Unpacking thoughts on a Tumblr comment...
Aug. 8th, 2018 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
auronlu...because if I actually replied on Tumblr there'd be a shitstorm.
(Note: I am doing this partly because I am in near paralytic-depression mode, and thinking about fandom stuff is a good way to put my brain in a separate spot instead of whinging.)
I received a compliment on Love Her and Despair on Tumblr, which is gratifying all this time, especially when I've been thinking about finishing it again even if the fandom mostly moved on ten years ago.
Quoth the anon:
I thanked them for the compliment and nattered briefly (by LJ standards) about my fic, and pointed them tomintywolf's Guardian graphic novel which started with a similar premise ("What if Yuna had accepted Lulu's offer to become the Final Aeon") and is probably about 3 pages from being finished, unlike mine.
[EDIT: Rereading this post, I'm tempted to delete it. I feel like my brain and/or my writing has atrophied from being outside of academia too long. But I guess I'll leave it.]
I commented very superficially on sexism and did not touch that comment about the "sexualization of a 15 year old girl" with a ten foot sword.
Because Tumblr has gotten very, very strange about minors in fanfic and in canon. To the point that I'd probably be accused of sexualizing minors for having opinions about teenaged sexuality.
Because yeah, the sexualization of Rikku is a thing. But it's complicated.
First off: The FMV where she strips out of her wetsuit? Pure, gratuitous fanservice for the fanboys, with her butt in our face. Blergh. And to a certain extent, her original wetsuit costume is problematic as well, although it's also just strange. (Mountain climbing harness over wetsuit with clown shoes? Well, it's a look.)
But reducing the character to that? NO. Even though we're dealing with a certain amount of "female characters can choose to look sexy, but when male game designers are calling the shots it ceases to be self-expression," there's also a lot more to Rikku's character as intended by the game designers as opposed to just interpreted by fans.
Rikku is competent. She's calling the shots as a young leader among the Al Bhed. She sizes up Tidus, figures out how to save his goofus ass, gives him a lot of sensible advice. She's bilingual, which is rare in this world. She pilots a machina to rescue her cousin, and becomes Yuna's guardian when she sees Yuna's got too many competent guardians to be abducted. She continues to speak sense to the blinkered Yevonites throughout. And she's pretty damn handy in the field, as she herself points out on more than one occasion ("Good thing you had me here to do X" is not a boast when she's saving their bacon.)
She's a smart kid.
So that's Rikku.
Now, Tidus is two years older than her, but still a minor himself (this is pretty hecking important, because Tumblr's gotten to such a point that some would probably call him a pedophile). Yes, there is enough of a gap between 17 and 15 to make Tidus' anxiety dream where he's torn between following Yuna or Rikku to Zanarkand a little... questionable. But that's the only time he exhibits any interest in Rikku beyond platonic camaraderie. He doesn't flirt when she returns. He treats her as an ally in Operation Save Yunie, and as a voice of common sense among all these Yevonites. Which she is.
There's something else I liked about Rikku's character later which put me off the first time I saw it. Tidus and Rikku are chitchatting about the other party members and observe that Lulu is "so together." Rikku says she'd like to grow up to be like Lulu and mimes boobs, which is in questionable taste (hi, male game designers), but from an in-character perspective is ... in character. "Give me a few years, and I'll be as cool (and hot!) as her!" is not a terrible thing for a 15-year-old girl to say. Even if I agree with Kimahri ("Rikku should be Rikku.")
And then... part of the reason I wrote LHAD was my initial reaction to FFX-2 was "shameless fanservice, and they made Rikku and Yuna more shallow, and they married off Lulu and got her pregnant to get her out of the way." Which is true.
But also.
- It's a damsel in distress story, where Tidus is the damsel. Yuna quests all over the world with two other girls performing feats of derring do, and if you complete all the sidequests she gets to bring him back from the dead, sorta. Although ACTUALLY, you don't have to go to that ending, and she is okay with him being gone in the alternate ending.
- Yuna's been raised in a repressive culture to be a self-sacrificing, demure, well-behaved figure of inspiration. Rikku's encouraging her to cut loose and be a young adult. Go have fun. Find a new life for herself.
