This is something I've been thinking about for ages without making any real conclusions, actually. So expect a lot of word vomit and no real point.
Final Fantasy 8 is one of those things that I like a lot more than it probably deserves because I encountered it at just the right time. I was about 15 and Squall Leonhart, the antisocial grumpy protagonist. clicked for me in the same way Holden Caulfield did for other people. He spoke for me and the endless frustration of dealing with people who seemed to want things from him that he wasn't sure he could give. And so the gloriously unrealistic way that everyone loved and supported him despite him giving no real reason for them to do so, was catnip to me at the time.
There's a speech he gives about half way through, where he says that he was a sensitive kid who always cared so much about people liking him but he hated the fact that about himself because men aren't supposed to be like that and his aggressively unpleasant demeanour was his response. If he was going to be flawed, he'd rather have manly flaws. If people were going to dislike him, he'd give them a reason to. And, as a closeted gay kid who'd done that same thing, of adopting a manly aggressive arsehole demeanour because those flaws seemed somehow better flaws then being sensitive and vulnerable, it hit a nerve. I honestly think it's the only moment in any media where it not only rang true but it actually explained me to myself.
Not that Squall is gay. He has a rather charming heterosexual romance as it happens. But he also starts a game with a fraught, complicated and frankly homoerotic relationship with his rival and bully Seifer. And it's that relationship and those two characters that stuck with me. It's something that looking back at my teenage original fiction, I kept trying to reproduce.
Seifer is Squall's dark mirror in many ways, the man Squall's mask is modelled on. He's the one who's aggressiveness Squall is mimicking in the early scenes and the only one he really seems to bond with pre Rinoa. Only, he goes far beyond Squall's general grumpy desire to be left alone, Seifer is aggressive to the point of being vicious. He enjoys fighting beyond anything else, picks fights with anyone willing, pushes around and bullies those he thinks are weak and ends up committing all sorts of atrocities in his personal quest for recognition.
Which is standard for the bad guy, but the interesting thing about Seifer, as the big aggressive bully, is how unconcerned he is with masculinity. When he insults Zell, the team member who he views as weak and stupid, it's by calling him a chicken, a baby and a boy but not a girl. In the same way it's only when Edea calls him a boy that he loses it. It's not male to be at the forefront of battle, in Seifer's view, it's adult. Because he essentially views people in terms of their power, those weaker than him are his prey, those that are his equals need to be challenged and encouraged so that they can become worthy rivals, and those that are more powerful need to be obeyed. And power, in his mind, isn't masculine, it's feminine.
The books he reads and the films he watches are about powerful women and the men who serve them. When we see him butt heads with authority figures in Garden, it's women, Quistus and Xu who he's trying to impress, when he switches sides it's because of the charisma of the woman on the other side who convinces him to fight not alongside her but for her. It's not Selphie, the young skinny girl, who he picks on as being the weak link in their fighting unit, it's the tattooed, muscled male martial arts specialist Zell.
And when he goes traitor not only is his trusted second in command a woman, but his boss is too and he speaks glowingly about her power (though it's problematic that the bad guys are a powerful woman and the poor pitiful man fooled into listening to her.). For a character who represents aggressiveness and glory hunting, who can only see worth in martial strength and who is lacking almost entirely in empathy, he is remarkably free of misogyny, in defining masculinity as not being feminine. (This is partly because in his world, magic means there is no real difference between the genders in terms of fighting.)
Fandom often blames Seifer's worst actions on Ultimecia, the woman he serves, but that's kinda missing the point. Seifer's problem isn't that someone asked him to torture people and blow up a town where the only people he cares about are probably living, it's that he said 'yes, sure' and then did it.
Seifer wants to be important to other people and, because he's a romantic, he writes delusional stories about his life, in his head, where he is. Him and Squall are a pair of equals with mutual respect and rivalry competing to be the best fighter. Him and Ultimecia are a pair of crusaders out to change a corrupt world and willing to get their hands dirty to do it and Squall is the evil friend turned enemy out to stop him. And at least one of those delusions does absolutely play into gender stereotypes, we find out that he romanced Rinoa, a resistance leader, and promised her help freeing her city, clearly seeing himself as a crusader sweeping into save a damsel in distress. But it's also explicit that his plan was to serve under her and carry out her daring ideas, rather than take over. It’s difficult to imagine he would have respected her had she not already took up arms herself.
That desire for approval and the concern about what people think, the lack of emotional control, the hero worship of female authority figures rather than male. It's all very familiar. Seifer in many ways has all the same qualities that Squall was trying to escape by adopting his persona. I'm never convinced the game's actually that good, but there's a lot in the character work which just fascinates me and has struck with me for years.
I've roleplayed Seifer for a while, now, and I kind of delight on playing with the fact that, given his personality, he has no reason to look down on feminine traits. He always look very neat and fashionable in game, so I've made him someone who cares about his own appearance. We know that Squall is a good dancer, so I've made Seifer good at it too. Recently, when he needed a non martial fitness program, I had him choose ballet rather than sport.
I quite like the idea that within the FF8 universe boys are raised to be masculine in a way that doesn't have any fears of femininity or women involved.
