Final Fantasy VIII: Time/Ultimecia Plot FAQ by Sir Bahamut Version: 12.

0 | Last Updated: 2011-03-28 | View/Download Original File Hosted by GameFAQs Return to Final Fantasy VIII (PS) FAQs & Guides Would you recommend this FAQ? Yes No FINAL FANTASY VIII ANALYSIS ON ULTIMECIA AND TIME Version 12.0 By: Sir Bahamut ------- Real name: Kristian J. Strmmen TheOnionKnight -- Real name: B. Burke Squall_of_SeeD -- Real name: Glenn Morrow

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Sections: I. General FAQ Information ~ Purpose of the FAQ ~ Brief Summary of the Various Sections ~ About the Authors and Contact Information ~ Version History ~ Copyright Info II. The Nature of Time and Time Compression in FF8 [NT0] ~ Introduction [NT1] ~ The Static Time Model - The axioms [NT2] - General discussion [NT3] - Defending the axioms [NT4] ~ The flow of time [NT5] ~ A Brief History of Time (in FF8) [NT6] ~ The time-loop [NT7] ~ Sorceress powers in the time-loop [NT8] ~ Ellone's powers and the Junction Machine Ellone [NT9] ~ Time compression [NT10] - General discussion [NT11] - The "Hippie weirdness" problem [NT12] ~ The final battle and ending FMV [NT13] ~ The time compression sorceresses [NT14] ~ The Ragnarok and the blocked off cities [NT15] ~ Discussion on fate [NT16] ~ What about the real world? [NT17] - Static vs dynamic [NT18] - The flow of time in the real world [NT19] ~ How about alternate universes? [NT20]

~ Dynamic Time - The alternative [NT21] III. Ultimecia. ~ Preface [U1] ~ The Rinoa = Ultimecia theory [UR1] - The basis [UR2] - The hints (with responses): [UR3] * Witches and immortality [UR4] * Witches and dying in peace [UR5] * Witches and Hyne [UR6] * Witches and appearances [UR7] * Witches and Wings [UR8] * Ultimecia and Rinoa's faces [UR9] * Griever [UR10] * The possible origin of Ultimecia's name [UR11] * "Becoming warped" [UR12] * Rinoa allowing Squall to kill her [UR13] * Time compression [UR14] * The location of Ultimecia's castle [UR15] * Ultimecia's words during the final battle [UR16] * Dissidia [UR17] - Various flaws [UR18] - A Fair Shake [UR19] - Conclusion [UR20] - Afterword [UR21] * The issue of 'valid interpretations' [UR22] * Concerning the role of official sources [UR23] ~ An Ultimecian Analysis - The Unjust Persecution [UP0] - How History is Written [UP1] - Anticipating Ultimecia [UP2] - "Destined to Face Me" [UP3] - A Rose By Any Other Name [UP4] - To Compress, or Not to Compress -To Compress, Of Course! [UP5] - A Few Final Remarks [UP6] - Summary for the "Lazy Reader" [UP7] IV. Additional Information [AD1] ~ Ultimania Information [AD2] ~ Miscellaneous In-Game Information [AD3] ~ Tutorial Information [AD4] ~ Squall's Terminal Information [AD5] ~ Adel's motives [AD6] ~ The End of the Succession of Witches [AD7] ~ Laguna and Squall? [AD8] ~ "The Plot Twist" [AD9] ~ Connection between Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy VIII? [AD10] ~ Enigma of the Deep Sea Research Center [AD11] ~ Another (literary) Ultimecian Analysis [AD12] Credits.

V.

======================================= -Section I: General FAQ Information======================================= ~Purpose of the FAQ~

This FAQ will provide in-depth and varied explanations and insights into two of the most frequently debated bits of the game: the nature of time in FF8, and the mystery of Ultimecia. These two topics, especially the latter, pop up so frequently on the forums here (and everywhere else for that matter) that I and some others decided to compile what we knew after having participated in discussions on both subjects for several years. We do not claim to have all the answers or the best theories or anything. We have merely been in discussions on these matters for many years, and feel that we collectively have got a pretty good idea on what's going on with certain aspects of the plot. We hope you will agree that there's something worthwhile to be found within this FAQ! You might have noticed that this site already has an FF8 Plot FAQ, addressing some of the same issues as this FAQ does. However, these authors felt it was quite lacking in the issues of time and Ultimecia, so we sought to try and get the content of this FAQ put into the other Plot FAQ. Unfortunately, this never worked out, so in the end, we were able to get our own FAQ posted. We hope you enjoy it! PS: For those of you who didn't take the hint from the title of the FAQ, there WILL of course be massive SPOILERS on a regular basis! The FAQ assumes you've completed the game and are familiar with the plot, so don't read it if that's not the case with you. ~Brief Summary of the Various Sections~ In the section "The Nature of Time and Time Compression in FF8" we will explore theories about the nature of time in FF8, using various information provided in the game, and ultimately use these theories to explain things like the time-loop and time compression. In the section "Ultimecia" we will discuss the background and motivations for Ultimecia. This part will be split in two. The first part, "The Rinoa=Ultimecia theory", will discuss the titular theory ultimately explaining why it doesn't hold up under scrutiny. The next part, "An Ultimecian Analysis", will describe the true background and motivations of Ultimecia as are told to us in the game, and subsequently supported by the Ultimania. -----About the Authors: Unless explicitly specified otherwise, everything in this FAQ was written by Sir Bahamut. The FAQ is registered under my (Sir Bahamut's) name but only due to the fact that GameFAQ's couldn't put us all down as authors. In reality, this FAQ is very much the product of the collective efforts of all three people listed at the beginning of the FAQ. We have probably all written similar amounts in this FAQ too, so you really should view all three as being the rightful authors of this document. Contacting Sir Bahamut: kristian.strommen@ntebb.no Contacting TheOnionKnight: nonarticulate@hotmail.com Contacting SquallOfSeeD: glenn.morrow@gmail.com

Please contact Sir Bahamut for questions on the FAQ as a whole. For questions/comments on the various theories inside, contact whoever wrote the bit in question. If unsure who to send to, send it to Sir Bahamut. E-MAIL POLICY: Make subject "FF8 Plot FAQ" or something similar which makes it clear that the mail has got something to do with FF8 and the topics in the FAQ. No unnecessary attachments. If you do give me information, include the name you wish to be referred by in the credits section (or remain anonymous if you wish). No non-constructive criticism please ("your theories suck", "you're smelly" etc.). Don't send the same message many times; we will read all mails, but may take some time responding if we are busy/away. Remember, we may not be able to reply immediately, so have patience! If however, it's been several weeks, make a topic on the FF8 Message board at GameFAQs asking for whoever it is you can't reach (for instance, you might make a topic titled "Attn: Sir Bahamut"). Or try to resend the mail. -----Version History: 1.0: First complete version (some time in 2004). 1.5: Updated the R=U section quite a bit, as well as adding some stuff to the Time/Timeloops section. 3.0: Completely rewrote the entire section on Time after new breakthroughs in practically all fields. 4.0: Big update in the R=U section, due to new info from the Ultimania guide. Also added the "Additional Information" section, for various bits and pieces not necessarily related to Time or Ultimecia. Unless something new and big pops up(unlikely) this will probably be the last major update. 5.0: 1. October 2005 Went through and corrected mistakes coming from the rushed 4.0 update. Added The Dark Legend's bit on "The Plot Twist". Generally cleaned up the FAQ, adding a sentence here and there, removing a line now and then. The FAQ seems to be as good as it can get at this point. This will be the last 'cleaning up' I do of this FAQ. Future updates will only come from new theories/info. 6.0: 27. June 2006 In light of the discovery that there existed some unfortunate flaws in the explanation of time compression, I took the opportunity to do a bit of cleaning up, clarifying some things and generally trying to make the FAQ more accessible. Unfortunately, the mentioned flaws have not been solved, and will not be solved by these authors. We are all tired of the issue, and all have more important things to deal with in the real world. Perhaps someone will solve the TC problem in the future (if you have done so and are reading this, send us a

mail!), but it will not be one of us. The problem is explained in the 'UPDATE (2006)' note under "The PLOT thickens". 7.0: 6. July 2006 Typically enough, as soon as I think I've made the last update, I instantly get several mails with new and interesting contributions, this time primarily from one "Yuthura Ban". So had to add some stuff to the "Additional Information" in the Time part, as well as a few bits to the R=U part and the Unjust Persecution section. 8.0: 7. August 2008 Almost exactly two years after the last update, this new, substantial update is finally here, having been in the working for more than a year. The new version includes a huge overhaul of the entire section on time/time compression, including explanations for more events, more detailed and thorough presentations, a better model for time compression and most excitingly perhaps, a new explanation for one of the big unsolved problems on time compression ("hippie weirdness"). There have been slight additions and edits on the Rinoa=Ultimecia theory section, including what is hopefully some more enlightening closing words on what exactly its current status is. Finally, the entire FAQ was very kindly and generously given a thorough (and much needed) spell-check by one Douglas "Fox-Raweln" Meneghetti! So the new version's got quite a lot to it which I hope the reader will enjoy. It must be said though (although I may yet live to retract this) that this is almost certainly the last major update this FAQ will see. Considering that the time taken to complete these updates has increased so dramatically lately and that myself (Sir Bahamut) and TheOnionKnight, the only remaining authors now, are likely to only get busier as time goes by, it just seems a bit hopeless to think of another major update. In addition, the topics discussed definitely are feeling quite exhausted to these authors. That being said, we hope this new big update will be a nice way to leave this FAQ for future readers, and that not too many flaws will be discovered as time passes. If you find any, please do send a mail to me (Sir Bahamut) at kristian.strommen@ntebb.no 8.1: 5th September 2009 Originally intended to be an unmarked update to change an e-mail address, I decided to write a quick and concise summary of the main ideas of static time. The full description there is quite lengthy and I thought some might be more interested in how static time explains various ingame events more than how static time itself works, so I spent 10 minutes writing up something which will hopefully be helpful! 9.0: 23rd November 2009 How many times will I proclaim to have made the last update only to make a major update later? Probably several more times by the looks of it. This update came about primarily because TheOnionKnight decided to completely rewrite his "Unjust Persecution" piece on Ultimecia's background and motives. Squall_Of_SeeD then

came out of 'retirement' and wrote a short section about Dissidia's impact (or lack thereof) on the R=U theory. New information then came to light concerning the TC witches, which is discussed in the relevant section. Finally I ended up adding a few notes in various places, making changes here and there, wrote a brief summary of the Unjust Persecution theory and also added a discussion on the role of the Ultimania and other official sources when analysing the game. Squall_Of_SeeD also updated his exposition on "Dynamic Time". Hopefully the changes will all seem satisfactory. All three authors are certainly very pleased with the result! 10.0: 12th August 2010 The main motivation for this new update started with the realization that the 'feedback' problem (discussed in [NT8]) is in essence mathematical in nature and could thus possibly be tackled head on as a mathetical problem. This led to the proposition of two new possible resolutions on 'feedback', leading to a long debate on all the various considerations and implications, and possible other explanations. In addition, several other things to update were brought to light. Ryan Goss's idea of why Ultimecia needed to be in the past to cast time compression, and a new section by TheOnionKnight on phiefer's idea about Adel's motivations. Squall_Of_SeeD also updated his text on Dynamic Time and the R=U section. Many small changes were made reflecting new Ultimania translations, including e.g. AD7. The 'Unjust Persecution' section was in this vein also updated to include information proving conclusively that Ultimecia was a name known to people, thus making it overwhelmingly likely that she would be remembered in the future. We hope you like it! 11.0: 7th March 2011 The original prompt for this update was the surprising discovery, thanks to Gwendal and others, that there is a hidden tutorial entry buried in the games code which cannot be unlocked by legitimate means. The tutorial entry is titled "Succession of Witch Powers", and provided us with extremely useful and enlightening new information relevant to the whole 'feedback problem' in [NT8]. Then, on an entirely unrelated tangent arising at the same time, TheOnionKnight and Squall_Of_SeeD began participating in a discussion on the possible connections between FF8 and FF3, as well as the nature of the Deep Sea Research Center This resulted in two new sections you can find in the "Additional Information" part of the FAQ. As usual, some other minor changes were made, but the above covers the critical updates. We hope you enjoy the additions. 12.0: (Current Version) 28th March 2011 TheOnionKnight's new text "Another (literary) Ultimecian Analysis" was added to the FAQ, and some further comments about the meaning of Ultimecia's name and its connection to 'paramecia'. All authors feel this update is fairly final in nature, but given previous history, you never know. We have no unfinished business left in any case. We'll see!

-----Copyright information. This game is a copyright Square, but this FAQ is a copyright Sir Bahamut/TheOnionKnight/Squall_Of_SeeD 2011 This is what you may do with this FAQ: 1. You may read it. 2. You may download it to your computer. 3. Send it to others as long as you don't charge them or change the FAQ's content, and don't present the authors as anyone else but Sir Bahamut, TheOnionKnight and Squall_Of_SeeD. This is what you may not do: 1. Sell this guide for profit (unless consented by the authors). 2. Steal information without giving the authors all the credit and asking the authors beforehand. Websites may post this guide if they follow these conditions: 1. The FAQ is not altered in any way. 2. The authors get full credit. 3. You send the author a mail before posting it, telling me you wish to post it, and include the Web sites address. 4. Do not post it without permission, and don't harass if denied.

===================================== -Section II: The Nature of Time- [NT0] ===================================== NOTE: Before reading, please understand that all this is based ONLY on what the game tells us, common sense and logic. Considering the magic, monsters, frequent time travel, etc., it would be a mistake to automatically assume that FF8 physics are identical to real world physics. The authors can after all take some artistic liberations in their own game! Since we furthermore cannot study the FF8 world as real world physicists study our world, we are forced to make this a purely theoretical debate based solely on what the game tells us. Essentially, this means that you'll hear no mention of the theory of general relativity, or quantum mechanics, or any such complex real-life scientific theory when we try to explain things. Instead, we will be starting from scratch, adopting the simplest views and explanations possible, with the only requirement being that they are logically coherent and explain what we see in the game. ---------------------------------INTRODUCTION [NT1] ---------------------------------Several vital elements of FF8 involve time in a very explicit manner. Ellone sends Squall and Co. back in time repeatedly to try and change the past; Squall does the same after Rinoa is lost in space. Ultimecia is trying to

literally compress all of time and then absorb it to become a god (see the Ultimecia section for more). More subtly, one of the major themes of the game is that of fate, a concept closely interwoven with the nature of time. These aspects of the game often inspire a significant amount of debate among gamers, as the game itself doesn't make too much explicitly clear about a lot of it. However, most disagreements boil down to different fundamental assumptions about time. Rather, people will be operating with slightly different models of time (e.g. models lifted directly from films like "Back to the Future," which seems one quite popular model, or the model we will present in this FAQ). Most such models are purely intuitive: the assumptions underpinning them are not made explicit or justified, and unsurprisingly so! Time is something so intrinsically part of our lives that most people will feel that they understand it even if modern science is more or less clueless, and so do not properly establish a consistent, logical framework to use when analysing FF8. This section of the FAQ aims to alleviate this situation by constructing a model of time with all assumptions made explicit and backed up by logic and in-game evidence. We will then use this model to develop a theory of time compression, and thus try to explain everything in the game which in some way is linked to the finer workings of time. In the first section we will present the assumptions of the model, discuss their general implications and explain where they come from. Then we will discuss time compression and the rest of the time-related aspects of the game. Finally, we will explain where the assumptions of our model came from and why we use them. It should be noted that there are essentially two basic different models possible. The assumption that you can't change the past leads to one, and the assumption that you can change it leads to the other. In this FAQ, for reasons that will become clear, we have heavily favoured the former idea, and it is this model which we will employ in this section and make a case for. Squall_Of_SeeD, however, advocates a model in which the past can be changed, and so his own outline of what such a model might look like and its capacity to explain in-game events can be found near the end of this section. NOTE: If you find the following description of static time too inaccessible and long, then please skip to the section called "A Brief History of Time (In FF8)" (search code: NT7). A shorter, more compressed account can be found there. ---------------------------------------------------THE "STATIC TIME" MODEL ---------------------------------------------------~The Axioms~ [NT2] At the heart of the "static time" model we use in this section lie three main statements, assumptions, or "axioms," if you will. These are as follows: 1) A "moment" is defined as a single point in time. Then time can be thought of as an ordered, possibly continuous (i.e. infinitely divisible) sequence of moments. Such a sequence defines a "line of time." (i.e. a line of time is a sequence of events coming in a specific order)

2) We define the "Universal Line of Time," abbreviated to ULOT, as being the line of time containing every moment in the history of the FF8 universe. Furthermore, the ULOT is of finite length (i.e. the FF8 universe doesn't last forever). Hence the ULOT, in other words, is a line of all events from the beginning of the FF8 universe to its end, viz Beginning|----------------------------------------------------|End 3) The events (or moments) prior to any given reference point on any line of time cannot be altered by any means. Put more simply, no one can change the past.

~General discussion~ [NT3] The first statement contains a lot that can be discussed. Note the intended generality of the definition of "A line of time" as opposed to "THE line of time." This is necessary because time-travel complicates things. If you follow Squall in-game, his progress through time is continous in nature (there are no weird jumps, as if you appear to have progressed from one point in time to another, missing out on a lot in between, like a film missing a section); from Squall's perspective it always looks like he's simply moving forward in time. But when viewed on the ULOT, the thing most people would think of as "THE line of time," he's actually jumping around all over the place quite a bit, i.e. whenever he travels in time. This observation leads to the necessity of defining the "Personal Line of Time," abbreviated to PLOT. A PLOT is merely a line of time following the "life" of a single object, be it a person or a particle. To be pedantic, one could say that every fundamental particle has its own PLOT, and the PLOT of something like a human being would simply be the sum of the PLOTs of all particles making up that being. But the important idea is basically that we can and will talk about time as seen from different perspectives than the ULOT. The idea of PLOTs implies that the ULOT is a somewhat inadequate way of viewing things, and that instead we should consider what has been dubbed the PLOT-sheet: that is, the ULOT is really a sheet made up of all the PLOTs of all particles in existence. Although the PLOT-sheet is in theory a better model than the simple ULOT, it turns out that in almost all cases it is just as easy to think only in terms of the ULOT, which is what we shall do throughout. However, it is helpful to keep in mind the idea of the PLOT-sheet, because it will occasionally be quite useful. The fact that we call time "possibly continuous" is due to the fact we don't know whether or not there's a fundamental unit of time or not. To draw an analogy between the line of time and a number line, we don't know whether timelines are equivalent to a line of integers or a line of real numbers. If it's the former, then the single integer would correspond to the smallest unit of time: it simply wouldn't be possible to experience time on a shorter scale. If it is the latter, however, just as in the reals we can always find a new number between two given ones, we could always divide a time interval into smaller sections; there'd simply be no lower limit as to how short a time interval one could experience. Time would be infinitely divisible. However, we have no way of answering this question based on information from FF8, and in the end, it has no real impact on the questions tackled in this section, so we'll leave it at that. Now, the astute reader will have noticed something more relevant, namely

the circular nature of the 'definition' of time given. We define a moment as a point in time, and then define time as a sequence of moments - very circular indeed! This circularity is an inevitable result of the fact that we don't really know what time is in a truly fundamental way. It may therefore be more sensible to consider time as the very ordering of moments, rather than the moments themselves, or perhaps somewhat equivalently, as a measurement of the distance between two moments. Launching into a fullscale investigation of the true nature of time would however not be prudent in such a limited FAQ. The bottom line is that most people will have an intuitive feel for the concept of the line of time outlined above despite its circularity, and for the purpose of the FAQ, that will be sufficient. Practically speaking the circularity was made in the direction of defining time as a sequence of moments because it more clearly leads to one of the perhaps most useful analogies of time: the film analogy. In it, one imagines a moment in time as corresponding with a slide in a film. Any given line of time could thus be considered as being a film consisting of (possibly infinitely many) slides. The idea of time being ordered and continous would then analogously be that there are no film slides missing which cause the film to "jump," and that the events viewed in the film follow a linear progression. Assumption 2, that the ULOT is finite, then means that the total film of the FF8 universe has a beginning and an end. This analogy is helpful when making precise the idea of stuff actually happening in FF8. So consider, say, the event in which Squall dances with Rinoa. This event would be a sequence of moments, and would thus be represented as some small interval on the ULOT (of length 5 minutes, or however long they danced for). The sequence of moments making up this interval would then show the dance progressing moment by moment. In one moment you'd have Squall and Rinoa frozen in one particular position, and then in another position in a later moment. The film analogy quite literally describes what's going on. All these moments seen together then make up the event "Squall and Rinoa dance." In practice it is usually uneccessary to revert to this level of detail when describing events, and more straightforward language will be accurate enough. It is, however, helpful now and then to keep in mind that this film analogy describes what's really going on. Ok, so now that we have a basic idea of a line of time and a useful analogy with which to compare it, we can discuss the meaning of the third assumption. The statement of the past not being alterable from "any reference point" is a result of the fact that we see in the game that not just the past, but crucially also the future exists on the same line as the "present." We tend to consider the events we see in the game with Squall as being the "present," but as is revealed, the future already exists because Ultimecia is influencing Squall's era from it using the Junction Machine Ellone. But if the past cannot be changed from Squall's point of view, the same must certainly apply for Ultimecia; from her point of view, changing the past would be impossible. But her past includes Squall's future, hence Squall's future is in fact set in stone. The same argument can easily be extended to demonstrate that in the world of FF8, if you "can't change the past," time is set in stone in because all of time exists (not just "present"). So in FF8, time is set in stone. This is easier to understand from the fact that if the future and past exist on the same line as the present, those very terms become meaningful only relative to some given moment. There is no set, universal "present," "future" or "past." Rather, we have to talk about the future as seen from Squall's perspective at some given time, or the past as seen from Ultimecia's perspective at some given time. From the perspective of the

ULOT, no moment is more special than any other, and the only difference between two moments is their temporal separation. So saying that the "past" cannot be changed is in fact equivalent to saying that time itself cannot be changed, i.e. the ULOT is set in stone. More formally, this corollary to assumption 3 could be stated as follows: "The FF8 universe is uniquely described by one single, unalterable ULOT". What is critical to note here is that this applies even to time-travelling events. Even if Ultimecia travels to her past to try and change things, every influence she has was already set in stone. Consider, say, the event in which Ultimecia gives her powers to Edea as seen in the ending. In no sense is Ultimecia changing anything when she does this, because there was never a time when Edea didn't receive powers from Ultimecia in this way. The event is set in stone. The slide is fixed, and so when Ultimecia went back into the past she was merely fulfilling her fate, so to speak. Similarly, no other time-travelling ended up changing anything, because if someone travels to the past, they always appeared in the past at that time, there was never a time when they didn't appear in the past and there will never be a time when they aren't in the past. Time is set in stone. This explains the name of this model of time. Time is "static" because it literally doesn't change. In fact, although we deduced that the future exists by in-game observation, we could also deduce this directly from the assumption that you can't change the past. We start by making an initial assumption: the future does not exist. Beyond the "present," nothing is certain, but a choice, once made, cannot ever be unmade. But then we know that time-travelling is quite possible. So let's assume that we decide to travel back in time. Let's say we go back to the location of John Lennon's murder and disable the murderer, effectively preventing John Lennon from dying (note that I have for the sake of convenience used real world examples, while I should in fact be using examples from the FF8 plot). As you can see, we have arrived at a logical contradiction: we have changed the past even though changing the past is not possible. Hence we can conclude that the initial assumption must necessarily have been false. But do things really improve if we start by assuming that the future exists? Well, if we look at things from John Lennon's perspective, the event in which you decide to travel back and save him already exists just like his own present state. This effectively means that your travelling to the past isn't in any way changing anything. Things always happened like that; you would have attempted to stop the murderer, but would not have succeeded, and Lennon would have been subsequently shot. When you get the idea, many years later, that you will try and change things, you would naturally be unaware of this, leading you to travel to the past despite the fact that this would merely be fulfilling your "destiny." Your presence in the past is immutable. You were always there and were never not there. All the events on the ULOT are set in stone. To make explicit one major difference between static time and its counterpart, dynamic time, we may note that in static time, the entire ULOT must have come into existence at once (in order for the future to exist), while in dynamic time, the ULOT would be continously growing from a single starting event, the future being created continously. This is apparent because in dynamic time the future cannot exist, for the same reason that it must exist for the past to be unalterable. In dynamic time you can change the past, so the future doesn't exist. Time evolves dynamically, hence the name.

~Defending the axioms~ [NT4] 1) As discussed before, this assumption is more just a way to allow us to visualise things in a clear way. The definition has, as stated, heavy elements of circularity in it, and so is hardly ideal. But it seems to be the best we can do with our current understanding of time, while capturing the intuitive ideas we already have. So there's not much that can be done to defend this one in other words. If you feel you can offer a significantly clearer definition please don't hesitate to send us a mail. 2) The only actual assumption here is that the ULOT is of finite length. Its basis lies in time compression, and results from the basic observation that the compression is not an instantaneous process, but rather runs at some finite "speed." But if the ULOT were infinite in length, it is reasonable that it would take an infinite amount of time before the spell were completed. Since this seems a rather daft situation for Ultimecia to put herself in, and because the spell does appear to be nearly completed by the end of the final battle, we may conclude that the ULOT is finite in length. One might argue that the speed at which time is compressed accelerates, the speed diverging to infinity. In such a scenario it may be possible that even with an infinite ULOT, time compression may be completed in a finite time interval. However, as this quickly becomes highly speculative and complex, we have chosen to make the simplifying assumption that the ULOT is simply finite in length, thus eliminating all such problems. 3) The third assumption is the real meat of static time, and what truly defines it. It is also the assumption which is the most debatable, and as such will be discussed in greater length. The first argument for the assumption that you can't change the past is simple enough: Ellone states it outright on the space station. Ellone: "You can't change the past. I just realized that." She says this after she has painfully tried through the whole game to change it using Squall and Co., repeatedly sending them back into the bodies of Laguna and Co. As if that wasn't a strong enough message from Square, they even make Squall doubt it, and have him try and save Rinoa by changing the past himself. Yet despite Squall's efforts, he is not able to change the fact that Rinoa gets lost in space, and a big point is made about the fact that Squall only saves her by risking his own life by going out after her in present time, so to speak. A fair point can be made that in these events where Squall is in the past through Ellone's powers he couldn't change the past because of the limitations imposed by her powers. It is certainly possible to influence the past using her powers, as Ultimecia shows by using Edea so effectively. But Ultimecia's use of Edea may have crucially relied on Ultimecia's abilities as a sorceress, and while Laguna's stories of being influenced by "fairies" causing him to be more powerful in battle indicate some effect by Squall, he was perhaps not in a position to change anything. However, this is speculative, and from a story-line perspective it is clear what is being shown. They all show, culminating poignantly in Squall's desperate attempts in the escape pod, that you can't change the past. This message is equally noticeable in Ultimecia's character and story, although I will have to refer to the section called "An Unjust Persecution" for a proper discussion of her story. But in essence, one can see her entire

mission to cast time compression and destroy SeeD as a result of her desire to change the past, but as it turns out, her attempt to change her past is what sets in motion the events of her tragic past anyway. There are, furthermore, some quite specific elements of the ending which indicate that the past cannot be changed. Edea refers to having received her powers from Ultimecia, and indeed that is what we see happen. So it is clear from that, at least, that some things do not change, and so it is not unreasonable that Square wished to imply that nothing changed. The inability to control one's life by altering time underpins the game also in a more subtle way, in the guise of "fate." The concept of fate revolves around the idea that you are not in control of your own life, that you are destined to do certain things and so will do them whether you want to or not. In static time, fate can thus be seen as a way of rephrasing that time is set in stone, and so fate has a highly natural place in static time. This is relevant because one of the main themes of the game is fate. Cid talks a lot to Squall of his fate, while Squall tries to deny it, as does Ultimecia, yet neither succeed, and so on. Indeed, the main musical theme of the game, "Liberi Fatali" (which plays e.g. in the opening FMV) literally means "Children of Fate" in reference to the main party. Now, as fate is such a central concept in FF8, and such a point is made about several people's inability to change the past using time-travelling and such, we simply find it unlikely that Square actually intended the exact opposite: that actually you can change the past, it's just that Ellone and everyone else didn't manage. Of course this is quite possible (e.g. a legitimate case can be made about Ellone's failure being a result of Squall and Co's lack of attempts to deliberately alter Laguna and Co.'s natural paths). It is even possible to explain why some things clearly don't change (e.g. Edea getting Ultimecia's powers) while still allowing the past to be alterable, as Squall_Of_SeeD demonstrates. However, these ideas tend to result in a ULOT which actually asymptotically approaches a static ULOT anyway (that is, time evolves in such a way that the time-loop in the game discussed later gradually settles down to an unalterable loop, at which point the model becomes indistinguishable from a static ULOT), and so dynamic time becomes more a theory based on intuition. As we will see, there are some highly unintuitive aspects of static time which lend credence to this approach, but in the end, we (Sir Bahamut and TheOnionKnight) figured that, after all, when the game goes to all that trouble of implying that you can't change the past and that time is set in stone (i.e. fate), it just seems more reasonable to follow that prompt rather than attempt to work around it. Static time also appeals more than its counterpart, "dynamic time," where the past can be changed, for aestethic reasons. Static time simply yields a clearer, simpler and more elegant picture of time, and its explanations are equally simple and elegant, as we shall soon see. If we assume the past can be changed, a whole lot of trouble arises simply because it's awfully hard to define a sensible manner in which events could be altered anyway (something we discuss more in the next section). Static time avoids all such problems and, as such, is seen by both myself (Sir Bahamut) and TheOnionKnight as being the superior model. All further discussion in this section will thus be assuming static time as the foundation. -----------------------------------------THE FLOW OF TIME [NT5] -----------------------------------------There is one aspect of time which is so entrenched in our lives, so

intuitively true that we rarely if ever question it or even think about it, even in discussions on time-travel and the like. That aspect is what is commonly dubbed the "flow" of time, and is the observation that we seem to be inexorably and unceasingly moving from the past to the future. The very fact that we observe motion indicates a passage of time, and that we are flowing down the river of time, carried along by its steady flow, from the past to the future, our own position at all points representing the "present." Few if any would deny that this is what we feel to be true, and an essential part of life. However, could our intuition be fooling us? Does the concept of a flow of time make sense? The answer, in fact, seems to be a resounding no! The reason for this can be found by simply considering what time "flowing" could mean in a physical sense. "Flow" implies that some sort of change is occurring, that there is a change in time which results in "now" becoming "then," the present becoming the past and the future becoming the present. There is a direct implication of some form of motion, or at least change, in the very concept of time flowing. Yet this is in reference to time itself. Time itself would be undergoing change. But time by its very nature measures change; change is actually nothing but a recognition of the passing of time. Nothing changes without time having passed. So what possible sense could one make of time itself changing? Time itself would have to experience a passage through time, which appears patently absurd! One would seem to have to appeal to the notion of a higher-dimensional time, one which records the passing of time of the ULOT. But then this higher-dimensional time would also require its own higher-dimensional time, creating a chain of higher-dimensional time-dimensions seemingly extending to infinity. The absurdity of this should readily be apparent. You might now suggest that although time itself is not moving, we are moving through time, thus accounting for the apparent flow. However, although more subtle, this does not avoid the problem described above. If we are ourselves tracing through prescribed events in time, then our presence at some event and subsequent departure from it represents a change in time itself too. To make an analogy, one could think of our motion through time as illuminating the slides of a film, one by one, and the slide currently illuminated represents "present." However, the act of a slide being illuminated to then become dark again represents change of time itself, and thus becomes absurd again. It appears that in static time (and any model of time really), time is indeed entirely static, like a frozen block of ice rather than a flowing river, and flow of time is an illusion. Such an illusion would not be too hard to explain. At any moment in time, our minds are in a state which have recorded events prior to it, strongly suggesting that we have flown from the past in order to arrive at that particular moment. So to our minds it would always seem as if we have flown through time, even if that were not the case at all, thus creating the apparent illusion. Although this works quite nicely and makes static time look very nice indeed, we can all recognise that this explanation is not satisfying. Our intuitive feeling of "flow" is far too strong. Absurd or not, we all feel ourselves moving through time in some sense, and any model which does not incorporate this aspect will undoubtedly feel artificial. This fact, that the flow of time is entirely illogical yet so powerfully intuitive, is perhaps one of the biggest problems about time there is, also in the real world, where there is no solution as of today. So what do we do about it? For the purposes of this FAQ, we have decided that the problem is unsolvable. We will not try to artificially impose a mechanism for the flow of time to work, as a sensible mechanism is not known, but will not reject the flow of time either.

Basically, some effort has been made to make the theories contained in the FAQ not depend on notions implying any changes in time itself, except in the most intuitively obvious ways. After all, it is probably impossible to purge all references to the flow of time from this document, and attempting to do so would just make things confusing. One thing should be said though, and that is that in static time, if one is to think of time flowing at all, one has to think of it as flowing forward from every event at once, since the past and future all exist. This is why when Squall travels to the past in the ending, time is still "flowing" forward for his younger self. ---------------------------------------------------------------A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME (IN FF8) [NT6] ---------------------------------------------------------------If you have already read all the above and feel confident in your understanding of the main ideas of static time then you can safely skip this section. If, on the other hand, you thought the above was far too lengthy (it really is quite lengthy I have to admit) or convoluted then this section will attempt to give a brief, hopefully more accessible summary of what the static time model is all about. This should allow you to read the rest of the FAQ without too much confusion. In FF8 we essentially distinguish between two possible models for time, depending on whether or not you allow the past to be changeable. If you say "the past can be changed" then the result is what we call a dynamic theory of time. If you say "the past cannot be changed" then the result is what we call the static theory of time (note that there might be many slightly differing versions of dynamic time but there is in essence only one theory of static time). In this FAQ we have determined that static time works best. There are several reasons for this. For one it is a whole lot simpler to grasp and also to use. Dynamic time has a huge problem in simply specifying HOW the past changes (does the one single timeline change? Are there multiple timelines?) and no convincing model has so far been proposed. Static time requires no added complications. Most importantly, though, the idea that the past cannot be changed is implied by the game itself. Ellone states outright that "you can't change the past", and Squall himself experiences this when he is unable to prevent Rinoa from falling into her coma. Ultimecia herself is unable to change her destiny of being killed by Squall (see the section "An Ultimecian Analysis"). In addition "fate" is a big theme in the game, and fate goes hand in hand with the idea that you can't change time. So accepting that you cannot change the past it is not hard to see that all of time must be immutable. Since Ultimecia's past is Squall's future, Squall's future cannot be changed. This generalises immediately and we see that in FF8 all of time is set in stone. All events already exist and none of the events can be changed. Any attempt using time-travelling will simply be another set of events in the FF8 timeline set in stone. If you try to change the past then it was always the case that you tried to change the past. As an example, consider the ending where Ultimecia goes to the orphanage and gives Edea her powers. It might seem as if Ultimecia is changing the past. Yet if you talk to Edea earlier in the game she will say that "her story" began when a dying sorceress arrived and passed her powers to Edea: it is clear that she's referring to Ultimecia. So you see that Ultimecia wasn't actually changing anything by

going to the past. In the FF8 timeline she always went to the past and there was never a time when she didn't go to the past. Time is set in stone. And that is, in essence, what static time says: in FF8 there exists one timeline where all events, past, present or future, are set in stone. Obviously, as this was a brief exposure, there may be some missing details you find unfulfilling. In that case, please take the time to read the full description above! ----------------------------------THE TIME-LOOP [NT7] ----------------------------------The idea of a time-loop arises naturally from the ending of the game. In it, Squall and Ultimecia are transported back in time to the orphanage. There, Squall tells Edea about Garden and SeeD before Ultimecia gives Edea her powers. The sorceress Edea told us gave her powers in the orphanage, thus starting the whole game, we discover is Ultimecia herself. So Ultimecia's act of travelling to the past is the very thing which starts the sequence of events which results in Ultimecia rising to power and going to the past after her defeat by Squall, and we have what can easily be dubbed a "loop" in time. Using the picture of the ULOT, we might think of it looking something along these lines: |-------------------| | | Past<------------------A-------------------B----------------->Future Event A here is the event we see in the ending; where Squall and Ultimecia arrive from the future and meet Edea. Event B here is the event in which Ultimecia and Squall travel back through time. --NOTE: This image of the loop is inherently flawed, because while the time passed between A and B on the principal line (i.e. the bottom part) amounts to several hundred years, the amount of time that Ultimecia and Squall use getting to event A from event B (i.e. the top bit) is clearly NOT hundreds of years, despite this image implying just that. --As any loop on the ULOT would have to have always been a part of it, we might say that the ULOT contains bumps. --NOTE: Of course, if you think of things in terms of the PLOT-sheet, there would be no such bumps, so again the "bumps" on the ULOT are just a result of its slightly inaccurate representation of time. ---

Now, the presence of such loops is interesting because of the highly curious internal logic of such a loop. To demonstrate the dazzling conclusions we are forced to draw, we will refer to the following example: Take the term "SeeD," the official name for the military force educated in the Gardens. Garden and SeeD were founded by Edea and Cid. Now take Squall. Squall knows of the term "SeeD" because he IS one; he was put into the organization created by Edea and Cid, and knows about its terminology, including the term "SeeD" because of them. Now consider the ending section where Squall arrives at the orphanage and meets a young Squall and younger Edea. Before Ultimecia arrives, Squall talks to her about "SeeD" and "Garden." Edea seems puzzled at this, as if she has never heard of those things before in her life. Let's assume she hasn't (this assumption is up for debate, but is a good example of the point being made; the actual validity of the assumption is irrelevant). The big question -and the big point -- is this: Where did the idea of the term "SeeD" actually come from? To fully demonstrate why this question is important, we'll label the event in which Squall learns of "SeeD" through Edea founding it as event A. Then we'll label the event in which Edea learns of "SeeD" through Squall telling her as event B. That being done, let's make a cause-effect diagram showing whose idea it really was: A--->B--->A--->B--->A--->B--->A--->B--->A------>repeat ad infinitum. The implications are thus that within a timeloop, the notion of cause and effect as we know them are effectively destroyed, as evident in A leading to B, leading to A again, as pictured above. Both event A and event B are the causes of the term "SeeD," and both event A and event B are the effects of the causes! If you really took in the idea of the loop on the ULOT completely, this is an obvious conclusion: events A and B would be on the loop in such a way that asking which came first, A or B, is as meaningless as asking which point is the "starting point" of a circle. A more well known analogy would be the question of the chicken or the egg. This idea that the term "SeeD" doesn't have an origin is one common thing that makes people lean to the "dynamic time theory." This is because in the "dynamic time theory," it WOULD have an origin. To understand this, remember what we concluded about the two theories previously. In the "static time theory," the entire ULOT would have to have been "created" all at once, while in the "dynamic time theory," time would have evolved from a given starting point. Then bring in the idea of the loop we have just introduced. We know that since Ultimecia travelled back in time, she must have caused some sort of change. Now, in the "dynamic time theory" the loop would keep happening over and over again (since time is always evolving, even within the loop, so each time Ultimecia goes back to the past she initiates a new round of the loop), but according to this, there must have been a first loop, a first time in which Ultimecia travels back in time. This first time, she must have been changing something. But what was she changing? All we know for certain is that this "original time," this "pre-loop" time would have contained Squall, Rinoa, Cid, Edea, etc., even Ultimecia. This "original time" must have contained events completely unlike the ones we see in the game; in short, no events that are a result of Ultimecia using Junction Machine Ellone to try and find Ellone, because in the original time, Ultimecia would not yet be alive to do all this (this will be expanded upon in the section on dynamic time later).

This "original time" would however contain cause-effect diagrams completely unspoilt by any timeloops, so the term "SeeD" would have had a meaningful origin somewhere within the "original time." Of course, since it's anyone s guess what actually happened in the "original time," it is still impossible to answer where "SeeD" really came from. The dynamic time theory does, however, allow one to say that the question does in fact have an answer -- it's just that we can't ever know that answer! In static time, however, there is no original timeline and thus no correct answer, and yet the theory remains internally consistent. The logic of time-loops is strange for sure, but there's not actually any logical paradox arising from them within static time. They are as fixed and immutable as anything else. Now, a common misconception of the time-loop is that it somehow "occurs" indefinitely and as such the people in the loop are "stuck" in it. This is however an absurd notion. In the ending we are led to a point in time where it is indicated that things will "start over" again, and so we start thinking about the loop as starting all over again. But if we look at the graphic visualisation of the loop above, we notice that all that is really happening here is that we are literally letting our eyes trace out the loop over and over, creating a essentially visual illusion that the loop occurs more than once. If we return to the film-analogy, what we are doing is equivalent to watching a section of the video, then rewinding and watching the same section again. It is not that the events on the video are somehow happening again, it is that we are watching them again. So from the perspective of someone in the loop, the events happen once and only once, and as such no one is "trapped" in the loop. The events of the loop happen once, just like any other event on the ULOT. After Squall goes to the orphanage and sees his younger self, he returns to his own time and lives on happily ever after, and in Ultimecia's era time keeps on ticking onwards. The younger Squall we see will grow up to experience the events we play in the game, and is in fact simply the same Squall. If we follow his life, however, we are merely replaying the game, rewatching the video. The loop occurs only once. This visual illusion is actually closely connected with the notion of the flow of time, as discussed before. We're imagining the flow as moving around in a circle on the loop, so it appears as if it should be happening over and over. Since this naive conception of flowing time doesn't work, however, the imagery is flawed, explaining why the loop actually only happens once. In fact, it would be better still to either say "the loop is always 'happening'" or even "the loop never 'happens', it just 'is'" (arguably these two statements amount to the same thing). The point is that there's no sense in which the people in the timeloop have any experiences of repeating events over and over.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------SORCERESS POWERS IN THE TIME-LOOP AND THE FEEDBACK PROBLEM [NT8] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------While the internal logic of the time-loop is mostly perfectly consistent and no cause for worries, there is one particular aspect of the loop which poses a very serious problem, namely the way in which the passing on of sorceress powers occurs. Recall that Rinoa is, after Adel is killed, the only sorceress left of her era. Odine says this outright in his mission briefing in disc 3:

Odine: "First, go to Lunatic Pandora. Ellone's probably being held captive inside, so rescue her first. Then kill Sorceress Adel before ze awakening process is completed. Now, we're left with Rinoa as ze only sorceress of this era." Now, the Tutorial has the following to say, which raises some questions as to how Odine could know for sure: "Sorceress [...] It's hard to determine how many sorceresses exist today, for many keep their powers concealed. However, it is believed that they avoid spreading their power too thin." However, Squall_Of_SeeD found that Odine's claim was supported by the FF 20th Anniversary Ultimania File 2: Scenario guide. In its summary of FFVIII's story, on pg. 268, we find the following line: "Rinoa wo toru rikon da Adel wo taosu to, kono jidai no saigo no majyo to natta Rinoa ni Ultimecia ga hyouisuru." In English, this means, "Rinoa is separated from Adel when she is toppled, and Ultimecia then possesses Rinoa, who has become the last witch of this era." So while it may have been difficult for Odine to determine the number of sorceresses in their era, it's fairly safe to assume that he did in fact succeed. The link to the issue at hand comes from the realization that this implies that Ultimecia has Rinoa's powers. If Rinoa is the only sorceress of her era, then any sorceress after Rinoa would necessarily have to have become a sorceress by receiving powers from Rinoa, and similarly any sorceress after Rinoa would have those same powers that Rinoa had, including Ultimecia. Now, Rinoa first became a sorceress by inheriting Edea's powers, so in fact Ultimecia has Edea's powers. But now recall that in the ending, we see that Ultimecia gives all her powers to Edea. Why is this potentially a problem? Well, If Edea, Ultimecia and Rinoa all simply were passing on the exact same powers to eachother there wouldn't be a problem, but this is not the case. Firstly, Edea was already a sorceress before she inherited Ultimecia's powers: Edea: "It's ok. There's no more need to fight. That sorceress is just looking for someone to pass her powers on to. In order to die in peace, a sorceress must be free of all her powers. I know...for I am one, too. In fact she first became a sorceress as a child; "I first became a sorceress when I was a child. And once again...13 years ago." Secondly, Rinoa received powers from Adel, which Edea did not have originally. Let's focus on this contribution by Adel for a moment. Rinoa first got Edeas powers, and then also Adel's powers. Hence Ultimecia has both Edea's original powers as well as Adel's powers. But Ultimecia gives her powers to Edea, so that Edea then gets back what she had originally as well as Adel's powers. By simply tracing the succession of sorceress powers around the timeloop it seems as if Edea has somehow ended up with more powers than she started with! In static time, this is a direct violation of the principle forbidding changes to the past, so there's an obvious problem there. However, even in dynamic time

this seeming build-up of Edeas powers is problematic. After all, intuitively we would probably expect that if a sorceress gets more sorceress powers, she becomes more powerful. The above argument seems to indicate that for each new 'revolution' of the timeloop, Edea inherits a new set of Adel's powers. In fact, it's worse still: because Edea was already a sorceress before inheriting Ultimecia's powers, Edea would additionally get a new copy of those original powers each successive loop. Intuitively then it would seem that Edea ought to get increasingly more powerful each loop, and since Ultimecia has Edea's powers, Ultimecia would also get more and more powerful each loop. But then surely, after enough repeated loops Ultimecia would be so powerful that she'd easily crush Squall and Co, hence successfully compressing all of time, including the succession of the loop we play in the game, a blatant contradiction. It seems as if when Ultimecia gave her powers to Edea, she set in motion a catastrophic feedback-loop, which directly contradicts static time, but also makes dynamic time entirely unstable and rather suspect. What, then, are we to do? It turns out there are several ways of resolving this. We'll discuss some in detail and briefly indicate other options. [Warning: the following discussion is rather technical and lengthy, so feel free to just skip it. The bottomline is that it's possible to resolve the issue in several ways depending on what you assume about both the nature of sorceress powers and time compression. However, there is, unfortunately, no one theory which stands out as being distinctly more plausible than the others.] Since the problem can clearly be seen to arise from our, perhaps naive, assumption that sorceress powers 'stack' in a very direct sense ("more sorceress powers makes you more powerful, end of story"), it's of course very natural to consider whether this assumption is really necessary. One very natural idea pops up first. This idea suggests that while getting powers you didn't already have will make you stronger, getting a second copy of powers you already had will not have any impact. We often say that in this theory, 'powers act like sets' (because in this case the combination of sorceress powers behaves like taking the union of sets; if you take the union of two sets, you only get something bigger if the sets are distinct). With this idea, Edea would not keep getting new copies of Adel's powers, since they'd only make a contribution once. It is thus not too hard to believe that this idea might prevent any feedback-loop, but just in case let's make the argument rigorous. We make the following definitions: P(E) = Edea's powers right before she passes them on to Rinoa. P(X) = Edea's original powers that she received as a child from some unknown sorceress. P(A) = Adel's powers P(R) = Rinoa's powers as they stand at the end of the game. P(U) = Ultimecia's powers right before she passes them on to Edea. For any two sets of sorceress powers A, B, let A*B denote the combined powers of A and B (i.e. A*B represents the amount of power of a sorceress who has inherited both powers A and B). So within this idea of 'powers as sets', we have that A*A = A for any sorceress powers A (ie. getting the same powers twice is no better than getting them just once). [Note: please observe that * is not regular multiplication of numbers in any sense, it's purely a shorthand notation for 'the combined powers of A and B'] Rinoa gets first Edea's powers, then Adel's, so that

P(R) = P(E)*P(R) Ultimecia has Rinoa's powers, so also P(U) = P(E)*P(R) Finally, Edea first get's powers from sorceress X, then from Ultimecia, so P(E) = P(X)*P(U) So upon substituting the expression for P(U), we get P(E) = P(X)*P(U)*P(E) If, in fact, P(E) = P(X)*P(A), then this equation is trivially satisfied, for then it would read P(E) = P(E)*P(E), which is true by our assumption of how sorceress powers work. But we will argue that this must in fact be the case. For consider where the powers circling around the timeloop are drawn from. They are drawn exclusively from Sorceress X and Adel. Within the timeloop itself, there's no contribution of new powers, only a circulation of the same constant set of powers. Ultimecia gives them to Edea who gives them to Rinoa who gives them to Ultimecia. So Edea's powers could not possibly consist of more powers other than P(X) and P(A). Since P(E) certainly must contain both P(X) and P(A), it follows that P(E) actually equals P(X)*P(A). Hence we find that P(E) = P(R) = P(U) = P(X)*P(A) So when Rinoa gets powers from Adel, her new powers are P(R) = P(E)*P(A) = P(X)*P(A)*P(A) = P(X)*P(A) (i.e. Rinoa's powers are the combined powers of Sorceress X, Adel, and Adel again, which is the same as just Sorceress X and Adel by assumption). It is clear now that we get no buildup of powers. Edea's powers are always just P(X)*P(A), and the feedback issue is prevented. Okay, so this idea allows us to resolve feedback. But is the defining assumption actually reasonable? Would you really not get more powerful if you received the same powers twice? Is that really how sorceress powers work? As it turns out, the game has some interesting things to say which are relevant here. First, recall the following tutorial entry: "Sorceress [...] It's hard to determine how many sorceresses exist today, for many keep their powers concealed. However, it is believed that they avoid spreading their power too thin." The idea of powers being spread 'too thin' implies that powers can be watered down by being spread between too many different women. Conversely then it must be that if a sorceress receives many sets of powers, she gets stronger. This doesn't contradict the 'powers as sets' assumption, since under normal circumstances the only way to get more powers would be if you got them from different people, but the timeloop shenanigans means we're not in normal circumstances! Next recall Ultimecia's scan info: "A sorceress trying to change the world by compressing time and taking power from all sorceresses."

So as a result of time compression, Ultimecia is, in one sense or another, able to take control of more sorceress powers in order to become stronger. Of course, the intuitive idea is that as time is compressed, multiple (infinite even) copies of sorceress powers from the past and future are also brought together (compressed together), and Ultimecia exploits the magic of time compression then to inherit all these multiple copies and add them to the powers she already has. But recall that we know Ultimecia has all the sorceress powers available in the world already (since Rinoa was the last sorceress of her era, meaning all strands of sorceress powers had come together in her). So if our intuitive interpretation of the Scan information above is assumed, any sorceress powers Ultimecia inherits as a result of TC would be powers she already had, and so according to the 'powers as sets' theory would not make her stronger at all. Is there a way to get out of this contradiction? The answer is yes, as long as you're willing to make a stronger appeal to the role played by TC. For user JD IXI pointed out that there's a natural way to think of TC making Ultimecia stronger through 'taking power from all sorceresses'. We know that Ultimecia, in her final form, starts absorbing all of time and space. Clearly then she'd also absorb multiple copies of sorceress powers throughout time. But this way of absorbing powers is not, a priori, compatible with the normal form of absorbing of powers that takes place during a succession of witches. She no more inherits these powers in the regular sense than she inherits the properties of anything else of space-time she absorbs. JD's idea is then that you could think of it as if when Ulty absorbs space-time, sorceress powers included, she is able to wield what she absorbs in a more disembodies sort of sense. She essentially wields space-time as a weapon. So she can also wield multiple copies of the sorceress powers as a weapon. As JD put it, it's the difference between a magician casting a more powerful spell and 10 magicians casting the same spell. You could imagine it as if Ultimecia is able to not just dual-wield her own powers, but multi-wield them, even infinite-wield them. Ultimecia doesn't in and of herself become a more powerful sorceress though. Thus we have our first example of a complete resolution: assume that powers 'act like sets', and that Ultimecia uses TC to take sorceress powers in the more indirect way explained above. The strength of this way of resolving it is that it makes a very minimalistic assumption about how sorceress powers stack (namely that they basically don't), and makes a fairly intuitive appeal to the effects of TC. On the other hand, there are very definite weaknesses as well. Arguably the idea that sorceress powers don't stack is unintuitive, although given that sorceress powers are left mostly unexplained this is not a major flaw. More serious is the fact that Ultimecia's scan info clearly seems to emphasize the role of sorceress powers in Ultimecia's plan to get power. If sorceress powers were only involved in the sense that they are also part of the space-time that Ultimecia absorbs and wields, then why even make a point about it? If Ultimecia could wield all of space-time itself then surely the role of sorceress powers in particular wouldn't be that critical in comparison. The emphasis placed on the role played by sorceress powers is even more apparent in the Japanese version: (Japanese line in romaji; you can read the line here: http://urawa.cool.ne.jp/fanaticcloud/ff8/13.html) "Jikan wo asshyukusuru koto ni yori, subete no jidai ikiru majyo no chikara wo tori kamunde, sekai wo unu no omou ga mama ni tsukuri jiki souto****eiru." (Direct English translation) "From the act of compressing time, she is taking in the power of the witches to have lived in every era, and is attempting to forever remake the world in her own image."

