Well, I’m not sure if he would like either, but I think he’d feel comfortable around both. I mean, he would not fear them or find them gross, besides, I can imagine Terra adores all kinds of animals, even the ones most people find repulsive or scary, and if Kefka has to be around Terra he may be used to her strange pets =P
Lol well, I thought it was funny if it was Kefka the one being saved. But in all seriousness, I don’t think Kefka fears anything, though I doubt he particularly likes spiders. He probably doesn’t like anything either xD
you know how kefka has those weird ears? They look like elf ears to me. Sometimes I think he is an elf.
Ah, you see, that’s one thing I really dislike about his Dissidia redesign. I’m just not fond of pointed ears xD Besides, wasn’t Kefka supposed to be a normal human being before his infusions? Amano never draws him with pointed ears, and since I don’t like them I always picture him with normal ears in my headcanon. Though at this point I learned to live with them! They certainly won’t put me off if the art is pretty ♥
How would it be if he was never human to begin with, though? That’s quite an interesting possibility!
Thank you for your question, and I hope you don’t mind my answering publicly.
I have a lot of things to say about my OTP, so this will be a bit long, but I feel the need to get my point across since this pairing is usually so misjudged by fandom.
I would not compare this pairing to Aeris/Seph, though. While I have nothing against people who ship this pairing (I think everyone is entitled to ship whatever they like), what sets them completely apart is that Sephiroth killed Aeris, Sephiroth didn’t give a fig about Aeris, while Kefka never actually harmed Terra. If you look at it, Terra is probably the only one Kefka never actively try to hurt or kill. At some point he stopped pursuing her, yes, he probably stopped caring about her altogether (he stops caring about everything, why not Terra?), but never really lifted a finger against her, nor expressed any desire to kill her. In the end, he just wants to destroy everything, but never singled her out as target, like he did Leo, Celes, the emperor, and the rest of the Returners, and just about every living creature in existence. If I were to compare a Kefka pairing to Aeris/Seph, that would rather be Kefka/Leo since Kefka did want Leo dead, and did kill him, but that’s as much as I’ll say in that regard, I’m not into criticising other people’s ships.
As to if there’s a canon reason to ship them together, there may be, but there’s surely no canon reason not to ship it. At the beginning of the game, we see Kefka putting a mind control device on Terra. As far as FF6 goes, that’s the only meaningful interaction we’re granted to see between them (barring the final battle). But even then, it’s a scene that’s charged with meaning, a meaning which was sadly lost in translation. I asked a friend of mine who speaks Japanese, Mooncalf, to provide me a faithful translation of this scene, and she not only gave me one, but three. She gave me permission to share them, so here they are:
While “girl with the power of magic” is technically correct, “maryoku ga motsu hito” is a pretty standard compound subject in Japanese fantasy genres. They technically have words that mean ‘sorcerer’ or ‘witch’, but they also like using this really long composite phrase instead to mean that same idea. So more often than not, I just translate this as ‘sorcerer/sorceress’. ‘magician’, etc.
REALLY literal (literal words, but not necessarily intended meaning) :
Kefka: “If it isn’t my little girl who wields magic power…hee hee hee…Once I put on this puppet circlet, you will move according to my will!
Moderate (fairly literal, but made to sound natural in English so that meaning is preserved):
Kefka: “If it isn’t my little sorceress… Hee hee hee… Once I put this Puppet Crown on [your head], your every move will be at my whim!
Conceptual (Least literal; focuses on creating a characterization, as Jp-En translation has a tendency to lose character, words are taken as concepts and not directly translated; overall characterization of the speaker is considered to fill in blanks):
Kefka: Ah! If it isn’t my favorite sorceress… hee hee hee! Once I put this Puppet Crown on your head, you’ll be my own little marionette! I, the great Lord Kefka! (“my own little doll” would also be possible)
In the case of this phrase, I think I actually prefer leaning on the most conceptual (I vary between styles 2 and 3 as a translator). The reason is because ‘[ore-sama no omou]-ga mamani ugoku da’ means ‘By my thoughts/will (you) shall move.’ This is a natural way of saying things in Japanese (though it sounds awkward in English) but was supposed to be a play on the crown’s name of “puppet”. Because: what does one do with a puppet? They make it move by manually manipulating it themselves. I added the “I the great Lord Kefka” at the end as a way to emulate the pompousness of his ‘oresama’ in the original phrase.
