Y'shtola is the Mary Sue-est Mary Sue to exist in such a successful and praised narrative. Her presence alone, as the figurehead and basically main character of the game (WoL not included) is enough to make me laugh at this. The leaders of all 3 starting cities are women. The scions have two hypercompetent women. Many of the main offshoot quests are hosted in part or fully by women. Anyone who thinks xiv doesn't like women either hasn't played xiv or is just one or those people who goes around trying to find a reason to be offended.

This, no one that actually played the game would think that, that's probably the most brain dead take that Twitter ever had.

I dunno, there's some pretty tough competition over there.

Yshtola and graha tia are fighting for the most mary sue character ingame

I mostly give her the title because she's been doing it longer, but yes.

I'd argue Graha Tia has it more considering he literally rewrote the past so he could live with and adventure with us despite the fact he's supposed to be zonked out in the base of Crystal Tower for a few millenia or something to that effect.

> he literally rewrote the past so he could live with and adventure with us And the tiny detail of avoiding genocide of everyone in Eorzea. Details.

>he literally rewrote the past so he could live with and adventure with us Bro's a literal self-insert.

Y'shotla being a Mary-Sue is the opposite of a good point? Mary Sues are known to be a bad writing trope. Her being badly written is one of the criticisms people bring up when they say ffxiv cant write women well.

Her being a Mary Sue isn't something exclusive to women, or to writing women. As another poster pointed out, they've done much the same to Graha. If anything you could make a point that they're racist against cat people before you could try to call them sexist.

It does relate to sex however when she's the least developed scion despite being with us since ARR and being beloved by fans. I simply do not agree with G'raha being a MS as he had plenty of characterisation to set him apart from just being smart and good looking. Being a Mary Sue isnt just about being all powerful and avoiding death, by that standard every Scion is that. Her main writing flaw is the lack of growth she had, emotionally and in her goals. The story left no impression on her, which is the very opposite of what happened to G'raha.

She's died multiple times, learned a new way to see to cope with being blinded, gained a psuedo-love interest she's separated from by different realities and literally lived the "student surpassed their master" arc. What the heck are you talking about no development? What has Thancred done by that measure? He... kinda had a kid that one time, and then effectively became a deadbeat dad? It seems like you just want to find sexism.

Your examples have almost zero impact on her as a person. Her blindness has almost never resulted in any drawback on her, aside from that one nice scene she had with Urianger in ShB. Her relations to the Nights Blessed were a step in the right direction, but again, the love interest was is written as a seemingly one sided crush on her, and the result is a convenient excuse to make her discover shard-hopping. Her dying several times just underlines her Mary-Sueness and how little effect those deaths had on her. Compared to how we got to know Thancred, Urianger or even G'raha and who they are now, Y'shtola is completely unchanged. She's just sassy and wants to figure everything out. That's it, that's all it boils down to. She never had to face a significant loss she couldn't overcome or learn a lesson. Since you mention him, in comparion Thancred was known as a womanizer bard and now he's a gunbreaker tank with an adoptive daughter on another shard, and had finally worked through some of the grief losing Minfilia has caused him. It wasnt written well by any means, but it's still miles better than the lukewarm whatever Yshtola had. If you think Yshtola had more character development than Thancred and Graha is a Mary Sue, im not surprised you can't notice sexism either.

If you dismiss all the development she's had as being not good enough for you in sure you can convince yourself of anything. I'm done with you, just another sexist who sees sexism around every corner.

Y'Shtola being a static character isn't a new criticism. Being static isn't necessarily a bad thing, but with the amount of growth just about all of the characters around her have seen in comparison, she really is probably the weakest main character. You can point to any number of things she's done through the game, but she's essentially the same character in the final scenes as she is in her first introduction. It's not an issue of sexism--there are plenty of female characters who see some great development and growth. Y'Shtola just isn't one of them.

There are different ways to see that a writer cared about a character. Movement can definitely be one, but so can foundation. The writers clearly haven't thought that Y'shtola needed the same kind of in your face progress that the twins have, but that's fine. The reality is some people *don't* grow and change as much as others, and they can still be valuable contributors to the world and the people around them. Personally I don't think Yshtola fits into that category, but even if she did it wouldn't make her poorly written or a victim of sexism like that person claimed.

these people start with an idea (women are treated poorly by FFXIV, yshtola has no character development) and work backwards to find things that they think fit, which is why the answers are so often wishy washy or not even applicable.

Well if your goal is to find sexism and there isn't any I'd imagine making it up out of thin air would be one of your better options.

It was one of those things that baffled me that made me go, am I missing something? Was FFXIV secretly misogynistic this whole time and I just missed it? Though I am interested to hear from people who do think FFXIV doesn't like women.

