#last order

Kids of Academy City

(poor adults...)

It's as simple as that

It would appear that I have ruffled some feathers.

Screenshotting the following exchanges because I have no other way to respond directly to certain accusations being thrown around:

Quite the laundry list of accusations. Let's see here…

"constantly mischaracterizes him" "completely overlooks and dismisses his major trauma and complex character" "paints him as one-dimensional" "uses him as a punching bag"

Oh, you mean like the FFVII fandom here on Tumblr does with Cloud all the time? Gee willikers. Imagine someone constantly doing that to someone else's favorite character. Wouldn't that just be so annoying?

That's just a sample, by the way. I've collected plenty more receipts demonstrating just how loving and mature the FFVII fandom is towards the story's protagonist, especially here on Tumblr.

Sephiroth was never a complex or morally grey character to begin with. He was never meant to be. Not if we go by the 1997 source material as opposed to Square Enix's innumerable, clunky attempts at turning him into a an actual Mary Sue (First Soldier is a prime example of them rewriting and distorting their own story to accommodate the character's ongoing and inexplicable popularity).

Moreover, Sephiroth and his fellow SOLDIERs were never heroes to begin with. That's all war propaganda by Shinra. You'd have to be completely illiterate not to be able to figure that out. He was a war criminal who helped Shinra invade and take over another country so they could exploit its natural resources.

This happened when he was an adult, by the way, so you can't tell me that he was simply young and didn't know any better. If he hated serving Shinra's purpose, he never showed any signs of it. What did he do about it, exactly? Desert from the army? Protest? Stage a rebellion against his masters? No, because he never cared about anything or anyone but himself and his own glory. Anything else is purely a retcon, and Square Enix have tried to retcon their own story numerous times, usually extremely badly (Before Crisis, Last Order, Crisis Core...)

So that's all easily-debunked nonsense. Now for the more serious accusations...

Anon accuses me of being "homophobic" despite my support for ships like Zakkura, Aerti, and Cloud x Vincent, as well as misogyny, despite not providing a single shred of evidence to support that claim (I routinely chide shippers for hating on Aerith or Tifa with misogynistic BS over dumb shipping nonsense). They are quite welcome to dig around my blog in search for any evidence to back up their claims. I'll wait.

Furthermore, Anon, whether it's one person or multiple people, keep pestering @lovely-cherubs about all of this, in what I can only assume is an underhanded attempt at trying to drive a wedge between us instead of simply confronting me directly with their issues.

I suspect that this is, if anything, a heavy-handed attempt at trying to frame my... let's call it a strong dislike of Sephiroth (fans) and Sefikura as... homophobia?

I put it to you thusly:

I may be a hater, but I am a principled hater, thank you very much. In case it needs to be stated out loud, I am extremely left-leaning in my politics (why would I even be on Tumblr in the first place if I weren't?) and wholeheartedly support LGBTQ+ causes. That does not mean I have to support grotesque ships like Sefikura. FFVII already has great queer ships like Aerti and Zakkura. We don't need this rapey trash as "representation". To claim that Sefikura is good or important queer representation is like claiming that Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs is great trans representation.

As for the charge of "harassing" fans, I occasionally leave comments on works and posts that go out of their way to mock and belittle Cloud in order to point out their immaturity. To say that I'm explicitly harassing Sephiroth fans, however, is simply another lie, a gross distortion of the truth.

Let's continue...

For context, this is the meme they are referring to, one that I created in order to highlight the sheer hypocrisy of these fans regarding how they talk about and treat other characters versus how they treat their precious Sephy:

You will notice that at no point did I mention anything about anyone's sexuality (or gender, for that matter).

I'm sorry, but no, this is a lazy attempt at dismissing legitimate criticism through guilt by association. Same with the 4chan/incel stuff. What Anon forgot to mention is the context that I use these terms ironically to highlight how Sephiroth fans talk about Cloud and others. This is not my way of speaking or thinking. It's yours. You may not use these exact words, but they reflect how you perceive and treat these characters. I'm simply drawing that behavior into the light with the intent of exposing it for what it really is.

