Explanation on the R=U theory?

[Sir Bahamut]

Why? What purpose could this serve, and how could it better justify the attention that Griever recieves throughout the game than R=U?

It's really simple you know. If you wanted to summon something to pit against your enemy, what would you summon? Well, you'll probably agree that pitting your enemy against the one thing he considers invincible might be a good idea, because it gives you a strong psychological advantage, no? Well, Griever is what Squall considers to be the strongest creature ever, so it is perfectly logical that when she scans his mind, she decides to summon exactly Griever.

There's no arguing about this really. Just look at what she says in the japanese version:

Ultimecia: Your feelings, I shall summon the most powerful of things
[from them]! The more strongly you feel, that will be what shall torment
you. Fufu."

It says flat out that she intends to pit Squall against what he considers to be the strongest thing ever to "torment [Squall]". The game offers this excellent and highly logical explanation without any need for "R=U" assumptions.

Griever doesn't get THAT much attention really. He is supposed to symbolise the values Squall admire, and fighting Griever is thus a symbolically potent battle. But there's nothing more to Griever than that; he's hardly payed as much attention as you seem to imply.

My point was that there are elements of the game that can be thought into, and my example was one generally agreed upon as being worthwhile and conclusive.

Definitely. Ultimecia's background and motives are very worthwhile to look into, but the game itself (backed by the Ultimania) offers a perfectly good explanation if you look closely enough, and logical arguments can easily demonstrate that although R=U may be a neat idea, it simply doesn't hold up. It's that simple.

My point was simply that stories involving time-travel frequently involve such occurences, and that the apparent oddness of R=U is lessened by this fact.

No, I'm afraid it isn't, for two reasons.

1) Your implication here requires timetravelling to the future, which is something we never see outside of TC. In other words, there's nothing in the game suggesting that after TC is finished, Rinoa would have any way of travelling to the future in order to become Ultimecia.

2) It isn't implied that Rinoa will go to the future at any point.

The fact that timetravelling occurs in FF8 doesn't in any way make the theory plausible. One could argue that it makes it "possible", but then anything is "possible" if you think hard enough.

EDIT: By the way, there is not a single "plothole" in FF8 that R=U 'answers' which does not already have a much simpler and more reasonable answer offered by the game itself.