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magical-xirl-4 · 2 years

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This essay will expand upon why Cloud Strife is an important focal point of Final Fantasy VII. It will highlight how he contributes to the story's themes of protecting the environment through his identity and character relationships, and emphasise the importance of those relationships on the development of his character.

(originally posted on Twitter).

Cloud Strife is central to the plot of Final Fantasy VII as he is the main player character, and by design represents a very relatable figure to the player.

Cloud lives in his world as someone who was rejected by the people around him, and discarded by the people he worked for. At his core, he is a deeply wounded person; he had a childhood that was filled with stigmatisation by his peers and some adults. He wasn’t always left out by other children by choice, but began to avoid them because of this, and it led to Cloud developing self-esteem issues that impacted his interpersonal skills as an adult.

Cloud viewed himself as weak and inferior throughout his life, and went through many experiences that led to him trying to prove himself to others, but failed despite trying his best. Although he was similar to how he was as a child, he grew into an adult that shuts off his emotions and rejects other people in order to protect himself.

During the start of the game, Cloud is subconsciously at a very low point and is lying to himself and others about who he is. He believes that he is so weak to the point that he tried to convince himself he made it into SOLDIER, a childhood dream that he wasn’t able to fulfill. This aspect is aided by the fact that an alien parasite was embedded into his genes, and has jumbled his memories on what happened on the day that led to this very moment of identity confusion. To add to that, parasite also fed on Tifa’s memories of him, a girl who he had admired from afar and promised he would become a SOLDIER for her. All of this ultimately fed on his insecurities, and made him believe he is someone he's not.

So here, we have a person that has sunken so low into their self-doubt and despair that they are stuck in a hole that they can't climb out of. Cloud lost everything that he knew prior to his adult life due to a homicidal man that he used to look up to, and now he has no idea who he truly is. Under the surface, Cloud is in a deep state of turmoil. On the surface however, he appears cold and uncaring. He has no regard for human life. He tells his eco-terrorist coworkers that he's only working there for the paycheck; he doesn't care about the planet he lives on. He's in a state where he's only fending for himself because he's so hurt and confused.

His situation is relatable to many because we have all felt helpless like Cloud at some point. Like the things outside of ourselves don't even matter, because it's all hopeless in the end anyway.

However, as Cloud's story continues, he is met with friendship. There are those who are wary of him, but there are others who are kind and charitable to him, and he feels accepted like he never has before in his life. He gains friendship through every main character, but the character who stands out the most in their kindness is Aerith Gainsborough. She stays with him for a few reasons, one of them being because she genuinely enjoys his company, as she can see past his tough guy act for his earnest self.

Fast forward to the rest of the game where you're able to explore the world outside of Midgar, and Cloud is forging bonds with characters outside of Tifa, Barret, Aerith and Red XIII. He becomes a leader and a friend, despite his current identity crisis and self-esteem issues.

Tifa gets closer and also sticks by him to pry into his mind as she feels that something about him is off, and Barret becomes someone he can truly rely on despite their rocky start. He gets closer to Red XIII after he visits to his hometown, and he offers companionship to Cid after witnessing the hardship he's has gone through with trying to fulfill his dream. Cloud does the same with Yuffie, who struggles with trying to restore her nation to what it once was, and Vincent, who is battling extreme regret and guilt. Last but not least is Aerith, who he can feel drifting away from him the further she gets to uncovering her true mission as a Cetra.

Now, Cloud begins to care for others outside of himself. He has crafted bonds with his teammates and friends. He begins to care for the world he lives in.

The game's message becomes clearer the deeper you delve into it, but it's most obvious by the end. It's a message of self-acceptance and appreciation of life. His self-acceptance includes acknowledging his flaws and self-esteem issues and not trying to hide them, but it also involves him caring for people and the planet. Caring for the world and for other people isn't something weak, it's an indicator of being a strong and compassionate person. All of his friends, and especially Aerith, show him this.

Aerith was most attuned to the lifeblood of the planet out of anyone he knew, and ended up connecting with Cloud the most. She confessed to Cloud that she wanted to meet the real him, but is then murdered by Sephiroth before they could further their bond. Cloud lost someone who he regarded closely, and her death ends up becoming his main motivation for protecting the planet. After her death, Cloud truly begins to understand why life is so precious. Cloud knew how much life meant to Aerith, and he realises how much the protecting the planet meant to her. She didn't want to die, but died trying anyway, so Cloud tries to honour her memory at the end to complete her dying wish- release Holy to stop the planet's destruction.

Before that though, Cloud has a moment of reconciliation with himself. After he emerges from the Lifestream with Tifa and his restored memories, he truly accepts who he is. No if's and but's, he apologises to everyone and strives forward despite all that happened.

He sees his flaws and accepts his feelings of inferiority, and goes out to be the hero anyway. He works together with his friends that he forged strong connections with to save the day. Cloud's character evolves to the strongest point it's been in the entire game. And it's a very inspiring message to convey to the player, who may feel similarly to Cloud. Even though he recognises his short-comings, he remains close with everyone and fights his hardest.

Square Enix specifically wanted a character to go from having no care for life, to a character that deeply respects and appreciates it. They want you, the player, who maybe started off like Cloud, to care for the world and the people in it.

It’s scary to care and put yourself out there. There’s always rejection involved. It’s why Cloud hid himself from the world, but just because he hid, it doesn’t mean he never cared or never loved anyone. He always did, but because of his trauma, it was hard to break out of feeling like he had to be uncaring to survive. His memories and personality were muddled, but he chose to build relationships with people, to be close with them, because he wanted to and because he could.

Cloud is a wonderful character for this reason, and it’s for this reason that he is the main character of Final Fantasy VII.

#final fantasy vii #cloud strife #ffvii #final fantasy #cloud #happy birthday month ya bitch boy i owe ya one

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writer59january13 · 1 year

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Hyperbolic quasi autobiographical prevarication...

caricature sketch of person best known to yours truly

What began as an honest

to goodness attempt

to craft personal truthful profile

evolved into a fictional poem manifested into the following.

Despite the onslaught of paparazzi, I (an eccentric kindhearted sexagenarian - born January xiii, mcmlix at The Christ Hospital within Mount Auburn, Ohio) instantaneously shied, blinked away from the spot (klieg) lights, and avoided crowdsource most of my iv and lx orbitz

round the earth mainly on account of being gifted with introvertedness somewhat minimized by bottle fed powder milk then subsequently licking, gnawing (actually gumming), and chomping on biscuits, which magical and top secret ingredients (heavily guarded courtesy

Norwegian bachelor farmers) gave this once painfully shy person indomitable, formidable,

and creditable courage to face fearful fixes

such as getting up out of bed first thing in the morning

and crafting a poem.. Posthumous fame and fortune will launch then rocket one veritable unknown aspiring, inspiring, outgoing and unflagging wordsmith (legend in his own mind) unwittingly slated to shunt next of kin into the pantheon of storied poets even feeble attempts

at his mediocre reasonable rhymes feebly attempting to communicate a not so stellar existence punctuating (while dragon coccygeal tailbone pronounced along the boulevard of broken dreams), a battle of life waged

against being trumpeted as some freak of nature (a controversial incontrovertible

standard compact prodigal son) birthed courtesy éminence grise famous prolific father, who begat him - unnamed de jure heir to the family fortune/empire - longevity of libido potion, when said parent a centenarian far beyond (where's the beef) viz chronological virility age

severely testing scant minority, when seething hormonal fluid loosed into chamber of secretes (think fecund female) and pushing biological envelope in situ regarding outer limits when males can still procreate versus majority doddering, hobbling, and lobbying along lovely bones, when their get up and go got up and went into those twilight zone of years. Invariably many an older gent sought to lay claim as doppelgänger of humble fellow, whose countless progeny incorporated a zip code unto themselves, and for an unnamed dollar figure (one comprising many zeros and commas) small dollop would be sold to highest bidder. Meanwhile, or until

that futuristic manifest destiny I currently sequester myself within cupboard workspace within one bedroom man cave labeled b44 as flickering candlelight casts dark shadows across the outer limits of the twilight zone soon to silently pronounce the figurative curtain call

on another mundane day, no different than previous, nor promising variation

on a theme of ennui (self quarantine against 10000 maniacs) following twenty four hour time frame witnessed by mine feeble scratchings across the rocky surface doing double duty as crude table and writing surface since yours truly lacks for paper pencil or electronic device. Lack of formal education found me forced to teach yours truly reading, writing, and arithmetic while I hibernate until the conclusion of total mortal kombat allows, enables, and provides me chance close encounters of the third kind ideally to be fruitful and multiply amidst dystopian landscape.

