KJ

Happy DOINK! reveal, everyone! I totally scored this year, receiving not one, not two, but *three* awesome fics based on my prompts, one regular gift and two Moogle Fluff stories:

Compromise by lassarina - FFXII, Ashe/Balthier post-game.

There the Bones of Us May Lie by justira -- even more Ashe/Balthier, this one set during the game, right after Ridorana.

Warrior's Flame by Jessicamariek -- FFX, Rikku and a proper Al Bhed mourning ritual for Tidus and Auron.

I adore them all and highly recommend that you check them out.

As for me, I wrote two gifts this year:

On the Sidelines - FFX-2, Paine and Lulu. "On Yuna's first visit back to Besaid, Paine and Lulu have an opportunity to get to know each other a little better."

Dreams & Obligaions - FFXII, Ashe/Basch. "Ashe and Basch have been carrying on a secret relationship ever since the war ended. But changes will soon force their secrets to come to light, and Ashe and Basch must decide how to proceed."

Looking for more? The full collection is here. Enjoy!

My Doink! assignment has just arrived and I have no idea how I am going to chose among these awesome prompts. So much KJ bait in here, I can't even tell you.

The last time this happened, I wrote two stories (although one was pretty late). Maybe someone will get lucky again. ;)

So excited. :D

Time for Doink! (aka Final Fantasy Exchange)



Sign up, spread the word. :D

Hey, fandom folks! Check out all this STUFF going on!

1. DOINK! (aka ff_exchange) presents: Chocobo Races! A team-and-points based competition to see who can create the most Chocobo Down. I always write a CD story or two, and this sounds like a fun incentive. Come join me on Team Tonberry! (Or, you know, if you must choose Team Cactaur, I suppose that's okay, too.) Rules are here, sign-ups are here. You don't need to have participated in FFEX in the past.

2. Another round of newgameplus is open for sign-ups through Saturday, and they are looking for more players! I confess, I am waffling a little on this one: partly because I'm a little nervous about offering in Dragon Age when I haven't finished DA2 yet, partly because I'm worried about making a hard commitment that overlaps with the Mega Flare timeframe, partly because I'm having a hard time coming up with request prompts. But I really want to play -- I haven't done one of the regular exchanges in this community yet, and I'd like to. Fortunately I have a few days to decide yet.

3. Speaking of Mega Flare... don't forget that sign-ups for artists are still open! I kind of can't believe that the rough draft deadline is only a few weeks away. Where did August go? My story is progressing, though, and considering that I completely threw out my old idea and started with a new one just two weeks ago, I think I'm doing okay. At some point I may need to ask for some help; none of my usual brainstorming partners have played Dragon Age, and I miss having other minds to bounce ideas around with.

I am done with my ff_exchange story! And with time to spare.

Now I am being consumed by my first (and hopefully not last) story for the newgameplus reversathon. Seriously, seriously consumed. This prompt hit me like a ton of bricks: I wrote 2300 words in one day, and I already have more words of fic written this month than I wrote in the entire month of March or April and will probably crack February's total before I go to bed tonight. And almost all of them are on this one fic. I haven't been on fire like this in awhile; it's a nice feeling.

Not to mention, I got bunnied really hard the other day for a story that I think will make a Mega Flare project. Since I hadn't been sure what I was going to write this year, I am very pleased to have an idea present itself. (Well, really, to have it presented by someone. But more on this at another time.)

So I think the creative juices are back with a vengeance. Which just goes to show that, more often than not, making a public complaint about being in a creative lull will often act as a catalyst to end that lull. Here's hoping, anyway.

Because I worked the Saturday before last, and my school was closed for Good Friday, I was blessed with a four-day weekend, and it was glorious!

Thursday: I started the day with a writing morning, for the first time in ages, during which I nearly finished a draft of my ff_exchange story. Then I came home and worked on my Dragon Age replay all afternoon, followed by a lovely dinner with lovely friends and lovely wine in Alameda.

