Destination Ivalice
Part 1 | Part 2
Prologue
When I was a real young kid, I watched my neighbor shoot my cat with a rifle; I watched her eyes go dark and felt the warmth of her blood on my hands. On that day, I looked deep into the eyes of death—the hard-coded reality of it all—and it pained me terribly. Now, I only look when I really really have to, and even then, I shield my eyes, peering through the thin gaps of my figurative fingers, playing peek-a-boo with the quote-unquote real world.
The thesis of this essay is that everyone does this—not just me, but you, too. And you’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise.
This one is for Corbel and all the other cats out there who just want to explore the world unfettered by the fear of death.
I. Mewt & Me & Final Fantasy
Mewt Randell is a twelve-year-old kid from the role-playing game Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, released in 2003 by Square Co., Ltd. for the Game Boy Advance. Mewt’s had a rough life; shortly before the events of the game, his mother became sick and died; Cid Randell, Mewt’s father, devastated by the loss of his wife, spiraled into a deadbeat stupor to the point where he was unable to properly care for his son; and all of this left Mewt emotionally orphaned, forced to cope with the grief of losing his mother alone, and this reality pained him terribly. So, being a smart kid with an incredible imagination, Mewt retreated into fantasy worlds, becoming shy and awkward, nearly mute and unable to make meaningful connections with his schoolmates. And when Mewt was not at school getting bullied by the other kids, he was sitting in front of a screen playing video games; his favorite video game series was Final Fantasy.
My favorite video game series is Final Fantasy, too.
It’s important for you to know that I’m typing this essay from an office shed in my backyard that is not dissimilar to a cave containing two PCs, each with three monitors (three for work, the other three for stuff I actually enjoy—like writing longform essays such as the one you’re starting to read right now), a 14-inch late-90s CRT television (for maximum nostalgia when playing quote-unquote retro games), and a flat-panel TV (for DVDs and newer games, although I rarely play anything released after The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess [as I seem to have an irrational dislike of all media released after 2006—or so some of my friends have said]). And If you think that’s a lot of screens, it is—and sometimes all these screens are flashing all at once because, well, why the hell not? And slightly behind the screens, to the left, on the other side of this 12' x 15' room, there’s a bookshelf standing six shelves high containing several novels by Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson (three different editions of Neuromancer, for some reason), and Samuel R. Delany; there’s also a fat Lord of the Rings tome, the full bibliography of Philip K. Dick, Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, most of the Dune series, Gravity’s Rainbow (haven’t actually read much of this one, although I considered pretending that I did), Infinite Jest, A Clockwork Orange, The Pale King (reading this now, nearly halfway complete, with marks), The Catcher in the Rye, a copy of both Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet each with original Shakespearean text and modern-day English translation (part of the No Fear Shakespeare series), my dad’s 1970s copy of 1984, The Little Prince lost somewhere in there (thin book), Girl with Curious Hair (also haven’t read this one), &c.; some manga including the full Magic Knight Rayearth series and Death Note and X/1999; some graphic novels like the entire Sandman series (written by he who must not be named), some Frank Miller (Ronin, his Batman stuff [which I don't like]), the very obligatory V for Vendetta and Watchmen tomes (of course), and I even have a copy of the New American Bible: St. Joseph Edition, which includes full maps of Jerusalem (and other Bible-relevant locations) drawn in what can only be described as Middle-earth-like illustration. It’s important to note that while the bookshelf itself is so densely packed that removing even one book requires a fair amount of wiggling and some force, there is not a single nonfiction book to be found up there—not a single one; nothing that can be tied back to reality. (I’m not bragging or trying to flaunt some superior taste in literature here—this stuff is pretty basic nowadays, anyway; these are just the facts, these are just things that I happen to have due to the weird causal quirks of how my life played out.) And near the bookshelf, up and to the right, mounted to the wood-paneled wall, is a transparent acrylic case housing six model robots that I built myself, all bent into unique and very cool action poses, and two additional robots atop the case itself, also posed cool, all meticulously panel-lined with black ink to give them that special “pop” which is especially important since these robots are immediately visible upon entering the room. Below the robot case is a thin wooden tower with six shelves containing neatly rowed video game boxes in alphabetical order, starting with the entire Castlevania DS series, then Chrono Trigger DS, then the full DS Dragon Quest mainline canon (which totals close to $569.90—eBay math, as of 10/15/2024 [again, not bragging: just facts]), followed by Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time, Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift, Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, Strange Journey, SimCity DS, Animal Crossing: Wild World, Hoshigami Remix, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, every Pokemon title for the DS (this collection is worth something like a whole grand or more [which is solely driven by Nintendo’s forced product scarcity and near-complete lack of backward compatibility between console generations, which they exploit to sell straight digital-online ROM rips of these classic games on their current-generation platforms]), The Dark Spire—(at this point, you probably noticed that the titles are no longer in alphabetical order, and this is because the tower fell over months before writing this and, at the time, I was too busy to put the games back in order, and now the urge to order them has faded entirely and I just don’t care anymore)—Mega Man ZX, WarioWare D.I.Y., Phantasy Star Zero, Lunar Knights, SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters DS, Star Fox Command, Hotel Dusk: Room 215, a puzzle game just called Exit for some reason, Kirby: Squeak Squad, Lego Harry Potter: Years 1–4 (which is not actually mine—an ex-girlfriend’s [although possession is nine-tenths of the law, as they say, so it is basically “mine”]). Below the DS shelf sit various boxed PC games, including Spore: Galactic Edition, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade—(again: not bragging; these are just facts; things that exist in my general vicinity)—Diablo II, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, Final Fantasy XI: The Vana’diel Collection 2008, Final Fantasy XI: Treasures of Aht Urhgan (the cover art is a full spread of one of Yoshitaka Amano’s most stunning urban landscape scenes: a city of onion-domed palaces swirling in blue haze bordered by warm flowers—this is one of my most treasured pieces of paperboard, as it was gifted to me by my mother back in 2006), Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition, and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. (Note: not bragging.)
