#not surprising ! imo they still left it as like. pretty much textual but still easy to ignore if you so wish

[moishecampbell]

catching up with the latest "actually it's open for interpretation" incident this time with the gundam girls this is very funny. it simply never ends

[butchtifalockhart]

@fury-brand i completely agree that there are elements of both aeris and tifa’s arcs that are extremely compelling and well written in the original game (and imo the original is infinitely better overall). taking aeris specifically — especially for the time, the way her death is handled is remarkably good even compared to modern media. she’s not a damsel, she’s a martyr, and her death is very integral to the themes of the game. yes, it partially motivates cloud, but i i feel it’s also given the narrative weight to be so much more than just that. i think real love was put into writing both tifa and aeris, especially in the ways they were allowed to diverge from tropes/stereotypes when it was for the benefit of the overall story.

my criticism is more pointed at how the game, at times, failed to do that. i feel that failure can be evidenced partially in how it describes the women themselves compared to their counterparts. in the original player’s guide, both aeris and tifa’s metatextual descriptions go out of their way to:

1. reference their attractive appearances

2. reference their romantic attachments to cloud

in a way that none of the male character’s descriptions do. it’s a piece of writing that is meant to frame the player’s expectations for the whole game. i love both of those characters, but this inclusion and the way that ethos seems to play out prominently throughout the game through tropes like the male gaze and male centeredness feels pretty deliberately like service to a very specific fan — video games were pretty exclusively marketed as “for boys” in the 90s so it’s not really a surprise, but still.

the remake doesn’t fix a lot of those issues — in a lot of ways, its just as bad. but it was nice to see jessie get more personality. it was nice to see aeris and tifa interact in ways that emphasize a true bond between them. it sometimes lets them exist outside of cloud. they actively want to spend time with each other, with cloud jokingly left the one to hold their shopping. tifa comforts aeris in the train graveyard when it would have been so easy to have cloud swoop in and rescue her instead. it’s not groundbreaking stuff by any stretch of the imagination, but at least it’s something. what i was hoping to express is that liking games like final fantasy sometimes feels like scrounging for scraps. a lot of sources have the devs indicate they meant the “love triangle” to be up for interpretation, but the one interpretation that was explicitly ruled out in canon is that maybe it’s okay that neither tifa or aeris are interested in cloud. this is mostly just my experience as a queer player rather than definitive textual analysis, and a lot of it is open to interpretation — so take it with a grain of salt because i may be wrong. i hope maybe this clarifies!

maybe i’m just a jaded lesbian but being a fan of ff7 is rough sometimes when you’re not the “target audience” (translation: a cishet guy). in the original game, the main gals’ whole existences hinge on the fact that they’re heteronormative love interests for the player character. it’s an element i think seriously detracts from the original — the player’s guide literally spells out that cloud gets to be cool and complex while aeris and tifa are just there to fawn over him and fight for his affections when they are both so much more than that. obviously i don’t think it oughta be illegal to ship them with cloud or find a romantic relationship between them cute, but i do wish more fans engaged with the obvious misogyny the creators originally had in mind when writing those relationships. i’m reminded a lot of the context behind the “bechdel test”:

…these criteria, originally published in “dykes to watch out for”, jokingly outlines these as the criteria as necessary for lesbians and other queer women to pretend the characters on screen could be queer too. the joke is that this is such a low bar, yet many movies (then and now) completely fail to clear it.

it’s ironic, because i’m not even positive the original ff7 would pass it. say what you want about the remake (i certainly have my opinions on it), but at least it likely inadvertently gave the gays a bone with more aeris + tifa interactions and the greater depth to the women overall. idk — is this just me?

[orionsangel86]

Destiel Going Canon? Key themes to look out for...

So I recently answered this ask and mentioned that I have a few key indicators that I am looking out for in the show which for me personally, will confirm the path the writers are taking in relation to endgame Destiel. I wasn’t thinking too much at the time about outlining those indicators, but since both @destielrose and @carasauruswrex asked me to talk about them, as well as getting the below ask from a nonny:

I figured I’d talk about about the kind of indicators I’m looking for. 

