If the FFVIII characters were animals, what kind of animals would they be? (Feel free to substitute pokemon/dog breeds/plants/whatever for animals.)

Two weeks ago, I had these “down” in my head, but I neglected to write them down, so now I’m not sure I remember. 

I remember Zell was a dolphin. Not just because of his limit break but it actually does seem to suit him, in my opinion. 

Seifer and Squall I’m of two minds on, honestly. Symbolically, the lion works for Squall for a number of reasons. But I also think that a large, maned, elusive ungulate, an elk or mountain goat, would work for him personality-wise. It also fits well with his name, Leonhart--”hart” is an archaic word for stag. 

Seifer similarly has two possibilities, and which is more appropriate kind of depends on how I’m viewing him in the moment. Either a large horse/stallion full of bravado, some earned some not, or a canny shark, uncomplicated yet misunderstood, but not to be underestimated. (On a more joke-y note, I can see him as a hound, specifically a Rhodesian Ridgeback, but that’s more because it’s funny than because I think it suits his personality.)

Quistis has to be a wolf. Legendary, strong, dangerous, majestic, smart, determined, hard-working...and utterly mythologized to the point her vulnerabilities and imperfections are often erased. 

Selphie, the marten. Small, adorable, bouncy, completely badass and absolutely not someone you want to mess with because she will gleefully ruin you. Also thinks nothing of the cold. 

Xu (in a similar vein) has to be a honey badger who don’t care. 

Irvine probably should’ve been the “stallion,” but it feels more like he plays that part without actually being that, if that makes sense? He makes me think of Great Dane, tall and imposing and strikes a powerful pose when really not into the idea of hurting anyone and really needs companionship and affection to be happy. Also, have you ever met a horny Great Dane? If not, be glad. 

Rinoa...an owl. Not just because of the Forest Owls, but because she has a lot of focus, and a willingness to shift focus when necessary. She knows what she wants, she goes for it, and her decisiveness makes her either (or both) Very Dangerous or/and Very Clumsy. She’s fluffly, and she’s sharp. Expressive but sometimes hard to follow. Also, I just think the mental image is cute. 

More birds: Edea is a goose. Sometimes a Mother Goose with all her adopted goslings, and sometimes a Horrible Goose, wrecking things, depending on whether she is or isn’t possessed. 

I could probably list the rest but this has already gotten really long, haha. 

The Successor Challenge Submission: Twentieth Time's a Charm

Written by jadetarsier

Synopsis: Balamb Garden desperately needs another pilot. But finding one proves more difficult than anyone would have guessed.

Genre(s): General

Featured Character(s): Nida, Squall Leonhart, Zell Dincht

Current Word Count: 2,856

Rating: K

Theme: Pumpkin Spice Latte, Twenty

Status: Complete

Links:

Chapter 1

Weird fan theories: Squall is dead. Rinoa is Ultimecia. 

How about we combine them in a stunning twist?

Squall is Ultimecia.

Name 7 comfort films and tag 7 people

Tagged by @teacupballerina, thanks! :D

Airplane!

Hot Fuzz (I notice everybody picked this one, nice)

Hot Shots

Kiki’s Delivery Service

LadyHawke

Tangled

Twister

Tagging A-Z style, @deemoyza @grimoire-of-geekery @jadetarsier @madnimrod @riinoaheartilly @rubybahamut @runicmagitek

Never pressure, only join if you’re as bored as I am. :B

@jadetarsier you inspired me!!

It’s actually pretty funny. He hasn’t said anything at all since I told him to behave. I’m surprised he’s even still in the chat at all. Regardless, maybe what I said will stick and he’ll grow up a little bit. :)

I’m glad you mom-ed him :)

I know some of your cats' names, but I'm not sure I know all of them. Can you tell us their names and maybe a little about each one?

I don’t have pictures handy on this computer, but from oldest to youngest: 

-Natalie, our fluffy black voidbeast

-Holden, a tan tabby, hefty linebacker of a once-tomcat, now very lazy cuddly couch potato

-Clive, our Very Long, Very Handsome and Very Polite orange boy~

-Audrey, Clive’s calico sister and resident marshmallow, who is Not Polite At All unless you remember to give her catnip at the scheduled time each day (she determines the schedule)

-Fujin, one of two we found as kittens living under our shed in NC. She’s also a tan tabby, and very sweet, but while she never starts conflict, she will finish it. Also, true to her namesake, she doesn’t talk much, but when she does, she YELLS. 

