Final Fantasy VII: Full Circle
Legal notice and acknowledgments: All characters, locations, plot devices, themes, ideas, concepts, motifs, and emotional reactions to them belong to the corporate auteurs of Squaresoft, Enix, Square-Enix, and Enix-soft – all of which shall bid the smiting by their valiant lawyers of the round table of anyone who disagrees with this policy, which I certainly do not. The fanfic (internet slang for plagiarism) that I have written is a purely farcical divertissement of no ambition or artistic value whatsoever, and is to be ridiculed and ignored. Not only am I a plagiarist, but also the plagiarist of a plagiarist, as I have shown the unmitigated audacity to go so far as to adapt a scene from a certain doujinshi (Japanese for plagiarism) into this work (the website of the aforementioned plagartist responsible for this scene can be found here: http://www.ne.jp/asahi/junk/g/ff/ ). Thank you or reading this.
Author's Statement:
French New Wave filmmakers such as Godard and Truffaut believed that the best way to respond to a film is to make another film. As a Final Fantasy VII fan insulted by the sub-mediocre film-sequel that is Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, I was compelled to take this route. Although a humble fan like myself lacks the resources necessary to make a film, I can certainly write my own screenplay, which, coincidentally, is Advent Children's weakest point (although I find the film to be lacking obviously in all areas to some extent, especially in the music department).
And so I bring you Final Fantasy VII: Full Circle, the film I feel that Advent Children should have been but never was. This story functions like an "alternate universe" version of Advent Children, borrowing elements from the film and inviting comparisons, but never acknowledging Advent Children as part of the Final Fantasy VII timeline. The only canon I adhere to is that of the game itself.
So take heart, my fellow disillusioned fans; by using the power of your imagination to flesh out the non-existent film I've delineated in these pages, you will experience but one example of the viable alternative that exists in respect to Advent Children and mass-produced culture in general. This is an alternative that transcends economic, legal, and authorial restrictions on creativity, allowing it to exist as it truly is, governed only by the limits of the imagination. For what is Advent Children's story but another fanfic with a copyright attached to it? As long as we all have imaginations, we all have control over imaginary worlds. No single individual, not even the author, can rise above this egalitarian model, unless, of course, he can trick others into believing that his word is superior and somehow truer. There is, in fact, no objective truth in an imaginary world, which is why it is imaginary and not reality in the first place. Secondly, because the pleasure of an aesthetic experience comes from within, one's personal interpretation and memories of that experience will always trump authorial intention in the heart of the individual. I don't understand why so many people think authorial intention is important to Final Fantasy VII when it's not even an auteur work in the first place. Anyway, on that note, I leave you with the following quote:
"Audiences may resist the dominant meanings and messages, create their own readings and appropriations of mass-produced culture, and use their culture as resources to empower themselves and to invent their own meanings, identities and forms of life. Moreover, media culture itself provides resources which individuals can appropriate, or reject, in forming their own identities against dominant models."
-- Douglas Kellner, Media Culture, 1995