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About us
I created this page to clear up some of the most common questions that people ask about us and this website. I hate biog pages (like anyone's really interested in my favourite flavour of ice-cream anyway), so you won't find any "vital statistics" here. This is basically just a rundown of who we are, what we do, and our thoughts about FFVII and the gaming scene in general.
Q: What is the Final Fantasy Club?
A: Yeah, I know it sounds like a real club. But the FFC is really no more than an AVALANCHE-like group of ever-so-slightly demented (Speak for yourself! - Teioh.), Final Fantasy VII-worshipping Internet fanatics, who thought it'd be good to get together and do something FFVII-related, rather than spending all our time locked in our bedrooms with the curtains closed like the anti-social losers we are. It's not a club you can join or anything (ask yourself, would you really want to?)
Q: And you are...?
A: The Final Fantasy Club has recently "streamlined" itself, which is a nice way of saying that AllSeeingI and JenovaRebirth are no longer with us. (They're not dead or anything, don't worry, they just didn't want to do the website any more.) In fact it's been quite a while since they left, I just haven't bothered to update this page to reflect the fact. The artiste formerly known as SquAre_frreek is now Riesz Fenrir, webmaster over at the Seiken Densetsu 3 Page, and Teioh is still around in all his cynical, acid-tongued glory, probably because no one else will have him. So it's just the three of us, then.
Q: Why Cloud Strife?
A: I chose Cloud because I think I most resemble him in real life. (No, I don't have a shock of spiky blond hair!) I've always been a bit of a loner, someone who never really fitted in with the crowd, and I do have terrible mood swings (as Riesz and Teioh will testify to.) I've always been drawn to fantasy games like FFVII - and, indeed, the web - because they're a form of escapism, a way of leaving reality behind and immersing yourself in an alternate world. (Geez, someone get this guy on Prozac - Teioh.)
Q: Who owns the website?
A: I do. It was my idea to do the website, and I do nearly all the writing. Riesz had a hand in the design (which is why it looks like some five-year-old knocked it up on a Spectrum ZX - j/k, Riesz), and Teioh mostly contributes by criticizing everything I do, eating my Monster Munch and providing Riesz and myself with a colourful vocabulary of choice expletives for future use. But generally, I'm the one getting my hands dirty with the HTML side of things.
Q: Are you and Riesz... you know...
A: If anyone does e-mail me asking this, then they'll get a scathing reply, as it's none of anyone's business. But I felt I'd better quash this little misconception before it starts, as I know a lot of people IRL think there's something going on between us, just because we're always hanging around together. The simple answer is this: Riesz and myself have been friends for at least seven years, and that's all it is. We both like the same things, we're both social outcasts with few offline friends, and we just get on well together. I'm irredeemably in love with Tifa (yes, I know no one believes that this is real love, but it is), and as for Riesz, she'd rather I didn't say who she has a crush on, but it's not me. Alright? Sheesh, you guys are so hentai-minded it's unbelievable...
Q: Admit it, Riesz is really a gay pervert posing as an innocent Seiken 3-loving female.
A: I'm answering this because recently my bestest pal has been getting some stick on a forum she visits - a group of chauvanistic, small-minded, insolent primates have been accusing her of being male, or gay, or both, for some as yet unfathomable reason. So if you're one of them, then take it from someone who knows: Riesz is one hundred and twenty (Years old? - Teioh.) per cent female, and I bear the scars of her once-monthly fist frenzies (which I've cannily dubbed "female turbulence" ^_^) to prove it. She may prefer Pokémon clobber to fluffy pink dresses and high-heels, and she may be a demon at Warhammer, but one thing she doesn't do is claim to be someone she's not.
Q: How long have you been into games?
A: Speaking personally, about 152 years... no, seriously. For me it started with the NES, my first love (that was before Tifa!) Then I upgraded to a SNES, which I still play today. Teioh (or Koopa Paratroopa, as he liked to call himself then...) got interested when he saw Mario Kart for the first time. I dabbled in import gaming a little, but when the SNES started to fade from the gaming scene, I refused to "defect" as I saw it, to Sony or Sega. I've never owned a PlayStation - I'm not anti-Sony, but I like to think of myself as a "hardcore" gamer, and I just wasn't interested in playing the "light user" stuff that seemed to form the basis of the machine's catalogue. Of course, that was until I saw FFVII, and fell in love all over again... I now own a PC, but it's not really a games machine. In fact I think the only game I've got for it is FFVII! We still love all the old classics like Mario World and Secret of Mana.
Q: Now that FFVIII is released, are you going to cover it?
A: What, with a plastic bag so we don't have to look at it? No, we will NOT be covering FFVIII on this site. For me at least, it goes against everything that Final Fantasy has ever stood for. FF is more than just a series of games, it's a legend, a cult, a religion even, and if that's the case then FFVIII is tantamount to sacrilege. It's not Final Fantasy, it's just an RPG being sold off the back of the name. Everything has been Westernized, all the Japanese charm that made the series what it was has gone. It saddens me, to be honest.
Q: But surely FFVII can't go on forever...
A: Who says?! People still worship games that were released decades ago. I'm sure if you look hard enough you'll find sites devoted to the very first Final Fantasy out there. Just because FFVIII has come along, threatening to shake the gaming world with the force of Meteor and all, that doesn't mean we should forget about FFVII! "The best game ever" - that's what many magazines called it. You don't just forget about something like that so easily. I'm not about to jump on FFVIII's hype bandwagon and I don't think the rest of the FFC are either. We have more loyalty than that.
Q: So you don't intend to quit this site any time soon?
A: Um... well, we sorta have already. But please don't think that just because we're not keeping up the site anymore, that we don't still worship and support FFVII. It isn't a case of us losing interest in the game, it's a case of there being nothing left to do with the site, and me not having enough time to work on it. And don't you even let it enter your head that we're going off to do a FFVIII site, because we are most certainly not. We believe that the future of games doesn't lie in how fast a console's processor is or how may millions of CGI-rendered polygons per second it can push, but in the creation of something that combines gameplay, storyline and atmosphere so well it absorbs you into its world, evokes tears of joy and sorrow in equal measure, and most of all, makes you believe. I thank you.
