FFXIII: the "Rec Me Fic" edition
So I said in a comment that I actually expect FFXIII to become a decent writing fandom for me because of the holes and confusion in said story. That's pretty true: I write more for fandoms that didn't necessarily feel complete or sensical to me (FFIV, what with the LUNAR WHALE and all; FFVIII's plot holes and weirdly focused storytelling) than I do for ones that felt more or less complete (FFVI and FFX being good examples here - I loved both games, but I don't feel as compelled to write for them as I do for other fandoms. It isn't that VI and X don't have things to explore or holes in their stories - they do! - and some of it is character draw between all of the games, sure; but I just don't feel like I have as much to add in those canons as I do for IV and VIII). I liked FFXIII enough to think about dabbling in it fannishly, at least, and since my writing has more or less dried up and been left for dead, I want to tentatively encourage anything that gets me excited about words again.
So here's what I want to do, to take my mind off of my job: I want to talk about the characters in FFXIII, and I want to talk about things that I liked, and I want to talk about things that I want to read, or want to write. And then I want you guys to talk back about characters and rec me good fics! First, rec me anything that's good from FFXIII, whether or not it matches with stuff I am into, because good fic is wanted and needed and I'm always excited about new stuff in a new fandom. But second, if you can think of anything that will fill some of those holes I'm feeling pretty keenly, please hand it over! self-reccing is totes okay too. give me fic please. Or, if you see something that looks like fun, prompt me! Or make me prompt you! FUN GAMES IN SEV'S JOURNAL: THE MUSICAL.
I'm only going to talk about the main party cast, because I'm still so confused over who the enemies were and who was which one and what the fuck, who was Raines anyway so while my dumb ass is sorting that out, let's talk about the pretties:
Lightning
I ended up adoring Lightning. I say "ended up" because I started out pretty ambivalent to her; I liked that she was so badass and efficient, but the game didn't really give you any reason to connect with her, sympathize with her, engage with her character: there was really no reason to give a single fuck about Lightning, because she was just going to do her thing, the end. It wasn't that you disliked her, but that there were no real reasons to like her other than "general badassery because reasons?" I like my female badasses but I like them with a little more snap to them; give me a reason to think she's cool other than "it's a girl! With a sword! See???" and I'm not gonna fall for that. I didn't really feel anything about her at first.
I did love the way that she opened up to the rest of the group - not opened up so much as started caring about, really - and the way it happened gradually. You see her starting to care about Hope from a mile away, sure, but then the way she started clicking with Snow, started watching over Fang even - being Group Mom is something I can really sympathize with and the fact that Lightning got to be some kind of Group Mom while still kicking majority ass was really awesome. I actually thought her (English) voice acting was fabulously done.
I always had Lightning in my party. I loved her roles in battle, the way she was a decent (not great) Medic, the way her stats were so evenly split between str/mag, all of her Ravager animations - one of the great things about FFXIII was the way the character roles really tell you something about the character themselves. Light as Com/Rav/Med is really fitting in my head. I gave her the Axis Blade/Enkindler because Lightning is already absolutely fast as fuck, and when I gave her that plus the auto-Haste accessory plus a couple other speed accessory stacks she also got ATB+15% and she was just. fucking. everywhere. and it was so awesome. PLUS: ARMY OF ONE. CAN WE TALK ABOUT ARMY OF ONE. I HAD PROBLEMS IN MY PANTS THE FIRST TIME I USED THAT.
Things I am interested in exploring with Lightning:
Sazh
I FUCKING LOVE SAZH.
Seriously. Favorite character from the get-go and remained so for the entire game. Sazh definitely seemed the most mature of the group, maybe because he wasn't completely drowning in his own emo angst, just kind of wading? He brought this light-heartedness to the group that was serious, somehow - a sarcastic and snarky edge on the "get over yourself" bits that managed to cut through all of Vanille's saccharine sweet chirpy perky stuff and Hope's emotional sappiness. And it wasn't that his story wasn't sad, because it was - in some ways his was the saddest of all, because sure none of them deserved it, but Serah was an adult with agency of her own - poor little Dajh got turned into something he shouldn't have because of other people's fuck-ups and Sazh had to live with it.
