#crying about ff7 constantly

[dark-elf-writes]

I hope you know that you dragged me into ff7 fics again.

I was just chilling, bouncing between batman, Danny phantom, and their crossovers, when bam! I am now obsessed with ff7 again. I never even played the game(s).

I had over a hundred tabs open to be read of those fanfics, what am I supposed to do with them now?

Thanks, I guess *reluctant*

You’re welcome ☺️☺️☺️☺️

If I’m going down you’re going down with me 🥰🥰🥰🥰

[dangoulains-devotion]

you mustn't blame yourself

[kadajsbitch]

How they deal with you when you’re emotional:

Final Fantasy VII

Warnings: Language, 18+, talking about mental health

A/n: This is my first time writing for this blog so bear with me. Idk if it’s going to be an active blog, but I got so much FF7 stuff I made and haven’t posted so I’m just going to drop it here lol 💀 hope you enjoy.

Also gifs aren’t mine.

Yazoo:

His answer to seeing you emotional will always be space.

It pisses him off to see you upset but not in a, "Oh my poor baby" way, but more of a "I don't want their ass being moody because that kills my mood, and it's annoying that they can't even calm the fuck down to tell me what's wrong right now." Way… 💀

So in a way he cares... but overall, he just wants things to be “normal” so he can continue on with his usual ways of life peacefully.

Once you calm the hell down, he'll come to you with maybe a tissue and a glass of water (so that your not snorting your own snot every thirty seconds) and he'll ask you what happened.

If your having an emotional outburst due to something like someone pissing you off, or your in physical pain and/or mental pain, he'll go into action to make sure its immediately taken care of ether that be dragging you to a doctor, or taking care of who bothered you.

If it's something having to do with something minor like a movie or book making you cry, then he very much will not be comforting you. You not being able to handle something fictional or even something based on real life (true crime, etc) is your own fault.

Maybe if said book is a work of Non-fiction and it was genuinely fucked up, he might add two cents and validate you on why your pissed but don't expecting him to cuddle and love you, and wipe your tears.

If it has to do with family stuff however, his reactions vary depending on the type of family situation, but he'll definitely try to be more comforting in the sense of not outright leaving you immediately despite it making him uncomfortable.

Kadaj:

Unlike Yazoo who walks away because he's not in the mood to deal with you in your upset state, he walks away because he knows how he gets when he's like this.

The last thing he would want was someone to see him at his lowest, and he feels it'll make you less prone to getting in this state if you don't have someone constantly comforting you.

Doesn't mean he isn't concerned however.

He'll find you after awhile and ask for a detailed explanation as to why you were so upset and like Yazoo, he goes into action.

If it's more on mental or physical side of an issue, he may offer some advice as to what he knows instead of wordlessly getting things set up for you, like Yazoo would.

If it's something minor, he's definitely annoyed but feels better knowing it's not something threatening.

"Why would you watch/read something like that when it clearly states in the description that it's that sort of (movie/show/book, etc)?" He’ll ask, probably rolling his eyes as he does so.

"Don't get anymore of this if your not going to be able to control your emotions."

Again, his reactions would vary depending on the family situations, because he does have some knowledge and experience when it comes to that, but he'd definitely be more comforting.

Loz:

Unlike either of his brothers, he immediately is standing up, looking at you like “what the fuck happened?"

Considering he could give less of a fuck about where and who he gets emotional with, you being upset in front of him doesn't phase him. It's just he wants to know what and/or who made this way.

In a way, he also wants to be there with you while you're in this state because he feels like he's the one who's constantly over emotional in front you, and so to him, it's like an "even" thing when it finally happens.

Not so much even, but he feels more comfortable being emotional when you are considering his brothers are far from emotional unless it's anger they’re displaying.

Surprisingly, he gives good mental advice if it has to do with mental health. Physical is something he'd have to get a second opinion on if that was the case, but regardless he's trying to help.

Uncomfortable with straight up cuddling (as are his brothers 💀), but he'll sit with you in either silence or try to talk to you to help you calm down.

If the reason for your emotional outburst has to do with something media like, he'll probably watch/read it to see if it'll give him that reaction too but most likely not. In that case he’ll probably shrug, a small smirk coming on his face because he can’t help but to feel in a sense more emotionally mature for once, but he’ll refrain from rubbing it in until your calm enough to handle his teasing.

If it's family, then he'll definitely listen and even end up throwing a situation that he's went through that's similar, once you finish and validate you on how your feeling. Overall, out of the three, he’s probably the best choice to talk to.

Bonus:

Sephiroth:

For the sake of this, I’ll be using C.C/Reunion Sephiroth. The remnants are still fairly new, and are adapting which is why I feel like they wouldn’t be out right evil in how they handle people they are acquainted with or have a more personal relationship with’s, emotional outburst.

Sephiroth is tricky when it comes to others having emotional outburst… as a war general, he’s used to seeing the effects of and after battle take toll on people and how they may become mentally vulnerable from it, and because of that he can be very indifferent and can come off a little harsh when he’s “comforting” those around him.

“Control yourself. This won’t be the first time you face obstacles such as these, so there’s no use in crying.”

If this is a situation outside of his usual work element however, he’d definitely feel conflicted on how to proceed.

Like his two other counterparts, I feel he’d separate himself from them due to randomly being thrown in this position. More so to keep himself calm.

I mean if we look back at C.C, he seemed fairly uncomfortable with Zack getting upset about the situation at hand, despite it being a dire one. So he’d definitely be further unraveled by someone having an outburst about something he may view as minuscule.

If it’s something having to do with someone bothering you, he’d have a quick reaction.

“Consider it taken care of.” He’d say stiffly, before hightailing it away from you to deal with whoever it was, hoping by the time he returned to brief you on what happened, you’d be more stable.

If it was mental or physical, like Kadaj he’d offer some advice on what he knew, but would ultimately do the more rational thing and suggest you speak to a doctor and/or therapist for your problems.

Again, going off from what we saw, C.C Sephiroth isn’t someone who really likes to be touched (despite him being so handsy in the remake 💀) so don’t be expecting a hug or for him to hold you or anything.

One time, a cadet was upset and he tried to force himself to do something other than stiffly telling them to get over it… he awkwardly held his hand out, and patted them… on the head.

While it did stop them from crying, the looks he got from those around him definitely made him reconsider ever offering physical comfort again. (He was trying though 😭)

If it’s something having to do with media, whether it be fictional or not, he’d simply shrug and tell you not read/watch those things if you couldn’t stomach it.

Family isn’t something he really has a grasp on, but he knows it’s important, and for your sake will try to listen and give his thoughts as best as he can for the sake of comfort.

[theartforest]

it’s finally done! this is my entry for the @turksfanexchange for @thedarling - i went with the second request:

"Seventh Heaven AU": This is a faux-coffeeshop AU where the Turks meet up at Seventh Heaven for drinks to chat/hang out. What's discussed or what transpires can be as silly or as serious as you want, and the event can happen at any time (during or after the main events of FF7 OG or FF7 Remake; Advent Children and so on).

I would LOVE to see Tifa if possible (obvi) or any other Avalanche members for that matter, but I will completely leave it up to the author/artist to do so.

read more about it under the cut! or if you want, you can read the entry and see it here on ao3!

so here we have four of the main Turks at Seventh Heaven, hanging out and having a few drinks! I went with the 'main' Turks that appear in the main FF7 game (so unfortunately that excluded Cissnei) just taking a breather. Tseng's having a glass of wine as well as a glass of water (via my boyfriend's suggestion that Tseng looks like he'd be on top of things well enough to drink water as well as wine) and looking completely done with Reno, Elena's having a cocktail delivered to her courtesy of Tifa, Reno's on his third bottle of beer, and Rude's having a nice glass of whiskey and looking at Reno judgmentally because he's gotta deal with a very very drunk partner after all this, and the three Avalanche members [I wasn't sure if I wanted to include Barret and/or Cloud so I included the other three, I hope that's okay!] at the bar counter itself talking and doing normal bartender stuff because they wanna help Tifa out.

I really had a lot of fun doing this fanart, it's technically my first piece of Final Fantasy art ever! Did a lot of experimenting, especially in shading the hair and skin (which turned out to be a huge improvement to how I usually do it) and backgrounds and lighting are still something I need to work on, but I'm really happy with how this turned out!!

I also wanna give a few thanks to some people!

Huge thanks to Leo, my boyfriend, for constantly encouraging me and giving me some feedback - it really added some nice finishing touches for this piece!

Also, I used the Sims 4 for the composition and reference of this image, so huge thanks to those who created these ;u; without them I'd be a crying ball on the floor, so here they are (from the ts4-poses Tumblr blog):

Tifa and Elena's poses

Reno and Rude's poses

Tseng's pose

Wedge, Biggs, and Jessie's poses

[pilvimarja]

What are some of your favorite video games?

I've been gaming since the early 90s and I'm kind of passionate about video games, so this is going to be long! :D I think my current #1 favorite and most replayed game is Alien Isolation. It's a sequel to the first Alien movie where you play as Ripley's daughter Amanda, and it does an incredible job capturing the look and overall atmosphere of the movie. Also one of the scariest and hardest games I've ever played and one of the few games where I've achieved the Platinum Trophy, which I'm really proud of.

Another game I'm constantly playing since 2020 is The Long Dark. It's a survival game set in a remote island in Canada during a harsh winter and your aim is to, well, stay alive. It's not an easy game, but there's something incredibly meditative and calming about sitting by a cosy fire and listening to the blizzard outside. Another survival game I love is the first Subnautica. I still don't know if that game cured my thalassaphobia or if it made it worse...

