#And I like when people explore Zack's issues

[sunflowerscosmos]

Your Touch, My Scars

Relationships: Zack Fair/Cloud Strife

Word Count: 3,705

Additional Tags: Domestic Fluff, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Zack Fair Lives, POV Zack Fair, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Domestic Zakkura, Rain, Post-Nibelheim Incident (Compilation of FFVII), Post-canon, References to Crisis Core, Soft Cloud Strife

Zack got back home late.

It was already dark outside, where normally he was back by sunset, long-since inside and making dinner. Instead, the headlight on his motorcycle cut sharply across thick shadows and streaking rain as he slowed to park. With a flick of his thumb, he dragged his goggles up and onto his hair. His eyes prickled at the cold wind.

One of the lights was on up in the kitchen. He settled back in the saddle and stared for a second, just waiting until a figure blinked past.

Cloud. Cooking, Zack guessed. Picking up the slack that Zack had dropped in his effort to make one last delivery before calling it a night.

A quiet sort of guilt tugged at Zack as he cut the engine and swung his leg over the bike to stand. His boots splashed into small puddles, the dirt beneath him already muddy from the pouring rain around him, and he swiped a useless hand across his face before heading towards the door.

He didn't bother reaching for his keys, already knowing the door would be unlocked for him. Cloud always left it like that when he was home and Zack was out. It made it easier for him to slip inside, warm air and the smell of spices washing over him.

Water dripped from his hair and clothes onto the wood floor. Mud left smudged streaks where he stepped. He dropped his things on the small table nearby, then crouched, yanking off one boot.

There was just enough time for him to wonder to himself if Cloud had somehow not heard the sound of his bike or the door opening before he glanced up to find Cloud poking his head out of the kitchen at the end of the short front hall.

He was smiling. A small, amused smile, one that looked better on him than it had any right to considering Zack knew the amusement was aimed at him. It went well with the loose hoodie and baggy pants he had on, how his hair was pulled back away from his face in a short ponytail, and the soft tint to his mako-eyes.

“It's raining.” Cloud observed, like he was somehow being helpful.

“Thanks.” Zack grabbed his other boot. “I noticed.”

“So did our floor.”

With a scowl, Zack wishing that it felt more genuine and less like it was about to flip into a smile of his own any moment, he tossed both shoes to the side. “I make all of your deliveries for the day, and my thank you is mockery. This is the worst job I've ever had.”

“Close. Your thank you is the soup I'm making and the warm clothes in the dryer.”

He turned and vanished back into the kitchen, missing the way that Zack perked up. His socks squished as he started after Cloud.

“What kind of soup?” He asked.

“Dunno. I'm just dumping crap in.”

“It can't be worse than what we got in SOLDIER, so sounds good to me.”

That earned him a sharp look, and he lifted his hands in defense. This time, he couldn't help but smile.

“Go change.” Cloud ordered. “You're getting water everywhere.”

“Yessir,” Zack said, spinning on his heel to head for the laundry.

And Cloud was right; the clothes he'd chucked in for Zack were warm, comfortingly so. He pressed them to his face before closing the dryer and heading back to his and Cloud's bedroom. It was carpet, and better to drip on as he changed, or he'd have just thrown them on right where he was. It wasn't like he cared a lot if Cloud saw him shirtless.

On his way back, he passed the kitchen again, catching the quietest sound of Cloud humming, too soft for Zack to be able to pick out anything other than the vague tune. It tucked itself around Zack’s chest and cradled his heart as he reached their room, tossed his new clothes onto the bed, and shrugged out of his shirt.

There was a time a while ago where the idea of Cloud ever doing something as goofy as humming to himself would’ve been a pipe dream. He’d been too much of a hard-ass to ever let his guard down that much after Nibelheim.

It said something about how different everything was now that he was, and how comfortable they’d become, living here together. Working together. Being a team.

Grabbing his fresh t-shirt, Zack sighed, slipping it on in one smooth move. A few of his larger scars tugged at his skin as he changed into the pants, boxers, and cozy socks that Cloud had gotten him. With a brush of his hand over his hair, he gathered the wet clothes and chucked them into the bathroom sink.

Rain pattered gently against the window as he slipped back out into the hall. His footsteps were soft, so when he paused to lean against the doorway, Cloud didn't look up.

He was standing across the room, back to Zack, stirring the soup on the stove. Warm light washed over him from the overhead lights, reflecting off the window. His hair was practically golden from where Zack was standing.

For a minute, it was like they were in an entirely different world. One where this was all they'd ever known. Where Cloud's eyes were the same soft color they had been the first time Zack had looked into them, where their scars were little more than childhood accidents, where they'd never been separated at all. Where there'd been nights like this for as long as they could remember, Cloud's quiet voice drifting over their heads as he made dinner and Zack not bothering to soak it all in because he had no reason to think it'd ever be taken away from him.

(Continued on ao3)

[cobaltperun]

Lost (30) - Tangled up in you

Tara Carpenter x female Reader

Summary: To anyone on the outside, and to Tara’s friends, you were Tara’s fierce protector, the MMA fighter who’d take anyone on for Tara. The Guard Dog, as Amber called you. You had no idea you’d have to protect her from people who claimed they loved her. It didn’t matter. As long as you and Tara had one another there was nothing you wouldn’t be able to survive.

Story warnings: Scream violence, family issues, trauma, angst, certain sensitive topics

Word count: 3.8k

Story masterlist / First part / Previous part / Next Part

-You're the fire that warms me when I'm cold, you're the hand I have to hold as I grow old-

~X~ September 2037 ~X~

No matter how many times she thought about it, Tara couldn’t wrap her head around the passage of time. In a few days your children would turn ten, a few months ago you turned thirty-six and she would be thirty-five in a few months. Mindy and Anika adopted three wonderful children that would turn four next month, and even Chad got married and had a kid of his own on the way! Sam was forty, and she somehow managed to settle down with the female cop that infiltrated the cult over a decade ago, and it was about damn time. Frankly, Tara was grateful to the woman for having the patience to deal with Sam’s uncertainties and doubts in herself.

The point was, the time was passing way too quickly, it felt like she gave birth to Zack and Susan just yesterday and now they were slowly but surely entering their rebellious phase. Well, sometimes, and for small things, but Tara dreaded the moment they’d start arguing with you and her over everything. Soon they’d be teenagers, exploring the world through a fresh perspective, learning more about themselves, truly falling in love for the first time, and all the other things Tara frankly wasn’t ready for.

You on the other hand remained fairly chill about it, saying it was part of growing up and that you couldn’t protect them from everything. Speaking of you, you were on a business trip, to negotiate a deal and handle some minor inconveniences with a partner company. You’d come back tonight, and Tara hoped she could deal with the mess before you arrived.

The entire kitchen was almost at the point of no return, almost messed up beyond all recognition, and Zack and Susan loved it. Tara, however, wondered why she came up with this idea in the first place. “Zack, sweetheart, bring me the cream,” she asked the boy as she took a deep breath and prepared to remove the cake mold around the layered cake she and the twins made.

“Mommy, this isn’t going to hold,” Susan poked the upper layer and it moved! Why were cakes like this?! She made great food these past few days, breakfast, lunch, dinner, as long as it wasn’t really complex, sweets, or any pastry aside from the simplest ones, she more or less could make it, but cakes would one hundred percent be her downfall!

“Nonsense, we followed the recipe, and I watched Y/N make these plenty of times before!” Tara remained hopeful. It would be fine, she did watch you do this even before Zack and Susan were born, even before you two got together. She could do it. So, what if the sink was filled with dirty dishes, or if there was flour all over the counter, or if the stove desperately needed cleaning and the kids and her had cream and filling and chocolate all over their hands and faces and clothes. The cake would be amazing. Maybe a bit too sweet, because she foolishly allowed Zack to add sugar to the filling, and maybe, just maybe, Susan spilled a bit too much vanilla extract into it, but it would be fine.

“Sue is right, Mom, though Mom is more whipped than this cream so we’ll be fine,” Zack set the whipped cream next to her and climbed onto the chair to watch the impending doom he was so sure would transpire the moment Tara removed the cake mold. He was so much like you it wasn’t even funny. Calm, not bothered by most things. Susan picked up some of your traits as well, but Zack was like a sponge when it came to you, picking up your traits and habits.

“It’ll be fine,” Tara said, more to reassure herself than anything else and, with her eyes closed, finally removed the mold, only to feel the layers of the cake the three of them spent hours making just falling apart.

This was why you handled the cooking, you, unlike Tara, could make anything. And you, again unlike Tara, actually loved doing it.

“See? We told you,” Susan ripped off a small piece of the sponge, dipped it into the filling and put it in her mouth. “At least it tastes good?” she offered as Tara nearly dropped her head down on the table.

She would have done it, if Zack didn’t put his hand between her head and the messy table. “Thanks, Zack,” she sighed, lifting her head up and just sitting down on the chair. This was, in one word, a disaster.

Before the boy could reply Tara heard the sound of car pulling into the driveway and, despite the mess in the kitchen, she smiled, taking the apron off and watching through the kitchen window as you stepped out of the car with your bag hanging from your shoulder and a bounce to your step. You could have parked inside the garage, but you were clearly impatient to see your family once again.

“Mom!” Zack exclaimed, running toward the doors with a large grin on his face and Susan immediately followed him, just as happy to see you again after five days apart.

“Clean up first!” oh, who was Tara kidding, this was the longest the twins spent away from you, of course they wouldn’t realize how messy they were. It didn’t help that the kids were as attached to you as she was, they loved you, looked up to you, relied on you. You were everything your or Tara’s parents failed to be, their support and protection and Tara felt lucky she could raise the twins with you. You made one hell of a team if she could say so herself and the twins were happy, and actually excited to spend time with the two of you, unlike Tara or you were when you were their age.

She smiled when she heard your laughter. “Who let you two loose in the kitchen?” you laughed and she heard both of your children laughing and shouting, she couldn’t see what was going on, but she was certain you just lifted them up, and sure enough you walked through the kitchen doors with Zack and Susan in your arms. “Another year or two and you’ll have to take turns, you’re getting a bit too big,” you laughed and kissed their cheeks as they hugged you tightly.

“We tried to make a cake for you,” Zack spilled the beans.

“We made a mess,” Susan fake-whispered to you and then pointed around the kitchen for you to see.

“Well,” you took the horror slash crime scene in front of you in as Tara just sheepishly smiled at you. “There are words that could be used in this situation,” you chuckled, lowering the kids down and walking over to Tara.

She just looked at you, too exhausted by the failure to get up and greet you. And, well, unlike the twins she was aware of how messy she was. Although, your clothes were already stained, so maybe adding a few more stains wouldn’t hurt.

“I missed you so much,” you kissed her as you wrapped your arms around her waist and pulled her up, and Tara hooked an arm around your neck.

She deepened the kiss and caressed your cheek, leaving a bit of whipped cream on it. “It’s a complete failure,” she chuckled softly when she pulled back and looked you in the eyes, and she still saw the same intense, absolute love she saw all those years ago. All these years and the love you felt for her didn’t fade even a bit, in fact, it just got stronger with time.

You took her hand and brough it to your lips to taste the whipped cream. “This is fine,” you said and glanced at the filling. “That’s not thick enough though. And you forgot to put the whipped cream on the edges,” you told her, just from one glance seeing where the main issues were.

Well, you were the one who handled the cooking, not Tara.

“Can we fix it?” Susan asked as you lowered Tara back down.

“Maybe next time, I wanna eat what you guys made for me,” you said, and so you just freshened up a bit and came back to the kitchen to enjoy the end results of your family’s efforts. It was just another thing she loved about you, because it didn’t matter that the cake was a mess, Tara, Zack and Susan made it for you, and to you that meant it was perfect as it was.

“See,” Zack grinned at her, and Tara noticed that his grin looked a lot like yours. “Mom is more whipped than this,” he reminded her, causing you to ruffle his hair.

“I mean, I can’t argue against that,” you laughed, taking another bite of the cake.

“Sue got an A for her drawing, by the way,” Zack suddenly said, and Tara watched with a wide smile as Susan blushed when you, proud of her, got up and kissed the top of her head.

“I’m proud of you, Sue,” you smiled, hugging your daughter when she wrapped her arms around you.

Susan shrugged. “It’s just the usual stuff,” she said, though the smile on her face gave away the fact that she enjoyed the praise.