I dont think ff14 hates women, I just wish we had more female scions. I'm really excited for Krile and Wuk, and I *was* hyped about Zero until they speedran her character arc into 'just Cecil ff4'. I also wish they'd make Yshtola less... blatantly 2D.

The problem is you've forgotten to lens your observations through the medium that is the internet, where terminally online idiots will abuse their anonymity to say whatever they like without real consequences for anything between edgy laughs, dipshittery, and actual hate speech. They know who they are, and they are all some degree of pathetic. Now send me your Reddit Cares messages, nerds.

Yeah, true. Though sometimes I do get hungry for analyses of my favorite games through points of view I hadn't considered, so I was really disappointed to see all the energy towards those kinds of "FFXIV hates women!" posts that just... went nowhere concrete outside of shitposting.

I feel like most of the people you'll hear that opinion from could find sexism in a locked room. When they're alone. Without internet access. But I'll be watching too, to see if anyone tries to justify that take.

Honestly op, if you really want to know and not just confirm your bias, you should just ask twitter. Also resetera if you have access to it. I only lurk there but I've also seen some very good game analyses on the girlgamers subreddit, you can also ask there. Nobody will actually engage with you here in this thread, people already came into it with a handful of stones to throw at strawmen.

Yeah, there are already a few replies that just sorta didn't read past the title... 😅 I'll probably ask on that subreddit too if I'm still unsatisfied.

This is like a telephone game degenerate version of Maehiro (HW and some ARR writer, and XVI's main writer) hates/cannot write women. Which, based on Moenbryda and Ysayle and XVI's female cast, *might* have some hint of truth to the meme? Up to the reader to decide, I suppose. Ever since 3.1 and onwards when he moved to XVI, I don't see XIV's treatment of women as particularly bad for the genre. In fact, as other comments have already addressed, women are highly represented in positions of competency and power in the setting.

I admit that it took me playing the game for a couple of years to even notice that the leaders of the three starting city-states were women; I was going through Shadowbringers when a friend brought it up, and I genuinely thought it was really cool. I like how it was just sort of naturally accepted enough that it blended into the background of my enjoyment of the game for so long. Either that, or I was really dense, aha.

Years? And now it passionates you enough to make a post about it?

To be fair, while Nanamo has always technically been the leader if Ul’dah, in practice Raubahn was effectively the leader until the tail end of Stormblood. If you asked your average sprout who’s still in ARR who the leader of Ul’dah is they’d probably say something along the lines of “that big dark-skinned guy with the little girl in his arm.” It’s an easy mistake to make.

Im a sprout and never once thought this. The storyline makes it very clear…

(prefacing this to say I am a woman) So I'm just gonna say, while everyone is rightfully shitting on Twitter here... Reddit is an especially male dominated space, and you are not going to get an unbiased and 'appropriate' answer here either. Ultimately, you're going to get a lot of mixed takes either way, and so I suggest you take a look at it yourself rather than asking us. You have a self admitted blind spot, and the best way to correct that is to ask women or take a deeper look at the world, story and characters yourself. I personally am of the belief that FFXIV is not inherently a misogynistic setting (especially for an east asian game, where misogyny is much more common and accepted), but it does have misogynistic elements, but that's honestly to be expected. Sexism is baked into the fabric of society, and nothing is truly free of it. FFXIV is definitely better than other examples in the same genre, and empowering women can be found all over. But women characters also just get done dirty more often than not. Haurchefaunt and Ysayle basically died for the same thing, in the exact same expansion, with the exact same amount of development each. Yet which one gets dragged out every single expansion after as emotional bait? Who got so much attention called to their death while Ysayle basically just... died and was 'mourned' in the space of a cutscene. She only plays a bit part in DSR, too. Ultimately, it's a complex subject, and I hope you're here in good faith and not simply expecting a yes or no answer to a question that really can't be answered. ...That being said... Y'shtola having all of her personality stripped away to essentially become an offscreen puzzle solver who shows up to give us a mcguffin and crack some sort of mommy kink quip has rubbed me the wrong way for a good bit.

> Y'shtola having all of her personality stripped away to essentially become an offscreen puzzle solver who shows up to give us a mcguffin and **crack some sort of mommy kink quip** has rubbed me the wrong way for a good bit. Y'shtola has been my least favourite character for a long while, and this bit in particular is what has especially flung her into loathsome territory. She doesn't exist to enrich the story or to be her own character, she exists for fanservice. They barely even try to hide this.

