Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2022-06-04 07:43 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2022-06-04 07:43 pm
Coming Home To Balamb Again.
I'm watching Tem play The Great Ace Attorney! We're very early in it - we're at the start of the second case and have just hit the first deduction sequence - but I'm enjoying it a lot.
I'm absolutely outraged that this game killed DrWatson Wilson in the first case and Kazuma in the second. You can't kill the boyfriends of both Ryunosuke and Sholmes immediately! Unless you want them to seek comfort in each other's arms, I suppose.
Both Tem and I shipped Ryunosuke and Kazuma very hard and were extremely unhappy when Kazuma was killed in the second case. Sholmes is not a satisfactory replacement boyfriend, although he is definitely hitting on us.
Also unhappy about Kazuma's fate: Zuko, our cat, who had a great time attacking Kazuma's bandana whenever he was on the screen. I've never been able to pinpoint a cat's favourite character with such certainty before.
I'm really puzzled by the question of what language the characters are speaking. It's canonically established that Ryunosuke can't speak English and Sholmes can't speak Japanese; how are they communicating? How does Ryunosuke converse with the Russian sailors? Is there an interpreter just offscreen? Did the interpreter commit this murder?
Wait, now that I double-check, Ryunosuke actually can understand the English spoken in the first case! It was a confusing decision to put it in an unreadable font; I suppose it was just to make it clear that Brett was speaking a different language from everyone else? I wonder if it was in plain English in the original Japanese version.
Frankly, making Ryunosuke sleep in the wardrobe on the ship is a tragic waste of an 'only one bed' scenario. Come on, let me believe he and Kazuma shared the bed at least sometimes. Maybe they tried sharing the bed for a few nights and then Ryunosuke insisted on sleeping in the wardrobe because he was having too many feelings.
On an unrelated note, I've been trying to write Squall/Zell, the first pairing I ever really shipped, and it's just impossible. Who's going to make the first move? Obviously not Squall. I can't picture Zell doing it either. It's hard to picture either of them even recognising any feelings they might have for each other, so I can't even write pining.
I used to be confused that Squall/Zell wasn't a bigger pairing, but it turns out it's physically impossible to write. I suppose that explains it.
Strictly speaking, I have written Squall/Zell once before - it was my first ever attempt at writing romance - but I was thirteen and it was dire. (It's only seven hundred words, but maybe I could do a miniature Old Fanfiction Book Club at some point.) Perhaps one day I'll manage to write something less terrible for these two; they deserve it!
I've been thinking a lot about Final Fantasy VIII lately. I've gone through so many fandoms over the years, but every so often my heart will fly back to this game; it's the single work of fiction that's most important to me and the one I'll always, always, always come back to. I've loved it for twenty years, and I'll love it for the rest of my life. These messed-up teenage mercenaries are a permanent part of me.
If you have something similar, I'd be interested to hear about it! What's the story your soul is anchored to?
I'm absolutely outraged that this game killed Dr
Both Tem and I shipped Ryunosuke and Kazuma very hard and were extremely unhappy when Kazuma was killed in the second case. Sholmes is not a satisfactory replacement boyfriend, although he is definitely hitting on us.
Also unhappy about Kazuma's fate: Zuko, our cat, who had a great time attacking Kazuma's bandana whenever he was on the screen. I've never been able to pinpoint a cat's favourite character with such certainty before.
I'm really puzzled by the question of what language the characters are speaking. It's canonically established that Ryunosuke can't speak English and Sholmes can't speak Japanese; how are they communicating? How does Ryunosuke converse with the Russian sailors? Is there an interpreter just offscreen? Did the interpreter commit this murder?
Wait, now that I double-check, Ryunosuke actually can understand the English spoken in the first case! It was a confusing decision to put it in an unreadable font; I suppose it was just to make it clear that Brett was speaking a different language from everyone else? I wonder if it was in plain English in the original Japanese version.
Frankly, making Ryunosuke sleep in the wardrobe on the ship is a tragic waste of an 'only one bed' scenario. Come on, let me believe he and Kazuma shared the bed at least sometimes. Maybe they tried sharing the bed for a few nights and then Ryunosuke insisted on sleeping in the wardrobe because he was having too many feelings.
On an unrelated note, I've been trying to write Squall/Zell, the first pairing I ever really shipped, and it's just impossible. Who's going to make the first move? Obviously not Squall. I can't picture Zell doing it either. It's hard to picture either of them even recognising any feelings they might have for each other, so I can't even write pining.
I used to be confused that Squall/Zell wasn't a bigger pairing, but it turns out it's physically impossible to write. I suppose that explains it.
Strictly speaking, I have written Squall/Zell once before - it was my first ever attempt at writing romance - but I was thirteen and it was dire. (It's only seven hundred words, but maybe I could do a miniature Old Fanfiction Book Club at some point.) Perhaps one day I'll manage to write something less terrible for these two; they deserve it!
