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mark_asphodelOK.
As we said last time, FE4's Gen 2 has four primary ways of establishing characterization:
1) Plot relevance-- cut scenes, recruitment dialogue
2) Family conversations
3) Lovers' conversations
4) Boss battle dialogue
Got it?
On to the Gen 2 chicks. They're a bit different from the dudes.
#1: The Mini-Me effect. Girls tend to be knock-offs of their mothers or otherwise derived from them in ways not true of the boys. If I had to pick a Gen2 male most like his mother, it would likely be Ced or Leif, followed by Faval.
#2: Massive gender imbalance in the playable cast means that the girls often have multiple predestined love options and we thus can see them in more than one situation across multiple PTs.
#3: The girls seem far less likely to have boss battle dialogue than do the boys, with Tinny being the major exception. Overall, the girls tend to let their brothers carry the war banner for them, which makes them less defined in terms of the actual conflict raging around them.
Yer Lady:
Julia is not handled well. Funny how FE keeps pulling the "pale haired dragon-blooded beauty" card outta the hat, because IMO they botch it almost every time. For most of FE4, the Julia we see is a sad-eyed girl with amnesia who has a crush on Seliph and premonitions but is about as interesting as a sack of wet flour. Then she gets her memories back and is basically God. But aside from that eleventh-hour moment of definition, she's the aforementioned sack of wet flour. Honestly she's more interesting in the FE13 DLC than in her own game.
Verdict: There is raw material to work with but what we have in the game is kind of a mess. See also: Ninian, Sophia...
Clear Inner Life:
Patty:
Patty is buckets of crazy colorful fun right from the get-go, but unlike her Gen 1 counterpart Dew, there seems to be a great deal driving Patty. She steals, shades the truth, and steps outside the law for reasons she can justify to herself, yet at the same time plainly craves identity, security, respectability, and wealth. She fangirls Shanan, hits on Corple in hopes of landing herself a distinguished and wealthy husband, and loooooves the idea of proving herself as a Duchess of Jungby. It's not really a stretch to chalk all this up to her deprived background as an orphan; Patty understands that stealing is wrong but hey, people do what they must to survive. Then too, Patty is our resident amateur cook and likely the only member of the entire FE4 cast with something that resembles a hobby. (I find the food thing in-keeping with the rest of her issues-- food as love for someone who's been that poor? Yeah.)
Verdict: Patty pulls off coherent and plausible characterization without even relying on a parent/child conversation for added definition (see: Fee and Nanna). Pretty good for what could've been comic relief.
Altena:
Altena's inner life is splashed all over Chapter Nine. And Eight. And the Epilogue. And so on. The good thing is that the interior battle between Quan!Altena and Travant!Altena is supplemented by scenes like her sweet, quiet interaction with Corple. So while Altena's identity crisis is a major part of her character, there's a bit more to her than that-- right to the Epilogue she's still trying to conduct herself as a dignified princess of Thracia in spite of daddy issues and brother issues and maybe a crush on her former babysitter. While FE5 indicates that Altena falls apart emotionally under all this strain, FE4's Altena mostly keeps herself together.
Verdict: Compare her directly to her fellow "turncoat" character Ares and Altena seems like much more of a 3D human being.
Fee:
Fee won me over right off the bat by having a stated, unique reason for joining Seliph's army. Mama Fury told her stories about Sigurd's war, and so Fee decided that crusading was her life's calling. And her pegasus is named Mahnya. From this and from her three lovers' conversation options, we can piece together and idea of a girl who's passionate about serious things without being :| about it, determined, very much into her home and family and the legacy of her mother and aunt, and aware that she still does have some growing up to do. Add to this Lewyn!Fee's heated confrontation with her father and I don't think Fee's all that much of a mystery.
Verdict: Not-Lewyn!Fee feels like she's missing something, but Lewyn!Fee is canon and well-defined.
Tinny:
There's a lot I don't like about Tinny. But, actually… given her prominence in the plot, she's one of the best-developed female characters in Gen 2. Her interactions with Seliph and Leif reveal her as a poised and determined young lady; I especially like her outright stated refusal to hang back and become another Deirdre. We see not only this calm and insightful Tinny but also anguished and confused Tinny, raging and determined Tinny, and sweet and clingy Tinny, and her motivations for these different states of being all make sense at any given time. I guess the problem for me with Tinny is the way the mature and insightful moments alternate with the moeblob squish… but I guess you could argue being Arthur's Little Sis brings out the squish in her in ways that being Mrs. Leif or Mrs. Seliph doesn't.
