Final Fantasy Fun

Having edited it, revised it, and hacked out about 15,000 words, I'm planning to start reposting Love Her and Despair, my FFX AU sequel ("What if Yuna had chosen the Final Summoning?"), one chapter a week starting on Friday December 14, 11 years after I started posting it on LJ.

No, the final few chapters are NOT quite finished, so you will have to have faith (as I do) that they will BE finished by the time I get there. But I certainly have plenty of time.

I'm going to post new entries for the revised chapters, with links to the old posted chapters with reader comments that in some cases influenced my thinking and/or revisions.

I hope to add a few illustrations, but we'll see. A few talented readers have submitted fanart in the past which I will most certainly shill.

NOTE: this means the sticky post at the top of my blog is out of date. I'll have that sorted soon, but for now, those links point to the pre-revision 2007-2012 version of the fic.

Are my paragraphs too short?

Since I compose in 18 point type, my paragraphs look long enough to me. But when I look at them on a large display, I see a lot of short choppy paragraphs. I feel like typical paragraph lengths in fic have shortened over my lifetime, but I'm not sure.

Here's the kind of thing I worry about.

 Editing is up through Ch 44, and at least some will be happy to know I've trimmed about 2K words. (And a reminder that the early chapters were mostly around 1200-1500 words, which are damn short chapters.) 

I've gotten up through the end of the epic battle with Sin/Yu Yevon, and the aftermath chapter immediately after it.

The final few posted chapters I need to see if I can consolidate/revamp, making it 1-2 chapters shorter. I was trying to resolve a lot of plot threads, let all the characters respond to what's happened, and give Lulu a chance to be front and center after she's spent the whole story behind the scenes and mostly offstage. I needed to show her recovery. But it dragged a bit. I'm sure there's ways to cut down to the essentials of those chapters and get on with the final showdown faster. 

But I know at least one of my readers really really loves the "Sunrise" chapter with Lulu meeting Rikku's daughter, so I wanna see if I can get that settled before I go. :) 

EDIT: I just finished transferring all my old working documents scattered across Pages and TextEdit into Scrivener. There's about 15 different versions of chapter 50, so no wonder it was getting away from me. IN SCRIVENER I TRUST that I'll be untangle this. (also, I have more skills and better discipline about "this is good character study/atmospheric stuff, but it doesn't move the plot forward or serve the story in some vital way, so DROP IT.)

Guardian and Love Her and Despair always had some sort of non-relationship with each other, since mintywolf and I were both fascinated by Lulu offering to become the fayth of the Final Summoning in FFX, but tackled the concept from opposite directions: she was primarily focused on what lay behind that offer, whereas I was focused on what might follow.

(I had forgotten that I told trekqueen my initial brainstorm for LHAD way back in 2007, posting the first chapter in December, and it might've been co-authored if I were better at sharing my toys).

So Guardian and LHAD went in different directions, since we had different interests and interpretations of certain characters— although over the years some of my views have been influenced by Guardian. Crucially, Mintywolf had a plan all along, whereas all I had were key concepts, a premise and an ending scene I was writing towards. I was terrible at plot back then. All I could handle was character, combat, dialogue, and poetic description. 

Hence my shamelessly borrowing elements of plot structure from FFX and LOTR. 

Anyway. You know LHAD has been stuck all these years. In the meantime I've written a fair amount in classic Who fandom. I've learned to structure plot. I'm tempted to apply what I now know to rewrite LHAD with better structure and pacing. But that's crazy-talk. People enjoyed it even as it was, and I'm terrible at finishing things, so I just need to FINISH THE THING, even if most of my readers moved on long ago. 

Thanks to Guardian, I've recently shifted my headspace back in FFX-land, enough that I've been listening to Siri read LHAD aloud to me over the past few months, mulling over the ending (the next chapter was largely written when I got stuck), and making editorial notes on existing chapters. 

But first I should say— as I've been saying on Tumblr— Guardian is an AMAZING and possibly unique fanwork, a fully-illustrated novella-length graphic novel, FFX reimagined with the female characters as primary, and the primary relationship is a bond of love between two women that grows and evolves over the years. I'm still in awe that the artist stuck to a schedule and posted a page a week for six years, apart from a few vacations, which is why Guardian is FINISHED despite being launched nearly five years after LHAD.

So go look at Guardian (but keep in mind Minty's going to be posting the reraw of 2 and 3 soonish). I've been enjoying rereading it all now that it's over, and I've been taking notes for a not-actually-liveblog of the "remaster."

And get ready to reread LHAD in a couple months! I'm going to start posting my own remaster on Tumblr December 14, eleven years after the original chapter 1 was posted. I'm editing it now, revamping the Dreamwidth and AO3 editions as I go, but those edits are only up through chapter 4. :) 

I continue to be inspired by getyourwordsout, even though technically I wrote only one tiny snippet of fic that qualifies for my official creative writing tally.

April Wordcount 521 (35,608 total)

• Creative: 521 for one flashfic (classic Who, Five/Nyssa fluff)
• Reviews: 5979 for seven reviews (goal for year: 100 reviews; 37 written so far)
• Let's Play: A whopping 29,108 for seven entries, not including three nearly-ready drafts.

I'm tempted to start counting my reviews and LP towards GYWO, but I must resist: I signed up to help inspire me towards a creative writing project, so that doesn't count, even though this is a lot of words!

