[Feedback] Wuk Lamat's English Voice

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Originally Posted by Nestama

Also how someone is online =/= how they are IRL.

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I think people are more true to themselves online in general rather than IRL, especially if anonymity is involved.

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Originally Posted by Isseki

Mostlikely because people are fed up with this stuff?

FF14 is a game that is build on its story, which is mostly told over cutscenes. And they hired someone that has not the necessary skills to perform the leading role and therefore forced uppon us.
The VA is literally one of the biggest reasons people dislike the story. All because the English Crew thought it would be great to DEI Hire instead of delivering a quality product.

People voiced this concern over multiple threads, tweets and stuff like this, and I read comments were people again got labeled to be any kind of phobes and stuff like this.
After people looked a little more into the VA they could easily see that this VA is basically not only unskilled but also a toxic one, which should have never got the job.

And no its not just the directors fault, because The VA clearly doesnt posses the range of voices with emotional input.

Allmost everything that is touched by DEI or Ideologies that are similar turns to trash, because they prefer their agenda over the quality of their produkt. Which you can see in allmost all kind of western entertainment.
Worst part... its unlikely that we will get rid of this till the next expansion. If we are lucky Wuk Lamat is not a part of the next expansion.

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As I said, transparent as hell.

What’s the goal here? Do you earnestly believe any dev is going to give your feedback any consideration at all given its content? You guys are just so empty.

117 pages deep and we're neck deep in "Woke Lamat" discourse.

Peak official forums moment

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Originally Posted by Isala

Literally go through some of the previous posts on Wuk Lamat. I don't even have a Twitter, but her insane takes were spread here by people who do. Unhinged stuff gets shared. And her VA is VERY MUCH unhinged.



Is it really obsessive to go "What the hell is wrong with this voice?", look up the VA, find some weird stuff, and go looking deeper, and find even more insane stuff?

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dish it sister i want to see

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Originally Posted by ViaDesperare

For those from Latin America, if you don't enjoy the representation from the VA as Wuk from the game then it's ok to call it out. It's ok to ask her to step down from the role so someone who can better represent your culture can take up the role. It's not hate-targeting to ask for Sena to step down, because she herself has done it before and believe that to be the case as well. Sena is white, and faking an accent that your people find offending so it's fine if you have to call it out.

https://i.imgur.com/hJT8jcA.png

https://i.imgur.com/RtDvlWq.png

https://i.imgur.com/K5VRnqC.png

People should understand your want for representation for a role that should've been thought about more from Kate to not misrepresent your country, culture, and people. I don't think SQX ignoring the outcry of Latin America will do them well, especially since the role was taken by a white woman. To our knowledge, Wuk Lamat isn't trans as well, and gender does matter a lot to Sena and Kate. Sena also can't fake the accent to represent your culture, and seems to break the American accent in, so by her word it's ok because she's unfit for the role.

https://i.imgur.com/1BcUVWG.png

Kate should agree with you too. She's pushing to bring more Latin American actors to the scene, which does help authenticate the culture that the races in the New World represents. So don't fear it as wrong to want to have someone better represent your culture, if you're mad then say something about it or bring it to the attention of SQX.


For those of us who are not of Latin America, we can't say that for you. It'd be quite rude and racist for us to talk for you. You should have the support of Luis, Koana's VA, as well.

https://i.imgur.com/NamLaxX.png

https://i.imgur.com/AyGGSSA.jpeg

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On a personal note, I really hope that the reason the Scions got barely any lines this expansion wasn't due to their English Voice counterpart being white. Kate, Sena, and Luis seem like they REALLY have a problem with white people, which shouldn't be an issue that goes on to affect the rest of the world, especially those of us in Asia and Latin America or just those that use the JPN/FRE/GER voices. I love rewatching the story and hearing Yuichi Nakamura and Ai Kayano, so I don't want their roles to be diminished if it's because Kate has an issue with the British VAs.

For the X/twitter stuff, I had some stuff leftover. You can get A LOT of stuff if people have been using the thing for like 10 years, assuming you are able to grab them.

