#what is UP ff7 nation

[flowersinmidgar]

[demial4]

Someone's Thoughtful Take on Cosmo Canyon

from Here

"Note Ive never played the OG. I know of the OG so I can’t really make a comparison aside from what others have said and what I’ve seen in love playthroughs and commentaries.

Personally, I like the remake’s take. 

Let’s look at the game’s themes. Ff7 at the core isn’t about magic swords and defeating Sauron, it’s about economic ideas, imperialism, corporatism, selfishness, and honesty. 

 In canon, Shinra has waged war on the world. And has more or less won. Shinra dictates what people should buy and believe, it is capitalist in the worst sense. Shinra has separated people from the environment through building cities and creating a society based on material wealth and fame (recall how cloud and tifa’s village was excluded from shinra’s economy and only knew of the world via shinra’s propaganda). 

So what would people in reality most likely be? They’d be tourists and certainly the areas affected by Shinra realize they need to survive…by being tourist sites. 

In the OG Wutai did do that which is why yuffie rebelled. The remake seems to indicate that happened to wutai as in canon. 

There are questions of how countries/people affected by imperialism adapt, and becoming a part of the free market by advertising “happiness, freedom etc” could be one of them.

In the real world, we do have “spiritual retreats” and “gurus (looking at you Beatles and that guru from India)” for wealthy, bored folks. So the game is taking this fakeness, this desire to get quick answers without really becoming a true rebel, and showing it in the game.

Yuffie, being one who comes from a semi-nation that has been brutalized and humiliated by Shinra, is skeptical of the cosmo canyon. And why shouldn’t she be? Her nation has suffered many deaths, and the loss of their tradition slowly, yet these guys are sitting around “meditating” only to go home the next day to their peaceful lives? They can go home safely but everyday her people lose more and more of themselves. Plus she isn’t sure they are correct about the afterlife-I mean they don’t have good evidence so why should she believe them? She has lost people and she has never seen them again. It’s a very mature take on the world for a young teen like yuffie.

When tifa ends up trying to tell people about what she actually experienced in the life force, no one from the cosmo canyon aside from Guggenheimer (who initially dismisses her) tries to delve more into what she is talking about. 

Tifa is talking to people who can’t or won’t understand what she is warning about because they haven’t had the life experiences she has and I suspect the genuine desire to help the world change. 

Later on, in golden saucer, Tifa confesses to cloud that she feels so helpless when she sees how no one in the golden saucer is reacting to the new war on wutai."

from Here

[sephirthoughts]

look i've watched every playthrough and cutscene of every FF7 game but standing there in Zack's shoes and watching Sephiroth's mind break in person hits different man. i love to joke around and say he did nothing wrong for funsies but now i seriously think it's just dead-ass wrong to call him evil, or even culpable for his actions after that.

he had a psychotic break and got mindfucked by a millennia-old alien whose literal talent is mindfucking people into destroying each other. the things he did were 'evil' in the deeply diluted sense of the word, meaning that they were destructive and harmful and caused the deaths of innocent people. but to even suggest that a deeply mentally ill person suffering from an actual psychotic break [an episode of psychosis in which an individual loses touch with reality, characterized by disruptions in thoughts and perception, making it difficult to distinguish what's real and what isn't (National Alliance on Mental Illness)] is ontologically evil or irredeemable because their actions while psychotic were bad is kind of fucked up. like a lot fucked up.

and yeah people love to say that if he weren't the most beautiful person to ever exist in a video game, i wouldn't be defending him but that's literally because the game studio itself wouldn't have realized he's a selling point and started giving him a deeply empathetic backstory. they know what they're doing. i would happily defend an unattractive villain in the same exact position except there isn't one.

also sephiroth being physically beautiful is part of his tragedy. it's not his fault any more than being unattractive would be his fault. it's a thing that was done to him. it was a thing that was done to sell him to the public by shinra (and ironically also by the game devs). they didn't put him in that leather coat and bare-chested titty harness accidentally. and ironically his superior physicality stops people seeing past the surface into the absolute mess inside. he looks perfect he must be perfect. he's an abused child who looks like a sexy superhero.

ps. i don't mean he should get a free pass to forgiveness-ville and be allowed to oopsie-doopsie his way out of mass-murder just because he's unwell, i'm just saying it makes me sad to hear him called evil just because he's deeply mentally ill and really really powerful and wants to destroy the world with fire. i feel that way like three days a week i just don't have superpowers and a wing and a nine-foot long sword

[undergoingcalibrations]

FF7: Ever Crisis New Lore Summary (For those who rightfully don't want to put up with gacha BS)

General Worldbuilding:

SOLDIERs, (as of The First Soldier campaign, which takes place 15 years before the start original game), are divided into two grades: Passive and Active. Passive grade SOLDIERs are only distinguished from common forces by their elite training and superior equipment. Active grade SOLDIERs have only appeared on the scene extremely recently as of FS, and have received 'enhancements' to improve their physical resilience and affinity for materia. Passive grade SOLDIERs, and the public for that matter, have no idea what those enhancements actually are, with one of the Passive grades, Glenn, assuming that they are cyborgs.

Passive grades are also called P0s, short for Project Zero, the VR fighting program used to filter out those eligible for SOLDIER training from other Shinra troopers. This is the source of rivalry between some passives and actives, as being selected for active grade is seen as more of a question of genetics than talent.

A new nation, Rhadore, appears in Ever Crisis. It's abundance of ruins, it's geography (a southern nation composed of several islands), and the presence of a vent where the Lifestream flows out into the ocean, suggest that this may be the name of the southern archipelago where Mideel and the Temple of the Ancients are located.

Rhadore's population was decimated by SOLDIER operations after it broke a treaty with Shinra a decade before the events of The First Soldier campaign (25 years before FF7), with one of the P0s, Matt, giving the current estimated survivors as between 500-1,000.

Based on the naming conventions of regions in Rhadore, and conversations with the one named Rhadoran character, Rosen, it appears to be based on Hawai'i (for instance, Rosen uses the Hawai'ian word for spiritual energy, mana, to refer to mako and the Lifestream).

Rosen refers to the deceased as 'being with the Planet', suggesting that Planetology may have been a common faith there before the Shinra genocide.

A respected occupation in Rhadore was to serve as an 'Eye of Rhadore', responsible for monitoring the flow of the Lifestream into Rhadore's seas and notifying settlements in case of danger, as surges of Lifestream not only cause tidal waves but render seawater temporarily toxic. Rosen states that only a rare few are eligible to become Eyes, as they "need to be able to hear the Planet, even when they're asleep", suggesting that Cetra outside of Aerith and Ifalna may have survived there in one form or another.

Cloud

In Ever Crisis's telling of the events of FF7, Jessie gives Cloud a copy of the Project Zero training program she found while hacking Shinra databases. Nothing's really come of it yet.

When Tifa asks Cloud what his go-to drink was in SOLDIER, Cloud mentions a cocktail called a Winter Salt, though cannot remember how to make it, besides, well...there's salt. One assumes it was a favourite of Zack's.

Cloud says that after Nibelheim, he found himself at the Sector 7 trainyard "as if I was guided there". Presumably, Sephiroth was doing the guiding, but to what end is unclear.

Tifa

Tifa worked at a steam bun shop in Sector 8 for at least three years before her gig at Seventh Heaven. Her steam buns were so good that Wedge would often force Avalanche to go out of their way to eat there, which is how she ended up becoming friends with the group in the first place.

Tifa regards Jessie as a big sister and mentor, even though they're almost the same age.

Apart from out of loyalty to her friends, Tifa joined Avalanche because the religious aspects of Planetology appeal to her- namely, the idea that her father and the rest of Nibelheim are with the Planet, so by caring for the Planet, she will always be connected to them in turn.

