#like he doesn't know shit about shit so he's trustworthy by default

[kennyomegasweave]

It's time for episode 5. I know there's an outing and a shooting this episode. Let's go.

Like why would no one tell Palm Nueng was allergic to alcohol? That kinda seems like a big thing because being like YOU SHOULD HAVE STOPPED HIM FROM DRINKING makes no sense cause he's an 18 year old kid. He's gonna want to drink, Palm wouldn't think that was weird at all.

Okay Palm's dad is an ass but I also feel bad for him? But what does he mean by Nueng's dad saved Palm's life? Does he just mean by employing him so he had money to send to Palm? I need answers bitch!

Not Nueng doing like riding lessons or whatever. Dressage or some shit. The wealthy just jumped out of him.

"You should look at me when you talk to me." If looks could kill you'd be dead Nueng. Palm doesn't want to see you right now. You acted an entire ass and he got his ass beat and he's mad at you and you also have a boyfriend.

Oh here's Ben. NOT PALM HAVING TO SIT THERE WHEN BEN AND NUENG ARE ON A RICH PEOPLE DRESSAGE DATE. And I would like to take back 52% of my Ben hate cause he's being nicer to Palm right now than Nueng is.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE WROTE A FOOL ON PALM'S CAST. NUENGDIAO. This is not how we handle our feelings!

Nueng saying "this isn't a date, calm down." My guy you said he was your boyfriend last episode. What are you doing. Also I can't take him seriously in this outfit. He's just carrying that little helmet and wearing those riding boots and a polo. He looks ridiculous. Ben really does like him to still think Nueng is cool.

NOT PALM HAVING TO ACTUALLY FOLLOW THEM ON THIS DATE. The audacity of Nueng. I get it's Palm's job but the audacity of Nueng.

NUENG HAS A RIDING CROP. Palm. Please. Want more for yourself. Maybe you should just go for Maggie. She's cute and not doing like fucking dressage and getting you beat in a alcohol fueled jealous I CAN YOU LOVE rage.

Maggie is spitting straight facts and, while I still wish she'd realize Palm isn't into her like that, someone needs to say this to Palm. Her absolute "this bitch" when she saw Nueng wrote fool on Palm's cast. I know that's right.

Okay. I'm gonna be less mad at Nueng because he bought Palm shoes as an I'm sorry but also baby you can't buy your way out of this. Palm doesn't want to be your sugar baby. Which is like valid but also Palm baby.

YES THROW HIS WORDS BACK TO HIM. But also my heart is hurting for them both now. Nueng's like obvious jealously at any mention of Maggie is just like. How is Palm not realizing this?

This bullying is like so much. Like banners from the ceiling, flyers raining down. Good lord.

Oh my god. This is gonna be bad I know. Ben's poor little face. Also like damn they don't play. "How could this happen?" They're just teen's kissing. Good lord.

Oh my gosh Ben. Ben. Baby. Ben's father is The Worst. "My son is the class president he'd never kiss a man." What does being the class president have to do with this? Ben looks like he's about to puke. I get why he lied, I'm not mad. My heart is breaking for both him and Nueng.

Also I know it's cultural and I know homophobia is everywhere, but as I've said before about Palm's dad and I'll say again to Ben's, most people would be happy to know their child is being taken in by a kind rich man. lol

Hi Chopper. You look sketch. I don't know if it's cause you were the one to out them or if it's cause you went to hold Ben's hand. I want to believe it's the second but like. I trust no bitch but Palm. Not even my own wife Chopper.

Oh baby. Nueng. This breakdown is just. Oh baby boy. Just hug Palm. He genuinely likes you, I promise.

They really just stayed up there all day. Did they at least call Nueng's mom?

Not Palm's broken arm being healed by the power of gay love.

Palm telling Nueng a genuine apology means more than an expensive gift. You should get both baby. He's gonna keep fighting his sugar baby status and he doesn't have to.

I feel bad for Nueng cause he thinks Ben just used him, but Ben genuinely likes him, I think. Palm saying Nueng loves Ben and Nueng being like I MOST CERTAINLY DID NOT LOVE HIM. I laughed.

Palm is out here like "what if I give you a better first kiss? Completely altruistic, it's for your own benefit." My guy. They really are both just playing themselves. lol

This kiss is like a million times better than Ben's and I'm screaming. They won't even touch each other with their hands and it's so much better. Please. Get married. Adopt two cats and a dog. And now they just have to sit there like that wasn't a Grade A kiss and didn't really mean much.

