Clever Title is Clever (Prequel ch47)

As in, I can't think of anything at the moment.

Chapter

Tumbl

I knew where this was going right from the beginning really, (well, beginning meaning the fleshed-out  FFVIII arc.)  I knew that Rinoa was going to discuss what she should do about the fact that she has the power of multiple Sorceresses and how they would set a goal to maybe transfer some of her Sorceress power back to Edea so that Rinoa was not at risk of being consumed/corrupted by that power.  Quistis, too, would volunteer to take some of that power in order to alleviate Rinoa's strain.  Assuming they knew how to do that, which they don't at the moment.

Meanwhile, Squall was going to set up to go back home.  Zell was to stay in Balamb, Laguna was to go to Esthar.  Ellone would follow him, but after she helped out Rinoa.

by hinokami-san

I mean, I made some minor changes.  In my outline, it was Squall's idea to go back to Traverse Town because he was homesick, but by the time I'd written it, Squall was mostly just conflicted and Rinoa had to convince him that going home was a good idea.  Naturally, they'll keep in touch and visit each other.

The whole thing with Aerith's letters was added later. I mean, I knew Aerith was writing him, and I figured that Aerith's letters would probably get a little more worried as time went on.  I mean, the last time we saw Aerith in-story was the chapter where she can't really focus on anything because she's worried both about Zack and about Leon and then she goes and fights Heartless and Zack drops in.  It's been at least three weeks since that point.  So yeah.

The artwork off to the side isn't really related to anything, except that I found it adorable. :-)

To respond to KKBeckett's review, yes, it is sort of like we're coming to a close.  The FFVIII arc is almost done.  But fear not, I have plenty more plot to come.  I'd say what, but that'd be spoilers, so ya'll just have to keep reading.

I'll give you some teaser quotes because I like you all, though!

"You're wearing a lot of pink."

"I feel the same way about Zack most of the time."
"Most of the time?"
"Sometimes he's obnoxious and I want to smack him over the head with my staff."

"Do you need glasses? Of course it's me!"

"You ever traveled by star shard before?"
"Huh?"
"I'll take that as a no.  Piece of advice: brace yourself."

"I don't think you'll believe me."
"Try me."

Anywho, I like this video.  Also, I just like Sara Bareilles.

Saving Squall (Prequel ch45)

At last, the Ultimecia/end of time arc is resolved! There's still some more resolution as far as the FFVIII arc is concerned, but that's coming up soon as well.

Meanwhile, there's still Cloud to worry about.  Oh, and the fact that Aerith's convinced something bad has happened to Leon.  I'm evil.

Chapter

Again, no tumbl.  This time because I wrote this chapter with a very strong base of my other fanfic, To Save Him.  There are subtle differences, but not enough that I was blogging about it.

by ~MCAshe on dA

Mostly I knew that Rinoa was going to go save him, using her vast amounts of Sorceress powers, and I becomes a power surge and takes them back to their own time, two or three days after she left originally.
didn't see a point of changing too much of FFVIII canon, since it is Rinoa that saves Squall at the end anyway.  She transports herself practically to him, only having to walk a little bit at the end of time.  She finds him unconscious at ... well, I suppose it's time limbo by that point.  He doesn't wake up and his heartbeat's super faint and so she thinks he might actually be dead for a moment there.  She starts weeping and then she

I mentioned in my notes "For once, she rescued him."

I am very fond of this chapter, mostly because it really solidifies the Squinoa dynamic.  They are totes adorable.

Also, Leon has finally come to terms with his father's existence and it's he that initiates the hug.  I love character development!

That, and Quistis totally ships Squinoa and completely understands why they don't feel like being the center of attention.  Yup.  That's a thing.

Boy, do I have so much in store for them later!

Coming up, we've got some Yuffie, which I know has been a request of some of the readers.  Then, there's going to be some "What is Rinoa going to do with all of her powers" as well as "Someone should let Aerith know that people are okay."  Heh!

Hmm, I think I'll give you some teaser quotes, because I'm in the mood:

"And you're wet! Yuffie! What did you do? Did you fall into the fountain?"

"You cannot change the past."

"Or I could just have a near-death experience."
"Don't be ridiculous.  None of us are going to fight you just for something like that."
"The powers themselves would kick in anyway.  Self-preservation tactic.  It wouldn't be an easy fight."
"Besides, Leon wouldn't let us touch you."

