107 | Dragon Friends Christmas Special, Mystic Messenger, & Yuletide Author Reveals: Welcome to 2017

[straightforwardly]

► So I just realized that there was a Dragon Friends Christmas Special podcast???? I managed to listen to it in the dying hours of 2016, and it was SO GOOD. So, so good. I mean, it was basically two hours of Freezo and His Christmas Adventures, so it’s not surprising that it was amazing, but still. That was a delight.

Hopefully this ends up coherent and doesn’t devolve in mindless shrieking. There was just so much that I loved about these episodes??? It already started off excellent. Baston was there with him! I really am looking for every hint that he stays with their group, and that made me so happy. And he was cooking! Baston the cook! I love it.

And Philge. I know she wasn’t actually in this one, but I loved that she got Freezo a present, and that it was really important to her! And Bobby, looking out for her!! Philge and Bobby both being good friends! That delights me.

Froyo was an excellent character, and the regular-DM played him so well. I loved his whole cousin, I trust you thing. Especially since Freezo is probably the last person you should trust unreservedly. I’m curious if we’ll ever see him again, seeing as the DM is usually busy being a DM.

FREEZO’S BACKSTORY MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. The reveal that his parents aren’t actually dead! And that they abandoned him at the temple because they found out what kind of person Freezo would become, because they thought that if any environment could make him turn out good, it would be a temple! And then they raised Froyo like a son in his place!

Like, I know that Freezo didn’t know about that stuff, but that + the other backstory details dropped in this special make so much sense. Especially in regards to the whole “maybe I do have a deathwish, maybe that’s why I am the way I am’ thing he’s mentioned once or twice before.

And his mother gave him a pendant that would protect him if he turned out to be a good person. That really touched me, tbh. And then Froyo stole it about two seconds later. (I actually theorized that the reason why it never fully sprouted with Froyo, despite him seeming to be a mostly decent person, is because he stole it from a then-innocent child who had nothing else, and so the immorality of that act is what held the acorn back despite everything else. This has been me, on my latest episode of Overthinking Silly Canons*.)

The whole “want necklace is an emotion” joke was excellent. Especially the second time around. Honestly, everything about the battle with the Krampus was excellent.

BUT THEN. BUT THEN. THAT ENDING.

Freezo gave the necklace to Philge.


I swear, I made weird choking sounds when I got to that part. That was just so sweet, omg. I mean, I do love how terrible and murder-happy and minor-backstabbing-y Freezo usually is, but that just makes the moments of genuine kindness all the more touching. Omg. I love these three, and I love their friendship so much, and, for all that Bobby and Philge were barely in this special, it delivered 100% on that front. So good. So, so good.


*Usually it’s Overthinking Silly Otome Games, but now I’m applying it to Dragon Friends too, which. Is definitely not an otome game, ahaha.

► In the last few days, I also got a new phone, because my old one was dying a slow, drawn out death. I bring this up because, now that I have a new phone, I’ve decided to start checking out some of the visual novels/otome games that have gotten so much love on FFA, starting with Mystic Messenger. So far, I can definitely see why this one is so beloved, even though I’m still baffled at the thought of a visual novel fandom having so many fics.

I’m on Day Four right now, and I am in love.

First, the format of this game is really fun and unique! And I suspect that’s what drew a lot of people to try it out in the first place. I really love how immersive it makes the game. I’ve been trying to play it without walkthroughs for this first playthrough— my only exception to that is that I’ve been using this this of spoiler-free chat times to make sure that I don’t miss any.

(Or try to. I missed one from 9:00 this morning because I woke up tired at the same moment that our old, blind cat decided that he wanted to sleep with me, and then I fell asleep again while waiting for it to be long enough for him not to be immediately disappointed.)

This… does mean that I’m interrupting my sleep-time with the strategic use of alarm clocks, but I’m used to that from my days of transcribing the temporary event stories from Shall We Date? The Niflheim. I did also screw up the first day, as I started playing rather late in the day, and so missed all but three of the chats. ._.

I named the main character Eun-hae, mainly because I think it’s a pretty name, and I wanted her to have a name that fit with the other characters.

During the original prologue chat, I was actually wanting to go for Seven’s route first, but when I was cautiously poking for more information about some of the game mechanics (hearts, hourglasses, etc.), I saw that you can’t get him or Jumin in the casual story, so I had to change up my plans.

So now I’ve decided to try for Zen’s route first. I… actually really misread him in the prologue chat— when he kept making that strange emphasis on “what if it’s a GIRL”, I thought that he might turn out to be a sexist character, especially considering that he’s an actor (like, in the, oh, girls, they’re just fangirls, ugh, sense), so I was really pleased when I realized that I was wrong about that! But I still wasn’t planning on doing his route first, mostly because, even though he’s really, really cute, I disliked that he was an actor, because that steps too-close to my hated “romance with a celebrity” thing.

