LogFAQs > #934857191

You got your wish, Alanna.

#95 - Shirley Fennes (Legendia)
The power to annihilate people is not something Id wish on anyone.

What a spectacularly horrible excuse for a character, let alone a main heroine.

Its hard to know where to start with Shirley. Maybe that ear-bleeding squeak that she calls a voice? Its been months since my last playthrough of this game and I can still hear her shouting Senel! in my head. And it was intentionally that way! It gets deeper when she turns evil, so the capacity to speak in a way that doesnt have me cringing every time her mouth opens is there. This was actual voice direction.

Or how about the fact that her entire role for the first three-quarters of the main story is to get kidnapped over and over and over? And then it even happens again in the Character Quests when shes supposed to not be deadweight anymore. Its like a running gag except Im quite sure it wasnt meant to be anything of the sort.

Really, though, none of that matters. What matters is that shes the only playable character in the series who tries to commit genocide. She tries to tell Senel she loves him roughly fifteen minutes after Stella dies, and when he (very reasonably) shuts her down, she decides life isnt worth living and no one cares for her, despite the fact that she had a group of close to a dozen people risking their lives repeatedly to save her. Ive seen people try to defend her by saying that the genocide part doesnt come until later, because she didnt really remember what becoming the Merines meant until it was too late. And technically, yeah, thats true. The genocide part comes when Maurits, who is very obviously evil at this point given that hes had no less than three complete monologues IN HER PRESENCE explaining in great detail his desire to rid the world of Orerines, somehow manipulates her into believing Senel never cared about her in any capacity. Thats equally as stupid and I dont understand how its supposed to make her look any better. The truly amazing part comes in the Character Quests where she claims that Fenimore was her first friend. Not the guy who spent years putting his life on the line to protect her. No, the racist girl that spent most of her screentime screaming at Shirley for daring to associate with that guy. Its maddening.

They try to wrap her up in this adorable little bow by giving her a cutesy design and making her all dorky in the Character Quests and making her the Oh, I just want to be everyones friend and if we just talk through our differences Im sure well get along girl and giving her an eventual bond with the other girls, and it just doesnt work. Too much damage has been done. Sure, shes not a jilted goddess on the edge of sanity anymore, but she is still a clingy, jealous girl for no good reason. And everybody treats her like shes amazing. Like, why is she the one talking Chloe off the ledge during Chloes Quest? Chloe barely knows her at that point. Their relationship is somewhat heartwarming by the end, but the lead-up feels so forced, because everything with Shirley feels forced.

And shes not even good in battle. Casters are worse than melee fighters in Legendia to begin with, and the attempt to make her a hybrid just ensured that she was especially poor. Most of her spells are already known by the other mages in the party and she doesnt learn unique ones until veeeery late in the Character Quests.

She contributes nothing. The party is better without her in it, but its not like shes a good supporting character or villain, either. She plays so many roles throughout Legendia and theyre all terrible. Her sister gets 2% of the screen time that she does and still manages to be a hundred times more interesting. Shirley is a truly deserving last-place finisher.

TL;DR: Laughable main heroine. Laughable villain. Laughable character in general. I stopped wanting to rescue her before too long. Makes almost every scene shes in worse. Awful in every possible respect.

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