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aestivalis) wrote2026-05-21 05:05 pm
aestivalis) wrote2026-05-21 05:05 pm
Entry tags:
oh shit it's jill final fantasy
ha ha nah it's just clive and cid again, jill's over there in the background or something like
don't even worry about it man
Despite recent silence on the topic, I in fact HAVE continued playing Final Fantasy XVI despite it betraying all my hopes and dreams. This is a game that's been out for a solid few years at this point but I still want to try and avoid being too overtly spoiler-y outside the cut so I guess I will say that I am...
... Recently arrived in the desert? Cid the Outlaw, baybee.
So actually I guess quite a bit has happened since I last said anything! Oops. I think trying to lay it all out in order and comment on every little thing will probably just lead to me getting fed up, so let's just see what jumps out at me!
LIKE, so. Obviously all my Benedikta musings from before were pretty much immediately ground to dust and thrown to the winds, so that's. That's a thing I should probably comment on, huh. It's especially rough that her end was so... I mean, I feel like I'm probably treading well-trodden ground if I go on about this too much, right? Like, we've got pretty good media comprehension around these parts, I don't need to say anything about this female character having her power torn away and immediately being threatened with sexual violence, subsequently succumbing to her fear and trauma in a manner that literally transforms her into a monster that we then have to put down. Like, we all saw it. We all see it. The analysis is obvious.
But fuck it, man, I love my literal promiscuous harpy bitch. Are there approximately seventeen billion seething issues surrounding her and her writing? Sure! But dang it, she appealed precisely to that real specific part of me that loves messy characters with traumatic backgrounds and regrets they refuse to process acting out against the world because they're so insecure about their own tenuous rise from the pits of squalor. Like, she is everything, baby. She is my angel. My dark angle. Never did a single thing wrong.
But this post is honestly not supposed to just be about why Benedikta Harman is still my beloved despite her tragically minor role in the overall story. It's certainly not supposed to be about me daydreaming about what Final Fantasy XVI would look like if they kept her around longer, what might have happened had she made it back to King Barnaby of Midsomer or what the Kingdom is called. Better yet, what if she had somehow been alive at the end of the Garuda battle and Cid had brought her back to the Hideaway... what if she'd been nursed back to health alongside Jill and they'd briefly bonded in the infirmary about what being a Dominant has done for them and the unique perils they've faced in this crapsack world as powerful but not empowered women, but then Clive had returned and they'd been forced to realise they are fundamentally at odds because Jill cares Clive and Benedikta wants to carve his face off? WHAT IF, HUH? WHAT IF.
But, like, it's cool. Cool that that doesn't happen. Very cool. So fine with it.
Clive Final Fantasy is very VERY good at yelling in agony or otherwise suffering onscreen. Always a big fan of when he does that. What an absolute unit of a sufferer. So good at getting big eyes and clutching his head and screaming. Really scratches the same itch as watching Cloud Strife getting all fucky with it, but with none of the baggage of the FFVII compilation. Thanks Clive. Please keep suffering.
So anyway, Benedikta leaves the story and the game is like 'shit we have no female characters' so Jill FINALLY wakes up from her fucking coma? Because she was in a coma I guess, I don't know, I thought she was just knocked out after that fight at the start but then she's unconscious for, like, a week or something? I'm not about to sit here and timeline it but there are multiple confirmed dusks and dawns, like, we know days are passing. And Jill is just, like. unavailable. still unconscious. no visiting. stuck behind the 'one girl at a time' gateway. But then Benedikta kindly bites it and so Jill is finally free to exist.
Ha ha just kidding Jill doesn't exist.
IT'S HARD, MAN. I want to like Jill. A lot about Jill works for me on page. Political ward in another nation, some small levels of tension between her and the family she now lives with but things are generally pretty good until all of a sudden they are catastrophically not. Enslaved, mistreated, forced to live as a weapon of magical destruction or see innocent people killed as punishment for her refusal to comply. Like, she's got some gritty shit going on! She could be so cool! She sort of is? Like, if you... if you squint? If you tell yourself that she's aloof and closed off instead of just transparently underwritten, then she's... she's cool.......
It's such a shame. They could be doing so much with her, but half the time she might as well not even be there. There are so many scenes where Clive and Cid do banter and exposition and what-have-you and then Jill will either add a closing remark or just be shown to be smiling slightly off to the side like 'oh, men :)', and it's such a waste. We barely have a party as it is, why can't they interact! She frequently evaporates from existence during side quests as well. And I was being SUPER forgiving of this for a while because I figured, okay, maybe you can come back and do these quests later so they need to make it play the same regardless of who's currently travelling with Clive. But no! Because there's been a fucking time skip since then so those quests are presumably locked within a specific window of opportunity. So write Jill in! WRITE JILL IN.
