Longcoats

[coyotecraft]

This is going to be one of my crazy schizo topics as I trace a certain design element across different stories. I'll be jumping around a lot. Point something out, but I'll expand on it later.
Where shall I begin?

I guess I'll start with a story I've been working on. It's not set in stone or anything but I'm using my Coyote avatar as a self-insert character. It's really a cheap story hack to have a knowledgeable capable side character as a catalyst to move things along. He enters the story wearing a longcoat.
Now, this attire is based on BizzareMonkey's "Corporation" members, which is itself a kind of a parody of Kingdom Heart's "Organization" members. And they all loosely hail from other dimensions. Places beyond, between, nowhere and never-when.
But I'm starting to realize it's more common than that.

Indeed, I see the Neverland Pirates sailing the "The Jolly Roger" as another permutation of this trope, for the lack of a better word.
I could easily talk about just pirates from this point on. They live out on the sea, outside of society and the law of the land. But to that point "pirates" might be a little deceiving. If gambling was illegal, then people could just board a casino ship that goes out to sea beyond the jurisdiction of local authorities.
In this sense, gamblers or card-players are a kind of "long coat". That's what Setzer was in FF6, which might explain why he makes an appearance in KH2 proceeding the nobodies. What's interesting is that the Setzer we see in KH2 existed within a digital simulation. I believe he was meant for more than just a cameo. In fact, I believe any time anyone makes a cameo their presence is just a vestigial stump of a bigger role that was cut from a game.
Beside Setzer, "the gullwings" from FFX-2 also make an appearance. But they where fairies. Why where they fairies?

Spoiler: Tangent

The conjecture is that the Final Fantasy characters in Kingdom Hearts corresponded to summons. Connections in the first KH were easier to make.
Leon = Simba. Sephiroth = Bambi (lol "mother"). Cid = Dumbo. Yuffie = Mushu. Tinker Bell = Destiny Island FF kids. Genie = Aerith.
But in KH2 there were fewer summons. Chicken Little (baseball movie) = Seifer's Sandlot gang (Sandlots are typically baseball fields, but here they're using bats in a "Struggle" competition). Peter Pan = the Gullwings, that's why they're fairies. But potentially, you know, the thing in FFX-2 was dress spheres so Sora might have gotten his Drive Forms from them instead of unlocking them as part of his outfit given to him by 3 other fairies from Sleeping Beauty. It's known that Buzz and Woody from toy story were planned summons that were cut from the game. They may have been connected to Vivi who is something of a doll character himself. But Vivi might also relate to Stitch who was an artificial lifeform. That leaves Tifa and Auron with no summon connection, and Genie.

The gambler/pirate mix is what also inspired the FFXI Corsair job class.
But enough about Square Enix games. Let's look at something else.

Do you remember the show ReBoot? Took place in a virtual reality. Lots of pop culture references. There were pirates in this a well, and in season 3 a lot of traveling between systems, and a general theme revolving around freedom fighters.
I'm pretty sure there's a Matrix reference in there. I mean, the movie reference, not the character named "Matrix". But then again, maybe that was a reference?
Nobody was really wearing longcoats, but they were all explorers from elsewhere. Actually, I think they would have worn longcoats if it wasn't a challenge of 3D animation at the time.

And yeah, the movie Matrix. You have "Morpheus" named after the god of sleep, who wakes up Neo and pulls him out of "the matrix".

There was also this scifi channel original miniseries called Tinman. Based on the Wizard of Oz. Only the "O.Z." stood for "Outer Zone". The henchmen that crossover and spend the whole movie chasing the protagonist were called "longcoats".
I recently watched it again, and it was baaad. I guess a lot of scifi channel movies are. But I remember it being a high-concept at the time. The plot was very different from the Wizard of Oz. Involving a search for the emerald that would power a machine, that would lock the 2 suns behind the moon during an eclipse and bring an age of dark. They don't actually explain what the "outer zone" is.
But like Narnia, or Neverland, the land of oz can be understood as a magical realm of fantasy.

 

[coyotecraft]

I'm short on time. But one "Nobody" of particular interest here is Luxord. He's something of a card shark and is involved in the Pirates of the Caribbean world.

Edit: Woohoo, I don't have to go to work this morning so I can keep going down this rabbit hole.
Where was I? Luxord. He's one of the remaining organization members in KH that's still a mystery. As far as I know he's former-self has yet to be revealed. There's plenty of speculation about him online already, but I want to stay on the topic of this "longcoat" archetype and what it might mean.

They're travelers of outer edges. depths. reaches. As a risktaker, or risk breaker (that's another Square game allusion), a card player is a little obvious. But cards can have a mystical element to them. Like a card reader. Foretelling futures and fortunes. Coincidently Luxord's identity as one of the Foretellers is already on the table.

Another coincidence, my own story uses tarot card motifs. Mainly because Perseverance uses tarot arcana motifs in it's story. As I said my story is hardly concrete and subject to revisions. But going back to my original draft, I was using my coyote character as a bouncer. Carding people at the door. It was mostly for comedic effect. He'd ID people by tarot cards, but then with one character he draws a Uno WILD card - like, "you're not suppose to be here". A wild card, and no one-eyed jack. Coming from another deck.

Why is it called a "deck" anyways? Etymonline.com suggests cards are stacked like the decks on a ship. And ship "decks" are a covering. From the verb deck, like "~deck the halls with boughs of holly~". As in decoration. But decking someone, like knocking them out, is another nautical term where the deck is the floor they're face down on.
Idk "cards stacked like the ship decks" seems a little weak to me to be a good explanation.

 

[coyotecraft]

FFXI currently has a free play period, so I refreshed my memory somewhat by replaying the events involving the Cosairs.
But actually the wiki explains what they are a little better. They were a navel fleet for a former kingdom the fell to the Empire. Their ship/hideout is wrecked but they manage to evade the current empire's clutches.
I don't think the gambling aspect of the job class is really explained, except for the line "Luck is my weapon".
Similar to the Pirates of the Caribbean plot, the coins of this fallen kingdom are cursed due to a pact with the Avatar Odin, and the undead in this region are former citizens of this nation that the empire is trying to erase.

Maybe it was my imagination. But I detected a hint of FF8 characters with the members of the "Seagull Phratrie". (Phratry = Fraternity = brotherhood). Laguna's party members are Kiros, last name, "Seagill", and Ward, who's weapon is a harpoon anchor thing. Then Laguna reads like Lagoon.
It makes me wonder if "longcoats" should have ships or at least a mode of transportation?
I also wonder if Radiant Garden in KH can become mobile like the Gardens in FF8? Laguna was planned to appear in KH: Birth by Sleep with a storyline connected to the Mirage Arena. "Mirage" like the city of Esthar perhaps.

I'm getting off track. Longcoats seem to be liberators of oppression, or the remnants of a former socieity/civilization. They're lucky or can literally dodge bullets, as is the case in The Matrix. They're quickdraws. Esoteric. Fraternal.

Oh, Junior from Xenosaga must be another one. He and his brother have the Durandal, which has a casino, and they're kind of like privateers as well. But best of all, he's something of a psychonaut in the second game.

And another longcoat gunslinger would be DC's Constantine. Who is also kind of a mystic, psychonaut, exorcist. The only thing he was missing was a nautical element. But a recent development made Shark King his ex-lover. That counts right?