magos-dominus

[magos-dominus]

https://twitter.com/theclotizine https://theclotizine.bigcartel.com/ A bunch of cool people and I worked on a thing! You should buy it! Preorders close on February 10th.

[magos-dominus]

🌟 CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT 🌠

Writer: Jacob R. Duffy @magos-dominus​ 💫

It’s a pleasure to have Jacob (Magos) as one of our writers! Make sure to check out their work below (it includes some really interesting analysis too!) 🧡

💠 archiveofourown.org/users/Magos_Dominus/ 💠 magos-dominus.tumblr.com/

[magos-dominus]

Chapter 2 is up!

[magos-dominus]

I wrote another thing.

This time, the start of a novel-length retelling of Remake that is also a thematic crossover with Bloodborne for some of that sweet, sweet gothic horror.

[magos-dominus]

I came to the realization a week or so ago that there was a tragic dearth of fic that focused on Tifa’s chiseled abs, and/or Cloud eating off of them like a dinner plate, in the loving detail that I have come to expect from the fandom.

Because all of you are cowards.

Anyway, here’s some food for you folks. Bon appetit.

[magos-dominus]

For once I wrote some honest-to-goodness Cloti fluff.  This is set after the events of FF7R, so obligatory FF7R SPOILER WARNING if you are trying to avoid.

[magos-dominus]

FFVII Fan Fiction Snippets

Magos slumped against his keyboard with a tired sigh. "Guess I'll throw a micro-fiction project on the WIP pile. I'll get to it all, soon," he lied to himself. The stack teetered dangerously with its most recent addition. "Something about Cloud teasing Tifa about fighting the Bugaboo hives in Chapter 13, on their way back to Elmyra's."

+++

"I'm gone for a day-and-a-half and this is your brilliant plan? Infiltrating a mafia don's hideout without backup, a way to signal for help, or an exit strategy?” His blue eyes bore into her shocked expression. Her hand came up to rest against her chest and she took a step back. “You could have died, or been captured, or worse, and none of us would have known what happened to you!" he hissed, clutching her shoulders hard enough to bruise.

A moment passes in silence, Aerith clearing her throat as she rhythmically clacked her heel against the stone flooring.

A shaky breath escaped his lips, his expression softening. Rough hands trail across her skin to rest, gently, at her sides. "You look lovely, by the way. Not the night on the town you imagined, I expect,” he whispered meekly, head ducking against his chest. “I did my best to match.” He brought his gaze back up to lock with hers. “When we get clear, you and I are going to have a long talk about this. I just got you back, Teef. I don't want to lose you again."

+++

He turned to face the huge, masked thug that blocked their path and dwarfed his compact frame, falling into a defensive stance in front of the others. “If you want to hurt them, you’re going to have to go through me,” he declared, eyes narrowing.

Tifa fell into formation behind him, looming menacingly over his shoulder. “-and if you touch a single feather on my precious chocobo’s head,” she added, “I’ll end you here and now.”

Their assailant considered them with a long, hesitant look. “I’m just going to… go,” he said. “Yeah. I’m peacing out of this one.” He shifted his gaze to meet Tifa’s. “Sorry about threatening your boyfriend, miss. Have a nice day!”

“It’s not like that!” she announced, face flushed, to the form retreating into the distance. “We’re just friends!”

Barret sighed and flicked the safety on his gun arm, bringing it to rest at his side. He frowned, his eyebrow arched questioningly, and he gave his two, younger comrades a long, appraising look. “Alright, lovebirds,” he announced. “Get a move on or get a room. We have work to do.”

+++

"Reckless?" she huffed. Her eyes narrowed, and her hands came to rest indignantly against her hips, body tilting forward, accusingly. "Name one reckless or irresponsible thing that I've ever done, Cloud Strife!"

The blonde SOLDIER paused for a brief moment. He dropped his pack to the ground and knelt to fish out a battered notebook. The worn booklet casually flipped open to its first page, surface covered in childish scrawl and singed at the edges. "Do you want me to start with the beehive from when you were five?" he asked, dryly, "or just since I got to Midgar?"

[magos-dominus]

I have been summoned. You asked, and I will answer, but its not going to be about mental illness. Tifa has the PTSD common to every member of the party, but I don’t feel it really defines her character the way it does Cloud. Instead, I’m going to talk about names, and symbolism.

