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case-of-traxits · 1 year ago

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WRO Reeve + Heartbreak

One who wears the crown, bears the crown.

For @here-be-ninjas | From a discussion on this post.

So I've been sitting on this for a few days now in my drafts. I kept trying to type it up as a reply on that fic, but the fact is... I just have too many feels and it kept getting way too long and I didn't want to slam out like, three half-thought out things. So here, I've done my best to outline some things that are going on for WRO that break my heart.

I have no idea if this is what you were expecting or wanting, but this is what you're getting.

Also, please excuse the gratuitous use of gifs, but like, I'm just delighting in the fact that when I search "Reeve Tuesti" in the gifs thing, I GET SOMETHING OMG.

(That wasn't true pre-Remake really. But thankfully, people are slowly realizing he's super handsome. So it's a win for me!)

Time to put my metal on Whose blood to spill? I don't know whose side I'm on. Two armies are coming at me. Their flags and weapons look the same. One tells the truth; the other's lying. And they're both calling my name.

-- "How Villains Are Made," by Madalen Duke

Canon Explanation

So at the beginning of Final Fantasy VII, we have three massive disasters occur in Midgar, all over the course of three days: Reactor 1 is bombed, Reactor 5 is bombed, and Sector Seven is dropped. It is certainly canon that all of these events deeply affected Reeve emotionally (if you want to see a video comparing Reeve's reaction to the Plate Drop plan, you can see that here).

Now, I don't think it's fanon to extrapolate that at the end of FF7, Reeve has lost basically everything.

Canonically, he's had to deal with the following:

The loss of Reactor 1.

The loss of Reactor 5.

The dropping of Sector Seven.

Tseng is nearly killed (how close Reeve is to Tseng is up for debate).

Cait Sith the First dies (as a sub-note on this one, not only does Cait Sith die, but the very thing that he dies for, to prevent Sephiroth from getting the Black Materia? Is immediately voided because Cloud hands it over to Sephiroth).

Aerith dies (how close Reeve is to Aerith is also up for debate).

Diamond WEAPON attacks Midgar, which is, of course, full of innocent civilians.

Reeve is dragged away to be imprisoned during this attack because he refuses to go along with Scarlet and Heidegger.

At some point, Reeve is freed (although, that's not important enough apparently to get a mention in the OG) and he organizes the evacuation of Midgar, which has to be evacuated through, canonically, a single train line and a single highway that wrap around the central pillar.

He shuts down all of the reactors in Midgar. I'll have to see if I can find a canon source for when, exactly, this happens; it happens sometime between when he is freed and when Edge is started, and I think there's mention somewhere that it's before the Lifestream surge that stops Meteor. However, per On the Way to a Smile, Episode: Barret, all mako reactors across the entire world have been shut down as of "several months after [Meteorfall]."

A few days after this evacuation process is started, his mother is killed when the Lifestream surges up to stop Meteor.

If he'd had any hope whatsoever of salvaging Midgar, or returning people to the city after the Meteor crisis, that's shot down after the Lifestream surge. So now he has a city full of people who refused to leave prior to Meteorfall, another city (Kalm) full of people who did evacuate, and no power for any of them. Again, you can see On the Way to a Smile, Episode: Barret if you want a little peek as to what some of the pre-Mako tech looked like. Spoiler? It isn't pretty. I'm talking coal-powered trucks kind of not pretty. This is a world without gasoline as tech. Mako literally powers everything, and they're now rationing what was left in the reactors. With that in mind, it's really no wonder that the WRO is militaristic.

As someone who has worked at an electric company (I want to add "canonically," but I mean IRL. XD), let me tell you, people without power? They are panicky. But okay, that's not addressed canonically, so let's disregard that side note.

Instead, let's just focus on everything else.

He's lost literally everything that he has clearly dedicated himself to: Midgar, his parents, one of his robot cats, and his entire livelihood. And suddenly, he's the only one with anything even resembling the experience necessary to run the world. The last standing member of the Shinra Board, and effectively, he's taken Rufus' place as the de-facto world leader.

And all of this starts on 12/9/07 and ends "the last third" of 01/08, according to the Crisis Core Ultimania Timeline.

