#the povs are deliberately left ambiguous here but you know

[leifyposting]

Your name is Diluc Ragnvindr. 

Or are you misremembering again? You’re forgetful, these days. 

Your name is Diluc Ragnvindr. You are certain of this. It meant something, once.

It is so cold out here. At least, you think it ought to be cold. It’s probably a bad sign that you are starting to feel warm. Or… don’t some of the native Snezhnayans make houses out of snow? Maybe that’s the reason you’re suddenly feeling warm, warm and toasty, like you’re snuggled up by a fire. When was the last time you sat by a fireplace? Do you remember?

Your name is Diluc Ragnvindr. Your father’s name is Crepus. 

No, that’s not right, is it? Try again.

Your father’s name was Crepus. 

Right. Because you killed him, don’t you remember? 

It was an act of mercy.

Put your hands around his neck and squeezed until the life faded from his eyes. 

It was an act of mercy!

Or maybe you placed your hand on his chest and pumped flame into his heart until it stopped beating. Wouldn’t that be poetic, the coveter killed by the very thing he had so coveted?

Your Delusion gleams on your chest, the same colour as the blood that’s blooming on the snow underneath you. It winks out at you from the bird that adorns your coat, like it knows something you don’t know, like it knows something you have forgotten. You have forgotten a lot, lately. 

He would have died from his injuries anyway. You simply couldn’t watch him suffer anymore.

Does that help you sleep at night?

No. It doesn’t. 

You haven’t slept well in a while. Three years, now; three years of tossing and turning and waking up from nightmares in a cold sweat. You can mark the time down to the day. No one tells you that when you turn 18 you forfeit any claim you had to a good night’s rest. That happens to everyone, right? Or is it just you? What happened on your 18th birthday that robbed you forevermore of rest? 

What else do you remember?

You have one brother. 

Oh?

Had one brother. His name is Kaeya. 

What happened to him?

You… You don’t remember. 

You do. Try harder. 

You don’t remember. 

He can’t have meant that much to you, then. 

He did! He does!

Then why don’t you remember?

You… 

Red against the night sky. Raindrops hit your blade and sizzle, sending steam into the air. You swing your claymore blindly, your vision obscured by flame, towards someone standing in front of you. Are you aiming for him, truly? Are you simply overtaken by grief? Either way, the effect is the same. When the steam clears, there is frost on the ground — an acknowledgement of the gods’ favour upon him. You turn and do not look at him again.

You had a fight, the two of you. 

Ah, there we go. What about?

It was after your dad died. 

And?

And he told you… something. Something that made you hurt him. Why can’t you remember?

Was it important?

It felt important at the time. 

And now?

Now it doesn’t seem worth much of anything. 

The snow is melting underneath you. You have always run hot, even before you received your Vision. You sink further into the snowdrift and it cradles your body like the mother you never knew. High, high up above you, an eagle makes slow circles in the air. You try to look around, but you are too weak to lift your head. 

Death has a way of putting things into perspective.

You’re not dying. Are you?

Sure looks like you’re dying, little prodigal. 

Kaeya will save you. He always has before. 

Kaeya’s not coming. You disowned him, remember? You tried to kill him. 

You didn’t mean it. 

That doesn’t change what you did. And now there is no one but yourself to save you. 

You remember… a boy on his knees in front of you, cradling a newly granted Vision to his chest. You remember the charred sleeves of his jacket, the skin of his arms raw and red, the blood that’s oozing from underneath his eyepatch. You remember the look of horror on his face. You don’t remember what you did to put it there. You don’t remember who he is. You don’t remember who you are.

It is so cold out here.

Stop that. 

And you are so tired. 

Enough of this. Who are you?

You don’t remember. 

Think. 

You don’t remember. 

Who are you?

Your name is– Your name is Diluc Ragnvindr. 

And?

You are 21 years old. Your father’s name is Crepus. Your brother Kaeya…

You hear crunching on the snow behind you. Footsteps, growing louder and faster as they spot you. A flash of blue in your peripheral vision, half obscured by the blood in your eye. Kaeya? Is that Kaeya?

Your brother Kaeya is not coming to save you.

Someone sinks to their knees next to you. “Gods, kid. Always getting yourself into trouble, aren’t you?” A woman’s voice. She gets her arms underneath you and lifts. You feel the earth fall away, blood and melted snow dripping from your coattails. “Let’s get you home.”

You don’t remember what home is. 

Yes, you do.

You remember a fireplace. The smell of wine. The feel of dirt beneath your feet, the gleam of a crystalfly outside your window, the dense heat of a summer evening before a storm. You remember a woman’s voice, gently chiding you for trekking mud into the house. You remember your brother’s obnoxious grin as he bends to take his boots off, ever the rule-follower. 

That’s not the home she’s taking you to.

You know that. She’s taking you back to headquarters.

Is that a good thing?

They will keep you from dying.

Is that all you want?

That’s all you deserve. 

But is that all you want?

No. It isn’t. 

Oh, little prodigal. Isn’t it time to go home?

[sjsmith56]

Family - Part 2, From There To Here - Bucky Barnes One Shots

Summary - Told from Winnifred Barnes POV. Recounts friendship between Bucky and Steve. How Sarah Rogers’ death and Bucky being drafted affected all of them. Touches on Bucky’s female admirers.

Length - 4764 words

Warnings - normal parental worries, strain in Steve and Bucky’s friendship, fear of Bucky going to war.

Author notes - no real plot, just a few slice of life glimpses of the Barnes family. There is some subtext but I have deliberately left it ambiguous. It can be what you want to see into it.

<<Part 1

🔹🔹🔹🔹

October, 1936

It was what we all knew would happen. Sarah Rogers had been sick for several months and when she finally went into hospital it was just a matter of time. Just a few weeks from the day she was admitted she was gone and her son, Steve, at just 18 years old, was left alone in the world, except for us. Our son, Bucky, had been Steve's friend from childhood.

Steve was a sickly boy who was small, asthmatic, and seemed to catch every virus going around. His dad, who died from a mustard gas attack in France during World War I never saw his son as Steve was born a few months after he died. Sarah was left to look after him as best she could on the meagre widow's pension she received. In those early days she lived in Hell's Kitchen which is almost as bad as it sounds for a widow with a sickly son. Somehow, through hard work and a strong will, she earned enough to move to Brooklyn. The neighbourhood had its own issues but there was one thing here that Steve didn't have there ... Bucky.

He was our oldest child, born in 1917. Rebecca, our second was born in 1929. Bucky met Steve in 1930, when the smaller boy was 12. He was being beaten up by bullies who wanted his lunch money. If there was one thing Bucky couldn't stand it was bullies. Being a bigger, stronger boy himself he laid into those others who were pummelling Steve and showed them that they couldn't have their way all the time. He brought Steve home with him, his nose bleeding, a black eye forming, and his shirt ripped. I chipped a piece of ice off the ice block in the icebox and wrapped it in a rag, told the boy to hold it to his eye. Bucky put pressure on the bridge of Steve's nose to stop it bleeding. While he was doing that I went up into the attic looking for some of Bucky's shirts that he had outgrown. Surely he had one that Steve could wear so I could launder and mend the one he was wearing. When I came back down Steve was holding Rebecca in his arms as she had started to cry. Bucky just shrugged as he held the bleeding nose back and pressed the cold rag into Steve's eye. Rebecca just cooed at the boy and the smile on his face and Bucky's face was wonderful.

They were friends from that day on. Steve's mother found work as a cleaning lady and I asked if Steve could wait for her at our house, worried about him being alone. She had the same worries and readily agreed, offering to pay for my time.

"No, you don't need to pay us," I said. "The boys can do their homework and watch Rebecca while I get supper on. Bucky likes him and boys need good friends. We're happy to have him for a few hours until you pick him up."

He was with us every week day after school, doing homework, having a snack, playing with Rebecca. Occasionally they went out and canvassed the neighbourhood for soda bottles to cash in, or doing odd jobs. Both boys liked to keep busy. They showed initiative often and I know the money both boys earned made the difference during the Depression. In 1935 Sarah Rogers was able to get work as a nurse in a TB ward. It was better paying than the cleaning jobs and with Steve in high school she didn't worry about him being home alone. Bucky was already graduated and working at the docks but they hung around together on the evenings and weekends.

Steve had started drawing pictures during the times when he was too sick to go to school. Occasionally he stayed at our house, sitting on the parlour sofa with a blanket wrapped around him, his sketch book open on his lap. He was such a good artist and Bucky learned to draw from him. They would draw cartoons of their teachers and school friends. When Sarah began feeling poorly she was unable to work much. Steve drew some beautiful pictures for her; scenes of the ocean, or flowers on the flower boxes that hung on the railings of fire escapes. He was doing all the housework then, cooking, cleaning and laundry. His devotion to her when she couldn't work at all was touching. Bucky supported him as best he could during that time but there were moments when Steve pushed him away, insisting he could do it himself.

When Sarah became too sick to stay at home Steve took her to the hospital and they confirmed what she already knew in her heart. She had tuberculosis and it was in its final stages. Only Steve was allowed to see her and he had to wear a face mask, and cover up his clothes with a gown. Bucky would wait for him, if he wasn't working, and walk him back to the flat where he and Sarah had lived. There wasn't much talking between the two but Bucky felt it was important to be there for his friend.

On Thursday, October 15, Bucky clocked out of his shift at the docks and came out to Steve waiting for him. As soon as he saw Bucky he began to sob and that's when my son knew that Steve's mother was gone. Now, working on the docks is very physical and manly. Softness isn't something looked kindly on. But at that moment Bucky just held his friend, hugging him hard and rubbing his back. He ignored the looks he got from the men coming off shift and was just there for his friend. Gradually Steve stopped crying and Bucky brought him home. We already knew as Sarah had put us down as next of kin and the hospital phoned. I hugged him. So did Rebecca. Gently I asked him if he had enough to pay for her funeral. He nodded.

"When Ma first got sick she called the American Legion and I guess she asked about helping a widow of a deceased veteran to pay for her own funeral," he said. "They offered her $25. I've been saving ever since. It's not much but it's enough. I'll have to put a headstone on her grave later, when I've saved up some more."

Bucky looked at me then at his friend. "I have some money," he offered. "It's yours."

"No, I can't take your money," said Steve. "I'll find a way."

Bucky insisted but Steve was firm. Then he stood up and thanked us for our sympathy and he began to leave. He wouldn't listen to our pleas to stay with us, said he was a man now and a man took care of his family himself, even when he was the only one left in the family.

A few days later we went to the funeral. It was a closed casket as Steve couldn't afford to pay for the embalming. The casket was little more than a plain box but again it was what the boy could afford. I bought a bouquet of flowers and we laid it on top so that Sarah would have something pretty to go with her to her final resting place. There were a few other mourners there as the Legion had posted a notice and some of Joe Roger's fellow soldiers who had survived the Great War came to pay their respects to his widow. As we took the final walk from the undertakers to the cemetery Bucky stayed beside his friend, worried about him having the strength to walk the mile distance.

At the cemetery the priest, as the Rogers' were Catholic, spoke the words that would consecrate Sarah Roger's soul to her maker. We didn't understand a word of it as it was in Latin but Steve and several of the mourners seemed to know what the responses were and we followed their lead. When the priest said the words "cinis in cinerem, pulvis ad pulvis" Steve picked up a handful of dirt and tossed it on the casket as it was being lowered. We understood he meant the phrase "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" and tossed some dirt on the wooden box. Bucky put his arm around Steve's shoulder, while I held his hand on the other side. The boy never cried but his face was stricken with grief.

I invited several of the mourners to our house for some coffee and sandwiches. It took a while to walk there and they filed in quietly into our parlour as I took my coat off and and put my apron on. Rebecca, even though she was only seven years old came into the kitchen to help, bless her good heart. Steve sat there with a sandwich on a plate in one hand and a coffee in the other, looking lost and completely devastated. Suddenly he stood up, put his food down and looked at me apologetically.

"I'm sorry but I can't stay."

He ran out the door and I told Bucky to follow him. When he came back a few hours later, well after the other mourners had left and I cleaned up after them he was sad and a little perplexed.

"He couldn't even find his door key," said Bucky. "I had to give him the one hidden under the brick."

"Did you ask him to live with us?" I asked. "We can squeeze another bed into your room."

"I told him but he said he could take care of himself. Why does he have to be so stubborn?"

"He's a man now," I replied, stroking Bucky's hair. "Has been ever since he started to look after his mother. It's hard for a man to accept help. Doesn't mean we won't help him."

Bucky looked at me with those blue eyes I loved so much. His thick dark hair was just like his father's had been and he had his strong features. I knew he was already popular with the girls but I also knew he understood how to keep a girl out of trouble. But what Steve was going through had Bucky perplexed that his friend wouldn't accept charity.

"How can we help him, Ma?"

"We offer our help with love, encourage him to believe that it's not weakness to accept it," I said. "You keep treating him the way you have since you became friends. He needs to know that will be the same. He doesn't want pity, but our understanding is another matter. I'll tell him his mother asked me to watch over him and that if he doesn't accept that then he's not honouring his mother."

"You're gonna guilt him," he smiled. "That's sneaky."

"Maybe, but I can't in good conscience let him wallow in misery, can I?" she said. "What if the tables were turned and it was you mourning me. What would you want him to do?"

My son pondered a while and then nodded his head in understanding. "I would want him to treat me the same as he always did. So, I guess I'll still tease him a little, build up his confidence a little, and just be quiet with him when he needs that."

I hugged Bucky quickly then patted him on the back. He always was smart. Together we would get Steve through this time.

Over the years it was hard for Steve and there were times when he felt terrible accepting our help but Bucky was always there to tell him we saw him as family and you have to help family. Through odd jobs, scrounging, and the occasional birthday or Christmas gift that included some folded cash hidden in it we helped Steve continue to live on his own, although he moved into a single room flat from the two bedroom one he had shared with Sarah. There was a standing invitation to Sunday dinner at our house and I always made sure to give him lots of leftovers that could be left in the small icebox he had in his room. Then he could heat it up on the hot plate.

〰️

December 1941 - March 1942

Five years and a couple of months after Steve's mother died the world, which was already in some turmoil with the Nazis taking over Europe and threatening to invade England, was thrown into more chaos when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. One day Americans were going about their business and the next day we were at war. The Selective Service act had been passed that fall of 1941 and both boys registered for the draft. Bucky got his notice just before Christmas and was ordered to report to the Brooklyn enlistment office in January. Steve got his notice as well just a couple of days later, and the two went together to undergo their physical. Bucky passed, was declared 1A and told to report for basic training at Camp McCoy in Wisconsin in February. Steve, as was expected, was declared 4F and took it hard.

Before he left Bucky tried to help Steve build up some muscle by taking him to the gym and training him the same way he had been trained when he took up boxing. It was a noble gesture but all the years of being sick hadn't allowed Steve the ability to withstand any sort of physical activity. He tried to enlist again just before Bucky left for basic training and once again he was rejected as 4F. George, myself and Bucky tried to encourage him to get involved in the war effort in other ways but he didn't want to hear it. I suspected he was going to other towns and trying to enlist under other names. He wasn't the first one to try as any number of men who wanted to serve their country but were considered unsuitable for combat also tried. Some succeeded, most didn't.

