DO HARM TO YOUR ENEMIES; TREAT YOURSELF WITH KINDNESS!

🫶🏻 happy saturday nerds 🫶🏻

FFXIV Rarepair Week 2026 June 8 - June 14 Day 1: Forge / Temper Day 2: Decay / Bloom Day 3: Reflection / Refraction Day 4: Denial / Indulgence Day 5: Mentor / Sprout Day 6: Mirth / Reverence Day 7: Free day OR Choose an unused prompt from a previous day #XIVRarepairWeek #XIVRarepairWeek2026

FAQ/Guidelines What can I make? Whatever your creativity desires, as long as it came from your amazing human mind! (Generative AI use can get fucked, though.) What counts as a rarepair? Your guess is as good as mine. Follow your heart, I'm not your dad. OC/NPC? NPC/NPC? Both. Both is good. Polyships? HECK YES. "Rarepair" is the common term, but you are absolutely not limited to monogamous couples. (Polyships are sort of rare by default in most fandoms, after all.) NSFW? Bring it on. Please be courteous and tag NSFW works as needed! Lastly, and more importantly: DO NOT USE THE EVENT TAG TO HARRASS PEOPLE Sometimes a ship is a rarepair because of its transgressive nature. If you see something you don’t like, block or mute as needed and move on.

Roll out the ship manifestos and dust off your "hear me out"s: Rarepair Week is back for its fourth year!

As with previous years, you have a choice of two words for each day. Pick whichever one speaks to you more, or do both if you feel so moved!

#XIVRarepairWeek #XIVRarepairWeek2026

How to use your imagination When your party stays at the Inn overnight, what do they eat? If you ever catch yourself wondering that then you know you’ve formed an attachment to your characters. With Etrian Odyssey’s characters, you only give them a name and a portrait, so no matter how you think of the character it’s technically just your imagination. But even in that case, without your imagination, the character is nothing. For example, a landsknecht who uses an axe might eat his meat with his bare hands and no utensils, but one who wields a sword might prefer a knife and fork at dinner. You might think differently, but... if you can imagine small details like that, you might find that you enjoy this kind of RPG even more. The essense is an RPG is using numbers to make calculated decisions, but if you invest those “numbers” with your own feelings, you can spice up the game little. Think about this: In your party of five, three characters are dead. Two of them are alive, but they only have a couple of HP left and no TP. They’re certain to die in their next turn, giving you a game over. Number-wise, those characters are useless, but how do you imagine they feel about that? What kind of people are those 2 characters who are about to die? Try to imagine things like that in the brief time before your game ends. Are they a landsknecht and a ronin, who’ll die facing the enemy and laughing? Is it a protector, ordering the weak medic to run with his last breath? The game over screen looks the same every time, but in your imagination, it could play out very differently. The game itself isn’t that big of a thing; what you imagine for yourself is much more fun. We hope that the player uses this game as a tool, to create dramatic and fun situations in your own minds. —Kazuya Niinou

Been thinking about the use of imagination in video games lately, or how I feel there are few and increasingly fewer games that ask the player to use their imagination to engage with them.

This post Kazuya Niinou wrote to accompany Etrian Odyssey often comes to mind so I decided to remake it.

my favorite lizard pairing #ff14 #ffxiv

I need to re-listen to so many tracks now to find out what else I've been missing. My gast is flabbered.

I was wearing my new hearing aids last night under my headset when I arrived in Rak'tika on my Shadowbringers replay, and I don't think I had ever really noticed before what a richly layered track Civilizations is. I always liked it, but holy shit? It's not just lahee, y'all. I was missing so much.

Kermit the frog as Bob Cratchet in the Muppet Christmas Carol singing One More Sleep 'til Christmas, except Christmas is covered up with he words "hearing aids"

Am I making hyper-specific memes just for myself to cope with my feelings about getting my first pair of hearing aids tomorrow? Yes.

Ohh gods, I'm jealous. That looks delicious.

⚕️🐱♂️

Rain'li is a transgender man! <3

Digital art of my trans male ex-prince character kneeling and gently kissing the hand of his younger pre-transition princess self. Behind them is an ornate background frame with a sun setting behind the ex-prince's head.

