#FF7 Fic Excavation

[stormears]

Thinking about mid to late 2020 when I started this project of scrolling through ALL the FF7 fics on Fanfiction.net and making observations and taking notes about trends, tropes, ships and unique fics. From the first fic up to the date FF7R came out. It was a big endeavor. I got pretty far! Made 3 gigantic posts.

The fourth one has been half-finished in my drafts for um...three years?? I've seen a little bit of FF7 Rebirth on twitter and it's made me want to revisit the project. Haven't played it yet because I don't own a PS5. But the few posts I've seen had me revisiting my own tag and remembering what I'd read through before.

[chofitia]

Hello, I just wanted to say thank you for paying attention to all my "FF7 Fic Excavation" posts. I didn't expect them to be popular or have more than maybe 5 people interact with them, I am mostly writing them for myself/for funsies, but still the fact that you read and reblogged them all and had something to say made me pretty happy! I'm guessing you got the leaked AC movie back then via Limewire or something? Must've been incredibly exciting. Anyway, thanks for reading :)

No problem! It was seriously a trip down memory lane to reexamine all of these tropes and patterns in FF7 fic, and it’s something that I wouldn’t have the patience to do myself. Thanks for your hard work.

It wasn’t Limewire, I don’t think, where I got my copy of Advent Children (and before anyone asks, I have a legit vanilla DVD and a deluxe box and a copy of Complete.) but I remember getting it so fast to watch it right away that fansubbers hadn’t finished the subtitle track yet, and I had to download that and insert it separately.

[stormears]

(I never updated the post with more '99 - '04 fics. I'm still pretty proud of doing this research though.)

FF7R Fanfic Exvacation - Trends of the Times PART 1

Welcome to my ECOLOGICAL SURVEY OF FF.NET’S FF7 ARCHIVE.

I’m scrolling through (most of) the 36 thousand English FF7 fanfics on FF.net. I’m mostly a new fan because of the remake (know some spoilers now tho) and got curious what the fanfic culture of years ago was like…of FFN specifically. Because that’s what I know and used for many years. I’ll go up till shortly after Remake’s release date, I think. 

PART 1, YOU ARE HERE! // Part 2: May - Dec 2005 // Part 3: Jan - Jul 2006 

I had 1458 pages to go through at the start. Got through 30 of them before deciding I would, uh, take liberties and skip a few pages sometimes. Sometimes 2, sometimes up to 4. Because while I liked this project, I also want to eventually, actually READ some fics for this new fandom of mine. And the oldest ones don’t often…have that high-quality writing. Or they’re about late-game plot deets that I, a newbie fool, don’t know or want to read about yet! (Note 3 months later, I kind of regret this and may go back and read more deeply about the 1999-2004 fics. Future posts of mine don’t skip nearly this much.)

SOME FINDS AND FACTS:

- July 23, 1999: first English language FF7 fic posted

- February 2000: First mention of Aerith, instead of original translation Aeris

- Dec 3, 2000: First Sephiroth/Cloud fanfic posted, refers to the pairing as “shounen-ai”. Did not see the pairing being called “yaoi” till later, in fics published June 2001 and after.

- GENERAL: a lot of poems and songfics. Often mournful fics with son lyrics set in between every few paragraphs, from popular bands of the early 2000s (Metallica, Creed, Weird Al Yankovic, Avril Lavigne) or just the song with FF names and words plugged in

- GENERAL: Humor or light-hearted crackfic is the most popular genre, followed by romance. By mid-2001, TifaxCloud and AerithxCloud seem about neck-and-neck in popularity. 

-  June 14, 2001: First Tifa hate fic I came across. It’s written in script style, about the characters having fun and drinking at a house party. Author says in opening AN: “I truly think she is a slut.”

- GENERAL: My knowledge of what happens after the Remake is spotty but I didn’t expect there to be more than 10 AerithxRufus fanfics and there’s been…at least 10?

- GENERAL: One story has just 1 chapter, and the summary invites readers to go to the author’s Geocities page to read the rest! May 31, 2002. 

- January 2, 2003: a “fic” that is a group of haikus about the Turks, that was neat. Points for uniqueness. 

- One summary: “Not yaoi - you ought to read it just for that!” Although M/M pairings and/or self-declared yaoi makes up 10 - 15% of everything I’ve scrolled through so far. “Crazy yaoi fangirls” doesn’t appear to be a popular demographic here yet.  

- 1999-2002 fics often had very short, poorly written and meta-factual (?) summaries. Not detailed, more like facts about the story you might write on a sticky note, and poor grammar. One might be like: This is a story from Aeriths perspective. Its about her talking to thhe planet…..I wrote this in math class btw. Thanks for helping me Ashley R&R! (In 2003 to 2004 times, this is really tapering off and legit summaries get more common.)