And below those PC games sit several 3DS titles, more numerous than even my DS collection, though I will spare you the details on that one, as I’m sure you’re mentally exhausted by now, and frankly, I’m tired of typing out all these titles and am not looking forward to having to italicize each one of them with markdown or whatever method is required on the platform where this essay ends up being posted. And again—and this is very important—this is neither a brag nor a boast, these are just facts; these are my seminal games and my formative books: the stuff I spent so much time with that they are now pretty much an extension of myself; these are the treasures of my youth, ancient relics of a time I wish I could return to: my fantasy; my escape. Playing any of the aforementioned games sends me to another world—an Ivalice, of sorts—even so much as seeing the boxes elicits an involuntarily nostalgic trance with blank gaze and drool and the rest of the associated things; much like a Pavlovian response; likewise with the books, reading their words fill me with inspiration and calm, as if nothing else matters in the world, like I’m in my own private Ivalice.
And actually, there are a few more items that I think are especially important (I know I said I would stop, but there are only a few more, I promise): on the bottom shelf sit four video game soundtracks, all in their original fat jewel CD cases (all gifts from an old high school girlfriend): Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy IX, Chrono Cross, and SaGa Frontier II (my favorite of them all); and, in a tall black wooden cabinet to the right of them, all four of these games exist—in near mint-condition packaging—alongside a number of other seminal PlayStation games that I spent many summers playing.
Again, I am not bragging, these are just the facts. (It occurs to me that the more I insist that I’m not bragging, the more you might think I am, in fact, bragging—but again, I am not bragging. And to convince readers of a certain personality type who may still think I’m bragging [despite the many disclaimers]: Fine, you’re right—I’m bragging, but by admitting to bragging, I am showing that I am self-aware enough to critically analyze the fact that I am bragging, thereby negating the bragging somewhat.) And even now, if you’re still convinced I’m bragging, well, that’s a risk I’m willing to take because this stuff is very important. You, the reader, need to know these things. It’s important for you to know all this stuff about me—the whole essay kinda hinges on it; it’s important for you to know that I live ten minutes away from the Atlantic Ocean, and that when I look out across the endless blue, I barely hear the waves over “Fisherman’s Horizon”; it’s important for you to know that when I go on bike rides, I hear “Hunter’s Chance” instead of the harsh air whipping against my face; it’s important for you to know that when I sit down to write essays like the one you’re reading right now, I put on “Guldove: Another World” and imagine I’m in another world myself; and it’s especially important for you to know that, when my newborn son was having trouble sleeping during his first few nights in this cold, dark world, I put on Rhapsody on a Theme of SaGa Frontier II and just let the album play all the way through, and that boy fell right asleep.
It’s important for you to know that I live in a fantasy world—like I was saying, the whole essay kinda hinges on it.
This is just a small glimpse of my Final Fantasy.
II. Contextualizing Ivalice
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance opens to a schoolyard snowball fight which sets the stage for one of computer-gamedom’s most near-perfect tutorials—a microcosm of the entire game, really, explaining not only gameplay mechanics but also introducing the values, flaws, and motivations of the main characters, all while laying the groundwork for a simple yet engrossing drama that “really makes you think,” as they say.
(I’m going to use the rest of this chapter to cover the game’s characters, plot, and mechanics at a very high level. Feel free to skip along to Chapter 3 [especially if you’ve already played and beaten the game], keeping in mind that some of the later points in this essay hinge on knowing what I’m about to cover to some extent, so it’s not just me writing for the sake of it—though there is some of that. Don’t worry, I’ll try to make it as fun as possible so you don’t drift off.)
