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karma chameleon @candiedreptile2/26/2024, 6:35 PM

Phil Salvador @shadsy

Phil Salvador @shadsy2/26/2024, 6:28 PM

Eventually I'll stop crossposting my Final Fantasy VIII shitpost blog here, but I'm actually really happy with this latest post:

https://ff8isthe.best/2024/02/we-are-stuck-in-2007/

I've had a lot on my mind lately about how the agenda for cultural criticism can get firmly locked in place by someone who's early and authoritative enough, like how it's impossible to talk about the making of Citizen Kane without having to respond to the narrative Pauline Kael wrote out, even though it has been repeatedly discredited. This happens so much in games, in a way that is invisible unless you're looking at a span of 30 years of history all the time, which I've been doing at work.

This post is about that, but also about how Final Fantasy VIII had its reputation vandalized by a stupid two-decade-old YouTube video that unfortunately set the tone for every conversation about FFVIII that followed. And how hopefully there's a way to break through that!

(I'm also proud that I wrote this ~3000-word post in less than a day, which feels huge for me right now. Begone writer's block!)

#game criticism #game history #final fanatsy viii #ff8 #games #YouTube

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in reply to @shadsy's post:

Nire Bryce @NireBryce2/26/2024, 7:00 PM

def post it though. everyone else does with their blogs and it seems to work. Unless it feels like more work to you, and then yeah dw about it. But it does help me remember it exists.

Z @Hexagon2/26/2024, 7:02 PM

it's sad how i read the two phrases "it's all that guy's fault" and "we are stuck in 2007" and I just inmediately knew what/who this was about. I remember the first time I excitedly told a group of nerd friends how much I enjoyed FFVIII only to be ridiculed and made fun of. One of them sent me the link to the video as "proof" that it is bad. I watched the whole damn thing. And hated it the entire time.

Phil Salvador @shadsy2/26/2024, 7:10 PM

I had never watched it or seen any of that guy's videos, but I've heard about it so often. I was shocked how sexually aggressive it was? I know where that's coming from because I was on the internet in 2007, but what the fuck was wrong with people

Wolf @Aware-Wolf2/26/2024, 7:40 PM

The moment that I saw that FFVIII video was 2h45m long I knew it was probably from some illiterate pleb that just couldn't over the fact they didn't understand the game.

Goddamn the FF fandom just ruins the series for so many people.

RECCANTI is taking commissions!@reccanti2/26/2024, 9:34 PM

Was it originally on blip tv? How do you even host a video that long in 2007?

Wolf @Aware-Wolf2/26/2024, 9:55 PM

No idea. I would've assumed youtube and they just sat there on dial-up waiting for it upload and process.

I am thankful that the only sort of fan-made FF content I consumed back in those days were AMV's. I dodged an absolute bullet when I made the choice to avoid forum's or anything else regarding the series.

Phil Salvador @shadsy2/26/2024, 10:09 PM

It looks like it was done as a series of 10-minute episodes that were uploaded to YouTube, most of which have been deleted (for reasons I can only imagine, watching bits of it).

Vega Baby - VTuber Tour Guide @VegaBaby2/26/2024, 10:38 PM

I watched this guy at the time, and even then I didn't agree with his takes on FF8, and thought his horny jokes about Quistis especially were embarrassing as hell. I particularly remember how the second video in the series was ten or so minutes of him using the Draw command and complaining about how tedious it was, and it was extremely clear that he hadn't really looked into the systems or learned how the Magic RF mechanic works. To an extent, he was echoing criticisms of the game I'd heard elsewhere before then, and I let a lot of the bad criticism and humor slide both because of that and because I was a teen desperate for free entertainment. I don't know if he's strictly the origin of the popular perception of FF8, but he definitely emboldened its harshest critics.

By the way, the guy also eventually did a much shorter video on FF10 slamming that one too, and his main criticisms were 'Tidus is too androgynous and the voice acting is bad'. Pretty much all of his videos about RPGs were just embarrassing.

@brachistochrone2/27/2024, 12:43 AM

its influence on the film’s reputation is still unavoidable eighty years later

sorry to nitpick, but it hasn't been eighty years since 1971

Phil Salvador @shadsy2/27/2024, 1:05 AM

Oh whoops I was thinking about the movie and not the essay when I said that, will fix.

Voxandra @Voxandra2/27/2024, 11:05 PM

I still have memories of being baffled why people hated 8 so much when my brothers and I loved it just as much as 7 growing up. I cannot express the annoyance when I found out what the source of so much of it was, lmao

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