op here, i mentioned that tdm because it seemed jarring even to me with my limited knowledge of ff14 to see the wol and npc players write as if the ship was a confirmed totally happening thing, the characters were the love of each other's lives, super passionate etc etc etc - so yeah, doing it for an audience, as you say.

meanwhile the rest of the ff14s just threaded around them so there's one big part of the audience that wasn't touching that nonsense ig. can't recall whether the game allowed app challenges because if they did and a challenge wol appeared wanting to ship with the npc it's another mess waiting to happen.