#spitegarbage
Note
Do you have any advice for anyone trying to get into writing?
Not really a motivation thing or anything, just for improvement. Your writing has captivated me, and I felt like it's better to get advice from an author that is reachable than reading a ton of articles online regurgitating the same steps.
Aw, thank you, I'm honoured!
Apologies if this is kind of a mess, I mostly went through stuff I come back to a lot that helps me. Also tumblr seems to have removed the ability to do indented bullets. Fucking great.
In General:
When I'm first starting out writing a story I'm excited about, I usually don't do things in order -- I'll instead pick one scene I can see extremely clearly and am super excited about, one of the things that made me want to write the story to begin with, and then build the entire outline out from there to set it up (what needs to happen to set the scene up exactly how I want it to be? How do I justify that stuff? What would happen afterwards that would add to the scene even more in retrospect?) This not only helps keep the energy going for parts of the story that might not necessarily be fun to plan, but will inherently cause you to start building a story that is either circumstantially or thematically building to something. It can be something as small as a single conversation but it should be the bit that you personally want to see realised most strongly.
On that note, people like when they can see foreshadowing! That's what it's there for! This has been said by other people plenty, but I'll restate it here: the audience potentially being able to piece together your twist after a while is not a failure in writing, it means you put information into a story that allowed them to engage with it and conveyed something that made sense.
I personally sometimes (but not always mostly due to laziness and because I do try to approach shit chronologically so I don't have to double back and do massive rewrites, also due to laziness) like to write big keynote moments of character arcs in full in advance once I have the whole plot more or less laid out. That way, I know what's coming emotionally speaking and can have characters start clearly building up to things, do stuff like plant specific phrases that come back in big ways or are recontextualised later on, and it makes the story feel more cohesive as a whole and helps the scene hit a whole lot harder when you do get to it. Like I said though I'm lazy and I also don't like creating more work for myself if I don't have to, and if by chance the story doesn't shake out the way I thought it would by the time I get to that moment then god is it a pain to rewrite that sort of thing.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Mostly I find it helps keep me focused on where it's going. It's a late stage thing though, I don't start doing this until I'm sure I know how the story will be laid out more or less chapter by chapter, which brings me to:
GO BACK AND CHECK IF YOU HAVE A MIDDLE OF YOUR STORY. ARE YOU SURE? GO BACK AND CHECK AGAIN. This is like the number one pitfall I see basically everywhere across any genre, both with fanfiction and professionally (and in movies always winds up manifesting in reviews as "the movie gets kind of aimless after a while/the third act kinda starts out of nowhere after a really slow part). People have an idea for a strong beginning, the rising action and the big dramatic moment when the stakes are raised, maybe a quiet moment in the middle reflecting on all the tension of the plot and how it's reflecting on the characters, a thing that sets off the end, probably an idea how it ends and how things resolve, et cetera -- and they will forget that at no point did they actually create any connective tissue between their plot development points. Travel! Character beats! The actual events in between big beat A and big beat B, no matter how barebones! Go back and check if you've made any!
As someone that writes a lot of heavily character-driven stuff I'm very biased here, but: in my opinion, if you have good, solid characters, they can carry even the most barebones dogshit story because they are the lenses that the audience is experiencing the world from and through, and whose actions are potentially shaping the course of the story, and of course who the reader is getting attached to. Conversely, even the richest, most lavishly detailed world and story is going to land with a thud if your characters aren't any good and don't have any more to them than making various political developments happen, because at that point you don't have a story with different elements interacting with each other to create events and tension, you have a lore wiki, which is not the same thing as a story. Maybe you could use that for a tabletop RPG, but people aren't necessarily gonna want to read it.
RELATED: JRRT was a linguist and historian first and a writer second. Lore is great and all and can help your world feel like it's a living breathing place, but think about if it's a good detail to include onscreen or not, or if it's just there to "flesh out the world". Stop to consider if this actually has a demonstrable effect on the things happening in front of the reader or not, and if anyone would notice if it were removed outright. Can some things be assumed? What might need to be explained?
Keep an eye on narrative voice versus character voice! If I stripped the dialogue tags from your story, could you still tell who was talking? Does everyone just talk like the narration? Like each other? Like you? Everyone is gonna sound like you at least a tiny bit because you're the one writing it, but at least try to keep an eye on how much you're doing that. It can be pretty boring to just listen to one guy talk the entire time across multiple mouths haha don't look at how long this post is getting shhhhhh
Any story (but especially horror, and especially especially cosmic horror), lives and dies by its suspension of disbelief. The rules don't need to be realistic because it is all made up, and they can be any rules you want, and if you establish them clearly then the audience will buy in as best they can because they want to engage with your story on its own terms (or they SHOULD grumble grumble but that's another discussion and not really something the author can control), but then once you've made them you need to stick to them, or when you do break them it should wind up meaning something.
