If you've been in the Final Fantasy VII fandom a long time, you may have heard this story. If not, settle down and I'll tell you the tale of one Ben Lansing, the alleged Squaresoft employee who duped FFVII fans all over the internet into believing that the company intentionally left incomplete the means to resurrect Aeris, the beloved last-of-the-Ancients who dies in a dramatic fashion partway through the game.

Quick disclaimer: A couple of the links are from the FFVII Citadel, which I currently host and have been on the staff of for several years. Though it wasn't directly involved (and neither was I), the Citadel maintains a decent archive of Lansing-related materials; the ones linked here were donated by Tony Destro, who was involved. My intention is not shameless promotion, but to share the history of this kerfluffle, and for that, I needed some of the Citadel's links, which I've done my best to keep to a minimum. Anyway, let's get started.

( A SQLA rep hits the discussion! )

So IGN posted an article titled, "Is Final Fantasy VII Overrated?", part of a new series in their retro section that takes a look at the sacred cows of gaming and determines if they're, well, overrated. Naturally, this article attracted literally hundreds of comments. They started out civil enough, with some early posters readying their popcorn buckets. They would not be disappointed.

( estuans interius ira vehementi SEPHIROTH!!! )

Meanwhile, staffers at PSX Extreme and Kezins pick up on the story, the latter including a similarly-themed video from G4 and this bit of insight:

"No one is saying Final Fantasy VII was the greatest RPG ever made, but we are saying it was one of the best. In the end, I do think people have the right to believe the game was over-hyped or overrated, but as I said before they have the right to be WRONG."

Also, the first game covered in IGN's series? The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Quite a bit of fanboy froth in the comments for that article, too.

When shezoo reposts hir Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children fanfic, "Flower Face", to ffvii_yaoi (locked, comm is open membership), the response is seemingly underwhelming - that is until eternalwings posts to fanficrants about the story.

The first few comments are pretty tame and agreeable, until some of the author's friends and the author hirself show up.

It's called AU, twit.

Apparently, the story title comes from Welsh mythology, something renos_rude AND screamersgirl explain in the comments using the exact same text (with a tiny error likely because the entire lump wouldn't fit in AIM).

And then the author appears, complete with capslock, insults and exclamation point abuse.

AND YOUR RUINING THE PRETEND!

Not to mention the entire thread devolving into something to do with coconut.

All's well that wanks well, right? Except that a quick check back to see when "Flower Face" was originally posted reveals that shezoo is sepherotica is ssgallery is annataria (that Annataria), because ze changes usernames as often as ze changes URLS. And while some of those journals have been deleted, Annataria's is still there, listing many of the 'random' defenders (including the one so taken by the story) on FFR as friends. ...whoops?

Dearest, beloved, Fandom Wank.

I know you were looking forward to great excitement today. Some of you said words to me that indicated you anticipated fiery 'judgement' upon those who remained fresh and dewey white, those you call n00bs.

Anyway, you got today instead.

Stop anticipating things, we'll just break your hearts.

Sincerely,

Sepia P. Magpie, Esq.



PS: Use this post to reflect on how you could be better people. Or just fuck around in the comments.

(Long time lurker, first time poster. This is possibly old, but I found it too entertaining to pass off. If I happened to re-post something, mods feel free to delete, crowd feel free to point and laugh at me.)

Apperantly Square-Enix isn't happy. Strange really, because I can't see any similarities between
their Final Fantasy : Advent Children clips and this music video. Of course, I can't really comment on the possible ganking just yet as I yet to find a reliable source that confirmed the lawsuit, as well as first-hand confirmation of the classic excuse of "but we can't find their number!"

But it still didn't stop the comments from leaving a smile on my face. Really.

To be fair, I was expecting bigger wank consider "art thief", "Advent Children" and "youtube" are inevitably connected in this beautiful situation. But hey, there are still some beautiful gems.

( cut to save your f-list )

Surprisingly, or maybe disappointingly, there're minimal FF fan acting ever-so-slightly-too-verbal. Or maybe I'm looking into the wrong places. Hey, the comments are still rolling. We'll see.

EDIT: It was on clairvoyantwank, thank you reeve.

