#there's so many unanswered questions and so much room for character growth

[captain-k8kat]

There are 2 things I want for Diluc in regards to characterization

1) I want him and Kaeya to reconcile, I need it even. We've gotten hints of it sprinkled around but I need them to commit. I need them to be brothers again

2) I want diluc to realize that he doesn't need to be chained to his father's legacy. I want him to heal from his father's death more and not be chained to it, that he never needed his father's approval and he is his own person. That his father would be proud of him and even if he wasn't it wouldn't matter, he never needed it in the first place

[softeninglooks]

hey, do you like running? | Run with the Wind

Sports anime is one of my favourite genres, so I could not finish the Run with the Wind anime and not make a blog entry about how special and heart-warming it was! Since I couldn’t stop missing Haikyuu!, it felt so great to find another inspiring story and watch new characters embark on their very own journey <3

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Plot

Rwtw is about a group of university students who begin to train in order to participate in the Hakone Ekiden, a famous university race between Tokyo and Hakone held in January. To enter the race, the twenty competing teams must have either 1) been among the top 10 teams in the previous Hakone Ekiden, 2) had good team results in a qualifier preceding the actual Hakone Ekiden.

At the core of the plot of rwtw lies the fact that most of the members of the team did not actually want to run in the Hakone Ekiden, but were tricked to do so by Haiji, one of the main protagonists, who had them sign a lease agreement in which they - unknowingly - agreed to be part of the track field team of Kansei University when they moved into the house in which Haiji lives. Haiji is the heart and soul of the anime, he is the one who tricked everyone into joining the team, designed their training schedule, cooked their meals, and acted as a mentor and reliable figure for his friends and team-mates. He also recruited the other main protagonist, Kakeru Kurahara, who is a first-year with impressive running abilities but a reserved and rather cold and short-tempered personality.

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Characters

We also progressively get to discover the rest of the team - the energetic twins, Jota and Joji; the kind and reliable good student, Shindo; the caring and hard-working exchange-student, Musa; the nonathletic manga-enjoyer, Prince; the calculating and at first very reluctant to join the team law student, Yuki; the nicotine-addict who wants to do better, Nico-senpai; the trivia fan, King. Some of them take longer to warm up to running than others, but their personal growth is so empowering to witness, especially since it’s really easy to relate to the characters and their struggles! It’s also really refreshing to watch university and not high school students, which makes them all the more relatable for an older audience. It’s also really heart-warming to see how all of them went from room-mates to team-mates and then real friends, especially since some of the characters’ bonds became even tighter throughout the journey.

Like for many sports anime, friendship is at the heart of rwtw, which is why it’s so easy to get invested in the story because we come to feel as though these characters have become our friends too! Just like Hana, the high school student who helps them out, we root for them from the sidelines - I found myself smiling and cheering for them so many times as the series progressed. And friendship doesn’t stop past the track field either, there are so many great scenes of bonding and camaraderie throughout the anime, be it during training or a heartfelt conversation between the characters. In that respect, Prince and Kakeru’s friendship is one of my absolute favourite in the series, episode 10 being the turning point for me - from then on, I was really invested in the story and could not wait to keep watching <3

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The meaning of running

Throughout the series, the characters often ask themselves what it means to run - even, and mostly, Haiji, who is the one who started all this, and whose passion for running keeps chasing after the unanswered question of what it truly means to run. After spending so much time training and working hard, the question of “what is it all for?” inevitably arises, especially since the team truly started from scratch and each character put a lot of effort into improving. Pursuing goals and not knowing exactly where you’re going, questioning winning and speed, assessing your abilities, finding motivation, are all tackled from the different perspectives of all the characters, be it from central characters such as Kakeru or Haiji, or at first glance secondary characters like Nico-chan or King. And although most of these questions remain without a definite and verbalised answer, watching all of these characters grow and overcome their own struggles has us get to the bottom of what it means to run. Running is not about winning or being the fastest, nor is it about getting first place or breaking records. Running is about the team-mates who are waiting for you at the finish line, it’s about setting goals for yourself and doing your best to achieve them, it’s about recognizing your weakness and still pushing forward, it’s about friends helping each other out. 

Run with the Wind has us understand the meaning of running when we look at the outstanding personal growth of the characters and everything they achieved together. Although in the Hakone Ekiden each character runs their section separately, they are never really alone - we always see the rest of the team encouraging their running friend and doing their best to carry on their effort in the next section. Rwtw is all about bonding and team-spirit, which is why it so profundly captures the essence of sports. (/!\ SPOILER ALERT) To use King’s words, Haiji’s dream became their dream, and as Kakeru so simply and powerfully says - “the answer is you”. 

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Kakeru (/!\ SPOILER ALERT)

And finally, I wanted to dedicate a section to Kakeru, who became so dear to me. I expected Kakeru to resemble Kageyama from Haikyuu! - which he did, and I loved it <3 I have nothing against character tropes because I think that what matters most is how these tropes evolve into a character that feels authentic as we follow them on their journey, and this is exactly what happened with Kakeru. He went from cold and reluctant to run with this team to such a supportive friend, and seeing him open up more and let go of the past was so moving.

Kakeru is not a relatable character in the sense that he struggles particularly hard to achieve his goals - when we meet him, he already is a fast runner and undoubtedly the team’s strongest member. However, Kakeru has his very own character development centered around letting go of past mistakes and embracing the future. Not only does Kakeru grow to believe in the goal that Haiji set for them, but his mentality changes completely. He starts to pay attention to his team-mates, he helps them improve and becomes not only a model for them, but a real friend. Among them, Kakeru is accepted for who he truly is, without judgment, and he is sincerely believed in. Kakeru smiling more and showing more emotion by the second half of the story was so lovely to witness and he became so endearing as the story progressed. Haiji passing the sash to him is peak symbolism - Kakeru played his part in keeping their dream alive <3

‏‏‎ ‎In the end, rwtw reminded me of hq by the depth of the bonds between the characters, the attention to their growth, and the questions it puts forward. Although we can only lament that the 23 episodes of the series don’t leave as much room as in hq to explore the characters’ pasts and motivation, the time we spend alongside them has us truly grow attached to them and invested in their journey.

“The mountains of Ekiden are? The steepest in the world!”

[houseofwolvess]

hi y'all. im sorry ive been off tumblr lately but im here. also i just finished the final ep of stranger things 4 and i have heavily mixed feelings

[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.

[antihentaiclub]

i’m rating manga/manhwa i’ve read because i don’t want to do my schoolwork

1. Blood Bank

status: completed

rating: 8.8/10



this was the first one i read and MAN. i like how in the beginning there was no relationship whatsoever but because Shell had power, he was able to use it and see One whenever he felt, at first, Shell was almost like a sugar daddy trying to use that to win One over. but over time, they developed a genuine relationship that was unbreakable and brought them back to each other in the end so they would receive their own happily ever after that they Definitely deserved.

2. bj Alex

status: ongoing (side story)

rating: 8.9/10



the basis of the story was good. i liked the growth of Jiwon throughout the entire story. watching Jiwon accept and move forward from his past trauma was therapeutic and so wholesome. it would probably be my favorite aspect of the series. however, i wanted to punch Dong-gyun Real hard in the beginning because of how he thirsted of Jiwon, but i think that factor is what made him so realistic. he was nearly obsessed with this idea he had of Jiwon and we got to see that idea destroyed and rebuilt multiple times. one another note, i really liked the side story with MD and Chanwoo. it was subtle enough not to overtake the main plot, but present enough o make an impact. now, though, in the side story i want to murder Chanwoo because he’s taking MD for granted. anyways, overall, bj Alex is a very good story. i also quite liked that it was drawn in black and white and the important parts were in color.

3. Make Me Bark

status: completed

rating: 7.5/10



Make Me Bark was very cute. different than my usual tastes, but definitely a good, quick read. i like how Sungjoon was having nothing go his way but Hyo-in kinda swooped in and knocked him off his feet. although, i do wish that we got to know a little more about Hyo-in. i feel like i know so little about him.

4. Well Done!

status: completed

rating: 7/10



i liked the overall concept quite a lot actually. i think the author did a decent job in proving that there doesn’t have to be a good person, or a hero, in a story and that both sides can essentially be villains in their own respect. parts of me wished that Sangwoo and Jaehyun worked out in the end, but i know their relationship didn’t have a solid foundation whatsoever. i don’t want to say the end was fitting for Jaehyun, but he definitely got knocked off his high horse.

5. Walk on Water

status: ongoing

rating: 9.8/10



one of my absolute favorites. this story takes you on so many twists and turns emotionally. the author has beautiful art and an incredible story including growth for both McQueen and Yeowoon. i can’t talk enough about how much i like it. it starts with Ed, who’s later revealed to actually be name Yeowoon, trying to find another source of income to pay off debt that his grandfather accrued. he stumbled upon this gay porn website owned by Glen McQueen and decided to give it a shot, despite not being gay. from then on a shaky string of hookups to hide true feelings ensues until McQueen and Ed finally reveal their real emotions. they begin dating and one would think that’s it, things are fine. but instead, things all start going wrong and Ed and McQueen get in a huge nasty fight in which they both end up regretting but Ed can’t bring himself to be the bigger man and apologize. he starts finding himself in less and less fortunate situations, but currently things are starting to take a turn for the better as he and McQueen have apologized and are talking in hopes of eventually creating a new relationship that will not lead to the hurt they experienced before.

6. BL Motel

status: ongoing

rating: 8.7/10



in this story i liked watching Jinwon and Byul’s relationship grow. you get to see them develop feelings and not tell each other despite how obvious it is. you also get to see Byul struggle with he and his brother’s relationship and how it had been flawed from the beginning. it showed Jinwon helping him and letting him finally resolve the situation so now they are on better terms and healing and finding proper love. i liked that a lot. my one thing that bothers me though, is that a lot of the character designs are similar so i get super confused on who is who. it’s a little disorganized in that sense which can make it a bit hard to read. otherwise, it’s a great story.

7. Dear Door

status: ongoing

rating: 8.6/10



i love the art style for this story. it goes from sophisticated and attractive to cute doodles in seconds and i like the laid back approach to storytelling. in this universe demons can use people as “doors” between the human realm and Hell, which is how Cain, a demon, and Gyeong Joon, a human police officer. Cain begins to use Gyeong Joon as his door and they develop an interesting type of relationship that still has a lot of room for growth. it’s still very early on for this story but i look forward to updates.

8. Love or Hate

status: ongoing

rating: 9.5/10



another favorite of mine. first, the art style is incredible and the character designs are so good. plus, the story is well structured. in this story you witness Haesoo conflicted between two people, his long time hookup Joowon, who he had known for ten years and had immense history with, and Taekyung, a photographer who he met through his job and funny enough, resembles Joowon’s actions. the story shows the damage of toxic relationships and how vulnerable people become when they’re in love with another person and when all they want is them. the characters, Haesoo especially, are so well thought out and complex and it adds so much flavor to the already good story. i heavily anticipate season 3 and know i’m in for a rollercoaster.

