#argath

My second cover for Retronauts' "book club" series on Final Fantasy Tactics, wherein I return to talk about that rollercoaster of an opening act for *checks timestamps* three more hours. You can listen to it here!

Argath steps back from the screen, more towards the shadows of the strange place he is in. 

“Such is the nature of fate, Ramza! That commoner and his sister ought never have been here at all! Had they been mongering flowers on some street corner, she would yet live.“

“Few stop these days, and even fewer buy.”

“Seems to me as you’d earn a lot more selling that tinder-box o’ yours than them flowers!”

This whole sequence is pretty vicious in retrospect. What better sign of Algus/Argath’s class privilege?

Aerith is only saved here because of Cloud’s appearance, a supernatural, near-divine impossibility. Her fate, like no doubt so many in Sal Ghidos, was to suffer outrageous misfortune. And Algus/Argath considers this a viable alternative for Delita and Tietra, their appointed station, suggests it would be “safer” for them if they only minded their place.

Ivalice, like our own world, is not safe for the poor and oppressed. Those who suggest “nobility” in maintaining a status quo and fulfilling a class role always speak in terms of maintaining a superiority--and nearly always a fragile one, at that, for Algus/Argath’s hold on his station is very fragile indeed.

“Honest work would see them die old in bed, yet they choose instead this early grave. Why persist in such folly?”