I also love the Final Fantasy series. I've been playing it since FF7 and look forward to owning a PS5 so I can play the new one. FF8 was actually my first fandom and the fandom that taught me all about shipping and OTPs.

Another game series I like is Assassin's Creed. The Ezio trilogy has an amazing story and a protagonist and I really wish they'd remake it for current gen consoles. I also love AC Black Flag and AC Odyssey, and the protagonists Edward and Kassandra are among my favorite game protagonists ever. AC Valhalla is not much of an AC game, but it's an incredible Viking/Norse mythology simulator.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game that left a lasting impact on me and has the best written and acted game protagonist ever, in my opinion, but it's also a game that I don't think I'll ever be able to replay all the way to the end.

I was more into the Silent Hill franchise back when the SH vs RE internet battles were at their peak, and I still love the first three SH games, but I've really fallen in love with the Resident Evil franchise in recent years. The original games were always a little too challenging and frustrating for me with their tank controls and intense inventory management, but I've loved every modern RE game since RE7.

Another game I've replayed countless times is the first BioShock. The story is incredible (avoid spoilers if you can!) and it has one of the most beautiful and atmospheric game worlds ever created. I also like the two sequels, but nothing beats the underwater city of Rapture from the first game.

Days Gone is my favorite post-apocalyptic zombie game, along with the Last of Us games. Horizon Zero Dawn and the sequel are both excellent and I'm actually planning to replay them this winter.

This has already gotten super long, but I want to end this with a shoutout to the original Medal of Honor and Spyro games, which used to be some of my favorite PS1 era games, the Monkey Island franchise and other old-school LucasArts games, Far Cry 5, the Uncharted trilogy, the Mass Effect trilogy and the Dishonored trilogy and Prey, which is from the same studio as Dishonored. And the new Tomb Raider trilogy and the modern era Wolfenstein games are also a lot of fun!

[hikennosabo]

trimax volume 5 random thoughts

the moment i saw this volume cover, i said to myself, "oh man, the book club is going to be crazy this week."

these are all very disconnected sorry

^ is this the first time we're seeing the injection power-up?

watching the 98 anime i could never really take midvalley completely seriously - i mean, using a saxophone as a weapon is objectively pretty hilarious. but his fighting style as we see it here in the manga is genuinely cool and intense.

also does anyone else think that the wolfwood vs midvalley fight is kinda... homoerotic

"you are like a wolf! ...wood!" [roll credits]

i love biblically accurate vash, it hurts to watch him have such a bad time but the visuals are so cool. i think other people have said everything that could be said better than i can, so i'm not saying much about him in this post. just... oof :(

also i love meryl, have i mentioned how much i love meryl?

legato is the most unintentionally funny motherfucker on the planet. there's something very wrong with him and i find it so entertaining. he's constantly screaming crying throwing up etc

^ real legato dialogue that made me laugh out loud. he's so funny. yes honey you're depraved now let's get you to bed

girls who say owieeee! :)

elendira is SO cool and i love her so much already and want to know everything about her. also her adaptive counterpart in stampede is the biggest downgrade i've ever seen in my life, what the hell. look how they massacred my girl.

i've made the general comparison between these characters in the group chat before, but seeing knives talk on the phone has the exact same energy as seeing sephiroth use a cell phone in ff7 crisis core LOL... like "this guy is a terrifying force of nature to be feared. here's him doing something extremely mundane." it's so funny

zazie is ALSO so funny. they thought ahead enough to prepare a disguise but they're in such a rush they don't even put it on correctly. congratulations buddy that's the worst anyone's ever done it

[icharchivist]

i'm back home.

it was a religious experience for me for as far as i can say, i'm still so dizzy. I had tears in my eyes the whole way through and some specific scenes or musics would immediately open the floodgates and by the end of the movie i was a complete sobbing mess.

I haven't watched this movie in so long yet it still hits me in all the ways it could possibly hit me. I've never outgrown my ff7 phase huh

There was a mini interview/documentary before the start of the movies about the devs talking about how Advent Children inspired them to do the remake, and this whole section was filled with shots from the remakes and the movies and the original game. I cried at the first shot showing Cloud jumping from the train, i cried even harder when they showed Aerith, and then they showed a demo of Rebirth which was one of the scenes where Sephiroth and "Cloud" work together and then again i was wailing like an idiot.

then it was honestly just jumping from one scene to the next crying.

I watched Advent Children mostly with the English Dub because i was used to it from Crisis Core, so i mostly know the dialogues from there (and would like. mutter them to myself at some times before the lines happened because oughh)

Point is that in the English version at some point when Cloud comes back he says "i think i made through it, all that shilly shally", which was a sweet reference to what Tifa and Aerith told him, but hearing back in the Japanese that he doesn't refer to that at all was one thing, the other thing was to see this line translated in french "i've been carrying my pain for so long, i think maybe it's starting to wear off" (idk how to translate it well bc it's not about how it's disappearing, more just that the pain itself is worn off) and i fucking sat there in the theater like wow why do i still relate to Cloud Strife in the rip year of 2024, i thought i was over this i thought i was over this i th-

(granted all of his scenes still reminded me Why and how it's still accurate but this is because i wasn't used to this punch that it took me by surprise, as if saying "Cloud Strife in Advent Children is so relatable" isn't already a walking red flag.)

Every single Aerith and Zack scenes had me sobbing ugly tears so i'm normal. i'm so normal. I'm so fucking normal.

Bless Reno's soul for being the one thing that would constantly make me laugh in this movie though. God bless him because this amoral freak will never see the light of heaven but he lighted up my evening

also i forgot just how cool the Fusion Sword was. Is it one sword? is it two swords? well it's a Fuck You Sword that's what.

I forgot just how cool Vincent was actually, i think seeing exactly how he moves on the big screen was so much more impactful than all the other times i watched this movie

and honestly the whole screening was worth it if only for the whole fight against Sephiroth near the end. Hearing One Winged Angel blasting all around me just got me vibrating, and man, he's still the worst <33333

ALSO the Zack scene during the Sephiroth fight, everytime i forget that Zack asks Cloud if he needs his help to fight Sephiroth (because what he says before and after that is what kill me on the spot) but with the Rebirth scene i saw earlier today it shot me in the fucking face are you kidding meeeeeeeeee

And aside just from the problem duo, i was crying everytime the rest of the ff7 cast was on screen. It really felt like coming home to your family and all. god it was emotional.

Anyway i'm so normal. I cried the whole way through like a ff7 fan.

I really need to pick up the remake again seeing it as a sequel because i miss them all.

So yeah. I'm back home. I had a normal one

oh and Seiyuu wise it's so funny to me how Suzuken really don't sound like Sandalphon at all but Sakurai does really sound like something midway to his Lucifer and Lucilius' voice and it got me even more psych dmg the whole time.

also i wanted to cry everytime Reno was on the screen because Keiji :(

So i was normal. So normal; I'm the most normal i'm --

At the cinema for Advent Children screening. Sorry if i get out of it more normal than usual. Chewing on my hand.

[blackroseraven]

Uh oh so I finished the FF7 Remake.

The TLDR? I am displeased.

So let’s start where I roughly left off. Where they decided “we need more fight filler” and turned the climb up the plate into a fight up the plate. They also moved the Heli Gunner fight here and renamed it for some weird reason.

I mean, I guess if they’re going to have a fight up the plate thing moving the Heli Gunner to here makes sense. Annoying fight. Once again the cutscene phase-changes prove to be a burden rather than a blessing.

So we immediately screw up stealthing into the Shinra building and have to kill everyone in the parking garage. This makes zero sense as it would be a high-traffic area so even with someone turning off alarms and stuff for us inside the building it would still. Not work. And the fights get repetitive quick.

Also Soldier 3rd Class are annoying. And yet Crazy Motorcycle was a Soldier 3rd Class and he was super tough, while these guys are just “randomly counterattack with vacuum wave” and “spam magic.”

Get to the lobby. What do we find? An unnecessary interaction sequence. Also we know for a fact that Cloud and Tifa can definitely jump high enough to get on top of the open-ceilinged reception area. But anime rules, where the hero got no ups unless they’re in battle.

Tifa falling on her ass into the rear lobby is stupid. She’s a combat master athletic genius. I hate how they did some very basic outfit changes to appease whiny people about the “depiction of her character” and then she’s constantly in need of being saved or failing at life, which makes her appear far weaker than a lady in a skirt. It’s the same problem the RE3 Remake had, where they put pants on Jill and then made her cry and scream a lot.

Anyway. I of course choose The Stairs. Which they ruined the comedy of because part of the joke was Cloud getting to the top of the stairs and being fine and the others being exhausted. Also you can find secrets in the staircase in the original, but hey, we can’t have that.

I loathe the redesign of the Shinra building. It’s so lame and wastes so much time, and they clearly took things they wanted from the original game - the Cosmo Canyonesque theater, for example - and then just shoved them in here.

And the goddamn Sephiroth visions just giving everything away.

Also I disliked the Mayor. And how he was Briefly Important and central to the plot and then just completely forgotten about. He was much better as an honest asshole who wanted power but fell victim to it. I hate how much Avalanche has been expanded; it helps shift blame away from Barret but also creates a lot of questions about just what this rebel military-armed group was doing while Barret was accomplishing things in his messy way, even if him doing so was part of Shinra’s plot.

Also the fact that Avalanche exists only when convenient for the game’s plot and otherwise it focuses on the Avalanche that is you three.