The scene fades in. The tutorial begins. The screen pans down to a scene that could be confused with our own world if not for the two-dimensional sprites that cause Ryoma Itoh’s deceptively cheerful cartoon aesthetic to leap from the pages of his artbook straight into the liquid-crystal display that’s blasting the player’s face with an epiphany of 16-bit color; the whole vibrant pixel presensation, combined with Hitoshi Sakimoto’s full-MIDI orchestrations, themselves all fuzzed up due to the Game Boy Advance’s limited 8-bit digital audio output, really brings the world of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance to life in a way that words can’t quite do justice: a red-brick schoolhouse with a green roof, a recess field blanketed in white, a shovel impaled in a mound of snow, a snowman with a green bucket for a hat, and some snow-packed walls for hiding; all indications point to this being a well-played field that has seen not only much adolescent action but also the adolescent angst that comes along with that, and the perpetrators of this angst are eight children standing wrapped in several layers of clothing; many of them nondescript, but a few stand out: Mewt, a boy with light-brown curls wearing earthy greens, is being picked on by a nondescript young kid: “Hey, Mewt. Where’s your little bear today?” A second anon chimes in, “He’s not going to say anything! He’s like a little girl!” And Mewt is just kinda standing there shoegazing, saying nothing, lost in dreams of Final Fantasy—(which is a series of video games in the world of this video game that you, the player, are actually playing, which is the first [and perhaps only] time Final Fantasy has been so self-referential [i.e., the game you are playing in the flesh exists within the game you are playing and the characters within that game are playing the same game you are playing within the game being played, &c. &c.], making Tactics Advance the most meta game in the Final Fantasy series, a point that will continue to be important throughout this essay)—and that’s when a firebrand of sorts named Ritz, a girl with hair as red as cartoon lava, steps forth to defend the shoegazer—“Hey! That’s gender discrimination! I know some ‘little girls’ who can kick your butt!”—before turning to the thus-far quiet blonde boy, inferred to be a friend of the shoegazer but just kinda standing there as if watching a car crash but not calling for any help whatsoever, and telling him, “You should speak up! Tell them your name, at least. You can’t be the ‘new kid’ forever!” And this prompts the player to input a name for the car-crash observer, whose official name is Marche, but the player can name him anything they want as long as it's within the ten-character limit. (And this is the most control the player has over Marche outside of simply doing the game-type things the developers intended the player to do, and since this is the only real so-called choice in the game [and, typically, the only choice in most JRPGs developed pre-2010], this means that naming Marche “ASS” or something equally immature is a perfectly valid form of play-how-you-want video game anti-determinism, as this is the only way to subtly alter the subtext of the game’s narrative, which one might want to do for reasons outlined later in this essay.) After the naming ritual, Mewt turns to Marche and meekly apologizes for getting him mixed up in all this schoolyard drama, but Marche replies, “You don’t have to apologize, Mewt. You haven’t done anything wrong.” And just like that, in a single less-than-two-minute scene, we understand the essence of the main characters: Mewt, the reserved shoegazer, lost in his own world; Ritz, the punky firebrand burning with contempt for societal norms, champion for the oppressed; and Marche, the opinionated bystander with a strong sense of right and wrong, willing to express his opinion but unwilling to back it up with action.
Shortly after the drama, the schoolyard is revealed to have been an isometric grid all along, and the snowball fight begins. The player is prompted to move Marche to a square on the field, much like a game of chess, thus tutorialing the act of movement; then, the player is prompted to throw a snowball at another character (called a “unit” in classic tactical role-playing game vernacular), teaching the methods of attack and the importance of positioning. After a few turns, one of the bullies throws a snowball packed with rocks at Mewt, causing the shoegazer’s head to bleed. Ritz comes forward to defend the boy, prompting one of the bullies to call her “whitey locks,” revealing that Ritz actually has white hair but dyes it red and is very self-conscious about this fact judging by her almost violent response: “Why don’t you come say that to my face?” The bullying persists, prompting a nearby teacher to halt the schoolyard game and reprimand the troublemakers, mirroring the judge mechanic introduced later in the game, in which breaking certain “battle laws” results in a fine or jail time for the offending unit. The bullies are taken away, and the snowball fight ends, leaving our main cast—Marche, Mewt, and Ritz—to their own devices.
Before they leave for the day, Mewt asks if Marche would like to come with him to the local library to pick up a book he ordered. Marche explains that he can’t, as he has to pick up his younger brother, Doned, from the hospital. Ritz asks if Doned is sick, and Marche reveals that his brother is afflicted by “something he was born with,” then invites everyone to come over to his house later so they can read Mewt’s new book together. They all agree. The screen fades out.
The vibrant colors of a child’s bedroom fade in. The main cast is huddled in the middle of the room, along with a new addition to the group, Doned, who is sitting in a wheelchair. Mewt pulls out the book he purchased earlier, a massive tome, and plops it down on the bright green carpet. Little do the kids know, the book is an ancient magical grimoire—the Gran Grimoire—and housed within its pages is a powerful wish-granter, a genie of sorts. When the book is opened, the genie’s magic is unleashed.
The genie hears the deepest wishes of all the children in the room: Mewt’s wish to see his mother again, to stop the bullies, to have a father that’s not a deadbeat alcoholic, and, most importantly, to live in the world of his favorite video game series, Final Fantasy; Ritz’s wish to live in a world free of gender discrimination, where she can be whoever or whatever she wants to be without fear of ridicule, and, most importantly, a world where she doesn't have to dye her hair red every day; Doned’s wish to not have monthly hospital visits, and, most importantly, to cast aside his wheelchair and be able to run alongside his brother on the playground; and Marche’s wish—revealed much later in the game—for attention, stemming from feeling overlooked by his parents, who focus more on his disabled brother than on him.
The Gran Grimoire delivers. That night, after all the kids are asleep, their world transforms into the fantastic world of Ivalice—a world of sword and sorcery, of magical beings of all shapes and sizes, of clear cut heroes and villains, where any illness is easily cured by the casting of a simple spell, a world in which a girl’s hair can be whatever color they want, a world in which all wishes are granted. And Mewt is prince of this new world, in charge of all the laws so that no one can bully him ever again; and his mother is alive; and his once-deadbeat father is now the highest judge in the realm. And Ritz is free to be whoever she wants; she becomes a feared but well-respected leader of a clan, and, most importantly, her hair is permanently red. And, of course, Doned can walk again.
