovely to meet and be knighted by you Eidin!! go check her out!!

[elliewiltarwyn]

polyam week day 1: first time sleeping together

The moment she came back into their lives, they realized what their missing piece had been all along.

[elliewiltarwyn]

polyam week day 4: outfit swaps | role change

"...if I'm dealing damage... and you're dealing damage... and she's tanking... who's healing the party??"

[elliewiltarwyn]

polyam week day 7: vacation | relaxation

wish you were here

used pose e1 from the polyam trio art meme!

two bonus shots:

extremely awkward wide-angle selfie

i'm a big sucker for tail wraps but of course it's hidden in the main shot

[elliewiltarwyn]

ffxiv polyam week day 5: alternate universe | in another life

Some days, she looks to the heavens and wonders if this is really the life that was meant for her...

[elliewiltarwyn]

polyam week day 2: domestic life | mundane tasks

"Thank gods we have someone in this relationship who can cook now. Mia was on the verge of throwing me out if I burnt anything else or evaporated another stew or whatever." "Come on, I still refuse to believe you evaporated a whole stew." "I'm just saying there's a reason I'm over here."

[elliewiltarwyn]

For the ask game: Ellie’s thoughts on Urianger?

(this shot's a repost from Roevember's "elezen pal" but I mean, it's relevant!)

Ellie and Urianger get along shockingly well, to everyone's surprise including their own! One would think the most direct, straight-to-the-point Scion (at least up there with Alisaie) and the wordiest beating-around-the-bush playing-both-sides-so-he-always-comes-out-on-top Shakespeare-ass nerd would get along like a house on fire... but they have more in common than they realized at first.

Both spent much of their childhood with their nose buried in one tome or another. Both needed someone who legitimately just cares for them as a person to withdraw from that shell. After ARR, both have lost those dearest ones to machinations beyond their control...

That all being said, none of this means that they hung out together all that much before ShB, or started out that way; they only really started talking after, of all things, the showdown with the Warriors of Darkness -- after Urianger revealed both the depths of his duplicity and his unwavering commitment to the Scions' cause. After Urianger's manipulations that offered up Minfilia's life -- Ellie's aforementioned dearest one -- as the coin to pay to save two worlds, though by his own admittance, 'twas not his to give.

Ellie probably did punch him for that.

She just didn't stop there; they got to hashing it out, and Ellie found herself truly listening to him for the first time, and she realized that the grief he felt over Moenbryda and Minfilia both is just as strong as her own. She gets him some ice for his face and asks him about them, and lets him drone on for the next several hours about how incredible they were. (She also gets him some wine partway through. She politely declines to share it with him.)

They keep talking after that night and keep sharing in that grief, and then start sharing other discussions about other subjects beyond that which initially connected them. Things like Sharlayan, like favorite books. Like where he picked up his manner of speech. Like her own failed ambitions to study at the Studium, and the subjects she had wanted to research while there. By the time she, the twins, Lyse, and Tataru get on the boat to Kugane, she feels fairly confident in calling Urianger a good friend, and she's willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

It's tested, admittedly, when he gets up to similar shenanigans later. But she can tell his apology is earnest and from the heart and that he really truly means it when he says he doesn't want to lie to her anymore, that if he had a choice he wouldn't, so she just claps him on the shoulder and smirks at him before dropping it entirely. (Besides, it's not like it was his idea to hide the truth of his Eighth Umbral Calamity vision. Though in the end she doesn't have it in herself to begrudge G'raha either.)

(And gods, seeing Bloewyda hug him in the sort of way she's desired to help cope with her own losses? She's happy for him but there's a slightly bitter taste in her mouth at the same time.)

She might be slightly trying to push him and Thancred together, especially after she sees how they dote on Ryne. But she's also content with the bromances they all share with each other.

or broemances. eh? ehh? ehhh--[i am yanked offstage by the neck with a shepherd's crook]

[elliewiltarwyn]

Ellie and Ysayle

DANG got hit right out of the gate with an NPC Ellie definitely has thoughts and feelings about, but I haven't actually thought about it yet dshfaklfjgs so this is all off the cuff!!