So... all of that. In six-ish weeks.

And this is true before we even touch on the expanded canon and my headcanons regarding Reeve Tuesti.

You reach the battle lines Racing inside your mind A question for all time, is it you? So gravity defy And storm the darkest night Is it you? Is it you who will save us?

-- "Who Will Save Us," by Tommee Profitt

Expanded Canon and Headcanon Time!

Expanded Canon: The Inspire Thing

So. Cait Sith. Beloved fuzzy son.

First, let's look at Reeve's profile from the 10th Anniversary Ultimania:

The head of the Urban Development Department. Involved in the construction of Midgar from the very beginning, he watches over the town’s development like that of a child. By utilizing his special ability, “Inspire”, he is able to cause inorganic things to emit life; his “child”, the “cat”-shaped robot, Cait Sith can be controlled from a great distance. After Meteorfall, he became the director of the World Regenesis Organization (WRO), which is devoted to the purpose of restoring life to the planet.

So this is interesting for a lot of reasons, but there's two very important things that this profile does for us:

One, it clearly states that Reeve has been "involved in the construction of Midgar from the very beginning," and he "watches over the town's development like that of a child." So... That's a great character note and a problem, but let's put a pin in that and we'll discuss the problem part of that in the next section. So the thing you need to actually note there is that Reeve loves Midgar. Like a child.

And two, it defines Reeve's surprisingly controversial "Inspire" ability. I say surprisingly because here's the general breakdown. Reeve has literally always had this ability, but people will sometimes discount it because it's not "mentioned" in any of the games. And that isn't... wrong, exactly. Reeve is never, at any point in any of the games, 'outed' as an Inspire. However, let's look at the Ultimanias over the years:

Now, I wish I had links to all of these pages for you, but the simple fact is, I don't. I could probably get links to all of them, given enough time, but I'm still rebuilding my compiled FF7 References Google Drive folder. When I get everything in there, I'll post a link.

The point I want to make with this is that it isn't something new. This is not some detail they retconned in to make things work. They've literally always implied it in game. There's a few metas floating around periodically that talk about Reeve and Cait Sith, and maybe one day I'll sit down and write up my own, but I want to be able to link to certain things like the Before Crisis scripts and such, because there's evidence in there to prove that Cait Sith is not just a 'robot'. He's a plush cat, yes. He's an animatronic, yes. But he's also an individual.

Canonically, in the original game, he feels pain when he trips and falls in the Temple of the Ancients on his way to die. He begs Cloud and AVALANCHE not to forget him, even if another Cait Sith shows up. He reminds them all that there's only one him. (And then of course, they promptly forget him. T_T)

In Before Crisis, Reeve gives the player Turk a controller to use with Cait Sith, but Cait Sith has 'thought' dialogue in the game that cannot be attributed to Reeve.

In Dirge, you see Cait Sith and Reeve together at several points, and they always move fairly in sync, but there's no indication of a controller in Reeve's hand at any point. And okay, that could be because Dirge was really bad about character models. We never did, after all, get a pregnant Lucrecia model in that game. ... Or in any other game, for that matter. But that's a different problem.

The fact is, at no point is Reeve ever shown using a controller. How he controls Cait Sith is subtle enough that he can control Cait Sith actively during a board meeting that he lets AVALANCHE listen in on during the original game. That's the board meeting where Scarlet and Heidegger propose loading up the failed rocket in Rocket Town with materia and launching it into Meteor in an attempt to stop it. And none of the other directors (or Rufus, who is canonically aware of Cait Sith and Reeve's control of him) notice. So I don't think it's actually a stretch of canon to assume that Reeve doesn't have a visible means of controlling Cait Sith.

Which means... yes. It's magic. Some kind of mental connection to Cait Sith. And let's just... digest that for a second.

Imagine a mental connection to something you love like a child.

And you send it to be crushed to death in an attempt to stop Sephiroth from obtaining a materia that he will use to destroy the world.

And immediately after you've done this, you have to get the next version of that child to the same place, to the same group of people, who have already lost the materia you entrusted them with.

