I just had a thought about the whole crystal thing in the early FFs, and how it isn't in FFVII.

It actually is there, but it isn't a central theme in the world construction.

I mean, there's four caves located in difficult-to-reach spots where you can find really important materia - Mime, Quadra Magic, HP<->MP and Knights of the Round.

The other crystal reference is the Huge Materia, which now that I think about it, remind me greatly of the crystals in FFIV - especially how the FFIV crystals seem to be kept floating in their special chambers, and the Huge materia float around in Bugenhagen's observatory.


Oh, and what do you think of the icon? Frankly, I nicked it off a favourite info site for FF. The site always has a little quiz on the frontpage. I went there looking for the names of the four rare materia that you get from the caves and the quiz was whether Tifa and Cecil would make a good couple. 3 people had voted "Yes", 5 voted "No" (including me). The sprite was cute and just what I was wanting.

I've just been thinking, over the last few hours since I got thinking about Larsa Solider, about kids in FF games, and it seems that practically all the games since FF7 (since I don't know any of the pre-7 ones well enough to give an opinion) have some sort of Token Kid - either of the Cute Kid, or Smart Kid type.

FFVII - Marlene.
BC - Yuffie.
AC - Denzel (though he shares with Marlene).
DoC - Shelke.
FFVIII - Ellone.
FFIX - Ekio.
FFX - Bahamut's Fayth.
FFX-2 - Shinra.
FFXII - Larsa Solider.

I know, I didn't include FFXI, but I know crap all about 11 and am never likely to bother since it's a MMORPG and my internet connection is crap for things like that.

Also, KH kinda doesn't count, since the lead character is still young either that he scrapes into the "Cute Kid" catagory - or at least he did in KH1, before puberty really hit him. (That makes me wonder, has anyone ever written a fic that actually brings up how much Sora grew while he was asleep between CoM and KH2? That'd be interesting reading.)

This can be counted as Mimi's Not Quite So Random Followup To Her Random Thought of the Day.


To put it simply, the observation on Balarlai's complection being similar to Xehanort's has reminded me of how Squeenix likes to make all of their bad guys (and girls) white-haired.

Let me list the usual suspects: Jenova, Sephiroth, Ultimecia, Kuja, Yunalesca, Baralai, Ansem/Xehanort/Xemnas, Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo, Wiess. All of them are white-haired.

The one who is a little questionable is Baralai - as that manifesto makes note of. He was possessed and really is only as much the true villain of the piece as say, Seifer. But it still means that through the mechanics of possession Shyuin has white hair by proxy.


I would be curious to know the hair colours of villains in other FFs - both before 7 and after 10-2. Maybe it's a theme that only started with Nomura but that would not be totally accurate because I have this impression that Nomura had nothing to do with 9 - barring borrowing Vivi for KH2. Plus going against the custom, Marluxia is totally not a silverhair - though silver-haired villainy makes its appearance elsewhere in CoM, in Riku's half of the game (if I'm not mistaken).


Anyway, it kinda makes me think that one may be able to predict who the true villain is in Squeenix productions (at least in FF stuff) by seeing who has the white hair.

And this post so demanded this icon!

I think I have come up with a reason why the Item command in FF8 could be a junction ability.

Simply put, GFs can maintain a dimensional pocket that the person they are junctioned to can store things in. This pocket is maintained even when the GF is not junctioned, so long as it has something within it, but the human cannot access it unless they have a GF junctioned.

Added extra reasoning for the shared inventory of the whole team - as one person gains more GFs the GFs already junctioned show them the location of the team's collective storage dimension. Therefore, because Squall had both Shiva and Quezecotal at the start they both had access to the one inventory, then showed it's location to Ifrit when he was gained, the junction of whoever drew Siren showed her the location, and so on as more GFs were gained along the way.


This however also raises another idea, that if someone got ahold of one of the team's GFs they have access to the team's inventory, if the GF has no compunction against betraying the team.

I have idly been toying with a Squall-Becomes-A-Sorcerer idea for a little while (not surprisingly, growing off of my previous plotbunnies) and I couldn't help but plot out a history of sorcery in the process.

( Hyne, Sorcery, and the civilizations of Terra )

o.Ô

The more I play this game the more annoyed I get at Rinoa. This time round I had her on Squall's team when everyone split up after D-District so the spot where I just saved it, she's just pestered him into giving her a tour of the Garden.


( And while I'm on the subject of Garden... )

Edit: Interesting little discovery, if one goes to the library during Rinoa's tour, Squall gets to see Ellone. She's kinda sad he doesn't remember her.

So I have been chatting with angel_0f_sorrow on AIM, where she was talking about a nutty RP she was in that was a cross between FFVII, Beauty and the Beast and Sleeping Beauty, where she was playing Lucrecia.

The discussion got onto Grimore Valentine, then onto DoC as a whole and she found a german website with DoC spoilers.

THESE LINKS HAVE SPOILERS!!!
So here's the website (Google translated so expect bad grammar) and here's angel_0f_sorrow's theory on what it means.
THESE LINKS HAVE SPOILERS!!!


My thoughts on it turned to what could be extrapolated about FFVIII, based on this info (yes, I know the DoC info was created after FF8 so I know it has no bearing but I like theorising anyway).

( BIG FREAKIN' SPOILER CUT!!!! )

Meh, that was cheery.

It strikes me that Garden - as an organisation - is still very young. I mean Edea got the idea for the place from Squall when Time Compression sent him back to the orphanage after Ultimacea's death and the child!Squall in that scene was what? 4? 5 years old?

Squall was probably sent there as soon as it was ready to take in students (Quistis said she ended up in Garden at the age of 10 and she's a year older than Squall, yet Squall was there before her) but I do wonder, they must have taken in older students at the begining as well if they wanted to start drawing in money from incidental mercenary jobs.

I can see why the internal war that Squall can back from Galbadia happened, I would think the first lot of instructors that would have been hired would have all been outsiders - old soldiers, school teachers, people like that. They wouldn't have the sort of loyalty the younger students would grow up with and more likely go with the one who they saw as holding their paychecks.

That also makes me think that as the first group of truly Garden-raised SeeDs (that sound so botanical) became "veterans" (one would think that Squall and his friends would be counted as such pretty early, considering their status as heros post-game) they would take over positions as instructors which in turn would probably make something like that civil war less likely and would seriously start in-Garden traditions setting in.


Generally though, the simple thought I have in mind is that Garden is still young, the Sorceress War may be over but SeeD has a long future ahead of it.

I just got thinking about the ShinRa xs. Wutai war and Yuffie's opinion of what Wutai had become afterwards and considering the symbolism of that.

It occured to me that the Wutai War may be symbolic of World War 2.

After all, Wutai is very classically asian in design, it faced up against a huge capitalist giant (Japan vs. America and allies) and the result is a country that seems to be pandering to it's conquerors (somehow I get the idea Japan has done that to a degree since WW2).

So if that is the symbolism inherit in the Wutai War that means ShinRa/Midgar = America.

Not a symbolic representation that I have all that much problem with, given how much of an ass Dubya is.

Just thinking of some of the logistics of FF8, where does a super-city like Esthar get it's food? The plains? I suspect then they'd be in for some serious problems post-game. Some of the fics I have read about SeeD coming in to help clean out the monsters called by the Lunar Cry sounds sensible because I imagine the plains around Esther are their prime farmland and it wouldn't do the economy much good if all those monsters are interfering with growing crops (the year's crops are probably lost already anyway so it's probably just as well that the country seems to be damn rich - they'd need it for both the general aid needed and for hiring every damn SeeD Squall can mobilize).

Meh, My mind is currently stuck on FF8.