Sandbox / Il Figlio Del Ghiaccio

Our Hero, ladies and gentlemen. Not pictured: dozens of sexual crimes

"Some other reader might just give up at this point, but NOT ME! I demand someone, anybody, no matter who, be it the author or anybody else, gives me an explanation of even just one of these uninterrupted onslaughts towards logic and the very existence of the causality principle!."

— Reaction of a reviewer, before the fanfiction was even over

Il Figlio del Ghiaccio (literally, "The Son of Ice") was a Massive Multiplayer Crossover Italian Fanfic, now cancelled, that was originally published between 2015 and 2016 by Rosa Du Vermnont.

It also just so happens to be an incredibly strong contender for the title of THE Most Completely Bonkers fanwork in the entirety of the Italian fanfiction community, with the added bonus of taking itself completely 100% seriously despite having moment of (plagiarized) straight-up comedic parody.

But what is it about?

Well, it takes place in Arda, at the beginning of The Hobbit... and then it promptly proceeds to screw the Tolkien canon over, sideways and under in any possible imaginable way, be it characters, plot, tone, themes and whatnot.

For starters, the author shoves literally everything she can think about on the spot in the story, from Darksiders to Frozen, from Berserk to completely unrelated music; some scenes are plagiarized from a popular Italian marijuana-themed fan-parody of the Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movies, while in others the characters play, in-universe, the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings miniature wargame.

And there are rape scenes.

Good Lord, there are so many rape scenes.

Theoretically, the story is about Sephiroth being born in Arda instead of a Shin-Ra laboratory, and how this influences and changes the plot of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings", while also making him a hero instead of a villain due to a more positive upbringing.

In truth, it's a thinly veiled excuse for the author to shove everything she happens to like into Arda. More often than not, it is done with no rhyme or reason, and absolutely always with zero regard for the canon of anything she takes from.

During the course of the story, Sephiroth does literally everything that was supposed to be done by the members of the Fellowship of the Ring, casually mentions he is the one who killed Ancalagon the Black, cheats on the various wives he gets without ever being called out for it, faces absolutely zero challenges whatsoever, is the teacher of Dragon Slayer Ornstein, fathers Kirito and is revealed to be the son of Sauron, who is also Isildur and a Daedric Prince who got reincarnated from the future.

Also, there is a lesbian couple of Original Characters, Serys and Arghenta, who have no personality apart from being homosexuals, and who amount to nothing for the story.

Suffice to say, it is quite the roller-coaster.

Compare and contrast to The Last Ringbearer: they're both fanfictions set in Arda, they both change the plot significantly, they both make some villains the good guys and vice-versa... the difference is that this one holds no philosophical or sociological significance, and was not written by a guy who felt compelled to create an Hate Fic because he despised the original work for being a fantasy and Tolkien for being kind of a luddite.

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Il Figlio Del Ghiaccio provides examples of:

