In defense of Rosa

[*PaladinCecil*]

Regarding Rosa's DS design.

I DID take a double-take to be sure it wasn't an edited image.

It DOES look like she's wearing purple panties :x

While I do dislike having to read people post about thinking Rosa's DS outfit makes her look like a slut, the part that gets me most out of sorts is the fact that most of the time, while people are more than happy to say Rosa looks like that, they turn around and say Rydia looks sexy when Rydia's wearing the exact same amount of clothing or less. It's an even bigger double standard when they say Rydia's The After outfit looks sexy while still saying Rosa's looks slutty, because Rydia's The After outfit shows even more skin than Rosa's.

I still have feelings to sort out when it comes to this issue. One part of it is that I can't help but think the changes made to their character designs for The After was made explicitly with fan comments on each of them in mind, and it irks me that Rosa's shoved in this massive robe that threatens to hide her face while Rydia gets an even more scantily clad look. Rosa DOES look fitting in that robe, but the reason behind a change and portrayal is everything to me, and I can't help but think the reason behind it for these two is that certain gamers (especially the BAD Rydia fans) refuse to accept the notion that Rosa could be just as sexy or moreso than the more popular Rydia, and it all stems back to how I typically see Rosa put down at the same time as Rydia gets built up. Whenever THAT happens, Rosa gets treated like the symbol of everything Rydia isn't, in turn made out to be the epitome of suck (because if she's the opposite, and everything about Rydia is awesome, it logically follows that...).


Before I say anything else that mentions Rydia this thread, I need to say this outright: I don't hate Rydia. I think she's a great character in her own right, and I see Rosa and Rydia as two sides of the same coin. What I DO hate is how a segment of Rydia fans treat Rosa like crap (e.g. the lie about Rosa pre-game and the portrayal in doujins, as petty as the second one sounds at a glance), and what that does to the way everyone views Rosa. At this point, the combination of overhyping Rydia and putting down Rosa that I've seen has numbed me to what I saw in Rydia to where I only objectively remember what I used to see in Rydia, and as you can see here, has me placing excessive focus on Rosa. If the situation were opposite, with Rydia the misaligned one and Rosa the one built up too high, I'd be defending Rydia instead.

It pretty much cycles; the more I need to defend Rosa (especially if it's on my own), the stronger my feelings get for the character. The less I have to defend her, the more I stabilize and closer I come to evening out between the two.


Sorry for giving you HUGE messages to read, it's my nature. I also just now saw the notifications I've been getting. Awesome, will be reading those after I posted my reply.


EDIT: I want to further emphasize that I capitalized the bad in "bad Rydia fans" to note that I'm not saying ALL Rydia fans are that way. I mean a specific subset of Rydia fans.

[Tamagon]

Now that's just a bit silly. Square's been known to make their females look slutty/fanservicy. They changed Rosa's design to make her look more like the common design of White Mage's. Summoners really don't have a "set" design. Other than the fact that they're green.

[*PaladinCecil*]

Now that's just a bit silly. Square's been known to make their females look slutty/fanservicy. They changed Rosa's design to make her look more like the common design of White Mage's. Summoners really don't have a "set" design. Other than the fact that they're green.

Summoners have become known for having green robes and a single horn. By your logic, Rydia should have a green robe and a single horn, or at least a green robe. She does not. Thus, I conclude Square-Enix covered Rosa in a massive robe reminiscent of white mages more because fans complained about her sexy new look in the DS remake, and made Rydia more scandalous because people liked it in her case.

[Dr. Acula]

I think her being a mother to a teenage son may have contributed to her changing style.

[NeoCracker]

Do you want to know why people think Rosa looks sluttier?

Her outfit looks more like what a dancer in some kind of older society would wear, the kind that put on shows for people.

Rydias looks more like a One piece swimsuit, and I hardly think you go to the beach and think "Oh that girl in a one piece swimsuite is a total ho-bag".

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Rosa looks slutty, but if I had to say which one looked Sluttier, it would without a doubt be Rosa.

[*PaladinCecil*]

I think her being a mother to a teenage son may have contributed to her changing style.