Well, at least Hojo is still a lunatic asshole.

I did not like the Experiment boss fight. It literally just became a mock Resident Evil boss with too many phases. 

Well, we save Aerith. Which is followed by Armored Shock Troopers appearing, because they have to work them in, but they have lightsabers. They still explode - which does an idiotic amount of damage, and the character AI is too stupid to back off and thus DIES - and the skater bois that come out of them are obnoxious.

What the hell is up with Red XIII. With this whole sequence. Why is he in uncontrollable beast mode after clearly being calm and quiet. This wasn’t necessary.

More plot revelation. And Jenova. Including a full-on Cloud Meltdown.

Now we cut abruptly to the Turks and get their perspective for a bit and a touch of conscience. It’s ridiculous, though. Rude is again saying they did the wrong thing but he’s the one who hit the button when he had a great excuse not to. They did such a bad job with this part. Tseng also spouts some fake wisdom, because clearly Heidigger or the President wouldn’t have any guilt about dropping a plate. President Shinra wants to just abandon the whole city, after all!

This part just sticks in my craw because there was so much they could have done to help excuse what the Turks were forced to do, there were so many little outs to give them more conscience and character, and they keep fumbling the ball and making them “just following orders” guys instead, which takes away any redemption or humanity.

.............Whispers.

............................Aribiters of “FATE.”

What the GOD DAMN SHIT IS THIS.

Noooo no no no no noooo. This is something I hate because it’s second only to Time Travel in “Ways To Hide the Deus Ex Machina of Author Influence,” and it’s almost always done badly.

Guess what guys it’s done reaaaaal bad here.

First off the Whispers change destiny purely through their existence and interference. It’s ugly and unsubtle. Second there’s no explanation why “The Planet” wills this; it’s just a lot of “look we gotta do it this way guyz” to hide the fact that “The Planet” is “Sort Of the Original Plot of FF7.”

And yet there’s also been so many changes to that plot that the Whispers haven’t cared about! It also just erases the idea that your choices ever mattered throughout this whole game.

Avalanche HQ is coming to rescue us apparently. Have I mentioned there was no giant Avalanche organization before?

Aaaaaand of course they had to cram this infamous scene in of Sephiroth before Jenova. Because of course he’s here. In the flesh. We’re just going to meet him right now.

Cloud falls into. A mess. He’s also fine after his fall because anime.

Did I mention this game is a victim of filler over content?

What in the hell you can’t even use Red XIII he’s just a bot? COME ON. Like you were supposed to have him during the Experiment boss fight and I was like “oh they changed that oh well” but to not have him playable or even commandable at all? It feels so lazy and it feels like this ended up being a lot of messy rushwork.

My lord this whole section ends up feeling like a bad Resident Evil fanfic mashed into Final Fantasy world. We’re just murdering BOWs. Some of whom have extremely annoying attacks that they spam and made me really mad.

And then the Brain Pod. A completely unnecessary boss battle that went from “strategize” to “mash the attack button angrily while my PS4 gets angry at the crazy amount of slowdown from all of the Pods staggering at once.”

Anyway this was gross.

And it all just leads to Hojo letting us go once he has enough “data.” I hate this.

We find President Shinra dangling off the edge of the building. Why? No one knows. The girls cry that Barret is being too mean to the evil corporate capitalist. Barret somehow ends up alone with Shinra who turns from crying man to Bond villain, complete with Golden Gun, monologuing away until he gets backstabbed by Sephiroth. Who then stabs Barret. Who ends up being fine because Whispers.

Literally saying “hey don’t worry it’s fine if you die we’ll just fix it” making it feel as if everything is pointless.

Oh good, Jenova.

The fight wasn’t terrible. I am going to complain that Jenova Dreamweaver is not in the naming convention of the Jenova. It’s Birth, Life, Death; they couldn’t go with Embryo or something like that?

But again, the fight was. Longer than it needed to be but not awful. 

And then Sephiroth. Who. Just. Fucking flies away. TWICE. Pointlessly. Carrying the dead body. And yet another unsubtle reveal. 

Of course they made Rufus even prettier - also how did Reno and Rude get to that helicopter? - and of course he has a Coat of Many Belts.

And of course he’s an Anime Prettyboi now too. Sure, President Shinra was a Bond Villain but Rufus and his Doggo fight and Assess literally just gives you riddles instead of fucking telling you what to do I wasted an action for goddamn NOTHING.

I hated this fight. I hated that they made him apparently stronger than a soldier when he’s only been depicted as a dude with a shotgun, not a Trigun character. Like that was the point of Rufus; he’s ballsy and brash but he’s ultimately a corporate head. Now he’s Anime Bad Guy No. 1.

Anyway, Triple Slash him when he’s Leashed, then wait for him to reload and Braver him when possible to Stagger in the next phase.

Even though Braver has a garbage charge-up time and terrible accuracy and half the time he reloads too fast so he just counters you and then does random anime moves until he sporadically decides he’s out of ammo and reloads his gun(s).

The Arsenal fight that follows is very poorly designed. The Barrier phase doesn’t add much to the fight, and then it constantly forces you to target the wheels when you want to hit the Main Cannon. They also emphasize Red XIII as just a bot by the way he only Staggers barrier drones when you do a certain action, which is obnoxious, and then he might as well not exist otherwise.

This was a lot of just. Tanking and picking away. Also the fact that the Arsenal loves to corner itself and then use Homing Laser, meaning you can generally only hit the Laser Gun with Thunder-type spells to stop it. And sometimes even that doesn’t work.

“oh no what do we do it’s a Chargin’ its Lazers” oh it’s dead before you finished your gasp because of course we just FUCKING SHOOT IT.

Motorcycle Time. I guess the Whispers would have save Heidigger because “important” but who knows better luck next time, Cloud.

You know what really annoyed me here, though? 

They did Crazy Motorcycle Man before, and this is the perfect time for him to show up, especially since he promised a rematch.

And he never shows up.

All that potential. All that buildup. For nothing.

Anyway I died like four times on the Motorball boss fight because of control issues and a lot of frustrated mashing. Like actually Yes, this is something that was improved on: Motorball as a motorcycle boss makes sense.

Then. Sephiroth.

Who clearly just defies fate or whatever and opens a magic portal to. No Fate World or something.

frick.

Like a) this is dumb and b) this is clearly what Sephiroth wants and if they stopped to think for a moment they’d realize maybe his destiny is to be defeated which is why he’s doing this. Except c) Sephiroth clearly disobeys the Whispers whenever he pleases and they can’t do dick-all about it which MAKES NO SENSE.

and Zack. And the Crisis Core ending, no less. Just with Whispers now in the background because WHY NOT.

I hate this. I hate all of this.

Aerith wants to stop Sephiroth. Yes I would also like to stop the man I have visions of killing me and the planet. They like largely stopped writing her character at the end of the game, did you notice that? She becomes very flat apart from a few really stand-out moments and it bothers me a lot. I get that they’re trying to show “inner Aerith” and create pathos but all the lines she’s given are so flat. So stereotypical. It’s not like the good moments where she’s like “I don’t care, he sucks.” in response to Cloud warning her about fighting Sephiroth. 

And.

JUST A MINUTE YOU GUYS I NEED TO GO BACK TO THE VENDING MACHINE AND BUY SOME STUFF BEFORE WE BREAK THE BONDS OF DESTINY ITSELF.

oh my lordt this was so crudely done and absolutely just shatters the atmosphere. There were better ways to do this and time the Point of No Return than this. It’s like if you reached the Heart of the Planet in the original and then were like “oh wait I gotta go to the store” and you went five feet backwards to a random shop run by a moogle or something.

First we fight the Whispers. And they’re just Spammy Assholes.

The first phase of the fight was probably the hardest part because the mirrored Whispers were just. Jackasses, and Assess was useless as always.

It’s so messy. They crammed so much “action” together and the phases are badly thought out and long and aggravating. What the shit is “Whisper Bahamut” and why does he have unblockable high-damage energy balls he can just spam at you? Why does he randomly get to Mega Flare with like five seconds of warning? 

I didn’t even know when to summon because I thought “oh there’s gotta be something even worse we gotta fight the Big Guy, right?”

No we just break Bahamut up and then the rest of the phases are remarkably easy. Like they dumbed down the AI and even when they rage you can shred them pretty quickly.

Just a Bell Curve of Terrible.

And of course. We immediately follow up with a Sephiroth battle. SE PHI ROTH

I hate this. I hate all of this.

Punisher Mode to pressure and stagger Sephiroth. And that’s all I’ve really got for you until we get to the Stupid Phase where for some reason he starts using basic bitch elemental magic and charging himself with those element for Really Obvious weaknesses. This is like Magic Opposites 101 and you can’t do this for a final boss battle. The only time I’ve ever seen this really work as a final fight is in Lords of Shadow when you fight Satan.

Also. Scanning Sephiroth? UNKNOWN UNKNOWN.

You know what that reads to me like? They couldn’t be assed to put in any information.

Anyway, I get Sephiroth to his last phase - why is he using Supernova he DOES NOT HAVE THE BLACK MATERIA - and nuke him with Tifa and Cloud’s Level 2 Limits.

“Mwah I’m still here Cloud : ) you can’t beat me yet”

7 seconds. Is that supposed to be a reference?

Because guess what it makes me think of?

“SEVEN MINUTES. SEVEN MINUTES IS ALL I CAN SPARE...”

thanks guys great ending.

Also Zack is alive? Somehow we changed the past by changing the future? 

