Listen. Listen to my story.

Yessir, like many of the other people who post things on this site, I'm an aspiring writer. I aim to be a novelist, am writing a book at the moment, blah blah blah. But that's not very interesting. It's meaningless until I finish it. Let's talk about fanfiction.

I'll admit that for a long time, I wasn't really one for fanfiction at all. Especially stuff that paired characters up and put them in relationships with one another. So I didn't really read any, and never considered writing any - until I played FFXIII. I found that game to be an unusual one for the series, because whereas (with very few exceptions) Final Fantasy characters in the past had never really had romantic ties with one another - explicitly or implicitly - and certainly never of a same sex nature - FFXIII seemed to be brimming with knowing winks and nudges in that direction. If I remember rightly (it has been a while since I played it), the exact nature of Fang & Vanille's relationship is never made explicit; they could just be really good friends, they could be lovers. I seem to recall one cutscene where Fang is examining Vanille's l'Cie brand - located in a somewhat personal space - without concern, while everyone else turns away uncomfortably. In fact, the whole storyline of these "l'Cie" and "Pulse" and whatnot seemed to hold a lot of parallels with, say, gay oppression.

Just think about it. Imagine that "l'Cie" was just one whole metaphor for non-traditional sexuality. We've got the fear of that, the fear of the unknown. The desire to expunge anything different. The (frankly extremely religious-figurehead-esque) Primarch Dysley, who preaches hatred to a population who don't know better. Focusing on our 6 main characters, we've got the father who hates himself and what he's become, the angsty teenager who never thought that this would happen to him, the romantic fiancé who wonders what will happen to his relationship, and so on, and so on. Try and recall that scene in Palumpolum where they're trapped at Hope's dad's place, surrounded by soldiers, and Snow marches out with his arms in the air in an attempt to demonstrate that he was normal, still a human being, and maybe not the monster that they were expecting. Obviously the metaphor falls apart when we consider that gays aren't granted superpowers in real life just for being gay. And they don't turn into withered monsters if they fail to do what they were told to do by the godlike superbeing that recruited them. But nevertheless, I think it was pretty clear the story peeps over at Squeenix had a "suppressed minority" concept that they wanted to embed deeply into the game.

Anyway, my point was that it seemed that although most of the potential for romance between characters was left implied, the game's story devs appeared to be doing all they could to give the fans something to work with. Almost like they were encouraging fanfiction based on their work. It felt, for instance, like Snow was given an almost entirely irrelevant (in the first game at least) fiancé as a means of providing a generic obstacle for the fans to overcome in a story pairing Snow up with someone else. I can't prove any of that, but it certainly seems people on this very website picked up on the vibes between, say, Hope and Lightning. Or Hope and Vanille. Obviously Vanille and Fang. And, my personal favourite, Hope and Snow.

I guess what I liked about the two of them was how much like chalk and cheese they were - and yet, how similar they both could be in more subtle ways. Sure, Hope is nervous and quiet whereas Snow is confident and extrovert, but they were each those things because they had the same tendency to bottle up their feelings and be disinclined to talk things out with others. Hope always gave off the impression of being quite intellectually gifted, and Snow always seemed to be more of an idiot. One of my favourite scenes in the game was when Hope was paired up with Snow in Palumpolum, and tried to indirectly drop hints at why he was mad, which Snow didn't pick up. Snow is beaming like an idiot, completely oblivious to how much Hope is obviously seething and gritting his teeth.

So, with regards to writing fanfiction of my own - it's a good way to get the juices flowing when I'm short on ideas, because the characters and setting are already right there for me. I'm sure everyone else feels the same way. And not only that - let's be honest, it's pretty hot to write naughty things happening between two of your favourite characters.

Warm Horizons was my first fic on here, and, if people like it, I plan on supporting it with some more sequel shorts. I've also got a few ideas for another pair of Final Fantasy characters from earlier in the series that I might pen a few lines about if I feel so inclined... I'm pretty pleased with what I've written already, but not too proud to reject constructive criticism should you wish to provide it! Thanks for reading, because there'd be no point in writing stories without having readers to share it with.