Different Stories Resonate With Different People

Aerith in light of healthcare provider

So, I’ve wanted to write an analysis about Aerith in light of her medical viewpoint for quite a long time but only recently got the chance to complete it. It is well known in the game that Aerith is the healer of the story. She possessed great MP with a limit break to heal and buff people which greatly affect your gameplay. Of course, you can equip others with Healing and Prayer materias to render them useful for healing as well. But story-wise, no one can take away Aerith’s status as the healer. We know in canon that Aerith provided herbs to the Sector 5 slums doctor to create medicine. And if you finished the Corneo Stash side quest in Chapter 14, you can return to the church and see a couple of elderly sitting on the pew praying. And when you come closer to them you’ll hear them talking about how they didn’t see Aerith around and they’re sure she’s alright and probably be around healing people. You know, since the Sector 7 plate just fell. (Even though Aerith is not alright actually coz she was kidnapped by Shinra by this time) Point is, we are fed by the NPCs on how much Aerith had helped around as a healer. She had been doing this for years.

While being in denial about who she actually is, being a healer had always been implanted in her. She is used to it. When you’re used to being a healer, there’s a certain level when you have different reaction compared to others. The way you think is different. Apart from that, she’s also a Cetra. And we knew for a fact Cetra had a certain affinity towards souls who are returning to the Planet. Meaning, as much as she is used to healing others, she’s also used to sensing death.

My whole point is that, being a Cardiac Anaesthesiologist and Intensivist as I am, I can totally relate my position with Aerith, as we both had constantly helped people and encounter death on daily basis. While I’m pretty confident that majority of these might be coincidence (because I’m pretty sure there were no doctors in the SE team), I thought the coincidence is pretty cool to ponder upon and I’m amazed at how the subtle differences between Aerith’s reaction to events from other characters.

I’m gonna ignore the meta part of Aerith, mainly because I’m not discussing about how much Aerith knew, and if there was anything in jeopardy of what she knew whatsoever. So we’re gonna focus on the fact that she is used to healing and feeling people’s death. People who are used to death on daily basis had a certain unique view on life and death. And that affects how we act upon facing them too. While this is evident throughout Remake, I’m gonna focus on the plate drop event to be more concise. I will also use Tifa as comparison to make it easier to see the difference between the reaction of the two. Let’s start!

1) Aerith is quick in emergency situation.

When you are used to people dying, you developed a certain immunity and you are able to have sound mind and composure at sudden change of event. As healthcare providers, we face stable situations turning into critical real fast. And we have a switch in our minds that turn us from standby mode to rescue mode. This is exactly what happened to Aerith when Don Corneo revealed Shinra’s plan to blow up Sector 7’s support pillar. Tifa is part of Sector 7. It is her home. Which was why her reaction showed how she was super devastated, she slowly stood up and muttered “They wouldn’t…” because she couldn’t believe it. Aerith? She had that switch in her mind, and she immediately turned and say “Come on, guys! We gotta go!”. She switched into that critical mode in a second. It helps that she’s also not personally connected to Sector 7, and thus her judgement was not as impaired. Of course, they both switched into critical mode in the sewer, but it was at the moment of reveal that made it different. Just like how healthcare providers switched at the moment of reveal that their patients are at the brink of death—you immediately jumped into rescue mode.

2) She plans for the worst.

Remember after they defeated Abzu and Tifa started to question Corneo’s information? She didn’t want to believe it, because it didn’t make sense to destroy your years of efforts building the plate just to get back to a small group like AVALANCHE. Think about the money they put in to build it, they’re gonna have to put them all again. In fact, along their way out of the sewer, Tifa voiced out multiple times how this had been bothering her. But I’m intrigued with Aerith’s reply “If he’s telling the truth, then we should go. And if it turns out he was lying, then so what?”. This here is exactly what doctors do. We plan and prepare for the worst. And if the worst didn’t happen, then so what? If you have ever had a life saving surgery, your doctors would tell you “You need this surgery coz you might die. But if you do the surgery, there’s a high chance you’ll survive, but there’s a small chance you’ll die too”. And we prepare for that small chance that our patients die. No, we don’t let our preparations lacking because we hope they’ll survive. We prepare to the worst outcome possible and get all the equipments ready in case they’ll die. If they didn’t, then so what? It doesn’t mean our preparations were futile efforts. It only means we were prepared. And that line of Aerith seriously hits home to me.

3) She hopes for the best.

