Crossposted to tumblr but here's a year end review thing!

2024 year in review

Taken from the list in this post! I decided to just come through and answer all the questions.

How many fics have you worked on since January?

Well I posted 41, but I have 2-3 more being actively worked on.

What’s something new that you tried in a fic this year?

I did a fake-reddit-post mediafic this year!

What piece of media inspired you the most? (This can be the fandom you wrote the most for, the one that spawned the most ideas, the one you thought about the most, etc.)

Final Fantasy XV my beloved, back for a second go at being my obsession

How many fandoms did you write for this year?

5 if you include "original work" as a fandom.

What ships captured your heart?

Squall/Seifer(/Rinoa) definitely leapt out at me this year. Other than that I've been kind of all over the place, but am currently in a gladnoct state of mind for some reason.

What characters captured your heart?

Okay so I didn't write any fanfic about it, but I read Naomi Novik's Scholomance this year and Orion Lake absolutely captured my heart. He is entirely blorbo bait for me, but alas, I didn't get what I wanted out of him in the third book and didn't find much fic about him either. Other than that, I spent a good while this year feeling like Squall Leonhart was extremely relatable, and then got back to FFXV and my true love Noctis.

Did you write for any new fandoms or ships this year?

Yes, actually! This year I wrote a Stardew Valley fic, and I also wrote my first (and so far only) Destiel fic for SPN.

What fic meant the most to you to write?

Hmmmmm. It's probably the Niflheim!Gladio fic that I haven't published any of yet because I'm not far along enough to be comfortable with it. Other than that possibly this little fic I wrote about Cartanica because even though I did it for a prompt, I was having a lot of feelings about Cartanica.

What fic made you feel the happiest to work on?

I giggled my way through writing Paw-paw said WHAT?, because the idea of Noct having a magical healing cock and it being used in a random side quest cracked me up.

What fic was the most satisfying to finish writing?

Probably Fated Circle, the Seifer/Squall postcanon one. It ended up being way longer than I anticipated and having a lot of action scenes, and I was pretty proud of it.

What fic was the most difficult to write?

It was weirdly this random one about Noct posing for a charity calendar? Not sure why that one gave me so much trouble but I eventually kinda threw in the towel on it. Other than that, the Niflheim!Gladio one I'm still working on is being pretty difficult because it has actual plot and needed an outline and is LONG.

What fic was the easiest to write?

Pretty sure I pounded out feast for a king on my phone during breaks from work because it flowed so quickly and easily.

What were your shortest and longest fics posted this year?

Shortest: Sacrifice, at 328 words

Longest: Fated Circle, at 10,066 words

What were your go-to writing songs?

...the FFXV soundtrack? Actually though for my FFVIII fic I spent a lot of time listening to the FFVIII playlist I put together, which includes multiple P!nk songs (What About Us, TRUSTFALL, Can We Pretend, among others) and also Kelly Clarkson's Catch My Breath which I listened to a million times thinking about Squall.

What was the hardest fic to title?

ALL OF THEM. But probably the Seifer/Squall amnesia one where I ended up with "The Body Knows" which is a dumb title.

What's your favorite title of the year?

Muscle Memory. I started writing this one about GF memory erasure years ago and finally wrapped it up to post this year, but the title was set long before posting because it Felt Right.

Share your favorite opening line

Henry Loxlian, just past his eighteenth birthday, was the most highly anticipated student at the Academy of Saint Lillian in a century.

from The Ecstasy of Saint Lillian, an original work I did for Smut4Smut!

Share your favorite ending line

None of them, I suck at endings. And, upon reviewing a bunch of them, I'm realizing that I often end fics in the same way, with something like "Maybe [thing the fic was about] isn't so bad after all." Oops? Anyway this one was okay.

Whether it'll amount to anything in the bright light of day, Seifer doesn't know, but here in the dark he'll hold this nascent dream close to his heart.

from A New Dream

Share your favorite piece of dialogue

From Absolution: "I deserve punishment." "No, you don't. But if you feel like you need it, then I'll give it to you."

Share your funniest line

People in the comments seem to really like that in my Stardew Valley fic I had Alex say, "Thanks, bro" to Sebastian after they had sex, but tbh that's a mainstay from hockey RPF so I feel like it wasn't that creative? 😂

One that I particularly enjoyed was Prompto saying "The tentacle monster wants to fuck your throat, Noct. All the way through." in ride of your life, though that's admittedly a little niche. I also liked Squall thinking that he and Seifer were exes in The Body Knows.

There's also the setup to Paw-paw said WHAT? which I had fun with: "Well see, I been gettin' these headaches? Real bad ones, sometimes, and Paw-paw's been worried about it. He told me, 'Go get Reggie's boy to fuck you and it'll clear it right up.'"

What's something that surprised you while you were working on a fic? Did it change the story?

I kind of had some fits about writing Most Eligible, because Gladio wasn't being villainous enough, and then Noct liked him too much, and then none of the plot made sense with there just being the one banquet, so I ended up adding a pageant because why not!

What writing programs did you use? Did you write by hand?

All my writing is done in gdocs.

If you had to choose one, what was THE most satisfying writing moment of your year?

Actually coming up with a coherent plot for the Niflheim!Gladio fic and outlining it. I cannot wait to share this fic with you all but I also do not yet believe I will finish it, and I am not one to post unfinished WIPs.

Did you do anything special to celebrate finishing a fic?

No, I finished a lot of fics and none of them were that exciting lol

How did you recharge between fics?

I am either constantly writing in a frenzy or not writing at all for months, there's no specific recharging happening.

Did you create fanworks other than fic?

I make a lot of playlists but mostly for my own personal use.

How many events did you take part in? (bangs, exchanges, ship weeks, zines, prompt memes, they all count!)

Enemies to Lovers Exchange, FFVIII Bingo, Smut4Smut, Nonconathon, Rare Pair Exchange, and a combo kinktober/promptober that also ended up becoming a server event for the Seifer/Squall discord, so that makes a total of....6-7?

If this were an awards show, who would you thank?

@misswonderheart who alpha/beta reads all my fic for me and lets me yell at her about it always and forever, and @freosan for brainstorming ideas with me!

What's left on your to-do list for 2024?

Nothing? I'm still working on some fic but I don't expect them to wrap up this year.

What would you like to write next year?

If this Niflheim!Gladio fic isn't posted next year I will be very disappointed in myself tbh. I've got 14k words written so far and I'm only like maybe 1/3 of the way through it or less. I rarely even write fics that are over 10k words long so having 14k already on it is a LOT, but I have some confidence I can do it! I just need to recruit some more cheerleaders I think 😂

I know there are always some year-end fic/fandom memes floating around dreamwidth but I don't know how to find them. If anyone has links to some I could steal I would love to do one this year! 😄

So after only really writing things for exchanges for quite some time due to massive lack of inspiration, and because I got back into FFXV since I'm playing it, I decided to do kinktober. I last did it back in 2018, and wrote 31 FFXV ficlets in a month, and got extremely burned out on it tbh.

This time I have three different fandoms I'm writing for so hopefully there will be less burnout, and I also limited the prompts and ships to only things I'm into. It's been surprisingly easy? Like I can just pick up a prompt and bang out a short fic in an hour or two. So far I've written nearly 19k words, 11k of which are for FFVIII.

What's most notable to me though is that it feels like back when I first got into FFXV, and how the quantity of fic I wrote really just blew me away because I had never been so productive before. Why was I so productive in FFXV? There's a simple answer: an active kinkmeme. I feel like if I'm writing only my own ideas in a fandom, I'll write a max of maybe 10 fics and then I'm done, that's all I've got. But if I'm getting prompts from other people, it's SO much easier, and I can come up with all kinds of ideas. That's probably why kinktober works for me -- it's basically my own private kinkmeme where the prompts are guaranteed to be things I like.

It's also much easier to write when I've got like-minded people in the fandom who are throwing ideas at me and being there for me to bounce ideas off of as well. I've petered out fastest in fandoms where the other people in the fandom are simply not into the same things as I am (The 100, for example, or The Magnus Archives to a different/lesser degree). Anyway, I don't know what any of that means but I found it interesting to think about.

