#this is draft 1 so it may change over time as stuff does
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lexiesdoodles · 4 months ago
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Timeskip Marnie concept
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cerberus-new-owner · 2 months ago
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do over cause i went to save this as a draft to look at something and there was an error (im fuckin crying rn, yes i broke my self censoring streak but this desrved it)
Helloooooooooooooo
sooooooooo it caught my attention that the dumb little sleeping heacannons i made a while ago caught your attention sooooooo
i may be interested in writing a part two but for the Angels + Solomon (raph not included) (btw this is like a rn thing like you're reading the post RN)
part three with barbie and dia at some point too if i remeber (they were originally going to be in this part but i got lazy lol)
Part 1 - The brothers Part 2 - The Angels + Solomon Part 3 - Diavolo + Barbatos
Content thingy-o - GN!mc, implied romance between mc solomon and simeon (seprate) (not luke), slight angst for simeon and lukes parts, mentions of asmodeus and barbatos, pet names for simeon and solomon
Simeon
w/o mc - he is a light sleeper like mother let kid sleep in their own room but is paranoid that something may happen (him and luke cause i hc that luke has night terrors often) he does let luke sleep in his bed if luke has a really bad nightmare or is just really shaken up for whatever reason, doesn't snore but does sleep talk and sleep walk usually to lukes room out of habit of checking on baby luke but occsionally just stands in the corner of solomons room mumbling random things almost creepily (need eggs for the cookies and flour for the cupcakes), i've said this many times before but w i n g s c a n b e b l a n k e t mans sleeps with his wings out as a blanket.
w/ mc - pretty much the exact same buuuuuuuuut cuddle positions!! (i promise i'll add this to the brothers version) love love loves it when him or mc lays on the others chest and he will use his wings to hold mc closer to him also loves big spoon little spoon mainly big spoon so he can wrap his wings around mc (cant tell me he doesn't love holding/hugging/cuddling mc with his wings) will use his wings to block out any morning sun light (if they're in the human realm its a good excuse to sleep in 'simeon, i have to get up its late' 'no you dont angel,its still dark' 'no it isn't, your just using your wings block the sun out') he's also pretty cold and enjoys teasing mc with the power of his freezing cold hands like just placing them on their back or something suddenly to feel the jolt of mc jumping at the sudden temperature change
Luke
w/o mc - frequent night terrors like cannot sleep kinda night terrors so simeon has to help him get back to sleep or atleast try ('luke i promise nothing like that will happen to me' 'are you sure'), he is a restless sleeper he is all over his bed at once and he has like a million plushies on his bed if any fall off he's appologising immediantly, he snores but not loudly like average kind of snores, and like simeon but also not like him (like father like son type a stuff) luke sleeps with his wings out (i feel like its a realm wide kind of thing in the celestial realm) but his wings are not quite blanket size for himself so he does have to use a blanket at night
w/ mc - he's mostly the same (he has slapped both mc and simeon on accident due to his restlesness) but he will bring one plushie with him if he does end up going to simeons room to sleep, also best sleep he'll ever get is when mc is with simeon cause he knows that they're safe with simeon but more importantly if he has a nightmare theres the chance that mc will go to comfort him ('m- mc? i had another *sniffle* nightmare' 'it's okay luke 'm here') it'd help especially if his nightmare is about something bad happening to mc and when he'd end up sleeping in simeons bed he'd be inbetween mc and simeon both of his parental figures helping him go back to sleep helps him to not have night mares or terrors
Solomon
w/o mc - when he does sleep he sleep talks like very big sleep talker tends to accidentally say spells in his sleep or summon asmodeus and/or barbatos in his sleep ('solomoooooooon honey i told you t-' 'so you got summoned by the sleeping bastard at midnight too?') he sleeps sprawled out starfish on his stomach probably still in his uniform (he does not give two craps) average sleeper too like not too deep of a sleep but not too light of a sleep, he will wake up when ever he hears simeon running to lukes room or when simeon is doing the creepy corner stand thing though
w/ mc - he sleeps alot more often still sleep talks and occasionally summons asmo or barbs but not as often stops sleeping starfish but still prefers to sleep on his stomach (which leads us to cuddlessssss) feel like he'd prefer to be ontop of mc like head resting on chest but like face down asleep hugging them as they either play with his hair or sleep, mans if also probaby burning hot so no need for a blanket when you have him ('solomon you're too hot' 'i know i am but you're way hotter my little aprentice' 'solomoooooooon you know what i mean')
edit part thing (i forgot to say goodbye oops)
GOODBYEEEEEEEEEEE AND THANK YOU FOR READINGGGGGG have a goooooood night, day, lunch, brunch, afternoon, pencil idk just have a good one!
Obey Me one Master List to rule them all
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bingebuddie · 6 months ago
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Here... We... Go...
Hi all,
Well, so far, 2024 has sucked for me... but anyway...
I've been feeling pretty out of sorts mentally, and depending on where my head is at, I've been bouncing back and forth between Fics and my Wes and Cole novel.
I am going on a writing retreat May 4-12th... so... expect some major movement...
I wanted to provide a few updates on where I am with my Fics and other works.
Sideways:
Published updates here have been slower than I wanted or anticipated. This has nothing to do with the story, as I have this outlined for Arcs 6-10... Yes, up to Arc 10.
My personal life has gotten in the way a lot over the last few months and has just eaten up my time to write.
Now, Arc 6 will lead right into Arc 7 and 7 into 8. You will want to throw some stuff at me for some of the wtf moments and having to wait between arcs... but it's all coming. Anyone new to the series has had the benefit of reading five fully finished-out arcs that took me about a year to write. Have some patience with me. It will be worth it.
Arc 6, Into The Unknown, has multiple chapters drafted. I just need to clean up some edits from my beta, and they will be posted. May is going to be a big month for this arc.
This is a pivotal point in the series. It spans Chapters 37-48, making it the longest arc so far. This installment will delve into the Seals' backstory, their connection with Buck and Eddie, and much more. It’s a substantial piece of the puzzle that you won't want to miss.
This one does have some heavy moments...
This does end with a cliffhanger... But I promise, it's not our boys directly you are left wondering about...
Arc 7—Strong—Eddie will need his friends and family like never before. This is a heavy Diaz family arc. The outline is eight Chapters.
This also ends in a cliffhanger and that promise I made above... does not apply here.... insert evil laugh...
Arc 8 Genesis—This is the big one. It all comes together here, and it is the part I am most excited to write. It is also the longest, with an outline of 16 chapters. You will find out more about Genesis in Arc 6.
This arc will change all of their lives and the status quo as we know it. Grab your seats and tissues. The previous title for this was Unleashed...
Arc 9 - Experience/Circles - Tentative Title - No tease, as it will spoil what's to come...
Arc 10 - My All - googles Mariah Carey ...
Sideways isn't going anywhere...
Shifted:
Volume 1: Nevermore
This was originally planned to be 30 chapters. I have 20 published right now. The rest of this is outlined, and chapters 21-25 are written and ready to be published. I haven't posted these because Chapter 25 ends on a massive cliffhanger, and I don't want to leave you all hanging. I will be finishing this... after Arc 6 of Sideways ...
I have a plan for the second arc... but that's all the way behind everything else on my docket...
Impossible:
If you have read this one, I have yet to post the last chapter...
This has an MCD, and while I was writing this, I lost a friend. It was hard to finish. I have finished the outline, and this will be completed soon.
Run:
This is on hold. I have too much else to focus on. Consider this on hiatus until I say otherwise. It might even be scrapped... will see...
Would You Mind:
This one was a lot of fun... The wrap-up/epilogue is done; it's with my beta...
Lap Dancing Eddie will return... in Sideways...
I Don't Want To Be Your Freind:
As of today, 7 of 11 chapters are posted. This is all outlined. I have drafts of chapters 8-11 done. Going to beta and will be posting soon...
I started this leading up to Season 7; it was my mind dealing with all the rumors and leaks... In my mind and my group chat, I was calling this my Anti Tommy and Marisol fic...
This got way out of hand and became a monster of a fic...
Now... on to what else I have brewing...
Future Shock - 3 Part Series - Magic/BAMF/Mayhem/Found Family/Soul Mates/Redux/Ryan Throw's The Timeline Into A Blender and Tada...
As It Is - 2030 and the 118 have been a fractured team since the lawsuit. When members of the team start to be picked off one by one, Hen, Chim, and Bobby, have no one to turn to until friends and family return in their most desperate hour.
As It Was - Details what led to the fracturing of the 118. A retelling of Season 2 and part of season 3...
As It Was Always Meant To Be - Now reunited, will the 118 be able to rally around each other, or will their painful past be too much to overcome.
This has a loose outline and it's very large ...
Depressed, Devasted, and Destroyed aka Something To Hold On To:
I keep calling this Triple D or DDD... This is a pure angst fest... major whump... like I'm mad at myself for the whump here ... seriously...
This has an outline...
