Will Final Fantasy XV's Cid be a Lady?

[Shauna]

No. Firstly, I'm going to ignore Troll's for purpose of this repsonse. (Yeah, the trolls are smurfing troutty, but everyone with any semblance of clout on the internet gets those in droves.) People dislike Anita because of how nonsensical her statements are. You need only look at her dissection of hit man to realize this. The game penalizes you for killing innocents (You know, like all those strippers you see being killed in the video she that she claims the game in question encourages you to kill) to see how, at best, disingenuous she is being in her critique.

I think that this sort of argument would hold more water if she had not been completely torn to pieces before she'd made any videos. There was no critique made. There were no videos with generalising statements about video games. There was an idea for a video series.

So why did people hate her then? What did she do when making her Kickstarter that deserved the level of vitriol she got?

She suggested that video games might have an issue with female representation. Simple as that.

[Spooniest]

I find that Anita Sarkersian's videos are too general...if she were more specific, people wouldn't be so confused about what statement she's making.

But the fact remains that 99% of her detractors go much much further out of their way to criticize her than is fair or warranted (or productive). I do believe that it's because she's a woman making the statement that games are kind of sexist.

It's pretty gross and I don't like looking at it.

[Shorty]

Because this same trend has been used in some of the responses in this thread, I'd also like to add that the "Not All Men" phenomenon is one of the most offensive trends regarding women's rights circling the internet today and that it does not in any way help the issue at hand, which is that whether or not a specific man is doing it, females in video games are sexualized and objectified by men and it negatively affects women in their daily lives.

[Shlup]

For what it's worth...

https://angelwitchpaganheart.wordpre...-off-my-chest/

Oooooh, you know I commented on that blog.

I guess I feel that FF's don't need to give "reasonable" representations of people. I haven't seen many fat, old, or bald male protagonists and I'm not bothered by that. Many of the characters in FF have idealized figures, male and female, which i'm fine with. I believe games are the appropriate medium for these things, Final Fantasy in particular.

To repeat one simple example I've given several times in this thread, the oldest playable female in a Final Fantasy game is Lulu at 22. There are no less than 23 playable male characters older than Lulu, up to age 70+. If your "fantasy" is that males can be whatever as long as females are all young and pretty, then that is sexist as all get out.

No one's promoting an eradication of pretty people; the issue here is balance.

I haven't seen any evidence that VG's change people's behavior to real word people.

Art and media both influence and reflect the culture which creates and indulges in them--if you can't recognize that then I feel you're missing the entire point of art and media. I don't want to leave you hanging though, so here are a few published studies:

http://link.springer.com/article/10....-9695-4#page-1
http://link.springer.com/article/10....-9250-0#page-1
http://utpjournals.metapress.com/con...ut85g663gr605/
http://link.springer.com/article/10....-9278-1#page-1
http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uplo...5150.15436.pdf
http://link.springer.com/article/10....-9637-1#page-1
http://jiv.sagepub.com/content/early...41078.abstract

A lot of people jump from this to "but that's like saying video games cause violence, which we know is untrue!" I don't think that's an unreasonable jump to make at first, but you have to consider 1) saturation and 2) ...effort levels? I'm failing to think of a phrase for that last one.

In regards to the former, we are just knee-deep in sexualization and objectification all the time. We are all raised from birth to value women based largely on their appearance, and that is constantly reinforced. We do this to everyone, of course--pretty people tend to have it better in general--but we do this to women far more. We are not exposed nearly so much to violence. Think of people who live in areas with a lot of gang activity; people living in those kinds of culture find that getting shot may just be a normal part of life. Or something to be proud of. For me, if I got so much as a superficial bullet wound is would somewhat smurf me up for life. I think if I got mugged I'd never leave the house again, but in some areas this is normal.

In regards to the later, there is a big difference between thinking sexist thoughts and shooting someone. Or even just hitting someone. I am not more likely to commit a violent act after playing GTAV, but I sure am more likely to be amused by the thought of running people over in my car. Seeing women in video games as primarily young and pretty, and often made to look like outright smurf dolls, influences how we see women.

Again, it's not about eradicating sexy, it's about balance. Balance both within the female gender and between the two genders.

Also again, my issue with Cidney isn't that she has boobs. I think I've illustrated the issue at least six times now though, and everyone else has said the same thing, so the next person to accuse anyone of hating on Cidney because "it's just some boobs" or something similar will incur just unrestrained wrath. Wrath, I say!

[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.