On the day Bucky had to go I made sure his clothes were clean and mended. He had all of his toiletries. We stood on the railway platform, George, Rebecca, Steve, and me, trying to milk out as much time with Bucky as we could before he absolutely had to board. Then his father offered Bucky his hand before pulling him in for a quick hug.

"You'll do alright, son," said my husband. "You have a good head on your shoulders and you're used to hard work. That's all the army needs from you."

Bucky kneeled down to his sister and looked fondly at her. Despite the great difference in their ages he had been a wonderful brother and Rebecca wrapped her arms around his neck then kissed his cheek. She began to cry and he took his handkerchief, wiping the tears away before kissing her forehead. He looked at Steve next and they hugged.

"Don't do anything stupid," he said to Steve.

"How can I when you're taking the stupid with you," replied Steve.

"Punk."

"Jerk."

They gave each other a little push and laughed nervously. Then Bucky turned to me and I had to swallow down the sob that was threatening to envelop me. My son, my only boy, was preparing to go to war. When did he become so tall and so handsome? When did he start shaving and wearing aftershave? My eyes began to fill with tears ... I couldn't help it.

"Ma, don't cry," he whispered as he enclosed me in his muscular arms. "I'll get leaves and come home to see you each time. The rumour is that once we're in it we'll chase Hitler right back to Germany in no time. I'll be careful, I promise."

Once again he pulled his handkerchief out and he dabbed at the tears on my cheek. The conductor called for everyone to get on board and Bucky picked up his valise, kissing me again quickly on the cheek. He showed his ticket to the conductor and got on with a final wave. We watched as he found his seat in the car and placed his valise in the rack above. Then he sat at the window and tried to lower it but it was locked and he shrugged. A whistle sounded and the locomotive gave a great gust of hissing steam as it began to pull the the cars behind it. Rebecca chased after it for a bit until George called her back and the train left the station with Bucky on it, leaving us four, his family, behind.

We didn't hear anything from him that first month. George, being a veteran of the First World War himself, said that was normal as the boys would be learning so much at boot camp. They would have their hair cut that first day, receive their fatigues, boots, underwear, shaving kits; the army supplied everything. Physical training would begin and I had no doubt that Bucky would excel in that. He was used to road training, running, as a boxer, and working at the docks had made him physically strong. George said his boxing skills would come to good use as he learned other methods to disarm a man. There would be marching to get the soldiers used to working as a unit and learning to trust the men they marched with.

"They won't even get into firing their rifles until the drill sergeant is satisfied they're ready to handle it," said George, recalling his own military career which ended when he lost his eye in an accident.

Six weeks after Bucky left we received our first letter and it was as George said, right down to the army giving them their own shaving kits. There was no picture of Bucky but he did ask for a picture of us and he gave permission for us to share the address with anyone who asked. I knew he meant any one of the girls he had dated as several had already asked to write him. We received letters every week from him and on the 12th week he informed us he would be given a week's leave after the following week of training.

The man who stepped off the train that day was not the boy who left. My first thought, and I'm sure George thought the same thing, was that this man was going places. Even though Bucky was confident before, the man we saw stepping off the train was incredibly sure of himself and very aware of the figure he cut. He seemed taller, broader, and noticeably drew the attention of all the women, young and old, waiting at the station for their loved one. His uniform was impeccable, his boots shone, and his smile when he saw us was as bright as the sun. Rebecca grasped his hand and he held it all the way out to the car, then opened the door for her and for me, like a real gentleman.

"Looks like the army agrees with you, son," said George, looking at him in the rear view mirror. "How has it been?"

"Good, I'm actually getting a promotion to Corporal and being sent for special training," he said. "All those times at the shooting galleries at Coney Island and Rockaway Beach are paying off. I'm the best marksman in the unit. When I'm finished in November I'll be made a Sergeant and return to finish out my training with the 107th."

"I'm proud of you son," said George but he gave Bucky a look which he acknowledged. I didn't know what had passed between them but I gathered George wanted to have a talk with him later. "Any one you know in the unit?"

"A couple of guys that I fought against when I was boxing," he replied, "and a few more that I faced in basketball or football. We've banded together whenever we get 24 hour liberty. Brooklyn boys have to stick together." He was quiet for a moment. "How's Steve doing?"

I looked at George. "He's still trying to enlist," I said. "Still getting classified 4F. He's coming for dinner tonight."

"Sure, but I do have a date later," he said nonchalantly. "Met a nurse on the train. She's staying with her sister in the Bronx. We're meeting at a dance hall. Don't wait up for me."

George and I exchanged glances. Bucky already had a date. That wouldn't go over well with about half a dozen girls who had his camp address and had been writing him religiously. Still, you were only young once. By the time we got to the house Steve was waiting on the stoop. He stood up as George parked the car; his eyes widened as he saw Bucky step out.

"How you doing?" asked Bucky, offering his hand to his friend. "Staying out of trouble?"

"I've had a few moments," replied the smaller man. "You look good. Did you grow?"

"Yeah, the army chow is better than they say," replied Bucky. "Not as good as Ma's food but I can have seconds with no problem. I have a date tonight, have one lined up for you if you want."

Steve blushed but said nothing. George unlocked the door and we all went inside so I could start preparing dinner. There was more talk about basic training with George adding some of his own experiences to the conversation. When dinner was finished George got out his pipe and tobacco, intending to go out back for a smoke.

"Okay if I join you, Dad?" asked Bucky, pulling out a pack of cigarettes.

Steve followed them outside and I began cleaning up. Rebecca offered to help but I suggested she get her homework done. I watched the three men through the kitchen window. George sat in an Adirondack chair that he assembled years ago. He was listening intently to something that Bucky was telling him, puffing on his pipe. Bucky held his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, like many working men of the day. Steve just listened, as if he was happy to be there. Eventually they all came in and Bucky put his arm around my shoulders.

"That was a real good meal, Ma," he said warmly. "Your food is still the best."

"Thank you." I patted him on the cheek. "What time are you leaving for your date?"

"Right away," he said. "We have to get Steve dressed right, then take the subway to the dance hall. You're okay if I bunk at Steve's tonight?"

I smiled and nodded, knowing that meant he expected to stay the night with his date. It was never really spoken of between Bucky and me, but George had told me of having the "talk" with him when he was 17 about boundaries, and being a gentleman. As far as I knew he never got a girl in trouble. If he had there would have been expectations of him to make it right as it would be our grandchild that needed a father.

After he and Steve left George turned the radio on. I finished cleaning up in the kitchen then brought some mending into the parlour so I could keep my hands busy while we listened to the music. Rebecca had finished her homework and was reading a book. Once she went to bed George waited for a while to make sure she was asleep then he gave me that look that indicated he had something important to say. I put my mending down and looked at him with curiosity.

"That special training they're sending Bucky on? It's sniper training. Killing men from a distance."

He put his thumb and forefinger on the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache so I knew it bothered him.

"How do they decide who does that?" I asked. "They did have them in the Great War, didn't they?"

"They did and we hated them," he replied. "Not the ones on our side but the German ones. They seemed to target the best of men and took them out without any chance of them surviving with shots to the head. We thought of them as merciless killers ... and now they want to make my son one of them. I know it's war but a sniper ...." He gave a big sigh. "Bucky wasn't joking that his time on the shooting galleries probably made him a good shot. Those rifles are rigged and he still cleaned up. Right from the moment they began marksmanship he said the drill sergeants were impressed with him."

"Does he know you feel this way?" I asked gently.

He shook his head. "How could I tell my son that? He's a good boy, a good man, who is going to be doing a thankless job but a necessary one." George looked at me with sadness and acceptance in his eyes. "Don't say anything to him. I'm only telling you because I tell you everything and I had to tell someone."

I nodded my agreement not to say anything but it was hard to picture my Bucky hiding somewhere in a battleground or a village, aiming his rifle at people, then pulling the trigger and ending their lives so quickly. When we went to bed I knew it still bothered George as he touched me in the way he did when he wanted me. This time he wanted comfort and I gladly gave it to him, the man I loved since I first laid eyes on him in 1915.

Bucky arrived back home about 11 o'clock the following morning. He looked a little worse for the wear and sheepishly asked if I could wash and press his uniform shirt. While he changed out of his uniform I called up and asked if he could do some yard work for me. He came down with his shirt in his hand and waited for me to tell him what I wanted.

"How was your date?" I asked.

"It was okay, Myrna was a good dancer," he said. "Wasn't happy with her sister Betty. She took one look at Steve and wouldn't go out with him. Said so right to his face. Myrna talked to her and she agreed to sit with us in the hall but after a couple of dances with him she saw friends on the other side and went to sit with them. He stuck it out for a while then left when I was on the dance floor. Didn't even say goodbye. I drank too much after as I was angry and once I got Myrna and Betty back home safely I drank some more. Barely made it back to Steve's but he was awake still and helped me settle down."

I turned to look at my son with concern on my face. He had never admitted to being drunk to me. His eyes met mine and I could see there was something further he wanted to say. Then he swallowed and handed me his shirt.

"What can I do in the yard for you?"

"The frost is gone from the garden bed," I said. "Could you turn the dirt over? There's some manure in the shed that you can work into it."

"Sure, I can do that, Ma," he said, then he smiled and kissed me on the cheek.

He went out every night the rest of that week, with each of the different girls who had been writing him. Steve didn't come around and I wondered if they had a disagreement but Bucky never said anything. When it came time for Bucky to return to camp we took him to the train. His girlfriends were all there and he kissed each one of them on the lips, smiling at them after. Then he turned to us and said goodbye to Rebecca first. His goodbye to his father was next, and it was very masculine and proper between them. Finally, he looked at me and hugged me hard, whispering that he loved me. With tears in my eyes I put my hand on his cheek and smiled, trying to be strong for him. He stepped on the stair into the train and looked past us for a moment, as if he was searching for someone then stepped inside, found his seat and put his valise up on the overhead rack. As the train began to pull away he raised his hand in goodbye. We didn't see him again until Christmas.

Part 3 >>

Series Masterlist

[icyday]

After a bit of vague-ing about my 'maybe queer' status earlier this month, I thought I might explain 1) why I feel ambiguous about my sexuality and 2) how I accidentally acquired a wife. The post is long, but it ends up covering about 18 years altogether.

(Shared with the permission of the wife in question @muusudgoi)

Warning: certain titles/referents might get ambiguous in places. The person referenced has read this and agreed that it reflects how she identified/how our relationship was perceived at the time.

Let's start with 18-year-old me. Call it a prologue of sorts.

Like the me of now, she has no clue of her sexuality. She's had a couple of boyfriends who were okay for a while. She's also interested in lesbians, at least at conceptual level. At least, she's read everything in her town's public library about lesbians, and while yaoi/shounen-ai seemed quite boring to her, yuri/shoujo-ai seemed a lot more interesting. However, she'd also never met a specific girl IRL that she had sapphic feelings for, except maybe in an idle 'if they were interested, I wouldn't say no' sense. They weren't interested. It wasn't an issue.

(in retrospect, she may have had a crush on her 5th grade teacher, but that's neither here nor there)

So to a certain point, she came into her university years being clueless about her sexuality to herself and deliberately vague about it to others. Was she gay? Bi? Straight? Ace? If you couldn't tell, why should she. She was also not really doing much to perform gender in any direction, so she didn't really project anything.

Her freshman college experience was one guy she met briefly, set up a casual date with, got stood up by, and then sort of walked away without giving too much of a damn. And then a (probable) egg whom she met-up with, and didn't jibe with chemistry-wise, and then just kind of relegated to a casual acquaintance. She might have been interested in the concept of girls but figured 1) she was too plain and slovenly to attract any and 2) despite not being any kind of religious, she was living at a Catholic dorm and was a little wary about being too open about any interest she might have had in that direction.

(It was very close to campus and reasonably cheap.)

Then, the meet cute happens. And the PoV switches into first person.

At the beginning of my Sophomore year, I had started playing an MMORPG that a friend of mine was into. I joined the group she was part of, and my future-wife was also part of that group. We both played female characters, though at the time she was not. While that might have been foreshadowing, the fantasy race we both played was female only, and enough male players played them that there was both a specific term to refer to them and it was the assumed default.

My wife was not immune to this. During the first interaction we both remember, she absolutely assumed I was a dude until I told her otherwise.

Anyway...

We didn't interact a lot for the first few months. I was a newb, and she sort of drifted in and out of the game. Left, played something else, came back for a bit etc. Springtime eventually rolled around, and she came back again. This time we were of similar levels on our main jobs, so there were more reasons for us to interact and tag along on each other’s quests. (Hey! You need a chest from this dungeon, and I need a chest from this dungeon! Let’s party!)

Her impression of me in retrospect: "You didn't annoy me."

Truly, love was about to blossom.

No, what happened then is that my laptop died because apparently being constantly logged into an MMORPG on a student-grade laptop for months on end isn't great for it. No laptop, no MMO, but I could get to my dorm's computer lab and post to a popular forum to let people know what happened, with some snarky, but sentimental goodbyes. The message basically went "[Specific people], I love you and miss you. The rest of you can go get bombed by goblins. [jokingly]" Not those words exactly, but that sentiment. My wife-to-be was part of the 'rest of you' group, and she took that as a challenge.

She responded to my post with 'Aw, Jais, I thought you loved me too."

And then used her google-fu to find my AIM handle (this was the mid 2000s, if you couldn't tell), and sent me a message. The whole interaction started with me being like 'Who TF is this person and why are they messaging me' and ended up a week later with us watching the sunrise together in our respective locations and realizing (for the first time?) what love was. I hadn't really been searching for my person, but apparently, I had found one.

I was twenty. She had just turned twenty-four. We were both babies.

There's a lot to skip over here. I think the important thing is that as this point, my wife is boymoding it up full-time. Just before my 21st birthday, she moves from Florida to Illinois to be with me, since I'm attending University there and she isn't. We move in together after about a month. (U-haul joke?) Everyone treats us like boyfriend-girlfriend. We treat each other like boyfriend-girlfriend. Any signs that point to something else are treated by both of us as plot-irrelevant. I graduate, and get a fast food job in the college town. We adopt two kittens to go with the one she brought with her. I get into grad school, and we and the three cats move to Seattle. Eventually we get engaged and married. (Before same-sex marriage was even legal in Washington state, no less)

Somewhere on the other side of marriage, twenty started to feel very...young for me to have met the person I'd eventually marry. Like why did I not try meeting up with women? At least to see whether I liked it or not? How can I say I really know what I am for sure, if I've never had any serious sexual or romantic interaction with anyone outside of a single partner? But also, I wasn’t terribly interested in either polyamory or leaving my spouse, so I dismissed those feelings as plot irrelevant.

Also, whatever is up with her gender gets more relevant. We attend our first Pride parade (as allies), which she may have cross-dressed for. I know there was definitely at least one Pride she cross-dressed at, because I had to be there to go, "Honey, no, try this instead." More signals are coming through (and I am, for plot-irrelevant reasons, much savvier to them) to the point where I do wonder if we're going to end up being old lesbians one day after we're done having children or whatnot.

But then dental insurance happens, and I think that ends up being the breaking point for my wife.

