Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VIII or any of its characters or locations. Final Fantasy VIII is property of Square-Enix unless they feel inclined to hand it over to me for no apparent reason. I also don't own the rights to lecture you all in grammar, structure and spelling although I sincerely wish I did.
Foreword: Let me make it clear from the start that this is a one-shot, so don't ask me to update for more chapters, etc. Normally, this is completely out of my writing style and character since I'm usually into the action/adventure aspects of storytelling. After browsing through the various Final Fantasy VIII stories on however, I felt more and more compelled to write this, if only to get it all off my chest. I believe this is a fairly accurate depiction of the current state of the stories and the authors who write them.
SQUALL'S DISPOSITION
Squall was sat on top of his bed when-
Squall looked up at the author. "Hey, isn't it 'sat on top of his bed'?"
"Excuse me"? the perplexed author asked, curious as to how a fictional character in his own story could converse with him. Clearly, the insomnia seemed to be taking its toll.
"Well..." Squall began imperturbably, "To place the verb 'was' right after my name and before 'sat', which is simply a past participle of 'sit' in this case, is grammatically incorrect so to speak. 'Squall sat on top of his bed' would simply do. Not only is it grammatically correct, but it makes you sound and look less like an uneducated ass."
"Since when are you one for so many words strung together, Mr. Introverted Antisocial?"
Squall observed his fingernails coolly (A.N: What a showboat) as he responded, "That's just a facade I put up to deal with the hormonally crazed female population of Garden."
"So what about the fangirls then?"
Squall's facial expression darkened considerably, the entire room itself seemingly holding its breath. "We won't talk about that..." he muttered bitterly. "Look, are we going to continue on with the story or not?"
"Hey, I don't even get paid for this! I'm just an author doing this on my own spare time."
"Clearly an incompetent one..." he grumbled faintly.
"Do you want me to put you as OOC?" the author threatened.
"No!" a panicked Squall shouted, raising his arm in protest. "Alright, I'll cooperate."
The author smiled smugly as several minutes of awkward silence ensued, with Squall simply staring at the author with a quizzical expression on his face.
"Well?" Squall shouted out, frustrated.
"Hmm?"
"Are you going to make me move and get this story going anywhere or are we going to sit here in this painfully mundane setting of a room and discuss grammar all day?"
"Right," the author realized, feeling slightly ashamed.
Squall sat on his bed, thinking of nothing interesting in particular when he arbitrarily decided to get up and roam the Garden, in search of some entertainment for his board mind.
"It's 'bored'. 'Board' is a noun. You can't use a noun in place of a verb. God, it isn't even spelled the same! How can you make that kind of error!" Squall exclaimed.
"It's Hyne."
"I beg your pardon?" Squall looked up with confused eyes at the author, needing a reiteration of what was said.
"In your world, you can't say God because your omnipotent being and creator is referred to as 'Hyne'. Therefore in place of any derogatory statement where the word 'God' is used to reflect frustration or send a condescending remark, you have to replace it with 'Hyne' instead."
"Thank you for that linguistics lesson professor," Squall drawled sarcastically, when he bumped into Irvine in the hallway because the author felt that this story needed some character interaction thrown in. For the purpose of simplicity, he just happened to be there at the right time for no apparent reason.
"Squall," Irvine acknowledged his comrade. "Like, where you off to?"
"In pursuit of some much needed entertainment as this author says. Although I'm not really one for it considering the fact that it completely goes against my strict personality and character, thus rendering the purpose of my journey completely pointless and trivial."
"Cool, can I like, come too?"
"No."
"Like great, I'll just then, like, tag along alright?" Irvine began to walk side by side with Squall as they made their way through the Garden halls and towards the cafeteria. Why were they heading to the cafeteria? Who cares?
"Are you sure you're straight?" Squall asked the auburn haired man, looking at him queerly. "What the hell? Why did I have to look at him queerly? Couldn't you have said 'peculiarly'?"
"It was a spur of the moment decision and given the circumstances, it was the perfect adjective of choice to use in that scenario," the author explained before getting back to the story.
Irvine rolled his eyes. "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. You're just jealous because I'm comfortable with my sexuality and don't feel the need to be so self-conscious of myself."
"What the hell are you talking about!" Squall shouted, eliciting stares from the Garden population yet not caring because he was Mr. Badass I-Don't-Care-What-Others-Think-Of-Me-When-I-Actually-Do. "You're the epitome of self-consciousness! Look at the way you act and dress!"
