Chatty December: Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII! Reeve! But really, anything! Favorite characters and why? Favorite ships and why? What did you enjoy about the game, what didn't you enjoy about the game?
Favorite characters is probably pretty easy; Reeve/Cait Sith. I have a kind place in my heart for Tifa, who just sort of radiates 'big sister' at me. But mostly it's Reeve. Because while the entire game is gray area, Reeve seems to be the only one fully aware that it's gray area, and is capable of being both compassionate and merciless. The entire rest of the cast, while aware there's evil in the world, tend to assume They're The Good Guys. Reeve doesn't assume he's a Good Guy. Most of the time he's just trying to do what's best as far as he can tell with what resources he has on hand. And I find that, on the whole, to be more admirable even though he did some fairly iffy things early on.
Favorite ships...I'd put Cloud with Aerith because they deserve each other, in both the positive and the negative senses of that phrase. I did not, for quite a while, ship Reeve with anyone because frankly he stands apart from both sides and isn't really trusted or even liked by either side, which makes it hard to ship him. My normal ship for Rufus would be Tseng, but as you may've found out perusing Ficwad, I've developed a tendency to ship Reeve with Rufus. This works for me if and only if I accept the premise that Rufus in fact a) Knew Reeve was managing Cait Sith, and b) was in fact manipulating Avalanche to clean up his father's mess through most of the latter half of the game.
Advent Children honestly made that premise a lot easier to believe, and so over the years I've kind of come to ship Reeve/Rufus in a pairing where Reeve isn't Rufus' conscience (because Rufus has one of his own, thank you) but is the means by which Rufus can make amends for Shin-Ra's collossal blunders because people will believe Reeve's intentions are good, in a way they'd never accept from Rufus, who early in his tenure made some very big, very public PR mistakes. ("I will rule through fear" and so on.)
There's a Rufus/Reeve fic out there - unfinished, I think - called Conscience of the King. It is, in a nutshell, why I really need to take as a premise that Rufus has a conscience and is capable of regret before I can pair him with Reeve. Because Reeve as Rufus' conscience flat out can't work, it has to end badly. Reeve is not Jiminy Cricket. (I love the fic. It just tears my heart out also.)
What I enjoyed about the game...hm. I am actually not the big FFVII fan that most FF fans are. I'm still not sure why that was the game that got spinoff after spinoff and its own movie. I'd have done it for FFVI, but not VII. But what I enjoy, on replay, is watching people do the best they can while very clearly also being completely in the dark about what anyone else thinks or feels or is doing. Everyone acts in a vacuum, so bound up in their own motivations that they can't see anyone else's. Cloud's right to chase after Sephiroth - by complete accident. His reasons for doing so at the start of the game have fuckall to do with what Sephiroth is actually trying to do.
What I didn't enjoy about the game is also probably why it would not have been made in the 21st century; basically, the heroes are terrorists. You start the game by blowing up a reactor. Avalanche's reasons for targeting reactors aren't bad ones. But their methods suck balls. They killed people who were only doing a job, trying to take care of their families, and weren't knowingly hurting anyone. You blow up a second reactor and kill even more people. And it's not the corporate bigwigs who are then left without power - it's the working poor of Midgar.
The only time this is addressed in-game is when Reeve, speaking through Cait Sith, finally completely loses his shit at Barrett. Those were his workers. And it made utterly clear why Reeve genuinely felt Barrett was the kind of guy who'd only listen if you took his daughter hostage. This guy had led the attacks on two reactors, killing a LOT of innocent people, and moreover felt PROUD of doing so.
It's something really wish the game - or movies, or side games - had gone into more depth in, but Reeve became my hero for being the only person to push back and go "THIS WAS NOT THE WAY TO MAKE YOUR POINT." Throughout the game, that's Reeve's motivation. The little guy, the 'people'. He doesn't talk about it much (I think because seriously, he's not very much on ANYONE'S side) but his eyes seem to always be on the little guy who's just trying to get by without getting poisoned, irradiated, eaten or shot at. (I recall Vincent being Distrusting at Reeve in Dirge of Cerberus for basically helping people out as best he could, and thought 'yeah, Reeve is just never going to be Avalanche. He's not a revolutionary.'
Avalanche are revolutionaries, anarchists. And they have their reasons, certainly, for being so. Reeve's just the one guy who's aware that true anarchy is the strong putting the boot in the face of the weak. That the law, that government, are meant to even things out and are not corrupt in and of themselves. Conversely, Shin-Ra was full of authoritarians who believe that the strong should rule the weak and were using the government to do it. It's just...the strong don't NEED government to put the boot to the weak. They'll do that regardless. But it's only through organization and cooperation - which are the foundation blocks of government - that the weak can overpower the strong. Or help each other. And Reeve demonstrably gets that. he didn't go outside the parameters of law until a) he knew for a fact that all his superiors were off their nut in a homicidal way, and b) that Avalanche had enough decent people that he COULD help them without winding up making the situation worse.
