(08-02-2015, 07:26 PM)Nero Wrote: But it's not just about creating conflict; it's about making conflict that is compelling and believable. The thing with racism and prejudice in Eorzea is that as far as the general population goes, creating a character who is racist for reasons that aren't superficial is rather difficult because the setting emphasizes a mingling of cultures and a certain open-mindedness that comes from being constantly exposed to different races and customs.
The emphasis above is mine, and please don't think I'm just trying to nitpick, Nero, because in your follow-up comment on the next page, I think that you make a pretty good point. That being said, I think the bolded section is actually not true.
It can work like that, but it very often does not. I am mixed-race and live in Texas, where being mixed-race is incredibly common. And yet, everywhere I look, including within my own mixed-race family, the idea of "mingling cultures" and "different races and customs" is an incredibly fraught subject. The racism of my region and, to a degree, my family works obviously and explicitly against us despite the fact that we are surrounded by and even composed of different races and customs, are constantly mingling and ever intermarrying and interbreeding, and are never and have never been in a racially or culturally homogenous environment.
I'm not arguing that anyone play a racist or not (much like Sin), and I agree that the aesthetic and much of the presentation of FFXIV belies a great deal of the racial reality presented in the quest flavor text, but I wanted to offer my two gil on the wider subject from a personal (perhaps flawed and anecdotal) perspective.