Here the act of taking sorceress powers is more clearly implied to come before any other wielding of the entirety of space-time. The main problem here is that we don't know exactly how the TC spell works. The emphasis on sorceress powers perhaps suggests that unless Ultimecia drastically enhances her own powers she won't be able to absorb all of space-time. On the other hand, some have suggested that the act of casting TC would surely allow her to absorb all of space-time just by itself, since that's the purpose of the spell. In retort one could of course say that the purpose of TC is, a priori, only to bring all of time to a single point, and although that point might be amenable to being absorbed, it's not at all clear that it would be possible to do so without possessing vast amounts of power, thus explaining the emphasis on gathering sorceress powers first. Opponents suggest that the sorceress powers are emphasized because they are needed simply to wield space-time -efficiently-, but if Ultimecia were able to efficiently wield all the sorceress-powers she absorbed, why would she not be able to efficiently wield everything else too? Maybe the sorceress powers she wields simply allow her to do much more than normal, but this still doesn't explain why the taking of sorceress powers seems to be a prerequisite for anything else. In any case, it's clear that it would be ideal if we alternative explanation which allows powers to stack so that Ultimecia can use TC to become stronger in a of way which places the inheriting of more sorceress there's a rather nice way of doing this. To motivate rephrase the feedback problem in a more mathematical could come up with an in a more naive sense, much more obvious sort powers first. It turns out this solution, let's first manner.

Using the notiation P(X), P(E) etc. above, we suppose that the powers are represented by some fixed, positive real number. So the higher the number the stronger the powers. Naively we would think then that if a sorceress starts off with P(A) and then inherits P(B), her total powers would be simply P(A)+P(B), even if P(A)=P(B). Now let's write down expressions for Edea and Ultimecia's powers analogously to the 'powers as sets' theory: P(E) = P(X) + P(U) P(U) = P(E) + P(A) (Edea starts off a sorceress with powers P(X), then gets Ultimecia's powers: similarly for Ultimecia). What we'd like to say is that P(E) and P(U) are fixed and finite quantities. The feedback problem is simply the fact that these equations do not permit any such solutions for P(E) and P(U). Mathematically this can be seen by looking at the coefficient matrix, but more simply you can just substitute the first equation into the second to get that P(U) = P(X) + P(A) + P(U) and since P(X) and P(A) are definitely non-zero (as they represent definite sorceress powers) we see that the right hand side is strictly bigger than P(U), while simultaneously equalling it, a contradiction. It can also be seen that in a dynamic time picture the powers would increase by P(X) and P(A) for every revolution of the loop, as expected. So our goal is to somehow fiddle with these equations in a way which forces a solution, but in such a way that this tampering has an intuitive in-game explanation. To get an idea of how we might justifiably alter our equations, we need to introduce another concept, namely the natural affinity of a woman to use magic. From the Ultimania section on sorceresses: "The potential to become a sorceress is determined by one's capacity to wield

such power -- their natural affinity for magic. This factor helps to determine Sorceress candidates for when a Sorceress passes on all of her power into the next Sorceress." In fact, the observant reader might already have noticed something odd about previous remarks made. For instance, in the 'powers as sets' explanation we ended up concluding that Edea, Rinoa and Ultimecia would all have the same powers, yet it's perfectly clear that Ultimecia is much more powerful than both Edea and Rinoa. The presence of a natural affinity presents an obvious way to solve this: Ultimecia simply has a higher natural affinity, and so can wield her powers much more effectively than Rinoa and Edea. For the 'sets as powers' theory then it's natural to think of two types of powers. There's the absolute power, represented by P(A), P(E) etc. above, and then there's the effective power which is determined by scaling the absolute power by a number representing the natural affinity. A higher natural affinity gives you a higher effective power (think about the interplay between the Attack stat and the Strength stat in games like FF7 or FF9). This idea of powers being scaled by a natural affinity stat leads to the next solution. Formally, we will say that every woman has an associated natural affinity stat associated to her (given by a positive, real number, possibly greater than 1). We assume that power transfer works in the following way: if a woman (who may or may not already be a sorceress) with natural affinity stat k inherits powers P(X), then the increase in her power is given simply by k*P(X) (where * is just regular multiplication now). The equations for power transfer in the timeloop now become P(E) = m*P(X) + m*P(U) P(U) = n*P(E) + n*P(A) where m is Edea's natural affinity stat, and n is the product of the affinities of all sorceresses between Rinoa and Ultimecia inclusive (note we need this product since we have a succession of witches going from Rinoa to Ultimecia, and at each step in the chain the powers get multiplied by the affinity of the sorceress receiving them). It turns out that provided m*n<1, these equations yield definite, positive solutions for P(E) and P(U). If, in addition, n is assumed to be sufficiently larger than m we can also arrange for P(U) to be strictly greater than P(E) (actually we also would need to assume that Adel is at least as strong as Edea, but this seems patently obvious anyway). It also turns out that the expressions for P(U) and P(E) found this way depend only on P(E), P(X) and the natural affinities, in accordance with the earlier argument that P(E) and P(X) must be the only powers actually making a contribution here. --NOTE: Although the above calculations alluded to are very simple, they have been omitted for the sake of brevity and not getting bogged down in maths. The skeptical reader is invited to verify it for him or herself. --Two obvious questions arise. Firstly, are these conditions on m and n plausible to assume, and secondly, how are we to interpret the physical meaning of our new equations? These are, not surprisingly, intimately linked questions. One way of thinking about it is just the same way we thought about affinity in the context of 'powers as sets', namely that affinity determines the extent to which you are able to wield your powers. So the affinity would be a percentage determining how much of the full potential of powers you could utilize. In our

case then we'd say the affinity was a number between 0 and 1 inclusive. If this were the case then it'd follow automatically that m*n<1, and that n is greater than m can be assumed by simply saying that Ultimecia is sufficiently stronger than Edea (since Ultimecia's affinity makes a contribution to n). This would, in other words, be perfect. However, the assumption that affinities are always in the range [0,1] has certain other less pleasant implications. In particular, since multiplying by numbers less than 1 decreases a number, in any chain of succession of witches the powers will tend to decrease the further along the chain you get. In particular, since Ultimecia is at the end of a chain starting with Rinoa, it would follow that Ultimecia is almost certainly weaker than Rinoa! Even worse, if you assume that the witches encountered on your way to Ultimecia's era are, in fact, the witches between Rinoa and Ultimecia, it'd follow that Ultimecia would be significantly weaker than Rinoa (since all but one of those witches are visibly pathetically weak). There are similar other weird consequences, but from this alone it's clear that this interpretation leaves something to be desired. However, if we allow affinities to be any positive real number, then there's still a very nice way of thinking about it. When a set of sorceress powers enters a woman with a very low affinity for magic, the powers will diminish. Conversely, while entering a woman with a high affinity for magic the powers will flourish and grow. You can think of sorceress powers as being a highly organic sort of thing, which is highly sensitive to its current host. But now the conditions on n and m are no longer trivial. If m and n are a priori rather small, then we could arrange for the conditions to be plausibly met by adjusting the relative sizes of m and Ultimecia's natural affinity. If you assume that the TC witches are the witches between Rinoa and Ultimecia, then it is plausible to assume that the product of affinities of sorceresses from Rinoa up to Ultimecia is small, in which case the indicated adjustment would make it work. Unfortunately, otherwise you kinda have to just appeal to fate. It's of course possible to try to tamper with the equations some more: note that the critical condition m*n<1 is required in order to make the powers positive, for the equations to have solutions it's enough to have m*n not equal to 1, which is, in a sense which can be made mathematically precise, infinitely unlikely (i.e. m*n =/= 1 with probability 1). So if we tampered with the equations to guarantee that all expressions end up positive (e.g. simply by taking absolute values) then the conditions being met would be entirely trivial. However, this kind of tampering would make the physical interpretation seem pretty unnatural, and so this attempt at a better solution is generally seen as deficient. So while this second explanation fits much more comfortably with Ultimecia's scan info (and arguably also general intuition), its weakness is that its complexity forces some non-trivial conditions on various natural affinities. There are still other possible resolutions available, although most of them are just variations of the above, with the main differences coming from the assumed role of time compression and the interpretation of 'natural affinity'. For example, you might interpret natural affinity as rather being a measure of how much power you can possess at any one time, so that one of the roles of TC was to unnaturally increase Ultimecia's affinity, hence allowing her to absorb more powers than otherwise possible, which in turn would allow her to absorb space-time itself. Then you could adopt an idea similar to 'powers as sets' to resolve feedback and all would be fine. Thanks to the ambiguous nature of TC and sorceress powers there are surely more ways still to resolve it all, but we hope the reader is convinced by now that the feedback issue is not fatal. Just pick whatever idea you found more convincing and roll with that. Update: (7th March 2011)

In a surprising turn of events, we found out thanks to Gwendal that there is a tutorial entry in the game which is for some reason only possible to read off by hacking into the game files (it is simply impossible to unlock it properly in the game itself). Squall_Of_SeeD's translation of the Japanese entry is as follows: "Succession of Witch Powers When a witch is prepared for death, she passes her powers to the person who will become their 'vessel.' According to Dr. Odine, witch powers gradually become weaker due to power lost during each succession, affinity, and other uncertain factors." The significance of this piece of information is that it justifies the equations used in the second solution. There we assumed that affinity was the only scale factor, and that affinity organically altered the sorceress powers in such a way that they might increase or decrease. This allowed us to control the flow of powers through the timeloop and solve feedback. Based on this new tutorial entry, we can say that it's actually a little more complex than that. There are several unknown factors coming into play which cause a variation of sorceress powers between immediate successors. Affinity is only one of these. Now, while powers do always decrease during the actual transmission itself, this may not always be due to the successor having a low affinity. So, while a certain amount of absolute power is lost during transmission, it is still entirely possible that a sorceress with a particularly high affinity can make up for this loss and boost her powers to be stronger than her predecessor anyway. This means that our second set of equations are perfectly valid as long as we understand the scale factor to be an overall measurement of affinity and all the other uncertain factors involved in power transfer. The assumptions on affinities that we required to make everything work become even more plausible now too. There, we really wanted the sorceresses between Ultimecia and Edea to have low affinities (because we wanted to ensure a sufficient amount of power loss before the powers reached Ultimecia). This is now entirely supported by the fact that powers in general tend to decrease. All that is needed to make the equations work now is to just assume that Ultimecia has a bigger affinity than Edea and Rinoa, which is, of course, entirely reasonable. In conclusion, the tutorial entry justifies the second set of equations used; we just have to interpret the scale factor as more than just the affinity. ---NOTE: For completeness, here is the hidden tutorial entry as it appears in the English translation, followed by Gwendal's original translation of the Japanese entry, and Squall_Of_SeeD's explanation of his own translation. Official translation -------------------------"When a sorceress is about to die, she gives her power to the next person who 'inherits' her sorceress powers. According to Odine's research, the power tends to weaken with each succession." -------------------------Gwendal's translation

-------------------------"The succession/inheritance of Sorceress power When a Sorceress has resigned herself to death, she passes her power on to the person who will become its 'Vessel'. According to Dr. Odine, due to uncertain factors/circumstances such as loss of power at the time of transmission and compatibility/affinity, there seems to be a trend/tendency towards Sorceress power growing weaker." -------------------------Squall's original explanation: "If you're wondering why and how I determined that, I'll explain. For you and others reading, I'll first post a fresh link to the Japanese text: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/ SuccessionofWitchPowers.jpg Now, the 'tsugi' (meaning 'each') after 'chikara no uke' ('receiving of power') and before 'toki no rosu/loss' says to me that powers are unavoidably lost each time during the succession itself (at least in normal circumstances; obviously, Ultimecia's absorption of them during Time Compression may be an exception). This 'tsugi,' by the way, is likely the source of the 'each' in the official translation's line, 'the power tends to weaken with each succession.' Also, to me 'yuruyaka' indicates more than a propensity (which is short of a guarantee) for the powers to be lost at each succession, because when used as a '-na' adjective the word is used to refer to things that slope, are loose, or are otherwise infirm. I feel that if the meaning intended was that the power could go up or down with each succession, this would have been emphasized rather than just the idea of the powers getting weaker. I think that notion also fits the established context of the setting better, where we have previously been given the information that witches attempt to 'avoid spreading their power too thin.' At any rate, as it's written, it seems definite to me that powers are lost each time during succession, even if there isn't always further loss due to affinity or the other 'uncertain factors.'"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------ELLONE'S POWERS AND JUNCTION MACHINE ELLONE [NT9] --------------------------------------------------------------------------Ellone's powers are a bit of a mystery in the game. Where did they come from? Unfortunately there's no answer for that to be found either in the game or this FAQ. She appears to simply have been born with them. Her powers are such that she can send the consciousnesses of people into the mind of someone in the past, creating a link between present and past. Ellone indicates that she cannot make the link unless she knows the subjects, but since she is capable of sending Squall into Rinoa anyway after simply having been in the same room as Rinoa, the indication is that she does

not need to know the subject very well, but that this would just make it easier for her. The Junction Machine Ellone presumably works in the exact same way and was created based on Doc Odine's studies conducted on Ellone under Adel's reign. It is unclear what sort of limitations the JME has in terms of who it enables you to be sent into. It's hard to imagine a machine 'knowing' someone, but perhaps it is enough for the person using JME to know the relevant person. Ultimecia is only ever seen to posses other sorceresses, so it is possible that she 'knew' these people by virtue of having inherited their powers. It is however also possible that the JME does not have such limitations, and that Ultimecia simply chooses to possess sorceresses because their power makes her a more potent force in the past. Both Ellone and the JME do, however, have a limitation on how far back people can be sent (although as Squall_Of_SeeD speculates, in Ellone's case the limitation may simply be due to the fact that she can't possibly know people who died before she was born). Although not a regular type of time-travelling machine, it is made clear by Ultimecia's possession of Edea, etc., that it can still be used to influence the past by influencing the "host" bodies you enter into via the connection of Ellone (be it through Ellone herself or the machine). Squall and Co. make little impact on Laguna, the most noticeable influence being the strength offered in battle, which Laguna and Co. attribute to "fairies." One interesting aspect to contemplate in regards to the process of possesion using Ellone's powers is the idea of overlapping possessions. If Ultimecia's plans failed at some point, could she not have sent herself further back in the past again and tried to reposses Edea and try again? As this never happens, it would seem this is an impossibility. It seems perhaps likely that the host's mind would be too crowded to allow this. Perhaps Ellone's powers wouldn't allow it directly? Or perhaps Ultimecia never attempted this because it might mean she would have to try and rid the host's mind of her own previous influence; she'd have to mentally overcome herself, which sounds like it might be an obvious stalemate, impossibility, or too complex to even attempt. Finally, it must be noted, since this is often brought up, that destroying Ellone, the blueprints of the machine or anything else like that would NOT have prevented Ultimecia from getting her hands on the Junction Machine Ellone. Since time is set in stone in FF8, and Ultimecia already had the machine in the future, Squall and Co. destroying the blueprints would not have magically negated that undeniable truth, and would simply have been part of the sequence of events which lead to the machine being created. It is likely that Odine would know this, and in any case Squall and Co. were determined to deal with Ultimecia head-on like they should, and never contemplated such defensive, risky and ultimately meaningless ideas. There is another aspect of Ellone's powers which is important, but that will be discussed in the section on "Hippie Weirdness" in the following section on time compression. --------------------------------------------TIME COMPRESSION [NT10] --------------------------------------------~General Discussion~ [NT11] "A complete mystery. Various states of past, present and future mixed together".

That is the gist of what we are told directly in the game (this line coming from the Tutorial->Information section). However, since merely calling it a "mystery" is quite unacceptable to these authors, we will attempt to explain what time compression (TC) really is all about, what a time compressed world would look like, and how it is established and works. A quick look in the dictionary reveals that "compression" essentially means the act of pressing something to a more compact state. For instance, were you to take a sheet of paper and crumple it together into a little ball, you might say that you have compressed the sheet of paper. But what does it mean to compress time itself? Well, using the handy picture of the ULOT, we could say that TC would effectively push at it from both sides, thus effectively crumpling it into a small ball. For the sake of simplicity and elegance, these authors assume that TC would effectively compress the entire ULOT into one single moment in time. To fully grasp this picture, we turn to the very elegant analogy formulated by TheOnionKnight: Imagine time as literally being a film made up of many slides (remember that we had to ignore the question of whether time is infinitely divisible or not) where each slide shows one moment in time. A "now" slide would then contain a record of everything that happened in the FF8 universe at exactly that moment in time. Watching this film would then be the same as watching everything that happens from the beginning of the universe till its end. Now imagine that you separate each individual slide from the film, and stack them all on top of each other. Shining a light through this stack of slides would be the same as creating an image of all the slides as one. Can you imagine what such an image would look like? Every single event in the entire ULOT all "happening" at the same time? It certainly makes us realise why it is that no one (except Ultimecia) can exist in a time compressed world! --NOTE: We know only Ultimecia can live in TC because both Rinoa and Edea tell us. For instance, here is Rinoa's statement: "There was a sorceress inside me. Ultimecia, a sorceress from the future. She's trying to achieve time compression. She's the only one who would be able to exist in such a world. She, and no other." --Anyone else would exist only in the sense that each event of their life continues to exist as fragments, but there would be no "flow" in time: you wouldn't move towards the future from the past. Instead, you'd be in a sense frozen in time, without actually realising it. This is the most commonly accepted view of a fully compressed ULOT, and is the idea we will be utilising in this FAQ. Now that we've established what TC does, we can move on to another fact we are told, namely that Ultimecia has to go to the past in order to cast the spell. This piece of information raises some important questions: is the spell limited in some way (and in that case, how?) or is it rather that Ultimecia WANTS to cast it where she does for some reason? Assuming the former as being correct, we are left with some strange facts. Firstly, the issue of why she needs to be in one particular place in time to cast the spell. It might make sense that she'd need to be in the direct center of the ULOT, but since Ultimecia is always moving through time, how is she able to coordinate things so that she casts it at the exact center? Does she perhaps only need an approximate center? She goes into a young Adel when she casts the spell, meaning she was about 50-60 years into the

past (from where you defeat Adel), which raises the question of why TC has such a strict conception of what is close enough to the center. Clearly, the idea that she needs to be in the center of time is too full of holes and problems that cannot be answered to be considered viable. Perhaps she needed to be in more than one place on the ULOT in order to activate the spell. Again, though, this assumption raises the same amount of questions as the previous suggestion. A final idea many use is that she needs to be in both the past, present and the future in order to cast it. However, this idea singles out Squall's "present" as THE present from which past and future is measured from. But since Ultimecia's present would by all reasoning be her own era, and not Squall's, this idea is flawed. So if the spell is limited in some way it seems hopeless to discover exactly why and how. But what if it isn't that the spell is limited in any way? Some suggested that it was a limitation on Ultimecia's powers rather than the spell itself, but these ideas never crystallized into something particularly plausible until Ryan Goss (aka FFVII Tatoo) made a critical observation: when Squall and Co. enter Laguna and Co. via the Ellone-connection, Laguna and Co's powers are boosted! In fact, they even talk explicitly about it, referring to it as 'the faeries' helping them. Naturally then we would have to assume that something similar happens when Ultimecia possesses a sorceress like Edea: Edea's powers are boosted by Ultimecia's, so when Ultimecia possesses Edea she has access to, in some sense, the combined powers of both of them. Or, if Ultimecia possessed Rinoa, she'd have access to -their- combined powers. And pushing it further, if Ultimecia possessed Rinoa, only to have both of them possess Adel, Ultimecia would have access to the combined powers of all three. Ryan's idea then is as simple as it is elegant: the reason Ultimecia needed to go further into the past wasn't due to some inherent need to go far enough back in time, it was because she needed the combined powers of three different sorceresses to in order to be powerful enough to cast the TC spell! You see, as established in the section on Sorceress Powers, Ultimecia is the only sorceress of her era, which means there's no more power to be gained there. The only way then to increase her powers is to use sorceresses from another era. The only way to do that is via the Junction Machine Ellone. Using that machine Ultimecia is able to possess Edea, and get their combined powers. But this is not enough: Ultimecia needs more power still. So she seeks to use the same method to possess yet another sorceress, and since the JME doesn't exist in Edea's era, Ultimecia has no choice but to seek out Ellone. Right at the start of disc 4, Ultimecia possesses Rinoa using the JME, before Ellone sends both of them back into a young Adel, and now Ultimecia is finally able to cast time compression. Recall that Odine suggests that it's uncertain if Ultimecia would be able to fully possess Adel in the normal way required for this, but the Ultimania actually confirms that she was able to do so. Indeed, the FF 20th Anniversary Ultimania File 1: Character says in Ultimecia's profile on pg. 259 that Ultimecia had possessed Adel when Squall and co. fought her: "Initially, she 'connected' to Edea, and via her memories, pursued Ellone s trail; during this time, Edea was aware of all that was taking place, but had no control until she was defeated by Squall s team of SeeD, at which point her witch powers transferred to Rinoa; at that point, Ultimecia used Rinoa as her puppet to free the evil witch, Adel, who had been sealed in space. Controlling the revived Adel, she again sought to bring Ellone into her hands." So indeed, Ultimecia would be able to utilize the power of all three sorceresses.

You might wonder, if all it takes is for Ultimecia to get more power, surely there are cruder ways she could do it? Like, say, forcefully fusing two different sorceresses and then possessing the result? Of course, Ultimecia tries to do just this at the beginning of disc 4, where she tries to have Rinoa and Adel fused! Seifer: "Can't go back now! I can't go anywhere! The sorceresses as one! That is Ultimecia's WISH!" Ryan's theory is particularly appealing because it naturally explains this as well. Ultimecia, perhaps losing patience at the prospect of capturing Ellone, simply saw the opportunity to do something much more crude in order to get enough power. So far this is the only plausible theory as to the seeming limitations of TC. But what actually happens when Ultimecia casts the spell? What happens that lets Squall and Co. move to the future? Why do they get exactly where they want to? How do they avoid being compressed? Why does the Ragnarok along with the entire CC Club end up in Ultimecia's time as well? All these questions, and other ones not mentioned, are basically different ways of angling the big question: How does TC work? We have established what a fully compressed time would "look like," but we haven't actually discussed the process of compression itself. Producing a simple theory that can answer all the questions and avoid introducing unanswerable questions will be the goal of this next part of the FAQ, and as we shall see, it is trickier than it sounds. To establish what we are told, here is what Odine tells us when explaining the plan to defeat Ultimecia, followed by Laguna's speech: Dr. Odine: "You vant to go outside!? You vant to fisticuffs!? Ok, we continue ze story! Let's see... There is only one way to defeat Ultimecia. You must kill her in ze future. There iz nothing we can do unless we go to ze future. There is no way to jump to ze future under normal circumstances. But there iz still a way! It iz because Sorceress Ultimecia plans to compress time. Compressing time with magic... Vat good will it do for ze sorceress to compress time? There may be many reasons, but it doesn't matter. Let's just figure out vat Ultimecia iz up to. In order for Ultimecia to exist in this time, she must take over ze body of a sorceress from ze present. But ze machine must have a limit. Ultimecia probably needs to go back further in time to achieve time compression. Only Ellone can take her back further into ze past. Zat iz why she iz desperately seeking her. We must take advantage of Ellone's power. There are 2 sorceresses in our time. Sorceress Rinoa and Sorceress Adel. Of ze two, Adel has not awakened yet. Once regeneration is completed, neither Laguna not I will be safe. Sorceress Adel is probably in ze process of awakening inside of Lunatic Pandora. Ultimecia will want to possess Adel, if Adel wakes up. Zat vill be a horrible event. Adel iz a horrible sorceress. If Adel's consciousness wins over Ultimecia, Adel will first destroy this era. So we must use Sorceress Rinoa to inherit Ultimecia's powers. Zat's all for ze mission briefing. First, go to Lunatic Pandora. Ellone's probably being held captive inside, so rescue her first. Then kill Sorceress Adel before ze awakening process is completed. Now, we're left with Rinoa as ze only sorceress of this era. Then wait for Ultimecia to possess Rinoa. When Ultimecia arrives, it's Ellone's turn. Ellone will send Rinoa back to ze past with Ultimecia. Ellone will have to send Rinoa and Ultimecia inside another sorceress she knows in the past. Edea or Adel... Zat's up to

Ellone. Once Ultimecia iz in ze past, she'll use ze time compression magic. We will see some influence here. I don't know vat kind of influence, but once Ellone feels it, she'll cut Rinoa and Ultimecia off from ze past. Rinoa will come back to this world. Ultimecia also goes back to her own world. Vat would be left is ze time compressed world. Past, present future will all get mixed together. You will keep moving through ze time compression toward ze future. Once you're out of ze time compression, zat will be Ultimecia's world. It's all up to you after zat." Later, Laguna says: "That's the spirit! Then, Ellone sends Rinoa and [Ultimecia to the past]! Ellone [brings back Rinoa]! Then [head to the future through compressed time]! Ultimecia lives far in the future where none of us can technically exist. There's only one way to make yourself exist in a world like that! As friends, don't forget one another! As friends, believe in one another! Believe in your friends' existence! And they'll also believe in yours. To be friends, to like one another, and to love one another... You can't do these things alone. You need somebody. Right, guys? What place reminds you of your friends? Imagine being in that place with all your friends. Once time compression begins, think of that place and try to get there! That's all! That place will welcome you. You'll be able to get there no matter what period you're in! You need love and friendship for this mission! And the courage to believe it. It's all about love, friendship, and courage! I'm counting on you guys!" To sum up the most important points learned from these quotes: 1) Ultimecia casts TC in the past (as seen from the game's perspective). 2) We will see effects of TC as soon as she casts the spell. 3) The fact that time starts being compressed is what allows Squall and Co. to get to the future. 4) TC is responsive to emotion, thoughts and willpower. Squall and Co. get to the future by willing themselves there and concentrating their thoughts on where they want to go, and avoid being compressed themselves through love and friendship. And then there is a fifth basic point: 5) TC is never fully completed. This fifth point is never directly stated, but we know it to be true because as mentioned, both Rinoa and Edea make it quite clear that ONLY Ultimecia can exist in TC. Combining this with the fact that TC compresses all of time, we can conclude that if TC was ever fully completed, we couldn't be playing the game because Squall, or anyone/thing else for that matter, would not be able to exist already from the beginning of disc 1. Since this is clearly not the case, we can quite confidently say that TC was never fully completed. From this simple fact, we can furthermore establish that TC is a process which takes time. To be specific, we say that TC works at a finite speed (saying it works infinitely fast means that the entire ULOT should be compressed as soon as the spell is cast, which violates the fact that TC was never completed). It is this fact which implies that the ULOT is finite, as mentioned near the beginning. The reasoning is that if the ULOT were infinitely long, Ultimecia would never be able to fully compress time (because TC works at a finite speed), and this implication is enough to convince these authors that the line of time is finite. If you are now wondering exactly how fast TC evolves, it is unfortunately a question that is

impossible to answer. All we can say is that it must be pretty damn fast! Now let's return to the point in time where Ultimecia casts the spell. If we were to look at the ULOT from the outside, what would we see happen once she casts the spell? Well, we previously thought that TC could be seen as pressing the ULOT into a single point, so we might imagine that if we looked at time from the outside, that's what we'd see happen: the ULOT literally being squashed into a single point. Some further deliberation will reveal that this won't work, however, at least not in static time. You see, since this literal change on the ULOT would have lasted for a finite amount of time before reverting back to its normal state, once it was over, there would be no indication that it had ever happened to begin with! This is acceptable in the dynamic time theory because time is always changing anyway, but in the static time theory, this is unacceptable, because the effects of TC are supposed to ALWAYS be a part of time. If this were not the case, the events where Squall travels to the future, kills Ultimecia and travels back (as well as the events where Ultimecia passes her powers to Edea) would only exist for a finite amount of time, which makes absolutely no sense at all if we are to think of all events as being set in stone. The only way to have a theory of TC which makes sense within static time is to think of it as being an event in time just like any other, rather than a process which acts upon time in a more literal fashion. We owe our current such model of TC to TheOnionKnight, who proposed that TC is a single moment in time which gradually comes to contain more and more of the ULOT, thus compressing more and more of time. Using the film analogy, TC can be thought of as a single slide which gradually contains more and more of the ULOT. If TC were ever completed, the TC slide would contain the entire ULOT within itself. But it is not that the TC event creates a separate ULOT; it doesn't form duplicates of all the events on the ULOT. To understand what Onion has proposed, think of one of those odd "picture in a picture" pictures. For example, imagine you have a picture of a man watching television, from such an angle that you can see what he is watching. Then imagine that the image you see on the television screen is the exact same picture as the "original" picture. In theory, this picture would extend forever inside the picture, because each "layer" would have another television in it. Onion's idea is that TC acts in the same way: the TC event would be like the television of the above example. But remember, as I said before, TC creates no duplicates! Instead, the ULOT we see inside the TC event IS the ULOT which the TC event is situated on. What this means, is that once the TC event contains more and more events, those same events on the ULOT will essentially be compressed. In a fully compressed time, the TC event would thus be seen to contain the entire ULOT, so the entire ULOT would be compressed. The idea is then that Ultimecia could shape the events within the TC event as she finds fitting, and in doing so shape the ULOT which the TC event is on. To make a diagram of the TC event on the ULOT: <---------------A--TC-B-----C A is the event in which Squall defeats Adel. TC is, you guessed it, the TC event. B is Squall's return from the future. C is the Garden party in the ending.

Since TC is a process taking time, we can further, recalling the ideas of the first part of this section on time, make a diagram describing the evolution of TC as a line of time of its own: A---B---C-----D Note that each moment in this line of time is a 'picture-within-picture' moment. A is the TC moment when it's first cast. It would contain at most a single moment of the ULOT (presumably itself). B would be a TC moment containing more of the ULOT. C would be a TC moment containing more of the ULOT than it did at B. D is the TC moment when the spell is broken. In other words, TC as an event is like any other event - a sequence of moments - but in this case it is specifically a sequence of "picture-withinpicture" moments, each successive moment containing more of the ULOT. If allowed to run to completion, it would culminate in a moment containing the entire ULOT. Now, it is noteworthy that if TC were completed, the ULOT would actually be a single point rather than a line, which brings us back to the point that TC could never have been completed. If it were, the ULOT would always have been in a state of full compression (since time is static) and thus would always have been a single point. Instead, the incompleted TC appears on the ULOT as just another event in time. This model is rather paradoxical in nature, but it is the best model we have been able to come up with. Since we view it as essential that TC be an event in time, and also that it must still describe the compression of time, a 'picture-within-picture' idea is almost implied directly, and so that is what we stick with. It is complex and hard to get your head around for sure, but we hope we have made it possible to understand (if anything after a couple of rereads and some time to reflect). There turns out to be one more problem however... ~The "Hippie Weirdness" problem~ [NT12] [NOTE: This next section was written by TheOnionKnight] This little section of the FAQ is dedicated to discussing a particular, specific phenomenon of TC. This phenomenon, dubbed "Hippie Weirdness," or HW for short, went untreated by analytical FFVIII debaters for years. The more people continued to delve into the nature of static time as FFVIII's time/space theories evolved, however, the more apparent it became that HW was, in fact, an important issue in need of attention. By merely existing in FFVIII, HW presents a particular problem for the static time model outlined thus far throughout the FAQ. But before getting to that, let's simply define what HW is: HW is experienced twice in the course of FFVIII, and might best be summed up as "temporal chaos." While HW occurs, the physical world distorts, eras seem to merge into one another, colors fluctuate, etc. HW first occurs directly after Adel is killed in the Lunatic Pandora: Squall and Co. sink through the floor, which melts from beneath their feet, and are

propelled through a sky filled with molten bubbles of "memory" and flocks of wayward geese. The second time HW occurs is directly after Ultimecia's defeat: Squall and Co. are thrust into a white void replete with, as Quistis mentions, "time warps." Squall afterwards continues to wander the corridors of HW, finding himself on a desolate rock in outer space, and etc. The hallucinogenic elements of these HW events are actually what led to the coinage of the term "Hippie Weirdness" many years ago, a term that, although comedic in its origin, has nevertheless stuck. Now, to begin with, it bears mentioning that HW serves a primary, narrative purpose in FFVIII. The first time it occurs might be considered the game's penultimate climax; what better way, after all, to send Squall and Co. to the future than by shooting them through a psychedelic barrage of chronological madness? The second time HW occurs literally is the game's climax; and, again, what better way to end the game than with a graphically-intense bang? The game's designers, no doubt, had the spectacle of HW foremost in mind, which is why it happens when it does - to give the story visual "oomph." When you aren't looking at the "oomph," though, HW becomes a rather tangly problem for the static time model. As elementary as it may be, the problem presented by HW can be condensed into a single question: why? Why does HW occur where and, more importantly, when it does? As has already been outlined, all events in a static timeline are predestined. They already exist on the timeline, and no occurrence within the timeline can change the timeline itself. Taking this as a given, it makes sense to say that any effects of TC would already be written into the timeline. Floors may melt, and memories may bubble through the air. The static time model accommodates all of this, however surreal it may be, as long as "all of this" operates in accordance with predestination. When Squall and Co. defeat Ultimecia, therefore, and her control over TC is lost, it follows that HW would naturally transpire. One event, HW, is simply following another event, Ultimecia's defeat, in a logical cause-and-effect relationship. When HW happens here, no problem arises. When HW happens after Adel's defeat, however, a problem, "the" problem, does indeed arise. Why? Because when HW happens in the Lunatic Pandora, it does NOT immediately follow its own cause: Ultimecia's casting of TC. She is not, after all, casting TC in the Lunatic Pandora. Ellone has sent her consciousness back in time, to an unstated year in the past, and it is there, in the past, that Ultimecia does cast TC. Why, as a result of this, would HW occur decades later in the Lunatic Pandora? The chain of cause-and-effect has been broken. The only apparent way that such a thing could happen is if the dynamic time theory is true, because dynamic time accommodates a malleable timeline. With it, one can simply say that when Ultimecia casts TC in the past, she effects and changes the entire timeline. In dynamic time, after all, the moment during which Ultimecia cast TC did not necessarily always exist on the line of time. It might have only come into existence when she finally "did it," and HW afterwards would have impacted and altered the entire timeline, Lunatic Pandora and Squall's present included. In the static time model, however, the moment at which Ultimecia casts TC would always exist. Therefore, the HW event caused by TC would also always have to exist. Because the cause-and-effect chain is broken,

however, the single moment during which TC is experienced in the Lunatic Pandora isn't actually any more connected to the triggering TC event than any other random moment in time. Have you figured out the implication of this yet? The implication is that, in a static timeline, because the moment at Lunatic Pandora is no more relevant than any other point in time, in order for HW to occur at Lunatic Pandora, it would seemingly also have had to occur at every other moment in time. In short, because cause-and-effect are nonexistent in this scenario, no two points are bound by them, and for TC to effect the timeline all the way up to Squall's present in Lunatic Pandora, it would ALSO have had to affect every other moment in time in-between. Every moment in the game should be a hallucinatory wonderland. But this is obviously not the case. HW only happens in the Lunatic Pandora, and when it happens there it is specifically caused by an "unrelated" event decades prior to when it happens. Static time does not allow for this - or does it? In dynamic time, Ultimecia can influence the "future" by acting in the "past" because nothing is set in stone. In static time, however, for Ultimecia's TC spell to cause HW in the Lunatic Pandora, those two eras of time must be somehow "joined together" in order to create a rational chain of cause-and-effect. Those two eras of time, however, cannot be joined together in static time. How, then, can one be paired up with the other? Why should, how can, HW happen years after TC is cast, as it does in the game? The solution actually doesn't lie in the static time model at all, which does, in fact, operate perfectly even under these apparently perplexing conditions. Rather, understanding the problem of HW depends, not upon reexamining the timelines or their models, but upon reexamining the mechanics of time travel itself. Many people probably have the same basic conception of what time travel would be like. It would likely involve going bodily backwards or forwards in time. That would mean leaving one era and entering another. Following that, once out of one era, the time traveler would not be bound to it anymore naturally, you might even say. To use an example of Sir Bahamut's from a previous version of this very FAQ, imagine that Squall and Rinoa have gone on a picnic, but that Squall, halfway through his meal, decides to jump into a time machine. He might go back into the past, stays there for twenty years, and then jump back into the machine and reappear at the picnic. On his PLOT, twenty years would have passed. For Rinoa, however, it would seem like only seconds had gone by. This conception of time travel might seem well and good, but in FFVIII, people rarely hop back and forth between eras like that. That's because no ordinary time machine is used by the characters in FFVIII: excluding TC, they depend entirely upon either Ellone or the Junction Machine Ellone for their time-traveling needs (and the JME, for all intents and purposes, functions exactly like Ellone herself). Ellone cannot simply send people back and forth willy-nilly across eras. She must maintain a direct, "real-time" connection with them for the duration of their stay in another era. No better example of this facet of her powers might be found than in the very first instance Ellone sends Squall and Co. to Laguna's era. After just boarding the train to Timber, Squall and Co. "fall asleep" and are transported

back in time, where they spend a few hours with/as Laguna. When they "wake up" again in their own era, their train has already reached Timber after having completed its international journey via the underwater tunnel. In other words, just as many hours have passed in Squall's era as in Laguna's: the two eras were "synchronized" by Ellone. This synchronization can be witnessed at many other points in the game whenever, in fact, Ellone uses her powers. When transported mere minutes into the past while aboard the space station's escape pod, Squall still falls asleep for the same amount of minutes in his present era as he spends in the past. This unique method of time travel might be imagined to be like a sort of telephone line, with Ellone acting as the "operator." Squall is at one end, his present era, and has been connected to another end, the past, with Ellone mediating the connection, but a connection must always be maintained. Otherwise, the phone call would simply be cut off. While this observation might seem tangential to the HW problem, the nature of Ellone's power is in fact pivotal to understanding how Ultimecia can cast TC in the "past" while HW alters the "present." Ultimecia herself is using the JME, and, as such, is subjected to the same limitations that Squall and Co. are when Ellone uses her powers on them. Instead of Ellone acting as the "operator" for Ultimecia, the JME fills that role, but Ultimecia still requires an "operator," and when she travels into a "past" era, that means that the JME has synchronized her own "present" era with the "past" one of her choosing. Although it is never observed in the game, what this inherently must mean is that, in her own era, Ultimecia's body has "fallen asleep" just like Squall's does. Somewhere in her castle, she is sitting partially-unconscious throughout most of the game! --NOTE: In fact, when the party the beach, she go unconscious ---

this is perhaps why she's simply sitting around on her throne finds her for the final battle. Having killed the SeeD's on had only to go back in time to cast TC, and since she had to to do so, what better place to do it than sitting on her throne?

When two hours, therefore, pass for Ultimecia while she is possessing someone in the "past," two hours also must pass for her physical body in her own "present." This, of course, means that if Ultimecia "snaps out" of possession after the two hour elapse, two hours of her own "present" time would have elapsed in the same interval. So while Ultimecia (or Squall, or anyone else) is not conscious in her own "present" while she is in the "past," she is still connected to, and her physical body is still alive in, her own "present," meaning that she functionally exists in two eras at once! Her mind is merely paying more attention to one of the eras than the other. If this isn't confusing enough already, Ultimecia kicks things up a notch in the Lunatic Pandora when she coerces Ellone into sending her back into another, THIRD era. For a few, brief moments, her body is sitting in her castle in the "future," Rinoa's body, which she is possessing, is sitting in the Lunatic Pandora in the "present," and Ultimecia's conscious mind is located in Adel's body in the "past." It's like a three-way phone call: all of the eras are synchronized, if only for a moment, and, if only for a moment, Ultimecia exists across all three of them (that is, her PLOT is overlapping all three eras in the manner described above). And this is the moment, of course, when she casts TC http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h59/TJF588/FF/08/tc-hw.jpg

(very helpful illustrative diagram due to TJF588!) The causes-and-effects, as you can tell, are back together, and the chain is no longer broken. Although none of the separate eras have been literally brought together on the timeline, they have all been "lined up," each sharing a specified duration of minutes with one another. Normally this synchronization wouldn't be noticeable at all, and would simply operate on a technical level, producing no physical effects in any of the connected eras: when Squall knocks over a vase in Winhill in the "past" as Laguna, for example, there is no crashing sound in his "present." But Ultimecia does more than knock over a vase: her TC spell, once cast, actually alters time itself. It therefore follows that the TC spell would indeed effect the eras which Ultimecia is synchronized with when she casts it, and HW is consequently seen at the Lunatic Pandora because that is one of the select, synchronized eras. Or thinking about it slightly differently, you can picture it as if the JME and Ellone connections create a temporal 'bridge' of sorts linking all three eras in time, so when Ultimecia casts TC in the past, the effect travels across this bridge and ends up getting cast in the other two eras as well. It would also stand to reason that HW occurs in Adel's "past" for a brief moment, as well as in Ultimecia's "future," but what happens in these eras is, alas, off-camera in the game. Nevertheless, with each era bridged by Ellone and the JME's direct-connection, events can be put down intact and predestined on a static timeline, and the problem with HW is resolved. Although the above explanation is a nice, intuitive explanation, it's also somewhat informal. For the interested reader, here's a slightly more technical way of thinking about it. If it just confuses you then there's absolutely no harm just sticking to the above. The underlying idea which makes the above argument tick is that the Ellone connection in some sense messes with the temporal simultaneity. When Ultimecia uses the JME to possess Edea say, we say that the two eras are 'synchronized', meaning that the eras are lined up in a one-to-one correspondence (see the illustrative diagram linked above). Two events 'synchronized' by this correspondence, although temporally disconnected on the ULOT, have been put into simultaneity with eachother. In ery informal terms, they are 'happening at the same time'. When TC is cast, because it's a spell acting on time itself, it manifests itself first at all simultaneous points to the one in which it is actually cast, explaining HW. In technical terms the best way of thinking about it is probably in terms of the PLOT sheet. Normally Ulty's PLOT has a well-defined position in relation to the PLOT-sheet as a whole (as in, it's lined up along with other events that happen simultaneously in her own era). If she were to cast TC without the Ellone connection then, TC would spread out from some point in her own era and that would be it, presumably no sideeffects anywhere else. But with the Ellone connection, her PLOT essentially goes all skewed in relation to the rest of the PLOT-sheet, so that events simultaneous to events on her PLOT are now both stuff in Squall's present, Adel's past and Ultimecia's own era. Her PLOT is somehow superimposed across all three eras in time, bringing them all into simultaneity.

--NOTE (by Sir B): It is my current opinion that while the model described

in the above is certainly the best model that has been proposed so far, that there are still several issues that are not dealt with quite as satisfactorily as I would want. All the problems with describing TC stem from the fact that TC is a process which acts -on- time, yet we cannot sensibly talk about time as changing. But of course it turns out to be awfully difficult to talk about time compression without resorting to handy visual analogies which directly imply a changing time. The TC event model is our best attempt at getting around that, but I have come to believe that it would take an actual mathematical description to really avoid any pitfalls and give a satisfactory explanation. Maybe one day I'll pursue such a description, but as things stand, I think the model described in this FAQ will give a pretty good idea of what must really be going on. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------THE FINAL BATTLE AND THE ENDING FMV [NT13] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------Both the final battle and the ending FMV may appear to be very confusing upon a first viewing but, in fact, can be explained quite nicely with an understanding of one fundamental property of time compression: the fact that it responds to thoughts and emotions. Thus, all the weirdness we see in the final FMV with Squall can literally be seen as a window into Squall's feelings and thoughts. Here is what I find to be the most straightforward description and interpretation. In the final battle, Ultimecia is in the process of compressing time, and in her final stage, scanning her will reveal that she has transformed into a form which will allow her to absorb time and space itself. Note that Squall and Co. were avoiding being compressed and absorbed themselves through willpower and their belief in eachother; they were all willing eachother to stay around, and their friendships were strong enough for it to work. When a party member is knocked out in battle then, and not revived for some time, their mental bonds have been broken for too long and they get compressed and absorbed. This explains what happens when party members are "lost in time." When Ultimecia is defeated, time compression (TC) stops, and the party is left in the partially-compressed time-warp where you fight Ultimecia's final form. Everyone but Squall, following Laguna's encouragement to stay focused on each other, ends up together, and are able to focus their minds together and get back to their own time again. Squall, however, is still unable to let go of his "lone wolf" attitude and so ends up alone. When he tries to get back to his own time, since he is not able to trust his friends, he thinks of himself primarily and thus ends up with a younger version of himself in the orphanage. There he meets Edea, and Ultimecia shows up and gives Edea her powers. Ultimecia appeared there for two reasons probably. Firstly, she was still focusing intensely on Squall, evident by her statement "I can't dissapear yet!", indicating that she still wants to fight. Secondly, she probably wanted desperately to pass on her powers, at least on a subconscious level (see the Rinoa=Ultimecia section for more discussion on this aspect of sorceress powers). These two factors would easily have led her to Squall via the properties of TC.

Moving on, Squall attempts to go back again, but fails once more and this time ends up all alone. As he walks, he starts feeling more and more helpless, lost and distressed, losing all hope of escaping. TC responds to this and shifts so that Squall is on a tiny island from which there is literally no escape. His thoughts then turn to Rinoa, but because he's so worn out and distressed, the visions produced by TC are tainted, which is why Rinoa appears all blurred. These visions begin to escalate as Squall starts panicking, until he collapses from the strain. Now Rinoa, using the power of love (corny but true) finds him, and although she first thinks he is dead, she hugs him, causing him to wake up. Note it's hard to say whether or not Squall died or not, but whatever the case, he was brought back to a waking state by Rinoa, and together they get back to their own time, Squall finally being able to trust in Rinoa. Some people speculate that Squall died for good, but this is patently absurd when taking into account the rest of the ending FMV. Firstly, there is the fact that everyone in Garden is celebrating and are as happy as we've ever seen them. If Squall had died, one would certainly expect there to be some more grief shown at some point. He was, after all, the leader of SeeD at that point! Secondly, this implies that Rinoa goes mad and starts having illusions of Squall, which is pretty absurd considering what a happy atmosphere Square decide to put in the ending. Furthermore, Selphie points towards Rinoa and smiles, which she'd hardly be doing if Rinoa was in fact completely insane. Of course, the fact that we don't see Squall in the camera is because the battery went out before he came into view. It is possible that Squall did die when he collapsed in the final FMV, but it is overwhelmingly clear that then Rinoa brought him back to life anyway. So although one can speculate freely on his exact condition after collapsing, he certainly is alive after the flower field bursts open in all its splendour. Other theories suggest that the final bit of the ending is all in Rinoa's head, but this has, of course, not a shred of evidence to support it, so cannot be treated seriously. Squall survives, and they all live happily ever after; at least, this is what the game implies.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------THE TIME COMPRESSION SORCERESSES [NT14] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------One aspect of "Hippie Weirdness" (see the section on time compression) is the fact that when you travel to the future, you encounter several strange-looking sorceresses, most of which look identical to each other. So the question is, who/what are these sorceresses? It was long assumed that they were in fact all the sorceresses who lived in the era between Rinoa and Ultimecia. Some have speculated that killing them enabled Ultimecia to absorb their powers via time compression (i.e. their powers were absorbed into TC and subsequently siphoned into Ultimecia). This is based on Ultimecia's scan info, which says of Ultimecia: "A sorceress trying to change the world by compressing time and taking power from all sorceresses." It is unclear whether or not she would gain powers from other sorceresses by virtue of them all being compressed together into one neat little package for Ultimecia to absorb, or if TC simply made it possible for powers from past sorceresses to travel to Ultimecia's time. In any case, these details

are not terribly important. The significant question is whether or not the TC sorceresses are real women who live between Rinoa and Ultimecia's era. Well, it might be the case that Squall and Co. focusing intensely on reaching a sorceress in the future actually systematically stopped by every single sorceress before Ultimecia and killed her before moving on. This theory is particularly attractive for some as it presents a conclusive proof against the R=U theory (see later sections for more). The fact that the sorceresses look mostly identical to each other is then suggested to be due to practical reasons: Square simply didn't have the time/resources/interest to make them all look like individuals. However, the scan info of the sorceresses seems to suggest something rather different: "Sorceress from beyond time who appeared due to time compression. Uses magic, but it is not very powerful." The phrase "beyond time" suggests that the sorceresses do not in fact come from some specific time period, but that they only came into existence through time compression and don't belong to any given time. This leads naturally to the explanation we deem to be the most likely, namely that the sorceresses were created by time compression as a manifestation of the wills of Ultimecia and/or Squall and Co. Ultimecia would be intensely focusing on maintaining time compression, protecting it from outside influence, and her powerful will may easily have caused the sorceresses to manifest as guardians of TC. On the other hand, Squall and Co. were focusing on finding some sorceress they basically knew only by name in an unknown time, so it is not surprising at all that they would encounter these guardians. This explanation also means that the identical appearances of the sorceresses isn't a problem at all, as they weren't actually real people. The fact that the sorceresses all cackle maniacally, fade in and out of battle, and that the final sorceress is a giant worm is also explained by this, and in addition, the fact that you fight them in locations important to Squall and Co. makes sense: these would be places central in the memories of Squall and Co. and thus these places might be made manifest by TC. The fact that the sorceresses are introduced to you first as someone appearing to be Edea, and all the other surreal aspects of the event all make sense with this idea. However, recent information obtained by Squall_Of_SeeD may indicate that despite all of the above, the TC sorceresses might actually be real women from the future after all. He was able to locate the Scan info of the TC sorceresses in the Japanese version of the game. The Japanese text can be seen here: http://tinyurl.com/yabpmu9 The most important part is the following line in the above link: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/tcwitches.jpg In Japanese, this says "Jikan asshuku no kouka de, jikuu no kanata kara arawareta daidai no majo." which roughly translates as ""Generation after generation of witches who appeared from beyond(/the other side of) space and time as a result of time compression." The person who wrote the commentary in the above link expresses a very transparent view of this: "After leaving the Commencement Room of Save Points, it's been arranged to fight successive generations of witches." (Note that "daidai," meaning "generation after generation," is a different

word from "rekidai," the word used in the line right above, meaning "successive generations.") This person then goes on to make the following comment: "Witches are an important element within FF8, but the attention given the successive generations of witches is slovenly. As 11 of them appear in only 3 varieties, and all are simply named 'Witch,' this is undeniable. Added to that, their strength doesn't help, and overall their looks are below expectations. Their bad luck may exceed the precedent set by Seifer." In addition, Squall_Of_SeeD located the bestiary information of the TC witches in the Ultimania, which when translated say: (Witch (1) bestiary entry; pg. 243) "Successive generations of witches from beyond space and time." (Witch (2) bestiary entry; pg. 244) "One form of the successive generations of witches who appear in the Time Compressed World." (Note that the word "rekidai" is again used for "successive generations") It seems clear from the above that the words "daidai", 'generation after generation', and "rekidai", 'successive generations', is pretty unambiguously suggesting that the TC sorceresses are in fact real women from the era between Rinoa and Ultimecia. Yet even while two words suggest that, the part stating they are from "beyond/the other side of" space and time seems to suggest again that they aren't real. After all, if they were real women then they would certainly not be from "beyond" space and time, and they would hardly be far enough removed from Rinoa's era to warrant the statement "the other side of space and time". Now, it is possible to read the line as simply saying they simply came from 'far away' in space and time, which is just about ambiguous enough to not clash with the idea that they are real women, but this still does not seem very satisfactory. So we have arrived at the unfortunate situation where the Japanese Scan info and Ultimania appear to be suggesting one thing (albeit with rather odd wording), while the game itself appears to be suggesting the opposite. What are we then to make of it all? In fact the opinions of the authors are split. Myself (Sir B) and TheOnionKnight both firmly feel that the suggestion from the game itself is simply too strong to be counteracted by the works "daidai" and "rekidai". Squall_Of_SeeD on the other hand feels that the lack of ambiguity in these words is convincing enough and that the Ultimania should be given the final say in the matter. Thus we leave it up to you, the reader, to decide what you feel carries more weight in this specific case. It is a great pity that we are forced to leave this question open, because if the TC sorceresses -are- real women, then the storyline implications would be huge. As the matter stands though, we don't really have any other choice. NOTE: See the section "Concerning the role of official sources" for further discussion on how we should treat things like the Ultimania and direct translations from the Japanese version of the game. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE RAGNAROK AND THE BLOCKED OFF CITIES ON DISC 4 [NT15] -----------------------------------------------------------------------------The fact that the Ragnarok ends up in the future is something which seems quite random, but has in fact a quite nice explanation using our favourite property of time compression. Xu states when you enter the Ragnarok on disc 4 that she and the CC Group really wanted to play cards with Squall, so their desire to play cards meant that they followed Squall through time compression, along with the Ragnarok they were on when time compression was initiated. Unfortunately, the reason why all the cities are blocked off does not have a similarly nice explanation. It is certainly not an effect of time compression, because then there would be no meaningful distinction between a town and the rest of the world map, so if the compression blocks off towns it should block off everything. The only reasonable explanation seems to be that Ultimecia sealed them off herself to prevent disturbances while compressing time. Of course, the real reason is that Square needed to make space for the big ending FMV, and since time compression was going on they figured they could get away with randomly sealing off the cities without any form of explanation, but from a storyline perspective, Ultimecia sealing them appears to be our best bet.

