Random Roar: Stark Raving Mad

One day I was riding my chocobo around in Final Fantasy XIV, because it’s fun to ride everywhere rather than just teleport all the time.  Cheaper too.  Granted, I don’t have to save my money, I’m not exactly hurting for gil when the game practically throws it at you for every little thing you do.  “You did your Duty Roulette today?  Here, have some gil,” it says.  “And you were Adventurer in Need.  Have some extra gil.  Wait, that was your third Duty Roulette this week?  Here, have some more gil!  Hey, that was your fifth dungeon overall this week?  More gil!  You also get 50 gil per enemy killed!  And you get even more gil because I’ve given you all this gil already!  Money, money, money!  Take it all!  We’re begging you, please take it!”  Honestly, why are real money traders still in business when legitimately earned gil is practically falling from the sky?

Anyway, I was running around Eorzea, and I saw someone named Linoa Heartilly.  Yes, “Linoa”.  Putting aside the fact that it’s a little uncreative to derive your name from a character in the same franchise, I honestly found it a little silly and I get a chuckle every time I see that particular name.  Linoa Heartilly.  I don’t know why.

Apparently I’m not supposed to be amused, I’m supposed to be pissed off by this.  On a nearly weekly basis, there is a topic on some message board somewhere about how bad and uncreative names are the bane of Final Fantasy XIV.  Apparently, if you give yourself a name inspired by popular media, you’re automatically a bad player, and no amount of damage mitigation, enmity control or proper skill rotation will convince people otherwise.

If you ask me, that’s bullshit.  Who cares if a player names themselves after something or someone else?  Granted, pop culture is fluid and changing and you might be in the right frame of mind to play Rick Grimes today, but five years from now you might regret it unless that’s actually your name and you really want to play yourself.  One thing I’ve seen a lot lately in these topics is that Game of Thrones is specifically called out.  Apparently, there are so many Starks in Final Fantasy XIV that it traumatizes and angers players, they see red, they throw tantrums and then go cry in the corner.  I imagine it must be incredibly painful for them to watch Iron Man, thanks to the titular character’s alter ego, Tony Stark.  And I really hope that these players don’t meet up with the thousands of real people who possess Stark as their surname, because those Starks might have to seek legal protection from the hordes of the self-proclaimed Eorzea name police.

And can we stop with the anti-Japanese hatred for just one moment, please?  Calling someone with a Japanese name a “weeaboo” brings another seven letter word to mind: asshole.  In fact, a few ass words come to mind.  An asshole who asserts this is happening because he assumes that everyone he encounters is from the United States and is of Anglo-Saxon origin.  Well, I have news for you people: in the melting pot of the United States, and of Canada as well, cultures from all parts of the world are represented and it’s one thing to ask that they speak our language.  That’s a given, we can’t learn fifty languages overnight just to accommodate everyone, it’s a lot easier for them to learn one language so that they can communicate with us.  They chose to live here, them’s the breaks.  It’s another thing entirely to ask them to give up everything that they are.  In the mid-1800s, Irish orphans were allowed to keep their names when they were adopted into French families in Quebec.  But I suppose that’s “different” because Irish names like Molly and Patrick are “normal” and Japanese names like Hikaru and Sakura aren’t?

I admire the arrogance, the ginormous balls it must take to declare certain names off limits because they’re not “normal” or “creative” enough.  And you know, with some names I can kind of agree.  If you name yourself something like Murderstorm, you had better have the skills to back that up because that’s not a name you should be allowed to give yourself from the start, that’s a name you earn.  A level 1 character named Killaman Slaughtermaster is intolerably arrogant.  A level 50 character named Killaman Slaughtermaster who can single-handedly bring down whole armies might still be arrogant, but he has earned that name.  If you name yourself Haruna Sato, that should not be any different than if you name yourself Emily Smith.

I suppose technically speaking, we’re all naming ourselves wrong.  Square-Enix went to the bother of coming up with lore for the races, and it turns out that my Seeker of the Sun Miqo’te character’s name is more consistent with a Keeper of the Moon Miqo’te, but in a series that has let players get away with naming protagonists whatever they wanted, I don’t see the problem with carrying over that practice into the fourteenth main instalment of the series.  So I’m a Seeker of the Sun named Sara Tyger instead of something like X’Taloa Ohlo or whatever my character should’ve been called.

But while we’re on the subject of naming, if you see a person playing a Midlander Hyur character named Stark and you have a problem with that, then you’re doubly an asshole because it actually obeys the lore for the Hyur race and chances are, this player used the game’s own name generator.

I am aware that some players name themselves objectionable things.  There’s a screen shot floating around the Internet of someone who had to change their name because Ass Cancer wasn’t allowed, and I saw someone once with the name Reaper Blind, which is close enough to “rape her blind” that I’m surprised he’d gotten away with it for as long as he did.  It takes a special kind of immature to come up with names like those and if you’re more worried about someone named Jaime Lannister than you are someone named Kunt Puncher, then maybe the problem isn’t with them.  The problem is with you.

So the next time you see someone with a name you find objectionable, ask yourself if this is because their name really is objectionable or if you’re just being an asshole.  This is Sara Tyger on Coeurl, logging off.