Oh, Dragon Age. I am so into this game, it's kind of ridiculous. To the point where, after a bit of agonizing, I broke down and bought the Ultimate Edition. To be fair, that cost about as much as buying Awakenings (the primary expansion pack) and one of the smaller downloads, so it'll probably be more cost effective in the end. Still, I have to face the fact that I have now purchased another copy of a game I already own. Does this make me a bigger geek than I already am?

Friday: Culinary adventures on the Peninsula with SE! We started with lunch and cupcakes at Vanilla Moon, then wandered down the street to an olive oil shop, where I was unable to resist walking out with a bottle of balsamic vinegar flavored with tangerine. It was really neat to taste dozens of oils and vinegars, play with blending the flavors, seeking out the perfect vinaigrette or dipping sauce combinations. The shopkeeper was really knowledgable and helpful, too.

Other stops included a taiyaki shop in San Mateo (little fish-shaped pastries filled with custard, bean paste, and other delectables including Nutella -- yum!); three attempts at finding a bakery in Redwood City that culminated in tea and pastries at Pamplemousse, which is our go-to place for such things; a spice store with a huge and fascinating stock; and a wander through Kepler's. Then we met up with T and SF for a tasty Japanese dinner of yakitori and other small plates, followed by a trip to Beard Papa for a cream puff dessert. Great food, great fun. I consider it rather a miracle that I didn't end up bringing home anything more than the vinegar, three jars of spices, one book, and half a dozen macarons from Pamplemousse.

Then we came home and played some Portal 2. This is a theme that will recur.

Saturday: The day of errands and lounging. Washed the car, got groceries, played Portal, made dinner, played more Portal, got some writing done, probably would have played more Portal but my wrists said "No." Fortunately, the writing went okay, on that front. I wrote the last little bit of my FFEX draft -- it needs a lot of work still, but at least that first runthrough is finished -- and then I started the Dragon Age fic that has been nagging at me ever since we finished the game. Well, one of them, anyway. Where all this will end up... we'll see.

Sunday: Easter Brunch! R and S hosted, we made hash browns, more yummy food was eaten, more good company was had, and then we dyed eggs. I don't think I've dyed eggs since the SKERG* Easter Brunch of 1997. There were some real beauties, too. Then we came home and played some Portal 2.

Oh, Portal. We started with multi-player cooperative, which is interesting and challenging. I would say, so far, that it's every bit as good as the first one. But I'll hold more complete thoughts for another day.

And so that was my four-day weekend. Which I really, really needed. And now, with luck, I'll be ready to go back and face the daily grind, rejuvenated and ready for more.

*SKERG, for the uninitiated, was the nickname for the apartment where I lived with four other people for a couple of years after college, so named because it was the most pronounceable combination of our first initials. I forget who coined it, but it stuck, to the point where we still refer to it by name, even though the household broke up almost 13 years ago.

Signups are open, hooray! I signed up last night. Won't you come join me?

While I am talking about video games, a few thoughts on Dragon Age: Origins, which I think we are probably a bit more than halfway through. (Yes, the first one. Spoilers for the second one are to be avoided, please. Many thanks.) I like the world, I like the characters, combat has a decent enough variety, and I like that there are many kinds of missions. I am totally smitten with Alistair. ( Mild spoilers, I guess. )

There are dangers here for a story junkie like me, playing a game that has such an apparently-flexible storyline. I want to choose every option in conversation, just to see how it changes things. And it goes without saying that I'm going to have to run through at least some of the other opening missions, although I hope I can restrain myself from having to replay the whole game every time. This is a long game -- we're 40-odd hours and maybe a little over halfway through? That's a lot of game to play through more than once.

1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.