----------------------------------------------DISCUSSION ON FATE [NT16] ----------------------------------------------Fate is a central theme in FF8. The fate of characters is several times referred to and discussed, as people like Squall first resist and then embrace their apparent "fate," while people like Ultimecia appear to be trying their utmost to change it. Indeed, the main characters are even referred to indirectly as the "Liberi Fatali," meaning the children of fate! But what is fate really? Here we discuss a couple of different interpretations of the concept. The most classical interpretation is that fate is the idea that events are being manipulated and controlled by some higher force(s). As vague an idea as this is, it is actually quite a tempting one considering certain events. For instance, the fact that Squall and Rinoa happen to stumble upon the Ragnarok in outer space right before their oxygen runs out is so extremely improbable that it almost seems necessary to appeal to some higher force to explain it. Similarly, the fact that a bunch of teenagers can defeat probably the strongest sorceress since Hyne all by themselves, even after she transforms and absorbs large amounts of time and space itself, seems almost a bit too ludicrous and unlikely. However, to the more scientific minded, this supernatural conception of fate will sound a bit unsatisfactory. It is indeed possible to think of fate not as something supernatural, but rather as merely a reflection of the fact that time is set in stone in FF8. In static time all events are fixed, all paths already laid out, and so everyone already has their fate written out in advance. But this fate would not necessarily be supernatural, rather an inevitable result of the laws of physics governing the FF8 universe. Still, though, this leaves unanswered the question of the aforementioned extremely unlikely events.

Of course, extremely unlikely events will, in a sufficiently old universe, have occurred several times anyway simply by recourse to statistics, so it is not too bad to just brush them off as statistical odditities. However, it is worth noticing that the unlikely events in the game occur in such a way so as to ensure the defeat of Ultimecia and the prevention of time compression. Since time compression, if completed, would contradict the existence of a static ULOT, this indicates another way of looking at things. The anthropic principle states (in one form) that we observe what we do because we exist. It arises as a consequence of the fact that our own universe appears incredibly finely tuned for us to live in; if any fundamental constant were altered just a little, life could never have arisen or maybe the universe itself would have collapsed shortly after being created. The anthropic principle then basically states that the universe appears to be so finely tuned to life of our kind because we exist to observe its finely tuned nature. Although this may sound like a meaningless tautology, it becomes quite meaningful if you make the assumption that ours is not the only universe. If you consider the idea that many universes come into existence all the time, then the anthropic principle becomes more relevant. Its interpretation would now be that the universe is so finely tuned to life because of all the universes that have arisen, ours is the only one finely tuned enough for life to arise and ponder why things are so finely tuned. This principle can be applied in FF8 too when considering time compression. In essence, the incredibly unlikely events occur as they do because of all the FF8 universes that have arisen, it was only the one in which those events occurred which prevented TC from being completed. Any universe which had similar events but not those unlikely ones would (probably) have resulted in TC being completed, and so these universes would have started off fully compressed, thus making them impossible to experience anything in. This basically means that we can easily and with good conscience brush off the unlikeliness of certain events as just statistical oddities which were bound to occur eventually anyway. As you can hopefully appreciate from all this, fate in FF8 is a subtle thing which we can't hope to be able to explain fully. Perhaps this brief discussion will have given some food for thought at least.

----------------------------------------------------------------WHAT ABOUT THE REAL WORLD? [NT17] ----------------------------------------------------------------~Static vs Dynamic~ [NT18] Surprisingly (or not), real world physics indicates that time may be static. You can use special relativity to show that the future and past exist as much as the present, so the notions of past, present and future are made redundant. For an observer, all of space-time would appear equal. So unless some new theory were to overthrow Einstein's, it seems that time in the real world is static as well. Introducing time-travelling to the real world yields the same conclusions we reach in the FF8 world: all time-travelling would have to be set in stone as well. It should, however, be noted that time-travelling in the real world seems rather unlikely, and, is at best, way, way beyond our current technology. If you're sceptical to my claims here, I'd recommend you read the book "The Fabric of The Cosmos" by Brian Greene, which explains what I

summarised here. It's a very good read, and actually discusses a concept of time identical to static time. Here are some relevant quotes, though, which show clearly the connection: "So if you buy the notion that reality consists of things in your freeze-frame mental image right now [...], then reality encompasses all of the events in spacetime." (page 138) "If you time-travelled back to December 31, 1965, then you were there, you were always there, you will always be there, you were never not there. [The hypothetical event considered] did not happen twice, [...] your presence [there] will be an eternal and immutable feature of spacetime." (page 453) "If you time travel to the past, you can't change it any more than you can change the value of pi." (page 454) Interestingly enough, I read this book after the static time framework had been completely deduced independently on the FF8 board here at GameFAQs. As you can imagine, it was a very pleasant surprise to have our ideas confirmed by such a top-notch scientist as Brian Greene, and it made us confident that we weren't merely babbling nonsense in the Time section of the FAQ! The book was also very helpful in inspiring the structure of the last draft of the Time section, as well as giving some good hints at how to easily explain certain concepts (indeed, I confess I almost straight out stole a couple of phrases from him). I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in time and space! ~The flow of time in the real world~ [NT19] It turns out that the question of the flow of time is a big unanswered question in physics today. Brian Greene in "The Fabric of the Cosmos," mentioned above, dedicates an entire sub-section of the book to the question: "Does time flow?" As mentioned above, the conclusions he reaches seem to be nothing else but static time. After deducing that all of (space)time exists all at once, like in static time, he concludes that: "Every moment 'is.' Under close scrutiny, the flowing river of time more closely resembles a giant block of ice with every moment forever frozen in place." (page 141) However, he acknowledges the fact that this is extremely counterintuitive and hard to grasp, and adds that "Time is a subtle subject and we are far from understanding it fully. It is possible that some insightful person will one day devise a new way of looking at time and reveal a bona fide physical foundation for a time that flows" (page 141). That's pretty much all I have to offer, though. The flow of time is basically a big unanswered question, and these authors have unsurprisingly not been able to penetrate deeper into the mystery than anyone else, so we'll have to leave it as an unanswered question. If you want to read a very interesting book on time and how our intuitive view of it may be completely wrong and not even necessary for physics to work, check out Julian Barbour's book, "The End of Time".

------------------------------------------------------------------------HOW ABOUT ALTERNATE UNIVERSES? [NT20] ------------------------------------------------------------------------It seems a popular approach based on modern real life ideas that alternate universes may form an important part of time-travelling and, thus, FF8. The visions Squall has in the ending are often cited as evidence of the existence of alternate universes (i.e. one where Rinoa's helmet bursts in space). However, it is the opinion of these authors that Squall's visions are too vague and trippy to really be used to constitute evidence, and further, that the idea of alternate universes simply makes things unnecessarily complex. This FAQ has described a way to explain everything without the necessity of appealing to more than one universe, and as alternate universes don't bring anything particularly desirable to the table, it seems redundant to consider it.

------------------------------------------------------------------DYNAMIC TIME - THE ALTERNATIVE [NT21] -------------------------------------------------------------------Explanation of the Dynamic Time TheoryWritten by: Squall of SeeD/Glenn Morrow The purpose of this article is to explain the Dynamic Time Theory. Whereas this FAQ's authors agree on most issues concerning time in Final Fantasy VIII, on this particular matter, I disagree with Sir Bahamut and TheOnionKnight. While they hold to the Static Time Theory -- which states that time is what it is, has always existed as it is, and always will exist as it is, with changes to the past being an impossibility -- I hold to this view. As such, we felt it would be best if I were to offer my own explanation of this theory. The principle assumption one should have in mind concerning the Dynamic Time Theory is that, like the Static Time Theory, it would also involve a static timeline in a sense. This is to say that it also "is what it is," and exists as it's "supposed to." However, as in Buddhist views of the self -- or, as some would put it, the non-self -- this theory calls for carrying the assumption that time is something that is always evolving. When it moves forward -- from one day to the next, one hour to the next, or even one second to the next -- it is evolving. The same is true of what is wrought by changes in the past. Time is not so much "overwritten" -- a common misconception of this view of time -- as it is that it evolves into something else. What happened before isn't erased from existence. It still happened. Time has just picked up and moved on. For an example, I am now referencing Marvel Comics' storylines concerning Cable, the son of the popular co-founding X-Man called "Cyclops." -- "Your future is my past..." -When Cable was an infant, the ages-old villain known as "Apocalypse" infected him with a "Techno Organic Virus" that turned living tissue into living metal. As this virus ravaged baby Cable's nervous system, it seemed assured that the infant would die.

However, a representative of the Askani Sisterhood that existed thousands of years in the future -- a future ruled by Apocalypse, and in which he was opposed by the Askani -- appeared to take Cable to the future, where he could be saved. Cyclops was forced to let his child go to the future in order to save his life. There, the infant was raised to become the savior of the people, destined to someday confront Apocalypse and topple the tyrant forever. While that day *did* come and Apocalypse *was* killed, the New Canaanite Order that ruled in his absence was also evil and things were not much better than they were before. The Clan Chosen -- Cable's people -- lost their war to the New Canaanites, and all that had been accomplished seemed to be for nothing. It was then decided that Cable should go back in time and attempt to prevent Apocalypse from ever ascending to his nigh-omnipotent power at the end of the second millennium A.D. After several years in the past, Cable -- with the help of his father and the other X-Men -- was successful in preventing Apocalypse's ascension. With Apocalypse's rise to power undone, the future that Cable had been raised in simply ceased to be. But not entirely. It still happened. He and others that had been there still remembered it, and those who had merely heard about it still knew that it had existed. Nothing changed in the present era as a result of preventing the future from coming to pass, despite the fact that the present was a product of that future. Time simply moved on. It evolved. Even with the future undone, Cable's Personal Line of Time (PLOT) would still look like this: A-----B-----C-----D----->Future A = his birth B = him going to the future C = him returning to the past several years after he had left, but as a grown man D = Apocalypse's ascension being prevented With that in mind, before we examine the Universal Line of Time (ULOT), it should be considered that the ULOT is a product of all the PLOTs within. The ULOT is like a giant tapestry composed of all the PLOTs that constitute it, each PLOT being akin to a thread in the tapestry. So long as a single PLOT existed in a certain era or timeline, undone or not, that era or timeline is part of the universe's own PLOT (the ULOT). Thus, in the situation being discussed, the PLOT of the Marvel Universe would look like this: (Note: For the sake of simplicity, this illustration *does account any other alternate timelines, circumvented future similar as regarding the Marvel Universe; there are simply to take into account without deviating from the purpose of are not being disregarded, but are simply beyond the scope detail here.) not* take into eras, or anything far too many of them this article. They of this article to

A-----B-----C-----D----->Future A B C D = = = = the birth of the universe Apocalypse's ascension Cable's return to the past Apocalypse's failure to achieve his god-like powers

While the Static Timeline Theory as proposed by TheOnionKnight and Sir Bahamut would call for the concept of a timeline being a misnomer, as can be seen here, it's still fully possible for time to be looked at as a line and as something in which PLOTs apply -- even despite changes in the past. -- "If it leaks, we can kill it..." -For a similar example, let us look to the "Terminator" film series. The premise of these stories is that a computer system called "Skynet" -possessing highly advanced artificial intelligence, to the extent that it has gained sentience -- decides to annihilate homo sapiens and allow machines to rule the Earth. The war between blood and metal begins on a day remembered to history as "Judgment Day." On August 29th of 1997, Skynet asserted its individuality and commandeered the computer systems of American nuclear missile silos. Targeting their contents at Russia, knowing the other country would counterattack with its own nuclear arsenal, Skynet effectively orchestrated a rain of nuclear destruction upon much of the world -- eliminating the majority of the human population and effectively crippling all nations that might have opposed Skynet. Naturally, in the war that followed, a legendary leader would rise among the ranks of the humans to guide his people during the conflict. In the first two "Terminator" films, Skynet sent mechanized assassins back in time, first in an attempt to kill Sarah Connor -- mother of the legendary Resistance commander, John Connor -- before she could give birth to her child, and, later, to target John after his birth. In both cases, the plots are foiled by agents of John's future self, who he also sent back through time. The second attempt actually results in Judgment Day being averted and the future seemingly undone. "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," however, established that Judgment Day was only postponed and that the future where a war with machines ensued would still come to pass -- but when these events were set in motion had now changed. August 29, 1997 was the date given for Judgment Day in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." This date was given first by Sarah Connor and later by the T-800 sent to protect John. Sarah should know because Kyle Reese -- John's father, and the agent he had sent back in time to protect his mother in the first "Terminator" film -- would have told her back in 1984. The T-800 should know for obvious reasons to those familiar with the film series. "Terminator 3," however, takes place approximately 10 years after "Terminator 2," by which time 1997 has obviously come and gone. In fact, "Terminator 2" would have taken place around 1995, seeing as how John Connor was 10 years old at the time, and was conceived in 1984. In other words, Judgment Day fell approximately seven years later than it was supposed to (John is 19 during the third film).

Later still, yet another change to the timeline occurs during the events of "Terminator 3." Another Skynet assassin is sent back in time, its purpose to eliminate John's lieutenants from the future that emerged out of a Judgment Day that fell in 2004. Successful in eliminating several before Judgment Day falls once again, the previous course of events that followed from the changes wrought in "Terminator 2" is also undone, resulting in yet another new timeline. Thus far, we have three changes to the "Terminator" timeline -- four versions of how time had flowed. There's, of course, the original timeline, in which Sarah Connor conceived John at some point prior to Skynet raining destruction across the Earth in 1997. In that timeline, John emerged as a leader of mankind's Resistance, and later sent his agent, Kyle Reese, back in time to protect his mother in 1984. Following that, there's the timeline in which Kyle becomes John's father, conceiving him with Sarah Connor in 1984. Skynet still causes its global conflagration in 1997 and rises to power, and John still emerges as a leader of the people to combat the cybernetic threat. Next, we have a timeline in which John's life was threatened by the T-1000 in 1995 and he was saved by a T-800 his future self sent to protect him. In this timeline, the Judgment Day of 1997 is averted, and instead follows some 10 years later. John then still emerges to lead humanity in its Resistance against the machines. Finally, we have a timeline in which events follow more or less the same as the previous up until the year 2004 -- at which point the T-X arrives from the future and eliminates several of John's lieutenants from the previous future. As always, John emerges as the leader of mankind, and the events of "Terminator: Salvation" follow from here without any new changes to the timeline as yet. In each case, time changed, but it was never replaced. The events of the original timeline are still known -- they still happened. Time was not erased. It simply evolved. At this point, you may wonder what relevance this has to Final Fantasy VIII and its timeline. The relevance comes in via establishing an example of what I believe the true nature of time to be in Final Fantasy VIII -- the idea being that time as depicted in the game is not what it always was. The point is to suggest that -- once upon a time, if you'll excuse the obvious expression -- an "original" timeline existed in which none -- or at least very few -- of the things that we see happen in the story of Final Fantasy VIII occurred. Under this theory, it was only through tampering with time that those events we see in Final Fantasy VIII came to pass in the first place. I will here offer a summary of what I'm proposing: (Note: Any number of "re-writes" or evolutions may have played into the evolution of Final Fantasy VIII's ULOT before the time loop came to be established. For the purpose of simplicity, the minimal number required for the time loop to come into play will be represented here.) -- The Evolution of Final Fantasy VIII's Universal Line of Time --

-Original timelineSquall is born. Squall dies without ever taking part in any of the key events of Final Fantasy VIII because none of it has happened yet. Someone -- possibly Ultimecia, or possibly Ellone herself -- screws with time in the future. -Second timelineTime has been screwed up, but evolves, and events happen to follow in such a way that Squall is in the party which defeats Ultimecia -- whoever she happened to be originally (see the "Rinoa=Ultimecia theory" and "Unjust Persecution" articles below for more on this). Ultimecia -- and possibly Squall as well -- arrive in the past, where she gives Edea her powers, and where Squall may have inspired Edea to create SeeD and Garden. -Third timelineEither the events of Final Fantasy VIII itself now occur, or events very much like them. In any case, a woman calling herself Ultimecia emerges out of the previous future to tamper with the past. Her actions then either concretely establish the time loop, or set in motion a fourth timeline -- this time, the exact events of Final Fantasy VIII -- which does. -All future loops of time and the "normal time" that follows themThe events of Final Fantasy VIII and its subsequent timeline. Time evolved until this time loop was established, and now time will continue to evolve naturally beyond the point of Adel's death. -- "You say you want an evolution..." -For a real-world example of what I'm suggesting, let's examine the PLOT of John Lennon and assume that someone were to go back in time to prevent his death. First, we'll look at how the common misinterpretation of the Dynamic Time Theory would look at his PLOT, and then we'll examine just what Lennon's PLOT *would* look like according to the Dynamic Time Theory in such a situation: -Analyzing John Lennon's PLOT according to the common misinterpretation of theDynamic Time Theory ^--------------->| | | | | | A---------B(C)[------->]Future | | | | | A-----------C | | |<---------------| A = John Lennon's birth B = Lennon being shot five times by Mark Chapman and then dying C = Lennon being shot in the shoulder, but being otherwise fine (C) = The moment of C being imposed over B [------->] = The rest of Lennon's life after time "starts up again" As can be seen in this illustration, the misinterpretation of the Dynamic Time

Theory would call for the timeline in which Lennon died being negated and with it having never happened. However, this is not the case at all. As with the illustration regarding Cable's PLOT, or as explained in the illustration utilizing the "Terminator" film series, the Dynamic Time Theory would actually call for taking the "negated" timeline into account. Thus, the real diagram for saving John Lennon would look like this: A-------B-C------->Future A = Lennon's birth B = Lennon's death C = Lennon being shot in the shoulder, but being otherwise fine Under the Dynamic Time Theory, from the perspective of Lennon's PLOT, he would be getting shot in the shoulder immediately after he died. All the time that had passed after the moment of his death until someone set out to change it would go unrecognized by his own PLOT, but would still be relevant to that of anyone else who was aware of the timeline in which he had died. Compare Lennon's PLOT, then, to that of the Marvel Universe from our earlier illustration: -Lennon's PLOTA-------B-C------->Future A = Lennon's birth B = Lennon's death C = Lennon being shot in the shoulder, but being otherwise fine A-----B-----C-----D----->Future A B C D = = = = the birth of the universe Apocalypse's ascension Cable's return to the past Apocalypse's failure to achieve his god-like powers

In both cases, the events of the previous timeline have remained in the memory -- and, consequently, part of the PLOT -- of those who had known of the prior timeline. As the ULOT is a tapestry composed of all PLOTs, the previous timeline still exists as part of the current one. The current ULOT, however, has evolved out of the developments of the previous. Naturally, some PLOTs will be affected by such events, but any cloth will get some frayed edges after prolonged rough treatment. Now, at this point, you may say that this is all speculative. The game itself tells us through Ellone that "You can't change the past," and what may have applied to the Marvel Universe or to "Terminator" has jack to do with what's going on in Final Fantasy VIII. A fair enough concern, and I'll be addressing it momentarily. I ask that you bear with me down this road just a little further.

I hope that so far I have successfully demonstrated the mechanics of the Dynamic Time Theory in a manner that is easy to understand. I will now touch upon those concepts within Final Fantasy VIII that could be construed as contradicting the concept, and point out why they do not -- as well as point out, in fact, where we see changes made to the past in Final Fantasy VIII! -- "Silence! I can change my own destiny!" --FateThe universe of Final Fantasy VIII -- and, consequently, its timeline(s) -seems to be governed by the concept known as "fate" or "destiny" -- that idea cwhich suggests all things to be pre-ordained. This concept most certainly fits with the Static Time Theory, and is often thought to be at odds with the Dynamic Time Theory. However, this is not the case. What is meant to be still is. What should happen happens. Changes to the past that cause time to evolve should merely be looked upon as fate. There is not really any contradiction present. This is simply a case where fate is far more obvious to recognize for what it is in the case of a time loop in which events will always play out the same due to the same people occupying that time loop and making the same decisions every time. -"You can't change the past": Discrediting EllonePerhaps the biggest piece of evidence supporting the view of a Static Time Theory's validity is that Ellone tells Squall that "You can't change the past," her own efforts to do so having failed. While this might seem to be true, Ellone's unique situation has to be taken into account. It is her very attempts to change the past as seen in the game that play small parts in helping the future -- and, consequently, the past -- come to pass. She's really only reinforcing it all, even as she makes attempts to change it. Ellone lives within a time loop and is not aware of it, and -- being every time the same person in the same circumstances, with the same history -- she will always make the same decisions. This too could be looked upon as fate. She came to believe that she couldn't change time, but as an individual within a time loop that she is unaware of, she's hardly credible -- especially when one considers what her powers allow her to do! Those she was sending into the past throughout the game -- Squall and his friends -- had no intention to exert their wills over Laguna, Kiros or Ward, and would likely not have done so even had they known that they could, unlike Ultimecia who freely and joyfully exerted her will onto others. The situation being what it is, I personally don't feel that Ellone is a reliable source of information. While true that she could not change the past, she was unable to do so in any of the ways she *tried* it -- even while someone like Ultimecia demonstrated that it is more than possible to make someone in the past do what you want them to do if you have the desire and they don't have a great enough will to resist.

Having the same objectives and the same history throughout every turn of the loop, Ellone would try the same things every time. In addition to Ultimecia demonstrating that the past can be affected via time travel, it's established in-game that the powers of Squall and the others provided Laguna and his comrades with additional strength. Furthermore, when Ellone sent Squall to the "nearest past," he was able to actually speak with Rinoa -- she genuinely heard him! Ellone's powers -- and those of Junction Machine Ellone -- provide more than a means to simply observe the past, unable to influence it. It's simply come to be that the chain of events that established the time loop are ones in which Ellone will never be able to alter Laguna's past. Once again: We plainly see the affects in-game of various individuals influencing the past -- sometimes in subtle ways, others dramatic. But in either case, their intentions are felt and their actions produce results. It just happens to be that the results of those actions over time became a self-perpetuating time loop. -"I will cease to exist as I am now. Only to be reborn as a 'God' to rule over every soul": Ultimecia's powersIn the event of the Dynamic Time Theory being valid, many would argue that we should be seeing an increase in Edea, Rinoa and Ultimecia's powers with each turn of the time loop -- whereas they would argue that the Static Time Theory would simply call for Edea receiving the powers she receives from Ultimecia when she receives them, and in the quantity that she is destined to receive them. Despite this, as noted by Sir Bahamut above, this issue applies for the Static Time Theory as well. However, in neither case does the power of witches "add up" over time. If this claim held true, Edea would, of course, increase in power until Ultimecia was easily capable of defeating Squall and the others -- thus, resulting in the time loop breaking. For the Static Time Theory in particular this is problematic, as -- if power were to "add up" in the past at all, to say nothing of Ultimecia being someday capable of defeating Squall and co. -- that would count as a change to time and there would be no static timeline. In fact, according to the Static Time Theory's very foundations, if Ultimecia could *ever* be capable of defeating Squall and co., then the defeat should surely have already happened. Fear not. Both theories still work fine, and without either involving the witch embodiment increasing in potency with each turn of the time loop. As Sir B masterfully explained above with what I like to call his "Theory of Everything" (look this concept up on a search engine if you've never heard of it before), witch powers can accumulate within the same body without necessarily giving the witch in possession the ability to wield greater power. Their own natural affinity for magic seems to determine their capacity for wielding the witch embodiment.

This is illustrated in the game by the fact that Rinoa grows no more obviously powerful after absorbing Adel's powers than she had been before, with only Edea's. As Sir B also noted, the possibility that a line of weaker witches existed between Rinoa and Ultimecia could go great lengths toward resolving matters. The presence of such a weaker line is something I would certainly argue to be the case anyway given that I believe the series of witches encountered in Time Compression to be Rinoa's successors (for more on that, see the "Time Compression" entry -- entry UR14 of this document -- under the "Rinoa = Ultimecia" section's analysis). Alternately, we could also explain the lack of powers building up to break the time loop the way I used to in earlier versions of this FAQ: Assuming that Ultimecia's power decreases in potency each time she is defeated by SeeD -- and being mortally wounded should certainly count as a decrease in energy -- much of her supreme power from the final battle is lost to her. This idea is supported by the fact that she is back in her old body following the battle -- despite having transcended it previously -- and barely able to so much as stand, much less even attempt to exact revenge on Squall before she dies. She was obviously weakened. Perhaps even losing some of the power she'd had before she started. Assuming all this to be true, a numerical diagram of the transfer of power would look something like this: (Note: For the sake of simplicity, and unless otherwise prompted, assume a Witch's full strength counts as 10, while that of Ultimecia at the time of her death counts as a mere 4.) -Ultimecia's power added to Edea's10 + 4 = 14 -Adel's power added to Rinoa's14 + 10 = 24 (Rinoa's power, as well as Ultimecia's power before we fight her) -The power of the 11 Witches encountered in Time Compression added to Rinoa's24 + 110 = 134 -Ultimecia's power after getting the shit kicked out of her, immediately prior to her death4 -Ultimecia's power added to Edea's10 + 4 = 14 Wash. Rinse. Repeat. The same quantity of power would be in play each time.

I hope that this article serves to positively compliment Sir Bahamut's compilation of our thoughts on time in Final Fantasy VIII, and that it may serve the Final Fantasy VIII fan community well in their exploration of the game's story. At the very least, I hope it allows fans to experience a new appreciation for the game's engrossing storyline.

===================================== -Section III: -Ultimecia===================================== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PREFACE [U1] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ultimecia, the main villain, is a woman shrouded in mystery. Her motives are never revealed, her background never brought up, and all in all, we don't know anything about her except that she appears to be pissed off at SeeD and that she wants to compress time for power, demonstrated by her scan info: "A sorceress trying to change the world by compressing time and taking power from all sorceresses." Compressing time would, by uniting all of time into a single event, put all of the sorceress powers from all of time into one point, which Ultimecia would then absorb, demonstrated by the final Ultimecia's scan info: "Ultimecia, transformed to absorb all time and space. Absorbing all existence as we speak." Absorbing all of time and space, as well as receiving all of the sorceress powers throughout time, would essentially make Ultimecia God. This quest for supreme power is generally accepted as at least one big motivation behind her actions, but we are still left to wonder if Ultimecia really has any other reasons for wanting to do what she does. And how did she become evil in the first place? It seems unlikely that she was simply born purely evil, intent to become God from day 1. It is possible that Ultimecia's only real part of the FAQ will present two theories and motivations. In the end, we hope that there may be more to Ultimecia than meets ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1) THE RINOA = ULTIMECIA THEORY [UR1] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This highly controversial theory has become immensely (in)famous ever since it was first conceived of. Whoever it was who first came up with the idea, we don't know, because so many people ripped him/her off that it's become impossible to tell by now. motive was power, but this next which expand on Ultimecia's origins you will at least understand that the eye.

The theory basically states that Ultimecia is in fact an older Rinoa. In other words, after the game ended, a string of events was set into motion, ultimately leading to Rinoa ending up "becoming" Ultimecia. This simple idea has been the starting point of countless lengthy debates and flamewars on many different forums, but is it really true? Ultimately, we will show that the theory is highly implausible, and simply not valid, or even practically possible as a theory. We will show that there is absolutely no basis in assuming Square intended for Rinoa to be Ultimecia, ultimately nailing the coffin by referring to the Ultimania guide itself, Square's official guidebook. -------------------THE BASIS [UR2] --------------------The R=U theory is a proposition of what might happen to Rinoa after a set of assumptions are made. To be precise, these assumptions are: 1) A sorceress has an extended lifespan, and will live much longer than a normal human. 2) Rinoa wouldn't give away her powers to some other innocent girl, and would instead want to keep them herself. 3) Rinoa's mental strength isn't all that good if she's all alone (i.e. without Squall and co.). You may notice that assumptions 2 and 3 are really subsets of a greater assumption, or rather interpretation of the plot: Rinoa's psyche. Obviously everyone will form an opinion of the main characters' psyches during the game, and this theory is based on an interpretation of Rinoa which makes assumptions 2 and 3 perfectly logical and plausible. Assumption 1 is brought up later, but just accept it now for the sake of understanding the theory. It is quite trivial to see that once the three -- or, as explained, two -assumptions are drawn, we can deduce that Rinoa will outlive Squall and all her friends. They will all die eventually, whether it be of age, illness or in combat. Rinoa will witness her true love and knight (Squall) die, as well as her father and all her other friends. They will die and she will not. Of course you might argue that she could die in a car accident, say, but it requires less assumptions to say she lived than died so it is ultimately a more reasonable statement. I mentioned that Squall is Rinoa's knight. Just to remind you of what we know about a sorceress's knight: Edea tells us that a sorceress's knight is supposed to help maintain the sorceress's mental stability and keep her from buckling under the pressure of the people. Remember that sorceresses are generally hated and there is even an organization made solely for killing them!. Adel, for instance, had no knight, and I don't think I have to remind you what kind of a sorceress Adel was! An example of a sorceress who is good and has a knight would be Edea, who has her knight, Cid. So we have a Rinoa, all alone in a world filled with people who generally

want her dead, fear her and hate her -- and knowing that SeeD still exists to kill people like her. We have a Rinoa in this scenario without a knight. Based on the aforementioned assumptions, we can now see that Rinoa could very easily be Ultimecia, driven insane by the grief and pressure, probably driven to severe paranoia. Eventually, she is so warped that there's hardly any trace of the old Rinoa in her. Instead, she is now the evil Ultimecia, trying to compress time and absorb all sorceress powers and eventually all time and space itself. NOTE: Some people think Ultimecia could be a sane Rinoa trying to get back to Squall, but this makes absolutely no sense at all seeing as Ultimecia tries to kill Squall several times. If Rinoa really is Ultimecia, the only reasonable option is that she is so twisted that she retains no aspects of her old self (i.e. Rinoa and Ultimecia have to essentially be different minds in the same body). I should add that if Rinoa continued to use GFs after the game ended, her insanity would doubtlessly be "amplified." GFs are very effective at removing memories after all. Remember Squall. He had forgotten almost all his childhood except the strongest memories of Ellone, and he'd only used GFs for 4-5 years. Of course, this added assumption cannot realistically be backed up by anything over than personal opinions on what happens after the game, so it it is not a strong point in itself, and we are really left with insanity as the primary thing. The theory requires such a strong insanity over such a long time that Rinoa could literally become a completely different person. If you then wonder what the point of the theory is, since R and U are basically different people anyway even according to the R=U theory, you are not alone. Now, you may ask yourself what "hints" supposedly back up this claim? And are there not certain things in the game which seem to contradict this theory? In this next section, all arguments used in favour of the theory are discussed, and, as we shall see, it does not contain much backing from the game. --------------------THE HINTS [UR3] --------------------NOTE: This next bit was written (almost) entirely by Squall_Of_SeeD, based primarily on the framework created mainly by myself (Sir B), with hints and such having been compiled from a multitude of sources over time. Also note that sorceresses will be referred to as "witches" in this next bit, seeing as that is that they were called in the Japanese version. ---------------------------Witches and Immortality [UR4] ---------------------------At its core, the theory works off the assumption that witches have immortality. Often-cited evidence of this is that Edea's facial features are far more youthful than should typically be expected for a woman married to a man

confirmed to be in his forties by the Final Fanasy VIII Ultimania guide (pg. 32). Another bit of evidence offered in this regard is that Ultimecia needed to go further into the past to cast Time Compression than the generation the game takes place in. When she finally is sent far enough back, it is into Adel's younger self that her consciousness arrives. The assumption here is that Ultimecia must have needed to go much further back in time, and that Adel, consequently, has lived longer than a normal lifespan. *Response*: To begin with, Edea's face certainly looks more developed and mature than those of Ellone, Selphie, Quistis or Rinoa. She has the appearance of a woman in her thirties, at least to this author. For that matter, even if she didn't, there's little reason to assume she couldn't have married an older man. As for Adel, considering how little we know of the mechanics of Time Compression, it's hardly a safe forest to venture into when looking for support for this idea. We don't know the limits of Junction Machine Ellone's power to send Ultimecia into the past. It may have been one year shorter than where she needed to be or 100 years too short. ---------------------------------Witches and Dying in Peace [UR5] ------------------------------Near the ending of the game, just before Ultimecia's death, Edea makes this very important statement: "In order to die in peace, a sorceress must be free of all her powers." What, then, does she mean? Does she mean that dying without first giving up one's powers would mean a bad afterlife existence for a witch? Or does she mean that a witch must simply be free of her powers to die? This could, perhaps, be taken to mean "Remaining alive, but not properly, forever caught in the dying moment until the witch is free of her powers." If this is so, then it may well be that witches are immortal after all if they can't even die until they are free of their powers. In fact, the Japanese line that Edea speaks here says simply, "A witch cannot die while still holding onto the witches' power." It may be that in the case of witches who do die, they're either giving up their powers so as to be free of the pain of death, or their body is simply forcing them to surrender their powers. *Response*: A strong point that may support the theory, but on its own doesn't do so, if only because SeeD fights and defeats 13 witches during the game -- all of whom die either immediately after being dealt a fatal blow or shortly thereafter. If such a concept of remaining alive as long as was desired were present, it seems more reasonable to assume that the story would have made a point of demonstrating it. In fact, the story does the opposite, as the whole idea of a "succession of

witches," so important in the game, directly implies that sorceresses cannot stick around for as long as they want. ---NOTE (by SoS): The three authors of this FAQ don't have a consensus on the nature of the witches fought by SeeD during Time Compression. This author believes them to have been real women who inherited the witch embodiment, whereas TheOnionKnight and Sir Bahamut feel that they're manifestations of various properties of the Time Compression phenomena. More on their take on these witches can be read in the "The Nature of Time" article above, in a section entitled "The Time Compression Sorceresses." In either case, Adel seems to die instantly when fatally injured during the battle with her -- though this is arguably influenced by Ultimecia -- and Ultimecia dies not long after she's defeated by SeeD, even while her final words appear to be defiance of her fate. As well, in Dissidia Final Fantasy, Squall slices his gunblade through Ultimecia's head, killing her instantly. ---------------------------Witches and Hyne [UR6] ---------------------Hyne is said to have been the progenitor of the witch embodiment power. The story of Hyne also goes that he created homo sapiens, then took a nap while they worked. When he awoke, he found that they had multiplied beyond his capacity to control them. In order for them to have multiplied so, it must be that his nap lasted a few hundred to several thousand years. This must mean that Hyne is immortal. Considering that the witch embodiment originates from him, it may well be that the witches inherited increased longevity, or full immortality. *Response*: As will be seen at the end of this section, witches don't have extended lifespans. They live lifetimes comparable to that of ordinary people. ------------------------------Witches and Appearances [UR7] ---------------------------While it may be argued that Ultimecia's grey hair -- something that normally wouldn't happen except in the case of aging -- is indicative of her lacking immortality, it should be kept in mind that, when possessing Edea, Ultimecia changed the length of her host body's hair from several feet to a few inches in seconds. For that matter, many witches display physical abnormalities, whether they be the veins on Edea's face and her elongated fingers, Adel's size, muscular appearance and discoloured skin, or the larger-than-normal bodies of the eleven witches encountered by SeeD as they made their way to the future. Another point often brought up to contest this aspect of the theory is that Adel seeking a successor suggests that witches do have a limited lifespan, but it should be remembered that Adel was at war with the world. Even her own

subjects hated her. It may simply be that she feared being assassinated without having a chosen successor already selected. She wouldn't want to endure the pain of her death constantly until she could find one. *Response*: These were once strong points, difficult to find fault with. On their own, they don't prove the immortality of witches, but coupled with another strong suggestion that the concept is plausible, they would certainly support the notion. That said, it should be kept in mind that witches have a natural instinct to want to choose a successor that they feel is fitting for their power. As the game's tutorial says, they avoid spreading their powers too thin: "Sorceress The legend goes that the Great Hyne created people. The sorceresses were given a fragment of Hyne's own power. It's hard to determine how many sorceresses exist today, for many keep their powers concealed. However, it is believed that they avoid spreading their power too thin." Plus, as mentioned above, witches have the lifespans of ordinary humans. This will be confirmed at the end of this section. -------------------------Witches and Wings [UR8] ----------------------In the opening FMV, Rinoa is shown at one point emerging from a group of white feathers, the same colour as the feathers on her wings. She's later shown emerging from a group of black feathers, the same colour as the feathers of Ultimecia's wings. Ultimecia is the only witch aside from Rinoa to have wings. This may be an indication of who Rinoa will become, her soul tainted and dark after the loss of her knight. She is then no longer an "angel," but a "fallen angel" instead, this represented through her black wings. *Response*: Wings and feathers are a motif of all the main witches in the game. Edea's dress has black feathers around the collar, Adel has two spiky wing-like protrusions extending from her back, Rinoa has her white feathery wings, and Ultimecia has her own black feathered wings. With this in mind, all that's represented here definitively is a connection between witches, not a connection between Rinoa and Ultimecia alone. Certainly there is a symbolic connection between the two women, though, in that they alone have feathery wings -- one pair black and one pair white. Rather than necessarily representing a transition of good to evil, however, it's as likely to be representing opposed good and evil -- opposed uses of the witch embodiment's power. ----

----------------------------------Ultimecia and Rinoa's Faces [UR9] ----------------------------------During the game's ending FMV, Ultimecia's face flashes over Rinoa's three times in a very striking manner -- and she also bears quite a resemblance to Rinoa: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/Rinoa2.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/Ultimecia_FMV.jpg While Edea, Zell and Seifer's faces also flash over Rinoa's during that cutscene (Edea's doing so first and a total of five times even, whereas Ultimecia's does so only three times), there's a somewhat greater emphasis on those moments when Ultimecia's face does so. The images of Ultimecia's face are solid and the only images on-screen at the time, whereas Edea, Zell and Seifer's faces appear in something of a "hole" in the screen and share screentime with other imagery. The faces of these other characters flash by in a rather insignificant manner, whereas Ultimecia's three appearances in that FMV are of her face being ever closer to the camera with each shot, until she is staring toward the camera intensely in the midst of Rinoa's image also looking toward the camera -- the sequence culminating in Rinoa's helmet in space bursting open. While it may be viewed as an insignificant string of imagery, it may well have represented Rinoa's "death" and "rebirth" as Ultimecia, the shattering of the helment symbolizing that she would cease to be who she was and become the witch that SeeD must fight. Though differences in Rinoa and Ultimecia's bodies may be cited as evidence that they don't look alike (their shoulder width and breast sizes, for example), again, Ultimecia was able to change the length of Edea's hair within seconds. As well, Adel and the witches encountered in Time Compression all bear physical appearances that are quite different from the bodies of normal women. The power granted by the witch embodiment can apparently deform a witch's body over time, and may even allow a witch to simply alter her appearance at will. *Response*: An intriguing interpretation of the ending FMV's imagery, and one that could serve as compelling evidence if coupled with other strong support for the theory. On its own, however, it's not enough to form a case. As things stand, it seems to require already assuming that Rinoa is Ultimecia in order to conclude that the scene was intended to infer something of that nature. As for a resemblance between Ultimecia and Rinoa, one can compare the faces of Selphie, Ellone and Edea with Rinoa's, and all will bear strong resemblances to her as well: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/Rinoa2.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/SorceressEdea2.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/Selphie.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/Ellone.jpg

All had the same character designer, Tetsuya Nomura -- to whom the charge has often been leveled that he designs similar looking female characters -- and -by today's standards -- Final Fantasy VIII had comparatively primitive FMV graphics. Under these conditions, there are almost certainly going to be resemblances in all these women's facial features in the FMVs: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/Rinoa2.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/SorceressEdea2.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/Selphie.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/Ellone.jpg For that matter, Dissidia Final Fantasy has a moment where noting a similarity in appearance between the two women -- if, indeed, they were the same woman -would be not only appropriate, but altogether logical. Yet it doesn't happen. For more on that, read the part of this section addressing Dissidia below. -----------------Griever [UR10] --------------Squall carries a ring with a lion engraved upon it, the ring's name being "Griever." This is also the name of the GF that Ultimecia summons during the final battle of the game, and which she junctions herself to for much of the battle. Earlier in the story, Squall gives this ring to Rinoa. Perhaps Griever was contained within the ring the same as Doomtrain was contained within the Solomon Ring, or perhaps it was even a creature that Rinoa herself created in honour of Squall. *Response*: There may have been a "real" Griever that existed in stories that Squall had known of -- just as he had known of Bahamut as a legendary "great GF" prior to the battle with the dragon, in which Squall refers to him as such -- but the only suggestion offered in-game as to Griver's origin is that Ultimecia created him from images in Squall's mind to fight him. When using the Scan spell on Griever, we're told that, in Squall's mind, he's the strongest GF: "Griever In Squall's mind, the strongest GF. Through Ultimecia's power, continues fighting without vanishing." Ultimecia's powers apparently allowed her to reach into other's minds, pull out certain images, and then give them physical form. This ability to reach into another's mind may also be displayed whenever she removes a character's complete stock of a particular spell during the battle with her. In the case of Griever, she simply manifested the thoughts she pulled from Squall's mind regarding what he believed to be the most powerful being in existence. The more extensive text from the Japanese version of the game featured Ultimecia saying this as she summoned the creature: (Translation by me) "Your thoughts, I shall summon the most powerful of things [from them]. The

more strongly you feel these thoughts, [the greater] shall be that which torments you. Fufu." [Translation note: "Fu" is often used as a sound for villainous laughter in Japanese fiction. We're keeping "Fufu" in for nostalgia's sake. It's sort of an in-joke for the three of us. Just pretend it's "Haha" if it bothers you.] This would obviously be a very cunning move on Ultimecia's part for a number of reasons. Not only because she's summoning a powerful opponent for her enemies to fight, but also one which Squall may not have initially believed it was possible to defeat. This idea that Griever was created from Squall's thoughts is also confirmed by the Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary Ultimania File 2: Scenario guide (pg. 247): http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/Griever-1.jpg "Legendary lion praised as the king of beasts The animal called a lion doesn't exist in this world beyond the imagination. This aloof figure is attractive to Squall, featured on his Gunblade and accessories, and firmly locked in the foundation of his mind. [Caption of a screenshot featuring Griever being summoned] The witch Ultimecia materializes Griever as a GF, pulled from an image in Squall's mind, and utilizes him in battle." Given all this, Griever is certainly not a link between Rinoa and Ultimecia. -----------------------------------------------The Possible Origin Of Ultimecia's Name [UR11] --------------------------------------------There was an ancient Grecian King by the name of "Mausolus," whose queen -also his sister -- was named "Artemisia." When he died, his grieving sister is believed to have went somewhat insane and decided to erect the greatest tomb in history to honour him. She would even mix some of his ashes in her drink every day. Among the most devoted wives history has known, Artemisia spent the last two years of her life overseeing the construction of the monument to her beloved. Seeing to it that the most skilled artisans that she could find took part in its construction, she had it adorned with statues of men and horses carved from marble. From Mausolus' name and this magnificent tomb, the latin word "mausoleum" (original Greek: mausoleion) was coined. Initially meaning "[building] dedicated to Mausolus," it's now applied to any grand burial place. Also notable is that at some point after Mausolus' death, invaders attempted to take his kingdom, but his queen used her cunning to organize the means by which to defeat all her kingdom's foes, despite being greatly outnumbered. The relevance of all this to the R=U theory is that "Ultimecia" is a valid English transliteration of the katakana used when writing "Artemisia" in Japanese. "A" and "u" are used interchangeably in Japanese, as are "l" and "r." The Ultima spell and name have even been mistranslated as "Atma" and "Altima" in the past as aresult.

Further, "e" and "i" are sometimes substituted for one another when transliterating names from Japanese to English. Finally, the "c" in "Ultimecia" may have arisen from the "s" sound in "Artemisia." At any rate, the "shi" katakana was used there in the Japanese katakana composing Ultimecia's name: A-ru-ti-mi-shi-a. As with the Maosoleum of Mausolus, many statues adorn Ultimecia's castle. Also, though the original tomb was destroyed long ago, the path leading down to the doors of Ultimecia's Master Room is strikingly similar to some artists' recreation of the path leading to the doors of the Mausoleum of Mausolus, being narrow and flanked with statues on either side as it is. As well, the pyramid-like roof of Ultimecia's Master Room is also a similarity to the tomb Artemisia built, as its roof has always been believed to have been of similar shape. Also relevant is that Ultimecia fought and killed many attacking SeeDs, the bodies of whom lay strewn across the beach behind Edea's house. This may well parallel the historical Artemisia's defeat of the forces that outnumbered her kingdom. Rinoa may well have become Artemisia, the grieving but devoted wife that sought to build a magnificent monument to her fallen beloved while she went insane. The castle, after all, is beautiful on its own, but is also filled with beautiful things. Also recall that Mausolus and Artemisia were brother and sister. Rinoa and Squall were as close to being brother and sister as would be possible without that actually being the case. Squall's father, Laguna, and Rinoa's mother, Julia, once had a romantic interest in one another, but various circumstances prevented a relationship from ever developing. Finally, note that Ultimecia's name has been translated as "Artimesia" for some translations of Final Fantasy VIII, including the German and Italian releases. *Response*: Perhaps the strongest piece of support for an R=U theory, it's certainly easy to see why and how a connection could be drawn here. The parallels *are* rather striking. That said, just as likely an origin for the name is that of Artimesia Gentileschi, a 17th-century Italian painter who underwent a number of difficulties in her lifetime. A mainstream film about her was released in 1997, around the same time that Final Fantasy VIII was in early production. It was also only about 16 years earlier that transcripts of testimony given in a rape case involving Artemisia were fully published -- at first in Italian, later in other languages. Though I'm uncertain of when they may have become available in Japanese, the English publication came in 1989. In any case, given the extreme prevalance of European art, architecture and scenery in Final Fantasy VIII, it's not at all surprising that the name of a female European painter who was receiving quite a bit of attention at the time -- herself a victim of unjust cruelties, and in whose artwork feminine strength and defiance against stronger oppressors is apparent -- could be given to a female character who has also been the victim of unjust cruelties, and in whose actions feminine strength and defiance against oppression is apparent. With this woman as a possible source for the name, the gallery of paintings in

Ultimecia's castle could certainly take on new significance. Sticking with possible European origins for the name, alternately, it's possible that Ultimecia was named for the Greek goddess Artemis, goddess of the moon -- the moon being a significant motif for Final Fantasy VIII. Whatever the case, however, the intended romanization of the name was certainly always "Ultimecia," as it appears in the English version. The official Japanese Dissidia Final Fantasy website labels her with this spelling. As such, the name may well be a play on the word "ultimate," as with the spell Ultima. Ultimecia had set out to absorb the powers of all other sorceresses, after all, and use this power along with Time Compression to become a God-like being. She was certainly -- even if only for a short period of time -- the "ultimate witch." In that regard, her name may allude to a concept of "all in one" or "altogether comprehensive" where the powers of the witches throughout time are concerned. This sort of naming is reminiscent of the Ultimania guides published by Square Enix -- of which the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania was the first. These guidebooks -- named with a portmanteau of "ultimate" and "mania" -- tend to be more or less comprehensive tomes on their respective games. In addition, the name Ultimecia bears a certain resemblance to the word "paramecia." A paramecia is a unicellular protozoa, and this idea of "unicellularity" would strengthen the "all in one" concept, especially in light of Time Compression, where Ultimecia is intended to become the singular focal point of compressed space/time. The latter possibility seems most likely to this author, though it's also possible, of course, that Ultimecia's name, characterization and castle are inspired by more than one of these ideas. With all that said, were other information available to support the notion of Rinoa being Ultimecia, the name "Artemisia" and the story of the Greek queen it belonged to would be an invaluable piece of symbolism to use as evidence in favor of the R=U theory. However, as things stand, it falls far short. ---------------------------"Becoming Warped" [UR12] ------------------------The Japanese instruction booklet for Final Fantasy VIII actually states that Rinoa will end up becoming warped: (Translation by Elizabeth M. Hollinger; source: http://74.52.10.22/psx_guides/ff8manl.html) "A beautiful and enigmatic woman, kind-hearted and driven to succeed. A cheerful girl whose 'mood maker' liveliness and gentleness touches people without discrimination. She's honest about her feelings and readily speaks what she thinks. However, in time she ends up becoming warped..." With this in mind, it's most certainly making reference to Rinoa becoming Ultimecia.

*Response*: Not necessarily. Japanese is a language built more off of context than off of the direct meaning of words. As a result, English translations of Japanese -- especially when they are direct translations -- often fail to convey context. The term used in the instruction booklet at that point was "amanojaku," the original, literal meaning of which is "devil beneath temple guardian deities." It's also used to refer to a perverse or wicked person, though sometimes in the context that someone's acting against their true nature. It may well be in this context that it's referring to Rinoa becoming something she wouldn't want to be and which she views as negative. So, another way of looking at that line would be, "However, in time she ends up changing in a way that she would view as negative." While becoming Ultimecia would, no doubt, fit this description, as it's not something explicitly shown within the game -- and as this is the instruction manual *introducing* people to the game -- it makes more sense in context that it's referring to something players will see when they play. Is there anything in the game which fits this description then? Well, of course: Rinoa becomes a sorceress! Quite against her will at that, and she is then used by Ultimecia to do things that are against her nature. Afterward, she fears her own powers and fears a future in which she will turn evil, like Adel or Ultimecia. This is a far more simple reading of these lines, one more comprehensive in light of all other details, and one which fits the context of an instruction manual introducing the game to players. --NOTE: Rudy Jacinto pointed out that you can also read it in the 'acting against her true nature' way by observing Rinoa's lack of resolve once the part decide to defeat Edea knowing it's their Matron. Her ultimately accepting the use of violence as an ends to a mean could be seen as acting against her more innocent nature. --------------------------------------------------------------------Rinoa allowing Squall to kill her (this point added by Sir B) [UR13] -----------------------------------------------------------------At one point in the game, Rinoa says the following: Rinoa: "If I fall under Ultimecia's control again... SeeD will come kill me, right? And the leader of SeeD is you, Squall... Squall's sword will pierce my heart...... I guess it's ok if it's you, Squall. Nobody else. Squall, if that ever happens..." Ultimecia is killed by Squall, so if Rinoa were Ultimecia, this would be a clear foreshadowing. *Response*:

Exactly: IF Rinoa were Ultimecia, this would be foreshadowing. But this is circular logic. If reading the line by itself without any notions of R=U already in your head, it would be a very bold leap indeed to draw from it that Rinoa must become Ultimecia. It is only when already assuming R=U that this line stands out, but this sort of backwards reasoning is completely unacceptable. Furthermore, note what Squall says directly afterwards: Squall: "That's enough! I'll never do anything like that. The sorceress I'm after is not you, Rinoa. My enemy is the sorceress from the future... Ultimecia." "I'll never do anything like that." The game is all about Squall and Rinoa's love growing to the point where it conquers everything, so it would be quite strange indeed if Squall ends up killing her after all. Perhaps dramatic irony from Square, but this line doesn't constitute a strong enough statement to be foreshadowing R=U. You might try to argue that this line implies that it is thematically necessary for Squall to end up killing Rinoa, but that would be to artificially insert an extremely dark interpretation of the game which isn't actually there to begin with. The game ends as happily as could possibly be, and nothing suggests that we should assume the most tragic outcome is thematically necessary. ------NOTE (by SoS): The following final three "hints" are all related to versions of the R=U theory in which Ultimecia was initially motivated by a desire to see Squall again, but lost her memory of this fact due to insanity or GF usage. -------------------------Time Compression [UR14] ----------------------Recall that onboard the Ragnarok, Rinoa expressed a desire for time to stand still so that she could remain with Squall: Rinoa "I don't want the future. I want the present to stand still. I just want to stay here with you..." Now, recall that Ultimecia intended to use Time Compression, a spell that would cause all time to exist in a single instance. While this is not necessarily the same thing as "making time stand still," Rinoa's words on the Ragnarok *do* express a desire to control time. It may well be that Rinoa wanted to meet Squall again and be moment of peace forever. Having gone insane, though, she may forgotten her desire to use Time Compression to meet Squall, to use the spell for other purposes. Insane people do insane *Response*: As with so much of this theory, this requires starting out with a conclusion and working our way backward. Aside from the obvious fact that Ultimecia could have met Squall again -- if that's what she so desired -- by simply using with him in a well have and then decided things.