+++ OPEN SPOILERS FOR FFVII (1997) and FFVII REMAKE +++

Tifa’s central internal conflict is the one that serves as the her namesake. FFVII has references to Jewish mysticism as a running motif, the most prominent of which is the Promised Land itself. There are also some vestiges of a more involved reference to the Tree of Life, which is a complex diagram that lists and interrelates the ten aspects, or the ‘Sephiroth,’ of divinity and the human spirit. One of these is called ‘Tiferet,’ meaning ‘glory’ or ‘splendor.’

It’s more obvious in this chart from a very early draft of the game’s story, where Cloud/Zack, Sephiroth/Vincent, and Tifa/Aerith were still the same characters. We have Tifa here, strongly connected, but positioned opposite, to Sephiroth, and that much of her character remains intact, at least philosophically.

‘Tifaret’ is the Sephira that embodies a concept that can be imperfectly described as ‘beauty,’ ‘divine love,’ and ‘reconciliation.’ It relates to, and balances, two of the other Sephira. The first is ‘Chesed,’ which embodies ‘charity,’ ‘compassion,’ and ‘forgiveness.’ The second is ‘Gevurah,’ which embodies ‘strength,’ ‘severity,’ and ‘judgement.’

As Tifaret tempers justice with forgiveness, Tifa struggles to reconcile her two core drives: protecting the innocent and punishing the wicked. Maintaining both becomes a difficult proposition when the sole apparent, viable action to force positive change is committing grand-scale industrial sabotage on a public utility.

This is most apparent when we get to the late game and she acts as a mediator between Barret, who represents ‘Gevurah,’ and Reeve, who represents ‘Chesed.’ Both of their approaches to the question of Shin-Ra’s malignancy are flawed on a fundamental level, as Barret ignores the human cost of his actions in the pursuit of just retribution and Reeve fails to hold Shin-Ra accountable for its crimes, even as he labors to mitigate the harm it inflicts. The game uses Tifa to unify these flawed perspectives, in a resolution similar to Yuffie and Godo’s atop the pagoda. “Determination without strength is meaningless, but strength without determination is also meaningless.”

It’s not an easy task, something the game recognizes by refusing to comment on a ‘correct’ path they might have taken. Tifa struggles to find that middle path the whole game, and its a question that doesn’t really have an answer, but she is, standing between Barret and Reeve after Mideel, confident in what they need to do to going forward. Shin-Ra needed to be taken down, but they all hurt a lot of people in Midgar, and that needs to be made right, however they can.

The struggle to find that balance is difficult, and uncertain, but it is a righteous thing.

I think a lot of people (especially cleriths) ignore or refuse to see that Tifa herself also suffers from some form of depression/anxiety because of her traumatic past and that is what drives a lot of her actions both in OG and in Remake. They see her doubts and fears as her being "whiny" or "mentally weak".... Do you know of any good written analysis on Tifa's mental state and her own trauma?

Even if they saw it they wouldn't care because it's Tifa. Hell, they won't even let Aerith be depressed about Zack. She's gotta bounce back when he died like a week ago and get herself a new man! None of these people care about the game. They just wanna play ships.

I don't think I've seen anything on Tifa's background. It's usually stuff that relates her to Cloud and only briefly mentions her own problems. I know I've talked about it in general, but there's no one solid post. Everyone just says bits and pieces cause we all know how Tifa ticks lol

If anyone has an analysis it'd be @magos-dominus or @nibelheiim

[magos-dominus]

Also, because I need to stretch my writer muscles, a game for those of you playing at home: 

The first person to correctly identify, and source the scene of, each of the three instances of dialogue I shamelessly poached from another piece of media in either Chapter 2 or Chapter 3 will win a one-shot of a scenario of their choosing, set at any point during REMAKE or the OG, subject to approval. Keep it PG, folks.

The bits I've stolen from the games don't count, however. That would be too simple, given the expected demographics.

The next two chapters are up! 

Folks, listen.I get frustrated by people who write angst and pain with no aftercare. It frustrates me as a reader and a storyteller. But today? Today, I am the very thing I once sought to destroy.

Maybe get some tissues for the third one. It ain’t cheery.

[magos-dominus]

Chapter 3 Link

The next two chapters are up! 

Folks, listen.I get frustrated by people who write angst and pain with no aftercare. It frustrates me as a reader and a storyteller. But today? Today, I am the very thing I once sought to destroy.

Maybe get some tissues for the third one. It ain’t cheery.

[magos-dominus]

So, I wrote a thing. God damn it all. I’m never getting out of this hole now, am I?