“Maybe, but,” you pulled Zack into a hug as well. “we’re both still proud of you. Both of you. No matter what you get at school, as long as you’re happy and put effort into what you’re doing, we’ll both always be proud of you,” you told them, and it was something both you and Tara told them as often as possible. No matter how big or how small, no matter if they succeed or fail, you would always be there to celebrate with them or cheer them up.

And Tara got up to hug the three of you at the same time. It felt good to have her entire family with her again, even if you were away for only five days.

~X~

It was late at night when you and Tara finished returning the kitchen to the original state. “Did you three have a whipped cream fight?” you asked incredulously as you brought the ladder to clean a few bits of whipped cream stains that somehow ended up on the ceiling.

Tara chuckled uneasily. “I’d like to tell you how that happened, but this whole night feels like a fever dream,” she sighed as she slumped into the chair, exhausted and sleepy, but not complaining for even a moment. Hell, she wanted to clean this all up alone and let you rest. As if you could rest knowing she was fighting the kitchen mess all alone.

At least Zack and Susan got too tired to make a fuss about their bedtime.

You climbed down from the ladder and approached Tara. “I appreciate the thought, Love,” you said, getting behind her and massaging her shoulders and neck slowly.

“That’s the spot,” she sighed contently and closed her eyes, just surrendering to the sensations of your touch over her shirt, well, your shirt, but at this point it was a shared closet. “How did your business trip go?” she asked while you lowered your hands to massage her back, or at least whatever you could reach above the chair.

“Eh, they were being greedy so I went and made it very clear we were paying them enough already, but I might need to look for another export company soon enough,” you said, thinking over the past few days. “Oh, and I managed to make a good deal, the company should earn a bit over a million from it, so that’s always a good thing,” you told her more, going into details on the deal and the work you did over the past five days.

All the while Tara nodded, congratulating, and praising you every now and then. Safe to say, you didn’t have to worry about money, and with how things were going Zack and Susan would be fine and able to pursue any interest.

~X~

Next morning you and Zack came back from the two-mile-long morning jog. Zack’s been training with you almost every morning, nothing too intense, but he went with you on a jog and did some cardio with you as well. He had no interest in martial arts though and just liked being active, and he liked to focus on the training he did do.

You followed him into the home gym you set up and, as he sat down to rest from the jog, you put on your gloves and began shadow boxing. It was one of your favorite exercises, as you moved in response to the imaginary enemy, maintaining the speed and power behind your hits as the doors opened.

You grinned, but you didn’t stop training. “Drawing again, Sue?” you asked, effortlessly switching from one stance to another.

“Yup!” Susan sat down next to Zack with a notebook and a pencil in her hands. While Zack had no interest whatsoever in martial arts, Susan did, though not the way you did. Instead of training or developing an interest in the uses of martial arts, she was mesmerized by the motions, the stances, the artistic side of it as she called it. Repeatedly she captured your movements and stances as she drew sketches, she later turned into detailed pencil drawings. She could easily depict a small fight scene through her drawings, and she was technically still nine. You were eager to see where her talent would take her. And while Zack lacked the more artistic talents, he had his own share of skills, mostly rooted in logic and math.

So, as you continued going through the motions you found yourself thinking you were the luckiest person in the world. You had two wonderful children and Tara with you, and absolutely nothing would make you happier than spending the rest of your life by their sides.

About an hour later, while you were in the middle of punching the sandbag you and the twins heard the doors upstairs opening and Tara came down with laptop in hand. “Baby you need to see this,” the urgency in her voice made you quickly take the gloves off, but the excitement in her eyes told you whatever she had to show you was good news. So, you took a few extra moments to wipe the sweat off your face as she set the laptop on the table.

Zack and Susan ran over to the laptop and paused. “UFC?” Zack read, puzzled.

You raised an eyebrow, that was the last thing you expected, but you leaned against the table and looked at the mail you got. “An invitation for the charity event? All the money made from the ticket sales will be donated,” you read, grinning as you saw the details.

“Is it because we have money?” Susan asked.

Now that you thought about it, you never really told them you were once a world champion. It just never came up.

Tara placed her arms around their shoulders and pulled them a bit closer. “Let me tell you a tiny little secret about your mom,” she winked at you and you pretended to not pay attention as the kids got excited over the idea. “Your mom used to be a world champion, the strongest female MMA fighter in the who world,” she fake-whispered.

“What?! Mom?!” Zack exclaimed, looking from Tara to you and back as if he couldn’t believe that.

“That’s so cool!” Susan shouted and ran over to her phone. From the corner of your eye you could see her Googling you and sure enough she found the proof of Tara’s claim. “It’s true! Look Z, she knocked one lady out in one punch!”

“No way!” Zack ran over to her, and you just smiled as you pulled Tara into a hug.

“You look happy,” you muttered against her neck.

“Mhm. I know you’ll accept,” she said and placed her arms on top of yours. “All these years and you’re still so strong,” she whispered as she turned her head and kissed your cheek. “My badass, adorable, MMA fighter.”

“I’ll show you adorable,” you grumbled, annoyed that she still pulled that out every now and then.

Tara looked a little too pleased with that. “I’m counting on that,” she spoke quietly, just for you to hear her. “Mmm, Daddy.” 

Fuck. She was going to be the death of you.

~X~

A month later you were more or less back in fighting shape and ready to fight. You felt good, light on your feet, with explosive punches and fast kicks and while you weren’t too confident in your grappling all these years later you had to admit that was never your go-to approach to begin with. So, here you were, once again in the octagon, surrounded by the fences and the crowd screaming your and your opponent’s name.

“You sure you don’t wanna give up, I’ll even bring you a chair so you can rest, after all, you might as well be a hag in the cage,” the girl was close to her prime, in her early twenties and, from what you heard, current world champion.

You just unzipped your jacket and tossed it outside to the team the organizers gave you and the girl paled a bit. She looked a bit like Anya now that you took a moment to look at her, only without any respect. “I’m good, brat,” you smirked bouncing on your feet and rolling your shoulders to warm up a bit.

The bell rang and the round began, and in that moment everything else disappeared, nothing mattered but the fight. Your body moved on instinct, with barely any thought in your head as you rushed the woman and landed a few quick, precise jabs.

She stumbled back, still completely open as you went for the haymaker and stopped right before your fist collided with her face. “Come on,” you pulled back and clapped a few times before beckoning her to come closer.

Her eyes narrowed dangerously as you smirked. She was faster than you gave her credit, but you weaved and dodged all of her attempts to hit you. You weren’t even keeping your guard up as she tried to go for your jaw. You just leaned back and brought your fist up, more bopping than hitting the side of her head, but she bared her teeth and tried to go for a haymaker.

You ducked and while her weight was off balance hooked an arm behind her knee and slammed her onto the floor. You didn’t follow up on it though, and instead just took a few steps back. You held up two fingers as she just blinked, looking at you as if she couldn’t believe what was going on. “One more chance, use it wisely, brat,” you said.

It wasn’t like you wanted to humiliate her, it was just that your instinct was to go for the killing blow, you needed to wait for the adrenaline to pass so you could follow all the rules. She tried again, though more cautiously this time. She was more precise, more focused, if you weren’t as relaxed and if she already wasn’t fighting at the pace you were setting she would have been a challenge, as it was, you just glided around the octagon, swaying and moving out of the way of her hits. She tried to knee you, but you just blocked her knee and pushed her back slightly. She stumbled and you went for a high kick. Her eyes widened, but once again you stopped before you could land the hit and stepped back once more.

“Warm up is over,” the easygoing smile disappeared from your face, leaving only complete focus on the fight. The cheers of the crowd became louder when you caught her in a clinch before she could even figure out that you went on the offensive. You hit her twice, breaking her hastily put up guard and then hit her face. While she regained her composure you went for a spinning back kick to the side of her head, ending the match with only a few hits and before the first round even ended.

“And the winner by knock-out is Y/N L/N!” the announcer shouted as the crowd cheered and you raised your arms high. You looked to the front row, to Tara, Zack and Susan cheering for you and, driven purely by emotions you swiftly climbed over the fence and ran over to them.

“Mom you were awesome!” Zack ran into your arms and Susan followed just a few moments later.

“Yeah? Your mom can still kick ass?” you lifted them up and kissed their cheeks.

“We have the strongest mom,” Susan giggled as her and Zack took the belt the judge was trying to give you. He looked uncertain but you just nodded, lifting your kids up higher as they raised the belt up high.

It was a short reunion with the octagon, only one fight, but you remained undefeated in your career, and you were satisfied. You fought one again, with rules and regulations and still won despite all of your instincts telling you to dispose of your opponent. And you got the chance to fight in front of your children, to show them who you once were, before the company, before training became just the way to stay in shape and capable of keeping your loved ones safe.

Eventually they gave the belt back to the judge and just hugged you tightly. With Zack and Susan still in your arms Tara stepped closer. Her eyes softened as she caressed your cheek, and then she just hugged both of your children and you at the same time.

It took years of trial and error, years of fighting to keep you and Tara and everyone else you loved alive, and you’d fight again if there was ever the need to do so. But right now nothing mattered but your family, and no matter what, as long as Tara and your children were by your side you would never be…

Lost.

A/N: So, that’s the finale, as far as the main story goes. As for the future of this story I want to do some side stories, some that are completely canon to Lost, and some that are more what-ifs than anything else. So, maybe I’ll write a few chapters about what would have happened if Tara called R over the night Amber first attacked her. Or maybe I’ll write something you request, so go ahead and tell me if there is something you’d really like to read. Truly, how often I come back to these two is as much up to you as it is up to me. Either way, thank you for reading!

Story masterlist / First part / Previous part / Next Part

Taglist: @alexkolax

[siryouarebeingmocked]

Someone recently claimed that the new Davies era of doctor who has no more wokism* than the show used to.

Now, maybe I've just changed in the past few decades, but from what I've heard of the 60th anniversary specials it does seem a tad more concentrated. Cherry-picking SPOILERS, sweeties.

- Donna got married offscreen. To what I can only assume is the last black cab driver in London.

- Her kid is trans. Specifically, non-binary, female presenting, says the wiki.** - In the next episode, we learn the Doctor is gay/bi when he thinks Sir Isaac Newton is hot. I'd smugly say this bit has no real relevance, but...the actual scene does carry the episode theme of accidentally changing reality. It's just the queer bit that seems tacked on. Though it does carry forward themes from 10s era. - Sir Zack himself is played by a half-Indian actor. It's not exactly hard to tell. I'm assuming they're running on Bridgerton logic. https://twitter.com/frozenaesthetic/status/1731332492282429950 - This episode is basically just Donna and the Doc exploring a weird location, and running into monsters, who happen to look like them. It would be a bottle episode, except for the large vfx budget. And yet ol' Rusty somehow managed to awkwardly wedge in an  progressive issue. - In the next episode, the villain explains how he's just exploiting the divisions that already exist in human society, including cancel culture. - no wait he's got a point. Jpg - This is ironic, given that Davies and/or his broadcasting house masters are pretty blatantly on the team that a) coined the word,  b) cancels people the most often, and c) defends the idea of Internet lynch mobs*** (***as long as they're left wing. If not, they're *ist "trolls", even if they're just complaining about the latest sacred cow.) Maybe the Davies was criticizing his own team. * Because the Toymaker was kind of racist back in the day (white dude dressed like a stereotypical Chinese dude), Davies made the new version a bit racist "as a callback to his original, problematic depiction back in 1966." - TVtropes, ref. DW Unleashed. On the other hand, the Toymaker also mocks and dresses as several other cultural archetypes. All the ones I've seen were white European ones. He just does this to everyone, apparently. - Toymaker also weaponizes the Spice Girls hit "Spice Up Your Life". No, I will not explain. Though I will note that a line about the "Yellow man in Timbuktu" was apparently drowned out in the episode. Probably for being a tad spicy. - One new UNIT character is a lady in a wheelchair. When the new Tardis - no, I will not explain - has a wheelchair ramp, she happily points it out. Which makes me wonder why the blue box would be so limited, considering it often deals with alien species. - Also, the same actress played a disabled Companion in the Big Finish audio dramas. I'm not sure why it was considered essential to do so in an entirely audio format, but there have been controversies over this sort of thing before (EG Artie on Glee, various racial voice acting controversies). - At this point, casting Ncuti Gatwa as 15 doesn't even register. Not really a blip on my radar. Black Doc? Whatevs. His sonic screwdriver has Rwandan words on it? So? I go to church with lots of Africans. Heck, I'm a black immigrant to ol' Blighty myself, just from the other side of the pond. Ncuti is, chronologically speaking, more British than I am. - Though given that he's Rwandan-Scottish, there may be some debate on the "British" part. - Wikipedia says the actor is pretty left-wing, but the actor seems good so far, so I'm willing to give him a sha-

Oh, come ON!