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retromusicart · 1 year

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Have some more chicken, have some more pie

It doesn't matter if it's boiled or fried

"Weird Al" Yankovic - In 3-D (Scotti Bros.-Rock 'n Roll, 1984) - Art direction by Lane/Donald, illustration by Jim Heimann, photograph by Jay Pope

What even is that shirt? Is Al suddenly a bumblebee? The 80s were absolutely insane.

Weird Al's debut album the year prior sold lousily (Scotti Bros.' distributor CBS putting all its resources on Journey's recently-released Frontiers at the time didn't help) and got OK reception at best, but was dismissed as a mere fad with no lasting power. This album proved those critics wrong.

Taking the criticisms of the previous album at heart, Al decided to have the parodies resemble the original songs more closely, and also toned down the accordion use, which was rather annoying on the debut. The result was his first commercial breakthrough.

Peaking at #17 at the Billboard 200, this album gave Al his first Top 40 hit, the "Beat It" parody "Eat It", his only one until the "Ridin'" parody "White & Nerdy" 22 years later. The album also spawned classics such as "I Lost on Jeopardy" (parody of "Jeopardy" by Greg Kihn), "Theme From Rocky XIII" (parody of "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor; also known as "Rye or the Kaiser") and "King of Suede" (parody of "King of Pain" by The Police).

Funnily enough, Survivor and Weird Al were both colleagues at Scotti Bros. in the '80s. Can only wonder what the regular office meetings between the two acts were like.

The album also marked the debut of Weird Al's "polkas" ("Polkas on 45"), which would become a staple for much of his career.

Image courtesy of Discogs.

#album #album cover #cover art #album covers #albums #80s pop #80s #80s music #80s rock #80s comedy #1984 #weird al #weird al yankovic #art

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daleisgreat · 3 years

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Speed

youtube

Today’s entry will mark the first official 4K home video release I am writing about. I already own a few other 4K UHDs, and a couple of months ago, I watched my first 4K video at home with 2001’s The Fast and the Furious. However, I already covered that movie’s BluRay release here several years ago, so I will not be dedicating another entry for it, other than to say that the 4K upgrade pops and makes it look like a new release. Today’s entry is for 1994’s Speed (trailer). Before diving into this movie, I noticed one of the tracks from this film’s score repeatedly used throughout sounds awfully like one of the main themes I primarily associated with the Metal Gear Solid franchise. I have no idea if this was pointed out before, and I just overlooked it all these years, or maybe I am grasping at straws. Click or press here to take a listen and decide for yourself. 1994 was a hell of a year for Hollywood movies primarily transpiring from a highway with The Chase, Speed, and the OJ Simpson Bronco chase….oh wait (although I highly recommend the ESPN 30 for 30 on it, simply titled: June 17th 1994). The majority of Speed has a straightforward premise: serial bomber and local madman Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) planted a bomb on a bus rigged to explode once the bus drops below 55 miles per hour. Police officer Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) is alerted to this by the bomber himself to exact revenge on Traven after successfully rescuing hostages from an elevator Payne armed at the beginning of the film.

From there, for the middle hour of this nearly two-hour film, the action almost entirely takes place on the bus. Traven makes a grand entrance onto the bus by commandeering a Jaguar and having its owner (Glenn Plummer) take the wheel so Traven could heroically leap onto the bus and save the day. It would not be that easy of a rescue mission as Payne has eyes on the bus, and Traven has to play by his rules and get him his $3 million ransom to disarm the bus. Without question, the middle hour on the bus is the best part of the film. The opening half-hour is an excellent appetizer with the elevator hostage crisis that Traven and his partner, Harry (Jeff Daniels), successfully foil. However, once the action shifts to the bus is when Speed takes off. Shortly after taking control of the bus, one of the passengers freaks and inadvertently shoots the bus driver, and a fellow passenger, Annie (Sandra Bullock), takes over the wheel. Throughout the film, Annie and Traven have wonderful chemistry, and I could not help but root for the duo throughout. Every couple of minutes, there is a new potential conflict to overcome to keep the bus going over 55mph. The film wisely peppers in brief dialog exchanges to let the movie breathe just enough before the next hurdle makes itself present.

The film's standout moment is the major obstacle for the bus to overcome when it encounters a stretch of unavoidable highway under construction and missing a hearty chunk of the road. Traven’s solution is that since that stretch of a road is on an incline, they may clear that gap if they build up enough speed! That epic stunt hits all the right notes, and I got goosebumps all over again re-watching it, and odds are, I bet you did too if you have seen this movie. If you have not, then watch this scene and see for yourself by click or pressing here. A lot of the critical discussion in the aftermath of this movie was if that jump was realistically possible. The best thing I can do is to compare it to another film, Road Trip, which is likely a better indicator of what could happen when attempting such a feat. Once the middle bus portion of the film is over, there are still about 20 minutes left where Traven tracks and chases down Payne in a subway station. The movie felt over once the bus portion had such a satisfying conclusion that it almost feels wrong to keep sticking with the film by this point, but I recommend you do since there is a satisfying payoff in the form of Payne’s demise. I have to share a story now when I first saw this film at around 13 or 14 on VHS. My dad’s VCR had what seemed to me at the time was a revolutionary feature where if I kept pressing the pause button repeatedly, it would slowly, frame-by-frame, play the film in super slow-motion. At that age, I thought this was a fantastic way to get the most out of the biggest stunts in action scenes. My favorite moment exploiting this feature was seeing Traven and Payne wrestle around on the top of a subway train until Payne was not watching his field of vision, and a warning light lead to his sudden beheading. I slow-motion replayed that sequence countless times in my awkward, early teenage years. Suffice it to say, Hopper plays the out-of-his-mind bomber perfectly, going so far as to make sure he receives his appropriate cinematic comeuppance.

The director ensures the many passengers on the bus maximized their minutes to the point I where it feels like you are right there with them!

Two audio commentaries are the only extra features of the 4K disc in this 4K/BluRay combo pack. One is with the director, Jan de Bont, and the other is with producer Mark Gordon and writer Graham Yost. Props are to whoever decided to subtitle the commentary tracks. I very much appreciate it! I first started to bounce back and forth between the two commentary tracks, but Bont was way too relaxed and had too many pauses to hold my attention, and I finished up with his track within five minutes. However, Yost and Gordon are very much engaged from beginning to end and have fun cracking jokes and sharing memories throughout. Some quick takeaways I got from them were how they wanted to film a major scene outside of a sports arena, dealing with critics poking holes at how unrealistic their stunts were, and how watching the movie felt very different at the time of the commentary recording just two months after 9/11. The BluRay disc contains the remainder of the bonus features. Inside Speed is a four-part feature lasting just under an hour breaking down the visual effects, stunts, and location sequences, but half of it also contains an HBO First Look special hosted by Dennis Hopper that hits all the right kinds of cheesy mid-90s EPK nostalgia that it is worth checking out. Aside from 12 minutes of extended scenes and a Billy Idol music video that seems totally off base with the tempo of the film, there are a couple of Action Sequences mini-features breaking down some of the stunts. I highly recommend watching the one dissecting how they did the bus jump, as it shows raw footage of what really happened when they shot it, and showed footage of some of the specific safety measures they instilled to make that stunt as safe as possible and had some eye-opening interviews with the stunt driver before and after.

After watching that old VHS copy nearly a dozen times, Speed wound up being one of my favorite action films I got burnt out early on and never bothered upgrading to a DVD or standalone BluRay. Watching it again in 4K all these years later breathed new life into it for me. I am not an expert at breaking down video quality by any means, but watching the 4K disc on my 4KTV gave the impression of this having far more current production values. The editors somehow managed to remove all the old film grain defects for a smooth 4K upgrade. If you have not seen Speed yet, then it has everything you could want out of a mid-90s action movie with explosions, gripping thrills and stunts, dramatic rescues, plenty of zinger one-liners…..and a Billy Idol theme song. Pardon me while I attempt my best Dennis Hopper impression here, “Pop quiz, hotshot, which 1994 blockbuster that takes place primarily on a bus is a perfect candidate for beer and popcorn movie night at home?” Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street The Accountant Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron The Avengers: Endgame The Avengers: Infinity War Batman: The Dark Knight Rises Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: Civil War Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve The Clapper Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Countdown Creed I & II Deck the Halls Detroit Rock City Die Hard Dirty Work Dredd The Eliminators The Equalizer Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Grunt: The Wrestling Movie Guardians of the Galaxy Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 Hell Comes to Frogtown Hercules: Reborn Hitman I Like to Hurt People Indiana Jones 1-4 Inglourious Basterds Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Jobs Joy Ride 1-3 Justice League (2017 Whedon Cut) Last Action Hero Major League Mallrats Man of Steel Man on the Moon Man vs Snake Marine 3-6 Merry Friggin Christmas Metallica: Some Kind of Monster Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpions Revenge National Treasure National Treasure: Book of Secrets Nintendo Quest Not for Resale Old Joy Payback (Director’s Cut) Pulp Fiction The Punisher (1989) The Ref The Replacements Reservoir Dogs Rocky I-VIII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery Scott Pilgrim vs the World The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Shoot em Up Slacker Skyscraper Small Town Santa Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Sully Take Me Home Tonight TMNT Trauma Center The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars Vision Quest The War Wild The Wizard Wonder Woman The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Apocalypse X-Men: Days of Future Past

#random movie #speed #keanu reeves #Sandra Bullock #jeff daniels #dennis hopper #glenn plummer #jan de bont

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historic-old-guard-lover · 4 years

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The emperor has to be god-king Andy. Also like since nicky and Joe obv have to have the lovers why not have andy and quyhn kissing as the empress.

Another related ask (potentially by the same person):

Also since the fool is a journey's beginning I'd almost want to pick Nile for it. As well there are four characters who commonly have swords (or an axe but close enough) and cards have four corners. So one sword each corner, nicky, joe, andy, and quyhn.

So. Someone has good ideas. Here’s the post that prompted these asks. This made me pull out my tarot deck and go through the cards. Below the cut is a break down of the entire tarot deck. There will be an explanation of the (standard) interpretation of the cards, good then less good, and then my associated headcannon (or more than one if I couldn’t decide). The source is my experience with tarot. I’m trying to minimize repeats, but historic and modern Old Guard members are counted separately. Enjoy.

The Major Arcana (aka the cards most people have heard about)

0. The Fool - the seeker. Naivety. Courage. Living in the moment. Journey’s beginning. All paths available. Folly. Apathy.

Nile. Anon convinced me. Though Booker has got the folly, apathy, and madness down, Nile is ultimately the beginning. She’s naïve but headstrong, and quite frankly a perfect match.

I. The Magician - the trickster. Power, skill, talent. Mastery, self-control, willpower. Subtlety. Divine connection and inspiration. Self-reliant.

Modern Nicky. Definitely Nicky. Just. He’s a formerly very religious man who just says these things. Also sniper.

II. The High Priestess - the moon goddess. Intuition, wisdom, foresight, divination, prophecy. Enlightenment, understanding, intelligence, education. Pride, emotional instability, unforgiving.

Historic Quynh. Her name means “night-blooming flower”, which is very moon goddess vibes to me. Also, I’d say over 500 years in a box turns understanding and enlightenment into emotional instability and unforgiveness.

III. The Empress - the queen. Feminine power, matriarch, mother. Fertility, pleasure, beauty. Success, evolution, movement. Marriage, wealth. Overattachment, domestic upheaval, delay.

Quynh. The counterpart to Andy’s emperor card.

Nile. Let’s be honest, she’s going to take over from Andy some day.

IV. The Emperor - the king. Masculine power, patriarch, father. Authority, leadership, proficiency. Wealth, stability, effectiveness. Perseverance, logic, endurance, experience. Lack of ability, weak character, immature, rebellious.

Modern Andy. She is the leader who’s short-comings effect her entire team. And who doesn’t love a little gender bending? (and her film look is already soft butch)

V. The Hierophant - the religious leader. Tradition, convention, ritual symbolism. Ceremony, religion, morality, philosophy. Mercy, goodness, forgiveness, humility, vulnerability, Impotence, Religious tyranny.

Historic Nicky. I mean, former priest (enough said).

Historic Andy. “I was once worshipped as a god” (enough said).

VI. The Lovers - the lovers. Love, attraction. Compatibility, harmony, choice. Triumph over trials, vacillation. Entanglement, enmeshment. Infidelity, moral lapse, vice, separation, quarrels, inadequacy, failing tests.

Andromaquynh. *peeks out from behind barricade* I know that most people would just put Kaysanova as this card, but look at all the negatives it is associated with. Sounds a lot more like our immortal wives can really cover the gamut. They have the range....I am a sucker for Kaysanova, though. Even though the beginning of their relationship is rocky, I’d like to think it’s been fairly constant over the years. But let’s reverse the uhaul lesbians and fickle gay men tropes! Sorry, Book of Nile fans. That ship just isn’t established enough for this, I’d say. Maybe one day?

VII. The Chariot - the journey. Ordeal, obstacles, competition. High stakes, ambition, discipline. Conquest, victory, greatness. Right action prevails, overwhelming odds, sudden defeat.

Merrick and/or Dr. Kozak. I mean, this is literally their characters in a nutshell. Merrick is the journey/ordeal for the old guard. He is driven by his ambition, thinks he’s won over impossible odds, and then has a sudden defeat.

VIII. Justice - the balance. Equilibrium, equality, symmetry, harmony. Integrity, honor, fairness, neutrality, moderation. Vindication, self-righteousness, bigotry, prejudice, favoritism.

Nile. This is the woman with a sword card. She brings a balance to the team, she clearly moderates conflict, and I’d love to see BLM art of her in this style. Just sayin.

IX. The Hermit - the seeker-sage. Wisdom, inspiration, contemplation, discretion, understanding. Safety, protection, spiritual quest. Seeking truth and justice. Self-denial, timidity, fear.

Historic Joe. The idealized warrior poet? Definitely just a form of the hermit. Helps explain why a Magrebhi trader/artist fought at the Siege of Jerusalem: spiritual quest. I also like the idea of Joe having a secret reserved side.

X. The Wheel of Fortune - cycles of life. Destiney, evolution and progress, advancement. Manifestation, unexpected events. Success, sudden luck. Ups and downs.

Modern Quynh. There is nothing that better encapsulates her storyline than the wheel of fortune. One day you’re roaming the world with your immortal wife. The next, you’re drowning for over 500 years. The next you’re in Booker’s shitty Paris apartment.

XI. Strength - fortitude. Resilience, courage, resolve, confidence. Integrity, moral victory, endurance. Energy, action, vitality. Power, force, violence. Abuse of power, disgrace, impotence.

Lykon. Do I love this character beyong measure and reason? Maybe so. We have so little to go on about him, however, that the only things we do know bely his strengths. Also, he becomes ultimately the weakest when he dies and encapsulates both “extremes” of the card.

XII. The Hanged Man - the tested. Delay, sacrifice, abandonment, rejection. Betrayal. Reversals, restrained or bound, limbo, trials. Falseness.

Booker. If the fact that his first death was by hanging didn’t convince you? Read that description again. His character arc is literally working through being the hanged man.

XIII. Death - the loss or parting. Alteration, transformation, transition. Boredom, depression, stagnation, failure or disaster. Bereavement, recovery, immobility.

Lykon. He literally represents the fear of death to the remaining immortals. It is HE that they invoke when they discuss it. Also, I’m still mourning my favorite underdeveloped character.

XIV. Temperance - the moderation. Self-control, economy, patience, coordination. Consolidation, harmony, friendship, recuperation. Unfulfilled desires, discord, stubbornness, hostility, clashing of interests. Time, seasons, and climate.

A Safehouse. I don’t think any of the people really capture the tempered essence of this card, the constancy throughout all seasons of life. An actual physical building that rises and falls with (regular) humanity, though, seems to do the trick.

XV. The Devil - the arcane. Magic, strange occurrences, prophecy, fate. Catastrophe, downfall, negative attitude, Temptations, sins, obsessions. Enslavement, bondage, misplaced loyalty, violence, fatality.

Honestly? I’m so torn. I feel like a major commentary of the movie is that our demons are the way people react more so than the people themselves. Maybe the armored van?

XVI. The Tower - the House of God. Disruption, expulsion from an earthly paradise, divine wrath. Punishment (of pride), loss, destructive rivalry, plans ruined. Need to start again, bankruptcy.

The Iron Coffin. While this doesn’t capture the religious undertones quite right, the coffin is the Tower for Andromaquynh, It is (divine? or very human?) wrath brought on by pride since the two probably thought that they would be fine. It is loss and painful new beginnings.