Suspension of disbelief in horror or fantasy can be trickier, especially when it's something weird and the rules aren't even mechanically sound in their own setting. In that case, the important thing to preserve is emotional stakes the audience can buy into, about how this situation might feel to be in, or if there are any things in real life it might feel similar to. This one's more intuitive than you'd think. Sure, you might not know that the veil of reality is flimsy and all it would take to destroy it all is to get noticed by something much vaster than you could ever imagine; but you probably DO know what it's like to be one missed rent payment from losing everything and realising your safety was really all that never sound. I don't even flinch if someone's head explodes into gore in a movie, but I'll always wince and look away if someone has their fingers crushed or their eye pierced, because even though the violence is lesser I can imagine that happening to me and I don't like it one bit!
Horror can potentially struggle with this pretty badly. Unless you're writing a slasher where the point is to watch some dumb teens bite it, your movie won't actually be scary unless the audience can in some way feel endangered, and they won't be able to do that if what is going on is too disconnected from anything a human could experience. Writers tend to get fixated on making a Really Gross Scary Thing(TM) or Biggest Evilest Threat Evar(TM) and assuming their job is done.
There's no one right or wrong way to do something, but be aware that sometimes things tend to come up in stories a lot for a reason. The tools you have are just tools. Complaining a story has tropes in it is like complaining a tree is made of wood.
That said, if you're thinking of your story entirely in terms of which tropes you want to use, it may be time to take a step back and think about what you actually want to accomplish rather than mushing the same paste into the same holes for the 800th time (more on that later).
Dialogue. If it's something you struggle with, remember that chances are you're a person that knows how to talk, and so you inherently know how to create dialogue. The biggest pitfall I see is people overthinking it trying to "Write Dialogue in this Story" rather than just typing an idea the way they know inherently that it would be typed. If you wanna try and capture a much different voice, spend time listening to people -- and I mean really listening. People double back, correct themselves, trail off, change their train of thoughts in the middle, do more or less of these things when they're in a certain emotional state depending on their personality.
Frankly I'd spend time listening to real people anyway. Spend too much time online and characters wind up sounding like Twitter threads, or worst case scenario you wind up with perfectly articulated ideas and Therapy Speak. A character might not have the vocabulary you, someone who has been online for eighty to ninety years (est) would to convey specific ideas, and not everyone is perfectly self-aware about what they're saying. Someone's probably more likely to say "fuck you I had a bad day" than they are to go "gosh i dislike how much your own success reminds me of how my own mother held me to impossibly high standards so i have very high rejection sensitivity which is why i'm lashing out". Or, again, if someone does talk like that make it mean something. It could be a good example of someone either being insincere and going through keywords to shut someone up, or someone that's very socially awkward giving a rehearsed speech, and those are all potentially interesting ways to then take a story.
(Sidenote because I see this come up sometimes: Hate to single out a single genre here, but anime and by extent video games but mostly anime is a bad place to learn to write dialogue from -- if you're listening to a dub, they had to translate stuff from Japanese and then make it fit lip flaps on a screen, and if you're watching subs, not only were the subs translated but anime trends heavily towards melodrama and Japanese people typically do not speak that way.)
You gotta know the rules before you can break 'em! Read books. Actual books I mean, not just fanfic. Broaden your horizons. When you start breaking rules it will be because it's what you want to do.
Personal nitpicks, some fandom specific and some not. I'm aware some of these are basic but also you never know who might need to hear this stuff so:
Hentai is not a good place to learn about writing actual sex. It's a great place to learn about sex that is following pure porn rules, in which case go nuts and godspeed soldier, but unless you want your scene to come off as either unintentionally rapey or full of nonsensical leaps of moon logic when you're trying to write an otherwise somewhat grounded setting, you should probably read actual books meant for actual adults about fucking, or pull from your own experiences if you're able.
* This isn't advice but I want it known at this point I've seen at least three fanfics clearly written by a middle schooler that's never fucked before and honest-to-god genuinely seems to think some degree of omegaverse is how actual sex works. So that'll be interesting to encounter going forward. If you aren't committing to porn rules (there's that "the rules can be anything you want so long as they're internally consistent" bit again!) do research is my point.
If you started your character creation with their outfit and can tell me their star sign, bust measurements, the four shirts plus jacket plus socks plus shoes they're wearing, the kind of weapon they can summon, eye colour, hair colour, skin colour, height and weight, their agility score versus their magic score, and their favourite ice cream flavour, and yet you have one paragraph about "personality", your focus might not be in the right place and you are making an MMO character. That's fine for something you're going to be staring at the back of for 200 hours but maybe not for someone you're going to need to live inside the head of. Start with personality, and you can tailor all that fun back cover dossier stuff around who that person is and how it would inform the way they dress.
