[meta] year in fic review 2006
Fandoms: Kingdom Hearts, Ourankoukou Host Club, D.Gray-man
The Stories
A Picture of Two [KH: CoM, 1sentence Challenge, set Gamma]
Surprisingly enough, I didn't have many problems involving these two characters, aside from trying to keep them in character from what I can remember of CoM. This is one of the fics that I didn't reference heavily from, but considering that there isn't a lot of source material, well, a lot of the character development actually stemmed from reading other people's impressions of Marluxia (dejablue7's works, in particular) and inferring from what Japanese fanartists think of the pairing. The set that I picked for this ship is extremely appropriate, for me, to write, therefore there wasn't much hair-pulling in finishing it eventually.
It's still one of my favourite pieces, mostly because I really liked how I did Marluxia's character there.
Human Culture [KH: CoM, drabble, challenge winner in kh_drabble]
What I really liked about this is how I characterised Zexion and Larxene in just so few words, as well as the style that I used here. I realized that more effect would have been achieved if I never used Zexion's name except in the conversation, but it's still a pretty tight piece of writing that leaves nothing to the reader to wonder about, a kind of bare bones, bare-faced piece. Somehow, I never managed to achieve the kind of resolution in other works that I had with this one.
Smile [KHII, drabble]
The beginning of my Axel/Roxas stint into the fandom. I'm not sure what bungee-jumped me into this, since I had finished playing KHII about two months ago, but perhaps it was because the English fandom was beginning to rave about it and probably, I had a strange fetish to scratch and so I wrote "Smile".
"Smile" was actually a tiny little branch off off "Stalemates" (which will be discussed later in detail). Those who had seen how I work would have known that "Smile"'s opening sentence was actually from "Stalemates", which I took out and pulled it into a little fic of it's own. This fic is a development of a base of ideas I had about the pairing, that while Axel may have genuinely cared about Roxas, there isn't any recipocation from the other in any manner. I never really meant for the piece to feel so hopeless at the end, but it managed to wiggle itself into the piece and stayed there.
Jericho [KHII, prose]
I must confess that the inspiration for "Jericho" came from another fic that was written by someone else. However, the biblical imagery for Axel came all on its own, along with the sharp, sarcastic and slightly insane voice that was reminiscent of Axel in KH2. I have to admit that the fic was clumsy in its execution, there were many things that actively contradicted my own original ideas about the original Jericho. Nevertheless, I was very happy that I managed to pull of the biblical references rather well.
I was a bit disappointed that fans rated this piece the least of their favourites, probably because it's a lot more intellectual in thinking as opposed to emotional. It probably set off a cold tone.
Beautiful Broken Boys [KHII+slight AU; prose]
For the oddest reason, a lot more people, when faced with the drabble and the prose versions of BBB, preferred the drabble version. Perhaps it's because it's tighter, shorter and a lot more to the point, Kairi's hopeless despair isn't stretched as much and the ending becomes more of a smack in the face because you wouldn't have expected it to end so quickly. Nevertheless, I liked pulling out the drabble into something longer and fit for posting on FFN.
BBB was also inspired by another fanfiction that had the same ideas about the aftermath of KHII, and I may or may not have borrowed a little heavily from its ideas, although I must say that I never referred to the fic in the process of writing this (the fic is called Tangential Motion, and you can probably see the influence it has on BBB). The title was also taken from another place, though I have forgotten where I took it from.
Stalemates [KHII; prose]
Ah, "Stalemates". I must confess that I have a love-and-hate relationship with this particular piece. On one hand, I really, really liked the style that I had used in order to delve into Axel's mind. The rambling, disconnected train-of-thought feel was one of my favourite aspects of the fic. I spent an extraordinary amount of time on this piece, which grew from a collection of drabbles that I had written in exploring Axel's personality and psyche. I think it took about three months (I started working on this in January, though I would have never expected it to grow into this.)
