Naunet

This really doesn't make sense. Why lock it temporarily, cutting off a lot of very productive discussion? Honestly, if you were going to lock the thread, you should have done it four, five, six pages ago, when emotions were at their height (though honestly, I disagree that the discussion got overly aggressive; people were being passionate, not mean) - not on the 19th page where people had, for several pages, been entering into discussions of how to approach Squee regarding the issue.

Why do you think he's so confused! He will wear that sweater if he knows what's good for him.

Oh definitely. Despite the frustration expressed in my posts, not having to deal with people telling me and others that we're abominations was refreshing! Kudos to the community for that.

Merri, your "private message quota" has apparently been reached (what the flying frak is that? Moderators shouldn't have "pm quotas" and become unreachable by the community), so I honestly have no other way of contacting you. But... The majority of us were being friendly. Locking the thread was unnecessary. I presume you'll lock and delete this thread, but honestly, I have no other way of contacting you because of the absolutely silly (and very misguidedly placed) "private message quota".

What? But we were talking about things to do... >_>

I'm sure I can pull in more. A few adverts on the RPC and the official forums closer to the time would also get out the representation.

I would like to be involved in this.

I shall wield the bricks with undeniable MIGHT! You will BOW to me!

I'm going to have to request that you (and Reppu, and whoever else) stop lumping us together just because of a Free Company tag. Ildur is in Unity as well and actually disagreed with us. And that is okay.

Of course, and I appreciate it, even though it is backwardly insulting people I feel camaraderie with (which I don't appreciate).

Pretty much this. We have absolutely no reason to trust a company to not discriminate when the norm is to discriminate.

I didn't say this. Please don't lump everyone together just because it's convenient for your point.

Well, to be fair, there are significantly fewer towns represented in-game than there are likely actual settlements in Eorzea. So it makes sense that the majority of NPCs will be represented fairly loosely, as there's a very limited amount of space to plop down miqo'te tribe towns.

Definitely the midlander. I'm not a fan of how monochromatic the miqo'te looks. She's like a ghost.

Thoughtcrimes? This is not 1984 (the novel). There is absolutely nothing wrong with being passionate about opposing inequality, but there's certainly something wrong with telling said passionate person that they need to stop.

I didn't actually use that word, but it is true and I will in no way "quit with" them, because it is foolish to think that people who have already engaged in discrimination will do anything else without active, strong pressure against it. It's just a nickname. I've been calling them that for a long while.

This is 100% unnecessary. Way to cross the line in an argument.

Discrimination has already occurred. To think otherwise is to fool yourself. Quite literally the only non-discriminatory options are 1) to NOT say that the marriage system will start with straight-only marriages and to release it without gender restrictions, or 2) to not release a marriage system at all but provide craftable wedding gear that anyone can use to RP their own weddings. That's it. Anything else is either passive discrimination through inaction or the delay of action, or actively discriminatory in the case of the possibility (/high/ possibility, as it's something they've already said they'll do) of releasing the marriage system with gender restrictions. Waiting to "discuss" this issue is discrimination. Waiting for "feedback" is discrimination. Because all of that implies that a marriage system without gender restrictions is somehow less, somehow dangerous, somehow wrong and something that needs to be carefully considered - but it is not. Rift didn't launch with marriage, and it wasn't something that was discussed as something they would implement in the future. When they did release it, it came with all the bells and whistles for everyone, regardless of the genders of the couple. Not a single negative wave was made. Everyone was just excited that Trion had finally listened to the roleplayers and given us something that is really fun - oh, and there was that awesome one day marriage-a-thon where we set a world record for most online marriages in a single day. And this is comparable to Squeenix, by the way. Rift is a global game, just like ARR. The difference here is that Trion never announced marriage with anything other than all-inclusiveness. It was never an option. It was never something they had to think over and collect feedback on. To them, equality was simply a fact. And while I've disagreed with some of their recent decisions regarding the game, I will always respect them for that one.

No one is doing this. There are passionate posts, but no one is "cursing out everyone" and acting "like a banshee". It is patronizing posts like this one, however, that make me want to do so, because it is incredibly frustrating to construct strongly worded but completely rational arguments and then get told to calm down like I am some kind of child who doesn't know how to control myself.

There is absolutely nothing an OP of a thread on the beta forum can do to prevent their thread from getting locked. If you make a thread supporting the implementation of a marriage system without gender restrictions, the majority of responses are people who just want to troll it into oblivion, or a whole bunch of "inb4lock" posts. It's absolutely idiotic.

That's not the point. No one should be excluded from content - and it is hard-line exclusion, not just "Oh, I can't raid because it's too difficult/time consuming." I don't really appreciate your "What does it matter?" attitude, because clearly it does matter to a lot of us, which makes your posts largely irrelevant and mostly just inciting negative reactions. I don't care when marriage gets implemented (I honestly wouldn't care even if they ended up not implementing it), but whenever it does hit the game, I absolutely expect them to implement it so that it is accessible to everyone, not just those who want to get married in a straight pairing. And you know, this doesn't only affect non-straight players - it affects everyone. Real life couples who want to get married in-game using the marriage system but can't because they both chose to play male characters, or both play female characters. Regardless of their real life sexuality. So not only would gender restrictions be Squeenix-endorsed discrimination, but it would unfairly exclude a lot of other people from an aspect of the game (which, while fluff, is still very much a part of the game, and no one should ever be excluded from any part of the game).

Okay, buddy, you seriously need to stop mischaracterizing the argument being made by those of us pressuring Squee for marriage equality in-game. Please note: No one is demanding that Squeenix implement marriage right now immediately ASAP BLARGH! So stop using that in your argument. Just stop. You're trying to redirect the conversation to a point that has absolutely nothing to do with the argument originally presented (and the one that we are pressuring Squeenix on). Your condescension is horrifically unnecessary.

It is absolutely not toxic to call someone on their intolerance - whether intentional or not - actions or words. It is totally okay to be intolerant of intolerance. I am not a bad person for not tolerating racism or sexism or homophobia or religious discrimination or any other bad thing. And incidentally, the only way our equality can be acknowledged is if they actually implement the marriage system with no restrictions. This "taking time to consider" crap? That's not acknowledging equality - that's actually giving credence to the side that would rather there be inequality.

Uhm... I'm honestly confused as to what you think I was arguing for. We know marriage isn't going to be in the release version of the game, that it's coming some time after the game launches. What we don't know is if the system will come with ridiculous gender restrictions or not.

Uhm... riots, what? I honestly don't understand what you're trying to say in that second paragraph. Trion implemented marriage when they did because it wasn't a system they had considered when the game released - unlike ARR, where marriage is something Yoshi has told us is for sure coming. It was something Trion did as a gesture of support towards the roleplaying community.