Irvine grunted. "You're one to talk. What's with the leather pants and the leather jacket? And a fur collar? Seriously now Squall, what's the deal there? And the hair, don't even get me started on the hair."
"What about the hair?" Squall crossed his arms over his chest, becoming extremely defensive.
"Everyone describes it as a tossed mess. Hardly," Irvine responded astutely, a blasé expression on his face. "Just how much hair gel do you use to get it look like that? You really do come off as a hypocrite you know that?"
"Hey, I got nothing on Cloud Strife." Squall proceeded to walk towards the cafeteria. "What was up with the abrupt character change? Since when are you one to be so perceptive anyways?"
"Since this story decided to give me a little more character development and depth than just about every other I'm in."
"Nice break from constantly being seen as Selphie's bitch and boy toy isn't it?"
"It is indeed actually," Irvine replied, quite satisfied with his current predicament, a smug smile on his face as he walked along with Squall, his hands clasped behind his back.
As if on cue, or simply due to a lack of imagination, Selphie magically appeared out of nowhere, wedging herself in between the two males.
"HIYA!" she yelled, nearly hyperventilating.
"Hyne woman, breathe," Squall muttered, continuing on.
"GUYS I'M SO EXCITED AND I DON'T KNOW WHY!" she screamed in caps lock because the author felt the need to emphasize her excessively sickening, cheerful personality. She began giggling hysterically like a schoolgirl, jumping around in circles and producing figure eights around the two boys as they trekked along.
"Selphie, don't you have anything better to do? Like gauging the strength of your neck by tying a rope around it and seeing how long you can hang in the air with your feet dangling?" Squall suggested, muttering the initial sentence, yet fully voicing the second."
"NOPE! TEEHEE!"
"Squall, I think you meant to have it the other way around," Irvine corrected. "You were supposed to voice the first sentence and mutter the second one so she couldn't hear."
"No, I had it right the first time."
Irvine turned to look at Selphie in amusement. "Selphie, are you ok?" He didn't actually care but the author made him ask for the purpose of progressing this pointless story along.
"I'M JUST FULL OF JOY AND ENERGY EACH AND EVERYDAY!" she yelled, her head bobbing up and down. She had been doing a lot of yelling. Some say it was because of the possible early childhood abuse.
"Some say it's because of the speed and cocaine," Squall retorted.
That too, the author agreed.
"When delving into the inner psyche that is Selphie's brain, one must carefully tread the waters for the wiring involved is sure to short circuit, thus resulting in an extreme hazard to all those submerged." Irvine was being philosophical again. It was a side of him that only surfaced when he was either not feeling horny or just simply repulsed. And since the former was often never a possibility, it most definitely had to be a result of the latter.
Selphie clung to Irvine and began to hug him fiercely. "OH IRVY, I'M FLATTERED BUT I JUST DON'T FEEL THAT WAY ABOUT YOU RIGHT NOW. MAYBE YOU CAN ASK ME OUT ANOTHER TIME!" With that, the overly hyperactive teenager began to hop, literally, towards another part of Garden before colliding into a random inanimate, stationary object and falling to the floor unconscious, never to wake up again for the duration of this story.
Squall and Irvine stared at each other for a moment with confused expressions before jumping into the air simultaneously and high fiving each other. Others around Garden stared at them-
"Don't say 'queerly'," Squall interjected, shuddering.
Others around Garden stared at them curiously?
"Much better."
Others around Garden stared at them curiously then. Squall and Irvine glanced at each other in awkward fashion, all of a sudden becoming self-aware of their respective selves.
"That never happened..." Squall threatened. "We'll never speak of this again."
"Right," Irvine agreed.
And so once more, Squall and Irvine and whoever the hell else felt like arbitrarily tagging along for no real reason at all began marching towards the cafeteria, which they should have surely reached by now but since the author felt like dragging this on for as long as possible, they still hadn't.
"Contraction. That's a contraction," Squall corrected, beginning to become increasingly annoyed of the author's antics. "You can't write contractions in the main body of the story, it's just extremely unprofessional."
"You just said 'it's' though," the author pointed out. "Should it not be 'it is'?"
Squall rubbed his gloved hand down his face slowly in frustration, letting out a low growl. It was a truly manly growl though, so fear not ladies. "Yes, but that's because it's part of a speech. In the case of quotes, it's perfectly suitable to use contractions as you wish."
As if on cue, some random student in the hallway began talking in an excessively loud voice to someone else. "So we'll all be talkin' like it'll be necessary to keep usin' contractions because it's keepin' our ragin' Commander on edge?"