I'd normally take that as good enough, but other games have their motherly females looking perfectly MILFish and showing cleavage, while the design for Rosa in this case covers all of her body and comes close to hiding her face. That they covered up so much of her body and have done absolutely nothing with her since the introduction and prologue portions of The After leads me to believe that fan reaction toward Rosa as a character told them "people don't like Rosa, so we should sweep her under the rug as much as we can without looking bad for it and focus on everyone else." That Rydia's plastered everywhere in The After, had hers as the first episode after the prerequisite intro episodes, and has a much more revealing outfit, all add to those notions I have because all of that for her makes it clear that they're building The After with catering to what they think the fans want.

This is why I had to say my views on Rydia earlier; I have nothing against her, but it's impossible to talk about my issues with how Rosa gets treated without mentioning Rydia, because the good treatment Rydia gets in comparison vividly highlights the issues I have. Where Rosa gets called slutty, Rydia gets called sexy. Where Rosa has her good events twisted into negatives, Rydia has her bad events twisted into positives. Where Rosa gets swept under the rug, Rydia gets put up on a pedestal. A complaint over people proclaiming Rydia to be the female lead of FF4 is argued against by saying she has more scenes and more development than Rosa in FF4... but then a complaint about Rydia getting so much attention in The After with Rosa nowhere to be found is argued against by saying Rydia didn't get much attention in FF4. There is an imbalance in the way each character gets treated for their roles in each game. Rydia gets excess, Rosa gets a deficit.


I don't want to finish this by giving the wrong impression, though. This past week has been kind to her. I've seen more people here and elsewhere acknowledging she has at least some good points (not necessarily appreciating or praising them, just knowing they're there), and some good, truly effortful art has been made of her recently that's on par with the quality I always see Rydia get (as opposed to the less-effortful art or half-done sketches I typically find for Rosa).


EDIT: I posted that before I saw NeoCracker's.

Do you want to know why people think Rosa looks sluttier?

Her outfit looks more like what a dancer in some kind of older society would wear, the kind that put on shows for people.

Rydias looks more like a One piece swimsuit, and I hardly think you go to the beach and think "Oh that girl in a one piece swimsuite is a total ho-bag".

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Rosa looks slutty, but if I had to say which one looked Sluttier, it would without a doubt be Rosa.

So dancer = slut? I can't say her outfit at all gives me the impression of a dancer, but even if it did, I fail to see how that would be grounds for thinking her clothing makes her look like someone who would have sex with random men. As for the one-piece swimsuit part, Rosa's wearing practically the same thing. In fact, she might be wearing a one-piece herself but with more underneath. This will make me sound understandably pervy, but if you check her upper torso, she has a red bra on underneath. The part people typically call "panties" on her could very well be (and probably is) a design shift in the leotard that her belt covers up. Would a woman really put on a bra beneath a top, but then suddenly decide panties alone is a good look for the lower half?

I know, I know, people don't think through first impressions at all so a fair bit of this is moot, but I also think that if they're getting that as the first impression of Rosa from one look at her, it only makes sense they should get that same response from Rydia. That they're interpreting practically the same thing or even LESS, just with different colors (and in The After, DEFINITELY much less and closer to the dancer wear you describe) as "sexy" when it's Rydia wearing it, leads me to believe most of "Rosa looks like a slut" is bias.

[NeoCracker]

1) I said so myself I didn't think she looked slutty.

2) No, dancer doesn't equal slut. But her outfit reminds me of the ones that are worn by some of the dancers you see in various movies, the kind that are thier simply to visually please the men.

3) Generally a Bra being at all visibleis concidered more innapropriate then it not being visable at all, so you're hardly helping your case with that point.

4) And it only resembles that kind of outfit. It hardly looks exactly the same.

[*PaladinCecil*]

1) I said so myself I didn't think she looked slutty.

2) No, dancer doesn't equal slut. But her outfit reminds me of the ones that are worn by some of the dancers you see in various movies, the kind that are thier simply to visually please the men.

3) Generally a Bra being at all visibleis concidered more innapropriate then it not being visable at all, so you're hardly helping your case with that point.

4) And it only resembles that kind of outfit. It hardly looks exactly the same.

1) Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that's what YOU thought. I got the impression you were trying to claim a dancer look is equivalent to a slut look.

