#it'll be searchable without them because I named names

[getvalentined]

Having a long chat with a couple friends about the dichotomy between two major deaths in FF7, both of which are technically assisted suicides, and what they mean for the characters involved.

Aerith allowed herself to be killed in the City of the Ancients in order to petition the Planet to activate Holy directly, because being half human rendered her incapable of speaking to the Planet directly. She didn't do anything wrong and she's given her all to do this any other way, but the flaw is in her blood. She can't change it. Her powers are very limited, she can't activate Holy on her own and she can't ask Gaia to do it for her because Gaia can't hear her—so in the City of the Ancients, she realizes that the only way she can save everyone is to die.

Particularly relevant to this discussion is that her first choice appears to be Cloud, who raises his sword over his head to strike her down because of Sephiroth's control over him, but is able to hold back. He's able to stop himself, to back off, to refuse to be responsible for her death. Sephiroth was going to let him do it, and when he manages to hold off, that's when Sephiroth literally jumps in to do it himself. Aerith was going to let Cloud kill her, and when he didn't, she let Sephiroth do it instead.

Important to remember here is that Aerith is a healer. Inherently. We know this from how she works in battle and the fact that she's able to grow flowers in the tainted soil of Midgar. She almost certainly could have saved herself, but she chose not to—even though she didn't want to die, she had always intended to come back, but finally realized that wasn't an option if she wanted to save everyone else.

Aerith's death was inherently and undeniably selfless, and that's the real tragedy of it: she wanted desperately to rely on others, but she couldn't. No matter how much they loved her, the only way that she could keep them safe was through her own death, regardless of how much she wanted to stay.

Aerith's death was an assisted suicide born from selflessness.

In contrast, Angeal demands assistance in his own suicide in order to rid the world of monsters, in order to support his own personal beliefs on what constitutes "suffering" and what honor really is. Angeal dies because he can't bear to live as he is any longer, he can't stand that the facade of an honorable and selfless hero that he spent his entire life building up was torn down—and not even by his own actions, not even because he slipped up, but because of what he is. It's in his blood. He can't change it.

Angeal appears to have chosen Zack to kill him because he thought he could get Zack on his "side," he could convince him that this was the only way. He believed he could convince him that this was the right thing to do. He couldn't, and Zack did everything he could to hold back, desperate to not be the one responsible for his death, but Angeal gave him no choice. Angeal forced him, not through some psychic control or mental manipulation, but by all but literally backing him into a wall and making it a matter of Zack losing his life or taking Angeal's.

Important to remember here is that Hollander states Angeal has full control over the diffusion of his cells, he can push and pull, he can distribute and reunite; if he can pull his cells back into himself, this means that Angeal could "turn off" his own degradation. He almost certainly could have saved himself, but he chose not to—in the end, Angeal appears to succumb not only to his injuries, but to a sudden and accelerated manifestation of degradation. He made sure that he was going to die, because that was the only way to stop being a monster.

Angeal's death was inherently and undeniably selfish, and that's the real tragedy of it: no matter how loved he was, no matter how hard the people around him tried to save him, the only way he could retain his flawed sense of honor and thereby his feelings of self-worth were through his death.

The concept of agency between these two characters and their respective deaths is super interesting to me. In Aerith's selfless death, Cloud was able to retain his agency, he was able to stop himself; in Angeal's selfish death, Zack was denied the right to his own, and was forced to help Angeal reach his goal. I don't think this is necessarily indicative of the difference between Cloud and Zack as characters so much as the difference in circumstances: Cloud had his friends with him and so succeeded in staying his hand, whereas Zack was entirely his own and thus he failed. It really drives home the core theme of FF7 being the importance of the people you love and the people that love you.

I don't really have a way to end this, it's mostly navel-gazing and ruminating, but it's so...interesting. It's such a dichotomy, such a juxtaposition. Aerith's death was selfless, and through it she saved the world by being where she was needed, by asking for help from the Planet itself; Angeal's death was selfish, and through it he condemned the world to Sephiroth's eventual wrath, by not being where he was needed, by refusing to trust the people who loved him to love him regardless of what he was. Tragic in every sense of the word.

[microwavetoaster-selfships]

Okay, so, I've been trying to come up with shipnames for AGES for me and my F/Os, and I've considered basing them off of songs/lyrics that I associate with them, and while I'm probably still gonna go with that, for now I'm gonna make a little mini tag system for them, just because I think it'll be cute, it'll help people know which F/Os I'm talking about if that's something they're interested in, and also for the sake of myself cause sometimes I like to go back and look at my own older posts for specific things and it's hard to do that without tags to look for! Plus, in case anyone else is trying to search tags for them for whatever reason, there will be something there.

So! For now my tags for my F/Os are literally just gonna be their names(potentially full names if they have a known one, I'm still on the bar about it), and just one or two heart emojis after their name for the color I associate with them! That's all, nice and simple :) keeping it plain and the text coming first for ease of searchability. I don't know if I'll make a proper list of who's tags is what since it's, well, literally their names, but if I make more vague ones in the future then I'll make a proper list and add it to my pinned post!

I'll still add this info(in a much, much shorter sentence ofc) to my pinned post just for the sake of people knowing :) thank you for reading!!