9. Back to School

status: completed

rating: 6.8/10



hear me out, by no means am i saying i didn’t like Back to School. what i am saying is i think there was potential for so much more. the ending was abrupt and left me with too many unanswered questions. i also thought the writing was a bit inconsistent towards the end. anyways, the concept was good. Cha Chiwoo left school because of a traumatic event and went back after taking his time off to finish and get his diploma. there he met Ki Kyujin, the class president, who tried befriending him despite the rumors that surrounded him. later on he reconnects with someone from his past, Song Jihyun, his ex best friend and the reason he left school in the first place. now, Jihyun decides to finish school and they’re all in the same class. throughout the story we got to unlock more of Chiwoo and Jihyun’s history, which was a factor i enjoyed. however, at the end, after Jihyun left, i think there should’ve been a point in the future where he comes back and he and Chiwoo actually resolve their last and can healthily move forward. i know it’s not my story, but i think something like that would’ve provided more of a resolution than Chiwoo just confessing his feelings and kissing Kyujin. i also think Jihyun was demonized more than necessary. he already had been falsely arrested for murder, he had multiple settled cases for his violent nature, and he had the major fall out with Chiwoo but in the q&a at the end the author said that Jihyun had raped Chiwoo which i don’t think matches his character. it was clear that everything he did was because he loved Chiwoo and he isn’t stupid enough to do something so cruel, or so i think.

[doomonfilm]

Thoughts : WandaVision [Disney+, Episode 9] (2021)

All good things must come to an end, and after roughly a year of speculation and nearly two fabulous months of weekly anticipation, Disney + and Marvel Studios have (seemingly) wrapped up the highly anticipated MCU-based series WandaVision.  For the general viewing public, it’s been a slow but steady growth of new fans (which I anticipate to boom now that the series can be binged in its entirety), but for many of us with a vested interest in the MCU (as well as a deep love for nostalgiac television and referential film), WandaVision became the gift that kept on giving : giving us fuel for what became rampant speculation, giving us a deeper insight into Wanda Maximoff as a grieving character and a being with power greater than she understood, and giving us new characters that will surely have a lasting impact on both movies and television series moving forward.

As an experiment on connecting a cinematic universe to an entertainment medium not dependent on box office returns, I would consider WandaVision a success, and one that can not so easily be duplicated by DC or any other entertainment entity.  Over a decade of work has been put into the foundation of the MCU that was Phases One - Three, and with a lore firmly established, it was really up to Marvel to fumble transitioning their storytelling style into longform storytelling for television.  With a handful of new series on the way, and movies expected by year’s end, the future is exciting for both Marvel and fans of the MCU alike.

THE STORY THUS FAR

Episode 09 : The Series Finale With Tommy (Jett Klyne) and Billy (Julian Hilliard) firmly in tow, Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) continues to goad Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) into a confrontation.  Wanda eventually gives in and attempts to attack Agatha, but Agatha absorbs the blows, revealing that she can (and intends to) absorb all of Wanda’s abilities.  A greyed-out version of Vision (Paul Bettany) appears and accosts Wanda, but Wanda’s Vision created in The Hex comes to her rescue, confronting and battling Grey Vision while attempting to appeal to any reason in existence.  Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) watches from the captivity of a nearby home, with Quicksilver (Evan Peters) standing guard.  Director Tyler Hayward (Josh Stamberg) recaptures Jimmy Woo (Randall Park) outside of The Hex, but Woo manages to contact Quantico.  Before they can arrive, however, Wanda is forced to partially remove The Hex by Agatha, and Hayward takes advantage of the situation to move S.W.O.R.D. forces into The Hex.  After realizing that a complete removal of The Hex will cost her Tommy, Billy and Vision, Wanda seals The Hex once again, leading to a final confrontation between her and Agatha Harkness with major consequences.

THOUGHTS ON THE SHOW For a series that was supposed to introduce us to Phase Four of the MCU, as well as potentially set up Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, I can’t say that I have any complaints with the execution.  I came into the show with Wanda Maximoff and Vision as two of my favorite characters, and like many people, I’d been referring to Wanda as Scarlet Witch despite this name designation having not taken place within the MCU.  Being rewarded with gift was the perfect amount of fan service (if you can even call it that, as it is key to Wanda’s story), and the way that future storylines have been set up will lead to worlds of revelations in the coming years.

Watching those willing to enjoy the series during its initial run lead to some of the grandest and widespread sets of theories and speculations that I’ve ever seen in regard to a TV show, although the implications of impact on the MCU cinematic universe makes that understandable.  The MCU is certainly showing a new approach to this speculation, as the inclusion of Evan Peters (as well as the fun and games they had with the introduction of the latest Spider-man film title) showed us, and I expect more trolling and swerves moving forward.  Be it Mephisto, Nightmare, Grim Reaper, Reed Richards, Professor X, Magneto or even Deadpool, the list of names that people attempted to will into existence was incredibly impressive (although, props to those who speculated on Skrulls, who I imagine will be EVERYWHERE moving forward).

As we move forward with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Loki on Disney +, and the eventual release of Spider-man : No Way Home and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, I anticipate more magic, more cosmic adventures, and more mind-bending antics that will introduce (and remove) characters from the playing field in soon to be iconic ways.  The future is really and truly an open door of possibilities the way that the MCU and Marvel are stepping their game up, and if WandaVision is any indication, be ready for some bold steps ahead.

As we move forward with Wanda Maximoff embracing her Scarlet Witch designation, and the depths of her powers in turn, it seems as if we are seeing Marvel take their already established practice of blurring the lines between hero and villain (a la Bucky) to staggering new heights.  It seems as if not even Wanda knows what the true ceiling for her powers is, but with the final moments of her battle with Agatha and the image of her dedicating a projection to absorbing the secrets of the Dark Hold, her ability to learn and adapt appears to be a key element to her strength.  With Agatha outright stating that Wanda’s powers exceed that of the Sorcerer Supreme, a clear line in the sand has seemingly been drawn between Scarlet Witch and Doctor Strange.  Ironically, the discovery of her potential has only made the implied fear from the Infinity Saga into a very real thing in the wake of her manipulation of Westview, which could separate her from the Avengers for a time.

Many speculated that WandaVision would play out as a sort of swansong for the Vision character, and while that appears to be the case for Wanda’s approximation of Vision, the enlightenment given to Grey Vision (and the absence of a resolution for this new character) leaves the door wide open for what will be with the character.  As a character (and also thanks to Paul Bettany’s stellar performance of said character), Vision continues to be one of the most compelling members of the MCU cinematic universe with his consistently thought-provoking and deeply emotional dialogue.  I thought that WandaVision would be a one-off, and based on the upcoming slate of films that may be the case, but with many unanswered questions left, I wouldn’t be surprised of Vision and Wanda find their way back to the realm of the limited series (again, contingent on character involvement in the already slated projects).

Bravo to Kathryn Hahn for bringing Agatha Harkness to life, and making her an instant fan favorite.  With her imprisonment presented at the end of WandaVision, we are not only seeing a potentially powerful played being put on ice and ready to reemerge at any given moment, but her connections to Mephisto and the Fantastic 4 leaves her open for future involvement in the MCU as a key player.  With Westview being so close to Avengers headquarters, she also serves as a living reference library for Wanda (although, as mentioned before, Wanda’s connection to the Avengers is unclear at this point).

Another fan favorite was Teyonah Parris, who stepped into the MCU fold in a gigantic way as Monica Rambeau.  Using her to bring “reality” into the series was a beautiful play, with her inclusion in The Blip serving as both a marker in the MCU timeline and an emotional shock for viewers looking for a character to root for.  It feels as if we have only seen the tip of the iceberg in regard to Monica’s power potential, which leaves room for her evolution to take place on-screen, and based on what we’ve seen thus far, it feels like Photon, Spectrum, Captain Marvel, or possibly even some combination of the three could be her next step.  With Nick Fury showing his hand in the form of a Skrull contact, it is almost a sure thing that Monica Rambeau will be playing a key role in the upcoming Secret Invasion storylines.

The appearance of Tommy and Billy marked a huge point of story potential for the MCU, and with so much of their fate left up in the air, seeing where their journey heads will certainly be interesting.  With announcements of a handful of future MCU characters on the way, it seems certain that Marvel has plans for the Young Avengers.  As previously mentioned, tying the twins physical form to The Hex, only to have them still seemingly alive and in existence somewhere, opens up two very specific doors of narrative : option one being a future encounter with Mephisto, and option two being Wanda’s journey for her twins serving as the breaking point for the Multiverse that sets up the Doctor Strange film.

I am even more excited about the future of the MCU now that I know where Wanda, Vision and all those tied to this series currently sit.  With the rampant rumors out there in connection to Spider-man : No Way Home, who even knows if these spaces that each character occupies will be the same by the time we revisit them.  What I do know is that the MCU/Marvel Studios and Disney + make a good team, and I will be wholly invested moving forward with anything that comes out of their collective camp.

[imogenkol]

TLOU Part II vs TLOU

welcome to more bitter 2 am thoughts on The Last Of Us Part II! This episode is on analysis! (Obviously these are all just my opinions and everyone is valid, whether they enjoyed the game or not, but I needed to get my thoughts out there. SPOILERS):

I have rarely ever seen someone say they didn’t like The Last Of Us, but there is a massive divide in how Part II has been received. Why is that? The difference between Part II and The Last Of Us involves a lot of things, but ultimately I think it boils down to the endings.

At the end of The Last Of Us, the player was given such a thought provoking piece to contemplate as the credits rolled. It came down to one single question: Was what Joel did the right thing? No doubt Joel is as morally gray as they come, a brutal survivor that has done terrible and unspeakable things just to stay alive and fight another day.

Then he is given a chance with an immune child to possibly save innumerable lives with a vaccine at the cost of her life. But he selfishly saves her instead. So, was it the right thing? Sacrificing so many lives to save one child? That was the question that kept everyone up at night after playing the game.

All the debates and discussions I’ve had, no matter how they viewed the morality of Joel’s actions, still came to one acceptance: It’s what they would do if they were in Joel’s shoes. And we were in Joel’s shoes. For almost an entire game, hours and hours, we spent taking care of this little girl and building a relationship with her. That’s what the first game was about, building something worth fighting for. Experiencing a powerful love that you would condemn the whole world for. But bringing it back to that one question: Was it the right thing?

It was bold. And it was brilliant. Focusing on humanity at its low points. Joel being his darkest self and closed off to the world, and Ellie being utterly lost and alone. These two individuals learning to rely on one another in a world that thrives on hate and violence and destruction, and finding love and purpose with each other to build a strong foundation for the future.

The Last Of Us Part II tears down the foundation that its predecessor spent so much time and care building up. Now, part one didn’t necessarily promise that it would last with the ending it had, but I don’t think it was unfair to assume that every difficult thing we guided Joel and Ellie to do to get where they ended up would be something that they could thrive in for more than four years.

Yes, Part II is a game focused on hate, but hate isn’t a topic that can be sustained in storytelling for an entire piece. With every story, there must be growth and resolution or it isn’t satisfying to experience. With the foundation being destroyed so early on and in such a careless and callous way, almost like they just wanted to get it done and over with, and all of the characters being thrust into a cesspool of negative emotions, such as grief and hate and rage, because of it, it makes it feel like everything before really was all for nothing.

We spend the entire game being forced to do brutal acts and simply losing more because of it. There is no growth, only regression. We see Ellie becoming similar to how Joel was in the beginning of the first game. This had the potential to be satisfying if these actions ended up catapulting Ellie into an even deeper character development, but it doesn’t.