My favorite writing universe is the first one that I created: fleshing out the Final Fantasy X universe for A Guardian's Legacy. In the process of giving Auron a backstory, I had to improvise details about Spira, its small towns, Yevon, the warrior monks, the other characters... And since half the story was written in Spira's future, I had to build the world in that direction, as well. I enjoyed the process a lot, and was quite happy with the world I came up with. Unless the idea I'm writing is incompatible with the AGL continuity, every FFX or X-2 story I write is, in my head, set within that iteration of Spira. (Aftermath is probably the most important example. I even re-used original characters.) I find it helpful, to have done all the world-building already, but also I think it's a pretty decent intepretation of the world we discover in the game. There are a few inconsistencies with Ultimania, but I can live with that.

An entry on my favorite projects would not be complete without a mention of the Death Shall Have No Dominion AU that I wrote with the late, great kunstarniki. Although I am proud of the story we created, my fondest memories are about the process: sharing ideas, the awesome clarity of being on the same wavelength with a collaborator, surprising and delighting one another as we fired snippets back and forth. Collaboration is an amazing creative high for me. The Confessional was a similar experience, and even more intense: I have never written a story that quickly before, and I don't expect to ever capture that kind of exciting creative madness again.

If we're talking more recently, I think my favorite is probably Political Considerations, the FFXII pinch-hit I wrote for the 2009 round of Final Fantasy Exchange. That story threw some pretty difficult political and character curveballs my way, and I was quite happy with the way I handled them. I was still getting the ground under my feet in that fandom at the time, too, so the fact that I got it all to come together under time pressure was something of a rush.

30 Days of Writing: Complete list of questions

Three weeks of writing like mad and then basically one week off. Let's see how that translates...

Days written: 27/31
Words written: 21,487 (72,162 for the year)
Words of fic written: 16,958 (!!!)
Words made up on the getyourwordsout pace: 4,501
Stories worked on: 7
Stories posted: 2

That's almost as many words of fic alone as words total that I wrote in February and March. Thank you, FFEX.

( Graph is, as always, behind the cut. )

Specific Goals:

1. Finish primary FFEX fic. The fic that I thought was going to be the primary one turned into the secondary one, and vice versa. So sort of yes and sort of no, depending on how you count it. I'll call it a win, especially since the original primary fic is completely drafted.

2. Write at least five days per week. If you mean on average, then yes. In absolute terms, no. But the only week I missed was the week I was traveling, so I don't feel badly about it.

3. Write secondary FFEX fic and begin preliminary plotting/outlining of fic for megaflare_ff. Also write official Mega Flare FAQ and other supporting documentation. FFEX gifts completed and posted! Along with a story that was for Moogle Fluff, but that didn't get finished it time; I'll clean it up for Chocobo Down next month. Mega Flare documentation is started and will be ready before deadline. As for the story, I got about 700 words of notes down, so I guess that counts.

4. Make some sort of progress on "Aftermath" and/or the Alphabet Fic Meme. I did make a brief start on one Alphabet Meme story, although I'm not completely sure it's going the direction I want to take. I didn't even look at "Aftermath", and with Mega Flare right around the corner, I may have to backburner that one for a bit. Ugh, I hate to even say that. Maybe I'll backburner something else instead.

I think it's safe to say that I made all my goals, or close enough, although I suppose I have the letter of that last one more than the spirit. But in some cases I hit the spirit better than the letter, so maybe that's okay.

Okay, so. June.

1. Begin writing story for Mega Flare.

2. Complete and post both in-progress Chocobo Down stories.

3. Write at least six days per week -- and that's per week, not on average. I have no travel this month, and break is coming; I should be able to manage this.

4. At least one of the following: finish and post one Alphabet Fic Meme story, make progress on "Aftermath", and/or complete the unholy crossover that I started writing on the plane yesterday. (I don't want to say any more about this one for fear of jinxing it. Let's just say it's completely out of character for me, and I fear the hordes of fangirls who must have written it already. But the idea popped up, my brain said "Hmmmmmm", and who am I to argue with my brain?)

More than doable, right? Right.

In Final Fantasy fandom anyway. That's right: Moogle Fluff time!

I always love the great burst of creativity and variety of fanwork that comes out of Moogle Fluff, and this year promises to be more of the same. Come and play! I'm off to check out the prompts...