💭 How I feel about this character

I will never get tired of talking about Vincent Valentine. He is my favorite character in the whole of fiction, my blorbo of blorbos, and I consider him the single most personally compelling character ever created. I’m not sure I can quantify how much I love this character.

One issue I do run into with regard to how much I adore the guy is assertions and assumptions that it’s because he’s hot so I wanna fuck him, which is 1000% not the case. I do appreciate his looks—his Rebirth design in particular makes me slightly feral—but it’s not from a place of attraction, per se. I personally have no interest in boning Vincent Valentine! I do think he deserves to do some boning, though.

💞 All the people I ship romantically with this character

I ship Vincent with Veld, Cloud, and Genesis, and often Cloud and Genesis at the same time. Also Reeve. Sometimes Tseng, but that’s complicated.

I was the first person on the English-speaking side of fandom to draw VinVeld fanart, way back when Before Crisis was still fairly new, and I have RP’d VinVeld with multiple partners since about 2009. Chapter 19 of BC happened, I got fed a loose translation on LiveJournal, and my brain chemistry was changed—another Turk, still alive, who knew Vincent? And they don’t refer to each other with any honorifics at all? And he recognized Vincent immediately when even Lucrecia didn’t? Those two were basically married, I’m sure of it.

That said, I actually shipped Strifentine before I shipped VinVeld, and I still ship it really hard. My current slice-of-life slow-burn WIP fic is Strifentine, and in Ye Olde Fandom Dayes it was intended to be a core component of my massive Sefikura Bodysharing AU that temporarily broke FFN’s review system, although I never got that far.

I’ve shipped Vinesis since Crisis Core, because Vincent and Genesis are kindred spirits in a way that is similar to Vincent and Cloud while also being completely different, and I love that for them. Two men-turned-monsters-turned-Weapons, doomed to walk the planet until its death, paying for crimes that were never their fault in the first place. Lovely.

While I’ve never personally posted much if anything related to Valenstrifesodos, I think the dynamic between the three of them would be amazing. Also, as I described to a friend literally yesterday, it’s like this: Genesis is Sephiroth’s soulmate by fate, Cloud is his soulmate by force, and Vincent is Sephiroth’s only living relative so he inherited both of them when the guy died.

Reeve and Tseng are much less commonly shipped with Vincent for me, mostly because I ship them with each other as endgame 100% of the time. In my head, Vincent was kinda with Reeve for a bit postcanon but it just didn’t work, and he’s honestly pretty attracted to Tseng but doesn’t ever pursue it because Tseng kinda hates him. (Tseng does not hate him, it’s complicated and entirely Veld’s fault, if Tseng ever gets over it they’d have a really fun dynamic.) Sometimes—assuming he doesn’t get back with Veld or enter into a relationship Cloud and/or Genesis—I feel like Vincent would occasionally be a third while Reeve and Tseng are together, but it’d be very rare.

🤝 My non-romantic OTP for this character

Also Genesis (in universes where Valenstrifesodos doesn’t happen they’re generally platonic for a very long time before anything happens between them), as well as Barret and Reeve, but I think my favorite option here is Shera.

They don’t really have any canon interactions to speak of, but I spend a lot of time thinking about Cid talking to Vincent in Dirge, telling him that Shera is worried about him and will want to know if he’s been eating enough—so they’ve had interactions, offscreen, between the OG and Dirge. Enough that Shera fusses over him and worries about his diet and sends messages along with Cid to make sure Vincent is doing all right. That’s adorable. That’s so sweet. I love that for both of them.

🚫 My unpopular opinion about this character

I feel like I have a lot of these, but it really depends on what one considers “unpopular.” I guess the biggest is that he isn’t in love with Lucrecia anymore? Even though that’s…canon. Like that’s canon. That is something explored in Dirge, the conclusion of their shared storyline is that Vincent was never actually in love with Lucrecia at all, because he never really knew her, and now that he does he actually appreciates her more, but is able to move forward and leave her behind. (Which is literally what she wants for him! She wants him to be happy without her! This was her goal and she succeeded! But god forbid women do anything!)