The way Ellie loses herself in this obsession with revenge leaves her stagnant. When she’s afforded another opportunity of seeking that revenge yet again, she seems to lose herself even deeper, leaving her family behind when she knows they’ll be gone if she returns, and threatening Lev to force Abby to fight her. Then at the last minute, she chooses not to take that revenge.

Maybe this could have been seen as her being pushed forward positively, but the imagery of her lying in the water on the beach, beaten and bloody and utterly defeated, really hammers in the fact that Ellie doesn’t have anything to fight for anymore. This conclusion is supported when she goes home to see the farmhouse empty and she deliberately leaves the guitar Joel gave her behind, resulting in Ellie being truly alone.

This ending was not thought provoking in the way the first game was. We’re not left with asking if what Ellie did was the right thing or not. There was no right or wrong to be had, only seeing a character who has lost everything be so consumed by hate that she can’t find a way forward in a way that would give her the closure that she needs. Ellie not being able to play the guitar supports this as well. The clear exhaustion and defeat on her face as she fails to play the song Joel taught her to play with her missing fingers and leaving the instrument behind with all of her other possessions stacked in the corner of a room in an empty house, isn’t the acceptance that Ellie needed to properly move on from Joel’s death. It rings hollow and unfulfilling.

Maybe others felt that this was as bold and brilliant as the first game, but I still hold with the belief that it wasn’t. It was an emptiness that left the grief I felt throughout the entire story unanswered for. The only question I found myself asking was “What now?” with a certainty that there wasn’t ever going to be a hopeful answer.

[teatimewithtess]

Book Review #1... Dracula ^-^

Dracula was written in 1897 by Bram Stoker, an avid Irish writer in his young adult years. The story’s format takes the appearance of multiple character’s diary/journal entries and letters in roughly 350 pages. The main character Jonathan Harker, a young naive solicitor in England, first encounters Count Dracula at his own castle in order to expand upon a business inquiry. The opening scenes start off slowly, as if Stoker purposely did so in order to provide tension for later abhorring scenarios. Harker avidly describes his surroundings and encounters with people throughout the entirety of his excursions, whether they are beneficial or not. His oblivious persona creates a pitiful urge from the reader to aid him or point out the obvious, which is especially heart-wrenching since his descriptions are in his personal journal. 

The audience witnesses the growth of insanity Jonathan Harker faces as he reveals his entrapment within the castle and the details of the Count are certainly unsettling, which contribute to the eeriness of the entire situation. However, in the modern day understanding of Dracula and vampires, there are many assumptions that have been made which could not have been entirely true which prompts the question... How much has society altered the reality of the book in order to appeal to the social hierarchies and norms?

The audience then encounters his future wife, Miss Mina Murray, a vivacious young woman certainly in love with Jonathan; Dr. Seward, a doctor of the mind during the colonial England era who consistently writes about his striking patient R. M. Renfield in the most intuitive sense; Dr. Van Helsing, an older academic with evolutionary advances in neuroscience who also has an extensive knowledge of vampiric history; and of course, Count Dracula, a suspicious gentleman with malignant, unnerving features in the viewpoint of common humanity. Although there are a few others, these are the main protagonists and antagonists the audience witnesses the growth of through first hand viewpoints, which places the reader in the character’s position in an evolutionary way.

The suspense, fear, questioning is felt as if you are in the room with the Count, where he appears and disappears within a second, where the power of Holiness is tested through the religious will of each individual character, as certain people do not possess the power to push through. Many mementos withholding religious and scientific values stress the ideas of what good and evil is, as Stoker explained how he based these characters off of real events/people. I do not read much literature where the format is journalistic, but this book used the format graciously. From the instances where characters are having an enlightening moment, to the reactions of evil presenting itself in the worst way, the audience witnesses a development of morals in which each individual reader can infer and create within their own analysis since there are many unanswered questions about the character’s acts. The grim, Gothic events generously appeal to a dark academic’s interpretation of life and literature.

Dracula also puts into perspective on the level of trust we consciously and unconsciously give to people in order to find out the truth for personal development or closure; there is also a measure of the balance of good and evil in personas which can drastically alter outcomes that must be considered when meddling with dangerous circumstances.

Dracula exceeded my expectations from the common story/assumptions I know from society that consistently smothers me with. Respectively, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for:

1) A psychologically manipulative antagonist in the old era of European history described through personal accounts.

2) The truth of a traditional tale told through time.

3) Being able to witness the emotional downfall of human charisma in it’s purest form.

4) An easier read of classic literature (the syntax and diction is not as difficult as many other classics.)

Dracula will hold a special place in my Gothic literature heart, and I wish for everyone to read it!

- Tesu

[seasaltmemories]

Thoughts on the Black Eagles

Spoilers for the entire game/route

Edelgard- I did my best to try and stay detached but what can I say she is my type and then all the ship tease had to happen and break my heart, even speaking from a less thirsty pov she is a really interesting morally gray character with well-developed motivation, I can’t help but just enjoy the fact she is so proactive despite the questionable nature of her actions (I haven’t done any other route yet I hear without you she gets real worse, but still from what I saw it seemed she only had beef with Rhea and it only turned into a continent-wide war bc Dimitri took Rhea shelter so it doesn’t feel right in my eyes to pin all the resulting deaths on her)

Hubert- He is like just openly the evil teammate and somehow he comes out likeable at the end of it all?? Like I was waiting for a humanizing moment, like a story explaining why he dedicated himself to Edelgard but aside from mentioning a turning point for when it became personal, he just apparently since been ride or die, on one had I feel like that makes him a less developed character (and kinda throws into question some of his paired routes) but I still loved his interactions with the others and just being nice in his own weird way

Dorothea- a delightful bicon, very personable and charming, I mentioned holding my breath about the bi characters bc I figured it would be a player-sexual deal where you don’t see it if you don’t romance them, but despite a lot of her stuff being about her trying to find a marriage partner (and implied to be mostly dating noble men) there was a very clear effort to use gender neutral pronouns and all with her, plus basically openly flirting with Edelgard and falling for so many female characters, one thing that kinda felt unanswered was just how sad her battle quotes were, and just how tired she was of fighting, it never came up in her supports, it really gave her character a melancholy ting I might end up exploring  

Ferdinand- grew a lot on me, especially as in battle he turned out to be a pretty good unit, pre-game impressions made it seem like he was all about competition which is just not an archetype I like but in reality he was pretty polite, more about his obsession with the literal trait of nobility and making sure others held up to their responsibilities, not the most interesting trait but enjoyable enough, especially when he ended up being just very friendly to Petra and all

Petra- also worried she would be one-note as the funny foreigner but a lot more personality shown through beyond her struggling with the language, regardless of the language troubles there was a degree of formality with her and a constant duty to Brigid, yet she still had her sense of humor, an absolute beast of a unit who was probably my strongest and def the highest level bc as a wryven lord she was just always taking out one enemy or another

Linhardt- the first few convos I was worried his entire personality would be his sleepiness but quickly rose to be a fave, just worked well with everyone and was a bicycle of the group I was eager to see paired with anyone, could both play off his eccentricities and ground others

Bernadetta- also worried that her personality would get old but not only did she have actual growth but holy shit did her backstory explain it all, girl was literally both physically and emotionally abused and behind the funny background music there was a very clear through-line for her believing everyone would turn on the drop of a dime to lash out at her and she mostly hid out in her room, still you saw her try and take steps and heal and generally move past it all, also a bicycle that just worked off every other member

Caspar- liked him the least but he was still enjoyable, just very “what you see is what you get” a hard worker who loves training, nothing about the character was done badly just not the most intriguing and I felt the most repetition among his supports, still after being mostly average by the time he became a war master he turned into a crit machine

I found the support system done really weird this time around, the fact + supports and ending some at B gave more freedom with structure was nice but they really wanted to have their cake and eat it too, bc you could get full supports with everyone, but a paired ending would still happen, they just chose it for you, which didn’t really change the fact there ended up being romantic subtext between basically everyone, and if anything it was more sudden bc marriage would just get brought up in any A support (although played as a what if that got a “let’s think about this later) still I loved the team and would be fine with them just all together, still in the future I hope this doesn’t happen again and that they just commit to S support, you don’t even have to write it, but I bet with a larger cast that is less so woven together I’m gonna care more about who ends up with who

As for the paired endings I got, they were: Byleth/Edelgard, Hubert/Dorothea, Linhardt/Bernedetta, and Petra/Caspar

Both Byleth/Edelgard and Linhardt/Bernedetta were adorable, Petra/Caspar was just perfectly passable, Hubert/Dorothea was the one I was initially most hesitant about (they were one of the first A supports I got so seeing HER proposal to him was like “honey you do so much better”) but now I want to try and make it work just because

But yeah this is one of the few games I’m most interested in actually replaying bc I want to get to know the rest, still i feel bias will affect almost everyone and most will always love their first house the most, still either way I enjoy this batch of weirdos a lot

[thebrightsessions]

Abt you not confirming any characters as poc: It feels a little performative. Like you go on and on abt how important representation is but you leave poc out in the cold. And this isn't even addressed in a way that makes it seem like you care or have thought abt it. I'm not trying to be rude, but it's a little (a lot) upsetting

I’m really sorry that it seems like I don’t care or that I don’t think about it - I do care and I spend a lot of time thinking about this exact subject. But, like 98% of my thinking, I tend to keep it to myself or conversations with close friends and collaborators. The internet is not always the best place to learn and grow. I even debated answering this ask publicly (or at all - as you guys know, there’s about 900 unanswered asks in here) because I’m always afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing, but I want to be transparent about this kind of stuff so that I can learn how to be better. 

This is a long post because I want to be as blunt and thorough as possible, so the rest under the cut. 

Representation is important but by talking about how I think representation is important, I in no way want to suggest that I am perfect or comprehensive with representation in my own work. I apologize if it’s ever come off that way - that is not my intention. I’m still learning and growing all the time - as is the greater population and wider entertainment world - and this inevitably means that I’m going to make mistakes or be behind the times or have major blind spots. I try to stay aware of my blind spots and listen to people around me who are smarter and better, but that doesn’t mean I can instantly course correct. 

When I first started The Bright Sessions, never mentioning anyone’s appearance in the show was a specific intention. I wanted our listeners to be able to imagine whatever they’d like to imagine and, selfishly, I was excited to see different interpretations in fanart, should we be lucky enough to have people drawing our characters. I naively thought that was unequivocally a good thing. After all, I loved imagining my own personal versions of the characters in books I read or podcasts I listened to - isn’t that the benefit of having no visual reference? I realize now how short-sighted that was. I still do think there’s beauty in having a completely open sandbox when it comes to visuals, but I also know better now that concrete representation is vital. 

Since then, I’ve been grappling with different questions. If I were to confirm someone’s race, would I be taking away something from someone? What’s the balance of having concrete, meaningful representation versus leaving doors open for listeners to make characters their own? I didn’t think about race in casting - perhaps another naive choice - so in making any races canon, would I have to recast? Limit the character’s race to the actor’s race? Are the rules different in voice acting? 

