What Zero Could've Been

[Absimiliard]

Stuff

Don't you think you're being a bit unfair here? The torrent of vitriol definitely goes both ways, and it frequently comes down hard on any unsuspecting individual unfortunate enough to voice a dissenting opinion. Lumping people into factions for their opinions is an extremely stupid practice.

[Theodric]

Personally, I aspire (imperfectly of course) to disagree with what people post, as opposed to disagreeing with the people per se.
However, I don't think everyone shares that aspiration.

You're not alone. I do as much myself and often propose simply agreeing to disagree where common ground cannot be found.

If people are willing to do that? Great. If not, I find myself writing them off by using the ignore function if they're only getting strangely personal and petty with their often bizarre insinuations about people's character and personal views.

Don't you think you're being a bit unfair here? The torrent of vitriol definitely goes both ways, and it frequently comes down hard on any unsuspecting individual unfortunate enough to voice a dissenting opinion. Lumping people into factions for their opinions is an extremely stupid practice.

Mm. I disagree with the attempts to lump people into 'factions'. It's not even applicable in many cases and neither side is a hive mind despite attempts by some to imply otherwise.

[Kazhar]

Do you post on the lore forum? It's all the same torrent of bitterness there, just with different targets, and it seems they've mentally grouped people who disagree with them there and here into one big force against them.

What happened? Was it seriously Endwalker's release? I've been only lurking for a year or two, but it seems things changed recently. Before the worst issue here were the constant spam of obvious troll thread, now it seems this place is slowly imploding.

[Absimiliard]

What happened? Was it seriously Endwalker's release? I've been only lurking for a year or two, but it seems things changed recently. Before the worst issue here were the constant spam of obvious troll thread, now it seems this place is slowly imploding.

It was already like this before, just mayhaps not to the same degree. All Endwalker did was change the subject from Garleans to the Ancients and Venat.

[Iscah]

Don't you think you're being a bit unfair here? The torrent of vitriol definitely goes both ways, and it frequently comes down hard on any unsuspecting individual unfortunate enough to voice a dissenting opinion. Lumping people into factions for their opinions is an extremely stupid practice.

The torrent goes both ways (and I am incredibly tired of it) but only one side of the torrent is here in this topic calling names and lumping in people who disagree with them here as being part of a team with people who disagree with them in a separate subforum.

[Theodric]

I'm indifferent to many of the Scions, at this point they mostly rub me the wrong way for the same reason that I came to tire of the likes of Anduin and Jaina back in World of Warcraft. Familiarity can easily breed contempt and especially when a consistent presence is coming at the expense of other characters who could step up and get involved.

That aside, as a gay guy who is attracted to masculine men I do find it rather troubling when I see people imply that asking for conventionally attractive, masculine men is somehow a bad or silly thing. Especially when many of the people asking for such have stated that they'd enjoy more variety in general for both player characters and NPC's alike. Furthermore they've even provided examples of what they'd like to see in relevant threads such as this one:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6026267

I also think it's a bit disingenuous to lump everyone who has issues with the Scions together as one big hive mind who always agree with one another on everything.

[SannaR]

I Feel like I got lumped into something I wasn't even apart of.....end of the day Ive come out of this today nothing but confused.
But, it sounds like that was the point. Me trying to understand it and make sense was all part of the game. What it accomplished...guess Ill never know.
GG I guess?....

It's how Iscah said it. Which is at least in my mind another way of just calling someone a white knight. I think I might have been partly to blame for Senti's Lyth stuff due to my mentioning of them being burnt out which comes from a thread in the lore section.

Speaking of Magnai she calls him the equivalent of a little boy/child in the other languages. So I'm not sure which comment would be worse. Also holy crap the tags.

[Absimiliard]

The torrent goes both ways (and I am incredibly tired of it) but only one side of the torrent is here in this topic calling names and lumping in people who disagree with them here as being part of a team with people who disagree with them in a separate subforum.

I don't know if I'd say that. It looks to me like there's been plenty of back and forth. Granted, there are a couple outliers in this thread for certain. At any rate, it's tiresome. If no one is allowed to speak on the forums without getting torn to shreds over their position, why even bother?

Don't like the Scions? Instant ad hominem.
Don't like Venat? Same thing. Criticizing her is the equivalent of shoving your head into a hornet's nest.
Don't like Zodiark? Same thing.
Don't like the Ancients? Yep, that too.
Emet-Selch? Not liking him is like signing a waiver saying you'd like to be the online equivalent of a punching bag.

A small group of posters are really bad about turning everything into a personal attack. The majority just try to work around it as best they can, lest they get dragged in as well. Then to add to this you've got another small group of posters that choose to communicate in bad faith, knowingly making disingenuous statement after disingenuous statement for no reason other than... well, I don't actually know the reason, but I'm sure there is one. The same posters with a tendency to choose disingenuous language also tend to look for problems where none exist. Doesn't help anyone.

[AwesomeJr44]

I'm indifferent to many of the Scions, at this point they mostly rub me the wrong way for the same reason that I came to tire of the likes of Anduin and Jaina back in World of Warcraft. Familiarity can easily breed contempt and especially when a consistent presence is coming at the expense of other characters who could step up and get involved.

I haven't played WoW too much (I only tried it for like 2 weeks) so I don't understand the WoW references, but I agree with the part about the scions. Some of them are annoying, and some of them are just... there. I don't feel like any of them really have a particular goal right now other than Yshtola, and I have several other problems with that character.

That aside, as a gay guy who is attracted to masculine men I do find it rather troubling when I see people imply that asking for conventionally attractive, masculine men is somehow a bad or silly thing. Especially when many of the people asking for such have stated that they'd enjoy more variety in general for both player characters and NPC's alike.

I've mainly taken a stance of neutrality on the OP of this thread (and before anyone says otherwise, you can go back and see that I've made that clear multiple times), but I do agree that it's quite troubling that some would like to label such desires for conventionally attractive characters as 'troubling'. Personally, I'm into conventionally attractive women, and no disrespect to anyone who doesn't fall under this category, but if you're not conventionally attractive, I'm probably not going to find you appealing to look at. Now imagine if someone made a thread asking for more overweight characters and I came into the thread complaining that someone was asking for the type of character they liked. I don't think I'd get the same support.

[SannaR]

I'm indifferent to many of the Scions, at this point they mostly rub me the wrong way for the same reason that I came to tire of the likes of Anduin and Jaina back in World of Warcraft. Familiarity can easily breed contempt and especially when a consistent presence is coming at the expense of other characters who could step up and get involved.

That aside, as a gay guy who is attracted to masculine men I do find it rather troubling when I see people imply that asking for conventionally attractive, masculine men is somehow a bad or silly thing. Especially when many of the people asking for such have stated that they'd enjoy more variety in general for both player characters and NPC's alike. Furthermore they've even provided examples of what they'd like to see in relevant threads such as this one:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6026267

I also think it's a bit disingenuous to lump everyone who has issues with the Scions together as one big hive mind who always agree with one another on everything.

Asking for that is different than wanting or wishing a lot of the cast to be like that in order to like them. Or like them more. That and the way it gets worded by the OP tends to come off as a demand and not an ask. While also making some feel as though anything less then that or a difference in opinion is not acceptable or allowed. Especially when the basis at least this round of the debate if you can call it one starts from disliking a character we just got introduced to. It would be like saying you loathe Teddy Duchamp from Stand by Me from the first few seconds the character is on screen.