In Final Fantasy, dragons are real. There are old bones lying around, and even older bones to dig up, but more importantly, there are dragons, real, live, breathing dragons walking around, landing on your trucks, stealing your princesses and fucking up your shit.
Childhood doesn’t have a dinosaur stage, not by that exact name, not in that exact way. There’s no brachiosaurus here, no velociraptor. Just dragons, in all their varied shapes and sizes, because what the world had was a Dragon Era, one that still isn’t all the way done.
There are dinosaurs. Bone Village seems to have fossils that look like dinosaurs. But dinosaurs took divergent evolutionary paths. Some evolved into dragons. Some evolved into chocobos.
Do they actually call those dinosaur bones at any point though? Because we see giant lizard bones in the ground and say ‘dinosaur’, but if you’ve got live dragons running around, what’s the reason to call the old bones anything else? Just trying to work out the concept of living in a world where dragons are real, because when we thought our dragons were real we didn’t have dinosaurs, just dragon bones.
I was just thinking from an evolutionary perspective. Dinosaurs are birds. Bird exist, so there must have been dinosaurs. Dragons exist, they are similar to some dinosaurs. So maybe dinosaurs are ancient dinosaurs but some dinosaurs are birds so maybe dragons descend from a specific type of dinosaur.
We have no guarantee that evolution followed the same pathway in ffvii, although real-world corollaries can add their own layers. But I’ve already made some creation mythos that like most creation stories, allude to what really happened before people could understand it, and strictly speaking, the dino-bird link doesn’t need to be there in this version of events. It’s a world where magic is real and there was an Age of Beasts of some sort, a little special creation in the mix isn’t out of the question.
True, but FFVII in particular seems very modern and like a world where science exists. So I think a theory of evolution might exist. As would a field of paleontology. There may be a creation Mythos for that world, but within the world there are probably non-believers who look for other explanations.
Just a thought – also I headcanon Nunchuck Turk’s father as a paleontologist. Bone village to me seems like a mix of paleontological and archeological research.
Definitely but that’s still no guarantee that their evolutionary pathways are the same as our own. On a very fic specific note, the science eventually confirms the myth, but depending on how the myth goes, their science may be just as fanciful to our eyes.
And maybe it’s even an issue of linguistic evolution. “You know the Cetra word for dragon means ‘terrible lizard’.”
“Lizard? Mo~om, lizards aren’t cool.”
“But they’re great and terrible!”
“Whatever. Still lizards.”
(Fic Aeris actually is a mix of archaeologist and paleontologist. She spends a lot of time in Bone Village and there is a common thread in what she looks for but it crosses all sorts of discipline lines as we define them on earth)
In Final Fantasy, dragons are real. There are old bones lying around, and even older bones to dig up, but more importantly, there are dragons, real, live, breathing dragons walking around, landing on your trucks, stealing your princesses and fucking up your shit.
Childhood doesn’t have a dinosaur stage, not by that exact name, not in that exact way. There’s no brachiosaurus here, no velociraptor. Just dragons, in all their varied shapes and sizes, because what the world had was a Dragon Era, one that still isn’t all the way done.
Why not both, though?
FF has birds, which are dinosaur’s descendants. Chocobos are literally feathered raptors. And, idk which Final Fantasy you’re looking at, but quite a few do have dinosaur mobs, like 8’s T-Rexaur. T-rex is a reoccurring mob.
Alt: if dragons are the real ones, then why not have dinosaurs be the fantasy/legendary creatures. The potential of flipping the irl dichotomy of dragon obsessed kids vs dinosaur obsessed ones on its head could be fun.
My only issue with that is how do you mark the evolutionary dividing line and where does it go. Mythologically there can be any number of stories about why some ‘dragons’ were turned into birds, but archaeology factors in sometimes in worldbuilding. What makes a giant reptile fossil be termed a dinosaur instead of an extinct form of dragon.
Without the context of which world and which culture we’re looking at, we can’t decide where that nebulous line in the sand would be.
Like, let’s say FF7/Gaia – Wutai would very much view it differently than, say, someone who lives in Nibelheim with big green dragons breathing down their necks on a daily basis. But if I were working on a different FF, the story would be different again–you bet your rondels the kingdoms in FF4 are only going to believe that they’ve seen in the flesh, and their wise sages are going to make up some mystic nonsense about everything else.
But also looking at real world paleontology (not archaeology), we’re redefining how we interpreted species with every new finding. It doesn’t have to be this hard line of “but how can dragons and dinosaurs coexist in the same timeline” because in real life we have bizarre shit that we divide by extremely narrow criteria like… this extinct animal had wrists with pronation, this live one does not. In this case, you’d just have to define “what makes a dragon unique” – is it the fire breathing? Were there fire breathing dinosaurs? Bam, there’s your starting line, build entire sandcastles of worldbuilding out of that.
