Wow, Wuk Lamat is really single-handedly ruining the DT story...

[Nothv13]

snip

So she is not needed to lead her people at all and Koane can handle it just fine. Makes the first half of the story even more pointless. Better ending to the first half. Wuk's flaws actually cause her to lose the right and Koane wins, Koane brings in in a similar role as Raubahn except more people focused. End up in the same spot and Wuk actually has a full failure to learn from.

[Y2K21]

Most of people's complaints come down to:

1. "She stole he spotlight!" Well why the hell would we be more important to the people of the land than the literal royalty of the nation? What's more, the people who matter realize we're insanely strong at every turn. Zoraal Ja's advisor Sareel Ja notes that we're a genuine threat, Bakool Ja Ja concocts a whole hostage scheme to fight Wuk Lamat without us smashing their face in, Gulool Ja Ja recognizes that we're the only person to have matched them, and we later defeat his shade when he was at his prime. We were a mentor, the veteran, the explorer who was hired on in exchange for our free invitation to a foreign land. Wuk Lamat is the character experiencing development, but we're the reason any of it happens.

I will disagree here. What exactly did she get mentored on? While everyone recognizes that the WoL is the big threat of the group, a lot of this is not attributed to Wuk Lamat UNTIL the fight with Bakool Ja Ja where she just pulls out being stronger than someone who she used all her strength on in a previous zone during the Hanuhanu. I would understand if they wrote and made a point of how she believes in herself that she gets stronger (Dynamis, Echo) but neither of this really happens and just makes the growth of the character look shallow. In addition, Wuk Lamat as a character does not really grow. She barely has any faults in her character (ones that do not impact her) and ultimately is the same character from start to finish. You can argue that is not true, but the character starts as a naive princess who strives for peace and the importance of how Tural is and for the people....to exactly the same but with more cultural understanding.

2. "Her voice acting is so bad!" If you've actually bothered to look up Sena Bryer's other works you'd see she actually has QUITE the range. Her voice was specifically requested and paid for by the dev team of FF14. I personally find it quite fitting. If you have a problem with it, you should probably list your credentials and provide an argument as to why, otherwise you just sound petty.

I mean, we can agree that Sena in other roles demonstrates some range - however the vocal direction by the localization team seems not to use it. This is a failing more of the localization team than anything (rather than the VA). The only thing I can criticize Sena for is the accent sounds very phony and does not match to anyone else in the zone, and some issues with emotional expression - but that could be more on the localization team.

Your points 3 and 4 kind of repeat what I say in these two, but ran out of space due to character limit.

[Aulainn]

I will not, especially when I have personally seen a GREAT amount of transphobia surrounding the character and her English VA. Especially now that certain figures have attached themselves to the whole thing, there is a substantial amount of people who dislike the character for no reason other than their favorite internet personality said to for transphobic or other asinine reasons.

You are the part of the problem why transphobia on the rise, keep up the good work.

[JuicyHeals]

You can't keep using the transphobic defense to dismiss criticisms with the character even ignoring that, you can't apply that to other regions that also have a problem with the character

[Y2K21]

You can't keep using the transphobic defense to dismiss criticisms with the character even ignoring that, you can't apply that to other regions that also have a problem with the character

The transphobia permeates so much from NA, that it has seeped into other regions. /s

Its going to be the new "but WoW" deflection.

[Voidmage]

You can all use the ignore function you know?
At this point this whole thread is going down.

[Dogempire]

Same here, I also played through the MSQ with Japanese voices and I still found Wuk to be quite.....linear and not to my liking. To be honest, I've never felt this frustrated with any character this much. In my opinion, Wuk is borderline Mary Sue and that's a sign of something I don't really enjoy.

I'd argue that Wuk Lamat is a Mary Sue because while she has negative traits, she doesn't suffer consequences as a result of them nor do they actually impact the story in any meaningful way. If you write a super OP character but then give them clumsiness as their only negative character trait, then they're still a Mary Sue if the clumsiness is only used for comedic gags and never in the heat of an important battle or during a crucial moment.

The only things I can think of off the top of my head as her negative character traits is her feeling of inadequacy at the beginning, her dislike of boats/lava, as well as her naivety.

Her feelings of inadequacy are never explored much and they end up disappearing completely after she beats Bakool Ja Ja, but anyone who actually knows about these kinds of feelings knows that they don't magically go away, that just because you complete a task that you didn't think you could do, that you suddenly feel as if you're actually okay the way you are, at least these feelings don't last long-term. We never see her doubt herself after becoming Dawnservant. She does pick Koana as co-ruler but really it just comes off as "Haha, I'm big dumb cat need smart person to do thinking" which just isn't compelling when it could have come from a place of deep-seated percieved inadequacy and maybe a nagging negative feeling of "I'm not good enough for this job, even if I passed all the trials."

Her dislike of boats/vehicles and lava is literally just a comedic relief device, negative traits that are only used for comedic relief don't really count as negative traits when it comes to making a character not a Mary-Sue. I guess there's also dislike of Alpacas, but again, comedic relief, same thing.

Lastly, Wuk Lamat's naivety isn't explored at all, she doesn't suffer as a result of her overly-trusting nature, or really put her trust in someone that ends up biting her, other than maybe Sphene, but the betrayal literally just boils down to:

Sphene: "I'm gonna do the bad thing"
Wuk Lamat: "No! Don't do the bad thing!"

Again, very shallow writing, Wuk should be constantly in over her head, especially in the final zones, and constantly being out of her league should make her "imposter syndrome" manifest and make her act out in ways to overcompensate for her feeling useless. They should have done more to highlight her immaturity. Show, don't tell when it comes to writing.

Wuk Lamat also just casually never struggles in terms of combat again after beating Bakool Ja Ja, she can just tear through the fabric of reality to smack a robot and then deal 13 million damage to it in 1 hit even though days ago she couldn't even make Bakool Ja Ja flinch when she swung her axe as hard as she could. She's not the warrior of light, she shouldn't be able to overcome her limits by THAT MUCH in a few days with some feels.

Our potential is supposed to be boundless, Wuk Lamat is just a regular fem Hroth

Anyways, like I said, Wuk Lamat is a Mary Sue, she doesn't have enough negative traits to offset her positive ones, and her sudden power boost is very much unearned

[Stapler-san]

You can all use the ignore function you know?
At this point this whole thread is going down.

he reminds me of this

[ForteNightshade]

1. "She stole he spotlight!" Well why the hell would we be more important to the people of the land than the literal royalty of the nation? What's more, the people who matter realize we're insanely strong at every turn. Zoraal Ja's advisor Sareel Ja notes that we're a genuine threat, Bakool Ja Ja concocts a whole hostage scheme to fight Wuk Lamat without us smashing their face in, Gulool Ja Ja recognizes that we're the only person to have matched them, and we later defeat his shade when he was at his prime. We were a mentor, the veteran, the explorer who was hired on in exchange for our free invitation to a foreign land. Wuk Lamat is the character experiencing development, but we're the reason any of it happens.

At what point in the entirety of Dawntrail do we ever mentor her? There are no quiet scenes like the one Koana had with Thancred nor moments where we step in because she's overwhelmed. In fact, the narrative actively and constantly forces us to the sideline even when our interference should be warranted. Characters like Sareel Ja and Bakool Ja Ja may acknowledge us but that rings hollow when we're never allowed to actually do anything. Those moments exist to try excusing what is otherwise poor writing. Our character isn't taking a backseat in this story, we're completely useless in a story that would prefer we weren't there in the first place. Seriously, you could replace the WoL with a random NPC, and so long as they praised Wuk Lamat ever couple of scenes, nothing would change in the narrative.

Like I've said countless times already. We aren't Hien, Yugiri or even Asahi. We're the guard delivering one of them a missive. That's what frustrates people.

2. "Her voice acting is so bad!" If you've actually bothered to look up Sena Bryer's other works you'd see she actually has QUITE the range. Her voice was specifically requested and paid for by the dev team of FF14. I personally find it quite fitting. If you have a problem with it, you should probably list your credentials and provide an argument as to why, otherwise you just sound petty.

I have. Her voice still has zero emotional range whatsoever, and she clearly struggles maintaining any degree of consistency when scenes call for quick tonal changes. Now I'll grant you, it's more tolerable in other games but that also may be due to her scenes being relatively short. As for my credentials? I suppose you've never criticised an actor's performance, didn't like the writing in a book or any activity in the world that doesn't squarely lineup with your career path? Put bluntly, if you work at McDonalds, you better like every movie every made, enjoyed ever book ever written and never spoken ill of any video game. After all, your opinion is limited to fast food. How dare you say the acting in x film wasn't good or the writing in y book wasn't good.

If it wasn't blatantly obvious, implying someone has to be in a respective industry to offer criticism is complete nonsense. Frankly, it makes your entire argument come across bias.

