2024 look-back post
Jan. 1st, 2025 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marsdragonI wrote even less this year, and I also let the Mad SNK Project down to the point where people started emailing me asking for updates. Sorry guys, I'm lazy and demotivated. I'm going to try to force myself back into the saddle translating this year, but who the hell knows what's going to happen to fic. Maybe I finally stop writing. I didn't even manage to write for Keith's birthday last year! Plus I'm even more wildly out of step with what's popular these days than I ever was, and it's starting to take its toll in exchanges. Sic transit gloria mundi, I guess.
24 May 2024
To Live For Pursuit of Virtue and Knowledge
Atelier Iris 2
I didn't even like Atelier Iris 2. I bought it back in college because a friend had worked on it and couldn't get more than a couple hours in because I was so bored. (My roommate that year loved it and played through the entire thing, though) Finally, late 2023, I decided I was going to conquer it once and for all and set my ghosts of poor video game purchases to rest.
It's not a great game! It's a generic JRPG in an awkward marriage to a traditional Atelier game and both of them are somewhat lessened by the experience. It doesn't have the slice of life focus that's so much a part of the charm of regular Atelier games, but it doesn't have the epic scope that draws a player into a regular JRPG. All the characters are walking bundles of cliches, and the main two have all the charisma of wet cardboard. The battle system is fun, but also incredibly easy to the point where most of the game is a cakewalk. The only thing I can make an unalloyed compliment about is the music, which is great.
And yet. AI2 takes 20 hours (2/3rds of the game length) to get to a plot twist, but when it does, it's a hell of a twist. The game drops a bunch of interesting things in the last 10 hours, and while it's not quite enough to redeem the entire game, I was enjoying myself a lot by the end. There's something to be said for ending on a high note, and AI2 does do that. And...I kept thinking about it. (still do, sometimes) It stuck in my mind. While it was there, I came up with this fic.
I thought the idea of Chaos becoming a wandering swordsman/doctor fit him, and went nicely with there being very few real villains in Atelier. Of course, he'd need to learn alchemy...which was his goal the entire time...and doing it with Viese let them bounce off each other a bit like they didn't in-game. And it let me flesh out Chaos' backstory and the world a little, which I wanted to do. Finally, I really wanted to get more into Erasmus and Paracelsus, who quite frankly I would've rather been playing as. Guy has to kill his adoptive father after said father goes mad in a quest for power? Holy crap Gust, why did you dangle this in front of me and take it away, it was made for me. Anyway, I wanted to show Paracelsus when he was still sane, but also give some hints as to how he'd go mad trying to grasp the power of Lilith for himself. I really like it being him taking "alchemy is for helping people" too far, it fits.
...all this, for a game I said I didn't even like. Would that I could still write like this for games I do. (/shoves all those Rufus/Lais ideas back under the bed)
I have gotten spam from FF.Net about this fic, which is endlessly funny to me. "I read your fic, To Live For Pursuit of Virtue and Knowledge..." Hahahaha no you didn't, no one read that fic. Can't you at least pick ones that have a hit count, you silly bots?
12 Jul 2024
Blood To Flow Without Cease
Final Fantasy IV
Written for Carbon in Nonconathon 2024
Feels weird that I've only written two fics for FFIV. I like it a lot! First played it in college with the GBA port and liked it ever since. Just...never wrote anything outside of exchanges.
Anyway, recip wanted some Kain torture and I was called upon to give. (it might sound weird, but I don't like a lot of blood as part of my noncon. I just see it as professional (?) duty to give the recip what they want) I had a real hard time coming up with reasons for Kain to get nonconned, though. Like, Dark Kain is literally the things Kain wants but won't let himself have, so what is he repressing that it would rape him? But of course, he wants to be punished...but why not just torture then? It was hard! I think I bridged the gap all right.
I did like the stabbing and healing around the spear, though, glad the recip did as well. That was the first image I came up with, everything else was worked around that.
Man, Kain's Lunar Trial really is convenient, isn't it?
17 Dec 2024
The Love of the Fire - To Rise
Final Fantasy VI
Written for PlayerProphet in Yuletide 2024
I had a lot of fun with this one. A lot of fun. At first I wasn't sure what to do with Locke and Terra, but I had the idea of them talking about love during the opera, where it would naturally come up. Then I remembered Terra is unconscious in Zozo when everyone else is at the opera, that's why it doesn't come up. (yes, I clearly need to replay FFVI) And after that it's a non-stop ride to the end of the world. ...but what about after the end of the world...? Jidoor did survive pretty well... After that I had it all planned out. Except for the tiny problem that I had forgotten two things:
1. The opera house isn't in Jidoor. For some reason.
2. That's where you fight the Earth Dragon.
Fortunately, these were pretty easy to fix. The Earth Dragon was a good excuse to interrupt the opera again and add a bit of action to an otherwise very talky fic, and the opera house not being in Jidoor let me have another bit of action to finish it up instead of everyone just going back to the inn to sleep.