Relationship Goals—In an effort to rebuild their friendship after their recent relationships crash and burn, Buck and Eddie join a local hockey team along with some of Buck's old seal friends. This was pure fan service to myself and a way to get Buck, Eddie, Wes, and Cole to play hockey and not have to do it on Sideways. This currently sits around 60 pages.
Stolen - A stolen kiss changes everything between Buck and Eddie... This angst fest is somehow incredibly soft... This is about 35 pages right now...
The Ties That Bind - Buck breakdown fic... This might get scrapped and merged into DDD from above...
All I Want for Christmas - Think Scrooged Vs. It's A Wonderful Life Vs 911... This won't be posted until holiday time...
The Wes and Cole novel is still moving along... it's my refuge when the show does something stupid...
I should probably get to writing... it's not like I have nothing to do....
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the-s1lly-corner · 1 year ago
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spot that meets a autistic reader, that is talkative to themselves, but has poor social skills because (lack of good parenting + bullys, but is very smart and loves art and engineering, and dreams to be a scientist one day.. it could began as the reader first feared him over an awkward moment? to opening up about themselves and the reader's obsessive fascination over him. two very talented ppl that only wants to be appreciated, respected and loved...💔
idk is it to much?? bruh I'm trying to be creative😭 I'd be happy with whatever happens!. aNd TaKe yO tiME!! On irl things and beloved spotty <3
Spot w/ an autistic reader!
Rubs my autistic little hands
Feeling a lil drowsy but I wanna chuck this out before I fall asleep for (possibly) the next 7 hours :3
Not proof read we die like Peter Parker <\\3 we are sleepy and tumblr wont let me save drafts for asks <\3
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Obligatory "I like this character so I'm hcing him to be ND like me" touch
He gets it
Anyways
I think to help make the whole thing less jarring, or whatever, is that you may have known each other vaguely before the collider incident
You weren't a scientist at alchemax, more like.
Well shoot I just forgot the term but like, you work there, but you dont do hands on experiments, not experienced enough yet
Intern?
Maybe, idk
Obviously you don't work there anymore after the collider blowing up, so... you're looking for a new job
You knew about Jonathan, but you weren't friends
You had also heard rumors about what happened to him but you kinda dismissed it as cruel rumors surrounding his death.. I mean no one could've survived that explosion.. right?
So imagine your surprise when you end up almost getting robbed by spot
Can you blame him? He hasnt found another job since the accident and hes probably living off of pity handouts; likely homeless
Now hand over the wallet!!/j
No but on the semi likely chance that you manage to defuse the situation, given Spot sucks as a criminal, you just bluntly ask if the whole
Rumor thing is true
I mean obviously it is but confirmation is important
After a few more chance encounters, you guys both finally decide to properly sit down and talk
Its tense and awkward at first since 1. How does one even act around someone like spot? He's vulnerable but also trying to do the whole. Revenge thing... And 2. Hes desperate for human interaction and it SHOWS, it's almost uncomfortable actually
But you both trudge past it and make it work
One meet up turns into two then three; then you discover how much hes struggling and
Now you're roomates
Oh my god they were roommates/ref
Anyways, that's the set up!! It kinda felt wrong to just. Jump into it without some explanation on how yall end up in the same area consistently
Doesnt mind that you mumble to yourself, he probably does the same thing. From muttering things to keep his train of thought to having a personal monologue, I wholeheartedly believe he does the same thing
Hs understands how it feels to be. Not treated very good, he likely wasnt the most respected in alchemax so it's not uncommon for the two of you to have vent sessions where you both let it all out
You ask him about his journey to becoming a scientist and not so subtly ask for advice on how to get into the field; and touching onto the whole human interaction thing, hes more than willing to talk your ear off about his entire career history
On the chance you dont want to do physics stuff, and you wanna do another branch of science he's all ears on listening to you ramble, may even lend a hand in getting you to where you need to be career wise
Yall do at home experiments as bonding stuff
Look if spot can make a mini collider in some building then I can only imagine the type of shit yall get up to at home
Oh? You're still curious about.. him? Of all things, him?
He never thought anyone would look at him with interest; usually its disgust or fear, or both
Hes hesitant at first because what if you discover something that'll totally change your view of him?
Takes (some, a little) coaxing
Bro caves fast, he misses physical touch
"So like, these holes-" you proceed to just. Dip your entire fist into a hole and watch said fist pop out from another hole
The demons are telling me to make reader like
Make it a game to try to throw stuff through his holes but I feel like that would be really mean, no one likes stuff getting thrown at them
Please dont throw stuff through his holes :(
Random but like
Idk if this happens with yall but
If someone stims do yall. Like stim back
Like I have vocal stims and mess with my hands; and sometimes my friend will be prompted to stim if I stim??
Idk but yall do that
OHOH before I post this if you're both comfy with physical touch please please please hold him, it's been so so long since someone has hugged him and he really really needs it :(
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zahri-melitor · 4 months ago
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20 Questions for Fic Writers Tag Game
Thank you @androxys for the tag!
1. how many works do you have on AO3?
I have 46 works on AO3 at the moment. There's a handful more spread over various other places, but at this point I've uploaded all of my back catalogue that I want to have archived there.
2. what's your total AO3 word count?
113,119 words. Which is pretty respectable given I tend not to write long pieces.
3. what fandoms do you write for?
Whatever is currently causing my brain to itch! At the moment that's most DC Comics, but I do have a few Yuri!!! on Ice drafts sitting around that I may or may not finish, at least one Girl Genius piece I could tidy up, a bunch of ATLA snippets, and I can frequently be provoked into writing Vorkosigan Saga if people pose the right scenarios.
4. what are your top 5 fics by kudos?
College Daze: a Yuri!!! on Ice SkyGem Retirement Challenge piece, where I don't bother with the reveal. It's three separate scenarios where people meet Yuuri as a college student in the US and don't know who he is. I'm entirely unsurprised it remains my most popular - it was a very popular challenge in the fandom and it's a lot more accessible and pandering to fandom tastes than some other stuff I write.
Find Out What It Means To Me: an immediate sequel to Yuri!!! on Ice, set around Japanese Nationals. Yuuri doubts himself but succeeds and finds how much love and support he has from the whole Japanese skating community. I love this piece because it's very much a balance of things I enjoy (fiddly technical details) and characterisation.
the picture frames have changed and so has your name: DC Comics. What if Dick no longer loved Tim? What if Dick got Morrison Disease? Ahahaha I think you all know this one. It's my big DC piece so far, so I'm not surprised it's up here. It also contains female characters that casual DC fans have never heard of in major roles, so I'm also not surprised it doesn't get the attention fanon-based material does in this fandom.
Little Chick in a Nest: Yuri!!! on Ice. Victor introduces Yuuri to Lilia, without realising that Minako was also a famous prima ballerina. The YOI fandom loves Minako's Benois, but it's a tiny set dressing detail; Victor probably overlooked it and nobody ever talks about Minako as a famous dancer. I had a lot of fun setting up Victor to put his foot in it.
there's an endless road to rediscover: DC Comics. Dick and Tim playfight in the Cave and Damian misreads the situation. I think this one is popular just because of the interplay between the characters, and it was my first attempt at trying to get my head around Damian as a character.
5. do you respond to comments?
Pretty much always. It's the time I spent on LJ coming through, because comments are for talking, and if you talk to me I'll talk back. If you're waiting on a response it's usually because I'm formulating some massive post. Also I tend to meet people where they pitch their comment - the longer and more detailed it is the more detail and discussion you'll get back.
6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
I'll hold your memory in my hands tonight. It's pretty hard to beat this one for angst in terms of the subject matter. (I still giggle to myself over the pun in this title because it's dreadful) Anyway CTE is something I have a lot of feelings about and they recently diagnosed two women as having suffered CTE due to domestic violence, which is horrific and really shows the long term problems and dangers from family violence.
Then there's A Duty to Your Family and Soft, Small, Silent, Still, one of which contains attempted infanticide and the other which contains canonical accidental toddler death, so you know. When I give heads up warnings I tend to mean them.
7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
...Happiest? hmmmm. I have a bunch of fluff, but probably Find Out What It Means To Me for YOI, Herds of Little Vorkosigans for Vorkosigan Saga, and These Small Hours for DC Comics?
Yes okay that's two baby fics and the one where everyone tells Yuuri he's the best.
8. do you get hate on fics?
Almost none that I'm aware of; there's occasionally a bit of pedantry on the Vorkosigan Saga fics but that's from known notorious figures in the fandom and I largely ignore them. If anyone's busy having a hate on for my fics they're kind enough to do it the correct way, which is privately where I can't see it.
9. do you write smut? If so, what kind?
Nope. The closest I get is playing around with innuendo at times in my writing. I'd really rather insinuate and then fade to black, it's heaps less awkward to write.
10. do you write crossovers?
I was going to play good old 'what do you mean by crossover' as far as DC Comics goes, but the answer is a frank yes, because I've got a West Wing & Grease crossover drabble I'm Not Pregnant which is leveraging Stockard Channing appearing in both.
