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rhodochrosite) wrote2023-12-07 10:47 pm
rhodochrosite) wrote2023-12-07 10:47 pm
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why is it called final fantasy when they keep making new ones though
this is not a post about final fantasy in general, this is very specifically a compilation post of ff7 fmvs i have recently enjoyed(?) as a guy who has never played a single second of any final fantasy in my life (although my question still stands). i have read about a million words of ff7 yaoi though! all over a couple weeks back in october! i don't know what came over me either. and then i watched advent children and understood nothing <3 i don't know who half the cast is and i couldn't tell you anything about the plot except for the parts that involve cloud getting impaled by huge swords, but one thing about me is that i love elite military academies and superpowers and fucked up enemies and people dying when killed and people not dying when killed and DOOM. so i will now proceed to make bold assertions about ship dynamics in a canon i don't actually know while reviewing another set of moving images.
zack/aerith x enchanted - taylor swift
ok so i obviously embarked on my ff7 journey because of sefikura, i'm sure i don't need to explain why, but it must be said that i was getting insanely distracted from the sexy toxic bl bag by tragic starcrossed firstlove hets T___T the only reason i can think of as to why this fmv in particular killed me so bad is first mover advantage since this was the first fmv i watched after my trusty content purveyor the youtube algorithm put it in my sidebar. and then i watched it like 50 more times in a row and sobbed every time. this is my ff7 jihan a thousand years. i honestly do not think it is that good (like i'm not even sure that the repeated use of the "an angel?" scene was intentional i feel like op just forgot they already used that footage) i'm pretty sure it's the actual zerith scenes i'm watching via the fmv that are carrying. i also think the meaning that i am deriving from it is not the meaning op intended to convey, but i don't care. it's my city now i understand zerith_enchanted.mp4 in a deeper and more intellectual way than even op ever could.
like, op is clearly trying to set up some kind of zerith vs clerith thing that i think is implying that cloud is the nebulous "someone" that the narrator is hoping their potential love interest isn't in love with, except cloud didn't even meet aerith until after zack already died and cloud was engaging in trauma-induced accidental identity theft at the time, so it literally is the other way around in that zack is the other person aerith is still hung up on anyway, but TO MEEEEE it should actually be cloud pov where zack and aerith are both the someone in question for each other because cloud is the unluckiest bisexual in the universe, except in a griefshipping way. like imo zack is the centre of the triangle and clerith is zack's widows club, they just don't know it.
the part where the clerith scenes flash up in black and white and then change to the exact same scene in colour except it's zack instead of cloud is sooooo sick and twisted like If You Know how i feel about replacement goldfishing and the idea of cloud->zack Want Him/Want To Be Him unrequited longing that spills over onto aerith combined with cloud's conscious decision to become zack's living legacy... like cloud loves aerith because zack loves (PRESENT TENSE, ALWAYS) aerith but cloud also loves aerith because aerith is aerith except these things are not extricable from each other AND THAT IS WHY clerith can never be endgame. zack is too fundamental in either his presence or absence!! also i'm getting seriously 相手固定 about zerith ngl (maybe with the exception of tifa for aerith in a Girls The World way or maybe a noren way) like YOU DON'T UNDERSTANDDDDDD REAL TRUE FIRSTLOVE ENDGAME...
what i think the clerith scenes do really well in this fmv is intensify the feeling of doom to the clumsy sweetness of zerith meeting for the first time and falling in love and having these beautiful joyful moments. just a little glimpse forward in time to the tragic future awaiting them... the storyline did end ): the past tense through the song (and especially in i was enchanted to meet you) is such a good fit for them in this sense and kinda makes me bite lemons, past tense always makes me feel some typa way... it's the awful sense of doom again. all of it being only a memory now.
also i never heard this song before and it's really good damn. like perfectly captures the (bitter)sweet first love vibes in the way that crj does the pure musical essence of having a crush.
zack/aerith x in this shirt - the irrepressibles
this is my ff7 markhyuck ivy ie the editing is legitimately very good and the fmv makes me cry. first of all the fmv opening with baby aerith's "a man you really really love just died / his soul came a long way to say goodbye" quote cut with zack's death scene and the moment she seems to sense it, as if she were prophesying zack's fate to her older self, made me cry shake blow up like holy shit it actually is all about cycles repeating and inescapable fates especially in the metacontext of the ff7 remake being an alternate timeline(??) of the original. especially with the echoing of zack's words in the past with cloud in the present *face holding back tears emoji* the voice acting in aerith's subdued "yeah. i know." as she leans back after cloud repeats what zack told her years ago is insanely good. ghosts everywhere you look.
