Au ra / Miqo RPers - the sliding scale?

[Mermaid]

I think it can be fun when people make their Miqo'te or Au Ra a little more animalistic but there's a very fine line between me finding it amusing and me finding it annoying. The ones who want to have more sensitive hearing, very expressive ears, or do the 'cat sit' a lot are perfectly fine. The ones who nya, talk about breeding, or have tails so sensitive they're turned on by people touching them are the one's I'll avoid.

 

What do I do with my character? Very little. As sort of a joke about lizards being cold blooded she tends to have cold hands and likes warmth (ie fire places and hot baths). Her tail isn't particularly expressive. It sways when she walks and it gets stiff when she's tense. It's movements I feel are so obvious I often forget to mention them in RP. About the only thing that's possibly out of the ordinary she does with it is tap it or swish it to music especially when she doing it to keep time.

 

I'm firmly of the belief that the fewer head canons in an RP the better. Everyone is on the same page and nobody has to worry about which way is more accurate. If someone wants to say their Miqo'te or Au Ra has above average hearing, for example, I tend to just roll with it and adjust my character slightly if necessary.

Edited February 19, 2018 by Mermaid
typo

[Ki wong]

I don't play to far into the cat like features on my character too much, I do play with her tail and ears tho. Not so much in a cat like way but more in the fact she has a tail and she uses it from time to time. Most of it is played for laughs like swating a hand away from her butt or something she wants, to being pretty expressive. I even had talks with people as they asked how strong it would be, like I figure it's stronger than people think as it's a lion's tail so it's most likely pretty firm. - and all tails to my knowing have bones so they aren't going to be so soft to the touch to get the owner turned on. I don't get that.- She's not getting red from you touching her tail.. that tail WILL hit you tho cause it's still her tail. The only thing I do do is depending on the nature of the RP and how she feels and who she's with, changes how her ears and tail reacts to people or person. If it was a close friend they would get away with playing with her tail to a point, if it was a crush of something then it'll have a different effect. Like your arm being touch by that super girl you love etc etc. A stranger.. that tail is moving at sonic speeds to your face smacking you at the speed of sound... followed by a snap punch. Cause she's a monk baby.

[Hollow]

Rather than focusing on the cat aspect for Miqo'te, the tribal aspect has always been more fascinating to me, and how it would influence their culture and norms.

 

For example, a typical Keeper would grow up a small group of two or three families consisting entirely of adult women and children. Boys would leave and go off on their own, probably as a young teen, and from that point on they're a permanent wanderer - traveling between family groups, staying for a while to woo any receptive ladies, then heading off again. Meanwhile, the family group - and thus, the culture, the stories, the lore and myths, all of that would be passed down from mother to daughter. Sons would get some of it, while they're still young, but not nearly as much as the daughter who will be staying and contributing. 

 

So the very concept of 'fatherhood' would be largely unknown. If you drift between villages, have a few brief liaisons, and then drift away, you're not even going to know your own children. You might encounter young miqo'te a few years down the road - maybe they're yours, maybe another male wandered through a week after you did and they're his. It probably doesn't even matter to you - you'd know your mother, and your sisters, but you wouldn't have a concept of a male lineage or acknowledging your descendants. And then imagine growing up with that culture, and then wandering through a city, and wondering what in the Seven Hells this city-born Miqo'te is taking about when she mentions "being exclusive" or "marriage". 

 

Meanwhile, the women's relationship with men would be almost exclusively based on sex. If a man is visiting, he's either wooing you or ignoring you until he leaves for the next village. You might recognize the men who visit once every season or a few times a year, but you wouldn't have any real friendships with them or platonic relationship at all. Of course, it would also depend on how much interaction the village has with other cultures - an outgoing family group or an insular one in the deep forest - but for the most part, everyone you know and live with is either another woman or a child (and if a boy, he'll be leaving in a few years anyway and you might not even ever see him again). 

 

It would be interesting for a story from that perspective, of growing up in that culture and then traveling beyond the Shroud and comparing it to the Hyur or Elezen ways. 

[Zansei Asano]

What we know about au ra, in terms of what they can do, is that they are no different to a hyur, except for having scales, horns and a tail. The hearing—while it is different how they perceive and hear it—is not better than a hyur. Their horns and tails regenerate if cut off, exactly to the length they had it before. The scales are soft, but durable. I even think there was a Xaela tribe that reinforce their boats with their own scales, so they do indeed have some strength.

 

Then there's the enhanced spatial recognition, which is for locating themselves.

Otherwise, they don't act all that differently. They act like hyur and talk like hyur.

I follow lore as strictly as I can, and I have not seen au ra act in any other way than like a hyur with just different properties like scales, horns, tail. They do not act like dragons or lizards or reptiles.

[TLATopHat]

Personally, I see the tails on my Au Ra and Miqo'te (as well as the articulation of my Miqo'te ears) as opportunities for additional or more subtle expression and body language.  I see it as a challenge to emote and describe what these additional emotive parts are doing during portions of the conversation.  Much like 'normal' human body language, I'd figure most Miqo'te and Au Ra are not always conscious of the tells their extra bits are giving off.  Miqo'te ears, especially, offer some nice opportunity to betray inner thoughts that the character may not have intended to broadcast, such as ears rising when overhearing something interesting or when something makes them feel positive emotions, or lowering/flattening when experiencing the opposite.  That's a very simple example, but it adds an extra layer of expression.

