#i post resources that i have read having good faith in interested readers that they too will read

[noctomania]

If it isn't about you then why are you bothered.

If you agree to no genocide why would you be bothered by me saying no to genocide?

If you agree to no apartheid why would you be bothered by me saying no apartheid?

If they do not represent you, why are you bothered?

Which part are you exactly upset about?

Are you upset that I criticize those matters, or that I am criticizing you for justifying those matters?

What is it you believe in anyway?

[queerstake]

As a queer drawn to the faith and trying to deal with the messiness of entering into everything, I've been trying hard to read more of the Book of Mormon because I only have a very vague understanding of it's Whole Deal, but executive dysfunction, ADHD, and honestly, a million other excuses are making it very difficult. Are there any good resources for walking through the fundamentals? Childish but I feel like I'm disappointing the Lord if I'm not more on top of this.

Hi anon! I totally get it and yes, I can think of a few ideas!

If you're looking for ways to understand the BoM (or even just general doctrine) from more of a bird's eye view:

I hope you don't find this silly, but when I was a kid, the church published an illustrated children's version of the BoM that's obviously way quicker to flip through. It might be harder for you to find those exact editions I read as a kid if you don't have ready access to a church library, BUT I found this!! It's (almost) the ENTIRE BoM illustrated and summarized and it's online!

Looks like they put out videos too that summarize the BoM beginning to end. Here's a link to the video series. I haven't seen these, so I can't vouch for them, but they might be helpful! Similarly, there's a BoM in 60 seconds video you might find helpful.

If you'd benefit from a schedule, the church is currently studying the BoM in sunday school! The past few years, we've been using a study guide called Come Follow Me with weekly assigned reading chapters. I've actually been working on posts about CFM as they relate to queer mormon theology, but I haven't had much posted yet since I've been having a rocky start to 2024. As things improve, I'll be able to hopefully even establish a schedule on this blog!

I'm not sure if missionary lessons is something you're interested in at this point, and it's definitely not something you ever need to do, but the missionary lessons themselves are a pretty good doctrine intro if you're looking for just Mormonism 101 in a digestible way. The missionaries teach out a book called Preach My Gospel, which is available right here. You'll be interested in the lessons, which are found in Chapter 3. If you just scroll down, you'll see some of the links are labeled Lesson instead of Chapter--just click on those bad boys. And if you have any doctrinal questions, I'm always MORE than happy to talk about the church! You'll probably get a faster answer DMing me personally at @logans-mormon-blog, but I'll always answer asks here as soon as time permits.

If you're looking for easier ways to finish the BoM from beginning to end:

The BoM on tape. The church has an audiobook version available on the Gospel Library app and other audio apps like Spotify.

The Reader's Edition. If you can get your hand on a reader's edition, a lot of people find this is an easier way to plow through the BoM. What's special about this one is that it's formatted not like scripture but like prose, and it really does change the reading experience!

I don't know if this helps any, but I struggle with some of the same issues as you and I'm always bitterly disappointed when I'm not able to move mountains. If I had my way, I'd be the most well-read scriptorian of all time and this blog would be updated constantly. But life often doesn't shake out that way. I spend way more time than I want to with my brain entirely burned out of my head. So you're not alone, if that's any comfort. I think God gets it--he made our brains, after all, and knows how hard it is to wrestle with. It's easier said than done, but don't beat yourself up. God loves the both of us and he's the most perfectly patient person who's ever lived. He's not frustrated or disappointed with our efforts. Religion exists, in my opinion, to help improve and enrich our lives, not make them more challenging OR even to make them perfect if we only could just run fast enough. I too wish I could be more diligent and on it, but shit happens, right? And we're not on earth to be perfect, we're here to be happy and to learn. When Joseph Smith was translating the BoM, God told him "Do not run faster or labor more than you have strength and means provided to enable you to translate; but be diligent unto the end." D&C 10:4. We're doing our damndest, and that's all God even wants from us.

If anyone else has more resource ideas, please let us know!

-Logan

[hkblack]

(1/2) Hi! I'm looking forward to your tips and tricks for editing/beta reading. One thing I sometimes find challenging when betaing for others is distinguishing between my personal taste and what could objectively improve the piece. Basic SPAG is straightforward enough, but when it comes to the more subjective aspects of writing, I worry about inadvertently imposing my own preferences/style on the author, when they may have an equally valid writing voice that's just very different than mine.

Hi @anonymousdandelion!

You sure do know how to start with the easy questions, don’t you?

I have about twelve drafts in a word document answering this question. I’ve got a bulleted list. I’ve got flow charts. I’ve got things broken down into how each one of those points should be it’s own post all on its own.

Ultimately I found myself chatting with the amazing @ambrasue. Ambra is a brilliant human and just posted the final chapter of Striking Chords, which is not only a great Human AU Good Omens fic in which Crowley is a Country Music Star, but also a repository of some of the best recs I’ve seen regarding Queer Country Music. There’s even a Spotify playlist based on Ambra’s recs because we all need more queer country music in our lives. Anyway! Ambra and I first started chatting when she needed help with some music metaphors for Striking Chords. I uh, have a degree in music so...I think I'm a good resource for music metaphors. When I put out a call for beta-readers for one of my own WIPs, Ambra offered her services. We were chatting about other things, including this Tumblr, and I brought up your ask.

She said this:

there needs to be a give and take, in so far as the beta needs to trust that if a suggestion isn’t what the writer is going for, the writer will say so, and no hard feelings either way. That’s maybe the best way to learn about what’s them and what’s you?

And my heart soared because in each draft I wrote in answer to your question, I tried dive into the trust that you need to have in yourself, in your writer, in your beta-reader, in everything, and I think Ambra summed it up perfectly in her response.

There are so many facets to the trust needed between a writer and a beta-reader. Here’s my trust statements:

As a writer I trust that my beta-reader is offering me suggestions that serve my story as a whole. I trust that my beta-reader has my story’s best interest in mind. That they are acting in good faith with every suggestion. I trust that they will not be offended if I do not take a suggestion. I trust that my beta-reader is not out to get me. I trust that an outsider’s opinion is only going to help me strengthen my plot and the weak points within it. I also trust myself to not take suggestions personally. I trust myself to know when a note is something I can work on at that moment. I trust myself to know if a note is a good note—but not the note I need at that moment in time, or in that story. I trust myself to take suggestions at face value. And, most importantly, I trust that my works are still valid and good even if I did make a mistake or get a lot of notes.

As a beta-reader I trust that my writer will not take things personally. I trust them to know their story, their world, and their writing better than I do. I trust them to take suggestions that they are ready to hear, and able to take, at face value. I trust myself to not take things personally when they don’t take my suggestions. I also trust myself to not take any kind of ownership over the pieces I beta-read, even if I see lots of my suggestions/rewrites scattered throughout the writing. I also trust myself to know the difference between a suggestion that serves the story as it is and a desire that I have as a reader. And when it is or is not appropriate to voice that second kind of suggestion.

This is really hard if this is the first time you’re working with someone and don’t know them/their voice/their style very well. So that last piece of trust I have as a beta-reader is super important. If it’s my first time working with you, and we are still on my first pass through the story, I will not give any notes that I cannot absolutely anchor in something objective.

“But what if you’re beta-reading something unfinished and the question the writer has is literally: what should I do next?”

I will dig through their work and find the crumbs that they’ve laid down to support as many variations on the theme they are going for. Everything I give to a writer when I first work with them will be based in the words they’ve already written.

If I’m reading and think to myself “Oh [blank] would be funny here” or “It’d be great if [blank]” I will absolutely stop myself and interrogate that line of thought to determine if it is something I have thought because their writing has lead me there, or because my fanfic brain, which already likes to riff on stories, is trying to build something else. If my fanfic brain is just bouncing along going “ha! What if they kissed?” then that thought never gets voiced to the writer. But if it’s, “Hey, you have this running gag throughout the rest of the story—and here is another excellent place to slide it in” I will give them that suggestion.

And I will trust the writer to know if that’s a suggestion that fits in their voice or not.

… Does this answer your question? It’s a big one, so I feel like this can be a continuing conversation because hoooo. You just came right out the gates punching with the heavy hitter.

[insanehobbit]

a twenty-five thousand word post about a twenty-three year old “debate”

As time goes on, I’m baffled that it remains a commonly held opinion that:

The LTD remains unresolved

SE is deliberately playing coy, and are (or have been) afraid to resolve it.

To me, the answer is as clear as day, and yet seeing so many people acting as if it’s a question that remains unanswered makes me wonder if I’m the crazy one.

So I am going to try to articulate my thought process here, not because I expect to change any hearts and minds, but more to get these thoughts out of my head and onto a page so I can finally read a book and/or watch reruns of Shark Tank in peace.

To start off, there are two categories of argument (that are among, if not the most widely used lines of argument) that I will try NOT to engage with:

1) Quotes from Ultimania or developer interviews - while they’re great for easter eggs and behind-the-scenes info, if a guidebook is required to understand key plot points, you have fundamentally failed as a storyteller. Now the question of which character wants to bone whom is often something that can be relegated to a guidebook, but in the case of FF7, you would be watching two very different stories play out depending on who Cloud ends up with.

Of course, the Ultimanias do spell this out clearly, but luckily for us, SE are competent enough storytellers that we can find the answer by looking at the text alone.

2) Arguments about character actions/motivations — specifically, I’m talking about stuff like “Cloud made this face in this scene, which means be must be [insert whatever here].”

Especially when it comes to the LTD, these tend to focus on individual actions, decontextualizing them from their role in the narrative as a whole. LTDers often try to put themselves in the character’s shoes to suss out what they may be thinking and feeling in those moments. These arguments will be colored by personal experiences, which will inevitably vary.

Let’s take for example Cloud’s behavior in Advent Children. One may argue that it makes total sense given that he’s dying and fears failing the ones he loves. Another may argue that there’s no way that he would run unless he was deeply unhappy and pining after a lost love. Well, you’ll probably just be talking over each other until the cows come home. Such is the problem with trying to play armchair therapist with a fictional character. It’s not like we can ask Cloud himself why he did what he did (and even if we could, he’s not the exactly the most reliable narrator in the world). Instead, in trying to understand his motivations, we are left with no choice but to draw comparisons with our own personal experiences, those of our friends, or other works of media we’ve consumed. Any interpretation would be inherently subjective and honestly, a futile subject for debate.

There’s nothing wrong with drawing personal connections with fictional characters of course. That is the purpose of art after all. They are vessels of empathy. But when we’re talking about what is canon, it doesn’t matter what we take away. What matters is the creators’ intent.

Cloud, Tifa and Aerith are not your friends Bob, Alice and Maude. They are characters created by Square Enix. Real people can behave in a variety of different ways if they found themselves in the situations faced by our dear trio; however, FF7 characters are not sentient creatures. Everything they do or say is dictated by the developers to serve the story they are trying to tell.

So what do we have left then? Am I asking you, dear reader, to just trust me, anonymous stranger on the Internet, when I tell you #clotiiscanon. Well, in a sense, yes, but more seriously, I’m going to try to suss out what the creator’s intent is based on what is, and more importantly, what isn’t, on screen.

Instead of putting ourselves in the shoes of the characters, let’s try putting ourselves in the shoes of the creators. So the question would then be, if the intent is X, then what purpose does character Y or scene Z serve?

The story of FF7 isn’t the immutable word of God etched in a stone tablet. For every scene that made it into the final game, there are dozens of alternatives that were tossed aside. Let us also not forget the crude economics of popular storytelling. Spending resources on one particular aspect of the game may mean something entirely unrelated will have to be cut for time. Thus, the absence of a particular character/scenario is an alternative in itself. So with all these options at their disposal, why is the scene we see before us the one that made it into the final cut? — Before we dive in, I also want to define two broad categories of narrative: messy and clean.

Messy narratives are ones I would define as stories that try to illuminate something about the human condition, but may not leave the audience feeling very good by the end of it. The protagonists, while not always anti-heroes, don’t always exhibit the kind of growth we’d like, don’t always learn their lessons, probably aren’t the best role models. The endings are often ambivalent, ambiguous, and leaves room for the audience to take away from it what they will. This is the category I would put art films and prestige cable dramas.

Clean narratives are where I would categorize most popular forms of entertainment. Not that these characters necessarily lack nuance, but whatever flaws are portrayed are something to be overcome by the end of story. The protagonists are characters you’re supposed to want to root for

Final Fantasy as a series would fall under the ‘clean’ category. Sure, many of the protagonists start out as jerks, but they grow through these flaws and become true heroes by the end of their journey. Hell, a lot of the time even the villains are redeemed. They want you to like the characters you’re spending a 40+ hr journey with. Their depictions can still be realistic, but they will become the most idealized versions of themselves by the end of their journeys.

This is important to establish, because we can then assume that it is not SE’s intent to make any of their main characters come off pathetic losers or unrepentant assholes. Now whether or not they succeed in that endeavor is another question entirely.

FF7 OG or The dumbest thought experiment in the world

With that one thousand word preamble out of the way, let’s finally take a look at the text. In lieu of going through the OG’s story beat by beat, let’s try this thought experiment:

Imagine it’s 1996, and you’re a development executive at what was then Squaresoft. The plucky, young development team has the first draft of what will become the game we know as Final Fantasy VII. Like the preceding entries in the series, it’s a world-spanning action adventure RPG, with a key subplot being the epic tragic romance between its hero and heroine, Cloud and Aerith.

They ask you for your notes.

(For the sake of your sanity and mine, let’s limit our hypothetical notes to the romantic subplot)

Disc 1 - everything seems to be on the right track. Nice meet-cute, lots of moments developing the relationship between our pair. Creating a love triangle with this Tifa character is an interesting choice, but she’s a comparatively minor character so she probably won’t be a real threat and will find her happiness elsewhere by the end of the game. You may note that they’re leaning a bit too much into Tifa and Cloud’s past. Especially the childhood promise flashback early in the game — cute scene, but a distraction from main story and main pairing — fodder for the chopping block. You may also bump on the fact that Aerith is initially attracted to Cloud because he reminds her of an ex, but this is supposed to be a more mature FF. That can be an obstacle they overcome as Aerith gets to know the real Cloud.

Aerith dies, but it is supposed to be a tragic romance after all. Death doesn’t have to be the end for this relationship, especially since Aerith is an Ancient after all.

It’s when Disc 2 starts that things go off the rails. First off, it feels like an awfully short time for Cloud to be grieving the love of his life, though it’s somewhat understandable. This story is not just a romance. There are other concerns after all, Cloud’s identity crisis for one. Though said identity crisis involves spending a lot of time developing his relationship with another woman. It’s one thing for Cloud and Tifa to be from the same hometown, but does she really need to play such an outsized role in his internal conflict? This might give the player the wrong impression.

You get to the Northern Crater, and it just feels all wrong. Cloud is more or less fine after the love of his life is murdered in front of his eyes but has a complete mental breakdown to the point that he’s temporarily removed as a playable character because Tifa loses faith in him??? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Oh, but it only gets worse from here. With Cloud gone, the POV switches to Tifa and her feelings for him and her desire to find him. The opening of the game is also recontextualized when you learn the only reason that Cloud was part of the first Reactor mission that starts the game is because Tifa found him and wanted to keep an eye on him.

Then you get to Mideel and the alarm bells are going off. Tifa drops everything, removing her from the party as well, to take care of Cloud while he’s a catatonic vegetable? Not good. Very not good. This level of selfless devotion is going to make Cloud look like a total asshole when he rejects her in favor of Aerith. Speaking of Aerith, she uh…hasn’t been mentioned for some time. In fact, her relationship with Cloud has remained completely static after Disc 1, practically nonexistent, while his with Tifa has been building and building. Developing a rival relationship that then needs to be dismantled rather than developing the endgame relationship doesn’t feel like a particularly valuable use of time and resources.

By the time you get to the Lifestream scene, you’re about ready to toss the script out of the window. Here’s the emotional climax of the entire game, where Cloud’s internal conflict is finally resolved, and it almost entirely revolves around Tifa? Rather than revisiting the many moments of mental anguish we experienced during the game itself — featuring other characters, including let’s say, Aerith — it’s about a hereto unknown past that only Tifa has access to? Not only that, but we learn that the reason Cloud wanted to join SOLDIER was to impress Tifa, and the reason he adopted his false persona was because he was so ashamed that he couldn’t live up to the person he thought Tifa wanted him to be? Here, we finally get a look into the inner life of one half of our epic couple and…it entirely revolves around another woman??

Cloud is finally his real self, and hey, it looks like he finally remembers Aerith, that’s at least a step in the right direction. Though still not great. With his emotional arc already resolved, any further romantic developments is going to feel extraneous and anticlimactic. It just doesn’t feel like there’s enough time to establish that:

Cloud’s romantic feelings for Tifa (which were strong enough to launch his hero’s journey) have transformed into something entirely platonic in the past few days/weeks

Cloud’s feelings for Aerith that he developed while he was pretending to be someone else (and not just any someone, but Aerith’s ex of all people) are real.

This isn’t a romantic melodrama after all. There’s still a villain to kill and a world to save.

Cloud does speak of Aerith wistfully, and even quite personally at times, yet every time he talks about her, he’s surrounded by the other party members. A scene or two where he can grapple with his feelings for her on his own would help. Her ghost appearing in the Sector 5 Church feels like a great opportunity for this to happen, but he doesn’t interact with it at all. What gives? Missed opportunity after missed opportunity.

The night before the final battle, Cloud asks the entire party to find what they’re fighting for. This feels like a great (and perhaps the last) opportunity to establish that for Cloud, it’s in Aerith’s memory and out of his love for her. He could spend those hours alone in any number of locations associated with her — the Church, the Temple of the Ancients, the Forgotten City.

Instead — none of those happens. Instead, once again, it’s Cloud and Tifa in another scene where they’re the only two characters in the scene. You’re really going to have Cloud spend what could very well be the last night of his life with another woman? With a fade to black that strongly implies they slept together? In one fell swoop, you’re portraying Cloud as a guy who not only betrays the memory of his lost love, but is also incredibly callous towards the feelings of another woman by taking advantage of her vulnerability. Why are we rooting for him to succeed again?

Cloud and the gang finally defeat Sephiroth, and Aerith guides him back into the real world. Is he finally explicitly stating that he’s searching for her (though they’ve really waited until the last minute to do so), but again, why is Tifa in this scene? Shouldn’t it just be Cloud and Aerith alone? Why have Tifa be there at all? Why have her and her alone of all the party members be the one waiting for Cloud? Do you need to have Tifa there to be rejected while Cloud professes his unending love for Aerith? It just feels needlessly cruel and distracts from what should be the sole focus of the scene, the love between Cloud and Aerith.

What a mess.

You finish reading, and since it is probably too late in the development process to just fire everyone, you offer a few suggestions that will clarify the intended romance while the retaining the other plot points/general themes of the game.

Here they are, ordered by scale of change, from minor to drastic:

Option 1 would be to keep most of the story in tact, but rearrange the sequence of events so that the Lifestream sequence happens before Aerith’s death. That way, Cloud is his true self and fully aware of his feelings for both women before Aerith’s death. That way, his past with Tifa isn’t some ticking bomb waiting to go off in the second half of the game. That development will cease at the Lifestream scene. Cloud will realize the affection he held for her as a child is no longer the case. He is grateful for the past they shared, but his future is with Aerith. He makes a clear choice before that future is taken away from him with her death. The rest of the game will go on more or less the same (with the Highwind scene being eliminated, of course) making it clear, that avenging the death of his beloved is one of, if not the, primary motivation for him wanting to defeat Sephiroth.

The problem with this “fix” is that a big part of the reason that Aerith gets killed is because of Cloud’s identity crisis. If said crisis is resolved, the impact of her death will be diminished, because it would feel arbitrary rather than something that stems from the consequences of Cloud’s actions. More of the story will need to be reconceived so that this moment holds the same emotional weight.

Another problem is why the Lifestream scene needs to exist at all. Why spend all that time developing the backstory for a relationship that will be moot by the end of the game? It makes Tifa feel like less of a character and more of a plot device, who becomes irrelevant after she services the protagonist’s character development and then has none of her own. That’s no way to treat one of the main characters of your game.

Option 2 would be to re-imagine Tifa’s character entirely. You can keep some of her history with Cloud in tact, but expand her backstory so she is able to have a satisfactory character arc outside of her relationship with Cloud. You could explore the five years in her life since the Nibelheim incident. Maybe she wasn’t in Midgar the whole time. Maybe, like Barret, she has her own Corel, and maybe reconciling with her past there is the climax of her emotional arc as opposed to her past with Cloud. For Cloud too, her importance needs to be diminished. She can be one of the people who help him find his true self in the Lifestream, but not the only person. There’s no reason the other people he’s met on his journey can’t be there. Thus their relationship remains somewhat important, but their journeys are not so entwined that it distracts from Cloud and Aerith’s romance.

Option 3 would be to really lean into the doomed romance element of Cloud and Aerith’s relationship. Have her death be the cause of his mental breakdown, and have Aerith be the one in the Lifestream who is able to put his mind back together and bring him back to the realm of consciousness. After he emerges, he has the dual goal of defeating Sephiroth and trying to reunite with Aerith. In the end, in order to do the former, he has to relinquish the latter. He makes selfless choice. He makes the choice that resonates the overall theme of the game. It’s a bittersweet but satisfying ending. Cloud chooses to honor her memory and her purpose over the chance to physically bring her back. In this version of the game, the love triangle serves no purpose. There’s no role for Tifa at all.

Okay, we can be done with this strained counterfactual. What I’ve hopefully illustrated is that while developers had countless opportunities to solidify Cloud/Aerith as the canon couple in Discs 2 and 3 of the game, they instead chose a different route each and every time. What should also be clear is that the biggest obstacle standing in their way is not Aerith’s death, but the fact that Tifa exists.

At least in the form she takes in the final game, as a playable character and at the very least, the 3rd most important character in game’s story. She is not just another recurring NPC or an antagonist. Her love for Cloud is not going to be treated like a mere trifle or obstacle. If Cloud/Aerith was supposed to be the endgame ship, there would be no need for a love triangle and no need to include Tifa in the game at all. Death is a big enough obstacle, developing Cloud’s relationship with Tifa would only distract from and diminish his romance with Aerith.

I think this is something the dead enders understand intuitively, even more so than many Cloti shippers. Which is why some of them try to dismiss Tifa’s importance in the story so that she becomes a minor supporting character at best, or denigrate her character to the point that she becomes an actual villain. The Seifer to a Squall, the Seymour to a Tidus, hell even a Quistis to a Rinoa, they know how to deal with, but a Tifa Lockhart? As she is actually depicted in Final Fantasy VII? They have no playbook for that, and thus they desperately try to squeeze her into one of these other roles.

Let’s try another thought experiment, and see what would to other FF romances if we inserted a Tifa Lockhart-esque character in the middle of them.

FFXV is a perfect example because it features the sort of tragic love beyond death romance that certain shippers want Cloud and Aerith to be. Now, did I think FFXV was a good game? No. Did I think Noctis/Luna was a particularly well-developed romance? Also no. Did I have any question in my mind whatsoever that they were the canon relationship? Absolutely not.

Is this because they kiss at the end? Well sure, that helps, but also it’s because the game doesn’t spend the chapters after Luna’s death developing Noctis’ relationship with another woman. If Noctis/Luna had the same sort of development as Cloud/Aerith, then after Luna dies, Iris would suddenly pop in and play a much more prominent role. The game would flashback to her past and her relationship with Noctis. And it would be through his relationship with Iris that Noctis understands his duty to become king or a crystal or whatever the fuck that game was about. Iris is by Noctis’ side through the final battle, and when he ascends the throne in that dreamworld or whatever. There, Luna finally shows up again. Iris is still in the frame when Noctis tells her something like ‘Oh sorry, girl, I’ve been in love with Luna all along,” before he kisses Luna and the game ends.

(a very real scene from a very good game)

Come on. It would be utterly ludicrous and an utter disservice to every character involved, yet that is essentially the argument Cloud/Aerith shippers are making. SE may have made some pretty questionable storytelling decisions in the past, but they aren’t that bad at this.

Or in FFVIII, it would be like reordering the sequence of events so that Squall remembers that he grew up in an orphanage with all the other kids after Rinoa falls into a coma. And while Rinoa is out of commission, instead of Quistis gracefully bowing out after realizing she had mistaken her feelings of sisterly affection for love, it becomes Quistis’ childhood relationship with Squall that allows him to remember his past and re-contextualizes the game we’ve played thus far, so that the player realizes that it was actually Quistis who was his motivation all along. Then after this brief emotional detour, his romance with Rinoa would continue as usual. Absolutely absurd.

The Final Fantasy games certainly have their fair share of plot holes, but they’ve never whiffed on a romance this badly.

A somewhat more serious character analysis of the OG

What then is Tifa’s actual role in the story of FFVII? Her character is intricately connected to Cloud’s. In fact, they practically have the same arc, though Tifa’s is rather understated compared to his. She doesn’t adopt a false persona after all. For both of them, the flaw that they must learn to overcome over the course of the game is their fear of confronting the truth of their past. Or to put it more crudely, if they’re not lying, they’re at the very least omitting the truth. Cloud does so to protect himself from his fear of being exposed as a failure. Tifa does so at the expense of herself, because she fears the truth will do more harm than good. They’re two sides of the same coin. Nonetheless, their lying has serious ramifications.

The past they’re both afraid to confront is of course the Nibelheim Incident from five years ago. Thus, the key points in their emotional journeys coincide with the three conflicting Nibelheim flashbacks depicted in the game: Cloud’s false memory in Kalm, Sephiroth’s false vision in the Northern Crater, and the truth in the Lifestream.

Before they enter the Lifestream, both Cloud and Tifa are at the lowest of their lows. Cloud has had a complete mental breakdown and is functionally a vegetable. Tifa has given up everything to take care of Cloud as she feels responsible for his condition. If he doesn’t recover, she may never find peace.

With nothing left to lose, they both try to face the past head on. For Cloud, it’s a bit harder. At the heart of all this confusion, is of course, the Nibelheim Incident. How does Cloud know all these things he shouldn’t if Tifa doesn’t remember seeing him there? The emotional climax for both Cloud and Tifa, and arguably the game as a whole, is the moment the Shinra grunt removes his helmet to reveal that Cloud was there all along.

Tifa is the only character who can play this role for Cloud. It’s not like she a found a videotape in the Lifestream labeled ‘Nibelheim Incident - REAL’ and voila, Cloud is fixed. No, she is the only one who can help him because she is the only person who lived through that moment. No one else could make Cloud believe it. You could have Aerith or anyone else trying to tell him what actually happened, but why would he believe it anymore than the story Sephiroth told him at the Northern Crater?

