#it's still janky af but that's why i think it's fun
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Your stuff tastes like strawberry sponge cake and crackers. Great combo. Slightly crunchy. 10/10. Also may you spare a dirk and jake strife?
i love receiving compliments and requests on the internet! many thanks
#homestuck#jake english#dirk strider#jane crocker#roxy lalonde#fefetasprite#caliborn#hey guys did you know they added layers to mspaint. i updated to windows 11 recently#it's still janky af but that's why i think it's fun
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Just finished grinding Assassin's Creed Mirage! WOOHOO! ୧( ಠ Д ಠ )୨
I think it's a deffo wonderful game and a refreshment after the RPG trilogy (it does have RPG elements to it, but still), and it also have some things that are lacking. It reminds me of the good 'ol days, but deffo not on par with the good 'ol days.
Here're some of my thoughts and reviews!
🕌 Sleepy's Assassin's Creed Mirage Review 🗡️
(Spoiler Warning ⚠️ Including the ending ⚠️)
Disclaimer, this is just my personal opinion. You may agree and disagree. I’m just gonna talk a lot because I LOVE Assassin’s Creed with all my heart. Here goes.
VISUALS
(+) Basim Ibn Ishaq, the handsome man that you are… HOLY SHIT (yes I’m adding him as the first plus point of this game what of it). Man's fine AF.
(+) Baghdad’s really beautiful, nuff said. The color palette is PERFECT - displays the warmth of the atmosphere really well, but also just enough greens and many starking hues of flowers.
(+) The waters and environment textures are CRISPY. The detailed patterns on the clothes, the engravings and the state of the arts is really cool. I haven’t really looked a lot into the 800’ Baghdad arts, but I can see lots of good details and art styles. SHOUT OUT TO THE ARTISTS!!
GAMEPLAY - Now here’s what I have a lot to comment on.
(+) Stealth -> I think they did quite good with the stealth. One of the many complaints that I saw on the previous RPG trilogy games was the fact that the main characters/players had no reason to be stealthy, because they can just barge in and defeat the enemies easily. Ubi has marketed the game to be more stealth focused and intentionally made Basim a less of a fighter (make sense, since he came from a thief background, unlike Bayek, Kassandra, and Eivor who are actual trained warriors since they’re kids). However, this brings me to the first lacking point.
(-) Combat -> The combat feels janky. I feel like I’m really fucked up in combat situations if I don’t upgrade my sword and dagger. Like I get it, Basim is not meant to be much of a fighter, but in the beginning parts (or… even the middle parts of the game, let’s be real), I feel like combat is HELL. I forgot the Youtuber who said it, but he said something along the lines of “I’m an assassin, I want to feel like an assassin and want to feel like a badass and can take down many enemies with ease.” And that actually rings true with me. When I’m in combat and countless soldiers are fighting or following me (and I don’t have the smoke bomb with the forgetting effect), I’m most certainly FUCKED.
(+) The fighting style is cool though, it's stylish and the finishing moves are sick af. It could deffo use some work.
(-+) Parkour/Movements - It’s alright. It’s most certainly better than the previous RPG trilogy, but it’s definitely not Unity or Syndicate. Sometimes Basim can do something that I didn’t want and I’ve lost count on how many times I got caught and died just from a mis-movement. I literally don’t understand why they don’t use the Unity parkours and combat styles. Unity’s parkour is smooth, swift, and stylish. It feels GOOD.
(+) Stealing - I’m a loot goblin in games, and believe me, I think I’ve spent like hours just stealing from the entire population of Baghdad that by the end of the game I’m probably richer than the Taxmaster and the whole entire Abbasid Caliphate. It’s fun, it’s easy, but it can sometimes be hard enough to miss. I just hope there’s more variety/difficulty in the stealings in different places – Like maybe in the Round City the diamond thingy is much smaller, or in like for stealing merchants (who has particular fashion/silhouette or have wallets/pouches with different colors) can be harder to steal from but have more rewards and money.
(-+) Map - OKAY. I love the fact that Mirage has a significantly smaller map than that of Odyssey and Valhalla. It’s focused and it’s much more centered. HOWEVER. For a game this caliber, and with this good of a graphic? It’s much too small and it’s too divided between two parts. Hear me out – The graphics are really cool, but I feel like the map is too divided between – either a densely populated city, or just barren lands of desert. I think the map could be much much bigger with much more collectibles and much more variety in the terrains. Like, for example in Black Flag (The S tier game. Argue with a wall), there’re more than one major city, while in Mirage the map is so very centered (Yes I get it it’s the Round City), but I’d love it if there’s another major city that we can travel to, like Damascus, for instace. + I love the Tales of Baghdad. MORE TALES OF BAGHDAD PLEASE.
STORY - nOW THIS… I never liked the stories post - Origins and here's why :
(-) LET 👏 THE ACTORS 👏 DO 👏 MOTION 👏 CAPTURE 👏 - My biggest complaint for the RPG game styles is always about the facial and motion animation. The cutscenes feel DEAD. The eyes are DEAD. I almost can't feel anything. Ubi is rich af, why not use facial capturing? AC3 was the first AC game to use motion capture, and holy shit… it's one of my fave games. Yes. All games, not only AC series. The emotion in their faces, the gestures, the small glances, the little movements - they all decide every character's personality. The reason why I love every AC since AC3-ACOrigins is because the actors pour all their voices, faces, even body movements into the interactions between characters, because they make the stories feel alive. Let the actors be actors. I can rant more but this is already a long post so I'll stop. MOTION 👏 CAPTURE 👏.
(+) I love Basim's origin story. Dude's a 17 year old street thief who got a bit over his head and ended up becoming a fugitive because he killed the fucking caliph himself. That was crazy HAHAHAH anyway even though I think the beginning felt a bit rushed I love it. I just wish they could milk it more.
(+) I love the side characters! Especially Ali (I think he's hot 👉👈 and he's the absolute freedom fighter). Anyway, even though they don’t really do much, they all feel alive and do lots of things (except Roshan prolly HAHAHAH but there's a reason I guess)
(+) Roshan. Mentor and reminds me of Al-Mualim. I particularly love the fact that after all that wise words throughout the game, she literally threatened Basim if he actually went to the underground temple. And when she showed up covered in blood??? And THE TWIST AT THE END??? "Roshan bint La-Ahad". SHE'S ALTAIR'S ANCESTOR. THAT FUCKING SHOCKED ME YOOOO. She's just amazing.
(-) Pacing - I feel like this is because they’re speeding things up (which is a good thing), the pacing is pretty standard in the beginning, but the ending is a bit too high of a rollercoaster mount. The ending went from 0-100 real quick. I feel like we need a more of a climbing storyline. This is why I kind of don’t agree with the ‘centering’ storyline instead of a linear story. Centering styles of story has no climb in the intensity, and because of that we can’t feel the character developments because he’s supposed to stay the same even though we’ve killed like 3 bosses already. And then when all the underlings are dead, finally the boss racks up Basim’s curiosity super duper high that it becomes too sudden.
(-) Weak Villains - The villains since Origins are always hidden and unknown, unlike the previous games where the Templars are literally KNOWN by the people. I want more villains like Haytham tbh, where he literally doesn’t care about the precusor sites and only wants stability in his reign as a Grandmaster. Or if the villains do care about the Pieces of Eden or have a prior interest of the First Civ, at least let them have an actual personality and character, let them be a menace and a threat since the beginning of the game instead of being the NPC’s we kill to finish the game. Let them challenge our beliefs as an Assassin/Hidden Ones. Let the villains actually have an impact to the main storyline. Imagine in the end Basim and Qabiha really went to the underground temple together, and got confronted by Roshan. That’s where the conflict in Basim climaxed! Imagine the emotion! The drama~!
(+) How the stories interlinked with Valhalla. Basim is a sage, and host of Loki who sought revenge to Odin (who wronged him). So I don't think Basim nor Loki are evil per se. They're just gray. Now the stories aren't just about Templars vs Assassin, it's more focused towards the First Civilization. It's a bit hard to keep up but it's nothing a bit of reading/looking up some lore videos wouldn't solve.
MISC
We need more outfits! The outfits are far too few for us to choose from!
Wonderful and mystifying music. Nuff said. Brendan Angelides and Layth Sidiq nailed it. One Republic and Mishaal Tamer’s “Mirage” in on repeat on my Spotify right now.
I love gear chests hunting and all the collectibles. I just wish the map is bigger and there’re more collectibles T_T I’M A LOOT GOBLIN OKAY.
I learn history of Baghdad LFG. I play largely for the stories and not the gameplays, so if there’s a codex entry or any new historical sites I always read it. Learning history doesn’t hurt!
How I can really relate to the real world. I live in Indonesia where 90% of the people is Muslim (I’m a Christian), so when I here familiar words like Alhamdullilah, Assalam’ualaikum and Wa’alaikumsalam, or see the people praying, the Adzan sounds throughout the city, the people praying towards the Ka’bah, it kinda feels like home! Just hope that they add more funny shit to it though, like “Yaallah Basim! Istighfar!” Or “WALLAHI.” Or more Arabic sayings so we can immerse more to the world.
MAKE BASIM DO THE 5 PRAYERS (maybe when we pass time or after a big mission we come back to him finishing a prayer).
FINAL VERDICT - 7.8/10 -> It’s a focused game, and it really did come back to some of the original elements of AC before the RPG trilogy. It’s not too long and casuals can play it without feeling like we have to grind like Odyssey or Valhalla. Deffo would recommend playing it!
Once again, BRING BACK MOTION CAPTURE ‼️‼️‼️🗣️🗣️
If you did play it gimme some thoughts in the comments! Thank you for reading! (人*´∀｀)｡*ﾟ+
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top 7 worst degrassi ships (excluding the obviously terrible/abusive one) just like you least faves
you've opened up a storm anon
7. cake. outside of the INCEST, i generally found their storyline to just be sorta.. annoying, especially in comparison to the far more enjoyable campy insanity of imogeli, these two just come off as bland as shit. i really wanted to like clare, especially because she sorta reminded me of andi mack and i love andi a lot, but the cake era and ESPECIALLY nowhere to run (a very cake centric episode) was just clare at her most insufferable and almost made sour on her completely. the best i can say about them is that jake will always be hilarious
6. triles. i honestly dont hate them as much as other people, but they just sorta annoy me. honestly all of degrassis MLM pairings have been kinda underwhelming to me, from darco being sorta Weird and bad for marco to ziley being boring as shit, but triles is the one thats just kinda frustrating and annoying. like maybe its the lack of chemistry between them or the fact that they are both sorta really shitty to each other, but i just prefer both of them to be Far away from each other. im sad that miles never got another male love interest .... and by that i mean im sad that we never got canon chullingsworth
5. jankie. these two are just ANNOYING. i really hate jonah, i dont know why because i really didnt mind him in s14 but then NC hit and he became so insufferable, and frankie is frankie. i like frankie marginally better than jonah bc she was funnier than him (not jonah didnt have the occasional Good Moment), but taking two characters i find annoying and pointless and putting them in a relationship made them so much more annoying. theres just no chemistry and i hated that the second they started writing frankston somewhat well in NC1, it was just to shove him to the side for JONAH. justice for winston. also they just seem to be so miserable during their entire time together, jonahs treatment of frankie in NC3 was sorta Really shitty, they were just a pathetic excuse for an enemies to lovers storyline, i wouldve had more fun if i were watching hunter and baaz fall in love instead.