(and ofc it got long so...)

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Ellie did not easily settle into the role of Warrior of Light; it felt ill-fitting and sometimes wrong, especially as she grew in notoriety and renown and started having people worship the ground she walked on for supposedly worshipping and being "blessed" by Hydaelyn. Never did she feel she could bring it up with her friends, not even her co-Warriors of Light Lily and Mia.

But an enemy... She knew the truth, she thought, she knew primals are an existential threat and cannot be suffered to live... but the Lady Iceheart was the first person who was able to put words to the unease roiling within her. It's likely "we who gods and men have forsaken shall be the instruments of our own deliverance!" dominated her thoughts until the bloody banquet pushed them out. How much agency does she truly have as a Warrior of Light -- is she bound to Hydaelyn's will? To the Scions'? She (and Mia and Lily) are the ones here in this amphitheatre fighting for...what, if not their own ideals? The Empire was such an easier villain to abhor in contrast.

When Alphinaud suggested appealing to Iceheart, she leapt at the chance because it felt like something within her own power -- her own will. And as she grew to know Ysayle Dangoulain proper, she found common ground in the distrust of those who consider themselves superior, who believe they have the right to use their powers -- their blessings, their Echoes -- as their own political pawns.

Mia had made overtures since the bloody banquet, but Ysayle was the first person Ellie felt truly understood her. Especially since she couldn't well speak of the hypocrisy of harming innocents in her quest for justice, because Ellie had very much made the same mistakes battling the primals in Alliance lands, if not on so grand a scale.

And as a person in her own right... she admired how strong Ysayle and her convictions were, to the point she found herself doubting if her own could stand up (but she found great pleasure in discovering that armor could be chipped by Petting Fluffy Moogle). The more they spent time together on the journey to Hraesvelgr, the more moments of softness, vulnerability, and warmth she found in a woman supposedly made of ice, and the more she grew to admire her. She found herself drawn to Ysayle almost as she had been with Minfilia, for a similarly earnest heart below a masking exterior -- she might very well have fallen in love if she wasn't still so raw with grief from the bloody banquet.

It might be better that she hadn't, because the very same grief and pain she suffered from losing Minfilia struck her regardless as she witnessed Shiva's form dissipating and a lone blue-robed Elezen plummeting to her doom through the clouds, and she found herself cursing whatever higher powers steer their fates even more. It also instills an even deeper distrust of Hydaelyn -- what exactly is She demanding of Her servants, of people with warm hearts like Minfilia and Ysayle? Of people like her? That sort of distrust isn't well and truly dispersed until she meets Venat in Elpis -- and I think (way more than I used to) Ysayle's memory lingers in Ellie's mind the entire time.

...that was way more than I expected holy shit lol, thanks for the ask @ubejamjar!!

[elliewiltarwyn]

misija for the "describe your oc's feelings/relationship to that NPC" ask game 👀👀

is this because i said "she did nothing wrong -- that's a lie she did everything wrong, but god forbid women do anything" when we did delubrum sdhkgasdjkl

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When Ellie looks back on the events of Bozja and of Misija in particular, I think more than anything she feels a deep sense of pity -- and she's sure that if Misija were still around, she would spurn, mock, and reject that from her.

Like Ysayle, Ellie one hundred percent understands where Misija came from; though Ellie's childhood was happier, she isn't unfamiliar with the pain of hunger and scrimping for whatever resources you can muster either, and if the Empire had established policies to help uplift those unfortunate souls in that position on Pearl Lane, she might've made the same choice to throw her lot in with them as Misija had. What resonates less is the generations-past betrayal that saw Misija's ancestor assassinated by the Blades who uplifted her in the first place -- again, an understandable grudge to bear and Ellie couldn't say if she'd feel any different if it happened to her own.

