application.

[alrighty]

[ Player Name ] : Vivi
[ Personal DW ] : vivi
[ Age ] : 23
[ Timezone ] : EST
[ Other Characters ] : Zuko @ flammatory

[ Character's Name ] : Vivi Ornitier
[ Character's Age ] : His age is usually given as 9 years physically and mentally, but he's really only existed for 6 months.
[ Series ] : Final Fantasy IX
[ Canon Point ] : Shortly after defeating Kuja, but before his off-screen death.

[ History ] : The Final Fantasy wikia page on him. There's also a complete game script available for detailed reference.

[ Personality ] :

In a lot of ways, Vivi is a normal nine year old boy, and his speech reflects that. He shouts when he wants to, he gets excited about seeing plays, he pieces the puzzle of Kuja's connection to the Mist and the black mages together-- he has self-doubt, he cares about his friends, he doesn't want to be left behind. He misses his grandfather. All in all, despite what he is, Vivi is for the most part very normal, and it's important to him that he is.

He does also have a stutter, which I see as coming from how sheltered he was prior to the start of canon. Living with his grandpa in a cave for as long as he could remember (not very long) lead to him interacting with no one but his grandpa. It was only after the Qu died that Vivi was forced to leave and make his way to Alexandria during the opening movie, and once there he is overwhelmed by everything. Sure he must miss his grandpa and be grieving, but he bounced back pretty resiliently, and focused on getting to see the play even though his ticket was a fake. He can be nervous around others, and hesitate frequently in his speech along with his occasional stutter, but once Vivi gets used to being around them that tends to disappear for the most part. Though it still arises again when he's nervous.

Vivi tends to keep a lot to himself. He will take his time and turn things over in his own mind for quite a while before mentioning it to someone else, and even if directly questioned on what's preoccupying him, he'll brush it off if he isn't ready to talk. Although his friends are immensely important to him in the simplistic, childish way of not wanting to be alone, Vivi is actually very self-defined. He doesn't readily accept the answers that are put before him, and is determined to find out for himself what he considers black mages to be, whether their manufacture as weapons of war is something he should accept. He is very philosophical, and spends a lot of time thinking about questions of death and the afterlife, of what defines existence, and what makes an action moral. He does this because all of these topics relate to his life in a very direct, unavoidable way, and Vivi isn't content to just accept his feelings as they are. He wants to know why he feels that way, and if he's right to.

This leads to him being somewhat depressed, as a character. He spends time to himself, thinking and full of uncertainty and sorrow and anger. His friends are what pull him out of it. Every time Vivi has doubt about who or what he is, whether he should be alive, whether he's done the right thing in stopping the Mist and should be angry at Kuja-- every time, which is often-- Zidane or Eiko or someone else is there to reassure him. He relies on his friends to keep him on track and confident, and for the most part it works well. Over the course of the game Vivi grows more sure of himself and his decisions, and that's reflected in how his role in the plot grows more and more active.

When it comes to Kuja and the way the black mages are treated as puppets, Vivi becomes angry and defensive, in a way we don't see him be about anything else. By the end of the game he's certain of his role and those of the black mages, and this perspective extends to the Genomes. They aren't soulless or empty; they just have to reach for their individuality if given the chance, and anyone (namely Kuja) that takes advantage of them earns his ire. He even says that he hates Queen Brahne for what she's done to them, though in reality she had been manipulated much like everyone else, and he doesn't let go of this feeling easily. He takes betrayal hard, as we see not just here but when he finds out that the black mages had helped Kuja willingly on the slim chance that he could extend their lifespans, and he is outraged and shocked. He wants the best for them, and wants to understand.

At heart, Vivi is kind and selfless. He is extraordinarily loyal to his friends and will follow them through anything they need to do, no matter how dangerous. Although he can be scared and withdrawn, and tend not to share his self-doubt with others, he listens to his friends carefully and watches out for them. Even Puck, who showed him a moment of regard way in the first scene, is someone that he remembers by name and calls his friend. It's easy to get on his good side, and his bravery is unwavering, whether it's in pursuit of his own identity or his friends' individual quests.

Ultimately Vivi's fate is a tragic one, and while Zidane was gone between their fight in Memoria and his return in the final cut scene, he must've come to terms with that on his own. Somehow we see that there is a series of what look like clones of him, though they don't share his memories at all, implying that just like the rest of the black mages, he has 'stopped'-- died-- as he was not made to live longer than a manufactured doll. But this fate is one that he doesn't let determine who he is, instead choosing to stand up for what he feels is true in his heart, from his own experience. As he says when Zidane leaves, this is a lesson that he learned from him; that you don't need to always know why you feel something, you just have to be honest with who you are.

[ Strengths/Weaknesses ] :

Vivi is a black mage, and a particularly powerful one, at that. There is a list of his abilities available, and due to his canon point he knows all of them upon arrival. In terms of pure raw attack power, he is pretty much unmatched across his game, scarily enough, and anyone with an elemental weakness can be exploited heavily. His status effect skills are not particularly reliable, and his stronger spells drain his MP relatively fast-- which he can then regain, albeit slowly, with Osmose. He can also enchant at least Steiner's sword to hit with elemental magic as well as physical damage without taking his turn, and when tranced (emotionally pushed to the limit, or has taken a lot of damage across fights), Vivi can do two spells immediately in succession when it's his turn. This is called Double Black, and lasts for a short period of time.

That said, Vivi has two glaring weaknesses: he has no healing abilities, and he has no physical skills. His Drain spell gives him a trivial amount of HP, and similarly even when equipped Auto-Regen tends not to make up enough health for what he's used to taking in a turn. To be truly effective, Vivi needs to be part of a party, with a physical fighter acting as tank and especially a white mage healing each turn. He has a very low HP bar to make up for his high MP bar, and little way to defend himself from physical attacks. His magic resistance is high-- but hit him with a weapon and he'll take some serious damage. He's not especially hard to hit, either, but it's worth noting that he can KO even high level enemies in two or three turns. In a serious fight, he needs to be taken out quickly.

[ Other Important Facts ] : I'm going to be assuming he wasn't at his max level when he was taken, because frankly that is a ludicrous level of power. lol. In general he's around level 70 or so. In addition, if I play him here for long enough, he will run up to the end of his natural lifespan in about a year or so, and that'll need to be dealt with.

[ Sample ] :

1.
It was learning how to speak to people again that was the hardest part.

It was easy to say that things changed after Grandpa died, because they did, dramatically. But it was the little things he didn't expect that made him feel tight with sadness. Sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, he'd see Quina... Or he'd imagine the buildings around him destroyed like the ones in Lindblum. It wasn't even really that he missed his grandpa, though he did. It was that it made him so afraid, how everything had changed.

He didn't know anything anymore... Nothing was right. Suddenly whether he was human or not was important to him - and the other black mages were important to him, as people. He was angry now, at Dagger's mother and that man in white, like he'd never felt anger before, never contemplated on that kind of level. It shook him as if he'd fallen off an airship and somehow survived, stranded on the Outer Continent.

Except every time he thought that, his friends found a way to remind him that stranded was a word he had no right to use. When he walked into Eiko's house at Madain Sari and saw a space left for him at the table to eat, he remembered.

That night, when Zidane asked him if he'd sorted things through, he said, "Not really. But I'm moving on."

2.
I also have some sample threads available here. Please excuse the fact that I didn't have a journal made for him for most of it!

[ Questions? Comments? Concerns? ] : Nope!