#took a lot of expensive therapy to undo that mentality

[rydiathesummoner]

OK I love Rebirth Tifa so much. She was...fine in OG ff7, but I really appreciate what they did here.

I understand original Tifa was a product of being female in 1997 (and a product of a culture that discourages interpersonal conflict) but the fact that she just sat and stewed over the truth about Cloud and Nibelheim always bothered me. It makes zero sense to mention it to nobody on the team. And stewing in silence didn't even help in OG, Cloud still went off the deep end, gave the black materia away, and lost his brains until she helps him after Mideel. Even then, yeah great she helped but a bit late by then yeah? I do understand in OG she's very timid, but girl you have to at least TRY.

Rebirth Tifa, however reflects more of a 2024 "see something, say something" attitude. She brings the issue up with Aerith, and that very night pulls Cloud aside to try to work it out. It only doesn't work because Cloud's jenova-celled brain causes him to immediately gaslight her before she can even start, and THAT'S something everybody can relate to. It doesn't matter that she got pissed and didn't get through to Cloud. The point is that she tried. That says a lot more about her character and made her already far more interesting than OG Tifa and I'm so excited to see where she goes from here.

[ashestoashesjc]

A Necromancer & His Zombie Boyfriend On A Couple's Retreat

Short Story 1/2/(3)/4/5/6/7/8/9/10

"RrRRrrrr... grrr? <Hey, uh, babe... seen my arm anywhere?>" rang Sett's voice throughout their cigar box of a house as he rummaged through closets, opened cabinets, overturned couch cushions. 

Shutting and latching the front door behind him, Ulrick began flipping through the stack of envelopes clutched in his right hand. "Huh? Oh…”

“Okay, so… don’t get mad,” Ulrick began, as meekly and guilt-tinged as one can make a shout. “But... there was this huge, I mean HUGE silverfish…” 

“GRrrr! Rrrrr. <Dude! Not cool,>” could be heard as Sett stomped his way to the foyer. 

“I know! I’m sorry! I’m weak!” moaned Ulrick. 

Sett sighed as he entered the cove and laid his single remaining hand on Ulrick’s left shoulder, the other sleeve draped flaccidly at his side. “Grrrr. <Well, yeah.>” he said. Ulrick snickered. 

“You know, having your boyfriend kill a bug for you is exceedingly normal,” Ulrick said, separating the bills from the letters that weren’t bills. There were very few that weren’t bills. “Almost conventional.” 

“Rrr. <True,>” Sett replied. “Rggrrrr. <Probably while the arm’s still attached, though.>”

“A mere quibble.” 

“Rrrrgrrr? <So, where is it now?>” Sett asked. 

“Ugh. Still getting cozy with the silverfish, I’d imagine,” Ulrick admitted, guilt creeping back into his voice. He covered his eyes with his free hand and shuddered. “In… the shower.”

Sett sucked air through his teeth in a compassion-filled cringe. 

“Yeah,” Ulrick sighed, resigned to his trauma. 

“Grrrr. <Don’t worry,>” said Sett. “Rraarr. <I got it.>” 

Ulrick slid his hand down his face with a grateful groan. “God, I love you.” Sett pulled him forward by his collar and pecked his forehead.

Continuing to sort through the mail, Ulrick came to a red envelope and, seeing it addressed to Sett, handed it over. “Looks important.”

Confusion clouded Sett’s eyes for the first few, slow moments spent undoing the envelope’s seal flap, until suddenly, a surge of realization like lightning drove him to violently tear the crimson paper away.

As he scanned the contents of the letter contained within, words failing to do his emotional state justice, Sett began to fist pump wildly, God help anyone in the flight path of his singular elbow. Ulrick looked on in entranced bewilderment.

“Was there itching powder in that envelope?” asked Ulrick.

Sett shoved the creased letter in Ulrick’s face, his manic energy not yet dissipated. Ulrick took it and held it out at arm’s length until his eyes brought the words into focus. 

“A couple’s retreat?” he wondered aloud, lowering the paper enough to peer over the top at Sett.  

“Grrgrrrr. <An all-expenses paid couple’s retreat.> Rrrrrr. <At a swanky resort.> GrrrrRr. <Complete with water skis.>”

“This is from a contest?” he asked, rotating and inspecting the sheet. “When did we enter a contest?”

“Rrggrrrr? <You know those entry slips we’re getting in the post all the time?>”

“The ones I’m always throwing away? I’m familiar.” 

“RrrRrrrrr ggrrrr. <Well, your aim could use some work, because some of them wind up in the mailbox,>” said Sett, with a shrug.

The sound that next filled the room, colored with exasperated mirth, was one Sett was used to Ulrick making, though one that never stopped bringing a flush of heat to the place where his heart used to be. 

He grabbed Ulrick by the hips and the two began to sway back and forth. “Rrrrrr. <Just imagine it,>” he purred dreamily. “GrrrRRrrrr rrrrRrrr grrr...arrrr? <Massages, rock-climbing, a luau. And… did I mention waterskiing?>”

Swaying still, Ulrick looked up with his head cocked. "I've... never heard you mention waterskiing before."

"GrrRrrrrrr. <I enjoy a lot of things I don't talk about.> Rgrrrrgrrr. <Like country music, or bad chick lit,>" Sett said before twirling and dipping Ulrick in a blur. "Rraarrrr. <I'm a multi-layered zombie.>"

Breaking clumsily away from the songless dance and squeezing the bridge of his nose, Ulrick set down the remainder of the mail on the side table by the entrance and looked his boyfriend over. “It’s totally free?”

“Grrarrr. <It’s totally free,>” confirmed Sett. 

Ulrick raised an eyebrow. “No catch?” 

“Rrr… <Well…>”

-

“And streeetch! That’s right! Streeetch!” 

At the front of Meadow Grove Resort’s famed yoga studio balanced - one foot planted on the ground, the other hooked deftly behind her neck - Chrysanthemum Smith, a remarkably limber 60-year-old instructor, urging her out-of-shape contest winning students to achieve the same feats of flexibility.   

All around Ulrick and Sett, a pretzel factory’s soon-to-be-discarded collection of heinous, gnarly undesirables had been given life in the form of sweaty middle Americans. 

That pretzels went through a less agonizing process being baked at 500 degrees was a fact Ulrick was both confident in and envious of. His legs were angled in a way he was sure he’d feel for weeks to come. 

Sett, on the other hand, had apparently been a contortionist in a past life, the way he bent himself into poses, well, a pretzel would gawk at, holding each position stoically before moving gracefully on to the next. It also helped that he couldn’t feel what would leave most tendons shredded rags.

Ulrick gave up the pursuit of dislocating his pelvis and instead went to poke Sett in the cheek. Through his mask, Sett made a chomping motion at the finger, though remained otherwise totally still. "Okay, but this kind of bites, right?" Ulrick signed. 

"A little. And not in the fun way," Sett signed back.

On a pair of blue, rubber mats to their left were two women - one in a biker's jacket and tattered, patched jeans, short red hair tied into a haphazard ponytail; the other a dark woman donning a shaved head, flower-patterned maxi dress, and combat boots - the former of whom suddenly grabbed Ulrick's attention with a nod. 

"You're telling me," she signed. 

And in an instant, they were no longer alone in the hazy, secluded sphere that made their reality.

So taken aback was he that he blurted aloud, "You sign?" 

The yoga instructor shushed him from her place at the head of the wide room, leading him to duck down sheepishly. With the forced inclusion of an overly casual air, he said more than asked, "You sign."

"Oh, yeah," the woman chuckled gruffly. "Mom's Deaf." 

Taking a sudden interest in the conversation, Sett's head swiveled to the leather jacket-clad woman. "Shit yeah!" he signed with fervor, eliciting a harsh snort from the woman. The instructor's head whipped around to glare her way, but went ignored. 

Sett's hands jumbled for a moment before he continued. "I mean, I'm sure that must have been very difficult for your family and--"

She gave a dismissive wave of the hand. "Nah, don't worry about it. She's capital 'D' Deaf. A congenital thing. Whole family's been signing forever."

Her wife - Jen, they later learned - chimed in with, "Di does it at home, too. She's taught me half the lyrics to Boys for Pele." 

"Wow!" Ulrick said with teeth-clenching enthusiasm. "That's so great! Isn't that so great, Sett?"

The mask did nothing to conceal Sett's raised, beaming features. "That's so great!" he signed. 

"I'm sorry!" bellowed the lithe yogi, shattering all delusions of serenity. "Am I boring you?" 

Several overlapping voices came to the general consensus of "Christ, yes."

One of the husbands, portly and somewhat resembling the famously affable capybara, asked, somewhat less affably, why they were being stretched into taffy when they should be outside taking one-on-one lessons with the beach volleyball instructor. He was joined by a few surly “yeah!”s. 

They were met with an unimpressed crossing of the arms. Though it should be noted Smith’s foot was still being held comfortably behind her head. 

"I would suggest, in the future, that you more closely scrutinize contest entries," Yogi Smith advised in as calm a manner as it seemed she could now manage, though with an unmistakable edge to her voice. "In order to partake in our facility’s more... physically involved activities, you’ll first need to align and cleanse your mental, emotional, and spiritual energies.”

This provoked a studio-wide groan, with the exclusion of Jen, who seemed just eager enough to cancel out the cloud of grim impatience encircling her. 

“Unless, of course,” Smith said, shifting poses to something favoring the letter ‘G’, “you’d prefer to construct your own schedules. In which case, a full price admission to Meadow Grove Resort remains available.”

She sleekly extended her right leg, pointing its foot pin-straight toward the sliding studio doors. “Don’t, as the masters of yore were wont to say, let the door hit ya.” 

When no one moved and the room went quiet enough to hear an acupuncture needle drop, Smith resumed a standing position and bowed three times to each division of the studio. “Namaste. Namaste. Namaste.” 

Chrysanthemum Smith had in no way undersold how ‘aligned and cleansed’ couple’s therapy and its airings of dirty laundry and subsequent ferocious dissolutions of decades of marriage; couple’s pottery, the same thing but with clay vases; and couple’s finger-painting, a bonding exercise in shared humiliation, would make their minds, emotions, and souls through sheer gut-rending hilarity.

Ulrick almost didn’t want to stop watching people who, hours ago, seemed all confidence and bravado, now being brought to tears by an instructor’s criticism of their macaroni art lacking ‘depth.’ 

But their confinement was over and they were free to roam the grounds as they saw fit and Sett, without even feigning to look for a map of the resort, made a beeline for the largest body of water (and the largest gathering of humans) he could sniff. Ulrick was still surprised at times by how agile Sett could be on his feet when on the hunt for blood - or recreational watersports - and struggled to keep up. 

Their long-awaited waterskiing adventure began almost as soon as they arrived at the lakeside, the instructor needing a volunteer at that instant to man the skis while he lectured another guest on the controls of the boat. At nearly a head taller than anyone else present, Sett didn’t need much more than a raised hand to stand out. 

Things were going great; Sett mounted on skis as long as he was tall, the boat revving greedily for take off. At Sett’s thumbs up, the runabout hammered off in a thunderous roar. And then, all at once, things were going wrong. 

The envisioned majesty of skimming the motionless calm of the crystal river was halted abruptly with a leaden Sett stumbling mid-lake in his skis, trying and failing to correct himself, going feet-over-head, and sinking like an anchor to the agitated silt of the riverbed below. 

Ulrick, though he jumped with concern at the first hint of a misstep, expected a brief swim back, perhaps slowed a bit - but not much - by Sett's stoney limbs. He’d been the star diver of his local swimming hole as a teen and still maintained some of the underwater dexterity, though nowadays tended to lurk the floors of bodies of water like a carnivorous bottom-feeder; eating habits included.

