What are your crazy theories after Endwalker

[Iscah]

The big thing with diverse cultures is that they won't all comply with your personal opinion about how things should ideally be. They'll have their own values, and whether you agree with them or not - whether every person in that culture agrees with them or not - collectively they have endured as traditions over time and if a majority of people in the culture are following those traditions, the culture will continue.

And yes, a lot of those cultures will have some kind of strict rules and responsibilities that set the path of someone's life according to attributes they can't control, like their gender or being marked with a special eye colour or identified as the reincarnation of someone. By our modern values that prioritise individuality, that might seem "bad". But for the people who are in that culture, even if they maybe don't feel happy about their circumstances, neither they nor anyone around them considers it to be a choice that is available to them. It's just how life works for them, and even the ones who want to rebel might not be socially able to - or other values instilled in them might override that personal unwillingness.

I suppose my own preference is to create characters who do adhere to their unique culture and are influenced by its values, rather than those who would outright object to it.

For the more traditionally-minded of my Seeker OCs, I haven't really poked at his thoughts on the whole situation (partly because the game is so hesitant to go in-depth about their cultural details and views) but I suppose it's just matter of fact. Go out, adventure, get stronger, and at some stage in the future pick a fight with a nunh and see if he's more worthy of the position. It's what Seeker men do and how their culture keeps going, generation after generation.

Of course, not all men are obliged to participate in the system, and there will be some who are just tias their whole life with no interest in changing that. Again it doesn't help that we have no in-depth explanation of the cultural view on that, or whether they can take partners at all.

G'raha never knew what the Eye was for, ... So now, suddenly, we've been reminded that there's a whole tribe out there that knows way more on the subject, and somehow G'raha was never able to check in with them in the course of his research?

I don't feel like it's guaranteed that the rest of the tribe understands how it works either - but assuming they do, I think it's likely that the imperial occupation made it impossible for him to contact the tribe until now.

I think Salina had a more specific plan, but we don't yet know what it is.

We still have the plot thread to pursue of her being name-dropped in Heaven-on-High.

I'm sure I'm supposed to leave it at "woo, yeah, catgirl harem!" and this is definitely a personal problem on my part, but I can't just look at 6000 years of unbroken patrilineal inheritance and say "oh, yes, not a single heir to the Eye took issue with their lot in life." Wouldn't one of them have tried to end it?

I'm not saying that there wouldn't be anyone in 6000 years who was unhappy about the situation. But at the same time, that's 6000 years of those people being brought up instilled with the importance of carrying on their tribe's sacred duty, being taught to regard it as more important than their personal feelings in the short term.

(Besides, probable or not, apparently it did manage to get passed down unbroken over all those generations or Raha wouldn't be here as he is today.)

And again, I think in a society like what we know of Seekers, it's possible that they have a much more pragmatic, less romantic view of... coupling, I think one of the U tribeswomen terms it.

That said, if we do end up meeting Salina (maybe she's in stasis on an Allagan starship), she could have some interesting Venat parallels if she comes to regret what she put Desch's bloodline through. That Salina and Desch are lovers in FF3 canon but quite explicitly not in FF14 canon itself has some interesting implications, since it suggests the possibility that she broke things off and (by virtue of her request) pressured him into being with other women (who were viable), rather than continue their inter-species romance. And assuming the "once per generation" thing is some kind of coded rule, whoever got it next basically had no rights to their own body. Even leaving the whole sex thing aside, there were probably ancestor-G'rahas who never had the freedom to adventure. How would Salina feel about that?

It feels like you're applying the worst possible reading of people's intentions here, portraying it as something that Salina "inflicted" upon Desch when there are all sorts of other possible scenarios.

It's just as conceivable that, firstly, Salina and Desch "could not" be lovers or at least not have children together - perhaps physically, perhaps socially, perhaps by one's culture or the other.

If Desch's tribe was already following what we know as Seeker culture, he may have considered himself bound to it. He may have offered that Salina entrust her blood to be kept safe by his tribe and their longstanding traditions.

Maybe they continued to be lovers, seeing that as separate from the physical business of passing down royal blood to the next generation.

And yes, for the future generations (perhaps very nearly for G'raha himself) it would be potentially a miserable thing to be saddled with this duty from birth, but still it happened. Maybe it was the only way, maybe the best way, maybe just what their culture insisted upon. If it wasn't Desch's descendents then maybe it would need to be someone else instead, perhaps with a less stable and reliable culture to keep the bloodline going all this time.