Bad child dialogue is my biggest pet peeve personally and I will immediately put a book down when I encounter it lol. A bigger portion of people are around children than you think and will notice if you've never interacted with a kid before. Children are not cavemen and do not talk like them. The gaps in their vocabulary tend to come from them having a limited amount of it and adapting new phrases into the few existing frameworks they have. This carries over to their psychology, by the way.
Specific to cosmic horror: you can't just make a Gross Thing, your horrors need actual motivations. Nobody cares how big of a squid you can invent, and going "uhhh it's so scary I don't have to bother can't describe it" can only work so many times and is not an excuse to at least not try to describe something. How it makes the characters feel, what the experience is like, whatever. Now, you don't ever have to tell the readers directly what the motivations of your old gods are, but you the writer should come up with some to shape their behaviour so the readers can see the inscrutable ghosts of clear patterned actions that almost make sense yet remain just outside human comprehension oooooooooo. Also readers can generally tell when that's missing and all you have is Large Squid Scary doing random gross shit so it's not an excuse to skimp.
Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. We have pronouns. We have context clues. We have sentence structures that convey what is going on to the reader. We have nouns. If you are going to constantly refer to your character as The Brunette it better be hugely massively goddamn significant that her hair is brown or it's gonna become clear real fast that you just ran out of ways to phrase things and it's gonna take people right out of the story. If the only way you can think of to describe your character in an intense emotional scene is "uhhh this is the one with the brown hair remember I hope you didn't forget" then that's code fucking red. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets.
And the two biggest bit of advice I can come up with for people trying to improve their craft that I give out every time:
1 Have a point. Have a clearly identified reason in your mind about what you want to accomplish with this story. This will help you get your thoughts in order when you are stuck, it will help you outline the story if you're not sure where you want it to go next, it will help other people troubleshoot with you if you aren't sure how to start solving a problem, it will help you make decisions about what and what not to include to help it feel complete, and it will help motivate you when you start to lose track of why you even started this project. Saying "well it's a Vampire AU and I want to do Hurt/Comfort with an ambiguous ending and a BAMF!Scrongus with Soft!Cromgle" doesn't tell me a damn thing, either as a reader OR as someone potentially trying to help you whip the thing into shape. That's a bit like asking, "How do I write a Cute yet Cool character?" like bitch I don't know it's your story there are a million ways to write this stuff and yes that is a real question I got asked once.
Instead, have an actual, identifiable goal that is personal to you, what you want to write, and what you have to say. That can be anything from "I have a lot of strong opinions about why gender is, across the breadth of experiences possible with human consciousness, a zero sum game that must be internally and deliberately engaged with before one is then able to determine their own relationship to it" to "oh man i love the idea of Mark from Accounts Receivable one day going apeshit and beating Jake from Auditing half to death with an office chair and the fallout that would generate and maybe also someone FINALLY FINALLY asks him for the first time 'hey dude are you okay do you wanna talk'" to "god it'd be so hot if this guy were bent over a pool table drooling onto the velvet and i am going to do everything in my power to facilitate that somehow". Either way, clear mission statement and goal that isn't just telling me what tags you're slapping on the finished product! If you have that kind of clarity of vision it will come across in your piece and resonate with people because it's a complete thought that the work is able to deliberately showcase, instead of just churning out Content™ that fits certain templates that are popular, even if you like said templates. What do you have to say? Why did this idea stick in your brain so hard you had to write it down and tell the world about it? What parts of it especially did you want to convey so badly? Show us!
2 Writing is vulnerability by proxy. Until we get the technology for brain uploading, you are only going to ever be you in your own head with your own thoughts, experiences, biases, and worldviews. If you think you can write something without exposing a lot of really revealing shit about yourself to an audience that notices it, perish that thought now. Quentin Tarantino and HP Lovecraft weren't slick about it and you won't be either. This is neither a bad thing or a good thing, it just is, and whether it affects the work for better or for worse is honestly dependent upon how you engage with that fact. I will say trying to back away from it generally leads to problems (unexamined prejudices showing up in stories, worldviews that it turns out most people don't share going stated simply as fact rather than being supported by the writing around it). It can also lead to a stronger story, though, if you're willing to engage with it. Engaging honestly with what scares you and why, what you find comforting, uplifting, upsetting, et cetera. All of these require vulnerability, and allowing other people to see that, and it's going to happen with your without your consent because you're the one writing the thing, so you may as well make peace with it and lean in. "But what if it's cringe" too late baby most things are cringe and that shouldn't be your focus. You are fighting a losing battle. We are all cringe. But we are free.