With Tifa, it’s different. Not only was she physically there, but she’s putting as much at risk in what the truth may reveal. She’s not just a plot device to facilitate Cloud’s character development. The Lifestream sequence is as much the culmination of her own character arc. If it goes the wrong way, “Cloud” may find out that he’s just a fake after all, and Tifa may learn that boy she thought she’d been on this journey with had died years ago. That there’s no one left from her past, that it was all in her head, that she’s all alone. Avoiding this truth is a comfort, but in this moment, they’re both putting themselves on the line. Being completely vulnerable in front of the person they’re most terrified of being vulnerable with.

The developers have structured Cloud and Tifa’s character arcs so that the crux is a moment where the other is literally the only person who could provide the answer they need. Without each other, as far as the story is concerned, Cloud and Tifa would remain incomplete.

Aerith’s character arc is a different beast entirely. She is the closest we have to the traditional Campbellian Hero. She is the Chosen One, the literal last of her kind, who has been resisting the call to adventure until she can no longer. The touchstones of her character arc are the moments she learns more about her Cetra past and comes to terms with her role in protecting the planet - namely Cosmo Canyon, the Temple of the Ancients and the Forgotten City.

How do hers and Cloud’s arcs intersect? When it comes to the Nibelheim incident, she is a merely a spectator (at least during the Kalm flashback, as for the other two, she is uh…deceased). Cloud attacking her at the Temple of the Ancients, which results in her running to the Forgotten City alone and getting killed by Sephiroth, certainly exacerbates his mental deterioration, but it is by no means a turning point in his arc the way the Northern Crater is.

As for Cloud’s role in Aerith’s arc, their meeting is quite important in that it sets forth the series of events that leads her to getting captured by Shinra and thus meeting “Sephiroth” and wanting to learn more about the Cetra. It’s the inciting incident if we’re going to be really pedantic about it, yet Aerith’s actual character development is not dependent on her relationship with Cloud. It is about her communion with her Cetra Ancestry and the planet.

To put it in other terms, all else being the same, Aerith could still have a satisfying character arc had Cloud not crashed down into her Church. Sure, the game would look pretty different, but there are other ways for her to transform from a flirty, at times frivolous girl to an almost Christ-like figure who accepts the burden of protecting the planet.

Such is not the case for Cloud and Tifa. Their character arcs are built around their shared past and their relationship with one another. Without Tifa, you would have to rewrite Cloud’s character entirely. What was his motivation for joining SOLDIER? How did he get on that AVALANCHE mission in the first place? Who can possibly know him well enough to put his mind back together after it falls apart? If the answer to all these questions is the same person, then congratulations, you’ve just reverse engineered Tifa Lockhart.

Tifa fares a little better. Without Cloud, she would be a sad, sweet character who never gets the opportunity to reconcile with the trauma of her past. Superficially, a lot would be the same, but she would ultimately be quite static and all the less interesting for it.

Let’s also take a brief gander at Tifa’s role after the Lifestream sequence. At this point in the game, both Tifa and Cloud’s emotional arcs are essentially complete. They are now the most idealized versions of themselves, characters the players are meant to admire and aspire to. However they are depicted going forward, it would not be the creator’s intent for their actions to be perceived in a negative light.

A few key moments standout, ones that would not be included if the game was intended to end with any other romantic pairing or with Cloud’s romantic interest left ambiguous:

The Highwind scene, which I’ve gone over above. It doesn’t matter if you get the Low Affection or High Affection version. It would not reflect well on either Cloud or Tifa if he chose to spend what could be his last night alive with a woman whose feelings he did not reciprocate.

Before the final battle with Sephiroth, the party members scream out the reasons they’re fighting. Barret specifically calls out AVALANCHE, Marlene and Dyne, Red XIII specifically calls out his Grandpa, and Tifa specifically calls out Cloud. You are not going to make one of Tifa’s last moments in the game be her pining after a guy who has no interest in her. Not when you could easily have her mention something like her past, her hometown or hell even AVALANCHE and Marlene like Barret. If Tifa’s feelings for Cloud are meant to be unrequited, then it would be a character flaw that would be dealt with long before the final battle (see: Quistis in FF8 or Eowyn in the Lord of the Rings). They would not still be on display at moment like this.

Tifa being the only one there when Cloud jumps into the Lifestream to fight Sephiroth for the last time, and Tifa being the only one there when he emerges. She is very much playing the traditional partner/spouse role here, when you could easily have the entire party present or no one there at all. There is clearly something special about her relationship with Cloud that sets her apart from the other party members.

Once again, let’s look at the “I think I can meet her there moment.” And let’s put side the translation (the Japanese is certainly more ambiguous, and it’s not like the game had any trouble having Cloud call Aerith by her name before this). If Cloud was really expressing his desire to reunite with Aerith, and thus his rejection of Tifa, then the penultimate scene of this game is one that involves the complete utter and humiliation of one of its main characters since Tifa’s reply would indicate she’s inviting herself to a romantic reunion she has no part in. Not only that, but to anyone who is not Cl*rith shipper, the protagonist of the game is going to come off as a callous asshole. That cannot possibly be the creator’s intention. They are competent enough to depict an act of love without drawing attention to the party hurt by that love.

What then could possibly be the meaning? Could it possibly be Cloud trying to comfort Tifa by trying to find a silver lining in what appears to be their impending death? That this means they may get to see their departed loved ones again, including their mutual friend, Aerith? (I will note that Tifa talks about Aerith as much, if not even more than Cloud, after her death). Seems pretty reasonable to me, this being an interpretation of the scene that aligns with the overall themes of the game, and casts every character in positive light during this bittersweet moment.

Luckily enough, we have an entire fucking Compilation to find out which is right.

But before we get there, I’m sure some of you (lol @ me thinking anyone is still reading this) are asking, if Cloti is canon, then why is there a love triangle at all? Why even hint at the possibility of a romance between Cloud and Aerith? Wouldn’t that also be a waste of time and resources if they weren’t meant to be canon?

Well, there are two very important reasons that have nothing to do with romance and everything to do with two of the game’s biggest twists:

Aerith initially being attracted to Cloud’s similarities to Zack/commenting on the uncanniness of said similarities is an organic way to introduce the man Cloud’s pretending to be. Without it, the reveal in the Lifestream would fall a bit flat. The man he’s been emulating all along would just be some sort of generic hero rather than a person whose history and deeds already encountered during the course of the game. Notably for this to work, the game only has to establish Aerith’s attraction to Cloud.

To build the player’s attachment to Aerith before her death/obscure the fact that she’s going to die. With the technological limitations of the day, the only way to get the player to interact with Aerith is through the player character (AKA Cloud), and adding an element of choice (AKA the Gold Saucer Date mechanic) makes the player even more invested. This then elevates Aerith’s relationship with Cloud over hers with any other character. At the same time, because her time in the game is limited, Cloud ends up interacting with Aerith more than any of the other characters, at least in Disc 1. The choice to make many of these interactions flirty/romantic also toys with player expectations. One does not expect the hero’s love interest to die halfway through the game. The game itself also spends a bit of time teasing the romance, albeit, largely in superficial ways like other characters commenting on their relationship or Cait Sith reading their love fortune at the Temple of the Ancients. Yet, despite the quantity of their personal interactions, Cloud and Aerith never display any moments of deep love or devotion that one associates with a Final Fantasy romance. They never have the time. What the game establishes then is the potential of a romance rather than the romance itself. Aerith’s death hurts because of all that lost potential. There so many things she wanted to do, so many places she wanted to see that will never happen because her life is cut short. Part of what is lost, of course, is the potential of her romance with Cloud.

This creative choice is a lot more controversial since it elevates subverting audience expectations over character, and understandably leads to some player confusion. What’s the point of all this set up if there’s not going to be a pay off? Well, that is kind of the point. Death is frustrating because of all the unknowns and what-ifs. But, I suppose some people just can’t accept that fact in a game like this.

One last note on the OG before we move on: Even though this from an Ultimania, since we’re talking about story development and creator intent, I thought it was relevant to include: the fact that Aerith was the sole heroine in early drafts of the game is not the LTD trump card so people think it is. Stories undergo radical changes through the development process. More often than not, there are too many characters, and characters are often combined or removed if their presence feels redundant or confusing.

In this case, the opposite happened. Tifa was added later in the development process as a second heroine. Let’s say that Aerith was the Last Ancient and the protagonist’s sole love interest in this early draft of Final Fantasy VII. In the game that was actually released, that role was split between two characters (and last I checked, Tifa is not the last of a dying race), and Aerith dies halfway through the game, so what does that suggest about how Aerith’s role may have changed in the final product? Again, if Aerith was intended to be Cloud’s love interest, Tifa simply would not exist.

A begrudging analysis of our favorite straight-to-DVD sequel

Let’s move onto the Compilation. And in doing so, completely forget about the word vomit that’s been written above. While it’s quite clear to me now that there’s no way in hell the developers would have intended the last scene in the game to be both a confirmation of Cloud’s love for Aerith and his rejection of Tifa, in my younger and more vulnerable years, I wasn’t so sure. In fact, this was the prevailing interpretation back in the pre-Compilation Dark Ages. Probably because of a dubious English translation of the game and a couple of ambiguous cameos in Final Fantasy Tactics and Kingdom Hearts were all we  had to go on.

How then did the official sequel to Final Fantasy VII change those priors?

Two years after the events of the game, Cloud is living as a family with Tifa and two kids rather than scouring the planet for a way to be reunited with Aerith. Shouldn’t the debate be well and over with that? Obviously not, and it’s not just because people were being obstinate. Part of the confusion stems from Advent Children itself, but I would argue that did not come from an intent to play coy/keep Cloud’s romantic desires ambiguous, but rather a failure of execution of his character arc.

Now I wasn’t the biggest fan of the film when I first watched a bootlegged copy I downloaded off LimeWire in 2005, and I like it even less now, but I better understand its failures, given its unique position as a sequel to a beloved game and the cornerstone of launching the Compilation.

The original game didn’t have such constraints on its storytelling. Outside of including a few elements that make it recognizable as a Final Fantasy (Moogles, Chocobos, Summons, etc.) and being a good enough game to be a financial success, the developers pretty much had free rein in terms of what story they wanted to tell, what characters they would use to tell it, and how long it took for them to tell said story.

With Advent Children, telling a good story was not the sole or even primary goal. Instead, it had to:

Do some fanservice: The core audience is going to be the OG fanbase, who would be expecting to see modern, high-def depictions of all the memorable and beloved characters from the game, no matter if the natural end point of their stories is long over.

Set up the rest of the Compilation - Advent Children is the draw with the big stars, but also a way to showcase the lesser known characters from from the Compilation who are going to be leading their own spinoffs.  It’s part feature film/part advertisement for the rest of the Compilation. Thus, the Turks, Vincent and Zack get larger roles in the film than one might expect to attract interest to the spinoffs they lead.

Show off its technical prowess: SE probably has enough self awareness to realize that what’s going to set it apart from other animated feature films is not its novel storytelling, but its graphical capabilities. Thus, to really show off those graphics, the film is going to be packed to the brim with big, complicated action scenes with lots of moving parts, as opposed to quieter character driven moments.

These considerations are not unique to Advent Children, but important to note nonetheless:

As a sequel, the stakes have to be just as high if not higher than those in the original work. Since the threat in the OG was the literal end of the world, in Advent Children, the world’s gotta end again

The OG was around 30-40 hours long. An average feature-length film is roughly two hours. Video games and films are two very different mediums. As many TV writers who have tried to make the transition to film (and vice-versa) can tell you, success in one medium does not translate to success in another. 

With so much to do in so little time, is it any wonder then that it is again Sephiroth who is the villain trying to destroy the world and Aerith in the Lifestream the deus ex machina who saves the day?

All of this is just a long-winded way to say, certain choices in the Advent Children that may seem to exist only to perpetuate the LTD were made with many other storytelling considerations in mind.

When trying to understand the intended character arcs and relationship dynamics, you cannot treat the film as a collection of scenes devoid of context. You can’t just say - “well here’s a scene where Cloud seems to miss Aerith, and here’s another scene where Cloud and Tifa fight. Obviously, Cloud loves Aerith.” You have to look at what purpose these scenes serve in the grander narrative.

And what is this grander narrative? To put it in simplistic terms, Aerith is the obstacle, and Tifa is goal. Cloud must get over his guilt over Aerith’s death so that he can return to living with Tifa and the children in peace.

The scenes following the prologue are setting up the emotional stakes of film - the problem that will be resolved by the film’s end. The problem being depicted here is not Aerith’s absence from Cloud’s life, but Cloud’s absence from his family. We see Tifa walking through Seventh Heaven saying “he’s not here anymore,” we see Denzel in his sickbed asking for Cloud, we see a framed photo of the four of them on Cloud’s desk. We see Cloud letting Tifa’s call go to voicemail.

What we do not see is Aerith, who does not appear until almost halfway through the film.

Cloud spends the first of the film avoiding confrontation with the Remnants/dealing with the return of Sephiroth. It’s only when Tifa is injured, and Denzel and Marlene get kidnapped that he goes to face his problems head on.

Before the final battle, when Cloud has exorcised his emotional demons and is about to face his physical demons, what do we see? We see Cloud telling Marlene that it’s his turn to take care of her, Denzel and Tifa the way they’ve taken care of him. We see Cloud telling Tifa that he ‘feels lighter’ and tacitly confirming that she was correct when she called him out earlier in the film. We see Cloud confirming to Denzel that he’s going home after this is all over.

What we do not see is Cloud telepathically communicating with Aerith to say, “Hey boo, can’t wait to beat Sephiroth so I can finally reunite with you in the Promised Land. Xoxoxo.” Aerith doesn’t factor in at all. Returning to his family is his goal, and his fight with Bahamut/the Remnants/Sephiroth/whatever the fuck is the final obstacle he has to face before reaching this goal.

This is reiterated again when Cloud is shot by Yazoo and seemingly perishes in an explosion. What is at stake with his “death”? We see Tifa calling his name while looking out the airship. We see Denzel and Marlene waiting for him at Seventh Heaven. We do not see Aerith watching over him in the Lifestream.

Now, Aerith does play an important role in Cloud’s arc when she shows up at about the midpoint of the film. You could fairly argue that it’s the turning point in Cloud’s emotional journey, the moment when he finally decides to confront his problems. But even if it’s only Cloud and Aerith in the scene, it’s not really about their relationship at all.

Let’s consider the context before this scene happens. Denzel and Marlene have been kidnapped by the Remnants; Tifa was nearly killed in a fight with another. This is Cloud at his lowest point. It’s his worst fears come to pass. His guilt over Aerith’s death is directly addressed at this moment in the film because it is not so much about his feelings for Aerith as it is about how Cloud fears the failures of his past (one of the biggest being her death) would continue into the present. If it was just about Aerith, we could have seen Cloud asking for her forgiveness at any other time in the film. It occurs when it does because this when his guilt over Aerith’s death intersects with his actual conflict, his fear that he’ll fail the the ones he loves. She appears when he’s at the Forgotten City where he goes to save the children. The same location where he had failed two year before.

This connection is made explicit when Cloud has flashes of Zack and Aerith’s deaths before he saves Denzel and Tifa from Bahamut. Again, Cloud’s dwelling on the past is directly related to his fears of being unable to protect his present.

Aerith is a feminine figure who is associated with flowers. That combined with the players’ memory of her and her relationship with Cloud in the OG, I can see how their scenes can be construed as romantic, but I really do not think that it is the creators’ intent to portray any romantic longing on Cloud’s part.

If they wanted to suggest that Cloud was still in love with Aerith or even leave his romantic interest ambiguous, there is no way in hell they would have had Cloud living with Tifa and two kids prior to the film’s events. To say nothing of opening the film by showing the pain his absence brings.

A romantic reading of Cloud’s guilt over Aerith’s death would suggest that he entered into a relationship with Tifa and started raising two children with her while still holding a torch for Aerith and hoping for a way to be reunited with her. The implication would be that Tifa is his second choice, and he is settling. Now, is this a dynamic that occurs in real life? Absolutely. Is this something that is often depicted in some films and television? Sure - in fact this very premise is at the core of one my favorite films of the last decade - 45 Years — and spoiler alert — the guy does not come off well in this situation. But once again, Cloud is not a real person, and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is not a John Cassavettes film or an Ingmar Bergman chamber drama. It is a 2-hour long straight to DVD sequel for a video game made for teens. This kind of messy, if realistic, relationship dynamic is not what this particular work is trying to explore.

(one of these is a good film!)

By the end of Advent Children, Cloud is once again the idealized version of himself. A hero that the audience is supposed to like and admire. We are supposed to think that his actions in the first half of the movie (wallowing in his guilt and abandoning his family) were bad. These are the flaws that he must overcome through the course of the film, and by the end he does. If he really had been settling and treating his Seventh Heaven family as a second choice prior to the events of the film, that too would obviously be a character flaw that needs to be addressed before the end of the film. It isn’t because this is a dynamic that only exists in certain people’s imaginations.

If the creators wanted to leave the Cloud & Aerith relationship open to a romantic interpretation, they didn’t have to write themselves into such a corner. They wouldn’t have to change the final film much at all, merely adjust the chronology a bit. Instead of Cloud already living as a family with Tifa, Marlene and Denzel prior to the beginning of the film, you would show them on the precipice of becoming a family, but with Cloud being unable to take the final step without getting over his feelings for Aerith first. This would leave space for him to love both women without coming off as an opportunistic jerk.

This is essentially the dynamic with Locke/Rachel/Celes in FFVI. Locke is unable to move on with Celes or anyone else until he finally finds closure with Rachel. It’s a lovely scene that does not diminish his relationships with either woman. He loved Rachel. He will love Celes. What the game does not have him do is enter into a relationship into Celes first and then when the party arrives at the Phoenix Cave, have him suddenly remember ‘Oh shit, I’ve gotta deal with my baggage with Rachel before I can really move on.’ That would not paint him in a particularly positive light.

Speaking of other Final Fantasies, let’s take a look another sequel in the series set two years after the events of the original work, one that is clearly the story of its protagonist searching for their lost love. And guess what? Final Fantasy X-2 does not begin with Yuna shacked up and raising two kids with another dude. And it certainly doesn’t begin with his perspective of the whole situation when Yuna decides to search for Tidus.

Square Enix knows how to write these kind of stories when they want to, and it’s clearly not their intent for Cloud and Aerith. Again, the biggest obstacle in the way of a Cloud/Aerith endgame isn’t space and time or death, it’s the existence of Tifa Lockhart.

A reasonable question to ask would be, if SE is not trying to ignite debate over the love triangle, why make Cloud’s relationship with Aerith a part of Advent Children at all? Why invite that sort of confusion? Well, the answer here, like the answer in the OG, is that Aerith’s role in the sequel is much more than her relationship with Cloud.

In the OG, it wasn’t Cloud and the gang who managed to stop Sephiroth and Meteor in the end, it was Aerith from the Lifestream. In a two-hour long film, you do not have the time to set up a completely new villain who can believably end the world, and since you pretty much have to include Sephiroth, the main antagonist can really only be him. No one else in the party has been established to have any magical Cetra powers, and again, since that’s not something that can be effectively established in a two-hour long film, and since Aerith needs to appear somehow, it again needs to be her who will save the day.

Given the time constraints, this external conflict has to be connected with Cloud’s internal conflict. In the OG, Cloud’s emotional arc is in resolved in the Lifestream, and then we spend a few more hours hunting down the Huge Materia/remembering what Holy is before resolving the external conflict of stopping Meteor. In Advent Children, we do not have that luxury of time. These turning points have to be one and same. It is only after Aerith is “introduced” in the film when Cloud asks her for forgiveness that she is able to help in the fight against the Remnants. Thus the turning point for Cloud’s character arc and the external conflict are the same. It’s understandably economical storytelling, though I wouldn’t call it particularly good storytelling.

As much as Cloud feels guilt over both Zack and Aerith’s deaths, it’s only Aerith who can play this dual role in the film. Zack can appear to help resolve Cloud’s emotional arc, but since he has no special Cetra powers or anything, there’s little he can do to help in Cloud’s fight against the Remnants. More time would need to be spent contriving a reason why Cloud is able to defeat the Remnants now when he wasn’t before or explaining why Aerith can suddenly help from the Lifestream when she had been absent before. (I still don’t think the film does a particularly good job of explaining this part, but that is a conversation for another time).

Another reason why Zack could not play this role is because at the time of AC’s original release, all we knew of Cloud and Zack’s relationship was contained in an optional flashback at the Shinra mansion after Cloud returns from the Lifestream. If it was Zack who suddenly showed up at Cloud’s lowest point, most viewers, even many who played the original game, would probably have been confused, and the moment would have fallen flat. On the other hand, even the most casual fan would have been aware of Aerith and her connection to Cloud, with her death scene being among the most well-known gaming moments of all time. Moreover, Aerith’s death is directly connected to Sephiroth, who is once again the threat in AC, whereas Zack was killed by Shinra goons. Aerith serves multiple purposes in a way that Zack just cannot.

Despite all this, though Aerith is more important to the film as a whole, many efforts are made to suggest that Zack and Aerith are equally important to Cloud. One of the first scenes in the film is Cloud moping around Zack’s grave (And unlike the scene with Aerith in the Forgotten City, it isn’t directly connected with Cloud’s present storyline in any way). We have the aforementioned scene where Cloud has flashes of both Aerith’s and Zack’s deaths when he saves Tifa and Denzel. Cloud has a scene where he’s standing back to back with Zack, mirroring his scene with in the Forgotten City with Aerith, before the climax of his fight with Sephiroth. In the Lifestream, after Cloud “dies,” it’s both Aerith and Zack who are there to send him back. Before the film ends, Cloud sees both Aerith and Zack leaving the church.

Now, were all these Zack appearances a way to promote the upcoming spin-off game that he’s going to lead? Of course. But the creators surely would have known that having Zack play such a similar role in Cloud’s arc would make Cloud’s relationship with Aerith feel less special and thus complicating a romantic interpretation of said relationship. If they wanted to encourage a romantic reading of Cloud’s lingering feelings for Aerith, they would have given Zack his own distinct role in the film. Or rather, they wouldn’t have put Zack in the film at all, and they certainly wouldn’t have him lead his own game, but we’ll get to the Zack of it all later.

The funny thing is, in a way, Zack is portrayed as being more special to Cloud. Zack only exists in the film to interact with Cloud and encourage him. Meanwhile. Aerith also has brief interactions with Kadaj, the Geostigma children and even Tifa before the film’s end. Aerith is there to save the whole world. Zack is there just for Cloud. If it’s Cloud’s relationship with Aerith that’s meant to be romantic, shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Let’s take a look at Tifa Lockhart. What role did she have to play in the FF7 sequel film? If, like some, you believed FF7 to be the Cloud/Aerith/Sephiroth show, then Tifa could have easily had a Barret-sized cameo in Advent Children. And honestly, she’s just a great martial artist. She has no special powers that would make her indispensable in a fight against Sephiroth. You certainly would not expect her to be the 2nd billed character in the film. Though of course, if you actually played through the Original Game with your eyes open, you would realize that Tifa Lockhart is instrumental to any story about Cloud Strife.

Unlike Aerith’s appearances, almost none of the suggestive scenes and dynamics between Cloud and Tifa had to be included in the film. As in, they serve no other plot related purpose and could have easily been cut from the final film if the creators weren’t trying to encourage a romantic interpretation of their relationship.

It feels inevitable now, but no one was expecting Cloud and Tifa to be living together and raising two kids. In the general consciousness, FF7 is Cloud and Sephiroth and their big swords and Aerith’s death. At the time, in the eyes of most fans and casual observers, Cloud and Tifa being together wasn’t a necessary part of the FF7 equation the way say, an epic fight between Cloud and Sephiroth would be. In fact, I don’t think even the biggest Cloti fans at the time would have imagined Cloud and Tifa living together would be their canon outcome in the sequel film.

Now can two platonic friends live together and raise two children together? Absolutely, but again Cloud and Tifa are not real people. They are fictional characters. A reasonable person (let’s use the legal definition of the term) who does not have brainworms from arguing over one of the dumbest debates on the Internet for 23 years would probably assume that two characters who were shown to be attracted to each other in the OG and who are now living together and raising two kids are in a romantic relationship. This is a reasonable assumption to make, and if SE wanted to leave Cloud’s romantic inclinations ambiguous, they simply would not be depicting Cloud and Tifa’s relationship in this manner. Cloud’s disrupted peace could have been a number of different things. He could have been a wandering mercenary, he could have been searching for a way to be reunited with Aerith. It didn’t have to be the family he formed with Tifa, but, then again, if you were actually paying attention to the story the OG was trying to tell, of course he would be living with Tifa.

Let’s also look at the scene where Cloud finds Tifa in the church after her fight with Loz. All the plot related information (who attacked her, Marlene being taken) is conveyed in the brief conversation they have before Cloud falls unconscious from Geostigma. What purpose do all the lingering shots of Cloud and Tifa in the flower bed in a Yin-Yang/non-sexual 69ing position serve if not to be suggestive of the type of relationship they have? It’s beautifully rendered but ultimately irrelevant to both the external and internal conflicts of the film.

Likewise, there is no reason why Cloud and Tifa needed to wake up in their children’s bedroom. No reason to show Cloud waking up with Tifa next to him in a way that almost makes you think they were in the same bed. And there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for a close-up of Tifa’s hand with the Wolf Ring on her ring finger while she is admonishing Cloud during what sounds like a domestic argument (This ring again comes into focus when Tifa leads Denzel to Cloud at the church at the end - there are dozens of ways this scene could have been rendered, but this is the one that was chosen.) If it wasn’t SE’s intent to emphasize the family dynamic and the intimate nature of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship, these scenes would not exist.

Let’s also take a look at Denzel, the only new character in the AC (give or take the Remnants). Again, given the film’s brief runtime, the fact that they’re not only adding a new character but giving him more screen time than almost every other AVALANCHE member must mean that he’s pretty important. While Denzel does have an arc of his own, especially in ACC, he is intricately connected to Cloud and Tifa and solidifies the family unit that they’ve been forming in Edge. Marlene still has Barret, but with the addition of Denzel, the family becomes something more real albeit even more tenuous given his Geostigma diagnosis. Without Denzel in the picture, it’s a bit easier to interpret Cloud’s distance from Tifa as romantic pining for another woman, but now it just seems absurd. The stakes are so much higher. Cloud and Tifa are at a completely different stage in their lives from the versions of these characters we met early on in the OG who were entangled in a frivolous love triangle. And yet some people are still stuck trying to fit these characters into a childish dynamic that died at the end of disc one along with a certain someone.

All this is there in the film, at least the director’s cut, if you really squint. But since SE preferred to spend its time on countless action sequences that have aged as well as whole milk in lieu of spending a few minutes showing Cloud’s family life before he got Geostigma to establish the emotional stakes, or a beat or two more on his reconciliation with Tifa and the kids, people may be understandably confused about Cloud’s arc. Has Cloud just been a moping around in misery for the two years post-OG? The answer is no, though that can only really be found in the accompanying novellas, specifically Case of Tifa.

