joudama scribbling

OK, this is my fic master list to end all master lists. Everything as I post it will be linked to from this post. So, yeah. The Almighty Master List. Some things aren't linked yet, because I haven't uploaded them to this journal yet. Meh, I'll get to it one of these days. XD

( FF7 )

( FF12 )

( CLAMP )

( Yami no Matsuei )

( Fullmetal Alchemist )

( Metal Gear Solid )

( Grab bag! )

...ye gods. This is where all my time went, isn't it?

And now, for another Kantan Cooking with Jou!

Strawberries and Marshmallow Toast

Toast one side of bread in a toaster oven.

When it's a tiny bit brown, flip it over, and place marshmallows on it.

Toast until the marshmallows are melty and a little brown.

While this is happening, slice some strawberries in half.

Once the toast is ready, stick the strawberries on the toast, and eat. :9

So lately, I've been on this huge Disney kick, and have been watching Disney songs dubbed into other languages on youtube.

Y'all all know "Hellfire" is one of the most fucked up songs Disney has ever done, right?

Well, the Russian, German, Italian and French versions manage to up the ante.

DDDDD:

The Russian version, containing the line "O witch, what are you waiting for? Decide your hell from now: either come to me, or go to the flames":

( Decide your hell. )

The German version, containing the lines "Forgive the sin that I succumbed to her. Destroy Esmerelda, and let her scream in agony" and "Gypsy, be glad! You can still choose me! Otherwise, you're ablaze." DDDDDD:

( Gypsy, be glad! You can still choose me! )

Italian, containing the line: "Be ready, gypsy. I know that you'll return. I'll wait for you in Hell.":

( I'll wait for you in Hell. )

French, with the lines "Hell stains my flesh with the sin of desire," "Heaven must punish me," "May a curtain of flame be her shroud," and "Be mine or my passion will lead you straight to Hell":

( May a curtain of flame be her shroud. )

Hi! I still exist! And was planning to get some writing done and answer back mail and comments from people this winter break!

( Unfortunately... )

The doc has not said how long my arm is going to be splinted and doing a mummy impression, but my guess is, at least a month (it's been a week and a half so far.) :(

Once I can type again, I'm going to get back to work on Thagirion and Harrow Children. ^^;;

Happy Holidays!

Everything wrong with FF13-2 in one picture:

( Remember all those strong female characters from FF13? Yeah. )

They should have called it "Final Fantasy 13-B." Because everything about this game screams "B-team." B-team writers, B-team characters...ugh.

I'm going to informally do NaNoWriMo this year, and my goal is to finish Harrow Children. ^^;;;

Wish me luck, y'all. I haven't been doing much writing because I haven't had much time, but danggit, I'm gonna try to make some. I need to finish SOMETHING, and HC is so dang close. I also want to go back and finish up more of A Hope in Hell, since I finally have my DVD of the King and the Clown again.

...Don't even ask me about TTYNKAP. The next chapter scares me and I've been avoiding it. Also, I need to get back into Chinese more before I tackle it, and I've been doing so much Korean lately that my Chinese-brain has atrophied. Which is why AHIH has priority over it (plus, I want to write more Park. I really like Park a lot for some reason.)

But first, yeah, I want to write more Zack-Tifa angst. >XD;;; Zack is kind of my new chew toy, and I'm not ready to switch over and make Tifa my chew toy, which I'd need for Thagirion.

( A snippit of me using Zack for a chew toy in HC. XD;;; )

I started poking around on some older fic today, since I figured a Thagirion break might be good. So I worked a bit on the next chapter of Harrow Children and on some of A Hope in Hell.

...Part 3 of Harrow Children is already twenty-nine pages long. But the beginning only has 5 pages before it starts fragmenting into incomplete scenes and thumbnail sketches. The the combined last two parts of A Hope in Hell are 30 pages.

Why can I never write anything short? *sob*

Title: And All Our Yesterdays Have Lighted Fools
Fandom: FF7
'Verse: Harrowverse
Notes: This came from a drabble challenge I did on my livejournal/insanejournal/dreamwidth, and as I wrote it, I realized how important it was to the whole Harrowverse, which is why I'm posting it separately (and slightly expanded and cleaned up, heh). This takes place during the FF7 game timeline, and is pretty much one of those big, pivotal moments.

The original prompt challenge was: "Pick one of my fics or drabbles, or any other project you happen to know I am/was doing. Request a future or past scene set in that fic-verse with any characters you want." This specific request was "Harrow Children, past, Zack, Aerith, Sephiroth."

--

( Out, out, brief candle. )

Ahahaha, I just split the next section of Thagirion into two chapters.

