Reblogs disabled on this one for reasons that should be clear if you look under the cut.

Vin/Lu: I don’t ship it

Why don’t you ship it?

The ship is canon-in-the-past, but it’s over, and it was never going to work anyway.

Lucrecia was never actually in love with Vincent! She was in love with his father, and Vincent was a replacement goldfish. Also she married Hojo, regardless of what fandom claims, the kanji describing their relationship on the official relationship chart is 夫婦 which is extremely married. Likewise, Vincent wasn’t actually in love with Lucrecia, he was in love with his own incorrect image of her, which was not accurate. Vincent’s character arc, culminating in Dirge, is him learning that he never knew Lucrecia at all, and accepting that the person she was still did her best, but he needs to let her go.

They never would have worked out even without Project S. They happened and now they’re over, and while Lucrecia is too far gone to say, Vincent is definitely better off.

What would have made you like it?

Honestly I don’t dislike the ship per se, I just don’t ship it. They’re over. They’ve been over for thirty years. Canonically. Relationships end, it’s okay.

I tend to avoid it in fandom because it’s generally portrayed in a way that invalidates Vincent’s entire character arc, and I’m not here for that. If there were less of that, I might be more into it, but as it is I give it a wide berth.

Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

The fact that this relationship failed for very human, realistic reasons is always very cool to me. They didn’t actually fall apart because of Hojo, or Vincent’s death, or the Jenova Project, or anything like that! In spite of the absolute madness going on all around them, Vincent and Lucrecia’s relationship fell apart because they were human people with flaws who both did their best; it’s not even that it wasn’t enough, it’s that they weren’t compatible. They’re both such solid characters, the relationship as it existed in-canon is honestly really beautiful and sad and I love that.

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Strifentine: I ship It

What made you ship it?

They are so similar and so different at the same time, their character dynamic has always meant the world to me. The thing that started it for me was Rocket Town, when Cloud sees the Tiny Bronco and starts getting all excited. Vincent looks at him for a second, then says “Should I keep watch?” He sees Cloud is into it, and immediately jumps to “I’ll help you steal this if you like it that much.” He met Cloud literally like a day ago. They have so much chemistry from the very start, and it just carries on from there.

Vincent is also the only person who, upon finding Cloud catatonic in Mideel, expresses concern and regard exclusively for Cloud. Literally the only one. Everyone else is worried about Tifa—only Vincent is worried about Cloud. I think that says a lot.

What are your favorite things about the ship?

Broken people learning how to be whole both for and because of each other is one of my favorite tropes, and Strifentine has that in spades. They just get each other.

I love how casual Cloud is after Vincent rescues him in AC, how candid Vincent is with Cloud, how neither of them put up with each other’s shit and Cloud says his goodbye by giving a snarky little tease to Vincent about him not having a phone—and then Vincent’s biggest concern is where to buy a phone. In Reminiscence, Vincent is the character that is enlisted to call Cloud, because Cloud will pick up for Vincent and everyone knows it. I live for their little chat in Dirge, where Tifa finally gets through to Vincent and immediately gives the phone to Cloud, who knows Vincent is immortal, but is worried about him; likewise, Vincent knows Cloud can kill a god, but he still tells him to be careful. They care about each other in a way that is unique to the two of them, kindred spirits who understand one another in a way that literally no one else can.

Also can we talk about how Cloud runs his hand over Vincent’s coffin in Rebirth? The way he stares after him when Vincent stumbles back into his tomb after his transformation drops, a reverie that Barret has to physically smack him to break? The way Cloud immediately trusts Vincent to guide them through the Manor underground, the way Vincent trusts Cloud not to lose his old security pass? The way Vincent sweeps in to save Cloud from the Shadowblood Queen, their banter after the fact? There’s that chemistry again! They’re perfect for each other!