goddd the way aerith spent four years and eighty-nine letters with her heart in her mouth one-sidedly casting her love out in the ever diminishing hope that it might reach zack... i'm gonna be sick. she really spent all that time only knowing for sure that zack had gone away and never returned, unsure if she should just give up on him and move on, never getting proper closure until she ALSO DIED. when zack was actually just comatose and being medically experimented on and then dead and had in fact died while trying so so so hard to come back to her no matter what. ummm at least they are together forever in newtype heaven now *face holding back tears emoji*
i think one of my fave canon het types must be the progression of first love -> almost getting together -> forcibly separated by circumstances beyond their control -> guy undergoes horrific secret trials and tribulations but is desperately determined to return to girl and goes through hell trying to do so -> girl is unaware of any of this and is half-heartbroken at the thought that she might have been abandoned but still clinging onto hope that guy will come back and always wears an accessory he gifted her before (-> HAPPY ENDING). two nickels moment with shinran and zerith and probably other ships i can't remember rn. like aghhhhh how strongly they both feel for each other despite the separation through time and space, how even real true love cannot bridge it, how awful the weight of the doom hanging over both of them through crisis core and the remake is, knowing what's coming and yet hoping against hope the future will change. and maybe it will this time.
sephiroth/cloud x teeth - 5sos
*saw sephiroth stabbing cloud through the chest and lifting him into the air on his sword and got so hard i got nauseous* i think i hauve covid. also the tasteful inclusion of cloud injury and battle exertion sound effects is delightful. also i love the "something in the way you're looking through my eyes" line being literal due to the mind control. also the editing in this is incredibly satisfying i appreciate when the sword movements are in time with the beat.
sephiroth/cloud x time machine - ingrid michaelson
youtube user JustDianeDoingStuff does it again... i'm predisposed towards feeling positively about songs that talk about cycles and history repeating in the context of the remake overall but also sefikura specifically. i loveeee their 因縁 (obviously) i love anything that brings up how they are bound together on the wheel of fate forever /neg /derogatory because of the confluence of all their circumstances and actions in those circumstances. and no matter how hard cloud tries to escape [fate / history / sephiroth / these things all being synonymous] it is inevitable.
anyway sephiroth saying "destiny comes" over the lyric "we were never meant to be" kinda goes hard af... also i can't believe "that which binds us together would be no more. and i would be loath to live in such a world" is a real thing that sephiroth canonically says to cloud. LOL? even if it was meant to come off in a mindfuck russian tuant way it's still like... you just have to laugh. you know i love an obsessed 1. sidenote i searched up the entire quote and it's definitely sephiroth just making sure cloud never forgets the immense You Burned Down My Hometown And Killed My Mum trauma he suffered at sephiroth's hands, to say nothing of all the other physical and psychological trauma sephiroth put him through later (being stabbed, being mind controlled, world almost ending, aerith, etc), but if you think about that some more it's also about sephiroth reminding cloud of the ways in which they are inextricably and eternally linked via massive karmic debt and that is so romantic 💖 因縁 is the most romantic thing in the universe!!
sephiroth/cloud x toxic (britney spears cover) - 2wei
i don't think this is a sefikura fmv actually but it is To Me. excellent jokes not jokes song choice, excellent sense of menace and looming unkillable terror.
this is unrelated to anything but i like when zerith is a side ship in sefikura fics, it reminds me of how akam artists usually have side shinran / other canon hets. unfortunately the reverse is not true (zerith main fics will probably have cloti side, while shinran main will probably have am@z side... the moral of the story is that you need to be a fujoshi to understand hetshipping. i actually haven't decided how i feel about cloti though so i'll meditate on that first, i know historically i enjoy a boy 0 x girl 0 het but i think i might be getting 相手固定 about sefikura too) which saddens me because i really like zerith but i'm too scared of potential landmines to look at any fan content outside of fmvs. anyway i enjoy how zerith and sefikura are two sides of the doomed fated love coin. FATE is so special to me.
ff7 x angels - within temptation
finishing up with a gen fmv, based on the posting date and view count i assume everyone and their dog has seen this one but it is very well edited and i enjoyed it greatly. i don't know who half the guys in here are, including the guy who has the first verse's storyline (vincent valentine the fake vampire guy........? real vampire guy? are there real vampires in ff7?? i did see him in some of the fic i read. and....annie leonhardt? why is there a woman in a crystal). naturally the zerith parts made me hold my breath and try to die but i also strongly enjoyed the asg parts especially the scene where they're 3way sparring except it's like weirdly unhingedly serious for genesis and probably angeal too by extension. world's most dysfunctional throuple whose relationship rapidly degrades at the same rate as their bodies and minds<3 incredible that their implosion takes out a bunch of people around them as collateral (zack </3) and almost ends the world, and i like how that's conveyed in this fmv with the splicing of their storyline into the zack/aerith/cloud storyline. i actually would like to understand more about the rise and fall of asg but i feel like they're gonna give me similar levels of sobbing_man_clutching_sink.png that zerith does so i'm holding off on that for the moment. but did i mention that i love DOOM. and tragedy. and fate but mostly doom.
