#fitting a mold

[andy-clutterbuck]

The Ones Who Live - 1x01 - Years

[redysetdare]

Some of you people need to stop acting so shitty over aspec stereotypes because it's starting to get to a point that you are just shitting on the people who experiences match the stereotypes and it's hurting a lot more aspects than it's helping.

[hereismybadpoetry]

Freshman year came

I felt small

Big school

Big personalities

A shadow

I wanted to be memorable

To make a mark

I willed myself to become clay

And learn to shape myself

Me

The potter

Me

The artist

Me

The scriptwriter

Me

The actor

I scraped the surface of group after group

I was clay

To fit any mold

But I could never find the perfect shape

[charcarts]

babifies your bacon feathers

[stuckinapril]

when you accept that the unique things about you are the best things about you. when you fall in love w your uniqueness and become obsessed w it and reject conformity. when you think for yourself and draw your own conclusions and adore that you don’t perfectly fit into a mold. that’s when you’ll know true peace

[the-darkestminds]

Elriels suggesting that shipping Gwyn with Azriel is disrespectful to real SA victims is without a doubt the worst take I have ever seen in my life lol

“Stop shipping Gwyn with ANY man without her consent”

LMFAO WHAT SHE AINT REAL 😭 how tf do I get her consent?? Do I need a permission slip from SJM??

[unexpectedbrickattack]

Based off of this: please understand my vision....

[tin-cant]

Just remembered in the early episodes of c2 talks Sam's response to someone asking if it was difficult playing a girl was basically "no they're the same as us". Which is in some ways true but also Veth wound up being like, the one character that I think you could under no circumstance genderswap and have her arc have the same effect.

[sonknuxadow]

ummm . *drops this here and runs away*

[fromtheseventhhell]

Arya and Dany stans: *discuss the likelihood that they'll have a positive relationship given their parallels, foreshadowing, status as key characters, and being two of George's favorite characters*

Stansas: Is this Sansa shade?

I think it's hilarious that Stansas got mad at me for (accurately) pointing out that they accuse Arya and Dany stans of being motivated by Sansa hate simply because...we get along and like both of them lol. The idea of them getting along is about their characters and has nothing to do with Sansa. Just because they pit Dany and Arya against each other for Sansa's sake doesn't mean we're motivated by the same thing. Are there some conversations that bring up Sansa + Arya's strained relationship? Absolutely, that isn't baseless in the books considering they're written as foils and George has already said they have issues they need to work out. The "Stark sisters 4ever" fantasy they have is just that, and it's funny we never see this same energy for Arya being turned into a prop for her sister 🤔. Sisterhood didn't stop Sansa from siding with Joffrey, telling Cersei that Arya was a traitor (even though she had no idea where Arya was), or calling Arya unsatisfactory when she thought that she was dead so why are we supposed to pretend it's an all-important factor when discussing Arya's potential relationships with other characters?

[seenfull]

[autumnslance]

Normally I'd agree many Final Fantasy games have rather young protagonists. It's because they're usually single-player JRPGs made with the assumption of younger players, and like most Young Adult media, create characters that cater to that, even if it ends up with teens running the world and fighting in wars. And for many players, the first time playing these games is in childhood/adolescence/very young adulthood. So it's YA anime.

Final Fantasy XIV does not fall into that same mold, despite the "Teen" rating for legal and distribution purposes.

The majority of the FF14 cast, including the bulk of the main characters, are between 20 and 40 years old (the Scion Archons, Ishgard Elf Husbands). Many other characters are between 40 and 80 (Ishgard's Counts are all late middle aged to elder dads/grandpas, Gaius is mid 50s, Jehantel and Ran'jit are elderly, all still active). The younger characters (especially with any authority or special position) like the Leveilleur twins, are actually outliers. And the youth of the characters between 16 and 20 years old tends to be plot relevant, where that inexperience and naivety causes problems and drives story (Nanamo's arc at the end of ARR into HW, Alphinaud and the Crystal Braves, Ryne's determination of self in ShB, etc).

