karanguni | meta meta meta meta mushroom mushroom

Entry tags:

meta meta meta meta mushroom mushroom

Just decided to take a break today on the writing front; I'm so braindead from coming home, doing an exam and then rushing three challenge fics that I blew off a Springkink deadline. I think I'll feel guilty about that, but not until tomorrow morning. 8D

If you've clicked on the cut, you are either extremely bored or extremely kind to me (xD). Whichever the case, if you've got your two cents, I'd be extremely happy to hear from you. Writing on my own is a bit like driving a truck in a pitch dark room; I always think I'm going to crash head-first into a wall...

General Blabber

I used to think that it was kind of weird when authors talked about challenge weariness; now that I've taken part in the first few of my own, I really appreciate the challenges that work like roads_diverged over at IJ: the ones with no time limits, open prompts, zero restrictions. They're barely challenges; they're more encouragements, and sometimes that's all I really need to write.

Doing 0TP and Springkink has forced a lot of words but very little joy out of me; it comes to a point where I'm writing and it's all just so many words. D: It feels like I'm being unfair to the person who put out the prompts when I give them something written that way; they may like it, but I know how badly written it feels (if only to myself), and having that audience there scares the shit out of me sometimes. It makes everything really stiff and static and flat; I keep trying for meaning and plot and purpose, and all I get are blind adages and blerghghgh.

Favourites

Surprise, surprise, Final Fantasy VII. I've been hanging around these boys for so long that it's really fun to step out of RP and do them on my own; fun, but totally terrifying. Looking back, it took a lull in my personal life and Crisis Core to kick me into writing independently. I think the last time I actually wrote fic was in 2006, which is scary - I didn't think it'd been that long.

Really strange that the first thing I wrote coming out was a Tseng/Zack (almost) fic (Fact of the Matter - I love Tseng and the Turks, but SOLDIER never quite hit me in the right places, yet the stuff that got written first is the stuff I'm least comfortable with.

Tseng's grown up into his own little niche; I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the amount of stuff I've written on him. I don't know how he reads to other people; when I do checks I'm so jalksfjasfjla at reading my own stuff that I can't tell. HAI GUYS IF YOU'RE READING THIS 8D 8D On a serious note, I'd really love to know if you think I'm butchering him or something!

Empery, written after a long, good month of producing lots of stuff (none of which I particularly liked) is my baby. It's something that sat inside my head for a while, never really taking voice and never really speaking out, just an idea and a concept and a feeling. It's not very often that those come out right, but Empery was so right on every level that the 6500 words didn't stop once they'd started. It put in place the backstory (emotional, not canonical, or even fanonical) I needed to justify Tseng being a ~~badass killer~~ who he turned out to be in later fics, and the stuff that follows Empery feels a lot stronger for it. First time I've been able to put some of myself (philosophically speaking) into what I've written, which felt three times as good as writing off prompts that I liked but didn't believe in.

New Men came out of the blue: it started with a Luck introspective that felt like it was going nowhere, and ended with the most powerful Tseng and Rufus that I think I've ever managed to write. I always want to make the Turks and the President as strong and forward and unrepentant as I can, and something always gets in the way - usually Rufus, or Tseng's conscience - but this time it just snapped nicely together and ajlfjaksjfaf, I want to be able to keep this up so, so badly. I don't know if I'm the only one who kind of... reflects? refracts? bounces off? how good I feel in RL with what I manage to put down in fic, but whenever Shinra comes together for a few thousand words it's a kind of mental kick, get your life in order; if you can write about it, you can be it.

Survivor: Icicle Inn was like stress relief piled on top of a lot of cackling fun. Life should be like that: laughing while doing what you love. Feel good! ♥ Just chucked all reader expectations and personal standards out of the window, and the end result wasn't too bad.

Now these haven't been so fun

Porn. I don't know why I fail so utterly at it when I write it alone, but god above do I suck at porn. I know the words and the physics and the descriptions, but every time I try to put it in fic it sounds out of place, superfluous and awkward. *makes screaming noies*

Beyond Good, Or: Evil. Even the title sucks. I had the entire thing planned out in my head and it was going to be awesome and brilliant and two thousand words later I realised I hated the ending and didn't know where I was going and was going to waste a lot of good content and then cry moar cry moar nothing happened. D:

Crossed Out. Don't dislike it, but I could've done a lot better by it, methinks, which makes me sad.

