#also re ff7 posting

[cloudstrifing]

@spiritxgeyser sent me 4, 7, 25 :3c tysm I always enjoy vibing with your huge brain takes and correct opinions 💖

4. How do you find inspiration for new ideas?

I walk around and listen to my blorbo playlists a lot deep in thinky thoughts... sometimes I will also see fanart that gives me brain worms, but honestly revisiting the source material is probably the best way to get inspiration (for fic at least) bc it will remind me what I love about a certain dynamic, and then I'll just try and zero in on what exactly is releasing the serotonin and spin off that!!! As far as concrete scenarios go most of my fics are just the same trope over and over, all that's different is the trappings so that's making it easy for myself lmaooo

7. How do you choose which POV to write from?

The first time I write for a pairing I will choose whoever I feel most aligned with (usually the more snarky and/or obnoxious character 💀), then I'll inevitably want to try to get into the other one's head later down the line eheh.

25. What fic do you wish you got more of a response on?

ALL my ff7 stuff, where is rebirth so that I can revert to being unhinged about this old ass game full time‼️ truly ik the trigunposting has taken over atm but ff7 is forever.

HOWEVER ALSO I rly wish more eyes would perceive my first vashwood fic, bc I think from a technical perspective it's the best fic I've made. The structure is full of very clear eyed Decisions that makes it coherent in a way most of my stuff is not. I would maybe have had them be a bit more oblique about their feelings at the end knowing what I know about the characters now, but overall I’m very proud of it and think it struck something true!!

[rivkae-winters]

You Will Rot

I adore this entire scene and their entire exchange and there are plenty of other posts out there on it but I’ve never come across the points I wanted to make hence why I'm writing this. Specifically on the implications of exactly what rots since that latched into my brain and would not let me go.

As always: this is only my interpretation of canon, there is no one true analysis to take as gospel. In fact please interact with your thoughts if you have any! I enjoy talking to other people about this sort of thing, fandom is all about discussion after all!

My stance on this line is one of nuance. I tend to think Sephiroth chose the worst words he could think of without fully considering the full implications.  He said the thing he knew that would hurt Genesis the most after the entire conversation beforehand.

What does it mean to be told to rot? Or even so told you will rot. 

In the FF7 universe, most explicitly displayed in CC, bodies dissolve. Corpses, both monster and human, are depicted as dissolving to return to the Lifestream. This is re-confirmed in the remake. 

Rot is not a term for humans, it’s not a cultural concept the same way it is for us in the real world. To decay and decompose are not processes that sentient beings undergo.

Rot is something for objects- things that live but aren’t alive enough or connected enough quote-un-quote to return to the Lifestream in the same dramatic manner. Rot is for things like food and flowers and things that are below the level of humans or animals or anything with general sentience. 

Sephiroth is telling Genesis here, he is not just a monster: he is insignificant. He is telling Genesis that he is not enough of a sentient being to return to the Lifestream and he’ll continue falling apart in real time just like a piece of fruit left forgotten and rotting on the kitchen counter. He is telling Genesis that at the end of the day he’s already dead in every way that matters and is no longer a person. Sephiroth is telling Genesis that he will have no mercy given to him at the end of the day: he will rot and waste like an object lacking sentience and then he will be left there.

Sephiroth is digging into Genesis’s own deepest insecurities here. Genesis fears not just being irrelevant but being rendered a non-entity, to be kept or out of control. Genesis has defined his entire life as a journey to be someone to be enough to be someone worthy of love and praise and being seen. Objects aren’t people, and Genesis is an object to Sephiroth with that statement. 

The only person who could help him no longer considers him a person- nor a thing with sentience. 

Obviously this is all over analyzing Sephiroth’s dialogue. This line was said with calculation, yes, but it was also somewhat reflexive. Sephiroth is under a lot of stress in this scene and Genesis has been slinging everything he never wanted to be told at him in a single conversation. Genesis then has the audacity to try to act as if he did something good. While Sephiroth’s world is collapsing around him and his other defected friend acts like he did him a favor. Sephiroth is angry, who wouldn’t be angry. Sephiroth thought the world of Genesis prior to his defection, he thought the world of both of them and those illusions have been crashing down around him.

So he uses Genesis’s own grief over his former friend’s tattered life that manifests as self deprecation and self dehumanization against him. He confirms the de-humanizing rhetoric that Genesis has been attaching to his own existence. Sephiroth in his pain and anger pushes past the fears that Genesis has been externalizing to what he knows Genesis is truly afraid of. 

If Genesis considers himself a monster than by the standards of the person Sephiroth thought he knew he is already living out his worst fears. He is nothing, he is nothing without his mind. If Genesis wants to be what he once considered a non-entity: wants to wallow in the rot and non-personhood so much then he can. 

Sephiroth turns his back on, in his mind, the moving corpse of the long dead Genesis Rhapsodos and walks away. 

You will Rot You are Nothing

There is also something to be said here for the Kanji used in the original!

I’m not touching on this as much as I would have liked to but it would be criminal if I didn’t at least pull out a Kanji dictionary.

I pulled Sephiroth’s line from here; warning the website is not in English at all but easy enough to navigate via context/knowledge of story events and the characters' Japanese names. 

Sephiroth’s line is: 朽ち果てろ kuchihatero

This is translated in the official English release as “You will rot” and in a pre-US release fan translation from May of 2007 roughly the same way as “Go decay”

朽  Decay; Rot; Remain in Seclusion

果  Fruit; Reward; carry out; achieve; complete; end; finish; succeed

[1][2] [3 specifically for 朽][4 specifically for 果]

Thanks for reading!

[daily-rayless]

AO3 Wrapped: Writer Edition

Got the idea to do this from @deemoyza

Words written this year: 25500

Works written this year: I wrote four fics this year, though two of them came pretty late and haven't been posted yet: "After the First Time" (Aerith, Final Fantasy 7), "Tenuto" (Tales of the Abyss -- I'm counting it as one fic because it's a drabble collection), "Matter Recollected" (Fate, we'll see about that title), and "Mother Paws" (Narnia, we'll also see about that title). (Other fics I posted this year had been written earlier.)

Work Most Proud of: "Matter Recollected". Most of the word count comes from that one, but it was an attempt to tell a bigg-ish story in a short-ish amount of space. I think I did pretty well establishing scenes and the characters' circumstances, then letting them stew in their own angsty juices for a while.

Work with Most Hits: Between the two that have been posted, definitely "After the First Time". FF7 is a much bigger fandom than Abyss.

Fav title: "Tenuto" gave me so much trouble, trying to find something to unite ten drabbles, so I fell back on music (appropriate for Abyss), and the fact that ten is there in the word was a bonus.

Pairing You Wrote the Most For: None of the pairings overlap, though the ArcherHakuno (technically ShirouHakuno) "Matter Recollected" is the longest, so we'll say that.

What Work was the Quickest To Write: "Mother Paws". I was thinking about Narnia while I was exercising (sure, that's a thing that happens) and ideas started leaping out of my brain; so I stopped what I was doing and hammered it out in thirty, maybe forty minutes.

What Work Took You Longest To Write: "Matter Recollected" took about a month, in forty-ish minute bursts every night. "Tenuto" also took a fair bit of time in the editing stage, getting the drabbles down to 100 words.

How Many WIPS do you have for next year: No first drafts. Things are being edited, though, right until they're posted, so we can count stuff from The Muse Trilogy there. Still wondering if I should even post the earlier Fate stuff, and I have one outstanding Abyss fic from a few years ago I might post.

