I appreciate Square Enix supporting LGBT rights in FFXIV.

[Lihtleita]

Never. I can't get remember one single game, book or serie that I have consumed that didn't use something that exists in our own world to craft storytelling.

bioshock- oh wait.... fallout- no wait not that..... final fantasy 7.....no, thats about ecoterrorism and how giant corporations would abuse their power if left in an unchecked monopoly

[sorawild34]

I'll be honest, I really dont understand the ship of Ryne X Gaia. Especially since in the SAME CUTSCENE Gaia states how she is waiting for Mitron.

[SeverianLyonesse]

...which also exists for mitron and gaia, even more so considering she promises him that 'they'll meet again' as she's rejecting her destiny of being an ascian
this also could very well mean that she's harbouring feelings for him, hell, it's even more spelled out than any possible feelings for ryne she might have

Yeah, that's definitely explicit in the text. I'm not trying to get into any shipping wars. Just saying that people who say there's literally no romantic framing of Ryne and Gaia aren't correct. There's loads of conventional romantic framing techniques at play.

Mitron is a female in the French version, so using Mitron as any sort of bellwether for Gaia's sexuality doesn't really work. Canonically one could say that Gaia is already bisexual before meeting Ryne if both versions are to be taken into account, although really it shouldn't matter if her past partner was male or female when we are looking at whether she has romantic feelings for Ryne.

However, the fact that Mitron was deliberately coded female by the French localization team certainly feels like they knew something about the Japanese writers' intentions that may not have been explicit in the English version. As if they thought the writing as it was might have been too obtuse and changing Mitron's gender helped provide a little more context on Gaia and Ryne's relationship being romantic.

Again, I point to the fact that the "friendship" plot of the Eden raids feels terribly boring and trite if this whole "coffee" thing really was teeny-bopping BFF brunch, as opposed to something more weighty like a first date. Not to mention the whole story could have been written drastically different if the aim of E12 was only about Gaia reclaiming her memories and not about her analyzing her attraction to Ryne specifically. There is a very deliberate and uninterrupted climax of Gaia being saved by memories of Ryne -> Gaia searching for Ryne ala Squall/Rinoa -> Gaia and Ryne reuniting in a pretty flamboyant explosion of flowers -> Rainbow crystal. Calling the Eden raids ending the realization of a queer romance is not an incorrect interpretation, and anyone out there insisting that romance isn't romance without being expressly spelled out has a pretty poor capacity for nuance in storytelling.

Between E12 and the FF8 parallels, there is enough to create ambiguity and I think support either the friendship or romance interpretation--although imo even the desire to create such ambiguity illustrates an intent on the developers' part to write a queer story. I think that interpretation is only further strengthened by the French localization.

[Lihtleita]

I'll be honest, I really dont understand the ship of Ryne X Gaia. Especially since in the SAME CUTSCENE Gaia states how she is waiting for Mitron.

she says he can finally be reborn and they might meet again someday. she never says she'd be waiting for him.

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip

The fact it’s only in the french version and no other version is already pretty suspicious, but the fact it’s literally never mentioned by the devs outside of that basically refutes that point. It wasn’t confirmed by the writers so it was most likely a translation error. Once again people looking so far into things thats pretty obvious it’s not leaning that way. Rainbow crystal is explained in that very patch with rainbow lava and now in endwalker with more rainbow crystals on the moon. A rainbow isn’t automatically lgbt.

Yup. Why can we not go back to times when games that had no political or social agenda, like Fallout, Deus Ex, Metal Gear Solid, Bioshock etc.



So we should just never have LGBTQ+ character for fear it may be forced? Would having just a few NPCs refer to their same sex partner in the exact way many do in-game now really spoil the story? What about the hundreds of times media forced hetro relationships at the expense of story (I saw people mention Batwoman, but what about the horror that is Olicity?)

We already have several lgbt characters in the game. It just isnt enough for some people.

[SeverianLyonesse]

The fact it’s only in the french version and no other version is already pretty suspicious, but the fact it’s literally never mentioned by the devs outside of that basically refutes that point. It wasn’t confirmed by the writers so it was most likely a translation error. Once again people looking so far into things thats pretty obvious it’s not leaning that way. Rainbow crystal is explained in that very patch with rainbow lava and now in endwalker with more rainbow crystals on the moon. A rainbow isn’t automatically lgbt.

French localization member confirmed it was most likely not a translation error.

https://twitter.com/noahrgent/status...78942335340549

Also you have really poor logic skills. Just because other interpretations exist doesn't mean you can completely dismiss an equally--if not more--plausible one without actually citing evidence against it. Just because rainbow crystal has an an in-game *explanation* doesn't mean it can't be given additional *meaning* in a different context. Just because a rainbow isn't automatically LGBT doesn't mean it absolutely cannot be when preceded by events which can hold queer romantic meaning.

Put another way, you are arguing that everything has to be ONLY Kinsey 0 or Kinsey 6 and that Kinsey 6 MUST have express, irrefutable evidence to defeat the default Kinsey 0 presumption. However, an entire spectrum exists and the Eden raids can be viewed anywhere in I'd say the Kinsey 2-5 range.

[KizuyaKatogami]

French localization member confirmed it was most likely not a translation error.

https://twitter.com/noahrgent/status...78942335340549

Also you have really poor logic skills. Just because other interpretations exist doesn't mean you can completely dismiss an equally--if not more--plausible one without actually citing evidence against it. Just because rainbow crystal has an an in-game *explanation* doesn't mean it can't be given additional meaning in a different context.

