THREAD: Long time FF fan, newbie to FF7 fandom

MY feelings has been going up and down due to COVID and strange exp with FF7 fandom. I have never seen a FF fandom more divided and toxic than this one.

I love Squaresoft and their games since 1997. Played most of their games 1/15

Parasite, Xeno, Mana, Chrono, vagrant..etc, even after merge with enix I still remained a fan.

I have never see Main PC and heroine be put down and butchered like this. Nor have I ever seen the need to validate the importance of MC and Heroine in any other FF game. 2/15

Never seen that many bad takes, fake news, aggressive, misleading fan translation, and personal attacks, accusation of racial/gender discrimination, cyber bulling, death threats

At most, I have never seen support characters inserted so forcefully in every aspect of the game 3/15

FF games for me, has always been a good wholesome fantasy game with clear theme with heavy emphasize on love, friendship, companionship and finding ones place in the world.

Every character have role and function in the game. They all work out wonderfully. 4/15

FF7 definitely takes on the burden of being a cult classic and the face of FF series, and it's compilation is suppose to bring more depth into the world and its characters. BC is about the turks, CC is about Zack and AC is about Cloud and his friends after OG event. 5/15

With so many different people working on the compilation, we can only treat them as inspired by the OG lore and character, not so much a complete coherent single piece of story. Character development and personality, even past and timeline are different from one another 6/15

FF7 OG Story-wise, with theme of life, has always been about a boy's journey to become hero and along the way, find his identity through the help of his companions. He was reunited with his chilhood crush, who with her support, become very important part of his family. 7/15

He had a fateful encounter. A woman whose fate is closely tied to the fate of the world. They developed strong emotional bond with each other. They also shared a common past connection with the man who is not only boy's friend, but a mentor, a skilled, heroic soldier. 8/15

She later fell in love with him and sacrificed her life for the planet and she doesn't regret. She knew she had a duty she must fulfill, and she finally gain the courage to act upon it for she has found people she wants to protect, and the man she fell in love with. 9/15

on top of losing the woman in front of him, he had to deal with his inner demon and a mad man who he used to idolize as the man he wanted to become, his hero. The man, with his cell injected into the boy, has become an integral part of him, caused the boy to doubt himself 10/15

but he had support from his new friends, his childhood neighbor, who is proof of his existence. A woman who believe he is not hollow, that the real him does exist, he is not a fake nor a puppet. With everyone's support he was able to defeat the villain and save the planet. 11/15

Why has this wonderful story turned in to such ugly narrative of love triangle and hero replacement. 2 woman fight over one man's affection or trying to battle out who has the rightful place of the main heroine? or that one waiting for the other to die to to take over? 12/15

Why has it become a story about a man who died in vain so his buddy can take all his identity and the girl he loves? none of these narrative exist in game. People are fighting over the truth from some supplemental reading known to contradict each other, using it as bible 13/15

still remain social distancing, I find my time with fellow FF fans a valuable personal time, share same interest and know there are people as passionate as me. Aside from that, I think I still have long way to learn when it comes to dealing with intentional bad takes 14/15

If you are unwilling to understand the story and respect creators, fellow fans, fan artists, understand how to separate fanon from canon, accept even if they don't give you what you want to see, you are always going to the the victim of your own doing. 15/15