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#My intent was to draw individual key art for each one to have something for each character's character card

wellfine · 2 years

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HII I love your art so much it's so expressive and it feels like theres so much movement in it! I was wondering if u had any tips or advice to help with that? I practice anatomy and expression so much but it seems like everything I draw on my own is so stiff!! Anyway I hope you have a great week :)) <3

Hi there! Firstly, thank you so much for the kind words, it means a lot that you would take the time to tell me!

Second- my advice is to take everything you've learned about anatomy and THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW!!!!!!!

... For now. Just into the front yard so you can keep an eye on it. But I have seen many artists concentrate chiefly on studying anatomy only to feel like their art ends up too stiff. My own experience has been to treat anatomy as a tool best used to correct an image in the later stages of construction rather than as your driving foundation.

If "correct" anatomy (however you choose to define that) is the priority of your undersketches, I find that you end up with a sort of Skeleton Song approach to drawing - y'know, the knee bone's connected to the thigh bone, etc etc. Whatever energy, emotion, or intent you wanted your drawing to convey is getting lost each time you split it into another anatomical segment. By over-focusing on individual parts, you lose sight of your image as a whole.

The key to conveying dynamic movement in motionless art is to ensure every element of your image agrees on and communicates the same action, the key to which is something called the line of action.

A line of action is simply that - an implied "line" with wich you lead the viewer's eye and communicate movement. Think of it as the core of your figure's action, simplified to its rawest form. By knowing this, you know what to emphasise and what to de-emphasise.

Well, art is a visual medium and I am better explaining with drawings than words or I'd never have picked up a pen in the first place, so:

Images can have multiple lines of action, lines of action can complement and contrast each other, and a line of action isn't always as obvious as something like running. Imagine you're tring to make your art more "aerodynamic" to the eye. Since I draw a lot of One Piece fanart, I assume you're also familiar with it, and you can probably imagine how Oda uses "lines of action" when composing panels of Luffy punching something, Zoro slicing something, Sanji kicking something- etc etc. He's really good at selling the "oomph" of action shots by reducing visual clutter so that the impact of the action is greater.

(The Monster Trio's abilities are all designed in such a way that allow for REALLY striking lines of action... you can tell Oda loves studying manga fight scenes and wanted to create a world where he could push these concepts to the limit, and it's no wonder One Piece caught the eye of animators even before it was serialised by Toei)

You're probably already noticing how line of action also feeds into composition and silhouette when it comes to conveying movement in an image. Basically put, once you've isolated whatever action it is that you want to convey, the more visual clutter you can streamline away from that action, the stronger an impact that will have on the viewer. A firm line of action, an uncomplicated silhouette for your figure, and a readable overall composition of your image/panel are all ways to minimise visual clutter.

You can also use this information to achieve the opposite effect! Sometimes the ideal action you want to convey is not fast, or powerful, or confident, and you can use the same principles.

In fact, you can apply line of action to images that don't have any "action" in them at all. You can make a drawing of someone simply standing there feel more lively by applying these same principles to their body language:

You can develop an eye for how to simplify movement down to its "lines of action" by studying real photos and other people's art. Try simplifying a figure to its silhouette, and then simplify that silhouette further to a stick figure. And honestly, a lot of this could be boiled down to "see your image as a whole and not just a collection of individual pieces". Set anatomy aside during the composition stage and bring it back in when you start building up the sketch.

Moving away from the line of action, my second piece of broad advice is simply to exaggerate more. Lots of artists subconsciously hold themselves back from pushing motion, expression, etc. out of concern that it will look "too much". Well, maybe it will- but you won't know that unless you try! You can always walk it back if you think you took it too far, but I think you'll be surprised by how far you can push your art before you hit that point.

My final piece of advice is to work on line confidence. Even if you follow the rest of this advice, if you have hesitant and scratchy lines, you're undermining the flow and punch of your art. The best way to improve line confidence is simply by practicing! Do a lot of quick, timed studies, and use a permanent medium like a ballpoint pen or marker. Focus on unbroken lines wherever possible even if it makes your studies look like garbo. I find traditional studies are best for improving line confidence, but if you'd really rather stick with digital then just don't let yourself use the eraser tool, and try using a chunky brush with limited pressure sensitivity.

And that's it! Don't stress about it too much though. Loosen up with your art and, like any other skill, you'll improve with practice, time, and analysing what you like about other people's art. Good luck!

#long post #sorry this is so long I just didn't want to hide it behind a cut because I think a lot of people would miss it #I hope this was helpful in some way! I'm always flattered whenever anyone thinks I'd know enough to ask HAHA #if I have the time then I'm always happy to answer questions like this! :)#not that I am an expert by any means but I can at least share what's worked for me

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insanehobbit · 3 years

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a twenty-five thousand word post about a twenty-three year old “debate”

As time goes on, I’m baffled that it remains a commonly held opinion that:

The LTD remains unresolved

SE is deliberately playing coy, and are (or have been) afraid to resolve it.

To me, the answer is as clear as day, and yet seeing so many people acting as if it’s a question that remains unanswered makes me wonder if I’m the crazy one.

So I am going to try to articulate my thought process here, not because I expect to change any hearts and minds, but more to get these thoughts out of my head and onto a page so I can finally read a book and/or watch reruns of Shark Tank in peace.

To start off, there are two categories of argument (that are among, if not the most widely used lines of argument) that I will try NOT to engage with:

1) Quotes from Ultimania or developer interviews - while they’re great for easter eggs and behind-the-scenes info, if a guidebook is required to understand key plot points, you have fundamentally failed as a storyteller. Now the question of which character wants to bone whom is often something that can be relegated to a guidebook, but in the case of FF7, you would be watching two very different stories play out depending on who Cloud ends up with.

Of course, the Ultimanias do spell this out clearly, but luckily for us, SE are competent enough storytellers that we can find the answer by looking at the text alone.

2) Arguments about character actions/motivations — specifically, I’m talking about stuff like “Cloud made this face in this scene, which means be must be [insert whatever here].”

Especially when it comes to the LTD, these tend to focus on individual actions, decontextualizing them from their role in the narrative as a whole. LTDers often try to put themselves in the character’s shoes to suss out what they may be thinking and feeling in those moments. These arguments will be colored by personal experiences, which will inevitably vary.

Let’s take for example Cloud’s behavior in Advent Children. One may argue that it makes total sense given that he’s dying and fears failing the ones he loves. Another may argue that there’s no way that he would run unless he was deeply unhappy and pining after a lost love. Well, you’ll probably just be talking over each other until the cows come home. Such is the problem with trying to play armchair therapist with a fictional character. It’s not like we can ask Cloud himself why he did what he did (and even if we could, he’s not the exactly the most reliable narrator in the world). Instead, in trying to understand his motivations, we are left with no choice but to draw comparisons with our own personal experiences, those of our friends, or other works of media we’ve consumed. Any interpretation would be inherently subjective and honestly, a futile subject for debate.

There’s nothing wrong with drawing personal connections with fictional characters of course. That is the purpose of art after all. They are vessels of empathy. But when we’re talking about what is canon, it doesn’t matter what we take away. What matters is the creators’ intent.

Cloud, Tifa and Aerith are not your friends Bob, Alice and Maude. They are characters created by Square Enix. Real people can behave in a variety of different ways if they found themselves in the situations faced by our dear trio; however, FF7 characters are not sentient creatures. Everything they do or say is dictated by the developers to serve the story they are trying to tell.

So what do we have left then? Am I asking you, dear reader, to just trust me, anonymous stranger on the Internet, when I tell you #clotiiscanon. Well, in a sense, yes, but more seriously, I’m going to try to suss out what the creator’s intent is based on what is, and more importantly, what isn’t, on screen.

Instead of putting ourselves in the shoes of the characters, let’s try putting ourselves in the shoes of the creators. So the question would then be, if the intent is X, then what purpose does character Y or scene Z serve?

The story of FF7 isn’t the immutable word of God etched in a stone tablet. For every scene that made it into the final game, there are dozens of alternatives that were tossed aside. Let us also not forget the crude economics of popular storytelling. Spending resources on one particular aspect of the game may mean something entirely unrelated will have to be cut for time. Thus, the absence of a particular character/scenario is an alternative in itself. So with all these options at their disposal, why is the scene we see before us the one that made it into the final cut? — Before we dive in, I also want to define two broad categories of narrative: messy and clean.

Messy narratives are ones I would define as stories that try to illuminate something about the human condition, but may not leave the audience feeling very good by the end of it. The protagonists, while not always anti-heroes, don’t always exhibit the kind of growth we’d like, don’t always learn their lessons, probably aren’t the best role models. The endings are often ambivalent, ambiguous, and leaves room for the audience to take away from it what they will. This is the category I would put art films and prestige cable dramas.

Clean narratives are where I would categorize most popular forms of entertainment. Not that these characters necessarily lack nuance, but whatever flaws are portrayed are something to be overcome by the end of story. The protagonists are characters you’re supposed to want to root for

Final Fantasy as a series would fall under the ‘clean’ category. Sure, many of the protagonists start out as jerks, but they grow through these flaws and become true heroes by the end of their journey. Hell, a lot of the time even the villains are redeemed. They want you to like the characters you’re spending a 40+ hr journey with. Their depictions can still be realistic, but they will become the most idealized versions of themselves by the end of their journeys.

This is important to establish, because we can then assume that it is not SE’s intent to make any of their main characters come off pathetic losers or unrepentant assholes. Now whether or not they succeed in that endeavor is another question entirely.

FF7 OG or The dumbest thought experiment in the world

With that one thousand word preamble out of the way, let’s finally take a look at the text. In lieu of going through the OG’s story beat by beat, let’s try this thought experiment:

Imagine it’s 1996, and you’re a development executive at what was then Squaresoft. The plucky, young development team has the first draft of what will become the game we know as Final Fantasy VII. Like the preceding entries in the series, it’s a world-spanning action adventure RPG, with a key subplot being the epic tragic romance between its hero and heroine, Cloud and Aerith.

They ask you for your notes.

(For the sake of your sanity and mine, let’s limit our hypothetical notes to the romantic subplot)

Disc 1 - everything seems to be on the right track. Nice meet-cute, lots of moments developing the relationship between our pair. Creating a love triangle with this Tifa character is an interesting choice, but she’s a comparatively minor character so she probably won’t be a real threat and will find her happiness elsewhere by the end of the game. You may note that they’re leaning a bit too much into Tifa and Cloud’s past. Especially the childhood promise flashback early in the game — cute scene, but a distraction from main story and main pairing — fodder for the chopping block. You may also bump on the fact that Aerith is initially attracted to Cloud because he reminds her of an ex, but this is supposed to be a more mature FF. That can be an obstacle they overcome as Aerith gets to know the real Cloud.

Aerith dies, but it is supposed to be a tragic romance after all. Death doesn’t have to be the end for this relationship, especially since Aerith is an Ancient after all.

It’s when Disc 2 starts that things go off the rails. First off, it feels like an awfully short time for Cloud to be grieving the love of his life, though it’s somewhat understandable. This story is not just a romance. There are other concerns after all, Cloud’s identity crisis for one. Though said identity crisis involves spending a lot of time developing his relationship with another woman. It’s one thing for Cloud and Tifa to be from the same hometown, but does she really need to play such an outsized role in his internal conflict? This might give the player the wrong impression.

You get to the Northern Crater, and it just feels all wrong. Cloud is more or less fine after the love of his life is murdered in front of his eyes but has a complete mental breakdown to the point that he’s temporarily removed as a playable character because Tifa loses faith in him??? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Oh, but it only gets worse from here. With Cloud gone, the POV switches to Tifa and her feelings for him and her desire to find him. The opening of the game is also recontextualized when you learn the only reason that Cloud was part of the first Reactor mission that starts the game is because Tifa found him and wanted to keep an eye on him.

Then you get to Mideel and the alarm bells are going off. Tifa drops everything, removing her from the party as well, to take care of Cloud while he’s a catatonic vegetable? Not good. Very not good. This level of selfless devotion is going to make Cloud look like a total asshole when he rejects her in favor of Aerith. Speaking of Aerith, she uh…hasn’t been mentioned for some time. In fact, her relationship with Cloud has remained completely static after Disc 1, practically nonexistent, while his with Tifa has been building and building. Developing a rival relationship that then needs to be dismantled rather than developing the endgame relationship doesn’t feel like a particularly valuable use of time and resources.

By the time you get to the Lifestream scene, you’re about ready to toss the script out of the window. Here’s the emotional climax of the entire game, where Cloud’s internal conflict is finally resolved, and it almost entirely revolves around Tifa? Rather than revisiting the many moments of mental anguish we experienced during the game itself — featuring other characters, including let’s say, Aerith — it’s about a hereto unknown past that only Tifa has access to? Not only that, but we learn that the reason Cloud wanted to join SOLDIER was to impress Tifa, and the reason he adopted his false persona was because he was so ashamed that he couldn’t live up to the person he thought Tifa wanted him to be? Here, we finally get a look into the inner life of one half of our epic couple and…it entirely revolves around another woman??

Cloud is finally his real self, and hey, it looks like he finally remembers Aerith, that’s at least a step in the right direction. Though still not great. With his emotional arc already resolved, any further romantic developments is going to feel extraneous and anticlimactic. It just doesn’t feel like there’s enough time to establish that:

Cloud’s romantic feelings for Tifa (which were strong enough to launch his hero’s journey) have transformed into something entirely platonic in the past few days/weeks

Cloud’s feelings for Aerith that he developed while he was pretending to be someone else (and not just any someone, but Aerith’s ex of all people) are real.

This isn’t a romantic melodrama after all. There’s still a villain to kill and a world to save.

Cloud does speak of Aerith wistfully, and even quite personally at times, yet every time he talks about her, he’s surrounded by the other party members. A scene or two where he can grapple with his feelings for her on his own would help. Her ghost appearing in the Sector 5 Church feels like a great opportunity for this to happen, but he doesn’t interact with it at all. What gives? Missed opportunity after missed opportunity.

The night before the final battle, Cloud asks the entire party to find what they’re fighting for. This feels like a great (and perhaps the last) opportunity to establish that for Cloud, it’s in Aerith’s memory and out of his love for her. He could spend those hours alone in any number of locations associated with her — the Church, the Temple of the Ancients, the Forgotten City.

Instead — none of those happens. Instead, once again, it’s Cloud and Tifa in another scene where they’re the only two characters in the scene. You’re really going to have Cloud spend what could very well be the last night of his life with another woman? With a fade to black that strongly implies they slept together? In one fell swoop, you’re portraying Cloud as a guy who not only betrays the memory of his lost love, but is also incredibly callous towards the feelings of another woman by taking advantage of her vulnerability. Why are we rooting for him to succeed again?

Cloud and the gang finally defeat Sephiroth, and Aerith guides him back into the real world. Is he finally explicitly stating that he’s searching for her (though they’ve really waited until the last minute to do so), but again, why is Tifa in this scene? Shouldn’t it just be Cloud and Aerith alone? Why have Tifa be there at all? Why have her and her alone of all the party members be the one waiting for Cloud? Do you need to have Tifa there to be rejected while Cloud professes his unending love for Aerith? It just feels needlessly cruel and distracts from what should be the sole focus of the scene, the love between Cloud and Aerith.

What a mess.

You finish reading, and since it is probably too late in the development process to just fire everyone, you offer a few suggestions that will clarify the intended romance while the retaining the other plot points/general themes of the game.

Here they are, ordered by scale of change, from minor to drastic:

Option 1 would be to keep most of the story in tact, but rearrange the sequence of events so that the Lifestream sequence happens before Aerith’s death. That way, Cloud is his true self and fully aware of his feelings for both women before Aerith’s death. That way, his past with Tifa isn’t some ticking bomb waiting to go off in the second half of the game. That development will cease at the Lifestream scene. Cloud will realize the affection he held for her as a child is no longer the case. He is grateful for the past they shared, but his future is with Aerith. He makes a clear choice before that future is taken away from him with her death. The rest of the game will go on more or less the same (with the Highwind scene being eliminated, of course) making it clear, that avenging the death of his beloved is one of, if not the, primary motivation for him wanting to defeat Sephiroth.

The problem with this “fix” is that a big part of the reason that Aerith gets killed is because of Cloud’s identity crisis. If said crisis is resolved, the impact of her death will be diminished, because it would feel arbitrary rather than something that stems from the consequences of Cloud’s actions. More of the story will need to be reconceived so that this moment holds the same emotional weight.

Another problem is why the Lifestream scene needs to exist at all. Why spend all that time developing the backstory for a relationship that will be moot by the end of the game? It makes Tifa feel like less of a character and more of a plot device, who becomes irrelevant after she services the protagonist’s character development and then has none of her own. That’s no way to treat one of the main characters of your game.

Option 2 would be to re-imagine Tifa’s character entirely. You can keep some of her history with Cloud in tact, but expand her backstory so she is able to have a satisfactory character arc outside of her relationship with Cloud. You could explore the five years in her life since the Nibelheim incident. Maybe she wasn’t in Midgar the whole time. Maybe, like Barret, she has her own Corel, and maybe reconciling with her past there is the climax of her emotional arc as opposed to her past with Cloud. For Cloud too, her importance needs to be diminished. She can be one of the people who help him find his true self in the Lifestream, but not the only person. There’s no reason the other people he’s met on his journey can’t be there. Thus their relationship remains somewhat important, but their journeys are not so entwined that it distracts from Cloud and Aerith’s romance.

Option 3 would be to really lean into the doomed romance element of Cloud and Aerith’s relationship. Have her death be the cause of his mental breakdown, and have Aerith be the one in the Lifestream who is able to put his mind back together and bring him back to the realm of consciousness. After he emerges, he has the dual goal of defeating Sephiroth and trying to reunite with Aerith. In the end, in order to do the former, he has to relinquish the latter. He makes selfless choice. He makes the choice that resonates the overall theme of the game. It’s a bittersweet but satisfying ending. Cloud chooses to honor her memory and her purpose over the chance to physically bring her back. In this version of the game, the love triangle serves no purpose. There’s no role for Tifa at all.

Okay, we can be done with this strained counterfactual. What I’ve hopefully illustrated is that while developers had countless opportunities to solidify Cloud/Aerith as the canon couple in Discs 2 and 3 of the game, they instead chose a different route each and every time. What should also be clear is that the biggest obstacle standing in their way is not Aerith’s death, but the fact that Tifa exists.

At least in the form she takes in the final game, as a playable character and at the very least, the 3rd most important character in game’s story. She is not just another recurring NPC or an antagonist. Her love for Cloud is not going to be treated like a mere trifle or obstacle. If Cloud/Aerith was supposed to be the endgame ship, there would be no need for a love triangle and no need to include Tifa in the game at all. Death is a big enough obstacle, developing Cloud’s relationship with Tifa would only distract from and diminish his romance with Aerith.

I think this is something the dead enders understand intuitively, even more so than many Cloti shippers. Which is why some of them try to dismiss Tifa’s importance in the story so that she becomes a minor supporting character at best, or denigrate her character to the point that she becomes an actual villain. The Seifer to a Squall, the Seymour to a Tidus, hell even a Quistis to a Rinoa, they know how to deal with, but a Tifa Lockhart? As she is actually depicted in Final Fantasy VII? They have no playbook for that, and thus they desperately try to squeeze her into one of these other roles.

Let’s try another thought experiment, and see what would to other FF romances if we inserted a Tifa Lockhart-esque character in the middle of them.

FFXV is a perfect example because it features the sort of tragic love beyond death romance that certain shippers want Cloud and Aerith to be. Now, did I think FFXV was a good game? No. Did I think Noctis/Luna was a particularly well-developed romance? Also no. Did I have any question in my mind whatsoever that they were the canon relationship? Absolutely not.

Is this because they kiss at the end? Well sure, that helps, but also it’s because the game doesn’t spend the chapters after Luna’s death developing Noctis’ relationship with another woman. If Noctis/Luna had the same sort of development as Cloud/Aerith, then after Luna dies, Iris would suddenly pop in and play a much more prominent role. The game would flashback to her past and her relationship with Noctis. And it would be through his relationship with Iris that Noctis understands his duty to become king or a crystal or whatever the fuck that game was about. Iris is by Noctis’ side through the final battle, and when he ascends the throne in that dreamworld or whatever. There, Luna finally shows up again. Iris is still in the frame when Noctis tells her something like ‘Oh sorry, girl, I’ve been in love with Luna all along,” before he kisses Luna and the game ends.

(a very real scene from a very good game)

Come on. It would be utterly ludicrous and an utter disservice to every character involved, yet that is essentially the argument Cloud/Aerith shippers are making. SE may have made some pretty questionable storytelling decisions in the past, but they aren’t that bad at this.

Or in FFVIII, it would be like reordering the sequence of events so that Squall remembers that he grew up in an orphanage with all the other kids after Rinoa falls into a coma. And while Rinoa is out of commission, instead of Quistis gracefully bowing out after realizing she had mistaken her feelings of sisterly affection for love, it becomes Quistis’ childhood relationship with Squall that allows him to remember his past and re-contextualizes the game we’ve played thus far, so that the player realizes that it was actually Quistis who was his motivation all along. Then after this brief emotional detour, his romance with Rinoa would continue as usual. Absolutely absurd.

The Final Fantasy games certainly have their fair share of plot holes, but they’ve never whiffed on a romance this badly.

A somewhat more serious character analysis of the OG

What then is Tifa’s actual role in the story of FFVII? Her character is intricately connected to Cloud’s. In fact, they practically have the same arc, though Tifa’s is rather understated compared to his. She doesn’t adopt a false persona after all. For both of them, the flaw that they must learn to overcome over the course of the game is their fear of confronting the truth of their past. Or to put it more crudely, if they’re not lying, they’re at the very least omitting the truth. Cloud does so to protect himself from his fear of being exposed as a failure. Tifa does so at the expense of herself, because she fears the truth will do more harm than good. They’re two sides of the same coin. Nonetheless, their lying has serious ramifications.

The past they’re both afraid to confront is of course the Nibelheim Incident from five years ago. Thus, the key points in their emotional journeys coincide with the three conflicting Nibelheim flashbacks depicted in the game: Cloud’s false memory in Kalm, Sephiroth’s false vision in the Northern Crater, and the truth in the Lifestream.

Before they enter the Lifestream, both Cloud and Tifa are at the lowest of their lows. Cloud has had a complete mental breakdown and is functionally a vegetable. Tifa has given up everything to take care of Cloud as she feels responsible for his condition. If he doesn’t recover, she may never find peace.

With nothing left to lose, they both try to face the past head on. For Cloud, it’s a bit harder. At the heart of all this confusion, is of course, the Nibelheim Incident. How does Cloud know all these things he shouldn’t if Tifa doesn’t remember seeing him there? The emotional climax for both Cloud and Tifa, and arguably the game as a whole, is the moment the Shinra grunt removes his helmet to reveal that Cloud was there all along.

Tifa is the only character who can play this role for Cloud. It’s not like she a found a videotape in the Lifestream labeled ‘Nibelheim Incident - REAL’ and voila, Cloud is fixed. No, she is the only one who can help him because she is the only person who lived through that moment. No one else could make Cloud believe it. You could have Aerith or anyone else trying to tell him what actually happened, but why would he believe it anymore than the story Sephiroth told him at the Northern Crater?

With Tifa, it’s different. Not only was she physically there, but she’s putting as much at risk in what the truth may reveal. She’s not just a plot device to facilitate Cloud’s character development. The Lifestream sequence is as much the culmination of her own character arc. If it goes the wrong way, “Cloud” may find out that he’s just a fake after all, and Tifa may learn that boy she thought she’d been on this journey with had died years ago. That there’s no one left from her past, that it was all in her head, that she’s all alone. Avoiding this truth is a comfort, but in this moment, they’re both putting themselves on the line. Being completely vulnerable in front of the person they’re most terrified of being vulnerable with.

The developers have structured Cloud and Tifa’s character arcs so that the crux is a moment where the other is literally the only person who could provide the answer they need. Without each other, as far as the story is concerned, Cloud and Tifa would remain incomplete.

Aerith’s character arc is a different beast entirely. She is the closest we have to the traditional Campbellian Hero. She is the Chosen One, the literal last of her kind, who has been resisting the call to adventure until she can no longer. The touchstones of her character arc are the moments she learns more about her Cetra past and comes to terms with her role in protecting the planet - namely Cosmo Canyon, the Temple of the Ancients and the Forgotten City.

How do hers and Cloud’s arcs intersect? When it comes to the Nibelheim incident, she is a merely a spectator (at least during the Kalm flashback, as for the other two, she is uh…deceased). Cloud attacking her at the Temple of the Ancients, which results in her running to the Forgotten City alone and getting killed by Sephiroth, certainly exacerbates his mental deterioration, but it is by no means a turning point in his arc the way the Northern Crater is.

As for Cloud’s role in Aerith’s arc, their meeting is quite important in that it sets forth the series of events that leads her to getting captured by Shinra and thus meeting “Sephiroth” and wanting to learn more about the Cetra. It’s the inciting incident if we’re going to be really pedantic about it, yet Aerith’s actual character development is not dependent on her relationship with Cloud. It is about her communion with her Cetra Ancestry and the planet.

To put it in other terms, all else being the same, Aerith could still have a satisfying character arc had Cloud not crashed down into her Church. Sure, the game would look pretty different, but there are other ways for her to transform from a flirty, at times frivolous girl to an almost Christ-like figure who accepts the burden of protecting the planet.

Such is not the case for Cloud and Tifa. Their character arcs are built around their shared past and their relationship with one another. Without Tifa, you would have to rewrite Cloud’s character entirely. What was his motivation for joining SOLDIER? How did he get on that AVALANCHE mission in the first place? Who can possibly know him well enough to put his mind back together after it falls apart? If the answer to all these questions is the same person, then congratulations, you’ve just reverse engineered Tifa Lockhart.

Tifa fares a little better. Without Cloud, she would be a sad, sweet character who never gets the opportunity to reconcile with the trauma of her past. Superficially, a lot would be the same, but she would ultimately be quite static and all the less interesting for it.

Let’s also take a brief gander at Tifa’s role after the Lifestream sequence. At this point in the game, both Tifa and Cloud’s emotional arcs are essentially complete. They are now the most idealized versions of themselves, characters the players are meant to admire and aspire to. However they are depicted going forward, it would not be the creator’s intent for their actions to be perceived in a negative light.

A few key moments standout, ones that would not be included if the game was intended to end with any other romantic pairing or with Cloud’s romantic interest left ambiguous:

The Highwind scene, which I’ve gone over above. It doesn’t matter if you get the Low Affection or High Affection version. It would not reflect well on either Cloud or Tifa if he chose to spend what could be his last night alive with a woman whose feelings he did not reciprocate.

Before the final battle with Sephiroth, the party members scream out the reasons they’re fighting. Barret specifically calls out AVALANCHE, Marlene and Dyne, Red XIII specifically calls out his Grandpa, and Tifa specifically calls out Cloud. You are not going to make one of Tifa’s last moments in the game be her pining after a guy who has no interest in her. Not when you could easily have her mention something like her past, her hometown or hell even AVALANCHE and Marlene like Barret. If Tifa’s feelings for Cloud are meant to be unrequited, then it would be a character flaw that would be dealt with long before the final battle (see: Quistis in FF8 or Eowyn in the Lord of the Rings). They would not still be on display at moment like this.

Tifa being the only one there when Cloud jumps into the Lifestream to fight Sephiroth for the last time, and Tifa being the only one there when he emerges. She is very much playing the traditional partner/spouse role here, when you could easily have the entire party present or no one there at all. There is clearly something special about her relationship with Cloud that sets her apart from the other party members.

Once again, let’s look at the “I think I can meet her there moment.” And let’s put side the translation (the Japanese is certainly more ambiguous, and it’s not like the game had any trouble having Cloud call Aerith by her name before this). If Cloud was really expressing his desire to reunite with Aerith, and thus his rejection of Tifa, then the penultimate scene of this game is one that involves the complete utter and humiliation of one of its main characters since Tifa’s reply would indicate she’s inviting herself to a romantic reunion she has no part in. Not only that, but to anyone who is not Cl*rith shipper, the protagonist of the game is going to come off as a callous asshole. That cannot possibly be the creator’s intention. They are competent enough to depict an act of love without drawing attention to the party hurt by that love.

What then could possibly be the meaning? Could it possibly be Cloud trying to comfort Tifa by trying to find a silver lining in what appears to be their impending death? That this means they may get to see their departed loved ones again, including their mutual friend, Aerith? (I will note that Tifa talks about Aerith as much, if not even more than Cloud, after her death). Seems pretty reasonable to me, this being an interpretation of the scene that aligns with the overall themes of the game, and casts every character in positive light during this bittersweet moment.

Luckily enough, we have an entire fucking Compilation to find out which is right.

But before we get there, I’m sure some of you (lol @ me thinking anyone is still reading this) are asking, if Cloti is canon, then why is there a love triangle at all? Why even hint at the possibility of a romance between Cloud and Aerith? Wouldn’t that also be a waste of time and resources if they weren’t meant to be canon?

Well, there are two very important reasons that have nothing to do with romance and everything to do with two of the game’s biggest twists:

Aerith initially being attracted to Cloud’s similarities to Zack/commenting on the uncanniness of said similarities is an organic way to introduce the man Cloud’s pretending to be. Without it, the reveal in the Lifestream would fall a bit flat. The man he’s been emulating all along would just be some sort of generic hero rather than a person whose history and deeds already encountered during the course of the game. Notably for this to work, the game only has to establish Aerith’s attraction to Cloud.

