auronlu | So what does "Lulu" mean, anyway?

She asks, too lazy to go look it up in name dictionaries.

I had two very large problems with this character. Okay, three.

I see her as a rather formidable young woman, strong-willed, somewhat sour and prickly, and frighteningly dangerous in battle. (Possibly I boosted her magic a bit earlier than some people do.) She seems a cool cookie who isn't alarmed or upset by much, any more than Auron is. "So together", as Rikku complained. Yet Lulu is a silly name. It sounds like a toy poodle.

WTF?!!!!!

When I first started writing all the fanfic that's been pouring out of me, I steadfastly refused to write "Lulu". I wrote "Lu" instead. Hence Auronlu. I've gotten used to it now, but "Lulu" still feels a little weird.

The other problem is the plush toys, for the same reason. I do not need my scary badass Dark Mage of Doom chanelling her power through a Pokémon, Beanie Baby, or other gratuitously cute fuzzy object, thankyou. However, I had a discussion about this on Adultfanfiction's forums that helped me get a little better grip on this; they're like the Shinto nature-spirits that show up in Miyazaki films. Okay, I grok. Spirits come in cute packages. And dark mages come in travel-inappropriate boob-baring corsets, never getting sunburned even in the Calm Lands.

I still can't bring myself to mention the cutsey things when writing Lu in battle. She casts fireballs. A plush toy doesn't. Okay?

And yeah, last but not least, I can't pretend I don't enjoy looking at her physical attributes, but I do wish that they weren't so gratuitously jiggly. I object to the deliberate, "look, here are my GINORMOUS WOBBLY TITS!" victory pose when she lands a critical hit and vaporizes a bad guy to a smoking cinder. They are perfectly adequate tits, but at that point, I want a badass comment, and possibly a look of withering disdain and nonchalance. I have a sinking feeling the fanboys are being invited to enjoy her tits, and not the character. This irks me. The character comes first; being totally droolworthy is icing on the cake. Auron's not very attractive (or at least I think he looks like an old shoe) and he's a fabulous character.

Whoops, that's enough posting for the day!

But one last thing.

Dear Square, if I buy FFX-2, I'm going to enjoy bits of it and be horribly horribly disappointed by having everyone reduced to Barbie Dolls. Had you done that to Lulu, I would have been forced to destroy something. I may still have to buy it, just to get a little more backstory for fanfic writing purposes. That means I'm going to have to watch Lulu with Wakka.

No love.