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man kojifox knows how to pick em lol

i have never been more happy in my life to know that some reprobate is using a video game as a platform to "own the chuds" or whatever garbage

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Originally Posted by grinkdaboy

man kojifox knows how to pick em lol

i have never been more happy in my life to know that some reprobate is using a video game as a platform to "own the chuds" or whatever garbage

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They really should vet people before they hire them, having a twitter account in the first place should be a red flag.

I love seeing my point proven more and more.

Dunno why people are targeting her for her orientation or beliefs, when the fact is that she's just a shit va who was unqualified for the role

She has an extraordinarily narrow range and difficulty adjusting pitch or tone to convey emotion, extremely poor pacing, poor clarity, a monotonous, almost derisive cadence that sounds like a customer service operator smiling through their phone, and little consistency in performance of her character's accent

Nothing about her resume speaks to this role, she's self-admittedly a poor casting choice for wuk lamat's character archetype having discussed role suitability a number of times on her socials, and amidst a cast of highly experienced, theatre-trained talent these factors are made all the more apparent

Why she was cast as the lead of this expansion is beyond me

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Originally Posted by Retropolitans

Dunno why people are targeting her for her orientation or beliefs

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I don't think for the most part people are doing that. But then the only counter argument I have seen in all of these discussion is "you only hate her voice because who she is", so a counter reaction to that is natural. When the entire defense is just pulling the bigotry card, than of course bigotry itself will become a topic.

The majority of the complains is just like you said, it's about the quality of the voice, not the person the voice belong too. In a way it's a shame too, her role suffer from both bad directing and a bad character in itself. My first run through the MSQ was in Japanese and Wuk Lamat is no less insufferable, I don't think even if they had cast Laura Bailey, Stephanie Sheh, Chantal Strand, Jillian Michaels or any other well known VA none would be able to save the role or characters. So those 2 things together with people obsession with bringing in cultural and social justice argument into every single thing because it's the hip thing to do these day and you just create the perfect triple wammy ****storm.

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Originally Posted by Retropolitans

Why she was cast as the lead of this expansion is beyond me

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I can tell you it's not the DEI conspiracy shit people are peddling. Like everything in the industry, it's about connections.

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Originally Posted by Retropolitans

Dunno why people are targeting her for her orientation or beliefs, when the fact is that she's just a shit va who was unqualified for the role

She has an extraordinarily narrow range and difficulty adjusting pitch or tone to convey emotion, extremely poor pacing, poor clarity, a monotonous, almost derisive cadence that sounds like a customer service operator smiling through their phone, and little consistency in performance of her character's accent

Nothing about her resume speaks to this role, she's self-admittedly a poor casting choice for wuk lamat's character archetype having discussed role suitability a number of times on her socials, and amidst a cast of highly experienced, theatre-trained talent these factors are made all the more blatant

Why she was cast as the lead of this expansion is beyond me

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Several times I have stated this exact argument only for people to respond with "Wow, kinda transphobic?"
and it's like, when did I ever talk about her being trans?
It's all so tiresome. I've elected to just shut up and swap to JP voices from now on if no change is made, as I highly doubt anything substantial will happen. Kate will keep her job, and Wuk won't be recast.

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Originally Posted by AddictedToWitches

Several times I have stated this exact argument only for people to respond with "Wow, kinda transphobic?"
and it's like, when did I ever talk about her being trans?
It's all so tiresome. I've elected to just shut up and swap to JP voices from now on if no change is made, as I highly doubt anything substantial will happen. Kate will keep her job, and Wuk won't be recast.

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That’s what happened just a few pages ago. It’s like the classic ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’: don’t point out the obvious lest you risk your head. The hypocrisy of her defenders is staggering, as evident by their responses following my post. I did not mention nepotism or DEI, yet here we are, arguing with each other over hypotheticals.

I’ve read many times that the only place to give SE feedback is the official forums: hence why I suggested highlighting the fault in choosing to cast this troublesome voice actor, be it because of her disappointing performance or her divisive public persona. People have been replaced in projects post-release for less.

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Originally Posted by Wildwiccan

As I said, transparent as hell.

What’s the goal here? Do you earnestly believe any dev is going to give your feedback any consideration at all given its content? You guys are just so empty.

