A Very Brief Overview of Magic: the Gathering
Magic: the Gathering is a collectible card game created by Richard Garfield in 1993. In the thirty years since, the game has grown into popularity from a once niche hobby into a massive worldwide phenomenon, printing billions of cards and enjoyed by millions of player. At its simplest, Magic is a competitive card game in which two players, representing powerful wizards, tap into the power of the land to summon monsters and allies and to cast spells. The fundamental cornerstone of Magic is the five colors of magic. All magic in the multiverse of the game is aspected to one of five fundamental forces, which exist as 'building blocks of reality'. These are White, Blue, Black, Red and Green. The five colors represent multiple things: the very land from which magic is drawn (a mountain is Red), the pure magic of spells being cast (a lightning bolt is Red), certain factional identities or professions (D&D-styled barbarians are Red), and more subtly certain personality traits (a yearning for freedom is Red). Players build their decks of cards from one or more color; traditionally, the tradeoff for playing more than one color is increased versatility (the life-gain and cheap, small creatures of White combined with the destructive spells of Black) at the cost of a more brittle strategy that risks finding itself unable to pay for all its energy costs.
The Five Colors
White represents "Peace through Structure." Its mana draws from plains. It values community, the group, and civilization as a concept. White seeks peace and order through unity, morality, and mutual support. It is tied to light, healing, divine will, and angels. More than any other color, it sees good and evil as objective, rather than relative value. It is often associated with fairness and justice, but left unchecked, it can veer into totalitarianism and the oppression of what is different. Its allies are Green and Blue. While no color in Magic is universally good or evil, it should be noted that White is usually on the side of the 'good guys' in Magic's narrative, with some very dramatic exceptions notable mostly for being, well, exceptions.
Blue represents "Perfection through Knowledge." Its mana comes from islands. It values intelligence, discovery, and the pursuit of self-improvement. Blue keeps an open mind and sees the world as an endless source of opportunities for discovery and mastery, and thinks very little of others except to the extent that they may aid in one's journey. It is tied to water, sea creatures, the sky, and wizards. More than any color, Blue deals with 'the stuff of magic itself,' such as metamagic and counterspells. Its allies are Black and White. Blue is typically the most morally neutral of colors, not abusive or selfish, merely uninterested in other people.
Black represents "Power through Ruthlessness." Its mana comes from swamps. It values ambition, ruthlessness, and looking out for number one. Black seeks personal advancement and sees others only as a stepping stone towards their own greatness. Black deals in all that is considered forbidden or unholy, such as necromancy, poison, madness, and magics that destroy (rather than merely subvert) the mind. It is tied to demons, corruption, and the undead. More than any other color, Black rejects the existence of objective good and evil, seeing the world only in terms of power balances, security dilemmas, and utilitarian outcomes. While fundamentally selfish and cynical, Black is also the color of self-reliance, being willing to stomach harsh deeds in pursuit of a goal, and being willing to self-sacrifice in pursuits of one's dreams. Its allies are Blue and Red. While no color in Magic is universally good or evil, it should be noted that Black is almost universally on the side of the 'bad guys' in Magic's narrative; while the game has historically graced us with various example of totalitarian White dictators and crusaders, it is exceedingly rare to see unambiguously heroic figures associated with Black - though it is used, at times, to represent characters who have become a channel for the will of others, an instrument of a nefarious design without a will of their own.
Red represents "Freedom through Action." Its mana comes from mountains. It values passion, aggressive action, and rejecting authority. Red believes that life is an adventure, and that laws and order is a hostile imposition that seeks to drain the joy of life. Red is represented both by the utterly carefree who have no agenda beyond their own fun, and by those so consumed by their passions that they would burn the world, united in their rejection of structures and norms. It is tied to fire, lightning, goblins, and dragons. More than any other color, Red is simply unpredictable, breaking away from ideological lines and factional alliances in the name of following its heart. Its allies are Black and Green.