The next one is that he would not enter into a relationship with Cid because even if Cid is his type (which he is!) he’s in a dedicated relationship with someone else, and Vincent has already done the song and dance of “fool around with a scientist under Shinra’s banner* who has a highly intelligent scientist partner who isn’t afraid to go to extremes for their work.**” It has nothing to do with interest or a lack of interest, it’s because Vincent literally, canonically got killed and turned into a monster for poaching*** and he’s never going to even entertain the idea of that ever again.

* Cid is an engineer in Shinra’s Department of Space & Aeronautics

** Shera is also an engineer in the same department and was literally cool getting burned alive if it meant the Shinra No. 5 launch would go off safely

*** Lucrecia and Hojo were canonically married and were already in a relationship at the time that Vincent showed up in Nibelheim

The rest include such hot takes as Chaos’ consciousness being gone at the end of Dirge (which is also canon), Vincent being Sephiroth’s biological father (which is not canon but fuckit), and him being unabashedly pansexual (any character that expresses romantic or sexual interest at any time in any media is bi or pan until proven otherwise) but not having relationships with cis women or anyone who could ever theoretically conceive—he interacted with Nero, immediately knew what happened there, and is not so irresponsible as to risk making any more monster babies capable of flattening the planet when they have a tantrum. (This is actually super rough for him because it’s a big part of his sexuality that he just has to cut off forever out of safety concerns and that’s pretty fucked up but there’s nothing he can do about it.)

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

It’s funny, because prior to Rebirth’s release I said the one thing that would make up for Vincent not being playable would be if he turned into something and attacked the party, but obviously the devs wouldn’t do that with a character everyone is supposed to trust—and then they did! I wanted to see them do something with the asymmetry established in Dirge, maybe give him a wonky eye or something like I draw him a lot of the time, but the devs would never do something like that—and then they did! I wanted him to be more fleshed out, like it would be nice to know if he ever had hobbies, but the devs would never waste time on that—and then they did! Rebirth Vincent was made especially for me.

All I really want now are more interactions between him and Cloud moving forward into FF7Re3, and I have a decent amount of faith that it’ll happen.

[ for the character breakdown ask game ]

🍄 ⇢ share a headcanon for one of your favourite ships or pairings

Let’s do post-Valenstrifesodos Vinesis! Genesis never forgets Vincent’s birthday, even after centuries and more. He keeps a running mental tally and knows exactly how old Vincent is, and in cases that they’re actually together during Vincent’s birthday he always does something to celebrate—although he stops telling Vincent that’s what’s going on before long. He knows Vincent doesn’t like marking the passage of time, but he loves him a lot and wants to celebrate how happy he is that Vincent exists, so it seems like a good compromise. Genesis does the same thing on his own birthday, on Cloud’s, and on a couple other important dates, so Vincent loses track pretty quick and just allows himself to assume that Genesis does things like this at random. (His own poor sense of time means that he never realizes that it’s not random at all.)

[writers’ truth & dare ask game]

12. What they do for their anniversary:

It takes them a while to figure out what the date of their anniversary even is, given that the process of them getting together was a bit complicated and it’s hard to say exactly when it segued from platonic to romantic to polyamorous between the three of them. Once they all agree on a date, their anniversary is usually a small affair wherein they all take a day off and go do something together, often away from the public. They go sightseeing, hiking, spelunking, swimming—activities centric on experiencing things together, making memories rather than focusing on gifts or anything material. In the end, memories are all at least one of them is going to have, so this is really important.

13. Who makes a bigger deal of birthdays:

Genesis. Cloud is terrible at remembering dates and doesn’t have strong feelings about birthdays either way, so he doesn’t really care. Vincent would avoid acknowledging them altogether if he could; other people’s birthdays are like a running tally until those people outgrow him or die, and celebrating his own is a bad joke considering he’s always going to be twenty-seven.

