Male Viera names?

[Fenral]

I wonder if it's even an upside-down thing where activity=gender to the point that adventuring is "being male" and staying in one place is "being female" and that could lead to the idea of dressing as a man while adventuring and a woman while staying in town for a longer period, and not seeing that as an issue. (This could also explain why non-Viera people think they've only seen female Viera in the cities!)

I'm so misunderstood. I was never trying to say they would have our idea of gender, just an idea of it that doesn't fit into "male" and "female" in the strictest sense of the word. "Transgender" in that context would be a so-called "male" engaging in the activities of a so-called "female," and perhaps adopting appropriate garb (they have the waist for it!).

In modern Earth, some guevedoce choose to remain female even after puberty tries to tell them otherwise (pretty sure you posted this article before), so I find it hard to imagine a society where this condition has been the norm for thousands of years wouldn't have encountered similar cases and have some sort of established practice (magic hormone reversal, even?). The simpler answer is that those kits are simply meant to be weeded out by warder initiation, but that's just really sad to think about. (That may also be an "actually, screw-this" backstory for a lot of Viera exiles.)

It would be funny if somehow, after all this we go into character creator and the Viera labels aren't "female" and "male" but "village-dweller" and "wood-warder" just to emphasize the cultural difference. I think that might upset a lot of people who see no reason for the "pandering" and can't understand why people can't just be happy with a common binary, but it's still deeply amusing to think about.

[Ceridwenae]

...For names, I've made an alt who will be a man bun. I just went with the "pick a name you like" method rather than one that directly referenced their upbringing - based on what it says for lady bun names in that they can discard the "forest" names and take on other racially-inspired "city" names. Didn't see a reason why the chaps would do any differently. It's not a gender specific name, I don't think. If I suddenly don't feel for it, I'll just change it.

As for the headcannon for appearance? Displacement works fine for me, then I think he probably got lost in Limsa* and was drafted into the ToasTiE's FC for Waifs & Strays (the ToasTiE is my main, all other chars I have are not WoL, and my kid is her "adopted cat child"); husband reckons my main is a miqo variant of Rowena - I say she's nicer! - so that'll do. Course they go through the story, but it's on a gameplay level not a canonical one. My main alt (!) is the ToasTiE's best and most favourite retainer, for example, and is not a WoL. He despises her, however.

...Anyhoo! Haven't really thought about gender stuff for the man bun. I'm equal opportunities and will just do what I feel is right at the time. I do have this down: He's a man bun. He's cute. A bit deadly. Probably goth, but I'll dress him to his form. And anything else is just icing and cherries on top! I'm so excited for man buns!

*I think everyone's been Lost in Limsa at some time in their lives.

[Iscah]

I'm so misunderstood.

Oh, I wasn't talking directly at anything you'd said; just my own level of pondering on what to do with my character and how they might perceive their gender once removed from the strict binary of Viera culture. There are multiple ways it could go.

And I suppose it comes down to what aspects of the concept you want to explore. "Accepting/rejecting body identity" isn't particularly what I want to play with because it's not something I have thoughts about. (I'm cis female and my gender just is, and not something I really think about. So I don't really care about exploring that, though I'd be interesting to see what others do with their own concepts.)

So what I'm interested for my character isn't what he thinks of his own gender but what he thinks he's supposed to do socially in a culture whose concept of gender bears little resemblance to what he's previously known, and whether that involves trying to meld the concepts together or just going with it.

It's probably not the most interesting thing to do with the concept, but I don't want it to be... invented thinking, I guess? Don't try to give him a dilemma that I don't know how to feel about.

So I'm in the line of thinking that on the one hand it might seem like a waste to have a somewhat gender-neutral character (accepting of but not strongly attached to that aspect of his identity) just identify with that gender and be done with it, hence the thought bubble of him perhaps switching between presented genders according to the setting he's in without it saying anything about his self-perception, except perhaps that he sees gender as secondary to social role. But on the other hand I feel like the mindset he's been brought up with might just logically make him adhere to the gender he's been handed.

This may all be "multiple-choice characterisation" for a while, with any of the possibilities being true simultaneously until I'm really certain what I want for him, or official lore gives more insight into how he might feel about it.

[Fenral]

The quote was just meant to highlight the part where, apparently, we agreed the entire time. Basically. Words are hard. I'm a cis-gendered gay man with a very low opinion of gender in general, so there's stuff I can't not think about.


Getting some serious deja vu, so I'm pretty sure we've had a similar exchange in the past.

[Iscah]

Getting some serious deja vu, so I'm pretty sure we've had a similar exchange in the past.

Male Viera is just one big merry-go-round of gender speculation since we first got the lore drop, and yes we've probably had something of this conversation before.

