Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[reivaxe]

Well, I actually have kind of flipped my direction on seeing male viera. It's probably too late to change the direction of the ship, but there's sort of a loss of character to the races in this game that came with the whole idea that every race must have male and female adventurers. I've been seeing this a lot in games right now where the idea of gender equality is being pushed so hard that world lore gets warped and lost in the process of supplication to the movement, like someone washing away the paint upon a canvas and leaving only the first layer, so that you see what looks like an ocean, but it's just an indistinct blob of two colors meeting at a horizon.

If a particular species of creature had adapted such that it was easier to have fewer males and more females, because of some adaptation that promoted such a setup as "good enough" for the survival of the species, it would make sense that the only adventurers that someone would see of that race would be of the dominant gender. That is what got lost in FFXIV vs FFXI with the Mithra vs Miqote, and the Galka vs Roegadyn. Viera are basically the take 2 of the Mithra in this game culturally, since the miqote got screwed up and turned into nothing more than a human cat person mascot race. Great, we all get to play humans with cat ears and eyes, but what exactly made them so special to begin with?

Gender / racial politics have really become far too prominent in creating worlds in AAA games and I'm tired of the white knight twitter riots that think building a race that has a female or male dominant ratio, for logical reasons, is a nail that must be hammered down. Galka reincarnated so they didn't need females. Mithra had a flaw in their race that made males of the species far rarer than females, so females were the only ones to really get the freedom to travel. I don't feel that those aspects are wrong, or say some political message about gender equality that goes against it. Personally I think Viera as they were written in FFXII were kind of odd, since the only reason a sentient forest would have in making a rabbit woman the way it did is to communicate with and deal with humans, but I digress...

I get what you're saying.

There's so many possibilities with lore, social systems, sexuality and culture for races that it's sad so many games take the approach of just thinly layering some other flavor ontop of "normative human" stuff.

I have no problem with Galka being a race of dudes who just reincarnate outta the ground instead of mating or w/e. Brings up interesting questions on how population grown or stability works with them and how their culture operates as well as their views on sex and so on. If Viera were just spat out by advanced life form trees as a means "to protect the forest" and only looked like pretty female humans with bunny ears because the tree(s) figure the greatest threat is human looking races and, through trail-n-error, found that human looking races tend to react poorly to things that don't look human like then that would be some cool ish. Basically, if Viera were like the plant race in GW2 (all come out from a Great Mother Tree, can have sex but can't have babies, come out fully grown, made to imitate humans and are pansexual regardless of what gender they were birthed to imitate and even have some form of a hive mind) but only looked female and were just an amalgamation of small-forest-animal features on a 98% human base I'd accept them being female only without problem.

IDK if that's their lore in other games but in this that's not how they are. Regardless of their origins they grow from childhood, have genders and procreate through sex. Given this ... I personally don't have a problem with Male Viera being in the game. I personally couldn't care less if they were added as I think the whole of the race adds next to nothing that couldn't have been achieved with a much-needed graphics engine and CC update (as seen in PSO2 NGS) but as the lore is I don't personally see the NEED in preserving their hidden nature to this extreme.

It begs the question of "why can't a Viera female who left get preggos in La Big City and birth a son?". Like, I know there's convoluted lore junk about how people see mix race procreation as "taboo" (not mixed race relationships/ sex but child making ...) which makes it rare, but we do know that in the rare cases where it does happen the child normally comes out as w/e race the mother is (mix-race babies like the half elezen girl are rarer). If their gene stuff works anything like RL the birthrate of females compared to males would be the result of male Viera naturally making far more X sperm than Y sperm ... which would mean that a Viera that left the forest and did the do with a male of a different race and got preggo from it (not a common thing, but it does happen for other races) would have a far better chance of making a baby boi than she would with a Viera male at home. Ultimately this means that you can have a population of Viera who were never raised in the forest because they were the product of some lucky taboo procreation and that population could have males that don't adhere to the practices of the males in their homeland because they were never raised there.

TLDR: Long ramble saying that if they had actually made it a mystical, full on fantasy, magical race that's just all women who don't have babies like normal people then yeah, I'd accept that and support them not adding males. But they used conventional %^%# with genders and such in a world with rules that ALLOW for a possible situation where male Viera could be a thing seen by others sooo IDGAF if they decide to show em. (Though I think the whole race is a waste personally)

[Yencat]

which would mean that a Viera that left the forest and did the do with a male of a different race and got preggo from it (not a common thing, but it does happen for other races) would have a far better chance of making a baby boi than she would with a Viera male at home. Ultimately this means that you can have a population of Viera who were never raised in the forest because they were the product of some lucky taboo procreation and that population could have males that don't adhere to the practices of the males in their homeland because they were never raised there.