For Genesis, birthdays are a chance to express to the people he loves how glad he is that they exist. He doesn’t celebrate landmark ages—although in the far future he’s the one that actually remembers Vincent’s exact age, and knows what Cloud’s would be if he were still alive—but rather the very fact that they were born in the first place. That’s a mindset that even Vincent can eventually accept, although it doesn’t help Cloud remember dates any better.

14. What nicknames they call each other:

Vincent doesn’t really use nicknames. He’ll use diminutive forms of a person’s actual name, but that’s different. Genesis is “Gen” a portion of the time, and “Rhapsodos” when he’s being insufferable. In the far future as they both cycle through a rather excessive number of fake names to keep from drawing attention, Vincent will sometimes use any of the names he remembers to refer to Genesis, who responds in kind. (They tend to lean into the more ridiculous ones, leading Vincent to occasionally refer to Genesis affectionately as “Dr. Rothosis,” to which Genesis will respond by calling him “Professor Ventfort” in a bad Old Junonese accent.)

Cloud is much the same as Vincent, although he takes even longer to do it. Vincent has been “Vince” since about halfway through the Crisis, sure, but Genesis isn’t “Gen” until they’ve been living together for two years. He does eventually refer to Genesis on rare occasions as just “bird” or “feathers,” much to Genesis’ absolute delight. (He also sometimes calls him “wingding” but that’s less appreciated.)

Genesis, though. Hoo-boy. “Love” is a big one, and he uses it indiscriminately for both Cloud and Vincent, alongside “darling.” Cloud is also “pretty savior,” “little wolf,” and occasionally “my sunlit hurricane.” Vincent is “blackbird,” “heartsong” and (much more rarely) “my eternal midnight companion.” He’ll also use long one-off poetic titles here and there, less nicknames or petnames so much as dramatic descriptions that suit the situation in one way or another. He occasionally refers to Cloud and Vincent together as “the champion and the apocalypse,” but in a very tongue-in-cheek way as if teasing someone by using their middle name. (Example: “If the champion and the apocalypse would condescend to bless me with their presence, dinner will be ready in less than ten minutes and no one has set the table.” Vincent is the only one of them with a middle name, so this is a fair alternative.)

15. What they would change about each other:

If they could change anything, they would all unanimously make each other match with regard to lifespan, aging and mutation.

Cloud is mortal, ages at an extremely slow rate but does still age, may experience further mutation later in life but thankfully only in a way that will absolutely be concealable (if Cloud ever gets a wing he will be able to put it away the same as Genesis) and destructible. He’ll live a long time, may change a little bit but will still have the capacity to look human, but he can be killed and someday he’s going to die.

Genesis is immortal, doesn’t age, will not experience any further mutations over time, but is probably still as destructible as his predecessors in the Planet’s service—the first generation of Weapons that Avalanche fought during the Crisis. He’ll live forever, he’ll be more or less the same (physically) that entire time, but he can probably be killed in the right circumstances.

Vincent is immortal*, doesn’t age, will experience further mutations over time as his human characteristics are overtaken and overwritten by the Weapon Lucrecia turned him into, and he’s indestructible. He’ll live forever, look less and less human as ages pass until no one would ever mistake him as such, and he can’t be killed no matter how anyone or anything might try.

(*Vincent is still in possession of the immortality and powers afforded to him by Chaos even post-Dirge; it’s Chaos’ consciousness that returned to the Lifestream, relinquishing control of Vincent’s body for good. We know this because Vincent was indicated to have been all but atomized stopping Omega from leaving, possibly even burning up on reentry like space debris, but eventually whatever was left of him recombined and remanifested in the cave where Chaos once slept, whole and complete and himself. Further, the OG ends with Nanaki making his way to Midgar 500 years post-Meteorfall, which we know is something he does yearly for the express purpose of meeting up with Vincent.)

If the three of them could change anything, it would be to make it so they were all the same in this capacity—whatever that might look like—so they wouldn’t be inevitably separated. Unfortunately, that’s never been in the cards.

(For the ship asks game.)