This frequency of English localization issues is unacceptable

[Boblawblah]

I like English Haurchefant. He makes me happy, and I still miss him to this day because of the changes that were made.

[Nestama]

EN Haurchefant best Haurchefant.

[Lunaxia]

Making jokes does not downplay, nor affect the seriousness one would take the matter of sexual harassment within a serious context..

Yeah, it does, though.

Again, no. This is not how any of that works.

Yeah, it is.

because anyone with the most remote sense would be able to identify that they would be inappropriate in real-life. If someone were to behave this way, it wouldn't be because the media they consume influenced them to do so.

The clueless don't, though, and the more unsavoury sort don't have any qualms about it to begin with. They just see it green lit as something they can get away with.

There is literally zero evidence, scientific or otherwise, to make the claim that people who have acted inappropriately wouldn't have done so had they not been exposed to adjacent or similar material...

You have to be a troll, there is no way someone can be this obtuse.

Like I said, companies are aware of this and leverage it into their products, hence why they have not and will not stop creating and marketing 'problematic' content like what we had here

Like what? Like who?

I've done my research on this, and it wasn't some 'flash in the pan' moment like you keep trying to claim. It was actually a very vocal uproar

You weren't even there, lol. Digging up an old post circa. 2015 that suits your narrative isn't "research" or proof of understanding of the matter.

If it truly were some brief 'flash in the pan' moment, then SE wouldn't have acknowledged it and admitted fault, and committed to reverting his characterization to be in-line with his canonical iteration going forward.

They committed to keeping the cutscenes largely in line with each other, while also continuing to state the importance of localisation and the reasons why they do it and why they continue to do it.

And Haurchefant was already dead by the time this came to light. Nothing changed, and no one actually cared.

a handful of vocal supporters of the censored version on Reddit are not the majority. The backlash received from censoring him transcended multiple communities, and

Imagine trying to pretend that there are a "substantial" number of people who care about the translation differences while claiming the only people who like Haurchefant are a bunch of supporters on reddit.

to this day still riles people up who would prefer to experience him the way he was initially intended to be.

So you, basically.

A vocal base of redditors and forum users doesn't count as making him one of the 'most loved' characters.

The fact that you're not aware how out of touch you are with the game and the community to even make this statement speaks for itself.

It's far more likely he's more liked by the Japanese audience, in his proper iteration, than by Westerners.

We're just pulling things out of the air now, are we?

Yes, because it's fiction and intended to be comedic, because jokes are not intended to be taken seriously.

You can keep on pretending that media exists in a vacuum apart from general society all you like, but no one else is.

Because it's obviously meant to be taken as a joke in the broader narrative

??? Haurchefant was 100% serious.

In his EN iteration, he's written to feel more and more like a 'big brother' character, which is very bothersome given that the WoL's relationship to him at that point wasn't really that fleshed out. I kept thinking "why does he care this much? is there something I missed or a quest I should have paid more attention to?"

I think you have some personal issues to maybe work on if someone slobbering over you makes you more comfortable than friendly courtesy.

Anyway, as funny as this was and as much as I admire your continued audacity to speak on subjects you have absolutely no understanding of or were even around for, I'm out. Good luck with the crusade and whatever it is you're actually looking for, though I have a feeling you're not going to get it.

[Atelier-Bagur]

EN Haurchefant best Haurchefant.

People just like to downplay actual good changes for the sake of purity even if the potential quality suffers.

Not saying that every change has been good but lets stop pretending like original Haurchefant was a good character. He was used as common japanese trope of the flamboyant man and many of his original lines clashed with the tone the script set itself up.

The only people who cry about it are the Hauchefant simps that want to feel validated for their obsessive sexual behavior over a fictional character. And FFXIV is no stranger to that part of the fandom.

[Telkira]

Yeah, it does, though.

No, it doesn't!

Saying that jokes about things is the same as minimizing or downplaying the severity of the subject matter would imply that jokes have a magical way of changing how people engage with and understand the subject matter. It's a drastic and biased oversimplification of how people engage with and address comedy that relates to a given subject, one that is contingent exclusively on misrepresenting the psychological and sociological aspects of humor in a way that validates the biases of those offended.

