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Kousagi · **06-19-2015, 05:58 PM**

Transethnic characters?
How does the RP community fare with this? Are there other players who have characters of Miqo'te ethnicity, but brought up by Hyur families? I'm talking people who were basically infants at their time of adoption, probably having Hyur-sounding names and generally being Hyur by culture?

If you've got experience as one, how do you usually write this into your characters' plot, or convey it to others? (Generally, I'm sure other RPers will be a little confused by an RP Miqo with a name like, "Adriana Hawkins" y'know?)Â

I mostly ask because I main miqo'te characters 9 times out of 10, but alternatively, what about say lala characters raised in Elezen families, or even Elezen youths, displaced by circumstance, being raised in Roe families?Â

Considering the calamity in canon, I don't see it being too far-fetched for an adoptee to have been taken in by a family or older adventurer who simply doesn't give a damn about racial and cultural barriers. I wish there were examples of this in canon (and if anyone can point out examples in canon/NPCs where you have cross-ethnic families/adoptions, I'd love to see how lore handles it... I feel Minfillia counts with her relationship to F'lhaminn.)

Characters from "far off lands"
With the recent release of Heavensward and the new locations, does anyone have plans for "far north" Miqo'te characters who simply grew up in any of the Heavensward hamlets or cities?Â

Alternatively, does anyone RP characters from "far off lands" in a way, ie, a Hyur who hails from the writer's own fanmade region across the sea? How well does this get recieved?Â

I mean, at the end of the day, yes, it is simpler to "just make an Eorzean" and fit them into the rules of Eorzea (Nunh/Tia conventions, nomadic Keeper males, forest-based Elezen or nationalistic Ishgardian Elezen, etc.) but I always feel there's room for statistic outliers. Elezen folk who don't quite fit the "typical image" of their race, or lalafells born into a family of travelers who have been to far more places than Ul'dah or Gridania, lalafells who come from pastoral families on the plains of Lominsa who worship neither the coin nor magic and spirituality. Idk, I'm rambling now.Â

Does anyone else simply just feel "too confined" by having to make their characters conform to the typical rules of their characters' race or expected place of origin due to said racial confines? I'm looking right at all the Miqo players who have been told they can't have a Miqo'te Dragoon/Lancer or a Miqo'te from Coerthas because "Miqo'te don't like the cold" or "Miqo'te tribes don't work that way." Or people who have Miqo'te that don't follow typical Keeper/Seeker naming conventions.

Idk, I mean... in the real world, a person from France isn't strictly going to always be born in Paris and do stereotypical French things. Sometimes you meet someone from France who was adopted into a Muslim family that spent half their youth growing up in Canada.Â

How do you play cross or transethnic characters or characters who are from different (fanmade) places all together?

Faye · **06-19-2015, 06:10 PM**

(06-19-2015, 05:58 PM)Kousagi Wrote: Transethnic characters?
How does the RP community fare with this? Are there other players who have characters of Miqo'te ethnicity, but brought up by Hyur families? I'm talking people who were basically infants at their time of adoption, probably having Hyur-sounding names and generally being Hyur by culture?

There are plenty of them. It's just a convenient way to play a Miqo'te while avoiding all the lore that comes along with them, so naturally a lot of people gravitate to that. They're typically pretty well-received by the community, but I would warn anyone wishing to play one that they've become a cliche and a lot of players are tired of seeing them.

As for character from "far-off lands," I'm not very far into HW yet but so far there's no evidence of any Miqo'te anywhere around Ishgard, so that one could be hard to justify. A lot of people play characters from other countries, however. Outliers exist, sure, and they typically have an understandable draw to them. The problem is then that everyone wants to play an outlier, and they stop being outliers. It's sort of... polite, I guess, to conform to lore for that reason? I don't really feel confined, though. The KISS method has its merits. A character should be interesting for their interaction with others and the depth and detail of their personalities, not for all the templates you can stack onto them, or all the twists in their backstory, or all their unique attributes.

Chris Ganale · **06-19-2015, 06:15 PM**

Three of my characters are from Doma, one is from a separate reality entirely, and my main is the ever-so-derided miqo'te dragoon. Doman characters practically don't get an eye bat at them anymore given the refugee angle from Garlemald utterly massacring them, many going on to be successful adventurers.

My miqo dragoon was a tribal who quit after getting his ass beat every time he tried to challenge for nunh, and wound up getting under-the-table training from a House Fortemps guard captain. This got him in hot water with Ishgard for a time, even so far as having a death mark, until he fought at the Steps of Faith, after which they kinda pardoned him. So he's not officially a dragoon, just has a bunch of the training. He's no humanoid hypersonic guided missile like the ones in the Heavensward movie, that's for sure.