But Marche isn’t having any of it.
“It's escapism! Can't you see? It's not healthy!” Marche says.
Marche wants to tear it all down—“It’s not real!”—and, as the game’s designated protagonist, he does tear it all down; that’s the win condition, the whole point of the game’s narrative. The details of Marche’s tearing-down of Ivalice are not so important; what is important, however, are the implications of this act: the implications of Marche putting his brother back in a wheelchair; the implications of Marche essentially killing Mewt’s mother a second time; the implications of forcing Ritz to live in a world of gender conformity and discrimination.
What I’m interested in are the personal and philosophical implications of tearing down Ivalice—the implications of facing reality instead of living in a fantasy world, or vice versa.
(Going forward, I will be referring to the original, Earth-like world as “the real world” [or some form of this] and the magical world simply as “Ivalice.” This is to avoid using clever compound adjective forms like “quote-unquote real world” or “so-called real world,” &c. It’s important to note that these verbiage choices do not reflect my opinion on which world is real and which is fantasy—this is only the same verbiage the game uses, so it’s just easier this way.)
III. Doned or: Final Fantasy Faith Fiasco
Let’s start with the most egregious implication: Marche paralyzing his brother from the waist down—again.
Marche, upon destroying Ivalice, sends his younger brother—who could run, jump, swim, and do all manner of frolicking in Ivalice—back into a wheelchair. Essentially, Marche just paralyzes Doned from the waist down—again—because his brother’s being-able-to-walk in Ivalice was “not real” and, thus, not worth preserving. (We are ignoring the elephant in the room for now—”what is real, actually?“—but don’t worry, we’ll get to that later.) According to Marche, Doned was living in a fantasy world and should, instead, just get used to being in a wheelchair for the rest of his life even if Doned doesn’t want to be in said wheelchair—which, he doesn’t, and he makes that very clear; he even spends the majority of the game sabotaging Marche’s efforts to destroy Ivalice all because he does not want to sit back down in that damn wheelchair.
“Of course you want to go back. You have a reason to! You can run around and play with your friends. But what's waiting for me? Have you thought of that? You have everything back there, and I have nothing!” — Doned
Granted, Doned is exaggerating a little bit there; and by the end of the game, Marche has convinced him to change his mind—“I'm sure you'll be able to run when we go back!” (Spoilers: this ends up not being the case)—coercing some form of consent to the whole put-me-back-in-the-wheelchair thing, but this consent is only valid if we ignore the power imbalance that arises from the big-brother-little-brother dynamic at play here, which we all know raises valid questions around said consent that we would be quick to call out in any other situation, such as if the two brothers attempted any other type of relationship later in life, if you know what I mean. (Not that I am condoning any sibling sexual relations here—I am simply bringing this up as something to consider when it comes to consent in the face of obvious power imbalances. And, if you’re unsure that there is indeed a power imbalance here, consider how any child looks up to their older sibling in both a role model and protector type way and how this idolization produces a level of fear—fear of rejection, mostly, but also that deep primal fear of “hey, they’re bigger than me and could just pound me into a pulp right now if they wanted to” type of thing—and how this overall idolization and fear might color the younger sibling’s decision-making process on any number of things. “But, author, aren’t there power imbalances in every relationship?” Well, yes, that’s true—but it’s a gradient, obviously, and this is probably something we should shelve for another essay because Final Fantasy Tactics Advance doesn’t even care about this discussion because it’s never explored in the game’s narrative—so, let’s move on.)
This is all good background information to have, but it isn’t really the point of the whole Doned-Marche thing; there’s no subtext about coercion or emotional manipulation or nuanced sibling dynamics within the narrative of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance itself. Main writers Kyoko Kitahara and Jun Akiyama—(also the “snowboard minigame planner” for Final Fantasy VII [which is a damn cool credit to have to your name])—wanted Doned’s story arc to be as simple as: a disabled child, bitter due to said disability, comes to grips with their disability and then goes on to lead a happy life. The problem here—ignoring the coercion aspect—is that Doned never really comes to grips with his condition at all; he blindly takes Marche’s word that he’ll be able to run again when he gets back to the real world. In short, Doned places his faith in both his big brother and the doctors, believing that one day they will find a cure for his illness, and this gives him the resolve to live in the real world again. He doesn't accept his condition, become one with it, learn to embrace it as something unique about himself—instead, he just sits back and puts his faith in Marche and some doctors. And, in this way, the subtext of Doned’s arc kinda falls flat—a Final Fantasy Faith Fiasco of sorts.
But what is faith, really?
Oxford’s Learner’s Dictionary—(I can’t use their big-boy dictionary without creating an account on their website, which, frankly, kinda pisses me off)—has two relevant definitions for “faith”; A) “trust that somebody/something will do what has been promised,” and B) “strong religious belief.” Now, let’s take a look at the first definition for “fantasy” in the same dictionary: “a pleasant situation that you imagine but that is unlikely to happen.” All things considered, it doesn’t take a huge leap of faith to conclude that faith and fantasy are not so different.
