#and a yellow oldrose bouquet...

[tsunael]

If there's anyone out there that cares about flower language and symbolism like I do, I made an informal write-up some time ago about the in-game flowers (that you can put in your house) and the different symbolism that they can mean.

I included the symbolism for the in-game colors as well when they were available.

Also as a disclaimer these could be incorrect, have contrasting meanings, or have different meanings in different real-world cultures. White chrysanthemums (kiku) are usually a funeral flower in Japan for instance. (My Japanese professor once said they were a faux pas for her to receive in a bouquet!) So your mileage may vary!

This was simply a fun personal project I made for myself that I thought other people might enjoy as well! So here's a question to answer in the tags:

What flowers would your WoL have in their residence?

Arums (calla lily) 🔷magnificent beauty, feminine modesty

Brightlilies (easter lily) 🔷purity, refined beauty 🔷White: virginity, purity, majesty 🔷Pink: wealth and prosperity 🔷Red: warmth, desire 🔷Yellow: gaiety, falsehood, "I’m walking on air" 🔷Orange: hatred

Campanulas (bellflower) 🔷humility, constancy

Chrysanthemum   🔷cheerfulness, "You’re a wonderful friend" 🔷Red: I love you 🔷White: truth 🔷Yellow: slighted love

Cosmos 🔷harmony, peace, modesty, "the joys that love and life can bring", beautiful

Dahlias 🔷dignity, elegance

Daisies 🔷innocence, beauty

Lilies of the Valley 🔷return of happiness, sweetness, humility, purity

Oldrose 🔷Red: I love you, love, beauty, passion, romance 🔷Blue: mystery, attaining the impossible, love at first sight 🔷White: innocence and purity, "I am worthy of you", reverence 🔷Yellow: decrease of love, jealousy, friendship

Shroud Cherries (cherry blossom) 🔷spiritual beauty, a good education

Tulips 🔷perfect lover, fame 🔷Red: declaration of love, true love, eternal love, romantic love, "believe me" 🔷Yellow: hopeless love, unrequited love, brightness, sunshine 🔷White: ask for forgiveness, purity 🔷Purple: royalty

Hyacinths 🔷sports, games, rashness 🔷Purple: I am sorry, sorrow, "please forgive me" 🔷Red: play 🔷White: loveliness, "I’ll pray for you" 🔷Blue: constancy, sincerity 🔷Yellow: jealousy

Hydrangeas 🔷heartlessness, boastfulness, "You are cold"

Morning Glories 🔷love in vain, affection

Violas (violets) 🔷modesty, faithfulness 🔷Purple: daydreaming, "You occupy my thoughts" 🔷Blue: watchfulness, love 🔷White: candor, innocence 🔷Yellow: rural happiness

Byregotia (begonia?) 🔷Beware

Carnation 🔷fascination, love, distinction 🔷Red: "My heart aches for you", deep love, admiration 🔷White: sweet and lovely, innocence, pure love 🔷Yellow: "You have disappointed me", rejection, disdain 🔷Purple: capriciousness, changeable

Moth Orchid 🔷love, beauty, refinement, beautiful lady

Sweet Pea 🔷departure, good-bye, delicate pleasure, tender memory, blissful pleasure

Triteleia 🔷 They're a North American wildflower also called 'triplet lilies' or 'Ithuriel's spear' which is a reference to John Milton's epic English poem, Paradise Lost. It's about an angel sent by Gabriel to find Satan in the Garden of Eden. Satan, in the form of a toad, is introducing evil suggestions into the ear of Eve when Ithuriel pokes him with a spear. Satan then returns to his true form, "for no falsehood can endure Touch of Celestial temper, but returns Of force to its own likeness." It is to an unknown but imaginative scholar of English letters that we owe the common name of this plant.

Long story short, I can't find any symbolism for this one. Would make a possibly good Halone/Ishgard reference if you wanted to read into it, though!

#queue time #mine #ffxiv #tsuna has white brightlillies white daisies and red carnations in her house 🥺 #with some white chrysanthemum and shroud cherries growing #and a yellow oldrose bouquet... #I should update them tbh

[shamans-of-reeds]

FFXIV Write - Day 25: Silver Lining

(( Mild 5.5 spoilers under the cut! ))

Putting together a bouquet was like remembering things. Some memories were more ideal than others, but all were part of the journey.

With another clip of the stem, a delicately washed lily of the valley is positioned into the vase. White arums are the centerpiece for this commission, accented by pale yellow oldroses. In Sali's opinion, these roses were better for friendships, but the language of flowers didn't matter all the often in shops nowadays. Besides, he also thought there was a better time to plan a Ceremony of Eternal Bonding.

The world was at war again. What remained of the Garlean Empire gnashed its broken teeth at the newly formed Grand Company of Eorzea. As a direct result, hospitals were filled with soldiers and adventurers, of whom were tasked with combatting the tempered. Where the tempered had emerged from was unbeknownst to Sali, but it wasn't a priority for him to know. He just made sure the hospital patients were brought back to health.

