KJ

Title: Wardens of Ivalice, Part One: The Joining
Fandoms: Dragon Age & Final Fantasy XII
Rating: T
Wordcount: 26,909
Characters: Ashe, Balthier, Basch, Fran, Elissa Cousland, Alistair, Nathaniel Howe, Alim Surana, many others.
Pairings: Ashe/Balthier, Alistair/Cousland. For now.
Spoilers: For FFXII and Dragon Age: Origins. Includes characters from Awakening but no major spoilers. No references to DA2.
Notes: So here it is, unleashed upon the world at last: my giant crossover of doom. I've never attempted a crossover of this magnitude before, so I hope it works. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to take this direction, and to all my IM friends who haven't played Dragon Age but put up with my babbling and idea-flings regardless. Enjoy!

Summary: Two years after war's end, Queen Ashe is confronted with a new threat: an invading darkspawn army, bursting from underground caverns throughout the world. Fortunately for Ivalice, Warden-Commander Elissa Cousland and her team of Grey Wardens are not far behind.

Link to story, on AO3

I have to admit it: I am kind of in love with this DA/FFXII crossover. It's starting to really work for me. And I am going to spam you all with a snippet that only half of you will half-understand. That's just how my obsessions roll right now.

Context: Grey Wardens have tracked a darkspawn horde to Ivalice and are recruiting from among the local populace. Balthier and Basch are among the first group of recruits for various reasons. Nathaniel and m!Surana (who is not "The Warden" in this universe, just one of their number -- f!Cousland is Warden-Commander) are about to board the Strahl for the first time.

( Snippet time! )

Considering how uncertain I was of this idea at first, I'm really excited by how smoothly things are coming together. Maybe not smoothly enough to have a rough draft in less than two weeks (who decided having such an early deadline was a good idea? Oh, right, that would be me), but certainly better than it was before. 13,000 words but with a ways to go, plotwise. So we'll see. But I am feeling hopeful, at least for tonight.

When I first became active in fandom, back in 2005, I was the very definition of "monofannish". I only wrote in one universe -- Final Fantasy X/X-2 -- and had very little interest in branching out. I would happily read fic in other canons, FF and otherwise, and I would write and talk meta for all kinds of sources, but when it came to creating fanwork, I was perfectly content to hang out in my own little corner. Friends would convince me to check out other sources, and I would often enjoy them, but never was I really tempted to start writing fic. And it's not as though I hadn't thought about it; once I got involved in fandom, I started looking at everything I read, watched, or played as a potential source of story ideas. But nothing outside of FFX and FFX-2 ever gave me anything powerful enough to be worth writing down.

Since those days, I have branched out a little, in that I am more able to take prompt ideas for fandoms I'm not really "in" and do something interesting with them: Sunshine, Star Trek, Babylon 5, other Final Fantasy games. But in all that time, I've only really discovered two new fandoms. The first was Final Fantasy XII. I played the game when it first came out, and wrote a few Kiss Battle and prompt meme stories, but I didn't get deeply into it in a fannish way until I replayed and, at around the same time, wrote three stories for the 2009 round of Final Fantasy Exchange. I was finally hooked, and I started considering myself a part of the FF12 fandom from that point on.

The second, and the first outside the realm of FF, was Dragon Age. I'm still in the first blush with this source, and I've only just started playing the sequel (about which more on another day), so it's hard to say yet whether it will last, but I have a feeling it will. Already, since finishing my first playthrough of Origins in April, I've published three stories, have several more in progress, and am devouring fic at a rapid rate. I haven't felt a creative rush like this since I first entered fandom, and it's got me to wondering: why? Out of all the games I've played since 2005, all the books I've read, all the movies and TV shows I've watched, why is Dragon Age the one that finally broke through? I've been thinking about it, looking for commonalities, and have come to a few preliminary conclusions.

1. I need a lot of compelling source material.
It is surely no coincidence that all of these canon sources are video games. And not just any games, but multi-hour RPGs, with tons of background detail, large casts, strong stories, and settings with complex history and culture. A game is many hours longer than your average movie, and unlike most TV series it usually tells a single coherent story, which I think helps me connect with the characters.

2. I need some gaps to fill.
This might seem to contradict the first item, but actually I think this is part of why games work for me as a source. Many books, especially series, will have the detail I need, but they don't leave as much unsaid, either. Games tend to elide a lot more backstory and character interaction, leaving me more room to play with the universe and the characters. I need a careful balance between Items 1 and 2, and so far games seem to hit it better than any other media. More often than not, I write a story because there's a question I need to answer. The more gaps there are, the more likely that many such questions exist.