Longest Work of the Year: "Matter Recollected" at 21100 words.

Shortest Work of the Year: "Tenuto" at 1000 words.

Fav character to Write: I really enjoyed dipping into different povs for "Tenuto", including characters I'd never really touched before. But if I'm honest, I love writing for Hakuno, my impression of her as a character is still developing, and she's just a lot of fun. So we'll say Hakuno.

Which work of yours have you re-read the most: Maybe "Tenuto"? Editing was all about repeated whittling.

Total Kudos this Year: 55. (Most of that is for Aerith.)

Total Hits This Year: 497. (Ditto!)

Total Bookmarks This Year: 6

Total Subscriptions This Year: 0

What Do You Listen To While Writing: I tend to listen to my music on shuffle. In most cases, having lyrics doesn't bother me, and I listen to a lot of folk and piano pop, so it tends not to be very intrusive to start with. It definitely helps mentally separate me into a writing mindset.

Fav line or passage: I don't know if I have a favorite, but I like this one: She watches Cloud walking ahead of her, turning to say something quiet to Tifa. She has to pull away from him now. But in the days that follow, she doesn't. Maybe she can't, but she suspects she merely doesn't. She did, after all, warn Cloud that the only thing she was really good at is giving up. Because she knows she'll probably die, and the Whispers still cluster around her and take from her, and the Lifestream, as beautiful as it is, doesn't have the same tenderness of being alive.

[icharchivist]

can you allow me to be a Grade A Bitch for a sec

(this is a DA4 AND a FF7Remake Hate Post)(but also i swear i'm making relevent points there. I think.)(i mean beyond just being a hater.)

so for the tldr the original FF7 has been one of the biggest impactful stories of my life when i was an early teen, and i was an adult when i got into DA and DA is part of the few stories that are like. super mega important to me. I hold both stories very dearly into my heart.

I was really looking forward the Remake and VG, mostly optimistic about what would come, trying not to set my expectations too high either.

But i ended up really disliking the direction both took so it's my cross to cringe, i guess.

But I also remember Epler talking about the ff7r saying it's an incredible game and even saying stuff like "this is the best and only way you should do a remake/a continuation" which means i'm also just 😬 because i fundamentally disagree.

I wrote a 10k words reviews of things that annoyed me about ff7r and like.

Some of the elements i was already hating in the RG happened in VG and i don't even know how on purpose it was 💀

on the complains i had:

-The lack of agency of the Main Character/Player.

FF7OG is about dealing with identity a lot and the OG does that by giving choices to how Cloud will approach some situations which doesn't amount to much but at least are because of dialogue choices, and the conclusion is "every dialogue choices isn't himself talking actually". Once Cloud has dealt with his identity problem in the OG you don't get to pick his dialogues for him anymore because he figured himself out; But still it gives some branching storyarc. In the Remake those options are fully replaced with "different branching depending on the number of quests you do with each girls" On top of that actual choices Cloud makes in the OG (like crossdressing) ends up imposed on him with the remake.

And i'm thinking about how one of the big problem with VG is that there is no real control on Rook. Even the dialogue wheels' options aren't so different from one another because you have a set path. The only thing you can change is the romance per se and even there it will depend more on how many quests you do with your companions than picking specific choices.

-"Weird on Flashbacks" They were super weird on how to time Cloud's flashback which also therefore completely ruins the 2nd Act twist when Sephiroth manipulates Cloud making him think none of his memories are real.

DA4 meanwhile is just weird about the flashbacks, you stumble upon them so they're not exactly linked together and all of that.

-The Pacing Complained about the major padding in the remake which was just very visible when you see a part of the game that takes me 8 hours in the OG took me 80 hours to clear in the remake. Like come on. And while some thing are relevent some others are just really annoying, or try to further a character arc at the expense of the plot (re: giving Barret two chapters (yay!) by making so the team doesn't go to save Aerith right away after she was taken to protect Barret's daughter (wait what?))

DA4? same thing. You keep being distracted from the main story by padding quests of having to take care of your companions' unfinished business instead of focusing on the main story. And then the ending goes too fast and with a terrible pacing.

quoting:

"-The Fear of Committing to the Fucked Up aspect of the game". DA4 took the hard pill out of this one.

In the OG the horrors Shinra pulls are truly horrifying, but there's also ambiguity like -- when Avalanche bombed the Reactors and the news said it killed many people, was it our bomb that did that? or was that propaganda? The game will give you no answer and will just have Barret and Reeve fight over it, whether it may have been something they had to do still against Shinra. Avalanche isn't all white in their actions, and because we stay on Avalanche's point of views there's aspects of Shinra we can't know about, and can't know therefore if they're THAT evil. (i mean. they probably are. but the game leave it up to discuss because then the convo between Barret and Reeve hits harder.)

In the Remake? Don't worry bestie like every bad things Avalanche did was from another branch, and Shinra purposingly made the explosion worse to kill people to frame you and start a war with another country. you did nothing wrong, they're using you, you're fine <3

The ecological aspect of the game is also severely undercut by the remake to focus more on Sephiroth, therefore removing any of the early political nuances of the game that is supposed to serve to set up the allegory Sephiroth represents.

in da4 do i even need to say it. We barely talk abotu the bad sides of Thedas, when we do it's from like, arguably horrible people, cultists, they're not regular people on the street, so you don't get to think about it. The Evanuris? just evil for the sake of evil. Don't worry about it. And instead of elaborating more on them, it focus back on Solas in a way that betrays what he represented in the previous game.

never thought i'd be comparing Solas and Sephiroth like that. Look what you make me do.

-Moralizing Revolutionaries for Taking Drastic Approach.

FF7 OG does have this one convo with Reeve i mentioned but in general the game mostly supports Avalanche's actions because they have to take drastic measures because Shinra IS that bad. Reeve is biased as a member of Shinra who was trying to change it from the inside and was also fed their propaganda, but he turns around eventually and commits fully to Avalanche when the rest of Shinra betrays him and shows him that there is no peaceful alternative for him to take.

In the Remake however you get multiple convo trying to have them wash their hands clean of it. Tifa is constantly doubting what they're doing (she wouldn't. let Tifa be angry. Why is Tifa no longer angry in the remake.), Barret not even being sure of his goal, clearly telling us the worst of Avalanche is another branch, "see we didn't mean to bomb the reactor to make a statement, we just wanted to make it unfunctional" untrue Jessie but okay!

But also the President of Shinra gets a whole new scene lecturing Barret about how he's not a revolutionary, he's just doing that to bloaster his own pride! that he's not mad Shinra killed his people, but mad that they don't look like hero. And Since then the convo is stopped by Sephiroth killing the president, you never get to talk about it ever again, almost validating him.

(which is repurposing a scene from later in the game that did call Barret's motivation selfish because he was in for the revenge more than for a change on earth, but THAT DOESNT MEAN IT'S ABOUT FAME AND PRIDE????? HELLO?????)

Because, you see, Revolutions being violent are bad :( you can't change the world by being violent :( you must always feel like you're punishing yourself for it :( oh and if you care a little too much actually have you considered that your desire is Selfish and therefore it doesn't matter?

the wild thing is that in the OG the conclusion was more like "yeah we're "selfish" in the way we want to save the planet, but that's because it means we want to keep living in it, keep making a future for people in it, we have to care personally to see it through". But there in the remake the only time it's brought up is to shame Barret for not being authenthic in his goal to save the world.

