the trick is to keep breathing

Day 14 – Favourite Final Fantasy male character.

It is really hard for me to pick a favorite male character, and honestly it's because I relate so much harder to the female characters - and that's interesting to me. Mainly because the fans I spend time with in fandom seem to have fallen - and fallen hard - for many male characters, and so many female characters get ignored or get a bad rap or just don't get written for whatever reason; and yet it's the ladies who speak to me. I am pretty firmly a cisgendered lady, but plenty of cisgendered ladies like writing the dudes and the slash, so I wonder what it is about myself that means the female characters have so much more of a draw on my interests.

It isn't that I'm not interested in the men (and, uh, I certainly like me some M/M too), but when I think about favorites in general - when I think about characters who interested me, spoke to me, meant something to me - it's almost always the ladies.

So to cut this ramble short I'm going to pick two favorite dude characters: Irvine Kinneas and Laguna Loire, from FFVIII.

Irvine was probably the first male character I felt for. Which is really funny, because he's portrayed as a playboy, a womanizer, a skirt-chaser - and wow, does fandom latch on to that one! - so why would someone who is so usually interested in the ladies herself like somebody like Irvine? I think it's because I almost instantly saw through the facade - because it is a facade; it's a game - and there's a lot of complicated feeling underneath, in regards to finding out who you are and where you come from and what you're gonna be. For some reason it meant a lot to me to see that, and I pretty instantly fell for Irvine. I love that he's funny and goofy and casual and supportive and serious and helpful and sincere all in one, that he really just seems to want to make other people happy, that there's so much going on in his memories and yet he's a competent SeeD - and yet he has these lines everyone else seems to have crossed, this line of basic humanity - all of it together makes an awesome character, and I'll claim him as a favorite because of it.

Laguna is, basically, just awesome. He's the kind of person I want to be my BFF. I want to go have beers with Laguna after work, basically forever, put everything else in the 'L' folder and let's play darts. I love him. No other characters are quite as great as Laguna.

Day 15 – Favourite Final Fantasy female character.

This one's hard for the opposite reason; I love so many of the FF ladies! For so many reasons! But there are two obvious choices here and I'm just gonna lay them out: Rydia from FFIV and Quistis Trepe from FFVIII.

Rydia's been a favorite since I was 8 years old, playing FFIV for the first time (as FFII, on SNES!). As a young girl with a serious fantasy bent and an imaginative magic obsession, I'm not sure you can imagine just how awesome it was to see an offensive lady mage: she does damage! She nukes! She is the nuker in that party. And I loved her character too: her entire story, the tragedy in Mist and her experience in the Land of Summons and the way she comes from two worlds and yet can see beyond them both to the bigger picture, overlooking the things that happened in the past to fight for the future. She's optimistic and spunky and driven, brave as hell and spirited, yet still sensitive and emotional and young. I loved everything about her as a kid and I still love her now, the complexity of a character in 16-bit sprites.

And I have never related to a character as much as I do to Quistis Trepe. She's not only a favorite in a gameplay aspect, she's a character of personal importance, in a way. A young girl told all her life that she's a prodigy, a genius, she's special, only to grow into her role almost too fast and continually be striving to make personal connections with the people around her; always feeling separate, too old for friends but too young for the work she's been thrown into; always feeling like she's missed something vital with her life and yet feeling the pressure to be responsible, to be mature, to continue to put her energies into things that are not her; never feeling like she gets the credit she deserves for making the responsible boring choices, and always feeling less-than: not good enough, not exciting enough, not important enough -- is it obvious how much I can relate, or am I just showing my ass here. Anyway. I find Quistis fascinating within the FF world too - her Blue Magic, where does it come from? who decided to make a 17-year-old girl an Instructor? her relationships with Xu, Squall, Rinoa, etc - and ever since FFVIII she has been a favorite of mine, and fandom just makes me love her more.

( 30 Days of FF Meme )

Alright, let's get some more of these out of the way, now that everybody else is done with this meme.

#07 - Least Favorite part of your favorite FF game.

I picked a bunch of favorites, now, didn't I?