And, were I to make something canon, how would I do so within the podcast? This might seems like a lazy, cop-out question to ask myself, but it is something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about. Certain characters have voiced their sexuality out loud because sexuality is something you can’t see, but it might feel awkward or shoe-horned in to have a character identify their own or someone else’s race out loud. In TV and film, the representation is there because you can see it - it isn’t being told to you. But of course, people do talk about their own experiences as a POC in real life, but that would mean writing a conversation specifically about the POC experience, which I feel isn’t my place to write. So, then, ideally I’d hire a POC writer, except I only recently started getting paid for writing this show myself and the last thing I want to do is cash in on someone’s experience and talents and then not pay them. That seems like the way worse option. 

Now, you might ask, “why not just confirm it on here or somewhere else online?”. Because it’s one thing for me to answer questions about a character’s favorite food or birthdays, but in my opinion, something as important as racial representation only counts if it’s actually in canon. I’ve confirmed some things that are heavily suggested in the podcast, but I’ve tended not to give answers about things like sexuality and race because until those things appear in the show, I have no right to claim them publicly for my characters. That’s how I feel right now but, as with all of this, my feelings may evolve. 

(sidebar: I did confirm Chloe’s panromanticism on tumblr before getting to it in the show, but she was already out as ace and I had a pretty decent idea that we were going to talk about her exes down the line)

So those have been some of the many thoughts that have been running through my head the past two and a half years and I still don’t have perfect answers for them. They are not at all meant to be excuses - I’ve been fairly upfront about the fact that my two big blind spots as a writer are gender and race representation. I know. That doesn’t mean I know how to be better. To be totally honest, I’m pretty scared to tackle those subjects as a white cis writer. I feel more surefooted writing queer characters - even ones with a different identity than my own - and male characters - even though I’m a woman - because men have been represented plenty in media. But when there’s already such a dearth of good POC representation (and the spectrum of gender representation) it feels like a much weightier thing to take on. But that should in no way stop me. Just because I fear identifying a character’s race in an audio format might lead to clunky dialogue, doesn’t mean it has to sound exposition-y and awkward. If I want to be a good writer, I need to find ways to write meaningful representation in multiple mediums, without sacrificing smoothness of writing. If representation is important to me in my work - which it is - I need to walk the walk and make sure that I’m considering what the breadth of representation actually means. 

(another sidebar because it always bears repeating: not everything can be everything for everyone. I get a lot of asks along the lines of “will you ever have a character who is x” and the reality is that I’m not running through a checklist of groups to represent in my work because I think that does lead to bad storytelling. That being said, if I want to challenge myself by telling new and diverse stories (diverse in the broadest sense of the word) and if I’m someone who believes that entertainment can be a force for positive change, I will do my best to widen the spectrum of the characters I’m writing. But: I am not at all obligated to do so. If a writer wants to tell the same story about the same people in 900 different ways for the rest of their life, they are allowed to do that. I wouldn’t want to do it - I personally believe that if you’re making something for potential mass consumption (as anything on the internet is), you’d ideally have good intentions that it would have a positive influence on the world. But the entertainment you consume does not have a responsibility to you. An artist is responsible for their art - if you make something and it has an affect on the world, negative or positive, you have to live with that. But as an audience member, I don’t think I’m owed anything by what I consume because I choose what I consume, and all the baggage that comes with it. If I waited for that piece of art that is perfect in representation and entirely unproblematic, I would be waiting quite literally for forever. Which brings me to my final point...) 

To be completely, brutally honest, there’s a trend on tumblr/the internet in general that I’ve seen grow exponentially in the past ten years that really worries me. And that is the constant tearing down of anything deemed even slightly problematic. I’ve grown so much as a human and artist in the past three years alone and I live in fear of making a mistake that will end my career and alienate my audience forever. It’s easy to get the impression from the internet that there is no room for growth. I would be lying if I said that wasn’t a factor in me steering away sometimes from things where the chances of me fucking up and courting hate are high. Again - not an excuse. I shouldn’t give a rat’s ass what people on the internet think of me, I should stop being a coward and try things that are important to me, even if I do them badly on the first try. But I’m human and the truth is that strangers on the internet being mean to me actually really fucking hurts. And it especially hurts if I don’t even get a second try to do better. It is impossible and extremely dumb for me to wait for a time when I feel like I can tell certain stories without messing them up, but I think that’s an element of what I’ve been doing. That’s bad and weak-willed and I’m sorry. 

(final sidebar: this ask is not an example of the above. This isn’t a rude ask - you are well within your rights to be upset about this and as much as it stings to know I’ve disappointed listeners, it’s always good for me to know because that’s how I grow. I’m talking more about the hypothetical fear that I try to deliver on something that’s important to lots of people and fail and get a lot of means asks and then have a long cry about it.)

I don’t know if this sheds any light on my thought process or just muddies things further - I’m clearly still figuring things out. I think the main thing I’m trying to say is: I hear you and I know and I’m going to try and do better but that doesn’t mean I’m going to do things perfectly or even well. None of what I’ve said here makes up for the lack of representation or lets me off the hook, but I hope it gives you some insight into where I’m at now. The original run of TBS will unfortunately always be lacking in this regard - there’s nothing I can do to change that. But in projects moving forwards, I fully have the intention to highlight new voices and stories and perspectives. Especially now that I’m in more of a position to actually pay people. But I’m not going to sit here and promise you that I’ll satisfy you with my writing in the future. I have no idea if I will. I have no idea if I’ll even satisfy myself. All I ask, from you and all our listeners and my team and even myself, is that we continue being honest with each other and that we always, always leave room for growth. 

I’m sorry I’ve failed you, but I hope you’ll give me a chance to do better in the future. Stay strange. 

[elmelloill]

Lucky Jacket

AUs are dangerous because sometimes you’ll write a chapter and then your friend will draw art for it and then you’ll end up talking about the clothes characters wear and then you end up writing 2500 words in the AU that don’t belong anywhere in the fic but you just have them now so you’ve gotta post them somewhere, right? 

Anyway. This is because @matte-bat and i started talking about Klavier’s leather jacket on twitter. 

Drabble for my klapollo college AU, Anyway, Here’s Guilty Love, taking place the next semester so I can ignore all the angst stuff that hasn’t actually happened in the fic yet. 

As always, god I hope the readmore works on mobile otherwise i’m sorry

Klavier Gavin was, in general, a very punctual person. Although fashionable in everything else, he was rarely fashionably late, and so when Apollo spent fifteen minutes sitting in the quad waiting for his boyfriend to arrive for their date that evening, he started to get legitimately concerned.

Two texts had already gone unanswered. Frowning at his phone, Apollo sat on the picnic bench, tapping his toe, for another thirty seconds before deciding he might as well try to figure out what was going on. And if Klavier was on his way, the two of them would just run into each other.

That’s what Apollo fully expected to happen, but he made it all the way to the Gavinners house without encountering any tall platinum blonds. Somewhat perplexed, he stood on the doorstep for a moment, and just as he was about to knock, the door opened in front of him.

“Hey, Klav—” he began, but it was Daryan on the other side of the door.

“Good, you’re here,” Daryan said. He looked troubled, and Apollo felt a flutter of worry in his stomach.

“Yeah, uh, is Klavier…”

“He’s fine,” Daryan assured him, rolling his eyes. “He’s just having…a moment.”

“O…kay?”

Daryan leaned against the wall. “You know his leather jacket, right? The one that like, starts to dissolve if he wears it in the rain?”

Apollo nodded. He knew it very well.

It had been a gift from Klavier’s host family in Germany. To many, the jacket might have been deemed unwearable many years ago, but Klavier had been very creative. Loose threads had been diligently trimmed, fraying edges artfully concealed, lost zipper pulls replaced with tiny silver Gavinners charms. The sleeves, too short after Klavier’s high school growth spurt, were in a state of being permanently rolled up, and Klavier managed to make it look like the hem was supposed to be cropped short by pairing the jacket with well-chosen graphic tees. The entire thing probably would have been uncomfortably tight around his shoulders by now if years of wear hadn’t gently stretched and softened the leather—it had quite literally grown with him.

Klavier’s attachment to the jacket was a bit of a puzzle, but then again, many things about Klavier were a bit of a puzzle. He had come back from Germany with a whole new vocabulary, after all, so it wasn’t too strange that he had also returned with a jacket that apparently doubled as something of a security blanket. Klavier called it “good luck,” but whether there was any rationale behind that declaration remained unknown.

“Well, it ripped,” Daryan explained.

Apollo frowned, confused. He was fairly certain the jacket had already ripped, multiple times, and Klavier had been playing it off as an intentional fashion choice for at least a year.

“Okay, understatement,” Daryan went on, noticing Apollo’s doubt. “One of the elbows disintegrated.”

Apollo’s frown turned to a grimace. “Ah.”

“Yeah. So he’s, uh, mourning, I guess.”

Of course he was.

Apollo sighed. “I’ll go talk to him.”

The door to Klavier’s bedroom was slightly ajar, so Apollo pushed his way hesitantly into the room.

Klavier sat cross-legged on the floor, the jacket spread out on his lap. He held the sleeve in one hand and a needle and thread in the other, and he was apparently attempting to sew a patch over the missing elbow. A questionable choice, Apollo thought, but he could probably pull it off.

As Apollo watched, Klavier very slowly poked the needle through the sleeve, and very slowly dragged the thread through. It almost worked, but as he pulled to tighten the thread, a crack snaked through the leather and the material around the thread crumbled into pieces. Klavier’s shoulders slumped.

“Verdammt,” he muttered.

“Hey, Klav,” Apollo said quietly, and Klavier jumped.

“Oh! Apollo,” he said, brushing a hand through his bangs in an attempt to hide how startled he had been. Then his eyes widened. “Oh. Shit. What time is it?”

Apollo chuckled. “You’re very late.”

Klavier looked pained. “Ach. Schatzi, I’m sorry, I—”

“Don’t worry about it. I heard there’s been a tragedy.” He dropped to the floor next to Klavier to take a closer look at the jacket. “Eugh. That doesn’t look good.”

Klavier sighed. “I’m afraid I’m just making it worse.”

“Hm.” Apollo wished he could say otherwise, but it really did seem like the sleeve was beyond repair. “And you can’t wear it like that?”

Apollo was doubtful, but he wouldn’t put anything past Klavier.

Dejectedly, Klavier shrugged the jacket on. No, there really isn’t any way to make that look stylish, is there?

The end of the torn sleeve looked awkwardly orphaned from the rest of the jacket, and as Klavier experimentally bent his arm, the rip in the material only broadened.

Even so, Klavier looked somewhat hopeful, as if he wished Apollo would tell him it really didn’t look all that bad, actually.

“Hm,” Apollo said instead. The glint of hope in Klavier’s eyes died.

He sighed heavily and gingerly removed the jacket, resting it on his lap again. The two of them looked down at it.

“Klavier,” Apollo said slowly. Sometimes, after a long life, old leather jackets have to move on to the big motorcycle gang in the sky, where their zippers never get stuck and they can listen to as much rock music as they want… “I think you need a new jacket.”

Klavier sniffed. “But…”

“Besides,” Apollo pointed out, “it’s not even cold enough for a jacket.” It was October—outside was a balmy 76 degrees.

Klavier pouted. “It was part of my outfit,” he said, his voice quiet. He ran a finger over the torn edge.

Apollo bumped their shoulders together. “I’m sorry, Klav. I know it was your favorite.”

