mark_asphodel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mark_asphodel) wrote2013-08-08 05:41 pm
mark_asphodel) wrote2013-08-08 05:41 pm
Some Musings on Women in FE
Just to get these thoughts down in one place...
I don't know about y'all but I found little things about the way female characters were handled to be a very off-putting thing in FE13. I didn't like a lot of the Big Things in FE13 either but small disparities really got under my skin. At this point, the high-water mark for the franchise treatment of female characters looks to be Tellius, but it's worth examining the baby steps-- both forward and backward-- it took to get to that level, or even to FE6's level of female empowerment.
FE1: Things actually got off to a pretty good start in FE1. You have a genuine heroine in Caeda, the princess who takes up arms and kicks ass when her country gets attacked and then recruits a good chunk of Marth's army in the bargain. You have a high-ranking, take-charge female paladin in Midia-- sure her rebellion fails but she was in there trying. You have princesses like Minerva and Nyna left ruling their respective nations at the end of the game. Elice is a victim and a passive object of rescue, but hey, Marth is at least as interested in saving his sister as in avenging his father-- heck, Marth's entire status as a younger brother of an elder sister rather than merely as the son of his father is interesting. Not bad, really. Also can't mention FE1 without mentioning the Pegasus Knight Sisters, whose influence in terms of character and story reaches many, many later games in the franchise.
FE2: Gaiden takes this solid base and expands upon it, providing a female co-lead in Celica, a character who deliberately gets involved in a campaign she could've sat out because she felt it the right thing to do. She doesn't get swept up in events-- she chooses to help influence events. More than that, though. Gaiden introduces something Archanea really doesn't have: female antagonists. Specifically, female antagonists that can't be saved via recruiting. Sure, there are damsels in distress and even Celica has to be rescued at one point, but overall Gaiden seems pretty good, especially when prominent female supporting members like Teeta and Palla are taken into account.
FE3: The second round of Archanea is a huge step back. Women are automatic allies or victims who need a man to redeem them. No true female antagonists-- even generic peg knights are male. Marth's key female allies all cede power to him at the end of the game. Mystery of the Emblem is the absolute pits in terms of female empowerment for this franchise IMO. I love the storyline but the way the female characters are treated just blows. Even Caeda's role gets reduced because some characters she recruited in FE1 got cut from the roster.
FE3 is also notable for what it lacks in that many distinctly female "archetypes" didn't exist yet-- the exotic long-haired sword beauty came along in FE4. The spunky village-girl archer arose in FE5. These are notable in part because FE11 retconned them into existence via characters like Athena and Norne.
FE4: Here, things get interesting. On the one hand, some people on the f-list have strongly objected to the, well, rape-happy tone the game takes in numerous places. On the other hand, I have to give FE4 props for introducing a world where female representation just IS. No male peg knights here-- Jugdral abounds with generic mages, troubadours, and peg knights who fight and die alongside the NPC men. Jugdral has memorable and annoying female mini-bosses (Deet'var, Pamela, the mage Sisters, the falcoknight Sisters) including a mini-boss who leads an all-female mercenary troop. Jugdral offers up a must-hate, must-kill, thoroughly malicious boss in Hilda-- who is explicitly working her of her own volition and not in opposition to the good guys because she's tricked, deluded, brainwashed, etc. And, of course, you have one of the most sympathetic elder-generation characters in the game in Queen Rahna, who is given a gloss of dignity even in death and defeat. So, overall, Jugdral is a massive step forward from FE3 in presenting a level playing field where women aren't automatically off-limits in battle because of their sex and unfit to rule because they lack "magic swords."
Of course there's a downside, and the downside is in your actual female playable cast. This ain't the land of gender equality-- not when younger brothers still count for more than elder sisters politically, not when brothers take active steps to keep their sisters from getting their hands dirty, and not when every single female member of the Gen1 cast is either dead or sidelined when Gen 2 rolls around. Given Lewyn, Finn, Oifaye, and Shanan all get Gen 2 screen time, it makes the off-screen presence of Aideen sitting back home in Isaach extra annoying.
