RP Interpretation Meme

[rp_anontalk]

For these anons-

ITT your interpretations of a character for critiquing and analyzing. Kinda like rp_advice_meme in reverse. Don't get too wanky- this'll only work if you play nice. ♥

Edit: Oops, meant this to be on the comm. Oh well.

Comments

Re: AERITH GAINSBOROUGH

[anonymous]

Aside from the big things about her that I think we can all agree on (toppy, kind, brave, pushy so forth) I see Aerith as a person who can actually be quite- ah, the word I want isn't dishonest, but maybe evasive when it comes to letting people into her own emotions. While she loves people, and enjoys being loved in return, there's some part of her that is reluctant to really let people in. For example: there are two (maybe three) characters who's only purpose in the game is to exposition about Aerith, because Lord knows she won't do it herself. There's really no way to reconcile what she says about Zack in the original game (he wasn't that important/too much of a skirt chaser/so forth) with what information we get from Crisis Core. I think the original game hinted that Zack was more important to her than she let on, but if you take into consideration things like her job, her clothes, a lot of her personality having come from Zack then he has to have been way more important than she let on. But still, she avoids talking about him. Some of this is, of course, is from her being a side character in two people's stories; if she talked about Zack too much then there wouldn't be a plot of FFVII, and in CC of course Zack had to have been really important to her or that romance would have been kinda flat. Still, I find it really hard to reconcile her saying "oh forget that skirt-chaser he wasn't that important" with the fact that she, uh, dresses herself the way he told her to, wrote him almost a hundred letters, and wears a gift from him every day for what- six years? My theory here is that not only was she not being honest with Cloud and the party, but also being dishonest with herself.

There are other things too, like her unwillingness to tell people what she knows about the Ancients and Holy. (Again, yeah, if she had told them it would pretty much cut out disk two but I digress.) The party of FFVII are her comrades, but she still really doesn't want to tell them anything about herself.

So, I guess what I'm saying is, I see Aerith as someone who- while still very warm and loving- has some serious intimacy issues. Is that just me?

Re: AERITH GAINSBOROUGH

[anonymous]

Yeah, I agree, to an extent. I think Aeris is fairly in-touch with who she is and what she feels, but a part of her is repressive. I think she's trying to protect herself, rather than concealing things for any other reason -- she learned early in life that who she is can be unfortunate and uncomfortable, and denying others access to that is a sort of coping mechanism for her. She's guarded, but not closed.

AERITH GAINSBOROUGH

[anonymous]

There are other things too, like her unwillingness to tell people what she knows about the Ancients and Holy.

Maybe it's not unwillingness? I don't think she really knows that much. She answers questions about the Ancients and the Planet in Shinra HQ to Cloud & Tifa but one of the things she says is "more than words...I don't know", that she often can't make out what the Planet is saying and needs to get out of Midgar to find her Promised Land. It's kind of a running theme that people keep overestimating how much Aerith knows about Cetra-related matters; when she gets kidnapped by AVALANCHE in BC she gets a guilt trip about Elfe dying without being able to get to the Promised Land, and all she can say is "…but I really don’t know where the Promised Land is…" There's optional dialogue in Costa del Sol where she talks to Cloud about how she doesn't know who she's supposed to be as an Ancient, so I don't think it's that she's unwilling to open up--it's her choice to start telling Cloud about it--as that she's seriously confused and lost and it's hard for her to find information about her heritage. (Although it's debatable whether she would have talked to anyone besides Cloud about that; Cloud's in a pretty unique position since he'd already protected her twice and reminded her of Zack.)

Also, I think disc 2 shenanigans would have happened even if she'd told Cloud everything she knew, because she seriously didn't know much. "The secret is just up here. At least it should be. ...I feel it. It feels like I'm being led by something." I'm not sure she knew what she was doing until she got into the City itself; she just trusted her connection to the Planet and it led her on a friggin' scavenger hunt to using Holy.