To build the player’s attachment to Aerith before her death/obscure the fact that she’s going to die. With the technological limitations of the day, the only way to get the player to interact with Aerith is through the player character (AKA Cloud), and adding an element of choice (AKA the Gold Saucer Date mechanic) makes the player even more invested. This then elevates Aerith’s relationship with Cloud over hers with any other character. At the same time, because her time in the game is limited, Cloud ends up interacting with Aerith more than any of the other characters, at least in Disc 1. The choice to make many of these interactions flirty/romantic also toys with player expectations. One does not expect the hero’s love interest to die halfway through the game. The game itself also spends a bit of time teasing the romance, albeit, largely in superficial ways like other characters commenting on their relationship or Cait Sith reading their love fortune at the Temple of the Ancients. Yet, despite the quantity of their personal interactions, Cloud and Aerith never display any moments of deep love or devotion that one associates with a Final Fantasy romance. They never have the time. What the game establishes then is the potential of a romance rather than the romance itself. Aerith’s death hurts because of all that lost potential. There so many things she wanted to do, so many places she wanted to see that will never happen because her life is cut short. Part of what is lost, of course, is the potential of her romance with Cloud.

This creative choice is a lot more controversial since it elevates subverting audience expectations over character, and understandably leads to some player confusion. What’s the point of all this set up if there’s not going to be a pay off? Well, that is kind of the point. Death is frustrating because of all the unknowns and what-ifs. But, I suppose some people just can’t accept that fact in a game like this.

One last note on the OG before we move on: Even though this from an Ultimania, since we’re talking about story development and creator intent, I thought it was relevant to include: the fact that Aerith was the sole heroine in early drafts of the game is not the LTD trump card so people think it is. Stories undergo radical changes through the development process. More often than not, there are too many characters, and characters are often combined or removed if their presence feels redundant or confusing.

In this case, the opposite happened. Tifa was added later in the development process as a second heroine. Let’s say that Aerith was the Last Ancient and the protagonist’s sole love interest in this early draft of Final Fantasy VII. In the game that was actually released, that role was split between two characters (and last I checked, Tifa is not the last of a dying race), and Aerith dies halfway through the game, so what does that suggest about how Aerith’s role may have changed in the final product? Again, if Aerith was intended to be Cloud’s love interest, Tifa simply would not exist.

A begrudging analysis of our favorite straight-to-DVD sequel

Let’s move onto the Compilation. And in doing so, completely forget about the word vomit that’s been written above. While it’s quite clear to me now that there’s no way in hell the developers would have intended the last scene in the game to be both a confirmation of Cloud’s love for Aerith and his rejection of Tifa, in my younger and more vulnerable years, I wasn’t so sure. In fact, this was the prevailing interpretation back in the pre-Compilation Dark Ages. Probably because of a dubious English translation of the game and a couple of ambiguous cameos in Final Fantasy Tactics and Kingdom Hearts were all we had to go on.

How then did the official sequel to Final Fantasy VII change those priors?

Two years after the events of the game, Cloud is living as a family with Tifa and two kids rather than scouring the planet for a way to be reunited with Aerith. Shouldn’t the debate be well and over with that? Obviously not, and it’s not just because people were being obstinate. Part of the confusion stems from Advent Children itself, but I would argue that did not come from an intent to play coy/keep Cloud’s romantic desires ambiguous, but rather a failure of execution of his character arc.

Now I wasn’t the biggest fan of the film when I first watched a bootlegged copy I downloaded off LimeWire in 2005, and I like it even less now, but I better understand its failures, given its unique position as a sequel to a beloved game and the cornerstone of launching the Compilation.

The original game didn’t have such constraints on its storytelling. Outside of including a few elements that make it recognizable as a Final Fantasy (Moogles, Chocobos, Summons, etc.) and being a good enough game to be a financial success, the developers pretty much had free rein in terms of what story they wanted to tell, what characters they would use to tell it, and how long it took for them to tell said story.

With Advent Children, telling a good story was not the sole or even primary goal. Instead, it had to:

Do some fanservice: The core audience is going to be the OG fanbase, who would be expecting to see modern, high-def depictions of all the memorable and beloved characters from the game, no matter if the natural end point of their stories is long over.

Set up the rest of the Compilation - Advent Children is the draw with the big stars, but also a way to showcase the lesser known characters from from the Compilation who are going to be leading their own spinoffs. It’s part feature film/part advertisement for the rest of the Compilation. Thus, the Turks, Vincent and Zack get larger roles in the film than one might expect to attract interest to the spinoffs they lead.

Show off its technical prowess: SE probably has enough self awareness to realize that what’s going to set it apart from other animated feature films is not its novel storytelling, but its graphical capabilities. Thus, to really show off those graphics, the film is going to be packed to the brim with big, complicated action scenes with lots of moving parts, as opposed to quieter character driven moments.

These considerations are not unique to Advent Children, but important to note nonetheless:

As a sequel, the stakes have to be just as high if not higher than those in the original work. Since the threat in the OG was the literal end of the world, in Advent Children, the world’s gotta end again

The OG was around 30-40 hours long. An average feature-length film is roughly two hours. Video games and films are two very different mediums. As many TV writers who have tried to make the transition to film (and vice-versa) can tell you, success in one medium does not translate to success in another.

With so much to do in so little time, is it any wonder then that it is again Sephiroth who is the villain trying to destroy the world and Aerith in the Lifestream the deus ex machina who saves the day?

All of this is just a long-winded way to say, certain choices in the Advent Children that may seem to exist only to perpetuate the LTD were made with many other storytelling considerations in mind.

When trying to understand the intended character arcs and relationship dynamics, you cannot treat the film as a collection of scenes devoid of context. You can’t just say - “well here’s a scene where Cloud seems to miss Aerith, and here’s another scene where Cloud and Tifa fight. Obviously, Cloud loves Aerith.” You have to look at what purpose these scenes serve in the grander narrative.

And what is this grander narrative? To put it in simplistic terms, Aerith is the obstacle, and Tifa is goal. Cloud must get over his guilt over Aerith’s death so that he can return to living with Tifa and the children in peace.

The scenes following the prologue are setting up the emotional stakes of film - the problem that will be resolved by the film’s end. The problem being depicted here is not Aerith’s absence from Cloud’s life, but Cloud’s absence from his family. We see Tifa walking through Seventh Heaven saying “he’s not here anymore,” we see Denzel in his sickbed asking for Cloud, we see a framed photo of the four of them on Cloud’s desk. We see Cloud letting Tifa’s call go to voicemail.

What we do not see is Aerith, who does not appear until almost halfway through the film.

Cloud spends the first of the film avoiding confrontation with the Remnants/dealing with the return of Sephiroth. It’s only when Tifa is injured, and Denzel and Marlene get kidnapped that he goes to face his problems head on.

Before the final battle, when Cloud has exorcised his emotional demons and is about to face his physical demons, what do we see? We see Cloud telling Marlene that it’s his turn to take care of her, Denzel and Tifa the way they’ve taken care of him. We see Cloud telling Tifa that he ‘feels lighter’ and tacitly confirming that she was correct when she called him out earlier in the film. We see Cloud confirming to Denzel that he’s going home after this is all over.

What we do not see is Cloud telepathically communicating with Aerith to say, “Hey boo, can’t wait to beat Sephiroth so I can finally reunite with you in the Promised Land. Xoxoxo.” Aerith doesn’t factor in at all. Returning to his family is his goal, and his fight with Bahamut/the Remnants/Sephiroth/whatever the fuck is the final obstacle he has to face before reaching this goal.

This is reiterated again when Cloud is shot by Yazoo and seemingly perishes in an explosion. What is at stake with his “death”? We see Tifa calling his name while looking out the airship. We see Denzel and Marlene waiting for him at Seventh Heaven. We do not see Aerith watching over him in the Lifestream.

Now, Aerith does play an important role in Cloud’s arc when she shows up at about the midpoint of the film. You could fairly argue that it’s the turning point in Cloud’s emotional journey, the moment when he finally decides to confront his problems. But even if it’s only Cloud and Aerith in the scene, it’s not really about their relationship at all.

Let’s consider the context before this scene happens. Denzel and Marlene have been kidnapped by the Remnants; Tifa was nearly killed in a fight with another. This is Cloud at his lowest point. It’s his worst fears come to pass. His guilt over Aerith’s death is directly addressed at this moment in the film because it is not so much about his feelings for Aerith as it is about how Cloud fears the failures of his past (one of the biggest being her death) would continue into the present. If it was just about Aerith, we could have seen Cloud asking for her forgiveness at any other time in the film. It occurs when it does because this when his guilt over Aerith’s death intersects with his actual conflict, his fear that he’ll fail the the ones he loves. She appears when he’s at the Forgotten City where he goes to save the children. The same location where he had failed two year before.

This connection is made explicit when Cloud has flashes of Zack and Aerith’s deaths before he saves Denzel and Tifa from Bahamut. Again, Cloud’s dwelling on the past is directly related to his fears of being unable to protect his present.

Aerith is a feminine figure who is associated with flowers. That combined with the players’ memory of her and her relationship with Cloud in the OG, I can see how their scenes can be construed as romantic, but I really do not think that it is the creators’ intent to portray any romantic longing on Cloud’s part.

If they wanted to suggest that Cloud was still in love with Aerith or even leave his romantic interest ambiguous, there is no way in hell they would have had Cloud living with Tifa and two kids prior to the film’s events. To say nothing of opening the film by showing the pain his absence brings.

A romantic reading of Cloud’s guilt over Aerith’s death would suggest that he entered into a relationship with Tifa and started raising two children with her while still holding a torch for Aerith and hoping for a way to be reunited with her. The implication would be that Tifa is his second choice, and he is settling. Now, is this a dynamic that occurs in real life? Absolutely. Is this something that is often depicted in some films and television? Sure - in fact this very premise is at the core of one my favorite films of the last decade - 45 Years — and spoiler alert — the guy does not come off well in this situation. But once again, Cloud is not a real person, and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is not a John Cassavettes film or an Ingmar Bergman chamber drama. It is a 2-hour long straight to DVD sequel for a video game made for teens. This kind of messy, if realistic, relationship dynamic is not what this particular work is trying to explore.

(one of these is a good film!)

By the end of Advent Children, Cloud is once again the idealized version of himself. A hero that the audience is supposed to like and admire. We are supposed to think that his actions in the first half of the movie (wallowing in his guilt and abandoning his family) were bad. These are the flaws that he must overcome through the course of the film, and by the end he does. If he really had been settling and treating his Seventh Heaven family as a second choice prior to the events of the film, that too would obviously be a character flaw that needs to be addressed before the end of the film. It isn’t because this is a dynamic that only exists in certain people’s imaginations.

If the creators wanted to leave the Cloud & Aerith relationship open to a romantic interpretation, they didn’t have to write themselves into such a corner. They wouldn’t have to change the final film much at all, merely adjust the chronology a bit. Instead of Cloud already living as a family with Tifa, Marlene and Denzel prior to the beginning of the film, you would show them on the precipice of becoming a family, but with Cloud being unable to take the final step without getting over his feelings for Aerith first. This would leave space for him to love both women without coming off as an opportunistic jerk.

This is essentially the dynamic with Locke/Rachel/Celes in FFVI. Locke is unable to move on with Celes or anyone else until he finally finds closure with Rachel. It’s a lovely scene that does not diminish his relationships with either woman. He loved Rachel. He will love Celes. What the game does not have him do is enter into a relationship into Celes first and then when the party arrives at the Phoenix Cave, have him suddenly remember ‘Oh shit, I’ve gotta deal with my baggage with Rachel before I can really move on.’ That would not paint him in a particularly positive light.

Speaking of other Final Fantasies, let’s take a look another sequel in the series set two years after the events of the original work, one that is clearly the story of its protagonist searching for their lost love. And guess what? Final Fantasy X-2 does not begin with Yuna shacked up and raising two kids with another dude. And it certainly doesn’t begin with his perspective of the whole situation when Yuna decides to search for Tidus.

Square Enix knows how to write these kind of stories when they want to, and it’s clearly not their intent for Cloud and Aerith. Again, the biggest obstacle in the way of a Cloud/Aerith endgame isn’t space and time or death, it’s the existence of Tifa Lockhart.

A reasonable question to ask would be, if SE is not trying to ignite debate over the love triangle, why make Cloud’s relationship with Aerith a part of Advent Children at all? Why invite that sort of confusion? Well, the answer here, like the answer in the OG, is that Aerith’s role in the sequel is much more than her relationship with Cloud.

In the OG, it wasn’t Cloud and the gang who managed to stop Sephiroth and Meteor in the end, it was Aerith from the Lifestream. In a two-hour long film, you do not have the time to set up a completely new villain who can believably end the world, and since you pretty much have to include Sephiroth, the main antagonist can really only be him. No one else in the party has been established to have any magical Cetra powers, and again, since that’s not something that can be effectively established in a two-hour long film, and since Aerith needs to appear somehow, it again needs to be her who will save the day.

Given the time constraints, this external conflict has to be connected with Cloud’s internal conflict. In the OG, Cloud’s emotional arc is in resolved in the Lifestream, and then we spend a few more hours hunting down the Huge Materia/remembering what Holy is before resolving the external conflict of stopping Meteor. In Advent Children, we do not have that luxury of time. These turning points have to be one and same. It is only after Aerith is “introduced” in the film when Cloud asks her for forgiveness that she is able to help in the fight against the Remnants. Thus the turning point for Cloud’s character arc and the external conflict are the same. It’s understandably economical storytelling, though I wouldn’t call it particularly good storytelling.

As much as Cloud feels guilt over both Zack and Aerith’s deaths, it’s only Aerith who can play this dual role in the film. Zack can appear to help resolve Cloud’s emotional arc, but since he has no special Cetra powers or anything, there’s little he can do to help in Cloud’s fight against the Remnants. More time would need to be spent contriving a reason why Cloud is able to defeat the Remnants now when he wasn’t before or explaining why Aerith can suddenly help from the Lifestream when she had been absent before. (I still don’t think the film does a particularly good job of explaining this part, but that is a conversation for another time).

Another reason why Zack could not play this role is because at the time of AC’s original release, all we knew of Cloud and Zack’s relationship was contained in an optional flashback at the Shinra mansion after Cloud returns from the Lifestream. If it was Zack who suddenly showed up at Cloud’s lowest point, most viewers, even many who played the original game, would probably have been confused, and the moment would have fallen flat. On the other hand, even the most casual fan would have been aware of Aerith and her connection to Cloud, with her death scene being among the most well-known gaming moments of all time. Moreover, Aerith’s death is directly connected to Sephiroth, who is once again the threat in AC, whereas Zack was killed by Shinra goons. Aerith serves multiple purposes in a way that Zack just cannot.

Despite all this, though Aerith is more important to the film as a whole, many efforts are made to suggest that Zack and Aerith are equally important to Cloud. One of the first scenes in the film is Cloud moping around Zack’s grave (And unlike the scene with Aerith in the Forgotten City, it isn’t directly connected with Cloud’s present storyline in any way). We have the aforementioned scene where Cloud has flashes of both Aerith’s and Zack’s deaths when he saves Tifa and Denzel. Cloud has a scene where he’s standing back to back with Zack, mirroring his scene with in the Forgotten City with Aerith, before the climax of his fight with Sephiroth. In the Lifestream, after Cloud “dies,” it’s both Aerith and Zack who are there to send him back. Before the film ends, Cloud sees both Aerith and Zack leaving the church.

Now, were all these Zack appearances a way to promote the upcoming spin-off game that he’s going to lead? Of course. But the creators surely would have known that having Zack play such a similar role in Cloud’s arc would make Cloud’s relationship with Aerith feel less special and thus complicating a romantic interpretation of said relationship. If they wanted to encourage a romantic reading of Cloud’s lingering feelings for Aerith, they would have given Zack his own distinct role in the film. Or rather, they wouldn’t have put Zack in the film at all, and they certainly wouldn’t have him lead his own game, but we’ll get to the Zack of it all later.

The funny thing is, in a way, Zack is portrayed as being more special to Cloud. Zack only exists in the film to interact with Cloud and encourage him. Meanwhile. Aerith also has brief interactions with Kadaj, the Geostigma children and even Tifa before the film’s end. Aerith is there to save the whole world. Zack is there just for Cloud. If it’s Cloud’s relationship with Aerith that’s meant to be romantic, shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Let’s take a look at Tifa Lockhart. What role did she have to play in the FF7 sequel film? If, like some, you believed FF7 to be the Cloud/Aerith/Sephiroth show, then Tifa could have easily had a Barret-sized cameo in Advent Children. And honestly, she’s just a great martial artist. She has no special powers that would make her indispensable in a fight against Sephiroth. You certainly would not expect her to be the 2nd billed character in the film. Though of course, if you actually played through the Original Game with your eyes open, you would realize that Tifa Lockhart is instrumental to any story about Cloud Strife.

Unlike Aerith’s appearances, almost none of the suggestive scenes and dynamics between Cloud and Tifa had to be included in the film. As in, they serve no other plot related purpose and could have easily been cut from the final film if the creators weren’t trying to encourage a romantic interpretation of their relationship.

It feels inevitable now, but no one was expecting Cloud and Tifa to be living together and raising two kids. In the general consciousness, FF7 is Cloud and Sephiroth and their big swords and Aerith’s death. At the time, in the eyes of most fans and casual observers, Cloud and Tifa being together wasn’t a necessary part of the FF7 equation the way say, an epic fight between Cloud and Sephiroth would be. In fact, I don’t think even the biggest Cloti fans at the time would have imagined Cloud and Tifa living together would be their canon outcome in the sequel film.

Now can two platonic friends live together and raise two children together? Absolutely, but again Cloud and Tifa are not real people. They are fictional characters. A reasonable person (let’s use the legal definition of the term) who does not have brainworms from arguing over one of the dumbest debates on the Internet for 23 years would probably assume that two characters who were shown to be attracted to each other in the OG and who are now living together and raising two kids are in a romantic relationship. This is a reasonable assumption to make, and if SE wanted to leave Cloud’s romantic inclinations ambiguous, they simply would not be depicting Cloud and Tifa’s relationship in this manner. Cloud’s disrupted peace could have been a number of different things. He could have been a wandering mercenary, he could have been searching for a way to be reunited with Aerith. It didn’t have to be the family he formed with Tifa, but, then again, if you were actually paying attention to the story the OG was trying to tell, of course he would be living with Tifa.

Let’s also look at the scene where Cloud finds Tifa in the church after her fight with Loz. All the plot related information (who attacked her, Marlene being taken) is conveyed in the brief conversation they have before Cloud falls unconscious from Geostigma. What purpose do all the lingering shots of Cloud and Tifa in the flower bed in a Yin-Yang/non-sexual 69ing position serve if not to be suggestive of the type of relationship they have? It’s beautifully rendered but ultimately irrelevant to both the external and internal conflicts of the film.

Likewise, there is no reason why Cloud and Tifa needed to wake up in their children’s bedroom. No reason to show Cloud waking up with Tifa next to him in a way that almost makes you think they were in the same bed. And there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for a close-up of Tifa’s hand with the Wolf Ring on her ring finger while she is admonishing Cloud during what sounds like a domestic argument (This ring again comes into focus when Tifa leads Denzel to Cloud at the church at the end - there are dozens of ways this scene could have been rendered, but this is the one that was chosen.) If it wasn’t SE’s intent to emphasize the family dynamic and the intimate nature of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship, these scenes would not exist.

Let’s also take a look at Denzel, the only new character in the AC (give or take the Remnants). Again, given the film’s brief runtime, the fact that they’re not only adding a new character but giving him more screen time than almost every other AVALANCHE member must mean that he’s pretty important. While Denzel does have an arc of his own, especially in ACC, he is intricately connected to Cloud and Tifa and solidifies the family unit that they’ve been forming in Edge. Marlene still has Barret, but with the addition of Denzel, the family becomes something more real albeit even more tenuous given his Geostigma diagnosis. Without Denzel in the picture, it’s a bit easier to interpret Cloud’s distance from Tifa as romantic pining for another woman, but now it just seems absurd. The stakes are so much higher. Cloud and Tifa are at a completely different stage in their lives from the versions of these characters we met early on in the OG who were entangled in a frivolous love triangle. And yet some people are still stuck trying to fit these characters into a childish dynamic that died at the end of disc one along with a certain someone.

All this is there in the film, at least the director’s cut, if you really squint. But since SE preferred to spend its time on countless action sequences that have aged as well as whole milk in lieu of spending a few minutes showing Cloud’s family life before he got Geostigma to establish the emotional stakes, or a beat or two more on his reconciliation with Tifa and the kids, people may be understandably confused about Cloud’s arc. Has Cloud just been a moping around in misery for the two years post-OG? The answer is no, though that can only really be found in the accompanying novellas, specifically Case of Tifa.

Concerning the novellas, which we apparently must read to understand said DVD sequel

I really don’t know how you can read through CoT and still think there is anything ambiguous about the nature of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. The “Because I have you this time,” Cloud telling Tifa he’ll remind her how to be strong when they’re alone, Cloud confidently agreeing when Marlene adds him to their family. Not to mention Barret and Cid’s brief conversation about Cloud and Tifa’s relationship in Case of Barret, after which Cid comments that “women wear the pants,” which Barret then follows by asking Cid about Shera. Again, a reasonable person would assume the couple in question are in a romantic relationship, and if this wasn’t the intent, these lines would not be present. Especially not in a novella about someone else.

Some try to argue that CoT just shows how incompatible Cloud and Tifa are because it features a few low points in their relationship. I don’t think that’s Nojima’s intent. Even if it was, it certainly wouldn’t be to prove that Cloud loves Aerith. This isn’t how you tell that story. Why waste all that time disproving a negative rather than proving a positive? We didn’t spend hours in FF8 watching Rinoa’s relationship with Seifer fall apart to understand how much better off she is with Squall. If Cloud and Aerith is meant to be a love story, then tell their love story. Why tell the story of how Cloud is incompatible with someone else?

Part of the confusion may be because CoT doesn’t tell a complete story in and of itself. The first half of the story (before Cloud has to deliver flowers to the Forgotten City) acts as a sort of epilogue to the OG, while the second half of the story is something of a prologue to Advent Children (or honestly its missing Act One). And to state the obvious, conflict is inherent to any story worth telling. It can’t just be all fluff, that’s what the fanfiction is for.

Tifa’s conflict is her fear that the fragile little family they’ve built in Edge is going to fall apart. Thus we see her fret about Cloud’s distance, the way this affects Marlene, and Denzel’s sickness. There are certainly some low moments here --- Tifa telling Cloud to drink in his room, asking if he loves her -- all ways for the threat to seem more real, the outcome more uncertain, yet there’s only one way this conflict can be resolved. One direction to which their relationship can move.

Again, by the end of this story, both characters are supposed to be the best versions of themselves, to find their “happy” endings so to speak. Tifa could certainly find happiness outside of a relationship with Cloud. She could decide that they’ve given it a shot, but they’re better off as friends. She’s grateful for this experience and she’s learned from this, but now she’s ready to make a life for herself on her own. It would be a fine character arc, though not something the Final Fantasy series has been wont to do. However, that’s obviously not the case here as there’s no indication whatsoever that Tifa considers this as an option for herself. Nojima hasn’t written this off ramp into her journey. For Tifa, they’ll either become a real family or they won’t. Since this is a story that is going to have a happy ending, so of course they will, even if there are a lot of bumps along the way.

Unfortunately, with the Compilation being the unwieldy beast that this is, this whole arc has to be pieced together across a number of different works:

Tifa asking herself if they’re a real family in CoT

Her greatest fear seemingly come to life when Cloud leaves at the end of CoT/beginning of AC

Tifa explicitly asking Cloud if the reason they can’t help each other is because they’re not a real family during their argument in AC. Notably, even though Cloud is at his lowest point, he doesn’t confirm her fear. Instead he says he that he can’t help anyone, not even his family. Instead, he indirectly confirms that yes he does think they’re a family, even if is a frustrating moment still in that he’s too scared to try to save it.

The ending of AC where we see a new photo of Cloud smiling surrounded by Tifa and the kids and the rest of the AVALANCHE, next to the earlier photo we had seen of the four of them where he was wearing a more dour expression.

The ending of The Kids Are All Right, where Cloud, Tifa, Denzel and Marlene meet with Evan, Kyrie and Vits - and Cloud offers, unsolicited, that even if they’re not related by blood, they’re a family.

The ending of DVD extra ‘Reminiscence of FFVII’ where Cloud takes the day off and asks Tifa to close the bar so they can spend time together as a family as Tifa had wanted to do early in CoT

Cloud fears he’ll fail his family. Tifa fears it’ll fall apart. Cloud retreats into himself, pushing others away. Tifa neglects herself, not being able to say what she needs to say. In Advent Children, Tifa finally voices her frustrations. It’s then that Cloud finally confronts his fears. Like in the OG, Cloud and Tifa’s conflicts and character arcs are two sides of the same coin, and it’s only by communicating with each other are they able to resolve it. Though with the Compilation being an inferior work, it’s much less satisfying this time around. Such is the problem when you’re writing towards a preordained outcome (Cloud and Sephiroth duking it once again) rather than letting the story develop organically.

Some may ask, why mention Aerith so much (Cloud growing distant after delivering flowers to the Forgotten City, Cloud finding Denzel at Aerith’s church) if they weren’t trying to perpetuate the LTD? Well, as explained above, Aerith had to be in Advent Children, and since CoT is the only place where we get any insight into Cloud’s psyche, it’s here where Nojima expands on that guilt.

Again, this is a story that requires conflict, and what better conflict than the specter of a love rival? Notably, despite us having access to Tifa’s thoughts and fears, she never explicitly associates Cloud’s behavior with him pining after Aerith. Though it’s fair to say this fear is implied, if unwarranted.

If Cloud had actually been pining after Aerith this whole time, we would not be seeing it all unfold through Tifa’s perspective. You can depict a romance without drawing attention to the injured third party. We’re seeing all of this from Tifa’s POV, because it’s about Tifa’s insecurities, not the great tragic romance between Cloud and Aerith. Honestly, another reason we see this from Tifa’s perspective is because it’s dramatically more interesting. Because she’s insecure, she (and we the reader) wonder if there’s something else going on. Meanwhile, from Cloud’s perspective it would be straightforward and redundant, given what we see in AC. He’s guilty over Aerith’s death and thinks he doesn’t deserve to be happy.

Not to mention, the first time we encounter Aerith in CoT, Tifa is the one breaking down at her grave while Cloud is the one comforting her. Are we supposed to believe that he just forgot he was in love with Aerith until he had to deliver flowers to the Forgotten City?

And Aerith doesn’t just serve as a romantic obstacle. She’s also a symbol of guilt and redemption for both Cloud and Tifa. Neither think they have the right to be happy after all that’s happened (Aerith’s death being a big part of this), and through Denzel, who Cloud finds at Aerith’s church, they both see a chance to atone.

I do want to address Case of Lifestream: White because it’s only time in the entire Compilation where I’ve asked myself — what are they trying to achieve here? Now, I’d rather drink bleach than start debating the translation of ‘koibito’ again, but I did think it was a strange choice to specify the romantic nature of Aerith’s love for Cloud. I suppose it could be a reference her obvious attraction to Cloud in the OG, though calling it love feels like a stretch.

But nothing else in CoLW really gives me pause. It might be a bit jarring to see how much of it is Aerith’s thoughts of Cloud, but it makes sense when you consider the context in which it’s meant to be consumed. Unlike Case of Tifa or Case of Denzel, CoLW isn’t meant to be read on its own. It’s a few scant paragraphs in direct conversation with Case of Lifestream: Black. In CoLB, Sephiroth talks about his plan to return and end the world or whatever, and how Cloud is instrumental to his plan. Each segment of CoLW mirrors the corresponding segment of CoLB. Thus, CoLW has to be about Aerith’s plan to stop Sephiroth and the role Cloud must play in that. In both of these stories, Cloud is the only named character. It doesn’t mean that thoughts of Cloud consume all of Aerith’s afterlife. Case of Lifestream is only a tiny sliver of the story, a halfassed way to explain why in Advent Children the world is ending again and why Cloud has to be at the center of it all.

Notably, there is absolutely nothing in CoLW about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith. Even if it’s just speculation on her part as we see Sephiroth speculate about Cloud’s reactions in CoLB. Aerith can see what’s going on in the real world, but she says nothing about Cloud’s actions. If Cloud is really pining after her, trying to find a way to be reunited with her, wouldn’t this be the ideal story to show such devotion?

But it’s not there, because not only does it not happen, but because this story is not about Aerith’s relationship with Cloud. It is about how Aerith needs to see and warn Cloud in order to stop Sephiroth. By the end of Advent Children, that goal is fulfilled. Cloud gets his forgiveness. Aerith gets to see him again and helps him stop Sephiroth. There’s no suggestion that either party wants more. We finally have the closure that the OG lacked, and at no point does it confirm that Cloud reciprocated Aerith’s romantic feelings, even though there were plenty of opportunities to do so.

I don’t really know what else people were expecting. Advent Children isn’t a romantic drama. There’s not going to be a moment where Cloud explicitly tells Tifa, ‘I’ve never loved Aerith. It’s only been you all along.” This is just simply not the kind of story it is.

Though one late scene practically serves this function. When Cloud “dies” and Aerith finds him in the Lifestream, if there were any lingering romantic feelings between the two of them, this would be a beautiful bittersweet reunion. Maybe something about how as much as they want to be together, it’s not his time yet. Instead, it’s almost played off as a joke. Cloud calls her ‘Mother’, and Zack is at Aerith’s side, joking about how Cloud has no place there. This would be the perfect opportunity to address the romantic connection between Cloud and Aerith, but instead, the film elides this completely. Instead, it’s a cute afterlife moment between Aerith and Zack, and functionally allows Cloud to go back to where he belongs, to Tifa and the kids. Whatever Cloud’s feelings for Aerith were before, it’s transformed into something else.