Between bad luck and poverty, my wife has always had terrible teeth, and not a lot of means to fix them. But two things happen in 2013-2014. One, we finally obtained decent dental insurance thanks to my job hiring me full time, and two, one of our cats ended up accidentally clawing her face in such a way that she ended up with an infection that the tooth issues aggravated. So after living years accepting that her terrible teeth were just a fact of life, she finally started getting them fixed. And mayve taking care of that problem led her to realizing that another thing that had bugged her her whole life might also be fixable.

(That whole gender thing.)

My feelings on her coming out at the time were extremely complicated. On one hand, I was a lot more educated on trans issues in 2014 than I was in 2005. The news didn't exactly surprise me. On the other hand, it was also the first time in our relationship where having a kid might not have been a total disaster, and the timing of the her news meant that we probably wouldn't get an opportunity to try. She offered to go back into the closet if I wasn't willing to stay with her, and I flat out refused that, the reasoning at the time being, "Now that you've told me your truth, I'm not going to let you lie to me." I told her I couldn't guarantee that I'd stay, but that I was willing to see what happened.

As an aside: There's a distinction between respecting someone's choice to stay closeted and being the reason someone chooses to stay in the closet. The first is a good thing, but I'd rather not be the second if I can help it.

There were a lot of changes. I don't know how deeply I want to get into them when this already feels so long, except to say, feelings get extremely complicated. I felt very isolated at points. Major changes were happening to my wife, and she wasn’t out to the world yet. Not only could I not talk about them, I also felt restricted about what I could talk about with others in a casual sense. It's like when people in same-sex relationships are told not to 'flaunt' it by well-meaning bigots, and that means not talking about any topic where their partner might come up. There was also the small issue where she came out to my mom and aunt by saying "Your daughter's a lesbian" as a joke, without actually checking in with how I felt about it (either the label itself or 'being outed' as it were).

But the changes were good to her. She was more confident and more open with herself and I liked the person she was becoming. She liked the way she looked which led to her paying more attention to her appearance, so she was definitely looked better. She was also 100% committed to our relationship, which meant that she was willing to be patient while I tried to keep up with her on her journey. It's hard to say whether I'm more or less attracted to her now as opposed to before she came out. If I had to simplify it, I'd say there's a bit less of a sexual connection, but more of an emotional one, and I'm definitely a lot more handsy with her now.

Anyway, it's been about nine years since she came out and started her transition. Our relationship is more stable than it's ever been. Therapy, economic stability, and not being in our twenties any more will do that to people.

I still don't know my own sexuality. I just accidentally married a woman.

(Have you tried living on one income while paying rent on a Seattle apartment?)

If I were pressed to label myself, I might go with 'vaguely bi' until I have more evidence in either direction. 'Bad at heterosexuality' is a fun way of putting it much in the same way that I sometimes refer to my wife as 'my boyfriend at the time', or 'my ex-husband' in contexts where the joke is obvious to anyone who might see it. (As when she posts our wedding photos, asking where she got that picture of me and my ex-husband from). But I'm also pretty sure that I don't project queer vibes IRL until the fact of my wife is known. Most of the queer spaces I've been in have primarily focused on gender-type queerness. This means I've always functioned more as a guest or an accessory to my wife, rather than a person who belongs there in her own right.

I keep thinking about labels. What fits me. If I even count as LGBTQ+, queer, or if I’m just in the penumbra that exists between the straight world and the rainbow one. I’ve learned a lot about what I don’t want in a label. I’ve adopted ‘bi’ over ‘pan’ mostly out of spite for the cohort that considered (considers? Is it still a thing) bisexual a transphobic identity. But I still haven’t figure out what I do want in one. Maybe I’m just one of those ‘problematic’ people who just doesn’t need a label.

[ganet]

Thoughts on Versus' (potential) relationships: Kiva & Zaybi

Original post

WARNING: SPOILERS!

I find them rather fascinating. In fact, the more I read Versus the more similarities I see in them. Certain scenarios also play out similarly for them both, which is interesting. They obviously have their differences as well, but those only help keep my interest in them. (This also has made me ship them a bit, since the soulmate trope is one of my weakness. And I know there is a big age gap between these two, and one huge thing is that I usually don't like those with my personal fav ships so I hardly have such ships. However, there is something going on with these two that I keep my eyes open for, that is, if there is more for them in the future.)

Style

One thing I find rather funny is the sense of style they both seem to have. You can see it's important to them, and in Zaybi's case ONE even mentions it in his notes. A gentleman killer demon with victorian gothic style (I presume, do correct me if I am wrong), and a human mage who wants to be "fashionable" (which is why he doesn't wear the mage robe normally or why he has those trinkets around his neck).

Here's Zaybi's and Kiva's character sheets by ONE, translated:

Captains

Chapters 1, 16, 2 & 11: They have similar ranks/class in their respective forces (captain).

Light VS. Darkness

Chapters 2, 14 & 12: Other characters compare Zaybi to a guiding light in the darkness, the Sun, the one who gives hope in dire situations. VS. Kiva who is a demon, the despair, the (natural) enemy, leading the demons and being the one who deliberately went on his way to destroy what little hope humans had.

Shield

Chapters 12 & 13: They are forced to use similar techniques to protect oneself (or in Zaybi's case; every human).

"Dying"

Chapters 12 & 16: Similar "dying thoughts". We are shown their hands. (They are also both then "saved".)

They also seem to think about the one person that's important to them before the "(presumably) ultimate death in the hands of Madalans" (with Kiva) or "thought he dies in the hands of the Parasite" (Zaybi).

Chapter 15: Kiva leaving the demons in his lord Jachi's hands before going for the final pounding.

Ambiguity

Their situation is also currently left ambiguous in the manga. (We aren't shown Kiva die, and the chapter 16 left Zaybi's situation open as well. Although, it possibly will continue in next chapter or change the pov to another character. However, his situation probably will remain uncertain for the time being.)

It is also notable how some of their similar situations happen in chapter order. (E.g. Kiva's "final moment" in ch 15 VS. Zaybi's "almost final moment" in next chapter. Or Kiva protecting himself in ch 12, and Zaybi protecting every human in ch 13.)

Now, more about what happened in chapter 12 between these two:

I actually felt something happening between these two characters before I read chapter 12 even, so it did surprise me a bit how sharp my instincts have been about this when Zaybi decided to save Kiva. Although, it is not explained what spell he cast on him, but Zaybi's fellow mage was surprised.

There's something I like about this next panel, since I like how Zaybi is calmly just telling Kiva to calm down despite being struck by him. (He also quickly put up a shield to protect himself.)

I honestly don't blame Kiva for hitting him away, since he did technically (almost) die, and suddenly you are "resurrected" and wake up surrounded by your enemies. Seems like Zaybi understood this.

And then I really like Zaybi's little smirk at Kiva. I do wonder how many humans have actually just smirked at the guy and not shown only anger or fear (which is understandable considering who Kiva is and what he has done to them).

Zaybi's gamble at helping Kiva really paid off since the demon did leave the humans alone (for the time being) even though he would have done worse. This really opened up an interesting situation for their (potential) future relationship, whatever that may be (if possible).

Other chapter(s) thoughts:

Not to mention that Kiva has wanted to off Zaybi's precious little brother few times now, and we know he will lose his light if he loses Hallow.

Chapter 14: Gyuta's final words to Hallow about Zaybi.

But, I do think if Kiva survives, he may have changed some of his views about humans.

Chapter 15: Kiva finally understood how difficult it is to muster your courage.

This thing about bravery and Hallow seems to (presumably) also reflect on chapter 16 with Zaybi. These panels could be either him being scared or he knows the danger and his instincts are telling him not to help the woman (which would have been the correct decision, as cruel as it first sounds).

Bonus thoughts:

Kiva was a small little demon when he got recognized by Jachi. Look at those small wings and the clothes are so small as well. (He looks also fairly short here.) It's told that he was born into a high-class demon clan. Although, he seems to have had some kind of skills (child prodigy?) if Jachi recognized him.

Chapter 12: Kiva reminisces about his life while dying.

Zaybi didn't seem to have born in any high-class life. He does seem to have been some kind of child prodigy, and other mages think of him as some kind of genius.

Chapter 14: In his last moments, Gyuta tells Hallow about Zaybi.

I have noticed they both are (battle) smart and can instantly act during the battle/dire situation. They are observant as well, moving with a plan/certainty. However, when there isn't any plans or things don't go according to a plan, they seem to react to it in their own way; Zaybi seems to be stuck (or internally panics), and Kiva loses his cool when he is really annoyed. This still doesn't usually stop them in the end, which I like. After all, Zaybi has a responsibility as mage captain to help the humanity survive, while Kiva's responsibility as a 11th division's captain of the great demon king army is to make sure demon lord Jachi will triumph and the demons will survive.

They also are the ones who have decided to support those important to them (Jachi for Kiva, and Hallow for Zaybi). And they seem to stand right between these two archenemies' - a hero and demon lord.

I am really interested to see where this particularly story will go.

[sparxwrites]

More self-indulgence, but in my defence I was asked to this time (by @florfering​). Without further ado: “yours were the arms (that the whole world was in)”, director’s cut edition. Once again, significantly longer than the fic itself. Whoops

You can find the fic in question here on tumblr or here on AO3, sans commentary.

Mumbo is not surprised when, the morning after Scar’s death, Grian runs away from the Southlands’ little trust exercise as soon as he’s been passed the life.

Martyn’s indignant squawks follow him as he flees, and Impulse gives brief chase, but Mumbo doesn’t bother. He knows exactly where Grian’s going. And he knows that Grian, even odds or better, will be back before long.

Opening gambit/premise here is that Mumbo and Grian know each other very well, and have known each other for a long time, and are in an… established relationship, of sorts. Of the “we’re soulmates/blood brothers and also we sleep together and maybe we’re a bit in love” variety, I think; they’re not platonic, by any means, but the basis of the relationship is this deep and abiding sense of a bond between them or a “meant to be by one another’s sides” kind of thing, and the sexual/romance component came a little after they’d already kind of ended up tied into one another.

Which makes this whole fic a weird kind of semi-wordless relationship negotiation, with Grian being like “hello, I found a man, can we keep him” and Mumbo evaluating whether he likes and trusts Scar enough to allow this. There’s a reason I tagged the thing “polyamory negotiations” on AO3! Do love me some relationships that are complicated and atypically-structured but still extremely deeply-felt and meaningful.

He’s even less surprised when Grian returns that evening, looking furtive and ashamed, and guiding a golden-eyed Scar by the hand through the still-rigged front gate.

The hand-holding is important here. I don’t know exactly what happened between “Scar died” and “Grian got another life into him”, but I do know that yellow Scar is uh… lightly traumatised, by the time they get back to the Southlands. Certainly still kind of actively in a shock response. So he’s vulnerable. This is not cool, collected, in control Scar – this is Scar who does actually kind of need Grian physically leading him, because he’s kind of dissociating out of his head a bit currently.

(Some of this is also because I subscribe to a theory some people have tossed around where Scar’s jump into the lava was at least partially intentional – both from a “I’m so fucking lonely and my attempts to buy friends didn’t work” perspective, and on a “Etho I’m going to go red deliberately so I can wreck your shit” perspective. Which is dialogue from Etho’s pov ep.5 that cc!Scar, interestingly, cut from his pov. Either way, I think c!Scar “slipped”, where it’s ambiguous even to him how much was him genuinely fucking up and falling into the trap and how much was him wanting to lose a life/punish people. The minute he hit the lava, though, he sure as all fucking hell regretted it, though, because burning alive hurts. So that’s another layer to the trauma-shock.)

The gate still being rigged is also important here– this is where Scar died! This is the site of his current trauma! And of Grian’s trauma, because that scream of “Scar!” was… whoof. It was something. So there’s a kind of mutual comfort going on here, as they navigate through the site of Scar’s death on the way back to what Grian considers safety. Scar physically requires Grian’s help, is very literally in Grian’s hands; and Grian needs the reassurance that Scar is still there, still with him, still safe.

It’s also very important you know that I’m imagining Mumbo as having like… pulled a deck chair over to the gate immediately after Grian left, and basically just sat in it all day, waiting for Grian to come back. Even when the others were saying no, Grian’s gone, Grian’s betrayed us, Mumbo just shrugged and smiled and waited.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” he says, without any malice, and Grian jumps. His wings flare, the feathers puffing up – expected, a standard Grian startle response. He steps between Mumbo and Scar, weight distributed evenly between his feet, his centre of gravity dropped in something that might be almost a fighting stance – less expected. Novel. Concerning.

Mumbo knowing Grian well enough to very automatically and immediately read his body language is kind of central to the fic. A lot of their “negotiation” in this is through this weird little dance for two they have going on, where every movement they make towards each other is imbued with immediately-understood meaning and symbolism. Scar isn’t privy to this language (which contributes to the issues later in the fic), but for both Mumbo and Grian there is a whole dialogue happening here, largely without words.

“Oh.” Grian relaxes when he realises who it is, though only a little. The feathers flatten again. His wings stay half-flared, though, and he stays in front of Scar. He still hasn’t let go of Scar’s hand. “It’s just you. I thought you might’ve been Martyn, come to–”

He makes a motion with his free thumb, a jerky slash across the front of his throat, and grins. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

Grian, deflecting from having genuine emotions and/or fear by making jokes or being facetious? Must be a day that ends in “y”.

Jokes aside, Grian is anxious. He doesn’t regret stealing the life, doesn’t even really care about Martyn or the other’s reactions to it, but he does value Mumbo’s feelings and good opinion of him. And he’s worried he’s fucked that up, and/or that Mumbo’s going to tell him that Scar can’t be in the Southlands – because then he’s got to chose between the two men he loves, and he really does not want to have to do that. Because he’s not sure who he’d choose, and that terrifies him, because it says something about the depth of the emotion he feels for Scar that he doesn’t really want to confront yet.

Mumbo sighs, and crosses the space between them to press a kiss to Grian’s temple. “Welcome back, idiot,” he says, fondly, and his chest warms at the way Grian’s eyes flutter half-closed, the way Grian tilts his head into the brief press of lips against skin. “I’ve been waiting for you all day.”

I’m a sucker for small and meaningful gestures of intimacy. Mumbo’s is, apparently, a kiss to the temple. It’s another part of the “weird little dance” I talked about earlier – it’s ‘just’ a forehead kiss, but Grian has the context to interpret it as forgiveness and intimacy and a reaffirmation of their bond, and responds accordingly by absolutely melting into it, even though that’s technically an ‘overreaction’ to a fairly ‘platonic’ kiss.

“I’m sorry.” And then– “I’m sorry, Mumbo, I know I shouldn’t have, but– I signed a contract.” There’s something pleading in Grian’s voice. Something that doesn’t sound like a contract at all.

Grian, yet again, deflecting. “I signed a contract” is way easier than attempting to articulate “I spent a whole world at this man’s side, and then he betrayed me, and then he knelt before me and offered me his throat and I refused to slaughter him like a lamb, and then I beat him to death with my bare hands until I was covered in his blood and left alone in an empty bloodsoaked world with the sinking feeling that he let me kill him, and now I don’t know what the fuck that means because he’s here again and he’s alive and I still love him and I still feel guilty and I am absolutely refusing to acknowledge or process literally any of this”.

