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skywheeldate · 2 months

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Analyzing the Skywheel Dates

Unable to wait patiently for the Ultimania releasing next month, I wanted to provide my own analysis of the Skywheel dates between Cloud/Tifa and Cloud/Aerith.

By analyzing Cloud's behavior on these two dates, which are explicitly more romantic than the other four, I aim to understand why the dates played out the way they did and what was going through the character's heads during them.

Tifa Date:

What sticks out in most player's minds during the date is the kiss Cloud gives Tifa while riding the Skywheel, and it's easy to see why! It's the first time Cloud has kissed a woman on screen, after all. But I have seen fans state that this proves Cloud likes Tifa more, and while I hate to get myself involved in any shipping war, I feel there is a more interesting conclusion we can draw based on the timeline of events throughout both remake games.

First, I want to direct you to this caption from the Remake Ultimania:

When Cloud gives Tifa the flower, he wants to "Show off a youthful image of what he himself wants to be like"...

I think this caption is very important to helping us understand why Cloud was able to be so bold as to kiss the girl he was always too shy to befriend as a child. And I think it's linked to his new "ex-soldier persona."

See, the ex-soldier persona Cloud crafted is modeled after a person he admired and wanted to be like: Zack. Although making this new personality for himself was an unhealthy response to his trauma, I think there are good things to it, as well. For one, it allowed him to take action again and thereby begin his first steps towards recovery. In addition, it gives him courage to do things he never could before, such as strutting his stuff on the dance floor:

I don't think it's too far of a stretch to say that this extends to him giving the flower to Tifa.

So this, in my mind, explains how Cloud had the courage to kiss Tifa and why some fans might think it felt a little sudden or out of character--it's because it almost is, in a way. But let me reiterate, I don't think that's a bad thing. I think Zack's influence on Cloud is somewhat natural and, frankly, having the courage to do the things you want and have fun is never a bad thing. I truly believe Cloud is exemplifying being Zack's "living legacy" by becoming more confident and outgoing. It's a good thing!!

And let's not ignore Tifa in this scene. Before the kiss, Tifa brings up that she feels she and Cloud have become closer, but frets that she's rushing to conclusions again. She's giving Cloud a clear opening to prove his feelings for her--and frankly, after all this build up? Giving the flower, all the tiny touches they've shared? Cloud is more than ready to prove it to her, and he does. It's so easy, and he does it the best way he knows how: with a kiss. In that moment, the boy became the man he's always aspired to be.

Aerith Date:

Conversely, the Aerith date isn't quite as simple--at least to me. It's hard to understand what's going on in their heads, and I think they comparatively have more obstacles in the way of their romance.

The biggest obstacle is that Aerith has seen through Cloud's persona, and almost calls him out on it during the date. She tells him she's looking for the real him, and that she wants to meet him someday.

I believe this stops Cloud, subconsciously. While the persona he built around Zack gives him more confidence, it's still a persona. It's not who he really is. By giving into that persona at all, he is not giving Aerith what she wants. Being confident and bold with Tifa was important, because she needed proof he liked her, but here? What's important is being the "real" Cloud, whoever that is. It must have stumped him.

Aerith gives him an easy out though: she asks Cloud to let her snuggle up against him until the ride ends. And that much, at least, Cloud can manage. And he goes even further than that when he interlaces their fingers together. I think this is his way of showing that he'll be there for Aerith--not just till the ride ends, but after. He's showing her that he does, in fact, care about her, and that her selfish request isn't as selfish as she thinks it is.

I also want to bring up the lyrics from No Promises to Keep here since I think they're extremely relevant to the Clerith relationship and the hand-holding symbolism seen throughout the game:

Till the day that we meet again At our place, just let me believe In the chance that you'll come Take my hand and never let me go Take my hand And believe We can be Together evermore

The hand holding symbolizes their shared desire to be "together evermore" and the belief that they will be. The interlocked fingers display a powerful, mutual bond that cannot be so easily severed. I think this imagery is both simple and extremely beautiful.

In summary, although they are not at a point in their relationship where they're ready to kiss yet, I believe this scene is meant to show that there is still possibility for their relationship to grow and get to that point.

.❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。• *₊°。 .❀

Thank you for reading till the end! I hope you enjoyed my thoughts. Feel free to use or reference this post if you found it resonated with your own interpretations of these scenes. And if you have your own interpretations to share, I would love to hear them!

#ffvii #ffvii rebirth #final fantasy vii #final fantasy #cloud strife #aerith gainsborough #tifa lockhart #meta #ffvii meta #clerith #cloti

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hedonistbyheart · 1 month

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People seem to think that one of the changes they'll add to the FFVII Remake triptych is that Vincent will be Sephiroth's father instead of Hojo and I refuse to accept it. I'm going to utterly deny any hint at the possibility until they force me to accept it. I hate it.

I LIKE that Sephiroth's conception is not a product of love, I like that his parents are both hyper intelligent and utterly horrific people. I like the idea that he is a child with so much potential, but the fact that his parents did monstrous things, without literally being monsters, corrupted him.

If Vincent is his father you get more of a tragic lovers scenario, but it muddles how Sephiroth ended up being the genesis (excuse the pun) of everything. Lucrecia's motivations are already fucked, but if Sephiroth is a lovechild, Hojo would have to have stolen him I suppose. It's a possibility, but I still prefer the og explanation. I prefer it because it's fucked up, to be clear.

I also like the idea of Vincent feeling responsible for Sephiroth because he was in love with Lucrecia, rather than because Sephiroth is his actual child. There's something very gothic about feeling guilty about the child of the woman you pined after, but never actually had, and the irony of the man who contains monsters being more human than the one who did father the godlike child.

#ffvii rebirth spoilers #ffvii #ffvii meta #maybe they'll sell me on it if it happens #square enix is remarkably good at selling me complete nonsense #but for now I do not see it lol

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finallyfantasy7 · 1 year

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Strange they thought they had to change the design of the Buster Sword in Crisis Core Reunion to match Final Fantasy VII Remake when no explanation was neccessary, the story was almost telling itself.

Angeal's father had the sword made because he was proud of his son. He owed a lot of money for that sword, so it was obviously very expensive. It makes sense the sword would be ornate.

Angeal Hewley (almost) never used it wanting it to stay in perfect condition.

Zack Fair used it, but he was very careful with it. He says in Crisis Core that he always hits with the blunt side so he doesn't damage the blade.

Cloud Strife doesn't care. That's his personality at the beginning of FFVII Remake. We see Cloud on the train some 2-3 months after he got the Buster Sword, and he has already ruined Zack's uniform. Just before Cloud woke from his catatonic state, Zack's old uniform, which he dragged Cloud around in for a year, looked like this

2 to 3 months later, with Cloud's treatment it looks like this

The right strap has been replaced, the original pauldrons are gone, and the one he has now is rusting and covered in chipped paint.

So wouldn't it also make sense that he ruined the ornate golden hand guard as well, and replaced it with something much more simple, sturdy, and utilitarian?

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allottavabassa · 10 months

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Tifa Lockhart/Aerith Gainsborough is kind of an odd ship dynamic, actually! There's a lot going on with those two

I feel like they could pass for a healthy, well-adjusted couple right up until the point where Tifa tries to start one (1) sincere conversation about Aerith's emotions.

Aerith seems like she can hardly cross the street without three layers of irony and performative cheeriness. She's in a party full of late-90s antiheroes, and somehow she's still the least good at being open with people.

#i'm sure they could work through it—they are capable people—but boy could aerith do with some therapy sessions #aerti #aerith gainsborough #ffvii meta

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toopolar · 1 month

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"Do you think we're less destructive in the other universe?"

The other universe:

#hannibal #hannigram #will graham #hannibal lecter #sefikura #cloud strife #sephiroth #ff7rebirth spoilers #ff7 meta #ff7 #ff7 remake #final fantasy vii #ffvii

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glossolali · 6 months

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okay listen i was talking to @quinn-of-aebradore and @wanderingbasilisk about my netherdeep blorbo and long story short (insert spoilers here) and we got to talking about FF7 AND THEn I came to the conclusion that Matt is such a a FF7 nerd that that LOOK:

METEOR vs RUIDUS....

is RUIDUS GONNA CRASH INTO EXANDRIA IN C3???

are ruidus born like jenova remnants?????

