Astrea
Lefty, transgender, furry, and (sigh) podcaster
Overthinking media, model building with overly detailed paint jobs, and dabbling with game design junk.
Avatar by @cupsofjade
You used to be able to stumble upon a mysterious mirror in your eccentric uncle's attic and we were all okay with it. No one's immersion was ruined because the protagonist got hit by a truck in chapter 1.
it's easier to imagine getting cratered by a box truck than finding a door in the woods that leads to a fairy kingdom
i feel like it says that if you manage to get out you wouldn't care about finding your way back
broke: i died and also nobody loved me and i had no friends or attachments so it's fine that i left everything behind to start in a fantasy world
woke: the people i left behind love me so much they will tear apart time and space to get me back
it's time for the resurgence of final fantasy tactics advance
Counterpoint: Marche's actions were not morally justifiable. He destroyed Ivalice against the specific wishes of all his friends (and his brother who was able to walk again!), potentially killing who knows how many sentient beings, just to go back... for what? Everyone's life was straight up a lot worse in St. Ivalice. In other Final Fantasy narratives, Crystals 'power' the worlds in some way, so the act of destroying them just to fulfill your own desires is A Bad Thing.
I know a lot of this is contradicted by FFTA2 and other Ivalice games, but if you take FFTA as a single text and at face value I think Marche was wrong to do what he did. He also didn't know it would be fine! He gambled a whole reality to just be some sad kid. Couldn't be me.
i cannot believe we're all still arguing about Marche. it has been 20 years
Thank you for bringing this up! I faintly remembered it when I made my post. Back when I played it, I was a sad troubled kid, so my anti-Marche stance came from a very nihilistic, escapist, "fuck real life" point of view. So a lot of the nuance got lost in my memory
i was the same way too ! my young self didn't vibe with marche at all and spent a lot of time thinking about why (never reached an introspective conclusion until much later tho)
Just thought of a half-dozen different Star Trek episodes (complimentary) immediately after reading this.
...
("To my father, who's coming home.")
Maybe it's just an embellishment of reality. Like, they really did visit their eccentric uncles, but instead of seeing the entertaining junk in the attic, the protagonists are in hour-six of a racist and sexist rant about avocado toast and the Federal Reserve Board, texting their friends "Kill Me." Not actual death, just escaping to the new world to avoid pining for death...
