Oh yeah, I've known about their original names. The Gurus of Zeal also have a pun name where they all rhyme but don't seem to have any real significance. Magus' original name is sometimes translated to Jyaki which would mean imp and fit with the pun of his later name of demon king, but I like the name chosen in the English with Janus since that's the name of the Roman god of doors and gates which fits better with the time travel mechanics. CT is definitely one of those games where I feel the English localization made it better than the original product. It's a shame a lot of Toriyama's humor and naming conventions were lost due to it, but I honestly felt it made the final product a little more interesting. As someone who has studied a lot theology and religious studies, it made the game more involving for me. I remember reading a while back that Crono's mom had a name in the Japanese version, but I don't think I ever knew what it was exactly.
Since you are such a Chrono Trigger fan: Did you know that Ozzie, Slash and Flea were with a probability of 99% named by Toriyama-san? Their original names are puns of Vinegar, Mayonaise and Soy Sauce. I think you get it. Gohan, Chichi Vegeta, Freeza, Bulma, Trunks, Yamcha, Kuririn, Chiaotzu, Tenshinhan, Jiren, Toppo, Nappa, Turles, Bardock, Gine ... Toriyama-san loves funny names and puns. Also nice to read C(h)rono's mother is called Gina/Jina. I don't think I have ever seen the name before.
No, I haven't heard of the FF Peasant before. Oddly enough, I don't read FF theories too often. Brahne's lack of believable characterization always bugged me too. I can see Kuja doing something like using his power to enhance her negative traits or something, or perhaps Brahne was never really that good of a person either and the tragedy of losing everyone she loved made her easy psychological prey for Kuja. She's such a flat character, it's kind of hard to say, especially her being a good person is more of informed characteristic than one players really get to see.
Do you know the Final Fantasy Peasant? He is a nice guy but even though he uses official sources he moves too close to theory territory.
Another problem that I have with the plot is the fact that Brahne's turn is not actually explained on a responsibility level except for very slight hints about pushes that are not fully elaborated on and all. Many people think Kuja just made use of her grief, negative feelings et cetera and basically naturally influenced her and like Kuja said, giving her greed a push. Apparently many think there was no evidence of Kuja using any other methods for that "push". But the problem here is that her corruption happened already shortly after he met her and became so extreme which led her to even sacrifice her daughter is just such an extreme that I wonder how people think there is no evidence for it. She did not care for her daughter up until that greed left her. After Cleyra she even wanted her to be killed for being useless and also for having stolen the royal crystal. Even if you "become evil", it is just not believable that you have no problem killing your own people unless you have no morals and we knew Brahne was a good a caring person before so there were some. That is why it strikes me odd that people think Kuja pushed her by just providing her with what she needed instead of using some magic. And I do not mean mind-control but just something that fuels her emotions and making lher a moral void. Any other thing is truly unbelievable because if Kuja without powers and only with advice and spells was enough for her then she is not even close to being as good as Garnet thinks, and as said, we already saw in the end that this is not true. This is why it bothers me to have all information I could get but narrations still not telling enough. It only can make sense this way if she is so good but apparently so many do not even consider that.
Well at least IX isn't the worst about those kind of plot details, but its been an issue since the first game. FF has always had an issue of "I know it doesn't make sense logically, but its cool" with some of their writing. Not that other RPG series don;t venture there as well, I think FF just gets more flak because of the series overall popularity.
I do follow my Ultimanias alright, but it is still weird, especially considering that I only go for the non-fanwank way. I also have the game in Japanese (I have shown you an English screenshot but righ t now I am playig it in German, I have all three) but even in its original language it still always was kinda not satisfying enough for me and my neuroticism when it comes to such hickups. If not of course I would not write right now. I mean, I am glad FFIX is mostly consistent but these things appear then and slap you out of your fascination of such a well crafted story. Yeah, the f'ing t key. I remapped it to be there instead of the kyu key but that was a bad location.
Yeah I can imagine losing the functionality of a T key and trying to type in English would be a bit of a nightmare. Let's be honest here, I love FFIX and it will always be my fave PS1 FF but yeah, there is a lot of stuff that comes out of the last two discs that feels like the team was cutting corners to make a deadline unfortunately. The memory thing with Zidane feels out of place in Memoria, and I feel if we followed background info from the Ultimania we may be able to fan wank ourselves an explanation, but it still wouldn't really explain how certain plot elements come out of nowhere in the game with little explanation.
No, it is not the attack on Madain Sari but the moment before when Joan and Garnet flee (so yeah, it is the attack but earlier in that secret grotto under the house that Eiko is in all the time years after). If they actually brought in a scene where they could have justified Zidane to originally be a part of it would have been something more logical. But instead they went the "this is not my memory, why can I see it," route only to bring the trace back to the crystal explanation and a very nothing-at-all-saying explanation of how some people that understand memories see other memories. And all that together has no establishment, no foreshadowing. No explanation why Zidane out of all people can do it, no one doing it before, it does not even make sense because Zidane was never really established to be the ultimate memory understanding guy. You cannot do such a move after Zidane runs through the whole city "what is this, what is this, what is this, why can I see it?" I am all for spirituality and overly fantasy stuff in stories but this is too little and too late. Not even little. They only brought their explanation for the crystal together with that and that was it. Which is why I see it as so "nothing at all." They could have skipped the "understanding memory" part or could have included it as they did and neither would have been enough. Late explanation for the crystal and establishment for Zidane where there was none and no other foreshadowing for the world itself when it comes to that stuff like with other people or so makes a bad combination. My t key is broken and I had to remap it. God, is that annoying.
FFVIII with both the monsters being native from the moon and more specifically, Pupu though he's more of a gag than a real "oh my goodness, ALIENS!" type deal. FFV I feel would technically count but again, mainly on a technicality as opposed to a real attempt at doing the subject of aliens. As for IX's end area, I can agree Sakaguchi and Ito dropped the ball a bit in the plot department, but I probably don't mind as much cause it was starting to become traditional for me at this point. To me the crystal shenanigans was just a clumsy attempt to do a shout out for the Lifestream which wasn't too far fetched from dealing with the Black Mages and Iifa tree before. If this is the scene where they see Garland destroying Madain Sari, I always assumed Zidane see it along with Garnet because he was actually present at the time in the Invincible, but there is no direct evidence.