I need to find myself some more user icons. I love Noctis but I don't wanna use him for every single post, and the only other ones I have on here are old Captain America icons because that's what I was into when I created this account. Maybe Squall? I could go for a closeup of his accessories, hmm.

My kids currently have their friend over for a sleepover and are doing their favorite activity, Warrior Cats roleplay. My two kids tend to be kind of loud when they're playing and are excited but oh my god adding another kid in is like an exponential increase in noise level. At times I definitely wish we had an older house that didn't have the "open floor plan" that we have downstairs, because being able to shut the kids into a room to play and let the rest of the house be quieter sure would be nice sometimes... (Also, the fact that I can't consume any media that's not kid-appropriate until they're in bed, other than books, because you can hear everything from everywhere in our house.)

On that topic, I'm still working on reading Warrior Cats but after like 30-odd books I'm pretty tired of it. I thought I'd give just one more arc a try and see, but this one isn't great so far. I have a couple other books that were recommended to me and are actually aimed at adults (or at least teenagers) waiting for me to read them that I grabbed from the library. It's fascinating to me when someone recommends me a book and I pull up the library website and there are 32 people waiting for 11 copies of the ebook, but the actual physical book is just sitting there on the shelf where I can walk up and grab it.

Aside from that, I've been playing FFXV. Kid 1 has decided she wants to play it too, so she has also started it (she also has a FFVIII game going). I have given her some spoilers about the ending because my kids can handle upsetting content much better when they know it's coming, but we'll see how this goes. In my game, I just got to Lestallum and went on the "date" with Iris. Every time I play I think again how much I love Noctis, and what a great job his voice actor did. I have the "beeeeeeeeeeeeeans" quest active right now too and I love how we get so many different things from Noctis, like, the kind of cocky shit he says during battle sequences, the softness when he's helping out a cat or taking on a quest just to be a nice guy, the way he complains about beans but still takes the quest anyway. What a great character!! He's just such a good guy!!!

On that note I've been rereading my own FFXV fic, some of which I have pretty much entirely forgotten writing. Good thing I wrote so much of it, I guess? It's kind of nice to revisit enough years later that it feels like I'm reading a fic that someone custom wrote for me to be specifically relevant to my interests. I'm also noticing some grammatical patterns that I used way too much which kind of suck, but hey, can't win 'em all.

I also joined a couple of FFVIII discord servers. I'd like to write some more Seifer/Squall fic and I only need one more to fill my bingo card, but I'm having trouble with coming up with ideas. I'm thinking about doing one where Seifer maybe decides to defect from Ultimecia between the parade and D-district and become like a double agent or something, but I don't actually want to go all the way through with it and write the entire alternate universe it would require. I still wanna do the super sketchy one about Seifer and Edea too but that one won't fill my bingo card.

My fic for enemies to lovers exchange is done but I'm still a little worried that the sex isn't sexy enough. It's got a specific kink in it that I put a bunch of in, but then I didn't really like . . . go all the way with it, you know? It's like the "lite" version of the kink I suppose. I'm not really sure what to do about that though. I wanted to write some treats too for my recipient since the ship and tags we matched on are good, but again, I can't come up with any ideas. Maybe I should just open up for prompts on tumblr or something? That's been useful for me in the past.

I'm also considering doing kinktober. I had a good time the one time I did it for FFXV and wrote a shitton of fic for it, and I'm thinking I could do it again and be open to prompts for XV or VIII or something. On the other hand I don't want it to be too high-pressure? idk idk, I'm not really active enough on tumblr in either fandom to have a bunch of followers who are gonna send me prompts.

Hello I am here with two topics today: 1) I finished FFVIII! and 2) I read some books recently and have Thoughts(TM) and this really seems to be the best forum for posting these sort of thoughts!

( FFVIII! )

Moving on, let's talk about some books.

( books )

I probably have more to say about all of this, but I gotta go to my tang soo do class, so I am off!