Aerith

Aerith loves picnics because as a child in the labs, she naturally wasn't allowed to eat outside.

Elmyra had hired a bodyguard to look after Aerith when she was little (Shinra's got great life insurance payouts, apparently), but Tseng...dealt with them.

On a related note, one of Aerith's lifelong ambitions, ever since she can remember, is to one day be stronger than Tseng. Not that she wants to hurt him, necessarily, just that she never wants to be afraid of him pushing her and her family around again.

Ifalna was able to visit Aerith in spirit at least once after her death, comforting her when she was afraid, and reassuring her that she was strong because her family was with the Planet, and the Planet was with her.

Sephiroth

Based on the timeline, Sephiroth is anywhere between 12-15 during The First Soldier campaign. I'm tempted to say he's on the older end of that spectrum, as the P0s are surprised but not appalled by his age, and Cloud applied for SOLDIER at 15, if that's anything to go by.

Sephiroth uses a katana in Ever Crisis, rather than an odachi like in his other appearances. He's not tall enough to pull that off yet.

At some point between The First Soldier and Crisis Core, Sephiroth's eyes changed from blue to green. Mako will do that, I guess.

Despite Shinra propaganda stating that Sephiroth was already a decorated SOLDIER by this point, the mission to secure a site for a new mako reactor in Rhadore that The First Soldier covers was his first field operation- Shinra was simply trying to boost support for active grade SOLDIERs by attributing the accolades of others to their prototype. Sephiroth is upfront and untroubled about this with the P0s that have been assigned to him.

Sephiroth appears to be a true patriot, having no remorse for the Rhadorans that would stand in the way of Shinra's mission. He has no compunction when it comes to killing even a group of young and elderly Rhadorans attempting to evacuate, a thoroughness that he attributes to Shinra's training- the young could be receiving military training, and the old could be seasoned veterans, so all must considered a threat and eliminated. The P0's, on the other hand, seem to be mostly in this for the money and find Sephiroth's actions disturbing, though hold that against whoever taught him he had to be this way, not Sephiroth himself.

...despite this, Sephiroth states multiple times that he did not ask to be what he is and doesn't want to be the false hero Shinra's propped him up as. When asked what he wants to be when he grows up, he thinks to himself that "I just want to live a normal life", but refuses to say it aloud.

Sephiroth keeps a picture of Lucrecia on him at all times, though Hojo told him it was a picture of Jenova. He asks everyone he meets if they've seen her or know anything about her, and appears to believe she's still alive.

[thecloudstan]

What happened to Dark Star? I haven't seen Advent Children for years, so I'm assuming Dark Nation is out of the picture, but is Dark Star in the picture at all for Next Time You Call?

To be honest, my assumption when I began NTYC was that Dark Nation was dead, and so the line from chapter one directly references the fact that Cloud killed him:

He dreams instead of Rufus Shinra...the way he snarls as Cloud cuts down Dark Nation in a single violent swing of his sword. 

I just saw Advent Children again before the release of Rebirth when it was enjoying a limited run in theaters, and Dark Nation was nowhere to be found. I'm assuming his survival (and rebrand as Darkstar), is a dyed-in-the-wool retcon. I'm totally okay with that. Rufus surviving the end of FF7 is the first and most major retcon that I can remember, and I never once was assed about it. He's such a great character, it would've been a shame if he met his end that day on the top floor of Shinra HQ (like his disgusting father...no thanks).

I never thought to include Dark Nation past the events in the original game, so I can't. I don't want Rebirth to change too much of the fic's foundational canon. It will only make it more difficult for me to keep things straight going forward, and I don't want the fic to end up having an obvious pre-and-post Remake series identity crisis. With the exception of utilizing Remake/Rebirth's beautifully expanded maps and locations, and the occasional harmless background tidbit (like learning exactly how/when Cloud left Nibelheim through both Traces of Two Pasts and Rebirth), I'm going to predominately defer to the canon that existed right up until 2016.

This was a great question, and definitely something that stays on my mind now that so much more attention has returned to FF7 in general. I think the thing that will probably affect me and my depiction of Rufus in NTYC going forward is the knowledge of just how strong his connection to his lil beastie was, because of the fact that I wrote it in such a way as to make Cloud directly responsible for killing the man's dog...yikes...

Maybe he'll get Rufus a puppy, someday, who knows? (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.)

[astralartefact]

dawntrail fanfest thoughts (& prayers) Part II London

(Part I >> here)

Pour one out for Krile, I miss her.

My opinion hasn't really changed so far, still pretty optimistic over here. I didn't really get anything I really wanted (except for one thing, we'll get to it), but the things I didn't really like weren't catastrophic either, so... Let's just get into it.

Viper I don't know if I like this more or less than I would have liked Corsair (which I wouldn't have liked bc I think pirates are boring). I like the concept of the two combined swords and I think it could look very flashy, but from what I've seen so far I'm not particularly interested, the in-game job trailer really didn't do anything for me.

I guess it's because this job seems very very FF16 to me but in a bad way. Lore and Realism but with fantasy fire effects just doesn't really make for an iconic aesthetic imo... but hey, maybe they just hid the best parts from the job introduction video, they showed like two or three skills at most lol. But who knows.

But as long as I get my Green Mage/Pictomancer I'm not going to complain too much about this one. Good for the people who really love this! Love that for you!

My Green Mage/Pictomancer Hopes and Dreams Koji said "We should look to his [Yoshi-P's] hints from last fanfest" for the remaining job - so Pictomancer is still possible!!!!!! It's not over until it's over!!!

I once again realize that I shouldn't have gotten myself attached to something that might not actually be happening. If they don't do Green Mage/They do Green Mage wrong I will be so disappointed lol

It's just that I can see them do your average generic Druid instead because 'something something we need to cater to a western audience now bc FF16, Final Fantasy legacy stuff is cringe actually so we need to make everything generic western fantasy to be taken seriously' and I'm very much not here for that. Just give me a charming little Green Mage with a big staff or maybe with a judge's mallet - or maybe like one of those shogun war fans??? But I'll take whatever, even the weird ugly little gimmick you're bound to come up with.

The Limited Job Beastmaster and if it's not it better be something truly out there and not just some half-assed BS. Yoshi-P, you have to show the community you listen just a little bit, it's getting dire out here.

Eliminator Is it just me being desperate for Hamauzu-based Remixes or does this thing exude FF13 energy... Makes me wonder if the Tural-based Technology we've seen in that one dungeon art might be FF13 inspired? I just hope it isn't just Allagan again, make it another nation that lived around that time.

The Areas Kozama'uka looks really pretty... I love when fantasy background elements you can't even reach are "too big" (like FF7 Remake's Midgar Skyboxes) - so I guess Shaaloani still has a chance to win me over depending on whatever we find there. Speaking of which: Shaaloani is exactly what I pictured/dreaded a New World based expansion would look like and I do not particularly like it, I was hoping we would be save from bargain bin wild west stuff at least until we went to Northern Tural. I also hope that the pseudo-oil stuff is just lore and won't be a big part of the msq because good gravy Yoshi-P hire a diversity consultant already I'm dying over here.

The Graphics Update Now let's give it up for the real MVP of the day for all of us no graphic mod people (and to the graphic mod people that complain 'we already had that for years', quit your yappin, 85% of you don't have taste anyways.) The new lighting stuff looks amazing - especially what they did with the fog, it looks gorgeous, I'm so excited. The lighting updates on the character models look so good, too... I think you can really see the difference in that picture they showed of the femRoe scholar in the new AF gear. And the glow up on Midlander Face 1 is amazing. Is that even allowed?? This was slumbering under there all this time???

