Character Creation Has A Race Problem

[MoroMurasaki]

Heh.

I've already seen someone rant about my posts here on Gamefaqs and Tumblr. It's pretty creepy, honestly.

Just wanted to be clear - I'm not suggesting any of these posts are literally crossposts with tumblr, I was using 'Tumblr' to describe the "muh intersectionality" vibe that this thread has cultivated.

I have seen a few links from friends to a twitter that links stupid OF forum snipets, though. While creeping after a specific person would be wrong I don't see any issue with a sort of compilation of some of the dumbest or most objectionable OF posts.

[Lunaxia]

God I'm tired of the crossposts from tumblr showing up on the OF...gross indeed.

I don't use tumblr so you'll have to find something else to support your garbage assumptions.

Any chance to approach me though, eh?

[New_Game_Plus]

Whew. This thread...is just something else...

[Awha]

I see this thread is still chugging along somehow

It is a shame, I do hope they find joy in the slider one day.

[Bahati]

I'm not sure how I feel about OP considering the character creation options being not "black" enough. Not extensive enough, sure but not black enough?

Come on now, we're past assuming people of African descent can't have various shades of brown complexion, thin lips and high nose bridges, aren't we?

[Wyvernheart]

I want blackish hair in the game that isn't a joke. Looking at you afro.

[Iscah]

A few additional thoughts:

On the specific issue of the character creator not having options for wider noses, I wonder if it may be a technical issue rather than a design choice. There seems to be very little variance in the width of noses, but from a side view they vary a lot - high, low, different shapes and sizes. So it's possible that the issue is actually in how the "interchangeable" elements of the face need to fit together, or how it moves when doing emotes.

On hairstyles, Roegadyn and Elezen have a few extra braided styles that Hyurans don't have access to, and wavy hair rather than straight. Again, it's a matter of which elements of character design are most important and which ones you want to compromise on.

On the "clearly black" characters Sawney and Roland: I noticed that Sawney has very pale eyes (one shade off pure white according to his character data) and that sent me thinking - there seems to be a strong pattern of that colour choice. The dark-skinned Elezen characters I was talking about earlier all have pale eyes too, and light hair colours. Perhaps resulting from the same mindset that leads to anime characters having hair and eyes of any colour and still being perceived as Japanese.

Side note on that 'curly updo' hairstyle: it gets used a few times for "sylphs in human disguise" - Noraxia at the Waking Sands early in the game, and two "shifty characters" (obviously touched sylphs) that you encounter in one of the sylph beast tribe quests.

"We want butt sliders! Bunny suits for men! Motorbikes! Bulges! Frilly lolita skirts! Angel and devil costumes! Rabbits!"
>300+ likes

"Character creation is biased towards eurocentric beauty standards despite having a clearly human race with varying ethnicities like those IRL and should have more representation for other races."
> "wOOoOaahHH man this is a FANTASY game whoever heard of BLACK PEOPLE in a FANTASY GAME lmao wwOAHH outragEOUS who do you think you ARE"

It's not that simple. A lot of the early part of this topic involved people trying to make helpful suggestions and getting insulted in return because it's not exactly what the original poster was looking for. That's going to drive away a lot of people even if they agree with the overall sentiment.

Also most of those topics have been around longer, and the only one I could find in the first five pages is the "bulges" one which has all of fifteen likes, versus seventy to the first comment saying it's not actually a fair equivalence.

[Lunaxia]

snip

They were just examples showing what "real life"/ non-fantasy and other frivolous features have been more popularly requested despite the prevailing arguing being "but this is a fantasy game!"

To be quite honest, I couldn't care less what tone OP said it in, how they should have said it or who was offended by it. People would still be using the same ridiculous excuses, just with slightly less cattiness.

Actually, probably the same amount. It is the OF, after all.

As a general side note, it's worth remembering racism isn't always intentional or hateful. Sometimes it's merely ignorance.

[MoroMurasaki]

They were just examples showing what "real life"/ non-fantasy and other frivolous features have been more popularly requested despite the prevailing arguing being "but this is a fantasy game!"

To be quite honest, I couldn't care less what tone OP said it in, how they should have said it or who was offended by it. People would still be using the same ridiculous excuses, just with slightly less cattiness.

Actually, probably the same amount. It is the OF, after all.

As a general side note, it's worth remembering racism isn't always intentional or hateful. Sometimes it's merely ignorance.

Trust me if I could work some magical logic to not feel compelled to interact with you I would - it's always a chore. I would clean ten litterboxes a day if it kept this poop off the forums.

rac·ism
ˈrāˌsizəm
noun
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.

I would absolutely love for anyone to point out where there is any racism in this thread. Not including every race is not racist just like not including a bunch of gay characters isn't homophobic or not including fat characters isn't some slight to overweight people. It's SE's game, we just play in it and if their story has Hyur looking more or less white that's fine.

Valuing other character customization features over the ones proposed by the OP also isn't racist. Personally this set of character customization options isn't going to do much for me so it isn't at the top of my list where as detatching the Au Ra faces from the horns would be great to me as someone who almost exclusively plays Au Ra. To expect me to be cheering someone on irrespective of their absolutely shoddy pitch just because they asked for yet another character customization addition is just dumb.

As I said multiple times before (not that I ever expect you specifically to be the least bit informed of course) if the OP had made their pitch without the "this is racist" parts I would have done the same thing I usually do with these threads and left a "cool buddy, good luck, looks nice!" and called it a day. My reservations initially were 100% with their attitude as were many others but I guess reading is hard.

So no, the OP and those people arguing these changes were necessary or it was racially insensitive are to blame for the cattiness just like you are here for perpetuating that same nonsense. If you truly cared about just getting these features and not about virtue signally you would just ask for them instead of doing so while calling SE racist for not having them.

I don't see the Viera thread screeching about representation and it looks like they might actually get their wish. Maybe take a page from their books.

[Aana]

To give SE a little credit, some of this is about as silly as demanding LOTR needed more black people. Its a high fantasy set in a fictional european setting. So no, there arent a lot of black people in a europoean geographic set of people. Eorzea is a world SE made up. We have only seen 1 (now 2 in SB) continents on this fictional planet, and only a fraction of the inhabitants on these TWO continents are even human, so no, they dont have the variation of humans that an entire planet of humans has. This is a game set on a portion of a planet with 5 playable species and a multitude of other humanoid species (NPCs). So no, you arent going to see the same variety of humans anymore than seeing a wide variety of Au Ra who all live in 1 mongolian steppe clone region. Races in this game are regional, not global. Not getting global variety in a regional game. We got other non-human species instead of global human variety.

A fantasy game doesnt NEED to have equal representation to the real world for a variety of logistical, practical, and world building reasons. No more than LOTR needs to have a giant african zulu tribe stuffed into their medieval Europe fantasy story.

There is a place for intentional inclusion in media and a notable shortage of diversity in many places. This probably isnt one of them.