I've often talked with my best friend, Zelly, about the Final Fantasy VIII characters' eye colors, and what they are in canon, but I've never written at length about it before; it never crossed my mind to write something like this, either, something that was more than pure opinion and me spewing vitriol like crazy. But after reading a particularly, er, frightening Gary Stu and sporking it on Livejournal, I got out my PSP8, got out the eyedropper tool, and set about proving fanfiction authors wrong. The descriptions in the fic called Seifer's eyes brown, along with Selphie's. Now, I already know full well that Selphie's eyes are green, so it was time I made sure I could attest to the eye colors of the rest of the cast of Final Fantasy VIII. For all these conclusions, I used the CG character art, all of which I saved long, long ago, but you can find the same pictures on Creative Uncut here, if you want to see what I'm basing my blah blah blah on. I will provide a hexadecimal code for the color and write the final conclusion of the eye color in that color, just to make the results more evident than simply saying, "His eyes are blue." The following is my research of sorts.

I started with Squall, upon whom most of fandom can't seem to agree definitively. His eyes are blue, gray, or if the author is like me, blue-gray. I was out to see if I was right or wrong, and in the process, I hoped I could disprove those who have called Squall's eyes "bright blue" or "silver" - yes, I have seen both as adjectives for Squall's eyes. Well, in the CG art of Squall, his eyes are actually blue-gray, in my estimation. I would consider #A1B5BE, the hex code taken from the main part of Squall's iris, to be blue-gray. One could also call it blue, if you're a stickler for getting away from hybrid colors, but I think that more accurate is blue-gray. In one respect, I was actually right (or, if you prefer blue, I was mostly right; I've always called his eyes blue-gray, not gray-blue, and there is a difference). However, looking at the non-CGI art, the hex code changes to #7290D0, or blue. I think that, gray being eliminated based on the happy medium of the CG art and the traditional art, both blue and blue-gray are correct. So I suppose that I've been mostly right! I won't suck my own cock about it, but I'm kinda proud of that fact. So let's move on before I allow my ego to get out of hand.

I followed up with Zell. Unlike Squall, his eye color is rarely in question. I've never seen anybody get it wrong yet; sure, there are different modifiers for basic blue, including calling his eyes "sky blue" and "light blue," but there is an actual consensus on him that's absent when it comes to Squall's eye color. Zell's eye color, again, taken at the least-shaded part of his iris, was light blue or #9BC0D0 in hex code. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to call his eyes blue and agree with fandom once and for all.

Third was Selphie, who, again, tends to be easy for most authors. Only once have I seen an author get it drastically wrong, and it was in the case of the aforementioned Gary Stu fic. That was an anomaly, though, so I'll pretend I never read it. Everybody seems to agree that Selphie's eyes are green, and look: they are! Her hexadecimal code, by the way, was #3DD080. No doubt about it; Selphie has green eyes.

Fourth was Quistis. I've never, not even in the worst fics I've read, seen her eyes described as anything but blue. I've seen "sky blue" used for her, too, but never have I seen an inaccuracy where her eye color is concerned. Most people seem to have seen the FMV shots and remembered perfectly well that Quistis's eyes are blue, and if they saw this little research rant, they would agree on her hex code, #75C3F1, being true to canon. But like I said, no one disputes Quistis's eye color.

I stuck with easy characters and checked Rinoa's eye color next. Everybody seems to know that Rinoa's eyes are brown. I know it, you know it, the fanfic writer next door and the other one living in Australia (if you're from Australia, the other one living in Singapore) both know it. So it was simple to say that Rinoa's eyes are brown, hex code #5F4E46. If you want to be creative, they're dark brown, since many people are under the impression that Rinoa is Asian. If she isn't actually Asian, well, I would nod and say that at the very least, she has Asian features. Certainly she's distinctive in a game in which most characters are light-haired and -eyed, and she is the only one with brown eyes. But I'll prove that in a minute, when I've gone through the rest of the main characters.

Now I had to get to the characters whose eye colors no one can agree upon, much like Squall. But in Seifer's case, there isn't even a compromise that calls his eyes the Seifer equivalent of blue-gray. To many fic authors, his eyes are blue; to plenty of others, they're green; I consider myself well-read enough to say that I can't recall seeing more than one fic author describing his eyes as blue-green, or green-blue, or teal or turquoise, and which of those it was, I can't remember. So let's go see. Seifer's hex code is #7EC9C5, which means his eyes are green by my book. If you think I'm being biased, then a better alternative is to call them green-blue; even then, it was tough to call whether they were blue-green or green-blue, but in the end, looking at the color wheel above the swatches in Paintshop Pro 8 proved to me that, since the circle fell closer to the green end of the cyan range, his eyes are green-blue. Or, if you want to be creative, they're teal, though I don't suggest this. I could understand a fic going either way on this, really, since Seifer's eyes are rarely seen in clear, direct light in FMV shots; he's in shadows, under cover of night, or in orange lighting. But I, who have always written him as having green eyes, could be challenged and fairly called wrong in that respect, as compared to Selphie's, they're not particularly vibrant. Still, not to favor myself, but I think an author would be closer to the truth to call his eyes green than to call them blue, especially considering that the non-CG art of Seifer has eyes I'd safely call all the way green (their hex code is #659585) but some could indeed call them green-blue. And even then, blue is not necessarily wrong or bad, unlike calling Squall's eyes silver or Selphie's brown.