Ultimately I'm satisfied with all my fics this year except for where I wish there were more of them.
24 May 2024
To Live For Pursuit of Virtue and Knowledge
Atelier Iris 2
I didn't even like Atelier Iris 2. I bought it back in college because a friend had worked on it and couldn't get more than a couple hours in because I was so bored. (My roommate that year loved it and played through the entire thing, though) Finally, late 2023, I decided I was going to conquer it once and for all and set my ghosts of poor video game purchases to rest.
It's not a great game! It's a generic JRPG in an awkward marriage to a traditional Atelier game and both of them are somewhat lessened by the experience. It doesn't have the slice of life focus that's so much a part of the charm of regular Atelier games, but it doesn't have the epic scope that draws a player into a regular JRPG. All the characters are walking bundles of cliches, and the main two have all the charisma of wet cardboard. The battle system is fun, but also incredibly easy to the point where most of the game is a cakewalk. The only thing I can make an unalloyed compliment about is the music, which is great.
And yet. AI2 takes 20 hours (2/3rds of the game length) to get to a plot twist, but when it does, it's a hell of a twist. The game drops a bunch of interesting things in the last 10 hours, and while it's not quite enough to redeem the entire game, I was enjoying myself a lot by the end. There's something to be said for ending on a high note, and AI2 does do that. And...I kept thinking about it. (still do, sometimes) It stuck in my mind. While it was there, I came up with this fic.
I thought the idea of Chaos becoming a wandering swordsman/doctor fit him, and went nicely with there being very few real villains in Atelier. Of course, he'd need to learn alchemy...which was his goal the entire time...and doing it with Viese let them bounce off each other a bit like they didn't in-game. And it let me flesh out Chaos' backstory and the world a little, which I wanted to do. Finally, I really wanted to get more into Erasmus and Paracelsus, who quite frankly I would've rather been playing as. Guy has to kill his adoptive father after said father goes mad in a quest for power? Holy crap Gust, why did you dangle this in front of me and take it away, it was made for me. Anyway, I wanted to show Paracelsus when he was still sane, but also give some hints as to how he'd go mad trying to grasp the power of Lilith for himself. I really like it being him taking "alchemy is for helping people" too far, it fits.
...all this, for a game I said I didn't even like. Would that I could still write like this for games I do. (/shoves all those Rufus/Lais ideas back under the bed)
I have gotten spam from FF.Net about this fic, which is endlessly funny to me. "I read your fic, To Live For Pursuit of Virtue and Knowledge..." Hahahaha no you didn't, no one read that fic. Can't you at least pick ones that have a hit count, you silly bots?
12 Jul 2024
Blood To Flow Without Cease
Final Fantasy IV
Written for Carbon in Nonconathon 2024
Feels weird that I've only written two fics for FFIV. I like it a lot! First played it in college with the GBA port and liked it ever since. Just...never wrote anything outside of exchanges.
Anyway, recip wanted some Kain torture and I was called upon to give. (it might sound weird, but I don't like a lot of blood as part of my noncon. I just see it as professional (?) duty to give the recip what they want) I had a real hard time coming up with reasons for Kain to get nonconned, though. Like, Dark Kain is literally the things Kain wants but won't let himself have, so what is he repressing that it would rape him? But of course, he wants to be punished...but why not just torture then? It was hard! I think I bridged the gap all right.
I did like the stabbing and healing around the spear, though, glad the recip did as well. That was the first image I came up with, everything else was worked around that.
Man, Kain's Lunar Trial really is convenient, isn't it?
17 Dec 2024
The Love of the Fire - To Rise
Final Fantasy VI
Written for PlayerProphet in Yuletide 2024
I had a lot of fun with this one. A lot of fun. At first I wasn't sure what to do with Locke and Terra, but I had the idea of them talking about love during the opera, where it would naturally come up. Then I remembered Terra is unconscious in Zozo when everyone else is at the opera, that's why it doesn't come up. (yes, I clearly need to replay FFVI) And after that it's a non-stop ride to the end of the world. ...but what about after the end of the world...? Jidoor did survive pretty well... After that I had it all planned out. Except for the tiny problem that I had forgotten two things:
1. The opera house isn't in Jidoor. For some reason.
2. That's where you fight the Earth Dragon.
Fortunately, these were pretty easy to fix. The Earth Dragon was a good excuse to interrupt the opera again and add a bit of action to an otherwise very talky fic, and the opera house not being in Jidoor let me have another bit of action to finish it up instead of everyone just going back to the inn to sleep.
Ultimately I'm satisfied with all my fics this year except for where I wish there were more of them.