Green represents "Growth through Acceptance." Its mana comes from forests. It values nature, harmony, and cultivating life. Green sees the natural order as inherently valuable, and artificial impositions upon it as violations of a greater good, which often puts it in opposition to human civilization and development, though it is not universally primitivist. It is tied to plants, mutation, predation, elves, wild animals, and colossal beasts of enormous physical power. More than any other color, Green is associated with rampant growth without agenda, purpose or allegiance beyond its own propagation; this power is either captured and channeled by others, or engulfs them whole in a pre-sapient tide that has no identity but 'life.' Its allies are Red and White.
Multicolor
In 1994, the Legends set introduced the idea of 'multicolored' cards, which would go on to have a defining impact of the design of the narrative of the game. A Blue-Black card is (theoretically) more difficult to play because it requires your wizard to draw from two separate sources of power at once, but in exchange, that card can embody traits unique to both Black and Blue in a single synergestic package, allowing for great efficiency and raw power. This opened fascinating narrative new vistas: If Red represents freedom, violence, and aggression, and Black represents ambition, green, and lust for power, then what is a Red-Black personality? Most likely not a very pleasant person; someone ambitious, aggressive, with very little regard for others, refusing to be bound by any rules and willing to use violence to get their way. But if White represents community, order, healing, and light - then what is a White-Black personality? Perhaps one who seeks order through power, ambition through community, who heals others to further their own ends? One might imagine a hanging judge, a corrupt priest, but also a skilled doctor who is in it for the money above all. White and Green are natural allies in that they value harmony, order, mutual cooperation, and collective growth; but at the heart of their alliance is an unspoken and irreconciliable difference, for White believes that order is a social structure imposed upon a hostile world to ensure peace, while Green believes that order naturally arises from nature and includes predation and violence as natural balancing forces and that attempts to constrain this ideal model are unnatural and aborrent; will a Green-White faction find harmony between these two viewpoints, or tear itself apart from its contradictions?
What matters to us, today, is that the introduction of multicolored cards allowed for the expression of much more complex identities for the characters of Magic the Gathering; indeed, it is also Legends which introduced playable cards based on unique, named characters.
Universes Beyond
Magic: the Gathering is a highly polished, excellently designed competitive card game, whose intricate rules and vast catalogue of playable cards offer the potential of incredible variety and tactical depth. It is also an international juggernaut franchise that will never be making enough money unless it is making literally all the money. These two facets are in direct contradiction with each other; I will not belabor this point, only cite the most banal example: if the game as it exists has achieved a fragile balance, then publishing a set full of superior versions of older cards would shatter that balance, but would also rake in fantastic amounts of cash because of all the players who now need to buy these new cards to keep up with the 'power creep.' That makes breaking the game a sensible business decision, but a terrible game design decision; the struggle between those two sides, good business and good game design, has defined the history of Magic. I will leave it up to you which side is winning right now.
For much of its history, MtG had a thriving 'fanmade cards' hobby. These were people, on the Internet, using image editing software to create fake cards that they would share with others. These were sometimes original characters, but most of the time they were based on existing IPs Except in the event that you could print those cards and convince your friends to let you play them as if they were 'real,' these were completely unplayable; they existed solely because Magic card design is fun and figuring out how your favorite superhero would be represented in a Magic card is a really engaging pastime for fans. So MtG fandom spaces were awash in 'homebrew' cards representing Superman, Naruto, or Sephiroth. Depending on your inclinations as a fan, you either wanted them to be the most overpowered bullshit possible ("When I play Ichigo Kurosaki he destroys all enemy creatures and inflicts 10 damage to the opponent"), or you found it more fun to design balanced cards that got the spirit of your fave right while still being believable as playable cards.