Junction Machine Ellone and going to the past, there's also the even more obvious fact that Ultimecia's goals as expressed by the game and hinted toward by the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania had nothing to do with Squall. For that matter, it's never implied that Ultimecia was insane. She always knew full well what she was doing and to what end -- as do we. Her goal was to avoid her fated death at Squall's hands, and to then become one with all that existed in the universe -- a singular existence in which she would essentially become God. For more on this matter, read this FAQ's "The Unjust Persecution" article by TheOnionKnight. There, Ultimecia's true motives -- or, at least those heavily supported by the game and its Ultimania -- are discussed at length. While on the subject of Time Compression, while traveling through it to the future, SeeD battles and kills several witches -- presumably the ones who inherited Rinoa's powers down the line, and ultimately passed it to Ultimecia. After all, Odine says that she and Adel were the only two witches still alive in the present era -- so once Rinoa became the only one, the powers that Ultimecia eventually received would need to have been passed down from Rinoa. Furthermore, when using Scan on the witches, this information is given in the English version: "Sorceress from beyond time who appeared due to Time Compression." The Japanese version of this line offers even more information: "Generation after generation of witches who appeared from beyond space and time as a result of Time Compression." As well, the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania (pg. 243) has this to say about the first group of witches who appear in Time Compression: "Successive generations of witches from beyond space and time." It also says this concerning the second group (pg. 244): "One form of the successive generations of witches who appear in the Time Compressed World." Finally, on pg. 269 of the FF 20th Anniversary Ultimania File 2: Scenario guide, not only are the witches again referred to as "rekidai no majo"/"successive generations of witches" in a line that reads "After the successive generations of witches, the final battle with Ultimecia awaits" -- but, then, in a caption of a screenshot of Squall's party battling the witches, it says this: "Soko ha arayuru kuukan wo kaneru basho tonari, arayuru jidai no majo tachi ga osoi kakatte kuru." That translates to: "In the place where all space combines, the witches of all eras attack." arayuru = "all" or "every" jidai = "era" or "epoch" no = "of" majo = "witches" Here is a scan of the page, with the relevant lines underlined in red: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/tcwitches-1.jpg The use of the terms "generation after generation" ("daidai" in Japanese) -again, in the Scan info of the original -- and "successive generations"

("rekidai") -- twice in the FFVIII Ultimania and again in the FF 20th Anniversary Ultimania -- would suggest that these witches are people who inherit the powers of the witch embodiment at some point in the future. "Daidai" in particular was used to refer to the generations of genuine witches pre-dating the events of FFVIII by the Japanese version's in-game Tutorial under the heading that appeared as "Sorceress Power & Embodiment" for the official English version. The line, as it was written there, said, "Since distant, ancient times, the witch powers have been succeeded through generation after generation by those who become their vessels." [Note on translations: the Kanji for "vessel" or "container" (utsuwa) is what became "embodiment" for the official English translation of the game.] While it isn't explicitly stated within the game or Ultimania that the TC witches are Rinoa's successors rather than her predecessors from some point in the past, as one might argue is implied to be a possibility by "arayuru jidai no majo"/ "the witches of all eras," Odine does tell the party in the briefing before they go to Lunatic Pandora that they will be traveling *toward* the future to reach Ultimecia's time. It's most simple to just take him at his word -- as well as the Ultimanias at theirs; they refer to the TC witches as the *successive* generations, after all -- and assume that these are other witches from all eras *of the future* and in poession of the witch embodiment after Rinoa and before Ultimecia. At any rate, I believe the authorial intent regarding these witches is quite clear between the original game's Scan info, the FFVIII Ultimania's descriptions of the witches, and the FF 20th Anniversary Ultimania's descriptions. ---NOTE (by SoS): As noted under "Witches and Dying in Peace" above, the three authors of this FAQ aren't in agreement on the nature of the witches fought by Squall and company as they traveled to the future. While I believe them to have been real women who inherited Rinoa's powers down the line, TheOnionKnight and Sir Bahamut feel that they're manifestations of various properties of the Time Compression phenomena. More on their take on these witches can be read in the "The Nature of Time" article above, in a section entitled "The Time Compression Sorceresses." Even if not real women, however, it's not the most critical point in my response to this part of the R=U theory -- Ultimecia still wasn't using Time Compression to see Squall again in either FFVIII or Dissidia Final Fantasy, and she certainly didn't present herself as insane either time. ---------------------------------------------The Location of Ultimecia's Castle [UR15] ---------------------------------------Ultimecia's castle was anchored above the sea at Edea's orphanage -- not far from the flower where Rinoa and Squall had promised to meet. Consequently, the castle would have actually been facing the flower field.

Of all the places in the world where Ultimecia could have placed her castle, why here? *Response*: The game implies a very simple explanation for Ultimecia's castle being where it is without any reason to believe that she was waiting for Squall. Ultimecia hated SeeDs, and she had slaughtered the remaining SeeDs of her era shortly before casting the Time Compression spell. Their bodies lay scattered across the beach behind Edea's house: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/DeadSeeDs.jpg They don't appear to have been dead for long, so it's not as though Ultimecia built the castle, killed the SeeDs and then parked it there many years before with the intention of it remaining there forever. Also, the castle *floats*. Why build a floating castle to begin with if you're going to park it in one spot? The dead bodies of those SeeDs are a testament to Ultimecia's reason for anchoring the castle there. It makes much more sense -- especially in light of Ultimecia's hatred of the SeeDs and the obvious short amount of time that those SeeDs had been dead -- to conclude that Ultimecia anchored the castle there and slaughtered the remaining SeeDs to settle a grudge before casting Time Compression. Granted, it's possible that she placed her castle there from the start and that the SeeDs launched an assault against her shortly before she cast Time Compression, but this doesn't seem as likely as the notion that SeeDs were still using Edea's orphanage as a base years into the future. As well, we'd still be left with the question of why a floating castle is kept in one spot. Thematically speaking, the castle being located above where the SeeDs had been brought together and raised for a time also allows for another point of emphasis on FFVIII's theme of fate. The song from the game's opening is "Liberi Fatali," meaning "fated children." As with the orphanage being Squall and the others' point of focus when passing through the Time Compression wave to arrive in Ultimecia's era, this is likely another piece of the mosasic that emphasized how everything had been ordained from the start. All significant events occurred at or near the orphanage. As was the case with the overall concept of Ultimecia seeking to use Time Compression to meet Squall, this is only support for R=U if one had already accepted the concept and was using backward reasoning. -------------------------------------------------Ultimecia's Words During The Final Battle [UR16] ----------------------------------------------During the final battle with Ultimecia, her words may illustrate that she believes that the things one cares about will slip away from them inevitably, as Squall and Rinoa's other friends would have were she immortal: "Reflect on your..."

"Childhood..." "Your sensation..." "Your words..." "Your emotions..." "Time..." "It will not wait..." "No matter..." "...how hard you hold on." "It escapes you..." This may have been an attempt on Rinoa's part to reach out to Squall. She had wanted to meet him again, but her insanity *Response*: Considering that Ultimecia makes no *other* attempt to "reach out to Squall" during the game -- merely trying to kill him each time she encounters him instead -- it's hardly plausible that she's suddenly doing that at this point. For that matter, she's speaking to the inevitability of time -- that eventually, all that's important to you will fade away. While this nihilistic viewpoint certainly indicates some past trauma and loss, it doesn't necessarily indicate an older Rinoa lamenting the loss of the people she loved in younger life. For an alternate view of Ultimecia's past that would lead to her holding this perspective -- one that takes thorough stock of all in-game evidence and Ultimecia's own words -- see TheOnionKnight's "The Unjust Persecution" article in this FAQ. For that matter, the idea that Ultimecia was ever trying to reach out to Squall emotionally or ever wanted to be with him in a romantic fashion is well contradicted by Dissidia Final Fantasy. Even when given another opportunity to be around him post-FFVIII, she exhibits nothing of affection for him. For more on that, read the part of this section addressing Dissidia below. ---------------------------------DISSIDIA [UR17] ---------------------------------NOTE (by SoS): This new entry in this section of the FAQ was added in response to the publication of Dissidia Final Fantasy. As such, it was written years after all the other parts were initially written -- though all have now received revision with this most recent update to this section. ---It's been more than four years since I last made a contribution to this FAQ. Having returned to the e-company of my co-authors, I was inspired to write this new section to address what bearing, if any, Dissidia Final Fantasy has on the possibility of R=U. Not surprisingly -- to this author anyway -- Dissidia offers little that could be construed as an endorsement of the idea. Truth be told, if anything, it just pushes the idea further from the realm of plausible, and may have even begun to set it outside what's possible. Most striking and most obvious, Ultimecia as presented in Dissidia is not insane. If anything, she's too sane. She's calculating, reasoned and completely

aware of the consequences of all that she's doing. While the R=U theory never *really* required Ultimecia be insane in order to work, it was a tenet of the theory for most of its incarnations. Dissidia soundly puts such an idea to rest. As well, the notion that Ultimecia bears a great resemblance to Rinoa is swatted aside, albeity indirectly. Near the end of the story, during the Shade Impulse segment, a conversation between Squall and Onion Knight reveals that Squall has recovered his memory of his promise to meet Rinoa in the flower field by Edea's house when they're separated. Shortly thereafter, Squall references this promise as he begins his final battle with Ultimecia. If he had just recovered his memory of Rinoa waiting for him not long before this, then it's especially hard to swallow that he wouldn't at least mention that his enemy looks like her. If this woman looked similar to the one he's in love with, and he has to fight and kill this one to get back to the other, then it's *very* odd that he goes through no cognizant or emotional reaction to this. Furthermore, when Squall asks Ultimecia of her goal in this same scene, she simply references the goal she'd had in Final Fantasy VIII -- the desire to compress time and rule the universe as a god: Squall: "What exactly is it that you want?" Ultimecia: [Hm.] "A world of compressed time-- where you shall worship me, the eternal and solitary being!" Squall: "Get over yourself." [Squall's gunblade appears in his hand] Ultimecia: "Why do you interfere? You are the same as I, trying to create an ideal world." Squall: "Maybe so. But I also have a promise to keep." Ultimecia: "Even that will dissolve when I compress the world and make it mine. Poor child. It is such a misfortune that you had to be born in my world." Squall: "Then I suppose your misfortune was in being my enemy." Even in Dissidia, there is no indication of Ultimecia ever having intended to compress time in order to be with Squall again. She simply wants to use Time Compression as a tool to gain the power she desires over all life. It's also quite telling that -- even resurrected from death and allowed the opportunity to spend more time around him -- Ultimecia never seems to experience the slightest memory return to her related to being Squall's girlfriend or wife in the past. This, despite Squall bringing up his promise to reunite with Rinoa while talking to Ultimecia. She, in fact, makes light of the promise and declares that it too will be erased. There's simply nothing in Ultimecia's characterization in Dissidia to suggest the R=U theory. Now, all that said, there may arguably be allusions to the fandom's Rinoa=Ultimecia theory within the game -- most notably, that three weapons exclusive to Ultimecia in Dissidia are named after weapons that belonged to Rinoa in FFVIII: Valkyrie, Cardinal and Shooting Star. Despite this potential tongue-in-cheek reference, it's not a significant matter when one considers that there really wasn't another similar character whose weaponry the developers could have drawn on for this game.

Rinoa was the only other sorceress around with a variety of weapon names. For that matter, it's not as though this situation creates a unique connection. Tidus uses *four* weapons named after weapons that Wakka used in FFX; Kuja can use the Whale Whisker, which was Dagger's most powerful weapon; several characters can use weapons that had belonged to other characters in previous games. Just as Rinoa was the only other sorceress for weapon names to be drawn from for Ultimecia, Wakka was the only other blitzball player who had weapon names to be drawn from for Tidus. Connection enough exists right there. The only other potential nod to the R=U theory comes at the beginning of Squall's battle with Ultimecia during Destiny Odyssey VIII. There, Ultimecia says "Shall we dance?" before they fight. Whether the character herself intended this as a reference to Rinoa asking Squall to dance in the original game ("Dance with me?") is impossible to determine, but given that there are no other possible allusions in Dissidia to Ultimecia or Squall believing the two women to be the same, it's really a dead end. She's most likely just using "dance" as a synonym for "fight," as is often the case in various media. In summary, we're left with much the same situation as several years ago when assessing the status of the theory: possible, but even less plausible than before -- if not moving into the realm of being beyond possible. Several common pillars of the theory are contradicted by Dissidia, and we're left to look elsewhere for Ultimecia's origin and motivations. And for that, as always, I recommend reading TheOnionKnight's excellent "The Unjust Persecution" article in this very FAQ. ---------------------------------VARIOUS FLAWS [UR18] ------------------------------Having addressed all the "hints" that are cited as evidence for the theory, I would now like to address a few flaws in the concept itself, though Sir B had done so prior. First and foremost, Ultimecia attempted to kill time was when she sent the Iguions to kill her. Galbadia Garden if Rinoa is in the party. Later disable the locks on Adel's tomb, so as to free Rinoa several times. The first She later tries again in still, she uses Rinoa to the elder witch.

Immediately after, she ditches Rinoa in space, leaving her to die. If Rinoa were her past self, we can reasonably assume she would be aware of it to some extent, even if insane, as she would be witnessing her own past and the events that led up to driving her into insanity. Granted, if one is operating with the assumption that Rinoa would have forgotten her past completely due to the use of GFs across several centuries, that would present more reasonable grounds for her not being aware of it -- though that in itself is backwards reasoning, and we see during the game that being reminded of one's forgotten past can bring those memories back to the surface. Squall and the other main characters recover their childhood memories when Irvine reminds them.

Also, as noted in a response to one of the hints above, SeeD is said to be traveling toward the future to confront Ultimecia in her time. Along the way, they fight and kill several witches. If -- as appears to be the case to me based on the witches' Scan data and Ultimania comments -- there are witches who exist along the timeline between Rinoa and Ultimecia, this would hardly be an indication that they're supposed to be the same woman. It would be, in fact, a massive blow to the idea. With Odine identifying Rinoa and Adel as the only witches of the present era prior to Adel's death, other witches in the future could only receive their powers from Rinoa. I would also now like to stress the point that if losing Squall was the main reason for Rinoa going insane and becoming Ultimecia, it stands to reason that we would have seen some measure of recognition toward him on Ultimecia's part. Instead, she displays no recognition or affection toward him, merely tries to kill him, and tends to address SeeD as a whole. In fact, Ultimecia does not do or say anything which indicates that she has any sort of relationship with the main characters at all. She behaves completely differently than Rinoa, to the point where they might as well be considered different people anyway even if one assumes R=U. Furthermore, even when given another opportunity to be around Squall post-FFVIII during the events of Dissidia Final Fantasy, she still merely tries to kill him. NOTE (by Sir Bahamut): Furthermore, it must be noted that while the ending of the game is full of joy and happiness and hope, R=U would entirely negate this. Now, there is of course nothing wrong with such "poetic irony," but Square doesn't have a reputation of making happy endings like the FF8 one whilst really intending for everything to go to hell afterwards. The R=U conclusion goes against everything that game has built up to; the climactic kiss between Squall and Rinoa would be bitterly tragic instead of joyous. This is not something Square are known for doing, and so one would expect a lot more foreshadowing and hinting towards this in the ending. As it is, there's nothing in the ending hinting at a dark future. ---------------------------------A FAIR SHAKE [UR19] ------------------------------Having now addressed all those matters, I would like to offer the theory its fair due and point out those often-cited points that are used to argue against the theory, but which fail to actually contradict it. Afterward, I will offer conclusive evidence on this matter that seals the case that Rinoa *cannot* have been intended to be Ultimecia. ------------------------------------1) Rinoa Dying In The Final Battle ------------------------------------*Possible contradiction*: Since Rinoa can die and be absorbed into time in the final battle with Ultimecia, if she were Ultimecia's past self, that should erase Rinoa's future. In other words, it should erase Ultimecia's own state of being in the

present. *Why it isn't a contradiction*: While Rinoa can die in the final battle with Ultimecia and be absorbed into time and Ultimecia not vanish, with the normal flow of time already skewed by Time Compression, Ultimecia was possibly outside the normal flow of time, and, thus, protected. For that matter, she was likely already in possession of the witch embodiment of all those witches killed by Squall and the others when they entered Time Compression. Perhaps by virtue of this and being the one who cast Time Compression in the first place, she was granted immunity. For that matter, to question this would require questioning why Squall, Irvine, Zell, Selphie, Quistis and Rinoa hadn't already faded out of existence due to their own pasts being swallowed up by Time Compression. Basically, with the condition time and space were in during the final battle, it is impossible to say anything conclusive about what should and should not happen under those circumstances. --------------------------------------------------------2) Rinoa leaving her proper place in the time stream --------------------------------------------------------*Possible contradiction*: Rinoa left the time stream at the moment that Adel died. She and SeeD traveled to the future. Ultimecia would have no longer had a past beyond the point of Adel's death if she were Rinoa. When SeeD got to the future, they would not have found Ultimecia there, for Rinoa would not have been able to become her, being that she left the time stream before she ever could become the older witch. Even with Rinoa returning to the exact second that she left the timeline, until she returned to the past again, there shouldn't be an Ultimecia for her to encounter in the future. *Why it isn't a contradiction*: As with the previous point, there was no longer a normal flow of time due to Time Compression. To argue that Ultimecia should have vanished because her past self no longer remained along a timeline that itself no longer existed even while the past self continued to exist would be completely illogical. Especially in light of Squall and the others not vanishing, despite their own pasts having been absorbed into time. --------------------------CONCLUSION [UR20] -----------------------Many points used to argue in favor of the theory either already require having accepted it as fact -- in which case the conclusion would be used as support for the evidence that's supposed to support the conclusion, a logical fallacy known as "circular reasoning" that absolutely is never valid in a debate -- or require making some leaps in assumption that have shaky support at best, are

defeated by Occam's Razor at times ("all things being equal, the most simple explanation is the best"), or are outright contradicted by information in the original story or other official materials. In fact, the matter of witch immortality is altogether *impossible*, as it is outright contradicted by the "WITCHES" entry in the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania guide, which states that witches have a normal lifespan: (Translated by DarkAngel) "SORCERESSES Said to have existed from time immemorial to the present day, the sorceresses are women who are said to have received their powers from the old god, Hyne. There is, however, no hard evidence to support this claim. Extraordinarily powerful, many sorceresses have harboured ambitions to rule over the world -as a result, many people have come to equate the Sorceress with fear. However, there are also many Sorceresses who have chosen to live a quiet life sheltered away from civilized society; as such, the actual number of Sorceresses and the amount of power shared between them remains unknown. The potential to become a sorceress is determined by one's capacity to wield such power -- their natural affinity for magic. This factor helps to determine Sorceress candidates for when a Sorceress passes on all of her power into the next Sorceress. The giving and receiving of power can be made between any two individuals -- it not necessary for them to be related by blood. A Sorceress's lifespan is the same as a normal human's, however they cannot die until they have passed on their power to the next Sorceress." --NOTE: The Ultimania guides for Final Fantasy games are guidebooks published by Square Enix itself, with a ton of information directly from the creators. So this translation tells us what the creators of the game have to say on the matter, and is obviously intended to reflect the intent with which the story was written. While one could certainly refuse to accept extra textual materials into their own "personal canon" and appreciation of a story, if one is discussing the actual canon -- the official story -- and authorial intent, they'll have to accept this detail. Furthermore, as has been shown in the various addresses to the "hints" above, the concept of R=U has little ground to stand on even without this Ultimania information. --Since it is quite obvious that Ultimecia lives too far into the future for any of the in-game characters to live to see her rise to power within a normal human lifespan, it is clear that Rinoa cannot become Ultimecia even if she is a witch. The game states that Ultimecia lives "many generations" ahead of the present era, and even the most feeble interpretation of "many" would not allow Rinoa to become Ultimecia. While the Ultimania states that witches cannot die until they have passed on their powers, in all cases where we see witches fatally wounded, they either die immediately or shortly thereafter, suggesting that they either choose to die then and there so as to end their suffering, or that their bodies force them to give up their powers. The latter notion is supported by the fact that Ultimecia is still trying to defy her fate during the ending, even while her body is forcing her to give up her powers. We know this because she states "I...can't...disappear yet," which is certainly not a statement of defiance regarding dying *with* her powers, as

she couldn't anyway according to the Ultimania. This was a statement made in defiance of dying at all, which she would if she gave up her powers. Seeing as how she didn't want to die yet does, we can only conclude that witches' bodies force them to give up their powers when the time of their natural death has arrived -- in which case Rinoa couldn't have remained alive by simply choosing to hold onto her powers despite having reached the end of her natural lifespan. Rinoa *will* die before Ultimecia is born. Rinoa is *not* immortal. Rinoa is *not* Ultimecia. While one might still yet argue that Rinoa could have been placed in the same kind of seal that Adel was, and that this cryogenically preserved her far into the future until she was released, such a notion is never suggested to have occurred by any of the information we do have -- nor do we even know that this process prevents aging. In any case, trying to find a means around the declared authorial intent that witches aren't immortal that would still allow for one to live for centuries into the future despite no other indication that this does -- or even *can* -take place seems to be somewhat defeating the point of arguing for authorial intent. Besides, there's already a perfectly valid and well-supported explanation of Ultimecia's origin anyway, with said origin not being dependent on Rinoa in any form whatsoever -- and based solely on in-game details. Refer to TheOnionKnight's "The Unjust Persecution" article below. The final word: The conclusion that is drawn by this document, its authors, and which we believe to be supported by the in-game evidence, extra textual materials, and principle of Occam's Razor is thus: Rinoa *is not* and *cannot* be Ultimecia. The theory is altogether not plausible nor reasonably possible. -----------------------ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS -----------------------I wish to acknowledge and offer my gratitude to Sir Bahamut, the original author of the Time/Ultimecia FAQ on GameFAQs, and one of the most knowledgeable people on the subject of Final Fantasy VIII and time in the world. I've learned a great deal from you, sir, during our many debates and brainstorms, and firmly believe that our friendship has been invaluable to both your analyses of Final Fantasy VIII and mine, as well as to both yours and my ability as a writer. Thanks for everything, bro. I also wish to thank TheOnionKnight and Leuchest/The Dark Legend of GameFAQs for their tons of input and theorizing that have in no small part contributed to my musings and formation of this article. A special mention also goes out to Katicflis of GameFAQs for her input and brainstorming which undeniably contributed to the theorizing amongst myself, Sir Bahamut, TheOnionKnight and Leuchest/The Dark Legend in various ways. Another special mention goes to pmog, also of GameFAQs, for pointing out certain points in the Ultimania to look into having translated. Finally, a special thanks goes to DarkAngel, staff member at the now defunct AdventChildren.net forum, and owner of the Gunshot Romance website, for translating articles from the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania.

-Glenn Morrow

--------------------------------------------------------------------AFTERWORD (added by Sir Bahamut) [UR21] --------------------------------------------------------------------~The issue of 'valid interpretations'~ [UR22] So where does all this leave the R=U theory really? Although the Ultimania information puts an end to the debate for all intents and purposes, some will be quick to point out that it doesn't constitute conclusive proof against the possibility that Rinoa is Ultimecia. The reason is that one could imagine ways for Rinoa to reach Ultimecia's era which don't require her to have an increased lifespan. One suggestion is that she could be sealed in the Sorceress Memorial or in a machine similar to the one Adel was held in. However, as Skyblade from eyesonff.com noted, the game never actually states that these devices will keep people alive indefinitely, or even prolong life at all. Another suggestion is that with all the time-travelling and such, it's possible she jumped forward in time at some point (although the only known method in the game for travelling to the future is through time compression, which is not around after the end of the game), and one could ostensibly dream up other ways for Rinoa to reach the far future of Ultimecia. Indeed, R=U is not disproven from a mathematical point of view. However, that has never been, and can't ever be, the aim of such a debate. R=U is a debate on literary interpretation, not a mathematical conjecture (despite the fact that its popular title, "R=U," makes it sound like just that), and as such any talk about proving or disproving it is meaningless because it's simply not possible to prove or disprove a literary interpretation! Instead, the focus lies on what is plausible and not. As an example, one could speculate that Irvine is in fact Ultimecia. This would be impossible to disprove entirely, but anyone will recognise that this theory is too implausible to consider. It is not what we'd classify as a 'valid interpretation' of the game. A valid interpretation arises naturally from information in the game itself, extrapolated using a bare minimum of assumptions. Irvine=Ultimecia is not a valid interpretation of the game because it in no way arises naturally from the information in the game, and further requires wildly imaginative extrapolation. Now you may say that "but in the end it's all just opinion", and of course in essence that is true. But the reason anyone discusses works of art to begin with is because we believe that not all intepretations are equally plausible. We are willing to discuss what Ultimecia's true motives may be because we feel that some ideas (e.g. Ultimecia wanted to take control over space and time in order to defeat her own fate: see the Unjust Persecution section for more) are better than others (e.g. Ultimecia wanted to compress time so she could make sure she never missed another dentist appointment). Determining whether or not a given intepretation is plausible can be a subtle affair, but it is still one we think is worth doing. If you disagree, and think that all ideas are equally plausible, then this FAQ probably isn't for you, but maybe you'll change your mind as you read on. Now, is the R=U theory a valid interpretation of the game? Does it arise naturally from the game, is it supported by in-game evidence and is it extrapolated from these using a bare minimum of assumptions? The short answer is: no, no and no.

Although the tragic spin of the R=U theory might make the plot a lot more interesting for several gamers, the theory simply is not plausible. It's not quite as bad as the suggestion that Irvine = Ultimecia mind you, but the hints are simply not strong enough, as Squall_Of_SeeD has effectively shown. The claim that Rinoa is Ultimecia is extremely bold, not the least because the game doesn't even provide a natural method for Rinoa to reach Ultimecia's era, and, if true, would be an incredibly important plot-point, perhaps even the most important one. As such, it is necessary for the hints to be very strong indeed, but as has been shown in the previous part, none of the hints are particularly convincing; even presented all together they simply don't add up to give much weight, and frankly seem redundant due to the Ultimania information, which does three damning things against R=U. Firstly, it wrecks the main argument as to how R=U is even possible to begin with. Secondly, it implies a different background to Ultimecia all together. Thirdly, it never mentions anything indicating R=U. The arguments just end up looking far too weak. So the situation is that the theory does not arise naturally (indeed, the physical possibility of the theory doesn't even game), it's not supported by any compelling in-game evidence a significant amount of assumptions and imagination to work. just does not stand up to scrutiny. from the game arise from the and it requires The theory

It is worth also considering what we actually end up with if we assume R=U. Since Ultimecia clearly has no memory of being Rinoa (she does not recognize Rinoa or Squall in the game) the theory would require Rinoa to have become so utterly deranged that she effectively become a completely different person. Due to the possibility of prolonged GF exposure this is perhaps not a terrible requirement, but in actuality it means that R=U cannot really hope to explain why Ultimecia does any of the things she does in the game. Her motivations cannot be assumed to have originated with her former self as Rinoa, since they may just as easily have come about after the shift to her new self was complete. R=U may add a bitter twist of irony to the game and explain to some extent Ultimecia's background, but it does nothing to explain her motives for wanting to compress time or for any other of her actions or statements during the game. In the end we'd still need to treat Ultimecia as a separate woman from Rinoa. What then is the point of R=U really? In light of all this, the final verdict of the theory is that despite not being 100% impossible, it simply is not plausible enough to be considered a valid theory. As far as literary criticism goes, the theory simply is not true.

~Concerning the role of official sources~ [UR23] So far in this FAQ we have twice referred to what we might dub 'official sources'. First, when discussing the Time Compression witches, where we quoted both the Ultimania and the Scan info in the Japanese version of the game. The second time in the R=U theory above, where we quoted the Ultimania. In fact we will refer to the Ultimania later on in this FAQ as well. The reader may however have noticed that in the first two cases the information was treated differently. In the case of the TC witches we ultimately concluded that the official sources used could not be accepted as an unchallengable statement from the creators of the game themselves, while we placed a lot more weight on the sorceress lifespan quote from the Ultimania and argued that it more or less has to be accepted as canon. It is easy to draw the conclusion that we are being hypocritical in how we treat official sources such as the Ultimania.

If we felt the Ultimania wasn't good enough in the case of the TC witches, could it not possibly be considered not good enough for the sorceress lifespan issue? I will now try to justify why this is not the case, and why we felt justified in our apparent hypocrisy. Ideally, when the creator of a work of art comes out and makes a statement regarding his or her work, we would like to take that statement at face value and incorporate it into our understanding and assessment of said work. But what if the creator makes statements which appear to bluntly contradict the work itself, or makes several statements which all contradict one another? One good example of the latter is Bergman's statements on his so-called "Silence" trilogy, consisting of the films "Through a Glass Darkly", "Winter Lights" and "The Silence". Shortly after the last one was released, Bergman said that they fit together as a trilogy. But then, later on in his life, he stated that they never really were a true trilogy. So -are- they a trilogy or not? We cannot appeal to Bergman's statements, so what are we to do? It's simple: we watch the films themselves and then make our judgement based purely on what is actually there. Let's consider another example, this time from the world of Final Fantasy, courtesy of Squall_Of_SeeD, who summarises it as follows: "The FFVII 10th Anniversary Ultimania said on pg. 80 (pg. 82 of the Revised Edition) that the continuity disaster Last Order (which SE has officially stated is no longer canon) was just from Tseng's perspective -- his recollection and interpretation of how things went down. Yet a file sitting on his desk that he's reading during the story -- and which he would have been the one to write -- has text on it in English that clearly contradicts everything he's supposedly 'recalling.'" Here we have an example where the creators make a statement which directly contradicts what's in the game itself. What are we to do? It's simple: we look at what's in the actual work and then assess Square's statement accordingly (in this case it's fairly easy to see that Square's statement was a blunder). The point is this: when assessing a work of art, official statements from the creator are an authority, but they are not the only authority. The work of art itself is also an authority! So when we have information both from the work of art itself and the creator, we must not be too hasty and simply blindly accept the latter information. If the information matches up then we have little reason for doubt and can safely accept both as canon. But if the two contradict eachother we must be a lot more careful, and ultimately we must look to the work itself to determine which fits more. This is of course exactly the situation we have in this FAQ. In the case of the TC witches, the Ultimania and the game seem to contradict eachother, so we are forced to leave the question unresolved. Each reader must look at the game and judge for themselves. With the sorceress lifespan issue, there was no such contradiction. The game itself indicates that sorceresses can die just like regular human beings, and the Ultimania simply confirms it, hence we may feel justified in accepting this as canon. 'Official sources' of any kind are often very convenient to quote in order to put an end to certain ideas, but we should keep in mind that the content of these sources should not be immediately accepted. We should always make sure that the sources generally with with the actual work in question. If the information matches up, we are good to go. If it does not, then our final conclusions should be drawn from the work itself. After all, we are discussing the work, not the official sources!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2) AN ULTIMECIAN ANALYSIS - THE UNJUST PERSECUTION (by TheOnionKnight) [UP0] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Now that R=U has been thoroughly discussed and, we hope, thoroughly gutted, we will place it aside totally. This section of the FAQ is dedicated to exploring an alternative motivation for Ultimecia. Pooh pooh, you may say; what alternatives exist? The whole problem with Ultimecia is that the game does not supply her with a motive. That was the appeal of R=U, was it not? That concept filled in a hole in the story, and without it, what are we left with, but that selfsame hole again? We re reduced once more to a onedimensional villainess. If Ultimecia is not Rinoa, she is just an evil stereotype, and her singular motive is world domination for world domination s sake. And that isn t very appealing at all. However, we get what we get, and the game simply gives us this cookie-cutter antagonist, so we must brace ourselves and take it without flinching. Actually, we must do no such thing. We must simply look back and pay a little more attention to the story. I will be the first to admit that the game does not spell anything out when it comes to Ultimecia. However, a number of hints and suggestions about the Sorceress are dropped in very curious and also extremely telling locations throughout the plot, and these hints and suggestions, when added up together, amount to much more than an evil stereotype. They are, nevertheless, only hints and suggestions, so if you are reading this section of the FAQ with an appetite for proofs you will not get them and will leave dissatisfied. What you will get is another literary interpretation of Ultimecia s actions an interpretation entirely divorced from anything related to R=U. This interpretation, unlike that one, is based on nothing which the game itself does not supply for our consideration. Furthermore, it is an interpretation that tries as best as it might to stick to what the game supplies, and to make as few extrapolations as possible. For that reason, I might pompously declare that the thing is not an alternative motivation whatsoever, but merely the actual motivation for Ultimecia as given by the story; but I will not go that far. When discussing Ultimecia in any way, allowances must be given, and assumptions inevitably made, so no one theory about her will ever be the theory. Some will just be more impervious than others. This one is not only quite impervious, but also, I think, thematically satisfying. However, if you don t agree with it (which you are not at all obliged to do), perhaps, and hopefully, you will still find it interesting enough reading material. --------------SUBSECTIONS --------------1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. How History is Written [UP1] Anticipating Ultimecia [UP2] Destined to Face Me [UP3] A Rose By Any Other Name [UP4] To Compress, or Not to Compress To Compress, Of Course! [UP5] A Few Final Remarks [UP6] Summary for the "Lazy Reader" [UP7]

--------------------------------------------------------1. HOW HISTORY IS WRITTEN [UP1] ---------------------------------------------------------

The very first topic that needs touching upon is the general topic of history or, more dramatically, History. This topic needs touching upon because it is the foundation for the theory to follow, in both a broad and in a specific sense. I therefore touch upon it now to get it over with, and will try to get it over with as quickly as I can. Namely, I touch upon it to make this singular point: history is remembered. How obvious! How simplistic! How petty an observation! These are undoubtedly some of your reactions to the statement up above. Nevertheless, I must harp for a while on this elementary point in order to establish it as truly elementary. The simplicity, the obviousness of it is essential. History is remembered. That, in fact, is nearly the definition of the word itself the word history, I mean. It does not exist, as a point of reference for us, if it is not remembered. It floats away and slowly subsides into the oblivion of forgetfulness. And some history does do this, and ceases to be history. The small events of the world are too small to be worth recording. They drift out of remembrance and in a few generations they turn into bits of nothing. They pass on. The big events, meanwhile, are remembered and recorded and established, even, in our own world, inside of schoolbooks. Now it bears mentioning that the world of FFVIII is not our own world. This point is also obvious. However, the game s fictional world is based enough upon our own as to make it relatable to us. It is relatable in many ways. We may therefore assume that, in it, things worth noting are recorded, just as they are in our own reality. This is one of the only great assumptions that the theory presented here will make, and you can see how great of an assumption it is. What, now, in the world of FFVIII, we must ask ourselves, would make it into the history books? What events experienced during the game are noteworthy enough to be remembered? I ll summarize them shortly. An influential nation, Galbadia, begins to wage an outright war on neighboring countries. A resistance group, the Timber Owls, attempts to assassinate this nation s president, and also attempts to assassination this nation s political ambassador. That political ambassador, in turn, attempts to assassinate the president succeeds, in highly public fashion and proceeds to usurp control of the country and later of the entire continent. That this political ambassador and subsequent de facto dictator also happens to be an evil Sorceress only serves to make the entire coup more memorable. The Galbadian war machine now turns its focus, not merely upon neighboring countries, but upon the entire globe. In reaction to this a mercenary force known as Garden engages the Galbadian army in an effort to once more assassinate that troublesome Sorceress at the helm. They succeed in subduing the woman but not in preventing the Galbadians from resurrecting a titanic alien artifact with cataclysmic powers from the seabed. This artifact consequently draws with magnetic force innumerable space-monsters from the surface of the moon, and deposits them in pell-mell style all over one half of the planet. A space-station is destroyed as collateral damage in the process. Another egomaniacal Sorceress, banished to an orbiting cold-sleep tomb for having previously committed genocidal war crimes, is also unhappily set free. In response to this unsightly dilemma, the technologically-advanced and culturally-isolated nation of Esthar (which happened to get the brunt of all those magnetized space-monsters), conducts research to determine that the prime mover behind the global predicament is actually a Sorceress from the future. This unpleasant lady has been using a time machine, already under development in Esthar, to travel backwards into the past and stir up trouble.

Furthermore, she intends on destroying the space-time continuum. It was she, in fact, who had assassinated the Galbadian president and assumed control of that country. She was possessing someone else to do it. To be stopped, she must be confronted and killed in her own era; the military force Garden agrees to undertake the task, travels through time, and gets the dirty work accomplished. This all, you must admit, sounds highly remarkable. If you think that it sounds unremarkable, you must live a very enviable life. In terms of global impact on the world of FFVIII, the war above-described is of a literal significance. Its entire series of events makes our actual World Wars look like mere schoolyard skirmishes. We remember Franz Ferdinand now, but imagine with how much more interest we would remember him if he had been a Sorcerer! Imagine if the atomic bombs were not just bombs, but clumps of writhing lunar creatures dumped from outer space! Hopefully that is enough of an illustration to, if not prove, then to powerfully suggest that the historical events witnessed in FFVIII would be remembered by later generations of that game s fictional population. Perhaps details would fade; battles be remembered, but the names of generals forgotten; speeches still recalled with vividness, but their precise contexts unknown. That is not too much of a logical leap to make, so let us make it. And let us make one further one, a little more specific, but no less improbable: that the name Ultimecia might resonate with meanings in FFVIII like the name Hitler does in our own world. That last leap, let me say now, though, is not really required. It is just too tantalizing to pass up when making an example. Other names, indeed, could make the very same example: do we not recall Caesar, Nero, Attila, and so on and so forth, also with clarity? Important people, if they are important enough, live on in the general memory as well as important events do. And so would the name Ultimecia. Objection! I hear the word already on your lips. You say that all of this is well and good, but also that the whole thing is outrageously far-fetched. Sorceresses, and time traveling, and magical possession, written into history as facts? Perhaps all of these did occur in the game, but they are all just too outlandish for the common men and women of FFVIII to believe, and certainly far too outlandish for inclusion in anything like a schoolbook. Well, perhaps in our own world this might be the case; if Cleopatra, to name someone, anyone from history, for the sake of example, was actually a Sorceress, we certainly don t know about it right now. If that fact was a fact it was not recorded no doubt because it seems too improbable, and no one would (indeed, nobody does) believe it. Therefore the question must be posed: would anyone in FFVIII believe that Ultimecia existed? Would her story be too improbable for History to stomach? Perhaps, as I have said, in our world, yes; but in the world of FFVIII many odd things are taken for granted. Monsters, for one, fall from the moon; Sorceresses are well-documented by renowned scientists; zombified blobs can impersonate political figures; schoolteachers in high-heels can summon demons from magical lanterns to fight for them in battle. I could go on and on, but I ll stop there. The point, I think, is made. Therefore let us presume that Ultimecia was, indeed, remembered by the world. That is not a very bold presumption after all, is it? But time-traveling! you continue to protest. Isn t that still too outlandish, even next to monsters from the moon? Why, not at all. It s really the least outlandish item on the menu. The JME is a physical, extant object in the world of FFVIII. Dr. Odine himself, the game s Stephen Hawking, has all of the calculations worked out. He has studied Ellone s temporal powers intimately. So you see, even that part of the story would slide very neatly into a historical account.

-----------------------------------------------------2. ANTICIPATING ULTIMECIA [UP2] -----------------------------------------------------Now, with the foundation of our theory established, we may move on to the more substantial meat of the matter at hand. However, let s not eat the whole cow all at once. We ll start out slowly, and go through the topside, the flank and the sirloin in their proper order. What this means, in non-metaphorical terms, is that we still have a few stages of scene-setting to chew on before we start discussing Ultimecia s psychology. The first part of the scene that we set I ll spell out once again: - History is remembered. That was the pivotal point of Part 1, which you just read. The pivotal point of Part 2, which is sitting at this very moment on your dinner plate, is as follows: - History, once remembered, is learned from and acted upon. This is the second great assumption which the present theory makes, and, once more, perhaps you can see how great of an assumption it is. (Nothing so extreme as Rinoa being cryogenically frozen, anyway! Excuse me, let me show R=U to the doorway again.) What I mean by saying that history, once remembered, is learned from is just that. This observation applies in a general sense to the world as we know it today. History is recorded for a reason. Humans don t record it just because they like documentation. Of course, documentation and preservation are a part of the whole process, but they aren t the end result of it. The end result is education, in both scholarly and in practical terms. One learns by studying the past. Sometimes one learns about things that are long-gone and beyond social resurrection about cultural practices that have vanished, governments that have dissolved, the boundaries of ancient nations, and etcetera. And then sometimes one learns about things that are not only capable of being resurrected, but may very well be revived in the present about modes of philosophic thought, religious beliefs, fashion trends, and once again etcetera. These things, once understood and learned about, may then be acted upon, which is the second clause in the statement I made up above. Fashion trends, for instance, may be brought back from the grave. Old literature may give birth to new ideas, not to mention to new literature. Dusty sciences may have the dust blown off of them, and thereby illuminate a path to fresh discoveries. Did not all of this occur (excepting the resuscitated fashion trends) when the Middle Ages turned into the Renaissance? Does not this still occur today, whenever someone turns back to Homer for entertainment, to Lao-Tzu for inspiration, to Thomas Paine for guidance? Apply the same concept to the world of FFVIII. The same exact thing there: its fictional populace also returns to and continues to build foundations of the past. To cut directly to the chase, I ll mention primary and most pertinent example of this outright the Lunar Cry, Crystal Pillar and the Lunatic Pandora. happens on the the the

A meteorological phenomenon to say the least, the Lunar Cry is documented in the world of FFVIII as having destroyed the Centra continent and the civilization that once resided there. The tutorial observes that the Cry has occurred many times in history and will reoccur in the future. It is mentioned by various NPCs during the game, as well. The Crystal Pillar, meanwhile, is a probably-alien artifact that causes the Lunar Cry by producing

a strong energy field between the planet and the moon. And the Lunatic Pandora is an enclosure for the Crystal Pillar made by Esthar which, the tutorial handily hypothesizes, was probably built to cause the Lunar Cry through artificial means. The implication of this is clear enough, though not directly stated: Esthar has developed a weapon of mass destruction by harnessing the natural power of the Lunar Cry. The regulatory guarantee of this phenomenon is what drives the Esthar scientists, led by Dr. Odine, to manufacture the Lunatic Pandora. History has obviously taught them something very practical, indeed! They have turned the past into a military trump card. That is an example of history being applied in a very hands on manner, but now we must take this concept of applied history and project it beyond the game s temporal boundaries into that unobserved chronological space between Squall s present and Ultimecia s future era. This, of course, is the segment of the FFVIII timeline that most greatly concerns us. It is the segment that R=U purports to cover (excuse me once again as I show this intruding equation to the door). In order to examine Ultimecia in any sizeable way, we must attempt dipping into this quadrant of the timeline. We may not, however, and I will not, attempt to specify what occurs there. We do not have enough information to attempt stating specifics. We may only, and I will only, generalize about what might have occurred there. And when I say generalize, I do mean generalize in that term s broadest sense. It is my intention in this section of the FAQ to suggest, in great, sweeping strokes, a vague and yet an encompassing outline of that blank narrative terrain. Allow me to make my first stroke. It stands to reason, if we take both of the above-related points into consideration, that both of those points would converge and subsequently flow in one predictable direction. The population of FFVIII is historically-aware. Let us say, as a minimum, that they will remember the grandest moments of Galbadia s attempted global conquest. They will remember the activation of the Lunatic Pandora, and they will remember the Lunar Cry that devastated Esthar. In the streets of Deling City, the public is already talking about Ultimecia during the third disc of the game; two soldiers near the entrance of the city make these remarks: "I heard Seifer Almasy is now in league with this sorceress named Ultimecia." "With Sorceress Ultimecia behind us, Esthar and its technology are nothing." Meanwhile, other random townspeople are saying things like: "I heard that new guy in charge, Seifer, is up to something big. Now he's teamed up with some evil force greater than Edea, and he's trying to do something to this entire planet." "I heard there's a new sorceress now called Ultimecia. I hope we can trust her." The public at large is aware of Ultimecia's role in the global turmoil, and with Selphie's online diary publicizing this Sorceress's name in an ongoing eyewitness account, the appellation "Ultimecia" will undoubtedly be remembered by the people of the world. Now, remembering all of these things - the Galbadian War, the Lunar Cry, the Sorceress "Ultimecia" - they will also act upon them. They will act upon them as anyone would act upon the great facts of world history. But they will also act upon them in an unusual and in a unique way, because the events of world history, in FFVIII, are not relegated solely to the past as they are in our

world. History, in FFVIII, also encompasses the future. Time-travel, of course! You smack your forehead as you remember it. For you do remember it, don t you? You have figured out the whole thing already. During the course of the game, and the course, of course, of the Galbadian war, time-travel is utilized as a vehicle of attack against Ultimecia. Garden s forces arrive in her era to confront her; in her era she is, indeed, confronted; and then Garden s forces return to their own era, having conquered her in hers. When Squall kisses Rinoa on the balcony during the Garden Party, Ultimecia s defeat is literally a thing of their past. That Sorceress has already been killed. And yet she has also not even been born! She will not be born for generations still to come. In spite of this, however, she has already earned her place in the annals of history, and will be remembered as a villain and as a tyrant. That last statement, I admit immediately, was also another assumption. It is an assumption, though, that follows effortlessly from the two points up above. It is, indeed, almost the only assumption that may follow from those points. It is the natural assumption to make. One may make it smoothly, logically, and easily. One almost does not even have to make it; the assumption makes itself. It comes about on its own terms. It is an extension of the circumstances present in the game. Ultimecia s defeat does occur before her birth, and her name, therefore, will enter into history before she is alive. Generations of people preceding her birth will know her name, and will be able to remember, via history, the misdeeds and the atrocities of the Sorceress who reigned over Galbadia. They will know, furthermore, also that she has not yet been born. They will know, though she has already been vanquished, that Ultimecia must still, in the future, rise to power. Her rise has been written as a fiery and a fated declaration into the very fabric of the past, and so into that of the future. It must happen because it has already happened. It is a thing that will transpire absolutely, as a fact. Picture it, then, if you will, as a guillotine s blade. It has fallen before it has fallen in Squall s present era but it must be lifted, will be lifted, gleaming to its height sometime in generations succeeding Squall s own. The residents of those succeeding generations will observe the thing as it ascends. They will see the blade climb higher, see it hang, prepared to fall, and see, perhaps, even droplets of blood drip down from it before it finally and fatally descends. History has told them they will see such a blade rise, and so they shall. But will they simply watch the blade ascend? Will they resign themselves to a spectator s role in the affair, and passively observe Ultimecia s rise because they know that, in the past, although in their future, via the machinations of time-travel, the Sorceress must be defeated? Will they give themselves up to the omnipotence of Fate, and decline to participate in events? Or will they, conversely, react? Will they, in spite of their own actual and historically-proven inability to successfully fight Ultimecia, anticipate her birth and her ascension to power? Will they keep an eye open, prepared to, all the time, stage an attack? Will they wage a war with her, in their own era, even though they know that their efforts should be futile that she can only be beaten as she has already been beaten in history? If you take human willpower into account, and also human stubbornness, and also human desperation and determination, the answer to that string of largelyrhetorical questions will be apparent. Humanity will fight back against Ultimecia. Humanity must fight back. Humanity will anticipate, and will watch for, her ascension. It will do this even though History has declared all such efforts to be impotent. This is a conclusion that, once more, follows logically all preceding points made. It is a conclusion that requires no very taxing suspension of disbelief. It may, even, almost be said to require none at all. And it may said to require so little because we are shown, in the

game, that the residents of Ultimecia s fight back against her.

future era did, indeed, attempt to

Just outside of her castle, you may recall seeing a few discarded carcasses on the beach. These are the unceremoniously-slain bodies of White SeeD members, and Squall remarks, when he stumbles upon them, Future SeeDs We re fighting across generations. SeeD and Garden, organizations founded specifically to combat Ultimecia, are still in operation, in the future, even though the Sorceress has already been vanquished in the past. They are still in operation even though it has been written into history that they cannot accomplish their singular goal in their own era. They must wait for the past to come around again, and intersect with their future, but they will not and they do not wait that long. They resist Ultimecia, and are slaughtered in the process. Well, then, so much for their valiant exertions. The principle lesson, not for any of them (bless their poor murdered souls), but for the rest of us, has been learned. And just what is that principle lesson? Simply that Ultimecia was pursued by the population of her own era. And so, as you see, all the points we ve been making connect rather nicely as dots on the same diagram. History is remembered, and Ultimecia is remembered along with it; history is then acted upon, and Ultimecia is pursued, although in vain, by a population aware of her immanent emergence. Only a few very basic assumptions have been used to weave these elements together into a cohesive web. However, I can see your finger even now attempting to come over and poke at what you think might be a hole in the needlework. Fine, fine, you say she was pursued in her own era. That s evident enough. But what if, just what if never mind all the hassle I went through in Part 1 of this thing history wasn t remembered so well? What if the world really had forgotten about Ultimecia? What if they actually didn t know that she would rise to power in the future? Bah, humbug, I say! I don t want to be a Scrooge, but you are quite trying my patience with this topic! Won t you just accept the overwhelming probability that Ultimecia s name would be remembered? No? You want a line or something from the game? Fine, then, we ll see what the lady herself has to say about it. -----------------------------------------------------3. "DESTINED TO FACE ME" [UP3] -----------------------------------------------------Ultimecia is not a great speaker. By that I mean, the woman tends to hold her tongue. She makes brief and terse statements when she makes statements at all. She is constantly dismissive, and does not, for that reason, ever bother explaining herself to anybody in the game. Why should she, after all, explain herself to all the wretched peons that surround her? What business do they have addressing the likes of her? They have no business doing that, and therefore she doesn t allow them to do it. She makes no villainous monologue, and never divulges even a single part of her plan. No, not the tiniest bit! Dr. Odine and Edea are the two persons responsible for piecing the Time Compression puzzle together; Seifer later reaffirms their speculation. In spite of this, Ultimecia does talk, and when she talks she generally makes obscure and reflective comments. These comments often soar over the heads of whatever listeners are attending to her speech at the time. They soar over those listeners heads because Ultimecia is often, when she does speak, speaking to herself. Her words are meant for her own ears. They touch upon thoughts that she already has in her head. They are little quips and utterances. Frequently they are derogatory (oh, how she loves denouncing SeeD

members as fools!). But they are not without their import. Although they are brief, they are still open windows into Ultimecia s intellect; and although they remain only briefly opened, they still allow us to glimpse for a moment what is inside of her mind. During a confrontation with Squall inside of Galbadia Garden, Ultimecia makes these remarks: Ultimecia (as Edea): So the time has come. You're the legendary SeeD destined to face me? Squall: (What is she talking about?)

