See, I think there's a problem here: Miqo'te are human beings for all intended purposes. And so are Elzen and Roegadyn and Hyur and Lalafellin. We can say that they are different species on a biological level, but they aren't so on the intellectual level. And humans, may I recall you, are defined in our world as 'rational animals'. So the fact that Miqo're have cat characteristic does not mean they are inhuman at all: what makes them human is that they are capable of abstraction and rational thought.
If the different Eorzean races did not have the same capacities for rational thought, the cultural differences between them would be much more marked and inclusion in the same society as equals would be right out of the question. But we here we have all this different 'species' or 'races', coexisting in the same societies with basically the same opportunities. Miqo'te aren't, in short, lions or dogs. They are people. Maybe their society is primitive, but that doesn't make them any less capable of critical thought and abstraction.
But my biggest problem with the original post is that it tries to form a basis for a culture by the use of purely biological data which, as I have said before, is very inaccurate because real human societies don't work like that. Spartans didn't execute children that were judged ill or unfit because of their unique biology (clue: they didn't have a unique biology), but because their society was thought and structured around the art of war and, as such, they consciously thought that having weak citizens would make them worse at waging war. The only thing human biology had anything to do with that is that the elders looked for specific signs of illnes/unfitness. But that's it. The people thought and made up the culture like that not out of biological necessity but out of a conscious choice. The only reason all this biological speculation about Miqo'te sounds feasible is because there's not enough lore to contradict it. But, at the same time, there's not enough lore to confirm it.
Coming back to my 'Miqo'te are people' statement for a moment: implying that we can form an accurate and realistic culture for them based only on biological data interpreted from some tidbits of lore is akin to saying that, if I want to understand chinnesse culture and I don't have access to the proper 'lore' (so to speak) but know a few specific bits of data, then I should study apes and birds. Posibly apes and birds that live in Asia. And then conclude that because certain birds or apes of Asia act in a specific way that can be correlated to chinnese society somehow, then that chinnese people act like those birds and apes in every other aspect too.
Of course that chinnese people are not a fantasy culture made up by someone with a typewritter, mind, but the point is that you can't understand a culture by only looking at their biology. You have to study all the bits. Like the enviorement. Enviorement has much more to do with a culture than biology. A society that relies on farms to sustain itself will have different beliefs, for example, than one that relies on minery.
Everyone will use whatever interpretation they want for their own micro-canon, and that is quite fine. I do think that this specific interpretation of a fantasy society is not only innacurate but also unfair, as it treats a whole race as if they were simple animals when the in-game universe explicits they are people.
Oh, and finally: pickles! Because all posts should have some random non-sequitur shouting at the end.
If the different Eorzean races did not have the same capacities for rational thought, the cultural differences between them would be much more marked and inclusion in the same society as equals would be right out of the question. But we here we have all this different 'species' or 'races', coexisting in the same societies with basically the same opportunities. Miqo'te aren't, in short, lions or dogs. They are people. Maybe their society is primitive, but that doesn't make them any less capable of critical thought and abstraction.
But my biggest problem with the original post is that it tries to form a basis for a culture by the use of purely biological data which, as I have said before, is very inaccurate because real human societies don't work like that. Spartans didn't execute children that were judged ill or unfit because of their unique biology (clue: they didn't have a unique biology), but because their society was thought and structured around the art of war and, as such, they consciously thought that having weak citizens would make them worse at waging war. The only thing human biology had anything to do with that is that the elders looked for specific signs of illnes/unfitness. But that's it. The people thought and made up the culture like that not out of biological necessity but out of a conscious choice. The only reason all this biological speculation about Miqo'te sounds feasible is because there's not enough lore to contradict it. But, at the same time, there's not enough lore to confirm it.
Coming back to my 'Miqo'te are people' statement for a moment: implying that we can form an accurate and realistic culture for them based only on biological data interpreted from some tidbits of lore is akin to saying that, if I want to understand chinnesse culture and I don't have access to the proper 'lore' (so to speak) but know a few specific bits of data, then I should study apes and birds. Posibly apes and birds that live in Asia. And then conclude that because certain birds or apes of Asia act in a specific way that can be correlated to chinnese society somehow, then that chinnese people act like those birds and apes in every other aspect too.
Of course that chinnese people are not a fantasy culture made up by someone with a typewritter, mind, but the point is that you can't understand a culture by only looking at their biology. You have to study all the bits. Like the enviorement. Enviorement has much more to do with a culture than biology. A society that relies on farms to sustain itself will have different beliefs, for example, than one that relies on minery.
Everyone will use whatever interpretation they want for their own micro-canon, and that is quite fine. I do think that this specific interpretation of a fantasy society is not only innacurate but also unfair, as it treats a whole race as if they were simple animals when the in-game universe explicits they are people.
Oh, and finally: pickles! Because all posts should have some random non-sequitur shouting at the end.
![[Image: DWv3oGi.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/DWv3oGi.jpg)