Demyx was never meant to be included in the piece, but I fell to fandom expectations and slotted him in just for kicks. However, his inclusion did make for some of the most stunning sentences that I have written, which wouldn't have been possible without him. I had a lot of favourite bits, because they played with imagery and voice and endless possibilities and hope. The description of Demyx through Axel's (rather romantic and cheesy) eyes still fills me with awe, because I didn't know how I had written it and I probably would never be able to reproduce that effect.
However, I also disliked the fact that this is probably one of the most loved pieces in the Axel/Roxas fandom. I deliberately omitted a lot of things in the fic, such as speech, and I had written in the perspective of Axel, though the intention was to let the reader draw their own conclusions from it. There is a definite character bias towards Roxas in this, after all, this is Axel's mind we're talking about. Unfortunately, this led to many people asking me if I were an Axel/Roxas shipper, which I'm not really.
Furthermore, my writer's credibility was attributed only to this piece, which peeved me because I have written other works prior to this. The fact that it's a popular pairing that I was writing about also made me doubt my own writing abilities, because works of popular pairings always get raving reviews, and I wanted feedback that was genuinely towards my own writing.
Thus, I stopped writing Axel->Roxas, even though I had liked exploring their relationship with each other.
The oddly out-of-place references to Saix (at least to me) was actually a product of seeing too many Demyx/Saix J!fanart, although eventually I never did fall into the pairing once Xemnas came along.
Identity Crisis [KHII; prose]
It was much later that I decided to tackle the Roxas aspect of the game. Roxas was a character that I was ambivalent about, furthermore, my ideas about Roxas seemed to clash with most of the fandom. Writing this fic involved getting into Roxas' head as well as looking into how he might or might not have come into terms with his rather extraordinary life, and the more I thought about it the more hopeless and sad it felt. Like some fans have mentioned, Roxas was one of the most shafted characters in the game, relegated to a veritable tool that was used at will and whim. He's different from Namine, whom I felt was a complete deus ex machina, and it makes it a lot harder to write for him, since his character had been developed to an extent in the game. Furthermore, we are shown in the game that Roxas' Twilight personality was manufactured, and what we have of Roxas' 'true' personality is someone who's cold and who is heartless.
I chose Riku to interact with Roxas because Riku probably could relate, just a little, to Roxas. But for me, the little is just that, and it isn't enough to give Roxas the comfort or the stability he desperately needs in order to move on.
After writing this, I would like to have written more of Riku and Roxas interaction. Maybe next year. I also had immoral to thank for cleaning up the fic by a lot.
Why Ootori Kyouya Does Not Wear Contacts [OHC; prose]
OHC. It was a flash fandom, one that I got caught up with in the excitement of people finally discovering that there was a shoujo manga that was somehow refreshingly different, and I attempted to write fanfiction for it to boost the then-empty fandom. This was pretty much an exercise in figuring out how to write fanfiction for something aside from KH, and it was clumsy, a bit stilted, but still quite fun. Kyouya was my favourite character in the manga, though I always knew that I had a fetish for megane-type characters with a side of evil.
Kyouya and Tamaki's relationship with each other is often turbulent but meaningful, and I tried to bring that out in this piece, although I'm quite sure I didn't quite succeed. The idea was entirely a plotpoint, after all, I had wondered why Tamaki wouldn't have tried convincing Kyouya to wear contacts if it would make him more, uh, pretty.
The Shower Effect [KH+AU; prose+slight smut]
Gift-fic for moontear. I had started writing this early last year (2005) and a lot of complications arose in the process because the setting of the fic was entirely destroyed by KH2 canon. Like Roxas, I had problems defining Riku's character despite the fact that I had spent a lot of time writing him, somehow with each installment of the game Riku's character changes and evolves so very quickly. This was meant to be a sort of reunion-fic, but I may have overplayed the dramatic aspect of Riku's emotional weakness. I didn't want smut to be the focus of the story, because the main point was Riku trying to come to terms with himself.
However, I really like the mature Sora in here.
