seventhe | Entries tagged with doink: 2013

Heyyyooo, so let's talk about fic stuff. Today's post is a small-fandom extravaganza. We'll start with DOINK! 2013!

I got a really awesome gift this year:

Seeing The Bright (1875 words) by Estirose
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Princess Hilda, Gordon (Final Fantasy II), Leila (Final Fantasy II), Arc (Final Fantasy III)
Summary:
At camp, Hilda gets ready to retake Fynn. But there's a little time before that to rest, talk to her friends, and decide what to make of Leila.

Not only is this a crossover fic (!!!!!!!) that not only includes some of my favorite FFII characters but managed to work in Arc (and Arc/Alus!!!) – points for that alone, ladies and gentlemen; ways to make your Sev happy: surprise crossover references – but it's a beautiful look at Hilda's mindset in the game before they retake Fynn, the way she thinks of her people (not just the people of Fynn she needs to care for, but the people around her she chooses to trust) and her situation. It's gorgeous.

I also received an awesome piece of Chocobo Down:

Don't Talk to Mountains (They Talk Back) (2755 words) by flonnebonne
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Edge Geraldine/Rydia
Characters: Edge Geraldine, Kain Highwind, Rydia, Cecil Harvey, Rosa Joanna Farrell, Ceodore Harvey
Additional Tags: how can anyone spend seventeen years on a mountain, meta disguised as fic, ffiv: the after years makes no sense, edge is silly
Summary:
Edge tries to talk Kain off the mountain and gets an earful of nonsense. After which the story stops even trying to make sense.

I started giggling at the summary, then the first paragraph made me lose it, and I was hooting by the end. This is legitimately one of the funniest fics I've ever read.

I wrote two things for DOINK! this year. My gift was:

Sight (3461 words) by seventhe
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Final Fantasy II
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Minwu, Hilda (Final Fantasy II)
Additional Tags: Hilda/Minwu (implied), gratuitous use of imagery, Backstory
Summary:
Minwu sees things; when he looks at one thing, he sees another, and he has his whole life. But when he looks at Fynn Castle, he sees only its stones; when he looks at Princess Hilda, he doesn't know what he sees.
The story of how Minwu came to serve Hilda, and how they came to trust one another.

I ended up really enjoying this prompt, and really enjoyed writing this fic. There's a lot to be said about the bond between Hilda and Minwu, and I really only approached Minwu's side here, but after

moogle_university I apparently had a lot to say, up to and including a lot of crossover meta fun to throw in there and play with. It is full of references to other FFs! It is a fun game: gotta catch 'em all! I am awful. However, I think I now ship Hilda/Minwu. I'm not sure I'm sorry.

I also wrote a piece of Chocobo Down:

a dancing game (1840 words) by seventhe
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Vaan (Ivalice Alliance), Penelo
Additional Tags: Sky Pirates, Treasure Hunting, effective (if quirky) friendships
Summary:
Penelo and Vaan find yet another trap in search of treasure. Lucky for them, they still dance a mean game.

…which reminded me how much I enjoyed FFXII's battle system, and I am looking forward to getting there in our replay.

And finally, unrelated to DOINK! at all, I also finished and posted another giant thing, for which I will somehow manage to blame

lassarina (for moogle_university),

auronlu (for encouraging me), my friend Phil (for beating FFIII while visiting), and myself (for being a horrible, incorrigible person who likes terrible ships):

Architecture (12208 words) by seventhe
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Final Fantasy III
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Alus/Arc
Characters: Arc (Final Fantasy III), Alus Restor
Additional Tags: Period-Typical Underage, Aged-Up Character(s), aged up from canon, precocious boy-kings, shy trusted advisors, clumsy boy makeouts, Kissing
Series: Part 2 of precocious boy-kings and their shy trusted advisors
Summary:
(+5 years from the game; sequel to Calligraphy.) Arc finds new direction in Saronia, new understanding of himself, and new everything with Alus. (In which Arc builds a bridge, Alus hires an advisor, and Luneth, Refia, and Ingus write letters.)

