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Squeenix Fail
Here's the thing, about the recent announcements regarding Lightning Returns.
You all know that I'm a huge FFX-2 fan, so it's not like fanservice or character redesigns or playing dress-up dolls are deal-breakers for me. I might have rolled my eyes a little bit at Lightning Returns and her five million outfits, and I think it's more than fair to ask if a Final Fantasy game with a male protagonist would have ever included such an aspect, but it doesn't bother me really.
This thing with the breast enlargement bothers me. Not just the fact of it, but the way it was presented, the tee-hee-nudge-wink grossness of it, the idea that whether Lightning's breasts jiggle is the most important thing about the game, the fact that it's Lightning being sexualized in this particular way. In her original characterization, Lightning broke out of many of the female character stereotypes that have plagued Final Fantasy games in the past, so to see this change is really frustrating.
Take this news and combine it with the lack of female playable characters in FFXV (which hasn't been officially confirmed but seems highly likely) and the redesign of Stella from this to this, my faith in Squeenix is pretty much shot.
I will still probably buy and play Final Fantasy XV; I will still probably not get Lightning Returns unless I ever manage to finish FFXIII-2, so nothing has changed for me, really. But it's all very disappointing, and getting worse.
You all know that I'm a huge FFX-2 fan, so it's not like fanservice or character redesigns or playing dress-up dolls are deal-breakers for me. I might have rolled my eyes a little bit at Lightning Returns and her five million outfits, and I think it's more than fair to ask if a Final Fantasy game with a male protagonist would have ever included such an aspect, but it doesn't bother me really.
This thing with the breast enlargement bothers me. Not just the fact of it, but the way it was presented, the tee-hee-nudge-wink grossness of it, the idea that whether Lightning's breasts jiggle is the most important thing about the game, the fact that it's Lightning being sexualized in this particular way. In her original characterization, Lightning broke out of many of the female character stereotypes that have plagued Final Fantasy games in the past, so to see this change is really frustrating.
Take this news and combine it with the lack of female playable characters in FFXV (which hasn't been officially confirmed but seems highly likely) and the redesign of Stella from this to this, my faith in Squeenix is pretty much shot.
I will still probably buy and play Final Fantasy XV; I will still probably not get Lightning Returns unless I ever manage to finish FFXIII-2, so nothing has changed for me, really. But it's all very disappointing, and getting worse.
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What's so maddening is that FFXIII seemed to be the best title to date in terms of complex female characters who were people first (still some eye candy, but nothing gratuitous or gross.) What happened?
Toriyama is truly appalling.
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Exactly. It would be much less disappointing if they hadn't seemed to be taking steps forward with this series. And now they have to undo it all with developer interviews? And that's even more annoying. It's like they don't understand their own character.
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Regarding Lightning, I'm willing to concede to some fanservice but Lightning? Jigglyboob!breast-enhancement!Lightning feels deeply out of character.
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tl;dr: complex stuff is complex. :|
I appreciate that many gamers (and movie-goers and anime viewers) enjoy eye-candy and like those aspect of the fantasy provided in games (and movies, anime, etc.). From the creator's side, I also appreciate drawing/modeling the human form** and I understand why artists enjoy making certain kinds of characters and costumes in video games. So, as long as the plot is good and the characters are interesting, I'm willing to forgive certain costuming choices and body choices. A big part of my forgiveness comes from me knowing that I strongly prefer realism over fantasy when surrounded by a mass commercial audience who more strongly prefer fantasy. This makes me forgive the aspects of fantasy designed into the original costume Lightnings wears in FFXIII. I can forgive Ashe's ridiculous "skirt" (although I rolled my eyes when one of the Squeenix dudes said in response to Ashe's costume that "it's hot in Dalamsca. hurrhurrhurr.") just as I can also forgive Basch's convenient keyhole-to-the-abs costume. I can even forgive Fran's costume (sort of...) because, in the end, Lightning, Ashe, Basch, Fran and others are more interesting to me as characters (people!) than as objects designed for oogling.
What pains me is when fanservice/objectification takes the driver's seat. Yet, my feelings are complex because I have a sketchbook filled with character designs that I made years ago and that sketchbook has just as much pin-up and beefcake as it has other kinds of body types and costumes and styles. (Although I really *did* learn something about the human form/anatomy when drawing hyper-idealized versions of it, but that's a discussion for another day.)
