KJ

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...

But that day is not today. There's just so much fandom stuff going on lately (FFEX! FFXIII! Mega Flare!), and the rest of life and the world is just too depressing, complicated, and/or dull for me to be inspired to talk about it. Someday soon, maybe.

I have my ff_exchange prompts, and they are awesome. Every single one is something I could write, and all of them are interesting on one level or another. Now I just have to narrow them down, decide whether I want to go for a challenge or expand on something more familiar. Who knows, I might have to write more than one. Either way, exciting!

Also the documentation for Mega Flare is almost finished! Look for that sooner rather than later. Fingers crossed that it's ready this week. I love the buzz on this that I'm seeing around! :D Good times. I probably won't start officially poking at my own idea until I finish FFEX, but I have definitely been contemplating my options...

Getting in on the recc'ing action for FFEX, in honor of signups being extended to TODAY! Haven't signed up yet? Go ye forth and join in!

FFX/FFX-2 fic:

On the Precipice of the World by cyrnelle: An excellent pilgrimage story, lovely all around but especially for the conversation with Father Zuke, a character we don't seen nearly enough of in fanfic.

Thinking-Not-Thinking by not_cynical: Aurikku, except not, and much more realistic to me for it. I love the interaction with Tidus at the beginning, and there is tasty meta as well. Yum, meta.

The Eternal and Perpetual Cycle of Becoming by bottle_of_shine: Speaking of tasty meta... there is lots of it here, along with some really awesome world building about Yevon, old and New. The pairing is Baralai/Isaaru, and it builds up from scratch in a very believable way.

To Know Foreverness by muggy_mountain: A sadly sweet Lulu/Wakka story that develops their relationship into what we see in X-2 and beyond.

FFXII fic:

Necrohol by alimond: Excellent Fran and Basch interaction; I really felt their voices in my head.

Sticky Sweet by lassarina: Balthier/Ashe and a stolen moment. One of my favorite pairings filled with the bittersweetness that I love about them.