Lore Forum Decorum - Just What is Meant by Good/Bad Faith?

[Lauront]

This does read as you encountering negative drama over lore discussions in other venues, and then importing that negativity here to the Official Forums lore discussions. (The comparisons to Meteion do come to mind, but I assume everyone else can also see it, so no need to elaborate, and it's tangential anyway.)

/shrug

10c

[Theodric]

I don't think such a point really stands beneath even a light amount of scrutiny given that multiple posters have spoken out within this very thread to state that they've found this place to be rather hostile and needlessly dramatic at times. As it so happens, such behaviour can be found elsewhere in addition to here.

[Aexnidaral]

This thread do be havin' some bad dynamis. (ninja character limit edit incoming)

I don't really post much on these Forums (though, I did chuckle when someone abbreviated the Official Forum as "OF" which... means something entirely different to my Twitter addled brain...), but figured I'd add my two gil.

I think the reality is that people have very different views on what constitutes good and bad faith arguments, which kind of hampers the discussion to begin with. When you have groups of people coming together to discuss something they hold dearly and are passionate about -- regardless of the medium -- it can (and does) get out of hand pretty quickly, even if people mean well. Personally, for me, bad faith is when someone approaches a situation without any intention to have an actual dialogue and just pops in to stir the pot or regurgitate their favorite fan-fiction. An example of this for me would be that like... two month period a year or so ago when some very loud group of people on Twitter had somehow absolutely convinced themselves that Amon was actually Emet-Selch, even though that made no sense then, and we know to be categorically untrue now (thank god); there were a chunk of people who I saw would try to nicely present reasons why this theory wasn't possible using the Encyclopedia Eorzea, but got dunked on for whatever reason.

I know sometimes I have trouble separating out a person's takes, and how the interact with others on forums, to who they are as an actual person. Especially with regards to how I view someone's takes being a reflection of their values. There are some people on this forum I have never interacted with even once, and would be incredibly reticent to engage with privately because I've (unfairly) judged their behavior on public spaces like this/Twitter/Discord/Reddit; but who I would probably end up liking and getting along with personally. I'm a big villain lover -- in FF I've been a stan of my fashion queen Edea/Ultimecia, my silver haired twinks Kuja and Sephiroth, and my nihilistic blue boy Seymour for as long as I can remember. In the same way that in other fictional universes some of my favorite characters are villains like Count Dooku, Kreia, and the player-character Sith storylines in SWTOR. When Shadowbringers came out Emet-as-Solus probably was one of my favorite fictional characters ever. The problem I have is when people start saying things like "The Ascians weren't actually bad", "the Empire did nothing wrong" , "Actually, Hydaelyn is evil!", or "If you think about it, the Jedi are the bad guys!" Because of how I (unfairly or not) correlate someone's takes to their values and who they are as a person at their core, when I see people say things like "if you think about it, the people who wanted to commit a genocide weren't actually that bad!" it's fairly off putting and hard for me to engage with them in my own good faith because I see them as simping for "Actual BadnessTM" and not having any nuance to their position as if they were saying something to the effect of "I love [X Character/Group], what they're doing is awful, but the writers really found a way to make their point of view and actions understandable."

To circle back around to the more macro question of "Lore Forum Decorum" -- I am a lore person. I get very hyper focused on/in the lore of things that I like. Every week or so I like to spend an hour or so before I go to bed just browsing the lore forum and reading some of the posts. I like reading what folks have to say, and enjoy seeing other peoples interpretation of things, as well as seeing people answer questions that get posted; sometimes even giving me "aha!" moments when I read the answers. There have been a number of times where I've almost engaged, posted, etc., but usually I get stopped by the fact that A) I'm lazy and logging into my account on my phone and pulling up my one time password takes a bit of the wind out of my sails and B) the way some of you argue with one another can come off as cruel and sarcastic to the point of being unwelcoming. I say this as someone who is, by my own admission, not a conflict adverse person by any means, but often I read posts on here that come off as being off-puttingly rude and unnecessarily harsh. Of course, part of that is the fact that it is very hard to interpret tone by text alone even on the best of days; but there are times where it's hard not to grimace at some of the posts/way people argue with one another.

Not necessarily directly related, but in an earlier comment I saw someone blame Discord for communities and conversations moving away from things like Forums. I don't think the specifics of that are true, but I think Discord being an all-in-one platform really helped catalyze that to it's fullest when compared to the smaller compartmentalization for communities I saw during the AOL/MSN/Skype/TeamSpeak/etc era. Additionally, I do want to say, in regards to some back-and-forth I saw earlier about something that happened on Reddit (I assume r/FFXIV subreddit?) always report those instances to both the Admins, and the subreddit mods. I know on the r/ffxiv sub like, half of us identify as Queer in some capacity so we take homophobia/transphobic/etc very seriously; and any time there is a report or modmail it gets manually reviews by a moderator.

See you all in my next post in two years!

[Vyrerus]

This does read as you encountering negative drama over lore discussions in other venues, and then importing that negativity here to the Official Forums lore discussions. (The comparisons to Meteion do come to mind, but I assume everyone else can also see it, so no need to elaborate, and it's tangential anyway.)

