Other Side

Although Selphie is an overall optimistic, happy-go-lucky individual, what truly allows us to see beyond the surface are the times she feels blue or depressed. These moments make her fragility show and trigger a serious side of her that is otherwise invisible throughout the game.

Selphie goes through a particularly bad phase from the moment she leaves the D-District Prison in Disc 2 to the end of the second battle against Edea. This is easily explained by a number of factors that, combined, have a crushing effect on her: first, her true home, her dearest Trabia Garden, where the people she grew up with are located at, faces destruction at the hands of Galbadia. Not only was she powerless to stop the missile attack, there may be some guilt there concerning the mere fact that it happened, too, since the only reason Galbadia even retaliated was the party's failure at assassinating Edea at the end of Disc 1: telling from the way she acts at the Missile Base, it seems that Selphie is on a fake sugar high (with her going on a killing spree and Irvine even commenting that she can be "a little out of control" at times), a natural human defense mechanism against such situations. A while after, when she is reunited with the rest of the team members in Fishermans Horizon, she comes to find out that the Quad stage, where she planned to host the Garden Festival, has been destroyed with the crash against the town. At this point, the more important things in Selphie's life are not just slipping through her fingers: they are quite literally falling apart.

In her diary, this is when Selphie mentions feeling blue: despite Irvine's successful efforts to cheer her up by finding her a way of organizing a concert, the joy is only temporary, and she soon faces the difficult decision to go visit the ruins at Trabia. After gathering all of her courage together, she asks Squall to take her there: she sounds uncomfortable and hesitant when approaching him, almost shy, very much unlike her usual self, and it is obvious that, as Quistis comments, she is trying hard to act cheerful. The subsequent scenes in Trabia are extremely important in the definition of Selphie's true character; once there, she runs around, visiting her friends' graves (where she can be found making a very touching speech), spreading hope and support among the survivors and in the process tying all ends together in her mind, trying hard to find closure. At last, she thinks it possible to pull herself together and decides that things will be okay after she gets her revenge against the sorceress; however, this solace is once again short-lived, for just a few moments later the party regains important memories from their childhood, and the truth is cruel: it is not the evil, distant sorceress Selphie expected that she will be facing, but her beloved Matron...

Selphie has to deal with a lot in an extremely short period of time: she must get used to the idea that Trabia is in ruins, that the Garden Festival she had worked so much for is no more and that, in the end, she will supposedly be killing the woman who took her in as a child and offered her a home. Given the circumstances, it is truly admirable that she manages to maintain such enviable mental stability, and even more so that she lifts herself up and channels all of her rage into an effective response to the events that have brought her down. The party's presence, of course, plays a prominent role in this, especially Irvine's: it is also in them that she finds the strength to keep the decision of facing Edea to the very end. Once the latter goes back to being their Matron, Selphie undergoes a drastic change: now that things are "back on track", she feels that she can take on anything or anyone and her old self is back, much to Irvine's joy: after all, the two of them are seen together a lot more often from then on, and it seems that they have become a support pillar for each other, even if, contrary to Squall and Rinoa's, their more intimate moments are never shown.

Not only do these less than perfect periods serve to show that Selphie does have a serious side to her and that she is more mature and sensitive than she seems, they are also the living proof that she is a strong, selfless woman, one that not only brings herself back up but also finds it natural to give whatever energy she has left to those who need it more.