Scar, behind him, has not said a word. The hood of his wizard’s robe is still up, pulled low over his face, leaving only golden eyes and the faint suggestion of lips visible through the shadow. His scars – old, pale, diagonal, cutting through one eye, through the other and the bridge of his nose, across his cheek to brush just right of the left corner of his lip – are invisible in the low light, but…

Aaaand we’re back to Scar’s reputation management habit. He’s less self-conscious about the aesthetics of the scars – he’s already got plenty of those – and more shying away from what they represent, i.e. the trauma of his recent death and the feelings/intentions associated with that. They also represent, visually, to other people, him “fucking up” via “falling” into an obvious trap that he’d already fallen into once – which is incompatible with the smooth and competent businessman thing he’s trying to do.

(I think, also, the respawn not working perfectly is… significant, from the perspective of the characters. I talk a bit below about my half-formed thoughts about the respawn being something semi-sentient for a generous definition of sentience, and the characters are aware of this, that it’s a thing that to some extent makes choices based on its own weird logic. So for Scar to have marks left from his death means that death was– significant. It wasn’t a silly accident, or a mistake, it’s got meaning to him, enough so that the respawn decided it should permanently mark him – which, for something that was ostensibly a silly slip into an obvious trap, raises some really uncomfortable questions from the the others for Scar that he really does not want to answer. Or have to think up a convincing lie about.)

When Mumbo squints, he can just about make out something red, something angry-looking, something with the texture of melted wax, crawling across Scar’s face towards the corner of his right eye. Towards the right corner of his mouth, half-pulled-up in what might not be a wry smile.

Something something Scar’s little smirking half-smile as a salesman’s affectation, part of his mask, now made permanent – and how that permanence/lack of voluntariness changes the emotional valency of it, both for how he feels about wearing it and how other people interpret it.

I enjoy writing about characters getting long-term injuries/disabilities/disfigurements that are really significant, not just because anything like that is significant, but because it interacts with something that is a really core part of themselves in a way that forces them to reckon with how they’ve constructed their own identity. Scar’s one is to do with how something that was part of his mask is no longer something he can take off at will; it changes the way he feels about his performance, because it’s less fun playing a part when you can no longer entirely drop the act at the end of the play. It changes the way people read the performance, too, because it’s obvious to everyone else that the smirk is involuntary – so it’s no longer a signal he can lean on, since people now read pity and lack of agency into it rather than competence and confidence.

“Hey, Mumbo,” says Scar, and when he smiles his salesman’s smile, the right side of his mouth hardly moves. His teeth flash white in the dark. His voice has the usual lilt to it, all effortless and easy charm, but it’s hollow in the middle, empty down to the bones. Dead inside. “I’d apologise for dropping in on you so unexpectedly, but I’m not sorry at all, so I won’t bother. And besides– I had an invite.”

Unfortunately, even a traumatised and shocky Scar is a bit of a cocky arse, even if the tone of voice doesn’t quite land. Maybe especially so, given he currently feels under threat and that’s a defence mechanism – but it’s also just how he is. Man’s got compulsive swagger in his bones.

Mumbo does not miss the way Grian’s fingers tighten around Scar’s hand. Does not miss the way Scar’s fingers – burns there, too, flowing down from his wrist over his pinky and ring finger – go white-knuckled in return.

Trauma bonding! Again, I don’t… entirely know what happened between Grian leaving the Southlands/Scar respawning and the two of them returning with Scar on yellow, but I don’t think it was easy for either of them. This is also dragging up a lot of weird unresolved stuff from both of them left over from Third Life, and the way that ended for them, which neither of them have dealt with or acknowledged – they might not even realise that’s why they’re so fucked up over it, to be honest, but it’s there. Looming over both of them.

“I made a promise, Mumbo,” whispers Grian, wretchedly, and that– that sounds closer to the truth.

Grian translation: I can’t help loving him. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I tried not to, and I thought I could avoid it, but I can’t, and you need to understand that it’s not my fault. It’s involuntary. It’s out of my hands.

“Move aside, Grian,” says Mumbo, with a sigh. “I’m not going to hurt him.”

Mumbo translation: Can you stop being an idiot for like five minutes oh my god. I still love you, and I’m not angry you love him. I just need some time to process this,and evaluate what this means and how we can make this work.

Grian moves aside. He lets go of Scar’s hand, and Mumbo takes that as the sign of trust that it is.

Scar takes it as abandonment.

Again– Grian knows Mumbo, trusts him, has read into Mumbo’s small gestures throughout the conversation to know that the negotiation is going well, and uses a small gesture to reciprocate that trust.

Scar, however, doesn’t have the context to read that gesture – he’s not privy to the language Mumbo and Grian are speaking, and in fact probably has no idea about the enormous amount of subtext going on here re: relationship negotiations. He’s only reading the surface cues (Grian is anxious, Mumbo has said he’s not angry but done little to prove it, Grian is letting go of him) rather than the actual conversation: Grian is anxious about Mumbo accepting that Grian loves Scar, Mumbo has repeatedly demonstrated that he’s not angry and is willing to be patient and still loves Grian, Grian is reciprocating Mumbo’s extended hand in the face of Grian’s “betrayal”/“bad behaviour” by stepping back to let Mumbo and Scar negotiate on their own terms without his interference but with the assurance that Mumbo won’t hurt him because Mumbo understands how important he is to Grian.

So– Grian sees this as an extremely meaningful gesture, a huge show of trust, something very safe. Scar sees it as “oh god my comfort blanket has just been dragged away from me and a guy who has absolutely no reason not to kill me is approaching me”. Whoops! (What can I say? I love a bit of subtle miscommunication.)

He doesn’t run, doesn’t so much as flinch, but there are suddenly whites all the way round his golden irises. Mumbo can see them, as he approaches, wet and reflective in the dark. They flicker yellow-orange in the torchlight, his pupils blown wide and dark with adrenaline.

When he knocks Scar’s hood back off his head with the brush of a single knuckle, Scar doesn’t flinch, but his eyes are full of fire.

This is just me hammering on the theme of Scar-and-fire-slash-lava as hard as I possibly can, because sometimes you’ve got to be dramatic and poetic and lean in a bit.

The torches cast a strange, dancing light across his new scars. The burns cover the right side of his head, hair gone and replaced by fresh, glossy skin in silver and red all the way up to his temple. The warped tendrils of it reach towards his eye, across to his mouth, down below the neck of his robe. His lip is tugged up at the corner by it, his mouth twisted into a permanent half-smile. His eye seems spared, though – unharmed, like his full left side.

The respawn’s strange like that, sometimes. Capricious, in what it decides to take from you. In what it decides to leave. In the marks it decides you should bear.

I’ve got an ongoing Thing that I’m still working out re: creative mode and respawn and a variety of other game mechanics as… deities, ish, but in a very abstract and intangible and inhuman sense. Kind of a cross between the fae and an eldritch abomination, but without a body and with an even more fucked sense of humour/justice.

Creative mode will just straight up fuck you up, eat you hollow from the inside out, don’t touch that shit with a barge pole unless you’re an admin and even then be careful – but even with the respawn, which is much less… whatever it is that creative mode is, there’s a risk every time you use it, in terms of a price it might decide to take. Especially on a server where death has been made more meaningful than it usually is, because the respawn (like all the other partially-sentient game mechanics) interacts with the meaning placed on the death by the player more than anything about the mechanics of death.

(Some of this comes from the requirement of explaining arbitrary game mechanics, either enforced via mods or by player obedience, when you’re writing “serious” fanfiction – such as why you can sometimes have limited lives, especially in the context of e.g. Dream SMP, where there’s three lives but deaths only sometimes count and there’s not really any good rules about what kind of deaths count. Some of this comes from my old Yogs headcanons where I was playing around with such typical themes for Minecraft roleplay fanfiction as “what makes a god versus a monster” and “what makes a person a person” and “apotheosis as a faustian bargain”, and ended up writing a fic series with creative mode as a secondary antagonist. Some of this comes from the fact that I, unfortunately, as a person, start reading belief systems into absolutely every space I can possibly find, and I am in love with the idea of double-edged swords and being part of something bigger than yourself whether you want to be or not and confronting the fundamentally unknowable and accidentally shaping reality by telling the same story enough times, even when you’re not aware you’re telling a story.)

Mumbo sighs, again, and presses the same kiss to Scar’s temple as he had to Grian’s. Though he’s gentle, steady – even when his lips press against waxy, burnt skin, alien to the touch – Scar flinches as though he’d been struck by lightning.

More micro-gestures! This one’s a demonstration, for Grian, that Mumbo’s accepting Scar – into the Southlands, yes, but also in terms of “I acknowledge he’s important to you and I’m not going to fight that and I’m not going to make you choose, and I will care for him and learn to care for him because he’s important to you and I love you.”

The placing of it on the burnt temple is also important. Mumbo’s correctly identified the burn as a point of Concern for Scar, even if he doesn’t fully understand it, and therefore there’s other layers to the gesture that can be read in – an apology for helping create the trap that killed him, a reassurance that the burn scar doesn’t bother him (an incorrect analysis of what bothers Scar about it, but a reasonable assumption), maybe the slightest edge of a powerplay in the sense of “you will be vulnerable, and I will be kind to you while you’re weak, but remember that if you try anything – especially with Grian – I can hurt you”. But mostly the first two.

“Easy,” murmurs Mumbo, for his ears only. “Easy now.”

And another micro-gesture, this one just for Scar, because now he’s agreed to “adopting” Scar, they need their own language too; need their own space, without Grian’s influence, because you just slapping another person onto the side of an existing dynamic is recipe for disaster. This is a first step towards working out how the two of them dance together, whether Scar realises it or not – and I think he probably doesn’t, because as good as Scar is with manipulating narratives, he’s pretty bad with people/“uncontrolled stories”.

Scar exhales, unsteadily, and dips his head in what might be a nod. “Yeah,” he mutters – twitches again, when Mumbo settles an arm across his shoulder, before leaning ever so slightly into the touch. Something in the motion of it reminds Mumbo of fresh-tamed wolves, eager for affection, fearful of violence, bristling with recently-feral pride. “Okay, okay, I get it. Behave, etcetera etcetera. I’ll play nice. I promise.”

Scar, again, misinterpreting things. Wilfully misinterpreting? A bit. But also the guy genuinely has zero idea that this whole thing is an elaborate relationship negotiation. He’s vaguely aware there’s a layer to the conversation he’s missing, but he assumes that it’s a “hey so Scar can stay, right, and you’re not going to kick me out for stealing a life, right?” which… yes, but it’s also a “and I might be a bit in love with him, but you’re my boyfriend and I love you, but also I don’t think I can stop loving him because I tried and it’s not working, and I don’t know what we do with this”. Which gets answered with a “I still love you, and I’m not angry, and I don’t mind you loving him, and we’ll see if I can learn to love him too”.

(At some point Mumbo’s going to refer to “my boyfriends”, and Scar’s going to be like “wait, who’s the second one”, and Grian is going to lose his shit laughing. Because, oh yeah, whoops, we forgot to tell Scar we’d adopted him as a third.)

(…For bonus comedy points, this happens after they’ve all slept together several times.)

That’s not what Mumbo meant, and he thinks Scar knows it. But he’s done enough pushing for one night. Instead, he opens his other arm, jerks his head in Grian’s direction. “Hey, Grian. What’re you waiting for? Get over here!”

Grian slots under his arm gratefully, easily, like he was made to fit there. It loosens something tight in Mumbo’s chest. “So you’re not going to dob us in to Martyn, then?” he asks, cheekily, a note of genuine worry buried deep enough to be barely audible. “I’ll make it up to him somehow, I promise, I just– I knew he wouldn’t say yes, if I asked, so–”

Weird ways in which Scar and Grian are the same: they’re incapable of just asking people for things. Scar because he doesn’t really have any friends, because he just has no idea how to make them and refuses to be emotionally vulnerable, and therefore would have to go and ask “strangers” which seems very intimidating; Grian because he bleeds emotions everywhere all the time, which hides the fact he does very little actual vulnerability, because he’s a little bit terrified of what might happen to him if he puts his heart on display out of an awareness of how damn tender the thing is, and therefore doesn’t want to ask because oh god what if he gets rejected.

It’s probably why they like each other so much. It’s probably why Mumbo ends up being so soft towards Scar in this, too, despite initially having good reason to be standoffish – reminds him of someone else he’s very fond of.

“Martyn decided that his loyalties lay elsewhere, whilst you were out on your rescue mission,” says Mumbo, with remarkably little bitterness. It’s hard to feel bitter, with Grian pressed warm against one side, Scar pressed fever-hot against the other. “So you’re safe. For now, anyway. You know how he gets about revenge, and all that nonsense.”

Something something the symbolism of Scar and Grian showing up hand in hand and waiting for Mumbo’s judgement, and now Mumbo between them with his arms around both of them.

Also more Scar/fire-related imagery, which is apparently my OTP for this fic.

“Yes,” says Grian, like he’s won something, which is an entirely inappropriate and entirely Grian response. “So Scar can have Martyn’s bedroom, then, is what I’m hearing.”

Look. I love Grian. I love all three of them, and their tenderness, and the subtle little relationship negotiations going on here. But Grian is fundamentally unhinged, especially in Third/Last Life, and refused to have a normal reaction to discovering one of his friends was a traitor. Horrible little goblin.

Mumbo hums, non-committal. “He could,” he says, and thinks of Scar and Grian, hand in white-knuckle hand. “Or we could drag the bed into our room. Sleepover time.”

Mumbo said Okay Maybe Scar Goodtimes Is Hot Actually. Maybe he gets a bit of “sleepover”. To, y’know, help with the trauma.

(Less flippantly, Mumbo’s explicitly acknowledging that there’s some trauma-bonding going on here and that maybe Scar needs a bit of safety and stability to get him through the night. Scar Goodtimes gets to keep his emotional support Grian, as a treat.)

“Oh!” Grian perks up at that, the top of one wing nudging against Mumbo’s elbow. Mumbo doesn’t even need to see them to read the body language written there; they’re traitorous tell-tales, every time, and he knows Grian like the back of his own hand. “Oh, a sleepover. My, my, Mumbo. How forward of you! What do you think, Scar? Are you willing to risk your good name and virtue to have a little Southlands sleepover with me and Mumbo?”

Scar shrugs one shoulder, and says nothing – but, for the first time since he walked through the front gates, that strange new half-smile of his reaches his eyes.

See, Scar genuinely thinks this is just a weird Southlands thing and/or a joke, and that Grian’s being hyperbolic. Grian is uh… not being hyperbolic. (Though possibly not for that very night, given fucking someone recently traumatised whilst they’re still partly in shock is a bad idea and also bad manners.)

[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.

[chasingfigments]

👀

First: Thank you for your patience!

Second: This snippet made me miss Steel Under Skin. XD What a fucked up fic this is.

One of my favorite character things about Steel Under Skin is just how difficult it is for Gladio to read Ignis when Ignis doesn't want to be read. Gladio certainly considers Ignis his friend, but they're not yet on the same level of knowing one another as they are in the game. And that means there is a whole bunch of opportunities for ambiguity and uncertainty as both of them deal with a lot of horrifying/terrible/sickening moments of violence between them, but especially in the scene just before this one.

But Gladio knows enough in this moment to recognize that Ignis has deliberately staged this--he could have left long before Gladio got here. So now the question is: what is the purpose of it?

