#every drawing you see is preceded by five more just like it

[golyadkin]

I cannot express enough that if your reaction, as a hobby artist, to not getting that many notes on your art is to say "maybe I should just stop doing art altogether" you need to stop posting art to tumblr

not necessarily forever, not even for long, but just stop putting your art on here and start doing it for you again, remember why you enjoyed doing art in the first place and stop relying on the attention of faceless people on the internet for your enjoyment of your hard work

believe me, I get it, nothing crushes the artistic soul quite like labouring for hours on a piece only for it to get like 10 notes, so you need to find your own source of joy in the act of creation and a lot of the time that means making art and not showing it to anybody

#not art #listen #for real #this is not about any one person because i've seen posts about it from a bunch of people #you think i post everything here? buddy i dont even post half my stuff here #every drawing you see is preceded by five more just like it #that never see my cursor close to the save button #i have a sketchbook i draw in regularly that i do'nt show to a single goddam person #i make cutout art from gels i steal from work and stick them to my windows and do paintings in my living room just for me #because that it the only way you are ever going to be able to retain your original love of art #is by doing it for the sake of doing it #not for the sake of seeing how many people stop and stare #anyways i'm sorry if this sounds terse #but i'm so sick of seeing artists put all their self-esteem and happiness in the hands of a blogging website #stop selling yourself short by measuring your self worth by how many reblogs you get and what people say in the tags #your artistry and your happiness are worth more than that #if you're an artist for a living that's another story #but even then #even then #anyways sorry i'm done ranting

[raayllum]

love as magic :: rayla + callum’s mage arc (s4 update)

So I made a post about this over a month ago and a much longer meta about Rayla as an agent of Narrative Change in Callum’s specific arc with magic (as he has arcs with his family, grief, also running throughout Arc 1 and 2) forever ago ?? (Oct 2021 dear lord) but this is my unofficial follow up because S4 did what I’ve been hoping for for a very long time

Which is to say rather than leaving the parallels between Callum’s relationship with magic and his relationship with Rayla as purely subtextual, it finally made them 100% textual, thank you very much

So now I just wanna scream about why this is a big deal, to me, anyway

The first is that this is not technically the first time this has happened, with three main preceding events. The one that probably counts the ‘least’ purely because it’s supplementary material (although it did help me predict that Rex Igneous was gonna eat a jelly tart like 2 years in advance so you know, can also be relevant sometimes) is from Callum’s Spellbook, in which Rayla has a note saying “Love is magic” in agreement with him (and Amaya also signs it, so future Janaya foreshadowing maybe?) as the closing note / page of the entire book.

This sentiment is of course very well reflected in the other moments that draw the largest parallels between Callum’s journey with magic and his development with Rayla. When Callum connects to the Sky arcanum, he does so propelled by love from the memory of his mother and anchored in the present by love from Rayla, with pretty clear parallels. 

And in his eyes, it is his love for Rayla that makes the wing spell work for the first time against all odds. 

Season four continues this trend, then, with the creators confirming in multiple interviews that one of the reasons Callum became so obsessive about the mirror was to distract himself, and we see this first hand in their reunion scene as he goes to his half-empty Tome of Translation, then using the mirror as a wall, etc etc. Even throughout the season in terms of how he uses his staff as well, until he realizes he can’t use it as a crutch any longer and flat out drops it to pick up Rayla’s sword.

Okay cool, so Callum’s arc with magic often parallels this relationship arc with Rayla, even into S4. (If you’re interested in how it parallels in S1 and S2 I’d recommend the metas linked at the top.) Why does this matter?

Well, it lends itself very well to the idea that while reconnecting with Rayla, Callum will also connect to the Moon arcanum in a future season (likely season five) and possibly while breaking free of Aaravos’ brainwashing. 

It also helps to balance out the negative side effects he’s experiencing due to magic use with some of the more positive ones, like the emphasis of agency in Callum’s arc or the fact it can help him protect his loved ones, like the rest of the Dragang. 

TLDR; I think it’s a great example of how relational TDP is with its story arcs (i.e. Soren’s position as crownguard is about his own construction of self and also his relationship with Ezran, reaffirming each other in a loop) as well as how the show displays that the best things or characteristics in our lives can also routinely be our worst ones if taken too far to extremes, and I just think it’s a neat fun consistency and reflects how Rayllum’s dynamic changes every season, while Ezran has thus far routinely been there to anchor Callum as a foundational > transformative aspect. 

#rayllum #mage boy #tdp #the dragon prince #tdp meta #arc 1 #arc 2 #s4 #parallels #analysis #analysis series #moon arcanum theory #i am so sorry the last paragraph is one sentence but we're leaving it as is bc this was impromptu ok bye #s4 continually taking the undercurrents of the first three seasons and bringing it the forefront #my beloved <3 #s4 is my best friend #wishlist achieved

[atlantic-riona]

Superhero comics are American mythology. They have their roots in demigods and heroes of the Greek/Roman tradition, and earlier traditions. Batman is a man of cunning, like Odysseus; Superman is super strong and fast, able to bound impossible distances, like Hercules, Gilgamesh, or Cúchulainn. We can even look back to American folk heroes as a precedent.

I'm going to use DC Comics here for examples because 1) I’m not as familiar with Marvel, and 2) I think that DC has the more iconic superheroes, in the tradition of fantasy/myth (but that's another rant for another time).

We have our gods/demigods (Superman, Wonder Woman) and our ordinary mortal heroes (Batman). They each have an origin story, which is similar to stories of heroes that you see across cultures, and a narrative path they follow. Bruce Wayne's parents are killed in an alleyway, so he takes up a crusade against crime, to stop that happening to anybody else. Superman comes from another world (in a sense his divine origin) and gets raised by ordinary parents (similar to the early life stories you see with semi-divine heroes across mythologies). Superman and Batman then protect a certain area (Metropolis, Gotham) from those that would seek to destroy it. Almost like a one-man Knights of the Round Table, protecting Britain from Saxon invaders.

And like the Arthurian tradition, the respective Round Tables see more members join. In the spirit of many older mythologies, it’s a younger generation. Just as the demigod heroes replaced the Olympians, who replaced the Titans, or as Fionn mac Cumhaill replaced the Ulstermen, who replaced the Tuath Dé Danann as the central figures in the culture’s stories, the Batfamily, Teen Titans, Supergirl, Impulse, and more begin to replace the older generation.

However. The commercial nature of superhero comics ultimately limits them from becoming true mythology. Batman can never retire. No Robin will ever be his permanent successor. Wonder Woman never dies. Nobody in the comics universe can age or die, at least not permanently. The characters never can grow and change too far from their original conception, because they won't be marketable anymore. At the same time, people get bored with the originals after awhile and leave. So comics are stuck between making the characters interesting and making sure they never get too far from the original, in order to keep people buying the comics. What they end up doing is endless reboots, retellings of the same stories again and again and again; not because they appeal to people on a deep level, but because they're banking on nostalgia, familiarity, and superficial curiosity.

It would be like if the Greeks endlessly told the story of the Trojan War, for a hundred years, only we're permanently stuck in the Iliad, Hector kills Patroclus and Achilles kills Hector only for all three to resurrect five seconds later with no lasting harm done, the gods occasionally get rotated in and out as interest waxes/wanes, and the quality of the writing gets worse every time. In the short term, it might get the publishers some money, with people buying the new stories because of nostalgia, familiarity, and/or curiosity, but ultimately it'll kill off the entire industry.

When my grandmother was young, she remembers every kid bought comic books and traded them, boys and girls. Today, comics aim themselves at a very specific age range, banking on the nostalgia factor. Or at specific groups, in the hope that a brand new character will draw in new readers—only to turn around and cancel that series, because very little depth was given to the character beyond “target X audience,” and people aren’t interested after the initial few issues. Comic companies might want to write a new female superhero (or revamp a pre-existing one), but if the extent of her character is “she’s a woman and that’s super rad,” most...people aren’t going to be interested. If she has no flaws, no arc to go through, nothing that makes her an interesting character, then she’s not going to draw in new readers and she’ll push away old readers. Every hero has some kind of arc or journey he or she undertakes, all the way back to Gilgamesh. And like I said above, this limits comic companies—they can never allow the mythology to naturally progress and change. It always has to be about what garners the most attention, the most profit—not about what the natural progression of the story might be.

This is why in fandom, where there isn't a need to make money, things progress more naturally. Go back far enough on Archive of Our Own and Fanfiction.net, and most of the stories in the comics category are about the original founders of the Justice League—Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, and so on. Look there today, and most of the stories focus on or significantly include the younger generation. This is a trend that naturally happens with mythologies, and will most likely keep happening in fandom, if not in the actual comics.

tl;dr: American superheroes are America's mythology, but because of their corporate nature, they can't fully progress as most natural mythologies/legends do

#dc #mini-lecture #superheroes #essay

[dailyrugbytoday]

The All Blacks seven game undefeated will start their 2023

New Post has been published on https://thedailyrugby.com/all-blacks-seven-game-undefeated-will-start-2023/

The Daily Rugby

https://thedailyrugby.com/all-blacks-seven-game-undefeated-will-start-2023/

The All Blacks seven game undefeated will start their 2023

The All Blacks will start their 2023 season riding a seven game undefeated streak after finishing last year with six wins and a draw.

After a rocky start to 2022 the team found some rhythm after making some changes with a pair of new assistants in Jason Ryan and Joe Schmidt. I think Foster is incredibly, incredibly stubborn on this’: The changes the All Blacks need in 2023.

However, more changes must come according to Kiwi scribe Mark Reason who believes that the team needs to send two-time World Player of the Year Beauden Barrett to the bench to accomodate Crusaders flyer Will Jordan.

I’d very just like to peer Will Jordan come returned in at fullback, I assume that is an critical exchange for them to make,” Reason stated on Stuff’s The Podium podcast.

I assume the entirety with the alpha male, Richie [Mo’unga] and Beauden [Barrett] shadowing every other a chunk, isn’t useful. I’d a great deal as a substitute see Beauden turn out to be the effect participant off the bench which he’s so notable at. I suppose that would free up Richie a bit.

Richie Mo’unga have become the All Blacks live first desire alternative at No 10 down the stretch after the win over the Springboks within the 2nd Test at Ellis Park.

All Blacks will play Rugby World Cup 2023 in France

The draw turned into held in Paris overnight, with New Zealand drawn along hosts France, Italy, Americas 1 and Africa 1 in Pool A. The All Blacks have played France seven instances at RWCs, the most of any u . S . A ., and Italy 5 times, with the 2019 fixture cancelled.

The Americas 1 winner will come from a play off collection among the 2021 Rugby Americas North champion and 2021 Sudamerica Rugby champion. Africa 1 might be the winner of the 2022 Rugby Africa Cup.

As with preceding Rugby World Cups, the event will feature 20 teams divided into 4 pools of five teams.

Your Pools at Rugby World Cup 2023!

Register for tickets here: https://t.co/wiftbbRu2B#RWC2023 pic.twitter.com/PFKEGHRrAO

— Rugby World Cup (@rugbyworldcup) December 14, 2020

Twelve groups have already qualified – the top three groups from each of the 4 pools at the 2019 World Cup – and were seeded into 3 bands based totally on their position inside the World Rugby ratings on the begin of this 12 months.

The Crusaders pivot looked to have misplaced the position in 2021 after staying lower back in New Zealand for circle of relatives reasons, permitting Beauden Barrett to play a string of games at first 5-8th.

After dropping at Mbombela Stadium with Barrett starting at 10, the new coaching team of workers initiated the exchange yet again. The Kiwi rugby author known as on consistency in choice, particularly in the midfield, so combos may be settled before the World Cup.

There’s a whole lot of paintings in forming the 10-12-thirteen aggregate. One of the large failings of Foster’s education profession has been inconsistency in selection,” he stated.

Mo’unga has performed with I suppose, nine of ten distinctive No 12s in his fairly brief global profession.

Again, why did they alternate everything for the Scotland sport? Madness, when you need to get some consistency in selection so those partnerships can shape. The All Blacks regarded to have discovered gold with the selection of ordinary fullback Jordie Barrett at second 5-eighth within the very last Bledisloe Test of the year.

Barrett persevered at No 12 on the give up of year excursion against Wales, however became swapped out once more for David Havili towards Scotland.

One of the reasons Carter turned into so good, obviously he become one of the fantastic, terrific gamers however he played with Ma’a Nonu and Conrad Smith in such a lot of Tests, Reason stated. They want familiarity to determine who their 10-12-thirteen is.

For my money that might be going to be Mo’unga, Jordie Barrett now, and Rieko Ioane and they want to stick with them. The give up-of-year excursion became always a danger for Blues openside Dalton Papalii to start after an injury to everyday captain Sam Cane in opposition to Japan.

Reason believed it became time for Foster to start a brand new chapter with a new captain after the toll of accidents that Cane has had.

The entire us of a knows he shouldn’t be, he’s no longer the fantastic participant he was five years ago, and why need to he be after such a lot of hideous injuries,” Reason defined.

He’s not that participant, he gives away too many penalties, which value the All Blacks in a number of the games in opposition to Ireland.

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Behind the scenes with The Calling

[January 14, 2023]

{Popia140:}

So I speedran through The Calling [Haji’s old Randomized Platinum fic] and lemme just say how I really love how the gym battle system worked, the dancing and literal physical combat between the Pokémon and the literal trainers themselves

Pepe’s adorable, but that scene in Floaroma when he stops the grunts from the stealing the man’s honey with his creepily calm assertiveness was pretty badass to me, ngl, considering his reluctance to confront and fight

Even though it is old, the mystery surrounding certain locations is pretty good (Old Chateau, the Ravaged Path, that weird pool thing in the Oreburgh Mines) it’s cool to see someone’s interpretation of events different from my own

Also Pepe and Pearl’s relationship was very fun to read! The mystery of Napoleon’s disappearance really piqued my interest, and I was not really sure if he was his older brother in this interpretation (idk if they got separated from birth or something, or just simply not brothers at all) but it’s nice to see that Pearl still cares for him

Another thing that interested me was Pepe’s religious upbringing, with the fossils and all and being raised in some church, before moving to Twinleaf Town- I think it really gave his character good background and depth, which also ties into his peacemaking pacifist-like mindset

But anyways that’s all I have to say about Haji’s The Calling series, hope you don’t mind my rambling review @Haji

{Haji:}

I don't mind at all! You're making me blush :AYAYA:

I really enjoy the battle system. I've been trying to study different dance styles to make each one unique in how it functions.

I would normally be all like "shhh spoilers" but considering the story hasn't had an update in like five years, it seems silly to ask you to wait. It's a separated at birth situation. Why though is because I play a lot with destiny in the TPP universe especially having a single timeline in a seemingly cyclonic world

Timeline wise as you may have noticed while reading, this is actually before original Platinum

{Popia140:}

oooh! Did not know that! :Begwan:

So I was right with the separated at birth theory!

{Haji:}

Yeeeaaah.... [Pepe’s religious background] was one of the factors in my nervousness. At the time I preceded every Author Note basically going "Look, my lore is weird. Don't eat me" or something because I knew even if that's how it played in my head, I was scared of "going against the grain" with what everyone else was doing. Which mostly was Pepe the Frog memes and artistic snob portrayal

{Popia140:}

Personally, I felt that the artistic snob sort of personality didn’t mesh well with his shyness (in my opinion, it’s just a matter of taste), but I imagine that if he did paint, it would be out of a sort of therapy for his trauma under the voices and the crazy things he experienced in his life… or he just wanted to paint a cute Skitty because he has a weakness for cute things :Begwan:

Could go both ways, imo

Also, who was the girl during the blackout at the Ravaged Path?

{Haji:}

I can see that. In fact, after Ultra events, I like to imagine he does a lot of art for that reason. Still trying to remember things and drawing out memories to make sense of it. His friends can remind him of things they recognize or talk to him about some of the more disturbing images

[The girl in the Ravaged Path] would be Mindy! The Candice replacement in this world. She was a Psychic Trainer and portrayed as a showman, but Fossil wise, I had her with Cover

{Popia140:}

Napoleon is mentioned by Pearl in the story, so I’m assuming they must have met when they were very young- where did Napoleon end up? And did Pepe learn that Napoleon was his older brother in the end, maybe after-game?

{Krizste:}

What if Pepe uses art snobism to cover his shyness. Like he's trying to appear..... Whatever the word is.. not-shy, but It just looks like snobism

{Newbie:}

Confident?

{Krizste:}

Yeah that word!

Tryna pull of confidence but just being really jank about it

{Haji:}

Given what people probably expect of him as Napoleon's brother, I can imagine him putting on that kind of face  at parties :Jebaited:

Napoleon went to stay with Aunt Grace and Richard while all this was going on. Honestly never knew he had a brother until after Ultra events. Which finding out after that just made him worse about the whole... Trying to murder Pepe multiple times while not himself thing. Pepe woke up at the villa after they got back home only to learn it's been months he's been in a coma (time shenanigans. He made sure Leo was able to wake up in the "canon" timeline in order to stop Cyrus but it seems in a weird way, Pepe took his place. Missed everything during the Bill Overlord events and was too injured to do the Unova stuff with Cly, but Leo knew he was okay enough to go with the other S1 hosts)

Pepe on the other hand found out about Napoleon during his journey, so he knew  about it WAY ahead of Leo but they still didn't meet for.... Some time??? Again, Pepe becoming a time traveler at the end of his run makes his lore in my timeline hilariously screwy

{Krizste:}

Oh yeah who was it that lost his head again? Was that pepe

{Haji:}

Yup

{Popia140:}

Ahh thanks for the answers!!

Napoleon completely in the dark about it, lol

Did their mother separate them at birth?

{Haji:}

Sort of. With Forrest's [Gardenia] backstory I was going to get more into the pre-RPlat / pre-Red war stuff that was going on when he was a kid. Gravund [Roark] and the boys would have been too little to remember but Forrest was a little younger than Pepe is now so he's got some scars from it. Basically the family got split up when fleeing the violence so Johanna has Leo with her and thought her husband and other son didn't make it. Pepe was taken to Hearthome like many other war orphans but while it wasn't separated at birth they were both around maybe one or two years old at most

And before you ask about their father, I had an idea and then I wasn't sure but I've been on the fence about things so let's just leave him as a giant question mark

{Popia140:}

Aw, that’s sad for them :BibleThump: the Quinnels never really got to bond as bros

{Haji:}

Yeah... But things are peaceful for next several decades (next Sinnoh run wasn't until Gauntlet), so they've got time. Help out with the others when duty calls, but even many of the other hosts know they can go to Napoleon's palace to get away from things for a while. Cly's mansion is often a nice hang out but it also happens to be the gang's base of operations in secret so there's always some level of alert since Unova isn't as stable as Sinnoh is. (And besides, for Aaaaaall the trauma of Kanto, Johto, and Hoenn seeming to be in a consistent state of peril, Sinnoh is lovingly close by for Leo and Pepe to give a sense of normalcy for the newbies)

{Popia140:}

Aww, a happy ending :Burrito2:

{Haji:}

I love these two so much, but my gosh I feel bad for what I put them through. I feel bad for most of the hosts I wrote for, but good lord did these two need a happy ending

{Popia140:}

They def deserved it, they went through so much

{Haji:}

[cough] can I tell you a secret? |D

{Popia140:}

yea sure

{Haji:}

Even though I stopped writing it, this is the story that has never left my mind. I've actually continued working on it, but never posted and one of my goals is to continue at some point if I ever get my projects in order

Sometimes I'll just be watching a show or something and get reminders of the characters and how much I miss them

[Bonus: a mildly out-of-order side tangent from Haji’s comment about the TPP universe being cyclical]

{Trollkitten:}

In my headcanon, the TPP-verse is cyclical the same way the Zeldaverse is cyclical. All of this has happened before, and it will happen again.

{Haji:}

Yup! Though why is always different in my books partially because the villains have different motives each time (and adds to why they think it would be any different this time because they're not like the last guy who did)

{Newbie:}

i vibe with the idea of the universe just breaking down and getting rebuilt over and over again, reality in smithereens and then being rebuilt from the ground up... or just completely coming up with entirely new plots while disregarding canon :Kappa:

{Mitzi:}

my lore somehow manages to do both. frequently at the same time

{Newbie:}

you and i are like-minded :Keepo:

#twitch plays pokemon #tpp #lorecord archive #loremaker haji #loremaker krizste #loremaker trollkitten #loremaker newbie #loremaker mitzi #randomized platinum run #ultra run #PP #PEE #nqpppnl #pp is the ultra host #timeline cyclicality #fossil gods

[apexpoet]

These four loose sheets were found slipped into the notebook of The Five in which the preceding drawings appear. It is not known to whom this is addressed.

September 16, 1903

You are bewildered by what we have told you, but the phenomenon we are trying to explain is truly bewildering. What is this phenomenon, you ask? Well, beloved, it is that which we want to call the secret growing. How often have we heard you say that everything is futile, that nothing comes of all your labors. Yet like amorphous buds your endeavors sprout in all directions. You see everything as formless and you forget that this is a sign of life. Gradually the formlessness takes on more precise contours and the steadily growing roots feed an ever stronger plant, which will one day explode with an abundance of leaves and flowers. You know this is so, but you must perceive this knowledge with such vividness that you dare to build on it. You have to feel with certainty that even the smallest effort to grow in goodness leaves a clear trace inside you. When you do not see an outer result, this must not discourage or tire you in your efforts, for just as invisible hands help and tend every plant on this green Earth, so every budding sprout of goodness is tended and shaped and protected by invisible powers and when the time comes your eyes will open and you too will see the beautiful plant that grew in secrecy, the product of your noble endeavors and your pure intentions. Accept our account as a greeting from us so that you shall never tire when all seems lost. —Hilma af Klint

[kitkatpancakestack]

The looming presence of Season 5 really has me in a meta state of mind. Special thanks to @emofrxnk who ALWAYS engages in 9-1-1 and buddie crackheadery with me. Her genius is kept offline but is nonetheless unmatched.

I'm doing my re-watch as one does, and noticed a fun little parallel between the bomb scene in 2.01 and the shooting scene + its preceding events in 4.14. There are some main points I want to cover here:

1. The importance of the vehicle used in the scene

2. The name "Charlie"

3. The point of the scene

4. The repercussions of the scene

Ambulance vs. Battalion

Okay, so this bit of genius is all @emofrxnk. We were discussing the obvious poignancy of the battalion car in 4.14 catching fire, because it was so deliberately referenced and repeatedly shown again going up in flames. She mentioned how the battalion car (which Buck and Eddie both arrive to the scene in) symbolizes the state of their relationship prior to the series of events that succeed it. As in, the car catches fire, and this represents (which we know to be true after watching the end of the episode) a change in the status quo of their relationship. What they had before is literally burned to the ground, gone, and something else will take its place.

In 2.01, Buck and Eddie are riding in the ambulance together to the hospital. Eddie finds the live round and the two of them do their whole bonding thing, and when it's all said and done, the ambulance literally explodes. Following the line of thought mentioned above, the ambulance can be paralleled to the battalion car in that it represents another significant change to the status quo of their relationship, being that their petty rivalry literally exploded in their faces and something else will take its place (and boy did it!)

The Name Charlie

Listen, I know coincidences happen and I know it's hard to keep up with every detail in a show, but you're telling me, out of all the millions of names they could have chosen, for this particular kid, they decided to recycle the name Charlie? Excuse my skepticism but I just have a hard time accepting this as an accident.

The scene in 2.01 and the scene in 4.14 are practically identical, but the first thing that drew my attention to the parallel between them was the name Charlie. I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to see the parallel without the repeated name, if I even realized it at all. In 2.01, Buck and Eddie work together to save the older Charlie's life. in 4.14, Buck and Eddie work together to save the younger Charlie's life. You cannot convince me there isn't something there.

The Point of the Scene

Let's talk about what happened in the scenes, as well as the Point of the scenes, or the supposed reason for including them in the sequence of events during the episodes. Both scenes to me feel like they painstakingly ensured Buck and Eddie would be together. I say this because Hen and Chim are literal paramedics. Would it not have made sense to have one of the with Eddie in the ambulance in 2.01? As for 4.14, Chim was with Buck when they talked to Eddie before the shooting scene. Chim really should have gone with him. Like, wtf is Buck doing there, y'know? This is a medical priority, Chim is the most experienced, he should have gone with Eddie. But this was intentional.

Both scenes also feature life or death situations for Buck and Eddie. In 2.01 it's a bomb, and the threat of being blown up. But they go through this together. In 4.14, rip all of our souls, it's the shooting. It's the framing and the blood splatter that draws both of them into the scene, so even though only Eddie got shot, it feels like both of them are stuck in this life or death situation together.

Essentially, the contrivances of these scenes are deliberate. We see what made it through five rounds of cuts and editing. They knew what they needed to show us and it needed to be delivered in those specific ways.

The Repercussions of the Scene

Maybe a hot take but I think these two moments in 2.01 and 4.14 are THE MOST important buddie moments, as far as their relationship development goes, and we haven't even witnessed the fallout from 4.14 yet.

I am cognizant of all the small and crucial moments we get between these scenes, but the overall significance cannot be matched. 2.01 is literally the catalyst of their relationship. It's the moment their enemies to friends speedrun crosses the finish line. It kickstarts everything. 4.14 also feels like the catalyst to something new, we just haven't had any material to confirm or deny this, yet. But as far as magnitude goes, Eddie makes Buck Christopher's legal guardian. He calls him Evan. He proves just how much he Knows and Sees him (and while we're at it, he's been seeing right through Evan Buckley since 2.01 and you can quote me on that).

These are both absolutely pivotal moments for their relationship, and these are the two moments that represent a palpable and disruptive shift in their dynamic.

I don't know if there's anything here or if I'm actually losing my mind, but I'm chucking more word vomit into the void. This hiatus is either pushing me further toward or further away from the truth. I lowkey make these analyses posts as documentation that will either be my ultimate vindication when buddie is endgame or my ultimate shame when they aren't, but either way, it is incredibly cathartic.

All I can say is, hold onto your butts, guys. Season 5 is coming for our lives, I can feel it.

#buddie #parallels #meta #buddie meta #it's the life or death situations for me #it's the change in dynamic for me #it's the ridiculously tight and cohesive writing for me #there's no way this is a coincidental scene and the fact that they are two seasons apart is insanity #these writers are unhinged #i think i am going insane #someone please take my brain away from me it won't let me live #hiatus crackheadery #positivity and crackheaded speculations ONLY #meta by me

[insanehobbit]

a twenty-five thousand word post about a twenty-three year old “debate”

As time goes on, I’m baffled that it remains a commonly held opinion that:

The LTD remains unresolved

SE is deliberately playing coy, and are (or have been) afraid to resolve it.

