marmolita

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.

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 also participating in the enemies to lovers exchange which I need to get to work on, and in FFVIII bingo that I need to work on too. I'm trying to come up with specific story ideas for FFVIII but it's weirdly difficult? Like I know I want Squall/Seifer(/Rinoa) and I know what kind of vibes I like for them (mostly: post-canon), but I cannot for the life of me come up with any specific details. I'm still considering rewriting the RP AU version of them that I have into a fic, but I can't use it for FFVIII bingo because crossovers aren't allowed and there are FFXV characters in it who are a pretty big part of it.

I also still want the Seifer/Ultimecia!Edea of my dreams, which I think I could write, but it also won't fit my FFVIII bingo card because I got a Squall-themed card.

In any case I kind of slowed down my playthrough of FFVIII because the kids and I both had a bunch of evening activities, and I was doing some grinding to get ready for Ultimecia's castle, which is boring af. I did finally decide screw it, I was gonna go even though I didn't have what the internet said I needed, and tonight I went into the castle, using a walkthrough to help me find things. It's been going pretty well so far -- the only time I thought I would have a problem was the second or third bad guy, who pretty immediately killed Quistis and Rinoa, but whatever the "mega spark" or whatever attack he was doing was just recharging Squall, so Squall beat him singlehandedly.

The thing that killed me the most while poking around Ultimecia's castle is the SeeD is still paying my salary 😂😂😂

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!

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.

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 😩

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"

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 😂😂

 I feel like it's been forever since I posted here but it's only been like ten days.  Probably because during that time I spent almost all of my free time either reading the FFVIII screenshot LP I mentioned last time or doing the ridiculously self indulgent RP I've got going on with dustofwarfare and freosan.

Now that I've reached the end of ff8, I feel weirdly bereft of the excitement of consuming a new canon.  I think there were a lot of problems with it, especially in terms of pacing and character arcs, but man oh man the plot is one wild ride.  I love everything about the universe -- it's so strange and such a mix of fantasy and scifi (as final fantasy usually is).  There is so much implied badwrong stuff too, like the fact that Squall and Seifer have been child soldiers since age 5 (and Quistis since 10).  The fact that Garden trained them to use GFs knowing full well that it would erase their memories, specifically because if the don't remember anything they won't have human attachments and will be able to kill even their closest friends.  The fact that Ultimecia seduced Seifer into being her Knight with a combination of mind control and his foster mom's body.  (yes I absolutely believe she slept with him in that body for maximal badwrong)

I think what frustrates me the most about it is not what actually happens in it, because I enjoy all of that, but what COULD have happened in it.  How did Seifer go from commanding Galbadia Garden to tattered and broken in Lunatic Pandora?  What does it mean to be a knight and could Seifer have used that role to stop Ultimecia?  How close were they all when they were actually kids?  Were Squall and Seifer really rivals or were they friends?  I mean, out of everyone there, Seifer is the closest thing Squall has to a brother -- they literally grew up together without being separated at all.  Like I know Ellone is his sister figure but he barely knows her, and he's spent his whole life with Seifer.  How does that actually work?  What about Rinoa?  What was her childhood like?  What actually happened between her and Seifer during their summer fling?  How long has she been a sorceress?

In any case I feel like if you don't already know the plot you're not going to fully understand the wildness of this story without this key bit of worldbuilding information: there are monsters that kids on the moon, and sometimes they fall to earth in a giant mass.  There's a space station to keep an eye on the moon.  There's a giant city-sized device/ship/weapon that can artificially cause monsters to fall from the moon.  It's fucking BONKERS.

Anyway I talked about it a bunch on Tumblr and Twitter but yeah, I have some feelings.  (and now I am going to curl up in bed and try not to cough up a lung, being sick sucks)