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Calling valid feedback empty... I dont know *shrugs*

The goal is simple:
While I doubt it will change anything for now, I hope things will change for the future.
Since I doubt they will recast Wuk Lamat, I just hope we dont have to have her around especially as much as now in further patches.

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Originally Posted by Retropolitans

Dunno why people are targeting her for her orientation or beliefs, when the fact is that she's just a shit va who was unqualified for the role

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because they're forcing an unnatural vocalization technique that's straining and limited due to it. there's a clear reason for being this bad in a particular way

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Originally Posted by wigleht

because they're forcing an unnatural vocalization technique that's straining and limited due to it.

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There are any number of professional well known talent who can do top quality accents. It's their actual profession after all. If it was too unnatural for this particular talent, then they are clearly not the right one for the job.

I've witnessed how this particular sausage was made for the best part of a decade. Even if the talent's inability to actually do the character's voice wasn't picked up in casting, or it was a case of covid making their performance lackluster, there are (should be) so many people in the loop, that should have detected these problems before it went to release.

Just the final trail of woke lamat going Speeeeeeene made us in chat go oh wtf that voice single handedly killed any good will I had in that typenof voicing it wast amatuer at best I did some research on voice actor cause thats what you should do. There imd score is mid to low take dawn trail out of list highest they have is 6.0 on down, best part is that it shows in how god awful they are at ranging, screaming, yelling, showing/conveying emotions during voiced cutscenes.

Now if you like Wuk Lamat voice not her jp I mean her English voice then congrats don't let ppl tell you no. Yet for me that voice got me wondering was dawn trail a fever dream and im still in arr and this was a premonition of the future and were the ascians right to wanna rejoin the reflections....oh god....what have we done Emet Selch was right.....

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Originally Posted by Zakuyia

Now if you like Wuk Lamat voice not her jp I mean her English voice then congrats don't let ppl tell you no. Yet for me that voice got me wondering was dawn trail a fever dream and im still in arr and this was a premonition of the future and were the ascians right to wanna rejoin the reflections....oh god....what have we done Emet Selch was right.....

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I'll accept that take, good thing that we're warned ahead of time and can do things right.
This is what the Sundering made out of people. There's no salvaging this, we have to put things back in order.

We just want a recast so the rest of the expansions isnt ruined. Expecting a good experience isn’t abnormal. In the future perhaps the higher ups should step in to analyze who they are casting as well. There is no way they wanted this to be such a flop yet here we are.

People were expecting a pseudo-vacation where we agreed to go view the competition yet we were forced to do the same menial tasks for others like in ARR (which had to be cut down) for a super annoying women to follow us around preaching.

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Originally Posted by Nyxs

We just want a recast so the rest of the expansions isnt ruined. Expecting a good experience isn’t abnormal. In the future perhaps the higher ups should step in to analyze who they are casting as well. There is no way they wanted this to be such a flop yet here we are.

People were expecting a pseudo-vacation where we agreed to go view the competition yet we were forced to do the same menial tasks for others like in ARR (which had to be cut down) for a super annoying women to follow us around preaching.

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In my opinion the first half of Stormblood had similar issues like Dawntrail with its writing and pacing. At least the voice actors then were well cast, and (as far as I know) presented themselves professionally outside of the scope of FFXIV. Yes, Lyse was disliked as a character, but not to the extent Wuk Lamat currently is. I feel the devs reduced Lyse’s presence due to the criticism she was subject to. They have shown they are willing to course-correct.

For Dawntrail, I can accept the story and characters being badly written, even though in previous expansions the writing was of higher caliber. Ultimately it’s a means to reach the end-game content. I still expect the quality of presentation to be on par with previous expansions. To have the MSQ be dominated by bad voice acting because they cast a contentious person whose character has what feels like 97% of the voiced dialogue… it’s a tough sell. I’m uncertain if I want to keep my subscription if further patches focus on Wuk Lamat.

Be better, Square Enix. Recast and replace Sena Bryer with a better, actually professional voice actor. A full rewrite of the story isn’t possible, but at least make the presentation tolerable without having to suddenly switch to Japanese/German/French after greatly enjoying each previous expansion in English.