Doned is using Oxford definition-A faith to improve his outlook on a likely grim future stuck in a wheelchair. (Disclaimer: Use of the words “grim” and “stuck” and any henceforth words and/or phrases that seem to indicate some sort of anti-wheelchair sentiment on behalf of the author are actually being used empathetically on behalf of Doned, who does not want to be in the wheelchair—he hates the wheelchair. According to Doned, he is “stuck” in the wheelchair; hence why this chapter leans more toward anti-wheelchair sentiment than reverse. Assuming that this perceived anti-wheelchair sentiment reflects the author’s opinion on being in a wheelchair would be folly; the author [that being myself—not sure why I’m doing this in third person] does not have feelings one way or the other about being in a wheelchair. It appears to this author that being in a wheelchair kinda is what you make of it; meaning: if you don’t like being in the wheelchair, then being in the wheelchair is bad, but if you do like being in the wheelchair, for whatever reason, then it is good. [Note that the author also believes both “good” and “bad” are up to subjective interpretation, which may or may not muddy the waters even further here.] It follows that the author of this piece holds strong “life’s what you make it” sentiment and, beyond that, has no opinion on the wheelchair thing.) But, in truth, Doned has no way of knowing if he will ever get out of the wheelchair. Some might say that Doned is simply lying to himself; others might say that he’s living in a fantasy world; and, perhaps, Doned’s fantasy world is not so different from Ivalice. So, in a way, even when Marche destroys Ivalice—returning everyone back to the real world—Doned is still living in a fantasy world of faith.
But is living in a fantasy world so bad? Marche seems to think so—but I don’t.
We—i.e., you and I; i.e., human beings—have faith in all sorts of things that we don’t fully understand, and we use this faith to keep us sane, to shield us from the harsh truths of reality.
Let’s start with some Oxford definition-A faith examples, as these apply to most people. Like Doned, we have faith in doctors, even for simple procedures; we expect the doctors performing those procedures to actually know what they’re doing—yes, they have a diploma on the wall, but we also have faith that the diploma itself wasn’t simply printed from their home computer, or that the doctor didn’t cheat his way through medical school; and we assume that since the doctor is still practicing, they must be reliable on some level, as they haven’t had their license revoked or been thrown in jail for malpractice or whatever; yet most of us don’t even know how those processes work to begin with, which is yet another thing that we have faith in: the systems on the backend. We have faith in the vaccines injected into both ourselves and our children, despite not knowing the exact chemical makeup of what’s inside the syringes (and, yes, I’m aware that this is a weird, politically charged topic, and that many people don’t, in fact, have faith in these vaccines at all, but I guarantee you that all of those anti-vax people have faith in a number of other things that they don’t fully understand in the same way that they don’t fully understand the vaccines [and, importantly, this “we don’t know what’s in those damn vaccines!” justification is the most common reason cited for vaccine skepticism]; for example, these same people have no idea which chemicals are in the food they’re eating [and, to remain consistent, they would need to grow their own fruits and vegetables and raise their own livestock, then make sure that the fertilizer and food they’re using for those respective fruits/vegetables and livestock are fully understood at a chemical-composition level]; these same anti-vax people don’t know what’s in the toys they let their children chew on, or what’s actually in the cleaning products they use around the house, &c. &c.; in short, they trust a whole bunch of stuff that they don’t know the first thing about.) Moving on, we (back to you and I) have faith that our cars won’t just explode the moment we start the ignition (most of us having no knowledge of what the parts are made from or how they even work together, let alone if someone didn’t sneak a pipe bomb onto the bottom of the car while we were sleeping the night before). We have faith that, after we pay our bills, the stuff we’re paying for—electricity, water, internet, the works—will continue to work as advertised (otherwise, why would we pay?); we have faith that the money we use to pay those bills isn’t stolen or lost by the banks we keep that money in. I could keep going—but I think you get the point: we have faith in all sorts of things we don’t fully understand. Granted, we have good reason to have faith in some of these things, said reasons being a culmination of experience and feedback from friends, family, and qualified experts who have insisted that the stuff works as advertised, along with the fact that most of us have seen this stuff working for years, so we just kinda assume it’s all well and good, which has led us to have strong conviction in our faith that these things will just do what they are supposed to do. The Oxford definition-A faith point isn’t really all that profound—it’s just how it is: as humans, we operate under a certain level of faith that the stuff we use every day isn’t going to kill us; some of this faith is more backed by evidence than others. This faith keeps us trusting the perceivable world around us—stops us from going insane with endless questions of “Well, are you sure this works? Can you explain it in detail? Can I get a chemical composition chart on this? Can I have the full blueprints?” &c. &c.
Life would be very hard indeed if we didn’t have some degree of faith in the systems working all around us: healthcare systems, food regulators, utility infrastructure, waste management, law enforcement, etc. We have faith in these systems because, ultimately, we’re scared of dying, and these systems help us live longer, healthier, happier lives. And, yes, I know these systems aren’t perfect, and many need to be reformed, but it’s hard to deny their immediate benefit to overall well-being, which is why we maintain some degree of faith in them and why they continue to exist at all.
We place our faith in the backend systems as if to spit in the face of our own mortality—and, in this way, our faith is not so different from the faith of a religious zealot.
