Sometimes I have a plan for the characters I create in Final Fantasy 14 and sometimes I create them on a whim. Creating new characters is something I’ve been doing for many years in other games when I need a change, want to try something new, or need to take my mind off something that’s bothering me in the real world.
Final Fantasy is my escape when the real world becomes too much and a couple weeks ago I really needed a distraction from grieving and sadness after saying goodbye to a dear companion. I had plenty of existing characters I could play to distract myself, but none of them were helping and thus it was time to make someone new.
I’d had zero plans to make any additional Viera because I already had a female and male dark-skinned, Rava Viera. But suddenly making a pale-skinned, Veena female Viera held great appeal, and thus, that’s what I did. I had no idea what I was really going for when I got to the character creation screen, I just knew I wanted her hair to be some shade of blue. Blue is my favorite color and I knew making a new character with that hair color would immediately lift my mood.
Then a funny thing happened as I was making my new bun girl, I found myself making her rather goth and emo-looking, which isn’t something I’ve ever done before with a character in FFXIV. I don’t consider myself goth in real life, emo maybe, but as games aren’t real life, I’m free to do whatever I want! I gave her very pale, ashy-blue skin, dark blue hair with light blue highlights, and pink eyes. In slight contrast to her goth looks, I gave her the hairstyle with pigtails and flower ties because it just seemed right for her. However, if they made hair ties that were little skulls, she’d definitely prefer that.
Picking the class for my new bun girl was pretty easy as soon as I’d finished her looks because she looked like someone who would enjoy punching and kicking her enemies. So pugilist/monk it was! She won’t however be wearing the bright yellow monk gear though because it’s not her aesthetic.
When it came time to name my new bun girl, that gave me some trouble. Sometimes I have a name all picked out and ready, but as she was spur of the moment, I hadn’t thought of anything. So I went through the random name generator and nothing appealed but I did see some parts of names that sounded interesting so I ran with that and got creative and came up with Rajilo Tarsieh. As soon as I decided on the name, I could feel that it fit her and thus my new goth bun girl began her existence in Eorzea!
Now I do find Viera to be beautiful, but the racial starting gear is not really my thing, so I was very thankful that creating Rajilo coincided with me receiving my final veteran’s reward clothing of Squall’s attire. As soon as I could get her to a mail Moogle, I got those clothes and put them on her. I didn’t care that they weren’t good armor and frankly, she wouldn’t care either. The black pants, jacket, and boots with the white shirt were definitely her style! She has expanded a bit into tones of grey, but black is definitely her favorite color.
And of course, the perfect mount for her is a sleek black motorcycle.
Playing Rajilo turned out to be the perfect distraction from my sadness and I found myself having a lot of fun playing her. I’ve played pugilist on several characters and it’s definitely one of my favorite melee classes. The class quests for pugilists have an amusing and interesting story and help me feel invested in the class, as do the monk classes that follow.
As it happens, Rajilo’s creation happened shortly before the beginning of Vierapril, which I’d already planned on participating in with my Rava Viera, Zhjya and Knevdar. There was more than one list to choose from for Vierapril but I stuck with one for all three of my buns so I wouldn’t get confused. Doing the prompts on Rajilo has helped me get to know her even better and develop her personality more. It helped her find a new friend, it encouraged her to visit the beach, and it even forced her to wear *gasp* pink!
Now as you see from many of the photos, Rajilo’s new friend is in fact a baby brachiosaur. He found her while she was mining and when she realized he was following her, she decided to adopt him and name him Waffles because she was hungry for breakfast at the time.
I haven’t really made pets a part of my FFXIV character stories before. Pets have some bit parts to play in the stories, but they’re not integral to the tale. However, there is definitely a bond between Rajilo and Waffles and that will fill a whole blog post of its own in the future.
I made Rajilo to help me get through a challenging part of my life and she’s definitely done that. Although it’s painful for Rajilo to crack a smile, she makes me happy every time I play her because she’s such a departure from my usual characters. I don’t really know where she fits in my current FFXIV fanfiction stories, but I’m sure she’ll show me eventually. For now, I’m just going to enjoy playing her and exploring the interesting parts of my personality that she uncovers.
Srinity 