• 10,000 Years: The epilogue takes place exactly ten thousand years after the normal finale.
• Author Appeal: The fanfic is unashamedly just a sink for the author to shove in everything she likes, with the story making sense being an afterthought. Also, yuri and, debatably, non-consensual sex (it doesn't seem to be endorsed, but it does run rampant in the tale).
• Aborted Arc: It's a given, since the Author didn't plan the story, and made things up on the spot. For example:
  • Tom Bombadil was announced as set to appear in the following chapter... and was never mentioned again.
  • Alduin was announced as ally of Sauron, but never appeared.
  • The Dohvakin needed to go on a quest to get his powers back, only to have them back the immediately following battle scene.
  • Gollum disappeared into non-existence for no particular reason somewhere during the Battle of Osgiliath.
  • The author herself promised a flashback about how Sephiroth defeated the Balrog (in Gandalf's place) and returned, but we never saw that.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Azog the Defiler is, admittedly, towering and muscular, but is also a scarred, fanged, almost shark-faced monster with a penchant for sporting a constant Slasher Smile. In this story, human women remark on how conventionally attractive he is.
• Adaptational Badass: believe it or not, Grima Wormtongue, the snidely, cowardly and physically unfit in every sense of the word Evil Chancellor of Rohan, of all people, since he manages to rape Eowyn, a woman who, canonically, would use him to mop the floor.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • Sephiroth went from a raging, genocidal sociopath with a God Complex to a full-fledged hero that the narration keeps trying to force us to praise.
  • Azog and Smaug were Good All Along and just pretended to be evil in order to fool Sauron and somehow help the Dwarves become better people.
  • Heathcliff is the leader of an order of heroic knights, instead of being a nutjob who murdered people with virtual reality.
  • Jenova is not a Humanoid Abomination hellbent on cosmic extermination, but a good-natured Damsel in Distress.
• Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: Aerith went from being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice by Sephiroth to be his third and final wife.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Thranduil is an unrepentant rapist who sold the entire Middle Earth to Sauron for a chance to rape Jenova.
  • Denethor is crazier than usual and genuinely evil, without any of the canonical reasons or the tragedy elements.
  • The Skull Knight from Berserk went from being aloof and distant, but genuinely trying to help, to replacing the Mouth of Sauron.
  • Sauron manages to be, if possible, even worse than in canon, being a rapist and also (somehow) Hojo from Final Fantasy VII.
  • Same thing for Griffith, again from Berserk, who in this version never had any of the positive qualities he had in the Golden Age flashbacks from the source material, and turned into Femto for no reason and with never-explained means.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • Galadriel, who canonically is supposed to be one of the most powerful living Elves, here is reduced to be Sephiroth's mother and later wife.
  • Eowyn, who went from being a Mumak-crippling, Nazgul-slaying Badass Normal, to a pure victim whose entire character arc consists of being raped by Grima Wormtongue and being healed from the trauma by getting bedded by Legolas.
  • For a villainous example, Sauron: despite having a body, he lacks all his more exotic powers, and said body is much weaker than the original one.
• Adapted Out: Celeborn is nowhere to be seen so that Sephiroth can bang Galadriel; Finduilas, mother of Boromir and Faramir, is replaced by a very minor Posthumous Character from The Inheritance Cycle; Shelob doesn't exist; Radagast is nowhere to be found; the Army of the Dead never appears.
• An Ice Person: Arghenta is stated to have ascended from a human to a nondescript supernatural being with ice powers, which she, of course, never uses.
• Anachronism Stew: For the most part, the story manages to just have High Fantasy elements... up until Mozart and modern rock bands are mentioned, Sephiroth uses an mp3-player and Gandalf says he saw The Exorcist.
• Ancient Keeper: Arghenta and Serys are the guardians of the Arkenstone, but they allow the Dwarves to find it and grow obsessed with it to the point of greed-induced insanity because that would allow the Dwarves to become better people and to spiritually grow from the greedy beings that Arghenta and Serys themselves allowed them to become.
• Armies Are Evil: the hordes of Mordor seem to be comprised completely of deranged rapists.
