aerifth

[aerifth]

the full set of paper mario styled ff7 characters... i tried to fit in as much as possible, theres one or two other outfits i might try to squeeze in but im happy to call this finished :)

[aerifth]

assorted aerti doodles 2 feat. abby britney and tyler (i am forcing my friend to play ff7)

[aerifth]

this actually happened (aerti comic)

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some paper mario style ff7s for... Something

[aerifth]

3 am rebirth spoiler thoughts

sifting through some of the direct translated japanese dialogue from rebirth has me reconsidering a few scenes... by the way i finished rebirth and thought the ending was a little stupid but the emotional impact worked on me so whatever. anyway

i have a bunch of Big questions that are sort of swirling and intermingling as more time is spent by the community breaking it all down and speculating. a couple of my big ones right now are:

- why is zack's timeline healing?

- what the fuck is the dream date?

- why can only cloud see aerith, and the crack in the sky?

and i think these all are connected, in that breaking them each down helps me get the bigger picture. a big concept right away thats been on my mind: does despair signal the end of the world?

in intermission, we see zack entering the church to find no aerith but her flowers dying and a bunch of townies sobbing for a previously unknown reason. in rebirth, we learn his world is dying- marked by the scar across the sky. this is a common theme across all of the alternate universes- tear in the sky, locals believe the world to be ending. what if one is causing the other?

i believe that these alternative timelines /are/ fragile, but not necessarily predestined to die- not any more than our planet is predestined, for instance. all things die, eventually, but what if that great despair is a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy? people believe the world is ending, and so it does.

zack is the wildcard here. we're left to assume that aerith, somehow, saved him by taking control over the whispers- otherwise, we don't fully understand how zack was able to unite with whats left of the otherwise post-remake sector 5 civilians. zack, throughout the entire story of rebirth, is constantly trying to outrun his fate; constantly trying to uplift others and get them to believe that something can be done, and that they still have a life to fight for. we periodically check in with the aforementioned flowers, and something strange happens: over the course of the story, they start to come back to life.

we hear from biggs that the lifestream is "all dried up", in one of the offshoot timelines. there's no more mako left to take from the planet. if we're to assume this is precisely how these worlds are dying, then that means, at least in zack's main timeline (terrier), there is a lifestream. one that is healing. this can't just be aerith, somehow - one might assume it's a sign of her return, following her death, but this regrowth begins long before approaching aerith's destiny.

on that note: the dream date. in the japanese direct translation, the thing she says to cloud in the beginning is a little different.

"simply returned to the planet? or returning?" is a notably different line, if only because it's a little more direct than her quoting sephiroth's one-liner about a "homecoming". i'm still not 100% on its meaning, so i'll explore a couple of avenues.

my first inclination is that, somehow, this is implying that this is something they've done before. not literally, per se, but it's an awareness of the original game's events that suggests this is some kind of reunion of a cloud with an aerith. this, regardless, is echoed in the final scenes of ch 14 anyway. after the dream date, cloud seems far more aware of what's happening to aerith, and when fighting jenova lifeclinger, he mentions that he's "done it before, he can do it again"- something that can only really imply that he's now much more aware of the original games events than before. aerith and cloud even talk about meteor before it's been cast, making it sound like they know what's coming. you could interpret that because of this "enlightenment", that is how he can see the crack that the party cannot. maybe aerith could see it herself the whole time? it would give another meaning to why she "hates the sky", enough to have gone back and retconned her final line from remake before rebirth came out.

that was a doozy, but the other interpretation of aerith's dream date line is that they're somehow between life and death. maybe not in a literal way (though in the main timeline, both are unconscious), but in a way that maybe suggests the true nature of the alternate timelines. aerith take cloud on a date that is intentionally very similar to when zack takes her shopping in crisis core, which is solidified in the japanese dialogue where she quotes this original scene directly.

i'm left wondering if these timelines (or at least this one) are made of memories. hodge-podged together worlds with no destiny or motivation to exist, just to be as they were until they no longer can. it's a little shaky, but the way things interconnect in general is very hard to tell right now. in the japanese text, sephiroth calls the lifestream's alternate realities "layered", which would explain a bit how this could work (inception style - literally a dream (date) within a dream (zack's world). the game suggests that consciousness can be transferred between multiversal bodies, so i don't think coma aerith and cloud just suddenly got up and were fine. they seem more separated, and even when cloud is able to visit that body and see zack in the gold saucer hotel, he still can't just get up and move. he's confined in the same way zack's cloud is.

