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Final Fantasy Sexism Part V: Women in Charge
Welcome back to another addition of Final Fantasy Sexism. Last time, I looked over Final Fantasys IX and X and found them a bit, well, lacking in how women were portrayed (minus Beatrix, who was a positive, if qualified, step forward). You don’t need to remember every detail of the prior entries to know that I have found most of the Final Fantasy series lacking up until this point. This entry will focus on Final Fantasy XII and XIII. Will this finally be where Square-Enix turns things around?
I have said before that this series is not about looking at one aspect of a character and saying “that is sexist!” Context matters. It is the consistent and repeated overreliance on gender-based stereotypes that is the problem, which I have tried to highlight in this series. This phenomenon not only places a limitation of female characters into overused tropes and clichés, but also serves as a reaffirmation of gender roles and stereotypes in real life. Video games have commonly told us that women are weak, emotional, flighty creatures that need big, strong, and more rational and secure men for protection and stability – because that is exactly how women are commonly viewed.
In Final Fantasy X, for example, Yuna was far and away the most important character in the party based on in-game standards. The overplot revolved around her pilgrimage to fight Sin, and all of the other playable characters were only there to protect her in that quest. Yet not only was the main character Tidus, but Yuna’s significance in the game revolved largely around her growing relationship with Tidus. Her dominant role in the game was not the heroine, but the love interest. Tidus being the main character was not sexist by itself, but how Yuna’s relevance revolved around him minimized her as an independent character.
Well, Final Fantasy XII showed us how to do it right.
Final Fantasy XII: The Reign of Ashe
Like in FFX, Ashe is not the main character. You don’t even meet her right away. But she is the most important character in your party, and widely considered the “true” main character of the game. Instead of taking a backseat to the real main playable character, Vaan, he instead takes a backseat to her story.
Ashe was born a princess – a role that has appeared in the FF series before. She was wed in an arranged marriage to Lord Rasler to solidify an alliance, though eventually came to love him. When Rasler was killed by Archadian forces, Ashe did not lose the will to fight, like Terra or Garnet, but instead hid underground and formed the Resistance, where she stumbles across the rest of the party members. When that happens, Ashe does not bungle everything until the REAL leaders (men) take over, like Rinoa, but instead takes charge and gets things done. She is confident, assertive, resolute, and, most importantly, capable, a stark contrast to many of the lead females in previous FFs.
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Ashe, determined to kick ass and take names. And something about not chewing bubble gum.
It is true that Ashe is captured a couple of times early on (along with everyone else) – but Ashe hardly fits the damsel in distress trope. Ashe is not captured due to her own weakness, but due to the duplicity of her partner, Vossler. And considering that most of the game’s plot revolves solely around her, it can hardly be fairly said that her purpose was to be captured and need rescuing. Unlike most other FF princesses and female leads up until this point, Ashe was a capable fighter and leader, pushing the party along through the events of the game.
Ashe does have her emotional moments. When she first meets Basch, who she thought killed her dead husband, she slaps him. When Balthier demands her wedding ring as a down payment for his aid, she hesitates and briefly struggles with the decision. But these moments are not portrayed as weaknesses, but as humanity, and Ashe does not waiver from her resolve. While she is occasionally uncertain about her ultimate plan, such as briefly debating a potential truce with the Archadian Empire, this was due to the huge ramifications her decisions would bring, not due to feminine timidity. FFXII gave us a mature and political overplot, and the developers gave it a suitably strong and mature female lead, a stark contrast to the stereotypes that litter most of the franchise. Ashe was truly a breath of fresh air.
And while Ashe’s outfit is a bit… silly, it’s not the blatant fan service of Tifa or Lulu. Instead, Ashe, and most of FFXII’s characters, followed the trend of Wakka and Tidus from FFX by having wacky outfits, most of which somehow managing to leave the midriff bare. Though like every other woman in the history of video games and comic books, she suffers from poor armor placement (more on that with Fran).
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It’s good that her knees and elbows are covered in case she decides to take up rollerblading.
And then, of course, there’s Fran. Fran, the sexy Viera dressed in a confounding fashion, is the obvious choice for pointing out that maybe FFXII is not as advanced as it appears on the surface. However, I would argue that, despite her rather ridiculous choice of apparel, Fran is much less sexist than most FF women, in that she breaks a lot of standard feminine tropes. She’s a mechanic who maintains the airship, which is far from a common female role.
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Fran returned to a more traditional female role with this conjugal visit.
Fran's significance to the plot is also not dependent on a man, where she is the sassy, confident mechanic who offers a lot of one-liners with Balthier and occasionally moves the plot along with mist-frenzied attacks and visits to her home village. She also has her own character development, also notably lacking in male-dependence, based on her voluntary exile from the other Viera. Fran has an interesting personality, but not the bratty teenager or the feisty princess that readily fit into a previously overused mold. Despite her admittedly ridiculous outfit, Fran’s personality offered a nice variety to previous female roles – which is among the biggest negatives among the first ten FFs.