…because I cannot stop writing Arc/Alus and I never will and I am not sorry, so here are 12000 words of it, that and FFIII worldbuilding and continued Refia/airships and Luneth/pranks and Ingus/Sara (who actually have the best sense of humor of all of them) and Arc and Alus and trust and friendship and horrible budget committee meetings and clandestine meetings in the library (except not) and falling asleep on couches, and I will never stop having things to say about shy, awkward, kids; about clever, brilliant precocious young boys who are strong in ways that aren't traditional; and the ways they can find confidence and belonging and also make out a lot. It is like my thing for Larsa only much much worse. /DEFRIENDED

It's a direct sequel to Calligraphy, but it seemed to need to stand on its own; I'm so happy with a lot of what I wrote this month, but I'm so so very happy about this one.

I ALSO have finally found the actual Rosa fic that I have been meaning to finish and edit and post - the third part of my polyamorous trifecta, Momentum / Content With This Winter / [All The Ghosts] - and so even though I haven't really had time yet to make educated comments on

sathari's Rosa entry I am jazzed beyond belief that I didn't lose the fic entirely like I thought.

I GUESS I HAVE BROKEN THROUGH WRITER'S BLOCK, GUYS?

HEY Y'ALL GUESS WHAT HAPPENED

DOINK: FINAL FANTASY EXCHANGE WORK IS UP AND OPEN

ALSO THERE'S CHOCOBO DOWN / MOOGLE FLUFF

HOORAY

Crossposts: http://first-seventhe.livejournal.com/350947.html

Had my last surgical injection on Thursday. Turns out that it's pretty easy to forget that just because these things aren't hella invasive does not mean they aren't a big deal; I spent Friday attempting to do a bunch of physical-labor-type stuff around the house and was reminded that my system is still full of anesthetic aftermath at about ~3:00 when I seriously just... burnt out, like my body crapped out, like literally just stopped functioning, like someone had repeatedly punched me in the everything and left me for dead. Whooooooops. Lost a lot of the weekend recovering from that too; turns out overproductivity results in less productivity when your body sucks like mine does!

greeted with a 3-hour 3-meeting back-to-back boredom extravaganza this morning at work (boredom being relative; two of the three meetings were informative and the third gave me a platform to complain loudly about stuff so it wasn't really a waste of time; just not the way I like starting off my Mondays)

tired

Finishing up FFIV for moogle_university; have been reminded why this game is special to me. It isn't that it's the "best" of the FFs or the best game I've ever played; it's just the correct combination of [nostalgia points] + [characters and plot points highly relevant to my interests] and will probably always be my favorite, which just proves that I have horrible taste in life.

HAS ANYONE / EVERYONE STARTED THEIR DOINK FIC/ART/WORK??? Every year I swear I'm going to blog more about the exchange and then every year I'm like, I'm just too tired. I have so many thoughts and they are all living in giant apartment complexes on the corner of "You can't talk about that in public Sev" and "no1currr" and so I look at that and go back to my fic and monitoring of our inbox and sigh, heavily.

I'm finally living in my own room...? I have my new carpet and the paint job is done and it's set up in a way that makes me feel happy and comfortable, and ... I like it? I've felt and been transient for years and I'm not sure I have words for how comfortable and safe I feel finally putting down roots in a place that is mine, that I own, where I am the one who gets to have final say on everything, where I have my own space and my own dominion and all things I've needed for years but haven't prioritized, where I can do whatever the hell I want. Including paint my study leaffire-orange and yellow, because I am dumb. Not having to answer to anyone is apparently the space where I am the most comfortable with myself; it is also a completely appropriate adult goal. don't question me.

where am I

oh yeah lunch

Crossposts: http://first-seventhe.livejournal.com/348202.html

HEY Y'ALL! DOINK! Final Fantasy Exchange 2013 is open!

It's been a hell of a couple weeks getting everything to this point (especially because I have excellent timing - sure, ACCIDENTALLY A HOUSE right as we are frantically getting all of our cats in a row to launch, clearly I am a professional!), but here we are! And this will mark the first round in years where all three mods are able and excited to participate -- that's awesome.

I pretty much welcome everybody who can to participate -- there are some new rules we're using on a trial period this year, just FYI -- DOINK time is one of my favorite fannish times of the year and I'd love for as many people to play as possible.

If you can't do the exchange bits - schedule, demand, etc - I also beg you to consider joining our pinch hit team. I honestly don't have the language to tell you how important our pinch hitters are to us every year -- so if exchanges aren't your thing, but you want to do something, that's an awesome way to help us out.

