Random Ponder on Women in Final Fantasy

[auronlu]

I've seen some angstfic where female characters in FF games are denied the role they crave because of their gender. You know, the "I have to be a nun, because they wouldn't let me a be a crusader" or "I'm a swordswoman and I'm going against the grain, so there!" type angst.



On the one hand, the game mechanics of Final Fantasy games tend to have built-in gender roles and stereotypes. Except for Paine and Girl Power which were cheapened by Tits and Ass and Barbie Dress-up, there's a running trend in which the guys run over and go ka-SLASH for a zillion points of damage with a sword, while most of the gals apart from Tifa go *dainty dink* for 10 points of damage, and may wipe their foreheads in relief as their battle victory move (Aeris, Rinoa, Yuna in FFX). The girls tend to be magic users and healers (not always, but more often) while the guys tend to be fighters.

Plus there's the whole Evil Sorceress thing in one form or another. (Yunalesca, Ultimecia, Jenova.)

And yet.

Have you seen how many female crusaders there are? There's Lucil and Elma, Miyu. Lady Yocun was a Crusader-- I just discovered this, whoops, so much for my high priestess idea -- and so, I assume, was her Guardian who became the Sin that Braska defeated.

There's plenty of female Seeds. There's Elena. I haven't played enough FF to know if this is true for all the games, but it seems to me that while the main female characters tend to fall into traditional healer/sorceress/thief/non-heavy-combat roles (usually, not always), and the fighters and world leaders are usually guys, the military organizations seem pretty gender-neutral.

I'm not sure about this, I'm just thinking how we sometimes assume prejudices and pitfalls of our own cultures which don't necessarily exist in the FF worlds.

Or at least it's a little more complicated.

Comments

[auronlu.livejournal.com]

Believe me, I adore Rinoa -- and it was embarrassing to me that I enjoyed "rescuing" her on a few occasions, indulging my Utena-like Prince streak -- so it annoyed me having her get damsel'd quite so much. Also there's that finishing move where she seems to go "phew, we made it!" instead of, BWAH, I KICK ASS. I get frustrated by the body language of the female characters. (Lulu's tits-jiggle. EXCUSE ME? She should stand there looking smug and disdainful.)

I realize after pondering this subject more that I have no firm conclusions, other than the fact that I need to play IX and enjoy the strong female characters there. It seems to be nuanced. It seems not to be cut-and-dried. It seems to vary by game. And more recent games are making some conscious attempts to buck stereotypes for both men and women. (Hooray, Isaaru! Except in X-2, where you went weird on us.)


At the risk of repeating myself, all I'm thinking here is:

~ Hey, wait a minute, we can't write fanfic where some female character's excluded from a military organization like the Turks, SeeDs, or Crusaders, because there's plenty of evidence that women rise to power in these organizations.

~ Which means that these Final Fantasy cultures may not be as sexist.

~ Except that there's an awfully high proportion of female characters with a) "dink! I do no physical damage!" b) "I am a damsel in distress and need to be rescued!" and/or c) "I am nervous and unsure of myself!" compared to the male main chcaracters.

~ The women tend to be the healers, thieves, or mages, the boys tend to wave swords, spears, or punch things. But this is a trend, not an absolute.

~ Political and party leaders are usually male. (Rufus, Mika, Seymore, the president-in-8-whose-name-escapes-me, General Martine, Cid...)

~ The "evil witch/sorceress/slut wearing buttfloss" (okay, they don't usually have the buttfloss) archetype is alive and well.


Yet on the whole, despite the above items, I fall back on, "Hey cool! Instructor Trepe." And the like. And I'm looking forward to seeng XIII.

You know what will be a real revolution?

When the poor guys wind up being able to do as many different things as the women. We're starting to be allowed to have women who are bad-tempered without being considered bitches, or who happen to wield swords and beat the snot out of things. We're starting to have women who don't particularly need rescuing every disk, and are competent. I'm not advocating male characters who make a career of being wusses in distress -- though it might be kind of cute, in a Vaniel way, sooner or later -- but rather... the small wirey guy who's a cute little thief, or the gentle quiet one who's a healer, or the artist/bard type who wins people to his side and keeps the party's morale up by being an extraordinary decent chap, even if he's not much of a fighter. (Okay, there was Laguna. He was also referred to as a "moron".) Or, heck, a wizard who can't do any physical damage. Or a thinker who's not a 7-year-old whiz kid named Shinra. Or a dandy who's more into clothes than the Gullwings, and has style.

Shake up the gender stereotypes! Be creative.

Also we need more crossdressing scenes, but everyone would complain it's just a repeat of FFVII.

That rocked. :D

[haku-kaen.livejournal.com]

Oh, I do agree with all of that, like I said. I mostly commented because, eh... I've seen so many people, when asked about what their normal party was and why they picked it, say things along the lines of they never used Rinoa because the junction system makes you horde your magic so your stats don't go down, so it's pointless to use the weak magic-using girl is pointless (well, okay, they usually say more along the lines of "because she sucks at fighting") that it's become a bit of a pet peeve, since, yeah, plotwise she's weak but it doesn't translate over to the battle system.

Sometimes I wonder if they'd been planning on making her a stronger character within the plot too, and then somewhere along the line just... didn't. Because her stat growth suggests that they'd meant her to follow in the footsteps of Tifa and Celes, and in turn have Freya follow in hers. And if Square hadn't followed their pattern of quickly forgetting about the revolutionary groups they set up at the beginning of their games as the main plot distracts the characters, I think her role in the game would've been much more interesting if they'd kept building on her part as one of the Forest Owls.

So, I think think she started out from what could have been a good place (aside from her having someone make her a frilly pink bedroom in their hideout). But then begins the long string of her constantly being in danger, or enthralled, or kidnapped. And the way that every plan she comes up with not only goes completely wrong, but also often messes up the things everyone else were doing when she decided to run off and do her own thing. So the potential she had ended up being mostly squandered.

I love her when I'm not spending all my time rescuing her, but, geeze, from the end of disc two to the beginning of disc four the game practically ends up becoming a journey from one rescue to the next, from her dangling off of Garden (which is my personal favorite of the rescue scenes, so I can't complain much about that one), to the coma, to space, to the Sorceress research center that I can't remember the name of, to Adel.

Haa... I think I need to start hanging around FFVIII message boards again, because, looking at how much I just typed, obviously I've been missing talking about things like this.

[owlmoose.livejournal.com]

the small wirey guy who's a cute little thief... or the artist/bard type who wins people to his side and keeps the party's morale up by being an extraordinary decent chap, even if he's not much of a fighter.

Okay, you have *got* to play FFIX. Because you have just described Zidane. At least in the first couple of discs. (And also because it's a fun game!)

OOOoo.

[auronlu.livejournal.com]

Very nifty. Okay, yes. I definitely need to play. :D