Palm telling cheesy jokes to make Nueng laugh.

Palm's dad sitting in that chair about to make an awkward turtle.

Aww, Nueng's mom really just loves him so much. And of course she knows what happened at school Nueng. It's why she's having this conversation about vegetables. Because she loves you. No matter what you eat.

"Are you dating? You can't date. You must focus on Nueng." See Mr. Palm's Dad, he will solve that problem by dating Nueng himself. But I don't think his dad is gonna vibe with that. Oops.

Once again I ask, why does Palm not have a tie? I WILL ASK THIS EVERY SINGLE EPISODE UNTIL I GET AN ANSWER OR THE SHOW ENDS.

NO MRS TANYA IS NOT ABOUT TO DIE NO SHE IS NOT. ABSOLUTELY NOT.

I can't even care about their hands because like Bad Bitch Tanya better be okay. Also like damn they're just kids. Like Nueng is only 18. Palm is around there I'm guessing? This is Rough.

Okay. That preview better mean Nueng's mom is alive. He clearly won't get to see her but I can't imagine he'd be on a beachfront vacation with Palm's flop mom holding hands and shit if his mom was dead. I WILL CLING TO THIS.

I will also choose to believe Chopper looked so sketch when Ben said he's gonna fuck up the person that outed him not because it was him, but because he went to hold his hand and that's a Big Moment.

I also would like to say I take back all the mean things I said about Ben and I feel so bad for him. He's the bad guy in Nueng's story right now, but he had no choice. His dad is out here like MY SON IS THE CLASS PRESIDENT AND A STRAIGHT HE'S NOT DISGUSTING. Meanwhile Nueng has his mom completely accepting him. And now that Nueng knows this I'm hoping he won't be as upset with Ben. But Nueng's also not like the best with feelings and reflections, lol.

This show. Amazing.

[swampkingtor]

As yet another Angeal fan who thinks the fandom does Angeal a great disservice by not recognizing how awful he is, I'd like to add some context.

This got long af, but the tl;dr is that fandom treats Angeal like he's the person characters who don't know him at all think he is. The characters who actually know him see him completely differently, but for some reason fandom largely disregards that.

It seems like generally speaking most of the fandom either hasn't played CC, hasn't played CC in 10+ years and doesn't remember much about Angeal aside from 'honor' and maybe 'suicide by Zack,' or remembers him but doesn't want to deal with investigating him enough to strike out from fandom standard. This results in people who want to utilize this character finding basic references about who Angeal is, either from canon dialogue and mail or from other fandom sources, and the things that typically come up first don't necessarily lend themselves to a closer look.

The trouble with many canon references is that CC went to a great deal of trouble to tell players who Angeal is, but what they showed us was very different. For example, early on Kunsel sends Zack a mail that says "I think Angeal has a lot of common sense and is a trustworthy fellow. Let's face it: Genesis never found group activities appealing, so Angeal is, in fact, the spiritual leader of SOLDIER." Angeal himself talks ad nauseam about his SOLDIER honor: in addition to all of his dialogue on the subject, his default DMW memory is just him saying "Prove your honor to me" and Zack replying "I got it." Anyone who played the game with sound would have heard those lines over and over.

Canon dialogue with Angeal has him telling us he grew up poor and stole food, but not from the rich guy in town, because Angeal was friends with his son. As Skadren has pointed out, this is fairly faulty logic -- and in canon Zack himself asks Angeal why he didn't just ask his rich friend for food, to which Angeal replies, "Honor can be quite the burden at times." As Skadren says, this sounds more like pride than honor. Still, without a closer interrogation of what's going on here, the surface message is "Angeal has strong morals," and that's a message constantly reinforced by the script. Added together with background info we get about Angeal's hobbies, I think that's why fandom tends to characterize him as an honorable mentor/dad type. There IS canon support for this interpretation, it's just a very, VERY surface-level look.

To me as a fic writer, Angeal is an interesting and compelling character because his public and private personas are so different. Zack, our narrator and a character who plainly assumes he's close to Angeal as his protege, clearly knows almost nothing about him. For some reason the fandom largely accepts Zack's interpretation of Angeal: he's a good guy who suffered some unchecked depression and traumatic shit happened but it wasn't his fault. This is... a weird interpretation. We know Zack only sees the best in people he likes, and we know he likes Angeal. We also know Zack doesn't know Angeal well, because he is constantly surprised to learn even the most basic details about a guy he seems to have spent kind of a lot of time with.

