I was tempted to remove the part where I got annoyed at her hitting on Squall because I no longer believe that happened at all. It really bothers me and I feel legit guilty and ungracious, but whatever. It was my honest reaction. It stays.
Paah-tay
-Squall looks SO. BORED.
-Zell goes for a hand shake/slap of celebration, but Squall just takes a drink and leaves him hanging. Wtf Squall.
-Selphie invites Zell to join the Garden Festival Committee, but he freaks at the prospect and runs off.
-lolol. Selphie asks Squall to join the Committee, and his dialogue options are priceless.
-I’m tempted to have him say yes, but I really don’t think that’d be his style. Squall is such a jerk sometimes. Not even “No thanks,” just “…….”
-Cinematic. Hey, it’s woman from the intro and the logo!
-hahahah – she’s kind of great? She asks him to dance. He’s his stubborn silent self, but she don’t give a FUCK. “Let me guess – you’ll only dance with someone you like? Ok…”
Then she starts doing this hypnotism thing and it’s hilarious.
”Look into my eyes…”
[Later edit: the dynamic at the start of this relationship reminds me strongly of Aeris and Cloud.]
-It works. Dance time.
-LOL HE SUCKS AT DANCING
And she totally doesn’t give a shit. She just laughs and keeps him on the dance floor, enjoying it even as they stumble around.
-Hey, he actually gets better! (Or they switched to a dance he knows.)
-She excuses herself to say hello to a friend. I don’t think we’ve heard her name yet. Squall goes out (of course) to the balcony of brooding.
-Quistis! Hi, Quistis.
-I’m pretty sure Quistis’s primary hobby is Making Squall Feel Awkward.
-Aw! She used to be awkward like him. I wonder if we’ll ever get a flashback to Li’l!Quistis.
-But she’s here on business. Orders Squall to get to the Training Center in his uniform for undisclosed reasons. That’s right, buddy! DINO TIME!
---
Dormitory
-The scene shifts to Squall’s room to change. Not even a chance to say goodbye to Mysterious Dancing Woman.
-I actually could decide to leave for the Training Centre without changing, disobeying orders, but it seems a pointless thing to do. I’ll change.
-Wait, what? He changed, but not into his SeeD uniform. Dammit. I thought she wanted him in his SeeD uniform, not his dress uniform. Gah. Can’t seem to change back.
---
Training Centre
-Quistis meets him at the front.
-!!!!!WHAT! It sounds like she wants him to fight “T-Rexaur.” She’s going to teach how to do it easily through a Status-Junction tutorial. Smooth.
-Interesting. While the elemental junctions imbue attacks and defenses with either ways to change part of the attack/defense to that type of damage, status junctions have a certain percent change to inflict or defend against the status junctioned.
-100% is not a guarantee. Some enemies are immune to statuses even if those are at 100%, and some will get through even if defense against that status is at 100%.
-Also interesting: something like Esuna is an all-rounder. Defends a little bit against many status types.
-She tells me to junction sleep to my attack. The only GF who can do this is Siren.
-WTF game. How am I supposed to do this if Siren is junctioned to Selphie and I can’t get to Selphie to unjunction Siren?
…never mind. Just found the “Switch” option.
-After a mess of tinkering, I finally got it. Not a great chance since I haven’t stocked up on sleep, but a 10% chance. Better than nothing I guess?
Note to self: as SOON as I see a new spell to draw, max out on it.
-Ready to go in. I went left last time, I’ll go right this time.
-First fight, I get the chance to put this into practice. It’s against a Grat with Sleep to draw on.
-Got up to 100% just from that one fight. Nice.
-Didn’t come across T-Rexaur, but we reached a room in the middle of the Training Center.
---
Make Out Point (a.k.a. balcony off the Training Center)
-It’s like Make Out Point up in here!
-Quistis and Squall take a place and watch the school from a distance. Quistis, I like you, but unless you tell Squall why you ordered him to Make Out Point with you, it’s feeling a bit inappropriate.
-They wait in silence until midnight passes.
-Huh. She wanted to wait until after midnight to officially say that she’s no longer his instructor. That they’re now peers.
-Look. I don’t necessarily think she’s hitting on him. I also don’t necessarily think that eventually it would be terrible for her to do so. But there’s a huge power gap between instructor and student, especially when the instructor has a huge say in whether the student advances towards the power and prestige of being a SeeD.
But maybe don’t take your now-former student to Make Out Point and tell him “Hey, we’re peers now!” (Sorry if I’m going off on this. I’ve just seen SO many pieces of fiction about English teachers who fall in love with their students and start horrendously inappropriate relationships that I’m hyper-sensitive to any intimations of this kind of arc.)
-Wait. I may be totally misunderstanding this. She’s saying that she got chewed out for failing as an instructor?
-Some age background here. She’s basically a prodigy. SeeD at 15, instructor certificate at 17, and she’s now 18. I didn’t know she was that young. I assumed she was in her late 30s.
-Noooo! Quistis. :(
I feel super, SUPER terrible (despite knowing that she’s a fictional character) for thinking she was trying to take advantage of Squall. She’s here venting because it sounds like she either just got fired as an instructor or is about to get fired. Jeez.
SQUALL: “Are you done yet? I don’t wanna talk about it.”
Now I’m DEFINITELY confused. Why is Squall being such an asshole?
QUISTIS: “I’m not asking you to say anything. I just want you to listen.”
SQUALL: “Then go talk to a wall.”
…this is the protagonist? Eat a bag of hell, Squall. Seriously. He stalks off.
Quick note: my problem here is with Squall, NOT the game for giving me Squall. The game is acknowledging in the text, very immediately, what an asshole Squall is. It’s not trying to portray him as a noble soul or anything like that. He might eventually become that, and he probably has reasons on top of simply being a teenage boy for being like he is, but he’s not there yet.
[Later edit: as I read through these notes and screenshots, I think I definitely misunderstood this. Sounds like when Quistis says she became Squall’s peer, it’s not just because they’re both now SeeD, but because he’s now SeeD AND she’s no longer an instructor. She’s just a non-instructor SeeD.
And fuck the Garden faculty. Quistis is super young. Haven’t they heard of professional development? If they have a problem with her teaching, maybe don’t write her off when she’s 18 frigging years old.]
p.s. fuck squall for his behavior at the end. And fuck me for my anger at Quistis. Sorry Q :(
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Next time: leaving the Training Center.
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