Which is a nice segue into Oxford definition-B faith; the religious faith. I’m sure I don’t need to list out every example of how this version of faith works, and that you—as a human on planet Earth—know damn well that people all over the world are worshiping all manner of gods and goddesses—the most popular (as of the writing of this essay) being those of the Abrahamic triad of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—and that these religious people have all manner of reasons for believing in whichever god(s) they choose to believe in and that every single one of these reasons is entirely lacking in terms of real, tangible evidence. Some might say that these people are living in a fantasy world; a world in which, after they die, they are sent to some nice place that totally justifies all the suffering they experienced here on Earth, as if whatever god or gods they worship couldn’t just bypass the whole miserable process and put them straight in the good place to begin with—but for whatever reason, no, they have to tough it out here on this stopgap layer of torment before they are allowed into the heavenly kingdom. (I could go on and on about this, but I would be retreading old ground, considering that my views on this have not changed [see my essay titled “Fishing for God.”]) The point of this paragraph, however, is not to lambaste religious people—in fact, I totally understand the urge to believe in a higher power and a life after death, considering the vast suffering in the carnal animal kingdom of which we are a part of. And I know this kinda sounds condescending, like “Those dumb religious people are just making up stories to make themselves feel better!” But that’s not my intention either—although I do believe they’re making up stories, but I don’t see them as much different from any other story we tell ourselves to stave off despair. It seems to me that, as humans, we are deathly afraid of our mortality; we are deathly afraid of this life we're experiencing right now being all there is, that, after death, there’s really nothing else, and then, eventually, we are just forgotten. It seems to me that we are deathly afraid that, when Mom dies, we will truly never see her again; and, perhaps, all of us kinda instinctively know this is the case, but we don’t want to believe it; as such, religion is the ultimate panacea to these Transient Mortal Blues—and that’s OK, I think.
When it comes down to it, our default status condition as mortals is fear, and we use faith in the system and religion as a way to combat this fear. And while this faith may not be entirely evidence-based or realistic, it keeps us from drowning in despair; it keeps us from having a nervous breakdown; it keeps us motivated; and, most importantly, it keeps us alive. This faith is a fantasy, and this fantasy makes us happy; and, as long as we’re not hurting anyone, what right does Marche have to come along and tell us otherwise? Why should Marche get to trample all over the fantasies that we hold so dear?
By the time the end credits roll, Doned is back in the real world, in the hospital, still in his wheelchair. He seems happy in his newfound faith that one day he will be cured, and this makes life in the wheelchair bearable for him.
Doned has even made a new friend, and in this final scene, we see him teaching his new friend how to play Final Fantasy.
A fantasy within a fantasy.
IV. Ritz or: MEMES
“My hair is pure white. I was born that way. I had to dye it every morning … Before I learned how, my mom would do it for me … She looked like she would cry every time she took out the dye.” — Ritz
The kids at school would call Ritz Malheur “whitey-locks,” and, because of this, Ritz felt compelled to dye her hair bright red every morning. Not only that, but Ritz was interested in fantasy novels, video games, and all manner of rough, noisy activities generally associated with boyhood, and these tomboy leanings ensured endless bullying at school. However, unlike Mewt—who would retreat into himself—Ritz conformed to what she believed those around her wanted her to be; she dyed her hair red, wore dresses, and hid her boyish interests, all to fit the role society imposed upon her. She did this begrudgingly and with much angst. Ritz was like a chameleon (poorly) blending into her surroundings, only showing her true colors when alone or around people she could trust. This repression of self became a deep existential frustration that manifested as outbursts of rage directed at her fellow schoolmates. While this rage was sometimes useful—such as when it was used to protect other children, most of whom she deeply related to (Mewt being a prime example)—most of the time, it would just get her in trouble.
Little did Ritz know, she was (and still is) living in a consensus reality—a collective fantasy, a shared dream, a meme.
We are all just memes—stop laughing, it’s true.
“Girls wear dresses and read romance novels, boys wear baseball caps and play video games, &c.” is not necessarily a “meme” like Ronald McDonald driving down the highway with LOL INTERNET flashing on the screen, or ceiling cat, or those overly wholesome therefore absolutely sickening “Advice Animals,” or Pepe the Frog and his myriad racist offshoots, or Pam from the hit 2000s television show The Office looking at a picture of two very different things and saying “they’re the same picture,” or even the classic black Labrador Retriever answering the phone saying “HELLO? YES, THIS IS DOG.” (This dog meme is my personal favorite: in essence, it’s an absurdist meme—nearly postmodern, really—a precursor to actual nonsense memes like “skibidi toilet” [with Michael Bay in talks to direct the film adaptation of skibidi toilet, which may or may not just be part of the meme—who actually knows]. But, honestly, the dog-answering-the-phone meme is way deeper than modern absurdist memes, as it’s more a commentary on how we’re all animals and how—when you really get down to it—whether a dog’s answering the phone or a human, it really makes no difference: it’s all absurd all the way down; we used to write letters, send them off, wait months for a reply; and even that was weird; now we’re just picking up the phone, yelling at each other; talk is cheap; humans are tethered to their phone cords; no better than the charge of their phone’s battery; and the cord itself is tied in a hangman’s knot; it’s totally weird, it’s all gone way too far, sucking out our humanity through the earpiece, polluting our thoughts, and so on and so forth [at least, that’s what the dog meme makes me think about].) Back to the point, the shared-dream meme is not like those aforementioned internet memes—well, actually, now that I’m thinking about it real hard, they are exactly the same: both are cultural quirks transmitted through time and space, an infection of sorts, except the infection isn’t caused by microbes; it’s caused by ideas. And, importantly, while these memes may seem very concrete and hard-coded into reality, they are actually totally malleable. Just like “skibidi toilet”—“girls wear dresses, boys wear baseball caps, &c.” is not a real thing; it’s not floating around in the ether waiting for someone to pick it out of a primordial meme soup; instead, it’s just a stupid idea that caught on and persisted for decades because it provided some utility—or, in the case of “skibidi toilet” or whatever, it provided laughs. And if you’re not buying this whole meme thing yet, look no further than different cultures and their wildly different