This also happened to my husband Solas, where all of the extreme positions he took were shamed by the narrative, and framed as him being selfish for caring so much, and don't worry you don't get to see revolutionary do violent things anymore, that's soooo DA in 2011 we don't do that anymore.

Who needs to talk about ecology or slavery when you can make the villain who was always a symbolism of how this society has failed people to be Bad People Because They're Bad, Guys.

-Also on that Tifa point: Girlboss means you're not allowed to want to take revenge anymore and you have to embrace your position as a motherly figure.

Tifa is SOOOO angry in the OG and is like. Downright mean at time?? she insults the boys really often? Because she's traumatize, she wants revenge against Shinra, when Aerith gets kidnapped she doesn't have time for the boys' nonsense when Aerith was taken because of her, so she stresses and insults the guys to move faster because Aerith is in danger.

In the Remake, don't worry, she doesn't want revenge. She wants to just make a change in the world! but not like this :( not with violence. Barret has to encourage her with "violence is the answer" and he barely believes himself when he says that. Instead Tifa's motivation becomes much more about protecting Marlene, the little girl she helps out. And so when Aerith gets kidnapped saving Marlene for Tifa, Tifa does the normal thing to.... ask Cloud to give up on saving Aerith because both her and Barret are very tired and Aerith knew what she was doing and both Tifa and Barret need to grief for a while. It's only after 2 chapters worth of content that weren't in the OG that Tifa suddenly remembers her original character and sneaks on Cloud when he sneaks out and says "i thought about it, but actually i can't just do nothing for Aerith, so i'm coming with you :(". Cool. In the OG she nearly threatened Cloud that if they didn't go asap to save Aerith she will Do Something. So then when you go save Aerith instead of Tifa nearly starting a fight with Barret because they have different plans to save Aerith and Tifa doesn't vibe with Barret's, it's Cloud and Barret who fights and Tifa who is the voice of reasons going "ahah guys calm down :)"

Because you see, women cannot want revenge. They cannot be angry. They cannot have a selfish desire out of her selfish relationships. Out of feeling personally wronged. We don't want women like that. Women needs to just scold guys for being silly boys for being traumatized by what she's stronger about. Don't forget to emphasis she really just wants the best for others people, especially those she's motherly about. Because a woman has to be a sweet mother figure first.

This also happened to my fiend Mythal, see. Stripped of her desire for revenge, her vindication, because "wow Solas is so silly wanting to fight back against people who hurt us, i care about the people and the daughter i abused all her life now."

Don't worry; She has the last wise word when Solas is being silly. That's what Women are for.

next point again, quoting:

"-No respect for the mysteries of the saga."

Listen for more ff7 reasoning read the blog post i linked, for da4 do i need to say it. the way they just handwaved some lore we have theorized about for more than a decade, and the fact they almost didn't address it? (they revealed that the "elves=spirits" reveal was supposed to be revealed by Anaris but since some people wouldn't play Bellara quest they realized they had to tell it elsewhere. Imagine that. imagine THAT.)

ff7R was so convinced people would know aspects of the saga so they didn't bother treating those aspects with respect. both game wrote themselves with "here what we expect the players to know about us, and what players wouldn't know, and only then we'll care what we talk about" instead of telling a story.

re my ff7 post but i got upset at how they spelled the lore out in ff7 way earlier than in the OG and in a way less subtle way, and honestly, the lack of subtility in the lore reveals counts also for da4.

-Sephiroth/Solas are fundamentally different from previous games because they want to sell you the aura of the character without any regard to what those characters represents, and they get away with it by just handwaving it with "well they're manipulators anyway so of course they would" instead of genuinely focusing on the fact they are people who have been pushed by the system they were a part of all their lives and why the fuck am i NOW putting comparaison between Sephiroth and Solas; It's going to piss me off so i'll stop -- OH GOD IS THAT WHY THEY HAD SOLAS STAB VARRIC. REPRESENTATIVE. REPRESENTATIVE TALK TO ME. BECAUSE I'LL BE IN YOUR WALLS.

-Meanwhile also no nuance with the villains.

That's a bit carried over from FF7OG on here except when it comes to Sephiroth, but they somehow made the Evil People Even More Evil, Reeve is much more conflicted about being Part of Shinra than he was at first in the OG, and Sephiroth was stripped of his complexity since it's AC!Sephiroth, not OG!Sephiroth.

But no nuance. in my DA4 villains. "people are just bad sometimes."

"-Desamorcing any emotional scene by the new mysteries." dfjdlfkjdfjfdhd THEY'RE THE SAME GAMESSS IM SO

sorry ff7r bad with the whole "those are the ghosts that are maintaining the original timeline and it's bad uwu" but this wording applies to everything about the Executors, fuck the Executors, i'm out of fucks to give.

-paraphrasing "why would you pretend a character who's death is important is still alive just to play with us until reality will eventually settles in" i'm this close to say Varric=Zack the situation is dire.

"-Aerith and Nanaki becoming dev's mouthpieces at the expense of their own character arc." i don't want to get deep into it but legit sooo many chara in VG do that, especially when they criticize Solas. Morrigan first and formost because of her situation, but eventually characters will just starts to act out of characters to tell you what the devs want you to think. Re: the Murals discussions scenes.

Also both Aerith/Nanaki and Solas who are the "last of their kind" in some way and instead of it being to further their characterization, it's just used so you get some lore info, infodumping, and then disregard them as soon as you do.

-The Themes are no longer theming.

Big Themes like Ecology, War, Capitalism, science destroying Nature, Nuclear power, ect on FF7 side, or Slavery, War, Religion, on DA side, are fully taking a backseat over personal plotline that takes away from the impact those had on the world.

FF7 becomes about how those specific fuckos are stuck in a fate loop and have to replay fate over and over again, making them special while in the OG they were a bunch of nobodies doing what they could with the issue they had, while in DA4 you're so focused on people's personal regret you lose the big picture of how the world actually works.

And in turn therefore the new themes are incompatible about the original themes.

Solas must let go of the past because screw the ancient elves. FF7R players are put in a position of asking themselves "sooo will the characters we know die die this time?" and the game will bait and switch it because "maybe you can challenge fate!" when one of the big themes of the OG is "the destructive consequences of the Denial Stage of Grief."

-In the end both games are telling you to let go of what the previous games tell you to enter into a "new era" for a "newer audience" that apparently can't handle moral nuance, systemic problems, and stuff like that.

"-It feels unfinished."

And that's just for stuff i can compare to reading my FF7R review at the time!!

to me FF7R is a bad game because it betrays the themes of the Main Game, mischaracterize most of the characters especially for the sake of new, badly written twists, and it completely refuses to let you Think about the Society the characters live in. Don't worry about it. Blame Solas/Sephiroth. It's fate/the Executors. You don't need to think about the system that led to those things. You don't need to think about your influence in those. you don't need to think.

But hey it's escapism media right. Enjoy your witch looking for her cat in the Alps. I'm going to seethe, for having starting my year playing ff7r to see if i was too hard on it only to feel like i wasn't hard enough, and finishing it on DA4 where the betrayal came out of nowhere.

And i wouldn't drive as much the comparaison if i hadn't seen DA devs praise the damn game like. Maybe this and "who's Zevran again" should have been the two Red Flags to make me think i shouldn't care, actually.

[tactical-mode]

After a rushed release, I took my time re-editing and reshooting and am now happy with the final product. Lesson learned. Perfectionism is the enemy of putting a product out, but I can afford to take the time to be proud of it.