4. owanya. i was like 6-8 when s10-11 were airing so i have no real way of telling if this is the case, but from what i hear from other people in the fandom these two used to be really well liked and i really have no idea why. was owen popular as well? how was someone like owen found more likeable than fucking marisol???? (racism) anyways i dont really feel like explaining why sleeping with the guy who hate crimed one of your best friends and also harassed you multiple times isnt the Smartest of moves, and i feel like it wouldve been much better had anya realized what she did was stupid and then refuse to look at owen ever again, or at least not have their relationship be framed as a positive. were we supposed to like... disagree when holly j and fiona were talking shit on owen in front of anya ?????? bc they were based af.
3. dolly j. i think i have a bit of a bias when i say this because season 10 was the first season of degrassi i watched so i didnt have the proper backstory to these two and their only storylines in that season were him trying to be her sugar daddy (which i wasnt even paying attention to bc the misfits vs fitz and three tenners plots in that episode were 1000x better than their drama), them breaking up, and then him assaulting her so.... not the best first impression. even when i did get their backstory in s9 i still ended up finding them to be extremely half baked. but also i think i also have a bias against them in s9 because i found holly j in s9 to be at her strongest, softening up and being kinder while also retaining her snark and edge which i love about her, but then along comes declan and holly j becomes a shell of herself. i still love her of course, but i hate the fact that post-declan, holly j didnt feel quite as... holly j-like. i could honestly care less about declan as a character, but its more of what this relationship does to holly j that makes me dislike them so much. and again the assault definitely soured me on this pairing from the jump. im just sayin holly j shouldve dated a different coyne....
2. bhandarco. i know you said that i couldn't include any 'obvious' ones, and in my mind this IS one of the obvious ones, but they have a lot of fans so that means its free range for me to put this on this list. for one, the age gap is . questionable to put it lightly. and its the fact that multiple characters around johnny and alli (clare, bruce, jenna) point out the fact that shes too young for him that makes it all the weirder. how the writers were able to WRITE IN characters saying 'hey its really weird that johnny, a grade 12, is dating alli, a grade 9' but refused to condemn this relationship is beyond me, but it wasnt the first time they did it, and unfortunately it wasn't the last, this is just the tamest example of the show doing this. anyways, i dont need to explain why the lying about sexual history or spreading around nudes of a 14 year old are bad. the thing is, i want to like johnny dimarco, because hes a funny character and had a fuckton of potential, but his treatment of alli, no matter how 'soft boye🥺' he acts around her, puts me off of him. and maybe im biased but the fact that so many people can ship them despite all of this but act like bhandurner is toxic and problematic makes me wanna bash my brains in. anyways alli deserved so much better and im glad she got better, eventually.
1. zaya. im not very subtle about my burning hatred for zaya, ive said multiple times that i hate them and that theyre my least favorite degrassi pairing Ever. i think my hatred of them used to be a kneejerk reaction post-cam, seeing as camaya is one of my favorite pairings from the show, but thats definitely not it because i liked matlingsworth! i am not against the idea of maya dating people after cam, hell im not even against zig and maya getting together post-cam in concept. it couldve worked like toberty, and i love toberty! i think all of my problems revolving zaya stem from season 13. back when i first watched s13, the only thing i could think of when i saw this new zaya dynamic was that they were trying to reverse engineer their dynamic into a knockoff of duncan and courtney total drama, with the whole 'reckless bad boy/goody two shoes good girl' thing they were pushing, but it didnt work for either character, ESPECIALLY zig who is 10x more whiny than he was as a niner while they tried to push him as a bad boy. the weird enemies to lovers thing they were trying to push didnt even work, zig just felt needlessly cruel to maya for no reason. the zig/miles fighting was horrible, zig calling maya his sloppy seconds was horrible, zig telling maya instead of respecting her boundaries after her boyfriend died he shouldve kissed her was HORRIBLE, zig being pushy and pretty much harassing maya into loving him and then becoming pissy when she didnt was horrible (notice a pattern?) i think him learning to respect that and moving on wouldve been a pretty good, if insufferable to get through, arc had they not randomly have maya realize shes in love with him during s14 out of literally no where. they were terrible in NC1-2 but i think anyone could tell you that. idk im sorta talking out of my ass rn and if i go and rewatch s13-NC4 i would definitely be more concise and accurate to why i hate these two so much but as it stands right now zaya is my least favorite degrassi pairing and i hate how the show tried making them seem so cute and #otp, especially in s13.
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Hi! Can you do an analysis where after you do all the sidequests in chapter 3 and Tifa asks Cloud which outfit to wear? Thank you!
You're talking about the alone at last discovery, but you want all the dress options? I mean, the mature one is canon for her even if you don't do alone at last, so the other choices are optional within an optional scene – and the only reason it's optional is because you get the mature dress anyway.
Basically I'm just gonna do the mature dress lol
Ok, spoiler warning for ppl who haven’t played – do I still need to do this? Eh ok, (I tag FF7R spoilers as final fantasy 7 remake spoilers) and it’s gonna be medium.
Also, this is one person’s interpretation of the scene, so if you disagree that’s cool and we’ll agree to disagree.
You’re also gonna have to excuse the janky quality on some of the screens, I’m grabbing them from Youtube and it’s frustrating af trying to get the exact moment I want.
Please check my master post to see if I've already covered your question, thanx
Recap time!
A pouting Cloud – who will always be my favourite Cloud cause adorable af – has been convinced by Tifa to help collect money for water filters to cover his pay for the reactor job. While they're making their rounds he gets stopped by Marle for a little heart to heart and a very important life lesson that he takes with him through the rest of the game.
Once that's over and he's changed the filter in his room, he pops next door to see Tifa.
AGH SHE'S SO CUTE! She's totally being cute on purpose too! Big eyes, hands behind her back, leaning forward, she's doing everything she can to put Cloud at ease because she's about to be nosy and we know Tifa doesn't push people.
The wide eyes, surprised “hmm?” and unguarded expression show he thought she had something else in mind besides this question lol
This isn't real!Cloud btw, it's just surprised Cloud lol
This is real!Cloud. After some back and forth between them, where Cloud seems to have a small deliberation with himself what he's ok to reveal while Tifa wears an earnest and hopeful look of expectation he'll share with her, Cloud turns away and gives some basic info that's emotionless and has very little attachment to his SOLDIER persona. A part of him seems to realise that and we see a flicker of grief cross his face. His mouth downturns and his brows pull together for a brief moment. He may well be getting a reminder of Zack's death, but it's so detached at this point he can't recall it or feel anything besides the slightest flicker. He grows confused and tries to muddle it through, but there's no conclusion. It's yet another odd feeling he has that comes with no reason why.
Tifa senses Cloud's upset and apologises for pushing him. She's very aware of his feelings and the distance between them from the long years apart.
We get a wide shot of them, showing the physical distance, which highlights their emotional distance. However, between them on the rug is the pattern of the reunion flower. This imagery has likely been placed there as a metaphor for them reuniting.
Cloud gives Tifa his profile as she talks about them maybe never meeting again and it being a strange coincidence they did. Since part of him assumed she was dead the entire time, it's likely a painful association to him and that's why he can't face her when she says it. With his head down and eyes obscured we can't really read his face very well, but from the glimpse we get, he looks hurt.
The distance between them closes when Tifa takes steps towards Cloud and he turns to her. She suggests they celebrate and Cloud looks surprised. Since he's probably wanted to ask her out since forever, the ease in which she does it makes him doubt she's sincere.
Tifa clearly becomes defensive here. The potential rejection from Cloud's “really?” has made her cross her arms over herself in a protective gesture. Her expression is hiding the hurt that Cloud might not want to go out with her. She tried to close the distance between them, but then took a small step back, indicating they're not quite comfortable with each other still. They're both wary and tip-toeing around each other, being careful. In Tifa's case, it's likely so Cloud won't up and leave all of a sudden. And for Cloud, we can guess it's because as much as he wants to be with Tifa, he feels like he always fails her and has no right to be around her.
Cloud, you're a goddamn troll and I hate you lol
Caught the smile the third time I watched this bit back. I knew he was teasing her anyway, but his micro-expressions give me life and I need to find the exact moment they appear. He wants to see her dressed up. Just the idea of her dressing up for him is making him want to smile. Cloud joking around is adorable and I wanna see more of it. This is hints of real!Cloud teasing his crush because he thinks she’s cute.
Remember during their promise scene when Cloud would try and bait a reaction out of Tifa and she'd one up him and he'd end up being the one who got stuck in his feels? Yeah, this is that.
You'd think by now Cloud would've learned not to tease Tifa if he can't handle the come back. I mean, this is a clear, check me out, pose.
When Cloud says, “Something refined,” Tifa smiles and replies “we're not kids anymore” which is definitely suggestive of her. The look on her face hints that she's got plans already and she's pleased that it seems Cloud doesn't think of her as just his childhood friend anymore. Which is why she draws attention to them not being kids any longer. She wants Cloud to think of her as a woman.
And Cloud likes the idea of them matching. It's suggestive of a couple, which he'd like to be with her, so the fact she's asked him to match her is a huge hint that she still has a crush, although Tifa's so reserved her hints are very small and take a keen eye to spot. That Cloud smiles at the thought shows how much he's looking forward to going out with her, he does this tiny little shy glance away then back to her – we were robbed of a cute date up on the plate #cries#
More Cloud smiling. He's looking forward to it, even if he replies “maybe” to Tifa saying how much fun they'll have. He was asked out and agreed. That's how dates work. We were robbed #cries even more#
It's an introspective moment for him. He's likely wanted to ask her out for years and this is how easy it was the entire time lol
Conclusion
Get married, make babies, we're getting old here!
Cloud isn't pressured into going out with Tifa, the amount he smiles during this exchange shows he's excited to have a date with her – even if they're not calling it a date. Tifa got Cloud to open up a little and they closed some of the emotional and physical distance between them. It's a step on the path to them becoming a couple.
I say a lot that they have good eye contact and this is where they begin. Before this moment, Cloud looked at her, but didn't hold her gaze as much. After Marle telling him to try more, he's putting himself out there for her and making that emotional connection. Their eye contact in this scene isn't there at the start, because of the seriousness of the conversation at times, but Tifa's very sympathetic to Cloud's needs and does her best to cheer him up. It works because he teases her and by the end, they're on their way to that moment in the corkscrew tunnel when neither of them broke eye contact even after getting up.
#final fantasy 7 remake spoilers#final fantasy 7 remake analysis#alone at last#Cloti#cloud/tifa#cloud strife#tifa lockheart
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because i have too much free time
I’m going through and taking screenshots of the new Cyberpunk demo and adding my 0.02 cos its a free country
1. Couldn’t get a screenshot but Bridgette says “She will be de first” which I assume means the character (who is fem V in that part of the demo) will be the first one to penetrate the Blackwall? Speculation atm.
2.
One guy fires a rifle at a flying car and there’s what I assume is a Pres Trump reference/ “fake news” joke. Personally I hope there’s not a lot of these but that’s because I’ve had a gutfull of American politics by now and I’d prefer they focus on the 2020 lore than actual events. The flying car had one of those scrolling banners, said “OUR EYES” before the scene changes.
there are floating constructs. I think they are parking spaces or something for the flying cars (like the skyway in back to the future had hovering stoplights?). The models look identical so its possible that they are either static meshes for decoration, or something the player might interact with (i recall some speculation about a flying car game segment, I know we can’t drive them but there’s still the possibility of a rail-shooter type mission at some point). I like how full the skybox is.
the UI has floating numbers/subtitles, however I’m hoping these can be turned off somehow for the people who prefer a “clean” look.