That's basically what the Feol were, the offspring of a Viera woman with an Aegyl man.

They still only had daughters though, but that might be more game dev related (not having to make as many different sprites) than genetics.

[WhiteArchmage]

That's basically what the Feol were, the offspring of a Viera woman with an Aegyl man.

They still only had daughters though, but that might be more game dev related (not having to make as many different sprites) than genetics.

They all share the same sprite, incidentally, but since their only appearance is in one cutscene where they

get killed off by a Feolthanos-corrupted Mydia, who shares the same sprite as the others when not wearing her "Judge of Wings" armor,

it was prooobably to save resources. No confirmation one way or another whether they were all female or not.

[Yencat]

They all share the same sprite, incidentally, but since their only appearance is in one cutscene where they

get killed off by a Feolthanos-corrupted Mydia, who shares the same sprite as the others when not wearing her "Judge of Wings" armor,

it was prooobably to save resources. No confirmation one way or another whether they were all female or not.

Yeah, mostly resources I imagine. Other things are a bit strange like that as well, Mydia's mom is supposed to be a full-blood Viera but she's super pale.

The concept of Veena and Rava have existed before XIV but it seems to have been related to hair colour rather than skin colour previously. There's still a lot of old forum posts around speculating whether Fran is a Veena or a Rava, which from XIV Viera's perspective would seem obvious.

Either way though, they really wouldn't need to invent a half-breed Viera for males to be playable.

[MikkoAkure]

It begs the question of "why can't a Viera female who left get preggos in La Big City and birth a son?". Like, I know there's convoluted lore junk about how people see mix race procreation as "taboo" (not mixed race relationships/ sex but child making ...) which makes it rare, but we do know that in the rare cases where it does happen the child normally comes out as w/e race the mother is (mix-race babies like the half elezen girl are rarer).

TLDR: Long ramble saying that if they had actually made it a mystical, full on fantasy, magical race that's just all women who don't have babies like normal people then yeah, I'd accept that and support them not adding males. But they used conventional %^%# with genders and such in a world with rules that ALLOW for a possible situation where male Viera could be a thing seen by others sooo IDGAF if they decide to show em. (Though I think the whole race is a waste personally)

Half-races coming out to be whatever the mother is, is made-up fanon that is spread by RP forums to support being able to RP a character who are things like half miqo'te/half au ra but look 100% miqo'te since we don't have the option for that in-game. There is nothing in-game that states they they come out as the same race as mom. If a viera and a hyur were to have a baby, the baby would be obviously not full viera. Considering that viera have been present in Rabanastre for long enough that they are considered normal citizens, and viera themselves live for 300+ years and have ample opportunity to have babies with others, the fact that male viera are still completely unknown to regular citizens and visitors of Rabanastre means that viera aren't sleeping around to make more.

The concept of Veena and Rava have existed before XIV but it seems to have been related to hair colour rather than skin colour previously. There's still a lot of old forum posts around speculating whether Fran is a Veena or a Rava, which from XIV Viera's perspective would seem obvious.

Are you sure about that? I can't find any information on veena and rava being an actual thing that exists before they were announced as clans for FFXIV. I remember someone editing the FF wiki to retcon veena and rava into FFXII, but I don't think that's canon.


As far as trying to reconcile male viera to the story, it is as easy as saying: "the Garlean invasion has disturbed the forest and they have made incursions into the viera homeland. Though in the past they would have fought to the death against incursions, their bows and arrows are useless against their foe's hardened steel. More and more viera men now break tradition and follow their sisters out of the darkness of their jungles and into the light of Dalmasca and the rest of the world.". There. No having to include unrealistic genetics made up by RPers to justify anything.

[Yencat]

Are you sure about that? I can't find any information on veena and rava being an actual thing that exists before they were announced as clans for FFXIV. I remember someone editing the FF wiki to retcon veena and rava into FFXII, but I don't think that's canon.

I found a forum thread from 2009 discussing whether Fran was a Rava or a Veena, but it wasn't very long and without much context where the information came from.

They seemed to be making the distinction that the Veena have white hair and Rava are darker haired, so they settled on Fran being a Veena.

Like I said though, not sure where they got it from but definitely from before XIV.

[WhiteArchmage]

Are you sure about that? I can't find any information on veena and rava being an actual thing that exists before they were announced as clans for FFXIV. I remember someone editing the FF wiki to retcon veena and rava into FFXII, but I don't think that's canon.

I remember Veena and Rava being a thing before XIV, unfortunately I don't remember WHERE I read that and don't have the strategy guide or Ultimania to confirm it. And the wiki is also suspicious because the image it uses for Veena is their in-game models while the image for Rava is the CG models (and the main difference between THOSE is that the Rava have white spots in their ears while Veena have black spots on theirs...).