As the player, we see Angeal's public persona through the eyes of Zack, other SOLDIERs, his fanclub, and Hollander, all of whom have different focuses but the same general perception (that Angeal is great! This is a perception Zack clings to even once he starts to get to know Angeal better). Other SOLDIER see Angeal as an honorable mentor and leader, the sort of commander who is strict and firm but also offers support and guidance to his troops. Zack is not the first person to be directly mentored by him. Angeal's fanclub, called The Keepers of Honor, see him in a particularly domestic light. To them, Angeal is an honorable warrior, but they're more interested in his 'family man' traits, such as being a dog lover, a gardener, a cook, and thrifty. According to them he is also a nature photographer, a devoted friend, and a bit of a mama's boy.

Hollander's view of Angeal is radically different, but I grouped him with the 'public persona' people because he also obviously doesn't know Angeal very well at all. He considers Angeal to be both perfect and Hollander's own redemption after the "failure" that is Genesis. (This is in terms of lab experiments, not SOLDIER ability.) Genesis the test tube baby is not stable, but Angeal the accident child is. Hollander also believes that he is Angeal's biological father, which may lend itself to his pride in his son/experiment. Like lower rank SOLDIER and Angeal's fanclub, as far as Hollander is concerned, Angeal can do no wrong.

The thing is, as Skadren and fflove190 have demonstrated, Angeal's actions don't match up with what the script says about him. The characters who know him well don't think of him as a deeply honorable leader with a strong moral compass. They have no problem believing he would quit Shinra and run amok with Genesis.

The people who actually know Angeal are Genesis and Sephiroth, obviously, but also Gillian (Angeal's mom), Tseng and Lazard (who may not know Angeal well but know enough about him to make accurate deductions), and Angeal himself. Getting into Genesis' interactions with Angeal would require an entire essay of its own and this is getting long enough already, but suffice it to say Genesis knows Angeal well enough to convince him to do pretty much anything, up to and including helping to kill literally everyone in their hometown and also Modeoheim, a random uninvolved town. Sure, Angeal has been through war and definitely killed people already, but murdering civilians doesn't exactly scream "honor" or "strong moral fiber" to me.

The first time we really meet Sephiroth in-game, he immediately deduces that Angeal has betrayed Shinra and deserted. Zack is deeply offended by this take, because he somehow has no idea that Angeal, Genesis, and Sephiroth are all old friends. In-game moments (and a timeskip month) later, Zack is sent to apprehend Genesis in Banora, and learns that Sephiroth refused the mission because he didn't want to fight his friends. When Angeal later seems to switch sides to help Zack fight Genesis in Midgar, Sephiroth holds a grudge: although he doesn't say as much, it seems like he's mad at Angeal for leaving him behind, and not prepared to forgive and forget or trust that he won't do it again -- which turns out to be a good call, because Angeal leaves with Genesis literally minutes later. Ok, maybe an hour or two. Still.

Going back to Zack's trip to Banora, while he's there he meets Angeal's mother, who tells him again about the family honor being tied up in the Buster Sword. Gillian is quick to throw Genesis under the bus, but she doesn't actually say anything to defend Angeal's actions. Then she dies. (Zack thinks Angeal killed her, so at this point even Zack is prepared to accept that Angeal isn't perfect. Later Angeal tells us she killed herself out of shame, but he doesn't say shame of what, and he doesn't exactly have a reliable grasp of reality at that point, so it's kind of unclear what really happened.)

Lazard and Tseng work with Angeal but are not his friends. The player has no way of knowing how well they know Angeal. We do see that Tseng knows details about Angeal's upbringing that Zack missed, and that Tseng has no problem believing Angeal willingly left Shinra to join Genesis and participate in whatever Genesis is up to. Zack plainly struggles with this interpretation, and Tseng doesn't really push the subject, but it is clear that Tseng believes their Banora mission to be "capture and/or kill both Genesis and Angeal" and not "rescue the Good and Honorable Angeal from the Evil Betrayer Genesis" as Zack seems to have interpreted it. Lazard, likewise, has no problem believing that Angeal is an active participant of whatever Genesis is up to. Since Lazard is funding Genesis on his misadventures, he should know.

At this point, I'd like to give honorable mention to Kunsel, who is demonstrably the canniest SOLDIER in Shinra: he's always in the right place at the right time, always asks the right questions, and is somehow able to make leaps of logic that escape everyone else. Obviously this is because he's serving the plot and providing the player information, but he's still a character in his own right. And when it comes to Angeal, although he sends Zack the message I quoted above, he ALSO responds to Angeal walking up to him and Zack with "Heads up, a 1st!" and then gets out of dodge. He says that as though he doesn't know who Angeal is or is nervous around him, despite already being a 2nd before Zack is ever promoted. So Kunsel both admires Angeal and is nervous around him, and makes no effort to interact with him despite stating an interest in doing so. He is literally the only SOLDIER aside from Sephiroth and maybe eventually Zack to demonstrate even a modicum of wariness around Angeal, and he does so even before the betrayal.