- It's kind of a teenaged guys coming-of-age story, except again. It's the girls' story. (And FFX had an ongoing theme about whose story it really was. X2 is Yuna's. She's writing her own story, rather than having it dictated by the church.)
- The Crimson Squad guys also wind up needing to be rescued by Y,R,P.
- Shelinda's still a bit of a drip, but Dona turned from a one-dimensional character to a complex one, even a mentor figure, which is interesting because she's never been Yuna's friend and is wary of her. Lucil is put forward as a major role model and respected authority figure. Nhadala is a minor character but very much a boss.
- I vacillate between rage and denial at the character of LeBlanc. Like Dona, she seems at first glance to be cast in the "slutty and jealous rival" role which is so appallingly common for female characters, in contrast to the "goodie two shoes" girl held up as the hero. Yet she, like Dona, is also a bit more complicated (and shrewd).
- There's the usual fanservice problem: Many teenaged girls do enjoy sexy costumes; it's a common way of growing into one's body and waking up to one's sexuality. But when it's portrayed a entertainment/game for men to watch and perv over, it ceases to be self-expression.
Miyazaki is a lot better at showing girls being girls by and for themselves. But I think, to some extent, X-2's designers really were making a conscious effort to swap out the roles usually played by male characters and let it be a "girls only, boys please wait over there" story.
Even if FFV in all its goofiness did it without drawing attention to the fact that the party is majority-women for much of the game.
But I'm getting a little off-track. The original poster complained about "sexualization of a 15 year old girl" in FFX, not sexualization of a 17-year-old and 19-year-old girl in X-2.
The anon also complained about sexism, which is a whole other post. On the one hand, absolutely. (Mintywolf's entire story re-centers the tale on the friendship of Lulu and Yuna that was obviously a deep and essential part of their lives before Gary Stu crashed the party). Tidus butts in and becomes the hero of what was supposed to be Yuna's pilgrimage. The world of Spira itself has the usual skew of "mostly men in authority." Blitzball teams are almost all 3 guys, 2 gals, except the Aurochs which are all guys and are closer to the main characters? Women are mages or (at best) thieves doing glancing attacks, men get big weapons. Yuna keeps getting captured (although the first time, she's already escaped and knocks out a guard just as her guardians show up to rescue her, and she's not a passive victim in that wedding; she went through it hoping to get close enough to Seymour to Send him).
On the other hand, Lulu, Yuna, and Rikku are each strong female characters in different ways. Two of them have brains (Rikku and Lulu). Lulu's got that whole Mama Bear schtick, and went on two prior pilgrimages trying to stop Yuna's before it started. Yuna defies her church and saves the flipping planet. She's the one giving the big speech in the stadium during the endgame FMV. She's the one who was going to sacrifice herself for the world, but chose not to, subverting that trope.
There's a fine line between critiquing sexism in a piece of media, and reinforcing it by reducing the characters to less than they are, or fixating too much on their looks and ignoring their characters.
Anyway. Stating the obvious at length, I suppose, but I'm out of practice.
(Note: I am doing this partly because I am in near paralytic-depression mode, and thinking about fandom stuff is a good way to put my brain in a separate spot instead of whinging.)
I received a compliment on Love Her and Despair on Tumblr, which is gratifying all this time, especially when I've been thinking about finishing it again even if the fandom mostly moved on ten years ago.
Quoth the anon:
"Hey I read your fanfic something like... 10 years ago. I loved it and still love it. However I honestly feel like your writing is way better then the source material! I recently replayed FF10 and this game has soooooooo much sexism it's disgusting. Not to mention the sexualisation of 15 year old girl. Gross. Love and Despair is still great and incredibly enjoyable. You totally surpassed the canon material"
I thanked them for the compliment and nattered briefly (by LJ standards) about my fic, and pointed them to
mintywolf's Guardian graphic novel which started with a similar premise ("What if Yuna had accepted Lulu's offer to become the Final Aeon") and is probably about 3 pages from being finished, unlike mine.[EDIT: Rereading this post, I'm tempted to delete it. I feel like my brain and/or my writing has atrophied from being outside of academia too long. But I guess I'll leave it.]