He kind of became background fodder towards the endgame, since his story arc had kind of resolved itself; there was only one direction for him to go, and that was forward with the rest of the others, which was sad. But I loved his arc like burning. FFXIII in a lot of ways seemed to be about trust and betrayal, truth and lies, right and wrong, free will and choice and fate, and Sazh's storyline with Dajh - and, I'll point out, his arc with Vanille, which I greatly enjoyed - has so much of that in it.
So Sazh doesn't nearly have the stats that Fang or Lightning might, but I actually found him quite useful; he was, in fact, in my final party I used to beat the game, although I wasn't expecting to beat it the first serious time through so that was more happy accident than anything. He was most useful for me as a Synergist, really, although I also found that he played a decent Commando in Relentless Assault with Light/Vanille/Sazh as Rav/Rav/Com as long as he had the guns that boosted chain gauge - maybe his attack itself wasn't as brutal but damn it worked for me. I actually stuck him two levels up into Sentinel for use with Light/Vanille/Sazh as Med/Med/Sen, for Combat Clinic. He has a lot of HP so it worked out pretty well for me. I also liked Light/Fang/Sazh as Heavy Hitters Anonymous time - a much more physically aggressive group with both Syn and Sab support.
Things I am interested in exploring with Sazh:
Snow
Snow didn't do much for me. I found his constant repetition of the "hero" thing annoying, rather than endearing, like that guy you're friends with who only knows one inside joke and therefore brings it up all the time in the hopes that he'll make somebody laugh and feel like he's okay? It was like, tell not show characterization: Snow says he's the hero all the time, therefore he must want to be the hero. He just didn't click with me on some level - which is funny, looking back, because he's the one that was the most right: earlier in the game when he was all DEFY OUR FOCUS!!!! and WE GET TO CHOOSE!!! I was like bullshit Snow, do you not listen to how all of this fal'Cie and l'Cie shit works, cuz the game just explained it to me and I don't think you understand it and then it turns out that they did get to spit in the face of their Focus and have their cake and kill Orphan and eat it too. I just kind of didn't find him as interesting as the others - maybe because his conflict was more about Serah than himself? I don't even.
Because I liked Fang so much I didn't use Snow very often in battle - I guess he's a good Sentinel but that early in the game I was still like HOW DO SENTINEL and then Fang showed up and I really didn't use him once I got to start picking my parties. Sorry Snow.
However, I do find that I'm very interested in Snow when it's in relation to other people:
Hope
Hope also didn't do a lot for me - I was a little more sympathetic to him than Snow during the game, because there was a bit of the storyline when he and Lightning were traveling together, and Lightning was trying to 'teach him to fight' or whatever, and it just seemed so messed up: she was basically like, okay, sure, kill Snow, that's cool and here's my knife! That was interesting, and after Odin when she realized that it was messed up was interesting too, but then all of a sudden they fixed all of their shit and why do I think all good things are boring. I'm so sorry. I'm not sorry at all. But then his focus shifted from Lightning to Snow, and wow, writing all of this is making me want to ship Lightning/Snow/Hope for the ultimate mindfuck? Anyway, Hope had some really emotional storylines in this game, and I actually liked that. Also, HOPE'S DAD IS HOT.
I did like Hope in battle. The game is really pretty biased towards the Lightning/Fang/Hope party, and I found myself using it a decent bit - covers all the major roles and hits a lot of the good Paradigms, and hoooooly shit I loved the fact that bitty Hope is such a fucking hard hitter with the magics! I liked that he was the most 'white mage' of the group, what with Medic and Synergist, and he's a dude - a small tiny crack in the lady-healer trope, but I'll take it.
I kind of have covered what I want to read with Hope already, but hey, here it is:
Vanille
Vanille is a fucking complicated character.
