Seifer and Final Fantasy VIII
To Seifer, a sorceress isn't a woman. A sorceress is an ideal, a powerful force of nature who needs an equal to be her match. A sorceress needs a protector to protect her from the world and to protect her from herself, as her powers are so great that if she isn't reminded by her knight that she is human, she will gradually become less so. It really plays into the white knight in armour protecting his lady thing, except that in this world, the lady is more than capable of frying you off the face of the earth if you cross her. It's portrayed as a romantic relationship between equals, with a sorceress' love for her knight helping her to remain human, and a knight's love for his or her sorceress protecting her from a world that may or may not like sorceresses. This is a romantic fairytale, really, only it's one that Seifer bought hook, line and sinker on the basis of unconditional love. Being an orphan from infanthood as a result of a war, Seifer grew up in an orphanage until he was six, and then was sent to a military academy where he was taught to be a mercenary when no-one else would adopt him. There wasn't a lot of unconditional love towards Seifer as he grew up and he grew up craving the love that he didn't have. This is why he acts out, for anyone who's curious -- he wants any kind of attention at all, so that people don't abandon him and ignore his existence. The other thing he does is desperately long for a sorceress that he can love and she can love him, as equals. His childhood was spent watching movies about sorceress knights, when he reached Balamb Garden (the military academy) he borrowed out all the books on sorceresses and their knights and it was his big romantic dream.
The first mission our newly graduated mercenaries go on takes place in an annexed town called Timber. They're sent there to assist a resistance group (that Seifer brought to the attention of SeeD) in overthrowing their occupiers, Galbadia. Seifer (who did not pass the test to become a mercenary. Again) breaks out of detention and comes after said mercenary team, believing that they can't cope with the situation, and then ... promptly exacerbates the situation by holding the lifelong president of Galbadia hostage. As one does. Then the Sorceress appears, a conversation takes place between her and Seifer and then he leaves with her. We don't see him until the end of the first disc, where he's ... not himself anymore.
We aren't told what happened between Seifer and said sorceress (Ultimecia, possessing the body of his mother figure, Edea). This is somewhat unfortunate because Ultimecia kind of comes out of nowhere and tidying up her plotline would have cleaned the story up. But I digress! On the upside, there's enough subtext to make inferences as to generalities ... if not specifics. Which I would like. Plz to be getting on that and leave FFVII alone.
One: Seifer is a different person after meeting Ultimecia and becoming her knight
This is explictly pointed out in the game itself on multiple occasions. Squall observes it at the beginning of the second disc. Raijin and Fuujin say it to Seifer's face on Lunatic Pandora before leaving him. Of anyone in the game, these three people know Seifer best and know that he may be a troubled teenager (which he really is), he's not normally off his rocker. And let's be honest; from the parade in Deling City (end of disc 1) to Lunatic Pandora (beginning of disc 4) Seifer's sanity's pretty frayed. Hilariously, the game indicates this by the state of his long grey overcoat -- the more frayed it is, the more tenuous Seifer's grasp on his sanity is. By the time we see him in Lunatic Pandora, he's utterly snapped. Also, his coat's a mess.
Furthermore, I believe the script itself is designed in such a way to demonstrate to the layer that Seifer was very different post-Timber. Seifer is written inconsistently and given the massive contradictions, I can't help but think it was deliberate. While the storyline has plotholes you can drive a truck through at times, the main characters are written reasonably consistently. So Seifer's contradictions -- and they are pretty bad -- are a deliberate literary device.
Seifer at the beginning of the game cannot take orders. He's failed a test to become a SeeD (which he's been working towards all his life) three times because he cannot bring himself to follow orders for a few hours. Seifer's too fiercely independent to take any sort of instruction well, as he's convinced that he knows a better way to do things. Things will be done Seifer's way or not at all. However, after becoming Ultimecia's knight, Seifer takes orders. He ties up Squall and tortures him because he's ordered to by Ultimecia. This is quite jarring because a) Seifer doesn't respond well to being instructed and b) Squall's the only person who has been around in Seifer's entire life and ergo is the only person who truly understands him. It's that weird rivalry/quasi-friendship thing they have going on. Before, Seifer would duel Squall as an equal, consequences be damned. Now he's torturing a helpless teen who just took an iceshard through his shoulder. Nobility and chivalry towards one's rival really doesn't include torture. The fact that Seifer didn't challenge Squall to a duel but instead tortured him because he was ordered to was, to me, really telling.
The orders thing is interesting to me because it shows just how bizarre Ultimecia's knight is. He changed from someone who is so wild spirited that he can't even remain in a tactically significant area for a few hours to a puppet of a sorceress he's never even met. It's pretty clear to me that the Seifer we see from the end of disc 1 to the end of events in Lunatic Pandora is very different, and that something happened to him to make him this way.
Two: What I think happened to him
Firstly, I want to emphasise that I'd be very skeptical if any of this came out in play. At most, there may be vague allusions. After all, this is all inference and supposition on my part and Seifer doesn't want your weak pity anyway :|. But given that it's a huge part of why he was how he was during the game, I kind of need some idea! And ... well. Speculation is fun. :(
Unlike Edea, I don't think that Seifer was a helpless passenger in his own body. Although an argument could be presented that possession was the reason for his personality change, I think that Seifer was, to some extent, separate from Ultimecia and this is evidenced by dialogue between Seifer and Ultimecia. I don't think he was responsible because I don't think he was sane.
Going back to something I mentioned earlier, the scene where Seifer first encounters and interacts with Ultimecia, he's in a very sticky situation ... as one tends to be when holding the dictator of an aggressively military country hostage. Ultimecia appears and after a discussion about how Seifer doesn't know what to do, she says that he can make things right for him if he comes with her. Seifer does and before they disappear, Ultimecia tells him to say goodbye to his childhood. This interaction between Seifer and Ultimecia is dripping with unfortunate subtext when you realise that the person that Ultimecia is using as a meatpuppet is the woman who raised Seifer until he was six. With this in mind, Ultimecia and Seifer's conversation takes on a new character. Seifer believes that Ultimecia can make things better because she looks and sounds like his mother figure. This makes her final line all the more chilling. Saying goodbye to childhood can mean a number of things, but in the context I assume it means a loss of innocence. The term "liberi fatali" gets thrown around a lot because of the events of the game are predestined. Seifer's particular destiny is to be manipulated by Ultimecia, lose his innocence and then his sanity.
Do I think there was a sexual element involved? Yes. It's hard to watch a woman say to a teenager "let me be your mother figure and make things better and safe for you" and then add "I'll help you become a man" without thinking there's a sexual element there! Add in there Seifer's romantic dream of being a sorceress knight and being loved and needed as an equal and you have some serious sexual subtext. Further, I think it was this sexual desire and Seifer's need for affection that Ultimecia used to break Seifer to her will. She represented everything that Seifer ever thought he wanted and Seifer always is passionately serious about things. If he swears he will do something he will do it. And Ultimecia, in my opinion, used this conviction and need. Did they have sex together? I ... imagine they did something but we are not going to get into what exactly. :D
At the end of the second disc, Ultimecia possesses the body of Seifer's ex-girlfriend to tell him that if he raises Lunatic Pandora (it's ... a tower thingy that was in the sea), she'll allow him to dream again. There's an interpretation I've come across a few times that assumes that Ultimecia is literally preventing Seifer from dreaming. My interpretation though is that she really means "aspirations and desires", because that is the context that Seifer uses it. This explains why he doesn't respond when Ultimecia calls him a child, useless and worthless. He needs her. Instead of being an equal with Ultimecia, he's dependent upon her to become the person he remembers being, if vaguely. He'll do what she says when she says it not because he chooses it, but because he can't choose not to. In truth, he is Ultimecia's pet.
Three: What happened after Lunatic Pandora?
The next time we see Seifer is at the game ending where: a) he's reunited with friends who left him in Lunatic Pandora; b) he's on the opposite side of the globe from when he started and c) he seems to be a little older and wiser for his experiences. How did he get there? Well, I'm going to make a few assumptions! I bet these are all in the Ultimania guide that I cannot read as it's in moonspeak. :( I've read some of the translations, which make up some of this section though \o/
My first assumption is that after time decompressed, Seifer, Raijin and Fuujin were all in Esthar. This is a pretty lucky place for Seifer to wind up because Esthar researches sorceresses. (This is not surprising as their previous ruler was Adel -- who was quite insane -- and even after they deposed her and sent her to the moon, she has enough power to transmit messages of her own even through the planetary wide jamming that her prison puts out) Givne that the Esthar researchers already knew some of what happened after Edea freed herself, it'd make the process quicker in regards to assessment. Additionally, the Esthar president and the Commander of Garden have a relationship (...not like that you sickos :D) and so transporting the three of them wouldn't be especially difficult and really in Garden's best interests. I don't think, fandom to the contrary, that Seifer is going to be tried as a war criminal because Edea wasn't! I mean, she did kill Galbadia's president in front of a huge crowd, even if she was being controlled at the time. So I assume that the same would apply to Seifer.
As to why he's not in Garden as it flies over Balamb, I'm not sure that Seifer's ready to return yet. It's pretty reasonable; he's eighteen, he's betrayed his home of thirteen years for a dream that's now in pieces, along with the rest of his life. He's a little sad and wistful as the Garden flies overhead, but if his little temper tantrum before's any indication, he's ...better. Ish. SeeD has forgiven him -- Selphie mentions in her diary that Seifer was insane and that he has nowhere else to go -- so I assume that he's going to go back at some point. My own headcanon has him coming back at the end of the game, after Selphie's camera battery dies, because it seems to fit the way that the canon wanted to go with it.
What about camp?
For camp purposes I assume that the basic personality traits that Seifer showed in the first half of disc one are his core personality traits, and he'll definitely have them. However, I assume that Seifer will be changed somewhat by his experiences, because ... well, he went insane. He's still going to be the passionate, attention-seeking bag of dicks, because that's what I love most about him. That said, the strength of FFVIII lies in its character development and evolution, and so I also assume that he's going to be changed a little by his experiences.
He'll just never let on. Because he is a tool.