Ultimecia: I must say that I am impressed. ...An impressive nuisance. Your life ends here, SeeD. Worthless fools. After that, they battle; Ultimecia is also a woman who likes to get right to the point. But what about that tantalizing comment regarding the legendary SeeD who is destined to face her? (We know that the term SeeD is singular because the line, in Japanese, reads, Omae ga densetsu no SeeD datta no ka, where omae is the singular form of you. ) Squall wonders what this means, and through his inner dialogue the script has posed the question that he poses to himself also to the player. A topic has been highlighted for our consideration. We are asked to ask, along with Squall, exactly what the Sorceress might have been saying. Squall never does ponder out a proper answer, and the game never supplies one. This, however, is no problem for us, because the very question is an answer to itself or, rather, Ultimecia s initial statement is an answer to the question that it prompts Squall to consider. She is talking, of course, about history. Through her remark we learn that history has been inflated into something greater than itself, into legend, but it is nevertheless history, the very thing that we have been discussing all along. The past has been remembered well enough by the residents of Ultimecia s era. She is a voice from that era, and a voice educated enough, as is apparent, about the past to make the remark that she does make about it. She is aware, in a dim fabulous prophetic way, about what has already occurred, and therefore about what must subsequently still occur. Her impact on the world, in both the future and the past, has been substantial enough for its power to ripple across the necessary generations into her very ears before she has yet made the impact. Her comment, in other words, is merely a substantiation of the first assumption that I made in Part 1 of this FAQ. History not only might be remembered it has been remembered. Ultimecia herself remembers it. With that observation we have come full-circle, and arrived back at the beginning of our chain of logical conclusions. Each conclusion, as has hopefully been illustrated, feeds into and creates the others; and each conclusion is nothing more than an extension of facts and lines of script presented to us by the game. We have made the most basic assumptions to arrive at this place in our theory. Our assumptions might not, right now, even be called assumptions: they are so strongly implied by the game that the game may be said to have indirectly stated them. More than that, they are so strongly backed by reality, and by simple common sense, that they are really less assumptions than they are the first thoughts that would occur to any thinking person. The rationale is so obvious that it is elementary. So we have finished butchering the cow. Now we have all of the cuts spread out before us on the counter. Some of them are more substantial than the others;

some are smaller but more tender and therefore more implicating; some are simply pretty and convenient scraps, which perhaps we will throw to the dog under the table, or maybe to Ammut if we feel so inclined to feed that chimera. In any event, we are ready to prepare or to dispose of these numerous pieces of beef as we see fit. They have all been finely boned and presented to us in nice paper wrapping, tied with string. In plain language, the scene is set; we have finished building the foundation for our theory; now we forge on to the more gourmet endeavor of cooking the stuff into a satisfying meal. And if you are a vegetarian, so sorry. --------------------------------------------------------------4. A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME [UP4] --------------------------------------------------------------From this point forward, we leave the safe harbor of very practical assumption and set sail upon more open and hazardous waters. Our most practical assumptions, indeed, are now behind us. We must still make a few more assumptions, but they require more imagination than the previous ones have, and are therefore less easily branded as obvious or elementary. I would nevertheless still maintain that what assumptions remain to be made are relatively simple, but now we are entering that blank area of the timeline heretofore-mentioned, and when we are so far off of the map, we must beware of monsters. There is a fine line to be walked. One step too far in too extravagant a direction will have us inventing things out of our heads scenarios too detailed to be backed-up by the game, and too intimate and specific to be of any use to us. Therefore let me state plainly now what my intentions are for the rest of this FAQ. I cannot pretend to fill in empty spaces on the canvas. The canvas, in those spaces, is empty; the developers of the game did not illuminate them; and if I were to attempt painting them, I would be the one doing the painting, and not the developers. That isn t my goal in presenting this theory. My goal is rather to look, not at the empty parts of the canvas, but at the colored ones, and to look, more precisely, at the edges of the colored patches. We all presume, whenever we do attempt discussing Ultimecia, that a hidden picture exists somewhere. It must exist for us to theorize about it. Any theory is an attempt to expose that hidden picture. What I personally presume is that this hidden picture exists largely within the game, and that, though parts of it are blank, those parts are not blank because they are devoid of substance; they are blank because something has covered them up, or in other ways obscured them from our viewing. What has covered them up? The very fact of Ultimecia s own dismissive and condescending personality. She has a motivation, but she is no blabbermouth, and therefore we never hear what her motivation is. This is the blank spot on the canvas. Around that blank spot, though, are the traces of the image that would have filled in the center. We have a jigsaw puzzle, the exterior sides of which have been completed, but the middle is a hole, and the rest of the pieces to fill it that hole are nowhere to be seen. Ultimecia has withheld them. What I propose to do, then, is look at the parts of the picture that have been made available to us at all of the edges of the picture and to guess, using those edges as guidelines, at what might exist behind their empty center. The edges have already been established. Those edges are, I repeat, these: - History is remembered and acted upon. SeeDs in Ultimecia s own era attacked her. We may suppose that the remainder of the population, aware of her impending threat, also supported this resistant behavior. - Ultimecia was aware of her own historically-recorded actions in the past.

From there we begin to fill in the empty middle of the canvas, and the timeline, as best we can. We ask ourselves how, under circumstances such as these, Ultimecia might have come to be. How, even, would any child come to be named Ultimecia in the first place? If that name has been permanently associated, via historical records, with tyranny and madness, what parents would ever christen their daughter with it? This question may seem fairly trivial, and perhaps even beside the point, but it is a branch of a larger and more fundamental issue. How, if Ultimecia s destructive reign were written into history, would she be allowed to rise to power whatsoever? We have already supposed that the population of her era would combat her, and we have witnessed the outcome of their efforts strewn across a certain forlorn stretch of shore. But why did they not suppress her before then? They knew, well in advance, that she would make her appearance on the world stage. They might have even been (as Yuthura Ban has suggested) keeping tabs on each new Sorceress. A limited number of these women exist at any given time, and one of their magical inheritors is destined to be Ultimecia. Future generations have only, therefore, to watch each future generation of Sorceresses. One of these women is fated to be their long-awaited enemy. That is a historical fact. And yet only one of these women is fated to be Ultimecia. Therein lies the crux of the thing, and also the seed of the explanation for our initial query: how could Ultimecia come to be ? To flesh that explanation out, let me turn to a real-world illustration of my ultimate argument. The witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, during the late 1600 s, were in all likelihood not at the forefront of the developers thoughts as they plotted this game (to say the very least). Nevertheless these famous court proceedings provide an illuminating and easy example for the sake of comparison. What they are an example of is herd mentality, and much has been made of their psychological implications in regards to human behavior. Much has also been made of their political dimension. But let me sketch them out a little, for those of you who may be unfamiliar with them. The issue, of course, was witchcraft, and this issue, at the time, was an issue that could be dealt with before a judge and jury, in a courtroom. The penalty for practicing witchcraft, by default, was death. Remember that I sketch a generality with these statements. Because that is the case, I may also make some generalizations about court protocol, and throw off a few innocent remarks regarding parasitical lawyers, silver tongues, and deal cutting. A potential witch, once brought into the court, was of course faced with the impossible judicial system of the time. Once charged with the crime of witchcraft, in other words, he or she was as good as a witch and already in possession of a death sentence. Pleading innocence was futile, and proving it out of the question. All that remained for the convicted witch was the hangman s noose unless, one of those silver-tongued and quite persuasive lawyers may have said, the convicted, perhaps, had some information he or she would like to share? Information, for example, about the whereabouts of other witches ? The court might afford, after all, to pardon and spare an informant, and so one by one each convicted witch reported more potential witches to the judge and jury. In this fashion over one-hundred and fifty people were eventually brought to trial, each having been dragged into the courtroom via fabricated accusations, and each afterwards inventing their own fabricated accusations in order to be spared an execution. The point, as far as we re concerned, is paranoia as it is registered on a scale pertaining to the masses. A mere hint may be dropped, and as long as it is suggestive, as long as it is insinuating enough, and regardless of its truth, if it is potent, it may well swell into something like a pandemic.

Perhaps Sterbini, of all people, explained this psychological phenomenon best in his libretto for Rossini's The Barber of Seville, where Don Basilio makes these lyrical observations about slander and calumny: Slander is a little breeze...a mild wind... quite gentle. It's imperceptible and subtle... light and sweet. It begins as a murmur... softly... here and there... it's a whisper... a hiss. It idles along. It rambles around. It manages to slide into people's ears. It slips inside their brains. Then it swells and it stuns. It comes out of the mouth with an ever louder noise, and gathering force it flies from place to place. Like thunder echoing through the forest, it makes your blood run cold! Finally it spreads and produces an explosion like the roar of a cannon! An earthquake! A tempest! Shaking the heavens and the seas! Sterbini s point comes across even better when accompanied by an orchestra and sung by a bass in Italian, but for now it suits our purposes to see it in English in print. It certainly sums up what occurred in the Salem witch trials with more elegance than I could although, of course, slander was not as maliciously and purposefully at hand in those trials as it was in Rossini s opera. Yet the feeling and the spirit still pertains, and Don Basilio s philosophy may be applied to any situation in which something small snowballs into something gargantuan, public and out-of-control. It should be easy to see into what slot of FFVIII I intend to fit the above examples. The slot is made even more visible, and even more suitable for the example to be stuck into, because witches are actually, literally involved in both scenarios. In Salem, however, the witches were merely poor unfortunate souls, and it was slander indeed that whipped that colonial population into its convicting frenzy. In FFVIII, meanwhile, the witches are real, and it is not slander or imagination at all that colors them in a bad light; historical records and facts do this to them. Adel was an actual tyrant. The Odine Bangle has been designed to suppress Sorceress power. Technology has been developed to imprison them in a deep-freeze Memorial located in Esthar. We must seal your power, one official remarks to Rinoa, for the sake of the world. These women, empowered by magic, are not to be trusted, and not, if it can be helped, to be given the freedom to act of their own volition. It is therefore no wonder that, as the tutorial informs us, many Sorceresses keep their powers concealed. We will leave all the feminist arguments out of the picture for now, and merely observe that a certain level of discrimination is more than evident. Now conceive of how, in future generations, this discriminating attitude, like Don Basilio s slander, would idle and ramble along through the popular conscious, growing ever louder until it had succeeded in producing a cultural tempest. It would continue to increase because, rather than learning to sympathize with Sorceresses, the population would grow gradually more agitated and terrified of them in anticipation of Ultimecia s emergence. Hear, in your head, the clocks hands ticking down to the unspecified but guaranteed arrival of a tyrant; listen to the murmur of the crowds as their anxieties continue slowly mounting; hear the protestations and laments of the women whose fate is not, indeed, to become Ultimecia, but whose magical abilities nevertheless charge them with the potentiality of a transformation into that historical villain; picture the throngs rallying together against them. It is like the French Revolution all over again, is it not? But instead of a guillotine in the town square, we have a Sorceress Memorial! Forgive me for this frightfully cartoonish description. I do not mean it in a literal fashion. I merely mean to evoke the hot-headed and impetuous viciousness of the mob, whose momentum, once built, cannot be slowed or stopped by anything less than copious bloodshed. In other words, I mean to evoke the simple and primitive foundation of human nature: that instinctual fear of the other, and that primeval drive for survival. This drive would no doubt, as I have already explained, persist through the

future generations of FFVIII s world, and as a consequence Sorceresses living in those future generations would in all probability meet with hostile resistance and fear. I could do any amount of imagining about what their experiences and lives would all be like, but I ll refrain from that, and allow you to do your own imagining. Simply reference once more, to trigger your thoughts, the circumstances in Salem, and consider in what ways minorities have actually been discriminated against in reality. You can conjure up some rather hurtful images, can t you? People do barbaric things to one another, and the barbarism increases in an atmosphere of fear. Sorceresses are not treated well in FFVIII to begin with, and after Ultimecia s influence, the civilities extended towards them would certainly decrease more than a little. Yet this discrimination, however unjust it may be, is not without reason or rational cause for a future Sorceress is destined to be Ultimecia. The woman must be born. She must be born because her existence is carved in the unalterable stone of the past. Therefore she will be born. She will be one of the numbers of women placed into the spotlight of the cultural consciousness by Fate, and will be placed into this spotlight before she has done anything whatsoever to deserve the condemnation of the public. At least, from her own point of view, she will not have done anything worth condemning but the public will point at her even still, with confidence, knowing exactly what she might turn into, what she has done already. Her genocidal reign is legendary. It is destined to occur, for it has already occurred. And because it has already occurred, Ultimecia has already incurred the wrath of the world, and incurred that world s wrath without lifting a finger. She is still, perhaps, a young girl, or a young woman, but because she is a Sorceress the public persecutes her. It presses in upon her; it smothers her with unwanted surveillance; it scorns and stares at her, and threatens her, perhaps, even, with imprisonment. It does this without knowing that she is, at last, the one, that she is truly Ultimecia; it does this merely thinking that she could be Ultimecia; and by doing it by pressing her and persecuting her, by loading her down with the weight of a crime compounded by centuries of terror and anxiety it forces her, finally, to truly turn against the world around her. Being hated by society, why shouldn t she, in her own right, in her turn hate society? Why shouldn t she strike back and silence those who would oppress her? She is an individual, a revolutionary! She will not stand for what her magical ancestors weakly accepted their base, their menial mistreatment. She has done nothing to warrant this cruel harassment. She will strike back! If they will harass her, she will harass them! And so the snowball begins to roll again, gathering more force, more weight, more meaning, as the one Sorceress fated to be Ultimecia resists her persecution as the public observes how she resists it as that public pushes in upon her even harder than before as she pushes angrily back against them as stakes raise on both sides as violence breaks out between them as blows are killingly exchanged as she cannot now turn back from her bloody path as she ascends into her role as a historical tyrant. That is as far as my sketch of her rise will extend. To say anything else would be to invent details out of thin air, and however appealing certain details may seem, floating up there on their own little pink clouds, it would be a disservice to pull them down now. This isn t the place for fan-fiction. I have stopped where I have because I have finished with my outline. That outline is as general a thing as I could manage. It is the suggestion, if you recall the metaphor from earlier, of the picture in the middle of the unfinished puzzle. It is what, in the roughest sense, that missing section of the puzzle is likely to represent, based on what we see of the puzzle s completed edges. But a suggestion is all that we require. That suggestion is something for us to swallow, and we have only wanted, this whole time, a little bite to eat so there it is. You may chew on that bite for as long as you like. Chewing on it, you may also ruminate and wonder and compose your own,

more detailed, situations envision for yourself a more colorful and more peopled history for Ultimecia. You may fill, in other words, the outline in with your own shades and hues. Coloring it in that manner is not my business. My business is only to illuminate the initial outline itself, and to brush away the potential obscurity of it. But perhaps it is not even truly as obscure as all of that. Ultimecia, as I have said before, is not a blabbermouth. However, she does make one substantial speech during the game. It is an address to a Galbadian crowd, and the main part of it reads as follows: Ultimecia (as Edea): "...Lowlifes. ...Shameless filthy wretches. How you celebrate my ascension with such joy. Hailing the very one whom you have condemned for generations. Have you no shame? What happened to the evil, ruthless sorceress from your fantasies? The cold-blooded tyrant that slaughtered countless men and destroyed many nations? Where is she now? She stands before your very eyes to become your new ruler. HAHAHAHAHA." President Deling: (...?) Ultimecia (as Edea): "A new era has just begun." President Deling: "E-Edea... Are you alright...? Ede...!" (She telekinetically lifts Deling into the air and begins killing him with her magic.) Ultimecia (as Edea): "This is reality. No one can help you. Sit back and enjoy the show." (She telekinetically throws Deling's lifeless body.) Ultimecia (as Edea): "Rest assured, you fools. Your time will come. This is only the beginning. Let us start a new reign of terror. I will let you live a fantasy beyond your imagination." This speech may be taken, as I see it, in two ways, but whichever way you choose to take it, the thing is still worth taking. The first way to take it is as a generalization. Ultimecia may be speaking of the Sorceress as an idealized and conceptual composite, baring the public perception to its bone, and describing how Sorceresses as a collective have been criminalized to a degree verging on the fantastic. If that is the case, her speech may be read as an encapsulated summary of every point I ve related up above. It is a statement made, in-game, by the woman herself, about how people have condemned her kind for generations. It describes how the public perceives the Sorceress as evil, ruthless and cold-blooded; as a slaughterer and a destroyer. This is a testament to discriminatory herd mentality, indeed, and if it is nothing else but that, it still serves as an enlightening glimpse into the mentality of the global masses. There is another, though, and more interesting way to interpret this speech, and that is as a speech about Ultimecia herself. The way that you choose to interpret the speech depends upon the way that you choose to interpret its syntactical structure. The pronoun my, of course, can be no one except for Ultimecia; meanwhile, the very one, the evil, ruthless sorceress, and the cold-blooded tyrant may, as previously noted, apply, arguably, to a composite anonymous rhetorical individual. But these phrases may still also apply to Ultimecia. If they do apply to Ultimecia, and she is actually talking about

her own personal experiences, then what we have is a direct statement from the horse s mouth pertaining to her own history. There is no need, in short, for any conjecture at all. She has made a blatant remark about her persecution. Moreover, she has made this remark in an insinuating and ironical way. Notice precisely how she words her sentences. She does not portray herself as truly cold and ruthless and etc. She portrays, rather, the public perception of herself as consisting of those attributes. There is a disconnect between the woman on the platform the my in the second sentence and the Sorceress from the public s fantasies. This disconnect is suggested by the very questions that Ultimecia poses to the crowd: What happened to ? and Where is she now? Ultimecia is talking, here, about the Sorceress from the public s fantasies. She is asking where this other, potentially imaginary woman has gone. This other woman is responsible for the very crimes that history would record Ultimecia as having committed: slaughtering countless men and destroying many nations. Ultimecia is treating the woman, syntactically, as if she is another person. She even seems to suggest that there is an exaggeration involved in the other woman s attributes. She poses her questions in such a way as to mock her auditors for having believed in the exaggeration of those attributes. And then she comes full-circle in her final sentence, revealing that she the sorceress from your fantasies stands before you now. By referring to herself as she, Ultimecia is transposing the identity of the cold-blooded tyrant onto her own personality. A disconnect still remains between these two individuals even after Ultimecia has conflated them into one being: herself. She is revealing herself to be another woman besides herself, and yet, at the same time, revealing that that other woman is no one but herself. They are one and the same person. This is what enables her to mock the crowd; that crowd has not yet made the connection between the identity of the historical Ultimecia and the actual Ultimecia because the historical Ultimecia does not exist yet in the era when the actual Ultimecia is making her speech! This may all sound terribly confusing and convoluted. That is simply because it is. Two identities, a false one and a real one, are in play at the same time. Ultimecia has segregated the two of them. At the beginning of her speech, she is the woman on the platform, and she is describing the coldblooded tyrant. At the end of her speech, she steps consciously into the role of that tyrant, and fuses her own identity with the one derived from the fantasies of the crowd. She has become the destroyer, and yet she remains aloof and aware that the destroyer is still merely a role. Finally, she laughs aloud, and this laugh, like the rest of the speech, may be interpreted in a number of ways. It may, of course, be a stereotypical cackle a staple villains trait. But it may be another cynical reaction to the entire scene. She is laughing, not because she is evil, but because the public is unaware of what it is witnessing it is unaware of who she is in spite of the fact that this selfsame public body will be responsible for fantasizing her into existence in the future. As the only person aware of this irony, Ultimecia is in a unique position to laugh about it. It is my own preference to imagine her laugh as a bitter and sarcastic one, but then, I personally read a great deal into grammar far too greatly, you may say, into grammar, when I mention to you that Ultimecia s laughter does not end with an exclamation point, but with a period. This implies something to me, but the idea is too ephemeral to substantiate with anything more than a personal preference, so I only mention it once in passing. The real thing is the speech itself, for this speech, once properly analyzed, does far more than fit into the edges of the puzzle it fits into the very center of that puzzle s missing middle. It contains, although only in summary, a capsule of Ultimecia s life story, and it contains this capsule regardless of how you choose to interpret it. One interpretation fills the middle of the puzzle slightly more, but any interpretation still belongs in that puzzle s middle; and so you see that the middle of the puzzle was never wholly empty to begin with. It only needed, so to speak, some

emphasis. To go one step further in our analysis, however, it would be prudent at this point to also examine a more direct translation of Ultimecia's speech, as it is phrased in Japanese. Interestingly, although the spirit and purport of the speech is maintained in the English translation, certain aspects of it have been neutered. Squall_of_SeeD has done his best to translate the Japanese lines word-for-word, and this is his translation: Ultimecia (as Edea): "......It reeks. Filthy fools. Since time immemorial, we witches have lived within illusion. The foolish fantasy you produced. Adorning their bodies in dreadful costumes, the witches who curse virtuous humans by means of cruel rituals. The terrible witch who burns your green fields and freezes your warm home with ruthless magic. ......Worthless. Now that the witch from the illusion is come to be seen as a friend of Galbadia, you sigh in relief? Who is dreaming fantasy after fantasy?" President Deling: "E...Edea... Just what...? Ede......!" (She telekinetically lifts Deling into the air and begins killing him with her magic.) Ultimecia (as Edea): "Reality is not at all gentle. That being the case, you fools! There is nothing for you but this!" (She telekinetically throws Deling's lifeless body.) Ultimecia (as Edea): "Escape into your own fantasies! I shall continue to dance for your world of illusions! I shall dance for eternity as the witch wh o brings you dread! You and I. Together, we shall create the final fanta sy. Within are life and death and sweet dreams. The witch travels towards the eternal illusions! The witch of the future and Galbadia on to etern ity!" The most striking difference between the Japanese and English versions of the speech is the overt theatricality of the Japanese. Although Ultimecia speaks of a conceptual composite "Sorceress" in English, in Japanese she piles sarcastic attributes onto this rhetorical individual until she has fashioned an imaginable character. We can actually picture "Sorceresses" dressed in "dreadful costumes" and conducting "cruel rituals." These intentionally stagey and stereotyped descriptors illustrate forcefully just how campy and ridiculous the mass perception of "the Sorceress" truly is. That perception is a "fantasy," and made out of "illusions,"and in Japanese Ultimecia blatantly talks about the fabricated nature of the role that she is playing. The duality of the "public perception"of Ultimecia and the "real woman" behind, so to speak, the mask is stated literally when Ultimecia proclaims that she will "dance for [the public's] world of illusion." There is no subtly involved in this statement. Ultimecia is not what the public brands her, but because she has been branded, she will put on the "dreadful costume" and perform the part that she has been assigned. This notion of Ultimecia as a theatrical performer gives additional meaning to her bizarre wardrobe and melodramatic gestures, which she has acknowledged, in her speech, as things like props which she is using to embody the "final fantasy," the "foolish fantasy you [the masses] have produced." She is a self-aware actress, surrendering herself to her public image, and she is

doing this with a malicious irony. Her repeated emphasis on illusion, fantasy and dancing, as well as her mention of costuming, summons the artificial world of the theatre with a boldness not found in the English translation. "Sit back and enjoy the show" is Ultimecia's only comparable English line, because it also places the public in the position of an audience watching Ultimecia, who must therefore occupy the role of a performer. However, in English, this comment slips through the literary cracks, because there is no other theatrical language in the speech which the comment would serve to cap. Instead, the English translation employs military and political language with the words "ascension," "tyrant," "nations," "ruler" and "reign," effectively replacing Ultimecia's conceptual theme about the theatre with more concrete remarks regarding government. I cannot pretend to guess the translators' reasoning behind these word choices, and can only remark that they serve to render Ultimecia as a more militaristic threat in English, as opposed to a metaphysical threat with "illusion" as her weapon, which is how the Japanese text represents her. Of course, she is a militaristic and a metaphysical threat in -both- languages; each language merely underlines these two elements of her character with differing intensity. In my opinion, however, there is no reason not to embrace both translations, and to consider each one in its turn. The core message of the speech does not alter from Japanese to English, but certain thematic flourishes have undoubtedly been lost in the translating process, and these add yet another layer to Ultimecia's personality. But a question (although it is a silly, silly question) still remains! Who would name their daughter Ultimecia? Unfortunately, I have no answer to this simple question. I may only hypothesize and guess about it. Luckily it is not an essential question, but rather more like a little piece of amusement to consider. I have, of course, considered it, and here is my own spin on the issue, although my spin may be no better than yours. I don t personally believe that any parents would name their daughter Ultimecia. What I prefer to think happened, instead, is something along these lines: You say I m Ultimecia? Then so be it, kurse all of you, I am Ultimecia! As an individual cognizant of the historical role being forced upon her, it seems fitting, to me, for Ultimecia to climactically adopt the role for herself after she has been pushed at last over the brink. Such a transformation of identity would certainly be a dramatic finale to cap the process of her creation. But of course any number of theories like this might be dreamed up and hold equal amounts of water. We have entered the realm of fan-fiction which we already skirted before, so let s pull away again before we plunge into the last large section of our analysis. Naturally we do have one more great topic to touch upon, for what is any discussion about Ultimecia... without consideration of that ever-elusive Time Compression? --NOTE (by Sir B): If you recall the section about the time compression witches, it was left open as to whether or not they were real women. However, assuming they were the implications are huge in light of this theory. In short, future sorceresses would all appear to mysteriously end up getting slaughtered by Squall and Co as they move towards Ultimecia's era. Ultimecia's paranoia and anger would be multiplied tenfold as she learned that every sorceress prior to her (after Rinoa) was brutally killed, many perhaps being perfectly innocent. Now, it is the TheOnionKnight's opinion that this is NOT the case, and that

the TC sorceresses are not actually real women, and his theory certainly does not in any way rely on it. But it is certainly something to consider if you do think the TC witches were real. --------------------------------------------------------------------------5. TO COMPRESS, OR NOT TO COMPRESS - TO COMPRESS, OF COURSE! [UP5] ------------------------------------------------------------------------By now we have already done most of our cooking, and by that I mean, established the meat of our theory. We have taken what the butcher gave us, allowed it to marinate in the juices of applied logic, and finally thrown it out onto the grill. Now it is sitting there, sizzling merrily away, and the scent of it is wafting pleasantly beneath our noses. Ah, my, what an aromatic breeze, indeed! In just another moment the thing will be ready to eat. In fact, if we wanted to do so, we could leave it entirely alone right now, and consume our meal as-is once it has gotten how do you take yours? rare, medium-rare, or perhaps well-done? once it has gotten, in any event, heated through enough for each of our own tastes. We needn t touch the theory anymore, for it is already complete: Ultimecia has a back-story. The backstory was, as you saw, right there all along in the game. You already knew all the key components of it. I merely tried, as best as I could, to highlight them a little bit more brightly for you. And therefore you may take what I have highlighted thus far, remove it from the grill, and chow, as they say, down if you wish to. Either that, or you may wait a minute longer before eating, and scrutinize, as I will subsequently, some more potential toppings to flavor the basic meat with extra zest and extra theorizing! For although Ultimecia does have a back-story, she still lacks a specific motive for casting Time Compression (TC). Let s delve a little more into her mind, then, and see if we can orient ourselves in a position akin to that of one inside her shoes to get a better idea of why she decided to cast this particular spell. Of course, one extrapolation may be made immediately. It is not specific, though, and it might even be said to belong in the section up above this one, because it is so general. That extrapolation is simply: that she wanted to cast TC in order to take revenge upon the world. Having been persecuted, and having been the woman singled out by Fate to at last snap, and become Ultimecia, her plan of action would as a matter of course involve vengeance. That is the next logical step, going on in the same vein that we have been going on in, and it provides us neatly enough with the nugget of a motive. The world has launched an attack against her, so Ultimecia will launch an attack against the world. That attack is TC, and there you have it. The question, however, still remains: why TC in particular? We may grant Ultimecia her need for revenge. That need, in and of itself, is evident enough and basic enough as a motivation. By saying that again, I harp upon the point, but I harp upon the point to get around to this observation: that one may take revenge upon the world without taking revenge upon the whole of existence. After all, is not the scope of TC tantamount to that of a nuclear warhead deployed against an offending insect? Ultimecia may have been persecuted in her own time, and the SeeDs of her own era may have fought against her, but does this warrant the destruction of the known universe, and the obliteration of the space/time continuum? Revenge is one thing, but revenge on such a level as this certainly indicates an unstable and egomaniacal mind! We are back, as you can see, to considering Ultimecia as an evil for evil s

sake villain, and we are back at that stage, not in spite of, but because of our analysis of her history. Her history does not seem to give enough weight or meaning to her actions. It does not explain why she would choose such an extraordinary and cataclysmic method in order to exact her vengeance. She has been pushed around, certainly, been accused unjustly and perhaps been derided and shunned by society but to take these affronts, bundle and twist them inside of oneself, and transmogrify them into a rationale supporting the annihilation of existence would require a mind not only abused, but deranged, vicious and arrogant. It would require, in other words, precisely the sort of stereotypical villain which I have been trying this whole time to say that Ultimecia is more than. You can see already that I am going somewhere else, and that I have brought up the stereotypes again merely so that I may once more undo them. There is more of the picture to consider, so let us turn back, and look at the visible edges of the puzzle again, and examine what the game provides for our examination. We have a woman, Ultimecia, who knows about her own historical villainy. Because her name has been written into history with tyrannical connotations, she is persecuted by the global population before she has, in fact, done any evil act with her own hand. This persecution drives her to commit an evil act first, against the people of her own era; then, against the remainder of humanity, across a span of eons and uncountable generations. She casts TC as the ultimate retribution against mankind itself. In these facts, there is something fishy. Perhaps you can already sense the strange disconnect inherent in them. Somewhere deep and intrinsic is an apparent paradox, a type of contradiction, a little, irritating thorn of illogic that has burrowed into and is throbbing mildly in the middle of the thing. You may only perceive the throb dimly, but you nevertheless still perceive it. With enough concentration you might make out what the thorn is, and where it is, on your own time, but to save you that effort I ll spell it out presently. Ultimecia is aware of history. She is aware of what crimes history has charged her with. It is this awareness, on her part, that makes her feel the pang of her persecution with such vehemence. She knows that SeeD members from a past era are destined to face her; it therefore follows that she knows about her own attempt to cast TC in the past ; and it therefore follows that she should know the circumstances of her own defeat. Because she is aware of history, she is also aware that the TC spell is what enables her own fated execution. She knows that by casting it, she has set her own death into motion. That is the little bit of illogic I was referring to. It is the element of disconnect, of paradox, in the middle of the thing. It makes us ask why Ultimecia would cast TC as a method of revenge, if she must already know that the effort will fail. Of course we may solve the entire dilemma outright and immediately by saying that Ultimecia did not know the circumstances of her death. That would, would it not, eradicate the motivational paradox? It certainly would. We may say that Ultimecia was ignorant of global history, and that, if the world at large knew about her predestined emergence, she herself was somehow left in the dark. This would give us a neat and tidy explanation as to why she chose to cast TC. She selected that particular means of attack because she was unaware that it historically resulted in her death. She simply did not have all of the information at her disposal. You can perhaps tell how little this explanation suits my personal fancy. In my mind it is no explanation at all, but merely a distortion of the game s plotline to unspectacular effect. We are given a line of dialogue which indicates, point-blank, that Ultimecia is conscious, not only of her historical reputation, but of her historical confrontation with SeeD. To be aware of the

confrontation is to be aware of how it came about, via TC, and to claim that Ultimecia was ignorant of history is to ignore what the game has told us. It has told us that she is no such thing at all. She is keenly aware of the historical representation of Sorceresses, and of the global attitude towards them; she is also absolutely cognizant that SeeD has been fated to confront her in the past. To be cognizant of that, she must be cognizant of the necessity of time-travel, and, indeed, there is no reason to believe that she would be anything otherwise. This leaves us once more with our little paradox. Ultimecia knows that her attempt to cast TC will result in her defeat. History has recorded this outcome as a fact. And yet she still attempts to cast TC regardless of that fact. These contradictory plot elements seem to indicate a motivation that is not only egomaniacal, but also suicidal. I do not, however, think that a suicidal mindset is the answer to our question. Nor, for that matter, do I think that there is even a paradox involved. But how can there not be a paradox? How can there not be a contradiction? I hear you asking these questions and, of course, berating me silently in your own mind for talking about paradoxes and contradictions this whole time, only to turn around and say they aren t there. Fear not! This is the last time I ll establish such a point merely to break it down, and, indeed, I do not even intend to break the paradox completely down in order to rationalize it. In fact, I cannot break it down or, at least, I cannot break down its central tenants. Its two central tenants, to repeat myself just one more time, are these: - Ultimecia knows that TC historically causes her death. - Ultimecia still casts TC. This still looks, of course, like a contradiction. However, it only looks that way because we have not actively engaged it. Most people don t seem to actively engage it, and therefore come up empty-handed when talking about Ultimecia s mindset. Her mindset just doesn t make sense to them, and it doesn t make sense because they do not see why the woman would knowingly enact her own destruction. Of course there is something wrong with this very limited analysis, and the wrong thing about it is: that people assume Ultimecia would be enacting her own destruction consciously. We, however, will assume something different, and what we will assume is this: that, in spite of history, Ultimecia must nevertheless still think that she can succeed in carrying out her vendetta. But before we probe that concept any further, let s step back one pace and look at another handy example for comparison. This other example is Ellone, and at the very mention of her name perhaps you know already in which direction I am headed. Throughout the course of the game, Ellone moves cautiously along on her own little quest, which largely takes place in the background of main plot events. Her quest is a sentimental one, quite appropriate for a mildmannered lady like herself: she has put it into her head that she wants to reunite Laguna with his newborn son. The problem with this, of course, is the word newborn. A mere reunion between the two men, in the present, will not satisfy her. She wants to alter the past, and change events in such a way as to make Laguna s divided family recombine into a happy domestic whole. To accomplish this feat, she does what only she can do, and invasively possesses Laguna s past self via mental time-traveling in an attempt to force him to return to Winhill. I need not delve into the specifics of her various temporal trials and failures to arrive at my point, however, which is simply this: that Ellone does, indeed, fail. That statement carries more weight than it seems

to. Consider what she tells Squall at one point in the game. Ellone: "People say you can't change the past. But even still, if there's a possibility, it's worth a try, right?" Squall responds to this notion with typical cynicism: Change the past? Is she serious? Give me a break... Of course he doesn t make this remark to Ellone. He says it to himself in his own head. But it, too, carries more weight than appearances would indicate. It carries the weight of common sense. The past is the past, and that very fact is an indicator that it cannot be altered, for if it could be altered, then it would be something different than what it is already. Squall, a common man, with no desire to change the past and no power to attempt the effort, quickly and easily subscribes to this idea. But Ellone is different. Not only does she have an interest in rewriting history she also has the power to dabble in time-travel. Therefore she says what she does: but even still. Perhaps the past cannot be changed, but even still She must try the thing, hands-on, in order to convince herself. She cannot trust logic, or history, or common sense. She has the opportunity, the tantalizing opportunity, to poke her head into the time-stream and feel it run through her fingers firsthand. So perhaps the past is immutable, and perhaps all her efforts to change it will be wasted, but even still... Later on, after Ellone has done quite enough temporal spelunking, she comes back into the daylight of the present with a different philosophy. "You can't change the past, she observes. I just found that out. This observation is the same one that Squall made earlier. However, whereas Squall s observation was derived from pure rationality and (perhaps even cold) logic, Ellone s was derived from her own personal experimentation. She found [it] out, in contrast to Squall having reasoned it out. They both arrived at the same conclusion, but because Ellone was presented with the unique opportunity to test the thing herself, she had to take that opportunity before her mind was satisfied. Only afterwards was she willing to come to terms with the notion of immutability. To further strengthen this concept the concept, I mean, of a person needing hands-on experience to believe something shortly after Ellone relates her proven observation to Squall, the game presents us with a philosophical about-face on his side. Rinoa has fallen into a coma, and this conversation transpires: Squall: "You said you can't change the past, right?" Ellone: "You can find out things about the past that you never knew. And from what you've learned, you may see some things differently in the present. You're the one that changes. Not the past." Squall: "Really? There's no way to change the past? No, I want to find out myself. Take me to Rinoa's past. Even when faced with Ellone s observational proof that he cannot alter history, Squall still must find out [himself]. He refuses even, at this moment, to believe in his own prior common-sensical conviction. And why this sudden pigheadedness on his part? The answer to that is easy. It is because something dear to him has now been placed onto the line. Before, from his removed vantage-point as a secondhand commentator, he could go so far as to deride the idea of changing the past, but now that changing the past might

benefit him, he is willing to fly in the face of all logic and try the thing regardless of the fact that he cannot succeed. He comes, as Ellone does, eventually to recognize his error, but this is only after he, too, has personally failed in his attempt. Now we return, at last, to Ultimecia. As Squall and Ellone both did, she also has something personal at stake when it comes to time-travel, and that personal thing is her own reputation, persecution, and even the course, it might be said, of her entire life. All that she knows, and all that she has been compelled, by history, to exist for, depends upon the events of a historical time period located generations prior to her own era. The past has veritably molded her into existence. It has molded her, furthermore, into the role of a tyrant and a murderer. About this it would only be natural to imagine that she must harbor a deep and a bitter resentment. Her malice is not limited in application to humanity; it extends to encompass the natural laws of the universe itself, for those natural laws are equally to blame when it comes to pinpointing which forces were responsible for shaping her pathetic destiny. If she will strike back against mankind, why should she not also strike back against History? It is in her power to strike back that way. The JME is at her disposal. And perhaps the past cannot be changed; perhaps history cannot be rewritten; but the opportunity is there, and vengeance is fueling her desire to take it, so, like Ellone, she takes it. She must find out for herself. It is therefore, in some part, the principle of pigheadedness that drives Ultimecia to cast TC. History has said that this spell will not work. History has said more than that: it has said that this spell will kill her. But Ultimecia cannot trust History. She cannot trust it because the situation is too personal, and she must stick her hands into the dissected intestines of time, and feel them beat and pulse with her own fingers, before she is satisfied with the knowledge of how they operate. Then, and only then, when she has gazed into the bisected bowels of the universe, will she allow her own viewpoint to stabilize. To carry the medical analogy further, she has studied all of the available books on anatomy already; she has seen diagrams of organs, and pictures of systems, and even strung-together skeleton models; but she still wants to open a corpse with her own scalpel. With that, we have reconciled the two tenants of the situation s paradox. No one in FFVIII is willing to believe that the past cannot be changed until they have tried it themselves, so if the history books have told Ultimecia that she will die, she still refuses to believe that such a prophecy is guaranteed. However, this is only one part of the full motivation I intend to map out for her. The other part has less to do with stubbornness, and more to do with arrogance. It has also a little bit to do with the idea of dramatic justice. You must try to stand, for a little while, in Ultimecia s position. Think back upon the relatively genocidal-free, younger years of your life, when you were nevertheless still perceived as genocidal. Think back to your unstable maturation, when you began to have a firmer grasp on history; when you were still disparaged and abused for committing war-crimes that you hadn t yet committed; and feel, if you can, the sensation of fiery injustice flowing through your enraged veins. You have grown bitter bitter enough to adopt the mantle of the tyrant Ultimecia out of spite, to adopt it because it has been given to you so ungraciously by the public bitter enough to finally organize your own retaliation. Now the time has come to administer your vengeance. But no matter how many SeeD members you slay, no matter how much more powerful you become, and no matter how many accusatory fingers you chop off, whether figuratively or literally, of accusatory hands, one finger is still pointing at you. It will always be pointing at you. It was the finger that initially accused you, the long-reaching talon of history, and it is still jabbing itself

with unyielding conviction in your direction. You cannot get rid of it. It will always convict you. And yet, you say this to yourself, all of history is wrong it must be wrong for you aren t a tyrant, or you weren t a tyrant, until history transformed you into one. But history cannot be accurate. It cannot be unalterable. Because, if it is accurate, and if unalterable, this means that it has always accused you justifiably even when you were an innocent, and history singled you viciously out, no matter how vicious it was, it was true, and correct in having made the accusation. You deserved your persecution, you deserved to be attacked and discriminated against, if history was actually accurate but it cannot be accurate. You say this again and again to yourself. It cannot be accurate because you are not really guilty, and to prove that you were never guilty you will go back in time, you will seize the past by the throat, and you will twist it, fittingly, to your own ends. If you can twist it that way, if you succeed, then this will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you were never Ultimecia even if you are now Ultimecia. You didn t begin that way, and you didn t deserve to develop into that personality, because history s testimony was never a reliable thing. History was capable of fabrications. History is capable of them. And you have had enough of history. Your vendetta is subsequently rerouted into a specific channel. You will not simply combat SeeD, and you will not simply make the world tremble for having abused you you will cast TC, in spite of and because of history, and thereby gain absolute power over history itself. You will cast TC because no mode of vengeance would be more delicious. History has charged you with having attempted this spell, and so be it, you will attempt the spell. But history has also said that the spell will remain incomplete, and that you will die in the effort, and about that, you are perfectly convinced, you will prove history wrong. You will not die at all. Your willpower is too strong, and besides, the past, you think or, no, you know can be altered. You will alter it. You must alter it. You will cast TC successfully, and slaughter the legendary SeeDs in the process, and in that way you will not only rebuke, not only overcome, but you will also actually rewrite the very passages in the narrative of the past that have condemned you. Having completed TC, the timeline itself will be yours to warp and edit space will mold and remold itself according to your whims you will become one with existence, and the cosmos will swirl, reduced, like a ball of malleable putty in your palm! How superb, and how ironic, and how satisfactory it will be, to walk down the road to the gallows, and then kill the hangman, History, himself! You will break him on the wheel of Time Compression. How much more satisfying that would be than to simply avoid the gallows. Indeed, if you avoided those gallows, then the hangman would persist in living, and this you can t allow. That hangman must suffer. That hangman must die. And if, to carry out his execution, you must approach within a few yards of your own, then that is a risk you are willing to take. You are certain, anyway, that it is not a risk at all. You are too self-assured, and too vengeful, to consider even the possibility of your own defeat. And there you have it: my preferred motivation for Ultimecia. It is, I think, a really rather simple thing, psychologically-speaking. By that I mean, that it does not require any psychological abnormalities. It flows easily in the current of common emotions and reactions. It is how a normal man or woman might react in a similar situation. Furthermore, it is not an evil' stereotype. It is a motive bound up, somewhat tragically, in revenge but also in impotence for if Ultimecia did want to change the past, she was nevertheless destined, literally, like Ellone, to fail. This she could not have known, and yet this she must have known, which casts a somber hue across our finally filled-in canvas. The picture that our puzzle has added up to produce is a miserable one. It depicts the life of a creature selected, arbitrarily, by the unfeeling natural forces of the universe, to undergo an

existence of oppression and misunderstanding. This existence drove her to extremes, no doubt, and did transform her into a vindictive and a violent person, but is it not nevertheless pitiable, for being so far removed from Ultimecia s own influence? Her existence, I mean, being removed from the influence of her own actions. She had no influence. She was, in the end, a powerless thing, swallowed up and ground painfully into pieces by the uncompromising and uncaring gears of Fate. If she had any control over anything at all, that control was an illusion, for in FFVIII there is no true freewill. Ultimecia s last words or her penultimate words, rather seem to confirm this. They are certainly an ambiguous speech, but they strike me as possessing something nameable, anyway, and that nameable thing is nostalgia. Ultimecia is not a sentimental person, and yet here, at this stage of her life, so very near the end of it, a tenderness or a longing a contemplative retrospective quality has seeped almost gently into her language: Ultimecia: Reflect on your... Childhood... Your sensation... Your words... Your emotions... Time... It will not wait... No matter how hard you hold on. It escapes you... And... She cannot conclude her last sentence. Time has escaped her again. But her meaning has somewhat come through, and that meaning, to me, seems to be a rephrasing of something we ve already heard. Ellone understood it; Squall understood it, as well; and now, although too late, Ultimecia has come to the same, to the only, conclusion the past cannot be changed. ----------------------------------------------------6. A FEW FINAL REMARKS [UP6] ----------------------------------------------------Now that I have finished the main body of my theorizing, you have all of the elements at your disposal to make, of course, a sandwich. That is what we have been aiming at all along, you do realize. The meat, of course, you remember. That is the substance of the thing. It is all you really need. Well, that, and the bread to put it on (the bread is the same thing as the edges of the puzzle, naturally). But now you have some extra toppings and some condiments, as well. These you may pick and choose from. Of course I choose them all, since I put them all out in the first place, but they are not, as I have said, quite necessary. They are the above-related hypotheses regarding that question Why TC? but you do not need an answer to it, per say, to have a suitable grasp on Ultimecia. I personally find it an intriguing question to answer, and an important one, but it is, in the end, very up in the air for interpretation. I have just tried to stick to the basics with my own interpretation. And what I have come up with, doing that, is a very mouthwatering sandwich, indeed, with lettuce and tomato and onion and cheese, not to mention a crisp, crunchy pickle, and ketchup and mustard, of course, fit to rival, in combination, Jimmy Buffet s own Cheeseburger in Paradise. You smile, I see, or else you groan at that, but you must excuse me for the joke. It was really inevitable. I have only now to tie up some final loose ends. They have nothing to do with the theory, really. They are just responses to a few little potential inquiries (two inquiries, in fact). The first is this: why didn t Ultimecia kill Squall during the parade? Why did she keep him alive to interrogate him? This question may be basically reworded as: why didn t she snip the bud when she had the chance? And you can already see how practically sundry this inquiry is. The best answer to it, I believe, is tied up with the concept of where

the name SeeD came from. The foundation and purpose of Garden and SeeD is ambiguous, to say the least, and Ultimecia (actually, Seifer) interrogates Squall about this precise thing. That is, to put it bluntly, why she kept him alive to interrogate him. To interrogate him. Too obvious, perhaps? Ultimecia would as a matter of course have an intense interest in learning why an organization historically pursued her. History would have recorded the pursuit, but not necessarily the intention behind it, because that intention is so amorphous. Squall only learns about the true purpose of SeeD at the end of the game, and that purpose is inextricably linked to Ultimecia s own selffulfilling prophecy. There is no answer to why SeeD exists to combat Ultimecia, except that it does exist to do that. Ultimecia evidently suspected a deeper, or at least another, real agenda, hence the interrogation. And what better way to find it out, than to ask one of the SeeDs from Garden s original, founding generation? This real agenda, if it had existed, would have been the prime mover behind her entire persecution, and therefore a vital piece of information to discover. She must have wanted to know it tremendously, but, unfortunately for her, it never existed. The other potential inquiry that I want to address is really very much like the first one: why didn t Ultimecia take advantage of her own invulnerability while possessing Rinoa in the space station, and kill Squall at that time? In other words, again, why didn t she snip the bud when she had the chance? Because she had a deadline to meet. TC was her greatest concern, and releasing Adel from the Tomb was a step towards completing TC. Accomplishing this was much more important than engaging Squall in combat, especially since the Lunar Cry was practically in progress already, the space station in turmoil, and the Tomb had to be unsealed immediately. She didn t have the luxury to dawdle, and besides, imagine her mentality: she was too overconfident to think that SeeD was actually a threat. In point of fact, she calls them an impressive nuisance. It is easy to see why she prioritized Adel. I touched on those potential inquiries merely because those inquiries touch in turn, although tangentially, upon the topic of Ultimecia s own historical awareness. Why not snip the bud, why not snip the bud, if she knows ahead of time that the bud will blossom into a lethal flower? You have the answer in both her mentality and in her priorities. She is too arrogant, and too curious, for her own good. Also, she has a schedule to go by. Now I have finally said all that I wish to say nearly. The only other remark that I want to make is this one: that hopefully you have gained a fresh perspective on the game. If so, you will probably see new things come out of it, and new themes highlighted, that you missed seeing before. They are there, and with another pass over the story, they might shine out for you. Consider, as a parting example, Ultimecia s first conversation with Seifer. But try to consider what she says as being dually-applied, not only to Seifer, but also to a young woman faced with a terrible dilemma, and finally forced into making a choice that, once it has been made, cannot ever be unmade again. Ultimecia (as Edea): "Such a confused little boy. Are you going to step forward? Retreat? You have to decide." Seifer: "Stay back!" Ultimecia: "The boy in you is telling you to come. The adult in you is telling you to back off. You can't make up your mind. You don't know the right answer. You want help, don't you? You want to be saved from this predicament." Seifer: "Shut up!"

Ultimecia: "Don't be ashamed to ask for help. Besides, you're only a little boy." Seifer: "I'm not... Stop calling me a boy." Ultimecia: "You don't want to be a boy anymore?" Seifer: "I am not a BOY!" Ultimecia: "Come with me to a place of no return. Bid farewell to your childhood." ---------------------------As a very final note, Squall_Of_SeeD has this to add: "This theory is supported by Selphie's epilogue to the story of Final Fantasy VIII, as seen in her diary entry published as the last page of the Scenario section of the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania guide: (Translated by DarkAngel) "Finally, we arrived at Ultimecia's castle. Inside, there were a lot of traps waiting for us! Our futures were hinged in the balance -- could we do this? ...you know, I just thought thinking? She was trying to she trying to reach all the could try to erase the fate it that way, maybe what I'm of something right now. What was Ultimecia survive in the only way she knew how, I think. Was way out to the past to compress time, so that she she knew was in store for her...? Thinking about writing is one-sided."

Here, Selphie realizes that Ultimecia was merely trying to avoid the fate that was sealed for her by herself and SeeD long before she was even born. While one might argue that these are simply Selphie's musings and not something to be taken as canon, considering that the author of the Scenario section of the Ultimania guide (Benny Matsuyama) obviously wrote this in for a purpose, it being the epilogue after all, and that Ultimania Guides are published by Square Enix themselves, they are official documents and such things as this written into the narrative of a character's thoughts should be analyzed with the consideration that it was put there because it is the truth (as nothing is ever offered to contradict it). In conclusion, Ultimecia's ultimate goal was to avoid her fate, but in the process, to also become one with the universe through Time Compression and the witch embodiment, and to then guide all things as she felt they should be." --------------------------------------------------------------------------7. SUMMARY FOR THE "LAZY READER" (by Sir Bahamut) [UP7] --------------------------------------------------------------------------Sometimes we all need our Sparknotes, so here s a brief summary of the theory presented above. The "Unjust Persecution" theory about Ultimecia is based on two basic assumptions. These are: * History is remembered * Knowledge is acted upon

These may seem like trivial assumptions, and certainly we can feel fairly justified in assuming them. How then, are these seemingly trivial assumptions important? Simply put, because the 'history of FF8' (i.e. the events that happen during the course of the game) include information about the future, due to the fact that Ultimecia is a sorceress from the future influencing the past. In other words, due to the time-travelling in the game, information about future events is available to the people of Squall's era. What information might be significant to note? Well, the fact that a sorceress named Ultimecia will one day arise, wage war against the people in her own era before reaching back into the past, starting another war there between Galbadia and the world, triggering the Lunar Cry, releasing Adel, all in an attempt to try and compress all of time and end existence as we know it. The people of Squall's era already harbour suspicion and fear towards sorceresses, and it is clear that the events of the game will only strengthen these feelings. The knowledge, which we are assuming would be extensively documented in history books (just as we are taught about WW2 and Hitler today, future citizens in FF8 would be taught about the Galbadian War and Ultimecia), would clearly lead to increased fear and paranoia. If Ultimecia is definitely going to be born at some time, why not try to stop her before she's able to start two global wars and cause the death of countless innocent people? But which sorceress will become Ultimecia? It is likely that all sorceresses would end up being persecuted, and indeed Ultimecia confirms (as Edea in the speech at Galbadia) that sorceresses were persecuted in her own recent history, probably herself included. So the "unjust persecution" theory is that Ultimecia was initially just an innocent sorceress who was persecuted without having necessarily done anything wrong. Driven into a corner Ultimecia would rise up and strike back. But that is not all. In the game Ultimecia explicitly recognises Squall as the "legendary SeeD" destined to kill her. The fact that Ultimecia would be killed by Squall would also have been written down in history! So Ultimecia devises a plan to rewrite her own fate and simultaneously take revenge on those who persecuted her unjustly: by compressing time she would take control of space-time itself and become god of the FF8 universe. And that, in a nutshell, is the "Unjust Persecution" theory. My description does not even begin to do justice to it, nor does it attempt to offer any details. If, however, your interest has been piqued, then I very strongly recommend you go right ahead and read TheOnionKnight's full description. It will make everything a lot more clear and convincing.