To me, the answer is as clear as day, and yet seeing so many people acting as if it’s a question that remains unanswered makes me wonder if I’m the crazy one.

So I am going to try to articulate my thought process here, not because I expect to change any hearts and minds, but more to get these thoughts out of my head and onto a page so I can finally read a book and/or watch reruns of Shark Tank in peace.

To start off, there are two categories of argument (that are among, if not the most widely used lines of argument) that I will try NOT to engage with:

1) Quotes from Ultimania or developer interviews - while they’re great for easter eggs and behind-the-scenes info, if a guidebook is required to understand key plot points, you have fundamentally failed as a storyteller. Now the question of which character wants to bone whom is often something that can be relegated to a guidebook, but in the case of FF7, you would be watching two very different stories play out depending on who Cloud ends up with.

Of course, the Ultimanias do spell this out clearly, but luckily for us, SE are competent enough storytellers that we can find the answer by looking at the text alone.

2) Arguments about character actions/motivations — specifically, I’m talking about stuff like “Cloud made this face in this scene, which means be must be [insert whatever here].”

Especially when it comes to the LTD, these tend to focus on individual actions, decontextualizing them from their role in the narrative as a whole. LTDers often try to put themselves in the character’s shoes to suss out what they may be thinking and feeling in those moments. These arguments will be colored by personal experiences, which will inevitably vary.

Let’s take for example Cloud’s behavior in Advent Children. One may argue that it makes total sense given that he’s dying and fears failing the ones he loves. Another may argue that there’s no way that he would run unless he was deeply unhappy and pining after a lost love. Well, you’ll probably just be talking over each other until the cows come home. Such is the problem with trying to play armchair therapist with a fictional character. It’s not like we can ask Cloud himself why he did what he did (and even if we could, he’s not the exactly the most reliable narrator in the world). Instead, in trying to understand his motivations, we are left with no choice but to draw comparisons with our own personal experiences, those of our friends, or other works of media we’ve consumed. Any interpretation would be inherently subjective and honestly, a futile subject for debate.

There’s nothing wrong with drawing personal connections with fictional characters of course. That is the purpose of art after all. They are vessels of empathy. But when we’re talking about what is canon, it doesn’t matter what we take away. What matters is the creators’ intent.

Cloud, Tifa and Aerith are not your friends Bob, Alice and Maude. They are characters created by Square Enix. Real people can behave in a variety of different ways if they found themselves in the situations faced by our dear trio; however, FF7 characters are not sentient creatures. Everything they do or say is dictated by the developers to serve the story they are trying to tell.

So what do we have left then? Am I asking you, dear reader, to just trust me, anonymous stranger on the Internet, when I tell you #clotiiscanon. Well, in a sense, yes, but more seriously, I’m going to try to suss out what the creator’s intent is based on what is, and more importantly, what isn’t, on screen.

Instead of putting ourselves in the shoes of the characters, let’s try putting ourselves in the shoes of the creators. So the question would then be, if the intent is X, then what purpose does character Y or scene Z serve?

The story of FF7 isn’t the immutable word of God etched in a stone tablet. For every scene that made it into the final game, there are dozens of alternatives that were tossed aside. Let us also not forget the crude economics of popular storytelling. Spending resources on one particular aspect of the game may mean something entirely unrelated will have to be cut for time. Thus, the absence of a particular character/scenario is an alternative in itself. So with all these options at their disposal, why is the scene we see before us the one that made it into the final cut? — Before we dive in, I also want to define two broad categories of narrative: messy and clean.

Messy narratives are ones I would define as stories that try to illuminate something about the human condition, but may not leave the audience feeling very good by the end of it. The protagonists, while not always anti-heroes, don’t always exhibit the kind of growth we’d like, don’t always learn their lessons, probably aren’t the best role models. The endings are often ambivalent, ambiguous, and leaves room for the audience to take away from it what they will. This is the category I would put art films and prestige cable dramas.

Clean narratives are where I would categorize most popular forms of entertainment. Not that these characters necessarily lack nuance, but whatever flaws are portrayed are something to be overcome by the end of story. The protagonists are characters you’re supposed to want to root for

Final Fantasy as a series would fall under the ‘clean’ category. Sure, many of the protagonists start out as jerks, but they grow through these flaws and become true heroes by the end of their journey. Hell, a lot of the time even the villains are redeemed. They want you to like the characters you’re spending a 40+ hr journey with. Their depictions can still be realistic, but they will become the most idealized versions of themselves by the end of their journeys.

This is important to establish, because we can then assume that it is not SE’s intent to make any of their main characters come off pathetic losers or unrepentant assholes. Now whether or not they succeed in that endeavor is another question entirely.

FF7 OG or The dumbest thought experiment in the world

With that one thousand word preamble out of the way, let’s finally take a look at the text. In lieu of going through the OG’s story beat by beat, let’s try this thought experiment:

Imagine it’s 1996, and you’re a development executive at what was then Squaresoft. The plucky, young development team has the first draft of what will become the game we know as Final Fantasy VII. Like the preceding entries in the series, it’s a world-spanning action adventure RPG, with a key subplot being the epic tragic romance between its hero and heroine, Cloud and Aerith.

They ask you for your notes.

(For the sake of your sanity and mine, let’s limit our hypothetical notes to the romantic subplot)

Disc 1 - everything seems to be on the right track. Nice meet-cute, lots of moments developing the relationship between our pair. Creating a love triangle with this Tifa character is an interesting choice, but she’s a comparatively minor character so she probably won’t be a real threat and will find her happiness elsewhere by the end of the game. You may note that they’re leaning a bit too much into Tifa and Cloud’s past. Especially the childhood promise flashback early in the game — cute scene, but a distraction from main story and main pairing — fodder for the chopping block. You may also bump on the fact that Aerith is initially attracted to Cloud because he reminds her of an ex, but this is supposed to be a more mature FF. That can be an obstacle they overcome as Aerith gets to know the real Cloud.

Aerith dies, but it is supposed to be a tragic romance after all. Death doesn’t have to be the end for this relationship, especially since Aerith is an Ancient after all.

It’s when Disc 2 starts that things go off the rails. First off, it feels like an awfully short time for Cloud to be grieving the love of his life, though it’s somewhat understandable. This story is not just a romance. There are other concerns after all, Cloud’s identity crisis for one. Though said identity crisis involves spending a lot of time developing his relationship with another woman. It’s one thing for Cloud and Tifa to be from the same hometown, but does she really need to play such an outsized role in his internal conflict? This might give the player the wrong impression.

You get to the Northern Crater, and it just feels all wrong. Cloud is more or less fine after the love of his life is murdered in front of his eyes but has a complete mental breakdown to the point that he’s temporarily removed as a playable character because Tifa loses faith in him??? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Oh, but it only gets worse from here. With Cloud gone, the POV switches to Tifa and her feelings for him and her desire to find him. The opening of the game is also recontextualized when you learn the only reason that Cloud was part of the first Reactor mission that starts the game is because Tifa found him and wanted to keep an eye on him.

Then you get to Mideel and the alarm bells are going off. Tifa drops everything, removing her from the party as well, to take care of Cloud while he’s a catatonic vegetable? Not good. Very not good. This level of selfless devotion is going to make Cloud look like a total asshole when he rejects her in favor of Aerith. Speaking of Aerith, she uh…hasn’t been mentioned for some time. In fact, her relationship with Cloud has remained completely static after Disc 1, practically nonexistent, while his with Tifa has been building and building. Developing a rival relationship that then needs to be dismantled rather than developing the endgame relationship doesn’t feel like a particularly valuable use of time and resources.

By the time you get to the Lifestream scene, you’re about ready to toss the script out of the window. Here’s the emotional climax of the entire game, where Cloud’s internal conflict is finally resolved, and it almost entirely revolves around Tifa? Rather than revisiting the many moments of mental anguish we experienced during the game itself — featuring other characters, including let’s say, Aerith — it’s about a hereto unknown past that only Tifa has access to? Not only that, but we learn that the reason Cloud wanted to join SOLDIER was to impress Tifa, and the reason he adopted his false persona was because he was so ashamed that he couldn’t live up to the person he thought Tifa wanted him to be? Here, we finally get a look into the inner life of one half of our epic couple and…it entirely revolves around another woman??

Cloud is finally his real self, and hey, it looks like he finally remembers Aerith, that’s at least a step in the right direction. Though still not great. With his emotional arc already resolved, any further romantic developments is going to feel extraneous and anticlimactic. It just doesn’t feel like there’s enough time to establish that:

Cloud’s romantic feelings for Tifa (which were strong enough to launch his hero’s journey) have transformed into something entirely platonic in the past few days/weeks

Cloud’s feelings for Aerith that he developed while he was pretending to be someone else (and not just any someone, but Aerith’s ex of all people) are real.

This isn’t a romantic melodrama after all. There’s still a villain to kill and a world to save.

Cloud does speak of Aerith wistfully, and even quite personally at times, yet every time he talks about her, he’s surrounded by the other party members. A scene or two where he can grapple with his feelings for her on his own would help. Her ghost appearing in the Sector 5 Church feels like a great opportunity for this to happen, but he doesn’t interact with it at all. What gives? Missed opportunity after missed opportunity.

The night before the final battle, Cloud asks the entire party to find what they’re fighting for. This feels like a great (and perhaps the last) opportunity to establish that for Cloud, it’s in Aerith’s memory and out of his love for her. He could spend those hours alone in any number of locations associated with her — the Church, the Temple of the Ancients, the Forgotten City.

Instead — none of those happens. Instead, once again, it’s Cloud and Tifa in another scene where they’re the only two characters in the scene. You’re really going to have Cloud spend what could very well be the last night of his life with another woman? With a fade to black that strongly implies they slept together? In one fell swoop, you’re portraying Cloud as a guy who not only betrays the memory of his lost love, but is also incredibly callous towards the feelings of another woman by taking advantage of her vulnerability. Why are we rooting for him to succeed again?

Cloud and the gang finally defeat Sephiroth, and Aerith guides him back into the real world. Is he finally explicitly stating that he’s searching for her (though they’ve really waited until the last minute to do so), but again, why is Tifa in this scene? Shouldn’t it just be Cloud and Aerith alone? Why have Tifa be there at all? Why have her and her alone of all the party members be the one waiting for Cloud? Do you need to have Tifa there to be rejected while Cloud professes his unending love for Aerith? It just feels needlessly cruel and distracts from what should be the sole focus of the scene, the love between Cloud and Aerith.

What a mess.

You finish reading, and since it is probably too late in the development process to just fire everyone, you offer a few suggestions that will clarify the intended romance while the retaining the other plot points/general themes of the game.

Here they are, ordered by scale of change, from minor to drastic:

Option 1 would be to keep most of the story in tact, but rearrange the sequence of events so that the Lifestream sequence happens before Aerith’s death. That way, Cloud is his true self and fully aware of his feelings for both women before Aerith’s death. That way, his past with Tifa isn’t some ticking bomb waiting to go off in the second half of the game. That development will cease at the Lifestream scene. Cloud will realize the affection he held for her as a child is no longer the case. He is grateful for the past they shared, but his future is with Aerith. He makes a clear choice before that future is taken away from him with her death. The rest of the game will go on more or less the same (with the Highwind scene being eliminated, of course) making it clear, that avenging the death of his beloved is one of, if not the, primary motivation for him wanting to defeat Sephiroth.

The problem with this “fix” is that a big part of the reason that Aerith gets killed is because of Cloud’s identity crisis. If said crisis is resolved, the impact of her death will be diminished, because it would feel arbitrary rather than something that stems from the consequences of Cloud’s actions. More of the story will need to be reconceived so that this moment holds the same emotional weight.

Another problem is why the Lifestream scene needs to exist at all. Why spend all that time developing the backstory for a relationship that will be moot by the end of the game? It makes Tifa feel like less of a character and more of a plot device, who becomes irrelevant after she services the protagonist’s character development and then has none of her own. That’s no way to treat one of the main characters of your game.

Option 2 would be to re-imagine Tifa’s character entirely. You can keep some of her history with Cloud in tact, but expand her backstory so she is able to have a satisfactory character arc outside of her relationship with Cloud. You could explore the five years in her life since the Nibelheim incident. Maybe she wasn’t in Midgar the whole time. Maybe, like Barret, she has her own Corel, and maybe reconciling with her past there is the climax of her emotional arc as opposed to her past with Cloud. For Cloud too, her importance needs to be diminished. She can be one of the people who help him find his true self in the Lifestream, but not the only person. There’s no reason the other people he’s met on his journey can’t be there. Thus their relationship remains somewhat important, but their journeys are not so entwined that it distracts from Cloud and Aerith’s romance.

Option 3 would be to really lean into the doomed romance element of Cloud and Aerith’s relationship. Have her death be the cause of his mental breakdown, and have Aerith be the one in the Lifestream who is able to put his mind back together and bring him back to the realm of consciousness. After he emerges, he has the dual goal of defeating Sephiroth and trying to reunite with Aerith. In the end, in order to do the former, he has to relinquish the latter. He makes selfless choice. He makes the choice that resonates the overall theme of the game. It’s a bittersweet but satisfying ending. Cloud chooses to honor her memory and her purpose over the chance to physically bring her back. In this version of the game, the love triangle serves no purpose. There’s no role for Tifa at all.

Okay, we can be done with this strained counterfactual. What I’ve hopefully illustrated is that while developers had countless opportunities to solidify Cloud/Aerith as the canon couple in Discs 2 and 3 of the game, they instead chose a different route each and every time. What should also be clear is that the biggest obstacle standing in their way is not Aerith’s death, but the fact that Tifa exists.

At least in the form she takes in the final game, as a playable character and at the very least, the 3rd most important character in game’s story. She is not just another recurring NPC or an antagonist. Her love for Cloud is not going to be treated like a mere trifle or obstacle. If Cloud/Aerith was supposed to be the endgame ship, there would be no need for a love triangle and no need to include Tifa in the game at all. Death is a big enough obstacle, developing Cloud’s relationship with Tifa would only distract from and diminish his romance with Aerith.

I think this is something the dead enders understand intuitively, even more so than many Cloti shippers. Which is why some of them try to dismiss Tifa’s importance in the story so that she becomes a minor supporting character at best, or denigrate her character to the point that she becomes an actual villain. The Seifer to a Squall, the Seymour to a Tidus, hell even a Quistis to a Rinoa, they know how to deal with, but a Tifa Lockhart? As she is actually depicted in Final Fantasy VII? They have no playbook for that, and thus they desperately try to squeeze her into one of these other roles.

Let’s try another thought experiment, and see what would to other FF romances if we inserted a Tifa Lockhart-esque character in the middle of them.

FFXV is a perfect example because it features the sort of tragic love beyond death romance that certain shippers want Cloud and Aerith to be. Now, did I think FFXV was a good game? No. Did I think Noctis/Luna was a particularly well-developed romance? Also no. Did I have any question in my mind whatsoever that they were the canon relationship? Absolutely not.

Is this because they kiss at the end? Well sure, that helps, but also it’s because the game doesn’t spend the chapters after Luna’s death developing Noctis’ relationship with another woman. If Noctis/Luna had the same sort of development as Cloud/Aerith, then after Luna dies, Iris would suddenly pop in and play a much more prominent role. The game would flashback to her past and her relationship with Noctis. And it would be through his relationship with Iris that Noctis understands his duty to become king or a crystal or whatever the fuck that game was about. Iris is by Noctis’ side through the final battle, and when he ascends the throne in that dreamworld or whatever. There, Luna finally shows up again. Iris is still in the frame when Noctis tells her something like ‘Oh sorry, girl, I’ve been in love with Luna all along,” before he kisses Luna and the game ends.

(a very real scene from a very good game)

Come on. It would be utterly ludicrous and an utter disservice to every character involved, yet that is essentially the argument Cloud/Aerith shippers are making. SE may have made some pretty questionable storytelling decisions in the past, but they aren’t that bad at this.

Or in FFVIII, it would be like reordering the sequence of events so that Squall remembers that he grew up in an orphanage with all the other kids after Rinoa falls into a coma. And while Rinoa is out of commission, instead of Quistis gracefully bowing out after realizing she had mistaken her feelings of sisterly affection for love, it becomes Quistis’ childhood relationship with Squall that allows him to remember his past and re-contextualizes the game we’ve played thus far, so that the player realizes that it was actually Quistis who was his motivation all along. Then after this brief emotional detour, his romance with Rinoa would continue as usual. Absolutely absurd.

The Final Fantasy games certainly have their fair share of plot holes, but they’ve never whiffed on a romance this badly.

A somewhat more serious character analysis of the OG

What then is Tifa’s actual role in the story of FFVII? Her character is intricately connected to Cloud’s. In fact, they practically have the same arc, though Tifa’s is rather understated compared to his. She doesn’t adopt a false persona after all. For both of them, the flaw that they must learn to overcome over the course of the game is their fear of confronting the truth of their past. Or to put it more crudely, if they’re not lying, they’re at the very least omitting the truth. Cloud does so to protect himself from his fear of being exposed as a failure. Tifa does so at the expense of herself, because she fears the truth will do more harm than good. They’re two sides of the same coin. Nonetheless, their lying has serious ramifications.

The past they’re both afraid to confront is of course the Nibelheim Incident from five years ago. Thus, the key points in their emotional journeys coincide with the three conflicting Nibelheim flashbacks depicted in the game: Cloud’s false memory in Kalm, Sephiroth’s false vision in the Northern Crater, and the truth in the Lifestream.

Before they enter the Lifestream, both Cloud and Tifa are at the lowest of their lows. Cloud has had a complete mental breakdown and is functionally a vegetable. Tifa has given up everything to take care of Cloud as she feels responsible for his condition. If he doesn’t recover, she may never find peace.

With nothing left to lose, they both try to face the past head on. For Cloud, it’s a bit harder. At the heart of all this confusion, is of course, the Nibelheim Incident. How does Cloud know all these things he shouldn’t if Tifa doesn’t remember seeing him there? The emotional climax for both Cloud and Tifa, and arguably the game as a whole, is the moment the Shinra grunt removes his helmet to reveal that Cloud was there all along.

Tifa is the only character who can play this role for Cloud. It’s not like she a found a videotape in the Lifestream labeled ‘Nibelheim Incident - REAL’ and voila, Cloud is fixed. No, she is the only one who can help him because she is the only person who lived through that moment. No one else could make Cloud believe it. You could have Aerith or anyone else trying to tell him what actually happened, but why would he believe it anymore than the story Sephiroth told him at the Northern Crater?

With Tifa, it’s different. Not only was she physically there, but she’s putting as much at risk in what the truth may reveal. She’s not just a plot device to facilitate Cloud’s character development. The Lifestream sequence is as much the culmination of her own character arc. If it goes the wrong way, “Cloud” may find out that he’s just a fake after all, and Tifa may learn that boy she thought she’d been on this journey with had died years ago. That there’s no one left from her past, that it was all in her head, that she’s all alone. Avoiding this truth is a comfort, but in this moment, they’re both putting themselves on the line. Being completely vulnerable in front of the person they’re most terrified of being vulnerable with.

The developers have structured Cloud and Tifa’s character arcs so that the crux is a moment where the other is literally the only person who could provide the answer they need. Without each other, as far as the story is concerned, Cloud and Tifa would remain incomplete.

Aerith’s character arc is a different beast entirely. She is the closest we have to the traditional Campbellian Hero. She is the Chosen One, the literal last of her kind, who has been resisting the call to adventure until she can no longer. The touchstones of her character arc are the moments she learns more about her Cetra past and comes to terms with her role in protecting the planet - namely Cosmo Canyon, the Temple of the Ancients and the Forgotten City.

How do hers and Cloud’s arcs intersect? When it comes to the Nibelheim incident, she is a merely a spectator (at least during the Kalm flashback, as for the other two, she is uh…deceased). Cloud attacking her at the Temple of the Ancients, which results in her running to the Forgotten City alone and getting killed by Sephiroth, certainly exacerbates his mental deterioration, but it is by no means a turning point in his arc the way the Northern Crater is.

As for Cloud’s role in Aerith’s arc, their meeting is quite important in that it sets forth the series of events that leads her to getting captured by Shinra and thus meeting “Sephiroth” and wanting to learn more about the Cetra. It’s the inciting incident if we’re going to be really pedantic about it, yet Aerith’s actual character development is not dependent on her relationship with Cloud. It is about her communion with her Cetra Ancestry and the planet.

To put it in other terms, all else being the same, Aerith could still have a satisfying character arc had Cloud not crashed down into her Church. Sure, the game would look pretty different, but there are other ways for her to transform from a flirty, at times frivolous girl to an almost Christ-like figure who accepts the burden of protecting the planet.

Such is not the case for Cloud and Tifa. Their character arcs are built around their shared past and their relationship with one another. Without Tifa, you would have to rewrite Cloud’s character entirely. What was his motivation for joining SOLDIER? How did he get on that AVALANCHE mission in the first place? Who can possibly know him well enough to put his mind back together after it falls apart? If the answer to all these questions is the same person, then congratulations, you’ve just reverse engineered Tifa Lockhart.

Tifa fares a little better. Without Cloud, she would be a sad, sweet character who never gets the opportunity to reconcile with the trauma of her past. Superficially, a lot would be the same, but she would ultimately be quite static and all the less interesting for it.

Let’s also take a brief gander at Tifa’s role after the Lifestream sequence. At this point in the game, both Tifa and Cloud’s emotional arcs are essentially complete. They are now the most idealized versions of themselves, characters the players are meant to admire and aspire to. However they are depicted going forward, it would not be the creator’s intent for their actions to be perceived in a negative light.

A few key moments standout, ones that would not be included if the game was intended to end with any other romantic pairing or with Cloud’s romantic interest left ambiguous:

The Highwind scene, which I’ve gone over above. It doesn’t matter if you get the Low Affection or High Affection version. It would not reflect well on either Cloud or Tifa if he chose to spend what could be his last night alive with a woman whose feelings he did not reciprocate.

Before the final battle with Sephiroth, the party members scream out the reasons they’re fighting. Barret specifically calls out AVALANCHE, Marlene and Dyne, Red XIII specifically calls out his Grandpa, and Tifa specifically calls out Cloud. You are not going to make one of Tifa’s last moments in the game be her pining after a guy who has no interest in her. Not when you could easily have her mention something like her past, her hometown or hell even AVALANCHE and Marlene like Barret. If Tifa’s feelings for Cloud are meant to be unrequited, then it would be a character flaw that would be dealt with long before the final battle (see: Quistis in FF8 or Eowyn in the Lord of the Rings). They would not still be on display at moment like this.

Tifa being the only one there when Cloud jumps into the Lifestream to fight Sephiroth for the last time, and Tifa being the only one there when he emerges. She is very much playing the traditional partner/spouse role here, when you could easily have the entire party present or no one there at all. There is clearly something special about her relationship with Cloud that sets her apart from the other party members.

Once again, let’s look at the “I think I can meet her there moment.” And let’s put side the translation (the Japanese is certainly more ambiguous, and it’s not like the game had any trouble having Cloud call Aerith by her name before this). If Cloud was really expressing his desire to reunite with Aerith, and thus his rejection of Tifa, then the penultimate scene of this game is one that involves the complete utter and humiliation of one of its main characters since Tifa’s reply would indicate she’s inviting herself to a romantic reunion she has no part in. Not only that, but to anyone who is not Cl*rith shipper, the protagonist of the game is going to come off as a callous asshole. That cannot possibly be the creator’s intention. They are competent enough to depict an act of love without drawing attention to the party hurt by that love.

What then could possibly be the meaning? Could it possibly be Cloud trying to comfort Tifa by trying to find a silver lining in what appears to be their impending death? That this means they may get to see their departed loved ones again, including their mutual friend, Aerith? (I will note that Tifa talks about Aerith as much, if not even more than Cloud, after her death). Seems pretty reasonable to me, this being an interpretation of the scene that aligns with the overall themes of the game, and casts every character in positive light during this bittersweet moment.

Luckily enough, we have an entire fucking Compilation to find out which is right.

But before we get there, I’m sure some of you (lol @ me thinking anyone is still reading this) are asking, if Cloti is canon, then why is there a love triangle at all? Why even hint at the possibility of a romance between Cloud and Aerith? Wouldn’t that also be a waste of time and resources if they weren’t meant to be canon?

Well, there are two very important reasons that have nothing to do with romance and everything to do with two of the game’s biggest twists:

Aerith initially being attracted to Cloud’s similarities to Zack/commenting on the uncanniness of said similarities is an organic way to introduce the man Cloud’s pretending to be. Without it, the reveal in the Lifestream would fall a bit flat. The man he’s been emulating all along would just be some sort of generic hero rather than a person whose history and deeds already encountered during the course of the game. Notably for this to work, the game only has to establish Aerith’s attraction to Cloud.

To build the player’s attachment to Aerith before her death/obscure the fact that she’s going to die. With the technological limitations of the day, the only way to get the player to interact with Aerith is through the player character (AKA Cloud), and adding an element of choice (AKA the Gold Saucer Date mechanic) makes the player even more invested. This then elevates Aerith’s relationship with Cloud over hers with any other character. At the same time, because her time in the game is limited, Cloud ends up interacting with Aerith more than any of the other characters, at least in Disc 1. The choice to make many of these interactions flirty/romantic also toys with player expectations. One does not expect the hero’s love interest to die halfway through the game. The game itself also spends a bit of time teasing the romance, albeit, largely in superficial ways like other characters commenting on their relationship or Cait Sith reading their love fortune at the Temple of the Ancients. Yet, despite the quantity of their personal interactions, Cloud and Aerith never display any moments of deep love or devotion that one associates with a Final Fantasy romance. They never have the time. What the game establishes then is the potential of a romance rather than the romance itself. Aerith’s death hurts because of all that lost potential. There so many things she wanted to do, so many places she wanted to see that will never happen because her life is cut short. Part of what is lost, of course, is the potential of her romance with Cloud.

This creative choice is a lot more controversial since it elevates subverting audience expectations over character, and understandably leads to some player confusion. What’s the point of all this set up if there’s not going to be a pay off? Well, that is kind of the point. Death is frustrating because of all the unknowns and what-ifs. But, I suppose some people just can’t accept that fact in a game like this.