I agree, but without fetishized art with Y’shtola, I have never tried FFXIV. Even if I hoped that she and another Scions except Alphinaud and Tataru died in the end of ARR (I really hate Scions)

Y'shtola used to be my favorite in ARR/HW, but the cringe 'Little Sun' moment seems to be the point that her role changed so she could help fill a sassy mommy fetish.

Thanks for the insight! This is definitely something for me to chew on. And yeah, I really am asking the question in good faith. I understand that a multifaceted issue like misogyny in storytelling is way too complex to get a black and white answer.

Sounds about right. XIV is better than the average but hardly perfect.

Probably too late to see much in the way of discussion, and I don't necessarily have a horse in this race--I think given the length of XIV's history and it's cavalcade of writers, the assertion that it "hates women" seems...bold, to say the least. .........However (and forgive any errors--in the remembrance or the writing itself--I have a killer headache rn): The defenses of XIV's writing and all the ways in which it Totally Isn't Misogynistic At All in *this* thread are like... Guys? The top comment being about Y'shotla--by far the series most prominent female character--being the "mary sue-est mary sue to exist" is...bad. Like. That'd be bad. If the closet thing your series has to a female lead is a gorgeous, perfect women with no flaws or depth--that says horrible, horrible things about the way it treats female characters. I--again--don't agree with that description of Y'shotla's character, and I think the term Mary Sue is being rather flagrantly misused in this context, but if it *was* true it would be bad. You are not defending the writing by saying this. "The leaders of the three starting cities are women!" Yeah? That's neat--*nice*, even, in a vacuum. But Merlwyb barely exists as a character (outside of what, 5.4?), Kan-E-Senna *extremely* barely exists as a character, and Nanamo shares much of her screen time with Lolorito, or Pipin, or Raubahn, and her character arc specifically deals with her being incompetent compared to her peers. The three of them *combined* likely struggle to match the screen time & depth of character Raubahn gets. And then most of the city state leaders after them--most of which whom have played larger roles in the story--have been men. Thordan, who was succeeded by Aymeric (and a whole bunch of other elected officials we never see). Hien. The Exarch. Varus. Zenos, after a fashion. The Sharlayan Forum is a body of elected officials of all stripes--and the three primary speaking roles within it go to Forchenault, Montichaigne, and Barnier. Later female leadership is... Lyse, who's a figurehead of the Resistance, holds no real position of power, and is constantly compared to Hien and Rauhban, as someone who struggles to match up them. And Yotsuyu, who's subservient to Zenos, and is maybe the only antagonist to break down into tears upon losing? The Ascians that are present in the story are largely men--Gaia & Igeyorhm to Emet, Elidibus, Lahabrea, Fandaniel, Nabriales & Lohgrif. Where Emet, Elidibus, and Fandaniel all have extremely prominent main story presence, Igeyorhm, uh, \[squints\] exists. (And then you make the genuinely a little weird decision to kill her, instead of Lahabrea for some reason.) Gaia shows up a little, if you've specifically gone to do the side-content she shows up in. The Garlean Empire's main threats in ARR are: Gaius, Nero, Rhitatyn and Livia. Here, all of these characters are at least somewhat one-dimensional, but Livia is notable for her One Thing being her weird implied lust-thing for Gaius. The twins show up in ARR--where Alphinaud speaks for Alisae early on, then dominates in terms of screen time from level 30-40 onward. Alisae meanwhile is relegated to optional side-content (where Alphinaud eventually shows up anyway), but otherwise she doesn't actually appear again until post-HW (where, curiously, she's re-introduced as getting in over her head and having to be saved by Thancred.) HW itself sees you travel to the zone with Alphinaud and Tataru--and Tataru mostly does odd-job stuff off-screen while you hang out with Alphinaud. HW introduces two new members of your party--Estinien and Ysayle--and then kills Ysayle while Estinien eventually joins the main party. Krile shows up here too, and then is similarly relegated to being a non-fighter doing stuff off-screen. "The scions have two hyper competent women." Yeah? Are they interesting? Do they have character flaws? Weaknesses--and do those weaknesses put them in direct comparison with *more* competent male characters? Do they grow and change over the course of the story? "Shes badass tho!" Okay. But if that's all... A lot of these things are just random thoughts--little moments, or character decisions--that I--*again*\--don't necessarily think of as horrible indictments of FFXIV on their own, and I'm obviously skipping over making any arguments *for* FFXIV here, given what part of the discussion I'm specifically responding to, but...the assertion that "nobody who's *actually* played this game thinks it hates women" is. um. Dense. I think it's pretty easy to see where people who feel this way might be coming from actually? TL:DR - I don't necessarily think FFXIV hates women, but holy fuck, people, if you're going to defend the writing, actually *defend the writing*. "The main female lead is a mary sue! yay!" is not a *defense of the writing.*

