Days of Exile: Chapter 60

It is over! I'm super excited.

I've rambled quite a lot in the chapter itself, but I've saved the blog post for things more personal. 

Now, regarding the story where they went to Wutai, should I continue? I'm really in a dilemma about it. On one hand, I desire to write it out. On the other hand, I feel that it's time to break away from this world. I have to move on and try something new. If not, I may just ride on this 'success' and never improve in other things.

That is the biggest reason, among many others. It's also because I lack details and story plots to make it a good one. I don't know about you, but I never launch a story without planning up to 40% of the story. 40% means a skeleton of the story progression, the ending, some milestones of the story and solid, believable characters. Even my intentionally-crappy story on 9gag vs FF7 was planned. The only one where I did minimal planning was Samurai Deeper Kyo's "Dress Off!", which ironically, was the most successful story in my profile. That had implications on many levels.

I'm also afraid of the amount of time that I have to put in. As of now, I am uploading "The Only Exception" and I'm not sure how committed can I be with this story. Even now, I'm not very sure what is going to happen after Tifa's story. I'm pretty unprepared, hurhur. 

Then again, if I start moving away from the world of "Days of Exile", it means that it will take A LOT to get back into the world. Maybe a rereading of "I Want To Be A Turk!" and "Days of Exile". Just the thought of it is enough to get my lazy soul crawling back to the couch.

Here is the link to the web novella that I've mentioned. I'm sure you can find those youtubers yourself with their usernames, right?

Alrighty, time for fun facts of "Days of Exile"!

1. Every letter in the alphabet is used in the titles. I finally managed to get it done. If you are not sure what I meant, you can check out my post where I found out that I missed out "Y".

2. None of the chapter titles were words mentioned by Meia throughout that particular chapter. I'm pretty sure of that, but then again, I could be horribly wrong.

3. I absolutely love rewriting the game scenes. It may seem easy since I don't have to think of dialogue, but that's all that is easy. The setting, the actions, even the mistranslated sentences have to be looked into and mulled over before I could write out something more realistic. It was hard to understand what the game was trying to portray sometimes.

4. Many of the scenes were thought of last minute, and thanks to that, I found myself going in a direction that I was not expecting. One of them was Meia disguising as Matilda Ederfeld. Turned out that she was under disguise for a long time, and that led to her going to the Northern Crater, thus being more able to describe what happened when Cloud passed the Black Materia to Sephiroth. However, with that unplanned writing meant a lot of loophole filling.

5. My initial plan was to write the backstories on all the BC Turks, but the main story took up too much time. I've managed to cover Cissnei, KK, Alana, Cassie, Mason, Jasper and a bit of Leia. For Rod and Haato, I have mentioned it in the story but honestly, there was supposed to be a development from their stories so... Oh well. Since there may not be a chance anymore, Kido's backstory was that he was a lackey from Don Corneo's, which I've mentioned in "I Want To Be A Turk!" before but never developed further from that.

6. Oh well, it's pretty obvious that Kido is my worst character to develop. For some reason, I could not fit that taciturn character into the story. Better luck next time.

7. In case you are wondering about KK's name still, I really have no idea what it means, because I've never thought about it.

8. My favourite characters in "Days of Exile" were Reeve Tuesti and Kent. I enjoyed how Reeve became such an emotional character with so much potential for development. 

9. There were many character that regrettably, not written to their full potential. Kunsel and Kido were some examples. The one that I had the most regret towards, was Kent. I wish I could tell you what kind of backstory he had. In fact, actually I did, but I doubt anyone would be able to detect. You kinda need serious detective work, or owning the author's brain, to find out.

10. I would say the same for Lindy and Eddie too. The two of them are featured in Chapter 56 for a reason... which we may never know too. 

11. Two of my titles are exactly the same. Chapter 60 was supposed to be "Reunion" but I just found out that it coincides with Chapter 4. Oh well. That's why it's not "Reunion" anymore.

From these two stories in the last 3.5 years, I learnt a few lessons that I thought would be fun to share:

1. Always do your research. That is not exactly a lesson learnt, but I can never emphasise enough.

2. Thinking about your stories when doing something repetitive, like running or swimming, helps ease the exercise a little better. However, you don't get very far as you will find yourself getting back to square one. For me, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Furthermore, the frustration when you do think of a novel idea, but you can't stop to jot the idea down.

3. Try not to write a story for more than 40 chapters. Lesson painfully learnt.

And that's all I have for you, folks. Thank you and... hope to see you around in my other stories.

Of drawings and such

I was talking to a friend of mine just a while ago. She's a really talented artist but she said that she can't draw people very well. So that kinda reminded me of myself when I was a kid.

