Personal Notes/What the HELL is going on!?

Pulling the trigger!—Finally, I've completed several chapters. It's gone through revision after cursed, bleeding revision, even going so far as to receiving ANOTHER freaking rewrite. It's with no small amount of anxiety, hesitation, and trepidation that I've made the decision to pull the trigger and begin re-posting the work, starting with the first three chapters tonight (05/21/2021). I'm really hopeful, but also doubtful, that they won't see any changes, but at this point I think it's impossible for me to read through the chapters and NOT change anything. I have no clue why that even is. At any rate, as long as a chapter is ready, it will be up before the end of the day each Friday of each week. bang.

Where we are at!—I've finished the draft of the outline for the first day's events and begun writing them (again). I've posted the Author's notes so people can read them and decide based on what they're reading if they want to dedicate their time to this. I've set a count-down to destruction on the older versions of this work on both FFNet and Ao3.

When the last chapter for Day 1 drops on this version of this work, those versions will be reduced to smoldering piles of rubble.

How long will that be? Depends. I'm not planning to rush this out. I've got reliable feedback readers who're willing to endure my head-issues for reasons only they know, god bless them…

First and foremost—This work is being written to be read fandom-blind. That means it treads a lot of old ground. I am trying to write it in such a way that even those familiar with the material might be able to enjoy it. It draws heavily from the canon material of both source media. That's not to say it won't be different. I'm not re-inventing the wheel, here. I'd like to think I have better things to do with my time.

I probably don't, but I'd like to think that I do.

I've lost count—I can't remember how many times I've ripped this work down and re-written it. I can't promise this will be the final version. All I can promise is that I'll try my best. If you don't like the idea that you might fall in love with something that could one day vanish… please don't read this. Also, if you find that to be true for you, please, for the love of god, and I speak from experience when I say this in earnest, don't get married either.

So what's different this time?—What makes this time different is that I'm trying an outline. Novel. I know. But my process before was a sort of "Whatever works" approach and… that's just not working anymore. So I'm, outlining a day of events ahead in the story before I start writing the chapters, hoping to produce a more effective work. I'll also be referencing the Fate/Zero information as source material, and the anime and movies of both Fate/Zero and the three Fate/stay night routes, and expanding the focus far beyond just one character in order to make the story less dumb and more interesting.

I've removed the two weakest elements from the initial version of the story. You likely know what they are if you've come from that version of the story.

I have an over-arching plan (this is what I want from this story). Now it's just a matter of 'How do I hit all these points'.

I'm hoping like hell that outlining each day ahead of time will make that happen.

A Certifiable Author—I have a lot of head issues. Undiagnosed, high-functioning on the ASD scale. Depression. Probably a small amount of fucking… PTSD from shit that's happened in my life. Likely some other things… This has been therapy for me. It's taken me out of a really god damned dark place.

It's those head issues that make a lot of this story what it is. It's those head issues that have resulted in the five… or more fucking tear-downs and re-writes. It's those head issues that have resulted in THIS fucking re-write.

It's not an excuse for bad behavior on my part. I don't excuse my own bad behavior. Sometimes I'm not even fucking aware of it… A lot of the times, I'm not aware of it, I'd say. I try to be hyper-vigilant but… well… some days are better than others.

So please be patient and please forgive my stupid lizard brain and the idiot flesh bag wrapped around it for any weirdness or oddness that comes with this story.

Looking for Feedback Readers—I find the term 'Beta Reader' to be… odd. I don't know why. I'm looking for people to provide feedback on the story. In the past, I've leaned far too heavily into "It's funny so it's fine" when, no, it's not fine just because I think it's funny.

So having a person to evoke my cognitive dissonance with a well-placed critique so I have to beat it down with a baseball bat and properly address it with a cool and level head is good for keeping my writer's biases in check.

So if you're interested in helping me do that, please let me know. I even have a discord server. I mean, everyone does for themselves, their mother and their dog, so I'm not special in that regard. But it is there, so you can come in and… well, it's been empty forever… but it's there!— /NYS5XhsFqF

NOTES ON THE STORY PROPER

Because it's BORING—A lot of questions/reviews/points/nit-picks/what have you that came with the last version of this about why I chose to do a thing a certain way could be answered in the same way—I chose to do X because having Y would be FUCKING. BORING. That said, me thinking a thing is boring is not a valid basis for a decision in a story, so I've always tried to back a decision with a valid reason.

The Crossover Character—The Warrior of Light, the new character being introduced into the story, the main protagonist from Final Fantasy XIV, is a character I interpret to be more of a shell character. They do not have a well-defined, if present at all, personality. They are not Cloud Strife. They are not Squall Leonheart. They are not Fei Fong Wong. They are a shell into which a player of the game may project a personality of their choosing.

I chose this character for this very reason. It allows me to take a template character and build into them a personality of my liking. It's why he's not all grim and brooding, but a good-natured and naïve almost-idiot.

He is also literally my character from the game. Every item he has (with some liberties; namely the crystals themselves which serve as an important plot device; I've chosen to equalize their numbers across the board), every class he uses in the story, everything is taken from the character I rolled when I played (and still occasionally play) the game, though frozen at a particular point in time. In order to avoid spoiling things too much, I'll say no more there.