"I just got this awful feeling this morning and I can't shake it."

"You have a family back home, that you haven't seen in over a year--nearly two! Go visit them!"

That's that for now.

I know I've posted this video before, but I just love it too much...  Also, it's really hard to find good Squinoa videos....

She wants Time Kompression (ch39)

Or something like that :P

So, HUGE update! 2.5 was released! Anyone super excited? I probably watched the trailer four times this morning on tumblr alone (as in, every single time it showed up on my dash) and then I think I watched it again on FB.  Anyway...  *dances excitedly*

Anyway, link to chapter 39

Link to the tumbl

by VanEvil

So this chapter actually got written after I'd loaded up FFVIII and played that last battle again.  Because, why not.  T'was fun.  That, and I watched two different playthroughs to get more ideas than just what I do.  Because, seriously, I'm not writing Irvine or Selphie, and only some of their stuff gets transferred over to what I was doing with Edea and Laguna.  And my solution with Rinoa is to stick her in her limit break and then just keep her healed.  Then she just chain-casts.  There's no strategy.  And Rinoa in my fic would have strategy.  So... yeah...

Ultimecia's a pretty fun boss battle, honestly.  I found it incredibly easy the first time I played it (though, I'd had so much else go wrong with my game that I guess it just didn't quite match up to the suspense I'd gotten waiting for a functional third disk.)  All the same, it's a pretty decent battle, though the storyline of 8 is all over the place, don't get me wrong.  I think my stuff makes more sense lol.

Sorry for those of you reading the first posting of that chapter, I had missing words and stuff.  Clearly I need to proofread better.  I think it's all fixed now.  If not, lemme know, I'll probably fix them

Again, I kinda feel bad for all the crap I put Rinoa through.  This is the second time she's possessed.  And Ultimecia's a stronger consciousness.  And... yeah... I just... but... *shrug*.  Rinoa is the one who just gets all the Sorceress powers in my story.  Heheh...

And, yes, I did reference Shad.  Don't even ask me why.  I found it amusing and thus kept it.

Huh... is that really all I have to say about this chapter? I think it is.  I mean, it's just a boss battle.  The more interesting stuff will come in later chapters.  O...kay... then.

Well, then in that case... anyone wondering what happens next will have to wait a couple of chapters.  (I say two because the next chapter involves someone who is not these characters.  You'll see!

As usual, have a video:

Oh! before I do that! I found other things to say... I think I've already attached Rolling Girl to Rinoa.  Well, here, have another version of Rolling Girl (a really excellent cover if I do say so myself).  A lot of my feels relate to rar's feels on this one (not the first time I've said this) but... yeah... enjoy!

Fight Against Adel in Rinoa (ch30)

Link to the Chapter: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9446325/30/What-s-all-Gone-on-Before

Link to the livetumbl: http://magiksbrain.tumblr.com/tagged/ch30/chrono

So, this is the chapter where Leon finally decides that he's going to go after Rinoa.  Goodness, that took some persuading.  (Actually, it really didn't.  Edea basically just had to tell him what he needed to do.)  Anyway.

Literally, this is what I had written in my outline:
Leon, Zell, and Quistis were forced to go back to Balamb without Rinoa, but with Laguna.  Despite everything Laguna said, there was no retrieving Rinoa.  After agonizing about this for a while, Leon takes it upon himself to go rescue Rinoa.  He realizes that he cares about her a lot, maybe even to the point of love.  Edea coaches him a bit about Sorceress Knights and he goes off to rescue her.  On the way, he realizes that he loves her.  He brings Rinoa back to herself and she gets the two sets of Sorceress powers under control.

Yeah, so that happened.

by *Mar-ka on dA

Well, it kind of happened like that.  That particular portion of the outline hadn't been updated since I decided
that Adel's consciousness wasn't going to die yet.  Originally, Rinoa just lost control of the second set of powers, rather than Adel having anything to do with it.  But, aside from that modification.

What I do wish I had done, was maybe make the fight against Adel take a little longer.  Reading through it again, I feel like I shortened it by too much to keep it in a chapter length.  I don't know.  Anyone else have any thoughts on that?

