#sephiroth hate

So, Sefikura is trash. We all know this. At least, any sane person does. There are, unfortunately, not many such persons to be found here on the Tumblr side of the FFVII fandom. Since I'm getting tired of repeating these points in isolation, I'm going to gather them all and leave them here by way of procatalepsis.

1. "It's established! It's been around forever!"

The same is true of cancer and syphilis.

2. "But there's a ton of it around!"

A mountain of garbage is still just garbage.

Christopher Hitchens once described Ayn Rand's writings as being "transcendentally awful". In my humble opinion, he was being generous.

3. "But it's important queer representation!"

No, it isn't. If anything, it's closer to being hetslop masquerading as a queer ship, judging by the demographic it seems to appeal to the most (annoying, straight white girls with too much time on their hands).

Has any queer person ever said to themselves, "Yes, please. I'd love to be represented by a creepy, pedophilic stalker?" I sincerely hope not.

You want good queer representation in fiction? Think Xena x Gabrielle, Max Caulfield x Chloe Price, or Kirk x Spock. Those are great, iconic queer ships. That's proper representation. And FFVII already has great, iconic queer ships of its own, namely Zakkura and Aerti. Sefikura, by comparison, is a disease. It's not even in the same category. Claiming that it is good gay or queer representation is like claiming that Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs is good trans representation.

And even after saying all that, some fans will inevitably go down the disingenuous route of trying to frame my disdain for Sefikura as simply being homophobia. That's because they're flailing and grasping at straws because they've no real arguments left (and don't know how to argue honestly to begin with). Shit, if you really feel the urge to ship Cloud with another guy, at least make it a real man like Barret, not some fucking loser like Sephiroth.

4. "But it represents who Sephiroth and Cloud truly are!"

No, it motherfucking doesn't. It represent the exact OPPOSITE of who they are. And even you know that.

Sephiroth is a loser, a coward, and a failed god trying to take his inadequacies out on some innocent kid who never did anything to him. The same "nobody" kid from out of nowhere who keeps humiliating him, Shinra's golden boy, every step of the way. And he can't stand it, much as he tries to act nonchalant and uncaring. In other words, he is the single most pathetic human being on the planet. But in fujo-land, he is exactly who he thinks he is, and Cloud, conveniently is also exactly who he, the villain who is canonically wrong about everything, believes he is.

It's an incredibly shallow and false reading of both characters by fans who live in outright denial about the story, its events, and its meaning. Fans who try to twist the canon into something it's not for the sake of being villain simps.

^ The brutal truth

5. "You're taking this all too seriously!"

Another laughably transparent attempt to deflect criticism instead of actually dealing with it. No, you're so inured to the whole thing that you can no longer perceive it for the vile trash that it is. I aim to jolt people out of that complacency.

If you can't grasp why Sefikura is inherently repugnant, just imagine a child Aerith being groomed and raped by Hojo. And imagine the fandom constantly joking and meme-ing about it. (Or him trying to get Red XIII to forcibly impregnate her, because Hojo, pseudoscientific hack that he is, believes that dogs can reproduce with humans).

It's the same exact thing. But Sephy coasts by on pretty privilege. That's the only difference between the two. You know how sometimes when a teacher molests one of their students, people will say "but was she hot, though?"

Same exact fucking thing.

Is there room for that type of content? On a rule 34 fetish site, maybe. In the fandom's mainstream? No. It should never have been a thing in the first place.

6. "It's toxic yaoi!"

I swear to Satan, if I hear this insipid phrase one more time, I will come to your house and kick your teeth in.

^ This is what you dweebs sound like, by the way

Of all the paltry justifications listed so far, this is the weakest one of all. A sniveling, gutless, thought-terminating cliché intended, like all the other excuses enumerated above, to quell any criticism. And this is the one that people inevitably trot out when they realize that they've painted themselves into a corner and have no real arguments left. It's often combined with point 5, a.k.a. the "they're just made of pixels so who cares?" defense.

So if I started shipping, say, Don Corneo x Marlene, and plastered images of him leering creepily over her across every corner of the fandom, I take it that I could instantly rebuke all criticism of the idea by simply claiming that it's "toxic het"?

Don't be ridiculous.

If you said to me "Yes, I know it's complete garbage but I still kind of like it," I still wouldn't care for it one bit, but I'd at least respect your honesty.

But honesty is too much to expect from that corner of the fandom. I think we've firmly established as much.

7. "But what about the good stuff?"

... What good stuff?

I will grant you that this argument is the only salient one. Unfortunately, if there exists any mature Sefikura content at all (meaning the kind that doesn't woefully misrepresent the story and these characters and doesn't treat Cloud like garbage) it is still buried under a mountain of shit.

"I don't understand. My 'ship' is founded on treating one of its characters like dirt. Why don't people like it?"

"But I don't!" I hear you protest. "I'm the nice kind of Sefikura shipper! I actually respect both characters!"

Good for you. Unfortunately, that places you in the vast minority of Sefikura shippers who aren't complete shitheads. The damage is done. The rot has long since taken hold. It is fundamentally founded upon disrespect, as well as woefully misguided notions about Sephiroth's (non-existent) "supremacy" over Cloud Strife. It is an ugly, indefensible mess. It often involves rape, underage shipping, or both. Its shippers very often fetishize Cloud being sexually molested as a child by his mother's killer RIGHT OUT IN THE OPEN. In the fandom's mainstream channels. To thunderous applause by fellow idiots, no less. As such, unless there is a sea change in said portion of the fandom, you will get called out on it.

It didn't have to be this way. If sensible fans on your side of the fandom had criticized this mentality and this kind of behavior, and made a serious attempt to change the fan culture surrounding it for the better, things might not have turned out like this. But this is what you chose, collectively. To turn the whole affair into a zero-sum game. Therefore, Sefikura deserves every bit of hate and derision that comes its way. Your weak BS has been exposed, and there is no defense left for it. Your used colostomy bag of a ship merits no respect.

Addendum: "But what about the Revelation trailer? Doesn't that prove that (toxic) Sefikura is in some way canon?"

No, it doesn't. Stop acting like it's some meaningful, established thing. It's nothing more than a bad habit, and bad habits can be dropped.

Let's make something absolutely clear: Sefikura is not canon and will never be canonized. With that being said, Square Enix are acutely aware that this segment of the fandom exists, and are knowingly pandering to it with scenes like that. They're not fools. They are, however, cowards. Any writer worth their salt seeing this crap, witnessing the sheer disdain with which this portion of the fandom treats their protagonist, would have told said fans to fuck off.

Not Square Enix, though. Nope, they're leaning right into the meme, because they want to squeeze every last cent out of this cash cow franchise, and that means pandering to the worst elements of this fandom. Quite frankly, it's unforgivable that Square opened their reveal trailer with this disgusting garbage, causing said fans to become even more insufferable than they already are in the process, and it's a major reason as to why I won't be playing part 3. It's clear that all they're trying to do at this point is please everyone (other than fans who actually, you know, like OG FFVII's main character) at the expense of the original story's integrity. All that's left in the wake of their absurd, cartoonish new trilogy will be a muddled, artless mess that shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence as the original FFVII.

What comes next?

Quite frankly, FFVII is dead to me now, at least anything past the AC and DoC era. As mid as the writing for those releases may have been, it still isn't half as bad as Crisis Core or anything that followed in its wake. And Rebirth and Revelation are, as far as I'm concerned, the final insults to FFVII's legacy.

As for the literary emetic that is Sefikura, I'm not laboring under any delusions about that godawful side of the fandom ever changing its ways. It will go on to pollute the internet for a few more years with its puerile dreck while Square Enix drain the last few drops of milk left from FFVII's shriveled teats.

And make no mistake, the rest of us see you clowns and your weak BS for exactly what it is.

One last thing...

Who should you fear more, the angel of death or the man who put him in the ground?

So someone just called me a Nazi, yes, an actual literal Nazi because I think Sefikura is trash.

You'll have to forgive me if I think having my favorite fictional character RAPED BY HIS MOTHER'S MURDERER isn't cool.

For full context: I'm a Norse mythology nerd and my trashing Sephy has to do with his feeble claims to godhood whereas there are much older extant religious figures throughout human history that predate his claims to legitimacy. That's all.

In case it needs to be stated out loud, I FUCKING HATE NAZIS and racism in all its forms. The only good Nazi is a dead one.

Sefikura fans and apologists, however, will literally resort to any cheap and dishonest argument to deflect criticism, as they just proved today.

This opening scene is an embarrassment. Anyone who cares about quality writing should mock Square into oblivion for even thinking about putting it in the game.

When a character's popularity dictates how you write for that character, you're no longer a writer, you're just a performing flea.

And you wonder why I don't like your favorite character.

Sephiroth / Sefikura fangirls: "Wow Cloud is such an ukeboi"

Me: