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case-of-traxits · 4 months

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I’m sure you’ve probably talked about this before, but how do you think reeve’s inspire works?

So funny fact here: I've never actually formally meta'd about this publicly. I'm pretty sure. I've talked to a few individuals about it, but never in like, a definitive, "This is definitely how I think it works," sort of way.

Maybe it's time to change that?

First though, let's talk about why I use the Inspire ability at all, because a lot of that leads into how I think it works.

An Argument for Why I Use the Inspire Ability

I would love to start with Reeve's original bio, but of course, as we know, Reeve didn't get a bio in the original game manual. So instead, we're forced to rely on his Ultimania bio:

The head of the Urban Development Department. Involved in the construction of Midgar from the very beginning, he watches over the town’s development like that of a child. By utilizing his special ability, “Inspire”, he is able to cause inorganic things to emit life; his “child”, the “cat”-shaped robot, Cait Sith can be controlled from a great distance. After Meteorfall, he became the director of the World Regenesis Organization (WRO), which is devoted to the purpose of restoring life to the planet.

For what it's worth, Reeve's bio has been shockingly consistent with including his Inspire ability. I go into that a little bit over in my WRO Reeve + Heartbreak meta.

Now, I know a lot of people don't like the Ultimanias. They find them confusing, or contradictory, or whatever the current "I don't use them," reason of the day is. That's fine! Let's take a look at Cait Sith's original bio from the game manual:

Cait Sith rides on the back of a huge stuffed Mog he magically brought to life. Megaphone in hand, he's always shouting orders and creating dopey attacks...

So there you go. Mog and Cait Sith cannot simply be robots, since it's stated quite plainly that Cait Sith brought Mog to life magically.

(As a side note, Cait Sith in the OG comes equipped with the Manipulate materia. This is a fun multi-layered reference, don't you think? Pokes a note at him being a spy and kind of gives you a thing to consider about how he possibly controls Mog.)

(As a second side note, Cait Sith also has one of the highest magic/spirit scores in the OG, so he's clearly meant to be your caster.)

Now, that said, Reeve clearly did build Cait Sith as a robot. His Ultimania profile clearly refers to Cait Sith as a robot, and in BC, Cait Sith has a controller of some kind in his back, and he gets damaged and broken into pieces and the Player Turk has to put him back together.

(As a side note there— and I swear, I'll stop doing these soon— if I recall correctly, the pieces the Player Turk has to collect are the body, the head, and the crown, implying that Cait Sith's crown is in fact an important part of him, and not just a cute fashion accessory.)

In addition, it is worth noting that Rufus Shinra is well aware of Cait Sith and that Reeve "controls" him, and yet, Reeve is able to directly communicate with AVALANCHE during a board meeting where Scarlet and Heidegger are talking Rufus into loading up No. 26, the rocket from Rocket Town, with huge materia and crashing it into Meteor in an attempt to save the world. Reeve not only does this, but Rufus gives no outward indication that he's aware of it. So however Reeve "controls" Cait Sith, there must not be a visible component to it.

My point is that Cait Sith, from what canon shows us, appears to be a robot that Reeve can control directly, without need for any sort of external control system. And, based on some thoughts that Cait Sith has during BC that cannot reasonably be attributed to Reeve, Cait Sith is still somehow independent of Reeve himself.

So why don't I go with Cait Sith simply being a learning AI of some kind? Well, mostly because of Mog. If we go back to the original bio for Cait Sith, it reads very similarly to Reeve's Ultimania bio. So Reeve grants life to Cait Sith, who can, in turn, grant life to Mog.

Functionally, Cait Sith is a mini-Inspire of his own.

Canon Exploration of the Inspire Ability

Now that I've written out my premise for why I go with Inspire Reeve, let's get to the heart of the original question: How do I think it works?

Well, let's look at what we have to work with:

[Ultimania Bio] Reeve causes inorganic things to "emit" life.

[Ultimania Bio] Reeve sees Cait Sith as a child.

[OG Game Bio] Cait Sith inherits the Inspire ability.

[OG/BC/DoC] Cait Sith is capable of acting autonomously.

[OG/BC/DoC] Cait Sith can be directly controlled (to some extent, at least) via Reeve.

[OG] Reeve can speak through Cait Sith without other people in the room noticing.

[OtWtaS] Multiple Cait Siths can be 'active' at a time.

[DoC] Reeve and Cait Sith can move in sync with one another.

[DoC] Even if Cait Sith 'dies,' he can somehow convey information he learned right up until his death to Reeve/other Cait Siths.

How Does the Ability Actually Work?

So, with all of this in mind, here's how I usually go with Reeve's ability working:

The short answer is that I see it as a low-key, always-on mental connection between Reeve and Cait Sith.

A longer explanation starts with the fact that I see Reeve's Inspire ability as sort of... it has both passive and active modes for me. Basically, in the passive mode, Reeve is always influencing inorganic material around him. It's more noticeable when his emotions are heightened, but things like his phone and his car develop... quirks. His car isn't really conscious, exactly, but it does read his intent, and to some extent, it basically functions as a self-driving vehicle when Reeve is the one behind the wheel.