Maybe the original person speaking was comparing it to the Chibnall “history has always been a whitewash” era, which had a character who was a paper thin Trump satire. A tad ironic, when the whole point of bringing Davies, Tennant, and Tate back is to play on nostalgia.

*Tangent: that word was apparently voted  the most annoying words in English. Which is kind of hilarious if you know that it was originally created to self-describe certain progressives. And the "you can't even define that word!" meme was almost certainly ripped off from the right wing "what is a woman?" Meme. ** This is apparently because she's part Time Lord, through Donna. It seems a tad interesting to me that a few works featuring non binary characters happen to make them enby due to some sort of supernatural (Omniscient Reader) or sci-fi (SW Squadrons) influence which the vast majority of IRL enbies don't have. ...As far as I know.

[soldierhero-and-flowergirl]

Hi, I haven't played Crisis Core in sometime. Was Zack considered a playboy and a flirt? Could you please explain that aspect of his character? I love his relationship with Aerith. Thank you.

In Crisis Core, you will see Zack hits on some women such as the receptionist on Shinra’s building and Cissnei, a female Turks. But Zack doesn’t seem to like women playing hard to get, so if they aren’t attracted at him, he simply moves on; never hits on them again. And it’s like Zack has bad luck in flirting lol--if you knew that kind of trope. However, the response he gets from Aerith is different. 

At first, Aerith rejected his one date offer. But later, she takes initiative as Zack thought she wouldn’t date him. And that’s how they go on their first date, almost kiss. It’s a win-win. They’re both attracted to each others and Aerith isn’t passive girl. He eventually always visits her whenever he’s up to, spending time together, it’s a budding relationship, just as Nomura (creative producer of CC and creative director of CC Reunion) said here: 

── Will you be portraying the relationship between Zack and Aerith in detail in CC? Nomura: "They do have a lot of conversations together. Whenever something comes up, Zack heads straight to the church, as if maybe he’s looking to be healed (laughs). It’s a brutal story, but Zack and Aerith’s conversations are somewhat heart-warming, and offer a bit of respite. I hope people will look forward to watching their scenes together.�� 

(Dengeki Maou October 2007 Issue)

── You’ve also revealed some scenes with Zack and Aerith. But to people who know what the future holds for them, they must be quite sad to watch. Nomura: “There are a lot of scenes that explore what kind of relationship they had. If you take note of Zack’s changing hairstyle. I think you’ll have realized this, but Zack meets Aerith when he’s still 2nd Class, so it’s safe to say he spent a long time with her.“ 

(Famitsu Vol. 972)

In FFVII, Zack sends a letter to his parents, telling them about him doing his best as SOLDIER, but he also informs them he had a girlfriend. A man telling his parents that he has a girlfriend means no other than him being serious with her, the one and only. 

And we know how it ends, he’s faithful to Aerith till the very last thing on his mind. (T_T) Crisis Core Reunion will hit your feelings more because the devs recreate Aerith’s last image on his mind a little bit different.

Doesn’t mean that he can’t have female friends, right? He’s still friends with Cissnei. Nah, Nomura, along with the Director of original Crisis Core, Hajime Tabata, said that the beach scene between Zack and Cissnei was made to allude to a scene in FFVII, where Aerith says something about Zack having other girlfriend. 

── In the beach scene there's a good atmosphere between Zack and Cissnei, but what's kind of relationship did they have? Nomura: "There was a scene in FFVII where Aerith says something about Zack having other girlfriends." Tabata: "It's meant to allude to that. Besides that, she's also one of the people who gave Zack support along the way. Some of those feelings are depicted in the DMW memory scenes."

(Dengeki PSP Vol.397)

But Nojima, the scenario writer, confirmed that he didn't intend to portray Zack waver between Aerith and Cissnei. 

──Did you intend to portray Zack’s wavering between Cissnei and Aerith? Nojima: “No, that’s not true.”

(CCFF7 Ultimania; interview section)

In the game itself, the scenario on the beach shows Zack reject Cissnei's offer to rub suntan lotion on him and ask her to go doing something because he wants to call Aerith. 

Cissnei: Suntan lotion? Zack: No, nevermind that.

(after some talks about Shinra’s issues...)

Zack: Cissnei, go do something (then walks as he’s about to pick something on his bench) Cissnei: Calling Aerith? Zack: How do you know that? Am I being watched?

Later, player (you) will receive mails from Zack Fan Club that Black Suit, presumably Cissnei's alias, informs that Zack is not flirtatious player despite having the vitality. Don’t forget to open every mails you get in the game or you miss this one:

We received the following information from a member of our word-of-mouth network: Zack’s favorite swimsuit has embroidered sunflowers. Isn’t that perfect for someone as sunny as Zack?

He was spotted in Costa del Sol on a break. It was then, on the day of the simultaneous attacks, that he was seen fighting foes on the beach with a parasol! Isn’t that WILD? With all this vitality, you might expect Zack to be a flirtatious player when it comes to romance, but apparently he’s actually very sweet and naive.

Thanks to Black Suit for the info!

[cocoabubbelle]

Unpopular Opinion:

I like Bruce Wayne/Batman and all, but I can’t help but roll my eyes whenever DC does some alternative continuities and of all the heroes that become more antagonistic, he comes out unscathed and is one of the most irrevocably good guys that has to take it upon himself to fight his former friends/associates/family.

(Spoilers under the cut.)

Earth 2? That’s mostly Thomas Wayne junior after the first crisis.

The Batman who Laughs? That’s pretty much The Joker injecting a portion of himself into Bruce’s brain and overriding/mutating his personality.

Justice Lords? I don’t know much about their comic versions if they have one, but in the JSL Animated Series, the Batman of that world was the one who redeemed himself and turned against his team mates.

Injustice? Batman will always be the good one and always do the right thing even if he was the one who killed the Joker in a what if scenario because he is humble enough to accept his punishment and even the good Superman he recruits admits could have done the same thing as his world’s Superman and yadda yadda yadda.

DC vs Vampires? They seriously made Batman the only one of the golden trio that never got turned, the one who is trusted to figure out the solution to combat the vampires, and made Dick Grayson/Nightwing the King of the Vampires??

The CW version if the DCU? That Batman only showed up once for all I know, and was a failed attempt to criticize Zack Snyder’s take on the SC universe.

White Knight? Batman was only seen as the antagonist for barely the first few issues before teaming up with Jack Napier to take down the bigger threat, was the hero again when Joker returned, and is currently still a good guy (I don’t hate it, but I feel the role reversal of Batman and Joker’s usual dynamic could have been explored more.)

The Dark Knights of Steel? This one I will let slide on its thin ice since the “Kal-El” who stabbed Bruce was later revealed to be a white martian scout or something. I don’t want to suspect the writers intending the Els to be the antagonists but backtracking and introducing the White martians when reception to yet another antagonistic Superman was negative — and who knows? Maybe they purposely played into that to make the reveal over the actual antagonists more interesting—, but still.

In my opinion, Zack Snyder’s versions of the Trinity was the most successful of introducing a Bruce Wayne/Batman who could be seen as a well-meaning antagonist who was —and later recognized— that he was wrong. (and redeemed himself later too.)

Wonder Woman also gets some of this special treatment at times (most of her Superwomen counter parts are shifted to Lois Lane or Donna Troy, and even Mary Marvel at some point; in the animated adaptation of Injustice, she has reservations from the start and later turns against Superman despite heavily influencing him in the games and comics.)

Why is Superman usually the go-to for making/twisting a genuinely good, idealistic and upright hero who would never abandon his morals into an easily influenced powerhouse who totally will sacrifice/ditch his moral compass when given the opportunity? Some may excuse some of these iterations as being placed with the wrong setting and people who raised him in story, but that could easily work for Diana of Themyscira and Bruce Wayne too if given the opportunity. With the latter two, usually they still develop into the recognizable heroes we know and love, while at best Clark is manipulated and misguided and at worst he willingly embraces his newfound villainy.

Bruce Wayne/Batman is not better than Clark Kent/Superman. Neither is Wonder Woman.

In my eyes, and from what I can tell from most of the golden/silver/bronze age of the comic book era, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman’s character arcs and story development lead them to be seen as EQUALS. Hence their most popular dynamic as a TRIO.

Is Superman arguably the most powerful one? Yes. Is Wonder Woman arguably the most skilled in combat? Yes. Is Batman arguably the most intelligent one? Yes. Do they all have strong convictions and morals? Yes. Do they ALL have weaknesses and the capacity to have momentary lapses of judgement? Yes. Do they all stand strong as both individuals and united teammates? Yes.

Am I saying that the Beware the Superman trope is an overused one? Yes and no. Yes I am sick of it popping up almost everywhere in most western media. No, I don’t think it is without potential to be used as an actually useful plot device/character arc, especially if it extends beyond the “Superman” character template and applies to all manner of superheroes.

That’s just my opinion though.

[mezzomorendo]

Meet the Mun.

ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴘɪᴄᴋ ᴜᴘ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴜʀʀᴇɴᴛ ᴍᴜꜱᴇ(ꜱ) ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇ?

Zack has been a staple of my life since I first picked up Crisis Core wayyyyy back in 2009-2010 ish. Ever since I saved up every penny from chores and babysitting to get a PSP specifically to play it, I was obsessed with him and his story. I never played OG 7, so all I knew was Zack's life and his story and I loved him. I still do, and to this day he's a giant influence on me. I have an intense emotional connection with this character, and as an adult I see now why I connected with him so much. He was exactly what I needed as a lost, confused kid who didn't understand why I was the way I was. I picked Zack up as a muse a couple years ago, when I finally decided to try my hand at writing him. For the longest time he was just someone I admired, and now I get to infuse him with even more love. <3

ɪꜱ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ᴀɴʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ʏᴏᴜ ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴡʀɪᴛᴇ?

I'm not super fond of a lot of action scenes? Fights are really hard for me to do. I also don't tend to do things like torture or other darker subjects like that because I'm just here to have fun and do character exploration LMAO.

ɪꜱ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ᴀɴʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ʏᴏᴜ ʀᴇᴀʟʟʏ ᴇɴᴊᴏʏ ᴡʀɪᴛɪɴɢ?

FLUFF!!!!!! SHIPS!!!!!!!!!!! Really whatever lets me explore him being happy and alive and a person outside of the narrative. He really is defined by his death, so I love to explore who he is outside of war and dying.

ʜᴏᴡ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ᴜᴘ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʜᴇᴀᴅᴄᴀɴᴏɴꜱ?

Not gonna lie, quite a few are me projecting onto him LMAO. But usually the way I write HCs are from a handful of prompting questions. Some examples are below <3 "What are the realistic consequences of this part of his life?" This brought me to how long it would likely take him to heal after being riddled with bullets, what is mental state would be like, why he's no longer a combatant, and how he moved from "mercenary" to "EMT" "Would this explain why he is the way he is?" This is a lot of where I'm starting to extrapolate Gongagan culture/history as well as expanding on his family. It's also where i got him being poly and ADHD!

ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡʀɪᴛᴇ ɪɴ ꜱɪʟᴇɴᴄᴇ ᴏʀ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴘʟᴀʏ ᴍᴜꜱɪᴄ?

Music for more intense scenes, but often time it's just whatever random youtube video is playing in the background for me. I do have an entire Zack playlist on Spotify I use when I really need to get IC though.

ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴘʟᴀɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʀᴇᴘʟɪᴇꜱ ᴏʀ ᴡɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴇᴍ?

Eh, wing them usually. Sometimes I do a bit of planning over discord by throwing around IC thoughts or plots, but usually it's very spur of the moment. Zack doesn't do a lot of pre-planning himself so I don't tend to either.

ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴇɴᴊᴏʏ ꜱʜɪᴘᴘɪɴɢ?

HELL FUCKING YEAH I AM! I've elaborated on it in my rules but genuinely I love shipping with Zack. He's so full of love and care and it's hard for him not to catch feelings for people. He's also defined by the amount of love he gives - he loves so strongly, and all the time. I won't force ship, but even if you're like "hey i have a silly crackship" gimme.

ᴡʜᴀᴛ'ꜱ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴀʟɪᴀꜱ/ɴᴀᴍᴇ?