3. I need a 'ship.
But not just a 'ship that I like. Plenty of sources have 'ships I like, even adore, without driving me to write about them. No, I need a complete and total OTP obsession, to the point that I need to know more about them, explore every facet, bring them together and split them up and reunite them and see what happens. First it was Paine/Nooj and then it was Ashe/Balthier and now it's Alistair/Warden, but the pattern is clear. (There are interesting similarities between these pairings, but that's another post, too.) This was the realization that came as the greatest surprise to me, because I write so much gen, and I sometimes look sideways at the focus of some fandoms on 'shipping. But it fits, too, because I am a character-driven writer. Even my gen tends to be character-driven. And romance can provide a lot of fascinating opportunities for character interaction. It occurs to me that, the times I've jumped into a new fandom, the romance has come first, and then as I've written those stories, new story ideas come to me: gen stories about the characters in my 'ship, different pairings, new characters. And so I branch out. It happened with FFX/X-2 and with FF12, and I imagine it'll happen eventually with Dragon Age.

So, now that I've gotten my tl;dr on, what's yours? What draws you to become fannish about a source, rather than just liking it a lot? Are there patterns, or is it more random? I'm curious to know if other people's experiences are similar, or very different.

Got behind, so I'll get ahead a little bit today.

Day 16 – Your favourite Final Fantasy limit break.

From a sheer "kicking monster ass" perspective, how can it possibly be anyone but Yuna? Grand Summon, Bahamut, Mega Flare, battle over.

Day 17 – Favourite Final Fantasy mini game.

I doubt you will ever meet anyone else in the world who will say this, but the answer is Sphere Break from FFX-2. I love number puzzles, and this is one I both enjoy and am good at.

Day 18 – Favourite Final Fantasy opening sequence.

Depends on what is meant by this. If it refers to the opening images before you load the game, then the winner, by a long shot, is FFX-2. I neglected to mention "Memory of Lightwaves" when I answered the favorite music question, which was a terrible oversight that I correct here; it is one of the most beautiful songs in the series, and I used to just let the credits run. And I love the images, too, the stylized representations of the different characters and events of the game.

On the other hand, if we're talking about the opening FMV that launches the story, my winner is Final Fantasy XII. Epic in scope, it introduces not just the story and the characters but an entire world.

Day 19 – Best Final Fantasy outfit.

I don't really have a good answer for this question. I like some of the FFX-2 dresspheres a lot -- Trainer, Berserker, and Alchemist come to mind. Some of the prettier outfits, like Lulu's, are entirely impractical for battle, but the practical ones can be boring. I guess I could be predictable and say Auron. Billowing red coats are always fashionable.

Day 20 – Best Final Fantasy hair.

This is even harder. I can come up with lots of bad hair, but good hair is much harder to come by. I guess I'll say Fran -- not exactly practical, but boy is in gorgeous. Lightning has lovely hair, too.

( The rest of the questions. )

The ff_exchange reveal has occurred, and now there is much more tasty Final Fantasy fic in the world than there was this morning, including the gift written for me, a most excellent FFXIII story about Lightning and Sazh. Check it out. :)

Hard Balance by wingedserpent

As for myself, I have two stories in the collection. Both on the lighter side, which made them very fun to write.

A Little Help, FFXII, a story about Reks and Penelo and how they might have met. Gen.

Lost & Found, FFX-2, Gippal/Yuna, on a dig.

Just like last year, I didn't get my act together to write any Moogle Fluff, but I am looking very much forward to the Chocobo Down lists! I always get great ideas from them. Although this year, it will have to complete with my newgameplus prompts, which includes much tastiness as well. An abundance of fandom riches! Just the way I like it.

My Valentine's Day offering: three stories written for the 2011 Final Fantasy Kiss Battle. (Still lots of awesome unfilled prompts over there, for anyone so inclined!) All posted on AO3, all rated PG.

Title: Stick to the Plan
Fandom: FFX-2
Pairing: Nooj/Rikku
Prompt: Secret Agent AU. (The prompt was actually for a different couple, but I saw it close to a Nooj/Rikku request and could not resist the combination.)

Nooj knew that working with Rikku was going to be trouble; he just didn't realize how much.

---

Title: Wounded
Fandom: FFXII
Pairing: Ashe/Basch
Prompt: Healing

In a time of battle, healing comes in many forms.

---

Title: Aperitif
Fandom: FFXII
Pairing: Ashe/Rasler
Prompt: "It's not his first kiss, but he's positive it is hers."

On the eve of their wedding, Ashe and Rasler take a moment for themselves.