Hands down I have to give it to her creators, because she has one of the most complicated and complex stories I've seen in a Final Fantasy, and I absolutely love it even though I dislike some of it. She carries the whole happy cheerful perky girl trope by herself - which is a trope I'm not usually a fan of; I don't usually like the 'cute' girls - but it gets all tangled up in this hot fucking mess of her lies and deceits and choices and actions. So you get this weird feeling about her, like you're supposed to like her (because she's the cute happy girl) but you aren't sympathetic to her at all (because she keeps lying or hiding things and making dumb shit choices) and her voice acting really is this weird hot mess of sex noises that don't at all fit with what's going on, and yeah okay so her voice I wasn't a big fan of, I really wasn't. But it made the "perk up! Keep hope alive!" stuff that the spunky girl usually says have a couple layers to it, because some of it was "cheer up!" and some of it was "don't look too closely at me," and I thought that was pretty interesting. Overall a lot of the time she annoyed me, but unlike Snow - who annoyed me in a vague way that didn't make me care a whole lot - she just sort of irked me, and I was still interested to see where she was going.
I also have to say that I'm not entirely sure about her character arc. I'm not sure whether it was that she didn't come around to seeing what she'd done 'wrong' (as if there's really a clear 'wrong' and 'right' with the fal'Cie/Focus thing) and making better choices; she just sort of paired up with Fang at the end and they did their thing, but it was their thing, rather than her thing. I loved the intense parts of her story - her and Sazh; her and Fang - but I felt like it was continually the same thing over and over again.
I used Vanille a lot in battle too; I loved her set of skills and thought it fit her perfectly: she's not physically in your face but she's certainly darker than Hope. Her Saboteur skills were bad-ass and she made a great healer: her Medic saved my ass more than once. I gave her the wand that enhanced debuffs, which was awesome: debuffs in this game are mad fucking powerful. I did really like the Lightning/Fang/Vanille combination party: pretty offensive, very bad-ass. As long as it wasn't a long boss battle you could give the three of them the Sprint Shoes and basically tear anything you wanted into tiny pieces.
And I can't really talk about Vanille without Fang.
Fang
I love Fang. Absolutely. I loved her sarcastic ass from the second she stepped into the game, and I only came to enjoy her more and more. I actually loved her confusion, how it interfered with her loyalty to the group - her loyalties to Vanille and to the party conflicting; betrayal and trust - and how she was always true to herself and to what she wanted and was willing to fight for that. She was the embodiment of choice, to me, which is extra ironic because she's the one who became Ragnarok both times, just like the fal'Cie wanted her to - but she just seemed to make it so clear that she was choosing to do so for herself (and - or maybe more - for Vanille) that it seemed obvious.
Plus she is hot as hell even though she kind of has the Final Fantasy version of a mullet? I loved her in battle; she was in my party probably 75% of the time. I love how her roles suit her: Com/Sen/Sab, offensively in the enemy's face or guarding the things she wants to keep safe, never passive. I liked most of her voice acting, and I liked how much of a physical force she was. I never really got a very special weapon for her - during midgame I used her as a Sentinel a lot, but by the end of the game I really didn't use Sentinel all that much (didn't need it, I guess?), and I used her Sab skills a lot more than I expected to. Light/Fang/Vanille and Light/Fang/Sazh were awesome parties to have. I played a lot of the game using those two. Basically Fang just beat the shit out of shit and it was awesome.
Things that interest me here:
In having written all of this, I'm seeing a couple trends. In addition to FFXIII being about trust/betrayal, right/wrong, truth/lies, it's also about family, including families of choice. And I like that. But I also like the dark undercurrents in so many of these character-character relationships, because I have bad taste in everything. The Fandom Hell Bus is coming to pick me up. Get in; I'm driving
THIS GOT REALLY LONG.
SOMEBODY HELP ME OUT HERE.
This entry was originally posted at http://seventhe.dreamwidth.org/324242.html, which has
comments. Comment there (with OpenID) or here, it's all good.
