Final Fantasy VIII/WMG: Difference between revisions
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== There are monsters on the moon because the [[Final Fantasy IV
All of the monsters on the moon are genetically engineered bio-weapons created by the now hyper-advanced race of Hummingways. The Lunar Cry phenomenon actually keeps happening because they are trying to get back to Earth and take over the world. They even created the space monsters just to make sure nobody could attack the moon, thus ensuring that some day, they will finally succeed in an invasion.
* The first sign of their plan, as revealed on the Headscratchers page, was the fact that every moon-based monster could be turned into [[Sidetracked
== In a later iteration of the stable time loop, Ultimecia wins. ==
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*** It only says a Sorceress must pass on her powers ''before'' she dies, not that they can only pass them on ''when'' they die.
* Most likely, a lot of power is lost in the process of the sorceress being defeated and her power transferring to the next sorceress, particularly in the case of Ultimecia getting the crap beaten out of her in time compression and traveling through time to pass her powers to Edea. There's also no guarantee that Ultimecia is necessarily the ultimate recipient of Rinoa's sorceress power - it's never stated for certain that any character is the "last" sorceress.
* The FF8 think tank on [[
** Doesn't serious number crunching require... I dunno... some serious numbers to mean anything? As for the power she's actually using to compress time, yes, most of it scatters across time. Or rather, was ''already'' scattered across time, in the form of the sorceresses she hijacked with the Ellone machine.
== The game takes place on the same planet as [[
Let's take it point-by-point:
* The geography, seen [
* The Floating Continent in III is said to need maintenance to remain airborne. At the time of III, only one person knows how to do this. In VIII, there is an ancient ruin at the bottom of the ocean, right below where the floating continent would be.
* In III, there is a crystal tower in the eastern part of the Northern continent. In VIII, the Crystal Pillar is the focal point of the Lunar Cry. As shown in Centra, the Lunar Cry can have a devastating effect on the landscape. Where the Crystal Tower was in III, VIII has an unexplained crater which fans sometimes attribute to a previous Lunar Cry, meaning the Crystal Pillar was probably located there at some time in the past.
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** Not true. The elemental crystals in III are never destroyed, and are perfectly intact at the end of the game.
*** They might be intact at the end of III, but the time involved in making the floating continent collapse into the sea, mentioned above, could permit another "Flood of Light" to occur, a few thousand years later. The new breed of Dark Warriors could come up with an unconventional method which would necessitate destroying all the Light and Dark Crystals in order to banish the Void once and for all.
** By that logic, one could assume that Guardian Forces are born from the shard fragments. Their abilities are derived from a few Job Classes. If the Summons purchased or won derived their power from the Crystals, Light or Dark, it would help explain how each shard is now a creature. It's fairly similar in concept as to how Crystal Shards each held a different class in [[
* The hands of the clock tower in Ultimecia's Castle point to VIII and III.
* You can say Unei's mastery over dreams is in tandem with Ellone's power to transfer one's consciousness into the past.
* Ellone (nicknamed Elle) shares a similar plot role with Aria (named Elia in the Japanese version), both being [[Barrier Maiden
* The lowerworld of ''[[
* The orphanage reveal: They are played out in both games almost exactly the same. American players frequently point this scene out as being "out of place" or an [[Ass Pull]] because up until 2006, they had no frame of reference to place the significance of the scene in.
** Except that there is no orphanage reveal in ''[[
*** This point is irrelevant considering previous points- the amount of time it would take the floating continent to collapse in the sea wold indicate enough time has passed for the old world order to be wiped from the face of the planet. Regardless if there was an orphanage in [[
* Ultimecia's castle appears to reside in an interdimensional Void, similar to that of the Dark World.
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** Then again, considering Squall is a soldier, it's not too far fetched to believe he could have died before Rinoa even gets old. Heck, I even met people on forums claiming he died during the fight against Ultimecia and Rinoa is hallucinating during the final scene.
*** The issue is that Ultimecia lives generations into the future, well beyond the lifespans of any of the characters from the game's present, including Rinoa. Not to mention that the theory flies in the face of the game's themes about the importance of having [[True Companion]] and the [[Power of Love]], since it means that Squall was right to start with and everyone would have been better off if he'd remained alone and unhappy.