Pick a character I write, and I will give you the top five ideas/concepts/other I keep in mind while writing that character that I believe are essential to depicting them accurately.

This is an interesting batch of characters for me to consider in this light: three different canons (sort of -- one of the X/X-2 characters appears only in FFX and the other only in FFX-2), all men, all secondary characters, all with few specifics from canon, all characters I have written more about, I think, than most writers in the fandom. In each case, I've had to take the tidbits canon gives us and run with them (although we know somewhat more about Nooj than the other two). Fortunately, that's one of my favorite things to do with a character. Writing minor characters is fun, for just this reason.

With all that in mind, and in alphabetical order (and with spoilers for all three games):

( Al-Cid (FFXII) )

( Kinoc (FFX) )

( Nooj (FFX-2) )

Original meme post here (DW) and here (LJ). More requests are definitely welcome.

justira asked me about the Final Fantasy characters and 'ships that I love, compared and contrasted with Final Fantasy characters and 'ships I do not love.

Let's start by listing the characters and pairings I love and do not love, and then I can start pulling out commonalities. Some of these canons could have much longer "love" lists; in those cases, I've limited myself to four of each.

( List is behind the cut )

Looking over this list, some themes in the non-loved 'ships emerge right away. Incest is a big one, as are pairings that feature a distinct age difference and/or power differential. If by this, you came to the conclusion that Larsa/Vayne is my squickiest pairing in the history of ever, you would be correct! This extends to relationships between characters who seem, to me, to have more of a familial dynamic (Lighting/Hope, Snow/Hope, Wakka/Lulu) or friends/partners (Baralai/Paine, Balthier/Fran) than a romantic connection. I'm also not usually a fan of rival ships, particularly between the protagonist and their enemy.

The ships I do like? The first thing I usually need is some text. Interaction in canon. (With one obvious glaring exception -- Raines/Rosch -- which breaks a lot of other patterns, too. I'm really not sure where that one came from) Subtext alone almost never does it for me, although sometimes just a smidgeon of text is enough for me to open up to seeing subtextual cues as well. Because of this, and also because many of my favorite characters are female, I tend to gravitate towards het rather than slash.

As for characters, it's pretty clear here that I gravitate toward heroic characters rather than villains, but at least in the context of the Final Fantasy games, rarely is the protagonist my favorite character. My very favorites are usually just a step below the main hero: the support staff. Another type of character I like is one with a mystery. A character who has something hidden, just below the surface, but close enough that I can see that something is there, something worth discovering. One-note villains and "good" characters who don't show enough emotion for me to connect with them are typically the ones I don't care for.

The one exception in the character realm is the least-favorite FFX-2 characters, and that's all about the character development. I really liked the way Yuna's character developed and grew, showing more independence and while staing the same caring person beneath the perkier exterior. It felt very natural to me, the specific ways in which she changed and did not change. On the other hand, I didn't like the development on Rikku and Brother at all; it didn't feel true, or natural, and especially in the case of Rikku it was too bad, because I rather liked her in FFX.

30 Days of... Project! Complete list of questions / Ask a question on LJ or on DW.

I just spent an hour drawing up a family tree for House Margrace. Just one generation of direct descendants and a few assorted out-of-wedlock births, mind you -- I didn't even attempt to figure out aunts and uncles and cousins. (Yet.) Al-Cid and his siblings were enough trouble by themselves. But I keep coming up with names and relationships as I write the story, and I decided I'd better at least settle that once and for all. If nothing else, I need to make sure that their ages in relation to each other and Ivalice world history make sense.

18,551. And counting. Earlier today, I came up with a couple of politicking twists, and some reasons for people to do things, and I'm pretty happy with them all. So the story continues to take shape! Except for the end, of course. Someday, I will discover the ending of this story, but that day is not today.

Ganked from imadra_blue.

1. Write down the names of 10 characters.
2. Write an one-sentence fic for every prompt, using the characters determined by the numbers. Do NOT read the prompts before you do step 1.

1. Auron (FFX)
2. Paine (FFX-2)
3. Nooj (FFX-2)
4. Yuna (FFX)
5. Baralai (FFX-2)
6. Ashe (FFXII)
7. Balthier (FFXII)
8. Fran (FFXII)
9. Lightning (FFXIII)
10. Fang (FFXIII)

The quality of these varies, but I've already spent waaaaaay too much time on them, given that I have real projects I ought to be working on instead. Of course, I want to turn at least half of them into actual stories now. One of the ficbits is somewhat spoilery for FFXIII, and another for FFXII. No X or X-2 spoilers, I don't think. Rated from G to R for both sex and implied violence.

( Crossovers and cliche abuse and crack, oh my )