Requisite Tidus bitchery

[fuyu]

The nephew's playing a new game of FFX, so this is kind of sticking in my head again.

Why, why, why does Tidus get so much shit for being a "whiner"?

Okay, yes. He has father issues out the wazoo, and that does get a little annoying. Keep playing. He has reasons for those, and has considerable character development relating to that.

Yes, the narration is a little annoying. That's because the whole first chunk of the game is a recap. He stops narrating when you get to Zanarkand, I promise.

Screaming outside of Kilika Temple? Well, it's better than just bottling up all his discomfort and letting it eat him inside, right? Or hauling off and hitting someone from all the stress? Saying "I kinda wanna scream" and then doing so and getting on with what you need to be doing is actually a quite healthy way of dealing with the situation.

For the most part, Tidus is just kind of a doofy, optimistic dork who tries hard to make the best of his really crummy situation. Hell, by the time you get to Besaid he's already had half a metric fuckton of shit dropped on him, and yet he resolves to make the best of what he's got and try not to worry. Sure, he doesn't entirely succeed, but that he has the presence of mind to decide that after his city's been attacked, he's been sucked into a new world and had to fight monsters, scrape together camp in an old ruin when he's probably never even spent a night without electricity before, then he gets rescued by people who are suspicious of him and the one friend he can make in that situation tells him that everything he knows was destroyed a thousand years ago, and THEN he gets separated from them... I mean, really, and that's just the beginning of what happens to him. This is culture shock x100.

Again, sure, he has father issues up the ying-yang, but other than that he is remarkably well-adjusted. And he gets better as time progresses and he gets used to Spira, and he even eventually overcomes his issues. He's not a whiner, damn it. T_T

*protective of the dork*

Edit: Some spoilers in the comments. For the... one or two people who might read this post and haven't got that far yet. XD

Comments

[laylah.livejournal.com]

I get irritated when people bitch about Tifa, too, for similar reasons.

*HEARTS*

No, her behavior wasn't perfect. But that's a factor of being human. And it's certainly no argument for putting Cloud in some yaoi pairing that requires a lot of mental gymnastics to justify. >->

[fuyu]

*HEARTS BACK* *uses only icon with Tifa in it*

Srsly. You know, for the longest time I couldn't get any sort of bead on Tifa. It started to bug me that I couldn't, and I'd seen every date but hers, so I started a playthrough to get that and paid attention to her and I realized, uh, wow, she's just as confused as Cloud is. Worse, even, because Cloud's at least relatively sure of himself until Sephiroth starts poking him directly in the mental problems. Tifa has zero frame of reference for what to do, nobody else to turn to, and probably spends most or all Disc 1 wondering if SHE'S the crazy one. I am very sympathetic to her now. *pettins for Tifa*

[laylah.livejournal.com]

I was kind of always predisposed to like her, because girls that hit things with their fists = totally my type. But man, the more you watch what she goes through, trying to figure out what the hell is going on with Cloud and trying to help him when she clearly doesn't know what he needs -- yeah. ow. love. I think a lot of the reason I came out of AC shipping them so hard is that I want her to be happy, and she's clearly wanted to be able to be with him for a very long time.

[fuyu]

Yes. Ow. ;_; And she's so much better in AC, and Cloud's showing signs of healing, and just... it's not even just on her end, Cloud was infatuated with her as a child and does not seem to have stopped. They would be so sweet, if they can ever hack down the mile-thick jungle of issues between them. XD Cloud especially seems to neurotically guard his most precious feelings, so coaxing any action out of him towards Tifa, even if it was Tifa doing the coaxing, would be a tricky proposition not unlike trying to ply a scrappy feral cat with food so it will get out of the rain gutter. XD

[laylah.livejournal.com]

Yes yes. I ship them hard, and I write them when I can, but it's so tough, because they have all those years of tangled history and misunderstanding and trouble to work through.

...When he looks at her at the end of AC and says "I'm home," though, omg. I cry. I read so much depth into that -- not just "I've survived, I'm going to pull through," but "I've decided to live now, and come all the way back instead of clinging to the past." I really need that to be their happy ending. Or at least the point at which their ending can start working on being happy. ^^;

[fuyu]

So true. ;_; ... That's also the reason I have trouble comprehending watching AC first. I can't imagine watching them in that movie without knowledge of their history and their issues and oh. ;_;

YES. Aieee. The certainty in that "Tadaima" is just. Oh. "I'm home. I'm where I belong." That is totally the starting point for their happy ending.

icooooon. *woob* from a canonwhore perspective that scene bothered me, but oh god was it sweet.

[laylah.livejournal.com]

Hah, yeah, I sort of suspect that Square treats canon less like rules than like guidelines, with a lot of the new FF7 material coming out. Which is sort of maddening -- omg what really happened there -- but also kind of helpful, when one wants to, say, write Zack-centric the-week-in-Nibelheim fic. *cough*

[elanor-pam.livejournal.com]

Just want to say I'm totally WORDing you two here.

Uh, yeah, that. Because I haven't played X yet :D;