KJ

Title: A Guardian's Legacy
Fandom: FFX
Rating: Teen-ish
Wordcount: A lot. Currently at 29/46 chapters.
Characters: Auron, Kinoc, Braska, Jecht, Paine, Baralai, most of the main cast of FFX, lots of OCs. Main pairing is Auron/OC, with a side of Paine/Baralai, and others (particularly Tidus/Yuna) in the background
Spoilers: Yes, lots, for FFX and FFX-2.
Notes: As I mentioned in my monthly writing goals post, I decided to take on a different kind of project this month: cleaning up and reposting an older story that hadn't yet made it onto AO3. Although the posting is only about two-thirds done (I plan to put up two or so more chapters every day until it's done), I finished the big editing pass today, so I thought it would be a good time to share my progress so far.

Summary: The story of Auron -- warrior monk, guardian, legend -- and the family he left behind.

Posted on AO3

Have some short fics I haven't crossposted here yet, including my stories for this year's Kiss Battles and some Tumblr memes. All links go to AO3.

Kiss Battles

Title: Learning to Lose
Characters: Lulu, Yuna
Prompt: "They get closer and closer to the end, and Lulu doesn't know if she'll be able to see the thing through when they reach the finish line."

Lulu thought she knew what she was getting into.
---

Title: Five Years and a Hundred More
Characters: Larsa/Penelo
Prompt: She sees he's grown up.

Dancing at the five-year anniversary of Larsa's coronation.
---

Title: Visitor
Characters: Flemeth/Solas
Prompt: The Old Days
Notes: Major, major DA:I spoilers.

Flemeth has an unexpected visitor in the Wilds.
---

Other Flashfic

Title: Minor Acts of Sedition
Characters: Malika Cadash, Sera
Prompt: "I have one word for you: sing-a-long!"
Notes: I haven't completed the quest this story references, so apologies for any missteps with canon. But I think it should be close enough. No real spoilers.

When Maryden the bard sends reports of scandalous songs being sung, Malika Cadash has to hear them for herself.
---

Title: A Different Life
Characters: Blackwall/Malika Cadash
Prompt: n/a
Notes: Written to dive a little deeper into a conversation that Malika and Blackwall never properly had about his past. Major spoilers for Blackwall's personal quest.

A conversation put off too long.
---

Title: Good Company
Characters: Alistair/Sereda Aeducan (pre-ship), Duncan
Prompt: "Are you flirting with me?"

Alistair, Sereda, and a lighthearted moment at Ostagar.

Another round of DOINK! (aka Final Fantasy Exchange) has come and gone, and although I still have plenty of modly stuff to do, I'm happy to present my gifts, both given and received.

Firstly, my gift from laughingpineapple was a really beautiful artwork of Larsa and Al-Cid, reconnecting their friendship. I think this may be the first time I've ever gotten art as a gift, so that's exciting all on its own!

"Actual Deep Political Talk"
On AO3 / On Tumblr

I only wrote the one story this year, in part because of mod stuff and in part because I'm having issues with concentrating on writing lately. (Also why I haven't been posting much.) A long story, and nothing I want to get into right now, but anyway it kept me from playing around in Moogle Fluff or taking any pinch hits. Hopefully it will all resolve soon. Anyway, I had a lot of fun with my gift to wimblydonner, who requested something about any character reacting to the changes in Spira brought by the Eternal Calm. After noodling around with some ideas, I settled on Dona and Barthello, largely because I've never really written about them before.

Title: Rebuild
Fandom: FFX/X-2
Rating: Mature
Wordcount: ~3400
Characters: Dona/Barthello, Lucil, Nooj
Spoilers: For the end of FFX, and some implied for X-2
Notes: Fits within the continuity of Aftermath, but you don't need to have read that story to understand this one.

Summary: What's a summoner to do when there's nothing left to summon, no Sin left to defeat? Dona begins to search for her own answers.

On AO3

I finished all my 15 Characters meme prompts. There are some real doozies in this batch -- all crossovers, some more ridiculous than others. :) I hope people enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them!

Fenris and Yuna have an argument.

"Those creatures are dangerous."

Ashe and Alistair adopt a pet.

There were many things Ashe did not expect to find in the palace gardens when she went for her morning walk, but high on that list was the Grey Warden Alistair crouched on the grass, peering between the leaves of a well-manicured bush.

Paine and Carver Hawke make a pie.

The pile of dough sat in the middle of the countertop, a congealing lump of flour, butter, and water. Paine glared at it, as though she could shape it into the form of pie crust by sheer force of will. “Are you sure you followed the recipe?”

Paine and Bethany Hawke go to a concert.