Between where we left Cloud last time and where we find him in this opening shot, I actually filmed multiple scenes using Remake that took us into the station house, through a combat, up the stairs, and back out onto the street. These scenes were cut because they weren’t in the OG, it’s as simple as that. The 76 shots and ~15 minutes of good footage are waiting on the ancillary hard drive to be used in a music video or something.

[Chapter 01] Scene 10:  Meeting AVALANCHE

(see my post from Episode 1 to read about why I enumerate scenes this way)

This is the first major overhaul to a scene from 7R, and I cut a lot, refilmed, and moved shots around much more than folks might notice, and I had to manipulate a lot to make it seem like Biggs is interacting with Cloud, which he doesn’t actually do in the Remake scene.

The character’s mouth animations surprised me by how well they could be interpreted to be saying the PS1 lines, especially:

Jessie: “--s, this, uh, what was his name again?”

Jessie: “SOLDIER? Aren’t they the enemy?”

Biggs: “He’s a professional, unlike the rest of us.”

Biggs: “He quit them, and now he’s one of us.”

For the dialogue in this scene I blended PS1 and EC. Forever shout out to Yinza for preserving the PS1 script.

(remember to turn on closed-captioning for the dialogue!)

Scene 11:  Opening the Gate

There’s some stage blocking here and another instance where I decide to go with Remake and/or EC’s dialogue over OG. In OG, Barret tells them to split up (they don’t), the player is given the option to rename him, he tells Cloud that he doesn’t trust him, and then he tells the player how to use the controller buttons to run. Yeah, that won’t work. We’re going to keep his one line about trust:

“Ex-SOLDIER, huh? Don't trust ya!” (PS1/Beacause)

“You’d better be worth the money, merc. Every last gil.” (7R)

For this, 7R’s line is the most evocative and gives us just a bit more context for the situation at hand. I’m not super thrilled that it extraneously introduces us to the concept of ‘gil’, the fictional currency of FF7’s world, which isn’t relevant to the story right now (in the OG, Aerith introduces it when selling the player a flower). But the line is just so damn cool. Barret is so damn cool.

I cut the extraneous chatter between Cloud and Wedge here. I added a couple of shots around the door opening, such as moving one of Wedge’s face-muggings and a wide shot of Jessie and Biggs being sneaky.

I blended the different movements of the soundtrack here to match the iconic tilt of the camera up at the reactor. I also made sure to keep the entire sequence timed in such a way that Barret’s cold turn back is accented by the tense cellos. They haven’t said which one of Remake’s many composers is responsible for each individual diversion from Uematsu’s original score, but I would put good money on Shotaro Shima for the cinematic variation that plays during this scene. The forevariance of the Main Theme here is a particularly nice touch.

Scene 12: Combat: Cloud vs. 1 MP and 1 Guard Hound

A combat has begun, which means that our major story moments for the episode are behind us. That’s not to say that there won’t be plot in the following few minutes, but there won’t be dialogue. Enjoy the slow-motion feast for the eyes and ears, I really enjoyed making it.

Because Cloud is the only combatant in these, it’s easy to actually choreograph and re-shoot the fights, finaggling the enemies into the same locations as I use the same moves on them. This fight can be repeated after opening a nearby chest, allowing me to quickly restart it without having to reload, with only minor changes to the starting positions. For instance, in the first scenario, the members of AVALANCHE start on the battlefield and spend the first few rounds taking the lift, whereas they’re already at the top at the start of the second fight.

I really loved the naturally moody lighting on the crew in the warehouse, and cutting back and forth allowed me to mask some of the “jumping around” that the enemies and Cloud do – although not all, as eagle-eyed viewers will see. This will become less possible when more characters become involved in fights, but for the opening encounters I thought it would be important to show how this slow-mo thing could give the impression of fights progressing. Here's my favorite from the cutting room floor:

Scenes 13-14: Through the Warehouse

At three separate times, I mask edits to the score. At the end of the combat, Cloud sheathes his sword, allowing me to cut out 14 bars and restore Uematsu’s original score structure. I then put this opening piano on loop, extending it until enemies are on the screen (it’s masked again by the sound of the lift and by Jessie cutting the wires. In Uematsu’s structure, loops of the song don’t include the timpanis and orchestra hits from the beginning, but 7R’s version does include them, which I think is an oversight. However, it had the unintended upside of scoring the arrival of enemies from behind Cloud really well! Also, we can associate the orchestra hits with Cloud once more as they punctuate him whirling around and preparing to fight!

Fun fact: Bombing Mission has a bpm of 136, so when I found editing the music too repetitive I would use placeholders with the same bpm and then fine-tune it later. Highlights from the playlist I made were Rocket Man, Thunderstruck, Go Your Own Way, Jump (For My Love), and, heh, Sandstorm. 

Scene 15: Combat: Cloud vs. 2 MPs, 1 Guard Hound

With this combat, I chose to introduce the viewer to magic - specifically, Cloud’s ability to cast lightning and ice. In OG, the player learns this by taking control of Cloud down on the train platform, but its quite possible in a playthrough for Cloud to never use magic – and indeed, in 7R he begins with different spell abilities altogether!

However, I feel like this short encounter was the way to introduce magic with the maximum hype possible, and I’m proud of the result. Cloud zaps one MP, dispatches the other with a quick sword slice, then fires off an ice spell to nab the pup.

I tried to have the materia in focus while Cloud was casting in order to provide a visual clue as to where this magic comes from, because it won’t be exposited with dialogue for some time yet.

Scene 16: Combat: Cloud vs. 2 MPs

Around 1 minute of combat footage represents about 2-3 hours of shooting, and about 5 hours of editing. This one took a bit longer because I remained in bullet time so that I could get coverage of the crew running out onto the bridge.

For this combat, I cut out a chunk of the score to make room for the section that uses a variation on the Main Theme, accenting a Cloud hero shot.

Scene 17: The Bridge

This was pretty straightforward to shoot except for cutting out a door puzzle that triggers AVALANCHE running into the reactor. Filming around that was a bit tricky. I also dabbled in my first bit of colour-correction here, as jumping from the gap between sectors back into that metal tunnel was hard on the eyes.

A quick clip of the music to ramp up towards the credits, and about a hundred reshoots of that camera so that it passes between the pipes and not through them. And we're done.

Final Thoughts

I can’t believe anyone reads these things, but if you did, hey thanks. Let me know what you think of the series! And dOn’T fOrGeT tO LiKe aNd sUbScRiBe!

[hazzyking]

Hazel King's Masterlist/Intro

I tried to tag every story with what is in it, every fic I post has a little warning of what to expect so please read those!!! also, this is an 18+ blog so read at your own risk!

I am taking requests, if you don't see the Fandom below, just ask first. I'm in alot of Fandoms I just haven't written for many yet!

If anyone has any suggestions to make this list look better or whatever PLEASE comment below 😭

⚠️⛔️ I AM ACCEPTING REQUESTS, IF YOU REQUEST SMUTT/ ASK TO BE TAGGED IN SMUTT, YOU MUST HAVE YOUR AGE PRESENT IN YOUR BIO ⚠️⛔️

MORTAL KOMBAT X EPIC ART CHALLANGE

Important info/ WIP update

1/8/24

1/10/24

BG3

Show and Tav:

Lovissa's Act 2 appearance

Wyll and Shadowheart Banter

A clip that broke my heart p1

Lovissa interacting with the group Act 2 part 1

Lovissa interacting with the group Act 1

Things that Lovissa and Astarion do that only happen in my head

How am I Holding up?

