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rionaleonhart) wrote2024-08-13 02:29 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2024-08-13 02:29 pm
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It's Our Nature: Child Soldiers in Final Fantasy VIII
I'm still updating my Final Fantasy VIII website here and there! Somehow, though, it's only just occurred to me that I could also reproduce some of the pages on here. I've been having fun just rambling into the void, but I also love talking about this game with other people, so it might be worth occasionally putting some of my ramblings on my blog.
Here's a short essay I put up on the site today, about the psychological effect of most of the characters of Final Fantasy VIII being child soldiers. It's an interesting topic to think about, but it feels a little underexplored by the game itself!
If you'd prefer to read the version on the website, here's the link.
It's Our Nature: Child Soldiers in Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy VIII is not a story about how being raised in a military institution damages you; it's a love story. As a result, the impact of the characters' upbringing at Garden can feel a little underexplored.
Regardless, most of the main characters were trained from childhood to fight and potentially die on someone else's battlefield. Let's talk about that.
Someone Else's War
Rinoa is the only character in the party who has the luxury of choosing which battles to fight; she genuinely believes in Timber's liberation. The other characters are mercenaries; they're told who to fight, and they have to go and fight them, regardless of their own feelings. Irvine doesn't want to assassinate his mother figure, but that isn't his choice.
We're told multiple times that SeeDs aren't supposed to question what they're told to do. When Squall starts wondering why Garden is teaming up with General Caraway, he tells himself, (No point in me thinking about it. 'SeeDs aren't meant to question why.') When travelling with Squall through Deling City, Irvine asks, 'So, like... is it true that SeeDs aren't supposed to question their mission?'
Headmaster Cid tells Seifer, 'I don't want you all to become machines. I want you all to be able to think and act for yourselves.' But that's not what we see in the reality of how SeeD works. The SeeDs are human weapons, to be aimed and fired by their clients. They help Dollet and Timber to resist the Galbadians, but they could just as easily have been fighting on the Galbadian side if Galbadia had been the ones paying.
The SeeDs are also very aware that they're likely to die young and violently, and that their lives are just pawns in the larger concern of SeeD's mission. Before the Dollet field exam, Headmaster Cid reassures the candidates that the mission will still be completed even if they die in the attempt: 'You will be accompanied by 9 SeeD members. Should you fail, these members shall get the job done. They always do. Well, that's one less worry on your mind.'
When Rinoa, as SeeD's client, is leading Squall, Zell and Selphie to Timber's TV station, she starts trying to revise her plan because she's anxious about the guards. Squall and Zell tell her that, whatever decision she makes, they'll follow it, even if the battle is hopeless:
Squall: Don't worry about us. We'll fight your enemies based on your decision. That's our duty.
Zell: You tell us to go, we go. Even if it is a losing battle.
Zell's line here really struck me. These kids have been raised in the full knowledge that, at any moment, someone might tell them to die, and they'll just have to go ahead and die.
The Scars
How does being a soldier impact these characters? This isn't something the game explicitly goes into, so anything I can say on the matter is speculation; I can't say for certain whether any character was intentionally given a particular trait to reflect their upbringing as a child soldier.
What we know is that the SeeD characters are robbed of their childhoods, both figuratively and literally: they're out fighting wars rather than having normal childhood experiences, and their childhood memories are stolen from them by their use of GFs. If Balamb Garden knows that the rumours of GF memory loss are true, it doesn't particularly care about protecting its SeeDs from that effect: a Garden faculty member instructs Squall, 'Be sure to ignore all the GF criticism you hear from other Gardens or military forces.'
I'd say that Zell is the most well-adjusted of the Balamb Garden group, probably because he was raised by Ma Dincht rather than by Garden. (Side note: who does raise the orphan kids who live at Garden? When the orphanage kids first came to Garden as children, did they have anyone to look to as a parental figure? I suspect they just got flung into the same routine as any other student.) But the others have traits that stand out to me as possible side effects of their military upbringing.
I was a socially anxious kid, so I know you don't have to be a child soldier to have no idea how to talk to people! But I don't imagine Squall's life of training and battle made it any easier for him to learn how to interact with his peers, and the expectation that he might just end up another body on a battlefield probably wasn't great for his self-esteem.
Selphie's blithe, cheerful violence - instantly suggesting that they blow up President Deling's train with a rocket launcher, or proposing that they escape D-District Prison by skinning a Moomba and using it as a disguise - might just be a dark sense of humour. But I also sometimes wonder whether Selphie might just not have a normal conception of the severity of violence, having been raised in an environment where violence is normal and expected.