Verdict: Tinny makes sense as a character if you decide she has a couple of emotional screws loose. I'm pretty sure she has some screws loose.
Less Distinct Inner Life:
Nanna:
Well, look at that. It's Mini Raquesis. It's not that Nanna doesn't come across well; she's poised and determined in her early scenes with both Leif and Ares, a bit hard-edged and skeptical in her scene with Delmud, and then later in her lovers' conversations with Leif and Ares she demonstrates that hey, future queen or not she really is a sixteen-year-old girl who likes romance and shopping. Her other lovers' conversation, with Seliph, mostly indicates to me that she's likely the most devout of the Gen2 girls. And then she does get a unique father/daughter conversation with Finn, which again shows off Nanna's harsher, angrier side while tying up her convoluted backstory. (Most of the Gen 2 girls are, in fact, pretty angry.) On last thing about Nanna is that her dedication to Leif and the whole Unified Thracia scheme is undebatable in FE4, to the point where Seliph calls attention to it if she doesn't go back to Leonster with Leif at the end of the game. Makes it a bit strange if you've got, say, Azel!Nanna married to Ares.
Verdict: Decently characterized but with Nanna you get the feeling that some dots need connecting. She's far better-written than Delmud, though. Finn!Nanna paired with Leif probably gives you the most coherent Nanna (hello, FE5?) but that don't help Delmud any.
Note: I do find there to be a drop-off from Nanna to Larcei/Lana but not so bad that L&L deserve their own Tier of Suck the way their brothers do.
Larcei:
And here's Mini Ayra. Ayra was no great shakes as a character and neither is the replica. We get impetuous Larcei, dude-loathing Larcei, crush-on-Shanan Larcei, Ayra Death Denialist Larcei, and then her lovers' conversation with Seliph shows off a softer, more vulnerable side. There just isn't much holding all this together, and since she has no real role in the plot after Chapter Six, Larcei pretty much gets overwhelmed by the better-developed characters that follow. Even the addition of a parent/child conversation with Finn ends with a shoe-drop and has no follow-through and consequently says nothing about Larcei other than she doesn't like being stared at by random weird people.
Verdict: Less sketchy than Ulster doesn't mean good. One-Note Jane all the way unless you pair her with Seliph.
Lana:
Mini Aideen rounds out our trio of knockoff kidlets. I've thought long and hard about my issues with Lana and why she feels so damned unsatisfying. Her introduction is fine. The ending in which she doesn't get with Seliph (or anyone) reveals her to be another angry Gen 2 girl, though Fee-Tinny-Nanna-and-Larcei all are driven by issues that go considerably deeper than not getting on with the resident Lord. There are hints of a genuine friendship with and concern for Julia that mirror the implied friendship between Aideen, Ethlyn, and Deirdre in Gen 1. And yet, for all that, Lana feels so... tepid. Her connections are all to other problematic characters-- underwritten Lester, poorly written Julia, and the oh-so-temperate Seliph. Her lovers' dialogues with Ulster and Faval, while sweet, don't reveal that much about her... and it's the same conversation with Ulster as it is with Faval. Her father/daughter conversation with Finn is identical to the Larcei one in content and jaw-droppingly bizarre in its context, so that doesn't help any. And for all that she gets angry over NOT making with Seliph, if she does make with Seliph her main reaction is sorrow for Julia. Also, while Lana as a unit demonstrates that nuns and warfare do indeed mix well, she has even less of a believable identity as a nun than did Aideen. Compare her to Corple or even to Nanna and it seems like she's a staffchick Just Because.
Verdict: There might be something rather troubling and potentially interesting lurking under Lana's cutesy surface. Or maybe there isn't. Again, "not as bad as Lester" doesn't mean she's well-written.
Cipher:
Leen:
Leen has a promising start, what with her pithy comparison of soldiers to dancers who do unpleasant things for the cash. But after her maltreatment by Bramsel and rescue by Ares, she disappears. She can talk with Corple in a sweet little scene where she shows the young priest that dancers aren't all bad people, and Lewyn!Leen can talk with Lewyn in a scene that's much more about Lewyn not being an asshole (for once) than it is about Leen, who's passive compared to his alternate daughters. She has no lovers' conversations, though her death quote implies a crush on Ares. And… that's it. So basically we just have a sad girl who wishes she knew who her parents were and gets no answers.
