<–0 The Fool II The High Priestess–>
This is my current Final Fantasy Friday post where I’ll be discussing which characters I think exemplify each card of the Major Arcana. If this is your first time here, please head over to my Final Fantasy Tarot page for explanation. Now onto the next card!
Spoilers for Final Fantasy IX.
I picked Garland from FFIX for The Magician since the card represents an archetype that bridges the gap between heaven and earth. That was literally Garland’s purpose: to be the guiding hand between the dying world of Terra and the flourishing one of Gaia. Even though Terra technically exists inside of Gaia (per the wiki), I still consider Garland’s place as the Magician valid since he is facilitating the convergence of two worlds.
I did consider Kuja for this card (since he is a powerful sorcerer, as well), but he was really just a pawn (a fact that was a major push for his tranced wrath), and The Magician is more of a master of destiny (which makes Zidane the pawn of a pawn. Gah, Final Fantasy and it’s many layers), and Garland’s destiny and literal creation was to see the people of Terra installed in the new world.
Now that I’m thinking about it…whatever did happen to the souls of the people of Terra? The heroes save the genomes, but they were (at the time) empty shells. I need another post to delve into the idea of “growing” a soul, as it seemed the genomes did (as opposed to the black mages of Black Mage Village who for some reason one day just became self aware). The implications of this are quite heartbreaking since Garland was defeated and their ages old plan never came to fruition. Were their souls left to die with their world, or did a piece of them manage to survive as the genomes did?
Garland was performing the task he’d been set by the people of Terra in order to facilitate their survival in the bodies of the genomes, and therefore had to be powerful and wise enough to complete this without any further input after their souls slept to wait. In this he possesses the integral traits of The Magician card as the optimal master of all he surveys.
Alternates: Vivi (IX), Kuja (IX), Seymour (X), Rydia (IV)
Nobody guessed the character this week, but I have to give credit to Mr. Panda and The Otaku Judge for picking the game the card archetype would come from!
Next week is II The High Priestess. Leave your guesses for whom you think I might pick in the comments! As with this week’s if you guess the game they come from, you’ll get credit, too.
<–0 The Fool II The High Priestess–>
The Shameful Narcissist Speaks 
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Hooray! Credit! I’m enjoying these interesting posts! I never thought much of the Garland from FFIX (I usually think FF1 first), but that’s a great choice. For high priestess, I’ll guess Yuna from FFX.
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I found out about the original “knock you all down” Garland long after I played FFIX. I had no idea how much of a gigantic reference IX was to all of the earlier ones until I watched/played all of them so it was sort of like seeing the source after you’ve been exposed to the meme 🙂
IX’s Garland was much creepier and sinister than the original one’s. IX’s kind of had a General Grievous vibe to him with the exoskeleton aaaaand I’ve just exposed my slight Star Wars nerdom hehe.
Yuna is a good guess! She is definite High Priestess material.
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Garland = Grevious, I like it. No worries about liking a good thing. I actually played the Final Fantasy I first, so I’m all too familiar with Garland. When I got to IX (my favorite FF), I enjoyed the numerous references, including Garland. I was very surprised by that actually!
As for high priestess, there are numerous good choices throughout the franchise, but I thought of Yuna first, and so she was my guess, haha.
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I didn’t get into Star Wars really until VII (the story of my life hehe), but I always loved Clone Wars. I felt the cartoon was better than the three prequel movies, and I love how Disney has revived the series. I’ve always been more of a fantasy girl, but I do like Star Trek and then FFVII made me like the fusion of sci-fi and fantasy, and funny enough I’d no interest in playing it due to the sci-fi aspects!
IX is one of those games that you think is going to be cute and adorable with the almost Wind Waker cartoonish aesthetic, but then you get one of the darkest and philosophical Final Fantasies that literally questions what it means to be alive and whether destiny/fate will always control you by the end. Zidane’s existential crisis was heartbreaking, and you realize how he, Vivi, the other black mages, and the genomes all connect, but then you realize how every single character had a purpose crisis. They were all fighting against where fate and circumstance had put them and trying to figure out their identity. And the most amazing thing? FFIX was supposed to be a short send off to the PlayStation era of Final Fantasy! It wasn’t even supposed to be a whole game. It’s my second favorite after VII, and I can see a lot of similarities between the two, but of course IX references all of them. I’m going to enjoy reviewing it when I get to there!
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This post has definitely piqued my interest! I have very little knowledge of Tarot, so I’m hoping to learn a lot as you go on! I’m familiar with some Final Fantasy games, but not enough of them to make a guess. I’ll leave it to Mr. Panda’s expertise!
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Yay! I’m so glad I decided to do it like this. I was going to do one big FF Tarot post, but thought maybe I could do it as a series, and that seems to be drumming up a lot of interest/conversation.
Mr. Panda is an excellent guesser so you can never go wrong with that option 😀
Thanks for the lovely comment!
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I didn’t actually read this because I haven’t played IX yet. I plan to someday… hopefully. The dude in the picture definitely looks like an evil magician though!
I’m going to guess Yuna from FFX for the High Priestess.
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I can at least say that Garland is someone who is control of many destinies, which is a very “Magician” like thing to be, but I’ll keep my mouth shut on the details. I know you have quite an extensive backlog to get through!
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Wahey, I was sorta close. Given the meaning of the card I can’t argue with your selection. For the next one I will pick Terra.
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It was a good guess! I very nearly picked Vivi, too, but then I started thinking about it a bit more alongside the card, and Garland just stood out. Tbh now that I’m thinking about it, he reminds me of Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance) from Game of Thrones definitely in appearance, and certainly in controlled arrogance. If I were casting voice actors, I’d totally go with him! Hm…maybe I should do a post about that soon…nearly everyone would be English though (like they were with my VII voice acting dream list). I’m…kind of an Anglophile hehe.
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