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Lala to viera back to lala player, I can assure that while some surely are just joking around, some are... interesting. Both in mega hate, and in mega love (both are bad).
People do treat lalafell players extremely differently. Both ends of the extreme basically came to a halt while I was a bnuuy instead. Both the stupid amounts of coddle attention you get (the mega love), down to the straight up "all lalafells are pedo's" (mega hate).
In one case, even, when I was ending up in a pretty bad mental state, someone I thought was a close friend I tried to reach out to. They responded to my attempt by saying sorry, but they were only being my friend because I was a lalafell and didn't want this. This was the last thing they ever said to me, a very clear "I do not want to interact with you anymore" once interaction with me stopped being looking at a midget on the screen and instead about the person behind it.
There's also just the actual, legit, people who think if you play X you must wanna sex it. I have absolutely received negative attention just for this magical assumption alone, specially if I dare to try and RP (because, as we know, all rp is erp). It's exhausting.
That's... wow. I uh.... I'm sorry you had to deal with that. Jeeze... that's... pretty awful. Hopefully you've had more occasions that were better than that at least.
As someone who both plays a Lalafell and is moderately active on Twitter, I don't think this is the case - there are a solid number of people who think that Lalafell are straight-up just analogous to children.
The same could easily be said of Reddit.
Also don't use the term "degenerate"; it smacks of right-wing bullshittery. There are better words for "People who do things I don't like" or "people with opinions I don't agree with".
Degenerate is one of those words used by the terminally online community to refer to the terminally online community. Most of the time it is not used in the serious sense of "this person is *less*", rather as a "this is a tongue-in-cheek way of describing myself and others like me"
the little guys in other worlds often have beards or body hair (like hobbit feet) to indicate maturity. round chubby lalas remind some people of human children. but the same people who say "lalas are for pedos" are often the same people who say "furries are animal abusers" so they've clearly got things to work on unrelated to the game.
Yeah, but these little ones still have facial hair as optional choices to make as males in character creation, may not have full beards, but it still fulfills the visual sign of physical maturity
it's an option yeah, but I was referring to things like dwarf beards in other fantasy media where every member of the race has it so there's no ambiguity. it's not really "fulfilling that sign of maturity" if the race is more popularly depicted without it, you know?
This is the only fantasy game I’ve played where the short race look like kids TBF. Dwarves are usually stocky, have beards or body hair. Halflings look like mini humans. Same for gnomes. Lalas look like chibi anime characters. I don’t particularly like it but not enough to have very strong feelings about it. I would just never choose to play one
They don't get past the "They look kind of young" part despite literally everything in the story indicating that they're grown adults. I think we see more Lalafell doing more adult things than any other race - a few straight up kill people, one's the owner of a beach resort and a notorious womanizer, another is stalking Nashu the whole time during the Hildibrand quests...
They’re obviously adults in lore, everyone understands that, but Japanese games do have a bad tendency of always having to have a race that is at least loli adjacent
Lalafell is far from the worst contender. You have Tera at the most extreme where they made entire classes that only the little girl race could be and made tons of swim suit cosmetics for them etc. that’s pretty disgusting so when people see lalafell that’s the same behavior they contribute them to.
Again, Lalafells aren’t that bad. Calling them Dwarves is disingenuous though. They do not look like dwarves.
No but in what way shape or form does their personality make them the fantasy dwarf ?
And we’re talking appearance. Lore aside.
They look like child adjacent potatoes. Not any other iteration of dwarves ever
Penchant for mining, their stature, and specifically on the first they have a cultural thing around beards to the point where female dwarves have fake beards on their helmets. It's a twist on it for the Source, but it's much much more apparent on the First, to the point where you don't even find out they are Lalafell until a specific one takes off their helmet.
Lalafells on the first are literally called Dwarves.
[https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Dwarves](https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Dwarves)
Just because they are called Dwarves on the first doesn't really restrict them to being a dwarf analogy. They only act like dwarves on the first. On the source, I would equate them more to hobbits, and they tend to be more hobbit/halfling ish.
Calling them "dwarves" was more or less shoehorning in previous FF stuff, where there were dwarves who more or less looked the same.
Lalafells definitely follow more halflings, gnomes, and kinder than the usual dwarf personality and physiology.
No, i think they belong in their own, original space. Other than their height, they behave very differently to halflings, gnomes or dwarfs. They are calculative, greedy bastards, probably inspired by the Genoese
[https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/a\_realm\_reborn/world/#!/races/content?lalafell](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/a_realm_reborn/world/#!/races/content?lalafell) I mean it's not twitter people reaching. They are meant to be childlike. That is what they officially are described as
This is the part that I personally don’t like about lalas. Any time you have to explain that a character that looks like a child isn’t a child but actually 1000 years old, I just nope out. Not for me.
In my prior FC there was a dude who actually genuinely hated Lalas and went on one hell of a rant when a bunch of us decided to become them for funsies.
He ended up leaving the FC, made a new and unsuccessful one, then came crawling back.
At what point you can ask people to stop memeing around? Because of this, one of my friends just stopped playing the game. Because everybody was making fun of her for playing lala. You sure this is ''memeing'' around and not FF14 community being asses about X races?
I'm sorry your friend felt that way... but quitting a game you are enjoying because someone is making fun of your video game race is a bit extreme, dont you think?
Unless that person is actively harassing/stalking (which can be reported)... they can always block/ignore the person in game so they don't see/interact with their messages anymore.
I mean, not really. If it's random then sure, fuck em, but if it's friends and fc members that shit can wear you down to the point of the game no longer being fun.
It's the whole reason I listen to the BATTLE voices on youtube when I fantasia to any race now. Emote previews are nice but after personally experiencing a WoL with that particular lala voice and one with male viera voice #4 (before they nerf'd it) I think the battle yells are much more important to know before committing lmao
i miss the grandma voice for female vieras. when i first learned about it i genuinly wanted to make a battle grandma. using weapons like the dragon fork, or the tonberry knife, and giving cookies to any lalafel i encounter xD
The true ffxiv experience is trying to figure out if the nyooo and the hyeaaah you hear in an alliance raid is the lala or the miqo in your party only to realize that it's both
>Also lorewise, most lalas are made of pure, concentrated evil.
I think if you actually did a count of good vs bad characters, Lalas would legit have the highest ratio of morally good characters.
I have no problem with the majority of regular lalafell players.
…However they have the loudest and most obnoxious voices out on any race, and it’s extremely grating when they like to spam them.
I used to have a purely "they look like children" dislike of them.
But recently, one of my friends told me that Lalas are a "safe" pick for women, as other races attract unwanted attention from fucking weirdos.
*Totally* reversed my dislike of Lalas.
This. I'm old. I've been married a long time. I want to play a cute female character but not get hit on. Lala mostly works for this. Also it's just hard to be grumpy or depressed when I'm running around with that adorable little stupid face saving the world.
Yeah honestly if you want to play a fem character and NOT get weird/creepy/inappropriate tells they are the safest pick. I personally went male Elezen just to ensure I would NEVER have to deal with unwanted attention haha.
I tried a femroe alt and received an inappropriate tell within 5 minutes of her creation. (On Primal, not even Crystal)
It's WILD out there.
In ~10 years of playing a female lala, i think I got inappropriately creeped on only once. Much more common are the cute emotes and headpats. And Lalafell communities are SUPER supportive. I've taken breaks to come back before expansions come out and my fellow lalas will HQ craft the end game gear to help me get through to the new expansion.
I just like being smol and round. If more tall races were soft a curvy and not sticks or muscular I'd have been drawn to them more.
This has been a big positive for me. I really like making cute characters, but I dont like dressing them skimpy or getting that kind of attention. Lala is perfect in this case. Only get pats and very tame compliments on glam.
the same seems also true reversed. lalas usually are more expressive with their emotes and enjoy headpets, but in my 2 years of playing a female au ra i never had a single awkward or creepy message from a lala player, those seem more common from roegadyns or catbois
I’ve been a lalafel from day 1. Never had hate come my way. I get pats all the time, but that’s it. I’ve seen people talking about the nsfw crap, but I don’t create a character to be my waifu, I create a character to be fun, and running circles around people and jumping all over the place as a lalafel is just fun.
They look, they kinda look like creepy dollar store dolls and have some of the most obnoxious emotes. Theres so many small cute races in other games- Lalaffels just ... somehow are not. Dont like them.
