#prognostications

With Rebirth's release mere hours away, and the increasing risk of spoilers seeping into even the most well-curated social media feed as a result, it's time to batten down the hatches. Going radio silence until March. I may visit mutuals or reply to the occasional message, but no more idle scrolling for me until well after the 29th. With that in mind, I'll leave you with some final thoughts and predictions…

On shipping vs. respecting the narrative

The shipping wars have been done to death. We all know this. Nearly three decades of pointless bickering about whether CloTi or Clerith is canon, as if that's the only thing that matters about FFVII's story.

Judging by its promotional materials, Rebirth seems to be leaning very heavily towards Clerith. However, this may yet turn out to be a red herring. We just don't know, and won't know until Square finally unveil their true intentions regarding the remake trilogy as a whole. As much as they've revealed of the game thus far, they've been equally careful to conceal their ultimate goals in creating it. In other words, right now they are playing us harder than Kojima did back when Metal Gear Solid 2 was still in development.

My own bias is towards Clerith, obviously, but… to be perfectly honest, at this point I don't give a damn whether they canonize it or not, or even if they end up going completely in the other direction. So long as these characters find some kind of happiness and closure at the end of the road, (and so long as it all makes sense for the story) I'll be satisfied. People get so caught up in all this shipping nonsense that they often forget that, at the end of the day, this element is intended to be in service of the STORY, not the other way around. I'm no exception to this.

That all being said, I'm not particularly worried about Clerith being sunk at this point. I mean, have you seen the trailers? That, plus two separate theme songs about Cloud and Aerith expressing their longing to be together? It's not hard to see where all this is going. (Also, canon or not, I'm not going to stop liking Clerith just because it gets sunk by the narrative. The fuck were you expecting?)

Obviously, I want to see as many Clerith moments as possible in Rebirth, but I don't want Square to leave CloTi fans out in the cold. I'm not that petty. That interpretation of the story clearly means a lot to a great many fans, and I believe they deserve to get their fair share, too.

To be honest, I've always thought that the remake trilogy was an opportunity to undo some of the damage that the ambiguity regarding Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith's relationships has wrought. And the simplest way to do that would be to let individual fans control how that part of the story plays out, similar to something like Mass Effect. It might not be a perfect solution (and some fans might quibble that doing so would be a cop-out from Square's "true" intentions), but at least that way, everybody gets something.

But even that, I suspect, ultimately won't fix the fandom. Which leads me to my next point…

Rebirth won't settle the love triangle debate (and neither will the trilogy's concluding act).

This is admittedly a somewhat pessimistic prediction on my part. I'm hoping that with the conclusion of the remake trilogy, maybe the fandom can grow up somewhat and that CloTi and Clerith shippers can finally bury the hatchet. But even if Square were to go so far as to include a full-blown romance, wedding, etc. for one pair or the other, even that probably won't end the debate. My suspicion is that the topic of discussion will simply shift over to arguing about what the developers' ORIGINAL intentions were, before the remake trilogy or even the compilation came to be.

Here we may observe a pair of goalposts, endlessly shifting.

Aerith will (probably) die.

Much as I would like to see Aerith survive and flourish, I find it highly doubtful that Square would leave out one of the most iconic scenes in video game history. So, at the very least, Aerith will probably "die" in some way, and her funeral scene will undoubtedly be in Rebirth in some form. I can't imagine Square retelling FFVII's story and leaving out this moment entirely. It'd be like removing the baptism scene from the Godfather.

However, something tells me Aerith won't stay gone this time around. Whether she ends up in the afterlife, or in a state of limbo, there's little doubt in my mind that she'll return for the grand finale. Furthermore, I would argue that she's already been resurrected in a meta sense. Fans who insist that Aerith needs to stay dead in order to uphold the original title's themes of loss and grieving (the ones who aren't being disingenuous and insisting on this point merely to promote CloTi, that is) are forgetting that it isn't 1997 anymore. The rules aren't the same.

That said, I do expect that Aerith will die at the end of Rebirth. "No Promises to Keep" seems to be foreshadowing as much, and it would make sense for the song to play over the end credits (intended to soften the blow, perhaps, or to tide us over until part 3), reaffirming once again that Cloud and Aerith's bond is stronger than death.

As Vera Lynn once sang: "We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when. But I know we'll meet again some sunny day."

In closing

The wait has been excruciating, but it's nearly at an end. We all have strong opinions on this story and these characters, so the occasional dust-up is inevitable. (I'm as guilty of that as anyone else. I can be an absolute gremlin online, I'll admit it.) But with Square's aim being to deliver a maximalist reading of FFVII's story, jam-packed with every beloved moment and quirky element of the original title dialled up to eleven, there should be plenty of content for everyone to enjoy.

So whatever differences we might have, whatever characters you choose to ship together, etc., I want to take the opportunity to wish you all well, and I sincerely hope that everyone has a great time playing Rebirth.

Signing off until March.

                                  ❛❛ Hey. ❜❜

                  It’s a simple word, not enough to express or convey the                   amount of excitement currently rushing through Noct’s                   veins. They have missed her. Sure the both of them had                    spoken but it had still be twelve years since they had seen                    her. Well minus the about twenty minutes with Leviathan                     but that really didn’t count. Well it counted but they  had gotten                    the shit beaten out of them by a god and Ardyn had stabbed her                    so really there were no winners here.

                                    ❛❛ I brought you flowers. How are you feeling? ❜❜

Canadian Federal Election – No Matter How It Goes

This post will have been queued up, so here is what I think will happen. The deck chairs on the good ship Canada might rearrange a bit, but the overall layout will remain the same.  We shall emerge from this election with a Liberal minority government. The Liberal stratagists that suggested that they call an election during the 4th wave of a pandemic will have their asses fired *even though* the…

Blue eyes stared up at the woman before she averted her gaze. Wasn’t she supposed to want to grow up? To be everything she could. To do everything she could to help and grow. Hearing those words…she couldn’t meet the other’s gaze.