#forfdorfsorf

[nautilusopus]

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

[nautilusopus]

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.

#the number i #final fantasy vii #spitegarbage #forfdorfsorf

[nautilusopus]

Hello, what the fuck is going on in the FFVII fandom? (I’m not here to start shit, I’m just nosy)

do you mean the love triangle debate that's gone on for approaching 30 years that has only gotten worse, the endless salivating over how a couple sequels and some shameless gacha games including a battle royale clone that got shut down after six months "fixed" the original game by "making the characters nicer", the continued insistence that actually shinra is the good guys because the in-universe war criminals working for them are pretty and smol soft beans and the problems are just being caused by a Few Bad Apples, or the general open misogyny and lack of reading comprehension across the board

#asks #Anonymous #forfdorfsorf #it's bad here anon #Squid Alienates VII Fans #the 'guzzling slop' post pinned here refers to square enix just pumping out shitty sequels endlessly #and people heaping praise onto them anyway because sephiroth is in it so who cares

[nautilusopus]

@datflowrboi115 continuing this over here because it's actually a subject i'm legit interesting in but!!!

barring someone actually literally in the police force that's walking around with an iron cross tattoo (and even then, but we'll get to that), there's not really a substantial difference. disadvantaged kids can SUPER easily get suckered into propaganda and absolutely get chewed up by the system as a result, which cloud is basically the poster boy for

AND

it's worth noting that a lot of that is also how stuff like white supremacy takes root because that kind of propaganda is part and parcel tied into the recruiting process at times.

vii itself is a bit of an odd spot here because while sexism/homophobia et cetera certainly exist within the universe, there's actually not really any kind of notable racism, or at least not how it tends to express itself in american politics. most of the cultural stress comes from the fact that shinra has kind of colonised everyone and everything, less due to any racial motivation and more just because they're fully mask off profit first hypercapitalist.

Getting suckered into propaganda is very much drinking the kool-aid, as much as being an uneducated child that gets chewed up by the system. Believing Soldier is a force for good that would finally act as a reason for other people to like him is believing Shinra's propaganda about Soldier. It's the same act.

is cloud a fascist? obviously not lmao. but falling for the propaganda and believing the propaganda, which he did both of, is just the same thing. this is how people get sucked into this stuff. the guy was ABSOLUTELY a true believer right up until the moment when the guy he idolised burned his mother alive and stabbed him in the gut, and by then it was too late.

#forfdorfsorf #ALSO this is not even getting into the framing juxtaposition we get of the Parade Friends pre- and post-reveal which is like #legit maybe one of my favourite things in the entire game period

[nautilusopus]

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.

#the number i #final fantasy vii #spitegarbage #forfdorfsorf

[nautilusopus]

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.

#the number i #spitegarbage #final fantasy vii #forfdorfsorf

[nautilusopus]

This scene is so fucking important to me on a deeply personal level.

#forfdorfsorf #final fantasy vii #actually remembered to cap it this time

[nautilusopus]

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.

#the number i #final fantasy vii #spitegarbage #forfdorfsorf

[nautilusopus]

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.

#the number i #final fantasy vii #forfdorfsorf #spitegarbage

[nautilusopus]

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.

#the number i #spitegarbage #forfdorfsorf #final fantasy vii

[nautilusopus]

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.

#the number i #spitegarbage #final fantasy vii #forfdorfsorf

[nautilusopus]

WOW this post was in my drafts for almost two years and I am realising I never actually finished writing it. So fuck it I guess.

Something that's always bugged me about the end of FFVII that I thought I'd share:

So, during the ending, Meteor arrives and grows like energy tentacles or whatever and starts ripping up the city and burrowing into the Planet and shit. In the process, a lot of the city is completely demolished, and the Shinra logo is ripped clean off the tower:

But then later when Holy shows up and the devastation continues, now on both the Planet's end and Meteor's, the tower remains standing.

This is hardly an oversight -- it's visibly buffeted pretty hard by everything going on, but never at any point gets knocked over. Which is a little weird, right? If they were ever going to blow up their big iconic setpiece, now would be the time. It'd be pretty convenient symbolism, too, given the environmental themes the game's had up until now. Man's hubris or whatever. It'd look really cool and this would be the ideal time to do it, but they instead went out of their way not to.

The tower, now devoid of Shinra's logo, no longer represents Shinra, and is now being used to bring up another point the game has raised at a few points up until now, most notably at Great Glacier.

The tower, built by humanity in defiance of the natural world (a force that is neither inherently good nor evil, but simply worth preserving) around it, remains unfelled by Holy and Meteor. Humanity is a part of the world as much as the rest of it, but still has chosen to set itself apart. This, too, is something not inherently good or evil, and the game argues that this too can be something worth preserving.

I'm reminded somewhat of Princess Mononoke (an EXTREMELY similar work in terms of theme and the way the story resolves incidentally go watch it it's really good Neil Gaiman did the English dub if you liked VII you'll love Princess Mononoke). The conflict is not even inherently "Humans Bad Nature Good". The natural world -- the forests, the spirits -- are all shown as beautiful and worth preserving for their own sake; but at the same time, there is a degree of brutality inherent to it as well. Nature is not always good and nurturing. In contrast, Lady Eboshi (who is vastly more benevolent than Shinra) finds herself in conflict with the forest, all too willing to rip it all down in the name of progress and the distinctly human quality of compassion. Ashitaka himself is later berated by the wolf god Moro for expressing it.

At the end, when (spoilers) Iron Town is destroyed and overtaken by greenery, the only thing that is left are the people, who must choose to live and decide what "living" even means, being inextricably intertwined with the natural world and yet inevitably in conflict with it, and who must learn to balance this conflict with the fact that all life -- be it human or otherwise -- is as precious as it is insignificant in the broad scheme of things.

It's hard not to think of the image of Midgar's ruins completely overgrown 500 years later, and Iron Town covered in plants, taking a step back and thinking about not just their lives, but about what it even means to live and be a part of the world that is as much a part of them as they are of it.

#forfdorfsorf #final fantasy vii #if you say stupid shit in the notes about crisis core or shipping i block you #nobody could behave themselves when i started shitposting about the gold saucer and that's why we can't have nice things

[nautilusopus]

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. 

#the number i #spitegarbage #final fantasy vii #forfdorfsorf

[nautilusopus]

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. 

#the number i #spitegarbage #forfdorfsorf #final fantasy vii #that's right baby i post in the tags now

[nautilusopus]

Cooking for neither Fun nor Profit

Okay I keep referring to the chicken incident in posts and fics and 3 am Discord conversations and I'm realising it's been long enough that most people following me are not familiar with the chicken incident and I also never actually posted it here? Go figure! I wrote this in like an hour, two years ago, and it's lodged in my brain since.

Also worth pointing out that my bestest best buddy @shinjikari, completely independently of me and years before we ever met, also came up with the exact same chicken incident. Which means it's basically canon that Cloud pulled this shit at some point. Just so you know.

Cloud eats lunch with Yuffie, who also happens to be the only one that bothered to maintain a social life outside Avalanche.

#spitegarbage #forfdorfsorf #final fantasy vii

[nautilusopus]

Helloo again! sorry to disturb, here’s some more shitpost fanart thingie 😌✨

HELL YEAH

This is perfect and I love it more than words can possibly express.

The Number I

#art #submission #Anonymous #the number i #spitegarbage #spoilers #cloud finally gets a hat by proxy #forfdorfsorf