XVII. The Star - the bright promise. Hope, faith, light of the spirit. Recovery, symbols of immortality. Gifts, good prospects, new dawn, frustrated expectations.

Nile. The new immortal, enough said.

Historic Andy/Lykon. In a way, the first immortal would also be a great choice of representation.

XVIII, The Moon - the hidden forces. Twilight, illusion, deception, trickery. Dishonesty, danger, uncertainty, terror. Developments, particularly somewhat concealed. Errors, powerful feelings.

Copley. I know, I know. “He’s the moon when I’m lost in darkness” and all that jazz. But look at this card’s interpretation and notice it’s pretty negative. Copley’s entire role is to pull the strings behind the scenes. He makes headway on problems in secrets, he lies and deceives everyone in the film at some point.

XIX. The Sun - the work’s rewards. Daylight, co-creation, union “of male and female”. Peace, joy, pleasure, love, contentment. Accomplishment, achievement, success.

Joe. Not only is he the sun, he also fits this card perfectly. He is creation and happiness. Enough said.

XX Judgement - the rebirth. Judgement, sentence. Rejuvenation, renewal, resurrection, call to the new from the old, rehabilitation. Creation, promotion.

Historic Booker. I feel like his backstory with his family helped highlight the theme of rebirth for the Old Guard. They must be willing to give up what they have left behind to move forward. Also, there’s the more literal play as well since Booker was a conscripted criminal.

XXI The World - the long journey. Perfection, completion, conclusion. Power through intelligence and wisdom. The universe and the material world.

A group photo, of course! Beyond that? Who knows.

Historic Andy? She’s seen so much of it. Like just her eyes portray the history of the world.

The Minor Arcana (aka the rest of the cards)

Since most people are only familiar with the major arcana, I’ll just briefly explain it. The minor arcana are actually the majority of a tarot deck. There are four suits associated with the four elements. Each suit has ten number cards and four court/face cards (traditionally modelled either based on one person or different interpretations of similar costuming). Each number or face has its own meaning, each suit has its own meaning, and their combination mostly explains what the card should be interpreted as. Quite frankly, the minor arcana are vastly underrated in popular understandings of tarot.

Suit of Wands - fire. Spontaneity, action, passion, adrenaline, life force, stroke of genius.

Guns? It’d be a bit of a niche take, but I associate guns with fires.

Staffs? More traditional in shape.

Suit of Coins - earth. Solid growth, material interests, possessions, profit, business, labor, slow and considerate.

Historic currency. Enough said.

Suit of Cups - water. Heartfelt involvements, imagination, spirituality, love, friendship, family.

Fountains around the world. Enough said.

Suit of Swords - air. Worry, trouble, boundaries, objectivity, the power of truth.

Obviously, their weapons of choice. I would go into more detail about who best represents each number, but I don’t want to bore you.

Court of Kings - mature men. Leaders, authority, status-quo, taking responsibility.

Again, most tarot is very gendered. But members in tuxes?

Court of Queens - mature women. Reflective and active, concerned with security/foundations, supportive, focused.

Members in dresses/gowns/anything that glitters?

Court of Knights/Cavaliers - young men. Dynamic, adventurous, intensive, revolutionary.

Tactical gear. Or historical armor. But it’s easier to do tactical gear right than accidentally draw a 15th century helmet on a 14th century suit of armor.

Court of Knaves/Pages - younger women, teenagers, and children. Students, apprentices, trainees, messengers, new opportunities.

Casual clothes.

#asks #lovely anon #tarot #reference #niche headcannons #major and minor arcana #i really thought this would have more kaysanova #but tarot is for wlw i guess? who knows

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versus-weird-al · 2 months

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Please listen to both songs before you vote!

"Eye of the Tiger"

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"Theme from Rocky XIII (The Rye or the Kaiser)"

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#weird al #weird al yankovic #versus weird al #vs weird al #music #polls #eye of the tiger #survivor #theme from rocky xiii #the rye or the kaiser #Youtube

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mamthew · 4 years

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A Final Fantasy Ranking

Over the course of the quarantine, and because I had such a good time with the Final Fantasy VII Remake, I've ended up blazing through a ton of Final Fantasy games. Since April, I've played IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, and XIII. 6, 7, 9, and 10 I'd beaten before. 4, 12, and 13 I'd played to some capacity before. 5 and 8 were completely new experiences. I had no interest in going further back than IV, since it was the first one to really put any effort into character work, and I didn't play either MMO because MMOs don't really appeal to me (I'm planning to try XIV whenever this new update drops that makes the story mode more accessible, but it keeps getting pushed back so oh well). I also didn't replay XV because I've played XV three times and watched other people play it in its entirety twice, so I have a much better handle on it than any other game in the series.

Anyway, I didn't really have any plans for what I'd do with this, besides get a better understanding of the series as a whole, but I was kinda inspired to do my own Final Fantasy ranking. I'll probably be a bit more detailed than I should be because I tend to overanalyze my media and end up having too much to say. I’m actually not placing VII Remake in this ranking half because I regard it as a spinoff and half because it’s not yet a complete story, even though Part 1 is unquestionably a complete game. If I were to put it somewhere, it would probably be close to the top, possibly even in second place. Also worth noting that this is gonna have SPOILERS for every game I discuss here. I really just wanna use this as a place to nail down some of my thoughts on these games, so they’re pretty stream of consciousness and I didn’t bother avoiding any details from the plots.

10: Final Fantasy VIII.

I don’t think there’s another game in the series with a more obvious corporate hand in it than VIII. It’s kinda the Fant4stic of FF games; there are the bones of a substantive game in there somewhere, but every aspect of the game is such a bald attempt at checking off a 1999 list of “things gamers want” that the whole affair feels hollow and sickening. A major trend I’ve noticed throughout this series is the extent to which FFVII’s success pushed the architects of almost every subsequent game to try to recapture whatever it was that worked about VII, and VIII got the worst of it. It’s got the sullen guy with a special sword. It’s got the sci-fi. It’s got the terrorists with hearts of gold fighting against an oppressive state. It’s got the train scenes. It’s got the case(s) of amnesia that hides the true premise of the story. It’s got the ability to give any character any loadout.

Besides that, they kinda crammed in just a bunch of stuff popular with kids at the time. Jurassic Park? It’s in there. Beauty and the Beast? Here’s the ballroom scene. Hunchback of Notre Dame? Here’s that carnival. Alien? Now you’re alone on a spaceship running away from a horror monster. Saving Private Ryan? The party shares brains with war veterans and dreams of their experiences at war I guess. Half of anime? It’s all about a high school for mercenaries and the party is trying to get back in time for the school festival. Fandom culture? Zines are a collectible item, and each one you find adds an update to Selphie's Geocities page. It also has astronauts, and transformers, and a haunted castle, and a prison break, and Rome, and Alpine Wakanda, and war crimes, and lion cubs that have attained enlightenment, and there’s almost no connective tissue from one idea to the next.

Also the junction system is convoluted and terrible, using magic makes your stats worse, all enemies level up every time you do, and I couldn’t tell you which character excelled in what stats. The characters were all very flat, and the first time I felt like I was seeing the characters interact in ways that helped me to understand them was in the cutscene that plays during the end credits.

Also the female lead’s role in the story changes entirely with no warning every five hours or so. She’s a terrorist, oh no she’s aristocracy in the country she’s terroristing against, oh no she’s jealous of the others because they grew up together and she didn’t, oh no she’s Sandra Bullock in Gravity, oh no she’s the villain and it’s too dangerous to let her out, oh no it’s actually fine and they were bad for locking her up.

It’s an absolute disaster of a game. However, the music and background art is absolutely beautiful. Maybe they never gave me a good enough reason to be in an evil time traveling haunted castle, but damn is it a gorgeous rendering of an evil time traveling haunted castle.

9: Final Fantasy XII.

I’ve known for years that FFXII had issues in development. The writers came up with a story for it, and execs got scared because there were no young characters and they’d convinced themselves that young protagonists are what makes games sell. So two more characters - Vaan and Penelo - were added, one was framed as the protagonist of the story, and the entire story was rewritten so it could feasibly be from his perspective.

While the two characters they added are egregiously tangential to the plot, XII honestly has no protagonist. The writers originally wanted Basch to be the protagonist, but his entire arc is really just following Ashe around and being sad about his evil twin. Ashe is probably the most important to the story, but doesn’t have much presence for a good chunk of the story, and makes her most character-defining choice offscreen before having it stolen from her by a side character. Balthier has the largest presence in the story, and is most closely related to most of the events of the story, but has pretty much no role in the ending.