Anyway, this is a big digression, because I actually do agree that she's very guarded with the matter of Zack and doesn't like talking about when she's been emotionally hurt. My personal explanation for why her description of Zack and their relationship differs so much from what was actually the case has to do with how much the story of Aerith waiting for Zack parallels Elmyra waiting for her husband's return. When Elmyra's husband died, Aerith knew it was someone important to Elmyra because he had been wanting to return to Elmyra when he passed away--she heard those thoughts. Zack was desperate to return to Midgar to see Aerith. If Aerith sensed Zack's thoughts when he died, she probably knew how much he wanted to see her, which implies something was very wrong that he couldn't visit for five years and couldn't get a word to her, even with her trying to call him and attempting to send letters through Tseng. Instead of contemplating nightmare scenarios of what would keep a loving boyfriend completely silent for five years and then end with his death, she denies that he was coming to see her and changes details around to fit. She'd probably rather believe that Zack had been happy with someone else than that he was being hurt. But definitely being dishonest with herself, yes.

Re: AERITH GAINSBOROUGH

[anonymous]

Agreeing with pretty much all of this, and also commenting to add that the reasons for Aeris' guardedness could also likely be the result of everything people mentioned here, to varying degrees. She doesn't know much, what she does know worries her and makes her life difficult, and that she possibly doesn't prefer to dwell on it, rather, trusting her path to reveal itself.

AERITH GAINSBOROUGH

[anonymous]

While Aerith does talk about her experience being an Ancient in the original game, I do think it's interesting how she'd never admit to being one on her own. She might talk to Cloud about who she's supposed to be as an Ancient, but CC makes it clear that nearing two years in a relationship with Zack, she still hadn't told him about herself. It's pretty interesting especially because even if it should only be a need-to-know basis, Zack kind of did need to know: he was working for Shinra and the company had it out for Aerith. Had finding the Promised Land become higher priority during that time and more pressure been put on Tseng to recapture her, Zack could have found himself forced into a difficult situation with barely any warning. And Aerith knows how dangerous Shinra is, so the fact that she never says anything to Zack after two years shows there's a big issue there. All the same, she did talk to Cloud about her feelings regarding being an Ancient a few times, and she traveled with AVALANCHE, who all knew she was a Cetra and didn't treat her any different for it, so I think that by that point, she has less of a problem about telling friends about being an Ancient...even if it's still not something she'd just announce off the bat.

Also, while she lies about what was going on between her and Zack, I think it's important to note that that's really time-sensitive--she sensed his death shortly before meeting Cloud in the game. The last time she saw him was five years ago, but in the game she's reacting to a very recent event. It's not "Five years ago, her boyfriend disappeared and she has a problem admitting how important he was to her" but "Five years ago her boyfriend disappeared, and a few weeks ago he died and she's afraid something bad happened to him all those years". It's not so much an established behavior or pattern so much as a reaction, if that makes sense.

One thing not mentioned yet is how Aerith repeatedly runs off on her own. Sometimes this can be written off as just an impulsive urge, but other times it seems more serious (to me, anyway) for what it indicates about her attachment to people. For example, she leaves her house in the middle of the night in BC planning to take a journey out into the world, thinking that she'll come back home so "don't worry, Mom". And then there's her running off to use Holy without asking any of her friends for advice or help when she believes that she has the only way to save the world. Thank goodness she didn't get herself eaten by a monster before she got to the altar, huh.

Going along with the advice meme thread, if KH Aerith thinks of the group when making plans, I think FF Aerith might just have some trouble thinking of herself as part of a group. In the original game she becomes a part of AVALANCHE, but still, when bad turns to worse, she tells Sephiroth "I won't let you [injure the Planet]" and enacts a plan completely alone. It's the first time in her life she's been with people who know what she is and can trust to protect her: Elmyra would almost certainly get hurt if Shinra decided to get rough, Tseng is trying to convince her to come back to Shinra (in CC she trusts him to take letters to Zack, but in BC she backs away and then runs when he comes in, and the original game shows a lot of tension in their interaction), and she doesn't want to tell Zack she's an Ancient for whatever reason. So traveling with AVALANCHE is new for Aerith in that way, but it's not like her way of thinking changes overnight: she loves them, she trusts them, she'd do a lot for them, she's perfectly willing to both ask for and take help--oops, emergency, watch her take off to handle things herself. I wonder if KH Aerith is how the writers think Aerith would have really developed if she hadn't been born the last Ancient (which is, nearly a completely different person in some respects).

...I type too much.