FE5: Now here's where stuff gets really interesting and IMO relevant to later games. Thracia 776 keeps up the Jugdral tradition of putting young ladies in peril, but it also does some other stuff. We have expanded female representation in physical classes-- I mentioned Tanya the spunky archer, but we also have Machua the Hero and Selphina the bow knight (arguably a Midia expy but eh). We have some nuanced female characters in Olwen, Amalda, and Misha, who offer some moral complexity beyond what you get in the FE3 women-- and you might be obliged to kill them! On the downside, you have FE5's version of the Nyna archetype, mouthy little Princess Miranda, whom the script mostly treats with contempt and whose happy ending involves leaving her throne for a simple life as the wife of a man old enough to be her grandfather.
No, really.
[FE5, like FE3, presents a diverse array of noble, talented, powerful female characters and then concludes with an unequivocal message of UP THE PATRIARCHY!!! We like strong women... but not so strong they don't go back to the kitchen when we tell 'em to.]
And then there's Eyvel. FE5 basically rectifies FE4's lack of competent Gen2 adult female characters by placing Eyvel at the center of the action from the very first chapter. Here we have a woman who is in her mid-thirties(!), respected, an authority figure and leader, a renowed physical fighter, and also a loving and beloved mother. Eyvel kicks ass. And then a couple of chapters in she gets hit with the victim stick and sidelined for the majority of the game while the menfolk do the fighting-- turned into an Elice-like MacGuffin, on the mind of the protagonist but always out of sight until the penultimate chapter.
So what do we make of things when the script presents us with an OMG awesome female character and then makes the deliberate choice not to utilize her, to box her off, make her a literal object for 90% of the game? Do we say, "Welp, at least she was cool," and think that it's kind of neat to find such emphasis on a mother/child bond when it wasn't expected? Or do we feel irked because it wasn't enough? After all, what it would look like if IS had taken this scenario and swapped it, deep-sixing the male parent figure while the female parent figure stayed active? Well, IS actually did this IMO and it's called Path of Radiance, so there you go. You can look at it from the opposite angle, too-- killing off the protagonist's father is a trope in itself in Fire Emblem. Even Eliwood in FE6 shows up, promptly gets sidelined, and is spoken highly of throughout even though we don't see him DO anything. So IS repeatedly does this with and to male characters, and it's part of the show. It's expected. So... is it SUCH a terrible thing that this happens to Eyvel? Because, simply put-- what befalls Leif's "mother" isn't much different than what happens to the fathers of Roy, Ike, or Eliwood. Is this a case of a strong female character being shoved to the side (boo) or the case of a parental figure being shoved to the side so the kid is forced to grow up, and in this case the parent in question is-- for once-- the mom?
Then again, maybe it's both. That's what makes evaluating female characters and their roles so goshdarn difficult.
And then we have Linoan, who presents a different FE-specific issue. In Linoan we have what I once termed the Disappearing Female. She's the scion of a holy line, the beloved ruler of a besieged city, gracious and kind and pretty. She's also, in the end, completely irrelevant. Her bloodline don't matter 'cause she explictly never weds. Her city don't matter because all of FE5 is a retcon interpolation into FE4 and Tahra isn't even on the map in FE4. Everything we do with Linoan, every concern we have about her, amounts to nothing and the overall saga barrels along without her. See also: Lyndis.
Then again,Tellius took this and "fixed" it too, IMO. Take a good long look at Micaiah and just TRY to tell me Linoan wasn't an inspiration there. And then look at what Micaiah gets to do and the consequences that has. Her sekrit bloodline matters. She has a lasting impact on the map. Even if she's shown up by Saga Hero Ike, she unquestionably matters in a way that Linoan does not and that (IMO) Lyndis does not.
