Not the gender you thought they were

So, have you ever encountered that enemy or boss that because of the setup, and what you know of their race or background you assume they are one gender, only to learn later on that they were the other gender all along.

Well, I was running Xelphatol the other day with my FC, and I commented how I like to point out that the second boss is female, since it still shocks people. Well, as expected someone was surprised, and was like how do you know, lol. I simply mentioned its the Ixal naming convention for females. I also pointed out a little later how one of the Namazu in the Seven Hundred Seventy Seven, Gyorei, is female as well; to the same shock.

So it got me thinking, as there others out there, that we think are one gender but are actually the other. This is a list for those that are hard to tell at a glance since the sexes probably look almost identical. So Kobolds are out since we know, for now, the females are pink; real original SE, lol

He's what I got:
Dotoli Ciloc - The second boss of Xelphatol, we know because of the Ixal naming convention
Methuli Cattlan the Hard - Quest giver for the Ixal Beast Tribe, we know because of the Ixal naming convention
Gyorei - The Weaver Namazu in the Beast Tribe Quests, we know because she is refered to as she/her in the cutscenes

I still remember the hubub early in ARR's service over Brayflox Alltalks and her gender - the info for Brayflox's Longstop used male pronouns to identify her so everyone just assumed our gobbie cheese connoisseur was male.... then sometime later Brayflox's Longstop HM was released and... suddenly she was being identified with female pronouns, with much confusion from players and leading SE to sheepishly admit the earlier information was wrong and that Brayflox is a female goblin. ;)

Then there is the old Nael van Darnus controversy, which even the development team themselves were not entirely sure as to how to identify Nael properly (the Nael model in 1.0 used male elezen animations, and Nael was identified with male pronouns in the lyrics for Rise of the White Raven, yet some members of the development team apparently referred to Nael as a woman, and not helped in ARR with Turn 9 showing a very female elezen under that helm and even Urianger confused as to why they were looking at a woman instead of a man like they expected).

Eventually it was settled on making the 'real' Nael male but long dead, and his identity stolen by his younger sister, and thus the Nael 1.0 players fought at the Rivenroad (and the shade in Second Coil of Bahamut in ARR) was female. Sure it's one hell of a retcon, but at least it does make sense.

I think it's a natural confusion with any of the only-one-model beast tribe races, especially if pronouns aren't used straightaway. Other than the silly pink kobolds there's simply no way of telling, and perhaps we subconsciously expect them to look a little different.

Even having come in after they resolved the error with Brayflox's gender that Enkidoh was talking about, I was a little surprised when I first saw (in the dungeon description, I think) that she was a "she". I like it though. She's pretty awesome.

At least you can tell goblin gender by name, once you've picked up the pattern (-ix/-ox name endings). Likewise the Vanu Vanu with Vanu/Vali 'surnames'.

The ray-tamer Kojin (Makura?) is also female.

(I wish they had at least a bit of variety with beast tribe character appearances - even if they just made two or three faces, it would be much better than all of them being perfectly identical. Especially the human-faced Ananta.)

Ananta are a one-gender race though. There are no males. Probably due to Allagan shenanigans. They likely identify as female since Lakshmi is female. As far as why Lakshmi is female, I have my suspicions that she's like Garuda, but with her morality flipped. She was probably originally an Allagan who helped the Ananta get out of Azyz Lla and the Ananta thought she was their goddess after enough time had past.

Like with Goblins and Ixal, you can tell the Slyph's "gender" by their name endings as well. The "male" slyphs can produce bulbs and their names all end with "xio". "Female" slyphs flower at a different time than the pollinating season. Their names end in "xia".

Sahagan are another one-gender race. Kinda. One female lays all the sahagan eggs and she and the other females stay on the ocean floor. The males stay up on the oceans' surface. So we've never seen a female sahagan as far as I can tell.

I always assumed Twintania was female, but I'm not sure if there is any confirmation of their gender.

To be honest, it's pretty fair for the Beastman models to make it difficult to tell genders apart. Even in real life, humans are pretty terrible at discerning the gender of non-humans, unless there's a fair amount of sexual dimorphism going on.

Housecats, for example. Most people who don't own cats have trouble discerning the gender of a cat without lifting up its tail and taking a gander at its gonads - and even cat owners sometimes have trouble.

Doubtless, if Beastmen were real, humans that spent a significant amount of time around them would probably start to pick up on various tells (beyond their names) to determine male from female, but it's reasonable that those differences would be subtle enough that the game is justified in using the same models for both.

Ah yeah, I meant to mention the sylphs but I forgot in the end. Also I didn't mean Ananta needed different appearances to differentiate gender, just that in general it's weird to have these characters with human faces but they all look completely identical. (I guess we can blame it on Allagan cloning...)

It does make sense to label them as female though - aside of their appearance, they're able to [get pregnant / lay eggs, I forget which]. There are some animals that can actually do this, if I remember correctly.

Also it bugs me that the sylphs' "seed-bearing gender" is considered male, because that's the opposite of how plants are normally labelled. Not all plants have a difference of course, but some species will differentiate between flowers that grow into fruit and those that only produce pollen to fertilise the fruit-flowers. They are considered female and male flowers exactly because they correspond to female (child-bearing) and male roles in reproduction.

It at least makes a little more sense from the lorebook explanation that talks about the sylphs not really having male and female genders, but something else entirely (though still doesn't explain why they would pick up those labels 'the wrong way around'). The in-game description for the sylph minion doesn't go into any of that, and just says it's the males that produce seeds. Which they shouldn't, because that means that group should have been classified as the "female" gender in the first place.


Random trivia - it seems that beast tribe names only get capitalised if they're a specific race name, not a generic fantasy creature. eg. "Ixal, Sahagin, sylphs, Amalj'aa and kobolds" is correct.

ARE WE JUST ASSUMING THEIR GENDERS

Nope. The Lore Book goes into it quite a bit. The exception would be the Amalja'a which don't really have male/female roles or name except when it's breeding time. But they communally raise all the kids of one tribe together so, that might be part of why.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

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The thing about the Sylph though is you can't think of them as plants, but rather, plant like animals. What defines male and female isn't how the reproduction is done, it's just which reproductive cell they produce; males produce sperm cells and females egg cells. Keep in mind there are a few animal species where the male is the "female" to us, seahorses being the most well known.

Also I can't believe I forgot to mention the goblins and the sylph with their naming conventions.