So here's what I want to do, to take my mind off of my job: I want to talk about the characters in FFXIII, and I want to talk about things that I liked, and I want to talk about things that I want to read, or want to write. And then I want you guys to talk back about characters and rec me good fics! First, rec me anything that's good from FFXIII, whether or not it matches with stuff I am into, because good fic is wanted and needed and I'm always excited about new stuff in a new fandom. But second, if you can think of anything that will fill some of those holes I'm feeling pretty keenly, please hand it over! self-reccing is totes okay too. give me fic please. Or, if you see something that looks like fun, prompt me! Or make me prompt you! FUN GAMES IN SEV'S JOURNAL: THE MUSICAL.
I'm only going to talk about the main party cast, because I'm still so confused over who the enemies were and who was which one and what the fuck, who was Raines anyway so while my dumb ass is sorting that out, let's talk about the pretties:
Lightning
I ended up adoring Lightning. I say "ended up" because I started out pretty ambivalent to her; I liked that she was so badass and efficient, but the game didn't really give you any reason to connect with her, sympathize with her, engage with her character: there was really no reason to give a single fuck about Lightning, because she was just going to do her thing, the end. It wasn't that you disliked her, but that there were no real reasons to like her other than "general badassery because reasons?" I like my female badasses but I like them with a little more snap to them; give me a reason to think she's cool other than "it's a girl! With a sword! See???" and I'm not gonna fall for that. I didn't really feel anything about her at first.
I did love the way that she opened up to the rest of the group - not opened up so much as started caring about, really - and the way it happened gradually. You see her starting to care about Hope from a mile away, sure, but then the way she started clicking with Snow, started watching over Fang even - being Group Mom is something I can really sympathize with and the fact that Lightning got to be some kind of Group Mom while still kicking majority ass was really awesome. I actually thought her (English) voice acting was fabulously done.
I always had Lightning in my party. I loved her roles in battle, the way she was a decent (not great) Medic, the way her stats were so evenly split between str/mag, all of her Ravager animations - one of the great things about FFXIII was the way the character roles really tell you something about the character themselves. Light as Com/Rav/Med is really fitting in my head. I gave her the Axis Blade/Enkindler because Lightning is already absolutely fast as fuck, and when I gave her that plus the auto-Haste accessory plus a couple other speed accessory stacks she also got ATB+15% and she was just. fucking. everywhere. and it was so awesome. PLUS: ARMY OF ONE. CAN WE TALK ABOUT ARMY OF ONE. I HAD PROBLEMS IN MY PANTS THE FIRST TIME I USED THAT.
Things I am interested in exploring with Lightning:
- Lightning and Serah and Snow. Also, Lightning/Serah/Snow, because not only hello incest but what a compelling triangle: Snow being drawn to both girls and the complicated relationships between both of them, Serah recovering from crystal stasis, Lightning trying to fit herself into the new world? Shippy/smutty or not, I am somehow suddenly into the thought of Lightning struggling to figure out why Serah likes Snow so much and then finding out, whoops, and then maybe Snow is trying to become better friends with Lightning for Serah's sake and then whoops, and maybe Serah's views on everything are a little bit skewed after you've been in crystal anyway, uh. Plus the Lightning-Serah thing was so rife with undertones that could easily go my way (the incest way) anyway. Uh. Hush.
- Lightning and Sazh buddy fic forever: SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME THIS ALREADY EXISTS. I really want to see Lightning and Sazh together on Gran Pulse post-game, where they clear monsters out of places like Oerba where settlers can come live on Pulse, and kick ass and take names, and Lightning learns to be the cool badass auntie to Dajh (she had practice with Hope, see?) and gives him a knife or something and Sazh has an adorable freakout, and they banter and fight all the time and go on Cieth stone missions, and I just want this okay.
- Lightning-Fang, or Lightning/Fang/Vanille. Okay, so: I shall talk more about Fang/Vanille later, but I loved the way Fang and Lightning built up their rapport throughout the game. They're both hard-asses, possibly too much for their own good, and they're both this weird combination of leader/follower, and there was just as much butting heads as there was teamwork. And both of the times Fang 'turned' on the party, Lightning's response in the aftermath was pretty intense in my opinion. Whether shipped or not, stuff exploring Lightning and Fang bouncing off of each other and creating sparks would be awesome.