You may have heard me mention that I've watched anime and manga at a young age. What you wouldn't know was that I was really influenced by it. For the record, the very very first few anime that I watched were bits of Sailormoon and Ranma 1/2.

Anyway, it got me so into it that when I was in Primary 6, I tried drawing my own manga. I got caught for it by my parents and was scolded because I was not concentrating on my final exam (good ol' PSLE). When I went to secondary school, or middle school as some people would call it, I met a good friend and we started drawing together; showing each other's work when we were done. With her encouragement, I tried drawing another manga and guess what? I managed to finish one and a half chapters, yo.

Ah, good ol' days. I didn't last long though. It was one fine morning after my O' Levels that I realised that I wasn't quite cut out for drawing. I could only draw figures in a particular angle and they look pretty static. Furthermore, I. totally. suck. at. backgrounds. and perspectives. and the list goes on. The shame. I am too embarrassed to even look at my pictures now.

I lost contact with my friend after o' levels but the last time I checked, she was still drawing. Awesome.

With that, my drawing days crashed pretty quickly. Since that moment when I told myself that I wasn't cut out for drawing, I totally stopped. Nowadays, my drawings are just limited to cutesy animals and etc to make little children happy.

However, through that experiment, I realised that I was more interested in the other aspect of manga-making... the storyline.

And the rest, my friends, is history.

Celebrations are in order...

First of all, it was Meia's birthday about 4 days ago, so happy birthday Meia Etsky! I'm so glad and proud of how she had turned out after all those nonsense and brainstorming. I'm so glad that you felt that she was a wonderful OC and that she had tugged on your heartstrings more than once. She is indeed, a special one, because I've put in so much effort and work in shaping her to become who she is.

Next, I realised that this year would be my 10th year since I've started writing fanfiction. Like, gee. In fact, according to Fanfiction, 20th of October 2004 was my first chapter, ever. Considering that I have never read any fanfiction prior to that? The date would be pretty accurate. So I'm about 2 months late, but I wanted to celebrate nevertheless.

Finally, in my personal life, there is something worth celebrating too. I'm happy that I'm moving on to the next stage of my life and may the new commitments not lead me too far away from fanfiction writing.

What are the celebrations? Honestly, I did not make myself really do something. I have the intention of opening something to drink after Days of Exile is fully uploaded, but we'll see :) Well, I've been taking a break, reading manga to my heart's content, and writing really slowly... if you consider THAT a suitable celebration. Hehe.

Don't worry, I assure you that "Days of Exile" will continue uploading till the end.

The Only Exception: Chapter 1

Hello everyone, as you all know by now, I've been working on "I Want To Be A Turk!" and "Days of Exile" for the longest time. However, it's not like I don't write other stuff still. So since all that is left for "Days of Exile" is to be published, I thought I'll start publishing my new one.

When I was younger I saw my daddy cry and cursed at the wind.

Broke his own heart and I watched as he tried to reassemble it.

Since fanfiction has explicitly stated that no musical lyrics, I respect fanfiction and will remove the lyrics. However, here they are over here. The stories are written around the lyrics so I mean, that makes the story extra meaningful, just my opinion.

This plot bunny has been around since 2011, but for some reason I never got down to writing it. Since  2011, I've only written one and a half chapters. Although I have the ideas for the other chapters, I've not written them down yet. Here's to hoping that I will get them out... eventually.

“The Only Exception” is one of my favourite songs from Paramore. Then again, I love many many songs from Paramore, even the more recent ones when they went all mainstream-pop-ish. The stories have a story plot style like that of shoujo manga. That means you need to watch out for superficial plotpoints and way-too-fast-paced story progression. Yes, it IS intentional. 

Also, I'm a little doubtful of my writing in this story. I mean, everyone knows that I've spent the last 3 and a half years writing on two stories based on the Shinra Turks. I'm kinda scared that my characterisation of the AVALANCHE members will be kinda weak. It's time for a brand new journey of learning, nevertheless.

Like how I started “I Want To Be A Turk!”, I began by declaring that the story is updated on a non-committal basis. I've seen what 2014 did to my updating schedule, so no promises.

Anyway, this is four stories of four different characters. Their stories were written to fit the song. It’s AU, obviously. The four stories happen in the same universe. Each story takes about 2-3 chapters, depending on how much I want to write. I originally thought of ending each story in a single chapter, but reading too many words in one sitting kind of befuddles the readers’ comprehension. That's what I think.

Anyway, I hope you will read and review. Finally, a story not centralised on the Turks!