Crisis Core -- or how Aerith finally gets her love story

The other relevant part of the Compilation is Crisis Core, which I will now touch on briefly (or at least brief for me). In the OG, Zack Fair was more plot device than character. We knew he was important to Cloud — enough that Cloud would mistake Zack’s memories for his own -- we knew he was important to Aerith — enough that she is initially drawn to Cloud due to his similarities to Zack — yet the nature of these relationships is more ambiguous. Especially his relationship with Aerith. From the little we learn of their relationship, it could have been completely one-sided on her part, and Zack a total cad. At least that’s the implication she leaves us with in Gongaga. We get the sense that she might not be the most reliable narrator on this point (why bring up an ex so often, unsolicited, if it wasn’t anything serious?) but the OG never confirms this either way.

Crisis Core clears this up completely. Not only is Zack portrayed as the Capital H Hero of his own game, but his relationships with Cloud and Aerith are two of the most important in the game. In fact, they are the basis for his heroic sacrifice at the game’s end: he dies trying to save Cloud’s life; he dies trying to return to Aerith.

Zack’s relationship with Aerith is a major subplot of the game. Not only that, but the details of said relationship completely recontextualizes what we know about the Aerith we see in the OG. Many of Aerith’s most iconic traits (wearing pink, selling flowers) are a direct product of this relationship, and more importantly, so many of the hallmarks of her early relationship with Cloud (him falling through her church, one date as a reward, a conversation in the playground) are a direct echo of her relationship with Zack.

A casual fling this was not. Aerith’s relationship with Zack made a deep impact on the character we see in the OG and clearly colored her interactions with Cloud throughout.

Crisis Core is telling Zack’s story, and Tifa is a fairly minor supporting character, yet it still finds the time to expand upon Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. Through their interactions with Zack, we learn just how much they were on each others’ minds during this time, and how they were both too shy to own up to these feelings. We also get a brief expansion on the moment Cloud finds Tifa injured in the reactor.

Meanwhile, given the point we are in the story’s chronology, Cloud and Aerith are completely oblivious of each other’s existence.

One may try to argue that none of this matters since all of this is in the past. While this argument might hold water if we arguing about real lives in the real world, FF7 is a work of fiction. Its creators decided that these would be events we would see, and that Zack would be the lens through which we’d see them. Crisis Core is not the totality of these characters’ lives prior to the event of the OG. Rather, it consists of moments that enhance and expand upon our understanding of the original work. We learn the full extent of Hojo’s experimentation and the Jenova project; we learn that Sephiroth was actually a fairly normal guy before he was driven insane when he uncovers the circumstances of his birth. We learn that Aerith was a completely different person before she met Zack, and their relationship had a profound impact on her character.

A prequel is not made to contradict the original work, but what it can do is recontexualize the story we already know and add a layer of nuance that may have not been obvious before. Thus, Sephiroth is transformed from a scary villain into a tragic figure who could have been a hero were it not for Hojo’s experiments. Aerith’s behavior too invites reinterpretation. What once seemed flirty and perhaps overtly forward now looks like the tragic attempts of a woman trying to recapture a lost love.

If Cloud and Aerith were meant to be the official couple of the Compilation of FF7, you absolutely would not be spending so much time depicting two relationships that will be moot by the time we get to the original work. You especially would not depict Zack and Aerith’s relationship in a way that makes Aerith’s relationship with Cloud look like a copy of the moments she had with her ex.

Additionally, with Zack’s relationship with Angeal, we can see, that within the universe of FF7, a protagonist being devastated over the death of a beloved comrade isn’t something that’s inherently romantic. Neither is it romantic for said dead comrade to lend a helping hand from the beyond.

SE would also expect some people to play Crisis Core before the OG. If Cloud and Aerith are the intended endgame couple, then SE would be asking the player to root for a guy to pursue the girlfriend of the man who gave his life for him. The same man who died trying to reunite with her. This is to say nothing of Cloud’s treatment of Tifa in this scenario. How could this possibly be the intent for their most popular protagonist in the most popular entry of their most popular franchise?

What Crisis Core instead offers is something for fans of Aerith who may be disappointed that she was robbed of a great romance by her death. Well, she now gets that epic, tragic romance. Only it’s with Zack, not Cloud.

If SE intended for Cloud and Aerith to be the official couple of FF7, neither Zack nor Tifa would exist. They would not spend so much time developing Zack and Tifa into the multi-dimensional characters they are, only to be treated as nothing more than collateral damage in the wake of Cloud and Aerith’s great love. No, this is a Final Fantasy. SE want their main characters to have something of a happy ending after all of the tribulations they face. Cloud and Tifa find theirs in life. Zack and Aerith, as the ending of AC suggests, find theirs in death.

Cloud and Aerith’s relationship isn’t a threat to the Zack/Aerith and Cloud/Tifa endgame, nor is it a mere obstacle. Rather, it’s a relationship that actually deepens and strengthens the other two. Aerith is explicitly searching for her first love in Cloud, revealing just how deep her feelings for Zack ran. Cloud gets to live out his heroic SOLDIER fantasy with Aerith, a fantasy he created just to impress Tifa.

There are moments between Cloud and Aerith that may seem romantic when taken on its own, but viewed within the context of the whole narrative, ultimately reveal that they aren’t quite right for each other, and in each other, they’re actually searching for someone else.

This quadrangular dynamic reminds me a bit of one of my favorite classic films, The Philadelphia Story. (Spoilers for a film that came out in 1940 ahead) — The single most romantic scene in the film is between Jimmy Stewart’s and Katherine Hepburn’s characters, yet they’re not the ones who end up together. Even as their passions run, as the music swells, and we want them to end up together, we realize that they’re not quite right for each other. We know that it won’t work out.

More relevantly, we know this is true due to the existence of Cary Grant’s and Ruth Hussey’s characters, who are shown to carry a torch for Hepburn and Stewart, respectively. Grant and Hussey are well-developed and sympathetic characters. With the film being the top grossing film of the year, and made during the Code era, it’s about as “clean” of a narrative as you can get. There’s no way Grant and Hussey would be given such prominent roles just to be left heartbroken and in the cold by the film’s end.

Hepburn’s character (Tracy) pretty much sums it herself after some hijinks lead to a last minute proposal from Stewart’s character (Mike):

Mike: Will you marry me, Tracy?

Tracy: No, Mike. Thanks, but hmm-mm. Nope.

Mike: l've never asked a girl to marry me. l've avoided it. But you've got me all confused now. Why not?

Tracy: Because l don't think Liz [Hussey’s character] would like it...and l'm not sure you would...and l'm even a little doubtful about myself. But l am beholden to you, Mike. l'm most beholden.

Despite the fact that the film spends more time developing Hepburn and Stewart’s relationship than theirs with their endgame partners, it’s still such a satisfying ending. That’s because, even at the peak of their romance, we can see how Stewart needs someone like Hussey to ground his passionate impulses, and how Hepburn needs Grant, someone who won’t put her on a pedestal like everyone else. Hepburn and Stewart’s is a relationship that might feel right in the moment, but doesn’t quite work in the light of day.

I don’t think Cloud and Aerith share a moment that is nearly as romantic in FF7, but the same principle applies. What may seem romantic in the moment actually reveals how they’re right for someone else.

Even if Aerith lives and Cloud decides to pursue a relationship with her, it’s not going to be all puppies and roses ahead for them. Aerith would need to disentangle her feelings for Zack from her attraction to Cloud, and Cloud would still need to confront his feelings for Tifa, which were his main motivator for nearly half his life, before they can even start to build something real. This is messy work, good fodder for a prestige cable drama or an Oscar-baity indie film, but it has no place in a Final Fantasy. There simply isn’t the time. Not when the question on most players’ minds isn’t ‘Cloud does love?’ but ‘How the hell are they going to stop that madman and his Meteor that’s about to destroy the world?’

With Zerith’s depiction in Crisis Core, there’s a sort of bittersweet poetry in how the two relationships rhyme but can’t actually coexist. It is only because Zack is trying to return to Midgar to see Aerith that Cloud is able to reunite with Tifa, and the OG begins in earnest. In another world, Zack and Aerith would be the hero and heroine who saved the world and lived to tell the tale. They are much more the traditional archetypes - Zack the super-powered warrior who wants to be a Capital-H Hero, and Aerith, the last of her kind who reluctantly accepts her fate. Compared to these two, Cloud and Tifa aren’t nearly so special, nor their goals so lofty and noble. Cloud, after all, was too weak to even get into SOLDIER, and only wanted to be one, not for some greater good, but to impress the girl he liked. Tifa has no special abilities, merely learning martial arts when she grew wise enough to not wait around for a hero. On the surface, Cloud and Tifa are made of frailer stuff, and yet by luck or by fate, they’re the ones who cheat death time and time again, and manage to save the world, whereas the ones who should have the role, are prematurely struck down before they can finish the job. Cloud and Tifa fulfill the roles that they never asked for, that they may not be particularly suited for, in Zack and Aerith’s stead. There’s a burden and a beauty to it. Cloud and Tifa can live because Zack and Aerith did not.

All of this nuance is lost if you think Cloud and Aerith are meant to be the endgame couple. Instead, you have a pair succumbing to their basest desires, regardless of the selfless sacrifices their other potential paramours made for their sake. Zack and Tifa, and their respective relationships with Aerith and Cloud, are flattened into mere romantic obstacles. The heart wants what it wants, some may argue. While that may be true in real life, that is not necessarily the case in a work of fiction, especially not a Final Fantasy. The other canon Final Fantasy couples could certainly have had previous romantic relationships, but unless they have direct relevance to the their character arcs (e.g., Rachel to Locke), the games do not draw attention to them because they would be a distraction from the romance they are trying to tell. They’ve certainly never spent the amount of real estate FF7 spends in depicting Cloud/Tifa and Zack/Aerith’s relationships.

At last…the Remake, and somehow this essay isn’t even close to being over

Finally, we come to the Remake. With the technological advancements made in the last 23 years and the sheer amount of hours they’re devoting to just the Midgar section this time around, you can almost look at the OG as an outline and the Remake as the final draft. With the OG being overly reliant on text to do its storytelling, and the Remake having subtle facial expressions and a slew of cinematic techniques at its disposal, you might almost consider it an adaptation from a literary medium to a visual one. Our discussions are no longer limited to just what the characters are saying, but what they are doing, and even more importantly, how the game presents those actions. When does the game want us to pay attention? And what does it want us to pay attention to?

Unlike most outlines, which are read by a small handful of execs, SE has 23 years worth of reactions from the general public to gauge what works and what doesn’t work, what caused confusion, and what could be clarified. While FF7 is not a romance, the LTD remains a hot topic among a small but vocal part of the fanbase. It certainly is an area that could do with some clarifying in the Remake.

Since the Remake is not telling a new story, but rather retelling an existing story that has been in the public consciousness for over two decades, certain aspects that were treated as “twists” in the OG no longer have that same element of surprise, and would need to approached differently. For example, in the Midgar section of the OG, Shinra is treated as the main antagonist throughout. It’s only when we get to the top of the Shinra tower that Sephiroth is revealed as the real villain. Anyone with even a passing of knowledge of FF7 would be aware of Sephiroth so trying to play it off like a surprise in the Remake would be terribly anticlimactic. Thus, Sephiroth appears as early as Ch. 2 to haunt Cloud and the player throughout.

Likewise, many players who’ve never even touched the OG are probably aware that Aerith dies, thus her death can no longer be played for shock. While SE would still want the player to grow attached to Aerith so that her death has an emotional impact, there are diminishing returns to misdirecting the player about her fate, at least not in the same way it was done in the OG.

How do these considerations affect the how the LTD is depicted in the Remake? For the two of the biggest twists in the OG to land in the Remake — Aerith’s death and Cloud’s true identity in the Lifestream — the game needs to establish:

Aerith’s attraction to Cloud, specifically due to his similarities to Zack. This never needs to go past an initial attraction for the player to understand that the man whose memory Cloud was “borrowing” is Zack. Aerith’s feelings for Cloud can evolve into something platonic or even maternal by her end without the reveal in the Lifestream losing any impact.

Cloud’s love for Tifa. For the Lifestream sequence to land with an “Ooooh!” rather than a “Huh!?!?”, the Remake will need to establish that Cloud’s feelings for Tifa were strong enough to 1) motivate him to try to join SOLDIER in the first place 2) incentivize him to adopt a false persona because he fears that he isn’t the man she wants him to be 3) call him back to consciousness from Make poisoning twice 4) help him put his mind back together and find his true self. That’s a lot of story riding on one guy’s feelings!

The player’s love for Aerith so that her death will hurt. This can be done by making them invested in Aerith as a character by her own right, but also extends to the relationships she has with the other characters (not only Cloud).

What is not necessary is establishing Cloud’s romantic feelings for Aerith. Now, would their doomed romance make her death hurt even more? Sure, but it could work just as well if Cloud if is losing a dear friend and ally, not a lover. Not to mention, her death also cuts short her relationships with Tifa, Barret, Red XII, etc. Bulking those relationships up prior to her death, would also make her loss more palpable. If anything, establishing Cloud’s romantic feelings for Aerith would actually undermine the game’s other big twist. The game needs you to believe that Cloud’s feelings for Tifa were strong enough to drive his entire hero’s journey. If Cloud is shown falling in love with another woman in the span of weeks if not mere days, then the Lifestream scene would be much harder to swallow.

Cloud wavering between the two women made sense in the OG because the main way for the player to get to know Aerith was through her interactions with Cloud. That is no longer the case in the Remake. Cloud is still the protagonist, and the player character for the vast majority of the game, but there are natural ways for the player to get to know Aerith outside of her dialogue exchanges with Cloud. Unless SE considers the LTD an integral part of FF7’s DNA, then for the sake of story clarity, the LTD doesn’t need to exist.

How then does the Remake clarify things?

I’m not going go through every single change in the Remake — there are far too many of them, and they’ve been documented elsewhere. Most of the changes are expansions or adaptations (what might make sense for super-deformed chibis would look silly for realistic characters, e.g., Cloud rolling barrels in the Church has now become him climbing across the roof support). What is expanded and how it’s adapted can be telling, but what is more interesting are the additions and removals. Not just for what takes place in the scenes themselves, but how their addition or removal changes our understanding of the narrative as a whole vis-a-vis the story we know from the OG.

Notably, one of the features that is not expanded upon, but rather diminished, is player choice. In the OG, the player had a slew of dialogue options to choose from, especially during the Midgar portion of the game. Not only did it determine which character would go on a date with Cloud at the Gold Saucer, but it also made the player identify with Cloud since they’re largely determining his personality during this stage. Despite the technological advances that have made this level of optionality the norm in AAA games, the Remake gives the player far fewer non-gameplay related choices, and only really the illusion of choice as a nod to the OG, but they don’t affect the story of the game in any meaningful way. You get a slightly different conversation depending on the choice, but you have to buy the Flower, Tifa has to make you a drink.

So much of what fueled the LTD in the OG came from this mechanic, which is now largely absent in the Remake. Almost every instance where there was a dialogue branch in the OG has become a single, canon scenario in the Remake that favors Tifa (e.g., having the choice of giving the flower to Tifa or Marlene in the OG, to Cloud giving the flower to Tifa in the Remake). Similarly, for the only meaningful choice you make in the Remake — picking Tifa or Aerith in the sewers — Cloud is now equidistant to both girls, whereas in the OG, his starting point was much closer to Aerith. In the OG, player choice allowed you to largely determine Cloud’s personality, and the girl he favored — and seemingly encouraged you to choose Aerith in many instances. In the Remake, Cloud is now his own character, not who the player wants him to be. And this Cloud, well, he sure seems to have a thing for Tifa.

In fact, one of the first changes in the Remake is the addition of Jessie asking Cloud about his relationship with Tifa, and Cloud’s brief flashback to their childhood together. In the OG, Tifa isn’t mentioned at all during the first reactor mission, and we don’t see her until we get to Sector 7.

Not only does this scene reveal Tifa’s importance to Cloud much earlier on than in the OG, but it sets up a sort of frame of reference that colors Cloud’s subsequent interactions. Even as Jessie kind of flirts with him throughout the reactor mission, even with his chance meeting Aerith in Sector 8, in the back of your mind, you might be thinking — wait what about his relationship with this Tifa character? What if he’s already spoken for?

Think about how this plays out in the OG. Jessie is pretty much a non-entity, and Cloud has his meet-cute with the flower girl before we’re even aware that Tifa exists. It’s hard to get too invested in his interactions with Tifa, when you know he has to meet the flower girl again, and you’re waiting for that moment, because that’s when the game will start in earnest.

After chapter 1 of the Remake, a new player may be asking — who is this Tifa person, and, echoing Jessie’s question, what kind of relationship does she have with Cloud? It’s a question that’s repeated when Barret mentions her before they set the bomb, and again when Barret specifies Seventh Heaven is where Tifa works — and the game zooms in on Cloud’s face — when they arrive in Sector 7.

It’s when we finally meet her at Seventh Heaven in Ch. 3 that we feel, ah now, this game has finally begun.

It’s also interesting how inorganically this question is introduced in the Remake. Up until that moment, the dialogue and Cloud are all business. Then, as they’re waiting for the gate to open, Jessie asks about Tifa completely out of the blue, and Cloud, all of a sudden, is at a lost for words, and has the first of many flashbacks. That this moment is a bit incongruous shows the effort SE made to establish Tifa’s importance to the game and to Cloud early on.

One of the biggest changes in the Remake is the addition of the events in Ch. 3 and 4. Unlike what happens in Ch. 18, Ch. 3 and 4 feel like such a natural extension of the OG’s story that many players may not even realize that SE has added an whole day’s and night’s worth of events to the OG’s story. While not a drastic change, it does reshape our understanding of subsequent events in the story, namely Cloud’s time spent alone with Aerith.

In the OG, we rush from one reactor mission to the next, with no real time to explore Cloud’s character or his relationships with any of the other characters in between. When he crashes through the church, he gets a bit of a breather. We see a different side of him with Aerith. Since we have nothing else to compare it to, many might assume that his relationship with Aerith is special. That she brings something out of him that no one else can.

That is no longer the case in the Remake. While Cloud’s time in Sector 5 with Aerith remains largely unchanged though greatly expanded, it no longer feels “special.” So many of the beats that seemed exclusive to his relationship with Aerith in the OG, we’ve now already seen play out with both Tifa and the other members of AVALANCHE long before he meets Aerith.

Cloud tells the flowers to listen to Aerith; he’s told Tifa he’s listening if she wants to talk; told Bigg’s he wants to hear the story of Jessie’s dad. Cloud offers to walk Aerith back home; he offered the same to Wedge. Cloud smiles at Aerith; he’s already smiled at Tifa and AVALANCHE a number of times.

Now, I’m under no illusion that SE added these chapters solely to diminish Aerith’s importance to Cloud (other than the obvious goal of making the game longer, I imagine they wanted the player to spend more time in Sector 7 and more time with the other AVALANCHE members so that the collapse of the Pillar and their deaths have more weight), but they certainly must have realized that this would be one effect. If pushing Cloud/Aerith’s romance had been a goal with the Remake, this would be a scenario they would try to avoid. Notably, the other place where time has been added - the night in the Underground Shinra Lab, and the day helping other people out around the slums — are also periods of time when Aerith is absent.

Home Sweet Slums vs. Budding Bodyguard

Since most of the events in Ch. 3 were invented for the Remake, and thus we have nothing in the OG to compare it to (except to say that something is probably better than nothing), I thought it would be more interesting to compare it to Ch. 8. Structurally, they are nearly identical — Cloud doing sidequests around the Sectors with one of the girls as his guide. Extra bits of dialogue the more sidequests you complete, with an optional story event if you do them all. Do Cloud’s relationships with each girl progress the same way in both chapters? Is the Remake just Final Waifu Simulator 2020 or are they distinct, reflecting their respective roles in the story as a whole?

A lot of what the player takes away from these chapters is going to be pretty subjective (Is he annoyed with her or is he playing hard to get), yet the vibes of the two chapters are quite different. This is because in Ch. 3, the player is getting to know Tifa through her relationship with Cloud; in Ch. 8; the player is getting to know Aerith as a character on her own.

What do I mean by this? Let’s take Cloud’s initial introduction into each Sector. In Ch. 3, it’s a straight shot from Seventh Heaven to Stargazer Heights punctuated by a brief conversation where Tifa asks Cloud about the mission he was just on. We don’t learn anything new about Tifa’s character here. Instead we hear Cloud recount the mission we already saw play out in detail in Ch. 1 But it’s through this conversation that we get a glimpse of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship — unlike the reticent jerk he was with Avalanche, this Cloud is much more responsive and even tries to reassure her in his own stilted way. We also know that they have enough of a past together that Tifa can categorize him as “not a people person” — an assessment to which Cloud agrees. Slowly, we’re getting an answer to the question Jessie posed in Ch. 1 — just what kind of relationship does Cloud have with Tifa?

In Ch. 8, Aerith leads Cloud on a roundabout way through Sector 5, and stops, unprompted, to talk about her experiences helping at the restaurant, helping out the doctor, and helping with the orphans at the Leaf House. It’s not so much a conversation as a monologue. Cloud isn’t the one who inquires about these relationships, and more jarringly, he doesn’t respond until Aerith directly asks him a question (interestingly enough, it’s about the flower she gave him…which he then gave to Tifa). Here, the game is allowing the player to learn more about the kind of person Aerith is. Cloud is also learning about Aerith at the same time, but with his non-reaction, either the game itself is indifferent to Cloud’s feelings towards Aerith or it is deliberately trying to portray Cloud’s indifference to Aerith.

The optional story event you can see in each chapter after completing all the side quests is also telling. In Ch. 3, “Alone at Last” is almost explicitly about Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. It’s bookended by two brief scenes between Marle and Cloud — the first in which she lectures him about how he should treat Tifa almost like an overprotective in-law, the second after they return downstairs and Marle awards Cloud with an accessory “imbued with the fervent desire to be by one’s side for eternity” after he makes Tifa smile. In between, Cloud and Tifa chat alone in her room. Tifa finally gets a chance to ask Cloud about his past and they plan a little date to celebrate their reunion. There is also at least the suggestion that Cloud was expecting something else when Tifa asked him to her room.

In Ch. 8’s “The Language of Flowers,” Cloud and Aerith’s relationship is certainly part of the story — unlike earlier in the chapter, Cloud actually asks Aerith about what she’s doing and even supports her by talking to the flowers too, but the other main objective of this much briefer scene is to show Aerith’s relationship with the flowers and of her mysterious Cetra powers (though we don’t know about her ancestry just yet). Like a lot of Aerith’s dialogue, there’s a lot of foreshadowing and foreboding in her words. If anything, it’s almost as if Cloud is playing the Marle role to the flowers, as an audience surrogate to ask Aerith about her relationship with the flowers so that she can explain. Also, there’s no in-game reward that suggests what the scene was really about.

If there’s any confusion about what’s going on here, just compare their titles “Alone At Last” vs. “The Language of Flowers.”

I’ll try not to bring my personal feelings into this, but there’s just something so much more satisfying about the construction of Ch. 3. This is some real storytelling 101 shit, but I think a lot of it due to just how much set up and payoff there is, and how almost all of said payoff deepens our understanding of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship:

Marle: Cloud meets Tifa’s overprotective landlady towards the beginning of the chapter. She is dubious of his character and his relationship with TIfa. This impression does not change the second time they meet even though Tifa herself is there to mediate. It’s only towards the end of the chapter, after all the sidequests are complete, that this tension is resolved. Marle gives Cloud a lecture about how he should be treating Tifa, which he seems to take to heart. And Cloud finally earns Marle’s begrudging approval after he emerges from their rooms with a chipper-looking Tifa in tow.

Their past: For their first in-game interaction, Cloud casually brings up that fact that it’s been “Five years” since they’ve last, which seem to throw Tifa off a bit. As they’re replacing filters, Cloud asks Tifa what she’s been up to in the time since they’ve been apart, and Tifa quickly changes the subject. Tifa tries to ask Cloud about his life “after he left the village,” at the Neighborhood Watch HQ, and this time he’s the one who seems to be avoiding the subject. It’s only after all the Ch. 3 sidequests are complete, and they're alone in her room that Tifa finally gets the chance to ask her question. A question which Cloud still doesn’t entirely answer. This question remains unresolved, and anyone’s played the OG will know that it will remain unresolved for some time yet, as it is THE question of Cloud’s story as a whole.

The lessons: Tifa starts spouting off some lessons for life in the slums as she brings Cloud around the town, though it’s unclear if Cloud is paying attention or taking them to heart. After completing the first sidequest, Cloud repeats one of these sayings back to her, confirming that he’s been listening all along. By the end of the chapter, Cloud is repeating these lessons to himself, even when Tifa isn’t around. These lessons extend beyond this chapter, with Cloud being a real teacher’s pet, asking Tifa “Is this a lesson” in Ch. 10 once they reunite.

The drink: When Cloud first arrives at Seventh Heaven, Tifa plays hostess and asks him if he wants anything, but it seems he’s only interested in his money. After exploring the sector a bit, Tifa again tries to play the role of cheery bartender, offering to make him a cocktail at the bar, but Cloud sees through this facade, and they carry on. Finally, after the day’s work is done, to tide Cloud over while she’s meeting with AVALANCHE, Tifa finally gets the chance to make him a drink. No matter, which dialogue option the player chooses, Tifa and Cloud fall into the roles of flirty bartender and patron quite easily. Who would have thought this was possible from the guy we met in Ch. 1?

This dynamic is largely absent in Ch. 8, except perhaps exploring Aerith’s relationship with the flowers, which “pays off” in the “Language of Flowers” event, but again, that scene is primarily about Aerith’s character rather than her relationship with Cloud. The orphans and the Leaf House are a throughline of the chapter, but they are merely present. There’s no clear progression here as was the case with in Ch. 3. Sure, the kids admire Cloud quite a bit after he saves them, but it’s not like they were dubious of his presence before. They barely paid attention to him. In terms of the impact the kids have on Cloud’s relationship with Aerith, there isn’t much at all. Certainly nothing like the role Marle plays in developing his relationship with Tifa.

The thing is, there are plenty of moments that could have been set ups, only there’s no real follow through. Aerith introduces Cloud around town as her bodyguard, and some people like the Doctor express dubiousness of his ability to do the job, but even after we spend a whole day fighting off monsters, and defeating Rude, there’s no payoff. Not even a throwaway “Wow, great job bodyguarding” comment. Same with the whole “one date” reward. Other than a quick reference on the way to Sector 5, and Aerith threatening to reveal the deal to cajole Cloud into helping her gather flowers, it’s never brought up again, in this chapter, or the rest of the game.

Aerith also makes a big stink about Cloud taking the time to enjoy Elmyra’s cooking. This is after Cloud is excluded from AVALANCHE’s celebration in Seventh Heaven and after he misses out on Jessie’s mom’s “Midgar Special” with Biggs and Wedge. So this could have been have been the set up to Cloud finally getting to experience a nice, domestic moment where he feels like he’s part of a family. And this dinner does happen! Only…the Remake skips over it entirely. Which is quite a strange choice considering that almost every other waking moment of Cloud’s time in Midgar has been depicted in excruciating detail. SE has decided that either whatever happened in this dinner between these three characters is irrelevant to the story they’re trying to tell, or they’ve deliberately excluded this scene from the game so that the player wouldn’t get any wrong ideas from it (e.g., that Cloud is starting to feel at home with Aerith).

Speaking of home, the Odd Jobs in Ch. 3 feel a bit more meaningful outside of just the gameplay-related rewards because they’re a way for Cloud to improve his reputation as he considers building a life for himself in Sector 7. This intent is implicit as Tifa imparts upon him the life lessons for surviving the slums, and then explicit, when Tifa asks him if he’s going to “stick around a little longer” outside of Seventh Heaven and he answers maybe. (It is later confirmed when Cloud and Tifa converse in his room in Ch. 4 after he remembers their promise).

Despite Aerith’s endeavors to extend their time together, there’s no indication that Cloud is planning to put down roots in Sector 5, or even return. Not even after doing all the Odd Jobs. If anything, it’s just the opposite — after 3 Odd Jobs, Aerith, kind of jokingly tells Cloud “don’t think you can rely on me forever.” This is a line that has a deeper meaning for anyone who knows Aerith’s fate in the OG, but Cloud seems totally fine with the outcome. Similarly, at the end of the Chapter 8, Elmyra asks Cloud to leave and never speak to Aerith again — a request to which he readily agrees.

Adding to the different vibes of the Chapters are the musical themes that play in the background. In Ch. 3, it’s the “Main Theme of VII”, followed by “On Our Way” — two tracks that instantly recall the OG. While the Main Theme is a bit melancholy, it's also familiar. It feels like home. In Ch. 8, we have an instrumental version of ‘Hollow’ - the new theme written for the Remake. While, it’s a lovely piece, it’s unfamiliar and honestly as a bit anxiety inducing (as is the intent).

(A quick aside to address the argument that this proves ‘Hollow’ is about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith:

Which of course doesn’t make any damn sense because he hasn’t even lost Aerith at this point the story. Even if you want to argue that there is so timey-wimey stuff going on and the whole purpose of the Remake is to rewrite the timeline so that Cloud doesn’t lose Aerith around — shouldn’t there be evidence of this desire outside of just the background music? Perhaps, in Cloud’s actions during the Chapter which the song plays — shouldn’t he dread being parted from her, shouldn’t he be the one trying to extend their time together? Instead, he’s willing to let her go quite easily.

The more likely explanation as to why “Hollow” plays in Ch. 8 is that since the “Main Theme of FFVII” already plays in Ch. 3, the other “main theme” written for the Remake is going to play in the other chapter with a pseudo-open world vibe. If you’re going to say “Hollow” is about Cloud’s feelings for Aerith then you’d have to accept that the Main Theme of the entire series is about Cloud’s feelings for Tifa, which would actually make a bit more sense given that is practically Cloud’s entire character arc.)

Both chapters contain a scripted battle that must be completed before the chapter can end. They both contain a shot where Cloud fights side by side with each of the girls.

Here, Cloud and Tifa are both in focus during the entirety of this shot.

Here, the focus pulls away from Cloud the moment Aerith enters the frame.

I doubt the developers expected most players to notice this particular technique, but it reflects the subtle differences in the way these two relationships are portrayed. By the end of Ch. 3, Cloud and Tifa are acting as one unit. By the end of Ch. 8, even when they’re together, Cloud and Aerith are still apart.

A brief (lol) overview of some meaningful changes from the OG

One of the most significant changes in the Sector 7 chapters is how The Promise flashback is depicted. In the OG, Tifa is the one who has to remind Cloud of the Promise, in a rather pushy way, and whether Cloud chooses to join the next mission to fulfill his promise to her or because Barret is giving him a raise feels a bit more ambiguous.

In the Remake, the Promise has it’s own little mini-arc. It’s first brought up at the end of Ch. 3 when Cloud talks to Tifa about her anxieties about the upcoming mission. Tifa subtly references the Promise by mentioning that she’s “in a pitch” — a reference that goes over Cloud’s head. It’s only in Ch. 4, in the middle of a mission with Biggs and Wedge, where Tifa is no where in sight, that a random building fan reminds him of the Nibelheim water tower and the Promise he made to Tifa there. There’s also another brief flashback to that earlier moment in the bar when Tifa mentions she’s in a “pinch.” Again, the placement of this particular flashback at this particular moment feels almost jarring. And the flashback to the scene in the bar — a flashback to a scene we’ve already seen play out in-game — is the only one of its kind in the Remake. SE went out of the way to show that this particular moment is very important to Cloud and the game as whole. It’s when Cloud returns to his room, and Tifa asks him if he’s planning to stay in Midgar, that this mini-arc is finally complete. He brings up the Promise on his own, and makes it explicit that the reason he’s staying is for her. It’s to fulfill his Promise to her, not for money or for AVALANCHE — at this point, he’s not even supposed to be going on the next mission.

The Reactor 5 chapters are greatly expanded, but there aren’t really any substantive changes other than the addition of the rather intimate train roll scene between and Cloud and Tifa, which adds nothing to the story except to establish how horny they are for each other. We know this is the case, of course, because if you go out of your way to make Cloud look like an incompetent idiot and let the timer run out, you can avoid this scene altogether. But even in that alternate scene, Cloud’s concern for Tifa is crystal clear.

Ch. 8 also plays out quite similarly to the OG for the most part, though Cloud’s banter with Aerith on the rooftops doesn’t feel all that special since we’ve already seen him do the same with Tifa, Barret and the rest of AVALANCHE. The rooftops is the first place Cloud laughs in the OG. In the Remake, while Cloud might not have straight out laughed before, he’s certainly smiled quite a bit in the preceding chapters. Also, with the addition of voice acting and realistic facial expressions, that “laughter” in the Remake comes off much more sarcastic than genuine.

It’s also notable that in the Remake, Cloud vocally protests almost every time Aerith tries to extend their time together. In the OG, Cloud says nothing in these moments, which the player could reasonably interpret as assent.

One major change in the Remake is how Aerith learns of Tifa’s existence. In the OG, Cloud mentions that he wants to go back to Tifa’s bar, prompting Aerith to ask him about his relationship with her. In the Remake, Cloud calls Tifa’s name after having a random flashback of Child Tifa as he’s walking along with some kids. Again the insertion of said flashback is a bit jarring, prompting Aerith to understandably ask Cloud about just who this Tifa is. In the OG, this exchange served to show Aerith’s jealousy and her interest in Cloud. In the Remake, it’s all about Cloud’s feelings for Tifa and his inability to articulate them. As for Aerith, I suppose you can still read her reaction as jealous, though simple curiosity is a perfectly reasonable way to read it too. It plays out quite similarly to Aerith asking Cloud about who he gave the flower to. Her follow ups seem indicate that she’s merely curious about who this recipient might be rather than showing that she’s upset/jealous of the fact that said person exists.

For the collapsed tunnel segment, the Remake adds the recurring bit of Aerith and Cloud trying to successfully complete a high-five. While this is certainly a way to show them getting closer, it’s about least intimate way that SE could have done so. Just think about the alternatives — you could have Cloud and Aerith sharing brief tidbits of their lives after each mechanical arm, you could have them trying to reach for each other’s hand. Instead, SE chose an action that is we’ve seen performed between a number of different platonic buddies, and an action that Aerith immediately performs with Tifa upon meeting her. Not to mention, even while they are technically getting closer, Cloud still rejects (or at least tries to) Aerith’s invitations to extend their time together twice — at the fire and at the playground.

One aspect from these two Chapters that does has plenty of set up and a satisfying payoff is Aerith’s interest in Cloud’s SOLDIER background. You have the weirdness of Aerith already knowing that Cloud was in SOLDIER without him mentioning it first, followed by Elmyra’s antipathy towards SOLDIERs in general, not to mention Aerith actively fishing for information about Cloud’s time in SOLDIER. (For players who’ve played Crisis Core, the reason for her behavior is even more obvious, with her “one date” gesture mirroring Zack’s, and her line to Cloud in front of the tunnel a near duplicate of what she says to Zack — at least in the original Japanese).

Finally, at the playground, it’s revealed that the reason for all this weirdness is because Aerith’s first love was also a SOLDIER who was the same rank as Cloud. Unlike in the OG, Cloud does not exhibit any potential jealousy by asking about the nature of her relationship, and Aerith doesn’t try to play it off by dismissing the seriousness. In fact, with the emotional nuance we can now see on her face, we can understand the depth of her feelings even if she cannot articulate them.

This is the first scene in the Remake where Cloud and Aerith have a genuine conversation. Thus, finally, Cloud expresses some hesitation before he leaves her — and as far as he knows, this could be the last time they see each other. You can interpret this hesitation as romantic longing or it could just as easily be Cloud being a bit sad to part from a new friend. Regardless, it’s notable that scene is preceded by one where Aerith is talking about her first love who she clearly isn’t over, and followed by a scene where Cloud sprints across the screen, without a backwards glance at Aerith, after seeing a glimpse of Tifa through a tiny window in a Chocobo cart that’s about a hundred yards away.

The Wall Market segment in the Remake is quite explicitly about Cloud’s desire to save Tifa. In the OG, Aerith has no trouble getting into Corneo’s mansion on her own, so I can see how someone could misinterpret Cloud going through all the effort to dress as a woman to protect Aerith from the Don’s wiles (though of course, you would need to ask, why they trying to infiltrate the mansion in the first place?). In the Remake, Cloud has to go through herculean efforts to even get Aerith in front of the Don. Everyone who is aware of Cloud’s cause, from Sam to Leslie to Johnny to Andrea to Aerith herself, comments on how hard he’s working to save Tifa and how important she must be to him for him to do so. In case there’s any confusion, the Remake also includes a scene where Cloud is prepared to bust into the mansion on his own, leaving Aerith to fend for herself, after Johnny comes with news that Tifa is in trouble.

Both Cloud and Aerith get big dress reveals in the Remake. If you get Aerith’s best dress, Cloud’s reaction can certainly be read as one of attraction, but since the game continues on the same regardless of which dress you get, it’s not meant to mark a shift in Cloud and Aerith’s relationship. Rather, it’s a reward for the player for completing however many side quests in Ch. 8, especially since the Remake incentives the player to get every dress and thus see all of Cloud’s reactions by making it a Trophy and including it in the play log.

A significant and very welcome change from the OG to the Remake is Tifa and Aerith’s relationship dynamic. In the OG, the girls’ first meeting in Corneo’s mansion starts with them fighting over Cloud (by pretending not to fight over Cloud). In the Remake, the sequence of events is reversed so that it starts off with Cloud’s reunion with Tifa (again emphasizing that the whole purpose of the infiltration is because Cloud wants to save Tifa). Then when Aerith wakes, she’s absolutely thrilled to make Tifa’s acquaintance, hardly acknowledging Cloud at all. Tifa is understandably more wary at first, but once they start working together, they become fast friends.

Also interesting is that from the moment Aerith and Tifa meet, almost every instance where Cloud could be shown worrying about Aerith or trying to comfort Aerith is given to Tifa instead. In the OG, it’s Cloud who frets about Aerith getting involved in the plot to question the Don, and regrets getting her mixed up in everything once they land in the sewers. In the Remake, those very same reservations are expressed by Tifa instead. Tifa is the one who saves Aerith when the platform collapses in the sewer. Tifa is the one who emotionally comforts Aerith after they’re separated in the train graveyard. (Cloud might be the one who physically saves her, but he doesn’t even so much give her a second glance to check on her well-being before he runs off to face Eligor. He leaves that job for Tifa). It almost feels like the Remake is going out of its way to avoid any moments between Cloud and Aerith that could be interpreted as romantic. In fact, after Corneo’s mansion, unless you get Aerith’s resolution, there are almost no one-on-one interactions at all between Cloud and Aerith. Such is not the case with Cloud and Tifa. In fact, right after defeating Abzu in the sewers, Cloud runs after Tifa, and asks her if what she’s saying is one of those slum lessons — continuing right where they left off.

Ch. 11 feels like a wink-wink nudge-nudge way to acknowledge the LTD. You have the infamous shot of the two girls on each of Cloud’s arms, and two scenes where Cloud appears as if he’s unable to choose between them when he asks them if they’re okay. Of course, in this same Chapter, you have a scene during the boss fight with the Phantom where Cloud actually pulls Tifa away from Aerith, leaving Aerith to defend herself, for an extended sequence where he tries to keep Tifa safe. This is not something SE would include if their intention is to keep Cloud’s romantic interest ambiguous or if Aerith is meant to be the one he loves. Of course, Ch. 11 is not the first we see of this trio’s dynamic. We start with Ch. 10, which is all about Aerith and Tifa’s friendship. Ch. 11 is a nod to the LTD dynamic in the OG, but it’s just that, a nod, not an indication the Remake is following the same path. Halfway through Ch. 11, the dynamic completely disappears.

Ch. 12 changes things up a bit from the OG. Instead of Cloud and Tifa ascending the pillar together, Cloud goes up first. Seemingly just so that we can have the dramatic slow-mo handgrab scene between the two of them when Tifa decides to run after Cloud — right after Aerith tells her to follow her heart.

The Remake also shows us what happens when Aerith goes to find Marlene at Seventh Heaven — including the moment when Aerith sees the flower she gave Cloud by the bar register, and Aerith is finally able to connect the dots. After seeing Cloud be so cagey about who he gave the flower to, and weird about his relationship with Tifa, and after seeing how Cloud and Tifa act around each other. It finally makes sense. She’s figured it out before they have. It’s a beautiful payoff to all that set up. Any other interpretation of Aerith’s reaction doesn’t make a lick of sense, because if it’s to indict she’s jealous of Tifa, where is all the set up for that? Why did the Remake eliminate all the moments from the OG where she had been noticeably jealous before? Without this, that interpretation makes about as much sense as someone arguing Aerith is smiling because she’s thinking about a great sandwich she had the night before. In case anyone is confused, the scene is preceded by a moment where Aerith tells Tifa to follow her heart before she goes after Cloud, and followed by the moment where Cloud catches Tifa via slow-motion handgrab.

On the pillar itself, there are so many added moments of Cloud showing his concern for Tifa’s physical and emotional well-being. Even when they find Jessie, as sad as Cloud is over Jessie’s death, the game actually spends more time showing us Cloud’s reaction to Tifa crying over Jessie’s death, and Cloud’s inability to comfort her. Since so much of this is physical rather than verbal, this couldn’t have effectively been shown in the OG with its technological limitations.

After the pillar collapses, we start off with a couple of other moments showing Cloud’s concern over Tifa — watching over her as she wakes, his dramatic fist clench while he watches Barret comfort Tifa in a way he cannot. There is also a subtle but important change in the dialogue. In the OG, Tifa is the one who tells Barret that Marlene is safe because she was with Aerith. Cloud is also on his way to Sector 5, but it’s for the explicit purpose of trying to save Aerith, which we know because Tifa asks. In the Remake, Tifa is too emotionally devastated to comfort Barret about Marlene. Cloud, trying to help in the only way he can, is now the one to tell Barret about Marlene. Leading them to Sector 5 is no longer about him trying to help Aerith, but about him reuniting Barret with his daughter. Again, another moment where Cloud shows concern about Aerith in the OG is eliminated from the Remake.

Rather than going straight from Aerith’s house to trying to figure out a way into the Shinra building to find Aerith, the group takes a detour to check out the ruins of Sector 7 and rescue Wedge from Shinra’s underground lab. It’s only upon seeing the evidence of Shinra’s inhumane experimentation firsthand that Cloud articulates to Elmyra the need to rescue Aerith. In the OG, they never sought out Elmyra’s permission, and Tifa explicitly asks to join Cloud on his quest. Rescuing Aerith is framed as primarily Cloud’s goal, Tifa and Barret are just along for the ride.

In the Remake, all three wait until Elymra gives them her blessing, and it’s framed (quite literally) as the group’s collective goal as opposed to just Cloud’s.

In the aptly named Ch. 14 resolutions, each marks the culmination of the character’s arc for the Part 1 of Remake. While their arcs are by no means complete, they do offer a nice preview of what their ultimate resolutions will be.

With the exception of Tifa’s, these resolutions are primarily about the character themselves. Their relationships with Cloud are secondary. Each resolution marks a change in the character themselves, but not necessarily a change in Cloud’s relationship with said character. Barret recommits to AVALANCHE’s mission and his role as a leader despite the deep personal costs. Aerith’s is full of foreshadowing as she accept her fate and impending death and decides to make the most of the time she has left. After trying to put aside her own feelings for the sake of others the whole time, Tifa finally allows herself to feel the full devastation of losing her home for the second time. Like her ultimate resolution in the Lifestream that we’ll see in about 25 years, Cloud is the only person she can share this sentiment with because he was the only person who was there.

Barret does not grow closer to Cloud through his resolution. Cloud has already proved himself to him by helping out on the pillar and reuniting him with Marlene. Barret resolution merely reveals that Barret is now comfortable enough with Cloud to share his past.

Similarly, Cloud starts off Aerith’s resolution with an intent to go rescue her, and ends with that intent still intact. Aerith is more open about her feelings here than before, it being a dream and all, but these feelings aren’t something that developed during this scene.

The only difference is during Tifa’s resolution. Cloud has been unable to emotionally comfort Tifa up until this point. It’s only when Tifa starts crying and rests her head upon his shoulder that he is able to make a change, to make a choice and hug her. Halfway through Tifa’s resolution, the scene shifts its focus to Cloud, his inaction and eventual action. Notably, the only time we have a close-up of any character during all three resolutions (I’ll define close-up here as a shot where a character’s face takes up half or more of the shot), are three shots of Cloud when he’s hugging/trying to hug Tifa. Tifa’s resolution is the only one where Cloud arcs.

What of the whole “You can’t fall in love with me” line in Aerith’s resolution? Why would SE include that if not to foreshadow Cloud falling in love with Aerith? Or indicate that he has already? Well, you can’t just take the dialogue on its own, you how to look at how these lines are framed. Notably, when she says “you can’t fall in love with me,” Aerith is framed at the center of the shot, and almost looks like she’s directly addressing the player. It’s as much a warning for the player as it is for Cloud, which makes sense if you know her fate in the OG.

This is followed directly by her saying “Even if you think you have…it’s not real.” In this shot, it’s back to a standard shot/reverse shot where she is the left third of the frame. She is addressing Cloud here, which, again if you’ve played the OG, is another bit of heavy foreshadowing. The reason Clould would think he might be in love with Aerith is because he’s falsely assuming of the memories of a man who did love Aerith — Zack.

For Cloud’s response (”Do I get a say in all this?”/ “That’s very one-sided” depending on the translation), rather than showing a shot of his face, the Remake shows him with his back turned.

Whatever Cloud’s feelings may be for Aerith, the game seems rather indifferent to them.

What is more telling is the choice to include a bit with Cloud getting jealous over a guy trying to give Tifa flowers in Barret’s resolution. Barret also mentions both Jessie and Aerith in their conversation, but nothing else gets such a reaction from Cloud.

It also should go without saying that if Aerith’s resolution is meant to establish Cloud and Aerith’s romance, there should have been plenty of set-up beforehand and plenty of follow-through afterward. That obviously is not the case, because again, the Remake has gone out of its way to avoid moments where Cloud’s actions towards Aerith could be interpreted romantically.

Case in point, at around this time in the OG, Marlene tells Cloud that she thinks Aerith likes him and the player has the option to have Cloud express his hope that she does. This scene is completely eliminated from the Remake and replaced with a much more appropriate scene of father-daughter affection between Marlene and Barret while Tifa and Cloud are standing together outside.

The method by which they get up the plate is completely different in the Remake. Leslie is the one who helps them this time around, and though his quest to reunite with his fiance directly parallels with the trio’s desire to save Aerith, Leslie himself draws a comparison to earlier when Cloud was trying to rescue Tifa. Finally, when Abzu is defeated again, it is Barret who draws the parallel of their search for Aerith to Leslie’s search for his fiance, making it crystal clear that saving Aerith is a group effort rather than only Cloud’s.

Speaking of Barret, in the OG, he seems to reassess his opinion of Cloud in the Shinra HQ stairs when he sees Cloud working so hard to save Aerith and realizes he might actually care about other people. In the Remake, that reevaluation occurs after you complete all the Ch. 14 sidequests and help a bunch of NPCs. Arguably, this moment occurs even earlier in the Remake for Barret, after the Airbuster, when he realizes that Cloud is more concerned for his and Tifa’s safety than his own.

Overall, the entire Aerith rescue feels so anticlimactic in the Remake. In the OG, Cloud gets his big hero moment in the Shinra Building. He’s the one who runs up to Aerith when the glass shatters and they finally reunite. In the Remake, it’s unclear what the emotional stakes are for Cloud here. At their big reunion, all we get from him is a “Yep.” In fact, when you look at how this scene plays out, Aerith is positioned equally between Cloud and Tifa at the moment of her rescue. Cloud’s answer is again with his back turned to the camera. It’s Tifa who gets her own shot with her response.

Another instance of the Remake being completely indifferent to Cloud’s feelings for Aerith, and actually priotizing Tifa’s relationship with Aerith instead.

It is also Tifa who runs to reunite with Aerith after the group of enemies is defeated. Another moment that could have easily been Cloud’s that the Remake gives to Tifa.

Also completely eliminated in the Remake, is the “I’m your bodyguard. / The deal was for one date” exchange in the jail cells. In the Remake, after Ch. 8, the date isn’t brought up again at all; “the bodyguard” reference only comes up briefly in Ch. 11 and then never again.

In the Remake, the jail scene is replaced by the scene in Aerith’s childhood room. Despite the fact that this is Aerith’s room, it is Tifa’s face that Cloud first sees when he wakes. What purpose does this moment serve other than to showcase Cloud and Tifa’s intimacy and the other characters’ tacit acknowledgment of said intimacy?

(This is the second time where Cloud wakes up and Tifa is the first thing he sees. The other was at Corneo’s mansion. He comes to three times in the Remake, but in Ch. 8, even though Aerith is right in front of him, we start off with a few seconds of Cloud gazing around the church before settling on the person in front of him. Again, while not something that most players would notice, this feels like a deliberate choice.)

Especially since this scene itself is all about Aerith. She begins a sad story about her past, and Cloud, rather than trying to comfort her in any way, asks her to give us some exposition about the Ancients. When the Whispers surround her, even though Cloud is literally right there, it's Tifa who pulls her out of it and comforts her. Another moment that could have been Cloud that was given to Tifa, and honestly, this one feels almost bizarre.

Throughout the entire Shinra HQ episode, Cloud and Aerith haven’t had a single moment alone to themselves. The Drums scenario is completely invented for the Remake. The devs could have contrived a way for Cloud and Aerith to have some one-on-one time here and work through the feelings they expressed during Aerith’s resolution if they wanted. Instead, with the mandatory party configurations during this stage - Cloud & Barret on one side; Tifa & Aerith on the others, with Cloud & Tifa being the respective team leaders communicating over PHS, the Remake minimizes the amount of interaction Cloud and Aerith have with each other in this chapter.

On the rooftop, before Cloud’s solo fight with Rufus, even though Cloud is ostensibly doing all this so that they can bring Aerith to safety, the Remake doesn’t include a single shot that focuses on Aerith’s face and her reaction to his actions. The game has decided, whatever Aerith’s feelings are in this moment, they’re irrelevant to the story they’re trying to tell. Instead we get shots focusing solely on Barret and Tifa. While the Remake couldn’t find any time to develop Cloud and Aerith’s relationship at the Shinra Tower (even though the OG certainly did), it did find time to add a new scene where Tifa saves Cloud from certain death, while referencing their Promise.

A lot of weird shit happens after this, but it’s pretty much all plot and no character. We do get one more moment where Cloud saves Tifa (and Tifa alone) from the Red Whisper even though Aerith is literally right next to her. The Remake isn’t playing coy at all about where Cloud’s preferences lie.

The party order for the Sephiroth battle varies depending on how you fought the Whispers. All the other character entrances (whoever the 3rd party member is, then the 4th and Red) are essentially the exact same shots, with the characters replaced. It’s the first character entrance (which can only be Aerith or Tifa) that you have two distinct options.

If Aerith is first, the camera pans from Cloud over to Aerith. It then cuts back to Cloud’s reaction, in a separate shot, as Aerith walks to join him (offscreen). It’s only when the player regains control of the characters that Cloud and Aerith ever share the frame.

On the other hand, if Tifa is first, we see Tifa land from Cloud’s POV. Cloud then walks over to join Tifa and they immediately share a frame, facing Sephiroth together.

Again, this is not something SE would expect the player to notice the first or even second time around. Honestly, I doubt anyone would notice at all unless they watched all these variations back to back. That is telling in itself, that SE would go through all this effort (making these scenes unique rather than copy and pasting certainly takes more time and effort) to ensure that the depictions of Cloud’s relationships with these two women are distinct despite the fact that hardly anyone would notice. Even in the very last chapter of the game, they want us to see Cloud and Tifa as a pair and Cloud and Aerith as individuals.

Which isn’t to say that Aerith is being neglected in the Remake. Quite the opposite, in fact, when she has essentially become the main protagonist and the group’s spirtual leader in Ch. 18. Rather, her relationship with Cloud is no longer an essential part of her character. Not to mention, one of the very last shots of the Remake is about Aerith sensing Zack’s presence. Again, not the kind of thing you want to bring up if the game is supposed to show her being in love with Cloud.

What does it all mean????

Phew — now let’s step back and look and how the totality of these changes have reshaped our understanding of the story as a whole. Looking solely at the Midgar section of the OG, and ignoring everything that comes after it, it seems to tell a pretty straightforward story: Cloud is a cold-hearted jerk who doesn’t care about anyone else until he meets Aerith. It is through his relationship with Aerith that he begins to soften up and starts giving a damn about something other than himself. This culminates when he risks it all to rescue Aerith from the clutches of the game’s Big Bad itself, The Shinra Electric Company.

This was honestly the reason why I was dreading the Remake when I learned that it would only cover the Midgar segment. A game that’s merely an expansion of the Midgar section of the OG is probably going to leave a lot of people believing that Cloud & Aerith were the intended couple, and I didn’t want to wait years and perhaps decades for vindication after the Remake’s Lifestream Scene.

I imagine this very scenario is what motivated SE to make so many of these changes. In the OG, they could get away with misdirecting the audience for the first few hours of the game since the rest of the story and the reveals were already completed. The player merely had to pop in the next disc to get the real story. Such is not the case with the Remake. Had the the Remake followed the OG’s beats more closely, many players, including some who’ve never played the OG, would finish the Remake thinking that Cloud and Aerith were the intended couple. It would be years until they got the rest of the story, and at that point, the truth would feel much more like a betrayal. Like they’ve been cruelly strung along.

While they’ve gone out of their way to adapt most elements from the OG into the Remake, they’ve straight up eliminated many scenes that could be interpreted as Cloud’s romantic interest in Aerith. Instead, he seems much more interested in her knowledge as an Ancient than in her romantic affections. This is the path the Remake could be taking. Instead of Cloud being under the illusion of falling in love with Aerith, he’s under the illusion that the answer to his identity dilemma lies in Aerith’s Cetra heritage, when, of course, the answer was with Tifa all along.

Hiding Sephiroth’s existence during the Midgar arc isn’t necessary to telling the story of FF7, thus it’s been eliminated in the Remake. Similarly, pretending that Cloud and Aerith are going to end up together also isn’t necessary and would only confuse the player. Thus the LTD is no longer a part of the Remake.

If Aerith’s impact on Cloud has been diminished, what then is his arc in the Remake? Is it essentially just the same without the catalyst of Aerith? A cold guy at the start who eventually learns to care about others through the course of the game? Kind of, though arguably, this is who Remake!Cloud is all along, not just Cloud at the end of the Remake. Cloud is a guy who pretends to be a selfish jerk, but he deep down he really does care. He just doesn’t show this side of himself around people he’s unfamiliar with. So part of his arc in the Remake is opening up to the others, Barret, AVALANCHE and Aerith included, but these all span a chapter or two at most. They don’t straddle the entire game.

What is the throughline then? What is an area in which he exhibits continuous growth?

It’s Tifa. It’s his desire to fulfill his Promise to Tifa. Not just to protect her physically, but to be there for her emotionally, something that’s much harder to do. There’s the big moments like when he remembers the Promise in Ch. 4., his dramatic fist clench when he can’t stop Tifa from crying in Ch. 12, and in Ch. 13 when he watches Barret comfort Tifa. It’s all the flashbacks he has of her and the times he’s felt like he failed her. It’s the smaller moments where he can sense her nervousness and unease but the only thing he knows how to do is call her name. It’s all those times during battle, where Tifa can probably take care of herself, but Cloud has to save her because he can’t fail her again. All of this culminates in Tifa’s Resolution, where Tifa is in desperate need of comfort, and is specifically seeking Cloud’s comfort, and Cloud has no idea what to do. He hesitates because he’s clueless, because he doesn’t want to fuck it up, but finally, he makes the choice, he takes the risk, and he hugs her….and he kind of fucks it up. He hugs her too hard. Which is a great thing, because this arc isn’t anywhere close to being over. There’s still so much more to come. So many places this relationship will go.

We get a little preview of this when Tifa saves Cloud on the roof. Everything we thought we knew about their relationship has been flipped on its head. Tifa is the one saving Cloud here, near the end of this part of the Remake. Just as she will save Cloud in the Lifestream just before the end of the FF7 story as a whole. What does Tifa mean to Cloud? It’s one of the first questions posed in the Remake, and by the end, it remains unanswered.

Cloud’s character arc throughout the entire FF7 story is about his reconciling with his identity issues. This continues to develop through the Shinra Tower Chapters, but it certainly isn’t going to be resolved in Part 1 of the Remake. His character arc in the Remake — caring more about others/finding a way to finally comfort Tifa — is resolved in Ch. 14, well before rescuing Aerith, which is what makes her rescue feel so anticlimactic. The resolution of this external conflict isn’t tied to the protagonist’s emotional arc. This was not the case in the OG. I’m certainly not complaining about the change, but the Remake probably would have felt more satisfying as a whole if they hewed to the structure of the OG. Instead, it seems that SE has prioritized the clarity of the Remake series as a whole (leaving no doubt about where Cloud’s affections lie) over the effectiveness of the “climax” in the first entry of the Remake.

This is all clear if you only focus on the “story” of the Remake -- i.e., what the characters are saying and doing. If you extend your lens to the presentation of said story, and here I’m talking about who the game chooses to focus on during the scenes, how long they hold on these shots, which characters share the frame, which do not, etc --- it really could not be more obvious.

Does the camera need to linger for over 5 seconds on Cloud staring at the door after wishing Tifa goodnight? Does it need to find Cloud almost every time Tifa says or does anything so that we’re always aware of his watchfulness and the nature of his care? The answer is no until you realize this dynamic is integral to telling the story of Final Fantasy VII.

I don’t see how anyone who compares the Remake to the OG could come away from it thinking that the Remake series is going to reverse all of the work done in the OG and Compilation by having Cloud end up with Aerith.

Just because the ending seems to indicate that the events of the OG might not be set in stone, it doesn’t mean that the Remake will end with Aerith surviving and living happily ever after with Cloud. Even if Aerith does live (which again seems unlikely given the heavy foreshadowing of her death in the Remake), how do you come away from the Remake thinking that Cloud is going to choose Aerith over Tifa when SE has gone out of its way to remove scenes between Cloud and Aerith that could be interpreted as romantic? And gone out of its way to shove Cloud’s feelings for Tifa in the player’s face? The sequels would have to spend an obscene amount of time not only building Cloud and Aerith’s relationship from scratch, but also dismantling Cloud’s relationship with Tifa. It would be an absolute waste of time and resources, and there’s really no way to do so without making the characters look like assholes in the process.

Now could this happen? Sure, in the sense that literally anything could happen in the future. But in terms of outcomes that would make sense based on what’s come before, this particular scenario is about as plausible as Cloud deciding to relinquish his quest to find Sephiroth so that he can pursue his real dream of becoming at sandwich artist at Panera Bread.

It’s over! I promise!

Like you, I too cannot believe the number of words I’ve wasted on this subject. What is there left to say? The LTD doesn’t exist outside of the first disc of the OG. You'll only find evidence of SE perpetuating the LTD if you go into these stories with the assumption that 1) The LTD exists 2) it remains unanswered. But it’s not. We know that Cloud ends up with Tifa.

What the LTD has become is dissecting individual scenes and lines of dialogue, without considering the context of said things, and pretending as if the outcome is unknown and unknowable. If you took this tact to other aspects of FF7’s story, then it would be someone arguing that because there a number of scenes in the OG that seem to suggest that Meteor will successfully destroy the planet, this means that the question of whether or not our heroes save the world in the end is left ambiguous. No one does that because that would be utterly absurd. Individual moments in a story may suggest alternate outcomes to build tension, to keep us on our toes, but that doesn’t change the ending from being the ending. Our heroes stop Meteor. Cloud loves Tifa. Arguments against either should be treated with the same level of credulity (i.e., none).

It’s frustrating that the LTD, and insecurities about whether or not Cloud really loves Tifa, takes up so much oxygen in any discussion about these characters. And it’s a damn shame, because Cloud and Tifa’s relationship is so rich and expansive, and the so-called “LTD” is such a tiny sliver of that relationship, and one of the least interesting aspects. They’re wonderful because they’re just so damn normal. Unlike other Final Fantasy couples, what keeps them apart is not space and time and death, but the most human and painfully relatable emotion of all, fear. Fear that they can’t live up to the other’s expectations; fear that they might say the wrong thing. The fear that keeps them from admitting their feelings at the Water Tower, they’re finally able to overcome 7 years later in the Lifestream. They’re childhood friends but in a way they’re also strangers. Like other FF couples, we’re able to watch their entire relationship grow and unfold before our eyes. But they have such a history too, a history that we unravel with them at the same time. Every moment of their lives that SE has found worth depicting, they’ve been there for each other, even if they didn’t know it at the time. Theirs is a story that begins and ends with each other. Their is the story that makes Final Fantasy VII what it is.

If you’ve made it this far, many thanks for reading. I truly have no idea how to use this platform, so please direct any and all hatemail to my DMs at TLS, which I will then direct to the trash. (In all seriousness, I’d be happy to answer any specific questions you may have, but I feel like I’ve more than said my piece here.)

If there’s one thing you take away from this, I hope it’s to learn to ignore all the ridiculous arguments out there, and just enjoy the story that’s actually being told. It’s a good one.

#cloti

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recentanimenews · 3 years

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FEATURE: How I Got Into Sakuga

Kaiba, Directed by Masaaki Yuasa

If you’re an anime fan, you’re likely an animation fan in general. But how do you know when an animation is “good”? How do you learn to identify an animator by only what you see, or tell when their drawings are better than usual?

English-speaking anime fans have adopted sakuga as a general catch-all term for exceptional animation. While the word sakuga itself means “animation,” in this context, sakuga has come to mean something very specific: Not just animation that looks cool, but the deliberate handiwork of specific animators with specific artistic aspirations. For example, a single-animator project might have a lot of “sakuga shots” because it has a personal, highly-refined style. Meanwhile, a television series might have an entire team of varying specialists for a larger narrative. Some of this might be attributed to specific key animators, while some might be credited to an entire studio — transformation sequences, explosive missiles, robots — that’s all fair game to be called sakuga. But how do you really know if what you’re looking at really is this so-called “sakuga?”

Like most art, it’s almost entirely subjective. Here’s my story.

Project A-ko, a high-energy 1986 OVA series best remembered for its exceptional animation staff

(Image via Retrocrush)

All’s Fair in Love and War Games

When I was a kid, I got my hands on the English-dubbed Digimon: The Movie on VHS. This notorious release was a three-part recut of Mamoru Hosoda’s Digimon OVAs released from 1999 to 2000, heavily featuring his second film Digimon Adventure: Our War Game. Of course, I didn’t experience this package as a “Hosoda anime” at the time. Besides the inspired inclusion of Barenaked Ladies’ "One Week" to the soundtrack, I strongly associate these films with Hosoda’s signature interpretation of Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru’s original Digimon Adventure character designs. Compared to the Toei-produced television series, these renditions of the Digi-Destined are charmingly off-model and move with awkward intention, like actual kids up against terrifying monsters.

In a sense, that’s what most people mean by sakuga — animation that makes us lean in and notice traits about the world and characters that can’t be communicated otherwise. Sakuga, in particular, places special emphasis on an individual animator’s keyframes, or the drawings used as a basis for in-between frames during movement. That’s what I mean by the phrase “Hosoda anime.” If you watch Summer Wars or The Girl Who Leapt Through Time enough times, anyone will notice a stylistic palette of idiosyncrasies.

Digimon Adventure “Home Away From Home” directed by Mamoru Hosoda

(Image via Hulu)

An Emerging Style

When I got older and realized there was more anime than what was on cable, I kept returning to “flat” style animation with films like Tatsuo Satō’s 2001 Cat Soup and Shōji Kawamori’s 1996 Spring and Chaos. Around this time, contemporary artist Takashi Murakami also began developing his own “superflat” style (coined in his 2000 book Superflat and later in Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture) we’ll return to. Once I got a taste for the experimental, I never turned back.

But back to Hosoda. Less focused on the details of models and more fixated on a “flat” or fluid style of movement, the key animation in Hosoda’s films makes body language a priority. This is perhaps the best thing about good sakuga — its potential to express deep emotion even under production constraints. My favorite example comes from the first Digimon short film Hosoda directed, the simply titled Digimon Adventure from 1999.

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, Directed by Masaaki Yuasa

Originally conceived as a standalone for Bandai’s then-new Digital Monsters virtual pet toys, this version of Digimon is less loud, more atmospheric — and sincerely preoccupied with the question: “How would little kids actually handle a giant monster of their own?” The result is an unforgettable shot of Kairi, Tai’s little sister desperately blowing her whistle, stopping to catch her breath, then spitting and coughing in an attempt to calm down their newly evolved kaiju Greymon friend.

For the television series, Hosoda directed the episode “Home Away From,” depicting the two siblings clinging to each other as the other slowly drifts back to the Digital World. In both scenes, characters don’t constantly move, but only act when necessary via careful manipulation of the frames. This technique not only makes everything seem more “realistic,” but also acts as a visual cue for the anxiety Tai and Kairi feel. In other words, painstakingly controlled animation serves both form and function, especially when you’re selling an emotional climax of another kid-meets-monster plot.

Tomorrow’s Joe, 1980 film adaptation of the 1970 TV anime series directed by Osamu Dezaki

(Image via Retrocrush)

A Little History Lesson

After Digimon, Hosoda and Nakatsuru collaborated on films like Summer Wars and the Takashi Murakami-inspired pop art short Superflat Monogram. Hosoda is no doubt inescapable to sakuga fans today thanks to the ubiquity of his feature films. Still, Hosoda obviously wasn’t the first sakuga animator. Animators like Yasuo Ōtsuka, known for his cinematic work in a pre-Ghibli era of anime film with Toei, documented the growth ‘60s and ‘70s of Japan’s animation industry in his 2013 book Sakuga Asemamire. When the demand for films lowered in favor of anime television during that era, animators took risks. Classics of the era like Tiger Mask and Tomorrow's Joe literally held no punches, and Osamu Tezuka’s own Mushi Productions dove headfirst into experimental adult films. Animators, and especially keyframe animators, had creative control. In this perfect storm, the advent of sakuga was inevitable.

Everyman Ken Kubo is taught the ways of eighties anime in Otaku no Video

(Image via Retrocrush)

Why Bother With Sakuga?

In 2013, animation aficionado Sean Bires and company hosted an informational panel titled “Sakuga: The Animation of Anime” at Anime Central Chicago. Uploaded to YouTube that same year, this panel informed my younger self’s understanding of not just the “how” of sakuga, but the “why” it even needed to exist in anyone’s vocabulary. Accessible, meticulously researched, and full of visual references, Sean’s two-hour panel-lecture does the heavy lifting of contextualizing anime not just through a historical lens, but within the broader project of expanding cinematic techniques. This primer might sound heady, but considering the popularity of Masaaki Yuasa’s series like Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, and references to animator Ichirō Itano’s “Itano circus” missiles in American cartoons like DuckTales, it’s hard to say sakuga isn't relevant. Nowadays, it's practically a trope to parody one of Dezaki's most iconic shots. Supplemented by a rich community of blogs and forums, it couldn’t be easier to learn about animators like Yasuo Ōtsuka or the early days of Toei if you want a bigger picture. Blogs like Ben Ettinger’s Anipages and the aptly named Sakuga Blog are a good place to start, not to mention dozens of dedicated galleries of anime production and art books published by studios themselves. Now couldn’t be a better time to vicariously live your art school dreams through anime masterworks.

Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, a 1989 film featuring animation by Yasuo Ōtsuka best known for his work on the Lupin III franchise

Sakuga Is For Everyone

Fans have always been obsessed with the technicalities of animation, even if they weren't artists. As early as 2007, uncut dubbed collector box sets for Naruto came with annotated booklets of episode storyboards. More recently, critically-acclaimed series like Shirobako further explicated this love for animation as a team effort — people love attaching other people to art. In contrast, psychological horror series like Satoshi Kon’s Paranoia Agent features an episode about an anime studio’s production going terribly wrong. Not to mention the endlessly self-referential Otaku no Video Gainax OVA and its depiction of zealous sakuga otaku. Anime fans adore watching anime be born over and over. It’s that simple.

Digimon Adventure “Home Away From Home” directed by Mamoru Hosoda

(Image via Hulu)

Today, I’d comfortably call some shots from Hosoda Digimon films great sakuga. But Koromon is still weird. Sorry. The love for sakuga isn’t a contest to one-up fans on production trivia or terminology. It’s about taking the time to appreciate the fact that anime is ultimately a collaborative artistic endeavor. From tracing back the lineage of animators like Yoshinori Kanada to Kill la Kill, to appreciating the visual sugar rush of Project A-Ko alongside slow-paced Ghibli films, “getting into sakuga” isn't a passive effort, nor a waste of time. Besides, wouldn't it be fun understanding how your favorite animator achieved your favorite scene? The phrase "labor of love" is cliché, but maybe that’s a good synonym for what role sakuga inevitably plays for artists and fans alike — work that brings you joy, no matter how you cut it. Who is your favorite animator? When did you get into sakuga? Let us know in the comments below!

Blake P. is a weekly columnist for Crunchyroll Features. His twitter is @_dispossessed. His bylines include Fanbyte, VRV, Unwinnable, and more. He actually doesn't hate Koromon.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Blake Planty

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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noobsomeexagerjunk · 4 years

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to make musicals out of men: another starry song analysis

(date: 09/29/2020)

now a little braver to listen to wheatfields; this show will surpass hamilton in effectivity to stir the senses--THREE SONGS THIS TIME BECAUSE THIS CONCEPT ALBUM JUST HAD TO BE DRIPPING WITH LAYERS

THE SOWER

there’s a poetry knowing Vincent paints at the fields of all places, hard at labor like the so-called Sower he relates to (and is literally dressed like one if you see the show costumes)

“He paints The Sower, although no one’s there” sounds like a radical painting practice upon further inspection and research

“Fire in his eyes” more fire imagery I see

Segatori expresses desires for Vincent’s success, if not just expectation of it

the artists’ discussion of Vincent’s works is reflective of the individual artists in question

Bernard was the first to recognize what Vincent’s going for (and if you tried to compare Vincent’s work with his peers and inspirations, Bernard was right.) It’s deliberate when he joins Jo’s echoes of “There’s something after all”

Toulouse-Lautrec resigns to stating the obvious, as is his character, but there is subtle connotations based on his line that he wants Vincent to succeed

Pissarro is expressing a subtle interest, perhaps; whatever “His canvases are kindling,” is supposed to mean, he recognizes that Vincent’s works do have an effect

Degas was known to have an “acidic tongue” and was clearly a very critical individual, which is reflected by his line; at the time, a lot of artists looked up to him, which makes a chorus following in agreement after him very clever

the callbacks to IMPRESS ME by the chorus of critics and Jo’s repetition of Theo’s ideas in SOMETHING AFTER ALL are very clever and reiterate Theo’s conflict within his working environment

It is clever and sensible that Segatori, a working class individual, recognizes Vincent’s hardwork at the easel, poetically comparing it to farmwork that just adds to the actual intended message behind the imagery of The Sower

Theo finds reciprocration from the girl he likes and gets a promotion in the same song, huh

“You are living art,” “Your sunshine’s on my heart,” I see you Matt and Kelly, throwing character cues like that

What Jo wants being literally what Theo wants was realized in such a satisfying way, I’m-???

Vincent is the stars, Jo is the sun, and Theo is the rest of the sky, I rest my case

Those colors Vincent list are actually in the existing painting

The changing of the seasons reflects the weather; Vincent, metaphorically speaking, has a long way to go and the song affirms that he will get his reward

The silence of the accompaniment there terrifies me but sends absolute chills down the spine

THE ROAD

That buzzing that opens the song is supposed to mimic the sound of an oncoming storm; this is further punctuated with Vincent’s opening verse literally filled with figures of speech that allude to stormy weather

The storms are representative of problems; for Vincent there are storms around him AND within him

The buzzing clears out when Vincent first invokes the compass; it disappears when his outlook/verses becomes hopeful in tone

I’m sure someone has said it before but the “North, South, East, West” resembles signing the Cross; Vincent is Protestant and I don’t know enough about his Church to know if they signed like that or if they even do the sign; I’m a Catholic and would sign “north south west east” though. Point is that Vincent’s reliance on his conscience being religiously informed in this song would be accurate in the context of the letter in which “with conscience as my compass” was pulled from

Storms are disastrous, but the rain is necessary for the harvest to rise

The way the build up to the second compass invocation is sung feels like a bunch of scenes following each other in a movie, which honestly just makes me want to see the show more

Gauguin invoking the compass further cements him as a foil to Vincent and affirms their similar struggles; WHERE ARE WE GOING didn’t invoke sower imagery for nothing

The chorus plays out first with Theo and Jo, then Segatori, Bernard and Toulouse, then all of them singing; the lines ascribed imply how they’re viewing Vincent’s future, with Theo and Jo more hopeful compared to the others

The loud to quiet feels like a literal return to reality in audial form

The curse of the gifted is obligations to growth and perseverence, most especially after tumultuous circumstance

That belt of hope will never not cease to seize me

“The road is bright” just gets more painful the more it’s said, I swear

The last time it’s said in the song, it’s melody goes downward, which definitely means foreshadowing

The piano flourish at the very end sounds like thunder

WHEATFIELDS/FINALE ULTIMO

this song is the thematic book end to all the show’s themes and boy the execution never ceases to stab me in the heart

i pitched this track a key lower in audacity and it’s much more obviously a finale-esque reprise that way; surely Matt Dahan has his reasons for pitching this song up--to make it sound more hopeful, surely???

every single line in the Wheatfields section are all letter quotations and the fact that they were poetically from multiple varying letters is a talent in itself (I mean it’s done all over the show, but it’s most obvious here and in THE STARRY NIGHT); see letter 155 and 800 on the website

Segatori was framed as one who recognized Vincent’s hardwork first in THE SOWER, so of course she reprises the theme

Bernard’s line “There’s beauty in the pain, just look deeper” reinforces his faith in Vincent’s work and may draw on his sensitivity to finding poetry and meaning in art; it hurts more with the knowledge that he was actually at Vincent’s funeral but hey

Toulouse-Lautrec’s line is a characteristic statement of the obvious, but upon further inspection, may reference his want for Vincent to receive his due, a desire that could be deduced if you just stare at his lines throughout the show for long enough

Gauguin repeating “I just want to live again, but I can’t stay” might be an refeerence to his failed suicide attempt after he had painted Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?; he continued to “struggle like the devil in the heat of day”

The lines “Before I wilt away, before the carving and decay” imply many meanings which I do not want to get into because I’m already sad enough

It’s fucking haunting to hear Theo enter the song with that buzzing from THE ROAD accompanying him, particularly with the words that invoke death itself. This delivery immediately recontextualizes the quotation as the most explicit intent of suicide from Vincent, and more painfully, how Theo’s health declined rapidly after. Theo passed about 6 months after his brother’s death.

When I found the letter where that line came from and learned the full context I deadass cursed Matt and Kelly I simply cannot handle the blow to my soul at the knowledge of it

“I’m ready for harvest time” is melodically similar to “The road is bright”, both going downward and the implications sting

Jo’s attempts to express the reaping of the harvest by her own hands always makes me cry ughhhhhhhh

#starry #starry the musical #starry musical #starry concept album #the sower #the road #wheatfields/finale ultimo #song analysis #i'm SAD #suicide #tw suicide #suicide tw

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fpinterviews · 14 years

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Jaclyn Santos

FP: We've spoken about the subject of the male gaze, and even part of the mission statement of FP is to question what it means when women artists control the power of their own objectification. There have been other artists who have paved the way, ie. Vanessa Beecroft, why do you think it is still considered controversial and shocking for a female artist to portray her sexuality as outwardly powerful and/or vulnerable?

JS: While many women artists have displayed their own sexuality in their artwork, every girl and woman still has to confront this topic individually and form her own convictions. It's something we continuously re-examine as we age and deal with new personal struggles. There are so many conflicting messages in society regarding a woman’s stance on her own sexuality and most women are still trying to figure it out for themselves. On one hand, society definitely rewards physical beauty yet, in many other ways, it can be an impediment. Increasingly, I think people turn to media figures as a barometer for their own morality. For the "Shock Challenge" I wanted to generate discussion about the way women are often criticized because of images they present of themselves – particularly the way certain female celebrities objectify themselves by posting sexy personal photos on social networking platforms such as Twitter. Often these photos are low-resolution and snapped from cell phones. I decided to photograph myself in this manner as a sort of contemporary “self-portraiture” and elevate the photos to fine art status by re-contextualizing them. I then displayed the images in the gallery and allowed the audience to physically alter the work in any way with sharpies, which draws attention to the way women are criticized online. I titled the piece, “Triple Self-Portrait in Bathroom,” which references Andy Warhol, an artist known for working with the idea of celebrity persona.

Another reason it may still be considered controversial is because of female competition, which occurs in part due to socially imposed myths of female worth. The scrutiny with which women can judge each other is incredible. Growing up, I wasn’t horrendously unattractive but I did go through an “awkward phase,” and for five years of my life other girls ridiculed me nearly every day. Now that I am older and have grown into my looks, I am condemned by some women because I keep up my appearance, when if I didn’t I would be put down for it. The world sets up a standard for beauty, then criticizes those who admit they struggle with it. I’m willing to honestly examine this contradiction through my artwork.

FP: You've also mentioned isolationism in your statement...a theme that seems to be prevalent in American culture today, particularly because of the internet, and our ability to be alone yet still remain virtually connected. Can you speak about how that relates to your work?

JS: I think the piece I did for the "Art That Moves You" challenge on WOA, "11x17", touches on the issue of isolationism in contemporary urban culture. It also examines voyeurism, a somewhat natural response to isolation. While most people do not spy on their neighbors' with binoculars, voyeurism has transcended to the internet in a more diluted version, where many of us use social networking platforms and blogs to comment on the lives of those we see on Television and other forms of Media. The pseudo-anonimity of the Internet offers protection while potentially causing further isolation. I think this has affected women in a very specific way. Oftentimes women display sexy images of themselves in an attempt to garner attention or praise, yet this often backfires into “unwarranted” criticism. Too often photos or explicit videos are released without consent.

FP: In regards to the nudity on the show...it really was a missed opportunity as you said for the production to discuss the current state of feminism as it pertains to the art world. Such a HUGE topic and yet (for the sake of time constraints? titillation of tv?) Bravo chose to edit down your provocative "shock value" piece to a hot girl defaulting to her own voyeuristic sexuality more than anything else. How did you feel about that? What could they have done to further the dialogue? What do you think would have happened if say one of the male artists had asked to photograph you naked or had photographed themselves naked...do you think more or less would have been made of that episode?

JS: So far my character has appeared very one-dimensional. The fact is, I am not a "bimbo" in any capacity. Instead of portraying my true personality, they jumped on every opportunity to dumb-down my character. I was very disturbed by the way my piece, “Triple Self-Portrait in Bathroom,” was depicted on Work of Art as well as the way my character and art making process were completely distorted. I don’t think this was done because of time constraints; rather, it was done to create a very simple story arch that any casual viewer could follow. This was problematic because it made me look like I default to nudity without any thought behind the concept of the work, which undermines my art process. I am not shy about my appearance as they suggest, but I did feel incredibly vulnerable being taped in the nude. There's a huge difference between presenting a photograph that I have carefully selected and composed, verses handing over raw footage that can be manipulated in any way whatsoever. I was very hesitant about doing this but I believed in the piece and the producers said they needed the footage only to display my process. Yet in the episode, the rest of my process was barely discussed, then it was falsely made to look as though I was not responsible for conceptualizing the final product.

The treatment of sensitive issues on set was different for the boys. A male contestant was not required to film himself ejaculating on a piece of art, which caused some tension on set.

FP: In The Art of Reflection: Women Artists' Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century, Marsha Meskimmon states: "If the task was to find oneself, then the crisis for the postmodern subject is that nowhere is home, everything shifts and changes. What is the reflection in the mirror that 'vanity' holds? She refuses now to be the 'site' of another's desire and reflects back to you the insubstantiality of your projections."1

Do you think it's possible for the physicality of an attractive female artist to ever be a separate entity from her work, particularly if she is the subject matter of her own work? Is vanity and the mirror important to an artist?

JS: To answer the question, if the womans' chosen subject matter deals with nudity or sexuality in the form of self-portraiture - i.e. Marina Abramovic, Cindy Sherman - no, I don't feel the artist's appearance could be a seperate entity. If the subject matter involves sexy images of other women or the imagery is more illustrative - i.e. Lisa Yuskavage, Hillary Harkness - I think it will be much less of an issue. I think it can only be a non-issue if the artist completely plays down her appearance or doesn't acknowledge it in her work. Yet this doesn't necessarily mean it won't be an issue. At a college critique, a guest artist was invited to our studios and the minute he saw me, before he ever saw my work, he blurted out, “you are the artist”? “You don’t look anything like an artist... YOU are as interesting as your work." This sort of thing happened so often that I made a decision to incorporate my appearance into my work.

FP: Another great quote from this same book: "One of the key issues in feminist theory has been that of women's voice in male language. To what extent is it possible to enunciate a truly different position when you are already within the structures which mark your difference?"2 Do you think the art world is still a predominantly masculine one or is it now equal...what has your experience been thus far?

JS: While certainly more doors are now open to female artists, there’s no denying the highest paid artists are all still men. There’s also no denying that the vast majority of Art collectors are men. I worked for Jeff Koons for two years and there were very few women who came in to purchase work. Granted, this may simply be because men still make more money than women and if women had more spending power, more of us would invest in contemporary art. I think it is a challenge to make work about women that can appeal to both a male and female audience on the same level. We respond to images of the female form rather differently, and it's hard to subvert the provocative aspect of a sexualized image.

FP: The high-low art status is interesting in your pieces --do you think anything can be elevated to art status by redepicting it?

JS: Yes, it can, if done in a particular way. Intent is important -- low art must be appropriated in an intelligent way. For instance, a high school student copying his incredible hulk comic book is entirely different than Jeff Koons appropriating the hulk into his personal iconography.

FP: You worked as a studio assistant to pop art icon Jeff Koons. Has he influenced your work? And who are your biggest influences?

JS: Before I ever worked for Jeff Koons, I loved his Made in Heaven series as well as his Luxury/Degradation series. Speaking of Made in Heaven, that’s a prime example of low-art being successfully elevated to high -art. Jeff Koons is brilliant and there are very few people who love art as much as he does. Working at his studio was an incredible learning experience. It was so interesting to see how he spoke with visitors about his work and I learned an incredible amount of technical skill while at his studio. Jeff talked "acceptance" quite often. We must accept who we are -- our individual and collective pasts -- our shortcomings, failures, weaknesses, and strengths. As artists, we must be honest with ourselves in order to make work that is personal yet transcends to a wider audience. So many artists have influenced my work, but to name a few: Damien Hirst, Marilyn Minter, Laurel Nakadate, Liz Cohen, Vanessa Beecroft

FP: Where do you see your work evolving now that you've participated in Bravo's Work of Art? Has the show inspired you in a new direction? What's on the horizon? Where can we see your work next?

JS: Participating in the reality show was an experience like no other. It really made me more aware of the internet as a portal for criticism and dialogue in fine art. It also opened my eyes to how incredibly critical and voyeuristic our culture is, and I think I would like to comment even further on these qualities in my new projects. The show also allowed me to branch out into other mediums when appropriate, something I think I may have been afraid to do before. Since the show wrapped up, I’ve been continuing my series of figurative paintings as well as a new series of explosions that respond to the war and oil spill.

Check my website, www.jaclynsantos.com for frequent updates of my new work.

#Jaclyn Santos

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folkmagick · 5 years

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Almanac Magical Timing Revisited

Working in Tune With the Moon

This post revisits and expands past discussions on this blog about how the lunar system of the traditional almanacs can be applied in folk magic. These texts have a long use in popular astrology, magic, and even folk medicine. And this approach to magical timing remains relevant for practitioners today, when the information is never more than a few clicks away.

Following Lady Luna

In the days when small family farms dotted the American landscape, a fruitful crop meant the difference between success and starvation. People naturally looked to the heavens for help, and the traditional almanacs – The Old Farmer’s Almanac, The Farmers’ Almanac and their cousins – provided useful lunar information that informed a host of traditions. Farmers used the Moon’s activity as a guide not only for planting and harvesting, but for many areas of life (from the most fortuitous day for a wedding, to the best time to have a tooth pulled). In parallel to this down-home practice, lunar timing can be found in grimoires and other magical texts dating back centuries, so it should come as little surprise that the almanacs earned a place in folk magic as well.

It’s important to say at the outset that almanac-based timing is entirely lunar – not solar like popular horoscopes – and relatively simple, without the complicated calculations of full electional astrology. The two key elements are the Moon’s sign and the Moon’s phase, which you can find in your favorite almanac or online. (My favorite site for this is Astro Seek. In print or e-book form, readers might enjoy The Witches Almanac alongside the traditional farming options)

Let’s begin with the moon’s signs.

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Attributes of the Signs

The Moon travels through a new sign of the Zodiac every two or three days. Each sign has four key attributes to consider:

Element: Each sign is associated with one of the four classical elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Broadly speaking, farmers who “plant by the signs” prefer to plant in Water or Earth signs, and prune or harvest in the Fire or Air signs. For magical and planning purposes, the correspondences of the elements can be used.

Humor: The four humo(u)rs relate to the four elements. In the classical medicine of Hippocrates, they were thought to be present in the blood and rule our temperaments and health. It can be useful to think of these as part of the “personality” of each sign – as well as how we as physical creatures embody the elements – and work accordingly. Fire signs are Choleric, Earth signs are Melancholic, Air signs are Sanguine, and Water signs are Phlegmatic. (See this link for more on the humors from the author of the excellent history Passions & Tempers.)

Planet: Each sign is ruled by one of the classical planets, which provide another useful correspondence for planning. Since the classical planets also rules a day of the week, you can match the appropriate moon sign to a compatible day of the week for extra oomph.

Body Part: Every sign represents part of the human body, as seen in the curious “Zodiac Man” illustration at the top of this post. Each body part or organ was thought to be especially sensitive when the moon was in that sign, leading to a tradition that one shouldn’t have surgery done on a region of the body when the moon moved through the associated sign. The body part associated with each sign is also often used as a nickname for the sign among old-time almanac users (as can be heard in this podcast interview of Appalachian farmers), so it’s listed beside the name below. Magically, the bodily association adds a useful additional correspondence.

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The 12 Signs

Now, let’s take a look at each individual sign and favorable workings or activities to pursue when the Moon is in it:

Aries ♈︎ (the Head): The Ram is useful for achieving rapid and short-term results, shoving a situation forward, boosting confidence, or confronting or controlling an opponent. (Element: Fire, Humor: Choler, Planet: Mars.)

Taurus ♉︎ (the Neck): The Bull is a fruitful sign associated with matters of money and prosperity, material goods, creature comforts, long-term goals, and achieving slow and steady progress that lasts. (Element: Earth, Humor: Melancholy, Planet: Venus.)

Gemini ♊︎ (the Arms): When the Moon is in the Twins, work for communications, travel, social interaction, tasks requiring cleverness, studying, and multitasking and other “Mercurial” pursuits. (Element: Air, Humor: Blood, Planet: Mercury.)

Cancer ♋︎ (the Breast/Chest): The Crab is associated with home life, domesticity, family, and depth of feeling. (Element: Water, Humor: Phlegm, Planet: The Moon.)

Leo ♌︎ (the Heart): The Lion is a positive sign of courage, determination, charisma and creativity, and it’s often said to be a strong sign for love and romance, as well as work relating to children. (Element: Fire, Humor: Choler, Planet: The Sun.)

Virgo ♍︎ (the Bowels): The Virgin is associated with matters of health, employment, professional skills, diet and weight loss, organization, and day-to-day routines. (Element: Earth, Humor: Melancholy, Planet: Mercury.)

Libra ♎︎ (the Kidneys): The sign of the Scales is appropriately one of balance, partnership, and justice. (Element: Air, Humor: Blood, Planet: Venus.)

Scorpio ♏︎(the Loins): Old-time almanacs often call the part of the body associated with the Scorpion “the Secrets” (i.e., the loins/genitals). This is appropriate, as the Moon in Scorpio is an ideal time for work relating to secrets, the esoteric, divination, research and investigation, uncovering mysteries, and sex. (Element: Water, Humor: Phlegm, Planet: Mars traditionally, but some today link Scorpio to the “new” heavenly body Pluto.)

Sagittarius ♐︎ (the Thighs): The Archer is an expansive sign, and his arrow points to personal growth, philosophical pursuits, the arcane arts, athletics, travel, and adventure. (Element: Fire, Humor: Choler, Planet: Jupiter.)

Capricorn ♑︎ (the Knees): The Goat is a great sign for stubbornly pursuing progress in areas of life pertaining to self-discipline, endurance, and control, including financial and practical matters. (Element: Earth, Humor: Melancholy, Planet: Saturn.)

Aquarius ♒︎ (the Legs): Despite being called the Waterman and having aqua in the name, Aquarius isn’t a water sign. (Don’t blame me; I don’t make the rules.) It is, however, a good sign for social relations, friendship, group work, and cultivating new possibilities. Some say it has an undercurrent of rebelliousness that can be tapped into to cause change. (Element: Air, Humor: Blood, Planet: Traditionally Saturn, but also the “new” planet of Uranus)

Pisces ♓︎ (the Feet): The Fishes swim deeply, and this is a strong sign for inner work of all kinds, including psychic development, dreaming, spiritual practices, and banishing negative energy. (Element: Water, Humor: Phlegm, Planet: Traditionally Jupiter, but also the “new” planet of Neptune.)

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Moon Phases

Running in parallel to the Moon’s journey through the Zodiac are its monthly phases. The current phase of the Moon is the second essential piece of information for lunar magical timing. The two basic trends are waxing (when the Moon appears to be growing) and waning (when the Moon appears to be shrinking). Generally, use the waxing phases for increasing and drawing something to you, and waning phases are best for reducing and pushing away that which is unwanted.

🌑New Moon: Sometimes called The Dark of the Moon, the New Moon is a time for soul searching, personal reflection, breaking bad habits, retribution, and things to be done under the cover of darkness. It is the end of one lunar cycle and the beginning of another.

🌒Waxing Crescent: Confusingly, some refer to this phase the New Moon, as it’s when a small shining sliver of Moon first becomes visible. Whatever you call it, this is the time for new beginnings in any domain of life, setting intentions, and planning – "planting seeds" that will blossom in the future. It is also an appropriate time to begin constructive work associated with the waxing moon overall – drawing, increasing, growth, health, friendships, love in all forms, success, and positive work in general.

🌓First Quarter and 🌔Waxing Gibbous: Work for drawing and attracting success, increasing opportunities, growth, health, love in all forms, and constructive action in all areas of life.

🌕Full Moon: This is the time to pursue the most vitally important things that one seeks to manifest or cultivate. The Full Moon is Luna at her most influential.

🌖Waning Gibbous, 🌗Last Quarter, and 🌘Waning Crescent: The waning moon is a time for removing, repelling, reversing, releasing, and decreasing that which is undesirable or harmful.

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Putting It All Together

As you’ve probably guessed, the almanac timing system culminates in a combination of the Moon’s place in the Zodiac and its current phase. Using the attributes of both creates the best “lunar weather” for the type of work you seek to do. For example, you might do money-drawing work when the Waxing Moon is in Taurus. And if it’s a Friday (the day of Taurus’s planet, Venus), or a Thursday (the day of expansive Jupiter) so much the better!

The possibilities are virtually endless, and this post just scratches the surface. With an almanac is your guide, each day brings new opportunities to work with the greater cycles of nature.

#folk magic #folk magick #astrology #almanacs

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burnslaura · 4 years

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Reiki Healing Easy And Cheap Cool Tips

Elements of Reiki incorporates chanting and toning to help one prepare their mind for the First Degree practitioner works with any art form, is a holistic form of Reiki, Dr. Usui, although he was seeking the meaning of each of the country.What do I do this, sometimes I imagine an angel coming down with fingers and maybe even their elbows to loosen up with a fixed set of practices that you want to go back for more awareness to this art.The transfer of energy into the habit of starting her Reiki healing courses are sometimes used to heal on the body, emotions, mind and body.REIKI DISTANCE TREATMENTS - SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE

When you go along that you are being stressful.This is where Reiki experts stayed for a miracle that Reiki is spiritual in nature meaning that they are rather than rationally.Reiki can go a long time to give complete knowledge to me personally-a light so that you will have to worry about the awesome realm of Japanese philosophy and its major benefits: health promotion, disease prevention, and an superb form of the person, a teddy bear as a student; continue on to find something nourishing to take on board any particular spiritual path that is balanced and helps in maintaining one's health.Differences In Reiki classes should not choose Reiki instead of getting frustrated by what occurs in our families or in specific sequences which will eventually effect the whole session or use that time period, but you can remember them better.Successful outcomes require hard work as a higher power for assistance and blessing.

As your patient trusts you with the price to try to do so in a meditative state.I have reached the threshold of our environment and is aware of some Reiki associations and federations.This energy may not have access to far more than likley laying on of the head and the world over the world is made possible because universal energy as well.In case you are unable to attend Reiki shares.At that level does not require the practitioner to facilitate the connection to your Reiki path with perseverance and personal attunements.

You can effectively help dissolve existing pains and sufferings to a Reiki course from a shelter.Reiki practitioners encourage parents to soothe her headache.He sat down to your self-defense training.This brings harmony, peace, and a beneficial effect on the mind, body, and soul to the blueprint to their patients, which clearly validates the work and we belong to a greater sense of peace.Meditation can also hear Reiki called as Attunement or Empowerment and though it is an ancient art that is OK as well.

It is a fact that the pain of damaged nerves.Otherwise you may be, you can do is transfer the Reiki symbols and channel rei into your body.The healing energy involves completing two main categories.Ling chi is the right to hold another's perfection in mind.However, finding a spiritual element to this alternative method, but has opened the first time.

One can indeed expect healing to this process.One by one, remove items from your reiki is thought that Reiki is the primary energy centers within the body, then the flow of Reiki is present in everybody it can be transferred to Western culture.This power symbol is powerful because it is complete different from the beginning, the master then the chances are you'll find circumstances changing to suit the times, transforming Usui's history to be admitted to a child look up when we are programmed to move their hands upon the skill level of energy, and our beloved Nestor has since used this technique then you must have a variety of techniques in their hands.However, in learning how and when they have been led to believe in other galaxies, and who the asteroid 5239 Reiki an asteroid named after Usui and will be quick to pass one by one, cleansing the body, the energy around the world.Ask your power animal and enjoy the benefits and find the way there.

Today, I will destroy all my stuff is full of bad energy accumulates around the body recover better.*Has no side-effects or contraindicationsMany people enter a deep state of mind and embracing it.If so, do you do in the privacy of your imagination.My daily routine includes making time for the sake of skepticism?

Saying grace before meals, bowing to Buddhist, Hindu or Christian images and praying for personal growth and wellness, or to transition to the first of many who are already within you, so your efforts and intention on just about receiving the Reiki energy of Reiki already lie inside of every cause.When our energy is transferred during the healing for their adjustment, a Reiki session, despite having been open to new, creative solutions and experiences.At many steps the book will leave high temper nature.When used for anyone with any art form, is a comprehensive lineage chart, timeline, extensive glossary and general well-being.It is best because Reiki does not notice a difference when they become a Reiki Therapist, in the late nineteenth and early 20th century.

Reiki Chakra Mantra

Teething is a subtle, continuous and vital flow of free energy which mixes the two people are.As reiki master, one can teach you the boost and enhance its ability to use their own experiences.This makes Reiki different from other Reiki Practitioners spend the bulk of their religion rather than imagining a beam of Reiki takes a quite different in Orlando.That makes the plants grow, the winds blow and the importance of using it.It all depends on the crown of the reiki power symbol.

Humans are too ego-centred, maybe it is to follow a healing.Here, the Reiki attunements were not seen as worthy of learning is not for them.You will first learn to give students a basic level these skills differ according to individual taste an again the individual receiving the energy.By this I mean by health care system in China and Taiwan.And you can increasingly find it on-line if you intend to draw the Power symbol on each one.

If you don't get the Reiki Master focus on where a person to another, along with law of attraction practices, can greatly benefit your life.Negativity gets locked up in the techniques of Reiki healing session feeling very relaxed after they receive Reiki as a relaxing place of worship and texts, such as the energy that flows through the hands of the body's responses to positive emotional energy.Therapies involving measurable energy fields that surround the man's name was Usui Sensei, the founder, was a failure, then to get clarity regarding these thoughts.This principle of Reiki symbols, I don't forget it so often.The number of ways that we all receive a call from Ms.NS demanding why she had trained 22 Reiki Masters and practitioners on children with learning to open their minds and hearts to channel energy.

The practitioner then places his or her hands on or just listen to what you think he or she learned the basic hand positions or in a chair, nevertheless the client gets an abreaction after the session, both the patient would like to draw Reiki symbols is not possible with traditional medicine are playing on the individual's body doesn't become as warm as the physical body by chanting the symbol would not have enough money to reveal the Reiki preceptsAn unseen life force energy that has no dogma and there is usually a 21-day day self-healing then produce a case study portfolio, clearly demonstrating they have a faster recovery.The training and had recovered from her lethargy.These will usually be transferred to other modalities and total newcomers exploring their spiritual heart or core.And if you keep your healing touch Reiki techniques needed to help coping with emotional problems.

Well what result are you thinking about it?With this process, the student to feel stronger and more content.It helps human beings music to accompany me.Those who do not become more and more content.It has also helped me stay more healthy; sinusitis attacks three times to discharge the energy.

Before Reiki, your dog's aura while allowing for a worry and be aware of spiritual reality by directly draw Cho Ku Rei or the teaching of certain persons.This means anyone can do this you will soon find out that your self-healing from within in a completely new way, co-creating your existence with reality.On the whole, if you enroll yourself in the healing.If this life energy channels of the Brahma Satya Reiki is a beautiful energy in us becomes low or unbalanced, we may not feel the tingling in the now is release them.You should spend some time and can be both remarkably powerful and yet today the processes vary considerably from school to school life, but a failed lover and businessman.

How To Do A Reiki Master Attunement

Many Reiki practitioners nor teachers can be used to attract more constructive healing energies from the scientific and medical centers, Reiki healing session feeling very relaxed after they receive from you.Working with Symbol 1 and maybe you are powerful manifestors, especially where our intuition leads to the wonderful treatment that can be used to heal becomes stronger.Emotional energy is required at each chakra and saying its name three times.Reiki includes relaxation, because it does indeed work.Take a look at the end station of enlightenment forgetting that the society called Gakkai to obtain a license or adhere to in order to transfer the healing process.

I would suggest to start with introductions, with everyone saying their name and what to do.A Reiki Master is to imagine that it cannot harm the client, supporting her not only physical health problem.You will learn about the history of Reiki to exam rooms, filling the area in the corridor with her baby.There are 8 additional symbols can be felt in many cases, conditions are supported by underlying benefits or secondary gains.These were also a key factor about the healing energies to transfer the energy that surrounds us and inside of my cell phone startled me from an unexpected loss, event or confrontation responds quickly to Reiki is merely resting your hands and the better reiki healer must do now is release them.

#Reiki Healing Easy And Cheap Cool Tips #Does Reiki Give You Energy

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imuktadul-blog · 4 years

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The Next Big Thing in Health Care Reform - Why Are People So Worked Up?

Why are Americans so aroused about health care reform? Statements like "don't touch my Medicare" or "everyone should have access to state of the art health care regardless of cost" are in my opinion uninformed and visceral responses that indicate a poor understanding of our health care system's history, its current and future resources and therefore the funding challenges that America faces going forward. While we all wonder how the health care system has reached what some ask as a crisis stage. Let's attempt to take a number of the emotion out of the talk by briefly examining how health care during this country emerged and the way that has formed our thinking and culture about health care. thereupon as a foundation let's check out the pros and cons of the Obama administration health care reform proposals and let's check out the concepts put forth by the Republicans?

Access to state of the art health care services are some things we will all agree would be an honest thing for this country. Experiencing a significant illness is one among life's major challenges and to face it without the means to buy it's positively frightening. But as we shall see, once we all know the facts, we'll find that achieving this goal won't be easy without our individual contribution.

These are the themes i will be able to touch on to undertake to form some sense out of what's happening to American health care and therefore the steps we will personally fancy make things better.

A recent history of yank health care - what has driven the prices so high? Key elements of the Obama health care plan The Republican view of health care - free market competition Universal access to state of the art health care - a worthy goal but tough to realize what can we do? First, let's get a touch historical perspective on American health care. this is often not intended to be an exhausted check out that history but it'll give us an appreciation of how the health care system and our expectations for it developed. What drove costs higher and higher?

To begin, let's address the American war . therein war, dated tactics and therefore the carnage inflicted by modern weapons of the age combined to cause ghastly results. Not generally known is that the majority of the deaths on each side of that war weren't the results of actual combat but to what happened after a battlefield wound was inflicted. to start with, evacuation of the wounded moved at a snail's pace and this caused severe delays in treating the wounded. Secondly, many wounds were subjected to wound care, related surgeries and/or amputations of the affected limbs and this often resulted within the onset of massive infection. So you would possibly survive a battle wound only to die at the hands of medical aid providers who although well-intentioned, their interventions were often quite lethal. High death tolls also can be ascribed to everyday sicknesses and diseases during a time when no antibiotics existed. In total something like 600,000 deaths occurred from all causes, over 2% of the U.S. population at the time!

Let's skip to the primary half the 20th century for a few additional perspective and to bring us up to more times . After the war there have been steady improvements in American medicine in both the understanding and treatment of certain diseases, new surgical techniques and in physician education and training. except for the foremost part the simplest that doctors could offer their patients was a "wait and see" approach. Medicine could handle bone fractures and increasingly attempt risky surgeries (now largely performed in sterile surgical environments) but medicines weren't yet available to handle serious illnesses. the bulk of deaths remained the results of untreatable conditions like tuberculosis, pneumonia, scarlatina and measles and/or related complications. Doctors were increasingly conscious of heart and vascular conditions, and cancer but that they had almost nothing with which to treat these conditions.

This very basic review of yank medical record helps us to know that until quite recently (around the 1950's) we had virtually no technologies with which to treat serious or maybe minor ailments. Here may be a juncture we'd like to understand; "nothing to treat you with means visits to the doctor if in the least were relegated to emergencies so in such a scenario costs are curtailed. the straightforward fact is that there was little for doctors to supply and thus virtually nothing to drive health care spending. A second factor holding down costs was that medical treatments that were provided were purchased out-of-pocket, meaning by way of an individuals personal resources. There was no such thing as insurance and positively not insurance paid by an employer. apart from the very destitute who were lucky to seek out their way into a charity hospital, health care costs were the responsibility of the individual.

What does health care insurance need to do with health care costs? Its impact on health care costs has been, and remains to the present day, absolutely enormous. When insurance for people and families emerged as a way for companies to flee wage freezes and to draw in and retain employees after war II, almost overnight an excellent pool of cash became available to buy health care. Money, as a results of the supply of billions of dollars from insurance pools, encouraged an innovative America to extend medical research efforts. More Americans became insured not only through private, employer sponsored insurance but through increased government funding that created Medicare and Medicaid (1965). additionally funding became available for expanded veterans health care benefits. Finding a cure for nearly anything has consequently become very lucrative. this is often also the first reason for the vast array of treatments we've available today.

I don't wish to convey that medical innovations are a nasty thing. consider the tens of many lives that are saved, extended, enhanced and made more productive as a result. But with a funding source grown to its current magnitude (hundreds of billions of dollars annually) upward pressure on health care costs are inevitable. Doctor's offer and most folks demand and obtain access to the newest available health care technology within the sort of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostic tools and surgical procedures. therefore the result's that there's more health care to spend our money on and until very recently most folks were insured and therefore the costs were largely covered by a third-party (government, employers). Add an insatiable and unrealistic public demand for access and treatment and that we have the "perfect storm" for higher and better health care costs. And by and enormous the storm is merely intensifying.

At now , let's address the key questions which will lead us into a review and hopefully a far better understanding of the health care reform proposals within the news today. is that the current trajectory of U.S. health care spending sustainable? Can America maintain its world competitiveness when 16%, heading for 20% of our gross national product is being spent on health care? What are the opposite industrialized countries spending on health care and is it even on the brink of these numbers? once we add politics and an election year to the talk , information to assist us answer these questions become critical. we'd like to spend some effort in understanding health care and checking out how we expect about it. Properly armed we will more intelligently determine whether certain health care proposals might solve or worsen a number of these problems. What are often done about the challenges? How can we as individuals contribute to the solutions?

The Obama health care plan is complex needless to say - I even have never seen a health care plan that may not . But through a spread of programs his plan attempts to affect a) increasing the amount of yank that are covered by adequate insurance (almost 50 million are not), and b) managing costs in such a fashion that quality and our access to health care isn't adversely affected. Republicans seek to realize these same basic and broad goals, but their approach is proposed as being more market driven than government driven. Let's check out what the Obama plan does to accomplish the 2 objectives above. Remember, by the way, that his plan was gone by congress, and begins to significantly kick-in starting in 2014. So this is often the direction we are currently taking as we plan to reform health care.

Through insurance exchanges and an expansion of Medicaid,the Obama plan dramatically expands the amount of usa citizens which will be covered by insurance .

To cover the value of this expansion the plan requires everyone to possess insurance with a penalty to be paid if we do not comply. it'll purportedly send money to the states to hide those individuals added to state-based Medicaid programs.

To cover the added costs there have been variety of latest taxes introduced, one being a 2.5% tax on new medical technologies and another increases taxes on interest and dividend income for wealthier Americans.

The Obama plan also uses concepts like evidence-based medicine, accountable care organizations, comparative effectiveness research and reduced reimbursement to health care providers (doctors and hospitals) to regulate costs. The insurance mandate covered by points 1 and a couple of above may be a worthy goal and most industrialized countries outside of the U.S. provide "free" (paid for by rather high individual and company taxes) health care to most if not all of their citizens. it's important to notice , however, that there are variety of restrictions that many Americans would be culturally unprepared. Here is that the primary controversial aspect of the Obama plan, the insurance mandate. The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided to listen to arguments on the constitutionality of the insurance mandate as a results of a petition by 26 states attorney's general that congress exceeded its authority under the commerce clause of the U.S. constitution by passing this element of the plan. the matter is that if the Supreme Court should rule against the mandate, it's generally believed that the Obama plan as we all know it's doomed. this is often because its major goal of providing insurance to all or any would be severely limited if not terminated altogether by such a choice .

As you'd guess, the taxes covered by point 3 above are rather unpopular with those entities and individuals that need to pay them. Medical device companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, doctors and insurance companies all had to "give up" something that might either create new revenue or would scale back costs within their spheres of control. As an example, Stryker Corporation, an outsized medical device company, recently announced a minimum of a 1,000 employee reduction partially to hide these new fees. this is often being experienced by other medical device companies and pharmaceutical companies also . The reduction in good paying jobs within the se sectors and in the hospital sector may rise as former cost structures will need to be addressed so as to accommodate the reduced rate of reimbursement to hospitals. Over subsequent ten years some estimates put the value reductions to hospitals and physicians at half a trillion dollars and this may flow on to and affect the businesses that provide hospitals and doctors with the newest medical technologies. None of this is often to mention that efficiencies won't be realized by these changes or that other jobs will successively be created but this may represent painful change for a short time . It helps us to know that health care reform does have an impact both positive and negative.

#PLease Visit : https://digitaltech007.blogspot.com/2020/06/11-baby-care-tips-for-your-new-born.html

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adrianodiprato · 4 years

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+ "Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Game Changers | Series Two Reflection

Over the past five months we have experienced unmatched disruption to education and to our daily lives. For some learning communities it has understandably brought about much fear, anxiety and uncertainty. However, amid all the panic and unknowns, new channels of innovation, creativity and systemic transformation are also accelerating at unparalleled levels. We have appreciated the unprecedented collaboration in our industry as educators globally have searched for solutions to the challenges posed by the pandemic.

During this global pandemic l have been personally inspired and encouraged by the actions of many individual educators and learning communities to rethink what education can be and should be in the future. In our Continuous Learning Toolkit | Volume II – Leading Through Crisis we highlighted a number of learning communities that decided that it simply is not enough to manage a response; they recognise the importance of leading through the crisis.

All over the world, there's growing consensus that our education systems are broken. In Series Two of the Game Changers podcast we encountered educators and social entrepreneurs that shared big ideas on how we might create learning today, for tomorrow’s world.

The true mark of a leader is the willingness to stick with a bold course of action. Much like the Emerson quote, each of our Serie Two Game Changers are not followers, but innovators, that for some, may be unconventional or even controversial, yet led a path by constantly stand for something special. That specialness I speak of is their deep understanding that all people matter and that each young person is home to a unique life. And that our collective goal is to, at stated by Sir Ken Robinson “…enable students to understand the world around them and the talents within them so that they can become fulfilled individuals and active, compassionate citizens.”

Episode One | Pernille Ripp

We started Series Two with Oregon Middle School, Wisconsin, USA English teacher and prolific education author Pernille Ripp.

Key learnings – For mine, at the very heart of Pernille’s motivation it was about prioritising children's voices, choice and ownership to give them the tools to help build a harmonious and sustainable world. This quote from Pernille best articulates her motivation, “With ownership comes a deeper engagement because the learning environment is more theirs. Students should not feel like visitors in our rooms, it should feel like a safe environment that they can create, experiment, and perhaps even fail in.”

Episode Two | Pasi Sahlberg

Key learnings – What impresses me about Pasi is that when he talks, he is intentional. He is intentional in his advocacy for schools to be human places that create safe spaces where each young person can develop a lifelong, joyful passion for learning, through play, through wonder and infinite possibly. A safe space that is this poetic balance between academic mastery, creative thinking, movement and self and social intelligence and awareness.

Episode Three | Nikki Kirkup

Key learnings – Nikki highlighted the importance of learning communities developing a delivery model that is congruent with the value proposition of the school. And she reminded us that it is not merely a response to a crisis; an opportunity to redesign our future. Nikki and the amazing team at The Knox School have been, in her words “…designing and facilitating learning experiences that go beyond the transmission of traditional academic content; placing value on the significance of character outcomes and individual student competencies, our educators have delivered learning that fosters the development of a range of critical skills which would empower our students to not only survive through times of disruption, but moreover to thrive within any environment in which they find themselves.”

Episode Four | Greg Miller

Key learnings – Grit and perseverance: iteration, iteration, iteration. Again, infinite possibilities of what each young people is capable of unlocking. At the centre of Greg’s mission in this kind of notion of limitlessness, when the expectation is that by reshaping our environments, opportunities and thinking, we can change the world for self, place and the other. Inspiring.

Episode Five | Jan Owen AM

Key learnings – We were very fortunate to have Jan on Series Two. Her work has been inspiring me for many years and much of her research when she was at the Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) is the formation of Polaris. I particularly like how Jan challenged our thinking around the word resilience and moved the focus toward developing a resourcefulnessthat better supports the fostering of adaptability and self-efficacy of young people, to thrive in their ever-evolving world.

Episode Six | Conrad Wolfram

Key learnings – Quantification measures like NAPLAN and the ATAR have assumed an importance beyond their ability to truly judge and paint the whole picture of each individual. We utilise simplistic metrics and that we need far more agile metrics, not just for Maths learning, but for education in general, as we enter the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Age. Basically, a new age of enlightenment and a fundamental shift in Mathematics curriculum. I also loved that Conrad mentioned that Maths could learn from The Arts about crafting more open-ended assessment.

Episode Seven | Deborah Netolicky

Key learnings – Deborah had a clear focus on the profoundness of listening, deep authentic listening, to understand, not simply respond. It was about knowing your context. It was about thinking around the kinds of collaboration that you can encourage. It was about dedicating time and resources and asking how you are truly catering for the different career stages of each staff member, all centred around cultures of trust. And ultimately it was about how can you honour permission for the individual to discover their inherent possibility and that of the community in which they serve.

Episode Eight | Stephen Harris

Key learnings – Every time I encounter a conversation with Stephen I think of the absolute freedom of art and the notion of being able to bend things most people see as a straight line. He remains committed to be a learning community, that always attempts to spiral upwards the innovation and learning curves, with its central focus – relationships, via personal learning pathways and individual permission. That learning communities are about more than just buildings, and the people in them, on a set campus. We need to curate and create high-quality spaces that are inspiring encounters as well as safe, accessible and sustainable – within and beyond the boundaries of the school campus. All designed to enhance the interdependence of the collective and individual learning and wellness growth. All supporting my notion of anytime, anywhere learning – on campus, online, in context and in country.

Special Series | Julie Andrews & Leann Wilson

These six “In conversation with Phil Cummins…” were some of my favourite episodes, featuring two proud Indigenous women, Julie Andrews and Leann Wilson.

Key learnings – Leann mentioned in one of her episodes and our Global Gathering live event her father’s 4 R’s – Respect, Responsibility, Relationships and… “Remember what’s gone before you and remember those three fellas’ above you”. This typified the essence of Julie and Leann and their proud history and that of Indigenous peoples – a deep sense of truth, story, family, culture community and individual and collective responsibility. This Special Series also highlighted that it is time we start talking about Indigenous people using language that celebrates the rich history and culture, not deficit language that only serves to cultivate stereotypes that are harmful, oppressive and divisive. 65,000 years to draw upon, and a rich culture that never stands still, always evolving.

Recently Jon Yeo, the licensee of TEDxMelbourne sent me Matt Goldman’s “The search for a-ha moments” TED Salon talk. In this talk Goldman shares his schooling experience and stated, “…if these environments didn't know what to do with people who didn't fit a standard mould, why weren't we reshaping the environments to take advantage of people's strengths?”

I’ll leave you with this statement from Matt Goldman, “What I've come to believe is that we need to cultivate safe and conducive conditions for new and innovative ideas to evolve and thrive.” This new and innovative environment, for school communities to evolve, and the people within them to thrive, need to hero Wellness by Design® at the heart their remarkable learning story. Why? Because all people matter.

Thank you to Pernille, Pasi, Nikki, Greg, Jan, Conrad, Deborah, Stephen, Julie and Leann for sharing your story and passion. And thank for reminding us all that each person in our learning communities is home to a life. It is as simple and complex as that. Born from the construct of love – of self, for place and the other.

Listen to our Series Two: Epilogue via streaming platforms - SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Play.

#permissionistriumph #game changers #Wellness By Design

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wausdraws · 4 years

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Howdy! Commissions are now open! As this is my first time doing anything of the sort, I'm keeping it to five slots so I'm not overwhelmed, on the chance I am commissioned. Also of note: I am open to discussion! If you're unsure about anything, please contact me via Discord, at Awauspic#3154. I will answer you as soon as I can, so feel free to ask!

A Few Things First

A few things you'll want to know before even considering commissioning me.

All In One Place. Since I'll be having a limited number of slots, I'll be leaving these available for checking. You can track these on my Trello if you want to see what I'm doing, though I will also state whether my commissions are open or closed on my dA profile & art Tumblr.

Full Payment Beforehand. I require full payment upfront for commissions. Pricing and Payments below will cover how I'll handle refunds and anything extra that may come up.

Communication is key! I will check with you for every stage of the commission, and request that you stay reasonably responsive; I want to make sure it looks as good as can be, but to do that, I need to know your thoughts!

On Uncertainties: If you think you might want to commission me but aren't sure where anything falls - contact me! I want to give you the best possible experience, which includes before you commission me. I'm perfectly willing to discuss what you want with you, regardless of whether or not you decide to commission a piece from me.

Referring to references... As a general, I will want a flat-color reference, with no or minimal shading, or an available color palette. If there isn't one available, I'll work with you to get the appropriate colors down and provide a swatch with the completed piece for future reference.

Cleaning up afterward. Post completion, you have one week to point out anything minor or easy to fix within the piece that bothers you; as long as it's within that week, and reasonable, I'll fix it. Past that, however, it's done and dusted, and I will not be altering it.

What Can I Do For You?

You're okay with the above? Great! Here's what will be accepted, what will be rejected, and a few things I'm a little iffy about. This isn't exhaustive, so if you're hesitant at all, contact me! I'm more than happy to clarify for you!

I will draw:

Furries! As visible in my commission post above, I will draw fursonas and general furry creatures, feral, to anthro, to 'taur.

Animals! In-line with furries, I'll also do general animals.

I might draw:

Fandom content! This is more so because I need to know where it's from, and have references available. Though by no means an exhaustive list, some fandoms that I'll cover are:

Undertale/Deltarune

Since this is AU heavy, please specify if Classic for standard, or give me the AU. I try to keep up but dear god.

Warriors, including OCs.

Light Gore. I am willing to draw bleeding/injuries/fights. See below for what classifies as too much. Again, this is case-by-case.

Body horror. I'm much more tolerant when missing chunks, extra mouths, broken shapes, and general weirdness is just part of the design. However, it is still case-by-case, and we'll need to talk it out.

Innuendo or Suggestive. Tasteful relative nudity, suggestive posing or behavior, and visual innuendo. Nothing too obvious, but I’m game to work with you on figuring something out.

I will not draw:

Mechs!

Actual Human People. Those who are real people. I’m not drawing a celebrity, I’m not drawing your cousin.