(And, as an aside, you were just using this second version of that child to rescue a dying coworker that, your own personal closeness aside, your good friend is very close to. Because Before Crisis makes it very clear that Reeve and Veld are close in some fashion. It's a little ambiguous about their exact relationship, but they're close enough that Reeve risks everything to help the Turks because he's sure they're helping Veld who is on the run from Shinra at that point.)

Now, all of this to say... Why am I rambling about Reeve's Inspire ability and Cait Sith? Well...

Headcanon: The Inspire Thing

My personal headcanon is that Reeve, with long enough exposure to anything inorganic (i.e., his car or reactors) can inadvertently form a bond with it. Even grant it a sort of ... half-life. Now, admittedly, this is entirely fanon. I make no arguments that there is any sort of canonical support for the Inspire abilities working with this way.

But the fact is... it's odd, isn't it, that the reactors are under Urban Development? Why aren't they under Science?

(And yes, that is canon. It's in the original game that reactor control is under Urban Dev-- Reeve Tuesti-- not Science.)

So this is something I play with, that Reeve is some kind of brilliant engineer, constantly tweaking the reactors, adjusting them to maximize every drop of mako energy as efficiently as possible. And in my headcanon, he manages that in part by directly interfacing with the reactors.

Which uh... makes blowing them up emotionally problematic for him. How emotionally problematic? Well, @ladykf-writes wrote me some amazing ficlets that feature my headcanons about this after much rambling with her about them. So I highly recommend checking those out if you're interested in this idea.

So, basically, in addition to the list up there? You could add that my particular Reeve is also suffering from some serious emotional turmoil regarding the "deaths" of Reactors 1 and 5 as well as Cait Sith the First. Those aren't just moments of, "oh it's tragic these people died," or "oh shoot, I lost one of my robots," for him.

He literally lived through their deaths.

Now. Let's move on from my headcanons regarding this ability and let's talk about Reeve's problem.

Broken pieces of a barely breathing story Where there once was love Now there's only me and the lonely Dancing slowly in an empty room Can the lonely take the place of you? I sing myself a quiet lullaby Let you go and let the lonely in To take my heart again

-- "The Lonely," by Christina Perri. In particular with this song, the "you" that I imagine it being focused on is Midgar, not a person.

Reeve's Timeline Shenanigans

All right, back to Reeve's profile from the 10th Anniversary Ultimania:

Involved in the construction of Midgar from the very beginning, he watches over the town’s development like that of a child.

And from the Final Fantasy VII Complete Dismantled True Story (which while "official" is not necessary "canon" per the development team):

A capable engineer closely involved in the design and construction of the two-tiered city of Midgar and its eight mako reactors.

Now, unfortunately, Reeve's profile doesn't often get translated in other ultimanias-- or at least, not in places I've been able to find-- so we're kind of stuck with just these two interpretations of this side of him. Still, it's pretty clear, right? He was involved in the construction of Midgar from the beginning. Even in the Dismantled True Story version, he's closely involved in the design and construction.

It also mentions that he's 35 (like Barret) in the original game. Since the game takes place in 0007, we can say pretty confidently that he was born in '72; same year as Barret, for those who don't trust my math.

Now, let's look at Midgar's timeline, shall we?

From the 10th Anniversary Timeline:

[ μ ] – εуλ 9/23/1959 (48 years before FFVII) · Shin-Ra Works (later the Shin-Ra Company) discovers mako energy [ μ ] – εуλ 1/9/1968 · Construction begins in Nibelheim on the first in a series of power generation facilities, “mako reactors” for the purpose of extracting mako. [ μ ] – εуλ 6/24/1976 · Construction of the mako city, Midgar, begins. The Shin-Ra company relocates its headquarters to Midgar.

... Interesting. Okay. What about other timelines? Well, let's look at the Crisis Core Ultimania's Timeline:

[ μ ] – εуλ 9/23/1959 · Shin-Ra Works (later the Shin-Ra Company) discovers mako energy. [ μ ] – εуλ 6/24/1976 · Construction of the mako city, Midgar, begins. The Shin-Ra company relocates its headquarters to Midgar.

