During her last visit to Spira, Sam encountered not one, but two gratuitous lesbian scenes — one with bonus incest! — and finished up Chapter 2 with a visit to the creepy(er) underside of Bevelle with all its inappropriately sexual machina. Due to the recap hiatus, plus my own year-long procrastination in playing catch-up to Sam, it has been nine fucking years since I’ve last played this game. To put this in perspective, VGR-style: if Phoenix, Edgeworth, and Larry had been born during my last recap, at this point in real time, their fourth grade friendship would have already been cruelly ripped apart by the murder of Edgeworth’s dad. Luckily, playing through the parts that Sam already recapped was enough to get me back up to speed, so you guys won’t have to sit through endless paragraphs of me bitching about how much I suck at this.

Well…sort of. See, when I was consulting my five different game guides and comparing them to my percentage value from nine years ago and figuring out where that lines up with the beginning of the last recap, I realized that Sam skipped the Macalania Woods sequence in Chapter 2. In her defense, she looked at the guide, which basically said “Find the WTF Trio around the woods,” and thought I had already recapped that part. Which I did, but that was for Chapter 1. It’s not her fault the game designers are lazy and uncreative. Although if I were a cynical dickhead, I might suspect she skipped this on purpose since I specifically hoped someone else would recap this, and she wants me to suffer.

This is not a promising start.

Because this game isn’t confusing enough to follow without recapper time travel, let’s go back in time to the end of Part 8, and pretend the next part happened then. Since this is the first thing I played after the nine year hiatus, you will have to put up with me sucking even more than usual during this one scene. Okay, so the last time Yuna visited Macalania Woods, she tracked down the WTF Trio so she could listen to them whine about the forest disappearing, even though it has not visibly changed since she and Tightass corrupted that pond. In hindsight, I don’t know why I took it at face value that the fayth’s disappearance is responsible for ruining the woods, when the Pond Scene is a much more obvious cause. I am falling down on the job here.

Unlike the last WTF round-up, which had no motivation other than “the guide said to do this,” this time the game attempts to provide some background for the scene. As soon as the girls touch down in the forest of glowing crack rocks, they spot a Hypello further up the path, waving his arms to get their attention. It doesn’t appear to be a life or death situation, as he soon saunters leisurely up the path, but God forbid Yuna not immediately respond to a summons. I just realized how ironic this is.

Rikku recognizes this particular Hypello as “Tobli’s assistant,” but he already has a name, which is Dwayne. He wastes no time in asking them for “a favor.” Paine sighs wearily as she asks what he has in mind. I have to transcribe his response exactly: “Chief’s throwing a feshtibibble. Shinging and danshing and shellabebration?” Well, that was embarrassing. Dwayne has been tasked with hunting down the WTF Trio to perform in said feshtibibble — sigh — but can’t find those weird motherfuckers anywhere. And really, I can’t blame him for bailing on this task, because it sucked the first time I did it, too. He gives Yuna a letter to pass along to the WTF Trio members if and when she finds them. Unless “feshtibibble” is code for “nightmarish orgy,” this sounds innocent enough. Actually, this is probably the event that Yuna, Rikku, and Paine had to sell tickets for back at the Moonflow. This means that the people who bought the tickets are even bigger suckers than I originally thought.

Yuna incompetently makes her way back to the spring where Tromell Guado was whining earlier. I don’t see him at the moment — he’s probably jackin’ it behind a glowing tree — but there are several other whiny Guado milling about. At the far end of the spring, Bayra, the humanoid harp-playing bird in the Native American headdress, surveys the entire sad scene. He’s all, “What the fuck you bitches want?” and Yuna hands over Tobli’s letter, speaking to him slowly like he’s a toddler. I feel like everything I’ve recapped so far has been offensive. Bayra skims the letter, which I’m assuming is written in crayon for some reason, and announces that he can’t commit to the gig without consulting the other two members of the WTF Trio.

After attempting to communicate telepathically with them via a soothing harp solo, Bayra remarks, “How strange. I cannot hear their voices. Their minds must be closed.” Are they out protesting gay marriage or something? What this means for me, as the mission screen helpfully translates, is that Donga and Pukutak have transformed into circles of butterflies because of course they have, and Yuna must “enter the circles” in order to speak with them. Nothing can ever be not cracked out around here.

In spite of the unnecessary fetch quest nature of this mission, it seems like it should be relatively simple to carry out, especially since I’m using a guide (or five) for everything I do in this game. But this actually complicates things because the guide says that Donga and Pukutak are hanging around the spring area. And indeed, there are some circles of butterfiles nearby. The first one reveals a funnel-eared mouse who speaks in rhyme, and the second reveals a…whatever the fuck the blue Scottish Mr. Mime guy is supposed to be. Talking to them doesn’t trigger the next part of the mission, though, so I run around the screen in frustration and finally consult a different guide, which tells me where the actual Donga and Pukutak are hiding in the forest. I should have known that this mission couldn’t involve such a low number of random battles. Also, the two imposters are tiny and not voice-acted, which should have clued me in sooner. I guess I’m just a racist in that all funnel mice and Scottish Mr. Mimes look the same to me.

