Final Fantasy X's Women, i.e. Dagas_Isa is SMART

[auronlu]

dagas_isa  -- writing under my very favorite icon of hers -- had an interesting and thoughtful post comparing Yuna and Nao of Liar Game. Much thinky thoughts were posted.

However, I must snip out this paragraph and frame it on the wall, because it's so obvious, and yet I never quite crystallized the thought:

Plus, Spira appears much bigger in the sense of gender equality than our world is. As far as I can tell, there's really no intentional sexism in the way that Spira's drawn out, and it's possible to find women incorporated in the military, sports, and in the religion. That is, any sexism in X isn't so much within Spira, as it is in the people who produced it.

Purple emphasis mine, of course.

So yeah. We have our Lucils and our Donas and our Elmas and our Lulus and our random blitzers and Shelinda the Token Doormat. We have rather more male than female characters being movers and shakers within the storyline. We have Unnamed Mother Syndrome for Rikku, Yuna, Tidus and Seymour. But in the world itself, as opposed to the cast we happen to bump into, it appears that women might pop up in any role.

Except. Deflation time. I see no female maester, no female leader of any group from Al Bhed to Ronso, until we get LeBlanc in X-2, who is not the most flattering leader-figure. Maybe Spiran women can be in any role -- military, religious, sports -- but there is still a glass ceiling?  Or do we blame that on game designers' allocation of PC/NPC roles?

It still looks to me like it would be a lot easier for Lucil to make maester (or meyvin) than it would be for a woman in our world to get signed as a free agent in Major League Baseball or acquire "President" as a job title.

Also, Bechdel Test. Flying Colors. There are conversations [not about men] between all female PCs, and between a number of NPCs and PCs. (Even the Marshmallow of Yevon).

This post is tangentially related to the whole "why are women not being written in fanfic" conversation being carried out in some other fandoms. One thing our canon has which some fandoms do not: Women. Lots. In many different roles.

Cf: LoTR.  (sigh)

Comments

[dagas-isa.livejournal.com]

Except. Deflation time. I see no female maester, no female leader of any group from Al Bhed to Ronso, until we get LeBlanc in X-2, who is not the most flattering leader-figure. Maybe Spiran women can be in any role -- military, religious, sports -- but there is still a glass ceiling? Or do we blame that on game designers' allocation of PC/NPC roles?

I'd blame this on the designers, personally. Just because, in the sense of Spira as a world, there's no sense that people like Yuna, Dona, Lucil, Lulu, etc. are particularly unusual in being women in their roles even though there's a lack of female group leaders within Yevon (among other places).

Or in other words, the fact that the leaders of Ye Old Oppressive Religion are men seems to be less for institutionalized or cultural reasons (though I admit they could exist), and more for the reasons that in this world, it's hard to imagine that the leader of an organized religion could be female. And that women would be nearly as harsh and repressive as the maesters of Yevon are.

I can't speak for the Al Bhed except to say, if Sin had not been destroyed, and the Al Bhed more or less integrating into the larger Spiran society, I think Rikku had a much better chance of becoming succeeding Cid as leader than Brother.

And I'm tempted to give the Ronso a pass in my head-canon, just because I can really see them having well-defined, but equally valued, male and female roles, but really only getting to see the male roles because that's Kimahri's position. It's sad that one of the neatest things about the Ronso is that they are not a 'Single Gender Beast Race.'

[auronlu.livejournal.com]

Or in other words, the fact that the leaders of Ye Old Oppressive Religion are men seems to be less for institutionalized or cultural reasons (though I admit they could exist), and more for the reasons that in this world, it's hard to imagine that the leader [[of an organized religion]] could be female.

I was thinking that, and then worrying I might be mentally cheating in order justify my "yay she's right the FFX world is a GREAT sandbox because women can be anything!" squee. I think you're right, but I could see someone pointing to that and saying that we can't just pretend an aspect of the game is OOC when we want it to be OOC. Not that it really matters; I just like the idea of canon being gender-neutral so that not only is there plenty of canon-opportunity for women (which, let's face it, makes things easier to write, since one doesn't have to change the world to write women and/or get Mary Sue accusations as I sometimes did in LOTR fanfic), but also since women characters are everywhere in canon, they are also everywhere in fanwork, except on rare occasions when an author decides to focus on 2 or 3 guys without much reference to context/world (i.e. Braska, Jecht, Auron, and even then the wives may get enough recognition that the lack of canon names gets in the way).

[[ Holy run-on sentence, Batman. ]]

And that women would be nearly as harsh and repressive as the maesters of Yevon are.

I suddenly think "Drace!" and "Yunalesca!" which is funny since they're the same VA in the English dub. Drace in the FFX world as a maester, hmmm. (Magister, [pseudo-latin] maester, praeter, consul...gee, why is this sounding familiar?)

"Single gender beast race." Er. Hey. Point. Another thing I hadn't noticed enough, except in a cynical, "Oh, wow, they designed a race of [lesbian?] playboy bunnies as fanservice" sort of way. Moogles, moombas, whatever-Red-XII-is, Garif, Viera... drat. At least IX had one. (Freya's people, whose name I'm blanking on.)