-Raijin, Fujin’s beautiful blue-grey, FLUFFY sibling. If we hadn’t seen their mother carrying them around early on, we wouldn’t have believed these two were related. Raijin is so sweet, so shy, so good-natured and puts up with the gratuitous petting and hugging he’s subjected to without complaint. He’s got this small, raspy voice that doesn’t sound like it’s coming from a cat. He loves fish. 

-Carrie, the other calico, and perpetual baby. Although she’s 3 years old, she's never stopped looking like a kitten and can baby-face her way into almost anything. 

-Danny, the youngest, and also a voidbeast, although unlike Natalie he’s a shorthair. Danny is...ridiculous. He’s stout and pantherlike, but that’s where the similarities end because he is the most graceless cat we have ever seen and he has...no idea. His front arms are very strong and he climbs cat trees with them because he routinely misses a proper landing with his back legs. We’re not sure where the lack of coordination comes from, but it’s never gotten worse and he doesn’t seem to care. He is absolutely fearless and (almost) hilariously destructive, knocking anything he can find off tables, unrolling/tearing up rolls of TP or paper towels, digging the entire metal drainstopper mechanism out of the bathroom sink...especially when he’s trying to get your attention to convince you to do something he wants like feed or play with him. He’s basically the goose from Untitled Goose Game, but as a cat, instead. 

Favorite tv shows?

Um...hm. I don’t watch a ton of TV. I used to watch Star Trek with my dad growing up and have a lot of fond memories and pleasant associations with that series (TNG especially, though DS9 definitely grew on me), so I guess that’s a favorite. I also love tearing it apart, which I only really bother to do if I love something, so...yeah. 

Stargate SG-1 I like by the same token/for much the same reasons and is responsible for my interest in ancient mythology.

I really enjoyed House, M.D. although even I called BS on a lot of it, haha. It was well-written, for the most part, and just believable enough that the nonsense could be excused most of the time. I still find the ending kinda frustrating, though. 

When I was a little kid, there was a cartoon series called Mysterious Cities of Gold that was really intense and left 3-4 year old me rather haunted. When it ended, it didn’t run again, and for years and years all I had of it was 1/2 of grainy episode recorded on a deteriorating VHS tape. I never forgot the name of the series though because the theme song was burned into my brain. For a long time, though, no one else I knew had seen it or heard of anything like it, so if not for the tape, I might’ve thought I’d imagined the whole thing. 

Somewhere around 2005 though, I thought to look for it again, now that The Internet was a thing, and lo and behold, it was all over various nostalgia sites and had an IMDB entry. It wasn’t available to buy anywhere, but I...uh, aquired it, just to see if it was as intense as my childhood brain had recorded it being. At that point I’d already had a lot of my childhood favorites ruined by rewatches, so I didn’t have high expectations. 

Except, it actually was good. Pretty amazingly good, for an 80s kids series, and I can see why it messed me up a bit. The emotion in that show was legit (it’s plenty problematic in a lot of ways, of course, given its entire premise, but I can acknowledge that and still appreciate what it does right). I actually recommend giving it a watch, if you can find it in its entirety anywhere. So that’s a favorite, too. 

I liked Airwolf waaaaay too much, for some reason?

Yeah these are 80s and 90s shows, mostly, because I really haven’t watched much, or at least not religiously, since I started living on my own. TV watching comes in fits and spurts for me and I haven’t had a formative experience with it in a long time, although I have certainly seen things I enjoyed a lot. Hard to call them favorites though, because I think something has to change me, or create something new in me, to qualify for that. 

Thoughts on the remaster?

Not especially charitable. I tore into the game files as soon as I had them downloaded and was so very disappointed to see that they had been compacted into, of all things, CCcleaner archives, and all the executable code had been changed to point to locations within those archives (this was likely a cheap, dirty way of both saving space and deterring casual tinkerers). There are already tons of tools out there to unpack those files, restore the original direct calls in the code, and so be able to apply various other graphical/quality of life mods like you can in the old PC version. However, I was also sad to see that a lot of the bugs that were present in the original PC version--but were corrected in the first Steam version--are back in the remaster. I don’t know if those can be easily modded out, and I don’t know if they’re obvious enough for anyone to both to do it, but for someone like me, it’s hard to ignore. 