Kei! :D It's the name I use in dating sims and it's stuck LMAO

ᴀɢᴇ?

25+

ʙɪʀᴛʜᴅᴀʏ?

Soon, actually! Late April.

ꜰᴀᴠᴏʀɪᴛᴇ ᴄᴏʟᴏʀ(ꜱ)?

Blues and blacks <3

ꜰᴀᴠᴏʀɪᴛᴇ ꜱᴏɴɢ(ꜱ)?

Depends on my mood tbh but right now it's like. 90% of KINGDOM's work lolol especially Last Flower - i am WAITING for the day they eventually release it to streaming ;w;

ʟᴀꜱᴛ ᴍᴏᴠɪᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀᴛᴄʜᴇᴅ?

Advent Children, actually! I got to watch it with my BF who had never seen it before and it was sooooo much fun LMAO.

ʟᴀꜱᴛ ꜱʜᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀᴛᴄʜᴇᴅ?

Uhhhhh Apothecary Diaries I think? I think the last thing I watched was the finale for that.

ʟᴀꜱᴛ ꜱᴏɴɢ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪꜱᴛᴇɴᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ?

The Soda Wave on youtube's Pruno Faustino cover of Soleil by Tiara <3 I love that voicebank they made SO MUCH and it's so pretty

ꜰᴀᴠᴏʀɪᴛᴇ ꜰᴏᴏᴅ?

PASTRIES! Everything from Chocolate Lava Cake to croissants to mochi to whatever! I looooove pastries so much <3

ꜰᴀᴠᴏʀɪᴛᴇ ꜱᴇᴀꜱᴏɴ?

Fall. Bugs are dead and can't scare me and i'm not having issues with temperature regulation

ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴀ ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ ʙᴇꜱᴛ ꜰʀɪᴇɴᴅ?

Not really? I just have a lotta good friends :>

tagged by: well really stolen from @reapersxfolly (it's not letting me @ u gomenasorry)

tagging: whoever wants to do it!

[thevindicativevordan]

Maybe you've talked about this before but I'm curious what it is about Wonder Woman the Justice League show got wrong to some people.

No I haven't talked about DCAU Wonder Woman in-depth, mainly because she lacks depth. Her problem is fairly straightforward: she's entirely defined by being Batman's wannabe girlfriend.

Seriously go ahead and try to think of a great DCAU Wonder Woman moment or episode that isn't tied to Batman in any way. Her flirting with him is the number one attribute about her that people care about, when Susan Eisenberg was asked what she would like to do with the character in a hypothetical Justice League reunion, her answer was "I'd like to explore more of her romance with Batman". When I read that I was baffled. Explore a relationship doomed to failure because Bruce has to end up a bitter loner for Batman Beyond? That's what you want to do? After reflecting on it however, I can understand why she would feel that way. What else is there to explore? Treatment of Diana's mythos in the DCAU is a complete joke, her two major villains used on the show - Cheetah and Circe - were not afforded any respect. Cheetah kissing Batman and Circe making Batman sing "I'm a little tea cup" are the only uses of her Rogues Gallery in the DCAU that people remember. Steve Trevor was an old man in the present day that she only met via time travel. Like Superman she was clearly not the favorite of anyone involved in the show.

Outside of shipping her with Batman, Timm and Dini's go-to move when they didn't know what to do with a female character, she didn't get treated well. Much like how the DCAU paved the way for the modern Lex Luthor, combining the CEO and mad scientist, the DCAU is what cemented Wonder Woman as "the warrior". Like Superman she's mainly characterized as a hothead, and she's also meant to be a rookie learning about Man's World, unlike her peers who are all experienced heroes by the time the League forms. One of her few focus episodes is about an evil Amazon Aresia trying to kill off the world's men, with Diana making a few misandrist comments about how she's not sure why she should stop Aresia, with the lesson Diana learns being Not All Men Are Bad™. This was even the first time that I remember the concept of Diana having a divine father was introduced with Hades. You can draw a line from her depiction here to how she was characterized in the New 52 and under Zack Snyder in the DCEU.

So people latch on to the Batman relationship because it's at least something. Their interactions are cute and Batman is part of the "troubled heroes" category like Avatar: The Last Airbender's Zuko which shippers go crazy for. Leaves this incarnation feeling shallow and diminished compared to comics Wonder Woman at her best, but I understand why she has fans. Eisenberg is also a great voice actress and I remain fond of her performance regardless of my issues with Wonder Woman's characterization.

If there was ever to be a Wonder Woman cartoon I'd prefer it be a clean reboot set in it's own continuity. Again like Superman I think Wonder Woman is better served being off in her own bubble with no other heroes, it's just too tempting for all the Batman fanboys running things at DC to use her to prop their boy up. She deserves better than that.

[algumaideia]

hey nemi i know it’s late (we’ll maybe not for you depending on where you are but it’s late for me and i’m suuuuper sleep deprived so forgive me if this doesn’t make any sense) but what are you hoping for in the mq finale episode specifically for brad david ian and poppy

Hello :)

So I think David and Ian should kiss accidently and then have a super gay crisis. And while they are coming with terms that they are gay and start interacting with the queer community they grow a lot and finally stop being insecure about their masculinity, specially Ian. And then at the end of the arc they kiss again, this time because they are aware that they want to do it.

During the entire arc the only music that should play is Macho Man. Except when they kiss for the second time, then another music is allowed to play.

But being serious I don't really want anything to happen bc it feels like we're in the middle of the season not going to the finale, so I just want to things be open and season 4 to be season 3 part 2.

That being said I want David to continue on his journey to become more assertive and I want him to be a better boss which means he needs to be more considerated of other people and his employees.

I also want the movie to be sucessful but not on the next episode.

I don't want anything solved in the next episode.

I want Ian to apologize for Poppy and he needs to become less egotistical and become less insecure about his masculinity. He needs to learn to be more vulnerable.

In the next episode I want Poppy to realize that she is not a good person. I don't exactly want her to become better, just to realise she is not good.

In future episodes I want to know more about her family issues and I want her video game to be sucessful.

Now Brad? I think they sort of made a mess with him. He was okaing with dealing with trash but a coffee is degrading? He wanted to be a palpatine to a vader. Let him be that!! Explore how he is not exactly a good person but he often does good things!! I miss people entering on his office and he saying stuff with them. I want him to be really smart again.

Also i want Zack to appear, bc Brad said going to prison would launch his career now he is back as a janitor and mq wasnt sold so Zack would defiently appear to mess with his brother. So I want Zack back being a dick and Brad punching him.

More about David's relationship with his family would be really nice. Also more about Brad's family would be nice.

Also where is Sue??? She dissappeared!!! I like her!!

I want Phill to unionize.

And I want Paul back.

I also want Dana to go back to normal.

So that is all that I want.

[monochromaticbutter]

do you think ptj will do jaeyeol/jay’s character any justice? 🥲 i’ve read so many comments on reddit saying that ptj will just throw jay away because he’s served his purpose (attracting a large enough fanbase through queer-baiting) because jay’s potential to be a great character is just going down the drain (he’s the son of steve hong, he should he able to step in and help right? also big daniel is kidnapped and jay used to have such a strong “daniel is in trouble i gotta go help him” sensor so where tf is he?)

okay, but excluding all that, i think jay should be developed further as a character because he has so much potential that’s being wasted so far. i really hope ptj hasn’t forgotten about him and pulls an eli jang arc for jay because he’s super interesting to me, like i wanna know why he doesn’t talk, why he isn’t acknowledged by his family (?), where tf is he when all this is going down, what does he do in his free time, what are his likes (besides daniel lol)??? i just want to know more about him as a person IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK PTJ???

ahem, sorry for the rant, i just caught up to the latest chapter and i am FUMING because the last time we saw jay was in chapter 300+ and he wasn’t even that prominent in the chapter? i just miss when all we had to care about was daniel having to hide his 2 bodies from people, crystal being a snoop, jay and joy fighting over the same man, zack and mira’s relationship, zoe’s inner conflict not knowing she likes the very same person, etc. like what’s with all these new characters i do not give a single shit about? i loved the hostel chapters though but once they got to the worker’s arc, man…. pls just bring the original cast back.. this story is getting too much man..

so what do you think? 🥲😅😔

Thanks for the ask! This is the first one I receive so I got a bit excited <3 Apologies for the big reply!

About Jay's character potential, yes. That boy has so much potential. So many things have been implied with those little scenes he appears in, like when his dad said explicitly he doesn't want to talk to him anymore, or how lonely he's portrayed as. PTJ isn't new to inserting social issues into Lookism (bullying, poverty, exploration of workers, sexual assault, etc), so I have a strong belief that his story has a theme of homophobia, somehow, somewhere.

I'd be perfectly fine if his feelings for Daniel/Hyungseok were completely unrequited and he was just a character that happens to be gay and have a crush on him, while still having a proper development. Many people think it's either being gay or being well developed, as if gay crushes can't be simple and trivial like straight crushes. PTJ has all the pieces needed to do that (if he doesn't want to bother making them canon), the stage is flawlessly set; I'd say the reader is even led to believe something about Jay's past will appear Soon™️ after his dad shows up.

Nothing happens, though. Jay is gone for more than a hundred chapters, except the one time he appears in one panel soon before Jiho's last arc. So being honest, as much as I like to be positive, I have the same fear as these redditors.

I fear even worse, in actuality. There's a chance that, if he wants to bring Jay back and keep queerbaiting, he can simply make a big reveal at the end of him being Daniel/Hyungseok's lost brother or something. This thought is so absurdly cursed that it only occured to me after 5 years of reading Lookism. I cannot even begin to explain the immense amount of disgust I'd feel if that happened.

But at the same time, PTJ is one of those types of authors whose intentions I just can't understand. See, from the beginning of everything to about the end of Olly's arc, it does seem that he has a strong grasp on character arcs and can balance comic relief situations well with serious development. Most of the original cast proved to be much more than their looks or became less appearance-focused (which I thought was the point of the webtoon until recently... but that's a rant for another post)...

After that, everything kinda started to go downhill. I pretty much entirely agree with your point about Worker's arc. For a while, I tolerated the massive amount of new characters and said to myself, "It's just to expand on the story's universe, soon things will go back to normal". But they didn't. 100+ chapters later, I can only remember two occurances that took me out of complete boredom while reading: Jace/Bumjae being defeated and forcefully tattoed by that guy (1) and Daniel/Hyungseok being caught and tortured in a way that cut the connections between his two bodies (2).

And those two occurances are what keeps me going and having hope. Somewhere among the clown fiesta of new characters and 1v1 spam, it seems that PTJ still knows how to write character development.

I wouldn't say I'm putting all my faith in him, it's more like, I know I can't do anything about it, he's pretty much unreachable for me (other than me being a nobody in comparison, I don't use the same social media as him), so I'll do the same thing I did last year: when it begins to be too much, I stop reading weekly and let the chapters pile up. You could say I'm just hoping for the best and you'd be right, that's my main way of coping with possible queerbaiting in fiction LOL

In addition, the anime has been a light at the end of the tunnel. Jay has significantly more screentime than in the beginning of the manhwa, if I remember correctly. This might sound like a loose guess, but... If PTJ planned on scrapping Jay's role completely, he would know how upset that'd make the fans; wouldn't it be easier on him to ask the show's writers to not give as much fanservice in the anime, to prevent further headaches...?

I don't know, maybe he wasn't even allowed to request changes and left everything in the hands of the writers. Sometimes, it frustrates me to have so little knowledge about the behind the scenes of Lookism...

Overall, I'll keep writing based on my interpretation of him and the original cast, at least until some major lore bombs drop and my perception of them changes. For me, despite being well off, Jay still feels lonely and shy, both from introversion and fearing homophobia; and despite being a Cool Lone Wolf in the perspective of others, he's a complete goofball who (canonically) fears insects and dogs.

Side note: I feel less alone knowing I'm not the only one who's unsatisfied with the way the original cast is being treated + the direction the webtoon is taking. Hoping for a better future...