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Is this ship popular enough for that? Uhhh. My biggest unpopular opinion in most ships is that neither character is exclusively a top and neither is exclusively a bottom, so that’s probably the case here too, but I don’t actually know for sure. Vincent is more “toppy” in general—it’s his default position—but Cloud is really only vers for Vincent, so there’s probably a little butting heads in bed sometimes.

Based on what I have and haven’t seen in fic and fandom, the idea that Cloud is into Vincent’s monsters is a probably a big one too, at least on this side of the Pacific. But I also don’t even cast ¾ of Vincent’s monsters as separate characters (that’s a whole different unpopular opinion, but it’s specific to Vincent rather than the ship) so it’s really just different aspects of Vincent for Cloud to play with. And he plays with them. A lot. Monsterfucker Cloud supremacy.

From a fandom perspective, I personally think “Strifentine” is the best-sounding name for the ship out of the myriad of options we have. It’s the one that’s been in use in ENG fandom from the start, so my familiarity may be part of it; no shade to people who feel differently (including yourself! Obviously!) but I’m always gonna call it Strifentine.

[ to ship or not to ship ask game ]

Sefikura: I ship it

What made you ship it?

I played the OG. Literally that’s it. Cloud has minimum two women interested in him constantly and he spends all his time and energy obsessing over Sephiroth? Even since childhood? Like. The ship was there long before the devs confirmed that Sephiroth loves Cloud, y'all!

What are your favorite things about the ship?

There is just. So much of it. It’s so easy to find. This is one of the only things I ship that’s popular, and while it’s not one of my OTPs, it’s still nice to be able to find food when I want it.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Sephiroth is a sub. Yes, even with Cloud. (Especially with Cloud.) He’s not necessarily a bottom, but he’s a sub. That man spent his entire life doing what he was told, and after he dies he fuses with his alien half-mother and does what she wants instead. He puts on the image of control, and after his psychotic break he’s having fun playing with it, but it’s not who he really is, and I think that’s the best dynamic for him and Cloud. Further, Cloud is a top with most people (he switches for Vincent and Genesis), although he’s not necessarily a Dom. I think they could work it out.

[to ship or not to ship ask game ]

VinVeld: I ship it

1. What made you ship it?

I'mma be real, VinVeld was initially a crackship within the fandom when I was 18-19, when BC first dropped, based strictly on the fact that Veld had been stated to have known Vincent before his death. It’s easy to ship Turks with Turks, but there was no support for it at the time, so I was just kinda like “sure y'all do that.”

Then they actually met up in-game and that basically made me go “oh. oh.” because Veld recognizes Vincent instantly even when Lucrecia didn’t. Vincent recognizes Veld after thirty years. They refer to each other with no honorifics at all. Vincent then doesn’t hesitate to get up and fight to make sure that Veld and his attending Turk are safe, and immediately gives him the information he needs to get closer to his goal. Whatever they were to each other before Project S, they were close, and learning that completely changed my brain chemistry.

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?

It’s actual Old Man Yaoi. They have a history, they have an extant character dynamic that literally doesn’t exist for Vincent with anyone else. They know each other, but they don’t know each other anymore—and them getting to know each other again in the little time Veld has left is just one of the most beautiful concepts.

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Uhhhh is VinVeld popular enough to have unpopular opinions? I dunno. Apparently shipping it at all is a problem to a lot of people, so there’s that.

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💭 How I feel about this character

Okay, so, one of my biggest secrets is that I actually really love Rufus as he exists in canon and I really always have. He’s not a good person, he’s never going to be a good person, but he doesn’t have to be. I said in my post on Barret that sometimes good people do bad things, and sometimes bad people do good things—where Barret is in the former camp, Rufus is firmly in the latter, at least post-Meteorfall.

See, he’s a very bad person who does very bad things prior to Meteorfall, and he actually has very few redeeming qualities before and during the Crisis. He hates his dad for being an idiot, not for hurting people; he wants to take over Shinra for power, not to help anyone; he’s manipulative and calculating and sees people as little more than chess pieces for him to move around.