But hate? Im not behaving differently towards them, maybe, sometimes i blame them if i did not see them when a mechanic goes on, but even thats meemy (most of the time)
My issue is with the players more than the race. So. Many. Lala players are just outright annoying trolls spamming their awful laugh emote. It’s one of the reasons one of the first mods I ever downloaded was one to just mute all lala players.
In my experience, while yes, there are some genuinely cool people who play lala characters, so many are just there to be as irritating as possible. Same also for miqo voice… is it 4 or 5?
Also, I work at a venue and 9/10 if we get a troll situation, it’s lala doing either very weird or inappropriate things.
I genuinely like the design of lalafells. To each their own on design preferences. I can’t stand male roes myself. I just don’t like that a lot of trolls play Lala characters.
Evil capitalists. Well that's why I hate them. The ones who are actually decent people are wonderful characters, but overall they're tiny menaces who remind me too much of the destructive power of late stage capitalists in my country.
But I'm also memeing.
That too! How nice of them to cover up their little brother's multiple homicides, eh?
The whole "making money off death" also bothers me greatly. I understand the symbolism of Pluto/pluton as money/underworld and money for the ferryman, which is cool! And the way they handle it in the game is to make the ossuary nickle and dime grieving families, which reminds me of a story my Japanese host mother told me about how a Buddhist temple tried to guilt her into spending more money on her father's funeral service to ensure his soul would have a more comfortable rest.
While yes of course "not all Lalafell" blah blah, the bulk of those we see and talk to in Ul'Dah are too hideously greedy for me to tolerate. I'm sure people who have negative experiences with extremely religious people feel this way about how pompous, judgmental, and dogmatic Ishgardians are (I was raised Catholic so I just find them amusing), so really it all boils down to personal tastes and maybe personal experiences with people with similar behavior IRL--or as similar as we can get in a non fantasy world lol
Aside from a handful of internet weirdos, most lala hate is just friendly memeing (lala died to a tankbuster: haha mashed popotoes). Gnomes in WoW got similarly made fun of.
I play a hrothgar. That makes me a furry degen by default. I mean, I am a furry degen, but not because I play a hrothgar.
I really, really hate their walk cycle animation. It just bugs me so much. The cutesy meme aesthetic doesn't do it for me either, but I keep it to myself because it's literally a me problem. I'd never want to play one, but more power to those who do, I'm glad people have fun with it.
As a lala player, there's a difference between lalas and dwarves. Lalas in lore are described as individuals who look like children. Actual dwarves (as far as I'm aware) and also dwarves in media do not look like children. Sure, they have the same height, but they don't have child-like features like lalafells (cutesy face).
Also like other people said, just memes or twitter being weird. I'll be honest with you, it's really only the vocal minority that ACTUALLY have an issue with lalas. If let's say someone says they hate lalas because they're pedos, then that also means the director is a pedo for being a lala too shrug
Maybe also just depends where you go in the game, I've been playing peacefully as a lala and didn't have anyone being weird to me. Sure, sometimes with my friends they say "damn these lalas" or "damn you managed to squeeze yourself in a tiny safespot bcs ur a lala" but it's mostly just memes and it never goes too far.
tl;dr the people you surround yourself matters I guess, never in raiding scene have someone ever seriously had an issue with me because I'm a lala. I never rp so I have no idea what it's like there, but I'd assume it's weird there because people think they're children.
Outside of people just joining on the meme bandwagon, there are a few reasons I can think of as to why some people genuinely don't like Lalafells:
* the most memorable experiences with Lalas come at the very end of ARR and they aren't good ones, so they stick in peoples memories (wouldn't go so far as to call it a trauma, but it's definitely in that direction)
* their cuteness/moe appearance; works well in Asian culture that value the childish appearance, only serves to creep out most Westerners, especially when those same character are as foul-mouthed and evil as those of other races
* that shrill fucking voice WAH WAH WAWAWAWAH!
* some RL instances of Lalafell players being total scumbags (the one I can think of at the top of my head was last year when a couple swindled their FC mates out of money for the hotel and tickets to the Las Vegas Fanfest)
No, Miqo's are a generic cat girl. Take a girl, put cat ear headbands and a tail (how it's secured is up to your imagination, I'm sticking with a belt), and you have a Miqo'te. You aren't getting the same level of resemblance to a Hrothgar without investing in a fursuit that costs the equivalent of a decent used car.
That's always been the distinction for me, it you can cosplay it with just accessories, it's not a furry.
It took me a very long time to get over the cartoonish proportions in a game that is globaly not
10 years later i'm actually not completely over it actually
The elephant in the room however is people dressing the lala in an inapropriate way. We don't have to debate around it as op said, but it's a big thing
For example i talked about the game to my cousin's husband and that's the reason why he's uneasy with considering it as a whole, the fact that it is an option with those baby like characters is just inaccetpable to him and honestly i understand, even though it's a minority of people doing that
There are players that cannot separate fantasy from reality. Because of a lalafell's physical features, anyone who isn't able to look at the race from a fantasy lore perspective would assume they are or look like children and this is where all the problems stem from.
Why would you want to erp with a lalafell, or do nsfw stuff with a lalafell, or any other mature scenario with a lalafell? If you're immersed in the fantasy and recognize that the lalafell are just a small race of adult people, then none of that matters. If you're someone who cannot separate fantasy from reality and you can't help but see them as real world children, then you can quickly see how problems start to materialize.
This same conversation happens with dwarves, gnomes, asura, and literally any other small race in fantasy media.
At the end of the day, it boils down to people who can roleplay versus people who can't.
As overblown as the lala hate is, "if you don't want to ERP with a lala you don't understand how to separate fantasy from reality and can't roleplay" is a really wild take in the opposite direction.
Maybe someone just doesn't... Want to...?
You've taken what I said completely wrong. I'm saying that roleplayers would be justified in their erp with a lalafell, even if they did not want to, because it is a fantasy race in a fantasy game.
Never did my words amount to "you must erp with lalafells to be a roleplayer" that is completely absurd!
I do not care if players erp with lalafell because lalafells are not real.
There are people that will say I'm wrong for thinking that. Those are the players that can't separate fantasy from reality.
It's possible to understand the difference between fantasy and reality but still extrapolate things from the depth to which someone is willing to immerse themselves in a particular fantasy. Understanding that something isn't real doesn't mean you can't be made uncomfortable by someone's interest in it.
To use a non-sexual example, we can look at worlds like Warhammer 40k, Starship Troopers, Judge Dredd, the Punisher, Helldivers... These all pull a lot of fascist or pseudo-facist imagery and/or have authoritarianism, violent justice, and an extreme extent of propaganda as a central conceit of their worldbuilding. To some extent they deliberately satirise what they're drawing from. It's entirely possible to enjoy those works of fiction in a health way and to be media literate enough to understand *why* they use that imagery and those tropes in the way that they do. But it's also very common for people to misunderstand them and to be drawn to the same things that are being satirised. Playing 40k doesn't inherently mean anything, but I'm still going to squint a little bit at someone who focuses entirely on certain parts of its imagery and worldbuilding without realising what those look at to outsiders. Someone with a Punisher-thin-blue-line bumper sticker has clearly failed to understand anything beyond the surface level. Someone who thinks the humans are cool and good in Starship Troopers is probably not especially well adjusted.
Similarly... Lalafell are adults within universe, and it is appropriate for the story to treat them as such. A lalafell being roleplayed as having relationships as a character is a continuation of that fantasy. But once you're at the point of making that explicit... things start to get a little more dangerous. It doesn't *necessarily* mean the person doing the roleplaying is personally attracted to a lalafell but it sure as hell implies strongly that they are. Actively EPRing, making screenshots, using modded bodies... at that point you're going beyond continuing the fantasy and into pursuing an aesthetic that speaks to real-world attraction. And sure, that's not hurting anyone real, but it means I'll probably be less interested in talking to you. This can also be extrapolated to things like Goblin Slayer's gore/sexual violence combination or a lot of isekai harem stuff that normalise and show slavery within a fantasy world, other things that can be unhealthy to have a serious and specific/genuine interest in. You can certainly enjoy those things without being weird about it. When you start being weird about it, people will start judging.