"Shut up!" Squall yelled in anger, clearly frustrated because the author felt the need to alert the reader that he was frustrated since he assumed that the reader couldn't deduce the fact that he was actually frustrated judging from the exclamation point behind the quotation marks implying that he was frustrated.
"That's a run-on sentence and a repetitive one as well, one of the worst writing habits to get into," Squall pointed out, back to his usual smart-ass self. "You should break it down into several, more coherent sentences so as not to confuse the reader of the story. And you should also do away with constantly repeating everything. You only need to state something once to get your point across."
"Hey, I learn from best," the author defended himself.
All around, a resounding chorus of "ooooh's" sounded, with Squall joining in as well.
Squall shook his head in disappointment. "That was low man, ultimately low." The author hung his head in shame as Squall continued to shake his head. "Wouldn't you say so Irvine?"
There was no answer and only now did it dawn upon Squall that Irvine was nowhere within his visible vicinity. The cowboy had mysteriously and abruptly disappeared because the author simply felt that his time in the story was up and needed to get around to introducing the rest of the remaining main characters for the purpose of pleasing the rabid fans.
Squall shrugged and continued walking towards the cafeteria.
"Ok, No!" He stopped, now completely infuriated. "I've been walking to the EXPLETIVE DELETED cafeteria for the majority of this EXPLETIVE DELETED story. Just EXPLETIVE DELETED get me there already you EXPLETIVE DELETED!" The story was rated PG-13 and so the author felt that it would be inappropriate to add any higher grade curses seeing as how the majority of the readers would go cry to their mommies.
Squall was now magically in the cafeteria. Before he could proceed any further, for the sake of throwing some much needed conflict into the pointless story, Seifer appeared out of nowhere, still his old psychotic and egocentric self. There was no need to explain how he somehow managed to sneak into Garden following his in-game actions because it would take too much effort.
"Squall..." Seifer sneered because that's all he seems to ever do: just smirk and sneer. "Are you ready for..." Drum roll begins, building the anticipation. "OUR FINAL DUEL?" Seifer's voice thundered, for added effect.
Squall rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. "How many times do I need to kick your ass before your blonde head finally gets it? Just go home."
"But-" Seifer began with a pleading look in his eyes.
"Go home..." Squall stated indifferently, because you know, that's what Squall does: look indifferent and callous ninety-nine percent of the time.
Seifer hung his head dejectedly, looking miserable and was about to disappear from the face of this story when he spotted Zell purchasing (you guessed it) hotdogs. "It's Chicken Wuss." He pointed and laughed, forgetting his predicament as he went over to verbally assault the man with the hotdog fetish. Some say the fetish itself was a metaphor for him possibly swinging on the other side of the fence.
"What the hell?" Squall muttered, truly baffled. "Seifer just can't just come back like that and pretend as if nothing's ever happened. It's not consistent."
"Since when has this story had any consistency to fall back on? It's all been a random series of events and quotes slapped together to make this sorry excuse of writing appear worthy to read," Quistis chimed in expertly, appearing to his side. The part about her being witty seemed contradictory considering how she was in essence, a blond.
"What are you implying?" she questioned the author sharply, glaring at him menacingly.
"Hey, at least he's not having you pair up with Seifer for another absurd Seiftis," Squall pointed out.
Quistis scrunched her face in disgust. "I just would like to know for once, what would even make others assume that I would even be remotely interested in him? I mean, did the game itself not drop enough hints that me and him were completely revolted by one another?"
"Yet another plot absurdity in most stories pertaining to us," Squall pointed out, glancing around for no particular reason because the author felt that he should be committing an action and not simply standing there like a stiff.
"It can't get any worse can it?" Quistis asked, biting her lip because Final Fantasy characters tended to do that a lot for no apparent reason. Lip balm must have been in high demand in the FF world.
"Oh it can..." Squall muttered darkly, a figurative shadow overtaking him and giving him a blacker persona than usual. "It could always turn out to be a yaoi."
"It seems that the female population of fanfiction is obsessed with guys getting it on with each other. I mean, it could work couldn't it?" Quistis was curious for she was a woman too.
"No," Squall stated with an extreme sense of finality in it. "It can't work. Ever. Not ever." His eyes narrowed as he glared menacingly at all the authors with ideas brewing in their heads containing the latest exploits of male/male situations. "I'd rather have my balls incinerated along with the rest of my genitalia before I even think about engaging in any kind of activity with some other guy."
"What about Zell, do you think he would? I mean you know... the hotdogs?" Quistis questioned glancing over at the young man as he began choking from an excessive mouthful of them.
