Even Further Reading

This is a second edition of additional or extraneous information regarding and used in the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers.

This page will be updated as the story progresses. Please check back for new information!

Even Further Reading

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Chocobown'd!

As stated in the footnotes, it served to reason that after the fall of Midgar, public transport would be fewer and further between. The train systems of old Midgar would likely be damaged beyond fiscally reasonable repair and, with the president of the only major corporate power having fallen ill with geostigma, it's unlikely anyone had the means with which to recreate the mass transit systems Midgar once had at its disposal. This leaves the refugees and survivors of Meteor with few options for getting around. They would either have to have personal vehicles (such as motorcycles or small buggies) or use chocobos. There are a few car or van-type vehicles in Edge--we see them in the opening scenes of Advent Children--and Cloud has his Fenrir, however given the general state Edge seems to be in, it seems unlikely that very many people can afford personal vehicles.

Which was probably music to the chocobo-breeders' ears. If mass transit has come to a screeching halt because there is no longer a place for trains to dock near Midgar, then the chocobo industry will suddenly be in high demand. When racing chocobos, the fastest speed the best chocobo can attain is 187kph (116.2 mph), almost as fast as [we presume] a high-grade racing bike can go. And with the various types of chocobos that can be bred (to cross water, mountains, etc), chocobos are actually a more versatile and widely useful mode of transport than a bike or a car, which would be confined to relatively flat-land-travel.

In the original game, the Chocobo Farm on the eastern continent was the only place where chocobos could be bred and kept. While normal yellow chocobos could be caught in the wild in several locations all across the landmasses, one could only get special types of chocobos by breeding them at the Chocobo Farm. So after the fall of Midgar, as the demand for chocobos would increase, it serves to reason that the farm would expand into sattelite franchises all over the continent to get people to and from what was once the largest most industrial city on the landmass. These satellite locations would not breed or keep chocobos on-hand at all times, but would rather serve as a place where chocobos could be sent and retrieved in a more convenient location.

For example, Tifa and Marlene plan to go to Aerith's church to look for Cloud. However, Edge goes around the outskirts of Midgar, and Aerith's church was in the slums of Sector Five, and the slums are literally in a giant crater that is littered with debris...going on foot would not only be unwise, but would actually take far longer than the canon timeline permits. Ergo, Tifa must have had some form of transportation. Cloud is away, so they couldn't have taken his bike, and we're given no indication that Tifa has one of her own, nor does she appear to have a car or a buggy at her disposal. So it seems logical that a chocobo would be the next best choice. Renting a chocobo come the time of Advent Children can probably be likened to renting a car here on Earth. You call the main reservation number and they connect you to a location close to you, where you will go and choose the car you want based on your specific needs (small/medium/large/SUV, as well as certain insurance options and distance policies). So Tifa would call the Chocobo Farm and explain that she needs a short-distance plain chocobo to get from Edge to old Midgar. The Chocobo Farm would then contact the sattelite location nearest Edge and inform them of the reservation. They would then send a courier to deliver the reserved chocobo to the satellite location. We assume that the average plain yellow chocobo can be likened to an ostrich and maintain an average speed of about 65kph (40mph), meaning it would take the rental chocobo about five hours to get from the Chocobo Farm to Edge based on how we scaled the planet.

Nothin' but Net

One of the biggest fandom-controversies of Advent Children that I have come across is in the scene where Rufus tumbles from the 13th floor of the building where he was meeting with Kadaj, plunging toward the pavement below only to be miraculously saved by nets that Tseng and Elena shoot across the expanse to catch him. Many fans, I have found, discount the credibility of the movie from this scene alone, howling about how it's physically impossible for the net to have caught Rufus, how physics were being completely fucked, and wah wah wah, etcetera. Newsflash, folks--if you simply pay attention, a multitude of questions can easily be answered without whining. No, seriously. This scene is completely feasible, physically possible, and not an egregious error on the part of Squeenix. Boohoo for you~ No one has any excuse to bitch about this scene anymore, as I have discovered the secret.

The secret is--pay attention. -_-;; Let's take a look here, shall we?

In the timeline of the movie, this is when we are given confirmation that Tseng and Elena did, in fact, not die in Northern Crater at the hands of the SHM. If you take a close look at these screencaps here, you can see that they are apparently shooting some manner of net-guns toward their falling president. In the image with Tseng, you can actually very clearly see that the grappling prongs are trailed with two cables that have nothing between them. This is very important. Remember this: NOTHING BETWEEN THEM. The net-guns appear to shoot two cables with grappling hooks on the ends and nothing more. In the next few frames, we can see the cables settle against one another in a cross-section bridging the open air alongside the building. The screencaps here are a little fuzzy, so it's difficult to see in specific detail, however it does very much appear that the two cables coming from the left side of the frame are threaded between the two coming from the right. One of the most prominent arguments I saw/heard/read regarding this scene was that it would be physically impossible for the net to have caught Rufus unless it was somehow magically intersecting itself. Well, holy shit, kids, guess what? It's magically intersecting itself. Because at the time the support cables are cast, there is no net stretched between them. For as unclear as the image may be as far as the exact placement of the cables and how precisely they intersect, there is very obviously nothing between them.

If the previous image was iffy for you, then perhaps this next one will be of some elucidative assistance. Once the grappling hooks on the ends of the cables were secured and the cables criss-crossed however you choose to believe they were, you can very obviously see a net shimmer into existence between them. You can even see in the images how the nets twist and pull against one another with Rufus's weight, giving very clear indication that they do, in fact, intersect, and that the net between them was unfurled after said intersection. This gives indication of the use of materia, perhaps. Since a Barrier spell is depicted as visually similar to the net shown here (with prismatic-shaped pixel-type blocks that deflect attacks), it seemed very plausible that the grappling-cable guns that Tseng and Elena fired were infused with some type of Barrier materia. Since the Barrier spell only halves physical damage, it is clear that a Barrier spell is not impenetrable, so for Rufus's entire weight to have been caught and held in this net, a Barrier spell alone would not be enough. Even a Wall spell would be insufficient, since MBarrier (or Shell, as it is called in more recent FF games) also only halves damage. Since ShinRa is, however, the leading monopoly on mako technology and materia, it would certainly not be difficult for the company to have come up with new materia over the years that were not used in FFVII-proper, and were possibly still in an experimental stage during past events. The most likely hybrid created for use with this net would be a Barrier materia that permitted the casting of a spell that combined the power of Barrier and Reflect. Reflect spells completely repel all magic and shoot it back toward its caster and while there is no physical damage equivalent, it is not out of the question for ShinRa to have come up with a way to create one. After all, it was ShinRa who discovered the springs of natural mako and harnessed the very nature of materia in the first place. It is very likely that ShinRa has materia that no one else does.