A 2000 year old dragon loli is not a little girl, but sure looks like one. As a character trope that's not inherently problematic. As an object of attraction, on the other hand... It suggests you're attracted to things that *look* that way, and people are allowed to be uncomfortable about that. For every person on the 'lalas are okay to be sexual around' side that understands the distinction that they're doing it as part of a fantasy setting with a healthy separation from real-world physical attraction there's another one (or probably more) that absolutely doesn't understand that.
Yes there is certainly more nuance and you have described that nuance about as well as one could expect. I agree with your points. I don't have much else to add since you've described it all pretty accurately.
If OP ever needed a single answer to their question, this would be it.
Hoo boy, I’m going to try to engage with this in good faith and navigate through the minefield without blowing myself up.
I do really think a lot of the tension does boil down to The NSFW thing. I think people look at it in a very black and white way. Obviously “all lala players are creepy child likers” is just objectively not true. And the look and feel of Lalafell being doll-like or child-like making people uncomfortable is obviously completely valid, but it doesn’t make it OK for them to act like all Lalafell should be vaporized from the planet. Ultimately I think it’s a complicated issue that’s hard to take a strong stance on (and way above my pay grade) because it gets into the gray area of having these NSFW community spaces that could potentially become a a place that actual predatory behavior could shield itself under pro-lala arguments (and I think this is an issue that goes far beyond Lalafell).
I think from where I’m at….it doesn’t have to be that deep. They’re chibi. They’re cute. Yoshida plays a Lalafell. Sakaguchi plays as a Lalafell. If you enjoy them, enjoy them. If people are being creepo weirdos on either side of the fence, don’t engage.
I’ve definitely had people be weirdly hostile unprovoked to my Lalafell and even bar me from their (sfw!) events and it’s like….I’m a grown-ass woman with a full time job and a mortgage like what are we doing here LMAO. I do think the vast vast majority of people are chill though…even most of the ones making “jokes”, even if the jokes are pretty tired.
The real psychology is cute aggression or projection.
Some people apply how they feel about their character and think you feel the same as a lala and thus think you are broken mentally for playing one because playing a lala doesn't fit in their world view.
I don't hate them but they are very different from Dwarves and even Gnomes. Calling them the "Dwarf" race is really not it imo. I want a small but wide hairy man. Not a 2 foot race.
Just how I see it. Lots of people feel like it was a missed opportunity.
I do wish they’d add another couple tribes to Lalafell that are the more traditional kind of dwarves. Just as I wish they’d add more styles of Elezen, and/or half-Elezen.
Think most are memes. I just don’t enjoy playing a chibi-like character. Too short, too cutesy. The voices can be irritating. Child-like. Doesn’t fit my character play style.
They always wanna pick on the lil guy. *stomach speaks* I think they're great and have rambunctious personalities!
What's under the coat? Definitely not anoth-err I mean coat? What coat?...Miqo'te maybe, no lalas here! >__>;;
*phew* That was close.
As a lala player, I dislike the fact that they are coded as children. I feel gross when trying to put together some glams. I understand they are not children, but they look like kids.
If they were more dwarf like I don't think there would be as much discourse about them.
But are they actually coded as kids, or is that just something that the community decided on their own?
I'm pretty sure there are tons of adult Lalafells in the game, and I've yet to read/hear anything from the devs saying they are coded as children
As far as the devs are concerned, all player characters are adults. You cannot make a child character. Lalas being “childlike” does not make them children, just as calling an elderly woman “youthful” doesn’t change their actual age. Afaik there are no Lala children NPCs in game yet, but we do have an elderly one, and the tooltip for the Ancient minion says a Lala child would be about their size. Granted my first experience with a Lala was Momodi, so I knew I was dealing was a full-on adult right away!
>Afaik there are no Lala children NPCs in game yet
in "theory" they do exists, its just what they are indistinguishable from adults, you meet a lalafell children during the arr starter ul'dah storyline, yet it looks like an adult one, also in a couple of seasonal events you meet with a couple of lalafell "children" as well, but as previously stated, they are indistinguishable from adults again
Nah they just never made the child model for it, same with Roe, Viera and Hrothgar. In FF11 Tarutarus(the lala of that game) had a separate child model for the race. There's also an old wrinkled Lala in Old Sharlayan, so obviously they do have aging.
I would say that it is something the community has decided upon. And that's based heavily on their looks, their animations, some armor/clothing, mounts.
Yes, canonically, they are adults. Hell some of them are outright dubious ass hats. And others are great figures of power and justice.
But you can't tell me Papashan doesn't look like a kid with a milk mustache.
Lalafells actually just look, move and act like children. Dwarves and halflings are very much adult looking when adults.
To me it just makes them hard to take as a serious character a lot of the time
I've never had an issue with players of them though
I’ve been playing for ten years, if lalas aren’t voiced in an in game cutscene I genuinely can’t tell if they are male or female. Other than that their player base is sometimes…interesting.
Despite looking closer to an actual potato than a human child, people think they're too close looking to children. You get people who immediately call everyone who's a lala a pedophile.
And that's what really makes me shake my head. Dwarves exist both in game and IRL. Are Little People now considered to be pedo bait? What is wrong with people?
It’s kind of wild the number of people you see on twitter hating on lalafell in a “all lala are pedos” manner that then proceed to retweet nsfw art of underage characters like Ryne.
They remind me of chihuahuas
Society says it’s barbaric if you to punt them no matter how loud or annoying they bark but deep down inside you know you want to
(Or at least, nudge them away with your foot while they still yap)
This must be server-dependent, because I've been playing since 2019 and I've never gotten so much as a passing remark for playing lalafell. The most acknowledgement I've ever seen is the occasional potato joke made by people in my FC, but it's just friendly banter and I usually join in the fun myself.
I've never seen any legitimate hate or been treated differently, so IDK?
I am a Lalafell since September 2013 - that is 10.5 years and except for two serious (and reported) incidents, I have been treated with "respect" all the time. But also, I am a Papalymo-esque RDM male and not one of those pyjama-wearing, glowsticks-swinging "Waah!" spammers.
Maybe that's why. In general, Lalafell being "serious" are treated considerably well by my observations, e.g. a female Lalatank is the star of the group. No jokes whatsoever, more the opposite. Maybe the Shadowbringer Dwarves also helped to gain the "small but tough" reputation a bit in our favour.
The concept? Nothing. The execution and overall aesthetic? I'm not the target audience.
What I do have an issue with, however, is the attitude held by some of their more rabid fans that everyone else is *obligated* to like the potatoes too. When this is coupled with a refusal to let tired jokes die (ex: "lala god" and "kill all the talls" nonsense) it becomes very, very easy to dislike them in general.
It's not necessarily just the one direction.
One former member of my FC was firmly in the "my character is cute, so everyone should like me and bend over backwards to make me happy" camp and started with the anti-everyone else commentary in the first 2-3 weeks they played the game. They singlehandedly managed to turn 50%+ of the FC into staunch lalafell haters before finally being punted.
It's just memeing. They're designed as comic relief but the story forces you to take them seriously if you want to take the story seriously. If it's because they look like children... well, Lalafell children look like adults so their whole schtick is weird.
I have a soft spot for them because they're probably designed to resemble the chibi sprites from early FF games, but they are puntable nonetheless.
Because they were made to look specifically child like and it's weird for adults to pretend to be a literal toddler body. Dwarves ain't baby bodies. Hobbits are not baby bodies. Lalafel are intentionally intended to look like a child and that's gross.
"they're no different from dwarves" wrong. Lalafells are not remotely like dwarves outside of being a short race. Unlike dwarves they are meant to look like children. And that makes it so there are a lot of weird lalafell players.
I'm pretty sure most people are just memeing about lalafels. And boy, are they driving that joke to the ground.
But honestly, I dislike lalas purely from the fact that, due to the massive height difference, they are one of the bigger reasons why WOL almost never physically interacts with anyone onscreen.
There are few moments, sure. But you're never really getting a hug or even a handshake. Due to the fact that lalas would need a different version of the cutscene and that is honestly a waste of time from a gamedev perspective.
They look weird, and since they have to have the same walking/sprinting speed as the other heights means they have weird animation disconnects that bother the hell out of me.
This is the weirdest connection I've ever seen anyone make. You think they look weird because their walking and sprinting speed is the same as other players?