[magos-dominus]

itsdone.gif

Now THIS was a prompt!  I have to confess - and I am a complete dumbass jerk for this - I didn’t write down the @ screen of who actually sent me this prompt.  🤡 My brain is a glitchy mess sometimes.  So please forgive me, and if you’d like, come up and claim your prize so I can credit you in the beginning notes.

Just as a polite warning, fic involves a huge Remake spoiler, so if you’re a Cloti fan whom that matters to at this point in time, then you may want to avoid until you complete/watch the game.  Cut for spoiler

Keep reading

[magos-dominus]

Thank you for the vote of confidence @silver-wield​. I’ve got a big character meta piece on Cloud dedicated to his social and psychological issues in the works at the moment, so I’ll have an immense block of text dedicated to answering this question soon.

In the interim, I’ll say that our boy’s various mental eccentricities don’t... map that well to mundane psychological disorders. He’s definitely nursing a combination of PTSD and C-PTSD, from multiple sources, but his lingering memory and identity issues have distinctly... fantastical origins, and largely serve as an extended narrative metaphor for his distorted self-image and damaged self-worth.

It’s important to remember that Cloud is dealing with a case of drug-induced amnesia from his Mako Poisoning, as well as being actively manipulated and haunted by an evil, vindictive alien ghost. Boy needs an exorcist and a detox as much as he, and the whole cast if we’re being honest, needs some CBT and handful of anti-depressants.

So this is a strange question but are there any posts or blogs or meta that discuss Cloud’s dissociative disorder? Or any of his other disabilities? It’s just super important to me cause I just finished the scene right after he falls where he’s like, telling himself to move? And the world is white? And it super affected me in a big way. Also all his flashbacks and memory problems and jumbled thoughts and such and it just really resonated with me. Sorry to be a bother! Im just looking for content

I honestly haven't seen anything specifically dedicated to that in my travels and rabbit hole dives, apart from certain people saying Cloud is just emo and that he doesn't have mental health issues - because I guess a flawed, realistic character is less edgy than their interpretation 🙄🤦‍♀️🙄🤦‍♀️🙄

I've done a couple of analysis on Cloud's ptsd and I sure af don't shy away from including his mental health issues when commenting on his behaviour when it's relevant.

There's @magos-dominus @nibelheiim @otp-oasis-heavenxearth @eizasake and @aislingyngaio who all have excellent insight and make great observations. They also probably have more connections than me, I'm pretty fresh in this part of the fandom, although I'm a longtime fan 😁

[magos-dominus]

This is magnificent piece of writing. I'm very grateful for it.

The slow transition from Cloud's inner-thought space, as a direct emotional and structural continuation from Broken Pieces, into a phantom recreation of their promise on the water tower is a wonderful touch. The dense paragraphs of Cloud's internal, self directed guilt and shame feel heavy, and help communicate those pregnant, tense pauses as his mind wracks itself for what to do. Then, as their conversation begins, it breaks up the text into smaller, easier to digest chunks. As Cloud gets his thoughts out, the paragraphs become shorter, and the structure of the writing feels like it opens up. Which helps to convey that easing tension and clearing air through your command of storytelling structure as well as your excellent prose.

+++ But then, her lip twitches. Looks up at him with an impish smile. She asks, “If I promise, then that means you’ll be sticking around?” +++

This is the stand-out piece of characterization in the whole work. In a delightful echo of herself in the promise scene, you portray that moment where Tifa's contemplation and acceptance and hope turns coy and downright mischievous. Then the tension is gone, Cloud's raging thoughts and self-recriminations cease, and they're back to their shy, stupid, painfully-in-love selves, at least for the night.

Well done. Very, very well done. Maybe sometime in the next hour I'll get this dumb smile of my face.

Take care and keep up the great work. I'm looking forward to it.

My fourth entry into my ‘deleted scene’ series of short Cloti fics based on your amazing prompts!  This one is an extended scene after The Hug, requested by @magos-dominus  

I’ve become a short fic machine thanks to y’all and I’ve been having a grand time

Also as an FYI, I am working on an amazing prompt from a fan who requested I write something about Zack and SPOILER 

Keep reading

[magos-dominus]

Sequel to this, I guess??? I JUST WANT A DOMESTIC BORDERING ON MARITAL ROOMMATE AU OK

Beep Beep. Beep Beep. Beep Beep.

“Nnn…ngh?”

Beep Beep. Beep Beep. Beep Beep.

“Nngh.”

Beep Beep. Beep Beep. Beep B—

“Dammit.”

The sound of the alarm and Tifa’s grumbling roused him from his sleep. He might as well wake up now. Blinking the rest from his eyes, he froze when he saw her form leaning over his torso.

“The…fu…ck?”

His voice was raspy, but it was loud enough to alert Tifa that he was awake. Behind lidded eyes, he saw her freeze in surprise, then quickly snatch the phone buzzing on the table before sitting upright.

“Morning.” Greeted Tifa, stiffly. She looked down and her phone and swiped the screen to cancel the sound. “Sorry for waking you. I did tell you last night about the alarm.”

Cloud raised a feeble hand and slowly drew the covers up to his neck. “S’kay.” He shifted in bed, so he was now facing her. “Y’up?”

Tifa smiled down at him and ruffled his already messy hair. “Yes, I’m up.”

“Hmnngh?” He raised a finger to point at her phone. Time? He seemed to ask.

“Quarter to seven.”

“S’too early.” Cloud grumbled and covered his head with the blanket. He heard her comment something about SOLDIERs waking up early, but he let it slide.

A melodic laugh left Tifa’s lips as she pushed away his legs to leave the bed. “Shoo,” she told him when he wouldn’t budge. “I’m going to take a bath.”

Her sleepy roommate acquiesced and folded his legs and he felt the bed dip under her weight as she climbed off the bed. 

“I’m taking a bath so that gives you half an hour of sleep.” She patted his back. “Try to maximize the time, ‘kay?”

Cloud gave her a thumbs up from under the blankets and quickly fell back to sleep at the sound of the shower running.

[magos-dominus]

I’ll Stand by You

What do we want?? TIFA COMFORTING CLOUD AFTER A SEPHIROTH VISION!!!!

When do we want it??? NOW!!!!!

Yeah. That’s what this is. 

***

Tifa’s lies in bed, staring up at the ceiling.

Her thoughts keep swirling about in her head like a hurricane, her mind skipping from one thought to the next, never settling on a particular one for very long. She worries about Sector 7. The aching grief that sits in her heart from losing her friends keeps coming back up and forcing more tears to her eyes. Her thoughts also dwell on Aerith. On finding out that the Ancients are real - that Aerith is one - and that Shinra now has their hands on her. And guilt eats her up for getting Aerith involved in this mess in the first place.

 When not dwelling on any of that, her mind turns back to Cloud and the way he’d held her when she cried her eyes out a mere hour or two ago. She couldn’t forget how those strong arms had felt around her. Even when he held on a little too tight, she’d still felt safe in them. And she’d felt… something else. She just doesn’t know what exactly. But it’s not something she’s felt before, and she doesn’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. 

She sighs and closes her eyes. She’d left her bedroom door open a crack in case someone needs her, and it allows the white noise of the sleeping house to filter into her room. She tries to focus on that instead in an attempt to get her mind to quiet enough for her to fall asleep. 

She can easily make out the sounds of Marlene and Barret sleeping in the room beside hers and she spends a good while just listening to them. But then her ears pick up on another sound that makes her eyes snap open. 

It’s the sound of someone groaning in pain.

She rolls out of bed and quietly makes her way out of the room. Out here she can hear harsh breathing coming from downstairs and she feels her heart clench. Cloud is down there, sleeping on Elmyra’s couch. 

His headaches seem to have been getting worse. She wonders if it’s another one that’s bothering him. Or perhaps an injury that he’d hidden? 

Tifa quietly makes her way down the stairs and the light filtering through the windows is enough for her to make out Cloud sitting on the couch, hunched over with his head cradled in his hands. Must be another headache then. 

“Cloud?” she asks, reaching out to touch his shoulder. 

He flinches so hard at the sound of her voice that he nearly throws himself off the couch. He twists around to face her with a look of fear similar to the one he’d had earlier that night on the when he’d been leading them to this place. 

He quickly pulls his face back into a neutral expression once he recognizes her but it’s too late. She’d seen.

read the rest on AO3

[magos-dominus]

A tumblr-prompted short fic about Cloud’s perspective during the opening events of Chapter 13: A Broken World. FFVII Remake spoilers!

———————-

I asked for cloti Remake prompts, and y’all DELIVERED!  Thank you!  

This is the first of several that I happened to finish soonest.  Shoutout to @headspacedad for this one!  This one hurted me in the heart to write, damn you. lol.  But seriously, it was fun to think on.  It turned out pretty angsty, but I hope you and our fellow clotis enjoy the perspective and (some) liberties I took.

I’m working through multiple prompts at a time, so finished works may NOT be finished and posted in the order prompts were received, simply because some are having me think a little harder than others, lol.  Thanks for your patience and as always, feedback is WONDERFUL but never expected.