#auncyen

[yusuke-of-valla]

13, 17!

13. your favorite type of fandom event (gift exchange, ship week, secret santa, prompt meme, etc)

REMIX RELAY! I don't think it's particularly common but basically it's like a game of fandom telephone where one person writes a fic, and then someone else gets just that fic and makes art or a fic based on it, and then that fic goes down and so on and so forth. It's always really fun to see what people come up with and latch on to, sometimes they swap POV, i did this in Marvel so it's like "ok how would that concept play out in a different canon," sometimes you write it with a different ship, it's great!

And the also all the pieces are released out of order and you inevitably find out the really angsty fic came from a throwaway line in a fluffy one, or someone took an art peice and made it way darker, it's great. I'd love to do another one

17. something everyone in the fandom loves that you also love?

I don't pretend to know what the general fandom opinion is but I think "Kamoshida's Palace fucking slaps and is a brilliant opening to the game" is pretty common. It just does a really good job of setting the stage for everything that comes before, Ann not killing Kamoshida because she wants him to suffer, Kamoshida being a prick but also showing you why no one does anything. It is so SO good and this is not damning with faint praise because you NEED an opening this good to get the rest of the game going but Persona 5 would not be as popular if that one arc wasn't pretty much perfect in every way it needed to be

[chrismerle]

for the fanfic meme: why do you write fanfic and what's your favorite part of it? how do you decide when something is done?

(le meme)

why do you write fanfic and what's your favorite part of it?

for me fanfic is like a kid playing with dolls. there is a story or a scenario in my head, so I remove it from my head, and sometimes it involves mashing two characters together and going 'now kiss.' there are also a lot of 'what if' elements to why I write fanfic. exploring side details, exploring semi-AUs (AUs that still utilize a lot of elements of canon; I'm not that interested in a lot of AUs that are totally divorced from canon, since then they're also totally divorced from a lot of what caught my attention), exploring characters who never met finally meeting. stuff like that. a lot of my fanfic is me having a question and deciding I'm the only one who can answer my own question. I tend not to write for spite, though? generally if I feel THAT strongly negative about it, I'm not going to recreationally engage. there are a few notable exceptions, but we're not gonna get into them; generally speaking, i don't write out of spite

I guess my favorite part is just that I have fun? sometimes dialogue is the most fun. sometimes action is. sometimes going into ludicrous depth describing something is. sometimes lovingly detailing the emotional breakdown is. it depends.

how do you decide when something is done?

vibes. i freely admit most of my one shots just kind of stop, instead of ending, because that's where the idea i wanted to write ended.

[cateringisalie]

11, 16, 17

11 - Link your three favorite fics right now

For a moment I wondered if this should be other people's fic. I'm still not entirely sure because you can swing this as get to know the author as in something else in the same medium they like. At the same time, I am sure the actual intent was to gauge my side of what I like in terms of my own writing.

…

Still not sure. Not the best answer but-

Wait, I need to link the wretched things don't I? Ugh.

(assuming I'm doing this right):

Symbiosis - Elmyra lives in a very nice house. A suspiciously nice house. But instead of some annoying junk about crime lords and a robot that Don Corneo uses in his arena for no coherent reason, how about co-existence between one of the strangest elements of Midgar fauna?

The Sex Education of Edea Lee - so very silly, but I've just refound the cartridge for Bravely Default and been thinking about the game again, and this was a fun write and reached a whole number of unexpected places. The read-through was possibly the most unexpected result.

Oh, Make me Over - imagine a new and excoriating take on Remake and how this thoroughly ignores it. A kind of iteration of various takes on Wall Market give greater depth (you, of course, bear some responsibility after penning your version which continues to echo down ever since and has influenced ever since). I think I just feel I did better with this one than some of the earlier. Pretty sure I took great pains with a lot of this.

16 - How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Share one of them?

Three that I am actively doing anything with - I think there are others that have dropped by the wayside.

