FFVI - thoughts on Locke
Dec. 14th, 2012 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wallwalker posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
personalapocalypseLocke really doesn't do a good job of protecting anyone, does he? Not in the game, or in the backstory for the game, at any rate. (I'm not bashing him. I like Locke. This is more of an exploration of his various issues.)
He doesn't protect Rachel, of course. And presumably that's the whole root of his issues. He can't protect her from falling, he can't make her amnesia go away, he can't be there when she dies to help keep her safe.
He tries to protect two ladies in the course of the game, and in the end, what happens to them both? Something happens to both of them, on his watch. Terra ends up transforming and flying away in agony. Celes does something even more potentially horrible - she teleports away with Kefka in the heart of the Empire, presumably opening herself up to being imprisoned as a traitor and sentenced to execution again, or worse, Kefka's personal prisoner.
In fact, in two of those cases (Rachel and Celes,) the ladies end up in trouble to protect him. Rachel falls because she pushes him out of the way when a bridge collapses, and falls in his place. She protected him, but hurt herself in the process. Think, then, of how much it must have hurt him when Celes did something very similar - when Celes actually put herself into potentially worse danger by teleporting away with the Imperial general and his soldiers who were about to attack Locke and their friends. These were the same people who'd almost executed her for treason before; at the time, he had absolutely no reason to expect that they wouldn't kill her outright.
(You could make the same argument for Terra, but it's less severe and less personal - Locke helped convince Terra to use her powers to help the Returners, and as a result she transformed, which caused her pain.)
I suppose that my point isn't that Locke feels this burning need to protect women; it's more that he keeps watching women that he cares about (romantically or not) end up hurt to protect him, and I think that the only way he knows to prevent that is to be the protector, to make sure that any harm that happens to him comes down on him and not them. But not only does it not work, it's not healthy for him, and he's going to have to deal with it before he can have a healthy relationship. He's going to have to get used to being in a relationship where they're perfectly capable of protecting each other.
(Just some thoughts that I had while trying to plot something that I'm still working on. Hopefully it'll come together soon.)
He doesn't protect Rachel, of course. And presumably that's the whole root of his issues. He can't protect her from falling, he can't make her amnesia go away, he can't be there when she dies to help keep her safe.
He tries to protect two ladies in the course of the game, and in the end, what happens to them both? Something happens to both of them, on his watch. Terra ends up transforming and flying away in agony. Celes does something even more potentially horrible - she teleports away with Kefka in the heart of the Empire, presumably opening herself up to being imprisoned as a traitor and sentenced to execution again, or worse, Kefka's personal prisoner.
In fact, in two of those cases (Rachel and Celes,) the ladies end up in trouble to protect him. Rachel falls because she pushes him out of the way when a bridge collapses, and falls in his place. She protected him, but hurt herself in the process. Think, then, of how much it must have hurt him when Celes did something very similar - when Celes actually put herself into potentially worse danger by teleporting away with the Imperial general and his soldiers who were about to attack Locke and their friends. These were the same people who'd almost executed her for treason before; at the time, he had absolutely no reason to expect that they wouldn't kill her outright.
(You could make the same argument for Terra, but it's less severe and less personal - Locke helped convince Terra to use her powers to help the Returners, and as a result she transformed, which caused her pain.)
I suppose that my point isn't that Locke feels this burning need to protect women; it's more that he keeps watching women that he cares about (romantically or not) end up hurt to protect him, and I think that the only way he knows to prevent that is to be the protector, to make sure that any harm that happens to him comes down on him and not them. But not only does it not work, it's not healthy for him, and he's going to have to deal with it before he can have a healthy relationship. He's going to have to get used to being in a relationship where they're perfectly capable of protecting each other.
(Just some thoughts that I had while trying to plot something that I'm still working on. Hopefully it'll come together soon.)
