Mother (Jenova) == Mother earth/mother nature ?

[Dionysos]

Spoiler: Remake

In the Remake one of the things that varies greatly from OG is that Tifa does not remind Cloud of his promise. instead he remembers it himself. But I find that many unnatural elements seem to be placed to make him remember it:

- The presentation of the Stargazer Heights motel at the point where in the original game Tifa reminds Cloud of his promise.
- The Crescent Moon Charm artefact that the motel owner (Tifa's friend) gives to Cloud, which according to the description seems to be designed to artificially weld the hearts of two people together.
- Tifa's outfit (white top over black top, ponytail, ranger boots) which is reminiscent of the outfit Cloud was wearing when he made the promise.
- The word promise itself which is overused throughout the Remake and always in the presence of Cloud (even without counting the occurrences of Promised Land).
- The fact that Tifa does not use this argument directly this time.

In the Remake I was the one who felt trapped and I found it suspicious that Tifa said she felt trapped.

Spoiler: Remake

These changes are certainly curious. Cloud remembers on his own when he sees a fan which reminds him of the water tower, and it is a bit weird.

Whether these changes have deeper meanings for the lore of the Remake, or if they were just artistic choices or consequences of the expansion of the Midgar plotline, I’m unsure. Probably a bit of both, I’d suspect.

I would be surprised if at least a few of these points didn’t have significance though.

They still kept the stargazing aspect of Tifa’s introduction scene by naming their apartment block Stargazer Heights (instead of having them sleep next to each other on the floor in the Avalanche HQ).

I think that before the original game Jenova already acquired the tools (monsters and doppelgängers) that would allow her to start a pandemic but that she changed her strategy from her action 2000 years ago in order to have a chance to succeed in the next migration. Under Hojo's watch I think she had every opportunity to trigger this pandemic as it would have only taken one infected person to start.

Possibly Jenova was biding her time and playing the long game.

It could be a case of ‘slow and steady wins the race’.

The swift and active devastation during the age of the Cetra led to a retaliation (by the surviving Cetra and the Planet itself) which saw Jenova frozen in the North Crater. Maybe the stealthier approach was determined to be more likely to succeed.

Alternatively, since Jenova is partially dead, and had been frozen, she has only been reactivated since Shinra rediscovered her and experimented on her. We don’t know enough about her to determine if she has her full power still or not. Or if it could take a while for the more serious effects to take hold. Say, a generation after she has been discovered (when Sephiroth and others with Jenova cells within them become powerful adults).

Perhaps the actors were simply not told what their end was to be.

Spoiler: Remake

A counter argument to the actors' hypothesis could also be that in the Remake these clones seem to be endowed with powerful (supernatural) shapeshifting/illusionistic skills.

Spoiler: Remake

I think that seems to be Sephiroth acting upon the clones to toy with Cloud rather than the clones themselves having any control over that.

In the scene with Marco, only Cloud sees Sephiroth. To Tifa it just looks as if Cloud is losing his mind thanks to PTSD or something and is attacking her sick neighbour.

But it is interesting that the ‘clones’ do change form in this way though. And by being in black, hooded robes they come across as almost shadowy figures, like dreams and the shades of the dead.

Spoiler: Remake Oh, nice observation!
Still on the subject of theatre, doesn't Jessie's interest in Cloud seem a bit contrived/suspicious from the moment we learn that she's a professional actress?
Doesn't Jessie's request to Cloud for help in obtaining explosives should be reminiscent to him that he has pledged to come and get a certain person out of trouble if she need it? Perhaps the same goes for the damsel in distress sequence. Although he has already remembered his promise at this point, I think it may still be interesting (for the scriptwriter) to support this theme to ensure Cloud's (the player's) commitment.

Spoiler: Remake

Some of this damsel in distress business does stem from the OG with her foot getting caught and Cloud helping her in the first mako reactor. They just went full steam ahead with that in the Remake, and yeah it does have some parallels with Tifa. In Jessie’s case she is mostly toying with Cloud, it seems.

Wedge does warn Cloud about Jessie’s flirtations and how it doesn’t mean anything, warning Cloud not to get too attached and it is just an act, etc. I didn’t take this to mean any deep conspiracy in this instance though, only that Jessie likes to flirt and feels better behaving like that as some sort of emotional survival tactic.

Wedge says: “Life's a stage and loves the play!”
In the same vein as William Shakespeare’s “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players” (As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII).