[Theodric]

I rather they don't exist outside of the woods let the wol be the only male viera we see i would say the same about the cat bois but sadly that ship sailed after they pandered to the QQ'ers FF 11 > FF 14

I never bothered checking out FFXI precisely because of the existence of gender locked playable races.

I'm glad that the missing genders are set to be added to FFXIV, though I'm hoping we also get an expansion of character customisation for all of the existing playable races as some are looking a little dated at this point.

[Iscah]

A few things I've been thinking following this conversation.

The big one is that as much as Viera kits not having physical gender differences is weird to us, it must be just as weird for them coming into contact with the other races and learning that - by their concept - others' children are born with defined genders and adult body parts. And probably leads to some awkward conversations if another Viera doesn't warn them first.

And then on a personal headcanon note, I think my Viera has a teasing sort of personality and he finds it amusing to deliberately mention how he left the village once he discovered he was a man, and see how the other person reacts once they catch on to the implications.

Though a little less flippantly, I did solve something that was bugging me which is how to get him out of the forest because he didn't want to be a warder, without fully wanting to abandon his culture as well, and I settled on an idea that I quite like - he saw the Echo-granting starshower when he was a kit on the verge of maturing, and so got a sense of being called to leave the forest, but wasn't really sure if he should listen to it so he sort of "made a deal with the forest" that he'd leave if he became a man or stay if he was a woman. So that turned out to confirm that he should leave, and then a few years later he met up with some travellers from Eorzea...

Mostly he doesn't like to talk about this in depth though, so he just goes with the "nah I didn't want to be alone in the wilderness for the rest of my life so I shirked my duties and ran off" thing. Which is also technically true, or at least what he was planning before he had a more significant reason to do so.

[Fenral]

Well, it certainly wasn't my intent to rock your world with any of that earlier back-and-forth.

This might be going too academic/anthropological for people, but there's actually a lot of historical basis for rigid, exclusionary, and/or isolationist cultures reevaluating, on their own, what it means to keep to their faith. The most famous example is probably in the Bible itself (mostly thinking Old Testament here), which for as much as it describes the traditions of the Hebrews, it also notes the important moments in history where they realized they needed to change, and that they could change to fit the times without breaking their pact with God. Modern Jews barely resemble their Torah counterparts (no more burnt offerings on an altar of unhewn stone, for one), but their pact itself hasn't changed.

When I look at what's written down for Viera, versus how rigidly the Miqo'te systems are (not) adhered to in execution, I think there's easily some unwritten wiggle-room for adapting to the times. At the risk of getting a bit heavy, all it would take is one sufficiently large group of refugees getting too close to the settlement for an entire village to sit down to work through what the Wood's stance is on genocide.

[Iscah]

Well, it certainly wasn't my intent to rock your world with any of that earlier back-and-forth.

Don't worry, I'm not offended. It's all interesting stuff.

And yeah, Viera culture has the potential to change and reevaluate what they're doing, but before you can think about how it would change you have to know where it's starting from. And right now where it's starting from is that very strict isolationist culture, so that's where they're starting from unless you want to create an individual tribe that's already successfully adapting the rules. (But again, that depends on just how bendable the Green Word is and whether we'll hear any more on that matter.)

Of course there's also the Viis tribe as a second reference, since their culture seems to be a direct parallel to the Source Viera, and there's the side plot with the twins that ultimately focuses on one planning to leave the forest and reach out to other Viis who have already left, hoping to connect the two instead of remaining isolated.

I guess my main thinking is, establish how tribes work by the standard rules and set my character against those standard rules, rather than trying to explore what else a tribe might be collectively doing to alter those rules.


(Of course, setting the rules is also how you get to start playing with breaking them - or not breaking them, as the case may be. I'm sure I've previously mentioned my Seeker couple who got married and declared themselves a really small independent tribe so they're still technically in a standard tribal arrangement.)

[Fenral]

(Of course, setting the rules is also how you get to start playing with breaking them - or not breaking them, as the case may be. I'm sure I've previously mentioned my Seeker couple who got married and declared themselves a really small independent tribe so they're still technically in a standard tribal arrangement.)

The brother-sister duo in the more recent Moonfire Faire events strongly imply a similar family structure, not to mention the unnamed Keeper Miqo'kitten in Idyllshire who's usually waiting for her mommy and daddy to come back. Those are kind of my go-to examples of how the "Lore" has never really been all-encompassing for these sorts of things. A lot less is strictly forbidden than a purely literal reading might imply. Hells, even Bajsaljien had a wife, which will only make retroactive sense once female Hrothgar are playable.

I guess my default is to consider most player-character headcanons valid by default, as long as it's agreed that that's all they are. Understanding the rules is important, but you don't need to break your head trying to keep to them entirely.


(Which is all to say: I consider your approach entirely valid, and am merely offering points of reference to support it.)