Humans, in general. This will change as I improve, but for now, humans are a firm no go.

Bugs. I am terrible with them. I will improve, but for now, these are no-go.

NSFW.

NSFW Gore is anything excessive; pieces being ripped off, clear abuse or painful deaths are hard no's.

NSFW Sexual is with visible genitalia, actual sex, etc.

Pricing and Payments

Having chosen what you want and the piece in question confirmed to be alright, here comes the rest of it; paying the artist. As a heads up, everything listed is in US Dollars.

Details, Extras, and Deadlines, Oh My.

Character(s)

Group Shots: I will do multiple characters for full-body pieces of any level, but not for sketches or mugshots. Each character will add seven dollars onto the original price, for up to five characters total.

Complications In The Making: Characters come in varying levels of complexity. However, if one is exceptionally intricate - either in having heavy, detail-orientated patterns or a lot going on, that will be ten dollars per intricate character, alongside the original pricing.

Backgrounds: With all pieces, I’ll include a simple mono-color background, as well as one without. In fully rendered, I’ll add an effect on top to make it special. However:

Funky Background on Non-Rendered: I'm happy to add background effects on a non-rendered piece. However, it'll cost you another two dollars.

Simple Scenery: Scenes are another beast entirely. For simple scenes, that's seven dollars.

Detailed Scene: Fifteen dollars flat for anything detailed; more requested features drive the price up by two dollars every two features.

Deadlines. If you want a piece done by a certain time, it may drive up the price depending on how quickly you want it, and if there is anything I will have to set aside to get it done. Naturally, I will reject deadlines that I know I will not have time for, or are otherwise unreasonable.

Start to Finish: For a single fully rendered body piece, it takes me approximately three days to complete, while balancing it between the rest of my workload, while sketches often only take minutes.

Sets: You can commission multiple works at once, and I'll bundle them together to be done along the same timeline, or at least with each other; excluding a deadline or real-life problems, I'll have them done and sent to you at the same time. Individual prices still apply.

Up-Front, And Returned

After alerting me to your intent to commission and getting the details worked out, so comes the green.

A Cuppa! Feel free to pay me through Ko-Fi! It takes in 3$ increments, so anything divisible by three is an option, and with less processing fees.

Paypal! After we've got everything settled, I'll hand over my Paypal.

Patreon! Still a WIP, my Patreon is available if you're feeling like you want regular doses of art, or just want to support me. I appreciate it no less. <3

In the event of a refund... I will refund for work not completed. If, for example, you commission a full render, but request a refund after I have completed the sketch, I'll keep the sketch costs, but return the rest to you; you also, of course, get to keep what work was done before the refund.

#Wauspdraws #Awauspic draws #commissions #commissions opened #commisions open #commision #taking commisions #read more #art #digital art #drawing #help a college student out

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jojo-lity · 6 years

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I'd like a scenario where a female scientist from the speedwagon foundation discovers that santana is alive (and perhaps has already awoken before she found him) at some time in the far distant future and she finds that the last living pillar man is the most interesting person she's ever met, and he finds that he feels similarly towards her.

here we are, sorry for the wait!

ao3 link

Heavy, exhausted eyes stared up at the dark ceiling. The flight to her new home had been rough, but she couldn’t bring herself to risk oversleeping. After a successful internship, she had been offered a position in one of the Speedwagon Foundation’s most top-secret facilities, and the last thing she wanted to do was compromise a good first impression by showing up late.

Showing up in a state of sleep deprivation might not have been much better. Sighing, she slipped out of bed, trudging to the disorganised kitchen. If she wasn’t going back to sleep, maybe some early breakfast would make her feel a little more prepared for the day ahead.

It proved a good decision, perhaps more for the accompanying cup of coffee than the food itself. While she still couldn’t say she was at her brightest, it was enough to get her out the door on time.

On the surface, the facility looked exactly the same as the place she had worked before. The building’s structure was identical, and it was full of busy people in the familiar uniform, carrying various artifacts of interest to the organisation. The only notable difference was the battalion of guards surrounding every entrance, giving her and her ID a stern stare before parting to let her in.

She had been assigned to the study of a particular project. She hadn’t been told very much about it, only that it had been going on for a long time, and even in the building where everything was secret, any information about it was to be kept strictly under wraps. Apparently, there would be catastrophic consequences if anything got out. It made her nervous, but there was a certain kind of pride to be taken from it, if she was being trusted with such a sensitive matter. Nothing could possibly make her let her employers down.

“There you are.” Her direct supervisor didn’t seem like one for greetings, but at least she wasn’t unfriendly. “Right now, you just have to watch. Let us know if anything changes.” Was there a trace of pity on her face? “Do a good job, and you’ll be able to do something else soon.” From there, there was little left to do but show her to her station- a single chair and small desk, overlooking a large glass case.

The glass was thick enough to appear bulletproof, and harsh light was shining on it from every direction. It seemed strange, when all she could see in there was a rock. It was a bit larger than a human, and beautifully carved- Hang on. Looking closer, it appeared that there was a human face etched into the stone. She was no art student, but was it really possible for human hands to bring out such breathtaking detail? If not for the rocky texture, she almost could have sworn that the full, delicate lips were about to take a breath.

“Santana.” She jumped a little. Had she really been so absorbed that she had forgotten her supervisor was standing behind her? “That’s what we call him. Not sure who thought of it, but…” She shifted a little, almost uncomfortably. “Calling him “it” didn’t really sit right.” She might have been about to say more, but a machine on the other side of the room beeped, and she left the new employee to her work.

—

On the first few days, the sheer novelty of her new workplace, and her growing curiosity about exactly who or what “Santana” was, had been more than enough to get her through the hours of watching absolutely nothing happen. But as the week reached its end, she had to admit…

It was getting extremely boring.

At least her colleagues seemed to trust her, since they were leaving her alone in the room more and more often, especially during the later hours. Having no friends or family in the area, she had no reason to keep a regular schedule, so she had gone ahead and taken on most of the night shifts. In the middle of the night, the lab was a tranquil place, enough that her focus had slipped once or twice.

As luck would have it, it was in one of those moments that her lifeless, unmoving responsibility began to stir.

Body finally strong enough to withstand the constant ultraviolet assault for a short time, the protective hardness of Santana’s skin started to recede, allowing him to move and take in his surroundings. He wasn’t in the well, and Joseph was nowhere to be seen. He only saw one human, who was turning towards him with an expression of horror.

“I have to call someone!” Shocked enough to exclaim out loud, she grabbed her phone, dialling the number she had been given. It went to voicemail, prompting her to speak. “Hey, I…”

Her phone fell from her hand, the call spontaneously ending as it hit the floor. But she never dropped her phone. In the few seconds between that moment and the last time she had looked his way, Santana had escaped from the impenetrable glass, and was towering over her with a vaguely unimpressed look. “Don’t call anyone.”

Apparently satisfied with her timid nod, he turned away from her, eyes scanning every machine in the room. “Humanity has advanced yet further,” he muttered, lifting a computer monitor from its place on the table. In a few deft movements, it was in pieces in his hands, each individual component carefully turned over and examined.

He clearly wasn’t human, if he could move so quickly and effortlessly. But what was he? Why had he been in what was essentially a cage? Why was it so imperative that he didn’t escape? All he was doing was inspecting the rest of the computers, tapping at their keys and intently watching the results on the screens.

“You’ve created minds to think for you.” He turned back around to look at her. Or rather, only his upper half turned. It was a bit unsettling, even with the chiselled perfection of his face in full view. “A creative method to surpass your limits.”

“Thank you… I mean, I didn’t make these! It wasn’t even my idea.” The nocturnal schedule must have been taking its toll, since her stomach flipped at the idea of potentially being complimented by him. Maybe she needed more regular meals.

“Then whose was it?” With one last hit of a button, every ultraviolet light in the room shut off, leaving only a dim fluorescent glow. “Perhaps they’re worth meeting.”

“Well, they’re probably dead now… or most of them, anyway.”

“Hm. Really.” He blinked, drawing her attention to the gear-like symbol below his eye. “Human lives are… perhaps too short. Though I’m sure that’s the next problem you intend to solve.”

“It’s… one of them?” She wasn’t sure just how active the rest of the building was at this time of night, but someone was bound to notice soon that most of the room’s functions had shut off. She didn’t know why Santana had been held captive. All she knew was that as long as he walked and talked and reasoned like any living person, she couldn’t see him back in that position.

“We need to go.” It wasn’t easy to maintain any kind of authority, especially when he stared down at her as if she was interrupting something. When her voice wavered a little, she repeated her statement with more force behind it. “Or else we’re both in for it. Who knows what they might do?”

Thankfully, he seemed to accept it. “I’m taking these with me.” That was all he said before lifting a table that carried most of the equipment, holding it steady in his hands and walking right out. All she could do was struggle to keep up, watching as he effortlessly swept aside any obstacle between himself and the outside world.

—

“I can’t believe we did that.”

“There’s no reason not to believe what I did. It wasn’t even the first time.” After breezing out the door, Santana had continued out into the desert. Feeling somewhat responsible for what she had allowed to escape into the world, and still full of curiosity about his existence, she had seen no reason not to follow. She probably wouldn’t be able to show her face at the Speedwagon Foundation again.

After dismantling all his takings, he was in the process of reassembling them into a single machine. She knew a thing or two about computers, but he worked so quickly that it made her head spin. And he claimed to have never heard of computers?

“Well, I can’t believe what I did. I worked so hard for that job, and now here I am…” She swiped at the ground, collecting a handful of sand and letting it slip between her fingers. “Maybe I’ll get arrested.”

“Arrested?”

“Yeah, uh… guys with guns will come get me, and put me in a room, and I’ll probably have to stay there for a bunch of years. And it’ll suck… I mean, it’ll be the worst thing ever.” The more she talked about it, the more of a certainty it seemed.

“But you already live such short lives.” She was surprised to find that his attention was fully on her, his voice signalling a faint interest that it had been completely devoid of before. “Why would you be deprived of any of it?”

“I don’t know, it’s… just how we do things?” Now that she thought about it, it did seem odd. “Seriously, though, it wasn’t my idea. And whoever came up with it? Long gone.”

He shook his head in a short, tight motion. “And they told me nothing would change in two thousand years.”

“Two… thousand? Who’s “they”?” Was there any use in asking questions? Everything either of them said only seemed to raise more questions, more than they could answer even if they wanted to. “Never mind.” She fell silent, trying to listen for police sirens.

Some time passed, anywhere from a few minutes to an hour, until the structure Santana had built made a booting-up sound. It was followed by the familiar glow of several monitors, each displaying something different. He seemed to be paying special attention to the one rigged up to what resembled a small radio tower.

“Nothing mechanical is approaching us,” he informed her. “And I would sense the presence of anything biological.”

She nodded, seeing no reason to argue. Even if it was just an extremely convincing fake, she wanted to believe that he knew what he was doing. There was something fascinating about his absolute command over what he knew, and even what he didn’t. It made her wonder… “Why are you helping me?”

“You helped me.” Of course his answer was simple, and made perfect sense. “It seems that it was important for you to keep me in there. And yet you never asked that of me. It’s… interesting.”

There was no reason for him to lie. She was interesting to him, and not just as a curiosity, a representative of an unknown species. It made her feel a little less authentic, but rather than give up, she found within herself the determination to get to know him as a person. He had revealed enough to prove himself more than interesting.

“So, now that you’re out… where were you planning on heading?”

He blinked again. “Nowhere, just yet.” He gestured to his computer, now displaying words and images from all over the Internet. “I have a lot to learn.”

Waiting for the objection that never came, she moved herself closer, eventually settling herself next to him. “I think I do too.”

#santana #battle tendency #scenario #she her pronouns #sfw

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cubelelo · 3 years

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He Invented the Rubik's Cube. He's Still Learning From It

Erno Rubik, who formulated one of the world's generally well known and suffering riddles, opens up about his creation in his new book, "Cubed."

Erno Rubik, who created the Rubik's Cube, composed his book "Cubed," he said, "to attempt to get what's occurred and why it has occurred. What is the genuine idea of the cube? Video by Akos Stiller For The New York Times

The primary individual to settle a Rubik's Cube went through a month attempting to unscramble it.

It was the riddle's designer, an unassuming Hungarian engineering educator named Erno Rubik. At the point when he created the 3D shape in 1974, he didn't know it might at any point be settled. Mathematicians later determined that there are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 approaches to mastermind the squares, however only one of those blends is right.

At the point when Rubik at long last did it, following quite a while of dissatisfaction, he was overwhelmed by "an extraordinary feeling of achievement and utter alleviation." Looking back, he understands the new age of "speedcubers" — Yusheng Du of China set the worldwide best of 3.47 seconds in 2018 — probably won't be dazzled.

"Be that as it may, recollect," Rubik writes in his new book, "Cubed," "this had never been finished."

In the almost fifty years since, the Rubik's Cube has gotten perhaps the most suffering, flabbergasting, goading and engrossing riddles at any point made. In excess of 350 million solid shapes have sold internationally; in the event that you incorporate knockoffs, the number is far higher. They enrapture software engineers, rationalists and craftsmen. Many books, promising pace settling techniques, dissecting solid shape plan standards or investigating their philosophical importance, have been distributed. The 3D square came to epitomize "significantly more than simply a riddle," the intellectual researcher Douglas Hofstadter wrote in 1981. "It is a keen mechanical development, a side interest, a learning device, a wellspring of illustrations, a motivation."

ImageErno Rubik, right, at a Rubik Rsquo;s Cube big showdown in Budapest in 1982. The competitors included, from left, Zoltan Labas of Hungary, Guus Razoux Schultz of the Netherlands and Minh Thai of the United States.

Erno Rubik, right, at a Rubik's Cube big showdown in Budapest in 1982. The competitors included, from left, Zoltan Labas of Hungary, Guus Razoux Schultz of the Netherlands and Minh Thai of the United States.Credit...via Rubik's Brand

Be that as it may, even as the Rubik's Cube vanquished the world, the exposure disinclined man behind it has stayed a secret. "Cubed," which comes out this week, is halfway his diary, part of the way a scholarly composition and in enormous section a romantic tale about his developing relationship with the creation that bears his name and the worldwide local area of cubers focused on it.

"I would prefer not to compose a personal history, since I am not inspired by my life or sharing my life," Rubik said during a Skype meet from his home in Budapest. "The key explanation I did it is to attempt to get what's occurred and why it has occurred. What is the genuine idea of the shape?"

Rubik, 76, is exuberant and energized, motioning with his glasses and bobbing on the love seat, running his hands through his hair so it stands up in a dim tuft, giving him the vibe of a surprised bird. He talks officially and gives long, intricate, philosophical answers, much of the time following off with the expression "etc" while circumnavigating the finish of a point. He sat in his family room, in a home he planned himself, before a shelf brimming with sci-fi titles — his top choices incorporate works by Isaac Asimov and the Polish author Stanisław Lem.

He talks about the solid shape as though it's his kid. "I'm exceptionally near the 3D shape. The 3D shape was growing up close to me and the present moment, it's moderately aged, so I know a great deal about it," he said.

"Here's one," Rubik said, recovering it from the end table, then, at that point tinkering with it missing mindedly for the following hour or thereabouts as we talked.

Rubik Rsquo;s introductory plan was made of wood, then, at that point he added shading to the squares to make their development noticeable.

Rubik's underlying plan was made of wood, then, at that point he added shading to the squares to make their development visible.Credit...Rubik's Brand

"While heading to attempting to comprehend the idea of the 3D shape, I adjusted my perspective," Rubik said. "What truly intrigued me was not the idea of the solid shape, but rather the idea of individuals, the connection among individuals and the block."

Pursue The Great Read Every work day, we suggest one piece of outstanding composition from The Times — an account or exposition that takes you somewhere you probably won't anticipate going. Get it shipped off your inbox.

Perusing "Cubed" can be an unusual, bewildering experience, one that is similar to getting and winding one of his solid shapes. It does not have an unmistakable story construction or circular segment — an impact that is intentional, Rubik said. At first, he didn't need the book to have sections or even a title.

"I had a few thoughts, and I thought to share this combination of thoughts that I have to me and pass on it to the peruser to discover which ones are significant," he said. "I'm not taking your hands and strolling you on this course. You can begin toward the end or in the center."

Or then again you can begin toward the start.

Erno Rubik was brought into the world on July 13, 1944, about a month after D-Day, in the storm cellar of a Budapest clinic that had become an air-strike cover. His dad was a specialist who planned flying lightweight flyers.

As a kid, Rubik wanted to draw, paint and shape. He contemplated engineering at the Budapest University of Technology, then, at that point learned at the College of Applied Arts. He became fixated on mathematical examples. As a teacher, he showed a class called distinct math, which included helping understudies to utilize two-dimensional pictures to address three-dimensional shapes and issues. It was an odd and obscure field, yet it set him up to foster the solid shape.

In the spring of 1974, when he was 29, Rubik was in his room at his mom's loft, fiddling. He portrays his room as taking after within a kid's pocket, with pastels, string, sticks, springs and pieces of paper dispersed across each surface. It was likewise brimming with shapes he made, out of paper and wood.

Keep perusing the primary story

At some point — "I don't know precisely why," he composes — he attempted to assemble eight 3D squares with the goal that they could remain together yet in addition move around, trading places. He made the blocks out of wood, then, at that point penetrated an opening toward the sides of the shapes to connect them together. The article immediately self-destructed.

Erno Rubik, the creator of the Rubik’s Cube, at his home in Budapest. “I’m exceptionally near the cube,” he said. “The solid shape was growing up close to me and at the present time, it’s moderately aged, so I know a great deal about it.”

Erno Rubik, the creator of the Rubik's Cube, at his home in Budapest. "I'm exceptionally near the 3D shape," he said. "The 3D shape was growing up close to me and this moment, it's moderately aged, so I know a great deal about it."Credit. Akos Stiller for The New York Times

Numerous cycles later, Rubik sorted out the novel plan that permitted him to fabricate something incomprehensible: a strong, static item that is additionally liquid. After he gave his wooden solid shape an underlying turn, he chose to add tone to the squares to make their development apparent. He painted the essences of the squares yellow, blue, red, orange, green and white. He gave it a bend, then, at that point another turn, then, at that point another, and continued curving until he understood he probably won't have the option to reestablish it to its unique state.

He was lost in a bright labyrinth, and did not understand how to explore it. "There was no chance back," he composes.

After the 3D square turned into a worldwide wonder, there would be mistaken records of Rubik's innovative cycle. Reports portrayed how he isolated himself and chipped away at the 3D shape day and night for quite a long time. In actuality, he went to work, saw companions, and chipped away at tackling the 3D shape in his extra time, for no particular reason.

After he broke it, Rubik presented an application at the Hungarian Patent Office for a "three-dimensional coherent toy." A producer of chess sets and plastic toys made 5,000 duplicates. In 1977, Rubik's "Buvös Kocka," or "Sorcery Cube," appeared in Hungarian toy shops. After two years, 300,000 solid shapes had sold in Hungary.

Rubik got an agreement at an American organization, Ideal Toy, which needed 1,000,000 3D squares to sell abroad. In 1980, Ideal Toy carried Rubik to New York to a toy reasonable. He wasn't the most appealing sales rep — a bashful engineering educator with a then-restricted order of English — however the organization required somebody to show that the riddle was reasonable.

Deals detonated. In three years, Ideal sold 100 million Rubik's Cubes. Advisers for addressing the block shot up the success records. "There's a sense wherein the 3D shape is incredibly, basic — it's just got six sides, six tones," said Steve Patterson, a logician and writer of "The starting point: The Foundations of Knowledge," who has expounded on the 3D square as an epitome of mysteries. "In an extremely brief timeframe, it turns out to be fantastically unpredictable."

Right away, Rubik didn't have a compensation from the toy organization, and for some time, he saw little of the eminences. He lived on his educator's compensation of $200 every month.

#rubik's cube #cubelelo

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artbyelana · 3 years

Text

IPO UPDATE

IPO Update for summative. Amendment #2

Intent: (50-100 words):

In one or two sentences describe your intention: what your interests are, what will you make art “about”.

I’m very intrigued with the senses, more specifically touch and how it enhances our connections with others and our surroundings. I’m interested in exploring the sensation of touch (figuratively and literally) and its relation to memories and self through skin and the body. I want the work I create this year to convey the impressions of touch and how it embodies our experiences and memories within this world. I believe we are who we are because of the experiences we have lived. My touch is a physical expression of my identity and self and I think making it visual is an exploration I’d like to look into.

Background: (200-300 words):

Briefly describe what you did last semester, what you intend to develop from this work, and what (if anything) you are not going to continue to work with.

Last year my work focused on touch and the embodiment of our identity and emotions through the process of mark making and line. I also explored light and shadows and their relation to emotion. Using thin sheets of plastic, I etched self portraits into the sheets and then layered them together with frames. They created a ‘tunnel’ of my mark making and self, the portraits only visible when you looked through the layers at a certain angle with certain lighting.

I’m still interested in touch and the relationship between touch, ourselves and others and I’d like to develop my knowledge in the subject, however I’d like to portray it more literally. I’m hoping to make the connection to tactility more direct and visually overwhelming. Last year I went out of my comfort zone exploring a lot of mediums like the etching and the use of plastic. This year I’d like to return to painting to create my work.

I’ve decided I’m not going to continue with the etching into plastic, the focus on the actual physical line and act of mark making, as well as the connection to emotions and the exploration into light and shadow.

Method and resources: (100-200 words):

What do you intend to make (i.e., painting, sculpture, video, etc., etc.), and how (materials and processes). Do you need an individual studio space or can you use the shared space? What knowledge and skills do you need to gain, and what investigations do you plan to undertake?

I’m wanting to expand my experience and knowledge of paint by painting my work and ideas this semester. Even if I’m using a tool or brush to paint, the touch through the action and gesture of painting will help me create work that’s meant to intensify a connection to our senses, tactility and memory. I’d like to explore oil paint in works that require painting body or skin as I like how it can be manipulated and smoothed into different textures and I think it mimics skin really well. I’m also interested in using my hands and thicker paints and mediums like modeling paste, if I’m exploring touch and sensation, there’s not really any easier way to experience it apart from directly using my hands. I think abstract expressionism and styles like impasto and tachisme will be important in creating tactile and textural works - using these styles and ideas will also require some research.

I think for my idea, different scales will create different readings of the work. I’d like to explore a smaller ‘canvas’ and make the work quite intimate but I think I’d like progress to work bigger and really overwhelm the audience with the sensation of touch. I could use quite a few materials to create larger scale work like a sheet of MDF or plywood etc but I have always wanted to paint on un-stretched canvas. I think it holds a lot of possibilities for manipulation ect If I wanted to do something to it, unlike a canvas that has already been stretched onto bars. The canvas texture can also look quite similar to skin.

I have very basic knowledge of oil paint but I need to learn how to properly look after my tools when using the medium and how to work with the medium better when blending and mixing etc. For larger scale works maybe more specifically if I were to use my hands, I think I’d need to practice not being so restricted and hesitant when creating work and not being afraid of what it looks like. Not all art is pretty!

I’m going to need to gain knowledge on artists that use the body, create abstract and textural works and draw from memory and identity.

Schedule:

Produce a timeline of the above. Some key dates/events have already been populated:

Week 1: Research and brainstorming and add to workbook

Week 2: Reflect on work from last year, research artist models, explore different techniques and mediums, add to workbook

Week 3: Draft IPO due Tues Mar 9, First group crit Fri Mar 12, start creating work for crit and more research and add to workbook

Week 4: create work and more explorations and add to workbook

Week 5: Formative assessment crits Fri Mar 26, create work, investigations and clarify ideas. Finish work for formative. and add to workbook

Week 6: reflect on feedback from formative, progress, and add to workbook

Study Break: visit galleries - search for inspiration - work on painting techniques

Week 7: Brainstorm continuation, reflect on formative feedback, research, and add to workbook

Week 8: Start creating final work/s, research and add to workbook

Week 9: Continue making final work for crit week and add to workbook

Week 10: Crit Week , reflect on feedback and add to workbook

Week 11: Finalise work for hand in/make new work and add to workbook - update IPO

Week 12: Final hand in Tue May 25

References:

Begin a list of a minimum of 6 references, four of which must be artists or artworks whose work is inspirational and whom you intend to continue to use to develop your own work, and two other references (text, music, film, other writing, etc.) Briefly describe how each reference is relevant to your own intended research.

Reference both texts and artwork images properly: you should use the system recommended for visual material on OWLL, which includes the artist’s name, the date of the artwork and a URL, book or exhibition note.

Jean Dubuffet - I like how Dubuffet challenges the idea of ‘beautiful art’. I’ve been struggling to accept the idea of finger-painting in art school so it’s nice to see the success of Dubuffet’s work and his process.

Dubuffet, Jean. Site habité d’objets, 1965, Barbican Art Gallery, London, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/dubuffet-site-inhabited-by-objects-t00870

Yves Klein - I’m really interested in Klein’s idea of anthropometry and I think it has an interesting correlation with touch, tactility and the body. I also like his use of him famous blue paint.

Klein, Yves. Anthropometry: Princess Helena, 1960, Not on view, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80530

Jackson Pollock - Pollock’s texture and abstraction is something I think can be related to my own ideas and practice at the moment. His process also really interests me, I think the controversy surrounding his practice is interesting too.

Pollock, Jackson. Number 23, 1948, Not on display, Tate, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/pollock-number-23-t00384

Anselm Kiefer - The way Kiefer’s comes off the canvas/page is a really engaging aspect of his work and I’d like my own work to have similar affects with the viewer with my use of modeling paste and paint.

Kiefer, Anselm. Margarethe, 1981, SFMoMA,

https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/FC.595/

Gerhard Richter - I feel myself drawn to Richters work, mostly the blurred paintings or photographs he created. The blurred technique makes me think of memories that are fading, always there but never 100% can remember all the details. I often think about the blurring technique relaying a touch that is missed or craved.

Richter, Gerhard. Sailors. 1966, Oil on Canvas, Gerhard Richter, https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/art/paintings/photo-paintings/everyday-life-18/sailors-5764

Jenny Saville - Her visceral, thick paintings of flesh make me experience them through my own senses, every though I can only visually see them through a screen. I love the 3D texture that she gives the forms and body.

Saville, Jenny. Rosetta 2. 2005-2006, Oil on watercolour paper mounted on board, Jenny Saville, https://gagosian.com/artists/jenny-saville/.

Emilie Louise Gossiaux - Relying on the senses like touch and using memories to create work. Creating by feeling.

Gossiaux, Emilie Louise. After Image. 2018, unknown medium, Emilie Louise Gossiaux, http://www.emiliegossiaux.com/after-image/.

Classen, Constance. The Book of Touch. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2020. - Explores tactile sensations and touch with boundaries and experiences.

Fowler, Caroline O. Drawing And The Senses: An Early Modern History. Turnhout, Belgium, 2016. - How touch and senses were expressed through drawing earlier in history.

Resources:

Do you need a studio space, and/or access to any particular equipment? What kinds of materials do you think you will be using and where and how you will get these? Identify any health and safety issues (and how you intend to deal with these issues), This will probably take the form of an annotated list.

For summative :

Big canvas 2 x 160m

Modeling paste - 1L

Palette knives

Acrylic paint - several tubes of each colour or bigger bottles of each

Nails and hammer

Access to nice printer to print reference image

Artist pins/really thin and small nails to hang photo

Level

Drop sheet or something to protect floor

Old clothes

Wipes and or towel or paper towels

Access to water to wash hands and tools

Studio space = desk and wall.

Oil paint and appropriate solvents/oils etc - be safe when using the solvents (inhalation, skin)

Canvases and brushes

0 notes

waywardstrand · 6 years

Text

Working from Life - our Play by Play talk!

As usual we’ve taken a little while to post another update, but things are going super well! We feel like we’ve been reaching some pretty exciting milestones on Wayward Strand recently, and are moving steadily onward.

Before getting into the talk, we’ll be Officially Announcing it soon, but we’ve added a page on our website on which you can subscribe to our newsletter! If you want to get notified about key bits of news (including when Wayward Strand is released), or you’d like to get emails with some behind the scenes stuff, head over there and sign up!

And in the meantime, here’s the video and transcript of a talk that Goldie and I did at Play by Play in Wellington, New Zealand earlier this year. It covers a pretty wide range of topics, but it speaks to each of our influences in working on Wayward Strand, as well as what we’ve learned from the process of creating it thus far.

youtube

Transcript

Jas: So Goldie and I are going to talk about this topic mainly in terms of the game that we're both working on, Wayward Strand. You don't need to know too much about it before we get started, except for the fact that it's an interactive story set in a small coastal town, in southern Victoria, from the 27th to the 29th of January, 1978. Oh, and that it's set on an airborne hospital.

It's an interesting mix of elements - so how did we get there?

When our team-mate Russell came up with the initial idea for Wayward Strand we talked a bit about where it could be set - at that point we had the airborne hospital, but it could have been set anywhere, and in a real place or a fantasy one.

At the time I'd been listening to short fiction podcasts - particularly the New Yorker fiction podcast, on which a writer chooses a story from the archives to read and discuss. After the reading, the writer and the podcast host, Deborah Treisman, often speak about the author of the piece, and discuss how the story links to the author’s life and history. I was fascinated by how many of the stories being read were set in locations and at times that had personal significance to the author.

To highlight an example, Stephanie Vaughn's stories that have been read on the podcast, Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog and Dog Heaven, from her collection Sweet Talk, are both from an army brat’s perspective, exploring daily life on military bases, and Stephanie Vaughn herself grew up on military bases; her family followed her father around to these bases through the years of her childhood. However, none of her stories are autobiographical - they're drawn from her life, but not based on her life.