As a child, I thought Quistis seemed very mature. Looking at her now, though, she seems like what she is: a teenager trying and sometimes failing to be responsible, because she's been thrown too early into a situation where she has to be responsible. Flirting inappropriately with Squall, because she's a lonely kid separated from her peers by the fact that she's an instructor. Losing her temper with Rinoa and then abandoning her post to apologise to her during the assassination mission. Quistis is just eighteen years old, and she's expected to keep a cool head in very high-pressure situations; it's no surprise that she occasionally struggles.
I'm not even going to go into Seifer's psychological issues, or we'll be here all day.
What Does This Mean?
All of this basically boils down to two things.
a) I've created a cute little website based on an institution that systematically damages children and sends them to die.
b) I'm probably taking this too seriously. As I mentioned at the start, the psychological fallout of being a child soldier isn't really the focus of this game; the military school setup is just a convenient backdrop for the story to take place.
But the impact of being raised at Garden still peeks through, here and there. It's something I find interesting to think about.
'Damned imbeciles,' Bahamut says, when you confront him. 'Why do you wish to fight?' Thinking about Squall's response is why I decided to write this essay in the first place:
(It's our nature...)
(There is no real reason...)
(Maybe we were born... only to fight.)
I haven't yet decided whether I'll also end up making entries for some of the existing pages on the website, e.g. the one on the game's animation or the one about Squall and Seifer's relationship. They've been up on the site for a few months already, so it's possible anyone who might be interested will already have seen them, but it could still be fun to open them up for discussion here. We'll see!
Here's a short essay I put up on the site today, about the psychological effect of most of the characters of Final Fantasy VIII being child soldiers. It's an interesting topic to think about, but it feels a little underexplored by the game itself!
If you'd prefer to read the version on the website, here's the link.
Final Fantasy VIII is not a story about how being raised in a military institution damages you; it's a love story. As a result, the impact of the characters' upbringing at Garden can feel a little underexplored.
Regardless, most of the main characters were trained from childhood to fight and potentially die on someone else's battlefield. Let's talk about that.
Someone Else's War
Rinoa is the only character in the party who has the luxury of choosing which battles to fight; she genuinely believes in Timber's liberation. The other characters are mercenaries; they're told who to fight, and they have to go and fight them, regardless of their own feelings. Irvine doesn't want to assassinate his mother figure, but that isn't his choice.
We're told multiple times that SeeDs aren't supposed to question what they're told to do. When Squall starts wondering why Garden is teaming up with General Caraway, he tells himself, (No point in me thinking about it. 'SeeDs aren't meant to question why.') When travelling with Squall through Deling City, Irvine asks, 'So, like... is it true that SeeDs aren't supposed to question their mission?'
Headmaster Cid tells Seifer, 'I don't want you all to become machines. I want you all to be able to think and act for yourselves.' But that's not what we see in the reality of how SeeD works. The SeeDs are human weapons, to be aimed and fired by their clients. They help Dollet and Timber to resist the Galbadians, but they could just as easily have been fighting on the Galbadian side if Galbadia had been the ones paying.
The SeeDs are also very aware that they're likely to die young and violently, and that their lives are just pawns in the larger concern of SeeD's mission. Before the Dollet field exam, Headmaster Cid reassures the candidates that the mission will still be completed even if they die in the attempt: 'You will be accompanied by 9 SeeD members. Should you fail, these members shall get the job done. They always do. Well, that's one less worry on your mind.'
When Rinoa, as SeeD's client, is leading Squall, Zell and Selphie to Timber's TV station, she starts trying to revise her plan because she's anxious about the guards. Squall and Zell tell her that, whatever decision she makes, they'll follow it, even if the battle is hopeless:
Squall: Don't worry about us. We'll fight your enemies based on your decision. That's our duty.
Zell: You tell us to go, we go. Even if it is a losing battle.
Zell's line here really struck me. These kids have been raised in the full knowledge that, at any moment, someone might tell them to die, and they'll just have to go ahead and die.
The Scars
How does being a soldier impact these characters? This isn't something the game explicitly goes into, so anything I can say on the matter is speculation; I can't say for certain whether any character was intentionally given a particular trait to reflect their upbringing as a child soldier.
What we know is that the SeeD characters are robbed of their childhoods, both figuratively and literally: they're out fighting wars rather than having normal childhood experiences, and their childhood memories are stolen from them by their use of GFs. If Balamb Garden knows that the rumours of GF memory loss are true, it doesn't particularly care about protecting its SeeDs from that effect: a Garden faculty member instructs Squall, 'Be sure to ignore all the GF criticism you hear from other Gardens or military forces.'