Sometimes bad people do good things. It doesn’t make them good people. You can accept their help, you can rely on them, you can even trust them, but that doesn’t make them good people. That characterization still holding true even after Meteorfall is one of the coolest things about his character to me, because it’s like…things aren’t black and white. You don’t have to be a good person to do the right thing. You don’t even have to like doing it. But you should still do it. Rufus is not a good person, and I wouldn’t have him any other way.

I don’t talk about him often because a lot of Western Rufus fans don’t actually like or even accept his canon characterization, so the version of him that is lauded in fandom is not the one I am into. This is very difficult for me.

💞 All the people I ship romantically with this character

My actual OTP for Rufus, believe it or not, is Elfe. In a lot of my various RPs over the years they’re actually endgame. I also kinda ship him with Reeve (as stated in my post about Reeve), am sure he has some sort of homoerotic weirdness going on with Tseng, and believe that he was super attracted to both Sephiroth and Veld growing up.

🤝 My non-romantic OTP for this character

Tseng, as discussed in my post on him. They genuinely have one of the best dynamics I’ve ever seen, and nobody ever explores it, and it makes me so fucking sad because it’s so good.

Tseng is Rufus’ most valuable belonging, his most priceless toy, the queen on the chess board without whom he, the king, is sure to fall. He saved Tseng from his father’s wrath because he needs Tseng to survive, and Tseng knows it—but Rufus also knows that Tseng’s debt to him will only run so deep for so long, that he’d be the one left on the tracks in a test of loyalty if it were Veld’s life on the other line. There’s a scene in Rebirth (after Tseng flirts with Reeve), where Rufus lies to Tseng’s face about his interest in the Promised Land, and Tseng doesn’t know Rufus well enough to know he’s lying. Tseng, likewise, had seconds before been manipulating Rufus in order to make sure Aerith remained safe, and Rufus didn’t know Tseng well enough to tell that he was being manipulated. They trust each other more than anyone in the world, and they don’t know one another at all.

They’re two parts of a single unit in the same way as a hand on a sword. Rufus is the hand, Tseng is the sword, but if Rufus slips then that blade will run him through just the same as anyone else. Likewise, the hand can destroy the sword at any time, it can swing it in such a way that it’s sure to shatter if the prize seems worthy enough, it can throw it into fire to melt it down if it stops serving its purpose, and there’s nothing the sword can do about it.

Both of them know this, and they maintain a very delicate balance of existential codependency that isn’t likely to break until some time after Omega’s husk is caught in orbit. It’s fucking fantastic.

🚫 My unpopular opinion about this character

Rufus is a bad person! He doesn’t care about people as people! He has a pretty weak concept of personhood altogether—he wasn’t raised to be a person and I think he just projected that understanding onto everyone else, he sees himself as a tool as much as everyone else. The only difference is that as long as he’s at the top, he gets to decide how all his tools are to be used, and that includes himself. The only way Rufus has ever tasted freedom is through his control of others. He does get better with this postcanon, but it’s a pretty key aspect of his character that people just don’t like to play with for reasons beyond my understanding. If you wanna give someone a redemption arc, you have to admit why it is that they need to be redeemed.

Oh also he’s still disabled postcanon, fuck all you people with legs that work 100% of the time. He’s not always in a wheelchair once he’s cured of Geostigma, but he will always be a wheelchair user. Dark is now a service animal. (Tseng is also a service animal. Reeve is a therapy cat.)

🌟 One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

I actually really like what they’re doing with Rufus in the FF7R series so I’m just excited to see what he does next. Looking forward to him getting his worldview turned on its head when Cloud gives Sephiroth the Black Materia!

[ for the character breakdown ask game ]

💭 How I feel about this character

Razer, oh my god. My ties-for-first J&D blorbo. He’s fun and scary and absolutely ridiculous and god I love him so much. Camp gay with a side of murder. He’s perfect.