When Paine called Bethany and told her she had an extra ticket to see Ani DiFranco, Bethany wasn’t sure which made her more surprised: that Paine liked Ani DiFranco, or that Bethany rated an invitation from her.

Peggy Carter and Isabela go on a date.

Peggy was not in the habit of frequenting bars as seedy as this one, but the informant had been quite clear: in the North Sea port city of Kirkwall, the Hanged Man was “the” place to meet without attracting attention.

Isabela, Thor, and Jane Foster sit down for a nice, friendly game of Mario Kart.

Thor took the Wiimote from its charger stand and held it up to the light, squinting at it with suspicion. “I am not certain I understand,” he said.

"It’s a simulator." Jane plucked the controller from his hand and turned it sideways. "We race against each other in little cars. Hold it like this, see?"

Alistair has a crush on Steve Rogers, and Yuna tries to matchmake.

Yuna set her tray down on the cafeteria table and frowned. She met her friend Alistair here for lunch every day, and usually he greeted her with a smile and a wave. Instead, he sat silent, hunched over a plate piled with macaroni and cheese, his food barely even touched. If Alistair wasn’t eating all his lunch and half of hers, something was very wrong.

I did the 15 Characters Meme on Tumblr last week -- create a secret list of 15 characters, take prompt request with numbers standing in for the characters, see what happens -- and had a lot of fun. My list was a mixture of characters from Dragon Age, MCU, FFX/X-2, and FFXII. Some of the results (mostly on Tumblr, a few crossposted to AO3):

Steve Rogers challenges Basch fon Ronsenberg to a duel.

“I’m not so sure this was a great idea,” Bucky said, looking over his shoulder to the other side of the clearing where Basch checked the straps of his armor. “He looks pretty handy with that sword, and I don’t know if you’ve ever as much as picked one up before.”

Steve shook his head, then hooked his shield over his arm. “I don’t see that I have much choice,” he said. “That army is threatening the whole platoon. If I can save everyone on both sides by taking out their general, then I’ll do my best with a sword.”

Natasha Romanoff and Tony Stark in a love triangle, competing for the affections of another.

Tony stared across the room at Pepper, not quite certain he’d heard her right. “You have… plans? With someone who isn’t me?”

“Contrary to popular opinion, Tony Stark is not at all times the center of the universe.” Pepper crossed her arms with half a smile.

Seven and Nine get lost and argue over directions.

Character Seven was Balthier. Character Nine was Tony Stark. You have no idea how much I love this prompt.

Recast Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy as characters One and Nine. Rewrite the failed proposal scene.

The role of Elizabeth Bennet will be played by Alistair. The role of Mr. Darcy will be played by Yuna.

Alistair, Yuna, Tony Stark, and Sigrun throw a surprise party for Paine and Ashe. Two surprise party prompts combined into one story.

“C’mon, they’ll be here soon!” Sigrun ducked down behind the Warden-Commander’s desk and gestured for the others to join her. Alistair followed with a grin, but Tony didn’t move from his spot by the bar, and Yuna wavered.

“I… I don’t know,” she said. “Paine doesn’t always like surprises. I’m not sure Ashe does, either.”

Sigrun and Ashe, unexpected travel.

This prompt slots neatly into my Wardens of Ivalice AU, as a missing scene from "The Joining."

Auron and Basch are accidentally locked in a room overnight.

Auron turned the handle one last time, just to make absolutely certain there was nothing to do — he couldn’t break the lock, or bust down the door. “It seems to be sealed magically,” he said.

“Then it appears we are here for the time being.” Basch slid down the wall to take a seat on the floor, and Auron followed suit, tipping his head backwards. “I don’t suppose you carry rations?”

Ashe cuts Basch’s hair.

Though any of a hundred servants could have been called to take on the chore, Ashe feels compelled to perform this duty herself. After the Strahl is safe in the royal aerodrome but before anyone disembarks, she requests a pair of scissors, and then she cuts Basch’s hair.

Paine is afraid, because Balthier hates Yuna.

“You really think they’d come after us?”

Paine turned her head sharply to meet Yuna’s eyes. “You know Balthier wanted that sphere cache. You know you beat him to it, snatched it up from under his nose. And if you think the Youth League was mad when we pulled that stunt with them…” She shook her head. “They’ll be after us, all right."

This, to me, is the heart of the game: from the Guardians arriving at Home through leaving Bevelle. The revelations large and small, the growth experienced by every single character, Auron finally starts to let his hand show, my favorite cut scene ever: I could play it again and again.