[planckstorytime]

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: A World Beyond Anger (Part Five)

V. A Generous Interpretation…

Ordinarily, I eschew theories and predictions about where an ongoing story might lead, because I prefer to withhold a holistic reading of a text until the text is… well, whole. But at the risk of doing exactly what the marketing team wants from me, I must make an exception. To be honest, I don’t actually believe that we’re dealing with alternate timelines or discrete universes in the traditional (i.e. dumb mass media) sense. Upon visiting Cosmo Canyon, a nameless NPC has some easily missed dialogue that sheds some light on how we’re meant to interpret what’s happening:

“So… my parents are no longer with us – here, that is – but I believe they’re still out there, on another plane. I’ve been reading a bunch of theories on this alternate world in the hope of going there someday. And over the course of my studies, I stumbled across a fascinating theory. It addressed the issue of what the lifestream is, arguing that spiritual energy is actually a manifestation of our knowledge and memories. Like I said, it’s a fascinating theory… but it’s incomplete. What about our hopes and dreams? We remember those, don’t we? So what if spiritual energy doesn’t distinguish between our real, lived memories and the unrealized desires buried deep in our hearts? What if coming into contact with that energy allowed us to ‘peer through the looking glass,’ so to speak? It’s just an idea, but… I hope to find the truth someday.”

A tagline for Rebirth is “What is fact and what is fiction?” While this cryptic ad copy definitely alludes to Cloud’s false memories, I suspect it also hints at the nature of these alternate worlds – namely, that they’re illusory.

The world we explore through Zack’s eyes doesn’t add up. Supposedly, all of the events of Remake occurred just prior to his arrival, but that doesn’t account for why he’s arrived several months later than he should have, or how he carries a comatose Cloud in tow. Biggs, who also seemingly died, likewise appears in this world. He remembers Cloud from his adventures in part one. As if this asynchronous timeline wasn’t enough, both Zack and Biggs mention that their internal clocks seem broken – they can’t tell how much time has passed since they arrived. Meanwhile, the world has suddenly withered without anyone noticing, and an ominous crack of doom looms in the sky. Far from the radiant golden glow that we saw in the closing cutscene of the first installment, this Midgar evokes a fanciful dream morphed into a nightmare.

I believe that these separate takes on reality are manifestations within the lifestream – demi-realities given the illusion of form through the echo of subconscious desires. Keeping with the Freudian theme, we can surmise that such desires materialize as dreams. Aerith likely left some sort of metaphysical impression when she zapped the plot ghosts at the end of Remake. Everyone who shows up in this nonsensical dream world are people that she knew, pantomiming their lives through the ever darkening scenario. Just as we populate our dreams with the people we know in the waking world, I believe most of the individuals in these worlds are projections based on how Aerith views them, acting as she unconsciously directs them. The exceptions are Zack and Biggs, who appear more like errant ghosts, drawn in by her unfulfilled desires for their survival. If we compare this evidence to the narrative’s broader conflict between the pleasure principle and the death drive, we can deduce the following: To deny death is to master desire; to master desire is to live in a dream.

The original story’s lifestream sequence provides us with the smoking gun for this explanation – the presence of the same golden rift across the sky that we see in both Zack’s world and Cloud’s perspective during the ending cutscene. Within the demi-realities, this crack in the fabric of the universe portends the coming apocalypse. But perhaps it really symbolizes the fleeting succor that these delusions provide before crumbling to the inescapable truth? Fate seems determined to correct these worlds (perhaps reflective of the grieving process), as different iterations still end with Biggs dead and Zack facing an onslaught of Shinra gunfire.

The previously linked chart of the “timelines” posits that Cloud creates a new timeline where he saves Aerith during the finale. As explained, I disagree with this being a logical, causality-driven event, and suggest that it’s instead fundamentally illogical. Aerith’s apparent survival comes from Cloud’s denial of reality – his inability to cope with failure and loss. Whether she’s a projection on a transitory plane or entirely a figment of Cloud’s imagination, the point stands that it’s an unnatural, unhealthy, artificial existence. I do not think she is alive in both body and spirit somewhere, or that the confluence and sundering of worlds somehow sends one spirit to the afterlife and leaves the other alive and conscious. If that’s the case, then that is extremely stupid, and would paint the party’s inability to see what Cloud sees as a deficiency on their part. Cloud is not red-pilled; he does not see an omniverse while all the plebeians stare at shadows on the wall of a cave. Making him perceptive of real, tangible worlds beyond normal observation would devastate his character arc, which hinges on him accepting his weakness and shattering his delusions.

With all due respect to other theorists, I believe that the rainbow light denotes not the splitting of timelines, but instead points of interference within the lifestream. We see the rainbows appear when summoning entities from materia, when interacting with lifesprings, and even when transitioning into the Fort Condor minigame (consider the authenticity of those literal toys in relation to the memory-images of people in these alternate worlds). I can see why some players interpret the rainbow as a path of divergence, since it recalls the image of light passing through a prism. But I think that rainbows can have many meanings: unity, inclusion, hope, etc. For this reading, though, I’d like to draw attention to what rainbows really are – tricks of light, illusions toward which humans commonly ascribe superstitious awe. From Biblical covenants to viral internet videos that you haven’t thought of in over a decade, rainbows captivate onlookers, who assign them phenomenal importance. Rainbows, however, lack substance – they cannot be touched, they cannot give you that promised pot of gold. They provide temporary bliss and then fade, as all insubstantial novelties do. Seeing one in an oil spill doesn’t mean the environment’s not in danger. Thus, I think Rebirth’s use of rainbows factors into ideas of perception, delusions, and coping mechanisms.

If there’s any validity to this interpretation, then where should the story go from here? Well, Kitase said in an interview with Vandal that, although the final entry in the trilogy will culminate in a happy ending, it won’t be “sunshine and rainbows.” Perhaps that’s a hint, perhaps it’s a Freudian slip, or perhaps I am projecting my own desires onto my reading. Regardless, I think the dissolution of these dream purgatories is the only satisfying way to close this plotline. The worlds seem condemned to perish soon after their nascence. They’re only born when fate’s boundaries are breached, which can’t be an everyday occurrence. Cloud even describes the planet as “screaming” in agony as a response to this fission and fusion.

Cloud and Aerith’s dream worlds seemingly emerge as wishful fabrications where their loved ones live on, but the latter goes on to explain that death is a natural part of life:

“Y’know… If you think about it, life and death are just two sides of the same coin. Our bodies may disappear when we die, but our spirits still live on. We return to the planet, rejoin the lifestream, and – in time – give rise to new life.”

Aerith rebukes Sephiroth’s desire to forge an everlasting world, claiming there’s no such thing as “forever.” Cheating death comes naturally for him, and so the conflict won’t end until he, like everyone, accepts his mortality. Far ahead of him, the apparition of Aerith at the end refers to her current location as a “second home” – alluding to the multiple references of death as a “homecoming” and confirming her acceptance of her passing.

Cloud’s repression has taken root, and he must learn the truth in order to dissolve the false reality that he’s conjured. Through a veil of static interference immediately following her death, the player can see Cloud silently mouthing the words that he initially uttered there in the 1997 title. I believe he gives the same speech here, too, only to erase it from his conscious memory and escape into his delusions. As with Zack, so with Aerith.

This is why I really appreciate what they did with Tifa in the Gongaga section. At first, I was hesitant toward the premature revelation about her mother’s death, but now I see it as a potential setup for an emotionally resonant scene in part three. Cloud and Tifa will inevitably fall into the lifestream, where she will help him reconstruct his memories and accept his true self, as dictated by the source material. However, I think now she will also aid him in overcoming his grief about Aerith.

“You saved me before; now it’s my turn.”

Tifa says this to Cloud after recounting their shared childhood trauma. Unknowingly marching toward her death, Tifa believed that her departed mother was waiting for her across the Mount Nibel. Cloud intercepted her and tried to free her from her delusions. I hope that we see her repay him in the final game – she will bring him back to reality and help him to move on. The dead are gone forever. The best way to honor their memory is not repression, or regression, or Reunion – but progression, living for the future, and pacifying that drive toward death (inevitable though it may be).

In the end, Aerith says it best:

“I get it, I really do. Knowing that the people we love aren’t really gone? It doesn’t make it any easier to let them go. It still hurts. So we can’t just think of it as a ‘homecoming.’ ‘Cause it’s not that simple. We’ve all experienced pain. We all have our regrets. What we’ve done – what’s been done to us – that’s set in stone. The past is forever. But the future – even if it has been written – can be changed.”

Should the writing of the third entry opt to follow this path, rather than the full-on comic book multiverse option, I’ll find it more agreeable – maybe even moving.

Something is still missing, though. For some reason, those assurances still aren’t enough for me.

FULL ESSAY: https://planckstorytime.wordpress.com/2024/05/11/final-fantasy-vii-rebirth-a-world-beyond-anger/

[rythmicjea]

Can you write an Lody endgame analysis

This is a very interesting ask to me for many reasons. I have only ever watched the show, in its entirety, once. And I only did it to see how close I was to it after writing the majority of The Suite Adult Life. When I was a teenager, my grandmother said to me, "a good writer can take something they don't want to write about and turn it into something they do." I've kind of lived by that since. Did I want to write a Z&C fanfic? No, I did not. Did I want to write something that would aid me through the grief I was experiencing? Yes I did. And voila! TSAL was born.

So, I'm going to answer this, but it won't be in the way it is requested. This will be split into two parts. The first is addressing the characters directly and the second will be addressing the tropes the characters represent.

Lody...

The pairing of Cody and London within the Suite Life universe was never a possibility. This is for a multitude of reasons. The first, and the most important, is that Brenda Song, the actress of London is five years older than Dylan & Cole Sprouse. When the pilot aired it was just before Brenda's 17th birthday. The twins were thirteen but they played the ages of eleven (because they were so small). By the time the twins were of an age where any romantic storyline could be portrayed it would literally be breaking the law. The law of consent in California is 18. Disney, being the family oriented network that it is, would never cross that line.

Another example of this is Zack's crush on Maddie. Ashley Tisdale is seven years older than the twins. The show does a wonderful job addressing how such an age difference is inappropriate (even though they are only supposed to be three years apart - Maddie is in high school and the twins are in the 5/6th grade). Zack tries to flirt, she always turns him down.

Disney channel shows are not very complex and overall continuity in sitcoms were still a relatively new thing. Speaking of continuity, a little factoid that doesn't get mentioned is that London is twenty-one when she finally graduates high school. She and Maddie are the same age. Maddie, from what we can discern does graduate high school but London, due to her absences and lack of comprehension of the material continues to get held back. (In the series finale, London learning Spanish is an homage to the play The Miracle Worker about Helen Keller. "Aqua?" refers to Helen Keller learning how to speak and her first word is "Water?") So, with London being able to legally drink and the other students of her class being younger than the legal age of an adult definitely makes this problematic.

These legal issues are why actual teenagers are never (if rarely) cast in teen dramas like Riverdale. The actors being adults allows for the showrunners to explore situations and themes that teenagers get themselves involved in but without the legal consequences.

Because of this, London was never coded to be endgame with any of the other cast. It was morally, ethically, and legally wrong to even chance going down that path.

The Beauty and The Nerd...

However, if the characters were adults (during college for example) then this formula is time-tested and generally approved of. You have a character who is not very bright academically, but smart in their own way. They generally have a street smarts about them or they have been exposed to a social climate that the other has not. And then you have the quintessential "nerd". The person who is ranked first in the class, has hobbies that are considered "weird" and the like.

The reason why these two characters work is because on the surface they seem like opposites. The "dumb" one is attractive and the "nerd" is ugly (even though they never actually are). One is into what people consider "superficial" and the other is into "science" or academically challenging subjects. But that's about where it ends. Because when you look past these trivial issues, you see that the two characters are considered outsiders. They are either misunderstood by their peers or they are isolated from them for various reason. And because of that shared ostracization they are able to find common ground. They are able to change and grow to fit in with society better and expand their worldview thanks to the other has brought (an example of this is Penny and Leonard from The Big Bang Theory).

If we apply these two tropes to the characters of Cody and London we can see how, in other circumstances, the writers might have put them together and why. Cody and London basically grew up together so they have a history. London might have a mean streak she is not a mean girl and the same with Cody. Cody is kind of a dick when he gets older, leaning too much into his ego, but he still has a kind heart. He doesn't have the mass appeal that his twin does, but he does have an endearing quality about him. The same with London. London is portrayed as "very dumb". She does things that make no sense (because they are mostly written for comedic effect) but she has an affinity for animals and is incredibly sharp when it comes to them, fashion, and business. Overall, the pair compliment each other quite nicely. They would certainly have their conflicts but nothing that would be so detrimental to a relationship to end it.

Conclusion...

In conclusion, there's no evidence to support a "Lody" endgame theory. They were never written to be romantic interests to each other for many reasons. So, the writers never inserted any clues in the background or dialogue to support the pair. However, if you do what I did, which was age them up ten years, and put them on more equal footing, it's easier to create a narrative with the tropes they represent.

