Rynling R&D

Somehow I’ve managed to accomplish all of my nonfiction writing goals for spring. I still have a month left in the season before I move on to my big summer projects, which means that I have time to write two bonus essays. Here’s what I’d like to do:

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He has a PhD in Fashion ✨

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I’ve been doing some Final Fantasy VII lore research for my Aerith story while trying to figure out the timeline of events prior to the beginning of the game. Like, how old was Aerith when she and her mother escaped from Shinra in the Remake timeline, and when was she first introduced to the church in the Sector 5 slums, that sort of thing.

What I ended up finding, on an absurd level of detail, was Cloud’s timeline. He was recruited by Shinra when he was 13, and he left for Midgar a few months later, shortly after he turned 14. Apparently, recruitment at this age is common, as joining the military is like going to high school. If 14yo kids don't join Shinra in some capacity, this is when they find a job and start working full-time.

Not much to say about this, besides damn. That’s fucked up.

Also, apparently the game uses the Western calendar dating system, with Cloud having been born in 1986. It’s weird to think of him being my age, but I guess FFVII is technically historical fiction set in 2007.

To my Phoenix Down Exchange partner,

Thank you so much for offering to create a story for me!

I love explorations of how characters are shaped by their environments, and I want to dive deep into fantasy worlds to get a sense of what it’s like to live there, from wholesome to horror.

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Please allow me to expand on my requests...

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After leaving the opening town of Kalm, I got sidetracked with sidequests. Unfortunately, I haven’t actually managed to complete any of them. The world map is enormous. Even with a chocobo, it takes forever to get anywhere. Since you can fast travel, I think I’m going to go ahead and progress the main story and see how that goes.

Anyway, something that’s stuck with me is how Tifa confronts Cloud after he tells his version of the story about what happened in Nibelheim. She’s basically like, “After I was injured and almost died, I had to go through months of hospital stays and physical therapy, and where the fuck were you?”

Good for her. And also, I appreciate that she admits to dealing with chronic pain despite being very physically fit. Just because you’ve got your shit together doesn’t mean your disability isn’t real.

I also appreciate the scene between Barret and Tifa after Shinra brings the Sector 7 plate down on the slums. Tifa is in shock and on the verge of a breakdown, and she says something like “this is all our fault.” Barret hugs her while at the same time talking good sense, saying, “You can’t let yourself think like that. Whatever may have come before, it’s Shinra who pulled the trigger.”

Barret and Tifa have their differences, and they butt heads regarding Avalanche's goals and methods in multiple scenes. Still, they support one another when it matters, and they never forget that they’re fighting the same enemy. I didn’t expect to encounter such a healthy model of a progressive resistance movement in a commercial video game, but here we are.

Tifa and Barret have great chemistry in the Final Fantasy VII Remake, by the way. I would happily play a prequel game (maybe along the lines of Teardown) where the two of them are ecoterrorist buddies who do crimes in Midgar.

Also, I think the English-language voice actress nailed Aerith’s personality in the Remake. She seems sweet on the surface, but she’s 100% set on getting her way, and she can be super passive-aggressive when she runs out of patience. She has goddess-tier powers, and she has an appropriate level of self-confidence to match. I feel like the original English translation struggled with her voice (which is surprisingly masculine-coded in Japanese), but she shines as a character in the Remake. I am so in love.

Something I love about the Final Fantasy VII Remake is that it features a giant sprawling sewer level. It also has one of my favorite video game mechanics, which is raising and lowering sluice gates to adjust the water level. And then, a bit later in the game, you get to go back to the sewers and explore an entirely different section. It's a dream come true.

The atmosphere is great too. More than anything, FFVII Remake is about exploring urban infrastructure, with a strong emphasis on utility access tunnels. I'm the sort of sicko who downloads floorplans of academic buildings, prints them out, and then goes through the entire space with a highlighter to mark where I've been on the map; and I've seen some interesting access tunnels over the years. FFVII Remake captures the gritty liminality of those spaces perfectly, and I'd like to think that its sewer level is more or less what real urban sewers look like. Essentially, they're utilitarian workspaces filled with pipes, but they also serve as dumping grounds for everything the municipality doesn't need, from old postboxes to old fax machines to crates of document binders to... more pipes.

I also appreciate Barret's running commentary about safety hazards and how nothing in the sewers would make it past an OSHA inspection. Something I've always loved about Barret is that he's essentially an OSHA officer who finally snapped, and I'm extremely amused by how the FFVII Remake leans into this.

Anyway, FFVII Remake definitely has one of my personal top five sewer levels. It's wonderful.

It's also worth noting that Mara is visually modeled on Tifa. I don't have any feminist objections to girls walking around in miniskirts, of course, but the costume design still feels uncomfortable. I mean, that's not what I would personally wear to Rusty Nail Tetanus City, especially if there are zombies about.

I feel the same way about Tifa btw. There's just so much rusty metal in Midgar. And so many giant leeches.

Playing Crow Country made me irrepressibly nostalgic for Final Fantasy VII, so I downloaded the FFVII Remake on Steam Deck. I'm enjoying it way more as a handheld game than I did when I played it on PS4 with a big-screen tv; it's like the cringe is minimized. I also don't mind Tifa's clothing in the remake, as Barret has his own giant tits on full display. God bless.

What I propose is that we get some gender equality in survival horror as well. Specifically, I want Leon Scott Kennedy to have full frontal nudity. I want him running around swinging in the wind, because I think it's important to both the plot and the gameplay for the player to know why this character is referred to as Chad Thundercock on AO3.

ETA: Well, good news:
https://www.thegamer.com/resident-evil-4-remake-mod-nude-willy/

I played the opera scene in the FFVI pixel remaster last night. It was painful. I don’t know what they were trying to achieve by having an untrained singer do a voiceover in English, but I thought I was going to die of secondhand shame. On top of the horrible lyrics and poor performance, the vocals were autotuned and tinny. It’s the aural equivalent of a crusty low-res jpeg generated by AI. Poor Celes.

What makes this even more painful is that I have very fond memories of an amazing orchestral arrangement called Grand Finale: https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VI:_Grand_Finale

Anyway, I started playing Animal Well. I’m not sure it’s for everyone, and I’m not entirely sure it’s for me, but it’s quite interesting. It reminds me of Hyper Light Drifter in how stylish yet opaque it is. I also get the sense that it’s like Hollow Knight in that it’s going to be frustrating until it clicks. So far, the primary selling point is that the entire game is a sewer level, which I appreciate. There’s so much moss.

While I've been writing the essay about Ender Lilies, I realized something interesting about its sequel, Ender Magnolia. Ender Magnolia is currently only available in an abbreviated early-access version on Steam, so I can't say anything definitive, but the game has a lot of subtle (and not-so-subtle) references to Final Fantasy VI.

What's really cool to me is that I think Ender Magnolia is meant to be speculation on what the world of Final Fantasy VI was like in the immediate aftermath of the War of the Magi. That's something I've always wondered about, and it's cool to see that fantasy realized in such a visually beautiful game that's also a lot of fun to play (and, mercifully, not punishingly difficult). Also sword lesbians