Before they crossed the water sewer, Tifa once again voiced out how she couldn’t stop thinking about what Corneo said, and she was still hoping that he was lying. And then Aerith said “The future isn’t set in stone”. (Again, I’m gonna ignore the meta part of Aerith) And then she proceeded to set up that small date with Tifa. Believe it or not, this is actually what we do during bad calls. We’d talk about what we would do after all this ends; we’d go out dining, or playing games/darts, or go drinking, or whatever it is that makes us happy. Just to keep our minds calm and to allow us to hope for the future, even if it’s just a few hours away. It gives us hope and courage to go on. We plan for the worst, but we hope for the best. The more critical the situation is, the more you need to be level headed. And needless to say, after this point onwards, Tifa is much more calmed down from her struggle to keep herself focus.

4) She follows orders.

This might sound weird to some, but the ability to cast away your worry and focus on what you can do, instead of what you should do, is important in emergency situations. You need to know what you don’t know. You don’t get in the way of your comrades. If you’re not good in intubating, you don’t insist to intubate in emergency situations just because you wanna help. Seriously, you’ll just make things worse. When Cloud, Tifa and Aerith were attacked before climbing up and out of the sewer, Cloud asked both Tifa and Aerith to keep going. Aerith immediately answers “Okay” and left—without a single but. This is significant, because it shows that Aerith knew she’d be better off leave. She doesn’t need to offer help, coz her help was not needed. This is not the place where she could help. The ability to recognise this is very important for healthcare professionals. Tifa was a bit more reluctant to leave, but that’s probably because she is a martial artist in game. Also, the fact that Aerith could still joke “We’re not delicious” is just so real lol! Yup, we joke sometimes when we’re facing deaths—doesn’t mean we lose focus in saving the dying person in front of us, don’t worry. And then it happens again when they reached Sector 7 when Cloud asked them to stay with Wedge as he goes up, and Aerith immediately answered “sure"—because she can “patch” Wedge up, it’s where her abilities lie. This is even more accentuated when an injured Wedge argued that he can still fight, when he clearly can't—making this point even more obvious. Aerith is someone with the healthcare mind, Wedge was not.

5) She supports her comrades emotionally even when she’s worried too.

When they reached the surface, they spotted Shinra helicopter. Cloud assured them they’re only on patrol. Aerith turned to Tifa and said “Don’t worry, we’ll make it in time”. This moment is also very iconic to me. As I mentioned, I’m an anaesthesiologist. We are the support doctors to surgeons and physicians. Those moments when we’re operating on a AAA surgeries and the patient is losing litres of blood and literally dying, we’re pumping bloods in with our hands and get those Level 1 machines operating, and the surgeons would be panicking because it keeps bleeding? Yep, I did say it before. “We’ll make it. Just concentrate with the surgery and don’t worry about the bleeding”, even though I’m sweating and dying here trying to keep the patient alive. But I pretended to be calm in front of my team and cheered them on. Because the whole team need to keep calm. If one of the team lose hope, then bid your chance farewell. As an anaesthesiologist, we’re almost like the anchor in the room. People look at us to know if everything’s alright. I need to tell them it’s alright, so they need not worry. Aerith knew Tifa is worried. And she tried to keep Tifa calm with reassurance.

6) She doesn’t discriminate.

After they defeated the ghost at the haunted maintainance facility, Cloud tried to kill it, and Aerith didn’t let him. When Cloud said that thing was dangerous, Aerith said she knows and added “but even so…” she didn’t feel right about killing it. (Let’s ignore the fact that the Ghoul was a lonely creature for now) It then goes to drop the train wreck which almost killed them had it not been for Cloud. Now this would have been avoided had Aerith let Cloud killed it—maybe. But here’s the thing. When you’re hyper aware that people are dying left and right, you value life more. No one deserve to die, even the worst criminal in the world. You’re a law-abiding citizen? You’re a criminal? It doesn’t make a difference to us. I know this is something super hard to comprehend. But technically only when the law subject the criminal to death sentence that a person should be left to die. I’ve been a doctor for eleven years, I was a prison doctor for two. I had first hand experience of dealing with criminals. It’s not my job to determine whether they deserved to die or not. It’s not my call whether they will turn a new leaf or not had they lived. I know this is something others find difficult to relate and agree—happens to my non-medical family and friends. The verdict to us is simple. It’s a life. It’s worth saving. Period. (Technically the ghosts are dead though but my point still stands)

7) She tries in her best abilities and lets go of what is out of her control.

