 phonics down
This is a handful of soft feathers from the legendary Phonics. With the advent of instant messaging, the great bird is said to have spontaneously combusted. Legend tells that the Phonics will one day be reborn, and that the rivers will run red with the blood of those who cannot spell.
Type: usable Selling Price: 115 Meat.Restores 46-50 HP and MP and also does other weird stuff (In-game plural: phonics downs) | |
Obtained From
- The Penultimate Fantasy Airship
- Protagonist
- Items
- Penultimate Fantasy chest (0-5)
When Used
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You rub the phonics down on your wrists.
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You rub the phonics down on your biceps.
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or
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You rub the phonics down on your elbows.
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Notes
- Can be obtained by using a Penultimate Fantasy chest.
- Multi-use of this item results in an all-encompassing "You rub the phonics down on your body" message.
References
- In the original Final Fantasy series, the Phoenix Down item was used to bring a defeated party member back from Knocked Out status (or Swoon, or Fatal, or whatever a specific FF game called it) and restore some Hit Points, not dissimilar to the way phonics down works.
- Notably, in Final Fantasy VI (released as Final Fantasy III on the Super Nintendo in the United States) Phoenix Down was misspelled to fit a truncated version of its name within the game's item dialog box as "Fenix Down." This is the appropriate way to spell the word following the rules of phonics.
- The "Tingly" effects are a reference to Final Fantasy VII, specifically a certain character's death, which was commented by the main character with a speech including the memorable quote "My fingers are tingling. My mouth is dry. My eyes are burning!". Many fans reacted to said character's death with "Why didn't he just use a Phoenix Down on her?".
- According to its dictionary entry, the word "phonics" means "a method of teaching reading and spelling based upon the phonetic interpretation of ordinary spelling." This relates to the advent of instant messaging in that people sometimes use phonetic spelling of words instead of their proper spelling, e.g., "wuz" (was), "wat" (what), "by" (bye), "ther" (there/their/they're), and sometimes completely nonsensical spelling, e.g., "u" (you), "r" (are), "wat", etc. The explosion of the Phonics bird can be a metaphor for the figurative "explosion" of people using phonetics so rampantly, or a humorous suggestion that people "destroyed" phonics in their attempt to shorten their typing.
- In the United States the term Phonics is used to refer to a particular instructional design such as that used by the commercial Hooked on Phonics products. The mythical bird that bursts into flames at the advent of instant messaging is a double reference to the mythical phoenix and the learning tool phonics.
See Also
Collection
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