Wuk Sucks

[DarkMasamune]

She's OK to me, but she truly reminded me of OG Naruto and that felt weird. You know, the really optimistic, quirky, cringe, fun character that speaks loudly and adores food. Was waiting for her to shout dattebayo bro.

That being said she's OK. I came across more unbearable characters (looking at you, Asahi).

[LittleArrow]

She's OK to me, but she truly reminded me of OG Naruto and that felt weird. You know, the really optimistic, quirky, cringe, fun character that speaks loudly and adores food. Was waiting for her to shout dattebayo bro.

That being said she's OK. I came across more unbearable characters (looking at you, Asahi).

I agree there are more characters that make my skin crawl than Wuk Lamat, the difference is.. I wasn't force to be stuck with them for hours on end (I think the most dialogue heavy character in all of XIV history) and possibly well into the next 2yrs of patches.

[BabaM]

She's OK to me, but she truly reminded me of OG Naruto and that felt weird. You know, the really optimistic, quirky, cringe, fun character that speaks loudly and adores food. Was waiting for her to shout dattebayo bro.

That being said she's OK. I came across more unbearable characters (looking at you, Asahi).

That's because Asahi is the bad guy. He's supposed to be unlikable. He wasn't the protagonist. Unlike Alphinaud who was unlike in ARR, Wuk Lamat never had any moments where she was torn down and built herself back up.

[Dogempire]

She's OK to me, but she truly reminded me of OG Naruto and that felt weird. You know, the really optimistic, quirky, cringe, fun character that speaks loudly and adores food. Was waiting for her to shout dattebayo bro.

That being said she's OK. I came across more unbearable characters (looking at you, Asahi).

The biggest difference between Wuk Lamat and characters like OG Naruto and other sorts of "golden retriever" type characters (that are actually well-written) is that they have their own struggles that serve to ground them, Naruto is the way he is because he seeks attention and approval from *someone*, because he's all alone and shunned by the village. In that sense, the way he is is justified.

I absolutely adore the "golden retriever" character archetype and it's lowkey one of my favorites to the point I really liked Wuk Lamat at the beginning and thought she would become one of my favorite characters, but there's just no substance to the way she acts, no compelling and underlying reason for her positivity and optimism aside from "Well daddy likes peace so I like it too."

People who are overly nice and extremely positive/energetic/silly usually have some underlying trauma that makes them act the way they are, Wuk Lamat has no such trauma, no issues of abandonment by her real father, hell she doesn't even seem to be curious who her real father is. She never saw the horrors of war and that's why she came to value peace, she doesn't have an irrational fear of having the people around her hurt which is why she so stubbornly clings to the idea of peace, she's just a talking piece for a very generic morality of "Gais, fighting is bad and let's all work together"

Hell, they don't even go the route of making it so that Wuk Lamat lacks the power to maintain the peace that her father created, maybe they could have explored that the only reason Gulool Ja Ja was able to create peace was because behind the scenes there were overwhelming acts of violence to reign the citizens in that maybe have been lost to generations, maybe they could have put a twist on her father and made her suffer some sort of breakdown because the person she believed raised her wasn't the ideal she believed him to be.

Just ahhh, traumatize the characters, SE. If you're going to create a character that's too good for this world then you need to mess them up mentally by making them experience the horrors of the world or have things that they don't deserve to have happen to them end up messing them up mentally.

It makes for compelling writing and it makes us want to cheer for the character even more and see them succeed, if we actually watched Wuk Lamat struggle to come to terms with *something* before finally getting the resolve she needed at the end of the last trial because she doesn't want to let her friend fight alone and actually wants to confront her problems, then it would actually work, or at least not be so crappy

[DarkMasamune]

The biggest difference between Wuk Lamat and characters like OG Naruto and other sorts of "golden retriever" type characters (that are actually well-written) is that they have their own struggles that serve to ground them, Naruto is the way he is because he seeks attention and approval from *someone*, because he's all alone and shunned by the village. In that sense, the way he is is justified.

Damn you're right, I totally forgot that aspect of Naruto.

She's Naruto minus the obvious attention-seeker side (that is warranted since Naruto was discarded and botherline hated by the village).

So an annoying kid that got everything they want and clings to their new friends whilst wanting to be the main character in every situation.

[Malthir]

Damn you're right, I totally forgot that aspect of Naruto.

She's Naruto minus the obvious attention-seeker side (that is warranted since Naruto was discarded and botherline hated by the village).

So an annoying kid that got everything they want and clings to their new friends whilst wanting to be the main character in every situation.

Fantasy trust fund brat. :'D

[ThorneDynasty]

Fantasy trust fund brat. :'D

I kind of pushed it out of my mind in the moment, but now it's coming back to me, didn't she even have a line telling Bakool Ja Ja off for thinking he deserves the throne because of his birth? Or maybe it was another character on Wuk Lamat's or Koana's side, but boy, in retrospect I was giving the writing so much slack in the first half, because what I do remember is that the line was said completely unironically and without challenge.

[DarkMasamune]

I kind of pushed it out of my mind in the moment, but now it's coming back to me, didn't she even have a line telling Bakool Ja Ja off for thinking he deserves the throne because of his birth? Or maybe it was another character on Wuk Lamat's or Koana's side, but boy, in retrospect I was giving the writing so much slack in the first half, because what I do remember is that the line was said completely unironically and without challenge.

Yep, she does, right at the start when Bakool Ja Ja says that he should get the throne since he's two-headed.

[Dogempire]

Damn you're right, I totally forgot that aspect of Naruto.

She's Naruto minus the obvious attention-seeker side (that is warranted since Naruto was discarded and botherline hated by the village).

So an annoying kid that got everything they want and clings to their new friends whilst wanting to be the main character in every situation.

I wouldn't quite say that, I'd compare her more to an AI chatbot who's only programmed to say certain things/act a certain way and is predisposed to respond to situations in very predictable ways. Wuk has character traits that make her seem human enough but when something unpredictable or outside of her usual programming happens (Like new information that she's never heard before about the WoL and Scions' adventures) instead of being curious and asking about it, she instead ignores it and finds something else to talk about so she can stay in her parameters.

Wuk doesn't feel like an actual person because she lacks any deeper levels of emotion besides the surface-level stuff she spouts. She actually feels like she runs on ChatGPT or some sort of AI chatbot software.