• Artistic License – Law: Sephiroth accuses Saruman of rape. Despite the Uruk-Hai having committed the crime, there is nothing indicating that Saruman ordered it actively. Plus, he did not directly committ the crime, so he would be a rape instigator, technically speaking.
• Badass Army: the main characters, on virtue of never facing a single challenge in the entirety of the story, no matter how much the enemy might be clearly overhwelming in numbers and power.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Elf who lived and died in the First Age.
• Black-and-White Morality: The characters the Author likes are invincible, morally perfect and yet humble (which is an Informed Attribute, because we see Sephiroth being a complete hypocrite, a cheating husband, an absent father and a sadistic, rage-prone lunatic); everyone she doesn't like is a power-hungry, megalomaniac, over-the-top, cartoonishly evil-for-the-sake-of-evil Complete Monster rapist who is physically and conceptually incapable of redemption, and therefore must be murdered with extreme prejudice and preferably with sadistic glee. There is no middle ground.
• Blatant Lies: Arghenta gets jumped by Morana, clearly sexually assaulted, and has to repeat herself like a Madness Mantra that "it's not love" to stand the ordeal. The author tells us that it is not rape, because Arghenta liked it, and the story treats this horrific event as the start of a Forbidden Love subplot, to the point that Arghenta cries for Morana when the latter is killed by the Witch-King of Angmar.
• Break the Cutie: Many nameless women are victims of rape, and the narration points out that it mentally scarred them.
• Bumbling Sidekick: Almost everyone is turned into a less smart and less competent version of themselves, to make Sephiroth seem even cooler, but especially the Dwarves and the Hobbits.
• Bystander Syndrome: The White Council does absolutely nothing for the entirety of the story, except for repeating how cool Sephiroth is and, in Galadriel's case, having sex with him.
• Cassandra Truth: Galadriel calls the Alben assholes and warns the good guys not to trust them. Sure enough, once the Alben join the alliance, they contribute nothing to the battle against Sauron, and their Queen rapes Arghenta.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Every single Hobbit and Dwarf, both Played for Laughs and to remind us that they can't possibly be as cool or plot-relevant as Sephiroth.
  • The Dwarves, with the exception of Thorin, are interchangeable morons who never do or say anything smart or useful, and simply say incredibly unfunny jokes, and are called out on that.
  • The Hobbits are one-note characters, who are simply taken along as passive objects whose good-natured disposition is interpreted as being ludicrously oblivious about how anything concerning the world works; the only one with a distinct personality is Pippin, but said personality amounts to the story dialing his naivety and his lack of forethought to parody levels and making him a stoner.
• The Chosen One: More or less halfway through the Lord of the Rings arc, Sephiroth stops being simply unreasonably strong and cool, but he is downright stated to be a God destined to victory.
• Composite Character:
  • Sephiroth takes the roles of Aragorn, Gandalf, Frodo, Cloud Strife and Zack Fair.
  • Sauron is also Isildur and Hojo.
• The Conspiracy: Azog, Smaug and the White Council were part of one, since the dragon's attack on Erebor was an inside job to teach dwarves a lesson. All the innocent Humans who lost their homes were never brought up.
• Damsel in Distress: Are you a woman in this story whose name is not Galadriel or Serys? Congratulations, no matter how competent, badass or powerful you were in your source material, your only role will be to be kidnapped/raped/killed so that main (usually male) characters can feel bad about it and be rightfully angry at the culprit.
• Delusions of Eloquence: The story itself seems to be under them, because apparently, using big, important words to describe how cool Sephiroth is and how he is an invincible God closes plot holes and makes the story interesting.
• Demonic Possession: Hojo travels through time (and, when the Author wants for it to be the canon explanation until she doesn't want it anymore, space), somehow becomes and/or impersonates Sauron (don't ask how Morgoth factors into the equation, he doesn't), possesses Isildur after being defeated (it is never explained how, but it is hinted that it might be through the Ring) and forcefully breeds Jenova. Why all of this? So that Sephiroth could have a legal claim to be both The Lord of the Rings and the legitimate heir to the throne of Gondor instead of Aragorn.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Griffith forgets how to fight and how to lead his army in the Morannon Battle because he gets angry at seeing Sephiroth being cooler and more handsome in combat than him.