• Update to a previous thought -- so the bodies of the Al-Bhed in the Summoner's Sanctum do disappear after Dona and Isaaru send them, in contrast to the bodies that stay on the beach after Operation Mi'ihen. On the other hand, a fiend (a wendigo) comes to life before they've finished, so maybe that's the difference. And in Bevelle, Seymour uses Kinoc's corpse as well as four living people (one warrior monk and three Guado) to create his armor for the battle with Yuna and co. So I have to call the results of this study inconclusive.


• Also in the Summoner's Sanctum, I was really struck by Tidus's interactions with Valefor when he gets upset about Yuna, and the way Valefor bowed her head and wrapped her wings around Tidus, as if to comfort him, to share in his sadness. The bond between the summoners and the aeons must go both ways. What if the aeons grieve every time a summoner dies? What if they're tired of losing tiny pieces of themselves, of crumbling slowly over the centuries? Just another reason they, too, want the cycle to end.


• One of the things I always look forward to in this bit of the game are the interactions between Auron and Kinoc in Bevelle. The moment I noticed this time: when Seymour orders the warrior monks to stand down, and Kinoc pulls the gun away from Auron's face, he has a strange expression, like he's both disappointed and relieved that he won't be pulling the trigger.

After this, we have a little bit of falling action, as the party crosses the Calm Lands, plays the Monster Hunting game (easily my favorite sidequest), explores Yojimbo's cave, and heads for Gagazet. Good times.

I've been thinking about replaying FFX again for awhile, and being at home sick for the last week ended up being a good time for it. (I'd also thought about playing along with moogle_university, but I decided I couldn't hold out until October. :) I can always replay again then if I'm inspired.) I haven't played FFX at all for several years, and I hadn't done a top-to-bottom replay in even longer; then again, I know the game so well by now I doubt there will be many real surprises. But that's not the point of a replay like this. It's more about sinking back into the world and spending time there, reminding myself of the voices and the faces and the story. I'm about twelve or so hours in, just reached the Thunder Plains.

A few stray thoughts:

• The Jecht Shot is ridiculously hard. I think I reloaded seven or eight times before I got it to work. FFX was the last game before the ability to skip cutscenes was introduced to the series, and there's also no way to reload besides restarting the PS2, so that was also annoying. I don't intend to play much blitzball, so I didn't really need the Jecht Shot. But I so much prefer the way the characterization works if Tidus is able to make it work that I decided it was worth it.


• The other choice I really care about: who dies at Operation Mi'ihen. Nothing against Gatta, but the scene with Luzzu and Wakka at Djose Temple is one of my favorites in the game, so when I accidentally kept Gatta alive I found myself going back to a previous save.


• One thing I noticed at Operation Mi'ihen: after Yuna performs her Sending, there are still bodies on the beach. I remember having a discussion about that issue either here or someone else's journal a few years back: do human corpses disappear after death the same way that dead fiends do? At least based on this evidence, the answer is no. I'll have to keep an eye out in future scenes.


• Tidus's voice acting is better than I remember. Yuna's, sadly, is worse. Maybe it only seems that way because she gets so much better in FFX-2, so that's the impression that remains in my head.

I was getting coffee at the cafe across the street, as I often do on morning when I have no plans to go out, and someone was playing the piano. This happens so rarely that I forget that the cafe even has a piano, so it look me a moment to realize that the music was live. The song was also familiar, and it took me awhile to place it out of context. Then it hit me: it was the Hymn of the Fayth, from FFX.

By the time I pulled out my phone to inform Tumblr what was happening, the pianist had begun playing Zanarkand, followed by a little bit of Yuna's Theme, and then he moved on to other, less nerdy things (a bit of "Come Sail Away", and some other pop songs, some of the Top Gun theme, a touch of "Heart and Soul"), although there was also an attempt at Roses of May, from FFIX. Then, before I finished my breakfast, he was gone, vanished before I could compliment him on his musical stylings. A bit of random happiness for me, although it makes me a little sad, too, that he will never know that at least one person heard his musical choices and knew them to be a sort of fannish kin.

Finished my newgameplus story with time to spare; phew. Now I can finally contemplate other projects. Like the "Old Friends" follow-up, which is nudging me to post it in chapters. And my Mega Flare, which has been sadly neglected lately. And the next round of Chocobo Races!



I have been a very bad tonberry and didn't participate at all last time. /o\ But now that I have a little more breathing room, it's time to come play. I'm eyeing a handful of prompts and thinking of more. Meanwhile, while I was being giddy on a finished project high, it occurred to me that we haven't had one of these in far too long...

The FFX/X-2 Random Pairing List
Round Four

( Every bit as ridiculous as you remember it being last time )

As always, no need to claim -- if one or more of these inspires to create, or gives you an idea for a Chocobo Race prompt, feel free! But a link in comments would be excellent.

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.