started making it. had a breakdown. bon appétit

BEST DATE RUNNER UP: GENESIS

On paper, the date is flawless. He knows every every correct move to make, after all— the restaurant will be impeccable, the wine will be correct, the compliments will be delivered at exactly the right moment with exactly the right tone. He’s done this enough times that it flows effortlessly which is, eventually, the problem. Somewhere around the second course you’ll notice that the compliments, while perfectly and poetically delivered, feel like they were written in advance. Like dozens of people have heard them before. That the wine recommendation came too quickly. That the eye contact is consistent in a way that’s obviously being maintained rather than just happening naturally. He’s performing a date rather than being on one, so the moment you clock it the whole thing sours. You’ll still have a wonderful evening though. But you’ll leave wondering if Genesis Rhapsodos showed up at all.

BEST DATE: SEPHIROTH

Entirely by accident though. And I mean completely on accident in the most endearing way possible. Sephiroth agreed to this because it was for charity and he was not going to be the reason a children’s hospital didn’t get funded, so here he is.

He prepared extensively, as one would for an exam, with handwritten notes, on topics of general interest, conversation entry points, ““appropriate compliments”” (bless him), what questions to ask and in what order— and!! he is visibly, endearingly terrified. He holds the door open with purpose, he asks how your day was and then listens so carefully it’s almost overwhelming, like you’re being genuinely studied by someone who finds you legitimately interesting. When he doesn’t know what to say, he says so, which should be awkward, but it’s not. Because it’s natural and honest and leads to some relatable laughter. At one point he even mentions that he prepared for this, and that he wanted it to go well because the charity matters. He says it so plainly that it lands like a brick in the best possible way, because you can tell he really cares about the cause and that’s undeniably adorable. You will go home slightly dazed and unsure what just happened and thinking about it for longer than you expected...... probably because you made a friend and now have Sephiroth’s email.

WORST DATE RUNNER UP: ANGEAL

He tried. He genuinely tried, but nerves got the best of him. He picked a good restaurant, dressed appropriately, had things to talk about. You guys were actually having a good time, because he’s so down-to-earth and easy to talk to, it barely felt fabricated.

He was doing well right up until the moment he got so inside his own head about how this is a romantic date, and whether he was doing it correctly, that he excused himself to use the bathroom. And then experienced a spiral of such magnitude in the corridor that he simply... kept walking. And walking. Then reached the door and the fresh air. And then his legs made a decision and he ran out. He sent a very thorough and genuinely remorseful apology the next morning with a gift basket though. ... Genesis will never let him hear the end of it.

WORST DATE: ZACK

He brought Cloud. No seriously, he brought Cloud. Cloud Strife was physically present at the next table, in a chair, with a menu, when you arrived. He introduced Cloud like this was normal. “This is Cloud, he’s here for moral support, he won’t say much, just pretend he’s not there.” Cloud said hi and then sat there for the entire evening in a way that was technically separate but basically not. Close enough that you could hear him ordering and occasionally see him glancing over like a relationship counsellor monitoring a developing situation. He even shook his head in disapproval at one point.

Zack himself is genuinely lovely. Very enthusiastic, warm, funny, completely present...but at one point Cloud leaned over and said “you’re doing great” to Zack, and Zack said “thanks man” and they had a brief sidebar and then Zack turned back and said “sorry where were we?”

Who is more likely to fight over it and the title and who is it actually given to?

*Mid-mission, there is a golden apple on a low branch, glowing faintly. Scratched into the skin: “TO THE ONE TRUE HERO”*

Genesis, grabbing it: Well, I think we all know who this is for!

*Angeal grabs it before Genesis can bite into it*

Angeal: No, don’t! What if it’s for Sephiroth?

Genesis: How wonderful. How truly faithful my best friend is to me. A magical apple appears on a tree, with an inscription about heroism, and your first instinct is that it belongs to someone else.

Angeal: If a mysterious glowing apple appears, and none of us know what it does or where it came from, yes, I’m going to assume it’s for the one of us with supernatural eyes, silver hair, and a sword that crawled out of a void dimension and selected him personally.

