Icebreakers post
Feb. 27th, 2012 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lindorie posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
ff_metaSorry, you guys. Life's caught up to me this past month and made me put my baby on the back burner, which sounds harsher than it really is. (I hope.) Which leads me to something I've been thinking about for a while: an icebreaker post.
Introduce yourselves in the comments! I know fandom is small and some of you might know each other, but it never hurts to properly introduce each other to the class. Let us know all the things you'd like to discuss, even if it seems random and kind of dumb! That does not exist in FF Meta land! Everything is up for discussion!
Here's some questions to start you guys out:
Introduce yourselves in the comments! I know fandom is small and some of you might know each other, but it never hurts to properly introduce each other to the class. Let us know all the things you'd like to discuss, even if it seems random and kind of dumb! That does not exist in FF Meta land! Everything is up for discussion!
Here's some questions to start you guys out:
- What first suckered you into Final Fantasy as a series? Was it the plot? The characters? Nobuo Uematso (or his successors)'s music? Some sense of gamer's loyalty? Why is that?
- What is your favorite game out of the series to date? Why is that? What makes you defend it so, even though it may not be everyone else's cup of tea?
- Who is your favorite character? Why do you favor them? Is it because you identify with them? Because you admire them? Or is it something else?
- Anything else you'd like to share with the class? Any thoughts? Observations? Something funny and random? :)
no subject
Date: 2012-02-28 05:03 am (UTC)1. My best friends in elementary school (circa 5th grade) were into the game... then my mom started hanging with this new guy who was into Diablo II, FF, Magic the Gathering, etc, and he gave me a Playstation and FFVII. It was my first video game ever, and I really liked it... I later played FFX and X-2. I just started re-playing VII recently. The games just became a part of me.
2) I'm not sure. I've only played FFVII, X, and X-2... maybe I like the plot of FFX a lot. But I feel like I'm cheating on VII, so I'm going to say that VII is my fav... I'm going to play VIII after I finish VII.
3) Auron and Vincent (X and VII). There's something really cool about their personalities. mysterious and powerful. in VII I always play with Vincent; he's super bad ass.
4) Yuna/Maester Seymour. I do not approve. I encountered this phenom recently, and disliked. She's too "good" for him.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-28 06:05 am (UTC)1. You know, that's actually not a bad game to start on! Then again, everyone is different. My partner is all "I hate FFX and Tidus sucks huge monkeys balls" and I'm all "why must you say these horrible, mean things? ;_;" I like FFX for its plot, and its definite world building. Spira is definitely a sad place to be in. X-2? Hellooooooo fanservice, I'm not complaining
2. Why do you feel like you're cheating of FFVII?
3. Vincent! He's one of my favorite characters to write, mostly because he's so mysterious and because, well, he has quite a bit of backstory. I can imagine he's quite fucked up and snarky.
4. I AGREE WHOLEHEARTEDLY. YUNA, WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-29 09:03 am (UTC)and save some for me. and if it's wine, doubly so.
Wine is a lovely substance.
I feel like I'm cheating VII because that was my first video game, so it will always be very close to my heart. I think the opening sequence was almost metaphorical for something epic in my introduction to RPG...
I fully support anything that has to do with Vincent.
I also think Sephiroth is undoubtedly one of the greatest villains in the history of villains.
also, what I was referring with Yuna/Seymour was the fandom. people writing hentai/whatever about them. it displeases me.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-28 06:14 am (UTC)2. SHIT I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO ANSWER MY OWN QUESTION. I think after all this time it must be FFVIII. I don't know, I love them ALL, but I'm basing this solely on the game I write the most fic for.
I know the plot is kinda funky, even more so now that laceblade just pointed out the Squall is Dead theory to me, but... I don't know. I like the mix of modern sci fi and fantasy, I like the fact that mercenaries barely out of school, they're just effing orphans, for christ's sake, are saving the world. It was the first game I was exposed to after FFI, and it sticks to me, no matter how ludicrous the plot.
3. SELPHIE. Oh, okay, and Yuffie. And Beatrix. I identify with the first two, and deeply admire the thrid.
4. I am out of grown up drink. Also, I've always to work materia into fic. I've seen some fic where they melt into the weapon. But seriously, how the fuck do you work that shit in?
no subject
Date: 2012-02-28 12:44 pm (UTC)2. If I had to pick one at gunpoint it would still be VII but there's definitely areas that other games do better. XII is the one that has my favourite combat system, I think the best levelling-up system is X's sphere grid, XIII might be the best game-plus-story all-round package, and I love all the minor characters in IX.
