Lightning. It flashes bright, then fades away. It can't protect. It only destroys
To them, we are just pets. I've been so blind! I was born into a Fal'Cie world, raised on a Fal'Cie leash, without a master to follow... My life had no purpose.
In a field of male protagonists, many of whom have a rather rosy disposition, the female Lightning stands out a bit. What is interesting to me about her fro ma purely aesthetic perspective is that, despite making a female character similar in personality to Squall and early game Cloud, Lightning not only surpasses them, but does so easily. Throw into that that square resisted the temptation to make her some kind of femme fatale and she was already off to a good start.
She is simply a female soldier, who is many ways flawed.She's asocial, single-minded, and too proud to let anyone help her. She joins the army in the first place While she is motivated by her love for her sister and her want to take care of, and later rescue , her she often loses sight of her goals pursuing whatever is in front of her. The end result is that when the party gets together for the first time, she punches out snow, punches out Fang, insults Sazh and alienates Vanille. The only person who sticks with her in spite of her foul personality is Hope, who finds some appeal in her rough nature given the personal tragedies he also endures. After concluding that she couldn't shake him, the pair have a series of conversations that I feel are some of the best in the whole series, let alone game. At first, this effects Hope in the wrong way, as he decides to walk the path of vengeance just like Lightning. But ultimately, he awakens some kind of sisterly affection in her that she should have been showing towards Serah and Lightning slowly begins to thaw and see the errors of her anti-social ways.
The two of them grow together and by the end, Lightning realizes just how foolish she has been and grows. This development equips her and her alone to grapple with the realities of the tyrannical Fal'Cie and equips her to make the decision to take down the system that she had served so loyally up to that point. I remember when the advertisements for this game were running, there was a line about " It is their battle to survive each other" and i feel like that is both really accurate and applies very strongly to lightning. When FFXIII is at its best it is when the clash of personalities in the party crates conflict and raises issues, with the real challenge not being the conquest of bad guys, but the ability of 6 people to co-exist. While this gets watered down and diluted later in the game, that early game writing was awesome and Lightning is its main beneficiary.
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