Concerning the novellas, which we apparently must read to understand said DVD sequel

I really don’t know how you can read through CoT and still think there is anything ambiguous about the nature of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. The “Because I have you this time,” Cloud telling Tifa he’ll remind her how to be strong when they’re alone, Cloud confidently agreeing when Marlene adds him to their family. Not to mention Barret and Cid’s brief conversation about Cloud and Tifa’s relationship in Case of Barret, after which Cid comments that “women wear the pants,” which Barret then follows by asking Cid about Shera. Again, a reasonable person would assume the couple in question are in a romantic relationship, and if this wasn’t the intent, these lines would not be present. Especially not in a novella about someone else.

Some try to argue that CoT just shows how incompatible Cloud and Tifa are because it features a few low points in their relationship. I don’t think that’s Nojima’s intent. Even if it was, it certainly wouldn’t be to prove that Cloud loves Aerith. This isn’t how you tell that story. Why waste all that time disproving a negative rather than proving a positive? We didn’t spend hours in FF8 watching Rinoa’s relationship with Seifer fall apart to understand how much better off she is with Squall. If Cloud and Aerith is meant to be a love story, then tell their love story. Why tell the story of how Cloud is incompatible with someone else?

Part of the confusion may be because CoT doesn’t tell a complete story in and of itself. The first half of the story (before Cloud has to deliver flowers to the Forgotten City) acts as a sort of epilogue to the OG, while the second half of the story is something of a prologue to Advent Children (or honestly its missing Act One). And to state the obvious, conflict is inherent to any story worth telling. It can’t just be all fluff, that’s what the fanfiction is for.

Tifa’s conflict is her fear that the fragile little family they’ve built in Edge is going to fall apart. Thus we see her fret about Cloud’s distance, the way this affects Marlene, and Denzel’s sickness. There are certainly some low moments here --- Tifa telling Cloud to drink in his room, asking if he loves her -- all ways for the threat to seem more real, the outcome more uncertain, yet there’s only one way this conflict can be resolved. One direction to which their relationship can move.

Again, by the end of this story, both characters are supposed to be the best versions of themselves, to find their “happy” endings so to speak. Tifa could certainly find happiness outside of a relationship with Cloud. She could decide that they’ve given it a shot, but they’re better off as friends. She’s grateful for this experience and she’s learned from this, but now she’s ready to make a life for herself on her own. It would be a fine character arc, though not something the Final Fantasy series has been wont to do. However, that’s obviously not the case here as there’s no indication whatsoever that Tifa considers this as an option for herself. Nojima hasn’t written this off ramp into her journey. For Tifa, they’ll either become a real family or they won’t. Since this is a story that is going to have a happy ending, so of course they will, even if there are a lot of bumps along the way.

Unfortunately, with the Compilation being the unwieldy beast that this is, this whole arc has to be pieced together across a number of different works:

Tifa asking herself if they’re a real family in CoT

Her greatest fear seemingly come to life when Cloud leaves at the end of CoT/beginning of AC

Tifa explicitly asking Cloud if the reason they can’t help each other is because they’re not a real family during their argument in AC. Notably, even though Cloud is at his lowest point, he doesn’t confirm her fear. Instead he says he that he can’t help anyone, not even his family. Instead, he indirectly confirms that yes he does think they’re a family, even if is a frustrating moment still in that he’s too scared to try to save it.

The ending of AC where we see a new photo of Cloud smiling surrounded by Tifa and the kids and the rest of the AVALANCHE, next to the earlier photo we had seen of the four of them where he was wearing a more dour expression.

The ending of The Kids Are All Right, where Cloud, Tifa, Denzel and Marlene meet with Evan, Kyrie and Vits - and Cloud offers, unsolicited, that even if they’re not related by blood, they’re a family.

The ending of DVD extra ‘Reminiscence of FFVII’ where Cloud takes the day off and asks Tifa to close the bar so they can spend time together as a family as Tifa had wanted to do early in CoT

Cloud fears he’ll fail his family. Tifa fears it’ll fall apart. Cloud retreats into himself, pushing others away. Tifa neglects herself, not being able to say what she needs to say. In Advent Children, Tifa finally voices her frustrations. It’s then that Cloud finally confronts his fears. Like in the OG, Cloud and Tifa’s conflicts and character arcs are two sides of the same coin, and it’s only by communicating with each other are they able to resolve it. Though with the Compilation being an inferior work, it’s much less satisfying this time around. Such is the problem when you’re writing towards a preordained outcome (Cloud and Sephiroth duking it once again) rather than letting the story develop organically.

Some may ask, why mention Aerith so much (Cloud growing distant after delivering flowers to the Forgotten City, Cloud finding Denzel at Aerith’s church) if they weren’t trying to perpetuate the LTD? Well, as explained above, Aerith had to be in Advent Children, and since CoT is the only place where we get any insight into Cloud’s psyche, it’s here where Nojima expands on that guilt.

Again, this is a story that requires conflict, and what better conflict than the specter of a love rival? Notably, despite us having access to Tifa’s thoughts and fears, she never explicitly associates Cloud’s behavior with him pining after Aerith. Though it’s fair to say this fear is implied, if unwarranted.

If Cloud had actually been pining after Aerith this whole time, we would not be seeing it all unfold through Tifa’s perspective. You can depict a romance without drawing attention to the injured third party. We’re seeing all of this from Tifa’s POV, because it’s about Tifa’s insecurities, not the great tragic romance between Cloud and Aerith. Honestly, another reason we see this from Tifa’s perspective is because it’s dramatically more interesting. Because she’s insecure, she (and we the reader) wonder if there’s something else going on. Meanwhile, from Cloud’s perspective it would be straightforward and redundant, given what we see in AC. He’s guilty over Aerith’s death and thinks he doesn’t deserve to be happy.

Not to mention, the first time we encounter Aerith in CoT, Tifa is the one breaking down at her grave while Cloud is the one comforting her. Are we supposed to believe that he just forgot he was in love with Aerith until he had to deliver flowers to the Forgotten City?

And Aerith doesn’t just serve as a romantic obstacle. She’s also a symbol of guilt and redemption for both Cloud and Tifa. Neither think they have the right to be happy after all that’s happened (Aerith’s death being a big part of this), and through Denzel, who Cloud finds at Aerith’s church, they both see a chance to atone.

I do want to address Case of Lifestream: White because it’s only time in the entire Compilation where I’ve asked myself — what are they trying to achieve here? Now, I’d rather drink bleach than start debating the translation of ‘koibito’ again, but I did think it was a strange choice to specify the romantic nature of Aerith’s love for Cloud. I suppose it could be a reference her obvious attraction to Cloud in the OG, though calling it love feels like a stretch.

But nothing else in CoLW really gives me pause. It might be a bit jarring to see how much of it is Aerith’s thoughts of Cloud, but it makes sense when you consider the context in which it’s meant to be consumed. Unlike Case of Tifa or Case of Denzel, CoLW isn’t meant to be read on its own. It’s a few scant paragraphs in direct conversation with Case of Lifestream: Black. In CoLB, Sephiroth talks about his plan to return and end the world or whatever, and how Cloud is instrumental to his plan. Each segment of CoLW mirrors the corresponding segment of CoLB. Thus, CoLW has to be about Aerith’s plan to stop Sephiroth and the role Cloud must play in that. In both of these stories, Cloud is the only named character. It doesn’t mean that thoughts of Cloud consume all of Aerith’s afterlife. Case of Lifestream is only a tiny sliver of the story, a halfassed way to explain why in Advent Children the world is ending again and why Cloud has to be at the center of it all.

Notably, there is absolutely nothing in CoLW about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith. Even if it’s just speculation on her part as we see Sephiroth speculate about Cloud’s reactions in CoLB. Aerith can see what’s going on in the real world, but she says nothing about Cloud’s actions. If Cloud is really pining after her, trying to find a way to be reunited with her, wouldn’t this be the ideal story to show such devotion?

But it’s not there, because not only does it not happen, but because this story is not about Aerith’s relationship with Cloud. It is about how Aerith needs to see and warn Cloud in order to stop Sephiroth. By the end of Advent Children, that goal is fulfilled. Cloud gets his forgiveness. Aerith gets to see him again and helps him stop Sephiroth. There’s no suggestion that either party wants more. We finally have the closure that the OG lacked, and at no point does it confirm that Cloud reciprocated Aerith’s romantic feelings, even though there were plenty of opportunities to do so.

I don’t really know what else people were expecting. Advent Children isn’t a romantic drama. There’s not going to be a moment where Cloud explicitly tells Tifa, ‘I’ve never loved Aerith. It’s only been you all along.” This is just simply not the kind of story it is.

Though one late scene practically serves this function. When Cloud “dies” and Aerith finds him in the Lifestream, if there were any lingering romantic feelings between the two of them, this would be a beautiful bittersweet reunion. Maybe something about how as much as they want to be together, it’s not his time yet. Instead, it’s almost played off as a joke. Cloud calls her ‘Mother’, and Zack is at Aerith’s side, joking about how Cloud has no place there. This would be the perfect opportunity to address the romantic connection between Cloud and Aerith, but instead, the film elides this completely. Instead, it’s a cute afterlife moment between Aerith and Zack, and functionally allows Cloud to go back to where he belongs, to Tifa and the kids. Whatever Cloud’s feelings for Aerith were before, it’s transformed into something else.

Crisis Core -- or how Aerith finally gets her love story

The other relevant part of the Compilation is Crisis Core, which I will now touch on briefly (or at least brief for me). In the OG, Zack Fair was more plot device than character. We knew he was important to Cloud — enough that Cloud would mistake Zack’s memories for his own -- we knew he was important to Aerith — enough that she is initially drawn to Cloud due to his similarities to Zack — yet the nature of these relationships is more ambiguous. Especially his relationship with Aerith. From the little we learn of their relationship, it could have been completely one-sided on her part, and Zack a total cad. At least that’s the implication she leaves us with in Gongaga. We get the sense that she might not be the most reliable narrator on this point (why bring up an ex so often, unsolicited, if it wasn’t anything serious?) but the OG never confirms this either way.

Crisis Core clears this up completely. Not only is Zack portrayed as the Capital H Hero of his own game, but his relationships with Cloud and Aerith are two of the most important in the game. In fact, they are the basis for his heroic sacrifice at the game’s end: he dies trying to save Cloud’s life; he dies trying to return to Aerith.

Zack’s relationship with Aerith is a major subplot of the game. Not only that, but the details of said relationship completely recontextualizes what we know about the Aerith we see in the OG. Many of Aerith’s most iconic traits (wearing pink, selling flowers) are a direct product of this relationship, and more importantly, so many of the hallmarks of her early relationship with Cloud (him falling through her church, one date as a reward, a conversation in the playground) are a direct echo of her relationship with Zack.

A casual fling this was not. Aerith’s relationship with Zack made a deep impact on the character we see in the OG and clearly colored her interactions with Cloud throughout.

Crisis Core is telling Zack’s story, and Tifa is a fairly minor supporting character, yet it still finds the time to expand upon Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. Through their interactions with Zack, we learn just how much they were on each others’ minds during this time, and how they were both too shy to own up to these feelings. We also get a brief expansion on the moment Cloud finds Tifa injured in the reactor.

Meanwhile, given the point we are in the story’s chronology, Cloud and Aerith are completely oblivious of each other’s existence.

One may try to argue that none of this matters since all of this is in the past. While this argument might hold water if we arguing about real lives in the real world, FF7 is a work of fiction. Its creators decided that these would be events we would see, and that Zack would be the lens through which we’d see them. Crisis Core is not the totality of these characters’ lives prior to the event of the OG. Rather, it consists of moments that enhance and expand upon our understanding of the original work. We learn the full extent of Hojo’s experimentation and the Jenova project; we learn that Sephiroth was actually a fairly normal guy before he was driven insane when he uncovers the circumstances of his birth. We learn that Aerith was a completely different person before she met Zack, and their relationship had a profound impact on her character.

A prequel is not made to contradict the original work, but what it can do is recontexualize the story we already know and add a layer of nuance that may have not been obvious before. Thus, Sephiroth is transformed from a scary villain into a tragic figure who could have been a hero were it not for Hojo’s experiments. Aerith’s behavior too invites reinterpretation. What once seemed flirty and perhaps overtly forward now looks like the tragic attempts of a woman trying to recapture a lost love.

If Cloud and Aerith were meant to be the official couple of the Compilation of FF7, you absolutely would not be spending so much time depicting two relationships that will be moot by the time we get to the original work. You especially would not depict Zack and Aerith’s relationship in a way that makes Aerith’s relationship with Cloud look like a copy of the moments she had with her ex.

Additionally, with Zack’s relationship with Angeal, we can see, that within the universe of FF7, a protagonist being devastated over the death of a beloved comrade isn’t something that’s inherently romantic. Neither is it romantic for said dead comrade to lend a helping hand from the beyond.

SE would also expect some people to play Crisis Core before the OG. If Cloud and Aerith are the intended endgame couple, then SE would be asking the player to root for a guy to pursue the girlfriend of the man who gave his life for him. The same man who died trying to reunite with her. This is to say nothing of Cloud’s treatment of Tifa in this scenario. How could this possibly be the intent  for their most popular protagonist in the most popular entry of their most popular franchise?

What Crisis Core instead offers is something for fans of Aerith who may be disappointed that she was robbed of a great romance by her death. Well, she now gets that epic, tragic romance. Only it’s with Zack, not Cloud.

If SE intended for Cloud and Aerith to be the official couple of FF7, neither Zack nor Tifa would exist. They would not spend so much time developing Zack and Tifa into the multi-dimensional characters they are, only to be treated as nothing more than collateral damage in the wake of Cloud and Aerith’s great love. No, this is a Final Fantasy. SE want their main characters to have something of a happy ending after all of the tribulations they face. Cloud and Tifa find theirs in life. Zack and Aerith, as the ending of AC suggests, find theirs in death.

Cloud and Aerith’s relationship isn’t a threat to the Zack/Aerith and Cloud/Tifa endgame, nor is it a mere obstacle. Rather, it’s a relationship that actually deepens and strengthens the other two. Aerith is explicitly searching for her first love in Cloud, revealing just how deep her feelings for Zack ran. Cloud gets to live out his heroic SOLDIER fantasy with Aerith, a fantasy he created just to impress Tifa.

There are moments between Cloud and Aerith that may seem romantic when taken on its own, but viewed within the context of the whole narrative, ultimately reveal that they aren’t quite right for each other, and in each other, they’re actually searching for someone else.

This quadrangular dynamic reminds me a bit of one of my favorite classic films, The Philadelphia Story. (Spoilers for a film that came out in 1940 ahead) — The single most romantic scene in the film is between Jimmy Stewart’s and Katherine Hepburn’s characters, yet they’re not the ones who end up together. Even as their passions run, as the music swells, and we want them to end up together, we realize that they’re not quite right for each other. We know that it won’t work out.

More relevantly, we know this is true due to the existence of Cary Grant’s and Ruth Hussey’s characters, who are shown to carry a torch for Hepburn and Stewart, respectively. Grant and Hussey are well-developed and sympathetic characters. With the film being the top grossing film of the year, and made during the Code era, it’s about as “clean” of a narrative as you can get. There’s no way Grant and Hussey would be given such prominent roles just to be left heartbroken and in the cold by the film’s end.

Hepburn’s character (Tracy) pretty much sums it herself after some hijinks lead to a last minute proposal from Stewart’s character (Mike):

Mike: Will you marry me, Tracy?                      

Tracy: No, Mike. Thanks, but hmm-mm. Nope.

Mike: l've never asked a girl to marry me. l've avoided it. But you've got me all confused now. Why not?

Tracy: Because l don't think Liz [Hussey’s character] would like it...and l'm not sure you would...and l'm even a little doubtful about myself. But l am beholden to you, Mike. l'm most beholden.

Despite the fact that the film spends more time developing Hepburn and Stewart’s relationship than theirs with their endgame partners, it’s still such a satisfying ending. That’s because, even at the peak of their romance, we can see how Stewart needs someone like Hussey to ground his passionate impulses, and how Hepburn needs Grant, someone who won’t put her on a pedestal like everyone else. Hepburn and Stewart’s is a relationship that might feel right in the moment, but doesn’t quite work in the light of day.

I don’t think Cloud and Aerith share a moment that is nearly as romantic in FF7, but the same principle applies. What may seem romantic in the moment actually reveals how they’re right for someone else.

Even if Aerith lives and Cloud decides to pursue a relationship with her, it’s not going to be all puppies and roses ahead for them. Aerith would need to disentangle her feelings for Zack from her attraction to Cloud, and Cloud would still need to confront his feelings for Tifa, which were his main motivator for nearly half his life, before they can even start to build something real. This is messy work, good fodder for a prestige cable drama or an Oscar-baity indie film, but it has no place in a Final Fantasy. There simply isn’t the time. Not when the question on most players’ minds isn’t ‘Cloud does love?’ but ‘How the hell are they going to stop that madman and his Meteor that’s about to destroy the world?’

With Zerith’s depiction in Crisis Core, there’s a sort of bittersweet poetry in how the two relationships rhyme but can’t actually coexist. It is only because Zack is trying to return to Midgar to see Aerith that Cloud is able to reunite with Tifa, and the OG begins in earnest. In another world, Zack and Aerith would be the hero and heroine who saved the world and lived to tell the tale. They are much more the traditional archetypes - Zack the super-powered warrior who wants to be a Capital-H Hero, and Aerith, the last of her kind who reluctantly accepts her fate. Compared to these two, Cloud and Tifa aren’t nearly so special, nor their goals so lofty and noble. Cloud, after all, was too weak to even get into SOLDIER, and only wanted to be one, not for some greater good, but to impress the girl he liked. Tifa has no special abilities, merely learning martial arts when she grew wise enough to not wait around for a hero. On the surface, Cloud and Tifa are made of frailer stuff, and yet by luck or by fate, they’re the ones who cheat death time and time again, and manage to save the world, whereas the ones who should have the role, are prematurely struck down before they can finish the job. Cloud and Tifa fulfill the roles that they never asked for, that they may not be particularly suited for, in Zack and Aerith’s stead. There’s a burden and a beauty to it. Cloud and Tifa can live because Zack and Aerith did not.

All of this nuance is lost if you think Cloud and Aerith are meant to be the endgame couple. Instead, you have a pair succumbing to their basest desires, regardless of the selfless sacrifices their other potential paramours made for their sake. Zack and Tifa, and their respective relationships with Aerith and Cloud, are flattened into mere romantic obstacles. The heart wants what it wants, some may argue. While that may be true in real life, that is not necessarily the case in a work of fiction, especially not a Final Fantasy. The other canon Final Fantasy couples could certainly have had previous romantic relationships, but unless they have direct relevance to the their character arcs (e.g., Rachel to Locke), the games do not draw attention to them because they would be a distraction from the romance they are trying to tell. They’ve certainly never spent the amount of real estate FF7 spends in depicting Cloud/Tifa and Zack/Aerith’s relationships.

At last…the Remake, and somehow this essay isn’t even close to being over

Finally, we come to the Remake. With the technological advancements made in the last 23 years and the sheer amount of hours they’re devoting to just the Midgar section this time around, you can almost look at the OG as an outline and the Remake as the final draft. With the OG being overly reliant on text to  do its storytelling, and the Remake having subtle facial expressions and a slew of cinematic techniques at its disposal, you might almost consider it an adaptation from a literary medium to a visual one. Our discussions are no longer limited to just what the characters are saying, but what they are doing, and even more importantly, how the game presents those actions. When does the game want us to pay attention? And what does it want us to pay attention to?

Unlike most outlines, which are read by a small handful of execs, SE has 23 years worth of reactions from the general public to gauge what works and what doesn’t work, what caused confusion, and what could be clarified. While FF7 is not a romance, the LTD remains a hot topic among a small but vocal part of the fanbase. It certainly is an area that could do with some clarifying in the Remake.

Since the Remake is not telling a new story, but rather retelling an existing story that has been in the public consciousness for over two decades, certain aspects that were treated as “twists” in the OG no longer have that same element of surprise, and would need to approached differently. For example, in the Midgar section of the OG, Shinra is treated as the main antagonist throughout. It’s only when we get to the top of the Shinra tower that Sephiroth is revealed as the real villain. Anyone with even a passing of knowledge of FF7 would be aware of Sephiroth so trying to play it off like a surprise in the Remake would be terribly anticlimactic. Thus, Sephiroth appears as early as Ch. 2 to haunt Cloud and the player throughout.

Likewise, many players who’ve never even touched the OG are probably aware that Aerith dies, thus her death can no longer be played for shock. While SE would still want the player to grow attached to Aerith so that her death has an emotional impact, there are diminishing returns to misdirecting the player about her fate, at least not in the same way it was done in the OG.

How do these considerations affect the how the LTD is depicted in the Remake? For the two of the biggest twists in the OG to land in the Remake — Aerith’s death and Cloud’s true identity in the Lifestream — the game needs to establish:

Aerith’s attraction to Cloud, specifically due to his similarities to Zack. This never needs to go past an initial attraction for the player to understand that the man whose memory Cloud was “borrowing” is Zack. Aerith’s feelings for Cloud can evolve into something platonic or even maternal by her end without the reveal in the Lifestream losing any impact.

Cloud’s love for Tifa. For the Lifestream sequence to land with an “Ooooh!” rather than a “Huh!?!?”, the Remake will need to establish that Cloud’s feelings for Tifa were strong enough to 1) motivate him to try to join SOLDIER in the first place 2) incentivize him to adopt a false persona because he fears that he isn’t the man she wants him to be 3) call him back to consciousness from Make poisoning twice 4) help him put his mind back together and find his true self. That’s a lot of story riding on one guy’s feelings!

The player’s love for Aerith so that her death will hurt. This can be done by making them invested in Aerith as a character by her own right, but also extends to the relationships she has with the other characters (not only Cloud).

What is not necessary is establishing Cloud’s romantic feelings for Aerith. Now, would their doomed romance make her death hurt even more? Sure, but it could work just as well if Cloud if is losing a dear friend and ally, not a lover. Not to mention, her death also cuts short her relationships with Tifa, Barret, Red XII, etc. Bulking those relationships up prior to her death, would also make her loss more palpable. If anything, establishing Cloud’s romantic feelings for Aerith would actually undermine the game’s other big twist. The game needs you to believe that Cloud’s feelings for Tifa were strong enough to drive his entire hero’s journey. If Cloud is shown falling in love with another woman in the span of weeks if not mere days, then the Lifestream scene would be much harder to swallow.

Cloud wavering between the two women made sense in the OG because the main way for the player to get to know Aerith was through her interactions with Cloud. That is no longer the case in the Remake. Cloud is still the protagonist, and the player character for the vast majority of the game, but there are natural ways for the player to get to know Aerith outside of her dialogue exchanges with Cloud. Unless SE considers the LTD an integral part of FF7’s DNA, then for the sake of story clarity, the LTD doesn’t need to exist.

How then does the Remake clarify things?

I’m not going go through every single change in the Remake — there are far too many of them, and they’ve been documented elsewhere. Most of the changes are expansions or adaptations (what might make sense for super-deformed chibis would look silly for realistic characters, e.g., Cloud rolling barrels in the Church has now become him climbing across the roof support). What is expanded and how it’s adapted can be telling, but what is more interesting are the additions and removals. Not just for what takes place in the scenes themselves, but how their addition or removal changes our understanding of the narrative as a whole vis-a-vis the story we know from the OG.

Notably, one of the features that is not expanded upon, but rather diminished, is player choice. In the OG, the player had a slew of dialogue options to choose from, especially during the Midgar portion of the game. Not only did it determine which character would go on a date with Cloud at the Gold Saucer, but it also made the player identify with Cloud since they’re largely determining his personality during this stage. Despite the technological advances that have made this level of optionality the norm in AAA games, the Remake gives the player far fewer non-gameplay related choices, and only really the illusion of choice as a nod to the OG, but they don’t affect the story of the game in any meaningful way. You get a slightly different conversation depending on the choice, but you have to buy the Flower, Tifa has to make you a drink.

So much of what fueled the LTD in the OG came from this mechanic, which is now largely absent in the Remake. Almost every instance where there was a dialogue branch in the OG has become a single, canon scenario in the Remake that favors Tifa (e.g., having the choice of giving the flower to Tifa or Marlene in the OG, to Cloud giving the flower to Tifa in the Remake). Similarly, for the only meaningful choice you make in the Remake — picking Tifa or Aerith in the sewers — Cloud is now equidistant to both girls, whereas in the OG, his starting point was much closer to Aerith. In the OG, player choice allowed you to largely determine Cloud’s personality, and the girl he favored — and seemingly encouraged you to choose Aerith in many instances. In the Remake, Cloud is now his own character, not who the player wants him to be. And this Cloud, well, he sure seems to have a thing for Tifa.

In fact, one of the first changes in the Remake is the addition of Jessie asking Cloud about his relationship with Tifa, and Cloud’s brief flashback to their childhood together. In the OG, Tifa isn’t mentioned at all during the first reactor mission, and we don’t see her until we get to Sector 7.

Not only does this scene reveal Tifa’s importance to Cloud much earlier on than in the OG, but it sets up a sort of frame of reference that colors Cloud’s subsequent interactions. Even as Jessie kind of flirts with him throughout the reactor mission, even with his chance meeting Aerith in Sector 8, in the back of your mind, you might be thinking — wait what about his relationship with this Tifa character? What if he’s already spoken for?

Think about how this plays out in the OG. Jessie is pretty much a non-entity, and Cloud has his meet-cute with the flower girl before we’re even aware that Tifa exists. It’s hard to get too invested in his interactions with Tifa, when you know he has to meet the flower girl again, and you’re waiting for that moment, because that’s when the game will start in earnest.

After chapter 1 of the Remake, a new player may be asking — who is this Tifa person, and, echoing Jessie’s question, what kind of relationship does she have with Cloud? It’s a question that’s repeated when Barret mentions her before they set the bomb, and again when Barret specifies Seventh Heaven is where Tifa works — and the game zooms in on Cloud’s face — when they arrive in Sector 7.

It’s when we finally meet her at Seventh Heaven in Ch. 3 that we feel, ah now, this game has finally begun.

It’s also interesting how inorganically this question is introduced in the Remake. Up until that moment, the dialogue and Cloud are all business. Then, as they’re waiting for the gate to open, Jessie asks about Tifa completely out of the blue, and Cloud, all of a sudden, is at a lost for words, and has the first of many flashbacks. That this moment is a bit incongruous shows the effort SE made to establish Tifa’s importance to the game and to Cloud early on.

One of the biggest changes in the Remake is the addition of the events in Ch. 3 and 4. Unlike what happens in Ch. 18, Ch. 3 and 4 feel like such a natural extension of the OG’s story that many players may not even realize that SE has added an whole day’s and night’s worth of events to the OG’s story. While not a drastic change, it does reshape our understanding of subsequent events in the story, namely Cloud’s time spent alone with Aerith.

