To Koushiar Beor

As with many others I wish to write something here to really get my feelings out, and if you happen to find it then I hope you're well, and if you want I can remove your name. Also, some of this I wrote two to three years ago (I legit wrote about a book about my experiences in XIV in terms of size), so I apologize for any awkwardness in the grammar. 

I feel like we had an intense connection for such a long while but in hindsight it lasted less than a year, going from chatting every single day, spending hours doing some content we both enjoyed to spending so little time together than simple emotes were all we could muster. 

I remember our first meeting, I don't quite remember what spurred it on nor exactly how it came to be, but it was around the New Gridania aetheryte. I was just standing around in New Gridania messing around when I noticed you. I think I just commented on something and you quickly made a snarky comment. “Okay, it’s gonna be like that is it”. You just kept at it while I didn’t really make up my mind on what to do, it was really sharp wit and instant comebacks, I was a little taken aback because normally people aren’t like that. I loved it though, it was really funny just unusual. I assumed it was part of some roleplaying, so it wasn't as offensive as it could've been. I think I initially tried to use some wit and threw some comebacks too before I changed my tactic and approached him with immense kindness. That was hilarious. Also I remember tossing a huge wall of text ridiculing him and he grew a little silent. "Too far", I thought before he wrote back. You became a staple of the bench area for such a long time, becoming a member of FRZN and it was always eventful having you around. You would often speak in third person and present your long list of achievements and accomplishments.

To think that, with a few exceptions, some of these people would go on to become great friends, some would go on to do World First clears, and some would simply disappear from the world. 

After a while you simply vanished though, with no words or warning you were simply gone. I assumed your 30 free days were up and you hadn't bothered renewing, but I didn't know. As with many other people you simply disappeared and became a name on my friendlist.

Me and Tyke were just messing around in New Gridania, I told him to glamour a full plate armor set because “the chicks digs that”. No idea, we were just messing around. I think Tyke went to repair down by the inn when he said “Karma come quickly!”. And right then and there was a huge group of people clearly RPing and messing around and so I joined them. I like to think I’m decently creative, I can go on long tirades and trash talk quite a lot. I’m also in love with cringe to the extent that I can purposely put myself in a position to maximize cringe-capital. I love cashing in, anyway I just started trolling around and flirting with people. Both me and Tyke quickly came in contact with someone else (someone who’s in the Bench Buddys LS picture from above). Eljusiana Belhi.

This video is from the day a suspicious looking character similar to Belhi approached you, Beor, and you "called in the troops" (VAL spying with alts). Also, sorry for the 720p but y'know, PS4 recordings.

She was a lot like Tyke when I first met him, very open and very talkative. We all quickly hit it off. I also remember “flirting” with members of Val and also another fellow I thought lost, Koushiar Beor. He would try to flirt with Belhi and I would show up and flirt with him to mess up his plans. It was honestly rather funny, I miss all of that. That period had intrigue, drama and it had personality and characters. So much happened in such a short period of time and our friendship intensified quite well, Beor. Because we spent time together terrorizing a mutual friend's former FC we also bonded, and talked for hours.

We briefly stopped talking but it really exploded when we both started doing PvP together, and we would do them all day. I went from barely a few hundred matches to nearly a thousand.

Because of our fascination with PVP we would spend a lot of time in The Wolves Den. There’s a ship there with a tower looking structure you can jump onto. That was our Gridanian guardtower. 

We were in a Seal Rock and got to know someone the way you get to know someone in PVP. Emote spam, a couple abilities used on each other and more emote spam. When we got out however we found them in The Wolves Den so we started a party. me, Koushiar Beor, Yunakari Zehard and Damona Sinclair. Yunakari would later change his last name to Ren. We had a blast just doing PVP and talking about everything. We talked about starting a LS and for a while. I wasn't around to witness the birth of the LS since I was in Spain on vacation, it was summer time again.

When I returned they had started the LS and grown quite well together, the LS was called “Fun Club” and it had 30-60 members. It was quite packed and had a lot of activity. Damona and Yunakari had also started another FC. Because I came into it quite late I had missed a bunch of the introductory things, the stuff people say to get to know each other. I was picking up the pieces and we started doing PVP again. Around this time I had around 7-800 games played in Frontlines. I remember my game number 666 with Beor so going from 200 to almost 800 games should tell you all you need to know about how much we all played together. 

We started hearing rumours about The Feast. It was a new version of The Wolves Den, a 4v4 PVP mode and we started gearing up for it and forming a sort of static for it. me, Beor, Yunakari and Jasper Lloyd. I was the MCH, Yuna the SMN, Beor the WHM and Jasper the PLD. We were decent enough but we couldn’t keep it active, I think we played a total of maybe 10 matches before disbanding, and not a purposely disband either but one where you simply don’t bring it up. One where the team and the plans just fade from existence.

We barely did PVP after that. Maybe we got sick of each other, or perhaps I was just not active enough but in the end I lost contact with all of them. They still remained together though. Me and Beor would talk every now and then but never to the extent we used to.I got to know quite a lot of people through Beor, like Jasper Lloyd, Yumi Solstice, Nami Desu, Mikayla Chriel. 

Because of the size of the LS at the time I joined I just didn't mesh well with it. I couldn't quite "get" the internal humor because I wasn't around when it was formalized, I gradually had less and less contact until one day I was kicked. It became an extension of the FC and I just lost contact with all of them. Including you, Beor. You and the others wanted to invest more into the game, as in do more serious content, and I was perfectly content with doing whatever I was doing. You all formed a static, I think I was asked if I wanted to join once, but I declined. The sad part is that our "end" came partly or fully because of said static breaking up, but it was very successful for you. You met your, at the time at least, love. I'm not sure if you're still together so I don't wanna mention it too much, but I was happy to hear that.

There are still traces of the LS left, just insane to think that this LS once had over 50-60 active members, and a dedicated core of at least nearly 10-20 who consistently did content together. Now we're all over the world, but that's life.

As my life got busier so did the distance between us. You and I never really met up to do some content or to just simply chat like we had done, we didn't even really catch up through our mutual friends either, we simply stopped. It wasn't cold between us, like we'd emote and everything if we did see each other but as I said, it wasn't like before. It kinda appeared like the static took up all your time, and perhaps the static, and thus endgame content, made every other piece of content boring, and in the end that's how it did go. In the end I don't know what happened between all of you in the static, all I got was one side of that whole debacle. From mid 2015, prior to HW, all the way up to mid-to-late 2016 we had an intense connection, on and off, granted, but we would chat so much. Going from that to near silence to nothing but a few emotes when we ran into each other in the Gold Saucer always hurt. I do genuinely miss you, your wisdom and knowledge, your sense of humor, but I am happy that things have seemingly worked out well for you. I wonder what would've been had I joined the static, or had I not gone to Spain on vacation or had I not done this or done that. No way to know. I may add more to this later, but my "energy" is spent atm.

Parts of this were nearly directly copypasted from a longer document I wrote at the very beginning of 2018, some 2017. It's incredible to think that I wrote parts of this no more than a year and a half since our peak, and now it's been years.