Stereotypes

Fiora and stereotypes

One example of a character that breaks stereotypes is Fiora from Xenoblade Chronicles. Her story starts off with her living happily with her friends in colony 9. She cooks for her older brother and main protagonist/ love interest and is overall very pleasant. A bit further into the story, her home is attacked and she becomes a hostage seemingly falling into the damsel in distress trope. However, instead of the main character rushing in and saving the girl she is killed off. This subverts the player's expectations and sets up the story to come. I would categorize this series of events as a "subverted trope". Much later in the story, we find out that she somehow is alive and piloting an enemy mech, however, she does not recognize her friends. At this point in the story, her character falls into the category of a "double subverted trope", but her story progresses even more. Eventually, you find out that there is another person in her head and she finally regains control of herself, this creates a "zig-zagged trope" within her story. All seems to be getting back to normal until we find out that she is slowly dying in this new body of hers. However, instead of her telling the main character and placing herself into a position where she would be seen as helpless she keeps this to herself and presses on avoiding returning to the damsel in distress trope. When we reach the end of the story the main character kills a god and becomes one himself and uses this power to recreate the world. We start the final cutscene as Fiora in first-person perspective and catch up will everyone we met throughout the story, for some reason everyone is taken back when they see Fiora. Eventually, the camera zooms out when she reaches the main character and we see her back in her normal body from the beginning of the story. The build-up to this moment is all in an attempt to elicit an "intended audience reaction" of relief and happiness that things can finally return to normal. I think the writers did a wonderful job playing with different tropes throughout the story, and because of this Fiora will always be one of my favorite characters. 

When Fiora joins the party it's shortly after everyone falls from an enemy base and is split up. We start with the main character and Fiora on a beach and when Fiora wakes up she's back to herself, however, I think it could be cool if she still didn't recognize everyone but still joined the party. When the other character that shares a body with Fiora is in control she typically has a red aura surrounding her, so when she is engaged in combat the red could be brought into her attacks. I think this could have created a really cool dynamic tension between the different party members and added yet another subverted trope into her storyline where the player expects her to return to normal but she doesn't quite yet.