I get so unsettled when I hear the English voice of the cast, as I said earlier during Remake, having a cast with generic American accent with a handful of exceptions is solidly the most incomprehensible decision. Though no one will ever top Vanille is how she speaks is her characterisation key (something I have rarely seen in films or TV shows even).

Currently my own perception of each regional accents are:

Both Tifa and Cloud: neutral European accent with Norweigan/German lean, both will unintentionally change their accents a little based on who they speak to. (If we are doing the centre of the universe is US thing, I'm going for Appalachian.)

Aeris: Mild subtle urban London accent with a slight association with stereotypical low socioeconomic traditionally, but just enough that people would be careful to stereotype her. I think it's the industrial Midgar that makes me think of 1800s London? I'm also saying subtle because I don't expect full on Cockney. (If we are doing the centre of the universe is US thing, I'm going for old time 1950s Bronx.)

Yuffie: Rapid fire Japanese tinted fluent native level English. (If we are doing the centre of the universe is US thing, don't because it can't not be racist in this context.)

Barret: Generic American, I'll take that. Sorry.

Nanaki: BBC broadcaster English, to UK Public School Boy Posh English. The latter is a distinctive kind of posh that people can never regain once they hit adulthood.

Cait: Convincingly Scottish. Which is the official version.

Cid: Not just Queenslander, but like Queenslander who was originally from regional 130km away from Cairns to now living in Logan. I'm extremely apologetic about this one.

Vincent: I kept on thinking a mix of Romanian and Polish.

I wanted to do a no romance route, but seems like the only way to get there is to alienate everyone as much as I could, which I hated a lot for whole heaps of reasons.

The least bad option is Yuffie, as you know Yuffie is only interested in materia and not Cloud. At most Yuffie will be talking at Cloud about materia, maybe fake some affection in order to get materia. Turned out it's the only "romance" I can tolerate.

I wanted Cloud to be a good reliable friend to both Aeris and Tifa, and I entirely do not want Cloud to date either of them. Nanaki is too developmentally young. Barret is... Yeah, while I warmed up to him a bit more in Rebirth compared to Remake, I still never really liked Barret solely due to how poorly he ran Avalanche.

Interestingly the one character I made my Cloud particularly nice to is Cait and it's entirely calculated move. It's really about convincing Reeve that the general population are people deserving to live outside of Shinra tyranny and Reeve is the only one in the party who could make a difference from top down level.

Something I hate, as in burning hatred about remake series, is how the romancing works. You can't even be in good terms with people without it being made into romance, I mean it's slightly less terrible than Bioware games where you are not even allowed to say to no sex whether you want it or not (and this isn't even touching the entire Tali romancing line is about how to isolate and groom a child as her commander), but really if we are not aiming for the absolute bottom of barrel FFVIIRebirth is pretty bad.

This is the only time I "guide dammit" it other than the handful of times the game instructions were particularly unclear: specifically because I don't want to romance anyone but I also don't want to be an asshole as if that's the only way to draw boundary.

Especially Persona series already had such perfect solution for this: you get to an affection threshold, then the game asks you if you are platonic or romantically interested. One is no less than another. Particularly moving one was when you wanted to be the platonic best friend of Futaba: she was in such a particular situation that she needed a friend so much more than a boyfriend at that point.

Ultimately it's an issue of consent, but also it's an issue of non-romantic relationship isn't a lesser consolation prize ffs.

Anyway happy aromantic awareness week?