Character Creation Has A Race Problem

[Lunaxia]

"We want butt sliders! Bunny suits for men! Motorbikes! Bulges! Frilly lolita skirts! Angel and devil costumes! Rabbits!"
>300+ likes

"Character creation is biased towards eurocentric beauty standards despite having a clearly human race with varying ethnicities like those IRL and should have more representation for other races."
> "wOOoOaahHH man this is a FANTASY game whoever heard of BLACK PEOPLE in a FANTASY GAME lmao wwOAHH outragEOUS who do you think you ARE"

lol, gross.

[MoroMurasaki]

lol, gross.

God I'm tired of the crossposts from tumblr showing up on the OF...gross indeed.

[Theodric]

God I'm tired of the crossposts from tumblr showing up on the OF...gross indeed.

Heh.

I've already seen someone rant about my posts here on Gamefaqs and Tumblr. It's pretty creepy, honestly. I don't think anything I've posted here been super controversial - and it's worrying that rather than discuss things with me in a civil manner there's a reliance on sneaky passive aggressiveness instead. I suppose it's just further proof that quite a few of those involved just aren't willing to accept different opinions, thus they have no interest in an actual discussion and instead expect everybody to fall in line in complete agreement.

Well, he's rather handsome! He reminds me of Erwin Smith from Attack on Titan. A wonderful design and that combination of facial features is something I don't see too often when compared to the default male Midlander face.

And let's be honest, if you make a "black" female Midlander you only have 3 possible hair choices. Locks, Frohawk, and Afro. That means there's like a 33% chance anyone could possibly look like your character.. You can see it in this very thread. Most of the characters(except the Highlander Female) use the same Frohawk and tbh they look very very similar... Because there are so few choices that the majority of black characters will look exactly the same as each other.

There's numerous other hairstyles you can use, though. As well as things such as highlights - be they subtle or bold. I don't have golden or even long hair in the real world, yet my character does. Why do you feel like your character has to have certain hairstyles? As I said, I'm not against them adding the sort of hairstyles that you desire but until they do there's ways to mitigate the issues you have with the limitations in place.

[Magic-Mal]

There's numerous other hairstyles you can use, though. As well as things such as highlights - be they subtle or bold. I don't have golden or even long hair in the real world, yet my character does. Why do you feel like your character has to have certain hairstyles? As I said, I'm not against them adding the sort of hairstyles that you desire but until they do there's ways to mitigate the issues you have with the limitations in place.

If you haven't noticed yet.. my character is a Miqo'te the color of coal with coal-colored straight hair lol. I don't feel like she needs anything! I'm not looking to use any black features or hair on my character. I am advocating for this for my on separate reasons.

If I was to make a black character, then no there wouldn't be numerous other hairstyles to use as they're all straight.

[MoroMurasaki]

Heh.

I've already seen someone rant about my posts here on Gamefaqs and Tumblr. It's pretty creepy, honestly.

Just wanted to be clear - I'm not suggesting any of these posts are literally crossposts with tumblr, I was using 'Tumblr' to describe the "muh intersectionality" vibe that this thread has cultivated.

I have seen a few links from friends to a twitter that links stupid OF forum snipets, though. While creeping after a specific person would be wrong I don't see any issue with a sort of compilation of some of the dumbest or most objectionable OF posts.

[Lunaxia]

God I'm tired of the crossposts from tumblr showing up on the OF...gross indeed.

I don't use tumblr so you'll have to find something else to support your garbage assumptions.

Any chance to approach me though, eh?

[Iscah]

A few additional thoughts:

On the specific issue of the character creator not having options for wider noses, I wonder if it may be a technical issue rather than a design choice. There seems to be very little variance in the width of noses, but from a side view they vary a lot - high, low, different shapes and sizes. So it's possible that the issue is actually in how the "interchangeable" elements of the face need to fit together, or how it moves when doing emotes.

On hairstyles, Roegadyn and Elezen have a few extra braided styles that Hyurans don't have access to, and wavy hair rather than straight. Again, it's a matter of which elements of character design are most important and which ones you want to compromise on.

On the "clearly black" characters Sawney and Roland: I noticed that Sawney has very pale eyes (one shade off pure white according to his character data) and that sent me thinking - there seems to be a strong pattern of that colour choice. The dark-skinned Elezen characters I was talking about earlier all have pale eyes too, and light hair colours. Perhaps resulting from the same mindset that leads to anime characters having hair and eyes of any colour and still being perceived as Japanese.

Side note on that 'curly updo' hairstyle: it gets used a few times for "sylphs in human disguise" - Noraxia at the Waking Sands early in the game, and two "shifty characters" (obviously touched sylphs) that you encounter in one of the sylph beast tribe quests.

"We want butt sliders! Bunny suits for men! Motorbikes! Bulges! Frilly lolita skirts! Angel and devil costumes! Rabbits!"
>300+ likes

"Character creation is biased towards eurocentric beauty standards despite having a clearly human race with varying ethnicities like those IRL and should have more representation for other races."
> "wOOoOaahHH man this is a FANTASY game whoever heard of BLACK PEOPLE in a FANTASY GAME lmao wwOAHH outragEOUS who do you think you ARE"

It's not that simple. A lot of the early part of this topic involved people trying to make helpful suggestions and getting insulted in return because it's not exactly what the original poster was looking for. That's going to drive away a lot of people even if they agree with the overall sentiment.