2) Thanks for clearing that up. I agree, it does look like THAT kind of clothing, but as I said, I don't quite see how being visually appealing is grounds for thinking Rosa's a slut (as OTHER people have claimed) or how it's much different from Rydia. The only differences are that Rydia shows more skin and has less ornamentation, the second one understandable given that she isn't from noble, high society.

3) That philosophy is something I'm unfamiliar with, and I'm sure that's obvious. :P I guess it makes sense since men showing underwear would be impolite, but it's rather hard to hide a bra when the bra band is thicker than the shoulder strap of your outer wear.

4) I don't know what way you mean this one, so I'm skipping it.

[NeoCracker]

I was just saying it doens' look exactly like the dancer outfits, only resembles. Nothing really to read into.

In the end people who hate Rosa just grasp at little things like this and exaggerate.

[*PaladinCecil*]

I was just saying it doens' look exactly like the dancer outfits, only resembles. Nothing really to read into.

In the end people who hate Rosa just grasp at little things like this and exaggerate.

Which is why I get upset by things like what I've been complaining about. The people who hate Rosa grasp at things and exaggerate them. The more people who go with it, either because they absolutely loathe Rosa or they'd like to see her the way people are talking about her, the more it comes off as accurate to anyone who hasn't spent much time with the game. It comes off even MORE true if nobody raises a voice against it, because contrary to what some might like to believe, silence comes off as acceptance. If it's not true, someone would have corrected them, right? So, the person gets it in his or her mind that that view of the character must be right, and from that point on, they will read into the events of the game with that in mind.

At this point, Rosa's already lost being seen as gentle, loving and nurturing, all because of the above. The majority view I've seen has been that she's clingy (even though Cecil clearly loves her back just as much), whiny (even though the closest she ever comes to whining is fearing for Cecil's life), weak (even though the only times she needs help, she needs it for things that anyone could have needed help with), and so on. And her personality? "Oh, she's a stereotypical white mage," forgetting she was the first of her type and refusing to see where she's unique or gives it a bit of her own flair. While the majority opinion of her is that she sucks, up til now in the majority view, she's at LEAST retained her exquisite love story with Cecil and that pure angle...

...And now she's losing even that much.

People are willing to believe it when someone claims, without actual proof, that she slept with Kain and dumped him for Cecil because she's power-hungry. People are calling her a slut, mostly for appearance now, but as I have seen with any other traits of hers, they'll start to read into events of the game with that in mind. People are advancing the notion of Rydia as the female lead of FF4, and promoting the idea that the love between Cecil and Rosa is weak so that Rydia hooks up with the hero and Rosa goes off to do some random crap she'd never do.

I like this character, and the more things like the above that I see happen, the more I wish the DS remake were never made... because it's more important to me to have my favorite character retain at least some semblance of her good points in the eyes of the public and remain obscure, than lose all of that and become viewed as something bad and only have some pretty CG videos and images to make up for it. A remake of my favorite game is not worth the gradual butchering of one of the most personally important aspects of it.

[Denmark]

She crossed monster-infested lands alone, her bow and arrows her only attack. The fact that she made it to Kaipo is in itself a clear sign that she's more than just a damsel in distress. And unlike Rydia, she didn't have black magic to fall back on. Not only does this show Rosa's a strong woman, but it shows her deep love for Cecil. She risked her life traveling across land, desert and possibly mountain and must have faced hordes of monsters just to reach the man she loves.

Everyone knows that monsters only attack the controlled party (randomly or at set points in time) and important characters at key times. Thus, Rosa would not have been attacked; there was no need for it to happen.

FFIV might be the first one to actually have some real character development to it, but apart from Rydia growing up and Cecil changing to a Paladin nothing is really major, and both of those things happen quite suddenly. I see FFIV's characters as just their classes, because that's what they are really, more than being actual characters. The game decides for you which characters you use and when. It's different from other games up to this point in using five characters at once (at endgame) instead of four, but you still end up with Unne's favorite balanced party from FF1 (Knight [a Paladin, but Knights from FF1 used White Magic so could probably be called Paladins], Ninja, White Wizard, Black Wizard), plus a Dragoon.

Don't read the second paragraph of this post, just read the first one and pretend I wasn't ranting.

[Rase]

People care too much one way or another, and yes that is valid to the topic.