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah

We have people in this VERY thread combing through months of Sena's twitter and copy pasting the tweets here trying to paint her as some insane awful person who shouldn't be hired due to her morals. Yea, that's what I would call a bit obsessive. If you don't like her voice, hey cool, I'm not particularly a fan either, but trying to frame this as some insane DEI (wth does that even mean btw, I just know alt-right types use it when they're talking about wokeness taking over) is just ridiculous.

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The reason this has happened is the "star" of this expansion's performance is so jarringly bad in multiple scenes, that people wondered who this is and how in the world they got the role. It doesn't take more than a minute of curiosity to scroll.

I follow multiple voice actors (that I actually like) on Twitter. They are kind of my version of celebrity as a gamer, and it's fun to see what their new projects will be.

Personally I avoided Sena's since amidst all her boasting about how her work is universally loved, I'd be tempted to disagree and why bother. If they want to live in a delusional world that her performance is universally praised and that makes her feel good - whatever.

Anyone who publicly tweets about their hatred towards certain groups, or anything controversial isnt really a person I can trust/respect. And as we have seen with WoW, it can easily snowball into other things and ruin the fun for so many people (players mainly).

I hope SE realizes XIV is still their golden child. Better learn from Blizzard.

This was a miscast. I don't even know or care what region anyone hiring is from. Please by all means hire Americans. But hire talented ones. If you want diversity well this also would have been a great opportunity to be diverse and inclusive with the cast, by getting a native latina to voice act Wuk Lamat. We got neither. Which is very strange since this character got like 90% of all the voiced lines this expansion. Most of the other amateur voice acting in this game doesn't have as gigantic of a spotlight on them.

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Originally Posted by Lusarae

If you want diversity well this also would have been a great opportunity to be diverse and inclusive with the cast, by getting a native latina to voice act Wuk Lamat.

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I think this would have been the best approach and it would have made way more sense. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Wuk's VA was the absolute worst, but she probably needed a smaller role first before being given a big one like this. And she obviously needed better direction from whoever was in charge of that because, quite frankly, it doesn't feel like they really cared. They probably just said "say these lines" and didn't bother to try and refine them.

Im American and I agree that the VA was really bad. But its not just the VA. Its the writing. Not sure if the VA recording was not done in a studio but it doesnt sound like director helped them at all or anyone assisted them with the lines.

Several lines feel very flat, dull with no emotion. The upcoming patches the VA needs coaching and support to deliver better lines. However if the VA was better it still wouldnt improve the very bad writing and pacing. Nor would it fix the final boss encounter.

someone told me wuk is supposed to be a young teenager and i didnt even know. i thought she looked and sounded like 40 or something which made alot of her scenes weird and cringy. maybe if she had a young VA the naruto type personality would have worked better.

This thread is a pretty frustrating read because on both sides we've got people jumping in with more and more extreme takes and silly accusations to the point where it seems people are more invested in fighting an unrelated culture war than addressing the actual problem that is the bad voice acting.

There is no proof at all that the English VA for Wuk Lamat was some DEI hire or that the localisation lead is best friends with her and nepo-hired her. At the same time people criticising her performance are not automatically transphobes, and denying her mediocre at best performance and just blindly praising her because she's trans makes you look delusional and also is honestly just condescending and patronising towards the VA.

The reality is that her being trans has obviously made it more difficult for her to voice this female character. The VA was born with a masculine voice and therefore has to put in extra effort to put on a convincing feminine voice. This becomes even more difficult when she has to act out emotional scenes or has to shout and scream. It's an extra challenge she herself acknowledged in the past that she has trouble with. Which is why the voice acting for Wuk Lamat sounds so unnatural, unemotional, and amateurish. Especially compared to the stellar performances we're used to in FFXIV.

Now is this the fault of the VA? Partially, sure. After all, it's her performance and it's clearly not up to par. On the other hand, she's just doing a job she was hired to do to the best of her ability. I'm sure she herself also realised the performance wasn't all that good, but aside from stepping away and missing out on the money and experience of this job, what else could she do but her best?