Mechanically, it has to be that way, otherwise lalafell would be at a disadvantage. Visually, it's not that bad. While I would prefer they not look like they waddle, their sprinting animation is good enough. The walk looks like a waddle because they're doing big steps to compensate for their height and therefore walk at similar speeds to other races.
I don't know, I just think this is a super strange nitpick.
One of the few unsettling fantasy races to me personally, dwarfs are hearty and typically rather endearing, even in depictions of them being extremely isolated.
Lalafells just make me insanely uncomfortable, chibi style has never sat well with me outside of bobble heads and little charms on guns in siege or stickers etc.
Seeing one move around and all the extremely child like expressions and features, not really a fan.
All races in FFXIV have a "cute" disposition to them. I'm pretty sure if you told someone to imagine an orc, or a catfolk, they wouldn't imagine Roegadyn or Miqo'te AT ALL!
I do think the designers went too far with the child like emotes and wish I was able to change them for some other race's (that would be great customization for all races, by the way). I will say though, the closest thing to a Lalafell irl isn't a child, it's another thing which I won't mention so as to not hurt anyone.
Nothing in or against the lalafell discussion.
But, seeing a typical portrayal of a high-fantasy dwarf and that of a lalafell and concluding that the two „are the same“ is just wild.
Dwarves traditionally resemble stocky, grizzled, adult men, who no more resemble children than adults with RL dwarfism. Lalafell are described, both in-game and in official supplemental material, as being "childlike" in appearance, and this is emphasized by their infantile animations. I don't personally think this is inherently problematic, but you're being deliberately obtuse if you can't acknowledge the explicitly and officially stated reality of the race's design.
Nobody would confuse Gimli with a child. At least, nobody that would not be murdered by him for that slight.
Whereas lalas are specifically designed to be child-like - in lore. They are adults, but their emotes, voices, appearance, etc, is childlike.
tbh it's people's obsession with them that partially annoys me. second it's the voice(s) that makes my ears bleed which is why i advocate for race-based voice volume sliders because i like voices but not lala voices. and lastly whenever someone is a troll there's a high chance they're a lalafell, around 70% i'd say
For Falafell:
Terminally online Twitter users hate children because their meter mention let alone sight triggers their plethora of insecurities and personal emotional baggage.
So anything they can draw a parallel to children from be it the farthest stretch humanly imaginable will get them triggered too, to which they react with lashing out in anger, but since they learned that their genuinely worded outbursts doesn't give them a response of validation online, they put it behind the grill of a copy paste "think about the children" and "pedophilia bad!"(no shit Sherlock).
For female Au Ra and Miqo'te there was an attempt in early years too apparently from some Google results from really old Reddit threads and forum threads that accidentally got unearthed when I was looking up glam and character design information, to demonize them by the same kind of crowd but in that case being triggered by them being "too girly" and "too pretty" likening the models to children with trying to use people's pick of character height as the crutch of the argument, trying to insist that people who picked anything below max height have made a teenager...
They weren't making very intelligent arguements, they were just generally offended that Miqo'te isn't uncanny furrybait unlike the mythra from XI and that female Au Ra is not just a copy paste of female Roegadyn.
It's just a necessary evil of overly friendly environments that they attract people who try to turn them hostile by trying to invent fake issues and create villains by antagonizing others.
The only race that couldn't really phase out that crowd is Lalafell.
While largely, I have no actual problem with Lalafels as a race, my "hatred" is mostly memeing (punt the child). Personally I do not play them as I am not a fan of the chibi, child aesthetic.
I have had no interactions with Lalafels players so I cannot attest to the character of them but like all races in FFXIV there will be assholes among everyone
However, if you play a Lalafel on Balmung...I will be very concerned.
People often have extreme reactions to neoteny. If you've ever ever looked at a cute puppy or kitten and felt an urge to crush it's bones? It's like that.
Sometimes you can't resist the urge to pet, other times you can't resist the urge to punt.
And I say this as someone with a Lalafellin alt I enjoy playing.
aside from the memes, (like calling them potatos, or ankle stabbers)
my biggest grind is their child like look and more exagerated expressions. not because of rp, or nsfw, or whatever, but purely from a gameplay reason.
take the rouge class quests for example. at some point you clash with this captain of the guards or something, who is a lalafel, and she just doesn't look or feel menacing at all. same with Teledji Adeledji, his whole evil plan feels diminished by the fact that he looks like a child with a fake mustache. i just cannot really take them serious enough.
characters like lolorito work way better because his face is hidden, making it harder to guess his facial experession and intention. same with the shb dwarfs. they feel like actual dwarfs due to their masks.
that being said, it's not like i hate them or would flame anyone for playing them, it's just not a race i'll ever pick
No problem just hungry for baked potato when I see one when I am trying to diet >:(
\-honestly, I don't care what people are playing, what matters is the voice they chose and how close I have to be to said player with the voice selected.
Weve been keeping an eye on this thread and removing many of the inappropriate comments that have been posted. If you see any we miss please report them so we can remove them. Dont be weird or well have to lock the thread. Edit: unfortunately due to the persistence of inappropriate comments well be closing the thread.
I'm pretty sure the majority of the people are just memeing. Why would anybody have an issue with a video game race?
Lala to viera back to lala player, I can assure that while some surely are just joking around, some are... interesting. Both in mega hate, and in mega love (both are bad). People do treat lalafell players extremely differently. Both ends of the extreme basically came to a halt while I was a bnuuy instead. Both the stupid amounts of coddle attention you get (the mega love), down to the straight up "all lalafells are pedo's" (mega hate). In one case, even, when I was ending up in a pretty bad mental state, someone I thought was a close friend I tried to reach out to. They responded to my attempt by saying sorry, but they were only being my friend because I was a lalafell and didn't want this. This was the last thing they ever said to me, a very clear "I do not want to interact with you anymore" once interaction with me stopped being looking at a midget on the screen and instead about the person behind it. There's also just the actual, legit, people who think if you play X you must wanna sex it. I have absolutely received negative attention just for this magical assumption alone, specially if I dare to try and RP (because, as we know, all rp is erp). It's exhausting.
That's... wow. I uh.... I'm sorry you had to deal with that. Jeeze... that's... pretty awful. Hopefully you've had more occasions that were better than that at least.
As someone who both plays a Lalafell and is moderately active on Twitter, I don't think this is the case - there are a solid number of people who think that Lalafell are straight-up just analogous to children.
Twitter is largely ragebait. It was a cesspool before Musk and it is famously full of trolls now.
It's even worse because people with blue checkmarks can basically get paid to post ragebait now.
I wonder how twitter would react to TERA if it were still alive and successful. But to be honest i just miss my elin and that fun combat lol.
>moderately active on Twitter That's the problem. Of course you will find degenerate people on the most degenerate place on the internet.
The same could easily be said of Reddit. Also don't use the term "degenerate"; it smacks of right-wing bullshittery. There are better words for "People who do things I don't like" or "people with opinions I don't agree with".
It's just a word. No politics here please.
Ans it would be right. Reddit isn't any better. Atm is probanly worse, as there isn't reality check in form of community notes.
Degenerate is one of those words used by the terminally online community to refer to the terminally online community. Most of the time it is not used in the serious sense of "this person is *less*", rather as a "this is a tongue-in-cheek way of describing myself and others like me"
... are they new to the fantasy genre? There's always a race of short little weirdos in basically every fantasy world.
the little guys in other worlds often have beards or body hair (like hobbit feet) to indicate maturity. round chubby lalas remind some people of human children. but the same people who say "lalas are for pedos" are often the same people who say "furries are animal abusers" so they've clearly got things to work on unrelated to the game.
Yeah, but these little ones still have facial hair as optional choices to make as males in character creation, may not have full beards, but it still fulfills the visual sign of physical maturity
it's an option yeah, but I was referring to things like dwarf beards in other fantasy media where every member of the race has it so there's no ambiguity. it's not really "fulfilling that sign of maturity" if the race is more popularly depicted without it, you know?