I've been thinking a lot about Final Fantasy VIII lately. I've gone through so many fandoms over the years, but every so often my heart will fly back to this game; it's the single work of fiction that's most important to me and the one I'll always, always, always come back to. I've loved it for twenty years, and I'll love it for the rest of my life. These messed-up teenage mercenaries are a permanent part of me.
If you have something similar, I'd be interested to hear about it! What's the story your soul is anchored to?
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I love Zuko’s tastes in video came characters.
I know the thing with pairings where they’re really interesting, but also the only way they’re getting together is if someone picks them up like dolls, mashes their faces together, and goes “Now, kiss!”
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I know the thing with pairings where they’re really interesting, but also the only way they’re getting together is if someone picks them up like dolls, mashes their faces together, and goes “Now, kiss!”
It's so frustrating! I want to make them kiss, but it's very hard to see a path there that won't feel forced.
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Ah. I have the perfect solution for you, because it's the format of basically every serious relationship I've ever been in: have them spend a lot of time together and become increasingly closer in ways that neither of them recognize is unusual, until a third party who knows them both points out to them that they've been in a relationship for a long time without realizing.
I mean, this does have the problem that I don't know how you'd transition it into writing kissy fics, if that was a thing you actually wanted to do, but it's A+ for weird undefined intense queerplatonic things?
[If you have something similar, I'd be interested to hear about it! What's the story your soul is anchored to?]
I'm your FFVIII soul-anchor neighbor, though in a slightly different neighborhood! That game pretty much created me as an internet writer. I grew up tossing chapters of fic onto the FFGurus forums, before I even found FanFiction.net . It no longer occupies a permanent apartment in my brain, though it did for a good long while, but every now and again I'll get fly-by feels for ancient braintics or nostalgia for the game itself.
The one fandom that does still live rent-free in my brain is Stargate: SG1, which is such a mess in so many aspects, but which still has so many things I adore about it. My brain is still actively spinning out braintics for the original team, none of which will ever get written, because they're all ridiculously large, ridiculously self-indulgent, and ridiculously AU. ...I mean, I suppose that set of qualities has self-evidently not been a deterrent before, but SG1 seems to generate so many for me.
And then the fandom what probably had more of a formative effect on tiny!magi than any other is Fallout, the original. From it I trace my dread fear of radiation, my love of open-world games and weird unexplored corners and desolate places and hostile natural environments, and a lot of the cant and slant of my humor. Also, now that I think of it, probably a lot of my fondness for settings that are only a couple cuils off our normal reality.
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This is a solid strategy, but they're both trapped in the wasteland of Time Compression together, so there are no third parties around! (Except... Shiva? Shiva springs up from the cracked ground in a pillar of ice to go COME ON, GUYS, WE ALL KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON HERE.)
One day I'll actually watch the entirety of Stargate SG-1! What a strange mess of a show. I liked the characters, but so many of the episodes are terrible.
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I mean, is this one of those takes where bonding with your GF lets you start either hearing their commentary or getting emotional bleedover from them? A workaround could be found! Ship, uh, finds a way?
[What a strange mess of a show. I liked the characters, but so many of the episodes are terrible.]
PRECISELY THE PROBLEM. If you manage to make it out of the first couple seasons – the first one especially – the incidence of terrible episodes goes down, but they never entirely go away. Even late seasons have things that make me want to throw the screen out a window.
To be entirely honest, I have not gone back and re-watched SG1 in a very long time. Partially because I'm afraid of the suck fairy, and partially because I took most of what I liked, put it in a terrarium in the back of my head, and treat that as my canon for fanficcing purposes. I suspect that if I did go rewatch the show, I'd find a lot of subtle but jarring mismatches between what's in my head and what's actually presented as canon.
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As for a story that's etched into my soul, I of course must say Fullmetal Alchemist (the manga, not the animes). Ed's journey to fix his past mistakes is very personal to me, and is mirrored by Roy's journey to do the same. The themes of hubris, friendship, and moving on just hit home for me in ways other series haven't.
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Fullmetal Alchemist is a great one! The first anime is the only version I've experienced in its entirety; I got pretty far into the manga and Brotherhood but never actually finished them. Maybe one day I'll pick up the rest of the volumes.
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(Anonymous) 2022-06-05 12:50 am (UTC)(link)I suppose it's only fitting that your heart stays with the canon that inspired your username. I'm deeply fond of FF8 and will defend it to anyone who is dismissive of it rather than just, y'know, not enjoying it. I remember trying to find a good let's play of FF8 a few years ago and being crushed because they tended to be either from people who had played the game who basically started off saying "lol FF8, this game is so bad" which at least signposted me quickly to the backbutton, or from people playing for the first time who experienced major comment backseating into all the ways of how to break the junction system while complaining that the game was too easy (the irony of complaining about a game being too easy while actively telling people how to make the game easy was apparently lost on them).