3. I am weirdly bad at plucking characters out of their stories & environments to answer this question. I love writing about Garnet, I am ridicufond of Laguna, Balthier is an awesome asshole, I have entire headcanons devoted to Stiltzkin, and when I grow up I want to be Oerba Yun Fang.
4. It really, really bugs me when people say FF games/stories are all the same, because they're not. It's much more of a brand than a series. I don't like everything about all of them but the general quality of writing is unusually high as videogames go, and the series has tried out all kinds of interesting narrative structures and tropes. FF is always experimenting with gamewriting as a medium, and I don't think it gets enough credit for that.
OH GOOD.
Date: 2012-02-28 01:27 pm (UTC)2. FFIV, although FFVIII and FFVI follow in short order. FFIV is full of flaws, sure, but it gets flavored with nostalgia in my head: and its good moments are so good. FFVIII is just one of those worlds I fell head-first for. And FFVI... I actually think that VI is the best game out of the series, overall - I'll admit it; that just doesn't happen to make it my favorite. It's an excellent and amazing game but when I look at what I replay it's IV and VIII.
3. Quistis, Rydia, Irvine. That probably tells you something unfortunate about myself. ALSO: Laguna and Larsa. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME
4. WHO ELSE HAS SEEN DISTANT WORLDS? CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS
Re: OH GOOD.
Date: 2012-02-28 01:43 pm (UTC)teal deer everywhere
Date: 2012-02-28 01:41 pm (UTC)I have ended up as a pretty hardcore RPG fan, but I'm still partial to pretty men.
2. Final Fantasy IV. While the After does some fucky things, those can pretty much be ignored (and it does some good things, too, hello half-naked Golbez)... And besides, it's so good they borrowed a huge chunk of the plot for FFVII...
Good characters, a good plot that doesn't fall apart at the end, and just pretty much everything being good. ^_^
3. I'm not even sure I could pick one per game. ^^;; Squall is so much fun to write. I adore Cecil and Kain just for being themselves. Kuja, for being over the top in every direction... Aerith for the subtleties that make her so very unique... Quistis for knowing what she can't (and can) do.
4. I'm still happily chugging along with Project-ALL-The-Final-Fantasies, and I couldn't be happier. I really did fall out of love with the series, and with Square in general. When I first started gaming, I'd buy anything with the Square(-Enix) logo and wasn't disappointed, but once I started branching out, I realized that a lot of good companies make good games. And coupled with some of the incredibly dumb things S-E has done in the last few years, I just sort of wrote the series off as a whole.
It actually took one of the dumbest things S-E has ever said to bring me back:
"I think we took a little too long getting [Final Fantasy XIII] out," says Yoshinori Kitase, a developer and producer of the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII-2. "When you think of Western triple A titles like Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Assassin's Creed, they seem to work with a lot shorter turnaround - they make a new game in 1-2 years. That is something we need to follow up, because that seems to be the best way to keep our fans interested and attracted to the franchise." Kitase explains that this paradigm led Square Enix to develop and release Final Fantasy XIII-2 in the space of eighteen months.
Really? REALLY? One of these things is not like the others, and that one thing is Final Fantasy. Yes, four or five years between games is not good, but it'd be better if those four or five years weren't filled with random promotion for a game that's still a star's glimmer away. Work on the basics. Then build the hype machine, not the other way around.
FFvsXIII? For a headache, read this. For the gist of the mess, it was announced at E3 2006.
On September 11, 2011, it was announced that Final Fantasy Versus XIII had entered full production.
Aside from every now and then checking to see that it hasn't been canceled, because some dark part of my soul revels in deranged optimism, I think I stopped caring about this game in 2009 or so. Gah!
But anyway, somewhere around Kitase's weird statement about a FF every year, I was inspired. I still have a lot of Final Fantasies that I've not played, even though I own all of the US releases (and about 29438537453 copies of IV in Japanese, because IV). And hey, it's a numbered series, so...
ALL-THE-FINAL-FANTASIES!
I had tried playing the first one a couple times before. Once when Origins came out for PS, and I was still pretty new and I just didn't... I did not get it at all. Then for Dawn of Souls, when I would have made it farther but Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories came out like a week later. Made it to about the same point each time and yeah...
Turns out that it really is an amazing game. It's fun, and challenging, and the pacing was good and it never felt like a chore. By the last couple hours, I sort of went into 'one more dungeon' mode and then holy shit, end credits! \o/
I'm playing FFII right now, about 12 hours into it, in Mysidia for the first time. I'd heard all sorts of bad about FFII, so I was expecting chore-central. Actually... once I got over the repeated urge to see how close I was to leveling up... This game is great and I'm in love. ^_^
And now that I've left my herd of teal deer everywhere...