I'd say that Zell is the most well-adjusted of the Balamb Garden group, probably because he was raised by Ma Dincht rather than by Garden. (Side note: who does raise the orphan kids who live at Garden? When the orphanage kids first came to Garden as children, did they have anyone to look to as a parental figure? I suspect they just got flung into the same routine as any other student.) But the others have traits that stand out to me as possible side effects of their military upbringing.
I was a socially anxious kid, so I know you don't have to be a child soldier to have no idea how to talk to people! But I don't imagine Squall's life of training and battle made it any easier for him to learn how to interact with his peers, and the expectation that he might just end up another body on a battlefield probably wasn't great for his self-esteem.
Selphie's blithe, cheerful violence - instantly suggesting that they blow up President Deling's train with a rocket launcher, or proposing that they escape D-District Prison by skinning a Moomba and using it as a disguise - might just be a dark sense of humour. But I also sometimes wonder whether Selphie might just not have a normal conception of the severity of violence, having been raised in an environment where violence is normal and expected.
As a child, I thought Quistis seemed very mature. Looking at her now, though, she seems like what she is: a teenager trying and sometimes failing to be responsible, because she's been thrown too early into a situation where she has to be responsible. Flirting inappropriately with Squall, because she's a lonely kid separated from her peers by the fact that she's an instructor. Losing her temper with Rinoa and then abandoning her post to apologise to her during the assassination mission. Quistis is just eighteen years old, and she's expected to keep a cool head in very high-pressure situations; it's no surprise that she occasionally struggles.
I'm not even going to go into Seifer's psychological issues, or we'll be here all day.
What Does This Mean?
All of this basically boils down to two things.
a) I've created a cute little website based on an institution that systematically damages children and sends them to die.
b) I'm probably taking this too seriously. As I mentioned at the start, the psychological fallout of being a child soldier isn't really the focus of this game; the military school setup is just a convenient backdrop for the story to take place.
But the impact of being raised at Garden still peeks through, here and there. It's something I find interesting to think about.
'Damned imbeciles,' Bahamut says, when you confront him. 'Why do you wish to fight?' Thinking about Squall's response is why I decided to write this essay in the first place:
(It's our nature...)
(There is no real reason...)
(Maybe we were born... only to fight.)
I haven't yet decided whether I'll also end up making entries for some of the existing pages on the website, e.g. the one on the game's animation or the one about Squall and Seifer's relationship. They've been up on the site for a few months already, so it's possible anyone who might be interested will already have seen them, but it could still be fun to open them up for discussion here. We'll see!
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You're right that the game doesn't get into this like it should. Garden seems to be framed as a would-be benevolent organisation under Cid's stewardship; and it's the fault of that greedy bastard, NORG, that the operation turned so mercenary— but it can't be so simple. Especially since they use orphans as fodder and it's implied that there were a lot of orphans following the previous Sorceress war.
One thing I wish the game leaned into more is the implication that war doesn't work. When it comes to dealing with Sorceresses, Rinoa is able to remain a force for good because she has Squall on her side; and even though they battle Ultimecia and win, what truly ends that fight is Edea taking pity on her. It's a glimmer of potential into a very interesting theme that isn't given any real foundation.
Man, you know what would be cool? A Final Fantasy XV: Comrades-like game where you play as a customisable member of SeeD, carrying out missions in Eightslandia*.
* I don't know what that world's name is so I named it myself.
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It's sort of fascinating! The game clearly wants us to view Cid as a benevolent figure, but he's running such a screwed-up organisation. What's going on in your head, Cid? How do you feel when your students die fighting for arbitrary causes to earn your school money?
You're right; leaning harder on the 'war doesn't work' theme could have been really interesting. I love the hell out of Final Fantasy VIII, but it really could have taken a closer look at some of the themes lying unexplored under the surface. Then again, maybe its failure to fully explore its own worldbuilding is why I find it so compelling to talk about!
Oh, man. I never played Comrades and I struggle to connect with games that have customisable protagonists, but I'd still absolutely play that; I can't resist the opportunity to spend more time in Eightslandia.
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What's going on in your head, Cid? How do you feel when your students die fighting for arbitrary causes to earn your school money?
