Finally writing about Final Fantasy (sorta) · 3:00pm Sep 27th, 2018
Going back to this thought. I find it such an interesting lens for understanding worldbuilding. Either for analysing, or for creating.
No I still haven't watched that Lucy movie to see if it's actually executed well or not. I hate watching movies. But the process behind the guy's review is what's important. I swear nearly EVERY single time I see a similar concept about cyberpunk psychics, it's just a ripoff of AKIRA. Without any of the themes or messages. Someone just thought it was cool and wanted more of it.
People are stuck with preconceptions of what a story should look like, based on what they've already observed and experienced. Especially in these genres like fantasy, horror, sci-fi, maybe others. You can pick up a lot from intuitive learning, but at the same it's difficult to discard a lot of surface elements... much like someone who learns to draw by fanart, then later has to un-learn the "style" they imitated so closely and carefully.
John Landis: How do you kill a vampire?
Max Landis: Stake through the heart, garlic, sunlight...
John Landis: No. You can kill a vampire however the f*** you want because vampires don't f***ing exist. You can make up rules for any kind of thing you want.
There's an anecdote I know I've heard/read multiple times, but just this once I can't find the exact quote. Lauren Faust talked about how during preproduction, one of the artists working with her did a whimsical sketch of pegasi jumping on a cloud to make it rain. This wasn't part of her original plan, but she loved the idea so much she incorporated it into her world.
Princesses that raise the sun and the moon each day. It's odd how the fandom placed this front and center in how they embraced the worldbuilding, yet it's barely relevant at all in those early seasons. Only the pilot episode makes use of it at all. Just one. (okay and it's briefly mentioned in Twilight's cutie mark story, so 2?)
Compare it to how many times the show refers to ponies manipulating the weather and environment. Major stories like Winter Wrap Up and Hurricane Fluttershy, but also smaller moments like Rainbow Dash kicking a thundercloud to prank Spike. The sleepover happens because of a rescheduled rainstorm. By contrast, the Everfree Forest is the creepy "unnatural" place where weather, plants, and animals can't be controlled.
I guess story-wise you can't do much with altering the cycle of the sun unless you have Princess Celestia kidnapped, again... 
The changing of weather and seasons, now that helped to establish a unique fantasy world that fans wanted to be a part of.
For some reason I started thinking about the popular Final Fantasy series. The first five games have this iconic tradition, about these magical crystals that correspond to the 4 elements. But they're always just macguffins, to be collected or recharged or destroyed. Why do monsters and magic exist in these worlds? I dunno. Because they're RPGs and that stuff is cool.
FF3 and 5 were pretty fun in gameplay, and 4 was memorable for its grand cast of characters, and the main character's epic story arc. When Squaresoft broke their own tradition, I think they were onto something amazing.
Why/how does magic exist in FF6? Because it was lost for a thousand years, and is now being rediscovered by an industrial empire. They drain it from the descendents of the espers and fuse it into their technology, and even their own soldiers. But the heroes discover that when the espers willingly pass away, they pass on much greater magic power. That's the whole magicite system, where you can turn any of your characters into godlike wizards if you want. And all this is reflected in the themes of the story, as every single major character has a personal arc about the sacrifices of the past offering hope and life to the future, and finding a reason to live in a destroyed world.
Why/how does magic exist in FF7? The planet's a living organism, and mako energy contains the memories and knowledge of people who died. A corporation is consuming it for electricity, and finding crystallized materia as a byproduct. From this comes multiple themes. First the overall environmental story, where the main villain is basically a virus from space; he wants to shoot the planet with a meteor so he can infect the open wound. But humans might be the parasite that's killing it anyway? Secondly, the whole lifestream/mako concept is echoed in themes of identity, as every major character's arc is where they rediscover themselves, and learn how the past wasn't quite how they understood it. Less tightly focused than FF6, but I admire its expanded ambition.
Why/how does magic exist in FF8? Well, you wear ghosts, and then that lets you equip units of magic spells as armor, so your abstract numbers go UP..... um, and in the story that causes memory loss for boring plot twists, and then time travel happens. Okay, the story here is complete garbage, though I still kinda like the game. The Square golden age was nice while it lasted (I consider Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger as part of it too). FF9 had great characters, but the worldbuilding couldn't decide what it wanted to be about. I have no idea what the series is even doing recently.
Anyway, the point here is that this made me reconsider how I looked at those two games' stories. They're very creative, in ways I hadn't really considered before. Forget the artwork and music, or even the melodramatic plots and characters. Both games had very flawed English translations, yet still have a grip on gamers' imaginations. It's not about throwing fantastic things in just because they're fun, but having a reason for including them. That reason illuminates what you do with the story and characters, and establishes rules for what you won't randomly toss in.
I'm starting to think this might be more important than the story itself!
Harry Potter also has had huge influence over the past 20 years of fantasy. During the peak of its popularity, I remember many accusations of the poor quality of its prose (I was too dumb to have an opinion on this back then), and the unoriginality of its Hero's Journey plot (at the time, I thought the plot was decent, though not particularly amazing). Agree or disagree on those, but I think none of that mattered. J.K. Rowling created her own world that readers could explore and see themselves in. Magical school is just a part of daily life, and strange adventures spring forth from learning and classes! The modern muggle world and the traditional wizard world brush against each other but rarely mix. She didn't have to reinvent magic and all its tropes, just a world where it has a reason for existing.
And since then I've seen so many fantasy settings that that are centered around a school for magic. Just because. 
This is why I was so fascinated by the original Dark Souls, because it avoided historical drama and instead created its own mythology of flames vs entropy. I re-read all of the BONE comic series the other day, which created its own reasons for including dragons and magical dreams and talking animals, all while colliding that with Pogo-esque people from a modern world skeptical of fantasy stuff. It may have a lot of obvious influences, and borrow familiar story beats, but it's still unlike any setting I've ever seen. How do you even come up with this?
Even the creators of pen & paper role playing games figured this out long ago. They're not here to sell great stories. Provide the audience with a unique world, and the rules for how the magic works, and they'll explore it for decades.
tl;dr use imagination. most people forget how.
Creativity has much to do with experience, observation and imagination, and if any one of those key elements is missing, it doesn't work.
-- Bob Dylan
I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.
-- Albert Einstein
Imagination good? Imagination good.
I couldn't even make it that far.
If I wanted that much explicit sex, violence, and sexual violence... I mean, that's kinda RL there. I'd rather imagine in different directions.
Does this mean I shouldn't play FF12? It got the best ratings.
4944563
I think Game of Thrones is a fantasy substitute for people who want to think they like fantasy.
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I played 12 and finished it, but I can not remember what the story was about. There was some evil empire... did I defeat it? What did I accomplish? I remember too many stupid videogame plots, but this multi-million-dollar epic adventure is a black hole in my memory.
4945979 Oh, derp. I meant FF10.
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Ohhh. That one's alright. I'll admit it does a good job building up a unique world.