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.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-10 01:41 am (UTC)