Jumping in, the thing that gets me is... he knows Squall is going to be the key, because of the time travel (at least, Edea knows, so we assume she's told him). So the implication is that he sets up Garden to produce Squall. So all that cannon fodder, all that structure, the point is getting one orphan boy to the point where you can put the whole world on his shoulders, whether he's ready or not. In some ways, Seifer's practically just a tool to sharpen Squall with -- and I think we're meant to believe that Cid honestly wishes Seifer wouldn't act out like he does and wants to paternally guide him toward fulfilling his potential, but... do we really think Seifer can't tell, on some level?
Like. Unless Edea didn't tell him everything, Cid must've been railroading everything to get Squall to this point. And sure, Squall's gonna save everyone, they know that, so you can also view it as making sure the world gets saved and that Squall's ready to fight, but. At what cost?
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Cheerful violence could definitely be a side effect of normalizing violence. And being raised in an environment like that can lead to latching on to one particular way of coping and not developing a healthy balance.
That's very creepy about the memories!
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I'm glad this could be interesting; thank you!
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chasing squall and moomba down the tunnel of child soldiers
i love when stories delve into the way these sorts of upbringings really just destroy the characters' sense of normality, because imagining the cast of ff viii trying to do a normal outing without having their fight or die response activated would certainly be a story (gundam 00 explores this sort of situation with its characters pretty well, especially the concept of, "our enemy can be our employer just as easily") and, while it's a shame that there isn't too much focus on it in the source game aside from a few things here and there, i love hearing your thoughts about it (god i can only imagine the list for seifer especially because he seems to hold that "romantic" notion that dying honorably as a knight is for the greater good and oh seifer that is very much Not the case, wait until you can rent a car and then we'll talk about noble dying quests and such)
Re: chasing squall and moomba down the tunnel of child soldiers
I've never seen a Gundam series, but they do sound like a potentially good source of teenagers having psychological struggles, which is a theme I can rarely resist.
Speaking of which, Seifer is such a mess. I love him.
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the one thing that i think has struck me the most in replaying VIII as an adult is comparing how i saw each of the characters as a kid with how i interpret them now. Quistis is a big one for me, i really cannot get over her being an instructor at 18. Seifer's whole deal as well...oof.
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It's deeply weird to first play this game when you're younger than the characters and then revisit it when you're older. They're all so young! Which obviously never struck me when I was thirteen years old, and there was no meaningful difference in my head between being seventeen and being twenty-seven.
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Assuming Edea and Cid were EXTREMELY efficient, doesn't that all still mean that Garden can really only have existed for, like... maybe twelve years max? Is that not. like. completely bonkers??? What an absolutely insane scenario. Did the people of Balamb Town have any concerns about the local construction of a military school for raising child soldiers? Mein gott this rabbit hole is no joke. Final Fantasy why are you like this.
(UM, I LOVE YOUR ESSAY AND ALL YOUR THOUGHTS AND YOUR WEBSITE!!!)
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(Thank you!!! ♥)
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I really need to play this game again. It'd be interesting to see how my perception of it has changed since my teenage days.
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This is a good point! It sometimes feels like the game has a weird blind spot for the whole 'child soldier' element of the plot.
If you do revisit Final Fantasy VIII, I'd be fascinated to hear your thoughts! I've replayed it every few years since I first played it at thirteen, so I don't know what it would be like to come back to it after a long time away; I'm curious now!
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(Anonymous) 2024-08-15 12:33 pm (UTC)(link)Also, when people complain about Squall's surliness and closed-offness as a protagonist I think they forget that he was raised as a child soldier - it's entirely reasonable!
I've experienced a few media with child soldiers and they all take it in different ways.
Trails of Cold Steel is technically about child soldiers - they're not mercenaries, though, but it's a military academy in Erebonia, the country known for aggressively pursuing wars with all of its neighbours and creating pre-texts for war when none exist. So it's a military academy where you know your country will be off fighting soon, too. The protagonists are, for the most part, surprisingly well-adjusted, with some cracks in the facade: Rean, our protagonist, has really significant self-worth issues despite sometimes appearing confident. There's Fie, the literal child soldier who is younger than all the others anyway, who before this was a mercenary and who has no real notion of normal life and a military academy is considered almost like a rehibilitative experience for her as she only really knows how to fight and survive. And then in the Cold Steel 3 timeline, you have the awkwardness of students from places the Empire has invaded and annexed now being folded into that army and angry at the world about what happened. It's a concept it doesn't quite do enough with, I think, since it's really messed up when you start thinking about it!