It was either a stroke of coincidence or irony - the two easily confused by many - that his client was the bride of a Maelstrom soldier.

The bouquet is tied with a soft orange ribbon before Sali stepped back to observe his work. He was pleased that they would find the silver lining of these hard times. His only wish was that it would last. The one thing he fret most of all was that for him, painful memories were so prevalent. It was oftentimes hard to focus on the positive.

Maybe that's why the bride chose yellow roses. They represent optimism.

#FFxivWrite2021 #ffxivwrite #ffxiv #sali writings

[elegant-etienne]

FFXIVWrite 2019 #18 - Wilt

When I was a child, when Mother and Mama Adelie had a fight, Mama Adelie came home with flowers. Whatever she could get within the confines of her pay, I'm sure. More frequently than not, they were oldroses. Yellow, Mother's favorite color. She sniffed them once when she got them, and put them in a pretty blue vase in the window. "They're dying, you know," she told me. "It's actually sort of cruel to give them. They're picked because they're beautiful, and then we display them as they die."

The moment they were brown on the edges she said, "They’re wilting. How depressing. Throw them out.”

I used to whisper an apology to them as I dumped them in the bin. "You are still beautiful," I said. I did not see why something was less beautiful as it died. We are all dying, after all - flowers just more quickly.

But she never asked Mama Adelie to stop giving her flowers. Mama Adelie stopped after many turns. The fights got so poisonous no flower to could hope to cleanse them. And then she left.

The irony never missed my mind, really. She used to sit in windows and call out to men. I did too, before the cold came and we shuttered them.

A few times men sent me flowers. I always kept them in their vase until their petals fell off. They were beautiful as they slowly choked to death, just like me - I fancied. I laid the petals to dry in a bowl, and when they were ready, I used them in the bath.

Multi-purpose beauty. Like mine.

When I left that life behind and got married, I saved the bouquet. Red, pink and white oldroses for Valentione's. Some part of me wished to keep every arrangement, to fill our apartment with it, but that seemed a bit too much. I kept my bouquet. I hung it upside-down in a closet until it dried out.

I wonder if it's strange, to let things wither and die on purpose. Sometimes I think that's what my husband did to me. Locked me up, expecting that I would still be waiting, still, some light, fragile semblance of what I once was. Beautiful, gentle and fragrant. His to preserve.

We didn't really fight that much. At least, I couldn't call it fighting. He made me miserable, and so I acted badly. But he did not want me to leave, no, he was the one to leave. He must've wanted that duty. He never bought me flowers.

For a little while, I wished he would have turned up with a bouquet and a smile and an apology. But he never did.

I gave a man I liked a flower after he said he loved me. He gave it to someone else.

Abelaire bought me a flower to put in my hair the third time we met.

I pressed it in a heavy book, I did not let it dry and wither. It is dead, still, but frozen in that colorful moment. This time, it is alright, I think, to not sit and stare as I watch it die, or hide it somewhere out of sight as it dries up.

He brings me flowers all the time - hairpins, bouquets, and he tends a beautiful garden in the house we share.

As for my dried wedding bouquet, I put it in the bin.

#writing #ic #ffxivwrite2019 #retired ship name here #etibel

[starsandauras]

Prompt #18: Blossoms

FFXIV 30 Day Writing Challenge Prompt 18: Wilt

Relates to Prompt 12.

Brigid hummed softly to herself as she arranged the peach blossoms in a small vase. It had been such a pretty bouquet, given to her out of the blue for no real reason she could discover. It must have cost so much gil, especially considering how hard it would have been to find them in Eorzea without arousing the suspicions of the Crystal Braves.

She tried not to think too hard on it, both the circumstances of their being in Ishgard and the cost of the flowers. It was *rude* to contemplate the price of a gift, her mother had said when they were all children. And she would not let herself be *rude* about such a thoughtful gift. And such a pretty gift it was too! An uncommon flower, one that smelled lovely at that.

She feared for the day they started showing signs of wilting, and made a note to find an alchemist that could preserve the flowers for her. For now she used every trick she knew to delay the need. Properly prepared water in the vase, the best lit location she could find in her room at Fortemps Manor even with the ever present Coerthan weather. She sang a little to it, remembering how the roses she grew back in the brothel had done well when she did.

Brigid reached up and pulled the yellow oldrose from her hair, twisting it around by the pin that kept it secure. It was her signature, she knew. She so rarely wore anything else that folk commented on it when the rose was missing. But then, once the peach blossoms were preserved she could have a few set in a hairpin to wear for a moon or so. To show him how much she had liked his gift. That would be the proper way to show her appreciation, a voice that sounded quite a bit like her mother’s affirmed.

She hummed again, a few loose words playing through her mind as she did. The pink blossoms seemed to like the tune, so perhaps she would write it down. She moved the vase to sit next to her bed, just for the night. A slight touch of whimsy and romance.