Now, this is important to me as a shipper for two things. First, you see that the literal name of the device (Ayatsuri no Wa in Japanese), is Puppet Circle/Crown. Terra is usually regarded as a slave, namely Kefka’s slave, but the original script has no mention of slavery, nor deems Terra as a slave. She usually recalls that she was controlled by the Empire, but not enslaved. She was controlled in a puppet-like fashion. Whenever her involvement in the Empire is mentioned, she’s considered a former soldier, a sorceress, but is never diminished as a slave or a weapon or a mere tool. That disregard for her humanity was solely born from inaccurate translations. I will not say that Terra was on an equal footing with Kefka, because he certainly enjoyed a more privileged position as the emperor’s right hand man and second-in-command, but it does put her in a “more” equal position, so to speak, especially the position to say no if Kefka ever tried to force himself on her. And let’s not forget that Terra can set things on fire and never seemed against using her magic in self-defence (she does this readily in several instances of the game, basically every time you face her against an enemy). The fact that they needed a mind control device to subdue her will speaks volumes of Terra’s will power, I think.
The other thing is that, according to Kefka’s official profile in the Complete Guidebook, his hobby is playing with dolls. And here in this scene, he expresses his desire of turning Terra into his own doll. One way or another, Kefka’s favourite activity is to spend time with her, even if that’s only to watch her setting things on fire, while he doesn’t appear willing to keep other people’s company. Who’s to say he didn’t enjoy her company before he put the crown on her? Did Kefka always see Terra as his doll, even before he was actively controlling her? Food for thought.
I asked my friend a few more specific questions about her translation that I’d also like to share here.
You used ‘my’ here, is there any sense of ‘possession’ implied in Kefka’s speech, as if he did have some sort of authority over Tina prior to this instance?
Technically no. The only possessive is when he says she will be subject to “my will”/”ore-sama no omou”.
So it’s safe to assume that prior to this point Kefka had no personal power over Terra, like I’ve seen in most fics in which Gestahl gives little Terra to Kefka as a free-to-use special gif. My more realistic assumption is that he was his CO, he could’ve been his military instructor, and they could’ve had a close relationship, but Kefka wasn’t all that much ‘above’ Terra’s position, even if it was because both were the emperor’s favourite tools.
And the ‘if it isn’t…’ is implying that he wasn’t really waiting to find her there, or he’s just mocking her
He actually uses a question particle at the end of the sentence as if he was genuinely surprised and asking, but I’m pretty sure it’s mean sarcastically and he knew full well that he already had her in his grasp. :P
As if saying: ‘look what I found here’ when knowing exactly what he was going to find?
Exactly.
And then you used ‘favourite’ in the last one, does this mean that Kefka knew Tina well before this, and was maybe expecting this chance to make her his marionette?
I thought about using another word like ‘ickle’ as well, but in this case, I was going beyond the test a bit. I was implying the relationship with the diction, though it also does make a natural-sounding phrase. It works for characterization, though, which is especially important if one is writing from these scenes.
Certainly the nature of their relationship prior to the puppet crown is never mentioned in-game, though a lot of people assume that their mutual magic meant they were CO and subordinate, or at least in the same general division. But it’s pretty open for interpretation. :3
That would be cool, in my opinion, if most fans shared that assumption. Though from what I’ve seen in fics, the ones that are not outrageously offensive with their interpretation, still put Terra in a position where she’s so much under Kefka’s authority, and so far from the emperor’s interest, that Kefka ends up as the sole responsible for the puppet crown. And I’ll be the first to admit that Kefka was beyond happy with the chance to control Terra like a marionette, but I think it’s a shared responsibility between Professor Cid (who most likely was the one who developed the device, given that Kefka was no genius engineer), the emperor and Kefka. I think as well that Kefka’s overjoyed reaction to the crown affair is more of an evidence that he wasn’t entitled to do whatever he wanted with Terra prior to this point, to me his words carry an emotional echo of “At last!” My translator friend agreed here too.
In any case, translations from Japanese are particularly subjective, and in the end the non-Japanese speaker is subjected to the translator’s individual interpretation and skills, so to me it’s great to have the chance to know the reasons behind these choices, because it’s really difficult to keep a balance between accuracy and meaning.
I’ve read that there’s an unused line in the ROM that implies that Terra tried to resist when Kefka put the Puppet Crown on her. Apparently, she was supposed to say: ‘No, stop!’ but it was removed for some reason, maybe a wrong coding or the devs just discarded it.
There’s another scene in the game to which I want to bring attention. When Kefka goes looking for Terra to Figaro, in Woolsey’s and the GBA versions, he refers to her as a ‘girl of no importance’. While I recognise this as a wobbly attempt to make it appear as if Kefka’s only pretending to mislead Edgar about Terra’s actual importance, some have used this line to imply that Kefka doesn’t care about Terra. Though, going all the way to another continent and a kingdom stranded in the middle of a huge desert, and setting the castle on fire, thus breaking an alliance with a puppet state in the process is, in my opinion, enough to give the lie to these assumptions, I want to stress that Kefka refers to Terra simply as a ‘girl from the Empire’, and when Edgar asks if she’s the famous witch he’s heard about, Kefka retorts that ‘she’s none of Edgar’s concern.’