I hate this different timeline bullshit. I really, really do. The only good thing about the final fight in this game is that I was able to get the Buster Sword stronk enough to use it instead of any of the other stupid weapons.

I am Not Happy. 

The worst part, though, was definitely how in the endgame phase I was having issues not because of strategy or even being underleveled, but because enemies just... spam attacks at you. There’s a lot of poor design choices too, like how Sephiroth purposefully chases and targets whatever character you’re currently controlling: it makes it extremely frustrating to get AI characters to disengage so you can heal and such. 

Also like. Sephiroth is literally just using his moveset from Dissidia for the most part. Again it gives that feeling of jankiness at times, and like things were rushed in development and production. Like there’s ways to pay homage to the style and keep the way he moves without seeming to copy directly; a lot of the time he doesn’t feel smooth but rather sudden and sharp, and there’s a big difference.

So yeah.

The ending is stupid. We broke destiny for the whole world?

This isn’t FF7 at the end of it all. It’s not even really a remake. It feels more like FF7 III, or FF7B. Not a retelling or reimagining, but deja vu, something happening all over again because I dunno, someone made a wish on a monkey’s paw for a chance to save the world.

Especially because of the scenes where they have “memories” and visions of things that were really supposed to be huge surprises in the future. Does everyone know Aerith dies in FF7? Sure. Is it necessary to bring it up over and over again in the remake? Absolutely not. 

So yeah.

Finished the game. I might do one or two levels on Hard Mode just to see what these “manuscripts” are. I hate how it eliminates the importance of any choice or variance along the way with the destiny bullshit that then gets deus ex’d away anyway by Sephiroth. I hate the constantly feeling of authorial intent and interference, the plot holes and railroading. 

The game itself? It’s not terrible! It’s got a lot of good things going for it. It feels rushed at times and like there was a lot of quantity over quality. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t feel like a Final Fantasy game. It feels like an anime JRPG, like it would fit right in with the Tales series.

Here, freebie for you: rename it Tales of Midgard. The uh... Storm Discord, Diva, and Pin fighting against the evil Megami Corporation. And Storm keeps having visions of the former AGENT, Sefirah, and Neyhewh. Destiny says they will call a great Armageddon to the planet but they can break the bonds of Fate, blah blah blah, I’m not turning this into a Tales game for free hit me up Bandai.

Anyway I’m obviously bitter and jaded and probably being a little unfair, but these are my long and cranky thoughts. The ending of it all just ruined a lot of the game for me, as fun as a lot of it admittedly was, and when they did things well, they did things well! 

But they did so many of my unfavorite things and the quality just seemed to drop by the endgame, which really killed it for me. 

Especially that fucking ridiculous “pull up contest.”

Literally gave me a headache trying to do that minigame. But that might just be because of my brain problems, so. You know.

Okay. I am off to find some new thing to torment myself with.

[secret-engima]

Oh ancient plunnies, rise from thy graves and taste the air of the living world once more! Reveal to us thine secrets that the one named Enigma hath stashed away! (I mean if you want to share. I'm just curious what kinds of stories/head canons you're hiding in that dusty old attic in the corner of your brain.)

Oh gosh. I’ve been admittedly hoarding this ask because it’s so interesting but I don’t know what to do with it. XD Ummmmm

-Multiple times I have wanted to do a Journey inspired fanfic. Like- Journey the game? Uhhhh

THIS MASTERPIECE.

-I have, many times, for many fandoms, wanted to meet two characters into this- otherworld. A place of ruin and mystery and journey, where the scarf is like their life and the only things they can say are the little notes and chimes of lost songs. And these two characters have no memory of where they came from, or where they are going. They just know they need to get to the mountain. And they go together, and they BOND.

-And then they wake up, in a world that is loud and populated and filled with words that convey so much yet nothing at all compared to the simple intimacy of the song-notes. And they look for each other in that busier, more dangerous, more chaotic world, and maybe fix a few things on the way.

-I still kinda want to do a fic like that someday, but I’ve never been able to settle on what fandom I would be using and taking characters from. That and I’m never sure I’ll be able to capture the ... the atmosphere of Journey in mere words. It’s a bit intimidating to think about tbh. (not as intimidating as trying to do a fanfic for their other game ... I think it’s called Flower? Like- that one made me *cry*)

-I’ve come up with a lot of Naruto fanfics over the years, just- never finished or posted them. But I still work on a few? Idk if I’ve mentioned them on here before or not. I have an extremely angsty shapeshifter Sasuke AU and a Deaf Itachi fic I’m particularly fond of because it incorporates both time travel and a tiny Fairy Tail crossover. And also I get practice writing a deaf character. Which is fun, if hard.

-So many KHR themed plunnies. So. Many. Mostly in the vein of taking a character from one fandom, giving them Flame powers and possibly trauma, then casually kicking them back into their native Fandom to watch the chaos unfold. I’ve had ones for Naruto (all hail Stormy Cloud Neji), for Final Fantasy VII (all hail tiny angry Cloudy Cloud)- yeah. If it’s a Fandom I’ve been in, I’ve debated a KHR style AU for it at some point.

-SPEAKING OF FF7. Have I ever talked about my shapeshifter Fem!CloudxReno fic? That was a thing I started a while ago. Got pretty far on it too, then got dragged away by other fandoms. But like- it was a whole thing where certain people are able to just- shapeshift into a large animal form, but they were a small percentage. Sort of like how a certain percentage of people have two different colored eyes in RL. You know- a genetics thing considered “normal” but also “rare and cool” so to speak. Most of those who can shift are domestic themed animals or smaller wild animals like ferrets and such, but a few rare ones turn into big preds. Mostly I just wanted cranky Werewolf!Fem!Cloud and muchly snarky Reno to wind up in a ship. I regret nothing. Someday I need to finish that fic tbh.

-I had a SOLDIER!Reno au once. It never went anywhere. I mostly just wanted to cackle over the idea of Reno being the most Ninja of SOLDIERs and the Turks constantly wondering why the heck nobody recruited him before SOLDIER got their hands on him.

-Transformers Prime angst idea where a Decepticon from Shattered Glass wound up in Transformers Prime and all the mind-angst that come from being in a universe where the bad guys are now good and your friends are all evil and crazy and horrible. Fun fact: this idea later mutated into AMOSC. But I still used to debate doing this idea as a separate AU. Then I faceplanted out of the TF fandom and have been struggling too hard to get back into it for AMOSC’s sake to really bother with another TF au.

...Idk I think that’s all I got for now. It’s hard for me to dust off some of the super old plunnies at this point. They’re either in fandoms I’m not in atm or I just- can’t remember what I was gonna do with them. *shrugs* but there you go, a peak into the dustier corners of mine brain.

[paragonrobits]

a friend asked me to give a shot at doing an entry in this tier list they linked me to, of the video games inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame since 2015, and I opted to give it a shot!

My rankings are generally biased towards games I personally enjoy playing, though I will give some commentary on their historic relevance:

S-Rank

Super Mario Bros: The game that repopularized video games in the US, that arguably began the entire platforming video game genre and all its imitators and spin-offs, that spawned a new generation of video games after the Atari Crash in the US, and still a DAMN FUN game in its own right! I simply had to put this at the top ranking. After the disillusionment caused by Atari’s failures, this game brought home consoles back in a big way to the US. 

World of Warcraft: Now, I’m not much for MMORPGs. Nevertheless, I’ve followed the lore and general information in the Warcraft setting for years now, and a couple years back, my brother asked me to play it with him. I had a ton of fun, honestly! Playing a goblin mage, I believe. WoW is notable for being THE MMORPG, and still going strong. Admittedly, nowadays many games do what it does better, and the time when it was dominant as THE single game to play is past, but it was still an enjoyable experience and I really have to like how sincere the game is about its aesthetics and campy vibe. Given that the entire setting is reputedly a reskin of a Warhammer Fantasy Battle video game that went south, it’s cheery and colorful, morally gray tone is... an interesting complication in its history. (Also, HORDE. I STAN THE HORDE VERY HARD.)

The Sims: A bit of history; I did not play this game as enthusiastically as a kid as my sister and mom did. We ALL spammed the hell out of the Rosebud cheat, though; not until recent times did I actually wind up playing the game properly, when the most recent iteration of the series was free for a while. My mom didn’t care to play the game, she just liked building houses. In any case, while my attention drifted from the game now and then, I always am fascinated by the actual gameplay of caring for your simulated humans, and the way you don’t actually control them directly. This sort of hands off experience is actually a bit similar to the ‘dungeon simulator’ genre, and while the game is notorious for enabling cruelty (something I never saw the appeal of!), it’s a surprisingly wholesome experience, and it can’t be understated how unique this gameplay was at the time.

Legend of Zelda: It’s actually rather interesting how different OG Zelda is from modern games. Not just the top down perspective (which DOES pop up, now and then); the game is non-linear and allows you to go to any dungeon at any point, completing the game at your leisure, and the story is extremely barebones compared to what we may be used to. It’s quite a far cry from the linear gameplay of gradually collecting tools and working through plots that the games are known for. Breath of the Wild is, in fact, a return to form rather than an upheaval of the formula. I’ll also admit that I have a lot of affection for the gameplay of this one, as well as Link To The Past.