If you really wanted to dig in, there's room to develop cultural connotations to different tail motions and positions, a "proper" way to carry your tail, tail gestures that could be considered culturally impolite or even downright vulgar; even different ways to position your ears/tails when standing before or talking to people of different social statuses.  Heck, imagine a scenario where a tribal Miqo'te is just absolutely aghast at how city Miqo'te use their tails!  There's definitely room to get down into the fine detail with it if you want to, and all of this can be done without making either Au Ra or Miqo'te more or less 'animal' than they are in game.  It all can be attributed to just having some of these additional expressive parts that over the course of time became part of their cultural body language.

[Hollow]

15 hours ago, TLATopHat said:

If you really wanted to dig in, there's room to develop cultural connotations to different tail motions and positions, a "proper" way to carry your tail, tail gestures that could be considered culturally impolite or even downright vulgar; even different ways to position your ears/tails when standing before or talking to people of different social statuses.  Heck, imagine a scenario where a tribal Miqo'te is just absolutely aghast at how city Miqo'te use their tails! 

 

True. Though Sun Seekers are probably the most rigid in that department, with Nunh and Tia for breeding status, and a tribe chief and leadership. Moon Keepers seem to be just family groups of adult women of equal status, and all the men are completely independent. 

 

So you would even get the culture clash between the different varieties of tribal Miqo'te - a Seeker Nuhn being offended at how dismissive the Keeper women are of him, whether in their words or their unconscious mannerisms, or vice versa. And a Keeper male would be completely ignorant of any such subtle social interplay, since 90% of his time is spend alone in the forest.

[reuler]

Just to chime in here, I agree with much of what @Caldera has been posting re: the Miqo'te clans but I'll also speak about the Au Ra as I RP both races.

 

Much as many others have been saying, lore truly projects both Miqo'te and Au Ra as Hyurs with some extra oddities but are still largely humanoid. There may be some cultural differences (as was mentioned before with the tails) and some minor physiological ones (Au Ra having more acute hearing, Keeper Miqo'te having excellent night vision, etc) but, by and large, the differences between races are largely sociology rather than biology. I don't believe that Miqo'te go into estrus/heat just as I don't believe Au Ra lay eggs, and so on and so forth.

 

On the particular note of Au Ra (since I think the Miqo'te have been covered quite well by others), I actually focus less on the reptilian aspects of their physiology and more on the implications of their origin — and no, not the "dragons or voidsent" debate. I've strung together my entire theory in this Tumblr post but tl;dr I believe that Au Ra, like the Ixal, are a genetic construct of the Allagans. Therefore, I'm more likely to play them as "mutants" rather than reptiles. The Xaela in particular are quite fascinating because of their extremely primitive nature in comparison to all the other enlightened races: they're really just one primal summon away from becoming a beast tribe.

 

I will say, however, that I greatly prefer these types of differences versus more anthropomorphic ones, as they add greater depth of narrative and more nuanced expression than "I see better than you at night."

 

[Valence]

Just a quick note: Au'ra don't have a more acute hearing (Lalafells and Elezens do however). They just have a different hearing biology (that can regrow).

 

I tend to disagree on the fact that some races like Xaela or Miqo'te tribes are that feral to the point of being compared to beast tribes. Xaela for example seem to be very well inspired from mongolian culture and traditions with a big touch of fantasy, and that's... not really the mark of a pre civilized race, at least more than miqo'te tribes, that are very much primitive. But the way they are always portrayed by the lore is very human, to the contrary  of most beast tribes that are just very alien or have societal quirks so huge that they look like caricatures in comparison.

 

The good savage stereotype if you will.

 

Also beast tribes are first and foremost looking like beasts and/or chimeras, which isn't the case of au'ra or miqo'te (who also happen to wear clothes and whatnot, unlike beasts).

Edited March 27, 2018 by Valence

[reuler]

@Valence Perhaps my beast tribe comment was hyperbolic, but you caught the meaning of what I was getting at nevertheless.

[Aeva]

My idea for Aeva is that behaviorally speaking, she's a civilized person. She follows Keeper traditions pretty closely, so I wouldn't exactly say she's just a hyur with cat parts. She's not going to do anything crazy cat-like that other people mentioned though. No meows or "nya"-ing, pawing at people, having a tail so sensitive that.... yeah... Or lapping up milk, (it didn't even cross my mind that people would do this until I read the thread lol), or anything like that. She's a person and if someone compares her to a cat she might react with mild annoyance to it actually. I guess Aeva adores seafood, but I mean that could be just as much a byproduct of her being from Limsa, it's cat-like but I'm not sure if it counts. I do plan to play off of the anatomy though. I think the ears and tail present good opportunities to further express emotion, and I'll definitely be emoting with those. It allows for more subtle expressions when it's appropriate and I'd rather make use of them than not.

The only real animal-like behavior I have in mind for her is really enjoying scratches behind the ears, or her hair/tail being groomed. She would have a mostly human way of expressing this enjoyment, not purring or licking or anything. A pleased hum, a smile, her eyes gently closing as it relaxes her, things like that.

[L'tohk Rhoto]

I play more toward a Hyur with feline traits rather than a feline that happens to look largely human, but adopt a lot of cat abilities. Using ears and tails to show her general feelings at the moment from time to time, the enhanced sense of smell and modestly improved hearing over a hyur, the ability to eat raw meat, fish, or poultry with no ill effects as well as the ability to subsist on saltwater if need be. Greater flexibility and range of motion in her backAnd, of course, the uniform tongue/palette thing that miqo'te have that enable them properly pronounce that 'hiss' sound that the 'h' in their names call for.

 

Don't remember ever purring or using any of those other cutesy sounds some folks do, I also haven't given her any specific love of milk or catnip or that sort of thing. Any preference for fish she may have is entirely because she's a former pirate and grew up on a fish heavy diet, save the occasional gull or beast they chased down while landbound. If anyone cares to make their characters more feline and exhibit those traits? More power to them.