catboy disease
Created: 23 December 2019
Original world: Zalera, Crystal
Current world: Siren, Aether
I really never intended to get hooked on catboys. Honestly.
So here's the thing. During 2017 and 2018, I spent a lot of time writing about some of my original characters. I didn't publish what I was writing — it was very much just for me — but I had spent so much time with these characters that they occupied most of my thoughts. One of the stories I'd been writing was about how they traveled to different worlds. You can probably see where this is going.
In that vein, Cálei was intended to be the same character from my original work; his early lore reflected this. There were some neat parallels with what I'd written and Shadowbringers, so it dovetailed quite nicely. I struggled to ship with Reis, but I was very enamored of the Crystal Exarch and wanted to write shippy fic about him. Why not make a new character for the purpose?
The other thing is that I had come across a community that was planning on playing through the game as a group. I wanted to replay the game anyway, and while I could do so with the newly introduced New Game Plus feature, it'd be nice to do it with other people, and maybe make some friends.
So why a catboy? Because the character he was based on was sometimes a cat. What I didn't expect was that I was immediately drawn to the male Miqo'te emotes. The way his tail arched up when he caught a fish! His excited little cheer! His utterly adorable ear wiggles!
Truly, I was doomed from the start. Why I ever thought my favorite OC would turn into anything but my main MMO character is beyond me. Of course he became my main.
Cálei started on Zalera, which at the time was a preferred server. While the group I was playing with at the time didn't last more than a month or so, luck was on my side. In February 2020, my D&D friends (and their D&D friends) started playing the game on Siren. We couldn't visit across data centers at the time, so I made an alt over there to hang out with them briefly. It soon became clear that as soon as Cálei was past his 90-day probation for being made on a preferred server, he'd be moving over there.
For those 90 days, though, I had double EXP! I used this to great effect; Reis didn't have anything of the sort when I made her, and now that I'd played the game I could optimize my time better. Within those three months, I leveled most if not all of my ARR jobs to 50, beat ARR, and was well along on my crafters and gatherers.
Of course, by the time those 90 days were up, it was late March 2020. With uncertainty in the air, we took to Eorzea to pass the time. I truly got very lucky: I made lasting friends and immediately forged new connections. With this FC being made up of people who already liked roleplaying in D&D, it was a very creatively fulfilling time: we'd share thoughts about our characters alongside impressions about the game. Because I'd already played through the game on Reis, I could answer a lot of the new players' gameplay questions, paying it forward as my friend had for me when I'd been new.
The one problem was that my self-indulgent catboy AU of my original character didn't work as well in a group environment; it relied too much on my own backstories. Over time, Cálei drifted away from his inspiration and into a character wholly native to Eorzea, rather than the world-hopper I'd originally envisioned. I think it was for the best, though it took me a while to get there. I did consider changing his name and/or appearance, but by then I was much too attached, and the differences only matter to me anyway.
Of course, then I had to go and write an elaborate story for this Cálei too...