Re: teal deer everywhere
Date: 2012-02-28 05:09 pm (UTC)That said, I agree that SE needs to better calibrate the hype machine. I was super excited for FFXIII Versus in 2009. Now I barely remember that it exists.
Re: teal deer everywhere
Date: 2012-02-29 12:24 am (UTC)And I don't even know about the online stuff -- I've never heard a good thing about XIV.
Re: teal deer everywhere
Date: 2012-02-29 01:42 am (UTC)Re: teal deer everywhere
Date: 2012-02-28 05:16 pm (UTC)Confession: I haven't finished playing through FFII. I think what stopped me was that at the time I was sharing the cartridge with my brother. I really do need to get back to it.
What's this about teal deer?
Re: teal deer everywhere
Date: 2012-02-29 12:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-28 05:05 pm (UTC)2. FFX, as you might have guessed. ;) There is literally no one in the main cast I don't love, and the world of Spira is endlessly fascinating to me. I also thought it had one of the most coherent and well-developed storylines of all the games.
3. My favorite characters are Auron and Paine, for many of the same reasons. They're both stoics with a secret agenda, their pasts slowly revealed throughout the course of the story, which will always appeal to me. In TV Tropes terms, they both fall into the "deadpan snarker" archetype, another trope I have a hard time resisting. Finally, between them, they pulled me into writing fic for the first time ever, and even though I'm not writing them as actively any more, I still feel like they have facets for me to explore.
4. I won't go so far as to say that FF fandom is dying (the recent success of the Kiss Battle suggests that there's still plenty of interest out there), but it does seem to have slowed down quite a bit. How do you keep a fandom going when so many of its pieces have had no new canon for so many years? How do you connect the active pockets with the people who have become more disconnected?
no subject
Date: 2012-02-28 06:46 pm (UTC)I got sucked into the Final Fantasy series by my cousin doing a speed-run through FF6 for me and my sister when we were kids. The image of Terra standing on the bridge of the airship with her hair freed from her pony-tail struck me strong, and has stayed with me. Eventually I was able to get my hand on a copy of the game and play through it myself. It's still my favourite of the franchise. :)
That's all I have for now. XD
no subject
Date: 2012-02-28 10:34 pm (UTC)I've dropped in/out of interest in the series since that point, but I'm always excited to hear news about the franchise, and though I tend to wait after the initial buzz to pick up the actual games, I've enjoyed most of them. FFV, which I have only played via the crappy PSX port, is the only exception, but I suspect it's because of the whole 'crappy port, terribad translation' part.
2. FFVI! Terra is my favorite video game character ever and I thought - still think - she has one of the best character arcs in any game, ever, and the large ensemble cast develops more depth than most games with smaller, supposedly character-driven narratives. The gameplay is really solid, although it's not my favorite out of the series.
FFX is a close second, and after that, things get kind of muddled. FFVIII and FF: Tactics (if it counts?) are tied for 3rd.
3. Terra and Yuna. I like how their gentleness and desire to help others drives them to be the most powerful characters in their respective stories. And not in a nebulous, 'inspirational' way either, they get shit done. But it's in a way that feels very different from most other 'oh we have to save the world' protagonists.
Also Cyan and Sazh have ALL OF MY TEARS, FOREVER. Their stories are just so sad and well-portrayed. ;_; And I have a soft spot for Vanille.
4. I love Yuna's "Your plan sucks!" speech in FFX-2 to pieces. Every time I read or watch something where characters are killed off for
cheap easy dramabecause 'there's no other option,' I want to print that speech out and send it to the writers. I'm so tired of seeing stuff where people die because it's supposedly more realistic or moving to do so. :/no subject
Date: 2012-03-01 07:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-02 08:22 am (UTC)2. Oh lordy, FFIV, definitely. Partially because the Advance version was my entry point to the series, but also because of the amazing music and just how easily I fell in love with the setting (I love me some medieval fantasy). FFV and FFI follow after FFIV, then FFTA...and you may notice that all of these were on the GBA at one point. Yes.
3. Golbez, full stop. He wasn't that much of a big deal to me when I first played FFIV, but then came the Big Reveal and I was suddenly really interested in him. Add his development in The After Years to the mix, and I pretty much found myself identifying with him a lot. Also, he is adorable as a child.