Sephiroth: ...

Genesis: But apples are my thing! Sephiroth doesn’t even like apples!

Sephiroth: Who said I don’t like apples??

Genesis: I have offered you a Banora White every single day for the entire duration of our friendship and you have declined every single one.

Sephiroth: The man who once stood behind me, slowly ran his hand through my hair, and said “how beautiful, such a shame if something were to happen to it” — that man has been offering me apples daily, and you think I should just eat them without question??

Angeal: Neither of you are touching it. No true hero argues over a piece of fruit like this!

Sephiroth: What if we rock paper scissors for it?

Angeal: Absolutely not.

Genesis: Oh, so now you want the apple!

Sephiroth: If it’s mine, I’d like to have it, yes.

Angeal, taking out his pocket knife: FINE. You idiots can split it. Whatever happens, happens to both of you at the same time and I only have to write one report.

*He cuts the apple, they each take a half, and bite into it*

*Poof*

*There are two toads where Sephiroth and Genesis once were*

*Moogles laugh in the distance*

*≈ εγλ 1999 - Zack has just done something that aged Angeal three years in four seconds. Angeal has responded by lifting him by the scruff of his collar to save him from “dying” in the training simulator. Sephiroth pulls him aside afterwards*

Sephiroth: Was that necessary? Manhandling your student like a misbehaving puppy is unprofessional.

Angeal: He was about to walk directly into an enemy line because he got distracted.

Sephiroth: There are more professional ways to redirect a student. You could have intervened verbally, or physically placed yourself between him and the threat.

Angeal: Sephiroth, you don’t know this kid. You don’t know what it does to a person’s nervous system to train him. You don’t know the specific kind of patience loss you reach when he’s done the same thing for the fourth time and you can see the fifth time coming. Get back to me about cordiality when I’m dead and you’ve taken my place as his mentor to honor me.

Sephiroth: I would never do such a thing. I have better things to do with my time.

*Fast-forward to ≈ εγλ 0001. Angeal is dead. Sephiroth thought, in a moment of sincere sentiment, that the right thing to do was to take up the mentor mantle and be a good friend posthumously. He is currently in the training hall with Zack Fair. He is in hell*

Sephiroth: BEND YOUR KNEES. I’ve said this—the enemy is COMING DIRECTLY AT YOU, WHY are you looking at—*He grabs Zack by the scruff* BEND YOUR KNEES—THAT’S YOUR ELBOW! HOW DO YOU CONFUSE YOUR KNEES WITH YOUR ELBOWS? YOU HAVE HAD OWNERSHIP OF THOSE LIMBS YOUR ENTIRE LIFE.

Zack: I GOT CONFUSED!

The pyramid of bodies is the exact visual language used in classical Renaissance art:

The triangle the eye unconsciously identifies is a structural shorthand used to represent a struggle toward a singular point. Géricault explicitly used it in The Raft of the Medusa to show a pyramid of dying people culminating in the one guy waving a flag for salvation:

Another good example is the Vigeland Monolith in Oslo:

A mass of bodies reaching upward is heavily present in Ascension art like the Assumption of the Virgin above. The physical rule of these pieces is usually: the lower figures are crowded together and dynamic to show struggle— while the top figure is alone, calm, still, and surrounded by negative space ((showing detachment)). This is the case with Sephiroth at the top there to mirror how divine figures are framed to contrast earthly chaos with divinity.

The mass of bodies reaching upward represents human desperation, the collective cry of people suffocating under mortality and the chaos of existence, desperately clawing their way to the highest peak of spiritual escape to try to liberate themselves from that suffering.

But .... Then you have the irony. You place Sephiroth at the top of that exact structure like a god looking down on a mountain of black robes, the world, humanity.

And the reality is he’s not detached from the desperation at all. He’s completely trapped by it, and if anything that's why he’s at the top. His “ascension” is fueled by the exact same desperate, obsessive need to escape his past, his trauma, and everything that binds him to the humanity he despises.