Now, this does change a bit in the Remake Ultimania's Timeline, from what I understand. They push Midgar's construction date back to 1969, per the FFVII Timeline, which for the record I like because they source all their dates wherever possible. However, I haven't really dug into the Remake stuff yet because it's my understanding that the Remake is the Compilation in a blender, so just because something is true in the Remake doesn't make it true in other aspects of canon (for example, they adjusted the ages of Rufus and the Turks, to make Rufus clearly older/same age as them, whereas he was always younger in the original canon).

Anyway, the issue with this timeline is this: Reeve's four when they start building Midgar. How involved is he in this construction project?

Now, over the years, I've seen a few interesting takes on how to handle this.

One, people just completely disregard it. Which, fair. It's an ultimania canon note, not something from in-game, but I always find it interesting when people say, disregard these dates but are happy to accept say, dates regarding the Nibelheim project as gospel from the same sources. But hey, I cherry pick canon too, so who am I to complain, right?

Two, people go with the architect of Midgar being another R. Tuesti (probably Reeve's father is the most common headcanon), and over the years, his work has been conflated with Reeve's own until people just forget that Reeve himself couldn't have been the one to do it.

Now, my personal headcanon-- which I am absolutely detailing because you asked me about why WRO Reeve breaks my heart, and I swear all of this is tied into that original question-- is that Reeve's father was the original engineer who developed the Nibelheim reactor. He was also slated to be the lead engineer on managing the complicated network of the eight (nine, technically, at least during construction, but who's counting?) reactors in Midgar. Except when Reeve was about five, he died in an accident. Probably in a reactor, let's be honest.

And when the Turks (and because it's my headcanon and I can, the Turks in question are Veld and Vincent) are sent to pick up Papa Tuesti's notes from his widow so that the other engineers can try to make sense of them, they discover that the five-year-old can decipher his father's unlabeled diagrams. So they take the boy with them to the Shinra Manor in Junon where the President pays to have him formally educated and put to work deciphering these diagrams and notes to ensure that the Midgar project goes as planned.

Of course, being brought up to be this engineer means that Reeve has access to basically the best level of education possible. So yes, he's deciphering his father's notes, but very quickly, he's improving them. And that, my friends, is why he ends up as Head of Urban Development. Because the simple fact is, he's been brought up for this, raised and trained to President Shinra's exact specifications of what he wants in a city.

Now, once again, all of that is just my personal headcanon, and I can't even cite some of my old sources because I just cannot find them anymore. So take this or leave it, it's where I sit on it.

That also means that he was brought up in the same house as (although almost certainly very separated from) Rufus. There's a ten year difference between them, of course, so it wasn't like they were close, but there's certainly room for some... understanding between them. If anyone understands how the President was (who canonically was extremely abusive towards Rufus per On the Way to a Smile: Case of Shinra).

Now, how does all of this tie into WRO Reeve breaking my heart?

Well, per my headcanon, Midgar is literally his life's work. It's his father's legacy and it is the city he has poured his entire life into, and it's gone. At the end of the original game, it's gone, and he has to look at her dead carcass on the horizon every time he is in Edge.

He was fashioned into the engineer who builds cities and lives and fantasies-- the floating city, remember?-- and he was desperately just trying to survive the President's reign of terror under the hope that Rufus would be better (I can't find a copy of the source quote in Before Crisis, but it's mentioned on his Ultimania profile). And suddenly...

It's all gone.

I am the son And the heir Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar I am the son and heir Of nothing in particular

-- "How Soon Is Now," by the Smiths, but the AG cover.

So. If you've made it through all of this, I just. I have a lot of feels about Reeve Tuesti in general, and in particular, in what state he's probably in after Meteorfall. I guess this is what happens when you've been writing him for 20-some-odd years. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The long and short of it is this: Reeve is an incredibly underrated character, and he's so often sadly overlooked by fandom, and he just... he's been through so much by the time he's head of the WRO. I can't help but think that he's got to be so worn down by it all. It's hard, saving the world, especially in a position like he's in.

He is, after all, the only man in the world who betrayed Shinra twice and lived.

But he's also the man who built the world's largest, most complicated city, and he's a man who has survived losing everything.

And what did he do the next morning?

He went to work.

