remnantworld text hub

Midgar-Edge has a certain, unique smell, doesn’t it? Exhaust from the main thoroughfare, fresh bread, leaf litter smoke. Dryer sheets and cotton-polyester that barely endures the heat, if it’s the weekend. In the distance, the haunting call of crow murders, mothers chasing after their downy young. And later in the year, you may hear the sound of children in their winter boots, stomping in crumbling, slush-ridden asphalt, the sludge painting their new coats grey on their rush to school. Weaving through sidewalks lined with their older brothers’ mopeds and mountain bikes. And their sisters who hold cigarettes, limp between calloused fingers, filling front porches across the town with mournful laughter. Come now, look here! Follow the thumping bass through an unopened apartment window; weave to the next, higher up, and hear the screaming couple, the breaking glass; and back on the ground, strays baying as they tussle in the grassless lawns, the melting snow. 

How quaint, how silly. Everything in its place. The coughing factory district to the east and the glitzy downtown to the north. The shadow of Shinra to the west. Someone’s whole world to the south. Oh?

You look to one alley, where a man in black zips his coat to his nose and tries to blink moisture back into his eyes. In the bag slung across his shoulder is a collection of books — books he was told he would never be able to read. Look through them, if you want. It’s nothing particularly interesting. The wind is sharp and unforgiving. The city’s center most buildings — fledgling skyscrapers — create tunnels that whip his face red. Pretty little lights cross the tower gaps and no one appreciates them because they are taught to fear the back alleyways. The man in black does not seem to care about anything he was told or taught. He dances around the poorly salted concrete, his tennis shoes unfit for these icy treks across town. In certain areas, the leaders of the new city insist on technology to keep ice from accumulating. But of course, this is implemented only where travelers are meant to be impressed by Edge’s rehabilitation. The man does not live there.

He steps around puddles and drags his feet through snow piles from the morning plows. He crosses the street, crosses another, and another, ad infinitum… Edge has a certain, eternal nature, doesn’t it? All of these one-ways and roundabouts — you could cross every street and still get nowhere. And here we see the average of all men! Walking, walking, getting nowhere. You’d think he has no will at all. People and pets and buildings come and go as they have for decades, since Midgar’s first brick was laid. Stagnant water seeps through the centennial foundations. The world is destroyed from the outside-in, and here he is. Walking, walking, his books in his bag, the wind in his face, his thoughts elsewhere. He doesn’t know it — or he doesn’t want to — but like the foundations, his history is sealed here, encased in the concrete. Seeded in smog and steel, smothered by debris in a derelict hospital ward. Above these charred remains, the clouds part and we grant him witness. Beyond that, there is nothing but thin fabrics of space, stretching eternally, fraying across time. 

Now… are you satisfied? Isn’t there something else you’d like to see? This flyover town is no centerpiece — not anymore, no matter how the leaders and their beneficiaries try. This man and his ilk the world over will walk forever, their wheels will turn, but nothing will change. They can call it ‘rebuilding’ all they want. Humanity has doomed itself to entropy. Midgar-Edge is a microcosm of the planet: a crucible, a lost cause, another one of mankind’s hopeless experiments. Still, your thoughts remain with the man in black. Follow him up to the hill and down the other side. Dodging cars, giving other people a wide berth. Something glints in his pockets — a knife? Of course, but also, keys. Yet, the door unlocks before he can manage it himself, and he is hit with a wall of warmth. Someone is here to meet him. He smiles, taps the snow from his soles and steps into his home. Through the frost you note the other person’s silhouette. His bag slides from his shoulder, and I place my hand on yours, to stop you from getting any closer to the window, because there is nothing beyond it for you. There is nothing to be found with this no-thing, this wraith, and its simulacrum of peace.

Watch your step as you back away from the glass. The earth spins and the city becomes a speck as you rise, returning to your rightful place among the stars. Reminiscence can be a fine indulgence, yes? But let’s not take it too far. Memory, or the lack of it, is a tricky thing. Remember, and become stagnant. Forget, and become stagnant. So we decide the future is all that matters. The city is lost, and the man — the men, the women, the children, everyone — even more so. We know more than anything what humanity’s fate ought to be.

