Application.
Character: Vivi Ornitier
Fandom: Final Fantasy IX
Character Notes:
History: Vivi's background actually starts with another character, Kuja. Kuja is the villain of the game, typically power mad, wants to take over the world, etc. etc. In his pursuit of this and in cooperation with Queen Brahne of Alexandria, he manufactures black mages, intending them to be soulless dolls with the ability to wield enormous magics. Vivi comes in as the prototype to these mages, and as such is both more powerful and longer lived than they.
Vivi himself, however, does not initially know any of this. He grew up in a secluded cavern with a Quen as his adopted grandpa. When he was nine years old his grandpa died, and he struck out on his own. The first place he reached was the city-nation of Alexandria, where the aforementioned Queen Brahne ruled. Amidst plays and kidnapping and fighting, Vivi became caught up with Zidane - the protagonist - and company, embarking on an adventure to, in standard Final Fantasy style, save the world and everyone in it.
Along the way he learned the secrets of his creation, as long as one other horrifying fact: there is no way to tell how long he will live. The other black mages simply stop after approximately one year of existence, and are thus dead; but Vivi, as the prototype, has already existed for nine years without difficulty. He might stop at any moment, or he might live forever. This gives the poor little kid quite a bit of angst, as one might imagine, aside from his preexisting tag line: "How do you prove you exist...? Maybe you can't..." The word that canon gives to summarize Vivi's character is sorrow, which is not entirely inaccurate.
Personality: Vivi is indeed rather depressed. He can't classify himself as human, and for a long time wasn't even certain he technically exists; as well, there's that might-die-at-any-moment thing to set him back. He stutters and hesitates often in his speech, nervous about upsetting others and completely unused to the world at large. He is the epitome of sheltered, but despite that, is very resilient, and has keen insight for a nine year old. He is also, despite his immense kindness, not a saint. He cannot forgive Kuja. In fact he hates him, and rather shamefully prefers him dead.
Friends are everything to him. Zidane, Garnet, Steiner, Eiko, and everyone else - they are what kept and what keep him going. He values them incredibly, and as a young orphan thinks of them as family. Vivi is innocent in the extreme, but despite that is not afraid to use violence. He is a black mage of immense power, one of if not the most powerful character in the game, and capable of doing 9999 damage by the end of the game. One would never think this at first, not while looking at how adorable he is, and ordinarily Vivi wouldn't dream of threatening anyone. But if he sees a need to defend himself or someone else, he is more than capable of doing so, and is willing to face the consequences.
These traits are things he's developed. Near the beginning of the game, before the drama and tragedy to come, Vivi is very like a normal nine year old boy. He finds airships exciting, likes card games, is scared by all the violence going on around him, and worries for the well-being of people he's just met. He's not much past a kind-hearted and shy boy.
But as that time does pass, he opens up to his aforementioned friends: he stutters around them less, and speaks his opinions openly, even if he does willingly delegate himself to the shadows at times. Over the course of that year, he grows into a firm-minded and unflinching mage, too old for his years and someone who becomes at peace with his fate. For all the tragedy of his situation, given time, Vivi comes to bear it gracefully.
Other: I'll probably be restarting him if he gets in and taking him through game canon, so his first person samples reflect the beginning of the game. His third person is set later on to show more breadth of character.
Additional Links: Game script, picture of Vivi.
First Person: [both of these are audio]
Wow, I never thought I'd find something like this... W-Wait, can you all hear me? There are people in this book, aren't there?
I-I'm Vivi. It's nice to meet you. I found this book in an alley, and I saw people talking in it, so I thought I'd say hi... I hope that's okay.
First Person #2: I can't believe what happened... It was all so fast, a-and scary. Why would the queen fire on a ship that had her daughter on it...? I j-just don't get it.
I guess it's more important that we find the princess now... I hope she's all right.
Can I really help with something like this? I couldn't move at all last time, I was so scared... But, if they need me, I'll do it. I don't have... anything else.
Third Person: It was learning how to speak to people again that was the hardest part.
It was easy to say that things changed after Grandpa died, because they did, dramatically. But it was the little things he didn't expect that made him feel tight with sadness. Sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, he'd see Quina... Or he'd imagine the buildings around him destroyed like the ones in Lindblum. It wasn't even really that he missed his grandpa, though he did. It was that it made him so afraid, how everything had changed.
He didn't know anything anymore... Nothing was right. Suddenly whether he was human or not was important to him - and the other black mages were important to him, as people. He was angry now, at Dagger's mother and that man in white, like he'd never felt anger before, never contemplated on that kind of level. It shook him as if he'd fallen off an airship and somehow survived, stranded on the Outer Continent.
Except every time he thought that, his friends found a way to remind him that stranded was a word he had no right to use. When he walked into Eiko's house at Madain Sari and saw a space left for him at the table to eat, he remembered.
That night, when Zidane asked him if he'd sorted things through, he said, "Not really. But I'm moving on."