I’m glad that we have a slightly more future-proofed version of the game that has enhancements to make it less grindy for those in a hurry, but to say I was unimpressed would be an understatement. The monster textures do look better though, I will definitely give it that, and I’m happy it has console releases as well. 

That said, I don’t want to discourage anyone from getting it, even if it isn’t a perfect version of the game. It just falls far short of what I’d call a “remaster.” More like a port of the original PC game with updated character/monster textures, a (mostly) fixed OST (that’s still very buggy), and some nice toggle options like 3x battle speed. 

Who is Squall's roommate at the beginning of the game?

Feel like I might have answered this before somewhere, but I always felt (or just like the idea) that it was Nida. 

jadetarsier replied to your post “Who is Squall's roommate at the beginning of the game?”

Hmm, I just can’t see Nida. Squall might be oblivious to a lot of things, but there would be some practical value to knowing your roommate’s name. I think it’s either Seifer (who doesn’t actually live there, he found an empty single room and just moved in) or a student who has transferred out, perhaps Wimbly.

That’s fair! This is just my HC, but I always interpreted Squall as having one of those senses of humor where it’s really hard to tell whether or not he’s joking. I always thought of his hmmm who are you again to Nida as being one of those jokes (it was also a narrative choice, I think; Nida didn’t figure into the main story at all until that point, so they had to think of a way of introducing him. “Haha that random SeeD we included in graduation isn’t actually random but you didn’t know his name and neither does anyone else, even Cid said he didn’t stand out, the joke is that he’s really boring and we needed someone to fill in, get it get it” was probably the impetus for the exchange). I could be wrong, but it felt like the consensus around Garden was that Nida was the most boring person there, and even Squall kind of agreed (though not in a malicious way). 

That being said, it makes just as much sense for Wimbly, random-T-cadet, or no one at all to be Squall’s roommate, really. I dunno about Seifer...like Selphie or Zell, it feels like he’d make his mark on the room, or at the very least we’d see Hyperion’s case lying around (though again, you might argue that it’s on the opposing wall we can’t see). I can see how it makes sense plot-wise, but I’d have to have context to explain why you don’t see any evidence that it’s him. 

As usual though, just my opinion, YMMV, etc etc. Not disagreeing just thinking aloud, mostly. 

Another random question: Do you think Rinoa and Cloud would get along?

(OR: In which I write a three-page disclaimer and spend half as much time actually answering the question.)

So this question caught me by surprise, and I had to take some time to think about it. Because a lot of SquarEnix main protags get pegged as being same-y, not just facially but in their general dispositions, and “The Weather Team” of 7-8-13 fame in particular is often held up as a prime example of this. Quiet, surface-level misanthropy covering up a mountain of sensitivities is admittedly a tired teenage/early 20s trope, and especially when it comes to Cloud and Squall, I think it’s easy to paint their personalities in broad strokes, and assume they’re basically all the same person with just enough details altered to pretend they’re different. 

But I really don’t think that’s a fair assessment, and in order to answer a question like this I felt I had to really get into why it’s not. So, sorry for the delay in answering, because I had to take some time to organize my thoughts about it. 

OK, so, story/ramble time: 

Part of my need for that time is that, while I really like FFVII, it’s far from my favorite Final Fantasy. FFV and FFVI vie for the number 2 slot, FFXIII and XIII-2 as a unit occupy number 4, and FF Type-0 number 5…FFVII is a somewhat distant 6 or 7, depending on my mood switching out with FFX. I think that when I take FFVII on its own terms, I like it better than most other FFs, but all the additions–Crisis Core, Before Crisis, Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus, even Kingdom Hearts if you count that–have kind of muddied my appreciation for the original. So VII and its characters, as a whole, are a very complicated box of other self-contained boxes that my brain interprets differently depending on whether I take them as their own standalone set of stuff or consider them as part of a larger whole. 

I admit to a bit of pearl-clutching in this regard; when FFVII came out, I was dazzled by it. I loved the post-apocalyptic vibe of Midgar, and the empty, lonely feeling of the low-poly overworld. I think my enjoyment of that world was actually helped by the sheer lack of knowledge I had about it. At the time I first played it, I knew nothing about its conception or what had been lost in translation. I knew nothing about the Japanese fandom, the huge shifts that were happening within then-Squaresoft as a company, or the reject-characters (Edea, Fujin, Raijin, and Irvine) who would one day star in FFVIII and what their role would have originally been in FFVII (Edea had something to do with JENOVA, Fujin and Raijin were going to be Turks, and Irvine was replaced by Vincent). I had no idea that literally half of FFVII’s story was missing from the game itself, and that half again that amount would later be added and ret-conned into the original. 