======================================= -Section IV: Additional Information- [AD1] ======================================= This next section is just a collection of various other useful and interesting information. --------------------------------------------~Ultimania Information~ [AD2] ---------------------------------------------

Here follows all the translated Ultimania information related to the game that we have from the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania, the FF 20th Anniversary Ultimania File 1: Character, and the FF 20th Anniversary File 2: Scenario, official guides published by Square. ~FFVIII ULTIMANIA~ Area Guide From the "World & Character" chapter, these are all the entries for the towns and countries of the game (pp. 34-40), translated primarily by Squall_of_SeeD. The entry on Balamb was translated by hitoshura of TheLifestream.net, though Squall changed his use of force field to energy field," and his use of the world s three greatest delicacies 3 Great Delicacies of the World." ---Balamb History An island nation with abundant natural environments and surrounded by a beautiful ocean. During a time of war it became independent from the Holy Dollet Empire, and has since remained calm, without any unnecessary interventions into other nations affairs. Even after the Balamb Garden was set up 12 years ago, there was no change to the national peace, and it has managed to maintain a moderate financial wealth as well. One of the nation s characteristics is the design of many of its buildings, which is mainly based on curved lines with streamline patterning. In the interests of conserving the natural scenery, the houses in the town are kept to a uniform height. Geography and Foreign Relations Its warm and gentle climate makes it a pleasant environment to live all year round. From the edge of the island one can see the western continent dimly in the distance. The western continent, where the Galbadian territory expands out, and Balamb are connected by an undersea tunnel, and by using the transcontinental railroad running through it, travel between the two countries is simple. The harbour in the town not only serves as port for general ships, but also functions as a departure and arrival area for SeeD vessels. The Fire Cave located on the east side of the island is known as a dangerous area seething with molten lava, but as there is a GF energy field inside the cave, it is used by Garden students hoping to improve their combat abilities as a location for field training. Lifestyle and Industry With its refreshing atmosphere, the city in Balamb is a popular tourist destination, and the souvenirs sold at the shop in front of the train station is one of the providers of valuable tourism revenue for the city. The Balamb Fish caught in the coastal waters is a massive fish with bright turquoise scales, and thanks to its good taste is considered one of the 3 Great Delicacies of the World. However, because there is a similar breed of fish which can be poisonous, amateurs need to take care when cooking with it. The sea breeze common to all coastal towns means that the corrosion of metal is sped up, so at the garage of the rental car shop, painstaking maintenance is preformed on its vehicles. Military They have lived peacefully for a long time, and there does not appear to have been many situations demanding the use of an army. The existence of Balamb Garden and its SeeDs seems to give the citizens a sense of relief. ----

to

Dollet History Once a large country called the Holy Dollet Empire, all that remains is a small dukedom. As its government, it has a parliament in place. Considered a trademark of its scenery is the radio tower on the mountain summit above, as few such tranceivers exist in the world; however, it has been derelict since the large-scale radio interference began 17 years ago. Because it has been abandoned for a long time, it would require extensive repair to use again. As well, there are many Anacondaurs and other monsters living in the area, making approach unwise. Geography and Foreign Relations Lying in the northeast region of the Galbadian continent, it is a very small territory. The residential areas and commercial district reside on a small peninsula, while the mountain is on the continent proper, accessed by a bridge. With the town accessible by both land and sea, it is quite convenient for incoming and outgoing traffic. Because the mountain range in the surrounding territory serves as a natural bulwark, foreign invasion is difficult. Due to Dollet s warm climate and beautiful scenery, it enjoys healthy tourism from young men and women. Lifestyle and Industry The wealthy from various nations have high-class resorts set up here. For many shipowners, the enrichment of the harbor is a daily concern. Due to the decay of the town, restaurants and the like have seen sales fall. Military Though it holds a small-scale troop of infantry, they lack combat experience and could not cope with a sudden offensive surge. Due to a small military budget, the necessary funds to comission SeeD were raised by an extra tax on residents. ---Timber History A city located in the southeast region of the continent. The name Timber was derived from the surrounding woods. Due to its abundance of natural resources, invading the area became a goal for Galbadia, and Timber became a territory of Galbadia through military subjugation. Prior to its occupation, those in the resistance were hunted down, and many citizens were slaughtered; consequently, there is a deep-seated hostility toward Galbadia rooted in the local consciousness. Many of its citizens have or presently belong to the resistance, but the thorough management of antigovernment entities has put the majority of that mechanism into dormancy. Geography and Foreign Relations With the control of Galbadia established, the development of the city has been able to progress, but the presence of woodland has decreased dramatically. Still, there are parts of the surrounding nature that remain enriched, such as Obel Lake to the north, with its praised mysterious waters. At its edges, the town possesses four stations used for the railroad; however, because the violent Galbadian soldiers have so disturbed the peace of the town, travellers generally don t stay long. If an obedient attitude was taken with Galbadia, much more prosperity could be expected, but the citizens steadfastly continue to

seek independence from the government order. For example, despite their declining activity and financial resources, the resistance has sought external aid in their quest for independence. Lifestyle and Industry For a long time, Timber s mass media institution reflected local politcal ideology. The Timber Maniacs company located there is famous worldwide, and has formed the core of the publishing industry. With the gimmick of elegance found in its older buildings, an atmosphere of new and old blends in the city, with houses and stores having a look as though made of stone, while the TV station has a futuristic look. The mixture of Timber and Galbadia s crests within the city allude to the complicated history of the town. Military During the time of its independence, Timber retained its own troops; following Galbadia s occupation, however, that body was dissolved and Galbadia s own soldiers presently serve as the peace-keeping force. In order to give its government a firmer presence, the Galbadia army has some of its own troops stationed in Timber. ---Galbadia History When the technologically superior nation of Esthar invaded the rest of the world during the Witch War, Galbadia was motivated to expand its territory and reinforce its armaments. Vinzer Deling was inaugurated as president at a relatively young age, and in less than 20 years expanded Galbadia into the large western force it is today. This remarkable development is the product of politics of fear, and the tragedies of Timber s occupation, the imprison of political dissidents, and the loss of many lives -- all under the pretense of progress. In addition to the possession of long-range missiles, Galbadia s attempts to make contact with a witch have led to a feeling of unease spreading throughout each nation of the world. Geography and Foreign Relations The areas suitable for residence is little that of the range of Galbadia s territory, as desert spreads out from the country s center. Due to the constant clouds surrounding Deling City, there are only about 10 clear days out of a year. The president is the supreme power in the land, and demands much of his country while his approach to diplomacy is simply oppression; Galbadia Garden maintains a position of neutrality, but receives a lot of pressure as well. Lifestyle and Industry Many people pursue their lives in the capital, Deling City, which bears the presiden ts name. In the center of the city and serving as its nexus is the Arc de Triomphe; from there, roads expand out into a ring around the city, and free passenger buses are constantly running as the primary means of transportation about town. Although it is a modern city, classical architecture is preferred, and there are a great many stone statues throughout. Although the development of industry and commerce has been remarkable, as evident by the crowds in the shopping district, everything ultimately belongs to the state.

Military Reflecting the policies and power of the president, there is extreme cooperation amongst the military, and it conducts itself aggressively on both foreign and domestic soil. To that end, even regular troops in the military are highly trained for combat and able to use para-magic. Different uniforms are wore amongst soldiers according to rank and ability. Winhill Located in the hillsides of the southern part of the continent is this quiet village. It has few people due to its distance from Deling City. Pursuing the cultivation of flowers and quality manufacturing, the inhabitants lead peaceful lives. As some villagers have lost their lives after nursing dying soldiers back to health, the town s elderly look at outsiders with great wariness. Missile Base A military facility south of Deling City. Despite radio waves currently being unavailable for use, launched missiles can still be guided with great accuracy. Recognition of the facility s importance is weak among soldiers; inspections at the gate and inside are conducted out of obligatory habit. D-District Prison Constructed by imposing an abundance of taxes, it was built for the imprisonment of political dissidents. Endowed with the capacity to dive underground, it s difficult to escape from; for those sent there, imprisonment and death are said to have the same meaning. ---Fisherman's Horizon (F.H.) History This town originated with mechanics active during the time of Esthar s development who were dissatisfied with developments taking place in that country and only had a desire to make. The name was coined by one of the men who played an essential role in establishing independence from Esthar, deriving it from the town s ideal atmosphere; it s typicallyed shortened to F.H. Many of those involved in the town s construction have begun to reach older age, and, in recent times, it has seen the births of its first genuine native residents. Vestiges of the railroad station used to cross the sea to the east and west remain; station master was once considered the highest responsibility in the town. Geography and Foreign Relations Surrounded by the immense ocean, Galbadia is visible to the west and Esthar to the east. Due to the town s small size, its population is also small, though those coming from the Galbadian continent wishing to enter Esthar have occasionally remained permanently. Some F.H. residents contributed to the completion of Balamb Garden and the others, providing their skills as a service far and wide. Lifestyle and Industry There is little fluctuation in the town s warm climate, which reflects the town s gentle, open atmosphere. The buildings were made from recycled material, and stores and homes have a simple look and lack finishing touches; energy needed for the town is

provided by its windmills and mirror panels. Many residents pursue construction and repair as occupations, and have room to carry on peaceful lives. Military As the station master strongly loathes resolving problems through battle, the town has no army or weapons. Conclusions to disputes are reached almost exclusively by discussion. [Translator's note: "Station master" was translated as "mayor" in the English version of the game.] ---Esthar History Known as Silent Esthar for the past 17 years due to the country s utter lack of communication with foreign nations. Possessing the world s greatest technology, it became a large nation, but become gradually more focused on military affairs, and eventually launched the Witch War, becoming the enemy of the world s other nations. Following an internal movement to throw down its dictatorship, the former ruler was banished and a transition was made to the current republic system. With a president at the top of its political system, his many aides see to most administrative affairs, and the title has carries no significant meaning. Administrative officials within the country have sought to mitigate an extreme danger by sending it far away and constructing a highly expensive facility. Full-time crews take turns spending half a year at the facility, maintaining constant vigilance over the threat. Geography and Foreign Relations Current state of affairs within the country are unknown -- even the exact range of its territory, and whether anyone has verifiably entered or left. As there is no regular means of traffic into Esthar in place, and entry by air isn t possible, crossing the Horizon Bridge is considered the most realistic method of entering the country. The prevailing opinion is that the information blackout was performed to prevent the leak of advanced technology that may again cause mayhem on the world stage. However, the president s current workload and the complex process of presenting certain information to the public is said to be the real cause. Lifestyle and Industry The curved, translucent parts in the tall, orderly lined buildings gives Esthar City the appearance of a futuristic city. The streets and floors of buildings are kept so meticulously clean that the long robes serving as the national dress are guaranteed not to become dirty; also, travel around the city is facilitated by floating on plate lifters in the pipes throughout the city -and due to such high technology being utilized for traveling about the city, it is apparent that it has permeated to the daily level. In addition to those involved in the military and administrative affairs, there are those dedicated to the advancement of technologoy, as well as the research of magic and mechanical engineering. Due partly to the introduction of computers in the buying and selling of commodities, the shopping mall area in the eastern part of the city doesn t contain the crowds seen in foreign countries.

Military Possessing a powerful army utilizing high-tech technology, Esthar s military power exceeds that of the large country, Galbadia, in the west. Soldiers combat proficiency is enhanced by the suits they wear, and they wield tuning swords that have built-in shotguns. By means of advancement in the development of mechanized soldiers, it is anticipated that they will rise to the level of serving as the standard units, allowing citizens to be released from military service. The country once possessed the enormous device that can induce the Lunar Cry, but during the transition from dictatorship to republic, it was cast to the bottom of the sea. The former state of affairs in Esthar is largely unknown to its younger generation, who serve as much of the current army; there s a common concern that they rely too much on the enhancement suits and that refinement of their natural strength is neglected. ---Centra History Approximately 400 years ago, the nation that would leave behind the name of the Centra civilization came to be. Due to destruction caused by the Lunar Cry more than 100 years ago, it fell into ruin. People immigrating east and west from the Centra continent founded the nations called Esthar and the Holy Dollet Empire. Geography and Foreign Relations Possessing territory in every continent of the world, most was ocated in the south, with the center of Centra civilization and culture believed to have been toward the middle, where ancient ruins are. Their name is the Centra Ruins. Northwest of the ruins is an area of ocean where there was great damage caused by the Lunar Cry, having extreme effects on the surrounding coastline. In order to excavate a strange crystalline object believed to have fallen from the moon at the time of the Lunar Cry, Esthar troops were stationed here some ten-odd years ago. This would lead to Lunatic Pandora. In the present, almost no one visits Centra. Lifestyle and Industry As most of the land has been ruined, permanent settlers are few. Following the direct hit of the Lunar Cry, all survivors evacuated to the mobile shelters. It would appear that there was high industrial productivity prior to the downfall. [Translator's notes: -This section has two blunders related to the timeline. "Approximately 400 years ago" should be "Approximately 4000 years ago," as in the in-game Tutorial's "Centra Civilization" entry. Also, the same entry from the game identifies Centra being destroyed by the Lunar Cry only 80 years ago, as opposed to "more than 100 years ago" -The "mobile shelters" the surviving people of Centra used to evacuate the continent were obviously the Gardens -When this section says that the Esthar troops were stationed "here," it literally means "here." While it wasn't entirely clear in-game, the Lunatic Pandora Excavation Site is located at the northern end of that gulf northwest of the Centra Ruins. A map on pg. 387 of the book identifies it as the area Laguna, Kiros and Ward infiltrated during the game's second dream/flashback sequence -This confirms for us that the Crystal Pillar fell from the moon to

the planet at the time of the Lunar Cry which destroyed the Centra Civilization. Though that was always assumed by many players, I believe, this spells it outright] ---Trabia History The country on the northern continent. It has little land suited for residence, and many peaceful years have gone by without it being the target of foreign invasion. Trabia Crater, near the border of Esthar, is a site where the Lunar Cry once fell. Geography and Foreign Relations Due to the majority of the territory being covered in snow and much of it inaccessible because of many connected mountains, few people visit from overseas. Many of those who graduate from Trabia Garden become soldiers in the domestic army and officers who train soldiers. Lifestyle and Industry The pupils and personnel of Trabia Garden comprise most of the citizenry. Due to the few residences, the population is small. Due to the low temperatures and equally low yields of crops that result from them, there is much research into advanced agricultural methods. Reflecting their unique culture, inhabitants have a distinct Trabia dialect. On the northern island, the Shumi Tribe have their village, where they pursue a quiet lifestyle. Military In the event that war begins, all citizens are to be conscripted into a national army; Trabia Garden undergoes drills for such an occurrence. However, as the country is located in such a remote region, there has never been a need yet for a national army to be gathered for war. Village of the Shumi Tribe The Shumi Tribe and Moombas live in this village in northern Trabia. Due to the harsh climate, the ground surrounding the village at the surface level is covered with a dome. Via mining, the living space was created 323 meters below ground. Merchants dealing in certain stones sometimes visit. [Translator's note: This entry confirms what I think many of us had long suspected -- that the Trabia Crater was caused by the Lunar Cry.] --------------------------------------Keyword Guide From the "World & Character" chapter, these are all of the book's term entries (pp. 41-45), translated primarily by Squall_of_SeeD. The "Sorceresses" entry and all of the "Magic" entry but its final paragraph were translated several years ago by DarkAngel, then a staff member of Adventchildren.net, and still owner of the Gunshot Romance website, using the FFVIII Ultimania guide purchased by Squall_Of_Seed. ---Garden

On the basis of a growing concern, the Kramers established a private soldier training academy. Those trained here are known as professionals for their elite combat ability. 12 years ago, at the beginning, Balamb Garden was established; Galbadia Garden and Trabia Garden were opened together next. Each Garden has a Garden master of administrative matters, as well as a headmaster of academic affairs. Balamb Garden functions as the main campus and sets the example; entry into Garden is available to males and females between 5 and 15 years of age; the drive to improve one s abilities is also an essential condition. After demonstrating sufficient ability under Garden s instruction and receiving a campus s approval, students 15-19 years old are eligible for graduation (graduation must be achieved by one s 20th birthday, or they are dismissed from the school; remaining in the school after turning 20 is possible for graduated SeeDs). Many graduates are enlisted in armies around the world and actively involved in the war industry. ---Balamb Garden The central figure of the three schools. Wrapped in an atmosphere of freedom, conduct and attire are left to the discretion of the pupils. Counting the headmaster s office and the Master Room, four floors comprise the school building, with the dormitories and cafeteria on the first floor, where pupils spend most of their time. On the second floor are the classrooms and their tutorial panels, from which the campus network can be accessed. Because 24-hour training facilities are available, pupils interest in battle is high, and many take part in official grapple athletic festivals. Many students are also active in sports clubs they ve formed. ---Galbadia Garden This Garden is the largest of the three schools. With the headmaster and Garden master roles both filled by Martine, relations with the Galbadian government are very strong. Possessing a tradition of strict discipline, silence is maintained around the campus, such that even whispering is prohibited. Uniforms are standard attire, and jerseys and headgear are wore during exercises. There is a skating rink within the school, and ice hockey and figure skating are common club activities. Because many graduates are placed in fortunate positions, large amounts of money and weaponry are donated to the school from the country, and there is aggressive investment in the facility. ---Trabia Garden The Garden in Trabia. Having the greatest school spirit, pupils have a strong sense of independence. During times of problematic behavior, instructors make pupils stand in a row and recite the motto, Take Care of Oneself. Due to student council officials having difficulty drawing up a rule manual, the appearance of things is often that the younger

generation is in charge. On the sports front, basketball is popular, and rallies are held regularly. The colors of their uniforms are unlike the other Gardens, having a light grey foundation. ---SeeD Codename of the mercenaries employed by Balamb Garden. Consists of those pupils within Garden who possess the greatest ability, and handle duties such as combat support. In order to become a SeeD, one must pass the two-stage written and field exams (candidates qualify for examination at 15 years of age). Those recognized as SeeDs perform their duties in accordance with dispatch requests, while salaries -- stipulated by SeeD rank -are payed in fixed periods. The SeeD name is derived from being brought up by Cid like seeds in gardens; they have a fate they shoulder, though not necessarily just as conducting themselves as mercenaries. ---http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/Scan.jpg -Sorceresses Said to have existed from time immemorial to the present day, the sorceresses are women who are said to have received their powers from the old god, Hyne. There is, however, no hard evidence to support this claim. Extraordinarily powerful, many sorceresses have harboured ambitions to rule over the world -as a result, many people have come to equate the Sorceress with fear. However, there are also many Sorceresses who have chosen to live a quiet life sheltered away from civilized society; as such, the actual number of Sorceresses and the amount of power shared between them remains unknown. The potential to become a sorceress is determined by one's capacity to wield such power -- their natural affinity for magic. This factor helps to determine Sorceress candidates for when a Sorceress passes on all of her power into the next Sorceress. The giving and receiving of power can be made between any two individuals -- it is not necessary for them to be related by blood. A Sorceress' lifespan is the same as a normal human's, however they cannot die until they have passed on their power to the next Sorceress. ---Magic A special power that can only be used by Sorceresses. The magic that is used by human beings is referred to as para-magic. Discovered by Doctor Odine during the course of his Sorceress research, para-magic via junctioning GF is used by Balamb Garden. While it is possible to use para-magic without prior training, without equipping a GF one s power is limited physically, and cannot develop beyond normal parameters. However, in order to create forces capable of fighting without having to rely on the power of the GFs during combat, Galbadia Garden has instituted areas with special anti-magic force fields similar to those used in the D-District Prison. Related to magic is an invention of Dr. Odine -- the famous Odine Goods, which have a function that suppresses magical power.

---Junctioning Uniting an organism with a non-corporeal entity and magic. The magic of junctioning is practiced by those who equip GFs; the consciousness of one human can t be connected to another without an intermediary with a special ability. If the Junction Machine developed by Dr. Odine is used to perform such a function, the same effect is achieved, though the device is currently still in the trial stages. Someone whose mind is being junctioned to by another -- in other words, the person on the receiving end of the junction -- may experience a sensation like the sound of people chattering entering their head. However, the junctioned consciousness will likely be unable to put what has happened into words. In addition, the body of the person on the broadcast end of the junctioning will fall into a comatose state, with their consciousness gaining a clear view of circumstances on the end of the person they re being junctioned to. An effective method exists for the deliberate interference with a consciousness and junction magic, performed by means of accumulating specific materials that interfere in the transfer of powerful waves. ---Jamming The worldwide jamming that spread 17 years ago. As all frequencies became filled with noise, and the radio waves that had been the routine means of communication became impossible to use. Presently, HD (Hyper Data) cables stretched along the underground are the primary means of communication, though areas are often cut off from the cable network due to battles and the behavior of monsters; not all areas above ground are connected. If the restoration of a radio wave-related facility is conducted, a brief radio broadcast is possible, but as it has no practical use, it is rarely performed. ---Guardian Forces (GF) Each possessing special characteristics and appearing in the forms of beasts and fairies, mighty autonomous energy bodies. Existing in specific places (energy fields), they can reside within objects and living organisms, and furthermore, may be junctioned, bringing 2 kinds of beings together. If the other organism possesses a comparable consciousness, most lose their solid forms and can only manifest for limited periods of time. Equipping GFs is possible through the magic of junctioning, substantially enhancing the body s functions. However, the GF takes up residence in the mind of the person to whom it s equipped; this person should be prepared for the loss of some memories. For that reason, the use of GFs has many voices of criticism, and within Garden, which trains battle professionals, Balamb Garden is the only school where the use of GFs has been approved. ---Tears of the Moon [(Lunar Cry)] A cycle said to have begun tens of thousands of years ago, a

phenomenon in which monsters fall from the moon to the planet. The moon is the den of monsters, while humans inhabit the planet; a product of gravity, in a phenomena similar to the pull on the tides, when the moon s surface reaches its saturation point with monsters, the group spills and falls to the surface of the planet below. The monsters fall like the tears of the moon, and are not incapable of causing enormous damage to the surface sufficient to destroy an entire nation, depending on the scale of the event. As well, the natural terrestrial flora and fauna in an ecosystem may change drastically; many are the creatures that have been changed by the touch of the monsters of the moon. In modern times, high-tech science is able to predict where the Lunar Cry will fall, but a perfect method of controlling it has not been established. For that reason, the existence of the crystalline object known as the Crystal Pillar, which is capable of inducing the Lunar Cry, is extremely dangerous. ---Shumi Tribe A race with white-skinned bodies and large hands. Their village is located on Winter Island in northern Trabia, where they carry out a rather isolated lifestyle. A distinction of their race is that their exterior appearance is dependent on their inner nature, and they will metamorphose come a certain time. Each pursues their personal interest in a particular art, and is given the name of whatever hobby they have. ---Moombas A race possessing pointy, fiery hair across their bodies, as well as pretty eyes. They have a fondness for cleaning, and have a habit of sweeping spots where dust accumulates with their tails. They are extremely cautious and a bit cowardly, but have a strong sense of justice, and, once given a favor, won t forget it for the rest of their lives. They remember the taste of someone s blood, and can recognize them even after the passage of time and change of appearance. The race s enthusiasm for the production of their characteristic orange forms is reflected in their appearances. ---Timber Maniacs, Ltd. A major publisher established in Timber. 20 years ago, Timber Maniacs Magazine went into print; afterward, a variety of publications have come along, increasing on into the present. Timber Maniacs is both the name of the company and its first magazine; product of the ambition of a young journalist, as its popularity became high, its circulation expanded. However, as the Galbadia government feared the distribution of countergovernment sentiments, it imposed a temporary ban on the sell of the magazine at its peak, forcing it to change its coverage in current times. Presently, the Battle Series is a more practical imprint, and constitutes the majority of the company s sales. ----

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/Scan2.jpg -Gunblade Combining the sword with a standard shotgun's mechanisms, the Gunblade is a unique weapon. If you pull the trigger while the bullet is "set," a strong wave of power will travel down to the edge of the blade, raising the attack power of the Gunblade. By pulling the trigger at the right time, one can release a powerful attack; however, achieving competency in usage of the Gunblade is very difficult and therefore requires a high degree of aptitude. ---Cards Cards used in a competitive game in which they are arranged on a 33 surface. They originated from the magician Orlan modifying cards used in fortune-telling for use in a game, coining the official name Triple Triad. Initially played among soldiers, they spread to the common people and today are widely used for entertainment among men and women of all ages. ---Balamb Fish Found around the coast of Balamb, a large fish with turqoise scales. Due to its amazing flavor, it s known as one of the 3 Great Delicacies of the World. Among the other 3 Great Delicacies of the World are the wind cacti that dwell in Galbadia s arid regions, the famous West Cactus. The sweet pulp of its flesh is highly valued in the desert region. [Translator's note: Yes, it only tells us two of the 3 Great Delicacies.] ---Trepe Fan Club A fan club for Quistis formed within Balamb Garden. They record her battle activity in great detail. Membership numbers are growing, and currently stand at 28 members. ---Goodbye, Pupurun Depiction of the story of the small sprite Pupurun rendered into the language of humans. It's part of the Balamb Garden library's collection of books, but Raijin borrowed it and never returned it. Its sequel, "We Meet Again, Pupurun," was not as successful as the first work, being an obligatory production with poor content. ---T-Board A skateboard capable of traveling through the air at low altitudes, the T comes from the first letter of the word Turbine. Its use is banned within Garden. ---OCS

An optical camoflage system developed by Esthar. By projecting its hexagonal plates around an area, objects even the size of a city can be hidden. ---Spaceship Ragnarok Built based on the ancient Centra legend of the Dragon Ship, it is the world s greatest airship. With its distinct multiple fuselage, it was the flagship of the country that owned it while still active. In order to be able to perform its agile maneuvers, its fuselage is equipped with an array of jet propulsion nozzles. Sudden acceleration and turns are facilitated by eruptions in the large output mechanism of the rear fuselage, while the finer adjustments of direction and altitude control are moderated via the upper fuselage. A full crew includes the four positions of ship master, pilot, co-pilot (doubles as radio operator), and gunner, though it s possible to transport up to 10 additional personnel. Via coordination of data input with the airstation, excellent fully automated navigation is possible, and it s also capable of breaking through the atmosphere. Data Maximum displacement: 3,450t Length: 108m Width: 77m Height: 54m (at rest) 65m (when flying) Main armament: 609mm charged particle beam x1 Secondary armament: 152mm multi-barreled lazers x2 Main system: Reaction-model 12-step compression turbines (22,500kg propulsion) x2 Auxillary engines: Reaction-model 6-step compression turbines (2,480kg propulsion) x4 Top speed: 11.8km/s ---Other Vehicles Intercontinental Railroad Trains powered by a turbine mechanism, their railroad cars coloring differs depending on the travel region. Comprised of four cars, they are used for many purposes. There s also passenger cars with interiors customized for special customers, such as the president s private car and the cabin provided for SeeD s personal use, which had an extravagent design. -Garden Vehicles Classic-style cars with unique coloring. On the side of its frame are characters identifying the timing of each vehicle s making for Garden. Because of their long length, there s space to seat six occupants in the back of the vehicles. Passengers won t experience much jostling during transit. -Galbadian Troop Vehicles

Armored vehicles used by Galbadian troops. The power behind the motion drive is the same for all of them, but different kinds have different numbers of turbine engines and have them installed in different places (the grey cars have one installed in the front, while the khaki cars have two installed in the back). Primarily khaki cars are deployed to the missile base. -Timber Rollcars & Timber Monorails Trains and monorails that travel through Timber. Composed of 3 cars each, there are many of them. The roll cars were given a flush and crisp design, while the monorails have more curved appearances. Local residents coming and going from the TV station make use of the roll car lines. -High-Speed Landing Boats High-mobility landing boats owned by Balamb Garden. They have electronic boards used for preparations in their war rooms, which can seat six people during meetings. Able to break through water at a rapid pace, the ships have a strong exterior, and the machine guns on top of the hull have sufficient power to penetrate the armor of the Galbadian army s mobile weapons. --------------------------------------[From the bestiary information about the first group of witches fought in Time Compression; pg. 243] Successive generations of witches from beyond space and time. ---[From the bestiary information about the second group of witches fought in Time Compression; pg. 244] One form of the successive generations of witches who appear in the Time Compressed World. --------------------------------------Throughout the FFVIII Ultimania's "Scenario" chapter are diary-like entries reflecting the thoughts of the game's characters at that point in the story. The following is a translation by DarkAngel of the final entry (pg. 303) -- which is, ironically, a posting to Selphie's online diary at Balamb Garden: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/Scan3.jpg -Latest Diary Entry (Public) Finally, we arrived at Ultimecia's castle. Inside, there were a lot of traps waiting for us! Our futures were hinged in the balance -- could we do this? ...you know, I just thought thinking? She was trying to she trying to reach all the could try to erase the fate it that way, maybe what I'm of something right now. What was Ultimecia survive in the only way she knew how, I think. Was way out to the past to compress time, so that she she knew was in store for her...? Thinking about writing is one-sided.

Okay, moving on! If any of you want to ask me in person, I'll always be around! Think of it as a treat from your local, friendly Garden Festival Committee Director! Oh, and I wanted to talk about Seifer too. I know a lot of people might still be harbouring a grudge against him, but he's got nowhere to go, so I feel sorry for him. He lost his sanity back then (Hmm...), so let's just leave him alone, okay? Fujin and Raijin, too. Okay? Aaah! I can't believe it's this time already! The party's going to start soon! The video camera's not even done charging yet! I've got to change, too! Hurry! Until next time! --------------------------------------Additionally, Squall_Of_SeeD has translated the following interesting section found at the very back of the Ultimania (pp. 478-479): ---EPILOGUE A Day of Instruction at Garden text by Kazushige Nojima Good morning. Well, today is the tale of witches, eh? To be clear, this won t be on the test. So, those of you who want to ignore the teacher will be alright. If you study something else, that s fine. I think knowledge of this witch stuff will be interesting to all of you, though, as it involves real magic. Also, this witch story is one your teacher personally likes very much, so please try to maintain your attention and lend me your ear for a little while. Well, let s begin. First, when talking about witches, there s a text that can t be left out; I ll read it, ok? Starting. "At this time, daylight had not yet come, and everything was covered in night. There was a being called Hyne. Hyne created the world, and battled many beasts all the while. Because of the magic Hyne used, he was able to win the battles with this power eventually. Thus, Hyne was the governor of this world. Hyne seated himself upon his throne, from where he thought he could see all around. However, from the location of his throne, Hyne was unable to view the eastern sea because of a mountain. Because of his long battles, Hyne had become too tired to destroy the mountain and needed a tool to carve it up; he had an idea of what to apply to this task. This tool would be able to function of its own accord, and be able to increase its own numbers. Hyne named these tools human beings. Their males and females are the origin of human beings, and we descended from them. The human beings increased their numbers while carving up the mountain.

When their work was finished, they decided to ask Hyne what they should do next. However, Hyne was sound asleep due to his fatigue. There being nothing they could do about it, the human beings made changes to the land at their own discretion. When Hyne awoke, the appearance of the area had completely changed. He was most startled, though, by the number of human beings there were now. Hyne decided to reduce the number of human beings, and used his magic to burn up smaller humans. The small human beings were called children, and were very important to the humans. They wept intensely and protested to Hyne. However, he told him they were his tools, and his words angered them. They cursed his words when they heard them. The humans began a rebellion against Hyne. He retaliated with his magic, but the humans were able to increase their numbers in abundance. Besieged, Hyne bargained with the humans. He offered them half of his own body and power. At the idea of having half of this power, the humans decided they should agree to the deal. Hyne split his body in half and gave half to the humans. With this, a peace was drawn between Hyne and the humans. However, humans began to quarrel with one another for the first time, coming together in groups that wanted the power of half of Hyne s body. A long, long battle began. Many countries were established at this time. The battle was eventually won by the clan of the dark king, Zebalga. Within a forest, they convened to command the power of half of Hyne s body. However, the half of Hyne s body was unresponsive to their commands. Sage Vascaroon came to consult with Zebalga. He was wise, and knew the answer to the problem with half of Hyne s body. Hyne had given them a corrupted part of his body. What the humans had thought was half of Hyne s body was really just the cast off skin of Hyne. When they heard this explanation, the Zebalga clan was furious. They vowed to destroy Hyne. However, the other half of Hyne s body was nowhere to be found. The humans began referring to the missing Hyne as Hyne the Magician, and sought him for generations." This text comes from those claimed to have descended from Sage Vascaroon, and is part of the compilation "The Legend of Vascaroon." After this part, it talks about Vascaroon s many inventions and great achievements, but Hyne doesn t appear again. Must be due to the author forgetting midway, huh? Ah, what a shame. This is, of course, folklore and hasn t been verified by science. Even now, the author can only be speculated. It probably arose from various stories of the time being combined. If you believe this book, Sage Vascaroon lived 980 years! Hm? That s strange, right?

Eh? Was Sage Vascaroon telling the truth about Hyne s magic? Ahahahaha. Well, it s impossible to prove, so even if you advocate this theory, you shouldn t teach high school students to believe in it, huh? Well, there are people who believe the magic of Hyne is the origin of witches. Witches actually exist. There are various studies into their origin, but your teacher likes the "magic of hyne=witches" theory. Yes, that s so, isn t it? It s impossible to demand the origin of folklore, but it didn t come from zero, just as life didn t come from nothing. Therefore, I think there s a bit of truth, even in legend. No, I guess you could say I hope so? Ah, let s change the subject, shall we? Let me introduce you to the "magic of Hyne=witches" theory. Well, the word "witch" as it s commonly used was designated by the scholar Temu about 500 years ago. Temu combined folklore, legend and known facts, and is referred to as a historical scholar by story writers. Because of that, I like this Temu out of respect for his resolve as such a strange, daring scholar. Temu recorded this in his own work, "The Whereabouts of Hyne." "It s to be expected that the magic of Hyne could not be found. Because of people s feelings at that time, it concealed itself in bodies, in the form of women, people who it was thought should be protected. Occasionally, women played important roles in history, but I think this was the magic of Hyne. Whether it is the descendant individuals who are in control, or the magic of Hyne itself will be made clear with future research. The magic of Hyne in the form of women. I name these witches. " What does this explanation entail, huh? You might say it has a negative connotation, which certainly has a simple persuasive power, right? There is no evidence of what Temu asserted. I still include it, though. Eh? What became of the cast off skin of Hyne ? You can discuss that for classwork. This is very, very interesting! You can inquire about that name for geology classwork, right? Ahahahaha. We re getting off the lesson plan, aren t we, so let s return to the tale of witches. Lately, witches have been involved more and more in historical developments. Yes? Current witches? Historically, there have been many witches, so it s not clear how many exist. This is part of why they re considered a problem. Basically, witches hide themselves from society, it is said. For example, hm? Even though Dr. Kadowaki understands witches, does everyone?

Hm? Generally, has that been a greeting up til now? Yes, yes, it has been, hasn t it? However, such people don t exist. Yep, even on the part of the witches, that one s a problem. There have been many witches who abused the power of their magic. Oh, oh, this brings up another opportunity for us. Why is it that everyone has such an interest in the witches? If there are enough of you, I could make a witch research club. Okay, let s return to the main subject. Historically, there have been 3 important witches. Ah, some time ago, I mentioned them. Their names will be on the test. Ahahaha, though there may not be many that easy. Well. One witch is said to have, in ancient times, stood up for the sake of the people in a country at the time of its collapse. A movie was made about this witch and her knight, Zefer, which I think a lot of people have probably seen, huh? Next was the witch who divided the world at the time of the Sorceress War. She was a terrible witch. And then, who s the one most familiar to us? Yes, yes, it is. This witch cooperated in research on the mechanics of magic, thanks to which everyone can use magic, huh? That? Thaaat? That time already? Your teacher talks herself into a daze. Squandered our available time. It can t be helped, so have a good day. Prepare your memory for the names of the three witches. Well, see you tomorrow." ---[Translator's notes: -The part where the teacher is asked about a "greeting" probably refers to "Hyne's descendant," which Rinoa was addressed with by the Esthari officials who took her into custody during the game. -The three witches said to be of historical significance are most likely, in this order: 1) The unnamed witch who was the focus of the film Laguna starred in -- the same film that ironically inspired Seifer's "romantic dream" of becoming a witch's knight (this inspiration was confirmed on pg. 29 of the FFVIII Ultimania) 2) Adel, of course; she's the one who started the Sorceress War 3) The last is likely to be Edea. She and Odine obviously already know one another during the stage of the game where you travel to Esthar -- the Esthari officials who greet her do so by name, and she tells Squall to trust Odine when he says he wants to observe Rinoa -- so it s safe to assume that it was she who cooperated with him in the development of para-magic

-If this story reads kind of strangely, it s in part because I didn t go to any great, painful lengths to smooth out the language, and probably also because we re only privy to the teacher s words. The students input isn t in the text, and can only be guessed based on what the teacher says in response] ------------------------------------------------------------------------The following are Squall_of_SeeD's translations from some of the character profiles for FFVIII characters from this Ultimania. ~FF20th Anniversary Ultimania File 1: Character~ Edea [pg. 253] The witch who is controlled by a will of hatred Shattering a long silence, a beautiful witch who appeared on the world s stage. She approached President Vinzer Deling of Galbadia, who was scheming world domination, and -- as the trump card of that ambition -- was appointed the position of ambassador; she murdered Deling during her inaugural address and immediately settled into her new seat of leadership, seizing full authority. Burning with intense hatred toward SeeD, she ordered an attack by missiles against Balamb and Trabia Gardens. Converting Galbadia Garden into a mobile stronghold and mobilizing it into direct combact with Balamb Garden, which escaped the missiles, she tried to erase everything to do with SeeD. She was thought to be a wicked being, but after Squall s team defeats her in battle, her witch powers are separated from her and she regains her sanity. Originally, she was a kind-hearted woman who raised orphans, until she became a slave to the witch of the future, Ultimecia. [Caption next to a screenshot of Edea giving her speech] After murdering Deling, she used her magical powers -- specifically, a fascination technique -- to drive the assembled populace into a frenzy. [Translator's note: This confirms what many fans have long believed: that the crowd at the speech were so excited in part because Ultimecia was using her magic on them.] [Caption next to a screenshot of Squall and his team talking with Edea at the ruins of her orphanage] Having become a completely different person, Edea reveals the truth. At one time, she was the foster mother to the orphans, and was called Matron. Impressive Words You don t want to be a boy anymore? Come with me to a place of no return. Bid farewell to your childhood. -Timber: When recruiting Seifer I shall dance for eternity as the witch who brings you dread! You and I. Together, we shall create the final fantasy. Within are life and death and sweet dreams. -Deling City: After murdering President Deling

[Translator's note: This is from Edea's speech in Deling City, obviously, and just as obviously, it's significantly different from the speech found in the English version. In fact, this speech may be the biggest change in the script I've run across. I'll include the entirety of the Japanese version of Edea's speech in this entry: Ultimecia (as Edea): "......It reeks. Filthy fools. Since time immemorial, we witches have lived within illusion. The foolish fantasy you produced. Adorning their bodies in dreadful costumes, the witches who curse virtuous humans by means of cruel rituals. The terrible witch who burns your green fields and freezes your warm home with ruthless magic. ......Worthless. Now that the witch from the illusion is come to be seen as a friend of Galbadia, you sigh in relief? Who is dreaming fantasy after fantasy?" President Deling: "E...Edea... Just what...? Ede......!" (She telekinetically lifts Deling into the air and begins killing him with her magic.) Ultimecia (as Edea): "Reality is not at all gentle. That being the case, you fools! There is nothing for you but this!" (She telekinetically throws Deling's lifeless body.) Ultimecia (as Edea): "Escape into your own fantasies! I shall continue to dance for your world of illusions! I shall dance for eternity as the witch wh o brings you dread! You and I. Together, we shall create the final fanta sy. Within are life and death and sweet dreams. The witch travels towards the eternal illusions! The witch of the future and Galbadia on to etern ity!" ---The relevant line for this next translation is underlined in red in this scan: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/squallsmom.jpg -[From Raine's profile on pg. 254] Afterward, she becomes involved with Laguna and Squall is born, though she dies immediately after in childbirth. ---Ellone [pg. 254] A mysterious person who conceals a wondrous power A little girl whose parents were killed during Esthar s war, leading Raine to serve as her parent. She was also close to Laguna, until taken away by Esthar as a candidate to be Witch Adel s successor; she would be pursued by witches for a long time after that, and have to live a life in exile. Connect is what she calls her ability to send a person s consciousness into another person. [Caption next to a screenshot of Squall and Ellone reuniting on the lunar base] There was also a time she lived in Edea s orphanage. Her departure was the underlying cause of Squall s difficult personality. Impressive Words

(I got in twouble.) -Winhill: While talking to Laguna I remember those eyes. You just looked at me with the same eyes you had when you were little. Those curious, innocent, puppy dog eyes. I loved those eyes. -Lunarside Base: Said to Squall when connecting him to Rinoa ---Adel [pg. 259] Former ruler of Esthar, who turned it into the world s enemy Once the ruler of Esthar, she is the witch whose desire to hold ever more power led to the great war. Due to Laguna, she was sealed in a tomb with packing crystal technology, and banished to the void of space, where she was kept under surveilance; however, she would eventually return to the planet below as part of Ultimecia s scheme. [Caption next to a screenshot of Squall's team fighting Adel] The awakened Adel united with Rinoa, and though her power was diminished at the time, she still commenced battle. Impressive Words You thought I would fall for that trick? -Esthar: When Laguna lures her in front of the hologram of Ellone ---Ultimecia [pg. 259] The witch of the future, who desires Time Compression Filled with endless anger, a dreadful witch from the far future. In her time, she used the apparatus known as Junction Machine Ellone -- which allows one person s consciousness to connect to that of another person -- to possess witches of the world s past as she sought to capture Ellone, who possesses a special power. Her ultimate goal involves using Ellone to send her consciousness to the past so that she may begin Time Compression and institute a singular time. She sought this goal in the past, in the present day of Squall and his team; the whole of time would be compressed, giving birth to a world where only Ultimecia could exist. Initially, she connected to Edea, and via her memories, pursued Ellone s trail; during this time, Edea was aware of all that was taking place, but had no control until she was defeated by Squall s team of SeeDs, at which point her witch powers transferred to Rinoa; at that point, Ultimecia used Rinoa as her puppet to free the evil witch, Adel, who had been sealed in space. Controlling the revived Adel, she again sought to bring Ellone into her hands. [Translator's note: It would appear that the long-held belief of many fans that Ultimecia had taken control of Adel was on the money all along.] [Caption next to a screenshot of Ultimecia in her final form] To prevent Time Compression, Squall and his team traveled to the future and attacked Ultimecia in her previous forms. Finally, she took on this strange appearance with no face. [Caption next to a screenshot of Ultimecia passing her powers to Edea] For witches, it is not possible to die while they have their powers.

Defeated, Ultimecia appeared at the orphanage of the past, and succeeded her powers to Edea, who was already a witch. Impressive Words SeeD SeeD SeeD, SeeD, SeeD!! I loathe you Why do you disturb a witch so! Why can t I be free?! Your existences shall be added to the algorithm of Time Compression!! -Ultimecia s Castle: At the beginning of the final battle [Translator's note: This opening to Ultimecia's address was translated in a significantly different manner for the English version of the game. Personally, I much prefer the English rendition, what with the "Kurse all SeeDs" line, and "Swarming like lokusts across generations." Beyond the line about the "algorithm of Time Compression," everything is pretty much communicating the same idea as in the English version -that she'll send the SeeDs to an unpleasant realm where they will have to worship her. Though she's a lot more vicious in her wording in the Japanese at this point: "In intense pain, your minds shall shred and your memories fade. There will be nothing, and no thoughts of so much as nothing! To such a world I shall send you! You will be able to do nothing...... Well, nothing but revere me, the eternal existence!! Come now, who will be first? Ha, no matter who it is, it will all end the same...... I choose you bastards."] I am Ultimecia. Time shall compress. All existence denied. -During the final battle ------------------------------------------------------------------------The following are Squall_of_SeeD's translations of a few excerpts from this Ultimania. ~FF20th Anniversary Ultimania File 2: Scenario~ Manmade Oceanic Research Island [(Deep Sea Research Center); pg. 245] A solitary island located in the distant southwest ocean. A mobile research facility dubbed with the nickname 'Battleship Island,' it was built to navigate the seas throughout the world; though it continued investigating a powerful energy, its whereabouts went unknown for a long time. In a room at the bottommost level of the excavation area of the 'Ocean Stagnation' [('Deep Sea Deposit')] lurks the mighty monster Ultima Weapon. ---Witches [pg. 247] Beings who inherited the undying power Those people who have carried the "Witch Power" inside them since ancient times. This immortal power is passed from person to person, though witches are unable to die when on the verge of death unless they succeed the power to another. Those who become witches inherit powerful magic, and in cases where the successor has a wicked heart, they may attempt to become a mighty dictator whom none can contend with. This has happened twice in history, and, thus, witches are feared and have become detested. [Caption next to an FMV render of Edea] There is not one incarnation of the Witch Power only, for several have been carried throughout the world. However, due to the fear and persecution they face, many witches do not show themselves, and

establishing their total number is difficult. It is a rare case to inherit another witch's power after one has already become a witch, as Edea did. ---http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/Griever-1.jpg -Griever [pg. 247] Legendary lion praised as the king of beasts The animal called a lion doesn't exist in this world beyond the imagination. This aloof figure is attractive to Squall, featured on his Gunblade and accessories, and firmly locked in the foundation of his mind. [Caption of a screenshot featuring Griever being summoned] The witch Ultimecia materializes Griever as a GF, pulled from an image in Squall's mind, and utilizes him in battle. ---The relevant line in question for this next translation is underlined in red on the left side of this page's scan: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/ lastwitchandsquall.jpg -[pg. 268] Rinoa is separated from Adel when she is toppled, and Ultimecia then possesses Rinoa, who has become the last witch of this era. ---The relevant line in question for this next translation is underlined in red on the right side of this page's scan: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/ lastwitchandsquall.jpg -[pg. 268] Around that time, Raine gives birth to the child she conceived with Laguna, and he is named Squall. ---The relevant lines in question for these next two translated lines are underlined in red: [pg. 269] After the successive generations of witches, the final battle with Ultimecia awaits. ... In the place where all space combines, the witches of all eras attack. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------~Miscellaneous Information~ [AD3] ----------------------------------------------------

Here follows a compilation of various pieces of information found in the game you might not have noticed. This list is courtesy of Leuchest/The Dark Legend. ------------------------* Sorceress Knight Movie ------------------------Balamb Garden Students: "By the way...About the movie we want to go see..." "Oh, I'll watch anything." "I wanna see an action movie!" "No way! We just saw one last week." "I'm up for a comedy today." "Or how 'bout that movie about the sorceress and the knight!?" "Oh, you mean that remake?" "I've never actually sat through the whole movie." This is a reference to Laguna's movie. Whether his was the original or the remake is unknown. -----------------------------------* History Classes in Balamb Garden -----------------------------------Balamb Garden Student: "I have a question for ya! Esthar was the country that was governed by this evil sorceress way back when, right?" "So what happened to this sorceress? Did someone overthrow the sorceress? Did we learn about this in class?" "I think I cut class that day, so, like, I have no idea what this sorceress is about." No, the outcome of the Sorceress War is not known to the public. If you ask General Caraway in the second disc, or read Selphie's diary, they too, have no clue what happened after the war, as Esthar closed its borders. ---------------------------------------* Communication throughout the World ---------------------------------------Balamb Garden Student: "Worldwide signal interference. It started without warning 17 years ago." "That's why we communicate online, and use chocobos as messengers now." "That's why there's no reason to get the tower up and running." Communication online is done through HD cables, often destroyed by monsters. --------------------* Anarchist Monthly --------------------[Anarchist Monthly] First Issue!!! "Galbadia's dictator, President Vinzer Deling Special! How does he stay on power?" "We reveal his darkest secrets!!!" [Anarchist Monthly] 2nd Issue! "President Deling became the president after the 2nd Sorceress War ended." "To gain support quickly, he carried out the invasion of Timber."

"It was only a ploy to decorate an already corrupted man's immoral career..." "Our land Timber was brutally destroyed." "Here began Vinzer Deling's road to dictatorship..." [Anarchist Monthly] 3rd Issue! "To imprison anti-government sympathizers, the D-District Prison was built in the desert south of Deling City." "Millions were spent to built the facility. The threat of being sent to the prison intensified Deling's unpopularity." "The prison began imprisoning Galbadian anti-government sympathizers just as they did in Timber." "Moreover, the leaders of the resistance movements faced the threat of having family members imprisoned as well." "Around this time, Deling began surrounding himself only with loyalists, which turned him into an even more fierce dictator." [Anarchist Monthly] Final Issue!!! "With the exception of Esthar, the Galbadian Military possesses the world's only long range missiles." "Although never used in combat, their existence has become a worldwide threat." "It is said that the missiles have the ability to hit any target with astounding accuracy even without using radio signals." "Will the time come for the president to push the button!? When the time comes, Ti..." The articles tell us more about the D-District Prison and the Long Range Missiles (naturally, even before you're aware of it). It's now confirmed that the war fought between Esthar (under Adel's rule) and the world was known as the second Sorceress War. It's unknown which was the first (it may have been a reference to the legend of the battle against Hyne himself, but there's no way to be sure). -------------------------------* Vinzer Deling's Dictatorship -------------------------------Member of Forest Owls: "Did you see the clipping on the board in the conference room?" "[Anarchist Monthly] used to write special reports about the president." "I saw the guy who wrote for that magazine being taken away to prison." "Being imprisoned for telling the truth...That's downright wrong!!!" "It's not just the men who are sent to the prison." "Deling sends women, children, the elderly...Anyone who stands against him." "What was once a thriving resistance movement died down because of this." This reveals us more about the D-District Prison. Contrary to what Rinoa says, it's not just political activists that are imprisoned... -------------------------* Laguna Loire in Timber -------------------------Woman: "Just don't scare me from behind." "Once, I almost got hit by a train when someone tried to surprise me." "But a very handsome young man quickly grabbed my hand and saved me..." "If I remember correctly...his name was......Loire...I think..." Yes, Laguna is, indeed, a very present man.

--------------------------------* Adel's Messages in TV Station --------------------------------"I'm alive" "Bring me back there" "I'll never let you forget me" If you examine the static on the big TV screen in Timber, before Seifer attacks the President, you will see these sentences repeating constantly. They are from Adel, and result from Adel's Seal causing interference in radio waves on earth. -----------------------* Laguna's Inventions... -----------------------Soldier: "The president asks for the weirdest things." "This time, he wants a device that allows you to scratch anywhere on your body." "You know, so that you don't have to reach with your hands." Just some minor details. Not relevant at all, but somehow interesting, nevertheless. ---------------------------* Adel's Sealing Mechanism ---------------------------Crew Member: "17 years ago, Esthar was a country ruled by the evil Adel and feared by many." "The perfect gravitational balance between the moon and the stars makes this an ideal place to seal Adel and her powers." Researcher: "The sealing mechanism is made of a special material." "It seals Adel's powers, and at the same time prevents any means of outside contact." "Radio waves, sound waves, telepathic waves, junctions, you name it." "The signals from our wave jamming system are so powerful that it affects radio waves down on the planet." Explanation on Adel's Tomb: how it works and why it affects the radio waves in the planet. --------------------------* Space Suit Information --------------------------Piet: "The life-support system in that suit lasts 20 minutes." "The reserve tank will give her an extra 5 at the most." "It's unfortunate, but it can't be helped." If you decide to clock the time, as soon as Rinoa uses her reserve tank, until she enters the Ragnarok, the time should round between 5:30 and 6:00. Nice detail :)

-----------------------------------* Radio Waves Functioning Properly -----------------------------------Squall: (...a radio signal.) Zell: "Whoa!" "Sorry to interrupt, but it's an emergency." "We got radio contact from Esthar's Presidential Palace." "They have a plan to defeat Ultimecia. They want to hire SeeD to execute it." The radio signals start working after the Lunar Gate incident (after Adel being released). -----------------------------------------~Tutorial Information~ [AD4] -----------------------------------------Here follows a compilation of everything found under Tutorial-->Information, in the game. This list is courtesy of Leuchest/The Dark Legend. Location Name: Balamb A country on the world's smallest continent. Known for its temperate climate and warm people. Balamb Garden adds a school-town feel to this country. Fire Cavern A cavern near Balamb Garden where a Fire element GF lives. Dollet A small country on the eastern coast of Galbadia continent (formerly Dollet). Remnant of an ancient empire. Timber A city located south of Dollet in the forest area. It was an independent country before neighbouring country Galbadia invaded 18 years ago. There are numerous resistance groups fighting for independence to this day. Timber TV Station All forms of communication now use HD cables. No radio transmissions are used. Timber TV Station keeps its radio systems, waiting for the day radio transmission is restored. Galbadia Ruled under the military dictatorship of President Vinzer Deling, this country continues to expand its territory. Countless invasions of other countries are attempted, but most are deterred by SeeD. Deling City is its capital. Tomb of the Unknown King Located north of Deling City; the burial place of Dollet's last emperor. The tomb remains nameless due to an ancient belief that calling a dead king by his name brings bad luck. There are unconfirmed reports that a GF resides inside, as well as other monsters. Winhill A small town outside of Galbadia. It is actually a small village. Sorceress

Adel of Esthar ordered attacks on this village several times. D-District Prison Located in the desert south of Deling City, all people deemed dangerous by the government are sent to this facility. It has become a symbol of President Deling's fascist policies. Missile Base Galbadia's long-range missile base. As the only country to own long range missiles with the exception of Esthar, they pose a major security threat to the world. It is believed that the missiles are armed with a target-lock mechanism. The details are unknown. Horizon Bridge A railroad that connected the East and West continents. Completed about the time the war broke out, it was only used a short time. Since then it has been derelict. Fisherman's Horizon A station located in the center of Horizon Bridge. It's now a haven for expatriates who refused to have their skills exploited by the government. Trabia A country on the northern continent. Due to the harsh climate, Moombas and the Shumi tribe are the only occupants. Trabia Garden students and faculty also reside here. Esthar (1) Founded by people who immigrated to a continent east of Centra around the same time Dollet Empire was founded. The mild climate and temperament of the people soon gave way to scientific advancement. Esthar (2) Started the Sorceress War and fought against the world under Adel's rule. Their sorceress and their scientific powers posed a worldwide treat. After abruptly declaring an end to the war, Esthar closed its borders and has kept silent ever since. No details are known. Esthar (3) Governed by President Laguna and his aides. Due to their concern over Dr. Odine's inventions having a negative effect on the state of world security, they closed off their country for 17 years. It is very likely that President Laguna will be criticized for keeping silent for so long. Seaside Station A station on the Esthar side of Horizon Bridge. It is currently abandoned. Great Salt Lake A lake on the Esthar continent. What used to be a beautiful lake is now a barren field. It's speculated that Esthar's experiments led to the lake's destruction. Moon A world of monsters. Many works of art and epics about the moon throughout history are evidence of its mystical powers. Deep Sea Research Center A man-made mobile island for marine life research. Disappeared mysteriously after much wandering. Since the facility members are still alive, it is assumed to be concealed intentionally.

