#the--calamity

[novus-ordo-seclorem]

+"I was beautiful once."+

Vincent Valentine

@the--calamity

[frozen-fountain]

okay i’m bored so game time. make an assumption about me in my inbox and i’ll tell you if you’re right or not

You are a person who is at times overtaken by a sense of profound and deep awareness and appreciation for "insignificant" moments. The way sunlight falls onto a shelf, condensation on glass. That sort of thing.

The other side - and upside - of being profoundly miserable for a long time is heightened appreciation for all the things that seem insignificant through their smallness or their commonplace familiarity. At least it has been for me after making it to a place where misery is no longer the default. I don't believe you can place life experiences on a set of scales to judge whether a hard time was "worth it" or not, but I do know that if I hadn't had to weather some of them, I might never have had the one morning where I woke up listening to the wind in the tree in my yard and got to watch my cat repeatedly pounce on the shadows it made.

I really dig that people who don't know me well yet can sense this!

[frozen-fountain]

Weird Questions for Writers

…All.

Alright, everyone else go home, I guess. I'll be doing this in stages over the next couple of days because, as much as I enjoy talking about myself, I do still have to write this afternoon. Thank you!

What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is that just the default setting?

Basic Times New Roman, more out of familiarity than anything. I keep meaning to try the Comic Sans trick that supposedly makes it easier to focus, but I don't know if I can bear to look at that all day.

2. If you had to give up your keyboard and write your stories exclusively by hand, could you do it? If you already write everything by hand, a) are you a wizard and b) pen or pencil?

I don't relish the thought of those wrist cramps, but yes, I think I would. I can't stand the thought of just keeping it all in my own head.

3. What is your writing ritual and why is it cursed?

I usually end up doing it early afternoon, after lunch and a few minutes of pacing or stretching to clear my head. I'll also play with my cat for a while beforehand, as if he's tired from being a fearsome hunter he's less likely to get up on the clackboard to help me (results may vary). Then I procure something to drink, pick out something to listen to, and freewrite some word association for a bit if I'm not in the right headspace.

While I have a vague goal in mind for where I'd like to write up to, these days, I only make myself do a single sentence per day. It's usually much more than that, but just that sentence absolutely has to happen every single day if it's really all I can manage. When I'm done, I try to leave at a point I'm actively excited to get back to and have a clear picture, so it's easier to pick up the next day. Usually I jot down a few notes to help.

It's cursed because a lot of the music I enjoy probably is, and because the aforementioned notes have sometimes been things like "toilet paper" or "[character] on her Caravaggio bullshit" and I'm left just sitting there trying to work out what any of this was in reference to, or why Past Froze thought it was going to be helpful.

4. What’s a word that makes you go absolutely feral?

Susurrus. I try to limit it to one use per story, and maybe one per chapter if I'm feeling extra indulgent.

5. Do you have any writing superstitions? What are they and why are they 100% true?

Not a superstition I actively believe, but every time I think a fic might do well it's met with silence, whereas the ones I assume are for me and an audience of three end up performing way better than expected. I don't judge success on external factors and will write what I want to say regardless, but it's a nice reminder that whatever niche oddness you're cooking up might have more of an audience than you realise.

6. What is your darkest fear about writing?

It's more a fear about myself, which is that my ability or lack thereof to execute an idea doesn't matter, because what I have to say in the first place is of no interest or value whatsoever and no amount of minutely crafted phrasing can change that. (Needless to say, I would never think this of another person, no matter what they were trying to tell me.)

7. What is your deepest joy about writing?

That I do it anyway. That, regardless of how it does or doesn't impact on the world outside of me, I experienced something that made me feel strongly enough to take the time to attempt to recreate it in words. And when, after minutes that feel like hours of agonising over which words to use, I find some that hit the exact resonance and well of allusion I was hoping for? It's about the most accomplished I've ever felt.

8. If you had to write an entire story without either action or dialogue, which would you choose and how would it go?

I'd choose the all-dialogue option because that would be a bigger challenge for me, and also because I have a great model for how to do it in The Fall by Camus. So I'd reread that and pick apart how it was done in a way that worked; I can picture the setting of the novel so clearly even though it's only described in ways that feel naturalistic for characters who are walking through it. I'm guessing this would remain a shorter piece, and I'd have a specific reason for zooming in so completely on what's being said to the exclusion of all else, and I think this would be a great medium for an unreliable narrator. The negative space around what isn't said would have to be as intrinsic a part of the story as anything that makes it onto the page. I think it'd be a really interesting experiment, some time.

9. Do you believe in ghosts? This isn’t about writing I just wanna know

I believe many, many people have experienced things we currently (and most certainly always will) lack the scientific method to understand and quantify. I'm about ninety percent sure I had a premonition once. I also believe what we say and do resonates, in ways that are hard to track and trace, beyond the moment where they occur. I'm not sure whether this means I believe there's a non-corporeal part of us all that lingers after the physical body reaches its planned obsolescence, and that sometimes this remnant is able to reach out and touch the living from time to time, but it's something.

10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you?

At least a fragment of everything I've ever read or written lives under my skin. Even if I hated it or even if I can't remember anything about it besides that splinter that stood out the most. All I've lived - and not lived, especially when I might have had the chance to - is waiting over my shoulder and following me along the corridor, whether as a warning or a tormentor or a guide.

[ff7central]

The Nightmare Begins

by TheCalamity

"Forget Dirge of Cerberus. This is the definitive version of what happened to Vincent.

I've never met an author with an eye for personality like this one's, and this story's old- fashioned horror roots puts Vincent, Lucrecia, Hojo, and Gast's personalities at the very center. The plot feels like the inevitable result of the interaction of these specific people and their very human flaws.

That makes this hard to read.

It also makes it my favorite piece of literature to date, from fandom and mainstream both." - the recommender

Rating: Explicit Series: Part 1 of The Monsters Within

Summary:

There were three true horrors produced by The Jenova Project.

An infection, lingering in a dissolving body, hidden in a holding tank, exhumed from a wounded earth

A man so monstrous it became real, fated to consume itself from the inside out, endless

And a child of burden to it all.

[This is a gothic horror story. The monsters are human. The end point is madness and the house is a feature, not a setting.

OG canon compliant interpretation of The Jenova Project, where Sephiroth is the product of human failures enabled by ShinRa.

c/w for realistic violence, gore, death, body horror, psychological horror, human experimentation, suicide, spooky stuff, dark/heavy themes, disturbing imagery.]

[ff7central]

Finished the art for my assignment. I am so nervous; I hope they like it. Do I send it to you? Post it at a certain time here on Tumblr or A03? Thanks!

Hey, congratulations! This ask actually reminded me to put up my how-to post on the matter, so you can find that HERE, which covers the how and when.

In short, though, they need to go on Ao3 first, don’t post it anywhere else until the reveal. If you post correctly to the collection, you can do so at any time - it’s set as “unrevealed” so it will remain a mystery work until I change the status in August when everything is in.

Once the reveal is done, you can post it wherever you like! If you do a post on Tumblr about it, I’d want to know so I can reblog it. Some people prefer for me to just make a promotional post for it myself, which I can also do.