Donkey Kong: When you’re talking old school, as far as what you might call the modern generation of games goes (which is to say, the games that resurged after the Atari Crash), it’s hard to go wrong with Donkey Kong. It’s certainly notable for being a weird stage in Mario’s character and something that is generally ignored; it’s just strange thinking that at one point he was supposed to be abusive towards a pet ape that went in an innocent, well-meaning rampage! Personally this one kind of breaks a mold for my S-class rankings because while I like this one fine, I don’t like it THAT much; i mostly played it in the DK 64 game, and found it very difficult and that’s stuck with me. Still, I place it here for its momentous position in placing Nintendo on the map, with the influence and revolutionary technologies and gaming mechanics they would introduce, to this very day.

Pokemon Red/Blue: Hoo boy. HOO BOY it is honestly something of an oversight that I didn't immediately shove this beauty straight to the front of the S-line because good god I love this game. It's been years and years, long since I was but a whee Johnny playing a strange new game for the first time just because there was a cool turtle creature on the cover (because I was super into turtles back then), and I still love this game. Even with the improvements made to the formula since then (getting rid of HMs, the fixes and new types introduced since) there's still something lovable about this game, even as something as basic as the official artwork that just tugs my heartstrings. This game is highly notable for being an RPG that popularized the monster collecting/befriending gameplay (so far as I know), and as an autistic person, i really appreciate knowing the whole thing grew out of an autistic man's bug collection hobby from when he was a child. Pokemon is an absolute juggernaut of a media influence, and THIS is where it all began. It's first stage evolution, you might say. And not like a Magikarp or anything. This one's more like one of the starters... appropriately enough. Final Fantasy 7: This is probably a bit of a controversial take, but FF7 was not actually one of my favorite Final Fantasy entries back in the day. I never played much more of it than the beginning missions, as my cousin owned the machine in question, and I moved out before i could play it much. Final Fantasy 3 (in the US; it's more generally referred to as 6 now) was my favorite for a long, long time, and that game pioneered many of the traits that would be associated with 7: the epic story, the complex ensemble cast, though 7 really expanded on that basic idea, and previous games were hardly shabby in that regard. 9 is my favorite of the pre-10 era, with its extreme shake ups to the mechanics of the game. No; what makes 7 stand out is that it was a shift towards making Final Fantasy a constantly shifting, unique franchise where every entry was its own thing; it introduced 3D graphics with a fun and cartoony style mixed with a story that wouldn't be out of place in a cyberpunk story, and heralds Squaresoft (as it was called at the time) splitting off from Nintendo, with its censorship policies, and doing its own thing with Sony, with a great deal more freedom to write as they pleased. The party design also stands out, which each character having their own unique function in the party while the Materia concept allows a degree of modular skills to be installed, customizing them in ways that, in my opinion, the best entries in the franchise (on a gameplay level) would revisit. Colossal Cave Adventure: I'll be honest; I never played this game, and I don't believe it's particularly familiar to me at all. However, I chose it for this vaunted spot in S-rank because games of this nature, of text-based prompt and responses, are some of the most interesting things imaginable! Games like AI Dungeon are similar in some respects, and its impressive to think just how dang old this game is, and yet it managed to pull off basically being it's own DM. It has an interesting history; created by a man who worked on the precursor to the Internet, the game was made to connect with his daughter and was inspired by recent entries into Dungeons And Dragons, and later expanded upon by other programmers. It's notable that while Zork is the sort of game that would probably involve more immediate recognition (I actually mistook it for Zork at first, from the screenshot), this game was the first of its kind, and that always deserve some recognition. Minecraft: I absolutely LOVE Minecraft, and it's rightfully one of the most popular games, if not THE most popular game, of the last couple of decades, and it's interesting to think just how unconventional it is; the game is, effectively, a LEGO simulator, and as someone who honestly always wanted tons of LEGO sets as a kid but could never afford them consistently, there's something genuinely very appealing about Minecraft's basic set up. It's open approach and lack of a goal, just gameplay mechanics that encourage you to build and do as you please, makes for a very relaxing and unusual mentality not often seen in games until this point; it doesn't even have a storyline, it simply gives you a world to play around in. Of note, Minecraft's entry seems to have relevance towards video games becoming a cultural touchstone; Minecraft's visual aesthetic leans towards both blocky LEGOs and retro graphics, and certainly proves that games don't need to strive for hyper realistic graphics to be appealing. ----- A RANK Doom: I genuinely like Doom, a lot! I still have memories of replaying this game frequently, long before Doom 2016 and Eternal were glimmers; it's just genuinely very fun to play. That said, I feel that there's other games that are a bit more historically notable and while i like this game, not quite as much as other entries. But it cant be understated that this was THE first person shooter, and more to the point, was fundamental towards game design as we know it. Of note, it pioneered the idea of a game engine, which has had tremendous impact down the road in terms of making a flexible baseline system that latergames were programmed around. Additionally, the first three episodes being free, with the additional ones being purchased as part of the full game, this was, I think, the first demonstration of a demo. Back then, we called this shareware; a game which was free but had full features locked off, but otherwise you could play it however much you wanted. There's a REASON Doom winds up on more systems than Skyrim! Ultimately, while it's not one of my favorite games, it's impact on the business of gaming and the functions of game design cannot be overstated. Pac-Man: This game, is THE game that made video games a phenomenon and its worth thinking about that and how video games as a modern institituion can be drawn, however broadly, from Pac-Man's commercial success. I should note that while I've played this game extensively, it's not something I'm particularly good at; there's a LOT going on here and its a bit much for me to handle. That's probably a strength; there's a reason people had to fake their accomplishments and falsified high scores. It's worth noting that Pac-Man is a unique thing in that it has been rereleased many times over, and every generation has found it enjoyable and fun, unlike other games that set trends only to be lost out in the end. (Goldeneye, for instance!) The Oregon Trail: Like many other people I assume, I first played this game as something available on school computers. Purportedly made as an educational game to teach students about history, this game may be notable for, among other things, being an entry point towards the idea of resource management in video games (as well as being hellishly difficult, by the standards then, but that DOES illustrate a point, does it not?). It's also the oldest, most continuously available game ever made, even now being ported to smartphones, or so I hear! It seems to be a very early example of edutainment games, and a genuinely great one at that. It probably helps that a selling point is that it doesn't really mince around with its subject matter; anyone who's played this game knows that total party kill is the default assumption, as it was in life. Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat: I place these two together as I feel that they form a duo of sorts, and defined fighting games of my childhood and modern gaming experience; name a fighting game, from Injustice to something as deliberately different as Smash Bros, and it has SOME relation to these games, even if its in terms of doing something completely different. These games set a mold for fighting games! Among other things, both games feature iconic characters as a selling point, and to this day fighting games make their mark based on how signature their characters are. Mortal Kombat is of course an incredibly violent game (though very tame, by modern standards), and its fatalities and depicitons of violence sparked thought and arguments on what video games ought to be allowed to depict, for better or for worse. It's not implausible to suggest that the overly strict restrictions on what video games could depict go back to Mortal Kombat's fatalities, specifically (since there's far worse games predating it, though too graphically primitive to be obvious). Street Fighter, conversely, strikes me as having more characterization and depth, especially as far as fighting systems go; I find it hard to be interested in many fighting games now, if they don't offer as much depth as the likes of Street Fighter 2. Street Fighter stands out for innovating multiplayer play, initially in the arcade, and its not implausible to say that the likes of Smash Bros is a descendant of sorts of the specific mentality Street Fighter brought to the table. Consider also that it is STILL a mainstay in the remaining arcades and cabinets in service today! Tomb Raider: This is a game i legit liked back in the day, and there's some part of me that's sad that the platforming, puzzle solving and focus on exploration has not really made it back into the modern Tomb Raider series, last I checked. There's probably something interesting in that Lara Croft represents a bit of an intermediate period between platforming mascots and modern Edgy Protagonists; you know the ones. Balding white dudes with vague dad vibes, but this is not a slight on Lara; she definitely has a ton of personality, even just at a cover glance. This game had a strong focus on exploration, and that's honestly something I really like. Super Mario Kart: I'm going to be controversial here; complaints about the Blue Shell are kinda overrated. It's not that different from, say, a red shell hitting you from behind when you're close to the finish line. But, jokes and old 90s memes aside, this game has some interesting status in that it started the idea of making spin-off games in dramatically different contexts; Crash Team Racing and Sonic Drift, for example, are listened as similar games. On a franchise level, this began the trend of Mario becoming a truly flexible character who could do pretty much whatever was required of him, not just the original platforming games, and its possible his imitators never quite learned the same lesson. Though one wonders what Miyamoto might have thought if he'd known how many thinkpieces he would spawn with 'why does mario go-karting with Bowser when they're enemies?'. For my part, I favor the idea that the other games are in-universe fictions they're actors on and this is their actual dynamic, or that Mario is a relaxed dude who doesn't mind playing kart games with his foe. (I mean, he's not Ridley. Bowser's easy enough to get along with.) Animal Crossing: Again, I have to emphasize that I've never actually played this game, at least on a consistent basis (and by that, I mean I MIGHT have played it on the Gamecube, once, in the early 2000s), and have to speak from what I've seen of what it sparked. And I really do like the way it really codified the sub-genre of relaxed, open-ended games where the player is free to do as they like, without much stress or fear, which is something I think more games could stand to do. On my personal list of features that my ideal video game would have, Animal Crossing would definitely offer a few ideas. I am reminded of farming simulators, such as Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley; while they are different beasts entirely, there's a familiar sense of non-combat relaxation that's pleasant to see. Spacewar!: This machine is GODDAMN old, and like an old fogey predating modern humans, it deserves our respect. It's so old, it predates Pong. Supposedly created as part of predictative Cold War models, with an emphasis on emulating sci fi dogfights, producing a game that soon proved popular, for over a decade remainign the most popular game on computer systems, and a clumsy foray into arcade gaming (that didn't pan out, unfortunately) led to the creation of Pong by its creator, which is another story all its own! And Pong is directly responsible for the idea of the video game itself; this game launched the entire video game industry as we understand it! No small feat, indeed. ----

