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APPLICATION.
Character Age: 28
Character Species: Elezen — he is taller than the average human and stands at around 6'7", and he has long, pointed ears as well as slightly glowing eyes
Current Health: Fit and healthy
Outfit: ONE • TWO • THREE
Character Canon: Final Fantasy XIV
Link to History:
The events of FFXIV happen in the world of Eorzea. Yves Tourcenet is a 28-year old bastard of House Aubaints who, having always been gifted in black magics and thaumaturgy, left Ishgard at the age of twenty-one so as to avoid any potential accusations of heresy and witchcraft. It's there that he joined the Thaumaturge's Guild and began working at antique shop Thal's Lockbox, where he was able to throw himself into the study (and collection) of magical artifacts, hexes, and curses. His life as an employee of the Lockbox remained largely unchanged over the expansions of the game up until Endwalker, at which point his research took a darker turn as he began to investigate deeper, darker magicks that might help him protect his mother from the Final Days.
Canon Point: Endwalker — as Dynamis begins twisting people into Blasphemies in Ishgard
Canon Iteration: AU where he never met the Scions and was born to the minor House Aubaints as opposed to Dzemael (a canon House of Ishgard)
Canon Iteration Explanation: In this AU Yves never met the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, and thus never eventually joined them as a consultant for Extremely Cursed Things the way he did in his OU. He also has no ties to house Dzemael, which means he never had the opportunity to assist the WoL in killing Ser Grinnaux of the Heaven's Ward (his OU half-cousin) and exorcising the ugliest part of his traumatic childhood. As such he is still clinging on to a great deal of pain, which will continue to manifest in behaviours that keep him emotionally guarded and isolated.
Skills: Yves is a skilled researcher and treasure-hunter with a discerning eye for fine art and antiquities, and can both make and mend his own clothes when need be. His taste runs expensive but he's clever with his money, and is good at making his coin stretch as far as it can. He is also a talented alchemist and herbalist - skills which he initially learned from his mother as a child and pursued when he moved to Ul'dah.
Canon Abilities:
Yves is a powerful Black Mage and budding Reaper. He also possesses the Echo, the manifestation of which means he has the abilitiy to sense a person's weaknesses via their aether and figure out the most efficient way to kill them.
Role: Myth
Role Qualities/Attributes: Yves will slowly begin to manifest distinctly draconic-looking horns, claws, fangs, a tail, and eyes with slit pupils. If the opportunity presents itself down the line I'd like to look at draconic wings as an option, but I'm still undecided at the moment!
Role Reasoning: While some of Yves ambitions could be described as noble, his vicious, toxic upbringing mean that his methods are largely villainous. He is a person who struggles with forgiveness and has a tendency towards vengeance; he is intelligent, self-interested, and in a crisis would easily let another perish if it bought him more time to achieve his goals. What remains of his goodness is a tiny kernel at the very core of his being, and I'm hoping to explore his relationship with that part of himself in Folkmore. Whether he descends deeper into Myth or eventually finds his way towards being a Legend will depend on his character development in game!
Option 2. Choose FOUR-FIVE of the following questions to answer and expand upon. You may choose a fifth question if you feel it is integral to your character's personality. Each answer has a 100-300 word requirement.
1. What is the most important and defining relationship(s) in your character's life and why?
Yves has somehow managed to forge a scant handful of deep, close bonds as he as grown into himself as an adult, yet none of them have been as important as his relationship with V'lantaa Rhios.
V'lantaa is a Miqo'te woman in her mid twenties, the current owner of Thal's Lockbox, and perhaps the first person who ever looked at Yves and saw the bright flame of potential. They met by chance at the Thaumaturge's Guild when Yves was a new face in the city: he'd needed food, a place to sleep, and some way to pay his way through his studies, and V'lantaa had recognised the sharp determination burning bright behind pale eyes. It took several weeks of perseverance on her part before he finally agreed to take up employment at the Lockbox — thus cementing the beginnings of a friendship that would ultimately change his life.
