lore-friendly transitioning methods

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

by my interpretation they're only really available to the well-connected, and are barely even recognized as existent otherwise

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i'm super lazy canon follower, buy two times we have seen fantasias in quests/interactions with NPCs would he the shady alchemist guy asking us to pass one to that lala gladiator, and the moogle tossing them around like candy in Dawntrail :)

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

we want to play a trans character in ways that are faithful to our trans experience

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it sound like you got this. i did carefully imply another thing in my former post:
though fantasia might make perfect results, other less perfect means might make the character feel simply better about themselves. feeling right and looking perfect aren't same thing for people generally.

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Originally Posted by Burmecia

i'm super lazy canon follower, buy two times we have seen fantasias in quests/interactions with NPCs would he the shady alchemist guy asking us to pass one to that lala gladiator, and the moogle tossing them around like candy in Dawntrail :)

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The moogle Fantasias are of... dubious canonicity, but even if we do lean on the side of 'they're real', the game's also been pretty consistent that moogles are broadly considered fundamentally ridiculous beings that nobody particularly takes seriously or pays attention to. (In fact, Dawntrail reinforced this in the Pictomancer questline; we get that job because we're the only person that bothers checking.) If moogles are handing these things out, people probably aren't biting, and they probably aren't considered especially available or trustworthy as a result. I know I wouldn't drink something a moogle offered to me.

The Ul'dah quest with the gladiator, that one we can trust, and while we don't get much information, it tells us this is grey-to-black market material; that's not exactly something you can just buy off the shelf, the fact the lalafel had to go through shady back channels and that the merchant goes for the 'first hit's free' pitch to us tells us there's something dubious going on there. But it is worth stating that the NPC that peddles them isn't said to be an alchemist; their name is Medicine Merchant. That doesn't tell us anything, but it is worth noting; if they were an alchemist then we could assume this was producible by people, and we don't have that information. Instead, 'Merchant' confirms that he was selling these, which tells us very little but does say that Fantasias are worth selling.

It turns out this is a perfect bite-size way to understand how this game fills out sideline information, the stuff that's not really important to any story... and how sometimes we accidentally lead ourselves on wrong paths by not completely remembering it all. I'll be up-front, I also thought that NPC was an alchemist, but it is kind of important that he's not when sussing out the facts here.