Other characters I adore and also consider favorites are Garland (I though DFF did it for me), Bartz (V, not DFF), Faris (V), Terra (VI), and Rosa (IV).
4. I am always, ALWAYS late to parties like these. Very late. Yes.
In line with that lateness, I shall now admit I have never played any FF numbered higher than VII, am planning to play VIII and IX someday, and will likely never get to play any of the others.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 10:07 pm (UTC)2) I actually have a three-way tie: V, VI, and IX. YEAH. I adore VI because it's my favorite plot, cast, and soundtrack. I doubt it needs much defending because it's so popular. V, now, that one I've had to defend a lot over the years. Admittedly, some people were put off by the Anthology version, which I'll grant did not have the best localization (plus awful slowdown). And okay, it's hokier and less plotty than the others. But I DO NOT CARE. AT ALL. Because it has the job system, and it's charming, and the Advance re-translation does a lot to emphasize its humor and heart. I love the music, too. It's so underrated.
I've had to defend IX too. I understand not liking the battle slowness (though I personally have adjusted to it), but I love the cast, and the world, and the villain, and the music is AMAZING IMO. So much love.
3) CELES. ♥ ♥ ♥ Female warrior types, especially sword-wielding ones, have always been one of my favorite tropes in fiction. I blame reading Lord of the Rings at a young age and latching onto Eowyn. And also Celes herself. I also love her overall story, and once I get her back in my party in the World of Ruin, she never. ever. leaves. Favorite girl forever.
4) Totally random, but I am so freaking impatient for the next installment of that FFV Fabled Warriors OC ReMix album. I love remixes of SNES-era themes the most on that site, and a multi-part themed album dedicated to FFV? With job class themes? Hello, aural crack. Need more now.
This is me remembering the DW exists ._.
Date: 2012-06-01 11:53 pm (UTC)2. VII, both due to nostalgia and because I genuinely enjoyed the cast the most out of all the FFs I've played (VII through XIII).
3. Aeris, Fang, & Freya are my top 3.
Aeris/Aerith because I admit to projecting myself onto her and was incredibly moved by her death.
Fang, well, she's the closest character that I can say that looks like me and I appreciate that. The not-so-ambiguous issue of her sexuality is also very appealing to me, even if it wasn't S-E's intention. She's a lesbian in my head-canon and it's rare to see a potentially non-heterosexual character being portrayed in such a positive/non-stereotypical manner.
Freya was always the most powerful person on my team whenever I played IX; I wish she got more character development though.
I totally ship her with Amarant and I regret nothing.4.Anything else you'd like to share with the class? Any thoughts? Observations? Something funny and random?
The Piano Collections from these games give me life. I wish S-E would continue down that trend and do a string quartet collection or a jazz rendition of the OSTs.
Also, VIII has the best overall OST and no one will convince me otherwise.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-13 01:41 am (UTC)1.1 My favorite composer for the Final Fantasy series is probably Masashi Hamauzu. Before him, I had little to zero interest in the music beyond the themes "Liberi Fatali" and the Advent Children version of "One Winged Angel", but this guy comes along gives me everything I was looking for in a Final Fantasy score: symphonic competence. Something that sounded more cinematic than 8-Bit or Made-for-TV and never held back with the epic orchestrations. On top of that his alternative or dance tracks are incredibly fun to listen to.
2. My favorite game to date is probably Final Fantasy XII. The presentation of the game's aesthetics is what sucked me in first (it seriously reminded me of Escaflowne if Escaflowne was more interested in world building than it was Hitomi's interpersonal journey as a teenager stuck in another world), but the promise of pirates got me rather interested. I followed that game's development with a fine tooth comb and I got it for Christmas. I suppose I love XII above all the others primarily because of how its characters are presented; everyone comes form a different walk of life and they all have their own agendas or hopes. Also, its less focused on the romantic elements that the previous four games (7, 8, 9, 10) put serious investment in it, though its not devoid of it and centralizes importance more on the narrative than the interpersonal relationships. Also, the combat system was something I really got into and was rather disappointed to see it go in XIII/XIII-2; I lived to kill Dragons (or whatever those things were) and Cactus creatures.
3. My favorite character is probably Laguna. I by no means suffer from Laguna's chronic leg cramps or clumsiness, but he was a character was constantly trying to do the right thing no matter how many times the situation turned the tables on him and results turned out less than desirable. The exploration into his past through Squall's perspective was probably one of my favorite segments in Final Fantasy VIII and really heartened his character to me.
SmhWeghfIS
Date: 2013-05-19 04:59 am (UTC)