LogFAQs > #927220768

LeonhartFour posted...

Quistis wonders what will happen to Seifer, and Squall says he may already be dead. Rinoa says she feels sorry for him, which actually causes Squall to laugh because he knows Seifer would hate to hear someone say that about him. He actually understands Seifer pretty well...! Rinoa says she hopes he's still alive, and Squall inwardly tells her to think whatever she wants. Then we get our first real insight into Squall's personal philosophy that makes him who he is, when he thinks, "Reality isn't so kind. Everything doesn't work out the way you want it to. That's why..." and then he actually says the rest aloud to Rinoa, "As long as you don't get your hopes up, you can take anything...You feel less pain." That's what Squall's been telling himself since he was a little kid. As long as he stops hoping Ellone will eventually come back, it will hurt less when she ultimately doesn't. This isn't the way he wanted his life to be, but he has no control over it. He isn't the master of his fate. Rinoa maturely calls him a meany in all caps and a few exclamation marks, causing Squall to (rightfully) wonder what is up with her and then reluctantly (albeit likely insincerely) apologize.

popping in from my cold steel 4 playing/lurking to bring up something really cool about this bit in the original Japanese.

The exact wording Squall uses here is , genjitsu wa sorehodo yasashikunai nda. Why does this matter? Well, because the "MEANY" lines in Japanese is " " , "...yasashikunai. Yasashikunai!" Same word, except written without the kanji. Writing the word without kanji, especially right after it was written with kanji, makes her sounds really kiddy in Japanese. Which is bizarre, quite frankly--the line feels just as much out of left field in Japanese as it does in English. Which leads me to wonder: is she somehow echoing Squall's thoughts here, and just echoing the word rotely -- is that what the author is trying to signify?

Now if it ended here, maybe we could write this all off as me massively overthinking everything, but it doesn't. During Edea's unfortunately mistranslated speech at the end of disk 1, she says the exact same line: Genjitsu wa yasashikunai. Reality isn't kind. These aren't arc words, they don't show up all over the script -- this is it.

What does it all mean? Why do not one but two witches echo a line first contained within Squall's inner monologue? Is something going on here involving Ultimecia?

i have no fudging clue. it just keeps me up at night.
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Nonsense. "Testing" is for when you're still guessing--and now, I have no need to guess. -- Agatha, Girl Genius