#CliveJill

[owarinaki]

Final Fantasy XVI : Clive x Jill " I love You ,Jill"

[oveliagirlhaditright]

We were truly blessed that we got three Clive and Jill kisses in Final Fantasy XVI (the first one being during a really beautiful love scene between the two, actually):

1.

2.

And, yes, this second one is in an optional quest you can miss, but who cares? It's such a lovely, romantic scene. (maybe one of the best romance FF scenes ever. I saw someone say that it was pretty much a wedding between Clive and Jill. And you know what? I kind of agree!), And it's so important to the plot? As it's one of the ones that hint that Clive actually probably did live in the end? Really, as many are saying (and for good reason!), the end game side quests aren't really even side quests--they're truly main ones--and I don't know why the game treated them as such. That's kind of a mistake, and I sort of wish they hadn't. Because if you don't do them, you miss SO MUCH IMPORTANT STUFF!

3.

This one's the best one, for sure. This one has the best angle for the shot (they also moreso look like they're making out here when you actually see the scene).

But we also get this lovely forehead touch:

And Clive and Jill saying I love you to each other!

And, you know... aside from Final Fantasy XV adding in some Noctluna lines of dialogue post-launch (like Luna saying too Gentiana something along the lines of "...she longs to be with the one she loves" [about Noctis], though sadly she never got to say that to him in so many words--or him to her--IIRC), I think this is the first "I love yous" in FF. Yuna's "I love you" to Tidus in FFX doesn't completely count, since in the Japanese version she actually says "thank you" instead.

And since in most FFs, we're extremely lucky if we get one kiss between the canon pairing--and even if we do get said kiss, a lot of times they zoom out on the image!--we were so fortunate here! Also, to get two almost kisses between them!

[alienturnip]

Finished FF16 a few days ago and I do have some (long) thoughts about it, so I'm noting them down below. Reactions include the Waloed & Origin arcs.

Tagging @zadien as you requested <3 My thoughts won't be organized but I'll try my best to articulate as I go. Wall of text alert!

I think this is yet another case of "the story didn't satisfy me a lot but the characters bewitched me body and soul" so here I am at the end of the roads... with a lot of grievances toward how the story was structured & written but also impossibly attached to the cast haha, needless to say I have fanart ideas planned and incoming.

Things that I enjoyed a lot:

CliveJill's scene with the snow daisies, where she tells Clive that she wants to spread her wings after all this is over. MY GIRLFRIEND... YOU SHALL HAVE THE WORLD.

Jill being so good with acting dkfjsl <3 <3 she's so cute....

Jill being as much of a ruthless mtfk as Clive, they're soooo in tune when it comes to wrecking havoc

Everything about Joshua he brings SO SO MUCH to the table both with his personalities and the themes he represents. I would ramble if not for fear of this post's length...

Dion's contradictory demeanor hahahahaha - he insisted everyone call him "Dion" but wouldn't shut up about "Ifrit" and "Phoenix", he also refused Harpocrates' gift but then gave another to Clive 2 seconds later, then sauntered off without even checking if Clive likes it or not...

I generally bemoan the lack of discussion on Dion's relationship with his country's imperialism and his hands in that (like, everything about him was perfect to address that topic even in very brief ways?), BUT I highly enjoyed Dion's theme about the loss of personhood and to be reduced to a vessel of power and worship, his multifaceted relationship with the concepts of power & duty & hierarchy. So subtly yet powerfully done with so little screen time... I think Clive's own engagement with the theme (which is supposed to be his central theme) comes short in comparison.

Dion's side quest with Harpocrates also scratched my brain in INCREDIBLY ways, but again I won't ramble too much in this post...

(Hahaha by this point I think everyone knows who my fav is)

Dion & Joshua's dialogues are all so well-written (maybe save for Joshua's last speech...)

Everything about Mid & Gav, they're beautifully done, I love them they have such solid places within the narrative and lovely personalities too. When I watched Mid navigating the Entreprise I was just squealing and cheering for her! Her talking about the dream of flight and the danger it might entail, and her plan of turning such a weighted topic into a lighthearted treasure hunt! My gosh 💗 Gav's drinking scene with Clive is also especially touching, I felt a lot for his burdens.

