Quote Originally Posted by Theodric View Post
Yeah, it has happened to a number of people who attempted to role-play a Garlean or some other form of antagonist. Even people portraying defectors are targeted at times. The game seems to have a large number of individuals who see their character as 'themselves' and as such act like anything in opposition to their self insert is the worst, most brutal thing ever to exist.

I stopped bothering with the FFXIV Reddit altogether simply because a single mention of anyone liking the Ascians or the Garleans has a habit of devolving into accusations of those people being 'terrible people'. I can only assume there's a lot of people playing this game who do not realise that fictional characters are just that - fictional.

It sucks a lot of the fun out of the game, though I've found things are much calmer over on the European servers for what that is worth.
I see this everywhere, yeah. There is a huge, weird thing going on in fandoms where your taste in fictional characters directly reflects who you are as a person. And if you like villains or antagonists or any character who is less than perfect, or ships that are less fluffy than your average coffee-shop-AU-fic, then you are an abuse apologist and you are "normalizing" toxic relationships. It's insane.