{"id":53949,"date":"2022-03-04T06:00:01","date_gmt":"2022-03-04T11:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=53949"},"modified":"2022-03-03T11:44:05","modified_gmt":"2022-03-03T16:44:05","slug":"ff12-sightseeing-tour-part-8-the-protagonist-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=53949","title":{"rendered":"FF12 Sightseeing Tour Part 8: The Protagonist Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week Rocketeer talks about Vaan’s scene with the princess<\/a>. Which means it’s time for us to have “the protagonist conversation” about Final Fantasy XII. To be honest, I hate this conversation. It’s an unproductive time-sink, and there are always a handful of people willing to argue about it until the internet runs out of storage space.<\/p>\n

The argument begins when someone complains about the apparent protagonist of a game with an ensemble cast. Maybe they’re boring, unlikable, inert, or they have no personal stakes in the plot. So the critic will say so:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Critic: Man, Bob is just the worst main character.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And then it happens:<\/p>\n

Oh Mr. Critic, I see you fell into the classic blunder. You assumed that Bob was the main character. Sure, he’s the only one present for the entire story, he’s the audience POV character, and he’s the most prominent character on the cover, but that doesn’t mean he’s the MAIN character. You sweet summer simpleton.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you really paid attention to this story on a thematic level and you understood how it fits into the overall lore of the setting, you’d realize that the actual<\/b> main character is Bob’s bulldog Mr. Scruffy. Scruffs is the first character we see after the title card, and the way he growls at Dr. Crazo shows that he knew Crazo was going to betray the group long before anyone else in the party. This gives Mr. Scruffy agency that nobody else in the story demonstrates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also, if you look at how this series handles pet sidekicks you’d realize that… [3,000 words of conjecture, selective wiki citations, and fan-wank.]<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If you’re foolish enough to argue that Mr. Scruffy isn’t a good main character either, then your opponent will tag someone else in and they’ll argue that no – wrong again, dipshit<\/i>. The main character is actually Princess Hotpants. And if you shut down that line of argument then there’s another guy in line who wants to sell you the idea that the main character is actually Jimmy Sidekick. And right behind that guy is someone who says they can prove<\/b> to you that the main character is actually the villain somehow, because fuck you and your logic. Then there’s another guy who wants to make the case that the REAL main character is the nameless flower girl you bump into at the start of Act II, and another guy with a theory that the Flower Girl is actually the capital-G God of the universe and the whole story is just her daydream.<\/p>\n

And while all of this is going on, everyone is going to want to split hairs with you over the differences between “main character”, “POV character”, “author insert”, “audience surrogate”, and “protagonist”.<\/p>\n

Have fun!<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

The problem here isn’t that people make annoying arguments. If we got rid of all the annoying arguments, the internet would be out of content by Tuesday. No, the annoying thing is that you can’t actually disprove<\/b> what these folks are saying. Sure, you can argue that their argument is weak and implausible, but you can’t corner them with a well-placed QED and shut them down in the same way you can refute 1+1=potatoe.Actually, you could argue that this would fall under “Not Even Wrong<\/a>“.<\/span><\/p>\n

When ActualLee shows up and argues that the protagonist is actually<\/i> Mr. Scruffy, he’s just engaging in a really radical style of literary analysis. As a critic, I can’t rule ActualLee’s suggestions as out-of-bounds without also invalidating my own analysis. If we outlaw subjective interpretation, then all we’re left with is the obstinate literalism of CinemaSins<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There’s a performative aspect to this sort of thing. It can be fun to propose and advance ideas that other people never considered. Things like Deckard being a replicant<\/a>,Okay, this one is old hat now. But there was a time in the pre-internet 80s where this idea was brand-new and mind-blowing.<\/span> or that Pixar movies all take place in the same universe<\/a>, or even suggesting that Ferris Bueller is living in a “Groundhog Day”-style time loop<\/a>. And of course there’s Indoctrination Theory<\/a>, which people are still<\/b> advocating as a fix for Mass Effect 3’s broken ending<\/a>, eight years after the game came out. The problem isn’t that ActualLee is looking for hidden meaning or alternative interpretations to a story. That’s fine. The problem is that he’s using these alternative interpretations to attempt to shut down criticism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You can’t claim that Vaan is a shitty protagonist if Vaan isn’t the protagonist, and so you’re not allowed to make your case until you first prove<\/b> that he is the protagonist, and good luck litigating that in an interpretive framework where anyone – or even no-one – can be the<\/b> protagonist, a<\/b> protagonist, or hey, just what <\/i>is<\/i><\/b> a protagonist, anyway<\/i>?<\/p>\n