Honestly, if I were writing FFXII and told it needed a young protagonist, I would have aged up and expanded the role of Larsa, the brother of the main villain, who shows up as a temporary party member from time to time. The entire game is about family ties, and a journey spotlighting Larsa could have involved his learning about Ashe, Basch, Balthier and Fran’s family situations and using their experiences to grapple with his own. Damn, now I’m sitting here thinking about how good that could have been.

As it is, the game feels disjointed and aimless, and the ending is so bad it’s farcical. When I reached the ending, I watched Basch and Ashe forgive Basch’s evil twin for his villainy rampage, harking back to the moment earlier in the game when Ashe turned down the chance to gain powers that would have allowed her to avenge her country because she realized that those powers could also drive her to hurt innocents in the crossfire. In this moment, I realized how Vaan fit in as the protagonist of the game. “Oh, he’s going to realize that violence begets violence, and that he must break the cycle by forgiving Vayne for the death of his brother. He’s going to let go of that hatred he’s been trying to push onto someone for so long, and it’ll finally allow him to heal.” I realized that even though the road to this point was rocky, the writers had managed to craft a satisfying ending from the seemingly disparate pieces of this uneven plot.

And then Vaan picked up a sword and screamed AAAAAAAAAAA and charged Vayne down and stabbed him, and Vayne turned into a shrapnel robot dragon and exploded all the star wars ships and I threw my controller aside and laughed uncontrollably while my characters beat him up and completed the game on their own without any further input from me.

Oh yeah, the battle system is also incredibly boring. Instead of battling, the player writes up an AI script for each character, then lets them act based on those scripts. I would straight up put the controller down and watch youtube videos whenever a group of enemies showed up. I was pretty excited about the job system, but then there didn’t really feel like much of a difference between jobs, and my characters all behaved pretty much the same as each other.

The hands-off battle system, unfocused story, lethargic voice acting, and tuneless music all left me pretty uninvested in the whole affair. The art style and locations are beautiful, though, and it did make me want to eventually check out some of the Tactics games, which take place in the same universe but are supposed to have excellent stories and gameplay.

8: Final Fantasy XIII.

I’m not sure I’ve ever had two such opposing opinions of a game’s story vs. its gameplay. This game is the only one that plays with a bunch of story elements from FFIX, which did a lot to endear it to me. It’s sort of a game in which the protagonists are Kuja, the villain of IX. Like Kuja, they are created as tools by an uncaring god for the purpose of fighting against one world on behalf of another world, and are subsequently forced to grapple with the horrors of having an artificially shortened lifespan.

The story actually has a lot of Leftist themes, too. The gods of that universe spread ideology among the populace, and the people unquestioningly believe these false stories, as the gods have provided for them for as long as there has been written history. Much of the character arcs center on the characters being forcibly removed from their places within those ideological frameworks and having to unlearn what they’d always believed to be objectively true about the world.

So the story actually is pretty good, but it’s held back by some really clumsy storytelling; it constantly uses undefined jargon, has almost no side characters with which it might flesh out the world, actively fights against players trying to glean information from environmental details, and maintains (at least for me) a weird disconnect between the characters in the gameplay and the characters in the cutscenes. I think this partly stems from Square’s original failed plan for FFXIII to be the first game in a much larger series of games sharing themes and major story details. Despite these issues, however, the characters are all likeable and (mostly) believable, and their interactions are grounded in real emotional weight even while their universe feels intangible.

This all got dragged down by the gameplay, which is total dogshit. It’s got the worst battle system I think I’ve seen in an RPG. The game only stops being doggedly, unflinchingly linear about thirty hours in, the whole game took me about fifty hours, and I spent the last fifteen hours beating my head against each individual battle, waiting until the system hiccuped long enough to accidentally slide me a win. That meant I had about a five hour window of euphoric play, convinced that I actually loved this game, thrilled with every new experience it gave me, and excited to see what would happen next. I guess those five hours are what pushed this game over XII in my ranking.

7: Final Fantasy V.

Until FFXV, this game was the last of the “Warriors of Light” games, in which the game follows a party of four set characters for its entirety. To this day, it’s the last of the “Warriors of Light” games to let the player customize which character holds which roles through the job system.

FFV’s job system is the reason to play the game. Its story is mediocre, and its characters are all fairly flat, but there’s something viscerally satisfying about building party members up in jobs that might enhance the role they ultimately will fill. For my mage character, I maxed out Black Mage, Blue Mage, Mystic Knight, Summoner, and Geomancer. Then at the end, I switched her to a Freelancer with Black Magic and Summoning, and she kept all the passive skills for those jobs and also the highest stats across those jobs.

It was super fun and kind of a shift of focus for me, since I tend to place story above anything else in games. Despite the story not being special, though, the game’s writing is actually a ton of fun. It’s definitely got the most comic relief in the series, and I came away loving Gilgamesh as much as everyone else does.

And while it’s nothing special graphically, it does have some really cool enemy designs, and the final boss design is one of the most memorable ones they’ve ever done. Which is impressive because I keep having to look up Exdeath’s name because the character himself is super forgettable.

6: Final Fantasy IV.

This wasn’t the first game in the series to feature actual characters with names and depth, but I have no interest in playing FFII, so it might as well be. I actually played the DS Remake for this game, so it definitely had some quality of life improvements, like full 3d characters and maps, voice acting, an updated script, the ability to actually see the ATB gauge, and the ability to switch to other characters whose turns are ready without using a turn.

Apparently one thing the remake didn’t do was rebalance the difficulty for more modern sensibilities. Instead, this remake is...harder? It requires more grinding than the original? Why??

Either way, though, the story is actually solid! The game opens on its protagonist, Cecil, committing a war crime on the orders of his king, who raised him as a child. The first ten hours of so of the game follows Cecil as he tries to understand why he was ordered to kill so many innocents, turns his back on his country, and works to redeem himself.

This arc is reinforced by the game mechanics, too, which is super clever. His redemption is marked by a change in job from a Dark Knight to a Paladin, which also resets his level. For a time, his life is considerably harder because he’s finding his footing as a new person, which is marked by battles which had been easy becoming much harder for the player for a time.

This game places storytelling over gameplay more than I think any other game in the series. Each character is locked into a job, which I much prefer in my RPGs to games where characters function pretty much interchangeably. I dunno if it’s because I cut my RPG teeth on Tales, but it really bugs me when I can give Tifa the exact same loadout as Barret. I want the lives of the characters to bleed into their functions as gameplay devices.

However, the developers clearly had a ton of different jobs they wanted to add to their game, but hadn’t figured out how to allow for the player to switch in and out party members in standby. To fix this, they increased the in-battle party to five characters rather than or four (or the later constantly frustrating three), rotated the roster a ton, and had a ton of characters who straight up leave permanently. One character dies and never comes back. Two characters die and only are revived after it’s too late to rejoin the party. Four characters end up too injured to continue traveling.

This let the developers make a ton of jobs, but it doesn’t let the player exploit these jobs to their fullest. Characters’ stats reflect their role in the story, as well. One character is quickly aging out of adventuring, so his magic stats increase on levels, but his attack and defense stats actually decrease, signifying his failing body. Another character has already achieved some form of enlightenment, so he gains no stats when he levels up at all. The purpose of IV is the story, over any other aspect of the game, which makes it even more mindboggling that the remake would have increased the difficulty.

Besides that, the biggest issue I had with this game was the overbearing constant drama of it. While there were a few more lighthearted parts, they were mostly relegated to NPC dialogue and sidequests. The characters in this game don’t become friends so much as they become companions who bonded over shared tragedies, and this makes for quite a few scenes of every character separately wallowing in their own immeasurable sadness. I played FFV directly after this game and the light story and jokey dialogue was a much-needed palette cleanser.

5: Final Fantasy VI.

Before the unexpected success of FFVII irreparably changed the franchise, Square constantly mixed up the story formula for the series. IV, V and VI all handled their stories really differently from each other, and what I remember of III also felt fairly different from the games that came after.

Every game from VII on had a very clear protagonist (except XII, whose botched protagonist was still clearly marketed as the protagonist). The concept of the Dissidia crossover series is built on the idea that every FF has a protagonist at the center of its story. FFVI’s Dissidia character is Terra, but Terra is not the protagonist of FFVI.

