Blaugust Day 15: Video Game Crushes

This seems to be a fun topic meme that’s going around the blogosphere.

Jasyla from Cannot Be Tamed first turned me on (whee, unintentional word pun) to it, and she has a few other linkbacks in her post from where she got the idea from too.

Mercury’s followed suit at Light Falls Gracefully, having neatly nabbed Quistis and Marjory – two ladies who’ve also caught my eye for being pretty gosh darned sexy in a “I’m still competent and a whole person without you, but *wink* I would be totally hot in bed, and it would be awesome if we had feelings for each other” kind of way.

I thought about Liara or Garrus from Mass Effect, and while they’re both attractive (and Wrex is a dear), somehow I know they’re fictional and they weren’t an instant “OMFG” attraction / infatuation, which would fall more neatly under the ‘crush’ umbrella.

So we’re going to go a little more back in time, when presumably my hormones were more riled up and the graphics were more primitive, leading to a convenient comics-like gap in between the shown scenes where imagination (and projection) could take over.

Erana – Quest For Glory series

I fell in love with her before we even met.

How could you not love a lady whose raison d’être was to leave little pockets of peace and beauty and calm in an otherwise hostile world?

Her theme song would play, and I would just sit for tens of minutes in Erana’s Peace to meditate and rest.

In Quest For Glory 2, we saw her portrait among the wizards, a paragon of magic, a lovely druidess, a Faerie princess! *dreamy sigh ❤ ❤ ❤ *

So it was a terrific surprise (and somewhat of a blow to me) when we met in the later Quest For Glory games to see that some artist had criminally decided to depict her like this:

OMFGBBQ. CONTINUITYRUINED. #NORESPECTFORTHEPAST.

Ridiculously long ears on elves – instant turn off. Not to mention, a waif-ish anorexic look that brings to mind “child” rather than “sexy” or “hot.”

I did still love her for the person and personality inside… so I mainly pretended that this close-up didn’t exist (the pixel version was ok) and just went with the text to end her story and the romance.

Jaheira – Baldur’s Gate series

I have terrible luck with my video game crushes.

In Baldur’s Gate 1, her portrait looked hot as hell, and she was unavailable and inexplicably attached to that wimp of a Khalid.

Some people found her voice grating and annoying, I found it refreshing to actually see and hear a video game female that wasn’t a wilting flower, waiting for a man to come along and “complete her” or hold her hand, who actually “wore the pants” in her relationship with Khalid, and oh that “I don’t care what people think, I say what I want to” sarcasm and laconic humor in a lower-pitched rougher not-intentionally-sultry voice than was usual in fantasy depiction of females.

In Baldur’s Gate 2, she had an unfortunate makeover courtesy of the “ridiculously long ears on elves” artists faction… and I dunno, what are those… dreadlocks?

I can’t remember if I instantly swapped her portrait with the old one, but if I didn’t, I should have.

Fortunately, the game was mostly text when it came to dialogues, and you could read text with any tone and inflection you care to give it. So I mainly closed my eyes to looks and thoroughly enjoyed my romance of the outwardly strong but inwardly still fragile-and-hurting-and-needing-comfort-and-wisdom Harper.

Carla (the Sword Master) – Secret of Monkey Island series

Yet another unobtainable lady of strong words and character.

Why, oh why, do the video game protagonists keep going after the girl that I’m a lot less interested in?

Well, ok, Elaine Marley’s pretty competent in her own way too, but it was Carla I fell for at first sight. Couldn’t begin to tell you why. I guess that’s how crushes work.

Yeah, she was a bit of a cad for joining the mutineers, but really, Guybrush is Guybrush, right, -anybody- would push him around after some time.

Aeris (Aerith Gainsborough) – Final Fantasy VII

Time for me to join the ranks of the normal with Aeris (or Aerith if you prefer.)

Her spunk, her cheerful personality, that slightly wistful look on her face, her place of beauty and peace in the church growing the flowers she sells…

You name it, she’s got it. It’s as if the designers *cough* went out of their way to make sure nearly everybody would fall in love with her.

Little secret you might not know about me: I never finished Final Fantasy 7.

Somewhere around the Gold Saucer and the disk change, I caught wind of Aeris’ unescapable fate, spent some time looking up blind alleys wondering if a future revival was going to be possible, and then decided I had invested way too much effort and time leveling her up to only get to use her ultimate Limit Break for a short while before it would all be taken away.

Yeah, yeah, I geddit, good for story, loss is a fact of life, poignant narrative, yadda yadda. I wasn’t having any of it. I like my escapist fairy tale endings, dammit.

Yeah, well, fuck it. Fuck Sephiroth. The only way to win is not to play.

(I tried to sneak a peek at future videos and cutscenes via a primitive form of ‘data-mining’ and decided the rest of the story was heading towards one of those anime endings that only seem to make sense to the Japanese anyway, so nah…)

In my world, Cloud and Aeris are still frozen in time and together. The End.

This post was brought to you by the letters B for Belghast and Blaugust, the symbol ❤ , and the number 15.