Random Ponder on Women in Final Fantasy
Jun. 7th, 2006 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
auronluI'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.
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.
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Date: 2006-06-09 01:03 am (UTC)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.