💞 All the people I ship romantically with this character

My main ship for Razer is Erol, but that obviously can’t be endgame on account of Erol being fucking dead. I also ship him with Jak, which is wonderfully complicated after him being with Erol for so long. I also assume he’s fucked basically every male character he’s ever met, but I wouldn’t call that shipping.

🤝 My non-romantic OTP for this character

Rayn. I feel like post-X they’d form a pretty solid understanding, he’d be brilliant as her chief lackey, and she’d treat him better than Mizo ever did. Headcanon says they have a kid later in life, but not because they’re in a relationship. Rayn needs an heir, Razer won’t be weird about it because he’s extremely gay, it all works out.

🚫 My unpopular opinion about this character

I don’t know that Razer is popular enough for there to be such a thing as an unpopular opinion at this point, but back in my heyday I did get a decent amount of shit for referring to him and portraying him as being exclusively attracted to men. Folks can do whatever they want forever, but like…it is not actually biphobic to headcanon the man who is only handsy with other male characters in all 11 minutes of his canon screentime as being gay.

🌟 One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

I would like him to have more than 11 minutes of screentime, to start, but he’s a side character in a spinoff title of a series that is long since been binned, so that’s never happening and I accept it.

[ for the character breakdown ask game ]

💭 How I feel about this character

Torn is genuinely one of my favorite characters in the entirety of the J&D series. His characterization is solid and consistent, which is a big deal in a game of that genre from that era, and he’s genuinely just a really good person who is determined to make the world better regardless of the price he has to personally pay. He’s the only person to ever apologize to Jak for intentionally placing him in danger (during Jak 3, he literally says he’s sorry to put Jak on the front lines, but “you’re my go-to guy”), and readily admits fault every time he slips up. He’s an excellent leader and a role model to his people and I love him.

💞 All the people I ship romantically with this character

I’ve actually shipped Torn with like…a lot of people? I never did much outside private RP and some random scribbles here and there, but I’ve shipped him with Ashelin, Erol, Jak, Razer, and Gol. I don’t have a solid endgame ship for Torn because I don’t know that he would ever really settle down (work always comes first for him), but he’s such a solid character he’s fun to throw in with just about anyone.

🤝 My non-romantic OTP for this character

Tess. Hands down, Tess. He’d never admit it, but they’re basically two peas in a pod—he both loves her like the little sister he never had, and respects her as the weapons engineer that she is. She’s one of the most valuable members of his team and has been from the moment she fell into the Underground; he’d do just about anything for her, and never has to question whether the feeling is mutual.

🚫 My unpopular opinion about this character

I kinda think Torn is asexual. Like. I can’t explain it, but I genuinely think Torn is asexual. I don’t think he’s aromantic, but I just get this vibe from him that he doesn’t actually find people attractive.

🌟 One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

There are so many gaps in canon because of the genre and era in which the Jak series was developed that asking for one thing is like asking me to extract a single water molecule from a lake with my bare hands. I do wish we’d gotten any information on how he and Ashelin broke up between Jak II and 3, and how they got back together between 3 and X, just because it never made sense to me and it still doesn’t.

[ for the character breakdown ask game ]

💭 How I feel about this character

I love Reeve so much, man. I did a whole verbal dissertation about how great Reeve is like four years ago (it’s still up on YouTube) because he’s a fucking badass who deserves the world—and he literally gets it after Meteorfall, and does not fuck it up.

💞 All the people I ship romantically with this character

My Reeve is with Tseng, then he’s with Lazard, then he’s with Tseng again, then he’s with Vincent, then he’s with Tseng again. Then he and Tseng get married. Yaaaaay.

I also actually see him having this kind of on-again-off-again no strings thing with Rufus for a bit between the OG and AC? It’s very vague and they don’t actually do much, but it’s definitely there. (Then Reeve and Tseng marry each other and Rufus has some problems with that. It’ll be fine.)

