Alessa Gillespie
a letter to my future self
- AKA
- Sansa Stark, Sweet Bro, Feferi, tentacleTherapist, Nin, Aki, Catwoman, Shinjiro Aragaki, Terezi, Princess Bubblegum
1. Aerith is not a slut/prositute/whatever word you want to use for sexual promiscuity- Mostly because there's absolutely nothing to indicate that she is. So she flirts with some guy she meets. I didn't realize there was a law against women being proactive about their partners that indicates she's some sort of slut.
2. Aerith is no one's mother- I hate the argument that Aerith isn't a friend or potential lover because obviously she just acts 'motherly' towards, say, Cloud. If the criteria for being someone's mother is caring about someone else and wanting to keep them safe, then Tifa would be considered too much of Cloud's mother to be a romantic partner. Both women are motherly, if you want to call it that, towards Cloud, and it doesn't negate their romantic feelings for him. (being dead, on the other hand...)
3. Aerith is not some sort of pure, angelic, psuedo-Jesus figure- One of the first things you see if you play the game is that she is spunky, flirty, and quite proactive about what she does. To draw a comparison, you don't get that she's some shy, wilting Yamato Nadeshiko type as much as you can see that she is entirely different from her appearance. She's headstrong and dynamic, she isn't cowering behind her big strong bodyguard cause he's gonna save her or anything. She isn't a quiet-but-supportive angelic embodiment of perfection, she is strong and knows what she want. If anything, that characterization would only be apt in ACC where she can't interact with anyone besides people who are dying.
4. Aerith is not the queen of empathy- In life, she's the opposite. She has a tendency to deal with problems by pretending nothing is wrong and going on with her life. She's not like 'OH TELL AUNTIE AERITH ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS BARRET I WILL SOLVE THEM WITH MY EXPERT ADVICE'. She has no other way to deal with it because I doubt she's really encountered problems that her friends had been going through. Being chased by ShinRa all her life and being separated by the fact she was a Cetra probably made it hard for her to make close friends because she felt like no one could understand her.
5. Aerith is not a player- How did this idea even come up? Because she loved two guys? One of them was dead and she was getting over him. He's not a Cetra, so it's extremely unlikely he's just floating around and waiting for her to die. Then after 4 years of not hearing from him, she moves on. It's more amazing she lasted that long without moving on considering how few the times she was able to meet up with Zack were. Eventually she moved on to Cloud, which brings me to...
6. Aerith loved Cloud for Cloud, not Zack- To assume she ONLY reached the conclusion that she wanted to get to know the real Cloud if you got her date is ignorant. Even if she didn't tell Cloud personally that she wanted to be with the real him, she had obviously thought about it and wanted to be with whoever he was. Not getting her date doesn't negate what she wanted to tell Cloud. Moreover, she mentions Cloud as her lover in her OTWAS, indicating that she did fall for the Cloud she wanted to meet and not some illusion of Zack (surely if she did, she would have said that he was reminiscent of her lover and not her lover instead).
7. Aerith is not a Mary Sue- as already mentioned, she does have problems and even though she is another 'last of her kind' stereotype, she's handled just as carefully as Red XIII. Even if she's an optimist, it doesn't mean she has no problems, but she certainly doesn't sit around and mope forever because of them. Aerith has just as many problems as any other character, but she isn't terribly angsty about it.
If you have anything else to add, feel free. <3
2. Aerith is no one's mother- I hate the argument that Aerith isn't a friend or potential lover because obviously she just acts 'motherly' towards, say, Cloud. If the criteria for being someone's mother is caring about someone else and wanting to keep them safe, then Tifa would be considered too much of Cloud's mother to be a romantic partner. Both women are motherly, if you want to call it that, towards Cloud, and it doesn't negate their romantic feelings for him. (being dead, on the other hand...)
3. Aerith is not some sort of pure, angelic, psuedo-Jesus figure- One of the first things you see if you play the game is that she is spunky, flirty, and quite proactive about what she does. To draw a comparison, you don't get that she's some shy, wilting Yamato Nadeshiko type as much as you can see that she is entirely different from her appearance. She's headstrong and dynamic, she isn't cowering behind her big strong bodyguard cause he's gonna save her or anything. She isn't a quiet-but-supportive angelic embodiment of perfection, she is strong and knows what she want. If anything, that characterization would only be apt in ACC where she can't interact with anyone besides people who are dying.
4. Aerith is not the queen of empathy- In life, she's the opposite. She has a tendency to deal with problems by pretending nothing is wrong and going on with her life. She's not like 'OH TELL AUNTIE AERITH ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS BARRET I WILL SOLVE THEM WITH MY EXPERT ADVICE'. She has no other way to deal with it because I doubt she's really encountered problems that her friends had been going through. Being chased by ShinRa all her life and being separated by the fact she was a Cetra probably made it hard for her to make close friends because she felt like no one could understand her.
5. Aerith is not a player- How did this idea even come up? Because she loved two guys? One of them was dead and she was getting over him. He's not a Cetra, so it's extremely unlikely he's just floating around and waiting for her to die. Then after 4 years of not hearing from him, she moves on. It's more amazing she lasted that long without moving on considering how few the times she was able to meet up with Zack were. Eventually she moved on to Cloud, which brings me to...
6. Aerith loved Cloud for Cloud, not Zack- To assume she ONLY reached the conclusion that she wanted to get to know the real Cloud if you got her date is ignorant. Even if she didn't tell Cloud personally that she wanted to be with the real him, she had obviously thought about it and wanted to be with whoever he was. Not getting her date doesn't negate what she wanted to tell Cloud. Moreover, she mentions Cloud as her lover in her OTWAS, indicating that she did fall for the Cloud she wanted to meet and not some illusion of Zack (surely if she did, she would have said that he was reminiscent of her lover and not her lover instead).
7. Aerith is not a Mary Sue- as already mentioned, she does have problems and even though she is another 'last of her kind' stereotype, she's handled just as carefully as Red XIII. Even if she's an optimist, it doesn't mean she has no problems, but she certainly doesn't sit around and mope forever because of them. Aerith has just as many problems as any other character, but she isn't terribly angsty about it.
If you have anything else to add, feel free. <3