3015 Found a strong energy field 4141 Call this place Deep Sea Deposit 4242 Seal off Deep Sea Deposit Deep Sea Deposit Marine Research Island's last excavation site. Believed to be an ocean floor ruin. There is a note saying: 4127 Travel by Underwater Tower. Term: Draw Points By examining the Draw Points in the field and on the world map, you can draw magic. The Draw Points on the World Map are completely hidden. Examine odd-looking areas carefully. Time Compression A complete mystery. Various states of "present" are believed to become compressed. Sorceress' power from many generations may cross over to give one sorceress great strength. No one knows what effect this may have on regular human beings. Garden Balamb Garden was founded 12 years ago, followed by Galbadia and Trabia Gardens. Each Garden has an administrator, called Master, and a headmaster. Balamb Garden's Headmaster Cid was founder of the Garden. SeeD (1) Balamb Garden's mercenary force. Students 15 and older can participate in the written and field exams. They must pass both exams to become SeeD. SeeD members are paid by the Garden according to their rank. In the Garden, their status is no different from that of the other students. SeeD (2) SeeD conducts missions around the world. Most missions involve battle support and undercover work. SeeD is in high demand by groups requiring a small force of undercover specialists. Commissions made through such dispatches are an important part of Balamb Garden's income. SeeD (3) SeeD battle operations are noted for their skillful use of para-magic. Balamb Garden researches the use of GF in conjunction with para-magic. For this, Balamb Garden SeeD members master the most powerful forms of para-magic. SeeD Rank Shows your skill level as a SeeD. Higher ranks command a higher salary. SeeD Written Test Exam to test your SeeD knowledge. After becoming a SeeD, you can take the tests in the Tutorial. There are up to 30 levels, with 10 questions each. All answers must be correct to go up a rank. However, you can only take tests up to Squall's level. The truth about the Garden A haven for orphans founded by Sorceress Edea and Headmaster Cid. Named for their wish to raise the seeds of the future in their garden. Radio Interference (1) A phenomenon beginning with Esthar's silence 17 years ago. Almost all radio

communication facilities were shut down because of noise across all frequencies. However, short transmissions are still possible. Believed to have some relation to the moon, but details are unknown. Radio Interference (2) Most countries now communicate through the use of HD cables running underground. However, many of these cables are cut off by monsters or in battle. Many countries are left without any means of communicating with each other. Lunar Cry Refers to monsters falling from the moon. Completely destroyed the cities of Centra. Occurs when monsters reach a saturation point on the moon. It's believed that there are factors on the planet that cause this phenomenon. This phenomenon has occurred many times in history and will reoccur in the future. Monsters Creatures on the moon. Monsters fall to earth at regular intervals. This phenomenon is called the Lunar Cry. The monsters bred on the planet since the last Lunar Cry to make up those roaming the planet at this time. The Lunar Cry phenomenon also transformed some animals into monsters. Centra Civilization A civilization in Centra 4000 years ago. These Centra people immigrated to other continents and founded the Dollet Empire to the west and Esthar to the east. Centra was destroyed 80 years ago by the Lunar Cry. Odine Items A device to restrain sorceresses' power. Dr. Odine, afraid of Sorceress Adel's power, created it. It looks like beautiful jewelry. Sorceress The legend goes that the Great Hyne created people. The sorceresses were given a fragment of Hyne's own power. It's hard to determine how many sorceresses exist today, for many keep their powers concealed. However, it is believed that they avoid spreading their power too thin. Sorceress Power & Embodiment Sorceress power has been passed throughout history by the process of embodiment. Any person who has the capacity to embody the great sorceress power is a candidate. Crystal Pillar A crystal that causes the Lunar Cry by producing a strong energy field between the planet and the moon. It's believed to have originated in the moon. The Crystal Pillar responds to a specific location on the planet, and sends a strong directional signal. More research is required to analyse this process in detail. Lunatic Pandora An enclosure for Crystal Pillar made by Esthar. 3 miles tall wide, the enormous enclosure boasts a high-tech facility. It a reaction with the Crystal Pillar. A stone from the moon is was probably built to cause the Lunar Cry through artificial and 1.5 miles floats by causing sealed inside. It means.

Tears' Point Lunar Cry's point of origin determined by Esthar scientists. A security box restraining the power of the Crystal Pillar and ground energy field is set up. It is sealed to prevent the Crystal Pillar from entering the area.

Adel's Tomb A high-tech device intended for weakening and confining a sorceress' power. Shot into the moon's orbit after going through a special sealing process. Used to confine Sorceress Adel. It is the main cause of radio interference on the planet. Spaceship Ragnarok Esthar's space shuttle. Based on an ancient Centra legend of the Dragon Ship. Esthar's finest scientific technology was used to build it. Esthar's flagship, until it was used to send Adel's Tomb into space. MD Level Balamb Garden's foundation. The original structure of Centra Shelter remains almost entirely intact. Entry is strictly forbidden. Centra Shelter (Later became the Garden building.) Ancient Centra people spread around the world after Centra was destroyed by the Lunar Cry. People used mobile Centra Shelters to move around the world. Many ruined shelters are found around the world. Timber Maniacs A magazine representing the people's voice. It was popular among aspiring young journalists. Shut down after Galbadia deemed the publication dangerous. Eyes On Me Julia Heartilly's song. Julia married the Galbadian General Caraway after releasing "Eyes On Me". Gave birth to a girl one year later. Julia died in a car crash at age 28, right before her daughter turned 5. Person: Dr. Odine Started as a monster researcher. Discovered Guardian Forces (GF). With the cooperation of a sorceress, became the first sorceress researcher. Analysed the sorceress' magic, and created a method enabling a regular human being to use para-magic. Balamb Garden uses the principle of para-magic, combining it with GF's power. The Great Hyne Creator of mankind, and believed to be the first sorceress. Calling a sorceress the Great Hyne's descendant shows great respect. White SeeD Orphans formerly in the care of Sorceress Edea. They often travel on their ship, and are veiled in secrecy. Moomba A mutation of some unknown animal. Details are unclear. Remembers people by licking their blood. Shumi Tribe A small tribe living in the northern region. Basically gentle in temperament, they maintain a relaxed lifestyle. Shumis have big, long arms that change as they grow. The results vary depending on their environment. Chocobo They live in the 7 Chocobo forests around the World. Adults and children are

called Chocobos and Chicobos respectively. Chicobos are spotted often, whereas Chocobos are rarely seen. Loved for their gentle nature, Chocobos respond quickly to Chicobos in danger. Mayor Dobe The leader of Fisherman's Horizon. A strict pacifist. Before coming to FH, used to be a scientist conducting energy research in Esthar. ------------------------------------------------------~Squalls Terminal Information~ [AD5] ------------------------------------------------------Here follows a compilation of what we learn from using Squalls Terminal (computer) in the beginning of the game. This compilation is yet again courtesy of Leuchest/The Dark Legend. The Basics [About Magic] 'Magic' used by ordinary people is actually 'para-magic'. In essence, it is a technique which involves controlling energy. 'Para-magic' was developed by Dr. Odine. He was the first scientist to research the nature of magic by studying a sorceress. The skill can be gained through proper training. However, with magic, it is difficult to achieve power levels that are comparable to conventional weapons. [GF (Guardian Force)] A GF is an independent energy force. By combining it with para-magic, it is possible to control tremendous energy. Memory loss is a possible side effect, but this has not been proven as of yet. [About Sorceresses and Magic] A woman who has inherited the power of a sorceress. The origins of the sorceress go back to ancient times during Hyne's reign. However, there is no factual evidence. About Garden Facility Rules [Classroom] -Students should be in their seats and waiting for the instructors 5 minutes before class. -When class is over, proceed quietly to your next class. -Food, weapons and magic are prohibited. -Study panels are shared. Handle with care. [Training Centre] -Proceed with caution. There are real monsters in the training centre. -It is open 24 hours. Entering the grounds for reasons other than training is prohibited. -Do not engage in battles beyond your abilities. [Infirmary] -Visit the infirmary if you have and health concerns or problems. -No items may be taken from the infirmary without permission. -Follow the doctor's instructions. -Resident Physician: Doctor Kadowaki.

[Library] -Open Hours 9:00 a.m.-lights out. -Library Usage All materials are open to the public. You may check out materials at the desk. -Remain quiet at all times. [Dormitory] -Everybody is welcome to apply. -SeeDs have priority for single rooms. -Going out after-hours for reasons other than training is prohibited. -Do not leave personal possessions in common areas. [Cafeteria] -Open Hours 9:00 a.m.-9:00 p.m. -Keep the area clean. -If late-night meals are required, order them beforehand. Student Rules [Garden Precepts] -Work hard -Study hard -Play hard [Attire] -In general, there is no dress code in Balamb Garden. However, dress accordingly if instructed to do so by your superiors. [Reward and Punishments] -The headmaster presents official commendations to outstanding students. -Students who engage in violent acts, sexual promiscuity, or who fall behind in their curriculum, etc. may be expelled from Garden. [Conduct] -The skills acquired in the Garden must never be used for personal gain. -Refrain from committing any acts that may damage the Garden's reputation. -Take time to think things through before starting a relationship. [Emergencies] -Procedures in case of an emergency: If you are on 2F, use the emergency exit next to the classroom. If you are on 1F, exit through the front gate. All students must take care of junior classmen during emergencies. -Do not use the lift during an emergency. [Evening Outings] -All students should be in their dorm rooms after-hours unless at the training centre. Admission & Graduation Info [Admission] -Applicants between ages 5-15 are admitted. -All hard-working and confident youths are welcome. -Ambitious overachievers are also welcome. -Applicants are admitted only after passing a final interview. [Graduation]

-Must be between 15-19 years of age. -One must have all the required skills and knowledge taught through the Garden courses. -One must have the headmaster's approval to graduate. -At age 20, regardless of graduation all students are released from the Garden. [Opportunities for Alumni] -The Garden supports a program that helps graduates enlist in armies all over the world. -Instructors and SeeDs are permitted to remain at the Garden. However, SeeDship must be attained before the age of 20. Garden Info [About Balamb Garden] -Balamb Garden Headmaster Cid Kramer -Balamb Garden Proprietor Master NORG -Balamb Garden was the first Garden built in accordance with Headmaster Cid's ideals and dreams. [About Trabia Garden] -A Garden in the Trabia region. There is an exchange program between Trabia and Balamb Garden. [About Galbadia Garden] -A Garden in the Galbadia Republic. It is the largest Garden of the three. Galbadia Garden's master, Martine, who is also the headmaster, has setup a program to recruit Balamb graduates into the Galbadian Army. SeeD Info [What is a SeeD?] -Balamb Garden's mercenaries. Commanding GF, they have special fighting abilities. They work hard in small teams and operate all over the world. [Dispatching SeeDs] -SeeDs are deployed all over the world. Their services are requested by governments and even civilians. Their tasks range from providing military support to protecting civilians. [Qualifications for SeeD] -Students can apply after the age of 15. Passing the written test and completing an official mission are required to become a SeeD. SeeDs are paid according to rank. A Message from Garden Garden Events Spring Memorial Service Entrance Ceremony SeeD Exam (Written/Field) Summer Garden Festival Summer Vacation Autumn Student-Sponsored Event Winter Winter Vacations Cafeteria Announcements

*The competition for the hot dogs and meals is really getting out of hand. We are doing our best to provide everyone with enough food, so please be patient and conduct yourselves in an orderly fashion. Thank you. As you well know, magic and weapons are prohibited inside the cafeteria. Disciplinary Committee Announcements *Follow all disciplinary committee rules. This applies to junior classmen, too. *Do not bring animals inside the Garden. *Report seeing any unusual bugs in the Garden. *Do not litter. Library Committee Announcements *The following materials are overdue. Please return them to the library immediately. ************** "Insect Guidebook (Colour Edition)" Raijin "Goodbye Pupurun" Raijin *The following requested materials have arrived. ************** "Edible Flowers" "Turbine Engines (Revised Edition)" "We Meet Again, Pupurun" "The Sorceress' Knight (Scenario Edition)"

---------------------------------------------------------~Adel's Motives~ (by TheOnionKnight) [AD6] ---------------------------------------------------------A very interesting observation was made by phiefer3 regarding the motivations of Sorceress Adel. When Ellone was still a little girl, Esthar troops were sent to Winhill to abduct her. Laguna describes the event in this way: When Ellone was about 2, there was a massive hunt for girls in Esthar. Esthar soldiers came to Winhill and Elle's parents resisted. They were killed on the spot. The massive hunt was to find the successor for Esthar's ruler, Sorceress Adel. Ellone was raised by Raine who lived next door. And I came to know her. Then there was another massive hunt for a successor in Esthar again. Elle was taken away, even though I was there it s the most painful episode of my life. After she is abducted, Laguna travels to Esthar and breaks into Odine s laboratory in order to rescue Ellone. He finds her imprisoned in a cell, where she is obviously being contained as a research specimen. Nothing more is really said on this matter in the game, but when you think about the sequence of events, certain things fail to really add up. Although Laguna says that a massive hunt was being conducted for Adel s successor in Esthar, Esthar soldiers nevertheless come all the way to Winhill a rural town on another continent and kill Ellone s parents when her parents resist. The soldiers evidently abduct some girl (or girls) at that

time, though they do not take Ellone, and then they return to Esthar. Evidently, again, whichever girls had been gathered up as potential successors proved unsuitable, because another massive hunt is launched later. Esthar soldiers return to Winhill again, and this time they do secure Ellone. The girl is subsequently given to Odine and experiments are conducted on her. A few things are peculiar about this. It seems strange, first of all, to imagine that Sorceress Adel would even be interested in securing a successor in the first place. The woman is an egomaniacal tyrant bent on ruling the globe, and yet she is also apparently abducting very young girls in order to groom them as suitable heirs to her throne. The emphasis of the massive hunt conducted is on finding young girls specifically, and not on finding women with powerful magical affinities, which does seem to imply an intention towards grooming these young ladies. However, Ellone is not groomed at all. She is utilized as a lab rat. That s another peculiar thing about the entire situation. If Ellone was really supposed to be brought up as Adel s heir, she was certainly not pampered in the process. The third peculiar thing is how Esthar soldiers come specifically to Winhill, not once, but twice , in their search for Adel s successor. They only leave satisfied when they finally have Ellone. What all of these peculiarities seem to add up to is this: that Adel was not, in fact, truly looking for a successor. She seems to have been looking deliberately for Ellone, and when she does secure Ellone, she hands the girl over to Odine. The successor business has every appearance of being a cover for Adel s search for this specific young girl a young girl who just happens to have time-traveling powers. Odine studies Ellone when she is in his possession. In all probability he was studying her unique powers. The implication, therefore, of the entire scenario is that Sorceress Adel somehow knew Ellone was an asset worth collecting, and intentionally collected her. But how did Adel know that Ellone was an asset to begin with?

Here is where phiefer3 s eye-opening observation comes in. He has proposed that, when Ultimecia briefly possessed a young Adel in order to cast Time Compression, Adel gained access to some of Ultimecia s knowledge. Both Edea and Rinoa were possessed by Ultimecia, and both gained knowledge of that Sorceress s plans during the possession. How this knowledge was gained, the game never explicitly states. Perhaps Ultimecia s thoughts jumble together with those of the people whom she is possessing, but, as Odine would say, it doesn t matter. What matters is that Edea and Rinoa both unambiguously gain information from Ultimecia. It logically follows that Adel should have also gained information during her short period of possession. What would she have learned? Edea and Rinoa both learn parts of Ultimecia s plan, perhaps because Ultimecia is always concentrating intensely on her goals. When Ultimecia possesses Adel, she actually casts Time Compression in Adel s body, meaning that Adel should experience the full force of this spell s initial incantation. She would taste the power of Time Compression through the unique manner that only its caster normally would, because she is casting the spell under Ultimecia s control. She would also undoubtedly gain some of the information that Rinoa and Edea did, and learn the name Ellone as well as that girl s role in the process of initiating the TC spell.

Imagine how Adel would feel after the ordeal of her possession ends. Another Sorceress s mind, out of nowhere, spontaneously took control of her own after leaping through the timestream. This other Sorceress cast a potent time-altering spell, and then vanished, surrendering her possession, which would in all likelihood have left Adel more than a little mystified and absolutely floored. The ordeal would have certainly been a life-changing experience. This is phiefer3 s explanation for why Adel specifically sought Ellone during her massive hunt for a successor. By showing us that Ellone was being tested in a laboratory, the game forces us to question what Adel was doing with the girl. By stating that the massive hunt was conducted not once, but twice, and that Winhill was probed both times, the game hints that Adel had a very specific successor in mind when she conducted her search. Furthermore, the game goes out of its way to state that Ultimecia was sent into the body of a young Adel in order to cast TC. Ellone is explicitly given the choice to send Ultimecia into Adel s body or into Edea s, and she chooses Adel. Every single time that Ultimecia possesses someone, she stirs the pot, so to speak, and that person s life is influenced. What changed about Adel s life during and after her possession? All of these questions seem to be pieces of the same puzzle, and when you put them together they suggest the idea that Adel learned about Ellone through Ultimecia, and afterwards hunted for the girl, in her own era, in order to gain control over Ellone s power. This is why she had Odine conduct his experiments: to attempt harnessing that power. We might, after having established this much of the concept, also ask another question. Because Ultimecia was possessing a young Adel, what position was Adel in during the possession? Was she a child? Was she already a figure in the government? Was she already corrupt and power-hungry? Perhaps she was already corrupt, in which case the opportunity of capturing Ellone might have simply seemed like another angle to pursue. However, if she wasn t corrupt, perhaps experiencing TC firsthand gave her the taste of power that would ultimately lead to her corruption. Perhaps it was by trying to regain what power she had seen Ultimecia wield that she went down the path to become a tyrannical dictator. Of course, we can t say this for sure, because we know absolutely nothing about Adel s early life or childhood, but it is still an interesting prospect to consider. Another interesting prospect to consider (and one that we can say something sure about) is Odine s involvement in this entire affair. He was employed by Adel and acted as her top scientist, developing technology under her orders. He constructed the Lunatic Pandora because Adel wanted to turn the Crystal Pillar into a weapon. He was also studying Ellone after Adel captured the girl, undoubtedly because Adel instructed him to do this. If she had not instructed it, there is no conceivable way that Odine would have been able to experiment on the successor to the Esthar throne so openly. We can therefore fairly easily assume that Odine was experimenting on Ellone to discover the source of her power, or else to find a means to harness it. We also know that Odine did successfully find a means to harness, or at least to duplicate, that power through a mechanical process. He created the Junction Machine Ellone, and Ultimecia uses the future, fully-operational version of this device to travel through time. Now follow this chain of cause-and-effect backwards. Odine developed the JME because he studied Ellone. He pursued this course of study on his own, but he was initially instructed to study the girl by Adel. Adel wanted the girl to be studied because she knew about Ellone s power, which is why she conducted her massive hunt. Adel knew about Ellone s power because Ultimecia had possessed her. And, finally, Ultimecia was capable of possessing Adel (as well as Edea and Rinoa) because she had the JME in the future!

In other words, the JME was only developed in the first place because Adel and Odine were acting with knowledge imparted to them inadvertently by Ultimecia, who used the JME to do that. If Ultimecia had never possessed Adel with the JME, Adel would have never known about Ellone and made Odine conduct the experiments that led to the JME s creation. This is another causality loop, embedded in the subtle history of how the JME was built. It is just like how Garden was founded. If Ultimecia had not tampered with the past, Edea would never have created Garden, which would never have pursued Ultimecia, which would never have motivated her to tamper with the past. In precisely the same way, if Ultimecia had not tampered with the past, Adel would have never hunted for Ellone, the JME would not have been constructed, and Ultimecia would not have been able to tamper with the past because she wouldn t have the JME. The moral of this story is: there are more time-loop hijinks in FFVIII than you might at first realize! Thanks again to phiefer3, of the GameFAQs FFVIII message board, for coming up with this ingenious theory! ---------------------------------------------------------~The End of the Succession of Witches~ [AD7] ---------------------------------------------------------In the game we are given certain conflicting statements about how many sorceresses exist in Squall's era. The Tutorial and the Ultimania indicate that there are no exact figures available. From the Tutorial: "Sorceress [...] It's hard to determine how many sorceresses exist today, for many keep their powers concealed. [...]" From the FFVIII Ultimania (pg. 41): "[...] However, there are also many Sorceresses who have chosen to live a quiet life sheltered away from civilized society; as such, the actual number of Sorceresses and the amount of power shared between them remains unknown." However, Odine boldly asserts when Laguna explains the plan to beat Ultimecia that "there are 2 sorceresses in our time. Sorceress Rinoa and Sorceress Adel" and subsequently that if Adel were to give her powers to Rinoa that "we're left with Rinoa as ze only sorceress of [Squall's] era". Now, given that Odine's role in the game is to be the resident scientific genius who simply 'knows stuff', it is perfectly legitimate to assume that he is actually correct despite the Tutorial and Ultimania quotes above. The idea that Rinoa is the last sorceress of her era is thematically satisfying as well, since it means Ultimecia definitely inherited Rinoa's powers and not some random other powers. In fact, Squall_Of_SeeD found that the Ultimania confirmed this. In its summary of FFVIII's story, on pg. 268, we find the following line: "Rinoa wo toru rikon da Adel wo taosu to, kono jidai no saigo no majyo to natta Rinoa ni Ultimecia ga hyouisuru." Here also is a scan of that page, with the relevant line underlined in red on the left side of the page: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/

lastwitchandsquall.jpg In English, this means, "Rinoa is separated from Adel when she is toppled, and Ultimecia then possesses Rinoa, who has become the last witch of this era." So while it may have been difficult for Odine to determine the number of sorceresses in their era, it's fairly safe to assume that he did in fact succeed. Now, if Rinoa is the only sorceress of her era then Ultimecia is also the only sorceress of her era. But since Ultimecia passes on her powers to someone in her past, it follows that Ulty's powers are essentially 'stuck' within the games time-loop. What this means is that Ultimecia would literally have been the last sorceress ever. By defeating her Squall and Co. don't just stop one evil sorceress they actually put an end to the entire succession of witches.

------------------------------------------~Laguna and Squall?~ [AD8] ------------------------------------------Although this is fairly unrelated, here follows a list of the hints used to deduce that Laguna is Squall's father. This list is courtesy of myself (Sir B) although I can in no way take credit for these hints, seeing as they are as old as the game itself. 1) Laguna = Lagoon. Raine = Rain. Squall = Brief windstorm, usually with snow or rain. All these names are connected: they all have to do with water. Although not a strong point in itself, it fits nicely in with the rest of them. 2) Raine and Laguna had a child together. That child was sent to the orphanage. The children in the orphanage at that time were, as we all know, Squall, Seifer, Ellone, Quistis, Zell, Irvine and Selphie (there may have been others we never see, but typical plot conventions surely imply that it must be one of the children we know of). Ellone is the adoptive sister to that newborn child, and spends a significant part of her life trying to get Laguna back to Raine and this child. Coincidentally, who is the one person in the orphanage who Ellone is closely attached to? Squall. Also notice how none of the other children are paid attention to at all when it comes to this plot question, and seeing as how it is a very relevant part of the game, you'd think Square wouldn't just decide to drop it completely. 3) In the Ragnarok, Laguna tells Squall that "Ellone has told me everything" and "We'll talk when this is all over." Since Ellone had just stopped her quest to get Laguna to see his newborn child, one would expect her to tell all about the child to Laguna, and it seems rather farfetched that she refused to give him the true identity. This would also have been basically the most important thing Ellone would tell Laguna, so it seems plausible that he is going to talk to Squall about the same issue. 4) Talk to Kiros and Ward in the Ragnarok, and Ward will say "Good thing you

don't look like your father" in a joking manner. Kiros says "You look more like your mother." Kiros and Ward know the parents, and know the father well enough to make fun of him jokingly. Who fits into this description? 5) The tutorial tells us that Moombas recognize people by licking their blood. In jail, a Moomba calls Squall "Laguna" many times. This means Squall's blood was so similar to Laguna's that it fooled the Moomba. That kind of scene isn't just put in there for randomness, nor to prove that Moombas are mentally unstable. 6) Laguna has Squall's card. All these combined show us that Laguna is, in fact, Squall's father. ---[Addendum by Squall_of_SeeD: Squall's parents are confirmed to be Raine and Laguna in the FF 20th Anniversary Ultimania File 1: Character and File 2: Scenario guides. On pg. 254 of the former, we find this line in Raine's profile: "Afterward, she becomes involved with Laguna and Squall is born, though she dies immediately after in childbirth." Meanwhile, on pg. 268 of the latter, we have this line: "Around that time, Raine gives birth to the child she conceived with Laguna, and he is named Squall." Here also are the scans that go along with those translations, ordered with respect to the order of the translations above, and with the pertinent lines underlined in red (in the second scan, the relevant underlined segment is the one on the right side of the page): http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/squallsmom.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/ lastwitchandsquall.jpg Though the reality of the matter was long ago clear, it is entirely beyond question at this juncture.]

--------------------------------------------------------------------~The Plot Twist - or - They all grew up at the Orphanage!?~ [AD9] --------------------------------------------------------------------Here, Leuchest/The Dark Legend discusses what he calls "The Plot Twist." As the title suggests, this is the twist where we learn that everyone, save Rinoa, grew up in the same Orphanage: Edea's. The Plot Twist The plot twist in FF8 is frequently regarded as a bad plot twist. The real problem of the plot twist, which involves Squall, Seifer, Zell, Quistis, Selphie and Irvine, is the way it was presented. It was very sudden and delivered in a crappy way, as the story started to progress quickly, and the player was left speechless. When you analyse the plot twist, though, it's not

as bad and unbelievable as it might seem at first. Opinions aside, the plot twist is very believable, although it was poorly executed (by the elements of the plot, not the plot twist itself). If you're willing to spend some time thinking, you'll realise that the plot twist makes very much sense. The creators of the concept and ideals of SeeDs and Garden were Edea and Cid. They raised these 6 children and, later, each was adopted. Squall and Seifer weren't so lucky. They joined Balamb just as it was constructed and founded, at the tender age of 5. Selphie and Irvine, although little is known about them, could have been raised in Trabia and Galbadia, respectively. It's arguable whether they were or were not adopted, but IIRC, they never mention their family. The only members left are Quistis and Zell. Quistis was adopted, but left her home when she was 10. Joining Garden must have been her decision, as she knew Squall and Seifer. Zell, on the other hand, was the only character who was coincidentally put in the middle of the whole mess. Furthermore, the team who was scheduled to be part of the Timber mission consisted on Zell, Squall and Selphie. They were picked and put together by Cid. Was it purely coincidental? I don't think so. Quistis and Seifer joined them soon. Quistis, after the mission was over, told Squall they should head to the nearest Garden. As they get to the Garden, they are informed their mission is now to assassinate the sorceress. It's arguable whether Quistis was or was not under the orders from Cid when she informed Squall of heading to the nearest Garden, but somehow, it's too much coincidental to be so, because remember, the only ones aware of the Squall's mission were Cid and the Garden Faculty. The mission to assassinate the Sorceress was put together with Martine and Cid. Guess who they picked as the sniper ... Irvine, also a child of Cid's and Edea's orphanage. When you think about it, although luck did play some role in putting the 5 together, Cid was the one who wanted these 5 characters to defeat Edea, as he probably knew they would eventually find the truth. He is the one who puts together the team who heads for Timber and he is the one who assembles the team to assassinate the Sorceress, alongside Martine. Why would Cid want that? It's easy. Edea knew that, in the future, Squall would defeat Ultimecia and save the world. It's not unlikely she wanted Squall and his friends, those who were in the orphanage with him, to face the sorceress(es), and therefore, she asked Cid, for when they would graduate as SeeDs, to fight them. Cid had all the resources to do so, as seen above by the evidence and explanation shown. Also, something many people fail to understand many times, is that Squall and Co. weren't the only children at the orphanage, as later on, you'll learn the White SeeD, too, had no home and were adopted by Edea. These 6 were chosen because they were a group, a group that Edea, mostly likely realised would defeat Ultimecia, as seen in the ending of the game. Hence, the main theme surrounding them being "Children of Fate."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------~Connection between Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy VIII?~ [AD10] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------by Squall_of_SeeD Other than the Rinoa=Ultimecia theory, the only contentious fan theory

about Final Fantasy VIII's plot to have had any degree of staying power in the online community has been the theory that Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy VIII share the same world, their respective stories separated by the passage of a great many years. At the very least, the two do indeed share a number of intriguing parallels that demand the attention of any document seeking to thoroughly examine this game. This theory was originally posited in the early 2000s by a fan with the username "Desh." It would gain more attention between 2003 and 2005, due in large part to message board ruminations and other postings about it by the author of this current article, Glenn Morrow/Squall_of_SeeD -- in particular, an RPGamer editorial published on May 2, 2005: http://www.rpgamer.com/editor/archive/date/archq205.html http://www.rpgamer.com/editor/2005/q2/050205gm.html Though the poor writing and research quality of this now six-year old article is an embarassment, it is nonetheless necessary to include mention of it for the sake of this current article's account being thoroughly conducted. While not this author's proudest composition, it nonetheless stands as a significant factor in the ongoing consideration given to this theory when it appears on discussion boards. Prior to the writing of this current article -- and prompting it -a discussion on the matter again emerged on GameFAQs, where we co-authors of the Time/Ultimecia Plot FAQ have always conducted our debates and analyses. Though Sir Bahamut commented that he finds the debate "entirely uninteresting" and "can't see any connection between the two other than simply loose references," TheOnionKnight and myself were far more intrigued by this most recent discussion, though for somewhat differing reasons. The analysis that follows is the result of the discussion in that thread between us and another GameFAQs user, Vir27. Where pertinent, direct quotes from the discussion will be included in this article. The background for the theory's origin and propagation now established, along with the cause for the inception of this article, let's begin to look at exactly what shared elements between the two games have planted such controversial notions in the imaginations of fans. First, and perhaps most notably, both games share the name "Hyne" ("Hein" in the official English translation of Final Fantasy III for the Nintendo DS; both two names, however, use the same katakana: ha-i-n). While it isn't uncommon for Final Fantasy titles to reuse names, its appearance in FFVIII was only the second time it had appeared -- a reasonable implication then being that some deliberate commentary or thematic tie was being made. Cause for this belief is reinforced by other details of the two characters, as the thematic elements shared by the two Hynes don't end with name alone. Both demonstrate or are credited with possessing powerful magic, and both have in some way "cast off" their skin. As mentioned in the story from the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania

translated above under the section "Ultimania Information" (ctrl+f shortcut: [AD2]), the legendary Great Hyne of FFVIII is said to have cast off his skin as part of his ploy to trick the Zebalga tribe and escape with the greater part of his magical powers. Shorter tellings of this story also appear twice during FFVIII itself, once recounted by an elderly man to his grandchild in the house next to Ma Dincht's home in Balamb, and again on the White SeeD ship, told to some other children by a woman named Lina. Here are those two tellings of the myth: Balamb version --------------"Long, long ago...When this world was just made, there was a strong god called 'Hyne'. This god was very, very strong, but after fighting a lot of monsters, he became very tired. So he made 'people' like you and me to do all the work, and the god went to sleep. [...] However, the god was very surprised when he awoke. Surprised that there were so many people. Hyne decided to reduce the number of people by taking away the children. [...] Of course, everyone was scared then, too. And so, the battle against Hyne began. Even though the people were small, they all got together, and finally cornered him. Hyne didn't know what to do. Out of desperation, he gave half of his body to the people and ran off with the remaining other half. Well, he was a god. Anyway, it turns out Hyne tricked the people. The half that Hyne ran away with was the half that had the stronger magic. Hmmm...It might be close by, actually. It might even be watching you." --------------White SeeD ship version -----------------------"Once upon a time, there was a person named Hyne. Hyne was the ruler of the world. He became lazy and decided to make a tool to make his life easier. Hyne made a neat tool. His tool could make more tools by itself. Soon there were a lot of tools in the world. These tools were actually people. When Hyne woke up, he was surprised because there were a lot of people. Hyne wanted to reduce the number of people, and used magic to burn up a lot of small people. The small people were children. The people cherished the children very much. So the people rebelled against Hyne. Hyne used powerful magic to fight them. The people couldn't use magic, but they had wisdom. Eventually, Hyne began to lose the war, because there were too many people to fight, and they were getting smarter. Therefore, he decided to make peace with people by offering them half of his body along with his powers. Hyne cut his body in half and gave the people half as he promised. Then, another war started. People began to fight over the power Hyne offered them through his body. This war lasted decades. Finally, King Zebalga and the Zebalga tribe emerged victorious and demanded Hyne's body-half to get its powers. But the body ignored their commands. Then, Vascaroon came to the rescue. He appeared before the confused Zebalgas and revealed to them that Hyne's body-half was corrupt and possessed no real power. The body-half was actually Hyne's cast-off skin. The Zebalgas were angered by this truth, and decided to destroy Hyne. The Zebalgas never found Hyne. People began to call him 'Hyne

the Magician' and continued to hunt him for centuries to come." -----------------------As detailed in the epilogue story in the "Ultimania Information" section above, the myth then goes that Hyne decided to divide his power up into human women for safekeeping -- beginning the lines of witches. For his part, the Hyne of Final Fantasy III is portrayed as a skeletal figure -- thus, skinless -- in exotic clothing. Certainly, a parallel is at work here on some level. But does it run deep enough to establish a plot-related connection, especially in light of the Legend of Vascaroon differing so significantly from the portion of FFIII in which Hyne appears? To elaborate on that point, the Hyne of FFIII had been the advisor to King Argus until the earthquake from the beginning of the game released darkness that possessed and corrupted him. Afterward, he cast spells on the king's soldiers to control them, and enslaved the king along with the rest of the kingdom. He then cast a spell of control over the Elder Tree, mother of all trees, as well, and uprooted it before transforming it into a floating castle. He continued spreading chaos for a short time before being killed in battle by FFIII's Warriors of Light. With that, the spells he had cast were undone. So, again, given these striking differences in the accounts of the Great Hyne and FFVIII's Hyne the Magician, can we reasonably determine a connection within the games' stories? Before we can answer that, let's look at what other parallels exist between the two games. Next, a look at the world maps of FFIII and FFVIII reveals that the two are the most similar of any world maps to be found between two entries in the numbered, primary Final Fantasy series -- FFX and X-2 being the obvious exceptions, and for equally obvious reasons. FFIII's world map: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/ Squall_of_Seed/FinalFantasyIIIWorldMap.gif FFVIII's world map: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/ Squall_of_Seed/FinalFantasyVIIIWorldMap.jpg While not exact, they are undeniably similar. Both worlds feature the same number of continents, arranged in the same layout, and of approximately the same size, even if not quite the same shapes. There is even a smaller landmass in the middle of III's map that could one day be the Balamb continent on VIII's map. During our recent discussion on GameFAQs, TheOnionKnight made the following, similar observations: "Look at the other FF world maps. There's no similarity between them. With III and VIII, though, the continents are roughly the same shape and size, and occupy roughly the same position on the globe. I cannot believe that this was a mistake. The developers know what the world maps for each game look like, and if they designed two maps this close, they did it consciously."

Looking at the western continent, there is a lake near the middle that could well be Obel Lake. Given the knowledge of the creature residing there in FFVIII, as seen in VIII's Obel Lake sidequest, the entity is implied to be ancient -- suggesting that the lake itself is as well. On the higher portion of III's eastern continent, there are also a couple of lakes in good position to one day become the Great Salt Lake near the city of Esthar. The differences that do exist between the world maps could be explained by the passage of tens of thousands of years and the ongoing cataclysms that have occurred throughout history because of the Lunar Cry. Pg. 42 of the FFVIII Ultimania tells us that the lunar cycle rain of monsters is said to have been going on for that long, after all, while pg. 40 confirms that both the giant Trabia Crater and catastrophic destruction of the Centra continent were caused by the Lunar Cry, emphasizing its capacity to pulverize even a continent. More than the arguably vague positioning of lakes, though, there is a much greater link between the two maps to be found in their uttermost southwestern point. On III's map, this is the location of the Floating Continent. On VIII's, it is the location of the Deep Sea Research Center and the Deep Sea Deposit excavation site under the facility -- where the ruins of a lost civilization lay. Said civilization has no known connection to any on the mainland continents, and what we see of its architecture in the Deposit differs from any known style seen elsewhere in the world. That being said, the closest match to this ruined structure -- a series of suspended platforms connected by stairs -- to be found in FFIII as well is the chamber of the Wind Crystal in the Floating Continent's Altar Cave, and it isn't nearly an exact match. This is the chamber, as depicted in the Nintendo DS remake of FFIII: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/ ffiiiplatforms.jpg Though it does contain a series of suspended platforms connected by stairs, certainly the chamber is too small to actually be the totality of the vertical structure that Squall and co. pass through in FFVIII. Still, it is a similarity, as is the presence of numerous luminant crystals littered throughout the Altar Cave and the Deposit. These are the crystals in the Altar Cave, as depicted in the Nintendo DS remake of III: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/ ffiiicavecrystals.jpg Also, while this is largely based in interpretation, it is the opinion of myself and TheOnionKnight that the unrevealed treasure sought by the DSRC's researchers at the bottom of the

Deep Sea Deposit was a large crystal, given the resonance of the crystals in the area when Squall and co. activate the hoist at the bottom of the excavation site. For more on that matter, see the next article in this section of the FAQ, "Enigma of the Deep Sea Research Center." In any case, given the assumed passage of time required for consideration of such a theory in the first place, finding a building vaguely similar to a thoroughly ruined structure may not be the best basis for analysis to begin with. Far more notable of the DSRC, though, and more relevant to this article, is that Bahamut resides there, as he did on FFIII's Floating Continent. While our collaborator in discussing this matter, Vir27, felt that there was nothing more at work here than a parallel between "something that can be ruined and ruins, something that can fall down and something that is down," TheOnionKnight and I firmly believe there is a series of significant similarities between the DSRC area and the Floating Continent. All these parallels in mind, let's return to Hyne, where our analysis began. In addition to their names and the notion of removed skin, both Hynes are attributed with magical powers. In the case of FFVIII's Hyne, his powers gave rise to the powerful witches around whom so much of the game focuses. While the Hyne of FFIII doesn't come across as openly intimidating as the witches of FFVIII, their powers nonetheless have a lot in common. First, both III's Hyne and VIII's witches demonstrate the power of transmutation on a significant level. Hyne transformed the Elder Tree into a floating castle, while Ultimecia used Edea to bring the Iguion statues to life. According to their Scan info, several of the boss enemies in Ultimecia's castle were also inanimate objects brought to life through her magic -- Krysta, Trauma, and the Red Giant. Of the remainder, at least Tri-Point and Tiamat were magically altered from their previous forms. While transmutation may be seen as a fairly standard ability to be expected of characters of Hyne and Edea's sort, he also possesses the power to take control of others' minds, as evidenced by his brainwashing of King Argus's soldiers. Likewise, the witches of FFVIII have this ability. The player is first introduced to the concept at Galbadia Garden, where a female student in one of the hallways will comment, "I heard the sorceress has the ability to brainwash others. I wonder if it's true?" This is soon after demonstrated in Deling City, when Ultimecia whips up the assembled citizens into a fervor after murdering Vinzer Deling in front of them. Her control over the crowd there was confirmed on pg. 253 of the FF 20th Anniversary Ultimania File 1: Character guidebook, which states, "After murdering Deling, she used her magical powers -- specifically, a fascination technique -- to drive the assembled populace into a frenzy."

In addition, there's a similarity between the source of Hyne's powers and witches' ability to stop time, as demonstrated in Timber during FFVIII when Ultimecia uses Edea to freeze everything. The origin of Hyne's power is the ethereal darkness that was consuming FFIII's world during that game -- the accumulation of which in the world had stopped time. This corruptive darkness, which turned Hyne into the evil being he became, could have another parallel in that the powers of FFVIII's witches corrupt them in the absence of a knight who helps them maintain sanity. Given this plethora of parallels, do we have enough to establish a definite shared timeline between FFIII and FFVIII? In honesty, no, not in the opinion of these authors. Due to the significant differences in the narratives surrounding the Hynes of the two games, it's impossible to conclude authorial intent that necessitates elements not present in the official materials. However, we do nonetheless feel -- as TheOnionKnight so eloquently put it during our recent debate -- "the two worlds share intriguing and intentional parallels." Elaborating on that point, he made these comments concerning Hyne: "Hyne from III shouldn't be imagined to literally be Hyne from VIII, but instead, the two should be understood to echo each other. Once again, the developers didn't reuse the name Hyne by mistake. They know their own FF enemy lore. The fact that Hyne from VIII gave up his skin and Hyne from III is a skeleton cannot be accidental. I believe that's as far as that parallel goes, but the parallel is there to make you wonder, so you should wonder." As noted earlier in this article, while Final Fantasy references itself all the time, there are different levels of reference. There are motifs (e.g. "Cid," chocobos, etc.), homages (e.g. FFIX and FFXII's Garland, FFIX's Princess Sarah), allegories (e.g. Squall of FFVIII and Leon/Leonhart of FFII), and actual plot-related connections (e.g. Shin-Ra of FFVII and Shinra of FFX-2). Gilgamesh is a unique kind of reference all his own in the series, having been an homage (FFIX and FFXI's versions), while also becoming something of a motif and simultaneously serving as another example of a plot-related connection. Thanks to the Interdimensional Rift, he has appeared in many titles in the series as the same individual each time -- FFI's Dawn of Souls and 20th Anniversary rereleases, FFIV: The After Years, FFV, FFVI Advance, FFVIII, FFXII and Dissidia 012. The point here being that Gilgamesh made his first appearance outside FFV in FFVIII, which tells us right there that this game wasn't afraid of connections with other FFs. What kind of reference was VIII's Hyne, though? This question may be impossible to answer without explanation from the developers themselves, but we can safely conclude that something more subtle and clever was at work than accidental coincedence or a simple fondness for the name.

In that spirit, TheOnionKnight and I feel that FFVIII even asks us to doubt the veracity of the Legend of Vascaroon. It's always been a tad perplexing that a being who would have been humanity's greatest enemy in all of history should continue to be held in the mythological position of creating humanity, as is the fact that FFVIII's in-game Tutorial tells us that addressing a witch as "Hyne's descendant" is a sign of great respect. Why would that be the case when humanity has only reason to despise this entity? Furthermore, why are witches outcasts of society and seen as a symbol of fear if being Hyne's descendant is an honor? The ideas at work are bafflingingly inconsistent, and seem like holdovers from a more fearful time when the people were likely afraid that Hyne was still at large. The final lines from the old man's story about Hyne in Balamb indicates something along those lines: "It might be close by, actually. It might even be watching you." TheOnionKnight made the same observations: "I think the connection is intentionally off-base. The VIII writers knew what happened to the III Hyne, and could've written the Legend of Vascaroon to more closely resemble the boss Hyne. Even having the humans track down and kill Hyne in the legend after he tricks them with his skin would've created a greater unison. Instead, one Hyne is a god whose actions indicate that he's above human morality, and who escapes human judgement. The other Hyne is a power-hungry magician who controls his 'subjects' with magic, but is punished and executed by the protagonists, whereupon his magic comes undone and the chaos returns to normal. He receives comeuppance and the damage is repaired. VIII Hyne gets away with everything, and human civilization is born as a result of his trickery and scheming. What I get out of this isn't 'the two Hynes are the same,' but rather the question -- "What if they were?" The reference seems to exist to bring their differences to light along with their similarities. Importantly, we never see VIII Hyne, and we only know about him in a vague and mythical capacity. This parallel with III gives us pause and makes us doubt the myth. What if it *has* been distorted? What if Hyne *wasn't* omnipotent? Are we dealing with something strictly factual, or something perhaps more religious? The humans in VIII revere Hyne although, when you think about it, he was no better than the magician Hyne in III whose actions were intended to terrorize people. The Legend of Vascaroon becomes untrustworthy. We don't know where reality and fiction converge, or if they do at all, which, now that I think about it, plays directly into Ultimecia's speech about the plebeian masses creating their own 'final fantasy' about malevolent Sorceresses. Haven't they done the opposite with Hyne -- convinced themselves to worship a tyrant? Whereas, with Sorceresses, they turn innocent women into tyrants?" For myself, this line is the pivotal understanding to take from all of this: "The Legend of Vascaroon becomes untrustworthy." With the Hyne inconsistencies being all that could prevent the worlds of the two games from being compatible, and the belief that we

almost have to doubt the Legend of Vascaroon as a valid tale, it then seems the most simple synthesis of the available elements to arrive at a conclusion that FFIII and FFVIII share a timeline. I would also venture to say that in trying to explain the enigma of the Deep Sea Research Center (see the following article by that very name), we have to consider the possibility that the worlds are the same. Even the world-sustaining crystals of FFIII not being on the global stage in FFVIII isn't a significant matter given the thematic differences between the two titles and the metaphysical similarities that can otherwise be drawn. FFVIII is one of several FF titles published in succession that featured overt, shared metaphysical properties. FFVII, VIII, IX and X/X-2 all involve the application of memories as magical power (GFs siphon the memories of the humans they junction to), and properties like that of FFVII's Lifestream (in FFVIII, raw magical energy rises from inside the planet to its surface as draw points). Incidentally, pg. 8 of the FF 20th Anniversary Ultimania File 2: Scenario guide tells us that FFIII's world does have a Lifestream, and has a graph demonstrating that worlds with Lifestreams have crystals at their core: http://thelifestream.net/final-fantasy-vii/6151/translations-from -the-ff-20th-anniversary-ultimania-sources-of-power-in-ff/ We can also establish an association between crystals and draw points given that Squall will mention that the Deep Sea Research Center was in search of a massive draw point if the player doesn't have Zell in their party when they first arrive there. Though true that even with the Legend of Vascaroon discredited, one would still need to account for how Hyne in FFIII -- who was killed by that game's Warriors of Light -- could have lived to pass on any powers to human women, that's beyond the scope of this article. For what it's worth, I personally see it as a simple enough hole to fill, though it would be working entirely off assumption, and, thus, is better left out here. For his part, TheOnionKnight still sees the III-VIII parallels as less literal a connection, and as more valuable without that literal tie. His interest in the possibility stems from seeking to solve the Deep Sea Research Center's mystery, or, as he put it, at least achieve a "more cohesive understanding." Explaining that he is in pursuit of a more literary interpretation, he adds, "If more evidence came out that definitively proved III and VIII share the same world, I would actually be disappointed because this is such a literal solution." For this author personally, a more meaningful relation arises from a timeline in which the world inhabited by the Warriors of Light, Princess Sara, Desh and the Elder Tree one day becomes the world we experience in FFVIII, its history obscured by myth. But, as nothing can be stated definitively, it's ultimately up to each player to decide what provides the most meaning for them.

-----------------------------------------------------------~Enigma of the Deep Sea Research Center~ [AD11] -----------------------------------------------------------by Squall_of_SeeD Before reading this article, it's recommended that you first read the article that precedes it, "Connection between Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy VIII?" Both emerged from the same discussion at GameFAQs, and there is a significant degree of overlap in not only their material, but the analysis and rumination that gave birth to both articles. Now, before we get any further into the meat of this article, take a moment to read the following nuggets of information, starting with this entry from pg. 245 of the FF 20th Anniversary Ultimania File 2: Scenario guide: "Manmade Oceanic Research Island [(Deep Sea Research Center)] A solitary island located in the distant southwest ocean. A mobile research facility dubbed with the nickname 'Battleship Island,' it was built to navigate the seas throughout the world; though it continued investigating a powerful energy, its whereabouts went unknown for a long time. In a room at the bottommost level of the excavation area of the 'Ocean Stagnation' [('Deep Sea Deposit')] lurks the mighty monster Ultima Weapon." Next, read the in-game Tutorial's entries on the DSRC and the Deep Sea Deposit beneath it: "Deep Sea Research Center A man-made mobile island for marine life research. Disappeared mysteriously after much wandering. Since the facility members are still alive, it is assumed to be concealed intentionally. 3015 Found a strong energy field 4141 Call this place Deep Sea Deposit 4242 Seal off Deep Sea Deposit" "Deep Sea Deposit Marine Research Island's last excavation site. Believed to be an ocean floor ruin. There is a note saying: 4127 Travel by Underwater Tower." Finally, read Zell's explanation of the island if he is in the party upon arrival, and Squall's explanation if Zell isn't with the party: -With ZellZell: "This island's most likely that mobile research facility." Squall: "(Huh?)" Zell: "A.k.a 'Battleship Island'." Squall: "...So what did they research?" Zell: "Basically, they were tryin' to develop a draw system like ours. They probably traveled all over the world to gather different energy and materials for their research."