Didn’t see Jackie in this one, I don’t know if it’s because they intended for Johnny to basically “replace” his character as V’s right-hand man (pleas no not my boy) or if he just isn’t in these particular clips. Sounds dorky but I really like Jackie and I’m hoping he wasn’t the “bioware companion” that just gets killed at the start of the game so your character has some kind of revenge motivation
more example of destructible environments - obviously not everything will be breakable but it is a nice touch and gives combat that extra “oomph”. Unsure if you will be able to visit levels after you finish the mission, so there’s no way of knowing if the stuff you broke stays broke or gets “fixed”
default fem V’s look has changed - she has pink hair and eyes and her hand augments are different. Since this is mid-game gameplay it could be a natural progression/cosmetic changes available or just a stylistic choice on the dev’s part.
male V’s look has also changed and he’s rocking a cyber onsie that makes him look thicc af. Again, unsure if its dev changing the look or if they changed the default design. Also he has a magenta light on his head (and i think those are two earrings). Magenta is a pretty common colour in cyberpunk styles. I know they used to use yellow for V’s eyes and jacket. The default jacket’s light colour has changed from yellow to blue. Not sure why, either the colours are customisable in game or they just don’t like yellow, maybe.
My fallout mind has interpreted this as the cyberpunk version of SPECIAL. My take on these: Body = Strength, Intelligence is self explanatory, Reflexes = agility, Technical and Cool I’m unsure of.
the game still has swears and im happy. the cunt in a convent line was comedy gold please never remove it
I have some things to do so I’ll upload more later. My initial thoughts on the demo is that the gunplay looks fun and the environments are pretty, however some complaints I have:
- there doesn’t seem to be much roleplay/dialogue. Possibly because it was explored in the old demo but I’d like to know if the gameplay has gone the fallout 4 route of prioritising the loot-shoot gameplay loop over story and characters or if we still get a good dose of talking and reading for all of us rpg nerds out here.
- bro wheres jackie haha like hes okay right lmao like...that cinematic trailer was just jokes right....unless??
- the trailer had to be edited for spoilers but a side effect was the editing was kinda janky and made it hard to see what was happening in the video
- no mention of the 3rd class, Techies, just Netrunner and Solo. Maybe they are saving that one for later?
#cyberpunk#cyberpunk 2077#gameplay demo#just my mess of thoughts#im still excited for the game but im not gonna to be unrealistic with my expectations#cdpr
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So anyway, life updates on what I’ve talked about good, bad, and vagueblog.
But I introduce you to Betty White, or the Millennium Falcon, name pending.
Most of yall know that I’m on disability, dealing with some massively janky medical issues that Alabama’s bottom-ranked health care system doesn’t even know how to cover, and my wifey blew a disc in her neck at work, essentially debilitating her, too, but also earning a small settlement. In scale of it, 25K -- 21 after lawyer fees -- isn’t really much to do anything with.
So we had already known we had to fix up and sell the house and thought, hey, the land value went up substantially out here, we can pocket and flip it and be hella good.
Until her father finally came out here and in long story short, found out that the inspector that ran through this house when my wife first bought it (during our breakup period YEARS ago) didn’t do his job and it’d be 20-30K worth of repairs to even sell this place at the value her loan is for, meaning we pretty much have to short sell it to get out from under it. I mean bad shit. Fire hazard wiring and rotting roof and siding element under shiny things that hid it that have clearly been deteriorating since long before the house got a lipstick job.
So we went and found an RV, because it’s time to go. We have to GO. We have to get out of this state. There’s nothing for us here. There’s no medical care, there’s no worker protections, being LGBT women we’re extra up a creek in the area, it’s just bad. So RV it was! But finding one in the now suddenly cramped budget with the house turning up bunk entirely was FUN.
But like a stroke of providence I happened to find a listing the day it was upgraded on what has been jokingly referred to by my friends as the Millennium Falcon of RVs.
It came from an older couple, almost 60, that had been RVing for a few years, and the thing was already used when they bought it. It’s a friggin 1994. It’s old, it’s Chonk. But it was a project RV they decided to start on and while it has a solid AF 454 engine in it,
they’ve over a few years put in just about New Everything. New transmission, new air brakes, new air bags, new radiator, new septic lines, new alternator, new battery, new steering and suspension, new new new new new. Modified backup camera that tracks engine temp/tire pressure/etc like modern dashes and stays on constantly instead of just when backing up. It has its little hijinks with the in-n-out stairs being funky and the generator is a funny little bit because they didn’t want to spend 8K+ on a generator for an old RV so they got one that’s an external mount, which I imagine is why it was having a hard time selling.
Atop that inside the wife went bananas and got rid of the shitty old wallpaper and painted it bright colors different on every wall, removed the space consuming fold out couch since they didn’t need an extra bed and installed an armoire-storage-couch-thing that takes up half the outter floor space, stuff like that.
This was their baby and they intended to keep this baby and did great work on this baby, and the second I saw it in the advert, I knew it, because the images weren’t all spit cleaned sales stuff, it was vacation images with their shit still hanging inside it and their party lawn with their sports teams and stuff and the shiny lights they added on it to make it a party bus like
So anyway it turned out they basically got conned into getting a newer shinier one and just wanted to get the fuck OUT of Alabama but because of the generator and age it wasn’t selling at market value which was about 15K even as old as it is, and had price gouged it down to *8500*
Thought it was too good to be true, got our old construction and mechanic friend go out out there and go over it with a fine toothed comb and this thing, as he put it “goddamn if I had the money, I’d buy it myself, what the hell, you ain’t gonna get anything better for that price, hell, you ain’t gonna get anything as good for the price” THEY JUST WANTED TO GET OUT OF ALABAMA. And I mean, MOOD, BIG MOOD.
In fact the money they were asking for was basically to pay off loans and costs on all the New Stuff they put into it to begin with.
Because of them basically gouging their asking price in half an old lady had come to see it same day and at first the husband was like WHOEVER GETS US THE MONEY FIRST but talking to us the wife was like HELL NO THAT OLD LADY COULD BARELY GET IN THE THING SHES JUST GONNA DRIVE IT DOWN TO FLORIDA AND LET IT ROT THIS IS OUR BABY THESE GIRLS NEED TO TAKE CARE OF IT AND THEY WILL and she ran interference through the weekend until our mechanic friend could go check it out.
You might ask “if you have a buttload of money why an RV” but in trying to get out of Alabama and all the way back to Oregon where I literally KNOW I can make it work out in life for us, for reasons that are a whole story unto themselves, the moving costs cross country alone for a uhaul would be expensive AF. Downpayments. Finding pet friendly apartments. And then whether it was portland or somewhere else we could get STUCK. And we’re tired of getting stuck. So we’re packing up our own FUCKING house that we FUCKING own outright that fucking NOBODY can take away from us and with NO payment obligations and FUCK THE SYSTEM.
So anyway this big fuckin honker the wife was like WHY ARE YOU SO COMFORTABLE DRIVING THIS to Shea, but Shea worked for both Uhaul and Hertz so like hauling bigassed trucks around was kinda her thing and she also worked horses so giant ass horse trailers, you name it. So she just got up in there like she belonged and next thing you know we’re doing 65 down the bendy ass mountain freeways of central alabama like we been doing it for years
PS when you are in a literal fucking house 65 feels like 90, I’m just letting you know that now.
We’re still at our house cuz we gotta get this properly under our own tag/insurance and get a tow for the car. It was funny though cuz experienced or not knowing it was OUR LITERAL HOUSE Shea started like GOTTA BE CAREFUL GOTTA BE CAUTIOUS GOTTA MAKE SURE NOBODY DUMB and it turned into GET OUT THE WAY FUCKERS I’LL WIN within the 120 mile haul back home. Like BITCH I’LL TAKE MY FOOT OFF THE GAS BUT I AINT GONNA TRY TO JACK RABBIT STOP THIS FUCKER SO YOU BETTER GET SOME GIDDYUP IF YOU GONNA MERGE YOU FRIGGIN HONDA
This beast only has 65K miles on it. And that sounds like a lot but for an RV that isnt S H I T. People are like, if you can find a used one under 100K you’re doing okay. Half of those miles are just taking it out for a jog because you’re supposed to drive it once every couple weeks to keep it from rusting out basically. They just safely drove it in like a tristateish area down here for a few years as you can see on the cabinet stickers and moved around to sports games and shit and had fun.
The bedroom is purple. The kitchen is blue and yellow. KJSDKJFSjk she was like “Fuck the 1990 floral wallpaper we updating, there’s extra paint in one of the storage bins if you wanna touch any of it up”
So that’s it. We’re gonna do some work with said mechanic friend on the AC and a few tweaky details and as said, gotta tag/insurance/tow but once we get that worked out, that’s it, that’s home starting in a few weeks.
We’re heading to Independence, Missouri first to touch base with my internet momma then swinging in Salt Lake City to meet old media friends like the folks at Arrowstorm and stopping to enjoy their stuff at Evermore Park before hitting Portland which, reasonably, I’ll guestimate we’ll be at like a week or two before Halloween but maybe we’ll make better time. If you’re en route to those destinations and wanna meet up, lemme know, we’re still gonna have fun on the way and try to record shit.
Portland is the city I know how to work to and from the bone. I can turn any quarter into at least a dollar there, quite literally; I know how to eat eight times a day for free if need be. I reasonably think we can stay WELLLLLLLL above the line of needing that kind of assistance but because Shea is very anxiety driven to know we outright have a promised home and have promised food if worst case scenarios happen really made her go, you know what, fuck it, sure, Portland, you loved Portland, the wages are good in Portland, let’s do Portland.
If we start with dry camping at locations with free plug ups even still paying for Shea’s car and insurance, once major gas costs GETTING there are done, we’ll be running about 500 a month, and again, that’s including insurance for both vehicles and paying off her car note. Depending on the lot we land at, 700-900 a month. I can float that on my casual residual income. Everything after that is profit. Everything after that is success. I refuse to let Shea be anything less than Okay, but most of all, weird and nonconformative as it is, everything after this is scales of success. Hell minus the car note we’d be under 600/mo on the pricy end. We got dis.
No more of my wife being convinced she needs to performatively pull loans on her livelihood and shelter for the illusion of a 3/2 middle class life with a picket fence and a job she hates in a place she hates that she doesn’t know how to get away from. Hell, if she ends up hating Oregon? WE CAN PICK UP OUR HOUSE AND MOVE.
QUEER CULTURE IS HAVING THE MILLENNIUM FALCON OF RVS RAINBOW PAINTED INTERNALLY TO HAUL ASS TO PORTLAND OREGON AND AINT SHIT YOU CAN DO TO STOP US, FUCKERS.
It’s literally parked in our yard right now awaiting our voyage.
You bet your ass we’re getting an aux cord and blaring classic rock on surround sound the whole goddamn way
Also gonna get a CB radio to roll with some of the better trucker herds out there. Trust me, solid investment for a multitude of reasons. And entertaining.
If you don’t know what Smokie In The Woods is on a CB radio, you don’t know the road.