In the OG, we rush from one reactor mission to the next, with no real time to explore Cloud’s character or his relationships with any of the other characters in between. When he crashes through the church, he gets a bit of a breather. We see a different side of him with Aerith. Since we have nothing else to compare it to, many might assume that his relationship with Aerith is special. That she brings something out of him that no one else can.

That is no longer the case in the Remake. While Cloud’s time in Sector 5 with Aerith remains largely unchanged though greatly expanded, it no longer feels  “special.” So many of the beats that seemed exclusive to his relationship with Aerith in the OG, we’ve now already seen play out with both Tifa and the other members of AVALANCHE long before he meets Aerith.

Cloud tells the flowers to listen to Aerith; he’s told Tifa he’s listening if she wants to talk; told Bigg’s he wants to hear the story of Jessie’s dad. Cloud offers to walk Aerith back home; he offered the same to Wedge. Cloud smiles at Aerith; he’s already smiled at Tifa and AVALANCHE a number of times.

Now, I’m under no illusion that SE added these chapters solely to diminish Aerith’s importance to Cloud (other than the obvious goal of making the game longer, I imagine they wanted the player to spend more time in Sector 7 and more time with the other AVALANCHE members so that the collapse of the Pillar and their deaths have more weight), but they certainly must have realized that this would be one effect. If pushing Cloud/Aerith’s romance had been a goal with the Remake, this would be a scenario they would try to avoid. Notably, the other place where time has been added - the night in the Underground Shinra Lab, and the day helping other people out around the slums — are also periods of time when Aerith is absent.

Home Sweet Slums vs. Budding Bodyguard

Since most of the events in Ch. 3 were invented for the Remake, and thus we have nothing in the OG to compare it to (except to say that something is probably better than nothing), I thought it would be more interesting to compare it to Ch. 8. Structurally, they are nearly identical — Cloud doing sidequests around the Sectors with one of the girls as his guide. Extra bits of dialogue the more sidequests you complete, with an optional story event if you do them all. Do Cloud’s relationships with each girl progress the same way in both chapters? Is the Remake just Final Waifu Simulator 2020 or are they distinct, reflecting their respective roles in the story as a whole?

A lot of what the player takes away from these chapters is going to be pretty subjective (Is he annoyed with her or is he playing hard to get), yet the vibes of the two chapters are quite different. This is because in Ch. 3, the player is getting to know Tifa through her relationship with Cloud; in Ch. 8; the player is getting to know Aerith as a character on her own.

What do I mean by this? Let’s take Cloud’s initial introduction into each Sector. In Ch. 3, it’s a straight shot from Seventh Heaven to Stargazer Heights punctuated by a brief conversation where Tifa asks Cloud about the mission he was just on. We don’t learn anything new about Tifa’s character here. Instead we hear Cloud recount the mission we already saw play out in detail in Ch. 1 But it’s through this conversation that we get a glimpse of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship — unlike the reticent jerk he was with Avalanche, this Cloud is much more responsive and even tries to reassure her in his own stilted way. We also know that they have enough of a past together that Tifa can categorize him as “not a people person” — an assessment to which Cloud agrees. Slowly, we’re getting an answer to the question Jessie posed in Ch. 1 — just what kind of relationship does Cloud have with Tifa?

In Ch. 8, Aerith leads Cloud on a roundabout way through Sector 5, and stops, unprompted, to talk about her experiences helping at the restaurant, helping out the doctor, and helping with the orphans at the Leaf House. It’s not so much a conversation as a monologue. Cloud isn’t the one who inquires about these relationships, and more jarringly, he doesn’t respond until Aerith directly asks him a question (interestingly enough, it’s about the flower she gave him…which he then gave to Tifa). Here, the game is allowing the player to learn more about the kind of person Aerith is. Cloud is also learning about Aerith at the same time, but with his non-reaction, either the game itself is indifferent to Cloud’s feelings towards Aerith or it is deliberately trying to portray Cloud’s indifference to Aerith.

The optional story event you can see in each chapter after completing all the side quests is also telling. In Ch. 3, “Alone at Last” is almost explicitly about Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. It’s bookended by two brief scenes between Marle and Cloud — the first in which she lectures him about how he should treat Tifa almost like an overprotective in-law, the second after they return downstairs and Marle awards Cloud with an accessory “imbued with the fervent desire to be by one’s side for eternity” after he makes Tifa smile. In between, Cloud and Tifa chat alone in her room. Tifa finally gets a chance to ask Cloud about his past and they plan a little date to celebrate their reunion. There is also at least the suggestion that Cloud was expecting something else when Tifa asked him to her room.

In Ch. 8’s “The Language of Flowers,” Cloud and Aerith’s relationship is certainly part of the story — unlike earlier in the chapter, Cloud actually asks Aerith about what she’s doing and even supports her by talking to the flowers too, but the other main objective of this much briefer scene is to show Aerith’s relationship with the flowers and of her mysterious Cetra powers (though we don’t know about her ancestry just yet). Like a lot of Aerith’s dialogue, there’s a lot of foreshadowing and foreboding in her words. If anything, it’s almost as if Cloud is playing the Marle role to the flowers, as an audience surrogate to ask Aerith about her relationship with the flowers so that she can explain. Also, there’s no in-game reward that suggests what the scene was really about.

If there’s any confusion about what’s going on here, just compare their titles “Alone At Last” vs. “The Language of Flowers.”

I’ll try not to bring my personal feelings into this, but there’s just something so much more satisfying about the construction of Ch. 3. This is some real storytelling 101 shit, but I think a lot of it due to just how much set up and payoff there is, and how almost all of said payoff deepens our understanding of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship:

Marle: Cloud meets Tifa’s overprotective landlady towards the beginning of the chapter. She is dubious of his character and his relationship with TIfa. This impression does not change the second time they meet even though Tifa herself is there to mediate. It’s only towards the end of the chapter, after all the sidequests are complete, that this tension is resolved. Marle gives Cloud a lecture about how he should be treating Tifa, which he seems to take to heart. And Cloud finally earns Marle’s begrudging approval after he emerges from their rooms with a chipper-looking Tifa in tow.

Their past: For their first in-game interaction, Cloud casually brings up that fact that it’s been “Five years” since they’ve last, which seem to throw Tifa off a bit. As they’re replacing filters, Cloud asks Tifa what she’s been up to in the time since they’ve been apart, and Tifa quickly changes the subject. Tifa tries to ask Cloud about his life “after he left the village,” at the Neighborhood Watch HQ, and this time he’s the one who seems to be avoiding the subject. It’s only after all the Ch. 3 sidequests are complete, and they're alone in her room that Tifa finally gets the chance to ask her question. A question which Cloud still doesn’t entirely answer. This question remains unresolved, and anyone’s played the OG will know that it will remain unresolved for some time yet, as it is THE question of Cloud’s story as a whole.

The lessons: Tifa starts spouting off some lessons for life in the slums as she brings Cloud around the town, though it’s unclear if Cloud is paying attention or taking them to heart. After completing the first sidequest, Cloud repeats one of these sayings back to her, confirming that he’s been listening all along. By the end of the chapter, Cloud is repeating these lessons to himself, even when Tifa isn’t around. These lessons extend beyond this chapter, with Cloud being a real teacher’s pet, asking Tifa “Is this a lesson” in Ch. 10 once they reunite.

The drink: When Cloud first arrives at Seventh Heaven, Tifa plays hostess and asks him if he wants anything, but it seems he’s only interested in his money. After exploring the sector a bit, Tifa again tries to play the role of cheery bartender, offering to make him a cocktail at the bar, but Cloud sees through this facade, and they carry on. Finally, after the day’s work is done, to tide Cloud over while she’s meeting with AVALANCHE, Tifa finally gets the chance to make him a drink. No matter, which dialogue option the player chooses, Tifa and Cloud fall into the roles of flirty bartender and patron quite easily. Who would have thought this was possible from the guy we met in Ch. 1?

This dynamic is largely absent in Ch. 8, except perhaps exploring Aerith’s relationship with the flowers, which “pays off” in the “Language of Flowers” event, but again, that scene is primarily about Aerith’s character rather than her relationship with Cloud. The orphans and the Leaf House are a throughline of the chapter, but they are merely present. There’s no clear progression here as was the case with in Ch. 3. Sure, the kids admire Cloud quite a bit after he saves them, but it’s not like they were dubious of his presence before. They barely paid attention to him. In terms of the impact the kids have on Cloud’s relationship with Aerith, there isn’t much at all. Certainly nothing like the role Marle plays in developing his relationship with Tifa.

The thing is, there are plenty of moments that could have been set ups, only there’s no real follow through. Aerith introduces Cloud around town as her bodyguard, and some people like the Doctor express dubiousness of his ability to do the job, but even after we spend a whole day fighting off monsters, and defeating Rude, there’s no payoff. Not even a throwaway “Wow, great job bodyguarding” comment. Same with the whole “one date” reward. Other than a quick reference on the way to Sector 5, and Aerith threatening to reveal the deal to cajole Cloud into helping her gather flowers, it’s never brought up again, in this chapter, or the rest of the game.

Aerith also makes a big stink about Cloud taking the time to enjoy Elmyra’s cooking. This is after Cloud is excluded from AVALANCHE’s celebration in Seventh Heaven and after he misses out on Jessie’s mom’s “Midgar Special” with Biggs and Wedge. So this could have been have been the set up to Cloud finally getting to experience a nice, domestic moment where he feels like he’s part of a family. And this dinner does happen! Only…the Remake skips over it entirely. Which is quite a strange choice considering that almost every other waking moment of Cloud’s time in Midgar has been depicted in excruciating detail. SE has decided that either whatever happened in this dinner between these three characters is irrelevant to the story they’re trying to tell, or they’ve deliberately excluded this scene from the game so that the player wouldn’t get any wrong ideas from it (e.g., that Cloud is starting to feel at home with Aerith).

Speaking of home, the Odd Jobs in Ch. 3 feel a bit more meaningful outside of just the gameplay-related rewards because they’re a way for Cloud to improve his reputation as he considers building a life for himself in Sector 7. This intent is implicit as Tifa imparts upon him the life lessons for surviving the slums, and then explicit, when Tifa asks him if he’s going to “stick around a little longer” outside of Seventh Heaven and he answers maybe. (It is later confirmed when Cloud and Tifa converse in his room in Ch. 4 after he remembers their promise).

Despite Aerith’s endeavors to extend their time together, there’s no indication that Cloud is planning to put down roots in Sector 5, or even return. Not even after doing all the Odd Jobs. If anything, it’s just the opposite — after 3 Odd Jobs, Aerith, kind of jokingly tells Cloud “don’t think you can rely on me forever.” This is a line that has a deeper meaning for anyone who knows Aerith’s fate in the OG, but Cloud seems totally fine with the outcome. Similarly, at the end of the Chapter 8, Elmyra asks Cloud to leave and never speak to Aerith again — a request to which he readily agrees.

Adding to the different vibes of the Chapters are the musical themes that play in the background. In Ch. 3, it’s the “Main Theme of VII”, followed by “On Our Way” — two tracks that instantly recall the OG. While the Main Theme is a bit melancholy, it's also familiar. It feels like home. In Ch. 8, we have an instrumental version of ‘Hollow’ - the new theme written for the Remake. While, it’s a lovely piece, it’s unfamiliar and honestly as a bit anxiety inducing (as is the intent).

(A quick aside to address the argument that this proves ‘Hollow’ is about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith:

Which of course doesn’t make any damn sense because he hasn’t even lost Aerith at this point the story. Even if you want to argue that there is so timey-wimey stuff going on and the whole purpose of the Remake is to rewrite the timeline so that Cloud doesn’t lose Aerith around — shouldn’t there be evidence of this desire outside of just the background music? Perhaps, in Cloud’s actions during the Chapter which the song plays — shouldn’t he dread being parted from her, shouldn’t he be the one trying to extend their time together? Instead, he’s willing to let her go quite easily.

The more likely explanation as to why “Hollow” plays in Ch. 8 is that since the “Main Theme of FFVII”  already plays in Ch. 3, the other “main theme” written for the Remake is going to play in the other chapter with a pseudo-open world vibe. If you’re going to say “Hollow” is about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith then you’d have to accept that the Main Theme of the entire series is about Cloud’s feelings for Tifa, which would actually make a bit more sense given that is practically Cloud’s entire character arc.)

Both chapters contain a scripted battle that must be completed before the chapter can end. They both contain a shot where Cloud fights side by side with each of the girls.

Here, Cloud and Tifa are both in focus during the entirety of this shot.

Here, the focus pulls away from Cloud the moment Aerith enters the frame.

I doubt the developers expected most players to notice this particular technique, but it reflects the subtle differences in the way these two relationships are portrayed. By the end of Ch. 3, Cloud and Tifa are acting as one unit. By the end of Ch. 8, even when they’re together, Cloud and Aerith are still apart.

A brief (lol) overview of some meaningful changes from the OG

One of the most significant changes in the Sector 7 chapters is how The Promise flashback is depicted. In the OG, Tifa is the one who has to remind Cloud of the Promise, in a rather pushy way, and whether Cloud chooses to join the next mission to fulfill his promise to her or because Barret is giving him a raise feels a bit more ambiguous.

In the Remake, the Promise has it’s own little mini-arc. It’s first brought up at the end of Ch. 3 when Cloud talks to Tifa about her anxieties about the upcoming mission. Tifa subtly references the Promise by mentioning that she’s “in a pitch” — a reference that goes over Cloud’s head. It’s only in Ch. 4, in the middle of a mission with Biggs and Wedge, where Tifa is no where in sight, that a random building fan reminds him of the Nibelheim water tower and the Promise he made to Tifa there. There’s also another brief flashback to that earlier moment in the bar when Tifa mentions she’s in a “pinch.” Again, the placement of this particular flashback at this particular moment feels almost jarring. And the flashback to the scene in the bar — a flashback to a scene we’ve already seen play out in-game — is the only one of its kind in the Remake. SE went out of the way to show that this particular moment is very important to Cloud and the game as whole. It’s when Cloud returns to his room, and Tifa asks him if he’s planning to stay in Midgar, that this mini-arc is finally complete. He brings up the Promise on his own, and makes it explicit that the reason he’s staying is for her. It’s to fulfill his Promise to her, not for money or for AVALANCHE — at this point, he’s not even supposed to be going on the next mission.

The Reactor 5 chapters are greatly expanded, but there aren’t really any substantive changes other than the addition of the rather intimate train roll scene between and Cloud and Tifa, which adds nothing to the story except to establish how horny they are for each other. We know this is the case, of course, because if you go out of your way to make Cloud look like an incompetent idiot and let the timer run out, you can avoid this scene altogether. But even in that alternate scene, Cloud’s concern for Tifa is crystal clear.

Ch. 8 also plays out quite similarly to the OG for the most part, though Cloud’s banter with Aerith on the rooftops doesn’t feel all that special since we’ve already seen him do the same with Tifa, Barret and the rest of AVALANCHE. The rooftops is the first place Cloud laughs in the OG. In the Remake, while Cloud might not have straight out laughed before, he’s certainly smiled quite a bit in the preceding chapters. Also, with the addition of voice acting and realistic facial expressions, that “laughter” in the Remake comes off much more sarcastic than genuine.

It’s also notable that in the Remake, Cloud vocally protests almost every time Aerith tries to extend their time together. In the OG, Cloud says nothing in these moments, which the player could reasonably interpret as assent.

One major change in the Remake is how Aerith learns of Tifa’s existence. In the OG, Cloud mentions that he wants to go back to Tifa’s bar, prompting Aerith to ask him about his relationship with her. In the Remake, Cloud calls Tifa’s name after having a random flashback of Child Tifa as he’s walking along with some kids. Again the insertion of said flashback is a bit jarring, prompting Aerith to understandably ask Cloud about just who this Tifa is. In the OG, this exchange served to show Aerith’s jealousy and her interest in Cloud. In the Remake, it’s all about Cloud’s feelings for Tifa and his inability to articulate them. As for Aerith, I suppose you can still read her reaction as jealous, though simple curiosity is a perfectly reasonable way to read it too. It plays out quite similarly to Aerith asking Cloud about who he gave the flower to. Her follow ups seem indicate that she’s merely curious about who this recipient might be rather than showing that she’s upset/jealous of the fact that said person exists.

For the collapsed tunnel segment, the Remake adds the recurring bit of Aerith and Cloud trying to successfully complete a high-five. While this is certainly a way to show them getting closer, it’s about least intimate way that SE could have done so. Just think about the alternatives — you could have Cloud and Aerith sharing brief tidbits of their lives after each mechanical arm, you could have them trying to reach for each other’s hand. Instead, SE chose an action that is we’ve seen performed between a number of different platonic buddies, and an action that Aerith immediately performs with Tifa upon meeting her. Not to mention, even while they are technically getting closer, Cloud still rejects (or at least tries to) Aerith’s invitations to extend their time together twice — at the fire and at the playground.

One aspect from these two Chapters that does has plenty of set up and a satisfying payoff is Aerith’s interest in Cloud’s SOLDIER background. You have the weirdness of Aerith already knowing that Cloud was in SOLDIER without him mentioning it first, followed by Elmyra’s antipathy towards SOLDIERs in general, not to mention Aerith actively fishing for information about Cloud’s time in SOLDIER. (For players who’ve played Crisis Core, the reason for her behavior is even more obvious, with her “one date” gesture mirroring Zack’s, and her line to Cloud in front of the tunnel a near duplicate of what she says to Zack — at least in the original Japanese).

Finally, at the playground, it’s revealed that the reason for all this weirdness is because Aerith’s first love was also a SOLDIER who was the same rank as Cloud. Unlike in the OG, Cloud does not exhibit any potential jealousy by asking about the nature of her relationship, and Aerith doesn’t try to play it off by dismissing the seriousness. In fact, with the emotional nuance we can now see on her face, we can understand the depth of her feelings even if she cannot articulate them.

This is the first scene in the Remake where Cloud and Aerith have a genuine conversation. Thus, finally, Cloud expresses some hesitation before he leaves her — and as far as he knows, this could be the last time they see each other. You can interpret this hesitation as romantic longing or it could just as easily be Cloud being a bit sad to part from a new friend. Regardless, it’s notable that scene is preceded by one where Aerith is talking about her first love who she clearly isn’t over, and followed by a scene where Cloud sprints across the screen, without a backwards glance at Aerith, after seeing a glimpse of Tifa through a tiny window in a Chocobo cart that’s about a hundred yards away.

The Wall Market segment in the Remake is quite explicitly about Cloud’s desire to save Tifa. In the OG, Aerith has no trouble getting into Corneo’s mansion on her own, so I can see how someone could misinterpret Cloud going through all the effort to dress as a woman to protect Aerith from the Don’s wiles (though of course, you would need to ask, why they trying to infiltrate the mansion in the first place?). In the Remake, Cloud has to go through herculean efforts to even get Aerith in front of the Don. Everyone who is aware of Cloud’s cause, from Sam to Leslie to Johnny to Andrea to Aerith herself, comments on how hard he’s working to save Tifa and how important she must be to him for him to do so. In case there’s any confusion, the Remake also includes a scene where Cloud is prepared to bust into the mansion on his own, leaving Aerith to fend for herself, after Johnny comes with news that Tifa is in trouble.

Both Cloud and Aerith get big dress reveals in the Remake. If you get Aerith’s best dress, Cloud’s reaction can certainly be read as one of attraction, but since the game continues on the same regardless of which dress you get, it’s not meant to mark a shift in Cloud and Aerith’s relationship. Rather, it’s a reward for the player for completing however many side quests in Ch. 8, especially since the Remake incentives the player to get every dress and thus see all of Cloud’s reactions by making it a Trophy and including it in the play log.

A significant and very welcome change from the OG to the Remake is Tifa and Aerith’s relationship dynamic. In the OG, the girls’ first meeting in Corneo’s mansion starts with them fighting over Cloud (by pretending not to fight over Cloud). In the Remake, the sequence of events is reversed so that it starts off with Cloud’s reunion with Tifa (again emphasizing that the whole purpose of the infiltration is because Cloud wants to save Tifa). Then when Aerith wakes, she’s absolutely thrilled to make Tifa’s acquaintance, hardly acknowledging Cloud at all. Tifa is understandably more wary at first, but once they start working together, they become fast friends.

Also interesting is that from the moment Aerith and Tifa meet, almost every instance where Cloud could be shown worrying about Aerith or trying to comfort Aerith is given to Tifa instead. In the OG, it’s Cloud who frets about Aerith getting involved in the plot to question the Don, and regrets getting her mixed up in everything once they land in the sewers. In the Remake, those very same reservations are expressed by Tifa instead. Tifa is the one who saves Aerith when the platform collapses in the sewer. Tifa is the one who emotionally comforts Aerith after they’re separated in the train graveyard. (Cloud might be the one who physically saves her, but he doesn’t even so much give her a second glance to check on her well-being before he runs off to face Eligor. He leaves that job for Tifa). It almost feels like the Remake is going out of its way to avoid any moments between Cloud and Aerith that could be interpreted as romantic. In fact, after Corneo’s mansion, unless you get Aerith’s resolution, there are almost no one-on-one interactions at all between Cloud and Aerith. Such is not the case with Cloud and Tifa. In fact, right after defeating Abzu in the sewers, Cloud runs after Tifa, and asks her if what she’s saying is one of those slum lessons — continuing right where they left off.

Ch. 11 feels like a wink-wink nudge-nudge way to acknowledge the LTD. You have the infamous shot of the two girls on each of Cloud’s arms, and two scenes where Cloud appears as if he’s unable to choose between them when he asks them if they’re okay. Of course, in this same Chapter, you have a scene during the boss fight with the Phantom where Cloud actually pulls Tifa away from Aerith, leaving Aerith to defend herself, for an extended sequence where he tries to keep Tifa safe. This is not something SE would include if their intention is to keep Cloud’s romantic interest ambiguous or if Aerith is meant to be the one he loves. Of course, Ch. 11 is not the first we see of this trio’s dynamic. We start with Ch. 10, which is all about Aerith and Tifa’s friendship. Ch. 11 is a nod to the LTD dynamic in the OG, but it’s just that, a nod, not an indication the Remake is following the same path. Halfway through Ch. 11, the dynamic completely disappears.

Ch. 12 changes things up a bit from the OG. Instead of Cloud and Tifa ascending the pillar together, Cloud goes up first. Seemingly just so that we can have the dramatic slow-mo handgrab scene between the two of them when Tifa decides to run after Cloud — right after Aerith tells her to follow her heart.

The Remake also shows us what happens when Aerith goes to find Marlene at Seventh Heaven — including the moment when Aerith sees the flower she gave Cloud by the bar register, and Aerith is finally able to connect the dots. After seeing Cloud be so cagey about who he gave the flower to, and weird about his relationship with Tifa, and after seeing how Cloud and Tifa act around each other. It finally makes sense. She’s figured it out before they have. It’s a beautiful payoff to all that set up. Any other interpretation of Aerith’s reaction doesn’t make a lick of sense, because if it’s to indict she’s jealous of Tifa, where is all the set up for that? Why did the Remake eliminate all the moments from the OG where she had been noticeably jealous before? Without this, that interpretation makes about as much sense as someone arguing Aerith is smiling because she’s thinking about a great sandwich she had the night before. In case anyone is confused, the scene is preceded by a moment where Aerith tells Tifa to follow her heart before she goes after Cloud, and followed by the moment where Cloud catches Tifa via slow-motion handgrab.

On the pillar itself, there are so many added moments of Cloud showing his concern for Tifa’s physical and emotional well-being. Even when they find Jessie, as sad as Cloud is over Jessie’s death, the game actually spends more time showing us Cloud’s reaction to Tifa crying over Jessie’s death, and Cloud’s inability to comfort her. Since so much of this is physical rather than verbal, this couldn’t have effectively been shown in the OG with its technological limitations.

After the pillar collapses, we start off with a couple of other moments showing Cloud’s concern over Tifa — watching over her as she wakes, his dramatic fist clench while he watches Barret comfort Tifa in a way he cannot. There is also a subtle but important change in the dialogue. In the OG, Tifa is the one who tells Barret that Marlene is safe because she was with Aerith. Cloud is also on his way to Sector 5, but it’s for the explicit purpose of trying to save Aerith, which we know because Tifa asks. In the Remake, Tifa is too emotionally devastated to comfort Barret about Marlene. Cloud, trying to help in the only way he can, is now the one to tell Barret about Marlene. Leading them to Sector 5 is no longer about him trying to help Aerith, but about him reuniting Barret with his daughter. Again, another moment where Cloud shows concern about Aerith in the OG is eliminated from the Remake.

Rather than going straight from Aerith’s house to trying to figure out a way into the Shinra building to find Aerith, the group takes a detour to check out the ruins of Sector 7 and rescue Wedge from Shinra’s underground lab. It’s only upon seeing the evidence of Shinra’s inhumane experimentation firsthand that Cloud articulates to Elmyra the need to rescue Aerith. In the OG, they never sought out Elmyra’s permission, and Tifa explicitly asks to join Cloud on his quest. Rescuing Aerith is framed as primarily Cloud’s goal, Tifa and Barret are just along for the ride.

In the Remake, all three wait until Elymra gives them her blessing, and it’s framed (quite literally) as the group’s collective goal as opposed to just Cloud’s.

In the aptly named Ch. 14 resolutions, each marks the culmination of the character’s arc for the Part 1 of Remake. While their arcs are by no means complete, they do offer a nice preview of what their ultimate resolutions will be.

With the exception of Tifa’s, these resolutions are primarily about the character themselves. Their relationships with Cloud are secondary. Each resolution marks a change in the character themselves, but not necessarily a change in Cloud’s relationship with said character. Barret recommits to AVALANCHE’s mission and his role as a leader despite the deep personal costs. Aerith’s is full of foreshadowing as she accept her fate and impending death and decides to make the most of the time she has left. After trying to put aside her own feelings for the sake of others the whole time, Tifa finally allows herself to feel the full devastation of losing her home for the second time. Like her ultimate resolution in the Lifestream that we’ll see in about 25 years, Cloud is the only person she can share this sentiment with because he was the only person who was there.

Barret does not grow closer to Cloud through his resolution. Cloud has already proved himself to him by helping out on the pillar and reuniting him with Marlene. Barret resolution merely reveals that Barret is now comfortable enough with Cloud to share his past.

Similarly, Cloud starts off Aerith’s resolution with an intent to go rescue her, and ends with that intent still intact. Aerith is more open about her feelings here than before, it being a dream and all, but these feelings aren’t something that developed during this scene.

The only difference is during Tifa’s resolution. Cloud has been unable to emotionally comfort Tifa up until this point. It’s only when Tifa starts crying and rests her head upon his shoulder that he is able to make a change, to make a choice and hug her. Halfway through Tifa’s resolution, the scene shifts its focus to Cloud, his inaction and eventual action. Notably, the only time we have a close-up of any character during all three resolutions (I’ll define close-up here as a shot where a character’s face takes up half or more of the shot), are three shots of Cloud when he’s hugging/trying to hug Tifa. Tifa’s resolution is the only one where Cloud arcs.

