fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #410 ]

[ SECRET POST #410 ]

⌈ Secret Post #410 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 10 pages, 226 secrets from Secret Submission Post #059.
Secrets Not Posted: 0 broken links, 0 not!secrets, 0 not!fandom, [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ] too big, [ 1 ] posted twice, [ 1 2 ] repeat.
Next Secret Post: Tomorrow, Wednesday, February 20th, 2008.
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

MY HAIR ACCEPTS YOUR CHALLENGE!!!

Let us begin.

First, we need to address the claim that Cloud is ooc in LHR. One must remember that Cloud went through a level of prep for this angst in events prior to fanfic. For example, his deep and unrequited love for Sephiroth, who he then had to kill. Also, being used as the Cetra's punching bag. Also, finally opening up to another person only to have her womb explode all over him because of his mutant baby.

Wow. Way to go, Cloud. Anyway, this is all (along with leading an army for five years) going to contribute to Cloud angst of unprecedented proportions. If you can accept the idea of him having this intrinsic love for Sephiroth that is, until the end, unrequited, it burdens him immensely.

I will not excuse the abuse of ellipses, but then, neither would the author.

As for the Yuffentine...who else is Vincent going to hook up with? Cid is married, Barret is...something, Tifa is pining and then doing Zack, and Yuffie and Vincent can begin to develop a camaraderie of "people not crazy."

Also, Vincent needs someone to balance out his gloom, and while Yuffie has matured, she still needs an anchor. It's perfect!

THE NIGHT GOES ON AS I'M FADING AWAY

I'm not asserting that Cloud is out of character; as I stated in my original comment, LHR is AU. Given the basic premise of the AU- that Cloud's primary motivation for all of his actions was unrequited love for Sephiroth- and the backstory/setup of LHR - Cloud being an even crazier science experiment than was revealed in-game, his post-game alienation from all of his comrades (you have to admit the pole-dancing thing was somewhat over the top, but as it occured in the first chapter and was presumably conceived when both the story and the author were much younger and somewhat more clueless in the ways of the bad fanfic cliche, it is forgiveable), and the thing with whatserface's pregnancy - Cloud's characterization was completely reasonable. However, there's no way to arrive at that characterization without first accepting the basic premise of the AU, and then acknowledging the worldbuilding and set-up of the story.

HOWEVER. If you do not accept the basic AU premise*, and you ignore the backstory, then the Cloud you see at the beginning of LHR bears only a passing resemblance to the Cloud of Final Fantasy VII. Yes, there are plenty of similarities, but LHR-Cloud is a long, long way from post-game Cloud in a pre-Advent Children fandom.

ANYWAY. WHY DOES VINCENT NEED TO PAIR OFF WITH ANYONE, HUH? HE'S BROODY AND LONELY. GOD, WHY CAN'T YOU PEOPLE JUST LEAVE HIM ALONE? At any rate, if Cid weren't married to Shera (abusive relationship! I don't care if there's affection there, she'll always be the engineer who fucked up his rocket launch and he'll always be The Captain, and that's a bad power dynamic!) he and Vincent could hang out and drink tea together and be all, "Goddamn kids, always making too much goddamn noise, GET OFFA MY LAWN, INGRATES." GROUCHY TEA DRINKING LIFE MATES.

*I'm not going to argue that Cloud being madly in love with Sephiroth the whole time is an unviable premise- however, it is AU. You cannot extrapolate it directly from the canon; Cloud felt feelings of deep admiration and hero worship towards Sephiroth, but he was canonically not in love with the man. He was fourteen when he left for Midgar; he wante to join SOLDIER to prove to his hometown that he wasn't a fuckup, and to impress Tifa. That's canonical; that's reading the text. You can take Cloud's obsession with Sephiroth as being indicative of subtextual sexual/romantic desire, but it's not in the text. LHR's premise goes beyond being just a reading of the subtext and into full on AU, because it implies that Cloud's motivations throughout the entire game were based on sexual/romantic desire for Sephiroth, which is pretty much completely unsupported by the text. (Keeping in mind it's been forever since I've played the game or read the fic, augh. I could be stressing this too much, but whatever.)

A POST SCRIPT ON THE YUFFENTINE

Seriously, though, Vincent just should've gotten in on the Turks orgy. Would've been hotter and it would've made more sense.

I'm not arguing the Turks orgy. Shit, everyone should be in on the Turks orgy. I want to be in on the Turks orgy.

Given that Cloud is such an unreliable narrator, I don't think we can say with any accuracy what is or isn't possibly canon over the course of the game. I'm ignoring AC because it has a silly silly plot and sillier clothing, and while I don't believe that Cloud had that intense selfless love, a hero worship becoming love isn't out of the realm of possibility.

And if it's AU, it doesn't matter if we're bending canon, as long as we can fall within believable results of believable actions.

As for Shera and Cid, people can change. She and him won't always be stuck within those roles, and the relationship can progress beyond the somewhat-abusive one seen in the game.