The Alliance Raid Let's just all pretend we never thought Sakaguchi was going to do them (even though he literally said he wouldn't want to do one) and never talk about it again.

Anyways. FF11. Leaving the best thing for last - this is the thing I was really happily surprised by.

I'm so happy for FF11 :) That game has it fcking rough. It's constantly the one Final Fantasy game that's just. Not even considered. Even what we would reasonably call "Real" FF fans always just leave it out of everything because "MMO" (of course ever since shb that became "the worse MMO" instead) and casual gamers - even ones that play certain FF games - probably don't even realize that nobody ever talks about 11.

But it has so many cool concepts that would warrant a treatment like Eden with FF8 - meanwhile FF14 is directly built on things 11 provided, so many of our base fundamentals, so many generic mob designs, so many of our job concepts, so many things we just take for granted come from FF11 but it still never really got the same attention as the other FFs. Yeah, Eureka and Bozja are kind of based on it, but the way it is referenced is just so different from how most of the other FFs are represented in the game - it's always just the other MMO and it deserves to be treated the same as the others: as the mainline Final Fantasy game that it is.

So I hope they give it the respect it deserves. I need these to be better than Ivalice, just so FF11 gets enshrined somewhere in some way. Their legacy is on the line, Yoshida, so don't fuck it up!!!!! And make sure to include Memoro de la Stono because I like it!!!

I do hope they don't just make one of the Reflections actual FF11 Vana'diel though, I think that would be kind of lazy, it only worked with Y:DA and even there I'm the only person who liked that because I think Kingdom Hearts Bullshit Timeline Shenanigans are fun. I hope this is a FF14 version of Vana'diel like how Ivalice is our Ivalice - with certain concepts reinterpreted through our lense while others reappear almost identically, similar to the FF12 summons.

Now, I haven't actually played 11, I'm just a passionate bystander in all of this, but the one recommendation on things 11 I can give is the Record Keeper version of Awakening - most Record Keeper arrangements are amazing (see FF13's Blinding Light) but this is definitely one of their best.

Anyways! I'm really excited for what they do with it! I don't have any particular fear they're going to fuck the raids up, from a pure spectacle standpoint (the only standpoint that matters) they generally only get better. (except for eulogia) (fuck eulogia) I do hope they make them a little more challenging again, but I also won't be mad if they don't. Just don't ruin your own lore again like with Eulogia (fuck eulogia)! Also, I would love to see the Ark Angels, especially their armors as raid drops kthxbye <3

[sideeffx]

Welcome to my thoughts on FF13

Final Fantasy is dear to my heart much like everyone else’s but I find me and a small segment of other people appreciate it for traits that the wider gaming sphere is not focused on. Which isn’t fine, because people are liking things the wrong way. Anyways I want to talk about Final Fantasy 13, the infamous entry in the series and how it’s both not that bad but also pretty mid. A lot of people were critical of it, but I’m coming at it from a place of love. Because it’s unironically one of my favorite entries, but I think it makes a few missteps that prevented it from being great. Though I don’t think the game is the proverbial satan its made out to be (that’s 15). Beware of spoilers for a 10+ year old game I suppose.Also this is gonna be rambling instead of a clean structured review.

I’m sure if you’re reading this you know the gist of the FF13 story, the Fal’cie, glorified as inhuman protectors use humans they’ve branded called L’cie to carry out nebulous missions for them called Focuses. The entire question of fate vs shaping your own destiny comes up and the game works in favor of changing one’s destiny. I think the story is actually *gasp* good. But it could’ve been better

FF is a video game first and foremost, so it’s important for gameplay/story integration to be there. I think, a lot of the problem came from the player’s inability to care about the world as it stood because you don’t really much interact with it. I suppose then, my critiques aren’t with the story writing but how the game is structured to present that writing to you. Before I explain my complaints, let me dig into what I felt like the central themes. 

Nature vs Technology, Destiny vs Autonomy, and touching on colonization. The people of Cocoon live in shell that literally floats above Gran Pulse. The game making the point that its creation was predicated on stealing natural resources from Pulse’s inhabitants to give us a technologically advanced city that is light years ahead of everything else. Those who live in Cocoon are fed propaganda that Gran Pulse is a hellish and lawless place that they couldn’t hope to survive on, these sentiments are fueled by the war of transgression that saw Pulse’s inhabitants attempting to “invade” Cocoon. 

Of course, we could talk about the behind the scenes manipulations of all the Fal’cie involved here. Where Cocoon is really a city created to harvest human souls and thus it’s inevitable fate is to crash into Pulse and bring millions of people with it. I think the concept here is interesting, on the basis that the supposed utopian society Cocoon lives in is actually dystopian due to this revelation. However it’s not something that comes out of left field, rather the people are being put in boiling water to see how much their ignorance will win out. Case in point, the “Purge,” the most on the nose metaphor for ethnic cleansing you could probably ever see. Where those believed to be tainted by the lands of Gran Pulse are cast out of Cocoon by the Fal’cie and forced to live in the land viewed as backwards and evil.

In a way I see FF13 as a bit of a take on FF7′s story conventions where it heavily critiques capitalism but comes at it from an angle that FF7 didn’t, where it factors the exploitation of various ethnic groups heavily contributing to a nation’s wealth into the mix. As history has shown, a country doesn’t rapidly evolve based on its own merit. Because the enormous consumption of natural resources inevitably comes from somewhere else, otherwise it wouldn’t be able to sustain itself. Too bad the game doesn’t fully want to commit to any of this! 

My problem with 13 is the same problem I had with 7 but like, worse. While 7 had the entire midgar arc before it hit you square in the face with the whole JENOVA plotline and Sephiroth’s reveal, 13 kind of just veers wildly off course immediately and its allusions to the Pulse vs Cocoon conflict are tangential at best. While I argue the themes are obvious given a bit of critical thinking, I can concede that you can’t make a gamer do the work if you don’t give them a decent hook to be interested in the first place. For better or for worse 13 is a very character focused game where it places their struggles at the forefront and thus sculpts the bigger picture around that. 

Your characters are fugitives, perpetually on the run due to their branding as L’cie and the game reflects that by never really letting you sit and catch your breath. Everything is a point A to point B hallway, you can never really veer off course, and there are no towns to stop at. FF has always been at the least, semi linear, not favoring an open ended world where the player is meant to explore every single facet of it. But 13 forgets that the reason many FF games don’t feel linear is because they do their best to obfuscate it at every turn. Towns are always an important facet, where you can socialize with NPCs if you so choose and just generally recharge before the next batch of ingame events. The dungeons are interesting puzzles you’re asked to solve and thus take your brainpower away from thinking about how you ran straight to the place. And generally there are just personal events you can catch between characters where they’re just, talking. 

Not to mention the battle system itself, while interesting on its face was a bit of a flawed way to take us fully away from the turn based ATB days and give us something in the same vein, but different. Paradigm shifting and the various roles turned combat into an interesting puzzle at times, but it quickly denigrated into being solved extremely quickly. It doesn’t help that the game hand holds you aggressively for a gigantic portion of the story. Your party is fixed, Lightning can’t be removed from it, and their general roles are spoonfed to you. Lightning is a mixed attacker, Snow is a tank, Vanille is your dual Healer/Debuffer, Hope is a healer/buffer, Sazh is an offensive buffer, and Fang is an offensive debuffer. Eventually they all get the opportunity to act out of these assigned roles as the crystarium unlocks. But I felt as if it was too little too late, as by that time players are much too comfortable investing in their presets rather than veering off course. 