B RANKED Sonic The Hedgehog: I must state that I DO like this game, though not as much as later entires like Sonic 3 and Knuckles, or the Sonic Adventure series; the fast paced action seems a bit hobbled by the traps and need to be careful of surroundings, which would seem to run counter towards the whole idea of GOTTA GO FAST, y'know? But the game presents an interesting viewpoint on the nature of mascot gaming; created specifically, so it is said, as a rival to Mario, Sonic was designed as a mascot with attitude, and inspired a host of imitators; he's probably the only one to escape the 90s more or less intact, and this may have something to say about his flexibility, star power, and also the fact that he's a pretty mild character, all things considered. This game certainly has its place in gaming history, giving an important place in the console wars of yesteryear. Believe me, I was a kid in the 90s, Sonic was a HUGE deal. Space Invaders: This game is noted to have catapulted games into prominence by making them household, something outside of arcades, and it shows! An interesting detail of note is that supposedly, the Space Invaders were meant to all move at high speed, but this was either too hard to play against, or too costly on the processor; it was found that by making them speed up as they were defeated, it created an interesting set of challenge. You have to appreciate game history like that. In general, its success prompted Japanese companies to join the market, which would eventually produce what I imagine was a thriving, competitive market that would eventually get us Nintendo and it's own gamechangers down the road. Grant Theft Auto 3: I'm going to be honest with you. I don't much care for this sort of game. The Saints Row series, with its fundamental wackiness, is the kind of game I really DO like if I'm going for something like this, and GTA sort of leaning towards the 'cruel for fun and profit' gameplay is really unappealing for me. However, I'd be remiss if I didn't address this game, and what seems to come up is two things: the game's sheer freedom in its open world (which certainly pushed the bar for games of that nature, and has made it a byword for gamers screwing around in a game just to see what ridiculous things they could or couldn't do) and the infamous reputation from the mature aspects of the game. Personally, I'm not much for this game's take on maturity (if I wanted to discuss a game of that nature, I'd suggest, say, Spec Ops: The Line) but I really do appreciate what this game and its series did for the open world genre, and the sheer possibilities presented for letting you do what you wanted. King's Quest: I've never played this game, but I am a HUGE fan of the point and click genre (also known generally as the adventure game genre) that it spawned; without this game, there's no Monkey Island, no Sam and Max, no The Dig or Full Throttle, or Gabriel Knight. This game was similar to previous text-based games, with a text parser to input commands, but with the distinction of a graphical interface to move their character around, which would be the seed of later games such as the SCUMM engine of Monkey Island and other Lucasarts games (which, to me, ARE Adventure Gaming). The puzzles, comedic sensibilities, and interface innovations originated with this game, and codified those later adventure games i love so much. Starcraft: This is another one those list of 'games I should have already played by now'. I'm not much of an RTS person, barring forays with games such as Impossible Creatures, Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War, and more strange entries such as Brutal Legend, and I contend that the combat aspects of 4X games like Civilization DO count on some level; the specifics of troop movement and unit strengths/weaknesses are a bit beyond me, when you get to more complex stuff. Starcraft, reading between the lines, really introduced the idea of multiplayer culture especially for RTS, pioneered the Battle(dot)net system (which I mostly recall from Diablo, if I'm being honest!) as well as the idea of relative strengths and powers for individual factions so that they became characters in their own right. It's still a very popular online game, and that says SOMETHING. Also, I tend to use zerg rushes, so I would probably play Zerg. Probably. (There is much speculation on whether or not, like Warcraft being a failed Warhammer Fantasy game, if the same holds true for Starcraft and Warhammer 40k. I lean on the side of 'probably not'; the differences are too notable. The Zerg and Tyranids have some similarties, but that's probably because they're based on the same broad hive mind evil insect aggressor trope, and they have enough differences from there to be very distinct from one another. It's not like how OG Warcraft's orcs were very obviously warhammer orcs with less football hooliganism.) Bejeweled: This is a firm case of a game that I don't play, but I really have to respect its influence on gaming as a whole. Apparently it started as a match three-type game with a simplistic formula that proved wildly popular (perhaps making a point that simpler can be more effective, in game mechanics), with a truly explosive record of downloads; over 500 million, it seems. Thus its fair to say that this game set the precedent for casual games, which have become THE market. Regardless of your feelings on that genre, this one was a real game changer. (Pun intended, absolutely.) ----

C RANK Pong: "By most measures of popular impact, Pong launched the video game industry." This line alone saws it all, I think. It wasn't the first video game, but it was one of the more early ones, and its the one that really made video games and consoles successful, gaining widespread attention from the mainstream audience, as well as getting Atari recognition (for better or for worse, but perhaps that was just a development of being on top, so to speak; maye the console wars at least kept the big three honest). It also started the arcade revolution of games, and this humble game is essentially responsible for the entire state of video games as a concept, as we know it today. Halo: No disrespect to Halo, but it's just a game series I've never quite been able to get into. Those games are very hit and miss for me; games like Call of Duty, Battlefield, Gears of War and everything like that are just... hard for me to get into. It takes something specific like Borderlands or the Besthesda Fallout series, or something else, for me to get hooked, and Halo just doesn't do it for me! Nevertheless, I would be QUITE remiss if I simply dismissed it, and there's reasons for it to be inducted into the hall of fame barely three years into the hall of fame making inductees. Firstly, it was Microsoft's big entry into the console wars, and it must be said this was a MASSIVE upset and a completely unprecedented shift in the assumptions of the console wars back then; NO ONE expected microsoft to actually do this, let alone redefine gaming out of Sony and Nintendo's favor like that. At the time, PCs dominated FPS games, and Halo showed that consoles could do it just fine. It must also be said that it has a very intricate and complex system of lore, backstory and material that was quite distinctive for a new setting back in the day, and while I've seen people object to it's gameplay, I suspect that its with the benefit of hindsight; Halo offered an extremely unusual degree of freedom in achieving the goals set out for you. (Cortana also didn't deserve getting her name slapped onto that search assistant that eats up all your RAM.) Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego: Surprisignly enough, based on the article, this game was NOT an adaptation, but the source material of this character. This is where the fancy, mystery lady in the red coat started! Evidently this game was originally an edutainment game with a cops and robbers theme, and inspired by Colossal Cave Adventure from higher up on the list, and one must appreciate the effort that went into it. This one is ranked low, mostly because it didn't seem TOO notable to me. Honestly I'm surprised this is where Carmen Sandiego started. (And that she doesn't get enough credit as an iconic theatrical villain who won't go a step too far, but that's another rant.) -

D LIST

Here we are. The D LIST. The bottom of the sorting pile; the lowest of them all, the... well, the ones that I honestly don't necessarily dislike, but couldn't place higher for reasons of notability, personal interest, or perceived impact on the history of gaming. John Madden Football: Sports games, as a whole, really do NOT do it for me. I don't like real like sports at ALL (with, as a kid, a brief interest in boxing and that was just because they had gloves like Knuckles from Sonic the Hedgehog) so its hard for me to say that I find the history of this one all that compelling. Even so, there's some interesting elements in how this game was a sequel to a previous failed attempt, with a bold new attempt at a more arcade-style action game with a more dramatic take on the players, who would in turn be rated in different skill sets. The Madden series is STILL going so... it worked out pretty well, I'd say. (FUCKIN EA WAS BEHIND THIS ONE??? wow, EA is older than I thought.) Microsoft Flight Simulator: It's honestly a bit painful sorting this one so low, since I had many happy times as a wee Johnny playing this game back in the old days. I mean the OLD, old days. This was like, the days when Usenet was the preferred way for people to talk online. (Not me, though. I didn't talk to people, then. I was even less social than I am now, which is saying something!) All the same, I suppose that it was important to not crowd too many entries in a specific folder, and statistically, something had to keep getting knocked down, and in the end, I couldn't honestly say I still enjoyed this one enough to place it higher. Still, credit must be given where it is due; this game stands out for being an early foray into simulator gaming, showing a realistic depiction of actual flight. It has apparently been updated and rereleased many times since, which is impressive! Tetris: I like puzzles. So it might be surprising to hear this seminal game ranked so low; firstly, I like different KINDS of puzzles (like weird ones where you have to fling your sense of logic to the moon and back, or make use of gaming mechanics) and honestly this game is kind of stressful for me. You gotta keep an eye on a lot of different things flying around all at once, and constantly move things around, and that kind of attention and quick thinking does NOT come easily to me. All the same, I really have to admire how it was born from it's creator's pleasure in solving mathematical puzzles about sorting shapes into boxes, in a manner strangely remniscient of Satoshi's bug collecting that became Pokemon. Certainly the game's simplicity has proven a universally appealing thing, and may say something about the value of keeping it simple. Microsoft Solitaire: This game apparently became pay-to-get some time ago in recent computer generations, and let me tell, you, it was genuinely depressing to find that out. I remember younger decades, from the 90s and on, when this game was a regular and free feature in Windows computers fir MANY years. You got a computer, this game was on here. I was a kid, and i remember watching my mom play this game and makign the cards go WHOOP WHOPP all over the place and marveling, because I couldn't ever do the same thing. (A related note: I am terrible at this game. Go figure!) Of note, this game was massively widespread, and just EVERYWHERE, and I think everyone who ever played a computer back in those days instantly remembers it in some way. It was just... ubiquitous. Centipede: Oh, ol' Centipede. I don't mean to be mean to you. But between the likes of Pokemon and Super Mario Bros, even the arcade Donkey Kong, someone had to keep dropping down the leaderboard that is this tierlist, and unfortunately, there were other games that felt higher up than you. All the same, you're a very good game, and honestly, I like you more than some other games ranked higher for reasons of relevance to gaming history. Certainly more than anything else in D-listing. The colorful and appealing palette is noteworthy. That trackball controller! Amazing! (More games should use trackballs. They're fun and easy to use.) At the very least, Order of the Stick did a joke with you once, and that's better than anything I can do for you. All the same, you're a cool game.

