22 your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores
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I'm going to answer this in reverse because my answer to 11 will contain references to spicier things so I'll put it under a cut to be safe.
22. my fave part of canon that gets ignored?
The Banora Incident. Not to say that it gets ignored per say, but in a game where a lot of bad shit happens... I feel like it's pretty low on the list of talking points/things fandom is super concerned with.
But think about it. Banora is a fake town on an island at the bottom of the world. It's the Truman Show but make it tropical. This is a town with one purpose - and that purpose is to contain two of Shinra's dirty little 'mistakes' (and the scientist responsible for them) - an idyllic island home with a sinister secret, if you will. Also there are apples.
And when Genesis learns the awful truth - that his childhood was a lie. His parents weren't his real parents, the people he grew up with were basically there to spy on him??? HIS BEST FRIEND'S MOM WHO HE ADORES WAS THE SCIENTIST RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS EXISTENCE???? AND? He's a FAILED EXPERIMENT???? OH AND HE'S DYING WHOOPSIE BUT DON'T WORRY, SEPHIROTH WAS SUCCESSFUL SO COOL COOL COOL COOL COOL
^^^Genesis learning the truth from Hollander right before his brain breaks
Yeah. It's a lot. And I'm dying to dive into it.
Answer to question 11 below the cut because I'm gonna talk about [REDACTED] ;) <3
11. worst part of fanon
Sex God Sephiroth out there bedding all the people during his time in SOLDIER... I just...I can't get with it.
Like I get that he's attractive - not just attractive but ethereally beautiful. And he's dressed like a bondage daydream but...if you go back to his actual personality - pre Nibelheim brain snap - this...this is not a man who knows how to do sex. He knows what it is. How it works... but has no idea how to go about it because despite the fact that he is absolutely, drop dead GORGEOUS. He is also a big. Awkward. Nerd.
He's not running around Midgar and sewing his wild oats, he's in his office doing paperwork. Or having an awkward conversation with the woman from accounting - why is she blinking at him so much? is it dry eye? should he offer her the eyedrops he keeps in his desk? - or sparring...or doing literally anything else that has absolutely zero things to do with getting laid.
A term, as per my points above, he does not understand.
That's not to say he doesn't eventually have sex, I mean...Genesis (and Angeal) exist and I know he notices them and Genesis has clearly noticed *him* in that way. YES. THAT WAY. He does and I'm sure when he gets there he's pretty good at it. Probably better than pretty good lbr (I mean the man is notoriously, extremely competitive + a fast learner and you can't tell me he doesn't come with a hell of a praise kink already installed because, MOTHER ISSUES ;)) and I love this for him. And his partners. Get after it big guy.
A player though, he is not. Well, not in my head anyways ;)
As for post Nibelheim Seph? That guy kind of scares me a bit, so uh... good luck Cloud.
And that's why Daniel, the person who impresses this on Louis despite Louis trying to show the despair, is not only an important character but has one of the strongest hearts in the whole damn coven. The true romantic.
Yes! Exactly. I almost put something in the tags about that, too, but it felt like too much for tags. But yes!
Louis, in the interview, is trying to tell a story about loss and grief and despair and hopelessness. And Daniel, who has only known about vampires for one (1) night, hears that story and realizes that vampires have such a high capacity for love and so much time in which to find it and express it.
Daniel, at that table in that room in San Francisco, knows that if Louis went to Armand right then, Armand would open up his arms to him and they could be together. If Lestat were there, they could move past their differences and find love.
It's Daniel who tells the other vampires in Prince Lestat, “Every single one of you that I’ve ever known has had this capacity, to appreciate beauty and to love.”
Maybe it's part of why Daniel and Armand connect so quickly, as even as he's scared of Armand, he knows deep down the love he's capable of.
Daniel has always been the heart of the coven, a romantic who sees the potential and possibility eternity offers, not just for knowledge and experience, but for love.
