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ddd_news2010-08-03 08:27 pm
tripled_mods) wrote in ddd_news2010-08-03 08:27 pmAPPLICATIONS -- 2010; 001
THIS APPLICATIONS POST IS CLOSED. Please direct your attention to the new one here!
tripled_mods) wrote in ddd_news2010-08-03 08:27 pm
Kefka Palazzo, 5/???
Regarding the subject of Kefka being mentally ill—I’ll be playing him as having mental issues from the magitek infusion, which is canonically stated to have warped him, rather than as having an rl mental illness. This is partially because the game says outright that the magic did it and partially because people with mental illnesses, in general, don’t act like Kefka.
Kefka’s mind being warped by magic was caused by the magitek infusion and pushed Kefka into increasing violence and instability. This is mentioned by one NPC in the party’s first visit to Vector: “That guy Kefka? He was Cid's first experimental Magitek Knight. But the process wasn't perfected yet. Something in Kefka's mind snapped that day...!” (SNES quote, alas)
In the game, it is implied that magic makes whoever and whatever it touches more aggressive—random encounters are magical and attack, Terra’s magical form is summoned by her rage when she fights Humbaba, the espers destroy Vector in an uncontrollable rage—magic and anger are connected.
Magic also seems to pop up stronger with strong negative emotions. Phoenix activates when Locke feels deep sorrow for not being able to bring his girlfriend back to life; Terra’s other magical freak out happened when she was confused and upset about finding out her esper side; Wrexsoul the magical ghost boss monster wants to eat Cyan’s soul because it’s full of sorrow and rage, as do the Three Dream Stooges. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it seems to be fairly common, so I think it’s fair to extrapolate that magic is attracted to and is strengthened by negative emotions and thus would cause them more.
These effects of magic, then, would push Kefka’s personality changing to be more aggressive and a lot more prone to anger and other negative feelings and feeling them strongly. It’s also given him an obsession with gaining more magic. I’d say that part of this is biological and part of this is …well, magical.
(It doesn’t help that his job is, pretty much, “kill as many as enemies as possible without getting killed.” Give how Nazi-esque the Empire is, I’d imagine the taboo on horrible mass murder is much less. Although he’s well aware that killing is a Bad Thing in general, he does it because not only does it make him happy, but it’s culturally acceptable and he’s getting employed for it! If there was more of a taboo, he’d be more likely to go around killing wildlife and, say, running a clothing shop, but since there isn’t in the Empire and people telling him ‘killing is bad’ isn’t going to change that his job is to horribly murder people, he’ll stay a horrible murderous thing.)
(And as a god, his job is to do whatever he wants, which is why he doesn’t seem to be doing anything. He is doing things! Just not where team good can see.)
Kefka also has some issues with depression and has had them before the magic changed him, but these are unrelated to the magic’s changes. For him, life feels like it has very little meaning except for magic and destruction and so he pushes himself into those whenever possible. When not utterly focused on destruction or caught up in an emotional fit, he feels like he’s in a grey blah. He is not suicidal or self-harming, although he may discuss issues concerning that given his fixation on destruction and death, and so I’ll ask the mods and put up a warning beforehand if those seem likely to come up.
Kefka’s understanding of this is—well, I imagine that his world’s understanding of mental illness is somewhere in the mid-19th century, but he thinks about himself using terminology from the War of the Magi; he identifies as having ‘melencholia,’ which in the context of his world would be ‘an affliction of brilliant magi, a hazard of creativity and thinking,’ from texts dating back to the Wars of the Magi. He is aware that the magic has changed his brain chemistry and his personality, but believes it is an acceptable exchange for gaining magic. He’s not aware of how drastically his personality has changed.
Kefka Palazzo, 6/???
Also also, Kefka tends to have minions running around with him. They would be NPC soldiers, not canon characters, and interacting with him, not the journal. I’d like to ask permission for that. If there could be instances of NPCs interacting with the comm, I’ll ask permission for that before I do anything.
Additional Links:
Final Fantasy Wiki article on Kefka (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Kefka)
Wikipedia article on Kefka (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefka)
TV Tropes Article on FFVI (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FinalFantasyVI)
GBA game script (http://www.gamefaqs.com/gba/930370-final-fantasy-vi-advance/faqs/47016)
First Person (entry type):
[The entry first appears in precise, pen-and-ink handwriting and the words are jumbled into numbers and letters.]
[Then the letters shift, change, and soon a more coherent message appears:]
It looks like I’m not court-martialing those two idiots after all.
Bad enough that they lost the luggage. It’s a good thing I put all the important supplies in the armors before we got to the desert! Bad enough that the desert has these horrible bug things lurking in it, eating luggage and all my nice things and this is supposed to look like a diplomatic event.
I forgot how much I hate the desert. This place is even worse than Albrook’s desert, full of flying walnuts and dragon skulls snickity-snacking at heels and, every now and then, the dreaded sandworm popping up with a suction-soft mouth that yanks towards curved mandibles so that it can snap you up as a snack!
How did those two idiots manage to lose my luggage and my important journal?! It’s a good thing they got me this replacement or they’d be regretting it. Maybe they could feed the bugs and I could keep on going without bugs or idiots bugging me!
I hate my life. I hate this job. I hate everything. At least I got a quality replacement journal.
[and then a tenor voice pipes in, sharp and squeaky in surprise] …did the book just decode my cipher? It took years to learn how to write that!
Kefka Palazzo, 7/???
Kefka weighs the book in his hand, turning it over every now and then. It’s as light as a book of it’s size should be, well-bound, the leather…
Well, he thinks he should have noticed the faint buzz of magic on the book’s leather sooner. It’s very faint, smells like ozone when he brings it to his face, makes his fingers tingle. When he’d first found the book in his tent, he’d been too pleased that his old journal had been replaced to really focus on his surroundings, nor to notice that the book translated his coded shorthand to a normal longhand.
Stupid stupid stupid—
But right now, he needs to focus on the book. A monster book, most likely, a book that wrote back and talked back and occasionally flashed images on it’s pages and spoke of worlds beyond his own, and demons who lived in books were known liars who lied and ate whoever was stupid enough to try and keep their book around. It was the only logical explanation.
But. But but but. Monsters who live in books came for the art; they lust after beauty, just like the monsters in paintings or the monsters in music records. And this book is blank. Was blank. Is mostly blank save for his handwriting and the monster handwriting and the arcane symbols decorating in decadent silver.
In the pursuit of magic, Kefka has seen plenty of impossible things. He’s done them. He is the first magi in a thousand years, after whom all others in the Empire are modeled; he has found magical artifacts called impossible by historians and the Empire has made more and even wears some now, a ring that keeps the endless apathy and the boundless rage from eating him and a cloak that turns his movements swifter; he will find the gods, knows where they are and how to summon them, knows the secrets of their lands, knows he is one of them and will join them once he finds them and they shall become the Warring Triad Plus Kefka and he will not be that crazy clownface or that expendable general or stupid sucking scapegoat—
And he can risk believing in another impossible thing. If nothing else, if the book really is a lying monster demon in a book, he can give it to Dr. del Norte and they can figure out how it’s done and start a demon monster book science program and kill enemies of the empire with literature. Glorious beautiful perfect!
“So,” Kefka says, humming as he opens the book, speaking directly to it, “you claim that this Drama Drama Duck is real? And that all the worlds with it exist?”
He laughs, a jittery smug thing, like a smirking spider on roller skates.
“Prove it!”
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