- 2004 sampler platter of fics: 1) Aeris (not “th”) watches an irl Australian tennis player’s match on TV, goes to his house and kills his girlfriend, is sentenced to death by chocobo pecking 2) Sephiroth is a vampire looking for a mate and sets his sights on Tifa, also a vampire; they meet in a seedy/dangerous bar 3) After President Shinra is killed, the Shinra grunts discuss how they like Rufus much more because he doesn’t view himself as too good for dirty/dangerous work and isn’t afraid to be on the front lines with the grunts

- First mention of the Advent Children in a modern AU crackfic about child Sephiroth and his “little brothers” posted July 24, 2004. But google says the movie didn’t come out till September 2005? Idk. And yet a later, unrelated fic posted on February 20, 2005 mentions “the upcoming movie Advent Children.”

- 2004 and 2005 have a lot of Yuffie representation. I haven’t seen the word “Yuffentine” since I last seriously used/surfed DeviantART in 2012.

- We are at May 2005, I’ve skimmed and simplified almost 6 years of fanfic.

I’m going to put the brakes on my liberal skipping policy. There’s 1144 pages left as of this time of writing, April 24, 2020. I will only skip 2 pages max if I want to “hurry,” so I will view at absolute minimum 644 more pages of fanfic before I’m done. Again, I’ll probably go up to the day of Remake’s release (I’m more concerned with the PAST trends here) or maybe just a bit after its release for better comparison of the very old and very new. 

This is taking a long time, and obviously eating into time I could use for my own fanfics or anything else in life, but damn it’s fun.

(Note August 2, 2020: I SWEAR I’m gonna update this post soonish with more ‘99 - ‘04 fics :/ ) 

[stormears]

FF7 Fanfiction Excavation

I’m diving into FF7 fanfiction for the first time because I played the game (Remake) for the first time, and it made me so happy it’s like God himself picked me up from school and took me to McDonald’s and it made me LOSE weight. 

But I wasn’t sure where to start, because surely the fandom was at its biggest in the early 2000s when scattered, individual fanfic archives were more common, and even the growing FF.net didn’t have character tags. If I just search tags, pairing names, or AO3, I’d be cutting out SO MUCH old but good or unappreciated content. While I’m mostly on the hunt for shipfics, I want to be open to any good plot or idea, and I don’t want JUST the popular fics (so many appear to be timetravel AUs) so here’s the plan.

I’m scrolling through all thirty-six thousand English fics on FFN. Or as much of that as I can stand. I’ll read all the summaries, maybe stop to read a few fics on the way, make notes of what I observe as I go. 

I’ll probably take breaks to just sort by favorites or reviews and read some big popular ones too. I mean I’ve got years to read this stuff before Part 2 comes out. 

Just call me Chadley, because I WILL DOCUMENT THE FINDINGS OF MY RESEARCH...

[stormears]

FF7 Fanfiction Excavation - Trends of the Times PART 2

A long drag through the FF7 archive on FF.net, English fics only, sorted by publishing date, because I’m curious. This post: started at May 2005 and went to the end of the year, or page 1149 of the archive to page 1095. 

(Part 1, Jul ‘99 to Dec ‘05 Here...will split into 2 bigger posts probs) /// Part 2 YOU ARE HERE // Part 3: Jul - Dec 2005 HERE 

Keep in mind that I’ve only played Remake. I know a ton of OG spoilers, but some stories or ideas will just fly over my head. Ex., I don’t know who Shera is; I’m not sure if Sephiroth being a “general” in the war is fanon/popular fic idea or canon; I searched most reviewed/favorited stories on both FFN and AO3 recently and it was news to me that time travel is a VERY popular plot in this fandom. For that reason I didn’t think to start counting the time travel fics till mid 2005. 

*** = denotes a fic that’s not necessarily good but definitely interesting. Maybe a legitimately good story from my personal sampling of it, maybe a unique plot or character interaction, maybe something that made me go “oh my god” and want to share it.  

FACTS AND FINDS, FROM MAY 2005 ONWARD: 

- GENERAL: It seems Tifa is the most popular girl for shipfics involving a female character. Tifa/Reno! Tifa/Cloud! A dash of Tifa/Sephiroth! And Aerith is shipped with Sephiroth almost as often as she is with Cloud.

- First genderbend fic I noticed: June 12, 2005, about Vincent turning female and adjusting to life as a woman 

- July 2, 2005: “ YAOI did you read? YAOI! Please do not read if you don't like guy on guy action. R&R please!” (Middle school reading experience ACTIVATED)  

- “Yaoi” appears to have become more common usage in 2005 

- Red XIII fics: I realize now that I’ve seen next to no fics about him. The ones I can remember are very short and reflective fics rather than an actual story, plot or desire driving the character to do something. It’s always his thoughts and feelings on the events of the game after it’s all behind him, or on another character, or a death, etc. One fic which hinted at sexual content tho. 

- Oct 4, 2005: Okay it’s likely there’ve been time travel fics that I skimmed over or didn’t realize were actually timetravel. Today is the first one I noticed was explicitly time travel. Cloud goes back in time to when Sephiroth is an 11-year-old boy and kidnaps him. Only 2 chapters. 

- ***Oct 20, 2005: Possibly the best Rude-centric fic in existence (a 30k oneshot) was posted: “Epitaph” by grayout. Rude and Reno’s relationship from Reno’s initiation process into the Turks, and their partnership afterward. Exemplary writing quality with fantastic buildup of relationship and trust, if not “love”, or if not for long. Told in the 2nd POV where “you” refers to Rude. Truly amazing.***

- GENERAL: Time-travel fics kinda kicked off this year. I noticed a few in 2004 but 15-ish in 2005. There’s probably more time travel fics I didn’t notice because I’ve been looking at things so broadly for...400 ish pages now. Sorry. 