*** The theory isn't about ''Squall'', though, it's about ''Rinoa''. The bigger issue here is that the [[Stable Time Loop]] and all the talk about fate and inevitability flies in the face of the supposed 'happy ending' that the characters create, as they completely fail to stop Ultimecia ''before'' she is created and instead only stop her from doing the worst thing imaginable, ''after'' she develops a grudge against SeeD and humanity. For all the talk about Nakama and the Power of Friendship and Love, respectively, they hardly make a ''dent'' in Ultimecia coming about. Personally, 'Rinoa is put into cold stasis due to her Sorceress powers for an unspecified period of time, and her hatred of what went wrong twists her into Ultimecia' makes slightly more sense than 'Squall and Rinoa live happily ever after, but Rinoa ends up passing on her powers down the line until some other woman ends up becoming an evil Sorceress because humans fear what they can't understand. By that point, it's [[Somebody
**** ...how is "Squall and Rinoa being together ultimately proves destructive because Rinoa goes crazy from losing Squall and becomes the monster they fought to defeat, forcing Squall to kill her" in any way a better or happier ending than "Squall is on the road to getting over his issues and, yeah, Ultimecia will rise sometime in the future but we already know she'll lose because Squall and company will travel into the future to defeat her"?
** Wait, what? What does Ultimania state ''exactly''? That Sorceresses have normal human lifespan, that Rinoa is not Ultimecia, or '''both'''? The last time [[Silent Reverence|I]] played the game and discussed it with a friend, we found interesting that at one point in the game Rinoa is encased in Esthar in a Adel-esque fashion ''because of the sorceress powers''. Then Squall took the path to rescue her and she made it a point during a later discussion (can't remember the point of the game) that in the end she expected him to do so. Had Squal ''not done so'' (as he originally wasn't), Rinoa could have been in suspended animation for whatever time is needed, developing a (justified) grudge against [[SEE Ds]] and longing for the Knight Who Never Came. And there is a specific crisis point, close to the end of Disk 2, where Rinoa's mindset seems to be much alike what Ultimecia is stated to
*** That assumes that "sealing" a sorceress the way Esthar does stops them from aging, and there's no evidence that's the case. In addition, the FFVIII world's model for time travel doesn't seem to allow for alternate timelines, what with the [[Stable Time Loop]] - everything that happens, time travel shenanigans and all, happens in a single timeline, instead of anything being altered or any branch timelines forming as a result of future characters' influence on the past.
*** I doubt anything ages when it's placed in suspended animation inside of a cryo-capsule. Besides, Adel managed to survive up in space without food or water, first and foremost, and she was already old enough (at the point in which she was sealed) to consider getting an heir. If the sealing ''didn't'' stop a Sorceress from aging, it would raise the problem of how Adel can even ''move'' after seventeen years of inaction. All she'd be fit to do at that point would be to pass on her powers to the next person in line.
* That and most of the remaining evidence is circumstancial and requires some serious [[Alternate Character Interpretation]].
* Rinoa said she could see what was going on in Ultimecia's head while she was possessed. Shouldn't Rinoa have been able to figure it out from that? But she says nothing about it.
** Edea also had quite a bit of exposure to Ultimecia's thought processes and also doesn't say anything to indicate that Ultimecia is Rinoa or that there might be any issues that would come from Squall being Rinoa's knight; if anything, she encourages them.
** Additionally, Ultimecia has no problems trying to off Squall and Rinoa both several times each, something that she shouldn't want to do if she's the future Rinoa having a [[Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum]] over losing Squall. Arguing that she's too crazy to recognize either of them doesn't really fly since she ''is'' aware enough to recognize Squall as "the legendary SeeD destined to face me" and, if not sane, at least functional enough to get herself made Galbadian ambassador and put into a position from which to take over.
== Squall becomes Ultimecia. ==
Reading into Ultimecia's last lines before her defeat suggests abandonment issues very much like Squall's... and as Squall's epic [[Heroic BSOD]] in the end FMV sequence illustrates, he's not the sanest guy around.
* ....''[[Face Palm]]''
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== Rinoa is Ultimecia in the past. ==
Before you tell me that we already have that one, let me explain. See, the theory discussed above and the one that often comes back during discussions about FFVIII is that Rinoa outlives Squall and therefore becomes evil, but as stated above, it doesn't work considering sorceress have normal lifespans. So I thought about looking at the theory the other way: in the future, Ultimecia becomes a sorceress, she goes insane due to not having found a knight, and decides to start the time compression. However, in order to successfully achieve her plan, she needs to go back in time (and the game does mention that she needs some way to influence the past). This is how she creates Rinoa, a version of herself centuries in the past. Rinoa doesn't know this, either because Ultimecia erased her memory to avoid suspicions, or due to some other contrived magical glitch. [[Karmic Death|Karma comes back to bite her in the ass]] when her past version joins the SeeD [[Temporal Paradox|to destroy her.]]