In a perfect world, I would make all of my video game female action heroes bind their breasts to their chest with industrial-strength sports bras so I don't experience sympathetic boob-pain watching them jiggle and bounce. Jigglyboob physics for serious soldier Lightning is not something that I want to see as a selling point for a new FFXIII game. :/
Yet, this line of discussion eventually ends up in sticky territory. More than once some female fans have called me out on me negatively prioritizing sex-appeal in character design. Their comments? (paraphrased) "Women have been told by society to be objects and not to express their own desire. Sorry, we want our eye candy too!"
So, idk... I'm highly unamused by the overt nudge-nudge-wink-wink manner in which jigglyboob physics was presented as a selling point for the new FFXIII and that lack of amusement stems from all the reasons discussed under this post of yours. I want to think that people like Lighning because she is an interesting character. But, I don't have answers or solutions because I've also been verbally beaten up by female gamers who don't like the way I sometimes overly deemphasize attractiveness and/or desexualize male characters whom they find hot and sexy because -- after all, they want to enjoy their fantasy! I deeply appreciate that fact, even if their fantasy isn't mine.
(ask me someday about Ser Cullen's fandom...)(** to me, when making art, every single face and every body is amazing, no matter the person's age, body type, or ethnicity. The human form as a whole is aesthetically pleasing in its complexity and diversity, and representing the human form is intellectually challenging because each person is unique. When I stare at a model for HOURS while trying to understand how to represent them on paper or canvas or computer screen, I am absolutely mesmerized by each little thing that makes them uniquely who they are. Most realist artists and art students I know who study/do figurative art also say the same thing, even if they later get hired to make commercial art that has extremely narrow interpretations of what people "should" look like.)
Re: tl;dr: complex stuff is complex. :|
When you've gotten into debates with women about sexualizing characters, has it been about characters in general, or about male characters specifically? Because given the history of objectification in media, I think sexualizing male characters for the female gaze is quite different from sexualizing female characters for the male gaze (or sexualizing male characters as male power fantasies). (But if it's about a weariness with the emphasis on sexual relationships to the exclusion of all others within some branches of fandom, I can certainly relate to that.)
Re: tl;dr: complex stuff is complex. :|
If it were Lebreaux having fun with sexy costumes, I'd think it were appealling and adorable, because she appears to me to have a whimsical fashion sense. Even Yuna, as an expression of "trying on different clothes, having fun, finding herself, acting like a regular teenager and living the life she denied herself as a prim and proper virgin sacrifice," makes sense.
But Lightning? WTF?
Mostly, though, it's just that for me, the character matters more than her appearance, and I found it deeply disturbing that the male director and designer of Lightning Returns seemed to be fixated on her as eye candy more than as a person, as if that's the chief selling point of the character, when she is a helluva person.
And this is from someone who puts Fran in front of the party partly because I like her butt. But that's not what I think of first when I think of Fran (I think of her voice). She's a fascinating character who happens to have a nice butt. I would still like the character (and think it was pretty fantastic) if Viera were heavy-set, earthy and weathered like treebark instead of video game sexybuild.
Re: tl;dr: complex stuff is complex. :|
So, even if Lightning is Lightning, couldn't Lightning, herself, legitimately want to dress sexy at least once?
My point here is making a distinction between the scope of a character when we think of that character as a person vs the character as an object.
All of us commenting under this post are voicing deep disappointment with enhanced jiggle-physics as Squeenix's Hot New Selling Point for a remake of Lightning. From an external POV, jiggle-physics sexually objectifies Lightning and SquareEnix is blatantly using that as part of their sales pitch. From an internal POV, athletic women engaging in highly athletic activities purposefully keep their boobs tightly bound in place for damn good reasons (*ouch*).
But I feel uncomfortable saying no sexy costumes for Lightning *because* Lightning is Lightning. That seems too narrow and confining for the character herself.
It's a subtle thing, not sure if I am explaining it well. It's the difference saying no to problematic jiggle-physics marketing while still saying yes to female characters who can be physically strong and athletic, emotionally complex and compelling, and, when the *character* believably wants to, they can also appear as sexually appealing. I hope that makes sense?
To me, it's about embodying the character with a broad sense of agency such that the character appears to be who she wants to be across a range of different situations. When Lightning is physically leaping and bounding and fighting, I want to see her acting in her self interest rather than *only* as an objectified thing, but when Lightning has an in-world reason to dress in a manner that shows off her attractive form, I don't want to stop her from dressing sexy if I believe that is what she wants to do.