the big point i think i wanna make here is that i think hope is what is fixing zack's timeline. without him, the world would be doomed to die, because without him everyone else is already resigned to their fate. sephiroth wishes to use negative emotions and despair to choke the lifestream out of being functional, which i think seems to happen innately. zack's world heals as a result of him spreading hope. it's a sentiment echoed all throughout rebirth: if you believe, you will.

this could also be why cloud's world has a crack in the first place. if the party had been resigned to their fates, unwilling to think they can change it, then the world they inhabit will reflect that. cloud, the one who made that change in saving aerith, can see the truth- he is fully free from the shackles of hopelessness, free to make his own destiny. the rest of the party, however, mourning aerith's death, are already feeding into sephiroth's plan. that despair on a global scale is what he's wanted the entire game- it's why he's fueling the shinra-wutai war. global scale despair to choke the planet out of its hope.

this was a big brain dump and im not sure how much it holds any water, but i feel like i'm onto Something that's making sense of what all happens in rebirth. i'm still, like, mega coping that the interview quote about "linking up to advent children" is misleading, because frankly by this point that seems thoroughly impossible, unless AC is just a part of re3 and itll be new and different following the events of the story. aerith half dying already has me checked out a little bit, i think they should've committed to saving or killing her, though it seems that either way she can still be "brought back" one way or another (which seems likely anyway given how some of her most iconic weapons are still awol, and her level 4 limit break, accessible in the original game, is just not in rebirth at all). i don't know!!! this all feels star wars sequel make-it-up-on-the-fly to me and i hope they can stick the landing. i do deeply think if aerith dies at the end of all this then the story sucks and i don't see why they'd bother with all the "changing fate" stuff. i hope these mystery boxes aren't empty...!

#icymi

[aerifth]

3 am rebirth spoiler thoughts

sifting through some of the direct translated japanese dialogue from rebirth has me reconsidering a few scenes... by the way i finished rebirth and thought the ending was a little stupid but the emotional impact worked on me so whatever. anyway

i have a bunch of Big questions that are sort of swirling and intermingling as more time is spent by the community breaking it all down and speculating. a couple of my big ones right now are:

- why is zack's timeline healing?

- what the fuck is the dream date?

- why can only cloud see aerith, and the crack in the sky?

and i think these all are connected, in that breaking them each down helps me get the bigger picture. a big concept right away thats been on my mind: does despair signal the end of the world?

in intermission, we see zack entering the church to find no aerith but her flowers dying and a bunch of townies sobbing for a previously unknown reason. in rebirth, we learn his world is dying- marked by the scar across the sky. this is a common theme across all of the alternate universes- tear in the sky, locals believe the world to be ending. what if one is causing the other?

i believe that these alternative timelines /are/ fragile, but not necessarily predestined to die- not any more than our planet is predestined, for instance. all things die, eventually, but what if that great despair is a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy? people believe the world is ending, and so it does.

zack is the wildcard here. we're left to assume that aerith, somehow, saved him by taking control over the whispers- otherwise, we don't fully understand how zack was able to unite with whats left of the otherwise post-remake sector 5 civilians. zack, throughout the entire story of rebirth, is constantly trying to outrun his fate; constantly trying to uplift others and get them to believe that something can be done, and that they still have a life to fight for. we periodically check in with the aforementioned flowers, and something strange happens: over the course of the story, they start to come back to life.

we hear from biggs that the lifestream is "all dried up", in one of the offshoot timelines. there's no more mako left to take from the planet. if we're to assume this is precisely how these worlds are dying, then that means, at least in zack's main timeline (terrier), there is a lifestream. one that is healing. this can't just be aerith, somehow - one might assume it's a sign of her return, following her death, but this regrowth begins long before approaching aerith's destiny.

on that note: the dream date. in the japanese direct translation, the thing she says to cloud in the beginning is a little different.

