Final Fantasy-ism
I wanted to linkspam because I wanted a collection of these links to think about. I have issues with some stuff some of them mention, and I have concerns that the general progression of gendered identities and feminist discourse in society that have changed alongside the FF franchise mean that more of the changes to female party members are conservative and reactionary and just a reflection of social norms in popular culture rather than saying anything important about the FF franchise in particular, but. Linky and discussion in the future. Oh, and also it's all English and presumably very Western in cultural outlook and insights into characters. I know that some translation changes the presentation of some characters, but also I think we deal with some differences in gender stereotypes that mightn't be discussed in all the meta.
Final Fantasy through the lens of sexism and/or feminism.
First I ran into a panel at Zenkaikon that was broadcast on Youtube. (part one, part two, part three), and the panelist went on to write a series of essays that provide more context and I find a lot stronger and far less irritating than the panel itself (part one, part two, part three, part four, part five). It still has some, to me, problematic treatment of racism in part four regarding Fran, and relies on a very American-centric understanding of the treatment of black women that seems to forget that there's a different context for female characters with that colouring in Japanese media (Indian, other ethnicities outside iconic stereotypes of African American women). I appreciate that part five mentions to some extent the creation of male gender identity as well as female. There's also some links to other essays and resources and meta about gender and gaming at the end of part five that are pretty cool. I think the paper is also mentioned here but not uploaded.
Here, someone called Ethos uses a lovely image of a man in a plate bikini to illuminate a brief look at gender stereotyped roles of women in the FF franchise.
Acrimonyastrea analyses here sexism in FFXII through the presentation of female characters.
Someone who thinks that dressing in feminine ways is unfeminist wrote 'A Feminist Critique of Final Fantasy' that made me raise my eyebrows and I haven't read yet, but plan to later. From the first paragraph, I expect to get a headache.
There's a Yahoo Questions question thread here that sets things up for some amusing and infuriating answers, but also some long and thought out responses taking the entire franchise of games into account.
A thread about Lightning as XIII's main character here at gamefaqs or apparently also here at gamespot, with some amusing examples of our androcentric culture with people complaining about androgynous and girly male characters, including complaints that Ashe's vengeful nature makes her less heroic, and praise for the way that they don't 'rub your face in it' - in Lightning's femininity. Both interesting and headachy at times.
An amusing mistake of language, a thread about feminine appearance of male FF characters being titled 'Regarding Vaan's Feminism'
I am hoping to run into more stuff the more I keep my eyes open, but yeah. Links have been linked. Now for some tea!