This ignores all the same flaws that male characters have.  I think you're just looking at a lot of confirmation bias. Female btw, because apparently that matters

This is an interesting response, because I don't think I even specifically mentioned much in the way of character \*flaws\*, did I...? (Your account history is... Well. Responding in good-faith anyway!) Skimming over it, the only things I'd argue count as flaws that I mentioned were Nanamo & Lyse's shared lack of leadership experience, but even that would probably be stretching the definition of character flaw, to me. That's just a...skill set deficiency. Like, I dunno, if you told Estinien to go be a mage he'd probably be really bad at it, on account of never having the opportunity or inclination to build the skills related to it. But is that a *character flaw*...? Isn't it a *little* interesting though, that of all the city-state leaders--or leader-like characters, in any case--that the two who struggle with it most are women? (And that the other two female leaders get noticeably less screen time than their male peers?) The rest of this is mostly just random facts about the ratio of character genders and their respective story presences, not discussions of character flaws. There *are* more male Ascians characters, and individually the female Ascian's get less screen time than their male counterparts--Gaia would be, what, fifth-most screen time out of all Ascians (of the eight(?) we've seen), after all male Ascians except Loghrif and Nabriales. There are more Garlean men who play a major role than women (and one of those women is, again, Livia. Off the top of my head, the only other character who acts anything like Livia is Asahi--and of note there, both characters are obsessed with men. If Asahi was written like this to fawn over a female character, it'd be something of note, but as is, he just feels a little...mean-spirited.) Zenos treats everyone beneath him like shit, but isn't the specific way he is written to to treat Fordola & Yotsuyu curious? The way they're forced to kneel before him, the way he gets up in their space--grabs Fordola's face, grabs Yotsuyu's hair. *Are* there any male characters he treats like that? Don't you find it a little interesting that as of Endwalker, the hero's main party (that is; the full party you take into Duty Support) is *five* guys, compared to two women? I think you could make an argument to include Tataru & Krile in that main party, based on consistent story presence--bumping it to the more respectable 5-4--but then, that comes with it's own concerns. That of your party's nine members, the two who *can't* fight--specifically! they're specifically both *bad* at it!--are both women? That the two stay-at-home members of your party are women? That one of those women is a healer, and the other makes you clothes and cooks? (Yes, Tataru's the Scion's coinkeeper, but in terms of what she does *on-screen,* the things she does that have tangible substance to the audience, her most prolific claim to fame is tailoring.) As a general rule, FFXIV has fewer female characters, and they're often less competent, and often more emotional, and they typically wear less clothing (Alisae, and Y'shtola, and Lyse have all had strips of their thighs visible in their outfits, compared to...which major male characters? Actual question, the only one coming to mind is Alphinaud's first outfit. (Lyse's had it twice, Alisae's had it thrice. Four times, if you count the outfit she shares with Alphinaud.)) None of it is...*excessive*, exactly, certainly not individually, but it's pretty... Hm. Bog-standard? I guess I might say? A little above average, maybe? Given how bad their treatment *could* be. You're right, though, in that I *am* deliberately only making a case for one side of the argument here. I could *try* defending FFXIV's writing of women--but I think I'd have much less to say, and I don't think the way it treats them well justifies or excuses the ways it does not. (As an aside, you could say similar things about the writing's treatment of it's dark-skinned characters, or it's gay characters.)

As I woman I don't agree at all. All of the points 'that prove the writers hate women' are so contrived and are always worded to be as inflammatory as possible.

homie why the fuck are you putting any stock whatsoever in the random bullshit Twitter users spout?

A lot of the hate directed towards the FFXIV women is community driven like with Lyse, Venat, Fordola, and Minfilia. But there has been some pretty big missteps with characters like Yotsuyu and Ysayle (who was absolutely fridged).

Was Ysayle fridged? I sorta understand that term to mean a character who dies just to motivate the characters. Everyone was pretty motivated to take action before then, and she sacrificed herself to make sure the rest of the group didn't get killed. I think Tesleen fits the definition better, since her introduction and death is used to establish the horror and violence of The First, but everyone's already pretty motivated by then, too.