Re: tl;dr: complex stuff is complex. :|
Re: tl;dr: complex stuff is complex. :|
Re: tl;dr: complex stuff is complex. :|
Re: tl;dr: complex stuff is complex. :|
Although, once a game ships and is in the hands and minds of players, players create their own explanations for characters' motivations. I thought that the body design for the original Lara Croft was insultingly objectified for the male-gaze and it completely turned me off from the series. Meanwhile, academic research done by feminists with critical theory training when interviewing pre-teen girls uncovered very different feelings about Lara: female role-model, someone they wanted to be friends with, they fantasized about going on adventures beside Lara while playing the game, etc. So... idk. It's all very complex.
Re: tl;dr: complex stuff is complex. :|
My short answer on debates about gender and sexualization in media is this: it all depends on audience, context, and purpose. (although the matter of male power fantasies is a different matter for another time.)
When everyone in the room knows that the debate is being held by people who have donned their Critical Media Theory hats, it is enlightening and important to discuss the historic differences of how female vs male characters have been sexualized and objectified in media. And, yes, there is a different history and different set of messages regarding how characters (and actors and celebs) have or haven't been sexualized for the male vs female gaze, but both have been sexualized a good deal.
But, when people are primarily talking from the POV of their own positive personal feelings/desires/enjoyment regarding *specific* characters (which is what most casual fandom discussions are), I consistently find it counter-productive to have discussions that rank the value of whether that character, regardless of gender, should be designed as sexually attractive for either the male or female gaze and/or to be costumed or framed by the camera in ways that prioritize sexual gaze. The root of all of this is some level of objectification-fantasy and gendered beauty/attractiveness fantasy. As long as fantasies are fun and satisfy a non-harmful/minimal-harm need, I give it a thumbs up. (although this *is* where we could segue into a discussion about the potential for harmful messaging when sexual fantasies are combined with power-over fantasies all in one package, but we can save that avenue of fervent agreement that for later. ^_^)
My issue stems from the *assumption* that all fans of popular media consistently prioritize sexual attraction, sexuality, sexual relationships, and common notions of beauty and attraction above everything else, which is different from whether or not someone actually does or doesn't. If a character (or actor for that matter) fits certain stereotypes, non-fans of those characters automatically assume that fans are really only interested in the character because of sexual attraction. Meanwhile, many fans of those characters (but not all!) are noticeably put off when someone when another fan mentions that they are not sexually attracted and/or desexualizes (or de-romanticizes) that character in meta, fanfic, or fanart because that act takes the air out of their sexual/romantic fantasy. I find the entire matter of catering to a narrow set of sex-object/romantic-fantasy tropes tiring and demotivating when making art or writing fiction. Thus, when female fans say "hey, we deserve our fantasy too" with regard to male characters, despite me agreeing with them in principle, most of the time I'm probably *not* going to write fic or make art that gives them what they want, much in the same way that a pizza shop isn't going to make teriyaki (and, yes, both pizza and teriyaki are good and tasty). Or, to be dangerously more exact yet potentially very wrong, in the ways that popular romantic comedies and romance-dramas are different from horror movies and "art house" films (for the record, I despise the term/genre "art house" but I'm using it out of convenience).
To be blunt, nothing chills the room of Ser Cullen fans like mentioning I'm working canon-compatible story in which Cullen is somewhat aware of Alrik's abuses and chooses to believe/accept that he is powerless to do anything about it, (and that he is rather barrel chested and flabby around the midsection, and was transferred to Kirkwall because he killed a young apprentice during a moment of rage-fueled overreaction to a situation). To me, this is a far more interesting character to write and to draw. Likewise, Alistair fans have expressed discomfort to me whenever I say that the most interesting Alistair for me to explore in fiction is depressed, alcoholic Alistair, and someone will eventually state that I'm doing fandom wrong. In the end, these kinds of responses only end up reinforcing that fandom (and popular media???) should prioritize sexualization/romanticization.
Re: tl;dr: complex stuff is complex. :|
I confess that I have a hard time taking the Critical Media Theory hat off, especially when I'm talking with people that I know are capable of wearing it, because I find that kind of analysis both interesting and valuable. But I know, in theory, that it isn't always appropriate.
Re: tl;dr: complex stuff is complex. :|
In my experience in fandom and in the university classroom, these important discussions about media's representations of sexuality, relationships, fantasy, human bodies, and human experience seem to work best when everyone agrees to some set of ground rules on subject-object relations, separating what is being discussed from everything else that people also bring to the table. An agreement sort of like "this piece of media and this media event are objects we will dissect; the personal feelings you experienced when interacting with this piece of media are valid subjects of discussion but are unlikely to be universally held, therefore let us all respect that each person's feelings are internally valid and stem from a reaction to the media(and how the media provokes a reaction is something we can dissect) rather than treating those feelings as objects for us to judge." Or something like that. It's a difficult headspace for people to stay in.
