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#shorts
FINAL FANTASY is a registered trademark of Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd.
FINAL FANTASY XIV © 2010 – 2020 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. All Rights Reserved.
source
Tattoos. Or just messy eaters. Honestly it reminds me a lot of night elves from The Game That Shall Not Be Mentioned. Though that was for women only and fanservice demands more G'raha.
The fact that one of the faces has no stripes convinces me it's just paint/tatoos. Contrastingly, catboys ALL have the markings under their eyes. Making it more likely to actually be a facial feature.
Vanadiel's (FF11)'s Mithra also had stripes. The two races have some similarities. It may not be lore related but game design perhaps?
Could it be a mistranslation..?
I always though of them as facial features. Like how cats have whiskers, Miqo'te have these. Maybe the one female without is a: fan service or b: adaption/gone because other races don't have them. I'm not sure at b, because I don't know how well Miqo'te can reproduce with non-Miqo'te.
BUT, as far as I can tell, young Miqo'te doesn't have those. Are they naturally gain through adulthood? Or are they are sign of the tribe to celebrate adulthood and therefor tatoos?
The stripes remind me of how some cats are born with a single color, but patterns become more prominent in their fur as they grow into adolescence. I think it's a roll of the dice genetic thing as to whether or not it shows up, and not having the stripes is a completely recessive trait. Also, it reminds me how some people are born with blue eyes, and become other colors (usually brown) when they get older due to producing more melanin later on. This is interesting! I wanna see what the lore says now!
I generally think they are natural stripes but my WOL has stripes and eye spots of a very unnatural color so I think on him they’re paint. His under eye stripes are natural though! (Lots of stuff going on on his face lol. Maybe too much but I’m used to it by now)
The mithra from FFXI that the miquo'te are based on had these stripes in their base models, so that's definitely where it came from originally. They kept the races fairly close to FFXI's races, because their original intention was to allow FFXI players to directly port their characters over to FFXIV. But that idea was eventually scrapped before 1.0's release. Whether or not they've come up with a lore reason for their existence in FFXIV, apart from just being a cultural or race quirk, I don't know. I kind of think of them as tattoos, not necessarily a racial feature. Or something semi-permanent like henna.
In FFXI, most mithra models had the stripes but there were a few without. They also came in a greater range of shapes, and a couple of lighter purple/white pastel colors. So they seemed to be more like paint there. BUT there was also some debate in the FFXI community about whether or not the mithra were supposed to be completely fur-covered or not. Due to the graphical limitations and lack of high-res art and cutscenes, it was hard to tell lol. So even the FFXI community didn't have a full handle on the mithras.
I think the answer lies in the child models. At least as far as I can remember*, no child miqo has face markings, which to me indicates it may be a coming-of-age tattoo practice, or something along those lines.
*I reserve the right to be wrong in my memory
I really just want to think they are Natural like they are born with them. Some may have them others not. It just makes them much more unique and I hate to think that its not and just face paint.
As for the males which I don't see much talk of I know the markings underneath the eyes I'm sure they are born with.
The fact that miqo’te children don’t have them, suggests they get them later in life and aren’t born with them. So in my mind they’re a coming of age tribal tattoo type thing they get when.. they come of age.
They might be tattoos, akin to a cultural coming of age thing. That would go some way to explain why not all miqo'te have them and why the warpaint on warpaint conundrum might be explained. Especially if the tattoos have any specific meanings, then the warpaints could help mask the stripes.
Considering the character creator HAS a "face paint" option that's completely separate from miqo'te stripes, I choose to believe that they're natural. After all, why not give the character control of that sort of thing separately if it's cosmetic unless they're natural? I find it likely that perhaps those markings are passed down by blood, kinda like eye color or something else. It would explain why some miqo'te don't have them, because maybe that gene wasn't dominant in them. Aside from that, I just like the idea of them being real. And after all my character goes through, you'd think that they would fade at some point if it were paint lol
Pretty sure it's been stated in the lore that they're born with these patterns, and they darken/become more noticeable with age (hence the "children seemingly lack them" part). It's also been stated that only Keepers of the Moon have a tradition of applying war paint. That's why they're also a fixed part that comes with your face type, and, unlike actual makeup or war paint, can't be changed afterwards unless you pop a bottle of Fantasia and redo the face entirely.
If the above part somehow went retconned, I'd go with tattoos rather than war paint, because 1) permanent and can't be changed later on 2) "war paint over war paint" in cases like Pawah's truly doesn't make any sense and 3) I don't really see characters like Y'shtola wasting time daily to apply war paint when their lifestyle is so disconnected from the traditional tribal life (and Seekers of the Sun are not even supposed to follow such traditions to begin with).
I always thought of it as a natural feature on there face this is the first I heard about Yoshi P saying anything different.
Cats with striped fur have striped skin underneath. That's enough for me to believe it's natural.