I think this was just a general symptom of the trends at the time though. Nowadays, gaming difficulty is opening up as a talking point with relation to accessibility, but so much of the backlash to “easy” games (and thus the rise of Dark Souls’s niche) was that mainstream gaming made you feel kind of stupid. There wasn’t that same sense of freedom that was in the 2000s, because players could easily get confused and frustrated with the games of old that plopped you in the world and expected you to figure things out yourself. Devs in response overcorrected and treated the player as if they were children who just learned how to walk. 13 as a result didn’t bring that level of customization you expect from FF into the mix until you had already formed a solid opinion on its battle system.  

I think in this sense, the gameplay/story integration is extremely poor and one of the reasons 13 got so much hate, but wasn’t properly identified by gamers because we were kind of in the midst of an alt right pressure cooker that years later led to gamergate. Case in point being that the biggest critique of the game was Lightning being protagonist, Vanille being found to be annoying, basically a parade of misogynistic backlash. Gaming was only just beginning to open up to the wider public when it was previously a “male nerd” thing and thus gamers were not exactly ready to receive a female cast that was so highly focused on in Lightning, Fang and Vanille. Perhaps if 13′s premise was given to us now it’d be received warmly and seen as breaking barriers, but in the 2010s, Lightning was compared to a female Cloud in a derogatory way, Vanille’s accent was described as “fake” by some people (despite that not being true whatsoever) and just generally grating due to her blinding positivity, and Fang was subject to endless lesbophobic jokes. There were a lot of genuine critiques of the game as well, because the backlash was once again overwhelming. But I’m not sure whether they were drowned out or whether Square heard them properly, given how the sequels to 13 kind of veered off course into their own things. 

I guess, what I can take from this altogether. Is that 13 had a great base that could’ve used gameplay systems to better integrate you in the world itself and failed at that. Despite it all, the game is about a 7 out of 10 at worst, and the fanbase will not let this go and act like it’s a stain on the franchise. In many ways I think people just weren’t ready for what it brought to the table and SE failed in delivering the truly interesting parts of it well. I want to say that I hope they learned their lesson, but 15 was a development disaster and I think 16 is the first time I see them not do anything new with the emerging trends and instead play into them without any of the original spin I’d come to expect from FF. In this vein all I can hope for is another studio doing what SE couldn’t and giving us a truly thought provoking feminist masterpiece. Oh well.

.

[noblechaton]

so I watched the fourth Code Geass movie and I have a lot more thoughts about it - and this entire "brand" of movies - than I thought I would

I am going to ramble about this to an audience of 3 for a short period of time!

really I'm kind of fascinated by this entire situation, the decision to make these remakes/rebuilds/reedits of Code Geass while changing things both substantially and less so - it feels very much like those involved love Code Geass, but wished to amend things they deemed as mistakes or missed opportunities, which I'd say is pretty admirable given I feel R2 in particular carried a lot of issues that could have been resolved with some adjustments. I haven't seen the trilogy of movies that do this, so I don't have all the nuance and knowledge, but the whole thing kind of reminds me of the FF7 Remake stuff in some ways, folks involved with the original coming back and doing things again, if only to see what they'd change if they could do so

but beyond just that it also feels as if they wanted more Code Geass - and who doesn't? - and they rightfully realized that you can't really do that without Lelouch; in a lot of ways, he is the show, and without the character you could easily struggle to find any sort of magic again. not an impossible task, but one made very difficult without setting up something of a different world from that of the original run

hence, these remakes/rebuilds/etc., wherein they condense and shift things to ensure that they could, in fact, do more Code Geass in some form or another, in a canonical way that didn't futz with the original ending - which brings us to this movie, Re;surrection

so does it work? ehhhh

on one hand it's really blatant. like, again, those involved wanted more Geass, they knew they couldn't do it without the guy, they went in and changed things to ensure they had him. this utterly ruins the climax of the series, of course, and the ending to this fourth movie further strains things in some ways - he's just. back. going around and doing whatever with C.C. forever I guess

on the other though, I honestly don't feel the aforementioned resurrection is too out of the ballpark? there were already near-immortals in the show, a lot of mystical, magical stuff, and I can buy him coming back even if it kind of destroys whatever impact his death had beforehand. like, it doesn't hit as terribly egregious thanks to the World of C stuff being what it was - for better or worse

as for the movie itself? it feels like it was meant to launch a new series - to be a new series. there's two huge storylines vying for attention and neither really get the time they need or deserve, with the second one revolving around Nunnally and her capture feeling like it'd been a mid-season/season finale type arc, while Lelouch and his return is largely handled okay but doesn't get near enough time on screen as I'd wanted (which, to be fair, was always gonna be hard for a movie to get to, given how much I'd want)

it's definitely like, fine. the pacing is its worst enemy, the new "bad guy" faction/nation/etc. introduced doesn't really do much for me - though I said on call that it'd been interesting if the main Geass-using villainess had been the cause for things shifting in these remakes as they had, bit of a missed chance to tie things together imo - and in basically undoing the biggest, best part of the end of the series, it leaves a lot of things just sort of dangling without a clear pathway to address any of them (as of yet - more on that later)

but it's also really, really fun seeing all of these characters again. Lelouch is just such a good, fun character, Kallen has been sorely missed, even just the bit players like Jeremiah or Anya were nice to see, even if only one more time. and again, I feel the actual resurrection stuff is, at least, sensible - I don't know the full details of it, to be fair, I've not seen the previous three movies yet, but it didn't feel super egregious or poorly done; it was done for reasons that were admittedly kinda shameless, but didn't feel super insulting as far as methodology went

personally I do believe that this and Roze of the Recapture are building to something (this is later, btw), if only because I can't imagine you undo one of the biggest elements of this beloved series just to never really do anything with it going forward in some way; whether it's another movie, series, I don't know, but I feel there's been too much effort made to unite the characters of Code Geass across media - the anime/main guys, Roze's guys, the video game folk, etc. - for this to not go somewhere. and hell, I feel that way on the simple basis that leaving a guy like Lelouch alive in a series and never picking back up on it just wouldn't make sense

but on the whole, regarding this movie, I think it's fine overall. just kinda fine, a bit middling in places - at times it felt like an apology for some of the worst elements of R2, and at others it just felt like the worst elements of R2 again lmao. and in a lot of ways I found it a blend of the original series - a lot of highs that reminded me of R1, and some lows that reminded me of R2, which when together make for a perfectly decent, serviceable, fun if not entirely fantastic experience

it's generally just like. more Code Geass, for better and for worse, but some issues and questionable elements aside, I still largely enjoyed my time with it!

[glowyjellyfish]

…so here’s my FF7 fanmix. It’s an eternal work in progress, but this is the most stable incarnation before Rebirth hits and gives me new ideas. A few of these songs have been on my list basically since the original ff7 came out. I’m pretty happy with most of it—Yuffie and Red need work, Barret, Aerith, and Cid need more songs, and although I like the narrative I constructed with Vincent’s songs the tone is all over the place, but conversely I adore the Tifa section. I just figured I’d finally share what I have, see if anybody out there had any bright ideas, and let other people see if they like mine.

These are based on the OG, with Remake providing lots of inspiration. There will be spoilers for anybody unfamiliar with the OG, more than just The One Spoiler everybody knows, some vaguer than others.

Cloud

Bullet With Butterfly Wings by Karen O (I know this is cheating but it’s such a good song for him!)

Seven Nation Army by Seven Nation Army

Break Out by Foo Fighters

Best Imitation of Myself by Ben Folds Five

When She Was Bad by Buffering the Vampire Slayer

Hollow by Yosh (also cheating, but too good not to use)

Who Are You, Really? by Mikky Ekko

All These Things That I’ve Done by The Killers (I think this is a pretty popular song for Cloud fanmixes)

Still by Ben Folds

Butterflies and Hurricanes by Muse

Invincible by OK Go

Barret

We Will Rock You by Queen

Uprising by Muse

Still Swingin by Papa Roach

Ready Aim Fire by Imagine Dragons

Big Yellow Taxi by Counting Crows

Angel Down (Work Tape) by Lady Gaga

Tifa

All the King’s Horses by Kamina

That Distant Shore by Rebecca Sugar

It Takes All Kinds by Aimee Mann

Breaking Up Girl by Garbage

Hush by Buffering the Vampire Slayer

Losing My Religion by R.E.M.