Verdict: Cipher.
Adult females:
HAHAHAH. There are no female characters over the age of twenty in this Generation, compared to the FIVE (six if you count Ares) adult males running around. Aideen is shelved off screen, Briggid and Sylvia are MIA, and all the other ladies are stated to be D-E-A-D. Damn, couldn't they have Aideen show up as a Gotoh-style High Priest with a nice tome in the final chapter? Anything?
As we said last time, FE4's Gen 2 has four primary ways of establishing characterization:
1) Plot relevance-- cut scenes, recruitment dialogue
2) Family conversations
3) Lovers' conversations
4) Boss battle dialogue
Got it?
On to the Gen 2 chicks. They're a bit different from the dudes.
#1: The Mini-Me effect. Girls tend to be knock-offs of their mothers or otherwise derived from them in ways not true of the boys. If I had to pick a Gen2 male most like his mother, it would likely be Ced or Leif, followed by Faval.
#2: Massive gender imbalance in the playable cast means that the girls often have multiple predestined love options and we thus can see them in more than one situation across multiple PTs.
#3: The girls seem far less likely to have boss battle dialogue than do the boys, with Tinny being the major exception. Overall, the girls tend to let their brothers carry the war banner for them, which makes them less defined in terms of the actual conflict raging around them.
Yer Lady:
Julia is not handled well. Funny how FE keeps pulling the "pale haired dragon-blooded beauty" card outta the hat, because IMO they botch it almost every time. For most of FE4, the Julia we see is a sad-eyed girl with amnesia who has a crush on Seliph and premonitions but is about as interesting as a sack of wet flour. Then she gets her memories back and is basically God. But aside from that eleventh-hour moment of definition, she's the aforementioned sack of wet flour. Honestly she's more interesting in the FE13 DLC than in her own game.
Verdict: There is raw material to work with but what we have in the game is kind of a mess. See also: Ninian, Sophia...
Clear Inner Life:
Patty:
Patty is buckets of crazy colorful fun right from the get-go, but unlike her Gen 1 counterpart Dew, there seems to be a great deal driving Patty. She steals, shades the truth, and steps outside the law for reasons she can justify to herself, yet at the same time plainly craves identity, security, respectability, and wealth. She fangirls Shanan, hits on Corple in hopes of landing herself a distinguished and wealthy husband, and loooooves the idea of proving herself as a Duchess of Jungby. It's not really a stretch to chalk all this up to her deprived background as an orphan; Patty understands that stealing is wrong but hey, people do what they must to survive. Then too, Patty is our resident amateur cook and likely the only member of the entire FE4 cast with something that resembles a hobby. (I find the food thing in-keeping with the rest of her issues-- food as love for someone who's been that poor? Yeah.)
Verdict: Patty pulls off coherent and plausible characterization without even relying on a parent/child conversation for added definition (see: Fee and Nanna). Pretty good for what could've been comic relief.
Altena:
Altena's inner life is splashed all over Chapter Nine. And Eight. And the Epilogue. And so on. The good thing is that the interior battle between Quan!Altena and Travant!Altena is supplemented by scenes like her sweet, quiet interaction with Corple. So while Altena's identity crisis is a major part of her character, there's a bit more to her than that-- right to the Epilogue she's still trying to conduct herself as a dignified princess of Thracia in spite of daddy issues and brother issues and maybe a crush on her former babysitter. While FE5 indicates that Altena falls apart emotionally under all this strain, FE4's Altena mostly keeps herself together.
Verdict: Compare her directly to her fellow "turncoat" character Ares and Altena seems like much more of a 3D human being.
Fee:
Fee won me over right off the bat by having a stated, unique reason for joining Seliph's army. Mama Fury told her stories about Sigurd's war, and so Fee decided that crusading was her life's calling. And her pegasus is named Mahnya. From this and from her three lovers' conversation options, we can piece together and idea of a girl who's passionate about serious things without being :| about it, determined, very much into her home and family and the legacy of her mother and aunt, and aware that she still does have some growing up to do. Add to this Lewyn!Fee's heated confrontation with her father and I don't think Fee's all that much of a mystery.