zack/aerith x enchanted - taylor swift
ok so i obviously embarked on my ff7 journey because of sefikura, i'm sure i don't need to explain why, but it must be said that i was getting insanely distracted from the sexy toxic bl bag by tragic starcrossed firstlove hets T___T the only reason i can think of as to why this fmv in particular killed me so bad is first mover advantage since this was the first fmv i watched after my trusty content purveyor the youtube algorithm put it in my sidebar. and then i watched it like 50 more times in a row and sobbed every time. this is my ff7 jihan a thousand years. i honestly do not think it is that good (like i'm not even sure that the repeated use of the "an angel?" scene was intentional i feel like op just forgot they already used that footage) i'm pretty sure it's the actual zerith scenes i'm watching via the fmv that are carrying. i also think the meaning that i am deriving from it is not the meaning op intended to convey, but i don't care. it's my city now i understand zerith_enchanted.mp4 in a deeper and more intellectual way than even op ever could.
like, op is clearly trying to set up some kind of zerith vs clerith thing that i think is implying that cloud is the nebulous "someone" that the narrator is hoping their potential love interest isn't in love with, except cloud didn't even meet aerith until after zack already died and cloud was engaging in trauma-induced accidental identity theft at the time, so it literally is the other way around in that zack is the other person aerith is still hung up on anyway, but TO MEEEEE it should actually be cloud pov where zack and aerith are both the someone in question for each other because cloud is the unluckiest bisexual in the universe, except in a griefshipping way. like imo zack is the centre of the triangle and clerith is zack's widows club, they just don't know it.
the part where the clerith scenes flash up in black and white and then change to the exact same scene in colour except it's zack instead of cloud is sooooo sick and twisted like If You Know how i feel about replacement goldfishing and the idea of cloud->zack Want Him/Want To Be Him unrequited longing that spills over onto aerith combined with cloud's conscious decision to become zack's living legacy... like cloud loves aerith because zack loves (PRESENT TENSE, ALWAYS) aerith but cloud also loves aerith because aerith is aerith except these things are not extricable from each other AND THAT IS WHY clerith can never be endgame. zack is too fundamental in either his presence or absence!! also i'm getting seriously 相手固定 about zerith ngl (maybe with the exception of tifa for aerith in a Girls The World way or maybe a noren way) like YOU DON'T UNDERSTANDDDDDD REAL TRUE FIRSTLOVE ENDGAME...
what i think the clerith scenes do really well in this fmv is intensify the feeling of doom to the clumsy sweetness of zerith meeting for the first time and falling in love and having these beautiful joyful moments. just a little glimpse forward in time to the tragic future awaiting them... the storyline did end ): the past tense through the song (and especially in i was enchanted to meet you) is such a good fit for them in this sense and kinda makes me bite lemons, past tense always makes me feel some typa way... it's the awful sense of doom again. all of it being only a memory now.
also i never heard this song before and it's really good damn. like perfectly captures the (bitter)sweet first love vibes in the way that crj does the pure musical essence of having a crush.
zack/aerith x in this shirt - the irrepressibles
this is my ff7 markhyuck ivy ie the editing is legitimately very good and the fmv makes me cry. first of all the fmv opening with baby aerith's "a man you really really love just died / his soul came a long way to say goodbye" quote cut with zack's death scene and the moment she seems to sense it, as if she were prophesying zack's fate to her older self, made me cry shake blow up like holy shit it actually is all about cycles repeating and inescapable fates especially in the metacontext of the ff7 remake being an alternate timeline(??) of the original. especially with the echoing of zack's words in the past with cloud in the present *face holding back tears emoji* the voice acting in aerith's subdued "yeah. i know." as she leans back after cloud repeats what zack told her years ago is insanely good. ghosts everywhere you look.
