Scholar's Identity Transformation

[Minali]

So, uh, Yoshi-P said we're supposed to wait and see how Seraphism looks in game and check it our ourselves, right?

I just reached Lvl 100 with scholar and had a very close look.

I still hate it a lot.

The gameplay of Seraphism is fine, but it never was about the gameplay to begin with.

It might be somewhat lore appropriate in that way that they took a being that looks like an angel, acts like an angel, is named like an angel and appeared as an angel in previous Final Fantasy games and called it a fairy or fairy adjacent. However, as someone who grew up around a lot of christian symbols, churches and what not despite not even being religious, I feel it's safe to say this is an angel costume. And yes, costume. It is not exactly super different from a normal angel glam, except it also cuts off my cat ears and my tail for no good reason.

Here some comparison screenshots for the people who don't play SCH as a catgirl. (The book is not part of the transformation, that's the Shb relic.)



I'm going to finish MSQ with Scholar for queue fast pass (and because I do enjoy the actual gameplay) and then never touch it again until this is being changed. I started this game as Arcanist and struggled so hard to learn scholar in Shb for years, but I finally got the hang of it and started to enjoy it in the last year of the EW patches. It pains me to put it down again after so much work, I like the gameplay itself, but this transformation into some christian religious entity taking away my glam and my racial traits is just a big no for aesthetic reasons. However, it's not only aesthetics. I won't even recognize myself on the battle field anymore without putting a focus target on me, because my eyes are not that great at some days, even with glasses, and having her altered in her entirety like this won't help with anything.

[KisaiTenshi]

It might be somewhat lore appropriate in that way that they took a being that looks like an angel, acts like an angel, is named like an angel and appeared as an angel in previous Final Fantasy games and called it a fairy or fairy adjacent. However, as someone who grew up around a lot of christian symbols, churches and what not despite not even being religious, I feel it's safe to say this is an angel costume. And yes, costume. It is not exactly super different from a normal angel glam, except it also cuts off my cat ears and my tail for no good reason.

I think Yoshi-P and the dev team probably didn't understand the issue. Like ignoring the entire "christian iconography" angle. That is clearly Angel-styled. Not "Faerie"

When i think Fairy, I think "butterfly-styled wings", and indeed if you look up "fairy" in google, nearly every single image you see has butterfly styled wings. Even cartoons that expressly read "fairy" do this (see Winx Club.) When you look for "mythical pixie", you also see a lot of the same "butterfly" but also other insect-styled wings like bee and dragonfly.

Feathered wings you only see on Angels. regardless of colors. (Like "demon/devils" can have black feathers, heck FF7 Sephiroth literately has this in official artwork.) While it is not expressly "an angel thing" it is definitely contradicting the established "Fairy" lore the game has used till now.

Do I think this is a big deal? Not really, but it feels like the conflation of "White Mage" is supposed to be the "light/holy" character, with scholar who has none of that. Some people want the scholar to be the military/combat tactician and all it's relic gear reflects that aspect. So it seems really strange to have things that should be part of one healer, on the other. Like if you swapped with Temperance with Seraphism, I'm sure both jobs would be like "that fits better", though maybe not what they want either.

[Minali]

I think Yoshi-P and the dev team probably didn't understand the issue. Like ignoring the entire "christian iconography" angle. That is clearly Angel-styled. Not "Faerie"

When i think Fairy, I think "butterfly-styled wings", and indeed if you look up "fairy" in google, nearly every single image you see has butterfly styled wings. Even cartoons that expressly read "fairy" do this (see Winx Club.) When you look for "mythical pixie", you also see a lot of the same "butterfly" but also other insect-styled wings like bee and dragonfly.

Feathered wings you only see on Angels. regardless of colors. (Like "demon/devils" can have black feathers, heck FF7 Sephiroth literately has this in official artwork.) While it is not expressly "an angel thing" it is definitely contradicting the established "Fairy" lore the game has used till now.

Do I think this is a big deal? Not really, but it feels like the conflation of "White Mage" is supposed to be the "light/holy" character, with scholar who has none of that. Some people want the scholar to be the military/combat tactician and all it's relic gear reflects that aspect. So it seems really strange to have things that should be part of one healer, on the other. Like if you swapped with Temperance with Seraphism, I'm sure both jobs would be like "that fits better", though maybe not what they want either.

Agreed, although I am not sure if CBU3 truly didn't understand this distinction between fae and angels. Seraph as a reoccuring figure and summon exists in previous Final Fantasy games and is very much being described as an angel. The name itself is from an angel from real world religions. (Granted, irl Shiva and FFXIV Shiva don't really have a lot in common either, but as said, it's more than just the name.) They are not the same and they should know this really well.

I still feel like they just wanted to bring in Seraph as fanservice into the game, for fans from other games with Seraph in it, and didn't know where else to put it but to the pet healing job, when creating Shadowbringers. And then things escalated. ^^;

[KisaiTenshi]

Agreed, although I am not sure if CBU3 truly didn't understand this distinction between fae and angels.

The first White Mage Relic (Thyrus) looks like this:


What does that look like? If we go by lore reasons, it looks like an elemental. But note the wing pattern. Now look at the wing pattern on the scholar Seraphism.

If we go into iconography, a seraph is a 6-wing class of angel. No two sources agree on anything other than having 6 wings. Any other angel in theology gets less and less human-like the closer to god they are. Like, just like with Shiva and Ifrit, relying on a real world interpretation inside a fantasy game is just silly.

But this is why people make these arguments. It's very clear that the white mage, scholar and astrologian are "too samey" to the point the developers have confused the lore for the healers, and have taken them in directions that might have been more appropriate on another.

If CBU3 really wants to, and they should, they should take apart all 4 healers and give them strictly different kits, lore, and job quests reflecting such going back to level 1. I like playing white mage, and I like swapping to SCH and AST, but they play so samey that I will sometimes forget to even summon the fairy. The fairy in ARR was powerful, but also would get KO'd by monsters. The fairy now is barely more than an auto cure-1 heal bot.