As for any other alternative pairings within the show, because of the age of the actors and the network it was on, the show was very straightforward with its intent. Best friends are best friends, romantic interests are stated at the beginning, etc.

[izzielizzie]

Idk if you talk about tv shows much but I’d love your thoughts on the Saved By the Bell reboot, especially parallels between new characters and the old ones and where you think they’re going with romance

i love talking about shows!!!

old vs new group

Zack and Mac

If the names and incredibly accurate casting wasn't enough, their knack for getting themselves into trouble, setting up elaborate pranks, and falling fast and hard for random girls should be a really good indicator of the parallel. But, one thing that should be mentioned: there is a little bit of Kelly in Mac too, which makes him a little more endearing that Zack (who really is trash). Mac is a lot more family oriented than Zack was, and Kelly, being in a family of seven kids, understands the importance of good familial relationships, and we see Mac wanting to be closer to his father. He does all of this stuff just because he wants his father to see him for once. And that is all Kelly.

Lisa and Lexi

I mean this one is kind of obvious: obsessed with fashion and relationships. They're both popular and give good advice. But I think the biggest difference between them is that Lexi's intentions are purely selfish while Lisa generally did what was best for her friends. It's interesting how they get into similar scrapes, but there's the very clear difference in how they happen and what the results are. Lisa, who spent a ton of her father's money and then worked to pay it back, even though her friends offered her money, ended up happy while learning a lesson. But when Lexi tries to get Jamie to date her or tries to win the role of president, she gets out of her scrapes without learning anything. She's starting to learn and she's going to have a great arc, but Lisa was - mostly - selfless from the first episode.

Jessie and Daisy

Again, another very obvious comparison. Jessie was the overachieving class president who was best friends with the popular prankster. And, per Mac's proclamation in the second episode, Daisy is Mac's best friend. But what sets Jessie and Daisy apart is that Jessie was super vocal about everything she believed in, and was willing to upset people she cared about even if it hurt her (think of her will-they-won't-they with Slater where she accused him of being a sexist pig every other second). And Daisy is just as vocal, but she has an inherent understanding of when to step back and let other people figure things out. Like when she says that if she wants to do anything at Bayside, she had to stop trying to fix one guy. Jessie didn't take that route with Slater.

Kelly and Jamie

For all of their other incredible qualities, Kelly and Jamie were reduced to the good looking airheads of the group. Kelly was the object of many boys' affection, and Jamie is just as liked by the girls at Bayside. But they're also both insanely kind and willing to help their friends. Jamie was the only one from the Bayside trio to be genuinely saddened about the kids having to go back to Douglas because, like Kelly, he never really has ulterior motives. He's kind of just... misguided.

Slater and DeVante

I know that the show explored this parallel from the very beginning of the show with the whole football thing, but their similarities extend farther. Slater was lonely and a little jaded when he arrived at Bayside because he had been in fourteen schools due to his father being stationed in a lot of different places. His only friend was his chameleon that he was really attached to. And he used his insecurities to look tough and join different teams to create his own family, knowing very well that he may have to leave. And DeVante has a really hard home life, and he's had some past misdemeanor issues, but like Slater, he wants to change how people view him while also trying to become happier. Maybe he isn't ready for a family like group of friends, but he's trying.

Screech and Aisha

Screech got the short end of the stick a lot, but he was an incredibly kind and helpful person - he got Lisa out of a lot of scrapes even though she never showed any interest or kindness in return - but most importantly: he was unapologetically himself. He flaunted his ant farm and his interesting abilities, no matter how much Zack teased him. And Aisha is the same way. She wanted to play football without a helmet just so people would know they were losing to her. And she's kind too. She lends a shoulder to Daisy constantly, and she's respectful towards Lexi even though she kind of admitted to sabotaging Jamie and Aisha's relationship.

Romances

the triangle

The Aisha, Lexi, and Jamie love triangle is reminiscent to the Slater, Zack, and Kelly triangle, where two people are fighting for the affections of a third person that’s rather oblivious. Saved By the Bell is a big fan of the “best friends to lovers” trope, so Lexi and Jamie might be the most obvious choice for long term couple, but - and hear me out here - I think the ultimate couple will be Aisha and Jamie. Jamie is less prejudiced out of the three original Bayside kids, but he’s a little confused, especially because his mother shields him from so much. If the show can do it right, with Aisha’s prompting, Jamie can have an amazing arc where he steps away from his mother and other people that have controlled his life (like Lexi), learning that he’s enough as his own person, and Jessie can learn that her son will be okay on his own.

And Jamie can teach Aisha how to accept her feelings, especially since she admitted that she’s not the best at talking about/understanding her feelings.

Slater and Jessie

Ah yes, my personal favorite. Especially since Jessie stood up to Rene, it’s highly likely that Kelly will be sowing the seeds of the old relationship in the second season, and we go back to our regularly scheduled programing

also - can you guys tell I adore Jamie yet? - it would be great for Jamie to have a positive father figure, something he doesn’t have since Jessie did most of the raising. 

Mac and Daisy

I know their actors were surprised by this pairing, but Mac and Daisy are perfect. Before Slater asked Jessie to the prom, I shipped Jessie and Zack so hard because they had chemistry and they were friends. Mac and Daisy have the chemistry - and have had it since day one - but also they’re best friends who build each other up and learn from each other. The also appreciate and value each other. Mac tried to teach Daisy how to be rich to get what he wanted, but ultimately he pushed everyone to help her since he knew that she was doing the right thing. And Daisy accused him of not being able to do anything, but she apologizes because she understands that Mac is still working out his issues and most importantly - he’s trying.

And I know this part is self-fulfilling because I’m Latina, but I really want Mac learning about Daisy’s culture and understanding where she’s coming from. Also: Mac interacting with Daisy’s brother would be perfect.

[fallindomino]

how i would have changed s2 of hsmtmts

obvious disclaimer but im not a screenwriter or anyth so im not claiming what i want is best, this is just for fun lololol

okay so first of all nini would still have dropped out of yac but she wouldn’t have gone back to east, she would have transferred to north bc she was too ashamed to tell anyone she left at first and maybe she still wants to explore who she is away from ricky and the others

nini could join north’s batb and this way maybe we could have some playful rivalry with lily and nini and more scenes with antoine shdhdjdj also it could have been a great opportunity to flesh out lily’s character so those scenes where she reaches out to ricky and her confession at the end of the season actually make sense lol

speaking of ricky ,,, i think he should have left the play at some point hear me out. he only joined in the first place because of nini and barely wanted to do it at all once he realized he wasn’t gonna be able to perform with her. he could have joined crew and been a manager with natalie or smth considering he rlly does see the theater gang as a second family. also this would leave so much room for ej and ricky development and bants since ej joined the av club and began to pursue film. they could have some convos where idk ricky asks ej how he figured out what he wanted to do after duke didn’t work out and ricky could actually develop some interests that arent the play or nini ,,, maybe fucking art club i mean he did p good on that centerpiece for carlos’ quinceañera.

with ricky not being the beast anymore i think seb should take his place that would be soooo good. and since seb isn’t chip anymore carlos won’t make those snide comments about chip being a small unimportant role and we can just cut that whole fight bc it was dumb and bad. we could still have seb being insecure that carlos is only dating him bc there aren’t really any other gay guys at school. in a heartbeat is great and i did like ricky being supportive in the background it was kinda funny too idk dhdjdjfj

ooh i almost forgot abt rini ahshdj okay so i still think they should break up. but in my version there’s no ricky pulling an ej 1.0 and deleting comments off of nini’s insta, cause with ricky in art club and nini at north trying to figure out what she wants i think one of them would realize that they’re going in different directions and only got back tgt because they made each other feel safe cause what they had was familiar. this could be triggered by ricky mentioning smth abt nini at yac and then nini breaks down and tells him that she dropped out and is at north and doesn’t know where she’s going. and then they can both realize they aren’t good for each other rn and have a less tragic mutual break up.

honestly i really liked the scene of nini taking charge after miss jenn freaked out cause with the character detail of nini giving every person in the cast of productions she’s in a thank you note she just seems really like someone who is suited to lifting others up. this could still be explored at north, maybe she could help lily through her issues that were briefly implied in ep 11 and nini realizes she wants to be a drama teacher and encourage kids to go off book and put themselves into their acting, something she couldn’t have at yac.

okay now ej ,,, so like i said in ricky’s section, more bants between them cause i feel like friendships kinda fell by the wayside due to all the relationships so more friendship !!!! also the scene where ej tells his dad he’s not going to duke shouldn’t have been an ending scene, it should have been fleshed out with his dad pushing back saying how he pulled all these strings to get him in and ej saying he doesn’t wanna go if his own hard work couldn’t get him there. and also more scenes of ej doing av club things !!! and realizing he rlly likes film and wants to do it OMG IT WOULD BE SO COOL IF HE BROKE THE FOURTH WALL AND ASKED THE DOCUMENTARY CREW ABT THE FILM INDUSTRY god i would love that. the only scene we rlly got of ej doing film things was at the quinceañera which made me kinda sad. uhhh also i just wanted to specifically mention how ej got mr mazzara that job at cal tech bc it really showed how he wanted to be there for people not just for gina, who he had a crush on, but for mr mazzara who supported him outside of romance, so i wanna keep that for sure.

gina !!! okay so i mostly liked her arc in this season, the only changes i would make would be to flesh it out a teeny bit (god this hypothetical s2 would have to be like 22 eps at least shdjdjdjfj) anyways besides ashlyn singing home to get gina to stay i think there should be a scene where they actually talk in her room abt how gina feels safer when shes on the run (second chance reference ilysm) hhhh and also a scene of her and carlos actually working out compromises for their choreo cause i liked that bit of development too and fleshing that out would make gina an even better foil for lily, who felt a need to hog the spotlight like gina used to. with gina’s own arc fleshed out her character would feel more whole independently from romance and portwell would be even more rewarding than it is in the current s2. the only thing i would really change abt portwell is that they would kiss !!! in the finale but thats bc im biased.

ashlyn should have gotten a more fleshed out storyline about being insecure about not being a good enough belle or the typical belle. there were some throwaway lines when north did their typical dramatics but the only two real scenes that showed it were when ash talked to big red about it and when she was telling nini she wanted to do a run in “home” bc lily did it. ashlyn should get more screen time where she has to grapple with the reasons she doesn’t feel good enough and big red can still support her but also gina too bc i would like more roommate besties interaction.

kourtney could still date howie, that harry potter shit was cute but there needs to be smth else for kourtney’s arc. idk she’s still into fashion so maybe she could be out here trying to create her own line or smth? this doesn’t have to be resolved in s2 like making a wholeass line takes time and she could work on it into a potential s3. kourtney just didnt get much outside of howie and the stuff at the beginning of the season where she said nini inspired her to be independent and that's why she got a job was just dropped?? so i think that fashion could fill that for her if she’s still dating howie cause like having her whole arc just be the pizza place kinda overlaps w big red’s mini arc abt how he wasn’t settling for hospitality, its what he wants to do with his life.

ik what ur thinking. anna, even if you added more episodes, where would u find the room to add all these plotlines?? well first we cut (most of) the seblos fight, so thats some time saved. honestly most of the time that we r going to gain is going to be from cutting ms jenn’s time. things like ms jenn’s and nini’s car ride would get cut, but mostly all of ms jenn’s romances would get cut down. considering she’s the teacher and isn’t actually a character with an arc how does she have THREE love interests this season?? like all of the weird tension between her and zack can be cut, like just some short scenes of them being competitive can stay. all of the stuff with ricky’s dad can go bye bye we don’t need it. i did like her w mr mazzara so most of that can stay i just didn’t like how he said he would give up cal tech for her, ew no that would be gone.

the MENKIES !!!! this is the last thing im gonna address cause in a perfect world every character would get a long fleshed out arc but then the season would be waaay too long and also im mostly trying to work within material the show gave so this is mostly made up of “realistic” deviations from what actually happened. lol idk what that even means it just makes sense to me. but anyways!! uhhh bro idk i thought them dropping the menkies was funny but it also made the finale really BAD lmao. in this finale, seb is the beast, east still had to deal w the fact that they’re underfunded compared to north but no one is injured, lily is less of a poorly written character and maybe ppl are even rooting for her, and wow i just realized i never actually said what role i think nini should have in north’s show. OOH she could be student director instead of lily cause lily both being in the play while also directing was weird considering omg i just checked and according to her wiki page shes a FRESHMAN?? and they let her be student director? lol hell nah. okay so with all that in mind ,,, the menkies should have been the season cliffhanger instead of portwell. east and north should both be nominated, both schools perform at the menkies, and then the award winner is about to be announced and THATS when it cuts to natalie and the end of the season.

one, this actually gives more tension for a summer s3 as we would be waiting to see the consequences of whichever school won. also i bet people would be wondering if nini’s gonna be transferring back to east or staying at north. people would also prob wonder if ej would be getting the scholarship if east won and what that would mean for his interest in film.

lmao that got longggg and idk if anyone’s even gonna read this but it was fun to do :D

[iaintyourbro]

The Unknown Journey Continues

Part 1

I know it's been a while... but I've been going down a rabbit hole with @starlight-samurai regarding time loops, Jenova, Minerva, and more fun. So I figured I'd try to put it into one post to get the insanity out of my head. Everything in here is based on things we've found by either going through more obscure Ultimanias, learning more about Dirge of Cerberus and trying to decipher what the hell Jenova is by putting together various sources - including other Square Enix games - and how they handled freakishly similar scenarios.

