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can't believe how hot i looked just before the start of the year

what happened

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i kinda feel bad about making Jessie's (and Aya's by extension) mom somewhat of an antagonist for the most part of Aya's story, while in the remake she's shown to be caring and worried about her daughter.

that's what happens when your oc starts out as a self-insert, with her upbringing being in a large part what shaped her as a person, while having been a Rasberry only for a half of her actual lifetime as a character.

now, i believe that i did her justice by explaining everything and providing her with a space to grow before her appearance in ff7r, but it still stings a bit, especially since i'm a sucker for quality mother-daughter time/relationship in fiction (gee, i wonder why ;-;). she seems lovely honestly and i feel like i hurt her in a way.

well, water under the bridge, i reckon. wouldn't ever change Aya's backstory. it's too important to her as a character and me as an author

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(trying to give relationship advice) from a narrative perspective i think both of you dying together would be the most emotionally satisfying resolution but i’m guessing that’s not what you want to hear

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realized i havent posted about them here: meet loki, my ff7 kiddo (they/them)!

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Finally, after three months of active development (six if you count the work done before her slight revamp) Aya’s toyhou.se page is finally ready, making her story, along with lots of additional information, fully accessible for the first time ever! It makes for a perfect introduction to her as a character, covering her story in its entirety, and from now on, when talking about her I’m going to be largely referring to the information included there. 

The idea for the page was inspired by the page of @fangirl-1st-class’s FFVII character, Raven. Seeing it for the first time has rekindled my long forgotten dream of making a wiki entry-style page for one of my OCs and, seeing as I’ve gotten completely consumed by FFVII’s universe since the start of the year, Aya was the perfect character to finally make it a reality. 

Some additional rambling below…

When I was only starting to write Aya’s story, I couldn’t expect it to end up being as detailed and expansive. While I was originally planning to make it around the length of Fandom pages of other FFVII party members, I quickly realized that it wouldn’t end up being the case if I wanted to be as thorough, not wanting anything I might find important to go unsaid. Effectively, this makes it read like something between a wiki entry and a poorly written fanfiction, but I quickly realized that I wouldn’t want it any other way. This page was a big undertaking, and actually following through on finishing Aya’s story to a satisfying result is something I’m very proud of.

As of writing this, I’ve yet to touch on some additional (very optional and inconsequential) sections, along with Dirge of Cerberus, which I haven’t had time to play yet, as well as add some pictures to improve the reading experience. Her story, though, where it stands, is complete and has an ending that I personally find satisfying. Dirge of Cerberus, due to the nature of its story, shouldn’t really affect it, making Aya a guest appearance at most.

Aya started out as a self-insert made for an OC x canon fic series of mine, but as the time progressed I started growing gradually more unsatisfied with her being only that, longing for her to become independent from the ship I’ve put her into, find her true purpose in the universe and become someone very important to most party members at the very least. This led to a slight revamp of her character halfway through, effectively being an expansion of her backstory, giving her not only the means to fight, but more than enough motivation to join Cloud in pursuit of Sephiroth - a perfect fit for an FFVII party member, and someone who I did my best to make become irreplaceable to Cloud and Tifa. I also decided to convey many of my own thoughts and feelings about this universe’s characters and events, through her words and actions, and I can only hope I did right by all of my favorites.

Aya also made me further analyze my favorite characters and appreciate the compilation’s story even more, as I actually had to read through the original game’s script again, as well as rewatch Advent Children. Coincidentally, this made me appreciate post-FFVII’s story much more, which is a nice bonus.

Since Aya wouldn’t exist at all if it wasn’t for Claudia Strife - who in her canon ends up as her wife - and Jessie - who ended up as her younger sister after the revamp (guess how this might affect her motivation to join Cloud) - it only feels right to include them in the tags as well, since I love Jessie, and…

I really like Cloud’s mom…

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A short transfem Cloud x Jessie comfort fic I suddenly felt like writing yesterday ;*

Keep reading

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idk

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ff7 doodles

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fun fact: "large language models are not conscious intelligences they're just predictive typing algorithms, they don't have minds, and they cannot be the victims of racism because they cannot be the victims of anything because they're literally just fancy text generators please for the love of god stop personifying them you're playing right into the hands of these big tech companies that want to act like they're the new Promethei so they can sell that vision to their shareholders" and "wow you were really quick to jump on the idea that you could make up slurs for robots, and the speed and degree of glee with which you did so makes me feel like the judgement of your peers was literally the only thing holding you back from dropping actual slurs all the time, that all you needed was an acceptable target, and that is honestly pretty worrying to me." can both be true at the same time. these are not antithetical concepts.