One last note on the OG before we move on: Even though this from an Ultimania, since we’re talking about story development and creator intent, I thought it was relevant to include: the fact that Aerith was the sole heroine in early drafts of the game is not the LTD trump card so people think it is. Stories undergo radical changes through the development process. More often than not, there are too many characters, and characters are often combined or removed if their presence feels redundant or confusing.

In this case, the opposite happened. Tifa was added later in the development process as a second heroine. Let’s say that Aerith was the Last Ancient and the protagonist’s sole love interest in this early draft of Final Fantasy VII. In the game that was actually released, that role was split between two characters (and last I checked, Tifa is not the last of a dying race), and Aerith dies halfway through the game, so what does that suggest about how Aerith’s role may have changed in the final product? Again, if Aerith was intended to be Cloud’s love interest, Tifa simply would not exist.

A begrudging analysis of our favorite straight-to-DVD sequel

Let’s move onto the Compilation. And in doing so, completely forget about the word vomit that’s been written above. While it’s quite clear to me now that there’s no way in hell the developers would have intended the last scene in the game to be both a confirmation of Cloud’s love for Aerith and his rejection of Tifa, in my younger and more vulnerable years, I wasn’t so sure. In fact, this was the prevailing interpretation back in the pre-Compilation Dark Ages. Probably because of a dubious English translation of the game and a couple of ambiguous cameos in Final Fantasy Tactics and Kingdom Hearts were all we  had to go on.

How then did the official sequel to Final Fantasy VII change those priors?

Two years after the events of the game, Cloud is living as a family with Tifa and two kids rather than scouring the planet for a way to be reunited with Aerith. Shouldn’t the debate be well and over with that? Obviously not, and it’s not just because people were being obstinate. Part of the confusion stems from Advent Children itself, but I would argue that did not come from an intent to play coy/keep Cloud’s romantic desires ambiguous, but rather a failure of execution of his character arc.

Now I wasn’t the biggest fan of the film when I first watched a bootlegged copy I downloaded off LimeWire in 2005, and I like it even less now, but I better understand its failures, given its unique position as a sequel to a beloved game and the cornerstone of launching the Compilation.

The original game didn’t have such constraints on its storytelling. Outside of including a few elements that make it recognizable as a Final Fantasy (Moogles, Chocobos, Summons, etc.) and being a good enough game to be a financial success, the developers pretty much had free rein in terms of what story they wanted to tell, what characters they would use to tell it, and how long it took for them to tell said story.

With Advent Children, telling a good story was not the sole or even primary goal. Instead, it had to:

Do some fanservice: The core audience is going to be the OG fanbase, who would be expecting to see modern, high-def depictions of all the memorable and beloved characters from the game, no matter if the natural end point of their stories is long over.

Set up the rest of the Compilation - Advent Children is the draw with the big stars, but also a way to showcase the lesser known characters from from the Compilation who are going to be leading their own spinoffs.  It’s part feature film/part advertisement for the rest of the Compilation. Thus, the Turks, Vincent and Zack get larger roles in the film than one might expect to attract interest to the spinoffs they lead.

Show off its technical prowess: SE probably has enough self awareness to realize that what’s going to set it apart from other animated feature films is not its novel storytelling, but its graphical capabilities. Thus, to really show off those graphics, the film is going to be packed to the brim with big, complicated action scenes with lots of moving parts, as opposed to quieter character driven moments.

These considerations are not unique to Advent Children, but important to note nonetheless:

As a sequel, the stakes have to be just as high if not higher than those in the original work. Since the threat in the OG was the literal end of the world, in Advent Children, the world’s gotta end again

The OG was around 30-40 hours long. An average feature-length film is roughly two hours. Video games and films are two very different mediums. As many TV writers who have tried to make the transition to film (and vice-versa) can tell you, success in one medium does not translate to success in another. 

With so much to do in so little time, is it any wonder then that it is again Sephiroth who is the villain trying to destroy the world and Aerith in the Lifestream the deus ex machina who saves the day?

All of this is just a long-winded way to say, certain choices in the Advent Children that may seem to exist only to perpetuate the LTD were made with many other storytelling considerations in mind.

When trying to understand the intended character arcs and relationship dynamics, you cannot treat the film as a collection of scenes devoid of context. You can’t just say - “well here’s a scene where Cloud seems to miss Aerith, and here’s another scene where Cloud and Tifa fight. Obviously, Cloud loves Aerith.” You have to look at what purpose these scenes serve in the grander narrative.

And what is this grander narrative? To put it in simplistic terms, Aerith is the obstacle, and Tifa is goal. Cloud must get over his guilt over Aerith’s death so that he can return to living with Tifa and the children in peace.

The scenes following the prologue are setting up the emotional stakes of film - the problem that will be resolved by the film’s end. The problem being depicted here is not Aerith’s absence from Cloud’s life, but Cloud’s absence from his family. We see Tifa walking through Seventh Heaven saying “he’s not here anymore,” we see Denzel in his sickbed asking for Cloud, we see a framed photo of the four of them on Cloud’s desk. We see Cloud letting Tifa’s call go to voicemail.

What we do not see is Aerith, who does not appear until almost halfway through the film.

Cloud spends the first of the film avoiding confrontation with the Remnants/dealing with the return of Sephiroth. It’s only when Tifa is injured, and Denzel and Marlene get kidnapped that he goes to face his problems head on.

Before the final battle, when Cloud has exorcised his emotional demons and is about to face his physical demons, what do we see? We see Cloud telling Marlene that it’s his turn to take care of her, Denzel and Tifa the way they’ve taken care of him. We see Cloud telling Tifa that he ‘feels lighter’ and tacitly confirming that she was correct when she called him out earlier in the film. We see Cloud confirming to Denzel that he’s going home after this is all over.

What we do not see is Cloud telepathically communicating with Aerith to say, “Hey boo, can’t wait to beat Sephiroth so I can finally reunite with you in the Promised Land. Xoxoxo.” Aerith doesn’t factor in at all. Returning to his family is his goal, and his fight with Bahamut/the Remnants/Sephiroth/whatever the fuck is the final obstacle he has to face before reaching this goal.

This is reiterated again when Cloud is shot by Yazoo and seemingly perishes in an explosion. What is at stake with his “death”? We see Tifa calling his name while looking out the airship. We see Denzel and Marlene waiting for him at Seventh Heaven. We do not see Aerith watching over him in the Lifestream.

Now, Aerith does play an important role in Cloud’s arc when she shows up at about the midpoint of the film. You could fairly argue that it’s the turning point in Cloud’s emotional journey, the moment when he finally decides to confront his problems. But even if it’s only Cloud and Aerith in the scene, it’s not really about their relationship at all.

Let’s consider the context before this scene happens. Denzel and Marlene have been kidnapped by the Remnants; Tifa was nearly killed in a fight with another. This is Cloud at his lowest point. It’s his worst fears come to pass. His guilt over Aerith’s death is directly addressed at this moment in the film because it is not so much about his feelings for Aerith as it is about how Cloud fears the failures of his past (one of the biggest being her death) would continue into the present. If it was just about Aerith, we could have seen Cloud asking for her forgiveness at any other time in the film. It occurs when it does because this when his guilt over Aerith’s death intersects with his actual conflict, his fear that he’ll fail the the ones he loves. She appears when he’s at the Forgotten City where he goes to save the children. The same location where he had failed two year before.

This connection is made explicit when Cloud has flashes of Zack and Aerith’s deaths before he saves Denzel and Tifa from Bahamut. Again, Cloud’s dwelling on the past is directly related to his fears of being unable to protect his present.

Aerith is a feminine figure who is associated with flowers. That combined with the players’ memory of her and her relationship with Cloud in the OG, I can see how their scenes can be construed as romantic, but I really do not think that it is the creators’ intent to portray any romantic longing on Cloud’s part.

If they wanted to suggest that Cloud was still in love with Aerith or even leave his romantic interest ambiguous, there is no way in hell they would have had Cloud living with Tifa and two kids prior to the film’s events. To say nothing of opening the film by showing the pain his absence brings.

A romantic reading of Cloud’s guilt over Aerith’s death would suggest that he entered into a relationship with Tifa and started raising two children with her while still holding a torch for Aerith and hoping for a way to be reunited with her. The implication would be that Tifa is his second choice, and he is settling. Now, is this a dynamic that occurs in real life? Absolutely. Is this something that is often depicted in some films and television? Sure - in fact this very premise is at the core of one my favorite films of the last decade - 45 Years — and spoiler alert — the guy does not come off well in this situation. But once again, Cloud is not a real person, and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is not a John Cassavettes film or an Ingmar Bergman chamber drama. It is a 2-hour long straight to DVD sequel for a video game made for teens. This kind of messy, if realistic, relationship dynamic is not what this particular work is trying to explore.

(one of these is a good film!)

By the end of Advent Children, Cloud is once again the idealized version of himself. A hero that the audience is supposed to like and admire. We are supposed to think that his actions in the first half of the movie (wallowing in his guilt and abandoning his family) were bad. These are the flaws that he must overcome through the course of the film, and by the end he does. If he really had been settling and treating his Seventh Heaven family as a second choice prior to the events of the film, that too would obviously be a character flaw that needs to be addressed before the end of the film. It isn’t because this is a dynamic that only exists in certain people’s imaginations.

If the creators wanted to leave the Cloud & Aerith relationship open to a romantic interpretation, they didn’t have to write themselves into such a corner. They wouldn’t have to change the final film much at all, merely adjust the chronology a bit. Instead of Cloud already living as a family with Tifa, Marlene and Denzel prior to the beginning of the film, you would show them on the precipice of becoming a family, but with Cloud being unable to take the final step without getting over his feelings for Aerith first. This would leave space for him to love both women without coming off as an opportunistic jerk.

This is essentially the dynamic with Locke/Rachel/Celes in FFVI. Locke is unable to move on with Celes or anyone else until he finally finds closure with Rachel. It’s a lovely scene that does not diminish his relationships with either woman. He loved Rachel. He will love Celes. What the game does not have him do is enter into a relationship into Celes first and then when the party arrives at the Phoenix Cave, have him suddenly remember ‘Oh shit, I’ve gotta deal with my baggage with Rachel before I can really move on.’ That would not paint him in a particularly positive light.

Speaking of other Final Fantasies, let’s take a look another sequel in the series set two years after the events of the original work, one that is clearly the story of its protagonist searching for their lost love. And guess what? Final Fantasy X-2 does not begin with Yuna shacked up and raising two kids with another dude. And it certainly doesn’t begin with his perspective of the whole situation when Yuna decides to search for Tidus.

Square Enix knows how to write these kind of stories when they want to, and it’s clearly not their intent for Cloud and Aerith. Again, the biggest obstacle in the way of a Cloud/Aerith endgame isn’t space and time or death, it’s the existence of Tifa Lockhart.

A reasonable question to ask would be, if SE is not trying to ignite debate over the love triangle, why make Cloud’s relationship with Aerith a part of Advent Children at all? Why invite that sort of confusion? Well, the answer here, like the answer in the OG, is that Aerith’s role in the sequel is much more than her relationship with Cloud.

In the OG, it wasn’t Cloud and the gang who managed to stop Sephiroth and Meteor in the end, it was Aerith from the Lifestream. In a two-hour long film, you do not have the time to set up a completely new villain who can believably end the world, and since you pretty much have to include Sephiroth, the main antagonist can really only be him. No one else in the party has been established to have any magical Cetra powers, and again, since that’s not something that can be effectively established in a two-hour long film, and since Aerith needs to appear somehow, it again needs to be her who will save the day.

Given the time constraints, this external conflict has to be connected with Cloud’s internal conflict. In the OG, Cloud’s emotional arc is in resolved in the Lifestream, and then we spend a few more hours hunting down the Huge Materia/remembering what Holy is before resolving the external conflict of stopping Meteor. In Advent Children, we do not have that luxury of time. These turning points have to be one and same. It is only after Aerith is “introduced” in the film when Cloud asks her for forgiveness that she is able to help in the fight against the Remnants. Thus the turning point for Cloud’s character arc and the external conflict are the same. It’s understandably economical storytelling, though I wouldn’t call it particularly good storytelling.

As much as Cloud feels guilt over both Zack and Aerith’s deaths, it’s only Aerith who can play this dual role in the film. Zack can appear to help resolve Cloud’s emotional arc, but since he has no special Cetra powers or anything, there’s little he can do to help in Cloud’s fight against the Remnants. More time would need to be spent contriving a reason why Cloud is able to defeat the Remnants now when he wasn’t before or explaining why Aerith can suddenly help from the Lifestream when she had been absent before. (I still don’t think the film does a particularly good job of explaining this part, but that is a conversation for another time).

Another reason why Zack could not play this role is because at the time of AC’s original release, all we knew of Cloud and Zack’s relationship was contained in an optional flashback at the Shinra mansion after Cloud returns from the Lifestream. If it was Zack who suddenly showed up at Cloud’s lowest point, most viewers, even many who played the original game, would probably have been confused, and the moment would have fallen flat. On the other hand, even the most casual fan would have been aware of Aerith and her connection to Cloud, with her death scene being among the most well-known gaming moments of all time. Moreover, Aerith’s death is directly connected to Sephiroth, who is once again the threat in AC, whereas Zack was killed by Shinra goons. Aerith serves multiple purposes in a way that Zack just cannot.

Despite all this, though Aerith is more important to the film as a whole, many efforts are made to suggest that Zack and Aerith are equally important to Cloud. One of the first scenes in the film is Cloud moping around Zack’s grave (And unlike the scene with Aerith in the Forgotten City, it isn’t directly connected with Cloud’s present storyline in any way). We have the aforementioned scene where Cloud has flashes of both Aerith’s and Zack’s deaths when he saves Tifa and Denzel. Cloud has a scene where he’s standing back to back with Zack, mirroring his scene with in the Forgotten City with Aerith, before the climax of his fight with Sephiroth. In the Lifestream, after Cloud “dies,” it’s both Aerith and Zack who are there to send him back. Before the film ends, Cloud sees both Aerith and Zack leaving the church.

Now, were all these Zack appearances a way to promote the upcoming spin-off game that he’s going to lead? Of course. But the creators surely would have known that having Zack play such a similar role in Cloud’s arc would make Cloud’s relationship with Aerith feel less special and thus complicating a romantic interpretation of said relationship. If they wanted to encourage a romantic reading of Cloud’s lingering feelings for Aerith, they would have given Zack his own distinct role in the film. Or rather, they wouldn’t have put Zack in the film at all, and they certainly wouldn’t have him lead his own game, but we’ll get to the Zack of it all later.

The funny thing is, in a way, Zack is portrayed as being more special to Cloud. Zack only exists in the film to interact with Cloud and encourage him. Meanwhile. Aerith also has brief interactions with Kadaj, the Geostigma children and even Tifa before the film’s end. Aerith is there to save the whole world. Zack is there just for Cloud. If it’s Cloud’s relationship with Aerith that’s meant to be romantic, shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Let’s take a look at Tifa Lockhart. What role did she have to play in the FF7 sequel film? If, like some, you believed FF7 to be the Cloud/Aerith/Sephiroth show, then Tifa could have easily had a Barret-sized cameo in Advent Children. And honestly, she’s just a great martial artist. She has no special powers that would make her indispensable in a fight against Sephiroth. You certainly would not expect her to be the 2nd billed character in the film. Though of course, if you actually played through the Original Game with your eyes open, you would realize that Tifa Lockhart is instrumental to any story about Cloud Strife.

Unlike Aerith’s appearances, almost none of the suggestive scenes and dynamics between Cloud and Tifa had to be included in the film. As in, they serve no other plot related purpose and could have easily been cut from the final film if the creators weren’t trying to encourage a romantic interpretation of their relationship.

It feels inevitable now, but no one was expecting Cloud and Tifa to be living together and raising two kids. In the general consciousness, FF7 is Cloud and Sephiroth and their big swords and Aerith’s death. At the time, in the eyes of most fans and casual observers, Cloud and Tifa being together wasn’t a necessary part of the FF7 equation the way say, an epic fight between Cloud and Sephiroth would be. In fact, I don’t think even the biggest Cloti fans at the time would have imagined Cloud and Tifa living together would be their canon outcome in the sequel film.

Now can two platonic friends live together and raise two children together? Absolutely, but again Cloud and Tifa are not real people. They are fictional characters. A reasonable person (let’s use the legal definition of the term) who does not have brainworms from arguing over one of the dumbest debates on the Internet for 23 years would probably assume that two characters who were shown to be attracted to each other in the OG and who are now living together and raising two kids are in a romantic relationship. This is a reasonable assumption to make, and if SE wanted to leave Cloud’s romantic inclinations ambiguous, they simply would not be depicting Cloud and Tifa’s relationship in this manner. Cloud’s disrupted peace could have been a number of different things. He could have been a wandering mercenary, he could have been searching for a way to be reunited with Aerith. It didn’t have to be the family he formed with Tifa, but, then again, if you were actually paying attention to the story the OG was trying to tell, of course he would be living with Tifa.

Let’s also look at the scene where Cloud finds Tifa in the church after her fight with Loz. All the plot related information (who attacked her, Marlene being taken) is conveyed in the brief conversation they have before Cloud falls unconscious from Geostigma. What purpose do all the lingering shots of Cloud and Tifa in the flower bed in a Yin-Yang/non-sexual 69ing position serve if not to be suggestive of the type of relationship they have? It’s beautifully rendered but ultimately irrelevant to both the external and internal conflicts of the film.

Likewise, there is no reason why Cloud and Tifa needed to wake up in their children’s bedroom. No reason to show Cloud waking up with Tifa next to him in a way that almost makes you think they were in the same bed. And there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for a close-up of Tifa’s hand with the Wolf Ring on her ring finger while she is admonishing Cloud during what sounds like a domestic argument (This ring again comes into focus when Tifa leads Denzel to Cloud at the church at the end - there are dozens of ways this scene could have been rendered, but this is the one that was chosen.) If it wasn’t SE’s intent to emphasize the family dynamic and the intimate nature of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship, these scenes would not exist.

Let’s also take a look at Denzel, the only new character in the AC (give or take the Remnants). Again, given the film’s brief runtime, the fact that they’re not only adding a new character but giving him more screen time than almost every other AVALANCHE member must mean that he’s pretty important. While Denzel does have an arc of his own, especially in ACC, he is intricately connected to Cloud and Tifa and solidifies the family unit that they’ve been forming in Edge. Marlene still has Barret, but with the addition of Denzel, the family becomes something more real albeit even more tenuous given his Geostigma diagnosis. Without Denzel in the picture, it’s a bit easier to interpret Cloud’s distance from Tifa as romantic pining for another woman, but now it just seems absurd. The stakes are so much higher. Cloud and Tifa are at a completely different stage in their lives from the versions of these characters we met early on in the OG who were entangled in a frivolous love triangle. And yet some people are still stuck trying to fit these characters into a childish dynamic that died at the end of disc one along with a certain someone.

All this is there in the film, at least the director’s cut, if you really squint. But since SE preferred to spend its time on countless action sequences that have aged as well as whole milk in lieu of spending a few minutes showing Cloud’s family life before he got Geostigma to establish the emotional stakes, or a beat or two more on his reconciliation with Tifa and the kids, people may be understandably confused about Cloud’s arc. Has Cloud just been a moping around in misery for the two years post-OG? The answer is no, though that can only really be found in the accompanying novellas, specifically Case of Tifa.

Concerning the novellas, which we apparently must read to understand said DVD sequel

I really don’t know how you can read through CoT and still think there is anything ambiguous about the nature of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. The “Because I have you this time,” Cloud telling Tifa he’ll remind her how to be strong when they’re alone, Cloud confidently agreeing when Marlene adds him to their family. Not to mention Barret and Cid’s brief conversation about Cloud and Tifa’s relationship in Case of Barret, after which Cid comments that “women wear the pants,” which Barret then follows by asking Cid about Shera. Again, a reasonable person would assume the couple in question are in a romantic relationship, and if this wasn’t the intent, these lines would not be present. Especially not in a novella about someone else.

Some try to argue that CoT just shows how incompatible Cloud and Tifa are because it features a few low points in their relationship. I don’t think that’s Nojima’s intent. Even if it was, it certainly wouldn’t be to prove that Cloud loves Aerith. This isn’t how you tell that story. Why waste all that time disproving a negative rather than proving a positive? We didn’t spend hours in FF8 watching Rinoa’s relationship with Seifer fall apart to understand how much better off she is with Squall. If Cloud and Aerith is meant to be a love story, then tell their love story. Why tell the story of how Cloud is incompatible with someone else?

Part of the confusion may be because CoT doesn’t tell a complete story in and of itself. The first half of the story (before Cloud has to deliver flowers to the Forgotten City) acts as a sort of epilogue to the OG, while the second half of the story is something of a prologue to Advent Children (or honestly its missing Act One). And to state the obvious, conflict is inherent to any story worth telling. It can’t just be all fluff, that’s what the fanfiction is for.

Tifa’s conflict is her fear that the fragile little family they’ve built in Edge is going to fall apart. Thus we see her fret about Cloud’s distance, the way this affects Marlene, and Denzel’s sickness. There are certainly some low moments here --- Tifa telling Cloud to drink in his room, asking if he loves her -- all ways for the threat to seem more real, the outcome more uncertain, yet there’s only one way this conflict can be resolved. One direction to which their relationship can move.

Again, by the end of this story, both characters are supposed to be the best versions of themselves, to find their “happy” endings so to speak. Tifa could certainly find happiness outside of a relationship with Cloud. She could decide that they’ve given it a shot, but they’re better off as friends. She’s grateful for this experience and she’s learned from this, but now she’s ready to make a life for herself on her own. It would be a fine character arc, though not something the Final Fantasy series has been wont to do. However, that’s obviously not the case here as there’s no indication whatsoever that Tifa considers this as an option for herself. Nojima hasn’t written this off ramp into her journey. For Tifa, they’ll either become a real family or they won’t. Since this is a story that is going to have a happy ending, so of course they will, even if there are a lot of bumps along the way.

Unfortunately, with the Compilation being the unwieldy beast that this is, this whole arc has to be pieced together across a number of different works:

Tifa asking herself if they’re a real family in CoT

Her greatest fear seemingly come to life when Cloud leaves at the end of CoT/beginning of AC

Tifa explicitly asking Cloud if the reason they can’t help each other is because they’re not a real family during their argument in AC. Notably, even though Cloud is at his lowest point, he doesn’t confirm her fear. Instead he says he that he can’t help anyone, not even his family. Instead, he indirectly confirms that yes he does think they’re a family, even if is a frustrating moment still in that he’s too scared to try to save it.

The ending of AC where we see a new photo of Cloud smiling surrounded by Tifa and the kids and the rest of the AVALANCHE, next to the earlier photo we had seen of the four of them where he was wearing a more dour expression.

The ending of The Kids Are All Right, where Cloud, Tifa, Denzel and Marlene meet with Evan, Kyrie and Vits - and Cloud offers, unsolicited, that even if they’re not related by blood, they’re a family.

The ending of DVD extra ‘Reminiscence of FFVII’ where Cloud takes the day off and asks Tifa to close the bar so they can spend time together as a family as Tifa had wanted to do early in CoT

Cloud fears he’ll fail his family. Tifa fears it’ll fall apart. Cloud retreats into himself, pushing others away. Tifa neglects herself, not being able to say what she needs to say. In Advent Children, Tifa finally voices her frustrations. It’s then that Cloud finally confronts his fears. Like in the OG, Cloud and Tifa’s conflicts and character arcs are two sides of the same coin, and it’s only by communicating with each other are they able to resolve it. Though with the Compilation being an inferior work, it’s much less satisfying this time around. Such is the problem when you’re writing towards a preordained outcome (Cloud and Sephiroth duking it once again) rather than letting the story develop organically.

Some may ask, why mention Aerith so much (Cloud growing distant after delivering flowers to the Forgotten City, Cloud finding Denzel at Aerith’s church) if they weren’t trying to perpetuate the LTD? Well, as explained above, Aerith had to be in Advent Children, and since CoT is the only place where we get any insight into Cloud’s psyche, it’s here where Nojima expands on that guilt.

Again, this is a story that requires conflict, and what better conflict than the specter of a love rival? Notably, despite us having access to Tifa’s thoughts and fears, she never explicitly associates Cloud’s behavior with him pining after Aerith. Though it’s fair to say this fear is implied, if unwarranted.

If Cloud had actually been pining after Aerith this whole time, we would not be seeing it all unfold through Tifa’s perspective. You can depict a romance without drawing attention to the injured third party. We’re seeing all of this from Tifa’s POV, because it’s about Tifa’s insecurities, not the great tragic romance between Cloud and Aerith. Honestly, another reason we see this from Tifa’s perspective is because it’s dramatically more interesting. Because she’s insecure, she (and we the reader) wonder if there’s something else going on. Meanwhile, from Cloud’s perspective it would be straightforward and redundant, given what we see in AC. He’s guilty over Aerith’s death and thinks he doesn’t deserve to be happy.

Not to mention, the first time we encounter Aerith in CoT, Tifa is the one breaking down at her grave while Cloud is the one comforting her. Are we supposed to believe that he just forgot he was in love with Aerith until he had to deliver flowers to the Forgotten City?

And Aerith doesn’t just serve as a romantic obstacle. She’s also a symbol of guilt and redemption for both Cloud and Tifa. Neither think they have the right to be happy after all that’s happened (Aerith’s death being a big part of this), and through Denzel, who Cloud finds at Aerith’s church, they both see a chance to atone.

I do want to address Case of Lifestream: White because it’s only time in the entire Compilation where I’ve asked myself — what are they trying to achieve here? Now, I’d rather drink bleach than start debating the translation of ‘koibito’ again, but I did think it was a strange choice to specify the romantic nature of Aerith’s love for Cloud. I suppose it could be a reference her obvious attraction to Cloud in the OG, though calling it love feels like a stretch.

But nothing else in CoLW really gives me pause. It might be a bit jarring to see how much of it is Aerith’s thoughts of Cloud, but it makes sense when you consider the context in which it’s meant to be consumed. Unlike Case of Tifa or Case of Denzel, CoLW isn’t meant to be read on its own. It’s a few scant paragraphs in direct conversation with Case of Lifestream: Black. In CoLB, Sephiroth talks about his plan to return and end the world or whatever, and how Cloud is instrumental to his plan. Each segment of CoLW mirrors the corresponding segment of CoLB. Thus, CoLW has to be about Aerith’s plan to stop Sephiroth and the role Cloud must play in that. In both of these stories, Cloud is the only named character. It doesn’t mean that thoughts of Cloud consume all of Aerith’s afterlife. Case of Lifestream is only a tiny sliver of the story, a halfassed way to explain why in Advent Children the world is ending again and why Cloud has to be at the center of it all.

