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

[Nousagi]

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?) 

 

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? 

 

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? 

 

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? 

 

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. 

 

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. 

 

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

[Faye]

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]

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]

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. 

 

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  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]

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]

 

 

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.]

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]

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

[Gone.]

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]

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

[Nousagi]

@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. 

 

@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."

 

[Zhavi]

 

 

@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?

[Afghan Vet 2009]

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. 

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. 

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.]

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.

[Dat Oni]

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

 

Go for it.

[V'aleera]

What other people think about your character's backstory is entirely irrelevant. Speaking from personal experience, if you create a well-written, interesting, and engaging character people will want to play with that character. And the more people you play with and friends you make, the more cowed into silence the people who would detract from your creation will be.

[Tokki]

I say GO for it if you really want to. At the end of the day, it is your character and I think you need to be happy with it. 

 

Miya was raised by a Hyur family, but recently she has gotten in touch with her birth roots changing going by her adoptive name I'yehmiya Faolain to her rightful name I'miya Yeh. Her father wasn't quite traditional, he left his tribe for adventure and a quest for knowledge and treasure on the high seas, but ended up kind of forming an honorary family of his own later on that he picked up along his travels. xP I feel bad though I killed off a lot of people in her past (pretty evil of me), but I like her backstory and at the end of the day I'm happy.  The adversity in her life makes her the kind soul she is today and idk...she has an awkward aloof side to her when culture clashes arise, but she still can be lovable even though she sometimes talks to her Chocobo like he's a person. 

 

My advice? Make your character your own. It is your story. A character is more than the people who raised he/she. Also find some awesome people to bounce off ideas with!~

[Faye]

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.

 

In the real world, a lot of kids are given up for adoption or otherwise orphaned. In game, however, lore tells us Miqo'te are rare with a small population. For Keepers, males are rare. For Seekers, only certain males are allowed to breed in order to create the best offspring. For a race so focused on procreation for the longevity of their tribe/clan, it's weird to think so many would be orphaned, weirder still so many would be picked up by other races (especially considering Miqo'te are often somewhat secluded from the rest of society and other races). The comparison is pretty much apples to oranges, but yeah, if I was in an RP set in the real world and half the characters involved were Korean adopted by American parents, I'd be a little confused.

 

Either way, I'm not discouraging anyone from doing it, so please don't put words in my mouth when there was no indication of that in my post. I just think it's helpful to give people fair warning that others might wrinkle their noses at their character, because some people don't want that, and others don't mind but like to be prepared to face it.

 

@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?

 

Keep It Simple, Stupid! It's a mantra people typically use to remind themselves not to overcomplicate or overthink something.

[Lilia Lia]

Do it if you want to.  It's just a cliche, like Faye said.  If you're fine with that then go on ahead. 

 

Some people don't like developing a character only to realize later that it's a cliche.  Rarely do people actually hold it against you, so if you're fine with it then don't let it bug you. 

 

I kind of smirk every time I meet another adopted miqo'te, but it wouldn't make me judge them or refuse to RP with them or make assumptions about them or anything.  Some of my best friends are adopted miqo'tes.

[Caspar]

I play a foreign character from a fanon locale I created myself, that seems unobtrusive and realistic enough that I feel it wouldn't ever be disrupted by updates in the setting. Since she was raised as a Doman, there is a tension between her displacement and her trained behavior that I can use to create conflict in RP with Othard natives. I found it a convenient way for me to brush up on lore I wasn't that familiar with, but also because I'm really attached to the "person between two cultures" tension. It has nothing to do with my own experiences and sympathies, I can assure you.

 

I'm disappointed Virara has not suffered greater discrimination, from Eorzeans of course, but particularly from Domans suspicious of a "Doman" who has never even been to the homeland, before or after the razing. To them, a Doman who has no particular love for their devastated home and a peculiar awkwardness among what should be her own kind ought to seem like an impostor who is too good at acting like one of them, and people ought to be suspicious or uneasy around her.

 

I like the idea of being an outsider and someone who cannot fit into any single culture, as I think culture is a mutable thing characterized by constant shifts in influence. I have a lot of affinity for the players who play characters outside of their traditional culture, including the miqo'te. However, they're just so common, it's easy to get lost in the masses. Rather than saying the cliche itself is bad, which it honestly is not, and is undeserving of the flak it usually gets here, I'd argue that it is hard to stand out and get attention for RP if you don't have a unique angle. And I would love to see more people take seriously the implications of being estranged from your own culture.