However, it is certainly true that Fran suffered from the classic female armor syndrome (also known as the ”get this steel thong out of my ass” problem) that litters video games, comic books, and movies. Like Lulu from Final Fantasy X, it is more difficult to take her seriously in such a getup, though at least Fran doesn’t take every opportunity to shake her breasts at the screen. Still, if the designers were going for “exotic,” FFXIII managed to pull off the look much better.
There was also Penelo, who, on first glance, may arguably fit into the Yuffie/Selphie/Rikku mold that I have repeatedly highlighted as one of the most blatantly abused molds in the FF series. But I would argue that she doesn’t fit that stereotype outside of her age. A close childhood friend of Vaan, Penelo is not the hyperactive brat like Yuffie or Rikku, but is instead the more careful and responsible member of the pair. It is Penelo who reprimands Vaan for stealing early in the game, and she tries to moderate Vaan’s dream of becoming a sky pirate. It is important to note that if Penelo is not the usual Yuffie clone, FFXII is the first in at least six FFs not to include that trope. It is a milestone worth noting in and of itself.
Final Fantasy XII was not perfect. Fran still has her ridiculous outfit, and of course it was Penelo and not a male character who was captured as a plot device to meet Larsa Solidor and be given a piece of nethicite. But it was a substantial improvement from previous games in how it portrayed female characters, and Ashe is arguably the strongest female character of the series. Regardless of how one views the gameplay, from a feminist perspective, FFXII was a welcome change and huge step forward.
Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Takes Over
Some years after FFXII, Square-Enix released Final Fantasy XIII. I was not a big fan of FFXIII overall, but, continuing on with the tradition of its predecessor, the game was overall commendable on the sexism front – despite some notable hiccups. Doing away with XII’s façade, Lightning, a strong, female fighter is the main character of the game. In fact, of the three female playable characters of Final Fantasy XIII, two of them are highly capable physical fighters, and one of them, Fang, is the strongest fighter in the game.
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Lightning’s cape also makes a hell of a lot more sense than FFX’s Rikku’s ribbons.
Lightning is a strong, fiercely independent woman who never got along well with her more girly, flighty sister, Serah. At the start of the game, Lightning had resigned her military position and volunteered for a Purge in order to save Serah, who had been marked as one of the feared Pulse l’Cie. When she is marked as l’Cie herself, Lightning and the other characters seek to save themselves from the inevitable crystal stasis – and eventually the world as well. Lightning is a tough and capable leader, though fairly closed off emotionally; it is Lightning who tries to toughen up Hope when they are alone for part of the early Chapters. She eventually warms to the other party members and stops being angry at Snow, but she is a stark contrast to FFVIII’s Quistis, a military figure who is portrayed as questionably competent and extremely insecure.
While most of the characters in FFXIII receive significant development, Lightning is the obvious leader. She is portrayed as the most capable, and early in the game takes charge when the group tries to escape from PSICOM from the Vestige. Lightning has a hard personality, similar to Beatrix in FFIX, but unlike Beatrix it did not require a man’s love to melt her icy heart; instead, Lightning naturally matures and loses her anger as the game progresses. Lightning’s physical appearance is also not exploitatively designed; while she wears a relatively short skirt, her fully covered torso and pouch partially obscuring one leg shows that her outfit is not designed to arouse.
What may be most notable about Lightning is her cold reception from some Western FF fans, which demonstrates most clearly how alive these sexist prejudices are throughout our culture. Despite the popularity of previous main characters Cloud and Squall, it was Lightning who was widely derided as a cold-hearted, emotionless bitch. The “b-word” was thrown around a lot, because while it’s totally badass for men to act tough and fueled on anger, a woman who does it is just bitchy. This double-standard is akin to the “slut” double-standard of women being scorned for having a number of sexual partners, whereas such men are culturally admired. To be fair, a number of fans liked Lightning, and she has been popular enough to justify her own sequel in Lightning Returns – but the “bitch” label was common enough to warrant mentioning.
This reaction is well-rooted in real life; as a result of feminism and more women succeeding and competing in what had previously been a man’s world, there has been a cultural backlash where women are urged to be more feminine in order to please men. (note that all of those articles were written by women) According to this view, women are supposed to act stereotypically feminine; when they don’t, something is wrong.
