(no subject)
Lightning and Identification
I wrote a bit about this in a rambling plurk, but … most people can’t see that, and this will be my thoughts hopefully organized better.
Becoming Lightning
One of the important things about Lightning is her name, her identification of herself as something that only destroys. It shows a very conscious level of understanding in herself, but it’s important to note that it was something she did as a child. In a lot of ways, Lightning put a lot of weight in the changing of her name. In her mind, she needed to be someone stronger. It’s expected of anyone who is a teenage girl who loses her family and suddenly has to step up. She didn’t want to do it half-way; so that she could both be the soldier she was aiming to become at the best of her ability and to protect Serah, she became Lightning. I don’t think she mulled over it a lot. It was something she decided because it made sense.
The important part of this is that she never seems to overanalyze her choice of a name until later. It’s just a fact-it’s who she is, what she does, how she presents herself, but she’s a young woman who finds herself distant from her sister and she doesn’t even know how to gift her. One of the most significant parts of Lightning’s character is that she’s not without her childish characteristics. Aside from the birthday circumstance, when she acted incredibly rashly toward Serah, she finds herself being petty and judgmental toward people in her thoughts-but at the same time, trying to understand them. She consciously recognizes that she’s on the outside of things. But that doesn’t matter: she’s a soldier, she works hard and she brings home money and she takes care of Serah. But she barely sees Serah, and she’s conscious of this being a problem.
She decides to take strides to change this on Serah’s birthday, but again, that’s when she acted like a child. I think, in some ways, Lightning was disappointed. Not only was Serah there bringing this up, she was bringing it up on Light’s birthday, with someone else there who wasn’t a part of their unit, someone who openly showed his feelings and didn’t need to be anything. Snow was just Snow-at least, that was what she believed. On that day, Lightning wanted to show Serah vacation spots so they could go somewhere together, so not only was her birthday ruined, but something she wanted to give to Serah in return was ruined, as well. It was a show of things slipping out of her control-all this time, she had been Lightning for Serah, but some part of her consciously distracts herself away from not being enough. She needs to be enough.
Simply put: she made herself into being enough.
Up to the point of right before she gets her Focus, Lightning tries to be her name. She’ll do anything ruthlessly and relentlessly because that’s the point of who she is. She tries to live up to that, even threatening Serah without thinking twice, even disbelieving her without listening. It leads to irrational behavior, because of a mixture of just plain not liking it, among other things. Lightning is Lightning the Soldier first and then Lightning the Sister-or so she tries to present herself. But the truth is, she has always been Lightning the Sister, and the only reason she was anything else was because of Serah.
The reason she did this is because, quite honestly, Lightning was young! She’s still young at that birthday party, but she feels that distance from other people. One of the successes of XIII, I feel, is taking these overly young people, throwing them into a situation, and having, underneath the weight of everything, them turn out to be real people. They are bound to be stupid and make mistakes and act petty and sometimes make absolutely no sense at all.
But for Lightning, she was forced to grow up rather quickly. Her father died when she was younger and then her mother died from an illness. Much of her upbringing has been about being prepared to take care of Serah, and when it came down to it, she didn’t want to rely on government help. She wanted to take it into her own hands. So becoming “Lightning,” dropping the name Claire, and becoming a soldier was all a part of doing what was necessary. She never had a proper childhood, and there are times when she tries to consider what it would be like to be different. She compares her father to Snow and says she might have rebelled; in my opinion, it’s an idle, pointless thought. After all: she doesn’t really know what she would be like if her father lived, if her mother lived. I also would go as far as to say that she wouldn’t have rebelled, because a lot of who Snow is bothers her because of how it is behavior she doesn’t approve of. Because she has determined and defined what behavior should be approved of for herself.
That isn’t to say Lightning would be completely different if the wheel had turned differently. Lightning is obviously a serious person who’s coping mechanism (for lack of any other way to really define all this) is to change her name, become a soldier (well, she had to, but really … she’s rather good at her job), and take care of her sister, Serah, through those means. She’s willing to shed her childhood for the sake of this role. She becomes an adult long before most people are able to deal with the idea of “adulthood,” and she embraces it. The thing is, she’s put into the position to make these choices. And the very core of who she is underneath all that is actually … someone who thinks and goes by her thoughts before she goes by her heart, but she needs people around her who do that. Serah had always been a source of strength for her, whether she realized it or not.