Also most of those topics have been around longer, and the only one I could find in the first five pages is the "bulges" one which has all of fifteen likes, versus seventy to the first comment saying it's not actually a fair equivalence.

[Lunaxia]

snip

They were just examples showing what "real life"/ non-fantasy and other frivolous features have been more popularly requested despite the prevailing arguing being "but this is a fantasy game!"

To be quite honest, I couldn't care less what tone OP said it in, how they should have said it or who was offended by it. People would still be using the same ridiculous excuses, just with slightly less cattiness.

Actually, probably the same amount. It is the OF, after all.

As a general side note, it's worth remembering racism isn't always intentional or hateful. Sometimes it's merely ignorance.

[MoroMurasaki]

They were just examples showing what "real life"/ non-fantasy and other frivolous features have been more popularly requested despite the prevailing arguing being "but this is a fantasy game!"

To be quite honest, I couldn't care less what tone OP said it in, how they should have said it or who was offended by it. People would still be using the same ridiculous excuses, just with slightly less cattiness.

Actually, probably the same amount. It is the OF, after all.

As a general side note, it's worth remembering racism isn't always intentional or hateful. Sometimes it's merely ignorance.

Trust me if I could work some magical logic to not feel compelled to interact with you I would - it's always a chore. I would clean ten litterboxes a day if it kept this poop off the forums.

rac·ism
ˈrāˌsizəm
noun
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.

I would absolutely love for anyone to point out where there is any racism in this thread. Not including every race is not racist just like not including a bunch of gay characters isn't homophobic or not including fat characters isn't some slight to overweight people. It's SE's game, we just play in it and if their story has Hyur looking more or less white that's fine.

Valuing other character customization features over the ones proposed by the OP also isn't racist. Personally this set of character customization options isn't going to do much for me so it isn't at the top of my list where as detatching the Au Ra faces from the horns would be great to me as someone who almost exclusively plays Au Ra. To expect me to be cheering someone on irrespective of their absolutely shoddy pitch just because they asked for yet another character customization addition is just dumb.

As I said multiple times before (not that I ever expect you specifically to be the least bit informed of course) if the OP had made their pitch without the "this is racist" parts I would have done the same thing I usually do with these threads and left a "cool buddy, good luck, looks nice!" and called it a day. My reservations initially were 100% with their attitude as were many others but I guess reading is hard.

So no, the OP and those people arguing these changes were necessary or it was racially insensitive are to blame for the cattiness just like you are here for perpetuating that same nonsense. If you truly cared about just getting these features and not about virtue signally you would just ask for them instead of doing so while calling SE racist for not having them.

I don't see the Viera thread screeching about representation and it looks like they might actually get their wish. Maybe take a page from their books.

[Lunaxia]

Trust me if I could work some magical logic to not feel compelled to interact with you I would

Or perhaps just exert some measure of control over the huge chip on your shoulder you have about me and your insatiable need to win internet arguments. There is nothing compelling you to respond to me beyond your own ego.

[snip]

LOL, I was waiting for the inevitable "pull up the Google dictionary definition of racism" post. OF never disappoints.

The key word in there is discrimination. Discrimination is any unfair or unjust treatment based on your race or gender, which covers all the more insidious forms of racism people like to pretend don't exist because it's not overt, aggressive racism. To assert there's no problem because there's no obvious hostility is not only wrong but incredibly narrow-minded. Exclusion (more or less the point being made here) whitewashing, lack of representation in the media - it all stems from the underlying, semi-subconscious current that one race/ type of beauty is more preferable or better than another... which is the most basic definition of racism.

It's SE's game, we just play in it and if their story has Hyur looking more or less white that's fine.

It's not fine, and the "hyur aren't people!!" argument is hilarious. Hyur are clearly, blatantly and utterly human rip-offs. They have human features, human naming conventions, human dress and even have distinct human ethnicities, with Anglo-saxon and Japanese having been shown. There are even references to real world religions in this game. There is no reason whatsoever that other races couldn't be included, and insinuating that they shouldn't have, "don't fit" or "don't need" a place in fantasy is both ignorant and racist.

Yes, it's SE's game. But like all mainstream media with a global audience, it falls to them to ensure a rounded and enjoyable gaming experience for all their fans, not just a select few. It's in their financial and reputational interests to do. Being Japanese isn't a reason not to, but in fact an argument for it - if they're so "clueless" about the issue, how will they know otherwise?

My reservations initially were 100% with their attitude [i]as were many others

Always conveniently the way, isn't it? That's not even a viable excuse. More often than not it's a cheap shot used to complain because of the innate hatred certain people have of being reminded of the bias media has, as well as the fact that they benefit from it. If you suddenly change your views because you don't like how something was said, you need to take a good look at yourself.

eh

Racism and representation is a problem, whether you like it or not. Those affected by it do not have to honey their words or not bring it up to make you more comfortable, and the irony in your insistence that they do while calling them whiny and catty is incredible.