Female representation is tricky, and in some cases I suspect that female fans (including me) actually DO judge female media characters more harshly than their male counterparts. That doesn't mean a lot of female media characters aren't tokens, or cardboard, or just plain crap. I specifically didn't mention a couple of female leads, Julia and Deirdre, that I find to be horribly written, and later FE games have their share of unsatisfying heroines IMO (Ninian, lookin' at you) or female characters with potential that aren't treated well by the script (Eirika the Gullible). But at a certain level I think I want to just be able to sit back and appreciate Caeda, Celica, Evayle and Linoan (and Titania and Micaiah)[*] without tying myself into knots over whether they could've been even stronger or better or more active or more consequential.
'Cause it's not like their male counterparts don't have problems.
* F!Kris, Katarina, F!Robin, and Lucina come with so much baggage that I can't help but tie myself into knots, sorry.
I don't know about y'all but I found little things about the way female characters were handled to be a very off-putting thing in FE13. I didn't like a lot of the Big Things in FE13 either but small disparities really got under my skin. At this point, the high-water mark for the franchise treatment of female characters looks to be Tellius, but it's worth examining the baby steps-- both forward and backward-- it took to get to that level, or even to FE6's level of female empowerment.
FE1: Things actually got off to a pretty good start in FE1. You have a genuine heroine in Caeda, the princess who takes up arms and kicks ass when her country gets attacked and then recruits a good chunk of Marth's army in the bargain. You have a high-ranking, take-charge female paladin in Midia-- sure her rebellion fails but she was in there trying. You have princesses like Minerva and Nyna left ruling their respective nations at the end of the game. Elice is a victim and a passive object of rescue, but hey, Marth is at least as interested in saving his sister as in avenging his father-- heck, Marth's entire status as a younger brother of an elder sister rather than merely as the son of his father is interesting. Not bad, really. Also can't mention FE1 without mentioning the Pegasus Knight Sisters, whose influence in terms of character and story reaches many, many later games in the franchise.
FE2: Gaiden takes this solid base and expands upon it, providing a female co-lead in Celica, a character who deliberately gets involved in a campaign she could've sat out because she felt it the right thing to do. She doesn't get swept up in events-- she chooses to help influence events. More than that, though. Gaiden introduces something Archanea really doesn't have: female antagonists. Specifically, female antagonists that can't be saved via recruiting. Sure, there are damsels in distress and even Celica has to be rescued at one point, but overall Gaiden seems pretty good, especially when prominent female supporting members like Teeta and Palla are taken into account.
FE3: The second round of Archanea is a huge step back. Women are automatic allies or victims who need a man to redeem them. No true female antagonists-- even generic peg knights are male. Marth's key female allies all cede power to him at the end of the game. Mystery of the Emblem is the absolute pits in terms of female empowerment for this franchise IMO. I love the storyline but the way the female characters are treated just blows. Even Caeda's role gets reduced because some characters she recruited in FE1 got cut from the roster.
FE3 is also notable for what it lacks in that many distinctly female "archetypes" didn't exist yet-- the exotic long-haired sword beauty came along in FE4. The spunky village-girl archer arose in FE5. These are notable in part because FE11 retconned them into existence via characters like Athena and Norne.
FE4: Here, things get interesting. On the one hand, some people on the f-list have strongly objected to the, well, rape-happy tone the game takes in numerous places. On the other hand, I have to give FE4 props for introducing a world where female representation just IS. No male peg knights here-- Jugdral abounds with generic mages, troubadours, and peg knights who fight and die alongside the NPC men. Jugdral has memorable and annoying female mini-bosses (Deet'var, Pamela, the mage Sisters, the falcoknight Sisters) including a mini-boss who leads an all-female mercenary troop. Jugdral offers up a must-hate, must-kill, thoroughly malicious boss in Hilda-- who is explicitly working her of her own volition and not in opposition to the good guys because she's tricked, deluded, brainwashed, etc. And, of course, you have one of the most sympathetic elder-generation characters in the game in Queen Rahna, who is given a gloss of dignity even in death and defeat. So, overall, Jugdral is a massive step forward from FE3 in presenting a level playing field where women aren't automatically off-limits in battle because of their sex and unfit to rule because they lack "magic swords."
