Winhill

There are lots of beautiful and cool locations in Final Fantasy worlds I'd love to visit. One of my favourite things about the series is the wonderful little places you get to travel to and learn the history of and all that good stuff. There's so much depth to the towns and villages and cities and military bases and train lines of the world of Final Fantasy number 8 in particular, and I spent a lot of time as a kid dreaming of being there. When I was about 10 years old I even wrote FF8 fanfic for my creative writing. The story was about being washed up on the beach near Balamb and having to decide whether to go back home to my real life or to stay in the game world and live alongside everyone there. I totally chose to stay in the game world. I wish I still had that story (complete with drawings of the characters alongside the story).

Today I wanted to focus on the gentle, isolated village of Winhill, which I have personally visited, as you can see. It's a quiet and pleasant town with beautiful fields and flowers and pretty wooden houses. Unfortunately, the place suffers from an infestation of dangerous monsters, but people seem to get by okay. It's a fairly insular place as it sits on an isolated peninsula, and I guess the monsters make it difficult to go too far, but despite its problems it's a sweet little village.

It even has a spooky and impressive mansion up at the town square, and some casually ignored history. The whole place has a bit of a death and mourning theme and feel to it, so it's a bit melancholy, but all the natural beauty kinda makes it a pleasant setting for fixating upon mortality, in a way. The people of Winhill have death on their minds for various reasons, but life goes on here, and it's so humble and lovely. I really like it here.