Prologue Footnotes

Midgar Standard Time would be based on the timezones illustrated in the map shown to the right. As we began formulating the ideas for this story, it dawned on us that the world map of Gaia was likely very tiny, simply from the in-game mechanics. Your bitty little sprite could feasibly walk a chocobo all the way around the world in a matter of minutes. Obviously, the planet can't be that tiny, but it gives an overall sense of a very small scale. This didn't really cause too many issues initially...until we discovered the canon timeline of events that took place in Advent Children (shown to the left). Having a set amount of time things were required to be done in put a specific limitation of size on the planet; certain distances needed to be traversed in a certain amount of time, and passage of time would have to be metered by timezones for time to flow naturally across the planet. Since Midgar seemed to be the largest and most populated, industrial city in the game, it served to reason that it was thus the most important. To prevent temporal issues that would have arisen from the fact that traveling east causes one to lose daylight, we chose to unite all possible timezones under one blanket timezone: Midgar Standard Time--similar to how on Earth we use Greenwich Standard Time to synch up official timepieces. While each timezone would run on its own hourly marker, we chose to show the events of Advent Children as having a timestamp from a consistent source, giving us Midgar Standard Time. For further information, please see our Further Reading page.

Also something to note is that when the gang is on the train at the beginning of the game, the conductor says over the PA, "Last train out of Sector 8 Station. Last stop is Sector 7, Train Graveyard. Expected time of arrival is 12:23AM, Midgar Standard Time...", proving that apparently, we were not the first ones to suppose a blanket timezone was a good idea. XD

Rosalind

In Before Crisis--the compilation game created by Square Enix for play on certain mobile phone systems--there are several playable characters for you to choose from. While none of these characters have canon-assigned names, a fan website dedicated to Before Crisis, Gunshot Romance, has an assemblance of Mission Summaries, in which the webmistress lists her preferred name choices for the playable characters. These names were embraced by a percentage of the FFVII:BC fandom, and personally, we found them to be awesome. So any mentionings of the playable Turks from the game will be under the monikers from Gunsot Romance.

Before Crisis canon tells us that Rosalind is very professional, and takes her job as a Turk very seriously. She entered the ShinRa Military School where her father is an instructor. Under the stern tutelage of her father, Rosalind flourished, becoming a top marksman, even surpassing the very man who had taught her. She graduated with honors at the top of her year, and was recruited into the Turks immediately afterwards.

Sisters?

In Before Crisis, it's listed in Playable Character A's bio that she is Elena's elder sister. There is also a screencap of the two of them in a scene together, in which Elena calls her 姉さん [Neesan], "Elder Sister". (Screencap provided by Suzaku) The girls' personalities often clash and Elena resents her sister for outdoing her.

The text in the screencap says, "Big sister [et al]! You guys came back!"

PHS

In the FFVII continuum, the cellular phones are referred to as PHS units: Personal Handyphone System. As far as is implied, these phones work pretty much the same as any cellular phone would.

Potion Calibration

In our interpretation of the way restorative items work in FFVII, an X-Potion is not a specific type of potion that magically restores you to full-health--rather it's...sort of like a prescription. You have it calibrated to your specific stats. Each X-Potion is made exactly to the specifications of who it is being made for, which would logically be the only way anyone who uses one could be restored to full-health without severely overdosing a low-level character, or falling short for a high-level character. For further details, please see Section Three of our Further Reading page.

Senpai~tte...nani?

The word 先輩 [senpai] is a Japanese term used in reference to someone's elder, as in at work, in school, or in a martial art, for example. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with age. Someone younger than you in age who is a higher belt-level than you are in karate would still be your senpai. This word doesn't translate well into English; therefore we opted to just keep the term to illustrate the relationship between the Turks. Reno and Rude have been Turks longer than Elena and Rosalind; ergo, Reno and Rude are the girls' 'upperclassmen', as it were. We are both well aware that the use of the dreaded "Fangirl Japanese" in fic is serious taboo...however this word does not have an acceptable translation into the English language and will therefore be left in its untranslated form. For the record, both authors of this fic study and speak Japanese--we're not just throwing this in the story for shits and giggles, I promise.

Comatose?

In Mission Seventeen of Before Crisis, your playable character falls comatose after being exposed to heavy amounts of mako radiation inside the depths of the reactor in Corel. This coma lasts three years, during which time it is implied that Reno and Rude visited on occasion--since they are both conveniently there when your character comes out of said coma and Reno cracks jokes about how long you slept. During the whole of Before Crisis, Reno and your character work together a lot, and Reno acts as a mentor to your budding Turk throughout most of the missions, teaching you about materia and showing you the ropes of Turkdom. He even comes to rescue you if you fail on a mission and get captured. We chose to have Rosalind be the Turk who was exposed to the mako in the reactor for several reasons, all of which will be explained as the story unfolds. Taking a few artistic liberties with this decision, we decided to play up the relationship between Rosalind and Reno accordingly.