Of course there's a downside, and the downside is in your actual female playable cast. This ain't the land of gender equality-- not when younger brothers still count for more than elder sisters politically, not when brothers take active steps to keep their sisters from getting their hands dirty, and not when every single female member of the Gen1 cast is either dead or sidelined when Gen 2 rolls around. Given Lewyn, Finn, Oifaye, and Shanan all get Gen 2 screen time, it makes the off-screen presence of Aideen sitting back home in Isaach extra annoying.
FE5: Now here's where stuff gets really interesting and IMO relevant to later games. Thracia 776 keeps up the Jugdral tradition of putting young ladies in peril, but it also does some other stuff. We have expanded female representation in physical classes-- I mentioned Tanya the spunky archer, but we also have Machua the Hero and Selphina the bow knight (arguably a Midia expy but eh). We have some nuanced female characters in Olwen, Amalda, and Misha, who offer some moral complexity beyond what you get in the FE3 women-- and you might be obliged to kill them! On the downside, you have FE5's version of the Nyna archetype, mouthy little Princess Miranda, whom the script mostly treats with contempt and whose happy ending involves leaving her throne for a simple life as the wife of a man old enough to be her grandfather.
No, really.
[FE5, like FE3, presents a diverse array of noble, talented, powerful female characters and then concludes with an unequivocal message of UP THE PATRIARCHY!!! We like strong women... but not so strong they don't go back to the kitchen when we tell 'em to.]
And then there's Eyvel. FE5 basically rectifies FE4's lack of competent Gen2 adult female characters by placing Eyvel at the center of the action from the very first chapter. Here we have a woman who is in her mid-thirties(!), respected, an authority figure and leader, a renowed physical fighter, and also a loving and beloved mother. Eyvel kicks ass. And then a couple of chapters in she gets hit with the victim stick and sidelined for the majority of the game while the menfolk do the fighting-- turned into an Elice-like MacGuffin, on the mind of the protagonist but always out of sight until the penultimate chapter.
So what do we make of things when the script presents us with an OMG awesome female character and then makes the deliberate choice not to utilize her, to box her off, make her a literal object for 90% of the game? Do we say, "Welp, at least she was cool," and think that it's kind of neat to find such emphasis on a mother/child bond when it wasn't expected? Or do we feel irked because it wasn't enough? After all, what it would look like if IS had taken this scenario and swapped it, deep-sixing the male parent figure while the female parent figure stayed active? Well, IS actually did this IMO and it's called Path of Radiance, so there you go. You can look at it from the opposite angle, too-- killing off the protagonist's father is a trope in itself in Fire Emblem. Even Eliwood in FE6 shows up, promptly gets sidelined, and is spoken highly of throughout even though we don't see him DO anything. So IS repeatedly does this with and to male characters, and it's part of the show. It's expected. So... is it SUCH a terrible thing that this happens to Eyvel? Because, simply put-- what befalls Leif's "mother" isn't much different than what happens to the fathers of Roy, Ike, or Eliwood. Is this a case of a strong female character being shoved to the side (boo) or the case of a parental figure being shoved to the side so the kid is forced to grow up, and in this case the parent in question is-- for once-- the mom?
Then again, maybe it's both. That's what makes evaluating female characters and their roles so goshdarn difficult.
And then we have Linoan, who presents a different FE-specific issue. In Linoan we have what I once termed the Disappearing Female. She's the scion of a holy line, the beloved ruler of a besieged city, gracious and kind and pretty. She's also, in the end, completely irrelevant. Her bloodline don't matter 'cause she explictly never weds. Her city don't matter because all of FE5 is a retcon interpolation into FE4 and Tahra isn't even on the map in FE4. Everything we do with Linoan, every concern we have about her, amounts to nothing and the overall saga barrels along without her. See also: Lyndis.
Then again,Tellius took this and "fixed" it too, IMO. Take a good long look at Micaiah and just TRY to tell me Linoan wasn't an inspiration there. And then look at what Micaiah gets to do and the consequences that has. Her sekrit bloodline matters. She has a lasting impact on the map. Even if she's shown up by Saga Hero Ike, she unquestionably matters in a way that Linoan does not and that (IMO) Lyndis does not.
