[meta] year in fic review 2007
Fandoms: Various for month of February, but fandoms which have notable standalones are Tales of the Abyss and Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. Bad year for me, I suppose. No notable KH contributions if you ignore February.
The Stories
Untitled [Phoenix Wright;prose]
I remembered writing this after playing Justice For All, Gumshoe really grew on me during this installment and I was surprisingly fond of Franziska after the end of JFA. Somehow it got into my head to ship Franziska/Gumshoe, but the ficlet didn't like the way it was going so it turned kind of gen. It still embarasses me that I can't really get their characters right.
February: 31 Days challenge [Various fandoms - KH, KH:CoM, Clover, Sandman, Ourankoukou Host Club, Koohri no Mamono no Monogatari, Mushishi, Phoenix Wright, Suikoden V, Spiral: Suiri no Kizuna, D.Gray-man, Wild Adapter, Nabari no Ou]
This is the first challenge that I tried to make myself adhere to. One of the reasons why I took this month was because the prompts were fairy-tale in nature, and since I was a massive fan of fairy-tales I took to the challenge like duck to water. Sadly enough, I never got to finish the entire month, having run out of steam and ideas around the 21st (though I was beginning to struggle a little earlier than that). Nevertheless, I was quite pleased to have written twenty-one short drabbles in a span of 21 days, and to be able to dabble in quite a few new fandoms to boot (Mushishi, Suikoden V and Nabari, to be specific). Hopefully, next year, I'll give another month a go.
Escape Artist [KH:CoM;prose]
There really isn't much to say about this because it's actually a part of a lost fic that I had been working on for a while. It doesn't lend much into character development for Namine, and for that I am sorry, but I had some ideas for this piece. Mostly, I was wrestling with certain facts and figures that refused to fit in with the canon, so I gave up. This was what was left.
SPOILERS AHEAD The following stories all come with fairly heavy spoilers, mostly because they were written after end-game or after a particularly important plot-point. Tread carefully.
Baby Steps [Tales of the Abyss;prose]
I finished the NAMCO game Tales of the Abyss in June, and actually started work on the fic shortly after I finished it. To say that this was a work of pain is pretty much an understatement; I started out with just a bare skeleton of an idea and on the seventh day, Asch rested and worked from there. Asch was a character that didn't grab my attention until fairly late in the game, and the events for his story (when you eventually piece them together) broke my heart. This fic also caused me to write and re-write scenes over and over because I felt an intense need to deal Asch an ending he would have wanted.
Originally the ending sentence was something more foreboding and sad, because Asch is really a very self-destructive kid at heart, always looking out for others rather than himself, but after putting myself through a month of him talking things through with Luke's friends I couldn't bear to give him the self-destructive ending the muse originally wanted.
In a sense, I wanted Asch to be happy. I've yet to read a post-Abyss fic that actually features an Asch who learned how to be exactly that.
an accidental memory [Persona 3;drabble]
After Abyss, I went on to play Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. Most of the fic that I wrote for Persona 3 is actually in-game rather than after end-game, mostly because I was more interested in Shinjiro and Akihiko than the main character. This was written with the October 4th events in mind, although the actual setting was taken from the tornado weekend. It was also inspired by one of the Japanese fanarts that I found in those P3 search engines.
Upon looking back on it, I felt that the piece is a little stilted, in that it loses its impact once the memory of October 4th is no longer fresh.
Homecoming [Persona 3;prose]
Lawl porn. My only NC-17 fic for the year, it was more of scratching an itch than anything else, although I tried to turn it into a sort of character development piece for Shinjiro in particular. Considering that we get so little information on Shinjiro in-game, I had taken a few liberties with his characterization. I didn't want it to be completely PWP but I guess people could look it that way?
In The House of My Enemy [Persona 3;prose]
Request fic for selphish. Because there was no prompt, I decided to touch on Yukari's relationship with her mother, her past and her introduction to SEES, although to be honest, the title came first before the plot ever made an appearance. I'm not a fan of Yukari and writing a fic for her certainly didn't make me feel sympathetic to her situation, but I have to admit that when I actually finished it I felt that it was an extremely condensed version of what it should be. Yukari's relationship with her mom was one of the things not properly explored in the game, and I felt that the S.Link that was used to try and give Yukari more character development fell a little flat. (And yes, in order to make an attempt at understanding Yukari better, I had to hunt for her S.Link script because I couldn't finish her S.Link in-game in time.) This is probably one of the fics that will undergo some re-writing before making it on FFN.
Growing Pains [Persona 3;prose]
Request fic for reisha, though this is probably on the backlog of many OTHER requests fics. She wanted Original!SEES AkiShinji, and since I had already started with Yukari introducing herself to SEES, I decided to follow on with the trend and wrote an "Akihiko and Shinjiro joins SEES" fic. It wasn't mean to be humourous at all, but somehow Shinjiro's jealousy wrote itself and Mitsuru's awkwardness and Aki's special talent at making Shinjiro want to smash his head into a wall. So it's not so much AkiShinji but Original!SEES trying to be comfortable with each other.
What can I say, they were really special and dysfunctional kids thrown together and they're supposed to save the world. I did enjoy writing the interaction with Mitsuru and Shinjiro, although when Aki and Shinji started fighting I was like, "Man guys how are you ever best friends with each other srsly." But I liked how it turned out anyway, in the end.