So essentially, Rinoa doesn't become Ultimecia, she always was, but she doesn't know it. By the way, following that logic, Adel is probably another past version of Ultimecia as well, and the whole brainwashing thing makes even more sense: Adel was obviously evil, and that led to her... him... it being frozen and sent into space. So to prevent this from happening again, she made sure Rinoa doesn't remember her original purpose (she doesn't have to as it is stated in the game Ultimecia only needs to temporarily take over her body for the time compression to work). Heck, that may even explain the importance of love in the scenario: Ultimecia made Rinoa hunt for a knight to make sure she wouldn't go insane after becoming a sorceress and be stopped before Ultimecia could possess her.
* Except the game establishes you ''can't'' change the past. That was what Ellone was trying to accomplish by sending the party back to relive Laguna's life, and she says you can't change the past.
** Well, maybe she did it during the Time Compression, implying that... the entire game is taking place during the Time Compression!
*** The entire story actually taking place during the ending sequence? [[Neon Genesis Evangelion
== Ultimecia is [[Kid From the Future|a descendent of Squall and Rinoa]] ==
It preserves everything truly tragic about the "Ultimecia is Rinoa" theory, while actually being plausible! So that's where Greiver came from.
* I always liked this idea. I'd imagine she was their grandchild or something and that she had already killed their older versions. We already know that the Guardian Forces destroy/erase your memory if you use it too much. Even Selphie that had only used Guardian Forces only recently as she transferred to Balamb had started losing some of her childhood memories. It is way to plausible to not be true, that the Guardian Forces had something to do with Ultimecia. Remember, she WAS using a Guardian Force herself that she seemed fairly familiar with. So Ultimecia must have forgotten a lot about her past.
** While she may be a decsendant her being their grandchild is impossible. Edea explains Ultimecia exists many generations into the future, making it impossible to simply wait and deal with her when she shows up. So far into the future that details about their battle with Ultimecia become faded enough that Ultimecia doesn't have enough information to actually win as she could have easily done had she known a few things straigth out (if she'd known Squall was her nemesis she'd have just killed him during the parade instead of saving him for interogation but she doesn't figure it out until her next battle with him).
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*** In the English dialogue what Edea says is that almost all sorceresses in history have been "hand-in-hand" with a knight, and that most sorceresses without knights have ended up using their powers in evil ways. She also says "A knight will present you with peace of mind. He will protect your spirit." She doesn't say anything about passing the stress on to the knight.
*** Uh... just what else do you think "A knight will present you with peace of mind. He will protect your spirit." ''means''?
*** "Having a knight around to protect you will help you feel safer and less stressed out." I certainly don't see anything in the statement "present you with peace of mind and protect your spirit" that necessarily implies directly passing psychological strain from one to the other leading to the insanity that the WMG is suggesting.
*** Because you're taking it too literally, that's why. You don't have to go through some magic ritual to transplant your stress to someone. You just have to lean on them too much and let them take the brunt of it.
== The GF Selphie found when she was a kid was Shiva. ==
When GF's are hanging around loose in a place of their own choosing, they seem to gravitate towards places associated with their
== [http://squallsdead.com/ Squall Is Dead] ==
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Dovetailing with the Squall is Dead theory, Squall's party was never meant to succeed in assassinating Edea. Seriously, why would SeeD send fresh-from-training, wet-behind-the-ears cadets on such an important mission? No, much like the protagonists of ''[[Spies Like Us]]'', Squall and his party were meant merely as a distraction, claiming the Sorceress' attention so that she would not notice the true threat, coming to her from within her own ranks... Seifer. After Squall was mortally wounded and went into his delirium, Seifer flew into a rage (Hey, he may have bullied Squall, but in the end, they were both SeeD, even if Seifer had to pretend not to be) and slew Edea right then and there. He then rendezvoused with Rinoa, debriefed her group, and they all mourned their fallen comrade together. Seifer and Rinoa went on to live a long and happy life together.
* But Squall has the GFs. Plus, he beat Seifer in the duel right before Edea. If Edea can beat the guy who beat Squall, plus Irvine and Rinoa, how would Seifer win?