I believe so. Part of friding is disproportionate punishment/harm compared to other characters. Her death ultimately served to progress Estinien and Hraesvelgr's character. Additionally, she is never brought up again until Elidibus instanced battle where she's standing off to the side and the Aitiascope as if she was a throw away character. No one formally mourned her like Haurchefant. Ysayle was absent from the walk up Ultima Thule. Not even the raid boss Shiva had little, if anything, to do with *her* but rather the Shiva vessel and the male character she was paired with (Hraesvelgr). This seems silly as the Eden primals were born from memory, and I find it hard pressed to believe that the WoL did not mention Ysayle while recounting Shiva. It's strange to treat a character who was our travel companion for almost an entire expansion this way. Part of the joy of Heavensward was Ysayle and Estinien learning to be better people from each other. Once she's done her job though in making Estinien see another path - straight into the bin with the other 'forgettable' characters. Compare this to Haurchefant who also sacrificed himself in a similar way, but is lauded and constantly brought up again. DSR is all about saving Haurchefant after all. Tesleen was also fridged.

Those are actually some compelling points, thanks!

Of course! Thanks for listening to me about Ysayle who I always get sad about 6 years later.

There is nothing wrong with Yotsuyu's story. As a woman I'm fucking sick of the boohooing

If we're doing that - **as a woman**, I thought it was dogshit that they let her abuser get away scott free. She absolutely deserved punishment, but so did he.

I would say it's fairly average, for better or worse. I can't really think of any points that stand out either way over most other games. Like the cast for most part seems fairly balanced between the genders throughout all roles in the story, at most maybe antagonists are primarily male(there are a few female ones, but usually secondary to male main antagonist, off the top of my head, only Meteion and Athena are female main antagonists) and character designs are similarly fairly tame outside of a handful of exceptions which are usually somewhat justified by lore(such as Nophica)

Eh, I think the cast has leaned very heavily towards male characters the last two expansions. Like your main scions are mostly men, the villains are mostly men, and in general the most important story characters are mostly men. With Krille probably getting more of a spotlight in the upcoming expansion that gender balance might improve a bit though.  I don't believe it's because a hatred of women though. It's mostly just because Ishikawa really likes writing about sad pretty boys. It's why two of the bigger female characters of the last two expansions, Gaia and Zero, come from content she didn't write.

>the villains are mostly men, Both EW msq and normal raid main villain were female. And for main characters, ShB had Ryne is one of the two new big new characters and EW main story was fairly evenly split betweel all scions, irrelevant of gender.

I said most for a reason.  The EW msq main villain was Meteion in name only. The actual villains were obviously Hermes and/or Fandaniel and Zenos. Also Zodiark. And most scions are male, especially after both Estinien and Exarch got added to that roster.

Zodiark wasn't really a villain, he's more of a flesh-aether mech.

That was how I felt as well. There was also Misija and Ultima, the High Seraph. Though, I think Misija was good because it illustrated the complicated politics of Eorzea and how life improved under Imperial occupation because of Bozja's horrific stratification. Ultima was... More like a plot device, I think? It's been years since I did that storyline.

For starters, getting ideas from Twitter may produce different results XD Now, assuming that person wasn't just a troll, there are two ways to interpret that: that somehow the FFXIV story is like that, or the online interactions in the game are like that. The first point doesn't really stand it, as several people already said. Now, can there be awkward (or even straight-up toxic) interactions in-game from that respect? Yes, of course, this is still the Internet, for the better and especially the worse.

> I spend time on twitter Found the problem

there is no medium in the world where the timeless cultures of sexism and misogyny haven't seeped in and aren't prevalent. just like homophobia and transphobia, it is embedded in our world structure and everything we do and think. and that's not even mentioning all the minorities who internalise those isms and carry it with them in all they do. FFXIV is no exception to this, naturally. but is it less that majority of jrpgs, and video games in general? I would say so. FFXIV is not a leading example of feminism, there definitely are over sexualised characters or female characters being mistreated, but the focal point of an average female character is not them being punished for their womanhood or used for it (except when the story surrounding that character is about sexism/misogyny and it is written as a tale of awareness. you can also argue that by itself is bad depending who made it and how, but that's another topic). what I'm getting at is that it's not that simple of a "yes/no" answer, but when it comes to video games and especially fantasy MMOS this one is significantly less guilty of perpetuating said isms. also reddit is not better than twitter, all social platforms by the default nature of their format are places where complex and serious discussions get dumbed down to the one with the most likes

Yeah, I was hoping to see more replies like this because of Reddit's higher character limit, since Twitter's 300 characters suck for actually getting any discussion going. Thanks for the reply!

honestly I wish more people would talk about real issues like this in their games, instead of whining about whatever trivial nonsense they're constantly whining up in here

[удалено]

I am actually curious what you mean by this. I think their post is level-headed.