To assuage Ignis's pride? To reassure Gladio that there's no resentment? For Ignis to reassure himself? To confirm that all of the intimate, awful, bloody moments between them won't alienate them forever? Something other reason that Gladio hasn't guessed at yet?

The next line that is cut off helps Gladio sort out what direction this conversation should probably take, but he's still guessing. He still isn't sure--can't be sure unless he asks outright and Ignis gives a straightforward answer.

And that's another thing I really enjoyed about SUS: that this two are trying so hard to be who they think they ought to be. That they think they need to flip a switch the moment they reach eighteen and be Grown Up Right Now so they can fulfill their duties.

Only the things that they think are required of them, the ones they've volunteered for and the ones they were born into, are really rather fucked up from any outsider POV. And maybe they get that, on some level, but they can't really acknowledge that either, because then they aren't Living Up To Their Destinies. And they can't fail in that.

[pixcldust]

𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐭 ;

pairing | iwaizumi hajime x gn! reader

wordcount | 1.5k

warnings | mild mention of death, slight angst i think, small letters on purpose

tags | ambiguous ending, friendship to something more, no beta bc im shy

a/n | i don't write gender neutral often (i barely write in 2nd pov tbh) so if i messed something up, pls let me know!! it’s 1am but i couldn’t sleep lmaoo i’ll try to sleep again after posting this.

the beginnings of a love story in three parts. 

i.

it starts in the summer, with you lounging on a deck chair, eating candy that turns your tongue blue. you’re wearing shorts and a tanktop, in one of your friends’ big backyard, watching them scream and laugh in the pool. the sun feels like hell on your bare skin but the laughter is infectious and you’re laughing with them. never mind that it’s your last year of senior high school and that after this, you may never see half of these kids again. there is only the here, the now, and it’s brighter than you’ve ever felt for most of your life.

he comes over, a wide smile on his tan face and pool water dripping off his hair. his fingers move deftly to flick water at you, laughing as he dries his hands and picks up his phone. despite flipping him off, you note his good mood - it’s a rare sight to see him play around so childishly like this. you find that you quite like it.

“done with swimming?” you ask. he nods, eyes on his phone. the first few beats of some hip hop song that you don’t recognise starts playing from its speakers.

“my fingers look like prunes,” he groans as he puts down his phone and splays out his fingers at you childishly. you scrunch your face up at him in return.  “plus they want to go eat pizza after this, and hanamaki is gonna take years to shower so i wanted to get a headstart.”

“we’re eating pizza after?” you roll your eyes. “damn these kids and their big appetites.”

“you’re not hungry, because you’ve been eating so much candy,” he wrinkles his nose at the packet of pop rocks in your hand. “that’s not good for you, y’know?”

there’s a pause, him staring at you and you staring at him - time in a frozen state - before you sigh and motion for his hand. “if you wanted some, you could’ve just asked.”

iwaizumi grins as you pour some on his hand. his smile gleams bright against his skin. “thank you.”

he throws them into his mouth as he runs off to take a shower, and you feel a smile curve your lips. it’s odd. your boyfriend isn’t here - he’s opted to train today, even though it’s probably the last time all of you will ever be close together like this - but you can feel your heart skipping the way it does when you’re with him.

ii. 

you and oikawa started dating at the beginning of your third year. 

it was bound to happen eventually; at least, that’s what most of your friends told you so. you have always been friends with tooru and iwa and, when you reached high school, makki and mattsun. tooru was always the popular one, iwa was the reliable one and you were the calm one. a package deal - girls, students in general, who were interested in oikawa and were too intimidated to approach iwa would come to you. frankly, you didn’t mind. everyone had had a crush on oikawa at least once, and it wasn’t like you were any different when you were younger.

what you didn’t expect was for him to confess to you in your second year. it’s burned in the back of your memory: under the shade of one of the staircases near the gym, in the middle of your lunch break, tooru’s face reddening in embarrassment. you said yes, because you’ve always found him funny and cute and attractive in all the ways more than physical and wasn’t that enough to make a good relationship? 

apparently not, since it’s been several months since you last had a proper conversation with him.

he’s in the gym again today, still training by himself, even though he’s already graduated. he’s going to go overseas, to continue his volleyball training in another team. you know this because that was what he told you the last time you two had a proper conversation. good luck, you said to him because you know that volleyball meant that much to him. never mind that he always, always, always put the sport before you, because even though he was your boyfriend, he was also one of your best friends and that meant supporting his dreams. you’re going to be amazing.

you can hear the squeak of volleyball shoes on hard floor, the thwack of ball against flesh, as you approach the gym doors. he’s there - alone, because school’s out for the end-of-term holidays - and he doesn’t immediately notice you standing there. his eyes are too focused on the ball as he sets to himself. he’s always too focused on the ball.

when he does see you there, he lets the ball drop and give you a smile. “hey y/n. what are you doing here?”

seeing his happy face chips at some of your initial confidence and your words falter at your lips, unwilling to come out. a deep breath because if not now, then when? would you really be okay with letting this relationship drag on and on? if there’s one thing you’re certain of, it’s this: you have fallen out of love with oikawa tooru. and he knows it.

“tooru, I think we should break up.”

it hurts a little, if you’re being honest, as you watch the smile slide off his face, giving way to a soft frown. you know he’s had to do this before, watch a person leave him because he was a little too selfish to give up volleyball for anything else, and you hated knowing that he was going through it again. your fault this time. but you know he’s seen this coming. even matsukawa has asked if you were doing okay in a rare bout of seriousness before. at the time, you didn’t know how to answer the question.

oikawa tooru is a lot of things, but he isn’t stupid. he should have seen this coming from miles away, a freight train hurtling at him with its headlights bright and glaring. it’s deliberate ignorance; oikawa saw the train. he just didn’t feel like stepping off the tracks.

“is this because of volleyball?” he asks, tilting his head. he doesn’t have an argument against you, and you know it’s because he’s felt the romantic love for you die off back to a platonic one. like you felt it. “if so, i’m sorry y/n, i didn’t mean to make you feel lonely-”

“it’s okay, tooru. i’m really proud of you, y’know? and... i hope we can stay friends.”

the last sentence sounds more like a question but he’ll understand. his frown disappears at your words, and while it’s not a smile, it’s something like acceptance and that’s good enough for you at the moment. picking up the ball, he nods. “me too.”

iii.

you’re in a tank top and shorts once again, under blistering heat, only this time they’re new clothes, and it’s just you and hajime. all your friends have grown up and out, dotted all across the country. you hum to yourself, stretching your fingers. hajime passes a packet of pop rocks to you.

“hey haji. have you ever thought about death?”

he eyes you suspiciously like you’re about to trick him with nothing but words, and it makes you want to laugh. “sometimes, yeah.”

makki and mattsun moved out of miyagi after high school opting to attend fancy universities in tokyo. tooru left japan completely - said he was going to train twice as hard overseas after the opportunity presented itself. that just left you and iwaizumi, attending the same college in miyagi. you didn’t mind and, despite iwa’s occasional huffs, he never seems to mind either.

and maybe it’s because the both of you are older now, because you’ve found someone who doesn’t mind the way you prefer to skip over small talk, but recently it feels like hajime has been becoming your source of energy more and more. after classes end, he’s quick to send you a text and you’re even quicker to respond - at this point, you’ve visited almost every cafe in miyagi. even the shitty ones, to hajime’s dismay and your amusement.

“we’re so old now, it feels like i’m on the brink of death,” you groan, pouring pop rocks straight into your mouth. they fizzle like miniature fireworks on your tongue. 

a magazine smacks you on the head but you can’t be bothered to turn and glare at him. you opt to glare straight ahead of you instead, to the pool and the few people in it. sunlight bounces off of the glittery water and your glare turns to a squint. “you’re 21, you’re not 71.”

“maybe it’s the heat getting to me.

“yeah, it’s seriously hot today,” iwaizumi knits his brows, sitting up in his seat. you steal a glance at his exposed biceps - bless his tank top - and feel a strange pound in your chest. opting to ignore it, your lips unfurl into a grin.

“sorry about that.”

the magazine thwacks you on the head again, but not before you see his lips curl into a amused smile to match yours. “shut up.”

all your friends have grown up and out, but your happiness is only beginning.

[severalspoons]

Long Rambling Trigun Meta Discussion 2

I *hate* the reply function in Tumblr. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t function. It doesn’t even open up a findable page so I can respond, and I can’t directly answer the reply. That’s why I reblog.

So, here’s the next best thing:

tiggymalvern

I don't recall anything like that fic you mention from either canon. It's a lovely idea, if only I could imagine Vash and Knives stopping arguing with each other for long enough to do it.

This fic I’m remembering was surprisingly hard to find, and now I’m wondering if it’s from FF.net rather than AO3. Will share once I find it!

The twins argue while doing it, IIRC, and have very different approaches. Luckily for the humans, in this fic the engineer likes the plant and takes care of it well, given how little is actually known about how to do so post-crash. Even so, Knives almost kills the engineer, but Vash stops him and leaves behind a little journal full of advice and encouragement. 

IMO, I feel like this is something Vash would be motivated to do more than Knives:

-- to repair his relationship with Knives

-- because he feels responsible for the people Rem saved

-- because he wants the bulb plants to be safe and happy

(listed in the order I thought of them)

But Knives would see this as slight progress towards Vash seeing things his way, so he’d go with it. What do you think?

tiggymalvern

I've never been entirely clear on the manga ending myself, and I think Nightow left it somewhat ambiguous deliberately. Vash and Knives are fighting, and then the earth forces attack them both, Livia intevenes and Vash and Knives fly off and

six months later we find Vash in hiding with the people who saved him, because Knives convinced them to, and then Knives plants an apple tree to help feed the peopl looking after Vash, and then he vanishes...

I assume he chose not to stay with humans and just went off somewhere, but it's left open

Interesting! Yeah, I got the sense it was supposed to be deliberately ambiguous, too. 

Many people say that Knives died giving his last energy to save Vash, to the point where I thought that was canon. 

No matter what happened with Knives and the tree, I have questions. If Knives planted the tree before dying or disappearing or whatever, I’d want to know where he got the apple seeds, and if providing the energy to make that tree survive on Gunsmoke killed him. If he turned into a tree (which I thought was the canon, but maybe not?), how? I can see why you didn’t interpret Knives as turning into a tree.

All I know for sure is, if Knives were dying, he’d want to do it on his own terms. Ideally in a way that would express his point and make an impression on Vash. I was going to say that creating a tree doesn’t seem like Knives’ style, but then I thought about the apple tree scenes in the anime. However that tree came to be, Vash would most likely associate it with happier times on the ship. Maybe he’d be fucked up enough to see it as a gesture of love. 

Maybe it was the closest thing to a gesture of love someone as manipulative and self-absorbed as Knives could manage...

tiggymalvern  Knives really is a person with no middle ground. When he believed Rem's teachings, he believed them wholeheartedly, that everything would turn out fine and people just needed to be given a chance. When he rejected those teachings and decided it was all just rubbish, he went maximum speed to the other extreme. Reject ALL humans, not just the individuals who had proven that they suck. And reject as in eradicate, not just avoid... 

I love Knives’ all-or-nothing way of being. Maybe because I know and love so many people with a little streak of that. And it’s so believable. Reminds me of a quote I read somewhere about how a misanthrope is a disillusioned idealist.

Knives thinks in utilitarian terms (”the greatest good for the greatest number with the least possible sacrifice”) as a kid for the few short scenes before he turns evil. He also seems to think in terms of groups rather than individuals (”humans,” “spiders,” “butterflies”). It saves him the grief Vash goes through at coming to know and lose so many people, but it also helps him justify a racist ideology. I love that about him, actually. If I were to write a Knives redemption fic, a key arc would be helping him learn to see others as individuals. I have a few paragraphs of something like that written...

Kids definitely need wonder and to see the beauty in the world, but it's also a good idea to mention the possibility of weird strangers offering candy that are best avoided. For these bizarre new non-human children, those warnings would have been extra pertinent, and maybe would have reduced the shock of what came after. Knives is definitely more mature than Vash in those flashbacks. Like you say, he wants to discuss issues with Vash, and Vash just parrots Rem. 

Agree.

I have a theory. Earth, in Trigunverse, seems a lot like our world, only worse.

I’ve seen a lot of people’s sense of wonder, beauty, fun, and curiosity squished. I was the weirdo in preschool, among other four year olds, for being too much like that. Maybe on Trigun Earth, a bleak place to begin with, that’s the norm. (And destroying people’s wonder/curiosity/etc. leads to depression and the ennui of modern life, but that’s another essay).

Some people, like those who run Waldorf schools, overreact by going to the opposite extreme. The worst, most ideologically rigid ones, deliberately wait to teach kids to read so they can explore the world unmediated by words a little longer. (And will even discourage kids who learn to read early, grr). Waldorf philosophy assumes young kids are basically sensing, feeling, and imagining beings, rather than thinking ones. 

I get the sense that Rem is one of these sorts. She was squashed and made to feel worthless for the way she saw the world. Maybe that’s part of the reason she was so depressed and needed Alex’s help. She’s raising the twins the way she wished she had been raised.

That sort of parenting wasn’t appropriate for a plant, of course. But no one had raised independent plants to adulthood before. No one knew what was appropriate. No one knew how to teach them about danger (or how not to). 

Growing up as a neurodivergent person in the Dark Ages, the only kid with allergies and sensory processing problems, etc., I understand all too well how badly things can go when even the most loving parents just don’t know what to do, and can’t find helpful information anywhere. Where helpful information isn’t just hard to find, but it doesn’t exist yet. 

So as critical as I’m being of Rem, I sympathize with her. She really didn’t have much to go on but her own knowledge and experience, and she bravely did the best she could.

Vash isn't thinking for himself yet, but he's a kid, so that's allowable. It does make it harder for Knives, though, who feels he has to be responsible for them both. 

You know, Knives does feel responsible for them both, and I hadn’t thought much about it and about the implications of that. No wonder he was so frustrated and furious. There’s definitely a sense of “something is deeply unfair and wrong” for a child trying to raise not only themselves, but their younger sibling(s).  Perhaps that’s part of the reason I saw Knives as caring about Vash, in his toxic, screwed up way. 

Plant biology is MASSIVELY confusing, and the more you try to piece it together, the more your head hurts LOL. But I think that's almost the point? ...Leaving the readers struggling to figure out the plants is the human perspective.

What do you think about the anime being so much from a human pov, especially considering that the most important characters in it are not?

Wolfwood is the support Vash needs to learn to control his plant powers among other things, the powers that have terrified Vash for so long that he ignored them. But Wolfwood isn't scared of them - or rather, he is, but not scared enough to abandon Vash because of them. He knows all about Vash, he knows all about July and the hole in the moon, he's seen Vash transform into some weird crazy thing with feathers, and Wolfwood still stays. Wolfwood lets Vash know that Vash's mistakes can be forgiven, and Vash is still a worthwhile person despite them. And because Wolfwood believes it, Vash can start to believe it. 

Between how well you put this and the dynamic itself, I’m...blown away and don’t know what to say. 

