#they play solitaire and stuff. it's fun:tm:

[rosaguard]

i’ll probably make a more official post about all this at a later date but i was talking to verumking about some stuff and since it was already something i wanted to talk about on my blog, i figured i would just post about it here as well. for starters, i don't really like the idea of minerva in crisis core - mostly b/c her existence raises questions the writers didn't seem to consider. for instance, if this being exists to protect the planet, why didn't the planet 'summon' her when sephiroth was running around and shanked aeris? i've been thinking of how i can make minerva not suck ( at least in my eyes ) and one idea is to just continue ignoring her completely while playing with the idea of aeris becoming something more™️ when she dies / enters the lifestream which has been floating in my head for awhile now.

i've seen people say they've made her overly special / powerful in the remake which is weird to me since 1). she was always special - being the last cetra was her big 'special' thing:tm: and 2). she was probably always meant to powerful but they couldn't fully explore it back in 1997. aeris' powers have been unclear in canon as far back as the OG - she can canonically enter cloud's subconscious and they take that ability even further in the remake - but we have no idea if that's a thing all cetra can just do or if she's even more powerful then the average cetra. for the sake of this discussion, i'm going to go with the latter. we already know she helped save the planet even in death; we just didn't know how until maiden that travels the planet ( which i'm constantly confused on whether is canon or not b/c cl.otis and clerit.hs are always arguing about it. apparently the ultmania it was in is getting reprinted so??? ). 

anyway, MTTTP basically turns her saving the planet into this 'my friends are my power' thing and all the souls she meets in the novel such as jessie, biggs, wedge, zack, etc. + the other souls within the lifestream itself help push meteor back but i'm also like....what if she just willed it by herself completely? this is essentially a long lead up to me proposing the idea of her and the planet's subconsciousness basically merging together once she dies. i always felt like aeris ( and other characters ) were super active post-death in a way that doesn't really make sense. aeris can be explained as her being a cetra™️ ( but even then i feel like it’s kind of a reach since the cetra are so unexplored ) but zack should've merged with the lifestream by the time advent children happens and it doesn't make sense for him to appear to cloud - at least based on how the lifestream is described in the OG - unless aeris herself willed it so. 

i’ve touched on how a lot of the themes regarding the lifestream and the cetra are very similar to many concepts in indian religions before on my blog. one thing i didn’t touch on, however, was how the philosophical concept of brahman reminds me of aeris’ character beyond death: 

brahma (ब्रह्म), brahman (stem) means the concept of the transcendent and immanent ultimate reality, supreme cosmic spirit in hinduism. 

brahman on the other hand cannot be seen with the naked eye. It can only be experienced. brahman is said to be all-pervasive. It pervades all parts of existence. it is present everywhere. sages of the past have experienced the Brahman and have become realized souls. according to advaita of sankara, all individual souls are parts of the supreme brahman. after getting liberation from the human bodies, the individual souls become one with the brahman. death is meant only for the body and not for the soul.

all of the souls in the lifestream make up one, large collective ( or 'soul' ) which is the planet's consciousness similar to brahman. the way brahman is described, or at least my understanding of it at least, is that it's not a 'physical' thing but something that is felt because it exists within everyone / everything and is present everywhere. this reminds me of not only of how bugenhagen describes the lifestream but also how aeris' presence post-death is handled as well. 

bugenhagen: eventually... all humans die. what happens to them after they die? the body decomposes, and returns to the planet. that much everyone knows. what about their consciousness, their hearts and their souls? the soul too returns to the planet. and not only those of humans, but everything on this planet. in fact, all living things in the universe, are the same. the spirits that return to the planet, merge with one another and roam the planet. they roam, converge, and divide, becoming a swell, called the 'lifestream'. lifestream... in other words, a path of energy of the souls roaming the planet. 'spirit energy' is a word that you should never forget. a new life... children are blessed with spirit energy and are brought into the world. then, the time comes when they die and once again return to the planet... of course there are exceptions, but this is the way of the world.

aeris within the lifestream is the last shot you see in the original game ( not counting the post credits ) and instead of hints of her theme playing, the chimes for the lifestream theme plays instead as she smiles. she also helps saves cloud after his fight with sephiroth in the lifestream so aeris not merging with the lifestream and still looking out for the others was a thing even in the original game. in advent children, her presence is constantly 'felt' even though she is not there directly whether it’s tifa being able to feel her presence when it's raining, cloud being able to indirectly talk to her, or even marlene sensing her when sephiroth summons the infected lifestream. 

tifa: aeris is here... everyone is here... cloud is here with us!

a lot of these moments are also specifically tied to nature ( or places she was tied to such as the church or her death site ): her leaving a voicemail on cloud’s phone when it’s dropped in water, her appearing in the flower fields in the credits as cloud is traveling the countryside, her showing up while the party is fighting bahamut in the sky, etc. sephiroth’s presence in the lifestream post-game would also work better as them being contrasting rivals because through geostigma, he would be hurting 'her' as she is the planet’s consciousness now. ( it could also explain why she was never like 'hey cloud, i have healing water under my church. go grab a shovel and get to digging fam!!!' because maybe she couldn't reach out to him or something. the real answer is bad writing and fan service but!!! )

overall, aeris becoming the ffivii equivalent of the supreme cosmic spirit is interesting™️ to me. her dying like in the OG isn’t a part of my main canon but the entire concept of this could still be a thing once she dies of old age in my main canon or used for another verse ( most likely the latter ). especially since she seems to just be able to...do things because she simply wills it after death - at least to an extent. for instance, cloud literally dies at the end of Advent Children and she simply went 'no, i don’t think you will' before sending him back to her church alive. she also talks to kadaj as he’s dying and joining the lifestream which again, doesn’t seem to be a general cetra thing but it’s hard to say. it always read to me as if ifalna had already fully merged with the lifestream when aeris was still a child and she couldn’t ‘talk’ to her mother anymore. yet aeris is able to physically manifest herself ( and zack ) outside of the lifestream to talk to cloud ( it was for fanservice:tm: but stuff like that raises questions SE!!!!! ).

tl;dr: she's basically a goddess after dying and keeps zack around because it gets kind of boring monitoring the flow of life sometimes.