This year almost all my writing has been for exchanges (and gosh there isn't much of it). I've got one more that hasn't revealed authors yet so I can't share my fic, but here's what I've done this year, from newest to oldest:

Rarepair Exchange: still a secret, unfortunately. I wrote this one back in May and it took until now to reveal 😩
FFVIII Bingo: Muscle Memory, FFVIII, Seifer & Squall. This is the fic I posted here a little while ago -- I ended up adding literally one sentence to it and posting it.

Nonconathon: The Black Tide's Revenge: Pirate Captain/Aristocratic Prisoner, original work. Noncon, obviously, for nonconathon, but this is basically just exactly what it says on the tin: an aristocrat was trying to end piracy and the pirates weren't going to let him get away with it.

Smut 4 Smut: The Ecstasy of Saint Lillian: Older brother excelling at sex magic/Virgin brother starting at same magic school, original work. This one was fun to figure out how the magic system worked in this universe where sex magic is clearly a "normal" thing.

I'm still not done with ff8 -- currently in the state of tooling around time compression trying to stock up enough magic and get my GF's enough abilities that I might have a chance of winning. I hate grinding like this but I also don't want to waste my time and just get killed a thousand times in a row! Anyway I have the Ragnarok and I can't play too often because hitting all the draw points on the island closest to heaven/hell is a repetitive stress injury trigger for me.

In the meantime, I've been working my way through the entire Squall/Seifer tag on AO3 and assembling a FF8 playlist. To try to reinspire myself to write fic, I signed up for a FF8 bingo card! But I still have no ideas.

I did, however, go looking for the one ff8 fic I did write in my gdocs, and along the way I found one I had started that I'm pretty interested in finishing! Unfortunately I can also see why I abandoned it -- because I have no idea where it was going. So, I'm just gonna drop it here and if anyone has any thoughts about where to take it lmk!

( Squall, Seifer, memory loss, romantic dreams )

I ended up giving up on the deep sea research lab because when I finally made it all the way to Bahamut he just instantly killed my whole party. Instead I went back and proceeded with the main story.

Then, I got to the point of battling Adel, and she just keeps killing us all immediately, so now I'm back on a slightly earlier save to see if I can do something to improve my chances. The internet said to get the cavtuar gf so I went and did that, but to learn kamikaze I have to grind for AP, and I don't wanna. Also idk how useful kamikaze will be since I do not have a lot of HP? I guess I need to get more magic to junction to hp or something? I've got only like 750hp on Zell and Adel kills him in a single attack no matter what, and then Squall only has like 2000 and Quistis has like 1300. The internet is like "oh this is an easy boss battle if you have 9999HP" and I'm like yeeeeeeah sure buddy.

Also I'm annoyed I can't upgrade my weapons because I don't have the right parts and I don't want to go fight more in order to get them. I have plenty of money though. Also I don't have many cards because I absolutely such at triple triad.

Anyway I've been reading a bunch of ff8 fic and found some good ones! I'll have to put together a rec list at some point. In the meantime I just wanted to note that I read one today where Squall has to go undercover as a stripper and Seifer is his undercover partner pretending to be a patron. It makes very little sense with the actual plot of the game because who would hire seed for this mission and why would the commander himself be the stripper but you know what, I don't care, Squall as a stripper is pretty hot. Coincidentally in my giant ffxv/ff8 group RP au Squall shows up initially undercover as a cage dancer and then ends up staying so he's a cop by day and a cage dancer by night. Guess I'm not the only one who has thought about this!

I'm at the point where I need to get to the Lunatic Pandora for the second time so we can start the plan to fight Ultimecia, so like, I'm pretty close to the end I think, but also I stopped at the deep sea research lab on the way because I happened across it and therefore literally all I did during my one hour of game time tonight was fight a thousand monsters and ruby dragons and then die.

Anyway I gotta say Laguna is a goofball but damn he's hot, A+ character design there. It's fun how there's so much in here to tell us that Laguna is Squall's dad but he doesn't actually say it. Laguna's plan to defeat Ultimecia is also such an entire load of wild bullshit lmao like sure! We'll just allow Ultimecia to possess Rinoa and do exactly what she wants with Ellone and then we'll be able to survive time compression and traveling to the future where we are incapable of surviving because we have the Power Of Friendship, and then when we get to her we'll fight Ultimecia directly and win because Reasons! And nobody has a better idea than Laguna's bonkers scheme. Like, idk, seal Adel again and seal Rinoa too or have Rinoa give her power back to Edea and seal Edea. No sorceresses, no Ultimecia possession! Or they could see if Odine can stop Ellone's powers so that Ultimecia can't accomplish time compression.