treatment of males versus females compared to any other culture—no two cultures are the same in their treatment of these memes, and while this difference in memes between cultures may be preferable to everything becoming homogenized, it also goes to show that these meme boxes are constructed from paper-thin walls that are easily destroyed and just as easily replaced with some other arbitrary thing that happens to catch on. The gendered concepts of “man” and “woman,” for example; this idea that men have short hair, kick balls around, play violent video games, never cry, watch shonen anime, wrestle, provide for the household, and so on and so forth; and likewise with women being associated with dresses, dolls, shojo anime, caretaking, farming simulators, wearing long nails and makeup, and all the other stereotypes that both you and I are very aware of; all of these memed-up standards are arbitrary and based on ancient superficial observations. Taking this anti-meme theory to its logical conclusion, even the very idea of a “man” being a human with a penis and facial hair and whatnots, or a “woman” being a person with a high-pitched voice capable of giving birth or whatever, is highly memed-up, as these gendered standards have been shaped by centuries of societal norms and observational interpretations; and while these observations may be based on physically tangible characteristics, the post-hoc categorization of them into little boxes with words is not; and all of this has evolved over time—this very evolution undermining the groundwork upon which these memes are built, as it illustrates that the memes are always changing in subtle ways. Another big problem with the memes is that things become very hazy when all the conditions to satisfy a certain meme are not met; take, for example, a quote-unquote woman, if one meme condition is missing—i.e., a woman who’s infertile, missing breasts, has more testosterone than estrogen, &c. &c.—is that woman suddenly no longer a woman? Are they some other meme entirely? Or is that person some kind of agender monster? Nay, the truth is that we’re all agender monsters because gender is a fantasy—a box we use to categorize certain people so that, ideally, we can make predictions about their behavior and act on those predictions accordingly; things get even more hazy when we consider technological advancements that essentially let someone fit any meme they want, provided they have the means to do so. It follows that many of our memes—especially our gendered memes—are outdated and, thus, society's insistence that they be maintained to the letter now does more harm than good.
Unfortunately, even if the memes themselves are not tangible, the actions people take based on these stupid memes are very real indeed—racial violence, gender discrimination, class-based oppression, &c.—but the ideas themselves are just ideas and malleable as such. Yet these memes influence us every day in very harmful ways. In fact, the whole thesis of this chapter is that these memes (especially gendered memes) are incredibly harmful and stupid and archaic and a bunch of other bad adjectives—and Ritz can easily testify to that.
Ritz, through no fault of her own, didn’t fit these gendered memes. She grew up in a society where girls were expected to dance and cheer, not play video games or kick balls around; a society where girls were expected to be timid and sweet, not independent and outspoken. She was bullied incessantly for not fitting the stereotypes of a quote-unquote girl—including having white hair, which was seen as a freakish deformity (another offshoot of cultural meme theory)—and, as such, repressed her true self and even dyed her hair to conform to the girl meme that society forced upon her. The problem didn’t lie with Ritz, however—it lay with society as a whole, which, through decades of meme cultivation, imposed a rigid social structure mostly based on immutable characteristics, ultimately otherizing her into submission.
What happened to Ritz was a grave injustice, and an unnecessary one at that; and this isn’t just happening to Ritz—it’s happening to people everywhere, every day, all the time. People are repressing their true selves over this. People are sick over this.
One could make the counterargument that these gender memes exist to better society in some way—but, honestly, in trying to steelman this position, I could not think of one thing. It seems to me that these cultural meme labels now only serve to confuse people into thinking there’s something wrong with them when they don’t check all the arbitrary meme-label checkboxes, leading to a lifetime of deep confusion and, ultimately, despair over the idea that they don’t fit a societally constructed label they’re told they should fit, which leads many to double-down on trying to conform to these meme labels to prevent ridicule and/or otherization, which only goes to strengthen the meme itself, thus perpetuating an endless meme cycle of confusion and despair—an ouroboros made entirely of pointless memes. Nearly every cultural meme label we give ourselves only seems to make it easier for someone else to decide who to hate and who to tolerate, and this applies across the board.
So, yeah, when Mewt opened that grimoire and Ivalice—a world in which Ritz’s hair was permanently red and the only meme that mattered was which job class one picked before kicking monster ass—became the new reality, you better believe Ritz didn’t want to go back to the real world where she couldn’t be her true self without the local kids pelting her with rock-filled snowballs because she didn’t fit into the little meme box that was imposed upon her by the bullies, who themselves had memes imposed upon them by their own parents, who (i.e., the parents of the bullies) also had memes imposed on them by their parents, who (the parents of the parents of the bullies) had memes imposed by their parents—which is now four generations of imposed memes—and so on and so forth; all without any of them truly realizing what was happening; which leaves one to conclude that, truly, these cultural memes do a real psychic number on us all. Even now, I—(yes, hello, it’s the author speaking directly to you from the em-dash-parenthetical statement of which I invented myself and that you have seen a few times now and probably thought “what is this person smoking, exactly? And how do I get some?” [essentially the em-dash-parenthetical is an aside-aside that kinda grammatically mirrors how my hyperactive mind works, but it’s also a middle finger to the whole system of Standard Written English and the snooty literati who unimaginatively back it without question])—take my earring out when going to see my great maternal grandmother because she just gets very uncomfortable and weird when so-called men wear earrings around her, which is an old cultural meme that has stuck with her since the 40s—(she’s, like, 102 now; so she would have been in her 20s in the 1940s, and, obviously—as of writing this—she’s still kicking, although she can’t remember much anymore, but she does get outside twice a day between her daytime soaps and plays bingo three nights a week, so, all things considered, she’s doing quite well for herself [but I do need to visit her more])—and, you know what, that’s OK; ancient cultural memes are hard to kill; in fact, you just kinda have to wait them out sometimes. (Not that I am “waiting out” my own great grandmother or anything—I wish only the best for her; however, her memes are stupid as hell.)