Madda · **06-19-2015, 06:18 PM**

Mirielda (Madda's catgirl) was raised by humans at a young age, and finds it much easier to talk and interact with them more so than her own race.

Madda can't speak for the entire community, but many people are accepting of it, as odd things can happen, just as long as they make sense and aren't too far out there.Â

The hardest part would be identifying the culture your character is raised in. Using our idea for an example, if a Miqo'te were raised in a Hyur family, they would definitely be taught what Hyur view as a social norm. They would be taught monogamy, to maintain one's cool, and Â maybe even family teachings. Depending on the character, they would also find it easier/harder to live up to their birth races' culture as well, since they were never fully taught or exposed to those before.

Zhavi · **06-19-2015, 06:26 PM**

Uhh...maybe I'm misinterpreting something, but I think you're making more of this than it really is.

Someone who was born in Korea but adopted by a typical US-centric family is going to act like .... a US citizen.

Sometimes such people don't give a fuck about where they were born and their birth families. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they face racism and cultural misunderstanding. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they want to build up their ethnic heritage. Sometimes they don't give a flying fuck. You build the character as you would any other character: you look at their childhood and how it affected them, and what challenges they might have faced and how it affects them in the present.

As for how people react to them, unless you're building npcs that is strictly dependent on other players.

Zhi grew up as the daughter of a second-generation Limsa Lominsa miqo'te, until she became a street kid. She acts like what she is: a product of the street who did not manage to escape the criminal lifestyle. Some traditional moon kitties have been put off by the way she acts.

Zhavi · **06-19-2015, 06:31 PM**

(06-19-2015, 06:10 PM)Faye Wrote: There are plenty of them. It's just a convenient way to play a Miqo'te while avoiding all the lore that comes along with them, so naturally a lot of people gravitate to that. They're typically pretty well-received by the community, but I would warn anyone wishing to play one that they've become a cliche and a lot of players are tired of seeing them.

I don't understand this attitude. If I were to be in a rp that takes place in the real world, and want to rp someone of Korean ancestry who is a US citizen, would people still have this idea of "it's getting old how all you people want to play Koreans who aren't actually from Korea and of the Korean culture" ?

I mean, you can come up with all these human race stereotypes that I ... don't want to use as examples because I don't want to create race arguments, but just -- whatever floats your boat, but please don't discourage people from creating characters that make them happy. In my experience, playing solely to please other people is going to make you unhappy at the end of the day.

No matter what you do, there's going to be someone who doesn't like it, so you might as well just do it.

Gone. · **06-19-2015, 06:40 PM**

I'd say there's a sizable chunk of the community that falls under the adopted Miqo'te crowd; considering the amount of war and subsequent death in the game world, it's completely plausible from every angle. Same goes for any multi-racial family, really.

As far as playing an outsider goes, the only place we have any real detail on outside of Eorzea is Othard, though most specifically Doma due to the related quests in the main storyline. Domans are a safe bet when it comes to this as anyone who paid attention to in-game dialog and has a decent understanding of old world Japanese culture can easily bullshit their way through the grey areas.

Foreigners from elsewhere are another story and though I'm willing to accept it if the person in question builds enough plausibility for me, I can't say I'd recommend going this route. You might as well be writing on your own at that point.

Magellan · **06-19-2015, 06:42 PM**

My main Claire is a hyur raised Miqo. She identifies as hyur, and thinks her own heritage to be rather odd. Which makes for great rp when she meets a traditional seeker Smile

Gone. · **06-19-2015, 06:44 PM**

(06-19-2015, 06:42 PM)Magellan Wrote: My main Claire is a hyur raised Miqo. She identifies as hyur, and thinks her own heritage to be rather odd. Which makes for great rp when she meets a traditional seeker

Claire is also just really fun and adorable in general. One of the best examples of this trope imo.

Magellan · **06-19-2015, 06:46 PM**

(06-19-2015, 06:44 PM)hauntmedoitagain Wrote:
(06-19-2015, 06:42 PM)Magellan Wrote: My main Claire is a hyur raised Miqo. She identifies as hyur, and thinks her own heritage to be rather odd. Which makes for great rp when she meets a traditional seeker

Claire is also just really fun and adorable in general. One of the best examples of this trope imo.

D'awww Veti <3

Kousagi · **06-19-2015, 06:52 PM**

@Faye True, true. It is rough, though I'm mostly asking to gauge just how often people have something to say about other players that have plots/origins they don't particularly like or are tired of seeing. It's been a really long time since I played on Balmung. I wrote a Miqo'te lancer for a while who had the dream of becoming a Dragoon, and luckily I never really got shit for it... but I had someone else in our very same guild who was a Miqo DRG and every time she was offline, people would talk crap about it... it was kind of discouraging. But granted, she had other issues that made her less than popular in the guild that I don't even remember (some drama between her and a few other members...? IDEK?) What is the KISS method, though, might I ask?