Verdict: Not-Lewyn!Fee feels like she's missing something, but Lewyn!Fee is canon and well-defined.
Tinny:
There's a lot I don't like about Tinny. But, actually… given her prominence in the plot, she's one of the best-developed female characters in Gen 2. Her interactions with Seliph and Leif reveal her as a poised and determined young lady; I especially like her outright stated refusal to hang back and become another Deirdre. We see not only this calm and insightful Tinny but also anguished and confused Tinny, raging and determined Tinny, and sweet and clingy Tinny, and her motivations for these different states of being all make sense at any given time. I guess the problem for me with Tinny is the way the mature and insightful moments alternate with the moeblob squish… but I guess you could argue being Arthur's Little Sis brings out the squish in her in ways that being Mrs. Leif or Mrs. Seliph doesn't.
Verdict: Tinny makes sense as a character if you decide she has a couple of emotional screws loose. I'm pretty sure she has some screws loose.
Less Distinct Inner Life:
Nanna:
Well, look at that. It's Mini Raquesis. It's not that Nanna doesn't come across well; she's poised and determined in her early scenes with both Leif and Ares, a bit hard-edged and skeptical in her scene with Delmud, and then later in her lovers' conversations with Leif and Ares she demonstrates that hey, future queen or not she really is a sixteen-year-old girl who likes romance and shopping. Her other lovers' conversation, with Seliph, mostly indicates to me that she's likely the most devout of the Gen2 girls. And then she does get a unique father/daughter conversation with Finn, which again shows off Nanna's harsher, angrier side while tying up her convoluted backstory. (Most of the Gen 2 girls are, in fact, pretty angry.) On last thing about Nanna is that her dedication to Leif and the whole Unified Thracia scheme is undebatable in FE4, to the point where Seliph calls attention to it if she doesn't go back to Leonster with Leif at the end of the game. Makes it a bit strange if you've got, say, Azel!Nanna married to Ares.
Verdict: Decently characterized but with Nanna you get the feeling that some dots need connecting. She's far better-written than Delmud, though. Finn!Nanna paired with Leif probably gives you the most coherent Nanna (hello, FE5?) but that don't help Delmud any.
Note: I do find there to be a drop-off from Nanna to Larcei/Lana but not so bad that L&L deserve their own Tier of Suck the way their brothers do.
Larcei:
And here's Mini Ayra. Ayra was no great shakes as a character and neither is the replica. We get impetuous Larcei, dude-loathing Larcei, crush-on-Shanan Larcei, Ayra Death Denialist Larcei, and then her lovers' conversation with Seliph shows off a softer, more vulnerable side. There just isn't much holding all this together, and since she has no real role in the plot after Chapter Six, Larcei pretty much gets overwhelmed by the better-developed characters that follow. Even the addition of a parent/child conversation with Finn ends with a shoe-drop and has no follow-through and consequently says nothing about Larcei other than she doesn't like being stared at by random weird people.
Verdict: Less sketchy than Ulster doesn't mean good. One-Note Jane all the way unless you pair her with Seliph.
Lana:
Mini Aideen rounds out our trio of knockoff kidlets. I've thought long and hard about my issues with Lana and why she feels so damned unsatisfying. Her introduction is fine. The ending in which she doesn't get with Seliph (or anyone) reveals her to be another angry Gen 2 girl, though Fee-Tinny-Nanna-and-Larcei all are driven by issues that go considerably deeper than not getting on with the resident Lord. There are hints of a genuine friendship with and concern for Julia that mirror the implied friendship between Aideen, Ethlyn, and Deirdre in Gen 1. And yet, for all that, Lana feels so... tepid. Her connections are all to other problematic characters-- underwritten Lester, poorly written Julia, and the oh-so-temperate Seliph. Her lovers' dialogues with Ulster and Faval, while sweet, don't reveal that much about her... and it's the same conversation with Ulster as it is with Faval. Her father/daughter conversation with Finn is identical to the Larcei one in content and jaw-droppingly bizarre in its context, so that doesn't help any. And for all that she gets angry over NOT making with Seliph, if she does make with Seliph her main reaction is sorrow for Julia. Also, while Lana as a unit demonstrates that nuns and warfare do indeed mix well, she has even less of a believable identity as a nun than did Aideen. Compare her to Corple or even to Nanna and it seems like she's a staffchick Just Because.