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

IS LUDINUS SEPHIROTH????

is IMOGEN GONNA PULL AN AERITH????

😂😂😱😱😱🥺

#goodnight lmao #i need it i think #BUT MARK MY W ORDS #critical role #cr spoilers #c3 #final fantasy #ruidus #ff7 #ffvii #ludinus #imogen temult #ludinus da'leth #glossopost #cr spec #cr meta #glossometa

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phoenixcatch7 · 1 month

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Various headcanons about sephiroth that come from someone who does not know enough about ff7 to have any sort of credible opinion:

He got artificially aged a couple years as a kid. This lines up with hojos astoundingly selfish, cruel, results oriented modus operandi. It gets results faster and means he doesn't have to deal with an infant/toddler for the usual years. It's said in some ff7 encyclopedia that he was on the front lines before he was ten, but his mind and body in ever crisis do not reflect that. And I SINCERELY doubt even propaganda fed soldiers would accept a nine year old in a war zone. That and he's the youngest of the 1st trinity, with them being very young adults, but looks fully matured (if with the face of someone who's never had a single spot ever lol).

His hair isn't normal. There's no way that's just normal keratin it simply isn't. I don't know what it is but it's as weird as the rest of him. Maybe it's like polar bear fur and suuuuper thick but hollow like bird feathers. Did you know their skin is pure black?? Do you think his hair reflects rainbows in the right light like glass tubes???

Speaking of his hair he probably started growing it out the second he stepped on the battlefield and away from hojo. Probably a buzz cut when he was a kid. I imagine it to be a combination of a symbol of independence and self care (as it is to me), taking control of his own appearance, and picking up a bit of the samurai/noble warrior culture alongside his katana during the war with wutai, which (in real life eastern cultures, notably traditional Japan and China, but do NOT quote me) associated long hair with nobility and high ranking samurai, and short/shorn hair with slavery and criminals. (Also, lions manes shorten or even fall out when they lose (gain injuries in) fights, and that's very funny to imagine sephiroth dealing with.) His bangs? They're the only part of his appearance that actually needs regular upkeep, so why does he have them? Simple. They're the same bangs as the picture of his mum lucrecia he got as a kid. Their hair spikes up there the same way ToT.

I lied there's another part of his appearance that needs upkeep. Man is wearing eyeliner and mascara. I get it's a character design choice to bring attention to his eyes but that is definitely eyeliner and the rest of his hair is white as snow, so mascara as well. The whole of gaia (ff7) is pretty 90s metal scifi dystopia and the general fashion (cohesive character designs) feature plenty of belts and earrings (but only for the men??) so it's unlikely to be any sort of big deal Mr macho war mascot is wearing subtle eye makeup.

But I do get the feeling he doesn't have earrings because he heals too fast. Like even cloud has a stud. I like to imagine the three of them went and got them all at the same time but only sephiroths didn't stick.

Those weird metal cuff looking bracelets all soldiers have are used to brace your sword with. Sephiroth is the only one I've seen use them through, so they're obviously very reinforced XD! But he can probably backhand all sorts with them. Wish they got more usage. Imagine charging sephiroth with a claymore or something (side eyes cloud) and he just slaps it away and his stupid leather glove doesn't even have a scratch.

He got taught reading and writing pretty late. You know the way he reads with his finger keeping track of where he is like a little kid? That's definitely an old habit. When you raise a super strong, super intelligent kid in the labs you're gonna want to restrict the information he can get, and I sincerely doubt hojo was going to be invested in getting his baby alien child soldier a well read education. Gast probably taught him some if he was old enough to understand. He might have originally been taught Ancient text before that fell through. Might even be mostly self taught.

You just know he's got a dog eared dictionary somewhere in his apartment.