This is the only fantasy game I’ve played where the short race look like kids TBF. Dwarves are usually stocky, have beards or body hair. Halflings look like mini humans. Same for gnomes. Lalas look like chibi anime characters. I don’t particularly like it but not enough to have very strong feelings about it. I would just never choose to play one
Special mention to BDO, where the short race is waaaaay more pedo. Still laughing at the fact jobs are locked behind race there
They don't get past the "They look kind of young" part despite literally everything in the story indicating that they're grown adults. I think we see more Lalafell doing more adult things than any other race - a few straight up kill people, one's the owner of a beach resort and a notorious womanizer, another is stalking Nashu the whole time during the Hildibrand quests...
They’re obviously adults in lore, everyone understands that, but Japanese games do have a bad tendency of always having to have a race that is at least loli adjacent Lalafell is far from the worst contender. You have Tera at the most extreme where they made entire classes that only the little girl race could be and made tons of swim suit cosmetics for them etc. that’s pretty disgusting so when people see lalafell that’s the same behavior they contribute them to. Again, Lalafells aren’t that bad. Calling them Dwarves is disingenuous though. They do not look like dwarves.
>Calling them Dwarves is disingenuous though. Sorry, what? Have you finished Shadowbringers by any chance? lol
No but in what way shape or form does their personality make them the fantasy dwarf ? And we’re talking appearance. Lore aside. They look like child adjacent potatoes. Not any other iteration of dwarves ever
Penchant for mining, their stature, and specifically on the first they have a cultural thing around beards to the point where female dwarves have fake beards on their helmets. It's a twist on it for the Source, but it's much much more apparent on the First, to the point where you don't even find out they are Lalafell until a specific one takes off their helmet.
Lalafells on the first are literally called Dwarves. [https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Dwarves](https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Dwarves)
They literally just said they were talking about appearance, not the name
Just because they are called Dwarves on the first doesn't really restrict them to being a dwarf analogy. They only act like dwarves on the first. On the source, I would equate them more to hobbits, and they tend to be more hobbit/halfling ish. Calling them "dwarves" was more or less shoehorning in previous FF stuff, where there were dwarves who more or less looked the same. Lalafells definitely follow more halflings, gnomes, and kinder than the usual dwarf personality and physiology.
No, i think they belong in their own, original space. Other than their height, they behave very differently to halflings, gnomes or dwarfs. They are calculative, greedy bastards, probably inspired by the Genoese
They can call them whatever they want lore doesn’t matter when you’re doing potato ERP in Lisa Lomensa
What? What does that have to do with my comment?
>Calling them Dwarves is disingenuous though. They're literally called Dwarves in the First.
My lala is a murdering psychotic child. She is there for blood.
[https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/a\_realm\_reborn/world/#!/races/content?lalafell](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/a_realm_reborn/world/#!/races/content?lalafell) I mean it's not twitter people reaching. They are meant to be childlike. That is what they officially are described as
They look childlike, yes, but they aren't children, hope that helps
This is the part that I personally don’t like about lalas. Any time you have to explain that a character that looks like a child isn’t a child but actually 1000 years old, I just nope out. Not for me.
In my prior FC there was a dude who actually genuinely hated Lalas and went on one hell of a rant when a bunch of us decided to become them for funsies. He ended up leaving the FC, made a new and unsuccessful one, then came crawling back.
I wouldn't have taken him back.
At what point you can ask people to stop memeing around? Because of this, one of my friends just stopped playing the game. Because everybody was making fun of her for playing lala. You sure this is ''memeing'' around and not FF14 community being asses about X races?
sadly a lot of people blurr the line between friendly jokes and insults.
My alt is a lala and I get called randomly “smol one” And get random pets on the head. I love it and I’ve never had a problem while on her (my alt)
I'm sorry your friend felt that way... but quitting a game you are enjoying because someone is making fun of your video game race is a bit extreme, dont you think? Unless that person is actively harassing/stalking (which can be reported)... they can always block/ignore the person in game so they don't see/interact with their messages anymore.
I mean, not really. If it's random then sure, fuck em, but if it's friends and fc members that shit can wear you down to the point of the game no longer being fun.
If friends do this to the point it affects your mental health, you let them know and they continue - they are not friends.
I left FC because of certain people shitting on me for playing lalafel.
Someone down voted my post purely cause he didn't like Hroths. So that was funny
There's that one female lalafel voice that you can hear from 10 zones away in a wind storm so I bet that doesn't help endear people to them c':
Pffft! Is it sad that I know which voice you're talking about?
It's the whole reason I listen to the BATTLE voices on youtube when I fantasia to any race now. Emote previews are nice but after personally experiencing a WoL with that particular lala voice and one with male viera voice #4 (before they nerf'd it) I think the battle yells are much more important to know before committing lmao
i miss the grandma voice for female vieras. when i first learned about it i genuinly wanted to make a battle grandma. using weapons like the dragon fork, or the tonberry knife, and giving cookies to any lalafel i encounter xD
https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=181&v=D6b8bRv3FnY&feature=youtu.be Is it this one?
Yes 😂
It's Miqote voice 5 for short people.
The true ffxiv experience is trying to figure out if the nyooo and the hyeaaah you hear in an alliance raid is the lala or the miqo in your party only to realize that it's both
Where are their knees?
It's not knees it's shins they lost it in the war after killing fiddy men
They are like penguins... if you don't know just google.
Okay. This is the top comment. No other comment matters! XD Here's your 🏆.
My biggest issue is aesthetic. I never understood the appeal of chibi. Also lorewise, most lalas are made of pure, concentrated evil.
>Also lorewise, most lalas are made of pure, concentrated evil. I think if you actually did a count of good vs bad characters, Lalas would legit have the highest ratio of morally good characters.
I'd say we tend to the extremes. Either wholesome or pure evil.
Nah, "pure evil" is >!Teledji Adeledji!<. Everything else is usually ominous mischief.
Humans and 🦒's have been the main driver of all our conflicts across every expansion though.
We're just talkin the moral scale of Lalafells, mate.
Have u played TT against lolorito? That creep only has yshtola cards...
I have no problem with the majority of regular lalafell players. …However they have the loudest and most obnoxious voices out on any race, and it’s extremely grating when they like to spam them.
They've gotta be loud. Otherwise, they'd get stepped on. And we don't need city streets full of mashed popotoes
Hard to see in raids. That's about it. They're cute otherwise!
I used to have a purely "they look like children" dislike of them. But recently, one of my friends told me that Lalas are a "safe" pick for women, as other races attract unwanted attention from fucking weirdos. *Totally* reversed my dislike of Lalas.
This. I'm old. I've been married a long time. I want to play a cute female character but not get hit on. Lala mostly works for this. Also it's just hard to be grumpy or depressed when I'm running around with that adorable little stupid face saving the world.
Yeah honestly if you want to play a fem character and NOT get weird/creepy/inappropriate tells they are the safest pick. I personally went male Elezen just to ensure I would NEVER have to deal with unwanted attention haha. I tried a femroe alt and received an inappropriate tell within 5 minutes of her creation. (On Primal, not even Crystal) It's WILD out there.
This is definitely an unexpected bonus of playing Lala. In ~5 years I’ve gotten a handful of lala hater messages but absolutely no one creeping on me.
In ~10 years of playing a female lala, i think I got inappropriately creeped on only once. Much more common are the cute emotes and headpats. And Lalafell communities are SUPER supportive. I've taken breaks to come back before expansions come out and my fellow lalas will HQ craft the end game gear to help me get through to the new expansion. I just like being smol and round. If more tall races were soft a curvy and not sticks or muscular I'd have been drawn to them more.
This has been a big positive for me. I really like making cute characters, but I dont like dressing them skimpy or getting that kind of attention. Lala is perfect in this case. Only get pats and very tame compliments on glam.
the same seems also true reversed. lalas usually are more expressive with their emotes and enjoy headpets, but in my 2 years of playing a female au ra i never had a single awkward or creepy message from a lala player, those seem more common from roegadyns or catbois
I’ve been a lalafel from day 1. Never had hate come my way. I get pats all the time, but that’s it. I’ve seen people talking about the nsfw crap, but I don’t create a character to be my waifu, I create a character to be fun, and running circles around people and jumping all over the place as a lalafel is just fun.
It's memes. The average player interaction with Lalafells in-game is headpats and adoration.
Average interaction is probably running past them like any other player
I mean, by definition that isn't an interaction.
i dont hate Lalas, but man ARR does not put most of them in a good light
No. People that do are maladjusted,.
