#tofucasserole

Sad that I don't have anything from this year or last year to add to this...

Oh geez uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Obvious pick but check out TNI if you follow me, are into VII, and haven't already. It's the thing I'd say I least have the urge to go back and fix (in part because of the length lmao). This had no right to turn out as good as it did considering I started writing it as a 500 word joke about a terrible terrible headcanon I read but them's the breaks I guess, and then people started drawing stuff from it??????? (Hosted largely at @thenumberi.) Insane. Made a lot of friends through it too (you're one of them hi). Copying my synopsis here:

Cloud, now four years out from Meteorfall, struggles to adjust to civilian life given he’s still gene-spliced with an Old God, and 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.

I shat Replacements out in six hours day-of and it's the only time in my life I've ever had something as a very clear vision in my head and realised it more or less exactly how I wanted without stumbling at any point. (I guess New Traditions was like that also but that feels like cheating a bit since I literally had to write that in an hour on paper for a contest and then was able to clean it up a little bit when I typed the thing up.) A story about how Cloud figures out where Hojo was getting his backup organs from, and the grieving process.

Cloud goes digging in Nibelheim and finds more than he was ready to.

Another thing I kind of vomited out all at once. I fucking love writing Yuffiefic and she is criminally underutilised by the fandom, as the only member of Avalanche that I think would actually have a social life outside of them. Also it was kind of a fun way to exorcise some of my own feelings about some cultural obligations I never like being dragged to (and feel guilty about hating) and why I hate participating them in the first place. Plus this one has like TNI has GORGEOUS ARTWORK THANK YOU TOFU

Also I put Halloween in the summer and added red bean buns and fireworks to it, fuck the police.

11 - Heartbeat

Cloud stepped closer to the chamber. The brilliant illumination of the interior was too much in the gloom of Midgar, the clinging shadows of Hojo’s lab. There was something in there, something almost hidden by the light. Familiar and alien, grotesque and oddly comforting. Mottled purple skin; last time it was lit by raw Mako.

The nuisance ringing in his ears reverberated, ever louder and he clutched his head in pain. From around him came the beat of a heart. He collapsed to the ground, unable to cope and the ringing stopped. The strange heartbeat reverberated until Sephiroth's death.

36 – conditional

A rescue from the Turks. Cost? The promise of a date. A rescue from Hojo’s clutched. Cost? Free. Cloud's tendency to care for his friends without strings made him far more appealing. In many ways it was almost a shame to have put those conditions on a date with him.

But Aeris’s interest was sufficiently piqued already. A spur of the moment phrase she almost regretted. She brought it up only once more, and to her alarm made Tifa uncomfortable. But she never forgot; neither did Cloud. He never saw their eventual less than stellar date as a hassle.

41 – insanity (also requested by @effortlesslyuncool)

What was it like to go insane? Tifa clung to the question after Cloud's tale, making it a distraction from the issues, from her discomfort. How did someone go from cold and distant to murderous as Sephiroth had? What could possibly exist in those secret rooms below the Shinra mansion to change someone like that?

(exhausted sigh) Ship It

1. What made you ship it?

Rubbernecking that turned up a surprisingly good Reeve character study, against every fucking odd

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?

what the fuck

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

my laptop's time to shine 😌

B got asked and I can’t think of more answers for it, I also already got asked (basically no I don’t think tumblr’s run me out of any fandoms), so!

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom, if so, what

ff7 fandom I am still proud of Cloud losing his temper and breaking the wall with Barret (Barret was fine.  the wall was not).  It’s not a crack fic and maybe not even quite humor given the amount of serious discussion that does happen, I can’t remember it now, but I was going for some humor with them giving each other grief at different points.

I also at one point tossed Don Corneo into an RP and used Brittney Spears’ “Womanizer” lyrics for the app.

I also also had Cloud get shrunk and eaten by a chocobo at one point in an RP, which was partially a joke about how gratuitous death had become in the RP because it was horror-themed but deaths were only temporary.  (IIRC it was done right around when they were deciding players would need mod approval for deaths to try to correct the tone issue? the mods let it slide as kind of one last stupid thing because chat thought it was funny.)

so yeah just absolutely stupid things like that lol

more recent fandoms though I don’t think I’ve really added anything outside of tumblr post ideas--wait never mind I wrote Futaba trying to teach Morgana about fetishes.

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas)

I was thinking of one and then realized I’ve already talked about a Persona x ff7 crossover before lol hmmmmm

what-if AU where Ifalna wanted to travel the Planet after meeting Gast and Aerith manages to have a fairly normal if always-on-the-go childhood

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending, about anything at all (gender identity, sexual or romantic orientation, extended family, sexual preferences like top/bottom/switch, relationship with poetry, seriously anything)

3) What fic of yours do you think is underrated?

I mean you were directly there when I griped for ages about how little traffic Tidewaters was getting lol (thank you for the art it's fucking gorgeous.

obligatory shilling everyone please look at it thank you

Also The Number I because I put a LOT of work into it but adjusted for time it honestly has pretty abysmal traffic for a fic of its type. Gen really is a killer sometimes.

14) What is something you wrote in a fic that you are hoping readers picked up on but you don't know if they did? And/or, what is something that you were excited that readers did pick up on?

A lot of the main cast are actually exhibiting many symptoms of mental illness! It's true!

Technically not anything I've written, but I really really wanted to do a fic at one point where Cloud and some other randos find these old Cetra ruins postgame and there's all these warnings about DO NOT ENTER THIS AREA that they ignore because, well, it's ancient magical ruins and there's obviously some monster or curse they set up to guard the place, but that's not really a deterrent to JRPG characters, you know? And they figure, well, obviously it's some sort of weapon like the Black Materia, we need to investigate properly. And the further they journey in the more skeeved out they get because so far they've encountered nothing dangerous but the warnings get more and more insistent, and some of the guys start feeling ill but they can't find anything in any toxicology tests. They're not being poisoned by the food or the air, they're just dying for no discernible reason. And then they reach the centre and there's just nothing there except one more warning, and they last just long enough to translate one line on the plaque at the centre, which says, "This is not a place of honour." And then Cloud, who has been tanking the symptoms better than a lot of them so far, throws up blood. THE END!

The main problem with that whole thing was that I was told it wasn't likely enough people would get the reference for the ending to be anything but confusing and nonsensical, and going any more overt felt, to me, obnoxiously hand-holdy and hurr-hurr-reference-do-you-get-it, so I scrapped the idea. Might return to it one day.

I also hope people are picking up on the whole like... commentary in TNI about the inherent futility of puzzling out which parts of you are separate from you and how there is no such thing as the true self and never will be.

18) What's the most obscure thing you've researched for a fic?

"How hard would my readers strangle me if I tried to go full conlang?"