(07-24-2014, 08:22 PM)Aerghwab Wrote:

(07-24-2014, 07:50 PM)Natalie Mcbeef Wrote: If we can't all get along I'll have to go back to posting gay lizard stories.

I have a lot of ideas.

Can we write a collaborative lizard/dwarf story? We'll call it Brokeback Under the Mountain.

(07-24-2014, 05:31 PM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote: I kinda see the Garleans as having just as much aether as any other hyur, but that they lack the ability to consciously use it. That's why in terms of abilities, they shy away from magic (one could say they have no aether reserves), but they certainly are physically weak. It just so happens that their magitek gadgets make up for the difference in their combat styles. 

I'd have expected Garleans to have slightly more defined gender roles in this sense. If we judge based off of the regular enemies, and named characters, we really only have a single Garlean female with power, with higher/equal ranking men. And all of the "regular" Garlean soldiers have always appeared to be male models and have male voices. But then, maybe they're just sending a male-only army to Eorzea. We don't have enough lore on them.

(07-25-2014, 04:14 AM)LiadansWhisper Wrote:

(07-24-2014, 05:31 PM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote: I kinda see the Garleans as having just as much aether as any other hyur, but that they lack the ability to consciously use it. That's why in terms of abilities, they shy away from magic (one could say they have no aether reserves), but they certainly are physically weak. It just so happens that their magitek gadgets make up for the difference in their combat styles. 

I'd have expected Garleans to have slightly more defined gender roles in this sense. If we judge based off of the regular enemies, and named characters, we really only have a single Garlean female with power, with higher/equal ranking men. And all of the "regular" Garlean soldiers have always appeared to be male models and have male voices. But then, maybe they're just sending a male-only army to Eorzea. We don't have enough lore on them.

I don't know if you noticed this or not, but the only female we see with Garlean forces who has some kind of power is also warming Gaius's bed.

I'm pretty sure there's a reason for that.  They really do strike me as rather chauvanistic.

(07-25-2014, 08:40 AM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote: Personally, I'd like to know how a Garlean civilian would act like. Who's to say they even really know what's going on if they aren't associated with the military.

(07-25-2014, 10:21 AM)Mae Wrote: Anyways. I'd imagine it wouldn't be too different from how civilian Germans were during WWII -- some were all for it, others weren't pleased but they went with it because they were seeing some/hoping for some benefits and/or were afraid of opposing and getting in trouble, and others were obviously against it.

(07-25-2014, 10:39 AM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote:

(07-25-2014, 10:21 AM)Mae Wrote: Anyways. I'd imagine it wouldn't be too different from how civilian Germans were during WWII -- some were all for it, others weren't pleased but they went with it because they were seeing some/hoping for some benefits and/or were afraid of opposing and getting in trouble, and others were obviously against it.

It's probably identical to that. But we won't really know anything about Garlean culture and if they have the same level of equality that Eorzea seems to have. 

As far as Eorzean gender roles go, there don't appear to be any set in stone, "only this kind of person can do this" mentalities. Which is nice.

(07-25-2014, 01:07 PM)Natalie Mcbeef Wrote: Only men can take off their shirts.

Yoshi P plz add nude beaches in 2.4

For equality.

(07-24-2014, 05:03 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: There's a third option. Maybe Papashan's just developed enough technique to overcompensate for his size? Relying on agility and being entire magnitudes smaller than your foe is a valid tactic, as is letting them think you're going to go down easily. If it was so simple to just be aetherially reinforced, there'd never be any reason for people to have sculpted bodies or actually try; Magic is just making us better. Having everyone on the planet be functionally equal because reasons feels like a cop-out to me. Having those who are able to hang with the bigger/smaller/faster/stronger/magical folk through experience and effort is what makes them heroes (or villains!) in the first place. Handwaving it away with magic makes for poor storytelling.

"I overcame Ultima weapon thanks to crystal-steroids! Thanks, Mothercrystal!"

(07-26-2014, 04:53 PM)synaesthetic Wrote:

(07-24-2014, 05:03 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: There's a third option. Maybe Papashan's just developed enough technique to overcompensate for his size? Relying on agility and being entire magnitudes smaller than your foe is a valid tactic, as is letting them think you're going to go down easily. If it was so simple to just be aetherially reinforced, there'd never be any reason for people to have sculpted bodies or actually try; Magic is just making us better. Having everyone on the planet be functionally equal because reasons feels like a cop-out to me. Having those who are able to hang with the bigger/smaller/faster/stronger/magical folk through experience and effort is what makes them heroes (or villains!) in the first place. Handwaving it away with magic makes for poor storytelling.