It is as if Wedge is conscious of the love tangle and how it risks unfolding like a drama. In Remake more than in the OG, Jessie is presented as the ‘third woman’ in Cloud’s life. Because, for some reason, all of the women (and some of the men) are into Cloud, and quite humorously Cloud is oblivious to or uncomfortable with a lot of it. Alternatively, it could be the writer’s effort to trick the player into feeling protective over these characters and fighting for them. If there is a complex ‘meta’ issue behind this, I’m sure it could come out in future instalments, if it hasn't already.

It may be that Jessie genuinely did feel something for Cloud, or maybe she was just enjoying the feeling of teasing him. Being an actress, she was good at it. But we do get a window into Jessie’s real, vulnerable, human side when we visit her house. Much of it is unsaid, but when you see her family photographs, her ill father, her mother cooking dinner, and so on, you get a sense of the ‘real’ Jessie. And it is a very sad story. Her act could be her mental escape from the harsh reality of her situation.

But if there is something sinister behind it, Wedge has Cloud’s back with his warning at least!

I agree that we are not shown any unmistakable reason to believe that the characters cannot have feelings in the game, in any case, they seem to be able to share it.

Yes it's true we learn some interesting things especially with Barret but maybe something is able to broadcast information in the form of dreams. A dreamweaver for instance?

The use of dreams and dream imagery in FFVII is something I’d love to explore further.

Spoiler: Remake

The designation as Dreamweaver itself is an English localisation choice. In Japanese she is ‘Jenova Beat’, referring to the heartbeat of a foetus or something. The reason behind this being that this is a new Jenova fight which precedes the Jenova fights in the OG (Jenova Birth was already taken, so what else could come before Birth if not a foetus?).

But sometimes the English localisation choices remain worthy of comment in their own right, since there can still be a lot of thought behind it and how it connects with the wider themes of the game (hence my tangent in my recent Titan article about Teioh being Hyperion in English). We know that Jenova has created an illusion in the Shinra HQ (or that Sephiroth has created an illusion using Jenova). And we know (or it is so far hinted at) that Sephiroth and Aerith both have some form of access to ‘memories of the future’ in the Remake, and various people are experiencing dreamlike flashes of the future.

The Aerith vision in chapter 14 has recently been stated by developers to be an Aerith possessing memories from the future. It is wild.

With the Remake, there’s definitely stuff like this going on, so the wildest theories are all worth exploring. In the Remake, the OG plot is left open to be reimagined and explored with different slants in a way which doesn’t interfere with the OG.

I'm glad you're interested in this idea
Maybe it was fate or the Planet that also decided the advent of the Shinra electric power company for some purpose.

I think in this context perhaps fate could be separated from the Planet.

Spoiler: Remake

If by fate we mean destiny and the Whispers. The Whispers (which might be from the future) seem to be wanting to protect the timeline in which they form. In that sense, they certainly would want to ensure the creation of Shinra for its role in world history, but also the company’s eventual destruction. Basically they seek to maintain the core story-beats of the OG.

Interestingly, developers comments seem to suggest (or confirm what people speculated) that the Whispers can only be seen by people who have the power to decide the fate of the planet. This is why Rufus can also see them, since he is the new president of the Shinra company after his father’s death and thus has power to affect the course of history.

The Whispers are seen to correct the mistakes of those who have veered from the correct path, and hence they healed Barret after he was killed by Sephiroth (since he shouldn’t be dead in the OG timeline). As an example.

Yes it's true, I often tend to neglect to consider Cait Sith... Shame.

He’s a divisive character. Some will write him off as comic relief, so it’ll be interesting to see what the Remake does with him.

Especially now that we have other robots or cyborgs like Chadley thrown into the mix with which to compare him. Those Cyberpunk themes could be resurfacing in new ways.

No, I think that the real (as well as the potential fake) Tifa must legitimately know that Cloud was not a SOLDIER at that event, but you're right the question was worth asking.

What strikes me is that she says she knows a lot of things about what Cloud should have known but I don't see how she could know so many things, or even one. Apart from the detail about the last time they saw each other which acts as an effective cover that leads us not to ask further questions (> Cloud should have known that the last time they saw each other was 7 years ago, not 5, that's what Tifa knows about what he should have known, no need to look further). It is perhaps interesting to note that this is the only date in the whole compilation whose accuracy is of interest to the plot.