Notably, there is absolutely nothing in CoLW about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith. Even if it’s just speculation on her part as we see Sephiroth speculate about Cloud’s reactions in CoLB. Aerith can see what’s going on in the real world, but she says nothing about Cloud’s actions. If Cloud is really pining after her, trying to find a way to be reunited with her, wouldn’t this be the ideal story to show such devotion?

But it’s not there, because not only does it not happen, but because this story is not about Aerith’s relationship with Cloud. It is about how Aerith needs to see and warn Cloud in order to stop Sephiroth. By the end of Advent Children, that goal is fulfilled. Cloud gets his forgiveness. Aerith gets to see him again and helps him stop Sephiroth. There’s no suggestion that either party wants more. We finally have the closure that the OG lacked, and at no point does it confirm that Cloud reciprocated Aerith’s romantic feelings, even though there were plenty of opportunities to do so.

I don’t really know what else people were expecting. Advent Children isn’t a romantic drama. There’s not going to be a moment where Cloud explicitly tells Tifa, ‘I’ve never loved Aerith. It’s only been you all along.” This is just simply not the kind of story it is.

Though one late scene practically serves this function. When Cloud “dies” and Aerith finds him in the Lifestream, if there were any lingering romantic feelings between the two of them, this would be a beautiful bittersweet reunion. Maybe something about how as much as they want to be together, it’s not his time yet. Instead, it’s almost played off as a joke. Cloud calls her ‘Mother’, and Zack is at Aerith’s side, joking about how Cloud has no place there. This would be the perfect opportunity to address the romantic connection between Cloud and Aerith, but instead, the film elides this completely. Instead, it’s a cute afterlife moment between Aerith and Zack, and functionally allows Cloud to go back to where he belongs, to Tifa and the kids. Whatever Cloud’s feelings for Aerith were before, it’s transformed into something else.

Crisis Core -- or how Aerith finally gets her love story

The other relevant part of the Compilation is Crisis Core, which I will now touch on briefly (or at least brief for me). In the OG, Zack Fair was more plot device than character. We knew he was important to Cloud — enough that Cloud would mistake Zack’s memories for his own -- we knew he was important to Aerith — enough that she is initially drawn to Cloud due to his similarities to Zack — yet the nature of these relationships is more ambiguous. Especially his relationship with Aerith. From the little we learn of their relationship, it could have been completely one-sided on her part, and Zack a total cad. At least that’s the implication she leaves us with in Gongaga. We get the sense that she might not be the most reliable narrator on this point (why bring up an ex so often, unsolicited, if it wasn’t anything serious?) but the OG never confirms this either way.

Crisis Core clears this up completely. Not only is Zack portrayed as the Capital H Hero of his own game, but his relationships with Cloud and Aerith are two of the most important in the game. In fact, they are the basis for his heroic sacrifice at the game’s end: he dies trying to save Cloud’s life; he dies trying to return to Aerith.

Zack’s relationship with Aerith is a major subplot of the game. Not only that, but the details of said relationship completely recontextualizes what we know about the Aerith we see in the OG. Many of Aerith’s most iconic traits (wearing pink, selling flowers) are a direct product of this relationship, and more importantly, so many of the hallmarks of her early relationship with Cloud (him falling through her church, one date as a reward, a conversation in the playground) are a direct echo of her relationship with Zack.

A casual fling this was not. Aerith’s relationship with Zack made a deep impact on the character we see in the OG and clearly colored her interactions with Cloud throughout.

Crisis Core is telling Zack’s story, and Tifa is a fairly minor supporting character, yet it still finds the time to expand upon Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. Through their interactions with Zack, we learn just how much they were on each others’ minds during this time, and how they were both too shy to own up to these feelings. We also get a brief expansion on the moment Cloud finds Tifa injured in the reactor.

Meanwhile, given the point we are in the story’s chronology, Cloud and Aerith are completely oblivious of each other’s existence.

One may try to argue that none of this matters since all of this is in the past. While this argument might hold water if we arguing about real lives in the real world, FF7 is a work of fiction. Its creators decided that these would be events we would see, and that Zack would be the lens through which we’d see them. Crisis Core is not the totality of these characters’ lives prior to the event of the OG. Rather, it consists of moments that enhance and expand upon our understanding of the original work. We learn the full extent of Hojo’s experimentation and the Jenova project; we learn that Sephiroth was actually a fairly normal guy before he was driven insane when he uncovers the circumstances of his birth. We learn that Aerith was a completely different person before she met Zack, and their relationship had a profound impact on her character.

A prequel is not made to contradict the original work, but what it can do is recontexualize the story we already know and add a layer of nuance that may have not been obvious before. Thus, Sephiroth is transformed from a scary villain into a tragic figure who could have been a hero were it not for Hojo’s experiments. Aerith’s behavior too invites reinterpretation. What once seemed flirty and perhaps overtly forward now looks like the tragic attempts of a woman trying to recapture a lost love.

If Cloud and Aerith were meant to be the official couple of the Compilation of FF7, you absolutely would not be spending so much time depicting two relationships that will be moot by the time we get to the original work. You especially would not depict Zack and Aerith’s relationship in a way that makes Aerith’s relationship with Cloud look like a copy of the moments she had with her ex.

Additionally, with Zack’s relationship with Angeal, we can see, that within the universe of FF7, a protagonist being devastated over the death of a beloved comrade isn’t something that’s inherently romantic. Neither is it romantic for said dead comrade to lend a helping hand from the beyond.

SE would also expect some people to play Crisis Core before the OG. If Cloud and Aerith are the intended endgame couple, then SE would be asking the player to root for a guy to pursue the girlfriend of the man who gave his life for him. The same man who died trying to reunite with her. This is to say nothing of Cloud’s treatment of Tifa in this scenario. How could this possibly be the intent  for their most popular protagonist in the most popular entry of their most popular franchise?

What Crisis Core instead offers is something for fans of Aerith who may be disappointed that she was robbed of a great romance by her death. Well, she now gets that epic, tragic romance. Only it’s with Zack, not Cloud.

If SE intended for Cloud and Aerith to be the official couple of FF7, neither Zack nor Tifa would exist. They would not spend so much time developing Zack and Tifa into the multi-dimensional characters they are, only to be treated as nothing more than collateral damage in the wake of Cloud and Aerith’s great love. No, this is a Final Fantasy. SE want their main characters to have something of a happy ending after all of the tribulations they face. Cloud and Tifa find theirs in life. Zack and Aerith, as the ending of AC suggests, find theirs in death.

Cloud and Aerith’s relationship isn’t a threat to the Zack/Aerith and Cloud/Tifa endgame, nor is it a mere obstacle. Rather, it’s a relationship that actually deepens and strengthens the other two. Aerith is explicitly searching for her first love in Cloud, revealing just how deep her feelings for Zack ran. Cloud gets to live out his heroic SOLDIER fantasy with Aerith, a fantasy he created just to impress Tifa.

There are moments between Cloud and Aerith that may seem romantic when taken on its own, but viewed within the context of the whole narrative, ultimately reveal that they aren’t quite right for each other, and in each other, they’re actually searching for someone else.

This quadrangular dynamic reminds me a bit of one of my favorite classic films, The Philadelphia Story. (Spoilers for a film that came out in 1940 ahead) — The single most romantic scene in the film is between Jimmy Stewart’s and Katherine Hepburn’s characters, yet they’re not the ones who end up together. Even as their passions run, as the music swells, and we want them to end up together, we realize that they’re not quite right for each other. We know that it won’t work out.

More relevantly, we know this is true due to the existence of Cary Grant’s and Ruth Hussey’s characters, who are shown to carry a torch for Hepburn and Stewart, respectively. Grant and Hussey are well-developed and sympathetic characters. With the film being the top grossing film of the year, and made during the Code era, it’s about as “clean” of a narrative as you can get. There’s no way Grant and Hussey would be given such prominent roles just to be left heartbroken and in the cold by the film’s end.

Hepburn’s character (Tracy) pretty much sums it herself after some hijinks lead to a last minute proposal from Stewart’s character (Mike):

Mike: Will you marry me, Tracy?                      

Tracy: No, Mike. Thanks, but hmm-mm. Nope.

Mike: l've never asked a girl to marry me. l've avoided it. But you've got me all confused now. Why not?

Tracy: Because l don't think Liz [Hussey’s character] would like it...and l'm not sure you would...and l'm even a little doubtful about myself. But l am beholden to you, Mike. l'm most beholden.

Despite the fact that the film spends more time developing Hepburn and Stewart’s relationship than theirs with their endgame partners, it’s still such a satisfying ending. That’s because, even at the peak of their romance, we can see how Stewart needs someone like Hussey to ground his passionate impulses, and how Hepburn needs Grant, someone who won’t put her on a pedestal like everyone else. Hepburn and Stewart’s is a relationship that might feel right in the moment, but doesn’t quite work in the light of day.

I don’t think Cloud and Aerith share a moment that is nearly as romantic in FF7, but the same principle applies. What may seem romantic in the moment actually reveals how they’re right for someone else.

Even if Aerith lives and Cloud decides to pursue a relationship with her, it’s not going to be all puppies and roses ahead for them. Aerith would need to disentangle her feelings for Zack from her attraction to Cloud, and Cloud would still need to confront his feelings for Tifa, which were his main motivator for nearly half his life, before they can even start to build something real. This is messy work, good fodder for a prestige cable drama or an Oscar-baity indie film, but it has no place in a Final Fantasy. There simply isn’t the time. Not when the question on most players’ minds isn’t ‘Cloud does love?’ but ‘How the hell are they going to stop that madman and his Meteor that’s about to destroy the world?’

With Zerith’s depiction in Crisis Core, there’s a sort of bittersweet poetry in how the two relationships rhyme but can’t actually coexist. It is only because Zack is trying to return to Midgar to see Aerith that Cloud is able to reunite with Tifa, and the OG begins in earnest. In another world, Zack and Aerith would be the hero and heroine who saved the world and lived to tell the tale. They are much more the traditional archetypes - Zack the super-powered warrior who wants to be a Capital-H Hero, and Aerith, the last of her kind who reluctantly accepts her fate. Compared to these two, Cloud and Tifa aren’t nearly so special, nor their goals so lofty and noble. Cloud, after all, was too weak to even get into SOLDIER, and only wanted to be one, not for some greater good, but to impress the girl he liked. Tifa has no special abilities, merely learning martial arts when she grew wise enough to not wait around for a hero. On the surface, Cloud and Tifa are made of frailer stuff, and yet by luck or by fate, they’re the ones who cheat death time and time again, and manage to save the world, whereas the ones who should have the role, are prematurely struck down before they can finish the job. Cloud and Tifa fulfill the roles that they never asked for, that they may not be particularly suited for, in Zack and Aerith’s stead. There’s a burden and a beauty to it. Cloud and Tifa can live because Zack and Aerith did not.

All of this nuance is lost if you think Cloud and Aerith are meant to be the endgame couple. Instead, you have a pair succumbing to their basest desires, regardless of the selfless sacrifices their other potential paramours made for their sake. Zack and Tifa, and their respective relationships with Aerith and Cloud, are flattened into mere romantic obstacles. The heart wants what it wants, some may argue. While that may be true in real life, that is not necessarily the case in a work of fiction, especially not a Final Fantasy. The other canon Final Fantasy couples could certainly have had previous romantic relationships, but unless they have direct relevance to the their character arcs (e.g., Rachel to Locke), the games do not draw attention to them because they would be a distraction from the romance they are trying to tell. They’ve certainly never spent the amount of real estate FF7 spends in depicting Cloud/Tifa and Zack/Aerith’s relationships.

At last…the Remake, and somehow this essay isn’t even close to being over

Finally, we come to the Remake. With the technological advancements made in the last 23 years and the sheer amount of hours they’re devoting to just the Midgar section this time around, you can almost look at the OG as an outline and the Remake as the final draft. With the OG being overly reliant on text to  do its storytelling, and the Remake having subtle facial expressions and a slew of cinematic techniques at its disposal, you might almost consider it an adaptation from a literary medium to a visual one. Our discussions are no longer limited to just what the characters are saying, but what they are doing, and even more importantly, how the game presents those actions. When does the game want us to pay attention? And what does it want us to pay attention to?

Unlike most outlines, which are read by a small handful of execs, SE has 23 years worth of reactions from the general public to gauge what works and what doesn’t work, what caused confusion, and what could be clarified. While FF7 is not a romance, the LTD remains a hot topic among a small but vocal part of the fanbase. It certainly is an area that could do with some clarifying in the Remake.

Since the Remake is not telling a new story, but rather retelling an existing story that has been in the public consciousness for over two decades, certain aspects that were treated as “twists” in the OG no longer have that same element of surprise, and would need to approached differently. For example, in the Midgar section of the OG, Shinra is treated as the main antagonist throughout. It’s only when we get to the top of the Shinra tower that Sephiroth is revealed as the real villain. Anyone with even a passing of knowledge of FF7 would be aware of Sephiroth so trying to play it off like a surprise in the Remake would be terribly anticlimactic. Thus, Sephiroth appears as early as Ch. 2 to haunt Cloud and the player throughout.

Likewise, many players who’ve never even touched the OG are probably aware that Aerith dies, thus her death can no longer be played for shock. While SE would still want the player to grow attached to Aerith so that her death has an emotional impact, there are diminishing returns to misdirecting the player about her fate, at least not in the same way it was done in the OG.

How do these considerations affect the how the LTD is depicted in the Remake? For the two of the biggest twists in the OG to land in the Remake — Aerith’s death and Cloud’s true identity in the Lifestream — the game needs to establish:

Aerith’s attraction to Cloud, specifically due to his similarities to Zack. This never needs to go past an initial attraction for the player to understand that the man whose memory Cloud was “borrowing” is Zack. Aerith’s feelings for Cloud can evolve into something platonic or even maternal by her end without the reveal in the Lifestream losing any impact.

Cloud’s love for Tifa. For the Lifestream sequence to land with an “Ooooh!” rather than a “Huh!?!?”, the Remake will need to establish that Cloud’s feelings for Tifa were strong enough to 1) motivate him to try to join SOLDIER in the first place 2) incentivize him to adopt a false persona because he fears that he isn’t the man she wants him to be 3) call him back to consciousness from Make poisoning twice 4) help him put his mind back together and find his true self. That’s a lot of story riding on one guy’s feelings!

The player’s love for Aerith so that her death will hurt. This can be done by making them invested in Aerith as a character by her own right, but also extends to the relationships she has with the other characters (not only Cloud).

What is not necessary is establishing Cloud’s romantic feelings for Aerith. Now, would their doomed romance make her death hurt even more? Sure, but it could work just as well if Cloud if is losing a dear friend and ally, not a lover. Not to mention, her death also cuts short her relationships with Tifa, Barret, Red XII, etc. Bulking those relationships up prior to her death, would also make her loss more palpable. If anything, establishing Cloud’s romantic feelings for Aerith would actually undermine the game’s other big twist. The game needs you to believe that Cloud’s feelings for Tifa were strong enough to drive his entire hero’s journey. If Cloud is shown falling in love with another woman in the span of weeks if not mere days, then the Lifestream scene would be much harder to swallow.

Cloud wavering between the two women made sense in the OG because the main way for the player to get to know Aerith was through her interactions with Cloud. That is no longer the case in the Remake. Cloud is still the protagonist, and the player character for the vast majority of the game, but there are natural ways for the player to get to know Aerith outside of her dialogue exchanges with Cloud. Unless SE considers the LTD an integral part of FF7’s DNA, then for the sake of story clarity, the LTD doesn’t need to exist.

How then does the Remake clarify things?

I’m not going go through every single change in the Remake — there are far too many of them, and they’ve been documented elsewhere. Most of the changes are expansions or adaptations (what might make sense for super-deformed chibis would look silly for realistic characters, e.g., Cloud rolling barrels in the Church has now become him climbing across the roof support). What is expanded and how it’s adapted can be telling, but what is more interesting are the additions and removals. Not just for what takes place in the scenes themselves, but how their addition or removal changes our understanding of the narrative as a whole vis-a-vis the story we know from the OG.

Notably, one of the features that is not expanded upon, but rather diminished, is player choice. In the OG, the player had a slew of dialogue options to choose from, especially during the Midgar portion of the game. Not only did it determine which character would go on a date with Cloud at the Gold Saucer, but it also made the player identify with Cloud since they’re largely determining his personality during this stage. Despite the technological advances that have made this level of optionality the norm in AAA games, the Remake gives the player far fewer non-gameplay related choices, and only really the illusion of choice as a nod to the OG, but they don’t affect the story of the game in any meaningful way. You get a slightly different conversation depending on the choice, but you have to buy the Flower, Tifa has to make you a drink.

So much of what fueled the LTD in the OG came from this mechanic, which is now largely absent in the Remake. Almost every instance where there was a dialogue branch in the OG has become a single, canon scenario in the Remake that favors Tifa (e.g., having the choice of giving the flower to Tifa or Marlene in the OG, to Cloud giving the flower to Tifa in the Remake). Similarly, for the only meaningful choice you make in the Remake — picking Tifa or Aerith in the sewers — Cloud is now equidistant to both girls, whereas in the OG, his starting point was much closer to Aerith. In the OG, player choice allowed you to largely determine Cloud’s personality, and the girl he favored — and seemingly encouraged you to choose Aerith in many instances. In the Remake, Cloud is now his own character, not who the player wants him to be. And this Cloud, well, he sure seems to have a thing for Tifa.

In fact, one of the first changes in the Remake is the addition of Jessie asking Cloud about his relationship with Tifa, and Cloud’s brief flashback to their childhood together. In the OG, Tifa isn’t mentioned at all during the first reactor mission, and we don’t see her until we get to Sector 7.

Not only does this scene reveal Tifa’s importance to Cloud much earlier on than in the OG, but it sets up a sort of frame of reference that colors Cloud’s subsequent interactions. Even as Jessie kind of flirts with him throughout the reactor mission, even with his chance meeting Aerith in Sector 8, in the back of your mind, you might be thinking — wait what about his relationship with this Tifa character? What if he’s already spoken for?

Think about how this plays out in the OG. Jessie is pretty much a non-entity, and Cloud has his meet-cute with the flower girl before we’re even aware that Tifa exists. It’s hard to get too invested in his interactions with Tifa, when you know he has to meet the flower girl again, and you’re waiting for that moment, because that’s when the game will start in earnest.

After chapter 1 of the Remake, a new player may be asking — who is this Tifa person, and, echoing Jessie’s question, what kind of relationship does she have with Cloud? It’s a question that’s repeated when Barret mentions her before they set the bomb, and again when Barret specifies Seventh Heaven is where Tifa works — and the game zooms in on Cloud’s face — when they arrive in Sector 7.

It’s when we finally meet her at Seventh Heaven in Ch. 3 that we feel, ah now, this game has finally begun.

It’s also interesting how inorganically this question is introduced in the Remake. Up until that moment, the dialogue and Cloud are all business. Then, as they’re waiting for the gate to open, Jessie asks about Tifa completely out of the blue, and Cloud, all of a sudden, is at a lost for words, and has the first of many flashbacks. That this moment is a bit incongruous shows the effort SE made to establish Tifa’s importance to the game and to Cloud early on.

One of the biggest changes in the Remake is the addition of the events in Ch. 3 and 4. Unlike what happens in Ch. 18, Ch. 3 and 4 feel like such a natural extension of the OG’s story that many players may not even realize that SE has added an whole day’s and night’s worth of events to the OG’s story. While not a drastic change, it does reshape our understanding of subsequent events in the story, namely Cloud’s time spent alone with Aerith.

In the OG, we rush from one reactor mission to the next, with no real time to explore Cloud’s character or his relationships with any of the other characters in between. When he crashes through the church, he gets a bit of a breather. We see a different side of him with Aerith. Since we have nothing else to compare it to, many might assume that his relationship with Aerith is special. That she brings something out of him that no one else can.

That is no longer the case in the Remake. While Cloud’s time in Sector 5 with Aerith remains largely unchanged though greatly expanded, it no longer feels  “special.” So many of the beats that seemed exclusive to his relationship with Aerith in the OG, we’ve now already seen play out with both Tifa and the other members of AVALANCHE long before he meets Aerith.

Cloud tells the flowers to listen to Aerith; he’s told Tifa he’s listening if she wants to talk; told Bigg’s he wants to hear the story of Jessie’s dad. Cloud offers to walk Aerith back home; he offered the same to Wedge. Cloud smiles at Aerith; he’s already smiled at Tifa and AVALANCHE a number of times.

Now, I’m under no illusion that SE added these chapters solely to diminish Aerith’s importance to Cloud (other than the obvious goal of making the game longer, I imagine they wanted the player to spend more time in Sector 7 and more time with the other AVALANCHE members so that the collapse of the Pillar and their deaths have more weight), but they certainly must have realized that this would be one effect. If pushing Cloud/Aerith’s romance had been a goal with the Remake, this would be a scenario they would try to avoid. Notably, the other place where time has been added - the night in the Underground Shinra Lab, and the day helping other people out around the slums — are also periods of time when Aerith is absent.

Home Sweet Slums vs. Budding Bodyguard

Since most of the events in Ch. 3 were invented for the Remake, and thus we have nothing in the OG to compare it to (except to say that something is probably better than nothing), I thought it would be more interesting to compare it to Ch. 8. Structurally, they are nearly identical — Cloud doing sidequests around the Sectors with one of the girls as his guide. Extra bits of dialogue the more sidequests you complete, with an optional story event if you do them all. Do Cloud’s relationships with each girl progress the same way in both chapters? Is the Remake just Final Waifu Simulator 2020 or are they distinct, reflecting their respective roles in the story as a whole?

A lot of what the player takes away from these chapters is going to be pretty subjective (Is he annoyed with her or is he playing hard to get), yet the vibes of the two chapters are quite different. This is because in Ch. 3, the player is getting to know Tifa through her relationship with Cloud; in Ch. 8; the player is getting to know Aerith as a character on her own.

What do I mean by this? Let’s take Cloud’s initial introduction into each Sector. In Ch. 3, it’s a straight shot from Seventh Heaven to Stargazer Heights punctuated by a brief conversation where Tifa asks Cloud about the mission he was just on. We don’t learn anything new about Tifa’s character here. Instead we hear Cloud recount the mission we already saw play out in detail in Ch. 1 But it’s through this conversation that we get a glimpse of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship — unlike the reticent jerk he was with Avalanche, this Cloud is much more responsive and even tries to reassure her in his own stilted way. We also know that they have enough of a past together that Tifa can categorize him as “not a people person” — an assessment to which Cloud agrees. Slowly, we’re getting an answer to the question Jessie posed in Ch. 1 — just what kind of relationship does Cloud have with Tifa?

In Ch. 8, Aerith leads Cloud on a roundabout way through Sector 5, and stops, unprompted, to talk about her experiences helping at the restaurant, helping out the doctor, and helping with the orphans at the Leaf House. It’s not so much a conversation as a monologue. Cloud isn’t the one who inquires about these relationships, and more jarringly, he doesn’t respond until Aerith directly asks him a question (interestingly enough, it’s about the flower she gave him…which he then gave to Tifa). Here, the game is allowing the player to learn more about the kind of person Aerith is. Cloud is also learning about Aerith at the same time, but with his non-reaction, either the game itself is indifferent to Cloud’s feelings towards Aerith or it is deliberately trying to portray Cloud’s indifference to Aerith.

The optional story event you can see in each chapter after completing all the side quests is also telling. In Ch. 3, “Alone at Last” is almost explicitly about Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. It’s bookended by two brief scenes between Marle and Cloud — the first in which she lectures him about how he should treat Tifa almost like an overprotective in-law, the second after they return downstairs and Marle awards Cloud with an accessory “imbued with the fervent desire to be by one’s side for eternity” after he makes Tifa smile. In between, Cloud and Tifa chat alone in her room. Tifa finally gets a chance to ask Cloud about his past and they plan a little date to celebrate their reunion. There is also at least the suggestion that Cloud was expecting something else when Tifa asked him to her room.

In Ch. 8’s “The Language of Flowers,” Cloud and Aerith’s relationship is certainly part of the story — unlike earlier in the chapter, Cloud actually asks Aerith about what she’s doing and even supports her by talking to the flowers too, but the other main objective of this much briefer scene is to show Aerith’s relationship with the flowers and of her mysterious Cetra powers (though we don’t know about her ancestry just yet). Like a lot of Aerith’s dialogue, there’s a lot of foreshadowing and foreboding in her words. If anything, it’s almost as if Cloud is playing the Marle role to the flowers, as an audience surrogate to ask Aerith about her relationship with the flowers so that she can explain. Also, there’s no in-game reward that suggests what the scene was really about.

If there’s any confusion about what’s going on here, just compare their titles “Alone At Last” vs. “The Language of Flowers.”

I’ll try not to bring my personal feelings into this, but there’s just something so much more satisfying about the construction of Ch. 3. This is some real storytelling 101 shit, but I think a lot of it due to just how much set up and payoff there is, and how almost all of said payoff deepens our understanding of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship:

Marle: Cloud meets Tifa’s overprotective landlady towards the beginning of the chapter. She is dubious of his character and his relationship with TIfa. This impression does not change the second time they meet even though Tifa herself is there to mediate. It’s only towards the end of the chapter, after all the sidequests are complete, that this tension is resolved. Marle gives Cloud a lecture about how he should be treating Tifa, which he seems to take to heart. And Cloud finally earns Marle’s begrudging approval after he emerges from their rooms with a chipper-looking Tifa in tow.

Their past: For their first in-game interaction, Cloud casually brings up that fact that it’s been “Five years” since they’ve last, which seem to throw Tifa off a bit. As they’re replacing filters, Cloud asks Tifa what she’s been up to in the time since they’ve been apart, and Tifa quickly changes the subject. Tifa tries to ask Cloud about his life “after he left the village,” at the Neighborhood Watch HQ, and this time he’s the one who seems to be avoiding the subject. It’s only after all the Ch. 3 sidequests are complete, and they're alone in her room that Tifa finally gets the chance to ask her question. A question which Cloud still doesn’t entirely answer. This question remains unresolved, and anyone’s played the OG will know that it will remain unresolved for some time yet, as it is THE question of Cloud’s story as a whole.