3. "She's so annoying!" Yes, she's a character undergoing significant development from a sheltered naive royal to a genuine warrior and ruler. That's what character development tends to look like. A good example to compare to this would be Luke Fon Fabre from Tales of the Abyss.

What development? She is nearly the exact same character from start to finish. She never once struggles nor sees any real adversity. Case in point, the narrative went out of its way to establish both Bakool Ja Ja and Zarool ja are leagues above her physically. When she first crosses swords (axe in her case) with the former, he effortlessly deflects her blow, and it's her weapon that ends up damaged. And yet after making a some tacos, she's suddenly able to defeat not only him on her own but his entire entourage while we stand in the corner smiling and nodding at how amazing she is. Remember that "mentoring" you claim we were doing? Yeah, we didn't train with her once. Not even a silly Rocky montage or something to illustrate any sort of character growth. She defeats Bakool Ja Ja because the writer needed her to--in a scene comically contrived where her real father is revealed, all to set up a poor kidnapping plot that is resolved in a single quest only to never be mentioned again.

Contrast this to us confronting Zenos in Stormblood. Even Thancred fighting Ran'jit in Shadowbringers, which has its own issues, at least depicted him seriously struggling to the point of nearly killing himself. And he still more or less only slowed Ran'jit down. We had to actually defeat him later. Wuk Lamat though? Nah, she's got the power of peace, harmony and FRIENDSHIP.

By the way, for giggles, take a shot every time she mentions one of those three words (pick your favourite!) and see if you can make it to the next level without passing out.

Her character "development" was finally reaching a zone where they didn't repeat the seasick joke for the 1000th time.

4. "Wuk Lamat shouldn't have been in the second half of the story!" You mean the fighter of the two rulers, the one who has a foil in Sphene shouldn't be confronting said foil, even though they have a tactical ruler already handling the defense of their capital? This is just daft.

How about the character who is an otherworldly being whose power level and scoop far outpaces anything Wuk Lamat has ever confronted or dealt with in her entire life? Whose existence is exactly the type of thing the Scions are supposed to deal with. Nope! She can just break through said being's barrier teleporting her out of space--something G'raha Tia didn't even think to do despite being the literal sage whose plot revolved around doing precisely that two expansions ago then parrying it's attack without any real difficulty and completely stealing the show.

Fun fact. If you have a certain meter, you'll see Wuk Lamat deals more damage than you do even as a DPS. She is actually made stronger than the god slaying Warrior of Light in that moment. But yes, tell me again how she doesn't steal the spotlight.

I'd argue that Wuk Lamat is a Mary Sue because while she has negative traits, she doesn't suffer consequences as a result of them nor do they actually impact the story in any meaningful way. If you write a super OP character but then give them clumsiness as their only negative character trait, then they're still a Mary Sue if the clumsiness is only used for comedic gags and never in the heat of an important battle or during a crucial moment.

I said the same but someone else linked "Black Hole Sue" and I have to admit, it fits Wuk Lamat to an absolute tee.

The Black Hole Sue: Her gravity is so great, she draws all the attention and causes other characters (and, often, reality itself) to bend and contort in order to accommodate her. Characters don't act naturally around her. They instead serve as plot enablers for her, with dialogue that only acts as set-ups for her response. She dominates every scene she is in, with most scenes without her serving only to give the characters a chance to "talk freely" about her. Most people don't oppose her and anybody who does will either realize their fault in doing so or just prove easy to overcome.

[Seymour_Rainecourt]

At the harvest float, I was still in an overall good mood if slightly bored, but foolishly optimistic that we'd get a turn of the narrative soon, so this would just be a kind of stupid and unfortunate episode. I was still making light-hearted jokes to my friend then about the "cultural sensitivity", see also: Our culture is, we like fair trade and alpacas.
But I lost it at the dead baby dilemma in the third zone, when for once there seemed to be a darker turn to something in the story, and it's solved within 5 minutes by the classic method of: "Did you know you have bad magical rocks in your forest? But it's okay, we have foreign scholars and science so we can give you better plants, use those. Now you don't have to get all those babies killed anymore." And everyone's happy.

If I recall, the attempted breeding between the blue and the tan mamool jas to create a two-head was what spelled the babies' fates due to being incredibly incompatible with each other; the aether meteor chunks and bananas were something else. The importance of producing a/the two-head mamool ja took extreme priority over all else in their culture.

There's the set dressing of the general "aw geeze we don't like eating this one thing but it's the only thing that grows" and then the actual plot of their society: the dead offspring of mostly incompatible species.

(Haven't read further than this so I apologize if I'm either incorrect or if others have pointed this out.)