Lightning Now-Post-Game and In Camp
The summary of everything that Lightning goes through after that is her having to deal with her understanding of the world being pulled out from underneath her, having to deal with unintentionally motivating someone to kill for revenge (though she comes around to disrupting that as best she can … to little avail), and having to deal with finding optimism when she has never been an optimistic person. But because the people around her are optimistic, she oddly becomes more like lightning than she probably realizes. Lightning itself is a fairly random circumstance, and it doesn’t have the same methodical process behind it. It does what it does and then it goes, whereas she became who she is both to represent that and to be someone more powerful. There’s no need to defend or be weakened if she’s fading away that quickly, right? But at the end, she defines it in a different way, without meaning to, with her behavior, her optimism, and her willingness to strike without a plan-all because of the other people around her.
Why hesitate when that’s what needs to get done? It isn’t to say she isn’t still thinking everything through, but she has the strength and motivation from the others’ strength and motivation to keep going. In the end, it’s Fang’s realism that she seeks to change, not her own. In a lot of ways, Lightning’s journey is necessary so she can help Fang, and make Fang see that there are more options than what are presented. Originally, Light herself wouldn’t have been able to. But since she lost Serah already, she needs that back-needs to get her role of Sister back, in some way, but also see the bigger picture. There are a lot of things wrong with the world, but things aren’t matching up. Smoke and mirrors have been her entire life, and she’s put up a lot of them herself. She’s done with them and she’s doing things her own way.
One of the important things about Lightning at the end of the game and as she’s coming into camp is how different she is in contrast to others. She doesn’t necessarily have a role she can latch on to (soldier, sister, defiant l’Cie), but she is heading off to save Vanille and Fang. She doesn’t necessarily need a role, either. At the end, it isn’t about roles or ideas or perceptions because those have all been shattered. At that point, when she leaves to go save them, she is thinking: Something needs to be done. Something can be done, and realistically, I am the only person who can do it. It says a lot about who she is, because she does regress somewhat in this thinking. But only because she doesn’t want to burden the others. They can live now, and live without any veil over their eyes trying to make them see the world differently. They were all strong, and now they can be strong from a different way. She needs to go save Fang and Vanille. They need and deserve that life, too.
Camp throws a fork into this in a lot of ways. In canon, she decides to go and off she does, off to save her friends and do what’s necessary. She thinks it through clearly and sees what is obviously the route for her to take. But then … she ends up in camp. Suddenly, everything that she had just decided and had accepted has been changed. Her powers as a l’Cie are back, Hope and Vanille have them too, and most importantly: Vanille is here. She’s seeking answers, and through doing it, she’s trying to remain reticent without giving too much of herself away.
Much of her approach to camp is one that just simply doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know why anyone would be happy or why they would accept things. People do things and drag them out and are incessant, and it’s not like with Snow. He did it for a reason, she realizes that now. But are they? Her initial thought before canon was that she didn’t give a damn about reasons. But now she realizes how excessively important reasons are. Why are people trapped here? What are they doing? Why? She’s asking why a lot more than she might normally, because she’s back at square one a lot. In some ways, Lightning is struggling to strike a balance between “we’ll take care of this place, no problem” and “none of this works with my world view at all.” All over again, even when she doesn’t really have a world view.
It doesn’t mean she actually is regressing, but she’s already seeking strength from Hope-and probably will from Vanille, too. Finding out that their situation was unique from a combination of testimonials from what Hope has hard and what Garrus told her set her off kilter. She’s lying a lot to Garrus-she’s presenting herself as a soldier and nothing more, as if identifying herself as someone who has dealt with the burdens of protecting people is easier. But by no means is she identifying herself that way.
The thing is, she doesn’t know what to define herself by. She’s Lightning, and she’s not conscious of the name other than it being a name she chose and stands by. At this point, it led to a lot of necessary things for her to accomplish, but it isn’t the same as it was when she was younger. Camp is forcing her to reassess who she happens to be. It’s just a good thing she has some of her family here.
