fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #336 ]

[ SECRET POST #336 ]

⌈ Secret Post #336 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Out again, Christmas shopping/making a buttload of cookies! You know what to do!

Last day to submit for next week!

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #048.
Secrets Not Posted: 0 broken links, [ 1 ] not!secret, [ 1 ] not!fandom, [ 1 ] repeat.
Next Secret Post: Tomorrow, Saturday, December 7th, 2007.
Current Secret Submission Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

*points up at the anon*

Yes, yes I do. I'm too lazy to go back and copypasta, but I swear I mentioned at one point that protagonists, by virtue of being protagonists, get more attention when it comes to characterization. Protagonists often have pasts relevant to the story, while the love interest does not and her characterization is largely defined in relation to the main character.

It's things like this that make a character like Terra from FFVI so unique - if she had had a love interest and he had been the main character, she would have been relegated to much the same position as many other love-interest types. But because she had the spotlight and had to stand on her own, she became a more complex and interesting character because of it. She has the history and the personality that most love interest girls lack.

I frequently wonder why I like slash, and why women like slash in general. I don't think it's just because 'it's hot and turns me on' - though that is part of it - and I do think there is a connection between slash and sexism - but maybe I was making it in the wrong place.

Um, quite a few of the characters you included in that secret do have backstories and personalities and are quite thoroughly fleshed out, and unless you completely skipped gigantic chunks of the game plot because you were too busy oggling the guys, there's no bloody way you could miss it.

See: Aeris, Garnet, Yuna, Elena, Rinoa

I don't necessarily like all of them, but I'm not about to say they were flat and lifeless and served no purpose other than to glorify their male love interests.

As for Aeris, Garnet, Yuna and Rinoa...

Their backstories exist almost purely to grant them awesome-super-powers. Aeris I would name as an exception because she spend a good chunk of her childhood in Shinra's labs, but Rinoa and Yuna? Garnet barely even remembers her childhood - effectively, she is Princess Garnet and Queen Brahne is her mother, as far as I'm concerned.

I seriously can't remember the details on Elena. I shouldn't have put her there, it's been years since I've played the game, but I already said that.

I did say this already, but let me try to condense it... If she's so awesome-special with her magic abilities, why the hell isn't she the main character? She basically becomes an accessory for the main character to tote around so her powers can be useful at plot-relevant points. Her status as the love interest diminishes her role and her influence on the story by BOATLOADS because the main character has to be the centre of everything.

There's ways to work against this, and this is why I wildly gesture at Kidd from Chrono Cross - she was great because she had her own agenda and didn't follow Serge around for the entire game. (I hear the girl from FFXII is pretty awesome, too, but I haven't gotten far enough to say).

(And while I'm talking about Aeris and Shinra's labs, hot DAMN she's way too well-adjusted for a lab rat who now lives in the slums. I always found that rather hard to swallow... but that's another can of worms.)

Or, like Lyon of Suikoden V, you can have a very good excuse to be following around the main character... she's his bodyguard.

If she's so awesome-special with her magic abilities, why the hell isn't she the main character?

Because, like most video games, RPGs are aimed at males so they make a male lead for the player to relate to?

But again you clearly aren't playing the same game as the rest of us. Yuna WAS the main character of FF10 for god's sake. The story was all about her and her journey to beat Sin. If anything, it was everyone else who was the "accessory" to her mission. Just because you didn't move her around the screen most of the time means she wasn't a main character? WHAT? Colette was in a similar situation, too. And I'm still boggling over WTF Tear and Garnet are doing there.

Everyone here is jumping at you because of your utter fail in using a term you clearly don't understand. Go to Wikipedia and read what a yamato nadeshiko actual is. Characters like Chi from Chobits, Belldandy from Ah My Goddess and Aoi Sakuraba from Ai Yori Aoshi are the yamato nadeshiko you're looking for.

Just write your slash and leave the reasons you write it out of it. I don't wanna know why anyone writes slash. I just wanna read it.

Edited 2007-12-08 06:58 (UTC)

I already said I was wrong to include the Yamato thing. I said it like three times. Let me say it again.

Of course the male is the main character because the genre is supposed to appeal to males. There is a WAY to have a love interest without her being an accessory, which is the entire point of me bringing up Kidd and Lyon.

I already explained that my reasons for including Tear were irrelevant and batshit. I'm getting sick of repeating myself.

Garnet, on the other hand, I think fits the type just fine. She's a traditionally feminine healer love interest, which was the entire point of the picture. I think she shares a lot of qualities with Aeris, Yuna, and the like.

Yuna is a major character, not the main character. Despite her importance to the world at large and her major part in the story... at the end of the day, the main focus is on Tidus. He is the main character. The story is about him and from his point of view, and the only reason anything really got solved in the end was because Sin was Tidus' father. Yuna's role in the story was to a) fall in love with Tidus and b) re-unite him with his daddy. Role in story =/= role in Spira as a whole.

For the record, I'm one of those maniacs who loved X-2.

I'm not going to go read everything you're saying elsewhere.

FF9 was a love story, first and foremost. So duh, Garnet was the love interest. But so was Freya to a lesser extent and Beatrix and Steiner. They just weren't the center stage. But were THEY nothing but love interests? Garnet was her own character. She faced her past, the death to two mothers and two homes, making costly mistakes and yet still had the courage to stand tall in the end. On the SIDE she was Zidane's love interest. But that wasn't her main role whatsoever. She was part of the deep and twisting story line that could not happen without her.

FF7 and FF10 were not love stories first and foremost. Their romantic relations with the male hero is there, but it is definietly NOT all they are and you have to be asleep the whole game to think that.

You do know games can have two main characters, right? A story told in one character's POV doesn't mean THAT character is the main character and no one else. It's a type of story telling. What about everyone else? They're just an "accessory" to the story because they also fill cliché roles?

So... Let me get this straight.

These female characters, according to you, all suck...

Because they fall in love with the lead male and happen to use white magic. :/

Edit: Might as well through this in. I only say this because for Elena, you fail to include Millenia, who doesn't use magic, but still happens to fall in love with Ryudo.

You don't include Quistis, who harbors a crush on Squall throughout almost the entire game.

You don't include Natalia, who can't decide WHO she loves until the end of the game.

You don't include Eiko who BLATANTLY has a crush on Zidane.

I mean... Yeah.

Edited 2007-12-08 07:04 (UTC)

It's not about who falls in love with who, it's about STORY ROLES. I also happen to find their personalities extremely similar, but since nobody else seems to agree I've given up arguing that as a lost cause.

Millenia is not included because I don't find her personality similar. At all.

I don't include Quistis because she isn't Rinoa and does not occupy Rinoa's role in the story.

I don't include Natalia because... dammit, I already said it was a mistake to include Tear and I said it like three times, so can we just skip Tales of the Abyss?

I don't include Eiko because she's not Dagger and does not occupy Dagger's role in the story. Also, she's like six. Six does not make for a real love interest. I hope.

I am so not in the mood for trying to re-hash everything I said about roles.

Also, Eiko strikes me as the cutesy type - even if she were old enough, the protagonist NEVER gets together with the cutesy type. It's like an RPG rule.

Does Squall end up with Selphie?
Does Cloud end up with Yuffie?
Does Tidus end up with Rikku?
Does Senel end up with Norma?
Does Luke end up with Anise? (again, the pedo)

Even if Eiko were not SIX, she still wouldn't even be close to approaching the type that I'm talking about because she's too cheerful and upbeat.

Actually, speaking as a Tidus/Rikku shipper and a Cloud/Yuffie shipper, I'd say that's entirely the choice of the fans. You can't say protaganist/spunky girl romance can never happen, because that's what fanfic is FOR. Hell, Yuffie is the only character who canonically kisses Cloud. So there. :3

And hey, japanese media and loli...*bricked*

~Miri

In the fic, sure, you've got no arguments from me, but it canon?

I can't think of one example where it actually happens. (And the date scenario with Yuffie is an optional, so it doesn't reeeally count).

I think it's unfair to write something off as "it's optional, so itdoesn't count". Games give you the option of choosing relationship values for a reason, after all!

In FFX, you get a scene with whoever you have the highest relationship with. I got Lulu my first playthrough, and Rikku on my second. On both, you have the option of choosing to say "I'd rather have you, [Character]" in response to a question about Yuna.

In FF7, I think it's incredibly telling that Yuffie is the only one to kiss him.

In Tales of Symphonia, the spunky-girl Sheena has a very obvious crush on Lloyd (main character). And again, with a high relationship value, his interactions with her can outweigh the 'canon' bias towards Colette (female lead).

