Final Fantasy Friday: Creating a Villain

Happy Good Friday!

On the last Friday of the month, I like to take some time to geek out about my favorite video game franchise, Final Fantasy.

I'm replaying FFIX, and I just passed the point where Garland, the overseer of Terra tells his beta-doll Kuja that he created him with a time limit until MC Zidane grew strong enough to carry out the mission to make Gaia habitable for the Terrans (through war and destruction). As if Kuja wasn't already mad that Garland created Zidane (he threw him off the ship on their way to Gaia, so Zidane didn't have any memory of his origin or mission), so when he heard that he was going to die, he SNAPPED and destroyed Terra in a matter of seconds.

So this brings me to the topic today: creating a villain. Many of the villains in the Final Fantasy games were created by the people around them. Kuja was already pretty bad, but in his case he was literally created to be. Learning there was a caveat just made it worse, and in the end, he redeemed himself.

FFVII had Sephiroth, who was actually pretty chill until he thought humans destroyed his people. That's when he snapped and destroyed Nibelheim. Had he not thought he was an Ancient, his story would've been totally different. Crazy enough, he might've been a main character in what would be a totally different game! We saw a little of that in Crisis Core with Genesis as the main villain. He wasn't as powerful as Sephiroth, and that irked him.

FFVIII has Ultimecia, and going off of the Ultimecia is Rinoa theory I shared during 2016's A to Z Challenge, Ultimecia wouldn't have existed had SEED not killed Squall in the future. Rinoa never would have become Ultimecia and tried to kill all SEED. She wanted revenge.

Though I didn't talk about Seymour in FFX during that challenge and while he wasn't the main villain, he was trying to reach that because of the bullying he experienced being half human and half Guado. He never felt good enough, and so he strove to be better than everyone else and show them up with force.

Most recently was Ardyn from FFXV, who was supposed to be King of Lucis in his time, but they used his soul to absorb demons, so he became corrupted and was cast out for it. Of all of the villains, I think he was the most justified in his reasoning to destroy Lucis. Like Kuja, you can't use people as test dummies and not expect them to snap when you try to discard them.

I could play with "What if" scenarios all day with these five games. Just imagine the possibilities! I'm actually imagining an FFVII with Sephiroth, Zack, and Cloud as a team, and that would've been really interesting. Or an FFIX where Kuja, you know, didn't throw Zidane off the ship, and Dagger as the main character trying to stop them.

Sounds like I should work on some Alternate Universe stories, huh? ... Hm...

Have a great weekend!

A to Z Challenge Theme Reveal (And a thousand GIFs)

I went simple last year, helping people out with some different colors for descriptions in their stories. This time, I'm making it about me and my gaming habit. So, hopefully, someone reads it haha.

My theme for this year's A to Z Challenge is...

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(Was that dramatic enough?)

FINAL FANTASY!!

I will be highlighting my favorite characters from the Final Fantasy franchise, so I will also be utilizing the (GA) tag for those looking for specific tags on the linky-list. To visit me, I will be over at my April Dailies blog. I hope you enjoy. :)

Final Fantasy Friday: This is My Story (with gifs)

WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU'RE CURRENTLY

PLAYING FINAL FANTASY VII OR X FOR

THE FIRST TIME. SPOILER ALERT.

There is nothing more fun to me than a story I can personally interact with, and Final Fantasy has featured some of the greatest stories and backstories off all time. I'll talk briefly about two of the most painful stories: VII and X.

If you know anything about Final Fantasy, you know it became most popular because of Final Fantasy VII, and this game not only still has a huge following and marked the beginning of the Playstation Era, but it has two prequels, a spin-off, an anime, I think a manga, and a movie, which I'm definitely watching some time this weekend.

In the gif'ed scene above, Aeris (or Aerith, depending on who you ask), the world's sweetest character, is praying for a miracle, and as she finishes, down swoops Jenova (read up on Jenova if you want to see the kind of craziness that was going on here and how deep this story goes) masked as and controlled by Sephiroth, the most powerful member of SOLDIER, to stab her through the chest. I was in total shock the first time I played and crying the second time I tried to play. And you would THINK this is the saddest part of the FFVII series, but it's not.

