There's a lot of stuff in here that reminds me of the fan-theories from FFVIII. I watched a playthrough of XIII because I knew I wouldn't enjoy it myself. I agree with all the complaints about the idiocy of the characters, and their contradictory natures that The Spoony Experiment brings up. I saw very little if any character development. And I certainly don't recall a whole lot of explanation. Was any of that stuff addressed in XIII itself, or is it from supplementary material like books, wiki/codex stuff, or in the sequels (which I know next to nothing about)

Half of the claims supporting her character, I have a lot of trouble believing the writers could properly convey considering how incompetent they were in the basic plot structure, I have a lot of doubt believing they could be so adept at something as nuanced as her personality flaws being properly explained and explored and worked through

And like it or not, no matter how frequent or infrequent, she is now known for the scenes where she's lashing out irrationally. And while I may not be aware of any worthwhile explanation for it. I don't agree that hitting and slapping and yelling at your comrades is very productive and rational. So at best, she's broken and needs therapy, and at worst, she's an unhinged sociopath who doesn't know how to handle having allies

At least with Cloud there was an entire section of the game you could play through that explained what happened. I don't recall very many flashbacks, especially not playable ones(?) that justify her behavior in the base game of XIII the first one

But maybe it's been so long that I'm just focusing on the bad taste the rest of the game left and have forgotten the few redeeming qualities it may have had in its plot and characters

But honestly, if all that stuff explaining and justifying her is only found in supplementary material, then I think that's probably a pretty bad excuse to say it's okay how she behaves in the main game, when that's all we had to go on initially. But if I missed something, then I concede there may be more to it. But I would find it hard for that extra information to make me see her as a better character

In the end I think she's just a badly written character, because I know a lot of better writers would have used that material and created something more memorable out of it, assuming it's in the main base game, and I've just forgotten, that kinda goes to show how pitifully it was handled that it wasn't presented as a huge part of her story