Every year I want to talk about the exchange more than I do; I'm a mod, and that means there's a weird line between stuff that I can talk about publicly and stuff I can't. This year has been no different; it turns out no matter how much discussion and communication and work you put into a thing, no matter how much effort you spend trying to be fair and decent to everyone involved, there will be people who think you are doing it wrong: strongly, vocally, happily. There will be people who blatantly disregard the spirit of the exchange so that they can do things the way that they want to, to get what they want. There are people who aren't malicious, but just lazy; there are people who don't care as much as we might think they should.

There were many years of this exchange where the mod team worked incredibly hard to make things fair for our participants -- forgetting (or not really forgetting; deliberately overlooking, maybe; making the choice to not prioritize) that we, too, are involved in this exchange, and the policies we choose need to be fair not only to our participants, but to us as well. There were many years of 3am email chains and desperate chats; years we endangered our sleep and health and our jobs to get things going because we had failed to consider ourselves as parts of our own exchange. "Fair and decent to everyone involved" has to also include the mod team - or the exchange becomes a miserable exhausting experience, and that means we fall short of our responsibilities to the fandom for offering it in the first place. Everyone loses!

But this is our exchange: I won't say we 'own' it, because we're doing it for fandom, not for us; but finally after years and years of doing this we're managing to strike a balance between making it awesome for others and decent for us as mods. I'm very proud of us for doing so; running an exchange this expansive, this diverse, with the amount of by-hand care that we take with everything - our matching is all done by hand with the help of some spreadsheet wizardry; all our assignments and communications and comment replies are done by us - is a lot of work, and I'm so very proud (and, selfishly, relieved) that we've come to a point where we can balance our own strengths and schedules and limitations with the way the exchange runs. Because every year when we gave it our all, there were still people who weren't happy -- this way we can make just as many people happy (if not happier!) and still save a little for ourselves.

This long rambling note isn't to call out any participants, though, or to complain about everyone. My point here is really to just re-announce, pretty blatantly, how much I absolutely adore my co-mods

renay and

justira and how much I love running DOINK!. It's hard as hell to get this started every year - I am not sure I could name two other friends with whom I would have as absolutely opposite of schedule/availability as I do with them *g* - but I am really glad we're all still working together and I'm excited as fireworks for this year. ♥

Anyway. Go play!

Crossposts: http://first-seventhe.livejournal.com/345044.html

Sev Falls In Love With FFIII's Confusing Ass Story One Piece At A Time, in which I post lots of screenshots with horrible commentary and also turn out really gay for Arc/Alus.

ALSO:

ff_exchange is starting up for 2013...!

I've decided to make myself participate this year. This is probably a really bad life choice since I'm fucking moving into my house from this week until the last week of April, which means not only actual moving (enough of a headache as is) but cleaning and painting and maintenance too, but oh well. I won't ever start writing again unless I make myself, and while it's probably a bad idea to "make myself" write a novel while attempting a move this profound, I think 1000+ words is fairly reasonable.

Crossposts: http://first-seventhe.livejournal.com/344295.html

in 10 days I get the keys to my house. I am sort of in disbelief-land still.

talked to the dr about my neck on Thursday. Turns out the news is better than I'd thought; the dr said that any kind of improvement is a good sign (I had been evaluating a 50%-75% improvement as "not 100% and therefore failure"; he said that 50%-75% is actually very promising), that he wants me to have a series of three shots with additional focused PT following the second shot, that whatever activity I can give it without pain will be good for it, and that he also wants me to stay on the painkillers until it is 100%.
So the forward plan right now becomes using gentle exercise to remind my neck/shoulders/back what it's like to not be all fucked up, then to have another shot ~end of March/early Apr and a third ~end of Apr. He seems really hopeful that since it did respond to the first shot that subsequent ones will be even better. I'm trying to take hope from his optimism.

I'm very happy to have been "cleared" to get back to working out, and am trying really hard to take it slow and gentle rather than just diving right in (and probably hurting myself again because my body is a jackass). I've been feeling very broken and lumpy lately - a very complex and complicated feeling, but generally not a good one - and I think this will help.

meetings this week with the Japanese Overlords. I have my project review this morning; at the advice of a few of the managers I've added a slide pretty boldly and blatantly requesting the targets and direction we still lack in two main areas; I am not sure how this will go over. send help

I've been playing FFIII. For now - until I make an official post - you can watch me here on tumblr. Basically this game:

Yup.

I still really want to write.

DOINK! Final Fantasy Exchange 2013 is coming up. That's right, stay tuned for your yearly dose of "Sev has officially lost it". Timing this round: impeccable; sign-ups open the day I get the keys. clearly I am a professional