But then a few minutes passed, and nothing. A lifeguard and two of the more experienced swimmers among the guests plunged into the river and searched for fifteen minutes, cracking the surface now and again for a gulp of air, all to no avail. The water was too cloudy with sediment to see past a certain depth, and the orange-purples of dusk were beginning to settle in. They'd need to return in the morning with a diving team.

It'd now been forty-five minutes, and three of the resort’s other guests were consoling Ulrick, one herself on the verge of waterworks. They'd just witnessed a man - someone's significant other - torn tragically from life's teat, and in front of the man he loved, no less. 

Ulrick, for his part, was positively miffed. 

"When I get my hands on him..." Ulrick started, before one of the grievers tossed him a teary-eyed questioning look. "Er, that is... would that I could only put my hands on him... again..." he corrected. 

Just as Ulrick had begun mentally reviewing the basics of the Arts of Throttling, a movement, barely noticeable, shook the surface of the lake. Then bubbles, then the full break of the water as a head rose into view. Then the screams of onlookers as, in the fading light, a ghastly lake monster began its murderous approach. Then screams of a different kind as people began to make the connection proper. Then there was weeping, fainting, more than one declaration of faith renewed. It was a miracle!

Later, after insistences for medical attention were politely but firmly refused and the religious stragglers begging for just a smell of Sett’s waterlogged clothes were shooed away, Ulrick asked why he waited so long to resurface, to which Sett said, "GrrrrRRrr. <Well, at first I was just sort of embarrassed.> RrrrrrrGrrrRrrr? <Then I thought, "How often do these people see miracles?>"

"Oh, sure," groaned Ulrick. "A man comes out of a lake after half an hour and it's a miracle. A man comes out of a grave after a few months and it's "Grab the torches and pitchforks, everyone!""

"Rrrr. <Babe.>"

Ulrick gave a pouty grumble. "I'm just saying. One's a little more miraculous, is all." 

Sett pulled Ulrick's head into his chest and stroked his hair. "GrrrRrrrRrrr. <Shh, I know, dude, I know.>" His heavy, soaked clothes and lack of body heat didn't chill Ulrick as much as they should have, and though a fine coating of sand covering him from head to toe gritted against Ulrick's cheek, it only made Ulrick rub his face in rebelliously. 

"Okay," Ulrick said, resting his fists on Sett's chest and gazing up into his eyes. "What's the next activity? I think we’re... due-au for a luau?" The moment the words left his lips, his face collapsed into disgusted regret.

“Rgrrr... <Actually…>” Sett said, wrenching off his mask and shaking the excess water from his hair, teasing a blush out of Ulrick. “GgrrrRrrrr? <Doesn’t watching the stars by the lake sound pretty relaxing?>”

Ulrick grinned and took a seat on the shoreline, running his hands through the tufts of ryegrass stretching out in waves around him. He tapped a spot to his right and Sett, half-cocked smile in tow, came lumbering over to take it. 

Hours flurried past, changing nothing about the image of the intimately silent pair but the number of stark white pinpricks in the sky they beheld. 

They threatened to sit silently basking in each other forever. 

And then Sett said, “GRrrrrgrrr, rrgrrr, graargrr. <So, Diane and Jen gave me their number, and they want to plan an outing.>” 

Unease shot through Ulrick’s veins, but he held his tongue in search of the correct words. “O-oh?” 

“Grrr? Rrgrrrrr. <Isn’t that cool? People want to spend time with us,>” said Sett, ensorcelled with the twinkle of every new star. “Rrrrr. <With me.>”

“That might be…” began Ulrick, before noticing the glimmer in Sett’s eyes and faint lift at the corners of his mouth as he stared up towards a great unknown. He sighed. “It’s going to be great.” 

Sett rested his hand on Ulrick’s, their fingers interlocking. He smiled, and the two gazed into an ever-darkening firmament, speckled with a thousand stars and a thousand futures.