In the end it's the voice director who has the final say. That's where the responsibility lies. And apparently the director thought this performance was good enough to ship. I don't know if it was the voice director who also chose and hired her in the first place, or if that was a casting director or someone else, but that's obviously also a place where mistakes were made.

I've heard people say that SE used a different VA agency for DT compared to previous expansions. I don't know if there's any truth to that, but if it is then people should be focused on telling SE that they want the old studio back instead of focusing on DEI conspiracies and "Woke Lamat" nonsense. I think that would be a way more productive way of getting SE to listen to your feedback and getting the English dub back to it's previous quality.

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Originally Posted by Carolingian

This thread is a pretty frustrating read because on both sides we've got people jumping in with more and more extreme takes and silly accusations to the point where it seems people are more invested in fighting an unrelated culture war than addressing the actual problem that is the bad voice acting.

There is no proof at all that the English VA for Wuk Lamat was some DEI hire or that the localisation lead is best friends with her and nepo-hired her. At the same time people criticising her performance are not automatically transphobes, and denying her mediocre at best performance and just blindly praising her because she's trans makes you look delusional and also is honestly just condescending and patronising towards the VA.

The reality is that her being trans has obviously made it more difficult for her to voice this female character. The VA was born with a masculine voice and therefore has to put in extra effort to put on a convincing feminine voice. This becomes even more difficult when she has to act out emotional scenes or has to shout and scream. It's an extra challenge she herself acknowledged in the past that she has trouble with. Which is why the voice acting for Wuk Lamat sounds so unnatural, unemotional, and amateurish. Especially compared to the stellar performances we're used to in FFXIV.

Now is this the fault of the VA? Partially, sure. After all, it's her performance and it's clearly not up to par. On the other hand, she's just doing a job she was hired to do to the best of her ability. I'm sure she herself also realised the performance wasn't all that good, but aside from stepping away and missing out on the money and experience of this job, what else could she do but her best?

In the end it's the voice director who has the final say. That's where the responsibility lies. And apparently the director thought this performance was good enough to ship. I don't know if it was the voice director who also chose and hired her in the first place, or if that was a casting director or someone else, but that's obviously also a place where mistakes were made.

I've heard people say that SE used a different VA agency for DT compared to previous expansions. I don't know if there's any truth to that, but if it is then people should be focused on telling SE that they want the old studio back instead of focusing on DEI conspiracies and "Woke Lamat" nonsense. I think that would be a way more productive way of getting SE to listen to your feedback and getting the English dub back to it's previous quality.

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This is how you communicate the realities of the situation without resorting to either hate speech, conspiracies or snark (I'm guilty of that one).

I'll bow out here, as you've said it better than I ever could and my snarkiness isn't helping the situation.

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Originally Posted by Carolingian

This thread is a pretty frustrating read because on both sides we've got people jumping in with more and more extreme takes and silly accusations to the point where it seems people are more invested in fighting an unrelated culture war than addressing the actual problem that is the bad voice acting.

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Originally Posted by Carolingian

I've heard people say that SE used a different VA agency for DT compared to previous expansions. I don't know if there's any truth to that, but if it is then people should be focused on telling SE that they want the old studio back instead of focusing on DEI conspiracies and "Woke Lamat" nonsense. I think that would be a way more productive way of getting SE to listen to your feedback and getting the English dub back to it's previous quality.

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Well put, and honestly this is what I attempted to convey earlier: if there are complaints about the quality of the product we paid for, we should address it concentrated, coherently and voice the criticism in a respectful manner - without resorting to memes and farfetched hypothetical situations, or worse, insults and mudthrowing.

To instead respectfully request that the devs take action and recast/replace one problematic voice actor to improve the quality should not be that offensive of a step to take, no? Or should it be lumped in with a big "we don't like the quality of Dawntrail"-thread where the actual issue won't be addressed?

I do believe the disappointing quality of Dawntrail's MSQ/localisation is directly related to changes in the usual development cycle. To assume the cause to be the change in hiring practices or having the wrong people in charge is a rational take, certainly if the involved parties are publicly speaking about these changes on their social media, and loudly so. Even moreso when the end product is visibly (negatively) affected.