I like having these kinds of discussions. They're interesting, valuable, and they allow me to make use of a whole bunch of hardcore knowledge I explored for my masters degree ... and almost never get to use anymore. :( But wow, half of these media theory discussions on the internet feel like pissing into the wind or, worse, fans feel like the discussants are pissing on them. Even when the issue feels really clear cut in how capital-P Problematic it is, there's usually some sort of nuance that becomes all but hopelessly lost or flattened in fandom discussions. The internet tends to amplify sound bites that state clear cut answers. :/
This whole matter of sexualized characters taps into powerful and sometimes contradictory feelings. So, getting back to the original issue, as much as I am grumpily side-eyeing Squeenix's locker-room level announcement of Lightning's enhanced breasts, I also want to see non-gratuitous uses of algorithms that give bodies a more natural, realistic appearance rather than having game characters look like wooden manikins. And then there is this other issue: does the player want to imagine themselves as being Lightning, or as hanging out with Lightning, or as having sex with Lightning? Is Lightning something for them to control or someone they picture as embodying real feelings worthy of respect? None of those "or"s are necessarily exclusive. Also, if player imagines themselves being Lightning or any other female character, part of that fantasy may involve being someone who attracts the heterosexual male gaze and/or who embodies certain aspects of female beauty. How often have we seen screenshots of custom-made hollywood-gorgeous female Wardens whose hair, makeup, and attire are completely out of character for the mud and toil of raising an army during the blight? Some female players might find a costume-play!sexy!Lightning more a more appealing and more empowering fantasy because Lightning is simultaneously ass-kicking powerful, has an interesting story, and has a sexually acknowledged side too.
In the end, is the FFXIII series or any other piece of media acting as a person's vehicle for a pleasant, mindless escape or as an object to be critically consumed? And at what point do we trust media consumers to acknowledge and internalize problematic elements while also letting them create a space to just enjoy for the sake of enjoyment?
Although you'd never know it based on where my fandom participation is focused, I enjoy the Metal Gear series and find it a giant parade of VERY HOT CHARACTERS (although, as my icon says, I really *do* play for gameplay challenges and for storyline). By hot, I mean distractingly hot. (...uh, wait, what were we talking about? oh, right, sexualization and objectification and the differences and overlaps between male and female gaze. complexity...) I have absolutely no idea whose gaze and whose fantasies the creators of that series were designing for given that Metal Gear emphasizes a specific brand of hyper-masculinity while nonetheless having notable queer subtext (and text). I'm vaguely aware of fans getting into major debates about how sexuality is handled in Metal Gear and whether or not it is problematical regarding women and problematic the regarding the LGBTQ community. And despite how much you might think I have to say on the matter, for years all I have done is shrug and say "Metal Gear is a parade of distracting hot characters that also has good gameplay and an entertaining story." My preference has been to remain completely detached from Metal Gear fandom. Zero interest in discussing canon or headcanon. Zero interest in reading or writing fanfic or meta. It's my occasional mode of entertainment, and I prefer it as a mindless escape and nothing more.
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But, all of that said, my tl;dr response to this entire discussion is: I am Highly Unamused with Squeenix's handling of Lightning's digital boob job but I am hesitant to judge the sexualization of an interesting, well-written female lead character. At least, not until I see more of how the new FFXIII presents Lightning and how other female players receive her.
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That was cool.
And then Toriyama is all like "OH YEAH I ADDED AN ENHANCED CUP SIZE FOR HER SO THAT WHEN SHE BATTLES YOU CAN SEE HER BREAST SWING LIKE WHOOPSIE-DAISY. TO MAKE THOSE DRESS AND FANSERVICE OUTFITS ALL THE SWEETER, AS THOUGH WE JUST NOW REALIZE WE SHOULD MAKE HER EVEN MORE SO."
Man, couldn't they have just shut their mouths until the game came out and we all start noticing "hey, she got jiggle physics, le sigh just like every other game isn't it, at least they marketed the plot first and then the costume fanservice that are allusions to their other games. And not like, let us alllll know you can see her breasts."
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I'm also really distressed at the all-male party for FFXV :/ Hopefully that changes.
grargle. It's like the industry takes a half step forward and then falls back 3 paces.
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This reminds me that the guy who recently left Eidos indicated that he felt Squeenix lacked courage to make tough choices. He may've been referring to something else, but it's interesting.
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Warning: NSFW.
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That is the best thing ever!