What of the whole “You can’t fall in love with me” line in Aerith’s resolution? Why would SE include that if not to foreshadow Cloud falling in love with Aerith? Or indicate that he has already? Well, you can’t just take the dialogue on its own, you how to look at how these lines are framed. Notably, when she says “you can’t fall in love with me,” Aerith is framed at the center of the shot, and almost looks like she’s directly addressing the player. It’s as much a warning for the player as it is for Cloud, which makes sense if you know her fate in the OG.

This is followed directly by her saying “Even if you think you have…it’s not real.” In this shot, it’s back to a standard shot/reverse shot where she is the left third of the frame. She is addressing Cloud here, which, again if you’ve played the OG, is another bit of heavy foreshadowing. The reason Clould would think he might be in love with Aerith is because he’s falsely assuming of the memories of a man who did love Aerith — Zack.

For Cloud’s response (”Do I get a say in all this?”/ “That’s very one-sided” depending on the translation), rather than showing a shot of his face, the Remake shows him with his back turned.

Whatever Cloud’s feelings may be for Aerith, the game seems rather indifferent to them.

What is more telling is the choice to include a bit with Cloud getting jealous over a guy trying to give Tifa flowers in Barret’s resolution. Barret also mentions both Jessie and Aerith in their conversation, but nothing else gets such a reaction from Cloud.

It also should go without saying that if Aerith’s resolution is meant to establish Cloud and Aerith’s romance, there should have been plenty of set-up beforehand and plenty of follow-through afterward. That obviously is not the case, because again, the Remake has gone out of its way to avoid moments where Cloud’s actions towards Aerith could be interpreted romantically.

Case in point, at around this time in the OG, Marlene tells Cloud that she thinks Aerith likes him and the player has the option to have Cloud express his hope that she does. This scene is completely eliminated from the Remake and replaced with a much more appropriate scene of father-daughter affection between Marlene and Barret while Tifa and Cloud are standing together outside.

The method by which they get up the plate is completely different in the Remake. Leslie is the one who helps them this time around, and though his quest to reunite with his fiance directly parallels with the trio’s desire to save Aerith, Leslie himself draws a comparison to earlier when Cloud was trying to rescue Tifa. Finally, when Abzu is defeated again, it is Barret who draws the parallel of their search for Aerith to Leslie’s search for his fiance, making it crystal clear that saving Aerith is a group effort rather than only Cloud’s.

Speaking of Barret, in the OG, he seems to reassess his opinion of Cloud in the Shinra HQ stairs when he sees Cloud working so hard to save Aerith and realizes he might actually care about other people. In the Remake, that reevaluation occurs after you complete all the Ch. 14 sidequests and help a bunch of NPCs. Arguably, this moment occurs even earlier in the Remake for Barret, after the Airbuster, when he realizes that Cloud is more concerned for his and Tifa’s safety than his own.

Overall, the entire Aerith rescue feels so anticlimactic in the Remake. In the OG, Cloud gets his big hero moment in the Shinra Building. He’s the one who runs up to Aerith when the glass shatters and they finally reunite. In the Remake, it’s unclear what the emotional stakes are for Cloud here. At their big reunion, all we get from him is a “Yep.” In fact, when you look at how this scene plays out, Aerith is positioned equally between Cloud and Tifa at the moment of her rescue. Cloud’s answer is again with his back turned to the camera. It’s Tifa who gets her own shot with her response.

Another instance of the Remake being completely indifferent to Cloud’s feelings for Aerith, and actually priotizing Tifa’s relationship with Aerith instead.

It is also Tifa who runs to reunite with Aerith after the group of enemies is defeated. Another moment that could have easily been Cloud’s that the Remake gives to Tifa.

Also completely eliminated in the Remake, is the “I’m your bodyguard. / The deal was for one date” exchange in the jail cells. In the Remake, after Ch. 8, the date isn’t brought up again at all; “the bodyguard” reference only comes up briefly in Ch. 11 and then never again.

In the Remake, the jail scene is replaced by the scene in Aerith’s childhood room. Despite the fact that this is Aerith’s room, it is Tifa’s face that Cloud first sees when he wakes. What purpose does this moment serve other than to showcase Cloud and Tifa’s intimacy and the other characters’ tacit acknowledgment of said intimacy?

(This is the second time where Cloud wakes up and Tifa is the first thing he sees. The other was at Corneo’s mansion. He comes to three times in the Remake, but in Ch. 8, even though Aerith is right in front of him, we start off with a few seconds of Cloud gazing around the church before settling on the person in front of him. Again, while not something that most players would notice, this feels like a deliberate choice.)

Especially since this scene itself is all about Aerith. She begins a sad story about her past, and Cloud, rather than trying to comfort her in any way, asks her to give us some exposition about the Ancients. When the Whispers surround her, even though Cloud is literally right there, it's Tifa who pulls her out of it and comforts her. Another moment that could have been Cloud that was given to Tifa, and honestly, this one feels almost bizarre.

Throughout the entire Shinra HQ episode, Cloud and Aerith haven’t had a single moment alone to themselves. The Drums scenario is completely invented for the Remake. The devs could have contrived a way for Cloud and Aerith to have some one-on-one time here and work through the feelings they expressed during Aerith’s resolution if they wanted. Instead, with the mandatory party configurations during this stage - Cloud & Barret on one side; Tifa & Aerith on the others, with Cloud & Tifa being the respective team leaders communicating over PHS, the Remake minimizes the amount of interaction Cloud and Aerith have with each other in this chapter.

On the rooftop, before Cloud’s solo fight with Rufus, even though Cloud is ostensibly doing all this so that they can bring Aerith to safety, the Remake doesn’t include a single shot that focuses on Aerith’s face and her reaction to his actions. The game has decided, whatever Aerith’s feelings are in this moment, they’re irrelevant to the story they’re trying to tell. Instead we get shots focusing solely on Barret and Tifa. While the Remake couldn’t find any time to develop Cloud and Aerith’s relationship at the Shinra Tower (even though the OG certainly did), it did find time to add a new scene where Tifa saves Cloud from certain death, while referencing their Promise.

A lot of weird shit happens after this, but it’s pretty much all plot and no character. We do get one more moment where Cloud saves Tifa (and Tifa alone) from the Red Whisper even though Aerith is literally right next to her. The Remake isn’t playing coy at all about where Cloud’s preferences lie.

The party order for the Sephiroth battle varies depending on how you fought the Whispers. All the other character entrances (whoever the 3rd party member is, then the 4th and Red) are essentially the exact same shots, with the characters replaced. It’s the first character entrance (which can only be Aerith or  Tifa) that you have two distinct options.

If Aerith is first, the camera pans from Cloud over to Aerith. It then cuts back to Cloud’s reaction, in a separate shot, as Aerith walks to join him (offscreen). It’s only when the player regains control of the characters that Cloud and Aerith ever share the frame.

On the other hand, if Tifa is first, we see Tifa land from Cloud’s POV. Cloud then walks over to join Tifa and they immediately share a frame, facing Sephiroth together.

Again, this is not something SE would expect the player to notice the first or even second time around. Honestly, I doubt anyone would notice at all unless they watched all these variations back to back. That is telling in itself, that SE would go through all this effort (making these scenes unique rather than copy and pasting certainly takes more time and effort) to ensure that the depictions of Cloud’s relationships with these two women are distinct despite the fact that hardly anyone would notice. Even in the very last chapter of the game, they want us to see Cloud and Tifa as a pair and Cloud and Aerith as individuals.

Which isn’t to say that Aerith is being neglected in the Remake. Quite the opposite, in fact, when she has essentially become the main protagonist and the group’s spirtual leader in Ch. 18. Rather, her relationship with Cloud is no longer an essential part of her character. Not to mention, one of the very last shots of the Remake is about Aerith sensing Zack’s presence. Again, not the kind of thing you want to bring up if the game is supposed to show her being in love with Cloud.

What does it all mean????

Phew — now let’s step back and look and how the totality of these changes have reshaped our understanding of the story as a whole. Looking solely at the Midgar section of the OG, and ignoring everything that comes after it, it seems to tell a pretty straightforward story: Cloud is a cold-hearted jerk who doesn’t care about anyone else until he meets Aerith. It is through his relationship with Aerith that he begins to soften up and starts giving a damn about something other than himself. This culminates when he risks it all to rescue Aerith from the clutches of the game’s Big Bad itself, The Shinra Electric Company.

This was honestly the reason why I was dreading the Remake when I learned that it would only cover the Midgar segment. A game that’s merely an expansion of the Midgar section of the OG is probably going to leave a lot of people believing that Cloud & Aerith were the intended couple, and I didn’t want to wait years and perhaps decades for vindication after the Remake’s Lifestream Scene.

I imagine this very scenario is what motivated SE to make so many of these changes. In the OG, they could get away with misdirecting the audience for the first few hours of the game since the rest of the story and the reveals were already completed. The player merely had to pop in the next disc to get the real story. Such is not the case with the Remake. Had the the Remake followed the OG’s beats more closely, many players, including some who’ve never played the OG, would finish the Remake thinking that Cloud and Aerith were the intended couple. It would be years until they got the rest of the story, and at that point, the truth would feel much more like a betrayal. Like they’ve been cruelly strung along.

While they’ve gone out of their way to adapt most elements from the OG into the Remake, they’ve straight up eliminated many scenes that could be interpreted as Cloud’s romantic interest in Aerith. Instead, he seems much more interested in her knowledge as an Ancient than in her romantic affections. This is the path the Remake could be taking. Instead of Cloud being under the illusion of falling in love with Aerith, he’s under the illusion that the answer to his identity dilemma lies in Aerith’s Cetra heritage, when, of course, the answer was with Tifa all along.

Hiding Sephiroth’s existence during the Midgar arc isn’t necessary to telling the story of FF7, thus it’s been eliminated in the Remake. Similarly, pretending that Cloud and Aerith are going to end up together also isn’t necessary and would only confuse the player. Thus the LTD is no longer a part of the Remake.

If Aerith’s impact on Cloud has been diminished, what then is his arc in the Remake? Is it essentially just the same without the catalyst of Aerith? A cold guy at the start who eventually learns to care about others through the course of the game? Kind of, though arguably, this is who Remake!Cloud is all along, not just Cloud at the end of the Remake. Cloud is a guy who pretends to be a selfish jerk, but he deep down he really does care. He just doesn’t show this side of himself around people he’s unfamiliar with. So part of his arc in the Remake is opening up to the others, Barret, AVALANCHE and Aerith included, but these all span a chapter or two at most. They don’t straddle the entire game.

What is the throughline then? What is an area in which he exhibits continuous growth?

It’s Tifa. It’s his desire to fulfill his Promise to Tifa. Not just to protect her physically, but to be there for her emotionally, something that’s much harder to do. There’s the big moments like when he remembers the Promise in Ch. 4., his dramatic fist clench when he can’t stop Tifa from crying in Ch. 12, and in Ch. 13 when he watches Barret comfort Tifa. It’s all the flashbacks he has of her and the times he’s felt like he failed her. It’s the smaller moments where he can sense her nervousness and unease but the only thing he knows how to do is call her name. It’s all those times during battle, where Tifa can probably take care of herself, but Cloud has to save her because he can’t fail her again. All of this culminates in Tifa’s Resolution, where Tifa is in desperate need of comfort, and is specifically seeking Cloud’s comfort, and Cloud has no idea what to do. He hesitates because he’s clueless, because he doesn’t want to fuck it up, but finally, he makes the choice, he takes the risk, and he hugs her….and he kind of fucks it up. He hugs her too hard. Which is a great thing, because this arc isn’t anywhere close to being over. There’s still so much more to come. So many places this relationship will go.

We get a little preview of this when Tifa saves Cloud on the roof. Everything we thought we knew about their relationship has been flipped on its head. Tifa is the one saving Cloud here, near the end of this part of the Remake. Just as she will save Cloud in the Lifestream just before the end of the FF7 story as a whole. What does Tifa mean to Cloud? It’s one of the first questions posed in the Remake, and by the end, it remains unanswered.

Cloud’s character arc throughout the entire FF7 story is about his reconciling with his identity issues. This continues to develop through the Shinra Tower Chapters, but it certainly isn’t going to be resolved in Part 1 of the Remake. His character arc in the Remake — caring more about others/finding a way to finally comfort Tifa — is resolved in Ch. 14, well before rescuing Aerith, which is what makes her rescue feel so anticlimactic. The resolution of this external conflict isn’t tied to the protagonist’s emotional arc. This was not the case in the OG. I’m certainly not complaining about the change, but the Remake probably would have felt more satisfying as a whole if they hewed to the structure of the OG. Instead, it seems that SE has prioritized the clarity of the Remake series as a whole (leaving no doubt about where Cloud’s affections lie) over the effectiveness of the “climax” in the first entry of the Remake.

This is all clear if you only focus on the “story” of the Remake -- i.e., what the characters are saying and doing. If you extend your lens to the presentation of said story, and here I’m talking about who the game chooses to focus on during the scenes, how long they hold on these shots, which characters share the frame, which do not, etc --- it really could not be more obvious.

Does the camera need to linger for over 5 seconds on Cloud staring at the door after wishing Tifa goodnight? Does it need to find Cloud almost every time Tifa says or does anything so that we’re always aware of his watchfulness and the nature of his care? The answer is no until you realize this dynamic is integral to telling the story of Final Fantasy VII.

I don’t see how anyone who compares the Remake to the OG could come away from it thinking that the Remake series is going to reverse all of the work done in the OG and Compilation by having Cloud end up with Aerith.

Just because the ending seems to indicate that the events of the OG might not be set in stone, it doesn’t mean that the Remake will end with Aerith surviving and living happily ever after with Cloud. Even if Aerith does live (which again seems unlikely given the heavy foreshadowing of her death in the Remake), how do you come away from the Remake thinking that Cloud is going to choose Aerith over Tifa when SE has gone out of its way to remove scenes between Cloud and Aerith that could be interpreted as romantic? And gone out of its way to shove Cloud’s feelings for Tifa in the player’s face? The sequels would have to spend an obscene amount of time not only building Cloud and Aerith’s relationship from scratch, but also dismantling Cloud’s relationship with Tifa. It would be an absolute waste of time and resources, and there’s really no way to do so without making the characters look like assholes in the process.

Now could this happen? Sure, in the sense that literally anything could happen in the future. But in terms of outcomes that would make sense based on what’s come before, this particular scenario is about as plausible as Cloud deciding to relinquish his quest to find Sephiroth so that he can pursue his real dream of becoming at sandwich artist at Panera Bread.

It’s over! I promise!

Like you, I too cannot believe the number of words I’ve wasted on this subject. What is there left to say? The LTD doesn’t exist outside of the first disc of the OG. You'll only find evidence of SE perpetuating the LTD if you go into these stories with the assumption that 1) The LTD exists 2) it remains unanswered. But it’s not. We know that Cloud ends up with Tifa.

What the LTD has become is dissecting individual scenes and lines of dialogue, without considering the context of said things, and pretending as if the outcome is unknown and unknowable. If you took this tact to other aspects of FF7’s story, then it would be someone arguing that because there a number of scenes in the OG that seem to suggest that Meteor will successfully destroy the planet, this means that the question of whether or not our heroes save the world in the end is left ambiguous. No one does that because that would be utterly absurd. Individual moments in a story may suggest alternate outcomes to build tension, to keep us on our toes, but that doesn’t change the ending from being the ending. Our heroes stop Meteor. Cloud loves Tifa. Arguments against either should be treated with the same level of credulity (i.e., none).

It’s frustrating that the LTD, and insecurities about whether or not Cloud really loves Tifa, takes up so much oxygen in any discussion about these characters. And it’s a damn shame, because Cloud and Tifa’s relationship is so rich and expansive, and the so-called “LTD” is such a tiny sliver of that relationship, and one of the least interesting aspects. They’re wonderful because they’re just so damn normal. Unlike other Final Fantasy couples, what keeps them apart is not space and time and death, but the most human and painfully relatable emotion of all, fear. Fear that they can’t live up to the other’s expectations; fear that they might say the wrong thing. The fear that keeps them from admitting their feelings at the Water Tower, they’re finally able to overcome 7 years later in the Lifestream. They’re childhood friends but in a way they’re also strangers. Like other FF couples, we’re able to watch their entire relationship grow and unfold before our eyes. But they have such a history too, a history that we unravel with them at the same time. Every moment of their lives that SE has found worth depicting, they’ve been there for each other, even if they didn’t know it at the time. Theirs is a story that begins and ends with each other. Their is the story that makes Final Fantasy VII what it is.

If you’ve made it this far, many thanks for reading. I truly have no idea how to use this platform, so please direct any and all hatemail to my DMs at TLS, which I will then direct to the trash. (In all seriousness, I’d be happy to answer any specific questions you may have, but I feel like I’ve more than said my piece here.)

If there’s one thing you take away from this, I hope it’s to learn to ignore all the ridiculous arguments out there, and just enjoy the story that’s actually being told. It’s a good one.

[funkymbtifiction]

hi, Charity! Due to the recent posts and submissions about self-blame in Fi-users, I wanted to ask about how this interacts with dominant Fi’s particular tendency to over-validate itself and shut out other perspectives. I know a lot of this is probably just down to individual maturity levels — some IFPs will be too locked into their own point of view and lean into believing “this is how I feel and I can’t change that, so I’m right”, while other IFPs will be too self-blaming and lean into “my emotions are my resonsibility, so I’m the problem and should do better instead of thinking someone else could just be a jerk” — but the difference still has me curious about any other observations you and/or other readers have on the subject.

I tend to be a “I should do better instead of thinking that someone else could just be a jerk” person, enough that I’ve been reconsidering lately whether I could instead have a dominant perceiving function that wants to collect all the info about what position is right or wrong. So much of the IFP information I’ve read focuses on dom Fi’s tendency to reject whatever it doesn’t like, unless the IFP in question is actively focused on developing Se/Ne. Meanwhile, I see myself as basically having a moral obligation to keep track of my own biases and consider other possibilities — enough that even when I’m hurt and angry over how somebody treated me, I still find myself thinking about what I could have done to express myself better. I know I can’t control the outcome of a conflict if the other person isn’t willing to listen or interact in good faith, but it’s hard to not think about how I should have been less sensitive/more articulate/etc.

Even though there’s a lot about Fi-dom traits and motivations I identify with, everything I’ve talked about above has always seemed in conflict with the usual descriptions of IFPs struggling to reevaluate their immediate reactions or consider differing views or experiences. The newer posts about Fi-users feeling more frustration with their reactions and finding it hard to fully accept that others can be at fault resonated a lot more, so it’s gotten me wondering about the scale of self-validation to self-blame in IFPs. Maybe it’s just a variation due to different stages of maturity or confidence, and/or enneagram influences mixing things up even more (e.g. how I’ll tend toward self-blame and excessive consideration of other POVs as a 9w1, while my ISFP 4w3 friend is peak “screw The Man, I’m doing what I want” :P). I’d be really interested in whatever you or others have to say about this! And thank you always for providing such a cool resource to learn from :) I hope you’re well.

Being a 9 makes a HUGE difference in INFPs developing Ne, since Ne and 9 are very similar -- they both are able to take up and hold and consider views that are not their own, they are both easily influenced by the external environment, and they both want to look at alternative perspectives; they are both carried along by things. I’ve noticed that 9w1 INFPs are farther along in Ne development than any other core for that reason -- it’s instinctual for them to hold a fluid viewpoint, it’s natural for their 1 wing and their Fi to self-blame first, and there’s no strongly defensive ‘NOPE’ barrier against the outer world except when it violates an internal principle (then the 9w1 INFP disappears or becomes stubborn). But the tendency to self-blame for not living up to a personal higher standard is very strong in high Fi types, and even more so with a 1 influence.

(EG: a 4w3 9w8 combo is going to be way less ‘this is my fault’ than a 9w1 2w1 combo.) You need to also remember that certain types have beliefs in how things and people SHOULD behave. 6s, 9w1s, and 2s in particular have a universal standard of appropriate behavior that includes their own, whereas 4s do not. So INFPs with 4 in their tritype question their own behavior and whether it is ‘appropriate’ less than a 2 would.

[schraubd]

ACES Wild

Last we encountered the "Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies" (ACES), they were pushing fabricated evidence and wild screeds against "critical race theory" in a failed attempt to derail the California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum after it was reformed in accord with tremendous efforts by a range of California Jewish (and non-Jewish) organizations.

Now they're back in action, and this time their target is California's new draft Mathematical Framework. What horrors are contained inside? Let's look!

The first draft of the California Mathematics Framework is out for review, and it includes as a resource "A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction," a guide that labels teaching practices like "addressing mistakes" and  "focus on the right answer" as "white supremacy culture."

This is critical race theory.

This is discrimination. 

(Is this "critical race theory"? Nope, not going to get sucked into that).

Unfortunately, as was the case in the ESMC debacle, we are given only the thinnest possible citations to the primary sources for the alleged offending content. The link to the CMF draft goes to a website offering a thirteen chapter document, all in separate documents, comprised of hundreds of page, with no indication of where in the morass the "Pathway" document is included. The link to the Pathway itself, for its part, goes to a site that contains five separate documents, again totaling hundreds of pages, with nary a clue as to where this language about "addressing mistakes" might be found. All of this, I suppose, is left as an exercise for the reader.

Well, I may not be a math expert, but I have gotten familiar enough with the strategies of ACES and its friends to know better than to accept what they say on faith. So I went in search of this resource and this language, to see if it is as scary and offensive as they say.

I want to begin with some good news: unlike the Ethnic Studies case, ACES and its allies do not appear to have completely fabricated the inclusion of the putatively offensive material. Congratulations, ACES! This is a big step forward for you as an organization, and you should give yourself a hearty pat on the back.

Alas, if we ask for more than "not fabricated" and stretch all the way out to "not abjectly misleading", things get dimmer.

Start with the CMF draft. From what I can tell, the section they refer to (where the Pathway document is "included as a resource") is on page 44 of chapter two (lines 1010-13). Here, in its totality, is what's included:

Other resources for teaching mathematics with a social justice perspective include... The five strides of Equitable Math.org: https://ift.tt/3qNG3O2

That's it (The website "Equitablemath.org" is titled "A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction"). It is mentioned, unadorned, in the "other resources" conclusion -- and as far as I can tell, nowhere else. Wowzers. I can feel the racial divisiveness cracking up from here.

One thing I'll observe on this is that often times one hears critics of "critical race theory" (or whatever random buzzword they're using today to connote "scary left-wing idea with a vaguely identity-politics kick") say that their problem isn't that the idea is included, but only that its indoctrinated -- it's not one perspective of many, it's the only perspective on offer. This protestation was always rather thin -- the many many bills banning "critical race theory" are decidedly not about ensuring viewpoint diversity -- and one sees just how hollow it is here. The raw, unadorned inclusion of the Equitable Math resource -- as part of a broader whole, not even quoted from directly -- is too much for these people to tolerate. This is not about ideological heterodoxy. This is about censoring ideas, full stop.

But maybe Equitable Math is such an awful or inane document that it would be wrong to include it, even as one resource among many. The way it's described, after all, makes it sound like Equitable Math is a group of hippies saying "2+2 = 4 is the white man's answer, man! Fight the power!" Is that what's happening? Is this a fever dream of post-modernism where nothing is true and everything is permitted?

Once again, I had to dig for myself to figure out where this content was so I could see it in context. The answer appears to be the first document on the site, titled "Dismantling Racism in Mathematics", on pages 65-68. Do they deny that there are such things as "right" answers in math? No: "Of course, most math problems have correct answers," but there are math problems (particularly word problems, but also data analysis) that can be interpreted in different ways that yield different "right" conclusions, and students and teachers should be attentive to that possibility. Do they say one should never "address mistakes"? No again, but mistakes should not simply be called out flatly but rather used as "opportunities for learning" with an emphasis on building on what the student does understand to lead them to recognize what they misapprehend.

I don't teach math, obviously, but there are many occasions where I'll say "such-and-such is the doctrinally correct answer -- but if we look at the problem from this other vantage, doesn't this other position become more plausible?" So when the Equitable Math site suggests, as an alternative to obsessive focus on the one correct answer, classroom activities like " Using a set of data, analyze it in multiple ways to draw different conclusions" -- well, that doesn't seem weird to me. Certainly, as someone who is also trained as a social scientist, I can say confidently that it's quite valuable to anyone who has seen how the same dataset can be deployed by different people with different priors to support different agendas.

Even more than that, the suggestions around "addressing mistakes" resonate with how I try to teach in my classrooms. Sometimes my students say something wrong. When they do so, for the most part I don't say "bzzzt" and move on, instead I try to guide them to the correct answer by having them unpack their own thinking. There's a lot of "I see what you mean by [X], but suppose ..." and ask questions which hone in on the problems or misunderstandings latent in what they're saying. And eventually they get there, hopefully without feeling like they've just been put inside an Iron Maiden for daring speak up. 

Admittedly, I've never thought of what I'm doing as "dismantling White supremacy" -- I just viewed it as good pedagogy. But then again, that's kind of what I've always thought when asked about such subjects -- we act as if there's this deep magic to fostering equity and inclusion in the classroom, when really it's employing the basic strategies of being a good teacher, one of which is declining to engage in a measuring contest where you prove you know more than the student does. Obviously I know more than the student does. I don't need to prove anything. So if they say something wrong, I do not gleefully pounce on them for it, I do my best to build on what they do know to get them to a position of right. Is that so outrageous?

Finally, ACES in its tweet identifies one other area of crazy-lefty-craziness in this resource: "the incorporation of 'Ethnomathematics'". What does that mean? They don't say, correctly surmising that fevered imaginations will produce something far worse than anything they might quote. So I'll do the quoting for them (this comes from page 8):

Center Ethnomathematics: 

• Recognize the ways that communities of color engage in mathematics and problem solving in their everyday lives. 

• Teach that mathematics can help solve problems affecting students’ communities. Model the use of math as a solution to their immediate problems, needs, or desires. 

• Identify and challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views. 

• Teach the value of math as both an abstract concept and as a useful everyday tool. 

• Expose students to examples of people who have used math as resistance. Provide learning opportunities that use math as resistance.

I know, I know -- we're all going to pitch a fit about challenging "capitalist views". But apart from that, this seems ... very normal? We all know, to the point of cliche, that a barrier to getting kids interested in math is that they fail to see how it's useful to them or "in the real world". So they advise that math be taught in a way that resonates with real world experience. And likewise, sometimes, for some people "in the real world", math can feel like an enemy (think "am I just a statistic to you?"). So figure out ways to name that and challenge that. For the most part, "ethnomathematics" just reads as a particular social justice gloss on "being a good teacher", as applied to teaching in diverse communities.

Now perhaps one disagrees with these concepts as pedagogical best practice. I'm not a math teacher, I'm not going to claim direct experience here. But that goes back to the intensity of the backlash -- that these ideas need to be banned, that they are outright dangerous and unacceptable and neo-racism. Can that be right? Surely, these ideas are not so outlandish that we should pitch a fit about their being (deep breath) single elements of an 80 page document which is itself part of a five part series being incorporated as a single "see also" bullet point in the second chapter of a thirteen chapter model state framework. Seriously? That's where we're landing? That's what's going to drive us into a valley of racial division and despair?

It's wild. The people engaged in this obsessive crusade to make Everest size mountains over backyard anthills are nothing short of wild.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/39P79OA

[jadelotusflower]

June 2021 Roundup

It's been a month of highs and lows. Every year my city holds a cabaret festival, and I've seen some truly amazing acts over the years - including Lea Salonga, Kristin Chenoweth, and Indina Menzel. This year's Artistic Director was the great Alan Cumming, and although due to covid he didn't quite get to curate the program he wanted to, the opening night Gala was still a highlight, as was Alan's DJ set at the pop-up Club Cumming afterwards, where there was much singing at the top of my lungs and dancing to pop anthems and theatre tunes. At one point Alan, dressed in a onesie and perched on the shoulders of a man wearing only sparkly short shorts, was carried around the dance floor while Circle of Life blared. Reader, I was delighted.

I was also able to see his solo show Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age, which was hilarious and damn, he can sing!

As for the low, I was meant to fly to Sydney for the weekend to see Hamilton, a trip I have been looking forward to for almost a year, but had to be cancelled because of a covid outbreak and border closures. The tickets have been rescheduled, but I'm still kind of bummed about it (while completely appreciating the need for covid safety, especially when our vaccine rollout has been completely botched by our incompetent, corrupt federal government)

Anyway.

Reading

The Hundred and One Dalmations (Dodie Smith) - With all the bewilderment over Disney's Cruella, I decided to revisit the original novel which I first read as a kid. It's funny, I had very vivid memories of this book, or rather thought I did, particularly the scene where Roger and Anita have dinner at Cruella's house that fixed in my young mind as utterly disturbing with all this devil imagery and the implication Cruella was literally some kind of demon, which must have been either a) my overactive imagination or b) an illustration, because it's not as clear as I thought it was. The strangeness is there (food with too much pepper, Cruella's inability to keep warm, the walls painted blood red) but not the explicit demon imagery I had remembered. There is a part later in the book recounting the history of Hell Hall and the rumors of Cruella's ancestor streaking out of the place conjuring blue lightening, but clearly child me was reading far more into the book than was on the page.

But I still wish they'd gone with this version of Cruella's backstory, because to me an aristocratic, ink-drinking, heat-obsessed, possibly-demon spawn, high camp villain is more interesting and rings far more true than plucky punk against the establishment.

Smith clearly had Facts About Dalmations to share, and she does really craft a wonderful animal-based story that the Disney animated film is largely faithful to. Key differences include: Roger's occupation (he doesn't have to pay tax because he wiped out government debt somehow?!?), Pongo's mate and the puppy's mother is called Missis, Perdita is another dalmation who acts as a kind of doggie wet nurse, Roger and Anita both have Nannies who come to live with them (Nanny Butler and Nanny Cook), Cruella is married to a furrier (who changed his last name to de Vil). Also odd, on her first description Cruella is described as having "dark skin" but later in the novel her "white face" is mentioned, so I'm chalking it up to 50's descriptors not having the same meanings they do today.

The Duke and I (Julia Quinn) - After being just whelmed by the tv series, I wasn't really planning on reading the books, but I saw this on the top picks shelf at the library and damn, the top picks shelf is irresistible. This is very much Daphne's book (and I had known each in the series dealt with the different sibling) so many of the characters and much of the plot of the show is absent, as are some of the more baffling elements of the show like the Diamond of the First Water nonsense, which I always thought was a strange character choice in that it stacks the deck for Daphne when her character arc is better served as somewhat of an underdog (in her third season, the kind of girl who is liked but not adored), and the Prince subplot which was always far too OTT even for soapy regency romance.

It's a breezy, fun read (that scene excepted), even if the misunderstandings are contrived and I'm never going to take "I'll never have kids because I hate my dad" as a credible romantic obstacle deserving of so much angst.

Faeries (Brian Froud and Alan Lee) - A lovingly detailed and illustrated compendium of Faerie and its inhabitants, drawing from a range of European (but primarily Celtic) folklore and mythology. Froud was a conceptual designer on The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, and the link is clear in the art as well as the focus on faeries as mysterious but oftimes sinister beings, where human encounters with them rarely end well. Lee has illustrated several publications of Tolkien's novels, and was a lead concept artists for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, and there is a touch of Middle Earth here as well, or rather the common inspiration of the old world. A useful resource for my novel!

Watching

The Handmaid's Tale (season 4, episodes 4-8) SPOILERS - So when I last wrote about this show in the Roundup, I was complaining it wasn't going anywhere. Well, I'm happy to be wrong because they finally changed things up with June finally escaping to Canada. That part of the plot following the survivors and their trauma has always been far more compelling than Gilead, and so it was a welcome development even if I side-eye some of the choices (none of these characters is seeing an actual licensed therapist why?).

This show has always been difficult to watch given the subject matter, and that has not changed after the shift in power dynamics. I will give the show credit for showing a broad range of trauma responses, from Moira wanting to move on and not let it consume her, to June, a ball of rage and revenge on a downward spiral, to Emily, trying to follow Moira's path but being drawn to June's, to Luke, trying his best but utterly unequipped to deal with what is happening.

But it is very hard to watch June go down this path - raping her husband (I concede the show perhaps didn't intend for it to be rape, but that's what is on screen and framing it as just "taking away Luke's agency" doesn't change that), wishing death on Serena's unborn child, and orchestrating Fred's brutal murder by particulation, then holding her own daughter still covered in his blood and it getting smeared on Nicole's face (an unsubtle metaphor in a series full of unsubtle metaphors).

There are interesting questions being asked of the viewer, and the show (perhaps rightly) not giving any answers. I can certainly appreciate the catharsis of Fred getting what he deserves even if I personally find the manner of it horrifying, but where is the line between justice and revenge, is revenge the only option when justice is denied, when does a trauma release become cyclical violence/abuse - the show is, for now, letting the viewer decide.

Soul (dir. Pete Docter and Kemp Powers) - In a world full of remakes/reboots/sequels, Pixar is perhaps the lone segment under the Disney umbrella committed to original content. However, there does seem to be a Pixar formula at work directed to precision tugging the heart strings, and some of the film feels like well-trod ground. On the other hand, it's hard to criticise the risk of centering a kids film around the existential crisis of a middle aged man, even with the requisite cutesy elements (and of course, the uncomfortable pattern of yet another film where the black lead character spends a great deal of the runtime in non-human form - herein, an amorphous blob or a cat). But the animation is stunning, it successfully did tug my heart strings, and the design of the Great Before and the Jerrys is original and fun.

RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under - Drag Race is somewhat of a guilty pleasure for me, since I generally don't watch reality shows, and this is something I really enjoy even if I'm not invested in the fandom (which like many fandoms can be very yikes). This year it was time for the Australian/New Zealand (Aotearoa) queens to show their stuff, although it's been met with mixed reactions. Covid restrictions didn't allow for guest judges, relegating them to mere cameos via video calls, and its clear that Ru and Michelle really don't quite get all the cultural nuances - Aussie judge Rhys Nicholson was however always delightful. But it wouldn't be Australia without a racism scandal, with the great disappointment of the two queens of colour eliminated first, and one queen having done blackface in the recent past yet making it all the way to the top four.

In the end, the only viable and deserving winner was last Kiwi standing Kita Mean, and it was pure joy to see her get crowned. I do hope they fix the bugs and indeed do another season to better showcase AU/NZ talent.

Writing

A far more productive month - to try and get out of my writing funk I had a goal to try and write every day, even if it was only 100 words. While I didn't quite achieve a consecutive month, I did get a pretty good average, at least got something posted and two others nearly there.

The Lady of the Lake - 2441 words, Chapter 4 posted.

Against the Dying of the Light - 2745 words

Turn Your Face to the Sun - 1752 words.

Here I Go Again - 1144 words

Total words this month: 8082

Total words this year: 35,551

[devourer--of--books]

I’m mad about Hunter being written off and here’s why you should be too

You: wasted potential.

Me, an intellectual: ah, Hunter and Nicola’s friendship

I have strong opinions about Hunter.

Yeah, you heard me right.

Look, I have strong opinions about many, many, things. Today, we are taking a dive on Hunter and Nicola. First I’d like to blame this post on Kate, as I decided to make it after I tried to articulate why Hunter being written off TCY makes me so angry in a huge comment under her latest OTK post but it ended up being too big and messy so I deleted it. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone elaborate on it, so if you were also mad about this, bro, not to be intense, but like, are we soulmates or...??

Before anything else, as I usually do with my text posts (which I haven’t done in a while, opsies), I shall provide you with arguably unnecessary context. Sit down, grab yourself some snacks, make yourself at home, I’m about to rant you into oblivion.

Since I know many accounts weren’t around back then, I’ll also give you the socio-political vibes of the time period, as any self-respecting half-baked essay written last minute should.

POV, you’re 14/15 year-old me. You flat iron your hair, you don’t use sunscreen, you think you’re straight and your school makes you wear those horrid low rise uniform pants, but at least you can somewhat do your make-up decently now that you grew out of your emo phase.

The year was 2016. The Ever Never Handbook has just come out. You re-watch the handbook trailer on youtube for the fifteenth time. Everyone is losing their minds over OcTObeR 14tH and “a student named Agatha ~ now Agatha of Camelot~”, as well as the portraits and the teasing for a new SGE book. Quests For Glory is announced just a few days later. 2016 tagatha ship week happens a few months down the line. 

This is the SGE Tumblr Fandom Peak.

Now, let’s start right there, two-ish weeks after the release of the Handbook, right as the QFG announcement comes out.

We all knew Soman wasn’t done with SGE after TLEA. He definitely had been teasing something in his weekly blogs (lol, remember when I used to check the blog, what a time to be alive) and once we got the ENH, we got quite lot of info to theorize. Here’s some that I can think off the top of my head: 

- The coven was going on a mission to find a new School Master.

- Tedros and Agatha were struggling financially in Camelot but were going to get married soon (even if Sophie doubted Tedros would have asked Agatha yet, as of the time of the Ever Never RoundTable, but we’re taking that with a grain of salt, because she was written to sound jealous here, and I won’t acknowledge that kinda of bs, she is happy for her friends okay, we’ve been though this-)

- Sophie had completely remodeled the School For Evil and was getting on Dovey and the rest of the faculty’s nerves (except for newly hired history teacher, Hort).

- The rest of the supporting cast had just graduated third year and was to be off in quests soon.

- The School was now accepting applications, and two of those applicants are Nicola and Bogden.

Now, I’m not even gonna bring up how it was mentioned in a video in EverNeverTv that Bogden would be an important character in TCY, and yet, I can’t think of anything relevant about him other than the fact that he knew tarot apparently, or how his application had more personality than him in the entire series, or how he was basically there so we could look at him and Willam and be like “oh, representation”, or how he’d be a good insight on how Galvadon perceives Sophie and Agatha post-TLEA, or- I’m just not gonna.

Oh, no. Instead, we are here to discuss Nicola’s application.

If your memory is foggy, let me remind you:

Nicola’s application is submitted, according to the Handbook, by her friend, Hunter. For convenience sake, we’ll assume Hunter is a guy (I’ll tell you why Hunter being a guy works better for me in a bit), but his gender is not mentioned anywhere in the ENH. I don’t think he has been gendered in any version (correct me if I’m wrong) or if there are any pronouns for him during TCY, but I’m fairly confident he isn’t mentioned at all.

Hunter tells us he is applying on Nic’s behalf, as she’d never apply for herself. He mentions that she is more or less the Galvadon equivalent of an activist for women’s rights, founding a rugby unisex team and campaigning for pants instead of skirts for the local school uniform, as well as having a feminist sounding book as her favorite book. It’s heavily implied that she is a jock, as he lists that, if marooned on a desert island, Nicola would want to have a soccer ball, a hockey stick and a set of dumbbells (“and none of this 5-lb nonsense”) with her.

Upon asked why Nicola should go to the school, his answer is: “because there’s a greater place for her in the world, where she can learn a girl’s true worth, and I don’t think it’s here.”

Then you have a note from (*rolls eyes* *suppresses a gag* *tears hair out*) the very late, long, long gone, absolutely dead, August Sader, telling the Deans to accept her application, despite having no reason to do so, as Nicola was to “play a crucial role in it’s [the school’s] survival.” Dovey and Sophie agree to flip a coin to decide which school will take her, which Sophie must have lost, as Nicola is accepted into the School For Evil.

By now, I think we all agree that Nicola was done dirty. If you check my QFG re-read you’ll notice that I complained about her there. As I had to go though her introduction chapter again to make this post, let me tell you why: Nicola wasn’t written to be likeable.

She simply wasn’t. That’s the one conclusion I can draw. Whether that’s intentional or not, I can’t tell, but the backlash she received was fairly useful, as it meant Soman could write her off the main story without much backlash from his target audience (aka, not us, pesky pretentious older readers).

The Nicola I was introduced to, not only in the Handbook but on her trailer for QFG was not the girl on QFG. 

Nic is there to be the smart  girl™, and while I do appreciate having a character who is a bit cocky about their brains, it just doesn’t work well there. Because her bond to other characters and the way she earns their respect feels so weak, she just comes across as pretentious. Characters like Hester and Agatha, who are supposed to be smart, feel dumbed down to show us how clever Nicola is. Agatha is supposed to be the resourceful thinker and Hester wanted to be class captain, you bet she studied like crazy, she probs knows every fairytale in existence. 

Then you add that to the (*rolls eyes* *suppresses a gag* *tears hair out*) Nicola and Hort fiasco and Nic feels like a weirdly written OC insert.

Handbook!Nicola sounded like a smart jock kind of character (read, more Gryffindor than Ravenclaw). Handbook!Nic was a Reader who read the tales as a hobby, but her favorite book is not a tale, it’s a non-fiction book (as far as I can tell). She might not be the fairytale expert, but she sounds like a practical thinker, as sport requires strategy, which is not Hester’s strong suit, given she is rather impulsive, or Agatha’s, given she is often unwilling to make hard decisions due to her Good nature and her own insecurities. C’mon, Handbook!Nic would have taken one look at Hort and sent him running to hills, because she would be able to smell his bs three miles away. She’s no one’s replacement, least of all Sophie’s (whom she probably would not have gotten along with (at least they got this part right) given Sophie’s “my prince will sweep me away from an ordinary life” phylosophy). To be honest she doesn’t sound like she’d be interested in dating at all.

But this post is about Hunter right? Let me remind you, Hunter is not mentioned in Nicola’s introduction, when she talks about her life in Galvadon. Canon!Nicola tells us that she has two brothers who want to inherit her father’s pub in order to sell the place, but Nicola is close with her father and likes working there to some extent, even if she has bigger ambitions. She believes her brothers sent her application as a way to get rid of her.

Back when I still had some faith that Soman had an arc for Nicola that included resolution, I had my theories as to why she wouldn’t mention Hunter: maybe he was to appear in later books and they’d have a huge backstory explaining their friendship, as well as a dramatic confession that Hunter sent her application because he felt Nicola deserved to live an adventure, and Nicola would either realize that she was meant for something more or that she wanted to live a quiet life, honestly either would be nice. I would have taken anything. Truly, if Nicola’s k-pop boyfriend in the OTK epilogue had been replaced with Hunter, I might be able to hate it less.

Especially if they came to the (*rolls eyes* *suppresses a gag* *tears hair out*) school wedding as friends. Because you know what?

We are starved for male-female friendships in the SGE universe.

Tedros’s only female friends (all his friends in general) are Agatha’s friends (who all tried to get rid of him at some point, save for maybe Dot) and his actual friends are all dead (Bettina/Chaddick). Hort could be counted as Agatha’s friend, if only he didn’t bash her every five seconds like a moron (he literally pitched the idea that Agatha should be executed by Tedros in OTK, just because he was envious or her relationship with Sophie (not jealous, envious, because Sophie wasn’t his to begin with)) over his delusional sense entitlement of Sophie’s affections (which I hate, but as this is not a Hort-bashing post, I won’t get too much into), but the coven, Beatrix, Renna and co. would not touch him with a stick. Merlin’s friendship with Lady Of The Lake is gone, and Dovey is dead. Rhian and Kei both had that frenemies thing with Sophie in ACOT/beggining of OTK, but I think it was supposed to be romantic? It wasn’t ew (I hate Rhian but he’s also wasted potential, and so was Kei, whom I liked, rest in peace). Japeth hates women for??? Whatever. Willam and Bodgen are such background characters I could not care less about them. The new students weren’t memorable enough for me to remember their names. I think this about covers the main male cast.

There’s a lack of male friendships too, but we kinda have (*rolls eyes* *suppresses a gag* *tears hair out*) Tort and whatever was that rushed Tedros/Chaddick friendship.  Rhian and Kei were gay friends (yeah, right, sure, very platonic). Tedros and Rhian could have been friends if Rhian redeemed himself, but otherwise no. Tedros and Filip… gay. Japeth literally killed Rhian, so also not very good friendship between brothers. Hort has no friends, because Ravan would so not be here for his bs. Willam and Bogden are a couple and (*rolls eyes* *suppresses a gag* *tears hair out*) so were Aric and Japeth, I guess.

Still don’t believe Hunter was wasted potential? Okay, let me tell you what my ideal Nicola arc would be, mixing Handbook!Nicola with some canon!Nicola and including Hunter.

- Nicola is the one inheriting the pub (once she gets married), despite Galvadon’s pre-TLEA sexism and conservative views, because she is her father’s only child and her brothers are actually her older half-siblings from her mother’s previous marriage.

- Her mom died at some point early in her childhood. Not a childbirth tho, because Callis, local witch gynecologist (have you checked my post on this yet? no? you should) was there for her, even if it was a high risk pregnancy because the mom was already older.

- Because of that, Nicola’s father actually sells bread to Callis for cheaper prizes, but don’t tell the elders, shhh

- Anyway, because her mom was gone so early, Nicola was raised by her dad, brothers and by the employees (mostly men, as I don’t think it was all that common for women to work jobs in Galvadon) of her father’s pub. Due to being a girl, most guys weren’t willing to befriend her (sexism, am I right), but because she was a tomboy she had difficulty bonding with the other girls at school, even when they weren’t outright hostile (cof cof Sophie). 

- Example: she and Belle had a tentative bond over their love of cooking, but often ran out of things to talk about and the conversation fell flat.

- Which is how she ends up befriending Hunter. 

- Hunter is the only boy in a family of many girls and his father works all day. He has a good heart and is rather emotional, but he always feels like he has something to prove, which leads him to being rather impulsive. Both Nicola and Hunter love sports and are very competitive people. Once Nicola gains his respect, he feels very protective of her and often feels the need to stand up for her, even if she doesn’t need it.

- Nicola knows Hunter feels overlooked in his family, so she is always inviting him over and taking care of him, keeping him out of trouble. Her father begins to see him as his own son, and soon he spends more time at Nicola’s house than at his own.

- Everyone thinks they’ll get married some day. His sisters tease him mercilessly about it, and so does Nic’s father, but frankly, Nic and Hunter see each other as family.

- You can bet Hunter is the one teaching Nic about periods after asking his sisters, so she wouldn’t have to suffer with Galvadon’s horrid Sex Ed. (go check the Callis headcanon’s okay, give me clout, that it my favorite post I’ve ever made)

- They tried to kiss once. Nicola vomited and Hunter gaged.

- Hunter is Nicola’s number one supporter and fan, 100% had those gender-equality pins she made for her campaigns all over his bags and jackets.

- Since most wedding matches are arranged by the elders before girls even graduate, it was settled that Nic and Hunter would get married to each other and then inherit the pub. It would of course, be a secretly platonic match and they would suspiciously have no children (Nicola even had a plan to visit Callis to get a potion for infertility, just in case the elders wanted to check on her... okay, I’ll stop).

- Hunter doesn’t tell her, but Nicola knows he wants to marry for love and have a family of his own. She tries to talk him out of marrying her, but he insists that he would be doing it out of love for her, even if not romantic, because Nic didn’t deserve to be matched up with some stranger she barely knows who would no doubt be less tolerant of her more radical views.

- She tells him it’d be fine for him to have a affairs then, but he insists he would never do that to her, because people would talk about Nic if that was the case and her reputation would be ruined.

- The night of Sophie and Agatha kidnapping Nicola tells him she would rather be taken to the School than to stay there and make him live an unhappy life.

- Hunter is horrified (remember, everyone thought going to the school was a fate worse than death) and makes her promise to never treat her life so fickly.

- Sophie and Agatha get taken, come back, but during Tedros’ reign of terror in Galvadon, right before they return to the Woods, Nicola’s father grows very very sick.

- Nic thinks he’s going to die, and she frets, not only because they’re close but also because she can’t inherit the place if she doesn’t marry Hunter. But, well, she sort of always knew, but now that feels very real, she thought she had some more time before that.

- They set a date for the wedding, but thankfully, Tedros and Agatha’s escape ends up causing the ceremony to be delayed.

- By the time the new date is set, there’s no more elders and Stefan is now mayor.

- But just because he is the mayor doesn’t mean the law and the sexism is gone overnight.

- Nic’s father is getting somewhat better, but she is still very worried about him, because of his old age.

- Once SGE starts having applications and has been proved to be, well, somewhat safe, Hunter suggests that Nicola applies, but after the scare that she might lose her father sooner rather than later, she tells him she can’t bring herself to leave him.

- Hunter doesn’t want her to throw her life away, specially now knowing that in the Endless Woods there were people like her and that progress would get there before it ever got to Galvadon 

- (He also wants to not marry someone he views as a sister, pls).

- So he files her application in secret.

- Nicola gets accepted, upon Sader’s request and Sophie’s bad luck, into the School For Evil. She and Sophie still don’t get along, the Evil castle rejects her and she gets pushed to Good, becoming an Ever, but she’s only staying until Christmas, because she is worried sick about her father.

- She thinks the application was a plot from her brothers because she doesnt think Hunter would ever betray her trust like that, after she specifically told him she wouldn't go.

- There’s no Hicola, instead, she and Hort become friends and she talks him out of his delusions with Sophie, because as much as Nicola dislikes her, Sophie was a girl too, and deserved to have her feelings respected. 

- She also punches Hort into giving up his envy of Tedros and Agatha while at it, because she is just that efficient.

- Everything else up to OTK can be pretty much the same because I can’t remember what happens, other than everytime Nicola is smart girl™, it’s not “because she reads”, but because she is practical. 

- Example: on the boat scene where she very pretentiously sasses Agatha for not saying hello to her (canon!Nicola, girl, she just suffered six months of loneliness at Camelot because Tedros shut her out and is now on a quest to save her happy ending, probs didn’t get much sleep, maybe cut her some slack) and then tells her how to sail a boat (despite the fact that there are no boats in Galvadon and I’m sure you can’t just read Peter Pan and learn to sail a boat, unless I did it wrong or something, maybe the storian version comes with a crash course). Here, instead, Nicola presses Hort (who is a pirate’s son) to remember literally anything to help them (therefore making him not completely useless on this quest), and he does and they tell Agatha and she’s like sure and does it.

- Now, in OTK, I literally can’t remember where Nicola was for most of it and I read that book not too long ago, so I’m worried. 

- Okay, so, have the Knights Of Eleven actually serve some purpose, include a scene where Tedros and Nicola stress-play rugby and get her some internal conflict.

- Nic now loves this world. She just spent the last few weeks fighting to protect it. She is now a Knight, and she loves the adventures and the new friends she made. Can she really go back to Gavaldon to take care of a pub? Well, she needs to, doesn’t she? That’s what a good daughter would do.

- After Japeth’s execution, Nic goes straight home.

- Her father’s condition is stable, as he is being treated by Hunter and his new wife.

- Oh boy, Hunter has some explaining to do.

- Nicola is furious that he broke her trust, but at the same time, she’s happy he’s happy and well, Hunter what do you have to say for yourself?

- “Damn, Nic, nice armour- ouch, my arm!”

- Apparently, since Nicola was taken, Stefan approved a law for people to be able to leave their inheritance to whomever they wanted. And since Nic was gonna be at the Woods, her father was more than happy to leave it to Hunter. Of course, unless Nicola wanted to stay at Gavaldon. 

- Does she? She’s not sure.

- Hunter and Nicola attend the tagatha wedding at Camelot (what, like I wasn’t gonna fix this part?), Hunter is Nic’s plus one.

- There, Hester, Anadil and Dot show her Sader’s note, and ask her, not to become School Master, but to become Dean Of Good, because she would be perfect for the new brand of Good to match Sophie’s Evil. You know, since she is all for gender-equality, good manners, practicality and was particularly good at dealing with Sophie’s bs.

- Since Tedros has the Storian Ring, the pen doesn’t need actual protection, well, not more than it can get from Nic and Sophie.

- Sophie herself insists that Nicola accept the position, not because she doesn’t want to be alone at the school now that Hort and Dovey are dead, no, of course not, since when did Sophie ever need anyone, she was just asking cause… cause Nicola looked lonely. The pretty boy who came with her was not her boyfriend, was he? Sophie was prettier than him anyway. Who needs a boy when they can have her?

- Whether they become a couple or not, I’ll let you decide.

- Bonus: years later, Hunter’s eldest daughter is accepted at the School for Good. Nicola is her godmother, and her favoritism shows.

There, if nothing else, the reason you should be mad about Hunter and the Handbook in general is because this didn’t happen.

[plagiatkontroll]

Plagiatkontroll

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Not knowing what to try to to , these new content writers use search engines to seek out like-minded articles then copy and paste an equivalent . Then they put in paragraph breaks randomly and insert the keywords without even checking if they're maintaining the structure of the sentence. This leads to a plagiarized article. In about 90 minutes all the ten articles are composed and dispatched to the provider. there's little question that these articles are going to be sent to the ashcan faster than you'll wink an eye fixed .

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There are some sites on the online , like Copyscape, that assist you to see out your articles for plagiarism. Just upload your article on a blogging site then paste the URL of the blog site in copyscape's page. it'll detect if your content is matching with the other content on the online and can show you the copied portions by highlighting an equivalent . Most authors don't mind up to 4-5% of matches. The algorithm of Copyscape triggers off if there are 3 simultaneous matching words. If you've got written `Latest Car Reviews' there'll be many websites that have similar content. this is often not plagiarism.