FFIV - My least favorite part of the game is, really, anytime the grinding gameplay starts to weigh the story down. The stretch of gameplay from the Dark Elf to the Tower of Zot, for example, starts to feel really really long. Likewise, grinding in the core of the moon is hard as balls but necessary to get all the weapons and, you know, that Zeromus dude, and I like grinding but at that point of the game I am usually ready for the ending. Plus, about half of the versions of this game have really fucking high encounter rates, which might be my least favorite part OVERALL.

FFVI - Again, my least favorite parts come with gameplay: I don't like having to chase the light through the room, I don't like getting stuck and lost on the Floating Continent (which, even though I have played this game 600 times, I still do... probably because I legit get lost every time and so I never learn it), and there are a few parts of the story that just seem slow./

FFVIII - My least favorite part of FFVIII is between Disc 2-3 when you realize Quistis, Irvine, Selphie, and Zell are never going to get the attention they deserve :(

#08 - Favorite Chocobo Version

I love them in FFIV because they come in fun colors - White Chocobos give you MP~! Black Chocobos fly! But I also like the Chocobo Knights of FFX/X2.

#09 - Favorite Moogle Version

I loved that the moogles in FFXII were engineers and e-techs. ♥

#10 - Best Final Fantasy Scene Ever

There is absolutely no possible way I am going to be able to answer this at all. :/ So here are some favorites?

- Rydia and Rosa appearing on the Big Whale
- Final Battle with Kefka (self-help book!)
- FFVIII Sorceress Parade - it's the moment where you realize how fucked everybody is because Edea is for real
- Palom and Porom turning to stone :(
- Yuna jumping off the tower in Bevelle
- The Scene Where Aerith You Know
- aaaaaaaaaaaaas;ldka;lsdkals;kd;laskd I don't do Best, okay


( 30 Days of FF Meme )

Day 03 – Your favourite Final Fantasy theme/song.

"Terra's Theme" from FFVI, also known as the World of Balance Map music. And the intro. And one of the main themes. This song can still give me chills, and I also once owned like a dozen really sweet techno remixes, they were awesome.

Day 04 – Your favourite Final Fantasy party from your favourite game.

HA! This is when I start to WIN by having lots of favorites, right?

FFIV: I'm partial to the final party: Cecil, Rosa, Kain, Rydia, Edge. It's balanced and ass-kicking. I especially liked the DS version, because once you had the final party I really enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts. Cecil, Kain, and Rosa are like caught in this giant clusterfuck of each other and worry and guilt and LUNARIANS!!! and CECILLLL!!! and ROOOOOSA, Rydia's being all sweet and innocent and excited about exploring and worried about them all!, and Edge is the only member of the party who doesn't have his head stuck up his own ass.

FFVI: Terra, Celes, Edgar, Sabin, for maximum damage dealing. Runners-up include Locke and Shadow, and possibly Setzer.

FFVIII: Well, since it has to include Squall, I'll go with Squall-Quistis-Irvine, which I find is a cool balance of strength, casting, and limit breaks, and is also SEXY. Acceptable alternative is Squall-Quistis-Rinoa.

Day 05 – Your favourite Final Fantasy City/Town.

I DON'T KNOW OKAY, I don't really glom onto locations as much as I do characters! Let's just go through here:

FFIV: The Feymarch is awesome! I love the meta of a Land of Summoned Monsters, and the place itself is neat.

In FFVI, I thought the uniqueness of the places was really neat: Zozo, for example, or Mobliz in the World of Ruin, or Thamasa, little towns where you can really kind of see how geography and stuff like that has affected the way they develop. I don't really have a favorite though.

In FFVII, I liked a LOT of the landscape; Midgar alone is its own world to build in, and then there's Cosmo Canyon (which I wish we'd seen more of!) and the City of the Ancients, which were neat.

In FFVIII I really liked Esthar - Laguna's shiny city of awesome! What's not to like?!

I liked a lot of the places in FFIX too, although none stands out as a 'favorite': I liked Lindblum, and Burmecia, and that crazy thing in the Desert.

FFX had some real awesome places too. Hey! I haven't mentioned FFX here but this is a good time to say, I fucking loved this game! It doesn't have the nostalgia value of IV/VI or the constant draw of VIII, but it's still one of my all-time favorites! And so much of what I liked about it was Spira as a whole, because I feel like FFX was in its world a lot more than other games, like, the world was part of the story itself; the worldbuilding there was intimately related to the story and the characters.

