FINAL FANTASY VII: Kill the Lifestream

Midgar was what remained. War and fiends were taking the rest. A dark city divided into two, at once a nexus of vacuous depravity and complacency, and the singular beacon of culture and progress to the shrinking world. One Shinra Power Company had won the global fight to own and dominate everything, and that prize in the new modern age was steadily buckling under pushback from a living planet they’ve butchered. The fiends, the mutated abominations of nature risen from the planet's own bloodstream, the unsolvable problem, left no endgame for the company and people under it but ruin. And there was Cloud Strife, awoken from forgotten origins as the avatar of it all; the lead act in a carnival of death, mercenary at the end of the world loose without an idea. Under the tyranny of the company he once served, he would rove as a fighter for nothing on a quest of blind revenge for and against people he did not understand, playing along with insurgents, failed revolutionaries, opportunists, and vigilantes, wherever the winds led. An ancient calamity awoken alongside him would see him on top of the empire, brought to heel in its dying hours by forces out of his control, squared against the competing interests of the many forces he aligned with. The greatest jostle for power at the end of all things would be the most meaningless. See this great performance. See this tale of violence, futility, atrophy, debasement, and trauma. See nothing that you want, but everything that this created world is. This is a remake of Final Fantasy VII. (part 1.) ”Hmmm what can you the reader expect?” asks everything published on this website. A. the only good fanfiction ever written (it’s true) B. don’t need to be a fan of the original, might even be better if you approach with a clean slate. C. very derivative from source material in concept, tone, morality, and scope—but otherwise canon-compliant. D. very psychologically driven, highly unreliable narrator and whatever. You won’t like most characters. Or most things that happen. E. occasional deadpan comedy because I’m very hilarious in addition to being terrible. F. not webnovel slop. Actual concept, actual thematic focus. Use your brains and shit. Literature is the most effective art form and reader and writer should treat it as such. Though I am bad at it.