Part 59: How to Break a Dragon's Heart
's Heartyes i ordered that one all the way from the uk because L&B hasn't published it in america yet (though the one clearly superior thing about the L&B editions, barring hardcovers, is that they don't have those ads for the film, fantastic as it was, on inside of the back cover) and yes it is relevant to this chapter so there
dammit i'm a decade too old to enjoy this series as much as i do haha
I should do a dramatic reading of some part as a bonus update. Having had HCE as my first and at-home language and growing up having to speak an incredibly strict Standard American English and later going through a number of phases of both natural and practiced dialect-tempering has given me a very fun oratorical capacity, even if my reasons for practicing dialects were sometimes kind of depressing. But these days I'm an educated, grown-up linguist and I know my now-twisted HCE is nothing to be ashamed of and if I ever find the Department of Education asshole who mandated drilling it into all students that HCE was Inferior And Indicative Of Stupidity when I was growing up--! At least, I would've thought this way a few years ago, but no matter how much someone might or might not deserve to be burned at the stake, doing that is just a vicious cycle. The generation before mine perpetuated it, and they're trying to teach my generation to do it too, and I look at myself and see how close I came to getting swept up in that way of thinking.
The insular bitches have always been bad for the Hawaii community (well, they do the same to the world in general, to be honest, but let's consider it from a microcosmic perspective)--not just Hawaiians, but EVERYONE living here--and they've tried really, really hard to have a negative impact on this place. Crazy insular religious idiots screaming about how bad homosexuality is, people coming in from the most forgotten and terrible reaches of the world and expecting to be waited on hand and foot and who want everyone to be like them rather than try to blend, retarded end-of-days not-linguists who don't know the first thing about languages foaming at the mouth over people speaking HCE, and not two generations ago, you had the REAL bastards. I mean, the language people from my childhood made me absolutely ashamed of myself for speaking HCE, and I'd practice in secret some weird stupid amalgamation of what I thought English was "supposed" to be based on films and news and other "standard English" sources that permanently warped my dialect, but that's nothing. The truly horrible people were thankfully--but tragically in the sense that they existed in the first place--long before my time, but you know, you still get the stories about how the Hawaiian side of your family, your second and third cousins, your great-aunts and great-uncles, sometimes even your own grandparents, scrubbed themselves with steel wool to get the Hawaiian out because they were told they were bad just for being it.
Just luck what era you're born in, I guess.
ANYWAY
"No, Regent, how many times do I have to tell you that you DO NOT have The Sperg no matter how much your behavior matches the symptoms described on the steampunk Internet"
In a perfect world, it would be illegal for doctors to diagnose Autism-spectrum disorders until 25, but that'll never happen.
"It looks so retarded"
"I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW THAT I'M NOT RETARDED, I AM A HIGH-FUNCTIONING--"
"regent shut uuuuuuuuup"
"Oh ew, lady, I mean people who wanna bang animals are bad enough but this is a BUG"
"Well, you ARE an oglop right now, after all..."
so what they don't tell you is that regent cid was playing strip tetra master with his oglop deck, and when his wife caught him, she thought it would poetic to turn him into one
Apparently it's called Quad Mist in Japan, or maybe the EU release.
So the "champion" is actually the easiest of the bunch. Erin only uses super-weak Oglop cards, and the only reason you'll lose is because you got unlucky. Since they rely on arrow placement instead of high numbers, you could easily win with the cards you get from the ticketmaster at the very beginning of the game. Getting to this match, of course, is another story entirely.
The Rebirth Ring is a cool thing to use against Ozma, because one of your 9999-damage spells relies on having 1 HP, which Auto-Life brings you back at. That aside, the whole thing about him easily one-shotting you should also be a pretty good argument against why you would even bother with healers as opposed to pure damage-nuke characters in general, and why you should just rely on this one second chance.
Anyway it's your prize for winning the tournament. Whoop de-fuckin' doo.
"Yup. Still awesome
"
"It's so exciting that I'll just talk about state secrets out of the blue!"
"Yes, yes, I know it's a wonderful invention but woman you have to learn how to shut up"
"Alexandria? That place is all the way in fuckin' Africa, who the fuck cares"
•••
"I hereby call this meeting of the Emos of Alexandria to order."
kuja if only you would've stuck to writing shitty music lyrics for troubled and whiny and overprivileged teenagers, you would've led a very fulfilling life without needing to do all this troublemaking
(just imagine a mspaint-style image of huihui blowing a ganja-shaped smoke cloud, i'm too damn lazy to make one)
"holy shit i am on fire fuck damn put it out"
Some of you may prefer it with just the music.
not pictured: kawelo
just in case you ever wondered how wide brahne's ass is compared to a normal human size, here it is for you in crisply-rendered fmv
"Attacking when I haven't even had a chance to comb my hair, how rude"
"Now see, this is the part where I'd normally whisk you off to some foreboding mountain or other, but they haven't been paying me nearly enough lately"
"I mean look at me here. I'm so awesome. But in a year, I'll have put on like a thousand pounds, and then five years after that I don't even get a callback from the new management. They just take my name and put it on the most retarded airship you've ever seen and they don't even pay me royalties"
"I had such a fun career, and then they had to go and break my fragile dragon heart
"
NATURAL SELECTION
alternatively
meanwhile, the soldiers haven't gotten assembled yet
So now you basically have to have talked to all the Knights of Pluto in the beginning of the game and taken notes on what their specialties were, and then assign them tasks appropriately.
I did write it all down when I played FF9 again something like two and a half years ago. I just can't seem to find the notebook where I did, so I kinda had to go on memory.
You assign it in pairs, so if you can just remember that Weimar knows all the women in Alexandria, you can tell him and his buddy to help the citizens. Remember that Laudo is the storyteller, so he's good for contacting Lindblum.
Mullenkedheim won the cannonball race, so he's the one to go to for shooting shit.
That leaves Blutzen and Kohel, and they get the leftovers.
This is the easy way to get the Angel Earrings. I think you can synthesize them later, but they cost some obscenely rare materials.
They don't teach anything particularly special, but if you want to learn all your abilities...
"I SUGGEST EATING A BUCKET OF KFC"
"if you say so, mother"
"--oh no i'm having a heart attack now, what have you done, mother"
See, Beatrix was never a bad guy, she was just misguided. there are no bad pokemon, only bad trainers
jose needs to shave that fuckin' beard
I mean sure it's fun to play video game music mimic-verbatim on the guitar, I can do the Suikoden songs and The Legendary Theme pretty well but I mean it's dopey as hell and I'd never record myself doing it, let alone film myself doing it
"What? No, don't be silly, there aren't any monsters around here
--FUCK WHAT"
BWFFFFF
"I'm fine. What about you?"
"It's just a scratch."
"Oh I hope you don't mind but I took your Cross Helm too, no hard feelings right"
Are you kidding? I could do this all day!
Huihui, of course, gets an auto-Trance in this battle.
As if you weren't already one-shotting these things.
Oh yeah word to the wise: Mistodons count as being Undead, so you probably don't want to do anything like fight them with the Blood Sword equipped.
And then the scene just ends.