Spoiler: Remake

It is strange that in the Remake we are made to understand that since they have been together in Midgar Cloud and Tifa have not told each other anything about past events. At one point Tifa offers to talk about it, but nothing is developed. I think that so far in the Remake Tifa hasn't had a chance to question what Cloud should have known (except about the 5 and 7 years again).

Was it really different in the original game? What really made her enlist him in AVALANCHE? Because it was Cloud's inconsistencies (plural), she says, that made her want to keep him around. Note that the Kalm sequence happens way later !

On the importance of the date, I’m not surprised. It is the key plot twist of the OG that Cloud wasn’t who we thought he was, and it all hinges on that date. Plus, they like to slip in references to the number of the game (FFVII and the number 7).

You are right, it is very odd if they didn't talk about things until Kalm, even in the OG. Traditionally, we're to believe that Tifa was holding her tongue and trying to suss out what might be wrong with Cloud, but she remained quiet on it for a long, long time. There's a lot to be said about the psychology of Tifa at this point.

I'm not sure that the Remake will give us any clearer answers than what has already been said in the compilation. Dirge of Cerberus starts with this sentence: "And so the hound weaves the final chapter in this tale of life". One can possibly understand that after this opus all the elements of understanding have been presented. Maybe everything was already presented in the original game.

I don’t think we’ve experienced a ‘full closure’ moment yet. Genesis is still a loose end, whether people like that or not.

Also the more we learn about the Remake and the implications of its ending (and the DLC), the more it becomes clear that the Remake is, in a sense, a kind of sequel to FFVII and not truly a remake. Some of these open ends are possibly to be resolved within the Remake project now.

It will surely be a trippy ride, but we might get some answers for some of the fandom’s deepest questions… It might be that these answers open up MORE questions, but still…

Is the Lifestream's natural fate to sail the darkness of the cosmos?

The presentation of Omega aboard the Shera (DoC) strongly reinforce the idea that the Cetras can be brought to travel from planet to planet. It explains that planets die and return to the cosmos in the same way that the Cetras die and return to the Lifestream. Whether by natural death or not they die at some point. In the final moments of the planet's life an entity composed of mako energy called Omega gathers all life forms and propels them into the cosmos. What is the cosmos if not a large number of planets and stars scattered in a great void? It is maybe conceivable that long ago the Cetras were forced to leave their previous planet because it was at the end of its life and that the planet propelled them to the game's planet (which they naturally had to terraform first in order to settle there). If it hasn't already happened, it's supposed to happen in the future. In any case I think we can tell from these elements that the fate of the Cetras is to travel from planet to planet.

So What will the Cetras who have been propelled to another planet be born from? The logical answer is that they will be born from the Lifestream, not from the rock they land on (although the rock would help them settle down). I also think there is a good chance that the landing (crash) will form a large hole comparable to the Northern Crater.

Is the Lifestream also the natural vessel since the Lifestream is the Planet essentially? (the vessel Sephiroth is talking about)
Can we still believe that the Lifestream is not an alien?

This scene does certainly shift the emphasis from the Planet alone onto the Planet in the wider context of the cosmos.
The laws which apply to the Planet (the Lifestream, etc) also apply to the cosmos as a whole, on a grander scale.

It is possible that the Cetra had travelled from another Planet deep in the past, however not them alone. All life, and it would be the spiritual energy rather than physical forms if we follow the logic of DoC. We aren’t to imagine the Cetra putting on astronaut helmets and strapping in to rockets. But perhaps the Lifestream had migrated to the FFVII Planet, carrying the spiritual essence of life within it and enabling the Cetra and other lifeforms to be born and terraform the planet.

It therefore cannot be ruled out that the Lifestream is extra-terrestrial in origin, deep in its antiquity. Similar to how scientists say that 'space dust' formed life on our Earth.

But by finding itself on the FFVII Planet, the Lifestream became the Planet and turned it into its own. Perhaps. To be a bit metaphysical, it can be like the idea that the soul only inhabits the body, and upon death it rejoins the Underworld and can be reborn, washed clean of memories, in a new body ready to start life anew (for example, as in Plato's Republic book 10).
So it could be that people merge the Lifestream with the Planet out of convenience, since the Lifestream became the Planet's soul. Whether the Lifestream is still the 'Planet' when it is no longer on the Planet is perhaps a topic the Planetologists of Cosmo Canyon might debate for years to come (or however long they have left...). If Sephiroth is conscious of this, he could well mean one thing when he says the other.

