About the Sundrop Dance naming scheme

Any theories or explanations on how the dance got its name?

The only stupid question is the one that goes unasked, as they say...

I got only two ideas.

• The name comes from the force of the dance, and a properly done Sundrop dance is like dropping the sun on someone. That is, it has great weight and power, which makes sense considering it's intended to be a war / deterrent dance.
• The name comes from a long metaphor. The sun, light, is hope, and by using the Sundrop dance you are destroying their hope. That is, the sun drops below the horizon, leaving only darkness and despair.

Might I add that, while it's highly entertaining to see the Vanu do it, the Sundrop dance is... significantly less powerful when my PC does it? Perhaps because I'm playing a waifish Auri woman, but...

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Originally Posted by Cilia

Might I add that, while it's highly entertaining to see the Vanu do it, the Sundrop dance is... significantly less powerful when my PC does it? Perhaps because I'm playing a waifish Auri woman, but...

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Apparently, the entire thing is modeled off Haka, a form of traditional dance from New Zealand, which has radically different moves depending on whether a male or female is performing.

I knew about none of this until just the other day, so full points to the dev team for expanding our cultural horizons.

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Originally Posted by Fenral

Apparently, the entire thing is modeled off Haka, a form of traditional dance from New Zealand, which has radically different moves depending on whether a male or female is performing.

I knew about none of this until just the other day, so full points to the dev team for expanding our cultural horizons.

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I figured there was some of that in there, considering the Vanu do seem to take cultural cues from Maori / Mariana traditional cultures. I immediately picked up on the differences between the male and female dances when I first saw Linu Vali use the Sundrop dance; while it's not as extreme as the differences in Haka, there are differences. Specifically, the third and fourth moves of the male dance are repeats of the first and second, while for females they cross their left / right arm across their chest as the third and fourth move.

Ehh. Minutiae.

EDIT
Yeah, after watching the male and female Sundrop dances side-by-side, I can say for sure the female version is significantly less, ah, energetic. Disappointing. Understandable, but even so. (If I didn't have swimsuits and underwear dyed with rare gold dye, I'd consider getting a Fantasia, but... ehhh.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fenral

Apparently, the entire thing is modeled off Haka, a form of traditional dance from New Zealand, which has radically different moves depending on whether a male or female is performing.

I knew about none of this until just the other day, so full points to the dev team for expanding our cultural horizons.

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Lol, I'd been calling it "The Vanu Haka" even before the official name was released. It just hit me the moment I saw the dance. (Tbh, I still call it "The Vanu Haka" occasionally)

It's also cool how some Vanu Vanu quests have you using the dance for various things.

Everytime I hear Sundrop, I think of cough drops for some reason...

Not going to lie, when I hear Sundrop, I think of lemondrop candies.

Sundrop is a lemony-sweet soda-type beverage in my neck of the woods :)

Gonna throw out that I think the theme in play is "lost in translation." In native Vanu the name conveys the force and terror of the dance, but translated into Eorzean Basic (or whatever they call it) by our Echo it just sounds really cute and mild.

Here's my crazy theory. The sea of clouds is a place where a single misstep could send you plummeting off the edge in to the clouds themselves. This could be especially dangerous at night, where visibility is much reduced and there all sorts of other creatures lurking about that could threaten the native Vanu. So the dance with it's precise motions and appearance of psyching oneself up, was done as the sun dropped below the horizon to signal the approach of nightfall. Thus the dance became a way for the Vanu to practice precise movement and psych themselves up before going out at night. Over the years however it became a dance that symbolized that courage and strength of the Vanu and began to suffuse other aspects of their lives until it became a central part of their culture.

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Originally Posted by Fenral

Gonna throw out that I think the theme in play is "lost in translation." In native Vanu the name conveys the force and terror of the dance, but translated into Eorzean Basic (or whatever they call it) by our Echo it just sounds really cute and mild.

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I don't think it's an Echo goof (since people besides us can understand the Vanu), it's just a cultural difference.

As you noted, the Sundrop Dance is based on Haka, a traditional war dance of the Maori people. Like the Sundrop Dance, its purpose is to psyche up the dancer(s) and intimidate their opponent(s). It's basically a challenge, "come get some!"

From our point of view, it's just a silly and goofy dance, since we're far more prone to immediately getting to the stabbing and shooting. It's very important to the Vanu, however, because it's a part of their history and culture, and allows them to resolve conflicts without bloodshed. (Unless you're dealing with the Vundu, but we all know they're jerkholes anyway. Maybe I should try using it the next time I'm sent on a mission to steal their food...?)

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Originally Posted by Cilia

I don't think it's an Echo goof (since people besides us can understand the Vanu), it's just a cultural difference.

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If you reread my sentence and cut off "by our Echo" the rest still applies, and yes, it is a cultural difference.

Well, I tried using the Sundrop Dance on the Vundu who come to stop you from stealing their food like I said I would...

... didn't work.

All the more reason to put them out of their misery! Shame on them for not respecting their cultural history!

A dance to shake the heavens and drop the sun unto thine enemies! THE SUN DROP DANCE

Now I wonder what the dance is called in the other languages...


And dropping the sun should be an actual attack.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Now I wonder what the dance is called in the other languages...


And dropping the sun should be an actual attack.

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German: Sonnentanz (sun dance)
So, basically the same, just without the implication that you drop the sun on them.

We should summon Aynonamoose in here!

I think it's just a play on words and that it doesn't have anything to do with "dropping the sun." Sundrop, as contrast to moon drop, which is generally just a poetic way of saying moonlight. So you're dancing the dance of the sun.

If I was forced to theorize anything, they're not as directly based on Mayans and their sun worship as the Ixal are, but there may be some sun reverence there, since you have the ancestral "mother" and "father" in the quests. In many cultures, the father is typically the sun, the mother the moon. My most liberal interpretation of this is, since you need to earn the recognition of their ancestors in order to dance it, you may be doing something of an ancestral-channeling dance, in who best represents the ancestor-father (the Sun) is the most intimidating.

There's a lot of possible reasons for the naming, but I feel this is a case of the simplest explanation being the correct one.

In Japanese it's 太陽の舞 I believe ('Dance of the Sun'). To be honest I'm pretty sure they adjusted the name purely to avoid the connotations of 'Sundance' in US English, since there's a risk of confusion with native American culture. The English name is cute so I like both.