[ SECRET POST #336 ]

[degrees.livejournal.com]

⌈ Secret Post #336 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Out again, Christmas shopping/making a buttload of cookies! You know what to do!

Last day to submit for next week!

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #048.
Secrets Not Posted: 0 broken links, [ 1 ] not!secret, [ 1 ] not!fandom, [ 1 ] repeat.
Next Secret Post: Tomorrow, Saturday, December 7th, 2007.
Current Secret Submission Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[kefanii.livejournal.com]

Dear 37:

ELENA IS AWESOME FUCK YOU

p.s. she's not a yamato anyway

/thoughts

[hezul.livejournal.com]

please have a slice of this WORD PIE. ♥

[kefanii.livejournal.com]

DELICIOUS WORD PIE.

Elena is blonde and a bit of a doofus at first, how is she a yamato at all!? She is so badass by the end of the game and in the beginning she's still brave and running off on her own and... eaoigjoea WHAT THE FUCK man, Elena is one of the best blonde female lead characters ever. :|

[hezul.livejournal.com]

I love Elena to pieces. And god I love the way she and Ryudo bounce off each other and nnnnngh MUST REPLAY GAME. X3

[kefanii.livejournal.com]

I knoooow god they're so cute! And funny! I'm playing through the game again right now with a friend. I had forgotten how wonderful all the snippy dialogue is. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

[fuyu]

May I inquire as to what this game is that you speak of because this Elena sounds, perhaps, right up my alley?

[kefanii.livejournal.com]

Grandia II, for the Dreamcast. Also ported (TERRIBLY) to the PC and PS2.

[elena-takami.livejournal.com]

Lol, timing.

[kefanii.livejournal.com]

Hahaha!

You say it is very, very Japanese but it has some great voice acting in it from famous American VAs!

[elena-takami.livejournal.com]

yeah, it's one of the extremely few games I haven't felt the need to turn voices off on (which is good, cause I don't think you even can XD). But the plot is very Japanese.

[kefanii.livejournal.com]

I wish I could punch Roan's VA, but yeah, OTHERWISE.

And well... it's a JRPG. I don't know what else would be expected. It's more out-of-the-box than some of them?

[fuyu]

Damn - if I only have a PS2 is that okay. I mean in what ways is the port terrible.

[kefanii.livejournal.com]

The graphics are... awful. They go from being a bit dated to holy shit is this a Playstation game!?

But, well, it's not as if the graphics are the main draw.

[fuyu]

Well, shit, I cut my gamer teeth on FF7, I can handle that!

:D

[elena-takami.livejournal.com]

Grandia II. Originally released for the Dreamcast, later re-released on PC and PS2. It is very, very Japanese.

[(Anonymous)]

I knew people would mis-read that. I'm sorry it wasn't clear enough.

The love interests in the VAST majority of JRPGs are very similar. No, they don't fit the cliche to a T, but when taken as a whole they paint a picture that I don't think is very pretty, and one that hearkens back to the cliche (while others are practically incarnations of the cliche, like Yuna and Rosa).

I don't have anything against any of those characters individually, it's the type as a whole that will automatically turn me off 'the token sweet healer-girl love interest.'

I know JRPGS are FULL of cliches, but the healer-girl love interest is, I think, the most persistent of character cliches in the entire genre. Even heroes get more variation!

It's gotten to the point where as soon as a healer-girl love interest is introuced I can't think of her as a character anymore - I think of a little white cloak with a red trim that follows the main character around.

[kefanii.livejournal.com]

But Elena is nothing like most of the cute healer girls. She's fucking awesome. Besides, Ryudo wants to be with both Millenia and Elena. You are allowed to dislike the healer girl cliche. But don't drag Elena into that just because she wear white! She's good in combat and damn awesome.

I don't get the whole INSTANT BIAS thing. I understand being fed up with the cliche, I really, really do. But if I stuck to that, characters like Fina from Skies of Arcadia and Elena from Grandia II that reinvent the wheel would never get the credit they deserve.