Two out of three are in a more nebulous state, so the active one is probably Amaranth Cuttings. Which… is a cheat since its on Ao3 but hasn't been updated in some months. However, its still in the process of being worked on (the original drafts were completed at speed and only to hit word count) and needs a lot of rework. This is the can't actually do a synopsis without giving a lot of the game away, or the inspiration and likely its very obvious what is going on but I have no idea if its mysterious or obvious! But basically, something very, very bad happened to Junon which resulted in the reactor being smashed into the city while Gast was still alive. And decades later, Aeris Gainsborough is interrupted in her church… by herself.

Penned well before any of Remake's story changes were at all obvious (but after announcement) and not that at all (no parallel universe/time-travel/alternate universes via Lifestream or whatever mess is going on in those miserable games)

17 - What do you do when writing becomes difficult? (maybe a lack of inspiration or writers block)

Sulk a fair bit. In slightly more productive terms, take a long break and focus elsewhere. I am currently trying to get back into writing again after such a hiatus. I switched off from fic entirely (writing and reading) and played games instead. Death Stranding is a weird, weird game…

[mari-lair]

the next morning, from this meeting

[bad0mens]

Looking through the AO3 tag for Kura and I COMPLETELY missed a fic by a mutual and accidentally used the same name for a side character that they used in their fic OTL How the hell did this happen??

[starkittnd93]

@auncyen hi i stole your joke lmao

[Hikari uses Shonen Power of Denial III once again!!!]

Sure hope he doesn’t run out of SP…

[nautilusopus]

The Number I

Chapter 66: I am.

Here we are at the very last chapter (aside from the epilogue). I'll be posting that on the sixth anniversary of this fic (June 15th). Look forward to it! That said, I'm not putting author's notes on the epilogue's intro, so here we go one last time.

Thank you to: @fury-brand @terror-billie @tofucasserole @denebolaleo-ffwriter @voidrotted @shinjikari @cateringisalie @kaijudragon @farfromdaylight @kaasen @subdee @themateriodictable @auncyen Cat

and anyone else I've sought help from over the years that I've dragged into beta'ing. Thank you to @varethinsilico, @jenovacomplete, @waifujuju, @defiantinsect, @rosemochi, @death-rebirth-senshi, @yuquiitas, @spectroscopes, and frankly too many people to count for their emotional support.

Lastly, thank you, for reading. If I was writing this just for me, I wouldn't have written it out at all because I already know how the story goes; the fact that other people wanted to see this dumb pee joke that rapidly got so badly out of hand has been what's kept me going through all these years for the entirety of this massive undertaking. I have a couple short story oneshot side pieces planned for this universe for fun, but this was always intended as a complete story with a specific outline and endpoint since June of 2017 when I posted the chapter, and after 66 chapters and an epilogue and 6 versions of the outline, and not only is it finally over, but the act of ending it is something I never thought I'd have the privilege and burden of doing. Thank you again for being here.

Cloud hallucinates. Voices sometimes, or music – it’s hard to tell. It’s just another consequence of Jenova’s encroaching presence in his DNA, and four years after Meteorfall everyone’s more or less adapted to it and other oddities associated with being not quite human. Mostly.

What begins as a chance encounter with something that isn’t Jenova soon leads to a fight for survival that can no longer be contained in the spaces between numbers, as Cloud tries to keep himself together and finally put his past behind him.

[iamsweden]

I was tagged by @cafeinnewdelsta to list my five comfort characters!

(this was SO hard btw)

1. Cyrus Albright (Octopath Traveler) - Right now, this little nerd is at the top of the list because he is literally me. We're both history nerds. I'm famously asexual and bad at noticing flirting. His philosophy on making education more accessible is perfect and I will always agree with anything that comes out of this guy's mouth. 10/10, I adore him and he encourages me to be a better me <3.

2. Xie Lian (Heaven Official's Blessing) - Stories about folks who hit rock bottom but find the hope to keep going always knock me out, and no one is a better example of it than this guy, our favorite trash god. He's such an inspiration because he keeps going. He believes in himself and the inherent goodness of others and, much like Cyrus, encourages me to be a better person.

3. Lucca (Chrono Trigger) - I've loved Lucca all my life and I'll keep loving her. She's so smart and resourceful and so, so caring of her friends, family, and the world. Chrono Trigger is one of the most important things in my life and whenever I think about the game, I always think of how much I love Lucca.

