Thank you so much! This essay was like therapy to me, and it’s a relief to know that it makes sense beyond me babbling about how much I love a fictional character.
I should warn you that the Aerith section of Traces of Two Pasts goes off the rails a bit in its attempt to justify some of the major retcons to the OG game’s story that appear in Remake. These changes make Aerith seem like more of a magical princess than I think she was originally meant to be, and Traces of Two Pasts leans hard into these “special snowflake” tropes. I love Aerith beyond reason, but the Mary Sue portrayal of the character can be a bit grating.
In the complete opposite direction, the Tifa section of the book makes the character feel much more human. It does one of my favorite things in fiction, which is taking a fantastic scenario (in this case, Tifa getting gored by Sephiroth) and viewing it through the lens of mundane reality. Tifa’s section is very good, and very emotionally + politically resonant. When you get a chance to pick up the book, I hope you enjoy this part as much as I did.
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I should warn you that the Aerith section of Traces of Two Pasts goes off the rails a bit in its attempt to justify some of the major retcons to the OG game’s story that appear in Remake. These changes make Aerith seem like more of a magical princess than I think she was originally meant to be, and Traces of Two Pasts leans hard into these “special snowflake” tropes. I love Aerith beyond reason, but the Mary Sue portrayal of the character can be a bit grating.
In the complete opposite direction, the Tifa section of the book makes the character feel much more human. It does one of my favorite things in fiction, which is taking a fantastic scenario (in this case, Tifa getting gored by Sephiroth) and viewing it through the lens of mundane reality. Tifa’s section is very good, and very emotionally + politically resonant. When you get a chance to pick up the book, I hope you enjoy this part as much as I did.