How Not To Drown by CHVRCHES & Robert Smith

Back to the Start by Mr Little Jeans

Shake It Out by Florence + the Machine

Dogs Days Are Over by Florence + the Machine

Braver Than We Are from Dance of the Vampires (look… just listen to this song if you can find it and try and tell me not to include it. I had to!)

Aerith

We Are by Ana Johnson

Somewhere Over the Black Parade by Zoe Zoller (so… this is a mashup of Welcome to the Black Parade and Somewhere Over the Rainbow from an amateur theater production. It’s amazing and absolutely perfect for Aerith, but you will not be able to find it and I don’t know if it is okay for me to share it. Just FYI.)

On My Own by Peach Union

Stand My Ground by Within Temptation

Never Let Me Go by Florence + the Machine

Nanaki

(I have really struggled to find songs for him over the years; these are fine but I think he needs more)

Dirty Paws by Of Monsters and Men

Run Boy Run by Woodkid

Babylon by Barns Courtney

Blood Like Lemonade by Morcheeba

Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons

Heartlines by Florence + the Machine

Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance

Twisted Logic by Coldplay

Yuffie

(I was a bit inspired by Intermission, but she still needs a lot of work)

Just a Girl by No Doubt

Something That I Want by Grace Potter

Mutiny, I Promise You by The New Pornographers

Boomerang by Lucy Schwartz

A Little Less Conversation by Elvis Presley (cover from Megamind)

Opportunities by Pet Shop Boys

The Future by Mystery Skulls

Feel It Still by Portugal. The Man

Reeve

(Cait Sith has a separate section below, although my view is that they are both Reeve)

Road to Joy by Bright Eyes

The Logical Song by Supertramp

Natural by Imagine Dragons

Scapegoat by Chumbawamba (one of the songs I put on here in the 90s before I understood what it was about, and now it reminds me of him even if it doesn’t totally work)

So Called Chaos by Alanis Morisette

Mowgli’s Road by Marina and the Diamonds

LIES GREED MISERY by Linkin Park (my Angry Reeve song!)

Diminishing Returns by Harvey Danger

Consequences by Buffering the Vampire Slayer (thinking about removing this one)

Cait Sith

(I think he’s basically the same person as Reeve, but he does have different vibes which requires different songs. Could use some ideas; these were just fun to give him and may not be as apt as they should be. I’m hoping Rebirth will give me inspiration.)

I Am Not A Robot by Marina and the Diamonds (recently added, may need a new position or something)

The Check’s In the Mail by Weird Al

Heist by Ben Folds

Win Or Lose by Foo Fighters

Vincent

(he is a bit of a mess; I struggled to find good songs for him and am constantly adding a bunch and removing a bunch. I think what I have is okay, and I do like the narrative I constructed here, but the tone is all over the place and I really don’t have any Perfect songs for him.)

Hopelessly Devoted to You by Kristin Chenowith (yeah, the Pushing Daisies version because I have it. I could really use a darker cover for him.)

Back to Black by Amy Winehouse

Gaeta’s Lament by Bear McCreary

The Abandoned Castle of My Soul by The Gothic Archies

Parades Go By by The Magnetic Fields

Some Kind of Monster by Neon Trees

Animal I Have Become by Three Days Grace

Howl by Florence + the Machine

It’s Over Isn’t It by Deedee Magno Hall

Blinding by Florence + the Machine

Beauty and the Beasts by Buffering the Vampire Slayer

Cid

Firefly - Main Title by Sonny Rhodes

Flying by Blue Rodeo

Holiday by Green Day

We Are the Champions by Queen

Sephiroth

Liquid Smooth by Mitski

Let It Go (Epic Metal Cover) by Connor Engstrom

Wild by Poe

Holding Out For a Hero by Nothing But Thieves

Apocalypse Please by Muse

Hellbent by Mystery Skulls

And So It Went by The Pretty Reckless

I Just Wanna Be God by Alice Cooper

Zack

(his songs are kind of a mixed bag, although the last two are great. I hope to get inspired by Rebirth.)

Bud Like You by AJR

Shake It Off by Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox

Battle Cry by Ludo

Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits

Soldier by Tommie Lee Profitt & Fluerie

The Turks

Come On Come On by Smash Mouth

Ballroom Blitz by Sweet

Goody Two Shoes by Adam Ant

Istanbul (Not Constantinople) by They Might Be Giants

…plus the odd song or two for other characters or general purposes that I’m really not sure about.

I probably should have tried making a Spotify playlist to share or something, but to be fair I hate Spotify.

[yandereine]

Minerva's Decides It's Time For One More Round (FF7 Fanfiction)- Ch3

Vincent Valentine burst from his coffin in a tumble immediately reaching for the phone that was not there. At first, he thought he was in another nightmare. Surrounded by black, wallowing in those long, lonely years by himself only to find that his eyes were shut, and he could reach out with his still human hand to touch his lover’s face, stroking their cheek.  

 They had aged so, so much since they’d first met. And he would remain eternally young while they would grow old and die. 

 It hurt him, so much. But he treasured their moments together as the world continued to struggle to breathe around them. Crops were completely unable to grow, even after the curing of Geostigma; the Planet could not recover in the end. And so they all waited to simply, die.  

 Going to sleep with their frail, aging body in his arms, he expected to awake to another cold, dark day only to find there was no light at all, returned to his coffin. 

 But unlike his dreams, he had the choice to actually get out, and so he did. 

 Panting heavily, or about as much as Vincent’s breaths being a touch louder than normal, he scanned the dark room.

 It was... 

 Not questioning his dreams, he ran. Ran out the door, breaking through every barrier in his way in a daze until feeling the Nibelheim cold billow his cloak and stroke his scalp as his hair blew into his face. 

 He ran, practically flying over the still locked iron gate and down the sloping stone steps to observe the small town beneath the mansion. 

 Though in the dead of night, it was alight with lanterns and... a commotion? 

 Tifa did not know her comrade and friend was there, realizing she had no idea how to explain to her father why she was screaming (oh come on, she was just speaking loudly) for Cloud in the middle of the night.

 Nor could she explain why seeing her father made her fall to her knees and burst into tears. 

 His fury had melted for concern, and now the entire village was awake and confused.  

 And so was she. 

 She was back. 

 Though she wasn’t sure how to process... anything. 

 Aerith, Denzel, the others what happened to them? 

 Plucked from one life into her old one without so much as a “mind the smaller body.” 

 So she stood with her father’s hands at her bare shoulders, sobbing while Claudia Strife rushed in and out of her home to bring her a blanket to wrap herself in. 

 Opening her bleary eyes, she could have sworn she saw a flash of red on the rooftops, but it could have been the dazzling light of a lantern as she wiped them and shook her head. Explaining this would take some time to think about, for her family, the villagers, and herself. 

 Vincent took a single look at the young, teenager surrounded by adults and backed off, realizing he was also in not the state of mind appropriate for a heavy confrontation. 

 It would be best to learn as much as he could back at the mansion, and figure out a way to get a signal to Tifa.

 ----------------------- 

The one and only Wutaian princes shocked the nation. 

 Yuffie Kisaragi, age forty, was sitting up straight with the regal demeanor of a queen in the body of an eight year old child.

 Godo Kisaragi was beside himself and sent for doctors, a shaman, and every manner of healer he could acquire to learn what could have possibly happened to his daughter in one night! 

