LIGHTNING RETURNS: FINAL FANTASY XIII (2013)

*To note to anyone else, this was in reference to my post about platonic relationships too probably, if you want to read my thoughts on that as well.

Anyway, only Fang being a male character is actually true, though I've often felt this is usually mentioned without the full context of what that was. Which, I guess is part of the misunderstanding of the second point you mentioned, too—remember what Watanabe and Toriyama talked about in the FFXIII Scenario Ultimania pg. 390 (my translation, but I'll provide the JPN text too for interest):

— I heard that Fang was initially planned to be a man.

Watanabe: In a very early idea, it [Fang] was a pair of men. However, both of them were like "Focus Machines" without any conflicts—just “doing what they had to do because it was their Focus”. So, in order to make them more human, I combined them into one person and changed him into a person who “wants to complete their Focus for the sake of saving Vanille”. The reason why I didn't change their brand was to concentrate on the motive of "acting not to prevent themselves from becoming a Cie'th, but to save Vanille". However, if the character [Fang] were male, there was concern that the story would be sidetracked by a romantic mood, and there was also an opinion that there needed to be three women as main characters—so we finally settled on the current form.

Toriyama: For the romantic story, we focused on Snow and Serah, a couple that had already been established.

—ファングは、当初は男性にする予定だったとうかがいました。

渡辺: かなり初期の案では、ふたり組の男性でしたね。ただ、両方とも「とにかく使命だから実行する」というだけで葛藤のない”使命マシン”みたいな人物だったので、より人間味を持たせるべく、ひとりに統合したうえで「ヴァニラを助けたいから使命を果たす」といった考えの持ち主に変えたんです。格印を変化させなくしたのも、「自分がシ骸にならないためではなく、ヴァニラを救いたくて行動する」という動機に一点集中させるためでした。そういうキャラクターが男性だと、恋愛ムードになって話が脇道にそれる恐れが出てくるのと、主要キャラクターに女性は3人必要だとの意見もあって、最終的にはいまの形に落ち着いたんです。

鳥山: 恋愛がらみの話は、スノウとセラという、すでにできあがったカップルのものにしぼりましたね。

The original plan wasn’t simply that Fang was a male, but that the single entities of Fang and Vanille didn’t even exist—there were two men instead. They would then combine into the one "Male Fang" and THEN Vanille was created to power Fang’s motives, hence why arguably Fang's character centers around Vanille in the series. But, in the conception of Fang being turned into a male with that of a female to “focus" (lol) on, they purposely steered away from placing it within the context of romance by turning him into a female. The representation of these two went from M/M, M/F, and then F/F.

The Fang and Vanille we know are definitely not written with romanticism, but it’s not even just that.

With “Fang being a Male” in relation to a female character being the premise of the issue they proposed—it doesn’t sound like they spent a large amount of time on the M/F combo and also lacked the intention of having them be romantic in the first place. There might be another interview that talks about it, but the Ragnarok concept could’ve came either at the beginning of the stage with two males, or by the end of it with two females, as opposed to ONLY the middle ground which already had a thought of potential issues by having a M/F duo. Neither would be strange considering we know how well borrowed concepts can be used for story/characters without being 1:1 to their sources—ultimately this worked for the F/F configuration.

The conflict of romanticism being tied to a Male Fang doesn't seem like it would be about their writing, either. It'd be a bit weird to suggest they couldn’t possibly help themselves from writing a "romantic mood/atmosphere" if Fang was a male. They treated it as an inherent issue that comes with M/F relationships as opposed to anything on their end of what they intended to do. So, it’s more than likely about what they believe about viewer perception of what gives a "romantic mood"—that of a male saving and caring about a female character, and that this additional (i.e. to the already intended Snow and Serah) romantic storytelling would sidetrack the storytelling. Which, knowing shipping culture, you give a M/F interaction PLUS they're important to each other? It's over. Though, they obviously didn't realize shipping culture has almost no limits, especially not for sex/gender. It'd be weird if it did. But, I do applaud the inspiration of wanting to have another female lead—thank you for whoever had suggested it.