Did you know there is a companion mobile game for it that was out on the good old flip phones? Did you know there was an online mode in Dirge of Cerberus only available in Japan, but had story elements that were not in the main game?

The sad part is, there's still so much to go through...

(I've also had various discussions with @ourfinalheaven, Manu, who doesn't have Tumblr, so here is her Twitter. and Somebody's Nightmare (here is her Twitter). So I wanted to tag them here, as it's much more fun to discuss these ideas as a group, since it'll only help you build on and strengthen your own ideas.)

Please be aware, there will be Spoilers for FFVII - Almost all Compilation titles, Xenogears, and NieR Automata throughout this.

So let's go on a journey where we explore what actually already exists in the compilation - including the idea of the whispers and timeloops - how Minerva may play into everything, and what exactly Jenova is capable of doing.

I asked Sesi if he'd ever played any of the NieR games, because he'd said something that made me wonder if they were going to take a similar approach. As a very, very quick high level summary: NieR Automata deals with a time loop type of idea. The androids will be rebooted and repeat the same things over and over again. This is broken when 2B is killed by A2 because she becomes infected with a virus. That being said, you have the option after Ending E to either erase all of your data and end the cycle OR you can try again. The Pods have a discussion, and one asks, "But won't they just do the same thing again?" and the other replies with "Maybe. But it could also be different this time."

Here's Sesi's message back to me when I asked him about this (cleaned up a bit since we were having a casual conversation over Discord):

Maybe I could just guess based comparatively on the Dirge storyline, because that was sort of SE's first flirtation with “robots and androids” since they’re all programmed and locked behind like task managers and shit that can shut them down. The story of the online mode for DoC that came out in Japan, we never got to see it, you’re basically an Android OC and you have to get to “the end of the level” and then essentially die, and a new one takes its place. This keeps happening until Weiss is essentially freed from being able to be task managed by the guys who are suppose to be able to control them and I know from tons of years with Square games that they’re verrrrry bad at differentiating their narratives they tend to just keep “ripping themselves off” so is it anything close to that?

Cuz if so I think I kinda know what you’re saying and yeah, I agree, I think with CC bringing in its poetic symbolism and LOVELESS, and DoC bringing back the cyclic nature of the lore, whispers, premonitions and future visions, proto-Materia and the perversion of this next cycle since the planet can no longer cleanse and protect itself and its will is weakening lesser and lesser to the point where it’s fate is “in a true sense of jeopardy This time essentially it’s all tied in together and sort of played as though it's a fated track; a cycle of events and something has hitched it, thus the whispers manifesting and Sephiroth's higher implied control over his destiny. Of course, even all that is just their new red herring game, but it’s definitely a part of the lore they want to play with, in order to go back and reMAKE the OG with the comp inserted from inception. Also gut punch a lot.

Time Loops

I was somewhat surprised to find out that this concept is NOT new to FFVII's universe. It's discussed in Dirge of Cerberus... probably one of the least played and least understood of the compilation. (Trying to sell a third person shooter with terrible controls to a market of mostly people used to turn-based combat wasn't going to go well.)

On top of it, we didn't even get all of it, since online mode was never released outside of Japan, and the Dirge of Cerberus Lost Episode was on Amp'd Mobile and Verizon flip phones back in 2006. Were you around for the cell phones in 2006? I had the ones on the list, and how somebody could play a game on those blows my mind.

Square has a tendency to reuse themes from their other titles. Probably one of the most blatant is the similarities between Xenogears and Final Fantasy VII. They were both being developed at the same time and a lot of ideas that didn't make it into FFVII ended up in Xenogears.

NieR

So how does this work? In NieR (both Replicant and Automata), you play the same path multiple times. Each time, it's slightly different depending on what side quests you did your first and second playthrough, but there's also other subtle differences throughout the story. In Automata, you get to play as 2B your first playthrough and 9S for your second. They follow the same path, but you get it from his perspective the second time and it reveals a bit more of what is going on. However, even with some slight differences, the main plot points stay the same and the ending result it also the same.

Then on your third playthrough, you wake up in the Bunker, and you're getting ready to go on a new mission. This time, though, 2B is killed and shit hits the fan. Things get crazy, you play as a new character: A2. In the end, pretty much everyone "dies", but you can choose to "reboot" and try again. You also can say you are done and let them all rest and delete your save data (the game gives you the option for both Automata and Replicant, and with Replicant, it actually leads to a new ending).

The striking thing for me is... There are certain events that will always happen, no matter what.

Fixed Points in Time

It's been years since I've watched Doctor Who, but there was something that stuck with me, and that was the fixed points in time. You can read about all of them here, but here's the basics:

Now, of course Doctor Who goes into this with much more detail and it's a recurring theme. However, as you read through that page, you'll probably find many aspects that have been used in various JRPGs that you've played. And Doctor Who most likely pulled some of the idea from classic Science Fiction novels. Each story puts its own spin on it.

How does this relate to FFVII Remake? Well, when they say that the major plot points will stay the same, it reminds me of this. No matter what, Cloud must fall into the Sector 5 Church, the Sector 7 Plate must be dropped, Aerith and Zack both must die, and Meteor has to be summoned, to name a few. So, with a time loop, those things would still have to take place in order to prevent a complete collapse of reality (at least in how Doctor Who uses it).

Therefore, the Whispers are ensuring that the Will of the Planet is followed.

One of the major themes in FFVII is that of loss. People die and they do not come back. Yes, other FF games do allow this to happen (FFX, FFXIII, FFXV), but VII is not those games. It was written with that idea in mind, that once a person dies, they, just like in real life, are dead and cannot be brought back.

I've previously written that I think they'll make us believe we are able to change fate, but we will eventually be slammed with the reality that we can't. That is because the planet has determined that certain events are fixed points.

Xenogears

Xenogears takes a bit of a different approach to the loop idea. Instead of repeating the same time period over and over, it has the characters reincarnated, and the same outcome happens each time: Elly dies. However, each time it's different. After all, they're in various time periods, in some cases thousands of years apart.

In all of the lives of Fei (who will have a different name in each time period) and Elly (who is always Elly/Elhaym), Elly will end up dying trying to protect Fei and the others. In one life, she is a religious figure at a totally not Catholic church, in another she's the wife of a scientist who was working to create children from nanomachines due to mass infertility issues. But she is ALWAYS with Fei, even if his name changes.

In her Mother Elhaym time, this is when Lacan (Fei) finally snaps. Though he's not fully aware of his past lives, he becomes aware, the anger consumes him, and he becomes Grahf. Fei is then reborn into the time period you play the game in.

There's a lot to unpack with this, so I won't go into it. Grahf wants to destroy God (Deus) because he thinks if he does, then it'll stop the suffering (his suffering).

If you do want to read more about Grahf, you can do so here, but it probably won't make much sense unless you've played Xenogears up to that point... Since it's much later in the game that this is all explained.

Lacan's desire was to stop the cycle of Elly always sacrificing herself for his sake. Though Grahf is not a perfect existence - he's not fully "The Contact", he sacrifices himself in order to let Fei move forward, and hopefully stop the cycle, by destroying the Deus system. (Elly also tries to sacrifice herself here, but Fei goes after her and stops her.)

Now, some people may think I'm saying that Cloud or somebody is going to do this in order to save Aerith or Zack (or his village or mom), but in FFVII if they do the loop method, I don't think Cloud, Tifa, Barret, and the others are aware of it. Most likely, it's only 'Sephiroth' and Aerith who are aware of it.

How this Could Be used for Final Fantasy VII

I'm stressing could because there's so many different possibilities on how they use this (if they are using this), so please, don't take this as fact. This is based on speculation based on what we know.

A time loop is a great way to explain away the differences in the story that we've seen: Biggs being alive, Wedge living for longer than he should have, etc. Since these are not major plot changes, they can simply say that this time it'll be slightly different... but your fixed points (major plot points) will remain the same.

It's a way to pull in some of the more obscure themes from Dirge of Cerberus and also play with the LOVELESS lore.

It could all simply be a big red herring and it's really just a remake of OG, but with the compilation tied together nicely... since it works much better when it's combined and not in 50 different games, books, movies, etc.

I don't think it's a "sequel" per say, not in the way I generally perceive a sequel. It's more of a loop of the same thing. The question is, when is the loop started and what will cause it to end? When will the planet (if it even is the planet) determine that it's good enough to begin moving forward?

JENOVA, Sephiroth, Genesis, and Minerva - Oh My!

Let's be real... Genesis isn't exactly the most popular character in the FFVII Compilation... but what if they make him one of the most important to the story? //Ducks as various fruits and vegetable are thrown in my direction//

I think what Genesis is probably most known for is his love of LOVELESS. He has the entire thing memorized and randomly says lines from it throughout Crisis Core. LOVELESS lore is still something I'm trying to grasp, so I am not going to comment much on it. Once I understand it more, I'll update this.

...And then this happens. The secret ending for Dirge of Cerberus, where Genesis picks up Weiss. Weiss, who has now been introduced along with Nero in FFVII INTERmission and is an optional ridiculously hard boss in the Shinra battle simulator in chapter 17 of the main story. There is some lore associated with the battle sim - so if you don't plan on beating it or you just can't, you can look up the pre-battle and post-battle cut scenes on YouTube. They're very short, but interesting. (I beat this asshole last night - it's a hell of a fight.)

....To Be Continued because apparently Tumblr won't allow more than 10 images per post now.... Next will be more on JENOVA and Sephiroth along with Minerva.

[yobitnet]

Yobit.net Cash Is Dead Yobit Exchange

“Physical money is out,” said B.S. Kohli, an economic advisor to the top of the Indian state of Punjab. Mothanna Gharaibeh, Jordan’s minister of digital economy and entrepreneurship, agreed.

As of this year, Gharaibeh said, Jordanians can not buy government services, from taxes to hospital bills, with cash. they need to use electronic payment systems like bank transfers or mobile wallets.

“It’s getting to be a troublesome transformation,” he said, pertaining to the nation’s poor and unbanked populations. “But refugees can take mobile wallets using their UN Refugee Agency ID cards. … We just got to stop printing [bills] and put it instead on mobile accounts or in bank accounts.”

Unlike many dollar-dominance-skeptics in Davos for the forum, Gharaibeh said pegging Jordanian dinars to the dollar has served the smaller nation well for many years . He doesn’t see needing to reinvent money, just remove the anonymous properties.

“Because we'd like to prevent evasion ,” he said.

Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari – author of the bitcoin community cult classic "Sapiens" – said he’s skeptical of bitcoin.

“Money goes within the direction of more and more trust,” he said. “Bitcoin is predicated on mistrust. It’s basically a return to gold.”

On the opposite hand, Harari predicted the entire elimination of monetary privacy could happen “very quickly,” which he described as a “dangerous” prospect.

Ask almost any economist, banker or yobittex.com politician at the WEF about financial privacy and they’ll scoff. With shockingly few exceptions, most will say more financial data collection and passive surveillance will benefit society. (When pressed, they could emphasize the importance of encryption and regulating access to the info .)

RegTech expert Diana Paredes, an underwriter turned CEO of the compliance startup Suade Labs, agreed the sentiment among her public- and private-sector clients is “cash is dead.” However, she added, it’s the work of policymakers to guard consumer interests.

“What we should always be doing is regulating privacy around [electronic payments],” she said. “I want to have my data. It should belong to me, not the bank.”

