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lananiscorner · 5 years

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FF VIII and Trauma

So I’m playing the remastered version of FF VIII on my PS4 right now and aside from the fact that it brings back all those memories from my childhood, when I first played it 20 years ago, I just had a Eureka! moment. I finallly understand, why I liked all the main cast of FF VIII so much, even though many of them play into anime archetypes that I usually can’t stand.

They are, in essence, a perfect demonstration of how different people deal differently with trauma and what it would take for them to recover.

There are gonna be spoilers galore below this point, but since the game is twenty years old, I’m not going to tuck them beneath a “keep reading line” for once.

First of all, the trauma: every single one of the playable characters from the main storyline (aka, not Laguna, Kiros and Ward), suffered the loss of their parents at a very young age, with almost all of them suffering it in the same way (parents were killed in the Sorceress War), except for Rinoa, who lost her mother in a car crash. But it’s very clear to see in the game who dealt with the loss in healthy ways and who didn’t and a lot of it comes down to what happened to them after Edea’s orphanage was closed.

Squall fixated immediately on Ellone while in the orphanage and it makes sense. She was from his village. She had been adopted by his mother at some point. She was probably the only person who had any information for him on who his mother and father had been... and then she just disappeared one day and no-one bothered to tell him why. For Squall, it was this abandonment combined with his generally introverted personality that made him decide that it was better not to get close to anyone ever again, because in the end they were all going to leave again anyway. And yet, it is painfully obvious throughout the game that he does crave some sense of emotional connection and his attitude towards attachment and abandonment is extremely unhealthy. The use of GFs wiping what memories he had left of Ellone and his parents, not to mention his time in the orphanage, clearly did not help. Neither did the fact that he went straight from the orphanage into Balamb Garden, a place specifically designed to raise children as soldiers, before he was even ten years old.

Seifer fixated not on another person, but on an ideal from a kitschy movie: the sorceress’s knight. Even in the playground he was always trying to boss people around, a behavior he continued in the Garden as head of the disciplinary committee. And yes, like Squall, Seifer went straight from the orphanage to the Garden before the age of ten. He spun this narrative in his head where he was the beleaguered hero who did what was necessary to defend others and who relied on his strength and courage to solve any crisis, but his lacking empathy meant that he never learned the proper line between strong leadership and bullying. He never learned proper empathy and why would he? Empathy was not on the required curriculum for a Garden student. His attitude served him well until he had to take his final exam and follow orders, at which point he was basically told that everything about him was problematic and he had just wasted ten years of his life on an apprenticeship that would never work out. I don’t want to excuse his actions, but in hindsight it’s very clear to see how Seifer was done dirty by his educators and their failures.

Quistis also started out bossy in the playground, though she did know the line between leadership and bullying. We know she got adopted and that it didn’t work out, though we never learn the details of why and how. She then came to Balamb Garden at age 10 and became an Seed at age 15 and a teacher at age 17, which is insanely quickly, even by standards of the FF VIII universe. Like Seifer, Quistis tried to regain control of her life by taking control of everything, except she had never hidden out in a fantasy narrative. When she was told that she had failed as an instructor, it hurt her, but it didn’t crush her completely. Just like when her adoption had not worked out, Quistis picked herself up and did her best to contribute to the well-being of the gardens and its students. Also, it helps that Quistis had apparently formed genuine friendship with at least one instructor (Xu) and had developed healthy hobbies outside of her work as a Seed (she is the leader of the card club after all).

Zell was the only one of the Edea group who was happily adopted and it shows. He went from being a scared kid who cried a lot to someone who still felt and expressed his emotions strongly, but was ultimately a very mentally and emotionally healthy and balanced person, with varied interests (martial arts, machinery, his grandpa’s rifle collection, jewellry making, I am probably forgetting a few). Zell, despite being a dedicated student and a good Seed, with occasional hang-ups, knows that if he were to quit tomorrow, he would not be left with nothing. He would not be left abandoned again. He has a family to come back to.

Selphie was sent to Trabia Garden, another institution that turned traumatized kids into soldiers, but 1) one that’s far away from the main Garden, high up in the mountains where oversight is less strict and communities are more tight-knit, and 2) one that doesn’t use mind-wiping guardian forces for training. Selfie admits that she only used a GF once when she found one during training before joining the main cast, so it is very likely that she remembered her time at the orphanage until that point. She remembered having had loving caretakers and she remembered having had friends. It also helps that Selphie had the most socializing personality to begin with (in contrast to introverted and withdrawn Squall, extroverted but bossy Quistis, bullying Seifer, and extroverted but easy upset Zell). She made a ton of friends at Trabia Garden, so while she did not have a family like Zell, she definitely had more of an emotional support network than Quistis, Seifer and Squall. The end result is someone who is very perky and quirky, a generally upbeat but friendly optimist (with an occasionally scary tendency to joking about violence, which suggests that she still suffers some trauma from that Sorceress War).

Irvine was sent to Galbadia Garden and never used GFs either. He is, as a matter of fact, the only one who remembered the time they had all spent at Edea’s orphanage, right up until the day he reunited with the others. It’s a shame we don’t know more about his time at Galbadia Garden, but we do know he deliberatly cultivated the image of a womanizing, lonely sniper. Like Seifer, he constructed a fantasy for himself, except Irvine learned how to play with people instead of against them and retained that knowledge through his time in Garden, making him the second-most balanced person in the orphanage gang (right after Zell).

And then there is Rinoa. Like I said upthread, her trauma was somewhat different in that she “only” lost one parent in an accident rather than both in a war, but we do know that she grew increasingly estranged from her father after this. Still, in spite of her father being military, Rinoa is the only one of the main cast who did not go from “traumatized child” to “soldier in training”. She did eventually lead a group of resistance fighters, but that came about as a long process of increased socio-political awareness and the desire to do good, rather than “a place I belong and that defines my identity”. As a consequence, Rinoa is the only in the main cast who rightfully calls out the bullshit that is taking traumatized kids and turning them into soldiers. Despite her somewhat ditzy antics and her damsel-in-distress syndrome, Rinoa is an incredibly emotionally mature person, who coped with her loss by deliberately trying to make the world a better place.

So... I don’t even know where exactly I’m going with this, except I love all of these characters. I loved them when I was a kid, for reasons I couldn’t fully understand. Now I do and that makes it even better.

#Final Fantasy VIII #FF VIII #character meta #long post #tw: childhood trauma #tw: parental death

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