Organizing/Splitting Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy VII currently is 253k long, I've been told by a mod it's not large enough to need splitting, but it's still quite a long page. The reason is that the page not only serves for the base game, but also for the expanded universe consisting of several spin-off titles, known to those unfamiliar with the series under the blanket "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII".

What I believe should be done is that the page split into two sections to ease navigation - one for the base game only, the other for the entire Compilation. What would be needed for this to happen is for the current list of tropes to be sorted through to know what entries go where. So I guess I'm posting here to ask if others think such a split is needed, and to look for help in sorting through the entries.

I think if you really think it needs to be done go for it. I'm sure anyone reading the page would appreciate it.

Sounds fine to me. I say go for it!

This thread should be in the Projects: Short Term forum, not here.

Yeah, I forgot about that forum when I suggested that Drake come here for assistance with figuring out what would go where. It's moved.

How much of it would go to the Compilation page, and not to a specific entry, since most of the extras have their own pages?

I'd have to go through the entire page to be sure, but at a glance it looks like there are a couple that would have to be moved to a Compilation section, though a couple it could be argued they should be moved to one of the spin-off pages instead.

Is it worth splitting off if it's just "a couple"?

Well I don't know how many there are in total, I just looked at the page to the Bs -_-. I'll go through and make a list in this post.

EDIT - And here it is. As I said, some could be moved to pages for the other spin-offs, others may be suited to being applied franchise-wide, and some could be moved to the character page or just removed altogther. Also there's quite a bit of general clean-up to be done with the page, damn shippers getting it locked ><

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Sephiroth's Masamune and Cloud's Fusion Sword blades are capable of not only slashing cleanly through massive pieces of concrete building that are far larger than the swords themselves, but setting the edges of the cut concrete ON FIRE. Of course, the swords, despite repeated clashing, never damage each other.
• The Ace: Zack.
• Ascended Extra: Zack.
• Back from the Dead: Sephiroth in Advent Children. Consistently subverted with Aerith, no matter how much the fans (especially the shippers) want it to happen. And, no, hacking the game to keep her in the party after her death scene doesn't count.
• Belated Happy Ending: Aerith and Zack are shown reunited in Advent Children.
• BFS: Cloud and Sephiroth each have one. Sephiroth's is a no-dachi. It's not just any no-dachi, it is six feet long in the game. In other words, almost longer than he is tall (his canonical height is 6'1"). In Crisis Core and Advent Children, the no-dachi gets a downgrade to a much more manageable four feet long (as if that makes it better).
• Bifurcated Weapon: Cloud's new BFS in Advent Children.
• Big Brother Mentor: Angeal to Zack and Zack to Cloud. Possibly also Cloud to Denzel.
• Blade Lock: Happens several times towards the end of Advent Children.
• Breakout Character: Vincent Valentine, who would go on to star in his own game. Same for Zack.
• Broken Aesop: The original game had an environmental message about the Lifestream and humans abusing the planet's natural resources to the point there was the chance Holy would see them as a threat and destroy the species. Materials set after the game, namely On The Way To A Smile, mention that people don't like using Mako anymore because they learned this message. Instead the more "environmentally friendly" fuel of choice people are turning to is ... oil.
• Cash-Cow Franchise: The Compilation.
• The Chessmaster: Rufus Shinra, in Advent Children, manages to pull the wool over Kadaj's eyes for the entire movie. Given his Magnificent Bastard status in the game, it really shouldn't come as any surprise...
• Dangerously Genre-Savvy: Yazoo shoots Cloud in the back while he's quietly contemplating his victory over Kadaj mere minutes earlier. Doesn't stick, though.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Rufus and the Turks in Advent Children.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Kadaj is really obsessed with his mother, though it's likely even he doesn't know why.
• Expanded Universe: VII has the most fleshed-out universe of the entire series. The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII refers to all media that deals with the FFVII universe.
• From Bad to Worse: Holy almost doesn't defeat Meteor... but thanks to Aerith's Big Damn Heroes moment, she can power it up with the Lifestream. Then the first cases of Geostigma start appearing.
• Gaiden Game: Dirge of Cerberus, Crisis Core, and Before Crisis.
• A God Am I: Sephiroth's motive: To wound the Planet itself, and absorb the Lifestream energy that the Planet uses to heal. Advent Children expands on his motives: he wasn't just going to blow up the world and call it good, but then use the Lifestream's power to travel to another world and fuck it up. He would do this to the entire galaxy, just like Mother Jenova had done in the past.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: The Turks. They oppose Cloud if ordered to, but under other circumstances are perfectly willing to live and let live. By Advent Children they're basically allies, and they get their own game in Before Crisis. And they have an awesome theme tune. They're also pretty tough in their own right. They put up a decent fight most of the time. Elena can also knock Cloud out cold with one punch.
• Hollywood Nerd: Every female scientist in the franchise.
• It Is Pronounced "Tro-PAY": Tseng's name, despite having an E in it, is pronounced "Sung". It's even lampshaded in Crisis Core; Zack finds a camera with T-S-E-N-G engraved on it... but has no idea who it belongs to.
• Layered Metropolis:
  • Midgar. In all sectors (numbered 0-8), an upper plate separates the ground-level slums from the other districts. This plate also blocks sunlight (what little there is of it) from trickling down into the slums. Agents from Shinra Inc. activate a support structure's Self-Destruct Mechanism between both layers of Sector 7, causing a section of the plate to come loose and crush everyone beneath before sending an earthquake relief force on the plate. Ironically, Reeve later moves the entire population of Midgar into the slums to protect them from METEOR.
  • An additional secret level, only known as Deepground, is located below both Midgar and the Slums, only accessible via the Sector 0 reactor. (Dirge of Cerberus)
• Mood Whiplash: Cloud getting shot by Yazoo while he reflects on Kadaj's death comes right out of nowhere too. He gets better though, literally two seconds later.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning:
  • Both Aerith and Sephiroth pull this off, furthering their own objectives by returning to The Lifestream after their deaths. By merging with the Lifestream, Aerith was able to directly control Holy and passively aid her allies (as seen in Advent Children), while Sephiroth was able to reach out and infect people with Geostigma in an effort to eventually corrupt the Lifestream.
  • Meanwhile, in Dirge of Cerberus, it's revealed that Hojo uploaded himself onto the internet in order to defy death and continue to screw over the world.
• My Greatest Failure: In the prequel Crisis Core, Zack's failure in capturing Genesis and preventing the death of Angeal.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: Especially if the fall is into Aerith's church. To date, three protagonists have taken the plunge from the upper plate into her flowers, and all three came out of it just fine.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Hojo also qualifies even moreso than Dyne or even his son, Sephiroth. For one thing, Sephiroth at least intended to become a god and remake the planet in his image. Hojo, on the other hand, fully intended to destroy the planet and for what? Research, that's what. More specifically, he manipulated Sephiroth into deciding to destroy the planet and become a god in order to also summon Omega, bond with it, and witness the final results of his research (which also explains why he made the extremely stupid decision to inject himself with Jenova's cells in a larger quantity than regular personnel of SOLDIER, with predictable results leading to his demise), and after that failed, he took over Weiss as soon as the World Wide Network was repaired and engineered through Weiss the sending of several uncontaminated people into the planet's core to trigger Omega and then have it leave the planet.