- GENERAL: both stereotypical “Mary Sue” fics (OC girl with tragic past gets involved with canon characters) and CloudxSephiroth fics had a slight uptick in 2005. I first noticed around midyear and counted around 15-20 of each by the year’s end. Stereotypes are forming. 

- Author Tidbit: Just noticed a certain fic author keeps showing up, I see their Hatsune Miku icon every handful of pages. A lot of oneshots and 2-3 chapter fics. They’ve written 159 total fics. And yet their profile only shows 35 of those. Idk why but anyway, I just thought, that’s a lot of fics! 

- Dec 26, 2005: a series of small oneshots/ficlets about Barret’s life. Seeing as it does not place Marlene front-and-center or make it specifically about his parent relationship to her, it may be the first Barret-centric fic I’ve seen yet, so that’s notable. Called “Haven.” 

- Dec 26, 2005: the word “YESH” 

- ***Dec 26, 2005: a fic about the three Advent Children escaping research labs when they are actual children, with adventure, despair, hope and a lot of brotherly fluff. Interesting to me because the plot and vibe reminds me of a movie, like Homeward Bound or Plague Dogs. Even though those are books now that I think about it pffft. Called “Ame ni Matte” by tamagopants.  

- Dec 28, 2005, largest review count I’ve seen so far: A modern AU called “My Disjointed Life,” humor/romance genre, about Cloud as a first-year university student dealing with “attractive girls, crazy professors and psychotic roommates.” 155k words and 1253 reviews! 

- ***Dec 30, 2005: Fic with neat character interaction of “ex-enemies.” After Advent Children, Rufus asks for Tifa’s help in rebuilding the world his father’s company helped ruin. Called “This Evolution” by anoneight8.

- There sure is a lot going on in December 2005. 

- GENERAL: From fall 2005 onward, there is a heck of a lot of Advent Children representation, as you might expect. The movie released in Japanese theaters on Sept 14, 2005. But the movie did get leaked online and torrented a lot on Sept 11, 2005, which is I assume how a lot of these English-speaking ficwriters experienced the movie, seeing as it wasn’t released in the US till sometime in 2006. (This release date info found HERE on the FF fandom wikia)

I think I’m going to stop here, at December 31, 2005, and maybe do 1 post per year now. We’ll see. I still have 1095 pages to go through, and even when I get annoyed and tired of it, I want to at least read through HALF of those pages. 

Stay tuned. 

[stormears]

Her Cat Red XIII

Reading old fanfiction and came across a Clerith Cinderella AU from 2006. The idea of anyone having a cat named Red XIII is so silly to me that I had to pause to laugh before I kept reading. 

Her evil step-sisters are Elena and Jessie, her best friends (Cinderella does have human friends here) are Yuffie, daughter of a circus manager, and Tifa, daughter of a farmer. Cloud is the prince and Elmyra is the fairy godmother. 

[stormears]

Minor edit to this post, I might have found the person who made "Reno Sinclair" a thing in this fandom's fic scene, they said they first used the name in 2004.

FF7 Fic Excavation - Trends of the Times Part 3

“A long drag through the FF7 archive on FF.net, English fics only, sorted by publishing date, going to Remake release date or shortly after, because I’m curious what people were writing about. 

This post: started at Dec 31, 2005 and went to July 31, 2006. 6 months instead of a year because I kept getting distracted by individual unique fics. Lotta, lotta oneshots. This was page 1095 of the archive to page 1024.

Part 1, Jul 1999 - Dec 2005 HERE (will prob split that into Part 1 and 1.5 when I add more content to it) // Part 2 Jan - Jul 2005 HERE // Part 3 YOU ARE HERE 

Reminder that OP here has only played Remake, but knows probably 70% of the OG game through spoiler hunting. I barely know about Yuffie, Vincent and Cid. It was news to me that Zack didn’t have a last name till Crisis Core and a popular fanon name for him back in the day was “Zackary Donovan”. (I found a fic from Feb 2006 that calls him that!) Apparently he was also called “Zax” in the OG and “Zack” came later? Idk I’m leaving that alone for now.

**** = denotes not just a fic that’s interesting for my trend list, but a really worthwhile one I recommend people actually look at. Not necessarily for great writing/story quality, but could also be for interesting character interactions, total weirdness, or some other unique quality.

SOME FACTS AND FINDS:

- Jan 8, 2006: a Cinderella story where Aerith (not ‘s’) is Cinderella and dreaming of the prince of the kingdom, Cloud Strife. Will true love conquer all!?

- Jan 15, 2006: first AerithxTifa story I can recall seeing so far, a high school AU written by a high schooler. Author calls it “Tiferith.” From my skim of first few chapters: Elena outs Tifa’s sexuality to Scarlet so she can get in with the popular kids, Yuna from FFX and Sora from KH are talking about their summer vacations, Rinoa from FFVIII says Tifa deserved to get beat up because the Bible says being gay is bad.

- By end of January 2006, the pairing of Vincent and Cid is being called “Valenwind” more than CidVin. I think it’s interesting that the ship name changed to being more of a “word” or a fluid-sounding name, rather than the typical smushing together of names like SephCloud or RenoRude. As far as I’ve seen, the only other ship to do this is “Yuffentine”. 

- GENERAL: On that note, the most popular Reno pairing doesn’t appear to be RenoRude anyway, despite a lot of their screentime being shared with each other, which often boosts shipping interest in any series. The most popular Reno pairing so far is RenoTifa! Often called RenoTi. (Second is RenoRufus, third RenoYuffie)

- Feb 1, 2006: an author references that their fic is a response to a LiveJournal community prompt. Blast from the past! 

- Feb 4, 2006: the first male OC-centric story I can recall seeing, about Cloud’s twin brother…Josh Strife. Josh kills 5 Shinra soldiers by himself before being told by Tseng to leave his hometown and go join SOLDIER. Cloud says goodbye to him and stays home with Tifa.

- ****Feb 26, 2006: Story titled “The-Secretary.” Summary: “Sephiroth’s new secretary is a little…eccentric.” The secretary is Jessie. Crack fic with 50 short chapters.

- Mar 13, 2006: A sign of the times: a songfic about Vincent featuring “In the End” by Linkin Park

- ****Mar 30, 2006: Nice little atmospheric, character-focused fic of Rude and his secret fondness for blues music and playing guitar. 2k. SUM: “Tonight, appearing live, the one and only Rude.” Black Suit Blues

- GENERAL: Midway through April 2006, I notice two popular trends: Yuffentine is the ship most often written about, and Aerith is more commonly called Aeris around this time. Notable amount of support for RenoxYuffie and RenoxTifa.

- Sampler platter of oddball fics in late April/early May: 1) “[Sephiroth x Cait Sith] Because really, no one understands the beauty of their relationship.” It was 800 words, half humorous and half serious, sex was discussed. 2) “Aeris and Barret are dumped deep into a forest by their mother when they come across a hash house where a wicked cow named Tifa lives…” Fairy tale randomness, even has centered text. Toy dolls that piss, children stealing marijuana, evil hag witch Tifa burns to death in an oven. 3) “The evening after the failed launch at Rocket Town finds Palmer reflecting on a rooftop. He is joined by Reeve, who he had considered a friend until tonight, when he realizes Reeve has his own agenda.” Reeve blackmails Palmer, whose first name is Herbert?

-****May 11, 2006: Platonic oneshot of Tifa and Vincent bonding in a bar, taking place midway through the OG. SUM: “A temporary bartender strikes up a conversation with an unexpected customer, and finds that they have more in common than the drinks between them. Tifa and Vincent, Platonic. Oneshot.”  Ethanol

- May 19, 2006: Two rare finds in one fic: Barret/Cloud and/or Clarret, and a bad ending where one party isn’t interested in the other. Barret repeatedly accuses Cloud of being romantically interested in Marlene (who is still a small child??). Barret also rebuffs Cloud���s interest in getting to know him better. In a moment of half-drunk frustration, Cloud announces that he is gay and Barret leaves the conversation. He reappears the next day, saying he knew all along, but that he also doesn’t want “any more of those pansy talks.” —> :’/

- GENERAL: An OG fan who’s been in the fandom for 20-ish years let me know that a popular fandom-given surname for Reno is Sinclair. There’s apparently a lot of fics out there with the name “Reno Sinclar.” I haven’t found any of them yet. On the other hand, I’ve only clicked on 8 or 9 fics with Reno in them since starting this project, since the first FF7 fanfic posted on this site in July 1999. HOWEVER. I have now come across two instances, by two different authors, choosing to name the character Reno Tarshil.

- ****June 12, 2006: A peaceful little SephCloud/Sefikura domestic AU (first person POV) which takes a dark turn at the very end. Not amazing but I appreciated the tone shift that made me feel like I had been ambushed. Beach

- June 14, 2006: Another oddity: a oneshot about Hojo being kind to child!Sephiroth by putting sunscreen on him when on a forced vacation. The first fic I’ve seen painting Hojo in anything resembling a positive light.

- Author Tidbit: Over the past 1-2 years of fics, I’ve noticed a couple of short horror/humor fics by the same author. I think they are the only person writing this combination of genres. Their stories are things like: Cloud cheats on Aerith with Yuffie so Aerith murders Yuffie, wears her body like a suit and then goes to jail. Every character is a cruel asshole and gets hurt or dies in inane ways. They often use the adjective “bloody” so I assume they’re British. I’m just saying they stand out.

- GENERAL: I have seen 7 or 8 different authors use the picture feature (shows up like a little thumbnail next to the story) to display a picture of their own face, like a mid-2000s selfie, rather than an author avatar or particular picture just for that one story. I’ve been using FFN myself since 2005 but unfortunately can’t remember when they implemented the picture feature, so I can’t say for sure that all these authors started doing this in 2006. In any case, it’s kind of notable.

- July 4, 2006: A fluffy, just barely smutty oneshot with the Zack x Cloud x Sephiroth pairing, about Cloud being afraid of fireworks. I am 75% sure this is the first time I’ve seen this OT3 being written about. It’s possible I saw it just one other time before this, but if so, I am not checking back infinite pages to find it. But fics about poly ships are very uncommon at this time.  

- ****July 10, 2006: a oneshot about Elmyra in her old age, reflecting on her life and going to visit the church in Sector 5 for the last time. When she was in her 54, a 32-year-old man introduced himself as her daughter’s indirect murderer and offered her a knife to kill him with but she refused. Elmyra later married this man, her second husband, Cloud. Author says they might be the biggest Elmyra fan in the world and wanted to contribute some fic about her. “Too Far Gone”  

- July 12, 2006: For the first time (I’m…80% sure) I found a fic that refers to Zack as “Zax.” Someone on Reddit told me that in the Japanese version of OG, he was called “Zax”, but I know for certain he was called “Zack” in Advent Children. Maybe this writer hadn’t seen AC, didn’t play the US-released version of the game, or just didn’t like the name Zack.  

- GENERAL: mid-July has 3 different AerithxTifa / AerTi fics in it which is quite a lot to find at once. On the flipside, despite the stereotype of yaoi fangirls being very on the rise at this time, the amount of “yaoi/shoujo-ai” stories about Sephiroth and Cloud are pretty few and far between. More common than AerithxTifa, but still it’s maybe once every 3 or 4 pages. 

- GENERAL: a lot of first-person POV fics. It was just more common. (I remember reading fic back in those times and I got the impression that a lot of authors just found it easier) There hadn’t been time for this POV to become fandom-culturally associated with poor/amateur writing or numerous YA romance novels yet. Off the top of my head, Twilight had only been published 1 year prior. Idk what other similar novels were around in 2006. 

 Other stuff:

OC girl count: 33, 1 of the authors was angry about Mary Sue accusations hurled at the OC

OC guy count: 5 guys, 2 of which are assassins

Poem count: 27 (+1 haiku). 5 of the poems were by one person in a row.

Time travel: 5

I thought time travel was a staple of this fandom…I guess just not yet? 

[stormears]

FF7 Fanfic Spelunking

So I’m cave-diving in the October 2006 sector of FF.net’s FF7 fanfiction section for my WILDLIFE SURVEY OF THE FANDOM’S FIC and I found this 11-chapter AU fic, which is *DEEPINHALE*

about Cloud being the master of a harem that includes Sephiroth and Tseng, who are slaves--and the author has written several fics in this verse--and Tseng was given to Cloud by Aeris (with an ‘s’) and Sephiroth and Tseng both have fighting skill and train with knives and swords when they’re not fucking Cloud, and both are being harassed by another concubine named Isis who uses her position as Aeris’s tutor to lie to Aeris and lash out at people she doesn’t like and Sephiroth is daintily and shyly suggesting materia Cloud can put in Tseng’s collar and jewelry, which they must do or it will slight Aeris’s generosity, and the mix of this slave AU while naked Sephiroth and Cloud discuss “I think you should give an HP Plus and Time materia to your concuslave” is, is so tonally nuts I keep stopping and thinking WHATT

Well it’s making me read the next chapter, is WHAT. The writing on this is pretty good quality compared to a lot of other 2006 fic I’ve skimmed. I’m “meh” on this plot personally but the writer’s style is carrying me pleasantly along this thing I otherwise wouldn’t read much of.

EDIT: I skimmed more of the author’s work and it seems to be part of an ongoing series they would occasionally add oneshots and a few multichapter fics to. They were all taking place in this world where the Cetra either never died out, or came back into society somehow, and they became the dominant class of society. Cloud and Aeris get slaves because they are Cetra. Or maybe Cloud was some sort of Cetra-adjacent? Didn’t read far enough to find out. 

[stormears]

FF7 Fic - Paragraph 29 Lines Long

In small, lazy bites I am continuing to do my ECOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE ALL 36 THOUSAND ENGLISH-LANGUAGE FF7 FANFICTIONS ON FF.NET (probably gonna stop at or shortly after the day of Remake’s release, tho: Apr 10, 2020.)

The fic archive starts in July 1999 and currently I’m at June 2006. I found this Yuffentine fic, a 30k long oneshot about Vincent kidnapping Yuffie for possible political random and then love ensues. The writing isn’t bad, but I don’t know these characters yet so they do not grab me too much. Those two facts together mean I am skimming and not really reading. But sometimes I almost CAN’T read the damn fic because it has some humpback whale sized paragraphs sprinkled throughout. Example: 

Below is the BIGGEST PARAGRAPH IN A STORY I THINK I HAVE EVER SEEN (29 lines) 

[stormears]

Edit, 4 years later. I think I found the person who made Reno Sinclair a "thing" in the FF7 fic scene.

Soldier First Class Donovan

I’m doing more of my ECOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE ALL 36 THOUSAND ENGLISH-LANGUAGE FF7 FANFICTIONS ON FF.NET (probably gonna stop a little after the day of Remake’s release, tho: Apr 10, 2020.)

And I randomly picked a small Zack-related oneshot to read, published early 2006. It’s written in second person, about 1.5k words long, and refers to Zack’s last name as…Donovan. Donovan???

This is news to me, a mostly new player who got into this via Remake and only knew scattered spoilers before that. Did the OG not give him a last name? Was there really a time when Zack’s last name wasn’t known and fanfic writers would just make it up for their fic? Or maybe a certain fanmade name became popular in one fic, and many fanfic authors started using it? I was told by a longtime fan that a popular fanmade surname for Reno came into being that way: Sinclair.  Maybe this is like that. 

[stormears]

FF7R Fanfic Exvacation - Trends of the Times PART 1

Welcome to my ECOLOGICAL SURVEY OF FF.NET’S FF7 ARCHIVE.

I’m scrolling through (most of) the 36 thousand English FF7 fanfics on FF.net. I’m mostly a new fan because of the remake (know some spoilers now tho) and got curious what the fanfic culture of years ago was like...of FFN specifically. Because that’s what I know and used for many years. I’ll go up till shortly after Remake’s release date, I think. 

PART 1, YOU ARE HERE! // Part 2: May - Dec 2005 // Part 3: Jan - Jul 2006 

I had 1458 pages to go through at the start. Got through 30 of them before deciding I would, uh, take liberties and skip a few pages sometimes. Sometimes 2, sometimes up to 4. Because while I liked this project, I also want to eventually, actually READ some fics for this new fandom of mine. And the oldest ones don’t often...have that high-quality writing. Or they’re about late-game plot deets that I, a newbie fool, don’t know or want to read about yet! (Note 3 months later, I kind of regret this and may go back and read more deeply about the 1999-2004 fics. Future posts of mine don’t skip nearly this much.)

SOME FINDS AND FACTS:

- July 23, 1999: first English language FF7 fic posted

- February 2000: First mention of Aerith, instead of original translation Aeris

- Dec 3, 2000: First Sephiroth/Cloud fanfic posted, refers to the pairing as “shounen-ai”. Did not see the pairing being called “yaoi” till later, in fics published June 2001 and after.

- GENERAL: a lot of poems and songfics. Often mournful fics with son lyrics set in between every few paragraphs, from popular bands of the early 2000s (Metallica, Creed, Weird Al Yankovic, Avril Lavigne) or just the song with FF names and words plugged in

- GENERAL: Humor or light-hearted crackfic is the most popular genre, followed by romance. By mid-2001, TifaxCloud and AerithxCloud seem about neck-and-neck in popularity. 

-  June 14, 2001: First Tifa hate fic I came across. It’s written in script style, about the characters having fun and drinking at a house party. Author says in opening AN: “I truly think she is a slut.”

- GENERAL: My knowledge of what happens after the Remake is spotty but I didn’t expect there to be more than 10 AerithxRufus fanfics and there’s been...at least 10?

- GENERAL: One story has just 1 chapter, and the summary invites readers to go to the author’s Geocities page to read the rest! May 31, 2002. 

- January 2, 2003: a “fic” that is a group of haikus about the Turks, that was neat. Points for uniqueness. 

- One summary: “Not yaoi - you ought to read it just for that!” Although M/M pairings and/or self-declared yaoi makes up 10 - 15% of everything I’ve scrolled through so far. “Crazy yaoi fangirls” doesn’t appear to be a popular demographic here yet.  

- 1999-2002 fics often had very short, poorly written and meta-factual (?) summaries. Not detailed, more like facts about the story you might write on a sticky note, and poor grammar. One might be like: This is a story from Aeriths perspective. Its about her talking to thhe planet.....I wrote this in math class btw. Thanks for helping me Ashley R&R! (In 2003 to 2004 times, this is really tapering off and legit summaries get more common.)

- 2004 sampler platter of fics: 1) Aeris (not “th”) watches an irl Australian tennis player’s match on TV, goes to his house and kills his girlfriend, is sentenced to death by chocobo pecking 2) Sephiroth is a vampire looking for a mate and sets his sights on Tifa, also a vampire; they meet in a seedy/dangerous bar 3) After President Shinra is killed, the Shinra grunts discuss how they like Rufus much more because he doesn’t view himself as too good for dirty/dangerous work and isn’t afraid to be on the front lines with the grunts

- First mention of the Advent Children in a modern AU crackfic about child Sephiroth and his “little brothers” posted July 24, 2004. But google says the movie didn’t come out till September 2005? Idk. And yet a later, unrelated fic posted on February 20, 2005 mentions “the upcoming movie Advent Children.”

- 2004 and 2005 have a lot of Yuffie representation. I haven’t seen the word “Yuffentine” since I last seriously used/surfed DeviantART in 2012.

- We are at May 2005, I’ve skimmed and simplified almost 6 years of fanfic.

I’m going to put the brakes on my liberal skipping policy. There’s 1144 pages left as of this time of writing, April 24, 2020. I will only skip 2 pages max if I want to “hurry,” so I will view at absolute minimum 644 more pages of fanfic before I’m done. Again, I’ll probably go up to the day of Remake’s release (I’m more concerned with the PAST trends here) or maybe just a bit after its release for better comparison of the very old and very new. 

This is taking a long time, and obviously eating into time I could use for my own fanfics or anything else in life, but damn it’s fun.

(Note August 2, 2020: I SWEAR I’m gonna update this post soonish with more ‘99 - ‘04 fics :/ ) 

[stormears]

FF7 Fic Excavation - Trends of the Times Part 3

“A long drag through the FF7 archive on FF.net, English fics only, sorted by publishing date, going to Remake release date or shortly after, because I’m curious what people were writing about. 

This post: started at Dec 31, 2005 and went to July 31, 2006. 6 months instead of a year because I kept getting distracted by individual unique fics. Lotta, lotta oneshots. This was page 1095 of the archive to page 1024.

Part 1, Jul 1999 - Dec 2005 HERE (will prob split that into Part 1 and 1.5 when I add more content to it) // Part 2 Jan - Jul 2005 HERE // Part 3 YOU ARE HERE 

Reminder that OP here has only played Remake, but knows probably 70% of the OG game through spoiler hunting. I barely know about Yuffie, Vincent and Cid. It was news to me that Zack didn’t have a last name till Crisis Core and a popular fanon name for him back in the day was “Zackary Donovan”. (I found a fic from Feb 2006 that calls him that!) Apparently he was also called “Zax” in the OG and “Zack” came later? Idk I’m leaving that alone for now.

**** = denotes not just a fic that’s interesting for my trend list, but a really worthwhile one I recommend people actually look at. Not necessarily for great writing/story quality, but could also be for interesting character interactions, total weirdness, or some other unique quality.

SOME FACTS AND FINDS:

- Jan 8, 2006: a Cinderella story where Aerith (not ‘s’) is Cinderella and dreaming of the prince of the kingdom, Cloud Strife. Will true love conquer all!?

- Jan 15, 2006: first AerithxTifa story I can recall seeing so far, a high school AU written by a high schooler. Author calls it “Tiferith.” From my skim of first few chapters: Elena outs Tifa’s sexuality to Scarlet so she can get in with the popular kids, Yuna from FFX and Sora from KH are talking about their summer vacations, Rinoa from FFVIII says Tifa deserved to get beat up because the Bible says being gay is bad.

- By end of January 2006, the pairing of Vincent and Cid is being called “Valenwind” more than CidVin. I think it’s interesting that the ship name changed to being more of a “word” or a fluid-sounding name, rather than the typical smushing together of names like SephCloud or RenoRude. As far as I’ve seen, the only other ship to do this is “Yuffentine”. 

- GENERAL: On that note, the most popular Reno pairing doesn’t appear to be RenoRude anyway, despite a lot of their screentime being shared with each other, which often boosts shipping interest in any series. The most popular Reno pairing so far is RenoTifa! Often called RenoTi. (Second is RenoRufus, third RenoYuffie)

- Feb 1, 2006: an author references that their fic is a response to a LiveJournal community prompt. Blast from the past! 

- Feb 4, 2006: the first male OC-centric story I can recall seeing, about Cloud’s twin brother...Josh Strife. Josh kills 5 Shinra soldiers by himself before being told by Tseng to leave his hometown and go join SOLDIER. Cloud says goodbye to him and stays home with Tifa.

- ****Feb 26, 2006: Story titled “The-Secretary.” Summary: “Sephiroth’s new secretary is a little...eccentric.” The secretary is Jessie. Crack fic with 50 short chapters.

- Mar 13, 2006: A sign of the times: a songfic about Vincent featuring “In the End” by Linkin Park

- ****Mar 30, 2006: Nice little atmospheric, character-focused fic of Rude and his secret fondness for blues music and playing guitar. 2k. SUM: “Tonight, appearing live, the one and only Rude.” Black Suit Blues

- GENERAL: Midway through April 2006, I notice two popular trends: Yuffentine is the ship most often written about, and Aerith is more commonly called Aeris around this time. Notable amount of support for RenoxYuffie and RenoxTifa.

- Sampler platter of oddball fics in late April/early May: 1) “[Sephiroth x Cait Sith] Because really, no one understands the beauty of their relationship.” It was 800 words, half humorous and half serious, sex was discussed. 2) “Aeris and Barret are dumped deep into a forest by their mother when they come across a hash house where a wicked cow named Tifa lives...” Fairy tale randomness, even has centered text. Toy dolls that piss, children stealing marijuana, evil hag witch Tifa burns to death in an oven. 3) “The evening after the failed launch at Rocket Town finds Palmer reflecting on a rooftop. He is joined by Reeve, who he had considered a friend until tonight, when he realizes Reeve has his own agenda.” Reeve blackmails Palmer, whose first name is Herbert?