Tifa’s emotions are tampered again when they confirmed Shinra was going to drop the plate when they overheard the Turks conversation. Her voice shook, we can literally hear it. Aerith’s response was “all we can do now is keep moving”. And she’s right. When they reached Sector 7 and the Whispers were preventing them, she said “we have to get past whatever it takes”. And later on Tifa left to help Cloud and Barret, and Aerith agreed to get to Seventh Heaven to ensure Marlene’s safety. Wedge had a short mental breakdown when he realised he was no good to anyone up or down the crime scene. And Aerith told him “We can still save a lot of lives”, “That’s no excuse to give up”, “I need to know I did everything I could”. Her encouragement helped Wedge save more people. Some argued, did she not care about the lives that already died? Now here’s my point; no, we don’t. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but really. What can we do for people who are already dead? Nothing. What can we do to people who are still alive? Everything. And this is the core of being a healthcare provider—we prioritise. Yes, we’re also humans. We can get emotional when our own friends and relatives die. (Aerith might not be as calm had it happened at Sector 5) But when we put the healthcare provider cap on, we meant business. That is why when disasters happened, and we triage people with black tag? That’s when we know we couldn’t do anything for them. We don’t mourn at the black tags. We move on to the other tags instead. So that we know we already did everything in our power to help. And yes, it doesn’t matter even if we lost more lives than we saved. It’s worth it, even if we only saved one person out of thousands deaths. Just like how Aerith saved Betty in Sector 7, that one life is worth it.

Rainy Sunday afternoon

Sephiroth print avaliable : https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/lukrevadraws/

Why Tifa is the only person, living or dead, who can resolve Cloud’s crisis

Alternate title: “What really happened in the Lifestream”

Of course the Lifestream scene has been discussed to death within the fandom. While some consider it one of the greatest triumphs of the Cloud/Tifa relationship and the game in general, others are quick to diminish its events and Tifa’s role. “Oh, any other childhood friend character who knew Cloud could do the job.” “Oh, Cloud only needed Tifa as moral support, he could have figured everything out himself.” “Oh, Aerith (maybe +Zack) could have done it by accessing her Cetra/time machine/empath/Planet powers.”

The Lifestream sequence is extraordinarily dense with many subtle visual cues, so there’s a lot to untangle and interpret. But no matter how you slice it, any take which downplays or eliminates Tifa is fundamentally missing the point of this scene, both for the plot and for Cloud’s character arc.

A lot of the confusion stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what actually needs to happen in the Lifestream and why. Thus, using specific details from the sequence, I’d like to present my take on the following:

Part 1: What Cloud needs to accomplish in the Lifestream to advance the plot

Part 2: Why Tifa is the only person, living or dead, who can resolve Cloud’s crisis, where we will discuss fun things such as:

Why Tifa is the the focus of his greatest flaw

What Tifa’s presence in the Lifestream accomplishes

Part 3: Why those “Tifa-less” fan theories just can’t work

This is a very long ride so let’s get to it!

Continua a leggere

I’m not good with Japanese, but these lines sound VERY similar!  

It would be interesting to know if there are others, did you spot any?

FFVII Remake vs Crisis Core comparison

Flowers.

Happy Birthday Aerith 🌸

Sephiroth:

Mass murderer

Child soldier

Lab experiment

Demigod

Enemy of humanity

Actual child

Monopoly host

High school student

Uninvited Smash attendee

Udon salesman

Impossible to take seriously anymore

Photo mode allows the player to restore the true colors of Elmyra's flashback.

As it turns out, when Elmyra adopts Aerith the ribbon is green.

(image source)

Aerith's ribbon: is it still a gift from Zack?

It has been rumored by some fans that the Crisis Core scene where Zack gave Aerith the pink ribbon is no more canon, because kid Aerith has a pink ribbon too.

I don't mean to sound pretentious but...they're evidently different. Kid Aerith's ribbon has four ends, adult Aerith's ribbon has just two.

Since the original FFVII kid Aerith's had two outfits. She wore the blue outfit in the first part of Elmyra's flashback and the orange one when Tseng tried to convince her to return to Shinra.

In the Remake she wears the orange outfit only in the train graveyard vision and the blue one in all of Elmyra's flashback, from the moment she found her at the station up to when Tseng showed up. It's definitely not very evident because of the sepia tone filter, but we can compare her dress to the concept art and to the orange dress: she has no ribbon on the chest but wears a pinafore dress and a light shirt with bell sleeves.

This means that in the sepia toned scene she was wearing the green ribbon, as we can see from the concept art.

The scene at the train graveyard bears many similarities with the situation described in Picturing the Past, so she was wearing the orange outfit before escaping Shinra HQ.

