Character Creation Has A Race Problem

[MaloraYuki]

How much is "more than just a few"? Do they need an entire catalogue of PoC-approved hairstyles? Jawlines? Eye shapes? What about the people who will turn around and cry that their attempts to represent PoC are, themselves, racist because they don't get every last nuance of how a black face is *supposed* to be shaped with their limited pixel art?

Race in this game is hyur, aura, miqote, lala, elezen, roe. Then divided into subcategories by lore location/tribe. It is not based on what is considered rl race it is based on game lore and what part of the fantasy world said race is from. There is no such thing as a African American face or European face or Native American or Asian/ oceanic face because they are not based on RL. You are not black in this game you are miqote, you are not white you are roe. You are not anything-American or anything of that sort because this is not America, it is not japan, it is not France, it is Eorzea.

[Magic-Mal]

This is not America, it is not japan, it is not France, it is Eorzea.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

snip

Damn. I can hardly tell the difference

[Magic-Mal]

Damn. I can hardly tell the difference

Neither can I

I must say, conveniently forgetting feudal Japan? Clever move.

This game takes place in Kugane too.

[Iscah]

Taoism, from the glamour. Angels and devils, Christianity.

Unless they talk about those things in ways that clearly link them to their real-world origins, they exist in the game world, and it makes more sense to "explain them" as such. Otherwise everything in the game that also exists in the real world is a real-world reference!

I'll admit, naming the "Taoist" set seems like a direct reference, although you could theorise that the same philosophy exists in-world (just replace 'China' with Doma or Nagxia or wherever they want to set it).

The angel and demon sets are, to our perspective, based on stylised figures from Christianity, but that doesn't necessarily require the in-world creator of the costume to be aware of those concepts. Maybe there's a parallel concept somewhere in Eorzean religion, or maybe someone just said "hey, wouldn't it be cool to make a coat with giant bird wings on it?"

In any case, since they only exist as cash shop items, I don't feel like they necessarily even exist in game lore.

EDIT TO ADD: Having remembered that, of course, demons (ie. voidsent) do exist in-world, I went looking in the lorebook bestiary to see if there were any that particularly looked like the glamour designs. There's the Blackguard encountered in the Void Ark (a feather-winged knight) and also for the angelic side of things, the enchanted statue Kuribu, guardian of Amdapor. So records of the Amdapor-Mhach "War of the Magi" could serve as game-world inspiration for the costumes.

[image]

Yes, that's Kugane. In Hingashi. What's this Japan you're talking about? Nobody there has heard of it.

[Enla]

Yes, that's Kugane. In Hingashi. What's this Japan you're talking about? Nobody there has heard of it.

This. While think you'd be hard pressed not to link Kugane itself to Bakumatsu-Meiji era Japan with it's Shinsengumi analogue in the Sekiseigumi, closed port, and Meiji inspired building aesthetics in the diplomatic quarter - at the end of the day it's /not/ Japan. Japan never had airships. Japan never managed to keep it's autonomy in only having one port open and the rest of the country closed. Nor did it have turtle and fish people running around and causing a ruckus either. Kugane, Doma, and the Steppe all follow the self same tradition this MMO has of taking inspiration from other places and using it to influence the design of set pieces with inspiration from Japan, China, and Tibet as well as Mongolia on frank display. Yet that inspiration doesn't mean that they are precise analogues, anymore than Ul'dah is an analogue for the Middle East or Ishgard for Europe.

Just because some of the references are more overt does not mean that the lore that differentiates those places is any less important to consider. Especially since Final Fantasy has a history of taking real world places, mythology, and many more things and twisting it to suit it's purposes for the narrative and making it something entirely new.

[MaloraYuki]

Ya that doesn’t mean it’s Japan. Thats kugane it has its own lore. Funny how people can’t separate real life from a game.

[Skivvy]

Ya that doesn’t mean it’s Japan. Thats kugane it has its own lore. Funny how people can’t separate real life from a game.

I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse, but I think it's pretty obvious that SE has taken some pretty big inspiration from Japan as well as Eastern culture in general with Stomblood. Of course the game has it's own lore, but then we see Japanese housing structures all over, kimonos, Vietnamese clothing / food options, and I'm sure plenty of other items I'm neglecting to mention.

[HyoMinPark]

I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse, but I think it's pretty obvious that SE has taken some pretty big inspiration from Japan as well as Eastern culture in general with Stomblood. Of course the game has it's own lore, but then we see Japanese housing structures all over, kimonos, Vietnamese clothing / food options, and I'm sure plenty of other items I'm neglecting to mention.

While you’re right that Kugane and Hingan culture have derived inspirations from real-world Japan (and other Asian countries), that still doesn’t mean that those places ARE Japan, something people in this thread seem to be conflating. They’re part of a made-up realm, regardless of where they got their inspirations from. A lot of things in this game have taken inspirations from a myriad of different cultures, religions, mythologies, and folklores, but that doesn’t mean that they hold the same equivalence in the world of the game.

It’s incorrect to post screenshots of Kugane and say “This is Japan!” when it’s clearly not. Kugane may be inspired by aspects of Japanese and Asian culture, but it is far from Japan proper.

[Skivvy]

While you’re right that Kugane and Hingan culture have derived inspirations from real-world Japan (and other Asian countries), that still doesn’t mean that those places ARE Japan, something people in this thread seem to be conflating. They’re part of a made-up realm, regardless of where they got their inspirations from. A lot of things in this game have taken inspirations from a myriad of different cultures, religions, mythologies, and folklores, but that doesn’t mean that they hold the same equivalence in the world of the game.

It’s incorrect to post screenshots of Kugane and say “This is Japan!” when it’s clearly not. Kugane may be inspired by aspects of Japanese and Asian culture, but it is far from Japan proper.

I think it's fairly common for a lot of games, books, movies, etc to pull inspiration from RL places and things, blend with their own ideas, and voila! A new world! I do agree that you can't just state Kugane = Japan, because it's not. Heavily inspired perhaps, but no. But on the flip side of this, many people have been clamoring in this thread that there is no reason to bring RL into the game. That argument just makes me scratch my head as there are SO many things inspired from real world things (not just in Stormblood), but heaven help you if you're asking for slightly more diverse character creation options as that is obviously stepping over the line.

And just to addresss the thoroughly beaten horse before it gets mentioned again (not saying by you, Hyomin, just in general!), yes, OP could have phrased several responses better/not gone on the attack with some responses - and maybe picked a non-clickbait title. However, OP hasn't been in the thread for ages now, no need to just rehash that mess constantly. Conversations flow and shift as time goes on, and there's no need to be bickering over something from the first few pages. :X

Weeee, 51 pages of outrage culture.

Only 13 for me. Gogo max posts per page!