Part of the dream behind Magic homebrew was that it was self-evident that none of those cards would ever come to be. Magic was very attached to its identity, its own proprietary universe. Magic has a setting, a multiverse full of heroes, and they navigate between worlds; when they want adventures themed after Japanese Sengoku fantasy, they go to Kamigawa. If they wanted pastiches of Frankenstein and Dracula, the vampiric House Markov and the fleshgrafters of Innistrad were right there. Magic had only briefly dabbled in borrowing from other fiction, with an Arabian Nights set and a Romance of Three Kingdoms set early on, now largely forgotten, before firmly casting themselves as their own setting and intellectual property
…
In 2021, Hasbro announced Universes Beyond: a new 'sub-brand' of Magic which would release new sets (sometimes small novelty sets, other times equivalent to full standard sets) based on non-Magic IPs, which would contain fully playable cards based on those IPs, legal in certain formats, both casual and competitive. The very first such set was relatively well received, though with some caution; it was made up of cards based on Godzilla and other Toho monsters, which were, very specifically, alternate names and artworks for existing cards, each one specifying which 'actual' Magic card it replaced, all of them giant monsters from the Ikoria set. Then Hasbro did a hard break by announcing that the first 'true' Universe Beyond would 1) contain fully new cards, not alters of existing ones, 2) be based on The Walking Dead, a zombie apocalypse story with no supernatural elements other than the zombies themselves and set in the modern day, whose universe could not possibly be more at odds with Magic's high fantasy that pointedly eschews guns among a number of other signifiers of technological modernity and which is, I must once again emphasize, about superpowered wizard-gods and their flying bird-people friends fighting dragons. This was very effective at setting the tone of Universes Beyond: This was about IP crossover based on perceived marketability, not about whether or not any given universe played well with Magic's own setting.
The Walking Dead would be followed by UB crossovers with Stranger Things, Arcane, Street Fighter, Fortnite, Warhammer: 40,000, Transformers, Dungeons & Dragons, Doctor Who, Jurassic World, and many others.
I hate all of them. On principle. I try to be objective in this introduction to Magic and Universes Beyond, but there is a level past which I cannot hide my bias, and it's the point where there is a Doctor Who Magic set with David Tennant (no offense meant to him) in the artwork for a "Tenth Doctor" card meant to act as your Commander in a deck themed after him. I cannot countenance this. This is not "my Magic."
…
And yet.
Every man has a weakness. Every man has his breaking point. My weakness, my breaking point, is when WotC announced that they would release a complete, draftable Universes Beyond set based on Final Fantasy. The whole franchise, games I through XVI.
I cannot look away. Unlike, fucking, Stranger Things or Fortnite, the Final Fantasy franchise is perfectly made for a Magic: the Gathering crossover. It is a high fantasy epic that ranges across the full spectrum of 'pure medieval fantasy with ambiguous ancient civilization' to 'modern, even sci-fi but in a way that involves a lot of strange anachronisms,' which deals in epic battles for the fate of the world, elemental magics and the primal energies that make up the world, personal drama set against a backdrop of both political and metaphysical conflict, and it has even dabbled in multiverse-based stories before.
It's perfect, and I want it.
But it's a year away. The set will not release until 2025.
And so, while waiting, and thinking entirely too much about Final Fantasy: the Gathering, I find myself compelled by a single, overpowering question:
What Color Is Each Final Fantasy Protagonist?
Now, this list is very arguable, and based on gutfeel most of the time, but I have added a reasoning for each character. Of note is that a thing MtG does is give a character multiple cards, each with different mechanics and sometimes different colors, to highlight different aspects of their character, or an evolution in their arc. For instance (and I'm going to list Lord of the Rings characters here, because more of my audience will be familiar with them than Jace Beleren or Liliana): There is a card depicting Golum as the stalker in the dark, chasing after the Fellowship; that card is Black, because it represents Golum at its lowest, a predatory and obsessive stalker with no thought but harm. However, a different card depicts Golum in the period when he is guiding Frodo and Sam across the moors, sincerely helpful, before his doubts and greed and obsession overtake him again; that card is Green-Black, representing the nuance brought to his character, as well as his newly highlighted skills as a scout and guide across dangerous wilderness. Gandalf the Grey is Blue/Red, because he a good-natured trickster figure whose designs aren't always apparent, whereas Gandalf the White is mono-White because he has been re-embodied as an angelic figure of salvation.
This means any given Final Fantasy character could be depicted in more than one set of colors, representing different moments in their character arc. When that is relevant, I will highlight it, but more generally this means any color set does not necessarily aim to encompass the entirety of the character's arc.
So let's get started.
Final Fantasy I
The Warrior of Light: White.
