* I thought I'd talk a little about the FFVIII fandom's attitude to Rinoa, and about how it's shifted over time.

Webmaster

* I first played FFVIII back in 2001, and before long I went looking for fanfiction. In those days, fanfiction could mainly be found on fanfiction.net and on people's personal websites.

Webmaster

* Before long, I started noticing weird patterns in the way Rinoa was written about.

Webmaster

* The attitude to Rinoa you saw at the time might have depended on which part of the fandom you were in. I'm sure there must have been a faction who were big fans of Squall and Rinoa's relationship, and they were probably positive about Rinoa as a character!

Webmaster

* In my case, I read a lot of stories in which Squall and Zell were boyfriends.

Webmaster

* Wait, what? Stories where me and Squall were what?

Z.D.

* How many people were writing these things? Where were you finding them? What the hell?

Z.D.

* This is weird, right? Tell me everyone else thinks this is weird.

Z.D.

* Uh, were they good?

Z.D.

* Some of them were good! Or I enjoyed them, at least. I was in my early teens, so my taste might not have been that discerning.

Webmaster

* Unfortunately, though, a lot of Squall/Zell fanfiction was very unkind to Rinoa! It was hard to find fanfiction that treated her character fairly.

Webmaster

* In many of the stories I read, the other characters seemed to hate Rinoa. I genuinely saw her referred to as 'the harpy' in the narration of fanfiction multiple times.

Webmaster

* It was so strange! These stories were written from the perspective of her friends; why would they think of her like that?

Webmaster

* Tastes differ, and there's nothing wrong with disliking Rinoa if she's not your sort of character. But, if you're writing fanfiction, it won't ring true unless you bear in mind that her friends care about her, whether you do or not.

Webmaster

* Um, hey, I think there's something wrong with not liking Rinoa: why wouldn't you?

Selphie

* Back in the day, I think a lot of people held Rinoa to slightly unfair standards. She was commonly considered immature. Really, though, she was an ordinary teenager; she just happened to contrast with the people surrounding her, who had gone through military training from childhood.

Webmaster

* The FFVIII fandom is a lot smaller these days, of course. But, from what I've seen, attitudes towards Rinoa have softened a lot, and I'm glad to see it.

Webmaster

* That's... good to hear? This is all very weird to read.

Rinoa

* Wait, Rinoa, you have a Garden Square account? You're not a student, are you?

Quistis Trepe

* Zell set me up with an account! He's pretty good with machinery.

Rinoa

* I don't think he was supposed to do that.

Quistis Trepe

* Uh, whoops. Sorry?

Z.D.

* Anyway, do you have a link to any of those stories where Squall and Zell are boyfriends? I'm really curious now.

Rinoa

* WHAT NO DON'T ASK ABOUT THAT, THAT'S SO EMBARRASSING

Z.D.

* While I'm talking about the early FFVIII fandom: I think that's actually the first place I saw people using portmanteau shipnames!

Webmaster

* These are very common these days, but at the time I hadn't seen it before. Squall/Rinoa fans called their relationship Squinoa, and the same pattern was applied to various other pairings: Squistis, Seiftis, Squell, Squirvine.

Webmaster

* Tumblr, which started to take off around 2010, was what really popularised portmanteau shipnames. You couldn't search for tags with slashes in them, e.g. Squall/Rinoa, so you had to combine the names: Squinoa.

Webmaster

* In that respect, I suppose FFVIII fandom was ahead of its time for using portmanteau shipnames nearly a decade earlier!

Webmaster

* Unfortunately, combining 'Squall' with just about any name sounds terrible. I'm sorry, Squall. That's just the way it is.

Webmaster

* ...whatever.

Leonhart