4. Tres Horny Boys (TAZ Balance) - I KNOW I'm cheating, but seriously how can anyone not see Taako, Merle, and Magnus as a unit? The entirety of TAZ Balance is a major comfort for me. I listened to the podcast for the first time during a really rough point in my life and it helped me through it. These three guys embody hope and love like nobody else. When I'm feeling down, I relisten to Balance or just think about these guys and they pick me back up.

5. Zack Fair (Final Fantasy VII) - Look. Just like everyone else in 2007, I played Crisis Core and ruined my life. Zack is everything to me. He's a hero. In a story full of heroes, real or not, Zack Fair is a hero. It's the perseverance to do good in a world that wants to knock you down that really gets me, you know?

Honorable mentions: Ophilia Clement (Octopath), Garnet (Final Fantasy IX), Allen Walker (D. Gray Man), Yuna (Final Fantasy X), Fjord (Critical Role), Caduceus (Critical Role), Yona (Akatsuki no Yona)

I'll tag @auncyen, @lyxthen, @shady-cactus, and anyone else who wants to do this!

[doodlecircuitredrawn]

Hi, everyone!

Fanfic update for Souvenir!!!

More context under the read more because of ISAT spoilers!

This is a cross-platform update notification for one of my fics!!! (I may draw a little smth for this if I feel up for it!) I was thinking on this for a good while, actually. I thought it’d be more convenient to have a post I could reblog to let people know that I’ve updated because uh… Why not?

This one’s for Souvenir, as I’ve mentioned!

I’ll copy paste the summary for it here!

“Did you know that souvenir means remembrance?

[Inspired by a Tumblr concept by @/auncyen!]”

Yeah! That’s it! I’m being as vague as possible because this is my vaguest fic concept AND I don’t wanna spoil things for the fic!!!

Warnings: Spoilers for ISAT’s entirety, self-loathing (It’s Siffrin being Siffrin,)

Again, let me know if there are any other warnings I should include. I wanna make sure that anyone who comes across my fics are comfortable with reading them!

So! Without further ado, go read it (if you want!!) [The user on the fic is my main Tumblr blog!!!]

Enjoy!

- Circa [:

[darrelodin]

Comfort Characters

Tagged by @auncyen - thanks for the tag!

Morgana (Persona 5): He's a cat, he's a kitty cat. And he sasses all day long. For real though, I love this lil guy with his character arc, loyalty to Joker and just how he holds onto hope through things. I do feel betrayed by Atlas leaving him in cat form so as such, he definitely gets to be human sometime in the post game (albeit def as a Joker-little-brother)

Daeran (Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous): The most arrogant, condescending man I've ever read, and I love him. Behind the cruel jokes and casual blaspheming, he's incredibly loyal to his friends, and seems dedicated to ensuring they live to the fullest. Bonus points for keeping me alive due to spamming Mass Heals - I just like seeing him happy. Bonus points for, in a world with clearly defined and proven existing gods, still goes 'eh, I'm hotter then them'

Romani Archaman (Fate: Grand Order): First, most importantly - never play F:GO. Second, if you do, prepare to drag yourself through hours of blah before the writers decide to kick into high gear and put together a story that will end with you in tears. This man is a mess, everyone uses him as a punching bag but he just never gives up, and I just like seeing him happy

Rocket Racoon (Marvel - Guardians of the Galaxy): He's just a lil-guy whose been through a ton of stuff, has an attitude, and shoots guns bigger than he is, what's not to love?

Red (Transistor): I love the story of Transistor, and it's carried so flawlessly through its protagonist, despite her never saying a word (in game, at least). I want her happy, damn it!

No tags from me, tho feel free to share some comfort characters of ya own!

[starkittnd93]

@auncyen @beantothemax @theynanigans I NEED YOU TO SEE THIS!!!!!

IT THE SIFF!!!

I don’t think I’ve ever put more love and effort into a singe piece of fanart ever in my life, and this is literally the first ISaT related thing I’ve made. I just needed a Siffrin to stare at me from my desk since I was too late to get the plush.

[yusuke-of-valla]

11 & 12!

11. Do you prefer ‘blank slate’ main characters you make yourself or otherwise project onto, or characters with a set personality and backstory?

