Sing, Muse. I said SING, MUSE...

Wordcount of all the discarded and unused and reworked drafts of the next chapter which currently lie on the cutting room floor: 9369

Wordcount of the next chapter, which still needs a few more concluding paragraphs: 3190.

I believe that we need to rename plotbunnies plotelephants. Maybe then they would not propagate like rabbits, bounding in all directions and getting munched by passing coyotes.


Thankfully, I think I've finally settled on one particular plotbunny, and have received one tolerably pretty scenic momen t from the Muse. It came to me as I was waking up, and it's one of those set pieces where it flashed into my head as a vivid painting. I hope my description did it justice. I'm no good with plot, spotty on characterization and dialogue, tend to reuse gestures overmuch -- but oh, yes, I love over-wrought scenery with a Tolkienesque passion!

I wish that I could write scenes with more than 2-3 characters without feeling like a novice juggler. Greek tragedians had the right idea. 2, 3 talking heads, no more!

I also wish, in retrospect, that I hadn't put myself quite so firmly into Lulu's head for this saga. I love her. I enjoy writing her. But I know there are more Auron fans than Lulu fans, and there's probably some readers saying, "shut up about the mage, already, we want Auron yumminess." He's such a reserved figure that he keeps being enigmatic in the corner.

Hm. Except I'm writing for my own enjoyment, not simply for readers. I am not a great fanfic writer -- discovering what else is out there has been a very humbling experience. So I should just play. Lulu pleases me as a person. Auron pleases me as a...hero, that's not quite right, but it explains why I sit inside the skin of one of them, and love the other.

I was beginning to worry that following through the Yojimbo plot would kill off my lemons. I still need quite a few chapters before I can get to anything lemony again. Hopefully it'll be worth the wait!

Duh. (What's in a name)

Square's slightly off-kilter yet apt use of names amuses me -- contrariwise, there's also the extremely random Laguna and Irvine, which happen to be the two closest cities to mine. Methinks somebody took a couple of darts to a map of California and/or chose them under the "Let's pick names that are barely pronounceable to native Japanese speakers!" method that spawned Zell, Quistis, Squall, and Loire.

But I digress, as usual.

Point. Here it is? Ah yes.

Auron = "gold". No, actually, Aurum = gold, and Auron is a Latin word with Greek ending tacked onto it.

I assume everyone knows what his name means, and then I suddenly realize that not everyone gets Latin shoved through their pores in school anymore. So, just in case that had never clicked, there you are.

Why am I not finishing writing this chapter? Argh.

Na vedui, it's up! (FFX new chapter -resurrection III)

Here we go. About time.

Resurrection III, chapter X: Phoenix Dreams.

I have actually been fighting this chapter for weeks and weeks, since I wrote the original version immediately after I started the story, long before I ever reached Yojimbo's cave! The earliest version wasn't compatible with what I've written since -- I hadn't intended Auron and Lulu to be gone for hours and hours, and had assumed that Yuna would simply wait patiently til they got back -- but that no longer makes sense. I've been trying ever since to write something as solid as the much simpler "what kept you?" sequence I started with. This works.

I shall now do the dance of the gleeful author, because I managed to squeeze in most of the pretty phrases and snippets that have been generated in the course of all my rewrites, without making it look like a badly-put-together mosaic.


*Edit*

Bah, I should have stated it to start with. THANK YOU trekqueen for telling me the original post I made for this chapter sucked. I'd been trying and trying and trying, and Saturday I uploaded a version I'd been struggling on for a while, but she said it didn't grab her, so I yanked it back down before many folks saw it. The next morning I woke up groggy and sleepy and wrote the Kilika sunset, sent her bits of the rest of this chapter for more feedback, and finally have something i'm happy with. Thank you beta!!!

Trying to figure out how to deal with adult material

How annoying that it's tough to find ways to label explicit content so that it will trip parental controls! I've got the AuronLu Shrine fixed up, but LJ is defeating me.

( investigations )

EDIT: Added a bit more info 11PM PST.

Also, on an irrelevent yet valuable note, I just backed up ALL my Aulu stuff, including hundreds of screencaps, videos, and everything I've written so far. I realized I hadn't done a good backup in a few months. Yikes. *pats external HD*