Finally there's Angeal's perception of himself. As with Genesis, this could be the subject of its own essay, and obviously Angeal's perception of himself changes over the course of Crisis Core as his knowledge of his origins grows and as he continues to suffer the effects of degradation. He goes from talking about his honor guiding his heroics to his honor standing in opposition to his monstrosity. He is deeply depressed and plainly hates himself. Aside from referring to Zack as a puppy and briefly educating us about local fruit, we see no mention from him of his softer qualities and interests.

Part of the joy of creating fanworks is that we get to take every source about a character and make use of them all. Part of the agony of dealing with Angeal the actual character is that he's in a horrible headspace: he's depressed, he hates himself, he's struggling to put forth a public persona that doesn't match his identity and values, and the hypocrasy inherent in that struggle makes him hate himself more which makes him more depressed.

If you would like to review CC canon, you can check out my complete transcripts here.

Angeal always bothers me and idk how to word it!! Not sure your take on why or what you see with his character in general but I'd love to know bc this has been bothering me forever

so this got. a little more heated than i thought it would. sorry anon lmao

angeal stans this is your warning!! nice things are not said under the cut

so angeal exists in the narrative to be the dead mentor figure so we feel bad for zack and to infodump a little about his and genesis's pasts in the beginning so genesis gets a modicum of development as well. he also does some obligatory passing on of his legacy of soldier honor and morals to zack so zack has a clear model to follow and we as the audience can see his growth from somewhat careless and cocky to a little more serious and driven after angeal's death. on a deeper level, angeal also exists as a counterpoint to genesis's and sephiroth's respective models of heroism, where (simply put) angeal's is staying true to a code of honor to protect the people, genesis's is being recognized by the public for heroic deeds, and sephiroth's is manufactured success and perfection in performance

and like, crisis core shows that each of these models doesn't work. in the case of angeal, his rigid adherence to a code of honor to remain morally pure leads to his downfall. especially with the circumstances of his death-- like, death before dishonor is an incredibly strong concept in japanese culture, but it's pretty clear in cc that what angeal does in forcing zack's hand is somewhat backwards in logic. like, where was this revelation that he was hurting people back in the middle of the war with wutai where he was literally destroying people’s villages and livelihoods vs. now when the war is literally over and he isn’t actively hurting people?? but. whatever. sure, let's assume this was the turning point that finally made him realize what he’s done in the past

but even then he doesn't solve anything, he doesn't try to help anyone despite that being basically his motto, he just gives up because he himself doesn't fit into his strict worldview-- if he isn't the hero he thought he was, then he must be a monster, and he can't be tolerated to exist. angeal quite literally shatters under the weight of his morals

there's also the issue of the story from his childhood, which is supposed to show his character as honorable à la "honor can exist in unconventional ways" but. it fails to establish him as such imo. it's like, you're too proud to accept help so you're gonna steal from people instead? and not even the rich people because one of them is your friend?? like there's a difference between being honorable and being too proud, especially if part of your motto is to protect others. it feels like a weird blend of capitalist work ethic + robin hood-esque imagery while missing the part where robin hood didn't actually steal solely because he was poor, he stole because fuck rich people and so he could help other poor people. you know. by giving them the handouts angeal is apparently too proud to accept

he's just a huge hypocrite, which makes his lectures on honor and pride feel all the more sanctimonious. he tries so hard to keep the moral high ground that the moment he comes up against something that actually tests his self-perception, he just shrugs and goes "guess i'll die". i feel like that was the entire point of how crisis core wrote him, especially given the role the buster sword plays in symbolizing his honor (aka use it or lose it), but the overall fandom tends to treat him as objectively the best of the firsts, like this bitch didn't just nosedive into drama queen territory just as quickly as the other two. i think @ladylokiofmidgard put it best when she said he has the moral backbone of a chocolate éclair

like angeal is as bland as white bread but somehow manages to singlehandedly piss me off more than any other character in the compilation. i could go on more but this post is already too long as it is

anyways. angeal was wrong. the buster sword is a metaphor for his failure to uphold his own philosophies relative to the people who inherited it. fight me