Klavier gave a small, disconsolate nod, then carefully folded the jacket and stood.

“You’re probably starving,” he said apologetically. “We can go.”

He took a moment to place the jacket on his bed, then followed Apollo downstairs.

“You can hang it on your wall,” Apollo suggested. “You know—Miles Edgeworth style.”

Klavier blinked, then let out a short laugh. “Okay, Apollo. Point made. It’s just a jacket, after all.”

Apollo’s bracelet squeezed slightly at that, but he decided to let it slide.

~~~

Apollo Justice was on a mission.

When Clay woke up Saturday morning the following week, he looked across the room to see Apollo already awake and dressed, sitting at his desk and poring over his laptop.

“Are you doing homework…?” he asked doubtfully. Although Apollo was perhaps slightly more studious than average, 10 a.m. on a Saturday was a little much.

Apollo didn’t even look his direction. “No. Hey, do you know any good thrift stores? Besides these ones.”

Squinting at Apollo’s screen, Clay could see a map of the city, scattered with red pins.

“Uh, not really. Why are you looking for thrift stores?”

Apollo needed for a thrift store because both shopping malls that he could reach via city bus had proven woefully inadequate when it came to providing a replacement for a cherished leather jacket. He was moving on to Plan B.

He explained the situation to Clay, who apparently knew Klavier well enough by this point that he wasn’t surprised in the slightest.

“Well,” Clay said. “I didn’t really have any plans for today, anyway.”

Apollo blinked. “You don’t need to come…”

“I’m closer to his size, aren’t I? Let’s find your boyfriend a jacket.”

Then Clay called Ema, who apparently knew the jacket’s history and was surprisingly sympathetic, and Ema called Kay, who was the only one in their extended friend group who had a car. Soon the four of them were pulling away from campus in Kay’s black sedan, Ema in the passenger seat while Apollo called out directions from his phone from the back.

The first store was a bust for leather jackets, although Kay found some sunglasses and Ema spent a long time looking at ties. Clay snatched up a nebula sweatshirt at the next shop, and Apollo actually found really nice suit vest at the third. The fourth store had a wide selection of jackets, but they were all either too worn, too big, or the wrong color.

By late afternoon, Apollo was starting to get very discouraged. The number of stores on his list was dwindling, and, while the four of them had all found some great cheap purchases, their original goal was yet unfulfilled.

“Maybe you can contact the host family,” Kay suggested as they left the second-to-last store. “Find out what brand it is, and buy one online?”

He had thought of that, although he hadn’t needed to go so far as to reach out to the family—he remember the tag on the inside of the jacket. And although the original wasn’t in stock anymore, there were numerous others he could have chosen from—if he wanted to spend his next two paychecks from Mr. Wright, that was. He sighed.

“That’s kind of a last resort,” he admitted. Klavier deserved it, of course, but…ouch.

But his optimism was wearing thin by the time they walked into the final store on his list. It was one of the nicer places they had visited—Kay was immediately drawn to a display of gloves, and Ema drifted over to the selection of button-down shirts—but when Apollo finally found the men’s jackets, he knew right away he would be disappointed. There was one leather jacket, but he could already tell it was too big.

But the rest of his friends were still looking around, so he wandered the aisles absently, running his fingers across a rack of shirts.

“Ah! Pollo!”

Apollo looked up sharply to see Clay skid to a stop at the end of the aisle. He spread his arms wide. He was wearing a leather jacket.

For a moment, Apollo could only stare.

“It’s…that’s…”

“Perfect, right?” Clay said. “And it’s super comfortable, too. I literally don’t want to take it off.”

Reluctant to celebrate just yet, Apollo walked in a circle around Clay, half-expecting to find that the back of the jacket was covered in some elaborate rhinestone monstrosity, or that it had some weird smell. But it was just a classic black leather jacket with a few tasteful zippered pockets, and it seemed barely worn. It fit Clay really well, too, and although Clay was shorter than Klavier, they had a similar build.

“Where did you find it?” He was faintly afraid that a customer would storm up to them imminently and accuse Clay of snatching the article of clothing out of their own basket.

Clay gestured vaguely. “Over there, on a rack. Someone must have put it back in the wrong spot.”

Tentatively, Apollo flipped over the price tag, and exhaled in relief. A little pricey, but nothing like the ones he had seen online.

“It’s perfect,” he agreed finally. Clay beamed.

The four of them made their purchases and returned to campus. Back in his room Apollo carefully wrapped up the jacket in tissue paper and put it in a plain paper shopping back that he had lying around. Then he paused.

Klavier’s birthday had passed in the summer. Their six-month anniversary had been last month. Christmas was much too long from now. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t just give Klavier a gift out of the blue, but it would be nice if there was some occasion…

He was idly scrolling through Facebook that evening when it came to him.

One this day: one year ago.

Belong was the image Klavier had made to advertise the first meeting of the Ivy Pre-Law Society.

That’s as good an excuse as any, he thought, smiling, even if it was a couple days off.

He texted Klavier to make sure he was around, then headed over to the Gavinners house.

Sam let him in. Klavier was in his room, sitting at his desk doing homework. On a Saturday night. Apollo would never not find it amusing that his boyfriend was a bigger nerd than he was.

Klavier turned around curiously when Apollo rapped a knuckle lightly against the door.

“Schatzi,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “what’s up?”

Apollo held out the bag. “Don’t worry, you didn’t need to get me anything.”

Frowning, Klavier accepted it. “What’s this?”

“Your, uh, we-started-our-club-one-year-ago present,” Apollo explained. He shrugged. “I dunno. Just open it.”

Klavier dug into the bag and unwrapped the jacket. His mouth fell open.

“Apollo…” he breathed.

Apollo rubbed his neck. “I know your old one meant a lot to you, and I know I can’t really replace it, but…I dunno, this one probably isn’t as nice? But it seemed really comfortable, so, um…” He bit his lip. “Hopefully it fits, at least?”

Wordlessly, Klavier unzipped the jacket and put it on. It did fit, like a glove. Klavier straightened out the sleeves and seemed momentarily surprised that they reached all the way to his wrists.

“Apollo,” he began, as he adjusted the lapels and flipped up the collar, “you didn’t have to…”

“Well, I wanted to,” Apollo said. Then he smiled wryly. “And you’re not really acting like someone who’s actually about to refuse a gift.”

Klavier, who was partway through securing the zipper, paused. He reddened slightly. “Well. It is very comfortable…”

Apollo laughed. “Good. It looks good.”

Klavier lifted his head, and Apollo noticed that his eyes looked a little shinier than usual. “Thank you, Apollo. This is…you really didn’t have to, but…it’s perfect.”

Apollo relaxed. “I know it’s not really the same as the old one…” he started to say, but Klavier shook his head.

“That one was special because it was a gift from people I care about,” he replied. “And so is this, ja? No less special.” He stretched his shoulders. “And look—no splitting seams!”

“I really can’t believe the old one lasted that long,” Apollo marveled.

Klavier took a breath. “Debatable that it really lasted,” he admitted. He stood and crossed the room to check his reflection in the mirror hanging behind his door. “I may actually be able to wear this for a concert without worrying about a wardrobe malfunction.”

Apollo narrowed his eyes. “Do you ever actually worry about that?”

Tilting his head, Klavier considered this. “No, not really. All part of the show, ja?” He grinned at Apollo over his shoulder, and Apollo rolled his eyes.

Klavier admired his reflection for a moment longer, then turned. “But schatz, now I feel bad. I did not get you a club anniversary present.”

“Eh, I’m sure you’ll find some way to make it up to me.”

“Will I now?” Klavier’s lips spread into a smile. He came to stand in front of Apollo, resting his hands on Apollo’s waist.

Apollo tried to suppress his own smile as he looked up at Klavier. “Yeah, you’re smart, I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Klavier murmured, leaning in and capturing his lips.

Apollo responded by grabbing the lapels of Klavier’s jacket and pulling him closer. It was strangely satisfying to do so without worrying that the fabric might come apart in his hands.  

~~~

The next morning, Apollo woke to a text from Clay.

Clay [10:03 AM]: so...... i guess klavier liked his new jacket

One of Apollo’s arms was trapped awkwardly under a snoozing Klavier’s head, so he typed out a succinct message with one hand.

Apollo [10:04 AM]: shut up

Clay [10:04 AM]: you’re welcome ;)

[cathygeha]

REVIEW

Up In Smoke by Annabeth Albert

Hot Shots #4

 This book left a smile on my face. It was a steamy-sweet romance between two men that so deserved to find happiness. No major drama for the couple though taking on the care of an infant baby girl was definitely not easy…but so much easier together than it would have been for either to do alone. It almost had a fairytale feel to it and was perfect reading for me the day I read it!

 What I liked: * That the backstories of the two men had commonalities

* That I felt both men were “equal” and brought qualities that would support the relationship

* That the two men communicated openly and maturely

* Shane: good brother, musician, loving uncle, has goals and dreams, a good person

* Brandt: firefighter, a bit of a rambler, professional, caring, team player, a good person

* The growth in both main characters

* How the two dealt with the situation they found themselves in

* That they were there for Jewel, the baby, and for one another

* That there was no major drama between the two men

* That it felt believable – mostly

* The fairytale feel of the story that might have been less believable but that was very nice indeed

* The happy ending

* Seeing/hearing about some of the characters from previous books in the series

* Wondering if there will be more books in the series

* That there was no “bad guy”

* All of it really except…

 What I didn’t like:

* Being reminded that firefighters have a tough life and that they sometimes die as a result of the job(s) they do.

 Did I enjoy this book? Yes

Would I read more in this series? Yes

 Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin-Carina Press for the ARC – This is my honest review.

 4-5 Stars

Up in Smoke by Annabeth Albert is available in eBook, mass market paperback and audiobook formats on April 27th!

  Book Description

Three Men and a Baby meets Backdraft with explosive chemistry and heartfelt feels.

 Freewheeling smoke jumper Brandt Wilder thrives on adrenaline. He’s never met a parachute he can’t repair or a dangerous situation he couldn’t wrangle his way out of. He’s popular and fun-loving and not at all looking to settle down or form lasting relationships. It’s a lifestyle that’s served him well…right up until the day he finds a baby on his doorstep.

 Shane Travis is used to putting his country music career—and his own happiness—on hold after his sister rolls through his life. Like last spring when she convinced him to try skydiving for his birthday—and she walked away with the hot parachute instructor.

 Now he gets to deliver the piece of news that will upend Brandt’s carefree life: he very well might be a dad.

 Shane’s niece is safe in Brandt’s strong, capable hands, but too many questions remain unanswered. Co-parenting while they sort it out leads to late-night talks, and soul-bearing confessions lead to a most inconvenient attraction. Still, Shane can’t leave this makeshift family behind—even if it means playing house with the one man he can’t resist.

 Hotshots

Book 1: Burn Zone (available now!)

Book 2: High Heat (available now!)

Book 3: Feel the Fire (available now!)

Book 4: Up in Smoke (coming April 27)

  Read on for an excerpt from Up in Smoke.

 Brandt’s deep chuckle rumbled straight through Shane. Damn. This was torture. Then the other man wrapped an arm around Shane, positioning his muscled forearm where Shane could see his fancy-looking watch gadget. “Now this is my altimeter. It tells me when we’re at five thousand feet and ready to deploy the chute.”