I commented very superficially on sexism and did not touch that comment about the "sexualization of a 15 year old girl" with a ten foot sword.
Because Tumblr has gotten very, very strange about minors in fanfic and in canon. To the point that I'd probably be accused of sexualizing minors for having opinions about teenaged sexuality.
Because yeah, the sexualization of Rikku is a thing. But it's complicated.
First off: The FMV where she strips out of her wetsuit? Pure, gratuitous fanservice for the fanboys, with her butt in our face. Blergh. And to a certain extent, her original wetsuit costume is problematic as well, although it's also just strange. (Mountain climbing harness over wetsuit with clown shoes? Well, it's a look.)
But reducing the character to that? NO. Even though we're dealing with a certain amount of "female characters can choose to look sexy, but when male game designers are calling the shots it ceases to be self-expression," there's also a lot more to Rikku's character as intended by the game designers as opposed to just interpreted by fans.
Rikku is competent. She's calling the shots as a young leader among the Al Bhed. She sizes up Tidus, figures out how to save his goofus ass, gives him a lot of sensible advice. She's bilingual, which is rare in this world. She pilots a machina to rescue her cousin, and becomes Yuna's guardian when she sees Yuna's got too many competent guardians to be abducted. She continues to speak sense to the blinkered Yevonites throughout. And she's pretty damn handy in the field, as she herself points out on more than one occasion ("Good thing you had me here to do X" is not a boast when she's saving their bacon.)
She's a smart kid.
So that's Rikku.
Now, Tidus is two years older than her, but still a minor himself (this is pretty hecking important, because Tumblr's gotten to such a point that some would probably call him a pedophile). Yes, there is enough of a gap between 17 and 15 to make Tidus' anxiety dream where he's torn between following Yuna or Rikku to Zanarkand a little... questionable. But that's the only time he exhibits any interest in Rikku beyond platonic camaraderie. He doesn't flirt when she returns. He treats her as an ally in Operation Save Yunie, and as a voice of common sense among all these Yevonites. Which she is.
There's something else I liked about Rikku's character later which put me off the first time I saw it. Tidus and Rikku are chitchatting about the other party members and observe that Lulu is "so together." Rikku says she'd like to grow up to be like Lulu and mimes boobs, which is in questionable taste (hi, male game designers), but from an in-character perspective is ... in character. "Give me a few years, and I'll be as cool (and hot!) as her!" is not a terrible thing for a 15-year-old girl to say. Even if I agree with Kimahri ("Rikku should be Rikku.")
And then... part of the reason I wrote LHAD was my initial reaction to FFX-2 was "shameless fanservice, and they made Rikku and Yuna more shallow, and they married off Lulu and got her pregnant to get her out of the way." Which is true.
But also.
- It's a damsel in distress story, where Tidus is the damsel. Yuna quests all over the world with two other girls performing feats of derring do, and if you complete all the sidequests she gets to bring him back from the dead, sorta. Although ACTUALLY, you don't have to go to that ending, and she is okay with him being gone in the alternate ending.
- Yuna's been raised in a repressive culture to be a self-sacrificing, demure, well-behaved figure of inspiration. Rikku's encouraging her to cut loose and be a young adult. Go have fun. Find a new life for herself.
- It's kind of a teenaged guys coming-of-age story, except again. It's the girls' story. (And FFX had an ongoing theme about whose story it really was. X2 is Yuna's. She's writing her own story, rather than having it dictated by the church.)
- The Crimson Squad guys also wind up needing to be rescued by Y,R,P.
- Shelinda's still a bit of a drip, but Dona turned from a one-dimensional character to a complex one, even a mentor figure, which is interesting because she's never been Yuna's friend and is wary of her. Lucil is put forward as a major role model and respected authority figure. Nhadala is a minor character but very much a boss.
- I vacillate between rage and denial at the character of LeBlanc. Like Dona, she seems at first glance to be cast in the "slutty and jealous rival" role which is so appallingly common for female characters, in contrast to the "goodie two shoes" girl held up as the hero. Yet she, like Dona, is also a bit more complicated (and shrewd).
