highlander eyebrows?

[Turnintino]

Otherwise, players cannot play Far Eastern Hyur, X’braal, Shetona, etc. You could headcanon as such but in-game we specifically play and are referred to as the versions of the races that are present in Eorzea, plus seemingly refugee Au Ra, Hrothgar, and Viera since none of those show up in Eorzea before Garlean involvement in their homelands and don’t show up in ARR or as NPCs who have lived here all this time. Just like how “Midlander” refers to the midlands of Eorzea, so too does “Highlander” refer to its highlands. Not that of any other region. Neither technically exist outside of Eorzea even though others may use the same models, so player Highlanders will always be Ala Mhigan.

This is kind of a funny conundrum in-game anyway, if you want to take the text at face value, because while it's true that character creation asserts (or at least very strongly suggests lol) that you're Eorzean, the text immediately asserts that you're a visiting outsider -- no matter where you go -- because character creation doesn't allow you to pick an origin, so the narrative can never reference it. Hell, it rarely acknowledges your race, even divorced from that context.

So, the WoL may well be Eorzean, but can never be from any parts of it that the story takes us to. Almost no NPC, no matter how reactionary, will ever look at your character and ever make even the broadest, most reasonable assumption based on player race. The WoL can be a Highlander, but they aren't Ala Mhigan. You can be the duskiest of Duskwights in the whole of the Shroud, and the text will never treat you like one. So, even outside of roleplay, it's difficult to take this kind of thing exactly as it's presented, IMO. Either you're left mildly confused at the inconsistency, or left to create a head-canon for these encounters... or entire expansions, as the case may be for folks roleplaying an Ala Mhigan in Stormblood, or an Ishgardian in Heavensward, and so on lol.

Point being, I guess, is just that I think this line of reasoning has its limitations, because it falls apart at least as early as ARR unless you're taking the RP approach and mentally rewriting as you go.