EDIT 2: And FFVII fans didn't disappoint. They have managed to blow their side of the story into wankolicious wank too. Lovely.

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Final Fantasy VII's release I bring you...

Cid and Vincent wank!

fanficrants brings the goods again with what looks like a totally innocent posting by konitsu about the 'yaoi height convention' -- namely, that the seme is ALWAYS TALLER ZOMG. The problem with this where Cid and Vincent are concerned is that Cid tends to be written as seme while being four inches shorter than Mr. Angsty Red Man. Pretty simple request, just don't write Cid pinning Vincent to the wall and looming OVER him when in reality he'd be looking up Vincent's nose.

( And then... )

ETA: Edited to put in a link to the original post 'cause I suck.

ETA: Advent Children: Look, an ffrantsrants post. Thank you, soupspooks!

I know it's GameFAQs but it's hard to pass up with the fanboy fapping. I think there should be a FF XII wank befores it comes out this month.

ElricVanClaus posts a whine about how he doesn't like to be attacked for not liking FF XII:

I'm trying to understand the logic behind this. So please leave you frustration and harmful words at the door. Let's be civilized shall we?

Some people find FFXII to be a boring game. Mind you, hardly anyone has something bad to say about the fighting system, as it is a breath of fresh air and a lot of fun, not mentioning that the Gambit system absolutely rocks (in my humble opinion). No, in fact, people who think FFXII is disappointing mention the story. And if I'm to state my own opinion on the matter again, I have to agree.

FFXII's story is sporadic and hardly interesting. The number one defense here is that Squenix wants players to "work for it". Now, how does that make sense? I will spend $50 on this game, I don't want it to feel like work. I want to have fun, and what has been fun since the beginning with the FF series is that the story is usually pretty good. Yes it's cliche, but it's still very fun. So when I'm hearing a couple of lines here and there about two countries that want to bash each other over the head, and a girl who really wishes they wouldn't but really is as useful as a tree trunk, I'm asking questions.

Is it "political" as some may reply? If "political" is another term for "loose and coma inducing", then I suppose it is. It's not "complicated" or "intricate" though, unless "So that guy is evil and he wants to take over the world with a weapon so the only way to stop him is to do the same thing" sounds complicated to you.

Then comes the dungeon-ing. If FF fans wanted dungeons, they would play Baldur's Gates. Though this isn't Baldur's Gates, is it? So, I must ask, why do I see myself paining through my 20th 4 hour long tomb before I can reach the next line of dialogue that explains to me that "our princess is in an other castle"?

Finally, the number one defense for the FFXII bashing, and the number one attack for the FFXII backing, is FFVII.

Does FFVII suck? While you may not like it, millions upon millions of people could swear their life to it, therefore it must be doing something right. But that's really not the issue. Because here we're arguing about FFXII. Not FFVII.

Can't we argue about a game in itself, without having to try to compare it to something else? Can't people who don't like the game for certain reasons just say "I don't like the game for certain reasons", and people who disagree say "I disagree"?

Is that really too simple?

Would it mean less Karma posts?

jsmith2001: I guess people could do that, but then the average intelligence of GameFAQ would rise above that of a dead penguin - and we simply can't have that. Sorry.

It's not long before the bashing, "VII/XII is better!", "MY OPINION!", namecalling, "The reviews totally back me up!", "Can't we all just get along?" and "Tee hee, fanboys! lol!"

As Dark Zero sums up:

For Anubis sake, do you know how painful it was to read through all this pages?

Opinions are sacred for their supporters but blasphemy for his detractors, in the end nothing matter and the war will continue. There is no point in clash against others for something so superfluous as a game, just let people be, you don't need to start WWIII because you don't share the same point of view.

Thanks to a mousey on wank_report!

Over at LJ's Advent Children community, someone asks why do people like CidxVin together. So far the replies seem civil and neutral for a while.

...Then all hell broke loose!

Over on FFCosplay, Pixyteri posts her Tifa Lockheart costume.

Immediately, Taiki posts "why not just come out and stop being a bitch?"

There are also comments about the OPs weight. Yeah, because of *course* Tifa would be able to have boobs that size and still have a tiny waist...