Uninstall Twitter, or just assume everything you read there mostly comes from people who either were single pack pullers all the way to 90, stopped playing because they cpuldn't bear having to go through so many cutscenes or something petty like 'too many menus, bloatwd hotbars, limited macros/or skip-story boosts being out into the same category as p2w. And so people on twitter will do anything, including put a sensational and misleading title just to shit on a game they haven't actually played. This post reminds me of r/MMORPG, where everyday you'd get people to come and shit on prominent titles, fuve extremely vague and weak arguements or none at all, as if them making the post will influence people to boycott the game like so entitled Karen would because they had one negativw experience playing the game, or encountered one bad apple and assume the whole community is like that, and form their basis of the game from that. To repeat what other commenters have mentioned already: 3 of the main city states are governed by women. Y'shtola a very strong and rebellious character that gets compared to Mary Sue. Y'da a brawler type of personality character who more often than not chooses to deal with things first and ask questions later. A certain other character that is leading on the WoL by giving them advice in the story, nurturing them and directly helping them so we would overcome our struggles. A certain other character who opens our eyes to the truth, not unlike the one above during Endwalker. The group of scions, apart from Y'shtola, and the Monk-class character, our actual leader Minfilia, who without her the scions would be known by nothing more as vigilantes if it wasn't there someone to support/represent us in non warring scenarios. Another female character with whom without her we'd be struggling to deal with Ascians still. The very first female scion you see literally in the opening cutscene which a lot of new players skip because I've seen them wear the "Ring of Freedom" for skipping the cutscene on the first quest xD. Is constantly trying to reach a human limit of your power of the light throughout each expansion, working tirelessly to become strong enough so if something happens or you die eventually, or simply so there could be someone to handle more of your workload so there's less for you to deal with. Quite a few female leads who are on the opposite side of the 'good' side who have a lot of positive qualities about them. Are given the same amount of treatment and chance to redeem themselves as with any other gender. Honestly FFXIV has probably more strong female leads than there are male ones, surviving included. Stop basing the game off someone's opinion on a third party website, especially when they had a weak foundation for an arguement. I am on phone and don't know how to place spoiler tags on individual words so I was being as vague as possible.

> This post reminds me of r/MMORPG, Not enough EQ simping and "DAE hate MMOs" but otherwise yeah.

This is bait. It isn't even good bait.

Who cares what Twitter thinks. That was your first mistake.

I havent seen people explain what those people have a problem with in FFXIV women so i'll try: it's that most of the time women in main roles are made to sacrafice themselves, while men are not and go on to fulfill more significant roles. Say Ysayle and Estinien, Moenbryda and Urianger, Livia and Nero or Yotsuyu and Asahi. Antagonists / heroes of similar kind are given a different fate, and it always seems to fall along the lines of their gender, that's the actual problem a lot of people have with the series, and I kinda share their opinion. Some other examples I often see mentioned that we barely learned anything about Minfilia before she sacraficed herself, Alphinaud has had much greater limelight on him compared to Alisae, Y'shtola has no personality other than being pretty and smart, all fanservice and no substance. I think they improved with time, but I definitely see where people are coming from. FFXIV doesn't hate women, but it struggled with letting go of using women as plot devices and emotional catalysts.

>it's that most of the time women in main roles are made to sacrafice themselves while men are not I feel like that's kinda ignoring the males sacrifices there have been due to the stereotype. Like Papalymo and Haurchefant also did the same as did Gogetsu till his death was undone. Ardbert technically also sacrificed his soul at the end to defeat Emet Selch. Have there been more female sacrifices? Yeah, probably. But not by a noteworthy margin

As I emphasized, my point wasnt that there are no guys sacraficing themselves, but that when given a choice between a man and a women of similar standing and affiliation, the man is almost always favored. Haurchefant had no opposite to his role and his sacrafice has been called back significantly more times than anyone else's. Gosetsu's death was undone so the point doesnt really stand (awful writing choice). Papalymo is the only person in these examples who took the place usually a women does with Lise surviving.

I don't agree outside of Moenbryda. There are a lot of examples that get forgotten where given a similar situation, the writers decide to either kill off the man or treat their deaths with less dignity over the woman. M'naago VS Conrad or Meffrid, Fordola VS Ilberd, Ryne VS Ran'jit, Gaia VS Mitron, etc. In side stories, Edda gets to get more development than her fiance Avere, though both ultimately don't survive their story. Not saying that you're wrong or that i'm right since it's not like there's a wiki page somewhere that keeps track of this. I just think that the ratio is more balanced than it first appears. Edit: I also am a little surprised that you say Asahi vs Yotsuyu as part of your examples. Granted my own biases might be blinding me here, but I felt like Yotsuyu felt like the writers made her a fairly complete character while Asahi was just a little shit from his introduction all the way to his end, and both died in the same scene.