One and one still add up to two: someone else got in charge, and the wrong people got hired. What we got was a lackluster expansion that does not live up to standards set before, with a few clear examples such as Sena Bryer's dismal performance. I personally don't care how it got to this point, or why, but I'd like Square Enix to address the complaints and take action.

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Originally Posted by PaleYonder

So if she says she's trans and gay, and she's a trans woman, she likes girls cause to her they're the same gender.

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Thank you for clarification!

Back on topic, I did fall into the twitter rabbit hole and kind of made some of my friends and FC mate fall into it too, to the point where they often send me a lot of tweets.

I would say I was driven to find evidence of Sena's ineptitude to voice act, due to people calling anyone who criticizes the voice acting or Wuk Lamat as transphobic. I kept using more and more of Sena's tweets because she can't be a hypocrite and not follow her own words. Since Sena is trans, and we're not the one saying her words, then the one who argues that we are transphobic can't call us transphobic because we aren't the one who said anything outside of using her own words back at her. If we do get called transphobic though, we could counter back with calling the attacker racist and misogynistic with what I found from Sena's tweets.

I just wanted to figure out why the voice acting was so bad for Wuk Lamat, so I kept digging and you can find everything I found, if you look at my post history or starting around page 103. Considering we went from bad and rushed voice acting from ARR, which was understandable due to reworking the game, to amazing British voice acting from HW until now, it was weird for me to hear such drop in quality. Anything related to the voice acting always resulted into 2 things: "You're transphobic" or "it's 100% the voice director". So, I searched and it wasn't 100% the voice director and people aren't transphobic for calling out bad voice acting which many people gave evidence to, all the yelling scenes/fake accents/voice cracks.

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Originally Posted by RabendaShin

Would it not be the right decision to highlight her problematic inclusion in the English localisation of FFXIV to the devs in its own topic? Other actors have been removed or replaced for far less hateful remarks than the ones she has voiced publicly.

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I mean if people are scared to do it, then I don't mind doing it. I just don't think I would be the right one, especially if asking for authentic voices. Someone from South America, so the Latin American culture, will have a stronger say due to the expansion representing them. A native Hispanic, or one who learned ESL, will have more impact and plus we who are not Hispanic cannot speak for them. I'm also newer, signed up because the MSQ and voices were so bad that I mass skipped after I got annoyed with Wuk Lamat.

The only thread I can really make is one for hating Wuk Lamat and asking to never have her show up ever again, but most of us can make that especially if you're from the thread where Wuk ruins everything. Anyone who hates Wuk Lamat will be branded as transphobic though, based on what we've seen, because of Sena, even if many of us don't use the English VO, so do think about that.

nah the actual transphobia here is wild though.

we know very well hating Wuk's English VA isn't transphobic, but since her tweets were dug up (admittedly very groaty tweets), people that obviously have a beef with LGBT (mostly T) have taken this as an opportunity to not very cleverly express their feelings toward that group, but hide behind the fact that yes, Sena is pretty awful.

I mean actual conservative anti-trans forum signatures? Asking "do lgbt race change irl now?" lol I said, lmao

Let's please just trash her performance and awful fake accent

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Originally Posted by Petroglyph

nah the actual transphobia here is wild though.

we know very well hating Wuk's English VA isn't transphobic, but since her tweets were dug up (admittedly very groaty tweets), people that obviously have a beef with LGBT (mostly T) have taken this as an opportunity to not very cleverly express their feelings toward that group, but hide behind the fact that yes, Sena is pretty awful.

I mean actual conservative anti-trans forum signatures? Asking "do lgbt race change irl now?" lol I said, lmao

Let's please just trash her performance and awful fake accent

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There is as far as I read no transphobia here.

The VA is bad in the role, a bad person overall... Just flatout not Maincharakter-material.
And the reason why people are even more annoyed is that people obv defend the VA because the VA is a T,
while they also throw the classic labels at people for pointing out how awefull the VA is.

Should be easily understandable. *Shrug*

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Originally Posted by Carolingian

Snip.

