Since my last post here, I finished Endwalker just before year’s end and am current caught up on Final Fantasy XIV Main Scenario Quest (MSQ) up to patch 6.18! So I find myself in some strange uncharted space on a number of fronts.
Losira is having a great time clubbing with friends and so many in our group have paired up and gotten Eternally Bonded (in game Marriage)! I love the in game wedding ceremonies! So our group is going through some changes. It’s really interesting to see how this all plays out and evolves, but I can’t help but feel maybe just a little bit jealous. That in itself is absolutely fascinating to me.
There are a lot of things to do yet in the game, but the social stuff is really where I spend a lot of time, especially now that Data Center travel is live. So Losira can finally go to the other Data Centers, Aether and Crystal. So far she’s only been to Crystal to visit Teraflare and Pluto’s Kiss, and the infamous Billboard Party on Balmung! I even made a new friend over there talking and dancing for hours!
But closer to home, the doki doki moments just keep on coming. Oh shoot, it’s way too late at night for this!
What’s it all about? That question enters my mind regularly as I dance back and forth across the line between reality and the digital spaces I inhabit like online games. But lately I struggle with the disappointment I feel when my so called IRL self doesn’t match up with my game selves. I feel like I’m not living up to people’s expectations, and in some cases, my own.
It’s been over a year since I started playing as Losira in Final Fantasy XIV. I’m still having a great deal of fun and I’m nearing my goal of completing the current game story content ahead of the Endwalker expansion release in November. And the nightclub scene has just exploded across all data centers in the game. You can literally dance all night, every night across the entire game! I really love it!
I’ve met a lot of interesting people out clubbing, and I’m glad we are having fun together. But then I feel disappointed because the physical me does not match up with the in-game me. The real life girl isn’t the in-game girl by many measures and I don’t want to let people down, or break their hearts.
I am really enjoying my play through of Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward! The story has totally sucked me in and I’m spending a lot of enjoyable time doing other things in the the world as well. My anxieties about playing group content are a receding memory as I routinely jump into dungeons and trials of the main story as a tank, blind rather than viewing a guide first! I must say that this game has stolen my heart.
But the heart wants what it wants, and I guess some hearts may want me, maybe? This past weekend, I was at the Rave Weekend parties at the Allure Lounge. Friday night was great! Music, dancing, and I got some good videos recorded too! I was really excited about doing it again on Saturday. By this time I was back to mostly being on my own and not part of a group as the group I had been with had gone through some romantic realignments and such. This wasn’t a problem for me, things come and go. And I’m used to going to all kinds of things on my own anyway, story of my life, lol.
Saturday, I’d no sooner got into line before I found myself in two separate conversations with two different people, both wanting attention. Then further behind me I spied two more friends who I’d also be talking or dancing with later. I was feeling a little overloaded and wasn’t sure how I was going to manage all of this. I like all of these people, and I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But I didn’t really want to be anyone’s steady girl friend either, at least I didn’t think so. I’m a Tank main, but GF main? Could I even play that role? IRL, I’m taken, but does that even matter in Eorzea?
I ended up dancing most of the night with two of the four friends and having a good time overall. A third danced elsewhere and I had a chance to talk to him before he left. It was his first time at the lounge, and he said it was fun. The fourth danced near us for a bit and I think was trying to get my attention, but I was torn between an ongoing conversation with one and also in the middle of recording video. But mostly I was worried about how to manage the other guys strong interest in me. Eventually the fourth guy left and I have not heard from him. He’s one of my Free Company mates and one of the first friends Losira made, so he’s special to me. But I think I did a bad job of showing it.
I had a lot of fun this past weekend! In game dance parties in Final Fantasy XIV have become a regular thing for me as hundreds of Gigabytes of party videos can attest to! But I’m not here to write about that. This is just a note about a strange dream.
In my dream, I was looking high and low for more information about Paladins. I don’t know why, maybe for a novel I wanted to write? Maybe for my character backstory? I just remember running all over the place looking, only to end up in the library of some unnamed university.
In the library, I encountered what appeared to be a group of guys playing or discussing DnD. I told them what I was looking for and they told me I should learn about Bruce Noble and handed me a thick white reference book. Only after waking up did I realize that Bruce Noble was a pretty silly name and did not refer to any known character. It was just a generic name one might use for any Paladin. LOL
And that’s it. That was my dream. Does it mean anything? I don’t know, but perhaps when I revisit this post in the future, I will have an answer.
Losira started as my main character in Phantasy Star Online 2, little over a year ago. She was named for Losira, last of the Kalandans from the Star Trek original series episode, That Which Survives. And she was part of a larger project of mine to project more of my own characteristics, race, gender, etc., onto my game avatars. This was something I had avoided in the past so as not to be a target of harassment in the games I played.
From PSO2, Losira was reborn on the Island of Kalanda in Animal Crossing New Horizons and then later catching them all in Temtem. Most recently, Losira has found a home in Eorzea in Final Fantasy XIV. It is here in FFXIV that Losira has been having the most fun of late. She came to be here because I wanted to experience the party scene in the Primal data center, but my main character is in Aether. So the only option was to start a new character in Primal and level her enough to attend the parties.
Losira loves to dance!
So am I a party girl yet? Hmm depends on who you ask I guess. My Free Company mates probably think a resounding Yes! Leveling Losira has been so much fun and I’ve learned so much! I feel like there’s a lot of me as I am, and as I would like to be inside of her too. So I guess The Losira Project has been something of a success! I’ve had a lot of fun with the parties and it’s brightened the whole leveling process giving me even more motivation to play the game better and better.
Losira knows how to party!
She’s not just an alt, she’s 2nd Main. Her big sister, Loressa, and I go way back though, all the way to Vanadiel, and will always be 1st Main. But that’s a tale for another time.
It’s been quite a while since my last post! Since that time, I am not only still alive, I think I might in some way be thriving! There’s been plenty of trouble to lose sleep over, but I found more refuge than I had expected to weather the storm.
In particular, I’ve been spending a lot more time in the online game, Final Fantasy XIV. Progressing through the story, placing in the top 100 on my server for the Ishgardian Restoration rankings, and even attending in game dance parties! Eorzea has truly been a refuge for me.
With the holiday and the promise of some good bargains this weekend, I’d been revisiting my plan to build a new gaming PC. The guys I work with are big gamers, so I’ve been looking to up my playing time.
I had initially thought about building a new rig last year in order to play Final Fantasy XIV, but by now, anyone who follows gaming knows how big of a disaster FFXIV proved to be. Square Enix is still hammering out the bugs, but it still isn’t ready for me to take that plunge.
Since that time, I’ve been playing Star Trek Online, which has been fun, but just not the same experience that I had with FFXI. I really missed Laureta, my main character there and the world itself. So while cleaning up my old PC and optimizing it for the games it can play, I decided to see if I could get my old characters back. I also wanted to see if SE had a payment system compatible with the way I wanted to pay.
Long story short, I’m back! It took nearly 4 hours of updates, but I have returned to Vana’diel! Swinging a sword with Laureta has never felt so good!