Digital art of my prince and knight characters Mattias and Emil as children shy about being next to each other. Mattias has very long hair and is wearing a princess gown. He is pre transition. Emil his knight is still taller and shyly looking at Mattias from the corner of his eye.

Art of a no-op trans man, Mat, and his cis male knight, Emil, standing shirtless embracing and staring into each other's eyes in a dark inn room. Emil looks a bit somber as he stares down and right through Mat because Mat has amnesia but would lay with Emil anyway. Mat doesn't remember their past relationship and Emil's sacrifice.

Portrait art of my trans male prince character Mattias facing his back to the viewer and looking over his shoulder with an elegant and calm expression. He has a unicorn horn and his hair is a lot longer than usual. He is wearing elegant shiny earrings and glitter under his eyes. Behind Mattias is the silhouette of a castle with a moon and stars pattern over it.

happy #transdayofvisibility 🏳️‍⚧️

my name is mimi and i'm a disabled gay trans male artist who loves my silly guys.

i draw trans men in a 'nontraditional' manner because it gives me gender euphoria to be seen and desirable the way i am.

💖 my kofi if you'd like to send tips!
ko-fi.com/heirakka

I don't have data on hand to back it up, but there seems to be a wave of acceptance not just for disability aids, but disabled identities in general that I feel I'm seeing amongst our age group and below. And I feel like examples like this and the mental shift that comes with them is a part of why!

I remember how stigmatized glasses still were when I got my first pair at seven, though, so maybe we'll see other disability aids more normalized in our lifetimes as well!

This is one of my favorite examples when I'm teaching accessibility as well, and I'm very much leaning on it as I'm getting fitted for hearing aids this week. They're much more heavily stigmatized in spite of being a very similar type of disability aid.

A tweet from @_sashayed: florist informed my mom the chapel we're doing our tiny ceremony in is full of ghosts.. my mom was like "oh! ok! wil they...will they enjoy the wedding?" and the florist said confidently "oh, YES."

Florists in Gridania:

[been in the expac for practically 5 minutes] when does he go freakmode im sick of waiting

Sketch illustration of Lyse Hext, posing as if ready to fight. She looks at the viewer confidently, smiling.

#marchofxiv Lyse 🧡

Moon Bunny, Froggy and Mushroom walking sticks.

It costs 0$ to Repost a Black disabled queer small business! It could lead to my next sale.

Here's new patterns for my carbon fiber foldable walking sticks!! Each pattern needs to sell at least 50 each to make them a reality!! Or else I'll have to refund them. Please support!

Store: Bibipins.com

A collection of pieces made by me, the artist Gabe, depicting red scenes of grief, rage, sorrow, isolation and more.

🩸 Im a transmasc latino artist with a love of horror, and queerness that I explore in my work. 🖤🦇

As a fulltime starving artist, any and all support directly helps to keep a roof over my head and a pen in my hands. 🙏💞

→🩸 linktr.ee/Ghastlygabo
→ ☕ ko-fi.com/ghastlygabo
→🔶 patreon.com/ghastlygabo

Please join me in appreciating the Twin Adder's biggest nerd.

Earlier in his adventuring days, Rain'li was in a relationship with Tahla Molkoh, a sidequest NPC from Stormblood aether current unlocks and, later, the Ananta quests.

I've written two fics about the two of them so far!

archiveofourown.org/works/75044226
archiveofourown.org/works/76435216

Banging my drum about LRP. Go read some excellent Gridania worldbuilding and one of my favorite depictions of Foulques.

Finally got a new chapter for this out, mainly focusing on the day of Greenbliss itself, the reappearance of Foulques and the setup for the rest of Sahri's journey. I did a lot of research for this one to try to flesh out the Greenbliss holiday, hope you enjoy!

archiveofourown.org/works/794592...

When I was a newbie healer, I queued into Aurum and said “I’ve never healed here, please bear with me”

And the tank simply said “I’ve never known fear” and did the cleanest run I’ve ever seen

It was magical. I miss your tanky cradle arms, stranger

Please tell him I love him.

His ears are so pointy and his eyes are so green!