Tifa's tits too big?

[The Xl]

I might be misreading these remarks, but my impression is that you may be misunderstanding what feminism is. It seems to be very commonplace for people to hear the term "feminism" and think it means female supremacy, but that's not the case at all. You can look it up in any dictionary or encyclopedia (online or off) and you'll find they all agree that feminism refers to the struggle to realize equal treatment for women, not special treatment. The 'feminine' aspect of that comes simply from the realization that the world is presently patriarchal (i.e. broadly gives special treatment to men socially, economically, politically, and culturally).

For me, feminism is personal, but also very much a logical part of my broader, egalitarian worldview that also impacts how I see issues related to class, race, sexual orientation, the relationship between people and nature, etc. I wasn't always a feminist either. I used to think feminists were very annoying, nitpicky people like I think many people do on first glance. But I also didn't have much sense of self-worth or self-respect back then.

Or alternately, by "both sides of the feminism argument" you could've been saying that there's no need to choose sides in the sex-positive / sex-negative debate, in which case everything I just said was pointless.



Being open about that sort of thing is fine by me. I know I've shared some of my own personal problems before ranging from things that happened in my past to my ongoing struggles with clinical depression and occasional suicidal thoughts. I find it difficult, but also cleansing, to talk about those things from time to time. In that sense, I know how you feel.



Okay, I'm glad to hear that!



I used to be very much a purist about localization too. Now I do a lot of cherry-picking.

Back in the day when it was just coming out here in the U.S., I very much wanted Saban and FUNimation to leave Dragon Ball Z alone in terms of localization because that was one of most heavily altered shows that came from Japan and a lot of the changes that were originally made I still feel were ridiculous, like for example changing the lettering on the shirts of a pair of demons to read HFIL instead of HELL for fear that using the term "hell" would be religiously insensitive. Therefore they whited out some of the lines to get HFIL and imagined this as an acronym for "Home For Infinite Losers". I thought that was pathetically hyper-sensitive. But the change I felt most strongly about was editing out the blood, often by whiting out the coloration such as to make it appear as spit or sweat. It's not that I have the bloodlust that I suppose some fans probably did or do (after all, we'd be kidding ourselves to suggest that the violence in DBZ isn't largely stylized); it's that eliminating the blood doesn't eliminate or reduce the violence, but rather the consequences. We in this country pride ourselves on posturing as averse to showing violent content to children like this, but what we're really doing is just trivializing it. You know, it's the Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry logic: the same level of violence is found throughout American children's animation, but we feel that by eliminating the consequences, we're somehow shielding children rather than teaching them the violence is no big deal. We disingenuously convince ourselves of our moral superiority in these sorts of ways. So I've always felt strongly about leaving the blood in. And likewise about leaving in at least some of the swearing. It's very much related to trivializing the consequences of violence oftentimes. Even the target audience of 8 to 14-year-old boys knows that shen somebody just got their arm ripped off, they're not going to yell "DAAAAARRRNN IT!!!". Even they know a stronger term goes there.

At the same time though, I do cherry pick a little because people often argue that things like boob size sliders and bikini costumes for like 13-year-old female characters in games designed to be played by adults (Xenoblade Chronicles X being one recent example) should be left in place by the localization departments based upon the contention that not to leave everything intact would be to disrespect Japanese culture. Yet I must contend that Japanese culture does not always respect girls or women. It's a more patriarchal society where women are still expected to quit their jobs when they get married or become pregnant, for example. Respect is a two-way street in my book, to which end I don't think there's anything sacred about boob size sliders that necessarily needs to make it through Western localization processes.

ugh, I hated funimations censorship of DBZ. Had me buying Japanese tape recording subs real quick.

I get not wanting Tifa having huge tits. I might be a touch distracted and disturbed if Cloud or Barrets nuts were hanging out or something, lol. I suppose this would be the female equivalent of that sentiment.

[exotix]