Apparently while developing FFVI, the directors decided they didn’t want the game to have a clear protagonist, so they asked the staff to staff to submit concepts for characters, and they’d use as many as they could. This game has fourteen characters, each with their own fun gameplay gimmick in battles. Three of the characters are secret, and one can permanently die halfway through if the player takes the wrong actions. Of these fourteen characters, the main story heavily revolves around 3-6 of them, while five more have substantial character arcs.

There’s kind of a schism in the fandom over whether this game or VII is the best one in the series, and I can see why; this game is absolutely fascinating. No other game in the series has done what this game did, which means it’s one of the two FF games I really want to see remade after they complete this VII remake.

The first half is very linear. It breaks the beginning party into three pieces, then sends each character to a different continent, where they meet more characters and build their own parties before everyone reunites. Once the story has taken the player everywhere in the world, the apocalypse hits. The villain’s evil plan succeeds and tears the entire world apart.

The second half of the game picks up a year later with one character finally getting a raft and escaping the island on which she’s been marooned. In this half, the player navigates the world, which has all the same locations, but in completely different parts of the map. The driving factor for much of the second half is to learn from incidental dialogue where each party member has gone in this new world, to track them down, and to try to fix some of the bad that’s been done to the world before finally stopping the villain who destroyed it.

It’s unique and clever and occasionally legitimately tugs at the heartstrings some, which is impressive for a poorly translated SNES game. The final dungeon is a masterpiece all on its own. It requires the player to make three parties of up to four characters, then send them in and switch between them as new roads open. This way, the game manages to feel like an ensemble piece up to the very end.

4: Final Fantasy VII.

As I previously mentioned, there’s kind of a schism in the fandom over whether FFVI or FFVII is the best game in the series. Neither is the best game in the series. FFVII is better than FFVI. Oops.

When I was first drafting up this list, it was before I’d reached my replays of VI or VII, and I tentatively placed them next to each other, with the strong assumption that I’d end up placing VI a bit higher than VII, since it has so many strongly differentiated characters with solid story arcs, beautiful artwork, great music, etc. etc. Then I reached FFVII and not even four hours in, I realized it would have to be higher on my list than VI.

VI has a better battle system, its characters are much more differentiated by their gameplay, its character sprites have aged much better than VII’s character models, and it has four party members in battles instead of three. But I couldn’t overlook VII’s gorgeous artwork, sharp character work, and character-driven story. In the end, I had to give it the edge.

VII is a strange beast. It simultaneously really holds up and has aged horribly. The story is excellent and I love the characters, but the actual line-to-line writing is pretty bad, making the whole experience of the game a bit like swimming upstream; you’re getting somewhere good, but the age of the game is still pushing you back the best it can. Similarly, the background artwork is fantastic and gives the game locations a sense of place incomparable to anything that had come before it, but the character models are so low-poly that the two are constantly at odds with each other.

Still, the game is more a good game than it is an old one. I think it’s managed to duck the absurd level of hype around it by actually being very different from what the most popular images of it make it out to be, if that makes sense. The super futuristic techno-dystopia city only makes up a very small portion of the larger game, and most newcomers to the game won’t have seen Junon, or Corel, or Cosmo Canyon. Heck, I didn’t know Cait Sith or Red XIII were characters before I played the game for the first time. One of the many reasons I’m excited for the rest of this remake is to see newcomers to the story learning just how much variety there is to the world, events, and characters of this game.

FFVII also began (and pulled off really well) a number of storytelling trends that continued in subsequent games in the series. Obviously, almost every game since this one has a clear protagonist with a cool sword for cosplayers to recreate, and an androgynous villain whose story is closely linked to the protagonist (or one villain who is linked to the protagonist and a second one whose purpose is to look like Sephiroth), but it’s started broader, more quality shifts, too.

FFVII is the first game in the series to try to give all its characters arcs based on a similar theme, for example, a trend that has helped give it and future games a sense of thematic unity, especially in IX, X, and XV. Heck, that trend was why I almost came around on XII before they nuked it. It was also the first game in the series to have a real ending, rather than closing out with essentially a curtain call featuring all the party members, like they did in IV through VI (and I assume earlier).

Another common feature of FF games that it didn’t start with VII but certainly was canonized with it was the mid-game plot twist tying the protagonist to both the villain and the larger story. FFIV had this as well, of course, but I feel like the orphanage twist in VIII, the Zanarkand dream twist in X, and the time skip twist in XV were all meant to recall VII’s twist of Cloud’s…very complex existence (IX’s two worlds twist actually is a clear homage to IV, but it’d be hard to argue that Zidane’s connection to Kuja - and the character of Kuja generally - weren’t more influenced by VII).

2: Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XV.

Sorry, this one is a two-fer. I’m not gonna spend too much time on why I placed these two together in the #2 spot (I wrote a long thing on it here, if you’re interested). In summary, the games kinda mirror each other, in story and design. Each game can be seen in the negative space of what the other game leaves out, and at the end, the characters react to similar situations in completely opposite ways. For this reason, and that they’re of comparable quality, I think they’re best viewed as companion pieces.

FFX was the first mainline Final Fantasy game I ever completed, six years late. It was the first FF game with voice acting and many fully modeled locations. It also kinda marks the beginning of the series’ constant changes to the battle system.

That’s not to say the previous games’ battle systems didn’t also differ from each other, but they all had the same setup, with levels and an ATB gauge. This was the first game since III not to have any real-time element to its battle system, nor numbered levels gained through experience points. Since X, no two FF battle systems have been remotely comparable, which is cool and innovative and keeps things fresh, but also means I’ve been starved for just a regular ATB FF game for too long.

In many ways, FFX feels like a bridge between the PS1 games and the later games. It feels much more streamlined than VII, VIII, or IX, in terms of both storytelling and design. The game is very linear, pushing the player from one area to the next and not allowing much backtracking until the very end. It also loses the aging look of the PS1 games’ menus and UI, finally updating the classic font and the blue menus with white borders to fully modernized and sleek graphics.

However, movement still feels very similar to movement in VIII and IX, the music definitely evokes the PS1 games more than the later games, and most locations are portrayed with beautifully painted backgrounds, rather than modeled in (which I actually prefer, and I was glad to see that VII Remake has gone back to that in some places).

Voice acting in this game is phenomenal for 2001, and honestly on par with many contemporary games. I can’t think of a voice actor for the main cast who didn’t do a great job. Tidus’s narration, especially, is emotional and evocative in all the right ways. Grounding the plot in a very personal story about Tidus’s difficulty coming to terms with and proving himself to his abusive father keeps the story relatable and real.

Something interesting about my experience with X is that because it was my first Final Fantasy game, I thought for a very long time that the series was about organized religion, and the ways it is used to justify evil acts. This might be the only game of the ones I’ve played that is about organized religion, or even prominently features a religious doctrine, which really sets it apart from the rest of the series.

The game’s thematic unity is on point, even if there is a scene where they state the central themes a bit too plainly. Every character, and even the entire universe of the story, is held back by the past, and every subplot and the main plot revolves around finding ways to move forward and leave the past behind.

I love FFXV. It feels like a return to form after XII and XIII. It’s also probably the furthest any game in the series has strayed from the original formula. Battles are entirely real-time, and the game is a straightforward action game. There is very little time spent with menus, and even the leveling system has been stripped down to a few skill trees. It’s immediately obvious that the game was originally created to be a spinoff, not a main title.

FFXV is also probably too much a product of the current era of microtransactions and payment plans. The full story is spread out across *deep breath* a feature film, an anime series, an anime OVA, a standalone demo, two console games, four DLC story chapters, a multiplayer side game, a VR fishing game, four phone games (though really three phone games because A New Empire straight up isn't in that universe and also is terrible), an expansion including several entirely new dungeons, and finally a novel set to release sometime this year. That’s a whole lot of story. I’ve not played the phone games or the VR fishing game, or read the novel yet, but I’ve experienced all the rest.

But I also played FFXV when it first released, before any patches, before I knew there was a film, just the game all on its own. So you can believe me when I say that without any supplementary material, the game is still great.

It goes back to the FFI, II, III, V “Warriors of Light” system, where the party has four characters who do not change at all throughout the game. While this bugged me at first, I soon came to appreciate having a story where almost all character interactions involved these four characters. It meant I came to understand them well enough to feel like they were my friends, too. Most characterization in this game is understated, presented through small shared moments, dialogue, and body language as they travel the world together. Much like X, the overarching story might be expansive and far-reaching, but the real show is in the personal journeys the friends have.