Conflict—If the canon WoL were dropped into the Fate/stay night 'verse with all of his crowning glory, he'd fucking curb-stomp everything into a fine god damned mist so fast there'd be no story to write.

That's boring as hell. I'm not interested in that. Conflict drives the plot, so there must be some limits set in place. With the help of one of my first feedback-readers, I've been able to come up with a reasonable source of conflict. It effectively explains his (relative to canon) weaker state of being from the start.

Spoilery bits ahead.

So what is his handicap? Once out of the first chapter that kicks off his new adventure, he's no longer on Hydaelyn. He's not even in that same fucking UNIVERSE anymore. Anyone who has played Final Fantasy XIV for more than a couple dozen levels knows you can't swing a god damn dead cait without hitting a mention of aether someplace. It's fucking everywhere. It's everything. Literally. It's magic. It's science. It's souls. It's what drives every single class ability, and what makes the characters able to do any of the shit that they do.

It's needed literally to fucking live.

That he doesn't just up and DIE as soon as he arrives in another world/universe is stretching it a bit. But that would be a pretty short and shitty story. So his handicap is just that—having to limit his abilities or die a horrible death from aether deprivation.

Fortunately, every adventurer is practically overburdened with an abundance of crystals which are literally condensed, concentrated chunks of aether. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

End Spoilery Bits

Monsters vs Humans—In the last version of this story, someone brought up an interesting question. They asked why he'd react the way he does to humans doing bat-shit crazy things.

My go to answer applies here. Having him thumb his nose at insane shit would be boring. I could make it work, but it's not what I'm going for. Of course, "because it's boring" isn't valid, so this is the basis for my decision.

The answer I came up with, which I tried to work into the story proper, is because it was humans, or rather, very much human-like creatures doing those bat-shit insane things. Every monster the protagonist from Final Fantasy XIV has faced was in fact monstrous. Most had some humanoid features (faces, hands, arms, legs, feet, whatever), but they were all monsters. Huge, swinging massive weapons, firing massive particle blast beam attacks, big on spectacle, but more than that, just. Fucking. Big. To go from seeing something the size of a god damned skyscraper dropping scaffolding on your head and wiping out half the raid (fucking Engels. Watch the FUCKING INDICATORS, GOD DAMN IT!) which is huge and slow to seeing something not much bigger than your average Hyur doing all the shit Servants are doing in the original VN (and by extension every other VN, light novel, anime, manga, movie, spin-off, video game, and god knows what else) SHOULD be at least a little jarring, at least.

Also, in every scenario (4 man dungeons, 8 man dungeons, 24 man raids), in which he was facing some insane thing which should not be, he wasn't facing it alone. There was always help. Fuck, even the cut-scene where he forced Lahabrea from Thancred, he was helped by a bunch of NPCs.

S*xy times? Also, did you just censor the word s*x? Twice? Why?—Yes. Yes, I did. Before I wrote this part, I even went in and added the above part about me being certifiable, as an answer to the 'why' part of this question. I couldn't give a definitive answer as to why I choose to write it as s*x and not sex.

Maybe a part of me finds it funny to do it like that. Actually, I think a lot of me finds it funny to do it like that.

Now, as for whether there will be s*xy times in the story… the answer is yes. Yes, there will be.

S*x, but no swears?—Yes. I curse a lot in my personal life, in the privacy and comfort of my own one-room apartment where (hopefully) only my dog can hear me to blow off steam, but the swears in this will be PG-13 at worst. And yes, I understand the… strangeness of having few swears yet… outright explicitly written s*xy times.

Please leave me alone about it…

The chapters keep changing!—Yes. They do… I hope that they DON't, because I do not intend to post them until they've received a thorough critique from my feedback readers and I've successfully addressed any issues. I am going to try like hell to write a chapter, get feedback, revise as necessary until I am satisfied with my response to whatever feedback I receive, and then post the chapter and LEAVE IT THE FUCK ALONE, but I do enjoy going back and reading my own work, and when that happens… I spot shit that needs to be changed. The more I write, the more I grow, and the more chances there are that I'll find something that can be improved upon on additional re-reads.

Then why not just wait until it's done to post it?—Fair question that nobody asked. The answer is because vanity. Getting hits, views, comments, reviews, etc. gives me impetus to keep moving forward and keep writing. It's quite vain, I know, but it's just how the brain works. Validation is… validating. Obvious statements are obvious, and politicians lie with every word they speak. I can go on and on with tautologies… but I won't.

What's your favorite color?—Seriously? Why did I type this question in here again when nobody gives a flying fuck about this? Orange… Orange is my favorite color. And flavor.

Last Note—Again, at the end of the day, this is a work of vain, self-indulgence written by me, for me first, and then shared with you in the hopes that, to paraphrase one Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, I can find just one (or many, or many, many, many) person(s) to praise it, then it won't feel like such a waste of fucking time.

Again, validation is validating.

Cheers—SweetFA on Ao3; Geoclasm on FFNet and pretty much everyplace else.