Or if we are to imagine people putting helmets on and travelling in rockets, then that would suit the idea of FFX-2’s Shinra making such a journey (which they have at least acknowledged in the form of a joke in the Shinra HQ museum in the Remake), but I’m not sure if that can be connected with Omega and the Cetra in deep antiquity.

That or the Planet allows him to do that for her.

If there is a collusion involved, but Jenova is still presented as a parasite (by people on the planet, and also the Planet itself according to the interpretation of people who can 'read' the Planet). Or perhaps, if we like, two cosmic entities fighting for dominance over the rock that is the Planet.

Yes, this sequence evokes a kind of purgatory, I understood your metaphor well.

Cloud is presumed to be a puppet so while he thinks that he contributes towards stopping a destruction, maybe he's led to do something else without realizing it.

I think, as I explain in the link shared in my precedent post, that the final battle is supposed to regulate the execution of the actions (Meteor summon and Holy) that are supposed to allow the meteor to be propelled into the cosmos. The battles that Cloud leads during the adventure should give him the necessary experience to be able to resist and defeat the holders of these forces (Bizarro Sephiroth presumably restraining Holy - Safer Sephiroth presumably holding the Meteor summon) one after the other in order to trigger events.
By beating Bizzaro we free Holy who comes to place himself under the Meteor then the Meteor who was waiting immobile for the arrival of Holy comes to press himself against him (Nanaki: "Holy is having the opposite effect"). Extreme pressure. The Lifestream takes advantage of this delay to join the Meteor ship. And finally by beating Safer we break the Meteor invocation annihilating in one go the extreme pressure he was applying against Holy which would instantly cause the propulsion of the ship towards the cosmos.
Of course, the effects of the actions taken at the Northern Crater are observed with a certain delay over Midgar due to the distance between the two places.

In this sense, couldn't the real purpose of the data analysis done by Hojo, Chadley and Scarlet be a mean to prepare/calibrate this final battle?

We’ll have to await the Remake’s presentation of these scenes for confirmation on this, probably much further down the line.
Since the Meteor is held there for a long time (rather than just falling like an actual meteor) and a lot of forces are at play, there is wriggle room for theories. I don’t see any evidence for this precise idea within the canon yet, but it wouldn’t be the craziest idea they’ve introduced that something got away at that time. If it did, I think it couldn’t have been the majority of the Lifestream though. But if we run with your idea, maybe some of it was expelled and created a void big enough for the Jenova-based negative lifestream to take hold? Just an idea.

I am not so sure that the migration was not successful while leaving some remains behind.
Concerning Vincent's action (Chaos) here is an extract from the Omega reports.

If Vincent (Chaos) is charged with carrying the remains of a dying world (following the potential departure of the meteor migration) it is noticeable that these remains do not seem to be fracturing as quickly as shown in the presentation on board the Shera. There must be a burden to bear for some time otherwise this sentence is meaningless. Perhaps this period is the one depicted in Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus.

To sum up my thoughts, maybe the migration really took off and the discarded remains is what is left on the rock, under the custody of Cerberus.

I interpret this to be looking to the future at what Chaos and Omega will one day bring, as opposed to something already in motion. But I see your point that it implies that it is expected that Chaos will be carrying the burden for a while.

If by that you mean that a Tifa playing the role of a confused person (regarding her relationship with Cloud) could help keep Cloud confused and thus make him vulnerable and manipulable, this is indeed what I think.

Understood. Thanks for the clarification.

And yet if we follow the canon there seems to be no connection between Sephiroth/Jenova and the Shinra's decision to execute Tifa. So maybe, as I propose, there is a hidden link between these entities.

Apart from that, I think nature might be capable of producing this kind of spine-like structure, although it's true that in the collective imagination this kind of setting usually evokes the action of alien/otherworldly beings, or of beings of ambiguous origin of great antiquity.
But wait, from what I posted above, wouldn't the Cetras be likely to be this kind of alien/otherworldly beings, or of beings of ambiguous origin of great antiquity?

Actually, yes. We see weird structures in the Forgotten Capital that are essentially giant seashells appropriated and turned into dwellings. And the Cetra also have technology like pearl-radios, holographic projection displays, and so on.
That could be seen as a quirky blend of organic and inorganic, hi-tech stuff.

