Sunday Post

[lavanya_six]

Been a while since I posted here, so I thought I'd put up a status update on my current writing projects:

1. Taking Sights -- The next chapter will be post this coming Wednesday. I'm currently in the final edit of the chapter, which needs a far bit of reworking. I've cut out a fair bit of the end of the chapter and am considering making a mini-chapter to tie up certain loose ends before going into the next story arc.

2. Ineffable Crossover -- My very own crap/crack fic won't be updated for at least another month. It's going to be loooong, though, and much more meaty compared to the last few crack-fests. Marissa Picard will be guest starring.

3. And the Gods Danced in the Night -- The next chapter is still in progress but I can't give an estimate for when it will be done. I'm writing the rest of the fic in one go for the sake of narrative tightness (the perils of writing a mystery).

4. Doctor Who and the Orders of Merlin -- After five months of writer's block on this fic, I've decided to junk it and start over. Instead of going for the haphazard chapter-by-chapter approach, I'm going to trying canabalizing what I've already written and make an 80k word novel out of it. Not what I normally do, but I think it'll be a good challenge to help develop my writing skills.

5. End of Line -- WIP. This is a Battlestar Galactica fic I've started writing after watching the series finale. It's a one-shot dealing with the final fates of all the characters (and I mean ALL the characters) after the events of the finale. It's about 20% done.

6. I've been tooling around with some Persona 4 fic, mostly femmeslash. I was quite taken by the game when I played it, especially with how shockingly (by video game standards) it explored topics of sexuality and gender. Nothing concrete fic-wise yet, but I'm in love with the game and want to try my hand at writing for it.


So that's what's going with me. How about you?

Comments

[shanghairain.livejournal.com]

My only reaction to the BSG finale--"And then, two months later they all died of dysentery."

P4 is wonderful. Have you beaten it yet? (I'm also not sure why the internet loves Chie/Yukiko... it must be something about yuri that I Don't Get?) (Also, have you played P3 Fes?)

[lavanyasix.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a hell of a lot of them will be dying like animals in my BSG fic. Considering "End of Line" covers every single character's death scene, most of them will be meeting unfortunate ends. It's fairly dark, so it's taking a while to write.

As for P4, I actually enjoyed it a lot more than P3. The story was tighter and the cast of characters made more sense. P3 had a lot of filler characters (Ken, anyone?) that had very flimsy reasons for being involved in the plot.

I've played P3-FES (it's the only version of P3 I've played). It was pretty good, but, as I've said, I liked P4 more.

I hadn't realized the internet loved Chie/Yukiko. From what I've seen, Chie/Yousuke seems more popular. Speaking personally, I find Chie/Yukiko more interesting because it plays up the sex/gender issues half the cast seems to have with themselves. Plus, when I saw Chie's Shadow for the first time, I was like "DUDE." A response one-upped only by seeing Kanji on the Midnight Channel for the first time.

P4 must stand alone as being the only RPG where your party consists of two repressed lesbians, a closeted-in-the-open gay man, a crossdresser, and a guy in a bear suit.

Yousuke: [Upon meeting Teddie] Why are you wearing that stupid bear suit?

Teddie: Why are _you_ wearing that stupid human suit?

(sorry)

Anyway, P4 *is* pretty wonderful. As interesting to me as their gender and sexuality issues are, all the main characters are interesting and well-rounded. There's tons and tons of stuff to work with in fanfic.

[shanghairain.livejournal.com]

Hah! I kind of look forward to this--the BSG finale was deeply unsatisfying to me on a lot of levels. Who was the last Colonial to die, and how does he/she do it?

Yeah, P4 is totally more polished than P3--they had Fes to polish the mechanics (and ow, Answer was a pain to grind through). I'm kind of curious, though--what social links did you max out?

First time through, I ended up with Yukari, Maya, Maiko, the bookstore owners and whats-his-face Magician boy...

As for Chie/Yukiko, a friend of mine claimed that they were the perfect yuri couple (also that Yukiko wears the pants, which I kind of disbelieve--though, admittedly, her argument was kind of persuasive.) She hasn't written *her* slashfic, though.

Recommendations for Chie/Yosuke? They kind of remind me of people I knew in high school. =P I've always been leery about Personaverse fic--it's generally not well done, and I respect the characters too much to see them butchered in poorly executed fic--but the P3 LP was absolutely amazing.

[lavanyasix.livejournal.com]

Hera will be the last to die, but she'll have a decent death of old age. The rest won't be so lucky. Going by the list in my notes, of the thirty or so characters, the leading causes of death are fever/infection, violence, and childbirth.

You're right about Personaverse fanfic. About 99% of the stuff on FFnet is crap, and the badbathhouse livejournal (NSFW) consists of 5000 posts of drabble porn. This is not too surprising. Video games tend to make for reams of terrible fanfiction. I can count the decent Mega Man and Zelda fanfics I've read on one hand. You'll have luck with Final Fantasy, but that's more to do with the sheer volume of it produced than baseline quality.

My theory is that video game fanfic sucks because the games don't have a solid narrative style for writers to base their fanfic on. TV, movies, books, and comics are all focused on storytelling and fanfic writers can ape that style. This is probably why video game movies suck so much.

Besides that, I do have a reason to be reluctant to write Personaverse fanfic. Namely, that the series is so distinctly Japanese that I'm not sure I can maintain the proper characterization. For instance, if I did write Chie/Yukiko femmeslash, I'd feel obligated to do so as with regards to Japanese ideas on sexuality and gender -- which are very different from Western ideas.

It's been a while, but I believe the P3 social links I maxed out were Mitsuru, Fuuka, Kenji, Chihiro, Yuko, and that track guy with the bum knee.