[whoisjennifercornet]

Update: Monica Edwards and the Freddie Lounds Youtube Channel

Jennifer Cornet. The FF7 House. An internet mystery we all know. In the second half of the 2010s a fandom investigator surfaced, claiming to link Jennifer Cornet with the fan community of the TV Series “Hannibal.” This was the dawn of the “Tattle-Crime Saga”, as reported by a Youtube channel titled “Freddie Lounds”. The channel was created by Monica Edwards, a woman in her mid-thirties at the time and a fan of the series. Aside from her above listed legal name she has also been known as Eve Rebecca Habat in some corners of the internet and possibly other aliases. 'Unprofessional' would be a kind way to describe Monica's narration of the case as she would constantly fly into rants which were barely relevant to the overarching story. However, her investigation work often appeared solid and credible. Then one day in early 2020, the Youtube channel she had worked so hard on vanished, erased from existence by Monica herself. My immediate suspicion was that she had terminated the page because inaccuracies and falsehoods of her claims had been brought to light. Was the Tattle-Crime Saga a hoax? Monica had mentioned that she was a writer working on a TV script (unrelated to the saga) and that a deal with a production company might be on the horizon. My immediate thought was that her Youtube channel had been an ARG (alternate reality game), a publicity stunt in designed to gain her internet fame and launch her writing career. Alas, it wasn't that simple.

Who Is Monica Edwards?

Monica had a long history of posting on forums and running blogs. The topics ranged from fandom, to lifestyle, to what she referred to as “political” blogs. From what I was able to find of her political blogs, they often consisted of her trolling people into a reaction, for example a post in which she cruelly mocked excerpts of other people's posts about their difficulties in high school, essentially stating, “No one had it harder than me, you're all a bunch of babies, quit crying about it,” etc. So if Monica has a paper-trail of being both an obsessive fan and an internet troll, how can she be taken seriously? With these questions piling up, I look to reddit seeking answers as to the validity of Monica's reports and why she had terminated her channel. The below conclusions were revealed to me by moderators of the r/tattlecrime subreddit. They have authorized me to publish these findings.

Why did Monica delete the channel?

According to my sources, the “Tattle-Crime Saga” was not a hoax. It has in fact been verified by multiple community members that Jennifer Cornet was the individual Monica Edwards encountered in the Hannibal fandom. Despite her lack of professionalism and explosive temper, Monica had pinned down Jennifer's real identity and exposed her. In short, the day Jennifer Cornet crossed paths with Monica Edwards would be akin to a ballistic missile colliding with a fire bomb. In regards to the channel's deletion, a coming-to-light of various false reports were involved as I had suspected. Monica was right about some things but not everything. As Jennifer went deeper underground Monica stretched further and further for updates on the case. Meanwhile, a rift was forming between Monic and the Tattle-Crime Reddit as well as the Discord server. It appeared that Monica disliked these communities existing outside her moderation. She was quick to hurl insults and accusations at anyone who questioned her methods and conclusions. In early 2020, Monica apparently posted multiple videos about a supposed re-surfacing of Jennifer involving a Tumblr account which she claimed Jennifer was behind. This allegation was quickly dispelled as a hoax by the broader community. Rather than owning up to her mistake, Monica went dark on all her blogs “For fear of her life” as she insisted her critics were stalking her. One month later in March, 2020 she briefly reappeared to delete the videos and subsequently the channel. It should be noted here that the deletion of videos on her channel was a gradual process. Even before the false Jennifer sighting debacle occurred, Monica had deleted the 20-part series on the Tattle-Crime Saga and replaced it with a single, more concise video.

Conclusions

So there you have it. Monica Edwards did expose Jennifer Cornet in the Hannibal fandom. That said, all details of the case otherwise reported by Monica should be taken with a grain of salt. In this writer's opinion, Monica Edwards can no longer be trusted as a source due to she has self-sabotaged her credibility. Finally, I will add that after an IMDB search, it appears that Monica's script has not been picked up by a production company.

[breezeinmonochromenight]

Is it bad that I'm sort of obsessed(?) with FF7? Like ever since I discovered it back in April, I stuck to the comp like glue and tried to understand everything about it and now I just can't get it out of my head. It doesn't really interfere with my work, but I think abt the characters constantly and all of their tragic moments make me emotional and it feels weird crying so many times over fictional characters. At this point, all of my friends except for one are absolutely done with my constant blabbering about the characters and I don't really want to talk to them about anything unless it's an emergency. It's had this positive and negative effect on my life where I've gotten so much motivation to draw, but I've also distanced myself from my friends after realizing they weren't interested at all in what I had to say and I also got bored of what they wanted to talk about. Should I take a break from having anything to do with it? FF7 makes me so happy, but how should I deal with it?

Oh, so you’re a keeper then! Don’t worry, it’s been like that for me (and a lot of people) since about 1997/1998 lmao — doubly so once Crisis Core came out for me, personally. I’m assuming you’re younger than 25, because the 26-early/mid 30’s fans of the series that really love it more likely than not know this feeling lol.

(And damn if FFXV, DMC haven’t sunk their teeth in deep, too, but I digress.)

No reason you can’t do both lol. Even I enjoy plenty of other things and can chill with my bubble of friends and talk about/do whatever but like. When I’m unwinding at night, or having me time, or whatever, that’s just my thing.

But yeah, no. Maybe dial it back around friends if they’re not interested but there’s no reason to like isolate and drop something because it was a passing interest for them. But at the same time no one should expect you to drop the things you enjoy to please them.

Idk. I guess I treat the fictional stuff I’m into as more of a hobby or something? And I don’t really talk about my hobbies much to anyone because those are for me. If that makes sense? As in, I don’t talk about FF7 outside of tumblr very often the same way I don’t often talk about like... building Gundams or something. That’s totally just me, though.

[sunandrainfic]

Meta Talk: FF7 Remake and Ethical Complexity

(WARNING: Spoilers for the whole Remake below.)

Okay, so there’s a cool thing they’ve done within the remake that I really really like, and I have to talk about it. 

In OG FF7, there were selfish people, and there were bad people, and eventually there were also good people, and that was the story. Selfish people did selfish things, bad people did bad things, and good people did good things. You could be selfish and do good and bad things, but you couldn’t be good and do bad things. If you did bad things and you were a good person, it was because you were being manipulated by bad people. (And yes, it’s heavily implied Shinra helps blow up Mako Reactor 1 in the original, too.)

In the Remake, good people are as capable of doing bad things as bad people.

Rude specifically addresses this in the scene we’re introduced to him. Aerith tries to stop Cloud from fighting him by saying: “He’s not a bad person.” Rude agrees. “No, I’m not bad,” he says. “But sometimes I have to do bad things.” 

That could describe Cloud himself: we know he’s a good guy, that his harsh and tough demeanor is an act of self-defense. He cares much more than he lets on, and he’s fighting to save the world. But in the Remake, we also see him nonchalantly going for the kill multiple times, only to have others stop him. He’s a good guy. But he’s capable of bad things.

One of the reasons FF7 took so long to get remade, I’m sure, is the fact that our heroes are terrorists. In 1997, ‘terrorist’ landed differently. Now, we’ve lived through two decades of Al-Qaeda, of ISIS, of an uptick in white supremacist attacks and a “War on Terror.” We live in a world where ‘terrorist’ means bombing churches and marathons, shooting up concerts and restaurants and clubs and garlic festivals. It means the disruption of everyday life to your average citizen. ‘Terrorist’ carries emotional baggage for the individual in today’s world that it didn’t in 1997.

And the game developers embrace this. The first thing we have to do after blowing up Mako Reactor 1 is walk through the fallout of our actions. The game intentionally forces us to face the consequences of our actions. Cloud, Barret, and the crew have to wrestle with the fact that their actions have directly hurt others -- “My friend worked there,” one bystander says as you pass them. People scream and cry. Kids hide in corners. Emergency workers try to save the injured. The gang seems shaken and moved by the damage they’ve wrought -- because they’re good people.

But they still decide to blow up another reactor. They still decide to turn off the sun lamps to Sector Four and continue their fight against Shinra using moves from a terrorist playbook. They’re doing this because they care about the Planet, and they care about the future. But no matter how noble the goal, their actions in reaching it are questionable. Square hammers this home with Tifa, who’s there to keep us in ethical perspective, to constantly remind us of what we’re complicit in. We are actively hurting people, Tifa reminds us. Our decisions are actively hurting people.

The same thing happens on the other side. We meet guards who recognize Cloud, who used to be friends with him, or who clearly are “just doing their jobs.” They’re not just mooks to be slain, their people. 