• Double Standard: Rape, Female on Female: Morana clearly sexually assaults Arghenta, who is clearly traumatized by it, but the Author got angry when this act was called rape. When you factor in that the Author likes Yuri, it's easy to see this trope in full effect.
• Draco in Leather Pants: In full effect with Sephiroth, who is turned into a hero in this story, most likely because of his good looks. Bonus points for literally wearing leather pants in canon.
• Dumb Muscle: the towering, musclebound Guts is reduced to this, because, despite Griffith already being Femto (somehow) and making the Band of the Hawk work with the Apostles and join Sauron's army... Guts himself keeps thinking Griffith is a good guy (despite the narration telling us that Griffith never had any of the positive qualities that allowed him and Guts to become friends in the first place), and changes his mind only when he personally sees Griffith ordering the wanton slaughter and rape of Gondorian civilians.
• Eldritch Abomination: oddly averted with Jenova. Instead of being a space-faring monstrosity from beyon the stars, who merely took a humanoid form, here she is always presented as an attractive, fair-skinned, fair-haired woman.
• Eldritch Location: Sephiroth finds himself in one during his battle with Sauron, where he meets Aerith who tells him to win. How did this happen, and what this space actually is, we're never told. It might be a different state of being, a "place" outside of regular space-time, the physical manifestation of a Near-Death Experience, or literally anything else.
• Everybody Loves Blondes:
  • Dew is fair-haired and even Frodo kind of lusts after her.
  • Azog, Thranduil and Sauron are all attracted to Jenova, who is portrayed considerably more blonde and considerably less tentacled than in canon.
  • Grima Wormtongue is still as-obsessed as ever with the blonde Eowyn, who later gets paired up with Legolas.
  • Sephiroth marries the blonde Galadriel.
• Evil Is Petty: Thranduil being a rapist would be bad enough, but he would literally let the entirety of Middle Earth burn under Sauron's foot because Jenova rejected him.
• Evil Sorcerer: Saruman, full stop, even moreso than in canon. In this story, he lacks any character depth or allegedely noble motivations, and he is just a tyrannical, murderous asshole who just so happens to be a Wizard.
• Flanderization: Pippin's character boils down to being an idiot and (due to the author's obsession with referencing an Italian parody fan-dub of the Peter Jackson's movies) a drug addict. He never accomplishes anything he does in the source material.
• Flat Character: Basically everybody, because adding so many new faces to the already vast cast of The Lord of the Rings, in such a rushed, short story, leaves little space to develop any of them, especially because the story would rather focus on the next scene in which Sephiroth does something setting-breakingly cool.
• Gainax Ending:
  • Caska, who in this version is the daughter of Farnese and Griffith, marries Guts, then they travel east and create Wutai, because turns out that Arda is the distant past of Gaia.
  • Sephiroth becomes King of Gondor before deciding to just go to Valinor for no reason.
  • Ciri bamfs into existence out of nowhere to give a sense of closure to Geralt and Yennefer's non-existent sub-plot.
  • Sephiroth meets Genesis and Angeal in the future, because Hojo was defeated in the past, therefore Shin-Ra never existed, despite Shin-Ra itself being what created Sephiroth, Genesis and Angeal; the time paradox simply did not wipe them out of existence because of reasons.
  • Sephiroth marries Aerith because she spoke to him from the future.
• A God Am I: Par for the course with Sephiroth, much like in the original game, where he thought that his genetics gave him the literal divine right to exterminate all life. The difference being that here, the narration itself calls him a God and a Messiah.
• Go-Go Enslavement: When Jenova is rescued, she is naked in a suspended cage in Sauron's throne room.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Sephiroth, much like in the original game. How much of his DNA is human, due to the plot changing over and over again his heritage (first and Elf, then an Orc, then Sauron himself), is open to debate, even more so when it is not entirely clear exactly what is third and final father actually is.
• Harmless Villain: the Nazgul, of all people, being incredibly incompetent and collecting defeat after defeat whenever they are in the general vicinity of Sephiroth.
• Hate Sink: The intended result for the antagonists; not a single villain has any remotely positive attribute. They are all completely evil, to laughably excessive levels, and it is impossible not to hate them.