Realistically, it was the only way to do it so I didn't a) have to truncate a LOT of things or b) end up with one mammothly and disproportionately long middle chapter.

So what was "What is Inside" is now "That Desolate, Arid Place" and "What is Inside."

Ahahaha, why must I plot so much?! ;_;

Yoinked from raisedbymoogles
1) Pick one of my fics or drabbles, or any other project you happen to know I am/was doing.

2) Request a future or past scene set in that fic-verse with any characters you want.

3) Wait for me to write 500(+/-) words of said scene.

Drabbles!
1. "Where One's Responsibilities Lie," future, Vincent finally settles on a name for his pet chocobo. - What You Are
2. ShinraMart, past, Sephiroth, Genesis. - Everything He Hates (LJ)
3. Harrow Children, past, Zack, Aerith, Sephiroth. - And All Our Words Have Lighted Fools (LJ)

OK, someone has decided to be all cute and post random Japanese nonsense comments anonymously, so because I'm all "WTF is this?" I am screening all anonymous comments. I thought about disabling anonymous comments, but I like some of the little nonnymice that occasionally pop up. So, screening. 'Cause, seriously. なんでやねん.

Even if you don't speak Chinese, the English sections alone made this, in my head, Aerith's theme in Thagirion the second I heard it.

The video pretty much cemented it as THE song for the whole fic.

Title: Thagirion
Fandom: FF7 (pre-game AU)
Rating: R
Summary/Prompt: Instead of waiting to breed new Ancients, Hojo decides to simply create a new one from Aerith and a terrorist who remembers more than she should.
A/N: This is for illumynare, who won my help_japan auction.

[Prologue] : If You Could Rewrite the Past
[Part 1] : One Set of Memories
[Part 2] : That Desolate, Arid Place
[Part 3] : What is Inside
[Part 4] : The Memories on the Other Side

Title: Thagirion [上]
Author: joudama
Fandom: FF7 (AU)
Status: 2/4
Rating: R
Word count: 7,000ish
Summary/Prompt: Instead of waiting to breed new Ancients, Hojo decides to simply create a new one from Aerith and a terrorist who remembers more than she should.
A/N: This is for illumynare, who won my help_japan auction. :D She made an incredibly generous bid, and as someone actually living in Japan, I am extremely grateful. Also, I'd ask that if you enjoyed this fic, to please consider donating to $5 or so to a charity. It doesn't really matter which one, but it'd be a way for the spirit of help_japan--and all of the help_* auctions--to keep going.

For the sake of brevity, I'm cutting out the extensive author's notes I actually wrote for this--if you are interested, I'll be posting them separately, as an Ultimania. :D I also broke the story into four sections - the prologue and three chapters - instead of the original planned two sections (...then three sections...) for the sake of brevity and to ensure these came out with more frequency. ^^;;

And remember, this is an AU, so the characters and a lot of situations are different - I write 'butterfly effect' AUs, and this is one of them. Everything will become clear in the next part, when I do more filling in. Promise. XD

--

( One Set of Memories )

The new Kingdom Hearts game is going to have Neku from The World Ends With You, and Quasimodo and Esmerelda from Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Dag, y'all.

I am currently playing Tales of Xillia. It is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with the Japanese gaming industry. :/

As I've played the game, I've gone, "...why are all the women dressed like skanks?", "...they had to do the jiggle physics, eh?", "...KILL IT WITH FIRE," and "Wow, that character is the same as ____ from Tales of ____./ _____ is this game's _____ from that other Tales game."

The thing the game fails at and hits out of the park are from the same source: copying what came before. Where is gets it RIGHT is when it takes a gameplay element from other games - the leveling up system is straight out of FF13, and it's made it so you can interact more with the environment instead of invisible walls, including some short first-person elements, which is straight from western games. The leveling up system is a smoother, more streamlined version of the FF13 crystals, and they've improved how to get stores to have more items. They've also made it fucking gorgeous.

Where it fails, however, is doing a copy-paste on the characters. This includes trying to include a "cute" character a ala a moogle or, even more fitting, Teddy from Persona 4. AND FAILING MISERABLY. Tipo is annoying as fuck, and I am not kidding, I have been yelling "Kill it with fire!" every single time it opens its mouth. It is that annoying. And also, for fuck's sake, game, you can not SERIOUSLY expect me to believe that a fifteen year old is a last-year med school student and seeing patients. Unless his name is Dougie Howser, NO. The only way it'd make sense is if you set him up as some kinda genius, and y'all haven'T, and more than that, once the Child Character showed how, she took over being the healer. So. No. Likewise, it makes no sense for the main female character to be dressed in straps of leather and cloth, given the way the people dress where she is from, and especially when you handwave it with her saying, "A short skirt is comfortable to move in," which indicates that the person who wrote that line has never actually worn a skirt at all, let alone one that is skin-tight and barely covers your ass cheeks. They could have given her shorts that same length, and I'd have bought it, but a skirt, no. That's fanservice, and fuck you.

