Male Viera names?

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Originally Posted by YianKutku

EDIT: To make it clearer, Matsuno could have said "in our world now, we try to allow boys and girls to be what they want. But Viera aren't raised like that, and they believe that boys and girls must have strictly different roles." That would make the statements clearer to me.

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That's the opposite of what he's saying.

The first part of the statement is about human culture. Humans have a concept of male and female as children and have different expectations placed on them depending on whether they are a boy or a girl.

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For us a big influence while growing up is our environment, "As a girl/boy this is what you have to do and how you have to behave".

In that sense, Viera aren't raised like that. Their approach to education and raising keeps this in mind. The surrounding enviroment is different to our present age.

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Viera do not have that "big influence" because they have no concept of boys and girls. The rest of the statement is vague but it seems simple enough to me that would mean that they're not raised with the concept. They're not preparing some children to be future warders and some to be future villagers, they just treat them all the same.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

That's the opposite of what he's saying.

The first part of the statement is about human culture. Humans have a concept of male and female as children and have different expectations placed on them depending on whether they are a boy or a girl.



Viera do not have that "big influence" because they have no concept of boys and girls. The rest of the statement is vague but it seems simple enough to me that would mean that they're not raised with the concept. They're not preparing some children to be future warders and some to be future villagers, they just treat them all the same.

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Except all Viera are eventually divided into warders and villagers, not due to skill or aptitude, but due to biological gender. This means it is gender essentialism, and an arbitrary one.

Hence my comment that it's not actually that different between the "human example" Matsuno gave and the Viera example. Humans may have different expectations of male and female children, but these expectations are arbitrary, and have very little to do with actual biology. And in modern society (and definitely in Eorzea), there is a drive towards examining those expectations and allowing for greater crossover.

Viera may not have the arbitrary expectation between children, but they demonstrably have them between adults. So either Matsuno is saying "Humans and Viera are the same in having weird expectations between male and female", or he's saying "Humans and Viera are different, because Humans try to look past biological (and assigned) gender, while Viera keep strictly to them". But the way he phrased it seems to wobble between the two.

I imagine that, with the male models now completed, they could easily add a transgender Viera or two to an existing settlement. It may have already been established that nobody has ever seen a male Viera, but that would still be true if they met an AMAB Viera. It would be a very easy retcon.

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Originally Posted by YianKutku

Except all Viera are eventually divided into warders and villagers, not due to skill or aptitude, but due to biological gender. This means it is gender essentialism, and an arbitrary one.

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They are divided by gender as adults, but that doesn't apply as children. He's talking about how they think and are treated as children.

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Originally Posted by Fenral

I imagine that, with the male models now completed, they could easily add a transgender Viera or two to an existing settlement. It may have already been established that nobody has ever seen a male Viera, but that would still be true if they met an AMAB Viera. It would be a very easy retcon.

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That depends entirely how the culture treats it - and I can't see them even having such a concept as transgender. You developed that body shape, you're a warder whether you like it or not, and there's no such thing as disagreeing with the role that fate has decreed for you.

I think we could easily find them outside of the tribe, but even then their whole understanding of gender is going to be different, especially if they're all treated as female until they "become" male. (It seems likely they all use female pronouns, at least.) In that case it would be more about refusing to acknowledge that physical change and continuing to adhere to the gender they've had from birth.

Fully aware you're speaking academically, but you've basically looped back around into gender essentialism, whether you meant to or not. What is gender but the notion that one's assigned sexual characteristics are intrinsically tied to one's personality and role in society?

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Originally Posted by Fenral

Fully aware you're speaking academically, but you've basically looped back around into gender essentialism, whether you meant to or not. What is gender but the notion that one's assigned sexual characteristics are intrinsically tied to one's personality and role in society?

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It's the state of Viera society as adults but not as children, because they can't be assigned a gender as children.

I would say that their view of gender would be slightly different from ours. Though in particular because their formation SEEMS to be less based on "gender" and more on "DUTY": such as "You'll either grow into a Wood Warder or a [Whatever the term was for the females]", a "duty" that HAPPENS to be based on sex (on which I'll say no more beccause I don't want to do a whole diatribe on gender roles and expectations).

HOWEVER, given that most if not all the Viera we meet are outliers and rebels (I'm deliberately excluding the Viis here), or were simply born out of their "restrictive society"; it does give a good excuse for a female (well, Designated Female At Birth) Viera to have wanted to grow up to be a Wood Warder only to be told no because she developed feminine sexual characteristics. She (or He if we go by the "Trans" angle and not a "gender-non-conforming" one, or a "Cis Female but enjoys typically-male roles") would be presented to us in a mostly "male Viera" sort of upbringing while "biologically" being female. Do I think the dev team will go with that? No. Of course not. They were weirded out enough giving men dresses to chip in to the whole "trans people exist" issue. Do I think it's a perfectly acceptable backstory for a Viera character that is even accidentally Lore-appropriate? Yes, of course.

It feels... like a convoluted way to retcon the Males' existence into XIV when we could have just said "Yes, they existed all the time.. off-screen." Especially since Matsuno added that this did not apply to FFXII, meaning he's leaving his options open in the case there's another Ivalice game.

The situation appears rather straightforward to me. They're not the equivalent of modern day real world humans, they're an isolated group of tribes bound by the will of their forest. As such their society subscribes to strict gender norms. Some Viera see fit to take their leave of the forest altogether, probably right around the same time that they grow into their adult form. The number of individuals doing as much, however, is likely to be small - though that won't be reflected in the player character population. It will, however, be reflected through NPC placement.

I think Matsuno handled the questions rather well. Especially since some of them were arguably deceptive and leading in their framing - particularly the phrase 'it sounds scary to me'. Assuming we get another lore book, I don't doubt that there will be more detail to work with as well as snippets of potential lore to be found in-game during Endwalker.

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Originally Posted by WhiteArchmage

It feels... like a convoluted way to retcon the Males' existence into XIV when we could have just said "Yes, they existed all the time.. off-screen." Especially since Matsuno added that this did not apply to FFXII, meaning he's leaving his options open in the case there's another Ivalice game.

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Agree with most of your post but just be be pedantic here; he also says they came up with it during XII's development, and that his reasoning for saying it doesn't apply to XII is only because he left that game's development before it had the chance to be published somewhere.

I do agree it's convoluted and not really necessary as an explanation, but all the same I just find it interesting to have characters from different cultures with different concepts of gender. It doesn't take away from the possibility of someone's mental gender not matching their body; it just means it's going to come up in a different form to a culture where everyone knows their physical gender from birth and is treated accordingly.

There's not much potential to recognise it while in the tribe and following the cultural rules, but they can still leave and embrace whatever identity they want once they're out in the wider world - though as I said, they're just going to have a different vocabulary and outlook about what it means and what gender roles even are.