11. have you ever had a fic stolen?
Not that I've ever noticed, and I honestly suspect it's unlikely to happen. I would need to write things that get more attention than I currently get, designed to hit fandom popular tropes.
12. Have you ever had a fic translated?
No. None of my Vorkosigan Saga stuff is popular enough to get a Russian translation and it doesn't fit the preferred tropes of that end of fandom anyway.
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?
Nothing I've ever specifically published as fic. I do have some commentfic over the years where there's been back and forth between me and someone else, but alas commentfic is a dying breed in fandom these days.
(and it's a LOT more informal than proper cowriting)
14. What's your all-time favorite ship?
All time favourite? Oh gosh. Probably Wally/Norah from Billabong, which hits just so many of my favourite notes for a relationship. Nothing for me will ever beat Wally throwing himself at Norah's mercy to confess that he would rather have died than Jim as he's 'nobody's dog', and Norah claiming him as her own.
I've loved those two since I was a little kid, and you know how it is with ships you acquire in that formative period.
15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?
I remain hopeful about a lot of my stash but I just can't see myself finishing a piece I have about Steph's baby and Helena Kyle. It's a fun scenario, but I cannot work out the villain who came after them both, and so it remains a setting without a plot.
16. What are your writing strengths?
From what people have said to me: I'm pretty good at paring down language and telling a lot of story in small scenes and understatement. There's a bunch of compliments I've had over the structure of TES 34/64 that I treasure, and everyone lost their minds over "the shoes had eventually come in handy. For the funerals." in a gap where a parent should be.
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?
Oh, this is something I have strong feelings about. I don't like loan words being translated and multilingual fandoms often have a working level of loan words that is higher than background use: think for example the amount of French commonly used when discussing ballet. So I tend to think you should use languages at the level of comfort that the fandom has for them.
It often comes down to the fluency of the characters in the scene - I think dialogue in another language can be quite powerful if some of the characters understand it and others don't, because you can leverage that variation in understanding in your audience. However personally I'm more likely to note what languages are being used in dialogue tags than arrange for a translation.
I do try to localise for word choice to the setting of a fic but at this point I've been in fandom too long and and I'm too stubborn to localise spelling for my writing.
Which means if I were to write Wellington Paranormal fic I would probably be using my extremely scanty Māori mixed through the dialogue; I wouldn't bother translating kia ora or whānau for instance. But on the other hand I'm not going to write in another language unless it makes sense for the story to do so.
19. First fandom you wrote for?
That I published? Harry Potter. Which I'm not ashamed of or upset over, really. It was a good fandom to learn how fandom worked in, and it certainly inoculated me against a lot of nonsense behaviour later on. I still have friends I made back then, I learned a lot about how Internet communities function and behave, and it's sort of weird to have things I was on the fringe of and have contemporary memories of occurring having become Fandom Lore.
20. Favourite fic you've written?
Oh damn. Hmmm. Look, probably the picture frames have changed and so has your name, because I'm super proud of myself for finishing it, but in terms of underrated pieces I have to to point to the Mother's Day series, particularly Tea for Two, because DC mothers deserve so much more love.
I don't have anyone specific to tag so let's make it an open offer.
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maythedreadwolftakeyou · 4 months ago
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Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Spread the self-love ❤️
<3 Ooohhh ok hm... honestly i do not post much fic (checked AO3 and only 18), for the amount that i start writing and then leave in various stages of completion in drafts on my computer, oops. Unfortunately at least 1 favorite is in that category, but here we go!
Fallout from the Fade (Dragon Age: Inquisition): Hawke is left in the fade during the events of DAI's Here Lies The Abyss, but manages to fight her way back out. However she's left to recover from the severe side effects and trauma that come along. Ok my confession here is while i have not updated this fic since 2020, i have in fact written more of it. But since i kept going so long (months... and then years...) between chapters I decided it'd be better if i just finish writing the rest myself (at least roughly) so i know how much more there is to go and can update it on a more regular schedule in the future when i start posting again. Alas i am very slow at this bc of grad school and also bc i get distracted easily and... have less motivation to work on it when not actually getting feedback as i go. So i may change my mind about this approach eventually but it's where the fic stands now.
Like Teeth Against His Heart (Dragon Age: Inquisition): After Solas wakes up from uthenera, he has many conversations with a variety of spirits over the course of DAI. Sometimes they tell him what he wants to hear, and sometimes they don't. I typically like the recent things I've written the most and this is that. It's a prose-poem style that plays with formatting, aka its kind of Weird, and weird is my favorite. I wrote it for a charity zine which also meant i had to have a Final Version rather than endlessly tweak it forever which was irritating at the time but also good for me.
Unposted, No-Finalized-Title fic, with the file jokingly named 'Sam I Am' (Mass Effect: Andromeda): pre-Andromeda and game timeline but from the perspective of your ship's AI, who also lives inside your character's brain, and in the game admits to altering your brain/body, and hello??? the game did NOT let me respond to that to the degree I desired? One of my literary obsessions is the combination of AI (the sci fi kind not... generative art etc) plus human augmentation... what that does to both parties sense of self, their relationships, how they view and function in the world, etc. In the vein of Silently And Very Fast by Cat Valente, Imperial Radch by Ann Lecke, Murderbot by Martha Wells... and I spent soooo much time wishing Andromeda had gone deeper into that angle/thinking about it myself I wrote. Quite a long fic about it. But i only played the game once and there wasn't much fan love/fanworks for it so I never posted it or any other Andromeda stuff I wrote, it was more just for myself. I'd like to go back and finish this fic but I estimate it'd be in the 40-70k word range and i'd need to replay the game to refresh my memory so it's like, a project for when i have a bunch of free time at some point in the future, since it's mostly just for Me.
the people you love become ghosts inside of you, and like this, you keep them alive (Mass Effect trilogy): Snippets of a variety of Garrus' thoughts and memories of Shepard, and a growing realization about the nature of love like theirs. I don't expect anyone to love this one but me, because it's just a self-indulgent thing I wrote specifically to figure out the flavor of grief involved in the relationship between my personal Shepard and Garrus. It's not as poem-formatted as my Solavellan one but the prose leans hard in that direction, and they came from the same place for me. I wrote it after finishing the trilogy because I (unlike a lot of fans, i know) felt very adamant that the correct ending for my Shepard is that she is dead now, and not coming back, and needed to cry some more about that.
like the leaves after a long winter (Dragon Age II): It's the first Christmas/Satinalia since Leandra's death, and Hawke is not in the mood for festivities -- until she realizes that everyone else will be spending it alone and finds herself hosting a party without even meaning to. I'll be honest #5 spot was kind of a toss up between this one, Less A Man Than A Wild Cat, and Grief. But I've decided on this one because 1. it covers my favorite thing to write about aka grief, but is actually written as a story/proper narrative unlike others i've already put on this list. With fanfic the most important thing to me before anything else is self-indulgence. While I love writing for prompts (like this one was!), my specific joy in that is taking an idea from someone else and figuring out how to cram all the things I care about into someone else's plot summary. Fanfic for me is like... it feels weird to call it 'writing exercises' because that implies i don't care about the final project when i very much do. Writing challenges? Maybe? Idk i just really enjoy having limitations to work within. Having NO boundaries is where I do my original content writing, so writing within the bounds of an existing franchise already means there's some limits (like keeping to characterizations, plot, etc) and then adding more on top makes it a fun experience and keeps me engaged.
While these are my top 5, I definitely don't think most of them are what other people would pick as a favorite from my (admittedly very limited) amount of posted writing, Fallout from the Fade being the exception. I think my friends probably like the one where I turned Fenris into a cat best (and that was VERY fun it's just also more lighthearted which i struggle to write sooooo bad), and then every one else is in my inbox about the single Solas x F!Travelyan fic I wrote largely as an experiment in writing sex scenes. sorry to everyone who read that and then tried to read my other fics and discovered its mostly blood and loss and Yearning...
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writercole · 2 years ago
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Update Update Update
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Okay sue me, I like that New Orleans view.
Let's talk, besties! Here's what's going on with me.
Feeling a bit of a burnout with writing. Don't misunderstand me - I'm still writing. I'm just chasing different stories right now.
Most of you guys know - I've been really open about this - that I've been struggling to find a job for almost 2 years now. Well, I finally got an opportunity. It starts training on May 1 but I'm pretty...skeptical because I've been screwed over so many times. I should note that there is nothing that suggests that this is a screwover but I'm just pessimistic at this point.
That's going to do one of two things - either I'm going to be writing a lot more or a lot less. I'm hoping it's the former.
I have like 100 stories in development currently and I get more and more ideas every day. Some of these are fanfic, some of them are probably going to be publications. Keep an eye here and at @coleslibrary for any updates or new publishing announcements.