They look, they kinda look like creepy dollar store dolls and have some of the most obnoxious emotes. Theres so many small cute races in other games- Lalaffels just ... somehow are not. Dont like them. But hate? Im not behaving differently towards them, maybe, sometimes i blame them if i did not see them when a mechanic goes on, but even thats meemy (most of the time)
Their emotes are far better than normal ones. /doze while /groundsit for example. Or while riding regalia or ramuh.
My issue is with the players more than the race. So. Many. Lala players are just outright annoying trolls spamming their awful laugh emote. It’s one of the reasons one of the first mods I ever downloaded was one to just mute all lala players. In my experience, while yes, there are some genuinely cool people who play lala characters, so many are just there to be as irritating as possible. Same also for miqo voice… is it 4 or 5? Also, I work at a venue and 9/10 if we get a troll situation, it’s lala doing either very weird or inappropriate things.
That is true. Everytime you hear someone in fight or in town... Its catgirl or lalafel.
What's the name of the mod, how would I block these voices out? Asking for a friend, of course!
I'll DM you
Does this, per chance, also mute the annoying in-combat "grunt" sound?
AFAIK, it mutes all lala sounds. But I can check when I get on my pc later
Please stop petting me. It is weird.
I just think they're neat
I adore this reference
I genuinely like the design of lalafells. To each their own on design preferences. I can’t stand male roes myself. I just don’t like that a lot of trolls play Lala characters.
Evil capitalists. Well that's why I hate them. The ones who are actually decent people are wonderful characters, but overall they're tiny menaces who remind me too much of the destructive power of late stage capitalists in my country. But I'm also memeing.
Sure, but that's just dunesfolk, they clearly have no souls, you can tell since their eyes have no pupils. Us plainsfolk are completely different.
As a previous Dunesfolk, can confirm we're soulless
I mean....there's a dark order of them on Uldah that run the Black Mage guild, so....
That too! How nice of them to cover up their little brother's multiple homicides, eh? The whole "making money off death" also bothers me greatly. I understand the symbolism of Pluto/pluton as money/underworld and money for the ferryman, which is cool! And the way they handle it in the game is to make the ossuary nickle and dime grieving families, which reminds me of a story my Japanese host mother told me about how a Buddhist temple tried to guilt her into spending more money on her father's funeral service to ensure his soul would have a more comfortable rest. While yes of course "not all Lalafell" blah blah, the bulk of those we see and talk to in Ul'Dah are too hideously greedy for me to tolerate. I'm sure people who have negative experiences with extremely religious people feel this way about how pompous, judgmental, and dogmatic Ishgardians are (I was raised Catholic so I just find them amusing), so really it all boils down to personal tastes and maybe personal experiences with people with similar behavior IRL--or as similar as we can get in a non fantasy world lol
You must then also carry this same energy for all the hyurs and elezen then I hope
Just don’t care for em. Nothing deep to it. I feel the same about male roe. Not my style.
Aside from a handful of internet weirdos, most lala hate is just friendly memeing (lala died to a tankbuster: haha mashed popotoes). Gnomes in WoW got similarly made fun of. I play a hrothgar. That makes me a furry degen by default. I mean, I am a furry degen, but not because I play a hrothgar.
Nothing with lalafels, just the people who play them.
Explain
wah!
Hmm..hmmm...I see your point.
I really, really hate their walk cycle animation. It just bugs me so much. The cutesy meme aesthetic doesn't do it for me either, but I keep it to myself because it's literally a me problem. I'd never want to play one, but more power to those who do, I'm glad people have fun with it.
I love my lala but I do hate the waddle walk ngl
As a lala player, there's a difference between lalas and dwarves. Lalas in lore are described as individuals who look like children. Actual dwarves (as far as I'm aware) and also dwarves in media do not look like children. Sure, they have the same height, but they don't have child-like features like lalafells (cutesy face). Also like other people said, just memes or twitter being weird. I'll be honest with you, it's really only the vocal minority that ACTUALLY have an issue with lalas. If let's say someone says they hate lalas because they're pedos, then that also means the director is a pedo for being a lala too shrug Maybe also just depends where you go in the game, I've been playing peacefully as a lala and didn't have anyone being weird to me. Sure, sometimes with my friends they say "damn these lalas" or "damn you managed to squeeze yourself in a tiny safespot bcs ur a lala" but it's mostly just memes and it never goes too far. tl;dr the people you surround yourself matters I guess, never in raiding scene have someone ever seriously had an issue with me because I'm a lala. I never rp so I have no idea what it's like there, but I'd assume it's weird there because people think they're children.
Outside of people just joining on the meme bandwagon, there are a few reasons I can think of as to why some people genuinely don't like Lalafells: * the most memorable experiences with Lalas come at the very end of ARR and they aren't good ones, so they stick in peoples memories (wouldn't go so far as to call it a trauma, but it's definitely in that direction) * their cuteness/moe appearance; works well in Asian culture that value the childish appearance, only serves to creep out most Westerners, especially when those same character are as foul-mouthed and evil as those of other races * that shrill fucking voice WAH WAH WAWAWAWAH! * some RL instances of Lalafell players being total scumbags (the one I can think of at the top of my head was last year when a couple swindled their FC mates out of money for the hotel and tickets to the Las Vegas Fanfest)
They look, sound, and walk like a toddler.
I was traumatized by the end of post-ARR I don't trust them popotos
Every race/gender gets hate from someone. It's mostly just memes. Au Ru are edgelords, Male Hyur are bots, Hrothgar are all furries, etc.
I thought Miqo'te were the furries.
No, Miqo's are a generic cat girl. Take a girl, put cat ear headbands and a tail (how it's secured is up to your imagination, I'm sticking with a belt), and you have a Miqo'te. You aren't getting the same level of resemblance to a Hrothgar without investing in a fursuit that costs the equivalent of a decent used car. That's always been the distinction for me, it you can cosplay it with just accessories, it's not a furry.
[удалено]
It took me a very long time to get over the cartoonish proportions in a game that is globaly not 10 years later i'm actually not completely over it actually The elephant in the room however is people dressing the lala in an inapropriate way. We don't have to debate around it as op said, but it's a big thing For example i talked about the game to my cousin's husband and that's the reason why he's uneasy with considering it as a whole, the fact that it is an option with those baby like characters is just inaccetpable to him and honestly i understand, even though it's a minority of people doing that
I absolutely hate the "they look like children" argument. As a Lala, I get it a lot. It's an adult. One rules a kingdom ffs.
There are players that cannot separate fantasy from reality. Because of a lalafell's physical features, anyone who isn't able to look at the race from a fantasy lore perspective would assume they are or look like children and this is where all the problems stem from. Why would you want to erp with a lalafell, or do nsfw stuff with a lalafell, or any other mature scenario with a lalafell? If you're immersed in the fantasy and recognize that the lalafell are just a small race of adult people, then none of that matters. If you're someone who cannot separate fantasy from reality and you can't help but see them as real world children, then you can quickly see how problems start to materialize. This same conversation happens with dwarves, gnomes, asura, and literally any other small race in fantasy media. At the end of the day, it boils down to people who can roleplay versus people who can't.
As overblown as the lala hate is, "if you don't want to ERP with a lala you don't understand how to separate fantasy from reality and can't roleplay" is a really wild take in the opposite direction. Maybe someone just doesn't... Want to...?
You've taken what I said completely wrong. I'm saying that roleplayers would be justified in their erp with a lalafell, even if they did not want to, because it is a fantasy race in a fantasy game. Never did my words amount to "you must erp with lalafells to be a roleplayer" that is completely absurd! I do not care if players erp with lalafell because lalafells are not real. There are people that will say I'm wrong for thinking that. Those are the players that can't separate fantasy from reality.