 Yuffie sat stone faced, back straight, looking ahead at the fifth witch doctor that came in that day. 

Wutai had fallen. Again. 

 In the decades that passed, disaster after disaster couldn’t stop people from building back up to their former lives. And so, Midgar was rebuilt as a true Neo Midgar for the people. No ShinRa overlords disregarding the slums or mako pollution. Everyone would work together to build a real brighter future. 

 Bullshit. 

 Wutai remained independent, and under her rule did they continue to train warriors and regain their long lost honor.  

 Ten years. 

 Ten years was all it took for the animosity between Neo Midgar to rival that of its former lords and the attacks began after the last stone of the cobbled streets had been set. Reeve had passed away leaving the WRO in her and Vincent’s hands, and even with their combined military strength could they not come to a truce or keep peace. Having no SOLDERs in a polluted, hostile world meant that the every single day, people had to learn how to fight for themselves with their own super powers.

 Strength, materia, and guns. 

 Warriors like Cloud were one in a billion. And even then, no one was like Cloud. The man couldn’t fight more than one battle at once, and so, he was not there during her capture, imprisonment, nor execution.

 It should have been her execution. 

 Live on Neo Midgar television she kneeled, her crown knocked onto the ground and waist length hair matted and dirty. Really, she should have grabbed the first materia she could find and went out in a blaze. But she sat rigid as the firing squad took aim, thinking of only one thing, her father’s surrender to ShinRa. 

 So there she was again, her father where he should be and herself on a cushion fit for a princess. 

 She was quiet. Manic, but quiet. 

 What could she say to him after all this time? 

 Nothing, instead she embraced him for several minutes and that was when she was ushered to the palace healing chamber while the fifth witch doctor that day attempted to read her chi.

 Honestly, she didn’t mind, choosing to let it happen.  

 There was nothing left for her then, and now she could make things right.

 ------------------------

Cid Highwind was in bed, smoking a cigarette and not moving besides the rise and fall of his chest, followed by the tapping of his cigarette into an ashtray. His back was up against the headboard, and Shera was not there.  

 He took another long drag of his cigarette as he stared at the wall across from him. 

 Round Three. 

 The first time he had gone back in time, he was gung-ho to kick some ShinRa ass, spear Sephiroth from a high jump, and get his own ass to outer space. That didn’t work as he’d planned. 

 First he’d been arrested for exposing and conspiring with AVALANCHE which- to his surprise, did not only consist of Barett, Tifa and a scant few others he’d been expecting. No, this other cell was something else, and hardly better than ShinRa. 

 It was, without a doubt, a shitshow. He bumbled his way through the past, telling everyone and their daughter, quite literally in the case of Marlene, what to expect. 

 They were overwhelmingly underprepared and thank Minerva for being the angel she was for yanking him out and putting him back in when they put an end to Sephiroth and Jenova, but at the cost of everything they held dear, even worse than the first go around. He tried again, wary from the years he’d spent fighting to save Gaia.

 But dammit he was going to try. 

 First, he decided to focus on getting to space, figuring the others needed the experience before they were ready to take on that monstrosity. With smaller rockets and world shattering discoveries about space, he theorized that maybe they could just migrate if things got too bad. Or hell, track wherever Jenova came from and blast it to hell. But he had not accounted for the hostilities of space, nor how many centuries it would take to actually achieve any of it.  

 He got his wish, going to space, even floating above their big, beautiful world in a space suit. But he didn’t have thousands of years to make it to another planet with water, and not millions to see another star. So, he got his butt into gear to do what he could to learn more about how to eliminate the threat of Jenova from the Lifestream.

 Cloud and Tifa had survived a long dip into it, why couldn’t he? 

 As it turns out, Jenova’s essence was even more deadly when it was in a space where the laws of the planet’s nature and physics didn’t apply.

 The repurposed spaceship was made to travel deep into the planet, and traverse the Lifestream to potentially find Jenova and put an end to things once and for all. He supposed being in the Lifestream itself, that immediately sent him on an express route back to where he was now. 

 How old was he, A hundred and three now? 

 Another drag from his cigarette. 

 Well, at least the cigarettes didn’t ever kill him. 

-------------------------

Barret Wallace downed his fifth shot as he tried to calm down and rationalize the situation. 

Marlene was not his daughter. His arm and hand were not a gun nor made of any kind of metal. No one’s phone numbers worked, and he was not swearing up a storm to Sephritoth’s face as he charged him.

 “I will never be a memory.” he’d said, according to Cloud. 

 After his fiftieth birthday, the damned wraith came back to bite them all when they were older, and slower. 

 Cloud, Shelke and Vincent were the best they had as that fiend came back from the dead. But to say it was a surprise attack was putting things all too lightly. From what he knew of Sephiroth, the evil bastard liked to be a little dramatic. There was some build up that sent Cloud over the edge, and they could expect bad shit to happen until he was gone.

 Swooping in the day after his birthday when everyone without mako enhancements was hungover and lazing around in their night clothes wasn’t exactly the most Sephiroth like thing they could have accounted for. 

 Cloud was out and jumping on the rooftops to beat his ass out of the newly built city though couldn’t do much about all the destruction left in their wake. Yuffie, all grown up and making him proud, had taken Marlene. They focused on rescue and relief. Seeing his grown daughter commanding the screaming crowd with a booming voice would have brought him to tears if he wasn’t focused on sprinting to where the fighting was taking place. 

 And it was a fight. 

 There was no way the people who’s houses Sephiroth tossed Cloud through got out without scratches or worse. But between taking pot shots and guiding the people to safety, Barett had little room to spectate along the way. What he did see, all too clearly, was the body of Shelke fall from the sky and land at his feet, unmoving.

 He didn’t know what snapped in him that day, but even if the girl was old enough to be somebody’s grandma, she still held the face of a sweet young girl, and he screamed. 

 The things he yelled at Sephiroth that day could go down in a lexicon to never say around your child. He hollered and never stopped shooting until he needed to recharge. 

 That was the moment that Sephiroth decided to stop dodging and go for him directly. 

 Waking up with a real hand and his wife near falling out of their bed as he yelled himself awake sent him into delirium. Stumbling through the street in just pajama pants dialing every phone number he knew, and even getting as far as the town gate before Dyne pulled him back. 

 Fifth shot emptied, he stared at the glass, and his dear friend rubbed circles on his back trying to get him to speak up. 

 Barret put his head down into his still flesh arms on the bar, and groaned.

[thornescratch]

Bodyswap!

I assume this is for the hockey one. I did the FF7 one in another post anyway. So I was having a conversation with Weaglerock, and we were talking about goalies and somehow that became discussion on how the best bodyswap on the Caps would be Holtby and Kuzy bodyswap, because their responsibilities and personalities could not be more different. But then they should, like, fall in love. or at least rub one out in each other’s bodies.

And also it was fun to think about the weirdness and logistics of how to cope with something like this if it happened in season versus off season. Like, in-season at least you can use the backup goalie and shit. For those two guys in off season (at the time, anyway) Kuzy would probably be okay waking up in North America in Holtby’s body and could navigate without too much trouble (he is not prepared for shaving as Holts, though he does his best), but if Holtby woke up in Chelyabinsk in Kuzy’s body, hoo boy, he’d be in trouble.

Anyway, Kuzy would take way too much pleasure in doing the Holtby hair toss, which Holts then retaliates against when he does the Kuzy laugh and Kuzy is like, “Do I sound like that? Really?” And then he is distracted by remembering he has Holtby’s goalie flexibility now, and he probably tries to suck his own dick while Holtby yells at him. Within, like, thirty minutes of them swapping bodies, the news is already out on the team group chat and four different people have suggested sex to see if that’s how they switch back. It would be more, but time differences. Poor Nathan Walker gets to relive the entire thing in group chat like a whole day later (possibly, not saying I've got a great grasp on time zones).

