Sailor §trange

I was imagining a mental rant about authors who hate fanfiction and got sidetracked onto how fanfiction teaches people how to write, which led to a thought that contrary to a comment I read (on fanthropology I think) people can learn world-building in fanfiction if they feel not enough detail has been given about the world they are working with.

Few! Run-on sentence!

This of course came around naturally to FFVII which I feel is a rather paltry world as far as detail is concerned. I mean, every region has maybe one or two locations in it? How realistic is that? If you want realistic go look at a Forgotten Realms map, every country has at least a half-dozen or more towns ands cities in each of them. That is how the real world works and Faerûn really does look like an equivilent to Europe.

FFVII world maps doesn't even look like the whole world to me, it's just too small. I keep imagining that there's more to the world beyond the bounds of the in-game map despite the looping effect when you fly the Highwind off an edge.
Hell, the climates fit this theory, Mideel, the Temple of the Ancients and Cactuar Island are all hot regions so it's easy to imagine they are equatorial.

So what's the rest of the world then? Is there anyone there or did mako usage or the Planet's attempt to heal the Northern Crater kill it all? (I believe something like that happened in FFIX.)

It's just one of those thoughts that goes around in my head.

Okay, so I'm currently reading a Plot Analysis of Final Fantasy IX - not unlike that one I read a few weeks ago about FF7 (actually, I got the URL for this FF9 one from the FF7 one) and something occurs to me:

Sephiroth's plan with geostigma in Advent Children works a very similar way to the Iifa Tree.

The Iifa Tree was basically weakening Gaia (draining it of souls) so Terra could take over - once enough geostigma-perverted souls (negative Lifestream) flooded the Lifestream Sephiroth would be able to take over.

The analysis has already made connections between the creation of Mist in FF9 as being like the production of Mako in FF7, and has also brought up that the whole takeover theme also exists in Spirits Within.

Reading this stuff does another thing, it makes me appreciate how much of common FF themes got put into SW.

While reading a post by amandaw about BC I got attacked by another plotbunny that has been haunting the back of my head since at least the first time I went through North Corel in the game.

Now I don't know if I've seen all the details about North Corel and how it got destroyed by Shin-Ra so I don't know how far off-base this is.

The idea is this:
Information is uncovered that reveals the reactor explosion that precipitated the retributive firebombing of North Corel was not an accident, but the deliberate doing of the old AVALANCHE.


Yes, it sounds simple but if anyone was willing to write a story about Barret it would be very interesting. I mean here's a simple coal miner who got his home town destroyed, his wife killed and a close friend apparently killed though later discovered to have gone homicidal, and his arm injured to the point where he had to have it amputated - only to join the terrorist organisation who was secretly at fault for causing the whole mess.

It'd be all the more interesting if a couple of the Old!Avalanchers - ones directly involved with the Corel explosion - were still alive, possibly trying to reserect the group because they misguidedly want to destroy the struggling Shin-Ra (which in turn would make for one hell of a moral dilemna for Barret if he hasn't put aside all of his Shin-Ra grudge).


But like I said, this'd need someone willing to write Barret and really get into his head and explore the differences between BC!Avalanche, Barret's Avalanche (as in Barret, Biggs, Wedge, Jesse and Tifa) and Cloud's Avalanche (the ones who chased, fought and defeated Sephiroth).

Cloud was not a failure.

Sephiroth told him he was to manipulate him into handing over the Black Materia.

Cloud then told Hojo, with apparent "proof" - not having a number - and Hojo believed him.

The "Clones" are not so much copies of Sephiroth as copies of the process that made him.


( Quotage: following on from talking about Cloud's Mako-poisoning-caused assumption of Zack's persona )

( Addendum )

Upon a bit further reading of that plot analysis I mentioned last post, I find it's conclusions about Sephiroth rather interesting.

( Again cut for spoileriness )

So, I saw a rather interesting post on myprettypuppet and got reminded of my unique materia, which in turn got me thinking about ( how, really, how *would* materia work? )

Next time I will actually talk about my materia instead of just how materia in general work.

( Editation )

I was just considering the size of the meteria in AC and really, when one takes that into account is the black materia all that different in size? For that matter, if there's a drastic size difference I'd say it was the White that was different - it could hardly have been as large as Cloud's materia that Loz took from the church if Aeris could wear it in her hair... could it?


Oh, and thinking on another point from that list of facts and interview details, if the team don't use the materia what the hell or they doing?

I have this theory that after so much materia usage they've become almost neo-cetra in such that they can use some magic without actually having the materia on hand. After all, FF7 humans are decedants of one branch of the Cetra race, right? What's to say they couldn't reclaim some cetra abilities?
It'd probably only apply to types of magic they used a lot though, like if I were to apply this theory to the way I'm currently playing FF7 Cloud would be able to call a Bolt spell without materia (seriously, I have not swapped out the Lighting materia Cloud carries at all. The most I've done is link it to an All materia).


Oh, and the shiny lights in Yazoo and Loz's arms at the end? I wonder which materia they were carrying there?

I found my way into the Wikipedia page about homosexuality in Japan and found this:

From religious circles, same-sex love spread to the warrior class, where it was customary for a young samurai to apprentice to an older and more experienced man. The young samurai would be his lover for many years. The practice was known as shudo, the way of the young, and was held in high esteem by the warrior class.

I'd heard something about that in a thread on fanficrants, I think, about Jedi but I got thinking when I read that about how it'd apply to a Seph/Cloud relationship.

I doubt I'm the only one who has considered such.