Of course you can, young Genesis and Angeal are like so important
So, for starters, as a kid Genesis wasn't quite the adult Genesis, full of dramatics and sarcasm and himself. He was a lot more withdrawn. Not shy exactly, just kind of surly. His parents gave him pretty much every material object he wanted and did so with this expression of polite disinterest, and Genesis didn't know how to deal with his emotional needs not being met. At some point he learnt how to act out for attention, but that was only after it occurred to him that it wasn't normal for his parents to never question where he was even if he spent the whole day hiding in the cave system.
Angeal kind of had the opposite problem, in that Gillian could be almost overbearing at times. She did it out of concern, because when your kid is the result of human experimentation being a mother becomes even more stressful than it already is. Any sneeze could be a sign of your son's DNA starting to crumble. And Angeal was a good kid, who never lied and always tried to do what his mother said, but he was also really tired of her breathing down his neck all the time.
When they met each other, they were kind of always exasperated with each other too. Genesis didn't realize not all kids had the access to private tutors and the education he had received, and thought Angeal didn't know a lot of things that were kind of obvious. On the other hand, Angeal didn't really get how people with more money than his family lived, and he was really frustrated by Genesis's apparent lack of common sense.
But they also got really tight really fast. Even as kids, they had pretty different personalities, but they still got along very well. Genesis hadn't started to guard his feelings as closely as he would one day, and he was very good at childish speeches about the great future that expected them. Angeal really liked those speeches, they managed to cheer him up even when he barely had food in his stomach.
Speaking of, it wasn't that Genesis willingly let Angeal starve. For quite some time, Genesis didn't even know how badly Angeal's family really struggled, because Angeal had been taught how to play the hunger off. Genesis at first just knew that Angeal looked thin, and that there were some days when he didn't feel like running or playing particularly tiring games, and that sometimes he climbed on other people's apple trees. And then got mad if Genesis did the same, because to Genesis it was just a fun game and the thrill of stealing something. In Genesis's defense, he was like eight when they became friends, and his parents never bothered with explaining anything they didn't think was necessary.
And later Genesis realized, but Angeal often turned down offers for food. Gillian had taught him that they shouldn't accept charity, because Gillian used to be the kind of woman who would put alien DNA in herself to see what it did to her unborn fetus, she had a lot of hubris and didn't get rid of all of it when she quit Shinra. Angeal usually refused offers, but Genesis figured out that he could manipulate Angeal into accepting. If Genesis said it felt weird to eat alone while Angeal watched, Angeal might share a bit of the lunch the cook had made for Genesis. And if Genesis asked the cook to make bigger portions, well, he was a growing boy.
There was a glorious year, when they were about twelve, when Genesis was significantly taller than Angeal thanks to having hit his growth spurts early. Then Angeal caught up. Genesis lorded his height over Angeal for as long as it lasted, and Angeal will never allow him to forget that.
Angeal also taught Genesis how to shave, when time came. Angeal's facial hair had started to come in first, and he had had to figure something out - they had already joined Shinra, so he had to make do with imitating older SOLDIERs. When Genesis began to develop the Puberty Mustache (TM) Angeal was there to teach him how to get rid of it. It was a strange kind of bonding experience.
When they were kids, they would sometimes share things. Genesis gave Angeal some books, and at least one Sephiroth poster Angeal always pretended he never had. Then they joined SOLDIER, and as Thirds shared the same room, and everything became a 'what is your is mine' kind of situation. Mostly on Genesis's side. He would steal everything, including possibly underwear. Angeal retaliated by stealing everything Genesis had in turn. Which Genesis hated, but he would not stop, and so Angeal wouldn't either. It was about as mature as you would expect from two early teen only children forced to discover the joys of sharing your bedroom.