Astarion X Lovissa:

Day Walkers

The Bloated Giant

Act 1 Headcannons

Apologize

Revenge

Killing Cazador

This Kiss

Nothing Will Come Between Us

One Piece

Buggy x Reader:

Apologize p1 (Smutt)

Apologize P2 (Smutt)

As the World Falls Down

Buggy Body Part Headcannons p1

Buggy Body Part Headcannons p2

Scar Tissue (Fluff)

When your not Around (Smutt)

Law X OC

Ink (smutt)

Ame Newgate:

Ame The Rain Storm

OC Information

Summer Wine ((Ame X Choo))

Newgate

Chapter One: Somewhere Beyond the Sea

Mihawk x Reader:

Just a guy in a Bar p1

Just a guy in a Bar p2 (Smutt)

Criminal Minds

Aaron Hotchner X Reader:

Blind Date

FF7

Reno X Reader:

Wet, Wild and a little Flashy. (Smutt)

Sephiroth X Reader:

When No One is Watching p1

FF7 Story:

You'll never fucking guess this, but I'm re writing it again!

Holiday Specials ((multi fandom))

A New Years Kiss ((smutt suggestive))

SOA/ Mayans MC

Alvarez x Reader:

Appearances (Smutt)

Hollyoaks

Simon Walker x Reader

Behave (smutt)

[terraxcloud]

MTG Clerra Post

I'm just going to go over a few things from the MTG update.

First off...

The boosters in MTG are separated into Play Boosters and Collector Boosters. The Play Boosters have Cloud on them and the Collector Boosters have Terra.

It's kinda surprising how upfront they put Terra. People (particularly the English-speaking variety) have mentioned her more often in the past week than probably in the past ten years, so I doubt the MTG folks were the ones who chose her to be the literal face of the set.

I think we've reached the point where SQEX are now comfortable in using her again (especially around Cloud). It could mean she may end up in KH4 or that they'll do more Clerra moments like last decade, or even re-release Dissidia. For perspective, there are already FIVE different artworks of Terra alone. Before this all we got since Remake was a statue that costs more than your old Honda and maybe an appearance in a mobile game (I'm ignoring the Unspoken bargain-bin cosplayer). Also, all those Remake hints, but Rebirth was way more about Yuffie.

I believe they are hinting stuff in this set, because why not? It's reaching way more eyes. Remember when I mentioned Rosalina? Weird times.

Y'shtola is the favorite Commander card of the four. Y'shtola is basically Sherlotta in a symbolic sense, and that's probably why she ended up being the main face of FF14 (you have a greater chance if you're related to Cloud or Terra, otherwise it's Zack and Aerith like with FF15). So basically, Cloud is surrounded by Terra and Terra's cat. Unfortunately, that cat thing is still hard to understand, but it may just be as simple as that.

Now I'm wondering if Terra's cat was actually a transforming person, Lol. Y'shtola and Sherlotta are really weird names that kinda, sorta look like each other (according to Google, no other Sherlotta exists). Are we not sure that Y'shtola isn't just a weird way of misspelling Sherlotta? What will actually "appear to us" after FF7R Part 3? That's really the biggest mystery.

I mean, would they go so far to include a cat if that's all it was? There has to be something more. I don't think Cloud is the only "missing from FF6" character here. I mean, Strago's wife Lara is "missing", but when do they hint her in anything? That's because she's not related to Terra in the same way as "the cat".

I'm not going to talk about WoL, but it could be similar to Tidus (or something weird that I know of that involves that 1 + 6 = 7 thing I won't mention again). Tidus is the romantic connection, y'know, "Yuna's Guardian". That whole bodyguard plot from OG FF7? Yeah, where did that go in the Remake trilogy? I mean, where is it? Well, it went more for Tifa than Aerith...but actually it's for Yuffie...although they don't mention it? But y'know, and your roomba knows that it's supposed to be about Terra (actually, hardly anyone knows). If only they did something with Dissidia 012 again.

There are multiple MTG players who were wondering why Terra's ability doesn't seem like Terra. I think you need to take the title of the card more seriously. However, the others have titles that are "them". Cloud is an Ex-Soldier, like, that's obvious. Terra's seems to be hinting at something, but I'm not bothering to find out what it may be.

[thefrostqueen]

Aerith, Death, and Sephiroth

Two Aeriths

Through various trailers, we have gathered that the Aerith in Zack’s timeline is in a coma, with Marlene ominously stating that when Aerith wakes up, a scary man (Sephiroth) will kill her. But more obviously, why is she asleep despite not looking injured? And why did she alone survive the tornado attack while Barret, Tifa, Jesse, and Wedge died? Zack is then seen sitting on the steps of the church, and Sephiroth makes a move to seemingly cut Zack down, while remarking “No, not you.” He is clearly looking for Aerith, but why is he bothering with another dimension’s Aerith in the first place?

And more interestingly, how does Marlene even know that will happen? Who told/showed her? From that scene in the new trailer alone, are we to believe that Sephiroth is attempting to kill Aerith in every dimension, or is there something deeper happening here? Why is Sephiroth so prominent in this section of the game in the first place, considering he wasn’t in the original?

A Driving Force

In December of 2020, Aerith’s MOCAP actress, Asuka Yoshikawa, made a post talking about how she had just finished a four-hour motion capture session with Sephiroth’s MOCAP actor. It was unclear whether this was the only session, or one of several. But based on this tweet, it seems Aerith and Sephiroth will have much more time directly interacting with each other in Rebirth than in Remake (and also in the original game)

https://x.com/asukayoshikawa/status/1342254416393428992?s=46&t=yqLOXI10UyvjbnqYzQDydg

A recent official interview by PlayStation with Yoshinori Kitase and Tetsuya Nomura supports and mostly confirms this. They discuss quote “reimagining” Aerith and Sephiroth as characters, citing their individual importance to the overall story. Kitase in particular acknowledges that Sephiroth was barely present in this section of the game in the original, but that in Rebirth, he is the quote “Driving force that pulls the story along.” They speak of him almost like they view him as the main protagonist.

Both legendary creatives emphasized one single thing however: further depth for both Aerith and Sephiroth. Nomura also stated that he believes players will respond differently to what happens regarding Aerith and Sephiroth’s fates, hinting at a potential divide of opinions from fans, as well as a very different outcome for the characters compared to the original.

No Longer Set in Stone

What excites me about all of this, is that there is so much more mystery surrounding Aerith’s death scene and Sephiroth’s role in the story at large, whereas it was fairly straightforward in the original. In the OG, Aerith was summoning Holy (the only force that can stop Meteor) when Sephiroth catches both her and Cloud by surprise and murders her. She dies and becomes more powerful, and through this Sephiroth is stopped.

In the Rebirth trailer however, Aerith is seen giving Cloud holy BEFORE the temple. As many have pointed out, Aerith giving Cloud holy means she has NO REASON to be at the temple. So why does she end up going there regardless? And Cloud doesn’t notice Sephiroth about to kill Aerith in the OG, but in the trailer we clearly see Cloud notice that Sephiroth is about to kill her, so he attempts to stop Sephiroth with the buster sword. But why would Sephiroth attempt to kill Aerith if she hasn’t summoned Holy yet?

Perhaps clarity lies in the fact that both Sephiroth and Aerith know how the events of the original FF7 play out. We are shown that Sephiroth’s intention is to change his fate by preventing his death, and doing so means killing Aerith. If this is the case however, then why did Sephiroth not immediately kill Aerith in Remake, despite knowing she summons holy to defeat him? Why wait?

