#what is doctor tot anyway? a rat?? I always felt like he seemed mole like to me? maybe the glasses?

[createandconstruct]

talk about ur love of final fantasy 9, idk talk about doctor tot or someone obscure that u love

HAPPY 22ND ANNIVERSARY FFIX. Guess it's as a good a time as any to answer all these waiting ffix asks I have waiting.

And poor Doctor Tootsie. Relegated to an obscure ffix character. But since you brought him up I'll give you my thoughts on the good ol' Treno Doctor. 

I sorta… hate him? NOT AS A CHARACTER. Idk it’s weird. Doctor Tot is a great part of the cast and I love his relationship with Garnet but overtime, while replaying and rewatching the game I’ve started to interpret him as a character who’s weak-willed and slightly misguided. I’ve gotten more critical of him and his actions over time which is why I’ve started to see him less as a fun loveable little eccentric guy and rather as a man who let those in power do as they wish. 

Tot is absent at the start of the story. We pick up from npcs in the library (if I’m remembering correctly) that he worked in the castle as Garnet’s tutor and recently left. When we meet him we learned that he left when Brahne began to become a bit unhinged and dismissed him. Now I can’t completely fault him, I’m not sure what this little top hat wearing guy would have done in the face of an unhinged queen but there’s a sadness there that, he left Garnet behind with a to-be abuser/leader-bent-on-war. She was just a little girl who’d lost her father and was now trapped with a mother who was quickly losing herself. I do at least forgive him for this because when Garnet comes to him for help with her mother he says one of my favorite lines in the game:

What I really have a problem with is that he watched on as Garnet, still Sarah at the time, was stripped of her identity as a child. He was one to find Sarah and her deceased mother when they washed ashore and while it was the King and Brahne who decided to cut off the little girl’s horn - mutilating her body - he never did anything with the information. He even let it slip his mind. My dude I know you're old but how do you forget that someone had a horn and then had it REMOVED. I'm concerned for your academia. He also tutored and helped raise the new Princess Garnet for years and allowed her to live in falsehood. The King and Queen could have adopted Sarah as a new daughter. They didn’t have use her as a replacement, but they did - perhaps for their grief or to hide that the actual continuation of their royal bloodline had died - and its a fact that makes me more and more existential whenever I think of it and how "Garnet" feels. She was stripped of her family, culture, identity, name, and literal anatomy. I can’t help but indict the bystanders of this act. Thus, Doctor Tootsie is included. He new of Garnet's origins, even though he did not associate them with the summoners at the time, and he did nothing with such knowledge. Leaving Garnet to discover it on her own, through tragedy.

But he’s got a little top hat, funny nose, and rat hands so I’ll forgive him.