It also comes with a lot of gadgets you usually have to buy, like converters for USB chargers in older vehicles and the cable antenna and an extra tent and hell they left two bikes on it like YALL WANT EM YOU CAN HAVE EM, SURE
So buying the RV, paying the friend for the loss of a work day, the necessary gas to get out there, and the tow all in all is gonna run us about 12,000 bucks total, which isn’t a bad deal for bringing your own house with you.
We already burned a few thousand of our settlement trying to fix this house before the bad news and/or upkeeping bills but now it’s time to burn it and walk. By the time we roll I’m expecting us to have about 4K over costs in the bank, which is... enough. It’s more of a nest egg than we’d have if we stayed here that’s for sure, covers emergencies on the way there and gives us a few months to get our shit together. Even the part-iest part time job out in Portland will float any overhead on bills much less if shea can fall in with all the media and digital work out there with her graphic design and art, we’re eyeing the portland saturday market to sell her stuff at in season too. SCREW THE SYSTEM YALL
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More Minecraft grumping
Cut to spare the dash.
Things I really don’t like about Minecraft, honestly:
The early survival game is inaccessible
Here’s the thing about early Minecraft survival: you’re plonked in the middle of the wilderness, with absolutely nothing, and literally the first thing you got to do is punch a tree and find a safe place to spend the night before you get beaten up by monsters.
That’s it. You could spend the night hiding in a hole, probably crafting and mining something in the middle of the night, while hostile mobs wander areas that aren’t lit up, waiting to, basically, kill you. And you’ll stay in this precarious situation for at least a few days, as you 1) make a place to sleep, 2) build shelter, 3) get supplies to venture out, and 4) don’t die, because if you die, you lose your stuff.
This is a game marketed to mass audiences. For children, even. And it can be so manifestly unpleasant I have no idea how it got popular so quickly.
I don’t actually have a problem with this, actually! I positively enjoyed some of that experience, and some of that tension makes for some fun gameplay and entertaining stories — like the one where I found a white horse, tamed it, named it, and then proceeded to take it to a foolhardy exploratory quest before it fell under a hail of arrows (RIP Binky 2019–2019).
And I don’t even have a problem with the learning curve, because I’ve learned and thrived in environments like Dwarf Fortress. I use emacs for gods’ sake. Low accessibility and high difficulty environments are my jam.
But getting here involved more than a dozen start-and-stop moments of gameplay where I literally quit the game, deleted the save, and went to bed in disgust. It’s stupid. It’s aggravating. I can’t believe that this was ready for mass market, what with the lack of telegraphing and the pretty damn high stakes from the start, that the only people who’d play this would be gamers who are familliar with the tropes, already know a little about Minecraft lore, and are invested to try and try again.
To be fair, they’ve made some things easier: they’ve included guidebooks with recipes to automatically load items you already know into the crafter, there’s an official guide online, and if need be, you have cheats. But consider:
If you need to cheat to get the game accessible, there is something wrong with the core game loop.
You can’t create a guidebook and then rely on players gaining “enough experience” to access them to make the game more accessible.
You can’t just bloody have a guide that a person needs to open a browser, or buy the book, to get by.
Survival is very much a non-starter if Minecraft is your first serious game, you get frightened or suffer from anxiety in trying to stay alive, and you have difficulty optimizing your moves to get the best result.
Redstone is a mess
Actually, I have no opinions on how redstone is implemented on a purely technical basis. It’s a system, it’s mostly Turing complete, that's… interesting. What pisses me off is how the Technical Minecraft community is… well, frankly, hard to get into, hard to gain proficiency in, and looks fairly clannish, insular and… honestly a drag to Minecraft’s further development, if Minecraft was to get developed further.
Like I’ve talked about this before, but the existence of the Technical Minecraft is entirely dependent on a class of software behavior that you could make an argument are actually bugs. Zero-tick pistons, anomalous sticky piston behavior with blocks, quasi-connectivity… these weren’t intended consequences for the developers of Minecraft, and they’ve said so before.
Say what you want, but honestly if the only reason why a developer reverted a bug-fix because a bunch of small, clannish, insular, and loud minority were making complaints, I’d honestly ask how much value those people should have in how you run your business.
But that isn’t all. I had taken to writing down notes because I wanted to figure out how certain redstone constructions worked, and even the simplest designs suffer from the following:
There appears to be no standard way of sharing schematics and designs for redstone creations.
Most of the instructions are in video, which is a terrible medium to instruct in, because you don’t have a way to skim through the resource, the presenter literally doesn’t have to say anything more than what they do on video (and thus can be as vague and contradictory as they want).
Most of the instructions are in the nature of, do everything this way, except this section, in which you need to do (flurry of movement as the presenter puts in a slightly different design that you better be able to catch). It’s “simple”. No, it’s fucking not.
Another thing that bothers me is that, fundamentally, most redstone designs are hand-crafted, which is mind-boggling. For one, if you are just starting redstone in Minecraft, you’re going to be sitting with the same toolkit that the most experienced users of redstone are. You’ll still be laying down redstone lines and putting in comparators. You’ll still be dealing with the janky and inconsistent behavior that experienced redstoners are. You’d still be debugging your creations with the same tools experienced redstoners are. And like, you’d be doing it with nary any institutional or technical support, because… reasons?
It’s like you progress from electrical engineering to low-level programming to high-level programming to virtual machines to virtualization… so that you can get back to electrical engineering again? Using skills that may or may not transfer well into other fields? Why?
And there are consequences for this as well, which I’ll get to in a bit, but also, I need to talk about how the community gets around this problem, which is basically…
Modded Minecraft replaces the problems vanilla has with other problems
Specifically? One of them is performance.
I don’t know if you’ve tried 1.12.x and then compared it with 1.15.x, but the differences are night and day. Like, I run a potato computer, mostly because we’re broke af and don’t have the scratch for a l33t gaming machine, but… well, yeah. What’s occasionally janky in 1.15 is literally unplayable in 1.12. What takes 5 minutes to load in vanilla takes up to thirty minutes in modded Minecraft.
And sure, this will sort itself out as modders eventually take advantage of the new architecture and optimizations within 1.15, but in some other ways, it won’t. Mostly because the nature of modded Minecraft is that it literally has to interface with the literal source files to generate or insert new code, and since mod-makers don’t have access to the code pipeline and the tools that they can use to optimize the game, well…
And we’ve only talked about the Java Edition, and not Bedrock, which I suspect will be even more tightly incorporated into the platforms that it runs, at the cost of having less open infrastructure, and as a result, more consequences to mod performance and stabilty.
But another thing that bothers me about modded Minecraft is how so many mods are just… Minecraft, but more. More power, more game mechanics, more technical additions, more mobs, more enchantments… but half the time the resulting game feels bloated and overly-complex.
This is funny because it literally sounds like I’m contradicting myself over the fact that early Minecraft survival had too little in terms of letting itself be accessible, so you’d think I’d welcome mods that worked out some of these gaps with things that made player lives easier.
But what I’m looking for is a realignment of how the game approaches players, not as a punitive, inaccessible system where difficulty is a mask for what is ultimately shallow gameplay, and what we get from modded Minecraft is more stuff. Sometimes, in some modpacks, just so many things that several mods do the same thing that the other mods do.
It’s kind of telling that every time I see a modpack that includes Draconic Evolution the first thing I think of is I better not get into Draconic early, because if I do the rest of the game will literally break, because I have no idea what the hell the mod creators are doing there, but when your damage scales allow you to three-shot the Ender Dragon final boss, that mod breaks the game. Doesn’t matter if you make a boss that’s three times tougher than, say, the Wither. Game’s fucking broken.
There are some good approaches: FTB Academy and other questbook mods do give players a chance to orient and align themselves with what to do, without forcing players to have to go through the anxiety and terror of not knowing what to do, and keeps them engaged far longer than they should be, but honestly… ultimately what you’re doing is more stuff, just through the lens of what the mod wants you to do.
Plus FTB Academy has Draconic and you can literally two-shot the Guardian of Gaia, which is supposed to be so tough that metal music starts playing and it can cause effects that are twice as worse as the Wither… well.
Is it just me or are there only dudes in this party?
If I have to count the number of people who weren’t cis men or boys in the time I’ve been lurking around Minecraft’s YouTube channels, I can quite literally say that the number would be less than half a dozen.
That’s very bad. When your visible community is 95% cis dudes and everyone else aren’t there, it tells me that:
The game alienates literally everyone who isn’t a cis dude
The player base are driving away anyone who isn’t a cis dude
Part of the reasons for #1 are, well, I’ve mentioned them above: it only really allows people who have the time and wherewithal to plug into an activity that offers no real benefit outside of the game itself, most of the fantasies it caters to is power fantasies of vanquishing more and more powerful opponents, and there’s barely any community support for newcomers.
So that’s no surprise that the kind of people who are popular Minecraft YouTubers are dudes who are either bad at explaining what they do, are inarticulate, or… well, to not put it too unkindly, dicks. I mean, Minecraft’s recent rise in popularity and relevance was, sadly, because PewDiePie was playing it. So that tells you everything.
And we haven’t even gotten into the fact that the playerbase looks pale as fuck, so you know that’s a thing. I’m seeing a few Indonesian-language Minecraft tutorials on YouTube, so that’s neat, but otherwise… it’s pretty white-dominated.
And this all assumes that the causes are all because of structural inequalities, not active fuckery against marginalized folks. I honestly don’t know how often that happens, though I wouldn’t honestly be surprised if it did. I mean, it’s not as if the game isn’t associated with nasty folk like PDP… and hell, even the original creator, who, to their credit, Microsoft and Mojang have sidelined, is a homophobic and racist dude.
But, yeah. I mean, $CHILD_1 and $CHILD_2 are still at it with Minecraft, and I’ll be around to help them through, hopefully to steer them away from the nasty stuff. But still, ugh. There are so many reasons to be grumpy about this game.
Mind you, at least it isn’t Roblox.
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~hellooooo~
hi guys! for this specific entry i’ve made the blog private once again. i kind of like it this way so maybe i’ll keep it like this... anyways i have a lot to tell you guys!
first off i just really want to get this off my chest. i would prefer you guys to not talk about it on stream (i feel like i’ll get really emotional and it’s something i’m not ready to talk about yet) but i do think it’s super obvious when i’m feeling sad so i should probably share it with my community. andy and i broke up a bit ago and it’s been something i’ve been struggling with for the past year >_< probably why i’ve been so inconsistent and all over the place with myself.
we had a really civil, mature break up, we spent 3 hours talking about how much we helped eachother grow in the past 3-4 years. the reason we broke up was kind of out our control. i think the timing just wasn’t right (i’m 20 and he just turned 22, we’re really young and can’t really think about marriage right now) and i just think we’ve never experienced life without eachother and we have so much more room to grow independently and on our own. we really tried our hardest to make things work but inevitably we realized that the only proactive action we could take was to separate for the best for both of us. we honestly never fought very often and when we did we were super mature about it and this is super cheesy but it’s as if the past 3-4 years of our relationship, we helped eachother build wings on our back and now it’s ready for both of us to fly... without eachother T_T our last promise together was that 2019 would be our year to grow on our own and we broke up on a really good note. (i’m still sad AF tho)
i know i never shared much about our relationship, so this might be a lil bit offstandish for you guys. all i ask is for you guys not to make assumptions about our relationship and to not speak about it on stream for now! i really hope you guys can understand if i’m a little off because this is the hardest thing emotionally that i’ve ever gone through. i am trying not to get too emotional HAHAHA anyways my english was probably so bad i’m sorry
anyways, LET’S TALK ABOUT HAPPY STUFF!
i’ve been filming a lot of different content behind the scenes! here’s a sneak peek of one of the videos i have coming soon hehe
ALSO LOOOOK HOW MUCH BENJI HAS GROWN
he’s so handsome now.. i hope i grow as much as he did as a human being this year :)
coachelLA PICTURES!
coachella wa really fun and i was so lucky to be able to experience with my friends .... i plan on relaly focusing on my friendships, community, and myself from now on <3
also my kitty should be here next month... i’m so excited...
these are pictures of her hahah :) lemme know if you guys have any name recommendations
also my birthday is coming up yay!!! olly got me some alcohol LMAO i can finally say that i’m not underaged anymore and i won’t hold my friends back when i go to bars or clubs
i also made tres leches cake on stream and it turned out great in taste but looks a bit janky haha
ok honestly guys i’m like not in a good emotional state right nowa nd don’t think i can type anymore :( i just need a day or two to really be sad. i’m totally okay guys like really don’t worry, i’ve been through this before and i know that this is the best for me and i’m going to come out of this so much stronger!!!! i know it. so dont worry about me too much :) i’m going to be happy and excited on my birthday stream and i have so much to look forward to including you guys. i love you guys so much
here’s some funny memes
okay i loev ou guys
bye bye
<3
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For nostalgia/being down reasons, I have gone back to some of my old PlayStation standbys on emulator. I just... Have I ever mentioned I love how absurdly cheesy these games can be? Especially like... The licensed platformer games?
