Fantasia Canonicity

[Wyssahtyn]

Why use fantasia (which has yet to be referenced in any way) when you can use glamours (which has been referenced extensively throughout the game)

Glamour prisms are specifically what M'naago uses to glamour the flag, and I feel like there was a technical explanation given at some point for how glamours work. Maybe in the Facet of Gathering quests, but I'm not certain.

I believe there was an explanation back when we unlocked glamours at 50 in Mor Dhona, but I think that quest was rewritten when they changed it to a 15 unlock. Haven't seen anyone with an archive of it either, so dunno.

[Duskane]

I know the final boss in don mheg has a spell called Fantasia to change him
I'm more inclined to believe that it actually exist in the worlds lore.

[Vyrerus]

I know the final boss in don mheg has a spell called Fantasia to change him
I'm more inclined to believe that it actually exist in the worlds lore.

Those abilities are actually prefaced as magical songs, rather than the alchemical concoction that is the subject of debate, and they amount to being aetherial illusions, much in the same vein as glamours.

Funambulist's Fantasia = Tightrope Walker's Song
Changeling's Fantasia = Transformation Song

As far as the meaning of Fantasia in this context, it'd be: a musical composition in fanciful or irregular form - improvisation

[KiKat_Coffee]

It's probably not canon.

But let's say it were, purely hypothetically. We can deduce it's something special as only the "Warrior of Light" has the ability to Fantasia. That means it's probably not an illusion but something more concrete that's got to do with our body, or rather, the aether that makes up our form.

That being said, Fantasia in music means free-form, so I'm assuming the elixir allows us to "free-form" our aetherial forms. I'm not sure how it would explain how others recognize us as we were before, but perhaps it's got to do with something about the color of our aether or whatever or something.

[MikkoAkure]

According a guy who interviewed members of the localization team:

While the Fantasia potion has some in-world flavor text, it’s mainly meant to be seen as a meta object. For example, you wouldn’t see it’s use, or reference to its use in storylines since in effect it doesn’t actually exist.

There's stuff in-game that's not entirely canon either. The Hildebrand quests for example are not quite canon and per Oda and Koji, whether or not you believe that it all actually happens is up to you. Then there's whether or not you believe that all the PCs you see are other adventurers, tongue-in-cheek references to FFXI and other games in minion flavor texts, non-FF cross-over events themselves like Dragon Quest, Monster Hunter, Garo, and Yokai Watch, and mogstation items that are very obviously modeled after real-world Korean or Chinese clothing despite neither country being represented with a fantasy equivalent in-game.

[Vyrerus]

Hildibrand not canon

[Anonymoose]

[Fry Meme]

To be fair, as canon as you want them to be, lol.

In my fandom echo chamber, this means the invention of the "one-way bubble" (aka Manderville Bubble). In this conceptualization, everything that is true outside of the Hildibrand quests is canon to the inside of the Hildibrand quests, but nothing that happens inside of the Hildibrand quests can be trusted to have happened outside of it.

For example: As part of a Hildibrand story we learned what is probably real history about Sil'dih. Did zombies talk and dance and people literally survive explosive detonations to the face and falls from space? Perhaps not. Hildibrand, imho, is coded like an interactive fiction - a play - a performance art - LARPing - something that is comedically exaggerated and polished to a mirror shine as a silly story, but in a way that makes it hard to believe "really happened" even by Eorzean standards. A running joke with us if "You can tell canon Godbert from quasi-canon Godbert by asking youself, "Is he wearing pants?"

Once you assume these bubbles can exist, you start to see them pretty regularly. Lightning and Shatotto quests despite Yoshida saying the universe of FFXIV is isolated. (And a reverse-polarity one around Dissidia.) Yo-Kai quests. Most of the holiday events as they celebrate the 7th coming of the 5th year since the Calamity. A lot of "semi-official" content starts to look like "in-character greeting cards" from the dev. team. You find yourself saying, "Oh! This is a Manderville Bubble!" and your friends know what you mean, lol.

Does that detract from their value or ability to be seen as accepted canon within other echo chambers? Not a bit.

If anything I think it lets them breathe a bit and be their best authentic selves.