Last among the main characters was Irvine. He, too, is a difficult character to pin down - or at least his eye color is. I have seen everything from green to blue to violet used to describe Irvine's eye color, and I've even seen teal used for him. Nobody seems to believe anyone else when it comes to the man's eye color, so I'm taking it upon myself to reveal that his eyes are blue, and the hexadecimal code is #467394. Decidedly not violet, and definitely not green, though if you had to pick one of those two (wrong) options, green would be the wiser choice; the RGB values are red 70, green 115, and blue 148. For violet eyes, you would need to be closer to a green level of 0-75 with comparable red and blue values. No, Irvine's eyes aren't violet. And even though I just said that they are closer to green, neither are they green. Granted, in this art, his eyes look darker than in the main FMV sequence in which we see his face, namely, the sequence that introduces him and his butterfly. In that sequence, they look more green. And in the non-CG art of Irvine, they do indeed look more violet (hex code #6E59A4). But, in the interest of deciding on one color, or one hybrid color, blue is the safest mix of all three. The happe medium between the green and violet depictions of Irvine's eyes is blue. Irvine's eyes are, then, blue.

I decided to branch out a little bit at this point and moved on to the secondary characters: namely, I tackled Laguna, Kiros, Ward, Edea, and Cid. This required some more creativity, as there is no CG art of Kiros, Ward, or Cid. For them, I used the official game art - what I call non-CG, what other people call traditional. Away we go!

Starting with Cid because very few people trouble themselves with him in their fics, and as such, you'll probably want him out of the way quickly. Cid is easy; his eyes are blue, and you'll note, if you put his hex code (#4B77A6) side by side with Irvine's, that they are similar to Irvine's eye color.

Moving on to Ward because, again, he rarely gets to appear in fics, and most people are likely only reading this for the characters they care about. Poor Ward and Cid, both of whom were easy-peasy. Ward's hex code is #A1BDE2, making his eyes light blue, or just plain blue. They are the lightest blue so far, though, which may be something to note for the sake of comparison.

Edea is third here, another character whose fic appearances are starkly limited. The few times she gets to show up, she quickly fades into the background, and for all my searching, I have yet to find an Edea-centric fic. Oh, well. The CG art of Edea is, unfortunately, not particularly helpful in determining her eye color. FMV shots usually place her in the same orange light and shadows that affect Seifer in in-game images, so I eventually resorted to using the traditional art of her. In that picture, her eyes are yellow, or gold, and their hexadecimal value is #E6D64B. I doubt that anyone questioned that. I've never seen anybody write a fic in which her eyes were anything but gold or brown, and brown makes sense to me, once she's no longer possessed by Ultimecia, who, it should be noted, has yellow eyes. Either way, authors are in the safe zone, in my opinion.

Now for the characters whom fic authors are more likely to care about and introduce to their stories as more than background characters or filler. Kiros has no CG art to accompany the official game art of his face, so I had to use the latter. And no one doubts that Kiros's eyes, with a hex code like #32261A, are anything but dark brown. I could have saved time by not bothering with Kiros, but I was doing everybody else, so I had to do his eye color, too! It's only fair!

And last but not least, Laguna, who receives treatment similar to Seifer: whether he has blue or green eyes, few can decide and agree. I like to believe that with Laguna, I've been proven right again. I describe him as green-eyed, and his eyes are indeed light green, or green-gray, if you want to look at the saturation as an indicator. I personally say that they're just plain green, since it's simpler, though technically, green-gray or even green-blue is more accurate, as the saturation of his hex code (which is #88AA99) is 43. In the non-CG art, the hex code is #94B2B0, with a lower saturation of 42. Not a big difference between the two, but the latter would suggest that like calling Squall's eyes blue-gray, calling Laguna's green-gray or even green-blue, like Seifer's, makes sense. If this disproves anything, it's those who call Laguna violet-eyed, or say that his eyes are bright blue. Anyone who calls them simply blue is closer to the truth, but still, the color levels (green is at 170 as opposed to blue at 153 in the CG art, and at 178 instead of blue at 176 in the non-CG).

If we've learned anything here, it is that the common conceptions of some characters' eye colors are wrong, and that determining eye colors requires a lot of checking when the art tends to vary between CG and traditional. Look at Squall and Irvine for prime examples of that very dramatic change, and at Seifer and Laguna for examples of a less dramatic difference that helps to make the decision for you when you look at the art. I think that the fandom more often swings the right way than the wrong, but for those who are in the middle or confused, and want some way of deciding, I have high hopes (like an ant climbing that rubber-tree plant) that this is somehow helpful. I also think that when it comes to a detail like eye color, paying as much attention as I've just paid is a bit obsessive, but it pays off; it helps me feel as if I have a better handle on the characters, feeling reaffirmed in writing Seifer and Laguna as green-eyed, and as if I'm more knowledgeable in the fandom, even if it's only when it comes to those surface details that I usually ignore in favor of the inner details of the characters' lives.

And for final reference, I mocked up a table of the hex codes of each character's eyes; the name is above the cell in which the color appears, giving you a bigger sample of the color than those given above in the text.