I think that is why this trope is used so much in science fiction/fantasy in order to suggest ancient aliens. It is an easy way of marking advanced cultures as removed in time and place from modern technology and aesthetics.

I agree with you and I have to say that it was a big surprise to me to be able to align these elements so neatly.

It wasn't this scene that I studied first after hypothesising that Tifa might be carrying memories belonging to Cloud, I was naturally interested in the Lifestream scene first and as you'll see it was the virulence of the Lifestream's interrogation of Tifa in the introduction to this scene that inspired the idea that in the scene mentioned earlier (Tifa's heart) Tifa wasn't naturally rethinking her past deeds but was in fact being led to open her heart.

Well, we are probably ready to continue!


3 - Could events that relate to Tifa show that she bears some memories that belong to Cloud ?

3.B - Tifa tells the Lifestream that it is asking the wrong person
As you pointed out to me, Ultimate Weapon, the same weapon whose contact with Tifa led her to show us what was in her heart, this time drops Tifa and Cloud into the Lifestream allowing the player to observe a field of conscience once again.

We are again shown Tifa against a black background (Cloud is absent from the image) and while in the previous episode it may have seemed that it was Tifa's decision to freely share her memories, this time she is clearly challenged by the Lifestream. She seems to have to answer questions asked by someone aggressive.
It seems to me that what is generally perceived by the players is that Tifa is being accused by the Lifestream of being responsible for the attack on the Midgar reactors. In this case she would be lying to the Lifestream but lying does not seem to be a talent that can be easily associated with Tifa.

So maybe Tifa is not lying but there is an anomaly with her memory. Perhaps it is this anomaly that makes the judge aggressive and causes him to delve deeper into the memory being studied to find the cause. The scene in the Lifestream would then be what we are given to see of Tifa's memory, a memory that would be filled with memories belonging to Cloud.
Tifa does not understand what is being asked of her, she seems to be telling the Lifestream that it has the wrong person.
The sounds of machine guns/helicopters and trains heard in this sequence may be indicative of events Cloud experienced when he was in the infantry.

Why would we enter Cloud's mind when it is Tifa who is violently challenged in the introduction to this sequence? It would be more of an opportunity for Tifa to go into introspection in my opinion.

If the questioning of Tifa is related to the Midgar attacks, why are the elements of memory that we are shown afterwards not related to this event? Why do we see a scene where Tifa comes to help Cloud come to his senses instead?

I think on this point there is definitely something weird going on here.

Some of the sound effects are interesting. I can hear the recycled Kefka laugh sound effect which is used for the Jack-o-lantern in the Gold Saucer’s Haunted Hotel, and various other uses. And also the radio noise can be heard – the same one you hear in places like the submarine.

Whether the gunfire is Barret, or anything else… I really want to know. That the focus afterwards is the Nibelheim incident, if she is remembering Shinra’s hunt of Zack and Cloud (therefore having memories not her own) then that would indeed be interesting. Or perhaps the Lifestream it planting these auditory hallucinations there, or she is hearing discordant noises related to various traumatic moments connected with random people in the Lifestream, and she’s simply picking up on it and interpreting it.

This section is as bizarre as a David Lynch film. Remake doesn’t seem to be backing down on this sort of thing either.

The possibility of Tifa having false memories has recently been fed by new comments in the new Material Ultimania. And then there is also a similar tidbit from Dissidia: Opera Omnia.

This new insight, I should suspect, could be very interesting to you!

I'll leave it here for now.

I hope I've taken enough of your comments into account, and if I've left any out it's probably because I feel that Tifa's corruption could reverse the way we perceive some of the information given and even the plot in general.

Concerning the focus on the last time Cloud and Tifa saw each other, I agree with you that it seems to signal the disparity in what they each remembered. This is certainly the intention, but perhaps this information is also a cover for other more sensitive information as I'm trying to show.

Please tell me what you think !

Also of interest to you might be Tifa’s mother’s name… Kazushige Nojima’s new novel Final Fantasy VII Remake: Trace of Two Pasts it has been revealed that Tifa’s mother might be called Thea.

I explain what that could mean in this thread:

SPOILERS - Apparently we might now know Tifa’s mother’s name…

Kazushige Nojima’s new novel Final Fantasy VII Remake: Trace of Two Pasts is out (in Japanese only) and already people are peeking at its pages. One of the details which people are reporting is that Tifa’s mother might be called Thea. If true, this is pretty cool! Not only is it a pretty name...

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