In the first level of the Treasure Planet game, for example, we have:
Doppler, explaining to Jim how to function in society, and even calls himself out on the exposition of explaining oh “this is the town of Benbow on the mining planet of Montressor, but of course you already know that, living here”
Pretty sure the kid’s a delinquent, doc... Pretty sure he already knows how to climb things, break things, and is more than familiar with that “death slide” thing.
“Now, Jim, here is how you work around the protection measures on barrels, chests, and crates, because those obviously don’t belong to anyone so you can totally break them”
Also Doppler’s much more prone to the Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness than he was in the movie? Although something about that line “Or in simple terms, SMASH THE DAYLIGHTS OUT OF IT WITH AN OVERHEAD SWORD ATTACK!” is still super great i have always loved it
Morph is here. We are not ‘supposed’ to have met Morph until the part of the story taking place like 3 levels from now.
Were the controls always this janky or is it just my emulator and USB remote? Either way these controls are hecked. Jim has 2 speed and it’s “booking it” and “stopped”. I can’t aim my pistol for snot. I have hang-glided to my death like 5 times on what should be a simple bit of platforming.
“I have stolen 5-7 times my bodyweight in gold and rubies, but I still gotta find that tresure planet ‘cause uh...”
Not a game thing but I have this impulse to obsessively jump on the checkpoints until I’ve gotten the dialogue for it like 3 times, and the sound effect at least 20. I have always done this and obvoisly I had to do it again bc tradition. It’s very satisfying.
I think some of these sound effects may or may not be the exact same ones from the Stuart Little 2 game too? Were they made by the same people? Same kind of weird but enjoyable platformy-collecty game.
Miner who is-... I’m pretty sure he’s the exact guy who owned the Skywalkers in the first Star Wars, except without the wings.
“We’re trapped down here because the lift is broken!” ... *immediately heads back the way I came. goes up that lift just fine. open sky and freedom stretches for miles into the wild blue yonder. heads back down into the mine. people are still ‘trapped’*
meanwhile the “exit” lift I fixed just leads out to a small balcony, with some more loot and also Doppler
Where art thou o Doppler?
also Jim literally just bought his way into a mining union and then literally straight-up murdered a buncha guys. I mean, they were bandits, but...
Also this mine is Not Very Well Set Up For Being Actually Useful
Fun things that all good mines include: tourist attractions selling relics from Captain Flint’s hoard, because obviously you’ve got so many rich tourists in mines, and Jim’s home planet was super important in Flint’s narrative
I almost forgot like u can get movie clips in the game and unlock them? I have no idea where you can access these movie clips, I have literally never cared to go and look at them once I’ve collected them (and obviously, I collect them). Because, obviously, you totally want to watch Treasure Planet via video game unlocks with PSX graphics, right?? Also whenever you collect them Jim just goes “Just what I was looking for!” ...somehow I get the feeling nobody really knew what to do with that one. Were you really looking for that, Jim? Really? The movie clips are what the real adventure is all about? I mean, I suppose since he’s already rich af at this point from raiding other people’s stuff, that could very well be the case.
There’s some more stuff I can’t think of off the top of my head but like?
It’s so cheesy and so much of it doesn’t make sense after thinkin about it for 2 seconds.
I love it.
why do they not make things like this anymore?
#my posts#Emma Plays PlayStation#I /almost/ played Stuart Little but that one I've gone through more recently of the two#and Chicken Run was cool when I first went through it but...? It hasn't quite held up so well as I remembered#BESIDES THOSE DOGS I MEAN LIKE FNAF GOT N O T H I N G ON BEING CAUGHT BY THOSE FRICKIN /DOGS/#everything else I had was more on the /meh/ side#in terms of ''playing enough to build up fond memories''#platformers r where it's AT
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Hi there! I was wondering if you could actually make an analysis comparing the touches between Cloti and Clerith (including the times when he leans away/doesn’t lean away when they get close). I know this is a big ask since Cloti share about a million touches lol. You can ignore me if this is too much. Thank you for all your insightful analysis thus far. I’ve really enjoyed reading everything you’ve put out. It’s made my FF7R experience so much more fun 😊
Heya, nonny! It's finally your turn, but with a slight tweak to our usual programme! There's way too many touches to compare each directly, it'd be like trying to break down every single look and say which are romantic and which aren't.
That being said, it's easier to list how many times each pair touches, how and who initiated and whether that touch was returned turning it into a mutual touch. Because there's passive touching, where only one person is taking hold and there's mutual, when both are taking hold of each other. There's also who is dominant in the situation because that's telling of whether they have mutual respect for each other.
Ok, spoiler warning for ppl who haven’t played – do I still need to do this? Eh ok, (I tag FF7R spoilers as final fantasy 7 remake spoilers) and it’s gonna be long.
Also, this is one person’s interpretation of the scene, so if you disagree that’s cool and we’ll agree to disagree.
You’re also gonna have to excuse the janky quality on some of the screens, I’m grabbing them from Youtube and it’s frustrating af trying to get the exact moment I want.
Please check my master post to see if I've already covered your question, thanx
Let's mosey!
I figured I'd start with the shorter one, since it only goes over one screen and it's easy to break down.
Of the 18 chapters of the game, Aerith appears as a playable character for 8 of them. The rest are minor appearances for cut scenes only. This takes her total screen time to 11 chapters.
The amount of times Cloud says Aerith's name in total is 23 times, with an optional 24th if you choose her in the sewers at the start of chapter 10.
This is the only part of the game that's optional. All touches are non-optional. They all happen. The ultimania confirms the clotiscrew tunnel as having happened and the resolutions all happen within the same night, but we only witness one at a time – which is why it says in the play log we witnessed them. It's just the one we happened to see that changes.
Of that 23 times, Cloud says Aerith's name, he says it directly to her a total of 9 times, with the sewers adding an optional 10th.
Cloud speaks Aerith's name to others a total of 14 times. The chapter he says her name the most is during chapter 16 when he, Tifa and Barret talk about rescuing her. Because it'd be weird to call her “the ancient” or some other epithet when she's their friend. In fact, Cloud does refer to Aerith as their friend when talking about her as well.
What's interesting is that even after meeting her during chapter 8, Cloud doesn't say Aerith's name to her or about her until they meet Leslie in Chapter 9. In game, they've been together around 12hrs by this point and Cloud never once said her name. In comparison, Cloud says Tifa's name to her in the first chapter they're together. Chapter 3 also lasts around 12 hours.
Onto touching.
The total amount of times Cloud and Aerith touch in the entire game is 18. Or once per chapter if you want to spread it out lol
Most of the touches come from Aerith to Cloud, with only 2 mutual touches between them, which are the 2 high fives.
Cloud touches Aerith a total of 7 times. Most of those are “action touches” where he's saving her from danger. I bet it still counts to some people though, so let's drop the whole “action” bullshit. It's a touch.
I suppose if someone wanted to romantically code this chart then the damsel catch and face touch are the most romantic gestures. Yet, we know from Cloud that he had no interest in Aerith then because of how he acted. And the resolution left him confused, so from Cloud's pov, nothing he did with Aerith was romantic. He did his job as a bodyguard. Aerith was the one making the flirty gestures, but even those came from a place where she's the dominant partner and Cloud is the submissive one. Their interactions were not that of equals from her perspective.
The most times Aerith and Cloud touch is chapter nine: Wall Market. Not surprising. Aerith initiates touch a total of 3 times, always her right to his left. There's the mutual high fives which are both right hand to right hand and then Cloud touches Aerith once at Don Corneo's when he helps her up. That's his right hand to her right wrist.
There's a very notable save between them during the train graveyard against the ghost in the maintenance room where we can see that Cloud doesn't put his hand on Aerith at all and holds his arm out to the side. This is during the jump when he also has his arm around Tifa. Because Cloud puts his arms out for balance when he's jumping and is already off balance by his hold on Tifa, he's keeping his other arm extended and wedged Aerith against him, holding her in place with upper body strength alone. I counted it as a touch since they are touching, but his hand is nowhere near her.
As for the resolution. If people think that Aerith had control over whether she was solid enough to touch Cloud, but then his hand went through her, that's their business. I made the allowance that she did touch him, but he didn't touch her because his hand literally went through her.
Right or left hand?
The right hand is a symbol of strength and most people's dominant one. The left hand symbolises passivity and weakness. It's the one you see Cloud clenching when he feels like he's not strong, whereas when he wants to protect someone he clenches his right fist.
Now that's explained, the touches between Aerith and Cloud are predominantly her right hand touching his left side. Even when she uses both hands to grab him, she's grabbing his left wrist or hand. This suggests that she thinks Cloud is someone weak in need of her protection. She doesn't believe he is bodyguard material.
In terms of symbolism, Cloud considers Aerith more of an equal than she does him.
The one time she touches his right arm is during the train graveyard section when he's about to kill a ghost. She uses her left hand to touch his right arm and stop him. She then puts her other hand on him to reinforce her words. This is a moment when Cloud is strong and she's weak, but there's no protection here. Aerith is in the passive role, but still trying to protect someone else. The ghost. Cloud is the aggressor and she is pleading for the Ghost's existence. It's a contrasting moment to Tifa and Cloud with Johnny, where Tifa begs for the living and Aerith begs for the spiritual. It's a strong division between their two roles and outlooks, as well as Cloud's preference. With Tifa, he backs down and trusts her judgement. With Aerith, he questions it.
Yeah, this got long because Cloud wouldn't stop touching her lol
Tifa appears in the game for a total of 17 chapters, either as a child in a flashback or actually in the chapter. Only chapter 2 is missing her presence. She is playable for 15 chapters.
Cloud says Tifa's name a total of 37 times, with one extra as the optional choice in the chapter 10 sewers. Of that amount he says her name to her 28 (29) times and he says her name when she's not around 9 times. He even says her name during battle, which he doesn't do with anybody else.
He mostly says her name to her and makes a point of using a different tone when speaking to her to highlight his deep feelings for her. When he's speaking about her there's still that edge of softness, but it's less obvious since she's not there in person and he doesn't want to give himself away how much he cares about her.