And frankly, when all that started to happen…I didn’t like it. I lost interest for quite a while. By that time, I already had FFVIII, and I didn’t really care to sink time and money into a game world whose story, and that of its characters, had already been told as far as I was concerned. I didn’t actually revisit VII at all until circa 2013, when a friend of mine convinced me to start writing FFVIII fiction again. She was a big Crisis Core fan who loved Genesis, and she really pulled me back into VII as an entity just because of her enthusiasm about it. 

So it’s kinda funny because I really only started exploring FFVII’s “extended universe” with any real vigor at the same time I was re-immersing myself in FFVIII’s comparatively cohesive lore (which is an…odd, way to describe FFVIII, to say the least, but by comparison, it’s true). 

All of this is to illustrate that, simply, I am not the most qualified analyst of FFVII-anything, including Cloud, his personally, who he is and how he acts. There are many more intelligent people who have spent far more time and effort picking apart his character, who know more about him than I do and can render a more complete picture of his motivations and likely reactions and interactions with various personalities. My Final Fantasy “home” is FFVIII, and that is the only game (with the possible exception of FFV) that I feel comfortable enough in my knowledge to form complete and detailed opinions about re: any given character. It’s much more likely that my understanding of characters outside of that universe, especially a character with as much backstory as Cloud Strife, is going to be missing a lot of potentially pertinent details and considerations that I would ideally have at my disposal, and I think it’s important to acknowledge that before I answer, if only because there are so many fans out there who feel very passionately about FFVII and everything to do with it. So, I am in no uncertain terms saying it: I am not a Cloud Strife expert and I may at some point make an assumption about him in this answer that is contradicted entirely by canon evidence that happened to escape me at the time of writing. 

I’m basically winging it. I’m going off my personal impressions of his character, some of which are 20 years old at this point, plus a little bit of fact-checking I did before posting this. So to my knowledge, no individual facts I’m referencing here are incorrect, but it’s possible some of the conclusions I draw may be inaccurate because I missed some information somewhere due to not being 100% invested in the vast, complex and in some cases contradictory plot that is FFVII. For that I apologize ahead of time. 

(This is, actually, the single reason why I have never written any kind of crossover fiction. To do so and feel good about it, I’d have to be equally invested in each and every universe involved. The three games I feel comfortable enough with in my knowledge to actually write for are FFVIII, Secret of Mana, and the R-TYPE series. Uh. Those aren’t exactly the best candidates for overlapping themes/universes, so…)

*breathes*ANYWAY. Okay so I’m going to actually answer your question. And it’s going to be short by comparison. Sorry about that. 

The way I understand Cloud, and the reason I felt the need to preface this with all that mess, is that the answer is “yes, sort of, eventually.” But with caveats. 

Rinoa is the sort of person to wear her heart on her sleeve, unashamedly. And she actively advocates just that: that emotions are part of who a person is and not something to feel shame over, and expressing them is as much an act of integrity as it is courageous (that’s why, assuming you make certain dialogue choices, she may accuse Squall of being ‘dishonest’ at certain points). I think, assuming Cloud treated her with his oft-wordless, minimalist’s-guide-to-introvert-socialization front right off the bat, she would initially find him to be frustrating and–where Squall emoted at least enough to indicate he had an emotional reaction that contradicted his attitude–Cloud’s more practiced cynicism and “why speak if you can just stare or shrug” philosophy would be a lot less cute to Rinoa. Where Squall deflects with whatevers and various degrees of you’re-doing-it-wrong, which at least indicate discomfort and a degree of genuine interest, Cloud’s unmitigated I-don’t-cares and when-do-I-get-paids would be likely to come off as genuinely dismissive, rather than defensive. This would make her less curious, and in turn less tolerant of Cloud’s apparent misanthropy. 

(Though I start with these comparisons for the sake of illustrating Rinoa’s way of filtering information, I don’t think her impression of Cloud is a question of comparing him to Squall; this would all hold true whether she knew Squall already or not.)