My first three books are all available on Amazon currently and the next one will be there as well. I'm going to go ahead and say that instead of minor rewrites and name changes, this next one, the rewrite of Sounds of Someday, is going to be a whole new story. The basic plot will stay the same but so many details are going to be changed that it's going to read as all new.
Master lists are going to be posting throughout the next month. Mostly actor specific ones that I've been having in my drafts for far too long. They will be updated accordingly.
Most of my upcoming stuff will be collections - stories set in the same universe that don't have to be read together and contain multiple main characters. The first of those is my country club collection - A Drive For Love - starting with Golf Pro Bradley Bradshaw.
Last year I promised a Dad!Jake series. Well, good news on that front. I'm about halfway through writing the series. You'll Be In My Heart should be debuting in the next month or so. It does have to go back through my betas but each chapter will be a different POV and will vary in word count but will contain one scene. The FMC has been changed from a reader to an OC. I'm sure this will affect readership but I don't really care.
I think that's about it on that front. I want to send out a couple of shoutouts to a couple of people before I finish here.
First, @princessmisery666, Stacey, babe, I don't know what I'd do without you. You've become the Opie to my Jax, the level headed guiding light to my chaotic ways. Though you do encourage some of my more angsty ideas and I love you for that. I love you, period. I got this. 💞
To @ryebecca. You're my twinsie and my sounding board. You help my rational brain take over the emotional side more often than not and never make me feel bad for having a different opinion. I love you mostest.
To @imjess-themess and @blue-aconite. You two beautiful souls keep me grounded on days where I'm trying to dissociate all the time. I know you don't realize the things you do to help my mental state lately but just know that the two of you mean the world to me. I love you both.
@fuckyeahhangman. What can I say about your gorgeous face other than I absolutely love it like a cat loves sunshine.
@wildbornsiren My swamp gremlin. The amount of times I've turned to you when I've had a bad day is steadily increasing and I am so grateful for your acceptance of my insanity. I love you!
And last but certainly not least @never--doubt. I know I say it all the time, but I'm so proud of you and so thankful for your friendship. You're like the little sibling I always wanted and I'm so happy that we found one another through this hellsite.
If you're reading this and you're not listed, fret not. I still love you. I just might have forgotten what your new URLs are.
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nightmarevore · 1 year ago
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hi! i'm getting into writing safe vore oneshots and i was inspired by a few of your works and reblogs. for years i was really discontent with my writing, but when i revisited some of your stories today, i noticed how similar your writing style is to mine, and the fact that people enjoy your content made me confident enough to complete a draft and plan a new story. i wanted to know if you make drafts and revise them? do you just publish the first draft? do you get help writing or editing them? 1☆
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WAAAAAAAAAAAAH I;M SOBBING THIS WAS SUCH A NICE SERIES OF ASKS TO COME TO YOU'RE SO NICE TO MEEEEEEEE omg gomgo gomgomgomgklgkgfkjngfjbjdk i've never been complimented LIKE THIS or asked extensively for my process, this is new to me!!! you're wonderful and kind and i appreciate you.
i'm gonna have to make a readmore here as to not clutter up everyone's dashes to tell you my process/thoughts so HERE WE GO!!!!
i actually have only one fic i get edited and it's a non-vore fic, a very close friend of mine edits a fn.a f fanfic i'm writing based on w/illi.am a/f.to/n. i don't ask them to edit my vore stuff, but they do know i'm into vore. i actually write all my fics in a google doc!
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i'll typically actually write as i go entirely. i have a rough idea of how i want the fic to go (who's in what, who does what, an event i need to happen, etc) and write along that rough guideline in my head. i write completely in order, or else i can't make it flow well together. sometimes i'll write what else may need to get done or else i may forget.
i'll consider things i decide to change as i go along "the first draft," since i went with something entirely different. for example, in one of my drafts for a wip fic, i chose to have luke, in the serial killer, panic and size-shift to half size and have the fic end with a half-size hurt/comfort vore from luke and rowan. instead, i changed it so luke is dazed but has time remain his current size and pull rowan out of his pred instincts taking over and have cuddles afterwards and vore when they got home, luke still the same size.
though adhd and autism get in the way at times—executive dysfunction is a bitch. a lot of things i have written, like a luke and rowan serial killer fic, as well a a fugue state william fic have been a WIP since February of this year—literally when i BROKE MY FOOT and was stuck in a reclining chair for a month. i keep telling myself i need to get to them, but then i see ffxiv and hanging out with friends and just decide that's a better way to spend my time at the moment. i've been in a huuuuge brain fog for a few months bc of this, the recent one shot i posted was actually made because i was speaking vore feelings i had with medli.
i definitely have an easier time writing when i'm specifically fixated on vore, luke and rowan, william, mike, etc.
i'll write when i'm hyperfixated, and my brain pushes me to write more when i'm at work rather than at home, because adhd classifies work as something i need a distraction from, and home as chill time. i'll write on my breaks or when i have a moment to myself to sit and hide.
i'll tell you right now, i get SOOO many ideas and have at least 10+ wips, including f./n/a,f, luke and rowan, and ffxiv characters.
when i write, i'm mostly writing from my heart. exactly what i'd expect to think, feel, and hear. i put myself into the perspective/mind of the characters i'm writing and can get deep into these fics as i write them. i get so interpersonally connected to my writing as i'm writing that i physically feel my character's emotions, and see them in my head exactly how they play out.
honestly, i'm not too sure about tips on how to get out of making yourself write when you don't feel like it. i've gotten frustrated with myself for staring at my documents for too long and not being able to write anything. i imagine the scenario in perfect detail, and then i'll sit down, stare at my work, and i'm like ....???????????????????
i'm actually trying to open up to my therapist about getting medicated so i can have an easier time writing/creating for you guys! hopefully soon.
i hope this kind of gives you some insight to my process, please go forth and create and never be afraid to share. <333
this ask means a lot to me!
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chayscribbles · 2 years ago
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chayscribbles’ monthly writing update ☆ january 2023
☆ STATISTICS.
words written: 10 029
projects worked on: Andromeda Rogue; The Gemini Heist; and a Third, Secret Thing :)
proudest accomplishment: uhhh i can't really thing of anything... i made it to 10k words for the month at the very last minute does that count
books read: Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty; Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty
☆ GENERAL COMMENTS.
as you may or may not have noticed i haven't really been active on writeblr lately. between work, the fact that it's january, and having to shovel through, like, 4 snow storms, i haven't really had the time or energy.
started the writing year super strong. hit a wall about halfway and have since been in a terrible slump for most of the month.
however it turns out that you can trick your brain into thinking it's experiencing New WIP Euphoria by digging up and revamping an old wip (i.e. the Third, Secret Thing).
book comments: both books i read were about murder in space. both were pretty good. both get a solid 4/5 stars.
(between that, watching Glass Onion, rewatching Murder She Wrote, and starting to watch Columbo, i think i'm on a bit of a murder kick lately.)
more specific wip-related comments + featured excerpt below.
☆ COMMENTS: ANDROMEDA ROGUE (draft 2)
not much to say about this one tbh. while most of my words from this month came from this wip, i've,, mostly just been patching up little things like smoothing over inconsistent details and adding a little meat to description and exposition... but i've been procrastinating on fixing the Big Stuff 😭
i really like how the new version is turning out compared to the first version tho. it's so much cleaner & that's very satisfying.
if only i could just *clenches fist* get myself to actually fuckin work on it
☆ COMMENTS: THE GEMINI HEIST (outlining / draft 0.5 or something)
i finished part 1 of 7!... and now i have no idea what i'm doing.
i don't think i like fast drafting lol. i hate how shitty my quality of writing has been. and yeah whatever that's the point of a fast draft blablabla but like, when my draft is already a little bit readable i can go back and reread parts and be like "oh hey this isn't half bad". and i know people are always like "don't reread right away!!! just keep writing!!!!!!!" but for me rereading as i go is part of the process lmao. not only does it remind me of important things i would otherwise forget, it also encourages me to keep going when i see that what i've done isn't terrible.
and... with this fast draft everything just feels terrible.
not to mention i can't seem to untangle plot... heists are fuckin hard to plan. especially since there's multiple opposing parties with different plans that are all going to inevitably go to shit, and so i have to make more plans for when that happens. it feels so complicated uuuggghghhhgh
☆ COMMENTS: a Third, Secret Thing (???)
i'm not gonna talk about it too much publicly yet so i don't jinx whatever is going on here (and i want to make sure i'm a bit more committed to this thing before introducing anything) but all i'll say is it's an older wip that i've talked about on my old blog that i've dug out and changed the genre into a dark modern fantasy mystery with messy sapphics.
☆ FEATURED EXCERPT.
alright i know i said i didn't want to talk too much about the Third Secret Thing yet but i couldn't find any passages to share in either AR or GH... so have this, with very little context :') uhhh tw for mentions of death and murder.
That’s how she ended up peeking groggily out the door at the frigid winter morning, having hastily thrown a sweatshirt over her pyjamas and a towel over her hair, only to have two police officers inform her that Vanessa Villa-Cortez had been found dead in her apartment early that morning.