Final Fantasy 8 is one of those things that I like a lot more than it probably deserves because I encountered it at just the right time. I was about 15 and Squall Leonhart, the antisocial grumpy protagonist. clicked for me in the same way Holden Caulfield did for other people. He spoke for me and the endless frustration of dealing with people who seemed to want things from him that he wasn't sure he could give. And so the gloriously unrealistic way that everyone loved and supported him despite him giving no real reason for them to do so, was catnip to me at the time.
There's a speech he gives about half way through, where he says that he was a sensitive kid who always cared so much about people liking him but he hated the fact that about himself because men aren't supposed to be like that and his aggressively unpleasant demeanour was his response. If he was going to be flawed, he'd rather have manly flaws. If people were going to dislike him, he'd give them a reason to. And, as a closeted gay kid who'd done that same thing, of adopting a manly aggressive arsehole demeanour because those flaws seemed somehow better flaws then being sensitive and vulnerable, it hit a nerve. I honestly think it's the only moment in any media where it not only rang true but it actually explained me to myself.
Not that Squall is gay. He has a rather charming heterosexual romance as it happens. But he also starts a game with a fraught, complicated and frankly homoerotic relationship with his rival and bully Seifer. And it's that relationship and those two characters that stuck with me. It's something that looking back at my teenage original fiction, I kept trying to reproduce.
Seifer is Squall's dark mirror in many ways, the man Squall's mask is modelled on. He's the one who's aggressiveness Squall is mimicking in the early scenes and the only one he really seems to bond with pre Rinoa. Only, he goes far beyond Squall's general grumpy desire to be left alone, Seifer is aggressive to the point of being vicious. He enjoys fighting beyond anything else, picks fights with anyone willing, pushes around and bullies those he thinks are weak and ends up committing all sorts of atrocities in his personal quest for recognition.
Which is standard for the bad guy, but the interesting thing about Seifer, as the big aggressive bully, is how unconcerned he is with masculinity. When he insults Zell, the team member who he views as weak and stupid, it's by calling him a chicken, a baby and a boy but not a girl. In the same way it's only when Edea calls him a boy that he loses it. It's not male to be at the forefront of battle, in Seifer's view, it's adult. Because he essentially views people in terms of their power, those weaker than him are his prey, those that are his equals need to be challenged and encouraged so that they can become worthy rivals, and those that are more powerful need to be obeyed. And power, in his mind, isn't masculine, it's feminine.
The books he reads and the films he watches are about powerful women and the men who serve them. When we see him butt heads with authority figures in Garden, it's women, Quistus and Xu who he's trying to impress, when he switches sides it's because of the charisma of the woman on the other side who convinces him to fight not alongside her but for her. It's not Selphie, the young skinny girl, who he picks on as being the weak link in their fighting unit, it's the tattooed, muscled male martial arts specialist Zell.
And when he goes traitor not only is his trusted second in command a woman, but his boss is too and he speaks glowingly about her power (though it's problematic that the bad guys are a powerful woman and the poor pitiful man fooled into listening to her.). For a character who represents aggressiveness and glory hunting, who can only see worth in martial strength and who is lacking almost entirely in empathy, he is remarkably free of misogyny, in defining masculinity as not being feminine. (This is partly because in his world, magic means there is no real difference between the genders in terms of fighting.)
Fandom often blames Seifer's worst actions on Ultimecia, the woman he serves, but that's kinda missing the point. Seifer's problem isn't that someone asked him to torture people and blow up a town where the only people he cares about are probably living, it's that he said 'yes, sure' and then did it.
Seifer wants to be important to other people and, because he's a romantic, he writes delusional stories about his life, in his head, where he is. Him and Squall are a pair of equals with mutual respect and rivalry competing to be the best fighter. Him and Ultimecia are a pair of crusaders out to change a corrupt world and willing to get their hands dirty to do it and Squall is the evil friend turned enemy out to stop him. And at least one of those delusions does absolutely play into gender stereotypes, we find out that he romanced Rinoa, a resistance leader, and promised her help freeing her city, clearly seeing himself as a crusader sweeping into save a damsel in distress. But it's also explicit that his plan was to serve under her and carry out her daring ideas, rather than take over. It’s difficult to imagine he would have respected her had she not already took up arms herself.
That desire for approval and the concern about what people think, the lack of emotional control, the hero worship of female authority figures rather than male. It's all very familiar. Seifer in many ways has all the same qualities that Squall was trying to escape by adopting his persona. I'm never convinced the game's actually that good, but there's a lot in the character work which just fascinates me and has struck with me for years.
I've roleplayed Seifer for a while, now, and I kind of delight on playing with the fact that, given his personality, he has no reason to look down on feminine traits. He always look very neat and fashionable in game, so I've made him someone who cares about his own appearance. We know that Squall is a good dancer, so I've made Seifer good at it too. Recently, when he needed a non martial fitness program, I had him choose ballet rather than sport.
I quite like the idea that within the FF8 universe boys are raised to be masculine in a way that doesn't have any fears of femininity or women involved.