We learn that Cloud, the main character, had a full breakdown due to OD'ing on Jenova cells, and while he and his bestie Zack, Aeris's boyfriend, are escaping the lab the evil SHINRA company have them in, Zack gets gunned down. You get to play this scenario out in FFVII: Crisis Core, and though you know it's going to happen, that doesn't make playing through it any better on the psyche! Just thinking of his face after that awful battle you get to play (as they slowly take away all of your abilities to actually fight), I can't breathe. It's the saddest story ever.

Nothing can come close to the depth of FFVII's stories, but man, did they try with my favorite game: FFX (and where today's subtitle comes from).

Listen to my story...This may be our last chance.

This one is a little easier to explain without a Wiki because I've played it 3 times and know it like the back of my hand. (Yes, I have a life. Why do you ask?)

Imagine a world at war, using all kinds of machinery called machina. In this world is Yu Yevon, a powerful wizard or Summoner. He wants to live forever and have all power over this world. Thus, he concocts this plan with his daughter, another powerful summoner, to create a monster that destroys an entire machina city, Xanarkand, and defeats the others fighting. He calls it Sin and claims Sin appeared because of the use of the machina, so you must now pray to Yu Yevon, for what, I have no idea; Sin still roams around killing the people. Machina is now forbidden, and to atone for and defeat Sin, a summoner must go on a quest to acquire spiritual creatures called Aeons (who are spirits of people who died during the war) on their way to Xanarkand. There, the summoner must sacrifice one of their guardians who came with and protected them on the journey, and this guardian becomes the summoner's Final Aeon, where upon defeating Sin, the Final Aeon is taken over by Yu Yevon, becomes a new Sin, and kills the summoner whom they were protecting in the first place. Irony.

Imagine this happening for 1,000 years.

Also imagine that there were survivors from Xanarkand, and these survivors, like those who gave up their souls to become Aeons, gave up their souls to create a dream of Xanarkand, as though there was never a war, and life continued as normal. Jecht, a world renown Blitzball player and terrible father, gets sucked out of this dream (I'm guessing by the will of those that are dreaming him) and washes up onto the shore of the real world and into the above-mentioned cycle. Knowing what happens, he sends his fellow guardian to the dream world to watch over his son until it's time to suck him out into the real world and stop the nonsense; ie., kill Sin, and then Yu Yevon before he can possess anyone else.

Imagine once more, that Final Fantasy creators have only completed one other main character love story happily in the entirety of this franchise until now.

Jecht's son Tidus and Yuna, the daughter of Jecht's summoner, eventually form a beautiful and pure love bond that comes to a head at the halfway point to Yuna's impending death, where she realizes she can't go with Tidus to his Xanarkand; she has to save the world for a little bit. Kissing in a frozen lake ensues, and it's just...magical.

Long story short, they defeat Sin/Jecht, have to kill all of the Aeons we spent the whole game collecting and falling in love with because Yu Yevon keeps possessing them when you summon them (the Aeons themselves tell you this will happen, because he can only possess Aeons), and then you finally kill Yu Yevon, ending the horrible thousand-year cycle of Sin...which means the people who were using all their energy to create the Aeons and the dream Xanarkand get to rest, so the dream Xanarkand fades, as does Tidus, who was part of the dream. And then the hug felt round the world ensues.

It might be because I'm a big Final Fantasy nerd, but it still breaks my heart! I think it broke the creators' hearts, too, because they gave us a sequel, which was bad, but it brought Tidus back to us as a gift for saving the world yet again, so I can't complain.

Well, that's all for this unintentionally long nerd post. lol I hope you enjoyed it. And since it was ultimately sad, here is FFVII's Cid with a bad lip-read and photoshopped banana.

Do you have any games you like to play or that have compelling story lines? I want to know!