• Idiot Ball: Many villains don't just hold it, they positively squeeze it as if trying to get juice out of it:
  • Thranduil, after his defeat, starts bragging to Sephiroth about how much he enjoyed raping his mother and how much she suffered for it.
  • Griffith decides that sulking because Sephiroth is better-looking is the right thing to do in the final battle.
  • Saruman doesn't even try to pretend that he'd like to bargain.
  • Denethor is so much of a cretin that he wants his soldiers to fight an (allegedly) suicidal field battle at all costs, because "sieges are not glorious enough and unworthy of Gondor", despite the fact that Minas Tirith is surrounded by the most imposing defensive walls among the Free People.
  • Hojo holds Jenova prisoner and doesn't use her to build himself an army of god-like super-soldiers, like he planned to do in the original game and in this very fanfiction.
• Jerkass Has a Point: We're not supposed to like Denethor, but he is technically right when he says that facing the hordes of Mordor in a field battle would be better. Not for the reasons he lists, but because the good guys have a small army of super-powered soldiers, led by a literal God-like invincible magic swordsman, and having them reap the legions of faceless mooks in the open would reduce the risk of civilians being caught in the crossfire.
• Kill It with Fire: How Sephiroth disposes of Saruman, going above and beyond by summoning a pillar of flames that completely melts Orthanc to the ground.
• Kudzu Plot: Both subverted and played straight at the same time.
  • On one hand, the story can't go a single chapter without opening a new plot-thread or mentioning a MacGuffin of some sort of significance.
  • On the other hand, once Sephiroth got his happy ending, all said plot-threads are handwaved without even an out-of-sight resolution, the only exception being the mystery concerning the true identity of Dew, the albino dancer girl who Frodo accidentally spies while she is taking a shower; once Griffith dies, she magically transforms in body, soul, mind and memories into Caska.
• Killed Off for Real: every single villain and Azog, the latter being the only time one of the good guys died.
• Large and in Charge: after Sephiroth falls in the chasm with the Balrog, the towering Azog becomes the leader of the Fellowship.
• Like Father, Like Son: Freanor/Kirito is Sephiroth's son. That means he is the only other character to be an unstoppable one-man army, who single-handedly killed a thousand Orcs in a single battle.
• Mad Love: Thranduil is not only a rapist, but when Jenova rejects him, he makes a deal with Sauron, sacrificing the entirety of Arda out of spite for being defied, and for the promise to be able to have his way with Jenova.
• A Man Is Always Eager: Not only the many, many registered sex offenders that form the villainous side, but literally everybody with a penis is an unashamed horndog. Geralt of Rivia, a guy who literally has a super-human libido, looks almost tame compared to his teammates!
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Apart from most of the already immense cast from Tolkien's works, the story features nearly the entire Final Fantasy VII cast, Kirito, Asuna and Heathcliff, Alduin and the Dohvakin, Geralt and Yennefer, Tauriel, Caska, Guts, Farnese, Griffith, the Skull Knight and the Apostles from Berserk, Dragon Slayer Ornstein, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and more.
• Mind Rape: Arghenta somehow gets one after she faints during the Warg attack. She starts having visions of a towering giant, clad in flames and in a spiky armor, armed with a mace, coming for her. The figure is hinted at being Sauron, but the vision goes nowhere.
• Mind Screw: The plot is nigh incomprehensible. Unexplained retcons, characters appearing in the story only to never be mentioned again, self-contradictory plot points, time-travel, reincarnations, plot-threads getting opened without going anywhere, and an uncomfortable amount of things that are there just because the author wanted to use them in the story.
• Mood Whiplash: A constant in the entire story. Serious, drama-filled moments are interrupted by, for example, Pippin trying to shatter the Palantir in his smoking pipe, mistaking it for crack. The most egregious example is when, immediately after discussing how much Caska risked being raped to death, Frodo, Sam, her, Gollum and an unnamed Dwarf Innkeeper start playing what is strongly hinted to be the Games Workshop official licensed wargame about the very story they're in.
