Megan Leyman

About a year after I started my transition in late 2019, I started to play Final Fantasy 14 online after some recommendations from one of my best friends and someone from work.

As someone who loved Final Fantasy since I was a kid, for me it was Final Fantasy 8 that got me into the series, which I have been replaying a fair bit recently.

So I had to try it out in October 2020 (honestly thought it was after I started my transitioning but looking back at it it says 2020, so finding this out shocked me) after previously trying an online game in 2008 without much luck and I just loved it.

Of course this happened during the first lock down, which took away my creativity aka my print work. It’s the big reason why I am no longer running a very small print business but blogging instead.

So this helped an awful lot to distract me from that.

This came a year after I started my transition and I like to say it helped in some form. I know full well with my transition I am never going to look like a proper woman/still going to be biological male whatever I do, so to distract myself from that to play a female character with the same name.

Have to say too, of course I know I am never going to look like my character haha, only thing we have got in common is that we are both tall (she’s quite tall as she is an elf, or what the game calls Elezen which is a race not that much people use compared to the bunny girls and cat boys etc).

I was so lucky in February 2022 to go to an event called Kupocon where I met a lot of the English Final Fantasy XIV(14) voice cast such as the one above, Bethan Walker who voices the character Alisale, I was able to talk to her about a minor character called Ga-bu it was great.

Was able to get all the ffxiv cast that were there to sign my Endwalker Vinyl, making it one of my most treasured items I have as the Final Fantasy 14 community is amazing.

Only annoying thing with the event is that my Cosplay I ordered didn’t arrive in time so only took the prop I made and myself. No surprise I had weird looks on the train haha

I am a sucker for books and being such a big game there is books detailing all the lore and such alongside art books!

I can’t end this post without talking about something else I gained from the game, a great set of friends that I still chat to every now and then. We worked together to some of the hard content in the game (not the hardest ever in the game, just harder than normal) and was able to get a good laugh while raiding.

The community in the game is as great as people say as you can be really anyone in real life and you can still make friends be with the raiding or other content found in the game.

Thank you Meg Vhuh (the Vhuh is a random surname that the game gave as option to choose from when I started) for being there, she is like another personality of mine that I cherish

I confess there have been times I have been burnt out of the game like earlier this year when I had a few months off the game after doing so much in it, but back in it as of late with so much on my list to do before the new expansion coming next year!

I am going to Japan in late 2024 for the second time and I want to see the Final Fantasy 14/Eorzea cafe while I’m there as didn’t know the game when I visited in 2019.

With that, thanks for reading!

Megan