"I don't even want to know." Squall shuddered, trying to clear his mind of disturbing thoughts as he looked for a place to sit down so he could rest his fatigued self from the horrific strain experienced by walking for so long.
"So when does this story end?" Quistis asked, seeking some kind of closure but ending up being extremely disappointed.
"Once we find Rinoa since she hasn't made an appearance in this story yet, fortunately for her." Squall began to search the cafeteria for any signs of Rinoa but was unsuccessful in locating her familiar face in the dense crowd.
He was about to give up and leave the cafeteria when, as if by magic, or simply through the author's abuse of power throughout the story, Rinoa appeared, standing out amongst the rest of the people. She waved over to Squall and Quistis excitedly as she conveniently sat all alone at a table while the rest of the students struggled to find seats anywhere, being forced to share tables with others. The author simply did not want to include other characters in this next scene for fear of over complicating the story. To make the entire scene even simpler, the author had Quistis conveniently remember that she had work to do so Squall and Rinoa could be all alone without any interruptions.
Squall glared up at the author. "You are such a lazy EXPLETIVE DELETED."
The author sighed exasperatedly, rolling his eyes.
Squall took a seat before Rinoa unexpectedly jumped up and flew at him, seating herself on his lap. Squall looked up confusedly at the author.
"I have to please the fans," the author explained. "I promised there would be some romance in it so here it is."
"But I hate her," Squall replied.
"We gotta have some Squinoa action in here Squall. We just gotta! If we don't have some kind of Squinoa action or romance in general, then no one will read this story!" Rinoa exclaimed, ignoring his previous comment. "It's just the way this site is built. Hopeless, young, love deprived and sex starved teenagers looking for some kind of satisfaction outside their lonely, miserable lives by reading sappy and cliché romance stories about us that are always the same: You're cold and lonely to start off and I'm the energetic and radiant beauty who comes into the picture to melt the ice in your heart and set you free. Usually, it always includes some form of conflict that breaks us up partway through the story, but somehow, we miraculously always end up back together again."
"Who comes up with this shit?" Squall cried in disbelief.
Rinoa reached over the table, fetching him a bowl. "Here, you need to eat because you're soup is getting cold."
Squall had shrugged and decided that sitting on him wasn't (Squall's note to author: contraction) so bad until she had said it. With fierce determination and absolute resolute, he stood up forcefully, knocking the brunette down on the floor, on her fat ass.
"Ow! My fat ass!" she verified as she gazed up at him angrily.
Squall had had enough. He simply lost it. "It's 'YOUR'! 'YOUR SOUP' bitch! Don't you get it you dimwitted idiot? 'Your' is an adjective and is the possessive form of 'you'! You can't say 'you're' in that context because 'you're' is a contraction meaning 'you are'! In this case, YOU ARE describing something in my belonging: The EXPLETIVE DELETED bowl of soup! It's my bowl of soup hence when you talk to me, you state 'your soup', signifying that it belongs in my possession! Do you understand you pea brained imbecile?" Squall was livid and his eyes were twitching.
The entire cafeteria stood silent and watched in amazement as Squall drew in sharp breaths from his overreaction.
"You're gonna lose your position of Commander for that!" a girl in the crowd shrieked, dreadfully reminding him of Selphie.
"As if that had any plausibility to it," Squall muttered, massaging his temples in an attempt to relax himself. "A seventeen year old Commander who's only been a SeeD for a few months gets the highest ranking position. Cid really needs his head screwed on tight because it seems that the author isn't the only incompetent one here."
Rinoa stood up and brushed herself off. "I guess there'll be no sex for you then!" she huffed.
"There wasn't going to be any!" Squall shouted, completely furious, the anger entirely taking over. "This is a PG-13 rated story for EXPLETIVE DELETED sakes!"
A resounding chorus of disappointed groans and moans began to sound from all across as the readers frowned and looked on in disappointment, their precious Squinoa action now quashed.
Squall turned to look at the author and jumped out of the story, beginning to wrestle him for the keyboard. The author decided this would be a good time to stop writing but not before asking Squall one final question that had been plaguing him.
"Squall?"
The brunette stopped momentarily, still frowning, and stared at the author inquiringly. "Yeah?"
"Do you think they'll ask for an update?"
"If they do, I'm committing suicide I swear."
Notes: Flame me, praise me, cuss me, burn me, give me hell. Do whatever you want. I won't be offended trust me. If you were offended however, well I can't directly state to you whether or not that was my intention but I think you're all clever enough to read in between the lines. Ciao.