Ask my characters questions to help me think while I organize my mess!!!

[sarasa_cat]

Help me think while I plot/outline!  

 

Ask my FFVII "Even The Littlest Monsters Cast Shadows Long and Tall" characters questions and I will respond!!

 

POV characters in past timeline (backstory and years leading up to Vincent's murder):

- Turk Vincent 

- Lucrecia 

 

POV characters in present timeline (FFVII + 4 years):

- Immortal Vincent

- Yuffie

 

Other characters: Hojo, Reeve&Cait, Tifa, Cid, Nanaki, Cloud, Marlene, Shelke, Godo, Vincent's mother (OC), and others from FFVII and Dirge of Cerberus cast (anyone fair game for an ask if I can relate it back to Even The Littlest Monsters). 

 

Ships: Vincent/Lucrecia, Lucrecia/Hojo, Yuffie>/Vincent, (other ships from canon acknowledged). (Vincent/Lucrecia is the canonical doomed mess, but with the addition of an extramarital affair occurring between them after Lucrecia marries Hojo.  Yuffie/Vincent as a canon-friendly ambiguous relationship - friends? partners? battlemates/housemates? lovers? - that is ambiguous even to themselves until they individually get their acts together a few years down the road).

 

Story Summary:  When Vincent is awakened by Cloud's crew, the events that unfolded three decades prior felt as fresh and as raw if they had occurred yesterday. Vincent spends the next four years seeking an understanding of who he has become while reconciling his past and present emotions. Story explores canon through missing scenes, backstory, interpersonal relationships, and psychological character studies. 

 

The chapters interweave four POVs in past and present timelines. Vincent, a ShinRa Turk, is an introverted, insecure late bloomer who fails to command the authority required in his position at the ShinRa Mansion facility in Nibelheim. Lucrecia, who has undergone previous setbacks to her academic career, is driven to succeed in her new position no matter the cost. Thirty years later, scientifically altered Vincent wrestles with guilt, shame, and immortality while making sense of a world that has moved on without him and a body that is not entirely his. Meanwhile, Yuffie struggles with finding a place and purpose for herself after Wutai has fallen from greatness. She develops an oddball, off kilter friendship with Vincent that both of them find difficult to define. 

 

Themes: academic hell, professional rivalries, career failures, broken relationships, workplace relationships, scientific research ethics violations, communication breakdowns, unrequited love that is not quite unrequited, extramarital affairs, growing up, body shame, body horror, trust issues, socially awkward people, friends to partners to lovers, found family vs blood relations, women who distrust gender roles, people trapped by the past, national shame, starting over again.

 

All asks to POV characters are welcomed -- goofy or serious asks, plotty asks, thematic asks, backstory asks, "how do they feel about ____ // what do they think about ____" asks, interpretations of canon asks, etc.

Asks to any other character also welcomed -- just connect it somehow to the ships, summary, themes, etc., in Monsters!

Comments

[zen_monk]

For Turk Vincent and Lucrecia, what is one of the things in which they really enjoy talking about, because surely people with bizarre emotional baggage has at least one thing in which they enjoy bonding over and ultimately get attracted to one another. Do they like folk tales and enjoy talking about the historical contexts and all kinds of "just what is the truth and what is fantasty?"

Do they have some kind of weird affinity for silent movies and cartoons?

Do they have weird tastes in food, like corn and mayonnaise pizza (which is a thing in Japan)? Or, PINEAPPLE ON PIZZA WITH HAM.

[sarasa_cat]

Funny you mention corn & mayonnaise pizza. I've long seen Vincent and Lucrecia bonding over safe topics+interests+hobbies while studiously avoiding any kind of deep connection.

Thus, there are things they bond over given who they are versus things they might have bonded over had they not been plagued with certain baggage.

Things they bond over -- the safe things:

1. Foodies, regional cuisine, regional delicacies, "famous" regional dishes, cuisine magazines, wine magazines, etc.: Both are into the foodie culture. They seek out authentic regional cuisine and swap all sorts of obscure facts about various regional cuisines. Both get a thrill out of eating strange regional foods on a dare.

2. Fascinating facts about various cultures around the world -- Vincent was well travelled as a child, which exposed him to many peoples and cultures (and their food). Lucrecia never had the chance to travel until her career made some travel possible, but she grew up in (pre-plate) Midgar which is a cultural melting pot and sort of like a mini-tour of the world just by walking block to block, neighborhood to neighborhood.

3. Music from their childhood, parent's, and grandparents generation rather than popular music in their generation: Big band, swing, and jazz orchestra. Vincent is particularly well versed in music trivia and has tastes that expand beyond big band/jazz, but this just happens to be where his interests intersect with Lucrecia's.

Something they bond over that straddles the safe and unsafe:

4. Science/professional gossip: Lucrecia uses science and professional gossip as currency and because she gets a thrill out of rummaging through people's lives especially when measuring herself against others. Vincent, as a Turk, seeks out sources of gossip for professional reasons. Lucrecia is very careful to *not* mention people/gossip that connects her with Vincent's father.

Things the could have bonded over by do not for reasons:

5. SCIENCE! -- Lucrecia studiously avoids and blocks any conversation about science. Vincent assumes she enjoys breaks from her work and doesn't push. Had their lives unfolded differently, Lucrecia wouldn't have been involved in the accidental death of Vincent's father -- her prior co-author and (in my canon interpretation) a co-chair on her PhD thesis committee -- and Vincent wouldn't have dropped out of a biochemistry phd program. ...And discussion of science wouldn't have been a mine field.

6. Guilty pleasure media -- Vincent loves B-movies, pulp SF, pulp detective stories, etc. Lucrecia is far too uptight about appearing educated and refined to ever admit that she might enjoy these things ... but this *could* have become their secret guilty pleasure had they been able to have a real relationship (which was unlikely for reasons that go well beyond Lucrecia's guilt over Grimoire Valentine).

[zen_monk]

This looks like a recipe for great friendship forming that gets hampered by the fact that Vincent's very job enables him to dig up and hold power over people's secrets, and Lucrecia's secrets and own professional holds are tenuous.

I'm also reading all this and thinking that Vincent could have the potential of being some kind of (nerdy and weird) manic pixie dream guy to Lucrecia :B

[sarasa_cat]

Nerdy introverted shy awkward and so very quiet manic calm pixie dream boy.

Emphasis on boy.

One of the Ultimanias lists Lucrecia, Vincent, and Hojo as being born in the same year but I've decided to stagger their ages a little bit by making Lucrecia and Hojo a few years older. Also, Turk!Vincent during the Dirge flashbacks looks, acts, and feels soooo young. And Hojo is constantly calling Vincent "boy" while Lucrecia treats him ... sort of like a boytoy, tbh, but one's milage may vary in how one interprets their interactions.

So, yes, very much the introverted calm awkward pixie nerd dream boy. ;)

Btw, I usually dislike the entire concept of the manic pixie dream *girl* trope but whenever I have a chance to invert it or deconstruct it, I have fun. This inversion of the trope with Vincent and Lucrecia gives me something to play with.

On the other hand, I am working very hard at figuring out how to radically, successfully, and believably deconstruct the manic pixie dream girl trope that is pretty much part and parcel in Yuffie & Vincent fanfic (and canon interactions). Some fanfic writers have played with the trope by making everything between them into dark comedy crazypants such that their cringeworth hilarious interactions make fun of the trope while still remaining believable characterizations. Basically, turn up their individual social awkwardness to eleven. I was thinking about tackling it as a deconstruction: exploring Yuffie's canonical manic crazy pants as an emotionally defensive act and socially defensive armor. This is usually implied in the dark comedy awkward Yuffie+Vincent, but left to the reader to unpack, assuming they unpack it all?

[zen_monk]

Query: just who is Vincent's mom and how much does she influence her son's life?

[sarasa_cat]

The tl;dr version is that Turk!Vincent uses his mother as his noble and honorable excuse for doing whatever it is that make Vincent most comfortable. This creates a complex relationship of expectations: Vincent does/doesn't want to do something but rather than admit the actual truth, he uses Obligation/Responsibility to Family (usually his mother) as an excuse for doing/not doing something. But then, when Vincent plays the "Obligation/Responsibility to Family," he has the pay the piper because his mother expects that he will be A Good Boy and Do Whatever He Said He Would Do.

To a casual observer, Vincent appears far closer to his parents than he actually is. A more careful observer would see the discomfort and emotional distance that Vincent places between himself at his family.

Vincent's mom and additional family members are a work in progress, still subject to changes, so how she influences her son's life is still a work in progress. Cannot decide if I want to make Vincent and only child of if I want to give him one sibling with a vast age gap between them -- something like 7 to 10 years of gap, Vincent being the older. Otherwise, he's an only child.

I've decided that Vincent's family are part of the immigrant melting pot in Midgar, they moved to Midgar when Grimoire was offered a scholarship for graduate school and were newly weds. Everything about Grimoire strikes me as IMMIGRANT, but that's a different topic...

Mom is more like Vincent: shy, quiet, introverted. Mom doesn't speak midgardian (or whatever the common language is) very well. Mom prefers to stick within her cultural enclave. That makes her more comfortable. She doesn't like making mistakes.

Meanwhile, Grimoire became a well-travelled, well-respected, top ranked academic and he was far more outgoing and gregarious. That said, he was a bit strict at home and expected things to be a certain way. younger!Vincent found his parent's dynamic a bit difficult at times and often had to provide emotional support for his mother when Grimoire was demanding, working extremely long hours, often traveling, etc etc. Mom's discomfort with making mistakes in public also meant that younger!Vincent -- including as early as age 7 or 8 -- would handle interactions his mother didn't want to have because the interaction was midgardian, foreign, and potentially embarrassing if she made mistakes.

Add in the specter of ALWAYS UNSPOKEN concern that Grimoire was having romantic affairs with his graduate students (romantic but not necessarily sexual).

And add Vincent's own social discomfort and his fear that he would never live up to the professional/academic greatness his father achieved.

And add Grimoire taking more career risks as he got older, *after* winning prestigious awards for prior field-defining work. Career risks in the form of scientific theories that seemed a bit out on the fringe.

So once Vincent is in university, he feels overshadowed not only by the specter of his father's academic greatness but also by the itchy little rumors of his father's romantic affairs, the criticisms of his father's current direction of work ... and it creates so much discomfort. Vincent is like a snail that wants to crawl into a shell and seal up the opening.

And then Grimoire dies during a lab accident while working with Lucrecia, whom Vincent doesn't know and, frankly, doesn't want to know because he doesn't want to know ANYTHING about his father's academic lab. I'm probably putting Vincent in the same university as his father for his undergrad years and then a different uni for his phd... Still playing with the timeline but Grimoire's death makes the most sense on my timeline while Vincent is two years into a PhD.

Thus, in my headcanon, Vincent drops out of a biochemistry phd program because he needs to get away from academia for so many reasons BUT he uses his mother as an excuse: He needs to take an official leave of absence from his program in order to take a professional job that pays him enough money to support himself and his mother. At least, that's what he tells his phd advisor (who mostly believes him) and the dean of his uni (who completely believes him).

During Vincent's years (4 in total?, 2 in nibelheim?) as a Shinra employee, he collects paychecks that his mother increasingly expects to receive such that she can live in at a level of comfort she is used to.

After his first couple of years at Shinra, Vincent takes an offer to be transferred to a new project -- that shinra mansion in nibelheim thing -- because room and board is included as part of the gig along with extra incentive pay for the "discomfort" of being off in the middle of nowhere. In actuality, Vincent wants to be far away from his mother (and lingering issues) so this is a win-win: move to another continent, cut living expenses down to nothing, send home large paycheck.

I very much want a scene where mom shows up in Nibelheim for some legitimate reason and Great Discomfort occurs. ;)