The real question, of course, is why Ultimecia is doing any of this in the first place, but oh well.

In any case the entire plot of this story is so completely bonkers, just totally unhinged, and I kind of love it. Gotta make some monsters fall from the moon so that we can bring an evil sorceress back from being trapped in outer space so that she can be possessed by a sorceress from the future who's using a machine that makes your consciousness time travel so she can then use a person to make her consciousness time travel even further back so that she can combine past present and future and create a world nobody is capable of living in but her. Kind of a long way to go to get some peace and quiet, Ultimecia.

Anyway I'm not sure if I actually want to do the deep sea research lab side quest or not, like, I'm kind of curious about it but I hate fighting and there's an awful lot of fighting involved. Then again, what if I don't have enough firepower to beat Ultimecia without it? Hmmm.

The game mechanics made the "catch Rinoa in space" way harder than I expected and so I lost her in space twice. 😩 Luckily, there was a "try again" button. The whole plot with Adel and the moon and the Lunar Cry is so bizarre, honestly, and I love it. Monsters live on the moon, and sometimes they fall to Earth. How do they survive the trip from the moon to earth? don't know don't care, apparently. Got an evil sorceress you doing know what to do with? Stick her in space forever. Somehow it's been 17 years but few people seem to remember it, which would seem realistic if I was also 17 but in my 40s, 17 years ago feels like yesterday.

Squall is just so interestingly clueless about love? Like he clearly has feelings for Rinoa based on how crazy he gets when she's unconscious and how he just dives into space for her heedless of the consequences, but then when he saves her he's like hug? what's that? why would I hug you? And then when she sits in his lap later he's like "why are you sitting here?" and does not seem to understand the concept of physical affection. Which like, I can see that he was brought up not having any physical affection, but he's a teenager who grew up in a school, he's gotta know about romance as a concept and physical affection as a concept, which makes it weird for him to be so clueless.

I feel like the sequence of events with the sorceresses is kinda weird, like, how did Edea give her sorceress powers to Rinoa? Did Ultimecia take them from Edea and put them in Rinoa? Anyway I do like the idea that Ultimecia was possessing Rinoa in order to free Adel, and was just gonna leave Rinoa floating in space once her job was done.

Anyway Steam is having their sale so I bought FFIX as well, which is actually the first and only final fantasy I have actually played myself! I'm working my way slowly through ff7 as well but I can't figure out how to turn off random encounters and I hate fighting so it's kind of a slog. I've got FFXV too but have been too absorbed in 8 to think about much else at the moment.

(ff8 stuff cross posted from tumblr)
I finally beat the sorceress boss battle in ff8 and now I'm looking for Esthar! I read a screenshot let's play of ff8 a few years ago but this is my first time playing it and wow I had forgotten this part where Squall is just like "I think I'll pick up my unconscious not-quite-girlfriend from the infirmary when nobody's looking and sneak out of the garden I'm commanding to walk across the entire ocean on a lonely bridge with her unconscious on my back." Squall bb she will get there faster if you let someone else help carry her. Or maybe cast a float on her or something. Also it's very unclear to me how Squall gets out and goes walking across the mega bridge and when he gets to the far side everyone else is there?? where did they come from?? did they not have to pass him to get there?

In other news I gotta get working on my fic for nonconathon but sadly I am not motivated at all. Maybe if I can pretend it's a ff8 au that'll get my brain working...

I need to do it like tomorrow or the day after because my kids are at camp until Friday and when they come home again I won't have time anymore. Tonight I had like five hours of free time and it was absolutely wild, I didn't know what to do with myself. Can't believe I used to have that much free time literally every night.

