Omicron said:
They are, somewhat recklessly, finding "refuge" in the wide-open gazebo.
Zidane: "Huh? What are you guys doing here?"
Shannon: "We like this place very much."
Sharon: "Even though we have lost the soul-soothing view of the sandstorm…"
Too bad they have no survival instinct whatsoever, what the fuck were you doing in a gazebo in the middle of a massacre.
...That looks less to me like an attempt to find any sort of refuge and more like them being convinced that they and everyone else here are about to die, with nothing they can do to stop it, and deciding they might as well go to their favorite place one last time. Not no survival instinct but no survival
expectation.
I found Fratley during my travels around the world!
...
I just realized.
I don't think I put this together before.
Freya has been going on an epic quest in search of Sir Fratley.
"I climbed the highest mountains only to hear rumors of your victories… I searched the deepest valleys only to find your footsteps. But I never found you."
So much struggle for even faint rumors.
And meanwhile.
This kid just
randomly bumps into him.
Owwwwww. I remembered Freya Suffering, but good grief I think it might actually be worse than I'd ever realized before.
Beatrix, who seems much more insightful than Steiner, was asking a minute ago how Garnet was doing because she clearly expected Brahne to care about her daughter's well-being.
And despite being the sort of person fine with Brahne ordering a genocide and actively disappointed she and her army couldn't play a larger and more direct part in carrying it out, was still surprised, depending on interpretation even shocked, at Brahne ordering Garnet's death. This is someone who already knows about and is just fine with much of the evil Brahne's been doing recently, and she
still didn't expect Brahne to do
this.
I'm curious how you all feel.
I'm feeling like I remember too much relevant information to make further direct comments here without too high a risk of accidental spoilers, sorry. Though perhaps I'll think of more as I go through the comments.
Hm, though I think I can say that I don't recall the scene failing to land for me, at least.
thamuzz said:
For all its cartoony artstyle, IX seems to lie on the darker and more brutal end of FF plots.
Yep! It's got different parts of various emotions, but that very much includes [gestures at recent scenes of genocide, suffering, and despair].
...And presumably it's not too much of a spoiler to say that the game is not, in fact, about to do a hard pivot and be lighthearted slice-of-life for the rest of its run.
Omegahugger said:
I mean... There's a chance that they didn't think they'd survive, and that this place with all the memories they've made would be the best place for them to die.
Yeeep. And given the peaceful, stable lives they'd presumably led so far, that generations before them lived, that they presumably expected generations after them to live, contrasted with what the were seeing happening around them? And while they may have gone to the cathedral (possibly to humor the party, or not slow the party down from trying to help others (probably-futile as that might have seemed), try and give more if-temporary comfort to others, a combination, something like that),
even if they'd somehow personally survived...
Burmecia was in contact with the wider continent; its people travelled. It also covered enough of the continent that presumably there were settlements outside the capital that just weren't shown in gameplay. Freya probably wasn't the only one who initially escaped the genocide by happened to be far enough away from it, and most of those survivors probably
didn't try to run in to help, knowing they didn't have Freya's power. Burmecia's capital city was ravaged, but the fresh ruins are still there. If peace can be restored to the continent (outside of Brahne's empire, that is), the Burmecian survivors could at least potentially regroup in their homeland, form a new government, and start rebuilding. Maybe there aren't enough, or maybe there are just barely enough they'll have some gene pool problems, but presumably
no one is certain about the numbers of survivors; in that uncertainty, there's hope, if currently faint.
The entirety of Cleyran civilization, so far as we know, was in Cleya. Every person, every building, every old book or relic. Presumably the version seen in game was a condensed version in terms of size, just like with Burmecia: more people that we saw, more space, etc. But all still up in the great tree. And IIRC, if you return to Cleyra's location on the world map later (and this hopefully isn't a spoiler, given what's been shown)? It's not even an enterable ruin.
Where the great tree was is nothing more than a vast burn stump, barely poking above ground level. Obliterated.
somewhatLazy said:
he's a hero, but he's not really doing it because he feels any sort of responsibility to a greater good and/or the community? He's doing it because he has empathy and he's not just going to do nothing and watch innocent civilians get char-fried.
Hm! That puts his... screensaver quote, whatever we want to call that, in an interesting new light.
"Virtue - You don't need a reason to help people."
That sounds good, and it is pretty good... but
also, "helping people is a considered moral imperative", "helping people is a commandment of my faith", and the like are reasons to help people. Thinking on your post, yeah, Zidane might help people just
entirely because it feels good to him to help people. It could even be interpreted as an extreme form of virtue (see quote) ethics: no detailed consideration or felt external pressure at
all, just doing good as and when it feels right from uncomplicated and uncontemplated internal motivation.
It's a good thing Zidane's internal Sense Of Right And Wrong turned out as morally good as it is, of course. He seems to be prejudiced against basically no one, and he doesn't feel like what's good for him himself is good regardless of harm done to others.