While most providers state explicitly that they expect the composed copy to be freed from grammatical mistakes and will be Copyscape free too, most of them haven't any idea about grammar themselves. attempt to keep your content original. only a few persons write perfect English if passive voice/verb were to be considered. As long as your composition is sensible and passes the Copyscape test, you'll avoid plagiarism and at an equivalent time, retain your provider too.

As our society is progressing, so is that the fall in ethics. People became desperately attached to win-at-any-cost ethos. Sports personalities, politicians, professionals - nobody is left untouched by this practice. The cheating in essay writing has made its way within the education system also . Gone are the times when essay writing was considered to be an art. Today, who likes to spend time in researching and presenting original ideas through essay writing when everyone knows the web can give them what they need at one fourth of the trouble .

Almost altogether the main British and American universities there has been a big growth within the plagiarised cases detection across all faculties. Over the last five years approximately , the changed outlook of scholars towards education generally and writing especially has seen a big tilt. Almost 90% students, though are honest in other dealings, are caught within the act of cheating annually.

The word plagiarism has its roots within the Latin plagiaries, pertaining to someone who has abducted a toddler , a kidnapper in other words. Today, within the world of essay writing the plagiarist is seen as someone who has snatched the work of somebody else and given it its own name. Students sometimes commit plagiarism in essay writing by using the tutorial thinking of somebody else without acknowledging. Other common methods include copying and downloading from net. there's also a trend of paying somebody else for own essay writing, which is justifiable as long because the other party doesn't copy it from another resource.

Related topics-

plagiatkontroll gratis

[whiskey-londubh]

As we talked about on Facebook, and I'm fine with you posting this :D for a tarot question, what does Beezlebub want me to know currently? I'm rather curious since I work with him but we dont talk much.

I used a classic Celtic Cross spread, because I’ve found it thorough, but straightforward. I’m somewhat of an intuitive reader, and I hope I can shed some light on the answer in the same way.

“To the entity known as Beelzebub, is there anything you’d like this witch to know? How do you view working with them?”

For the center cards, 1 and 2,  we have the immediate present in the Page of Cups, as well as the immediate challenge, in the Five of Pentacles. 

You’re a creative individual, but even if you don’t feel you’re accomplished, you still have an imaginative outlook, which is always a plus. You want to try new things and explore, like a child learning things for the first time. 

However, while the suit of cups is more about creativity, pentacles speak more to material possessions, and being a bit more pragmatic. You want to explore with total freedom and color outside the lines, so to speak. But you feel that you’ve lost something material (or can’t get it) and that you’d better keep tabs on more practical things. This isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, but in my own experience can make us think we’re keeping a balance when we’re not.

There aren’t many Major Arcana in this spread, but the Wheel of Fortune is one of two (/suspenseful music/). 

Your past is characterized by a stroke of good luck, or a notable blessing. The wheel turned, and it was your turn to benefit. This speaks to having an opportunity that drastically changed your life, and you took it for what it was worth. With the last two cards, this looks to me like you know what the blessings in your life are, but you’ve come into a period where worry is starting to creep up on you.

You don’t necessarily take this for granted, but you’re feeling the affects of less than carefree, or spiritual influences.

Recently, things have still been going well, despite setbacks and doubts. You still feel creative, and have trust in your abilities for the most part. Double-checking is good, but doesn’t mean you’ve lost faith.

Again, with Three of Pentacles, you know the value of balance. Having or using materials doesn’t mean materialism, and we’re physical creatures as well as spiritual. Keep paying attention to the balance of your practical (”mundane”) and magical. Though it’s important to keep our lives creative and fun, keeping up morale, we each have to find our own unique balance between grunt work and the rest. 

Take what you know you can do and build on it. Self-check is a part of growth just as much as reading from a textbook. The best future for you through this question is to reach a point where you can take this to heart, and own it.

Though I’m sure you’ve heard some of these ideas before, reversed Four of Swords speaks to the potential for a burnout in the immediate future. You’ve been blessed with opportunity and have taken appropriate advantage of it because you’re open to new ideas, and questioning yourself. 

Even the best of us can reach periods where we need to unplug and take a good look at what we want. Mistaking producing for productivity/positivity is dangerous. So far, I read this spread as your willingness to progress, and be a good student, but without giving up your sense of why you’re on this path in the first place.

Just don’t get tunnel vision. Focus is good, but can lead to using all your resources in one place while other areas suffer. Don’t spread yourself thin - sometimes, just take a break.

Back to references to your creativity - you’re confident in your abilities. Even if your path and work is hindered or influenced by anxiety or depression (or something else) from time to time, you know how to return to something you feel is stable. 

Keep on with your general methods, because they’ve served you well. A balance of material needs to serve the material side of you, with knowledge of the spiritual and creative to make sure the rest of you won’t go hungry. You care about following the recipe, even if it’s your own that no one’s ever heard of.

More and more pentacle cards~

Unfortunately, this also speaks to material pursuits. Again, not necessarily materialism, but a certain stubbornness and that you may be missing or ignoring something of a mundane nature despite your best efforts.

Even if the material isn’t something you’re holding in your hand, this can be seen in status, connections, or reputation. 

Up until now, all of your suits (except for the Wheel of Fortune) have been pentacles and cups. 

The Page of Swords is a card that, when reversed, speaks to a disconnect between what you want and what you’re actually doing. That, or you’ve said something that you haven’t fully delivered on, if at all. This could be due to hesitation, sensing something is “off” such as doubting your attempts at balance. 

You seem to need more time to sort out what it is you really want to do, or be clear on what it is that you’ve really offered or said. Not quite the same as the Hanged Man, but prompting more reflection on how you’ve come across. 

Self-reflection is good but, when it involves outside entities (human or otherwise), you may have stopped in the middle of your sentence, there. 

And, last card, other Major Arcana!

The World is the card of satisfaction and completion. This situation can  and will  resolve in some way, but will take some reflection on what you really want, why you want it, and how you’ve expressed yourself. 

I am not a Satanist, and don’t work with Demons or associated systems. So, the following is my intuitive tl;dr based on this divination only:

Beelzebub views you as competent, though not yet sparking specific interest. Not in a personal way, but they will not show focus on you until a few things are sorted out.

Why is it you want to work with them? Is it because of their status and reputation, however well-meaning? Are you a bit starstruck, for lack of a better term? Why do you want to work with them more closely? Why hasn’t the occasional exchange been enough?

They know who you are, and bear no ill will. You have their “business card,” but it’s not their personal number. To create a stronger connection, you’ll have to continue through their “secretary” for a time, and be willing to continue to follow procedures and etiquette. Not as an ever-present fan, but to show you’re willing to stay calm, measured, and leave it up to them, out of respect.

Then you might get a call to set up coffee, one of these days, rather than just passing each other in the “office.”

[skylights422]

@ace-and-aro-wlw-positivity created a Q&A for aspec authors/writers, and as an aspec author, I am excited to participate and answer as many of their questions as I can. Under a cut since it became really outrageously long.

1. What was your inspiration for your character(s)? Are they modeled on yourself, a person that you know, or a character that’s already been established?

Typically I’d say my characters are a mix of general inspiration from other stories/characters and then bits and pieces taken from myself. I try not to make any of them like a clone of myself or another character, try to mix it up, possibly with mixed success but that is the goal.

2. How much, if any, has your character(s) changed since they were first created? What caused this change?

Oh wow, okay I have characters I still use from grade school and middle school, and those characters have changed/grown a lot. Most notoriously (to me) though are my two fellas Euphranor and Kadri. I created them while daydreaming in middle school while watching those science videos in class about how I could make a more parody-like version of said videos, Kadri being the energetic and comically sadistic teacher and Euphranor being the constantly irritated and foul-tempered student. The core of their designs and personalities haven’t totally changed (Euph is still a hot-head and Kadri still likes to troll him), but they’ve become far more nuanced as characters as their story become more involved and serious. They’ve also become softer characters, with Euph having a Heart of Gold and Kadri being a bit morally grey but generally compassionate and friendly. I think the cause of this change and others comes from a mix of things, for one I simply got older and what I wanted out my characters changed a bit. But also I think it’s because I spent so much time with those characters in my head that I couldn’t help but develop them more fully, which in turn made me want to give them a good story. Also, everyone is definitely more queer now then how they started, largely because I became more aware and comfortable with my own queer identity and spent more time in queer spaces (though with Euph I actually just realized he had to be gay because I every het relationship I envisioned for him fell totally flat and yet imagining him as having crushes on guys just seemed to work better/make more sense, and that was an earlier decision).

4. Do you intend on publishing your story one day? Why, or why not?

I definitely do! I have many, many stories I want to publish, as books or comics or tv shows or films. I’ve always wanted to publish some of writing since it’s one of my main passions and have always taken inspiration from the stories I consumed. I just love writing and would want to be able to do it as my main career, the key will just be figuring out how to focus on one project long enough to finish it. xD

5. Surprise fact! Give a random fact about your character(s), whether it’s their favorite color, food, or even song!

Euphranor loves to sing! He hums to calm himself down and even full on sings to vent his feelings sometimes. Kadri loves literature and video games, and blackberry pie is his favorite food.

6. Admit it, you have a folder on your computer of the various types of picrews you’ve created for your character(s). Would you mind posting a few (or five)?

*VIBRATES* MY TIME HAS COME. I absolutely have way too many picrews of my fellas so I won’t post them all, just two each for the core four of my main novel project. First, Euphranor:

(yes he is a Hufflepuff)

Kadri:

(also since I dragged the Hogwarts houses into this Kadri is Ravenclaw)

Ena:

(I put her in Gryffindor)

And finally, Fiera:

(Right now I have her in Slytherin. She could also be in Ravenclaw though)

7. Time to get serious for a bit. There’s been heavy debate on having non-human characters identify as ace, aro, non-binary, etc., but never actual humans. As someone who’s aspec, how would you explain to someone who’s allo why this can be and is seen as hurtful?

I mean, as a sci-fi fan I definitely love if the non-human characters are queer coded, but it’s definitely important to include human representation as well, and I think there are a few simple reasons for that. One is that queer people are, in fact, humans, and therefore our stories deserve to be told as they are in reality as well as how they could be in fiction. The other is only writing us as inhuman implies you consider our identities as fictitious or too strange for a human to have, and queer people already have to deal with other forms of erasure and invalidation in real life. (Also, not everyone is a fan of sci-fi/fantasy, and they should still be able to read stories where they can see themselves)

8. It’s a sad reality that many stories in mainstream media don’t have characters that are aspec, not to mention without resorting to harmful stereotypes. Besides there being nothing wrong with IDing as aspec, why did you choose to have your character ID as such? What would you tell other authors who’re interested in writing characters that are aspec, but are afraid of offending the community?

I have a huge list of aspec characters, which definitely started happening more once I was aware of my own asexuality (and later, aromanticism), since I realized that I could make my own aro and ace characters and then just went wild with it lol. It’s also easier for me to write since I can actually draw from personal experience somewhat for it. Beyond representation having aro and ace characters also allows you to explore more facets of human emotions/the human experience, so that’s always fun.

As for how I would advise allies looking to write a-spec characters, my main advice would be to remember that we are an incredibly diverse group of people, and so while no one a-spec character will resonate with every a-spec reader, an a-spec character written in good faith will definitely speak to some of us. Write them as an character first, and when it comes to things like how their attraction does or doesn’t work and what they want out of relationships, figure out what works best for them. Really, if you’re concerned your character would be offensive in some way you can always make a post asking about it, many of us are happy to offer constructive advice and appreciate that someone is wanting to put in the effort to write about our experiences. Reading or listening to anecdotes from an array of a-spec people is also a good way of getting ideas of how to portray us, and there are various resources for that (the tags, AUREA collects anecdotes from arospec individuals, and probably more than I can think of offhand)

9. If you’re comfortable with sharing, what is your characters’ identity? Do they use any microlabels? Does theirs reflect your own?

Unsurprisingly I have many characters who are aroace (Fiera is one of them), and Ena is bisexual and gray-aromantic. Kadri was originally supposed to just be bi/pan but has become increasingly aspec, will they end up gray-aro as well as grey-ace? Will they end up as a pan oriented aroace? I don’t know yet, but they sure are a pan a-spec. My most recent project has exclusively aro-spec protagonists, Valentine is aroace, Cedar is demiromantic, Raelene is cupioromantic, and then Clematis and Hadyn are presently just Aro and might stay that way. My aroace characters are often styled after my own aroace experiences, while other a-spec characters aren’t as much.

11. Why do you think that not just representation is important, but GOOD representation? Can you offer any examples?

Well, I think there are a few ways to make ‘good rep’. There is the ‘this character helps bring awareness/educate about the community’ and then there’s ‘this character just resonates with certain a-spec people a lot’, and the main reason I think it’s important is because rep should be for the people they’re representing. So if rep hurts the community or totally fails to be relatable to anyone who’s actually a-spec, then it missed the whole point and is doing just as much to leave the community feeling left in the dust as no rep. Of course things do get complicated when the community is divided on whether the rep is good or not, which I imagine will be a common occurrence, and many examples of rep probably fall into the grey area between Good and Bad, but generally people should aim to tell stories that will help more than hinder the people you are telling your story about. (Although I also think that the long term end goal is to get to the point where there is enough representation that it doesn’t matter if some of it is ‘bad’ or not, since I feel like that is the true state of normalization, but that is sadly not yet the case)

12. What’s the genre of your most recent story? Do you always write in this genre? If so, what other works do you have? If not, why did you pick it?

My most recent story (with Valentine) is fantasy, inspired by shoujo style anime series like Cardcaptor Sakura, while Euph’s story is more dystopian urban fantasy? His exact genre has shifted around a lot and will probably continue to do so. In general, most of my works are fantasy in some way or another. A few are more sci-fi or horror based, but definitely the majority are fantasy whether that be magical girl type stories, urban fantasy, superheroes, or dark fantasy.

14. What’s a brief biography of your character? Is their history, personality, and/or looks similar to your own?

I’m going to go with Fiera here. The short version of her backstory is that she and her older brother were born to neglectful parents, and while their grandmother was attentive emotionally she also lived far away. Her brother discovered magic, long thought forgotten, but killed himself shortly after, leaving Fiera alone and confused. She then made a point to dedicate herself to studying the theory and history of magic in the hope that she may someday understand why her brother would take his own life so suddenly like that. She has a down to earth personality and is very observant, and has a great deal of ambition and focus for tasks. She naturally has a more lighthearted and curious personality, but has become more somber since the death of her brother. While she always struggled with sustaining personal relationships, it’s only recently she started using her power of observation to be more manipulative and always keep a cool, pleasant demeanor. She has a love for fashion and sewing, as well as an interest in chemistry.

She isn’t really based on me at all backstory or appearance wise, and only slightly takes after me personality wise. Our main similarity is that we both can be quietly observant and don’t tend to get outwardly angry very often, and that we are both aroace. But I am nowhere near as focused as her, am terrible at lies/manipulation, and have different interests. I’m also way more prone to energetic rants and blunt statements than she is.

15. What are the themes of your story? Is it a lighthearted adventure, or are we talking deep, ocean-sized levels of angst? Why, or why not, did you choose them?

The tone of Euph’s story is kind of all over the place due to how often I’ve tweaked it, but there are certainly oceans of angst for all the protagonists. There’s just also decided remnants of the wacky humor from when the story was predominantly a comedy, and a lot more scenes of the characters just relaxing or goofing off than might be typical in a high tension drama adventure. My story with Valentine is generally much more lighthearted, though there will be some deeper moments for character development (and also because I want it to have a slightly gothic vibe, just Because)

16. How long have you been writing? Has your style changed from when you first began to now? What are some tips you’d give to those who’re interested in writing a story of their own, be it professionally or as a hobby?

I’ve been writing in some capacity just about as long as I can remember, and so my style has definitely taken various shifts depending on how old I was and what I was taking as my main inspiration at the time. Sometimes I went for more sarcastic and whimsical narration regardless of the events happening of the story, sometimes I went for a more quick modern-ish style, sometimes I would focus more or less on descriptions or dialogue. I don’t really know where I’m at right now though.

What I would advise to anyone wanting to sit down and write is to be patient and kind with yourself. Nine times out of ten what sounds epic in your head will come out at first as clunky and all over the place. But that is pretty much the whole purpose of first drafts; the clunky first draft crawls so the second draft may walk so the third draft may walk a little faster so the final draft may run. The other thing I would advise is to absolutely experiment, and see what works best for you. There is every kind of writing advice out there imaginable, much of it contradictory, so really you just have to mess around with styles and perspective and dialogue and see what happens, which stuff you liked and which stuff you didn’t.

17. What’s your process for writing? Do you plan your story out first, write whatever you want then edit later, or both? How might this help others?

My writing process is pretty much a mishmash of writing whatever comes to me, then planning, then writing, then using a bunch of character building exercises to have fun but make no progress in the plot, then neglect the project for months, then write some more or maybe plan. I don’t know how much this would help others, though I have found when I set goals with deadlines and some external pressure (nanowrimo, reward system implanted by friends, etc) I am far more productive, so perhaps that is something others could try if they struggle with staying on track?

18. Your book’s become quite popular, easily reaching the New York Times Bookseller list, and now, you’ve been picked to lead a writing workshop. It goes swimmingly, and afterward, someone comes and tells you that your book not only inspired them to write a story of their own, but also helped them discover and accept their identity. What’s your reaction?

Mostly I would just be flabbergasted, but also extremely pleased and honored to have been able to provide any kind of help or assistance to my readers.And I would feel very happy for the person, since that sort of inspiration is great to come by.

19. Are there any published stories out there that feature aspec characters that you also read? Do you have any suggestions?

Unfortunately not that I can think of! I am peripherally aware of some ace characters, but they aren’t in stories I personally consume. I hope to find more though!

20. Just for fun, write down a paragraph of your most recent writing. It can be an action-packed scene, some witty dialogue, or a colorful description that you really enjoyed. (Be sure to properly tag any possible triggers!)

Well, my most recent finished work would be the clunky first draft of my novel. So, here’s a silly conversation that entertained me to write:

Once they had bought the food, they went back to the park to eat. 

“You know, Fiera, I have come to a realization.” Kadri said.

“Oh? What’s that?” Fiera asked.

“Store snacks are not as filling as restaurant food, nor as refined, but they are decidedly addictive.” he said, munching on Twizzlers.

“Yep. That’s what makes them store snacks. Plus, I couldn’t get any really nice stuff. I’m not made of money.” Fiera explained.

“Which brings me to my next question, how exactly are you financing our meals? You don’t seem to work a job of any kind.” Kadri said. Fiera was almost surprised that he knew about jobs, but decided not to ask about it. 

“You’re right, I don’t. But my parents leave me about sixty bucks a week so that they can do what they want without me starving to death in their absence. After yesterday and just now, I’m down to like eight bucks, and the next payment comes in three days, so after this stash goes it's dollar store snacks only.” Fiera explained.

“I see. Fascinating. And these drinks you bought us, why are they vitamin drinks?” Kadri said,looking over a vitamin water curiously.

“Because we definitely aren’t going to get any vitamins from chips and candy.”  Fiera said simply.

“There is logic to that, I suppose.” he said. There was silence for a few moments.

“Um… Kadri?” Fiera said after a while.

“Yes, Fiera?” Kadri said.

“You know you can’t eat a whole bag of Twizzlers in one go, right?”  Fiera said.

“I don’t see why not. If it is not going to give me the nutrients I need, it may as well provide me with the maximum level of pleasure it is capable of.” Kadri said.

“Yeah, but you’ll get sick. And we have limited supplies.” Fiera countered. Kadri looked at the bag of Twizzlers in alarm.

“These are poisonous in large doses!?” he exclaimed.

“What? No, not poisonous, they just make you sick because they’re candy. All candy does that if you keep eating it.” Fiera said.

“Commoners lead dangerous lives, it would seem. I shall never forget this betrayal.” He said to the bag of Twizzlers, putting it down and taking the vitamin water instead. 

[homenum-revelio-hq]

Welcome to the Order of the Phoenix, Gina!

You have been accepted for the role of SEVERUS SNAPE with the faceclaim change of Aneurin Barnard! We really enjoyed Severus’ ambiguous motivations that might come back to bite him in the butt later on! Your personality section was on point and we’re looking forward to having the resent grump come back to the Order. We are so excited to have you as part of this roleplay!

Please take a look at the new member checklist and send in your account within 24 hours! Thank you for joining the fight against Voldemort!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME: Gina

AGE: 25

TIMEZONE: MST-Arizona

ACTIVITY LEVEL: First and foremost, I’m a promotions producer at a local news station, so I’m on call if breaking news happens. Thankfully, for my job, doesn’t happen too often. Also, my boss is currently on maternity leave, but will be back mid-March. In the meantime, I’ve been given a lot of extra tasks that sometimes make me work 60 hour weeks. Luckily, The Academy Awards was one of our biggest nights with deadlines, news, etc., so things have somewhat calmed down. Thank goodness! Weekends are usually when I’m on the most. I’ll try to get on during the week – especially on my early days. All that being said, I’ll definitely will be able to post at least once a week! As long as writing is still fun, and doesn’t feel like a chore, I’ll be on the dash frequently (and I’m very good about keeping admins informed if there’s ever going to be an issue with activity check)!

ANYTHING ELSE: trigger: non-con.

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Severus Snape

AGE: 21

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Cis-Male, He/Him, Heterosexual.

BLOOD STATUS: Halfblood

HOUSE ALUMNI: Slytherin

ANY CHANGES: Request FC change: Aneurin Barnard. I can see Adam Driver work as well. Either way, I am comfortable - just happen to have more resources of Aneurin.

CHARACTER BACKGROUND:

PERSONALITY:

Generally, Severus is seen rather than heard.

The mind of Severus Snape is complex – to be sure. Filled with calculations, fragile threads of truths and lies he’s told and webbing them all together, and innovations for many different forms of magic. To keep all of these thoughts collected, Severus keeps a journal that he has heavily bound to keep secret. There, he states the deepest parts of his soul, creates new potions, spells, and whatever else he deems worthy. It is protected by a blood spell that only he knows the enchantment to. Like him, everything is kept very private and close to his chest.

While Severus has plenty of thoughts coursing through his brilliant mind, he does not initiate conversation. In fact, he says much more with his eyes. Even if they can be cold. However, this does not mean Severus will keep silent – nor is it out of shyness. When Snape graces others with his opinions or ideas, they should not be taken lightly. Every single word uttered has meaning.

Being around Death Eaters and the Dark Lord, he’s kept a keen eye – finding everyone’s tells and when it is best for him to speak his true sentiments. As well as this, if he feels provoked or given an opportunity to speak freely, he will not cower. Often, his retorts have a bite to them, thick with sarcasm or bitterness; or both.

Severus Snape is profound in potions – and dare we say even more skilled in the Dark Arts. Books were a comfort for him growing up, finding company with leather-bound pages and becoming well-versed in their contents. A strength he chooses not to boast about is his ability to create new spells, new magic, even. Most of these, however, were being saved to get a slight revenge over his old school enemies. And therein lies the rub. Snape’s insecurities are tightly bound to Hogwarts and being bullied – not to mention his inability to reveal his true feelings toward the one girl who showed him kindness all those years.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY:

A broken family. That was the home of Tobias Snape and Eileen Prince.

A Muggle father and a Pureblood mother. Such parents didn’t give Severus an opinion on blood purity – but rather if an individual could prove themselves. While his parents may have had married for love at some point, something shifted their feelings.

For Snape’s father, nothing seemed to please him. Except for, perhaps, a bottle of gin. This instilled a primal instinct for Severus to do better; be better. Strive for power.

As for Snape’s mother, she grew sickly and thin. Her grief taught him empathy. It also made him value any comfort; starving for any sort of love and affection. This was, most likely, the cause for Severus’ immediate interest in Lily Evans – and the roots of his near-obsession with her.

Both of his parents were unhappy, and let it affect both their home and their son. Living near-destitution, the Snape house was filled with hateful words, arguments, loud shattering of priceless heirlooms or objects, and other things that still haunt Severus to this day. When thinking back on his past, Severus prefers the memories of when they both neglected him altogether, rather than any other aspects of his upbringing.

OCCUPATION:

Potions Apprentice to Professor Slughorn.

Invaluable to the Dark Lord, the talents of Severus Snape brought him closer to his inner circle. For Voldemort, it also meant he could manipulate the young man’s talents to foil any plots that the Order may have against him. Knowing his passion for potions, Voldemort encouraged Snape to take on an apprenticeship with Professor Slughorn – while also peeking behind the curtain at Hogwarts and keeping an eye on the Headmaster.

ROLE WITHIN THE ORDER/THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ORDER:

**I read the following note: “Severus will not be in the plotline until a player is accepted in his role. Him turning on the Death Eaters and coming to the Order as a spy will be considered a “roulette” plot drop whenever he becomes a taken character. Until that happens, players should write as though he is not yet in the Order.” AND he plot drops, *so I’m writing him as if he’s newly joined the Order at first as a DE spy, but now as a means to win Lily’s friendship back. 😊

Walking a thin line between hero and villain had never once crossed Severus’ mind. Yet, here he was. An Order member. At first, in a plot for the Dark Lord, carrying out the order to spy on the organization; find out how it could crumble. The young wizard had already grown steadily in their ranks, garnered enough trust, and was even listening to Voldemort’s other requests like his employment. All for the sake of war. It was a task daunting enough for anyone; however, Severus knew pretending to be an Order member would bring him closer to Lily. That, and potentially erase any suspicions Frank Longbottom might have if he thought he saw the Slytherin’s face during the arrest. At first, it was all an act.

Now, within the Order, Severus is a black sheep. Many of his childhood bullies are within their ranks, and many who distrust him. Although, with Severus’ lust for power, proving himself is nothing new to him. In fact, he thrives on it. No more fighting behind a mask…watching those he cares for nearly meet their end. An easy task to spy, being a great reader of both people and their minds. However, an overwhelmingly difficult task to want to continue fighting for something he didn’t believe in. Not that he believes in the Order either, but his lust for power has now been overcome with a desperate need to win an old friendship back. Perhaps to take Lily Evans far away from any wars as well, forgetting the two sides; no more choosing between what is right, and what is easy. Severus faces this new challenge, while fighting off those he once stood beside. For now, he’ll leave it to fate – if he’s able to win Lily’s friendship back. Maybe even try and win her heart as well.

SURVIVAL:

Severus Snape survives purely relying on his skills – and providing them to whichever side he feels is winning. It was part of the reason why he joined the Death Easters in the first place. Unfortunately for the Order, Snape believes the Dark Lord will win; that they will fall – and not rise from the ashes, as their namesake. A lust for power has blinded him most of all. But with it, he’s earned the trust of Voldemort, become invaluable. A faithful servant. Once the war s over, Severus believes he will be rewarded for his acts. At least, as long as he continues to do his bidding…

While with the Order, Severus has taken up housing in Hogwarts during the school year under his apprenticeship with Slughorn. During the summers, he’s found a small flat down near Hogsmeade to keep close enough. Beforehand, he often stayed with Lucius Malfoy in their incredibly large manor. It made it easy to stay near his comrades and to carry out any dark deeds.