I cannot beat Edea in this boss battle and it's driving me BONKERS!! I don't like the fighting aspect of games in general and the fact that I've been stuck here unable to progress with the story despite spending FOUR HOURS trying to beat her is incredibly frustrating. I really thought I was gonna make it this last time but I mistimed putting her to sleep and then she obliterated me, half an hour into the battle.

I've googled for advice and junctioned as much as I can, but my GFs don't have all the junction slots that he internet says I should use. I thought I was going to make it by repeatedly sleeping her and triple attacking with all my best magic but I am not good at predicting when the sleep will wear off, and she managed to somehow do a status that made it impossible for me to sleep her and then silenced Squall and murdered Quistis and Rinoa.

I've got Sleep junctioned to st-atk and death junctioned to st-def and Squall has blozzaga on elem-def, and I've got Cerberus to give us triple so we can regen, shell, protect, haste, and aura ourselves, but it's not enough. I was using carbuncle earlier but tbh I think the reflect is less useful than triple sleeping Edea repeatedly bc without reflect I can at least apply more status boosts to myself. If only I could manage to get Quistis to do her limit breaks, hers are by far the most powerful ones i have 😩

Current Mood: frustrated

Still working my way through FF8! Last night we did the beginning of the battle with Galbadia Garden. I will admit to yelling at the characters for spending all this time talking about Squall's ring when they're literally in the middle of a time sensitive battle, but I guess I get a GF out of it.

Mostly though, I love how much Squall accessorizes and enjoys his rings and belts and whatever else he's got going on. This guy wakes up in the morning, suffers his existential angst about leadership and responsibility and war and peace, then does up his five belts and puts on his crop top fur lined jacket and his rings and necklaces and goes to battle.

In the general story I got through the part where they learn that they all grew up together, which is all very like.... like it pretty much sucked? They're all together but we know Zell got bullied and Squall was lonely and they all ended up at Garden regardless. Quistis's bizarre "I thought I had a crush on you but really I just wanted to be your big sister" was a very weird take, like, girl can you not tell the difference between those two feelings?

Anyway I was impressed with Zell taking charge of the students on the quad. Good for him, even though the absolute stupidest thing that has happened in this game so far is that Rinoa is hanging off a ledge for like an hour or two while everyone runs around unable to do anything EVEN THOUGH I HAVE MULTIPLE FLOATS STOCKED, like, cast a float on her and get her out of there! Why not!! She's probably hiding Angelo somewhere too, just Angelo cannon him and hold on to his tail, idk.

In any case I'm still pretty solidly shipping Squall and Seifer. There's just too much in how out of everyone Squall seems kind of obsessed with him and how they're set up as both opposites but also very similar. It really feels like Squall thinks of Seifer as the only person who thinks about things the same way he does, or the only person who really understands. He's still gonna try to kill him but only because he has to, you know?

Anyway that's all I've got at the moment other than a company that Fujin and Raijin were SO hard to beat 😑

NORG has already killed me twice and gosh I hate boss battles!! Other than that though here's my cross post from Tumblr: one of the things I love about ffviii is how relatable Squall is in so many ways, like, I have definitely had that feel when everyone looks at you and expects you to do something and you're like "damn I have no fucking clue what I'm doing, can't someone else do this?" but also very relatable to see someone in a managerial position above you get ready to do something and you feel like you have to be there because they might fuck it up and also also relatable is rolling around in bed like "what if this, what if that, damn I'm thinking too much, oops I fell asleep again"

Hello creator! I am very excited to see what you come up with and I'm sure I will love it! Fandom-specific prompts are in my signup so I won't reproduce them here, but this letter contains my general likes/dislikes. As always with these exchanges, as long as you avoid the DNW's and include one of my requested tags it's all good! This letter bears remarkable similarity to ones I've done for previous exchanges because I mostly copied and pasted it, so if you want to look through my dreamwidth for previous letters feel free.
( deets!! )

So my kids have been watching me play a bunch, which is fine, except that I have to keep turning it off so I can put them to bed. Last night we turned it off at the point where Caraway had explained the plan for assassinating the sorceress before we went back to the mansion. Tonight we picked up with starting the mission, and had to stop when Quistis et al escaped the sewer. It's definitely engrossing, and I didn't want to stop and neither did my kids. However, it was 9pm, which is their lights out time, so off we went.