So, sure, he's a thief and in addition to Tantalus's more personal escapades probably spent years effective available to Lindblum's black budget for Deniable Crimes, but he also doesn't hesitate to put himself in even massive danger to save people he's barely met, or indeed hasn't met at all. Steiner's had a crisis of loyalty and Beatrix may be starting one -- but we already saw, back in Evil Forest, how Zidane responded to feeling like Tantalus was even
slightly not morally good enough, even with the justification of the circumstances: he just left and set out to do what he felt to be the Right Thing.
SolipsistSerpent said:
Honestly, I assumed they just gave up on surviving and wanted to die in a nice spot. As far as they could tell a black mage could teleport in and kill them wherever they went so there was no real shelter.
EDIT: Ninja'd.
Hah, well, you still posted the idea before I have.
Thozmp said:
This seems like such a weird inclusion. Like, they've both served Alexandria for years, and given their duties as general and what seems like princess's personal guard, I'm sure they've interacted, it's just that she seems to be referring to something Steiner said in their shared pasts, but that seems almost nothing like the Steiner we actually see in the game.
Perhaps that could be interpreted as...
Beatrix is
completely fine with committing genocide, so fine with it that she appears to see automata and superweapons distancing her and her soldiers from the murder of helpless civilians not as sparing them having to commit such acts but as
stealing their kills. She also doesn't give the impression she was surprised by Brahne ordering it, and she seems to have tried, with significant success, to train her soldiers to commit warcrimes as easily and eagerly as she herself does. Despite the continent's decades of peace, despite how out-of-character pretty everyone else who's comment on it seems to feel this is for Queen Brahne, it seems like Beatrix might have just thought and felt that, of course, monarchs sometimes order warcrimes, and a good general should therefore be ready to jump to it.
And Beatrix is
aware of herself; her eye is open. She's known at least much of what her queen's doing, she certainly knows what she and her soldiers are doing, and she doesn't need to delude herself at all to live with it. Only
now, when Brahne orders Garnet's death, does Beatrix seem to be hitting any sort of real crisis of loyalty, any sort of shaking of her beliefs.
The line in question, slightly before the queen orders the execution? From context, the particular orders she speaks of blindly following are pretty plausibly the orders to
hold back. Her heart and her will meaning nothing, referring to her desire to get
personally more into the thick of the fighting and the slaughter of innocents, to truly show what she and her soldiers can do, no need for fancy tricks from a mystery arms dealer.
But what did Steiner say?
Well, Steiner is... Steiner. He conceptualizes himself as fanatically loyal, but his heart is so good that he
could not serve Queen Brahne as she is now. Once, yes, before things went bad, Steiner and Beatrix's loyalties were presumably of like strength and clarity, but I don't see Steiner taking any part in a genocide with clear eyes and a heart empty of pity. But he must serve his queen so... if he saw a worrying sign, no he didn't actually. Quite possibly much was kept from him to begin with, his own not-exactly-stellar observational skills stopped him from noticing more, and if something forced itself into his attention? We've seen how he deals with that. The Black Waltzes must have been lying. Someone else must be attacking Burmecia. Queen Brahne
HAS TO STILL BE the good queen he and everyone else knew, and anything suggesting otherwise
must have an explanation.
But Beatrix may well have been able to
pick up on this, may in fact have been part of actively keeping things that'd upset him away from Steiner. Steiner can wear his good heart on his sleeve and earnestly say that of course he should do what he feels is Right, and plausible could even have said that of course, if a monarch is doing Wrong, a good knight or soldier should do Right even if it's against their monarch's orders. In theory! But, of course,
they'll never have to worry about that sort of thing, not with their own oaths being to Good Queen Brahne!
Beatrix knows, maybe not at the time of that conversation, but eventually, that she and Steiner are not in fact serving Good Queen Brahne, but a monarch bent on destroying a long peace and waging genocidal war for her own wealth, power, and, it increasingly seems,
fun. And Beatrix can know that Steiner would be
utterly horrified by that, might well even follow his good, soft heart to turn on the queen, if the truth ever actually got through his thick skull, and know that she knows that, while also being fine helping keep that truth from him and preparing to march to her queen's war.
I'm finding this a
really interesting line of thought your post sparked, thanks (I don't think I'd considered that line in such detail before), because the irony is that, if something like the above happened, Beatrix in that line might just have been thinking of Steiner's good heart inclining him to turn against the queen and oppose her atrocities... applied to Beatrix's own hearts desire to
do more atrocities than the queen is allowing her to.
And yet, of course, as seen... Beatrix is a blood knight, leaping eagerly to battle and genocide and training others to do the same. She rankles at being held back from the glory of stabbing every last ratfolk child in the face; finally, war has come, her queen has ordered Beatrix forward to lay waste to all before her... except for the parts Brahne's reserving for this
upstart newcomer and his fancy toys. Beatrix doesn't see herself as a lowly tool of her queen; she's annoyed her queen isn't actively thanking her for doing her job (of warcrimes). In the interpretation above, she contemplates, albeit perhaps just idly, outright disobeying her queen's orders
so that she can more thoroughly quench her own bloodthirst.