** In the immortal words of [[The Order of the Stick
** So, Seifer has a secret GF that's undrawable, he's way more powerful than anyone else, and he was always one of the good guys? This isn't WMG, this is just a bunch of Fanwank.
*** Dear boy, what did you think WMG ''was''?
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== Ultimecia was born ''because'' Squall and co. defeated her. ==
Okay, try to bear with me. I found this one on [[
* Isn't that what ''actually happens?'' [[Esoteric Happy Ending|The ending of the game as is]] [[Inferred Holocaust|isn't exactly a happy one, after all.]]
** Not really. Between Adel, Edea, and others implied before them, this never happened. [[Wild Mass Guessing|No reason to believe that fear of something so distant from people would propagate like that so far into the future.]] Nice Fanon/Fanwank, though.
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== Ultimecia is trying to compress time in a misguided attempt to understand the non-existent timeline/continuity of the [[Final Fantasy]] series. ==
In Ultimecia's time period, she spent a lot of time playing the games of the series. However, she believed that all of the games shared a single timeline and constantly tried to formulate one on the [[Final Fantasy
== Quistis Trepe is [[Asexuality|Asexual]] ==
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** Maybe he got ascended so much for getting rid of that loon of Laguna.
*** The gap between NCO and General is a little too wide for that to be plausible.
* Wait, what? Red armored soldiers are only
== Ultimecia thought Seifer was the man destined to kill her ==
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The fact that a sorceress Ultimecia, who hailed from the future, was going to cause death and destruction is something we already know the people of the world know. The fact that she was killed by a gunblade specialist - a very rare trait - would also be carried to the future. So, when Ultimecia saw a man of the right age and using the right weapon to kill her, she thought this would have to be the man - who else knows how to use a gunblade, much less at such a young age? Not to mention that Zell had just said that they were all from Garden - where she '''knew''' the man destined to kill her was from.
* Given that Seifer ''does'' [[
== "Whatever." ==
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The reason why Squall is so indifferent is because he's figured out the secret to ultimate power in the world of [[FF 8]]: playing cards. Actual training is for losers.
* Following this to its logical conclusion, Squall is the [[FF 8]] world's [[Yu-Gi-Oh!|King of Games]].
== Ultimecia was an insane, ''alternate'' version of Rinoa that, thanks to Squall's efforts, will never come to exist. ==
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* Small correction: Squall was impaled, but ended falling about... a meter, maybe a meter and a half. He only fell from Edea's charriot, which wasn't tall at all.
== Squall and company were sent to help the Forest Owls because they were literally
Sure, they might have passed the exams and proven martial prowress, but you've got Squall who is totally apathetic, Selphie who.... we don't know what's up with her, and Zell, who's too spastic to be reliable on the battlefield. Not quite the "professional" image you want to present. So let's put them on this [[Failure Is the Only Option|hopeless]] mission in a backwoods area where they really can't embarrass us!
Naturally, this being a jRPG, the reject brigade saves the entire universe.
== Ultimecia is a [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds|horribly]] [[Break the Cutie|broken]] [[Bad Future|future]] Rinoa. ==
Specifically, around [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|fifteen years or so after the ending]], Rinoa's [[The Masquerade|secret of being a Sorceress]] is revealed to the world. The wounds from the previous Sorceress conflict [[Too Soon|still not entirely healed]], this goes about [[Burn the Witch|as well as you'd expect]], and [[Ungrateful Bastard|most of the world rises up to]] kill her before she goes [[Axe Crazy]]. [[The Champion|Squall]] [[Badass|declares war on the entire world]] in order to protect her. Sadly, [[War Is Hell]], and no matter how much of a [[Badass Army]] he commands, the forces of several entire nations wear them down over a number of years until, eventually, the heroes from the game are pretty much all that's left. As they slowly fall, Rinoa starts [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope|edging towards the slope]], [[The Power of Love|with Squall as the main force holding her in check]]. And, once he finally falls, [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds|Rinoa finally]] [[Unstoppable Rage|snaps]] a la [[Elfen Lied|Lucy]], [[Super Mode|unleashes her]] [[Let's Get Dangerous|powers]] [[One
Rinoa resolves to somehow go back and [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]], and knows from experience that by achieving [[Instrumentality|Time Compression]], [[Neon Genesis Evangelion|she can be with her beloved again]]. However, she doesn't have the time or experience wielding Time Magic to accomplish this, so she spends the rest of her life researching a way to [[Grand Theft Me|transfer her mind along with her powers when she dies]]. In this way, [[Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep|she'll have until the end of time to learn what she needs to]]. However, she uses the name of the current host Sorceress instead of her own.... [[Continuity Nod|and untold generations later a woman by the name of Ultimecia is born...]] Ultimecia becomes the latest host to Sorceress Rinoa, and it is in this period that she finally figures out how to achieve [[Instrumentality|Time Compression]].