goddd the way aerith spent four years and eighty-nine letters with her heart in her mouth one-sidedly casting her love out in the ever diminishing hope that it might reach zack... i'm gonna be sick. she really spent all that time only knowing for sure that zack had gone away and never returned, unsure if she should just give up on him and move on, never getting proper closure until she ALSO DIED. when zack was actually just comatose and being medically experimented on and then dead and had in fact died while trying so so so hard to come back to her no matter what. ummm at least they are together forever in newtype heaven now *face holding back tears emoji*
i think one of my fave canon het types must be the progression of first love -> almost getting together -> forcibly separated by circumstances beyond their control -> guy undergoes horrific secret trials and tribulations but is desperately determined to return to girl and goes through hell trying to do so -> girl is unaware of any of this and is half-heartbroken at the thought that she might have been abandoned but still clinging onto hope that guy will come back and always wears an accessory he gifted her before (-> HAPPY ENDING). two nickels moment with shinran and zerith and probably other ships i can't remember rn. like aghhhhh how strongly they both feel for each other despite the separation through time and space, how even real true love cannot bridge it, how awful the weight of the doom hanging over both of them through crisis core and the remake is, knowing what's coming and yet hoping against hope the future will change. and maybe it will this time.
sephiroth/cloud x teeth - 5sos
*saw sephiroth stabbing cloud through the chest and lifting him into the air on his sword and got so hard i got nauseous* i think i hauve covid. also the tasteful inclusion of cloud injury and battle exertion sound effects is delightful. also i love the "something in the way you're looking through my eyes" line being literal due to the mind control. also the editing in this is incredibly satisfying i appreciate when the sword movements are in time with the beat.
sephiroth/cloud x time machine - ingrid michaelson
youtube user JustDianeDoingStuff does it again... i'm predisposed towards feeling positively about songs that talk about cycles and history repeating in the context of the remake overall but also sefikura specifically. i loveeee their 因縁 (obviously) i love anything that brings up how they are bound together on the wheel of fate forever /neg /derogatory because of the confluence of all their circumstances and actions in those circumstances. and no matter how hard cloud tries to escape [fate / history / sephiroth / these things all being synonymous] it is inevitable.
anyway sephiroth saying "destiny comes" over the lyric "we were never meant to be" kinda goes hard af... also i can't believe "that which binds us together would be no more. and i would be loath to live in such a world" is a real thing that sephiroth canonically says to cloud. LOL? even if it was meant to come off in a mindfuck russian tuant way it's still like... you just have to laugh. you know i love an obsessed 1. sidenote i searched up the entire quote and it's definitely sephiroth just making sure cloud never forgets the immense You Burned Down My Hometown And Killed My Mum trauma he suffered at sephiroth's hands, to say nothing of all the other physical and psychological trauma sephiroth put him through later (being stabbed, being mind controlled, world almost ending, aerith, etc), but if you think about that some more it's also about sephiroth reminding cloud of the ways in which they are inextricably and eternally linked via massive karmic debt and that is so romantic 💖 因縁 is the most romantic thing in the universe!!
sephiroth/cloud x toxic (britney spears cover) - 2wei
i don't think this is a sefikura fmv actually but it is To Me. excellent jokes not jokes song choice, excellent sense of menace and looming unkillable terror.
this is unrelated to anything but i like when zerith is a side ship in sefikura fics, it reminds me of how akam artists usually have side shinran / other canon hets. unfortunately the reverse is not true (zerith main fics will probably have cloti side, while shinran main will probably have am@z side... the moral of the story is that you need to be a fujoshi to understand hetshipping. i actually haven't decided how i feel about cloti though so i'll meditate on that first, i know historically i enjoy a boy 0 x girl 0 het but i think i might be getting 相手固定 about sefikura too) which saddens me because i really like zerith but i'm too scared of potential landmines to look at any fan content outside of fmvs. anyway i enjoy how zerith and sefikura are two sides of the doomed fated love coin. FATE is so special to me.
ff7 x angels - within temptation
finishing up with a gen fmv, based on the posting date and view count i assume everyone and their dog has seen this one but it is very well edited and i enjoyed it greatly. i don't know who half the guys in here are, including the guy who has the first verse's storyline (vincent valentine the fake vampire guy........? real vampire guy? are there real vampires in ff7?? i did see him in some of the fic i read. and....annie leonhardt? why is there a woman in a crystal). naturally the zerith parts made me hold my breath and try to die but i also strongly enjoyed the asg parts especially the scene where they're 3way sparring except it's like weirdly unhingedly serious for genesis and probably angeal too by extension. world's most dysfunctional throuple whose relationship rapidly degrades at the same rate as their bodies and minds<3 incredible that their implosion takes out a bunch of people around them as collateral (zack </3) and almost ends the world, and i like how that's conveyed in this fmv with the splicing of their storyline into the zack/aerith/cloud storyline. i actually would like to understand more about the rise and fall of asg but i feel like they're gonna give me similar levels of sobbing_man_clutching_sink.png that zerith does so i'm holding off on that for the moment. but did i mention that i love DOOM. and tragedy. and fate but mostly doom.