Just as everyone else is below him. What makes this even more brilliant (imo) is that it visually mimics the physics of the Reunion itself. Sephiroth thinks he’s pulling the strings from above, but that mountain of bodies is rushing toward him because every single cell of Jenova is magnetically snapping back into place. But even Jenova herself is trying to break free of her own isolation. Meaning the creature Sephiroth worships (I use this word lightly) is just as trapped by hunger and desperation as the humans she infects.

Chadley lovers everywhere:

*Genesis is in a plain SOLDIER uniform. Sephiroth is in Genesis’ red coat, gloves, and sweater. Angeal is in...something unidentifiable. His chest is covered*

Genesis: You both look ridiculous. Angeal, what are you wearing? That’s not Sephiroth’s uniform.

Angeal: It is Sephiroth’s uniform. See the pauldrons?

Genesis: That’s not his coat!

Angeal: It is! I just zipped it up and adjusted the belts to a normal tension at the waist.

Genesis: You mean he chooses to walk around like that?

Sephiroth: Like what?

Genesis: Like—oh never mind. Angeal, I look completely plain. How am I supposed to look like you if I have nothing to work with?

Angeal: Oh, right! Here, this’ll complete it.

*He lifts the Buster Sword off his back and places it on Genesis—

—who goes down immediately with an alarming thunk*

Angeal: OI—

Genesis, on the ground: DON’T OI ME, HOW IS THIS FUNCTIONAL?

*Lazard comes around the corner with his clipboard*

Lazard: Why are you wearing Genesis’ coat?

Sephiroth: We swapped uniforms.

Lazard, looking at Angeal: Who are you supposed to be?

Angeal: Sephiroth! This is his uniform! I just zipped the coat and used a reasonable number of belts.

Lazard: Really? So he chooses to look like that every day.

Sephiroth: Like what??

Zack, walking by: Oh sick, are you guys doing costumes? Cool Genesis costume, Sephiroth! And Genesis, you got to try the Buster Sword AND Angeal let you cuddle with it on the floor? I’m so jealous. Wait, Angeal, who are you supposed to be?

Angeal: Sephiroth! I’m wearing his exact uniform! I just put it on differently!

Zack: Huh...so Sephiroth chooses to look like that..

Sephiroth: LIKE WHAT?

Genesis, on the ground: LIKE YOU’RE SERVING

Sephiroth: SERVING WHAT??

Genesis: CUNT. CUNT. HELP ME UP.

Sephiroth: THERE’S NO NEED TO CALL ME THAT.

https://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/Travis-Willingham/

This is the video that’s circulating and this guy is GOOD. Now the question is whether he’ll try to emulate Tyler’s eerie softness for continuity purposes or give us a dark, deep-sounding Sephiroth 🤐

I didn’t! Metaphysics, spirituality, religion, anything and everything to do with consciousness, states of awareness, and “woo woo” stuff like tarot, alchemy and manifestation are all my main special interest lol. When triggered right, I become an unskippable cutscene because I love symbolism and the art of linking things to other things™

Ok ok let me explain because I promise I’m not (completely) nuts. I mean I am, BUT THIS IS MY NICHE BEAR WITH ME

So in spirituality, (a) revelation equates to a final unveiling, the moment where everything once hidden gets revealed and laid bare all at once, the ultimate truth. Hence the last book in the bible being Revelation, the end of everything.

And when you look at what they actually named these four games:

(Crisis Core) Reunion, Remake, Rebirth, Revelation.

This made me think of the four stages of the Magnum Opus in alchemy. I’m doing a piss poor explanation, but essentially there’s

1) Nigredo; the death and rot where everything falls apart so transformation can even begin.

2) Albedo after the destruction, where truth starts separating from debris, it’s the illumination, clarity, purification

3) Citrinitas is the awakening, the growth where you realize you’re the one creating the path now and have to work with what you have.

4) And Rubedo is the completion, the full synthesis of everything that came before it

BUT ANYWAY, if you take stages into account, that’s not four random titles, but kinda sounds like a map.