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if you're transmisogyny-exempt, each of us has every right to see you as a potential threat until we're proven otherwise. it should be common sense at this point.

guess i'm just growing too tired to even convey what i mean. i'm done with coddling fellow adults to even hope to start being treated as a human being. i can scream all i want, but just like all my work, it's gonna end up getting lost in the void. i'm too tired to bother to acknowledge someone's ignorance as just that, and not something that actually harms me. even the acknowledgement of my feelings, as careful as it can be, gets treated as me stepping out of my lane, because i'm not the quiet person you can just bully - after all i should be happy that i'm not getting actively hate-crimed. it's much easier and more effective to just tell you to go fuck yourself, or kill yourself even, instead of expecting some privileged ignorant fuck to change their ways. do your own research. it's your responsibility to treat me with respect, not mine to coddle you to no avail. people like you are an active threat to the lives of my sisters and no amount of bargaining seems to ever change it. make of this what you will.

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I have found that many people who have not had a trans female or trans feminine experience often have trouble wrapping their brains around the concept of trans-misogyny, so I will offer the following two anecdotes to help illustrate what I mean by the term. Once, about two years ago, I was walking down the street in San Francisco, and a trans woman happened to be walking just ahead of me. She was dressed femininely, but not any more feminine than a typical cis woman. Two people, a man and a woman, were sitting on a doorstep, and as the trans woman walked by, the man turned to the woman he was sitting next to and said, “Look at all the shit he’s wearing,” and the woman he was with nodded in agreement. Now presumably the word “shit” was a reference to femininity — specifically, the feminine clothing and cosmetics the trans woman wore. I found this particular comment to be quite telling. After all, while cis women often receive harassing comments from strange men on the street, it is rather rare for those men to address those remarks to a female acquaintance and for her to apparently approve of his remarks. Furthermore, if this same man were to have harassed a cis woman, it is unlikely that he would do so by referring to her feminine clothing and makeup as “shit.” Similarly, someone who is on the trans masculine spectrum could potentially be harassed, but it is unlikely that his masculine clothing would be referred to as “shit.” Thus, trans-misogyny is both informed by, yet distinct from, transphobia and misogyny, in that it specifically targets transgender expressions of femaleness and femininity.

The second example of trans-misogyny that I’d like to share occurred at an Association for Women in Psychology conference I attended in 2007 (for those unfamiliar with that organization, it is essentially a feminist psychology conference). One psychologist gave a presentation on the ways in which feminism has informed her approach to therapy. During the course of her talk, she discussed two transgender clients of hers, one on the trans male/masculine spectrum, the other on the trans female/feminine spectrum. Their stories were very similar in that both had begun the process of physically transitioning but were having second thoughts about it. First, the therapist discussed the trans masculine spectrum person, whose gender presentation she described simply as being “very butch.” She discussed this individual’s transgender expressions and issues in a respectful and serious manner, and the audience listened attentively. However, when she turned her attention to the trans feminine client, she went into a very graphic and animated description of the trans person’s appearance, detailing how the trans woman’s hair was styled, the type of outfit and shoes she was wearing, the way her makeup was done, and so on. This description elicited a significant amount of giggling from the audience, which I found to be particularly disturbing given the fact that this was an explicitly feminist conference. Clearly, if a male psychologist gave a talk at this meeting in which he went into such explicit detail regarding what one of his cis female clients was wearing, most of these same audience members, as well as the presenter, would surely (and rightfully) be appalled and would view such remarks to be blatantly objectifying. In fact, in both of these incidents I have described, comments that would typically be considered extraordinarily misogynistic if they were directed at cis women are not considered beyond the pale when directed at trans women.

—serano

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I truly truly believe that the most important thing you can do in fandom is be a cheerleader. comment on fics. reblog art and rave in the tags. support the people making the things you want to see. this is how you keep a fandom alive. this is how you get more of what you want. you never know: that person could have decided to make more just because you liked it.

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reminder that transandrophobia doesn't exist and that MRAs are fucking clowns. Do not follow me if you participate in these circles

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sorta funny how many cis people seem to think being an ally just means like. not actively commiting hate crimes. "i'm an ally i'm just worried that hrt is dangerous and i dont like when they shove pride right in our faces and i think all this sjw stuff in movies is unrealistic and im worried about the children-" okay. so i dont think you know what that word means,

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The fact that people are treating the idea that men have privilege over women as like. An example of "radfem" thought and a dangerous indication of trans women falling for "TERF" thought is actually quite scary. This is like basic feminism. No, this idea isn't contradicted by intersectionality. What are we doing here.

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really hard not to see the redefinition of TERF from "feminist who wants to exclude trans women from feminism and women's spaces" to "feminist who isnt niceys to men" as, in part, conscious violence, because you've managed to call trans women men, to make our oppression about yourself, and to call us a hate group directed at us, all in one. genuinely makes me want to hurt someone.