Swing out sister - Now you're not here

Swing Out Sister - Now You're Not Here από pezhammer

Listen to my story. This may be our last chance.

Final Fantasy X, including its direct sequel, X-2, was the last diamond of the Sakauchi era Final Fantasy series. Back when I was a kid, and Squaresoft produced great games. I admit that me being 23 now, has a lot to do with how I evaluate  today's games. I am not as easily impressed as I was in 2003 when I first played FFX. Would the game have the same effect on me today? Probably not, but that's partly what makes it so sweet to reminisce. All the games have a special place in my heart, until X-2. After that, Hironobu Sakaguchi left the company due to reasons unexplained to the public.
I wish SquareSoft still made good games like that. Now their titles are too action oriented and too frothy story-wise. The music is not as memorable either .I remember waking up in the mornings to play FFX. Oh boy, that fight with Seymour on the snowy mountain of Gagazet. It was so hard to beat him that I remember, even his robotic voice, to this day . What a badass he was. Wakka, the dependable, albeit naive character of the group. Always hoping for the best, and keeping in line with the teachings of Yevon. His faith is tested in the game, and in the end, what he sees changes his whole perspective of it. Funny, easy-going, a brotherly figure for Tidus, and a serious and trust-worthy guardian at heart. Yuna, a quiet but powerful summoner. Respectfully going on a pilgrimage towards her doom, following her father's footsteps in a suicidal ceremony that will grant the people of Spira two or three years of Peace. Rikku, the cousin of Yuna, secretly an Al-Bhed , the comic relief of the group. Nicely making fun of  people to their faces, and being the carefree and full of energy thief-guardian of the lot. She acts as a little daughter to Lulu, the most mature of the group. Hardly the small-talk type, her remarks are always spot on, and her wisdom is always a great aid to the hot-tempered youth of the fellowship. I suppose she is like a mother to Yuna,when something goes wrong, Yuna always finds comfort in her arms. That leaves us Kimahri and Auron. Kimahri hardly ever talks, and thus he doesn't have many lines in the game. But his acts speak more that most people's words. He was with Yuna from years back. In a way, maybe his own tribe 's turbulations made him who he is. Kimahri's love and protection of Yuna sometimes makes him seem intimidating to others. But Yuna always found solace knowing that he was around. And she loved his little broken horn. It's what made him special.
Auron. When the game starts, the character Auron appears , non-chalantly re-defining the word cool ,to my 16 year old eyes . As I raised my jaw from the floor, the sequence begins when Tidus is brought back to reality from the dream of Sin by a whilrwind of anti-gravity. Somehow Tidus is transferred to another dimension through his "old man" 's intervention. But how did Jecht first materialize from the Fayth in the first place? How did he break free  from the dream of the Fayth ? He must have swam a long way from home , in "Dream Zanarkand" . The game cleverly leaves us hanging in questions such as this one.

Anyway, what I know now is that both things have happened. I grew older, and the games are really bad now. Final Fantasy is not the game that I loved to play. I still remember my wild excitement when I saw the little paragraph in a videogames magazine (yes I used to buy them, I was a hardcore gamer back then) that announced a sequel to FFX. I found solace in these games. Final Fantasy was a portal outside of this world for me, and every different installment of the Sakaguchi era games had a different charm to it . It's not a coincidence that Final Fantasy was successful and made its name in the 90's. The world was more open to dreamers back then, people were more open to sentimental and romantic ideas. But then again, I might just have grown old.
I don't want to hear any comments on how great Lighting's return must be in the new FFXIII. I don't want to listen to what casual fans have to say about the games. I am one of the niche market that grew up with it, that dreamed with it , and fell in love with its charm . I want  , however, to think that somewhere these kids (then) still look back to these utopias now, and reminisce them from time to time. I want to believe that these young dreamers are still the same today, somewhere in their heart, and the dream did not end just because they are now adults. Let's hope I am not the only one .

00:30am

There are so many people trying to fit in the society molds , it's bad for them , I think.

Why bother, when all of us are who we are, and we are going to be gone soon enough.

What I have now is the bursts of good memories that maybe never were, and thinking of

the past makes it seem more alluring. Memories are made , they do not just happen.

Just like re-writing a page of your diary, with every passing year . But there is something

inevitable, and sweet, no matter how far you go, or high you fly, you'll come back down

to earth. One of these days, you will be a post on an internet forum , 5 years ago, 10.

Fifty years from now , you will be what you felt that night when you reminisced,

but you won't be there to feel it. You, along with the rest of us, will be just another

pawn that came into this world only to leave it . Soon enough, this story will be told

again, from a different perspective, in another time. From another mind, and til we all

return to our rightful place, the solitary bliss of nothingness, it will be a recurring theme

of our daily lives. An elephant in the room that noone dares to notice. Willingly burdening oneself with duties of the Western mindset. Turn on the refrigerator

and change the channel once again then, you paid for it with your whole life. Smile, because the trip is so short, that it makes it seem sweeter at the end, than at the start.

Look back towards the past that comes running towards you, and flattens you with

the power of the present. 

Louise - Clan of Xymox

paradigm shift

You are you, by respecting  and loving yourself for who you are; you are at peace with yourself and consequently with the world. People can only look and produce sounds with their tongue, and even if a time comes when fists must be used; so be it. I am ready for everything. I stand for myself and what I believe. I will not live my life for anyone else but myself; All these years I lived for other people, catered to what they needed and was extra careful not to displease anyone. Well the time of trying to please everybody is over, not only because it is an impossibility; but because in doing so, you waste your own life. You are a fraction of a dot in 7 billion people. Your life is unknown, you are unknown  . Most of the people on earth will never know that you even existed. Nor will they care. You choose what you care about.  It's true. You choose wether you give a fuck or not, wether you invest your precious state of mind to either negative or positive energy. I came to the wise conclusion that in a party of two people, the one who gets upset is the one who loses. By becoming upset about something, it's like holding on to a piece of coal that's burning your hands. After holding on to anger for many years, I understood that it's not worth  it. I made the conscious choice to not only refrain from caring about what other people will say about me, but most importantly; What the boys in my head say. Demons, darkness, call them what you want. They are the voices that reside in your head, from the moment you are born, til the day that you die..and they feed on your investment of feelings to negativity. There comes a time that you know they are just that: Voices. By not even  acknowledging their voices, you annihilate them. Now, only a vestige of an old, broken self, they are just the boys that made you hate yourself. Everyone has them. Their existence is what you decide for them to be. Care, and give your life away. Abstain from caring, and say hello to a new life, a brilliant one.
At the end of the day, who has to live with the result of your decisions? You do. You are ultimately alone in this world.  You'd better learn to understand that hating yourself is like sailing through a raging sea, with nothing but a raft, and while maneuvering it, you start kicking and pull it apart. It makes no sense. Never self-doubt and never quit, and victory will be sweet, no matter what your dream is.

You are on a rock that's floating in space, endlessly traversing the cosmos . Your existence, is a blink of an eye. Our species , as all others, will come and go from this world; Only a footprint of time in the vast abyss of geological time. Live for yourself, not for others. There is no gimmick, no near-death experience to push  you up for a mere 6 months before you fall back to being your old nagging, complaining sack of bones and secrets. No, this is real, because it comes from within, and it is the most brilliant discovery, a paradigm shift that comes once in a lifetime. Only you can feel it the way you do. You just need to take a look inside your mind, and triumphant,  take the reins of your life again, and as the Floyd says: Shine on ,you crazy diamond!

To You (Kimi E Yuna)

For Spira, and the moments of happiness it brought us. It's real in my heart, and always will be.

one of these days again

D-Shade Truth