Quote Originally Posted by MellowMink View Post
It's so weird to me that some people are bothered by male Viera being playable since that supposedly goes against lore, yet I'm supposed to believe that every single male Viera in the entire universe of Final Fantasy XIV's multiple worlds chooses to comply with this supposedly mandated isolation and has no independent will of their own to try some public adventuring? I think the idea that there wouldn't be a single outlier is far more unbelievable than the idea that a few could be adventurers as well.

What, do they spontaneously combust if they come into contact with someone outside of their species, followed by the people who see them always having an inexplicable memory wipe? Is it literally impossible for them to have a relationship with someone who isn't a Viera either? Because that would be pretty problematic if that's the case.

Same deal goes for the female Hrothgar; how do people think it's unreasonable that an occasional female Hrothgar wouldn't be enthusiastic about the idea of living in isolation for their entire life? It's just ridiculous to me from a commonsense perspective.
I'm not against their inclusion and I can see both sides of the argument, but pre-imperial invasion it's like seeing a male member of an uncontacted native Amazon tribe walking around in Kyoto, if said tribe only had 1 male in 10 births and each male went through a period of dangerous training before being set free to roam the jungles, being taught their whole life with no outside interference or knowledge that it's their position in life to do so. All of viera culture is heavily indoctrinated into a "this is the way of things". Up until recently, the men in the trees have had no contact or reference at all with the outside world and would have no idea if it was better or worse than their current situation. The only thing they may know is that once every rare now and again when one decides to visit the women to mate and drag pubescent boys off into the jungle, they may hear about a woman or two leaving the homeland and abandoning their culture.

That said, there's already a lot of upheaval going on in the viera homeland now that the Garleans have invaded and are actively fighting them. Viera are also described as voluntarily leaving after defeating the Garleans in order to see what the world they come from is like.

Female hrothgar meanwhile make 0 sense to me and I have no idea why we never got NPCs of them and the starring role was given to a roegadyn. The absence of female ronso is even more confusing since they don't even have queens or anything and the few that are described are normal women.

As far as having relationships outside of viera, all races in all regions have a taboo against interracial mixing. Hilda was noted in her story to be a very notable exception to the rule, and except for 2 half-Garlean siblings and an apocryphal fisherman's tale, all other mixed children are not products of a consensual mixed relationship. There were even 2 men chased out of their village in a side quest because they're in a relationship and are a hyur and a miqo'te. And while I don't know what FFXIV viera think of other races, but in the Ivalice series viera described humes as being malformed and ugly so I don't think they had much mixing going on and we only know of one instance of that happening and it did not end well at all.