/lit/ - Literature

>>12454465
>As much as you love to masturbate over FF6 and Kefka, you don't really talk about any of the other characters much.
it's a lot like real life too! so many interesting things to think about, and all i ever do is go insane thinking about Nick Land's Wild Ride.

i really liked this post, btw. you're very much correct. it really is like a Shakespeare play: you can perform it as many times as you like, but you're never going to really find the Secret Essence of the thing. it resists bullshit forms of deconstruction, but rewards genuine hermeneutics. those characters are human - much more than anything explicable by easymode ideology. the ideology is there too, the Returners, the Empire, but the humanity of those characters is actually what shows up the tragic futility of politics. all of those examples you have given make the case.

with Cyan's letters, you get this wonderful view of the interior of a person who tries - amazingly - to actually reach beyond himself, and battles his own despair by aiding someone else. quite an idea! he could have been another angry, anti-hero, bent on revenge, but...he isn't. that's not the way out of his dilemma. and don't forget, it's not really the case either that Gau has no want - he's a castaway, and his father doesn't want to have anything to do with him. can we really say he joins the party just because? he didn't choose to be removed from civilization, his father went insane and blamed him for his mother's death. just because he doesn't *know* this doesn't mean it's not a part of his background. in a way, his innocence is, frankly, a miracle. with the Figaro brothers, i've always found it kind of interesting that in a way they both kind of get what they want, but even then it's hard to say if there isn't a hollowness there too. Edgar is a womanizer, but where's the woman in his life? he rules Figaro pretty much alone, out of a sense of loyalty. and Sabin is a bro, but his ideal of freedom is basically monasticism, poverty, and martial arts - after all, he was a scrawny kid. and don't forget also - the coin toss that gets him his freedom is rigged! all of his freedom, and the story he tells himself, is based on a lie! but it's done with love, and not with cynicism. these are things - mysterious things, but very human - that people do. because life is complicated. and because tearing your heart out completely isn't the answer.

and even though Gogo is probably not the Emperor Gestahl, i kind of like imagining the possibility that he might be.

every one of these characters has it in them, in a sense, to be much worse versions of themselves than they actually are. that, in a way, is how nihilism works: it's bound up with your character in the deepest possible way when you are cut away from the world, from the sense of having a 1:1 connection with it. they *find ways to tell themselves stories* that become part of who they are. but they don't really tell it to *you,* as the player.