#mic testing

“I would’ve thought about dying every now and then, and also, there could’ve been many a day when I fell asleep while re-reading the ‘Ways of Survival’, but…Yeah, I wouldn’t have died. Not that easily. I’d have continued to live on, somehow.” — Chapter 371: Ep. 70: A Story That Can’t Be Shared (III)

while talking to yoo sangah in the fourth wall, kim dokja comes to a brief realization: he would have continued on without twsa. imagining a future without the novel, he reconnects with a reality he has not confronted since he was a child. he imagines growing old, studying languages, and bike riding with yoo sangah. kim dokja is unreliable on the most basic of narrative terms, however for a moment he genuinely believed that he could have lived on without the novel.

it can be argued that he only comes to this realization due to the companionship he experienced within the apocalypse. it can also be argued that he was doomed to become the oldest dreamer the moment he clicked on the novel. however, focusing on these aspects of the past and future ignores the thematic undertones of doomed attachments. this brief glimpse into kim dokja’s thoughts on his life pre-scenarios uncovers the underlying question: was it love or terror that doomed him?

the obvious answer is yes, of course, it was both love and terror that doomed him. by the bedside of a comatose avatar, shin yoosung and lee gilyoung flip a coin on whether kim dokja lives or dies: 49 alive, 50 dead. a coin is tossed and fifteen years in the past, han sooyoung of an alternative universe publishes another chapter. the coin floats in the air. another dead end and yoo joonghyuk regresses once more. the coin never falls. yes, it was love, but it was also terror.

han sooyoung knows that continuing the story dooms kim dokja. she’s uniquely aware that saving kim dokja is a thankless duty— the universe in exchange for a life past expiration. a story recalled and retold: kim dokja chooses shin yoosung over seoul, han sooyoung choses kim dokja over the universe. kim dokja wins and han sooyoung always, always loses.

han sooyoung never questions if kim dokja could survive without the novel. part of it was selfishness: she’s finally experiencing the love of a dedicated reader she’s been envious of her entire life. she’s devouring herself to keep his attention, his comments. she kills, resurrects, and regrets yoo joonghyuk’s existence. she is also an adult and a child, and she is terrified of having kim dokja’s blood on her hands.

it’s easier to become a cog in kim dokja’s self-fulfilling tragedy than it is to leave him be. she cannot test the possibility of kim dokja surviving without the novel if there’s a chance he can’t. her desperation overrides her rationale. her love wanes in comparison to her fear. if there was a chance of kim dokja surviving without the novel, it could never be fulfilled. kim dokja is never given the chance.

until this point, there is no suggestion that cloud had a reason to mourn zack. zack is never referred to as a friend of cloud’s or never even gave the hint that zack was anything more than his superior. cloud’s mental instability and fractured identity faults the destruction of his hometown, his shame, and the jenova cells manipulating him. while that is true, it misses an important aspect of cloud’s psyche, which is: why forget zack entirely? when did the fragmentation start?

there are simple assumptions you could make. question: why forget zack entirely? answer: to erase the potential of discontinuity within his new reality. question: when did it start? answer: after he left the labs. question: but when exactly? answer: does it really matter?

you go to the labs for answers. there is no motivation to go to the mansion besides curiosity. cloud remembers not the experiments but zack breaking them out. he remembers the ride to midgar, zack’s caring of a mako comatose cloud, and zack saying: “i won’t leave you hanging like that. we’re friends, right?” zack says they’re going to become mercenaries together. when shinra comes, zack protects cloud. when zack dies, swift and brutal, cloud mourns. afterwards, you can discover scratched coded messages between them in their old containers. 

unlike most games when it comes to optionable cutscenes, there is no reward for finding this secret. narratively, it establishes something new: zack was, in some capacity, cloud’s friend, possibly his only after hojo. narratively, this is important but gameplay-wise is completely useless. cloud gains nothing from reliving this memory. in the player’s decision to return to the mansion, cloud performs the act of remembering zack’s kindness and friendship even though this action has no purpose other than grief. 

zack was unexpectedly popular after the release of ffvii in 1997. i believe it is because the player, consciously or not, rebonds with zack after the rediscovery of not his death but his friendship with cloud. zack, before the flashback (and far before the creation of crisis core/before crisis), was only perceived as someone who cloud envied and imprinted on when his psyche destabilized. zack was not seen as someone who particularly cared for cloud. friendly, yes. a friend? not exactly.