ext_33427 (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
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fandomsecrets2007-12-07 04:00 pm
degrees.livejournal.com) wrote in fandomsecrets2007-12-07 04:00 pm
[ 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.
37
Like -- oh, Kairi. I know you put in KH1 Kairi, so I'm not touching KH2 Kairi in my comment here, because she HAS grown up a year and her motivations and actions she'll take have changed. So just on KH1 Kairi -- yeah, she's a "princess of heart", but that doesn't automatically equal docile and gentle and kind. (I note that Belle is a Princess of Heart, and she elbowed some guy in the solar plexus and rescued herself when captured, in the same continuity.) Yeah, Kairi's role towards the end of the first game is to step back and not go with Sora, and just "always be with him" because her heart was with him, which can sound very... "female character only exists to highlight the male protagonist". But this is the same Kairi who skips school, who had planned to escape normal life by running off with two teenage boys (which, you know, has its own connotations, even though they're untrue in this case XD), who is a lazy layabout who can accuse others of being lazy while avoiding work herself. It's also the Kairi who's been running around inside Sora, observing the goings on, and it's a Kairi who, when she woke up from her coma, didn't look around in confusion -- the very first thing she did was launch herself to try to catch Sora, like a boy would for a self-sacrificing female character. I've always liked her final decision not to go along, not because it pushed the female character aside to make room for the male, but because it was something not done out of a whiny, clingy desire to be included -- instead, the question she asked was one of whether or not she'd be useful, and when sora said no, she agreed to stay behind so she wouldn't be an impediment. Which, honestly -- she has no fighting skills, no magic, and no weapon. I'd have thought less of her as a person if she'd insisted on going along and would have had to be protected -- instead she ignored what she wanted and was responsible about it. It always bugs me when that decision gets read as a "womanly" one instead of one any reasonable human being in her position should make.
Or ...Aeris. I'm really surprised to see her on a list of "Yamato Nadeshikos" because she's not the quiet gentle woman who sits at home and suffers (I actually can think of very few video game characters in that position. There's secondary characters, like Kushi in Okami, who are supposed to be that archetype, but even they show bursts of fiery spirit XD). Aeris is a gentle person, who dies in love and sacrifice (though not for a man but to save the. You know. Entire world). She's 'special', and not human. But at the same time, she's a street kid who grew up in the slums, laughs about the chance to get to dress a guy up in drag and prostitute him to a total asshole, and hangs around outside a whorehouse (if you choose to go into the Honeybee inn, anyway) where she stiffs the sexist assholes out there by charging them different prices for her flowers based on how bastardy they're being to her -- she uses her cute, sweet 'charm' to get away with it, too, because they pay up. Aeris is, when push comes to shove, a deeply good person who wants to save everybody and the whole world, but so is ... you know, Barrett, and Tifa, and Yuffie (though she's more localized), and ...just about everyone. The game is about characters with hometown attachments trying to save their hometowns, the thing about Aeris being a Cetra is that the whole world is her hometown. With that in mind, her motivations fall right in line with everyone else's in the game, and fits perfectly into the theme. Yeah, she has the power to back it up -- but so does everyone else; even if their hometown has gone to ruin (Barrett's, Yuffie's), there are options that can be taken through the game to bring it back to how it should be -- and because Aeris's hometown is the world, her level of ability reflects that. There's just cost as well.
Re: 37
I respect what you're saying -- I hate when female characters exist only to support a male, or only to be a self-sacrifice, but most video games have stories good enough to support something other than the Yamato Nadeshiko trope. Have you played Digital Devil Saga? I highly recommend it -- on the one hand, I think you'll probably be bothered by Sera falling into the archetype (And god knows I've argued against that before because it's always seemed really unfair and not taking her situation into account), but the main party healer is Argilla -- who's a female healer who's actually just your party mage, and a demon cannibal who eats things with her boobs and was officially the group's sniper before they all turned into demons. She's got some "extra-feminine" traits, like being the only one who resists cannibalism for a while (though there's a very strong male character who also does, which is found out about later in the game and takes that out of an anti-feminist perspective), but she's badass, strong, and just kind of awesome. And has breast-mouths, who doesn't like those? I think you'd find it an enjoyable way of handling the "party healer" trope (though anyone can learn healing skills, and I usually end up also making Cielo -- male -- a healer XD).