Final Fantasy IX

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything particularly productive lately. I have been distracted by Aidan Turner and, without a class prompting me to do so, I don't get many ideas for random works. I am sure the next five months will be filled with all sorts of poetry I think is awful due to my Poetry class I am required to take. Why force me to do poetry? It isn't fair. I'm so bad at it. I can't take it seriously.

And I have been watching too much British television. 

I even think with a British accent now. It's sort of strange. Yeah.

Anyway, to the point of this post. Final Fantasy IX. I really love that game. After much soul searching over the years, I can solidly say that it is my favorite Final Fantasy game, and it makes me sad that some people have never even heard of it. Final Fantasy VII does, however, come in a close second. And as overrated as people think that game is, I do love it regardless of how many people think positively or negatively about it. But that is a tale for another time. This post is about my favorite, Final Fantasy IX.

It is a funny game. It does still have plenty of seriousness to the plot, but I so feel like it has the most comedic talent out of any of the Final Fantasy games I have played, which is most of them. And every single character is so well-made. Zidane will forever be my favorite leading male, though I am pretty excited for Nocits in Versus XIII, but that is beside the point. His character is so well-made and developed throughout the plot, and my sister and I both fell in love with him. Her probably less than me, since I am the one with the "falling in love with fictional characters" issue. I can say the same for Dagger, Vivi, Steiner, Eiko, and every single one of the characters in that game. 

Next part of why I love it is Kuja. I understand that the majority of Final Fantasy fans will say that Sephiroth is the best villain ever. I can see that point of view. I am addicted to Sephiroth's story, and I fell in love with him as much as I fell in love with Zidane. More hard-core Final Fantasy fans who have been playing all of the games obsessively will try to tell me that Kefka is the best villain. I am currently in the process of playing Final Fantasy VI with my sister, so I can't jusdge the situation quite yet, but he does seem like a good villain. Naive fans who only started playing with the PlayStation 2 might try to tell me Seymour is the best villain. Those people... I don't even want to explain how wrong I find that. But I disagree. I believe that Kuja is the best villain.

I do have reasons. Kuja is not the most powerful. No, he would probably lose in a fight against Sephiroth. Again, not sure about Kefka. I should play Dissidia and find out. He is not the most mentally screwed up. He is not, by any account, the most evil. So if that is how you measure the best villain, then I do suppose he is not the winner. However, his character is astounding. He was created for a single purpose, and he was defective. So his creator made a newer version, a better version, that effectively was his brother. He was cast aside, and his creator knew he would be useless and planned to replace him with the newer model. I can understand why he got upset and tried to get rid of Zidane. Then he finds out that he is going to die. In a childlike fit of jealousy, he wants to destroy the world so that everything else will go down with him.

Kuja is not evil. He was mistreated, and that led him to make some stupid decisions. He never got to grow up, and he retained a childlike sense about him that led him to want to destroy everything. He wasn't proud of what he was, hence the hiding of his tail, and he was most certainly jealous of Zidane. But after all of the character development he went through, in the end he does something right. He saved Zidane's party and assisted them in escaping in the end of the game. Zidane saw that change in him, and he stayed behind to protect him. I like to believe that Kuja didn't die, but that is left up in the air. And that is why I feel like he is the best villain. His character is astoundingly well-done, and his motivations are original and well-founded by the writers.

My next point is the theme. As many people know, IX and X were developed at the same time. As such, IX did not receive much advertisement, but that isn't my point. The theme of Final Fantasy X is about dreams and hope. I love its message. It is one of the best games I have ever played. I haven't been involved with Final Fantasy VII for as long, but I know its theme could very well have something to do with the idea that we are destroying the planet. Also very important, and very close to my heart. Each game has something like that, but the one that hits me the most is Final Fantasy IX's. It is about life.

Every single one of the characters in IX is faced with their mortality. There are numerous monologues about life and how you need to live it, no matter what you are or what you've done. From Zidane, to Kuja, to especially Vivi, that theme is illustrated in every single character's story. Though it isn't explicitly  mentioned, most people assume the farewell monologue in the end is Vivi before he died. I also see that as being true, though it took me a while to figure that out. I feel like IX has the strongest message that can really be applied to any person, in any stage of life. We have to live with the time that we have, and not simply exist. That game genuinely changed my life.

