[Essay] Why Final Fantasy VI's storyline is innovative even by today's standards (CONTAINS FFVI SPOILERS)

Kefka was magical, because he begs for a degree of sympathy, despite being a massive sack of assholes. It's made obvious that he's essentially a PTSD sufferer that can't come to terms with the fact that he's permanently damaged and that other people can find good in situations that he cannot.

He doesn't destroy the world despite saying he wants to - he just damages everything enough to make it miserable, looses demons and kills people that seem to be getting ahead. His moments of joy are when he thinks he has forced people to betray the trust of loved ones (Edgar selling out Figaro to the Empire, Edgar abandoning Figaro, Celes being unveiled as a spy, the Emperor using Leo as a nice face for shitty behavior, his own betrayal of Geshtal, etc.) and specifically torturous shows of power like the poisoning of Doma and torching only the adults of a town so that a demon could pick off the orphaned children. Anger amuses him and even being bested in combat only sort of bothers him ("Grr.. I'll be back!")... Until it's when Celes betrays him and stabs him on the floating continent. He was denied his joy of forced betrayal, but moreso, his absurd, strongest emotional response of the game comes from that moment. He HATES being betrayed himself. Makes it sort of seem like he's been doing the "victim lashes out the same way" gig the whole time. He's been rolling around with a guy that put him to horrible experiments that ruined his mind, while forcing people to turn on one another and absolutely trips the fuck out when somebody finally does it to him.

Anyways, ranty, but yeah. He just seems a lot like an abuse victim and even spends the final meeting in disbelief and anger that other people managed to find good things in a world that looks like his own mind. If he, now a god, can't, why can they?

/r/FFRecordKeeper Thread