But then I got that first phone call with him, where you can ask him what he thinks of all the other characters, and, at the end, can also ask him what he thinks about himself. He said, ‘oh, I’m basically perfect’, and then went on about why, and I just stared at the screen, and then I started to laugh, because I realized: he’s a dork. Zen is a total dork. This is hilarious, and I am in love.

I mean, I think he could have easily come off as arrogant (what with, ‘oh, I’m basically perfect’ and ‘oh, I’m so handsome, I can’t believe God created someone as handsome as me’), except… I think he’s also genuinely kind? I’m only at Day Four, so this can still change, but I like the way he seems to genuinely care about the other members of the RFA (with the obvious exception of Jumin.) And I’m liking the hints of him not being quite as shallow as he seems, like when he approved of my character saying that looks weren’t too important to her, or that she thinks that a sensible woman would suit him best.

Idk if I’m going to succeed with getting onto his route. I know Day Four’s the last day of the general route, but I’m not sure if I’ve gotten enough approval from him to continue on. Hopefully I do.

►This entry’s getting quite long, but I don’t want to leave it off without doing one last thing. Reveals have happened over at Yuletide, which means that it’s time for me to talk about what I wrote. I wrote five stories, which is a Yuletide record for me— and that was such a nice surprise, considering that I'd barely managed to write/finish anything else this past year!


the still point of the sun [Shall We Date? The Niflheim ♦ Sunny/Isabella, Isabella & Skeletiano & J.J. ♦ 6.3K]

This was my assignment! I was absolutely delighted when I matched on Shall We Date? The Niflheim— as many of you might know at this point, it really is the fandom of my heart. It didn’t hurt that my recipient seemed just as excited about it as me. Honestly, my main problem was figuring out what to write them— because I had so many ideas! I wrote so many discarded openings for so many stories…

I went with this one in the end because I felt like it included the most of what my recipient wanted, and focused much more on all of their requested characters, and because I really liked the idea behind it. I’m still not sure what to feel about the end result, but my recipient seemed to love it, so I’m taking that as a good sign.

A Necessary Pleasure [Night Sun Tarot Deck ♦ Three of Pentacles/Page of Swords ♦ 2.1K] [NSFW]

This treat...surprised me. Mostly because I don’t write sex scenes, and I definitely don’t write anything that borders on being a PWP. Not because I think that there’s anything wrong with either of those things, but I’m usually not interested in reading them, and I definitely am not confident in my ability to write them. But the setup and worldbuilding for this just came up and hit me over the head like a sledgehammer when I was reading through shadowsapiens’s letter, and the next thing I knew, this story came flowing out of my pencil. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, all things considered.

A Mermaids' Guide To Collecting Humans [A Ladies' Guide to Collecting Mermaid Love Songs ♦ The Mermaids ♦ >1K]

There’s not too much to say about this one! I was intrigued by the idea of writing from the mermaid’s perspective, and the next thing I knew, the words were coming faster than I could write them down.

all of what is past [Train of Afterlife ♦ Wind & the Monster, Wind & Wing ♦ 1K]

My obsession with Zeiva games is well-documented, so it should come as no surprise that when I saw Train of Afterlife in the requests list, I instantly added it to my offers, and marked the letter for treating. I am so happy with this story— it might be my favorite thing that I wrote this Yuletide, if only because it came out exactly as I imagined it. Though, of all my stories, it’s probably the one that would make the least sense without knowing the canon, haha.

Blood in the Water [Chalice - Robin McKinley ♦ The Blood Chalice ♦ 1.2K]

I think this might have been my most popular story this Yuletide, which shocks me because it was also the one that I was the least satisfied with! That is, I did actually write exactly the story I wanted to tell, and I do love the ideas that I put into it (particularly in regards to how the Blood Chalice came to have blood as the vessel for her Chalicehood) but after I wrote it I had to wonder if it was actually a story worth telling. Maybe it’s a result of spending so much time on coal, but I couldn’t help but wonder that it was too introspective to be interesting.

Anyways, the people have spoken, and it seems that I was wrong. So that was a nice surprise.

► I might actually get a second entry out today, because 1) I want to get my usual my-year-in-writing retrospective up, 2) the Fandom Snowflake Challenge has started and I’d like to do that as well, and 3) there was another end-of-the-year post I wanted to do, but forgot about yesterday. We’ll see if I get it all done— I still have a lot of real-life stuff that I wanted to do today too.