Hello, dear readers. If you are seeing this, that means that you have decided to take a look and read my fanfiction. For that, you have my gratitude.
I would like to tell you the basic facts: first of all, English is not my mother tongue, so take this piece of information into account when dissecting my work (Who am I kidding? If somebody really wants to write or make use of a language different than his of her native own, they should be sure they can master it; that being said, feel free to be as unbiased and as relentless as you whish in your reviews). This is my first story ever, so reappraisals are pivotal to me, especially in helping make my own mind whether to carry on with this part-time activity or to throw it all away and pursue something which does not entail grabbing other people's attention; something like porn movies or numismatic. The point being: review please!
Now let's get down to the real thing: I've always been a lukewarm Final Fantasy appreciator. I've never been able to play to any of the games of the franchise (save for the very last one), due to my lack of affinity for that kind of gameplay but I dare anyone to say that the stories and the characters are not captivating. To cut a long story short, I decided to catch up with what I've been missing by watching hours and hours of gameplay and cutscenes and since my discovery of the gilded world of fanfiction, I unearthed the epiphany that if a plot did not turn out the way I wanted, hell I could always take my trusted laptop and write down whatever story I wanted, including whomever character I wanted in whichever setting I wanted. So here I am!
First question: why Final Fantasy VII? Because the charisma of the game itself is undeniable.
Secondly, there is this peculiar situation where each of the character has been somehow well-defined but still everyone of us feels like they are entitled to add their own brush to Cloud, Tifa or even Sephirot. They are all a bunch of dynamic fellows whose attitude and thoughts evolve in the course of the entire arc of the story but a 'full stop' in their development never really occurs. So it comes as no surprise if someone makes Tifa and Cloud marry or split up or have the Turks plotting to gain control of the WRO. One day Cloud will shake his brooding attitude off or Tifa will give him the dear John because she cannot stand him anymore, Yuffie will be the queen of its land or will forever relinquish her duties and Red XIII will morph into a superior being existing only in an intangible plain of reality. And the list goes on and on... The world of Gaia is still open to a myriad of possibilities and we are all here to put them on paper (or on server, specifically) knowing that maybe not everyone will like them, but most of us will at least find them a bit interesting. Basically, to sum it up, FFVII gave me the largest freedom available to paint my own version of events taking place after the last canon episode, that being Dirge of Cerberus.
Second question: why Yuffie? Because she is young, cute, badass and to me, like a blank canvas where everything can be drawn. Before you ask, I omitted from my story any other character I felt not too sure about its portrayal. One thing is to pick Yuffie, who has been sidelined in the games (in FF;DC she was more on-screen but still not enough, for me) one thing is too pick, say, Cloud or Aerith (if she was still alive!): I'm still not very knowledgeable of the trade and by choosing characters like them, I was risking too either corrupt them too much or to stick too much to the canon. As we say bak in my town: I'm going to fall if I dare to lean. Let's take this adventure one step at a time and let's stay away from the more complex characters (this might be conflicting with what I wrote in the last paragraph, but believe me it is not!).
Third question: why an original character? Well, because everyone who loves FFVII, or any other instalment, wished to be part of the story. I'm not saying that the original character is a mirrored image of myself. I'd rather say that he is part what I am, part what I've been and largely what I'll never be. So let it be an OC!
I began writing this story somewhere in late September, after flunking the admission tests to the university. Realizing I had much more free time and after a bachelor's party through the Balkans kickstarted my imagination (that and unhealthy amounts of glasses of rakija), Fall 2016 saw a good two thirds of the story completed. Christmas saw me coming to a grinding halt, due to the arrival in my family of Final Fantasy XV and the tale was left dormant for about a month and a half. Then on a lazy weekend of February, I sat by my desk and did in two days what I was meant to do in two months. The brain surely works in mysterious ways!
The story has been edited, especially chapter-wise, in order to be more readable. I'm going to frequently check for typos or grammatical errors. Feel free to point them out. I took great fun in writing this fiction, and it's also my pride, without second thoughts. I'm happy how it turned out to be, so I hope you will enjoy it as well.
One last recommendation: writing is a whole load of fun. Go write your own tale and bring it to the light of the internet! Start writing and you won't even need Netflix, believe me!
Thanks a lot to you all again. Have a nice day!
ilMaestroAmadio