I dont think im the one with the poor logic skills. You're using a translation that was literally not present in any other language, as evidence for a lesbian romance between two teenage girls.If it was present in any other language alongside french i would agree, but the fact its not is pretty telling. French localization member isnt the writer. Until the writer says its so it isnt. Two girls can be friends, them being close doesnt make them lovers. Its ridiculous. Again, people can have their headcanon, but lets not treat it as gospel when it isnt. It just makes the lgbt community look bad for wanting to make every friendship between two people of the same gender gay. We already have multiple gay and bi characters in 14.

[SeverianLyonesse]

I dont think im the one with the poor logic skills. You're using a translation that was literally not present in any other language, as evidence for a lesbian romance between two teenage girls.If it was present in any other language alongside french i would agree, but the fact its not is pretty telling. French localization member isnt the writer. Until the writer says its so it isnt. Two girls can be friends, them being close doesnt make them lovers. Its ridiculous. Again, people can have their headcanon, but lets not treat it as gospel when it isnt. It just makes the lgbt community look bad for wanting to make every friendship between two people of the same gender gay. We already have multiple gay and bi characters in 14.

1) Yeah you are, you just moved the goalposts because I proved your last ass-umption wrong. The game has only been localized in three languages, and we know that English translations tend to censor gender queerness in Japanese media. But even without that, one out of three translations deliberately decided to make Mitron female. We don't know if this was made on information from the Japanese writers or not, but that doesn't matter. 1/3 or even 1/4 languages is not insignificant data.

2) The claim that we want every character to be gay is hyperbolic and profoundly inaccurate. Do you see anyone clamoring for any other characters in the main cast to be gay--except as a matter of meming and jesting and fanficing? No, I don't believe I have ever seen serious discussions about how X or Y character is actually gay; the absolute furthest this ever goes is that Haurchefaunt/G'Raha Tia is WoL-sexual and Alphinaud seems to have a tiny boy-crush on Estinian. Neither of those are really shipping either, at least among the majority of this community. But this is a serious discussion of literary intent, not some childish shipping fantasy. I don't care about Gaia and Ryne's relationship much at all. But I do care about good writing, and what the writers of FF XIV apparently want to say, and whether the dipstick fans of this site are crapping all over it with their "no homo plz" whining like you are doing right now.

3) And for the record, for the umpteenth time in this cesspool of a thread, I have never said it was canon. I am presenting an interpretation that is well-evidenced that you have only countered with cheap whataboutisms as if even the smallest ambiguity invalidates the whole edifice--an edifice which is de facto, by design, and will indefinitely remain ambiguous. I have never said this interpretation was conclusive other than some pretty curious indications of authorial intent.

You are the one obsessing over the need for the heteronormative interpretation to be canonical. You are the one impliedly suggesting that queer writing is somehow worse writing. Check yourself.

[Makeda]

Does anyone remember a time when games could just be games without political or social motivated agendas being pushed out to random people?

Well...

What does that statement mean really other than "Can anyone remember a time when games were 100% perfect representations of my perspective of the world as I perceive the world now, and not perhaps how I did even back then?"

It's really impossible to NOT make social or political commentary from the perspective of someone.

Even if you just walk up and say "hi"... someone is gonna wonder why you didn't say "bonjour" or "Ohayo gozaimasu". Not to mention the person who sits there and wonders why "all you got is hi, how do I form a conversation with only that?"


What we really need here is some education on communication, and... dare I say it... 'diversity comprehension' - as in how to understand and process that other people have different perspectives without getting 'offended' by it or by the fact that not everyone wants what you want.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Well...

What does that statement mean really other than "Can anyone remember a time when games were 100% perfect representations of my perspective of the world as I perceive the world now, and not perhaps how I did even back then?"

It's really impossible to NOT make social or political commentary from the perspective of someone.

Even if you just walk up and say "hi"... someone is gonna wonder why you didn't say "bonjour" or "Ohayo gozaimasu". Not to mention the person who sits there and wonders why "all you got is hi, how do I form a conversation with only that?"


What we really need here is some education on communication, and... dare I say it... 'diversity comprehension' - as in how to understand and process that other people have different perspectives without getting 'offended' by it or by the fact that not everyone wants what you want.

Agreed. Nothing exists in a vacuum, everything we do, say, or publish is informed by and informs the social organism. To be social is to be political.

And, on a somewhat related note, it is impossible to separate the art from the artist. No one makes art without having an idea they want to fix in some form. The fact that there is an idea means that it will be constrained and defined by the artist's worldview, so the idea is always going to have some degree of bias, opinion, and objective. And the fact that it will be fixed means that the idea will inevitably be communicated to someone else in society. I.e., all art, whether intentionally or not, communicates aspects of the artist's worldview, which in turn can't help but propound or deny the artist's opinions on truth and politics.

I think you are right that it is partly a sign of empathy for people to be able understand art as an expression of the artist rather than as merely what they want to see. But it's also just a sign of being more thoughtful and analytically honest about things generally, and recognizing that, despite what the past few decades of advertising have taught us to believe, it is not the consumer that has the final say on what has meaning. It is the artist, and indeed the publisher who has any say at all whether and how that idea even reaches you, or if was ever worth creating in the first place.