Actually, this opens up a lot of questions. I know I’m wasting time on this when we have a lot of ground to cover in the rest of this recap, but I’m curious. We know of two WTF Trios of performers: these three motherfuckers that hang out in the forest for Yuna to find, and the traveling troupe of Borra, Daraya, and Pukara whom I had completely forgotten about until I reread the recaps. Sam also reminded me of the scene in Luca in FFX where both these bands performed for Maester Mika. So…what is going on with this? Are there three separate tribes of strange creatures living in this forest and they all grow up to form three-person bands? Or are the two bands that we know of rivals and/or copycats of each other? If it’s the first option, are different combinations allowed, like two humanoid birds and one funnel-eared mouse, or is that considered painful and ear-splitting?

And when my mind starts to wander like this, it always ends up traveling down a more disturbing road of possibilities — are these trios also of the, um, romantic variety? When a little blue Mr. Mime grows to adulthood, does he need to enter into holy matrimony with a harp-playing bird and a saxophone mouse? If a bird wants to marry two Mr. Mimes, is that considered deviant? Are there domestic inequalities, like the funnel-eared mouse getting stuck with all the housework? And on an even more terrifying level, how do they…do it? I know I’ve alluded to it briefly in a past recap, but never really thought too hard (ugh) about the possibility until Sam mentioned that the mouse’s funnel ears have likely been used for unspeakable things. You’re welcome!

I apologize for all the rat-holing there. Uh, so to speak. Although you can’t really blame me when this is pretty much the most boring thing I’ve ever recapped. Well, I’m the recapper and I’m going to skip ahead to where Yuna and company find the first circle of butterflies near a giant sparkling testicle. Donga appears before them in all his drum-banging, tassel-hatted glory. A Black Screen of Explaining Shit No One Cares About fades back in on Donga agreeing to play drums at Tobli’s event. He then disappears in a swirl of light, and Yuna moves on to the final fucker in the trio. Pukutak, the mouse whose ears have been used as fleshlights, is chilling near the Wank Pond. Shudder. In response to another Black Screen of ZZZZZZZZ, Pukutak announces that he/she is on board: “No, I do not mind at all! We’ll play our songs and have a ball!” I transcribed that just so you know what I have to deal with here. Pukutak disappears in a second glowy swirling jizz fountain, and a final black screen warps Yuna back to the main spring.

Okay, that was relatively painless if you ignore my shitty performance in the random battles, but the mission isn’t over yet. Speaking to Bayra triggers a final cutscene, where all three members of the WTF Trio confirm once again that they’ll play Tobli’s gig. “Yes. It will be a brilliant finale for our doomed kind,” Bayra declares, triggering a sad trombone in my imagination. Also, just a hunch, but “brilliant finale” might be overstating it a bit. “Doomed?” Yuna wonders, shocked. I guess it’s understandable that she might have missed the first five hundred times these fuckers whined about their imminent demise. Pukutak reminds everyone that the disappearance of the fayth is responsible, but I’m still sticking with my Pond Scene theory. “But it looks like we’ll be meetin’ our end someday soon,” Donga agrees. This downer of a proclamation is immediately followed by the triumphant Bill & Ted guitar riff of the mission complete screen, as the camera focuses on Yuna’s ass. The awkward segue proves that even the game doesn’t give a shit about the plight of these poor motherfuckers. Seriously, just burn that forest to the ground. Nothing good has ever happened there.

OF COURSE

All right, so the girls sold tickets to the show and rounded up the talent, allowing Tobli more time to masturbate to furry/feathery bird porn. I imagine he likes to look at fanart of whatever Bayra’s species is. But enough about this non-plot that I have made as gross as possible. With that out of the way, we can fast-forward through all the events of Part 9 and join YRP just after they find out that fiends are coming out of the temples and Baralai and Nooj have disappeared (together).

Before Yuna and her two way less important hangers-on dive into their plan to exterminate fiends for money, they need to finish up all the non-essential (but of course still essential) tasks around Spira. This means that I’m skipping over the plot hotspots at Besaid and Kilika and heading directly to Luca, a choice that I regret soon enough. As a crowd of unemployed Spirans and their resource-sucking children rejoice in the streets, the Gullwings sans Brother stand on the end of the bridge where the laughing scene took place. Understandably, Buddy is disappointed that no fiends are feasting on the local population, and thus, there’s no money to be had. Oh well, time to leave.

Of course that’s not what happens. While fiends brutally murder the rest of Spira, a Sphere Break tournament is being held in Luca. Great timing! No one here looks like a giant asshole! Before Shinra wanders off into the crowd — I’m sure he’ll just be an uninvolved observer — he suggests that Yuna participate in the tournament. “The grand prize is a dressphere,” he adds by way of encouragement. Well, shit, there’s nothing more important than spheres, especially dresspheres.