Until there seems to be a clear winner, Severus will carry out his work as a spy. Even if it means slightly changing sides to do it as time goes on. The skills he carries with Occlumency are not to be trifled with. It seems he’s one of the few to have mastered such magic, making him the perfect soldier for espionage.

RELATIONSHIPS:

Severus’ relationship with Lily Evans was broken long ago. However, he will try and make peace with her, at the very least. If they rekindle their friendship, Severus would likely switch sides; happily die for her and prove himself. If it blossomed even more (something he fears even daydreaming about will jinx it), Severus would give up everything with the Dark Lord and his following. Everything with the Order. All to be with her – away from the rotting parts of the Wizarding World.

OOC EXPLORATION:

SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS:

Ships: Snape/Lily & Snape/Chemistry.

Anti-Ships: None

WHAT PRIVILEGES AND BIASES DOES YOUR CHARACTER HAVE?

Having gone through a very traumatic animalistic incident in his years at Hogwarts, Severus has a large bias against werewolves. The whole experience left a nasty memory for him, left in complete shock and disagreement with Dumbledore. And having Fenrir Greyback at the Dark Lord’s disposal certainly didn’t make matters any better.

There is one thing that will never chance for Severus Snape, and that is his hatred and bitterness towards certain Gryffindor boys he now has to work with in the Order. The thought alone makes his blood boil and skin crawl. Yet, he will do what he must for his cause…and maybe even throw in a snide remark or two every so often.

Muggleborns are something of a mystery to Snape now. When he first met Lily, he thought she was different from any other one – slumping the rest together with the likes of his father. Although seeing how fierce Dorcas has become – and so well integrated with the Wizarding World – Severus has gained a new understanding. Of course, he’s still untrusting, at first, and even a little cold; but, that doesn’t mean his mind cannot be changed.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO?

Jess and I were talking because I’ve been itching to write again. She linked me to the RP, and there was a spark to my muse once more! Had to apply because I love the Wizarding World and exploring it. This is an interesting take on the Marauders era, in that it’s concentrating on one organization and its inner workings. I’m excited to explore that!

PLOT DROP IDEAS: 

There was a head cannon I had once read where Irma Prince is actually Severus’ mother in disguise. That might be something to play around with! Perhaps to prove his loyalties to the Dark Lord, he must eliminate his parents. Instead of this, Severus uses his connections to hide her as the librarian at Hogwarts and keep her safe.

ANYTHING ELSE? Super excited to be applying! 😊

[cherrycoveredpythia]

Extended thoughts on Brave the Tempest

2017’s Ride the Storm closed out the four-book arc that also included Hunt the Moon, Tempt the Stars, and Reap the Wind.  In these books, Cassie battled Ares and his minions while drawing closer to Pritkin and eventually hunting him through time and space. She learns more about her abilities while trying to save his life, and also becomes a reluctant power player in supernatural (and inter-dimensional) politics. Without her faithful companion by her side, she becomes more confident in her own powers and resourcefulness. Of course, she’s still Cassie, so all her discoveries and victories are slapdash and hard-won. But they are still victories. She’s a daughter of Chaos, give her a break.

Brave the Tempest focuses on Cassie’s political duties and her complicated feelings about being a leader and a “hero”. She’s now slain two gods (with help), but that doesn’t result in easy respect from the witches or the vampires. The witches see her as a tool of the Silver Circle, while the vampires see her as an extension of Mircea. They are all so wrong.

Cassie has to demonstrate her full strength to convince these factions to cooperate with her. It works, but nothing is ever simple. In the long run, who will love her and who will fear her? 

She’s becoming more like her mother every day.

Overall feelings

There are some amazing, joyful moments here. Please understand that I adore these books and characters, so I say this with love…

… but the book felt disjointed to me. We buzz back and forth from the witches to the vampires to the demons, and then go to Faerie and Victorian England. We get emotional scenes with Mircea, Pritkin, Marco, Rhea, and Rico. Augustine brings home a kidnapped fae. Tami needs to hire some staff but no one will take the job. Fred is a spy. Cassie is exhausted. I felt kind of exhausted too.

Important plotlines: Cassie’s growing pains with her powers, the political trouble with the witches and vampires, and the imminent invasion of Faerie. And then there was the timeline rupture. The rupture was terrifying and the fight with Jo in Victorian London was a full-on horror show. Cassie learned more about Pythian spells and then linked up her powers with Pritkin through the Lover’s Knot spell.  She’ll probably need these tools for the coming showdown. She and Pritkin are even more powerful together than they are apart. And they are both forces for good. But will everyone see them that way?

I think Karen is just laying out all the pieces for the next arc. It’s a little messy right now, but it will all fit together soon. I’m glad that Shatter the Earth is coming in December. If I had to wait another two years for the next book, I would be upset.

Favorite moments

Pritkin flirting and Cassie retaliating during S’mores night. Especially the marshmallow at the end. Goddamn.

The Dickening.

Everything related to Saffy and Vi, and seeing Saffy and Rhea becoming friends. I think she is a great influence on Rhea.

Pritkin and Cassie’s meeting with Adra. I high-key love Adra. He’s a really interesting foil for Caedmon, who leads their alliance with the “heavenly” planes. Caedmon is manic and charming, while Adra is pleasant and even-keeled. Except when he forgets to animate his glamourie. I reallllllly want to know what Adra looks like under there, but I figure he’s a Lovecraftian monster that would drive us insane.  

Adra shading Pritkin for never attending demon council meetings like other “heirs apparent.” 

Cassie nonchalantly offering to bring Adra to the vampire council.

Gertie nonchalantly easing Pritkin out of the room and shifting him to the depot.

Cassie borrowing Pritkin’s powers to suck the energy out of Jo.

Big events and revelations

Pritkin is not shy and neither is Cassie. I thought we would get some pussy-footing about their relationship, but we DID NOT. Pritkin came on strong and Cassie reciprocated. I wish I had a chance to read Siren’s Song first. They had some time to let the tension build and I *do* love a slow burn… torture me, baby!

Ancient Horrors! Children of Tiamat/Tethys! Pritkin is 1/16th divine! Kind of a watered-down Ancient Horror, if you will. Minus the tentacles.

Lover’s Knot

Fucking Jonathan

Invasion of Faerie needs to happen ASAP

Jo is more dangerous as a ghost because ghosts can absorb infinite power. (Can we turn Billy Joe into a super soldier???)

MIRCEA THE BOLD!

Cassie agreed to go find Elena because she’s afraid that Mircea will do it himself. And she doesn’t want to kill him.

Fred is a spy working for MARLOWE! And I guess his master power is camouflaging his aura.

Rico is from Napoli (this explains a lot, because I was confused when he said putanas instead of putane. Dialect!)

NEW PYTHIAN SPELLS: Shards and Chimera!

Young Agnes is a real bitch.  

The pros

I said this in a separate post, but I’ll say it here too. Cassie and Pritkin are back together and their relationship is so healthy and mutually supportive that it makes my heart ache. This is real #relationshipgoals. They are confidants and protectors and cheerleaders for each other. They don’t keep secrets or manipulate or gaslight. We need more of this sci-fi/fantasy and romance. There are too many dark, brooding male love interests who are borderline abusive. (Ahem, Mircea.)

MORE LGBT REPRESENTATION! 

The emergence of Mircea the Bold. I like Mircea as a character, but not as a love interest for Cassie. I’m happy to see him going through this transformation. He’s becoming more open and genuine. He’s not going to win Cassie’s affections, but I do think that he’s going to redeem himself in Dory’s eyes.

GERTIE IS BACK! And *not* as a roadblock. She’s a powerful woman who helps other women, and I am all. about. that. mood.

The cons

 TOO. MUCH. RECAP. Especially recap that broke up highly emotional moments. I don’t care if you are trying to explain things for new readers. Fuck ‘em. Anyone who buys a book, discovers it is part 1000 of an ongoing series, and tries to read it anyways… is a psychopath.

Too many plot-lines

 I miss Rosier.

We all knew that something was up with Fred, but I don’t think that his revelation as a spy got as much weight and screen-time as it deserved.

 I feel like the “wrap-up” with Jonathan felt rushed. He’s supposed to be terrifying but I’m like “meh, whatever, Jonathan, small fry compared to Apollo and Ares.” But I think she’ll get back to it in greater depth in the next book, so I can deal.

Can we PLEASE have some consistency about Agnes’s age? We see her as a teenager in late 19th-century London, for god’s sake. She must have been *at least* 130 years old when she died, and that’s being charitable. Previously, Cassie has said that Agnes was about 80. Lies. 

The questions

1.       My BIGGEST question. Cassie is changing. Not just maturing, but changing on a metaphysical level. The coldness, the hunger… I’m frightened for her. It’s not withdrawal from the Tears of Apollo and it’s not normal exhaustion. I have some theories.  

 Her divine side is becoming stronger and she’s beginning to require life energy in the same way that her human side needs food, water, and sleep. Why is this happening now? Maybe the Tears of Apollo are part of the equation, albeit indirectly. She’s been using more and more Pythian power thanks to the potion, and perhaps that has awakened her divine side more strongly. This is a little worrisome because she may have to feed on a regular basis to stay functional. Can she get all the energy she needs from incubus sex or from the Lover’s Knot? What are the moral considerations here? 

Less likely, but she might really be pregnant. I’m not a huge fan of this idea, but Rosier does mention in Reap the Wind or Ride the Storm that the incubus-child feeds on the life energy of the mother as it grows. That’s why his attempts at procreation failed until he impregnated Morgaine, who was part royal fae and part divine. If this is the case, Cassie might be having life-energy cravings instead of food cravings. Or maybe this is the divine/demon/fey version of morning sickness? Pritkin, please start using birth control.

2. What happened with Pritkin in Siren’s Song? Does Jonas know his true identity now?

3. So who is Pritkin’s divine great-great grandmother? Any speculation?

4. Cassie begins to wonder if any of the gods might be open to diplomacy. This must go somewhere. And it’s true, there are a number of gods in the pantheon who are traditionally friendlier towards humans than others. Athena is the first that comes to mind. There’s also the mythic trope of the Trickster/Fire-Bringer who helps humanity: Prometheus, Anansi, etc.  And there’s Loki, who doesn’t so much love humans as he loves to trouble the other gods.

MVPs

Ok, Cassie is the real MVP, as always. But barring her, I’m awarding this prize to the no-nonsense, sisterly duo of our hearts: Gertie and Hilde. They are officious and annoying, but that’s because they tell you what you don’t want to hear, and they are RIGHT. They are so right.

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

I’m visiting my mom for the first time since I came out to her and she has a book on the coffee table that claims to be “compassionately” answering questions about “homosexuality, transgenderism, and abortion” but is clearly a conservative reactionary text that probably concludes all sorts of gross stuff. Do you have any recommendations for books targeted at conservative, Christian parents of queer kids that are actually affirming? Thanks 💙

Hi there. I know exactly what kind of book you’re talking about; that’s the kind of reading material that a lot of Catholics use and it pains me. i suppose it’s better than flat-out hatefulness, but the “gentle” and “reasonable” tone makes my spirit ache because it’s harder for me, at least, to fight against. i pray that the Holy Spirit can soften your mom’s heart and open her to reading other texts as well. 

the following recs are not targeted solely at conservative Christian parents, but are written with such an audience in mind, using language and tone that will “welcome in” conservative readers. 

i recently offered some recommendations to another person looking for texts to share with their family, so check that post out! 

My wife, whose parents are non-affirming, really likes This Is a Book for Parents of Gay Kids: A Question & Answer Guide to Everyday Life by Danielle* Owens-Reid and Kristin Russo (*note: Owens-Reid now goes by Dan and i believe uses he or she pronouns interchangeably). It is “secular” i.e. isn’t centered around faith stuff but does have a religion chapter. 

i’ve also heard good things about Mom, I’m Gay: Loving Your LGBTQ Child and Strengthening Your Faith by Susan Cottrell, though i’ve not read it myself. 

You might also be interested in some of the stuff in my #dialogue tag – i wouldn’t straight-up hand that link to your mom, but if you wander through the tag you might find some helpful content and resources for conversations with her. i also have a “for allies” section near the end of my resources page with more stuff you could check out. 

does anyone else have any recommendations for fully affirming books targeted at conservative, Christian parents?

[wykedtrolls]

a dissertation nobody asked for, ft. my dysphoric trans ass (on the subject of truscum, cisgender medicine, and stupid assholes)

BOY HOWDY DID THIS GET LONG

I know that nobody asked for this post, and definitely nobody needed it, but you know what? Fuck it. You’re getting this post anyway.

Very recently someone in the community outed himself (himself, because I’m aware that he uses he/him pronouns and am not a piece of shit who will misgender someone under guise of offering anonymity. Cough cough.) as a transmedicalist. A truscum, if you will, because we all know that they mean the same thing and anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is a bitchcoward and a bigot.

Very disappointing, yes, considering the amount of transgender people* I know exist in this community, myself included. Disappointing, frightening, and rage-inducing. Particularly because this revelation followed an encounter said truscum had with a close friend of mine. Which I admit might make me a little biased but shhh. Neither me nor my friend(s) started this. The contents of that conversation had between the truscum and my bro should have been handled privately like an adult but- hey, since we’re putting all this shit out there now, guess I get to put in my two cents! Awesome!

And because we apparently like to bring science into shit, let’s get a lil scientific up in this bitch.

*Note: transgender from here on will be used to refer to as the umbrella of non-cis gender identities just for context and ease of reference. And also because that’s what it is, fuck off.

So, guys. Let’s talk about dysphoria.

PART 1. SEMANTICS

Dysphoria. Most of you have heard of it, particularly those among us (both within and outside of the fantroll community) who happen to be transgender.

But what does it actually mean? Let’s look a little closer. Dysphoria, as defined by Merriam-Webster:

dysphoria (noun)

dys·​pho·​ria | \ dis-ˈfȯr-ē-ə  \

Definition of dysphoria

: a state of feeling very unhappy, uneasy, or dissatisfied

— see GENDER DYSPHORIA

But this is just semantics. Let’s look at it, and gender oriented dysphoria in particular from a mental health perspective-

“Gender dysphoria is the feeling of discomfort or distress that might accompany a difference between gender identity, sex assigned at birth or sex-related physical characteristics. This type of distress doesn't affect everyone who is transgender.

Gender dysphoria is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), a manual published by the American Psychiatric Association to diagnose mental conditions. Gender dysphoria is a diagnosis that is given to individuals who are experiencing discomfort or distress due to the difference between gender identity, sex assigned at birth or sex-related physical characteristics.”

This is from the Mayo Clinic, a nonprofit academic medical center based in Rochester, Minnesota, lauded as the best hospital in the nation for 2018-2019 by the U.S News and World Report. Do with that information what you will, but most would consider the Mayo Clinic (while not a good replacement for proper doctor’s visits and medical treatment) a pretty credible health resource.

But we’ll come back to this.

For now, let’s look at another definition. That of the word ‘opinion.’

PART 2: FACTS VS. OPINIONS VS. BELIEFS VS. PREJUDICE

opinion (noun)

opin·​ion | \ ə-ˈpin-yən  \

Definition of opinion

1a : a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter

We asked them for their opinions about the new stadium.

b : APPROVAL, ESTEEM

I have no great opinion of his work.

2a : belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge

a person of rigid opinions

Opinions are inherently biased. It may be influenced by facts, but opinions in and of themselves are not fact. To borrow and paraphrase from Fowler, H. Ramsey. The Little, Brown Handbook. Boston: Little, Brown, 1986.:

When forming personal convictions, we often interpret factual evidence through the filter of our values, feelings, tastes, and past experiences. Hence, most statements we make in speaking and writing are assertions of fact, opinion, belief, or prejudice. The usefulness and acceptability of an assertion can be improved or diminished by the nature of the assertion, depending on which of the following categories it falls into:

A fact is verifiable. [Determinable by] ...researching the evidence. This may involve numbers, dates, testimony, etc. (Ex.: "World War II ended in 1945.") The truth of the fact is beyond argument if one can assume that measuring devices or records or memories are correct. Facts provide crucial support for the assertion of an argument. However, facts by themselves are worthless unless we put them in context, draw conclusions, and, thus, give them meaning.

An opinion is a judgment based on facts, an honest attempt to draw a reasonable conclusion from factual evidence. [Opinions are] potentially changeable--depending on how the evidence is interpreted. By themselves, opinions have little power to convince. You must always let your reader know what your evidence is and how it led you to arrive at your opinion.

Unlike an opinion, a belief is a conviction based on cultural or personal faith, morality, or values. Statements such as "Capital punishment is legalized murder" are often called "opinions" because they express viewpoints, but they are not based on facts or other evidence. They cannot be disproved or even contested in a rational or logical manner. Since beliefs are inarguable, they cannot serve as the thesis of a formal argument. (Emotional appeals can, of course, be useful if you happen to know that your audience shares those beliefs.)

Y’all get what I’m getting at, right?

Oh, but one more thing I’d like to add- And I think this one is important.

“Another kind of assertion that has no place in serious argumentation is prejudice, a half-baked opinion based on insufficient or unexamined evidence. (Ex.: "Women are bad drivers.") Unlike a belief, a prejudice is testable: it can be contested and disproved on the basis of facts. We often form prejudices or accept them from others--family, friends, the media, etc.--without questioning their meaning or testing their truth. At best, prejudices are careless oversimplifications. At worst, they reflect a narrow-minded view of the world. Most of all, they are not likely to win the confidence or agreement of your readers.”

We’ve all encountered our fair share of these sorts of prejudices, disguised as “opinions.” Because isn’t that a much sweeter word for what it is? It’s not bigotry to delegitimize the experiences of other transgender people, it’s just an opinion. Like which is the best ice cream flavour, or something equally harmless.

But when your opinion involves the dehumanization, invalidation, exclusion and harm of other people… Well, that’s not so harmless, is it?

Racism is prejudice influenced by opinions and beliefs. Transphobia is prejudice influenced by opinions and beliefs. They are not fact, they are not based in rational thinking, and in many cases they cannot be argued because these prejudices are willingly cultivated and held.

‘But, Eli!’ I know at least one truscum who may or may not be reading this might cry, ‘It’s a scientifically proven fact that transgender people need to have dysphoria to be trans!’

To which I say fuck you, this is why that isn’t true.

Let’s go back to the definition of gender dysphoria, shall we?

“Gender dysphoria is the feeling of discomfort or distress that might accompany a difference between gender identity, sex assigned at birth or sex-related physical characteristics. This type of distress doesn't affect everyone who is transgender.”

MIGHT accompany a difference between those things, and DOESN’T affect everyone who is transgender. Interesting take coming from a scientific source, right? It’s almost like transmedicalist/truscum thinking is based off prejudice, rather than opinion; much less fact.

Especially considering dysphoria wasn’t even a word we (we meaning transgender people) chose for ourselves in the first place. It was picked by the American Psychiatric Association’s board of trustees to replace the term “Gender Identity Disorder” (GID)

Disorder. A sickness. Because Western medicine, practiced primarily by cisgender people (be they medical experts or not) has never been kind to transgender people. The word doesn’t mean what transmedicalists or truscum think it does. It doesn’t make you more valid than our fellow trans siblings just because the perceptions held by you or others of what your body and gender are worth make you miserable.

Wanna read up a little more on this? Check out these links: 

THIS IS WHAT I WISH PEOPLE WHO IDENTIFY AS ‘TRUSCUM’ WOULD TRY TO UNDERSTAND. 

Not All Transgender People Have Dysphoria – And Here Are 6 Reasons Why That Matters 

Transgender People, Gender Identity and Gender Expression

PART 3: THE COMMUNITY (™)

If you’re dysphoric, my heart goes out to you. I’m dysphoric too. Dysphoric enough to transition despite the medical costs- because I was tired of feeling trapped in other people’s perceptions of me. But you know what? I love that there are transgender people who don’t feel defined by this persistent sensation of wrongness.

You shouldn’t be defined by that. Even dysphoric trans people know (or should, for the sake of their health) that your unhappiness isn’t the only thing that makes you transgender. In fact, in the least unhealthy cases, it’s only the smallest fraction of the gender experience. Being transgender and exploring your gender identity consist of a broad spectrum of emotions. The fact that some of us (US. WE are a community, and have to treat each other as such) get to snip that little fraction out of the spectrum is beautiful.

We’re made stronger by how different we all are, not weaker.

PART 4: IN CLOSING

Whether you’re dysphoric or not, whether you identify with a gender binary or not, you are worthy of celebration and validation and love. All of us have it rough- frankly speaking, cisgender people as a whole barely tolerate us even when our identities do follow the narrative most commonly accept us. It’s not our place to judge, or shun, or invalidate one another.

And as both a personal goodbye and a TL;DR to truscum who like to treat gender identity like a competition, like something you get to gatekeep and police, fuck you. Our identities are ours to decide, our experiences to forge, and if that happens to not include transitioning or dysphoria, no matter what your reasons are that doesn’t make you less valid.

Fuck you, for painting your bigotry as an opinion. Fuck you for hurting the feelings of other transgender people. And fuck you for making posts trying to paint yourself as anything other than an asshole so full of internalized transphobia and misery that you can’t look past it to respect other people and act like that’s only your opinion UWU

Anyway, trans rights.

[allisonawakened]

Not sure if you can help me, but I’m very distressed and need some guidance. I see spirits almost daily, hear voices, and sense the presence of angles, demons, and spirits. Often I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and see spirits at the end of my bed. It terrifies me. I don’t know how to control my gifts/develop them. I’ve often wondered if I was insane, but other people have confirmed my experiences to be real. If you have any advice I’d really appreciate it.

Hello Beautiful ♥

This is one of my *last few* super-old Asks & I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you with Spirit sooner. I have a lot of empathy for what you’re experiencing because I’ve been there… Anyone who is adept at Spirit Work of any kind has been there, really. Control is such a hard thing when you are initially bombarded with everything, and control comes with time.

I guess this isn’t true for everyone. Some people seek to open more, while the naturally gifted usually end up seeking for some semblance of sanity. Been there, done that, got all the t-shirts.

I’m going to suggest something that helped me *way back when*, but I have to say… just because it helped me doesn’t mean it will 100% work for you. The gifts are individual, and how our hearts, minds & souls process spiritual lessons is individual as well. We all have to find our own path & method in dealing with our spiritual abilities.

That being said though… In the beginning, like you, I was so overwhelmed by the number and diverse nature of the entities / energies / spirits that would visit me & sometimes I guess I also felt intimidated or afraid because with certain entities it’s just impossible to know, understand, or discover their true motives in seeking to initiate communication with you. They always seem to have their own agenda and depending on the type of entity they are they may not deem it necessary to let you in on that agenda or that agenda may not even be in line with your highest good.

So in the beginning I actually sought to ignore the things that weren’t relevant to me. In fact I think I would repeat a phrase like that in my head and then visualize certain aspects of protection, plus carry spiritual tools of protection (like protective crystals), plus do more ritualistic work in protecting my home, my bedroom, etc. 

And it was only through that work over the course of months if not years, that my natural psychic defenses just sort of started kicking in on their own. Now the switch has flipped where I don’t notice entities in my home AT ALL unless I’m *working* (spirit work) from home via my clients. And even then the only entities / energies / spirits I interact with at home are now my Guides / Allies + Loved Ones that hang out with me a few days before a client’s session.

In terms of what methods will work for you - again it’s really trial & error, but I would definitely focus most of your spirit work right now in protection, grounding, and asserting your own energetic will rather than engaging in communication with these entities.

Spirit just whispered an interesting thing to me while typing that last paragraph: “Don’t feed the Beast”

I think what Spirit means is that the more you choose to pay attention to & engage with these entities, or try to “figure them out” (why they’re there, where they’re from, why they want you, etc.) the more you’re focusing your will and energy on them. Spirit says in times like these it’s best to be selfish in regard to your own mental, emotional, physical & spiritual health. And that means beefing up your repertoire on Psychic Defense and Spiritual Protection.

♥

There are a few books I like (and one I haven’t read yet but it’s on my list) about Psychic Protection: 

My current “go-to” is not really a mainstream or well-known one but it’s called [ “The Art of Psychic Protection” ] by Judy Hall (that’s a link to the “Good Reads” profile on this book). 

It’s an old one so some of the practice or knowledge is a bit dated but I think why I enjoy this one is because my first / initially most powerful gift was Clairvoyance, so anything with visualization work actually makes things easier for me. There’s a lot of “theory” to learn from in this book but also practical application & it covers not only entities but “cord cutting”, “psychic attack”, and a variety of other topics.

The next book I plan to read *soon* and I have heard is good, is [ “The Occult Art of War” ] by Seth Cardorra (that’s an Amazon.com link for ordering the book). Which is loosely based on the principles presented by Sun Tzu in “The Art of War”. 

Side Note: Some of the reviews about this book say it’s a bit complex or it’s based on the idea that the reader is already well-versed in magical / spiritual work. And I can understand that just based on the exercise I performed below.

Because I haven’t read this one yet I just pulled a *bibliomancy* move by opening up the book to a random page to see what message I get / if the info resonates and the 1st + 2nd passages I read amount to this:

1. Sun Tzu: “Ordinarily, an army likes high places and dislikes low ground, values light and despises darkness,”

Occult Art of War translation: “There are always constants one should be aware of. Keep to your advantages and do not allow yourself to be burdened by your disadvantages.”

I really like that passage for you. I feel like it’s a reminder that you’re powerful enough to even be able to interact with entities to begin with, which means you’re powerful enough to deal with them otherwise you wouldn’t possess these gifts & abilities. Don’t look at your ability to communicate as a disadvantage, instead look at it as an asset and see what line of thinking that leads you to.

The second passage I read is:

2. Sun Tzu: “Take care of physical health and stay where there are plenty of resources. When there is no sickness in the army it is said to be invincible.”

Occult Art of War translation: “Keep close to your resources, take care not to overtax your energy or spread yourself too thin. If you do you will be stuck at a lower power levels until your position changes.”

That one resonated with me today - just read the note I posted before answering this Ask! I had to bail on / cancel or reschedule a lot of things last week because my energy was just not in the space to best “perform”, and honestly I’ve been questioning whether it is okay to do that. I guess Spirit just gave me my answer ;) 

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I could literally sit here and write forever on this topic or subject BUT instead, I encourage you to re-submit an Ask if you now have alternative questions about dealing with these gifts or spirit communication. I always just feel like there’s so much ground to cover in sharing knowledge / practice in Spirit Work.

Wishing you the best in dealing with this & please have faith in your own abilities / skills. You’ve got this, you just need to believe that you do.

It can be in entities’ best interest to encourage our disbelief in ourself. So we have to be the ones to push past what they are trying to communicate and instead always focus on what you know to be true deep within yourself.

Best of luck Babe 

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