“Got it.” Shane wasn’t about to study that meaty arm any more than he absolutely had to.

“Okay, it’s go time.” Dallas’s voice echoed though the room. Brandt quickly unclipped them, but as soon as he stepped away, Shane’s pulse kicked up. Maybe he couldn’t do this. Jump out of a plane? Who was he kidding? He was a ground dweller, through and through.

Right when he was about to turn away, though, Brandt grabbed his biceps. “Nerves hitting you? Trust me. You’ll be just fine. I haven’t lost a jumper yet.”

Shane barked out a laugh. “Not exactly making me feel better.”

“Listen, I can tell you all day about how awesome this is.” Brandt looked him dead in the eyes, gaze serious for once, all his charm turned to raw intensity. “But until you do it, you’re gonna think it’s all BS. Sometimes you gotta take a leap of faith.”

“Not very good at those,” Shane admitted quietly as he stepped free of the other guy’s grip. He couldn’t keep meeting his eyes either. Too much power there, like a shot with an extra kick.

“Okay. You want me to tell Dallas you want out?”

A yes was right there on the tip of Shane’s tongue, but then he heard Shelby’s laugh ring out. She’d love it if he chickened out. Not only would she get bragging rights for all of eternity, she’d get what she’d wanted and get to go with Brandt. And for whatever reason, Shane hated that most of all. “Nah. I’m going.”

He white-knuckled his way out to the small plane, spared a nod for the female pilot, and squished his eyes shut until Shelby jostled him into looking at the valley underneath them, the green canopy of the national forest contrasting with the pristine blue sky. Random snippets of lyrics danced through Shane’s head, ways that he might try to describe this view. But then, right as he was settling into something resembling comfort, everyone started shuffling around, getting ready to go. The wind rushed in as the hatch opened, and a full-body shiver raced through Shane.

Then Shelby gave him and Brandt one last coy grin before she and Dallas were away, her whoop echoing across the sky.

“Ready? Here we go.” Brandt nudged Shane closer to the open hatch. Shane wanted to say no, wanted to drag their clipped-together bodies back inside the plane, wanted to both hurl and yell. But in the end, all he could do was nod. Only one way down.

His knees had locked up even as his thighs trembled. Behind him, Brandt was sure and solid. He could push Shane out the hatch pretty easily, but he didn’t. He was letting it be Shane’s choice. And somehow that patience and restraint gave Shane a jolt of courage. One step into nothingness. That was all it took.

Brandt was right behind him, smooth as if they were on a dance floor, not open sky. And now they were fall­ing. Falling so fast. Faster than a car on the interstate with the windows all down, faster than a dirt bike on a steep incline, faster than the whoosh down a water slide. There was no describing the feeling of the wind on his cheeks, the roar in his ears, the shout that probably be­longed to him, the adrenaline that crashed through him as he tried to remember what they’d practiced about po­sitioning. Damn. Hard to think.

Which was funny because that was the one thing he was good at. Shelby was forever teasing him about overthinking. But now, his brain couldn’t even pull two words together as they rushed through the air. Brandt yelled something, but Shane was too busy hurtling through the sky to focus on it. And then he was pulled backwards, a hard yank as the parachute deployed. No more freefall. And the oh-my-God-about-to-die adrenaline quieted enough that he could look down, really look.

“Oh my word. It’s… .”

“Beautiful isn’t it?” Brandt’s voice was deep and rich, like warm honey over Shane’s still jangling nerves. Now that the air wasn’t rushing so fast, he could hear him better. Almost too much better, because it felt like they were soaking up each other’s awe and wonder. Sharing something warm and tender and perfect.

“Yeah.”

“Nothing like it.” Brandt whistled low, a sound that hit Shane somewhere soft. “Never gonna get tired of this view.”

“Me either.” Shane almost didn’t recognize his own voice, up this high, this far removed from everything that usually weighed him down.

“Hey, Superman. You want a turn steering?” Brandt didn’t wait for Shane to reply, grabbing his arms, guid­ing his hands.

“Whoa. Wow. I’m doing it. Look at us.” They swooped gently from side to side, and it was quite possibly the best feeling Shane had ever experienced.

“Look at you. Didn’t know your smile muscles even worked.”

“Screw you. I can smile.” Shane was feeling so good that he had to laugh.

“Well, then get ready. The landing crew will snap your pic as we land. It’s your rock-star moment.”

“Feels like it,” he said right before Brandt took over and set them down softly in a clearing, barely even jarring Shane’s knees. “Damn. That was…”

“It was something.” Brandt was looking right at him, like he could see straight through Shane’s layers, strip him bare. And Shane held his gaze, held the moment as long as he could.

 Copyright © 2021 by Annabeth Albert

 Add Up in Smoke to your Goodreads!

 Buy Up in Smoke by Annabeth Albert

Harlequin.com: https://www.harlequin.com/shop/books/9781335484727_up-in-smoke.html

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Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/up-in-smoke-27

  About Annabeth Albert

Annabeth Albert grew up sneaking romance novels under the bed covers. Now, she devours all subgenres of romance out in the open—no flashlights required! When she’s not adding to her keeper shelf, she’s a multi-published Pacific Northwest romance writer.

 Emotionally complex, sexy, and funny stories are her favorites both to read and to write. Annabeth loves finding happy endings for a variety of pairings and is a passionate gay rights supporter.  In between searching out dark heroes to redeem, she works a rewarding day job and wrangles two children.

 Connect with Annabeth Albert

Website: http://annabethalbert.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnnabethAlbert

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annabethalbert

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annabeth_albert/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6477494.Annabeth_Albert

[aion-rsa]

Halo Infinite: A Timeline of the Game’s Troubled Development

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Microsoft recently confirmed that Halo Infinite is now scheduled to be released sometime during the fall of 2021. The revelation that the game will be released a year after its recently delayed debut has prompted some fans to ask the question, “How did we get to this point?”

The answer to that question involves requires us to go all the way back to 2015 when Halo Infinite was little more than an idea. What began as the seemingly inevitable development of Halo 6 morphed into one of the deepest dives into development hell that we’ve seen in recent memory.

The timeline of Halo Infinite‘s troubled development isn’t always pretty, but it’s a necessary tool for anyone who wants to understand how Halo Infinite went from a game on the back of the Xbox Series X packaging to a title that may or may not even be released next year.

September 2015 – “Serious, Real Planning” Begins on Halo 6

Weeks before the release of Halo 5, Microsoft surprised many by confirming that initial work had already begun on the next Halo game. 

While Microsoft’s Frank O’Connor stopped short of naming that game in an interview with GamesRadar, he did mention that most people felt that the “Reclaimer Trilogy” which was supposed to play out across Halo 4, 5, and 6 had grown into more of a saga. 

Looking back, it’s pretty clear that this was the first official sign that “Halo 6” was going to be something different. As Halo 5 hadn’t even been released at the time of this interview, though, there was little speculation at that time regarding the full meaning of this interview.

October 27, 2015 – Halo 5 is Released to a Mixed Reception 

The story of Halo Infinite’s troubled development has to include the somewhat mixed reception of Halo 5. 

While Halo 5 received a fair bit of praise for its multiplayer features and certain gameplay innovations, more and more people wondered whether Halo had lost its identity as part of 343 Industries’ apparent attempt to incorporate more modern trends. There were real concerns regarding what a Halo game was anymore and whether 343 had done enough to truly leave their own mark on the series. 

Those concerns would seemingly form the basis of much of what came next. 

2015 – 343 Expands Development of a New “Slipspace” Engine

Around the time of Halo 5’s launch (the exact date is unofficial) 343 Industries ramped up the development of a new graphic engine called Slipspace.

While it seems that Slipspace retains a few key elements of Halo’s old Blam! engine, 343 Industries made it clear that they intend for this engine to fuel the future of the Halo franchise.

Given the reactions to Halo 5, many fans felt that the development of this engine was not just a way to help ensure the Halo franchise remained technologically impressive in the future but to help 343 leave behind another remnant of the past and make Halo something closer to their own. 

February 2017 – 343 Industries Talks About Halo 6’s Splitscreen and Co-Op Options

After spending most of 2016 focusing on Halo 5, 343 finally broke their silence on the next Halo game by confirming that the project would incorporate split-screen play and emphasize co-op. 

The announcement, which came during a D.I.C.E presentation, ultimately didn’t amount to much, but the fact that one of the first official pieces of information we heard about the next Halo game was a commitment to split-screen play inspired some fans to believe that the next Halo game would emphasize the franchise’s classic “staple’ concepts.

April 2017 – Microsoft Promises to Focus More on Master Chief

In what would prove to be an interesting interview with GamesTM magazine, Frank O’Connor acknowledged that fans were disappointed by Halo 5’s lack of Master Chief storylines and the ways that the game focused on other characters. 

In the short term, this interview served as a soft promise that the next Halo game would feature Master Chief in a starring role. More importantly, it furthered the idea that the next Halo game would both return to the series’ roots and help 343 Industries reshape the series a bit in order to better make it their own. 

Combined, those ideas kicked off a series of rumors which strongly suggested that the next Halo game would be a kind of reboot. 

June 2017 – 343 Industries Warns Fans of a Long Halo 6 Development Cycle

The first indication that the wait for the next Halo game could be longer than usual came in a 2017 blog post from developer 343 Industries. 

Ultimately, the post just noted that the company had no immediate plans to showcase the next Halo game and that it would likely be quite some time before they were ready to show off the project. While not an odd announcement in and of itself, some fans noted that there was previously only a three-year gap between the release of Halo 4 and Halo 5 and that this announcement came two years after the release of the last Halo game.

For the most part, though, expectations remained high.

June 10, 2018 – 343 and Microsoft Reveal Halo Infinite

One of Halo Infinite’s biggest moments came during Microsoft’s 2018 E3 conference when the game’s debut trailer was revealed to an enthusiastic audience. 

The trailer was a true teaser that largely consisted of sweeping environmental shots, musical stings, and a brief look of what appeared to be Master Chief. Aside from publicly revealing the name of the next Halo project, the biggest thing to come from this trailer was increased speculation that the next Halo game would effectively serve as a throwback to previous Halo titles. 

What’s maybe more important to note is that 343 and Microsoft remained quiet about many of the specifics of the project at this time despite growing speculation and even a few emerging concerns.

June 10, 2018 – 343 Industries Promises to Listen to Fan Feedback When Developing Halo Infinite

In a blog post published shortly after the reveal of Halo Infinite, 343 Industries promised to listen to fan feedback throughout the development of the game. 

There are two notable things about this blog post. The first was that it emphasized the idea that fans would be able to participate in playable tests of Halo Infinite similar to the Insider program used to test Halo: The Master Chief Collection. To our knowledge, those tests not only never happened but the development of Halo Infinite has often been defined by a distinct lack of updates from its creators. 

The other notable thing about that blog post? It was written by Chris Lee. You’re going to want to remember that name for later. 

July 19, 2018 – 343 Denies Battle Royale Rumors

Shortly after Halo Infinite’s debut, fans started to speculate that Halo Infinite either was a battle royale game or featured a battle royale mode.

This rumor was driven by the game’s mysterious name, the growth of battle royale titles at that time, and the fact that 343 remained silent about the finer points of the project’s gameplay ambitions. 

