Ranked in order of personal preference, and likely to change/expand as I read more fic
Warning: Most of these fics contain mature content (primarily violence and NSFW language, but also explicit sexual situations in the case of #1). Viewer discretion is advised.
This is a short but sweet fanfic about Reeve meeting the original Cait Sith. I thought it was absolutely adorable. Enough said. <3
This ongoing fanfic is newer than the others on the list and takes place during the events of the prequel game Before Crisis, about the history of the Turks and Avalanche. It occupies a dear space in my heart because there was a (however brief) period in my early adolescence when I wanted to be a Turk. (Apparently the stuff from Snow Fields about how they have to blindly obey any order without question didn't register in my thirteen-year-old mind. I think that's because I was really naïve back then and had a slightly warped mind from being mistreated at school.) On a less personal level, this story is especially notable because the author of this story took a group of mostly-unnamed player characters from Before Crisis, gave them all names, personalities, and fleshed-out backstories, and showed them interacting with such camaraderie that I almost wished that I were one of them. It shows the good and bad of both Shinra and Avalanche, although the author seems to favor (or at least prefer to glamorize) the former.
This cycle of stories set in the same continuity as The Conscience of the King (see below) center on a young and relatively innocent Professor Hojo and his involvement in the Jenova Project: an involvement that leads to his possession by Jenova and subsequent fall into madness. It's very Gothic, very Lovecraftian, and it chilled me to the bone when I read it.
This one, which I initially started reading in 2006 but didn't finish until September 2023, is proof positive that fan fiction, if written as a labor of love by a talented individual, can be Literature with a capital L. When I first attempted it as a teen, it was probably the deepest, most "serious" novel that I had read up to that point, dealing with serious themes such as redemption, lost love, hidden depths, and what separates true monsters from those who just believe themselves to be—and yet I only made it to around the two-thirds mark back then and don't remember why I abandoned it. (Most likely, I got caught up in some sort of stupid adolescent drama and forgot to finish it.) Re-reading the entire thing as an adult, it moves me even more than it did then, which I think is a testament to the quality of its writing. It reads like a Gothic romance from the eighteenth or nineteenth century crossed with Les Misérables (minus all Victor Hugo's digressions), and the author provides enough backstory for all of the important characters that the story is easy to follow even if you have never played the original game. (In fact, it's how I first learned about many of the characters and settings way back when!)
This AU fic is by the same author as Nursery Rhymes and The Conscience of the King (see below), and is just as wonderful as the latter. (I still prefer Conscience, though, for reasons elaborated on below.) It's another slow burn, still unfinished but so gorgeous, so vivid, so thoughtful, and so real that what is available manages to satisfy me anyway. (I still hope the author eventually finishes it, of course, but, unlike Conscience which follows the timeline of the original game (while contradicting current canon), I have relatively little clue what direction she intends/intended to go. I love those novels where the author shows you what's going on inside the characters' heads—especially those of multiple characters in one scene—and this fic does a wonderful job of doing just that, laying the inner thought processes and motivations of Tifa, Rufus, and Tseng bare.
I didn't think it was possible for me to love a fic even more than I loved Snow Fields, but this currently unfinished slash novel about Rufus and Reeve is the #1 best fanfic of anything that I have read to date. It follows Reeve's life from his first chance encounter with then-vice president Rufus about seven years before the events of the original game, through a steamy slow-burn romance where the other Shinra executives' machinations and eventual philosophical differences threaten to tear them apart. The dialogue is brilliantly-written, the characters all feel like real people with real motivations, and the descriptions and emotions are so vivid that I often felt more like I was watching a film than reading a novel. It has a very 1990s feel to it, making me nostalgic for that era that I only got to experience as a young child (and thus barely knew). The writing style is more experimental than in any conventionally published novel I've read, particularly the epistolary Chapter 14, which uses various documents and transcripts to depict the events leading up to the original game's opening scene in a fresh way. Reeve struggles with sexual fear and shame stemming from childhood trauma, which he attempts to overcome with the help of the more experienced and largely uninhibited Rufus, until circumstances turn their relationship long-distance. Although their relationship (temporarily?) falls apart after Rufus becomes president, I find their love story more moving and more inspiring than any other that I have ever encountered in fiction. (That includes Pride and Prejudice, which I never cared for, partly because enemies-to-lovers just isn't my thing, and I suppose also because straight romance typically isn't my thing either.) I just hope that the author eventually finishes writing it, so I don't have to! ;)
Last updated August 31, 2025