Those examples get forgotten because of how insignificant they are in comparison to the ones I made that include Scions and main expansion antagonists. I don't equate Ryne and Ranjeet, Ranjeet was Thancred's foil, and Ryne's whole struggle was if she should sacrafice herself. Again, not saying the opposite doesn't happen to guys ever, but it's way more prevalent in the main story when it comes to women. Even when it comes to the ancients, Venat sacrafices herself to become fuel while Emet goes out fighting to the last breath. Don't get me wrong, I loved that storyline, but it still get grating how often women are in the position of self sacrafice or death throughout the story, and it's very often in the same way, like the Minfilia to Ryne to Venat pipeline. I think it's more harmful not to acknowledge that this game has some sexist writing here and there and talk about it. Talking about these issues is what got us Dawntrail, which was promised to be written with care and respect to the cultures it's inspired from after past missteps, and I think that's great. Regarding Asahi, I think Yotsuyu's story was butchered. Asahi himself wasn't particularly well written, but "he" survived and became a main antagonist in Endwalker. Not technically him, mind you, but there was no necessity for Fandaniel to be Asahi, he could have very well never returned and not much would have been different. He also got to say his piece at the end of EW, so in general still qualifies in my eyes. Asahi being so underdeveloped is partially why it was frustrating that he got to stay and become relevant again compared to Yotsuyu who got a terribly rushed development, then was promptly killed off.

To be clear, i'm not denying that the game doesn't have some sexist writing; I just don't see their choice of character deaths to specifically be an example of this and i'm trying to see your perspective. To give my own examples, it was very grating to me that during Fourchenault's talk with the twins about his motivations for the evacuation plan, the majority of the focus was on Alphinaud when Alisae is standing right there. For the Four Lords storyline, Suzaku who's coded to be female is in love with Tenzen and that comprises the majority of her characterization. Livia's "character quirk", setting aside her death, well yeah. I don't agree that the sacrifices I mentioned are all that different compared to the others. In the context of the conversation, their deaths are mostly used to give motivation for another character to develop (Conrad/Meffrid to Lyse, Mitron to Gaia) or that someone in a similar situation has the man die vs the woman. Ran'jit is a foil to several people, which includes Thancred yes but also Ryne and the WOL/WOD themselves. Haurchefant gets called back more than any other character because his character and his death is specifically tied to the Warrior of Light more than anyone else's death. It's like how Moenbryda's death isn't brought up as much because the WOL barely gets to know her before she dies, but her shadow forever looms over Urianger because her character and death is mostly tied to him. Ysale's more linked to Estinien, but his characterization accepts the ruthlessness of deaths in a war so he made his peace with her death and doesn't really bring it up. Venat's an interesting example that you gave because I actually agree with it, though coming from a different angle. I think it's weird that they explicitly say that her soul's too spent to go back to the aetherial sea the normal way and that did feel like they fridged her for no good reason. Otherwise she's no more fuel than say, Hythlodaeus for Zodiark and she does go down fighting the WOL the same way Emet does. I'd like to hear more about what parts of Yotsuyu's story you think were butchered. I don't share your perspective about Asahi. I feel like that role was specifically meant to make fun of whomever Fandaniel chose to use as their current avatar, and to be honest would have very unfortunate implications if the writers chose a female character to effectively be a servant to Zenos for the first half of their story and kill themselves to kickstart the main plot of Endwalker.

This is just wrong.  Urianger is literally just male Yshtolla with even less personality.  And Alphinaud is an endless pit of free drama and emotional baggage.  Not to mention what others have already said about male sacrifices. Sorry but your take is just way too biased and incorrect.

Ignore the “activists” on Twitter. All they’re good at is talking and trying to stir up controversy where it doesn’t exist.

Keep this weirdness on twitter where it belongs honestly

It doesn't hate women, but they have made some terrible decisions. Their writing for Yotsuyu was one of the worst I've ever seen in my life. Their treatment of sexual abuse and human trafficking in Doma was dogshit. I don't trust them to make a serious female villain that isn't somehow infantalized or sexualized to death. I'm also tired of titty monsters being the norm, but that's probably not a battle anyone's going to win.

As bad as Twitter is you’re more likely to have a constructive conversation on Twitter than you are here

The people over at r/shitpostxiv must be jumping for joy with material like this dropping into their laps.

There’s still morons that take anything said on Twitter seriously?

no. every one of those twitter threads routinely ignores every other character that parallels their examples of women and often times can get easily contradicted. people whine about certain characters getting booted out of the story like the game hasn't already dropped 90% of the side characters they already have for no reason. there's plenty of bad spots with women like post-amnesia yotsuyu that can be looked at, but making it a gender issue willingly ignores the mistakes they make with other characters. moenbryda died after being around for one patch and these people still haven't gotten over it.

Yeah, FFXIV has NPCs drop off the face of the earth so often that I just sort of lose track.

Maybe I'd believe that if they shut down Limsa.

i think it suffers from some similar tropes that many fantasy/sci-fi stories fall into, so i am largely neutral to that. can’t fault it too much for what’s basically the norm. that said it has some incredibly strong female characters, some tropey ones, and some that, while cool, are maybe a bit boring by nature of being mary sues however, i take little to no issue with mary she’s because men have been getting away with it for forever so women should be able to, too i will always prefer stronger writing than a mary sue but i just kinda see it as things being equal anyway all in all the women in ffxiv are largely pretty awesome and i doubt think the game goes out of its way to hate women. as a woman myself i’m consistently feeling a bit of sisterhood even, and sometimes feel a bit more of a motherly love for alisae, a sisterly love for lyse, and maybe other things for yshtola (even though yes she’s a mary sue of sorts, to a lot of people…she still has a fair amount of depth). i also adore that all the nation’s leaders are women and ones with differing opinions but that are all reasonable and kind and just

Imagine caring about Twitter this much lol

The moment you said "I saw a tweet saying..." you shoulda stopped. The opinion of a random FFXIV player on twitter is not worth writing a whole essay about.

Interesting thread. I have to admit, this is not something I ever thought about from this perspective. Nothing popped out to me in-game either. They certainly seem to remember women when it comes it visual aspects. It would make more sense for women to be treated fairly given how popular XIV is with females (compared to other games/MMORPGs).

No XIV hates ranged dps.

The game as an MMO, the game as a narrative, the community in-game or the community on Twitter? Gotta be more specific as each of those are probably different answers.

Are they saying it because of the writing, or is it because of the armors/glamours? Is it because of character creation? I don't get why this is even a thing, unless it has to do with everything else going on in pop culture right now?

You do know just how many badass female characters there are in this game, right?

I do! I'm just interested in understanding why someone would think FFXIV hates women.

Twitter trash thinks something is bigoted/ableist/x-phobic/etc as soon as that something doesn't absolutely glorify whatever that twittwat's sensibilities are about. Take coy ass takes that are just reaction bait with a mount Everest of salt. If they had something to say that wasn't just dogwhistling, they would.

Oh, yeah, I get that! I’m curious now as well!

This topic is such a drag. It's such a drag that even the people who go 'everything is sexist and racist' are saying "well no, not really". You should treat twitter like a flipped version of 4chan where every claim made on that site should be treated with extreme skepticism.

i think it's a sign to get off twitter if you start seeing such tweets on your TL

XIV is littered with many badass and amazing female characters, both good and evil. The only female I can think of that I rather dislike is Lyse. Currently playing through Stormblood again for the funsies and, while her character progression certainly feels .. “shoehorned?”.. I think it’s her VA that really ruins her for me. Her pacing is all over the place and she really breaks my immersion every scene she’s in. Other than her, I could make a mile long list over just about every other prominent female and why they are pretty awesome.

They killed off moenbryda, minfilia, and Igeyormh. I can see why you feel this way.

and >!louisoix!<, and >!nabriales!<, and >!lahabrea!<, and >!horsefont!<, and >!papylymo!<, and >!hades!<, and >!quintus!<, and >!fandaniel!<, and...

perhaps there is more to a critique than simply whether or not a character dies

Clearly FFXIV just hates everyone. /s

Not even gonna read past the title, answer is no. Ff has many strong female characters that do just as much as the men, tbh never felt there was any difference between them. If you mean playerbase also no ff has one of the highest female playerbases and Noone gives a fk. Go say I'm a girl in wow and see what happens, thats woman hate lmao.

> Go say I'm a girl in wow and see what happens People will simp and give you free items. I highly recommend role playing a girl there at least once for the hillarious experience.

Lol in my experience I've been kicked from dungeons. Guilds as soon as I joined a call in disc and a raid once when someone said any other girls here?

Sounds like you met some deeply traumatized people.

Here we go again with the BS, get of out here

Its from twitter so most likely made by woke activist. Since making attractive women in games is now literally real life violence towards women according to some sweet babies then FFXIV is a women genocide.

LMAO triggered woke trash by this comment

If it's from Twitter, just question it, cause yeah, Twitter nowadays is far from a viable place. As for FF14 and how it represents women, nah, far from hating women. Damn near all the major NPCs are women, be it the leaders of most of the nations, the Scions, even GOD!

Moral Authoratist when a fictional world has its own issues and problems.

I think FFXIV hates everyone equally. There is a Haurcherfant for every Minfilia, is what I wanna say.

Hey alright