Female representation is tricky, and in some cases I suspect that female fans (including me) actually DO judge female media characters more harshly than their male counterparts. That doesn't mean a lot of female media characters aren't tokens, or cardboard, or just plain crap. I specifically didn't mention a couple of female leads, Julia and Deirdre, that I find to be horribly written, and later FE games have their share of unsatisfying heroines IMO (Ninian, lookin' at you) or female characters with potential that aren't treated well by the script (Eirika the Gullible). But at a certain level I think I want to just be able to sit back and appreciate Caeda, Celica, Evayle and Linoan (and Titania and Micaiah)[*] without tying myself into knots over whether they could've been even stronger or better or more active or more consequential.
'Cause it's not like their male counterparts don't have problems.
* F!Kris, Katarina, F!Robin, and Lucina come with so much baggage that I can't help but tie myself into knots, sorry.
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I think I judge female characters more harshly than males myself, but I think badly-written men get filed into the "blahhhh" pile while badly-written women fall into the "actually this is kind of offensive" pile. Does that make sense?
I think FE9/10 did best with female characters who were compelling and at least thought for themselves. Micaiah felt like she could be a real person. I mean, aside from her speshulness (and this is FE so who cares, everyone is speshul really), she makes hard decisions and deals with things and presents herself like, uhm, a person. Who deals with things they don't always want to deal with. Then you have Titania who is obviously capable and awesome, kind-of motherly to the young people (especially Ike and Mist), intelligent without being snooty--she's great. Well-rounded, I think. And then you've got Jill, whose own dad doesn't believe what he's told her, but she forms her OWN OPINIONS, is totally racist herself, REALIZES SHE'S AN ASSHOLE, and then TRIES TO CHANGE. With a man's help, yes, but I think it's important that she reaches these conclusions pretty much on her own via observation and not because Haar comes by and tells her to. (However, in 10, she does join Ike's team again because of Haar and for no other reason--well, because of what he says.) Oh and Astrid. We can say the whole Makalov thing is gross/"unhealthy" but she still makes her own choice there, which has to count for something. Mist is done pretty well, too. Even though she does sort of damsel it up a bit...she's pretty much a little kid at that point so it's not such a big deal. She's still portrayed as caring, kind, and hard-working. Also, she tries to make other people feel comfortable in the group (like Jill) so that's great, too.
I'm still upset that Ninian didn't get to play any badass roles in FE7, that Lyndis was side-lined after her Caelin Adventures ended. (Also, they TOTALLY failed at keeping Caelin and she FLED the castle. I mean, it was for the best, it makes sense, but it's still kind of depressing.)(After her "story" she's sidelined to making fun of Hector and basically nothing else outside of supports. Like "Oh yeah I'm here. But what I say means nothing, actually." Some female characters in FE7 were done pretty well (Louise) but others came off as ehhh (Rebecca) or potentially really cool (Priscilla). I'm still torn on how to feel about Nino. The pegasus sisters are a giant pile of sad and I honestly, as an adult, have a hard time liking Florina because of how she's written. (I like her single ending the best, probably because sticking her with Hector smacks of her needing a man or something and yeah, let's put her with the loud obnoxious man who's twice her size!!!!!!!! IT'S CUTE!!!!!!! no I don't think so blah blah blah I have Feelings on that.)
FE8 was better in some ways but I felt let down with poor Eirika. Like, if I was going to novelize that story I'd write her so much better. (Fuckdammit I am conceited.)
That said, I like Lucina the most of all of the females in FE13. While I really like Cherche too, I think Gen1 characters in general were shoddily done and uhmmm Lucina is adorable. However, the way they just kind of HAHAHA ACTUALLY NOTHING SHE SAYS MATTERS is upsetting. But that's what fanfic is for? IDK.
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By the way, no feminist criticism of Lucina is complete without the "Marth" Nindori comic. It's a plot point vaguely hinted at in the games, but the comic makes it explicit.
Comparatively, Lucina had a great deal of respect and background agency in The Future Past... though she still needs Daddy to save her. (At least she strikes the final blow?)
