I was trying to find some Rufus/Tseng doujin I thought I had, and found this essay on Rufus instead, which appears to have never been posted here. I'm pretty sure it's from the same time period as this essay on my love of cities, which sort of informs it a little XD.


I should probably begin this with a little summary of the sketch I'm building of President Shinra - he plays a really key role in Rufus' character. As a younger man, he was much like his son is portrayed in fanon - intelligent, charismatic, a born leader, as well as stubborn and a little controlling. He built Shinra, Inc out of basically nothing. He loved his wife very deeply, but she died when Rufus was five or six, possibly of complications from a second child, and it really changed him. He became withdrawn, angry towards his one remaining child, afraid of change, possibly alcoholic.

If I had to used one adjective to describe Rufus, it would be control freak. This is part of what drives him and his father farther apart - President Shinra tries to control Rufus, and it drives him crazy, and makes him even more controlling. This is also why Scarlet/Rufus would be really hot but not work out very well. Rufus needs to be in control, all the time, and Scarlet strikes me as the type of woman who would let nobody own her. Rufus does strike me as the type who does like a little contest of wills in his romantic relationships, someone who will fight him rather than give in immediately. He also maintains a high standard of self-control - thus Tifa's comment about nobody ever seeing him bleed or cry. Around all but a select few, he is pure ice.

At the same time, my Rufus is kind of an introvert. He feels like he's better than most of the people around him (and probably is), and fears emotional commitment most of the rest of the time. He thinks that if he gets emotionally close to people, they will control and use him like his father tries to do. He can be a bit of a ladies man, in that he can be outwardly utterly charming when he wants to be, but he doesn't follow through most of the time. In the rare case he does, it's never with any commitment. His only real friends are the Turks, and even among them, there is still distance - the only one he is really close to is Tseng, who is the closest to him in age, and the one he's known the longest.

My Rufus is also very athletic, and more than a little vain about it. He's got a bit of a temper - not as quick to anger as, say, Asher, but when he gets angry, he stays angry (Asher has my temper - quick to snap, but also quick to calm down), and exercise is a vent for that anger. It is also a way of having control over himself, much like I suspect is true of Vergil. He's probably proficient in more than one form of of hand-to-hand combat (nothing is quite as good a vent as punching things), as well as being a fairly expert marksman, although I'm not sure it's actually possible to fire a regular double-barreled shotgun one-handed, so my personal vote is that it's a modified one - the stock is shorter, too. I also put some thought into what sort of recreational sport would probably draw him, and realized that swimming was a likely choice. There isn't very many places that are safe to run even in Upper Midgar for the President's son, and both long-distance running and lap-swimming tend to be a good way to clear one's mind (a side note - out of all my other Midgar characters, only Sam can swim). He takes a great deal of pride about it, and I think in the post-game through AC timeline, he probably has a lot of self-hatred about being weak. (...Yeah, he's a bit like Vergil in my mind. Except while Rufus will get strong, Vergil, unfortunately will still be half-human.)

I also don't see Rufus as much of a manipulator. He has a few tricks up his sleeve, but he's no Vetinari (okay, so nobody is Vetinari, but Rufus doesn't come close). He wishes he were skilled at manipulating people so they would do what he wants without knowing it, but really, the only way he knows of getting what he wants is to intimidate people - the fear speech is born out of that. He needs to be in control, and the only way he knows of achieving that over others is to scare them into submission.

Rufus in Advent Children, though, is a changed man. I suspect that this has something to do with his city being torn down around him (Rufus/Midgar OTP!), as well as the destruction of the empire he longed to control. He was also very much reminded of his own mortality, and that of the few people he cares about - I'm still wondering how the hell both he and Tseng survived, as he was caught in a pretty big explosion, and when we last see Tseng in-game, he looks very close to death. Rufus' limitations frustrate him, but at the same time, he has started to learn to accept that no, he cannot control everything, but it's okay.