However, [[Chekhov's Gunman|the White SeeD]] have been fighting a war of attrition across generations to try and stop this, and they actually come close to winning because [[Orcus
Just as she nears her goal, though, Rinultimecia suddenly realizes that Time Compression would be really, really bad - i.e., a [[Negative Space Wedgie]] of horrific proportions - and alters her plan at the last minute to using Junction Machine Ellone so that she can [[Sharing a Body|Junction herself to her]] ''[[Sharing a Body|original]]'' [[Sharing a Body|self]]. However, [[Future Me Scares Me|Rinultimecia Terrifies Rinoa]], which results in something kind of like an [[Angst Coma]]. This is when Rinoa's passed out/possessed in Disc Three. Rinultimecia has a stronger will, which means she can move their shared body around, but not enough so that she can [[Uncanny Valley|move it fluidly]], resulting in the [[Zombie Gait]] when Rinoa gets up and moves. However, because she can't communicate effectively with Squall or Rinoa to explain what she's doing, everything goes horribly wrong ''almost'' [[Yank the
Rinultimecia [[Sequential Boss|tries everything she can think of to calm the heroes, or at least Squall, down]]. She creates Griever, the Squall's ideal of strength and pride, as a sort of [[Trust Password]], but Squall doesn't take the bait. She ends up resorting to [[Disney Death|temporarily removing the other heroes from the timestream]] to get Squall alone, but he mistakenly believes that his [[True Companions]] have been [[Killed Off for Real]], and [[Unstoppable Rage|flips out]]. Upon realizing that there's no way to make Squall recognize who she is, [[Despair Event Horizon|her heart finally breaks completely]], accepts that [[You Can't Fight Fate]], and lets her once and future husband-to-be [[Mercy Kill|put her out of her misery]] after [[No Ontological Inertia|ensuring that all of her magicks will undo themselves upon her death]], [[I Want My Beloved to Be Happy|allowing Squall and past-Rinoa]] to live [[Happily Ever After]].... [[Tear Jerker|but only]] [[Stable Time Loop|for a time]].
To summarize: Ultimecia is basically a fusion of [[Elfen Lied|the Diclonius]] [[Break the Cutie|Lucy]] and [[Neon Genesis Evangelion|Gendo]] [[Jerkass Woobie|Ikari]], whose [[Grand Theft Me|methodology]] [[Anti
Addendum: This also explains the [[Foe Yay]] in Dissidia - because of the war of the gods, Ultimecia has forgotten the ''exact'' nature of her feelings about Squall, but still remembers that they were quite strong, and would act accordingly... if only she could remember if it were [[Belligerent Sexual Tension|love or hate]]....
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** Original poster here: Rinultimecia remembered how those attempts had made her original self stronger as well as being important points in her relationship with Squall, and had to ensure that it was a [[Stable Time Loop]] until she saw an opportunity to drive everything [[Off the Rails]].
*** But if that's the case, why wouldn't she also remember that her past self would be terrified of and resist her, and that her efforts would result in Squall fighting against and trying to kill her? Why is she coherent enough to make a whole [[New Era Speech]] in disc 1 and verbally identify Squall as "the legendary SeeD destined to face me" in disc 2, but not enough to try to communicate to him that she is in fact Rinoa and just trying to reunite with him?
**** OP: <raises hand and opens mouth, promptly shuts it> .... [[Beat]] Hrm. That..... is a ''really'' good point. [[Logic Bomb|I'll get back to you on that one]]. EDIT: Rinultimecia herself had forgotten about the whole [[Future Me Scares Me]] thing, the speech was [[Fighting From the Inside|Edea]] ''[[Poor Communication Kills|mistaking]]'' Rinultimecia for an actual villain and trying in vain to orchestrate a [[Heroic Sacrifice]]/[[Taking You
== Ultimecia is possessed by the Dark Cloud. ==
Feeding off the theory that [[
== Seifer is Adel's kid. ==
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* He kills Odin.
* He is capable of fighting the group, but is obviously holding back.
* He's named after [[
== Rinoa is Yuno ==
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[[Category:Final Fantasy VIII]]
[[Category:WMG]]
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