Then there’s like a whole bunch of them doing playfully terrible (mostly non-permanent, someone does get a tattoo) things to each other's bodies, while the rest of the team works out how to switch them back. I love a good team ensemble hijinks story; they are my kryptonite.

It’s sort of a side-story to “Now I’ll be bold as well as strong” but you don’t need to have read that; it just takes place in the same universe.

"Anyway, I let Ovi see your dick," Kuzy says, and shrugs. "He believe me then."

"Okay, please stop showing my dick to people," Braden says.

Kuzy blinks at him from the screen in genuine confusion. "Why? It's very nice dick, Holts. You should show off more. Everyone on Russian national team agree with me."

"Kuzy, I swear to fucking God, if you showed my dick to anyone on Team Russia, I'm gonna—" Braden starts, but he doesn't finish because Kuzy is giggling too hard.

"No, no, just Ovi. And Snarls. And And, uh, Burky. But Burky ask, I didn't show to him first on purpose, you know?"

"I don't," Braden says, briefly wonders why Burky would ask, and then decides not to pursue it any further for fear of what he'll encounter.

“So, I show Ovi your dick and he know it’s me, not you since you don’t show off dick if people ask,” Kuzy continues cheerfully. “Also you know, I speak Russian to him.”

[tamagoneko]

tell me about the blorbos in your header

oh boy!! ill try not to just info dump kl;jda

💙 ZACK FAIR 💙

restless as a puppy and the tragic hero of ff7 this good boy is a ray of sunshine and optimism in an otherwise dark world. he carries his heart on his sleeveless arms, always trying his best to help those around him.

❤️ DANTE ❤️

the legendary devil hunter wacky woo-hoo pizza man himself! there's a lot to unpack here so we might as well throw the whole case.

the youngest twin from a tragic family this man though an air of nonchalance and wisecracks cares a lot though he would never admit it out loud especially to those he cares about as a means to protect them. he literally is always broke and in dept because he donates most of his money away to those he thinks needs it more.

🧡 OBITO UCHIHA 🧡

the black sheep of his family and resident crybaby he self sacrificed himself to save his rival and friends and tragically ended up getting brainwashed and manipulated by his own rescuer and ancestor. obviously what he did was wrong ( and he knows that ) but the end goal to unite the ninja nations so that no more children would have to die in pointless wars and people would no longer suffer was a noble one. once getting some sense beat into him he redeems himself for his past actions.

to sum it up they are all severely depressed and desperately needs lots of hugs and therapy. pure of heart, dumb of ass.

[fauzhee10069]

TL;DR the event is so one-noted and this Yuffie scene ruins the grim vibe it supposedly has.

Why Wutai War is a JOKE?

Because as adorable as this Yuffie’s scene is, this completely ruins the meaning of Wutai war for me.

As awesome as Sephiroth is as the war hero, it’s very hard to me to take seriously of this infamous, the one and only war in FF7′s world.

First, it was about a dispute of a mako reactor. Shinra wished to place a reactor at Wutai, and thus economically dominate the nation like the rest of the world. Wutai refused to surrender to Shinra authority, starting a long conflict.

The war was already so one-sided with Shinra held the world's most advanced technology, having planes, machine guns, robots, and the genetically enhanced special forces unit, SOLDIER + Sephiroth.

The background history which caused this war actually sometimes happens in some regions in my country too, albeit in much smaller scale when a company wants to exploit some area and evict the original residents.

Sometimes, riots happen and with background similar like this, what could happen is a deathly riot like Sampit conflict which happened back in 2001, though it was not about company vs residents, more like racial war at the time, but the riot scale will be likely more or less similar to this.

But FF7 treated this dispute with full scale militaristic war, instead of riots. It was soldiers against soldiers and the war lasted around 8 years.

What is Wutai? A nation or a region? Why would a war of this magnitude be needed to resolve this?

Perhaps Shinra needed a reason to make use of its technology and super SOLDIERs or that the narrative needed a background reason of how awesome Sephiroth is.

FF7 portrayed this war as tragic thing, by implying the misery of the people affected by this war, they suffered, they needed to flee, they became refugees to survive, bla bla bla, some known causalities of Elmyra’s husband and Sonon’s sister Melphie.

But then we had the last stage to end this war in Fort Tamblin, where Zack being the one-man-army single-handledly eliminated the remaining Wutai soldiers there and when it was almost over... came this little Wutai princess,  Yuffie... having fun with f*ckin’ soldier who just finished off the soldiers who defended her territory???

It ruined the horror of the war which supposedly exists (the narrative really pushed me to believe in that).

I think at the very least, Yuffie and Zack shouldn't have met there.

War in real life, if the enemy is about to capture the very last castle, or defense, they either will execute... or capture the family trapped in there.

That’s why Oichi and her 2nd husband, Shibata Katsuie let themselves burn inside the castle rather than getting caught by the enemy.

Perhaps because I'm already very used to studying the war histories, it's very difficult for me to take any battle seriously in fantasy genre.

first, espionaging,

then comes assassinating of some important figures,

sabotaging military supplies and food rations,

taking advantage of the terrain and weather,

oh... we need tactical battle formation too...,

how many commanders we need to lead our armies?

All of them gets jossed by one super overpowered character.

Perhaps my expectation is too high, or that comparing war in FF7 to historical wars is like apple to orange, it’s not fair.

F: “oh shut up, just suspend your disbelief, it’s a fiction for God’s sake!”

M: “of course we have to suspend disbelief in every fictions, but can I have a decent story that at least makes me ‘that’s bullshit but I believe it’ “?

Okay, so let’s be more fair here, I will compare the war in FF7 with FF15 instead.

Although FF15 also has quite a lot of flaws, I think the depiction of the war there is still better than FF7. At least, it felt that we are really at war.

Now what is the major flaw in Wutai war? It’s actually because the lack of representative characters in Wutai’s side!!

We only have Kisaragi Godo and Yuffie!! (Sonon and Melphie, etc.in the remake) And we don’t even see what they were doing during the war.

When the war already so one-sided, we only know the relevant soldiers on  Shinra‘s side, but none on Wutai’s side.

Compared to FF15, we have Noctis’ gang, Nyx, The Kinglaives, Crownguards, then on the other hand there are Glauca, Aranea and Ravus, etc.

Although Niflheim had eventually overwhelmed Lucis, it was still more balanced with the concept of “technology vs magic”.

Even more strangely, with the lack of relevant figures, how could Wutai survive for over 8 years against Shinra's overwhelming power?

This is a problem the fanfic writers have to deal with if they want to explore the Wutai war, because in reality nothing can be explored from this supposedly great event.

It’s so one-noted, it’s only purpose is only to give an awesome background for  the war hero, Sephiroth.

Sephiroth is the most powerful being in FF7, being a hero in Wutai war proved it. However, with a very one-sided power in favor to Shinra and zero enemy officer who can challenge him, it actually makes his achievement sounds like a 'joke'.

Even more amusing, the known character who might have challenged him (and impressed him) is Elfe from Avalanche???

Is there any Wutaian veteran worthy to him??

Come on Square Enix, there are still many ways to milk this FF7 franchise, but stop with the sequel for a moment (unless your goal is to permanently end Sephiroth because his AC ending is bullshit). Focus on the prequel, fix its world-building, tell me more about the rise of Shinra and tell me a more believable writing for Wutai war, teach me the life system in Gaia, how civilization develops with education and social life. I want to know what exactly the law and education system work there.