Passing Time. AJlsfjalsfjalfsjaljfajsfl why oh why oh why did I choose to write Good Omens; I'm not Gaiman and I'm not Pratchett and I'm not even 10% of what they are and Good Omens has a canon that's absolute on its own and every potential fic has been done a million times and I don't even know where this fic came from ajfljfsl

More?

I really want to be able to write Rufus again. He's such a fucking asshole.

And one day, one day, one day I will write epic Turk fic, and it shall be epic, and it will take me twenty thousand years. I don't know how people see Turks in fandom; the really awesome and cool writers who used to do them have long left, and nowadays I see almost nothing of Tseng, and barely anything of Tseng/Rufus, and downright no Tseng/Veld. Again at people reading this: what are the Turks like to you? Disorganised? Evil? Good? Grey? Full of Crack (TM)? Whipped by the other departments? Whipping the other departments? Professional? Pointless?

Something about Wutai and Tseng; the bastard!Tseng, not the emo!Tseng or the AU!Tseng or the denial!Tseng; something about Tseng in Wutai and being awesome. Maybe. Uh.

Thank you-s

If you've read this far, I think you're amazing. ♥ (I mean, this post is so self-centred and inward-looking that I sorta embarrassed putting it up.) You people have been pretty damned awesome, and I'm really grateful for it. I'm really kind of unused to people reading my stuff, and a lot of it is so blah blah blah that I give ♥ ♥ ♥ to the lot of you who haven't run away screaming. Lots of love! And cuddlings! And leave a prompt here if you want, because anyone who bothers to read this far should get a thousand ficlets!

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

I heart everything FF that you write and you know how much I love your Tseng. Some of the stuff that you throw into your fics for the bargain have often had me just go 'Wow'. Seriously. And I could so not do fic challenges, I am way to weak and flighty, so I very much admire those that can and punch out good ones too :)

I think you should be incredibly proud of what you write, I have no hesitation on clicking on your fic links. But every writer/artist/creator will always look back on stuff they create and wish they'd done something different, tweaked it here and there. I don't think you can avoid that.

And don't we all wish we were even a minimal fraction of the power that is Gaiman. Seriously, I'd eat his brain if I could. It doesn't help that he is sooo lovely, patient, kind and genuinely interesting in real life. I was a gibbering mess of jelly and melted heart muscles after I had a 5/10 minute discussion with him about his Snow, Glass and Apples. Gah.

And Gods. I can only just start to iamgine what your Rufus would be like ;) (filth, I hope)

First of all, your Tseng is fnjknfsjdjhfsdf! *ded* Seriously, the best Tseng of all Tsengs ever.

Period.

It actually makes me embarrassed how OC I make him seem even though I try to keep him in character.

And now that you mentioned it, Sphinx and I have written tens of thousands of words on Turks with Tseng/Veld and Reno/Rufus the main pairing, we just keep on postponing posting it 'cause well... it's unfinished yet. :P

And Rufus! Write him NOW! Oh GOD, bastard Rufus is good Rufus (but we all know he's good at heart). XD

I stumbled across you on a random click of a story on ff_press. I almost never bother, I usually go through other's f-lists...and what made it even more random was that I don't know what made me click because I don't really read Crisis Core stuff--

But I am so glad I did. ♥'s your writing, your characters so much.

There's an understated clarity about Tseng/your world/your work that hits home like you wouldn't believe. Another thing about your writing is it always seems perfect in itself - complete, as though you had complete control over the process and everything effortlessly came together. Which I know is probably not the case (everything good takes work? :g:) but it's such a mark of a good writer when it seems effortless. ♥

what are the Turks like to you?

One reason why I like your work is you make them potent. Too many Turk!fics marginalise, mock, ridicule, emasculate the Turks. You do them such justice as figures of change or as cogs within the machine, and all without quite making them into emotionless killing devices.

