Yoshinori Kitase shuts down "Squall is Dead", other fan theories

Just for the sake of relevance, I'll make one example: Squall is Dead. Let's take what Kitase, according to the article, said into account and then compare it to the in-game proof.

Firstly, Kitase agrues that Squall couldn't be dead and in order for that to work, he was stabbed around the shoulder area. It HAS to be the shoulder area, so he's alive. Anything else is irrelevant.

Now, in game, Edea (controlled by Ultimecia) casts a shard, consisting of five icicles: one primary large and blue icicle with its secondary smaller but green ones.

https://i.imgur.com/5JPfdXw.png

At least 2 of them (the green ones) went through Squall; the first one went through the center of his chest, second one went through his upper chest. Unknown about the other green ones, but the primary icicle strikes him in the upper-right area of his chest and then it's stuck inside him.

https://i.imgur.com/7w1oXBL.gif

On close up of the blue icicle (take note that a part of his sleeve is covering it):

https://i.imgur.com/G3A0eu5.png

Clearly not shoulder or around its area. His fall damage has to be considered as well. It doesn't matter if this whole scene was poorly rendered or not, but proof is proof and it's contradicting with the claim/assumption made by Kitase in the article.

Either he forgot what he had created or he's just discarding the themes of FF8 (how the story is played out, time travel and the whole fate / destiny thing.) because they're likely to have a role in this Squall being impaled scene as well.

But either way, you can easily interpret this Squall scene however you want, or just suspend belief. This Squall scenario also creates another ambiguity; what happened after this and before the prison scene? Squall questioning his wound and looking perfect in health. Things like this are ambiguous. A work of beautiful fiction and that's how it's supposed to be.

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Originally Posted by Fynn

Death of the Author is not about canonicity

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Tell that to the fans that do use it do artificially declare canonicity. And yes, the constant misusage of it is indeed fan-made. As a matter of fact you can hardly argue that "Death of the Author" is fan-made just because fans are humans and who actually finds a liking in some facette or another of a piece of work at one point is considered a fan or at least one that invests interest - but that's semantics right here.

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Originally Posted by Fynn

But every story has elements of ambiguity, and what the author thinks about those points of ambiguity is completely irrelevant, since everyone's interpretation is as valid as theirs at this point. When the work is out there, the author's perspective is but one of many. Even if he claims he has the right (like the creator of the .gif extension regarding its pronounciation), he has no right, really, to change people's perspective on it.

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As said, communication psychology outright disproves you and chewing on the Death of the Author will not actually do you a favour with this one so you really did not do yourself a favor with your reply. As a matter of fact you can hardly seperate canonicity and what you claim to actual understand of the original Death of the Author concept exactly because the very essence of canonicity makes every other interpretation an absolute waste of time. There are people who know that "fanon" and "head-canon" holds no weight in actual canonicity, that is true. But there are tons of people who overall think that they as part of a fan community have the power to decide over canonicity (e.g. the Detective Conan fans very often) and when it comes to DotA (lol, not Defense of blabla) most people also just use it as another excuse for canonicity debates, so no, not everyone uses it with the original meaning, which is exactly what I dislike. It is true, nobody can force you to think what the author says - to now get back to the original meaning. But it will still be the message - to get back to communication psychology; and yes, fiction IS communication as well because communication is the exchange of information. Just as you can misunderstand me as much as you want but you will never be able to decide what I mean over me. That you really seem to think I am discussing with just this forum and have never heard the stuff you guys say is beyond me. Its just that the aspects are either wrong, misused or other things. No one here is denying that people can "understand otherwise". That is not the point though and I do not appreciate how you are once more making use of my obvious instinct of answering to such things. I was hoping this would be over.

The true problem is that people cannot actually seperate "like/dislike" from "counting". People really have the nerves to think that when they do not like something it has the same power as the original writer just retconning stuff instead of accepting "okay, I did dislike that but its a thing nonetheless and it is not in my realm of power to actually make it void for that story". I hate tons of things. But I would never be so insane to actually act like that has any effect on these things.

EDITed the last part because your reply was nothing bad. But to show good will I will not continue this any further because that is what I wanted anyway.

Why are you constantly referring to communication psychology when I'm referring to Death of the Author from the perspective ofliterary studies? And why is my opinion on this stuff such a personal thing to you?

Okay I think we're getting off track here. Let's stop the back and forth and bring it back on topic. Thank you kindly.

Part of me wanted Squall to die as I never took to him as a character.

Oh well.