Verdict: There might be something rather troubling and potentially interesting lurking under Lana's cutesy surface. Or maybe there isn't. Again, "not as bad as Lester" doesn't mean she's well-written.
Cipher:
Leen:
Leen has a promising start, what with her pithy comparison of soldiers to dancers who do unpleasant things for the cash. But after her maltreatment by Bramsel and rescue by Ares, she disappears. She can talk with Corple in a sweet little scene where she shows the young priest that dancers aren't all bad people, and Lewyn!Leen can talk with Lewyn in a scene that's much more about Lewyn not being an asshole (for once) than it is about Leen, who's passive compared to his alternate daughters. She has no lovers' conversations, though her death quote implies a crush on Ares. And… that's it. So basically we just have a sad girl who wishes she knew who her parents were and gets no answers.
Verdict: Cipher.
Adult females:
HAHAHAH. There are no female characters over the age of twenty in this Generation, compared to the FIVE (six if you count Ares) adult males running around. Aideen is shelved off screen, Briggid and Sylvia are MIA, and all the other ladies are stated to be D-E-A-D. Damn, couldn't they have Aideen show up as a Gotoh-style High Priest with a nice tome in the final chapter? Anything?
no subject
Date: 2013-05-30 10:37 pm (UTC)Larcei's Run, perhaps?
no subject
Date: 2013-05-30 10:52 pm (UTC)Yep, once those girls hit the big 2-0, they put 'em out to pasture.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-31 12:06 am (UTC)Never. Not even when Ninian's staring at a portrait of her parents from long ago.
1 Other than a Definitely-Evil-Person-Who-Is-Presently-Oppressing-Both-Them-And-The-World. On the other hand, forgiveness is cheap, and resentment after the fact is absent.
So there's some kind of weird idealized passivity here I think. (Until Micaiah. She has to ask for others' forgiveness. I wonder if that counts as an inversion of the trope.)
no subject
Date: 2013-05-31 03:54 am (UTC)Julia
I think Julia, like Dierdre, has the potential to be incredibly interesting, but the games just…don’t…do…anything…with them. Julia, in particular, is left in such a strange situation, but she just kind of passively…hangs out…until the end of the game. It’s kind of disconcerting.
Lana
Agreed. It’s just so unfortunate so many of the kiddies are just not given much to go with. Her relationship with Julia could have been especially interesting…if we got more out of it.
Damn, couldn't they have Aideen show up as a Gotoh-style High Priest with a nice tome in the final chapter? Anything?
…Okay. This would have been AWESOME.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-02 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-31 07:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-31 12:02 pm (UTC)FE4 gives us Hilda, who's probably in her early 40s. She's evil and we happily kill her.
FE5 almost gets there with Eyvel, who is stated to be "about" 35 but if you do the math is probably closer to 38 or 39[*]. Archanea doesn't give us anything that I recall and I'm pretty sure Teeta in FE2 is on the low side of thirty.
FE12 provides that evil Emerina chick who runs the orphanage of child assassins. Dunno how old she is.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-31 02:27 pm (UTC)Isn't she 27? The one who jumped off a cliff?Would Niime count?
no subject
Date: 2013-05-31 02:33 pm (UTC)No, no, the lilac-haired bishop chick who controlled Katarina, Kleine, and the Roro/Legion boys. She was probably somewhere in her 30s.
Niime and Dara (NPC from FE8) are actually old. Crones. Ancient. There's just no mature/middle aged females. We have lots of active men in their 40s and fifties, and no female equivalent. At best we get Eyvel and Titania, and then Flavia. And Flavia's clearly a good deal younger than her male counterpart Basilio.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-31 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-31 05:34 pm (UTC)I've never felt sure about Selena but the FE8 cast in general is a bit less firm age-wise than most of the other gameverses. I mean, Seth looks like he could be in his mid or even late thirties but I've seen the argument made using in-game implied dates that he's far younger than that, possibly younger than Kyle.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-01 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-31 02:59 pm (UTC)Guess girls are either princesses or witches. :B
no subject
Date: 2013-06-01 01:17 am (UTC)Or soft spoken village girls. Or somewhat emotionally unstable knights.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-01 01:26 am (UTC)... Emotionally unstable knights?
no subject
Date: 2013-06-01 03:24 am (UTC)