If there's a reason for Lauront and Theodric or anyone to think that negativity or hatred from other venues is here, simultaneously then I can understand their inclination to be pithy and distant. That's their prerogative.

Receiving a credible death threat would be pretty alarming to me. I've never received one online, so it must be spooky. If someone on another venue mentions that they frequent another forum that I'm on, but doesn't identify who they are on that forum, then I'd be on edge too.

But hopefully for my transgression, people's minds are at ease at least when talking to Theodric, so we don't have to hang on it. Don't be surprised if Lauront and Theodric still do. I don't blame them.

[Fenral]

I know I'm spectacularly unpopular, so all I can really say is that it's never my intention to upset or offend anyone. (It can happen; I blame catboy RBF.)

Aside from FC chat, I don't discuss FFXIV anywhere else, because Lore used to be the accept-no-substitutes best. It was hard to come back after a brief hiatus to find it consumed in the negativity and vitriol I came here to escape, but in spite of myself, I'm also not quite ready to give up on it yet.

[Ryaz]

I know I'm spectacularly unpopular, so all I can really say is that it's never my intention to upset or offend anyone. (It can happen; I blame catboy RBF.)

Aside from FC chat, I don't discuss FFXIV anywhere else, because Lore used to be the accept-no-substitutes best. It was hard to come back after a brief hiatus to find it consumed in the negativity and vitriol I came here to escape, but in spite of myself, I'm also not quite ready to give up on it yet.

I've just started really looking at this part of the forum and I'm kind of amazed at how negative people are about the lore. It's almost as people on this site just don't enjoy the game and story, or are ticked off that it didn't follow what their head canon was on how the story should go.

Maybe it's because I can enjoy things, warts and all and don't try to overanalyze every little tidbit. People do it with movies as well and I find doing that just sucks the enjoyment our of most things.

[Vyrerus]

I know I'm spectacularly unpopular, so all I can really say is that it's never my intention to upset or offend anyone. (It can happen; I blame catboy RBF.)

Aside from FC chat, I don't discuss FFXIV anywhere else, because Lore used to be the accept-no-substitutes best. It was hard to come back after a brief hiatus to find it consumed in the negativity and vitriol I came here to escape, but in spite of myself, I'm also not quite ready to give up on it yet.

I like you. I think you've got generally cool ideas, and sometimes reveal fresh insights.

I don't think the forum is totally consumed by vitriol either. There's just a lot of old heat that's still hot, and it still causes some threads to catch on fire.

And I think the issue is really more the inclination to discuss plot elements and characters vs. actually discussing Lore. They are often deeply intertwined, and we have a hard time separating them because character actions lead to new lore. I think we can overcome it all, though. We just have to be open and frank.

[Cilia]

For the record I don't use Twitter or Reddit, and the only thing I use Discord for is playing Dungeons & Dragons, precisely because I know a lot of online communities are toxic (or quickly and easily become so) and want no part of that negativity.

I've just started really looking at this part of the forum and I'm kind of amazed at how negative people are about the lore. It's almost as people on this site just don't enjoy the game and story, or are ticked off that it didn't follow what their head canon was on how the story should go.

Maybe it's because I can enjoy things, warts and all and don't try to overanalyze every little tidbit. Peoppe do it with movies as well and I find doing that just sucks the enjoyment our of most things.

As I see it a large part of the negativity (right now, at any rate) is that Endwalker didn't play out the way a lot of people here wanted it to - Hydaelyn / Venat was given a sympathetic portrayal, wonky time shenanigans were afoot, and the story veered more in a traditional fantasy direction than the political intrigue that seems to be more popular among this Forum's frequent users; so people have decided to go Cinema Sins on it and pick apart all the flaws, real or imagined, in how its story and characters played out. Shadowbringers received nothing but glowing praise.

[Veloran]

Shadowbringers recieved nothing but glowing praise (more or less) because the narrative was far more tightly written and had far less plot holes and inconsistencies. Like the worst plot hole I can think of would be G'raha coming in at the end of 5.0 and despite being shot, beaten, exhausted, and far from the Crystal Tower, enacting a summoning spell for seven people that he barely managed to complete for WoL when we were helping him on our end. And this is very egregious, but people let it slide because it was part of possibly the best sequence in the entire game. Endwalker's issues are more widespread by comparison and affect much more than a single moment.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Shadowbringers recieved nothing but glowing praise (more or less) because the narrative was far more tightly written and had far less plot holes and inconsistencies. Like the worst plot hole I can think of would be G'raha coming in at the end of 5.0 and despite being shot, beaten, exhausted, and far from the Crystal Tower, enacting a summoning spell for seven people that he barely managed to complete for WoL when we were helping him on our end. And this is very egregious, but people let it slide because it was part of possibly the best sequence in the entire game. Endwalker's issues are more widespread by comparison and affect much more than a single moment.

Yep this exactly. Endwalker just has widespread flaws in comparison to shadowbringers and i think that added on to the fact it’s supposed to be effectively THE ending of this years long arc whilst also being delayed 6-7 months just puts more salt in the wound for people who found it fairly mediocre.