If you’re still doing the fic ask, then I have to ask about one of my favorites (also incidentally one of my favorite titles ever) How to Succeed in Sexual Blackmail Without Really Trying and numbers 2, 4, 11 and 14 😘
2: What scene did you first put down?
Do you know, this is one of those very rare stories where I wrote the entire damn thing from start to finish? Man, I’m trying to remember what it was like to have free time like that. Insane. Though I’m pretty sure the scene I started with mentally was the Reno falling out a window scene, so I knew that was going to be about midway in there, and once I hit it, that would be leading to the second half of the story and Cloud giving in/up.
4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?
"I don't care." Cloud savagely pushed his stick into the fire and several logs collapsed in a shower of sparks. He sat back and stared into the embers. "Is all Turk courtship this fucked up?"
"In my day, it involved more guns and rubber hosing," he finally said.
(Probably the line about Reno owing Elena money is the runner up. But my personal head canon is that post-FF7, Vincent spends a lot of his time repeatedly passive-aggressively negging Tseng about what the Turks are like now as opposed to when he was in them. Just a nonstop series of, “So that's how you do things now. Hmm," shady comments and raised eyebrows. )
11: What do you like best about this fic?
I like it when I can actually pull off fics that move quickly and have short sections to them. I feel like those flow more naturally than my usual “oh no we’ve spent eight pages on the same scene.” I love reading and writing long fic and epics, but keeping things short and getting your point and/or action across in less words is a real skill that I, uh, am still working on.
I also like that I think I managed to make it reasonably funny but also a little bit emotionally heartwarming. Balancing between those two things is the sweet spot I’m usually aiming for. I love angst and fluff and horror and everything, but in the end, humor will almost always win in terms of my favorite thing to try and write. Mostly because I think it’s hard to do.
14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?
Ha, see, the thing is, Reno is one of those characters that has such a wide fanon interpretation (which is good! people should enjoy the spectrum) and I have this super specific take on him where-- listen, I have my issues with Advent Children, but one of the things I thought they got right was Reno. He is totally that specific ridiculous yakuza who somehow repeatedly fails upwards. My personal fanon is that every night, no matter what’s happened, he falls asleep (or passes out) feeling victorious. He never interviewed for a job as a Turk; he just kept showing up and they couldn’t get him to leave. He has personal vendettas against vending machines. He can fight, sure, but he’s also just, like, chain-smoking chaos in a winkled suit that somehow turns incompetence into victory.
And then you have Cloud who’s saved the world multiple times and has so much trauma and so little self esteem to the point where he basically had to re-imagine his entire life and personality and become his best friend, and he’s just way too aware of everything that’s brought him to where he is now. My two favorite character types are people who are incredibly bad at being themselves, and people who are incredibly good at being themselves, and one of my favorite dynamics is then putting them together and seeing what happens. And it kinda feels like that would be why they’d be a good match, post-game. Reno just has no fucks to give about anything normal or noble, and that would make him impossible to offend or let down, which I think would be a big thing for Cloud.
(Reno also makes Cloud, by default, the saner person in the room whenever they’re together. And I feel like Cloud would be appreciative of that, you know?)