Turks orgy: and how, baby.

It's true that Cloud is an unreliable narrator, but it's heavily implied that what you see in the "Cloud Strife, This Is Your Lifestream!" episode is what actually happens, and yes, you could potentially say, "Okay, I think Cloud has a hero-worship/crush thing going on with Sephiroth here." But you could not say "Okay, everything that Cloud does from this point forward is motivated by unrequited, unconditional love for Sephiroth." I mean, yes, you could say that, but there would be no text to back it up.

Hero worship becoming love is a viable reading of the subtext, but that's not what happens in LHR; LHR goes beyond hero worship and love into full on jesus-christ-obsession, which is why it's AU.

Exactly! It's AU, so people should quit complaining about the canon bending; the characterization was consistent and believable within the context of the AU, and if you're going to complain about that, you shouldn't be reading AU fic to begin with. And, no offense, but if you're looking for in-character non-AU, S/C fic is probably not the place to do it. I do tend to have a much stricter definition of AU than most, and I pretty much feel any Sephiroth/Cloud fic that isn't just Cloud being full of sparkly infatuated crush-feelings as a kid is AU. Any post-Nibelheim fic that has Cloud still feeling anything other than betrayed needs to give me extra justification for those feelings.

Of course, given the frequently shoddy translation and often incomprehensible plot, and the fact that your primary narrator does spend most of the game completely off his rocker, it's pretty difficult to figure out what is and isn't "in character" for Cloud. And given that it's now been over ten years since the game came out, it's very difficult, if not downright impossible, to separate canon!Cloud from fanon!Cloud, especially in the post-AC fandom.

Okay, yeah, fine, Shera and Cid can change, and possibly the re-opening of the space program would act as the impetus to force that change. But honestly? In my experience, people don't change. And their personalities, from what little we saw of the pre-rocket-crash Cid and Shera, seemed to have remained more or less the same through the end of the game, which implies that they will continue to remain the same, post-game. I just don't think they would be particularly compatible or healthy as romantic partners. (This is the same issue I have in Naruto with the Sasuke/Sakura pairing; I have a selfless devotion squick that surfaces from time to time, particularly in regard to canon pairings.)

I do think they could progress to being peers and colleagues and friends, but I think that pairing them off romantically is sloppy at best and sexist at worst; Shera is essentially Cid's domestic slave girl, and that's pretty much all she is to him within the context of his house. When she's outside of the house, in the context of the rocket, we see her as an engineer, and then she's kind of awesome- but even then, she just exists to sacrifice herself for Cid. The fact that he chooses to deny her sacrifice effectively strips her of her purpose, so I guess you could view Shera in-game as a ghost of a person, an aborted sacrifice.

...shit, now I'm thinking about this waaaaay too hard. And I can't remember the details of the second launch well enough to comfortably hypothesize that Shera's second aborted sacrifice acts as a metaphorical resurrection for her because her role in the sacrifice changes, but Cid's stays essentially the same...

At any rate, what I see happening by the end of the game is the two of them changing, but not in any way that leads to romance. I see them releasing each other from the debt of guilt that they've both been carrying for years, but after that I see Shera moving on with her life, and Cid going back to his one true love- the sky. So I tend to have a problem with stories that just toss the Cid/Shera pairing off in the peripherals without any justification or background. The two of them ending up romantically involved goes completely against my (admittedly uncommon) reading of the text.

OTOH, she and Cid could join the Turks orgy with Vincent, and that would be hot. The more the merrier!

Just an anon popping by to gush about how awesome you other anons are. Srsly, talking critically about popular fics = ohfuckyes.

And so I'll add in my two cents - oh yes the Yuffentine was tacked on, but I feel the same way about the Tifa/Zack. Honestly, they were just boring side pairings that existed to get in the way of the point of the fic, which was Cloud digging himself into a hole of horrible wangsty despair. (The Turkpile was awesome, though. Damn. Fandom needs moar Turk orgy.) Any of the other drama was totally overshadowed by the S/C.

Coming as a regular of the KH fandom where everything is an AU and characterization is butchered on a regular basis... I'd have to agree on the 'it makes internal sense as an AU' front. I really have less problem with Cloud's wangsting (given that he has plenty of excuse within the fic) than I do with Sephiroth, who doesn't get nearly as much attention and is, well, if not quite woobified, at least halfway there.

That kind of thing gets hit with a lot of S/C fic, though - either Sephiroth is a psycho or a woobie, with no middle ground. I prefer Sephiroth psycho. Yes, with Cloud. Abusing him horribly. With no 'Leon' to come in and save Cloud's ass with his healing cock.

Oh, man, I wasn't expecting anyone else to get sucked into our nonsense! XD But welcome!

The Tifa/Zack was also a bit tacked on, yes, but I could see Tifa and Zack as having actual chemistry if one were to stick them in a room together. Tifa/Zack is also not a hugely popular fan pairing, so it didn't feel like the author was "selling out", so to speak, when it showed up in the fic. Tifa/Zack also has the automatic advantage of containing Zack, who tends to make all things more bearable, if not more interesting.