The Stories
Untitled [Phoenix Wright;prose]
I remembered writing this after playing Justice For All, Gumshoe really grew on me during this installment and I was surprisingly fond of Franziska after the end of JFA. Somehow it got into my head to ship Franziska/Gumshoe, but the ficlet didn't like the way it was going so it turned kind of gen. It still embarasses me that I can't really get their characters right.
February: 31 Days challenge [Various fandoms - KH, KH:CoM, Clover, Sandman, Ourankoukou Host Club, Koohri no Mamono no Monogatari, Mushishi, Phoenix Wright, Suikoden V, Spiral: Suiri no Kizuna, D.Gray-man, Wild Adapter, Nabari no Ou]
This is the first challenge that I tried to make myself adhere to. One of the reasons why I took this month was because the prompts were fairy-tale in nature, and since I was a massive fan of fairy-tales I took to the challenge like duck to water. Sadly enough, I never got to finish the entire month, having run out of steam and ideas around the 21st (though I was beginning to struggle a little earlier than that). Nevertheless, I was quite pleased to have written twenty-one short drabbles in a span of 21 days, and to be able to dabble in quite a few new fandoms to boot (Mushishi, Suikoden V and Nabari, to be specific). Hopefully, next year, I'll give another month a go.
Escape Artist [KH:CoM;prose]
There really isn't much to say about this because it's actually a part of a lost fic that I had been working on for a while. It doesn't lend much into character development for Namine, and for that I am sorry, but I had some ideas for this piece. Mostly, I was wrestling with certain facts and figures that refused to fit in with the canon, so I gave up. This was what was left.
SPOILERS AHEAD The following stories all come with fairly heavy spoilers, mostly because they were written after end-game or after a particularly important plot-point. Tread carefully.
Baby Steps [Tales of the Abyss;prose]
I finished the NAMCO game Tales of the Abyss in June, and actually started work on the fic shortly after I finished it. To say that this was a work of pain is pretty much an understatement; I started out with just a bare skeleton of an idea and on the seventh day, Asch rested and worked from there. Asch was a character that didn't grab my attention until fairly late in the game, and the events for his story (when you eventually piece them together) broke my heart. This fic also caused me to write and re-write scenes over and over because I felt an intense need to deal Asch an ending he would have wanted.
Originally the ending sentence was something more foreboding and sad, because Asch is really a very self-destructive kid at heart, always looking out for others rather than himself, but after putting myself through a month of him talking things through with Luke's friends I couldn't bear to give him the self-destructive ending the muse originally wanted.
In a sense, I wanted Asch to be happy. I've yet to read a post-Abyss fic that actually features an Asch who learned how to be exactly that.
an accidental memory [Persona 3;drabble]
After Abyss, I went on to play Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. Most of the fic that I wrote for Persona 3 is actually in-game rather than after end-game, mostly because I was more interested in Shinjiro and Akihiko than the main character. This was written with the October 4th events in mind, although the actual setting was taken from the tornado weekend. It was also inspired by one of the Japanese fanarts that I found in those P3 search engines.
Upon looking back on it, I felt that the piece is a little stilted, in that it loses its impact once the memory of October 4th is no longer fresh.
Homecoming [Persona 3;prose]
Lawl porn. My only NC-17 fic for the year, it was more of scratching an itch than anything else, although I tried to turn it into a sort of character development piece for Shinjiro in particular. Considering that we get so little information on Shinjiro in-game, I had taken a few liberties with his characterization. I didn't want it to be completely PWP but I guess people could look it that way?
In The House of My Enemy [Persona 3;prose]
Request fic for selphish. Because there was no prompt, I decided to touch on Yukari's relationship with her mother, her past and her introduction to SEES, although to be honest, the title came first before the plot ever made an appearance. I'm not a fan of Yukari and writing a fic for her certainly didn't make me feel sympathetic to her situation, but I have to admit that when I actually finished it I felt that it was an extremely condensed version of what it should be. Yukari's relationship with her mom was one of the things not properly explored in the game, and I felt that the S.Link that was used to try and give Yukari more character development fell a little flat. (And yes, in order to make an attempt at understanding Yukari better, I had to hunt for her S.Link script because I couldn't finish her S.Link in-game in time.) This is probably one of the fics that will undergo some re-writing before making it on FFN.
Growing Pains [Persona 3;prose]
Request fic for reisha, though this is probably on the backlog of many OTHER requests fics. She wanted Original!SEES AkiShinji, and since I had already started with Yukari introducing herself to SEES, I decided to follow on with the trend and wrote an "Akihiko and Shinjiro joins SEES" fic. It wasn't mean to be humourous at all, but somehow Shinjiro's jealousy wrote itself and Mitsuru's awkwardness and Aki's special talent at making Shinjiro want to smash his head into a wall. So it's not so much AkiShinji but Original!SEES trying to be comfortable with each other.
What can I say, they were really special and dysfunctional kids thrown together and they're supposed to save the world. I did enjoy writing the interaction with Mitsuru and Shinjiro, although when Aki and Shinji started fighting I was like, "Man guys how are you ever best friends with each other srsly." But I liked how it turned out anyway, in the end.