The lessons: Tifa starts spouting off some lessons for life in the slums as she brings Cloud around the town, though it’s unclear if Cloud is paying attention or taking them to heart. After completing the first sidequest, Cloud repeats one of these sayings back to her, confirming that he’s been listening all along. By the end of the chapter, Cloud is repeating these lessons to himself, even when Tifa isn’t around. These lessons extend beyond this chapter, with Cloud being a real teacher’s pet, asking Tifa “Is this a lesson” in Ch. 10 once they reunite.

The drink: When Cloud first arrives at Seventh Heaven, Tifa plays hostess and asks him if he wants anything, but it seems he’s only interested in his money. After exploring the sector a bit, Tifa again tries to play the role of cheery bartender, offering to make him a cocktail at the bar, but Cloud sees through this facade, and they carry on. Finally, after the day’s work is done, to tide Cloud over while she’s meeting with AVALANCHE, Tifa finally gets the chance to make him a drink. No matter, which dialogue option the player chooses, Tifa and Cloud fall into the roles of flirty bartender and patron quite easily. Who would have thought this was possible from the guy we met in Ch. 1?

This dynamic is largely absent in Ch. 8, except perhaps exploring Aerith’s relationship with the flowers, which “pays off” in the “Language of Flowers” event, but again, that scene is primarily about Aerith’s character rather than her relationship with Cloud. The orphans and the Leaf House are a throughline of the chapter, but they are merely present. There’s no clear progression here as was the case with in Ch. 3. Sure, the kids admire Cloud quite a bit after he saves them, but it’s not like they were dubious of his presence before. They barely paid attention to him. In terms of the impact the kids have on Cloud’s relationship with Aerith, there isn’t much at all. Certainly nothing like the role Marle plays in developing his relationship with Tifa.

The thing is, there are plenty of moments that could have been set ups, only there’s no real follow through. Aerith introduces Cloud around town as her bodyguard, and some people like the Doctor express dubiousness of his ability to do the job, but even after we spend a whole day fighting off monsters, and defeating Rude, there’s no payoff. Not even a throwaway “Wow, great job bodyguarding” comment. Same with the whole “one date” reward. Other than a quick reference on the way to Sector 5, and Aerith threatening to reveal the deal to cajole Cloud into helping her gather flowers, it’s never brought up again, in this chapter, or the rest of the game.

Aerith also makes a big stink about Cloud taking the time to enjoy Elmyra’s cooking. This is after Cloud is excluded from AVALANCHE’s celebration in Seventh Heaven and after he misses out on Jessie’s mom’s “Midgar Special” with Biggs and Wedge. So this could have been have been the set up to Cloud finally getting to experience a nice, domestic moment where he feels like he’s part of a family. And this dinner does happen! Only…the Remake skips over it entirely. Which is quite a strange choice considering that almost every other waking moment of Cloud’s time in Midgar has been depicted in excruciating detail. SE has decided that either whatever happened in this dinner between these three characters is irrelevant to the story they’re trying to tell, or they’ve deliberately excluded this scene from the game so that the player wouldn’t get any wrong ideas from it (e.g., that Cloud is starting to feel at home with Aerith).

Speaking of home, the Odd Jobs in Ch. 3 feel a bit more meaningful outside of just the gameplay-related rewards because they’re a way for Cloud to improve his reputation as he considers building a life for himself in Sector 7. This intent is implicit as Tifa imparts upon him the life lessons for surviving the slums, and then explicit, when Tifa asks him if he’s going to “stick around a little longer” outside of Seventh Heaven and he answers maybe. (It is later confirmed when Cloud and Tifa converse in his room in Ch. 4 after he remembers their promise).

Despite Aerith’s endeavors to extend their time together, there’s no indication that Cloud is planning to put down roots in Sector 5, or even return. Not even after doing all the Odd Jobs. If anything, it’s just the opposite — after 3 Odd Jobs, Aerith, kind of jokingly tells Cloud “don’t think you can rely on me forever.” This is a line that has a deeper meaning for anyone who knows Aerith’s fate in the OG, but Cloud seems totally fine with the outcome. Similarly, at the end of the Chapter 8, Elmyra asks Cloud to leave and never speak to Aerith again — a request to which he readily agrees.

Adding to the different vibes of the Chapters are the musical themes that play in the background. In Ch. 3, it’s the “Main Theme of VII”, followed by “On Our Way” — two tracks that instantly recall the OG. While the Main Theme is a bit melancholy, it's also familiar. It feels like home. In Ch. 8, we have an instrumental version of ‘Hollow’ - the new theme written for the Remake. While, it’s a lovely piece, it’s unfamiliar and honestly as a bit anxiety inducing (as is the intent).

(A quick aside to address the argument that this proves ‘Hollow’ is about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith:

Which of course doesn’t make any damn sense because he hasn’t even lost Aerith at this point the story. Even if you want to argue that there is so timey-wimey stuff going on and the whole purpose of the Remake is to rewrite the timeline so that Cloud doesn’t lose Aerith around — shouldn’t there be evidence of this desire outside of just the background music? Perhaps, in Cloud’s actions during the Chapter which the song plays — shouldn’t he dread being parted from her, shouldn’t he be the one trying to extend their time together? Instead, he’s willing to let her go quite easily.

The more likely explanation as to why “Hollow” plays in Ch. 8 is that since the “Main Theme of FFVII”  already plays in Ch. 3, the other “main theme” written for the Remake is going to play in the other chapter with a pseudo-open world vibe. If you’re going to say “Hollow” is about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith then you’d have to accept that the Main Theme of the entire series is about Cloud’s feelings for Tifa, which would actually make a bit more sense given that is practically Cloud’s entire character arc.)

Both chapters contain a scripted battle that must be completed before the chapter can end. They both contain a shot where Cloud fights side by side with each of the girls.

Here, Cloud and Tifa are both in focus during the entirety of this shot.

Here, the focus pulls away from Cloud the moment Aerith enters the frame.

I doubt the developers expected most players to notice this particular technique, but it reflects the subtle differences in the way these two relationships are portrayed. By the end of Ch. 3, Cloud and Tifa are acting as one unit. By the end of Ch. 8, even when they’re together, Cloud and Aerith are still apart.

A brief (lol) overview of some meaningful changes from the OG

One of the most significant changes in the Sector 7 chapters is how The Promise flashback is depicted. In the OG, Tifa is the one who has to remind Cloud of the Promise, in a rather pushy way, and whether Cloud chooses to join the next mission to fulfill his promise to her or because Barret is giving him a raise feels a bit more ambiguous.

In the Remake, the Promise has it’s own little mini-arc. It’s first brought up at the end of Ch. 3 when Cloud talks to Tifa about her anxieties about the upcoming mission. Tifa subtly references the Promise by mentioning that she’s “in a pitch” — a reference that goes over Cloud’s head. It’s only in Ch. 4, in the middle of a mission with Biggs and Wedge, where Tifa is no where in sight, that a random building fan reminds him of the Nibelheim water tower and the Promise he made to Tifa there. There’s also another brief flashback to that earlier moment in the bar when Tifa mentions she’s in a “pinch.” Again, the placement of this particular flashback at this particular moment feels almost jarring. And the flashback to the scene in the bar — a flashback to a scene we’ve already seen play out in-game — is the only one of its kind in the Remake. SE went out of the way to show that this particular moment is very important to Cloud and the game as whole. It’s when Cloud returns to his room, and Tifa asks him if he’s planning to stay in Midgar, that this mini-arc is finally complete. He brings up the Promise on his own, and makes it explicit that the reason he’s staying is for her. It’s to fulfill his Promise to her, not for money or for AVALANCHE — at this point, he’s not even supposed to be going on the next mission.

The Reactor 5 chapters are greatly expanded, but there aren’t really any substantive changes other than the addition of the rather intimate train roll scene between and Cloud and Tifa, which adds nothing to the story except to establish how horny they are for each other. We know this is the case, of course, because if you go out of your way to make Cloud look like an incompetent idiot and let the timer run out, you can avoid this scene altogether. But even in that alternate scene, Cloud’s concern for Tifa is crystal clear.

Ch. 8 also plays out quite similarly to the OG for the most part, though Cloud’s banter with Aerith on the rooftops doesn’t feel all that special since we’ve already seen him do the same with Tifa, Barret and the rest of AVALANCHE. The rooftops is the first place Cloud laughs in the OG. In the Remake, while Cloud might not have straight out laughed before, he’s certainly smiled quite a bit in the preceding chapters. Also, with the addition of voice acting and realistic facial expressions, that “laughter” in the Remake comes off much more sarcastic than genuine.

It’s also notable that in the Remake, Cloud vocally protests almost every time Aerith tries to extend their time together. In the OG, Cloud says nothing in these moments, which the player could reasonably interpret as assent.

One major change in the Remake is how Aerith learns of Tifa’s existence. In the OG, Cloud mentions that he wants to go back to Tifa’s bar, prompting Aerith to ask him about his relationship with her. In the Remake, Cloud calls Tifa’s name after having a random flashback of Child Tifa as he’s walking along with some kids. Again the insertion of said flashback is a bit jarring, prompting Aerith to understandably ask Cloud about just who this Tifa is. In the OG, this exchange served to show Aerith’s jealousy and her interest in Cloud. In the Remake, it’s all about Cloud’s feelings for Tifa and his inability to articulate them. As for Aerith, I suppose you can still read her reaction as jealous, though simple curiosity is a perfectly reasonable way to read it too. It plays out quite similarly to Aerith asking Cloud about who he gave the flower to. Her follow ups seem indicate that she’s merely curious about who this recipient might be rather than showing that she’s upset/jealous of the fact that said person exists.

For the collapsed tunnel segment, the Remake adds the recurring bit of Aerith and Cloud trying to successfully complete a high-five. While this is certainly a way to show them getting closer, it’s about least intimate way that SE could have done so. Just think about the alternatives — you could have Cloud and Aerith sharing brief tidbits of their lives after each mechanical arm, you could have them trying to reach for each other’s hand. Instead, SE chose an action that is we’ve seen performed between a number of different platonic buddies, and an action that Aerith immediately performs with Tifa upon meeting her. Not to mention, even while they are technically getting closer, Cloud still rejects (or at least tries to) Aerith’s invitations to extend their time together twice — at the fire and at the playground.

One aspect from these two Chapters that does has plenty of set up and a satisfying payoff is Aerith’s interest in Cloud’s SOLDIER background. You have the weirdness of Aerith already knowing that Cloud was in SOLDIER without him mentioning it first, followed by Elmyra’s antipathy towards SOLDIERs in general, not to mention Aerith actively fishing for information about Cloud’s time in SOLDIER. (For players who’ve played Crisis Core, the reason for her behavior is even more obvious, with her “one date” gesture mirroring Zack’s, and her line to Cloud in front of the tunnel a near duplicate of what she says to Zack — at least in the original Japanese).

Finally, at the playground, it’s revealed that the reason for all this weirdness is because Aerith’s first love was also a SOLDIER who was the same rank as Cloud. Unlike in the OG, Cloud does not exhibit any potential jealousy by asking about the nature of her relationship, and Aerith doesn’t try to play it off by dismissing the seriousness. In fact, with the emotional nuance we can now see on her face, we can understand the depth of her feelings even if she cannot articulate them.

This is the first scene in the Remake where Cloud and Aerith have a genuine conversation. Thus, finally, Cloud expresses some hesitation before he leaves her — and as far as he knows, this could be the last time they see each other. You can interpret this hesitation as romantic longing or it could just as easily be Cloud being a bit sad to part from a new friend. Regardless, it’s notable that scene is preceded by one where Aerith is talking about her first love who she clearly isn’t over, and followed by a scene where Cloud sprints across the screen, without a backwards glance at Aerith, after seeing a glimpse of Tifa through a tiny window in a Chocobo cart that’s about a hundred yards away.

The Wall Market segment in the Remake is quite explicitly about Cloud’s desire to save Tifa. In the OG, Aerith has no trouble getting into Corneo’s mansion on her own, so I can see how someone could misinterpret Cloud going through all the effort to dress as a woman to protect Aerith from the Don’s wiles (though of course, you would need to ask, why they trying to infiltrate the mansion in the first place?). In the Remake, Cloud has to go through herculean efforts to even get Aerith in front of the Don. Everyone who is aware of Cloud’s cause, from Sam to Leslie to Johnny to Andrea to Aerith herself, comments on how hard he’s working to save Tifa and how important she must be to him for him to do so. In case there’s any confusion, the Remake also includes a scene where Cloud is prepared to bust into the mansion on his own, leaving Aerith to fend for herself, after Johnny comes with news that Tifa is in trouble.

Both Cloud and Aerith get big dress reveals in the Remake. If you get Aerith’s best dress, Cloud’s reaction can certainly be read as one of attraction, but since the game continues on the same regardless of which dress you get, it’s not meant to mark a shift in Cloud and Aerith’s relationship. Rather, it’s a reward for the player for completing however many side quests in Ch. 8, especially since the Remake incentives the player to get every dress and thus see all of Cloud’s reactions by making it a Trophy and including it in the play log.

A significant and very welcome change from the OG to the Remake is Tifa and Aerith’s relationship dynamic. In the OG, the girls’ first meeting in Corneo’s mansion starts with them fighting over Cloud (by pretending not to fight over Cloud). In the Remake, the sequence of events is reversed so that it starts off with Cloud’s reunion with Tifa (again emphasizing that the whole purpose of the infiltration is because Cloud wants to save Tifa). Then when Aerith wakes, she’s absolutely thrilled to make Tifa’s acquaintance, hardly acknowledging Cloud at all. Tifa is understandably more wary at first, but once they start working together, they become fast friends.

Also interesting is that from the moment Aerith and Tifa meet, almost every instance where Cloud could be shown worrying about Aerith or trying to comfort Aerith is given to Tifa instead. In the OG, it’s Cloud who frets about Aerith getting involved in the plot to question the Don, and regrets getting her mixed up in everything once they land in the sewers. In the Remake, those very same reservations are expressed by Tifa instead. Tifa is the one who saves Aerith when the platform collapses in the sewer. Tifa is the one who emotionally comforts Aerith after they’re separated in the train graveyard. (Cloud might be the one who physically saves her, but he doesn’t even so much give her a second glance to check on her well-being before he runs off to face Eligor. He leaves that job for Tifa). It almost feels like the Remake is going out of its way to avoid any moments between Cloud and Aerith that could be interpreted as romantic. In fact, after Corneo’s mansion, unless you get Aerith’s resolution, there are almost no one-on-one interactions at all between Cloud and Aerith. Such is not the case with Cloud and Tifa. In fact, right after defeating Abzu in the sewers, Cloud runs after Tifa, and asks her if what she’s saying is one of those slum lessons — continuing right where they left off.

Ch. 11 feels like a wink-wink nudge-nudge way to acknowledge the LTD. You have the infamous shot of the two girls on each of Cloud’s arms, and two scenes where Cloud appears as if he’s unable to choose between them when he asks them if they’re okay. Of course, in this same Chapter, you have a scene during the boss fight with the Phantom where Cloud actually pulls Tifa away from Aerith, leaving Aerith to defend herself, for an extended sequence where he tries to keep Tifa safe. This is not something SE would include if their intention is to keep Cloud’s romantic interest ambiguous or if Aerith is meant to be the one he loves. Of course, Ch. 11 is not the first we see of this trio’s dynamic. We start with Ch. 10, which is all about Aerith and Tifa’s friendship. Ch. 11 is a nod to the LTD dynamic in the OG, but it’s just that, a nod, not an indication the Remake is following the same path. Halfway through Ch. 11, the dynamic completely disappears.

Ch. 12 changes things up a bit from the OG. Instead of Cloud and Tifa ascending the pillar together, Cloud goes up first. Seemingly just so that we can have the dramatic slow-mo handgrab scene between the two of them when Tifa decides to run after Cloud — right after Aerith tells her to follow her heart.

The Remake also shows us what happens when Aerith goes to find Marlene at Seventh Heaven — including the moment when Aerith sees the flower she gave Cloud by the bar register, and Aerith is finally able to connect the dots. After seeing Cloud be so cagey about who he gave the flower to, and weird about his relationship with Tifa, and after seeing how Cloud and Tifa act around each other. It finally makes sense. She’s figured it out before they have. It’s a beautiful payoff to all that set up. Any other interpretation of Aerith’s reaction doesn’t make a lick of sense, because if it’s to indict she’s jealous of Tifa, where is all the set up for that? Why did the Remake eliminate all the moments from the OG where she had been noticeably jealous before? Without this, that interpretation makes about as much sense as someone arguing Aerith is smiling because she’s thinking about a great sandwich she had the night before. In case anyone is confused, the scene is preceded by a moment where Aerith tells Tifa to follow her heart before she goes after Cloud, and followed by the moment where Cloud catches Tifa via slow-motion handgrab.

On the pillar itself, there are so many added moments of Cloud showing his concern for Tifa’s physical and emotional well-being. Even when they find Jessie, as sad as Cloud is over Jessie’s death, the game actually spends more time showing us Cloud’s reaction to Tifa crying over Jessie’s death, and Cloud’s inability to comfort her. Since so much of this is physical rather than verbal, this couldn’t have effectively been shown in the OG with its technological limitations.

After the pillar collapses, we start off with a couple of other moments showing Cloud’s concern over Tifa — watching over her as she wakes, his dramatic fist clench while he watches Barret comfort Tifa in a way he cannot. There is also a subtle but important change in the dialogue. In the OG, Tifa is the one who tells Barret that Marlene is safe because she was with Aerith. Cloud is also on his way to Sector 5, but it’s for the explicit purpose of trying to save Aerith, which we know because Tifa asks. In the Remake, Tifa is too emotionally devastated to comfort Barret about Marlene. Cloud, trying to help in the only way he can, is now the one to tell Barret about Marlene. Leading them to Sector 5 is no longer about him trying to help Aerith, but about him reuniting Barret with his daughter. Again, another moment where Cloud shows concern about Aerith in the OG is eliminated from the Remake.

Rather than going straight from Aerith’s house to trying to figure out a way into the Shinra building to find Aerith, the group takes a detour to check out the ruins of Sector 7 and rescue Wedge from Shinra’s underground lab. It’s only upon seeing the evidence of Shinra’s inhumane experimentation firsthand that Cloud articulates to Elmyra the need to rescue Aerith. In the OG, they never sought out Elmyra’s permission, and Tifa explicitly asks to join Cloud on his quest. Rescuing Aerith is framed as primarily Cloud’s goal, Tifa and Barret are just along for the ride.

In the Remake, all three wait until Elymra gives them her blessing, and it’s framed (quite literally) as the group’s collective goal as opposed to just Cloud’s.

In the aptly named Ch. 14 resolutions, each marks the culmination of the character’s arc for the Part 1 of Remake. While their arcs are by no means complete, they do offer a nice preview of what their ultimate resolutions will be.

With the exception of Tifa’s, these resolutions are primarily about the character themselves. Their relationships with Cloud are secondary. Each resolution marks a change in the character themselves, but not necessarily a change in Cloud’s relationship with said character. Barret recommits to AVALANCHE’s mission and his role as a leader despite the deep personal costs. Aerith’s is full of foreshadowing as she accept her fate and impending death and decides to make the most of the time she has left. After trying to put aside her own feelings for the sake of others the whole time, Tifa finally allows herself to feel the full devastation of losing her home for the second time. Like her ultimate resolution in the Lifestream that we’ll see in about 25 years, Cloud is the only person she can share this sentiment with because he was the only person who was there.

Barret does not grow closer to Cloud through his resolution. Cloud has already proved himself to him by helping out on the pillar and reuniting him with Marlene. Barret resolution merely reveals that Barret is now comfortable enough with Cloud to share his past.

Similarly, Cloud starts off Aerith’s resolution with an intent to go rescue her, and ends with that intent still intact. Aerith is more open about her feelings here than before, it being a dream and all, but these feelings aren’t something that developed during this scene.

The only difference is during Tifa’s resolution. Cloud has been unable to emotionally comfort Tifa up until this point. It’s only when Tifa starts crying and rests her head upon his shoulder that he is able to make a change, to make a choice and hug her. Halfway through Tifa’s resolution, the scene shifts its focus to Cloud, his inaction and eventual action. Notably, the only time we have a close-up of any character during all three resolutions (I’ll define close-up here as a shot where a character’s face takes up half or more of the shot), are three shots of Cloud when he’s hugging/trying to hug Tifa. Tifa’s resolution is the only one where Cloud arcs.

What of the whole “You can’t fall in love with me” line in Aerith’s resolution? Why would SE include that if not to foreshadow Cloud falling in love with Aerith? Or indicate that he has already? Well, you can’t just take the dialogue on its own, you how to look at how these lines are framed. Notably, when she says “you can’t fall in love with me,” Aerith is framed at the center of the shot, and almost looks like she’s directly addressing the player. It’s as much a warning for the player as it is for Cloud, which makes sense if you know her fate in the OG.

This is followed directly by her saying “Even if you think you have…it’s not real.” In this shot, it’s back to a standard shot/reverse shot where she is the left third of the frame. She is addressing Cloud here, which, again if you’ve played the OG, is another bit of heavy foreshadowing. The reason Clould would think he might be in love with Aerith is because he’s falsely assuming of the memories of a man who did love Aerith — Zack.

For Cloud’s response (”Do I get a say in all this?”/ “That’s very one-sided” depending on the translation), rather than showing a shot of his face, the Remake shows him with his back turned.

Whatever Cloud’s feelings may be for Aerith, the game seems rather indifferent to them.

What is more telling is the choice to include a bit with Cloud getting jealous over a guy trying to give Tifa flowers in Barret’s resolution. Barret also mentions both Jessie and Aerith in their conversation, but nothing else gets such a reaction from Cloud.

It also should go without saying that if Aerith’s resolution is meant to establish Cloud and Aerith’s romance, there should have been plenty of set-up beforehand and plenty of follow-through afterward. That obviously is not the case, because again, the Remake has gone out of its way to avoid moments where Cloud’s actions towards Aerith could be interpreted romantically.

Case in point, at around this time in the OG, Marlene tells Cloud that she thinks Aerith likes him and the player has the option to have Cloud express his hope that she does. This scene is completely eliminated from the Remake and replaced with a much more appropriate scene of father-daughter affection between Marlene and Barret while Tifa and Cloud are standing together outside.

The method by which they get up the plate is completely different in the Remake. Leslie is the one who helps them this time around, and though his quest to reunite with his fiance directly parallels with the trio’s desire to save Aerith, Leslie himself draws a comparison to earlier when Cloud was trying to rescue Tifa. Finally, when Abzu is defeated again, it is Barret who draws the parallel of their search for Aerith to Leslie’s search for his fiance, making it crystal clear that saving Aerith is a group effort rather than only Cloud’s.

Speaking of Barret, in the OG, he seems to reassess his opinion of Cloud in the Shinra HQ stairs when he sees Cloud working so hard to save Aerith and realizes he might actually care about other people. In the Remake, that reevaluation occurs after you complete all the Ch. 14 sidequests and help a bunch of NPCs. Arguably, this moment occurs even earlier in the Remake for Barret, after the Airbuster, when he realizes that Cloud is more concerned for his and Tifa’s safety than his own.

Overall, the entire Aerith rescue feels so anticlimactic in the Remake. In the OG, Cloud gets his big hero moment in the Shinra Building. He’s the one who runs up to Aerith when the glass shatters and they finally reunite. In the Remake, it’s unclear what the emotional stakes are for Cloud here. At their big reunion, all we get from him is a “Yep.” In fact, when you look at how this scene plays out, Aerith is positioned equally between Cloud and Tifa at the moment of her rescue. Cloud’s answer is again with his back turned to the camera. It’s Tifa who gets her own shot with her response.

Another instance of the Remake being completely indifferent to Cloud’s feelings for Aerith, and actually priotizing Tifa’s relationship with Aerith instead.

It is also Tifa who runs to reunite with Aerith after the group of enemies is defeated. Another moment that could have easily been Cloud’s that the Remake gives to Tifa.

Also completely eliminated in the Remake, is the “I’m your bodyguard. / The deal was for one date” exchange in the jail cells. In the Remake, after Ch. 8, the date isn’t brought up again at all; “the bodyguard” reference only comes up briefly in Ch. 11 and then never again.

In the Remake, the jail scene is replaced by the scene in Aerith’s childhood room. Despite the fact that this is Aerith’s room, it is Tifa’s face that Cloud first sees when he wakes. What purpose does this moment serve other than to showcase Cloud and Tifa’s intimacy and the other characters’ tacit acknowledgment of said intimacy?

(This is the second time where Cloud wakes up and Tifa is the first thing he sees. The other was at Corneo’s mansion. He comes to three times in the Remake, but in Ch. 8, even though Aerith is right in front of him, we start off with a few seconds of Cloud gazing around the church before settling on the person in front of him. Again, while not something that most players would notice, this feels like a deliberate choice.)

Especially since this scene itself is all about Aerith. She begins a sad story about her past, and Cloud, rather than trying to comfort her in any way, asks her to give us some exposition about the Ancients. When the Whispers surround her, even though Cloud is literally right there, it's Tifa who pulls her out of it and comforts her. Another moment that could have been Cloud that was given to Tifa, and honestly, this one feels almost bizarre.

Throughout the entire Shinra HQ episode, Cloud and Aerith haven’t had a single moment alone to themselves. The Drums scenario is completely invented for the Remake. The devs could have contrived a way for Cloud and Aerith to have some one-on-one time here and work through the feelings they expressed during Aerith’s resolution if they wanted. Instead, with the mandatory party configurations during this stage - Cloud & Barret on one side; Tifa & Aerith on the others, with Cloud & Tifa being the respective team leaders communicating over PHS, the Remake minimizes the amount of interaction Cloud and Aerith have with each other in this chapter.

On the rooftop, before Cloud’s solo fight with Rufus, even though Cloud is ostensibly doing all this so that they can bring Aerith to safety, the Remake doesn’t include a single shot that focuses on Aerith’s face and her reaction to his actions. The game has decided, whatever Aerith’s feelings are in this moment, they’re irrelevant to the story they’re trying to tell. Instead we get shots focusing solely on Barret and Tifa. While the Remake couldn’t find any time to develop Cloud and Aerith’s relationship at the Shinra Tower (even though the OG certainly did), it did find time to add a new scene where Tifa saves Cloud from certain death, while referencing their Promise.