Lit majors are taught to look for meaning and messages in a work, and it’s considered totally valid to find meaning that the author didn’t put there on purpose.\u00a0 The author is dead<\/a>, and ActualLee has the body in the trunk of his car.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Having said all that…<\/p>\n

Vaan is a Lousy Protagonist<\/h3>\n

If you haven't played the game and are having trouble keeping track of the characters, just remember than Vaan is the bored child with nothing to contribute. You can usually find him center-frame.<\/div>
If you haven't played the game and are having trouble keeping track of the characters, just remember than Vaan is the bored child with nothing to contribute. You can usually find him center-frame.<\/div><\/p>\n

Nothing about this guy works. He’s an audience surrogate that doesn’t ask questions on behalf of the audience. He’s a POV character that’s absent from many pivotal scenes. He’s a protagonist with no arc. He’s a leading man that blunders past two different suggested romances without noticing. He’s a hero that never impacts the plot and has little to no agency within the story. He’s the character that takes up the most space on the box while having the least interesting design.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You could argue that he’s the main character because he’s got the best stats. But if making the player more powerful is all it takes to make you the main character, then allow me to nominate the Strategy Guide for the position. Vaan’s stats are nice and all, but they’re not nearly as game-breaking as the description of how the byzantine and bizarre bazaar<\/a> works.<\/p>\n

He doesn’t drive the plot. Maybe he has a little agency at the start when he accidentally blunders into some treasure, but once Ashe joins the party he becomes just another lackey in her entourage and spends the rest of the game orbiting her. Which might be okay if we assume he’s handing the protagonist ball to someone else, but then Ashe can’t do the one thing protagonists need to do, which is make decisions<\/b>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His motivation of wanting to be a sky pirate is a good idea, but it doesn’t work because the game doesn’t do<\/b> anything with it. Balthier is positioned in the story to be his mentor, but he never does any sky pirating, he never teaches the kid anything, and the two never bond. Obi-Wan never handed the kid a lightsaber, told him about the force, or taught him to fight. Shit, the two don’t even talk to<\/b> each other after Penelo is rescued. All we do is fly Ashe around in an airship. Sometimes. When it isn’t broken or grounded by contrivances.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vaan isn’t training to be a sky pirate, he’s training to be a royal chauffeur.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Go ahead, be the protagonist. \/ Oh no, this is your story. You go ahead. \/ I couldn't possibly. You do it. \/ Oh please, you're doing me a favor. Go right ahead and take charge. \/ I really don't want to steal your story. \/ Etc.<\/div>
Go ahead, be the protagonist. \/ Oh no, this is your story. You go ahead. \/ I couldn't possibly. You do it. \/ Oh please, you're doing me a favor. Go right ahead and take charge. \/ I really don't want to steal your story. \/ Etc.<\/div><\/p>\n

Yes, this scene where he talks to Ashe is really good. You could use this scene as a starting point for a journey. You could use this scene as the turning point in a journey. And maybe you could even make this moment the completion of an ongoing journey. But you can’t build an entire arc out of a singular point. This scene introduces some interesting ideas, holds them up just long enough to make us curious about them, and then drops them and wanders off forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week Rocketeer talks about Vaan’s scene with the princess. Which means it’s time for us to have “the protagonist conversation” about Final Fantasy XII. To be honest, I hate this conversation. It’s an unproductive time-sink, and there are always a handful of people willing to argue about it until the internet runs out of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[612],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrospectives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53949"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53958,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53949\/revisions\/53958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}