- There's the usual fanservice problem: Many teenaged girls do enjoy sexy costumes; it's a common way of growing into one's body and waking up to one's sexuality. But when it's portrayed a entertainment/game for men to watch and perv over, it ceases to be self-expression.
Miyazaki is a lot better at showing girls being girls by and for themselves. But I think, to some extent, X-2's designers really were making a conscious effort to swap out the roles usually played by male characters and let it be a "girls only, boys please wait over there" story.
Even if FFV in all its goofiness did it without drawing attention to the fact that the party is majority-women for much of the game.
But I'm getting a little off-track. The original poster complained about "sexualization of a 15 year old girl" in FFX, not sexualization of a 17-year-old and 19-year-old girl in X-2.
The anon also complained about sexism, which is a whole other post. On the one hand, absolutely. (Mintywolf's entire story re-centers the tale on the friendship of Lulu and Yuna that was obviously a deep and essential part of their lives before Gary Stu crashed the party). Tidus butts in and becomes the hero of what was supposed to be Yuna's pilgrimage. The world of Spira itself has the usual skew of "mostly men in authority." Blitzball teams are almost all 3 guys, 2 gals, except the Aurochs which are all guys and are closer to the main characters? Women are mages or (at best) thieves doing glancing attacks, men get big weapons. Yuna keeps getting captured (although the first time, she's already escaped and knocks out a guard just as her guardians show up to rescue her, and she's not a passive victim in that wedding; she went through it hoping to get close enough to Seymour to Send him).
On the other hand, Lulu, Yuna, and Rikku are each strong female characters in different ways. Two of them have brains (Rikku and Lulu). Lulu's got that whole Mama Bear schtick, and went on two prior pilgrimages trying to stop Yuna's before it started. Yuna defies her church and saves the flipping planet. She's the one giving the big speech in the stadium during the endgame FMV. She's the one who was going to sacrifice herself for the world, but chose not to, subverting that trope.
There's a fine line between critiquing sexism in a piece of media, and reinforcing it by reducing the characters to less than they are, or fixating too much on their looks and ignoring their characters.
Anyway. Stating the obvious at length, I suppose, but I'm out of practice.
WOOOOOO HI I HAVE THOUGHTS ABOUT RIKKU
Date: 2018-08-09 05:29 pm (UTC)this is the sound of tumblr itself defriending me
and Rikku: she's so goddamned mature even if she acts like a silly kid? she's gritty and determined, she's competent and dangerous; she's sweet and angry and she has a lot of depth even if she prefers to act spunky and cute (even that, the layers, is a sign of maturity). sure, there's some gross sexist stuff that peeks through here and there, but if i think of a sexualized character, it's lulu, not Rikku at all.
sorry hi but i love Rikku SO MUCH and i don't agree with that part of the comment
Re: WOOOOOO HI I HAVE THOUGHTS ABOUT RIKKU
Date: 2018-08-10 06:05 am (UTC)(And yeah. Lulu. sexualization. See also: Fran. FF has a thing for sexualizing mature, intelligent, independent female characters in ways to make them more titillating and less threatening to gamer bros. That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it.)
Re: WOOOOOO HI I HAVE THOUGHTS ABOUT RIKKU
Date: 2018-08-10 03:30 pm (UTC)Fran is another one, yes! Because mature competence isn't sexy enough???? (oh wait: gamebros.)
Re: WOOOOOO HI I HAVE THOUGHTS ABOUT RIKKU
Date: 2018-08-12 02:18 am (UTC)Re: WOOOOOO HI I HAVE THOUGHTS ABOUT RIKKU
Date: 2018-08-17 02:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-09 06:08 pm (UTC)It’s like when I see people doing edits of character designs by like, coloring over bare skin to make a shirt, and then saying it’s “fixed”, as though the original intent was a cause of incompetency or an accident. I’m like Flik from “A Bug’s Life” in the scene about “pretend this rock is a seed. This seed will grow into an awesome tree as a result of time and care, and doesn’t rush.” “But it’s a rock.”