The other reason why Anon is desperately trying to smear me this way has to do with Sephiroth fans and their inability to meaningfully defend him. They simply don't know how. They've never had any reason to learn how to do it, given his baffling status within this fandom as a sacred cow. So they lie, go behind your back (see anon asks above), distort your arguments, and then pretend that you're the real problem.

The best they can usually mount in defense of Sephiroth is "You don't understand, he had a rough life!"

1) Much of that is a retcon as recent as Ever Crisis and First Soldier.

and

2) Do you know who else had a rough life? Literally EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING STORY.

Tifa had her father murdered, her home destroyed, and her entire life upended by by Sephiroth during his egotistical temper tantrum. (I do wonder how many children burned to death during his Nibelheim massacre). Yuffie grew up with war and occupation her whole life (and Sephiroth played a major role in her nation's subjugation and humiliation). Aerith had her father murdered by Hojo when she was a newborn baby. She then spent most of her childhood locked away in a lab where she and her mother were experimented on. Then her mother died while they were fleeing for their lives. She spent the rest of her life living in an open-air prison in Midgar thanks to the Turks, and then she got to enjoy maybe a couple of weeks of freedom traveling the world with her newfound friends before she was murdered by Sephiroth (after he tried to force Cloud to kill her with his own hands, no less). And Cloud himself? Where do we even start?

And yet, not one of them morphed into an egotistical mass-murdering psychopath. Funny how that works.

It's just more of the same selective sympathy that Sephy fans are wont to display. When other characters are being harmed, they cheer him on, getting off on his villainous antics. When someone trashes him for his actions, they immediately cry foul. Like we can't all see what utter hypocrites you are.

Here's a prime example: When the launch trailer for Revelation dropped, showing Sephy cradling an unconscious (or dead) Cloud Strife, how did you all react? Did a single one of you say "Cloud deserves better treatment from the writers than this"?

No.

Not a single one of you.

Don't pretend like you weren't all celebrating the protagonist's humiliation here at the hands of his worst enemy, his mother's callous murderer. You were all delighted to see it. Praising Square for its inclusion. Calling it a "renaissance painting". (Sure, let's insult the works of Botticelli and Caravaggio while we're at it by comparing them to this pandering dreck).

In short, being insufferable twits about the whole thing as always, because you're all more predictable than a metronome (not to mention phenomenally obnoxious).

Again, you wonder why I'm a hater? This is why.

"Sephiroth hater" is a strange phrase in and of itself. You don't hear people say things like "Blofeld hater", or "Iago hater", do you?

I hope this isn't too sophisticated a concept for you to grasp, but villains get hated on because they commit vile and hateful acts. Perhaps that clears things up for you.

You'd think that hating on the villain would be the default stance, and that hating on the protagonist to the absurd degree that Cloud receives hate, especially here on Tumblr, would be considered abnormal, an absolute outlier as far as fandom behavior is concerned.

Y'see, you love Sephy acting like a villain and strutting his stuff, but when someone actually attacks him for his behavior, then suddenly he's just a smol little uwu bean who never harmed anybody (and if he did, it wasn't really his fault, and also they probably deserved it anyway). It's Schrödinger's villainy.

I swear, talking to this fandom is like munching on a bottle full of crazy pills.

The funny thing is, I might actually sympathize with him if you weren't all such hypocrites. If you could be mature for two seconds. If you didn't treat Cloud like dirt.

Hell, I might even like him if his fans weren't such insufferable dickheads.

A small sample of the (ahem) high regard in which Sephiroth fans hold Cloud. (He is ~15 in that last picture, by the way.)

I enjoy an entertaining villain as much as the next person. But his utterly obnoxious fan base has made me detest Sephiroth forever. So nice going there. And if you have more sympathy for him than the people he victimized, I have no reason to take anything you say seriously.