As a writer, we can do a lot more with some research and deciding not to be reductive like, shit, dude, the raptors became chocobos and the brachiosaurs became dragons. Dinosaurs are extinct by evolution. Not every evolutionary line is successful, so you don’t have to explain every single one.
So you can carry forward with that: cultures argue about the validity of paleontology’s finds. There’s dinosaur/evolution deniers just like real life, but their bent is whatever magic powers their world. There’s movie/whatever fanboys that get upset if you put feathers on a raptor because they’re “fantasy” creatures that have “always” been depicted one way. There’s heated arguments between the dinosaur obsessed kid and the dragon obsessed one that hinge on “well, we can go down the street to the pet shop and look at a REAL dragon right now! you’re just in love with stupid moldy bones!”
Of course it’s paleontology, brain fart for reasons. Primarily I deal with VII and I’m really just trying to work out if the term dinosaur even exists when you instead have a world full of very real live dragons to begin lumping all giant lizards bones into. Everything else is strictly academic fine-tuning that might not even come into play in the pop culture of a world where dragons have just always been. All this to figure out if an archaeologist character’s offspring’s phase is going to be called Dragon or Dino, and in their world is there actual difference.
Yeah, but if you’re gonna put headcanons written matter of fact out there in the fandom tags, then… that’s what I’m doing? Playing off of it and throwing spaghetti at the wall.
Like, if you didn’t want people to react and engage with it, and if you were looking for a very specific thing for your own story that is not randos getting excited because, hey, you brought up a cool worldbuilding thing to think about, then idk, dude.
You’re being a pedantic,long-winded, smarmy ass, and there is no part of me that is willing to field conversation with the likes of you today. Go to bed and never speak to me again.
In Final Fantasy, dragons are real. There are old bones lying around, and even older bones to dig up, but more importantly, there are dragons, real, live, breathing dragons walking around, landing on your trucks, stealing your princesses and fucking up your shit.
Childhood doesn’t have a dinosaur stage, not by that exact name, not in that exact way. There’s no brachiosaurus here, no velociraptor. Just dragons, in all their varied shapes and sizes, because what the world had was a Dragon Era, one that still isn’t all the way done.
There are dinosaurs. Bone Village seems to have fossils that look like dinosaurs. But dinosaurs took divergent evolutionary paths. Some evolved into dragons. Some evolved into chocobos.
Do they actually call those dinosaur bones at any point though? Because we see giant lizard bones in the ground and say ‘dinosaur’, but if you’ve got live dragons running around, what’s the reason to call the old bones anything else? Just trying to work out the concept of living in a world where dragons are real, because when we thought our dragons were real we didn’t have dinosaurs, just dragon bones.
I was just thinking from an evolutionary perspective. Dinosaurs are birds. Bird exist, so there must have been dinosaurs. Dragons exist, they are similar to some dinosaurs. So maybe dinosaurs are ancient dinosaurs but some dinosaurs are birds so maybe dragons descend from a specific type of dinosaur.
We have no guarantee that evolution followed the same pathway in ffvii, although real-world corollaries can add their own layers. But I’ve already made some creation mythos that like most creation stories, allude to what really happened before people could understand it, and strictly speaking, the dino-bird link doesn’t need to be there in this version of events. It’s a world where magic is real and there was an Age of Beasts of some sort, a little special creation in the mix isn’t out of the question.
In Final Fantasy, dragons are real. There are old bones lying around, and even older bones to dig up, but more importantly, there are dragons, real, live, breathing dragons walking around, landing on your trucks, stealing your princesses and fucking up your shit.
Childhood doesn’t have a dinosaur stage, not by that exact name, not in that exact way. There’s no brachiosaurus here, no velociraptor. Just dragons, in all their varied shapes and sizes, because what the world had was a Dragon Era, one that still isn’t all the way done.
Why not both, though?
FF has birds, which are dinosaur’s descendants. Chocobos are literally feathered raptors. And, idk which Final Fantasy you’re looking at, but quite a few do have dinosaur mobs, like 8’s T-Rexaur. T-rex is a reoccurring mob.
Alt: if dragons are the real ones, then why not have dinosaurs be the fantasy/legendary creatures. The potential of flipping the irl dichotomy of dragon obsessed kids vs dinosaur obsessed ones on its head could be fun.
My only issue with that is how do you mark the evolutionary dividing line and where does it go. Mythologically there can be any number of stories about why some ‘dragons’ were turned into birds, but archaeology factors in sometimes in worldbuilding. What makes a giant reptile fossil be termed a dinosaur instead of an extinct form of dragon.
Without the context of which world and which culture we’re looking at, we can’t decide where that nebulous line in the sand would be.
Like, let’s say FF7/Gaia – Wutai would very much view it differently than, say, someone who lives in Nibelheim with big green dragons breathing down their necks on a daily basis. But if I were working on a different FF, the story would be different again–you bet your rondels the kingdoms in FF4 are only going to believe that they’ve seen in the flesh, and their wise sages are going to make up some mystic nonsense about everything else.
