Quote Originally Posted by arcanedude34 View Post
Mkay. I don't hate Rosa. I can't hate anyone as paper-thin as Rosa. There's nothing there for me to hate. She's just... there. What I meant by her being a side-character is that she has almost no importance to the overall plot. You have to rescue her a few times, she helps you out a few times, then she more or less becomes nothing but a plot device for Cecil to want to do what he wants to do, until he finds about the Lunarians, etc. I could care less if she's "technically" the female lead, she's still unimportant and (at least for me) hard to get attatched to.

Your idea that she started the stereotype is grossly misinformed, as you seem to think that stereotypes like this were not around before Final Fantasy. Look through games, books, stories, movies, shows, etc. before FFIV came out and I guarantee you'll find more than your fair share of Rosas.

Your arguements about "why would you care about what a loser says blah blah blah" is about the intillectual equivilent of "takes one to know one" (very similar to it anyway) I really don't think you made one good point, and I only stated that you needed a life at first, and only started stating how wrong I felt your position was once people responded to my statement.

By all means, take ff the kid gloves, tell my WHY I should like Rosa. Hell, it's worked before (I used to hate Edward until someone convinced me he wasn't half bad...) I have an open mind when it comes to this kind of thing, but if I can't see a character's merits, then I wont like the character. Plain and simple.

And, by the way, every time I said Rosa sucked, I said something like "imo" or "I'm sick of..." so I'm not saying my view is worth any more than yours, I'm just saying it's my view.

First five sentences are a lie.

Rest of the first paragraph ignores that she comforted Cecil all through his time as a Dark Knight, a stable reminder of love and light, especially the kind he has hidden deep inside him, in a time of blood-stained sins. It forgets she went after him across the desert by herself rather than, like some weepy, weak women would do, waiting back home sobbing over the assumed tragic loss of her love. It fails to recognize the role she had in Rydia getting over her fear of fire so they could reach Fabul, and how her very existence and arrival in the crystal room in Fabul at the perfect moment (if you consider the entire set of events, she likely heard how dire it was and rushed to help him from that) kept Kain and Golbez from killing everyone in the party that day.

Your second paragraph misconstrues my entire point. The SPECIFIC white mage stereotype embodied in Rosa BEGAN with Rosa. Characters similar to her with various mixes of traits and personality quirks have existed in fiction prior to this game, but she is the first female lead in the series to offer this exact mix. As a result, she is the template upon which all later characters in her role are based. Yes, Aeris too. But while we're on this thread, they say there's no such thing as a new story, only a new way of telling it. If Rosa is as unoriginal as you claim, so is any character you've ever liked.

Third paragraph is a cover.

I already know any attempt to get you to look deeper into Rosa is doomed to fail, much as I wish I could naively believe otherwise. You busted right out the gate with how much you think Rosa sucks, and I know psychology. The more you repeat something, the more strongly you hold on to it, the truer it is. You aren't coming into this with an open mind. You're coming into it certain that Rosa is a terrible character, and you'll be seeking every way you can to prove that remains the case. This is not an accusation that you knowingly don't want to see more to her, it's me telling you that when you've already made up your mind on an issue, you go through confirmation bias, even subconsciously. And with this character, it's easy to twist everything from a strength into a weakness. I saw one person do it superbly to the point where she sounded more villainous than Golbez.

I don't see how "I'm sick of..." is a statement of knowing it's viewpoint, but that seems like a non-issue to me beyond that it shows you already made up your mind about her, which blinds you to the possibility that you might not have a full picture of who Rosa is and what she's like. "Truth" is subjective in most cases, sure, but you can't strive to the closest thing you can get to an objective perspective if you already "know" with this much certainty that you're right.