Dark_castle
Junior Member
Vanille is worse. At least Rikku has a consistent accent and doesn't moan 24/7 or run in a disturbingly awkward feminine fashion. I am not touching on appearance.
Why is Vanille (FFXIII) such a childish character?
- Thread starter Dark_castle
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Vanille is worse. At least Rikku has a consistent accent and doesn't moan 24/7 or run in a disturbingly awkward feminine fashion. I am not touching on appearance.
chrominance
Member
Three things:
1) Of all the things you could point out about Vanille's apparent immaturity, the gun thing is what you picked? I don't remember all the details of the game but I feel like there are plenty of more convincing examples. The way she makes Hope look positively adult when they first meet up and wander around for a bit, for example, is just after that gun scene.
2) Vanille isn't even close to the most hateful character in XIII to me. Hope's worse, and is also a better example of how giving justification for his behavior doesn't suddenly make it acceptable (oh no your mom died and you decided to blame the single person who's probably the least responsible for her death? to the extent where you must kill him and drink from his blood to quench your thirst for vengeance? really?). Snow is worse again for being the biggest tool in the world with his hero bullshit.
3) I feel like you could maybe redeem a lot of the dumb character quirks in XIII if the writing team had imagined them as a Dirty Dozen-type group instead of playing it super serious. Like, "yeah we know all these people are damaged goods and possibly insane, but it's all Cocoon and Pulse have!" It definitely wouldn't solve the game's fundamental issues, but just some sign that the writers knew how ridiculous some of this shit was would move the needle from "unmitigated storytelling disaster" to "bad writing decisions."
I still haven't played XIII-2 yet, and I keep having this perverse desire to start for some reason. So obviously XIII's race to the bottom hasn't put me off sufficiently.
EDIT:
This is, weirdly, the thing I hate most about Vanille. RUN LIKE A NORMAL PERSON, DAMMIT.
1) Of all the things you could point out about Vanille's apparent immaturity, the gun thing is what you picked? I don't remember all the details of the game but I feel like there are plenty of more convincing examples. The way she makes Hope look positively adult when they first meet up and wander around for a bit, for example, is just after that gun scene.
2) Vanille isn't even close to the most hateful character in XIII to me. Hope's worse, and is also a better example of how giving justification for his behavior doesn't suddenly make it acceptable (oh no your mom died and you decided to blame the single person who's probably the least responsible for her death? to the extent where you must kill him and drink from his blood to quench your thirst for vengeance? really?). Snow is worse again for being the biggest tool in the world with his hero bullshit.
3) I feel like you could maybe redeem a lot of the dumb character quirks in XIII if the writing team had imagined them as a Dirty Dozen-type group instead of playing it super serious. Like, "yeah we know all these people are damaged goods and possibly insane, but it's all Cocoon and Pulse have!" It definitely wouldn't solve the game's fundamental issues, but just some sign that the writers knew how ridiculous some of this shit was would move the needle from "unmitigated storytelling disaster" to "bad writing decisions."
I still haven't played XIII-2 yet, and I keep having this perverse desire to start for some reason. So obviously XIII's race to the bottom hasn't put me off sufficiently.
EDIT:
This is, weirdly, the thing I hate most about Vanille. RUN LIKE A NORMAL PERSON, DAMMIT.
Dark Octave
Banned
They all are.
You don't remember Rikku very well. She is everything you just described.
Accent I can't comment on as I've only heard her Japanese voice which was definitely cutesy.
Rikku runs even more awkward as Vanilla! Even Yunas run animation in X-2 is not that much better...
Mr_Antimatter
Member
Vanilles run animation is the same as Yunas in FFx-2, IIRC. The difference in run animation was also one of the things that separate the 'girly' character of Vanille form the 'strong' characters of Lightning or Fang.
Interestingly, both light and fang have some 'girly' aspects as well. Lightning has her bellybutton peiced, and Fang rides sidesaddle on a chocobo, among other things.
As for Lights personality? What you see for the first half the game is basically her mask to hide her own pain and burden of responsibility. Heck, her mask went so deep that she even changed her name to something more fitting for the stronggirl personality she was trying for. You get to see her acting more normally near the end of the game.
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
Writing staff confirmed it in the Ultimania interviews.
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
Anyway, there is a reason why Vanille acts as she does. Whether or not you feel it is a believable reason is another matter entirely.
I couldn't stand her. I had a number of problems with FF13, and Vanille was top of the list. Fang and Sazh I liked. Lightning was just kinda vapid and uninteresting, but she didn't bother me. But Vanille is my most disliked character in 13, and possibly any other game, as right now I can't think of any other character I dislike more. Maybe I have a lower tolerance level than other people, but I never saw her as happy-go-lucky goofy, just irritating as all hell.
Knowing the reason why she was acting the way she was acting doesn't make it any better, it doesn't excuse it. Can't even stand the way she runs, its like she was designed just to piss me off.