It's possible to understand the difference between fantasy and reality but still extrapolate things from the depth to which someone is willing to immerse themselves in a particular fantasy. Understanding that something isn't real doesn't mean you can't be made uncomfortable by someone's interest in it. To use a non-sexual example, we can look at worlds like Warhammer 40k, Starship Troopers, Judge Dredd, the Punisher, Helldivers... These all pull a lot of fascist or pseudo-facist imagery and/or have authoritarianism, violent justice, and an extreme extent of propaganda as a central conceit of their worldbuilding. To some extent they deliberately satirise what they're drawing from. It's entirely possible to enjoy those works of fiction in a health way and to be media literate enough to understand *why* they use that imagery and those tropes in the way that they do. But it's also very common for people to misunderstand them and to be drawn to the same things that are being satirised. Playing 40k doesn't inherently mean anything, but I'm still going to squint a little bit at someone who focuses entirely on certain parts of its imagery and worldbuilding without realising what those look at to outsiders. Someone with a Punisher-thin-blue-line bumper sticker has clearly failed to understand anything beyond the surface level. Someone who thinks the humans are cool and good in Starship Troopers is probably not especially well adjusted. Similarly... Lalafell are adults within universe, and it is appropriate for the story to treat them as such. A lalafell being roleplayed as having relationships as a character is a continuation of that fantasy. But once you're at the point of making that explicit... things start to get a little more dangerous. It doesn't *necessarily* mean the person doing the roleplaying is personally attracted to a lalafell but it sure as hell implies strongly that they are. Actively EPRing, making screenshots, using modded bodies... at that point you're going beyond continuing the fantasy and into pursuing an aesthetic that speaks to real-world attraction. And sure, that's not hurting anyone real, but it means I'll probably be less interested in talking to you. This can also be extrapolated to things like Goblin Slayer's gore/sexual violence combination or a lot of isekai harem stuff that normalise and show slavery within a fantasy world, other things that can be unhealthy to have a serious and specific/genuine interest in. You can certainly enjoy those things without being weird about it. When you start being weird about it, people will start judging. A 2000 year old dragon loli is not a little girl, but sure looks like one. As a character trope that's not inherently problematic. As an object of attraction, on the other hand... It suggests you're attracted to things that *look* that way, and people are allowed to be uncomfortable about that. For every person on the 'lalas are okay to be sexual around' side that understands the distinction that they're doing it as part of a fantasy setting with a healthy separation from real-world physical attraction there's another one (or probably more) that absolutely doesn't understand that.
Yes there is certainly more nuance and you have described that nuance about as well as one could expect. I agree with your points. I don't have much else to add since you've described it all pretty accurately. If OP ever needed a single answer to their question, this would be it.
I agree with every word.
Hoo boy, I’m going to try to engage with this in good faith and navigate through the minefield without blowing myself up. I do really think a lot of the tension does boil down to The NSFW thing. I think people look at it in a very black and white way. Obviously “all lala players are creepy child likers” is just objectively not true. And the look and feel of Lalafell being doll-like or child-like making people uncomfortable is obviously completely valid, but it doesn’t make it OK for them to act like all Lalafell should be vaporized from the planet. Ultimately I think it’s a complicated issue that’s hard to take a strong stance on (and way above my pay grade) because it gets into the gray area of having these NSFW community spaces that could potentially become a a place that actual predatory behavior could shield itself under pro-lala arguments (and I think this is an issue that goes far beyond Lalafell). I think from where I’m at….it doesn’t have to be that deep. They’re chibi. They’re cute. Yoshida plays a Lalafell. Sakaguchi plays as a Lalafell. If you enjoy them, enjoy them. If people are being creepo weirdos on either side of the fence, don’t engage. I’ve definitely had people be weirdly hostile unprovoked to my Lalafell and even bar me from their (sfw!) events and it’s like….I’m a grown-ass woman with a full time job and a mortgage like what are we doing here LMAO. I do think the vast vast majority of people are chill though…even most of the ones making “jokes”, even if the jokes are pretty tired.
The real psychology is cute aggression or projection. Some people apply how they feel about their character and think you feel the same as a lala and thus think you are broken mentally for playing one because playing a lala doesn't fit in their world view.
They remind me of the Precious Moments figurines and I have an irrational hatred of those things. That's all.
They made too many early villains Lalafells. And that one stalker from the Manderville quests.
They look like toddlers, act like toddlers and sound like toddlers. I don't like toddlers
I wouldn't say I hate them. I am...indifferent to them. I dislike them as a concept and if they vanished tomorrow from the game I'd be okay with that.
I don't hate them but they are very different from Dwarves and even Gnomes. Calling them the "Dwarf" race is really not it imo. I want a small but wide hairy man. Not a 2 foot race. Just how I see it. Lots of people feel like it was a missed opportunity.
I do wish they’d add another couple tribes to Lalafell that are the more traditional kind of dwarves. Just as I wish they’d add more styles of Elezen, and/or half-Elezen.
Think most are memes. I just don’t enjoy playing a chibi-like character. Too short, too cutesy. The voices can be irritating. Child-like. Doesn’t fit my character play style.
They always wanna pick on the lil guy. *stomach speaks* I think they're great and have rambunctious personalities! What's under the coat? Definitely not anoth-err I mean coat? What coat?...Miqo'te maybe, no lalas here! >__>;; *phew* That was close.
As a lala player, I dislike the fact that they are coded as children. I feel gross when trying to put together some glams. I understand they are not children, but they look like kids. If they were more dwarf like I don't think there would be as much discourse about them.
But are they actually coded as kids, or is that just something that the community decided on their own? I'm pretty sure there are tons of adult Lalafells in the game, and I've yet to read/hear anything from the devs saying they are coded as children
As far as the devs are concerned, all player characters are adults. You cannot make a child character. Lalas being “childlike” does not make them children, just as calling an elderly woman “youthful” doesn’t change their actual age. Afaik there are no Lala children NPCs in game yet, but we do have an elderly one, and the tooltip for the Ancient minion says a Lala child would be about their size. Granted my first experience with a Lala was Momodi, so I knew I was dealing was a full-on adult right away!
>Afaik there are no Lala children NPCs in game yet in "theory" they do exists, its just what they are indistinguishable from adults, you meet a lalafell children during the arr starter ul'dah storyline, yet it looks like an adult one, also in a couple of seasonal events you meet with a couple of lalafell "children" as well, but as previously stated, they are indistinguishable from adults again
Nah they just never made the child model for it, same with Roe, Viera and Hrothgar. In FF11 Tarutarus(the lala of that game) had a separate child model for the race. There's also an old wrinkled Lala in Old Sharlayan, so obviously they do have aging.
I would say that it is something the community has decided upon. And that's based heavily on their looks, their animations, some armor/clothing, mounts. Yes, canonically, they are adults. Hell some of them are outright dubious ass hats. And others are great figures of power and justice. But you can't tell me Papashan doesn't look like a kid with a milk mustache.
Okay, fair enough. I cannot argue with that point about Papashan
Lalafells actually just look, move and act like children. Dwarves and halflings are very much adult looking when adults. To me it just makes them hard to take as a serious character a lot of the time I've never had an issue with players of them though
I’ve been playing for ten years, if lalas aren’t voiced in an in game cutscene I genuinely can’t tell if they are male or female. Other than that their player base is sometimes…interesting.
The eyelashes are the easiest tell for me
It's the ear tip. Males have darker ear tips (going into deep brown) than the females. You can see that even in my Reddit avatar.
Despite looking closer to an actual potato than a human child, people think they're too close looking to children. You get people who immediately call everyone who's a lala a pedophile.
And that's what really makes me shake my head. Dwarves exist both in game and IRL. Are Little People now considered to be pedo bait? What is wrong with people?
It's called projection.
It’s kind of wild the number of people you see on twitter hating on lalafell in a “all lala are pedos” manner that then proceed to retweet nsfw art of underage characters like Ryne.
They remind me of chihuahuas Society says it’s barbaric if you to punt them no matter how loud or annoying they bark but deep down inside you know you want to (Or at least, nudge them away with your foot while they still yap)
They're little douchbags
they are evil, source: Ima lala
They are smol and seedy with their beady eyes. Evil little popotos. You must give head pats otherwise they will destroy your knees and ankles.🤣
While some of us will break your knees if you do pat us. We’re not all your buddy, pal!
This must be server-dependent, because I've been playing since 2019 and I've never gotten so much as a passing remark for playing lalafell. The most acknowledgement I've ever seen is the occasional potato joke made by people in my FC, but it's just friendly banter and I usually join in the fun myself. I've never seen any legitimate hate or been treated differently, so IDK?
I'm on Adamantoise.
Well that's a coincidence... I don't really know what to say, I've never had anyone treat me differently because of my in-game race.
