Meta Month 5: [FFVIII] A Small List Of Thoughts On Seifer

[wallwalker]

So baconfat asked me to talk about Seifer from FFVIII, and since I've been replaying it fairly recently, I'm going to give it a shot. Unfortunately I don't really remember how much of this I've already said anyway, so here's what comes to mind...

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- One big question, for me, was always this: Did Seifer want to be a SeeD?

I think he must have at one point, or at least that part of him did, just to prove that he was as good as the other students who were passing their tests and being given so much prestige. But in the end I really don't think so. Being a SeeD for most of the game means being a mercenary and doing what the client tells you to do. Then, later, being a SeeD means basically being the force that humanity created to attack and finally put down a force that the entire world hates anyway, and where's the fun in that? He wants to be the champion, the hero; he wants to be the one who defends what the rest of the world hates and wants to destroy.

And I don't think he'll ever go back to Garden. At the end of it all, Garden still exists to train the future SeeDs, who are going to throw their lives away at the gates of Ultimecia's castle in order to prepare the way for Squall and his friends. Seifer might not be the Knight anymore, but I don't think he's ever going to turn around to the degree that he'll want to turn his back on her completely. He'll find something or someone else to fight for, but I don't think he'll ever be a SeeD.

- I think it would be very easy to just... dismiss the character the way that I did at one point, the way that the other person who was watching me play dismissed him as he was watching. Dismiss him as a bully, as a jerk, as someone whose opinions and dreams don't matter because of the way he behaves. So I was keeping an eye on him as the game progressed, for signs that he's just an bully and jerk.

Let's see. He picks on Zell when they were children, but there was never any sign of violence. It may or may not have been outright bullying in the end. All of the really violent stuff involved Squall. He fought with Squall in the beginning in what looked like some kind of training duel, and later he goes into full on villain mode and tortures Squall. That's not bullying. That's something else entirely, IMO.

Squall is a SeeD. Seifer is the exact opposite of a SeeD in many ways, since SeeD is meant to fight the Sorceress. (Side question: Did Seifer know this? I would imagine he could have, because Ultimecia was calling the shots in Edea's mind at that point, and Ultimecia knew it. But the fact that he was torturing Squall to make him divulge their purpose says otherwise. Best guess, she had ordered him to do it because he wanted him to make a SeeD say it.) Seifer's not just attacking and bullying Squall. He's attacking the symbolic representation of everything he hated about Garden, about SeeD.

As for kidnapping Rinoa, I do think that by that point he's pretty much in a religious sort of fervor; he's doing what Ultimecia demands of him. The fact that she's able to make him hesitate before throwing her to Adel, even for a moment, is very telling of what he feels and thinks about her, despite the fact that things didn't work out. More on that later.

- Then you have people who go further in the other direction and declare that Seifer isn't a bad guy, that Ultimecia got into his head and convinced him to do the things that he did, and when Ultimecia was out of the picture he was a perfectly upstanding guy. And that I definitely don't agree with. Seifer was the one who walked over to Edea, and I'm convinced he was aware - he was taunting Squall as he disappeared, if memory serves. There might've been some influence that changed his viewpoints slightly, but in the end I think Seifer chose to ally with Sorceresses because they gave him something he couldn't get in a big, impersonal military academy for mercenaries - a chance to fight for something other than money.

- So I really think that Seifer's relationship with Rinoa especially suffered because of his need to be a Big Damn Hero. A lot of Rinoa's development in the game relates to her wanting to be able to fight for what she believes in, even though sometimes she has to ask for help in order to do it. She's able to face Edea in Deling City, she says, because she feels strong enough to fight as long as she's with Squall. Contrast that with Seifer, who's looking for someone to protect, and I see an issue there.

Seifer wants to be a hero and protect the defenseless. Rinoa wants to be able to stand beside him and fight, but you can't protect someone who's going out and fighting beside you, because they're putting themselves in danger. I expect that before the two of them ended their relationship, there was a lot of pushing - Rinoa pushing away from him to fight, Seifer pushing her back so that he could "keep her safe." I really think that's what ended the relationship in the end, however amicably. They cared about each other; they just couldn't be what the other really wanted.

- As for other relationships after the game, well. After the game it seems like Seifer's only real friends are Raijin and Fujin, so a relationship with either (or both?) of them seems most likely. I'm not sure I can see Squall/Seifer after the game simply because Squall's still The SeeD Commander and would still represent a lot of things that Seifer would've hated; it would take a lot of work and probably some pretty insane situations.

And the other main characters? Hm. I think that it would be complicated for a long time. Everyone involved would have to get over the fact that one party is a SeeD, and the other is someone who dislikes the greed and the hate that SeeDs stand for (in his mind.) They would have to find some kind of neutral emotional ground on which to meet before a relationship could even be thought of. But I think it could work in the end.

..and now, I have to go to work (and now I have an idea for tonight about GFs and Blue Magic and how they fit into the mythology with the Sorceresses...) If I missed anything anyone really wanted me to discuss, leave a comment and let me know.

Comments

[thebaconfat]

He wants to be the champion, the hero; he wants to be the one who defends what the rest of the world hates and wants to destroy.

Ahhh, this is really insightful and a way of looking at his Knighthood that I really hadn't considered.

The SeeD thing is interesting too, because with Squall and Seifer in particular it feels like they're going to become SeeDs because that's where they've been put. I'm not sure they've really considered alternatives at all.

Garden still exists to train the future SeeDs, who are going to throw their lives away at the gates of Ultimecia's castle in order to prepare the way for Squall and his friends.

This is a really cool way of putting this.

And it's interesting how unsympathetic Seifer is in most of the game, while at the same time the game pretty explicitly tells you that SeeDs are meant to obey orders without question and that Seifer can't do that. I know that to a certain extent it sets up Squall's conflict later between his duty to SeeD and his feelings for Rinoa, but it's always felt to me like Seifer's a better examination of that conflict, only he's the villain and we really don't get to see any kind of resolution for him.

That's actually a great guess for why she's having him torture Squall, since that bit has never made much sense to me. (If she was asking, 'How does SeeD get to the future to kill Ultimecia?' that would be a little more understandable.)

The fact that she's able to make him hesitate before throwing her to Adel, even for a moment, is very telling of what he feels and thinks about her, despite the fact that things didn't work out.

Totally. I feel pretty positive that for a second there, he might have put a stop to everything, if Squall hadn't shown up to oppose him.

I don't like the Ultimecia-brainwished-him theory either, for one because he clearly was a dick even before the TV station incident, and because if you write off the part of the game where he's working for the Sorceress, you have basically no characterization to go off for writing fic, so why bother? And like you said, it just makes sense for him to choose to go with her. She's giving him a chance at something bigger and better -- and even if Garden did give him the chance to be a hero, he's clearly not very well-iked or respected there.

Rinoa wants to be able to stand beside him and fight, but you can't protect someone who's going out and fighting beside you, because they're putting themselves in danger.

I totally never thought of it like that! Very cool.

Thanks for posting this, there's some great food for thought here, and Seifer's been on my mind 'cause I'm replaying the game. I'm really interested in hearing your thoughts on GFs and Blue Magic!

[thebaconfat]

And, I liked what you said about Seifer being in a religious fervor, doing what Ultimecia demands. I feel like there's a point somewhere towards the end of disc three where he shifts away from fanaticism and into desperation -- he has that line about the Knight having retired, and about not being able to turn back. That he mentions not being able to turn back suggests that he's thought about it, and I always read it as he can't now, not because the Sorceress would kill him, but because his pride won't let him. Turning back would mean admitting that maybe he made the wrong choice and all that stuff he did was maybe awful instead of awesome and heroic.

It's really a shame that the game doesn't give us more on Ultimecia's motivations, because I think they really had the chance present her as sympathetic. If in the future, Sorceresses really are hunted down by SeeD, and the knowledge that she's destined to be destroyed by SeeD is what's driven her to desperately try to change the past and defeat Garden before they can do that, they really could have presented her as kind of a victim. Which would fit the game's little bit about how there's no good or evil, just opposing sides of a conflict, and would appeal a lot to Seifer's romantic and heroic dreams.

[lassarina]

Yesssssss I was just having this conversation with my paladin. Seifer needs to be the hero. He's an ass, it's true, but he chose his own path. And that path was the one he saw as heroic. He's, objectively, wrong, but i will totally misappropriate a tag line from a book I loved: if all that's good thinks you're evil, are you? I think that must have been part of his thought process.