"I overcame Ultima weapon thanks to crystal-steroids! Thanks, Mothercrystal!"

This is a fallacious rationalization and proves you know nothing about actual combat. There's an old axiom in boxing, it goes a little like this: "A good big guy will always beat a good small guy."

Reach matters. I don't care how good you are, if the other guy's got longer arms and a longer weapon he's going to have all kinds of advantages over you. "Waif-Fu" is a TV Trope, ya'll. It's not real life. In real close-quarters combat, size does not directly correlate to speed or dodging ability. There are tons of really huge fighters who can move like lightning--the US military has quite a few of them, for example.

The only possible way Papashan could be "heroic," then, is if he only fought people who were less skilled at fighting than him. Which doesn't make him very heroic since he would thus only fight battles he knows he can win. Look at it this way--a nine-year-old female martial arts student might be able to beat up an untrained, but otherwise average adult male. Maybe. If he was taken by surprise, perhaps. However, if the adult was trained, she would have no chance whatsoever. It would simply be no contest.

So, viewing this in the light of reality of combat, the use of magic to "amp up" a martial fighter makes all kinds of sense in the universe FFXIV is set in. Pretty much every physical weaponskill has flashy animations with colored lights and explosions--that would suggest that our attacks are "charged up" with aether. Because magic is magic, that would mean that actual physical qualities would fall to the wayside and the story goes out of its way to suggest that most Eorzeans have a similar capacity for aether (with the exception of some folks, such as Cid, who is Garlean, and that one THM questline lala).

Let's not even get into the fact that you've got a tiny little lalafell, the size of a very young human child (perhaps a bit pudgier) who can block castle-crushing attacks from a ten-meter-tall giant. Or a huge magitek mecha. Or a full-size dragon. Or any other number of equally monstrous and huge enemies that would, if combat was handled realistically, require full armies to actually take down, meanwhile it's shredding big male roe after big male roe with single snaps of its jaws.

Neither of the handwaves are especially "believable," but I consider the "magically amped up warriors" to be much easier to swallow than completely disregarding the basics of melee combat. In fantasy stories like these, which are fairly high-magic, not very dark thematically and have a strong action element, I always assume that magic is being used for far more than simply casting spells, but also to reinforce the strikes of melee fighters and help everyone take way more damage than a humanoid body should ever be capable of absorbing. I consider FFXIV to fall in the same category as RWBY, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and possibly even the Fate/Nasuverse, where all player characters are essentially on par with Servants in terms of how much ridiculous punishment they can take and just laugh it off.

(07-26-2014, 04:53 PM)synaesthetic Wrote: This is a fallacious rationalization and proves you know nothing about actual combat.

(07-26-2014, 05:22 PM)Berrod Armstrong Wrote: But, we digress! This thread was about girls and boys or something. Marriage! Has anyone kept track on which races have 'husband and wife' couplings? I know Lalafell do, and Hyur, from Tam Tara Deepcroft...what about the rest? It doesn't seem to be a part of Original Miqo'te culture...Sea Wolf Roegadyn females have 'wife' suffixes in their names, so maybe! I'm tryyying to think of an instance of Elezen...the guy who lost his lover in Coerthas, I think?

(07-26-2014, 07:13 PM)Mae Wrote:

(07-26-2014, 05:22 PM)Berrod Armstrong Wrote: But, we digress! This thread was about girls and boys or something. Marriage! Has anyone kept track on which races have 'husband and wife' couplings? I know Lalafell do, and Hyur, from Tam Tara Deepcroft...what about the rest? It doesn't seem to be a part of Original Miqo'te culture...Sea Wolf Roegadyn females have 'wife' suffixes in their names, so maybe! I'm tryyying to think of an instance of Elezen...the guy who lost his lover in Coerthas, I think?

I want to say that I saw it alluded to in one quest out in Coerthas... there was a "my lord" and "my lady" exchange, and in the context I took it to be the same as "my lord husband" and "my lady wife"... another NPC talks about her 'beloved'. To be honest, though, I would assume that the region the NPC is in (or 'grew up in'...) would more often dictate to the husband/wife trends than race or clan.