The pneumonia idea came from some KH fanfic that I read a long, long time ago, and liked so much that I used it in two fanfictions.
Product Testing [OHC; drabble+slight smut]
This was a challenge by reisha, who asked for Ouran porn. Ouran is not a porn fandom. Tamaki having sex breaks my brain in so many ways, even though it IS hot. Needless to say, I failed. BADLY. I didn't like this piece very much, so I'm not going to comment on it. e.e
Playing Substitutes [KH:CoM; drabble]
After the KHII and Ouran foray, I went back to my KH:CoM roots. By now I had a strange fondness for Larxene, who began to fascinate me with her status in the Organization. I was also going back into experimenting with imagery again, and it struck me about how the people which fandom always paired her up with, Marluxia and Axel, also had blonde, blue-eyed significant others of their own. It turned wheels in my head, and coupled with Larxene's personality, I decided to write a vaguely sympathetic piece about a girl who really had no place in the Organization, and who would do anything and everything to survive.
Conversations I [KH:CoM; prose]
Haha. With a title like "Conversations I", you would expect "Conversations II" to come out soon. Not happening, according to the muse. Anyway, in going back to CoM, I also went back to my first love in CoM. Lexaeus, by default, was my favorite character out of the entire CoM nobodies, probably owing to my recent fetish for big, burly men with a gentle personality. Zexion tagged along as part of a set, I would be happy to explore Lexaeus in itself, but their relationship with each other is extremely strange. Although it's cordial and almost friendly, there is also a tangible distance between them that it seemed that they wouldn't breach. It's like a funny dance between their present selves and their past selves, while from the game you can read that they are on better terms with each other than the rest of the Organization, there is also a whole load of contradictions that make their relationship complicated.
Zexion, for me, is a character that is motivated by fear. Lexaeus, on the other hand, is fearless, and stupidly so. I tried to convey that in the piece, but I'm afraid that it didn't quite come out.
Last Chance [OHC; prose, challenge entry for ouran_flashfic]
This was written for the sake of being written, I suspect. It's clichéd, and it doesn't really do justice to either Kyouya or Tamaki's personalities. It also points out, glaringly, my complete inexperience in writing these characters, as well as a failure on my part to do proper research on their motivations and character traits.
The Sky, The Land and The In-Between [KHII; 1sentence challenge, can't remember what set]
I had a tussle about this. Re-discovering the OT3 factor was like a lost love found, and it's probably a refreshing change from the gloom and doom that I usually write. However, I had problems with some of the sentences, and struggled with them for a great deal. There were so many things I wanted to cover about the relationship but only in one sentence, and that restriction often made me gnash my teeth in frustration. The sentences weren't as poignant as I hope for them to be, and I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn't meant to be a study in their relationship. It's about friendship, it's about love, it's about the little things and the stupid things, and mostly, it's about life.
Some of the sentences were disappointing, but some, I felt, were decent, but I hope that overall, it was a fun piece to read.
Small Talk In Tea for Only Two [DGM; ficbits]
This was my extremely brief foray into the DGM fandom. I liked the sentences and bits of character development that I had going on for Tyki and Rabi, but unfortunately the idea, whatever it was, fizzled out and died. Maybe, one day, I may go back to it when the inspiration comes back again.
Talking in Circles [KH:CoM; 1sentence challenge, set Alpha]
This was a redux of the original one-sentence challenge for my LexZex pairing, all thanks to KH2's wonderful revelations. It's also my chance to re-examine my ideas of the pairing, and I re-wrote most of the sentences that had clashed with my new perspective of the pairing. The end result was something hopefully more mature and less fangirlish.
What's Coming Up
Loose Ends: a Roxas-centric fic.
Yet Untitled: a Namine-centric fic that mostly revolves around her life in the Haunted Mansion, her relationships with Marluxia, Repliku and the inhabitants of Castle Oblivion, and coming to terms with herself.
Sea-salt Eyes for Sea-blue Ice: Hayner dreams of a boy he thinks he should know but don't.
