back when i worked at GameStop, we kept all of the preorder items in a drawer behind the counter. if the game had a preorder bonus to go with it, we kept it there too. if nobody came to pick up their preorder by the time a week had passed, that preorder bonus item would go to no one, and it was up for grabs for the employees. i got a lot of pretty nifty stuff for games i don't care about this way (a keychain for Undisputed, another keychain for Persona 3 Reload, among other things) and one of those things was this insanely cheap trucker hat with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth branding on it. now, i've said it before and i'll say it again, i don't give a shit about fantasy settings, especially in RPGs. as such, i've always had a can of Final Fantasy repellant on me at all times, in case they get a little too hopeful around me. (jokes aside i have given a couple of FF games a chance, such as the FF1 Pixel Remaster and FFIV on DS and i've enjoyed them an amount.) i know a good handful of the FF games, especially after the 6 classic games, stray away from the fantasy setting, but my point still stands. i don't really care all that much about Final Fantasy, and that goes for FFVII. i know i know, it's probably one of the best RPGs ever created by man, whatever. listen, if you're allowed to like FFVII, then i'm allowed to like Mother 1. i just don't get that much out of FFVII, at least from what i've seen of it. and man, don't even get me started on the remakes. they felt the need to make it such a big event that they split it up into several different parts, so if i were to ever want the full experience, i'd need to spend upwards of 210 dollars total, 70 dollars for each fucking game? jesus christ man, i'll pass.

now, when i see the world's shittiest mesh trucker hat with a FFVII Rebirth logo sloppily painted onto it, that's when i bite. this thing is so utterly depressing, but that's kind of why i love it. like, imagine the type of person who would wear this in public. i either imagine them as being the world's fakest gamer, or being the biggest Final Fantasy nut of all time, there's seriously no inbetween. in fact, i know someone who would wear this! one time on my shift, a familiar looking guy with a motorcycle walked in. turns out, he was a student my mom taught about 10 years ago, and when i was a kid he showed me anime boobs on his TF2 Conscientious Objector. that's not a joke, by the way. i told him offhandedly that we had the hats a few months back, and he seemed like he'd do ANYTHING to get this damn hat. y'see, it's people like that that make me miss that job to a degree. come on, would you meet someone like that working at a Ross or a Michael's? hell no, not in a million years.