343 shot down these rumors by saying that “the only BR we’re really interested in is Battle Rifle.” Still, the battle royale rumors became symbolic of both fan fears for the future of the franchise and 343’s lack of communication. 

December 19, 2018 – 343 Says Fans Happy With Halo Reach’s Customization Will Likely Enjoy Halo Infinite‘s Systems

During a stream on Mixer (R.I.P.) the 343 team revealed a few new tidbits about Halo Infinite, including the revelation that the game’s armor customization system was inspired by Halo Reach. They suggested that those who love expanded customization options would enjoy what they were working on. 

The general reaction to that news seemed to be largely positive. This is another point you’ll want to keep in mind for a little later.

June 9, 2019 – A New Halo Infinite Trailer Debuts at E3

Our next proper look at Halo Infinite came during E3 2019 when 343 and Microsoft revealed arguably the game’s most famous trailer and confirmed that Halo Infinite would be a launch game for the company’s next-gen console.

The beauty of this trailer was its simplicity. It stylishly emphasized the idea of Halo harkening back to its roots while establishing the foundation of the project’s new storyline. 

It was a wonderful moment that generated quite a bit of unfiltered excitement for the game, but that hype would soon be spoiled by some emerging practicalities. 

June 9, 2019 – 343 Confirms Halo Infinite is a Spiritual Reboot

A year after Halo Infinite’s debut, 343 Industries finally confirmed that the game was viewed internally as a spiritual reboot. 

Not only was it odd that it took so long for 343 to address a rumor as old as the game itself, but they did it in a way that left an unusual amount of room for speculation regarding the game’s timeline, purpose, and gameplay inspirations. Over a year after this revelation, we still find ourselves asking many of these questions. 

August 16, 2019 – Halo Infinite Creative Director Tim Longo Leaves 343 Industries 

While Halo Infinite had long been burdened by unanswered questions regarding the game’s development process, the first major public roadblock happened when Halo Infinite creative director Tim Longo decided to leave 343 Industries.

The news came as quite the shock given Longo’s work on the project up until this point and his history with the company, but the impact of the announcement was mitigated somewhat by Microsoft’s assurances that Halo Infinite’s development was otherwise proceeding as planned. In fact, Microsoft said that producer Mary Olson had already taken over as the game’s head of the game’s campaign team. 

October 14, 2019 – Mary Olson Leaves 343 Industries

Less than two months after being named as one of the key pieces of Halo Infinite’s development team, it was revealed that Mary Olson had left 343 Industries. 

Microsoft and the 343 team once again tried to employ some damage in the form of optimistic PR statements, but their strategy was significantly less effective this time around given the timeline of this departure in relation to Longo’s already stunning decision to leave the studio. Suddenly, many more fans were much more worried about what was happening behind the scenes.

July 23, 2020 – Halo Infinite Gameplay Trailer Falls Flat

Two years after its reveal, 343 Industries finally showcased Halo Infinite’s gameplay. What followed was a resounding “meh.”

Actually, that might be a generous summary of the reaction to Halo Infinite’s gameplay. Not only did the game look rough from a technological standpoint, but most people walked away from the gameplay reveal without a strong idea of what kind of game Halo Infinite actually is. 

Ultimately, Halo Infinite’s gameplay reveal was a failure that left many fans wondering how this game was supposed to be released in just four months. 

July 30, 2020 – 343 Tries to Address Fan Concerns in a Blog Post

Not long after Halo Infinite’s gameplay debut, 343 shared a blog post that tried to explain the shape of the early gameplay footage and get ahead of concerns regarding the title’s shortcomings. 

This was really one of the first times we heard 343 Industries prominently address concerns regarding the game’s development. Most of the previous messages we heard from Microsoft and 343 before prior to this point tried to maintain a more noticeable “everything is fine” tone that barely acknowledged reasonable concerns.  

August 11, 2020 – Halo Infinite is Delayed 

Arguably the biggest moment in Halo Infinite’s troubled development occurred when Microsoft and 343 shocked the world by revealing that Halo Infinite would not be released in 2020. 

The shock of that announcement lingers to this day. What was supposed to be the Xbox Series X’ premiere launch game instead became yet another 2020 game delayed due to development problems. 

Yet, there are many who felt that the complications caused by developing a game during the COVID-19 pandemic may have had less to do with this delay than the rough shape of the project itself. Those rumors were about to become significantly more popular. 

August 13, 2020 – Reports Suggest Halo Infinite Was Almost Split into Multiple Parts

Shortly after Halo Infinite’s delay, Phil Spencer confirmed that there were discussions at one point regarding whether or not it was better to release Halo Infinite in multiple parts rather than delay it entirely. 

This was an interesting moment as it not only highlighted the extent of the game’s development problems but the idea that prominent members of the Xbox team were in some way dissatisfied with the game’s progress and wanted to step in to remedy the situation. 

August 19, 2020 – A New Report Highlights Halo Infinite’s Internal Development Struggles

After years of speculation regarding Halo Infinite’s development struggles, a report from Thurrott seemed to shed some light on just how rough the road to this point had been. 

The report suggested that a combination of outsourcing, creative turnover, and the struggles of developing a new engine had significantly hindered Halo Infinite’s development and cast serious doubt on the future of the project. 

This report didn’t contain many revelations that fans hadn’t already assumed were true but it did capture the scope of the game’s development problems and how they may have impacted the project right from the start. 

October 22, 2020 – 343 Update on Halo Infinite’s Armor System Worries Fans

A rare official update regarding Halo Infinite’s development progress doubled as a worrying signal that the game will utilize a Destiny-style shader system that could lean heavily on microtransactions. 

While worrying in and of itself, this update feels especially relevant when coupled with the previous suggestion that fans would love Halo Infinite’s armor and customization system. The optimism that accompanied that suggestion felt like something from a lifetime ago. 

October 28, 2020 – 343 Industries Director Chris Lee Leaves the Project

Just when we all thought that Halo Infinite’s no good, very bad year couldn’t get worse, it was revealed that Chris Lee had decided to move away from Halo Infinite and take on other responsibilities within Microsoft. 

Lee was one of the few remaining high-profile creative presences on the Halo Infinite team as well as the guy who penned that early blog post that suggested Halo Infinite’s development would be driven by the input of its fans. That’s one of the many reasons we felt his departure raised Halo Infinite’s biggest red flag yet. 

November 30, 2020 – 343 Shoots Down New Battle Royale Rumors in Apology to Fans

While 343 Industries Community Director Brian Jarrard taking to Twitter to downplay the latest rumors regarding the project’s supposed battle royale mode wasn’t necessarily a big story in and of itself, it is interesting that he took that moment to apologize to fans for what a rough year it’s been. 

The biggest overall complaint regarding Halo Infinite’s development cycle has been the lack of updates from 343 that have forced those to jump to their own conclusions. Jarrard called for patience and understanding at a time when it felt like trust in 343 was at an all-time low. He acknowledged that a lack of updates had fuelled potentially harmful speculation but seemed to suggest that the team still wasn’t ready to share any significant new information about the game.

December 9, 2020 – Halo Infinite Officially Delayed to Fall 2021

With the announcement that Halo Infinite has been delayed until sometime late in 2021, Microsoft has seemingly ended the year in significant Halo Infinite updates on an appropriately despondent note. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Halo Infinite is not necessarily doomed to fail, but the idea that the game has been delayed a year or more after it was supposed to be the flagship title for Microsoft’s new console highlights the impact of the events that led us to this point and leaves us with serious questions regarding what the best-case scenario for Halo Infinite even is at this point.

The post Halo Infinite: A Timeline of the Game’s Troubled Development appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[bookaddict24-7]

BOOK REVIEW: They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera

Release Date: September 5, 2017

Age Group: 14+

Genres: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, Grief, Friendship, Death

Rating: 4.5/5 Stars

Find it on Goodreads here.

Disclaimers:

I received a copy via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

There may or may not be spoilers below. The clearly marked “spoilers” can be viewed on my Goodreads review, which is here.

This is a long text post.

I've never read an Adam Silvera novel before because I know that they will break my heart. I finally caved and read this one because that premise is promising as hell and wow, yes. Congratulations, Adam Silvera, my heart is officially broken.

I absolutely loved a lot about this book. They Both Die at the End is a great way of seeing this (hopefully) impossible world where we get told that it is our last day to live. It forces the two teen protagonists to really look at their lives and learn the last few lessons left for them to learn. One of the strongest things that helped Silvera's novel was the well-rounded storytelling.

I'm starting to really love this whole idea of having multiple POVs from the occasional side character when the reader needs a bit more clarity or depth to a scene. I love the little moments of other characters' lives and how they see their worlds in comparison to the protagonists. I feel like even though the side characters are kind of flat themselves, they aid in rounding out the main characters by commenting on how the world might see them.

Mateo and Rufus are the two boys destined to die in this book. That's not a spoiler, it's just a fact.

Mateo and Rufus have two very different lives, but they've both dealt with death and its power to change lives. I love the contrast of the two characters because it made for an interesting collection of moments where both characters grow. Mateo becomes a little more outgoing and less terrified of living in a dangerous world, while Rufus grows to appreciate life more and see the wonder behind living and caring for others, whether he knows them or not. Both characters have a lot to offer to the story and I'm really happy we get to see them together during this day.

Of course, there is a boldly underlined sadness in seeing two people destined to die so young. But I feel like instead of focusing so much on the ending, the reader should focus more on the characters themselves and the lives they live in between. They Both Die at the End is a great example of Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote: "Life is a journey, not a destination." If we stop thinking that these boys are about to die, we will see that in this last day they lived. I loved that despite the sad story idea, there was a beautiful life lesson thrown in there.

The side characters were great. Though at times a little bit flat, they served a greater purpose of highlighting the best aspects of the protagonists (as I mentioned before). Even the people we randomly get POVs from and the ones we never see again, it was great seeing these little tidbits--they felt almost like easter eggs for us to find. It also portrayed different sides to the same day. Not everyone gets the call, but there are still many people who do besides the protagonists and everyone chooses to live it differently. Also, it was great to see the parallels of different people living the same day, whether they got the call or not. I'm starting to thing that this book liked playing with the idea of contrasting themes.

One last thing I absolutely loved was seeing the Latino diversity, especially a Cuban-American character! I'm Cuban born and I live in Canada (so it's not exactly the same thing), but I absolutely love reading about characters who can call a part of themselves Cuban. It's a small thing but it's such a rare occurrence in YALit that it made me extra giddy.

Finally, the small things that brought my rating down were simple things that I found a little confusing and/or frustrating. There are a lot of questions left unanswered, and I don't mean the unanswered rhetorical questions left by Silvera. Either I missed the explanations behind these admittedly frustrating moments, or they were just breezed over in this book. The most important question I have is: What happened to Mateo's dad? Did we ever find out? I feel like this wasn't really told and with that being said, (view spoiler).

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. (view spoiler) This new world also felt very large and like it could have more room to grow. It completely felt like a story that was just plucked out of this world and dropped in your lap and while you might think it's something incredible, it's just another day for them. You're just stopping by for a visit while the rest of the world continues to function around you. I loved that feeling--knowing that more could happen, but like life, there's no way of knowing everything.

I would recommend this book if you're in the mood for great character growth and a bittersweet story about living life to its fullest.