1) Reunion is about the scattered pieces before anything else can happen. Sephiroth, Zack, Cloud, even Angeal and Genesis and Aerith and Tifa, so on because Crisis Core is the pre-everything. It’s Zack inheriting the sword, Cloud being forced to carry S cells, absorbing Zack’s identity, losing his own memories. Reunion is also literal in the lore. The Reunion is Jenova’s cells calling her pieces home, fragments returning to the source. You cannot build anything new until all of that is gathered in one place. Even if you don’t take Crisis Core as canon, there’s still the Nibelheim incident, and the whole tragedy of what happened there is that it’s doomed and it has to happen first.

2) Remake is looking fate in the face and refusing to give into it. The Arbiters of Fate exist in this game because the story knows it was supposed to go a certain way, but that doesn’t happen because Cloud and the others are choosing, against the literal fabric of destiny, to rip up the predetermined script. You can’t change a fixed outcome from inside it, so you have to break the walls first.

3) Rebirth is what happens the second after you burn the predetermined script and step into the open world (LITERALLY) but there’s no guide anymore and fate is off the table. Everything is raw and new and Zack is alive in diverging timelines and nobody knows what that means yet. The rules are gone and you’re breathing in air that has never existed before. A rebirth isn’t supposed to be safe or clean, especially one that is alive when it was never supposed to be possible.

4) Revelation is (and I’m just speculating here bc all we know is the OG story) when the mask, the veil, the illusion all drops completely. You see the whole thing for what it actually was and that’s why this word that works for the finale of this story. Rubedo is the final and most sacred stage of the great work where everything that died in the Nigredo, was purified in the Albedo, and birthed in the Citrinitas merges into one single point and completes. It’s the full transmutation where nothing is hidden or false anymore and you get the total, undeniable truth of what the entire process was building toward.

Revelation in the Bible is the Apocalypse, which people hear as destruction and world ending BUT !!

apocalypse/əˈpäkəˌlips/The word apocalypse originates from the Ancient Greek term apokalypsis (ἀποκάλυψις), which literally translates to “an uncovering,” “disclosure,” or “revelation”. It combines the prefix apo- (“away from” or “off”) with the verb kalyptein (“to cover” or “conceal”).

The word literally means unveiling. It’s the moment where every prophecy, death and resurrection and promise made across the entire scripture converges into the finale. In the bible, what was always true becomes visible for the first time because everything that obscured it has finally been burned away.

And for FF7 specifically, every false thing gets named in Revelation: the lie Cloud built his identity around, what Sephiroth actually is, what Jenova was always doing, what the Planet has been up to, and all the timelines. That’s the great work proving it was real, Rubedo, the Revelation.

Zack being in the Remake trilogy always confused people. I mean the man died, his story was told, Crisis Core was his game and it ended, so why is he here?

But what if it’s because this map requires him. Reunion being released gathered his pieces back into the narrative of the remake trilogy: his sacrifice, his memory living inside Cloud, the question of what he was owed by the universe. Remake broke the fate that killed him, Rebirth let him breathe in a timeline where he survived, and I assume Revelation is where it all converges.

If anything, (and I’m biased because that’s my guy™) Zack’s presence in the trilogy +whatever else happens is the game showing its work (like the great work) and demonstrating that Reunion, Remake, and Rebirth actually did something, that fate was actually broken, that the pieces actually came back together into something new.

SO APPARENTLY (AND YES I’M SCREAMING)

• Zack will have even more scenes in Part 3 and plays an important role

• The idea of multiple timelines is conveyed through Zack's presence and his part of the story

• Midgar is back in Part 3 and you can explore it again, and you may even encounter some Deepground characters as well...

BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY

Revelation 17

17 And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters:

2 With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.

3 So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.

4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:

5 And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon The Great, The Mother Of Harlots And Abominations Of The Earth.

6 And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.

7 And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns.

8 The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.

9 And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.

10 And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.

11 And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.

12 And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.

13 These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.

14 These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.

15 And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.

16 And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.

17 For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.

18 And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.

okay so the woman drunk with the blood of the saints is jenova who is sustained by consuming the lifestream