The whole inspo/idea was from this art from Dragonfall & Puzzels

Had started this version down here but my game simply closed. Decided to try again and changed some stuff!

Reblog from the source, not from me.

So, the quality might not be great since I used the snipping tool to grab these images while on the new Monster Hunter beta - but let me say how impressed I am with their character creator! Besides Throne and Liberty, this is the MOST complex character creator I've had the joy of using! Jak is an excellent character for me to test their cc on - she's not your standard, generic white woman protag. She's not only brown, but has lots of unique features, and her face has come to have distinct features in my mind, so if I want to meticulously re-create her...most cc simply don't allow me to come close. The HAIR on this! You can pick a style, a length, a highlight, and then there's 2 options for how far the highlight goes, and how sort of 'woven in' the highlight looks in your hair...so you could be lazy and slap on a hair you like and leave it like that - or make it massively shorter or longer, while vastly changing the colors! And the face! I was able to not only flip and reverse some eyeshadow to turn it into her little white face markings, but the "Miqo'te tribal markings" had an option in MonHun that look eerily similar, and I was able to tweak the color and angle and placement of those, too - the amount of options, and degree to which you can alter them? Mind-blowing. I can finally make Jak with her hair down, and the right facial features - even if that's kinda hard to tweak to the exact, precise way you want noses and lips...it's possible. (Miqo'te with their thin lips and uwu grins...I think I got about as close as is realistic with her lips, and little pert nose!) Now let's see if I can convince my brain that 'grinding, the game' will be fun.

Reblog from the source, not from me!

If you play FFXIV please like/reblog this post so i can follow you!!

Kudos to fanfiction writers for writing about all the trauma and emotional and mental turmoil that the original content creators dont acknowledge when putting characters through hell

This has evolved to one of fanfiction’s major assets in my eyes. To every author that cares enough about the characters in their stories to examine trauma, but also the slow, tedious processes of healing and recovery: your stories mean so much to me and other persons with mental health problems. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Society: We don’t talk about how anger is Often just masking grief

A 17 year old with a blorbo and a laptop: Don’t mind if I do tho

Now has this Headcanon that Jak sits in the bar when it’s closed, playing As Time Goes By...all head down, lost in thought, cigarette between two of her fingers, taking the occasional puff as that hand isn’t needed  for a note or two...

( @miqojak​ )

Uh, heck yes?? She does in fact do pretty much exactly that, when the jazz lounge is empty (or when she thinks it is, anyways)! Lights dimmed, playing to herself, lost in contemplation...you nailed it.

I heard you paint houses.

Spoopy Doll

Featuring one very old RP quote, and one Ketsuchi, of @throneoflevin

Block

The soft, pale curves are hard to ignore...but I have nothing to offer them.

I roll over in the plush grass, tearing my gaze away, to watch the multitude of leaves in varying shades of vermillion twist and contort in a light breeze. They seem so badly to want to be torn from that which gives them life.

I know the feeling.

Looking away does nothing for the feeling that I should, in fact, have something to offer for that which entices me so. I usually do. This so rarely happens to me, that I...don't know what to do. Frustration mounts, the longer it takes, and then it's even more difficult to find the right mindset that's necessary for that spark.

I roll back over, letting the movement push the breath out of me on an exhale, and simply stare at the gently fluttering pages of my sketchbook that arch, and catch that breeze now and then, themselves. I practically ache to put something on them - but what? It's all noise, in my mind - this book is supposed to help, but I can't...catch anything long enough to put it on paper, so the damn thing waits expectantly; gently fluffing its pages on the wind as if to beckon something forth, itself.

I feel...I feel - what do I feel? Like a rubber band that's been stretched too far, for too long. The stress of accompanying Kublai to the warfront to retrieve war machina lingers, like a poison - gunshots, explosions...

Three-eyed freaks I could spend the rest of my life killing, and never be sated.

The pages remain blank, before me, pale as Ishgard's snows. What can I give them? War doesn't belong in there. No machines, no Imps. This book of mine is so like my life - I can flip backwards in it, and trace my fingers over the memories so starkly rendered by my own hand that they're almost real.

I can, oh-so-gently, trace the pad of a fingertip down the occasional ragged edge that juts from the gutter of as much, a testament to depictions torn from it in anger - even my poor sketchbook has scars...reminders that I should never have put those I did in its pages, just as much as I should never have let them into my life to begin with.

Like me, it has a head, a tail, and a spine - though unlike me, it is full of beautiful things; here, a koi pond from the Shirogane park with the delicately spotted creatures circling one another; there, the intricate veining of one of those aforementioned leaves. And more often than I'd like to admit, the face of my Wolf looks back out of its pages; scowling, sneering, smirking, looking down his nose...and more recently, smiling...and even laughing.

Like me, it is full of memories - though similarly, the future is unwritten for both of us. Blank pages. Potential. The unknown. What goes there, in that blank space? What comes next? What else is important enough to keep?

The wind kicks up for a beat, forcing a few of those heavy, blank pages up and over, sending us forward in the book - paying no heed to the fact that they remain bare.

Life goes on, whether you're ready or not. Whether you know what's coming, or what you're bringing with you.

And eventually...it ends. I suppose all that matters is that something is on the pages, in the end.

I pull it to me - the book now warm from the sun - and can't help but smile at the sound the paper makes against itself as I flip back to the last empty page that beckoned to me - I think, perhaps, I'll work on my next tattoo's design.