Hojo has got a winter soldier style shutdown code in him as a failsafe. I sincerely doubt sephiroth would know, but he might suspect something. In canon sephiroth went off the rails exactly the way hojo wanted, so it was never used, but that man's psychopathy and tendency for mind manipulation combined with his thoroughness and self serving god complex (and general sadism) makes for a perfect breeding ground for that sort of brainwashing when dealing with a subject capable of ripping his blackened heart from his chest in a microsecond. The first word is jenova, because why would sephiroth suspect a surge of adrenaline at the sound of his 'mother's' name? Also I think it'd be super scary and ripe for fics.

Sephiroth doesn't experience gender the same way as humans. Not a chance. He'd totally use neo pronouns. Star gender. He achieved his safer form and had the biggest wave of gender euphoria ever (outside of that black wing arm which reads to me as a sign of corruption from.. *waves in shinras direction*). If a sane sephiroth saw it he'd be so jealous. (In contrast angel and genesis don't.)

He's got cptsd from hojo and labs/doctors in general. But he wouldn't know until he got therapy and exited survival mode lol.

I get the feeling he tried really hard to have morals and kindness even if it didn't come naturally until the library. It probably didn't come naturally but listen he was trying his best and succeeding!! But then his last thread snapped and he was like 'fine. If I'm a monster I'll be the worst monster they've ever seen' and went on to do exactly that.

He thinks he's rebelling and shedding his chains exacting vengeance etc etc but hojo handed him directly to jenova. Like he went from one slave master to the other he doesn't even know what his chains actually look like. Hojo was jenova yes man he was so happy to do anything for her out of scientific curiosity and sadistic glee. He was happy to watch the world burn if it meant he had a hand in it.

Sephiroth is actually a pretty good blend of his parents. Got all his looks from his mother though XD. And his temper. But his laser focused cruelty is all hojo.

Him and aerith probably knew each other in the labs at least peripherally. I like the idea they knew each other as kids.

He can't taste sour well at all, can taste water like cats and dogs, and craves fish. These have zero basis in canon and are mostly from a really good fic (ROADTRIP! by copper_nights on ao3, who does my absolute FAVOURITE characterisations of sephiroth and the gang) but I like the idea of him craving fish because of the whole 'part planet eating alien' thing and the fact life first developed in the oceans. So seafood is probably a pretty big part of jenova diet XD. But hojo probably has him on a more red meat based diet for ~protein~. Get this man some sushi!

The way he fights is very offensive unless he's sparring (obviously) but the way he takes damage is by being absolutely fine until he abruptly keels over. Like cats. This worries everyone around him and is entirely hojos fault. It's partly ff7 having limited gore like most media and partly the fight in advent children where he acts untouched, gets off a one liner to cloud and then IMMEDIATELY dies of his injuries. Kadaj survives about another twenty seconds. It's very classy big bad video game boss but it's also hilarious how much he refuses to ragdoll at any cost. He may be insane and clawing his way back to the earth's surface by kidnapping children but man has his dignity!! (Literally the only time he goes where he's sent is in rebirth when he grapples cloud for?? Absolutely zero reason?? And lets himself be pushed off and even then it's because he's playing mind games. Remake sephiroth is wild.)

He was also degrading before he died. As the youngest and most stable he lasted longest, but just like genesis (and Angel) he went downhill real fast even before he got thrown into the reactor. The degradation seems to start mentally before bigger symptoms appear, with paranoia, irritability, tunnel vision. I don't doubt chronic pain, which would exacerbate everything.

He LOVES space. It's almost hypnotic to him. He can navigate by stars amazingly well.

And I hit the character limit XD.

To round off briefly, I also feel he would be disappointed or betrayed upon finding out about/meeting lucrecia, for not being able to get him out of the labs (like elmyra did for aerith) because he probably struggled a lot with realistic power levels and his idolisation/fantasies of his mother, but I don't like that and also they both deserve a proper reunion so I usually ignore that lol.

And Vincent would have been his godfather, which is another reason hojo shot him - he could have lost legal guardianship over sephiroth, and thus, total control. A top ranking turk would have been the only person capable of successfully hiding such a child. Maybe they had the paperwork all ready.