When Elmyra found her and brought her in Sector 5 she had the green ribbon, not the pink one.

Someone tried to say Aerith stated the ribbon was a gift from her mother when she met Cloud at the church...

Nice try, but she was talking about White Materia. (Leaving a couple of links in case anybody wanted to check: OG, Remake)

So, not only there's no evidence that the pink ribbon is no more Zack's gift but that scene influenced also an important moment of the Remake: Aerith and Cloud's first encounter.

And in both cases the gift was made in order to thank the other for their help

CC: To show you my gratitude for that "hello" that woke me up.

Remake: You know, for scaring those things away.

Ehhh...can I say what a coincidence again?

Hi! I see many FFVII fans having great difficulties to accept Crisis Core as a legit canon entry of the compilation. Many of its scenes are often dismissed as fanservice or lazy copy&paste of the OG, and many lament that this game ruined the personalities of the characters. What do you think about it? Thanks!

Thanks for the ask!

I often think of this quote from one of my favorite shows, and even in the case of evaluating entertainment, I wish people would often think about this in how they move forward in discussions:

“If you stop seeing the world in terms of what you like and what you dislike, and saw things for what they truly are in themselves—you would find a great deal more peace in your life.”

— Patrick Jane, The Mentalist S2Ep.6

Without trying to sound too dismissive of people's free opinions, a lot of this type of commentary either doesn't come from a good, foundational understanding of canon or a more clearer-headed, objective understanding of the content within and of itself. Especially with the perspective of the writers and what they essentially wanted to achieve. The idea of everyone having their own personal takes is the way of being human, but once we enter discussions online, this becomes more like a plague that spreads and creates/shapes even more misunderstandings.

I've seen many things over the years so I can't exactly pinpoint everything, but the most direct is that there's no point in time where Crisis Core hasn't been a legitimate, canonical entry in the FFVII canon. There isn't any room for debate on that if we're talking about the FFVII canon as seriously as possible—you'd be having a laugh otherwise. Now, the evaluation of its actual materials? That's just the difference in why people say the things they do, spectrums between agendas, personal feelings, or inclinations with trouble accepting things that otherwise would cause them conflict. We can't allow these things to dismiss our understanding of storytelling, to dismiss the fact that, while a multitude of things can be included in any content that is simply there to be entertaining, this doesn't always reflect its actual nature in regards to canonicity, or to dismiss the prospects that the Compilation isn't just extra stories of the FFVII, but is a DEVLEOPMENT of the world first established—we need to be able to look at the growth and application of this content from a practical perspective, and if we're having discussions, try to be a bit more objective when making a point to another. The game sure isn’t perfect, in whatever standard that could ever be, but the conclusions reached like you mentioned are by people who don’t help things get done. Calling the game "fanservice" or disregarding intentional parallels as "lazy copy & paste" without looking at the context of WHY it was made—we're not going to get anything done.

That's why certain discourses in this fandom, lasting decades long, doesn't get done, and never will until people change the way they think about things and why.

The Misconceptions of FF7: A Cloud, Aerith & Tifa Analysis (Links)

As a side to - for all my efforts - an objective analysis of the one of the greatest masterpieces in fiction, this post has been on the back of my mind for a while. I did not initially want to do this post. But with all the enmity and spitefulness accumulated in the FF7 fanbase that has warped perceptions of its heroines into ludicrous caricatures over the years, it saddens me to feel that it is now a must. I am, of course, talking about the misconceptions of Cloud’s character, and the false notions & unwarranted hate surrounding Aerith and Tifa.

For anyone interested, this post is in 5 parts, linked below:

Part 1: The misconceptions around Cloud Strife

https://outbythehighwind.tumblr.com/post/640346131917946880/the-misconceptions-of-ff7-a-cloud-aerith-tifa

Part 2: Cloud’s relationship to Aerith

https://outbythehighwind.tumblr.com/post/640346297225904128/the-misconceptions-of-ff7-a-cloud-aerith-tifa

Part 3: Cloud’s relationship to Tifa

https://outbythehighwind.tumblr.com/post/640346303037112320/the-misconceptions-of-ff7-a-cloud-aerith-tifa

Part 4: Aerith and Tifa in their relationships to Cloud

https://outbythehighwind.tumblr.com/post/640346307697967104/the-misconceptions-of-ff7-a-cloud-aerith-tifa

Part 5: Aerith and Tifa as FF7′s heroines

https://outbythehighwind.tumblr.com/post/640346343012024320/the-misconceptions-of-ff7-a-cloud-aerith-tifa