I don't think you can say that there IS a canon love thing in FF7, actually. Nomura has said that he deliberately didn't resolve the Cloud-Tifa-Aeris triangle - there's no reason why Yuffie is any less of a candidate.

[tl;dr - Miri is a shipbitch who thinks too deeply about stuff.]

~Miri

Edited 2007-12-11 16:06 (UTC)

Does Vaan end up with Pene... oh.
Does Sora end up with Kai... oh. (Yeah, sorry, Kairi giggles, skips school, runs races, etc. She's more the cutesy type than the gentle soul type).

Other than that I can't talk, because I mostly have Atlus/SMT games on my shelf, and they tend to lack the cutesy sorts, but.

I haven't finished FFXII, so I didn't know that. If you're talking general trends, in the majority of cases it doesn't happen. I was making a generalization, I admit.

Okay... Well, have fun with that one. I'm not going to argue with generalizations.

Blanketing female characters I love under the "they aren't good enough for the men" sucks, but obviously we're going to get blue in the face arguing opinion here.

Because you're not arguing 'role in the story' even though you claim you are, or you would have included Millenia without a DOUBT, because her role in the story is, by definition, no different from Elenas.

You simply don't care for the soft spoken woman, which is fine.

Also, arguing about pairing ages is TL;DR. You should KNOW that age isn't really an object in fandom or loli and shota wouldn't exist.

I was assuming that we were talking about the canon. In any videogame, can you ever thing of a cutesy girl who gets together with the protagonist at the end? I really can't think of a single RPG where they do. As soon as the girl who will be the protagonist's love interest is introduced, you know that it's going to be her that gets together with the guy. Even if there's a love triangle, it's obvious who's going to lose (...FFVII was an exception because Aeris threw a wrench in the gears by dying.)

As for Millenia - her personality is too aggressive and brash to click with my image of the typical love interest. That's why I didn't include her. Also, she isn't a white mage.

When the hell did I ever say "they aren't good enough for the men"? If anything, I think they're too good. People keep defending these women by saying that they're strong, capable women - and yes, they are! I'm not arguing that at all! They are very, very, strong, capable women! And you know what? I can't identify with this uber-feminine, kind, caring bastion of emotional strength.

I can't understand Aeris because she lives as a lab rat, ends up in the slums, has her mother die, her boyfriend die, predicts her own death and walks straight towards it for the good of the Planet and is fine the entire time. She's so far and above anything I'll ever experience that I will never understand her. If she has depth this is why I can't see it.

Cloud, on the other hand? For most of the game he's a total wreck! I can understand Cloud a hell of a lot more than I can understand Aeris.

What I've been trying to define about these characters is that from Rosa to Yuna on up, I can't identify with a single one of them. Whatever they are, they are so completely unlike me that I am completely incapable of understanding, sympathizing, or liking them at all.

If you want me to be flat honest I'm the OP of 31 as well. The reason I get so irritated about the whole damn thing is that I'm sick of seeing sweet, feminine and emotionally strong (not that Shirley is what I'd call strong... that was just kind of a 'last straw' game for me) women always get the guy. I get enough of that shit in RL without having it shoved in my face in fiction that the only kind of woman that's desirable is that kind that I can never be.

I spent a bajillion posts trying to link together characters in a way that wouldn't make sense to anybody else because they're not me. I find RPG love interests to be of a similar type, but nobody seems to agree with me on that and it still drives me insane.

Anyway, sorry about the huge tl;dr, but I had twenty-four hours to sit on it and I want to try to cushion the effects of my initial knee-jerk reaction to the wank.

to be honest I don't get the part about RL. I don't know anyone like that in real life which is why I personally dislike the more extreme examples of the healer girl cliche- they're so unrealistic it's impossible to relate to them. I do feel like they're a collection of ideal feminine attributes put together but in the end you get something soulless and empty, not a "real" person you can love or hate.

oh and I agree with the other people- some of the girls you picked are waaay off!

Ah, but when I tried to draw similarities between the characters and say, "Look, these characters are similar" I got bombarded from every direction. The only thing that can't be argued with is something that is purely a matter of personal opinion.

Elena and Tear, for reasons which I really don't want to go over again, yes. The others? I'll stand by my statement.

.... Wow. You are a very shallow person. That might be the real reason you can't get a boy friend.

Thanks so much, anon. I'm happy to know that a random stranger on the internet is making value judgements about me based on little to no information after having never met me in the first place. It really makes me feel good about the human race.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #336 ]

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