With her help Yves was able to begin to figure out who he was outside the cold stone walls of Ishgard: as an employer she was strict with him, of course, but always encouraged him in his scholarly pursuits, and over the years the two have formed a deep bond akin to that of a brother and sister. She helped him learn to embrace both his nature and his gifts for magic and research — she treated him with respect, treated him as an equal — and in return Yves has been as loyal and close a friend to her as it's possible for him to be.
2. Is your character capable of forgiveness or will they hold a grudge until they die? Would anything ever make them change their mind?
Unfortunately, Yves is far more likely to hold onto a grudge until the day he dies than he is to forgive someone. This is largely because he lives in a world that is excessively cutthroat at the best of times: as a dealer of "specialist antiquities" he has learned to expect to be lied to, cheated, and stolen from, and he knows that actions often speak louder than words for the types of people he deals with.
By his reckoning, to forgive a slight is to invite it to happen again.
What's truly unfortunate is that Yves was of such a mindset long before he began to work at the Lockbox. Ever since he was a child his personal, most private goal has been to punish the people who hurt him, to the point where he has been holding on to that hatred for so long that it's become a fundamental part of who he is. He doesn't understand that it's something he could choose to let go of — that in holding on to it he's only prolonging his pain — because he needs to see it acknowledged by someone other than himself. Whether he'll ever learn how to let go remains to be seen.
3. What is your character's safespace? When do they feel the most settled and comfortable? When do they feel confident and relaxed?
It took Yves a long time to understand what it actually felt like to feel safe, and longer still to acknowledge his office at the Lockbox as a place where he felt it. It was the first room he'd been given that he could make into a space truly his own: V'lantaa was a lenient employer who was far more interested in his talent than how he chose to decorate, which meant he was able to gradually transform his office from an empty room with an adjoining sleeping chamber to a place that reflected himself.
Maps, books, curios, cabinets of chaos and artifacts imbued with magic — all of it forbidden to him in the Aubaints Estate, where he was furnished only with a small, bare bedroom with a single cot and desk. Over time the office became something of an extension of himself: sometimes he finds it's the only space he can truly think, and sometimes it feels like the space in which he feels the most like himself. It's when he's tucked away in his office researching Eorzea's magicks that he feels most grounded, settled, and comfortable, and when he's practicing the Black Magic in person that his confidence reaches its peak.
4. What famous folklore, legend, or myth would you associate your character with? Are they literally inspired by Snow White? Do they have similar struggles or energy as Red Riding Hood?
Yves is what would have happened to Cinderella if she'd had a taste of destructive magic as a child. While his father doesn't quite fit the "wicked stepmother" role, Yves's story mirrors hers in that he was taken to live with a side of the family who wanted to make sure he never felt safe or comfortable. He was instead reminded daily that he was a burden, he was beaten, and he was relentlessly bullied by his half-cousin, to the point where he had to learn how to carefully school himself so that pain and emotion simply didn't show.
Where he differs from Cinderella, however, is that Yves had no Fairy Godmother: he knew that if he ever wanted to get out he was going to have to do it himself. That affinity for magic was key: he practiced what rudimentary arts he could in the dead of night, or alone in the Brume, and held on to it as a way to one day wrest power back into his own hands. As such he has little faith in the others — he generally views people as stepping-stones to get him to where he needs to be — and instead of escaping his childhood by marrying into the greatest power in the realm?
His idea of freedom is using Black Magic to burn down his family tree.
Pronouns: She/They
Are you over 18?: Yes!
Contact(s): PM this journal •
Who Invited You?: Fiona
Current Characters: N/A
Permissions: Here
Writing Samples:
Please note that these writing samples are for OU Yves (with the exception of the TDM of course!) - everything is largely the same as the AU for Folkmore, but he has been working with the Scions of the Seventh Dawn and comes from a canon House of Ishgard.
TFLN #1
TFLN #2
PSL (NSFW-leaning)
Folkmore TDM