So I think, at first, Rinoa wouldn’t really like Cloud that much, and at least for a while, he wouldn’t give her a lot of reasons to think she was wrong about her first impressions of him as arrogant, cynical and maybe even a little greedy. Basically she’d echo a lot of what Barret had to say about him, but with a lot less swearing. 

And I think, actually, Barret is a good comparison, because it would take about as long for Rinoa to think much differently of Cloud. Not to wander too far into the land of the hypothetical, but a few dizzy spells and flashbacks in, she’d probably clue in that something wasn’t quite as it seemed with him. The more opportunities Cloud has to abandon the group, and doesn’t, the more she’d begin to suspect, and she wouldn’t be quiet about those suspicions; either Cloud has an ulterior motive, or he’s not as callous as he seems. Either possibility is exactly the sort of thing Rinoa would pick at until it bled, for good or ill. 

Without knowing more about the scenario (if there is one), I can’t really say how Rinoa, as I know her, would ultimately stand with Cloud--as a friend, an enemy, or somewhere in between--but I think the more she knows about him, the more she would think he’s actually a pretty okay person with a ton of problems oh my goodness, even if it really seemed at first like he was just an immature jerk. The fog of war is especially thick with Cloud (appropriately, no?), but given time, I think Rinoa would find her way through it. Perhaps, however, not without doing some damage, in the process. 

I know this has been discussed a lot, but I don't recall you specifically answering it on your blog. What weapons do you headcanon for Xu, Nida, and Library Girl (and anyone I'm forgetting)?

“Anyone I’m forgetting” could be a lot of people, haha. I’ll go with those, though. 

I did mention Xu briefly, once or twice. 

Most people in fandom assume Xu is a firearms specialist, and I can’t disagree I imagine her packing at least one and being quite possibly the best crack shot in SeeD, perhaps Garden in its entirety. 

But…I don’t think she has to use it, much? I envision it as something she does more as a passionate hobby, than what she specialized in as a SeeD. I don’t envision her as someone who mixes business with pleasure, and for her, guns are most definitely a pleasure. 

But, business? Business is the business end of her palm, knee or boot to your face. Maybe not even. She can plant you in the ground and barely touch you. Basically she’s a no-frills-no-fuss-no-fucks-given Shao-lin master. And everyone knows it. That’s why no one messes with her, even Seifer. 

Her jam is quite different from Zell’s acrobatic blend of kickboxing and Aikido. Although she can if required, Xu taking someone down typically happens with a minimum of actual movement. She’d be right at home in an Assassin’s Creed game, haha.

So at most, she’d use some kind of knuckle or claw, but only for monsters that are considerably larger than humans. I also imagine her being fairly decent with blue magic, although not as good as Quistis. 

I envision her having only one GF, and even that is more of a paramagic/junction tool than something she summons much. 

If she actually does shoot you, it’s insult to whatever injury she decides to inflict; it means she just doesn’t have the time to bother expending the energy required for magic or physical contact. 

Nida…I’ll be honest, I just go with him being a saber of some sort. Not even a gunblade specialist or anything, just straight-up big honkin’ sword of the oversized-kitchen-knife variety that’s common in the FFVIII world. The fact it’s so outwardly unremarkable suits him, but I do think he’s highly proficient with it, and while not the best swordsman ever, he can certainly hold his own against anything that comes to him. I imagine he’s sparred with Squall and Seifer quite a few times.

For ‘Library Girl,’ some kind of jo or small polearm. I just think she’d be cool taking down big guys with a thin stick, haha. We never saw anyone wielding something like that in the game, really, and she just seemed like she’d be good for it. 

Time For Reflection: Demoted

From: The Successor Challenge 2016

Challenge Theme: Change

Written by jadetarsier

Synopsis: He stood on the bridge, alone, and stared at the horizon.

Genre(s): Friendship

Featured Character(s): Nida.

Current Word Count: 841

Rating: K

Links:

Chapter 1

(Thank you, @jadetarsier @pinkcactuar8 and @vibranch, you really did help a lot.)

silentstarlight replied to your post “jadetarsier replied to your post “Who is Squall’s roommate at the...”

(New idea.) What if Cid indulged his favorites in different ways? Somehow Seifer had a triple with Raijin and Fujin, and the other room closest to Squall's is unoccupied.

I like this take a lot. ^