In any case, it’s clear that changing Fang into a female was part of their approach in NOT having romanticism between Fang and Vanille—following along with their character construction is everything else we see contextually set for the friendship, familial [sister], and irreplaceable bond that they share in the series and has been described in a multitude of ways via games, novels, and other paratexts. It's been made pretty clear, it just doesn't take priority for some fan's understanding for straight up annoying reasons.

Which I'm going to say this: It doesn't HAVE to take priority ultimately. In the sense that, shipping works to where you do you for you, BUT there's no amount of shipping desires that should stop people from being able to, at the very least, understand and accept the actual character relationship in-context. To do that first before veering off into your own personal desires. Shipping shouldn't overtake the truth. You can ship and do that, it isn't hard, and this should be encouraged more in fandom, because it's not even just the shippers. Interpretations should be welcomed, but they can be damaging if they're just used as an excuse to purposefully deny what otherwise is the truth for selfish reasons, and then pushed as the truth instead. We've had irresponsible, incomplete misinformation and personal perceptions being treated like facts that become typical jargon for those who pick it up. For years it's created a pool of wrong representation for these characters, which in my stead I do care about enough to write this crap.

It also doesn't help my sanity when I read "BUT THEY SLEPT IN THE SAME BED", knowing someone is regurgitating something on a forum and didn't actually read -Zero- Promise. Or The Outsiders, or a ton of other sources I can give right now. Or just didn't have a home setup this way themselves. Real life context. Dudes.

What is going on.

Other fandoms know how it is, @bluerosesburnblue even opened my eyes to this for the KH community for even what was considered the true existence of the "Realm of Sleep". What people understood about it was wrong for YEARS, and even now some of that still carries on and just mucks up what should be understood about the lore of the game. And then other blatant things—I thought I was dreaming the first time someone seriously, I kid you not, approached me with "Riku is the light" and some "Sora and Kairi have no romantic context".

Say psych right now.

And FFVII....good lord, does it even need to be said?! 23+ years. What is Advent Children's plot? Double freaking jeopardy.

I'm tired ya'll.

I don't think it's good for the game or the fandom, but there's not much that can be done outside of making the choice to set aside personal things and understand the content more for its own value. It also just sucks when things are underappreciated and unrecognized in general.

“Let’s make Fang female to avoid romantic connotations.” 

It dismisses an entire audience of people who don’t view sex/gender as the prerequisite for what constitutes a romantic relationship. We look at F/F Fang and Vanille the same way we would look at M/F Fang and Vanille. Their gender-flipping did absolutely nothing to fix the writers’ perceived “issue” upon our initial play-through of the game. Most people don’t seek out supplementary material beforehand in fear of spoilers, and rightly so. 

For a lot of [newer and/or younger] Fanille fans, we saw a romantic relationship first and were told later on it was something a bit more complicated than that.

That “issue” the writers had, in the grander scheme of things, also  feels pretty silly to me. Why should Fang and Vanille’s romantic relationship detract from Serah and Snow’s? Why can’t we have both? Why is two sisterly relationships and one romantic the acceptable ratio and not vice-versa? 

I’m not gonna harp on whether or not Fanille is platonic or romantic. I understand why people think they’re sisterly. In the same breath I keep in mind that everyone in Oerba was considered family. Not trying to do backflips here, but you see what I’m getting at.

The more accepting the world is of the LGBTQ+ population, the more these two characters will continue to be brought up. We can respect the authors. We can understand what their intention was. And we can point out that their attempt at writing a platonic relationship imploded pretty spectacularly for some of us. How they were meant to be written and how they were actually perceived (by select members of the audience) are two different things.

The writers at minimum did succeed in getting us all to agree that Fang and Vanille are the center of each other’s world. The nuances of their relationship beyond that don’t really matter to me. I love that they love each other. While I may be on the other side of this debate I do totally agree how exhausting it can be lol