Then there’s Rude and Reno, who wrestle with their orders from Tseng and Shinra to attack the Sector 7 pillar. Reeve protests and begs for President Shinra to “reconsider” dropping the Sector 7 plate. The soldiers guarding the gate are horrified at the plate drop. In another story, their uncomfortability with this horrific act would denote they’re good people. And yet Rude and Reno still drop the plate. Reeve does nothing to sabotage this or stop it from happening. These people aren’t ‘evil’ the way President Shinra, Hojo, Hollander, and Sephiroth are written to be. They aren’t heartless. 

They are still committing evil acts.

“They were my bombs,” Jessie says, and she’s right. “We did this,” Tifa says, and she’s right. AVALANCHE decided to poke a sleeping dragon when they bombed Mako Reactor 1, and their continued terrorism paved the way for Shinra to capitalize on the chaos they were intentionally wreaking to whip up fervor for another war with Wutai. The Sector 7 plate drop is the end of Act Two in this game because it’s a thematic culmination of the story the game has been telling, a karmic retribution for the direction our main characters choose to take.

This reaches a bit of a muddled head with Sephiroth at the end (muddled because the whole ‘destiny’ thing kind of thematically strays from the rest of the story, but we’re ignoring that thematic beat for the purposes of this meta.) 

Sephiroth does what Barret threatens to do when faced with the opportunity: he kills President Shinra. Even after the President is killed, Barret makes it no secret that he plans to kill Rufus Shinra, too. “End the family here and now.” On top of all that, Sephiroth claims to have the same noble goal our group of good guys do: he’s doing everything to “save the planet.” 

When we fight Sephiroth -- and, again, forget the destiny thing for a minute -- we’re fighting a manifestation of ourselves. Sephiroth is everything AVALANCHE has to rid themselves of if they want to truly save the world: the living embodiment of their justification for hurting others.

This is what the game teaches. Just because you are a good person does not mean you’re incapable of doing bad things. You don’t have to be evil to do evil. You just have to decide to do evil.

The Remake takes the themes of the original and heightens them, and I love it so much for doing so.

[shm128iii]

Final Fantasy VII Crack-Theory Time!

FF7 Remake spoilers under the cut.

So in Final Fantasy VII, the Ancients/Cetra were a race of people who were considered stewards of the planet, able to communicate with it. Aerith is said to be the last of the Ancients, and Sephiroth kills her ‘cuz she’s the only with the power to stop Meteor. With her death, they’re all dead and gone.

That said, however, come the Remake...

Which character is the one constantly saying that they can “hear the planet crying out in pain”?

Which character’s actions are almost entirely driven by -  even moreso than Aerith - protecting the planet, no matter the cost?

Which character has a surprising amount of knowledge about the Ancients and their teachings when asked about it, even if they claim they “didn’t believe it at first”?

Which character was seemingly able to, in the remake’s ending, use a plant Marlene was tending to in order to let her know that they were alive and okay?

And finally...

Which character was the one that the writers had first planned to have Sephiroth kill in the original game before settling on Aerith instead, and IS killed by him in the remake before getting revived by the Retcon Ghosts Arbiters of Fate?

Barret Wallace is a motherf@#$ing Ancient and you cannot convince me otherwise.

[claitea]

Tag Game

Rules: Name your top 10 favorite characters from 10 different fandoms and tag 10 people.

tagged by @masterfuldoodler :D thank you for the excuse to ramble about these characters that i love to death haha

Kingdom Hearts—Sora: my favorite characters tend to be the lovable idiots, stupid but mean well and just want to help out. sora fits the bill exactly, with a pinch of sass to make it interesting! and the subtle way they go about implying how negative sora actually feels under the happy-go-lucky front he's been keeping up for a while, especially in kh3, where he actually broke down... sora character development good!! someone unfreeze him, get this kid into a therapist's office and stop him self-sacrificing, please

Final Fantasy—Zack Fair: also another chirpy idiot type!! maybe i only like him because he really kind of is just the sora of ff7 - kind, sometimes stupid, loves his friends, self-sacrificial - but still, i love him. like look at how fiercely loyal he is!! willing to put his life down to keep cloud safe!! he's great!! i had decided he was my favorite ff character before i even started ff, after seeing how fun of a character he was in khbbs. i thought he got kidnapped at the end,,, half of the reason i started ff was to see how they save him,,,,,, they didn't save him,,,,,,,,,,

Dragalia Lost—Orsem: honestly i can't pick a favorite dragalia character between him, luca, euden, cleo, alex, sylas, vixel, fritz, heinwald, curran, lathna, ieyasu and ricardt, but i had to just pick one for this-- another chirpy, excitable character, he just wants everyone to appreciate ice skating like he does and i think that's adorable. shame that ingame he used to be a pretty decent damage dealer but is pretty quickly getting overshone. i spent a lot of currency and materials getting him fully upgraded only to learn he dropped a tier and melee fighters like him currently suck in the current boss fights :( i'll keep using him for fun in lower difficulties, of course!

Mother—Lucas: mother 3 is tied with ff crisis core for being the saddest pieces of fiction i've ever seen, no other series has made me cry as much as those two games. lucas deserved NONE of what happened to him or his family and friends, and god i hope that open ending saw him living the rest of his life happily. he's a good kid ;-;

Pokemon—N: now THIS is how you write a villain!! no other villain in pokemon even comes close to how good n was!! except maybe guzma but they're very different you can't compare them. wish n would come back.... colress keeps reappearing, and he's cool, another one of my favorites, but WHERE is n???

The World Ends With You—Shiki Misaki: the character development in twewy is phenomenal and shiki is no exception!! she's just a really fun character too ;w; give me a sequel where we see her and eri interact,,,, blease squeenix its all i ask,,,,,,,

Kid Icarus—Pit: again, chirpy idiot type. the characters in kiu are just so fun, the dialogue is so great. pit gives us gems like "step three: remove pants" "again today i will go soaring through the skyyy!!" and the classic "floor ice cream gives you HEALTH!" he's just a great, adorable character, and so is everyone else in kiu, i love this game. wish i could play it :')

My Hero Academia—Kaminari Denki: ah would you look at that, yet another chirpy idiot type character. really he's tied with kirishima for my favorite but :,) really need to catch up on bnha, i kind of fell behind a lot--

Professor Layton—Luke Triton: oh i dont really have much of a reason for luke being my favorite, i just think he's neat. i'm slowly playing through all the layton games, and i'm up to last specter right now, i do appreciate how they're fleshing out luke's character a bit more here! seeing standoffish constantly-glaring tiny luke after being so used to happy positive luke in the first three games kind of scared me at first, what did you do to my boy--

Castle Swimmer—Siren: listen listen i know i only started reading this webcomic literally last night, like 12 hours ago but. castle swimmer good. siren is great. so is kappa, skiff, silver, i cannot for the life of me remember the name of the queen with the long nose that i also like idhjdvdksb i am very bad with names. siren took one look at kappa and immediately decided that he was willing to risk it all to save him? same.

i dont like to tag, please steal this from me if you'd like to!

[idridian]

Let's see.... 3, 4, 5, 8, 9. 11, 14, 16, 17, 18, 22, 24, and 25 please?

oh shit somebody actually asked something what do i do

3) what order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else?

I almost always write out of order. Start with a sentence that my brain spit out, and work the rest of the story around it

4) favorite character you’ve written

Jenova from Final Fantasy 7. Her thought processes are super comfortable to write because you can pretty much do whatever the heck you want

5) character you were most surprised to end up writing

Any Undertale character ever. I hadn’t written fanfic in years, and then suddenly I was co-creator of an AU and was making stuff for it. It was crazy

8) favorite genre to write

Weird-cryptic-stream-of-consciousness-thingie

9) what, if anything, do you do for inspiration?

Listen to music while staring off into space and daydreaming scenarios

11) what aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing?

My ability to make characters have believable emotional reactions and thought processes. That used to be all over the place back in the day

14) do you make playlists for your current wips?

Nope. Too much effort

16) are there any characters who haunt you?

I used to have a very, very, very, very random overpowered Mary Sue OC called Sheiraminadolia. She was a vampire who could turn into a unicorn. I abandoned her at a truckstop years ago

17) if you could give your fledgling author self any advice, what would it be?

“Having a character that was in the story for the first two chapters suddenly reappear in chapter 24 for no apparent reason is a stupid thing to do. Also, save every three seconds and NEVER write in a document that is only on a flash drive and nowhere else because the flash drive will fucking break and you’ll lose half a chapter”

18) were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? what were they?

Susan Kay’s “Phantom”, and the novel version of “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith”. Both had a way of describing emotional and tragic moments that just got to me a lot, and I think I took a lot from that style and tried to emulate it when writing myself

22) are there any subjects that make you uncomfortable to write?

I’m normally incapable of writing smut. My brain refuses

24) have you ever become an expert on something you previously knew nothing about, in order to better a scene or a story?

I spent quite a lot of time trying to understand how the code of a game works so I could add cool things to TideTale. Not really to the point of being an expert, but enough to be able to bullshit my way out of plotholes

25) copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of

There’s quite a few that I’m fond of, so I’ll just pick one of the most recent ones and live with my decision. This is from the third chapter of “The Siren”, also known as “that one self-indulgent FF7 fanfic where I constantly punch everyone (myself included) in the feels”

Theystand in the rain for a very long time while different people make noises. Angealnext to him is crying, but he himself is calm and silent. He listens to thesoft drumming of the rain on the ground, and is dimly reminded of a cave behinda waterfall where there was a treasure waiting to be found. The treasure is gone now the emptinessinside him whispers.

Bythe time they get back to the hospital, the one who throws fireballs hasalready disappeared from his mind, never to return.

…wow. That took way too long. Why am I awake O_o