The characters and plot, while having all of their ties to the bits of Final Fantasy that are in each game, are so unique. My sister and I always play Final Fantasy games together, and in the old ones we say the lines since they aren't dubbed. Honestly, it is probably where my acting skills came from. And Final Fantasy IX is the first game we did that for. It has become a habit. Another part of my attraction to IX is the music. For some reason, people seem to really like the music of VIII. I don't particularly like that music, and I don't particularly like that game. There are things about it that deter me from being interested, like the double plot. IX has my favorite music, and every time I hear it all I want to do is play it again. It never gets old to me, and I really just wish that more people would give it a chance and be able to learn form it, as well as laugh and enjoy it, in the same way my sister and I did.

The Triangle

The Triangle

In all of my years of reading, both original works and fan fiction, there has been no single plot device that irritates me more than the dreaded love triangle. For most of my life so far, I thought it was stupid because it doesn't happen like that in real life. I have been proven wrong on that count, though it was more of a one-sided line than a triangle, what with someone liking me, but me not liking him at all in favor of someone else, who in turn didn't like me like that. So I understand that it can happen. But why on earth do so many authors feel the need to use it as a plot device?

I used to not have a problem with love triangles. If a book or fan fiction looked good, I would read it regardless of how many people were involved in the romance portion. I, however, eventually reached a point where it frustrated me. With the amount such a situation is seen in books, one would think it is a common occurrence in human life. While I can now admit that it isn't a real life impossibility, I also know that it is not nearly as common as an alien would think if he was learning our culture simply through reading fictional stories. I feel like we should be depicting human life as true as we can, unless, of course, the life we are writing about is not human.

Another problem I have with the triangle is the creativity aspect. Love triangles are a cliche. There are those who would disagree with me, and I do not particularly care. I have gotten to the point, when reading, where I see other potential prospects for the heroine and I assume there will be a damn triangle, even if it is just fabricated. Everyone is doing it. Should we just jump onto the bandwagon? I don't think so. There are so many ways to make a romance interesting without throwing in some other guy. Is this lack of originality a testament to the ever-shrinking creativity in writer's? I certainly hope not.

The next problem is characterization. I read these stories about some girl who is so very in love with this one guy. She would give anything for him. Then something unfortunate happens and she is forced into a situation, in some way or another, with another guy who is smitten with her. First of all, why are all fictional females ridiculously pretty and irresistible?  I understand that reader's don't want to read about an ugly person, as shallow as it may be, but it is really unnecessary to have everyone fall in love with your character. In reverse, it is not natural for the female to always be so fickle. Yes, there are people like that, but why is that the only side of human females represented in  literature these days?

I understand why the triangle is effective. It splits the reader, if done correctly. Either the reader has a favorite in mind and wants to see them win, or they love both and wait for the author to decide. This does keep the reader turning the pages, but at what cost? Yes, there have been times when a love triangle has kept me reading a book I would otherwise hate. But is that really the purpose of the book? I hope not. If so, it should just be sold under pointless romance with no plot. Yes, that was harsh, but as much as I feel that characters make a story what it is, plot is also necessary.

This rant really came about while I was reading a story where a woman was so in love and so happy, and the author decided to throw in a love triangle. It made me angry. So now I am letting it out. Because the plot is so good that I am willing to look past this stupid triangle because I need to know what happens in the story. And my stomach is growling. And the slightly formal tone of this post has now all-but-dissipated.

Fear Essay

Mirrors

For a long time, almost as long as I can remember, I have been afraid of mirrors. This fear was spawned from things such as the “Bloody Mary” trick, where you were supposed to turn off the bathroom lights and spin around, saying “Bloody Mary” three times, to make her show up in the mirror behind you with a knife when you turned the lights back on. I never tried, and I always adamantly refused to do so. This fear was made even stronger when I entered the stage of my life where watching horror movies became entertaining to me. A strong majority of horror movies have a bathroom scene and, within said scene, something frightening happens either involving the shower or the mirror. Now I will be doing something completely normal, like brushing my teeth, and when I lean down to spit out the toothpaste, I always expect to see something behind me when I come back up.
            

“Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out.” (Edberg) Children aren’t afraid. There is a time period where we are so young and so innocent that we are simply curious. We wonder what the hairy thing with all the legs is, and when we ask our mother, we receive screaming and fright as an answer. Fear is something our parents teach us just as much as they teach us the language we speak. It isn’t something we are born with, simply because we have to know what something is, at least somewhat, to know to be afraid of it. The only exceptions to that are supernatural events, death, and the fear of the unknown.

“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.” (Edberg) As stated previously, children are simply curious. That curiosity they possess so innocently is what, in a sense, protects them from fear. They just want to know what things are and to learn more about the world from that. Eventually a mother’s reprimanding will reach a point, psychologically, where the children become afraid. Hearing “don’t talk to strangers” over and over again implies that there is something wrong with strangers, that something bad will happen if you talk to them. The truth of the matter is that most strangers are probably not trying to harm you, but we have learned that it is better to be afraid of them than to risk said stranger being a serial killer or rapist.

