The Bog

Title: Amphisbaena
Fandom: Final Fantasy 4
Characters: Baigan. Appearances by Golbez, Scarmiglione, Cagnazzo, Kain
Rating: Mature
Length: ~6.6k words
Summary: Being a monster outside as well as inside has its ups and downs.
Notes: Hoo boy. Of all the fics nobody asked for, I think this is the least asked-for of all time. The story actually spun off a different fic that didn't work out (probably for the best given that it was kind of vile even for me) because I couldn't deal with Baigan's stupid snake arms. They suck so bad. In the game he's all like "Golbez has given me a great gift" and I am here to tell you: no he did not. Anyway, this has lots of extremely graphic gore and violence, body horror, non-explicitly-described rape; I hesitate to give this the guro tag given I don't think the gore in this is particularly eroticized, its mostly just gross.

The quote at the beginning is from Lucan's Pharsalia, a Latin epic poem about the conflict between Pompey and Caesar that knocked me on my ass when I read it in school and quickly became my favorite because it has some truly gnarly stuff in it. There's a lengthy sequence near the end consisting of Roman soldiers dying in graphic, horrifying detail to a variety of different deadly snakes, which in all honestly was probably the primary inspiration for this fic.

( At least a blatant seditious act would have given Baigan an excuse to break the Lord Commander's nose. )

Fandom: Final Fantasy 4
Characters: Edward/Edge
Rating: Everyone
Length: ~600 words
Notes: More Kiss Battle stuff, just silly and cute. This has the distinction of being the first thing in a while that I have 1) composed entirely inside a website text box and 2) lost the first version of due to this. Sigh. Also, I watched my friend play the Namingway Edition ROM hack of FF4 right before writing this, and there's a bit that stood out to me in that translation where they have Edward say "Assuredly so" instead of just like..."Yes", I suppose. In retrospect it's very funny to see how much that single line seems to have influenced how I write Edward's dialog.

( Prompt: full of surprises )

Finished my Four Job Fiesta run. I got to Exdeath at level 30, which is on the low side (having access to !Flee will do that to you), so I ended up grinding a little even though I hate to do that. Feels like an admission of defeat (I have beaten Exdeath at even lower levels then that in the past!). I grinded (ground???) up to 40 which I think was probably unnecessary -- a couple of levels makes a huge difference in FFV, and I absolutely chewed through the final battle in one go at level 40 with !Zeninage, the Chicken Knife + !Mug, the Magic Lamp, and a Beastmaster with a captured Rukh and an Air Knife (releasing the monster casts Breath Wing, which deals damage based on the target's HP and is Wind element, easily deals 9999 to every part of Neo Exdeath).

Something about throwing money at Exdeath until he dies is really funny.

Between 4JF and Octopath Traveler I've been thinking a whole lot about turnbased RPG design.

In other fandom news, Suruga-ya.com had a day of free shipping including international, so I grabbed a bunch of old FFIV stuff -- 3 guidebooks released along with the original game and Vol 1 of the 2008 light novel. My Japanese isn't great but I just so happen to be friends with a handful of pro translators so I might enlist their help to go through the book a bit and post anything interesting. The setting guidebook has a translation online but there isn't one of the light novel, to my knowledge. It's got some very interesing unique art as well -- a scene of Edward and Anna's wedding (?!) for example. The guidebooks have a lot of cute hand-drawn pictures of enemy formations, key art of different items, and of course the setting info that tells you wild shit like "Edward's family invented money" and "everyone born in Troia is female" and "there are only 100 Eblanese people left in the entire world". Also, the absolute shittiest reproductions of pixel art that the early 90s could possibly have served up in an official published book.

Wondering if I should make a mid-2000s-style Character Shrine so I can compare all the different official renderings of Edward, I don't think he's been depicted wearing the same outfit twice. Sometimes he's wearing a different outfit depending upon which menu you're looking at within the same game.

Also got the anniversary Song of Saya light novel, which is mostly just a piece of Fandom Merch rather than a source of unique canon stuff (the text seems to be pretty similar to the VN, from what I can read of the book and recall of the game's specifics, with only a couple illustrations). But, nice to have.

And I just realized I have never posted pet pics on DW, and I firmly believe everyone should look at him, so here's some pictures of my lionhead rabbit Pazuzu:





He was named after the demon in The Exorcist. For good reason, rabbits are inherently evil entities and he is an absolute monster (cute tho).

Time to get back to my roots and post some meta putting some minor detail of a video game under absurd scrutiny.

( So I was thinking about FF4's hovercraft )

Title: Diving Under
Fandom: Final Fantasy 4
Characters: Rydia/Leviathan
Rating: Explicit
Length: ~2k words
Summary: Rydia has no use for human things, especially human desires.
Notes: Written for a round of Porn Battle (RIP) and it got kinda weird, although I don't know where else a sex scene betwen a human and a giant sea serpent would go. Sort of soft-vore-adjacent, with fearplay and Rydia as a definite monsterfucker, because she would be.

( A great many monsters, she knew, harbored a desire to sport with mortals. )