• Mystical Waif: Jenova, in the broadest possible sense of the term. She IS sought after by the villains for her genes that can be used to create super-soldiers... and because they want to rape her, of course.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Sephiroth starts with his insane arsenal of powers and abilities from his original game, but over the course of the story he gets magic mp3-players, immunity from the Ring's influence, more magic swords (which he never uses), precognition, Complete Immortality, the magic ability to make the One Ring good, and (hinted at, the story proper is pretty unclear about it) a-causal existence, since he survives a Time Paradox he himself caused, which should have un-existed him.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Sauron is also a time-traveller, a possessed Isildur, a Mad Scientist, a Daedric Prince and probably even more nonsensical stuff.
• Offing the Offspring: Sauron is Sephiroth's father and wants to kill him.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The White Council, whenever it's not hailing Sephiroth as their new God, is busy speaking about how much they must prepare for what is about to happen and manipulating the Dwarves for never-properly-explained reasons.
• One-Man Army: If you thought Sephiroth was a monster to face in Final Fantasy VII, you have no idea. He kills Nazguls, Balrogs, mountain-chain-sized Dragons (this one is even just mentioned, as if murdering the biggest Dragon in all of High Fantasy literature was irrelevant), destroys the Tower of Orthanc with minimal effort, exterminates entire armies with a single slice of his sword, and his only match is a super-powered Sauron. There's no need to specify that this makes literally every other character in the story (and the mention of millions-soldiers-strong armies) completely redundant, and every fight scene unbearably boring.
• Orcus on His Throne: Sauron got a body without the need to reclaim the Ring (somehow), but he is, if possible, even less active here than in the original Books, and just sits in his throne room waiting for Sephiroth to come and kick his ass.
• Our Orcs Are Different: The Wandering Orcs are somehow magically capable of becoming good without ever being exposed to what "goodness" even is.
• Out of Character: pretty much everybody.
• Peggy Sue: Sephiroth's actions in this story change the plot of Final Fantasy VII, ensuring that no good guys (including the ones originally killed by Sephiroth himself) ever died, and the evident time paradox is never addressed. Sephiroth won and gave everyone a happy ending, and that's it.
• Plot Armor: Sephiroth faces exactly two challenges in the entire story, triumphs in both cases, said minor setbacks only make him more powerful in the long run, and he is downright stated to be invincible and perfection incarnate.
• Plot-Irrelevant Villain: No antagonist has any bearing on the plot apart from raping someone and getting unceremoniously killed by Sephiroth the first time they meet.
• Power Crystal: The Arkenstone is similar to a mythology-accurate Philosopher's Stone, in that it must be earned through virtue and spiritual betterment. It doesn't do much apart from that.
• The Power of Friendship: Suddenly, Sephiroth develops new moves and powers (including turning the One Ring, an insanely powerful magical artifact quite literally Made of Evil, into a ring with non-descript "benevolent powers")... because the playable cast of Final Fantasy VII, his canonically sworn enemies, started cheering for him from the future, encouraging him to win.
• The Prophecy:
  • Out of nowhere, Yennefer seems to have a prophecy that Sauron's victory will mark the end of the Era of Witchers. How this particular aspect holds particular significance, when we already know that Sauron's victory is a pretty bad thing for literally everybody who dares to be a remotely decent person, is never elaborated upon.
  • There is also Arghenta's seemingly prophetic dream about (maybe) Sauron rebuilding his physical body and bringing the war to her personally. It turned out to be equally irrelevant.
• Purple Prose: Attempted, by using big-sounding words to describe how cool Sephiroth is and by using the actual chapter titles written by Tolkien for the original book... whenever the story doesn't use terms such as "completely pissed off" and "we're gonna kick their asses", that, to put it gently, don't sound very Tolkien-esque.
• Random Events Plot: More often than not, things just happens because, to quote the author, "Inspiration told me so and so I wrote".
• Rape as Drama: in full effect, even if just for cheap shock value.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: All the villains are rapists just to make sure the audience hates them.
• Retcon:
  • During The Hobbit arc, Sephiroth was sent in Arda as an infant by the Lifestream from Gaia. Later, Gaia became the future of Arda.