You apparently like JRPGs. Congrats! Now suck it up and judge all the characters by their REAL qualities, not by whether or not they have a white cloak and an affinity for Cure.

[(Anonymous)]

*Sigh*

I think these characters all have *very* similar personalities, actually. I don't dislike them just because they are healers.

It's difficult to explain, but a lot of it has to do with role. It's common for the female lead to be 'special' in some way - she's a princess, she's got some kind of special power or other - and while the story should be about her because her role is so pivotal, she ends up being an object for the protagonist to cart around as *he* saves the world - and she never has much of a problem with this. (Alternately, she could be the main character's best friend from way back, and she basically does nothing besides follow him around).

Good exception to illustrate my point: Marle from Chrono Cross is a healer character and the main character's love interest. I don't think she fits the type at all - though her more active role in the storyline could be explained by Chrono's status as a silent protagonist. Kidd from Chrono Cross is the same way, and Lyon from Suikoden V is also very prominent. The other reasons I like Kidd and Lyon is that they have PASTS. So often in RPGS the male protagonist has a history of some sort that relates to the plot, but the girl has no past except as is relevant to the hero.)

Though I will admit it's been years since I've played Grandia II. I may be off about Elena.

[shinai.livejournal.com]

It's difficult to explain, but a lot of it has to do with role. It's common for the female lead to be 'special' in some way - she's a princess, she's got some kind of special power or other - and while the story should be about her because her role is so pivotal, she ends up being an object for the protagonist to cart around as *he* saves the world - and she never has much of a problem with this. (Alternately, she could be the main character's best friend from way back, and she basically does nothing besides follow him around).

This sounds like the infamous "canon-sue."

And as far as Elena is concerned - I agree wholeheartedly.

[powercorrupts.livejournal.com]

This is going to be a little in your face, but I think you really missed the whole point of Yuna. A lot of people brush her off as being cut from the same cloth as characters like Shana or Rosa, but unlike them, she doesn't sit around weeping for a hero to come rescue her, nor does she blindly assist some hero in their quest.

Yuna has trained for some portion of her life in order so that she can make an arduous, taxing journey across the world, and then die. All because she so blindly believes in saving the world that she would do all that for them. She's intended to be blindly, almost stupidly giving and loving. She believes so wholeheartedly that she's doing the right thing for everyone, that's why the whole fact that the entire religion and politics of the world is corrupt and subverted had actual impact on the characters.

Yuna was the embodiment of the optimism and the self-sacrifice that her church was supposed to espouse, and in reality, was the very opposite.

Yes, she's the ideal girlfriend to a great many sooo roonery boys. She's docile, she's subservient, she's giving, and she's inherently good. That was the point. If she had been someone like Ashe or Celes, would having to rebel against her own faith and government, no matter how corrupt, have hurt her the way it did Yuna? Would it have redefined her character at all?

Yuna's entire character was built upon her self-sacrifice at the end of the journey (and imo, she's a million times stronger than most heroines that she would march into death like that, no matter how misguided it was). When she lost that, it was like Cloud giving up his lie about being in Soldier, or Tidus finding out he was a dream. It was a large part of the game, and a huge part of her character.

You can write her off as a walking vagina and ideal girlfriend. A great number of people do. But god forbid a character be based on a stereotype that makes them interact with their world and the other charaters in interesting ways.

OP of 37

[(Anonymous)]

I've never thought of it that way. That puts her character in an interesting perspective.

Honestly, her interaction with Tidus bores me because they're both so... cliched, and when I say girls like Yuna make me write slash, in this case it's femmeslash. X-2 is like... opportunities for femmeslash out the wazoo. I don't know about anyone else, but at the end of the game where you have the option to re-unite with Tidus if you pull all the right strings - I always say, 'It's better this way.' Yuna/Rikku/Paine OT3!

[a-white-rain.livejournal.com]

um I love you so much. Yes yes yes.

[downburst.livejournal.com]

oh my god WORD.

[inksmears]

[anime-angel-ash.livejournal.com]

YUNA LOVERS UNITE! FORM OF A GIANT EAGLE!

Here, have an internet. You deserve it.