Much of the first half of the game is spent exploring an open world, driving along the road and getting out of the car for pit stops or to explore the forests nearby. This is one of the very few games where I don’t mind just exploring an area without the promise of an upgrade or a new scene, just to see what’s around the corner, or to hear whatever banter the characters might engage in next.

The entire world of this game is gorgeous, and the orchestrated music is some of the best they’ve ever done. The main plot is beautiful, too. It’s bittersweet and emotional, with a charismatic villain and a twist that blew me away the first time I reached it.

The supplementary material is also mostly really quality. I’d recommend the Royal Edition over the original edition for sure, and to watch Kingsglaive as well. The anime series is quick and fairly fun, and Comrades expands on the universe in some great ways, but neither has as much bearing on the overall plot as the DLC chapters and Kingsglaive. I’m so in love with the DLC chapters, actually, that two years ago I wrote a piece just on how much Episode Ignis affected me (here if you care).

This is definitely getting long, so I guess I’ll move on after saying I’m upset that they patched Chapter 13 to make it easier, and I’m angry at everyone who complained that Chapter 13 was too hard. It was a brilliant piece of storytelling through game mechanics, and it’s mostly been stripped of all that, now.

1: Final Fantasy IX.

It’s IX. It was always IX. I actually did come into this with an open mind, wondering if one of the new games I’d experience (IV, V, VIII, XII, XIII) might end up hitting me harder than Final Fantasy IX, but as I replayed my favorite game in the series I quickly realized that wouldn’t be happening.

There are only a handful of games that make me cry. IX is one of two without voice acting. There are several songs from IX that make me tear up just when I hear them.

The story of the black mages gaining sentience, learning that they can die, and trying to force themselves back into being puppets just to lose that knowledge really moves me. The same goes for the story of Dagger no longer recognizing her mother, setting out to find a place to belong, learning that her birth family is long dead, then watching her mother return to her old self a moment before losing her forever. And Zidane’s story, where he has nowhere to call home, finally discovers the circumstances of his birth, and realizes that had he stayed in his birthplace, he would have become a much worse person than he ultimately did.

More than any other, though, Vivi’s story will always stick with me. He was found as a soulless husk by Quan, a creature with the intention of fattening him up and eating him, but each of them awoke something in the other, and Quan ended up raising Vivi as his grandson. When Quan passed, a rudderless Vivi went to the city to find a new home, and eventually learned he was created as a weapon. Other weapons had also gained sentience, but none had the worldliness that Vivi had gained from his loving relationship with Quan. When Vivi discovers that most weapons like him die after only a few months, he grapples with the possibility that he may die at any time, and eventually decides that he can only take control of what life he has by living each moment to the fullest. He ends up becoming an example for the other weapons to follow.

FFIX is a game about belonging: both yearning to have somewhere to belong and learning that the place where you think you belong is actually toxic and harmful to you. Even the menu theme is a tune called “A Place to Call Home.”

IX ran counter to the trends of the series in a number of ways. It was a return to high fantasy after the more sci-fi VII and VIII, and was also much more lighthearted than those games, while still being heartfelt and occasionally bittersweet. Gameplay-wise, it locked each of its characters into a single job, gave them designs based on their jobs, brought back four-character parties, and introduced a skill system in which characters learn skills from equipment. It also had a much softer, less realistic art style, and mostly avoided the attempts to recapture VII that have plagued most other subsequent titles (besides Kuja’s design, I guess).

The story is also structured so well. It regularly shifts perspective for the first thirty hours, allowing the player to spend ample time with each of the party members, and shaking up character combinations for fun new interactions. It introduced a system similar to the skits from Tales games, showing the player often humorous vignettes of what’s happening to other characters at the time. Once the characters have all come together in one party, the game has earned the sense that all of them (except for the criminally underexplored Amarant) have become a family.

The supporting cast are a blast as well. Zidane’s thief troupe (who double as a theater troupe) are likeable and fun. Kuja’s villain arc allows him to be sympathetic without losing his edge. The black mages are tragic without being overdone.

The development team for this game put so much more work into this game than they had to. The background artwork was all made in such high-definition resolutions that the act of downscaling them to fit in the game removed details. Uematsu traveled to Europe to make sure he’d get the feel of the soundtrack right, and has said it’s his favorite score he’s ever done. Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy, says IX is his favorite game in the series.

FFIX is one of the two games I would like them to remake after they finish the VII Remake, but I’m terrified they’ll mess it up in some way. Honestly, the game’s only flaws (which I do desperately want them to fix) are a lack of voice acting, the underdeveloped party member Amarant (and to a lesser extent Freya), the dissonance of Beatrix never getting punished in any way for her hand in a genocide, and the fact that very few of the sidequests are story-related because so many of the smaller story details that would normally be relegated to sidequests are covered in the main plot.

Despite the danger, though, I think revisiting IX is absolutely essential moving forward. It represents so much of what made older games like IV and VI great, and its story is much more grounded in real emotion than many current Square stories tend to be. Remaking VII will be good for getting VII out of Square’s system. Remaking IX would be good for putting IX back into Square’s system.

Here’s a IX song as a reward for getting this far. I’m gonna go listen to it and tear up again.

#final fantasy #final fantasy iv #final fantasy v #final fantasy vi #final fantasy vii #final fantasy vii remake #final fantasy viii #final fantasy ix #final fantasy x #final fantasy xii #final fantasy xiii #final fantasy xv

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weird-al-song-tourney · 1 year

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EVERY SONG CONFIRMED FOR THE BRACKET SO FAR:

SUBMISSIONS ARE STILL OPEN, BUT I THINK IT'D BE A GOOD MOVE TO LIST OFF EVERY SONG I CAN CONFIRM SHALL BE GOING IN THE BRACKET SO FAR!!!!!!!!!

Albuquerque

Amish Paradise

Angry White Boy Polka

Canadian Idiot

Captain Underpants Theme Song

Christmas At Ground Zero

Close But No Cigar

Constipated

Dare to Be Stupid

Eat It

Everything You Know Is Wrong

Fat

First World Problems

Foil

Good Enough for Now

Handy

Hardware Store

Harvey the Wonder Hamster

Hey, Hey, We're the Monks (From "Galavant")

Hooked on Polkas

I Lost On Jeopardy

I Love Rocky Road

I Want A New Duck

I'll Sue Ya

It’s All About the Pentiums

It’s My World (And We’re All Living In It)

Lame Claim To Fame

Like A Surgeon

Midnight Star

My Bologna

NOW That's What I Call Polka!

Now You Know

Ode to a Superhero

One More Minute

Party in the CIA

Perform This Way

Polka Face

Polka Party!

Polkarama!

Rootin' For The Enemy

Sir Isaac Newton vs Bill Nye

Skipper Dan

Slime Creatures from Outer Space

Smells Like Nirvana

Super Duper Party Pony

Tacky

The Alternative Polka

The Hot Rocks Polka

The Night Santa Went Crazy

The Rye or the Kaiser (Theme From Rocky XIII)

The Saga Begins

The Weird Al Show Intro

This Is the Life

UHF

Virus Alert

White & Nerdy

Word Crimes

Yoda

You Don't Love Me Anymore

You Make Me

Your Horoscope for Today

eBAY

Submissions close this friday, May 5th

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meimikana · 5 years

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This one was actually written as a prompt from @ruakichan and posted on here, but I don’t feel like combing my tumblr to find it. So here it is again!

Dissidia Didn't Want Them: AO3 Fandom: Tales of Vesperia, Final Fantasy XIII-2 Pairing: Yuri/Flynn, Hope/Noel Rating: Teen Summary: Four hapless saps traveling together with not much to do.

P.S. The fic is under the cut for people who don’t wanna go to AO3 for whatever reason. Cheers~

---

"We'll be right back!" Yuri called out, waving back towards Flynn and Hope before heading off after Noel.

Smiling wryly, Hope could only shake his head in fond exasperation. "Like clockwork."

"Without fail," Flynn spread his hands out and sighed heavily at the entire situation. "Just can't ever stay put, can they? I swear, one of these days I'm going to put a leash on Yuri and never take it off."

"It's not a bad idea," Hope said smoothly, his expression taking on a knowing light as he glanced over at Flynn out of the corner of his eye. "Assuming we ever find our way out of this strange, seemingly pointless land, and assuming we make it back to my world somehow, which is highly improbable with our current odds, I suppose I could let you borrow one of mine to try out on him."

Flynn very nearly tripped, but managed to right himself a few seconds later without too much trouble. "Very funny," he grumbled, but there was little heat to it. He was used to far worse teasing from other areas.