Now, for my Reeve in particular, this is in no small part because the car was his father's, and he has worked on it extensively over the years. It's a classic car, basically, and it gives him an outlet for fiddly work that's outside and not in a reactor or tied to Shinra. If you're going with a Reeve who doesn't love his car as much, then obviously, that probably would be a bit more odd.

A more common variant on this, I think, would probably be that I usually roll with Reeve having... partially Inspired the reactors. All of them. All of the ones he has access to. And in this case, it's less because he wants them to be alive and more because he wants to have that access to them. He wants to be able to check statuses and know what's going on with a reactor at any given moment, and no matter how advanced the tech is, nothing will be faster for him than a direct mental connection.

Of course, that can have some less than stellar side effects when, say, a reactor explodes. @ladykf-writes wrote me some amazing ficlets that feature my headcanons about this after much rambling with her about them. So I highly recommend checking those out if you're interested in this idea.

Then he has the active mode of his ability. I've written a ficlet (Heritage and Legacies) about the process of actually Inspiring Cait Sith (and it makes mention of Reeve's first disastrous accidental Inspiration), but in short, it involves more or less willing the inanimate object to life. I usually go with the explanation that Reeve is literally feeding the object a bit of his own personal lifestream (or soul, depending on how you want to talk about it) until it starts circulating it on its own. This gives me a built in explanation for why he doesn't animate hundreds of things at once and such. I do like to have caps on things.

But because it was his personal lifestream that he used, he can basically retain... think of like a narrow, unseen string between Cait Sith and Reeve, no matter how far apart they get. And across this string, they can send thoughts, memories, and sensations. That's how Reeve knew what happened to Cait Sith when Nero ate him with shadows. Cait Sith had immediately connected with Reeve and told him.

Now, I do a few hand-wavey things for my own sanity when writing. I assume that when a Cait Sith dies, all of their memories get imprinted in Reeve's mind, and when he Inspires the next Cait Sith, they get a copy of all of those memories. This can create a bit of a jarring dissonance within the memories for a new Cait Sith, as they might remember being Cait Sith 1 and being Cait Sith 2 in the same conversation. But for the most part, it works.

The other thing I usually do with Cait Sith specifically is that I say that when he was first Inspired, he was very much like a baby or a toddler. He needed to learn a lot of things. I don't have any fics currently up featuring this (I will after the holiday events though), but basically, I go with it having taken Reeve a while to get Cait Sith to talk at all for example, and that he had to learn a lot of things on his own rather than relying on Reeve's memory of the things.

Now, because of the hand-wavey memory thing I already talked about, new Cait Siths don't have that same initial problem. They basically just get imprinted with everything Cait Sith 1 learned before he died.

(And for what it's worth, since Cait Sith's accent is supposed to be based on Reeve's parents, I always go with Cait Sith not speaking at all for a few months after he was Inspired. Reeve tried everything, from toddler help books to reading books to trying to bribe him, and couldn't get a single word out of him. And then, finally, Reeve was on the phone with his mother, trying to discreetly ask her for advice without admitting to his abilities or to what he'd done, and when he hung up the phone, Cait Sith looked up at him and spoke for the first time. In the accent Reeve hadn't realized he'd slipped back into with his mother.)

The other hand-wavey thing I do is that I usually have Reeve and Cait Sith share the ability to communicate mind-to-mind, no outward dialogue needed. I mostly justify this with it being a side-effect of them sharing the same personal lifestream rhythm.

I will say though, something I do that I don't know that I've seen anyone else do (I don't have any fics left up featuring this either, actually) is that I say the control can go both ways. So Reeve can reach for Cait Sith and speak through him, but so can Cait Sith. Now, I usually say that Reeve has to let Cait Sith do this, whereas Reeve can just take control from Cait Sith, but I chalk that up to Reeve being the one who did the initial Inspiring. Following that suit though, it would make sense that Cait Sith could do the same thing with Mog, if he wanted.

Now, I also headcanon that Reeve does his absolute best to let Cait Sith have whatever autonomy he can. My Reeve, in particular, didn't exactly have the happiest of childhoods, and he has spent a lot of time being told exactly what he can do and when, so he tries to give Cait Sith the childhood he never had.

If you read all the way down here, oh my goodness, but thank you. It's... a lot. Like I said earlier, the short answer is that I see it as a low-key, always-on mental connection between Reeve and Cait Sith. And I kind of flex it around, depending on what exactly I'm doing with the fic in question.

#Reeve Tuesti #Cait Sith #FF7 #Final Fantasy VII #I have so many feels about Reeve guys #so many #... I think that's what I tagged my last Reeve meta #And I'm still working on my WRO meta #That's... my metas took a bit of a backseat during the event weeks #And with two coming up #I've got to finish some of the stuff I have started #x.x #WISH ME LUCK #But this was a fun way to procrastinate

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