They even create this dynamic like 'oh nooo Clive will have to pretend to be Jill's Branded :(' and it's like, for a second you think we're about to see something? But NOPE, I think it's made use of for approximately one line of dialogue. You even have NPC quest-givers being all like OI YOU, BRANDED SCUM, WHERE'S YER MASTER and it's the perfect and obvious opportunity to just fucking do the thing! DO THE FUCKING THING YOU JUST SET UP THAT YOU WERE GOING TO DO! But no! No!!!! AHHHHHH
Holy heck, as usual I did not start this with the intention to relentlessly complain and as usual that is exactly what I have done. Let's say some other stuff! I'm still having fun with the actual gameplay, more or less. It can be a bit samey at points, but I also play it once every two weeks or so which definitely takes the edge off that feeling, hahaha. Most of the scenery (especially in towns) is pretty bland and I struggle to orient myself BUT some of the dungeon interiors have been sick as fuck and the inside of the Mothercrystal was especially gorgeous. Also everything that happened inside the Mothercrystal was gorgeous. Fucked up portal monster, weird reveal of weird antagonist fish-eye monster man, Cid very homoerotically protecting Clive, giving his power to Clive, and dying in Clive's arms (brilliant work, sir) while Clive just lost his shit all over the place (brilliant work, sir).
The bit where Ultima or whatever reached out for Clive's face like ~now we become one~ or whatever and Clive just stood there in helpless awestruck terror? Hell Yeah. Hell Yeah. Hell Yeah. Very good video game. Very. Very good. Good game. Very Nice.
OH YEAH AND JOSHUA IS ALIVE I GUESS that was also a good scene?! The emotional highs in this game hit pretty damn well! It's melodramatic as all heck but so long as you're all aboard the drama train then why the hell not, right? Give me that sweet melodrama! Make them all scream and fight and get mad about it! (Unless they're Jill I guess. She can look mutely sad or occasionally agree with whatever Clive last said.) (Cool.)
Anyway uhhhh five year timeskip took the wind out of my sails kind of massively after all the insane stuff that happened with the destruction of that first Mothercrystal and the reveal of Ultima. Like, fuck, we got some amazing and intense new stakes and then the game was like "fortunately, nothing really progressed for the next five years". Like damn. Also, no costume change! What the heck! >:( so lame.
Glad that Clive and Jill have apparently remained utterly chaste and have moved no closer to their extremely obvious endgame attraction to each other during this five year window. Get it together you freaks.
So that's pretty much where I am with the game at this point! I'm planning to go and play some more RIGHT NOW, so maybe I'll see Hugo! And maybe he'll talk about Benedikta! And I can be happy!!!! Or maybe nothing of the sort will happen. Who knows. Good luck, Clive Final Fantasy. Let's Go Suffer.
don't even worry about it man
Despite recent silence on the topic, I in fact HAVE continued playing Final Fantasy XVI despite it betraying all my hopes and dreams. This is a game that's been out for a solid few years at this point but I still want to try and avoid being too overtly spoiler-y outside the cut so I guess I will say that I am...
... Recently arrived in the desert? Cid the Outlaw, baybee.
So actually I guess quite a bit has happened since I last said anything! Oops. I think trying to lay it all out in order and comment on every little thing will probably just lead to me getting fed up, so let's just see what jumps out at me!
LIKE, so. Obviously all my Benedikta musings from before were pretty much immediately ground to dust and thrown to the winds, so that's. That's a thing I should probably comment on, huh. It's especially rough that her end was so... I mean, I feel like I'm probably treading well-trodden ground if I go on about this too much, right? Like, we've got pretty good media comprehension around these parts, I don't need to say anything about this female character having her power torn away and immediately being threatened with sexual violence, subsequently succumbing to her fear and trauma in a manner that literally transforms her into a monster that we then have to put down. Like, we all saw it. We all see it. The analysis is obvious.
But fuck it, man, I love my literal promiscuous harpy bitch. Are there approximately seventeen billion seething issues surrounding her and her writing? Sure! But dang it, she appealed precisely to that real specific part of me that loves messy characters with traumatic backgrounds and regrets they refuse to process acting out against the world because they're so insecure about their own tenuous rise from the pits of squalor. Like, she is everything, baby. She is my angel. My dark angle. Never did a single thing wrong.
But this post is honestly not supposed to just be about why Benedikta Harman is still my beloved despite her tragically minor role in the overall story. It's certainly not supposed to be about me daydreaming about what Final Fantasy XVI would look like if they kept her around longer, what might have happened had she made it back to King Barnaby of Midsomer or what the Kingdom is called. Better yet, what if she had somehow been alive at the end of the Garuda battle and Cid had brought her back to the Hideaway... what if she'd been nursed back to health alongside Jill and they'd briefly bonded in the infirmary about what being a Dominant has done for them and the unique perils they've faced in this crapsack world as powerful but not empowered women, but then Clive had returned and they'd been forced to realise they are fundamentally at odds because Jill cares Clive and Benedikta wants to carve his face off? WHAT IF, HUH? WHAT IF.
But, like, it's cool. Cool that that doesn't happen. Very cool. So fine with it.
Clive Final Fantasy is very VERY good at yelling in agony or otherwise suffering onscreen. Always a big fan of when he does that. What an absolute unit of a sufferer. So good at getting big eyes and clutching his head and screaming. Really scratches the same itch as watching Cloud Strife getting all fucky with it, but with none of the baggage of the FFVII compilation. Thanks Clive. Please keep suffering.
