#Rosa Joanna Farrell

[redwlngs]

this is my contribution for the night byebye

[iylisss]

Baron trio moment (was too tired for big art)

[zottower]

I don't know, do they kiss or hug in Tower of Zot ? Hug would be more logical, that's what happens in the 3D version. But on the GBA version (the one I played many times), it's unclear. Maybe one day I'll make an other version with Rosa's green outfit and Cecil's blue-grey armor and just the hug.

[liketheinferno2]

[estinininininen]

square loves their slender heroes but consider ffiv golbez and cecil probably would have similar physiques as brothers. cecil harvey growing up a weedy little kid like he missed essential nutrients lunarians need or was sick a lot, barely filling out before he starts dark knight training and then that draws his energy too

then he becomes a paladin, tankiest of tanks, and believes in taking care of himself again and eating right and training up and becomes, to use the technical term, a brick shithouse

the snes couldn't display it properly without combusting on the spot

all of baron when he comes back to save them: holy shit his balls dropped

kain at the airship meeting rockets past all the stages of bisexual awakening confusion and decides to double down and be even more of a dick to cecil, but like a little boy pushing a crush into mud cause he doesn't know what else to DO with his FEELINGS, WHEN DID HE GET BICEPS

rosa the second she is freed: 👀👅

[igura]

😳😌🙂

[joana-de-artes]

A Rosa to go with Cecil

[katkeyboardmastah]

Final Fantasy 4 The After Years doodles??? In 2023??? It's more likely than you think.

[freesiavacadoo]

final fantasy the fourth

[iyliss]

Baron trio :D

[redwlngs]

ffiv headcanon: rosa tops

[iylisss]

Rosa, The Sun

[daily-rayless]

25 Years of Rosa

I've been doing this character appreciation series for a while now, and it's about time we got to a very special character – the first character from the first JRPG I ever played that I first really fangirled over – the first character that was my Number One Favorite Video Game Character – Rosa Farrell from Final Fantasy 4.

June 1999

We are going so far back that I have no idea what my first Rosa fan art was. It's not this – but I wanted to highlight it because I was incredibly proud of myself. Rosa, all sad and anguished because she's missing Cecil.

But let's talk some about her, the good and the -- maybe? -- bad.

October 1999

I first played FF4 in May 1999, on a rickety and unreliable Super Nintendo. The cartridge was prone to failure and wiped out my first save once I'd gotten the team underground. But by then, I was invested, too invested to give up and play Chrono Trigger or something. I had to find out what happened to Cecil and Rosa and everyone, so I slammed that cartridge right back in and started up a new game. Fortunately, that one lasted all the way through.

January 2000

As I said, it was my first JRPG, and I adored the medium, especially the story. Along with having a rickety SNES, I also had a house with a not-great internet connection, and this was long before you could easily look up Let's Plays and videos of your favorite scenes. Convinced in my young mind that the game might never properly work for me again and would never, I don't know, be republished, I immediately sat down and wrote a detailed, dramatized summary of the whole thing just so I wouldn't forget it.

April 2000

And my favorite element of the story was Rosa, the healer, the archer, the female lead. Maybe it's just that FF4 was my first game, but I like to think there's a special spark to Rosa that makes her stand out.

June 2000

I was bubbling over with enthusiasm and, along with writing out a detailed summary, I subjected my patient and obliging mother to endless dissertations on the characters and story. I specifically remember talking to her about Rosa, and her commenting that Rosa was a traditionally “feminine” character, even “passive” – a healer, a love interest, needing to be rescued not once, but twice.

November 2000

And I think that's worth exploring – as neutrally as possible. On one hand, in fiction we do have a very long history of imperiled, secondary, predominantly supportive heroines, and the fact that so many had to be written that way reflects something bad in the real world. On the other hand, I really do believe that most tropes are just tropes, and even if they've been overused, often badly used, that doesn't mean they can't be used.

August 2001

In a lot of ways, Rosa is a very safe character. Though she's a studied mage and master archer, that's not why she's in the story. Her main involvement is as a love interest, both to the hero Cecil and his rival/best friend Kain.

November 2001

Rosa's reason for joining the adventure comes down to her love for Cecil. She isn't seeking her own quest. She never states a goal that isn't Cecil's. In fairness, the game is very stripped down, and none of the characters voice very complex motives. You could just as easily say Cecil is Cid's reason for joining the adventure.

November 2002

But Rosa's story beats all come down to Cecil and Kain. Surely, on such an adventure, Rosa would grow and discover things about herself, but you never hear about it. What you hear about is her worrying about Cecil, worrying about the fate of the world, taking care of others, and of course getting kidnapped. All very safe, non-disruptive things for a female character.

June 2004

There are even moments where the game leans into a slight but still apparent sexism. At the siege of Fabul, despite Rydia and Rosa being practiced fighters and valuable mages, they're sent to tend to the injured while the men go off to fight.

June 2005

This is echoed at the end of the game when Cecil himself, who knows full well how powerful Rosa and Rydia are, still forbids them to join him in the ending level. There's some brief resistance, but then the girls, in all apparent obedience, quietly leave while the men remain to save the world.

September 2005

Part of it may be that Rosa comes from a very early video game, but if we look at sci-fi/fantasy itself as a genre, we had more boundary-pushing heroines long before the early 1990s, at least in the West. By then, we already had Princess Leia, Red Sonja, Alanna the Lioness, and others.

April 2006

Rosa is brave, talented, and loyal, but is she ultimately a regressive character?

October 2007

I don't know if I have a perfect answer to that. What I do know is that one of the things I've always loved most about Rosa is that she knows her own mind. Yeah, she'll support you. Yeah, she'll cast Protect and Haste on you, and then she'll Cure you when Bahamut takes your HP down to 1. But she does not do it meekly.

2008

One of her first scenes is her comforting Cecil as he deals with his thorny ethical angst. But she quickly stops murmuring kindly to him and tells him he can't just mope and complain about things. He has to take a stand. He has to own his actions – change himself, one of the themes of the game. She sees it long before he does, and she isn't exactly tender as she tells him.

July 2009

She joins the adventure for Cecil, but she doesn't join with him. He leaves without her (she doesn't beg to come with him, she has things to do) and when he goes missing, she sets off on her own in search of him, going faster and getting farther than he did before desert sickness stops her cold.

March 2010

And at the end of the game when this selfsame Cecil, this guy who grew up with her and is in a relationship with her and knows her so well, tells her to go home and be safe while he and the guys save the world, she does meekly turn around and leave. But she doesn't go far. She and Rydia stow aboard his spaceship and travel with him and the men to the moon. Whereupon she tells Cecil, with no ambiguity, that he cannot keep her from coming.

October 2011

Which is a good thing, because I have beaten FF4 many times, and let me tell you, you are not surviving the ending boss without Rosa Curing you, Protecting you, and probably Lifing you more than once.

February 2013

So have I exonerated Rosa? I've shown how assertive she really is. Have I proved she's not regressive?

October (?) 2018

Honestly, I'm not a big fan of the assertive woman = automatically good female character theory. A woman can be physically weak, even psychologically timid, and still be an incredibly interesting, complex, and strong character. And another can be bold and brave and badass and still remain uninteresting and shallow.

2020

But I think I've shown that, whatever Rosa is, she's not passive.

August 2021

Being a back-row archer isn't a problem, being a healer isn't a problem, being conventionally feminine isn't a problem. Even, at the end of the day, being a “safe” character isn't actually a problem. It comes down to how well the character's written – and, even more subjectively, how they connect with the audience.

May 2024

Rosa connected powerfully with me. Since then, other characters have come and eclipsed her number one spot in my heart. But I still love her a lot, and I don't want to see her dismissed.

[zottower]

The Baron trio, but they are stuck in an old anime. I needed to try this. I played with Cecil's hair. I don't know, it's funny, but I wouldn't reuse this method of coloring "iridescent". It's still not him, I have to continue to draw the shiny paladin. Not like it's a chore. =D

[viralvava]

In all his life, Cecil has never seen anyone so completely and utterly perfect.

This is not, quite, the thought he has when he looks at his wife. She's beautiful, she's wonderful, even pale and trembling with exhaustion, hair plastered to her with sweat; but no, his attentions are reserved for one person and one person only, and that person is the tiny, infinitesimal bundle cradled in Rosa's arms.

"Our son," he breathes, for what certainly isn't the first time this afternoon. Surely he's been repeating himself, over and over again, for Rosa takes one look at him and starts chuckling under her breath. Then the baby squirms, and he is once again enraptured, ignorant to the world. Because she is a wondrous creature, Rosa musters up the effort to pass the wiggly little infant over to him.

Having long been cleaned up, not by any wetnurse but rather by Cecil himself, with the utmost care, the baby - their baby, his baby - is a glorious, pink being. Small, so small, and so chubby, so strangely proportioned; a scrunched little face, with a squashed nose and a tiny mouth, a *red* mouth - and the baby is pink because his blood is red, of course, so stark against Cecil's own blue-pale skin. Like his mother, and there is even the faint suggestion of downy blond hair speckling his head. Cecil has never seen anyone so flawless.

"Ceodore," Cecil mumbles, gaze locked onto the way the baby flexes his little, wrinkled hands. Unthinkingly, he holds out his own hand, aiming to brush over the baby's cheek, and is caught completely and utterly off-guard when that smaller hand clings onto his finger and holds.

Cecil moves his lips, finding them to be terribly chapped. "I think," he says, vaguely, still staring at his son, "that I will die here today."

Rosa chuckles again. She still sounds somewhat out of breath. The labour had been difficult for her, he thinks. Arduous. It had lasted quite a while. Cid had thought him calm; Cecil had thought himself sick with worry. Of course, it was impossible that any complications would arise. It had to have been impossible, or else he'd have lost his mind right then and there. As it stands, he thinks he'll lose his mind this very second, along with the rest of himself, watching his newborn son be, inarguably, the most adorable baby he has ever seen. Yang would probably disagree with him, but Cecil knows he's right. "And why is that?" Rosa prompts him, distractingly. He pauses to remember what he had said.

"I am going to have a heart attack," Cecil settles on. "Induced by the degree of ... joy, that I am feeling." He can hear his voice, and its as even as its ever been. Clearly, Rosa also thinks this, for she titters.

"Will I be getting him back anytime soon?" Rosa asks. Cecil raises his head to look at her. She's lounging, reclined on the opulence of their bed. She looks more exhausted than he can ever imagine being, and she's radiant. His eyes are once again pulled back to look at Ceodore, having fallen into a fast slumber, still clutching onto his father's finger.

"No," Cecil says. This time, Rosa's laugh is full and throaty.

[estinininininen]

oh rosa has no characterization this, rosa's just an object for kain and cecil to squabble over that. my rosa joanna farrell is best friends/stuck in a love triangle with two very, very capable but emotionally stunted men who have dark streaks a mile wide. what kind of ordinary soft white mage is like that? just hanging out with two royal pseudo-heirs that are also vibrating balls of competition and daddy issues? i'll tell you what. one who's almost as weird as kain and cecil are. girl is Hiding Something. your average emo girl thinks they can pull off the "sweet and pretty on the outside but darkness hides within" schtick pretty well but rosa has everyone so fooled even the dark knight and angsting dragoon don't pick up on it until she's elbows deep in someone's chest and talking nonchalantly over screams about what's for lunch. she was the kid who didn't have to be dared to poke roadkill. cecil harvey announces he's following his king's orders to become a dark knight and goes stalking off to his tower bedroom to brood while rosa joanna farrell in a pink frilly court gown looks up at his disappearing backside and thinks "damn he's gonna need someone to shove his bones back in place. might as well be me 🥰"