Also, Genesis didn't always hate plants. He won prized for making apple juice, you bet he was climbing trees and digging into dirt and getting more spiders in his clothes than he could count. However, after he came to the city he got it into his head that it was the cool and fashionable thing to claim he couldn't stand dirt. Because... he was rich and eccentric and was building himself a reputation. Angeal, of course, knew it was bullshit. He told Genesis so multiple times, but Genesis would never admit to it. Eventually Genesis did realize it was kind of immature, but he could not go back on his word after Angeal had teased him for so long, and so got stuck in this eternal cycle of pretending he hates Angeal's plants while also secretly wishing he could just get an orchid for his living room.
Omg your tags about JBSWM made me tear up a little 🥺 thank you so much!
asd;lfjk I honestly kind of expected them to get eaten by other people interacting omg. Um. But I'm glad honestly! You're very welcome, it was a really good fic. Definitely the first Big 5 polyfic that I read and *really* enjoyed. <3333
That note was just funny because it was So relatable. I spent a while puzzling on it like, what was the exact moment the author lost control of the story. And. And then the plot happened. Lmao. And I stopped wondering. (and also just kinda glad you did lose control of it bc holy crap it was just beautiful. Painful, of course, but so beautiful to experience)
I think (I hope!) I left comments but I do want to say it was incredibly well written and I read the whole series over the course of like a day and a half. And I still think about it a lot. It'll probably be reread soon.
2e. If you were to revise one of your older fics from start to finish, which would it be and why?
I'm a chronic reviser and I actually do stealth-revise my old fics on the regular haha. But the one that comes to mind is my very first fic, which was an Avengers fic that I deleted. One day I might spare the time to go back, revise, and finish it, just to see the difference between adult author me and baby 14-year-old me.
I would argue the opposite tbh, the more you unashamedly love your nerdiness, the more you're accused of being immature 😂. Being well over 30 (or 40) is just giving no shits about their opinion.
'Hey would you like to be deranged together?' is the ultimate pick up line for Daniel and Armand
Absolutely, yes. In fact, now I'm picturing it almost as an inside joke between them.
Like once, back when they first got together, maybe while Armand was in the middle of one of his horrific kitchen experiments, Daniel said something like "God, you're deranged." And Armand stopped and made that face--you know the one!--because he thought Daniel meant it and he was hurt.
And Daniel immediately saw the hurt on his face and said something like, "It's sexy as hell. How would you like to be deranged together?"
And so now sometimes they say that to each other when they have a particularly weird or strange project or thing they want to do.
Where did you get the idea of Sybelle becoming obsessed with a musician so Armand takes her around to watch them? Is there a story there you were thinking of?
RAINBOW! Thank you for the ask! For anyone who doesn't know, this is referring to my fic The City Never Sleeps, where Daniel and Lestat hang out in a post-canon world (and talk about Armand a lot, go figure).
So I was trying to think of a way to get Armand out of the house. Business is a good way to do that, god knows Armand has plenty of it, but I thought I'd mix it up and have him taking he kids around on some trip instead. And then I tried to think of what kind of trip it would be have to be where Daniel wouldn't necessarily want to go. He likes to travel and see things, and I'm sure they've traveled with the kids before, to Night Island at least.
Sybelle likes music and seems to have some obsessive qualities and so I thought it would be fun if she was totally enamored with some guitarist in a band to the point where she wanted to see every show he played. And Armand has the resources to basically make that happen. The dream, right? (I mean, I've definitely seen some bands a ridiculous amount of times just because I happened to be in the right place to see them a lot and would have absolutely traveled to see them more if I'd had the time and money!)
Also, given Armand's obsessive tendencies, I'm willing to bet there was a local band that he dragged Daniel to see 3 times a week for a 2 months straight or something, so it was funny to me to sort of put him in the other position, where he's indulging the obsession of someone he loves but is not necessarily as enamored with it as she is. It's her happiness that's driving it. I did try to make it clear by the end there Armand was a little weary of this Groupie Road Trip, but it wasn't easy from Daniel's POV so I don't know if that came across. I think he's happy to have to excuse to head back to TG early and maybe miss the Portland show, you know?
