Fantasia Canonicity

So, I was wondering about how canon Fantasia's are, given the massive lore implications of being to just change your race/sex/appearance and everything overnight no less. I've tried looking stuff up, but there really isn't a whole lot of information out there.
The only thing I can find is a reddit post that said
"The official answer is that it doesn't actually change you, it just gives you the courage to be who you really always were on the inside.

The lore team explained this on a lore panel during one of the fanfests."
Aaand I haven't been able to locate the fanfest panel they're talking about, and I don't want to just take a random reddit post with no source at it's word. That'd be pretty silly.

So, do we know anything about fantasia's in lore?

The one we got from Koji was to not really think too hard on it and that it's a glamor. You are still whatever you started out as for your race. Obviously a very very convincing glamor.

I can't remember where but, lore-wise, I read that Fantasias not only change you but change you retroactively, i.e. your character's history changes to that they were what they changed into.

I'm going to hazard a guess that what's going on here is that everyone who reads the one statement we got on it reads it differently.

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Fantasia works in a unique way. I can’t simply turn you into whoever you want, or people could get away with anything. Crime would be out of control. Even on Earth, people have the opportunity to change who they are – cut their hair, get a facelift, find a new career or a different spouse – but we often aren’t willing to make those drastic life changes. Fantasia gives you the courage to make the changes you’ve always wanted to make. Maybe you are Lalafell trapped in a Roegadyn’s body, it’s time to break out! And all you needed was that courage in a phial!

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You can read that from "It doesn't really change you." to "It makes the power of confidence so strong it does change you." to "This is a game mechanic to make money and retain subscriptions, please don't ask me about this."

I'm inclined to believe the latter at this time, because not one single NPC in the entire game has ever mentioned Fantasia one time. If it's not acknowledged by any character of the game, is it "in the game" yet? A question for wise men with skinny arms. However it behooves the RP community to come up with workable in-group fanon for their circles to have a rule of thumb for addressing it, because people are using it. Every group has different "rules" for it.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

The one we got from Koji was to not really think too hard on it and that it's a glamor. You are still whatever you started out as for your race. Obviously a very very convincing glamor.

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This does make the most sense, probably is what the canon is. Do you know where I can find that answer from Koji?
I'm not trying to be a jerk about it, but a lot of different answers that conflict come from people saying "oh yeah it was said at a panel" or "it was stated by this writer" and no links are given so like, that kinda makes this hard to corroborate.

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

I can't remember where but, lore-wise, I read that Fantasias not only change you but change you retroactively, i.e. your character's history changes to that they were what they changed into.

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The problem with that explanation is the retroactive part doesn't really work. Does it change your parents races retroactively? Their parents? Which homeland you come from? Because at that point, fantasias cause a butterfly effect of history changes where if only a few dozen people take fantasias massive swaths of history get changed. That'd be a nightmare to deal with

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

I'm going to hazard a guess that what's going on here is that everyone who reads the one statement we got on it reads it differently.



You can read that from "It doesn't really change you." to "It makes the power of confidence so strong it does change you." to "This is a game mechanic to make money and retain subscriptions, please don't ask me about this."

I'm inclined to believe the latter at this time, because not one single NPC in the entire game has ever mentioned Fantasia one time. If it's not acknowledged by any character of the game, is it "in the game" yet? A question for wise men with skinny arms. However it behooves the RP community to come up with workable in-group fanon for their circles to have a rule of thumb for addressing it, because people are using it. Every group has different "rules" for it.

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Ah missed your post.
But yeah it really does come off as you said, "pls don't ask me this it's just so players can play around with looks, I know it doesn't make sense."
It really does kind of point to not being really "canon" if absolutely no in-game characters or text even refer to the existence of the item.

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

I can't remember where but, lore-wise, I read that Fantasias not only change you but change you retroactively, i.e. your character's history changes to that they were what they changed into.

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That's not what it does lore-wise, it's what it does functionally. If you rewatch early cutscenes after fantasiaing (or any sort of visual change to your character) you'll be as you are now, not as you were at the time, because cutscenes just have a big space marked "insert player character here".

If anything, that's proof that it isn't something that actually happens to your character but an out-of-canon game function.

Personally I'm inclined to view it as non-canon. It's one of those things that I think really just cheapens the game/setting overall if it exists.

Call me old fashioned but I don't think every single element of a game needs a canon explanation.

If Fantasia exists, even if it's rare then one can't help but wonder why the antagonists just don't acquire one and go into hiding to evade being caught. Especially the wealthy and powerful ones who could, potentially, acquire one for themselves.

To me it's the equivalent of making the login screen a canon function.

I'm inclined to agree with Theo, it's a gameplay mechanic with the barest of excuse lore to make it 'look right' in the menu but otherwise has no connection to the story or lore.