"So sure I'm joking?" Hope's smile quirked up in amusement. "You've already seen just how enthusiastic Noel can be when he feels like it. With that knowledge in hand, such a conclusion isn't too difficult to arrive at."

Flynn stayed silent for the next half-mile of their meandering journey, likely mulling over the possibilities in his mind, before finally speaking up. "No, you're right. I have no way of knowing for sure. And frankly, you never can tell with people. No matter how well you might know somebody, they can still surprise you at the oddest times."

Hope chuckled. "Well, to be fair, I've always taken the saying "It's always the quiet ones." a little too literally. It makes things interesting though."

Flynn couldn't help but snort in response. "It does at that." He was smiling now though, his steps a little lighter and his shoulders a little less droopy thanks to a joke that may not even be a joke. There really was no telling with Hope. When they'd first met up, Hope had come across as quite serious and well put together, so it had been easy enough for Flynn to decide to go along with them. The fact that Hope and Noel were the first - and only - people they'd run across in this... place had helped as well. And really, that first impression hadn't actually changed much, it had just... grown. Hope was a natural born leader, but he was also a nice person. But also a devious one, especially when he was paying Noel back for something inconsequential. So no, leashes didn't seem like they'd be too far out of the ordinary for someone like Hope Estheim. He probably had one for every day of the week. Designer ones at that. Hmmm.

"You don't have one in purple, do you?"

---

The beast was quite big, with tufts of hair haphazardly sticking out of the rocky protuberances dotting the creature's body. They weren't part of a shell either, that was the damn thing's skin. Not exactly what Yuri would call a good prospect for dinner, much less getting back in one piece after a fight with it. The fact that it smelled like a sewer from downwind wasn't helping its case one little bit. If Noel thought that he was going to help at all with anything involving that thing, well, he had another thing coming. Such a happy lunatic...

"So what do you think?" Noel asked conspiratorially, an almost infectious grin plastered across his face.

"It's ugly," Yuri deadpanned. No way, no how, was he going to help Noel take that beast down. He preferred to stay in one piece, thank you very much.

"Well yeah," Noel shot back sarcastically, "That seems to be the theme of this stupid world, but that's beside the point. The point is what you think it will taste like."

"I don't know and I don't care," Yuri said blandly as he shifted around and started heading in the opposite direction from that hideous creature.

"Oh, come on," Noel practically whined after him, "Where's your sense of adventure?"

Yuri resisted the urge to snort in disbelief. "Not in my stomach." Sometimes he wondered about Noel's sanity, then he remembered Hope and didn't wonder anymore. Some things were truly meant to be, and not because of romantic ideals. No, sometimes it just took a lunatic to look after and care for another lunatic. "And don't even think about taking it down on your own. You might be able to," Yuri said conversationally as he continued to crawl away from that thing, "But then you'd have no way to cart it back to camp, because I sure as shit am not going to help you with that."

"You're no fun," Noel grumbled from behind him. Good, at least he was being smart and coming with instead of staying back. Hope wouldn't hold it against him if Noel really did do something that monumentally stupid, but Yuri preferred for his friends to stay in one piece, regardless of their state of sanity.

"I suggest we find something to hunt that won't end up having the texture of rocks," Yuri suggested as he arched an eyebrow and cast a look back at Noel. "Because I don't think our better halves will be amused if we bring back crap again."

Noel grimaced at the reminder. "Yeah... yeah, you're right. There is that. He'd probably freeze my butt again if I brought that thing back." Noel heaved out a dramatic sigh as they headed further into the brush. "Pity though, I bet it would've been real interesting."

---

It wasn't that Hope was spoiled or anything. Certainly, he'd spent his formative years as a "little rich boy", but circumstances had changed his outlook rather permanently. And really, there was no point dredging up those ancient memories again, especially not over something this stupid. So no, it wasn't that he was spoiled, and he was always prepared to rough it if the situation called for it (which it had several times throughout his life). But seriously, did everything in this godforsaken world have to taste so terrible? Animals and plants, it didn't matter which, there was always something off about the taste. At best, the wildlife came off as bland when cooked. Unfortunately, it rarely was at its best. The rabbit type creatures - that were ever so common - were outright rancid and impossible for even Noel to stomach. All the tuber roots they'd dug up so far had an odd sour note to them, but at least they were somewhat palatable. The birds were a crapshoot, literally. Hard to hunt and even harder to tell whether they'd end up edible or not. Honestly, Hope was beginning to suspect that their mysterious kidnapping and subsequent relocation to this terrible world was just an experiment to see how quickly they'd turn cannibal from the horrible food. They still had so little information to go on, so it was a feasible enough conclusion to arrive at.

"You feeling okay, Hope?"

Glancing over at Flynn, Hope managed to muster up a reassuring smile before turning his attention back to his distasteful meal. "I'm fine, just the usual problems with enjoying our typical dinner."

"Oh? Hmmm." Flynn hummed in curiosity, took a bite, chewed it thoroughly, then swallowed it down. "I don't know, it seems pretty decent tonight to me."

Hope shot him a disbelieving look before understanding dawned upon him. "Oh right, I keep forgetting that you have no sense of taste. This junk probably does taste just fine to you. Too bad that isn't a shareable trait."

"I have a sense of taste," Flynn grumbled defensively. Hope gave him another look, this one even more disbelieving, and Flynn deflated slightly. "Okay, so it's not the best, but I can taste things. You guys didn't have to ban me from cooking, you know. It's not like I could ruin this stuff that badly."

Hope snorted. "Never rule out the possibility of things getting worse, because the instant you get complacent it will get worse. Without fail." Flynn scowled irritably, but didn't argue the point. Hope gave him an apologetic smile, then took another small, measured bite out of his food. It wasn't the worst they'd had up until now, but it wasn't anywhere near being the best either. Ugh. What he wouldn't give for a little taste of civilization right about now.

---

Noel wasn't entirely sure how they'd gotten to chatting about their latest subject. Well, no, that wasn't quite true, he knew why. He just didn't know why why. Or something. Whatever. Despite having known their traveling companions for only a few weeks, he felt comfortable around Yuri, like they'd known each other for a really long time and were just catching back up on their recent goings-on. They didn't, of course, had only just recently met for the first time, but it didn't change that base feeling. Instincts maybe? Did it even matter in the end what the why really was? Probably not.

They'd come across another stream, this one a bit more promising, and had set up for another attempt at fishing. The last one had been disastrous with vicious, spiny fish that had ended on an extremely low note of bloody hands and empty bellies. Here's hoping there wouldn't be a repeat of that this time around. And so far it had been peaceful, though granted, they still hadn't gotten a bite yet. It could still go either way. Hope and Flynn were off foraging for veggies that hopefully wouldn't taste like ass again. It wasn't that he cared either way, but after awhile, it was pretty hard to ignore the fact that this planet was a smorgasbord of shitty tasting plant life and even shittier tasting meat critters. The sooner they found a way back home the better, to be honest. Noel wasn't sure he'd survive Hope's growing irritation with the local diet if it went on for much longer.

"You really shouldn't feel guilty about it," Yuri said finally after several long moments spent shared in silence. "But I'm sure you do anyway. It's hard not to when it involves a friend."

Noel swallowed heavily and nodded. He should have been able to do something, anything. But nothing had worked in the end, nothing had gotten through. Caius had stopped being rational a long time ago, probably even before he'd been born. All that had been left in the end was an end.

"But that's just the way things work out sometimes," Yuri continued, his tone deadly serious as he cast his line back out again. "There's really no right answer to something like that. Every choice is wrong, no matter which way you look at it. But you can't just sit idly by and let shit happen either, you have to do something regardless of it being wrong."

Noel nodded in reluctant agreement. There really hadn't been a choice in the end. Caius had been a friend, regardless of whether the man had still considered him one or not. To ignore his suffering, to let him compound it with countless sins, that would've been so very, very wrong. No, it hadn't been the "right" choice in the end, but it had been the only one that had afforded either of them any sort of peace. He could shoulder that burden, at least.

"It just boils down to what you can live with," Yuri said somberly as he gazed out over the water, a sad smile quirking at his lips. "It will always haunt you, of course; but some choices, no matter how horrible they seem, are so much easier to bear than others."

Letting out a heavy breath, Noel nodded once again. "I know. I just... wish it really were easier."

"Me too."

#Tales of Vesperia #ToV #Final Fantasy XIII-2 #FF13-2 #fanfiction

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