Still, in defiance, you peer down. Focus again. Now, there is a shift. It’s so cold. His face is red and his nose runs. The water in the sink burns, even though it is only lukewarm. Behind him, a silhouette rifles through his bag, looking for the book and the sandwich the man swore to remember. A dramatic groan, when it’s revealed he spent the money on late fees. Maybe next time. His legs are tired from the hike home, and the fluorescent lights are a bit too much at the moment. Following this silent complaint, as if on cue, they lower — made dim by the automatic decrease in energy output that occurs every evening.

here yazoo and i are going through and answering some of the questions at the bottom of the essay for fun and games :-)

in the age of the "minor-coded character", being us is really fucking annoying.

much ado about the Advent Children. are we adults? teens? little kids in the bodies of adults?

fun fact: it really does not matter!!

our age-incongruity is something that a lot of folks in post-remake FF7 fandom really, really can't seem to wrap their heads around. arguments about whether or not it's appropriate to ship us with anyone. calling yazoo and i "literal children", ignoring our abilities and capacity for total independence. calling me a "man-baby" for daring to show emotions beyond cold, edgy contempt for the world around me. i could go on forever.
it's frustrating to constantly run into this, and to know that others have gotten bullshit for not caring about it -- preferring to engage with us as we are presented without debate.

as part of syzygy and synthesis, as well as someone who actually cares about the story being relayed, it's all pointless. 

from a plural perspective: it's common knowledge in plural spaces that age doesn't align with intelligence, or independence, or external interests/hobbies/activities. plenty of jokes about the jaded 15 y/o who's in charge of the body's 9-to-5, or the 9 y/o who secretly loves dark souls, or the 40-something who copes through cartoons and comfort foods. idek what else to say about this. it's just a fact -- plurality sometimes makes internal experiences of age clash with external self-expression. 

from a remnant perspective: even if nomura sat down and said "yes, kadaj is 18, yazoo and loz are 21" or whatever, that still would not negate the vulnerability inherent to being born 2 weeks ago, supernatural knowledge notwithstanding. 
i personally had little control over how people physically saw me. unlike kadaj(who had a good amount of control over his body from months of practice prior to the events of AC), i could never really guess whether some one saw me as a leather-clad MMA combatant, or a strange looking little boy, or a formless cloud of pestilence. to this day, i confuse people with various parts of my appearance/expression and its relation to my identity -- from my age to my gender to my mobility aids and visibly autismophrenic behaviors.

from a story perspective: source material makes our ages unclear on purpose. the reunion files say yaz&i our in our twenties, but interviews with nomura&nojima talk about how we have a certain "childlike purity/naivete", and refer to us as "boys" in the same vein as kadaj. 
kadaj is younger than us(reunion files place him between 13-19), but has more chronological life experience and a more solid sense of self and purpose. he's the one "in charge" from the perspective of rufus, the turks, vincent, and cloud. 
this vagueness is directly related to our existence as remnants of sephiroth, as well as the general 7comp meditation on the nature of child soldiers; the cognitive dissonance required to be one, or to utilize them in your technofascist military dictatorship.

all this to say -- there's no clear answer to the question of our "true age" for a multitude of reasons. the vagueness is not only important to us as beings, but a deliberate part of our depiction on the 2D plane. learn to be okay with the fact that there is very little about a remnant that makes sense to the average person. we do not operate on human timescales or within human social norms. there are parts of us that are very childlike or straight up infantile, and other parts that are undeniably Grown As Fuck. we will indulge both of these parts at our own whims, whether it fits your interpretation or not. while our bodies are impacted by external interpretation, it is no longer the end-all-be-all of our lives. we now live in a way that rejects being "owned" by any individual or group -- whether it's sephiroth, shinra, square enix, or a head-canoner hellbent on ignoring anyone's perspective but their own.