[Spooniest]

It's just some boobs, you're fine with looking at them when a woman breastfeeds but if she wears a bikini top western civilizations doomed right

Note: chionos put me up to it

I enjoy natural ladies

[Shlup]

*snip* EDIT BY BoB: You can't say stuff like that!

If it helps, chionos, I don't have any reason in particular to believe men are more sexist than women. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me and it seems likely based on my perspective, but I don't hold the view that men are sexist and women aren't. Women are very often the sexist ones. And I mean women upholding the patriarchy and all that trout.

[chionos]

If it helps, chionos, I don't have any reason in particular to believe men are more sexist than women. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me and it seems likely based on my perspective, but I don't hold the view that men are sexist and women aren't. Women are very often the sexist ones. And I mean women upholding the patriarchy and all that trout.

Oh, I'd say men and women are about equally sexist. We're all human, after all. I think the difference is that men have been in control for a long time and in such a system, naturally their version of sexism is going to be more prevalent. Men were in power so they were allowed to be sexist. I fully believe that if all gender roles were flip-flopped, we'd see the same thing in reverse: a disproportionate amount of women objectifying men and oppressing men and so on. The key is balance, and I sadly don't think we'll ever find it from where we are now. It would take a book to explain why I feel this way (and I certainly don't mean we shouldn't try), so I won't bother trying to get into it here.

In any non-perfect system, unilateral power is bad.

[Hannibal_Khan]

We examined the association between playing sexist video games and sexist attitudes

I don't consider FF's to be sexist video games nor do i think that they encourage or reinforce sexist attitudes, thus I dont see how that study is relevent to FFXV's Cidney. And according to them them, any story involving a "dansel in distress" is sexist(seriously, even mario games are sexist now?)...

Are we gonna censor games now b/c a small number of men will show "higher levels of benevolent sexism"?. If a guy can't distinguish the difference between a VG and the real world and wants to be a sexist prick, he can die alone without a wife our children. Thats Darwin. Better for the gene pool, imo. Do you really think that Cidney's design will propagate a sexist attitude in someone who didn't already have those kinds of beliefs?

This relationship was not evident for women

You emphasis this as was to deflect from the issue of male sexualized/idealized body figures in contrast to females? as if somehow women are immune to having the own sexist attitudes reinforced by video games? b/c that study does not unequivocally state that. And i suspect that would not hold up after further research and more balanced sample(the paper addresses the need for these in further reseaerch tho). But I don't outright deny that possibility(although it does seem counter-intuitive) either and would be genuinely interested in seeing that topic studied further.

Asking why it's not okay for Cidney to be visually appealing for men followed by saying that sexualizing people is normal and then to say that you give the female gender the credit they deserve is preposterous, because evidently, you do not. You are giving the female gender the credit you think we deserve, which does not translate to credit at all.

How does me saying that "women are perfectly capable of distinguishing fictional game characters from real world expectations", equal me giving women no credit? And why is it preposterous for me to think that she can be both visually appealing and a great character. And why such contempt in your response? I didn't say I wanted her oiled up and put in chains, i just asked why she can't be visually appealing. Im sure there are more than a few feminist goals that we would be in agreement on, and Im not defending the VG world's representation of women across the board, I just disagree with your assessment that me wanting a female character to be attractive is immediately sexism.

Sexualization is a broad spectrum and i believe most characters are sexualized by players to some degree, regardless of how provocative a design is perceived to be. And I believe that's quite normal human behavior among both sexes.



Ultimately, it's the calls for censorship that I find most egregious...

...I'm looking at you, spooniest...

[Jinx]

Shut your smurfing face, Spooniest.

If it helps, chionos, I don't have any reason in particular to believe men are more sexist than women. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me and it seems likely based on my perspective, but I don't hold the view that men are sexist and women aren't. Women are very often the sexist ones. And I mean women upholding the patriarchy and all that trout.

Oh, I'd say men and women are about equally sexist. We're all human, after all. I think the difference is that men have been in control for a long time and in such a system, naturally their version of sexism is going to be more prevalent. Men were in power so they were allowed to be sexist. I fully believe that if all gender roles were flip-flopped, we'd see the same thing in reverse: a disproportionate amount of women objectifying men and oppressing men and so on. The key is balance, and I sadly don't think we'll ever find it from where we are now. It would take a book to explain why I feel this way (and I certainly don't mean we shouldn't try), so I won't bother trying to get into it here.

In any non-perfect system, unilateral power is bad.

angel_manslave3.jpg

[Spooniest]

I don't consider FF's to be sexist video games nor do i think that they encourage or reinforce sexist attitudes

I don't understand how you can be so mistaken.