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Well said.
But I will point out that the reason people are accusing Sena of being a nepo-hire is that she has been friends with Kate, who is now the localization lead, since before the casting, as evidenced by being mutuals on twitter and frequently interacting.
VDs and localization leads hiring people they know is not an uncommon thing, but when they get hired over people more fitting/deserving of the role (like an actual latina) then obviously people are going to shed more light on it.
I will agree that the primary fault lies in the voice direction.

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Originally Posted by Isseki

There is as far as I read no transphobia here.

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That's because transphobic posts get reported and eventually deleted (there were A LOT in this threads early days to the point where this thread was hidden as a result. Even the tags were pretty bad, too). There were a couple posted around page 100 or so with a disappointing amount of likes (~20-30).

Anyway, criticism is fine, but don't believe that you're in the majority in hating the VA when really you could just be a third. 1/3 hates, 1/3 loves and 1/3 indifferent. Don't go out of your way to personally attack the VA just because of some tweets as that just comes off as looking for a reason to hate her, the person and not their performance which is probably why some people may make assumptions. Don't bring "DEI hire" into this as it just makes you sound like a grifter rage-bait conspiracy theorist. Just criticise the voice (and story if you so choose), call out the posts that actually are being transphobic so those giving the thread a cursory glance at those moments don't think you're complicit with it and you're gucci in my eyes. SE will most likely NOT change Wuk Lamat's VA just because of this thread (because again, most likely just a third of the XIV population), since it has a handful of the same people posting in it such as myself, yourself and so forth.

I personally didn't mind her VA at all. Only criticism I have was that screams and yells sounded a bit muffled. I suppose that is because she is MtF trans, so probably had trouble hitting higher volume, while keeping a feminine pitch and tone. Other than that, I had no problems with her voice.

Hmmm does Sena have some white hispanic heritage? Isn't "latino/latina" usually more of a cultural demonym? (According to the US definition it is)

She was born in the US but her parents, or at the very least one parent IIRC are Puerto Rican

I miss earlier today when I didn't realize there were people who disliked the voiceover.
I'm usually really picky with VO so this took me by surprise - like I can't listen to Genshin in EN it makes my skin crawl lol.

But I enjoyed Dawntrail the whole way through. There were some weak links for me (mostly nameless crowd NPCs) but Wuk Lamat was not one of them.

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Originally Posted by AkaeiNox

Hmmm does Sena have some white hispanic heritage? Isn't "latino/latina" usually more of a cultural demonym? (According to the US definition it is)

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She describes herself as being from "an old kentucky home", that she's "PR on her dad's side", and she's described herself as white in the past. She doesn't speak spanish, either. Her identity doesn't matter with regards to her performance except that she's absolutely just not faking the accent well, but I think it is worthwhile mentioning that people are trying to give her points for being puerto rican (as in some people think she's FROM puerto rico), but she's really just an american with a parent or grandparent from the old country. I really don't want to imply callous or cruel intent, just clarify, since others have brought it up.. ^^;;

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Originally Posted by Petroglyph

She describes herself as being from "an old kentucky home", that she's "PR on her dad's side", and she's described herself as white in the past. She doesn't speak spanish, either. Her identity doesn't matter with regards to her performance except that she's absolutely just not faking the accent well, but I think it is worthwhile mentioning that people are trying to give her points for being puerto rican (as in some people think she's FROM puerto rico), but she's really just an american with a parent or grandparent from the old country. I really don't want to imply callous or cruel intent, just clarify, since others have brought it up.. ^^;;

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That's the disingenuous part for me, in light of recent "all of Dawntrail characters have Latino/Indigenous voice actors" posts. Certainly when she is the one voicing what is objectively the main character of Dawntrail. Pair that with past tweets claiming other identities, it gives pause to think about the professionalism and intents of this person.

I'm from Europe and have very mixed heritage, but I'm not going to claim to be Chinese because my great grandmother was born and raised there. I have no ties to Chinese culture or identity other than by distant blood and appreciation of rice, so why would I get to claim I do and parade it as some kind of victory?

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Originally Posted by Petroglyph

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I assume her being unable to speak Spanish might be an issue for a lot of people from a representation perspective. (Too being from Québec we are also very attached to the french language so I can relate in a way)