They might be just headcanons, but I really like them XD! I don't usually make these, I prefer fleshing out canon with sturdier stuff or straight up making aus, but sephiroth sends me feral so lol.

#Yeah I don't know how many of these are shared with other people!#Or how many have been proven/disproven in canon #But there's a ton of stuff to think about and some are just fun to imagine #I love his whole deal he pulls it off so well but there's always this element of loneliness and tragedy.#I also love wondering how a baby planet eating space germ angel would deal with life as a flesh and blood person #Like you'd assume those things were mutually incompatible lol #sephiroth #sephiroth crescent #final fantasy 7 #ffvii #ff7 #sephiroth ff7 #ffvii remake #crisis core #ff7 meta #sephiroth ffvii #sephiroth final fantasy #ff7 sephiroth #ffvii sephiroth

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ultimate-sword-showdown · 1 year

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Round 1, Match 15: Galaxia vs. Masamune

Galaxia

From: Kirby

Wielder: Meta Knight

Galaxia is Meta Knight’s trusty sword. He is able to perform many feats with it, including battling Kirby and besting Galacta Knight (the “greatest warrior in the galaxy”). Meta Knight also gives Galaxia to Kirby in Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, who then uses it to defeat Dark Mind.

Masamune

From: Final Fantasy VII

Wielder: Sephiroth

The Masamune is an extremely long and unwieldy sword used by Sephiroth. It can cut through boulders and other rocky substances, and is famously used to kill Aerith as well as impaling Cloud and lifting him into the air.

#sword showdown #sword showdown polls #kirby #meta knight #galaxia #final fantasy #final fantasy 7 #ffvii #sephiroth

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whetstonefires · 6 months

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For the DVD Commentary post:

"I hate everything, he sobbed, and was surprised somehow when they did not draw back further, were not angry, even though it could not possibly be news by this point. I hate everything. I hate Shinra. I hate the world. I hate you. I hate Mother. I hate Sephiroth.

He made the name mean something entirely different than they had, trying to tame him. An image in fragments, bright silver yes and speed, the fit of uniform boots. The sound of people saying it, year in and year out—cold disdain and breathless admiration and writhing jealousy, and every repetition a new burden to carry. The crackle of flame and the stink of mako, laughter like Hojo’s laughter in his own throat, the taste of blood in your mouth. Jenova’s long-dead eyes staring with too much awareness for a corpse.

All the things the word Sephiroth meant that he felt consumed by, but also the mere thick, fungus-spreading concept of self.

He had failed so many times in so many ways. They told him he was perfect and yes everything was easy except anything that actually mattered, and he just wanted to do something right."

This one lives in my head hahaha i'd love to know the commentary behind it

Oh, this is a fun one! (That's for this post from this fic, the sixth and final Sephiroth-as-sibling AU.) Sorry for the delay in turnaround, I had to. Thanksgiving. It was a lot.

Well, we're already like three layers deep into Sephiroth's head during this bit, since it's a flashback to how he was feeling during an interaction within the Lifestream, so that part's a little redundant. He's about as self-aware as I can personally justify Sephiroth ever being.

This was an important bit for the fic, since it covers two essential elements--most obviously, it's the moment when Aerith's project of separating Sephiroth's consciousness from the greater Jenova gestalt decisively bore fruit.

Secondly, this is the passage where we find out why I've been tying myself into knots this entire time refusing to let the POV character call himself by name. (This would be even more important if I'd ever finished and posted the whole story; this is technically just the opening.)

Written carelessly, this bit would be just, the worst exposition-dump. So I leaned in hard on the sensory data, of Sephiroth's experience of brokenness and of his own fractured identity, and how that drives his relationship to the situation he's in now.

I ran through all the senses, some more than once--the physicality of memory was very important, since the physicality of the actual experience was illusory. Sight was first color, then a specific image; fire was a sound and mako was a smell. Taste was blood, which I remember wording carefully so it spanned the breadth from 'when you overwork until you start tasting blood' to 'blood in your mouth from serious injury' to 'having bitten,' because Sephiroth's cannibalism is all strictly metaphorical but it's also a big part of the narrative.