Despite that, I'm glad I included the Adel conscious in favor of Rinoa just losing control.  It make Rinoa the only girl who gets possessed, sure, but that's one girl out of a load of boys who have trouble with "shadows" (e.g. Rar's Sora, Riku and Cloud (and kind of Zack).)  *not spoilers because of AtP and BB*

Though, it does make this sequence a little bit darker than originally planned.  Whoopsies.

Then, to piggy-back off of what the livetumbl has going on... I *love* the sarcasm that Leon's got going on.  "I'm going to go visit it as a tourist attraction--no, I'm going to try and rescue her, you dumbwit!"  The second half of that post refers to Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog.  Because sarcasm, that's original.

Then, in those last moments, he's just so mushy.  And he's never been more grateful that Rinoa's always called him 'Squall' in his life.  I made sure that Adel always referred to him as 'boy', and it's not until Rinoa's truly herself again that she calls him 'Squall.'   Heheh.

So, yeah.  That's all I have to say.

Letters Between Aerith, Leon, and Cid (27)

Link to the chapter: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9446325/27/What-s-all-Gone-on-Before

Link to the live tumbl (it was live): http://magiksbrain.tumblr.com/tagged/ch27/chrono

So, I'm not quite sure what gave me the idea to do letters, but I fell in love with it as soon as I wrote them out.  I think it was because I knew that the characters were writing letters back and forth to each other, so why not exemplify that? As the liveblog said, I'm using them to almost summarize things that would take longer scenes to work out otherwise, but I still get a great bit of emotion, because I'm actually in these characters heads.

Yes, this time around, there was a lot of summary involved, but I think that'll change in the future.  I'm intending to write a lot more letters between the characters as the story progresses.

by ~venardhi on dA

And, since I can't really find a good picture of letters, have an awesome cosplay of Cid!

I think this is the first point in which Aerith's initial worry about Zack starts to show.  Because, honestly, she's just sitting off to the side as she's watching Zack cope with both the fact that he killed someone and the fact that his friend is dying.  This is also where Aerith vows to do whatever she can to help Zack.  Because that's who Aerith is.  Also, Aerith's been writing letters for a long while.  She writes to Zack because she loves him, and Leon because she loves him--but in a different way.  She just wants Leon to come home, and at the same time, she wants Leon to follow his heart (especially where Rinoa is involved.)  Aerith's a huge Squinoa shipper.

Leon, of course, responds to every letter Aerith sends, when he gets the chance to, anyway.  He's busy killing Sorceresses! Well, sort of.  Aerith ends up being the first person he admits to that he might actually like Rinoa.  Of course, he hasn't quite admitted it yet, but he's gotten really close.  (While he's doing that, he's being super adorable and it's just so feels-inducing.)  Meanwhile, he's also struggling with his feelings towards his father, and he just wants some answers, which is why he reaches out to Cid.

Cid, of course, never writes letters.  He only wrote one because Leon wanted a response and Aerith pestered him to do it.  This particular letter of Cid's gave me so many feels and it was not okay! Because Cid is a father figure to Leon, it's just not the most obvious relationship in the worlds.  But Cid really does want the best for Leon, as a weird mixture of an older-brother-father-figure-ish-thing.  The age difference is something I haven't quite figured out, but, all the same, ugh, Cid, feels!

I really love how the different styles showed up.  I think I really pulled that off.  Aerith's very detailed in her letters.  She wants to let the people she's writing to know exactly what's going on.  But, outside of that, the letters become a place where she ends up voicing her most inner thoughts.

Leon, on the other hand, doesn't really have a logical order to his letters.  They're very stream of consciousness, because he's still trying to figure everything out as he's writing it.  The letter writing is a way that he organizes his thoughts, which ends up making the letters unorganized.  However, for the things he does know and has figured out, he ends up being very brief, because why waste the time otherwise?

Cid's style is a lot how Cid just talks.  In this particular letter, he was telling a story, so I can't really narrow down if all of his letters are/would be like this.  All the same, he doesn't write letters often, so, he probably has a lot to say (even if it's only one one particular subject) when he does write letters.

Anywho, that's all I have to say. This vid is awesome.

Rinoa's Inner Fight (26)

Well, I'm not behind on homework anymore.  But I'm certainly not ahead either.  Oi.

Anyway, link to the chapter: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9446325/26/What-s-all-Gone-on-Before

Link to the tumbl: http://magiksbrain.tumblr.com/tagged/ch26/chrono/

So, once again, I've got a chapter that's split up into four sections.  The FFVIII arc takes up half of it, then I have Denzel's birth slid in as well as the ending sequence involving Lea and Isa (now Axel and Saix.)