  • Azog and Thranduil were both stated to be Sephiroth's father, before the narration stuck with Sauron.
  • An unnamed Elf woman was stated to be Sephiroth's One True Love, then Galadriel was, then Aerith was.
  • Sephiroth had a son named Freanor, but in between arcs, he turned into Kirito.
• Ron the Death Eater: Thranduil went from being fairly amicable in the books, to aloof and distrustful in the movies, to a narcissistic rapist who is also Sauron's double agent among the Free People in this fanfiction.
• Savage Wolves: a given when the Wargs appear. They are giant, evil-infused wolves bred for war.
• Sequel Hook: A sequel was planned, in which Sephiroth, after going to the future, was going to repel an Invasion from Westeros and, quite possibly, win the war for the Iron Throne. This would've made little sense, considering that this story presents Westeros' characters as existing in the same point in time as Arda, but logic and causality are of little concern to the author.
• Sex God: Many scenes are dedicated to tell us that the protagonists are having sex... and then one of the Original Characters gets tricked into going into the bedroom of a Drow Matriarch, who jumps her in a dubiously consensual act, and which is supposed to be seen this as romantic.
• Shout-Out:
  • Heathcliff, Kirito and Asuna are stated to be "Blood-Oath Knights", and it was confirmed that said "Blood-Oath" is, specifically, the one in The Inheritance Cycle; it holds absolutely no significance and said novels barely factor in the fanfic, so it was probably chosen because it sounded badass.
  • Arendelle is in Arda and Angels live there.
  • The Exorcist is referenced. One might think that Pazuzu is an antagonist who joined Sauron's side... and one would be wrong. The movie is referenced because Gandalf says he saw it, all while cussing like the dickens.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Galadriel defines an entire race as "assholes", Gimli calls Pippin and Merry "bastards" and Gandalf of all people drops f-bombs like they were napalm and he was invading Vietnam.
• Sorcerous Overlord: Saruman, as usual. Of course, he never uses any of his powers and is defeated with zero effort by Sephiroth the same scene they meet, so how much "sorcerous" he is is up for debate...
• Splatter Horror: Guts strangling Griffith with his own entrails certainly qualifies as splatter.
• Stuffed into the Fridge:
  • Farnese was uncerimoniously offed before the "Lord of the Rings" arc started.
  • Morana's death only served to make Arghenta feel bad about her rapist.
  • Jenova was killed before it was retconned as her being imprisoned inside Barad-Dur.
• Stupid Evil: every villain, with no exception. None of them ever does anything even remotedly resembling wise, astute, smart, or even just self-preserving.
• Superpower Lottery: Sephiroth didn't just win it, he kept playing it and winning again and again. His physical attibutes, mastery of magic, skills with sword and insane arsenal of more exotic powers put him firmly into sheer setting-shattering levels of over-powered.
• Time Travel: sometimes combined with space travel, no less. Both Sephiroth and Hojo are eventually revealed to come from the future.
• Vagueness Is Coming: There seems to be a, well, rather vague significance to Sauron's victory in relation to the Witchers, but it is never explained properly and it is never mentioned again apart for a single scene to make sure Yennefer looked worried.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Sephiroth had a son named Freanor from his first, unnamed, Elf Wife... what happened to him? Why is Kirito his son? Are they the same person? If so, why did Freanor change his name? If not, where did Kirito come from?
• White-Haired Pretty Boy: well, duh. It's Sephiroth we're talking about, with his silver hair reaching to his ankles as usual.
• Womb Horror: An uncomfortable amount of dialogue is dedicated to remind us that, yes, human women have been forcefully impregnated by Orcs and are now being forced to "take care of the aberrations growing in their wombs". It would already be abhorrent if they were in Orcish breeding camps, or something, but they're not and the oh-so-morally-superior Sephiroth sees nothing wrong with such clearly unwanted pregnancies coming to fruition. He does describe the event as traumatic and the pregnancies as unwanted... but he also seems to think it is only natural for the mothers to actually care for the babies forced upon them, and that he himself defines as "aberrations".
• Zerg Rush: invoked but ultimately averted. The narration specifies that the armies are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in the numbers, but they never matter, because the protagonist is so insanely powerful, he can destroy them with no effort.