I know this anime chick is half-naked! I know this story has some sexism and questionable gender roles! Can’t we just talk about how much implied hidden depths and personalities these female characters have that enriches the story?
no subject
Date: 2018-08-10 06:21 am (UTC)Tumblr doesn't lend itself to nuanced discussion.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-10 04:32 pm (UTC)Agreed. Lots of nuance is lost and there’s been a lot of trending dogmatic statements about fairly sensitive issues especially regarding relationships and sexuality. Thankfully on my dashboard ive followed people who has made little ambiguity on their language regarding race and ethnicity but man a lot of drama on western cartoons.
I also think a lot of discussions get cyclical and what were oncr fairly old arguments get resurfaced once new fans or material come in. Like when Sailor Moon Crystal aired and there’s a lot of reiteration on how the girls are depicted or manga vs anime or suddenly troubling scenes recontextualized. Or about fanservice in anime and jrpgs even though these criticisms exist in western comics and games too but i guess the difference is that those material does respond back to the criticisms and improve itself based on acknowledging women as a market demographic.
But i think what does get lost in Tumblr folks, and perhaps by current fan trends, is that what seems obviously exclusionary and reductive for some (or most) can still be inclusive and affirming in others especially in progressive media. Or even in not-greatly progressive media (which speaking of FF, im remembering when there were many thinkpieces on XV and the rest of the canon). And that’s some neat tension when the two clash.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-12 03:06 am (UTC)The thinkpieces, ahoy. I was never as Thinky Thoughts as some of our best writers, and I feel like I'm bringing back broken potsherds and things from those old discussions.
"Neat tension" is a much healthier way of framing the debate/complexities than what I see on Tumblr.
I confess I still haven't played XV. Yet I know that despite its problems— which, of course, exist in every FF to one extent or another— some of this group of players have enjoyed it.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-10 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-11 08:35 am (UTC)As for the problem with age & sexuality, I come from a place where I never had sexual desire until I was 19. I was extremely well-read, knew all sorts of stuff and had read 'naughty' things, but could never connect. I made gentle fun of my gal pals losing their minds during puberty, having no understanding. Then at 19, I lost MY mind for 2 years when my sexuality finally kicked in. Going from nothing to nuts helped me to get some perspective.
...and then, I have a 16-years-younger sister who started sneaking out of the house -starting at age 12- to go seduce guys. She would -literally- climb out of her bedroom window and go stalk guys, harassing them until they would have sex with her. I learned about this when one of the guys she did this to complained to my parents [and Mom was in shock when she phoned me to tell me this]. Sister was given counseling, first from their church, where she successfully seduced the therapist - and then from a non-religious therapist who managed to get the concepts of consent & discretion thru to her [then 14-year old skull].
So - both ends of a small bell curve, but enough to let me know that sex hits others differently - so notions of 'when' someone is considered able to consent to sex has always seemed messed up to me. Going-thru-puberty me saw everyone around me in school hooking up like WAY before 18. My sister, even more so. So I've always thought that 16 would make a lot more sense for legality - for all sorts of things.
*Looks up and blushes* Sorry - gone into a ramble, I have. But - I love seeing you post. You are inspirational & a love.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-12 02:15 am (UTC)And as a writer I'm interested by your bell-curve story because it's the spectrum of how humans can be, which is useful to know since we aren't all the same yet we have to write characters who are different.
Personally, I was... unaware I was bi? Which made things a little confusing in high school, and a LOT confusing in college when I started crushing out on some RL Lightning-type people. But I think by modern standards/terminology I'm demi, which leaves me puzzled by people who feel sexual attraction towards people based on appearance before they get to know somebody well. But I know that's a thing that happens.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-17 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-18 08:58 am (UTC)But he wanted in to a AD&D rpg I was table refereeing and I'll referee for -anyone-. And then his clever, annoying, astonishing characters let me see inside his mind and won my heart.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-11 03:21 pm (UTC)I don't have a lot to add except yes, this.
My opinions on all of this are probably kind of skewed because I came to FFX directly from another game fandom that had a female protagonist who was HEAVILY sexualized (as were several female villains), to the extent that fanservice was proooobably one of the main reasons for the games existing. I loved her in spite of all the fetishization because she was awesome, but the aggressive level of sexiness made me (being ace) pretty uncomfortable and after that, FFX seemed wholesome in comparison.