If it truly had this effect, then people like myself and others who are vehemently against sexual harassment, wouldn't find Haurchefant funny, nor would we defend his initial incarnation, and neither the West nor Japanese certainly would continue to perpetuate these specific literary devices in their media and media culture.

Yeah, it is.

It's not.

I'd suggest you actually pick up a psychology and sociology textbook, or do proper research into the consensus behind media effects on behavior, attitudes, and perceptions. You're going to find a lot of people claiming that there's an effect, citing correlational and largely anecdotal evidence, but you'll an almost equally robust set of papers critiquing this, and also find that the consensus is largely unmoved because none of these are able to outline or demonstrate causation.

The way fiction is perceived and how it affects people is not simple. It, like fiction, is complex and highly nuanced, with the only real standard is that things depicted in fiction do not 'normalize' things that would be considered harmful or problematic outside that context. You'd be surprised how often subjective biases override objective judgement in this regard.

The clueless don't, though, and the more unsavory sort don't have any qualms about it to begin with. They just see it green lit as something they can get away with.

People can be really dumb and completely devoid of media literacy, but inferences into media depictions and how it affects people has consistently failed to demonstrate a causal relationship between continued exposure and promulgation of these things. People often claim to find inferences, but they can't demonstrate anything more than minor correlations grounded by a selection effect.

The fact that people are able to differentiate and compartmentalize, at the conceptual level, something that is hypothetical, as opposed to merely fictitious and inconsequential is proof of this lack of an effect.

It always comes down to this back-and-forth with debates like this.
Even with the way many studios or media companies have radically changed their approaches to how controversial material can be depicted or marketed, the rates of abuse and all of these other harms these measures seek to address have never actually gone down. In fact they may have increased, but that alone isn't evidence of anything.

Like what? Like who?

-South Park
-Family Guy
-American Dad
-Big Mouth
-F-Is-For-Family
-Brickleberry
I can name more TV shows which feature perverts who behave just like Haurchefant, but that would make this already-long post that much longer. These shows are marketed by their raunchy comedy, and of course, it's going to break into territory that will make people uncomfortable. I'm not even going to touch up on JP content. That'd be cheating lol

You weren't even there, lol. Digging up an old post circa. 2015 that suits your narrative isn't "research" or proof of understanding of the matter.

I don't have to have been there, literally all of the evidence is already there from that time. It's not a matter of picking stuff that 'suits my narrative', it's about quoting a representative from Square Enix themselves who admitted fault and apologized. You casually casting all of that aside just to disagree with me on this is extremely petty.

Imagine trying to pretend that there are a "substantial" number of people who care about the translation differences while claiming the only people who like Haurchefant are a bunch of supporters on reddit.

There are. People want to have a quality experience that's consistent with the original vision of the game and not feel like SE is behaving like 4kids Lite, where all the characters have different names and plotlines are significantly changed to account for 'cultural differences'.

They committed to keeping the cutscenes largely in line with each other, while also continuing to state the importance of localisation and the reasons why they do it and why they continue to do it.

They also said that any further incarnations of him would be consistent with his canonical characterization, so that way there's one true Haurchefant. For things like side media or merchandise or events. All he wanted to do is ride the WoL like a pony...
They also admitted that changing him was wrong, and that they would have done things a lot differently given the severity of the blowback from fans and a general sense of disappointment in how they handled it. I admit, I wouldn't have been as concerned if the EN localization of Haurchefant was consistent across all regions, because it meant that one region wasn't getting something that another region was, and vice versa. If the Japanese script signed off on and integrated the changes, then it would have been through their internal processes to do so.

We're just pulling things out of the air now, are we?

Nope. It would just make sense, wouldn't it? I've also checked, his JP characterization is generally more well-liked by Japanese fans than the EN is, whereas in the EN there's this mixed-reaction with political implications. Over in JP he's literally just a character people like. There are stickers in LINE where he's depicted shirtless, and I think those are hilarious.

You can keep on pretending that media exists in a vacuum apart from general society all you like, but no one else is.

It's not about media 'existing in a vacuum', it's about actually knowing and understanding the effects. If you had been paying attention to anything, and didn't object to factual statements about the game being a pure work of fiction, you'd know better.