Oh set personality and backstory. I feel like they fit into the world better and it’s more intriguing when they have opinions and push back on things and can argue about stuff! Like a friend was playing TWEWY and the game would be so much worse if Neku wasn’t an asshole you know?

12. A character you like in a game you’re currently playing

Right now I’m playing Buried Stars and like 2 hours in but so far Gyu-hyuk Lee seems very nice and polite? If he’s got shady shit going on it is less apparent at the moment so I feel like when I do my first playthrough I’m gonna try and get his ending, assuming that’s how this works

[chrismerle]

g, l, x

(le meme)

G - do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?

Ehhhh, bit of a mix. Mostly in order, but if there's a scene I REALLY want to write, I'm not going to stop myself from doing so. One shots mostly get written in order. Longer form fics are more likely to have me popping from scene to scene.

L - how many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

If that thing gets half-assedly proofread once before I post it, it's a good day.

X - a character you enjoy making suffer

Sky's the limit, baby. If they are in the fic, they will probably suffer in some capacity.

[cateringisalie]

18 and 30!

18. A game location you really like

Majula from Dark Souls 2. Yes, the world is somewhere past its end, and there's a pit there which leads to subterranean domain of horror - as well as those other paths leading to nightmare locations and things that will kill you in seconds. But. Its a lovely late-afternoon place of respite that feels relaxing.

Sure, its no guard against the inevitable memory loss of hollowing, but its comforting.

30. Game you think you’ll finish next?

System Shock - though I have a bad habit with its sequel of always getting so far and then just never playing the game again. Still, I have gotten massively further with the new version (the old I think I managed one corridor from the start when I got killed and the game-over freaked me out).

But! I really want to finish it this time.

[chronologically-challenged]

Since I got a few comments about it, here's my essay from the tags (with some edits to make it more readable/fix typos):

#listen they will kill for each other but also its such a short time???? like??? That's part of the tragedy tbh #like!!! yeah they'll go back to their previous lives bc who in their right minds throw out everything they were doing before for people you've# only known for a few months and it turns out all of them do bc they're insane for each other but!!!! like!!!! that's still a big ask!!!!!

#yeah lets throw out everything we've ever know to be together. Lets fucking go and then they do in the end!!!! but!!!#that's because they're all seriously ride or die for each other!!!!!! far more than siffrin thinks anyone will ever be for him!!!!#anyway I have a lot of feelings about the party and just how bonkers (affectionate) they are#yeah no siffrin I too would not expect people to put aside their previous lives especially if its clear they have other plans#'yeah I'm gonna invite myself over to your house to live here lol' yeah no I would not assume that!!!!!!!

#the issue is more that siffrin doesn't communicate what he really wants because if they do and his family says no then... being together truly#will end so he doesn't ask so they never will get a no so it never has to end (and has his reason to keep going)#this is turning into an essay in the tags but like. God its a wild set of circumstances so#tbh siffrin not thinking the party wants to travel together is not wild to me neither is family not communicating#them wanting to be together ALL OF THEM wanting it is... unbelievable in these circumstances

#but they do bc they're all insane and ride or die but the extent of which is a mystery to all of them#anyway that's my essay in the tags#just read the no loops fic where the adults minus siffrin all offer to bring bonnie to bambouche and had FEELINGS about it

shout out to @auncyen and their fic btw lol

I think that the party's communication issues can be summed up as "man, is it awkward to tell someone that you want to spend the rest of your life with them if you've only know them for a few months? Probably."

[bad0mens]

Tagged by @captwaddledoo for the five comfort character meme. LETS GOOOOO

1. Celes Chere from FFVI - character who started my fixation on icy hearted female knights who turn out to be so much more.

2. Yuri Lowell from Tales of Vesperia - snarky, clever, and incredibly depressed. Projecting hard.

3. Hikari Ku and Partitio Yellowil from Octopath Traveler 2 - Yes, they are a package deal, do not separate.

4. Byleth and Dimitri from Fire Emblem 3 Houses - Yes it's me projecting again, and yes, another cold lady warrior (I have a type okay?).

5. Mothman - look, I too wish to be a cryptid

Tagging @suspiciouspopsicle @auncyen and anyone else who wants to do it!!