Empathy. I'd say that's a defining feature of your writing. You empathise, you make them empathetic, you make the readers empathise. It's brill.

Tseng is perfect. He's alive to me now. ;)

Dude, I have the bestest flist ever. :D ♥ ♥

Man, if I were 1% of Neil Gaiman, I'd be a very happy human being. Reading any of his work makes me feel so incredibly small; he's such a detailed and expansive author. You got the chance to meet him? Eeeee!

8D 8D DOES NO ONE WANT TO LEAVE PROMPTS, ALSO

Hehehe, Turks are the bestest fun to co-write with someone; you can juts go on and on and on. There's so many ways you can twist them! They're like rope!

I'm building up to Rufus... and slowly. The asshole doesn't want to get written. He wants a damned red carpet laid out before him before he even makes a cameo.

Feel free to leave prompts also, if you'd like!

Word about ff_press. I've found a couple of really good authors off of that list, even if most of the time it takes a lot of stumbling around to get to the really neat stuff. :D

ajflanfh I wish I could do half as much of the things that you say I do; complete control over the process? I usually end up looping a song and begging my fingers not to take me into Off Topic Land (TM). I'm really awful at planning and structuring stuff; my drafts are hilariously messy whenever I try to put a framework down. (And then my framework reads something like, "And then there was sex". Useful!)

Re: Turks - it's kinda a great pity whenever people just make them killthingsallthetime or emoaboutkillingthingsallthetime. There's a whole playground out there, and it's hard to even scratch the surface - making Turks into more than what canon offers us of them is one huge game of really fun make belief to me. Make belief with guns.

ajksfjalf you are too damned good to me, srsly. *flail* Thank you! ♥ ♥ ♥

(Tseng's alive! He's gotta eat you in your bed!)

And leave prompts! :D :D I totally owe it to you after this.

I had the fortune to meet him at the Eastercon that takes place in Heathrow every Easter and this year, he was guest of honour (apparantly, he goes very frequently. am planning a return next year). I went with

spikeyboots, who happened to have some awesome contacts with the people helping out in it this year and we got to help him with his signing on the last day.
My job: to stand by his side, make sure his signing pens worked and to usher people on.

I was a nervous wreck the entire time, the man is just so awesome. and pretty to look at.
And then I had a chance at the end to chat to him, when we were clearing up about fairytales and their uses and how dark and twisted they were, and of course, the Sandman and Dream. He said he was glad that I was traumatised by his stories and hoped that I was passing the trauma on. I assured him that I was :D

...However, I do now owe

spikeyboots a segment of my soul for the whole entire experience. I think Gaiman's worth it though.

Prompt (although this is probably a rubbish prompt, but I've always been intrigued as to how it would work as a prompt):

If I knew the way
I'd seek it out and set forth too;
With scarlet leaves
Woven into offerings,
Autumn has departed -

Heian Waka, Oshikochi Mitsune (one of my favourites.)

*dead* That is just such an awesome prompt; you have anyone you want for it in mind? :D

And ajlfjalk oh god,

spikeyboots must be some sort of god. That. That. If I could stand by NGaiman and pass him pens, maybe I'd be able to flake a few skin cells off of him and clone him and ajslfjalfj so lucky!

The one time he was in Singapore, I hadn't read his books yet. *___* A month later, I picked up American Gods, and consequently wanted to beat myself to death for not having gone down to his signing. TO LIVE IN A LARGE, CON-HOLDING COUNTRY! Now the opportunities are scarce at best. D: D:

I think I'd like it for a Zack and Tseng. Is that alright? I loved the one of them that you did :)

spikeyboots does have very unusual powers of persuasions and contacts sometimes. Certainly an agent of some divine intervention? I am heavily in debt. Alas.
And I did not think of cloning, dammit. I was too busy trying not to flush and stare at his awe inspiring mass of hair. And his voice. Gads, that man has a voice on him.

Darn, that is a case of bad timing! He'll probably be back though, he's always hopping everywhere at the sounds of it. You have to jump him if he gets back to you, seriously!