Sunburn: Nobody touches Ootori Kyouya. Nobody.
The Stories
A Picture of Two [KH: CoM, 1sentence Challenge, set Gamma]
Surprisingly enough, I didn't have many problems involving these two characters, aside from trying to keep them in character from what I can remember of CoM. This is one of the fics that I didn't reference heavily from, but considering that there isn't a lot of source material, well, a lot of the character development actually stemmed from reading other people's impressions of Marluxia (dejablue7's works, in particular) and inferring from what Japanese fanartists think of the pairing. The set that I picked for this ship is extremely appropriate, for me, to write, therefore there wasn't much hair-pulling in finishing it eventually.
It's still one of my favourite pieces, mostly because I really liked how I did Marluxia's character there.
Human Culture [KH: CoM, drabble, challenge winner in kh_drabble]
What I really liked about this is how I characterised Zexion and Larxene in just so few words, as well as the style that I used here. I realized that more effect would have been achieved if I never used Zexion's name except in the conversation, but it's still a pretty tight piece of writing that leaves nothing to the reader to wonder about, a kind of bare bones, bare-faced piece. Somehow, I never managed to achieve the kind of resolution in other works that I had with this one.
Smile [KHII, drabble]
The beginning of my Axel/Roxas stint into the fandom. I'm not sure what bungee-jumped me into this, since I had finished playing KHII about two months ago, but perhaps it was because the English fandom was beginning to rave about it and probably, I had a strange fetish to scratch and so I wrote "Smile".
"Smile" was actually a tiny little branch off off "Stalemates" (which will be discussed later in detail). Those who had seen how I work would have known that "Smile"'s opening sentence was actually from "Stalemates", which I took out and pulled it into a little fic of it's own. This fic is a development of a base of ideas I had about the pairing, that while Axel may have genuinely cared about Roxas, there isn't any recipocation from the other in any manner. I never really meant for the piece to feel so hopeless at the end, but it managed to wiggle itself into the piece and stayed there.
Jericho [KHII, prose]
I must confess that the inspiration for "Jericho" came from another fic that was written by someone else. However, the biblical imagery for Axel came all on its own, along with the sharp, sarcastic and slightly insane voice that was reminiscent of Axel in KH2. I have to admit that the fic was clumsy in its execution, there were many things that actively contradicted my own original ideas about the original Jericho. Nevertheless, I was very happy that I managed to pull of the biblical references rather well.
I was a bit disappointed that fans rated this piece the least of their favourites, probably because it's a lot more intellectual in thinking as opposed to emotional. It probably set off a cold tone.
Beautiful Broken Boys [KHII+slight AU; prose]
For the oddest reason, a lot more people, when faced with the drabble and the prose versions of BBB, preferred the drabble version. Perhaps it's because it's tighter, shorter and a lot more to the point, Kairi's hopeless despair isn't stretched as much and the ending becomes more of a smack in the face because you wouldn't have expected it to end so quickly. Nevertheless, I liked pulling out the drabble into something longer and fit for posting on FFN.
BBB was also inspired by another fanfiction that had the same ideas about the aftermath of KHII, and I may or may not have borrowed a little heavily from its ideas, although I must say that I never referred to the fic in the process of writing this (the fic is called Tangential Motion, and you can probably see the influence it has on BBB). The title was also taken from another place, though I have forgotten where I took it from.
Stalemates [KHII; prose]
Ah, "Stalemates". I must confess that I have a love-and-hate relationship with this particular piece. On one hand, I really, really liked the style that I had used in order to delve into Axel's mind. The rambling, disconnected train-of-thought feel was one of my favourite aspects of the fic. I spent an extraordinary amount of time on this piece, which grew from a collection of drabbles that I had written in exploring Axel's personality and psyche. I think it took about three months (I started working on this in January, though I would have never expected it to grow into this.)