Hope this helps. I just know I've left half a sentence fragment in here that I said I'd come back to and then forgot oh god
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“spitegarbage”
Archive of Our Own, October 21, 2019. Final Fantasy VII tags.
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youtube
Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared
The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!
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The Number I
Chapter 66: I am.
Here we are at the very last chapter (aside from the epilogue). I'll be posting that on the sixth anniversary of this fic (June 15th). Look forward to it! That said, I'm not putting author's notes on the epilogue's intro, so here we go one last time.
Thank you to:
@fury-brand
@terror-billie
@tofucasserole
@denebolaleo-ffwriter
@voidrotted
@shinjikari
@cateringisalie
@kaijudragon
@farfromdaylight
@kaasen
@subdee
@themateriodictable
@auncyen
Cat
and anyone else I've sought help from over the years that I've dragged into beta'ing. Thank you to @varethinsilico, @jenovacomplete, @waifujuju, @defiantinsect, @rosemochi, @death-rebirth-senshi, @yuquiitas, @spectroscopes, and frankly too many people to count for their emotional support.
Lastly, thank you, for reading. If I was writing this just for me, I wouldn't have written it out at all because I already know how the story goes; the fact that other people wanted to see this dumb pee joke that rapidly got so badly out of hand has been what's kept me going through all these years for the entirety of this massive undertaking. I have a couple short story oneshot side pieces planned for this universe for fun, but this was always intended as a complete story with a specific outline and endpoint since June of 2017 when I posted the chapter, and after 66 chapters and an epilogue and 6 versions of the outline, and not only is it finally over, but the act of ending it is something I never thought I'd have the privilege and burden of doing. Thank you again for being here.
Cloud hallucinates. Voices sometimes, or music – it’s hard to tell. It’s just another consequence of Jenova’s encroaching presence in his DNA, and four years after Meteorfall everyone’s more or less adapted to it and other oddities associated with being not quite human. Mostly.
What begins as a chance encounter with something that isn’t Jenova soon leads to a fight for survival that can no longer be contained in the spaces between numbers, as Cloud tries to keep himself together and finally put his past behind him.
#the number i#spitegarbage#final fantasy vii#forfdorfsorf#ffvii#oh god it's here oh god oh god oh god#if there are any typos in here that i still didn't catch after all this time i'm gonna cry
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The Number I
Chapter 64: The Number I
Thank you to @fury-brand, @tofucasserole, and @terror-billie for making this chapter possible.
Cloud hallucinates. Voices sometimes, or music – it’s hard to tell. It’s just another consequence of Jenova’s encroaching presence in his DNA, and four years after Meteorfall everyone’s more or less adapted to it and other oddities associated with being not quite human. Mostly.
What begins as a chance encounter with something that isn’t Jenova soon leads to a fight for survival that can no longer be contained in the spaces between numbers, as Cloud tries to keep himself together and finally put his past behind him.
UPDATES EVERY OTHER MONDAY.
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The Number I
Coda
A conclusion.
Cloud hallucinates. Voices sometimes, or music – it’s hard to tell. It’s just another consequence of Jenova’s encroaching presence in his DNA, and four years after Meteorfall everyone’s more or less adapted to it and other oddities associated with being not quite human. Mostly.
What begins as a chance encounter with something that isn’t Jenova soon leads to a fight for survival that can no longer be contained in the spaces between numbers, as Cloud tries to keep himself together and finally put his past behind him.
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The Number I
Chapter 61: If He’s Your Man Then Why Have I Gradually Replaced Parts of Him Until All Original Components Have Been Swapped Out?
god i missed the free dopamine i get when i manage to update on time
FANWORKS:
Here's a book cover-type thing that was made by @denebolaleo-ffwriter and @shinjikari that itself spawned from a shitpost, as most fanart for this thing (and in fact this story itself) did.
Also not so much an art but a playlist curated by Tai of a lot of very cool vibes and mood music. Once again, stoked someone even likes this thing enough to put something like this together. Very cool!
Thank you to the beta squad for doing your beta thing love you guys
Cloud hallucinates. Voices sometimes, or music – it’s hard to tell. It’s just another consequence of Jenova’s encroaching presence in his DNA, and four years after Meteorfall everyone’s more or less adapted to it and other oddities associated with being not quite human. Mostly.
What begins as a chance encounter with something that isn’t Jenova soon leads to a fight for survival that can no longer be contained in the spaces between numbers, as Cloud tries to keep himself together and finally put his past behind him.
UPDATES EVERY OTHER MONDAY.
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The Number I
Chapter 65: The Real Shrapnel Was Inside Us All Along
The next chapter is the last one (not counting the epilogue) and you have no fucking how hard I'm panicking right now.