Having said that, a personal headcanon I have is that it is more like a form of glamour, as we know glamour magic (that change's something or someone's appearence) does exist in the lore - the sylphs have it as almost as an inate racial ability, and the big one was that iconic scene during Stormblood's story where the Ala Mhigan Resistance magically cast glamour on the giant Garlean flag in The Fringes to change it into the flag of the Resistance), so Fantasia would be a natural fit for that. Probably less so for glamour prisms and the glamour 'toilet', but then maybe I'm just overthinking this again. ;)

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

Probably less so for glamour prisms

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Glamour prisms are specifically what M'naago uses to glamour the flag, and I feel like there was a technical explanation given at some point for how glamours work. Maybe in the Facet of Gathering quests, but I'm not certain.

I know the final boss in don mheg has a spell called Fantasia to change him
I'm more inclined to believe that it actually exist in the worlds lore.

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Originally Posted by Duskane

I know the final boss in don mheg has a spell called Fantasia to change him
I'm more inclined to believe that it actually exist in the worlds lore.

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Those abilities are actually prefaced as magical songs, rather than the alchemical concoction that is the subject of debate, and they amount to being aetherial illusions, much in the same vein as glamours.

Funambulist's Fantasia = Tightrope Walker's Song
Changeling's Fantasia = Transformation Song

As far as the meaning of Fantasia in this context, it'd be: a musical composition in fanciful or irregular form - improvisation

It's probably not canon.

But let's say it were, purely hypothetically. We can deduce it's something special as only the "Warrior of Light" has the ability to Fantasia. That means it's probably not an illusion but something more concrete that's got to do with our body, or rather, the aether that makes up our form.

That being said, Fantasia in music means free-form, so I'm assuming the elixir allows us to "free-form" our aetherial forms. I'm not sure how it would explain how others recognize us as we were before, but perhaps it's got to do with something about the color of our aether or whatever or something.

According a guy who interviewed members of the localization team:

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While the Fantasia potion has some in-world flavor text, it’s mainly meant to be seen as a meta object. For example, you wouldn’t see it’s use, or reference to its use in storylines since in effect it doesn’t actually exist.

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There's stuff in-game that's not entirely canon either. The Hildebrand quests for example are not quite canon and per Oda and Koji, whether or not you believe that it all actually happens is up to you. Then there's whether or not you believe that all the PCs you see are other adventurers, tongue-in-cheek references to FFXI and other games in minion flavor texts, non-FF cross-over events themselves like Dragon Quest, Monster Hunter, Garo, and Yokai Watch, and mogstation items that are very obviously modeled after real-world Korean or Chinese clothing despite neither country being represented with a fantasy equivalent in-game.

Why use fantasia (which has yet to be referenced in any way) when you can use glamours (which has been referenced extensively throughout the game)

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Glamour prisms are specifically what M'naago uses to glamour the flag, and I feel like there was a technical explanation given at some point for how glamours work. Maybe in the Facet of Gathering quests, but I'm not certain.

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I believe there was an explanation back when we unlocked glamours at 50 in Mor Dhona, but I think that quest was rewritten when they changed it to a 15 unlock. Haven't seen anyone with an archive of it either, so dunno.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Hildibrand not canon

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http://theinfosphere.org/images/7/76/Frychew.gif

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

[Fry Meme]

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To be fair, as canon as you want them to be, lol.

In my fandom echo chamber, this means the invention of the "one-way bubble" (aka Manderville Bubble). In this conceptualization, everything that is true outside of the Hildibrand quests is canon to the inside of the Hildibrand quests, but nothing that happens inside of the Hildibrand quests can be trusted to have happened outside of it.

For example: As part of a Hildibrand story we learned what is probably real history about Sil'dih. Did zombies talk and dance and people literally survive explosive detonations to the face and falls from space? Perhaps not. Hildibrand, imho, is coded like an interactive fiction - a play - a performance art - LARPing - something that is comedically exaggerated and polished to a mirror shine as a silly story, but in a way that makes it hard to believe "really happened" even by Eorzean standards. A running joke with us if "You can tell canon Godbert from quasi-canon Godbert by asking youself, "Is he wearing pants?"

Once you assume these bubbles can exist, you start to see them pretty regularly. Lightning and Shatotto quests despite Yoshida saying the universe of FFXIV is isolated. (And a reverse-polarity one around Dissidia.) Yo-Kai quests. Most of the holiday events as they celebrate the 7th coming of the 5th year since the Calamity. A lot of "semi-official" content starts to look like "in-character greeting cards" from the dev. team. You find yourself saying, "Oh! This is a Manderville Bubble!" and your friends know what you mean, lol.

Does that detract from their value or ability to be seen as accepted canon within other echo chambers? Not a bit.

If anything I think it lets them breathe a bit and be their best authentic selves.