Lady Isabelle may I have your hand in marriage--

Clive holding Joshua or clutching his body...... breaks me every time I love love LOVE tragic siblings

I can honestly write an essay for each of the characters (especially Jill & Dion my thoughts about them are overflowing) but they will have to be separate posts at this point, let me know @zadien (or anyone else reading this 🫣) if you'd like me to talk some more.

NOW onto the criticisms proper...

Waloed & Origin arcs were pretty underwhelming, mostly because I feel like they haven't offered anything new that wasn't already resolved in the previous arcs...? I enjoyed Barnabas' vibe but his impact on me was a big fat 0, and here comes the conundrum because, well, I'm guessing him being emotionless & devoid of a personality is supposed to be the point with his worship of Ultima, but even that was not done well... All his bedroom scenes kinda ruined all of that, not to mention the out-of-nowhere 'mother' appearances that the story doesn't even bother to explore aside from showing her naked body (Benedikta got the same treatment after her death my god I'm so sorry my beloved)...

Idk what I'm supposed to take away from the character and, in consequence, the Waloed arc? I know nothing of who he was, his dialogues didn't even match Clive's growth at that point - again, why is Clive questioning his humanity NOW of all time, when the story has been going so well? Could they have, idk, shown Clive's fear coming back to him after reuniting with Joshua & discovering Dion's descend to madness, so that they can segue into the Waloed arc more smoothly - that despite Clive's best intention he may lose all his control at the most crucial point and ruin all that he holds dear (like Dion), and that he never let go of his guilt at Phoenix Gate, and having Joshua back unwittingly brought back the nightmares he'd lived with for 13 years? Maybe that would give his identity crisis at the beach some more substance instead of "Barnabas bested me twice and now I'm wet and sat" situation he got going on... I am thankful for Mid & Dion's arc & CliveJill romance & everything about Joshua but the main villain & plot points felt so distant... MY BRAIN WAS NOT SCRATCHED

(I adore Mid & Dion & Joshua hahaha they're so colorful in 3 entirely different directions, my silly children)

I am also not really convinced by Ultima's writing. The plot reveal of him being a God who created humanity but then abandoned us all *could* have been pretty powerful and on point if it wasn't executed in such fragmented ways. If only they dig deeper into one or two specific aspects of that concept to explore...

I am especially fond of the idea of Ultima as symbolic for "the absent parent" and "the narcissistic parent" (both in the intimate familial context and the wider context of head-of-state/leader figures), which could have paralleled SO WELL with Anabella & Sylvestre & EVEN ELWIN had they not cut off Anabella's presence immediately after her death, or had they make Dion reflect deeper upon his relationship with his father beyond "I killed him I am so sad", or had they make Joshua's and Clive's memories of Elwin more complicated - maybe in how they (especially Joshua) worshipped his as their father & leader, but less so as a man, someone human & flawed? And then they can explore how the children gaining autonomy & freedom despite their parents & the circumstances that shaped their childhood as a direct mirror to them breaking away from Ultima? The frustrating thing is, I THINK they did try to do that, what with all the Inner Voice snippets and the initial buildups and all, but the execution keeps coming up short...

Ultima & the Eikons as symbols of "power that binds & enthralls" in contradiction with Clive's fight for a "free world" could've been much more relevant and poignant if maybe they allowed us to get more invested in Ultima's backstory (flashback cutscenes perhaps? more involved murals? a more multifaceted discussion around the concept of will? some attempts at humanizing Ultima's race so that when Clive says "you're just like us" we feel it a bit deeper?) instead of just having the guy monotonously narrating all the plot twists... my god. Not to mention all the on-the-nose dialogues of power of friendship & crude slavery allegories... I don't know! I think Square did NOT do it well in this one.

That's all I can pull from the top of my head at the moment! Ready to hop into replies or asks to talk some more, but yea!

[altocat]

Eh heh heh... Clivejill for ship bingo

They were super cute! I really love how respectful and reverent Clive is towards her. They were unexpectedly wholesome.