Sazh
I FUCKING LOVE SAZH.
Seriously. Favorite character from the get-go and remained so for the entire game. Sazh definitely seemed the most mature of the group, maybe because he wasn't completely drowning in his own emo angst, just kind of wading? He brought this light-heartedness to the group that was serious, somehow - a sarcastic and snarky edge on the "get over yourself" bits that managed to cut through all of Vanille's saccharine sweet chirpy perky stuff and Hope's emotional sappiness. And it wasn't that his story wasn't sad, because it was - in some ways his was the saddest of all, because sure none of them deserved it, but Serah was an adult with agency of her own - poor little Dajh got turned into something he shouldn't have because of other people's fuck-ups and Sazh had to live with it.
He kind of became background fodder towards the endgame, since his story arc had kind of resolved itself; there was only one direction for him to go, and that was forward with the rest of the others, which was sad. But I loved his arc like burning. FFXIII in a lot of ways seemed to be about trust and betrayal, truth and lies, right and wrong, free will and choice and fate, and Sazh's storyline with Dajh - and, I'll point out, his arc with Vanille, which I greatly enjoyed - has so much of that in it.
So Sazh doesn't nearly have the stats that Fang or Lightning might, but I actually found him quite useful; he was, in fact, in my final party I used to beat the game, although I wasn't expecting to beat it the first serious time through so that was more happy accident than anything. He was most useful for me as a Synergist, really, although I also found that he played a decent Commando in Relentless Assault with Light/Vanille/Sazh as Rav/Rav/Com as long as he had the guns that boosted chain gauge - maybe his attack itself wasn't as brutal but damn it worked for me. I actually stuck him two levels up into Sentinel for use with Light/Vanille/Sazh as Med/Med/Sen, for Combat Clinic. He has a lot of HP so it worked out pretty well for me. I also liked Light/Fang/Sazh as Heavy Hitters Anonymous time - a much more physically aggressive group with both Syn and Sab support.
Things I am interested in exploring with Sazh:
- ANYTHING SAZH-CENTRIC: GIVE
- So like I said above, I want to get my grubby hands on some Sazh-Lightning buddy-fic, although after I wrote that huge paragraph I'm realizing that I also kind of want it shippy too? It's a fascinating twist on the usual "older guy / younger girl" trope (Vincent/Yuffie, Auron/Rikku) in which the younger girl is the happy peppy type and the older guy is grumpy - Lightning's nowhere near perky, and Sazh may grumble but he isn't grumpy and stoic and quiet either. I'm actually surprisingly into this. Please, someone.
- Sazh and Vanille. This is another one where I'd like to see the darker side of it. I know that their story arc went through some dark spaces and then came out okay in the end; I'd like to see it, especially shipped, at one of those darker points. They bounced between the trust/betrayal/trust thing so many times; I'd like to see something messy and emotional and awesome between them. I also like their friendship post-that and I wouldn't mind reading something shippy because Sazh.
Snow
Snow didn't do much for me. I found his constant repetition of the "hero" thing annoying, rather than endearing, like that guy you're friends with who only knows one inside joke and therefore brings it up all the time in the hopes that he'll make somebody laugh and feel like he's okay? It was like, tell not show characterization: Snow says he's the hero all the time, therefore he must want to be the hero. He just didn't click with me on some level - which is funny, looking back, because he's the one that was the most right: earlier in the game when he was all DEFY OUR FOCUS!!!! and WE GET TO CHOOSE!!! I was like bullshit Snow, do you not listen to how all of this fal'Cie and l'Cie shit works, cuz the game just explained it to me and I don't think you understand it and then it turns out that they did get to spit in the face of their Focus and have their cake and kill Orphan and eat it too. I just kind of didn't find him as interesting as the others - maybe because his conflict was more about Serah than himself? I don't even.
