Exponential Chapter 94: DLC - Intermission, a final fantasy vii fanfic

Hey Alluma, so what the hell took you so long?

Well, honestly, IRL. It's been a rough year. I'm in the process of declaring bankruptcy and have changed jobs several times – probably will be doing it yet another time soon. And even when I've HAD free time, I've been kind of bummed out and haven't really been able to get the adequate inspiration to work on this chapter directly.

Still, I've been chugging along. This story has never truly been on "hiatus". I Literally. Think. About. It. Every. Single. Day. It gives me quite a bit of comfort, I'm full of ideas… yet actually transmitting them to a page has pretty much lagged.

Then something else happened.

THE REBIRTH TRAILER DROPPED.

I KNOW you were screaming like I was. And theorizing like nothing else. I have all sorts of ideas – and some of them are creeping into this story. Wondering about this weird multiverse stuff? Well (spoiler kinda) my theory is that the whole "Zack" thing is going to end up as a kind of "shadow" timeline, something that is going to be revealed as a possibility that could not be.

(EVEN MORE SPOILERY - Did you also notice Rufus's voiceover about "shadows of the man"? OR… or… or… at the 3:00 mark… that is CLOUD in the black cloak?! Seriously, go back and look to it and freak out like I did. I didn't even put it together until Max Dood brought it up.)

And didn't you LOVE the back-to-back Cloti "battle couple" moment? Tifa and Aerith fighting together, too? Then go to the TGS trailer… SO much fertile material. (Right off the bat, notice Cloud is much taller than Tifa? Even though we know he's not? Total Zack mannerisms too. And I'm not certain, but I think it might even be Zack's VA speaking the lines here… it doesn't sound like Cody.)

I'll likely be discussing more at the very end of this story, but for the moment… the point is, I HAVE A GOAL NOW. I really wanted to finish this story before Rebirth. I THINK I can do it, but I had to survive this chapter first. So after watching the trailer, I went on a crazy, twelve-hour run where I finished editing every scene in this chapter… except the one with Cloti in the church.

THAT, took even more time. It went through SO many rough drafts. (At least seven.) Because in it – and well, really, the chapter as a whole – even more than the rest story – everything is important. Like, practically every WORD of this chapter was there for a reason – plot progression, characterization, feelies, foreshadowing, even red herrings. But I finally – FINALLY! – got it done. Even before that, I had to do basically an entire reread of my OWN story – and probably will need to do so at least one more time before I finish.

Bored in the meantime? Need something else to read? Well, most of us Cloti writers have the one story that really got us to write in this fandom, and mine is Tales Within Tales, by kitsune13tamlin. It's recently been added to Ao3. Kind-of-canon (in one of my reviews, I called it "novelization in a blender") but also…. Imagine if the story was from Tifa's POV.

Other stuff I'm reading? The Curriculum by my friend MayonakaNoAme, another long-term writer in the fandom – boarding school AU, really well-written and I will kill her with my bare hands if she doesn't finish those last couple chapters. Beneath Silver Skies, a Western AU (which is an AU I've never seen before) by Rand0mSmil3z. Fractals by LadyGrainne – a series of what-if snapshots.

Any XIV players out there? (Rhetorical question.) I'm also reading Light of Dawn by my friend Senigata. I'v e completely lost track of the place names but I'm still following the story. Overall following canon with WoL (F) x Y'shtola pairing. And best of all, it's ALMOST FINISHED!

And if you need some Cloti humor in your life, may I suggest my own crackfic, Please Take Our Short Two-Minute Survey. I've been playing with the one when I need a break from the intensity of Exponential.

Meanwhile… I've pretty much blocked out all the scenes I think I need until the end. But this thing keeps expanding on me; it's a lot of "this needs to happen" or "these two characters need to meet and talk". And then on top of that, I keep having more ideas. I'm going to be including stuff from EVER CRISIS, believe it or not. Not a LOT new from that game… but I got a couple inspirations.

A word about my writing style – well, for one, I write quite a bit of this by hand. I've written plenty of notes before, but this is the first time I've actually done this much raw text with pen and paper. I have come to SWEAR by this technique – there is something about touching pen to paper that triggers ideas in a way that doesn't happen when typing. Eventually, I type it up – and if it STILL doesn't feel right, I copy it back onto paper once again. I am adamant about not posting anything until I feel it's ready. And I thought about breaking this up, or reordering the scenes – but in the end, there were no natural breakpoints, and only one ordering of scenes felt correct. So here we are.