Demyx was never meant to be included in the piece, but I fell to fandom expectations and slotted him in just for kicks. However, his inclusion did make for some of the most stunning sentences that I have written, which wouldn't have been possible without him. I had a lot of favourite bits, because they played with imagery and voice and endless possibilities and hope. The description of Demyx through Axel's (rather romantic and cheesy) eyes still fills me with awe, because I didn't know how I had written it and I probably would never be able to reproduce that effect.
However, I also disliked the fact that this is probably one of the most loved pieces in the Axel/Roxas fandom. I deliberately omitted a lot of things in the fic, such as speech, and I had written in the perspective of Axel, though the intention was to let the reader draw their own conclusions from it. There is a definite character bias towards Roxas in this, after all, this is Axel's mind we're talking about. Unfortunately, this led to many people asking me if I were an Axel/Roxas shipper, which I'm not really.
Furthermore, my writer's credibility was attributed only to this piece, which peeved me because I have written other works prior to this. The fact that it's a popular pairing that I was writing about also made me doubt my own writing abilities, because works of popular pairings always get raving reviews, and I wanted feedback that was genuinely towards my own writing.
Thus, I stopped writing Axel->Roxas, even though I had liked exploring their relationship with each other.
The oddly out-of-place references to Saix (at least to me) was actually a product of seeing too many Demyx/Saix J!fanart, although eventually I never did fall into the pairing once Xemnas came along.
Identity Crisis [KHII; prose]
It was much later that I decided to tackle the Roxas aspect of the game. Roxas was a character that I was ambivalent about, furthermore, my ideas about Roxas seemed to clash with most of the fandom. Writing this fic involved getting into Roxas' head as well as looking into how he might or might not have come into terms with his rather extraordinary life, and the more I thought about it the more hopeless and sad it felt. Like some fans have mentioned, Roxas was one of the most shafted characters in the game, relegated to a veritable tool that was used at will and whim. He's different from Namine, whom I felt was a complete deus ex machina, and it makes it a lot harder to write for him, since his character had been developed to an extent in the game. Furthermore, we are shown in the game that Roxas' Twilight personality was manufactured, and what we have of Roxas' 'true' personality is someone who's cold and who is heartless.
I chose Riku to interact with Roxas because Riku probably could relate, just a little, to Roxas. But for me, the little is just that, and it isn't enough to give Roxas the comfort or the stability he desperately needs in order to move on.
After writing this, I would like to have written more of Riku and Roxas interaction. Maybe next year. I also had immoral to thank for cleaning up the fic by a lot.
Why Ootori Kyouya Does Not Wear Contacts [OHC; prose]
OHC. It was a flash fandom, one that I got caught up with in the excitement of people finally discovering that there was a shoujo manga that was somehow refreshingly different, and I attempted to write fanfiction for it to boost the then-empty fandom. This was pretty much an exercise in figuring out how to write fanfiction for something aside from KH, and it was clumsy, a bit stilted, but still quite fun. Kyouya was my favourite character in the manga, though I always knew that I had a fetish for megane-type characters with a side of evil.
Kyouya and Tamaki's relationship with each other is often turbulent but meaningful, and I tried to bring that out in this piece, although I'm quite sure I didn't quite succeed. The idea was entirely a plotpoint, after all, I had wondered why Tamaki wouldn't have tried convincing Kyouya to wear contacts if it would make him more, uh, pretty.
The Shower Effect [KH+AU; prose+slight smut]
Gift-fic for moontear. I had started writing this early last year (2005) and a lot of complications arose in the process because the setting of the fic was entirely destroyed by KH2 canon. Like Roxas, I had problems defining Riku's character despite the fact that I had spent a lot of time writing him, somehow with each installment of the game Riku's character changes and evolves so very quickly. This was meant to be a sort of reunion-fic, but I may have overplayed the dramatic aspect of Riku's emotional weakness. I didn't want smut to be the focus of the story, because the main point was Riku trying to come to terms with himself.
However, I really like the mature Sora in here.
The pneumonia idea came from some KH fanfic that I read a long, long time ago, and liked so much that I used it in two fanfictions.