Therefore, Wutai war is a joke, not even a funny one, it’s a sad and terrible joke. It can only be fixed if Square Enix wants to do a prequel exploring on that event. A light novel is nice too, but having a prequel spin-off game that takes place in Wutai war with Sephiroth as playable protagonist will be a gold experience. Then a confirmation whether Tseng is Wutaian or not and how he ends up in Shinra.

At least, I’ve finally found a decent fic that portrayed the war pretty well.

[blackroseraven]

I watched the Yuffie DLC and it looks really fun, but it also doesn’t seem like. FF7, at all. Also “Fort Condor” the game is the equivalent of something like Amazon or Google releasing a game where you destroy the National Butterfly Center or something. Like seriously.

Also seriously THAT’S where you decided to add Crazy Motorcycle Man?

And yes I did not like the other “Wutaian Ninja” Sono... whatever, and predicted exactly what was going to happen to him. I really thought the whole thing started pretty good but then it turned into a bad fanfic manga, where they try to cram as much cool stuff in around their Anime Self Insert as possible.

Also literally no one is going to know Deepground and the Tsviets and Weiss because they were from Dirge of Cerberus, the FF7 spinoff that basically everyone except my partner hated. Well, I didn’t hate it, and hilariously I think it did a better job of expanding the universe than a lot of the Remake stuff has, but I didn’t love it either, you know?

Anyway it’s just. Wild to see this stuff being thrown in willy-nilly to expand on everything. It has that feel to it where someone learns about something for the first time and they have to chuck it into everything.

The length of the DLC definitely contributes to the feeling of emotionally staggering all over the place, since it wants to be funny and a growing-up story and sad and infuriating all at once. There’s sort of this hint of post-World War II drama to it, but I really don’t think this was the time or place for it, nor was it handled very effectively. It sort of makes a mockery of what Wutai was supposed to have gone through at Shinra’s hands because they literally only bring it up sporadically during Sad Times, and then they’re back to joking and laughing.

It’s just wild to me they went with Weiss and the Tsviets for the end when there’s so much material closer to the core of the series they could have gone with. Deepground felt so deeply unnecessary, especially for Yuffie, since this was Vincent’s whole thing. You had no problem creating a whole new group of Avalanche people who sniff down their noses at Barrett’s “splinter cell” - also “gosh they’re causing so many problems for us!!!” doesn’t jive at all well with the appearance of “Main Avalanche” in game when they have gatling guns and heavy armor and they’re blowing up a Shinra depot and apparently working with Wutai ninjas - and your Ninja Dude, but making up a new bad guy is too much?

That and the feeling of colossal failure leaves the DLC so empty, ultimately. It started off so fun and looks like such a neat system! And then someone who watched too much Evangelion and Sad Naruto took a big literary dump on it while showing off their Big Brain Look How Much I Know About The Extended Universe.

“Gee you’re mean and so hard on them!” Yes because I wanted this to be GOOD. I really wanted them to succeed here, to tread that line between “cool new stuff” and “inglorious fanfic” and they decided to dive right into inglorious fanfic. And I know bad fanfic, I have written it myself.

Anyway.

The only possible thing I’m ever going to be excited for in this universe is Zack’s Big Adventure but I’m terrified they’d screw the whole thing up. It already sort of is screwed up because he has a random-ass Buster Sword on his back and in Crisis Core that was very specifically mentioned as something forged especially for Angeal so no production models exist, which means he should instead be using the standard SOLDIER sword. 

YES I KNOW WEIRD EXTENDED UNIVERSE TRIVIA TOO.

It would be great though. Just imagine it, when’s the last time we had a Final Fantasy with a funny goofy main character who deals with his sadness in healthy ways and isn’t actually an alien or something, and who ends up never actually being broken, no matter what circumstances he finds himself in?

Give me that. I just beat Minerva again in Crisis Core, I goddamn deserve that.

[rayshippouuchiha]

You ever think about the fact that ff7 is a fairly loose retelling of Norse mythology with some liberties taken? Like, we have the shinra, both the father and son, as the stand ins for odin at different points of his life ex. aggressive expansion across the worlds nations being Odin's conquering of the nine realms, and ruling over it "benevolently" afterwards. President Shinra as the scheming conquering warlord, and Rufus as odin after losing his eye and gaining "Wisdom" (foolishness). Hell, rufus even has Odin's two ravens in the form of Rude and Reno, his eyes and ears in the realm as it were!

And what do the Shinras want? To reach Valhalla, I mean "The Promised land". Hell, it probably would've followed the same beats if it weren't for an outside source interfering (jenova)

But wait, there's more! We have the warriors three! Are they Sephiroth angeal and genesis? Possibly. Or the warriors three could be Soldier, the Turks and deepground.

Sephiroth is and Surtur in this play, with Cloud as Fenrir (all that wolf iconography) but even so, they switch between roles! Fenrir was supposed to kill odin but, nope! Surtur did it instead! So I know what your thinking, if th is is true, wheres thor? Dead! Thor was Zack. Fenrir was forced to take up thor's mantle!

The einherjar Is the lifestream itself, rising up to battle ragnarok ( lifestream casts holy to stop meteor)

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I couldn't help but notice it.

There’s been a number of threads and the like over the years drawing connections between FF7 and Norse mythology and I love every single one of them

[megpie71]

One for the FF7 Fandom

I'm very irritated with the trend of ageing up the characters which persists in Crisis-Core era fic, particularly by Western authors.  

I'm irritated with it because it's done to satisfy Western (or more accurately, USAlien) notions of sexual morality rather than anything else: it's done so when there's slash, it isn't happening "under-age" (for values of "under-age" which correspond with the law in certain US states).  Because, canonically, Cloud Strife left Nibelheim at the age of fourteen, spent two years in the Shinra infantry, and the Nibelheim Event took place when he was sixteen.  Zack Fair was eighteen.  Sephiroth was an absolute maximum of about twenty-five, but is more likely to have been around twenty.  

The thing is, all of this is a fucking PLOT POINT.  It's one of the things the writers of the original game were raising as problematic: child soldiers, child SOLDIERs, and the ways wars chew up the youth of a nation.  Cloud Strife at the beginning of the Original Game is a severely traumatised military veteran at the incredibly young age of 21.  This is Not A Good Thing.  When we age-up the characters so some rando's extremely culturally-specific notions of age-appropriate sexual morality aren't offended by "minors" being involved in sexual activity (and this started back when Crisis Core was first coming out; trust me, the Puritan call has been coming from inside the house of FF7 fandom since about 2007 at least) we are diluting this important plot point.  

And we're not diluting it to make a counter-point.  We're just diluting it to prevent the Puritans from bitching at us.

Ideally we should be counter-questioning them.  We should be asking "Why, out of all the things which are potentially offensive about this character's situation, is it the sex you're throwing a tantrum about?"  

Why aren't you complaining about a kid (canonically) being in the army at age fourteen?  Why aren't you upset about Zack Fair (canonically) undertaking a mission with a kill count of well over fifty people, at the age of about sixteen?  Why aren't you concerned about Sephiroth effectively being Shinra Corporation property from birth?  Why aren't you worried about the (canon) biological experimentation carried out on Cloud, Sephiroth, Aerith, Genesis, Angeal, Zack - none of it with informed consent (or indeed, any consent whatsoever)?  Why aren't you upset about all three of the Generals being severely traumatised by wartime experiences at an age where most citizens of the USA haven't even finished college?  Why is it just the sex (which generally depicted as being a pleasurable experience, a bit of warmth in a crapsack world) which horrifies you so much you have to complain oh-so-loudly about it, rather than all the other things these "minors" are being expected to do?  

WHAT THE FLYING FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOUR FUCKING PRIORITIES?

We need to start asking this question of the Puritans in our midst, and making them damn well justify their actions, not bending over backwards to try and get them to leave us alone.