But also looking at real world paleontology (not archaeology), we’re redefining how we interpreted species with every new finding. It doesn’t have to be this hard line of “but how can dragons and dinosaurs coexist in the same timeline” because in real life we have bizarre shit that we divide by extremely narrow criteria like… this extinct animal had wrists with pronation, this live one does not. In this case, you’d just have to define “what makes a dragon unique” – is it the fire breathing? Were there fire breathing dinosaurs? Bam, there’s your starting line, build entire sandcastles of worldbuilding out of that.
As a writer, we can do a lot more with some research and deciding not to be reductive like, shit, dude, the raptors became chocobos and the brachiosaurs became dragons. Dinosaurs are extinct by evolution. Not every evolutionary line is successful, so you don’t have to explain every single one.
So you can carry forward with that: cultures argue about the validity of paleontology’s finds. There’s dinosaur/evolution deniers just like real life, but their bent is whatever magic powers their world. There’s movie/whatever fanboys that get upset if you put feathers on a raptor because they’re “fantasy” creatures that have “always” been depicted one way. There’s heated arguments between the dinosaur obsessed kid and the dragon obsessed one that hinge on “well, we can go down the street to the pet shop and look at a REAL dragon right now! you’re just in love with stupid moldy bones!”
Of course it’s paleontology, brain fart for reasons. Primarily I deal with VII and I’m really just trying to work out if the term dinosaur even exists when you instead have a world full of very real live dragons to begin lumping all giant lizards bones into. Everything else is strictly academic fine-tuning that might not even come into play in the pop culture of a world where dragons have just always been. All this to figure out if an archaeologist character’s offspring’s phase is going to be called Dragon or Dino, and in their world is there actual difference.
I sometimes ponder the possibility that Trungus did fuck his daughter, and the reason she gets to sit in his chair and make his decisions now is because this is their version of hush money.
“It wasn’t no symptoms, Doc, it was demons holding her down. The pastor drove six out of her and that man she turned down sent back seven stronger ones to bind her harder.”
“Did you take her to the hospital with this last round of contortions and eye-rolling?”
“No, Ma’am, we went straight to church for three days straight and it was while the pastor was praying over she died.”
“I see. Well, we will proceed, and hopefully at the end we can at least tell you what was going wrong with her body.”
“Good, good, you wouldn’t find the demons. Pastor said they already gone.”
*Deep Breath*
This is rather a lot to field this Friday morn.
Found something that could explain the seizures
And another thing to explain the projectile vomiting
She should have been in the emergency room, not the church
Pastor can come too and pray in the hospital, we know how to work with and around belief systems here
In Final Fantasy, dragons are real. There are old bones lying around, and even older bones to dig up, but more importantly, there are dragons, real, live, breathing dragons walking around, landing on your trucks, stealing your princesses and fucking up your shit.
Childhood doesn’t have a dinosaur stage, not by that exact name, not in that exact way. There’s no brachiosaurus here, no velociraptor. Just dragons, in all their varied shapes and sizes, because what the world had was a Dragon Era, one that still isn’t all the way done.
There are dinosaurs. Bone Village seems to have fossils that look like dinosaurs. But dinosaurs took divergent evolutionary paths. Some evolved into dragons. Some evolved into chocobos.
Do they actually call those dinosaur bones at any point though? Because we see giant lizard bones in the ground and say ‘dinosaur’, but if you’ve got live dragons running around, what’s the reason to call the old bones anything else? Just trying to work out the concept of living in a world where dragons are real, because when we thought our dragons were real we didn’t have dinosaurs, just dragon bones.
In Final Fantasy, dragons are real. There are old bones lying around, and even older bones to dig up, but more importantly, there are dragons, real, live, breathing dragons walking around, landing on your trucks, stealing your princesses and fucking up your shit.
Childhood doesn’t have a dinosaur stage, not by that exact name, not in that exact way. There’s no brachiosaurus here, no velociraptor. Just dragons, in all their varied shapes and sizes, because what the world had was a Dragon Era, one that still isn’t all the way done.
Why not both, though?
FF has birds, which are dinosaur’s descendants. Chocobos are literally feathered raptors. And, idk which Final Fantasy you’re looking at, but quite a few do have dinosaur mobs, like 8’s T-Rexaur. T-rex is a reoccurring mob.
Alt: if dragons are the real ones, then why not have dinosaurs be the fantasy/legendary creatures. The potential of flipping the irl dichotomy of dragon obsessed kids vs dinosaur obsessed ones on its head could be fun.
My only issue with that is how do you mark the evolutionary dividing line and where does it go. Mythologically there can be any number of stories about why some ‘dragons’ were turned into birds, but archaeology factors in sometimes in worldbuilding. What makes a giant reptile fossil be termed a dinosaur instead of an extinct form of dragon.
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