The Warriors of Light can be any combination of classes you want, but beyond this, they are one thing: avatars of the Light, of goodness prevailing over evil, order over chaos, civilization over the apocalypse, life over death. They are not truly people; they appeared one day, without history, bearing crystals to save the world. Of all Final Fantasy protagonists, they are the closest to avatars of a metaphysical forces, without human connection, whose sole purpose is to save mankind. They bear no hatred, form no bonds, accept no recompense beyond what will help in their mission. They are the ideal, and for that reason, they are in a way simultaneously awesome and hollow. More elementals than humans. I believe this is a take Dissidia followed to some weird ends with its own plot, and embodying the 'Warrior of Light' as a singular entity modeled after Amano's original concept art; this is probably what I would do myself, portraying the Warrior of Light as a monowhite card depicting a single heroic figure, nameless and heroic beyond humanity.
The Warriors of Light: White/Blue/Red/Green
Failing that, and following from the above treatment, I would portray the Warriors of Light not as individual characters, but as a single party - Warrior, Thief, Black Mage, White Mage, maybe. As a collective entity, they represent all colors but Black, which is too selfish, too nefarious to be represented among them; rather they are all colors working together in concert against the apocalyptic designs of Black-aligned entities.
Final Fantasy II
Firion: White/Red
Poor Firion. Though he was introduced in the first FF game to have an actual narrative, that narrative is utterly devoid of character arc. At least we can speculate wildly as to the nature of the Warriors of Light. Who is Firion? A heroic young man who wants revenge against the empire and gets easily seduced by a hot monster lady. That revenge, however, does not lead him to any moral compromise, it's a simple heroic motivation to heroic ends. Firion is good, and he's passionate, and he's good at fighting. He's the most archetypal Boros (Red/White) character to ever exist.
Guy: Green. He's big, talks like Tarzan, and can speak with animals. He's the Big Buff Wild Guy.
Maria: White/Green. Her personality is 'girl,' meaning she is kind, mediates between people once or twice, and has a minor breakdown over how much shit the game puts our characters through.
Leon: Black/White. He is easily turned to evil without any mind control, consumed by his ambition as the dark knight, but eventually sees the errors of his way and is swayed to the protagonists' side to save the world, before leaving to wander the world because their conflict has driven a wedge between them. He's the closest the game has to moral complexity, but he really is just the Proto-Cecil.
Final Fantasy III
I'm aware that the 3D remake of III gives each of the Orphans of Ur more defined character traits, but that's not the version I played. With that in mind…
The Orphans of Ur: White/Blue/Green
The Orphans are what the Warriors of Light would be if they were something resembling characters. Not complex ones, to be clear; the Orphans effectively exist as an aggregate entity, whose dialogue between one another is unmarked. But they do have a character, and it's an entertaining one. They're children (or rather young teens), thrust into a world of conflict, saddled with a responsibility too heavy for them to bear. They are kind-hearted, sometimes naive, they respect their elders, they bear their increasing sorrows with strong hearts even as they gnaw at them. They are charming and make friends easily. They help everywhere they go. They bear the power of countless heroes of the past, changing and adapting with every challenge they meet. They are the best qualities of White, Blue and Green, true heroes, though perhaps sometimes they had more of the willful independence of Red to make them care a little more for themselves.
Final Fantasy IV
Cecil, the Dark Knight: White/Black
Cecil is the Dark Knight, a man consumed by loyalty. He has sacrificed his body and the possibility of love for the sake of power, power to serve his king; this power, he uses even to evil ends, though briefly. Though Cecil is not selfish, he has deliberately silenced his own moral instincts, he has made himself a servant to evil, before he could fully realize the nature of that evil. Even after he rescues Rydia, he is haunted by his actions and the nature of his power; he is made to kill men who once served beside him, his former comrades. He is a figure of vengeance even in righteousness, and his quest is to escape that shadow, to free himself from a blade of darkness that can only ultimately bring suffering.