Cloud and Tifa touch a whopping 61 times! Because there's no such thing as “optional touching”. You just chose not to witness it.
These are all individual touches. This means that one touch ends and then another touch begins. With the clotiscrew tunnel, Cloud has his hand on Tifa's back, that's one touch. He takes it off to brace against the ground. Then he puts it back on her. That's a second touch. In the list the first is under full body hug because that's how that touch began. The back caress is listed as its own touch because there was no reason for him to do that. When there's no reason to touch, but it happens, then it's its own touch.
Most of Tifa's touches are to Cloud's hand, arm, back or shoulder. She varies which hand she grabs him with depending on how insecure she's feeling at the moment and which side of him she's on. She shows weakness towards him at times, but predominantly her touches are her right to his right, showing that she views him as her equal. The times when she touches his left side, it's usually in a moment of weakness for herself, so she's touching him with her left hand.
Ex. the final dungeon when Tifa grabs Cloud. She starts off by holding his wrist with both hands, but he slips, leaving Tifa to clasp his left hand in hers. This is a moment of weakness for them both since she's not strong enough to pull him up. Barret appears and helps. The touch began by Tifa taking Cloud's wrist but became mutual when their hands held. This makes it a different touch than the initial wrist grab because Cloud returned it.
Cloud touches Tifa a lot. Like a stupid amount. There are several “action back hugs”, he grabs her around the waist a lot, and although in early chapters he took her wrist, after chapter 12 he also begins taking her hand.
During the train graveyard he literally uses his body as a shield, throwing himself on top of her (in case people wanted to question why I described it as “guards”)
The chapter 14 resolution I've listed as Cloud hugging Tifa, since her arms aren't around him. They're resting on his upper torso – which counts as a touch since she had to put them there – but this was Cloud hugging Tifa.
Cloud's touches towards Tifa are a lot more romantically coded than hers are to him. He caresses her back, grabs her around the waist, by the hand, props her between his legs and hugs her. Tifa is much more reserved in comparison, but her touches imply a lot of affection and desire to be close to him, while remaining respectful of his personal space.
No naming?
Cloud doesn't speak Aerith's name in 10 chapter out of 18.
He doesn't say Tifa's name in 2 chapters out of 18.
People can argue it's because he didn't know it before that point, and sure, okay, whatever, in that case he didn't say her name in 2 chapters, but to get that total you have to ignore 10 chapters of the game.
Oh wait. How many chapters does Aerith appear in? Sounds about right.
After her rescue, Cloud only says Aerith's name to her 3 times. This is in chapter 16 and 17 only because he says neither girl's name in chapter 18. In comparison, Cloud says Tifa's name 7 times in those same two chapters.
This shows that even when in the depths of a fear state, he knows he can rely on Tifa as a figure of support.
No touching?
You'll notice that in plenty of chapters there's zero touching at all between Cloud and anyone. That's because skinship isn't the point of the game and he's got bigger things happening in his life than who he's touching more.
After Cloud and co rescue Aerith you'll notice he doesn't touch her at all. Not once. During this part of the game, Cloud is in a fear state because of all the Jenova stuff, the experiments, Hojo, the drum, Sephiroth and so on. He's terrified and Aerith isn't someone he feels he can look to for comfort. During this part of the game, Cloud is mostly a silent background presence within the narrative. For the hero, that's very telling what state his mind is in. He doesn't return to that cocky SOLDIER persona until the Rufus fight.
Cloud also doesn't initiate touch with Tifa during these closing chapters, however he does engage in mutual touch by taking her wrist and hand.
“Action touching”
Since I'm sure some people would love to discredit a lot of the touches between Cloud and Tifa as necessary because he's saving her.
6 of the 7 actual touches from Cloud to Aerith are action touches. The Resolution where his hand goes through her is only an attempt and didn't succeed. Cloud is saving Aerith in every single one of them. The one touch from Cloud to Aerith that isn't an action touch is when he puts his hand on her shoulder after saving her from Eligor. During this moment, he doesn't make any kind of eye contact with her or checks to see she's ok. He doesn't ask if she's ok, either. He puts his hand on her shoulder, then turns to face Eligor. Of the two, it's Tifa who checks that Aerith is ok and reassures her; she also puts her hand on the same shoulder that Cloud did.
Of Cloud's touches to Tifa 22 are “action touches” with the remaining 11 being unnecessary. That means those touches happen when there's no threat to Tifa or himself or need for him to put his hands on her in a protective capacity.
In the name of fairness, the 2 mutual touches between Cloud and Aerith are not action touches, whereas all 9 of the mutual touches between Cloud and Tifa are “action touches”.
Battle banter?
There is no downed or low health dialogue between Cloud and Aerith where he says her name. Cloud yells Tifa's name if she's knocked out and he asks if she's okay when she has low health.
In conclusion
Was this a stupidly long and involved way to waste my time on a replay? Yes. It fucking was. Why? Because it doesn't even fucking matter who said who's name more often or who touched who more often and how.
Cloud and Aerith began the game as literal strangers – one who Cloud didn't particularly like that much either – and then they slowly became friends by the end of the game. Cloud literally calls her his friend several times.
Aerith's touches are either her showing dominance towards Cloud by taking his left hand or arm, or they're flirty and irrelevant. She slaps his shoulder at one point, which isn't close to the kind of thing someone with an interest in another person does. Compare to Tifa who touches Cloud's shoulder, it's a marked difference between their attitudes towards him.
More telling is the fact that after Aerith rescues Tifa, there's only one moment she touches Cloud that's a purposely flirtatious gesture. It's the arm grab during the train graveyard. This is the only time she's purposely flirting with Cloud. Even then, Aerith grabs Cloud's left arm, signifying that he is not her equal in this exchange. Tifa takes the right arm, looping her left arm around his and placing her right hand on him, signifying she does consider him her equal.
After that there's only two other times in the entire game that Aerith touches Cloud. Her resolution when she uses her left hand to touch the left side of his face – signifying that she is feeling too weak to be a figure of strength and that Cloud is also weak. It's not a flirtatious gesture because her expression conveys regret. This is also a reference to the gold saucer date where Aerith laments not meeting the real Cloud. This Aerith knows Cloud isn't real and regrets she'll likely never meet him if her death remains as it was in OG.
The other time is during chapter 18 when she grabs his arm to stop him walking straight into the portal at destiny's crossroads. Again, she grabs his left wrist. Not romantic.
Cloud and Tifa began the game as old friends. They already have the foundation of knowing each other, not to mention their mutual crush. This means they're more eager to further intimacy. They want to touch each other. Cloud more so than Tifa because he's not long out of a mako coma and his last memory is her stabbed by Sephiroth and believing she died. Ofc he wants to touch her to reaffirm she's still there. Ofc he wants to push for that relationship he was too afraid to go for. And this is further impressed on us after the chapter 16 cut scene where he sees the vision of her being killed again. After that, not only does Cloud turn his head to look for Tifa, but he turns his entire body to reorient himself to her. Because he's terrified of losing her again.
Tifa has more reserve with her touches because she's aware something's wrong with Cloud and doesn't want to upset him. She's concerned and it shows. Her touches are very supportive and sympathetic. She's conscious of not pushing him or getting in his personal space. The one time she does break this unspoken rule is during her resolution and even then she's very mindful of not touching him more than necessary until he puts his arms around her. Then she puts both hands on his chest, but still able to maintain that respectfulness towards him.
So yeah, that's that.
I'm not gonna be providing a load of pics with this one because it's insane trying to illustrate every single touch between Cloud and Tifa. I probably could've added another category listing them by cut scene, but I literally didn't think of it until now and there's no way I'm going back over everything again.
Estimating Aerith's off the top of my head it's about 17 cut scenes worth of touching.
Tifa's is about 23 cut scenes worth.
So yeah, hope everyone's happy with the results lol
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Do you have the language of flowers body language discovery event analysis? Would like to know your thoughts on it.
Okay, language of flowers discovery, which is something else that's all about Zack.
Ok, spoiler warning for ppl who haven’t played – do I still need to do this? Eh ok, (I tag FF7R spoilers as final fantasy 7 remake spoilers) and it’s gonna be long.
Also, this is one person’s interpretation of the scene, so if you disagree that’s cool and we’ll agree to disagree.
You’re also gonna have to excuse the janky quality on some of the screens, I’m grabbing them from Youtube and it’s frustrating af trying to get the exact moment I want.
Please check my master post to see if I've already covered your question, thanx
Let's mosey!
Recap time!
After completing all the quests in sector 5, which Cloud was not a happy bunny about, he and Aerith head back to her house because her mom made dinner. Before that, though, Aerith heads over to one of the flower beds and calls for Cloud to join her.
Just gonna add that this is completely avoidable if you ignore Aerith and go into the house, same as alone at last is avoidable if you go back to the bar. Because I did this. I checked it out. After some dumdum tried to say you can't skip it. Because you can.
Also, you have Marle in alone at last who stops Cloud for a chat, but here, it's just Cloud and Aerith with no one else for a pre-chat chat.
Yeah, that's Cloud's face the second we see him. I mean, the boi doesn't look impressed. He's like “da fuq?”
And when Cloud asks if Aerith's talking to the flowers, not that he even gets to finish that question, she shushes him. What's really interesting about that moment, is that although Aerith initially gives Cloud a bright smile like she's playing, before she's even brought her finger away from her lips she's giving him a less than pleased expression. Then there's the fact she shushed him at all. For people who say this is romantic, shushing somebody when they're trying to talk to you is rude.
And it's here that the black, white and red butterfly first appears and begins hovering near to Aerith. It stays around for the entire scene. The symbolism of this type of butterfly is drawn from several sources, but the overall implication is that it's a departed soul of a loved one. Since Aerith is obviously talking to Zack and not the actual flowers during this scene, the butterfly symbolises his presence beside her.
Aerith speaks the line about the day she had in a resigned tone, indicating she wasn't having as much fun as she made it seem. Aerith is someone who hides her feelings behind a bright smile – which is often misinterpreted by her fans as something it's not. She likely endured much of Cloud's bad mood just as much as he endured her. The meta knowledge she has says they're friends and she misses her friends because she gives each and every one of them a bright smile when they meet again, but she's also aware that she could hurt Tifa because of Cloud, so she's already making an attempt to keep him at a distance, while also trying to become friends with him again.
This is so obviously her thinking about Zack I shouldn't even have to bring it up. She looks like she's having a conversation with him, tilting her head, smiling and looking more happy than the entire time she's spent with Cloud. We get zero shots of Cloud during this. Instead, we get a shot of the flowers. Surely, if she's trying to engage with Cloud we'd see him? It's like he's been cut from the scene. There's no sounds from him to say he's part of the conversation and there's no reaction from him to show he's even still there. Aerith's focus is totally on that flower bed and Cloud could've left and I doubt she'd notice.
And if the fact she's ignoring Cloud isn't evidence enough, she's blushing here. After tilting her head to listen to something the flowers said and one touched another. So, a language of flowers kiss from Zack to Aerith and she sighs and blushes.
Zack's a bigger dork than Cloud.
And that butterfly is still hovering around Aerith, because one of the meanings of that kind of butterfly is that it shows up to chase away any potential rivals. Cloud isn't even a rival, but it's gonna make sure he doesn't get a chance to become one lol
We can't see Aerith's face exactly here, but her mouth is a straight line and she's looking at the ground with a vacant stare. Seems like she's lost in thought.