There are honestly so many possibilities regarding both timelines and the fate of the two Aerith’s that it is maddening. One could live, the other could die. Or maybe they both die—perhaps Aerith’s death is an inevitable prime event in any timeline.

I will be on the edge of my seat when February 29th arrives!

[kyuohki]

4, 10, 19!

Alright! Let's do this!

4. a story idea you haven’t written yet

Ooof. There are many. One is Seraï's past! I'm still plotting out to how she is related to the Queen, and how/why the Queen did what she did. Also some more Teaks/Valere (bc most of what I've been writing has been m/m or m/f, and I've never really written anything for f/f...they're so cute together, I figure it would be good starting point!)

There's also my Zelda OC (not an OC!Zelda, but a character I built waaay back in 90s with Link to the Past (who may have been related to Link *cough*). There's my FF7 fic idea (more based on the original, than the remake), again with the OCs...

I made a lot of OCs that started out as self inserts, and played with all the characters like dolls in my head, eventually making some characters I'm really attached to. (I'm still a bit apprehensive on writing them out and posting them, as they're so self-indulgent, but they make me happy, so why should I care if someone else doesn't like it??)

10. what is the longest amount of time you’ve let a draft rest before you finished it?

Longest I think I managed was a couple days? I am very guilty of wanting to share *right now* and practically hovering over the f5 button after posting.... ^u^;; (Then read through it later and realize all the typos and wonky lines, or have a better idea for a section...but I'm very guilty of thinking that since it's posted, then it's "finished," and try to refrain from sweeping edits after the fact? Silly reason, but I've had fav fics from other authors who have re-written and replaced fic, and realized I never got the chance to save the original that I loved. I don't want to do that to anyone who has enjoyed my fic (which is why Discarded Hope will stay in it's original form, when I re-write the newer ver.)

19. the most interesting topic you’ve researched for a fic

This goes to an AssCreed supposed-to-be-crackfic. Essentially Ezio get's shrunk and turned into cat-boy, where Leonardo finds him. I fell into a "what the heck did people eat back then?" rabbit hole, bc I needed the cuteness of tiny!Ezio being fed by Leonardo, and wanted to be accurate. For a crackfic. Don't remember if I ever found exactly what I was looking for, but I remember some of the results to be surprising.

[pilvimarja]

What are some of your favorite video games?

I've been gaming since the early 90s and I'm kind of passionate about video games, so this is going to be long! :D I think my current #1 favorite and most replayed game is Alien Isolation. It's a sequel to the first Alien movie where you play as Ripley's daughter Amanda, and it does an incredible job capturing the look and overall atmosphere of the movie. Also one of the scariest and hardest games I've ever played and one of the few games where I've achieved the Platinum Trophy, which I'm really proud of.

Another game I'm constantly playing since 2020 is The Long Dark. It's a survival game set in a remote island in Canada during a harsh winter and your aim is to, well, stay alive. It's not an easy game, but there's something incredibly meditative and calming about sitting by a cosy fire and listening to the blizzard outside. Another survival game I love is the first Subnautica. I still don't know if that game cured my thalassaphobia or if it made it worse...

I also love the Final Fantasy series. I've been playing it since FF7 and look forward to owning a PS5 so I can play the new one. FF8 was actually my first fandom and the fandom that taught me all about shipping and OTPs.

Another game series I like is Assassin's Creed. The Ezio trilogy has an amazing story and a protagonist and I really wish they'd remake it for current gen consoles. I also love AC Black Flag and AC Odyssey, and the protagonists Edward and Kassandra are among my favorite game protagonists ever. AC Valhalla is not much of an AC game, but it's an incredible Viking/Norse mythology simulator.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game that left a lasting impact on me and has the best written and acted game protagonist ever, in my opinion, but it's also a game that I don't think I'll ever be able to replay all the way to the end.

I was more into the Silent Hill franchise back when the SH vs RE internet battles were at their peak, and I still love the first three SH games, but I've really fallen in love with the Resident Evil franchise in recent years. The original games were always a little too challenging and frustrating for me with their tank controls and intense inventory management, but I've loved every modern RE game since RE7.

Another game I've replayed countless times is the first BioShock. The story is incredible (avoid spoilers if you can!) and it has one of the most beautiful and atmospheric game worlds ever created. I also like the two sequels, but nothing beats the underwater city of Rapture from the first game.

Days Gone is my favorite post-apocalyptic zombie game, along with the Last of Us games. Horizon Zero Dawn and the sequel are both excellent and I'm actually planning to replay them this winter.

This has already gotten super long, but I want to end this with a shoutout to the original Medal of Honor and Spyro games, which used to be some of my favorite PS1 era games, the Monkey Island franchise and other old-school LucasArts games, Far Cry 5, the Uncharted trilogy, the Mass Effect trilogy and the Dishonored trilogy and Prey, which is from the same studio as Dishonored. And the new Tomb Raider trilogy and the modern era Wolfenstein games are also a lot of fun!

[anthropos-metronff]

Question for ya:

I agree that at the end of the day, Vincent is not at fault for what happened to Sephiroth/what he became.

But do you think he still blames himself anyway? Does he feel like he could have done something different and harbor guilt over it? That was my thinking, that he would feel some level of responsibility for the JENOVA project, but there isn't much out there that focuses on Vincent in this regard.

(Also yeah "pure and unsullied" to describe a child soldier is a little...😬)

I think you're looking for a potential headcanon reading here which is in fact canon. In the original game it's very obvious from your first meeting with Vincent that he's absolutely swimming in guilt, self-recrimination and a completely collaped and ruined self-image. And he locates the cause of this, right there in the basement, as stemming from his inability to stop the Jenova project, and the resulting impact this had on someone who he loved. (Lucrecia)

When you tell him about Sephiroth, he basically says 'Well, I didn't know about all that until just now, but that's another reason why I'm terrible'.

So yeah I think it's very obvious he blames himself for the Jenova project and Sephiroth.

I think it's important to establish, though, that FF7 is a game where character self-perspectives are both fallible and mutable. And this? All the above?^^ I think it's very clearly a product of Vincent's trauma, not a considered view on his responsibility.

I think it's implied in the wider canon, though not stated outright, that he probably blames himself not just for the Jenova project, but also what happened to himself at the hands of Hojo. Which, y'know, is obviously nonsense, but is very much in line with what a lot of survivors of trauma and abuse feel.

But that's all not really dealt with properly by the game. He's an optional character and he suffers very badly from what we might call the Quistis phenomenon of So You Got One Chapter of Character Development, and Now You're Done.

The nearest he gets to a resolution is if you have him in your party when facing Hojo and Sephiroth. His reactions kind of come out of nowhere in developmental terms, but him coming to a self-realisation that You know, maybe it should have been a fuck like Hojo who needed punishment, not me, is still pretty cool for a character who has been weighed down by guilt and trauma and a very obvious struggle to emote previously.

Thank you for the kind words re: my take on that line from Nomura by the way. I think I got one like for that post so it's nice to know that at least two people feel the same as me on it.

[sapphire-weapon]

To be honest, I don’t think people who hate the idea of Ashley and Leon together even like Ashley as a character. They just pretend they are “protecting” her from a “problematic relationship” (lol what?) because they can’t hate on her like they used to be able to in the 00s. Misogyny in fandom isn’t acceptable anymore so they can’t make hate posts like they used to. Therefore they try to turn it around as a moral thing when in reality they’re just mad about a ship.

yeah, i've definitely made that case before, myself. i've kind of reached a point now where it's like... there's probably a whole bunch of different factors at play, but what blows my mind is the fact that people can't just say "nah i don't like the ship."

it's difficult for me to use RE as an example because i like basically every ship in RE (except for aeon, but that's a bad example because there's actual legitimate writing issues at play there), so i'll use FF7 as an example, since i'm always comparing FF7 and RE4 anyway.

there's nothing ~problematique~ about cloti. i just don't fucking like it LMAO why don't i like it? because i don't. i didn't find their chemistry interesting. it's boring and i don't care. it's really that simple.

see how easy that was

it's like no one told these people that it's okay to just not like shit.

the good (?) news is that, since FFXVI's release, RE fandom has shrunk faster than the titan submersible (too soon?) so i don't really see a whole lot of this stuff anymore. the only batshit takes i see anymore are from lifelong aeon folk, and like. what else are we expecting from them, really

the bad news is that i might still have to deal with those motherfuckers if i dare to poke my ass into that fucking minefield also as well, instead of just doing what i've been doing and dropping posts and then running and ignoring literally everyone who tries to talk to me about them.

[2000sanimeop]

I finished ff7 rebirth! some thoughts, pretty much entirely vibes based and I personally wouldn't consider them spoilers but

i love it, love the ending, love barret and tifa going 👀 at each other at the very end. love the questions the game leaves me with, chief of which is—are there tifa fans that like to wax about how messed up she is? where are those people/those posts? I would like to see them. she's so interesting (while also completely anathema to my sensibilities), but i never see anyone talk about it.

this lady needs therapy the most out of anyone in the party and that includes cloud strife. aerith seems to enjoy people with Problems so I say GL to them

moving on, i also loved looking at food. so refreshing after ff16's tall apples and massive bowls of cranberries. in cosmo canyon, everyone appears to eat pain aux amandes with a full loaf of Italian bread, as a side. delightful.

rebirth also has the only card game that didn't have me running for the hills. it was actually really fun and the quest line/involved NPCs were all unhinged 💚

finally, I LOVE how much I love cat sith and yuffie. I'm so glad they're fun to hang out with *and* play.

re combat, i'm a bit conflicted. I had a lot of fun most of the time and LOVE synergy but there were bits and pieces that were SO frustrating—for example, when [boss] teleports and is loading up a fuckyouinparticular move on aerith, using her ward shift to teleport out of the way brings the boss with you. That's cool!! example 2, rufus shinra. whatever, at least I know now. i think both remake and rebirth were both variable enough that i can't really say one is better than the other, but the synergy moves are charming enough to count for a lot imo

anyway, I look forward to playing this for at least another month solid, but at least now I can do other stuff in-between.

p.s. the camera most sucked and I don't know what they were thinking. can't s-e just get the camera from god of war or something

Precious Memories

[nightfall-1409]

20 questions for fic writers

I was tagged by @valkeakuulas and @marbled-polecat— thank you!

How many works do you have on ao3? Right now, it's 16! I've gotten more, but it's...you know. scattered about!

What’s your total ao3 word count? 565,822! I think though if you consider everything I've ever written it's probably over a million. I've gone scorched earth before.

What fandoms do you write for? Currently, Star Wars in general. I don't think I've felt the urge to write for other fandoms in a while.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? (Re)convene The Botched Job Like Resonance from a Plastoid Cup Rebuilding from Broken Glass And I couldn't Recognize myself in the Mirror

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Yes! Though I like to wait until I update because I enjoy seeing them in my dashboard between updates. I think its fun to talk back to people who enjoy stuff.

What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending the 16th fic which is anonymously posted, but of those actually linked to the profile, it's likely Vulture.

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I'm a sucker for happy endings, but almost certainly Rebuilding From Broken glass...because it's done.

Do you get hate on fics? Yes ! :( I get a lot of very positive comments, don't get me wrong, but I've gotten hate just the same.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? I try to, in theory. I'll plead guilty to being a little prudish.

Do you write crossovers? Nope! I've considered it.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Wholecloth, no, never. I did have a bitch who was running a zine, who turned down my proposal...and then her fic for the zine was eerily similar to my pitch. But that's not actionable. Just irritating.

Have you ever had a fic translated? Nope!

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Yes, a few times!

What’s your all-time favorite ship? A great question. It's even funnier because I don't write for it nor is it in the fandom I'm currently in. Zack/Cloud from FF7.

What’s a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? There's a fic I started writing early early on in Clone Wars that basically amounted to Rex having the roughest time adjusting to his position with a then-padawan anakin. It was called "The benefits of drawing the short straw" and it's probably going to remain perpetually 4 lines on a word doc.

What are your writing strengths? I like to think that I am good at getting into the minds eye of characters and seeing things from different angles and even conflicting angles....

What are your writing weaknesses? I'm very bad at killing my darlings and knowing when to cut lines of dialogues and scenes for clarity or flow.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? Fraught. There are times where I can see it, and the benefit of it, and then times of needing to go back and forth from the author's notes to the fic's text and getting a little irritated. I can also be...concerned with non-fluent authors attempting to write in real world languages, and the way that they can end up...sort of kitschy.

First fandom you wrote for? ...formally, Final Fantasy VII, all the way back in 2009. Or Inuyasha, in my journals, back in...woof. 2006.

Favorite fic you’ve written? I really do love (Re)Convene... it does give me a little brain worms.

I'll tag... @crown-of-winterthorne @inconocible and @third-generation-female-warrior

As this is smart u are correct Kuulas, the questions unanswered below;

How many works do you have on ao3?

What’s your total ao3 word count?

What fandoms do you write for?

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Do you get hate on fics?

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Do you write crossovers?

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

What’s a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

What are your writing strengths?

What are your writing weaknesses?

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

First fandom you wrote for?

Favorite fic you’ve written?

[icharchivist]

f///f 7 new trailer related salt i'm so sorry for that but bear with me

also will include spoilers to the 1997 game.

god it sucks, the Re//birth trailer looks so nice graphicwise but i keep thinking back to the plot stuff they showed and. I guess i really can't accept the fact the "remake" is actually a stealth sequel and i really don't vibe with what they're doing with it it's making me so sad.

with the first part i was already on the fence not really liking the idea, the main thing is like. I think we're losing all the subtility of the original in some way which is kinda baffling that 25 years later i find it so. vulgar?

I had this pet peeve already with the way they utilized Sephiroth in the first part, considering he just keeps popping up / have a boss battle despite it being the one part of the OG where Sephiroth /doesn't/ appear and is just mentioned a lot, which is meant to build up to him. And ofc the choice is rooted on how they couldn't leave Sephiroth out of the game while he's soo popular (tho it's also the same reason they showed Zack and i'm still so mad at that), and so they rooted the whole "stealth sequel" around him, with Sephiroth not being the one of the main timeline but of the post-AC timeline. Like. Guh whatever.

But that was the intention they were going with anyway, considering the stealth sequel aspect of it, and all in all, it's in character for Sephiroth to do that. I just hate that they called the game a remake and then put Sequel Sephiroth in it.

But the Re///birth trailer kinda hammered in stuff i was on the fence about and i'm hhhh.

I hate that Tifa says aloud in the trailer, even to Aerith, that she doesn't remember Cloud being there during the Nibelheim Incident.