I work in "blocks" rather than a traditional outline… and I start with a bunch of random notes. It's a lot of "what about this? Or hey, what about that?" and eventually it assembles together. It's kind of like, if you are doing a jigsaw puzzle (I do the 2,000 piece kind) where if at first you don't know if that piece is a tree or the tiger's butt? But eventually you put a few red pieces together to become the bird, and some blue pieces to make the water, and then those start to align also.

I DO have a notebook labeled "Notes – Final Stretch". But there's also one upcoming chapter in particular that has a whole notebook to itself.

I think you can also see that some plotlines are wrapping up. It's pretty clear in what direction Tseng and Cid/Shera are headed; more or less Barret as well. I also added Madam M to the Ao3 character list. It turned out she has a small but significant contribution to play. I think I might be adding ONE more character – I THINK I've figured out where their plotline needs to go.

And as we get closer to Rebirth, I'm including some of my ideas about where that is going. Destiny – what exactly it is, and does it exist at all – is a big theme of this chapter. I'm pretty excited to see if Rebirth ends up changing any of my ideas from this story.

A few credits here. When I need OC names, I steal them from other Final Fantasy games. But I wanted Mina to have a name with few other associations. Her name is actually Cyan's wife from the JP version of FF6; Shun was his son. (While I was researching, I learned her Japanese name is Moguri – literally Moogle Girl. But I like my name.)

I wanted to be able to draw Marlene, Denzel, and Mina's teenaged selves – I can draw, but not really people. I actually put them in some baby-makers and age-progression stuff – spent way longer that I should probably admit to doing this. (Three hours.) I got some better results than others… but maybe I'd be better off just describing them.

Marlene is about 5'9", thanks to her dad. There's a little bit of him in her face, but mostly she looks VERY much like Aerith except for darker hair and brown eyes. She's fourteen right now and still skinny enough to fit in Aerith's old clothes, which of course is exactly what she is wearing (probably purposefully) in the Tseng scene. She always keeps a ribbon in her hair; she went from the ACC braid to wearing her hair half up/half down to a finger -thin braid from her left temple. Her hair is long and wavy rather than curly; rather than bangs, her shortest hair hits just at her shoulder.

Denzel is about 5'11. Yes, that means both his children are taller than Cloud, a fact he doesn't love. There's a cool art I cannot find at the moment of Denzel and Cloud carrying groceries together (I'm going to try and include this image and see if it works), but another good match is if you look up "Dead Fantasy – Masking" on you tube. Denzel looks to be about twelve there, but you can get an idea of his fashion taste. He's relatively skinny and a little less wide eyed than as a kid, but recognizable as our boy.

Mina is 5'5", a shade shorter than Tifa. She's less skinnier and more bustier than Marlene. More almond-eyed and her hair is stick-straight. While Marlene almost always wears dresses, Mina's style is more casual, jeans and T-shirts.

A general shout out to Zayana/Stef from Discord who always seems to be able to find art pieces for me. Also, this comic by shillo/Dune was the inspiration for the "Cloti in the church" scene: /_shillo/status/831136269669249025?t=i0s0g4P2H1m-yFvWItxGOA&s=19

I also did some sketches of the current layout of Seventh Heaven with all the add-ons. Looking at the bar from up front, you see the main bar; garage is to the back left, family eating area is to the back right. You can also see the living area to the right of the bar; there's no windows for privacy. It's entered the back way, through the family eating area, where you would first enter the more formal dining area (at the rear of the building) and then the front is a large living/TV room type of area. From that area, a long, skinny hall runs towards the back again to hit Denzel's room. Denzel has only a couple small windows, making his room basically a cave, and he likes it that way.

Above the bar and the TV room, currently there is no second story, but Marlene's room is above the garage, with the flower garden on the third floor above THAT. Denzel's bed is now downstairs, so Marlene put up a drawing easel and a couple chairs close to the window, which faces west (seen in ACC).

Cloud and Tifa's master suite is above the office and the second floor bathroom. Their master bath is to the north; it's small now, but Tifa has plans to improve it. Their bed is against the inner wall, so they can wake up to the sun coming up from the east; they also have a window to the south, above their dresser, where they keep the double-framed image Marlene and Denzel gave them as a wedding gift.