Male Viera names?

[Iscah]

I think what I was more getting at is, it's not "not" a concept of gender just because it doesn't kick in until puberty. The implications seem to be they're raised in the village by women, and then sent off to live with the men once "things" become apparent. Yeah, kids are stupid, but they generally start forming an identity well before hormones kick in, and that system basically guarantees the omnipresence of "female" role models to pattern behavior off of.

The thing is, where are they going to get that concept of gender from, and form that identity upon, if the only thing they know about men is that they're not allowed to live in the village?

And apparently the women do everything that the men would do anyway, besides the additional ultra-survivalist skills that need to be taught from warder to apprentice.

At most you'd have some kids showing a preference about what role they'll have to take up, but that isn't necessarily tied to gender even in a culture with the normal concepts of male and female.

Because honestly, as soon as I started trying to reconcile that with the "forced into a death game to prove their masculinity because they grew a penis at age 12" thing my brain started to melt. There's... really no way to explore that rigidity in-game while also showing it as necessary or positive without a heaping helping of unfortunate subtext.

I think I'm missing the subtext, but you've got it upside-down saying they do it to "prove their masculinity". Their masculinity has been inarguably proven by the fact that they grew into a man, and that is why they have to get out there.

You will inevitably get a child perfect for village life who ends up growing in the other direction. The reverse as well. It would be an easier pill to swallow if the truth of Viera ended up somewhere along the lines of "we can make exceptions in either direction depending on the child, and our societal equivalents of your quaint notions of 'gender' are purely based on function."

I don't think the idea is supposed to be easy to swallow. It's meant to be a harsh strict societal rule based on tradition over practicality. That's the only way a system like that can stay intact. If you start making an exception for the clumsy man who is good with kids and the woman who wants to be a warder, pretty soon it stops being a gender-based system at all.

The big thing is, tradition and religion make people throughout history do a lot of things that make no sense from a secular perspective. Do this, wear that, eat certain foods, don't approach the sacred mountain or the wrath of the gods will fall upon the village and it will be all your fault.

And this being fantasy fiction, there's a particularly high chance that the gods actually are ready to inflict their wrath.

If it's a matter of practicality, determining societal role purely by physical gender isn't a great approach, and maybe it would be helpful to let the warders come home for dinner too.

If it's the sacred will of the forest that men become warders and leave the village, you don't argue with the sacred will of the forest. That's just the Way Things Are and you take up your role or accept exile as your only other option.


Also, at a meta level, the whole system was concocted as an explanation for why there are no male (or male-model) Viera in the village. It wouldn't really make sense if it didn't strictly ban men from the village.

[Fenral]

I don't think the idea is supposed to be easy to swallow. It's meant to be a harsh strict societal rule based on tradition over practicality. That's the only way a system like that can stay intact. If you start making an exception for the clumsy man who is good with kids and the woman who wants to be a warder, pretty soon it stops being a gender-based system at all.

I think the key will be in how (or if) it ends up depicted in-game at all. I think to me, it seems a waste to have Viera children grow up genderless only for them to be sorted out later. On the one hand, you end up with an all-male-bodied group and all-female-bodied group of otherwise genderless beings, which I agree is neat, but on the other, dividing them up at all feels like its wasting the potential of exploring a truly genderblind society.

But then...

Also, at a meta level, the whole system was concocted as an explanation for why there are no male (or male-model) Viera in the village. It wouldn't really make sense if it didn't strictly ban men from the village.

This. Matsuno crafted a very solid explanation on the assumption that it would never need to be walked back. But here we are. It wasn't until Heavensward that the devs really felt they could relax a bit on the scarcity of male Miqo'te, and then they were not only all over the place, but didn't really stick to the "established lore" beyond naming conventions, carrying with it the implications that enough had moved on from the old ways.

Will the Dramaturge still talk about how nobody's ever seen a male Viera? Will we get some sort of disaster-induced exodus like the Au Ra to explain their sudden presence? How much of their society would they try to hold onto if they were forced to live alongside other races? There's a lot to ponder.

Also, I certainly hope you haven't mistake my willingness to debate with you for any kind of personal attack. I know I can come across as harsh (I blame the perma-scowl on the character avatars), but I'm not actually that invested in an outcome here. From our minimal interactions on these forums, you seem like a cool, articulate person with interesting ideas.

[Kakurady]

It wasn't until Heavensward that the devs really felt they could relax a bit on the scarcity of male Miqo'te, and then they were not only all over the place, but didn't really stick to the "established lore" beyond naming conventions, carrying with it the implications that enough had moved on from the old ways.

My headcanon to explain the proliferation of male Miqo'te adventurers is that something happened 25 years ago (Battle of Silvertear Lake?) that affected the gender balance of the Miqo'te. At least, that's what I would use for the backstory of a Miqo'te PC.

[FrightfulNight]

My headcanon to explain the proliferation of male Miqo'te adventurers is that something happened 25 years ago (Battle of Silvertear Lake?) that affected the gender balance of the Miqo'te. At least, that's what I would use for the backstory of a Miqo'te PC.

One thing I have noticed in ShB is that unlike on the First compared to the Source there appears to be a more 50/50 gender balance of male and female Mystal, the Firsts equivalent of the Miqo'te. So the larger quantities of male Mystal NPCs at least makes sense there. Who knows in the future at some point they may take us to another shard were something similar is present for that shards equivalent of the Viera as an excuse to show more male Viera NPCs.

[Iscah]

Will the Dramaturge still talk about how nobody's ever seen a male Viera? Will we get some sort of disaster-induced exodus like the Au Ra to explain their sudden presence? How much of their society would they try to hold onto if they were forced to live alongside other races? There's a lot to ponder.

I don't think there'll necessarily be a claim of their "sudden presence" because if the WoL is a Viera, that means they've been emerging from the woods since at least some time prior to the beginning of the story. It's going to require either a subtle rewrite or explicit disproving of the Dramaturge's current claims to bring in any kind of alteration to the lore he provides, but it won't be because the situation within the game has changed since he delivered it.

As for how to take their societal views into the wider world, I'm playing with that myself trying to work out what my hypothetical alt makes of the whole thing. I think he's fine with being a man but doesn't really have a concept for what that means besides being a warder, though maybe being an adventurer is close enough.

I wonder if it's even an upside-down thing where activity=gender to the point that adventuring is "being male" and staying in one place is "being female" and that could lead to the idea of dressing as a man while adventuring and a woman while staying in town for a longer period, and not seeing that as anything remarkable. (This could also explain why non-Viera people think they've only seen female Viera in the cities!)

Or maybe it's just as simple as being a man, because he is.

I'm not sure which way I want to take that and I think it's going to partly depend on what new official lore we get regarding them.

Of course, the attitude of exiled Viera to their culture is all dependent on why they decided to leave the village in the first place. Did they leave to dodge their cultural expectations or because they felt called to serve the village best by journeying beyond it? They might want to hold to their traditions as much as they can, or they might be glad to be rid of the whole thing and just entirely take on the new culture they've landed in.


Come to think of it - from the WoL's specific lore, it does seem like a very Azemish thing to say "stuff your overbearing traditions, I'm off to see the world and help people as best I can."

Also, I certainly hope you haven't mistake my willingness to debate with you for any kind of personal attack. I know I can come across as harsh (I blame the perma-scowl on the character avatars), but I'm not actually that invested in an outcome here. From our minimal interactions on these forums, you seem like a cool, articulate person with interesting ideas.

No offence taken, and thankyou for the compliment!

And yes, perma-scowl on the avatars is a bit of a thing. Some get it worse than others.

[Fenral]

I wonder if it's even an upside-down thing where activity=gender to the point that adventuring is "being male" and staying in one place is "being female" and that could lead to the idea of dressing as a man while adventuring and a woman while staying in town for a longer period, and not seeing that as an issue. (This could also explain why non-Viera people think they've only seen female Viera in the cities!)

I'm so misunderstood. I was never trying to say they would have our idea of gender, just an idea of it that doesn't fit into "male" and "female" in the strictest sense of the word. "Transgender" in that context would be a so-called "male" engaging in the activities of a so-called "female," and perhaps adopting appropriate garb (they have the waist for it!).

In modern Earth, some guevedoce choose to remain female even after puberty tries to tell them otherwise (pretty sure you posted this article before), so I find it hard to imagine a society where this condition has been the norm for thousands of years wouldn't have encountered similar cases and have some sort of established practice (magic hormone reversal, even?). The simpler answer is that those kits are simply meant to be weeded out by warder initiation, but that's just really sad to think about. (That may also be an "actually, screw-this" backstory for a lot of Viera exiles.)

It would be funny if somehow, after all this we go into character creator and the Viera labels aren't "female" and "male" but "village-dweller" and "wood-warder" just to emphasize the cultural difference. I think that might upset a lot of people who see no reason for the "pandering" and can't understand why people can't just be happy with a common binary, but it's still deeply amusing to think about.

[Iscah]

I'm so misunderstood.

Oh, I wasn't talking directly at anything you'd said; just my own level of pondering on what to do with my character and how they might perceive their gender once removed from the strict binary of Viera culture. There are multiple ways it could go.

And I suppose it comes down to what aspects of the concept you want to explore. "Accepting/rejecting body identity" isn't particularly what I want to play with because it's not something I have thoughts about. (I'm cis female and my gender just is, and not something I really think about. So I don't really care about exploring that, though I'd be interesting to see what others do with their own concepts.)

So what I'm interested for my character isn't what he thinks of his own gender but what he thinks he's supposed to do socially in a culture whose concept of gender bears little resemblance to what he's previously known, and whether that involves trying to meld the concepts together or just going with it.

It's probably not the most interesting thing to do with the concept, but I don't want it to be... invented thinking, I guess? Don't try to give him a dilemma that I don't know how to feel about.

So I'm in the line of thinking that on the one hand it might seem like a waste to have a somewhat gender-neutral character (accepting of but not strongly attached to that aspect of his identity) just identify with that gender and be done with it, hence the thought bubble of him perhaps switching between presented genders according to the setting he's in without it saying anything about his self-perception, except perhaps that he sees gender as secondary to social role. But on the other hand I feel like the mindset he's been brought up with might just logically make him adhere to the gender he's been handed.

This may all be "multiple-choice characterisation" for a while, with any of the possibilities being true simultaneously until I'm really certain what I want for him, or official lore gives more insight into how he might feel about it.