Is it at all possible that before Adel got the powers of a Sorceress, she was a normal looking girl. But upon gaining her powers, they may have mutated her body and transformed her into a male? And never bothering to tell anyone about it, everyone just continued calling him a female because they didn't know any better? Or maybe even as Dazuro said, maybe the title of Sorceress is just that, a title, given to either gender upon inheriting these powers. Adel could have been the first male to gain these powers and the people just thought he was female due to the title. I mean really, even female body builders retain some form of feminine attributes to their body, especially in the face and the chest areas, depending on how far they push them selves. Adel looks 100% male, and the only thing that is backing up the possibility of him being female is just a few characters referring to Adel as a female. Yet the in-game model and concept art is clearly a male body type and facial features. I mean its quite possible that them referring to Adel as female in the english script could have been an error in the translation. Like how Aerith had her name mistranslated as Aeris when FF7 was first ported in english. But that's just my two cents on the whole thing, not trying to start an argument or debate or anything, just giving out my opinion.
Ixbran (talk) 00:54, March 17, 2013 (UTC)
- Sorceresses are always female. You can see the Sorceress (Final Fantasy VIII) article for more details and it also has additional details from the Ultimania where it talks of the mythology concerning how sorceresses were created.Keltainentoukokuu (talk) 01:03, March 17, 2013 (UTC)
- But that's the thing though, the in-game people believe that Sorceresses can only be female based on their limited knowledge on a legend they know little about. Adel could have been the first male Sorceress, but because of peoples limited knowledge, automatically assumed Adel was female and called him that. And again, there is still the possibility that Adel could have been female at first, but was transformed into a male upon gaining her powers due to them having a strange effect on her/his body. We know very little to almost nothing about Adels past life or how s/he got his/her powers or what affects they had on his/her body when s/he first inherited them. Anything is possible in a world where magic exists.
Ixbran (talk) 01:23, March 17, 2013 (UTC)
- But that's the thing though, the in-game people believe that Sorceresses can only be female based on their limited knowledge on a legend they know little about. Adel could have been the first male Sorceress, but because of peoples limited knowledge, automatically assumed Adel was female and called him that. And again, there is still the possibility that Adel could have been female at first, but was transformed into a male upon gaining her powers due to them having a strange effect on her/his body. We know very little to almost nothing about Adels past life or how s/he got his/her powers or what affects they had on his/her body when s/he first inherited them. Anything is possible in a world where magic exists.
- The official mythology is that Hyne divided himself up and distributed himself among women and that's why only women can become sorceresses.Keltainentoukokuu (talk) 01:35, March 17, 2013 (UTC)
- I see your only focusing on countering my statement of Adel possibly being the first male Sorceress, and avoid talking about the possibility of Adel being morphed into a man as a side effect of her powers. If your going to try and debate with someone, you really should try to come up with counter statements for all accusations, and not just focus on one. Your becoming a broken record repeating the same thing over and over again. And again, the knowledge that we know about the legend regarding Hyne separating his powers is limited to what the in-game characters know, and for all we know they could be wrong on some parts.
Ixbran (talk) 01:48, March 17, 2013 (UTC)
- I see your only focusing on countering my statement of Adel possibly being the first male Sorceress, and avoid talking about the possibility of Adel being morphed into a man as a side effect of her powers. If your going to try and debate with someone, you really should try to come up with counter statements for all accusations, and not just focus on one. Your becoming a broken record repeating the same thing over and over again. And again, the knowledge that we know about the legend regarding Hyne separating his powers is limited to what the in-game characters know, and for all we know they could be wrong on some parts.
- There is not really any debate going on here. Adel's body type may be largely influenced by the need of having Rinoa junctioned into her for a gimmick boss battle. Thus she needs to be much taller than a normal human, have a wide torso so Rinoa will fit in there (and then having weak little arms coupled with otherwise large torso would just look funny so she gets muscular arms too), and boobs would get in the way. She has a long red hair in a braid and wears a skirt, both pretty feminine attire. Whether Adel could have changed gender, well, in the real world when dealing with transgender people the true sex of a person is considered to be the sex that they identify themselves as, not what they may be biologically. Likely Adel identifies as a woman due to the way she dresses herself, and that she hasn't made everyone call her a he.Keltainentoukokuu (talk) 02:19, March 17, 2013 (UTC)
- Ohhh, long hair and robes, thats your excuse for saying Adel is a woman and not a man? I wonder if there are other male characters in this game series that wear long coats/robes and have long hair? Lets take a look shall we?
.png "Kamlanaut NPC (FFXI).png (100 KB)")
- See how ridiculous that was? Long hair and Long Robes Does not a woman make. Adel never referrers to them self as a woman. Only the other characters do, and only because Adel is a Sorceress and as stated multiple times, humanities acknowledges on the legend of Hyne and the Sorceresses are very limited. Your attempt at defending her possibility of only being female are very weak. Not to mention the fact you are willing to accept Adel as female just "because the game said so" and not even question it despite there being physical evidence to say other wise makes me wonder about you. If people told you to jump off a cliff and that youed be just fine, would you do it?