You wanna take a drink of that promise land You gotta wipe the dirt off of your hands Careful son, you got dreamer's plans But it gets hard to stand Soldier keep on marchin' on Head down 'til the work is done Waiting on that morning sun Soldier keep on marchin' on

-- "Soldier," by Tommee Profitt

#Reeve Tuesti #FF7 #Final fantasy vii #I have so many feels about Reeve guys #I just #SO MANY #I hope someone enjoys this #I've been working on it for DAYS

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paper-mario-wiki · 5 months ago

Note

Could you explain how Ambrosia is able to come back after dying?

Sure yeah, I'll give it a shot.

[Fursona Lore/ Mild Existential Horror presented in charmingly primitive MS Paint style under the cut]

[At the top of the panel there is the label "conceptual space (currently being created. The middle is labeled "THE UNIVERSE, REALITY (the other)". The bottom is labeled "CONSCIOUSNESS, REFLECTION (the self). The very bottom of the panel reads "OTHER, FREAKIER BUT LESS IMPORTANT STUFF" ]

To keep it brief, a person is when a certain amount of consciousness slips upwards into reality. Consciousness is, like the laws of thermo dynamics [sic], a fundamental property of the universe.

I'm sure you've heard of the sticking-a-pencil-through-paper metaphor for theoretical wormhole travel, right? Staying within that visual metaphor, imagine the moisture in the air around that "piece of paper" as what consciousness is. It creates tiny, imperceivable changes in the surface and makeup of the paper. Imagine a microscopic rain cloud making a tiny fraction of the paper a little bit soggy. That's what you are in the universe. A tiny soggy fraction of a massive piece of paper. (That's why you feel so small btw).

Of course, putting it into that metaphor IS greatly simplifying it, since in real life things like time and space sorta overlap, ya know? Because they're entirely separate dimensions of measurement. Consciousness is the same, it is everywhere in the universe all at once, but only after it seeps in from a place that is exactly where we are, but elsewhere. 4D stuff is complicated sorry if that's not super clear ha ha.

Normal people happen when a bunch of that stray potential-consciousness starts stacking more and more layers of reality on top of itself. Sort of like those pastries that you fold butter into and then fold it like 10 times and that makes it so theres like a billion layers of butter and dough and butter and dough and butter and dough and on and on and on. But with, uh. The other stuff. Consiousness and matter from the universe.

Speaking semantically, that's all the little tiny organisms that work really hard to make you alive. Like the biome in your gut, or the bacteria in your tissue and blood cells. Look it up, 43% of the human body is made of bacteria. Like, that's just on google.

Anyway, all their effort culminates in an increasingly complex meat shell that constitutes a person.

For the sake of practicality, we can imagine the way consciousness "seeps in" to the universe is like heat coming off the sun. The two overlapping infinite planes radiate into each other like heat radiates off the sun.

That clear? Heat from the sun. Remember that, it's important for the next part.

I'm sort of like a solar flare.

My consciousness, in its raw form, was so concentrated that it was like a tiny shooting star straight from the source.

Also kind of like a kidney stone, I guess.

Since my consciousness (which, to be clear, is approximately the same "amount" of consciouessness as anyone else, just all smooshed together into a single clump) is smooshed together into a single clump, the shell forms naturally as "reality" settles onto it. The "shape" the consciousness takes is basically the same as your body or anyone else's since the framework of both entities are the "same" on the "outside". Thus the "shells" turn out "similar" too.

Sorry for all the quotation marks, it's hard to talk about concepts outside of the third dimension in third dimensional terms, and like. I also am not super sure about this stuff either. I'm only relaying what I've learned from the scientists but some of it goes over my head.

I like to think I'm clever but like. I'm not a genius.

So here's the part where me and you are different: When your shell breaks apart (when you die) it's because the consciouessness had been escaping your shell, like air from a balloon, and the physical structure can't support itself anymore. Or, like, maybe you just fall over and hit your head on the concrete one day and pop the balloon all together.

Either way, the consciousness escapes from the pressure, and either goes back "down" where it came from, or goes upward into conceptual space, which is sorta being constituted through forces exerted in the physical universe. Well, I mean, really it's more of a product of a reaction between consciousness and physical space. Whatever I'm getting off topic.

The point is the shell breaks cuz the balloon pops. I think that was my point.