[Rin Heartilly]

The issue I have with Cidney is that considering she's a female mechanic, it makes sense for her to be a tomboy. The fact that she's got petrol grease on her face and scruffy hat hair, along with the iconic goggles paints the symbolism for a tomboy, but at the same time she's got a really skimpy outfit on which is totally not suited for mechanical work :S

Of course it's entirely possible for her to be a female mechanic that isn't a tomboy, but I feel like she's giving off two different types of personalities both of which are clashing.

[Freya]

We examined the association between playing sexist video games and sexist attitudes

I don't consider FF's to be sexist video games nor do i think that they encourage or reinforce sexist attitudes, thus I dont see how that study is relevent to FFXV's Cidney.

Just throwing my bit in here. This is the same SE that decided to make Lightnings boobs bigger in Lightning Returns so she'd be more jiggly. Why? Cause... boob jiggles!

According to a Famitsu interview (nabbed by DualShockers), Motomu Toriyama "wanted it bigger" with regards to Lightning's chest, a fact he found funny when interviewed on the subject. Lighting -- who Square Enix wants us to believe is a strong female character -- gets her jiggle on with various costumes in Lightning Returns, her model designer showing off how much you can make her chest bounce.

"Yes, her chest jiggles," explained Nobuhiro Goto. "Since everyone can decide what costume she’ll wear, you can make sure it does (laughs). By the way, since Lightning swings her arm when you change her weapon in the menu screen, that’s a recommended action for sure-fire jiggling! To see it even better it could be useful to equip a small shield. Look forward to it!"

That was their last game released in the FF series... sooo


JUST SAYING.

I don't know if anyone has brought that up yet cause, you guys post a lot but yeah. There it is again if it was brought up before!

[Sephiroth]

We examined the association between playing sexist video games and sexist attitudes

I don't consider FF's to be sexist video games nor do i think that they encourage or reinforce sexist attitudes, thus I dont see how that study is relevent to FFXV's Cidney.

Just throwing my bit in here. This is the same SE that decided to make Lightnings boobs bigger in Lightning Returns so she'd be more jiggly. Why? Cause... boob jiggles!

According to a Famitsu interview (nabbed by DualShockers), Motomu Toriyama "wanted it bigger" with regards to Lightning's chest, a fact he found funny when interviewed on the subject. Lighting -- who Square Enix wants us to believe is a strong female character -- gets her jiggle on with various costumes in Lightning Returns, her model designer showing off how much you can make her chest bounce.

"Yes, her chest jiggles," explained Nobuhiro Goto. "Since everyone can decide what costume she’ll wear, you can make sure it does (laughs). By the way, since Lightning swings her arm when you change her weapon in the menu screen, that’s a recommended action for sure-fire jiggling! To see it even better it could be useful to equip a small shield. Look forward to it!"

That was their last game released in the FF series... sooo


JUST SAYING.

I don't know if anyone has brought that up yet cause, you guys post a lot but yeah. There it is again if it was brought up before!

I never actually noticed the jiggling as an obvious effect so it cannot be that present. The game is too dynamic to just look at her chest all the time and when you do she most of the time stands still.

I feel like you're saying that, because you didn't personally notice, it's not relevant or real. Toriyama specifically states he purposefully made this feature, but it doesn't count because you didn't notice?

That is the exact opposite of what I always do so any further discussion is completely unnecessary. By the way a person can intend something and while the intention is there some people might still not notice it or probably have no problem with the intention. A perfect example is my last post in which you didn't understand what I was talking about. However you will not stop forcing yourself to feel insulted of something insignificant like you did the last 4 weeks and I am not interested in more of that.

By the way - you have insulted me now. By reading what you want you have completely missed out my character which would have told you that my post would never be meant the way you understood it.

[Shlup]

I'm starting to wonder if Hannibal_Khan thinks anything is sexist at all? FF's female playable cast is entirely young, pretty (except for Freya) women, while the men have a full range of ages and types. The first and only female Cid is dressed like a smurf doll for her role as a mechanic. And (I hadn't heard this before) Lightning's chest was made bigger specifically so that players could make her jiggle for their viewing pleasure.

Like, dude, you don't have to declare FF The Most Sexist Game Series of All Time and throw all your games away, but when you say the games just aren't sexist I just don't even know what to say to that.

I never actually noticed the jiggling as an obvious effect so it cannot be that present. The game is too dynamic to just look at her chest all the time and when you do she most of the time stands still.

I feel like you're saying that, because you didn't personally notice, it's not relevant or real. Toriyama specifically states he purposefully made this feature, but it doesn't count because you didn't notice?

I don't understand your agenda. Either of you.