The story started out great and then the actually cookie-cutter characters showed up and I'm getting bored to tears with them, when I am not actively wishing for a flame thrower.

It's like the game devs haven't realized that a) the average gamer is no longer 15 and b) what was cool when they were 15 is not cool to someone in the age range of the average gamer, which is early-to-mid-30s. It's obvious that story and characterization were given a backseat, and it doesn't matter how good your game play mechanics are when you don't give a shit about the characters in an RPG.

You can make a good game by taking previous elements from earlier titles and tweaking them.

You can not make a good story by taking characters from earlier titles and just changing their clothes and voices and dropping them into a story filled with similarly copy-pasted lines.

Tales of, I am disappoint.

I just got Tales of Xillia today and have been playing for about an hour.

So far, it is really, really dark. Like, REALLY dark.

Which is kinda awesome.

I also really like how the male character is a healer - he's a med student about to finish medical school, and the female character is so much higher level than you and with so much more magic and XP that it's not even funny. >XD

So yes, an hour in, and kinda awesome.

Also, the axe-crazy character is also female, and also very much axe-crazy.

Ahaha, there was a huge typhoon this weekend. Three, four straight days of rain. It was so gross. I'm lucky, though, since I was just north of the hardest-hit areas. The worst I got was sodden and inconvenienced, so I'm definitely considering myself lucky.

As for writing, ahaha, I got NONE done this weekend, even though I'd been hoping to work on stuff - I ended up staying out all night Friday when I went to a friend's birthday party (so much fun, but GAH, hate men at clubs who can NOT take hints.) I missed the last train back, so a bunch of us went to karaoke after, and then to a club. Karaoke was fun, even though the French guys kept smoking (and I'm pretty sure one of them was hitting on me). The club was also fun until the guy who could not take a hint decided to scare away all the guys I had been dancing with. >:(

And ahaha, as one of the people I went dancing with noticed, "You were surrounded by men!" And it's true, lololol. I am foreign and have big boobies; yes, I was surrounded by men after a while. Which was great when it meant I was dancing with hotties; not so much with a kuuki-yomenai (needs a cluebat) guy wouldn't take the hint and go away. I mean, dude spilled a drink on me, I kept trying to ditch him but he kept following me, I told him I didn't want a drink when he tried to buy me one but he still grabbed me around the waist and took me to the bar, GAH. At one point, a different guy was like, "...are you OK? Is he bothering you?" because I just. Could not. Ditch the guy. And it was painfully obvious that I was trying to. I mean, at one point, I turned around away from him and started dancing with this other guy pointed, and STILL. I kept going, "Oh, my friends are over there!" and bowing out and he. Kept. Following. I eventually fled the dance floor and found some of my friends sitting at a table and joined them, and didn't go dance for the rest of the evening, because GAH. I am sad because before he decided to try and stake some kind of claim on me, I had been dancing with this hottie with a niiiiiiice body.

I went back into Osaka Saturday to buy a new washing machine because NO NOT PUTTING IT OFF ANY MORE, TYPHOON BE DAMNED. Sunday, I had to wait for it to be delivered, then had to go re-record a song for a CD of children's songs for a language school, because they decided they wanted it done completely differently from the way they gave it to us - and, of course, they gave no instructions on what they wanted instead, only that they wanted it less dirgelike (and it was like a dirge because that is what they gave us, gah. I had to come up with a new melody and harmonies, and tell the mixing guy where to cut it and how fast to speed it up.) So that was my weekend and why I had to go out continuously in a frickin' typhoon and why I got no writing done.

But I plan to get some done this weekend, because my entire upcoming weekend plans are now DO LAUNDRY. :Db

Oh, and when slacking off today, I wrote a page of HC and did some cleaning up of parts of AHIH.

In case any of y'all missed it, El Shaddai is now out in English.

I hope you all know what this means. *expectant look*

You know you all want to play as Armaros and hear Lucifel joking around with God. You know you do.

Hi, I still exist! :D

I've just been way busy lately. ><

Anyway, I am also back to writing some. I worked on both Thagirion and the last chapter of Harrow Children a few days ago, and hope to spend most of my weekend chipping away at one of them.

I feel like writing something short, so anyone want a drabble? :D?