Ixbran (talk) 02:09, March 18, 2013 (UTC)
- See how ridiculous that was? Long hair and Long Robes Does not a woman make. Adel never referrers to them self as a woman. Only the other characters do, and only because Adel is a Sorceress and as stated multiple times, humanities acknowledges on the legend of Hyne and the Sorceresses are very limited. Your attempt at defending her possibility of only being female are very weak. Not to mention the fact you are willing to accept Adel as female just "because the game said so" and not even question it despite there being physical evidence to say other wise makes me wonder about you. If people told you to jump off a cliff and that youed be just fine, would you do it?
I think Ixbran just may be onto something here. Again, nothing that holds any real bearing since we're delving waist-deep into fan-wankery, but the idea that Adel may be first the male Sorceress since Hyne or that Adel was given a masculine body through the Sorceress powers are both interesting, and if I may say so, entirely plausible. Kelt, you keep bringing up the Ultimania example, and while normally we take the Ultimania's word as the Bible of FF, the point you seemed to have skipped over is that the legend of Hyne present in the Ultimania was written from the point of view of a Balamb professor who has only relied on previous legend and myth, and not from the point of view from the scenario writer of FF8 who would know exactly what went on. So we really shouldn't consider it "official". The Ultimania legend of Hyne differs from the two legends presented in the game, making it no more than a third take on the legend. From the Balamb professer's POV, he's only known of female sorceresses, so it would make sense to teach that there have only been female sorceresses, not even thinking that there might be the possibility of a male sorceress occurring. Perhaps female sorceresses only pass their powers down to other females because that's what the legend says? As for the masculine model given to Adel, I think it's silly to believe that if the scenario writers were dead-set on making all sorceresses female, they would not have given Adel such a masculine appearance for something so insignificant as a boss battle when compared to Adel's overall backstory. If they wanted to have made a regular-sized, feminine Adel, they would have found a workaround to have Rinoa junctioned to her during the boss battle. Attached to her back, perhaps? Maybe a second head? It doesn't really matter. As for true gender, if Adel considered itself a woman, then as the leader of an entire nation, who's going to tell her otherwise? The fact of the matter is that she still holds a masculine appearance (no wide hips at all) and even forgoes a shirt, which I think rules out Adel thinking of itself as female unless she was an exhibitionist or something of that nature. As for the dress and a skirt, plenty of guys have long hair, perhaps braided to keep it out of the way? The skirt is a meh point as well since even in the real world pants are a moderately recent invention and guys used to be free-flowing down there all the time, whether it be robes or kilts or whatever. If the sorceress power did change her gender, she very may well have thought of it as a sacrifice to hold great power and just accepted it. The fact that everyone refers to Adel as a her only reflects the knowledge that there have only ever been female sorceresses, and they've discounted the possibility of a male becoming a sorceress.
tl;dr - It's entirely within the realm of possibility that Adel was either originally male or was transformed into one, and the Ultimania can't be considered wholly correct in this instance. - +DeadlySlashSword+ 03:20, March 17, 2013 (UTC)
- The game refers to her as a female. End of story, end of discussion. How is this even a debate when it's stated point-blank in the game that she's female? To deduce anything further along the lines of personal lifechoices, transgenderification due to magical exposure or whatever ridiculous speculation you want to pull out of nowhere, just because she doesn't have a nice set of boobies and a proper waistline (wut?), is pure fanfiction, plain and simple. She's a female that happens to look very masculine, that's all there is to it, and that's all the game ever says on the subject. Sure, it's fun (I guess) to speculate about her appearance, but at the end of the day, and from a wiki standpoint, she is objectively, unequivocally female. Espritduo (talk) 03:52, March 17, 2013 (UTC)
- Also lets take another thing into account: If Adel had been the first male Sorceress as i said in my first theory, maybe it had an effect on his mind as a side effect of all previous sorceresses having been female. Maybe even though he had a male body, his mind identified as female and thus preferred to be called a female. Same goes with my other theory; if Adel had been female but her body was turned male as a side effect of gaining her powers, despite male body her mind was still the same and wanted to be identified as a female still. Similarly to Transsexuals who are physically one gender, but mentally and emotionally identify as the other. People probably referred to Adel as female because of limited knowledge of Sorceresses only being female in the past, and possibly because Adel refereed to itself as female due to their mind set. So its possible that Adel could be both genders: Female Mind set, but male body.
Ixbran (talk) 02:09, March 18, 2013 (UTC)
- Also lets take another thing into account: If Adel had been the first male Sorceress as i said in my first theory, maybe it had an effect on his mind as a side effect of all previous sorceresses having been female. Maybe even though he had a male body, his mind identified as female and thus preferred to be called a female. Same goes with my other theory; if Adel had been female but her body was turned male as a side effect of gaining her powers, despite male body her mind was still the same and wanted to be identified as a female still. Similarly to Transsexuals who are physically one gender, but mentally and emotionally identify as the other. People probably referred to Adel as female because of limited knowledge of Sorceresses only being female in the past, and possibly because Adel refereed to itself as female due to their mind set. So its possible that Adel could be both genders: Female Mind set, but male body.