– “Vash, take care of Knives.” This breaks my heart because so far … he hasn’t. First he follows Knives around. Then abandons him. Then attacks him. I really do think Vash was trying. He followed Knives around for so long while being so angry with him for what he'd done, and yes, part of that was because he didn't want to be alone himself, but part of it was him trying to follow Rem's advice. 

Yeah, true, he did try at first. I undervalued it because by the time the series starts, that was far into the past and Vash probably doesn’t even remember it, but still.

In the manga, Rem specifically says, 'Vash, don't leave Knives alone,' because I think she recognises that Knives is prone to extremes and needs a balance. 

See, that instruction makes so much more sense. And I think the plants would have agreed. (Well, of course they would. They’re a collective consciousness, after all).

Rem probably also knew it’s bad for anyone’s health or sanity to be alone, and an emotionally unstable twin plant even more so. Knives would be in a solitary confinement of his own making.

Vash tried and tried to get Knives to change; he spent so much effort trying to explain why genocide wasn't the answer. But Vash failed, and eventually he recognised that he was always going to fail. So he left Knives, because he needed a life that wasn't that failure. He needed to do something to compensate for Knives. He took upon himself the responsibility of not only protecting the humans from Knives, but protecting the humans from the worst in themselves, which Knives' actions brought to the surface. And that is one hell of a lot to take on, and not a recipe for a happy life.

Yeah, that’s...a heroic life, but not a happy one. In a way, it seems almost as doomed as trying to change Knives. 

[invertedfate]

Random Ask Dump - Anniversary Edition (50+ REALLY OLD ASKS!)

Going through OLD AND CRUSTY ASKS to try and chip away at the inbox. HERE WE GOOOO...

That’s an interesting idea, and I could run it by Cake, but I think it would honestly be a LOT to track from a programming perspective. Especially ‘cause killing Sans is gonna result in a “bad ending,” so to speak.

An attempt was made by Undyne to have all three hang out at the same time. Papyrus was SUPER EAGER. ...but one thing led to another and there were many messy explosions of chemicals and lots of smoke. Alphys had to step in before things got out of hand. It was all very daunting for her. Pap and Undyne are VERY LOUD, VERY AMBITIOUS PEOPLE.

I actually have some ideas of some side comics I may do at some point! :o It’s just that right now there’s a lot going on.

I need to poke Carni about that at some point. He’s just been very busy with other projects!

Clearly he’s standing on the “out to lunch” sign.

I wanna say that it’s very possible in theory. :o It probably affects them differently since monsters’ emotional state affects their magic and their physical state.

I do like little easter eggs like that, though I’m not sure where I’d fit it in atm just ‘cause I already showed Pap’s room, haha.

I made the chase theme for Mad Dummy as well as Mad Mew Mew’s battle theme. @pinewsun​ made the battle theme for Mad Dummy, and @thomasthepencil​ made the Season Dude battle theme and MD’s overworld theme. :o

That’s a really fascinating conundrum! You’re absolutely right- if IF was a standalone game, then from a writing standpoint, having more subtle implications would make sense! The reason I chose a different approach for IF is because it’s set after Flowey’s already known to be evil and I like to give different POVs rather than stick to just Frisk’s.

That’s an interesting thing, actually- both fights lean heavily on the fourth wall. Both are treated as climaxes for their given routes. It’s funny because Asriel’s fight is a lot more straightforward and less meta by comparison.

I agree! The thing with Papyrus is that he’s extremely powerful- he just doesn’t want to kill. But it’s a deliberate choice not to kill- he’s able to force his attacks to do next to no damage. He’s also pretty darn crafty, as he made the Gauntlet himself. It really is just a case of Undyne’s personal biases and concern for him.

That was a deliberate choice. :O Papyrus is very influential toward Frisk. He is best skeleboi.

Papybot loves you, anon! He just wants to feed you WHOLESOME SPAGHETTI!!!

It is possible to whistle through teeth. ...alternatively, magic. As for the music, Undertale implies that the music is heard! Maybe it’s just... a thing that exists in this world. Or it’s just meant to be a silly meta joke. I try to keep it somewhat ambiguous other than occasional nods to it. Chara’s pants are lighter because I just... felt like it, I guess? Haha. I wanted their feet and pants to stand out more from each other, so they have khaki pants. As for the Undyne fight being animated, well, this ask is old by now, but Sparks was the one who was down for it.

Well, the teaser’s been out for a long time now, but that’s the idea! It’s also why this has been in production for so long. The Determinator has some really over the top attacks (that weren’t even shown in the teaser), and Sparks animated in Photoshop. That’s how hardcore he is.

Shhhhh. Don’t give me ideas. I’m already slacking on Tem Village. :P

Sometimes I do have slumps and burnouts (see Antipode’s lengthy hiatus), but breaks lead to me being refreshed and coming back with even more enthusiasm than before!

Oh, there are a lot of these throughout the comic. For instance...

Flowey appears in a few background shots in the Ruins!

When Sans says “or maybe...” he looks at the empty flower pot. This was one of the earliest bits of foreshadowing about who created Flowey, and nobody noticed it at the time!

The MTT vending machines initially look like this but have helpful items.

And then they look like this, with an angry face and pose- Mad Dummy has possessed them!

As of Part 38, it’s been revealed that he did first meet Asgore as “Santa.” As for whether or not he knows the truth, time will tell. :o

Oh, these are excellent suggestions for calls! I’ll try to keep these in mind.

So, I believe Glyde uses the Mysterious Door motif. Jerry uses the motif in its battle theme- I believe it’s a mix of original motif and Wrong Number song?

Sans is a master of power napping. He probably gets a decent amount of sleep, though.

There are a lot of ways to interpret Pap’s lack of sleep! In IF, he can get by without it, but he also has a lot of reasons to avoid sleeping. Some reasons include productivity but also due to a looooot of heavy baggage. More on that later.

I think sleep can definitely make monsters healthier. Rest = better mental health as well as physical health, and with how important mental and emotional help is for monsters, that’s very important!

They just really like socks. Socks are warm. Socks are slinky. And googly eyes are the best. So they took on the form of a really eccentric sock puppet and sock collector. Scandalous.

It also has Alphys’ motif, as the two are the leaders of the royal guard!

I would say the lack of Asgore as an influence has left Undyne slightly less grounded? Like, she had Toriel and Gerson in her life, but her relationship with Toriel is... definitely not quite as close? Like, Toriel by that point kept people at an arm’s length due to losing multiple children (including one from old age). So, while they were on friendly terms until the aftermath of the DT experiments and the tapes’ release, it was more like mutual respect and a sorta professional relationship with Undyne admiring Toriel and wanting to spare her from more heartache.

That is a really interesting idea. While that didn’t happen, I do need to maybe revisit the grumpy dog at some point or another. He’s still a lil’ salty.

I think in terms of layout it won’t change much, but there will be new/different content for sure. :O

Mad Dummy’s base design is mostly original, but she has a wig + headband from DIO from Jojo Part 3! Fun fact: While MTT has Kamina shades, Papyrus’ goggles are loosely based on Simon from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in terms of color. :O

So basically, when Asriel defeated Frisk, he had the power over the timeline to reset it as he pleased- in theory. However, that power was overwhelming for him, and due his lack of understanding OF said power and one last ditch attempt at resisting from Chara, things went wrong.

There is a track that takes some inspiration from Rage Awakened. It’s not released, and it’s not exact, but it won’t be released for a WHILE. Like until the part comes out.

I think it’s just the fact that tacos are so random. Like, my biggest beef in that regard was that OG Underswap had a lot of arbitrary replacements for things in UT and not all of them made sense. Like, if Sans was to make a foreign food, ramen would’ve made more sense due to Alphys being weeb trash, haha.

Okay, so the rough timeline iiiis... Falling: - Cyan - Green - Orange - Blue - Purple - Yellow Dying: - Cyan - Orange - Blue - Purple - Yellow - Green

You know, it’s funny because this ask is super old, but that’s basically sorta what happened. :O It became a beach-themed resort.

Never forget MTT fangirl Temmie’s pool escapades.

I think Forgespring for me because I had to make the tileset myself (it took a few months, I think?), but Aquarius was definitely in the works for a while. But once I had the tileset from Fours, the rooms were very easy to design!

That woulda been pretty rad! Maybe I can find another spot for it one day, haha.

I think for Dohj, I’d have to check with Fours, but I’m certainly not opposed at some point? Right now, the following chars can take questions: - Frisk - Papyrus - Sans - Undyne - Alphys - Napstablook - Mettaton - Asgore - Chara - Flowey

Cyan appears in Part 45! :O No answer about orange for now, tho.

I do have vague ideas for Tem village. I just haven’t had time to go back and do it.

Stay tuned and you may find out! :O

Hmmmm... I had a lot of fun with MTT SPIRAL and the Determinator, tbh. They were both very time consuming, but I love how they came out! Also, buff Jerry.

Turnabout Storm. :)

It’s a really awesome fan crossover that works way better than it should. :P

None taken! We know that with headcanons, everyone is gonna have their own interpretations. These are just the voices we liked for Fireglobe Production, but everyone has their right to their favored interpretations!

Yeah, Knight Knight is one of the coolest CORE mercs in the original game. It was fun to repurpose them for Inverted Fate as royal guards. :o It made room for unique encounters in the CORE in the form of them robots- as Undyne would rather use machines than other monsters to do her work.

Personally, I see it as an Asriel motif, but I also acknowledge that at one point it WAS gonna be an Asgore motif. Toby has a habit of just using whatever music works for a scene (see sans. at the snail farm.)

I do have a few ideas, though I won’t say for what yet. :o

He’s likely made blueprints for that train. :P

It probably would just have different flavor text/progression!

So basically, I treat the starting motif for BAaTH/Power of NEO is just a “true hero” motif.

MTT is definitely major in IF! As for whether or not he’ll have a hangout, time will tell. There’s definitely more to resolve with him, though.

I’m gonna remake at least a few of the older tracks, including Regret. My goal is just to bring the OST to a similar standard of quality.

So, animated parts coming up: Part 47, Part 49, Part 50. There may be some other parts, but we’re gonna wanna scale things back for a little bit for the sake of all our sanities.

I go with both. ;)

Honestly, probably fairly similar to the bully fight in the Ruins- which is why I ultimately decided not to do one. Both fill similar archetypes, though I think if I did do a battle, I woulda still had Flowey interrupt at the end and scare them off.

It’s a very emotional scene. Far more tragic than her geno death, IMO.

Well, the main goal in that regard is the remasters (Part 9 is in progress). Otherwise, I do think these hiatuses are good for working ahead. I’ve still gotta do more work, though, because my buffer this time around is a lot smaller from the trial-hiatus buffer. Alas!

Honestly, the website is the best thing to happen to IF. It’s allowed us to do so much with the comic’s presentation that would be impossible with imgur. NORIX IS THE BEST...

[lostinthewinterwood]

Chocolate Box Letter 2020

Dear Chocolatier…

  Thank you for writing for me!  I hope you find inspiration, if you need it, somewhere in this letter, but either way, good luck with your writing!

(some of the prompts are… rambly and disjointed; the lengths vary wildly, but dw I love them all.  I hope the rambly ones still make sense; this letter is uhhh almost 3k and my brain is Tired.)

General DNWs:

Rape/non/dub-con; non-canonical major character death*; smut/graphic sex scenes; heavy angst; hurt no comfort; graphic depictions of deliberate and methodical self-harm**; graphic depictions of suicide;  gore; heavy gender dysphoria; grimdark; complete downer endings; character bashing; incest; cringe comedy; a/b/o; mpreg; full setting AUs (canon-divergence, even significant canon-divergence, is fine); graphic eye trauma; graphic and/or permanent hand trauma (unless the setting can provide a more-or-less fully functional prosthetic or equivalent); issuefic.

*exceptions noted below.

**I don’t include things like, say, punching a wall in a fit of emotion under this. however, something like cutting would not be appreciated.

  General Likes:

I like family/friendship stories, things that play with canon in interesting ways, honestly… a lot of things.  I don’t know. articulating things I like is hard.

I’m an absolute sucker for identity porn/secret/mistaken identity drama, as well as non-sexualized/non-fetishized crossdressing (either direction, and especially if for plot-relevant disguise purposes!) and if you combine them, well, I’ll be a very happy camper.

Other things I like include wriggling into canon and exploring something left unexplored by said canon, what-if stories featuring some sort of canon divergence, and plotty fic, if you want to write something long enough for that to be relevant.

  Order of fandoms:

·        Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

·        Super Powereds – Drew Hayes

·        Tortall – Tamora Pierce

·        Carmen Sandiego (Cartoon 2019)

·        The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)

·        Frozen (Disney Movies)

·        Little Women (2019)

·        Original Prompts

·        Crossovers

    Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren (Star Wars Sequel Trilogy)

So uh I may be having a slight case of Feels™ over these two, though tbh I’m not entirely sure what those feelings are exactly.  I don’t know what exactly I’d most want, though I’d be interested in explorations of their evolving emotions in relation to each other, especially through Kylo Ren/Ben’s whole death/rebirth thing.  What-ifs are another thing; what if, say, Ben didn’t die?  What happens, then, since they’d have to actually deal with what he’s done?  Feel free to retcon the kiss (which I thought was rather devoid of chemistry; in general their dynamic came across to me more as weirdly sibling-ish, especially after the Death Star duel) to a hug or something, if you want.

If you want to go to a lighter place, I can also see all sorts of shenanigans emerging after they discover their Force-teleportation skills.

Also feel free to retcon Rey’s parentage, if that is where your heart takes you: might she be Luke’s secret child?  Leia’s?  A descendant of Obi-Wan Kenobi and, say, Satine Kryze?

Apart from that I’d prefer no full-setting AUs; canon divergence is fine, and if you go that route you can pick a divergence point as far back as you want.

Feel free to include whatever other characters are necessary for the story you want to tell.

(And also do keep in mind that you can absolutely cut off someone’s hand here, or for the Star Wars crossover farther down; in this franchise it is a goddamn motif.)

    Super Powereds – Drew Hayes

Adam Riley & George Russel | Relentless Steel (Super Powereds)

I’m utterly fascinated by the relationship these two have; the interplay of Adam’s… vendetta, maybe?  I’m not sure what the right word for it is… and the fact that George also serves him as a mentor/almost-parental, in some ways, figure.  And, you know, that Adam (maybe) kills him.  We don’t actually see that; for all we know he made a different choice.

Consider this an exception to my “non-canonical MCD” DNW, since it’s deliberately ambiguous in canon; you can kill George, if that’s where your muse takes you.

  Alice Adair | Legacy & Vince Reynolds | Jack of All (Super Powereds)

Their friendship/cousin relationship is Wholesome and I love it.  Any point in the timeline, post-canon, all of it is Good and Welcome.  Do they form a legacy children/villains’ kids club? They’re secret cousins; untangling the mess that is the past; so much juicy juicy stuff to work with!!

  Phillip Adair | Globe & Charles Adair | Alchemist (Super Powereds)

Brother vs brother! O the drama! But also, they grew up together; they were once best friends; and Charles grew hard and it all fell apart—give me their childhood, maybe, or HCP years or young heroes before Shelby’s powers grew too much for her, or lean into the tragedy of what comes later…

    Tortall – Tamora Pierce

Numair Salmalín | Arram Draper & Varice Kingsford (Tortall)

Numair Salmalín | Arram Draper & Varice Kingsford & Ozorne Muhassin Tasikhe (Tortall)

Ozorne Muhassin Tasikhe & Numair Salmalín | Arram Draper (Tortall)

Varice Kingsford & Ozorne Muhassin Tasikhe (Tortall)

I love these kids, okay?  And I wish they could all just… be okay.  But of course they won’t be; we already know what becomes of them, after all.

There’s a lot to explore here, with these three in their varying combinations of course.  Right now I’m most interested in the pre-Wild Magic timeline—what was Varice and Ozorne’s dynamic before Arram came along? what little snippets of things happen offscreen during the timeline of Tempests and Slaughter? how does Arram gain his black robe; how does Ozorne feel about that? Varice? how does Numair end up in exile, and how do the others feel about that whole affair?—but really I’d also be interested in something set during or around the time of Emperor Mage, from any of their POVs.  We get all the story there from Daine, who is great! but she doesn’t know the history between the three of them, not intimately as they do, and I’d love any of their emotional reactions to being together again under such strained circumstances, so many years after everything fell apart.

  Numair Salmalín & Myles of Olau (Tortall)

He was on a mission, was he not, when he became that hawk at the beginning of Wild Magic?  (please ignore if I am Wrong there.)  So how did they meet?  Why did Numair become an agent?  All sorts of questions, here…

  Prince Stiloit Tasikhe & Varice Kingsford (Tortall - Pierce)

Stiloit seems so… calm, and level-headed, especially when compared with Ozorne who is not.  And he clearly finds Varice interesting, and her company valuable.  So maybe tell me something about that—what does he think of her?  She of him?  What if, perhaps, he didn’t die when he does?

  Keladry of Mindelan & Nealan of Queenscove (Tortall)

They have a BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP and also ye gods when I reread First Test at like 19 (having first read it at 10) I was struck by how very, very fifteen Neal is in that book and it’s hilarious.  But more seriously—Neal’s PoV on things would be fantastic, since we only see him through Kel’s eyes and he doesn’t let her see everything about himself.

  Keladry of Mindelan & Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie's Peak (Tortall - Pierce)

What a beautiful mentorship relationship, I love them.  Also, how does Raoul feel about this open girl page?  Who’s so determined, and has such potential in how she could become more, in an area he knows about (that being military command)—how does he feel about her, living her best life; how does he contextualize it in his intimate knowledge that Alanna could not do what she is doing—and yet it was Alanna, with her deception, who allowed this to be.

  Alanna of Pirate's Swoop and Olau & Numair Salmalín

The renowned lady knight-healer-mage and the black robe on the run from Carthak! How did they meet, anyway?  They’re something like the same age, I think, or at least he’s no more than ten years her junior.

  Alanna of Pirate's Swoop and Olau & Thom of Trebond (Tortall - Pierce)

My poor Important Destiny Twins… Look I just, I want some content with poor Thom, right?  I’d rather here that we set the story before his death, or that we make it an AU where he gets to live.

    Carmen Sandiego (Cartoon 2019)

Shadowsan & Hideo (Carmen Sandiego 2019)

There’s… so little of this stated or shown overtly, really, but I’m fascinated.  I can’t get over it.  Just tell me about the brothers, please.

    The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)

Runaan/Ethari & Rayla (The Dragon Prince)

Family fluff!  Or angst!  Or turn round and give them a reunion!  All depends on where in the timeline you pick, really.

(there’s a fic on ao3 with the tag “this fanfiction written by the ETHARI LOOK IN THE FUCKING WATER gang” and honestly that is just such a mood.)

  Amaya & Sarai (The Dragon Prince)

…I don’t have much to say here really, just that I love me some sibling dynamics.

  Callum & Ezran (The Dragon Prince)

A king by birthright, a prince only by adoption, who by age/maturity would probably be better-suited to ruling… look idk just, bros okay???

Maybe something when they were younger, or canon-era, or… idk I love them.

  Callum & Ezran & Rayla (The Dragon Prince)

Friendship! Angst! The gang’s all here!  If you want you can include rayllum but for this prompt at least I’d rather it be lowkey.

  Claudia & Soren (The Dragon Prince)

I am heartbroken over these kids and just—I need more content with them.  Even if it makes me sad.

  Callum & King Harrow (The Dragon Prince)

There are a lot of complicated feelings I have about them—how clearly Harrow loves his stepson, and how even after more than a decade, Callum still isn’t quite comfortable with his stepfather.

    Frozen (Disney Movies)

Agnarr/Iduna (Frozen)

How did they get together?  Why does Iduna stay with Agnarr; why doesn’t she just go home?  How does that revelation conversation go—when does it happen?  How do they come to decide to block Elsa’s powers; when/how do they decide to sail for Ahtohallan?

  Kristoff & Ryder Nattura (Frozen)

Reindeer bros!!  What did Kristoff do while Anna and Elsa were off doing the plot stuff?  Does he go with the Northuldra?  I love the dynamic between these two; it’s adorable and there’s so painfully little of it.

  Yelena & Mattias (Frozen)

So clearly they know each other, right? It’s been thirty-four years, and they clearly have some sort of sniping thing going on but they don’t seem to be actively antagonistic towards each other.  How do they feel about each other, really? How have they interacted in the past?  Is there anything there?  What about after Mattias goes back to Arendelle?

  Anna & Elsa (Frozen)

There is just.  There’s a profound tragedy here—they’re best of friends till they’re five and eight or so, then they don’t interact for thirteen years, they have three years together, and then they go off together to the Enchanted Forest and Elsa doesn’t come back to live in Arendelle, while Anna must return… I don’t know.  Tell me about that, maybe.  Or give me sweet fluff about them as children.  Or something.

  Anna/Kristoff (Frozen)

They’re adorable and I love them and I really just want more.  Maybe something from between the movies—how do they navigate forming a relationship, when he was raised by trolls and she’s been so isolated?

    Little Women (2019)

Amy March/Theodore Laurence (Little Women 2019)

…I don’t know, they’re cute, Laurie is a disaster, I love seeing Amy grow up, I hunger for moar content with them.

  Beth March & Mr. Laurence (Little Women 2019)

This has a lot of potential for cute/sad father/daughter dynamics, I think!  And I’d love more of it.

  Friedrich Bhaer & Josephine March (Little Women 2019)

Friedrich Bhaer/Josephine March (Little Women 2019)

I just want cute content with Jo and her dynamic with this man who actually respects her and her writing okay?  Maybe something like, I don’t know, navigation of boundaries around Jo’s writing and his criticism thereof… I don’t know.  Have fun with them.  And I really don’t care if it’s shipfic or not.

  Theodore "Laurie" Laurence & Josephine March (Little Women 2019)

Theodore Laurence & Josephine March (Little Women 2019)

Laurie is still a disaster but I love him anyway, and their friendship is sweet, and I need more content™.

    Original Prompts

In general: I’m not super picky about how shippy the shipfic gets; most of the ship prompts here would, I think, work as well for gen, excepting the suitor and the princess (which is not to say I’m asking that it be gen, obviously I’m not, but if your muse takes you that direction then go for it).  Likes I put up top still apply down here.

In terms of settings, I especially like high fantasy, space fantasy, or, if relevant, Classic Superhero City Setting, but I’m open to just about anything.

I’m also not tremendously picky about the genders of the characters involved; if it isn’t stated within the prompt, go wild, but please do stick to standard English pronouns; I have a lot of difficulty reading things with neopronouns.

Most of these pairings are prompts in and of themselves, but I’ll add in some bits of commentary for each one.

  Disgraced Vampire Queen Moonlighting As A Barista/Exhausted Vampire Hunter In Search Of Caffeine

Okay, so I just think this has great potential for absolute hilarity, and identity shenanigans aplenty.

  Dragon & Human Child (Original Work)

I love dragons.  I love playing with dragon-lore, though here I’d appreciate it being a relationship wherein the dragon is not evil, at least not to the child.

  Female Crossdressing General/Female Crossdressing Enemy General (Original Work)

So uh from my general likes, it should be… fairly obvious what called to me here lmao.  But there’s such potential here!  The drama!  Do they know each others’ real gender?  Do they know that they’re on opposing sides?  How does this romance across the battlefield work?  Is it even across the battlefield—are they at war, or just generally enemies?

  Female Failed Chosen One & Female New Chosen One

Such delicious depths to delve here… why did the first one fail?  What’s her relationship with her successor?  What have they been chosen for?  The setup of this makes me think that the failed chosen one is an adult of some age that’s distinctly older than the new one, who I’ve been imagining as an older child or young adult, but you should follow your muse there.

  Female Ship's Captain & Grumpy Stowaway Orphan Rebel

What kind of ship are they on, anyway?  Sailing ship?  Spaceship?  What’s the orphan rebelling against—an Evil Empire?  The Man?  Something else?

  Female Suitor Sent As An Insult To Ruling Monarchs/Princess Uninterested In Male Suitors

This seems like… I don’t know, there’s just such potential for dancing around each other and Misunderstandings™ about what’s going on.  Is this the princess’s Gay Awakening?  Has she known for a while why she’s not into the male suitors?  Why was this female suitor selected for the insult?

  Injured Male Superhero/Male Supervillain Who Saves His Life

I love superhero identity shenanigans, and ambiguous morals, and I’d love to dive into the emotional turmoil that results from this rescue decision—why does the supervillain do it?  How does the hero feel about being saved by his enemy?

  Musician/Dancer with magical powers (Original Work)

Another trope I love that I didn’t mention before is magic music and magical arts in general, so this here is right up my alley.

  Portal Fantasy Protagonist & Their Mentor In A Trade Useful In Both Worlds (Original Work)

…Look, idk man this is just sweet and wholesome and I Want.

  Retired Male Superhero/Male Supervillain Who Keeps Seeking Him Out Because He Misses Him

Is this not just the plot of Megamind?  In all seriousness, though, I feel about the same here as I do in the injury situation; I love me some hero/villain dynamics in general.

  Witch & Witch's Apprentice

Mentor and student!  Always a fun time.  I’m picturing this as some pseudo-historical or straight alternate-world setting more than modern, but follow your muse here.

  Wounded Werewolf/Female Apprentice Witch who Begrudgingly Rescues him (OW)

Honestly I feel like the dynamic here will probably scratch the same itch that the hero/villain pairings do.  Clearly I have a Type.

    Crossovers

Oliver Queen (DC's Arrowverse) & Matt Murdock (Daredevil(TV))

Local Vigilante Man With Many Issues Meets Counterpart From Another Universe would be the headline here, probably.  I don’t know.  I think they’d be fun to bounce off each other.

For reference though I haven’t watched all of either show: I’ve seen the first four seasons of Arrow in their entirety and some of what comes later, and I’ve seen the first two seasons of Daredevil.  You can reference later events, I’m not currently really following either show and am not particularly worried about spoilers, but without some degree of context I’ll be fairly lost.

  Shmi Skywalker (SWPT) & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren (SWST)

How do these two meet?  Is it time travel nonsense?  Shmi as a Force ghost?  Both of them in the afterlife?  And if it’s before Ben’s redemption but after his Fall, I do rather hope she’s Disappointed™ in him.

  Vince Reynolds | Jack of All (Super Powereds) & Midoriya Izuku (My Hero Academia)

Look.  Look.  All I have ever wanted since I started watching My Hero Academia (which… I haven’t seen much of, but don’t worry about spoilers I legitimately do not care) is to see Vince meet with the character who I immediately internally dubbed tiny green Vince.  How did this happen? Frankly I neither know nor care.  I just want to see it happen.

Thank you for writing me fic!!

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

one thing i find peculiar is that ghosts are mentioned in asoiaf (ghost of harrenhal, theon as the ghost of winterfell, etc); but are there ever any "actual" ghosts? like do ghosts or other guidance from the past canonically exist, or are they just something people believe in like in reallife? I'm leaning towards the latter, but I'm curious what I might've missed when reading.

Just stories about ghosts – as we’ve never actually seen any on page live (so to speak) in a POV, we can’t be sure they’re real. Though there’s a kind of might-have-been, where GRRM wrote a Tyrion chapter where he met the Shrouded Lord when pulled underwater at the Sorrows, but then tossed it out (probably because of his preference of keeping the presence of gods and other supernatural beings subtle and indirect) and replaced it with a nightmare instead.

As for guidance from the past, there are the Old Gods, who are canonically a group mind of greenseers bound to weirwood trees – and we know from Bran’s experience that he can reach out to the past and the present – so perhaps a greenseer reaching out to the future is also possible. They have visions of the future, so why not be able to talk to the people in the future too? (Who would experience it as a visit from the past.) Time is an illusion, to a tree all times are one.

Also, there are odd dreams of the dead that may have a level of reality to them:

That night he dreamt that he was back in the Great Sept of Baelor, still standing vigil over his father’s corpse. The sept was still and dark, until a woman emerged from the shadows and walked slowly to the bier. “Sister?” he said.But it was not Cersei. She was all in grey, a silent sister. A hood and veil concealed her features, but he could see the candles burning in the green pools of her eyes. “Sister,” he said, “what would you have of me?” His last word echoed up and down the sept, mememememememememememe.“I am not your sister, Jaime.” She raised a pale soft hand and pushed her hood back. “Have you forgotten me?”Can I forget someone I never knew? The words caught in his throat. He did know her, but it had been so long…“Will you forget your own lord father too? I wonder if you ever knew him, truly.” Her eyes were green, her hair spun gold. He could not tell how old she was. Fifteen, he thought, or fifty. She climbed the steps to stand above the bier. “He could never abide being laughed at. That was the thing he hated most.”“Who are you?” He had to hear her say it.“The question is, who are you?”“This is a dream.”“Is it?” She smiled sadly. “Count your hands, child.”One. One hand, clasped tight around the sword hilt. Only one. “In my dreams I always have two hands.” He raised his right arm and stared uncomprehending at the ugliness of his stump.“We all dream of things we cannot have. Tywin dreamed that his son would be a great knight, that his daughter would be a queen. He dreamed they would be so strong and brave and beautiful that no one would ever laugh at them.”“I am a knight,” he told her, “and Cersei is a queen.”A tear rolled down her cheek. The woman raised her hood again and turned her back on him. Jaime called after her, but already she was moving away, her skirt whispering lullabies as it brushed across the floor. Don’t leave me, he wanted to call, but of course she’d left them long ago.

–AFFC, Jaime VII

Was Jaime given a true dream, a visit from his mother’s spirit? Or is his subconscious merely accepting the truth of his lost hand, and projecting his confusion about his identity into his mother’s words? We don’t know. I’m not sure if it’s important that we know. The mystery and ambiguity may be what’s the most important thing here. (See also the question of how real Jaime’s cave dream of Rhaegar and the Kingsguard was, and the question of why Jaime has these true dreams to begin with.)