Now back to the characters. Oerba Yun Fang, as previously noted, is the strongest character in the game and the best Commander. A strong fighter from Gran Pulse, Fang is fiercely devoted to one thing: her childhood friend/sister/lesbian lover Vanille. Her one moment of childlike irrationality is when she refuses to abandon her Focus to destroy Cocoon in Chapter 10, but that was just yet another painfully forced plot point in order to have her summon Bahamut (just as with the first appearance of the other summons, most notably Hope’s Alexander). I would not consider Fang as strong a female character as Lightning, however, mostly due to the fact that Fang does not have the same character development. Fang pretty much exists as-is, and doesn’t change. Still, her personality and competence make her a change of pace from most female characters of the first ten FFs.
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And based on this apparent boob grab, some have speculated that both Fang and Vanille are lesbians.
Speaking of the ambiguously lesbian duo, Oerba Dia Vanille is the other Gran Pulsian who stumbles across the party at the Vestige, and quickly develops a relationship with Hope and then Sazh. Young, cute, and relentlessly cheerful (at least in her façade), Vanille showed that Square-Enix just couldn’t stay away from Yuffie/Selphie/Rikku mold for too long. While it’s true that Vanille’s exuberant cheerfulness is a forced front for her inner pain and guilt, it’s tough to ignore with Final Fantasy’s history of abusing that female mold. Additionally, Vanille is one of the weakest characters in the game, and is the best Medic (healer). A combination of some of the most overused molds in the Final Fantasy series, Vanille is obviously a terribly sexist character, right?
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From someone so young and innocent-sounding, her constant orgasms in battle can be a bit… disconcerting.
Well, yes and no. Given FF’s history with those molds, Vanille’s setup is far from ideal. But as I reiterated in the introduction of this article, context is everything. Having a woman as a healer is not sexist; having women constantly relegated to that role is. Someone has to be the healer, the cute kid, or the person in need of rescue. It only becomes sexist when female characters are consistently limited to those roles solely because of gender-based stereotypes that women belong in those roles – thus reinforcing bad stereotypes while also limiting the variety of female characters. While Vanille repeats some of the earlier tropes, she does so in a game where the other female playable characters successfully break away from most of those stereotypes – and when female characters in the last Final Fantasy had also done so. The context for Vanille is very much different than the context for, say, FFIX’s Eiko or FFX’s Rikku. FFXIII offers more variety, at a time when Square-Enix seemed committed to more female variety, making it a little more likely that the choices involved in Vanille’s character were not based solely on her gender – and at the very least makes her less worthy of criticism overall.
Additionally, a lot of typical female gender-based stereotypes were instead developed more fully in some of the male characters. The weakest and most emotional character in the party is Hope, the whiny kid who blames Snow for his mother’s death. And Snow’s sole motivation is to save his love, Serah, from her crystal stasis. Sazh is the most easily frightened of the group, and is motivated by his frequently developed love for his son, Dajh (parental love being a common motivator for female characters, as with Terra and Edea).
But, as I said, FFXIII does have its hiccups. There is, of course, Vanille, who was analyzed above. There’s also the not-so-subtle fact that when Serah is crystallized, she magically becomes naked, whereas when Dajh is crystallized, his clothes remain firmly attached to his body. I’ve heard some explanation of this phenomenon being that Pulse l’Cie become naked in the crystal (though get their clothes back when reawakened) and Cocoon l’Cie remain clothed. But this ad hoc rationalization is further minimized by the fact that the Pulse l’Cie crystals you spend any time staring at in the game are women. How silly and pointless.
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I can only assume the clothes disappear as encouragement to save her.
If she were clothed and ugly, after all, no one would care.
Overall, however, FFXIII remains a largely positive step, and a definite improvement over most other games in the series. Most of the weaknesses of the female playable characters (such as Fang’s lack of development) are attributable to shoddy writing rather than worn out, gender-based stereotypes.
Ashe and Lightning were two strong female characters in two consecutive FF games. Final Fantasy XII was probably the strongest in the series for women, with Ashe, Fran, and Penelo offering a nice variety of roles, strengths, and personalities without forcing any them into the same tired molds. While FFXIII has its missteps, Lightning and Fang were also largely free of those gender tropes that FF writers had so frequently relied on in the past, and they are confirmation that Square-Enix is consciously trying to improve.
With Lightning being forced into the new face of the Final Fantasy franchise, and having two strong female leads in two consecutive games, it looks like Square-Enix is now taking women seriously. There was a lot to criticize in the first ten games, but there is also much to praise about the direction SE is currently moving. Let us hope that this trend continues for future games in the series.
That brings us to the end of our overview of the games. What did you think? Were FFXII and XIII that much of an improvement? What was the most sexist game in the FF series? Should I do a Part VI to look at how these issues play out in real life? Leave your comments/suggestions/ridicule below!
The full FF Sexism series:
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
[Unless otherwise credited, all FF images are from The Final Fantasy Wiki]