#FFXIVWrite2019 #Warrior of Light: Brigid O'Donnell #Please read romance as in the non-love version of the word #I agonized over that last sentence because I worried folks would read it that way and it's not meant to be #Remember Bri's too dumb right now to realize the man is literally courting her

[starsandauras]

Entry #25: Roses on my Table

FFxiv 30 Day Writing Challenge Prompt 25: Rose (Extra Credit Day) Title taken from an Emma Goldman quote: “I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck." 

It had started with a single blossom. Brigid couldn’t remember where she had been the day a young Miqo’te boy had handed her six year old self a yellow rosebud, but she did remember him. Blue hair and eyes, a fluffy tail, a pretty smile with a gap in his teeth. It had been a small bud, only the very tip of it open, enough for her to see the sunny color peeking past the green calyx.

She remembered the rosebud as well, clear as a day at sea. It had been small, so very small. It had five leaves along the stem, and someone had broken the thorns off. It was likely to prevent hurting the people handing them out and the ones being handed them. But she could see the yellow, and knew that it would bloom if only she could take care of it.

She had begged Mama for an empty bottle or one of their cups so she could put it in water and tend it until it bloomed. Mama had thought, well if she continued to indulge Llewellyn with his taking in animals, she could certainly indulge her daughter with a simple flower. So a pretty bottle had been found, and Brigid had tended to it nearly religiously, her smile as bright as the flower when it finally bloomed fully. It had a full head of petals, each and every one of them a miniature sun in her eyes.

She had begged for a full rosebush once those miniature suns began to set, even a miniature rosebush would have made her happy, but sadly even Da had turned her down, citing the need for as much space in their tiny garden as they could keep. She had been very sad, but she understood, since that garden was what supplemented their food.

As she had gotten older and more aware of the costs of things, she had recoiled at the price of even a miniature rosebush.

It was only when she joined The Gilded Rose that she found herself with enough funds to buy that miniature rosebush, and she filled her bedroom with them, first with vases full of them, and then three miniature bushes in their own pots. Still, she dreamed of a garden full of roses and other flowers. Lilacs, irises, lilies, sunflowers. All flowers, little thought given to needs. To have that would be to have reached security in her life.

When friends and clients had discovered her fondness for roses, they started to send her gifts of them, all bouquets. But they were all reds and pinks, the occasional white. Not a single yellow blossom, not a single head of miniature suns. She loved them all of course, for they were roses, but they were not her rose. Pink was too soft, white turned to brown far too soon, and while red was that lovely color of blood, it was just so… common. Everyone got red roses. There was no thought put into it, like giving a lover a diamond over another gem they preferred, such as a garnet or a ruby. It was too easy.

When she moved on she gave her bushes to those who had mattered to her most during her time in the Rose, knowing they would be well cared for. Her rose tattoo would have to be enough sunshine for her, at least for a time. She could live with that, and when she knew she could afford it she would buy a yellow oldrose to wear in her hair. She smiled brighter on those days.

As her relationship wit Thancred grew and deepened, he would bring her flowers. Her irises, her lilies, her lilacs. Again her room was full of them, and when they returned to the Rising Stones once the matter of the Crystal Braves had been settled, she nearly fell to her knees to find that someone had protected them, had tended to them. None stepped forward to claim responsibility for it, no matter how much she asked so that she could thank them as they deserved.

She received more flowers. Jasmines, clover, even forget-me-nots. Her room was a riot of colors and scents and she adored every moment of it, every bloom she found in her possession. Some would be dried and made into potpourri, others would end up as hair ornaments, either worn by herself or sold via the boards to those who would.

One day Thancred took her by the hand, raised a finger to his smiling lips and silently lead her to her (their) room, shaking his head at her raised eyebrow.

He opened the door and she gasped sharply, a hand flying to her mouth in joyous surprise. There on the table was a full sized rose bush, settled happily in a light yellow pot. The buds were still closed, but peeking through the calyx was the color of sunlight. She turned to stare at him, eyes wide in surprised.

“You prefer yellow roses,” he murmured, pulling her into his arms. She laughed, tears of happiness beading at the corners of her eyes as she threw her arms around him in return.

“Aye, and I was tellin’ you to nay be gettin’ the idea of red ones in your head,” she murmured, smiling brightly. He chuckled and kissed her temple fondly. “But a full sized rosebush darlin’… ‘tis bein’ so much, just for me…”

He shook his head and kissed her sweetly. He pulled back and pressed his forehead against hers, smiling. “It is the time you have spent on your rose that makes her so important,” he whispered, laughing fondly as she tightened her arms around him, Brigid laughing even as she cried happily.

“Couldnae have been givin’ me a greater gift,” murmured said, voice wobbling with her tears. “Thank you so much.”

“Anything for you, Spitfire.”

#FFXIVWrite2018 #Warrior of Light: Brigid O'Donnell #Thancred Waters #Flowers are one of Bri's great loves #right after stabbing people; fire; Thancred; and her family #Thancred's rose quote is by Antoine de Saint-Exupery #but seriously y'all I don't care if the meaning of a yellow rose is friendship #yellow is prettier