And she
also asks her Garnet is doing, without much at all in the way of prompting or segue. She's given a new order, which might well involve more killing people, and instead of getting right to it, she stops and asks how Garnet's doing. She hesitates to believe the implications of "She is no longer of any use to me" from the queen who ordered a genocide and just gleefully wiped a pacifist civilization off the map with a superweapon. When Brahn clarifies that she wants Garnet, her previously-beloved daughter, executed, Beatrix outright replies "What?" A bit later, "Your Majesty...".
That doesn't look performative, to me. Not like she was only asking about the princess because she felt she was supposed to, not like she didn't care about the sentence, or even was wondering if the queen would let Beatrix herself chop Garnet's head off.
Beatrix, if the game wants her to stay a villain, could have been completely heartless. Utterly, unshakeably loyal to Brahne to any fault, or caring for nothing and no one but herself, her personal glory, and the shedding of blood; the difference would just be whether she led her army of brutal brainwashed mooks for her queen's command or her own ambition.
If the game wants to reform her, she could have been more reluctant, showed more qualms, not been shown
actively wanting to do more warcrimes for her own satisfaction, possibly even against orders. Struggling with her loyalty and fealty, eased into the queen's horrible transformation gradually due to not being as blind as Steiner but not seeing a way out. Traumatized, despairing, knowing she's doing terrible things but feeling trapped, until the party gave her a way out and she could begin grappling with her crimes.
But instead?
Whichever way the game ends up going, she has significant complexity! ...And I'm not sure how to say more without risking spoilers too much, but, well, I find her a pretty interesting character, good from a writing standpoint if not, you know, necessarily so much
morally. And she has good theme music.
(But I think Freya still wins on overall coolness.
)
Pidl said:
Sure, but Beatrix doesn't know that. For all she knows, he pretty much defected.
...Oh. Right, I suppose it could also be that.
...And I'd like to examine the implications of that interpretation for Beatrix's character, but I've already spent so long on this and should probably just keep going; I do actually have things to do tonight other than thinking and talking about FFIX.
Omicron said:
and the plate drop, while no doubt impressive, doesn't drag things out in the way Cleyra does, the Slum's inhabitants are wiped out off-screen, not on the screen
Also, IIRC, that was just callousness.
"Yeah, we'll destroy a big chunk of our own city and kill basically everyone on or under that plate section, but who care's about them? If that's the price for getting our objective the quick and easy way, eh, we can afford to replace their utility to us."
Burmecia and Cleya, meanwhile, appear to have been a deliberate genocide. Those civilian deaths weren't even just monstrously acceptable collateral damage to achieve the objective, they
were one of the objectives.
Vocalist said:
Bwahaha, it's so funny to me that, from the perspective of everyone back home in Alexandria, Steiner is some huge rebel with a conscience who left with Princess Garnet, defying the chain of command in favor of following his heart - when in reality he's a complete henchman whose heart's desire is to follow the chain of command and he would have gotten Garnet back home ages ago if he just wasn't so bad at it. Steiner is going to be so offended when he finds out.
Pfhaha oh, yeah, when you look at it
that way...
Thanks.
FunkyEntropy said:
It's jarring and I have no idea why the hell he did it.
Well, I also don't have much relevant education, and don't think I'd even consciously noticed that jar before you pointed it out, but to guess...
beautiful for the theme of someone who commanded an army that engaged in full on genocide
That.
Beatrix is beautiful, elegant, powerful, at least fairly intelligent, seemingly genuinely caring about at least a few people, quite plausible trying to take good care of the soldiers under her command and genuinely loyal to her country... and also a massive, eager, and unrepentant war criminal.
Adloquium said:
This is a major difference between the English and Japanese text.
...What.
...So the English and Japanese versions just kinda have...
completely different characters who happen to share names, a lot of traits, and similar story roles?
Why?
They even
reverse her thoughts on Steiner; English!Beatrix seems to be, one way or another, talking about how Steiner finds it more important to follow his heart, and Japanese!Beatrix is talking about
how thoroughly Steiner just follows orders with no will of his own!
...I'm getting the impression English!Beatrix might be a more interesting and unconventional character, but, like... did the translators think Japanese!Beatrix was
such a bad character that she needed to be
drastically rewritten? That seems unlikely, but if not that... what?
Omicron said:
It was, annoyingly, some of the best fried chicken I ever made.
...New secret recipe?
(Well, maybe not so secret, I guess, since the key detail's been shared here.
)
dhasenan said:
So far it's been layering tragedy on top of tragedy. Surely this trend is coming to a close and the narrative will transition into a cozy slice-of-life hurt/comfort story.
Pf, hah, we had similar ideas for a joke, apparently.