The subtle build up to her uncertainty in the OG were so good, it gets genuinely so unsettling to see that she /is/ hiding something from Cloud but you don't really get what it is, especially while the game was building up something was wrong with Cloud and we had no clue what it was exactly.

The remake already kinda was already far less subtle about Cloud's deal already and just, downright spoiled it with that ending anyway (i hate it i'm sorry😭 take it from Zack Fangirl #1 i absolutely hate how they showed him in the game)

But god i hate it, i hate how it's just genuinely telling you exactly what's up in some way.

bc the confrontation with Sephiroth in the OG is so fucking good. Sephiroth gaslighting Cloud into telling him he doesn't actually exist, that he's just Sephiroth's clone and it's why Sephiroth can manipulate him so well, that he wasn't there during the Nibelheim incident, and him turning to Tifa for support and you realize that *this* is what Tifa's weird behavior has been building up to: that she can't actually reassure Cloud with remembering the reality Sephiroth is making *both* of them doubt at that moment.

Like in the OG it builds almost like this moment of fooling the player into thinking Sephiroth is right the same way it fools Cloud. What the OG does so well is that it gaslights you the same way it gaslights Cloud. And it does it by removing one of THE Pilar of your certainty. Because you trust that Tifa is the One Person who won't lie to you, who was there from the start, who's always been there for Cloud. And sure you don't get why something is wrong with her most of the game but therefore this moment hits so hard.

Honestly i feel like we're losing the actual impact of the gaslighting plotline anyway completely with how much we already revealed about Cloud's past in the remake (they shouldn't have showed Zack they shouldn't have showed Zack i'm SO mad). And perhaps i'm just mad because one of the big reason i imprinted so much on ff7 when i did, and why it became such a formative part of my life, is how much i identified and related to that specific plotline to start with.

Instead in the trailer they also have Sephiroth tell you Jenova can change appearance and replace people in your life and then he tells Cloud "you saw me kill [Tifa] so how can you believe she's the real her?" and i find it. so fucking vulgar.

Yeah makes sense for AC!Sephiroth to aim specifically in having Cloud doubting the people he loves, since he knows this is Cloud's strength. But, aside from the fact we're changing the dynamic between Cloud and Sephiroth already (by completely losing how slowly Sephiroth saw Cloud as a threat, since now he knows Cloud is HIS nemesis), I just think it fucking sucks and doesn't have the actual punch the original had.

Sephiroth managed to control Cloud body and soul, he almost pushed him to kill the people he loved, he pushed him to trigger the apocalypse, he made him doubt he was an actual person, Sephiroth made Cloud his by wrapping his vision of reality, by abusing of the way Cloud couldn't trust his own memories. Trying to isolate him from his friends by having doubted them just feel like a massive downgrade to me.

Like yeah makes sense that post AC Sephiroth wouldn't use the same manipulation tactics. But that might also be why it shouldn't have been a timeline fuckery to start with.

Also i find the expositionary line extremely clunky, i don't remember the Jenova reveal to have come *this* soon in the timeline but whatever, it's a trailer anyway.

And anyway i've seen people kinda joke about it with like "what if they kill Tifa instead of Aerith this time" and i'm genuinely so jaded it genuinely makes me angry. Aerith's Death had so many layers, in plot and thematic and were so intrically linked to who she is as a person. Tifa dying would just be the shock value people have wrongfully claimed Aerith's death was all along all those years. And if they're genuinely doing that like. making us doubt if Tifa is going to survive to try to have us buy into the (already very cruel imo) "will Aerith survive?", i just find it absolutely lame.

I wanted to like those games. I've been waiting for them since 2015, it was all i ever talked about.

But between the remake bait and switch and the various decisions they're taking, it's just making me sad.

And even just taking the game as a sequel instead of a remake doesn't work on me because i find it rather rude. Like the complains about "why would fans want a fully remade game when they can just replay the original" (because people don't play 1997 games and because it's kinda sad that the rest of the saga has elaborate graphisms and not this one), with having enemies from the remake being "keepers of the canon" and how now it's all about "the future isn't set in stone"

it kinda kills me because i never pinned f//f7 to be a story about fate. f//f15 is, in a way, and would totally earn having a twist on "this is not set in stone, we can change things".

but f///f7 is so much about grief, about nature, about accepting that things went wrong, that horrors happen but you have to carry on, you can't rewrite it. Cloud has tried rewritting his life and it didn't end well, he had to accept what happened to him. And instead we get a game that is all "actually you can rewrite what tragedies are about to happen". it just. sighs.

man i'm sad that i'm this sad about it.

i'll finish playing the remake and sure i'll play re//birth, on every other aspect it seems nice.

But man. this excitement from years ago just turned into pure dread and i'm absolutely not excited about the game, and it really makes me sad.

[shatteredsilverwing]

Welcome!

Welcome to my very first blog: ShatteredSilverWing!I hope you will have a nice stay when I give updates on this blog every now and then :D

First, I’d like to introduce myself: My name is Amaliya (27 y/o) and I’m a huge, thirsty simp for our silver-haired dream boy~ So my blog will mainly focus on him and FF7 themed things!

Despite that, I have huge addictions on the following fandoms/games/animes:

-Final Fantasy

(10,10-2,14 (up to Endwalker patch 6.4),7 (OG, AC, CC, DoC and Remake, of course),12 and Dissidia especially)

-Kingdom Hearts

(played every game up + main game 3)

- Pokémon (All Generations)

- Animal Crossing

- Naruto

- YuGiOh (Duel Monsters and GX)

-Disney

- Assassin’s Creed

- Super Mario

- SerVamp

- Hetalia (yes... it’s a questionable remnant of my past self. I won’t talk about it until I’m asked to do so. Pinky Promise on that one)

... and some several other things I can’t recall spontanously.

Secondly, I’d like to talk about what you might expect here:

First off, if you’re a minor, then I’d ask you politely to PLEASE not interact with this blog! Since this blog will eventually post fictions and thoughts which will definitely sound the R18 alarum, I’d advise you to avoid this blog for your own sake!

Also, I do not want to make anyone feel uncomfortable in here, so before so you start reading my posts, I will

ALWAYS

mention Trigger Warnings (depending on the posted subject content) in advance if needed!

I want this blog to be a safe space where everyone can share their thoughts, feelings and interests without being judged.

This is a matter that is very near and dear to me so please, treat everyone with the same respect you wish to be treated.

In case you feel uncomfortable or if you have any constructive critism to share, you are welcome to point it out to me in a POLITE manner (and no, anonymity won’t shield you in any regard)

I’d like to re mention that this is my very first blog so mistakes will happen at some point. We’re all humans and not in the least perfect and as long as you’re speaking politely to me about it, I can work and improve and make notes on what to keep in mind.

Next off: The contents I write

I’m open for any kind of content (SFW and NSFW alike) except:

- Underage NSFW (hard red flag. Any attempts on asking me for such kind of things is an instant report and block. You have been warned and I will not think twice about it)

- Gore

- Vore

- Suicidal/Self-Harm topics (personal decision, please respect that)

- public and self-humiliation

And lastly:

Don’t be shy, I do not bite!

Ask away and I will answer truthfully. Be warned though that English is not my native language, so it might happen that I misunderstand or misinterpret some things. If that happens, I will ask back just in case to avoid any misunderstandings. A personal ask from me: If you know any good sites or dictionaries to work with (especially on learning Synonyms!), please let me know! You can drop them in the ask box anytime! Like I said, I’m always willing to learn! So... Again, welcome! :D