I assume others are reading, so figured I’d make a thread for any discussion on that.
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Hilights imo:
- Overall graphic design! Lots of nice little details.
- Crim’s art (though for some reason all Lucrecia art in this zine is compilation Lucrecia! xD). But I like how this tells a story and prompts questions. Quoth my notes: “Vincent interacting with Ifalna. Yessssssss. Is it Hojo’s birthday? (he’s got the chair!) Or a celebration of the conception of Sephiroth? :P Vincent is the only one without a hat. This feels plausible, bless him.”
- A brilliant piece of art of the team racing away from monsters in the buggy. Brilliant because it conveys plot, scene and characters instantly and is very funny. <3 the numberplate. And Vincent’s face makes it. One of my fave things in the zine.
- A very cool Vincent artwork by the calamity.
- An essay with some high-quality compilation-bashing.
- A gorgeous artwork of Aeris in the Sleeping Forest. It’s got a unique style, floaty, Amanoesque. Maybe my fave thing in here.
- A cool Sephiroth artwork, in nice reds and oranges (fiery!), emphasising similarities between his appearance and Jenova’s.
- Cute paper cutout chocobo racing art.
- A neat Turks fic. Just a good and plausible retelling.
- A really cool fic by Greenjudy. I like it for similar reasons to Crim’s art, ie: it prompts more questions and stories. And the atmosphere. Some nice eerieness around a Cure spell.
- A yesssss piece of Turks art by Maegraeth. All the characters come through, we (unusually) get Rude in the centre, and it’s also just pretty.
- A great piece of whole-party-prepping-to-fight-the-final-battle art! Really matched the tone of the game.
I liked quite a lot of the art in this. I hope it’s possible to find bigger versions of some of those pieces. I’ll have to go back and add names of unfamiliar creators in a bit.
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I have still not got round to retrieving the names, oops…
I was thinking on this today, about how I found the fic quite samey. I daresay it’s bad form to criticise a free thing like this but then it’s not really the fault of any particular creator, if it’s even a fault, and I’m not sure what factors led to it (is it just a function of contemporary fandom?). But I thought it was interesting. Both tone and writing style were similar across fics; most was angst (with a hopeful ending), plainly written, slightly political without going into too much depth, giving a snapshot of a scene with the camera up close to the character, retelling game events or imagined scenes between… I found it interesting that it was trying to be a nostalgic publication, but it felt nothing like the landscape of fic I remember, and that’s quite bound in with my own nostalgia. And I thought that was interesting in contrast to the variety of the art. I think they had some kind of rule that all fic had to be gen, but I don’t think there was a single comedy fic. Or anything with an experimental style. Curious how others found that side of things.
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I only just started reading it. So far, agree that there’s some really cool art and design stuff!
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(Ah oops! I tried to hold off a while so I wouldn’t colour anyone else’s view before they read it, but looks like I was too impatient. 
oh well, I doubt I have that much influence)