"simply returned to the planet? or returning?" is a notably different line, if only because it's a little more direct than her quoting sephiroth's one-liner about a "homecoming". i'm still not 100% on its meaning, so i'll explore a couple of avenues.

my first inclination is that, somehow, this is implying that this is something they've done before. not literally, per se, but it's an awareness of the original game's events that suggests this is some kind of reunion of a cloud with an aerith. this, regardless, is echoed in the final scenes of ch 14 anyway. after the dream date, cloud seems far more aware of what's happening to aerith, and when fighting jenova lifeclinger, he mentions that he's "done it before, he can do it again"- something that can only really imply that he's now much more aware of the original games events than before. aerith and cloud even talk about meteor before it's been cast, making it sound like they know what's coming. you could interpret that because of this "enlightenment", that is how he can see the crack that the party cannot. maybe aerith could see it herself the whole time? it would give another meaning to why she "hates the sky", enough to have gone back and retconned her final line from remake before rebirth came out.

that was a doozy, but the other interpretation of aerith's dream date line is that they're somehow between life and death. maybe not in a literal way (though in the main timeline, both are unconscious), but in a way that maybe suggests the true nature of the alternate timelines. aerith take cloud on a date that is intentionally very similar to when zack takes her shopping in crisis core, which is solidified in the japanese dialogue where she quotes this original scene directly.

i'm left wondering if these timelines (or at least this one) are made of memories. hodge-podged together worlds with no destiny or motivation to exist, just to be as they were until they no longer can. it's a little shaky, but the way things interconnect in general is very hard to tell right now. in the japanese text, sephiroth calls the lifestream's alternate realities "layered", which would explain a bit how this could work (inception style - literally a dream (date) within a dream (zack's world). the game suggests that consciousness can be transferred between multiversal bodies, so i don't think coma aerith and cloud just suddenly got up and were fine. they seem more separated, and even when cloud is able to visit that body and see zack in the gold saucer hotel, he still can't just get up and move. he's confined in the same way zack's cloud is.

the big point i think i wanna make here is that i think hope is what is fixing zack's timeline. without him, the world would be doomed to die, because without him everyone else is already resigned to their fate. sephiroth wishes to use negative emotions and despair to choke the lifestream out of being functional, which i think seems to happen innately. zack's world heals as a result of him spreading hope. it's a sentiment echoed all throughout rebirth: if you believe, you will.

this could also be why cloud's world has a crack in the first place. if the party had been resigned to their fates, unwilling to think they can change it, then the world they inhabit will reflect that. cloud, the one who made that change in saving aerith, can see the truth- he is fully free from the shackles of hopelessness, free to make his own destiny. the rest of the party, however, mourning aerith's death, are already feeding into sephiroth's plan. that despair on a global scale is what he's wanted the entire game- it's why he's fueling the shinra-wutai war. global scale despair to choke the planet out of its hope.

this was a big brain dump and im not sure how much it holds any water, but i feel like i'm onto Something that's making sense of what all happens in rebirth. i'm still, like, mega coping that the interview quote about "linking up to advent children" is misleading, because frankly by this point that seems thoroughly impossible, unless AC is just a part of re3 and itll be new and different following the events of the story. aerith half dying already has me checked out a little bit, i think they should've committed to saving or killing her, though it seems that either way she can still be "brought back" one way or another (which seems likely anyway given how some of her most iconic weapons are still awol, and her level 4 limit break, accessible in the original game, is just not in rebirth at all). i don't know!!! this all feels star wars sequel make-it-up-on-the-fly to me and i hope they can stick the landing. i do deeply think if aerith dies at the end of all this then the story sucks and i don't see why they'd bother with all the "changing fate" stuff. i hope these mystery boxes aren't empty...!

#ff7 rebirth #ff7r spoilers

[aerifth]

btw i beat rebirth and have opinions but have no idea what avenues there are to talk about it and its making me crazy. processing evil and dark information conjured from the very deepest tenches of hell itself

[aerifth]

i hope you guys treat whenever i remember to post on here like a big special event. like a loch ness monster sighting, or perhaps a shooting star

[aerifth]

Aerith and Tifa based on J.C. Leyendecker’s “Romeo and Juliet” painting

#straight up all timer #what i wouldnt give to hang this up on my wall

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Yuffie casually confirming that AerTi is a thing.

#i cannot believe how much gay sex aerith and tifa have in this game

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Big news from Tartarus I'm just so proud of him

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panel de pon aerith! i made this today for a panel attack mod, i might release it at some point

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Drew all of Peach’s armor in the OG Super Mario RPG :)

Procreate on iPad Pro

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New York is a city of contrasts

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new super ff7 college au 2024 edition

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hell yea we sippin the finest wine, wearin the fanciest suits, livin in the biggest houses, fuckin the hottest bitches everythang lil b turn it up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

[aerifth]

my art + pixel art year in review!