Usually I don’t like going on about this stuff too much because there is always a risk that too many people will take my random indicators really seriously and start seriously getting upset with the show if they don’t actually happen, and I don’t want that to be the case. Also because ultimately I have no idea how they are planning to progress this story regarding Bi!Dean and Destiel and anything I say is pure speculation based on my own logical understanding of how to build a decent narrative that would make sense to the audience.

The fact also remains that even if we DO get all the indicators I may mention, it still doesn’t actually mean 100% the writers will go ahead and make destiel an undeniably canon pairing. I can’t predict the future, I just happen to like looking into all this stuff and asking why when certain themes are continuously used in a narrative. So please don’t take this post for gospel. It’s all speculation. 

A while back I wrote a post about “preparing the audience” in which I explained how the show has a way of preparing the audience for anything that may surprise it, by adding in “buffers” which acclimatise the audience to certain concepts such as Cas formerly being in a female vessel. I spoke about how this is a clever way of trying to deal with an audience of extremely mixed opinions, political views, intelligence, tolerance, etc. and trying to please everyone whilst taking baby steps towards their own ultimate goals.

When I talk about key indicators for canon endgame destiel, I am talking about the continuation of using these buffers (some examples of which I outlined in that post). When I wrote that post, 12x19 had only just aired, and I was still reeling with utter disbelief that they would include a scene where Dean gives Cas a mixtape in a supremely intimate moment that made me feel like an intruder to my own TV screen. Never would I have begun to imagine that season 13 could have made it so much worse. 

Starting with where we are currently, it can no longer be denied that Dean and Cas love each other deeply. This has been made textual over and over again in season 13 on Dean’s side and was made pretty damn clear in 12x12 on Cas’s side (also arguably in 13x04 though far more subtle). The audience already knows that whatever these guys have, it goes beyond a standard friendship, and also goes beyond a brotherly bond because of the clear comparisons in Cas’s relationship with Dean and his relationship with Sam.

So what are the main hurdles left in order to establish destiel as a legitimate pairing?

The first and most obvious is sexuality. To a heteronormative audience, they would look at both Dean and Cas and say “they are straight guys”. Therefore the main indicators I would be looking for are to do with sexuality and bringing them both out of the closet.

Now Cas has never shown much interest in sex or sexuality, but he has only canonically been with women, so it’s easy to understand why certain people (heteronormative GA people) would still see him as straight. A key indicator then would be to somehow imply that Cas doesn’t give a shit about sexuality and is not straight.

You might want to interrupt me here and say “but Saz, we already had that in 7x01 and in 10x17″! Why YES we did! That’s right! So the key indicators would be LIKE those moments but stronger. For instance having a man flirt with Cas and Cas showing some interest (bonus points if he looks and is dressed like Dean). or we get another “teachable moments” scene between Cas and the boys and Cas specifically asks them about MEN much to their surprise. Cas getting grumpy about them going on about waitresses and instead asks them what they think of the waiter for example. It doesn’t have to be huge, but another reminder of this would be excellent timing.

For DEAN however any indicator for this category would be huge. I wrote a whole bloody post on his bisexual reveal, and I feel that Dean coming out of the closet would be the biggest indicator of them all that Destiel is going canon. Because well, that’s been the whole debate right? It’s the one thing holding the GA back from even CONSIDERING Destiel. “Dean is Straight!” they say. 

So whilst I am partly hoping for a bisexual reveal within this season (or at least early next season) other key indicators would be more noteworthy moments such as 8x13 Aaron scene. Or the glorious confessional scene in 10x16. Something that imo is substantial meat to the bisexual reading that isn’t easily argued away by an anti. Something that is enough to make the GA go “wait a minute...”

Those are obviously the biggest indicators. Though there are other things I would of course think would be huge moments as well.

Sam Winchester being more and more exasperated as per 12x10.

Sam dropping more hints. Conversations like 11x02 for example. Or in light of his current arc saying something to Dean like “you don’t know what it’s like because YOU have CAS”. 

I also think it will be a HUGE deal if either Sam or Dean ADMITS to Cas what it was actually like when Cas was dead during 13x01 to 13x05. Because Cas has NO IDEA. I would prefer this conversation to come from Sam. Sort of in a situation where Dean has an argument with Cas because Cas wants to go off and be a self sacrificial dumbass again for Jack and Dean isn’t happy about it and storms off, and then Sam just says something like “you need to understand Cas, you don’t know what it was like when you were gone. Your death broke my brother. Please don’t die again. Because I’m frightened if that happens I’ll be burning TWO bodies on a pyre...”

The other moments I would be looking out for are small things such as:

Dean’s bedside table moving back to the other side of the bed the way it was in 9x14, 

A picture of Cas in amongst Dean’s current photo collection, or one of Dean on Cas’s phone. 

The mixtape coming back into play somehow. 

Cas moving into the Bunker permanently and being shown to have his own room (this was an ambiguous topic in 12x19 as it appeared that Dean was running to a room allocated to Cas but it was debated that the room was also used to house Mary at one time so maybe what I’m asking for here is a Bunker room that Cas has personalised somehow.)

Other characters referring to them as a couple again. We used to get this a lot in the earlier seasons, but it hasn’t happened hardly at all recently and I actually consider this quite telling. The change came around the s8 time period which we also consider as the same time that TPTB decided to treat Destiel as a serious narrative in the show. The only times it DID happen after that was in 10x05 which doesn’t really count because it was a celebration of fandom and can be isolated from the actual narrative and also in 10x14 in a deleted scene, and that whole moment seemed less like a joke and more like a serious conversation where BOTH parties involved were admitting their very real and very non platonic love for Dean. It didn’t read the same way as the earlier characters joking about them being boyfriends, it read far too serious (which is why I think it was cut). So to bring this back, to have people like Rowena, Anael, Ketch, even Claire or Alex or someone non threatening, start referring to them as a couple to get a rise out of them would be interesting, because it would also be textually reminding the general audience that this is *a thing* in this show and get them thinking about it again... buffers people. Buffers are important. 

More scenes together/ shots where they are literally together. It has been the case in the later seasons that Dean and Cas have been separated quite a lot due to various plot reasons. I also stand by my own reasoning that if they did keep them together, the scenes between them at this point would be so freaking intimate it would be hard to watch without feeling like an intruder (10x03 and 12x19 are obvious examples of this) so for the writers to start introducing MORE scenes of Dean and Cas TOGETHER (and more specifically together and alone) it would be interesting to see their interactions and if they build on the destiel subplot - because they can hardly avoid it. Just having them interact in intimate ways is the best way now to start getting the audience used to what should in theory hopefully become a canon romantic relationship.

That’s everything I have right now. But like I said above I stress that none of these things would actually MEAN Destiel is going canon (except maybe a coming out episode for Dean) just that they would make me feel more and more convinced of the writers plan if they WERE introduced, whereas if we do just happily plod along in season 13 and NONE of the above happen at all, then I will definitely feel a bit disappointed. At the same time even if they don’t introduce any of the above, they may instead introduce a whole bunch of other stuff that I absolutely couldn’t have predicted (like the MIXTAPE) and throw me totally off guard. 

Ultimately, if we get another run of episodes like 12x10 - 12x12 and 12x19 I will be extremely happily and on cloud 9 about my feelings for destiel. Those episodes alone already raised my hopes and expectations for it as endgame, and season 13 episodes 1-6 solidified that, so really they can only go up from here. It’s just a case of ensuring that the show remains on track towards canon destiel rather than derailing somewhere along the line, but as of this moment this canon train definitely hasn’t derailed.