I wrote a bit about this in a rambling plurk, but … most people can’t see that, and this will be my thoughts hopefully organized better.
Becoming Lightning
One of the important things about Lightning is her name, her identification of herself as something that only destroys. It shows a very conscious level of understanding in herself, but it’s important to note that it was something she did as a child. In a lot of ways, Lightning put a lot of weight in the changing of her name. In her mind, she needed to be someone stronger. It’s expected of anyone who is a teenage girl who loses her family and suddenly has to step up. She didn’t want to do it half-way; so that she could both be the soldier she was aiming to become at the best of her ability and to protect Serah, she became Lightning. I don’t think she mulled over it a lot. It was something she decided because it made sense.
The important part of this is that she never seems to overanalyze her choice of a name until later. It’s just a fact-it’s who she is, what she does, how she presents herself, but she’s a young woman who finds herself distant from her sister and she doesn’t even know how to gift her. One of the most significant parts of Lightning’s character is that she’s not without her childish characteristics. Aside from the birthday circumstance, when she acted incredibly rashly toward Serah, she finds herself being petty and judgmental toward people in her thoughts-but at the same time, trying to understand them. She consciously recognizes that she’s on the outside of things. But that doesn’t matter: she’s a soldier, she works hard and she brings home money and she takes care of Serah. But she barely sees Serah, and she’s conscious of this being a problem.
She decides to take strides to change this on Serah’s birthday, but again, that’s when she acted like a child. I think, in some ways, Lightning was disappointed. Not only was Serah there bringing this up, she was bringing it up on Light’s birthday, with someone else there who wasn’t a part of their unit, someone who openly showed his feelings and didn’t need to be anything. Snow was just Snow-at least, that was what she believed. On that day, Lightning wanted to show Serah vacation spots so they could go somewhere together, so not only was her birthday ruined, but something she wanted to give to Serah in return was ruined, as well. It was a show of things slipping out of her control-all this time, she had been Lightning for Serah, but some part of her consciously distracts herself away from not being enough. She needs to be enough.
Simply put: she made herself into being enough.
Up to the point of right before she gets her Focus, Lightning tries to be her name. She’ll do anything ruthlessly and relentlessly because that’s the point of who she is. She tries to live up to that, even threatening Serah without thinking twice, even disbelieving her without listening. It leads to irrational behavior, because of a mixture of just plain not liking it, among other things. Lightning is Lightning the Soldier first and then Lightning the Sister-or so she tries to present herself. But the truth is, she has always been Lightning the Sister, and the only reason she was anything else was because of Serah.
The reason she did this is because, quite honestly, Lightning was young! She’s still young at that birthday party, but she feels that distance from other people. One of the successes of XIII, I feel, is taking these overly young people, throwing them into a situation, and having, underneath the weight of everything, them turn out to be real people. They are bound to be stupid and make mistakes and act petty and sometimes make absolutely no sense at all.
But for Lightning, she was forced to grow up rather quickly. Her father died when she was younger and then her mother died from an illness. Much of her upbringing has been about being prepared to take care of Serah, and when it came down to it, she didn’t want to rely on government help. She wanted to take it into her own hands. So becoming “Lightning,” dropping the name Claire, and becoming a soldier was all a part of doing what was necessary. She never had a proper childhood, and there are times when she tries to consider what it would be like to be different. She compares her father to Snow and says she might have rebelled; in my opinion, it’s an idle, pointless thought. After all: she doesn’t really know what she would be like if her father lived, if her mother lived. I also would go as far as to say that she wouldn’t have rebelled, because a lot of who Snow is bothers her because of how it is behavior she doesn’t approve of. Because she has determined and defined what behavior should be approved of for herself.
That isn’t to say Lightning would be completely different if the wheel had turned differently. Lightning is obviously a serious person who’s coping mechanism (for lack of any other way to really define all this) is to change her name, become a soldier (well, she had to, but really … she’s rather good at her job), and take care of her sister, Serah, through those means. She’s willing to shed her childhood for the sake of this role. She becomes an adult long before most people are able to deal with the idea of “adulthood,” and she embraces it. The thing is, she’s put into the position to make these choices. And the very core of who she is underneath all that is actually … someone who thinks and goes by her thoughts before she goes by her heart, but she needs people around her who do that. Serah had always been a source of strength for her, whether she realized it or not.