Listening to her stories really awoke in me a realisation that this was something you could do - that I could do - set a story in a place and time that you have a personal connection to - and how that could be interesting and powerful. I’m going to pass across to Goldie, but I just want to say to read Sweet Talk! It’s incredible.

Goldie: One of the most captivating and earliest exposures for me of neorealism in indie art was when I discovered American Daniel Clowes’ long-form graphic novel, ‘Ghost World’. Ghost World follows Enid Coleslaw and Rebecca Doppelmeyer, two cynical, pseudo-intellectual teenage girls recently graduated from high school in the early 90’s. What really captured my curiosity was the way that the novel, as well as the 2001 film adaptation, follows the two teens as they spend their days wandering aimlessly around their unnamed American town, criticising popular culture and the everyday Americans they encounter. Especially notable in this small town, and still present in our towns and cities is the slowly encroaching franchises which smother their town’s individuality. The story regularly highlights characters who are almost the antithesis to the normalisation of behavior and social exchange. It’s hardly revolutionary, but was quintessentially realistic; a light shining on the quirk of the everyday.Ghost World was hugely influential on my expectations for myself as an artist, it taught me how to appreciate the small stuff which gets ignored by Warner Bros, Disney, Marvel and local mainstream media. Realism, in games, has usually meant photorealism - whereas realism or neorealism in literature, art and film has constantly been more about social context, historical actuality and political commitment to progressive social change. Robert Yang’s recent short article on Realism in games is worth a read to cover this.

When I arrived at uni, eventually, to study game design it was surprising to me to see that there wasn’t yet much exploration of the ‘slice-of-life’ genre in games, and even less social realism in games. There was some, the closest example I came across with glee was Dys4ia by Anna Anthropy, who used games to talk about her experiences with transitioning. Likewise, when I discovered Escape from Woomera, Katherine Neil’s extremely confident Half-Life mod which explores Australia’s ongoing disgraceful treatment of asylum seekers, I nearly exploded with hope for games. ‘Papers, Please’ by Lucas pope is another popular example of a reality-informed game for political expression. Richard Hoffmeier’s Cart Life, too, is perhaps the ultimate realist game, but to get into something as breathtakingly perfect is going to require a different talk.

Anyway, at uni, I decided with my friends to make a game inspired by Daniel Clowes, and the mundane, and set it within my fictionalised memories of growing up in Melbourne. We called it Movement Study 1. I chose Australian artists like Howard Arkley to inspire a lot of the visual design on key parts of the short game, knowing that in the 70’s he had also tried to extract the beauty from his mundane suburban Melbournian experience.

Like Ghost World, it focused on a loosely autobiographical version of myself through two characters who wrestle with their evolving post-high school friendships. I just wanted to see if it worked in Melbourne and of course, it did. It was a successful project as far as our intention for it goes. Since then, in 2013, we’ve been lucky to see games such as Gone Home and more recently, PaperBark, set in and about the Australian bush, and Knuckle Sandwich, another Australian endeavour at personal expression through interaction, with less of a real-world setting but with so much auto-biographical content. I learned through practice that the games space, like literature and film before it, was ripe for real-world settings and stories. Since making Movement Study 1, I have worked on a handful of private, small unreleased games, illustrations and stories about the lives of people from Australia, including but not restricted to family history.

When Jason and Russell approached me about working on Wayward Strand, it was an instant fit. All they had to do was mention that they were wanting to create a game set in Australia in the 70’s and I was interested. Through exploring more about the history of the time and place, we have constantly been confronted with terrible stories of injustice, as well as a plethora of unique country-life aesthetics to draw upon, and have the benefit of the lense of contemporary awareness to know which points to focus on.

Wayward Strand is my second attempt, in a team, at writing and crafting a richly Australian story based on fictional characters, informed by stories and histories I have come across. Because of the depth of history - both healthy and frankly, fucked up, I don’t doubt that Wayward Strand will eventually prove to be a successful exercise in real-world fictional narrative games.

Jas: So we thought we should have a slide that breaks down what we see as the key benefits of setting a game in a real place and time. It’s important to know that many of these benefits apply regardless of whether your game has a strong narrative component or not!

The benefits we see are, in brief:

* If you make a game that’s set in a place that has personal significance to you, it’s likely that it will have significance to other people in your family and community as well, and they'll be able to potentially help with your research process. In our case we were particularly lucky with this, which Goldie will speak to later, but reaching out to your local community is how you can find people who are able to be great resources in this regard.

* Once you set your story in a real place and time, it provides a scaffolding for your story as you are building it - you are still going to be telling your story, but having it set somewhere specific is incredibly helpful for overcoming the blank page. It’s a real place! It exists, or existed, and you can keep finding out more about it, then using the results of what you find.

* Relating to that, a real place and time is a treasure trove for influences and idea-generating facts or stories - think of it as the most comprehensive lore you could possibly imagine, and there are likely to be virtually limitless resources to draw from (we certainly found this anyway)..

* Finally, your work of art gains an immediate significance to real people's lives - the people who live in that place now, or lived there before, or have parents or ancestors who lived in that place. This provides meaning to your project beyond your personal creative impulses, and acts as a good incentive to actually finish what you've started - you’re now contributing to a continuum of cultural works about this place and time.

Goldie: Getting deeper in to the personal connections I am able to draw upon with this particular project, my mother Liz worked in the 70s, 80s and 90s as a charge nurse in Emergency Departments across Melbourne. She also grew up rurally, and has been an unparalleled resource for knowledge of the time and of experiences in hospitals. We’ve been able to base entire characters on her stories, as well as moments with almost all of the patients. Let alone the actual day-to-day running of the hospital. Vocal mannerisms, routines and expectations on the staff, behaviours of the patients. Ways for the staff to have fun, ways for them to get away with it. The hard parts and the sad parts. There were some things we couldn’t include, especially stuff which happens after dark in hospitals on slow nights such as crutches cricket, but learning about the culture of people working in these places at that time has been wonderful.

Like mum, my dad Jim was also involved in hospitals during his career- he was a senior health architect and was the lead designer on many of Melbourne’s large and small scale hospitals and health facilities. I grew up in a house full of reams of A0 paper with architectural plans for hospitals, as well as notebooks full of questions and thoughts which I never really understood. Approaching wayward strand as a designer, in the architectural mindset was definitely enriched because of this. Ship architecture on the other hand was less known to me- but luck has it that my grandfather, also Jim, was a ship’s engineer and his WW2 ship, the HMAS Castlemaine is still docked and accessible in Williamstown, Melbourne, and the public are welcome to tour any time. Merging hospitals and ships is pretty tough, though, so we’ll see how I go.

Another thing I have been able to draw upon is the experience I had with my dad in the last 5 years of his life. He died in 2016 after a long sickness which caused him the need to live in a handful of nursing homes around Melbourne. Visiting him every few days was pretty difficult after a while; nursing homes these days generally are unpleasant places, usually due to the tiny amount of funding available to them, as well as the task of managing older, sick and dying people of diverse backgrounds with differing care requirements. I spent many after work and uni afternoons with him updating him on how my life was changing, all whilst his was completely stagnant, and drawing ever so slowly to a close. He died about 5 weeks after I started working on Wayward Strand and I have squirrelled a huge amount of observations of the patients, the buildings, the routines and the feelings from those environments into the game. It’s been very healing for me, I think, to have had a project so immediately relevant to what could otherwise have been left to simmer. Knowing that the nursing home in our game is a slightly different type: luxurious, one of the first, and more like an optional living arrangement for some of the patients feels like a good thing. To really capture the greyness and frankly, macabre tone of a contemporary nursing home isn’t what we want to do with Wayward Strand…But knowing about it helps. Kind of like pushing an idea as far as it can go, and choosing which parts are gentle and true enough to include in a family-friendly video game.

Jas: I’m going to give a specific example that came out of talking to Liz which is a pretty minor spoiler - at one point we had a storyline that revolved around a character's desire to be euthanised, and that desire being blocked by the hospital staff. It made a bunch of sense to us when we thought of it and it's a topic we're interested in and initially wanted to explore in the story, but as we spoke to Liz she let us know that at the time - this is over 50 years ago at this point - euthanasia really wasn't the hot-button topic it is at the moment, and the hospital staff would basically euthanise patients if they desired it.

The staff used a euphemism for it - it was described as "making the patient more ‘comfortable’" - and the staff would just crank up the morphine and let them pass quietly in the night. This is not only a really interesting fact to know about our setting that has a lot to potentially explore in and of itself, but we've been able to change that character's story to be more suitable to the time, and to be more unique as well.

Now, instead of the storyline being very directly related to the hot-button topic - which is already being covered in other media such as the late great Terry Pratchett’s documentary Choosing to Die) - our storyline has become more about that particular character's struggle for empowerment, and being given the right to make her own choices.

Goldie: There’s something which belongs to the people when you use media, especially media traditionally used commercially, to depict realism. Making work which comments on reality can be a powerful historical tool, both as documentation and representative of large social issues. Take for example one of the most significant paintings from the early realism period - The Gleaners, an ever-long masterpiece by Frenchman Jean-Francois Millet completed in 1857. The painting depicts, in an unadorned manner, three peasant women gleaning a field of stray stalks of wheat after the harvest, which they will use to feed their impoverished families. It is a sympathetic representation of the lowest ranks of rural society- and in 1857 it was very- extremely- poorly received by the French upper class, who were the prime audience for paintings like this at the time. Even the middle classes, fresh on the other side of the French Revolution in 1848 were upset by the painting. To them it was a reminder that French society was built upon the hard labor of the working masses, and landowners linked this with empathy towards Socialism - very uncool, even scary at the time. The Gleaners as well as other paintings and works of literature from this period were instrumental in broadening the perspectives of entire generations, thus shaping the course of history to become more inclusive, fair and considerate. Even pieces such as the (slightly problematic) Pride and Prejudice, 1813, have used reality to create social commentary and critique. Whilst this isn’t literally my personal history, it has helped to shape the reality I live in. By now, it’s the norm, artists across all media are regularly drawing upon the real world for their work. To use music as an example, there was a fresh wave of social critique with the hip hop movement, as well as with the political American punk movement in the 70s. Avant-garde art in the early 20th century with movements like Dada and outsider art in Europe are also significant, and the list goes on.

Making art hasn’t always been, and isn’t always political, but it can be, and if games are art, we can and should go there when we can, especially when we have things to say. This is one of the reasons why amplifying voices which aren’t traditionally as loud as mine, or maybe yours, is something vital for large-scale cultural progress.

In the 70s in Australia, following consultations and through general knowledge, we can paint one picture of rural Australian life at the time. It’s been covered in movies like the popular Puberty Blues, which shows the awkward, difficult and painfully slow (and sometimes painfully fast) moments of growing up by the beach. It’s heard in music of the time, notably Australia’s rock and even punk music of the time was always the voice of a working class people, demanding better conditions, and poetically capturing the conditions of their everyday lives. We can see snippets of VASTLY celebrated Australian culture by watching football and cricket re-runs, even if they were (and perhaps continue to be) pretty bad news as far as toxic masculinity goes. Less discussed than sport culture in the public forum at the time were some of Australia’s more despicable histories- for example the government’s cultural treatment of women, queer people and most markedly perhaps it’s unforgivable and unforgettable treatment of indigenous Australians. In the 1970s this was still, and I think continues to be, shameful. When the team met with Land’s Council member Uncle Chris to discover more about being young and indigenous at the time, he and I had a blast talking about the music scene in 70s Melbourne - but we also uncovered some very hard truths which have helped us shape the experiences of another young character on board the ship.

Jas: In regards to indigenous consultation we also talked with Dan Turnbull from the Bunurong Land Council - he let us know stories of the Bunurong who lived and still live on the land where the story is set, and really gave us a primer on Bunurong culture and society from his perspective.

We initially got in touch with the Bunurong Land Council through Dakoda Barker in Queensland, and we didn’t really know what to expect, but it turned out that Dan loves games, has a great understanding of what we were going for, and was able to give specific, pointed feedback and advice.

One of the particular things we came to Dan about was that, as Goldie mentioned, we wanted to have a Bunurong character in the game - a young Bunurong man - but we were worried about the ethics and outcome for the community of having a Bunurong character without having Bunurong representation on our team.

But what Dan told us was, obviously it would be great for us to have representation on the team, but that we should still go ahead with it - that he sees it as a net positive thing, something that he's excited about as a Bunurong man, and he gave us some pointers and guidance for how to do it in a way that he'd find respectful and worthwhile, as well as letting us know how to get more Bunurong folks involved.

Now it's important to note that we shouldn't assume that he speaks for all Bunurong people, or that this is some "license" or grant to do this - but it means that, from a personal perspective, we felt more sure of ourselves in including this character, and had a better idea of how we could include him in a way that wouldn’t be detrimental to the Bunurong community.

Consultation isn't a box to tick off or something that you can use to make yourself immune from criticism - criticism is good, healthy and valuable, especially when it comes from people who are more marginalised or less privileged than you.

Instead, consultation is an ongoing process that empowers you to make your creative work more relevant to more people. Every discussion that we've had so far has given us further insight; more interesting elements of the setting to explore; and has enriched the final player experience.

Goldie: If you’re able to pile in to a car or bus with your team and visit areas you want to explore, absolutely do it. When I was making Movement Study, I originally wanted to set it where I grew up, in Port Melbourne. But as it turns out, my artist and I decided to meet in Brunswick which is a more common area for our generation to have grown up in- there weren’t very many kids in Port Melbourne and so it wasn’t as well-known as Brunswick. This was definitely the right decision, as multi-generations of Melbournians instantly recognised exactly where the game was set. When Adrienne and I went to Brunswick, we spent time walking around and taking photos and footage of the old houses lining the streets. Small details popped out - how the gardens were kept, where wheelie bins were stored, how much signage there was, the condition of the footpaths, leaf litter, how much traffic there was at the time of day the game was set…so much more. Even just to be able to grab a palette from the walk was useful. It made the biggest difference to the game I think of anything else we did, and so when Wayward Strand decided where might be best for our game to be set, we decided to head off on a short adventure.

We booked a house for the weekend and took cameras and microphones and notebooks, and planned visits to local historical societies and places of interest. We got a huge amount done just that weekend. Walking around on the windswept beaches and getting our boots wet in the sand, as well as climbing over sandbanks, eating fish and chips at the local fish and chippery all helped place us in the mindset of what living and growing up there might be like. Watching kids the same age as our main character, 14 year old Casey, running around at the local markets dragging their parents around, or loitering behind the library with their bikes. Of course, things have changed since the 70s, but the visits to the historical societies helped us out there. We learned, by chance, that the closest large town to where we were, was in fact where the largest rural hospital was at the time, and that plenty of nurses and doctors had lived in the town back then. We walked through the streets documenting houses which could have belonged to our characters, all the time fleshing them out in to the richly sculpted people they are today. Small details like whether someone needed to paint their fence, or whether someone had the champion roses of the street were all there for us to pick up on and include. Who helped them build their houses? What are the families of the characters like? Who has previously used the rusted swing set?

More recently, we did a second beach trip to a different part of the Victorian coastline, just as a location scouting expedition. Kind of surprisingly, the history we had discovered during our first trip to Inverloch was extremely different to the history of this millionaire’s playground, Sorrento, even though they’re only a few hundred kilometers apart. It was only a short trip, and we spent a lot of the time either relaxing or focusing on other parts of running our studio, but at least we were able to ask ourselves “Did sunburnt knees feel the same in the 70s?”

Jas: Putting the game in this setting, having characters and stories that are informed by our own memories and life experiences, give us a structure, a scaffolding, in which to create our story. It’s gives us tons of materials to draw from, is a universe that already makes sense, and the fact that it’s so personal to us is a big factor in us still being excited about the project two and a half years in.

As an example of one of the many benefits that have come up, on our trip to Inverloch we - actually Goldie - found this book of short stories by older folks, published in 1999 - it’s full of stories by people whose lived experience is way closer than ours to the time that our characters would have been living in.

Here’s another example of a benefit that happened just last week - our animation lead Kalonica is visiting Europe at the moment, and went to the V&A Ocean Liners exhibit in London, and she posted dozens of incredible photos for source material for our ship on Slack, spurring a ton of fascinating questions - the answers to these questions will further enrich the player’s experience.

A question we keep asking ourselves at the end of this process is, why are so many games seemingly set by default in fantasy or sci-fi settings? Of course do that if it makes sense for your game, but why not have the default be a real setting, a real time and place in history or a contemporaneous setting, and open your project up to these really exciting possibilities?

Goldie: Well thanks for listening to our experiences and some of the reasons behind why we take this stuff as an opportunity, I hope it’s given you something to think about. Along with the easy and fun and warm parts of setting a project locally, I hope the weight of some of the political stuff has been inspiring too. I’ve been in Wellington for a week and reckon it’s a bit of a haven, but I’ve just arrived here from my first international trip, ever, where I visited the Pacific Northwest of America following GDC. What I saw was sometimes beautiful, but usually darkly astonishing. The homelessness crisis and drug abuse problems are results from a long history of neglect from local and federal government, the low common wages are the result of rampant unchecked greed, and the lack of even baseline social healthcare is bewildering. Some of the tiniest towns I passed through actually desperately need those franchises I mentioned earlier to create work, as dying industries leave entire generations without jobs. In New Zealand, like just about everywhere else, there is a massive housing affordability crisis, and of course there’s the growing income inequality gap which is is a problem which both of our nations share. If a portion of people in games aren’t making work or observations about what’s happening in our homes, we’re at risk of losing what I think is a profoundly significant piece of global history AND falling behind as an introspective form of expression. Even by taking inspiration from previous interpretations of a real time or place, you enrichen the cultural value of your game, and align it with other forms of fiction in a positive and fresh way; in a way that games, I think, are ready to be aligned with.

The times we’re living in are full to the brim of injustices at the hand, primarily, of big corporations and governments willing to have their pockets lined to get power. Asylum seekers in Australia are still treated like bugs, women are still, if quietly, treated as second-best, queer people in some countries are still murdered. This stuff isn’t new, but the people in this room are young and talented, and making stuff which people want to consume. It’s important, I think, to realise that by digging in to your own local histories you can help shape cultural expectations we put upon ourselves and expect from each other. Being brave enough to call out the problems, and curious enough to explore them through interaction and narrative design even retrospectively is a meaningful way to make games. On top of this, it’s also an extremely abundant resource for entertainment, if that’s more your speed. I watched a few choice New Zealand films on my way here and we’ve seen the impact those have had on the global media landscape - why can’t games use the same lore and landscapes to create new and relevant places to play?

What you as a designer choose to take from your local histories and places is very open - which is why research is key. By dealing with real world figures or events or even whole communities or towns, remember that you have the voice to highlight things which are otherwise left in the past or brushed over.

#posted by jason

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indd40041020202021 · 3 years

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a week and a half of revving my engine

This last week I thought a lot of time thinking about what my project could be. It feels like I’m back at square one in a way, but I think that moving through all of the ideas that I’ve had has made me come to more manageable decisions - even from last week.

I had originally come back to this idea of playground, or taking a literal piece of another world and planting it on the school patio or parking lot roundabout, something that be big, stand out, stand in it. But I think that I don’t have enough time for this! After speaking to Sophie and Keith, I realized that I can still approach the idea of design fiction or even a counterfactual through a single object. I think I’d like to do 2-3 objects to get a rounded understanding of what ‘objects’ might be in this world. Even the word object, sopping with use, may not be applicable in the final work. Sophie mentioned how nature and technology are often at an impasse, oil and water. Carbon technology may be a way to move away from that idea.

This week, Neri Oxman did a quick chat with Paula Antonelli about some of her work in material ecology. One thing that stuck with me was her explanation of the same issue, the oxymoron of nature and tech or material/anthromass as she says, that it is an oxymoron only until it isn’t true. She spoke about the idea of reincarnation. I thought about planned obsolescence. Currently it’s a false obsolescence, it exists forever in dumps, buried in the ground and contributing to the Anthropocene, or in the ocean as micro-plastics clinging to the gills of fish. If we are designing with nature, we need to understand nature’s process, which includes the process of death, or true obsolescence. How can it go back? I’m glad she made a point of saying “NOT circularity, but reincarnation”. In third year, we did a project on circularity, and its faults seems glaring to me. This idea of the circular design system is false as well - the material will always end up as garbage. It’s more of a spiral than a circle, the recycling only prolongs the cycle. This is not to say I don’t support re-use and recycling (if things actually get to recycling and not the Phillipines as Canadian trash), but I don’t think it’s the answer to our massive and wicked problems. Our anthro-mass outweighs naturally produced biomass globally. That is INSANE.

Neri also spoke about templating; this helped tie together some thoughts I had been having about politics of use and humans’ issues with control. How can I create, take ownership for work done by other species, or avoid ideas of ownership altogether but still have some control of material direction. Neri spoke about how her team uses generative modelling, programming, and ‘templating’ to create an idea of where the direction of the work may go, but leave a lot of the actual understanding of how things will be brought together to the other species, such as silk worms. If I am imagining myself in this other world as a ‘designer’ or hacker or builder or whatever word makes better sense, I think this idea of scaffolding the intent is where I need to be going here. How can I support other species to create in tandem with us, in a way that remains beneficial and non-exploitative for all parties involved. ..or is that putting a lot on myself? hahahah I often hear retorts to this co-exist idea with Darwin’s survival of the fittest, but in reading more about Darwin’s work, it seemed survival of the kindest was much more akin to his beliefs. I heard an incredible story on the radio today about the Monitor Lizard. Recently, Monitor Lizard numbers have been dropping because of a poisonous invasive species called the Cane Toad. For this reason, scientists have been researching the Monitor Lizard more closely, and discovered something incredible about the way they lay their eggs.

The Monitor Lizard lays its eggs underground in a burrow, but a burrow unlike any other. They dig down into the earth in a helical pattern, digging for up to 3.6 meters! The giant underground network is then used not only by the lizard to lay their eggs, but 750 individuals of 28 different vertebrate species in a combination of 16 warrens made up of many individual nesting burrows and a handful of foraging burrows. This blew my mind. This lizard - a massive, dangerous predator - was not only coexisting, but building the structures in which to do so. The scientists who discovered this warned about the decline in Monitor Lizard population because they also maintain these burrows, preventing them from caving in and allowing species continual safe refuge.

I feel as though our narratives of killer stories that we have pushed onto nature are becoming increasingly moth-eaten. There is this interconnectedness, this holistic entanglement (as this project was first called) that creates a mesh of life that supports all of us. I thought it was really beautiful while reverse searching this image in hopes for a fuller version, that Google’s algorithm pulled results from DNA strands, human spines, wisps of smoke. These visual comparisons feel like some kind of key in unlocking meaning the world - like how tree branches look like lung bronchioles or how wool looks like mycelium, or how onion rings look like tree rings, or how a myriad of other things mimic each other in form. I watched a show called Alien Worlds this weekend - it’s like Planet Earth, except astrophysicists and astrobiologists estimate what lifeforms would be like on other planets. It was amazing to see how science uses fiction to not only project onto other planets, but also interrogate our own planet, trying to go back and forth between planets to understand the other. Many times in the show, I found myself asking whether the planet they were on was Earth or an imagined one - like the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia - so incredible! This show reinvigorated my sense of fiction as a real way of working through problems.

^This is on Earth, the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia

So I have been doing more than just reading and watching and listening (although I believe these are all valid forms of work for my project). I’ve really been thinking about what the final form is going to be. In this world, biomimicry will not be a word because it will not be an outlier activity that needs to be defined, as it will be part of the makeup of how the world works. I want the items to feel as though the integration of nature is seamless, somehow harnessing its ways of working through templating structures. In these drawings, I was thinking about comparing things we use now to how they would look in this other world. phones for communication might not rely on sound but on vibration to transmit messages. Maybe sound or bioluminescence is a language of its own (or hacking into a mycelium network). I was trying to mimic patterns of deep sea squids for their light patterns. I thought about combining a free energy coil with a spinning magnet that smacks against a crystal - this, in theory, could actually act as a battery (the coil itself would be enough, but hitting a magnet on a cystal supposedly acts as a capacitor from what I’ve read, so it would be a way of storing energy in a natural way)

Below I thought about screens, and how often we use them. I found a video on youtube that shows how to use smoke to display video. Could steam from a geyser or from dry ice work in the same way? I also thought about direct reciprocity - offering the privilege of warm-blood to our cold-blooded creatures. (although I’m also thinking about layered reciprocity - again, to reference Alien Worlds - the snottites in extremeophile caves - bacteria feeding off chemicals, the snottites dripping into the pools below, feeding the fish, the fish giving off chemicals, etc) I’ve been thinking about ceramics because there is this connection to earth in a way that many other mediums don’t have. I was thinking about Markus Kayser’s Solar Sinter, how technology like that could be better integrated into nature and used for building materials or even for creating art. I imagined a tree hanging over a beach with a large lens grown into a crotch in the branch. As it sways over the sand below, the lens magnifies the heat from the sun and creates a glass structure beneath it.

I started thinking more about bioluminescence, knowing that some seaweed hsa that property. I also found out that certain lichens glow under UV blacklight (also scorpions, as per the Alien Planets show). I think there’s something that feels otherworldly with bioluminescence, and it may be a good way to visually connect other worlds with this world. (also thinking of Sputniko’s transgenic silkworm bioluminescent jacket here) I bought a UV flashlight and am going to take it out to explore the forest at night for inspiration! In my world, I thought about structures. As Sophie mentioned carbon-based technology, I tried to imagine what an engineered version of this would look like? bioluminescent seaweed lights up when agitated, what if we could use this as an indicator of chemical agitation, such as water pollution, or maybe even engineer the algae to create freshwater - desalinating pockets so that we don’t take too much from our finite sources of freshwater. I also thought about the possibility of asking for help with health indicators. If, for example, this world is part of a counterfactual where we responded to environmental warnings back in the 70′s and we did not spiral into the sixth extinction; we would hypothetically preserve many species extinctions, including those who have gone extinct before we had a chance to ‘discover’ them. In this thought, I thought about a species of leech that developed bioluminescent qualities, such as the algae. We can interact with the leech by allowing it to take a sample of our blood, and we can read the colours it flashes back to us as an indicator of our blood levels or heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, etc. At first I imagined this as the real-world exhibit prototype - a porcelain that you put your finger into, a sensor triggers a motor that triggers an arm with a spike on it to prick your finger. This tells the computer to turn the lights on, and a projection of a leech-like shadow swimming inside, that flashes colours. My husband is a film maker and I was asking him how this could be done and he just said to me “why would the leech be in a container in this world?” and I said back “well, it would be this pocelian hub that sticks out of the water with a finger hole in it so you knew where the leech was”... and he kind of looked at me and said “why don’t you just put your finger in the water?” .. duh. So I thought about a different way, a MUCH easier way - I can create 3D model of a leech/fish, 3D print it and make a silicone mold with a cavity inside. I can then take a simple swimming motor from a childrens toy and hide it inside, insert an LED, use a silicone shell to make it water proof, and have it swim around in a tank as an example of what it would look like. I really love this idea as it speaks to extinction, other creatures, and reciprocity as well (feeding the leech).

I was thinking about infrastructure, and what a harmonious city might look like. I was inspired by Naomi’s work with rope, and thought about cities that don’t cut down trees - how ‘sidewalks’ would become raised paths, made of strong grass rope.

I also thought about seaweed as a solar panel, as I was inspired by plant based solar cells. What if street lights absorbed energy through the day and emitted a green glow at night, all through natural means? I thouht about meditation too, lowering ourselves into the earth to be literally head-level with other creatures. It reminded me of something I had written in second year, and I like that idea of embodiment being an important tool in understanding.

I feel that I’m starting to gain traction in a direction, bringing these heady ideas down to the ground. I started to look at places that sell live algae culture, but most of them are far away, in the states or beyond. Of all the places I looked, I took an exasperated swing at craigslist and found someone in Surrey who sells live algae for aquariums! So I ran out and bought a bottle. I also bought some grow lights and plan on expanding this bottle so that I can create a little algae cloud. I don't know if this is bioluminescent, but I feel that through growing the algae I might find other uses for it, or somehow add bioluminescent bacteria into it, or something.

I asked my dear friend Rylee, a biologist at SFU about what to do. He gave me a big run down on how to make algae from natural sources (he got back to me after I bought this bottle). I asked him about bioluminescence, and he replied: “ hmmmmm. ya. i dont know of any freshwater bioluminescent algae altho im sure it exists. lots of saltwater diatoms and other non-algae like protozoans or bacteria. theres lots of research on using bacteria to flouresce to indicate all sorts of things. most are genetically modified. im curious how u wud fake it. haha” The algae that I bought is cultured in saltwater, maybe if I grow it in salt water I might have a chance on introducing bioluminescence?

I was doing some other reading, and thought about technology and nature again, and had a thought about circuit boards. Most electronics work off circuit boards, but why does the board have to be hard plastic? I emailed Tim in the interaction design about it, and he told me that PCB printers use extreme heat for an extended period of time, and for that reason, most organic materials don’t work. However, I knew about conductive thread, and Tim reminded me that the Soft Shop might be able to help me embroider a circuit onto the seaweed. So Tomorrow I am going into the soft shop to work on that. In the meantime, I experimented with sewing copper wire into kombu. The kombu was fairly sturdy, but the grain of the kombu made it difficult to sew as you would with a regular fabric.I tried to sew a rip together, and it seemed to hold while wet. As it dried, it separated, but didn’t tear other than where the original tear was. Imagine an internet of seaweed, flowing circuits of kelp forests lighting up, powering the world. I’m really into this direction!

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