Happy reading!

[mrnerdteacher]

The Top 5 Unanswered Questions that are Gnawing Away at Me after the Season Finale of Santa Clarita Diet

Netflix has once again added an amazing show to its growing lineup of original series, and just like its “Stranger” or “Orange-r” forefathers, “Santa Clarita Diet” ends its season with quite a few cliffhangers and unsolved mysteries. Here are 5 questions even more pressing than “How much vomit?”

In case it wasn’t obvious: SPOILER ALERT

What turned Sheila in the first place?

While the show establishes that a non-fatal zombie bite can spread the “disease,” this doesn’t explain how this show’s patient zero, aka Sheila Hammond, became undead in the first episode. She wasn’t bitten, exposed, or anything in between, so how and why did things take a TURN for the worse? (get it?)

What was the Small Red Ball?

The show repeatedly shows the viewer that in the process of becoming a zombie, the infected release an “insane” amount of vomit, in addition to a as-of-yet unidentified red ball. Is this an organ, or a foreign agent linked to the cause of the mutation? Or perhaps it is some sort of growth, or vessel containing the soul? For something that seemed so important, I can’t believe we never even got a hint…

What WAS with Joel, anyway?

In episode 7, after killing Dan, Joel becomes oddly sentimental and emotional, pausing during otherwise tense situations to reflect on the beauty of nature or the reflection of light on the wall. Sheila half-explains his behavior by saying her new violent lifestyle “broke him,” but the writers never give us enough of a confirmation to call this one case-closed. Although it didn’t come up again in subsequent episodes, I’ll bet we come to learn more about what makes Joel tick in the next season…

Why Did Joel Finally Break?

Speaking of which, in Joel’s last scene he is being taken into protective custody at a mental health facility, presumably for being honest with what looks like a doctor of some kind. But why did Joel choose to finally come clean and tell the insane truth? Nothing at the Serbian woman’s house would have forced him to explain any of the horrors he had been enduring over the last few weeks; in fact, it is pretty unlikely “Baka” would have even pressed charges once she sobered up and recovered from one heckuva hang-over. So what exactly prompted Joel to get himself committed?

Are There More “Dieters” Out There Somewhere?

This one is a little loose, but go with me for a second. Before Loki was killed, the show established he had a pretty violent lifestyle, despite his love for smooth jazz. While the series shows you most of Sheila’s comings and goings, it is entirely plausible that Loki inadvertently bit or wounded a few people we never heard about, leaving the door open for other zombified characters to emerge in season 2. Plus, the show also gave a subtle hint that Sheila may have attacked more people that we know. “If you’re craving pizza, eat someone who just ate pizza!” She imparts this wisdom to Loki while they were bonding over their shared insane circumstances. But when did she learn this trick? And how many people did she have to eat before figuring out a nuance like this? While it’s entirely possible that this was just a simple case of careless writing, I like to think there are some side-stories yet to be told.

Next Year, In Santa Clarita!

Personally, I was surprised how much I grew to love this show. Here’s hoping Joel and Sheila are “free” to hang with us again soon! I have so many questions, and not just about the marble floors and detached guest room.

[elysiumrp]

Congratulations TRISHA! You have been accepted as Sabrina McCarthy. Please go through the checklist and send in your account within 24 hours. If you need more time, make sure you send a message to the main.

Welcome back, Trisha! It’s been ages, but I’m so glad you decided to join us again as Sabrina. I can’t wait to see where she goes on the dash cause I know that you’ll do wonders playing her. In regards to your question about having one of her parents be from England, go for it! I definitely think it makes sense with her character, and I’m fine with either parent. Welcome to Elysium!!

OOC INFO

Name: Trisha Age: 26 Timezone: GMT Preferred Pronouns: She/Her Previous RP Experience: [RFP] Activity Level:  On a daily basis, I’m working office hours, until six in the afternoon. I’m usually free in the evenings, sometimes I need to go to a meeting or two but it’s rare. Of course, it’s also in the evening when I cook, clean and whatnot, but I tend to have at least one hour on a regular night to log in and be around. Anything Else: Nope! And I do hope I’m not missing any catches here, because I’ve read basically everything around, hahahaha.

IC INFO

Character Name: Sabrina McCarthy Second Choice Character: N/A Why did you choose this character:

I don’t tend to have a favourite type of character; I usually like them closer to who I am, a bit different, which gives me more room to develop them without strings attached. However, once in a while I need a change. Perhaps it’s my writer’s instinct telling me it’s fed up of the same old thing (like it led me to write stories in first person - which I’m not exactly a fan of - and write from a male’s perspective, as well as a variety of others experiments). I believe this time came. Sabrina is out of my comfort zone, which would push me to actually portray a character and not simply, naturally play it with my instincts. I have played characters like her before, of course, and it took me places I didn’t expect, which is always amusing.

Sabrina is apparently flawless, a privileged. Underneath layers of expensive designer clothing, imported makeup and youth, she has her own demos, caused by a relapse in the family, often amongst the wealthy ones. As I’m always drawn to the darkest bits of everything, I guess it’s concealed it all and slowly opening up the troubled cracks that led me to Sabrina. She’s very raw as a person, so I think she has a lot to be explored and refine.

Describe your plan for them: It will all depend on how things play out, but portraying Sabrina adjusting to a severe circumstance would be interesting. A more ordinary and less drastic scenario would be the loss of her clique - for whatever reason, from gossip to a misconduct in friendship from either end. How would she deal with the fact that she has no friends other them and how what would she do to come out of her decade-planned social agenda. She would be forced to interact with people that she isn’t too fond of, or even intimate of, for instance.My aim is, I want development. And with that, in Sabrina’s case, it comes with a lot of personal suffering. Her personality isn’t easy, she’s adamant about her beliefs and the way she was raised, without anything to trouble her and make her want to change; I want to put her in situations out of her comfort zone, to slowly build personal growth. And there’s no way of making someone without breaking them first.

Describe your character’s feelings, reactions, and potential involvement/want to be involved during/after the recent fall of the Council (At least a few sentences): Disbelief. Not a surprised one, but a “are you stupid?” eye-roll one. For Sabrina, everything was nothing but well-planned marketing. The media, nowadays, could do wonders to anything and anyone’s reputation - and she knew that quite well, being in her area of expertise. The videos all over the internet, the allegations - they were all publicity. That thought persisted as the first attack occurred in Times Square. It was an odd and clear cry for attention for whatever company was producing that movie/TV show/series/campaign, but it was all an act. Monster did not exist. After the third attack, her creativity perhaps couldn’t wander that far, yet she was rational and intelligent enough to realise something was wrong. That sixth sense clicked the moment he started starting at her, commanding her. Yet nothing said by Nicholas compelled her into doing anything at all. The man acted off with confidence and naturally. Sabrina fought back with teeth (ironically) and fists, running off. It was when she got home that she decided to peek through the layer of silk she were around her neck. Bite marks, trailing down her shoulder covered by blouses of long, high collars. In the danger of the madness the city was truly living now and her own, unanswered fears, she tried to play along without actually sharing with anyone how vulnerable and afraid she was, not even to her parents and closest friends, with the exception of Samantha, who took the time to explain her what many humans were still blind to, telling her small details and even teaching her a few ways to protect herself.

Para Sample:

(I’m sampling this thread, which is more developed and in depth, usually the way I prefer writing. It isn’t IC as I often struggle to write any IC applications.)

Bubbles jumped from the skillfully balanced coupe glasses seemingly superglued to the silver tray. Tulip ones would have been better to preserve the sparkly taste, but after countless refills of Moet - and some downed whiskey on the side - Ella lost her sense of criticism. Regardless of some errors perceived only by a controlling businesswoman, the celebration was, as usual, outstanding. The magazine’s filial in Canada was particularly acclaimed by their Christmas parties, a tradition in a country where snow cornered every living being. New Year was typically celebrated in New York City, back at Ella’s headquarters and main building of the fashion empire. Hard liquor could be found at an arm’s length, champagne was spurting from fountains and, needless to say, there were private areas where recreational ‘distractions’ had the prerogative of a turned blind eye.

In certain zones, the music was as loud as in a night club, the spaces dark as in the anonymity of a Vanilla Sky movie. It was a party, after all, and nobody could party better than rich, powerful people. Especially when they all held dirt on one another, which kept all the gatherings - no matter how large - always very secure for some occasional colleague lose control over the incentive of an invited outsider plus one - or multiples.

Particularly, Ella felt like indulging into champagne. It wasn’t unusual for her to drink (not lately), but the bubbly liquid seemed to be getting to her head fast enough to unleash her scarce inhibitions. It was past one in the morning, though, and consequently everyone else was cut or their way to alcohol intoxication, so the editor-in-chief didn’t mind her sharp, bold tongue and impulsive behaviour. It had proved to be fun so far, in spite of some honest, foolish mistakes.

With a half empty glass of flat Moet, the brunette detached from her crew of co-workers and headed to one of the many bars. With a bubbly smile matching her drink of the night, she requested a new coupe, taking the brief moment of wait to scan her surroundings. Coming to the party was purely an obligation, at first, but she managed to find the fun in it after some litters of alcoholic beverages. Those who knew her, were aware that the brunette was going through a rough time, regardless whether she would share the details and causes or not. Tonight, she allowed herself to feel lighter; tomorrow, she would deal with the consequences of hangover.

It seemed to have started ahead of schedule. A sting hit her temple vividly, like a pin hammered in her brain, at the blurry sight of a familiar silhouette. It was very much alive in her memory to provoke her the certainty of seeing what she thought to be standing across the room. No more than a month had it been she had last seen him, and from afar she could sense his presence, now that she was aware of it. However, it couldn’t possibly be him.

The bartender politely handed her the glass, while Ella’s azure gems wouldn’t diverge from the target her brain focused on. Her lips moved in a ‘thanks’ that was muffled by the music back in the open chamber nearby, so quietly she spoke. It was like being on a trance. In a black tuxedo, his gold-tone, slick back hair was all she could see. But the stance, the gestures he made whenever speaking to whoever was that unfamiliar person he talked to - the voice she heard had to be his, or else her mind was repeating it just for tease. Playful tricks of the mind, after too many glasses. She believed it, she also doubted it. He was away, somewhere in Europe. She was here. She came back. This isn’t happening.

He turned around. Black shawl lapel tuxedo, ebony shirt underneath - a complete full-black outfit just like that first party. Ella was also in black. Her colours were neutral, always black, beige, dark brown and, on occasion, some white. They looked like coordinating colours when most carried on the Christmas warm up in red and green. And the voice that she heard before, it turned louder as she, much to her surprise, walked toward her in the company of another man, which soon enough turned a corner and left Princeton to arrive at the bar alone. He was quicker than Ella’s despair to flee. She couldn’t hear her own thoughts, her heart was too loud in her ears.

Any questions/concerns/things you’d like to change: (siblings to add, pronouns, sexuality you’d like to specify, personality, face claim, history, etc., etc.)

If it’s possible, perhaps Sabrina’s mother of father could be from the UK? I don’t know, I’m asking because I live in Europe and there’s a few differences from the English here and from the USA. I think it could add a bit more of character to her, by having a double nationality and being raised back and forth two distinct continents. It’s not mandatory, just something I thought interesting. :)