Because I liked Fang so much I didn't use Snow very often in battle - I guess he's a good Sentinel but that early in the game I was still like HOW DO SENTINEL and then Fang showed up and I really didn't use him once I got to start picking my parties. Sorry Snow.
However, I do find that I'm very interested in Snow when it's in relation to other people:
- Snow-Lightning, like I said above: I'm into the Snow/Serah/Lightning thing, shipped or not, just because it's complicated and complex in all the right ways for me. Incest or not.
- Snow/Hope. SNOW/HOPE. CAN I TALK ABOUT SNOW/HOPE FOR A SECOND HERE. Because okay, Snow wasn't that interesting to me and Hope wasn't either, but oh gosh did their entwined story set off a lot of bells for me, talk about pushing all of my darkfic buttons? So I'm into that relationship. But then I did a quick browse on AO3 and I found out that I'm not into Snow/Hope when it isn't dark and fucked up. I don't want some amiable sappy homosex, I want guilt-tripping and angst and Hope still having to work through issues about his mom and Snow being very hung up on Serah and whether she'll come back and Hope with the knife from Lightning and how Lightning ties into their shit too (can I have knife play? please???), and maybe in the middle of this awful guilt and hate and anger there's suddenly attraction and Hope is like, you owe me this, as he gets on his knees and Snow is like, think of Serah, but it isn't working, and it's super messed up, okay. That is how I would like Hope/Snow to be and please and thank you and may I have it?
Hope
Hope also didn't do a lot for me - I was a little more sympathetic to him than Snow during the game, because there was a bit of the storyline when he and Lightning were traveling together, and Lightning was trying to 'teach him to fight' or whatever, and it just seemed so messed up: she was basically like, okay, sure, kill Snow, that's cool and here's my knife! That was interesting, and after Odin when she realized that it was messed up was interesting too, but then all of a sudden they fixed all of their shit and why do I think all good things are boring. I'm so sorry. I'm not sorry at all. But then his focus shifted from Lightning to Snow, and wow, writing all of this is making me want to ship Lightning/Snow/Hope for the ultimate mindfuck? Anyway, Hope had some really emotional storylines in this game, and I actually liked that. Also, HOPE'S DAD IS HOT.
I did like Hope in battle. The game is really pretty biased towards the Lightning/Fang/Hope party, and I found myself using it a decent bit - covers all the major roles and hits a lot of the good Paradigms, and hoooooly shit I loved the fact that bitty Hope is such a fucking hard hitter with the magics! I liked that he was the most 'white mage' of the group, what with Medic and Synergist, and he's a dude - a small tiny crack in the lady-healer trope, but I'll take it.
I kind of have covered what I want to read with Hope already, but hey, here it is:
- Hope-Lightning, anywhere on the scale, if it's sort of them dealing with their emotions in fucked-up ways.
- Hope-Snow, more of the same, but especially Hope/Snow with sex as a placeholder for all the shit they can't deal with
Vanille
Vanille is a fucking complicated character.
Hands down I have to give it to her creators, because she has one of the most complicated and complex stories I've seen in a Final Fantasy, and I absolutely love it even though I dislike some of it. She carries the whole happy cheerful perky girl trope by herself - which is a trope I'm not usually a fan of; I don't usually like the 'cute' girls - but it gets all tangled up in this hot fucking mess of her lies and deceits and choices and actions. So you get this weird feeling about her, like you're supposed to like her (because she's the cute happy girl) but you aren't sympathetic to her at all (because she keeps lying or hiding things and making dumb shit choices) and her voice acting really is this weird hot mess of sex noises that don't at all fit with what's going on, and yeah okay so her voice I wasn't a big fan of, I really wasn't. But it made the "perk up! Keep hope alive!" stuff that the spunky girl usually says have a couple layers to it, because some of it was "cheer up!" and some of it was "don't look too closely at me," and I thought that was pretty interesting. Overall a lot of the time she annoyed me, but unlike Snow - who annoyed me in a vague way that didn't make me care a whole lot - she just sort of irked me, and I was still interested to see where she was going.