Favorite characters is probably pretty easy; Reeve/Cait Sith. I have a kind place in my heart for Tifa, who just sort of radiates 'big sister' at me. But mostly it's Reeve. Because while the entire game is gray area, Reeve seems to be the only one fully aware that it's gray area, and is capable of being both compassionate and merciless. The entire rest of the cast, while aware there's evil in the world, tend to assume They're The Good Guys. Reeve doesn't assume he's a Good Guy. Most of the time he's just trying to do what's best as far as he can tell with what resources he has on hand. And I find that, on the whole, to be more admirable even though he did some fairly iffy things early on.
Favorite ships...I'd put Cloud with Aerith because they deserve each other, in both the positive and the negative senses of that phrase. I did not, for quite a while, ship Reeve with anyone because frankly he stands apart from both sides and isn't really trusted or even liked by either side, which makes it hard to ship him. My normal ship for Rufus would be Tseng, but as you may've found out perusing Ficwad, I've developed a tendency to ship Reeve with Rufus. This works for me if and only if I accept the premise that Rufus in fact a) Knew Reeve was managing Cait Sith, and b) was in fact manipulating Avalanche to clean up his father's mess through most of the latter half of the game.
Advent Children honestly made that premise a lot easier to believe, and so over the years I've kind of come to ship Reeve/Rufus in a pairing where Reeve isn't Rufus' conscience (because Rufus has one of his own, thank you) but is the means by which Rufus can make amends for Shin-Ra's collossal blunders because people will believe Reeve's intentions are good, in a way they'd never accept from Rufus, who early in his tenure made some very big, very public PR mistakes. ("I will rule through fear" and so on.)
There's a Rufus/Reeve fic out there - unfinished, I think - called Conscience of the King. It is, in a nutshell, why I really need to take as a premise that Rufus has a conscience and is capable of regret before I can pair him with Reeve. Because Reeve as Rufus' conscience flat out can't work, it has to end badly. Reeve is not Jiminy Cricket. (I love the fic. It just tears my heart out also.)
What I enjoyed about the game...hm. I am actually not the big FFVII fan that most FF fans are. I'm still not sure why that was the game that got spinoff after spinoff and its own movie. I'd have done it for FFVI, but not VII. But what I enjoy, on replay, is watching people do the best they can while very clearly also being completely in the dark about what anyone else thinks or feels or is doing. Everyone acts in a vacuum, so bound up in their own motivations that they can't see anyone else's. Cloud's right to chase after Sephiroth - by complete accident. His reasons for doing so at the start of the game have fuckall to do with what Sephiroth is actually trying to do.
What I didn't enjoy about the game is also probably why it would not have been made in the 21st century; basically, the heroes are terrorists. You start the game by blowing up a reactor. Avalanche's reasons for targeting reactors aren't bad ones. But their methods suck balls. They killed people who were only doing a job, trying to take care of their families, and weren't knowingly hurting anyone. You blow up a second reactor and kill even more people. And it's not the corporate bigwigs who are then left without power - it's the working poor of Midgar.
The only time this is addressed in-game is when Reeve, speaking through Cait Sith, finally completely loses his shit at Barrett. Those were his workers. And it made utterly clear why Reeve genuinely felt Barrett was the kind of guy who'd only listen if you took his daughter hostage. This guy had led the attacks on two reactors, killing a LOT of innocent people, and moreover felt PROUD of doing so.
It's something really wish the game - or movies, or side games - had gone into more depth in, but Reeve became my hero for being the only person to push back and go "THIS WAS NOT THE WAY TO MAKE YOUR POINT." Throughout the game, that's Reeve's motivation. The little guy, the 'people'. He doesn't talk about it much (I think because seriously, he's not very much on ANYONE'S side) but his eyes seem to always be on the little guy who's just trying to get by without getting poisoned, irradiated, eaten or shot at. (I recall Vincent being Distrusting at Reeve in Dirge of Cerberus for basically helping people out as best he could, and thought 'yeah, Reeve is just never going to be Avalanche. He's not a revolutionary.'
Avalanche are revolutionaries, anarchists. And they have their reasons, certainly, for being so. Reeve's just the one guy who's aware that true anarchy is the strong putting the boot in the face of the weak. That the law, that government, are meant to even things out and are not corrupt in and of themselves. Conversely, Shin-Ra was full of authoritarians who believe that the strong should rule the weak and were using the government to do it. It's just...the strong don't NEED government to put the boot to the weak. They'll do that regardless. But it's only through organization and cooperation - which are the foundation blocks of government - that the weak can overpower the strong. Or help each other. And Reeve demonstrably gets that. he didn't go outside the parameters of law until a) he knew for a fact that all his superiors were off their nut in a homicidal way, and b) that Avalanche had enough decent people that he COULD help them without winding up making the situation worse.