#wwiu

[fury-brand]

After 4 years, I finished my 200k word OTP epic, Wars Waged In Us. Here's some art for the end.

[fury-brand]

Today's the two-year publishing anniversary of my Aeris/Sephiroth AU, Wars Waged In Us! To celebrate, here's an illustration of one of the bright spots in their journey, discovering the wonders of Cosmo Canyon.

[fury-brand]

poppies

[fury-brand]

conflict/connection | this one's very inspired by my ongoing fic, Wars Waged In Us, which suits this prompt pretty perfectly, so... hand holding...

[fury-brand]

Sometimes I think about how in Wars it's Aeris who has the line "don't you want to be more than what was done to you" and wonder like... do they know? How often does this line get read as like New Perspective for Sephiroth rather than the beating heart of all his atrocities? Like that is fundamentally what his misconceptions about being Cetra and his ambitions towards becoming a God are about, but the standard way to read it is probably Aeris, Who Is Functional And Obviously Has Nothing Wrong With Her, Imparts Wisdom Sans Dramatic Irony. And if they don't know, will they by the end?

Y'know they say you can take a whole bunch of stuff for granted about shared understanding with the reader when writing fanned fiction but I think it is less true than conventional wisdom may suggest

[fury-brand]

aeriseph lol

squid you ignorant slut.

OTP Like You Wouldn’t Believe

Why are you like this?

I don’t know. Tragic backstory, youth spent as a Sephiroth fucker, the fact that when you like something for long enough you just wind up incepted 8 layers deep in your own recursive bullshit. I will never change. I will never improve.

What do you like about it?

well they’ve got the stabbing bit from utena/anthy down pat so it would be good to add some hand-holding into the mix, amirite???

Anyway, Sephiroth and Aeris are my super duper favourites. They’re narrative foils and fated enemies, bearers of the black and white materia, the culmination of a 2000 year old conflict between Jenova and the Cetra, the unnatural consequence of Shinra’s willingness to corrupt any and all nature and the only person able to produce living, growing greenery in the slums of Midgar. They come from similar circumstances, they are both half-human/half-other, they navigate that identity in opposite directions and they doom one another. Oh boy, do they doom one another.

Finally, crucially, they both come to pretty tragic endings (in Sephiroth’s case, the “this guy is incapable of making good choices” kind of tragedy) with a whiff of inevitability about them. These two are dominoes in the rube goldberg machine of fate, set against each other from the start, culminating in a conflict of apocalyptic proportions. The question of “Could Sephiroth ever have been anything better?” is directly connected to the question of “Could Aeris have survived?” And not even just because he murders her, but also because he murders her specifically because she takes it upon herself to “deal with” him (and good for her - kick his ass baby) - because nobody else can do it. Because her hand was forced in a lot of ways.

And then getting into their personalities - Aeris is outgoing and stubborn and refuses to give any ground on the things she believes but cagey and mistrustful and allergic to being actually emotionally honest with people, telling them the truth about how she feels. Sephiroth will not stop telling you how he feels, all the time, usually in a way that suggests he is either deep in denial about it or just totally lacking in any kind of meaningful perception. It makes for an interesting potential combination of strengths/weaknesses. They’re also both lonely people, both explicitly harmed by Shinra and by a lack of community, kinship, people who are like them. 

So what you’ve got is a pair of people who are uniquely positioned to understand and potentially support each other who are, through a combination of their differences, their traumas, the things that make them who they are AND the choices that they’ve made about who they want to be, stuck enacting cycles of violence that extend out literally millenia before they were ever born, that remained manifest even between their fathers. It makes me. Actually insane. I can’t handle it.

Friends, enemies, lovers, I am truly fine with all of the above, but they need to hold hands.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Aeris raining on Sephiroth to make him Good is my literal nightmare scenario and I never want this ship to be canon, it is not safe in square enix hands

[fury-brand]

Late entry for Aeris Week Day 4: Yellow Flowers

Tattoos are a common way to reclaim bodily autonomy. I thought that maybe keeping her flowers with her always to symbolize her own healing might be nice for her.

[fury-brand]

happy 1 year anniversary to Wars Waged In Us