Cecil, the Paladin: White
You could easily argue Blue/White, but I think this works better as a single color, representing the chasing away of Cecil's shadows, the purification of the light, and his rising to a greater power. Paladin Cecil is brave, noble, he regrets his past misdeeds but does not let remorse keep him from moving forward. He is human, and capable of love. Born anew, to bear his father's legacy and save the world from an ancient and unfathomable threat, to free his brother from his own demons without even knowing it.
Rosa: White. She's a healer, a mentor figure, a love interest. She wants to pull Cecil out of his shell, to guide Rydia past her trauma. She's sometimes a little aggressive in this (thinking about the ice barrier scene), but it's because she's surrounded by people with avoidance mechanisms. She wields a bow with great skill, which is not uncommon for White-aligned creatures.
Final Fantasy V
Bartz: Red/Green
Somewhat controversial pick, I think; I wavered a lot on whether Bartz should be White/Red, or White/Red/Green, but White/Red typically tends towards a kind of military community and discipline that Bartz doesn't have. Bartz is a wild seeker of freedom, a young man with an endless appetite for new horizons, who feels stifled by the social expectations and constraints represented by White. He's a boy we're introduced to running across the endless plains on the back of a chocobo, finding new friends but immediately trying to ditch them to protect his freedom, who then tries to ditch them again later when Faris and Lenna are crowned; he's close to animals, he enjoys nature, he's good in a fight. Gruul (Red/Green) characters are also often part of 'ecoterrorist' factions, and, well… Bartz spends most of the early game smashing power infrastructure that's draining away natural resources, doesn't he?
Faris: Blue/Black
Faris is a pirate. She is introduced having very little qualms capturing or potentially killing people; she rules her crew with an iron fist in a velvet glove. She is dashing, attractive, dangerous, and will stab anyone who gets too close to her before she allows it. She is a queen of the sea, going everywhere on her ship, bonded with a sea monster. She is literally fluid, in her gender presentation and her identity, pirate or princess, man or woman, friend or foe. She embodies the deadly, murky waters of Dimir (Blue/Black) - only with more of a heroic compass than is common for these characters.
Lenna: White/Red/Green
Like Maria before her, but more developed, Lenna is kind-hearted and gentle. She's a friend to all living beasts with a self-sacrificial streak, a princess who grew up in a castle but is unafraid to go out into the wild to find her father. Lenna cares about family, about her friends, and about her people; she's impulsive, driven by care and emotion, with powerful bonds to wild creatures. In the end, that bond manifests in Phoenix, the bird of fire, being born of the soul of her wind drake friend. Lenna can be naive and can be reckless, but she is a powerful friend driven by strong conviction and a love of the world.
Galuf: Blue/Red, then Blue/Red/White
Tricksy old mentor, Galuf may play himself up as more of a White-aligned, Obi-Wan type than he really is, but when we are first introduced to him we see the core of carefree, gleeful whimsy that years as a king once buried under layers of responsibility. Galuf the amnesiac is a trickster, unburdened by duty, who is seeking the mystery of his past but, on some level, enjoys not having a past, enjoys spending these wild days with his young new friends, feeling spry and young again. He's mischievous, passionate, and devoted to his friends above all. It's only when his memory comes back, and with it his grief for the loved ones he lost, his guilt over the failure to answer the Exdeath threat, the duty he had forgotten, that he takes up again his old responsibility, bears again the mantle of king, and burns himself on a pyre of his own strength for the sake of the ones he loves.
Krile: Blue/Red(Green?)
Krile is a different aspect of Izzet (Blue/Red) than Galuf; less mischievous, more inventive. The spark of potential, the creativity of youth, the fluidity of one who has yet to fully settle their path in life, who could become anything or anyone. Though she shares some of Galuf's mischievous nature, and while she bears the essence of earth, which represents hope, Krile is also burdened with grief and loneliness. Her ability to communicate with animals might lean towards Green, but I think of it more as a kind of psychic power aligned with Blue; it ties into the extrasensory gifts she seems to manifest at times, making her keenly attuned to what is real and isn't. Though a Princess, she relates to others in terms of bonds of kin and friendship, much closer, more personal relationships more aligned with Red than White. Coming out a meteor swinging lightning bolts at enemies, she is a prodigy wizard even before she inherits the powers of the crystal; the archetypal young genius of the Izzet. She's most likely to acquire White as part of her color identity as she grows older and shapes her path in life, learning restraint and deciding on her long-term goals while taking on her responsibilities as queen.
