Fantasia Canonicity

[MikkoAkure]

According a guy who interviewed members of the localization team:

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.

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.

[Vyrerus]

Hildibrand not canon

[Anonymoose]

[Fry Meme]

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.