Reeve is one of the characters I read as being exclusively gay, so I don’t ship him with any female characters except in a comphet context. He may have had a sham marriage to Scarlet when they were younger for the sake of both of their careers (headcanon says they met in high school while she was transitioning and went to uni together so they’ve known one another for a really long time), but she got Really Weird after uni, they’ve long since divorced, and they never actually fucked the entire time.

🤝 My non-romantic OTP for this character

This is actually really hard because in my head Reeve has a lot of friends and he cares about all of them pretty much equally. This makes it difficult to narrow things down with him regarding platonic (or at least non-romantic) relationships.

I do really love his dynamic with Barret, at least the implications thereof. Barret hurt a lot of Reeve’s people and Reeve hurt and manipulated Barret in return, but at the end of everything Reeve still knows that Avalanche is going to find him in Midgar, and Barret still recognizes Reeve as the bleeding heart behind Cait Sith. What a great relationship.

🚫 My unpopular opinion about this character

Reeve is a badass. Rufus is not the secret puppetmaster leader of the WRO—Reeve is the man in charge, and he’s going to stay in charge for as long as he feels he needs to. Or until he’s dead. Reeve is the most benevolent dictator Gaia has ever seen, but he is, in fact, a dictator. But he’s good at it, and he’s so benevolent that most people don’t even seem to notice, so it’s fine.

🌟 One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

I really want to see him get found by Avalanche during Meteorfall. I want to see how that happens. I want to see him running around organizing the evacuation effort, directing people to safety, ordering Turks and Troopers and SOLDIERs here and there and everywhere to save as many people as possible. I just want to see more of him being the excellent leader that we know he is.

Also more Tseeve crumbs would be nice but the two we got from Rebirth is more than I ever dreamed, so I don’t want to get too greedy here.

[ for the character breakdown ask game ]

💭 How I feel about this character

I literally named one of my cats after this character, if that helps put my feelings about her in perspective. While not one of the handful of fictional characters I refer to as My Wife, Seem is by far my favorite female character in the entire Jak series.

💞 All the people I ship romantically with this character

I ship Seem with Jak and no one else. I’ve toyed with other concepts, back in my heyday in the J&D fandom, but she is one of the rare cases of a character that I monoship.

🤝 My non-romantic OTP for this character

Daxter! They’ve got a really fun dynamic of not putting up with each other’s shit, similar to Daxter’s relationship with Jak, and I love that for both of them. I think there’s a lot of potential for hijinks, as well, most notably without Jak around. Seem is usually the one with the braincell, but I feel like she’d get swept up into Daxter’s shenaniganery more easily than expected if it were just the two of them.

🚫 My unpopular opinion about this character

I read Seem as an androgynous woman, in spite of modern fandom’s assertion that she’s nonbinary and directly contrary to early fandom’s argument that she’s actually a man. Her final character art was literally titled “seem-girl-merged” on Bob Rafei’s personal website, and he confirmed in a fan email that the team decided to make her a girl toward the last minute, but kept her more androgynous features to make her stand out from the rest of the female cast.

I’m totally cool with enby Seem, mind you, it’s just not how I read or portray her. It’s also something I’ve had people argue with me about in the past, using the fact that her build is very flat and angular compared to other female characters as “proof.” As a cis woman who has gotten misgendered for her entire life because I’m very flat and angular, I can tell you outright that this kind of argument is fucked up, towing the line of TERF transvestigation shit, and we need to retire it forever. Thanks.

🌟 One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

More screentime in general would have been nice, but I think it would have been super fun to get Seem in Jak X. I know there’s no indication that she even knows how to drive, but the idea of her showing up in a getup somewhere between Maia’s and Erol’s because If I Have To Watch You Crash Your Car In My Temple One More Time I’m Killing You Myself is something that I’ve carried with me for ages and nobody gets to take it from me now.

[ for the character breakdown ask game ]