I do feel bad for Zell, because he's kind of just standing there awkwardly while everyone else figures out their next move.  Laguna's super apologetic after what happened and he wants to make it up to Leon and Leon's just like "go away, I never liked you anyway."

So, this is where I start being super mean to Rinoa though.  Originally, Ultimecia was supposed to come and absorb Adel's powers before Rinoa could get to them.  This would then of course spurn a ton of "oh crap, we have to kill her before she kills us all now!" But as I was writing, I got to thinking that I liked the idea of Adel trying to make Rinoa a vessel again.  I thought "oh crap, that's mean", but I just couldn't resist! Once I had it worked out, I was super in love with the idea, so it stuck.  It spawned this in my outline:

"Before they even leave Esthar, Rinoa suddenly loses control of the second set of Sorceress' powers.  Adel's consciousness overpowers her and Rinoa is essentially possessed by Adel.  She starts destroying Esthar.  Esthar police come and lock Rinoa up in the containment facility."

So, yup, that happened.

Outside of that, I decided to give the chapter with Denzel's birth as a marker for where we are in the timeline, more than anything else.

by ~G-a-t-i-n-h-a on dA

Same thing goes for Lea and Isa.  Though, they have a little bit more plot involved.  This marks when they're found by the organization, specifically Xigbar.  I also tried to show Lea's apprehension about the whole thing.  Lea and Isa's friendship is still intact though, at this point.  For now, at least.

Anyway, let's do review responses.

archsage from chapter 25: Yes.  Oh dear is right.

From chapter 26: I'm glad you're finding things to be getting more and more interesting.  To answer your question about locations of other people: Marlene isn't born yet, Vincent and the others are around.  (I know, so specific, huh?) Other than that, no, I haven't read that particular fic, maybe I will when I get a chance.

KKBeckett: Yes, Leon would really like it if Laguna stopped helping.  Not that that's going to happen anytime soon.  And, yeah, Axel's a little over it all.

Anyway, this video is just for fun and giggles.  There was a post on tumblr that highlighted the piece of music (one that my cello teacher had hanging on her wall for laughs).  My friend (who doesn't play music) was talking about how that should be possible.  But... it's not.  It's just... not.  Not for one person playing everything.

Stories about Fights (24)

Or something lame like that.

I'm actually super sorry that I haven't been posting/updating the blog.  I literally don't have time and it's not cool.  Stupid school.  I mean, I get it... I need it... but... ugh.

Link to the chapter (just in case you've all forgotten which one i'm referring to): http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9446325/24/What-s-all-Gone-on-Before

Link to the livetumbl (which I filled in earlier this evening in my abundant spare time (don't let it fool you, I actually didn't have any, I was doing that while I was eating dinner)): http://magiksbrain.tumblr.com/tagged/ch24/chrono

by `Ahr0 on dA

I'll admit, the picture on the left technically depicts events that have yet to occur, but this is the chapter where the picture fits best.  And when I stumbled across that picture (while looking for OTHER pictures, I fell in love with it instantly. Heh.) I just love Squall's face.

So anyway, I knew all along that Rinoa was going to be the one to recognize Laguna as her mother's mercenary, considering she's the only person in the room who can actually make THAT connection.  Squall, however, gets to realize that the man in front of him is actually his father.  And he's not super happy about it.  I mean, think about it, your father figure disappeared before you were even born and now you're finding him 18 years later? Yeah.  No.  Thanks for nothing, dad.

However, this is also the chapter that features Laguna's story.  So, my story in a story.  It's similar to Laguna's story in FFVIII, just with the addition of extra Worlds, really.  I realize now, looking back on it, that it's completely dumb for him NOT to have finished that letter, but... Laguna's a very emotional man and in his grief, he simply didn't finish it.  Or something like that.  Because, that's what had to happen.  I swear, this is FFVIII's doing, not mine.  I'll continue on with Laguna's sob story in a couple of chapters (when I get the chance) mostly because that's when the rest of this goes down.

Quick Review Response, Kiros and Ward will likely not be making an appearance.  They may make a cameo much later in the story, but I make no promises.  I've got a ton of characters to deal with already.  Heh.

Anyway, have another Vocaloid video: (I'm in a mood)