Originally Posted by
Kolsykol
I don't think that's an argument people really make.
People just tend to assume that a monster/ beast is male unless it's overtly feminine in a humanoid way ( which can be cool too, people act as if only masculinity is cool and femininity is only sexual but that's another discussion ).
Even people who complain about monsters/ beasts having breasts etc ( altho they never complain about this when they have male anatomy ) still assume that they're male unless they have breasts or look overtly feminine in some other way lol.
Which is kinda dumb considering that most of us can't tell the difference between the gender of irl animals unless they're very obvious and we already know how to distinguish them before-hand.
Personally I just think that if a character is established as one thing then that should be respected and they should stay as such.
I don't rly care if it's in terms of their personality and character archetype, so aka a sexualized character shouldn't be censored and should stay sexualized and a non-sexualized character shouldn't be sexualized.
Or a character that is of a specific ethnicity, sexuality, religion, gender etc ( unless it's like black Superman but NOT Clark Kent, so another character taking on the name for example ).
Fictional characters are obviously not real, but people still talk about objectification and agency.
And I can't think of anything more objectifying than changing something that drastic willy-nilly.
I know that there are ways people justify it in some cases, but I think it's just dumb and I don't think that two wrongs make a right.
In the case of the FF series there's more of an excuse because they don't necessarily rely on each other, but I still think it'd be really weird if Shiva appeared as a dude.
There's just certain things that are established and repeated to the point you begin to expect certain things.