It may seem that I’m beating around the bush, but I believe it’s pivotal to understand what was Terra’s role and position in the Empire if one wants to understand this pairing. Because, of course, if you see Terra as a slave who was kept locked in the labs and was mistreated all her life and used as a tool and weapon, then I’m not surprised why people can’t get this pairing from the get-go. That scenario doesn’t give much room for the development of a relationship, unless it’s for Kefka to abuse and rape mind-controlled Terra to his heart’s content. Yet this is all fanon misinterpretation.
Terra was indeed used as a guinea pig for Magitek research. However, there’s no evidence that she was kept in the labs all the time, not even that the experiments were horrible or painful. General Leo, during their conversation on their way to Thamasa, alludes to the experiments and to Terra having suffered, but as to the nature of her suffering, that’s open to interpretation. And if you think being used as a guinea pig diminishes Terra’s value or humanity in the eyes of the Empire, let me remind you that Kefka too was a guinea pig, yet he still rose to the highest position only below the emperor himself. These experiments did not reduce Kefka to the level of a tool or a weapon, as people consider they did Terra. But Terra was extremely important for the Empire and Kefka. Just consider that, when she goes MIA, the emperor sends his most trusted man to look for her. Breaks a useful if fickle alliance with a puppet state to bring her back. And declares world peace and temporarily gives back their freedom to all their conquered territories to persuade Terra that the Empire has changed their ways and get her to cooperate. Ultimately, the emperor viewed everyone as tools, and Terra is not exempted, but neither are Kefka or his generals. In regard to Terra’s upbringing, I think the fact that, when Kefka puts the crown on her head, they were on the Imperial Palace and not the Magitek Facility, is a good piece of evidence to support that she was raised in the Palace like a soldier and not locked in the labs.
And like I said in an older post of mine:
Kefka did not physically abuse Terra. Kefka did not rape Terra. Kefka did not torture Terra.
Kefka put a mind-control device on Terra, had her burn fifty of their imperial comrades alive and saw her off to Narshe. And that’s all the evil he ever did to her. Anything else you want to BELIEVE that happened between them it’s in your imagination.
I hope that’s enough about the original game as to why I consider a relationship between them plausible prior to the mind control. Now let’s jump to Dissidia, because while some may not consider it canon, FF6 co-director Kitase himself gave his thumbs-up to Dissidia Kefka. And Kitase’s nearly sole responsible for Kefka’s character and personality as we came to know him.
Now, Dissidia goes a bit over the top with Kefka’s obsession over Terra. It startled even me, and I’m a shipper.
First of all, there’s a mistranslated quote of his that’s important to consider. In the localised version, Kefka’s quote vs Terra is ‘Come home to papa’. While I personally always read this ‘come to papa’ as a creepier twist to his original line, many people has sadly interpreted this as Kefka having a fatherly interest in her. To deny this, it suffices to cite the original Japanese line, in which he merely asks her to ‘come back to’ him. Besides, apart from this line, there’s nothing in their interactions that may suggest a father/daughter relationship, neither in FF6 nor in Dissidia. My Japanese-speaking friend has recently acquired a physical copy of the FF6 Settei shiryo-hen guidebook, which is a data book that expands on the characters and setting of the game, and she kindly told me that if she finds anything else about Terra and Kefka’s backstory she will let me know, so I may go back to it if there’s anything else to add to this regard.
I will be briefer about Dissidia Kefka because I think his interest in Terra beyond her destructive powers is quite obvious. He declares that ‘destruction is what makes life worth living’, while saying that Terra is ‘destruction incarnate’. Is he implying that Terra too makes his life worth living? That’s as simple as 2+2=4, in my opinion. He also invites her to join him to destroy everything and everyone, “only you and me”. I don’t know, but I bet destroying things is Kefka’s idea of a perfect date xD In any case, that’s as close to a love declaration as we could ever get from Kefka. Note that he’s trying to persuade her to join him, it’s not just forcefully drag her back to his side, he even does his best to explain his plans and the place she has in them, even if his plans reduce to destroy everything and everyone, “together.”
