[ SECRET POST #4354 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4364 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 48 secrets from Secret Submission Post #625.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: What controversial fandom opinions do you have?

[(Anonymous)]

Having played FFVIII lately, I disagree. The problem is there's a lot of subtle things that add up to it, but it's easily missed when you're younger. Now that I'm grown, I can see where some of his "Whatever" is him pushing back against his own attraction due to his fear of abandonment, and then she went comatose and that all went out the window.

Re: What controversial fandom opinions do you have?

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks, you said it better than I could put it together. Playing it again recently, I appreciated Squall a lot more, and saw a lot more in him than I used to. He's a lonely, depressed kid-- like, literally, just graduated high school, thrust into a position of authority he didn't ever want. Combine that with being really socially awkward, of course he reacted to his immediate crush on Rinoa by freaking out internally and shutting down.

He's already deeply worried about her by the time the whole Deling City thing is going down. He cares about her a lot.

And I can kind of understand why everyone else trying to push them together is a little off-putting but like... again, they're all 17-18 years old. This is kind of what high schoolers do, haha.

Re: What controversial fandom opinions do you have?

[(Anonymous)]

Not to mention they're pushing because most of them can tell that he has a crush and won't act on it unless he's sufficiently pushed. Most of them don't know he has severe abandonment issues. He doesn't talk about them.

Rinoa's the first person to notice, because she's an outsider to the whole Garden thing, which makes people into teenaged soldiers and so inherently kind of fucks them up. Zell is, ironically, the most normal because he had a loving family. Rinoa's a little fucky (but then I'm 100% convinced her mother was a political assassination to warn her father, because some of how her dad acts is super shady in regards to how overprotective he is). But she's the only one who reacts like his reaction RE: Seifer supposedly being executed is super fucked up and speaks to deeper issues as opposed to just out of character. And after that event, you can notice her poking at him and worming her way into his heart--which he pushes back against hard because "what if she leaves me like everyone else."

Re: What controversial fandom opinions do you have?

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, when I was much younger first playing this game I thought the Gardens were awesome and I wanted to live in one so bad-- coming back to it now is like "wow holy shit they are definitely just kind of turning out very young soldiers into horrifying war conditions.

Like, I kind of want to go back to the Deling City thing with this: Squall during this entire part breaks my heart. He wants so badly to make sure Rinoa is safe and wants to go help her, but due to the whole child soldier thing he is almost physically incapable of breaking the mission to do so (which is sort of a double-edged sword in and of itself), and it rips him apart. If it wasn't for his friends helping him hammer out a quick compromise, I'm almost sure he would have pretty much just blue-screened. The kid is a mess.

Re: What controversial fandom opinions do you have?

[(Anonymous)]

I see your points but I can't help but think more people would still object to this dynamic if Squall was a female and Rinoa a male character.

Re: What controversial fandom opinions do you have?

[(Anonymous)]

That... seems like moving the goalposts a little? 'Cause I don't think it would honestly change very much-- an awkward girl blue-screening when she meets a cute boy that gets her to dance with him, who then inwardly freaks out only to end up caring very much for this boy's well-being the moment he's in danger? That's ship fodder in a neatly tied package, haha. People eat that shit up.

Or if you mean specifically the nudging of Squall's friends to get them together, I feel like you're assigning it a lot more weight than it actually has if you read something sinister in it when it's applied to a girl instead. They poke fun at Squall because they like him, and they know he likes Rinoa.