I always found the theory fascinating even if it was never true. It raises a few good questions about that weird FMV on the closing section.

If the article is unreliable, then why believe it? Why do you let a writer dictate what's true and what's not, when he's not under the best circumstances? Now, come tomorrow or so and if he drank or did drugs and make a new interview saying the same things but repeating in such a contradicting way, again, I'm assuming you will still believe what he says regardless? After all, he's a god, the entity with no imperfections. Every now and then, he can freely change his mental state and redecorates his whole creation anytime he wants.

Smh.

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Originally Posted by Lone Wolf Leonhart

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except this is fiction

as in, its not real, whatever anyone's opinion on it is

If you're coming from the "Death of the Author" position that a work stands on its own and once it's out there in the ether it's up to you to decide how you interpret it, I have no problem with that. It's how a lot of people identify with song lyrics.

I actually wasn't addressing that. In fairness to you, my post was ambiguous.

Oh, sure, I can see that, I wasn't addressing your post in a defensive manner at all, if that's what you got from that ;)

I just find the whole message of that image interesting and meriting discussion: sure, there are true things about the world that can't really be argued because they're real no matter what you think, and yet people will aggressively defend their (wrong) stance on the thing, to the point that their opinion will be the accepted one, despite the truth being the opposite. It takes a whole other meaning when you apply it to a work of fiction - to what degree can we say that what we take as a given in a specific narrative is an objective truth? Sure, the things we see on the screen are true, but is the way we understand them the same? Like, some people may believe Squall died in that particular FMV, but we really have no measurable way of knowing that that's really not the case. Sure, the rest of the game seems to disprove it, but the rest of the theory kind of has an explanation for that too. The creator may believe otherwise, but again, his idea isn't necessarily overriding anyone else's - until we get a canon continuation outright and fundamentally disproving the theory. I know we have stuff like Dissidia, KH, and WoFF that have Squall in them alive, but those can't really count since they're not really canon to FFVIII's story.

That said, I personally don't believe any of the theories Kitase disproved anyway (though I'm still kinda partial to R=U if only because it being real would add a lot of depth to the game). It's just interesting to consider all these options as there are people who believe them and defend them vehemently, to the point of making it look like a conspiracy theory, but since all of this is a work of fiction and is not inherently real (or true), pointing out who has the right of it really depends on your point of view.

So yeah, that was just my two cents on that. Sorry if I took your post the wrong way!

I think Spoony said it best as to why the Squall is Dead theory honestly makes the story worse. Since if the theory is canon only the events first disc actually happened, then story ends with Squall dying without having accomplished anything. Maybe if the whole point of the story was finding out whether it's reality or not (like in Total Recall) it would make sense, but here it just comes off as another tacky, half-assed, ultimately meaningless idea thrown on the pile with no real depth or weight to it.

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Originally Posted by Example

I think Spoony said it best as to why the Squall is Dead theory honestly makes the story worse. Maybe if the whole point of the story was finding out whether it's reality or not (like in Total Recall) it would make sense, but here it just comes off as another tacky, half-assed, ultimately meaningless idea thrown on the pile with no real depth or weight to it.

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Wow I actually agree with Spoony when it comes to something FF8 related. :/

If the Squall Is Dead Theory is canon, it would make the whole game tacky and it would have no meaning.

i think Spoony secretly loves FF VIII, all the memorabilia scattered around his room and it takes time to make those quality FF VIII costumes... and i agree the Squall is dead theory does only cheapen it...

I agree that Squall is not dead - I have never viewed him as dead, at least not from the Ice Strike (I did consider the possibility that (SPOILER)he died during the ending, and was revived but apparently he was more "near-death" than anything), but I also agree that Kitase proved the theory wrong in a poor way by saying that the Ice Strike hit Squall in the shoulder area. I too, do not think it looks like the shoulder area, and the wound does not need to be in the shoulder area for Squall to survive, especially if you go by the possibility that he was cured by Edea so he would be alive for questioning. Maybe, the script originally called for Squall to be hit in the shoulder area, and the scene didn't reflected that, and Kitase forgot that the scene didn't match up to what was planned, or maybe he's just remembering it wrong? Either way, I believe him when he says Squall survived, he just could have proved his point in a better way.

Serapy, you and other people who want Squall to be dead or Rinoa to be Ulitimecia, or anything else are allowed to follow fanon ideas of that, but the canon explanation is that they are not. The beauty of fanon is that it is whatever you want it to be, and canon and fanon do not affect each other - it's just only the former is true when dealing with the real story.