[V'aleera]

It's just a cliche

I've yet to encounter a character on these forums or in this game that isn't.

[Magellan]

It's just a cliche

I've yet to encounter a character on these forums or in this game that isn't.

Lol. Pretty much this. Simply the act of playing a Miqo, traditional or no, is a cliche, simply because they are SO ABUNDANT in both the rp and greater community. The mere presence of their numbers alone kind've shatters their lore.

 

The point is; ain't none of us original around here, so just rp what interests you and have fun doing it

[Sin]

If you're asking if you're going to get shit for using an overdone trope? Probably depending on how well you roleplay it. If you're asking how much? Who knows depends on the crowd you play with and who your friends are.  Should you care? Probably not, unless you do, then you should. <--- Wisdom.

 

@Hauntmedoitagain

Of course you perceive the negativity to be centralized in the RPC. I believe that is because this is a public forum for discussion, and here people are free to discuss their ideas and opinions no matter how upsetting they are to some of the listeners. In game, if I pass by someone roleplaying Cloud reborn, Slayer of Thrall and Garrosh, I'll shrug and move on to roleplay with someone else who is more my style. In the forum if someone asks me what I think of someone roleplaying Garrosh and Thrall slaying reborn Cloud I'll happily say I think that's an awful character and in my opinion wouldn't open yourself to a lot of fun roleplaying and writing opportunities.

 

I think a lot of good comments here. Eorzea is a dangerous place, the prospect of losing your parents and being adopted is more than plausible. If you have a unique character, and you can really bring that identity to life in a fun way. Go for it! Will it lump you in a category with a certain stereotype of cliche'd characters with cliched characteristics? Yup. Does that matter? Maybe. Up to you.

 

The game's RP community is robust enough that you will through a bit of searching find people who like to roleplay just as you do, and that's the beauty of it. Live and let live.

[Lilia Lia]

I feel I should clarify something.

 

There are some people who feel personally let-down when they realize, too late, that the distinctive quality they meant to give their character is actually the opposite of distinctive.  This is a subjective feeling that some people get towards their own characters and it's the main reason to caution someone who is considering basing a character around an idea that's a teensie bit overdone. 

 

For some people, they realize only too late that their character backstory is an instance of an overdone player trope, and that bothers them because they genuinely wanted to use it as a way of making their character stand out.  From a lore point of view, the concept of a miqo'te who was raised by hyur parents is unique, which is part of the charm of it.  But the fact is that in the player community, it's just the opposite.  And people wouldn't know this unless they were told ahead of time.  That's really the only reason I see it as a courtesy to alert people to how widespread it is. 

 

If it doesn't bother you that you'll be one of the many playing a very similar backstory, then that's really all that should matter.  But there are people that would want to avoid this kind of thing for their own reasons, so knowing ahead of time can be helpful to them.

 

To put it another way:  It's now a kind of fan-made lore that miqo'tes tend to be adopted and raised in cities.  It's so commonplace, in fact, that it's almost the norm.  Many characters you meet will not be surprised to learn this about you.  You may find this to be disappointing.  And for that reason it won't really be a distinctive feature of your character like you may have intended for it to be.

 

This only really matters if you intend for the city-raised tribe-ignorant backstory to be anomalous or to be going against the grain.  I think a lot of players do intend this because they write that story with the official lore in mind, without taking into account what you might call the "player-made lore" which is in reality going to form a significant part of the actual RP experience.  Does that make sense?

 

Also, as a disclaimer, I don't mean to offend any of the many adopted miqo'te who are certainly replying to this thread.  I'm only saying that there are some people who would decide against making this a major part of their character if they knew how common it was.  And there are players in the community who find it refreshing when they meet a miqo'te who actually does have a tribal background, so that alone makes it an attractive option when considering the kind of character you want to RP.  You COULD be the first tribal miqo'te that a lot of people meet, and firsts like that are always interesting.

[Taeh Niumoenwyn]

On a slight varation my Keeper (Taeh Marchand)was raised by an Elezen family, perhaps this isn't quite so common but even if it was I thought of the idea and characters background without being aware of this and therefore I'm okay with it.