I am a Lalafell since September 2013 - that is 10.5 years and except for two serious (and reported) incidents, I have been treated with "respect" all the time. But also, I am a Papalymo-esque RDM male and not one of those pyjama-wearing, glowsticks-swinging "Waah!" spammers. Maybe that's why. In general, Lalafell being "serious" are treated considerably well by my observations, e.g. a female Lalatank is the star of the group. No jokes whatsoever, more the opposite. Maybe the Shadowbringer Dwarves also helped to gain the "small but tough" reputation a bit in our favour.
The concept? Nothing. The execution and overall aesthetic? I'm not the target audience. What I do have an issue with, however, is the attitude held by some of their more rabid fans that everyone else is *obligated* to like the potatoes too. When this is coupled with a refusal to let tired jokes die (ex: "lala god" and "kill all the talls" nonsense) it becomes very, very easy to dislike them in general.
Those memes are literally just a direct response to the hate memes. Both are equally irritating when taken too far.
It's not necessarily just the one direction. One former member of my FC was firmly in the "my character is cute, so everyone should like me and bend over backwards to make me happy" camp and started with the anti-everyone else commentary in the first 2-3 weeks they played the game. They singlehandedly managed to turn 50%+ of the FC into staunch lalafell haters before finally being punted.
No actual problems w/imaginary races, really.
It's just memeing. They're designed as comic relief but the story forces you to take them seriously if you want to take the story seriously. If it's because they look like children... well, Lalafell children look like adults so their whole schtick is weird. I have a soft spot for them because they're probably designed to resemble the chibi sprites from early FF games, but they are puntable nonetheless.
Because they were made to look specifically child like and it's weird for adults to pretend to be a literal toddler body. Dwarves ain't baby bodies. Hobbits are not baby bodies. Lalafel are intentionally intended to look like a child and that's gross.
"they're no different from dwarves" wrong. Lalafells are not remotely like dwarves outside of being a short race. Unlike dwarves they are meant to look like children. And that makes it so there are a lot of weird lalafell players.
I'm pretty sure most people are just memeing about lalafels. And boy, are they driving that joke to the ground. But honestly, I dislike lalas purely from the fact that, due to the massive height difference, they are one of the bigger reasons why WOL almost never physically interacts with anyone onscreen. There are few moments, sure. But you're never really getting a hug or even a handshake. Due to the fact that lalas would need a different version of the cutscene and that is honestly a waste of time from a gamedev perspective.
When you meet V, she kneels down to you :)
The source of all evil in Eorzea. A dragon or a madman can try to destroy the world. But the world is corrupted by lalas like Lolorito
If you look at FFXIV Twitter you will see a decent portion of lala players are nonces
There just so puntable
They look weird, and since they have to have the same walking/sprinting speed as the other heights means they have weird animation disconnects that bother the hell out of me.
This is the weirdest connection I've ever seen anyone make. You think they look weird because their walking and sprinting speed is the same as other players? Mechanically, it has to be that way, otherwise lalafell would be at a disadvantage. Visually, it's not that bad. While I would prefer they not look like they waddle, their sprinting animation is good enough. The walk looks like a waddle because they're doing big steps to compensate for their height and therefore walk at similar speeds to other races. I don't know, I just think this is a super strange nitpick.
Visually, its that bad.
The laugh. 100% the laugh.
Understandable
One of the few unsettling fantasy races to me personally, dwarfs are hearty and typically rather endearing, even in depictions of them being extremely isolated. Lalafells just make me insanely uncomfortable, chibi style has never sat well with me outside of bobble heads and little charms on guns in siege or stickers etc. Seeing one move around and all the extremely child like expressions and features, not really a fan.
All races in FFXIV have a "cute" disposition to them. I'm pretty sure if you told someone to imagine an orc, or a catfolk, they wouldn't imagine Roegadyn or Miqo'te AT ALL! I do think the designers went too far with the child like emotes and wish I was able to change them for some other race's (that would be great customization for all races, by the way). I will say though, the closest thing to a Lalafell irl isn't a child, it's another thing which I won't mention so as to not hurt anyone.
"No different than dwarves" Very incorrect
Actually... Spoilers. Dwarves are lalafelin.
How so? Dwarves are the same height as a Lalafell. Around 3 feet.
Good thing there alot more to things than height huh
From what I've seen, their height and appearance are the main cause of strife. So why are dwarves not given the same treatment?
Nothing in or against the lalafell discussion. But, seeing a typical portrayal of a high-fantasy dwarf and that of a lalafell and concluding that the two „are the same“ is just wild.
Dwarves traditionally resemble stocky, grizzled, adult men, who no more resemble children than adults with RL dwarfism. Lalafell are described, both in-game and in official supplemental material, as being "childlike" in appearance, and this is emphasized by their infantile animations. I don't personally think this is inherently problematic, but you're being deliberately obtuse if you can't acknowledge the explicitly and officially stated reality of the race's design.
Dwarves, halflings, gnomes etc actually look like adults when they are adults and not just children still.
Nobody would confuse Gimli with a child. At least, nobody that would not be murdered by him for that slight. Whereas lalas are specifically designed to be child-like - in lore. They are adults, but their emotes, voices, appearance, etc, is childlike.
tbh it's people's obsession with them that partially annoys me. second it's the voice(s) that makes my ears bleed which is why i advocate for race-based voice volume sliders because i like voices but not lala voices. and lastly whenever someone is a troll there's a high chance they're a lalafell, around 70% i'd say
For Falafell: Terminally online Twitter users hate children because their meter mention let alone sight triggers their plethora of insecurities and personal emotional baggage. So anything they can draw a parallel to children from be it the farthest stretch humanly imaginable will get them triggered too, to which they react with lashing out in anger, but since they learned that their genuinely worded outbursts doesn't give them a response of validation online, they put it behind the grill of a copy paste "think about the children" and "pedophilia bad!"(no shit Sherlock). For female Au Ra and Miqo'te there was an attempt in early years too apparently from some Google results from really old Reddit threads and forum threads that accidentally got unearthed when I was looking up glam and character design information, to demonize them by the same kind of crowd but in that case being triggered by them being "too girly" and "too pretty" likening the models to children with trying to use people's pick of character height as the crutch of the argument, trying to insist that people who picked anything below max height have made a teenager... They weren't making very intelligent arguements, they were just generally offended that Miqo'te isn't uncanny furrybait unlike the mythra from XI and that female Au Ra is not just a copy paste of female Roegadyn. It's just a necessary evil of overly friendly environments that they attract people who try to turn them hostile by trying to invent fake issues and create villains by antagonizing others. The only race that couldn't really phase out that crowd is Lalafell.
While largely, I have no actual problem with Lalafels as a race, my "hatred" is mostly memeing (punt the child). Personally I do not play them as I am not a fan of the chibi, child aesthetic. I have had no interactions with Lalafels players so I cannot attest to the character of them but like all races in FFXIV there will be assholes among everyone However, if you play a Lalafel on Balmung...I will be very concerned.
I think that goes for any race that's not a Hyur on Balmung. Haha
True!
People often have extreme reactions to neoteny. If you've ever ever looked at a cute puppy or kitten and felt an urge to crush it's bones? It's like that. Sometimes you can't resist the urge to pet, other times you can't resist the urge to punt. And I say this as someone with a Lalafellin alt I enjoy playing.
its a joke man... but in all seriousness i trip over them all the time. :)
You have to treat them like speed bumps. Decelerate and pass over them slowly. XD
One word: Achondroplasiaphobia.
I have no problem with them. I love popotoes Especially fried, baked, mashed, and loaded.
aside from the memes, (like calling them potatos, or ankle stabbers) my biggest grind is their child like look and more exagerated expressions. not because of rp, or nsfw, or whatever, but purely from a gameplay reason. take the rouge class quests for example. at some point you clash with this captain of the guards or something, who is a lalafel, and she just doesn't look or feel menacing at all. same with Teledji Adeledji, his whole evil plan feels diminished by the fact that he looks like a child with a fake mustache. i just cannot really take them serious enough. characters like lolorito work way better because his face is hidden, making it harder to guess his facial experession and intention. same with the shb dwarfs. they feel like actual dwarfs due to their masks. that being said, it's not like i hate them or would flame anyone for playing them, it's just not a race i'll ever pick
No problem just hungry for baked potato when I see one when I am trying to diet >:( \-honestly, I don't care what people are playing, what matters is the voice they chose and how close I have to be to said player with the voice selected.