You could claim that Sephiroth also has a fairly obsessive interest in Cloud, but contrary to Sephiroth, who’s constantly belittling Cloud, Kefka always speaks highly of Terra to the enemies. He says ‘her powers are the real thing’ and calls her a ‘good old friend’ of his. In the American version, he has a lot of sugary nicknames for her, like sweetcakes and dear and babe. I should have to get the Japanese script and ask my translator friend if there’s any of it in the original version, but he does call her ‘tomodachi’, and he never ever regards anyone else, either seriously or jokingly, as a friend. And he’s terribly annoyed when the Onion Knight interferes in his chase, to the point that, when the boy prevents him from talking Terra into re-joining him, Kefka reacts the same explosive way he did in FF6 when he was stabbed!
During one of their confrontations, Kefka laments that Terra didn’t let her powers destroy her mind. I wonder if he just wanted her to become like him, for the sake of having a companion who’s just as wrecked as himself, someone else with whom he can enjoy destruction with the same intensity.
I actually like the way this post analyses Dissidia Kefka’s obsession with Terra.
And what does Terra do when Kefka loses their final match? She tries to talk reason into him, she tries to understand him, while Kefka choses to commit suicide when he could’ve tried to attack her once more, if only out of spite. Is Terra happy that Kefka has finally vanished from that world? No, on the contrary, she shows compassion. She declares: ‘It was your broken heart, you were trying to fill it with destruction’. This line is very powerful, and you can interpret it as you like, but you can’t deny that Terra is at least trying to empathise with Kefka. I’ve never seen anyone else showing this kind of sympathy towards Kefka.
Dissidia 012 takes Kefka’s obsession and Terra’s understanding to a whole new level. See what happens when Kuja tries to meddle in his business. First, Kefka is playing with Kuja the same way he does everyone else, all the while acting all laid-back and cheerful, but Kuja just has to mention Terra and Kefka’s demeanour goes from playful to dark and seething in a split second. If you watch the Japanese dub, Kefka’s tone shifts from high-pitched and childish to gruff and menacing just as swiftly. After this, he takes personal revenge against Kuja, to the point he exposes Kuja as a traitor before Zidane and his Cosmos fellows, not only watches him die in great delight but also mocks him cruelly while he’s fading, and goes as far as to implant fake memories in him that Kuja carries into the thirteenth cycle. All because Kuja dared to take Terra away from him. Not as much though, just ‘weakened’ the spell that Kefka used to control her.
There’s a controversial scene in which Kefka is shown hurting Terra onscreen. It worried me for a while, until I mentioned it to a fellow shipper and she pointed out that, after he hits her with lightning, Terra’s perfectly hale and hearty to run away with Vaan, and that she saw Kefka’s ‘punishment’ as the equivalent, in a modern army, to ‘drop and gimme twenty’. I thought it was an appropriate comparison (especially since this fellow shipper of mine is an ex-soldier and she gets that mind-set much better than I do), because Terra is indeed perfectly fine after this, she doesn’t look harmed or weakened by Kefka’s attack, and though I’m not certain if, at this point, Kefka sees her as a subordinate or merely a possession (his doll), the fact is that he expected obedience like a CO would, he gave a direct order to her and she refused, and thus he resorted to corporal punishment. As controversial as this scene still may appear, calling that ‘torture’ as the wiki does, I think, is way too farfetched.
After Vaan and Terra run away, Kefka chooses not to pursue her because he’s certain she will come back to his arms like she always does. And Terra does come back, not, of course, to return to his side, but after Cosmos’ death, when the warriors are trying to understand what happened, Terra purposefully goes after him to seek answers. She says she wants to let Kefka know how she feels, as if she’s counting on Kefka helping her to understand their predicament, even though they’re technically enemies. I seriously wonder where did these expectations come from. Wasn’t Kefka a complete jerk to her up to this point? Well, perhaps not?
I may be missing something important because I didn’t play Dissidia or Dissidia 012, but I think I got the gist of their storyline, and at the end of the cycle, it seems like they can at least talk and understand each other.
Other reasons as to why Kefka and Terra would’ve had worked together while it lasted are Kefka’s fascination with magic, particularly fire, which is Terra’s specialty, and Kefka’s childishness coupled with Terra’s motherly side. Among others but isn’t this reply insanely long already? =P
I realise I ended up writing a whole essay on my OTP, but believe me I could still keep saying much more about why I believe Kefka/Terra is shippable and logical and I’m madly in love with it. Anyway, if you feel like you need more clarification or need me to expand upon anything related to my shipping this pairing, I’d gladly keep blabbering about it! Ultimately, it’s up to every shipper as to why they like the pairing. I have talked at length with other shippers and they all have different reasons and interpretations of the pairing. These are largely my own =)
When I see your recent Raiden drawing, I think that he's about to get really freaky with Rose.
man you guys with your gutter brainsok finnnee if you all can’t really think outside that, this was my original intensionhappily strangling one of the haven troopers during his naked escapehowever, it does not help that I was listening to this song while drawing it