The Hyne myths are not really at odds with each other though, I don't think we can say they are all three different stories. The point of telling it from different povs I think is that the story of Hyne is a myth, not history. Therefore it could be said no one knows where the sorceress power originates. What appears true though is that men are not known to wield it. Personal fan theory I have is that sorceress power is like a GF that you can't unjunction, that can't exist without a host like a normal GF can, and that's why it will junction itself to someone always. :E In that way the sorceress power could be seen more like as a parasite.
Adel's role in FFVIII is mainly to be a boss battle, though she is used heavily as a plot device to explain stuff away too. She is more of a plot thing than a person, which is why I think the boss battle may rather heavily dictate her final appearance. After all they could have junctioned Rinoa to her differently even with the intention that Adel is meant to be like a man. But they wanted it to be literal and freaky. Adel is not topless, at least according to our own Appearance and Personality section on this article, although even if she was I don't see how that necessarily would mean she doesn't consider herself a woman. She may have cast aside social norms and decided to be the freak-thing that she is.
Tetsuya Nomura's concept art seen at the A&P section here does display Adel with boobs (?? don't look like normal breast muscles to me, though who can say), although it appears that unlike in the final game, in the concept art Adel has been bound up naked. Which would make sense really but no one wants to see that in the game. XP Guess if sorceresses were entombed naked the whole rescuing Rinoa scene could have been more saucy too. XPPPKeltainentoukokuu (talk) 18:43, March 17, 2013 (UTC)
- Compare Adels concept art works and in-game render to that of female body builders and you'll see that despite being called female, Adels art and render hold almost no sign of any form of female anatomy. Even female body builders retain their breasts despite how big they get, yet in art work and in -game Adel is shown to have highly defined pectorals.
Ixbran (talk) 02:09, March 18, 2013 (UTC)
Who's to say that any of the characters are female or male, based on what's in game or artwork. All females may be males and vice versa. If we change Adel gender on the page, then you've forced me to leave and never return to this wiki again.188.238.240.77 05:52, March 21, 2013 (UTC)
- I don't pretend to have read this, but I presumed that it being moved to The Blackjack was because the discussion was not one that affected mainspace itself. Is this not the case? Jimcloud 05:56, March 21, 2013 (UTC)
- The reason we moved this to the forums is because this argument is stupid and we're not going to change the content of the wiki on this issue regardless of how much hot air Ixbran spouts. Don't worry yourself over this. And to answer the question you made in your second edit: marking edits as minor is only available to registered users. -- Some Color Mage ~ (Talk) 05:57, March 21, 2013 (UTC)
- Oh my god. This has got to be the stupidest discussion in the whole of this wiki. Adel is female. I don't think we even need to go into the actual facts of what is in question here. If you're going to raise a contradictory argument from what is generally stated or assumed, the burden of proof rests with you. Lack of evidence to dismiss this argument is not proof that supports it, and this argument fails on the balance of probabilities--Arciel Spira (talk) 18:28, March 23, 2013 (UTC)
- Great. Glad you showed how stupid you thought a discussion that had no intention of affecting the mainspace was. This is the Blackjack, fan wankery is by all means allowed here. - +DeadlySlashSword+ 20:11, March 23, 2013 (UTC)
- thanks for the irrelevant point. It doesn't make the discussion any less stupid.--Arciel Spira (talk) 20:25, March 23, 2013 (UTC)
- Great. Glad you showed how stupid you thought a discussion that had no intention of affecting the mainspace was. This is the Blackjack, fan wankery is by all means allowed here. - +DeadlySlashSword+ 20:11, March 23, 2013 (UTC)
- Oh my god. This has got to be the stupidest discussion in the whole of this wiki. Adel is female. I don't think we even need to go into the actual facts of what is in question here. If you're going to raise a contradictory argument from what is generally stated or assumed, the burden of proof rests with you. Lack of evidence to dismiss this argument is not proof that supports it, and this argument fails on the balance of probabilities--Arciel Spira (talk) 18:28, March 23, 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick answer I'll log in next time then.188.238.240.77 06:03, March 21, 2013 (UTC)
Ahem... I apologize if this counts as necro-posting but I feel I must comment on the topic. First, Adel is called a "Sorceress." The suffix "-ess" is by definition feminine, whereas the Masculine and gender-neutral equivalent would be "Sorcerer." Second "Adel" is a female name, coming from the German/Germanic name "Adele" (which means "snow." And if you have seen The Sound of Music and heard the Austrian folk song "Adel Weiss," and take into account that the Grimm fairy-tales were originally in German, you might realize that the song likely refers to the world famous character of "Snow White" who eventually had her name unnecessarily translated by Disney for the cartoon). And that is a lot more text than I had been expecting to write when I started.Kingfisher2376 (talk) 23:17, April 19, 2013 (UTC)