Characters have a variety of appearances; some characters in the same age ranges look very different. Varis is younger than X'rhun but Varis's model shows the stress and disagreeableness of his life a lot more than the RDM trainer's. Cid's in his mid-30s but with the beard looks older--and without it he has a baby face (hair color doesn't matter, cuz they do keep the anime trope of "everyone's got white or silver hair"). Lalafell are designed to be anime-cute halflings so it's hard to tell their adult ages even if they've got facial hair like grandfatherly Papashan. The pad'jal of course look like kids, but the youngest main pad'jal is A-Ruhn in his late teens; all the others are adults stuck in adolescent bodies. E-Sumi is a few hundred years old. Kan-E uses various methods to look older so other leaders and people from outside Gridania will take her seriously as an adult. The padjal introduced in the StB WHM quests is a child, and that's the plot; she's not in charge of anything, or has any particularly advanced-for-her-age skills. She's just a kid having a really rough time.

This inability to determine age by looking and assuming isn't just due to limits of the game engine and character creation options; it reflects real life. I met my work team for the first time in person recently; one person looked older than I know them to be, thanks to months of stress and health issues. While all of them were shocked to remember I'm in my 40s as according to them, I "look much younger". Most people are actually pretty bad at guesstimating ages based on appearance, due to the variety of folks' lives.

Speaking of kid characters, many of the children we interact with, like the Doman Adventurers, are between 12 and 14 and act much younger. Khloe has this going on too, with her age "corrected" to 13 (when previously listed as 10), but she acts way younger to me. Most of the actual child characters are treated like children, and it's not until they get to 14-16 (Honoroit, Leveva) that we start to see them treated like maturing adolescents and having some rsponsibilities, but still young and prone to the kind of choices one expects of less experienced and more emotional youth.

As a MMO, FF14's primary audience is actually adults; teens do play the game, but also age up with it if they keep playing. If a 15 year old began playing with ARR's release, they're in their mid-20s now. Having a primarily adult cast, and treating child characters like children, and adolescents like young people figuring out how young adulthood works, makes sense for this game.

FF14's time bubble is also part of the issue; a developer tool to keep it so they don't have to worry too much about character ages, new models so often, or how long things take in game. Timelines are then intentionally left malleable for the players' benefits, to create our own stories and determine how long things take for our WoLs and their tales. Some folks have their stories pass in real time, some compress it to a year per expac, some expand it out even longer. So the ages the characters have listed in the lorebooks and rarely in game (which is then reflected in online resources), is a starting baseline. Personal headcanons as always should be applied (including changing around some character ages to fit one's own story if necessary).

Also, FF16, made by the same team, has a brief prologue/tutorial section where the main trio is between 10 and 15, guided/trained by adult characters, experience the inciting incident trauma--and then we spend the majority of the game with the main cast in their 20s and 30s. The game also has a mature rating, featuring some sexual situations, lots of violence, and stronger language than other FF games. It's made for adults, and its cast reflects that.

So it is a matter of audience expectations; for a MMO, you're going to have an older and aging player base, and the varied ages of the cast reflect that, as do their varied appearances and experiences as adults. The young characters are treated closer to how their youth should be; still with respect for those in positions like Nanamo, but also prone to errors due to inexperience that drive story. In other FF titles, which were made to be more YA-focused, a teen and young 20s cast were treated much differently. But even in the single-player FF titles, if they are made with adult players in mind, their cast and stories likewise reflect that.

[looking4thatqueersubtext]

im so fucking sick of seeing jude depicted as a thin ass woman like NO.

it's stated multiple times through out the books that not only is she muscular because of all her swordfighting training but she also doesn't have that thin frame and that is exactly what sets her apart from the fae (and part of what makes her beautiful to cardan like hellooooo?). she has curves and muscle and scars. all of that is so so so important to her character.

[swedenis-h]

Day 6 Prompt: Womanhood & Coming of Age

( @claudiadelionlac )

[stinkythehutt]

half formed thought but something about how the side of the fandom that loves obi-wan and dislikes anakin views obi-wan as simultaneously the most powerful and talented & the whumpiest most in need of care man ever, unconsciously and unintentionally mirroring anakin’s own warped view of him

[quietbirdee]

practicing his new hair! (also it was very strange to draw him w/o gloves sjldf)