Product Testing [OHC; drabble+slight smut]
This was a challenge by reisha, who asked for Ouran porn. Ouran is not a porn fandom. Tamaki having sex breaks my brain in so many ways, even though it IS hot. Needless to say, I failed. BADLY. I didn't like this piece very much, so I'm not going to comment on it. e.e
Playing Substitutes [KH:CoM; drabble]
After the KHII and Ouran foray, I went back to my KH:CoM roots. By now I had a strange fondness for Larxene, who began to fascinate me with her status in the Organization. I was also going back into experimenting with imagery again, and it struck me about how the people which fandom always paired her up with, Marluxia and Axel, also had blonde, blue-eyed significant others of their own. It turned wheels in my head, and coupled with Larxene's personality, I decided to write a vaguely sympathetic piece about a girl who really had no place in the Organization, and who would do anything and everything to survive.
Conversations I [KH:CoM; prose]
Haha. With a title like "Conversations I", you would expect "Conversations II" to come out soon. Not happening, according to the muse. Anyway, in going back to CoM, I also went back to my first love in CoM. Lexaeus, by default, was my favorite character out of the entire CoM nobodies, probably owing to my recent fetish for big, burly men with a gentle personality. Zexion tagged along as part of a set, I would be happy to explore Lexaeus in itself, but their relationship with each other is extremely strange. Although it's cordial and almost friendly, there is also a tangible distance between them that it seemed that they wouldn't breach. It's like a funny dance between their present selves and their past selves, while from the game you can read that they are on better terms with each other than the rest of the Organization, there is also a whole load of contradictions that make their relationship complicated.
Zexion, for me, is a character that is motivated by fear. Lexaeus, on the other hand, is fearless, and stupidly so. I tried to convey that in the piece, but I'm afraid that it didn't quite come out.
Last Chance [OHC; prose, challenge entry for ouran_flashfic]
This was written for the sake of being written, I suspect. It's clichéd, and it doesn't really do justice to either Kyouya or Tamaki's personalities. It also points out, glaringly, my complete inexperience in writing these characters, as well as a failure on my part to do proper research on their motivations and character traits.
The Sky, The Land and The In-Between [KHII; 1sentence challenge, can't remember what set]
I had a tussle about this. Re-discovering the OT3 factor was like a lost love found, and it's probably a refreshing change from the gloom and doom that I usually write. However, I had problems with some of the sentences, and struggled with them for a great deal. There were so many things I wanted to cover about the relationship but only in one sentence, and that restriction often made me gnash my teeth in frustration. The sentences weren't as poignant as I hope for them to be, and I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn't meant to be a study in their relationship. It's about friendship, it's about love, it's about the little things and the stupid things, and mostly, it's about life.
Some of the sentences were disappointing, but some, I felt, were decent, but I hope that overall, it was a fun piece to read.
Small Talk In Tea for Only Two [DGM; ficbits]
This was my extremely brief foray into the DGM fandom. I liked the sentences and bits of character development that I had going on for Tyki and Rabi, but unfortunately the idea, whatever it was, fizzled out and died. Maybe, one day, I may go back to it when the inspiration comes back again.
Talking in Circles [KH:CoM; 1sentence challenge, set Alpha]
This was a redux of the original one-sentence challenge for my LexZex pairing, all thanks to KH2's wonderful revelations. It's also my chance to re-examine my ideas of the pairing, and I re-wrote most of the sentences that had clashed with my new perspective of the pairing. The end result was something hopefully more mature and less fangirlish.
What's Coming Up
Loose Ends: a Roxas-centric fic.
Yet Untitled: a Namine-centric fic that mostly revolves around her life in the Haunted Mansion, her relationships with Marluxia, Repliku and the inhabitants of Castle Oblivion, and coming to terms with herself.
Sea-salt Eyes for Sea-blue Ice: Hayner dreams of a boy he thinks he should know but don't.
Sunburn: Nobody touches Ootori Kyouya. Nobody.