We still don't get to see Cloud's face during this. He's basically a totem that the audience is using to sit on so they can watch Aerith. It could literally be anybody standing there and we'd get the same result of that character being detached from what's happening because we don't get to see their reaction.
And then we get a mid range shot of the two of them standing pretty far apart with the butterfly flitting about between them. In the background we can see the house with its triangle windows, which are dark for now indicating the LTD aspect isn't lit up, which means we've not reached any LTD references yet. Which is interesting because in the OG we've had several before we reach Aerith's house.
That line is such a Zack thing to say there's no way she wasn't talking to him and imagining what he'd say to her. He died five days ago and she knows that, so it's actually heartbreaking that she'd choose something he'd say as a reply here. It shows how close they were that she'd know his speech patterns and phrases he'd use. It shows how much she loves him that even when she's hurting from his death she'd choose something he'd say just to try and bring herself closer to him.
And that butterfly is still between her and Cloud.
Cloud offers polite interest because he's been learning lessons and applying them. It's called character development and isn't that special seeing how he already asked Biggs about Jessie and then offered Wedge encouragement when he felt down all the way back in chapter 4. He didn't say anything with the level of importance of “if you wanna talk, I'm listening,” because he doesn't know Aerith, but he's trying to join in the conversation and not be such a closed off asshole to people.
Aerith they didn’t say anything, but she looks depressed as she says that because she wishes she could hear Zack’s voice. It’s in her downed dialogue that she hears his voice calling to her.
Then we get Aerith looking at us. Because Aerith does that. A lot. Of all the cast who do a 4th wall break and look at the audience, Aerith does it the most and usually it results in her trolling the players. Which is hilarious and I support it!
Aerith shrugs and, still looking at the camera—us—says it's not like we'd believe her. This is so damn funny! She's basically saying even if she outright said to everyone that she loves Zack, she isn't interested in Cloud and actually likes Tifa and doesn't wanna be part of their toxic nightmare LTD that those people still wouldn't listen to her. And the look on her face when she says it is like “We've all tried for 23 years and you still won't listen.”
And Cloud barely gives her enough eye contact to suggest they're talking to each other and then dismisses her. Which feels like it relates to the meta message Aerith just gave about fans not listening to them.
Then he stops. Has another thought about not being an asshole. This is all soldier Cloud btw, I checked and there's none of those real Cloud hints we get around Tifa and and post resolutions.
Aerith seems surprised at this change in him, since she's not done anything to warrant it, but obviously she doesn't know about stuff he's done with Avalanche and anything outside of her general knowledge. She wouldn't know about Marle or the Jessie job or him flirting with Tifa or any of that. She only knows about him from what OG Aerith knows and she'd only know about Cloud from the moment they met.
And again, Aerith's looking at the flowers. Obviously this message is plot related and hints at Aerith's upcoming fate. She says it won't be much longer now, meaning she doesn't have much time left to live. The flowers having an important message to give her is one of those mysteries that we're not gonna get an answer to yet because it's something that's related more to how the flower metaphors unfold and isn’t part of any romantic context.
And when we cut back to where we can see Cloud we see he's not even looking at Aerith. Polite interest, like I said. He's not actually interested. But the butterfly is still flitting around Aerith, so it cares at least.
Then we get a shot of Aerith's right hand, which is a symbol of strength, protection and resolve. Aerith knows what her duty is and she's determined to see it through, even though she's likely very scared about what she has to do.
Cloud looks meh about this. There's literally no reaction happening here and the only reason I'm including it is to show that Cloud has no reaction to what Aerith just said.
But when Aerith speaks of giving up and it's what she does best he gets another big mood face on. If what she did that day was giving up then he probably doesn't want to know what she's like when she's trying lol
He even says he doesn't believe that about her. “Could've fooled me.” People really don't listen to Cloud, do they? He's not meta, doesn't do double speak. He says what's on his mind. He doesn't say everything on his mind at every moment, but when he shares, he's straight with it. If he thinks Aerith isn't like how she thinks she is then that's how he thinks.
Aerith says today is special, Cloud looks away as he asks why and then we get another bit of Aerith trolling the camera. She gives it a long look, laughs and keeps her gaze on it and gives it this knowing little look like she knew people would get all excited by her doing that and that's why she laughs. It's got nothing to do with Cloud. Although we know Cloud doesn't like it when people laugh at him, so she probably accomplished a couple of goals there by alienating him a bit more.
Which, yeah, she did, because his face is not amused. Cloud doesn't like gossip or being made fun of.
Cloud says to the flowers to learn to talk to her, but the flowers are a representation of Zack during this scene, so he's saying to Zack to learn to talk to her, and then we get the butterfly in the frame again, front and centre this time confirming the symbolism.
I might've suggested Cloud's words were about himself with Tifa, but he's very much soldier Cloud during this, so I don't think he'd say anything out loud about her unless real Cloud prompted him to, and since he's absent from this scene I can't see it being anything other than soldier Cloud drawing on real Cloud's dork personality trait and trying to sound cool with it.
Aerith asking if the flowers said anything and Cloud repeats the Zack line. Her answer of “that's the spirit!” has a double meaning. It could mean that's the attitude you need to have towards it. Or, it could mean, that's Zack's spirit.
In conclusion
This is pretty much Aerith and Zack with Cloud as a bystander/third wheel. There's some great meta moments from Aerith where she trolls the players and calls out their bs about LTD stuff and anything else to do with her or the other characters having their own opinions.
On the surface of it, the only reason I can see for people to even think it's something it's not is the fact that Aerith is smiling and perky. Like, someone isn't allowed to be like that unless it's romantically motivated. But, Aerith is like that. She's the girl who hides her pain behind a smile.
Cloud isn't really present for much of this scene when you really notice it. We get his back more than his face and when we do see his face he's not looking at Aerith or he's looking bland af. The most animated expression he makes is right at the start with the one eyebrow lift. After that, his face is in lockdown lol
#final fantasy 7 remake spoilers#scene analysis#language of flowers#it's all Zerith#I was surprised how little Cloud's actually a part of this
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FF7R: What if?
I’m back with more analysis!
So, I caught a youtube theory that said because the whispers are gone now, every single event they interferred in is retconned. I was gonna be like, that sounds interesting, but then they went off on this huge tangeant that ended in – you guessed it – Cloud dying 😒
Even though it literally contradicted their own evidence they'd stated earlier in the vid.
Sephiroth says he won't let Cloud die, but then we've got Cloud having seven seconds to make a choice and sacrifice himself for the greater good. Even though Sephiroth literally said he won't let Cloud die. This is why I don't listen to theory vids where they have people live or die because it ignores canon and the devs have said canon still counts, so until we get evidence otherwise I'm gonna go ahead and say Cloud lives and please stop trying to FF15 him because that is the absolute suckiest ending for a guy who absolutely has earned and deserves his best ending – which is ALIVE. He deserves to be alive!
(Not to mention the other theories starting that Sephiroth is the good guy now...like seriously? Stuff like this makes me want to cry. Sephiroth isn't good and Cloud doesn't deserve to die. How tf is this FF7? This is the worst kind of fan fiction trash and it belongs in a dumpster fire!)
And that's my tangeant lol
So, back to the whispers and the what if. If their influence is now undone and everything they interfered in is gone I wondered what that meant. So, Imma gonna follow the ones we know about and see what conclusion we get. I've got a chart of each appearance they make in Remake, so these are the actual events they interfered in.
Let's mosey!
Ok, spoiler warning for ppl who haven’t played – do I still need to do this? Eh ok, (I tag FF7R spoilers as final fantasy 7 remake spoilers) and it’s gonna be huge lol.
Also, this is one person’s interpretation of the scene, so if you disagree that’s cool and we’ll agree to disagree.
You’re also gonna have to excuse the janky quality on some of the screens, I’m grabbing them from Youtube and it’s frustrating af trying to get the exact moment I want.
Please check my master post to see if I've already covered your question, thanx
Recap time!
Chapter 2 is the first time we see the whispers and their purpose here is to keep Aerith from leaving the area before Cloud arrives – because they meet in the OG – they then later chase her away – also OG – leaving him to fight the security forces alone.
So, we can't actually see them yet, but their purpose at this point is to keep Aerith from leaving the area so she can have the whole flower conversation with Cloud.
What if?
If Aerith wasn't forced to remain there, then she'd have evacuated along with other residents and gone back to sector 5. She'd never meet Cloud, never agree to go back to Shinra and the story of FF7 wouldn't happen.
Aerith is about to stay and fight alongside Cloud until a whisper chases her away, allowing her to deliver her OG line of, “Nice meeting you.”
What if?
If Aerith stayed she'd have remained with Cloud until the station, where he'd been forced to get her onto the train with Avalanche. She'd have met them and Tifa much sooner, possibly joined their cause and potentially died in the pillar if she wasn't able to convince Tifa she could go along to Don Corneo's.
The other option is Cloud would've taken her back to sector 5 once they got to sector 7 and they'd have avoided the rooftop walk, he'd have gone back to sector 7 because that's where he lives and they wouldn't have met again.
Chapter 3 is their next appearance after Cloud gets a futuristic flash of the plate collapse. They appear to distract him and prevent him from questioning what he just saw.
What if?
Cloud could bring up the plate's structural integrity around Avalanche or the neighbourhood watch. They could increase patrols around that area and get a jump on Shinra's attempt to collapse it. The increased security could mean they're successful in stopping the plate from falling.
(Don't tell Cloud this, he'll drown in guilt forever lol)
Still in Chapter 3, during the scene at Seventh Heaven where Cloud isn't included in the next reactor mission. An intangible whisper floats near the ceiling, observing events.
What if?
Since this relates to Cloud being part of the reactor 5 mission, his not going would be catastrophic for those who went instead. Why? I'll get to that in a sec.
Near the end of Chapter 4, whispers appear in Cloud's room while he sleeps. Their purpose is to ensure Cloud remains asleep(?) while they incapacitate Jessie (see conclusion for my theory).
What if?
Well, they failed, since Cloud woke up anyway, but if he'd slept through the fighting then Jessie would still be injured and he'd be on for the mission.
So, we're at the reason for the whispers last two appearances. With Cloud off the reactor 5 mission, Jessie, Barret and Biggs are the go to team. That's not what's meant to happen.
What if?
Oh, I like this one. This one has a huge impact.
Jessie goes on the mission with Barret, leaving Tifa and Cloud behind. Biggs is waiting over by the reactor the same as before.
While on the train, the security measures activate the same as before. Since Cloud was the one who suggested jumping from the train, these two won't think of it. They'll fight the bots off until they arrive at the station where they're either captured by security forces or killed on the spot.
If by some chance one of them realises they need to get off right away and they jump the same as our triple A trio did, they'd likely die during the crab warden battle.
If by some miracle they get past all of that and complete the lighting the path section to get the cargo platform moving and make it into the reactor, they're still caught by Shinra and then executed because only Cloud knows how to dispose of the Air Buster's components.
So, to put it in simple terms: they die.
Neat huh?
The very end of Chapter 7 where Cloud is falling from the scaffold into sector 5's church (what religion is this church for anyway?). Whispers appear to slow his fall and keep him alive.
What if?
He dead lol
What else should I say? He fell 300m and he's not invincible.
In the sector 5 chuch after the Reno fight, Cloud is about to kill Reno and whispers appear to stop him and drag him and Aerith away.