@Chris I dig this a lot. I haven't been on in a while so I haven't seen any characters from Doma yet, but I can see where this is far more canon-friendly. That's actually a really cool idea to play with. I also dig the idea of a Tia who just got tired of the Tia life, haha~ I don't blame the guy one bit.

@Madda I wish I could +Like posts or something. I feel this hardcore. I think that's my biggest drive for wanting to write a Hyur-raised Miqo, simply because for the sake of plot, I really don't care to make a character that has an inherently typical Seeker upbringing, the character I have in mind is just not one it'd work with, she's too impulsive and jealous, and I think she'd have been utterly miserable as a Seeker female growing up in the harem. Granted, I could just have her be a catgirl who ran away from the life. But I'm also kind of tired of Eorzea in general and more interested in having her come from a fanmade place "across the sea" that doesn't play a very confining or distracting role in how I play her present life. I think that, while Miqo'te tribal lore is fascinating and in-depth, it just isn't for everyone and can be a little confining, especially in naming conventions.Â

@Zhavi I could be making it a little more than it should be, but it's still nice to talk about. Like, yeah you are right that a kid from Korea adopted into a US-centric family would act like a US citizen, no doubt. There are people who don't give a fuck about birth families, some who do, etc. I'm mostly asking to see how much shit I'd get for making a character who didn't fall into lore structure to a tee. But you also make a good point that I think I really needed to see/hear -- "No matter what you do, there's going to be someone who doesn't like it, so you might as well just do it."

[Image: tumblr_nq3k88GBD31urdmxno1_1280.gif]

[Image: tumblr_nq3k88GBD31urdmxno1_1280.gif]

Zhavi · **06-19-2015, 07:13 PM**

(06-19-2015, 06:52 PM)Kousagi Wrote: @Zhavi I could be making it a little more than it should be, but it's still nice to talk about. Like, yeah you are right that a kid from Korea adopted into a US-centric family would act like a US citizen, no doubt. There are people who don't give a fuck about birth families, some who do, etc. I'm mostly asking to see how much shit I'd get for making a character who didn't fall into lore structure to a tee. But you also make a good point that I think I really needed to see/hear -- "No matter what you do, there's going to be someone who doesn't like it, so you might as well just do it."

In that case, I am sad. That sort of thing makes me sad.

For another example, if authors got discouraged after the first, second, third rejection letters, we'd be missing a lot of really wonderful stories.

Too, there are some things other rpers do in their writing or character building that make me twitch -- but I don't let that stop me from rping with them. Give people a chance before you write them off, y'know?

Miah Polaali · **06-19-2015, 07:27 PM**

(06-19-2015, 06:10 PM)Faye Wrote:
(06-19-2015, 05:58 PM)Kousagi Wrote: Transethnic characters?
How does the RP community fare with this? Are there other players who have characters of Miqo'te ethnicity, but brought up by Hyur families? I'm talking people who were basically infants at their time of adoption, probably having Hyur-sounding names and generally being Hyur by culture?

There are plenty of them. It's just a convenient way to play a Miqo'te while avoiding all the lore that comes along with them, so naturally a lot of people gravitate to that. They're typically pretty well-received by the community, but I would warn anyone wishing to play one that they've become a cliche and a lot of players are tired of seeing them.

As for character from "far-off lands," I'm not very far into HW yet but so far there's no evidence of any Miqo'te anywhere around Ishgard, so that one could be hard to justify. A lot of people play characters from other countries, however. Outliers exist, sure, and they typically have an understandable draw to them. The problem is then that everyone wants to play an outlier, and they stop being outliers. It's sort of... polite, I guess, to conform to lore for that reason? I don't really feel confined, though. The KISS method has its merits. A character should be interesting for their interaction with others and the depth and detail of their personalities, not for all the templates you can stack onto them, or all the twists in their backstory, or all their unique attributes.

I have to agree with this. Says everything I wanted to say.Â
I play a Traditional Keeper. Just because you play character according the the lore of that race. Does not mean you have to stick to it to a tee. You can have some deviation. Which is what I do.Â
Either way play your character according to how you want to play them and not someone else. in the end you will be more happier and satisfied.

Gone. · **06-19-2015, 08:16 PM**

You will, unfortunately, receive 'some shit' for bending and filling in the grey areas.

On the positive, the negativity tends to stick to the RPC. I've yet to see it actually make its way game-side.

Ultimately, play the character you want! You're here to tell your story, not appease others outside of your circle.

Edgar · **06-19-2015, 08:37 PM**

I did this with Edgar, and got zero shit for it.

Go for it.

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Miqo'te raised by Hyur families? Also, discussing: characters from "far off lands?"

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes