Quote Originally Posted by Sairys View Post
While you're googling perhaps drop in the Melanesian people and check out a pretty common hair colour for them? While you're at it maybe also look up a thing called "hair dye".
Perhaps also check out some images of Viera, you may notice that their skin colours run from lighter to darker shades while their hair seems to have a tendency towards light into white (though darker hair colours exist)

Lilja could just be a dark-skinned light-haired Viera... because they exist and seem to have always existed. She could also have died her hair/fur because hair dye seems to exist in the game. The argument really actually seems a bit silly, because accepting her as a POC character just means she's increasing representation where dismissing her as a fashion/trope achieves what?
So ultimately it's a matter of 'Can we tick the box or not?'. I stand by my earlier point, from a Japanese perspective 'she's a gyaru' isn't farfetched at all. Though ultimately it matters little to me personally, if she was meant as gyaru or as a Viera who was naturally born as she is, it don't matter to me. She's an annoying character to me either way. It also doesn't matter in the setting, as I've stated before, skin color means nothing in Eorzea. You won't hear Lilja about her skin color because it simply isn't a relevant factor. Only we insist on such things.