Things I Learned from FFVII

I had an awesome amazing FFVII dream last night...one that would leave me covering my face and giggling in the corner, and before you pervs start thinking your pervy thoughts, I'm a fangirl and it doesn't take much for me to cover my face and giggle in the corner.  It's not surprising really though.  I spent a good portion of the night posting FFVII memes and looking through my Pinterest boards.  In less than a month I've discovered that as much of a fangirl as I am, I am nowhere NEAR as crazy as some of the people on the interwebs.  I also read a few pages of my book on the Qabalah, which is all about the Tree of Life and Holy Sephiroth, etc.  Besides the simple fact of I think about FFVII ALL THE TIME.  It's the inspiration for my life and writing, and as such, it's always in my head to some degree.  After I woke up I starting compiling a mental list of all the things I learned from that game, and realized I'd have to write this down before it was forgotten.  I am almost positive that there will be more; my thoughts just haven't become cohesive around all of them yet.

1.  Don't screw with the planet - Years ago before really bad shit happened I used to care a LOT about the environment, animal rights, etc.  Then I stopped, then I played FFVII and holy shit I cared again.  It was a revival/awakening in my brain.  This stuff REALLY matters so today I am an avid and outspoken activist.  I (attempt to) lay the verbal smackdown on people who deny global warming and I have a general disdain cum hatred of humanity.  Honestly, playing FFVII when you hate humanity is a terrible idea.  You want everyone to fucking burn.  The thought of it just increases my loathing.  Humans fuckiing suck and if some kind of cataclysm wiped us all out, I can't really say we didn't deserve it.  There is no goddamn excuse for our terrible behavior, no saving grace for why we can't get our heads out of our asses.  The information is there, but no one wants to face it or listen to it because it forces us to change out of our comfort zone, do something we don't want to do, be transformed by the truth...but the consequences of inaction or too dire and too terrible to conceive.  However, the MUST be not only be conceived, but expected and anticipated, because there is no amount of denial or blindness that will make the inevitable go away.  If the earth just decided to say "Fuck all of you, I'm done," I would not blame it for one instant.

2.  Look below the surface; take nothing at face value - Things are rarely what they seem and seldom what you expect them to be.  The dark tragedy of the game is that nearly everyone is a victim of greed and corruption perpetuated by fucking humanity.  I studied psychology and literature in college and grad school and have always had an eye for the abstract, but FFVII really showed me you have to look beyond the seeming because things are rarely as straightforward as they appear, and there are so many hidden levels and nuances that play a role in all happenstance.  Nor should you ever trust what people say without knowing the reason why they're saying it and knowing the source of their knowledge.  It taught me to (literally) be the devil's advocate, to try to find a reason behind the terrible things that people do, because I truly think that only by understand how and why an individual arrives at a particular place will you ever be able to possibly stop terrible things from happening.  Again, turning a blind eye is not going to aid us, and all of those saying they don't care why people do evil just that they do evil are hiding themselves from the truth.  It's easy to say that someone is evil; it is much harder to say why they are.  The general consensus is that they just are, but I find that unacceptable.  FFVII made me not just accept the Word of God, but rather revel in the Death of the Author , because once a work has been released to the public, it is fair game, and nothing the creator really says/does can dissuade or dismiss what is there, even if they don't see it themselves (Yes...I as a writer am also subject to this.  Quite an annoyance, but that doesn't make it any less true).

3. You reap what you sow - You cannot expect something good to come out of horror, corruption, and abuse.  I have read stories that subvert this trope (Sword of Truth for example), but I find this to be generally miraculous and even so the character usually fights against some inner demon of darkness that was sown at their birth.

4.  Mommy issues will really fuck you up - Again not something that I didn't already know, but holy wow microcosm/macrocosm since the creator of FFVII lost his mother in the midst of the game's production, and uh, that certain trickled down into the story.  Nothing is conceived in a vacuum.  I took a class called New Historicism that insisted upon this fact.  In it we looked at works along side what era the author was writing in in addition to what their station in life/state of mind was at the time.  It matters...it most certainly matters, and while the author may be dead at the stories entrance into the public discourse his or her environment at the inception and creation never ceases to resonate.  All of the mommy issues.  ALL OF THEM.  But to be serious...this verified and validated that you can take something absolutely terrible and use it to make something influential, something amazing, something that will endure.  A story that people are still talking about, still arguing about, still writing about, still fame warring about and still being inspired by after more than a decade and a half.  In this world where websites and memes endure nearly as long as the life of a mayfly, that span of time is likened to eternity.  Pain not only makes us all kin, but I have found no better inspiration or driving force for any making.  The most beautiful songs are always the saddest and the most brooding part of Gothic culture rests on the notion that sad things can be beautiful.  People who don't understand this always want the happy ending even when the sad or the bittersweet would be a far better fit.

Sword Fight Win or Fail

I do have quick dreams/visions about being impaled fairly often, more so depending on what I've been watching, but I was in the full blown dreamscape with this one.  I was sword-fighting someone, a guy, nondescript.  I won the battle, but took a stab wound to the stomach, deep enough that it would've killed me in real life, but in the dreamworld I didn't feel a thing.  What was odd was the sword/knife I was stabbed with had a smooth edge, but the wound was serrated horizontal across my stomach.  There was also no blood.  I could walk, but I had to constantly hold it together.  Medical authorities were called, and I remember I was in one of my friend's houses, though it didn't look like it being altogether much larger and we wandered around looking for these doctors so that they could stitch me back up.  When we finally found them, they were busy doing something or other, and when I grew tired of waiting and said something, the "head" doctor said that it wasn't his job and directed me to the next in line who initially looked appalled at the wound, but then decided I didn't need to be sewn up after all.  The last thing I remember is running my hand along the bumpy edge of the wound and when I woke up I clutched my stomach, feeling far more nauseated on the other side than I did in the dream.  The best part is I do have a scar on my stomach from my gallbladder surgery, horizontal, but smooth, but I've felt pretty sick all day thinking about this.  I usually avoid watching scenes were people get impaled, because I can literally feel it.  It's awful.  I guess my recent avoidance of some such scenes might have called this potential nightmare up.

I had one a while ago where I was watching two women sword-fighting around an old style carriage.  They were dressed in Victorian or steampunk outfits.  Then they began to chase each other around the carriage, but the one suddenly stopped and turned around with sword facing her opponent...you can guess what happened next.  I wrote a scene in my story of just such a thing prior to this one happening.  That wasn't the worst one though...the worst are the ones that feel real.  Where I'm falling and falling, and what stops me is getting impaled. Front or back it makes no matter.  These dreams usually end the same, so the one described above was a different sort.  I didn't wake up after it happened and I learned to heal myself.