“D… dead?” Amina repeated, her mind in a haze. She had to still be asleep, right? Maybe the guilt over ignoring that text had seeped into her subconscious and was feeding her dreams. There was no way someone was at her door telling her that Vanessa, a girl she hadn’t heard from in nearly seven years, was… was—
“Killed in an apparent burglary gone wrong last night,” said one of the officers gravely. “A neighbour noticed the door had been clearly forced in, went inside to check, and found Miss Villa-Cortez’s body on the floor of her apartment.”
Amina’s head began to swim. She clutched the doorposts to keep her buckling knees from giving way completely beneath her. No. No. Vanessa couldn’t be dead. Amina still had to answer her text.
if you know you know ;)
☆ TAGLISTS. let me know if you want to be added/removed to any of them.
genera taglist:
@nicola-writes @dgwriteblr @the-orangeauthor @retrogayyde @quilloftheclouds @ashen-crest @writeblrfantasy @celestepens @stardustspiral @pepperdee @extra-magichours @avi-why @lefttigerobservation @chazzawrites @bardolatrycore @innocentlymacabre
andromeda trilogy taglist:
@bebewrites @nicola-writes @dgwriteblr @the-orangeauthor @retrogayyde @akindofmagictoo @quilloftheclouds @nora-theteawriter @ashen-crest @corpsepng @writeblrfantasy @chaylattes @toboldlywrite @celestepens @stardustspiral @pepperdee @cheerfulmelancholies @extra-magichours @writeouswriter @cilly-the-writer @lefttigerobservation @rose-bookblood @drowsy-quill @chazzawrites @cynic-and-chief @enchanted-lightning-aes @aesa
gemini heist taglist:
@florraisons @akindofmagictoo @cream-and-tea @nicola-writes @memento-morri-writes @antique-symbolism @rose-bookblood @afoolandathief @pepperdee @avi-why @zonnemaagd @chazzawrites @analogued @enchanted-lightning-aes @innocentlymacabre @kahvilahuhut @celestepens @cilly-the-writer @extra-magichours @retrogayyde
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mothknight42 · 1 year ago
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For the ‘So Many Ideas’ post about WIPs, I’d love to hear about any ideas you have for the stuff listed in the post!!!
THANK YOU FOR THE ASK ! ! ! ! AHHHHHHHH I love a good excuse to talk about the feral ideas that are constantly scratching at the cat posts of my brain. I am going to ramble (as per usual......my apologies) so putting my answers below the cut.
Fics I want to write
All of the fics I write are ones I want to write, so this category is a bit funny. But I REALLY want to write a very dorky and self-indulgent Tokyo BayoJeanne rivals fic where they play competitive Splatoon. LMAO. I don't know if I ever will, because it is so ridiculously niche and silly.....but the idea is floating around currently. Jeanne is a Splatana Wiper Deco main and her backup is the fucking Bamboozler (ANNOYING TRYHARD MOMENTS). Bayo mains Dark Tetra Dualies and her backup is the Dynamo Roller. They spend entire matches just trying to kill each other, much to the chagrin of their teams. They meet IRL and are like. Oh she's hot. Oh no. OH nooooooooooo. Their first date is bowling which is way too fucking competitive and they end up making out in the bowling alley's shitty arcade. Love wins.
Fics I want to read
Lumen Bayo. I want this fic so badly as something I could just sit down and devour. In an ideal world, this fic would be written together by dubhgloinne, Dikhotomia, and Wilmaa and I would sob and scream and bite my hand until it bled at every chapter. Alas. They are not writing it, *I* am, so I will do my best to emulate the things they all do fabulously well and translate it to my own style. Part of why this fic is so daunting is because it is something I want primarily to read, and I am not sure if I can pull off the actual writing haha. We shall see.
Also a BayoJeanne coffeeshop AU. How the hell does this fandom not have one yet (as far as I am aware). I have started writing it but.....I know nothing about coffee. Or tea for that matter. So I will probably never finish writing this one. Someone else, PLEASE. I FUCKING BEG. BAYOJEANNE COFFEESHOP MEET CUTE ! ! ! !
There is just One Scene and I could write it but it would be waaaay more cool if I had all the build up to the scene but unfortunately. I can only figure out the Scene
Oh god. I have one tiny snippet of scene for a sequel to my orpheus fic, where Jeanne and Bayonetta have a full fight over Jeanne's over-protectiveness ..... but it would hit harder if I properly set it up and properly let them cope. It has been sitting in my drafts for months. I may never finish it. But I want to.
I keep changing my mind. Where am I going with this
Fun fact - last year I started planning what was supposed to be my first proper multi-chapter (side-eyes DH) set post Bayo 2, where Jeanne and Bayo would manage to bring a small cohort of witches back to life accidentally due a failsafe put in place by the Umbran Elder. But I was worried I was veering too close to some of the amazing ideas andthatisterrible has explored in their Endlings series and couldn't stop changing my mind on what to do with it. I have since abandoned it. I came up with an OC for it (a butch Umbra named Calliope) that I was IN LOVE WITH. She appears briefly in my blood and darkness fic, but this would have been her chance to shine. Alas. RIP to her.
This has been done a million times before. But. Hear me out
Jeanne and Bayo falling in love post Bayo 1. I have written this fic twice before, a million other people have written it, and yet here I am doing it a third time. But here me out. t4t BayoJeanne falling in love. DO YOU SEE THE VISION.
I will 100% Never Write This. This is just my Emotional Support Idea no one can ever know about bc it makes sense only to me
This used to be my t4t bayojeanne fic, but cringe is dead and I am free so I am actually writing it and will post it someday. I don't think I have any current ideas that fit this category.
Would be better as a comic...
I have had this idea pinging around in my head about Umbran hair rituals since last May (and playing Origins has only made it worse) but I think because so much of it is about feeling and vibes it would make for a much prettier and more impactful comic. I can't draw though so. RIP. I will probably break down some of these ideas and incorporate them into other fics though.
This will be my magnum opus if I can just get my 50 pages of ideas into a coherent narrative
Lumen Bayo. God please. Praying I can pull it off. I love it so so so so so much.
All I have are vibes
Eldritch horror Bayonetta, who gets a hold of both Eyes of the World and uses them to prevent Jeanne from ever dying. She becomes a god and loses her humanity in the process, and Jeanne is horrified (both by what her lover has become for her, and because she still loves her despite it all). My favorite Mass Effect fic of all time plays with a similar idea/theme, so I am drawing inspiration from it. But I only have vibes, not a real plot. It will probably be pretty experimental.....if I could write it in a similar style to this fucking incredible fic by Dikhotomia that would be epic. One day. ONE DAY.
WIP I started and haven't updated in 2 years and oh god its beEN TWO YEARS???
LMAO. It was this fic but since I finished it I don't have any other WIPs that have been sitting stagnant for more than four months. The other ideas pinging around my brain right now are Origins focused (I have a longer Morgana/Rosa endgame Origins AU fic in the works, but who knows when that will see the light of day.

ANYWAY. Hope this was interesting?
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elfwreck · 1 year ago
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Things ChatGPT might actually be good for:
First drafts of business contracts - they'll need serious review, but they might substantially cut down the necessary lawyer time.
First drafts of company handbooks - for those, most companies want them written in boilerplate & autocomplete. They can touch up the sections that make their company unique, but a general policy of "wear business clothing at the office" does not need creativity.
Code. Lots of coders are using AI. You ask it to make code that does a function, and it throws some code at you, and you put it into the program and test it. And as noted, since it's a bullshit autocomplete generator, sometimes the code doesn't work. That's fine. You keep the part that does and ask for a new version of the part that doesn't. Saves hours of writing and tinkering with tiny bits of phrasing. [feel free to insert rant here about how code is practical and should not be covered by copyright, but that's a whole separate issue.]
Solo TTRPG - players are using AI chat programs to generate location descriptions, encounters with NPCs, magic items, and so on. There is a problem with this - you don't get new & innovative stuff from ChatGPT - but if what you wanted was "just gimme 250 words about The Spooky Castle On The Hill," it's great.
Interesting random item lists - Remember before ChatGPT when people would post "AI-generated list of Harry Potter spells" and so on? Or lists of song titles? If you want prompts to spark your creativity, AI may be able to come up with those.
Extrapolative reports based on data - you feed it charts and numbers and it tells you in plain language what they show. Right now, this would need heavy review - as noted, the damn AI will LIE ABOUT DATA. But. "Check this two-page synopsis for lies" may be a lot faster than "review all of your data and write a two-page synopsis from scratch."
In time, Chatbot AIs may be able to come up with decent story summaries - you feed it the fic; it gives you a one-paragraph description. You decide how much of that to use, and whether to change it because the focus you want is something else.
Item #1 - drafts of business contracts - is so fucking useful that, on its own, that would guarantee the chatbots are never going away.