The game, I mean, but maybe also the fic.

Touch was the specific encasing sensation of standard-issue footwear and the internal sensation of your throat spasming on laughter, which bleeds into sound because Sephiroth's laughter during his breakdown is sometimes spelled like Hojo's and this makes me insane and I don't think he'd have been happy to notice it either.

And sound was also the symbolic item of the name, and the way it is held differently in each user's mouth, and how public-use Sephiroth's name was made by Shinra, when it was almost the only thing he had that was his own. The way his celebrity rendered him public property and so many people felt they knew him and had a right to his acknowledgement in return.

The way this makes trying to call him back to himself by calling his name, the way they do here, the way Zack tried at Nibelheim--difficult. There's no inherent intimacy in using his name to impose a specific personhood on him, and what there is has a lot of negative associations.

The nice thing about writing something happening in the Lifestream is you don't need to, and shouldn't, distinguish well between fact and metaphor. The name is the meaning you pack into it, much more than it is physical syllables. But the shape of those syllables is still attached, essential, in the same way the dead remember what they looked like, until they don't.

I don't think you can do a post-Jenovization Sephiroth without massive identity issues. He's technically been mindwhammied even more thoroughly than Cloud was at the Northern Crater, and like with Cloud, it was being in a position of doubting who and what he really was and whether that was worth anything that set him up to crack in the first place. So he doesn't have any stable sense of 'himself' to go back to.

There's no one alive who can do for Sephiroth what Tifa does for Cloud. But, I thought, there might be a few people dead who have a shot.

If you consider Sephiroth's lines in Cloud's version of the Nibelheim flashback to be canon--which I do because they're much more interesting than the alternative--then we also have strong indications Sephiroth adopted his omnicidal transhuman identity as a coping mechanism. He's very obviously not a happy person, but when Cloud/Zack/whoever says after the massacre that their sadness is the same he laughs and asks, what do I have to be sad about?

This new identity is his consolation, an escape. He has to have hated himself because most of 'himself' is a thing he threw away.

I think it's very significant to the themes of Final Fantasy VII that while our protagonist can be directly, physically puppeted by psychic projection when taken by surprise, ultimately it seems to be necessary to break Cloud's will at the root in order for Sephiroth to 'win' their conflict, a process probably achieved with the other more thoroughly overcome Copies via torture and isolation. (What this implies about the making of Genesis' Copies I'm not sure, but it's not good. The Compilation is very bad at preserving theme though, and I very much opted to side with the OG on any point of conflict here.)

Sephiroth may have been both deceived and influenced by psychic pressure, but he can't have been forced. He chose this. He rejected everything that he had ever been in life other than 'a killer' in exchange for a new identity that was straight-up fraudulent, and then when that bubble burst one with nothing in it but hunger and anger and pride, and didn't look back.

So, any Sephiroth you put back together post-Nibelheim to be a distinct living person and seek things other than domination and murder (a thing I've seen done quite a few times, it's a popular saw I'm kinda riffing on, though I've never seen it done in this timeframe) is going to be a wreck for reasons that have nothing whatever to do with guilt.

He has never had a strong and stable sense of self, raised within Shinra and subject to its demands. Sephiroth-of-SOLDIER was so easy to throw away because it was a self built up chiefly from without. He is not a nice or an accommodating person, but he's also not one who ever learned to make his own choices, something that's implied in the original game and leaned into heavily in Crisis Core.

When he unconsciously expects to be rejected for expressing his ragged, vulnerable hate in the section excerpted, that's part of this. Sephiroth is a character whose main vector of self-expression has always been violence, but who has never been permitted his own anger--before he breaks, his resentment of Hojo appears exclusively via passive aggression. (This is such a bad combination stg President dude wtf did you expect.)

This passage is the baring of all these facts, the breaking point where Aerith successfully deprives him of his coping mechanisms thoroughly enough that he's driven onto the shoals of honest agony. And he's already ditched the act-normal, stay-level coping behaviors that got him through most of his life. And he's straight-up lost chunks of his psyche that got particularly integrated with his Mother and left behind when Aerith did Big Slice, some of which had provided him with load-bearing emotional bulwarks against self-loathing. So what's left?