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YMMV

• Angst? What Angst?: Sephiroth gets stabbed by the Morgul Dagger instead of Frodo, and he starts despairing about how he is now a monster who doesn't deserve to be called a human. It lasts exactly one paragraph and it is only an excuse to justify Galadriel giving him consolation sex.
• Anvilicious: The author really, really, really, really wants you to never forget how much better Sephiroth is at everything than everybody else combined.
• Ass Pull: Sephiroth falls with the Balrog instead of Gandalf, and returns dressed in white and with Cloud's swords from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which kind of almost makes sense. Why the hell is Smaug suddenly a white dragon, as well, if none of that happened to him? The author's answer amounted to "Because I wanted to".
• Audience-Alienating Premise: who is this story for?
  • Fans of The Lord of the Rings won't like it because all their favourite characters amount to nothing and a villain from a different story gets everything done.
  • Fans of Final Fantasy VII won't like it because it completely changes the plot and meaning of the game and because the main villain is turned into a hero for no reason.
  • Fans of wild crossovers won't like it because all of the crossover elements bear little to no influence to the plot and are almost everytime just cameos.
• Bile Fascination: Where else can you find a story so absurd that it presents the Charred Council from Darksiders giving Guts his Big Fancy Sword, Azog casually starting to sing to mock the Dwarves about eating Italian greasy junk food and Smaug setting the path for his own army on fire... and demands the reader to take it seriously?
• Black Hole Sue: this is Sephiroth's story. Everybody else exists only to lose to him or to repeat how perfect he his.
• Canon Defilement: One could easily rename this fanfic "Crossover Canon Defilement: The Official Novel" and it would just make everything more honest.
• Life Imitates Art: so, the premise is that Sephiroth travels back in time to rewrite history so that it is more favorable to him. Did... did this fanfiction predict by sheer chance the plot of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth?
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Orcs wearing kippah and wielding menorah-shaped lightsabers!" ^ExplanationThe author insists on calling the Orcs "marrani", which is derived from a derogatory term used in Spain during the Inquisition to describe Jews who pretended to convert to Christianity, but actually kept practicing their real religion in secret.
  • "Inspiration told me so" ^ExplanationLiterally how the author explained parts of her story that made objectively no sense whatsoever, refusing to further elaborate.
  • "The Horse Got Laid" ^ExplanationWhen we didn't know who Caska's father was, only that in this story she is Farnese's daughter, some people joked that, seeing how many rape scenes are in the story, the father might actually have been the infamous memetic Rapehorse.
  • "And then there was a rapist"^ExplanationBorn from the fact that the story is chock-full to the brim with rape, and the author admitted that she added this element because it was an easy way to create immediate drama.
  • "Denethor doesn't know what a wall is"^ExplanationDenethor states that resisting a siege instead of going for an open field battle is against Gondor's ways, somehow ignoring that Minas Tirith is literally a gigantic fortress-city surrounded by walls hundreds of feet tall.
• Moral Event Horizon: Every single villain, being them either rapists or rape-instigators, passes such horizon basically the attosecond he is introduced.
• Nightmare Fuel: Attempted for the explicit purpose of adding cheap drama and shock-value, with nightmare sequences, war crimes and gorn aplenty.
• So Bad, It's Good: This is not a good story in any conventional sense of the word, but it is so unapologetically exaggerated and loaded with a veritable barrage of nonsense that it is bound to elicit a chuckle or two.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: apart from Sephiroth, the only one of the good guys to accomplish something is Guts, who manages to kill Griffith by disemboweling him brutally and strangling him with his own entrails. The other characters are kind of just... there.
  • The story mentions dragons in Sauron's army, but the chance to have Ornstein remind everybody of his title by slaughtering them in a properly epic metal fashion was never even thought about.
  • With all the monsters in Middle Earth, it is kind of a waste to insert Geralt of Rivia in the tale and let him do nothing but the usual unicorn-involving sexy night with Yennefer.
  • Faramir replaces Boromir in the Fellowship. Nothing ever comes of that.
  • Griffith joins Sauron's side, and it could have been a nice chance to explore his attempts at becoming the leader, considering Griffith his defined by ambitions. Instead, he seems content with being Sauron's lackey.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Sephiroth mentions Arendelle, calling it a "Mystical Land of Angels"; it might have been used to add more supernatural beings to the mix, which would have made sense, considering the story later references Darksiders... but it is only mentioned to explain why and how Sephiroth can use what is, for all intents and purpose, just a magic mp3 player.
  • Either Serys or Arghenta (the poor quality of the writing makes it hard to understand) is revealed to be Sauron's sister. Nothing ever comes of that.
  • Arghenta dreams a guy strongly hinted to be Sauron (a hulking, iron-clad giant armed with a blunt object) is coming for her. He never does.
  • The Apostles are said to be sieging Osgiliath. We literally never see them do anything, which is too bad because, considering how unique each Apostle is, it might have given birth to actually creative fight scenes.
  • Sauron still has a physical body due to possessing Isildur, but never once tried to do anything to get the One Ring back or to personally intervene in any way, shape or form.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Morana, arguably, since she is a rapist, but unlike the villains, her act is framed as romantic, none of the good guys criticize her for it, and she dies a hero's death.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Sephiroth keeps insisting that he doesn't want to be judge, jury and executioner, but does so nonetheless for the entire fanfiction. He also seems to think that it is only natural for women to care about children born from rape, cheats on his wives, and abandoned his son for over sixty years.

Trivia

• Author's Saving Throw: Despite throwing a written hissy-fit at the discovery of negative reviews, and threatening to call the police on some people who commented said reviews in real life for "trying to instigate her to commit suicide" (despite nobody actually doing so), Rosa du Vermnont at least vowed to keep writing (and, hopefully, improving), even if just to spite those who mocked this story.

Drinking Game

• Drinking Game: Do not play it, as you'll be choking on you own vomit well before you get halfway through:
  • Take a shot of gin everytime Sephiroth does something that was supposed to be done by a canon character.
  • Take a double shot of whisky everytime anybody, be it a character or the narration itself, tells us how cool Sephiroth is.
  • Take two shots of vodka for every instance of rape.
  • Take a shot of absinthe everytime something or someone is introduced without having any impact on the plot.
  • Take two shots of gin for every instance of Canon Defilement.