What chatGPT will never be good for:
Creating fiction. Some fic authors have noted that "I keep feeding it shipping starters, and it keeps turning them into het when the romance kicks in." Because it's been trained on half a million het romance novels and maybe a scant handful of other ones. It recognizes the shape of "romance story" and knows that those involve a boy kissing a girl. And it's got similar problems with every other mainstream fiction genre. It mixes what already exists; it can't do groundbreaking. The closest it gets is "mixes two different likely-cliche tropes in a way that you, personally, have not seen before." And you could use that as a base for a good story, but ChatGPT can't, because other than the occasional flash of "huh I've never seen those two pieces next to each other," it's going to fall back into its "same as it ever was" rut.
Creating new art. See above. Same problem. It's getting used to "make art" now, because unlike fiction, there's a lot of art individuals haven't seen. I have not read all the Harlequin Romance novels ever... but I have read enough of them to be familiar with their tropes; books with those tropes are boring. I have not seen all the Dragons Flying Over Mountains art ever - AND a scramble of existing tropes is still going to look interesting to me. But like fiction: other than the occasional "wow, you can put BOTH of those together on a page???" moment, it's not making anything new. It's not combining symbols in a way that's meant to hit your deep psyche; it's not starting with a familiar, almost cliche setting and adding the one element that will make you rethink the background.
Anything for business beyond the first draft level. Even when they get better - even when they get frighteningly good - any company that relies on AI-generated contracts, handbooks, tutorials, or reports is setting itself up for (a) lawsuits and (b) financial ruin. Because the AI is not a person, does not have business priorities, does not actually have the ability to "comply with the law" when it sets up a contract.
(Give it three years and wait for the hilarious lawsuit when one company sues another over some clause buried in the AI-generated contract that nobody noticed until some intern pointed it out at a board meeting.)
Just on a whim, because I know that Alcibiades is one of the weirdest and funniest characters in ancient Greek history, I asked ChatGPT "What's the weirdest thing Alcibiades ever did?"
ChatGPT came back with the details of something Alcibiades (henceforth referred to as 'Alci' so I don't have to keep typing it out) was accused of, but acquitted of.
When I pointed out that he had been acquitted and may not have actually done this thing, Chat GPT apologised and said, "yes, he was acquitted", and then went on to tell me that, nonetheless, the event was significant because it made Alci flee the city.
Alci did not flee the city, he was sent away on a military expedition, which was exactly what he'd wanted and asked for. When I pointed that out, ChatGPT apologised again for being wrong.
I asked again for weird things he might actually have done, and was told one version of a story I've heard before about how Alci stole some stuff from a friend. ChatGPT's version was different from what I'd heard, though, so I mentioned that, and only then did ChatGPT acknowledge that there were different versions of the story. As part of its apology and correction, ChatGPT said that it did not always have access to all information - but then proceeded to provide details of the version of the story I'd heard before, showing that it did, in fact, have access to that information.
I asked again, what is the weirdest thing Alcibiades ever did? ChatGPT gave me an answer, which was a story I'd never heard before, so I asked for a source. ChatGPT told me it was in Plutarch's Lives, and I presumed it was in his Life of Alcibiades, so that's where I looked. When I said I couldn't find it there, ChatGPT told me, sorry for not being specific, it was actually in Plutarch's Life of Nicias. So I went and read Plutarch's Life of Nicias and couldn't find it.
So I told ChatGPT that I couldn't find the story in that book, could it please be more specific? What I was hoping for was a chapter or page number or something, I just presumed I'd missed it.
ChatGPT came back with "no, actually it's not in that book, it may be a later invention, there is no concrete evidence for this story."
TL;DR: ChatGPT cannot be trusted. Even when it does give you a source, it can be wrong. It has no capacity to evaluate the accuracy or likely accuracy of the information it gives you. It will present you with wrong or debatable information and give you absolutely no indication that it may not be correct, or that other versions or interpretations are possible.
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gertritude-art · 2 years ago
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Progress Report!
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As promised, here is another progress report for DemonVN - or, as it will officially be known, Demon Detangled: Horror at the Homecoming Dance (subtitle pending).  You can view the first (rough) six minutes of it up there.  There’s still quite a bit to edit about it, as I’m sure you can tell, and a lot of it is stuff I have already shown, but for once, it’s all up there together.
Anyway, let’s get started!
FIRST...:
DemonVN has an about page on this blog, now.  You can read it here!
MENUS:
The title screen is officially done!  You can see what it looks like up above.  And, yes, the official name is Demon Detangled!  I’ve had the name in mind for months, but was waiting to officially say it in case I wanted to change it (spoilers: I could not think of a better one). The subtitle is still in need a rework, but I’m including one on the off chance that I gather enough willpower to turn this into a series, rather than just a single game.  Gotta make ‘em distinct, somehow...
I still need to customize all the other menus, but I already have drafts of how they should look in the works!  They should be done in the next few weeks.
SPRITES:
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Lillie now has a new sprite, as does Catherine!  It is only looking at them now that I realize just how inhuman Lillie looks.  Hm.  Perhaps this is a deep metaphor for how, really, humans are no different than demons... or that she just needs to get out of the church more often.
Anyway, the rest of the cast is also in the progress of being edited a bit, but I don't have anything official to show for them... Please imagine them in your minds.
POINT AND CLICK ASPECTS:
As I have mentioned, DemonVN does have point and click aspects, so as to excite and challenge the average three-year-old who may want to play.  I spent a lot of the past week or so trying to iron out some of those aspects.  Did you know that at one point, you’ll be able to select multiple items to use on someone?  Check this out:
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Aside from that, I’ve been slowly fixing and figuring out all the other item interactions in the game!  I almost got that done in time for this update, but I think it’ll take me another few days to get the base of all those implemented.  There have been a lot of if/else statements at play...
THE WRITING:
I’ve been jumping back and forth quite a bit with the writing of this game, but I have made some progress!  The introduction is still getting written (it remains my white whale), but all the interactions you can have with your classmates are close to finished.  That is something I did not realize I had actually done until I wrote it just now - it feels like I’ve been writing them for forever!  Here’s a fun interaction to show you:
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Aside from that, a lot of my writing energy has been spent sitting and figuring out how the ending is going to go.  There is a specific, very important emotional section of it (SPOILERS: MORDRED EXPERIENCES AN EMOTION) that I’ve been trying to figure out the tone of for over a year, and I think I finally understand how it needs to be written without it coming across as overwrought or undeserved.  I wish I could show off what I’ve written of it so far, but... it will be good :^) 
THE ART:
Didn’t do much in the art department, recently, but I do have a lot of placeholder assets in place!  Shout out to this funky guy:
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I have a really cool CG I drew a few months back that I had to reluctantly cut, and so I could show you that... but I’m not going to #cruelty #hatred
IS THE END IN SIGHT?
Not yet!  Check back next month for another report on how it’s going, though!  I should have some more answers by then.  Hopefully.  
WHY DID YOU WORK ON YOUR TITLE SCREEN SO HARD BEFORE YOU FINISHED THE GAME.  I WAS SO EXCITED THINKING YOU WERE DONE.  EXPLAIN.
1) I needed to do something for the game one day, and I didn’t feel like doing anything else.  2) Doing this helped me learn that buttons can perform multiple functions, which!  I had no idea was possible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Thank you for telling me, Ren’Py!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway, that’s all for now.  See you next month with another progress report! :D
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sister-dear · 3 years ago
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Sentence Structure and Flow
Someone on discord asked me about how I structure sentences and how I learned to write. I’m going to do my best to answer! Hopefully it’s useful. It got long, so I made it a Tumblr post.
On learning to write:
Sky_squido, the author of “What Hyrule Hadn’t Seen” made this presentation and there were several points in it that I found incredibly helpful.
The two main ideas that I found most beneficial:
It’s about the ~vibes. Every story or scene has some kind of overall theme or emotion. Once you’re far enough into your story to have found what that is, edit your word choice to match. If a word technically works but doesn’t fit the mood, replace it with something else. The actual definition of a word is sometimes less important than the emotion that word conveys.
Verbs are incredibly important. If you’re having trouble with your sentence structure - if your story seems boring or like the prose drags - look at your verbs. I tend to use “is” as a verb far too often (or “was” for those of you who write past tense), so a lot of my editing comes down to reworking some sentences to make the stronger, more interesting words be the action words. So instead of “Legend was walking,” the sentence would be “Legend walked.” Or, even better, “Legend strolled/stalked/slouched along.” We’ve gone from a passive sentence to something that tells us, in engaging fashion, not just what Legend’s doing but how he’s doing it and maybe even a little about how he’s feeling.
Filter Words
Another post I found incredibly helpful: examples of how to cut out ‘filter words.’ It’s great for adding urgency, establishing tone, and introducing strong descriptions into your writing. Basically, this is how to put ‘show, don’t tell,’ into practice at a sentence-structure level. I use this approach a lot when it comes to conveying character emotion.