• Progressively Prettier: Reno was not originally designed as the prettyboy he is in FFAC and later installations.
  • Cid Highwind was originally designed as a much more gruff and coarse-looking character; however, he has gotten Progressively Prettier in any of his other Compilation appearances. Just compare his original portrait to his portrait in Before Crisis, or his CG render in Advent Children.
  • At least he kept his gruff appearance in Dirge of Cerberus.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Kadaj, though he is rather young. And Loz, who fits the description a little better.
• Redemption Demotion: Rude and Reno, who were actually competent in Final Fantasy VII, are reduced to comic relief in FFAC now that they've had their Heel Face Turn. Then again, they still put up a good fight against Loz and Yazoo.
• Redemption in the Rain: Kadaj gets this. Loz and Yazoo just get blown up in the rain.
• Red Shirts: In the original and Crisis Core, this role is filled by the Shinra army, who wear blue. In Dirge of Cerberus, the white-shirted WRO are the Red Shirts. The officers do however get the nifty red hats.
• Spell My Name With An S:
  • You could probably power several continents with the sheer energy spent on debating whether to use "Aeris" or "Aerith". As of recent English releases (such as Crisis Core and Kingdom Hearts) and from the very beginning in Japanese publications, "Aerith" has become the canon spelling, but because people still cling to the "Aeris" spelling from the original US release (and it has yet to be corrected in reprints), even The Other Wiki uses it - but only when referring to Final Fantasy 7 itself.
  • The Spanish translation of Kingdom Hearts uses Aeris (for Aerith) and Sefirot (for Sephiroth), like in the original translation of FFVII, but they are changed to the canon equivalent in Kingdom Hearts II. Some Spanish players find those unfortunate because Sefirot is the usual transliteration of the Hebrew word, and as such it was about the only thing the Spanish "Blind Idiot" Translation did right.
  • "Shin-Ra" (in Japan) versus "Shinra" (in translations), which was rather curious because it clearly said "Shin-Ra" in the company's logo, in the English version as well. Japan has adopted the "Shinra" parsing in text, but the logo continues to read "Shin-Ra".
• Starfish Character: Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo each represent different aspects of Sephiroth, and Kadaj ultimately turns into him. The other two have this ability as well, but the producers thought it would be over the top to show three Sephiroths, so only Kadaj was shown achieving it.
• The Starscream: Rufus is revealed to have been this to President Shinra in Last Order, secretly working against his father in hopes of replacing him, but Sephiroth solved the problem for him.
• Sticks to the Back: Cloud's BFS. Advent Children shows quite clearly that he uses a sheath/holster, though in Crisis Core, SOLDIER troops are fitted with magnetic holsters for their swords.
• Together in Death: Aerith and Zack. Subverted, Aerith promptly turns down Zack when he playfully flirts with her in the Lifestream.
• Tragic Bromance: Cloud and Zack. Although this is kind of vague, it's elaborated on in the other entries of the franchise such as Last Order, Crisis Core, and Advent Children.
• Trauma Conga Line
  • Holy crap, Denzel. The "On The Way To A Smile" novella and OAV spares him no suffering.
  • The other novellas for Barret, Yuffie, and Red XIII.
  • Cloud himself. Up to Eleven. Before the game even starts, he's already: (1) endured a lonely, alienated childhood; (2) been told he's too weak to become a SOLDIER; (3) watched his hero Sephiroth destroy his hometown and nearly murder both his childhood crush Tifa and his good friend Zack; (4) suffered over four years of sadistic experimentation by Hojo; and finally (5) is forced to helplessly watch Zack die in a gutwrenching heroic last stand to protect him.
• True Companions: AVALANCHE, plus Zack in Cloud's case. Zack has his own True Companions in Crisis Core, ditto the Turks.
• Tyke-Bomb: Sephiroth and Kadaj.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: Sephiroth's sword, Masamune, is explicitly stated to be a weapon that only he can use. At one point, the team sees the sword sticking out of the corpse of President Shinra, but they don't take it, presumably for this reason. In the Last Order anime's recreation of the Nibelheim scene, Tifa attempts to use this weapon to slash Sephiroth and fails for this reason, though this was not present in Crisis Core's version of the same scene.
• White-Haired Pretty Boy: Lots of 'em.

edited 3rd Mar '13 5:56:29 PM by DrakeClawfang

If there aren't significantly more tropes than that for that Compilation page I'm not sure it's worth splitting them off. It would just make it harder to find the tropes. Also, many of them are either Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children or Crisis Core, so they should be moved to those pages instead. And a few belong on the main page.

Several of those are also Zero Context Examples and need beefing up to be valid entries.

Well, for one, do we have a page for every item in the compilation? Lesseeee...

• Final Fantasy VII: Ok.
• Crisis Core: Ok.
• Final Fantasy VII Advent Children: Ok.
• Dirge Of Cerberus: Ok.
• Before Crisis: Ok.

It appears we lack:

• Last Order: Final Fantasy VII
• On The Way To A Smile
• Maiden Who Travels The Planet (though its canonicity is highly debatable, that doesn't stop it from getting a page, provided it has tropes)

edited 4th Mar '13 7:29:16 AM by lu127

That's a fair point. I'd also add that while I understand the reason the page FF 7 page is locked, if a Compilation page, and pages for those spin-offs as well, were made, they would likely grow fairly quite a bit beyond just the examples listed.