What if?
Another fun one.
Reno dies, the security forces either die or retreat from Cloud. If Aerith isn't traumatised by witnessing a murder right in front of her, she and Cloud walk out of the church and he takes her home, instead of the detour over the rooftops and through the scrapyard (because they'd have taken less time walking along the main road and arrived well before Rude got there in the helicopter).
Rude would've gone to the church when Reno didn't answer, found him dead, come after Cloud for revenge, been killed or badly injured and Cloud would've fixed his reputation around that sector as a badass murderer who you don't mess with.
Elmyra would've sent him on his way because she doesn't want her baby hanging out with a killer and Cloud would've arrived back in sector 7 well before Tifa had the idea to go to Don Corneo. He either would've gone with her or they'd have stormed the mansion instead of the route that actually happened. They may have still been dropped into the sewers, but with a day in hand before the operation, would've arrived back in sector 7 before Shinra arrived and saved the pillar.
Whispers cover the church and block specific exits, leaving the route to the roof open. When Aerith falls (twice) they save her.
What if?
Cloud would take a different exit besides the roof, which would lead to a similar result as above where he avoids Rude at the station and has more time to get home instead of being forced to stay overnight because “it's getting late”. He'd help Avalanche save the plate and wouldn't have to let Tifa go to Don Corneo alone.
For Aerith, the whispers saving her mean she's uninjured and can cross the rooftops. The whispers also prevent Reno from taking her back to Shinra by force.
We don't see the whispers again until all the way over in chapter 12, where they appear to block Cloud, Tifa and Aerith from reaching the pillar.
What if?
Since Cloud is the only one to go up the pillar to start, we'd see him arrive in time to save Wedge and Biggs, then move up with them to save Jessie before reaching Barret.
If we include the previous what if with Reno being killed and Rude injured then the person piloting the helicopter won't know who Cloud is and won't be as vindictive in attacking him. This means the pipes won't fall from the platform and Tifa won't go up there.
Tifa and Aerith would go to 7th heaven to get Marlene and evacuate the sector, Tseng would still appear to threaten Aerith, but Tifa may well be strong enough to deal with him On the other hand, she might not and wind up dead.
If we discount the chapter 8 what if and Reno and Rude are fine, he and Rude have Cloud, Biggs and Wedge pinned down with no solution in sight until Tifa meets up with them (the pipes would still fall here). They'd move on to meet up with Jessie and Barret as a large group, where they'd still save the plate from falling and likely kill Reno and Rude with their larger number party.
Chapter 12, Whispers surround Rude as he tosses Tifa aside and pushes the plate separation button.
What if?
Cloud or Barret would've killed Rude and stopped the plate separating.
Chapter 12, Whispers surround Wedge, keeping him in place until a piece of the plate drops on him.
What if?
Wedge would escape with his cat out of sector 7 and our triple A team wouldn't find Deepground later on. (Kinda odd, seeing how they then drag Cloud away from discovering more about his past once they're there, but it looks like the whispers don't consider their own actions aside from ensuring the current OG canon event takes place. Wedge needed to die, so they dropped shit on him.)
Chapter 13, Whispers appear during Deepground when Cloud is about to remember the experiments carried out on him.
What if?
Cloud would remember his past much sooner, likely have a breakdown right then and there, which makes him incapable of rescuing Aerith. Tifa wouldn't have the benefit of the lifestream to deep dive into his subconscious and help him, so it would likely take a lot longer for him to repair his fractured psyche. Aerith would be experimented on by Hojo, forcibly impregnated and likely killed.
After their big interference in chapters 12 and 13, we don't see the whispers again until Chapter 16, where they appear to drag Hojo away before he can spill the beans to Cloud.
What if?
Cloud is told of his fake persona and recalls the true events of what happened to him. He likely has a mental breakdown, making him useless for the rest of the escape from the lab. The team gets caught and probably executed as an example of what happens to those who go against Shinra.
Aerith is recaptured and the experiments on her continue.
Chapter 17 and whispers surround Aerith, trying to prevent her revealing the truth about who their real enemy is and other events to come.
What if?
Aerith would reveal all about Sephiroth, his role in things and possibly other details that only she knows because she's got some weird meta!Aerith thing happening this time around. She'd be a far less mysterious character and the team would know exactly what they're facing instead of being left in the dark.
At the end of chapter 17, Sephiroth stabs Barret and kills him. Whispers immediately appear to bring him back to life.
What if?
Well, Barret's dead. That means there's no one to help Aerith and Red in the mech battle as they're escaping, meaning they'll either die or be recaptured.
If they escape still and get out of Midgar, not having Barret in the team means the events in Corel change and the possibility of them not getting out or losing the battle to Dyne becomes a possibility. If they're stuck in Corel prison forever, then they're stuck forever.
If they manage to escape, there's still a huge Barret shaped hole in the team formation and they're in trouble anytime they need a long range fighter, and while Barret does fly off the handle whenever he's ranting about something, he's also got a huge heart and offers a perspective that's different to the others. He holds Cloud and Tifa together when they lose focus and is pretty much the team dad. Without him around they're not as strong emotionally or morally.
Still chapter 17 and the whispers surround Cloud as he tries to go after what he thinks is Sephiroth, but is actually a cloaked figure carrying Jenova away.
What if?
I'm suspicious about the identity of #2 here. On the one hand, stopping him from taking Jenova away means she returns to her tank and the threat from her is gone, but on the other hand, what if the reason why they were stopping Cloud is because he knows #2?
In Crisis Core we learn that Cloud was kept in the #2 tank beside Zack, but he never got a number tattoed on his arm. Because of his S cells he won't degrade and turn into a remnant like the others, but (someone correct me if I'm wrong here) Zack has G cells and would degrade eventually. It's all well and good saying he died, but what if he didn't? Before the crisp packet I mean. What if his body was collected by Hojo, had further experiments done and given a tattoo, only because he doesn't give a fuck which one of them was in which tank, he tattoos the wrong number on Zack and so he turns into #2.
It seems far too simple the whispers appeared to stop Cloud from getting to Jenova when that's a remnant that with a number that has potential revelations that would fuck Cloud all the way up.
So, he stops the remnant, learns their identity and freaks tf out and becomes useless for the rest of the escape. They're likely captured by Rufus and executed. The world ends because no one can stop Sephiroth.
The whispers appear to stop Wedge and push him out of a window, restoring canon with his death.
What if?
Does anyone think it's strange they're so insistent that Wedge dies? Why? They've tried to kill him 3 times and he's only a minor character and his being alive wouldn't affect anything.
Unless it does.
Cait Sith theory anyone? If Wedge is somehow transferred into the moogle body that Cait Sith uses then him being dead would be very important because his consciousness would be needed to pilot the moogle. We've got a lot of cat references with Wedge and he's the kind of short, squat shape the moogle is, not to mention he's desperate to be relevant to everyone. So, maybe he doesn't talk when he's the moogle, but he's self aware enough that he wants to do his part for everyone. We only find out after he dies again that it's actually him. Cue tears from Barret.
Whispers cover the Shinra building, causing a delay in our heroes departure when they stop to look at it.
What if?
Well, there'd be no road battle and everyone would get out of town a lot sooner. Maybe the whispers did just wanna see a fight.
Honestly, this one stumps me. There's so many of them. It's like a miniature version of when they cover Midgar. So, what's happening inside the Shinra building that needs them to do this much to contain it? You gotta remember, we're not always getting all the info. There's other things happening besides with Cloud and the gang.
Hojo's inside, so is Rufus and the Turks. They're obviously trying to prevent a change or delay it enough that things continue regardless, but hiding the team from Rufus who has to send troops after them doesn't seem right. I'm betting something else happened here.
The whispers appear to hold up the collapsing roadway so our heroes escape.
What if?
Well, they dead, so this one's simple lol
The whispers in the past cover Midgar.
What if?
Now, if this is an all time consequential event. This one matters. Which makes me question what's happening in the Shinra building that matters.
The glittering result happens only in Zack's scenes and the lingering glitter is then seen in the present, which indicates some sort of ripple effect going out from that point in time. So, let's track it.
Let's assume that Zack reaching Midgar is what's being prevented here and now he's gonna make it alive. Zack's death is the first jolt that brings Cloud back to himself enough to get to the city, where he then finds Tifa. If this doesn't happen because Zack is caring for Cloud, then he'll end up in sector 5 instead and still very sick. His recovery will be a lot slower and it'll be Zack who goes about with Aerith. Cloud might not recover at all by the end of the game since it's Tifa calling to him that wakes him up.
Avalanche would likely fail the first bombing mission, since they needed Cloud's expertise to get in and out. They might die in the attempt.
There's no plate fall because Avalanche failed and Shinra needed them to blame for it.
Aerith has no reason to go with the Turks and there's no rescue afterwards.
Sephiroth would still retrieve Jenova, but there'd be no one to chase after him because Zack wouldn't be inside the Shinra building because Aerith wouldn't.
Sephiroth would still need a reunion puppet to get the black materia though, so there might be several attempts before he succeeds, but I believe he would eventually even without Cloud. Meteor would be summoned and the world would end.
And that's why Zack has to die.
Whispers linger around several grunt soldiers as Zack prepares to fight.
What if?
Just confirming what I said above about Zack being a necessary key part in the machine that needs to be taken out if things are gonna continue along the ideal timeline where the planet doesn't end in a fiery ball of death and destruction.
Conclusion.
I'm not gonna add the giant whisper battle because that's obvious, but there's definitely some inconsistences happening with what the planet deems important. There's huge events that actually make a difference when you track them and then there's some that make you go “wtaf?”
Most of the whispers interfering is to keep people alive or ensure continuity. They don't get in the way otherwise.
Except one time.
Chapter 4, where you even hear a voice ??? saying to sleep and dream sweet dreams. That doesn't seem right.
I mean, it sounds like Sephiroth and if I was gonna make a reach, the whole dream imagery has been very clearly linked to Aerith in Remake, so is he saying to remain within the dream so that reality can't happen? If Sephiroth wanted to succeed he'd prefer Cloud to avoid reality right? He told him to run away, to live, to leave, to avoid things. He wants Cloud to choose not to fight.
He's a bad guy (no redemption bullshit please), but his motives are much more complicated this time round. He's been very closely linked with Aerith a few times. He touches her. She's the only person beside Cloud he touches. Sure, it's a vision, but the devs still had it happen. And Sephiroth's voice is heard coming from Aerith's direction at the end of the game.
It's obvious this Sephiroth isn't the same as the OG one, but how much is he aware of? I don't believe the whole time travel theory. I do believe the meta!theory, because Sephiroth could get info from the lifestream the same way Aerith did at the start when she's staring at the mako coming out of the pipe. He could still be OG Sephiroth using what he learned during his little dip to manipulate events in his favour. There doesn't have to be a need for time travel to do this. Aerith's changing stuff without being a time traveller ffs. People need to stop going “well it's Nomura” and acting like anything ott is a go.
What I'm getting at is people need to stop looking at this from a mile long distance and screaming time travel because that's all games and films have done lately and look at it using the actual evidence we've got in the game. What we got is the whispers had clear motives for what they did, except one time when a voice was heard. Yall need to look at this shit the devs are dropping in front of your noses because this is where the plot is happening.
#final fantasy 7 remake spoilers#final fantasy 7 remake theory#Sephiroth motives#what if#meta theory#Final fantasy 7 remake analysis#whispers analysis
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