So anyway, Benedikta leaves the story and the game is like 'shit we have no female characters' so Jill FINALLY wakes up from her fucking coma? Because she was in a coma I guess, I don't know, I thought she was just knocked out after that fight at the start but then she's unconscious for, like, a week or something? I'm not about to sit here and timeline it but there are multiple confirmed dusks and dawns, like, we know days are passing. And Jill is just, like. unavailable. still unconscious. no visiting. stuck behind the 'one girl at a time' gateway. But then Benedikta kindly bites it and so Jill is finally free to exist.
Ha ha just kidding Jill doesn't exist.
IT'S HARD, MAN. I want to like Jill. A lot about Jill works for me on page. Political ward in another nation, some small levels of tension between her and the family she now lives with but things are generally pretty good until all of a sudden they are catastrophically not. Enslaved, mistreated, forced to live as a weapon of magical destruction or see innocent people killed as punishment for her refusal to comply. Like, she's got some gritty shit going on! She could be so cool! She sort of is? Like, if you... if you squint? If you tell yourself that she's aloof and closed off instead of just transparently underwritten, then she's... she's cool.......
It's such a shame. They could be doing so much with her, but half the time she might as well not even be there. There are so many scenes where Clive and Cid do banter and exposition and what-have-you and then Jill will either add a closing remark or just be shown to be smiling slightly off to the side like 'oh, men :)', and it's such a waste. We barely have a party as it is, why can't they interact! She frequently evaporates from existence during side quests as well. And I was being SUPER forgiving of this for a while because I figured, okay, maybe you can come back and do these quests later so they need to make it play the same regardless of who's currently travelling with Clive. But no! Because there's been a fucking time skip since then so those quests are presumably locked within a specific window of opportunity. So write Jill in! WRITE JILL IN.
They even create this dynamic like 'oh nooo Clive will have to pretend to be Jill's Branded :(' and it's like, for a second you think we're about to see something? But NOPE, I think it's made use of for approximately one line of dialogue. You even have NPC quest-givers being all like OI YOU, BRANDED SCUM, WHERE'S YER MASTER and it's the perfect and obvious opportunity to just fucking do the thing! DO THE FUCKING THING YOU JUST SET UP THAT YOU WERE GOING TO DO! But no! No!!!! AHHHHHH
Holy heck, as usual I did not start this with the intention to relentlessly complain and as usual that is exactly what I have done. Let's say some other stuff! I'm still having fun with the actual gameplay, more or less. It can be a bit samey at points, but I also play it once every two weeks or so which definitely takes the edge off that feeling, hahaha. Most of the scenery (especially in towns) is pretty bland and I struggle to orient myself BUT some of the dungeon interiors have been sick as fuck and the inside of the Mothercrystal was especially gorgeous. Also everything that happened inside the Mothercrystal was gorgeous. Fucked up portal monster, weird reveal of weird antagonist fish-eye monster man, Cid very homoerotically protecting Clive, giving his power to Clive, and dying in Clive's arms (brilliant work, sir) while Clive just lost his shit all over the place (brilliant work, sir).
The bit where Ultima or whatever reached out for Clive's face like ~now we become one~ or whatever and Clive just stood there in helpless awestruck terror? Hell Yeah. Hell Yeah. Hell Yeah. Very good video game. Very. Very good. Good game. Very Nice.
OH YEAH AND JOSHUA IS ALIVE I GUESS that was also a good scene?! The emotional highs in this game hit pretty damn well! It's melodramatic as all heck but so long as you're all aboard the drama train then why the hell not, right? Give me that sweet melodrama! Make them all scream and fight and get mad about it! (Unless they're Jill I guess. She can look mutely sad or occasionally agree with whatever Clive last said.) (Cool.)
Anyway uhhhh five year timeskip took the wind out of my sails kind of massively after all the insane stuff that happened with the destruction of that first Mothercrystal and the reveal of Ultima. Like, fuck, we got some amazing and intense new stakes and then the game was like "fortunately, nothing really progressed for the next five years". Like damn. Also, no costume change! What the heck! >:( so lame.
Glad that Clive and Jill have apparently remained utterly chaste and have moved no closer to their extremely obvious endgame attraction to each other during this five year window. Get it together you freaks.
So that's pretty much where I am with the game at this point! I'm planning to go and play some more RIGHT NOW, so maybe I'll see Hugo! And maybe he'll talk about Benedikta! And I can be happy!!!! Or maybe nothing of the sort will happen. Who knows. Good luck, Clive Final Fantasy. Let's Go Suffer.
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Aerith, Rinoa, Yuna: I believe that people working on the game cared about these characters! But Jill is so frequently sidelined or relegated to the role of supporting poor traumatised Clive, despite the fact that she's got an equally traumatic backstory. I often forgot she was accompanying me because she was simply given no dialogue. There's such a contrast to, say, Cid, who I do think the game team cared about.
Still, hey, she's got a nice outfit.