The point is: Ritz doesn’t want to go back to the real world. And throughout Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, she rages small battles against Marche’s clan, often competing for the same bounty marks, and while she’s not actively trying to thwart Marche at every turn—like Doned is—she does make it clear that she does not ever want to go back to the real world. But, as you know from reading this far, she doesn’t really have a choice in the matter and has to go back regardless, due to Marche making that decision for her.
The thing about Ritz, however, is that her time in Ivalice changes her. Through a partnership with an Ivalician local, Shara—a white-haired bunny person (the meme label here being “Viera” [race itself being just another meme])—who pushes Ritz to see things differently; Ritz goes through a series of introspective changes, essentially becoming aware of the cultural gendered memes that had been oppressing her back in the real world; and by the time Ivalice is destroyed, she has come to grips with her personal identity; she quits pretending to be the girl that everyone wants her to be, and she even quits dyeing her hair—wearing her white hair proudly at school the next day. By the end of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Ritz doesn’t care about the memes anymore.
“You'll be fine, Ritz. You're tough. I should know. And if you laugh, your mother will not be sad. I think it was you being sad that made her sad.” — Shara
There’s no doubt that Ritz likely faced some bullying for her newfound anti-meme ways upon returning to the real world, but, much like Ritz's mom, who would cry each time they washed out the red dye from Ritz’s snow-white hair, the tears weren't caused by the hair but rather how Ritz reacted to the whole hair meme itself. It was an empathetic exchange between mother and daughter. Ritz had adopted the meme that white hair on young girls was as abnormal as her quote-unquote tomboyish ways, and these memes internalized into a repressive sorrow that made her mother cry and made the bullies target her—since we all know that bullies feed on the charged feedback they receive from their victims. But once Ritz stopped caring about the memes, those around her stopped caring as well—the memes ceased to have any power over her.
In a way, Ritz was living in a shared dream, a fantasy world of memes created by those around her, a fantasy world of which she was feeding into by conforming, thus perpetuating a feedback loop of confusion and despair, and this fantasy world was destroying her psyche. So, instead of living in the collective’s fantasy world, she decided to create her own fantasy that didn’t conform to the gendered memes perpetuated by those around her.
At least, that’s what I took from the whole thing.
Ritz’s ending—specifically the implications of her growth—is one of the more poignant character endings of the game, revealing that, while cultural memes do impact us directly in many ways, we might be giving them too much power over ourselves, and this fear of ridicule over not satisfying every little condition for a particular cultural meme may be causing us to repress our true selves.
But forget about Ritz for a moment. I think what I’m ultimately trying to get at is that you and I are much more than socially constructed memes—we are fleshy, real people, and these memes are fucking with our heads, big time.
I don’t think I’m naive, and I know everyone who’s actually naive says they don’t think they’re naive—but what I mean is that I’m under no illusion that this essay will somehow abolish social memes such as gender, race, borders, religion, breakfast, money, &c. In fact, I’m under no illusion that we, as a species (another meme), will ever get over these stupid memes at all. And I’m not even saying that we should abandon these memes entirely; however, I am saying that I would like for others to consider that these memes are indeed socially constructed, and that we place way too much importance on them, and that this importance we place upon them causes great harm to those around us; therefore, we ought not to take these memes so seriously, lest our intention is to perpetuate harm (which I would hope it’s not). Let the so-called boys wear dresses; let the quote-unquote girls have facial hair; and let anyone identify as whatever they want to identify as, because, at the end of the day, who is actually being harmed? We have been so collectively mind-fucked by these memes that we are literally basing entire democratic elections on where people are allowed to go to the bathroom—it’s embarrassing. Perhaps, one day, when we realize that we’re all living beings instead of a collection of arbitrary traits packaged into some dumb meme box, we’ll stop shaming others for not fitting into these dumb meme boxes. Perhaps, one day, we’ll stop killing each other en masse for looking and/or thinking differently from one another, and thus, we can explore the world unfettered by the fear of death.
I am reminded of Corbel.
We all share one life: a life beyond gender, race, and even species—and that’s a meme I will back with my entire being.
To get back on topic, yes, it’s true that Marche forced Ritz out of Mewt’s Ivalice—but by the end of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Ritz didn’t need Mewt’s version of Ivalice because she had created her own Ivalice without all the stupid memes.
Ritz overcame the memes—why can’t everyone else?
#ComputerGames #Ethics #Autobiographical #FinalFantasyTacticsAdvance #Essay