The end of November snuck up on many, with a whirlwind of holidays to keep everyone busy.
Just days before the American Thanksgiving, and an exciting lead up to Starlight, Mitan Pontan-Max set aside some time to discuss life as an Eorzean journalist—despite a hectic sleep and work schedule throwing her just a little off-kilter.
Pontan-Max spends much of their time on Aether recording the stories of the FFXIV community in her magazine POPoTO, the “Professional Online Portfolio of Traveling Occasions”. However, when not engrossed in writing, she’s happily engaged in PvP, South Sea content, glams, or decorating her home from top to bottom.
While, decorating is more of a pet project than one for profit, she still enjoys spending her time focusing on ways to improve her private estates.
“My home isn’t even publicly broadcasted,” Pontan-Max said, “and my apartment is only word-of-mouth as being a nice place for people to sit if they are doing things [or] gathering on Aether.”
Bringing others together, either in her home quietly or through community events, is important to the journalist.
“[…I] always felt a fondness for places focused on care for their patrons and the community at large,” she said. “This is why I tend to stray away from nightclubs (that, and a majority are known to not be fond of Lalafells). My magazine highlights these places that hold the community and their enjoyment as the forefront of their operation.”
It’s a worthwhile endeavor. The nightclub scene is prevalent in Eorzea, but it’s certainly not the only venue type that someone can find. There are streets full of cafes, sports events, spas, quiet bars, restaurants, museums, aquariums, and more.
“I was visiting some venues for the first time, and having picked up a decent crowd of friends, I wanted to share these places with others, particularly Lalafell,” Pontan-Max recalled. “It had taken me far too much wading in the PF (Party Finder) to find [these venues] and, if not for the people I’ve met, would’ve taken even longer.”
On any given day, the PF can be littered with all sorts of advertisements for clubs, spas, adult events, and more. On well-traversed data centers like Aether, it can be even more difficult to find something that suits your playing style.
Having realized she just might have cracked the code, Mitan Pontan-Max set forth her plan to share these experiences with others as broadly as she could.
Similarly to how word-of-mouth and community helped Potan-Max find the places they’ve experienced and written about, the community has kept POPoTO on the tips of everyone’s tongues.
“I still depend primarily on [POPoTO] being shared [through word-of-mouth], as I want it to feel like a friend bringing up these places in conversation,” she said. “No better way to do that than to have your friends mention the magazine.”
Only success has followed Mitan and POPoTO so far. The magazine will soon see its 12th issue, after first cropping up in autumn of 2022.
POPoTO has showcased several establishments across Aether and other data centers, such as the Lali-Ho Maid Cafe, Umami Tsunami, and Fiddlesticks’ Funny Flat—just to name a few. Each venue showcases the creativity and compassion for the communities they serve.
“I couldn’t name a favorite venue, as I still frequent a good bit of them,” Pontan-Max admitted.
Past issues of POPoTO have included tips for players just jumping into venue hopping and roleplay. From glams to interactions, there’s quite the array of meaningful tricks for getting started, and it comes by her earnestly through learned experiences.
“I was always in different pots creatively,” she said. “Singing, instruments, photography, painting, and writing all wrapped together. I read, which bled into my writing skills, and is still influencing my writing today, with the XIV material and dialogue adding terms and prose to my technique.”
Roleplay began for Mitan as local LARP (live action roleplay) events, which led to cosplaying, living fanfiction groups, more and more writing, and now in-game RP.
“When you are working from characters that have a pre-made backstory and personality, you have to form yourself to it or make reasons to break the norm,” Pontan-Max said. “Writing everything from scratch is a lot of work and making a cohesive and sensible storyline and personality is more complex of a skill than it gets credit for. It’s so easy to fall into tropes if you aren't careful.”
Original character lore drops happen often in her magazine issues, most recently documenting the tale of Mitan’s father disappearing.
(The story contents of which I won’t spoil for you all.)
“[My roleplay] started as a Lalafellin recreation of my vtuber model,” Pontan-Max said. “I stream under MikaMischief, an American-born tanuki yokai running a convenience store, and I wanted to make Mitan (her name having Mi for Mika, Tan for Tanuki, and Pon for the Japanese drum sound) to be an equivalent.
“She has long splintered off from that into her own story, starting from me making her origins in the South Sea Isles and building from there. The current inspirations are a mash of different heroines from Nintendo and Ghibli that I feel embody the hardworking and altruist types.”
Seeds of this earnestness show up as early as Issue 3, in which she discusses the ways the greater FFXIV community mistreats Lalafell players.
“For those, such as myself, who face real world discrimination and [seek escape in FFXIV], [the ridicule Lalas receive] rings only as hateful and ignorant,” Pontan-Max reported in the third issue. “I am aware we can not force a world of change, but I and those I spoke to on the matter wish to bring awareness before things get worse, as ignored problems often do.”
Having lived a past life as an Au Ra, where finding solidarity and community proved difficult, the Lalafell community felt purposeful and meaningful to Mitan.
POPoTO is an homage to what matters most to Mitan Pontan-Max. The magazine isn’t just a vanity project. There’s more to be gained and more to be shared between the pages of each issue. And it could only be made possible with Mitan Pontan-Max’s sincere perspective, in and out of the game.
In spite of the tougher issues Mitan seeks to tackle, there’s hope.
There’s always hope threaded in her words.
Aether has an abundance of venues and community members of every race who embrace Lalafell and welcome them in as patrons and genuine members of the community.
This compassion is why Mitan Pontan-Max will never run out of material nor run out of reasons to highlight what it truly means to embrace one’s community.
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