I do kind of feel LHR needed the side pairings and side plots and such, because otherwise Cloud's wangsty hole of despair would've gotten terribly monotonous. And it set the stage for a lot of character and world-building that I, personally, found fascinating. I like me some good worldbuilding, and the FFVII world is full of opportunities to do so.

I have never played KH! I probably never will, either, but I'd never actually thought to look at it in the context of a giant Disney/FF crossover AU- which it totally is, now that I think about it! And that's actually pretty cool, and kind of makes me want to play it so I can write long and pretentious critical essays comparing the original characters to their KH incarnations. (My English major is showing. *shifty eyes*)

I'm (to my great shame, at times) a huge fan of woobified Sephiroth, but that's because I really like my fic and my pairings to be happy. I'm not actually all that big a fan of misery porn (which is why it's funny that "A Long, Hard Road" is one of my favorite stories fandom has produced, because the whole thing is this huge wankfest of schadenfreude and it's Sephiroth/Cloud, which I tend to dislike). But hey, to each their own! I can see the evidence for Sephiroth being psycho or being a woobie, but I don't trust very many writers to manage the latter convincingly.

(Augh, the healing cock! It's just- what, does their semen contain Neosporin or something? LHR had a little bit of healing cock in it, and those were the sex scenes that made me cringe. I honestly found the scene where Cloud was a literal weeping uke (so to speak) to be more in character and less cringe-worthy than the scene where the sex is actually happy.)

my hair is announcing a new challenger!

...or something. By all means, welcome to our silliness.

I defended the Yuffietine for the argument's sake - it really does upset me as a pairing because I don't see them as ever having any sort of chemistry whatsoever, whereas I can see Zack/Tifa working when the opportunity presented itself. Yes, that opportunity itself was tacked on in the fic, but I don't mind that as much.

Yuffietine didn't bother me quite as much in LHR as it tends to because Yuffie had grown up, to a degree, and was a more mature individual. (In my head; however, Vincent goes back to being a Turk and gets in on the Turk orgy. Or lives alone somewhere.)

Although it was emotionally painful the first time I read it, on retrospect the first time Cloud and Seph have sex in LHR is my favorite, because of how in character I felt their reactions were. everything after that was a bit hollow.

I like human Sephiroth, and a stronger Cloud then I tend to see, but that's another discussion.

And semen actually does have slight medicinal properties. Burns, mostly. It's like aloe vera.

...aloe vera? It's not like it's coming out of Seymour Guado's hair, woman! It comes from a cock!

Otherwise, I have nothing more to respond to! I am completely in agreement (except about the Yuffentine, because I still view it as a sell-out), except about the aloe vera bit, but that's not something to be argued about.

It would seem this round goes to you (and your hair). But I'll get you next time!

You cannot bring Seymour Guado's hair into this argument. Discussion. What have you. That's like some sort of crazy Godwin's Law.

Don't argue with me when I'm right and you're wrong.

I am not fond of the Yuffentine, but can kind of - actually, that's a lie. He should be a part of the Turk orgy or live by himself somewhere. With his guilt. His burning, searing guilt. (Which, if it is rather like a burn, could be cured with a application of semen!)

We shall have to agree to...agree. Well played.

Don't argue with me when I'm right and you're wrong. Bitch.

You brought up spurious claims that semen is like aloe vera. I brought up Seymour's hair in response to the mention of aloe vera. IT'S A PERFECTLY LOGICAL CONNECTION. If I then went on to compare Seymour to Hitler to further discredit your aloe vera theory, then you could cry Godwin's law. But since I didn't, you can't. Nyah.

But, if one were going to apply semen to Vincent's burning, searing guilt, one might read that as an endorsement for Cid/Vincent. So, fine. You can have semen with anti-burn properties. But if I burn myself, I'll take the neosporin or the aloe vera over the semen, thanks.

THAT'S IT. I declare that we solve this through time honoured dueling traditions and play...a children's card game!

Or not. I'm not going to continue to argue with you. I can't possible imagine lowering myself to that level when I am so clearly RIGHT and you are so clearly WRONG.

Nothing justifies Cid/Vincent. It's even more inexplicable than Yuffentine. Well, maybe. BUT STILL.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #410 ]

Re: 36

I'M SICK OF THIS LIFE, I JUST WANNA SCREAM

WHY DID THIS HAPPEN TO ME

I'M SLIPPING OFF THE EDGE

I'M HANGING BY A THREAD (TEAL DEER EVERYWHERE)

Re: I'M HANGING BY A THREAD (TEAL DEER EVERYWHERE)

My tl;dr, it is everywhere.

drowning in a sea of tl;dr

K.O.!

ZOMBIE REVIVAL

WHAT, YOU'RE STILL HERE? GOD, GET A LIFE.

Re: WHAT, YOU'RE STILL HERE? GOD, GET A LIFE.