I am not a cosplayer, but damn, if I ever was gonna cosplay the sorceress parade outfit would be IT. That whole sequence is gorgeous, even with the difference between the old graphics vs what we expect now. Also it's fascinating that she comes out there and is like, "You're all a bunch of sniveling idiots. I'm evil incarnate and I tricked you into letting me take over and now there will be a reign of terror!!" and the people in the crowd are just like, "idk what you're saying but yeah!!!! sounds great!!!"

My kids were mad at Quistis for not listening to Rinoa earlier and then for leaving her post, and at Zell and Selphie for also leaving their post, and at Irvine for making Squall go after Rinoa instead of staying at THEIR post. I think the takeaway here is that my kids are sticklers for the rules and I guess would make good SeeDs? They're not wrong though, I was mad at the characters for that too.

I continue to be glad I can turn off random encounters because I find fighting tedious, especially if I'm trying to get somewhere or do something.

Character notes: Squall is clearly conflicted between being relieved Seifer is alive and upset that he's going to have to kill him. It's interesting to see his opinion on everything in war as well. When Irvine freaks out in the clock tower though, all I could think of was the RP fic I had with a friend where Squall calms Irvine down in a similar situation by domming him. 😅

Looking forward to more tomorrow!

I just posted on tumblr about how my play through of final fantasy 8 is going and then I was like, this feels like a dreamwidth post, so here you go I guess!

I missed half the first period of last night's hockey game because I couldn't find a save point in ff8 so here's my update on how my final fantasy playing is going!

I haven't played ff7 in a little bit because my time has been limited and it's a pain to set up on my tv as opposed to on the steam deck itself. I was going to last night but I couldn't get the controller to work so I gave up and went to 8 instead. I haven't played 15 because my kid forbade me from playing it without her and then she wanted to watch tv instead every night so...

In any case the kids were supposed to go upstairs so I picked up 8 last night. They came down again and ended up watching and got pretty into it too 😅

The things I don't like so far: the junctioning system is confusing af. I don't really know what I'm doing so I just pick something and use the auto button and hope for the best. It's more or less working so I guess it's okay? I tried playing triple triad exactly once and had no clue whatsoever what I was doing so I haven't tried again. The only other thing that bugs me is that when people have an animation associated with what they're saying I can't click their dialogue off the screen until the animation is done.

However, things I like! I really like the characters. idk if it's because I already know what's gonna happen in the story but they're appealing to me more than the ff7 characters. We've got a healthy dose of child soldier trauma, some fucked up mercenary worldbuilding, and dumb teenagers who are in a situation dumb teenagers shouldn't be in doing dumb teenager stuff and then being like "oh shit I shouldn't have done" that or "wtf do I do I'm not prepared for this situation" which feels on point.

You probably already know that I'm a Squall/Seifer shipper but playing it really brings out how much Squall and Seifer were actually friends, or at least the closest thing Squall has to a friend at Garden. Squall keeps defending him to other people, thinking of him when he's not around, etc., and then Seifer still applauds Squall for passing the SeeD exam even though Seifer himself failed. It's unclear whether he came rushing to Timber because he was worried about Rinoa or he came because he was worried about Squall or both.

Ultimecia is so excessively creepy in just the right way, too. The music adds a lot to the scene where she first takes Seifer with all that creepy talk about him being a little boy who wants someone to take care of him (creepier knowing the big reveal later in the story).

Underrated thing I loved: the commentary from Squall et al when they're in the dream world with Laguna 😂 Just totally harsh 😂😂

Dear Creator, my ship- and fandom-specific thoughts are in the signup form but here's some general likes/dislikes! I fully admit that I am really bad at coming up with ways to express what I like in art vs fic so just know that if I requested art as an option I will be happy with literally anything!
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Anyway, not all of my lists apply to every fandom but hopefully you can pick and choose what makes sense. And of course, per the signup, you only need to match on one thing and avoid the DNW's and it's all good!!

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marmolita

February 2025

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marmolita

Recent Entries

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