A lot of weird shit happens after this, but it’s pretty much all plot and no character. We do get one more moment where Cloud saves Tifa (and Tifa alone) from the Red Whisper even though Aerith is literally right next to her. The Remake isn’t playing coy at all about where Cloud’s preferences lie.

The party order for the Sephiroth battle varies depending on how you fought the Whispers. All the other character entrances (whoever the 3rd party member is, then the 4th and Red) are essentially the exact same shots, with the characters replaced. It’s the first character entrance (which can only be Aerith or  Tifa) that you have two distinct options.

If Aerith is first, the camera pans from Cloud over to Aerith. It then cuts back to Cloud’s reaction, in a separate shot, as Aerith walks to join him (offscreen). It’s only when the player regains control of the characters that Cloud and Aerith ever share the frame.

On the other hand, if Tifa is first, we see Tifa land from Cloud’s POV. Cloud then walks over to join Tifa and they immediately share a frame, facing Sephiroth together.

Again, this is not something SE would expect the player to notice the first or even second time around. Honestly, I doubt anyone would notice at all unless they watched all these variations back to back. That is telling in itself, that SE would go through all this effort (making these scenes unique rather than copy and pasting certainly takes more time and effort) to ensure that the depictions of Cloud’s relationships with these two women are distinct despite the fact that hardly anyone would notice. Even in the very last chapter of the game, they want us to see Cloud and Tifa as a pair and Cloud and Aerith as individuals.

Which isn’t to say that Aerith is being neglected in the Remake. Quite the opposite, in fact, when she has essentially become the main protagonist and the group’s spirtual leader in Ch. 18. Rather, her relationship with Cloud is no longer an essential part of her character. Not to mention, one of the very last shots of the Remake is about Aerith sensing Zack’s presence. Again, not the kind of thing you want to bring up if the game is supposed to show her being in love with Cloud.

What does it all mean????

Phew — now let’s step back and look and how the totality of these changes have reshaped our understanding of the story as a whole. Looking solely at the Midgar section of the OG, and ignoring everything that comes after it, it seems to tell a pretty straightforward story: Cloud is a cold-hearted jerk who doesn’t care about anyone else until he meets Aerith. It is through his relationship with Aerith that he begins to soften up and starts giving a damn about something other than himself. This culminates when he risks it all to rescue Aerith from the clutches of the game’s Big Bad itself, The Shinra Electric Company.

This was honestly the reason why I was dreading the Remake when I learned that it would only cover the Midgar segment. A game that’s merely an expansion of the Midgar section of the OG is probably going to leave a lot of people believing that Cloud & Aerith were the intended couple, and I didn’t want to wait years and perhaps decades for vindication after the Remake’s Lifestream Scene.

I imagine this very scenario is what motivated SE to make so many of these changes. In the OG, they could get away with misdirecting the audience for the first few hours of the game since the rest of the story and the reveals were already completed. The player merely had to pop in the next disc to get the real story. Such is not the case with the Remake. Had the the Remake followed the OG’s beats more closely, many players, including some who’ve never played the OG, would finish the Remake thinking that Cloud and Aerith were the intended couple. It would be years until they got the rest of the story, and at that point, the truth would feel much more like a betrayal. Like they’ve been cruelly strung along.

While they’ve gone out of their way to adapt most elements from the OG into the Remake, they’ve straight up eliminated many scenes that could be interpreted as Cloud’s romantic interest in Aerith. Instead, he seems much more interested in her knowledge as an Ancient than in her romantic affections. This is the path the Remake could be taking. Instead of Cloud being under the illusion of falling in love with Aerith, he’s under the illusion that the answer to his identity dilemma lies in Aerith’s Cetra heritage, when, of course, the answer was with Tifa all along.

Hiding Sephiroth’s existence during the Midgar arc isn’t necessary to telling the story of FF7, thus it’s been eliminated in the Remake. Similarly, pretending that Cloud and Aerith are going to end up together also isn’t necessary and would only confuse the player. Thus the LTD is no longer a part of the Remake.

If Aerith’s impact on Cloud has been diminished, what then is his arc in the Remake? Is it essentially just the same without the catalyst of Aerith? A cold guy at the start who eventually learns to care about others through the course of the game? Kind of, though arguably, this is who Remake!Cloud is all along, not just Cloud at the end of the Remake. Cloud is a guy who pretends to be a selfish jerk, but he deep down he really does care. He just doesn’t show this side of himself around people he’s unfamiliar with. So part of his arc in the Remake is opening up to the others, Barret, AVALANCHE and Aerith included, but these all span a chapter or two at most. They don’t straddle the entire game.

What is the throughline then? What is an area in which he exhibits continuous growth?

It’s Tifa. It’s his desire to fulfill his Promise to Tifa. Not just to protect her physically, but to be there for her emotionally, something that’s much harder to do. There’s the big moments like when he remembers the Promise in Ch. 4., his dramatic fist clench when he can’t stop Tifa from crying in Ch. 12, and in Ch. 13 when he watches Barret comfort Tifa. It’s all the flashbacks he has of her and the times he’s felt like he failed her. It’s the smaller moments where he can sense her nervousness and unease but the only thing he knows how to do is call her name. It’s all those times during battle, where Tifa can probably take care of herself, but Cloud has to save her because he can’t fail her again. All of this culminates in Tifa’s Resolution, where Tifa is in desperate need of comfort, and is specifically seeking Cloud’s comfort, and Cloud has no idea what to do. He hesitates because he’s clueless, because he doesn’t want to fuck it up, but finally, he makes the choice, he takes the risk, and he hugs her….and he kind of fucks it up. He hugs her too hard. Which is a great thing, because this arc isn’t anywhere close to being over. There’s still so much more to come. So many places this relationship will go.

We get a little preview of this when Tifa saves Cloud on the roof. Everything we thought we knew about their relationship has been flipped on its head. Tifa is the one saving Cloud here, near the end of this part of the Remake. Just as she will save Cloud in the Lifestream just before the end of the FF7 story as a whole. What does Tifa mean to Cloud? It’s one of the first questions posed in the Remake, and by the end, it remains unanswered.

Cloud’s character arc throughout the entire FF7 story is about his reconciling with his identity issues. This continues to develop through the Shinra Tower Chapters, but it certainly isn’t going to be resolved in Part 1 of the Remake. His character arc in the Remake — caring more about others/finding a way to finally comfort Tifa — is resolved in Ch. 14, well before rescuing Aerith, which is what makes her rescue feel so anticlimactic. The resolution of this external conflict isn’t tied to the protagonist’s emotional arc. This was not the case in the OG. I’m certainly not complaining about the change, but the Remake probably would have felt more satisfying as a whole if they hewed to the structure of the OG. Instead, it seems that SE has prioritized the clarity of the Remake series as a whole (leaving no doubt about where Cloud’s affections lie) over the effectiveness of the “climax” in the first entry of the Remake.

This is all clear if you only focus on the “story” of the Remake -- i.e., what the characters are saying and doing. If you extend your lens to the presentation of said story, and here I’m talking about who the game chooses to focus on during the scenes, how long they hold on these shots, which characters share the frame, which do not, etc --- it really could not be more obvious.

Does the camera need to linger for over 5 seconds on Cloud staring at the door after wishing Tifa goodnight? Does it need to find Cloud almost every time Tifa says or does anything so that we’re always aware of his watchfulness and the nature of his care? The answer is no until you realize this dynamic is integral to telling the story of Final Fantasy VII.

I don’t see how anyone who compares the Remake to the OG could come away from it thinking that the Remake series is going to reverse all of the work done in the OG and Compilation by having Cloud end up with Aerith.

Just because the ending seems to indicate that the events of the OG might not be set in stone, it doesn’t mean that the Remake will end with Aerith surviving and living happily ever after with Cloud. Even if Aerith does live (which again seems unlikely given the heavy foreshadowing of her death in the Remake), how do you come away from the Remake thinking that Cloud is going to choose Aerith over Tifa when SE has gone out of its way to remove scenes between Cloud and Aerith that could be interpreted as romantic? And gone out of its way to shove Cloud’s feelings for Tifa in the player’s face? The sequels would have to spend an obscene amount of time not only building Cloud and Aerith’s relationship from scratch, but also dismantling Cloud’s relationship with Tifa. It would be an absolute waste of time and resources, and there’s really no way to do so without making the characters look like assholes in the process.

Now could this happen? Sure, in the sense that literally anything could happen in the future. But in terms of outcomes that would make sense based on what’s come before, this particular scenario is about as plausible as Cloud deciding to relinquish his quest to find Sephiroth so that he can pursue his real dream of becoming at sandwich artist at Panera Bread.

It’s over! I promise!

Like you, I too cannot believe the number of words I’ve wasted on this subject. What is there left to say? The LTD doesn’t exist outside of the first disc of the OG. You'll only find evidence of SE perpetuating the LTD if you go into these stories with the assumption that 1) The LTD exists 2) it remains unanswered. But it’s not. We know that Cloud ends up with Tifa.

What the LTD has become is dissecting individual scenes and lines of dialogue, without considering the context of said things, and pretending as if the outcome is unknown and unknowable. If you took this tact to other aspects of FF7’s story, then it would be someone arguing that because there a number of scenes in the OG that seem to suggest that Meteor will successfully destroy the planet, this means that the question of whether or not our heroes save the world in the end is left ambiguous. No one does that because that would be utterly absurd. Individual moments in a story may suggest alternate outcomes to build tension, to keep us on our toes, but that doesn’t change the ending from being the ending. Our heroes stop Meteor. Cloud loves Tifa. Arguments against either should be treated with the same level of credulity (i.e., none).

It’s frustrating that the LTD, and insecurities about whether or not Cloud really loves Tifa, takes up so much oxygen in any discussion about these characters. And it’s a damn shame, because Cloud and Tifa’s relationship is so rich and expansive, and the so-called “LTD” is such a tiny sliver of that relationship, and one of the least interesting aspects. They’re wonderful because they’re just so damn normal. Unlike other Final Fantasy couples, what keeps them apart is not space and time and death, but the most human and painfully relatable emotion of all, fear. Fear that they can’t live up to the other’s expectations; fear that they might say the wrong thing. The fear that keeps them from admitting their feelings at the Water Tower, they’re finally able to overcome 7 years later in the Lifestream. They’re childhood friends but in a way they’re also strangers. Like other FF couples, we’re able to watch their entire relationship grow and unfold before our eyes. But they have such a history too, a history that we unravel with them at the same time. Every moment of their lives that SE has found worth depicting, they’ve been there for each other, even if they didn’t know it at the time. Theirs is a story that begins and ends with each other. Their is the story that makes Final Fantasy VII what it is.

If you’ve made it this far, many thanks for reading. I truly have no idea how to use this platform, so please direct any and all hatemail to my DMs at TLS, which I will then direct to the trash. (In all seriousness, I’d be happy to answer any specific questions you may have, but I feel like I’ve more than said my piece here.)

If there’s one thing you take away from this, I hope it’s to learn to ignore all the ridiculous arguments out there, and just enjoy the story that’s actually being told. It’s a good one.

#cloti

[kinogane]

Meditations on Playing as Earthlings in Dragon Ball Xenoverse, Part 2

(previously)

The Dragon Ball Xenoverse games allow you to play as five races: Earthling (the default selection), Saiyan, Majin, Namekian, and the elegantly named "Frieza Race", with the first three races having an additional choice of gender. Compared to the Dragon Ball games mentioned in the previous post, Xenoverse probably differentiates the most between race/gender combinations. Each has a drastically different basic moveset that will be extremely relevant in combat, especially for strike-oriented playstyles, each have different stat spreads (and sometimes mechanics) that incentivize different playstyles, and arguably most importantly, each have their own unique techniques, the centerpiece of which is the race-specific Awoken Skill.

For context, in the first Dragon Ball Xenoverse, there were two problems with transformation skills like Super Saiyan and Unlock Potential. First was that they counted as Super Attacks, so you would have to give up a skill slot to make use of them, and second was that the transformations available to your character consisted of Kaioken, Unlock Potential, and variants of Super Saiyan. So like past Dragon Ball games, you weren't especially rewarded for playing a non-Saiyan character, since it meant you had to run Unlock Potential (or run a gimmicky Kaioken build), while Saiyans could at least nominally choose between that, and multiple variants of Super Saiyan that suited their playstyle.

This was remedied in the second Xenoverse game with the addition of Awoken Skills, which were transformations that occupied a separate slot. More importantly, Xenoverse 2 also added race-specific Awoken Skills, which meant that there was actually a compelling reason to pick races besides Saiyans.

In theory, at least. In practice?

Frieza Race characters probably gained the most in the sequel. Their Awoken Skill, Turn Golden, is relatively straightforward, both from a gameplay standpoint and an aesthetic standpoint. Your ki blasts are stronger and you do the Golden Frieza thing. Much like the form in the series proper, it's a bit dull and uninspired as a body recolor, but it is identifiable as a powerful transformation.

Namekians gained the ability to Become Giant, hearkening back to King Piccolo in the original Dragon Ball (and I guess Lord Slug in the movies), which as I understand was a fun transformation to use before it got nerfed in subsequent patches. Currently, it's a neat gimmick that's fun to mess around with and can be effective in bursts, but the stamina drain means it can't see the extended use that just about every other Awoken Skill can.

Majin gained the wildly unpopular ability to undergo Purification, which translates into becoming a Kid Buu with a special moveset. A Kid Buu that, mind you, only changes its skin and eye color as appropriate; regardless of how you customized your character before the transformation, your Purified Majin is going to look basically the same as any other Purified Majin, which is kind of a problem in a game where a significant portion of the userbase's interest in the game is at least partially in coordinating outfits for their player characters.

Earthlings got to ride on a Flying Nimbus and use the Power Pole.

The race-specific Awoken Skill for Earthlings is riding around on a cloud that kinda already loses a lot of its luster when, by construction, all characters can fly, and wielding a weapon/tool that hasn't been relevant since the original Dragon Ball. It's a nostalgia play that basically no Earthling character is going to use extensively, since you can't use your own skills and are limited to a moveset that loses its visual and gameplay novelty in minutes, at most.

It should be mentioned that Saiyans, as of the time of this writing, have access to five variants of Super Saiyan.

(Caveat that I can't speak for the PvP side of these evaluations, and quite frankly, I couldn't be bothered since Xenoverse PvP seems thoroughly unappealing, but I digress.)

So yet again, even when concessions are explicitly made to make playing non-Saiyan races an appealing alternative from a gameplay standpoint, Saiyans are still the clear winners and Earthlings are still clear losers. Furthermore, there's at least an argument that the non-Earthling Awoken Skills at least invoke an image of power as understood in Dragon Ball. For all the shortcomings of the Namekian and Majin Awoken Skills, you can at least point to King Piccolo and Kid Buu as signifiers of strength. If anything, the image of Goku on the Nimbus with the Power Pole is reminiscent of a time when Dragon Ball was significantly less concerned with displays of power, which is kind of counterintuitive when it's invoked as a method of attaining greater power.

Put reductively, it's kind of a bummer, but then again, isn’t this dynamic, of Saiyans being given the lion's share of power and relevance while Earthlings get virtually none, the most Dragon Ball shit ever?

Hindsight has only made Videl's presence in the early parts of the Buu Saga all the more fascinating. For that run of episodes, all the way up to the World Martial Arts Tournament, the degree to which Videl is an active participant and outright combatant in the action is kind of surreal. It's not entirely without precedent, since Chi-Chi had her moments in the original Dragon Ball and the occasional moment in Z, but unlike Chi-Chi, it really does seem like Videl's perfectly content to be this active for as long as she's around. What's more, the show explicitly makes reference to her being wildly more powerful than her dad, who himself is established as of legitimate world champion caliber, and it even goes out of its way to have Gohan teach her to fly. While that scene is absolutely primarily meant to set up her true purpose in the series writ large, there's a pretty good correlation in Dragon Ball between "people who can fly" and "people who can at least fight a little".

Then, of course, Spopovich happens.

I'm not particularly interested in litigating post-crisis Videl here, since it's been discussed plenty, and yeah, I also think it's more than a little bit of a bummer. But knowing the trajectory of post-Z Dragon Ball, especially Super, it makes Videl's irrelevance on an action level kind of an inevitability? Like, yeah, maybe if she bounced back harder and played a larger role after the Spopovich fight, you maaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe could draw a line to her at least being comparable to the likes of Krillin, Tien, and Yamcha, but given the reality of modern Dragon Ball, would that be anything more than a pyrrhic victory?

So really, when you consider that the frankly ridiculous power scaling of Super is really just the logical extension of the scaling in Z that was already well underway by the Buu Saga, it naturally raises the question of why they bothered to even make Videl this much of an active force in the first place. From square one, she's arguably destined to be relegated to Gohan's love interest and future wife, so why go through the effort of showing the audience that she's stronger than every Earthling that's not a Z-Fighter? It does parallel Chi-Chi's strength in Dragon Ball to help further foreshadow her pairing with Gohan like Chi-Chi with Goku, but then why make her be that into fighting when Chi-Chi was always clearly content to be a housewife?

And like, Jesus Christ, all that only to be that definitive with that Spopovich fight?

I bring Videl up because my main created character in Xenoverse 2 is a female Earthling. Ever since I booted the game for the first time, there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to primarily play as a female Earthling, because with it came the knowledge that I was going to control a female Earthling doing and achieving some frankly wild shit, like going toe-to-toe with Final Form Mira, literal deities, Jiren, and Ultra Instinct Goku(?!?), sometimes back-to-back in certain Parallel Quests.

And of course I can, because that is the entire reason for the Xenoverse games' existence. The game has always been an unabashed power fantasy all about defeating some of the most powerful entities in Dragon Ball history with your own created character on your own terms.

And yet, as I do all of this with my female Earthling, the knowledge that in canon, the most powerful analogue to my character is Videl, a character who almost literally gets the relevance beaten out of her in a brutal and unforgettable manner, makes the experience feel almost rebellious. It feels like everything from the godawful Awoken Skill to the subpar race/gender stat distribution for a strike-oriented build to the very nature and history of Dragon Ball itself is working against my character becoming a ludicrously powerful force of nature, and yet I not only can, but literally must push through and go even further beyond.

I cannot emphasize enough that this sense of transgression has no basis at all when it comes to the game. Absolutely nothing about the Xenoverse games explicitly suggests that Earthlings, female or otherwise, are somehow destined to be strictly lesser than Saiyans or any other races. Again, the game is an unabashed power fantasy; it's going to let you achieve that power fantasy regardless of race or gender, because to do so otherwise is completely antithetical to the entire reason people play the game in the first place.

But looking at past Dragon Ball games, at least to me, makes clear that they really didn't have to include the option to play as an Earthling. They clearly feel no obligation to do so, since they've excluded it in previous games. They completely dodge the need to include a human-like race option with the existence of Saiyans, who aren't even differentiated by the presence of a tail. I genuinely don't think any significant number of people would have even batted an eye over the exclusion of Earthlings. ‘Cause, you know, it's Dragon Ball, why would you play as an Earthling?

But they did. They let you choose to play as an Earthling, a race that Dragon Ball has essentially been drilling into your head, for years, is a strictly less powerful and less interesting version of Saiyans with practically no upside. They gave you the option, and I took it, all because it effectively let me play out an extended Videl what-if by proxy and stretch credibility into complete, unrecognizable nonsense.

I recognize that this absolutely reflects more on me and my relationship with Dragon Ball as a whole than it does on Xenoverse, but when it’s the only Dragon Ball game that embraces customizable characters to the extent that it does, it’s necessarily going to be the only game that actually lets me grapple with that tension between the source and the spin-off, and reckon with how that can shape the audience’s experience and perception of the bigger picture.

#dragon ball xenoverse #dragon ball xenoverse 2 #xenoverse #xenoverse 2 #dbxv #dbxv2 #xv2 #dragon ball #dragon ball z #dbz #videl #videl satan

[darkisrising]

Bobadinluke, 37?

Ooooooooooh, Anon. Dear, sweet sweet Anon. You have NO idea how overboard I went on this, lolol. Thank you for the prompt, I hope when you read this next 4k+ words you won't regret it too much. Disclaimer: All I know about prison I learned by watching Oz back in the day. Full whump in this one, and threats of sexual assault though none actually occur. Some character death, some mentions of transactional sex... lottttttta cursing. Yeah, just, if you decide to read this one please proceed with caution. 37. meeting in prison au, BobaDinLuke

“First thing you do when you get to prison,” Anakin Skywalker whispered into his son’s ear as he held him so tightly Luke couldn’t draw in a deep enough breath, though maybe that was just the panic setting in. “You find the leader of the Sith in there and tell him Darth Vader said to take care of you. He goes by Maul. He’ll keep you safe.”

In answer, Luke hissed “Fuck you, you fucking bastard” and sincerely meant every word of it. When the guards pulled them apart to lead Luke away—the irons around his ankles clattering ominously—it was a relief. For a father that had thrown him and his sister by the wayside as they were growing up, leaving them to be raised by distant and dubiously-related relations, he sure had decided to make himself suspiciously present in the courtroom ever since he’d framed his only son for murder.

“Don’t be proud, Luke,” Anakin called out, his voice cutting through the courtroom’s chatter. “You’re going to need all the help you can get.”

Luke’s tempted to throw another “fuck you” over his shoulder but then he caught sight of Leia, clutching her tiny lump of a newborn son in her lap. Her eyes were as close to crying as he’d ever seen his sister get and that’s when it all came crashing down on him. That this moment, which some stupid, fragile part of him had thought would never really come to pass, had happened. He’d held on to hope that someone—some jurist— would listen to all the damning witness testimonies and look at all the gruesome crime scene photos and then look at Luke—pacifist, Prius-driving, yoga teacher Luke—and think “No, it couldn’t possibly have been him.” He had a rescue dog, for fuck’s sake. He’d gotten Artoo from the no-kill shelter that he volunteered at between shifts at the local food pantry.

How the fuck could they ever believe him guilty of murder?

But Anakin Skywalker, leader of the Sith crime syndicate—second only to the so-called Emperor whose identity was a mystery to all but his most trusted underling—was good at what he did. If he wanted to kill a district attorney, he killed a district attorney. If he wanted to pin it on his son to keep his own ass out of prison, then that’s what he did. And then if he showed up every single goddamn day to Luke’s trial, sitting there just behind his son so that no one could help but notice the resemblance between the two of them—couldn’t help but speculate at how close they must be for his father to be taking such a personal interest in his son’s trial—until a person decided that the apple hadn’t fallen far from the rotten, mafia-laden tree?

Well, then; he did that, too.

Guilty on all counts. Seven life sentences to be served consecutively. One hundred and five years without the possibility of parole, and Luke knows as soon as the van pulls up to the prison gates and he’s shuffled out along with all his fellow offenders deemed too dangerous to society for anything but the most maximum of maximum security prisons, that he is going to die here.

As it turns out he doesn’t have to go looking for the Sith. Word of his arrival has preceded him and he turns from placing the blanket and pillow he’s been assigned onto the bunk he’s been assigned to see he’s been followed.

“Hey, you Vader’s kid?”

There are two men lingering by his cell’s opening and Luke doesn’t need to ask who they are to know what they are. They have that same glint in their eyes, rabid fanaticism and zero fucks to give, that mark all the Sith that Luke has had the displeasure of knowing in his life.

“No,” Luke says as mildly as he can manage before turning his back on them to pluck at his blanket under the guise of making his bed. His hands are shaking, his anger at his father is like runoff from a melting mountain snow, and he takes deep, careful breaths to try to staunch the torrent. He’d kill for a yoga mat and a dim room right about now, but he doubts that’s in the cards for him anytime soon.

“Aren’t you Skywalker?”

“I am,” Luke allows. “But I’m afraid my father’s name is Anakin. Not Vader.”

“Oh, come on,” one says, standing close enough that Luke can smell that his clothes are fresh from the dryer. It’s an industrial smell and utterly impersonal. “We both know who Anakin Skywalker really is. Maul wants to see you.”

“I’m afraid Maul is just going to have to be disappointed, then, because I don’t want to see him.”

“I think you’re going to want to,” the other one says, flanking Luke’s other side and he’s suddenly very aware of how small this cell is, especially with three bodies in it. “Pretty blond kid like you? Lots of ways you can end up hurt, you know what I’m saying? You’re going to need someone to protect you while you’re here.”

“I can protect myself.”

They only laugh, like they both know things that he doesn’t, but they don’t press the matter any further. Luke finds out the next day they were right to laugh. Maybe Luke had taken enough martial arts classes as a kid—from a sensei teaching out of a strip mall that was so wizened and stooped that he wasn't much taller than the children he instructed— to think he knows something about something. As he lays on the floor of the prison’s basketball court with the taste of his own blood leaking through his clenched teeth, a bribed guard smirking near the closed door as six men pummel him with fists and feet, Luke quickly learns how little he knows about anything. When one stomps on his wrist Luke doesn’t even scream, the pain is so white hot he can only cling to consciousness for one bright, all-encompassing moment before everything fades to black. The last words he hears before he’s gone are “Tell Darth Vader that the Tuskens send their regards,” and then: nothingness.

When he wakes up in the medical ward there is a cast on his arm and a man staring down at him. He's wearing the khaki pants and button up shirt of a prisoner. Tattoos spill across his face, down his neck, and continue again along his exposed forearms and for a moment Luke wonders if he’s the only one that can see this fearsome creature of a man for all that the nurses and guards and other prisoners are ignoring him.

“Still think you don’t need my protection, young Skywalker?”

Maul. It has to be.

Luke has to clear his throat before it’s any use to him but eventually he’s able to get out “Dunno why I’d need it. ‘M doing great.”

Maul grins and a mouthful of sharp teeth glint in the stale, fluorescent light. “Yeah? Well let’s see how long that lasts. Your daddy says I’m not supposed to raise a finger to help you until you pledge loyalty to the Sith.”

Luke’s heart kicks over as a chill spreads across his skin. So that’s what all of this has been about. For years his father had tried to get Luke to join him, to serve the Emperor just as he did, and now—what?—Anakin thought he could force Luke’s hand? That he could manipulate him into a situation where he’d have no choice but to swear his allegiance to the darkness Luke has tried so hard to exorcise from his life?

“That’s never going to happen,” Luke says and Maul only pats Luke’s ankle, a parody of comfort.

“Oh, it will, young Skywalker. The only question is how much pain are you willing to bear before you do? There are a lot of men in here that hate your father. I’m sure one of them will convince you that you need our protection.”