Also, as the name may suggest, my old friend the "Warchild" books explore this concept. Actually, I think the series exists as the author wanting to tackle the concept of child soldiers, so it does lean into it a bit more than the other two. I've mentioned before that I take a lot of influence from this series of books, writing style included. It has a sort of detached narrative style at times - especially in the first book, as our protagonist clearly detaches himself as a coping mechanism for his experiences. I also think Warchild is interesting in the regard that Jos, the first book's protagonist, is very much a thinker and is quite quiet, and since he says so few words, probably comes across considerably differently than he does in his head.
Here are some quotes to illustrate some things, as why would I not do this on a relevant topic when I can blather on about favourite subjects? :D
The first 36 pages of Warchild are written in second person. That part ends like this:
Falcone might have been chasing you. You didn't look. You ran as fast as you could. People screamed at you to stop and get out of the way. An alien face looked at you from across the decreasing distance of jet-occupied deck. The eyes were completely black.
A fist slammed into your back and threw you to the deck. The last word you heard wasn't one you understood.
*
That was all I remembered about Falcone. It was enough.
You can see here, without needing to read what was before it, the distance trying to be put on those experiences - and it's the perspective of an 8/9 year old. You can also see that the trauma comes from Falcone - that's who he's thinking of there, not the aliens.
I wonder sometimes if some people would put this book down because of the second person, but it's a very small portion of it and it's done really well imo.
Anyway, the next section of the book deals a lot with trauma - though we're not talking child soldiers at this point, but effectively a child prisoner of war, sort of? Who they then tried to indoctrinate. That context explains Jos a lot, but it's obviously not something he shares. I won't go too much into this because it's not the child soldiers bit, but I did like this exchange:
"You can tell me just as easy, but you don't because you like to play games."
"That is Falcone in your head, speaking through your mouth."
Anyway, time skip, and to the bulk of the book, which is the relevance of this entry. At fourteen, Jos signs onto a ship as a spy, but he'll be a soljet, fighting against the side who rescued him, so it's like double layers of trauma.
He showed us how to strip and assemble the rifle and named all the parts. He talked about how it was going to save all of our lives and how it would kill strits. He said we were going to kill the enemy with this weapon. Strits. Symps. The enemy.
Pirates, I thought at him. You and the Khan.
Remember, Jos is fourteen!
On witnessing a ship being destroyed (but not part of the battle, noteably):
"That was better than a vid." He grinned. "We must've ambushed them."
"We didn't feel it," I said absently. "I guess we wouldn't, really, unless the grav-nodes were knocked offline."
They agreed.
But I was wrong. I had felt it.
Saying a lot in a few words, there.
And another one I wanted to note in terms of trauma (and bear in mind, the specific information of being expected to fight your allies):
But it felt like I'd been doing this, reading about what symps would be okay to kill, for too long already. I smelt the ship in my clothes and felt its drives in the rush of blood through my system, like an infection.
This one is a longer quote, as it really gets across the detached horror of war very well. And remember: 14!
I saw the symps and fired, like I was trained to do. They had guns and they aimed at me because they saw a jet. I killed a man in striviirc-na clothing. The laser pulse went through his face. I'd aimed for his chest but he tried to duck, an instinctive move. I killed three other people, two women and a man, sent a grenade ahead of me that severed limbs from bodies, severed hands from arms. I left pieces of these people in my wake.
But it wasn't me. It was just a body moving. And they were just bodies without names.
We moved fast, but I saw it all slow. One minute was forever breathing in, and the next minute infinity exhaled. Details of red accumulated in my memory like spent pulse packs.
Jet voices reverberated in my head, barking orders, calling clears, a counterpoint melody to the death being played around me, the death that I caused, that I moved through, as if it didn't matter, and it wasn't a man that I murdered, or a woman, or people that I would've commemorated long ago with a burning paper ship. Here it didn't matter. Here nothing mattered because I was alive and they were dead, and that was it.
I tracked blood on the deck of that sympathiser ship, tracked it from room to room like a pirate.
You can really feel that quiet horror. And, of course, the worst comparison Jos can make is comparing it to a pirate (you may have deduced that Falcone is a pirate) which is also an echo to what happened to his own ship, which was attacked by pirates and had got him and all of the other children kidnapped. (And most of them sold effectively to the black market - didn't say that earlier!).
Jos goes very quiet and insular - even more so than usual - after this experience and we get this bit of dialogue, too:
"We have to learn to get over it, y'know."
I said, "Maybe that's the problem. Everybody just gets over it."
"Well, what else is there?"
How else do you cope with what you're doing in war, especially when you don't agree with it?
