* If I'm wrong I"m sorry, it's been a while.
When the heck did RPGFan have fanfics?
You guys sound like you need to lay off the GF usage for a while.
That said, FFVIII's plot was all about Squall and his developing romance towards Riona to begin with. I mean, even the assassination attempt could be boiled down to "Don't worry. Whatever happens, Squall will take care of it.". Rinoa has an item that could depower the Sorceress? Great, lets lock her in her room and ignore her and her stupid plan, and hope she doesn't do anything stupid like tricking another party member into letting her out so she could put herself in harm's way and force Squall into making a detour to save her. Drop gates both in front of and behind the Sorceress' float? Great, now she knows that somebody's gunning for her, hopefully no apprehensive snipers have to take a shot at her while she's on red alert and her shields are up. Hell, it was so much of Squall's show that when he inevitably makes his attempt at offing Edea, nobody takes action to stop his attack outside of Squall's turncoat rival Seifer and Edea herself, despite the fact that not only is he storming the float in the middle of a parade meant to display and showcase the nation's military might, but that the whole goddamn nation should've been on high alert given the two previous attempts made on Edea earlier that very night, let alone the Timber clusterfuck where Squall and co. publicly broadcasted both their intent and their affiliation on the very first live television broadcast in almost twenty years. The most damming thing about the whole assassination attempt though, is that the only reason why it fails is because Edea got a cutscene powered attack off before Squall could deliver the finishing blow.
Basically, despite everything that could possibly go wrong going wrong in the most spectacular way possible, that is the sole reason why the whole clusterfuck falls apart, even his allies didn't even bother once he went down.
And then there's crap like NORG, the Centra continent, the Orphanage cutscene, anything having to do with Esthar, anything having to do with the political or geographical scale of anything (you have a world with two, maybe three countries counting Balmb, five cities, eight if you count the Gardens, three villages, and a bunch of miscellaneous crap like a prison, a missile base, a deep sea research station, an orphanage, and a couple of dungeons and forests), anything involving Riona (yes, including that stupid dance scene, what other explanation is there for Squall's initial ineptitude at dancing other than he suddenly cutscene powers his way into getting good in a hurry; seriously, she is so much The Load that its no wonder I hate her archetype with a passion), among other things.