Bitcoin in Davos

Fear not, bitcoiners: Not all members of the yobit Davos elite are pushing for e-fiat authoritarianism; some leaders here see a future where bitcoin continues to thrive.

“Bitcoin may be a fantastic idea, as long because it is monitored,” Kohli said, praising the compliance standards already upheld by bitcoin-friendly Swiss banks.

Bruno Le Maire, the French minister of finance , offers a shining example of a bitcoin-friendly politician.

He said decentralized digital assets will have a task to play within the way forward for France, as long as organizations just like the crypto custody startup Ledger and therefore the bitcoin development startup ACINQ still pay taxes and uphold regular compliance standards.

“We don’t want digital companies issuing their own currencies like sovereign states,” he said, making a subtle dig at Facebook’s Libra. “But we believe [bitcoin] can reduce the prices and delays of international payments. … We strongly believe fintech.”

Likewise, Mariam Al Muhairi of the state-backed Dubai Future Foundation says her team will spend 2020 exploring the way to support companies that want to use digital assets.

“It’s to assist regulate that area,” she said, emphasizing the team remains within the research phase. “There are entities that do own and use [cryptocurrency].”

Paredes added the simplest thanks to protect bitcoin’s usability is to teach regulators about specific use cases in order that they can make laws and compliance standards without jeopardizing projects useful .

The divide between cypherpunks and banks grows ever more narrow when experts drill right down to the specifics.

wef-2020-bruno

French minister of finance Bruno Le Maire et al. discuss the way to tax Big Tech. (Credit: Leigh Cuen for CoinDesk)

Common ground

Most crypto veterans at the WEF were even as hooked in to financial institution digital currencies (CBDC) because the bankers themselves.

For example, Elizabeth Rossiello, CEO of Aza Financial (formerly known by the name of its retail product, BitPesa), said she’s “really excited” about the People’s Bank of China issuing a CBDC. She sees this so far another customer onramp that enhances the very fact bitcoin makes up 7 percent of her company’s monthly volume.

MakerDAO Foundation CEO Rune Christensen agrees: “Generally i feel it’s specialized for the trend of digitizing the economy,” he said of the CBDC trend. “It’s just a step toward more blockchain adoption.” His project’s DAI stablecoin, he told CoinDesk, could at some point be the liquidity backbone for the world’s CBDCs.

Meanwhile, Cloudflare CTO John Graham-Cumming said his internet infrastructure company generally takes a proactive approach to promoting censorship-resistance, whilst his team supports clients like banks and similar institutions within the public sector.

“What goes over our network isn’t really our business. and that we don’t think it’s our job to work that out because that might be quite creepy,” he said, adding the corporate runs gateways to both ethereum and therefore the InterPlanetary filing system (IPFS).

From Graham-Cumming’s perspective, bitcoin is a powerful experiment because it actually works and continues to figure , no matter political and technical challenges. Yet, Cloudflare is more focused on ethereum.

“When you check out the smart contract stuff, that’s a programing language . we expect someone goes to create something interesting with ethereum and that we hope they’ll find our services useful,” he said. “As people start to figure with new organizations for financial transactions, they have to ask how that organization is brooding about security. … We’re all resting on top of something else.”

The only thanks to protect privacy during a world of digital cash, he said, is with a mixture of excellent regulatory policies and standard “best practices” that promote security throughout the ecosystem’s architecture.

“The idea of Web3 is that you simply should be resilient,” he concluded.

Zack Seward contributed reporting.

[rainbowcarousels]

I don't know how interesting this is going to be but I started to answer a comment on the latest JBSWM from @zanahoriabaila and realised I actually kind of want to talk more depth about the subject so I'm going to post it up here. Between talking a little about Genesis especially on twitter and briefly talking a couple of chapters ago about Sephiroth, it's kind of all been ruminating into something meta that borders on a directors commentary.

Again, how come your Genesis always spews all the stuff I think?

This is absolutely something I do with my version of Genesis on the regular and there's a few different reasons why he’s my character of choice for uncomfortable examinations of stuff.

 Cut for discussion of fic, canon, trauma and interrelationships with everyone!

The first reason is the Eve symbolism that comes with Genesis as a character. There's a decent bit of it with Genesis (much like Aerith) when you consider his name, his limit break, his carrying around of the forbidden fruit and the look of the Goddess statue and in CC canon, he is the first person to tell Sephiroth about what Jenova is. As such, giving a lot of the harder hitting commentary to Genesis feels natural because he is good at weaponising knowledge.

It also makes more sense out of AGS to give it to him because of each of their interactions with how knowledge effects them. The revelation of the Jenova Project in general (I hope!) illustrated this pretty well in that Angeal takes in knowledge and then thinks about what he should say or do or feel about it and it impacts it greatly. Sephiroth takes in the knowledge and tries to analyse and categorise because exploring how he feels emotionally about something is really difficult for him and unless it's pertinent, he just doesn't address it in terms of how to feel about it. Genesis in contrast to both goes instantly to what he is feeling in the moment and it fuels his decisions and choices.

Angeal's issue comes when what he should feel and what he does feel are so at odds that he can't reasonably justify how he feels and he's been going through a lot of that since he doesn't want to think ill of his mother, he does not want to consider that his father might have lied to him and he absolutely does not want to think about Hollander at all. His sense of honour is wrapped up in family, in the idea that he pulled himself up to get where he is with hard work and determination and that he does make a positive difference and he's just...completely lost right now emotionally because he can't reconcile his feelings with what he thinks he should feel.

Sephiroth's comes when something is emotive and he can't pick it apart and make sense of it through physical and observable changes. I think this probably comes from spending his childhood as a lab specimen so he knows how to report things that are observable and that emotions are too subjective so he doesn't include them. Then getting thrust into war, he also learns to describe himself by a physical status report. Zack gives him one based on how he is physically because he knows this is how Sephiroth is. The problem for him and the reason he is as noted by the same comment so detached is because he just doesn't really process anything emotional in any significant way, which is why as noted in one of my much earlier chapters, he struggles with saying 'I love you' because it's pure emotion and he tries to show it in his own way instead.  

Then you have Genesis who runs on his emotions and experiences like they're fuel. There's a throwaway line in Don't You Know My Name about how Genesis doesn't so much like or dislike things as he dismisses or obsesses over them and because of that, he has the nastiest tunnel vision and comes across as self centred. He likes to write his own narrative in a way that makes sense to him based on what information he has and how he feels about it. There's a line in the song from JBSWM's title song that says 'judgment made can never bend' and I think this is part of Genesis struggling more with Zack's inclusion into their relationship with Cloud because he formed his own opinions on Cloud and Zack is Angeal's little puppy he's been hearing about for years. It's hard to shift perspectives for him.

Zack and Cloud have their own relationships with truth and feelings but Gast is history for AGS. So onto Gast, because that the subject being discussed in the chapter. It's not something new, if I go by my own timeline, Genesis and Angeal have known since they were 15 about a decent chunk of what happened as Sephiroth's background and Angeal comes down hard on the 'respect what Sephiroth feels even if it's not entirely accurate because it's important to him' side and Genesis comes down on the 'This was bullshit and Sephiroth needs to know it was bullshit regardless of how attached he is to the memory of Gast because he needs to deal with it'.

Zack and Cloud are just forming their opinions and it'll happen over a few chapters, but Zack is far more emotion based but he also has rose coloured glasses and if there is an upside, he will find it. Cloud, growing up feeling angry and isolated and idolising Sephiroth, kind of has a similar way of coping as him in that he has this idea he can't be openly emotional or vulnerable because he'll get hurt but he also isn't about to pull any punches either. It should make for interesting interaction hopefully.

I think Sephiroth is more knowledgeable than he realises in that he quickly guesses from Genesis being willing to share that they are in the 'experimented on parents' club that this is colouring some of his interaction here. He backs down earlier when the subject comes up, not because he thinks he's wrong but he's not pushing that hard because as much as it comes from a place where he's sad and angry that this terrible thing happened to someone he loves, he can rationalise backing down because his feelings are second hand. Except now they're not. While Angeal and Sephiroth can look at their parents to some degree and assign some kind of blame (and Cloud can from being victimised), he can't because he doesn't know who his parents are or what the circumstances were but Gast was the head of the department when this crap went down so he is a prime target for someone to be furious at.  

These guys spent their teenage years building coping mechanisms based on battlefield experience, it's probably not a surprise Sephiroth is practical and tries to funnel it into something productive, Angeal tries to find the honourable method of dealing with it in the way he's supposed to and Genesis just wants someone, anyone appropriate to unleash all of that emotion on. I'd also argue that Zack tries to apply it to being the best hero he can be even though he was doing a lot of pretty unhero-like things and Cloud was cannon fodder, it's no surprise his sense of worth is in the toilet and he can't really grasp the idea of being special.

Someone described JBSWM as five broken people trying to make each other whole and I don't think it's exactly right, but it is close. It's five people trying to figure out a way to live with a shit ton of trauma and a lot of it is trauma they're complicit in which is really difficult to work through given all time and resources let alone trying to deal with Shinra at the same time. 

This kind of brings me back to why Genesis is often the pushing person in the relationship and why he's not always right to do it.

As horrible as the Project G revelations are, it's not the same as growing up in the way Sephiroth (and in some ways, Aerith) did and he has the coping mechanisms he has for good reasons. He needs to have this idea of Gast as this good person who tried to be good to him but died because the alternative is Gast wandered off the moment he wasn't as interesting anymore and left him (in JBSWM's timeline at around the age of 4) to try and survive it by himself. He's already lost this perfect idea of a mother by having the 'L' put there and all SOLDIERs having JENOVA on their files and he's kind of desperately clinging onto something good because he hasn't really thought about what a lot of it would look like to someone coming in now until Cloud started to ask about it and had enough first hand experience to know it was really messed up. He can justify it as Gast was the better scientist, the better man, the better influence for him but if you start taking that away, it puts him in the position of being victimised and abused and that's all there is and I don't think he knows how to even begin to process that. As @aimeelouart pointed out, if he thinks about it or talks about it with any perspective, he would have to acknowledge he is traumatised and a large part of his identity has been built on his own invincibility. How can he be traumatised if that’s so?

The flipside of it being that I don't think any of them understood fully in a conscious way what happened with Sephiroth’s childhood until they saw it up close and personal with Cloud and even if it's coming from Genesis (dude is loud), Angeal is also pissed off and furious that it's just as bad as they thought it might be but could never be sure because they've only ever seen the aftermath and he does not talk about it. Zack got it all in one, he heard about it and saw it and is trying to deal with that but for Genesis and Angeal, it's festered for a decade and since no one save for maybe Zack has ever met a single healthy coping mechanism, it goes out as Angeal being cautious and letting Sephiroth set his own pace and Genesis going no, this is important, you have to confront this because if it hurts them from just caring about him and realising how bad it was, if Sephiroth some day realises how awful it was, he's going to just...shatter or explode and they'll lose him and even if he struggles to express it sometimes, he does love him dearly and like with Cloud, he wants him to figure out what will make him happy and it doesn’t seem like he’ll feel happy until he can stop blocking out what he’s feeling on instinct as some leftover coping mechanism. Cloud having to deal with his own lab trauma just brings it to the forefront and Genesis is not wasting the opportunity.

The thing is I don't think he's wrong about it because I think Alien Demi-god Sephiroth and Sane Sephiroth are two sides of the exact same person. There's hints of it here and there, but I think one of the biggest ones is he's very possessive and it took Hojo crossing the line and almost killing Cloud when he was beginning to grow attached to him to get him to move out of his holding pattern. In a way, this can also be traced all the way back to Gast and the idea of his mother because it's this almost childlike view that when he's attached to someone, they leave and it hurts so the obvious answer is make it so they can't leave or in the case of canon, try to push them to come back. I genuinely do not think Jenova knew what they were getting themselves into with him because they were like 'hey I could be your mom' and got absolutely swallowed by someone who was hurting, desperate for connection and just So Fucking Done with all of it until his will overrode theirs and he was never, ever going to be alone again because the entire planet would be reborn as part of him. 

Not the direction I'm going with JBSWM, they have some things they need to work on with each other but they are together and leaving Shinra was as close to a statement of commitment as you can get. With Midgar behind them and a chunk of their identity and dreams left with it, trying to face those uncomfortable truths will be hard for everyone and as much as Genesis puts it out there, he’ll struggle with his own too because if they have to deal with their shit, so does he.