Actually, now I come to think of it, maybe Lymle (?) from one of the Star Ocean games. I haven't played it, but I've seen a video of that character and maybe she would either give Vanille a run for her money or take the top spot.
Knowing the reason why she was acting the way she was acting doesn't make it any better, it doesn't excuse it. Can't even stand the way she runs, its like she was designed just to piss me off.
Actually, now I come to think of it, maybe Lymle (?) from one of the Star Ocean games. I haven't played it, but I've seen a video of that character and maybe she would either give Vanille a run for her money or take the top spot.
KoopaTheCasual
Junior Member
Seriously. That response in my opinion is everything wrong with the current fanbase, since I've seen this reasoning way too many times. FF never used to be about sticking your dick in the characters. Wtf happened?
AdmiralMikey
Member
It's amazing that the very first post in this thread spelled out the very first thing I thought of when I read this topic's title. From the very first time you see her and she did that, "Bang!" I knew I was going to hate her. Then, I proceeded to hate her for the next 50 hours.
It's also pretty amazing to see the route that this thread took, because I hated Rikku from FFX as well, mostly for the same reasons I hated Vanille. Characters who are supposed to be taken seriously but act like annoying children are no bueno in my book.
When I first played FFVII when I was like 7 or 8 I definitely wanted to stick my dick in Tifa.
Meccanical
Member
I laughed way too hard at this.
Austriacus
Member
Thats just complete bullshit and you know it. We have been getting sexy babes since IV
At 7 or 8? Wtf, I must have been a slow developer. All I cared about at 8 was Action Man and cartoons.
Not to derail too much but I've been a perverted fuck for as long as I can remember. I blame my brother's porn stash and being exposed to stuff like Wicked City and Crying Freeman at a very early age. :3
Graphics got better.
The only reason people didn't want to stick their dicks in the older characters is because they didn't look like this:
They looked like this:
Meccanical
Member
10/10
KoopaTheCasual
Junior Member
No, it's not bullshit. I said that's what's wrong with the fanbase. Yes, we've been getting sexy designs, but thankfully, the limitation of technology made it harder for the "i like this because that one character is hot" faction to be prominent. Now that poly counts have caught up, it's completely exposed and attracts a different type of attention. It's been growing slowly since FF7, but now it seems to be a requirement for every single entry.
Yes, that's the crux of my point.
Femmeworth
Banned
She clearly suffers brain damage from being a crystal for so long. Fang also has brain damage that manifests itself in a different way. (Or Toriyama and Watanabe are hacks.)
What the fuck. I don't remember that.
She's a sociopath.
You can argue that she's the true villain of the game.
She doesn't?
Part of it is usually Final Fantasy writing, but at least they actually kind of wrote a reason for the character to be like this in the game. It's her way of dealing with guilt, as Vanille feels personally responsible for most of the events in the game.
If true, it's probably why she's still basically the central character.
If true, it's probably why she's still basically the central character.
Don't forget that she is 15 in the FFX. She is jailbait.
I'll look around and see if I can find the interview.
You view it differently, there's nothing silly about either idea. I took their relationship as romantic since there's lot's of subtext and plenty of people saw it while you saw it as just friends/sister type.
Anyway like I said above, I'll take a look around for it. I haven't seen it in years.
As well she should, it is, quite literally, all her fault.
The whole time Vanille was acting like an off-kilter little oddball, she was giving a serious narration with very straightforward voicework, too. This converged later on, when we learn how much pain she places on her own shoulders, and how badly she views the lives of everyone burdened with a horrible Focus.
She was the Selphie, the Rikku, the Yuffie of the game. I personally disliked Selphie more, just because she seemed to be WAY less interesting than Yuffie, (I think the only non-Laguna party people I really liked in VIII were Quistis and Zell) and wasn't anywhere near as interesting as Rikku, who became one of my best-in-party by games end. (And was basically Final Fantasy Bubbles.)
Beyond "She's just an anime stereotype"... she's just a very Asian portrayal of a female character, really. I'm surprised how you'll see 30-some year old women in Korean Dramas who make the same whiny immature sounds
, move in crazy girly ways, or act as if they need to take on a "mask" of adulthood to say a serious line, as if their default maturity couldn't portray serious well.
I don't really see it any different than the obvious Bombshell in a Noir story, the sexy surfer girl in a vacation story, or the alluring vixen that every married man bumps into when he's on a business trip, away from his wife. The cute, overly girly archetype is just an Asian narrative standard, that serves an upfront purpose to give the story a certain personality without much trouble. Generally, the character gets development beyond this, and turn into something more by a stories end... but laying out this familiar roles is a way to give a variety of people a character to latch onto, to pull them deeper into the world.
----
Personal feelings for XIII, I disliked the false freedom of the battle system, and the early game relationship of Snow and Hope. Hope was a seething ball of rage, yet Snow never got out of his own personal view of himself enough to see how the boy was reacting to him. Hope held onto an irrational ideal for a BIT longer than I'd liked, but I don't hate him for the thought, just for how long he stuck with it.