Lightning Now-Post-Game and In Camp
The summary of everything that Lightning goes through after that is her having to deal with her understanding of the world being pulled out from underneath her, having to deal with unintentionally motivating someone to kill for revenge (though she comes around to disrupting that as best she can … to little avail), and having to deal with finding optimism when she has never been an optimistic person. But because the people around her are optimistic, she oddly becomes more like lightning than she probably realizes. Lightning itself is a fairly random circumstance, and it doesn’t have the same methodical process behind it. It does what it does and then it goes, whereas she became who she is both to represent that and to be someone more powerful. There’s no need to defend or be weakened if she’s fading away that quickly, right? But at the end, she defines it in a different way, without meaning to, with her behavior, her optimism, and her willingness to strike without a plan-all because of the other people around her.
Why hesitate when that’s what needs to get done? It isn’t to say she isn’t still thinking everything through, but she has the strength and motivation from the others’ strength and motivation to keep going. In the end, it’s Fang’s realism that she seeks to change, not her own. In a lot of ways, Lightning’s journey is necessary so she can help Fang, and make Fang see that there are more options than what are presented. Originally, Light herself wouldn’t have been able to. But since she lost Serah already, she needs that back-needs to get her role of Sister back, in some way, but also see the bigger picture. There are a lot of things wrong with the world, but things aren’t matching up. Smoke and mirrors have been her entire life, and she’s put up a lot of them herself. She’s done with them and she’s doing things her own way.
One of the important things about Lightning at the end of the game and as she’s coming into camp is how different she is in contrast to others. She doesn’t necessarily have a role she can latch on to (soldier, sister, defiant l’Cie), but she is heading off to save Vanille and Fang. She doesn’t necessarily need a role, either. At the end, it isn’t about roles or ideas or perceptions because those have all been shattered. At that point, when she leaves to go save them, she is thinking: Something needs to be done. Something can be done, and realistically, I am the only person who can do it. It says a lot about who she is, because she does regress somewhat in this thinking. But only because she doesn’t want to burden the others. They can live now, and live without any veil over their eyes trying to make them see the world differently. They were all strong, and now they can be strong from a different way. She needs to go save Fang and Vanille. They need and deserve that life, too.
Camp throws a fork into this in a lot of ways. In canon, she decides to go and off she does, off to save her friends and do what’s necessary. She thinks it through clearly and sees what is obviously the route for her to take. But then … she ends up in camp. Suddenly, everything that she had just decided and had accepted has been changed. Her powers as a l’Cie are back, Hope and Vanille have them too, and most importantly: Vanille is here. She’s seeking answers, and through doing it, she’s trying to remain reticent without giving too much of herself away.
Much of her approach to camp is one that just simply doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know why anyone would be happy or why they would accept things. People do things and drag them out and are incessant, and it’s not like with Snow. He did it for a reason, she realizes that now. But are they? Her initial thought before canon was that she didn’t give a damn about reasons. But now she realizes how excessively important reasons are. Why are people trapped here? What are they doing? Why? She’s asking why a lot more than she might normally, because she’s back at square one a lot. In some ways, Lightning is struggling to strike a balance between “we’ll take care of this place, no problem” and “none of this works with my world view at all.” All over again, even when she doesn’t really have a world view.
It doesn’t mean she actually is regressing, but she’s already seeking strength from Hope-and probably will from Vanille, too. Finding out that their situation was unique from a combination of testimonials from what Hope has hard and what Garrus told her set her off kilter. She’s lying a lot to Garrus-she’s presenting herself as a soldier and nothing more, as if identifying herself as someone who has dealt with the burdens of protecting people is easier. But by no means is she identifying herself that way.
The thing is, she doesn’t know what to define herself by. She’s Lightning, and she’s not conscious of the name other than it being a name she chose and stands by. At this point, it led to a lot of necessary things for her to accomplish, but it isn’t the same as it was when she was younger. Camp is forcing her to reassess who she happens to be. It’s just a good thing she has some of her family here.