Just because bad people gravitate towards things which may, at a glance, glorify bad things doesn't mean it has a reinforcing or 'normalization' effect on those antisocial beliefs or attitudes. No evidence exists to conclusively demonstrate that, contrary to what people claim, and as stated previously, the winding down of those depictions will not make those people any less likely to 'change' or adjust these attitudes.

??? Haurchefant was 100% serious.

Maybe in some aspects. He functions as a supporting role and is helpful to the WoL either way, just in one he feels more like a proper character whose trope has function, but as a character, he was not intended to be taken 100% seriously. Learn the difference between a fictional character as a literary device and an actual personality, and how those concepts intertwine based on mood, tone, and broader context, I guess.

I think you have some personal issues to maybe work on if someone slobbering over you makes you more comfortable than friendly courtesy.

Maybe unwarranted emotionally-charged 'bonds' just aren't all that appealing, and maybe much of the infatuation with his EN iteration is motivated by something else? I'm not going ton assume things, but that's just my evaluation. Most of why I didn't like him was because it felt wrong, like he wasn't supposed to be this way.

Anyway, as funny as this was and as much as I admire your continued audacity to speak on subjects you have absolutely no understanding of or were even around for, I'm out.

I'd suggest you familiarize yourself with the actual effects of media and not just the biased takes of what political commentators say. Your entire rhetoric reeks of something uniquely foul, and that foulness is shared by people like Dworkin and Sarkeesian, but also more sinister forces, like conservative pundits such as Richard Nixon. Do with that as you will, you might learn something!

[Telkira]

People just like to downplay actual good changes for the sake of purity even if the potential quality suffers.

Not saying that every change has been good but lets stop pretending like original Haurchefant was a good character. He was used as common japanese trope of the flamboyant man and many of his original lines clashed with the tone the script set itself up.

I actually liked the canon Haurchefant better. He acted as a comic relief character, which was a welcome and abrupt staple in Japanese comedy with the function of breaking up the dreary, cold tension of the setting. They were supposed to clash, because he was supposed to lighten the mood. The Heavensward expansion is very political, very cold and arguably grim, even. Having him come in and act the way he did was a comedic delight, and it makes me sad that they didn't want EN players to experience that.

These tropes don't exist as some item on a checklist, they have purpose within the way Japanese writers tell stories.

[Nestama]

Okay but EN Haurchefant still best Haurchefant.

[Theodric]

I actually liked the canon Haurchefant better. He acted as a comic relief character, which was a welcome and abrupt staple in Japanese comedy with the function of breaking up the dreary, cold tension of the setting. They were supposed to clash, because he was supposed to lighten the mood. The Heavensward expansion is very political, very cold and arguably grim, even. Having him come in and act the way he did was a comedic delight, and it makes me sad that they didn't want EN players to experience that.

These tropes don't exist as some item on a checklist, they have purpose within the way Japanese writers tell stories.

Haurchefant being a pervert whilst good-natured overall never really bothered me. I thought it was a pretty funny premise and it's unfortunate that the English version of the character is so sanitised. One of my favourite JRPG series of all time - Shadow Hearts - has similar characters played for laughs and I found them funny rather than offensive.

[Palladiamors]

Haurchefant being a pervert whilst good-natured overall never really bothered me. I thought it was a pretty funny premise and it's unfortunate that the English version of the character is so sanitised. One of my favourite JRPG series of all time - Shadow Hearts - has similar characters played for laughs and I found them funny rather than offensive.

Ah man, I miss Shadow Hearts. From the New World was just okay but Koudelka and SH 1 and 2 were a wild ride. They just don't make'em like that anymore.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I actually liked the canon Haurchefant better. He acted as a comic relief character, which was a welcome and abrupt staple in Japanese comedy with the function of breaking up the dreary, cold tension of the setting. They were supposed to clash, because he was supposed to lighten the mood. The Heavensward expansion is very political, very cold and arguably grim, even. Having him come in and act the way he did was a comedic delight, and it makes me sad that they didn't want EN players to experience that.

These tropes don't exist as some item on a checklist, they have purpose within the way Japanese writers tell stories.

He still lightened the mood in the ENG version. It was just more nuanced