On being asked to recount his time with Falcone (the second person section at the beginning):
The words came, eventually, like the dragging footsteps of something bleeding.
After his team-mate dies, as a result of a mistake from him:
A stone fell through me. It dragged me down to the deck. It made me rattle like a hollow thing.
We also get this (he's still fourteen, by the way - there is a time skip later, but we're not at it yet!):
"Private Musey, you're confined to quarters until dock. The reprimand will go on record as will a month's forfeit of pay. I want a detailed report of your actions in my comp within the hour, after which I'll decide if you ought to be brought up on formal charges. In addition, you will assist Commander Mercurio in preparing the body for send-off. Dismissed."
The last was the punishment. Everything else was necessity.
Which leads to this lovely section of disassociation again:
When people died, they became murderers of the living.
Mercurio kept looking my way, maybe to see if I would break.
But it was a stranger's face. And I was nowhere there, in that grim duty, in that weak ritual of apology. I was standing outside of myself. We were both strangers here, where we weren't meant to be, looking at each other with our eyes shut.
I'm quoting lines I really like and that I feel deal with trauma and the relation of being a child to that, but this is one of my favourites, I think - how do you cope? It's just a story around you that you're experiencing. It's not you.
Right prior to the next part (which has a time skip), his feelings on the whole child soldier thing are asked about:
"Tell him someone died. Tell him I hate it. But tell him I'm still doing my job."
I tried to remember why I was doing it.
I thought of casting paper ships off balconies and the flame light dancing towards the sea.
Little meteors for the fallen dead.
*
I go back to Macedon with things in my head I have no language for. They are just hoarse sounds in a hollow drum of silence.
So Jos is around 17 at this point, and contrast this to the earlier descriptions of battle.
You turn a corner and there's a body in clothes you don't recognise, and you shoot.
You can't see their faces because they wear black helmets, protection against any chemical gases the ship might release into isolated corridors. Smart bastards. But it doesn't matter. They die the same, faceless or not. Rifle pulses penetrate even helmets.
It's a race to own compartments. You move room to room, corridor to corridor, setting traps that will bite the heels of anyone who follows you. Bleed them to death in your wake.
It's now a sort of accomplished dissociation. It sounds less and less bothered, but he's still coping by depersonalising. Definitely far more de-sensitised than he was!
I won't spoil the ending, but as an exploration of child soldiers and trauma experienced by children in war, it's a really interesting source to look at. I really like Jos as a protagonist and you know I like explorations of complicated circumstances, so I thought it relevant to bring up in context of this discussion!
-timydamonkey, who is always happy when she can ramble enthusiastically about favourite things, especially when it's on topic in the first place!
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This is such an interesting aspect of the game! Squall definitely seems to know Seifer better than he knows anyone else.
This was an interesting read! Jos definitely seems interestingly messed up, and I see what you mean about how the writing style reflects his state of mind. I particularly like the 'like an infection' detail, the 'we have to learn to get over it' exchange, "Tell him someone died. Tell him I hate it. But tell him I'm still doing my job", and 'things in my head I have no language for'.
Fun fact: your comment is almost twice as long as the essay it's a response to.
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I'm just saying, I would gladly be here all day for this!
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It's very interesting to think about though and I love reading other people's meta (please do get into Seifer's psychological issues). I really need to do a FFVIII replay but will I ever find the time for one... -_- At least I have your posts to read and ponder over!
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I hope you find time for a replay! It is my professional opinion, as someone who's dedicated her life to being weird about Final Fantasy VIII, that everyone should be playing this game at all times.
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That's a very good opinion, I have to agree everyone should be playing FF8 at all times. And then talking about it so I can vicariously play through them.
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I do wonder what happens to candidates who wash out, especially if they've been using GFs for a while. (Seifer!) So what, you're just out on the street without anything and without any memories, and all you really know how to do is fight? YIKES.
Oh, wow, this is fascinating and awful to think about. If Squall had ended up just forced out of Garden, I think it would have destroyed him.
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We're told that this is Seifer's last chance at the SeeD exam - you graduate by 20 or you're out. So....now what? How do you get a job somewhere? Do GFs eat your memories that were already created, or do they slowly destroy your connection to memory-forming, so that you end up just never being able to store anything at all? Given their training and abilities (even if most of those abilities are tied to GF usage in Balamb, but consider Galbadia) do you really just let those kids go or are they quietly stuffed in a pit somewhere so they can't be used against you? How deep DOES the rabbit hole go?