But even as this is getting to the heart of his unhappiness, he's at the same time conducting one more self-evasion maneuver here, trying to wrap Sephiroth up into a bundle that he can externalize his self-hatred onto, a thing that people (including Jenova) made of him (he, who is a made thing) rather than a person he continuously is.

If Aerith had set him adrift in the Lifestream in this state and somehow kept Jenova from promptly reincorporating him, he probably would have succumbed to the true death quite rapidly, since it's the hanging-on to one's own identity that holds that off, and Sephiroth's primary attachment points seem to have always been his hatred and his physical form, and he's here shown in a state of rejecting his attachment to both, for lack of any other effective shield against the hurt of being.

Instead she stuffed him back into his body, which was conveniently preserved in crystal at the Northern Crater (a significantly less bullshit way to resurrect the lad than anything else I've seen done imho lmao like it's already there in the text). Existing as a single person in a body is the foundation (though not a necessary prerequisite) of individual selfhood in this setting, so he's sort of being forced to patch a self together by virtue of having skin.

Which brings us out of this flashback and a day later to the main timeline of the fic--wherein it is hopefully now more obvious why he's acting this way.

And possibly why one of the first things he did (after stabbing Rufus on sight lol) was cut off his iconic hair.

The three ghosts (not actually appearing in the quoted passage but relevant) are being fairly honest, since 1) they're dead and made of feelings and that makes it harder to avoid and 2) what they're doing wouldn't work otherwise.

Aerith's primary motive really isn't revenge, though I think as we see with Tseng she is fully capable of balancing a sense of connection to someone and the opinion that they should die and spare everyone else the burden of their existence in the world; her primary motive isn't pity either.

This is strategic. Sephiroth makes Jenova much stronger and is doing a lot of her thinking as part of the gestalt; breaking them up is, if possible, the single most effective thing she can do from within the Lifestream. And since in this timeline she knows Sephiroth much better than in canon, she has an angle of attack available. And she does identify with him, and remember him as a very unhappy child, and when you come down to it no person who was a deeply unhappy child ever entirely stops being one, deep down.

(Another fact that is relevant to Cloud's canonical identity arc. He cannot start to fully heal until he integrates that resentful eight-year-old who internalized the blame for not protecting Tifa from herself.)

Zack is in this for her sake and Cloud's, and because his failure at Nibelheim is his greatest remaining regret, especially because of the way it replicates the trauma of Angeal's death. There's no way he could pass up the chance to resolve that. And even now, he really feels for Sephiroth--especially now, as Aerith's plan gets moving and how pitiful a creature Sephiroth is under all that gets exposed.

Angeal feels, with some justification, responsible for Sephiroth's mental breakdown. He didn't realize he had that kind of power or he would at the very least have made more effort to explicitly dip on Sephiroth personally and make clear that it wasn't personal, but he definitely helped fuck the guy up. Happily, if there's one thing Angeal is good at it's failing to let go of things he very clearly should not hold onto, so he makes a solid anchor for this maneuver.

The only reason he's able to verbalize this as usefully as he does is the squad basically ran drills for this before making their move. All three of them are violently allergic to most expressions of sincere emotion, especially negative, especially their own, especially conveyed in words rather than gestures and allusions, and having to listen to one another's practice monologues was significantly more unpleasant than getting killed in the first place. But they had to, so they could provide critique.

I don't think I have any puns for this one?

:} Do note that Aerith's chopping maneuver after luring Sephiroth's core consciousness away from the gestalt center via grudgebaiting should be visualized with that same overhead slam animation she uses in FFVII:1997 when you have her jump forward from the back row and deliver a physical blow with her staff.

#ask #hoc est meum #Anonymous #sephiroth #ffvii #final fantasy 7 #meta #aerith maxing out her ghost accomplishments #hold my beer obiwan #........stack of three obiwans #ask game #dvd commentary #i admit that the idea Aerith *can* stuff people back in their bodies relatively casually #relies heavily on advent children #but hey that's canon!!!

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