Yes, you've mentioned that you ship Squall/Zell and I do agree with you that it seems highly implausible that either of them would make a move. There is zero change it would be Squall so you'd have to focus on what would make it plausible for Zell... Maybe he would do it to piss off Seifer?
I guess the story my soul is anchored to is The Warchild series. I am still very fond of it, and I picked it up as a teenager - I wrote about it at A Level and in my Dissertation at university, actually, among other things! The author even agreed to an interview with me regarding my subject and her portrayal of it for the dissertation which sits loudly in there as an appendix. I've written it multiple times for Yuletide which is saying a lot as normally I get obsessive over a canon if I particularly like it, but that tends to be for maybe a year or so and I drift out of it. Never have with Warchild. I know I've mentioned I like the author's writing style and that it has heavily influenced my own, but the love of her turns of phrase is only a small part of why the series sticks with me.
The author calls the series a mosaic narrative, which is basically that there's a continuing plotline/plot progression, but that the books are narrated by different characters from different perspectives/backgrounds. (The author has also written vignettes from other character viewpoints.) Although the one thing that they do all have in common is that they're all deeply damaged individuals for differing reasons (hmm, definitely spotting a theme to what I find interesting!). And, not gonna lie, I love the protagonist of the second book being an outsider POV on the protagonist of the first and finding him to be deeply rude (he's not very talkative so he comes across quite differently outside of his head than in it). The series just really caught me - and I generally take little interest in anything space themed, so it was very much a surprise to me! (I picked up the first book for an online book club.)
Here's the blurbs of the three books just to give a bit of context and contrast:
Book 1: The merchant ship Mukudori encompasses the whole of eight-year-old Jos's world, until a notorious pirate destroys the ship, slaughters the adults, and enslaves the children. Thus begins a desperate odyssey of terror and escape that takes Jos beyond known space to the homeworld of the strits, Earth's alien enemies. To survive, the boy must become a living weapon and a master spy. But no training will protect Jos in a war where every hope might be a deadly lie, and every friendship might hide a lethal betrayal. And all the while he will face the most grueling trial of his life... becoming his own man.
Book 2: The son of an infamous starship captain, the grandson of a diplomat admiral, and his home station's "Hot #1 Bachelor", Ryan Azarcon lives in a fishbowl. After witnessing a horrific terrorist bombing of his grandfather's embassy, Ryan's grief-stricken face is plastered all over the net. Now, a year later, he is still plagued by nightmares of bloody destruction that make him desperate to escape his family, the relentless media, and his memories. When his distant and domineering father takes controversial action in the long, depleting interstellar conflict, Ryan is targeted by assassins. Forced to confront the violence, he begins to question everything he thought he knew about the war and his father. He will realise that the enemy is not who he thinks and uncover a secret that may destroy any hope of peace...
Book 3: At age four, Yuri Kirov watched his home colony destroyed by the alien enemy. By six, he was a wounded soul, fending for himself in a desolate refugee camp, and still a child when the pirates found him. Now twenty-two, Yuri is a killer, a spy, an arms dealer, and a pirate captain himself - doing life in prison. That is until EarthHub Black Ops agents decide to make Yuri their secret weapon in a covert interstellar power grab. Released from jail, but put on a leash by the government, Yuri is more trapped than ever. Controlled by men even more ruthless than the brigands he's ordered to betray, Yuri is back again in deep space where his survival depends on a dangerous act: trusting a stranger's offer of help...
I believe the author has talked about some of the inspiration certainly for the first book being a horror over the existence of child soldiers in war and what they experience (...only just thought this while writing this, but this is very FF8 too, isn't it?). The books don't pull their punches.
-timydamonkey, who can talk endlessly apparently
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That sounds so frustrating! Why Let's Play a game you don't enjoy?
There is zero change it would be Squall so you'd have to focus on what would make it plausible for Zell.
I'm just quoting this because I enjoy how true it is, even if that truth is currently causing me writing difficulties.
I remember you mentioning the Warchild series! It does sound interesting; it seems like the themes might be similar to Animorphs, actually. There's something so personal about your relationship with a book or series that influenced your writing style.
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Honestly, a number of things. Growing up as a shy, isolated, bookish child who had a tendency to read books and comics over and over and over, and also use them as springboards for blatantly derivative original fiction, there are a number of canons that were heavily formative for me as a juvenile creator that still hold up well enough that I revisit them every 5-10 years or so, often dipping back into fandom creativity when I do - Elfquest, Amber, X-Men.