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I definitely feel that most female fans (including me as well) judge female characters more harshly than male characters. The situations you've described in that vein, like questioning Eyvel and Titania's roles, seem almost tame when compared to some of the uglier ways that can manifest. I'm sure we've all seen female fans unduly lashing out against female characters perceived as too weak or too abrasive, while conveniently giving male characters in similar roles a free pass. :| I've tried to get into the habit of examining exactly why I feel as I do when I find myself put off by a female character, and I think it's helped improve my perspective a lot (not that I don't have failings at times too). Sometimes just asking myself "but how would I feel if this character was a man?" and going from there can be really helpful.
Since you remarked on tumblr that you were thinking of picking up FE9 again because of this: I think FE10 does an overall better job in this regard. FE9 still does much better than most FE games, but Micaiah doesn't come into play at all until FE10, and characters like Elincia and Sanaki are (in my opinion) way more interesting in FE10. (Although Titania, since you mentioned her, is probably more interesting in FE9, but just because of relative screentime. Same with Jill, since Manna brought her up.) Plus FE10 is the only FE game with a female final boss!
Also, since Lucina has been discussed a lot in the comments... Sort of like what Ammie said, one point I will give FE13 is that I think it did a good job showing that Lucina's peers (the other children, that is) have a lot of respect for her, and this comes through very strongly in supports and in the various DLC. I found the way the other kids speak to Lucina to be a big step up from the way Lyn and Eirika's respective contemporaries treat them, for instance. Unfortunately the rest of the game (especially the plot, sigh) doesn't really follow suit. :|
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However, I can also find some points where I will admit that the outrage is justified. I myself was annoyed when it turned out that Videl's Ultimate in DBZ Budokai 3 is just having Gohan come out of nowhere to save her
.
Lucina needs her own game.
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I generally take the opinion that Fire Emblem does a good job with its female cast since there are so many women characters, which is nice. Of course within that grouping some of the female characters can be less than stellar, but…yeah.
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I had also wondered why FE7 seemed to have taken a step back, with its female cast on the whole being more delicate and traditional (and the men likewise tending to treat them as such), but thinking about it in terms of the series' theme of new generations succeeding where their predecessors failed, it makes more sense. Even just looking at the (male) protagonists: you've got chivalrous Eliwood, who seems compelled to offer his protection to every woman he meets-- not disrespectfully, but because that's presumably how he's been taught. With Roy, it just isn't an issue. Take his recruitment convo with Lilina, for example-- his primary love interest, whom he swore to protect earlier, and who Eliwood, naturally, told to stay out of danger. Anyway, Roy gives her a tome to defend herself with, and that's it. No "are you sure you're okay to fight?" or "stay behind me!" or anything like that (IIRC, the only recruitment convo along those lines is Ellen's, and that's the second chapter; suffice to say, he learns). This change isn't arbitrary, either: after all, it was Cecilia-- the character who's arguably the most aware of sexism in all its forms-- who taught them during a highly formative period of their lives. So yeah, of course the prequel is going to seem more old-fashioned when all the evidence from FE6 indicates that things in Elibe are changing pretty rapidly.
Since I don't know, is this sort of thing evident in the other two-generation universes? Some of the comments seemed to sort of indicate that this was true for Ylisse, but what about Jugdral?
More generally, I've also caught myself being overly analytical of the motives/development/etc. of female characters over males. Sometimes, like Ammie brought up in her gendered tropes meta, it's understandable, as the combination of certain traits is often trite with one gender and refreshing with the other. But I guess I'm getting tired of the idea(s) that a female character loses Feminist Points by taking advice from a dude or failing at something or caring about her kid or, idk, crying. Then again, women who are TOO perfect, strong, etc. get the Mary Sue card thrown their way, so I guess there really is no winning when everyone's a critic. Which shouldn't be news, I guess. The important thing that IMO FE essentially gets right is to include a wide variety of female characters, so there isn't one single representative for womankind that everything is riding on, plus you get more opportunity to create interesting characters and dynamics that way.
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