Maul isn’t wrong. In his first month in prison Luke becomes intimately aware of the intricacies of his cell block’s various factions and all the ways that Darth Vader has, one way or another, fucked over each and every one of them. He learns it in the cafeteria, where he’s jumped in line to get his food, and in the gym, where he’s pinned down by steel between the weight racks, and in the library, where he’s caught somewhere between the dictionary and the encyclopedias. He almost learns it in the showers when the leader of the Hutts has him dragged to his knees but that was blessedly interrupted by a CO actually doing his job for once.

Jabba watches him go, thick tongue licking across even thicker lips, and Luke knows his time is running out. He’s going to need to find a protector and quick.

***

The one respite he's found in this hellish existence are to be found at night. His cellmate, an old man with a white beard that everyone else calls “Crazy Old Ben,” is a lifer who is less interested in Luke’s body and more concerned with his soul. Together they meditate, sitting on the cold concrete floor and tuning their breaths until Luke can pretend not to hear the sounds of quiet violence and even quieter pleasure in the almost-dark prison.

Old Ben takes Luke under his wing until the day Luke comes back from a shower to find no trace of Ben save for the ratty old bathrobe he always wears. It’s crumpled into a heap on the otherwise pristine cell floor, like he had been in it and then, suddenly, was gone.

When the blaring sirens and red flashing lights and screaming of the guards call for a lockdown, Luke knows, he knows, he knows whose body has been discovered. And when, from across the hall through bars of his own, Maul catches his eye and smirks, Luke knows who ordered the hit on the only friend Luke had found in this God forsaken place.

***

Somehow the warden talks Luke into leading a yoga class for his fellow inmates. It's bullshit, of course; no one ever shows up. But it is nice to have space enough to move the way he wants to without risking someone stepping on his throat while he's down in Shavasana or taking his downward facing dog as an invitation for something he’s not interested in offering.

One day he’s startled to find a man he's never noticed before waiting for his arrival. He’s flanked by two that Luke has had plenty of run-ins with already to know they run with the Mando gang and Luke balks when he catches sight of Vizsla but for once there’s no smirking taunts to be had from him. He stares sightlessly ahead, chin raised, as if at attention and that more than anything makes Luke look back at the unknown man again.

He’s handsome: with sad, dark eyes and a scruffy appearance that somewhat distracts from the fact that his prison uniform is wrapped tight around a body that’s been whittled lean with muscles. He has a smattering of scars, remnants of violence that cut across his arms and hands, and if he’s there to beat Luke up he certainly doesn’t act like it when he extends his hand politely.

"I'm Din," he says in a careful, unassuming voice and Luke warily takes his hand, giving his name in return. “I understand you’re running a yoga class here.”

“Oh, yeah,” Luke says, glancing at Vizsla again and wetting his lips. “But, um, if you need the room it’s yours. No one ever shows and so I can clear out—”

“I’m here to take the class.”

“Oh,” Luke says, mouth running before his mind has caught up but what else if new? “Oh, well, that’s great. Let me get you set up with a mat. Are your, your—” he casts about for the right words. “—friends? Going to be joining us?”

Vizsla snorts. “Hell no, Skywalker. We’re just here to make sure nothing happens to the Manda’lor.”

It takes everything in Luke to simply nod and turn to the pile of mats to find one that isn't reeking of sweat and mold from being shoved into storage dirty. To not gawk at the doe-eyed man who even Luke, who prides himself on knowing nothing about his father's world, knows rules over all the Mandalorians, both inside and outside the prison. The one man that not even Anakin Skywalker will fuck with.

"I have a son," Din explains with a shrug when the class is over and Luke has been rendered suitably impressed with the fluid grace with which the fearsome Mandalorian gang leader had moved through every pose, his body made for movement and honed by battle. "The people that are watching him for me say there's this lady on YouTube that teaches kids yoga that he’s gotten really into. I just thought if I tried it it could almost be like we were, well," he shrugs again like whatever he's about to say is too unbearably personal and despite himself Luke finds it utterly charming.

Luke smiles, asking "How old is he?"

"Five."

"Well, if he’s anything like his dad then he must be a natural at yoga, too."

Din's lips quirk in a smile and something complicated in Luke’s belly curls at the sight. Or maybe it's not so complicated, Luke considers as he watched the Mand’alor leave with his guards. Luke can recognize a burgeoning crush when he feels it. He floats through his shift in the kitchen, contentedly lost in his memory of the other man, until he's brought back to reality when he takes a punch to the side of his head.

"Watch what you're doing, Skywalker. Hate for you to get hurt when you've got your head in the clouds, " the inmate supervisor calls out and Luke can only nod as he ignores the pain from his jostled skull and gets back to work.

Luke keeps his crush to himself, and would avoid Din completely if not for the fact that folks are remarkably less inclined to punch him in the face whenever he’s in the Manda’lor’s company and so he tries to be as close to him as often as he can. It’s strategic, Luke tells himself, as he asks Din if he has any pictures of his son and coos over a kid with giant eyes who is triumphantly holding up two bright pink Easter eggs. The more Din likes him, the better his chances when he finally works up the courage to officially ask for his protection. He knows he doesn’t have much to offer in return, but by now Luke knows the transactional nature of prison. His body is a hot commodity and he’s perfectly willing to give Din exclusive use of his ass and mouth if it keeps him alive.

He ignores the thrill of excitement that the thought of sex with Din inevitably brings.

So Luke flirts, flickering little touches here and leaning in closer there, hoping that eventually things will progress naturally. They don’t, but that’s okay because Luke is nothing if not persistent. He has full faith in his ability to work the cute twink angle. Lord knows he did it enough when he was on the outside and had far less to lose.

And it works. Sort of. Din doesn’t seem to notice that Luke drifts along in his orbit after morning yoga classes, sometimes well into the evening and as close to lights out as he dares. The reason why he doesn’t make a move on Luke becomes painfully, achingly, mortifyingly clear the morning Luke enters the meeting-come-yoga room to find Din in a passionate kiss with someone Luke’s never seen before.

He should have known something was different when there had been no Mandalorians posted by the door but this. This. This is. It’s—

The man whose mouth Din is trying to crawl into is built like a shit brick house, all thick muscles and big dick energy as he holds Din by the jaw and their teeth clack so hard that Luke can feel the echo in his own mouth. When he tears away to fix Luke with a stare, he can see that this man’s been so scuffed by life that even his scars have scars and when he speaks it is with a deep, gravel voice that shivers across Luke’s skin.

“You must be Luke,” he says, as if he hadn’t just been caught making out in a dark room. Like Luke can’t see his raging hard-on through his prison-issued pants.

With a calming breath Luke grasps desperately for his most enlightened and peaceful tone as he replies. “I am. Will you be joining us for class, Mister….”

“Fett. Boba Fett. And no fucking way. I’m just here to stand in the corner and enjoy the view.” He smirks at Din who answers with a smile that’s absolutely smitten and Luke can feel his heart jump into his throat before plummeting into his stomach.

“Of course. Make yourself comfortable.”

When the class is over Luke lingers in the room, taking his sweet time rolling up the mats. As he follows Boba out, Din turns to look back at Luke with a confused expression. “Aren’t you coming?”

“No, no, you go on ahead. I’ve got things to do.” Din’s eyebrow raises and Luke can concede that maybe his voice was a little high, a little pinched, but Din doesn’t press the issue. He only shrugs and tells Luke “Well, you know where to find me” before he’s out into the hall.

Luke doesn’t need to go in search of information on Boba Fett. It’s drifting through the filtered prison air wherever he goes. His re-incarceration is all anyone can talk about, starting from his offense—knocked over a grocery store and killed the clerk, if you can believe that stupid shit—and wild guesses as to why he would have gotten caught doing something so petty when he’d finally been paroled—probably just missed his husband, you know how stupid those two are for each other.

“Guess you got tossed to the curb, huh, Skywalker?” Jabba says when they are working the food service line and Luke is very carefully keeping his eyes from looking at where Din is sitting, trying to eat between laughs as Boba crowds so close he’s practically in the Manda’lor’s lap. “Tough break. You know the offer still stands if you want a new cock to suck.”

Telling the Hutt what exactly he can do with his cock and precisely how his mother might like it might give him a surge of soaring adrenaline for the moment but he quickly sees the error of his ways when it’s time to clean up and he’s shoved into the industrial freezer next to all the rows of Hoth Farms Vegetables.

By the time he’s found he’s pretty much stopped shivering which doesn’t seem like a good sign. The doctors in the medical ward seem to agree, at least as far as Luke can tell by all their scrambling activity when he’s wheeled in, barely clinging to consciousness.

***

“That was remarkably stupid,” a melodious voice says a week later.

Luke has been able to cling to lucidity well enough that he’s been sent back to gen pop, for all that he keeps to his bunk and can’t seem to stay awake for longer than a few hours. Shockingly no one has been by to harass him in his weakened state but his luck has finally run out. There is a mountain of a man leaning in his cell’s doorway, and Luke can’t even find the energy to be nervous by the way Boba Fett’s dark eyes are narrowly assessing him.

“I excel at stupid.”

“Yeah, I’ve gathered that from what I’ve been hearing about you. Son to one of the scariest sons of bitches around and yet you refuse to join up with your old man’s gang. Instead you prefer to get the shit kicked out of you like you're just another prison bitch.”

“Yep, that’s me alright,” Luke says with false cheer as he struggles to sit up.

“Word also has it that you’ve been following my husband around like a bitch in heat.”

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. “Listen, Fett—”

“Now I don’t begrudge you a little schoolboy crush. Din is a hot piece of ass. And I haven’t exactly been around so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt here that you didn’t know that he was otherwise engaged.”

“I didn’t. I swear I didn’t.”

“Okay. Good. That’s that.” Fett nods at him, but he doesn’t move from where he stands, still watching Luke. Still taking his measure.

“Does, uh,” Luke’s tongue darts out to lick his lips, a nervous gesture that Fett’s eyes watch sharp as knives. “Does Din know that I—” and he can’t bring himself to say anything more about it.

Fett snorts a laugh. “Din is clueless about just about everything but fighting and fucking. He doesn’t even know whose kid you are. I’d be very surprised to hear he was able to figure out for himself that you’re in love with him.”

“Ah. Okay, well that’s,” Luke stops when the ache in his chest tightens so abruptly he can hardly breathe. Still, he forces out a bleak: “That’s good.”

“It is. Take care of yourself, Skywalker.”

***

There seems little point in fighting against the inevitable after that. If his father thought prison was going to break him, then he’d thought right. He takes a month of beatings without so much as lifting a finger to protect himself. His face is in a perpetual state of bruises but he hardly notices for all that it feels like he’s floating, like he’s becoming one with some great higher power and one day he might just fade away entirely.

Fett is usually there in the periphery—watching, always watching—and Din’s eyebrows furrow every morning when he catches sight of some new mark, some swollen finger, some hastily bandaged scape.

“What’s going on?” he asks and it seems like Fett was right, Din really is that unobservant if he doesn’t see how often Luke is made to bear marks in answer for the sins of his father.

Luke plants a sunny smile on his aching face while Fett watches them from the corner of the room, arms crossed and face twisted in a scowl. “Not much. Same old same old. Shall we begin with our Ohms?”

***

He’s spitting blood down the drain after another ambush that leaves him splayed on the slippery communal shower floor when Fett finally confronts him.

“What the fuck are you playing at? You’re a dead man walking, Skywalker. Quit being stupid and go to Maul. Get his protection.”

“Never,” Luke grinds out with more vehemence than he’s felt in a long time. “I’ll never join the Sith.”

“Why not?”

“Like you care,” he says, reaching for a washcloth to finish the shower that had been unavoidably interrupted. Fett gets to it first and he holds it aloft and out of Luke’s reach unless he wants to strain his ribs that have seen better days.

“You got some kind of Daddy issues or something? That why you won’t become a Sith?”

“Hey, fuck you, Fett,” Luke says and he waits for Fett’s first punch but it never comes.

“Come here,” he says instead, his head tilting curiously. Luke doesn’t move and Fett rolls his eyes. “Come here, don’t look at me like I’m about to eat you.”

A washcloth wielded by a surprisingly gentle hand dabs at Luke’s face. He holds perfectly still under the ministrations while Boba leans in closer. “You’ve got gett'se, that’s for sure.”

“Like I know what that means.” Luke’s tone is bratty and rather than take offense, Fett smiles.

“Gett'se. Guts. Courage. Going to need to learn Mando’a if you’re going to be joining me and Din for the foreseeable future.”

“What?” Luke asks, eyes wide, and Fett doesn’t answer. Not in words.

The distance between them disappears as Fett presses his plush lips to Luke’s bleeding ones. He’s careful, so careful in his kiss and it shatters something vital in Luke. Tears are burning his eyes, biting at his nose, by the time Fett pulls away. “You’re breaking Din’s heart, the way you’ve been carrying on, cyar'ika. And that’s been breaking mine. So why don’t you do us all a favor and come be ours for a little while. If you hate it, we can set you up with someone else, but I have the feeling you’re going to like it just fine. What do you say?”

Luke can’t speak through the tightness of his throat, through the spilling of his tears of relief, and when Fett kisses him again, and again, and again, each time it’s like he’s someone worth caring about. Someone that matters.

Fett—Boba—turns on the shower and leads him under the spray, washing his hair and his skin. “Shouldn’t I be doing that for you?” Luke asks quietly and Boba laughs.

“Sure. Soon as you can lift your arms higher than your shoulders you're free to do anything you want to my body. Until then let me wash your fucking hair, alright? Gotta make you pretty for Din, yeah?"

He rests his forehead against the immense, solid expanse of Boba’s wet chest and for the first time in a long time he feels safe enough to close his eyes somewhere that isn’t his locked cell.

When the guards— who had fucked off to wherever the hell they’d been bribed to go while Luke took maybe his last beating ever—finally show up and yell at them to break it up, Luke isn’t even mad about it because Boba is tossing him a towel and telling him to hurry up and dry off. Din is waiting for them.

#darkisrising fic #bobadinluke #tumblr prompt #ask game #ask box

[what-the--curtains]

Not a Piece of Art

Part 1/4 - A Grudge Like No Other

(Javier Peña x f!reader)

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Summary: You’re tasked with an impossible mission and an even more impossible partner to complete it with.

Authors note: I have never not once seen narcos all I know if based on other fics I’ve read so pls be kind but let me know if anything’s wildly out of character! Also I’m aware forensics wasn’t a solid discipline (especially DNA fingerprinting) but we’re gonna pretend it is. Lemme know if you’d like to be tagged (or untagged) 😊

Tw: Mentions of fake parental death, swearing, mentions of sex

Word count: 4.1k

Tagged list: @agingerindenial @diogodxlot

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The morning sun radiates down on your shoulders as you lock the door to your apartment complex behind you. Despite the early hour it was already far too hot, but at least the humidity wouldn’t kick in until the afternoon. You’d been working in Colombia for a few months now, but the heat wasn’t something you’d ever get used to. You weren’t complaining, most days you preferred it to the frigid temperatures that painted your childhood. The frost bitten noses, wool socks and thick snow falls coating tree branches seemed all but a distant memory now. You’d settled on Columbia after your long time best friend Connie convinced you to take the universities offer. She had recently made the move down south and was eager to have you there with her.

She’d told you about the job and honestly, you wouldn’t be surprised if she had marched down to the university herself and dropped off your resume. She’d flown up to Brown and helped you pack up your life and then unpack it after your arrival to the terraced apartment Connie had picked out for you both to live in. It was a decent size and the balcony was south facing which gave you all day access to the sun. When you weren't working you spent your time out there soaking up the sun and watering the small garden you had been tending to since your arrival. Your days were primarily spent at the university working out the finer details of the forensics lab you were hired to set up. Your PhD in forensic anthropology has left you with various laboratory based skills, including DNA analysis, making you a coveted asset to the campus. Whilst in school you had also completed an art certificate which came in handy when facial reconstructions were needed.

After everything was in place you began running samples, processing unidentified remains by working on dental ID’s and facial reconstructions, as well as testing for drug residue. Despite being run by the University your job wasn’t as research based as you would have hoped with your work often falling under the DEA’s jurisdiction. You weren't involved in their day to day protocols. You mainly just ran the tests, or identified bodies recovered from the crime scene only conversing with them when it was absolutely necessary. Police work wasn’t in your wheelhouse, and it wasn’t a profession you supported or believed in.

Many faces passed through your workspace all demanding your utmost attention claiming their projects to be the most important. One frequent flyer through the lab was Steve Murphy, who Connie had met down in Miami a few years back. His relationship to your friend was the only reason you had bothered to make an effort with him. A friendship was established between the two of you faster than you had expected, due in part to his easy southern charm, but mainly because he and Connie evidently had feelings for eachother. You always found it easier to get along with men who weren't trying to get into your pants which was, unfortunately, a frequent occurrence in the male dominated discipline you worked in. There was only one flaw you could attribute to Steve, his work wife, the other half of the DEAs “dynamic duo”, agent Javier Peña. You’d never been formally introduced to the man, but his reputation preceded him. His was a face that also made frequent appearances in your lab but you'd never spoken more than three words to each other which was, probably for the best. You had what some might deem a confrontational personality and from what you understood Peña was, to put it nicely, an asshole.

He always came in sporting a more casual look and sunglasses which he kept on despite being indoors, a habit that drove you up the wall. He’d tap the file on the glass to get your attention always making you walk the five extra steps to get to him. You didn’t bother to look up when he passed the beige folders to you just grabbed the file from his hands and added it to the pile on your desk. He’d started attaching yellow sticky notes with “put a rush on” scrawled across them in impatient handwriting, as if his case was more important than the remains you were currently working on identifying. Not talking was a strategic move on your part, you’d heard he was quite the charmer when he needed something done, and you weren't going to let him get away with that. You ran this lab, not Javier Peña. Was your dismissal of him warranted? Maybe not, but your gut instinct was usually right and the rumour mill had painted Peña in a very specific manner. You weren't about to let yet another hot headed alpha male who took “too much male energy” to an entirely new level into your life.

Unfortunately, your knack for avoiding him became nearly impossible when you were called out to work on a crime scene. Despite your refusal to work in the field, the remains couldn’t be moved so you had to go to them. The site was just far enough away that a daily commute would have been tedious so you, along with the dynamic duo and your forensic team were booked into a nearby hotel. You weren't sure what you'd done in your past life to piss off the gods but somehow you’d ended up sandwiched between Steve and Peña. Steve wasn’t the issue, apart from the TV which you’d hear blare spanish dubbed reruns of Miami Vice between 4 and 8 PM, he was a quiet, considerate neighbour. Peña, on the other hand, was neither considerate or quiet particularly during the late hours of the night while you were trying to sleep. Sharing a wall with the agent proved to be an issue, so much so that by the third day just looking at him filled you with such intense rage that you'd given yourself lockjaw.

Every night without fail you laid awake as the exaggerated, bordering on ridiculous, moans coming from whoever he'd enticed into bed that night reverberated through your shared wall. You'd tried it all, earplugs, pillows so forcefully wrapped around your head you were essentially smothering yourself, but the sounds still permeated through the plaster and into your head. On the fourth night when you heard the talking start you knew what you had to do. You furiously wriggle free from your sheets and make your way out into the hallway. You walk one door over and inhale deeply before aggressively pounding your fist on the door.

“Hey” you say, through gritted teeth.

“Hey?” a slightly disheveled Steve murmurs eyes squirting into the hallway’s bright lights as his arms cross clumsily over his bare chest.

“Look I hate to ask but can I sleep on your couch, the walls are thin and...”

“And Peña has a thing for loud women '' he finishes for you, shoulders relaxing as he opens the door up for you “surprised you lasted this long, come in i'll grab you some pillows”

“Thanks for letting me sleep here, I think I may have killed him in the field tomorrow if I didn't get at least an hour of sleep. Also this isn’t some tactic to get you to bed so you can stop trying to cover your modesty” You say wiping your eyes, as Steve drops his arms to his side laughing.

“I know, believe me, besides i'm sure you're aware I’m only interested in one person.” So he did have a thing for Connie.

“You should go for it, I think she'd say yes” you offer, even in your sleep deprived state you were still a pretty solid wingwoman.

“You think?” His eyes light up, further cementing your belief that Steve, despite being friends with Peña, was a good guy.

“Thanks” you murmur as he hands you some pillows and a light sheet. It's not long before the AC’s quiet hum draws you into a deep sleep.

The alarm blaring out from Steve’s room pulls you from your dreaming state, groaning as you squeeze a pillow over your head. Why was it that you always felt worse after getting a good night's sleep? You briefly doze off again only waking as the smell of burnt toast convinces your brain that either a fire has started, or you were having a stroke.

“Tryna burn this place down?” you mumble, relaxing back into the couch cushions as you watch Steve scrape the burnt bits off into the garbage before buttering it and taking a bite.

“You think you got enough sleep to not kill my partner this morning?” he asks between mouthfuls.

“No, but I did get enough to realize if I killed him in the field there'd be witnesses” you remark pouring coffee into a cracked mug. “Thank you for letting me sleep here “

“Anytime, though Javi should be the one thanking me considering I basically saved his life. Lucky were leaving today or I’d have to put him into protective custody.”

“And I'll never have to hear him ever again” you say suddenly feeling a bit better. You were glad for Steve being so accommodating to your needs, especially considering he didn't really know you that well. “Well I should go get ready for the day ahead what it's supposed to be out?”

“A balmy 40” Steve offers, as he washes your cup up in the sink.

“Wow I should have packed my snow pants when I moved down here.” you dead pan, the delivery causing Steve to snort as you exit the room. As you exit, Javier opens his door kissing the woman he’d spent the night with one last time watching as she strides off down the hallway. You don’t see him, but he sees you. Specifically, he sees you leaving his partner's room, and in nothing more than an oversized t-shirt, he raised his eyebrows. Good for Steve from what he’d heard half the department had been trying to get your attention to no avail. Your head was always buried in paperwork and your ears were always donning headphones blocking out small talk, maybe he should take a page from your book. He didn’t say anything to Steve in the field, but he did watch you interact with one another. Paying specific attention to how you'd made Steve laugh while photographing the murder weapon. Javi watched as you meticulously gathered up a few finger bones that he'd overheard you saying would be used for DNA fingerprinting. He'd tried to talk to you a few times this trip, but the second he'd stepped in your direction he noticed your jaw clench and your body tense up, not wanting to upset you he decided it was best to back off. After getting what you need you packed up your things and headed back home, with no intentions of ever having to interact with Peña for more than 5 minutes ever again.

Several months later

Your lab was now contracted out full time by the DEA which meant you still got to do research but you didn’t have to teach any teenagers which was quite frankly a dream. Unfortunately, the contract meant you'd now be spending time in two male-dominated fields. The boys club offered little that would qualify as genuine friendship. Turns out the ones brave enough to approach you were only nice to you because they wanted to sleep with you. Something you’d found out after overhearing a less than true story about you from one of the guy’s you’d hooked up with. After that you’d stopped sleeping where you work and started looking elsewhere. Your few short lived romances were mainly found in dive bars only going home with people that had been thoroughly vetted (and vaguely threatened) by yourself, Connie and Steve. Who was now a relatively permanent fixture in your life after finally asking Connie out, and you really didn’t mind it. He was good to Connie and he never minded being excluded when you needed a girls' night without him. You also assumed the decrease in misogynistic talk amongst the agents was Steves doing, you made a mental note to thank him later, as you took another swig of the beer you’d been nursing for the past hour.

Steve was still inseparable from Peña and where he went Javi was sure to follow. Your inability to not become enraged by him meant you often found yourself leaving the room as soon as he showed up, subsequently cutting your Connie time in half. Devastating both you and her.

“You know he’s not really as insufferable as he acts” Connie states, Javi was due to show up any minute which meant it was just about time for you to leave.

“ You're not gonna sell me on this” you say, chewing on a stale nacho chip from food you’d ordered hours ago.

“Seriously, he's almost nice sometimes” your pointed look tells her to drop it. Connie was nothing if not resilient and you were constantly amazed by her. You don’t know how she worked as a nurse. You had a hard enough time with the dead, how she also dealt with the living as well was beyond you. She was a quantifiable saint which was probably why she saw the good in Peña.

“Remind me to never make you mad” Steve says.

“No one holds a grudge quite like her” Connie exclaims

“Awe you say the sweetest things about me” you retort after finishing the last of your beer.

“Alright well I’ve got an early morning shift so we should be heading out, tell Javi I say hi” Connie says kissing Steve before the two of you exit the bar.

“Are you really going to keep up this affront against Javi?” Connie asks, interlinking your arms together as you exit the bar.

“Yes, now please and can we stop talking about Peña even thinking about him gets me riled up”

“I thought you said you hated him” she teases causing you to roll your eyes.

“Please don't make me gag” you say pulling a face that causes you both to break into a giggle fit.

“What up her ass? Seriously, am I infectious or something?” Javi asks, slumping down across from Steve who's filling out paperwork at his desk.

“Well considering your history, probability is pretty high” Steve quips back earning him a thwack to the head with a folder you’d dropped on Peña’s desk earlier that morning.

“You know her, what's her deal, why does she hate me?”

“Everyone hates you Javi, it’s a fundamental part of your personality” Steve laughs.

Javier usually wasn’t one to concern himself with how others perceived him, but his work frequently overligned with yours and he figured his life would be made infinitely easier if he could get into your good books. Sure, at first his intrigue in getting to know you was purely physical. He knew looks aren't everything, but for what he wanted, they played a fundamental part. He wasn’t the only person to have noticed you the day you showed up, all eyes were on you as you walked through the DEA embassy for the first time. Your arrival had sparked a competitive energy amongst the men with the agents often vying over who got the honour of dropping off case files to you. A few were apparently even so lucky to have actually spent the night, at least that's what he’d overheard some agents proclaiming loudly, making him doubt their validity.

He’d cracked down on what some would call “locker room talk” when he thought you and Steve were sleeping together, after seeing you leave his room early that one morning. Though if Steve had been spending nights with you he’d never brought it up to Javi, and after he started dating Connie there never seemed a right time to ask about you, so he let it go. He’d gotten more proactive with stopping it once you’d been hired on full time. He’d upped his guard when he’d caught one trying to cop a feel of your ass the day you had been called in on your day off. You’d come in wearing a skirt shorter than what would be considered workplace appropriate gaining you more attention than usual. He noticed the guys hand drop down low, but any contact was stopped when Javi smashed the guys arm back into the wall behind him. In most cases a move like that would have earned him a swift punch to the face but a simple raise of his eyebrows was enough to get the pervert to sit back down.