I think I've got a vauge idea for something that I can throw together tomorrow; ~~but first I must stop myself from turning them into samurai and/or ronin omg~~. 8D

*whimpers* Sexy brain + sexy voice + crazy hair jalfjaslf. Please, sir Gaiman, come to this pathetic island once more. *hopes* He's so damned -- cool is the only word I can think of using. He's probably the only man on earth who can wear that word without sounding like a dork. Neil Gaiman is cool.

Utterly. There's very little doubt really that Dream and he became intrinsically linked at some point. The man wears cool like his leather jacket. *discreetly wipes drool from mouth*

Heh heh. They'd be uber hot as ronins. I'd be in ronin heaven. Am very pleased it's a prompt worth of a fic, it's such a nice waka. Yay yay! *cheers* *spazzes again at the thought of Gaiman*

~~Zack would be the first and last ronin to stab himself with his own sword. By accident.~~

*spazzes* rofl.
oh, my dear dear Zack. We know him only too well. Bless.

Before I started reading your fics, I read almost nothing that was centered around the Turks. Heck, even now I still read very little that is centered around them, other than your fics. My attention was initially caught because of your Tseng/Zack fics, because I'm a huge Zack fangirl, and I was curious. However, the resulting stories that I found absolutely blew me away with their quality, which lead me to further investigate your writing. You're probably going to remain one of the few people who, on a regular basis, can get me to read Turk!fic and enjoy it. *grin*

One of the reasons I love your fics - and you should know this already, I ramble about it often enough - is your ability to worldbuild and create setting. The tone of your stories is amazing, the way you create everything and make them seem real.

You might be concerned about the quality of your stories for the challenges, but I personally think that you've been doing an amazing job. I light up whenever I see another one of your responses, and look for your name as I scroll through the entries.

Coming from a writing major, someone who's been going through a writing workshop every semester for the past three years, you are a very good writer. I want to take some examples of your stories and show them to my writing teachers, most of whom don't like sci-fi and fantasy, and say, "See? Not all of this stuff is horrifically stereotypical. Every once in a while, you come across a true gem like these. Stuff like this is what makes me want to write."

As for a prompt...*grin* The Turks (any of them), on a mission that doesn't involve killing; as you said, they aren't all about heartless killing for whatever reason (and especially not about emo-ing over it afterward).

Considering that before I read your fic I barely knew who the turks *were*, and now I have a deep and abiding love for every single fucked-up one of the blighters ... well, just thank you for turning my head. ;)

Heheh, quite a few people made it all the way to the bottom it seems. (And I have no clue as to what a 'prompt' is, lol.)

I never even knew you wrote 'Beyond Good or: Evil'. I never really read it either, but I read the wiki on it, and I found it quite fascinating. (And it also influenced me, though this isn't visible in my fics. I can tell you that this FFX-marathon-ish thing I'm doing at this very moment is because of that. (And because I don't know when I have to return the game to my friend.))

About the Turks, I don't know how they should be, but I know that I'm doing a lousy job at writing them. (And Rufus for that matter.) But when I think of the Turks I kinda see them like cogwheels in a machine - though with a mind of their own. They may have their own oppinions about things, but can't really voice it or act upon it. (Unless they want to end up in a body bag.) Like Cissnei and the other renegade Turks, you know? (Except that they were lucky enough to get out 'alive'.)

(It's all part of my plan for world domination, see; first job is to suck everyone into Turk!verse... xD)

*flail* You guys are seriously too good to me. I always think that I'm blabbering too much when I talk about Midgar/Other Places, but looks like I may not be such a dork after all! 8D

Ooh, you're a writing major? That is so cool; studying that must be really, really fun. MY LIFE GOES NOWHERE at the current moment, so yeaaah. One day I dream of getting published, but I'm so bad with long fiction that it makes me keyboardsmash and write a lot now just in hopes of being in practice enough in the future... xD

Oooooooooooh, prompt. *twiddles with the idea* Kekekeke.

*thrusts Turks into your direction* They taste as good as SOLDIERs, and are better dressed! 8D

Prompt? Just drop something you might want to see me write and I'll try and write it! ♥ ♥

There's a wiki on Beyond Good, or: Evil? xD And you're writing a FFX thing? That's cool; I know a lot of my friends really liked that game, and I've been trying to grab a copy for a while now.