Thank you to @fury-brand, @terror-billie, @tofucasserole, @shinjikari, @voidrotted, and @denebolaleo-ffwriter for bringing me through this home stretch. Could not have done it on my own.
Cloud hallucinates. Voices sometimes, or music – it’s hard to tell. It’s just another consequence of Jenova’s encroaching presence in his DNA, and four years after Meteorfall everyone’s more or less adapted to it and other oddities associated with being not quite human. Mostly.
What begins as a chance encounter with something that isn’t Jenova soon leads to a fight for survival that can no longer be contained in the spaces between numbers, as Cloud tries to keep himself together and finally put his past behind him.
UPDATES NEXT ON THE 12TH. STORY CONCLUDES ON JUNE 15TH.
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The Number I
Chapter 63: PSYCHIC DOUBLE REACHAROUND
SORRY NOT SORRY
Advance prep hellchapter that caused massive hiatus: 3/4. No prizes for guessing what the last one will be...
Than you Datflowerboi115 for this high quality meme.
Thank you to @fury-brand, @tofucasserole, and @terror-billie for making this disaster possible.
Body horror. You know the drill.
Cloud hallucinates. Voices sometimes, or music – it’s hard to tell. It’s just another consequence of Jenova’s encroaching presence in his DNA, and four years after Meteorfall everyone’s more or less adapted to it and other oddities associated with being not quite human. Mostly.
What begins as a chance encounter with something that isn’t Jenova soon leads to a fight for survival that can no longer be contained in the spaces between numbers, as Cloud tries to keep himself together and finally put his past behind him.
UPDATES EVERY OTHER MONDAY.
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The Number I
Chapter 60: The Fabled Orgy Chapter Is Here at Last (Haha This Is False I Have Done a Joke Yet Again)
Motherfucker Of A Chapter To Write that I prepped years ago and then I just sat on it and now it's here oh god oh god oh god: 2/4. Not completely happy with it (frankly I think 55 turned out a hell of a lot cleaner and not just because it got its own point across way more succinctly), but then I'm never happy with these things. Them's the breaks!
Thank you to @fury-brand, @terror-billie, @tofucasserole, and @subdee, as well as @denebolaleo-ffwriter, @voidrotted, and @shinjikari for making this possible.
And also you should know that this chapter contains suicidal ideation, graphic depictions of self-harm and gore, and allusions to non-consensual sexual behaviour.
Cloud hallucinates. Voices sometimes, or music – it’s hard to tell. It’s just another consequence of Jenova’s encroaching presence in his DNA, and four years after Meteorfall everyone’s more or less adapted to it and other oddities associated with being not quite human. Mostly.
What begins as a chance encounter with something that isn’t Jenova soon leads to a fight for survival that can no longer be contained in the spaces between numbers, as Cloud tries to keep himself together and finally put his past behind him.
UPDATES EVERY OTHER MONDAY.
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The Number I
Chapter 62: No One in This Story Hydrates Enough for the Amount of Crying That Gets Done
Hi! I really hate this one and I feel like it was a lot of the holdup! However, it is DONE and frankly I haven't known what the fuck I've been doing since day one so...
Some trivia: This chapter is, chronologically, the very last thing written for TNI (most of the big important stuff, which is pretty much everything beyond this point, was prepped a long long long long time ago in advance). As such there's probably a bunch of typos in this one that I won't catch until two weeks later.
Thank you to the beta team for beta-ing this entire last leg of the story basically all at once.
Cloud hallucinates. Voices sometimes, or music – it’s hard to tell. It’s just another consequence of Jenova’s encroaching presence in his DNA, and four years after Meteorfall everyone’s more or less adapted to it and other oddities associated with being not quite human. Mostly.
What begins as a chance encounter with something that isn’t Jenova soon leads to a fight for survival that can no longer be contained in the spaces between numbers, as Cloud tries to keep himself together and finally put his past behind him.
UPDATES EVERY OTHER MONDAY.
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20 questions for fic writers
Tagged by @subdee, may as well since it's been a while
1. How many works do you have on ao3?
40
2. What’s your total ao3 word count?
590,973
3. What fandoms do you write for?
FFVII mostly, but none of that spinoff bullshit. I have some stuff for XV in the works despite hating XV and the characters having zero fucking personality because this is just my grieving process I guess??? They're basically all crossovers with VII except one though so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I've also got a couple things for Spy X Family I'm excited for but unfortunately am a bit hamstrung due to certain reveals and lack of reveals so it's on pause.
(Also Ever Crisis and Remake back to back have sucked all the fucking joy out of me in one fell swoop so I'm trying to remember why I even fucking like doing this when FFVII has effectively been erased.)
4. What are your top five fics by kudos?
1)The Number I.
Go read it. I worked hard on it and it's very dense and heavily character-driven and a genfic focused on plot, and, most importantly, is complete. I'm going to shill this one directly I ain't give a damn:
Predominately involves Cloud, now four years out from Meteorfall, struggling to adjust to civilian life given he's still gene-spliced with an Old God, who begins losing control of his body to a heretofore seemingly unknown entity with inscrutable goals. As it gradually becomes clear that the events of the previous four years aren't as they seem in more ways than one, things start to go off the rails completely as Cloud winds up enmeshed in conflict between multiple parties: an international initiative studying cosmology and the two doctors leading it; the WRO, who has considered him a Jenova-based liability from day one; interpersonal friction with his newfound family stemming from the residual baggage of everything he went through; and reality itself beginning to deteriorate.
It's slice of life, it's cosmic horror, it's a character study, it's about grown men crying and legacies and grief and trauma and intimacy and autonomy and gender as a microcosm for broader truths about the nature of the self, it's got angry tearful fistfights, bottoms that haven't figured out you can take it in turn to service top, Cloud telling everyone his strong and correct opinions about magic and materia and bikes, found family shenanigans, and me talking about garlic for way way way too long. Something for everyone!
I wasn't kidding about any of that by the way, heed the warnings at the top of the chapters because I do NOT pull punches and we get into some heavy shit. Go hard or go home.
Originally it was a 500 word pee joke I was gonna show to two people in response to a terrible LTD argument I saw someone make and was sure I'd "wrap it up quickly". Oops.
2) An Idiot's Guide to Holding Hands. I wrote this in response to, I'm not kidding, the worst most hateful fanfiction I have ever fucking seen in my life. As big of a beef as I have with the Crisis Core fuckers treating the women like shit and being pretty hateful towards them as a whole, they're still at least clearly writing because they genuinely love Crisis Core and the characters in it for reasons that are presently unknown to me. This thing on the other hand was oozing contempt for the cast of VII and Evangelion and the women in particular and I genuinely don't know why someone would put that much fucking effort into making something like this and felt a sudden need to rebut everything it stood for. It's not super great as a fic tbh but y'all seem to like it so at least something came of it.
3) Don't Ask How The Job Interview Went. Harry Potter/VII crossover I shat out in like 6 hours on a whim because a Halloween prompt one year was "witches and wizards" and I hated all the existing crossovers (ugh again with the crisis core). Honestly had an entire multichapter fic as a sequel lined up that I was pretty excited for but as things went on I felt grosser and grosser about even making it. Maybe I'll do something with the outline one day, it was basically finished. Still kills me that this thing is so fucking popular but there you go.
4) What's Dead and Buried. This is literally just Chapter 18 of The Number I (which you should go read!). I wrote it, realised it worked great as a standalone fic and gateway drug, and published it as its own thing. If you're on the fence about TNI, maybe check out this oneshot. Features shitty gremlin child Cloud interacting with Vincent and a lot of grim implications about both their lives that Cloud is too young to really get. Very very black comedy.
5) Adjacent. I don't like this one sorry. It was a commission and while I like the individual headcanons of freaky shit Cloud is inclined to do and was chomping at the bit to use them somewhere I don't like how they wound up getting utilised. Feels like generic fandom fluff to me. I'd delete it but people seem to enjoy it and I don't want to take that from them.
5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?
Always and as soon as I possibly can! I'm immensely flattered people actually take the time to comment on stuff and I enjoy getting to talk about the stuff I wrote in a bit more depth.
6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
It's Full of Stars easily. Fucked that dude up beyond repair. Also was considering a sequel for this one too so I could explore some of the stuff fueling what the fuck is going on here, though that might obviously ruin the ambiguity of said ending and what exactly was done to him.
7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
I'm a big baby I actually almost always try for happy endings, or at least bittersweet. Probably Tidewaters, nobody even gets pulped in that one.
8. Do you get hate on fic?
Basically no. I've gotten five negative comments in all the years I've been doing this:
Two were people whinging about how I made Aeris Jewish in a fic and how that was reverse racist against Christians (die mad about it lol).
Two were someone that wanted an in-depth essay over my right to use a slur within the context of a character talking about people calling him that slur in a character arc partially about feeling alienated from gender and basically demanded I out myself to "prove" I could use it while missing literally everything about why that word would be used to where they felt the need to send that shit to begin with (gee thanks did you do it did you make the queers feel comfortable). Reading comprehension is so so important you are all going to kill me.
The last one was a long six paragraph rant completely unrelated to the fic in any way because I joked in the author's notes about not liking a video game that they liked(????), followed by an even longer ten paragraph rant about how actually the unrelated game was "95% perfect" (lmaoooo) and how "5% of it being bad isn't a good reason to hate it". The first half of it's on there, I deleted the second comment because my fanfiction comments are not the fucking gamefaqs forums dude. (Also die mad about it lol.) That remains to this day the only comment I've ever deleted from any of my fics and that includes the one that literally just said "penis" and nothing else.
9. Do you write smut?
If you squint lol. TNI has a couple sex scenes in it. They're uh
they're in it.
Boy are they in it.
10. Do you write crossovers?
Hell yeah I do. Also I'm a purist about this term A CROSSOVER IS WHEN YOU CROSS THE TWO THINGS OVER BUT THEY ARE STILL THEIR OWN DISPARATE THINGS. A FUSION IS WHEN THE TWO SETTINGS ARE FUSED. WORDS MEAN THINGS. ALSO A DRABBLE IS 100 WORDS EXACTLY NO MORE NO LESS. I'LL KEEP SITTING ON THIS PORCH SHAKING MY FIST AT THESE CHILDREN UNTIL THEY FUCKING LEARN.
Anyway I'll dump FFVII on everything and nobody can stop me. FFXV. Mass Effect. Spy X Family. Aliens. Ellen Ripley can, should, must, and will fight Jenova with a power loader.
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Nah I talk a big game but I ignore the Comp too hard to break into the mainstream. I'm small potatoes.
12. Have you ever had a fic translated?
Nah and no surprises why. Shit's too wordy.
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?
Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind of? Fuck I gotta finish that thing.
14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?
meh. Does Loid/Yor even count? Everyone keeps writing it wrong and we still haven't seen the penny drop but it's sweet in its extremely fucking dysfunctional way (which is the best way GO READ TNI COUGH COUGH).
15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but probably won’t?
Frame-Perfect. Should not have started writing before finishing the damn outline, don't know how to resolve this thing without it being a massive downer any way you slice it. This is why you should never pants VARETH.
16. What are your writing strengths?
Dialogue babyyyyyyy. I literally won an award for it once lol. Probably also psychological horror. Those two things combined means there's a lot of stream of consciousness shit in nearly everything I do, and if that's not your jam you probably won't like it.
17. What are your writing weaknesses?
It is so, so hard to get a character from a location to another location. It shouldn't be hard. Why is it hard??? I should be allowed to just go And then he went, in exactly that cadence every time and everyone should just deal with it UGH
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?
Extremely hit or miss and you can almost always tell if the person in question doesn't speak it. Use sparingly because you are playing with fire.
19. First fandom you wrote for?
FFVII. The Number I is technically my first fanfiction ever, actually!
20. Favourite fic you’ve written?
Either TNI obviously, but also as a whole either Replacements or Tidewaters. Replacements I whipped up on the spot day-of in a few hours on a whim and it basically turned out perfect???? I've never been able to replicate that before or since. Tidewaters is Cloud Yuffie Nanaki shenanigans which I love, and I was shocked and horrified to learn I'm basically the entire tag of that as far as that's concerned (I'm working on rectifying that I promise shhhh).
Everyone I know that writes was already tagged basically uhhhhhhh
@varethinsilico, @denebolaleo-ffwriter, @spectroscopes, @terror-billie, @jenovacomplete, anyone else who wants to take a crack at this pretend I tagged you.
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The Number I
Chapter 58:ｎｕｌｌ ｐｏｉｎｔ
Thank you so much to @fury-brand, @tofucasserole, and @terror-billie for betaing. Couldn't have gotten this far without you.
Cloud hallucinates. Voices sometimes, or music – it’s hard to tell. It’s just another consequence of Jenova’s encroaching presence in his DNA, and four years after Meteorfall everyone’s more or less adapted to it and other oddities associated with being not quite human. Mostly.
What begins as a chance encounter with something that isn’t Jenova soon leads to a fight for survival that can no longer be contained in the spaces between numbers, as Cloud tries to keep himself together and finally put his past behind him.
UPDATES EVERY OTHER MONDAY. PROBABLY.
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The Number I
Chapter 59: Great Piss Joke, Now Say Something Beautiful and True
Wow, okay, shit. The story's done being written. (If anyone was curious, a lot of this was typed years ago! The last thing to actually get physically written was 62.)
Due to some very nasty real life stuff, I had to bust ass to finish this by March 15th. Things wound up working out, but I didn't know that at the time, so I would like to give a huge, huge, huge thank you to @fury-brand,@terror-billie, @tofucasserole, @denebolaleo-ffwriter, @voidrotted, and @shinjikari for jumping on board to help finish after I declared an all hands on deck state of emergency. I genuinely could not have done this without you. Also thank you to everyone that provided their support which was, in a lot of very tangible ways, just as crucial to getting this mess done.
On a lighter note, fanart!
