good afternoon i want to talk about furiae again

i think the dev team of drakengard 1 failed at making her an uninteresting character. I think it comes down to her subversion of the archetype she was so clearly meant to embody

She's the damsel in distress; the lovely princess trapped in an enemy castle. BUT when you finally reach her, and you 'talk' to her, it turns out shes kind of a Terrible person?? and I LOVE that

princess peach and zelda are both good characters (i assume, havent played many of their games), but at some point, 'caring, loving, beautiful princess' is a tired trope. Even when the damsel has her Badass moments (aka sheik from zeldo), that subversion is-

-in and of itself, at this point expected due to the push for more self sufficient female characters. Furiae is the epitome of 'yes girl give us nothing' and i fucking love her for it.

She doesnt want to be the Goddess. She doesn't care about her people. She has no 'special talents' or cool skills, nor does she want any. She is self aware of her moral failings to the point where she kills herself over it. It's a great example of a negative character arch

and her resurrection as a horrible harpy creature hellbent on killing everyone who caused her such emotional distress is just icing on the cake. queen shit.

Like she is Undeniably in the wrong here. She IS the bad person. This isn't some 'innocent woman takes vengeance on the people that wronged her' story. But since everyone is EQUALLY wrong it feels very cathartic to see them destroy each other

Writing strong female characters isnt about writing tough characters. it's about writing complex, self-contradictory monsters who sew the seeds to their own destruction. the medusa archetype fucking slaps when it's done right (aka NOT as a symbol of female empowerment)

Writing a medusa archetype as an empowered woman who CHOOSES to act the way she does undermines the complexity of the character. The interest comes from a character being forced into a bad position, and either bending or breaking because of it

there are really really good empowered female characters (OBVIOUSLY) but sometimes empowering certain characters can actually remove what makes them interesting in the first place.

In regards to removing the 'flaws' from furiae in order to make her sympathetic, it simply can't be done. Her feelings towards Caim are a fundamental pillar of her character, and trying to ignore that fact does a disservice to her character-

-because thats where the CONFLICT is. that's the reason she feels so ugly. she KNOWS it's terrible, but can't bring herself to do anything for or against it because she is weak and she has an image to maintain. She's already at her breaking point at the start of the game!!

The problem is when stuff like that one manga says 'ah yes. we can make money if we fetishize this.' because of course that will sell copies (not to mention, the devs have no respect for furiae in the first place by design)

i just think that with like. half an hour of extra thought put towards her character and a little more respect on the dev's part, she could have been maybe one of drakenier's most complex and interesting characters

ANYWAYS thank you for coming to my ted talk i might have more to say later who knows. im always thinking about furiae and would love to do a Really deep dive into her character one day. this is all still fairly surface level lmao theres a lot to unpack here