But possibly the thing I've been doing that with the longest is the original Star Trek. It's one of the earliest things I remember watching on TV, in afternoon reruns when I was probably four or five, and the wild thing is that I still remember specific episodes even though I only ever saw a few of them at that age. It was probably the thing that first introduced me to hurt/comfort. I watched it off and on throughout my childhood whenever I could catch a rerun, back in the days when shows airing on TV was the only way to watch them, and I'd say every few years I go through a renewed surge of interest that involves watching some episodes, reading some fic, and picking up some tie-in books. I think there's a distinct chance I've never actually seen every episode, since I've never just sat down and watched it in order.
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is one reason why I enjoy both reading and writing a variety of intense hurt/comforty tropes, ranging from characters going through some kind of hell together (torture, survival in the wilderness) to things like sex/cuddle pollen, involuntary soulbonding, and sudden onset telepathy. Some people just need to be jammed into each other's proximity and then forcibly held there.
All excellent stuff! I've actually attempted this in my fic - they're trapped and isolated in an inescapable wasteland together, unsure of how or if they're going to survive - but, inconsiderately, they still won't make out.
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There is just no helping some people! XD
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(Anonymous) 2022-06-06 12:27 am (UTC)(link)-timydamonkey
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Story my soul is anchored to? That's a good question--I can think of a number of them, but I think it's Digimon, specifically the Adventure and 02 seasons.
It took me some thinking, but I think what's singles them out from the rest is they're not even my favorite works of fiction (they're not even my favorite seasons of the franchise--that's Tamers), but they're the ones I keep returning to one way or another, whether I've revisited them or just saw the phrase "Digimon" out in the wild. Childhood nostalgia undoubtedly plays an essential role in this, but they're also just fascinating seasons for the qualities and flaws that make them up (especially 02, what a fascinating mess that was) and how they would go on to inform and shape my tastes in fiction. They introduced me to the wonders of isekai, character growth, varieties of friendships and relationships in fiction, traumatized characters with mental health problems that make bad decisions, eldritch horror,
hot bondage angel/devil women,hurt/comfort, sickfic, tragic backstories, redemption arcs, and the wonderful, wonderful genre of "why am I enjoying seeing my favorite character suffer so much" (aka whump). They're my fandom equivalent of comfort food, and that's just as important as any other story I hold in high regard.no subject
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I'm glad you're enjoying GAA! :D I played the games with my brother a while back and loved them; they're so much fun.
TBH, my very first thought when you said "second case" was "oh no, I'm so sorry for your loss". Ace Attorney mentor is such a fraught occupation... I'm even sorrier to hear about poor Zuko! :( It must be especially hard when your fave is the only canon catboy representation in the game so far.*
* GAA's artist gave the main cast official fursonas, and Kazuma's is Nyasougi.
It's the same incomprehensible font in the Japanese version; the only parts in plain English are "Shut up!" and a few words of gratuitous English (indicated by cursive font in the localization). My brother and I were also confused initially, given that Ryuunosuke is the PoV character and is clearly fluent in English (for a brief, exciting moment, we speculated that she was secretly French and banking on no one being able to tell the difference), but I guess they just wanted to show that she was speaking a foreign language and needed a translator.
IIRC, the localized script indicates which language is being spoken through honorifics: Ryuunosuke says "Miss Susato" when speaking English and "Susato-san" when speaking Japanese, for instance. And yeah, since Sholmes says he doesn't know much Japanese, I assume they speak English with him.
It is entirely implausible that Kazuma wouldn't at least suggest sharing the bed. Ryuunosuke probably would freak out about it, but there is no way that Kazuma of all people is so risk-averse he'd draw the line there.
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Ah, thank you for the information on the Japanese version! What a confusing decision.
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Re: language — my take on it was that the unreadable calligraphy was Brett speaking English until she switched to Japanese, and we were initially supposed to assume that Kazuma and Ryunosuke couldn't understand; they seem to wilfully pretend as much in order to play on Brett's prejudices. After the trial, they have an exchange that makes it clear they speak and understand English at a very comfortable level, although the exact wording escapes me now.
By Word of God, Susato and Ryunosuke only speak Japanese when they're alone. Honourifics are the game's way of showing us that. Me, I didn't even notice until I was reading an interview with Janet Hsu on the matter, because honourifics just tend to glance off me like water these days.
Both Tem and I shipped Ryunosuke and Kazuma very hard and were extremely unhappy when Kazuma was killed in the second case.
God, right? Ryunosuke's dreamy boyfriend whom he was supposed to kiss! It wasn't supposed to be this way.
I love this crazy game so much that I've been in fic-writing hell for it since, uh, checks watch— last November. And now that you're playing it, I can't wait to leave you a series of increasingly wordy comments on everything I could ever possibly find fault with. :D
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God, right? Ryunosuke's dreamy boyfriend whom he was supposed to kiss!
EXACTLY. I take some consolation in the possibility that they did, at some point, kiss, and Ryunosuke freaked himself out wondering what it meant, and now he has no way of ever knowing.
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