Turks are kinda cogwheel like, aren't they? Especially if you take a stab at BC canon, where they get kicked around a lot. BUT THEY HAVE BIG BRAINS, and they always pull out/escape/run away/blackmail their way through somehow. 8D

No, I'm not writing FFX, just playing the game like crazy. I like it. The story interests me, involves me, and it actually /tries/ to draw me in, unlike FFXII. (Which is a nice game, but it takes /ages/ for the story to really kick in. If at all.)

And FFX also makes a statement about the world we're living in, like FFVII, without lecturing. I like that in a game. (And it's entertaining too, what could I ask for more?! XD *cough-betteranimation-cough*)

Oh... it was actually 'Beyond Good AND Evil'. Oops. http://beyond_a_wiki.editthis.info/wiki/Further_Reading

FFXII took a while, but I had so much fun with the gameplay itself that the plot just jumped me, and THEN I WAS LOST :D :D :D

That is just SO Rufus! XD

Feel free to leave prompts also, if you'd like!

~~*begs the fifteenth person in the row now*~~

I erm... have this insane request that I know will never be fulfilled. It has Cloud and Tseng and Rufus and Tseng is the one in the middle. It should be angsty, preferably Tseng a bit messed up with maybe Rufus/Cloud established.

~~Meh, I just want to see Tseng sandwiched between two blonds.~~

That what you asked for? XD

Er, prompts. People hate my prompts like you wouldn't believe. So feel completely free to ignore this.

What I was wondering. Um. Prompt: collision - Yuffie's quest to restore the honor of Wutai derails when she runs into Tseng.

Any world, really. Even AC or after, not necessarily FFVII OC or inbetween.

Again: feel completely free to ignore this. (Did I mention people hate my prompts? XD)

HOLY SHIT that prompt will either lead to something hilarious or too profound, but I think I kinda want to write it!

Gah! Thrusting Turks!

That sounds so much dirtier than it should. ;)

Oy, finally getting a chance to sit down and write this.
I adore you Tseng. You've made him more real than just about anyone I can think of. I don't think you're butchering him, even if there was a lot of established back story on him.
I like the...not quite porn that you've written so far. Especially Tseng and Zack up against the train window.
The Turks....my intro to FFVII was AC, so I can't speak for the butchering that some say has been done to them. I haven't gotten much past meeting Aerith in the church in the original game. I really go by how each individual writer portrays them, assuming the writing is good in the first place.
Re: the prompt. If you're up for crack, how 'bout:

My blood runs cold
My memory has just been sold
My angel is the centerfold

with whomever wants to play. If not in the mood for crack, I've got a bunch more. Downtime at work + listening to song lyrics= lots of prompts.

♥! Welcome back from busyland!

My brain is kind of dead from sleep deprivation right now, but I float a thousand hearts at you ♥ ♥

You can hit me with more prompteses if you want! I'll pick and mix and see what comes out. 8D

Yay, lots of hearts.
Okay, here be some prompteses:

I dream of love as time rolls through my hands

Don't Cry http://www.lyrics007.com/Guns%20N'%20Roses%20Lyrics/Don't%20Cry%20(Original)%20Lyrics.html (to me, this is Angeal/Zack)

Always lyrics http://www.elyrics.net/read/b/bon-jovi-lyrics/always-lyrics.html
Yay for power ballads!

Well you know it's all I think about
I write your name, drive past your house
Your boyfriend's over
I watch your light go out

Wicked Game lyrics http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/chrisisaak/wickedgame.html

Mirror!sex
Wingkink (how is there not more of this?)

Well, you're famous now and there's no doubt
In all the places you hang out
They know your name
And they know what you're about

And I can make you every promise that has ever been made
And I can make all your demons be gone

Well you burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed (to me, this is initial meeting/early days of Seph, Angeal, and Genesis)

I know some of the characters I'm seeing aren't ones that you really do, so I don't have any problem if there's someone else that fits perfect for you. :D

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

meta meta meta meta mushroom mushroom

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject