Humble Beginnings (Patreon)

I've been doing warm up sketches so I could attempt another OC showcase withe my FF7 characters. I figured this piece would be a good way to start it off before I procrastinate any further.

I became obsessed with Final Fantasy 7 when I was 12/13, and I mentioned elsewhere that I made two friends who played the game. And we would spend our lunch hour every day at school writing stories and making our first OCs for the game way before we even knew they were called that. But I still have our notebooks with all our silly stories ❤️

Allura and Callisto were the characters created by my two friends. Allura was a glamorous singer at the Gold Saucer. In other stories she was a traveler, or an employeeat Shinra. Callisto was a member of the Turks, and Tseng's second-in-command. Whenever she appeared in our stories she lived in Midgar. Diana was mine and I didn't have much in the way of a fabulous career. She was a lonely traveler, or Allura's sidekick, or was a Shinra experiment who Callisto once saved.

Of course no 12 year old made OC wouldn't be complete without the ships! And we had many! The obvious route was to pick our favorite characters. With Allura it switched between Vincent Valentine and Sephiroth, for Callisto it was Tseng and sometimes a character from another game. Because crossovers are fair game! :3 With Diana, I shipped her with Cloud Strife a lot, and then Rufus Shinra. But Cloud was my favorite so a lot of stories I wrote about Diana were self indulgent, and sappy meetings between the two. Stories about first meetings, others where they got married and had kids, I was more focused on happy family life and sweet romance. Was I any good? 12 year old me was happy with it! I had 6 notebooks chock full of fanfics 👍

But as I went through them, I had to stop myself from insulting our stories. My tastes, growth and wisdom as a person changed since I was 12. 😆 Looking at some of our ideas does make me wince, but I also see how it helped me learn a ton of things. It's also a glimpse in how I saw myself and what I wished I could be like when I grew up. ❤️❤️❤️