But as I think I've probably mentioned before, I have a tendency to fall for the fanservicey characters for non-fanservice reasons. Because they're usually the ones who get to be cool! And smart! And powerful! And then I get annoyed that they’re often reduced to their physical attributes by the fandom or the game itself. (And, inevitably, end up elbow-deep in a complicated fanwork about why their CHARACTER is so important and before I know it I’ve dedicated years of my life to it. Guardian is just the only one that has reached fruition so far.)
On a side note I actually like X-2 a lot despite its handling of Lulu. While there seems to be more outright fanservice with the way the three female leads are dressed, it seems a lot less . . . male gazey than X? X has a lot of lingering camera shots angled at Rikku’s backside or down Lulu’s dress that X-2 doesn’t have. And I like being able to finally play as Yuna, whom I feel strongly should have been the player-controlled protagonist of the first game.
But it is complicated because there is a difference between a teenage girl dressing up in a flirty costume for her own enjoyment, and an adult male game developer designing a teenage girl dressed up in a flirty costume for the enjoyment of men. I’ve never really found a way to reconcile the two, other than that everything I write/draw is about female characters from a female perspective intended for a female audience, so the fanservice takes a backseat to character development.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-12 02:12 am (UTC)And yeah, you reconcile it by centering it from/in a female perspective.
Which reminds me of that CRACKED article mocking Final Fantasy erotica waaay back in 2006, which glommed onto some of my old fic and decided I must be a boob-obsessed guy because I write Lulu, who has big boobs... never mind that I never mentioned them, and those stories were from her perspective and very specifically written to suit a woman's preferences. And then the clueless wonders illustrated their article with nothing but hentai-ish images of anime characters with big boobs and no personality which... yawn. NOPE. NOT INTERESTED, and there was nothing whatsoever like that in the stories they were singling out, which -- of course-- turned out to be written entirely by women, for women.
Ahem. Back from the NSFWland, I like your perspective on X-2's treating the female characters more ... autonomously? There's one scene that's a little male gaze-y, but even then it's kind of "girls hanging out with each other." (The hot springs scene.)
And backing up still further, I tend to fall for the fanservice-y characters too. I still have the suspicion that they're worried female characters who are too strong, smart, self-willed, and taking-no-shit will be offputting to guys, so they make them visually cater to guys who might otherwise be threatened by that. But maybe it's just they're piling all the cool stuff into the same character. (I'm thinking of Lightning in XIII, before she was giving the smexy costumes... she was the standard tired-of-your-shit female character, although not the Loremaster which is a big part of Fran and Lulu's appeal for me, and I think there was a certain amount of hostility towards Lightning because she wasn't fanservice-y enough. Which they "fixed" in Lightning Returns, which I never got around to playing even though I actually like parts of XIII very much. And if I ever do play it, I'll be liking it in spite of that.)
no subject
Date: 2018-08-18 09:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-13 06:05 pm (UTC)I also found Tidus to be better than I remembered? Still not the hero really, but a way better viewpoint character than when I was in my early 20s.
But ugh, I wish more nuance could be a thing because that was a game fandom that really helped me get past some toxic religious shit and handle some growing up. We can reject the pandering and still love what has obviously resonated beyond the surface.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-16 05:29 am (UTC)I had the advantage when I came to most of the Final Fantasy games that I was already in my late 20s, early 30s, and had been a TA for a few years. So a lot of the time I felt like a chaperone or Mom or something being patient with these emotional and not-entirely-mature teenagers (I started with VIII) trying their best and doing a damnsight better than I would've done at that age.
Tidus can butt in and be a bit annoying, and it's frustrating at a meta level that this was Yuna's pilgrimage and yet the spotlight is on him so much, but there is this whole idea that the clueless outsider is the only one who can break them out of the cycle of toxic religion by his sheer cluelessness?
And he is enthusiastic and goofy and tries, so that there's been memes around over the years likening him to doge or a golden retriever.
Anyway, I'm babbling, but I'm glad you're finding new things playing back through it. It's not perfect -- most popular media is far from it-- but it's resonated with a lot of people over the years.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-18 09:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-17 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-17 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-20 03:07 am (UTC)I'm glad I can be a bright spot. ♥