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Digital Mind Wave
Geramee Hensley
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"Too much hope is the opposite of despair... an overpowering love may consume you in the end." —Vincent Valentine, Final Fantasy VII
(Note: Spoilers for Final Fantasy VII)
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Searing through the sky, a terminal diagnosis burns red, blue, purple, pink. The third act of Final Fantasy VII begins after the heroes fail to stop the end of the world. Sephiroth, the antagonist—you’ve probably heard of him, even if you never played FFVII—summons a giant meteor. A calamity so large, it consumes the screen’s periphery as you zoom around the overworld in the airship you stole from the Big Evil Corporation exploiting the earth. Later, an inconsolable dirge supplants the optimistic and adventurous main theme you’ve been accustomed to so far.
Memory is an image rendered by electricity and seen by the heart alone. The cosmology of FFVII states the planet itself has memory. All living things die, and their spirits return to the planet as currents of beautiful wispy green waves swirling under the dirt. An individual’s memories don’t die with their body; the planet folds them into its own.
The Big Evil Corporation, Shinra Electric Power Company, constructs massive reactors to extract and process the lifestream into a usable form of energy. Shinra promises big dividends and jobs to the lifestream-rich towns who agree to the construction, and towns who don’t consent befall sudden and “coincidental” tragedies. Towns who do agree watch the landscape wither, drained of its memory and spirit.
An act of ecoterrorism ignites the plot of FFVII. You are Cloud, an ex-SOLDIER. SOLDIER is a class of supersoldiers—the true elite of Shinra’s military. So, Cloud defects; he becomes a mercenary; and a childhood friend—Tifa—reconnects with Cloud and recruits him into a little terrorism. You have to blow up a data center—I mean reactor.
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When I was eight years old, my parents took me to see Moulin Rouge! in theaters. Satine, the heroine played by Nicole Kidman, falls in love with the penniless poet and hopelessly idealistic romantic Christian. Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman really bring their A-game to the zany, tragic, campy, garish, all-over-the-place script but nothing, nothing, nothing outshines the music and their vocal performances.
The Duke of Monroth arranges a contract to bind Satine to him in exchange for funding the Moulin Rouge’s extravagant theater production—a mise en abyme. In a silly little mix up, Satine mistakes Christian for The Duke, falls in love, and this error threatens the lives of our protagonists and the financial solvency of the cabaret. Very early on, the film establishes that Satine has consumption. She coughs blood into a handkerchief, and a terminal diagnosis burns red, blue, purple, pink.
Satine tries to destroy Christian’s love for her to save his life. She picks The Duke, tells the writer to get lost, and she ultimately fails, when at the climax, Satine and Christian reprise the only original track written for the movie, "Come What May," in an utterly heartwrenching, effusive duet. Satine and Christian reaffirm their love; the ideals of the Bohemian Revolution—beauty, truth, freedom, and love—emerge victorious. The owner of the Moulin Rouge punches The Duke, and a gun flies out of The Duke’s hand, leaps out a window, and cartoonishly sails through the sky and ricochets off the Eiffel tower.
Amor vincit omnia. The curtains fall. Satine, overcome with her illness, dies in Christian’s arms as he weeps helplessly into the cold and sweaty air.
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Ten years pass, and Square Enix releases a prequel to FFVII—Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. In Crisis Core, you play as Zack Fair, an excitable 2nd Class SOLDIER who aspires to reach the highest rank, 1st Class, like his mentor Angeal. All of the 1st Class SOLDIERS look like J-pop artists. They are boiz who like to hang out and get all sweaty together training including Sephiroth, who has not yet gone full-genocidal, but is a respected war hero—so still a bit genocidal.
Final Fantasy VII as a series, like Moulin Rouge!, knows when to not take itself not-so seriously. Outrageous humor lines the impending doom of all you know. The original game features a cross-dressing minigame to break into a brothel-keeper’s den. Crisis Core goes into detail about Sephiroth’s hair care routine to achieve his luscious silver locks.
Crisis Core also introduces a gameplay component called the “Digital Mind Wave.” The DMW represents Zack’s memories. It’s a slot machine spinning in the top-left corner of the screen with pictures of everyone you meet throughout the story. When the numbers stop and line up, you level up, get a temporary buff; or, when the faces match, you revisit a scene with that character then channel their memory into a devastating attack themed after who you remember.
A hidden equation in the game’s programming forces its hand on the scale. Progress through the game, and your chance of leveling up increases. Meet a new character, and the game adds their portrait to your DMW. A plot point occurs with specific characters and the likelihood of seeing their face rises. At times a robotic woman’s voice announces “MODULATING PHASE” as the game zooms in on the DMW and you watch the pictures align—sometimes in a dramatic fashion: the slot machine is one off, and then BAM, it snaps-to and forces the reels to match.
During the most tense moments of the story, the DMW goes into a state of heightened emotions. The blue-ish green outlines turns yellow and red. The wheel accelerates, sparks fly, and memories cut into gameplay. Triggers, triggers, triggers. While you fight, images of your friends flash on the screen then fade to signal what’s going through Zack’s mind. Modulating Phase. The recurrence, the bright sounds, the flash—the player’s lack of agency in all this heightens the emotions for them, too.
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In 2025, I began EMDR therapy. EMDR introduces a gameplay component called “bilateral stimulation,” which in my case meant holding two buzzers like controllers that would alternate with vibrations in my hands as my therapist walked with me through my memories.
We outlined my life.
We identified moments of heightened emotions.
I was told it was like a train ride. You travel the path, and things zip by you. You notice. You keep going. The slot machine spins. Sometimes it spins faster. Images flash. Bright, beautiful things. Your therapist asks what do you notice?
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Moulin Rouge! transformed me at an early age. Unasked, it loops and reminds me of my mother. The movie made me more like her—a penniless poet, a hopelessly idealistic romantic. A slot machine with the faces of everyone I love spins in my head.
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I replayed FFVII a month after my mom died. Act 2 of the story closes with the death of one of the main characters, Aerith. It’s one of the most famous deaths in all of video game history, making 11-year-olds cry everywhere. Before this death, you leap on stones making your way to an altar. Leap on the first stone, and you can’t go back.
You can’t go back, and if you’re replaying this game you know what’s about to happen. A terminal diagnosis burns the sky.
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In Crisis Core, your mentor Angeal does not shut up about protecting his honor, which is dubiously defined, but seems to mostly mean “follow your heart.” This honor—the heart—has a visual representation in Angeal’s “Buster Sword,” an iconic weapon fans know well as what Cloud will wield in the next game. When Angeal dies he bestows his honor, his dreams, and his big-ass sword to Zack, who must wield this honor as well as he can fight.
Zack is an idealistic, devoted, energetic dude. We may as well call him a penniless poet. He earns the nickname “Zack the Puppy” from those less enthused by his energetic attitude. His last name, “Fair” is a direct foil to Cloud’s—”Strife.” Cloud, in Crisis Core, is a lowly infantryman who Zack befriends quickly through their shared childhoods in backwater towns—both sites of Shinra reactors.
Because Crisis Core is a sequel, fans come in knowing how it all ends. Sephiroth loses his mind, conflagrates Cloud’s hometown, and Shinra rebuilds the town, pays a bunch of actors to inhabit it, then acts like nothing happened. Zack and Cloud are imprisoned, experimented on with weird alien magic by a mad scientist, and held in stasis for nearly four years, until Zack busts them out and hauls Cloud’s catatonic ass far-far away.
Aerith, the one who dies in FFVII, is Zack’s girlfriend. She lives in Midgar, a huge city where Shinra keeps its headquarters. On the outskirts of the city, Shinra tracks you down, and you confront their entire army.
You cannot go back. You cannot win. You fight infinite nameless soldiers, and don’t you dare bargain with infinity. While you fight, the DMW spins on. The faces of those you know slowly erase—white silhouettes spin outside memory’s sight. The battlefield narrows. Zack is strong, but he’s traveled a long way. Exhausted. Worn down. Memories loop and bust. They flash on the screen, interrupted by gun shots and gameplay. The DMW stutters. It rewinds. One face remains—Aerith. The DMW eats the screen, and memories cut in between your last breaths. The reels jam. The whole thing seizes, refusing to play the next memory. You hear her voice hellooooo, and then a final gunshot as green tessellation burns then fades to white.
One month before my mom dies, she sits on my bed. She asks are you ready for what's about to happen?
Looking at the memory together my therapist asks do you feel negative, positive, or neutral?
A terminal diagnosis—
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Zack dies but succeeds in rescuing Cloud. Cloud’s brain is fragile from mad scientist experiments and the trauma of seeing his town and nearly everyone he knows and loves mercilessly slaughtered by a super soldier. Cloud holds Zack as he dies, and Zack passes down the sword. He tells Cloud to protect his honor and his dreams. Protect your heart. You’re my living legacy.
Through a complicated cocktail of alien magic and PTSD, Cloud’s mind absorbs many of Zack's memories and persona. Cloud forgets himself; his identity collapses into Zack’s; and, in the next game you become Cloud, who is kind of Zack until the end of the third act. In this act, you, the player, become Cloud’s best friend, Tifa, who, through means of the lifestream—the literal totality of all living memory swirling beneath the planet—travels into Cloud’s psyche to help him remember who he truly is.
Tifa guides Cloud through his memories while a massive transparent image of himself writhes in the background. You, the player, you, the Cloud, you, the Tifa. Tiny little buzzers in your hand vibrate. All versions of yourself collapse in on one another. Cloud remembers who he is. Do you? Does this make you feel positive, negative, or neutral?
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Two years before my mom died we started working on a book together. We never finished it, but me and the version of her I hold within myself—a version both wholly her because the only version of people we get to hold of anybody is our version, and a version not wholly her—we will finish it. She worked on it until she couldn’t. The last full sentence she said to me was write it how you remember me. I remember. The slot machine accelerates. You’re my living legacy. I pick up the sword.
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I talk about EMDR with my partner. Or, I try to. I offer half a sentence. They invite me to say more. The slot machine jams up. The faces on it stutter.
They are so patient with me. They place their legs across my lap and look at me with eyes that help me see myself better. In these tiny moments, I understand the kind of love that inspires people to have children despite the meteor igniting the skyline. I push through the memory, and love forces its hand on the scale.
With tenderness, they look at me and ask would you like more coffee?
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Geramee is a penniless poet and a hopelessly idealistic romantic. They are in love.
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