Aside from learning fears from our families, we also learn fears from society and the media, including movies. For some reason, a lot of humans enjoy the feeling of being afraid. Perhaps it is the adrenaline we get, the fight or flight scenario, or maybe we are all just a bit masochistic. Near Halloween, we find amusement parks with mazes full of people covered in goopy makeup and fake blood that will scream at us in an attempt to scare us, and they will typically succeed. We watch gory movies, jumpy movies, and movies that are just downright creepy, because we like the fear that we feel, even if we don’t want to admit it to ourselves. After all, fear is mental. If we didn’t want to be afraid, all we would have to do is remember that no, a dead girl with long hair covering her face that is disturbingly mangled is not going to come out of the television and kill us.

Everyone is expected to be afraid of something. Some people are more scared than others. Some fears are completely irrational, like my fear of mirrors instilled in me from the excessive amounts of scary movies I watch, and some fears are perfectly sensible, like being afraid of having a fatal car accident. While fear can hinder some parts of like, like making me afraid to even go in the bathroom after seeing a horror movie, it also protects us. Even though most situations aren’t something to be afraid of, fear is like a safety net. If I wasn’t afraid of that stranger my mother always told me not to talk to, would I be that girl on the news found raped and murdered while walking home one night?

Works Cited

Edberg, Henrik. "22 Inspirational Quotes on Fear." The Positivity Blog. N.p., 2012. Web. Web. 23 Oct.       2012. 

On My Feet

On My Feet

My feet are not pretty, nor are they delicate. They are lumpy. Some of my toes are sticking in strange directions. In fact, my toes are not flat like a normal foot, but they curve down at the end of each one. This is with the exception of both of my big toes, my “turtle toes,” that curve up and cause me to get the most obnoxious looking holes in all of my Toms shoes. I suppose that is what I get for not wearing socks with them, but socks with Toms look so strange. My feet are unnaturally long and skinny, I probably have bunions, and my heels, toes, and balls of my feet are completely covered in calluses.

            

There are reasons for these deformities, of course. Shoes. Many different kinds of shoes. Pointe shoes, tap shoes, jazz shoes, ballet shoes – they all had a part in the unbecoming of my feet. As previously stated, my feet are long and skinny. Being both long and skinny does not bode well for shoe fittings. Typically, skinny feet are short. Apparently, the longer your feet get, the wider they are expected to be. I had many a dance teacher tell me, especially for pointe shoes, that the width of the shoe fitting me was much more important than the length. So pointe shoe after pointe shoe, jazz shoe after jazz shoe, my feet were balled up inside shoes that were much too small.

            

It was almost like how Chinese women wrap their feet in ribbon so that they will be smaller, because it is impressive, in their society, to have small feet. My toes always had to curl up in my shoes, which is why they now curve down and inward at the ends. Obviously, the worst of these shoes were the pointe shoes. Not only were they small and squishing my feet to death, but I was also expected to stand on my toes – the very same toes that were being crushed inside the shoe. One time it was so painful that I just sat down and started crying. My pointe teacher was unhappy with me, but I asserted that my shoes did not fit and it hurt too badly to do the exercises across the floor.

            

I continued, for the next two years, to try on pointe shoes in a store, decide they were good enough, and then go to class and not be able to dance in them. There was no brand of shoe, and no size of shoe, that would fit my feet, but the damage was already done. My toes face inward, like the point you see on high-heeled shoes sometimes, and they curve in unnatural directions. I have ingrown toenails because of this, and the angle my toes now face have caused me to get bunions on my feet.

            

A similar process happened with tap, jazz, and ballet shoes until we found a company that made tap shoes in a narrow size. Then it just was ballet and jazz. I quit taking pointe classes after those two years, but my feet continued to get deformed from all of the workshops I did where I was forced to wear my ballet and jazz shoes that were just too small, but I wouldn’t take them off until I got to the point where I legitimately could not feel my feet – I was concerned that it might be unhealthy, which is the only reason why I removed the shoes.
            

I don’t take dance classes anymore, but I still hate my feet. Granted, I now have the ability to wear shoes that are one to two sizes too small, since my toes are so capable of crushing themselves. It is nice to be able to have that large of a range of shoe sizes, but I do prefer for me feet not to be in pain. I don’t particularly like wearing shoes that expose my feet or toes, like flip flops, because I always feel like people are judging me for how deformed they look. However, when I explain I am a dancer, people usually have an easier time understanding – apparently, it is common knowledge that dancers’ feet are gross.