Squall: "......" Zell: "I dunno how the heck it ended up here. I heard they did some hardcore research here. They even used GF for experiments. To science geeks, it was treasure island." -Without ZellSquall: "I've also heard that this thing was in search of a large draw point somewhere." I've asked you to read these entries because this is as definitive as any official information ever provided about the facility. As one of my co-authors, TheOnionKnight, put it, the DSRC is "the great unsolved mystery of the game ... which seems to tease you and force you to ask questions whose answers are just out of reach." From the moment we arrive at the Deep Sea Research Center, questions are being asked by the characters and presented to us to also consider (e.g. Quistis: "Where in the world is this?"). First, the party wonders what the facility is, and though Zell (or Squall if Zell isn't in the party) has some knowledge of what it is, the specifics of what was going on there are a complete mystery -- a question they continue to give voice to once they step inside. Quistis will ask, "What on earth were they researching?" Squall will wonder, "(...What is that big blue thing?)" Though they get answers about the large, blue tube in the center of the room when they are confronted by "The Great GF ...Bahamut" as Squall refers to him, ever more elusive questions present themselves the further the party delves into the depths of the facility. After defeating Bahamut and going a floor below his location, Quistis will now ask, "I wonder why they abandoned this place...?" Another mystery -- and though the monsters we face further down would be sufficient explanation, the mystery deepens when we consider that the in-game Tutorial's entry on the Deep Sea Research Center tells us, "Since the facility members are still alive, it is assumed to be concealed intentionally." So, not only was the place never abandoned, but we're told that the researchers are, in fact, still alive. But how can this be? We meet no one but monsters in our exploration of the Deep Sea Deposit under the DSRC. So, where then, are our researchers? Perhaps we already have our answer. Take note of the crystals scattered throughout the Deposit area. Rather strikingly, the composition and coloring of the crystals in the Deposit bear a resemblance to the composition of the Crystal Pillar, as can be seen in this comparison image of cropped screenshots put together by Drawpoint, owner and author of the FFVIII Analysis website (ff8a.com): http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/ ffviiicrystals.jpg Referring to a man in Esthar who will -- after the Lunar Cry has come down -- transform into an Elnoyle and attack the party, as

well as the in-game Tutorial's "Monsters" entry, which states that "the Lunar Cry phenomenon also transformed some animals into monsters," Drawpoint theorizes that the crystals in the Deep Sea Deposit are in some way related to energy from the moon and caused the researchers to become the monsters in the Deposit. For further evidence, he refers to the message that is broadcast in the Deposit when Squall and co. reactivate the excavation site. The message announces that "all except the leader must take shelter." Drawpoing then points to the fact that there are no more random encounters after Ultima Weapon is beaten as an indication that Ultima Weapon was, in fact, the leader that was spoken of, and all the other monsters/former researchers responded to the instruction as they would have when they were still human and took shelter. Even if this provides us with an answer to the riddle of what became of the researchers, the most interesting questions about the Deposit remains unsolved: What exactly had the researchers found? What was that cable at the bottom of the excavation site being used to hoist? And perhaps just as importantly, why are we never shown what it is? We're still being asked to consider this at the bottom of the Deposit, right before the battle with Ultima Weapon. Quistis will comment that "They invested so much in this facility... There must be something here," while Squall will ask aloud, "What was going on down here...?" At this juncture, the player needs no enticing to go in and seek treasure. They've gone as far as they can go, flipped the final switch, and are sitting back to see the results of their own investment -- and they get nothing. Subtle as it may seem, they are being overtly asked to consider what the facility had discovered, and possibly even its narrative purpose. While the possible timeline connection between FFIII and FFVIII (see the previous article in this FAQ) may provide an answer, one of my co-authors, Sir Bahamut, feels that these questions are rather unimportant -- and, in fact, that the puzzle the developers were presenting us with from the moment we arrived at the Deep Sea Research Center never had an intended answer, the facility intended to be simply a spooky, mysterious place in which the player could fight a couple of powerful, optional bosses and acquire a couple of GFs. Our collaborator in this discussion, Vir27, concurred. TheOnionKnight and I -- giving the developers more credit than that they would have accidentally presented us with such a puzzle to consider, or done so deliberately with the intention of there never being more to it -- are of a different mind on the matter, however. Here follows his insightful speculation about the DSRC: "Obviously, the Deposit is some sort of Atlantis situation, even without the III connection, but the III connection strengthens this notion, which is why I'm still considering it this many years down the line. I keep saying to myself, 'There *must* be an answer... even a vague answer... what's the answer?" But there is no answer -- that I've found, in any case. Is there any other location, in

any other FF, as shrouded in enigma as the Deposit? I can't think of one. All the other 'mysterious places' have an explanation behind them, even if it's a hazy explanation. The fact that the Deposit itself is so tantalizing and atmospheric is why I'm intrigued by it. It's like the Centra Ruins, but even those make more sense than the Deposit." Expanding on his point about the Centra Ruins being less of an enigma, he later added: "The Centra Ruins are actually even more peculiar on the surface. There are levitating stones and strange runes, translucent stairways that melt out of the air, puzzles, lots of weird architecture. Odin resides in the inner chamber. But even though this is all bizarre, and unlike any other place in the game, the mere fact that the ruins are located on a destroyed continent provide them with background. The vague history of the lost Centra civilization actually fits hand-in-glove with the vague nature of the ruins. We know the people were technologically-advanced. The ritualistic atmosphere in the ruins seems to correspond to the metaphysical nature of the GFs, which have been sterilized and converted into weapons technology in the modern era, but nevertheless possess a certain occult aura, which the Centra apparently respected more, or were more in-tune with. Thematically, the Centra Ruins 'work' on all these levels, so even though we don't know what the ruins are, we still 'get' them. The Deposit, meanwhile, has no history. Is it related to the Centra, too? Its remote location suggests that it's something different. There are crystals all over it, which don't correspond to anything Centran, but do correspond to the Crystal Pillar. Esthar was experimenting with the Pillar, and Esthar was excavating the ruins. We know all this, which is why the Research Facility itself isn't mysterious. But the Deposit has no thematic companion in the game (like the Centra ruins and the Centra culture are thematic companions). In spite of that, the game teases us with more specific details related to the Deposit than it does the Centra Ruins. We have so many specifics, from the excavation, that yield nothing. They don't cohere with anything, or even themselves. This, I think, is the perplexing issue. The game is presenting us with clues that seemingly lead nowhere. Why was the place sealed, and allowed to be overgrown? Wouldn't it have been better to move Battleship Island, and allow the ocean to reclaim the Deposit, if what was down there was so dangerous? What is the cable pulling up, since it makes the crystals react? Did Adel command the excavation, and then, after she was usurped, the new government didn't know about it? That may explain why the place is overgrown, if, after some disaster, no one on the mainland was 'in the know,' and therefore no one came to help. And by the way, what is that statue in the Deposit depicting?" Further rumination: "The game directly poses the question to the player, through Squall, 'What was going on down here...?' The game provides us with selected log entries from the research journals. We are supposed to wonder why the crystals react, because the characters wonder this. The game is providing us with a puzzle.

Contrast this to the Centra Ruins. No character ever wonders what the place is. The game does not dangle anything in front of us, like those research logs. The Centra Ruins is obviously intended to be a 'spooky, mysterious place,' and its titular link to the extinct Centra culture provides us with enough information to be able to understand that the ruins are a partly-metaphysical relic from a technologically-advanced civilization. So, in this case, it's not that difficult to know which interpretation we should take. If the Deposit puzzle proves to be ultimately unsolvable, the game is still giving us a puzzle and pointedly asking us to consider it. We aren't supposed to go 'oh, spooky,' and then just forget it." Recognizing that an inarguable, definitive answer based on in-game clues and official statements will likely never emerge, TheOnionKnight concluded his meditations with this: "Maybe we need to approach the Deposit from another angle. I'm so used to thinking about variables and proof and evidence and theories, that I haven't even attempted literary interpretation yet. In other words, a literary interpretation is what we need here. I don't think this is like Ultimecia or the time-loop or Time Compression. It's not a matter of finding a 'proper explanation,' but of getting a handle on the place. I don't believe any solution that we piece together will be specific. I expect the 'answer' to the 'puzzle' to be general and vague, like the Deposit itself, but I do think there's an answer to be found. If the word 'answer' isn't going down easily, try 'more cohesive understanding.' The III parallels appeal to me for this exact reason. If more evidence came out that definitively proved III and VIII share the same world, I would actually be disappointed because this is such a literal solution. I enjoy contemplating the amorphous idea that the games are overlapping in a conceptual way, and it's in this amorphous conceptual direction that I'm looking for more clarity (perhaps ironically)." In that spirit, we set out to determine what literary readings we can take from the Deep Sea Research Center -- and I now share them with you. First, and more simply, perhaps the meaning we are to take is that "you can't always explain everything." Look at the nature of the rest of the plot: It demands we analyze it through multiple exposures to the material just to understand things like the villain's motivation and goals. And that puzzle -- the solution to which still eludes most casual players of FF -- was the easiest to piece together. This FAQ that the three of us have updated for years is a testament to not just the degree of geekiness we share, both individually and collectively, but the enigmatic, puzzle-riddled nature of the game. Yet all those things we've looked at were still things that answers that we could determine from the available official materials. So, all that being the case, it's to be expected when we come across such a mysterious place as the DSRC and writer asks us -- through the characters themselves no less had that the -- to

consider what the meaning is, we will in fact begin to do just that. We might notice that it's in an identical location to a civilization that was nearly lost once before in another title. We might also notice that a certain dragon inhabits both of these locations. When considering other parallels to this second title, we might then begin to ask ourselves, "Could it be ...?" After all, this game does have another outright connection to another FF in the form of Gilgamesh, who mentions Bartz of FFV (Japanese version only) and speaks of the Interdimensional Rift as well. FFVIII doesn't shy away from connecting itself to other FF games. But, per the difficulties in reconciling the two owners of the name "Hyne," perhaps the solution remains just out of reach -- and deliberately so. We've been given so many other puzzles in the main plot, all of which could be solved with enough analysis. Yet here, in this side quest that gives us so much to consider while also giving us so little that is concrete to consider it with, we are defeated. This is a meaning we could take -- and a valuable one in its own way. Or perhaps another message is trying to emerge here. TheOnionKnight made the following observations: "I think that, based on the clues, the cable must be pulling up a crystal. Our strongest hint to go on is the smaller crystals reacting to it, and when you boil the question down, what more natural thing is there for them to react to than a larger crystal? But what is this larger crystal, if it is indeed a larger crystal? It can't be as big as the Crystal Pillar, can it? How would a simple cable be able to hoist something that huge? If the crystal in the Deposit (if it's a crystal) is an elemental crystal, I don't think it matters which element it is. The idea, in this case, would be, to me, that the researchers are indeed excavating artifacts and ruins from a lost culture, and if the crystal is an elemental crystal, that underlines the fact that VIII has a world in which these elemental crystals play no role in society. The civilization in the game was the most technologically-advanced in an FF title to that point ... It has advanced beyond the magic-based medieval FFs of the past -- even beyond the materia-based FFVII -- and now, what magic does exist is literally digitized: two GFs are stored in a computer. Magic isn't mystical anymore. It's scientific. Odine developed the junction system, right? Ellone's powers can be harnessed by a machine. Everything is testable and mathematic, and 'magic' has lost what makes it 'magical.' Except in the Deposit, where there is a force too strong for the researchers to harness, where the floating laboratory of Battleship Island has been reclaimed by nature, where there are ancient ruins with no connection to anything in FFVIII -- but perhaps with a connection to an older FF title where magic was still a mysterious force in the world -where the elemental crystals were enshrined, not turned into weapons of war like the Crystal Pillar.

This cloudy overlap between III and VIII also plays into the time/space issues in VIII, although not, once again, directly, but thematically. The franchise is spatially overlapping itself, and if one were to drill through the time/space continuum in VIII, perhaps one would emerge in another game (this is a cute comment more than a potential claim). III does come before VIII, and VIII's futuristic world is built on the medieval worlds of the previous games. There also seems to be an actual link, in VIII, to the other games, via Gilgamesh. When he appears in VIII, he actually is stepping into this game from another game, and the implication is that he can step into all of the games, and is doing this sequentially, to collect weapons from the various worlds. He's using the Interdimensional Rift -- so there's another connection, to FFV. A curious connection, too, since it is a literal connection, and VIII is the only FF game to make it so explicit. We're back at how VIII loves its time/space issues." TheOnionKnight began to touch on the matter of science vs. magic in FFVIII's setting -- a battle in which magic apparently loses -- and from that, I believe I have seen a literary interpretation of the Deep Sea Research Center emerge. Starting with Final Fantasy VI, each title in the numbered, main series shifted progressively further from the traditional fantasy settings that had adorned the classic installments. Indeed, as TheOnionKnight observed, Final Fantasy VIII featured the most technologically advanced setting of any Final Fantasy at that point in time -- a trend not universally well received by longtime fans of the series, even among those who liked VI, VII and VIII. FFVIII was the greatest departure from tradition yet seen. Despite FFVI's steampunk setting, that title still offered a number of elements that planted it squarely amongst its predecessors. Airships still looked like flying versions of ancient marine vessels, crystals still figued in prominently, and -- perhaps most importantly -- magic was still abundant, even if it had begun to lose its typically primordial place in the setting. With FFVI, in fact, the supernatural had begun to find itself not so much supplanted by technology, but coopted by it. While those with the innate ability to use magic were relatively few, technology allowed the possibility for anyone to possess it. Not only Magitek Knights such as Kefka and Celes, but ordinary citizens of Vector -- children even, such as the one who will use Cure on the player's party -- had been infused with magical power from magicite crystals. Even in the cyberpunk setting of FFVII with its mako reactors, mega corporation Shin-Ra, and technology that made launching a manned rocket into space a possibility, magic was part of people's daily lives. Anyone could buy and sell materia crystals, and -- like the Magitek Knights of FFVI -- Shin-Ra's elite SOLDIER unit was comprised of individuals infused with the same raw power found in crystals. The magical energy coursing through the planet even powered everything in FFVII's world, from cars to televisions and lightbulbs. The worldwide infrastructure was entirely dependent on magic, even in smaller towns. And yet, the eldritch was even further subsumed by the technological here.

That brings us then to FFVIII. Technology is advanced and plentiful. It also, by and large, runs in much the way one would expect to find it in the real world. No mako-powered cars here -- they burn gasoline. Trains travel across an entire continent, while chocobos live in the wilderness and would hardly be considered practical for travel. And more than something long aspired to and just within reach, breaching the atmosphere with a manmade vessel before returning safely to the earth is easily performed. It should come as little surprise, then, that in this Final Fantasy world closest to our own, magic is widely shunned, and those who possess it inherently are feared and outcast. Though it still maintains a presence amongst military units, this magic ("para-magic" as it's known) was produced by Dr. Odine studying the witch embodiment and developing a mechanism to simulate the real thing. It's not nearly so potent, however. Squall's in-game study panel even says "it is difficult to achieve power levels that are comparable to conventional weapons" with it unless it's used in conjunction with Guardian Forces. And that's just the beginning of how magic has been relegated to the bench in the society. As TheOnionKnight noted in the discussion that led to this article, Guardian Forces can be housed in computers, the powers of those with inherent magical abilities can be simulated by machines, and magic in general is approached scientifically -- and in that context, it's not even considered real magic within the setting itself. All that in mind, let's look at the following numbered entry in the Final Fantasy series. With FFIX, we saw a return to the classic style of world establishment, as well as its standardized themes. This is readily apparent even in the marketing tagline attached to the game in North America: "The Crystal Comes Back." Indeed, this underscores the minimal role crystals have in FFVIII's world. Other than the Crystal Pillar, they barely figure in at all. The crystals that appear in the Deep Sea Deposit and resonate when the hoist on the final level of the area is activated are the only others of any significance to be found in the game's world. Though their resonance before Ultima Weapon appears led these authors to the conclusion that the hoist was trying to pull a larger crystal out of the water, even were its presence confirmed, magic is still relegated not to the backseat, but to the trunk. And all while, the treasure that lay so near at the bottom of the Deposit remains out of reach. Neither Squall and co. nor the player is ever rewarded for their efforts with knowledge of what the lost facility researchers had found. But suppose for a moment it is a crystal -- one that remains lost amid all this other loss of the truly mystical in FFVIII's world, the title before FFIX, where "The Crystal [Came] Back." Has a discernable message of some sort begun to emerge from the seemingly aimless elements that were thrown at us with the Deep Sea Research Center? Was this area the developers' way of acknowledging and commenting upon the shift Final Fantasy had taken from its roots? As they would know what we would see with the next entry in the series, were they saying something about where Final Fantasy had come from, where it had gone, and where it was going?

Examining the story's ironies, it seems quite possible. Despite the loss of the Ragnarok 17 years earlier, Esthar had since established a comfortable presence in space, and humanity's greatest living enemy -- a witch, of course -- had been set there like a trophy on a wall. On Battleship Island, even the majestic Bahamut -- a classic staple of the series, routinely among its most powerful presences, and an ever-applicable example of its more fantastical side -- had been subdued, stuck in a test tube like a science experiment, and placed at the gate as though he were the facility's leashed guard dog. After being referred to as a GF at the beginning of the battle with him, Bahamut even expresses fear of Squall and his companions: "...GF? I...? Using my powers... It is you humans... I fear..." From this, TheOnionKnight made the following observations: "Bahamut expresses disdain at being called a 'GF.' That's another scientific term. He considers himself to be something greater than the term denotes. And yet he also fears the term 'GF' being applied to him. His Yoda-speak can be reconfigured to say 'I fear you humans using my powers.' Take note of the word 'fear.' Humans don't anger him. They actually make him fearful. Science has already conquered and contained him in his cylinder. He's also saying that he's afraid of humans when they use his powers (or powers like his, from other GFs). Humans have become stronger by harnessing Bahamut's magical kin. There is a paradigm shift going on that makes Bahamut nervous. But his opinions are perhaps outdated. GFs are already harnessed. He simply hasn't seen how widespread this practice has become, because he's been trapped in a tube for unknown years." Yet here in the ocean's depths, something more primal still reigns, and it bears little concern for the technological advancements men bring with them. Whatever the researchers found, their undersea towers, test tubes, steam pressure-controlled locks, and other sophisticated equipment hadn't mattered. They had entered a realm only a sorceress would have been at home in. Unable to control this newest discovery, they faded into history as soundly as the fantastical had everywhere else in the world. After traversing the ancient ruins concealed in the Deposit in search of its secrets, Squall and co. expect to discover a treasure of some sort -but neither they nor the player is granted any such thing. While true that the game's most powerful Guardian Force, Eden, can be drawn from Ultima Weapon, the same GF can be acquired from Tiamat in Ultimecia's Castle. Once Bahamut has been acquired, there is very little rewarding a player who decides to fully complete the sidequest. Perhaps the GF -- who is itself quite the perplexing figure -- is even a hint to the theme we've begun to explore. Though often assumed to be of some relation to the Garden and SeeD taxonomy, as a reference to the mythical Garden of Eden, there's nothing else associating the naming scheme with Eden. But there may be a little more tying it to this theme in light of what we've uncovered in our analysis. For all their trouble in getting to the bottom floor of this lost realm (another tie to the Garden of Eden?) in which men have no place

trespassing, Squall and co. are greeted as one could expect to be if approaching the mythical Eden: with the point of a sword and a mighty foe. Though Squall and co. do manage to conquer the powerful beast Ultima Weapon, firmly positioning them as the most powerful living creatures in the Deposit, they move no closer to unearthing the facility's lost secrets. The question, posed to us, is left for us to answer. Have we found the answer in a theme of calling our attention to magic's triumph over technology before Final Fantasy turned its attention back to magic? While we cannot say for sure, this author feels confident that we have at least found one answer.

---------------------------------------------Another (literary) Ultimecian Analysis [AD12] ---------------------------------------------(written by TheOnionKnight) I want to muse a little about Ultimecia. I won t be talking about anything provable or concrete here. These are simply impressions that have gone through my head during the long years I ve spent playing, replaying and discussing the game. As a forewarning, I m going to quote three extra-textual sources at great length, where I believe they speak about themes present in the game better than I ever could, so please excuse me if you find these quotations overbearing. (1) I have always liked Ultimecia. She is a theatrical villain. But when I began theorizing about Time Compression with Sir Bahamut and Squall_of_SeeD, and piecing together Ultimecia s motivations, I grew to like Ultimecia more and more. This is because her story involves themes and ideas that strike me in both a personal and in a larger, universal manner. There is something strangely resonant about her desire to compress time. There is also something bold, even heroic, about how she desires to dismantle fate. The predicament she faces is a classical one, and one which every thinking person must also face: it is the question of predestination versus free will. On one hand, Ultimecia s goal is undoubtedly evil. She wants to enslave existence, and is willing to murder and manipulate people to achieve this end. But on the other hand, her goal is also very common. She wants to assert her individuality, and prove that she is in control of her own life. Is this really such an ignoble mission? Perhaps she goes about it incorrectly. But however malignant her scheme may have been, she uncovers physical, mathematical truths about her universe in the process, and these truths sit uneasily with me. I subscribe to the static time interpretation of the game, and in this model, predestination exists because the timeline cannot be altered; in the dynamic model, the time-loop is also inevitable. What this means is that, had Ultimecia s scheme been more

humanitarian, she would still have met with failure in her attempt to assert her free will. Fate is a force which crushes her under its wheel. Her personality, her agenda, these things are constructions which reality s physical nature manufacture and compel her to wear. Any control she wields is an illusion. Her actions, her thoughts, are prescribed by physics. This same principle holds true for every other character in the game. Everyone in FFVIII is an automaton moving on a preset course. But these other characters do not attempt to vie with fate. In fact, some of the most outlandish pieces of dialogue in the story coincide with the cast s almost-lackadaisical attitude towards events transpiring around them. For example, when Squall and Co. wake up after falling unconscious on the train ride to Timber, how do they initially react? Selphie: There s no way we can understand this first mission! Let s just concentrate on our

Squall: (I guess you re right ) We ll put this incident on hold. I ll report it to the headmaster once we get back to Garden. Zell: We should be there soon, eh? Here we go Psyche yourself up, baby!

The incident is swept under the rug and forgotten with such instantaneousness that it seems absurd. The characters do not even bother to talk about it together in private. Later on, Dr. Odine makes this insightful remark: Dr. Odine: Compressing time with magic... Vat good will it do for ze sorceress to compress time? There may be many reasons, but it doesn't matter. The characters float along on the current of the plot, oblivious of the forces that direct them, and unconcerned about their own obliviousness. In part, this is just lazy writing, but it also reflects how the cast really does deal with their problems. Squall buries himself in introversion and avoids social contact. Esthar isolates itself with super-technology. Mayor Dobe lives in an ideological bubble, and when dealing with someone who holds opposing political views, his first response is, When are you leaving? (This is the point where we would insert a cartoon picture of an ostrich sticking its head into the sand.) Only the villains seem interested in changing the status quo, and when predestination is at stake, only Ultimecia decides to fight against it. Cid and Edea, in direct contrast, actually work to -accommodate- fate by forming Garden and training SeeDs. I cannot bring myself to condemn Ultimecia for fighting fate. There is something in me that can sympathize with her motive. For this reason, I find myself cheering for her in certain respects, despite her villainy, and also becoming irritated at the other characters for taking such a passive approach to their own lives. The developers undoubtedly intended this to a degree. When Squall has his breakthrough in the escape pod, and asks Ellone to help him change time, albeit futilely, this action stands out against his past history of passivity. So does his decision to invade the Sorceress Memorial and free Rinoa. These moments mean something precisely because Squall has finally chosen to act. But they ring hollow to me. Fate is still involved. If Squall and Rinoa get a happy ending, this is not because they chose action over passivity; Ultimecia also chose action. The choice of action itself is not what saves Squall and Rinoa. Their happy ending is as random and mechanical a production of time/space as Ultimecia s unhappy ending. And although the heroes win and the villains lose, this outcome has nothing to do with morality, justice or willpower. It is pure coincidence (dramatic coincidence, to be

sure). The time/space continuum does not have a moral conscience. I am talking as if the events of the story are real, and have no author. Of course the story s outcome is not coincidental in our reality: the developers wrote it that way. But in the game s reality, fate is coincidental for the characters. This gives Ultimecia s death a double-edge. From outside the game, as we play it, we can see that fate crushed her because she was a villain, but from inside the game, as I have explained, fate has no rhyme or reason to crush her. Free will simply does not exist, and Ultimecia s quest for it is a pathetic delusional enterprise. It is this underlying physical law of the game s universe that makes Ultimecia s defeat seem almost bitter to me. The bitter thing is not that she failed to conquer the globe. The bitter thing is that she managed to look overhead and see the puppet strings that were animating the cast all along. What type of message, exactly, is being projected? I admit that I have no clear answer. The game seems like a strange muddle to me, with weird ideas that resonate with disquieting philosophical implications. (2) I cannot claim to know much about Buddhism, but an essay about the religion written by Lafcadio Hearn caught my attention. The essay is entitled Nirvana: A Study in Synthetic Buddhism, and it appears in Hearn s book Gleanings in Buddha-Fields. At one point in the essay, while discussing preexistence and the transmigration of souls (and how these things both do and do not exist in Buddhism), Hearn makes these observations: Certainly while we still try to cling to the old theories of permanent personality, and of a single incarnation only for each individual, we can find no moral meaning in the universe as it exists. Modern knowledge can discover no justice in the cosmic process; the very most it can offer us by way of ethical encouragement is that the unknowable forces are not forces of pure malevolence. Neither moral nor immoral, to quote Huxley, but simply unmoral. Evolutional science cannot be made to accord with this notion of indissoluble personality; and if we accept its teaching of mental growth and inheritance, we must also accept its teaching of individual dissolution and of the cosmos as inexplicable. It assures us, indeed, that the higher faculties of man have been developed through struggle and pain, and will long continue to be so developed; but it also assures us that evolution is inevitably followed by dissolution that the highest point of development is the point likewise from which retrogression begins. And if we are each and all mere perishable forms of being, doomed to pass away like plants and trees, what consolation can we find in the assurance that we are suffering for the benefit of the future? How can it concern us whether humanity becomes more or less happy in another myriad ages, if there remains nothing for us but to live and die in comparative misery? Or, to repeat the irony of Huxley, what compensation does the Eophippus [a prehistoric horse ancestor] get for his sorrows in the fact that, some millions of years afterwards, one of his descendants wins the Derby? But the cosmic process may assume quite another aspect if we can persuade ourselves, like the Buddhist, that all being is Unity, that personality is but a delusion hiding reality, that all distinctions of I and thou are ghostly films spun out of perishable sensation, that even Time and Place as revealed to our petty senses are phantasms, that the past and the present and the future are veritably One. Suppose the winner of the Derby quite well able to remember having been the Eophippus? Suppose the being, once man, able to look back through all veils of death and birth, through all evolutions of

evolution, even to the moment of the first faint growth of sentiency out of nonsentiency; able to remember, like the Buddha of the Jatakas, all the experiences of his myriad incarnations, and to relate them like fairy-tales for the sake of another Ananda? We have seen that it is not the Self but the Non-Self the one reality underlying all phenomena which passes from form to form. The striving for Nirvana is a struggle perpetual between false and true, light and darkness, the sensual and the supersensual; and the ultimate victory can be gained only by the total decomposition of the mental and the physical individuality. Not one conquest of self can suffice: millions of selves must be overcome. For the false Ego is a compound of countless ages, and possesses a vitality enduring beyond universes. Here, Hearn s description of the Buddhist notion that all being is Unity sounds like Time Compression to me. When I first read this passage, the exact parallel between Nirvana and TC made me wonder, in the sense that wonder means start to think, and also in the sense of how a child can wonder at a marvel. I reconsidered Ultimecia s goal. Would Time Compression be Nirvana to her, and what would this mean? It might be like some ultimate sacrilege, to forcibly seize Nirvana for oneself, but if Time Compression did result in Enlightenment, how would Ultimecia change in the process? Would she remain evil, or, having attained unity with past, present and future, would her mind clear and her soul blend benignly into the infinite singularity that is existence? Perhaps she would remain evil, and become a tyrannical divinity, as the game suggests. If this is the case, it does not make me wonder any less about Time Compression defined as Nirvana. Not only is Ultimecia seeking free will, but she is also seeking the simulacrum of a Buddhist holy state, and there is no indication that this simulacrum, once obtained, would not be that actual holy state itself. Her goal becomes extremely universal when Time Compression is viewed in this light, and her fated defeat even more troublesome, in my mind. Is she not on the verge of shedding her false Ego during the final battle, when her human shell dangles below her true form, a form made from the cosmos itself, which blends literally into her new incarnation? In another minute, she might very well have achieved the total decomposition of mental and physical individuality as she achieved Time Compression. When Rinoa describes what TC would entail, she remarks that [Ultimecia s] the only one who would be able to exist in such a world. She, and no other. This sounds terrible and menacing and, once again, if Ultimecia was a tyrannical divinity, it no doubt would be that. But consider the statement, and the concept, from another angle. If Ultimecia merged into and became One with the universe, which is already truly One, she, and no other, would indeed exist, because existence is Unity, and behind the faade of reality, Unity, or Oneness, is the only thing that ever has existed. Nothing would alter. With this interpretation, Ultimecia s victory would not have destroyed the universe, but rather, it would have affirmed both free will and Nirvana. Her defeat, subsequently, that coincidental, unmoral, to quote Hearn quoting Huxley, defeat crushes both philosophical and religious hope at once. This interpretation seems very dour to me for this reason, and yet Time Compression does sound so much like Nirvana that I cannot shake the comparison from my mind. Here s another thing I wonder: what a Buddhist monk would have to say about FFVIII. In the same book, but in another essay entitled Within the Circle, Hearn makes additional ruminations about time, space and the nature of existence, but

without any direct connection to Buddhism or Nirvana. The essay is actually more like a prose poem than an essay, in which Hearn first describes the (imagined? personally experienced?) painful hyper-sensation involved in seeing [his] former births. Afterwards, a disembodied voice begins a conversation with him. What this voice discusses sounds, once more, uncannily like Time Compression to me. I transcribe the relevant quotation here so that you can consider Hearn s philosophy in tandem with FFVIII s physical universe. All that exists in Time must perish, [said the voice]. To the Awakened there is no Time or Space or Change, no night or day, no heat or cold, no moon or season, no present, past or future. Form and the names of form are alike nothingness: Knowledge only is real; and unto whomsoever gains it, the universe becomes a ghost. But it is written: He who hath overcome Time in the past and the future must be of exceedingly pure understanding. Such understanding is not yours. Still to your eyes the shadow seems the substance, and darkness, light, and voidness, beauty. And therefore to see your former births could give you only pain. I asked: Had I found strength to look back to the beginning, back to the verge of Time, could I have read the Secret of the universe? Nay, was answer made. Could you have looked back the Past would have become yet more, the Future would Only by Infinite Vision can the Secret be read. incomparably further than your power permitted, then for you the Future. And could you have endured even have orbed back for you into the Present. What is the Circle?

Yet why? I murmured, marveling

Circle there is none, was the response; Circle there is none but the great phantom-whirl of birth and death to which, by their own thoughts and deeds, the ignorant remain condemned. But this has being only in Time; and Time itself is an illusion. Whatever these comments were derived from, I find them extremely illuminating when applied to Time Compression. Hearn suggests that not only Time and Space, but also Change, would be revealed as nonexistent to an Awakened person; and an Awakened person, in turn, is a person who can perceive that the circular and finite nature of time is in fact not circular at all, and not finite, because time is an illusion and finity is not a real aspect. Infinity, which paradoxically is singularity, is the only truth. We cannot understand this when we are within the circle of time s illusion, but if we broke from that circle and annihilated past, present and future, we would gain comprehension. Time Compression would annihilate these things for Ultimecia by rendering them into oneness, ready for absorption into her own mind and body. I said before that, had Ultimecia achieved TC, she would have affirmed free will in the FFVIII universe. But, actually, she would have affirmed fate, because Change, too, would dissolve for her like Time and Space; in a Time Compressed world, there is no time and therefore no change. To take one step backward, if we imagine that she had achieved TC, this would have meant that she was always fated to achieve TC, and its attainment would, in fact, have revealed this fact to her. This was not the case, however, in the game. Her fate was to fail, but this also revealed the truth to her, that truth being: change is impossible; fate does exist; time is static, and therefore time is an illusion. Forgive me if this sounds confusing. If you have followed me, then you ll see that I am not arbitrarily applying Hearn to FFVIII. His philosophy fits

hand-in-glove with the physical universe established in the game. His philosophy fits so well that it is the physical universe established in the game. I can only imagine that this is because both Hearn and FFVIII deal with very real philosophical concerns, and those concerns (time, space, being) are the same. Now, the more I understand how time functions in the game, the more I also understand how very doomed Ultimecia was from the beginning. I m not talking about childhood persecution. I m talking about her desire to usurp fate. Fate, to repeat myself again, does indeed crush her in the story. But even if she had succeeded in casting TC, and managed to become one with the universe, this would ve simply been another way for fate to have crushed her. Her victory, if she had attained it, would have been fated, and therefore her arrival at this victory would have revealed to her, just like her defeat did, that free will is nonexistent. In simpler terms, she is facing a lose-lose situation. Her aspiration towards free will is doubly-pathetic, because winning and losing would both lead her to the conclusion that there is no such thing as free will. This exposes the aspiration itself as absurd, and extends beyond Ultimecia. Anyone in FFVIII s world who also believes in free will believes in a delusion. Truth in FFVIII, therefore, can only be obtained by subscribing to the oneness of existence, by surrendering the reins of your own life, and by recognizing that action and change are worthless phantasms. This does not strike me as horribly inspirational. It actually re-colors the entire story for me, and makes the Garden s victorious ascent into the sky during the finale seem almost disenchanting. This is because free will and individuality are conjoined concepts in my mind, and the destruction of free will involves the obliteration of individuality. You may ask: but what is individuality worth, anyway? Maybe nothing, and maybe we lose nothing when we lose it. This is a possibility. Our personalities may be entirely composite, from inheritances, from copied behaviors, etc., and we may have no true individual thoughts in our heads whatsoever. If this is the case, it s something I m still learning to accept. It is also, if it is the case, quite a heartless concept. Returning to the game, and assuming that free will does not exist, if anyone in the game s world ever were to attain Enlightenment (or some other success), this would mean that time/space had umorally determined that outcome. Conversely, if somebody else were to fail at attaining Enlightenment, time/space also unmorally determined this outcome. Senseless physical law, therefore, is responsible for dictating who will be saved and who condemned, and a person s fate has nothing to do with their spiritual devotion, moral fiber, or what-have-you. This is no new idea. It is the old cruel world notion, responsible for countless Why me? Why me? exclamations in reality and fiction. In our modern age, of course, we do not attribute our misery to the Moirae; we attribute it to scientific principles, cold-blooded, mathematic. But we still exclaim Why me? a lot. FFVIII seems to present this outlook as the factual basis inside its fictionalized universe. The question now becomes: what do we make of it? I have already said what I make of it. These ramblings are my thoughts. You might have another interpretation. Other interpretations are certainly available. For example, it is possible to argue that free will and predestination are able to coexist. If you were to accept this argument, then perhaps Ultimecia s defeat does not put the last nail in free will s coffin after all. I realize that I am opening something like a can of worms, and that I cannot even begin to brush the surface of the concepts I m addressing, but I would like to present a quotation from Boethius s Consolation of Philosophy that argues in favor of free will coexisting with predestination.

The Consolation of Philosophy was written around 524 AD, and is an extended philosophical treatise concerning fate, free will, good and evil, and the potential moral underpinnings of the universe. It is actually couched in a fictional story where Philosophy, embodied as a woman, comes to sooth Boethius in his prison cell (he really was imprisoned for treason when he wrote the book) and presents a chain of logical arguments to him. Near the end of the work, when Philosophy makes the claim that a good power rules the world and everything happens aright, Boethius asks her to unravel the causes of matters that lie hidden and to unfold reasons veiled in darkness. In other words, he says, Explain yourself. She replies: You are urging me to the greatest of all questions, a question that can never be exhausted. The subject is of such a kind that when one doubt has been removed, countless others spring up in its place, like the Hydra s heads. The only way to check them is with a really lively intellectual fire. The usual subjects of inquiry concern the oneness of providence, the course of fate, the haphazard nature of the random events of chance, divine knowledge and predestination, and the freedom of the will; you can see for yourself how difficult they are. But she agrees, despite the difficulty, to explain them to Boethius, and the entire concluding section of the book is devoted to a long logical argument where Philosophy establishes one point for the sake of balancing another atop it. I cannot quote the entire section here, but if you re interested, you should read the book yourself to see the full argument. Suffice it to say that Philosophy is not blowing hot air, and when she reaches the conclusion I will quote, she has a solid logical ground for having reached it. Her conclusion is as follows: If you say at this point that what God sees as a future event cannot but happen, and what cannot but happen, happens of necessity, and if you bind me to this word necessity, I shall have to admit that it is a matter of the firmest truth, but one which scarcely anyone except a student of divinity has been able to fathom. I shall answer that the same future event is necessary when considered with reference to divine foreknowledge, and yet seems to be completely free and unrestricted when considered in itself. For there are two kinds of necessity; one simple, as for example the fact that it is necessary that all men are mortal; and one conditional, as for example, if you know someone is walking, it is necessary that he is walking. For that which a man knows cannot be other than as it is known; but this conditional necessity does not imply simple necessity, because it does not exist in virtue of its own nature, but in virtue of a condition which is added. No necessity forces the man to walk who is making his way of his own free will, although it is necessary that he walks when he takes a step. In the same way, if Providence sees something as present, it is necessary for it to happen, even though it has no necessity in its own nature. God sees those future events which happen of free will as present events; so that these things when considered with reference to God s sight of them do happen necessarily as a result of the condition of divine knowledge; but when considered in themselves, they do not lose the absolute freedom of their nature. All things, therefore, whose future occurrence is known to God do without doubt happen, but some of them are the result of free will. In spite of the fact that they do happen, their existence does not deprive them of their true nature, in virtue of which the possibility of their non-occurrence existed before they happened.

What does it matter, then, if they are not necessary, when because of the condition of divine foreknowledge it will turn out exactly as if they were necessary? The answer is this. It is impossible for the two events I mentioned just now the rising of the sun and the man walking not to be happening when they do happen; and yet it was necessary for one of them to happen before it did happen, but not so for the other. And so, those things which are present to God will without doubt happen; but some of them result from the necessity of things, and some of them from the power of those who do them. [ ] But, you will reply, if it lies in my power to change a proposed course of action, I will be able to evade Providence, for I will perhaps have altered things which Providence foreknows. My answer will be that you can alter your plan, but that since this is possible, and since whether you do so or in what way you change it is visible to Providence the ever present and true, you cannot escape divine foreknowledge, just as you cannot escape the sight of an eye that is present to watch, though of your own free will you may turn to a variety of actions. Well, you will ask, isn t divine knowledge changed as a result of my rearrangement, so that as I change my wishes it, too, seems to change its knowledge? The answer is no. Each future thing is anticipated by the gaze of God which bends it back and recalls it to the presence of its own manner of knowledge; it does not change, as you think, with alternate knowledge of now this and now that, but with one glance anticipates and embraces your changes in its constancy. God receives this present mode of knowledge and vision of all things not from the issue of future things but from His own immediacy. So that the difficulty you put forward a short time ago, that it was unfitting if our future is said to provide a cause for God s knowledge, is solved. The power of this knowledge which embraces all things in present understanding has itself established the mode of being for all things and owes nothing secondary to itself. And since this is so, man s freedom of will remains inviolate and the law does not impose reward and punishment unfairly, because the will is free from all necessity. It should be noted that although Boethius believes in the Christian God, there is no trace of theological dogma in his arguments, which are purely logical, and earlier in the book, Philosophy in fact defines God as follows: Nature s fixed order could not proceed on its path and the various kinds of change could not exhibit motions so orderly in place, time, effect, distance from one another, and nature, unless there was one unmoving and stable power to regulate them. For this power, whatever it is, through which creation remains in existence and in motion, I use the word which all people use, namely God. If we were to define God as the mathematical truths of physics, we would be using roughly the same definition that Philosophy employs. This is essential to understand when considering her speech about God s knowledge and divine Providence, and we may effectively substitute Fate for God in her argument, if we also understand Fate to be nothing more than the static timeline, which observes everything because everything already is. In other words, just because time is static, and change is nonexistent, this does not mean that people lack free will. Free will and fate only appear to clash because of their technical definitions and our own limited perspective from within the circle, so to speak. God, or fate, knows what actions we will make, and these are transcribed on the timeline in advance, but God and fate are not responsible for compelling us to make these actions. We are responsible for our own choices, and it is our decisions which inscribe events onto the timeline. Time/space is now the passive entity, and we are the active agents whose willpowers authored the course of existence from the beginning of the universe. Nothing will ever change for God, and events are

predestined, because, once more, time is an eternal singularity which encompasses past, to view our future actions before we make those actions from our flawed sense of the

illusion, and God exists as an present and future, allowing Him them, but we are still motivating present.

Reconsider Time Compression, wherein time and space cease to be, and yet wherein Ultimecia is said to still possess intent. This is truly a status which fuses mortal and divine perspectives, and in it, Ultimecia would be able to witness her own future actions while also perceiving her power of choice to influence them. It is really like the chicken or egg question. Which comes first: free will or fate? If one comes first, it precludes the other from existing, but in the Boethian cosmos, both come first because both always were, are and will be. Ultimecia would be able to grasp this paradox in a Time Compressed world in ways which we are incapable of grasping in the normal world. But I am not personally convinced that the Boethian cosmos does apply to the FFVIII universe. It flirts with applicability, but unlike Hearn s Buddhist gleanings, it doesn t achieve the necessary hand-in-glove fit. This is because of the time-loop, and also because of Ellone s failed ventures. Boethius s philosophies do seem to allow the potential for time-travel, in the sense that if such a thing were possible, free will would shape the past and the future just as free will already shapes the future. The game, however, apparently rejects this idea in the Ellone subplot: when Ellone attempts to apply her will to the timeline, she finds that she can change nothing, and this is because, unlike Ultimecia at the orphanage, she had not already changed it. Had she possessed true free will, the timeline would ve already accommodated her decision, and she would have succeeded to a greater degree in her mission. Instead, she appears to possess consciousness but not legitimate freedom, and when she consciously chooses to look into the past, it is only to discover that her actions can leave no imprint. Now, Sir Bahamut has posited that this is simply because Ellone is not as powerful as Ultimecia, and therefore cannot influence events as drastically. While I acknowledge the possibility and even probability of that explanation, the thematic purpose behind Ellone s failure seems to imply something greater to me. If Ellone is weaker, magically, than Ultimecia, this does not strike me as the primary message to take from her subplot; rather, I read the subplot as an example of a character butting heads with fate directly, and coming away empty-handed. Time/space appears to be molding Ellone, rather than the opposite, which would have occurred in a Boethian cosmos. Squall_of_SeeD, meanwhile, believes that Boethius may still apply to the game, and has stated this about the subject: From a perspective outside a timeline -- God's point of view, if you will -changes to that timeline would not necessarily be any less fated to occur. They're a natural, physical consequence of objects already in motion -- even if some of those objects hail from the future. To put it another way, I'm reminded of a discussion that took place some years ago on GameFAQs. One of the countless vs. topics that we've all seen a thousand times, it was nothing particularly special until someone made the assertion that putting Squall up against anyone prior to FFVIII's ending isn't a fair fight because he's fated to be there to kill Ulty, so he would have to come through any obstacle that met him before then. Compelled to respond, suddenly drawing on a fresh understanding of Dynamic Time that I'd never been able to illustrate before, I said, Squall didn't win because it was fate; it was fate because he won.

As you can see, there are many outlooks available, and if you reach an interpretation that differs from mine, I would not be surprised (after all, my two co-authors have). And although I don t think that Boethius s philosophy is perfectly compatible with FFVIII, it has certainly informed my opinion. In any case, I do believe that is very necessary to weigh the possibility of free will s potential existence against its potential nonexistence to reach a conclusion about Ultimecia s story. (3) But now I want to put aside logic and physics, and approach Time Compression from a more personal perhaps even artistic direction. The TC concept, the more I consider it, continues to open more fantastically for me, like those tea leaves that bloom during infusion in hot water, and I find that it operates not only on an intellectual, but also on an emotional level. To explain what I mean, I am going to bring in my last extra-textual source: Marcel Proust. When I first read In Search of Lost Time, I did not instantly think about Ultimecia. But when I next thought about Ultimecia, I found myself returning to Lost Time, and revisiting passages in it. This monumental book is like no other ever written, and it opens doors to so many things. One that I never anticipated was a door into FFVIII. The novel lent me yet another, and a deeper, understanding of TC. In the book, Proust explores (among many, many other ideas) the personal relationship which all humans experience with time. There is a famous episode in the first volume in which the narrator tastes a madeleine cookie dipped in tea; this taste sensation triggers an involuntary memory, the most powerful form of nostalgia, uniting past with present, and reviving a moment from the narrator s childhood when his grandmother gave him a madeleine dipped into tea as a treat. The narrator experiences other flashes of involuntary memory throughout the book, and finally reaches this understanding about the strength of memory in the novel s last volume: The truth surely was that the being within me which had enjoyed these impressions had enjoyed them because they had in them something that was common to a day long past and to the present, because in some way they were extra-temporal, and this being made its appearance only when, through one of these identifications of the present with the past, it was likely to find itself in the one and only medium in which it could exist and enjoy the essence of things, that is to say: outside time. This explained why it was that my anxiety on the subject of my death had ceased at the moment when I had unconsciously recognized the taste of the little madeleine, since the being which at that moment I had been was an extra-temporal being and therefore unalarmed by the vicissitudes of the future. This being had only come to me, only manifested itself outside of activity and immediate enjoyment, on those rare occasions when the miracle of an analogy had made me escape from the present. [ ] [...] A moment of the past, did I say? Was it not perhaps very much more: something that, common both to the past and to the present, is much more essential than either of them? [ ] [ ] In the observation of the present, where the senses cannot feed it [a person's inner being] with this food [a sustenance made from the essence of things], it languishes, as it does in the consideration of a past made arid by the intellect or in the anticipation of a future which the will constructs with fragments of the present and the past, fragments whose reality it still further reduces by preserving of them only what is suitable for the

utilitarian, narrowly human purpose for which it intends them. But let a noise or a scent, once heard or once smelt, be heard or smelt again in the present and at the same time in the past, real without being actual, ideal without being abstract, and immediately the permanent and habitually concealed essence of things is liberated and our true self, which seemed - had perhaps for long years seemed - to be dead but was not altogether dead, is awakened and reanimated as it receives the celestial nourishment that is brought to it. A minute freed from the order of time has re-created, in us, the man freed from the order of time. And one can understand that this man should have confidence in his joy, even if the simple taste of a madeleine does not seem logically to contain within it the reasons for this joy, one can understand that the word death should have no meaning for him; situated outside time, why should he fear the future? Proust explains, in the book, that he is seeking to capture a universal truth, and that his success can be measured by how his readers respond to the novel. If he has succeeded, then his readers will recognize the feelings that he is describing, in the novel, in themselves; more, his readers will actually feel those feelings manifest in themselves as they read. The novel is not a classic without reason. Many people do feel the emotions that Proust is evoking, because involuntary memory and nostalgia are universal human sensations. They may perhaps be the most important sensations that a person can ever feel. What interests me is Proust s notion that they are so powerful because they exist outside time. When we experience an emotion in the present that we knew exactly in the past, past and present dissolve as we become aware of that emotion s purest form. The calendar crumbles; our place in space expands infinitely, until there is no more space and no more time: we exist in a dimension of only, of total sensation. Within Time Compression, past, present and future would dissolve for Ultimecia, and she would exist permanently outside time in a state where every emotion is purest and every sensation heightened. She would live forever in that moment at which Proust s narrator tastes his madeleine. If you have ever experienced a feeling like what Proust describes, then you can appreciate the potency and the pleasure of such a feeling. It is the epitome of euphoria wrapped in an epiphany. It is enlightenment. Time Compression, for Ultimecia, would be mental, emotional, spiritual enlightenment on every single level, but also on the most basic human level, because every single person with emotions can and must feel it at least once in a lifetime. Ultimecia would feel it for all time, because she would feel it without time. In this sense, Ultimecia s egomaniacal mission can be understood to be the same mission that every person faces and yearns to accomplish. She wants, like Proust did, to regain lost time. This is not the evil goal of a villain. It is the commonest goal in the world, and also perhaps the most profound. We all desire to compress time, but hopefully by now I have established that a Time Compressed world is merely a world in which time does not even exist and such a world, or at least the perception of such a world, is indeed attainable in life. It is embodied in Proust s extra-temporal moments, where the joy that we feel has nothing to do with our physical reality (Proust did not go into raptures because the madeleine just tasted that spectacular), but has everything to do with the process of remembrance itself, and the fact that this process shatters Time on an ideological plane that we nevertheless experience as intensely as happiness or sorrow. This elevated emotion is the purpose of Art in Proust s novel, and therefore the purpose of Art in real life; it is also, perhaps, the purpose of sentient existence, if you are willing to humor such a grandiose statement. An additional comparison may be drawn here between Proust s extra-temporal moment and Hearn s notion of Nirvana. They seem quite similar, and both seem

similar to Time Compression. Are all three, perhaps, the same thing? Proust s approach to Nirvana is certainly not the ascetic approach of any Buddhist! But do they not arrive at an oddly identical goal? Does not Ultimecia also arrive at this goal or almost arrive there, before her defeat? I have quoted this speech in this FAQ before, but I am going to quote it again, because when it is juxtaposed with Proust, it gains unsuspected depths: Ultimecia: Reflect on your Childhood Your sensation Your words Your emotions Time It will not wait No matter how hard you hold on. It escapes you And Apart from suggesting a new awareness of static time, and the futility of attempting change, Ultimecia s words also probe into the very same extra-temporal sensations that Proust describes in his Lost Time. Others have noted that Ultimecia seems rather pacifistic at this stage of the battle. Why has her mood softened so much, when she was spitting venom at her opponents just a few minutes earlier? I believe that this is because she was not half-merged with the Oneness of the universe a few minutes earlier. She only begins to philosophize when her defeat is immanent, and it is at precisely this moment that she forms the opinion she states. She has achieved the brink of enlightenment, and then feels enlightenment slipping away forever, informing her remark that time will not wait no matter how hard you hold on. This opinion directly opposes Proust s novel, while nevertheless acknowledging the sensations that his novel attempts to capture. It also opposes an opinion that Ultimecia herself stated earlier in the game. Ultimecia: "Come with me to a place of no return. Bid farewell to your childhood." Bid farewell to your childhood and Reflect on your childhood are two bookend remarks. Ultimecia makes the first remark in her first appearance, and the last in the final battle. These two conflicting pieces of advice indicate an ideological shift in Ultimecia s worldview. Although Ultimecia is declaring, in both instances, that childhood, and therefore the past, is impossible to recapture, she no longer shuns the contemplation of that lost era when she speaks during the final battle. Even if time escapes you, she still says that you should reflect. This is a radical departure from when she told Seifer to bid farewell to his lost innocence. Her worldview has shifted, of course, because she has come so close to achieving Time Compression. But fate strips away her epiphany, revealing in that single gesture both the glorious possibility of Nirvana and the unmoral impossibility of attaining it in the FFVIII universe or, at least, the impossibility of attaining it via free will. And her speech reads like a bittersweet dirge or a eulogy as a result a dirge or a eulogy for the death of enlightenment itself. At the same instant, the speech is a rebuke against space/time: even if the past is destined to escape, Ultimecia has advised Squall and Co. to reflect on it, regardless. Is this not one final, revolutionary declamation against fate, uttered in fate s very jaws? Ultimecia refuses to surrender, which makes her impending destruction seem tragic to me; tragic, because it represents the destruction of the philosophies she embodied, whether her surface motives were moral or amoral in the end. I am not quite prepared to sail away on the Garden with Squall and Rinoa, and I admit that I might be in the minority. The game s developers seem to have intended the ending to be happy, for love to conquer all, etc. Does it? Maybe not so neatly. Laguna is still left standing at Raine s grave. Acceptance, I suppose, is meant to really be the key. Ultimecia was unwilling to accept her

destiny. Squall finally did accept his. The authorial hand punished and rewarded them in accordance with this precept. There are truly so many components. I will end my musings here, having come to no firm conclusion. It may be years before I come to one of those, if ever. In the meantime, I hope I haven t rambled too incoherently, and beg pardon for my amateur handling of the philosophy involved. As one last note, I highly recommend anyone interested, not only in time, literature! Which, by the way, this challenge anyone to play through it, that a video-game can be art. both Lafcadio Hearn and Marcel Proust to space and memory, but also in good game is: literature. And I would and then to read this FAQ, if they doubt

=================================== -Section V: Credits=================================== * SideswipeZulu, admo, bleedingdigits, Druff, JD IXI, Big D, Xshu, lindblum resident, Yuthura Ban, Skyblade, Douglas "Fox-Raweln" Meneghetti, Riku Heartless, Katicflis, PMog, flametongue, TJF588, Ryan Goss, Vir27 and countless others from GameFAQs and elsewhere who participated in all the arguments we had on these issues, giving invaluable insight and arguments. This FAQ wouldn't be here without all of you! * Leuchest/The Dark Legend, for his compilations of in-game information, as well as generally contributing greatly and consistently in discussions. * A very special thanks goes to DarkAngel, staff member at AdventChildren.net, and owner of the Gunshot Romance website, for translating articles from the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania guide. * CJayC for creating such a great forum and FAQ site. * Square, for making a game filled with such a lot of interesting material to debate and discuss (even if you did cop out on a few issues). * Finally, although perhaps unnecessary as I have already credited them as co-authors, I have to give a great thank you to Squall_Of_SeeD and TheOnionKnight. My discussions with you two in particular have been very rewarding, not only when it comes to FF8, but even in maturing me as a person and debater. Again, thank you! Thank you for reading, we hope you enjoyed it. Yours sincerely, Kristian J. Strmmen, aka Sir Bahamut, B. Burke, aka TheOnionKnight, Glenn Morrow, aka Squall_Of_SeeD Final Fantasy VIII: Time/Ultimecia Plot FAQ by Sir Bahamut Version: 12.0 | Last Updated: 2011-03-28 | View/Download Original File Hosted by GameFAQs Return to Final Fantasy VIII (PS) FAQs & Guides