I also have to say that I'm not entirely sure about her character arc. I'm not sure whether it was that she didn't come around to seeing what she'd done 'wrong' (as if there's really a clear 'wrong' and 'right' with the fal'Cie/Focus thing) and making better choices; she just sort of paired up with Fang at the end and they did their thing, but it was their thing, rather than her thing. I loved the intense parts of her story - her and Sazh; her and Fang - but I felt like it was continually the same thing over and over again.
I used Vanille a lot in battle too; I loved her set of skills and thought it fit her perfectly: she's not physically in your face but she's certainly darker than Hope. Her Saboteur skills were bad-ass and she made a great healer: her Medic saved my ass more than once. I gave her the wand that enhanced debuffs, which was awesome: debuffs in this game are mad fucking powerful. I did really like the Lightning/Fang/Vanille combination party: pretty offensive, very bad-ass. As long as it wasn't a long boss battle you could give the three of them the Sprint Shoes and basically tear anything you wanted into tiny pieces.
And I can't really talk about Vanille without Fang.
Fang
I love Fang. Absolutely. I loved her sarcastic ass from the second she stepped into the game, and I only came to enjoy her more and more. I actually loved her confusion, how it interfered with her loyalty to the group - her loyalties to Vanille and to the party conflicting; betrayal and trust - and how she was always true to herself and to what she wanted and was willing to fight for that. She was the embodiment of choice, to me, which is extra ironic because she's the one who became Ragnarok both times, just like the fal'Cie wanted her to - but she just seemed to make it so clear that she was choosing to do so for herself (and - or maybe more - for Vanille) that it seemed obvious.
Plus she is hot as hell even though she kind of has the Final Fantasy version of a mullet? I loved her in battle; she was in my party probably 75% of the time. I love how her roles suit her: Com/Sen/Sab, offensively in the enemy's face or guarding the things she wants to keep safe, never passive. I liked most of her voice acting, and I liked how much of a physical force she was. I never really got a very special weapon for her - during midgame I used her as a Sentinel a lot, but by the end of the game I really didn't use Sentinel all that much (didn't need it, I guess?), and I used her Sab skills a lot more than I expected to. Light/Fang/Vanille and Light/Fang/Sazh were awesome parties to have. I played a lot of the game using those two. Basically Fang just beat the shit out of shit and it was awesome.
Things that interest me here:
- Fang/Vanille. It's basically canon. I'm down with that. I could add a special bit about how happy I was that - even though both of their character designs were certainly made to be visually appealing - their relationship angle wasn't ever played up for titillation or oooh lesbians: they basically cared a lot about each other and that was the foundation of all of it, but I'm not sure I have to. Their relationship was imperfect and flawed and unbalanced and so strong and awesome, and whether it means hot sexy times or 'just' friendship (because I'm also tired of good genuine friendships being devalued for 'not having sex') I want more of it, please.
- Fang/Vanille/Lightning - Like I said when I was talking about Lightning, I loved the way Fang and Light played off of each other. They were compare-and-contrast - similar in some ways (caring for Serah/Vanille being a major one) and different in others - and I saw sparks, if no one else did. I liked the way that Vanille and Lightning were so centric to the times Fang 'went a little nuts', and I think that it's the kind of thing that could really be explored. Fang and Vanille are both a little 'wild', from Gran Pulse and all, and I think maybe Lightning has a little bit of that 'wildness' in her, too, and I think the three of them together would be pretty amazing and also fairly hot.
In having written all of this, I'm seeing a couple trends. In addition to FFXIII being about trust/betrayal, right/wrong, truth/lies, it's also about family, including families of choice. And I like that. But I also like the dark undercurrents in so many of these character-character relationships, because I have bad taste in everything. The Fandom Hell Bus is coming to pick me up. Get in; I'm driving
THIS GOT REALLY LONG.
SOMEBODY HELP ME OUT HERE.
This entry was originally posted at http://seventhe.dreamwidth.org/324242.html, which has
comments. Comment there (with OpenID) or here, it's all good.