-****May 11, 2006: Platonic oneshot of Tifa and Vincent bonding in a bar, taking place midway through the OG. SUM: “A temporary bartender strikes up a conversation with an unexpected customer, and finds that they have more in common than the drinks between them. Tifa and Vincent, Platonic. Oneshot.”  Ethanol

- May 19, 2006: Two rare finds in one fic: Barret/Cloud and/or Clarret, and a bad ending where one party isn’t interested in the other. Barret repeatedly accuses Cloud of being romantically interested in Marlene (who is still a small child??). Barret also rebuffs Cloud’s interest in getting to know him better. In a moment of half-drunk frustration, Cloud announces that he is gay and Barret leaves the conversation. He reappears the next day, saying he knew all along, but that he also doesn’t want “any more of those pansy talks.” ---> :’/

- GENERAL: An OG fan who’s been in the fandom for 20-ish years let me know that a popular fandom-given surname for Reno is Sinclair. There’s apparently a lot of fics out there with the name “Reno Sinclar.” I haven’t found any of them yet. On the other hand, I’ve only clicked on 8 or 9 fics with Reno in them since starting this project, since the first FF7 fanfic posted on this site in July 1999. HOWEVER. I have now come across two instances, by two different authors, choosing to name the character Reno Tarshil.

- ****June 12, 2006: A peaceful little SephCloud/Sefikura domestic AU (first person POV) which takes a dark turn at the very end. Not amazing but I appreciated the tone shift that made me feel like I had been ambushed. Beach

- June 14, 2006: Another oddity: a oneshot about Hojo being kind to child!Sephiroth by putting sunscreen on him when on a forced vacation. The first fic I’ve seen painting Hojo in anything resembling a positive light.

- Author Tidbit: Over the past 1-2 years of fics, I’ve noticed a couple of short horror/humor fics by the same author. I think they are the only person writing this combination of genres. Their stories are things like: Cloud cheats on Aerith with Yuffie so Aerith murders Yuffie, wears her body like a suit and then goes to jail. Every character is a cruel asshole and gets hurt or dies in inane ways. They often use the adjective “bloody” so I assume they’re British. I’m just saying they stand out.

- GENERAL: I have seen 7 or 8 different authors use the picture feature (shows up like a little thumbnail next to the story) to display a picture of their own face, like a mid-2000s selfie, rather than an author avatar or particular picture just for that one story. I’ve been using FFN myself since 2005 but unfortunately can’t remember when they implemented the picture feature, so I can’t say for sure that all these authors started doing this in 2006. In any case, it’s kind of notable.

- July 4, 2006: A fluffy, just barely smutty oneshot with the Zack x Cloud x Sephiroth pairing, about Cloud being afraid of fireworks. I am 75% sure this is the first time I’ve seen this OT3 being written about. It’s possible I saw it just one other time before this, but if so, I am not checking back infinite pages to find it. But fics about poly ships are very uncommon at this time.  

- ****July 10, 2006: a oneshot about Elmyra in her old age, reflecting on her life and going to visit the church in Sector 5 for the last time. When she was in 54, a 32-year-old man introduced himself as her daughter’s indirect murderer and offered her a knife to kill him with but she refused. Elmyra later married this man, her second husband, Cloud. Author says they might be the biggest Elmyra fan in the world and wanted to contribute some fic about her. “Too Far Gone”  

- July 12, 2006: For the first time (I’m...80% sure) I found a fic that refers to Zack as “Zax.” Someone on Reddit told me that in the Japanese version of OG, he was called “Zax”, but I know for certain he was called “Zack” in Advent Children. Maybe this writer hadn’t seen AC, didn’t play the US-released version of the game, or just didn’t like the name Zack.  

- GENERAL: mid-July has 3 different AerithxTifa / AerTi fics in it which is quite a lot to find at once. On the flipside, despite the stereotype of yaoi fangirls being very on the rise at this time, the amount of “yaoi/shoujo-ai” stories about Sephiroth and Cloud are pretty few and far between. More common than AerithxTifa, but still it’s maybe once every 3 or 4 pages. 

- GENERAL: a lot of first-person POV fics. It was just more common. (I remember reading fic back in those times and I got the impression that a lot of authors just found it easier) There hadn’t been time for this POV to become fandom-culturally associated with poor/amateur writing or numerous YA romance novels yet. Off the top of my head, Twilight had only been published 1 year prior. Idk what other similar novels were around in 2006. 

 Other stuff:

OC girl count: 33, 1 of the authors was angry about Mary Sue accusations hurled at the OC

OC guy count: 5 guys, 2 of which are assassins

Poem count: 27 (+1 haiku). 5 of the poems were by one person in a row.

Time travel: 5

I thought time travel was a staple of this fandom...I guess just not yet? 

[stormears]

Soldier First Class Donovan

I’m doing more of my ECOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE ALL 36 THOUSAND ENGLISH-LANGUAGE FF7 FANFICTIONS ON FF.NET (probably gonna stop a little after the day of Remake’s release, tho: Apr 10, 2020.)

And I randomly picked a small Zack-related oneshot to read, published early 2006. It’s written in second person, about 1.5k words long, and refers to Zack’s last name as...Donovan. Donovan???

This is news to me, a mostly new player who got into this via Remake and only knew scattered spoilers before that. Did the OG not give him a last name? Was there really a time when Zack’s last name wasn’t known and fanfic writers would just make it up for their fic? Or maybe a certain fanmade name became popular in one fic, and many fanfic authors started using it? I was told by a longtime fan that a popular fanmade surname for Reno came into being that way: Sinclair.  Maybe this is like that.