KJ

So as often happens, I got to talking with people about fandom projects, and what all we'd like to see, and one idea that came up was the possibility of doing a Big Bang in Final Fantasy fandom.

What's a Big Bang? The short answer is: a fanwork challenge where authors write longer stories over a time period of a few months (most Big Bangs run 5-6 months, and goals are usually either 20,000 or 40,000 words), and artists collaborate with the authors to illustrate the stories, and everyone gets lots of shiny longfic to read and arts to admire. (The long answer is here.)

The discussion went on for awhile, and naturally the first logical step was a poll. To that end:

Here's a poll.

It's based in Google Docs, so you don't need to have an account on any particular service to fill it out. Curious who's responding and what they said? Check out the responses here. Leave your answers in the poll, then come back here to share your thoughts! (Anon and OpenID commenting are on.) And please feel free to send it on to your long-fic writing friends! The more, the merrier.

Here we are at last, the penultimate battle. It comes down to four. Poll closes on Monday at 11pm Pacific.

Who will reign supreme?

( Allez Cuisine! )

The seeds have been set! Deathmatching commences: now. Poll closes on Sunday. Have at it!

Edited: Poll extended to Monday, April 13th. at 11pm PDT.

Edited again: Poll is now closed. Please vote in the next round! Thanks. :)

( Follow me to the poll )

Last week, I acquired a pair of Mary Janes for the first time in... as long as I can remember. (They're Clark's and will be quite comfy, I think, once I break them in.) In fact, I don't remember the last time I bought shoes that weren't sandals, sneakers, or boots.

Because I dislike wearing socks, naturally my first question, as with any shoe, was "do I have to wear socks with that?" They fit fine either way, but I don't know whether I'm committing a terrible fashion faux pas. So I turn to you for help.

(ETA: Because a couple of people have asked... the shoes are black.)

[Poll #1326308]

Yet another in my ongoing series of polls on household debate topics. Today's subject: Refrigerator Management.

[Poll #1298797]

The time has come to settle one of the most serious issues of our time.

[Poll #1210642]

That's right: radio buttons, not ticky boxes. I am going to make you choose. And perhaps we can bring an end to this dangerous conflict.

So John Edwards dropped out. Since I had finally settled on him, and was actually looking forward to casting a vote that mattered for a candidate I liked, this throws me into a bit of disarray.

( Hey, let's all do a poll! )

I've been thinking about doing something like this for awhile, and finishing the replay gives me the perfect excuse. One of the downsides of FFX-2 is that so much of the best content is buried, easy to skip in your rush to hit all the hotspots (and I would just like to reiterate my best advice on this: if you're playing FFX-2 to get as much story as possible, save the hotspots for last whenever you can), and I've often wondered what the implications of that are, in terms of what people know. So, to that end: a poll!

( Significant spoilers for Final Fantasy X-2 are within! )

Very interested to see how this comes out! I do, however, request that you not flame the game in comments -- flawed or no, I happen to be very fond of it, so if anyone comes out with the burning hatred we aren't going to get very far in discussion. Thanks.

For some reason, the subject of who the real villain is seems to come up a lot in Final Fantasy discussions. Some of the games are straightforward in that respect (would anyone try to claim that Ultimecia is not the true villain of FFVIII?), but more of them are not. So I say we settle it, "once and for all."

Warning: this poll contains spoilers for Final Fantasies 7, 9, 10, and 12, if you consider the names of characters that might be villainous to be a spoiler.

( Who's the evillest of them all? )

I've left out the older games, because of those, I've only played FFV, and I remember few of the plot details. If you want to discuss them in comments, feel free.

So this poll, about writing characters, comes from a conversation I had with cupcakemonster. Is it easier or harder to write characters with whom we identify, in terms of personality? (This is mostly geared toward fanfic writing, of course, but I bet some of this could apply to working with original characters as well.)

( Ticky-boxes behind the cut. )