* HOLY.

—————— 𝘰𝘩 , 𝘮𝘺 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 , 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘮𝘦

88LETTERS. ind. priv. sel. roleplaying blog for AERITH GAINSBOROUGH of square enix's FINAL FANTASY VII FRANCHISE. primarily following the OG timeline , with slight influences from REMAKE + REBIRTH. as remembered by SILAS ( any pronouns , 24 , est ) OTHER BLOGS: @dontcherish ( cloud ) , @onedate ( zack ) , @erthshaker ( terra ) , @keywields ( sora )

carrd.

A STUDY IN: girlhood and its absence , a lamb to the slaughter , do not stand at my grave and cry , love as savior and ruin , grief as an old friend , i am the thousand winds that blow , the value of a single life , how life carries on even in death , when kindness becomes cruelty and cruelty becomes mercy , becoming a martyr , & more. PARTY MEMBERS: zack. cloud.

okay i think i'm awake enough to compile my thoughts on what rebirth has done with the story for ff7 and compile it with my own headcanons that i've held for aerith for years now.

the multiverse. i'm gonna come outright and say it, i don't love that that's where square is taking the story. as interesting as the multiverse idea can be for media, it was executed poorly. yes, branching timelines is a really basic and integrated trope by this point, but they have to do something in the narrative, or they have to have major emotional impact. and rebirth, sadly, does not hit that for me. i don't really understand what it is they're trying to do, but even with branching timelines that exist based on certain choices (butterfly effect style), ff7's story both in the og and the remake trilogy really seems to be an all roads lead to rome kind of situation, that being aerith's death at the hands of sephiroth in the forgotten capital. for all intents and purposes on this blog, unless plotted or decided otherwise, aerith is dead and the timeline proceeds as normal.

aerith's death. aerith went to the forgotten capital knowing she was going to die and that her death was necessary. i've held this headcanon for years that aerith has known about her death for a long time preceeding remake, given that she herself states that she wants to live in the moment, because she doesn't have much time, but she wants to at least take her destiny into her own hands. if she has to die, it will be on her terms, when she decides she's ready. her death is inevitable, at least the way the remake timeline was proceeding, despite sephiroth being an arbiter of fate.

the date with cloud. this is actually quite interesting to me, as both cloud and aerith merge with their counterparts within this timeline. cloud is wheelchair bound due to the mako poisoning he suffered from hojo's experiments, and aerith is comatose. but since the cloud from the main timeline merges with the cloud from the alternate timeline, that is how he is able to see the rift in the sky at the end of rebirth, while the others cannot. it is also how i believe he's able to still see aerith, as she is, as stated above, dead in his timeline. until the third game proves me wrong, i'm choosing to factor in cloud's status as an extremely unreliable narrator. however it was that aerith returned to the main timeline, i'm not sure, but i imagine it has something to do with sephiroth, as he enters the church as aerith sends cloud back to the main timeline with the white materia.

the white materia. in the main timeline, as of rebirth, aerith's materia is completely empty, devoid of the magic that would summon holy. the aerith in zack's timeline still has a white materia that can be used, which cloud is given in the church on his date with aerith. as for what happened in the og timeline to completely erase the white materia's power, i suspect that has to do with the duel against sephiroth at the end of remake slightly altering the course of destiny, though completely diverting it from its intended path. the aerith in zack's timeline is somewhat closer to aerith from the og, and she is able to give cloud her version of the white materia, allowing the aerith from the main timeline to summon holy.

the rift in the sky. somewhat controversial take, but the rift cloud sees in the sky is, as established, a symbol of the fact that the timeline has branched. he created a divergence by parrying sephiroth's sword, and in this alternate reality where aerith survives, by virtue of having created it, cloud can see that it is doomed to disappear. the main timeline is not the one that is crumbling, by virtue of converging with another version of himself previously and having been the one to form the rift, cloud is experiencing two timelines at once, the one where aerith died and the one where she didn't. for the rest of the party who were not present for the events of aerith's death, they are only aware of their main timeline. the exception to this is tifa, as i believe and many others believe that she has also witnessed this other timeline to some extent, though she can't see or interact with the aerith that was saved.

aerith at the end. at the end of rebirth, after the final boss battle with sephiroth, aerith disappears into the lifestream, signaling her death as a concrete event. for the purposes of the main timeline, aerith was killed by sephiroth, just as she was in the original game. and since she had previously prayed for holy, it would come, as in the og, bugenhagen says that in order for it to work, the materia must be glowing and a soul seeking holy must reach the lifestream. however, only cloud being able to see her after her death may also have been a callback to advent children, where cloud is able to perceive the spirits of zack and aerith at the church.