Will Final Fantasy XV's Cid be a Lady?

[chionos]

Oh please someone take one for the team and say it. Pllleeeeeeaaassseee.

Also, Edit: I'll add something of value to the discussion, or try to.

Character designed to be sexy AND sexualized:


Character designed to be sexy BUT NOT sexualized:


There's a difference between making a character that's attractive and making a character that's an object.

Square's not the worst company out there for these things, but they're still guilty of it.

Perhaps it's hard for some of you to understand sexualized vs. non-sexualized b/c we're talking about different characters in different situations and blah blah blah, well here's one character, before and after a reboot:



The Tomb Raider reboot finally gave us a Lara whose body makes sense, whose proportions are realistic and unsexualized, who can be sexy without taking away from all her other qualities.

The point isn't sexiness. People still think the new Lara is sexy. People think Alyx Vance is sexy. But that's not the primary reason for them being onscreen. THEIR PURPOSE FOR BEING A WOMAN IN A GAME IS NOT JUST TO BE A PIECE OF ASS.

It's not even the amount of skin showing. Lara's clothes get shredded throughout the newest game, so by the end she's showing a lot more skin than shows in the above picture. But, for one, it makes sense in the story, and for two, it isn't the focus, it doesn't get in the way of Lara being Lara, which is more than a pair of tits.

I hate that we can't (neither as a forum nor as a society) get on the same page. Bottom line, it's pretty obvious that female characters are sexual objects in games more often than not, including in Final Fantasy. I don't think every single thing that people point to as being sexist is actually sexist, though. For instance, I don't think you can say that FFXV is sexist for having an all-male cast and also say that FFX-2 is sexist for having an all-female cast. (I haven't seen that in EoFF, but I have seen it online, and it's just an example).

I don't think it's wrong to point out that #notallmen. Because it's true, and because it's not about being defensive (I mean it doesn't have to be). Men who are closet misogynists may use it to cover the fact that they're totally secretly against this feminism stuff, but I don't see much evidence of it being about that. I don't think it should be a "movement" or anything, I just think it's important as an idea. You and I and everyone in here might be aware that not every dude is full-on sexist, but I've seen enough broad sweeping statements online, and heard enough women trash "every guy" to know that some people do take it too far. And ultimately, I think it's important that men and women work through this together. This shouldn't be a war, at least not one between men and women.

Is it really so hard, such a HUGE distraction, to see the whole thing in the proper perspective, to realize #yesallwomen and #notallmen at the same time? It's not so hard. It's no more difficult than asking men who have been indoctrinated from childhood to undermine and objectify women to suddenly see how wrong their thinking has been.

It's not a distraction, it's part of the discussion. Clearly this is an issue that requires more than a quick-fix, more than a simple overarching statement that cleans everything up in one fell swoop. I think it HELPS the cause of feminism to recognize that not all men perpetrate or propagate sexism (in the same way that not all women benefit or enforce feminism). That group of men is absolutely essential to the cause of feminism, because whether we like it or not, that's the group that has to change the minds of men who are sexist (that's logic, not sexism, think about it). It's also important to note because that group (along with women) needs to recognize unintentional or incidental sexism at work.

For instance, the disparate ages of FF characters was mentioned earlier. Something like this could be totally unintentional or accidental (for the record, I think it's indicative of Japanese cultural trends, i.e. directly sexist, but to make a point...). In other words, I don't think that the developers at SE have a rule that says there cannot be female characters over a certain age, they just design them that way. I'm not giving them a free pass, bear with me. Even assuming the characters were designed, just by chance to be the way they are (and not because SE designers intentionally thought to propagate sexism), they've had plenty of opportunity to be anti-sexist, to be proactive about the way they develop female characters, and for the most part they haven't been.

Again, I want to reiterate that I don't think SE is as bad as these threads might seem to imply. I think they're better than average, in fact (which is sad in it's own way I guess). Which is why it's sad to see them do something like this with Cidney. It's not the worst case of sexism in video games, but it's a step in the wrong direction. It's a step backward, not forward.