Rebuttal to the Roles of FF Women

by Joshua Maciel

I find it strange that people seek to find meaning in the most meaningless of things. For instance, there was a small outcry by a group of Jews due to a "k" found on snapple bottles, because it supposedly was implying a connection to the KKK. But I digress. We are talking about women in final fantasy.

There are two things which are very different which are often grouped together: intent and marketing. Intent implies that something was done on purpose for a direct desired effect, whereas marketing is a ploy to get people to buy games. For instance, Tifa's unnatural figure. The first mainstream FF game, and it goes the route of Lara Croft for one of the female leads. Intent, or marketing?

Marketing. It is quite doubtful the character designers, the writers, and everyone else in Square decided, "All athletic futuristic women wear skirts, and had puberty be inordinately kind to them." And it's obvious that it worked if males are gawking and buying it for that. The intent was not to be unrealistic, the intent was to sell games. Key difference. But enough about Tifa's bosom, it's really just a side-note in Final Fantasy. If you want to discuss bosoms in video games, discuss Lara Croft's breast reduction from 2-3.

And why is it that a man is always killed or lost for a long time? A few examples: Palom and his sister use stone on themselves, Cid closes off the cave to the dwarven world with a bomb and his body, Tellah sacrifices himself for revenge, Yang blows up a cannon with his body, Kain gets captured by the enemy, Leo gets killed by Kefka, and Biggs and Wedge and that girl get killed by Shinra. Why is it that all these incidents have men in them? You see my point? My list is longer.

As far as keeping people in the dark -- it's probably for plot purposes. Mystery is often a good tool in a story. Ever watch the Blair Witch Project? No blood, no gore, but it scares people more. The imagination is a powerful tool, and if you can get it going, the experience becomes deeper for the participants. But don't take my word for it, go find a game with the entire story spelled out with no mystery, and see if you enjoy it just as much. It's like a how-to novel on saving the world.

Why is it that games need 100% realism in them? Why is it that regardless of what armor Barret's wearing in FF7, he's still shirtless? Who cares? All games take imagination. In all honesty, adventuring without a shirt is just stupid if you can wear armor. It's to create a constant image you can get used to. Although it would be cool if 20 outfits were designed for each character, and they programmed bathrooms into games, and made you go every 20 minutes of walking around the overworld, I doubt it would really make you enjoy the game more. My point is not that Meagan Ehrhardt is wrong. She could very well be on the button. What I'm trying to show is that you can get anything you want from anything you see. Point of view works in mysterious ways. I could look at Brad's mini-poll about monkeys and bananas and call him racist. I could even come up with a few examples for it, but that's not true (I'd hope). Read carefully, keep an open mind, or you may just fall short of the understanding you're trying to acheive.

Original Editorial: The Roles of Final Fantasy Women