That
Final Fantasy VI
Terra: Blue/Red/Green
Temur (Blue/Red/Green) is the identity of nature in all its power, the color set of elementals, the flow of the raw magic of life, unbound by civilization or personal ambition. Potential unbound, unleashed. That is Terra, the girl without a past, the child of two worlds, the power of Espers guided by a human heart, the most powerful wielder of magic in the world. She has suffered, as nature does. She has been bound, as nature has. Wielded against her will. But eventually, she broke free, and with her freedom came tremendous change for the world. With her freedom came the godlike power of her Trance form, an entity beyond humanity. Terra contends for the nature of love, until she accepts about herself that her love is not a romantic love, but a compassionate love, a maternal love, the love of a caretaker, a nurturer, who fights to defend the world and all the things in it and bring life back to them.
Celes: White/Blue/Red
The Magitek Knight, the General who took Maranda, the willing weapon of the Empire, we meet Celes only after she awoke to the evil in which she took part; we'll never know if Black was once part of her color identity, but I don't think so. Emotionally stunted by a childhood raised as a weapon, Celes struggles to find her definition as a human being, when it is so much easier to be a naked blade against injustice, something for others to wield. White is discipline, and discipline is self-mastery, and mastery is self-denial. Blue is adaptability, and adaptability is fitness to purpose, and purpose is to be used properly. Only red is freedom, independence, connection, the connection to others that can help her become her own person and acknowledge the love that burns in her heart, a love not like Terra's but personal, individual: Her grandfather, monster though he may have been, her friends, who wait for her beyond the sunset-lit ocean, and Locke, for whom alone she reserves a special love.
Locke: Blue/Red. He just doesn't have enough edge in his thief shtick to qualify for Black, and "thief" is a role pretty strongly dominated by Red and to lesser extent Blue in Magic history. He's an intrepid adventurer who can't be tied down except for his lost love, he's fast and agile and sneaks places and fights with short blades and steals shit from opponents; Blue/Red.
Edgar: White/Blue/Red. Artificer king who willingly shouldered the mantle of ruler so his brother would live free, inventor and user of cunning contraptions, inveterate flirt, he embodies the same Jeskai combo as Celes in a very different, more superficial way; mostly he's centrally a White-aligned character, the good king who is noble, courageous and good to his friends, with Blue and Red taking more of a backseat.
Sabin: Red. Sabin is brashed, blunt, and impulsive. He doesn't think things through ahead of time, relying on quick decisive action, which works more often than not thanks to his initiative and strength. He's an incredibly skilled martial artist and stupidly strong, and a devoted friend who still loves his brother after their estrangement. Sometimes one color is all you need.
Cyan: White. Cyan would embody the Boros (White/Red) ideal of strength, training and devotion tempered by discipline, order and hierarchy, except he succeeded so much at the tempering part that it ended up utterly stifling and he never truly grows out of this, with his limited arc mainly focusing on his self-doubt being cleansed with a reassurance that his family do not believe that he failed them. Whatever Red is in Cyan's soul barely expresses itself in letters penned under a fake name; ultimately he imposed White upon himself.
Setzer: You cannot make me care enough about Setzer to give him a color identity. Blue, I guess.
Final Fantasy VII
Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER: White/Red/Black
Cloud at the start of the game is a combat operative. That is what he sees himself as, what other people value him for, and why he's recruited by Avalanche. He is a slick tactical operator, a man whose entire life is defined by his training and the Mako infusion that made him more than human. All of this is false, but he believes it with all the strength of his heart, and with the power imbued in him, he is making it reality with every level gained. Unbeknownst to him, Jenova's cells grow within him, corrupt his body and soul, subvert him even as they enhance him with incredible, deadly combat power. He has all the best martial aspects of White, Red and Black - consummate skill and discipline, furious aggression and quickness of improvisation, ruthless calculation and a willingness to push himself past his limits for power. He is missing all the other, positive aspects of these colors - Cloud is aloof because he's trying to project a particular identity that he doesn't fit in, he deals with social awkwardness by trying to act cool, but he seeks belonging, he longs for a human touch that he does not know how to ask for, he yearns for someone to know him in the way he doesn't, cannot know himself. He is, after all… Just a puppet.