I don't know if this even counts as fanart because it doesn't happen in the story and mostly just spawned from shitposting during the workshopping phase, but it DOES have a bird in it, so I will be sharing regardless. Thank you Tofu for making this dream a reality.
This, on the other hand, did happen! Thank you voidrotted for this incredible interpretation of chapter 58.
Cloud hallucinates. Voices sometimes, or music – it’s hard to tell. It’s just another consequence of Jenova’s encroaching presence in his DNA, and four years after Meteorfall everyone’s more or less adapted to it and other oddities associated with being not quite human. Mostly.
What begins as a chance encounter with something that isn’t Jenova soon leads to a fight for survival that can no longer be contained in the spaces between numbers, as Cloud tries to keep himself together and finally put his past behind him.
UPDATES EVERY OTHER MONDAY.
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The Number I: Update Schedule
Chapter 59: Monday, March 20th
Chapter 60: Monday, April 3rd
Chapter 61: Monday, April 17th
Chapter 62: Monday, May 1st
Chapter 63: Monday, May 15th
Chapter 64: Monday, May 29th
Chapter 65: Monday, June 5th
Chapter 66: Monday, June 12th
Chapter 67: Thursday, June 15th
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The Number I
Chapter 57: Since Someone Asked Me Five Years Ago: No It Wasn't A Tom Holland Joke
WE'RE BACK! Hopefully for good this time until it is complete, more or less. Only 61, 62, 63, and 65 still need major portions of them to be written and then this monstrosity will be OVER and I will be FREE and I will have finally completed the process of giving you all irreparable brain damage.
Anyway, guests of honour in no particular order:
@aerithkinfaker read my fucking mind apparently and happened to create the exact image that popped into my head when I read this text post. Also immensely proud that my legacy is such that I am tagged with every popular post that mentions cannibalism (keep doing it I am touched).
@denebolaleo-ffwriter drew fanart of the opening scene of chapter 1! Genuinely spooky to consider how far this thing has come. I set up the whole outline for it back in June of 2017, sure but I figured best case scenario I'd make it maybe 10 chapters in and then get tired.
Speaking of chapter 1, Cloud actually getting to eat that kimchijeon, courtesy of @voidrotted, who actually remembered the canon lore that Cloud can't use chopsticks for shit.
voidrotted actually drew a lot of shit! another fucked up Tifa to add to the collection, Zack having a normal one, Sephiroth having an even more normal one. Love all of these so so so much.
Also they made some memes. Now this is a goddamn moodboard.
This one was anonymously submitted. thank you so fucking much to this loving rendition of the Boy Putty. If I was even worse about updating than I am I could post this in time for the anniversary of this fic, but I figure you guys would want a chapter more.
Lastly, this bit from @waifujuju who responded to my dumb little shitpost doodle with this incredible sketch of these extremely canon events.
Thank you to everyone that helped get this thing off the ground, including but not limited to @fury-brand, @terror-billie, @tofucasserole, and probably some other people I am forgetting because all of this was spaced out across the 11 remaining chapters as I scrambled to finish them all at once and I honest to god lost track of who was helping with what. If I left anything out here, either fanart or beta crediting, DO NOT BE SHY ABOUT MESSAGING ME SO I CAN GIVE YOU THE CREDIT YOU DESERVE.
heads up body horror and gore you guys know the drill by now
Cloud hallucinates. Voices sometimes, or music – it’s hard to tell. It’s just another consequence of Jenova’s encroaching presence in his DNA, and four years after Meteorfall everyone’s more or less adapted to it and other oddities associated with being not quite human. Mostly.
What begins as a chance encounter with something that isn’t Jenova soon leads to a fight for survival that can no longer be contained in the spaces between numbers, as Cloud tries to keep himself together and finally put his past behind him.
UPDATES EVERY OTHER MONDAY. PROBABLY.
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actually on a serious note i can back that up
like cloud's a writhing mass of insecurities perpetually terrified he's going to be kicked out of the Man Club and frequently feeling alienated by his own gender and trying to reconcile that, and meanwhile here's tifa who one day went up to her dad and said "i'm a girl" and knew that and acted on it and everyone nodded and went "yeah that tracks she's a girl" and from his perspective that is a remarkable amount of clarity of purpose and a sense of identity and another reason he winds up a bit obsessed with her for a while
and meanwhile in reality while i don't think she ever grappled with her gender herself in and of itself, that's still potentially a lot of scrutiny her own identity and perception are under (not to mention the whole nibelheim thing) and that's a lot of extremely stressful second-guessing going on, and at the end of the day he still has her on a pedestal for all these reasons and needs to learn to maybe take her off, and she needs to accept that it's okay to step off herself and that people will not fall to pieces if she does not perfectly exemplify stability all the time always and in fact will probably find it a relief that she struggles with things sometimes as well
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