Thoughts on My Fics - Confidence Games

[wreath_of_laurels]

Confidence Games was originally posted under the pen name of teekoness in December of 2010 and is my favourite of my Final Fantasy VII fics and at this point may be my favourite overall. It was written as a gift fic for sinnatious' birthday for which requested a Kunsel-based story. It was supposed to a short light-hearted story but whenever I make plans.... Well, I honestly don't know why I bother. Controlling my muse is like trying to wrangle a Gryphon, likely to either slice you up or fly away if pushed too far.

Writer's Warning: Before I go into detail, I want to make one thing clear: if you have an interpretation that contradicts my own thoughts.... that is SO COOL! As far as I am concerned as long as they are supported by the text, your interpretations are valid as my own. Plus if you are willing, I'd love to hear what they are.

My initial concept was nothing like my final one. It was inspired by the bit in the Final Fantasy VII movie where it becomes evident that Vincent Valentine doesn't have a PHS (cellphone). So I thought it would be funny if the reason for this was that due to him of touch with modern technology after all he did spend most of the last couple decades locked in a coffin. Meanwhile Kunsel's defining feature was his tendency to send Zack constant texts. Marrying the concepts, I tried to write a humour fic with Vincent attempting to use his cell with Kunsel as tech support.

Unfortunately this crashed and burned horrible. I couldn't get past the first few paragraphs and even those ones I had, I didn't like so that was a bust. So time went on and I ferreted more and more about I couldn't deliver on the piece that I had promised. Somewhere in the midst of this I noted the fact that in the game, Kunsel seemed to have high level information on ShinRa. Where was he getting the information? Why weren't the Turks shutting him up? I was then reminded of a line in "Fifth Act" bysinnatious (a truly spectacular fic) where Kunsel is stated to have the makings of a good Turk.

So why not make Kunsel a Turk? And thus the seed for the story was born.

I struggled again. I could hear the dialogue of the characters but not the narrative. So after repeatedly reminding myself just to write something, anything, I wrote nothing but dialogue with the bare minimum of description. It was only after I was done the bare bones of the story that I went back and added more. This is readily apparent in most of the more humourous Zack-Kunsel interactions and obvious in the Zack-Kunsel toe incident where I decided that whatever the reader imagined would be funnier than whatever I could come up with.

One other thing facilitated the breakthrough: the fic's title. When I was younger, I read up on con artists thereby learning about confidence games, in which a scammer manipulates a mark for their own benefit. What better description for what a spy (or undercover Turk) does than 'confidence games'. Meanwhile, optimistic Zack is practically the incarnation of hope and trust (both synonyms of confidence). So I came up with the idea that while Kunsel is manipulating SOLDIER, Zack is unintentionally changing Kunsel.

Once this was settled, I wrote the first part involving the military divisions of ShinRa hating each other (minus the part about Kunsel's partner shooting him), and then everything becomes a blur of the keyboard clacking and the colours black and white flowing across the screen.

The Gryphon had taken off. This time with me caught in the iron grip of its claws. During that first day, once I broke though, I neglected to eat, drink or use the bathroom. Except for a few bits, I wrote everything from the beginning to Zack's death in those eight hours. At which point, Nature was calling, she was about to break done the door and I was forced to attend to more mundane needs.

I'm honestly not sure what my thoughts or plans were during that day. (Darn muse!) My memories were something along the lines of 'Oooh, that would be funny' and 'That's a horrible thing to do him... Let's do it!' Rereading it makes me think there was some method to my madness. I do know that adding Cissnei was a conscious decision as I found her interesting and I wanted more experience writing female characters.

My observations on rereading the stuff up to Zack dying:

- I have absolutely no clue when Cissnei figures out that Kunsel's priorities have shifted. I'm fairly sure that some of her comments are genuinely innocent. Probably more interesting that way.

- I think that Cissnei is going through the same emotional journey to Kunsel. I think they're a lot alike, but while Kunsel protects himself by acting reserved, Cissnei puts up a mask of being light-hearted and friendly. I think Zack sees this and it's part of the reason he sets them up.

- Margery - Rereading this, I hope this didn't come off as me being an ass towards trans people. I'm somewhat tempted to change this part. I personally picture Margery as either as a male crossdresser or as identifying as both genders. He/she prefers women.

- The reason is freaking out about the Zack's cot back home? His life has led him to becoming extremely paranoid. Zack is the first person in a long time that he trusts and some part of him is terrified its all an act. Not an emotionally healthy individual that boy.

Day two of the writing was much harder. In this case, I do remember the writing process. It was way less dialogue and way more work. Also Gryphon!Muse had taken to batting away at the back of my head while I tried concentrate.  I seriously considered simply ending it with Zack's death. It would work, but it felt like it brought Kunsel's journey to an abrupt halt. It seemed to betray the story as a whole.

Arguably the entire story was about trust and hope, and Kunsel had serious issues there. So where did they come from? We know that he's even nervous among his fellow Turks. Enter Marcus, Kunsel's former partner who shot him and sent Kunsel's paranoia into the stratosphere. I retroactively added him to the first scene and suddenly

I like to think that some part of Kunsel has been going over and over that shooting for years wondering why he lived. (I never actually have Kunsel do this, but I like to think his behaviour implicates this. More likely, this is sloppy writing on my part.) The reasons that Kunsel came up with were always the darker ones. Marcus was sloppy. Marcus wanted him to suffer. Marcus was trying to implicate him. So when Cissnei, his new partner, reaches out to him he finally comes up with a hopeful one: Marcus cared about him thus genuinely didn't want to kill him.

This spurs him onto finally embracing his inner Zack and offering trust and hope to Cissnei like Zack did for him.