Random Roar: Gender Flipping My Lid

 

As a gamer, I am getting fucking tired of hearing about gender.  It’s bad enough that, as a male, I’m assumed to be a potential rapist just because of my gender.  It’s as ridiculous a notion as if I suddenly decided that all Americans secretly desire to pull a gun out and shoot me for not being an American.  Americans kill a hell of a lot of foreigners every year.  Sure, #NotAllAmericans, but #YesAllForeigners.

Ridiculous.

So you can imagine how awful it was when the gender debate began to permeate into gaming culture.  This isn’t to say that there aren’t some legitimate issues that need to be discussed.  But come on, there’s legitimate and then there’s…

Okay, the Final Fantasy XV controversy.  This isn’t the first time a Final Fantasy game has made an entire playable cast a single gender.  Final Fantasy X-2 inspired some male gamers to complain about playing Charlie’s Angels: the magical girl anime, but for the most part, the game was well enough received.  Final Fantasy III was originally about a group of four mischief-making boys who accidentally inherit the mantle of Warriors of Light.  Later ports would change one of the boys into a token girl.  And speaking of token, at one point after a certain sacrifice in Final Fantasy V the remaining playable cast of that game was mostly female, with a token guy tagging along.  Gender has never mattered in Final Fantasy, the only thing that does is the telling of a good story.

If anything, Final Fantasy X-2 and Final Fantasy V prove that the series is actually more progressive than most when it comes to featuring females in prominent roles.  At least five games in the series give star billing to a female: Final Fantasy VI (most debates regarding the main character of this game are between Celes and Terra), Final Fantasy X-2, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lightning Returns.  Seven, if you count female characters created in Final Fantasy XI Online and Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.

But making the entire playable cast of a game male these days proves you are a tool of the oppressive patriarchy trying to put women in their place, or some such nonsense, whereas making the entire playable cast of a game female means you’re being progressive, unless it’s a Dead or Alive Xtreme game, in which case you’re still Satan.

Here’s a little hard truth: in real life, people who want to go out and do stuff with their friends will not wait to make sure their group has token members of the opposite gender first.  They’re not being oppressive, they just want some time with their friends.  Most Final Fantasy games didn’t give the characters a choice about who they needed to ally with, and so Zidane found himself teaming up with the princess he was supposed to kidnap and the knight sworn to protect her, Cloud literally dropped in on Aeris after being hired by Barret and Tifa to help their cause, and the Returners needed all the help they could get.  In the only two Final Fantasy games where the characters seem to have complete agency over who they work with, Yuna and Rikku team up with Paine to go sphere hunting, and Noctis goes on the run to escape a plot on his life with his three male vassals, no doubt chosen by him before the game began.

Then there’s Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear.  As far as I can tell, the biggest problem people have with it (other than game crippling bugs and a bad multiplayer experience) is that there’s a transgender character in it.

What the actual fuck?  Apparently it’s “promoting a political agenda” if you acknowledge that certain people exist, but here’s the thing: the character isn’t transgender in the traditional sense.  Or at least, that’s not the impression I get from the quote most often pulled from the game when people talk about the character.

“When I was born, my parents thought me a boy and raised me as such. In time, we all came to understand I was truly a woman. I created my new name from syllables of different languages. All have special meaning to me; it is the truest reflection of who I am.”

It sounds to me like the character was brought up by a pair of bat-shit stupid parents who didn’t realize that a lack of a penis means that this might not be a boy they’re raising.  But I could be wrong, this could be a legitimate example of a boy who never felt right in their skin until they started acknowledging that they should’ve been born a woman and then began living as such.  I’ve not played the game.  But still, so what?  This character is a shopkeeper and not a major character at all.  If a measly thirty seconds with this person truly bothers people, I can just imagine what’ll happen when players have to put Cloud in a dress in the upcoming Final Fantasy VII remake.

Hard truth #2: if you’re going to give a game a negative review and the lowest possible score because of one inoffensive NPC whom you’ll only meet for about a half a minute or so, then the problem isn’t with a developer promoting a political agenda.  The problem is with assholes like you.  I mean what, are you going to walk up to an actual transgendered person and say to them that they’re cramming a political agenda down your throat just because they exist?  Fuck you!

And speaking of non-existent problems, why can’t Link be a woman?  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to boycott Nintendo if every Link we get from now until the end of time are men.  As with Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda has never been about the gender of your character.  It’s been about that character going on an adventure to save Hyrule.

What bothers me is how Nintendo justifies Link being gender-locked.

“We thought about it, and decided that if we’re going to have a female protagonist it’s simpler to have Princess Zelda as the main character.” -Eiji Aonuma

Well, shit, make Zelda the main character if that’s the route you feel you have to go.  I’m not a game developer, I shouldn’t have to spell this out for someone who is.

“…if we have princess Zelda as the main character who fights, then what is Link going to do?” -Eiji Aonuma again

Mario never had that problem.  Reverse the roles.  Ganon could’ve captured Link when he was too young to defend himself.  A fairy then appears before Zelda and tells her that she’s the only one who can rescue the chosen hero who can defeat Ganon.  In fact, that could be the main crux of the story.  All her life, Zelda’s been told that as a princess and a girl, she has to rely on other people to fight her battles for her, so she decides early on that “Yes, I can.”  Even as she’s being told that she’s only rescuing the chosen hero so that he’ll go and save Hyrule, “Yes, I can.”  So when Link is rescued, the only thing left is to defeat Ganon and it’s Zelda and not Link who steps up to the plate because throughout the entire game, she’s demonstrated how capable she is and rather than wait for Link to train himself up and find a bunch of heart containers, she decides to finish the job because “Yes, I can.”

“You know there’s the idea of the Triforce in the Zelda games we make.  The Triforce is made up of Princess Zelda, Ganon and Link. Princess Zelda is obviously female. If we made Link a female we thought that would mess with the balance of the Triforce. That’s why we decided not to do it.” -Eiji Aonuma a third time

Okay, I’m going to explain this using extremely simple words just in case Aonuma or anyone on his creative team is reading because it’s quite clear they’re being idiots right now: you are the ones who can say what the Triforce can and can not to.  You can just say the Triforce does not care about Link’s gender and then your problem is solved.  Good God, people, you’re worried about what a fictional MacGuffin thinks about gender politics?

It took me five seconds to come up with a simple story that would allow for a female Link and still not mess with the Triforce’s precious balance.  A prince was born whom the royal family named Zelda and a girl was born in a nondescript village whom her parents named Link.  It’s as easy as that.  Or if you want to make it a bit more complex, Ganon curses the royal family so that they can only produce male heirs, thus preventing any more Princess Zeldas from being born until the curse is somehow lifted.  A random fairy comes to the King in his sleep saying “The new Prince shall be named Zelda” and although there’s confusion among the royal family about why this must be, the Queen eventually gives birth to Prince Zelda.  Meanwhile, to complete the balance, the newest chosen saviour of Hyrule is born a girl and given the name of Link, because Link should be a perfectly good gender neutral name, none of that “Linkle” bullshit.  Problem solved.

Developers, you can make your video game characters whatever gender you want.  It’s not problematic if a game doesn’t have a girl in its cast.  It’s not promoting a political agenda if a character is outside the normal gender spectrum either.  But if you don’t intend to add a female protagonist to your traditionally androcentric series, please don’t insult our intelligence when you explain why.