[owarinaki]

Final Fantasy XVI - Clive & Jill first kiss scene

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Parallels, in that after both of these couples make love (if you get the high affection scene with Tifa, that is), the girls rest their head on their guy's shoulder.

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Parallels between Final Fantasy XVI and Final Fantasy X: in that Jill and Yuna both had shitty fates because of the systems of the worlds that they live in--and would have died because of them (and both girls are willing to go on journeys to change the status-quo, even at the cost of their own lives)--but at the end of the games, it's the guys who die instead. But not, like, completely in a "I want to die instead of you or bear your burden" kind of way. But because they find new ways to completely break the systems and change the worlds for the better, but the cost is Clive and Tidus have to die for it, as no good deed goes unpunished.

[oveliagirlhaditright]

I saw an article about how one of the things Final Fantasy XVI had in common with some other FFs--to make it a FF (which is still a silly argument that we even need to have to me, but whatev)--is flower importance in the story. And that's certainly true. So I decided to make a post about that... And prepare for the longest post in the history of the world, because I may have gone overboard in screenshotting some of these. I also decided to include Kingdom Hearts here, since it's a Disney and Final Fantasy crossover (with its own story, of course).

We'll never know how similar or not Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy XV's stories are or were to each other (after Tetsuya Nomura, director of Versus XIII, got kicked off the project and the game got a new director and became FFXV, and the story did at least slightly change)--even with Nomura now putting some of his Versus XIII ideas into Kingdom Hearts. It seems here, though, that even when it was Versus and Noctis and Stella, instead of Noctis and Luna, there was at least one flower scene with them. Perhaps this is the aforementioned Noctis and Luna flower crown scene (maybe originally it happened with Noctis and Stella, and that was then repurposed for Noctis and Luna). Like, for whatever reason, something upset Noctis' childhood friend here (the responsibilities her mother had to endure, perhaps, if this part of the story was still very much like XV's. Mayhap that hurt Stella to think about), and Noctis comforted her with the sylleblossom, and then we got the flower crown scene Luna alluded to in XV... or maybe it was something totally different from that with Noctis and Stella. Maybe sylleblossoms didn't even exist in Versus. Like I said, we might never know. But here, at least, was another couple (again: how similar they were to the later Noctis and Luna: who knows?) where flowers were at least important to them for a hot second.

Kairi likes to pick flowers, as we see here and in a scene in the BbS credits (that I'd show, but picture limit is keeping from doing it [I'd show a lot more pictures for a lot of these girls, if it weren't for picture limit)].

She also has a flowery Keyblade, of course, surely because of her love for flowers:

And I guess part of her Keyblade's design is that a king chess piece--which Sora's chess piece was the king one in KHIII, of course--is attached to a red string. And we all know about the red string of fate (I bring that up, because another common theme in all of this, is that all these gals with the flowers are part of a star-crossed lover pairing).

Kairi's heart is also in the shape of a flower in Re:Mind and Melody of Memory?

Yep.

Edit: Oops. I forgot Squall and Rinoa: Squall's promise to Rinoa that if she comes to Edea's orphanage--that is full of flowers outside, giving us our flower connection--that he'll be waiting for her, so she'll find him.

Also, I think Yeul gave Noel a flower in Lightning Returns for some reason? Though I don't remember why. I've only played Lightning Returns once--and only watched the cutscnenes once, in said playthrough--many years ago at this point. I really need to replay Lightning Returns again, as I actually love the Lightning Trilogy and found the gameplay in Lightning Returns very enjoyable. I also know that one of the Yeuls in FFXIII-2 loved flowers.

[oveliagirlhaditright]

I've noticed something kind of funny... so, in Final Fantasy XIII, we have Snow and Serah engaged to be married, right? Really, for all three games of the trilogy...

But, sadly, we never get to see their wedding at the end of the series (that most of us are still pissed about. Seriously, Square Enix, the next time you-release this game--like on PS5 or something, you should seriously add that in as an epilogue or whatnot, for even more incentive for old fans to buy the game again.)

But in the next mainline game, that's not an MMO, Final Fantasy XV, we do see Noctis and Luna's wedding, even though it unfortunately has to take place in the afterlife, since they both die in the main story. Some have actually theorized that part of the reason we got the Noctluna wedding, is because people were so mad we didn't get the long-awaited Snow and Serah wedding. And there may be some truth to that.