Cloud, Hero of the Planet: White/Blue/Red
This is Cloud at the end of the world. Broken, and remade. Cast down into the Lifestream, where he had to put back together the pieces of his own soul. Revenge is no longer his primary drive - that failed at the Northern Crater, where all his wrath only made him a more pliable slave. It was purged out of him along with Jenova's hold on his soul. Now he stands for the souls of the departed, for the will of the Planet, for the salvation of all living things. This Cloud stands next to the one he loves, and knows his own feelings. He knows what Aerith was attempting in her last moments, and he will make sure her last prayer is answered. He's the master of himself, and finally at peace.
Tifa: White/Green
Tifa is caring, nurturing, kicks ass with martial arts, and is part of an ecoterrorist gang. She resents Shinra and cares about the planet - but ultimately she cares more about the people around her. She's a mediator, the kind of person who ends fights between friends and who talks to people one on one when they need to. She's a figure of unity, of friendship, one who seeks to ensure everyone works together. She has also spent years making sure she would always have the strength to protect those bonds physically if need to; she is only a healer in the metaphorical sense, the skill she has mastered is to fight for those she cares about with her fists. What's perhaps more interesting about Tifa, though, is which colors fail her: Mainly Red. She cares about others' feelings to the point of fearing confrontation and being unable to bring up unpleasant truths. She is unable to express her own feelings to the point of allowing the boy she loves to begin a relationship with another girl because she did not dare to speak up for herself. On that day at the reactor, screaming over her father's body her hatred of Sephiroth, SOLDIER and Shinra, she had that passion, that flame… But no longer. She is driven by love, but not to fight for it. In the end she can't speak about her feelings aloud even when she confesses them. Red is the color she really needs, and the one she is most lacking in.
Aerith: White/Red/Green
If Temur (Blue/Red/Green) is the wild and untamed power of nature, then Naya (White/Red/Green) is that power brought into harmony with humanity, into purpose and order, without stifling it. Aerith is the Last Ancient, she bears the will of the Planet and hears its voice - but she struggles to understand it. She lacks Blue, knowledge, wisdom, experience. She's been cut off from the distant heritage that should have taught it to her. All she has is her kindness, her passion, her faith in the Planet, in her mother's spirit, in her friends. Aerith is not meek, she has Red's motion, its emotion, its yearning to be free and wander and follow her heart's whim. She is capable of admitting her feelings, of reaching out to the one she loves. She is also a healer, drawing directly on the power of the Planet, in tune with its energies, and in her last moment she is trying to reach out to the soul of the world, to awaken it.
Barret: Red/Green. Much more on the ecoterrorist side than Bartz, admittedly; Barret is passionate, he's charismatic, he's angry, he loves the planet and wishes to see her restored, he harbors a deep desire for revenge that poisons his high ideals, but he is ultimately able to see that and put it past him, and grow. His love for his daughter cuts through all as his greatest quality and his ultimate motivation. When revenge for Correl is no longer what drives him to oppose Shinra, love for Marlene is what drives him to oppose Sephiroth.
Sephiroth: Blue/Black/Red. I've talked a little about how Black can, in theory, be a positive aspect, but how in Magic history it's usually associated with evil. But mono-Black character tend to be merely selfish, merely ambitious, merely evil. A serial killer, a callous necromancer, an assassin for hire. Grixis, the combo of Blue, Black and Red, is what tends to stand for the "ultimate evil" in Magic. It is Black's unbridled lust for power and disregard for others, married with the cunning and vast knowledge of blue and the destructive power and burning passion of Red. It is evil that schemes and consumes. It corrupts as much as it destroys. Nicol Bolas, the dragon-pharaoh who tried to conquer the universe with an army of undead, is Grixis. Sauron's most powerful card is Grixis. And Sephiroth, I think is Grixis; an evil as insidious and patient as it is vengeful and petty, reaching over fast distance to corrupt minds and manifesting to personally annihilate threats with overwhelming power, which delights in sadistically wielding half-truths to break minds. Jenova, by contrast, is Black/White/Green, a living growth that is alien to our world, something that thrives in our midst by corrupting our bonds and changing us from within. It is life, and it is community, it is only that that life and community are wrong.
Final Fantasy VIII
Squall, New SeeD: Blue/Black/Red
Look, I know what I just said about this color combo. And I know that WotC/Squeenix will never be bold enough to make a Grixis Squall. But I think it's right. It's not that Squall is an ultimate evil, obviously; but he is the ultimate killer. He is the perfect killer, and he is perfectly alone. He's trained himself to silence his moral instincts and see the world through a cynical lens that is not truly natural to him. He's strong, fast, highly intelligent, capable of deadly initiative, but he surrenders that initiative to let himself be wielded by others, and grows frustrated when they do not use him as what he is, a deadly weapon. He is everything Cloud only believed that he was, the ultimate spec ops, a one-man army capable of taking down giant robots and hordes of soldiers alike, to dive deep behind enemy lines and cripple infrastructure. He wields a vast array of power obtained through years of study to bind and control spiritual entities of immense power, channeling their magic and ability with a flexibility the FFV protagonists would envy. He's proud, conceited, ashamed at the same time; perpetually consumed by loneliness and social awkwardness and embarrassment. He has none of the stability or happiness or peace that White or Green bring. All the inventivity of Blue, the ruthless power of Black, and the fiery determination of Red are combined in his ideal model of himself and it's driving him miserable. But he is very, very good at killing things.
Squall, Leader of Balamb Garden: White/Blue/Red
Look, I know, I'm not being original here. The thing is, Jeskai (White/Blue/Red) is pretty much the end point of every Final Fantasy protagonist whose arc is about being a 'living weapon' who finds themselves and what they truly care about and finally connects to other people. It's Celes, it's Cloud, and arguably it's Squall. I think you could argue that, once the self-destructive ruthlessness and 'power is all that matters' attitude is gone from Squall, so is the aggressive resolve of Red, leaving him with only White/Blue, a more introspective, reserved, and self-controlled Squall… But we just saw him freak out over Rinoa. Which is completely understandable under the circumstances! It's just, he's the only one who is reacting so vibrantly, so angrily, mad at the world for taking the one he loves from him just as he realizes that love, and thinking of nothing more than to save her. Squall has reached out, he connects Balamb Garden, they all look up to him, he is trying (hard as he can, and I would say endearingly badly) to be the one they need in that moment, and that is thoroughly White-aligned; he still has his skillfulness, his versatility, his ability to plan and think around his enemies (he did manage that surgical strike at the heart of Galbadia Garden, bypassing the Sorceress's army, after all), which is very Blue; and that passion is Red, shifted in focus. A healthier focus, probably.
And that will be it for today. Feel free to argue about the characters I haven't covered here, I'm literally running out of time.
As you can see, I've placed Black in several characters' identity, but the nature of Final Fantasy stories is such that this is, ultimately, a trauma or character flaw that they resolve and overcome. And don't get me wrong, Black is one of my favorite colors to play, it's just that although Magic's narrative insists that it's as full of positive potential as any other color, it mostly kind of sucks on a psychological level.
There is one FF protagonist I'll say earns their permanent, positive 'Black' is on my color identity, though:
Final Fantasy XIV
The Warrior of Light: White/Blue/Black/Red/Green. Their identity encompasses everything. They have gone to the end of the worlds and beyond, faced utter despair and all-consuming anger, alongside beautiful joy and great wonder. They have also mastered like two dozen different jobs channeling multiple forms of powerful emotions, from those requiring perfectly calm minds and rational calculations to those that embody the anger of the lost and the willingness to step out of society's norms to become a blade of dark justice. The resentment of being a 'convenient hero,' the selfish desire to leave it all behind and strive only for themselves, is something they have battled before, as is the desire to break the order of the universe to bring back the dead for their own comfort. They're every color, and I love them.
