#arkeetalks

ice and water are (usually) made of the same stuff, but exist within different environmental conditions; water has more of a sense of freedom to it, as it's in oceans, rivers, lakes, evaporating away into clouds (hmm), raining down... as a free flowing fluid, it goes anywhere, gets associated with everyone and is guaranteed to drench you all over without reservations, if you allow it to do so.

ice, meanwhile, is very solid and closed off, harsh.

hostile to touch. (it can burn you and it can severely harm your limbs to the point of amputation, and even kill you.)

it only exists outside of winter in areas that are constantly very cold or in freezers/spaces with monitored temperature.

but!

if you put an ice cube in a glass of water at natural temperature, over time it'll melt and become one and the same with it.

you know, just like how a persistent angeal is able to get through to sephiroth in the end of their robio mission and befriend him to the point that sephiroth is comfortable with teasing him and laughing with him.

then, if we were to expand this into ags, casting an association of fire over genesis — he firagas people freely, summons ifrit and is furiously red...

fire also melts ice, though it's more direct and vicious about it than having to wait for an ice cube in a glass of water to melt down into it.

you can often put off fire with water (y'know like how angeal often interferes when genesis gets too heated up), but fire can also boil water away, and certain kinds of fire can use water to obtain oxygen and burn more intensely (like how you can give genesis some of angeal's blood to keep him from extinguishing, but shouldn't give him sephiroth's cells at all to keep him from exploding into a monster, and also how being in his inhuman condition and being unable to save genesis wears angeal down to the point that he seeks his own end).

fire does those things, which can be quite destructive, but it can also be warm, tender and quite romantic.

you know, just like how genesis in crisis core is often described as a "good boy" or a cherished friend before he started burning himself down and trying to take the world with him?

like

if i post a cool picture of pikachu that i drew myself and some idiot comes in with their qrt to say how ugly pikachu is and how i should just do a cool flip off a bridge because it's "unnatural" to like cartoony characters as an adult, i can just go to their qrt and i'll see not just them, but also all their mean friends all at once, who i can then easily report for harassment or mute/block forever

now, if i post a cool picture of pikachu here and someone reblogs to add kind commentary about how much they love pikachu? someone can easily reblog their reblog to start a harassment campaign on me and i won't even know anything about that unless i go dig in the notes of every single kind person adding commentary to the post's body to start a conversation or show appreciation

if 10 people start a kind conversation chain before the harassment begins, that means i would have to dig through 10 different reblog chains and their subsequent notes to be able to report some clown with an url like dick chandelier for harassment

A PORN BOT COULD REBLOG ANY OF THE COMMENTERS TO ADD THEIR JUNK TO THE POST AND I WOULDN'T EVEN KNOW! SUDDENLY A PORN BOT IS LINKED TO MY ART INDIRECTLY!!!

PUKICHO COULD APPEAR ON MY POST TO DO THE THING PUKICHO DOES TO POSTS AND I!!! WOULDN'T!!! EVEN!!! KNOW!!!

quote retweets work because more often than not (the not being private accounts quoting you), clicking on one leads you to an intact chain of post + replies (and qrts of the qrt, listed in their own space); you don't need to search through 10 posts' notes to access all the people adding commentary on top of the qrt, you just need to go to one

also because often they're used as a tool of warfare: rather than hiding yourself in a person's replies, you're blasting them to your followers who may or may not dunk on them too and everyone ends up pretty much pissed off at each other for it (without respect to you or to pikachu!)

modern short format soc media stimulates ragebaiting and feeds on it to thrive

it doesn't stimulate healthy, drawn out conversations or even creative pursuits such as art or writing

the ability to reblog a reply or a fix to the search engine would be much better than "let's try to slowly morph into twitter"

like

c'mon, bluesky is already kinda that, i don't need 3 twitter-like sites while all else is tiktok like and instagram is...

- your best friend goes on the mission of your dreams with your idol

- said best friend befriends your idol before you (!!!)

- they don't tell you about the life threatening situation they've experienced together (!?)

- they tease each other playfully in front of you (😳!)

- you get wounded and really sick, but your idol can't save you even when you ask (though not politely)

- your best friend just can't save you either and he dies (!!!)

- the dream of sharing your town's fruit with your idol comes true somehow, but at what cost, man? at what fucking cost? (it cost literally everything)

- some assholes come and ask you to share your cells with them, the same thing you asked from your idol before without success; what the fuck? no

- everyone forgets your name and legacy, so you're just g now

- proceed to not appear in any new story at all, everyone tries to avoid mentioning your name as much as humanly possible

- can't even be just g anymore because that part of dirge is cut off

- said best friend has probably more screen time than you, now

- "no, it's not an issue with the voice actor, we were just expecting the right time to release this remaster"

sephiroth and angeal as a thing™ echoes quite some what lucrecia and vincent had before... well, everything that went down

like (bear with me, this is morning brain speech)

vincent also wanted to help/protect lucrecia to the point of being nosy about it even after she chose hojo

but also he put her value as a person over his, with thinking stuff like "well, as long as she's happy, it's okay, right?" (but of course, in the end it led to him being shot and filled with monsters, causing him to — at least for og — isolate himself from society at large and go into a long sleep)

and i dunno, that from vincent feels to me too similar to young angeal wanting to help sephiroth out of his misery (and possession??) even though seph keeps rejecting him in favor of isolation or other pursuits (like masamune or alissa), while putting a lot of his value as a person in his capacity to take care of others — he doesn't mind getting punched in retribution if he can get sephiroth to pull himself together, for one

and that... carries on into his adulthood, with his need to protect others being so strong that he definitely collapsed into himself when realizing that he could pose a threat to other people's well being, that degradation could turn him into a monster like that

aaand, you have sephiroth, who inherited all the low self steem and insecurity issues from his mother

and... i dunno, man, i find it utterly fascinating how both sephiroth and lucrecia essentially fall into despair rather quickly after losing angeal and vincent (though vincent didn't permanently die, but still)

sephiroth pretty much disappears from the narrative for the whole modeoheim chapter and only reappears in junon, 2 years after modeoheim; shortly after, nibelheim happens, sephiroth gets killed and ends up in a nice crystal

lucrecia tries to bring vincent back by any means necessary while being denied access to her son; she doesn't succeed, leaves everything behind and... ends up in a nice crystal

like, sephiroth's body could've ended up anywhere else (though you can argue it's convenient for him to end up in the place jenova originally fell in) but it ended up not that far away from where angeal last was and the place he was likely buried at (shinra doesn't bring bodies back, see: sebastian and essai)

so it's like... if you want to kindly follow my delusional line of thought here, after death sephiroth almost went home — as in, not his hometown or the place he grew at, but where the heart is — almost made it there... only to be once again taken over by jenovan ideas of revenge against humanity, being the chosen one and planetary destruction

then, of course, cloud and co. go there and the whole place seph's eternally resting at kinda falls apart, weapons awake, etc

but the place cloud pops up next when carried by lifestream currents from there? stupidly close to where banora used to be

and sure, gaia is a relatively small planet, but man

there seems to be a theme with sephiroth — and sephiroth-associated people carrying his cells, namely cloud — almost achieving happiness and closure, almost getting to keep what was once good, almost returning to a metaphorical home after death, only to just... never really make it there

less so about genesis not being playable and more so that something about getting adult seph — especially adult seph from advent children of all places, which in my opinion is adult seph at his lowest point — feels... i dunno, oddly wrong?

it's almost as if they're trying to appeal to the good ol' nostalgia/edgy coolness factor, even if it's something "a long time in the works", especially with saying that "the release was decided by player survey"

i'm always happy to see sephiroth — he's still my favorite ff7 character for how complex he actually is — but i don't know what i should be feeling when it's an announcement that will please all the annoying dude bros who keep rejecting young sephiroth on the basis of him not being on that level of power already

i don't know, like... it kinda feels like watching your favorite character being stabbed to death by your other favorite character— oh

fandom recently has been a lot; i've unfollowed friends in other socials whose content changed into mostly blogging about discourse, i've seen people leave, i've heard of old bullies trash talking me and i've only gotten the surface level aftermath of recent events because i was keeping myself sorta away to renew the writing muse/write

(and i've cried, a lot, missing what things used to be like back in 2015-2017... easier times, for sure)

i'm making a post on this instead of doing my usual thing and vanishing randomly because i want to remind everyone that if i share something from other people here, unless i'm outright stating i vouch for that person as, y'know, a person, i'm not necessarily endorsing that person on whatever personal conflicts they may have, i just share content that appeals to me; if people have trouble with each other, they gotta communicate and sort it between themselves

my fandom view has always been, after all, to assume the best scenario unless proven wrong; i don't place hard blocks on any of the events i run unless people are very visibly bullies or had beef with me that was too stressful, i'm socially anxious but always willing to talk to people over shared interests and the like, and i mostly stick to rare pair content nowadays for my peace of mind: a segment of my main/first ship's fandom has partially burned me out on it on a different site with their behavior and ooc views on my favorite character (i still love said ship, but would rather see it the way me and a few folks i consider friends handle it)

so if i naively shared content from someone in particular after going on a ship tag dive to calm myself down, don't blindly assume i necessarily endorse anything and everything from them on a personal level

and don't assume i'm up to date with whoever is beefing with who and for what reason, because i never keep up with that kinda stuff, and i don't come to fandom spaces for this kinda stuff, i come only to see good art, good writing, headcanons and to share my stuff sometimes

if you ever have issue in general with the content i'm sharing based on the original poster (or hell, with me in general) being involved in something, by any means, do reach out and inform me of things

i will NOT mediate conflicts for anyone, because i've done that before and it ended up with me gaining a stalker on an occasion and trying to vouch for someone else i had to later block on a different one, but if i'm told of what happened, i'll at least listen (and try to assess all sides before deciding for myself whether or not to continue sharing content from someone)

people are really complex... i got blocked by someone elsewhere who had previously told me they were glad to have met me, without warning or explanation and it really got me thinking even more about things...

sometimes even if you think you've done no wrong, someone can just decide to 100% dump you, so maybe some things simply ain't meant to be

sometimes fandom can feel pretty isolating, especially if you're into the more niche things

sometimes there are mean spirited individuals and even good people can do harm to others on occasion... and miscommunication is frustrating, having your words twisted either way

so i guess i'll just keep moving :))

if people like my stuff, great, if people want to drop me without even giving me a chance to elaborate, well sucks but what can i do? if people have beef with each other in any way... that's on them