A couple other points
Variation is your friend.
Repeating things draws attention.
Description slows things down.
1. Variation is your friend.
For most writing, it’s a good idea to vary your sentence structure and length. Dialogue with no tags is rapid. Same with short sentences. Short and choppy reads disjointed and fast. This also applies to paragraph lengths! Longer sentences and paragraphs read slower, and in turn cause your reader to linger; sometimes maybe even linger too much. A combination keeps things interesting.
Too many long sections in a row - be they sentences or paragraphs - causes reader fatigue. Don’t be afraid to break those up. Let your readers take a breather.
If all your sentences start the same way, rework some of them. Lead with the action in one sentence and the subject in the next.
Starting a new paragraph gets a reader’s attention. You can use this for punch.
You should have one topic, or one person speaking, per paragraph.
Important things go at the start of the paragraph. Readers won’t tend to remember as much stuff from the middle or ends. Speed readers might not read those sections at all. The above note about one topic per paragraph? This is why.
2. Repeating things draws attention.
This applies to everything from individual words to overall themes to something like a series of sentences all with the same structure. It can work for you or against you.
A lot of my editing winds up being me reworking sentences to avoid using the same word too closely in succession. I’m not talking basic words here, like ‘he’ and ‘said.’ Those are non-words. If you have enough strong words around them, they disappear. They’re fine. But to use a snippet from a current work in progress:
...(Legend) bares his teeth, river water dripping off his hair and sticking his tunic to his legs. He braces his legs, wet muck squelching over the sides of his boots.
I wound up changing to “sticking his tunic to his thighs” to avoid the repeated word “legs.” I didn’t want to draw attention to his legs themselves, but the state of them. “He braces his feet,” would also work, or I could just cut the sentence down. “He braces,” does the trick just as well, and might be what I go with for the final draft. If the sentence makes sense without the word, then you can let the unneeded word go and your writing will often be stronger for it.
This can be much harder to do with nouns than verbs. Sometimes you just need to call a sword a sword. That’s usually where I start to alternate between a small group of words. “Sword,” “blade,” and “weapon” can all be alternated between to try to avoid using the same word too close together. You might also be able to get around using the problem word at all, as in the example above.
Another note on non-words. Names and pronouns qualify! You can use them over and over again and readers won’t notice. In fact, trying not to use these words can actually draw more attention than just using them!
For example, referring to Hyrule as “the Traveler.” Is it relevant, in the context of what I am writing, that Hyrule travels a lot? Or am I just trying to avoid using his name too much? If the answer is the latter, either don’t bother or change your sentence structure to remove the name entirely. If you have a solid action word, the name will disappear in favor of the action.
Using ‘Traveler’ in this context draws attention away from whatever Hyrule’s doing to what he is. That may not be the best thing to draw attention to. If what you are writing is a story about Hyrule finally getting a safe place of his own to call a home, you could use it for contrast. In which case, save it. Use it once, so it has impact. But if I'm writing about Hyrule teasing Legend, referring to him in that way can disrupt the flow of the story. It draws attention away from Hyrule's personality and his interaction with Legend to his background.
The point is to do it deliberately! It’s okay to use names and pronouns a lot. ‘Traveller’ is a title. Titles stand out.
3. Description slows things down.
Anywhere you want to linger or draw attention is where your descriptions should be going.
The middle of a fast paced action scene where your character is concentrating on the fight might not be the best spot to go into deep detail about the surroundings or what the enemy looks like. Convey those details in bursts that are worked into the action: “Time nearly rolls his ankle on the rocky ground.” Be very sparing. What makes an action scene interesting is how the character feels about what’s happening. You only need enough information on what the surroundings look like for a reader to follow along, and you can probably do most of that setup in a brief paragraph before the actual action starts.
On the other hand, if your character takes a shocking injury in said fight and you really want to dwell on that moment? Or if they’ve got a really cool, flashy move that they unleash in one single exciting burst of fighting prowess? That’s the spot to let your inner poet shine. Slow those spots down and let the reader really enjoy what you’re doing by using your detailed descriptions there.
This applies to all action, not just fighting. Walking through a busy marketplace? Action. A conversation? Can be approached as action. The best spots to use lots of description will be the spots you want to linger on: the first glimpse of a long-lost friend through the crowd, that last hug as they say goodbye.
Description slows things down. Use it accordingly.
Most everything else I can think of is less to do with flow and structure and more to do with other aspects of writing, so I'll stop here.
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author-a-holmes · 11 months ago
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I LOVE THIS!
There's so many little gems in here even if I can already tell this whole process isn't quite for me!! I read it before going to bed but I'm going to have to reread this a couple of times and tease out the parts of your process I want to try implementing within my own!! <3
I'm going to do a little bit of a breakdown on what I'm going to try out, and what I'm not going to try, beneath the cut, in case anyone is interested in seeing how I incorporate other techniques into my own toolset, but @unbearable-lightness-of-ink don't feel obliged to wade through it!
Just thank you very much for sharing! I love learning new methods and techniques, and hearing from other writers about their processes ^_^ <3
1) Round Out The First Draft
Yes! I do this already. I don't go back and make edits while I'm writing the draft. That's possibly the fastest was for me to confuse myself, and get lost in the reeds. This is also why I need a 2nd draft for Darkling. I didn't have a huge number of things to add or change with Changeling, so when I got to the end of my frist draft it was really clean.
I start with an outline on the computer, and then as I'm writing I will build a physical timeline as I write stuck to a large sheet of craft paper that's taped to the wall of a cupboard in my living room. This really helps me keep everything neat, and logical, and in order, so I've never needed to go back and add a whole lot of stuff at the end of the first draft before.
Darkling's become a different beast, I've still got about 7 chapters to go, and I already know (from my physical timeline building) that I need to add a lot of content, and at one point a whole new chapter, which is why I'm looking at a 2nd draft for the first time.
2) Leave It To Cool
This is common writing advice because it works really well for a lot of people. It doesn't work for me. I've tried it, and I get bored too easily. I have to be able to dive straight back into a project once I'm done, and I beat myself up for that for a long time, until I learned that Sarra Cannon does the same thing (Vindication tastes sweet lol)
Seriously though, I would always recommend to authors to follow this step because it DOES work best for most writers.
It doesn't for me I think, in part, because my distance from my stories takes literal years. I can remember every detail of my books, the stories never fade. I can remember the plots of stories I wrote over twenty years ago, so it's easier for me to just dive straight back in. At most, I usually give myself a week, but that's more to give myself a break and a rest, before starting work on my edits as I usually find them very mentally draining.
3) Rewrite
Ah, the bit I'm most excited to dig into, since I've never actually done a rewrite before!
Starting with a brand new blank doocument, and setting it up via a split screen on my main desktop PC (so the screen is large enough) was my plan, so I'm glad to see I was on the right track with that Lol
Adding in chapters, changing transitions, fixing magic systems, etc, all of these are what I was referring to when I said rewrites are for big, structural changes.
And I think this leans into where every writer writes differently, and every book requires a slightly different process. Rarely do I need to change things at the developmental edit level, by the time my first draft if finished.
The fact that I do this time is exactly why I'm going to move into a rewrite.
And you mention those changes is where your drafts split off from the original. I agree, I can already see where some of the pieces I need to add are potentially going to change later scenes in the story. Some of the scenes may change the relationships between characters, like a series of cause-and-effect ripples. It's going to be rather exciting to see how those ripples span out.
Take notes as you go; I do this already for the first draft, it only seems to make sense that I'd continue doing it on a rewrite. Things I spot and need to address in my editing passes that wo't change the trajectory of the story. Often these aree foreshadowing pieces I need to include for me, sometimes I'll notice I've foreshadowed something and I'll want to go back and make sure there's more than one instance for readers to pick up on, for example.
A lot of the details you mention addressing in a rewrite, such as Character Dialogue, POV imbalances, or setting details, are things I address as I'm drafting. I can't not, because if it's wrong, if it feels wrong or sounds wrong my brain stalls on them, and I grind to a complete halt.
The sheer number of times I've had to backtrack and rewrite a chapter from a different character's POV because my head just won't let me keep writing in the wrong POV is too many to count.
When it comes to researching technical details, this is also something I usually do during the outlining stage, and include in my pre-writing worldbuilding research. Again, has become a different beast for me this time because I do have a few things I need to worldbuild in that I didn't want to pause writing to figure out. The downsides to writing a large majority of the first draft during Nanowrimo, tbh.
4) Fill plot holes, reorder scenes, and add missing stuff
This is the stage of your process where you lose me. I don't make huge structural changes in this way because I plan out the shape of the story before I start writing.
This is part of my outlining process, and I don't have sections where I add [Write this scene] or [add transition] because I cannot write out of order. And if I'm going to reorder scenes, that happens during the first draft because, well, I can't write out of order.
I've said it a couple of times, but Darkling is a bit of a different beast for me. I know I need to add in a new chapter somewhere between chapters 19 and 20. This is highly unusual for me and my process, but is also why I'm doing a rewrite for the first time.