But I feel good about those LP posts, so I'm not gonna beat myself up over it. I just need to finish it and get back to what I was doing!

Oh, and while I'm at it, April fanart. All done in 15-30 minutes.

( All Doctor Who, sorry. )

ursulav has a nifty acronym for what I am going to try and do in November: finish LHAD (or at least get closer).

NaNoFiMo.

(With thanks to Minty for encouraging me!)

Was feeling low, but fandom has not let me down.


Sazh Katzroy - Sunleth Waterscape by ~shinyspikes on deviantART


In other news, while I've given up the pointless exercise of a wordcount since I'm not actually aiming for a particular wordcount, 900 words of epic battle-description spewed out last night, giving me high hopes for the next chapter of LHAD. Unlike most other key scenes that I had anticipated for years, it came out fairly effortlessly and was even better than the scribbled notes of five years ago. 

Now if I can just breathe life into the LINK chapter that leads to it. I keep massaging it like over-stimulated pie dough, and it's not working. Come on, everybody, how hard is it to sort yourselves into an adventure party and stay-behind party and pick up your traps and get MOVING already?! The Muster of Horse Stinking Rohan did not take this long. (At least it's not as bad as that chapter in FOTR where they all hop in the boats and start paddling away from Lorien only to realize — WHOOPS, FORGOT A POIGNANT FAREWELL SCENE! — so they turn back and have a picnic with Galadriel.)

So, daily bash at Love Her and Despair for NaNoMo once again is resembling Tolkien in all the wrong ways. Have you ever seen his early drafts for LOTR?

Chapter 50 of LHAD consists of 15 pages of overlapping, contradicting and alternative character interactions, as I attempt to pare down the cast list, tie up plot threads and jettison NPCs. I just printed out everything, cut the overlapping bits into puzzle pieces and arranged them on my desk. Gaaah. Too. Many. Pieces. Which to use, which to cut? *pokity pokity poke*

 

3028 / 50000 words. 6% done!

I've been following FFX's real story structure very loosely so far (shamelessly spliced with bits of plot structure borrowed from LOTR). This is that messy bit after Zanarkand when you get the airship, but instead of going after the Really Ultimate Endgame sequence you're tempted by a gazillion sidequests.

Or, according to the Lord of the Rings timeline, we just finished the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, and everyone's meeting up in Aragorn's tent for a strategy session (except Sam and Frodo, who are regrouping in a ditch on the other side of the pass of Cirith Ungol). Based on FFX's structure, that scene should go something like...

 

The pre-endgame of ROTK, Final Fantasy style...
 

Aragorn: We are now marshalling our forces for the last battle of Middle Earth. Who's with me?
Gandalf: But first...
Everybody: SIDEQUESTS!
Faramir and Eowyn: Secondary characters need their plot arcs tied up, stat!
Sam and Frodo: We gotta do some level grinding before we cross that volcanic plain. It looks scary.
Gandalf: I think I need to go acquire a Valefor Eagle Summons. You never know when wings could come in handy.
Imrahil: We've got one of those tactics-style field battles coming up. Better replenish the various kinds of troops. Cavalry, infantry...
Aragorn: Er... I finished my ultimate weapon quest ages ago. C'mon, guys, we don't have time for this!
*Everyone scatters to do sidequests*
*Aragorn and Eomer look at each other, shrug, and wander off for a slash scene*

Er, uh, yeah. So anyway. I will firmly resist sidequests, but it's taking a bit of cat herding -- once again -- to shuffle a great many Faramirs & Eowyns off the stage so that I can get on with the Really Ultimate Dungeon. (Also, I'm still waffling about who gets to be in the ultimate dungeon party. And then there's Rikku and Wakka's sprogs. Can't I just tuck them away in the portable hole where Lucas stashed the Imperial Battlefleet at the end of Return of the Jedi?) 

So I was just pecking at a heated argument for my next chapter, and was once again reminded about one of the perpetual tropes in Final Fantasy X:

Er, yeah. John Sheridan is Tidus (a.k.a. "Hey You" or "You-Know-Who" in game dialogue, which means he's actually Voldemort. Nevermind.)

Anyway, my point: the "choices" trope.

( How the Choices Trope plays out in FFX )

824 words today, nearly the same output as the last two days.

1718 / 50000 words. 3% done!

Continuing to be amused by the wrisomifu, although I fear I'm not participating enough in the feedback threads.

Today's writing session, in sum: "Ye gods, I've just written an entire scene describing a fricking DRESS. And MAKE-UP. WTF?"

However, Lulu is clearly more of a clothes horse than yours truly, and I can't leave her stuck in a Yevonite nun's habit for the rest of the story. That's just not right. I don't think she can conjure up a corset, leather and lace just by snapping her fingers, so some "girding of the hero" business is required.

Lace. I knew I'd forgotten something. Nevermind.

Which reminds me:


A Better World - Ice Goddess
by *Lillyxandra on deviantART

Thankfully, I only saw this after I'd already written a rough draft of the description of Lulu's new duds and had a mental image of what she was wearing; otherwise I might've been tempted to stuff her into it. (The colors are all wrong, however; much too pale for her. Also, too easy to get the drape snagged in battle. I am fairly certain that Lulu's insanely high evasion stat derives from learning how to fight in an evening gown, perhaps using the skirt like a bullfighter's cape, but still, there's limits.)