FFXIVWrite 2023 #1: Envoy

(FFXIV-Write info here)

Her skin prickled even beneath the long fabric - it was made to breathe, after all, in the heat of the day... but as the sun set on a blushing horizon over the desert surrounding the city, the change in temperature was a swift one.

The savory aroma of miq'abobs for sale at the vendor below was hard to ignore - and this fellow had innovated, to offer the sweet-doughed honey fritters local to the area on a stick, as well... all the easier to eat on the go after a busy day - and that much harder to say no to, as the sweet-and-savory scents mingled on an evening breeze to accompany you the whole way down this particular stretch of street... it was a prime location to make quick gil near the end of the day.

But Jak preferred the advantage that height gave - attribute it to the 'Little Robin', or maybe the 'Dragon' that she fancies herself... but she felt safer up high. Less like she was smaller than the rest of the world around her - and more like the higher being she was. It wasn't as though she fancied herself a Shepherd - but the Sheep sure as hell weren't smart enough to keep an eye out for themselves. Wolves walked among them in plain sight - many and more guised as the Sheep-dogs, even; and little was more despicable to the young woman than the thought of those posing as protectors to take advantage of those in need. Wearing the uniform, going to muster, shining their boots... strong-arming refugees, bullying the homeless.

Ul'dah was supposed to be the city that would open its arms to her - and her twin - when they'd been on the run from Garlemald... instead, it was the place where hope had well and truly died in the streets like a dog; the place where the bloated corpse of that self-same hope was kicked on a daily basis, spit on by the very people who were supposed to help.

She asked herself, as she had so many times before - what was her place in this world, now? Where did she fit in? Who were these people to her? She'd fought and struggled for her people - but the family she'd known was long since dead... and the Garleans still paid for that loss.

But what now?

She half-hopped, half-slid from the roof's overhang, to drop in an alley and make her way around - slipping the vendor a few gil extra for a savory 'qa'bob. She was all that remained of the J Tribe - of her branch of it, at least. There were other branches that had split, and wandered afar... but the Jackal was hers. The sands of Gyr Abania were its home, and hers - and while the Jackal prized survival? It protected its pack... all those struggling to survive. All those who would do what it takes to get by - all those clever and savage enough to do so.

And if she was past the point of merely surviving - was it her duty to follow yet further in the Jackal's footsteps? Were these people, barely hanging on, in need of the Jackal? That was the easier question to answer; because of course they were. These were the very people the Jackal guarded, rather than preying on - the rest of the world would gladly underestimate and devour them, and so the Jackal would give them the strength and the wit to fight back.

It was exhausting to even have to contemplate - she didn't even like people, broadly speaking. But who fought for them? Did they have something like the Jackal, to give them the will to be strong enough, like she'd had? Was it her job to give them that? Being a hero didn't appeal - it had lost her people everything, once, in merely trying to fight back.

The Shadow of her Beast half-stalked, half-oozed along the wall beside her in this new turn of alleyway, shadows dripping from its maw, only to rejoin with its somewhat-canine-form at large, as they 'fell' near its viscous, inky paws... those jaws with far, far too many razor-teeth slavering at the mere thought.

If the Wolves have it coming, then what does it matter what the Sheep consider us? The Sheep will bleat, regardless - may as well give them something to bleat about. Hate, or love, those who deserve retribution will have it - if for no other reason than because they took away our last chance at innocence.

FFXIVWrite 2023 #2: Bark

The hawking in the streets of Ul'dah had always struck a chord with the young woman - she'd come from a tribe of merchants, craftsmen, and dealmakers of all stripes, and every stop at a trading post or village had come with the barking of the salesmen and the jackals alike.

Perhaps that's why it stung even more than the rejection from the Shroud had - sure, she'd still be glad to burn the damned place down, but at least she could agree with their 'mystical forest spirits' - she didn't belong there, hemmed in by trees on all sides.

The hot, open air of the desert, and the sticky press of skin-and-fabric in the markets - the ebb and flow of civilization; beaches weren't the only place you could watch tides. She may not be Ul'dahn born, but she was merchant-borne, and Jak could watch the crowds swell and recede - and the day's ebb and flow of gil, consequently. As a child, what else had there been to do, but watch? Before things had gotten bloody, this din had been the sort of thing that spoke to new opportunities, new experiences... wondrous wares, if only you've got the gil.

Perhaps that's why this place had called to her - perhaps that was why it was easier to walk the streets of Ul'dah, than the streets of Ala Mhigo, or the deserts of Gyr Abania. It was familiar - but it wasn't quite home. It didn't cut to the quick in the same way that going home would.

And far too many Mhigans had ended up here, in just as shitty a position as she'd been in - so who would she be, then, if she just left them here - how she'd been left by her own twin? Hadn't it struck her deeply just to see war orphans struggling on the streets of Kugane? How could she turn her gaze from those so like her, here in this place where she knew exactly how they felt? - how they struggled.

Being short is difficult at times…especially when you can’t even reach all of your ingredients for cooking - or your plates. Or cups. Or spices.

…You’re not allowed to laugh! (The real reason she’ll never whip anything up for @ketsuchikotetsu - she’d have to ask him to reach the top shelf, and that’s just too much. Also why she didn’t ask him to get cups from the higher shelf. That would just be infuriatingly EMBARRASSING.)

Digging around in my blog, I found a VERY early gpose of mine (and brightened it in my phone’s editor bc it was much too dark) - one of the earliest. Her first apartment decos, first tail mod, first mog… and boldly spoken words, considering that cooking for Kets is now something she genuinely enjoys getting to do (until he makes housewife jokes… then she threatens to make him seafood instead of steak, as he isn’t much of a fan of fish).