But since GRRM is deliberately increasing the level of magic throughout the series – and we do know for a fact that the dead can be resurrected – we may eventually get indisputable proof of the existence of ghosts, too. We’ll just have to see…

[tsunrugi]

So I have a lot of thoughts about Ares that I haven’t been writing down/sharing on here! I was going to go through point by point with that trailer they did a few months ago, going in to my personal opinions/predictions for each team, situation, and what I think that means for the characters in them… but then I realised I really just want to talk about Teikoku. So i’m gonna. do that.

so aliea is a super influential arc for a lot of characters, and three of those have ended up at teikoku - sakuma, fudou and kazemaru (just mentally add + genda every time i mention sakuma, i love him but unfortunately he doesn’t get built on much after aliea). and actually the minute hino said this was an alternate timeline i was v. concerned in regards to the development for these characters bcs i see them as being v important to them growing up in to strong healthy beautiful adults! very briefly:

- it reaffirms sakuma’s sense of self in a teikoku w/out kidou. it helps him define himself w/out kidou. also like it’s super fucking mature of him to be able to encourage kidou to go to raimon when he knows it’ll hurt him in the process!! props for sakuma, look at all that Character Growth.

- it sets up fudou’s whole deal. on subsequent viewings it actually also sets up his isolation which is super super important for his later development.

- it shifts kazemaru’s perspective, shows us (and him) how destructive it can be to cling to things like being the best, how having high standards for yourself can, when left unchecked, be self destructive. the whole dark emperors thing makes him grow up very fast and kind of refocuses his priorities in sport (and life?).

so in ares, these things haven’t happened. maybe they won’t happen! that concerns me because i love that these things happened because it’s a testament to how well i11 develops its characters subtly and continuously through the series. i want to have faith but lbr, this is going to be one fucking crowded series. here’s maybe my thoughts re: all of these characters being together, on what appears to be the most fucked team in the competition. like, rip teikoku, you’re not getting anywhere and it’s not fair because you’re beautiful and you deserve it.

first up with sakuma. he’ll probably suffer enough being a captain on a team coached by kageyama, but i’m curious to see exactly how. not just because i enjoy suffering, but because kageyama brand suffering is pretty bland at this point, so the real question is - will this suffering bring about as nice character moments as shin teikoku did? shin teikoku was such a good story arc. it had purpose in the overall season as well as for the characters involved! and i’ll say it again, i really love how sakuma Grew because of it. it takes a lot to own up to your own mistakes, let alone as big as the one he made. he wasn’t just trying to absolve kidou of his guilt by telling him he was better at raimon: he was also in a way repenting himself, giving himself a stern talking to, to try and see past his own desires and fears and paranoia and to fight his loneliness with his friend’s happiness. it sounds so petty but this can be hard!! fomo is a Real Thing. and i think this kind of shapes sakuma later, in ffi - he gets setback after setback but he works through it and it’s Brilliant. he works hard to get back in to shape so he can play again. he works even harder to try and be on the representative team, and then gets knocked back. picks himself up and keeps going. puts aside his own beef with kageyama to support kidou. he works on himself constantly, physically and mentally and just As A Person, and it all starts with that guilt from shin teikoku. will ares have these moments for him?

i can see the whole “kidou come back to teikoku :cccccc” thing being solved by a casual conversation. it might even be OFF SCREEN. and that feels super anti-climactic considering the lasting impact of shin teikoku? what i want is for sakuma to lose it again - maybe have his anger at his own inability as captain boil over, have him lash out at kageyama in the Worst Possible Way. he’d have to be isolated. he’d have to ignore support from genda and kazemaru and whatever interaction he has with kidou. but it would be FUN and we also get to have his development and learning growth and i’d be happy*

i want to jump in with kazemaru next. because he’s kind of similar with sakuma in how dark emperors impacted his character, only his attachment was to the idea of winning/being the best rather than a person or idealised team/friendship situation. kazemaru doesn’t look like he’s in a good position in aliea which ngl gives me Life, but the question is - will this lead to his realisation and reconfiguration of his toxic mindset?

there’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve, or with having ambition or goals. but we all know how that ended for kazemaru, because of the way he internalised loss and failure and was eventually tempted by pure power. he’s very de-powered in ares. he has to play second fiddle to KAGEYAMA, of all fucking people, and idk i got the vibe from the trailer that he’s trying to start a coup with sakuma at least to usurp it all. but… is this consistent with s1 kazemaru, or even early aliea kazemaru? he feels very ffi kazemaru already. again, no doubt he’ll Suffer, but there was something to dark emperors that was so shocking, so impactful, that you can’t help but want something just as big? i don’t think there’s space for it in the ares story. and like sakuma, i don’t think he’s isolated to the point he was in aliea for it to happen all that naturally. so the question is - will his toxic mindset get addressed? will the dark parts of his ambition be dealt with, or will they still be there ready to explode?

i think that’s my major concern. aliea built kazemaru’s dark emperor turn so well. i don’t want that aspect of his character to just be ignored like it was never a thing, because imo it’d make the whole thing feel less like natural, human development and more like contrived plot device. and yeah, i know this is fiction, i know things have to happen for the plot, but i like i11 because it does treat character seriously, and does have the plot evolve along character lines. even in s1 kazemaru talks about how he wants to fight on the world stage. his break in s2 is believable. his stress, his fear, his anxiety, his despair, it’s all believable! please let elements of that stay in whatever he has to go through in ares.

and now for fudou! i love fudou. i was v. concerned when he turned up in the outer code and seemed Actually Stable. see, the thing with these three in aliea is that they were all isolated (sakuma you could argue had mentally separated his own suffering from genda’s, when you consider the extend he went to in shin teikoku in comparison). and they all dealt with that isolation by taking the power of the aliea meteorite. sakuma and kazemaru did that with a whole lot of passion. they let it consume them. fudou… didn’t. fudou was in control. and he seems to discard it without having to break like the other two did.

fudou is so interesting, i’d recommend an aliea rewatch just focusing on him. he’s all about the calculated revenge agains the world. he wants chaos, but he himself is not chaotic. he wants it to come apart around him, but to stay above it all. that’s why the only real moment of shock for him comes when kageyama rubs it in his face that he’s just as much of a pawn as the rest of them. this is a Deep Cut for him. this is Huge. and it’s huge because, as much as he wants to stay separate, he is still insanely affected by his family situation. it follows him in to ffi in that he can’t open up or trust any of his teammates, and how he deliberately antagonises them to keep them away. he doesn’t want, closeness. he doesn’t think he needs it, even though in many ways he craves it (snarky comments to himself that just serve to show how lonely he is, the fact that 90% of his hissatsu are combo moves, etc).

ANYWAY. why does this matter? well, in what we’ve seen of him in ares he’s…. playing nice? he’s sitting quietly and listening? he’s involved in team play? HE’S WEARING THE NO. 10 JERSEY JFC. this fudou already feels post-ffi. i can give them the benefit of the doubt - he doesn’t know why he’s at the teikoku meeting, and he doesn’t seem to have an established relationship with kageyama. maybe he’s just playing it save, sussing things out. but i hope there is some chaos. i hope he doesn’t play nice from the get-go. ffi was really fun in deconstructing his actions vs. everyone else’s intense dislike of him. it’s a really subtle unravelling of a villain, one that i missed on first watch because i was too god damn mad at him. but!! it’s so good. it’s so well done. and there are so many layers: we see fudou as we know him, just that Shithead who caused shin teikoku. we see fudou from the POV of kidou and sakuma, as someone who can’t be trusted, as someone who might still be working with kageyama. and then we see him through his own actions: he was fucked over too, and he wants to get back at kageyama just the same as everyone else. he’s insanely attentive to his teammates, even in the early stages of the season. he’s alone. and he grows. i love adult fudou because it’s such a lovely transformation from this isolated kid who dealt with his pain by causing chaos, to an actual well adjusted human being who has Friends and who Coaches and Helps people and Supports them while still retaining his own sense of self. IT’S REALLY NICE. BUT WE CAN’T HAVE THAT ARC IF HE’S ALREADY THERE.

so hino, please, make fudou a shit. make him the biggest shit. make him ambiguous and unpredictable and look I know there’s not that much time to deal with this but make him chaotic, just for a little bit. he is the joker - let him act like it before he joins up all buddy with sakuma and kazemaru, as per the implications of the trailer. you can do it, i have faith in you.

*i will most likely be happy with anything they do anyway this is all moot

[elizabethrobertajones]

SAD TIMES! so when dean says that the boys home with sonny wasn't so bad because nobody bad touched him, burned him or beat him with a metal hanger? does that mean he's comparing his time there to all the other times he did get bad touched or burned etc? i bet that's it. like he could actually enjoy hid freedom from his father and freedom from responsibility in general and he was finally free of all the bad things that happened to him?

I’d read it as going under Dean’s pop culture knowledge of what’s “supposed” to happen in prisons or foster homes - the kind of abuse and violence that depictions of these often focus on, or of course sometimes are actually happening and you get horrible news reports about… (Honestly the fact they trawl the news for weird stories all the time means they must read some truly hideous news stories about regular people doing awful shit >.>)

I sort of file it under the same thing as what I was talking about in this recent post:

http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/155634477583/i-wonder-why-this-harmonica-thing-is-never-a-part

about Dean’s jokes about being in prison. Basically, he’s always projecting that defensive mechanism, and in these cases, trying to fit into the pop culture prisoner persona in a very genre-savvy way. In the end of season 2 you get those two episodes very close to each other (back to back?) where Dean is a PA on the movie set and in prison, and both times Sam calls him out for getting way too in character, but that’s sort of how Dean operates :P He’s very good at shedding personality skins and trying on a new one, possibly because 90% of Dean’s on screen time is Dean under one personality or another that’s not really who he is, whether because he’s acting as a persona obviously on the job, or because he’s deflecting and acting up a version of himself for emotional reasons… 

That conversation was Sam challenging him about what it was like at Sonny’s and how Dean liked it, so he had a reflexive response to continue protecting Sam under the old rules of “the story became the story” from however John originally told Sam what happened (and Dean went along with it willingly or not) but obviously with the rules changed now that Dean’s in charge of the story and Sam’s found out it even happened… Dean doesn’t really want to share the truth of it, probably because it took a huge emotional toll on him to leave so the fact he was happy there and sacrificed that for family would get a really bad response from Sam (who Dean’s watching closely the whole time protective of John’s part in this and knowing Sam is liable to go off on one about how terrible John was - thanks Sam :P), and we get to see a lot more than he ever tells Sam through Dean’s POV and the flashbacks to understand WHY he is defending his time there so carefully and weaving this non-committal story about it to Sam, as if nothing there mattered.

So he gets flippant and makes references to stuff he knows can be connected to the situation to remind Sam how awful it could have been, and come at it from the negative perspective which is a good way to sort of establish that it was at a bare minimum not, like, literal Hell. Which changes the way some one thinking about it from that would imagine the experience, because Dean’s setting up “not beaten or molested” as the baseline, rather than selling something like that it was peaceful and quiet and boring but he didn’t enjoy it, because that would still be too fishy for Dean to risk it, never mind trying to pass off, it was great and I had a girlfriend and was learning to play guitar but don’t worry, it was actually totally crap here and I couldn’t wait to leave. 

(He kind of fucks that up that their next scene is Sam finding out about Robin existing, but patching over the issue for that one conversation, at least :P)

But I guess because it’s Dean and if you like angst, there’s no reason that you can’t assume he’s drawing on other traumatic childhood memories, whether that’s an exaggeration or not of what he describes, because he does just comment this out of the blue, and it’s sort of… the fact he associates it with himself? Actually, this reminds me of the other moment in this episode that’s really close to the surface text, talking about Dean going through abuse, and it’s the same point I made in my rewatch notes about the ambiguity of that moment so I’m just going to copy and paste that >.> 

okay whoever did this superwiki transcript is actually fascinating me half as much as the episode… I normally delete the stage directions but:

Sitting in front of YOUNG DEAN, SONNY takes his cuffed hands to open up the cuffs. YOUNG DEAN’s forearms are bruised and red, as if bruised or abraded by bindings or ligature marks.

SONNY (noting the marks with concern)Deputy do that? (YOUNG DEAN scoffs and shakes his head.) What, your old man? (YOUNG DEAN shakes his head no.) Well, then, how’d you get it?

YOUNG DEAN (turning back to SONNY, somewhat defiantly)Werewolf.

SONNY looks at YOUNG DEAN for a long moment, realizing he’s not going to get a different answer from the kid.

SONNYOkay.

There’s a whole ton of discussion on this moment already out there - the “did John hurt his kids physically” argument is long and old and no stone left unturned etc (well, I have found relatively un-turned stones on this rewatch but shh) but I’m amused by the way the transcript takes pains to describe how the marks look, suggesting specifically that Dean was tied up e.g. making it much more likely this was something that happened on the job.

[Note from present!me realising I never quite finished this thought: which isn’t to say that this interpretation automatically decides definitely what the marks looked like and how they were made, just that this is how that fan read them… Writing it that way in the transcript removes any ambiguity from what the surface text is telling us despite the fact it’s just presented as an ambiguous visual clue that the fandom’s been arguing about for ages about how those marks could have been made, and the fact of this lack of ambiguity is what amused me…]

The actual dialogue is an interesting example of the season 9 storytelling theme - and of course “the story became the story” coming from this episode we know it’s hard at work. In this case though I’m looking ahead to 9x18 and Metatron asking what makes the story work and citing subtext. This moment is intentionally given as an ambiguous moment. Sonny thinks Dean was hurt by John (or the deputy) and has no reason to believe “werewolf” because that’s blatant fiction because to him monsters aren’t real. Dean is being this much snarky and deflective enough that even for us, knowing damn well that werewolves exist in their universe and that Dean was already hunting them at this tender age, Sonny’s speculation on it changes the flippant rely and can offer a crack through which to wonder for ourselves how else Dean might have got the marks, and just to weigh the possibility.

And then of course from there you can make your opinion whichever way takes your fancy, like writing stage directions to imply it was the monster, or assuming at the very least having Sonny suggest it might be a call to think about how John treated them, in an episode that’s already repeatedly underlined his emotional neglect/harsh emotional punishment to Dean - if not to assume he did hurt him, then to take it as a prompt to consider it emotional abuse being depicted in the episode. And then some John fans will take Dean’s line as total exoneration of John from ever hurting Dean, and probably go with all his surface level comments telling Sam not to get all weird about John and Dean saying that he deserved it…

http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/148015532758/9x07-rewatch-or-i-love-this-kid-but-i-find-deans

Of course however Dean got the bruises, John at the very least comes out of this episode with another mark against his name for child endangerment and deliberate neglect, but the point I’m looking at here is that thought about Sonny thinking it was just run of the mill no supernatural stuff involved physical parental abuse. That creates an association in the story LINKING John to said abuse, whether the show is implying he did or not, his actions are equated to physical harm coming to Dean. I guess in the same way, this comment from Dean might not be directly implying that that ever happened to him, but it also makes an association between Dean and that kind of abuse happening to him as a kid, which again leaves you at least that avenue of thought to wonder how deep that implication goes… 

(I think from Dean’s comments in that scene, he’s definitely more trying to guide how Sam thinks about what Sonny’s was like for Dean, and not getting alarmingly real about that sort of thing, as it was a fairly flippant comment even if for a rather grim emotional purpose… I’ve never thought about it inverting that he wasn’t talking about that sort of thing happening TO him there but instead being about it NOT happening to him specifically there, but it’s an interesting thought when it comes to interpreting it… 

idk, I’d like to think that that didn’t happen to Dean, ever, and that he was mostly just run of the mill supernaturally neglected and endangered. :P)