XII I am not sure I've played enough times to name a 'favorite'. XD

( 30 Days of FF Meme )

Swiped this as soon as I saw it from rosencrantz and irish_ais ~!

Day 01: Favorite Final Fantasy Game

HOW DO I CHOOSE

Well, in typical Sev fashion, I am going to have to choose three because I don't do decisions, but I have reason for my choices, so here goes:

My favorite Final Fantasy game in general/overall is FFIV. This is for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with the game itself and everything to do with nostalgia. FFIV was my first Final Fantasy - back when it was FFII - and I can remember first sitting down with my brother to play it: the boy I had a crush on in school had lent us FFII and Zelda for SNES, for one week, and I really just remember getting hooked on FFII. Jim and I couldn't beat it in the time we had it, but after getting that taste, we would constantly petition my mother to rent the game from the supermarket. It became our babysitter: Mum and Dad knew that if we had that game for an evening we wouldn't do anything else, including get hungry. It was real.

So I have a huge soft spot for that game overall. I loved Rydia from the second she came on the screen, adorable little green-haired nuker. I watched Cecil and Rosa be all sweet at each other, watched Kain's awkward honor/obedience thing twist himself up in ways I was probably too young to understand, loved Edge, cheered at Yang and Edward and Palom and Porom, and cried at the frigging Giant of Bab-Il when everyone comes back to fight, I'm not lying, I still tear up at that scene occasionally because, well, we're going on 20 years of memories of playing that (yup, just aged myself, didn't I).

I made Rydia and Rosa Lego People afterwards. I mean, okay, at that time, I liked video games, but I think I would have liked them more if they'd had girls in them - and FFII/FFIV did. No matter what (genuine and appropriate!) criticisms you can lay on Rosa and Rydia in terms of traditional female roles and female video-game-character roles (and I have!), you can't deny that they are important in the game, important to the plot. Rosa's at Cecil's side for a lot of it; Rydia saves the day with her summons. They both defy the menfolk and fly to the moon and won't take it back. It isn't - it was like, oh, okay, I can identify with that. I used to pretend I was Rydia more than I should admit online.

I've played this game more times than I should admit either. I've played it on SNES, on emulator, on PS1, on GBA, on DS, on PSP. I know it pretty well. And every time I play it I still enjoy it: so there isn't a lot of gameplay involved, no customizable characters, not even really replay value (except for the DS NGP option), and yet... I still love it, because I'm a nostalgic softhearted sucker for it. It still makes me smile and sigh and stabs my heart in all the right places.

So for those reasons, FFIV will always be my overall favorite.

My game I think is the best one is actually FFVI. It's complex and intricate in a lot of really awesome ways, with character backstories that are really fleshed out and personalities that are multilayered. It's funny and silly and heartwrenching and sad all at once. It has a fantastic villain and no real hero / "main character", but it's led by two awesome heroines who are central to the story being told. Gameplay is pretty straightforward, but characters are sort-of customizable (Esper levelling-up) and there's some replay value in that you can pick different parties and get different scenes in-game and at the ending. It's a great game and when I think of all of them, I still think it's the shining star.

It would be my favorite, but the nostalgia-value of FFIV pushes it over the edge, honestly. I have some pretty good memories of FFVI, too, though - dual-controller SNES games where I wanted to be all the girls and Jim had to be Sabin because I couldn't Blitz worth a nickel.

My favorite game to write for is FFVIII. As a fanfiction writer, as somebody in fandom, I think this is a slightly different angle: FFVIII was a fantastic and fantastically confusing game. And for a fanfic writer, it's still my favorite. I still haven't run out of stories to tell in that world; I omni-ship the entire cast; I'm still coming up with theories, past and present and future and why does no one pay attention to Ellone and the game was informative enough to give us these interesting characters, a time-twisting plotline, some father-son snippets, weird fated threads -- and yet confusing enough that it leaves plenty to write for, plenty to do, lots of things to say and explore and lots of directions to go.

It was a great game, and of the "later" FFs it is my favorite. And for fanfic, it is the winner.

( 30 Days of FF Meme )