Despite the scene playing out a few feet from you, you never noticed carrying on about your day as if nothing had happened, headphones on, paperwork in your arms and various scrawlings across your hand, reminders of meetings he knew you'd be late to anyways. He assumes your chronic lateness was a tactic to spend as little time around him as possible. Your hatred for him was palpable, he wondered if it was as obvious to everyone else as it was to him. He'd noticed how you would stand in meetings when the only seat available was next to him. It was starting to get to his ego. He wanted to know what he possibly could have done to be treated like the scum of the earth by you. He’d heard from Connie that you didn’t like cops, but you got on fine with Steve. Your lives continued on with minimal interaction until the day you were called into the head of the DEA’s office.

“Office now!” your boss shouts from the door. Fuck. What have you done now?

“Hey you need something?” you ask, lips parted and forehead wrinkled, feeling like a child who’d just been called to the principal's office. Your head snaps to the left when you feel eyes boring into you, eyes belonging to Peña. He shifts around in the chair to escape your violent gaze. You turn to Steve who's gazing up at the ceiling.

“I have the dental results here for the missing persons from the case last week, it’s a match, I know it's late but...”

“It's not that,” he gestures his hand to the chair beside Peña and you sit, placing the documents down on the table. Javi cranes his neck slightly, eyes darting over the various statistics strewn across the page surprised you were able to piece it all together.

“You have an art degree right?”

“I have an art certificate” you correct

“and you paint”

“A bit”

“She was featured in local galleries back in the States” Steve pipes up.

“ Good, we need you to go undercover” you snort before laughing aloud. Your amusement quickly fades when you realize no one else was laughing with you.

“Wait you're serious? You want me... to go undercover? I'm not an agent, I can’t use a gun, I don’t think I've even held one before” you say, tearing through all the excuses you could think of.

“You can shoot a bow and arrow,” Steve pipes up.

“Ya very different instrument Steve, also does Connie tell you everything about me” he shrugs his shoulders.

“You won’t need a gun anyways, you'll have a trained agent with you at all times.” Your boss reassures.

“No. No way! Im sorry but this… this is beyond the scope of my work and my skill set” you assert, not budging.

“You’ve been to crime scenes before, you’ve been in dangerous scenarios, excavated mass graves, we need you you’re the only one who can help with this”

“Why? You have multiple agents out there who would kill to go undercover, why me?” you push

“ Your background, and relative anonymity. There's been an increase in art dealing amongst the sicarios.”

“So what? Maybe they just really like art.” you offer

“Does anyone really like art” Peña pipes up

“ Yes, the whole world actually” you shoot back, successfully shutting him up.

“We think they're using convincing fakes to smuggle drugs without suspicion” Steve offered, helping to clear up the situation.

“Okay... then hire an art expert to go in and see if the paintings are real”

“We need you to test for residue on the paintings, and to recreate one in time for the next move”

“Okay im good, but I am not good enough to recreate a painting worth thousands of dollars.”

“From what I’ve seen you are,” Steve says further cementing your fate.

“What if I say no?” you ask, exhaling deeply.

“Then you're fired” Javier pipes up, once again causing your head to turn to him.

“And who, pray tell, made you judge, jury and executioner” you spit “last time I check Javier Peña wasn’t the one signing my paychecks”

“No, but I am, and you will do this” Your boss's backing of Peñas statement makes the smirk on his face even more aggravating.

“Fine, but just know I will be personally mentioning you all in my will so everyone knows exactly who got me killed, and I'm gonna want a raise, more vacation time and a new piece of lab equipment if I make it out alive. ”

“Fine” you smile feeling slightly vindicated.

“So what's my story? Who am I to have a million dollar painting in my possession?” you ask, as your boss pulls up a document on his computer.

“You’ll go by Melanie Alverez nee Smith, you were born in London England to parents Maria and Calvin who passed in a car accident four weeks after your nineteenth birthday”

“Shit” you mutter, thinking about your own parents who were very much alive.

“You dropped out of Oxford where you were undertaking a degree in chemistry and moved to New York where you began painting. You were a struggling artist for the first two years but received funding to attend Julliard. After graduation your first major piece was accepted by a local gallery and put up for auction. It sold for 10,000$. The buyer wanted to meet you after seeing your photo. He’d sent thousands of flowers to your gallery before showing up and asking you on a date.

“Must be nice” you murmur

“After a whirlwind romance you eloped and moved down to Columbia where you continue to work as an artist.”

“Alright easy enough, short live romance is a good call that can be used to explain why we don’t know certain information about each other.”

“You'll be staying here” A huge spanish style house appears on the screen. Its prestige was only overshadowed by the mansion looming over it from across the private beach. Must be the target's house, you think.

“It was built by the target, he lives there with his fourth wife. He’s rich, sources claims from drug smuggling, they think he may even have direct links to Escobar

“Like, as in Pablo?” you ask, eyes widening.

“Apparently he’s his art dealer. We need you to go in and see what he knows, if it's not enough then test the paintings in their homes”

“And if they trace?”

“You'll give them the fake implemented with a tracking device so we can target its route.”

“Okay well I'd say easy enough but the threat of being murdered isn’t lost on me. Who's my husband anyways? Obviously he’s rich but did he tragically fall down the stairs and die, did I kill him?” you ask, smiling as Steve laughs.

“What?” you say looking up

“What...” you say as Steve refuses to meet your eyes as he chokes on his laugh.

“Well you haven’t killed him yet but I give it a week.” He responds.

“Who's my husband” you ask, again suddenly afraid and very aware that there were two men in this room, and one was currently laughing at you.

“Your lucky day sweetheart.” Your head turns comically slow to face Javi, the effect only causes Steve to snicker more.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” you whisper.

“This mission is anything, but a joke.” your boss interjects “If we can trace the arts movement it brings us one step closer to catching Escobar. I don’t know why there's animosity between you two and frankly I do not care. You two must work together. If you are to succeed you have to be believable. Study up on each others aliases the target hasn’t made it this far without being killed by being stupid. We’ve tried to get to him before with no success, he will be on high alert. You two will have to convince him, and his wife, that you’re sincere.”

#javi x reader #javi x you #javi x y/n #Peña x reader #Peña x you #javier pena x reader #Javier Peña x you #narcos fanfic #agent peña x reader #agent Peña x you #not a piece of art #part 1

[vegalocity]

Peachtea/TripSun could have the moment of Tang pretending to be awestruck by Wukong bc neither of them are ready to have that convo and Wukong's trying not to die at how Tang's hamming it up, even though he's tried hundreds of times to impress him.

Honestly the implications alone for that are hilarious

Like the lot of them just decided to try living as mortals again for whatever reason (except wukong) and that required a lot of rolling with people’s assumptions. 

And So here Tang is, whose supposed to be just some random human scholar, whose written several dissertations on history and the classics because he’s a giant nerd and totally wasn’t present for a few of them what are you talking about, and to keep from blowing the secret wide open on those whom it’s being kept from (Xiaotian and Xiaojiao basically, honestly dropping the façade would ruin absolutely nothing but he’s ALREADY COMMITED TO THIS DAMMIT) He just plays up the excitable nerd angle because... reasons he’s honestly enjoying it he thinks its funny

and then The pilot happens. And Wukong returns but not to see him, or his brothers. He just passes the staff to Xiaotian and doesn’t come into the city except when he thinks he’s being clever and keeping an eye on things by shapeshifting. 

And sure he COULD drop his own disguise and drop in on him on Flower Fruit mountain himself, any of them could have. But Wukong had said very explicitly before vanishing that he’d wanted some alone time and that he’d find them again when he was ready. But... five hundred years? 

And then New Years hits, and they see eachother again, and he knows at one glance Wukong recognizes him. And... Look, even BEFORE he gained immortality Tang was slow to anger. But 500 years is a very long time to simmer, so he sees his monkey again and it’s not even because Wukong sought him out, it was explicitly incidental to helping Xiaotian out with the Spider Queen. And he. Is. Furious. He knows Baije and Wujing had decided to not really keep it a secret, just not draw attention to it either, but- 

Fuck it.

And now Wukong is pulled into this odd little snaggle of half-lies. And it would be troubling if it weren’t so damn funny. Almost like putting on a performance for the kids, or parts in a play. So he’s ‘So quickly besotted with the snarky yet excitable scholar’ and as the ‘so suddenly lovestruck monkey’ that he is CLEARLY that means he’s going to be hanging out at the noodle shop more, despite Baije and Wujing, erm, a-hem, Pigsy and Sandy, also taking a fair bit of his attention as he ‘regales them all with tales of what he’d been up to since vanishing (Read: Catching up)’ He only has eyes for his ‘new crush’...made it easier to pretend that he had actually been ready to re-enter the world but didn’t have a good reason to until he got someone to chase.

And Tang is not ready to drop the guise yet, to drop the guise means having to really confront how much he’d missed his bad monkey, so this is an excuse to finally get that hole in his chest filled before he had to aknowlege hat it was there at all. So of course everything the ‘legendary monkey king’ would do to show off and every story he’d regale that was never written down would be ‘oh so exciting and utterly amazing to behold’ And truth be told all those years ago he was rather impressed with Wukong’s millions of attempts to win his positive attention, but he hadn’t been able to express that out of a worry of his disciple’s arrogance getting even worse than it already was. Now well... he was just some mortal scholar whom had ‘grown up on the tales of his adventures’ after all. 

Something that would incur the Monk Sanzang’s fond grin and perhaps a gentle Acknowledgment of the hard work Wukong must have put in to be able to master this or that skill, the Scholar Tang can ‘oohh and ahh’ at and try valiantly to hold back his laughter at how much Wukong would positively preen under the attention.

There’s something so much more simple about this little play of theirs. It doesn’t have to be big and complicated yet, It will be once one or both of them is ready to will it to be, but for now it’s a playful innocent romance that is only now starting to bloom between a Monkey whose reputation precedes him, and a perfectly normal scholar whose so peculiarly unshakeable when faced with danger yet so enthusiastic to hear the most daring of escapades.

Hard cut to Pigsy and Sandy passing a bucket of popcorn between them.

Pigsy: This is actually disgusting, i might literally vomit.

Sandy: I’m so glad they finally renewed my favorite Telenovela

#writingamongther0ses #letters to vega #Peachtea #Tripsun #ngl i'm only fond of the 'tang is Sanzang in any meaningful sense' thing when its also peachtea #any other ship and i can't get behind it #bc it looses the 'YOU GHOSTED ME FOR 500 YEARS BAD MONKEY' charm

[the-quiet-winds]

The Gravity of Tempered Grace (part eight)

[This is the end of this story, hope everyone enjoyed!]

[part one] - [part two] - [part three] - [part four] - [part five] - [part six] - [part seven]

[Part 8: Till All My Sleeves are Stained Red]

The Life and Times of Jane the Queen, Chapter 13 - The One Who Kept Her Head

“Jane’s relationship with Henry was not nearly as tumultuous as the ones that preceded her. It was filled with ups and downs, as relationships tend to do, but those highs and lows were not nearly as intense as when Henry was married to Catherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn.

Regardless, Jane was passionate about what she believed in, and that passion would sometimes spill into arguments with Henry. Even though she was often quiet and reserved, she was no stranger to giving her husband a piece of her mind, and even breaking decorum by calling him “Henry” in front of courtiers, much to his ire.”

It’s the blinding lights that catches their eyes. 

Red and blue, flashing harshly against the darkness of the townhomes, careening down the street. 

Police aren’t an uncommon sight by any means in New York, but lights blazing down their road at almost four in the morning?

Something isn’t right.

“Jane’s in trouble,” Cathy says immediately. “It- it has to be.”

No one even stops to question her, and as soon as they’ve somehow all found shoes they’re rushing out onto the sidewalk and following the lights.

Oddly enough, the mass of police cars come to a stop only a few blocks down, and they are nearly blinding as the girls approach.

Cathy has to admit, it’s definitely not the scene she was expecting. 

Jane, completely unscathed, is leaning against the rail of one of the house stairs, talking to an officer.

Henry is in handcuffs, raging and storming and yelling all sorts of nonsense as he’s forced into a car.

Jane looks past the officer she’s speaking to and sees the other queens, all in their pajamas and whatever shoes they could find in a hurry, and she excuses herself.

She doesn’t get any words out before throwing her arms around as many of the girls as she can fit, who all reciprocate the hug in turn.

“But I thought…,” Anne starts, faltering as her gaze falls on Henry, who is glaring daggers at all of them through the back windshield of the cruiser.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” Jane says. For the first time since they’ve returned, there’s emotion and sincerity in her words and in her eyes. “I had to make him think I was on his side.”

“What… how did you get the cops here?” Kat asks.

“When I didn’t have my heart, I did a lot of reading,” Jane says. “It made sense, I guess, when nothing else did. When I left earlier, I wandered into our favorite bodega.”

That was just earlier this same night, they all find themselves remembering, and yet it seems like forever ago.

“There was a newspaper on the stand from yesterday,” Jane continues. “I flipped through it and found an article about a man who was wanted by Interpol for destruction of property. Specifically, destruction of property at Chapel Royal at Hampton Court. And the suspect looked ‘suspiciously like Henry the Eighth’.” 

“You knew you could get him arrested,” Catherine says.

“At the time I didn’t, because I wasn’t sure that I knew anything,” Jane quips, chuckling softly. “But when he showed up and he had my heart… I just knew it was the best thing to do.”

Cathy gasps quietly. “That’s what you meant!”

“Is this really what you want? Do you really want to go with him, despite everything?”

Jane meets Cathy’s eyes. “This is the best thing I can do.”

Jane nods. “I wanted to tell you guys. I really, really did, but I couldn’t risk giving you any clues or anything that Henry might’ve figured out. I had to get him to give me my heart back and convince him to leave with me right then. He did, so I went upstairs, called the police, and then we left.”

“Are you okay?” Anna asks, reaching out to take Jane’s hand with a soft squeeze.

The squeeze is reciprocated and Jane smiles. Really, truly smiles. “I feel better than I’ve ever felt before.”

She’s yanked, once again, into a group hug, and it isn’t until she pulls away that she sobers slightly.

“I’m really sorry,” she says.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Anna says.

“I know, I know. But I need to say this.”

No one objects further, and Jane takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all about any of this heart business sooner. I mean… at first I didn’t know, of course, but once he was talking to me… he manipulated me, I know that now. And he made me say and do a lot of things I really regret. So I’m sorry, I guess.”

Out of everyone, it’s Anne who steps forward to speak. “I think we all owe you an apology too.”

Catherine elbows her, and Anne clears her throat sheepishly. “Okay, okay. I owe you an apology. I was really quick to dismiss anyone’s thoughts that something was off with you, which was a real dick move. I’m sorry.”

Jane gives a chuckle. “Well, I can’t blame you entirely. It’s not every day that someone suggests your housemate-slash-costar doesn’t have a heart in her chest. And I know we didn’t have the best relationship last time around.” Her eyes turn shy, just slightly. “I hope that this time it’s different.”

“I do too,” Anne says.

“This is a touching moment and all,” Kat says, “but it’s like… four in the morning. Can we go back to bed now?”

They all make their way back to the house, leaving the blinding police lights behind, and Jane feels like she can finally breathe again.

She’s too wired to sleep, though, so as everyone slinks back to their rooms for some much-needed rest, Jane finds herself seeking solace in the only other person who’s usually up this late.

“Can’t sleep either?” Cathy asks, spinning halfway around in her desk chair.

Jane shrugs and makes herself comfortable on the end of Cathy’s bed. “Just… still adjusting, I guess.”

Cathy moves to her side. “I can’t even imagine-”

“Stop, please, I don’t want your pity or anything.”

“It isn’t pity,” Cathy says honestly. “You went through something traumatic, Jane. I…,” she sighs. “You’ve gone through something that not a single other person has ever gone through. I can’t imagine how lonely that must feel.”

Jane draws her knees to her chest. “I guess I hadn’t thought about that.”

“I know that we don’t understand what you’ve been through, but we’re here for you, alright? Always.”

“I know you are. And I appreciate it, more than you think.”

Cathy smiles and bumps Jane’s shoulder with her own. “I know that Catherine is glad to have you back, but I’m just excited to get to meet you.”

“As am I. I… I’m excited to get to experience all of this for real. To have fun with you all and not wonder if something was missing.”

“We’ll make the best company we can for you and all your experiences.”

Jane grins, then yawns.

“Maybe you should get some sleep,” Cathy suggests. “You’ve had quite a night, if I do say so myself.”

Suddenly, Jane turns bashful. “Do you mind if I stay here?” She asks softly. “I really don’t want to be alone-”

“Of course you can stay here,” Cathy says. “You just make yourself comfortable.” She takes Jane’s hand. “He can’t hurt you anymore, I promise.”

Jane pulls her into a hug, and when they pull apart, Cathy helps Jane get comfortable in the bed.

It doesn’t take long at all for Jane to pass out, the exhaustion of the night all catching up with her at once, and Cathy returns to her desk.

She clicks through a few things on her laptop before stumbling upon her email, where she has an unread message from “Boleyn.”

It’s actually from herself - she had emailed a link to Jane’s biography to her personal computer in case she needed to do some further reading, but it seems now that Jane is back to the way she should be.

Still, though, even as Cathy clicks the link and skims the first few paragraphs of the book, something doesn’t feel right.

This isn’t Jane’s story. Not the way it should be told, at least.

Cathy closes the tab, pulls up a new document, and begins to type.

The Life and Times of Jane the Queen, Chapter 1 - The Return of a Monarch.

#six the musical #six the musical fanfiction #jane seymour #catherine parr #catherine of aragon #anne boleyn #katherine howard #anne of cleves #julie writes #the gravity of tempered grace

[abbydramarambles]

The REAL Ending CLOY

This is my headcanon and you can’t tell me otherwise. The epilogue in Switzerland is set a few years after the events of that piano concert. They have already found a way to be together more permanently. To me the house doesn’t seem like a vacation house, it seems like a home home. 

There is that photo of Se-ri on the bridge, not something one would frame for themselves. RJH definitely lives there. Check out the north Korean coffee kettle and other souvenirs as well. This is the sort of stuff one would have in their home.

The only thing holding RJH to North Korean is his parents, the fact that they could be killed if he were to defect. After they die, he has no reason to stay. We’ve already been shown that he is resourceful and would know exactly how to get out. Not to mention that everything in north Korean runs on money, if you have connections like Se-ri and RJH do....anything is possible. And to me these two people with all their power, well they would find a way.

Dan’s mother travels out of the country a lot as well for business. I think the 2 weeks is the longest trip Se-ri takes while RJH’s parents are alive. It’s not the only trip of the year. I doubt her employees would be saying “you’re going to Switzerland again??” if it was a once a year sort of deal they wouldn’t think she had a man. They even say “it’s lasting a while this time”. Come on who in the world would think it’s a relationship if their boss goes to switzerland for 2 weeks a year. It’s her favorite 2 weeks of the year because of it being uninterrupted time. 

Well with her wealth and his determination, and connections via his family, I'm sure they'll find a way eventually, either it is his parents passing away (since it has been about 6 years between him going back to NK and the epilogue meetup), or him somehow getting a long term mentoring position at Switzerland. You’re telling me Dan’s mom a department store owner can swing to Europe anytime, and Se-ri who created a whole scholarship for her man can’t swing something in collaboration with Papa Ri?

I got the impression the student performing his song on stage was a full-time student in Switzerland. RJH is not studying abroad but is teaching NK scholarship winners. Seri has been traveling back and forth a lot but these two weeks are the longest continual time they have together. 

When Seri first sees him in Switzerland she asks how dangerous his journey was, and he didn’t answer, just said he got on the wrong train but reached his destination. “Destination” implies a final location to me, not just a two-week stay. For two people who find it torturous to be apart for even a moment, destination would not have been thrown around like that. It could’ve taken his Dad some time to manage the politics to make a permanent teaching position with the National Symphony. He did see his son cry in the car after leaving her. That man is powerful, the 3rd most powerful man in North Korean. A political manipulation genius, a man always one step ahead of the others. He got his son and 5 people in and out of South Korea. You best believe he can make it happen. He’s not going to sit back and leave his only son living without his only dream. Plus RJH was never a flag waving patriotic North Korean anyway. He already expressed that he wanted to stay with SeRi in South Korea, have a child that looks just like her. It’s kdrama script writing 101 to not have your lead character mention a deep desire such as this one unless its foreshadowing or serves a larger purpose. And Park Ji Eun is no noob writer. 

Let’s look at the way the show itself references fate and destiny. Regardless of how impossible it may seem, these two always managed to find each other again. Fate is pushing them together and is on their side. I don’t think fate wants them to meet 2 weeks a year. Fate didn’t make them meet in Switzerland, in North Korea, in South Korea, and in Switzerland again for 2 weeks a year for the rest of their lives. I can’t entertain that.  A lot of people think that the epilogue on the hill and when she meets him for the first time again in Switzerland with the parachute are the same time frame. I don’t think so. I really do think the piano concert is the ending and the picnic is the epilogue. It’s years from then, when everything has been sorted about how to be together permanently and it’s a window in to happy every after. Just look at their body language and expressions in the last scene, they are totally at peace and seem to have gotten everything they wanted. Even the music radiates peace. Listen to the lyrics of Sigriswil that play as the camera pans out “wandering this strange night, won’t you be here by me? now I hold your hands, with you I’ll be alright...how does it feel, my friend? It’s been a long day and night” THEY ARE NO LONGER WANDERING ALONE THAT IS THE POINT. period. It was a “long day and night, but now I hold your hand” ... how does it finally feel to have your happy ever after....my friend. IT REEKS OF OPTIMISM and closure. In film making the atmosphere says everything about what is unsaid in the script. 

You best believe he won’t leave a stone unturned to be with her, see her grow old and live in the house of dreams with their twins. Just the fact that he vocalized this thought in the show leads me to believe that it did indeed happen. 

Believe in what the show is telling us to believe. What it’s showing us, not telling us even. That love will always find a way. 

Cloy’s ending also reminds me of  very heavily of (spoiler) that of “my love from the stars”. It was written by Park Ji-eun, the same writer as CLOY. So yes they are forced to be apart in that show too, but he finds his way back and each time they meet its for longer and longer and its implied that one day it will be forever. If an alien could find a wormhole to make it back to his love interest, north korea isn’t looking too bad. Same thing with her other star crossed lovers show “legend of the blue sea”. The mermaid finds him again against all odds and they live happily ever (plus a baby). Hey I’m just saying that the precedent has been set on how this seperation works through our writers own works. Having seen all of Park Ji Eun I know exactly how she structures her endings. It’s almost always the same. The mermaid made it back, the alien made it back...north korea is where we draw the line? They’re only apart for awhile till they figure it out, and they work hard to do so.

Whatever this image is from TVN left it unaired. They shot something they had to pull back. My crack theory brain says she looks a bit pregnant. Actually, that ain’t even a crack theory, I stand behind it. Son yejin is so slim, and judging by the material of the dress it just wouldn’t fall like that unless they were trying to make her look pregnant. Like LISTEN, just LISTEN to me. They put in the effort to get the actors in these outfits we have never seen before, they even gave seri flowers...whY?? There are no other purely promo shots that didn’t have footage attached. The only ones I can think of are the ones they took in front of a greenscreen for the photoframes inside their house. THIS WAS A REAL SCENE THAT WAS DELETED.  South Korean dramas pre-film certain scenes (like the swiss ones) and live film the others to make slight changes to the storyline based on audience reaction. During airing there was quite a lot of political backlash a la north korea. 

There are some stills TVN released that weren’t screencaps. But ALL of them were in outfits relating to scenes we have seen, such as this one.  It just would make no sense for them to go out of there way to get this image on the jam packed expensive swiss schedule and not just do greenscreen in korea like they did for all the other promo material UNLESS it was a real scene. 

So you want more evidence for plot points that indicated the original, unaired, together forever in Switzerland ending?

Let’s look at some details, at one point in Episode 14 when Jeong Hyeok's father is meeting with the bad guy Senior Colonel who tries to use photos of Jeong Hyeok in Korea as a bargaining chip, he says "You should retire quietly. Using your health as an excuse won't raise any suspicions." now whilst this may be a casual reference to him being old and that health issues are plausible, it's also possible Jeong Hyeok's father has had some long term illness they've not mentioned which would add to why it wouldn't raise suspicions.

The main reason I thought of this is it would sort of line up with some other details, in the finale when they're deciding whether to send them back or not, at the NIS briefing they mention how the North has requested keeping it quiet and confidential, they mention "They want the confidentiality term to be five years. They're being sensitive about it because one of them is a high-ranking officers son". Then if we fast forward toward the end when Se-ri is receiving the timed messages, a year passes after her birthday message from Jeong Hyeok, after that scene we see Jeong Hyeok having his farewell meal with the townspeople and preparing to leave after being accepted as a pianist for the National Symphony Orchestra, presumably around the same time as Se-ris birthday given that scene was right before. Se-ri then comes up with her Switzerland Music academy idea probably a few weeks or month or so after she read RJH's text about meeting and then it tells as it's one year later, Se-ri waits but doesn't meet him and returns home, her mum says "It breaks my heart to see you return in disappointment every time" which if that's a correct translation it means it's been more than once by this point. Add up this entire timeline....guess what it comes out to. FIVE YEARS. That’s how long it takes them to sort out a permanent solution for their problem.

When he chooses to defect it will be much easier for him considering he’s making trips to Switzerland already. All he would have to do is walk into a South Korean embassy in Zurich. They have an open door policy for North Koreans, he doesn’t even need to cross the DMZ again. 

You want even MORE proof? Okay my friend, I’ll bite. Why are there photos of a couple with children?? Honestly come on I really don’t have to say more.

They had to leave the ending open. Due to the political situation, they couldn’t exactly show RJH, a North Korean, defecting. Pretty sure our buddy Kim Jong-un would not be chill with that.  However ridiculous it is, the show had multiple attacks on it while it was running by political parties saying it violated the “national security act”.

The ending was clearly cleverly re-edited to be less explicit so the viewer can read between the lines but the show-runners can protect themselves from lawsuits and public sentiment regarding a sort of maybe illegal situation. If you believe they met for two weeks a year for the rest of their lives, you don’t know RiRi Ri-eally well ;) 

#crash landing on you #cloy #yoon se ri #ri jung hyeok #ri jeong hyeok #hyun bin #son ye jin #kdrama #binjin #dooly #riri couple