The bottom line is, if you don't like my posts about Sephiroth/Sefikura, you know where the block button is. But this going-behind-someone's-back-to-badmouth-them approach is both underhanded and dishonest, not to mention heaping on lies, distortions, and half-truths in order to smear me, as well as going out of your way to pester and harass a completely unrelated blogger because you're in your feelings about something I said. If you have an issue with my stance, come talk to me directly. Don't rope other people into it because you're afraid of an actual debate.

The unending narcissism of Sephiroth fans

Being an asshole isn't unique to Sephiroth fans. Zack fans can be annoying assholes, Aerith fans can be annoying assholes, Tifa fans can be annoying assholes, and even Cloud fans (gasp!) can most certainly be annoying assholes… Trust me, during my time in this fandom, I've witnessed every combination and permutation of assholery there is. And I can still safely say that Sephiroth fans are the single worst segment of this fandom... and believe me, that's a high bar to clear. Which makes it all the more bizarre when Square Enix decides to pander to that crowd, knowing just how uniquely toxic and narcissistic it is.

Why do they behave this way? Because they think they can get away with it without criticism. Because they believe that everyone thinks the way they do. That everyone loves Sephiroth and thinks he's perfect and flawless, an invincible angel of death, a 4D multidimensional chess-playing mastermind, the greatest thing since sliced bread (and, similarly, that everyone believes Cloud is just some worthless loser and a dork who just happened to get lucky defeating him several times in a row).

What can I say? Simping is a hell of a drug, especially if you are only now discovering the hard way that not everyone thinks the way you do. And that you are going to have a hell of a time trying to justify any of those beliefs to begin with. Want to be a simp for Sephy while casually trashing everyone else's favorites? How's that working out for you?

The worst kind of hate isn't explicit. It's implicit. Unspoken. Ambient. Everyone knows, so there's no need to even say it. "Cloud Strife? He's… lesser. Sephy is the real deal, don't you know? In fact, he's the real main character of FFVII, not that chocobo-headed dork wielding Zack's stolen valor while barely keeping up with everyone else around him. He's just some country bumpkin dweeb who's never done a single cool thing in his life. He's such a tryhard, too. Everyone knows."

You might not all say it, but you're damn sure thinking it. And your way of thinking has, unfortunately, infected much of the rest of the fandom, to the point where, whenever Square reveal any new development for him, the knee-jerk reaction is, more often than not, "wow that suxx/that's dorky/look at this loser lmao!" rather than "damn, that's awesome!"

But when a single blogger shows up and starts treating Sephy with the same level of casual disdain that you've always shown the story's main character, all of a sudden a war crime has been committed.

As if the entire narrative of FFVII doesn't turn these notions on their head, showing Sephy up for the phony that he is while deconstructing Cloud's initial facade and then reconstructing him as a true hero, and a genuine badass.

Which one is more impressive? The angel of death, or the man who hacked him to pieces?

It all boils down to one word: Hypocrisy.

"Too much venom", and it's just me throwing your own attitude back in your faces and revealing it for what it is. Don't dish it out if you can't take it.

Can this fandom change for the better and become more mature about all of this? I highly doubt it, but that's up to you. Until that day comes, then with all due respect, all I have left to say to you is...

But maybe I'm wrong.

As vitriolic as I can be when it comes to taking people in this fandom to task for their hypocritical behavior, I have no doubt made missteps along the way. Perhaps I'm overly acerbic. Unfair, even. Maybe I've hit a few undeserving fans with stray shots while attempting to illustrate a point. You are well within your rights to think all that.

So, my challenge to you is this: Shut me up.

I mean it.

Prove me wrong. Not with underhanded tactics like going behind my back to harass other bloggers or slandering me with untruths that you are incapable of backing up with any real evidence. And not with mere diegetic arguments. No, we're past all that. We need something more elementary in nature.

Take the high road for a change. Prove me wrong by being more sophisticated. If you want to shut me up, show me that you can be principled and mature for a change.