But in the aforementioned Final Fantasy XV, apparently Noctis and Luna made flower crowns when they were children:

But we never get to actually see said flower crown scene in a flashback or anything like that. And they never get the chance to do so again as adults.

Then Final Fantasy XVI comes around, and Jill makes Clive a flower crown, but we actually get to see it:

It's like in the past Final Fantasy games, they're setting things up... but not seeing them through, for whatever reason, only for the next game to do that thing with their couple. XD

[oveliagirlhaditright]

If anyone is gifing FFXVI in the future, might I humbly request the scene where Joshua notices something wrong with Jill and suggests that he and Clive do something about it? (Also, maybe the segment--that's a part of this whole thing--where Joshua says, "Honestly, Clive: what would you do without me?" Because that was just great.)

Because I love this trio, of course. But (though it might be me) I kind of felt like when they got older, we got more scenes of Jill being concerned about Joshua, but fewer of the other way around. So I really appreciated this moment:)

[oveliagirlhaditright]

This scene in FFXVI reminded me of something I've seen before, with other characters, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Maybe this scene with Ven and Aqua and/or Gula and Ava?

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Parallels (the parallels, of course, being Jill telling Clive [and Joshua] to come back, and then Clive later promising Jill that he'll come back).

[oveliagirlhaditright]

In that one FFXVI side quest, where you have to choose a fabric color that you like, because the seamstress wants to one day make you an outfit as a reward (after doing a quest for the the seamstress, so she has more fabric to make dresses for the girls at the hideaway), I thought eventually we might get an outfit for Clive in that color.

Actually, I thought it might be a date scene for Clive and Jill. Because if I recall correctly, this is the same side quest where the person brings up how she had thought that Jill was a princess, because she just had that air about her (yeah, it is. Because she mentions wanting to make a dress for her).

So I thought that maybe she would make Clive and Jill outfits based on the color you chose, and then you'd have a date together where they match, which would have been cool.

Though that didn't happen. LOL

But we got enough awesome Clive and Jill moments in this game, so I can't complain.

Edit: Actually, I guess something does happen with this (thank you to user flidgetjerome for the tip). Apparently it's very easy to miss (and I did miss it). But at one point, if you talk to Jill outside your balcony, she'll give you a cloth based on the color you chose earlier as a sort of favor:)

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Roxas from the 358/2 Days novel - "My best friend. The girl I treasure. Xion."

[oveliagirlhaditright]

[oveliagirlhaditright]

I've seen people mention that Jill, at the end of Final Fantasy XVI, is very much like Rinoa: with how at first she's depressed, of course, with how Clive has died(?), but then she seems to get hopeful during the end, seeming to hint that Clive actually lives, of course.

And people have also commented the similarity with the watching stars, too. In Final Fantasy XVI, Jill--towards the beginning of the game--was going to wish on the star, metia, for Clive's safe return, but then didn't: thinking that she didn't have to, because she believed that he would return safely without it. And at the end of the game, when that star falls, Jill takes that to believe that Clive has died (and with the things we know, that's likely the case...). But upon seeing the sun rise, she seems to gain hope that Clive may have survived. And there are certainly side quest things that do hint that he did somehow pull through in the end.

In Final Fantasy VIII, Squall and Rinoa meet the moment they both see a shooting star at the SeeD ball. And there's a moment towards the end of the game where it also seems like Squall has died--and Rinoa also believes that--but Squall does live. In the credits there, you see Rinoa watching shooting stars again (though you don't quite know that yet, because you can't see what she's pointing at. But clever viewers might easily figure that out, of course, because this is the exact pose she struck when she saw the one at the beginning of FFVIII). And though you don't know Squall has survived yet, and that he is with her (this will be revealed after the credits), Rinoa's smile and pose is, of course, a hint to it. Like Jill's hope is surely a hint that Clive survived.

Rinoa's face above--when Squall does, indeed, survive (another clear hint before the post-credits scene)--also probably matches Jill's own before mentioned relief.