I can't just go back and add that extra chapter, it will feel really disjointed and weaving in the section into the story requires, for me, to write the story from the beginning and weave in the new strands the during the flow of the overall narrative.
5) Time travel aka chronology aka “how the fuck did they to all those things before sunset?”
Yesssssss!!! I love this! But, not a big but, BUT, I do this while drafting.
This is part of the reason I create a physical outline/timeline on a sheet of paper on the wall while writing my first draft. I stick post it notes on the wall, and on each note I give rough details of what happens in that chapter... and at the top of the post it note I put which day of the story it is, or what date it is if the story is set in the real world.
I started doing this for Changeling because the vampire school classes ran overnight, which mean every day was technically spanning 2 days, and I got myself really confused on the timeline... but I found it SO helpful that I've continued the habit.
(I'm gonna hope this is small enough/blurry enough that all the spoilers are unreadable *crosses fingers*)
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6) Vibe checks
This one I want to adopt wholesale. In combination with your note about how editing each chapter in isolation (which is my current method) doesn't give you a birds eye view, because you're totally right.
I tend to have a particularly good birds eye view of my story, because I don't forget my plots, like I mentioned earlier, but doing a complete read through/pass through to focus specifically on things like character voice is something I want to adopt into my process.
Character voice is something that can be so easy to get wrong, that even though I'm confident in it, because I tend to slip into a character's headspace fairly easily, I don't think that doing a pass specifically focussed on it can ever really be a bad thing.
I have one character in Darkling who speaks in very short, clipped, sentences, and one of my notes for my self edits is to go through and check that none of his sentences extend past 15 words long, unless he's in a high-emotional state.
Things like that are, and should, require a pass all of their own, so you can focus in and pay attention to details.
7) Cuts
This is a tough one to address, because many people feel very, very strongly about cuts.
I also don't want to just gloss over it, because it's important for every writer to consider the impact their words are having on the narrative, and to learn how to differentiate between something that adds to the story you're trying to tell, and something that you just want to share with the reader.
For the latter option, I'd advise taking that stuff you just want to share because it's cool, and making bonus content, or a reader magnet for your newsletter, or whatever.
For me, personally, I'm a very wordy writer, but I'm wordy with a purpose. And what I mean by that is I can point to any single paragraph in my book and tell you at least 2 things it's doing.
Whether that's character development, character backstory, worldbuilding, foreshadowing, or actively moving the plot along, it's there for at least two reasons. I prefer to have 3 or more, but if a piece of writing only has one reason for being there I either remove it (Copy and paste it into a "Scraps" file), or I rewrite it so it's doing more heavy lifting.
This part is interesting because I don't have a specific section of my editing process dedicated to this. I kind of work on it as I go through everything else, and I mean that from the first draft through to the final editing passes before it goes off to my Editor.
If I spot a section that's not pulling it''s weight, I fix it, one way or the other.
On the other hand, I'm a wordy writer. I know this and accept this about myself, and it's also part of the reason I never contemplated traditional publishing. I wanted to be able to tell the story I wanted to tell, in the way I wanted to tell it... so as long as I can see the wrods are doing multiuple things, and aren't ONLY there for gratuitious info dumping, then I'm not too harsh with my cuts either.
8) Ctrl+F fixes (I'm switching this one from 9 to 8)
Oh bloody hell. Okay. This is an entire editing pass for me. I actually do this part per chapter. I have a list of my personal crutch words and phrases, and I check every chapter for them during my self edits.
For my biggest ones, I'll then do one more Ctrl+F at the end to see how many are LEFT across the entire document, just in case I need to thin them out even more.
9) Make It Pretty
I moved this one from 8 to 9 because it's the last stage I do before sending it to my editor. I tend to do this readthrough right before I need to send it off to my editor, maybe a week before, because by this point I've been going over every single chapter one chapter at a time.
It's probably been about 2 months since I read chapter 1 and did my self editing process on that chapter, so I just go right back to the beginning and reread through from the start.
I'm usually very happy with the manuscript at this stage, what I'm mostly looking for are places where I repeat myself, because if I find something I think needs rewriting in the editing stage, I'll hit enter and rewrite it on the next line. Sometimes I'll forget to remove the previous version of the paragraph from above it.
Apart form that, this pass is usually my fastest, and easiest.
10) Proofread
Before proofreading, it goes out to my editor, but, uh...
I don't proofread my own work. <3 I know I'm probably going to get yelled at for this one, but I don't!
By this point in the process I'm usually sick of rereading it lol, so my manuscript will come back from my editor for the line/copy edits. I'll work with her to make all the appropriate changes, and once we've finished and the file has been okay'd I move onto formatting.
Once the book's formatted, I'll then send it out to my mum and a couple of friends (who act as my informal proofreaders).
Once I've fixed anything THEY'VE caught, I send out my ARC's. Anything my ARC readers catch and message me about gets edited in my formatting program, the book files redownloaded, and the final, buyable files, then uploaded to all vendors
Again, I know this isn't the best way to do this, and one day I hope to earn enough money from my books to hire both a copy/line editor AND a proofreader, but in the meantime, I rely on my friends, family, and ARC team for those final, tweaks.
This is a purely financial decision, and if an author can afford a proofreader, I'd absolutely recommend one.
11) Send it to Someone; Make Subsequent Passes
I don't do this, because I don't have a critique partner I'd trust with my work. There's a couple of people I would trust to critique my work, but they'd all busy with their own projects.
If I was going to do this, I'd be sending it out for feeedback around stage 6 (vibe checks) before stage 7 (cuts) just because I'd like to see if they suggest cutting the same pieces I'd cut, or if their favourite parts are something I was going to cut, I might then consider leaving it in.
But all in all, I've been writing for twenty.... four? years? I wanna say twenty four. I tend towards trusting my own instincts at this point, and when they fail mum will always tell me if something's not working. Even if she can't articulate why, that usually gives me a good jumping off point to sort it out on my own.
It has recently occurred to me that to make a second draft after the first one I have to... rewrite the entire thing?? Not just, take the document and, edit ON IT, OVER it.
And that a first draft is not really supposed to be... readable?
Guys I need help,.how do you do drafts??
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nekomas-kuroo · 3 years ago
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an old friend
ft terushima yuuji
request: can you do an hc with Terushima where the reader is a childhood friend but goes to Karasuno and is the manager for the boys vbc and he had already known he had fallen for her and so shows off hard during the match against Karasuno and even tho her team won she goes to cheer him up and they hang out a lot after and then she falls for him and whatever else you feel like should be added?? i love Terushima sooo much!💜
a/n: oh my god this request is over a year old i’m so sorry. this has literally been sitting in my drafts this entire time cause i loved it but i wanted to do it justice
masterlist
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terushima yuuji
you and terushima have been best friends for as long as you could remember
however, you two picked different high schools when the time came, but you didn’t let it change your friendship, despite not being able to see each other as often as before
so when you found out that both karasuno and johzenji had made it to the spring qualifiers, you were both extremely excited
you both had been harboring feelings for each other for quite awhile, but neither had said anything since 1. you’re both kind of oblivious and 2. you didn’t want to ruin anything
you two don’t have much time to talk before the game, with you helping karasuno get ready, but you’d be lying if you said you weren’t looking for him
you lock eyes and send each other a smile, catching the attention of a few members of your team, but no one says anything
as the match starts, you anxiously watch, cheering on your own team but silently cheering on terushima as well
you notice he’s playing harder than you’ve ever seen him play. he’s always been a little bit of a showoff, but this is more than you’ve ever seen before
you can’t help but gasp at his insane spike, causing sugawara to look over at you
“does y/n have a crush?” he asks playfully
“he’s an old friend” you reply
you can’t keep your eyes off him the entire match, even when timeouts are called you glance over at him occasionally
once the match ends with a win for karasuno, you happily congratulate your boys before running over to where johzenji is gathered
“yuuji!” you call out, immediately putting a smile on terushima’s face
you quickly run over and hug him, gaining attention from your own team
“you did great yuuji! you’ve gotten a lot better” “thanks y/n. i had to impress you, didn’t i? can’t let you fall for one of those karasuno boys”
you talk for awhile before kiyoko comes over and lets you know it’s time to go
you two hug again and part ways, but as you turn to leave, terushima grabs your wrist
“y/n, what do you say we go out tomorrow? after all your tournament stuff is done?” “oh yeah, we haven’t hung out in awhile--” “no, i mean on a date y/n”
your brain kinda breaks there. both terushima and kiyoko are staring at you, waiting for you to respond
kiyoko eventually ends up bringing you back to your senses, when you finally respond “yes, of course!!”
terushima may have lost that game, but he still went home smiling knowing he was gonna go on a date with you
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insanehobbit · 4 years ago
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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.
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(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.
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(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.
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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.
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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.
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Here, Cloud and Tifa are both in focus during the entirety of this shot.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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