Fandom: Final Fantasy IX
Character Notes:
History: Vivi's background actually starts with another character, Kuja. Kuja is the villain of the game, typically power mad, wants to take over the world, etc. etc. In his pursuit of this and in cooperation with Queen Brahne of Alexandria, he manufactures black mages, intending them to be soulless dolls with the ability to wield enormous magics. Vivi comes in as the prototype to these mages, and as such is both more powerful and longer lived than they.
Vivi himself, however, does not initially know any of this. He grew up in a secluded cavern with a Quen as his adopted grandpa. When he was nine years old his grandpa died, and he struck out on his own. The first place he reached was the city-nation of Alexandria, where the aforementioned Queen Brahne ruled. Amidst plays and kidnapping and fighting, Vivi became caught up with Zidane - the protagonist - and company, embarking on an adventure to, in standard Final Fantasy style, save the world and everyone in it.
Along the way he learned the secrets of his creation, as long as one other horrifying fact: there is no way to tell how long he will live. The other black mages simply stop after approximately one year of existence, and are thus dead; but Vivi, as the prototype, has already existed for nine years without difficulty. He might stop at any moment, or he might live forever. This gives the poor little kid quite a bit of angst, as one might imagine, aside from his preexisting tag line: "How do you prove you exist...? Maybe you can't..." The word that canon gives to summarize Vivi's character is sorrow, which is not entirely inaccurate.
Personality: Vivi is indeed rather depressed. He can't classify himself as human, and for a long time wasn't even certain he technically exists; as well, there's that might-die-at-any-moment thing to set him back. He stutters and hesitates often in his speech, nervous about upsetting others and completely unused to the world at large. He is the epitome of sheltered, but despite that, is very resilient, and has keen insight for a nine year old. He is also, despite his immense kindness, not a saint. He cannot forgive Kuja. In fact he hates him, and rather shamefully prefers him dead.
Friends are everything to him. Zidane, Garnet, Steiner, Eiko, and everyone else - they are what kept and what keep him going. He values them incredibly, and as a young orphan thinks of them as family. Vivi is innocent in the extreme, but despite that is not afraid to use violence. He is a black mage of immense power, one of if not the most powerful character in the game, and capable of doing 9999 damage by the end of the game. One would never think this at first, not while looking at how adorable he is, and ordinarily Vivi wouldn't dream of threatening anyone. But if he sees a need to defend himself or someone else, he is more than capable of doing so, and is willing to face the consequences.
These traits are things he's developed. Near the beginning of the game, before the drama and tragedy to come, Vivi is very like a normal nine year old boy. He finds airships exciting, likes card games, is scared by all the violence going on around him, and worries for the well-being of people he's just met. He's not much past a kind-hearted and shy boy.
But as that time does pass, he opens up to his aforementioned friends: he stutters around them less, and speaks his opinions openly, even if he does willingly delegate himself to the shadows at times. Over the course of that year, he grows into a firm-minded and unflinching mage, too old for his years and someone who becomes at peace with his fate. For all the tragedy of his situation, given time, Vivi comes to bear it gracefully.
Other: I'll probably be restarting him if he gets in and taking him through game canon, so his first person samples reflect the beginning of the game. His third person is set later on to show more breadth of character.
Additional Links: Game script, picture of Vivi.
First Person: [both of these are audio]
Wow, I never thought I'd find something like this... W-Wait, can you all hear me? There are people in this book, aren't there?
I-I'm Vivi. It's nice to meet you. I found this book in an alley, and I saw people talking in it, so I thought I'd say hi... I hope that's okay.
First Person #2: I can't believe what happened... It was all so fast, a-and scary. Why would the queen fire on a ship that had her daughter on it...? I j-just don't get it.
I guess it's more important that we find the princess now... I hope she's all right.
Can I really help with something like this? I couldn't move at all last time, I was so scared... But, if they need me, I'll do it. I don't have... anything else.
Third Person: It was learning how to speak to people again that was the hardest part.
It was easy to say that things changed after Grandpa died, because they did, dramatically. But it was the little things he didn't expect that made him feel tight with sadness. Sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, he'd see Quina... Or he'd imagine the buildings around him destroyed like the ones in Lindblum. It wasn't even really that he missed his grandpa, though he did. It was that it made him so afraid, how everything had changed.
He didn't know anything anymore... Nothing was right. Suddenly whether he was human or not was important to him - and the other black mages were important to him, as people. He was angry now, at Dagger's mother and that man in white, like he'd never felt anger before, never contemplated on that kind of level. It shook him as if he'd fallen off an airship and somehow survived, stranded on the Outer Continent.
Except every time he thought that, his friends found a way to remind him that stranded was a word he had no right to use. When he walked into Eiko's house at Madain Sari and saw a space left for him at the table to eat, he remembered.
That night, when Zidane asked him if he'd sorted things through, he said, "Not really. But I'm moving on."