But she sort of feels the same way she did with Emet-Selch: she understands, but she can't agree with the horrors in the present, particularly with the fates of Gunnhildr's Blades in the southern front. And for the rest of the Bozjan offensive, she felt a twisting nausea in the pit of her stomach whenever she thought of Misija's ambitions to take what she was owed...because on some level, didn't she deserve some kind of reparations...?

Part of Ellie wishes that at the end, after the climactic battle at the Dalriada in which the resurrected form of Queen Gunnhildr gave her strength to stop the Diablo Armament, that she had been the one holding the knife over Misija's broken body... because if she had, she probably would have thrown it to the side, in a wish for Misija to see that the equitable society she wished for was possible without the imperial ambitions of Garlemald. Not being Bozjan herself, however -- only one of the strongest weapons in their arsenal without which they wouldn't have succeeded in their mission... -- she knows it wasn't remotely her place to be that judge.

But she can't think of Bozja ever again without that twisting nausea in her stomach.

thanks for the ask @verysmallcyborg!!

[elliewiltarwyn]

personal wol infopost

I have three co-Warriors of Light who I write as part of the same universe. they are:

-Ellie Wiltarwyn, female Roegadyn dark knight/monk -Mia Longhart, female Hyur paladin -and Lilyana Tsuki, female Miqo'te ninja

Ellie is my main and the one in which I've invested *checks /playtime and despairs* 279 days as of this writing, and the one I do high-end content with -- though Mia is beginning to catch up...

some more personal details below for each!

(amazing art by tumblr.com/gzeidraws!!)

Elilgeim "Ellie" Wiltarwyn, a flameout from the Studium who found new meaning in her life when the Echo gave her a purpose and directed her to Gridania, where Yda and Papalymo recruit her for the Scions. Throughout the MSQ, she goes from White Mage through ARR, picks up Dark Knight in Heavensward, switches to Reaper for Endwalker, and puts the scythe down for Monk post-Endwalker. It's pronounced VILL-ter-win, like "filter" with a slightly harder nearly-V sound.

Mia Longhart, a refugee from Garlemald with a strong moral compass that drove her to Eorzea to fight against her homeland. She drills in the Gladiator's Guild in Ul'dah until the Echo points her to Thancred, who recruits her for the Scions. Throughout the MSQ, she consistently sticks to Paladin, but learns how to be a White Mage, Samurai, and Bard for party flexibility. To overcome the Garlean inability to wield aether, she works with Cid and his Ironworks to have magitech implants to amplify what the Echo grants her.

Lilyana Tsuki, a Seeker of the Sun miqo'te who refuses to speak of the clan whence she came. She considers herself a stray who's fallen in with the Rogue's Guild in Limsa Lominsa as long as they'll take care of her, which is until the Echo directs her to investigate dangers that catch Y'shtola's eye as well, and she recruits her for the Scions. Throughout the MSQ, she fights with both knives as Rogue and with fists as Monk until she goes missing at the end of ARR and its bloody banquet. She's found by Yugiri in Heavensward and trains as a Ninja, then dips her toe into Astrologian and Dancer as those opportunities become available. She's incredibly snuggly and will curl up for a doze at a friend's side if given the chance.

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I have like five more OCs/alts but these are the ones who have the Echo in my personal canon. :3

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8/11/23 Edit: this is when I switched Mia's surname from Dragosina (was never really satisfied with that) to Longhart. a) it's a little more in-line with FF names in general, not just XIV's (like y'know, Tifa Lockhart. She's basically the Tifa to Ellie's Cloud...) b) it makes it less obvious she's related to a certain mad Garlean scientist (for some reason, I was stuck on keeping a semblance of "Asina" in her surname, but now I've decided it doesn't matter, and she wants to distance herself) and c) Longhart doesn't actually mean "long heart," long is the Chinese word for dragon, so now her name's "Dragon heart" and I think that owns. 😊

(...I guess it might be a little appropriative for a Garlean citizen to take a name from a culture they've probably conquered, but I don't think it's enough to make it insensitive rather than respectful. Actually... who is the Chinese equivalent in FFXIV? Is it Doma or Yanxia?)

12/20/23 Edit: finally put in the time to make those trust banners for them :)