I've never played Japanese RPGs in the hopes of seeing western characterization pouring into it. I like Japanese RPGs because I like Japanese characters archetypes, which are a breath of fresh air in between generic military men, women who exist simply to NOT be men in stories, and worlds that act as if children could never be consequential to a story.
I feel like most of these kind of threads totally ignore the development a character goes through in their own stories. Almost every non-villain childish character I've ever seen in an RPG has a reason for it, and is called out on it by the party, or themselves, by games end. They generally deal with the imbalance, and their lines towards end-game reflect this, with more serious, mature outlooks going forward.
She was the Selphie, the Rikku, the Yuffie of the game. I personally disliked Selphie more, just because she seemed to be WAY less interesting than Yuffie, (I think the only non-Laguna party people I really liked in VIII were Quistis and Zell) and wasn't anywhere near as interesting as Rikku, who became one of my best-in-party by games end. (And was basically Final Fantasy Bubbles.)
Beyond "She's just an anime stereotype"... she's just a very Asian portrayal of a female character, really. I'm surprised how you'll see 30-some year old women in Korean Dramas who make the same whiny immature sounds
(But... the men do that a lot, too! "Bu~YoHhhhHhH!")
I don't really see it any different than the obvious Bombshell in a Noir story, the sexy surfer girl in a vacation story, or the alluring vixen that every married man bumps into when he's on a business trip, away from his wife. The cute, overly girly archetype is just an Asian narrative standard, that serves an upfront purpose to give the story a certain personality without much trouble. Generally, the character gets development beyond this, and turn into something more by a stories end... but laying out this familiar roles is a way to give a variety of people a character to latch onto, to pull them deeper into the world.
----
Personal feelings for XIII, I disliked the false freedom of the battle system, and the early game relationship of Snow and Hope. Hope was a seething ball of rage, yet Snow never got out of his own personal view of himself enough to see how the boy was reacting to him. Hope held onto an irrational ideal for a BIT longer than I'd liked, but I don't hate him for the thought, just for how long he stuck with it.
I've never played Japanese RPGs in the hopes of seeing western characterization pouring into it. I like Japanese RPGs because I like Japanese characters archetypes, which are a breath of fresh air in between generic military men, women who exist simply to NOT be men in stories, and worlds that act as if children could never be consequential to a story.
I feel like most of these kind of threads totally ignore the development a character goes through in their own stories. Almost every non-villain childish character I've ever seen in an RPG has a reason for it, and is called out on it by the party, or themselves, by games end. They generally deal with the imbalance, and their lines towards end-game reflect this, with more serious, mature outlooks going forward.
Truth
manzoman96
Member
Sazh was cool. Snow and Hope were alright but at least they had a bit of character development. Everyone else was dull and boring.
Are you implying that the way Rikku looks indicates that she moans 24/7 or runs in an awkward fashion?
viewtiful_dru
Member
Dudes extrapolating HARD in this thread.
She's a character archetype that appeals to a portion of the Japanese audience. You'd be surprised how many Asian folks in general get off on their women being stupid/helpless/child-like. It's seen as desirable for as long as their looks hold up, from what I've observed, after which resentment sets in and cheating follows.
Just throwing this out there... but, as one may recall, this is the character Square Enix actually rendered nipples for.
Near end game spoilers:
This was something SE did not expect people to find, of course. But once folks started ripping XIII's assets.... they were there. Plain as day.
Near end game spoilers:
Vanille appears nude when crystallized. Her breasts are covered, but the nude model itself actually has nipples. SE took the time to give her nipples.
This was something SE did not expect people to find, of course. But once folks started ripping XIII's assets.... they were there. Plain as day.
Source? This is relevant for my... Research..
No I'm implying that she does moan 24/7 and runs in an awkward fashion. At least when compared to Vanille.
I mean hell, her animation and sounds during her Mix overdrive are just as Japan-creepy as Vanille's gun humping summon.
http://kotaku.com/5451645/why-theres-a-naked-final-fantasy-xiii-character-model
IIRC, they removed the nipples in later versions.
lastflowers
Banned
sazh was awesome.
Personally in a game full of largely unlikeable, though occasionally entertaining, characters my least favourite by far is Sazh and his tired super generic faux-everyman bullshit.
Yes, clearly her lack of gun safety is the worse thing about the charcter. Why not tell us how much you hate lack of trigger discipline in the artwork next.
Yes, clearly her lack of gun safety is the worse thing about the charcter. Why not tell us how much you hate lack of trigger discipline in the artwork next.
really? I thought she was mostly consistent with her attitude in the scenes she was in
BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO
Junior Member
Unknown One
Member
Well they failed. Cloud actually has a personality in FF7. Let's Mosey!
Femmeworth
Banned
That's a red herring for Lightning's fully modeled vagina.
I didn't think she was so bad. But I didn't find any of the characters in the game to be great, either. Such a letdown after FFXII which had some really cool characters.
Its so clear to me now, I was obviously lying to myself and Sazh wasnt my least favourite character.
AuthenticM
Member
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