suz's multi-chaptered WIP! rambling & such [ETA: What We Deserve]

[suzanami]

ETA: the fic is now live here.  I'll probably continue to flail and whine in this thread, don't mind me.
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so I haven?t touched WWD since spring of 2013 but hopefully I can get my shit motivated enough to work on it again soon since I?m 30k into it (ugh I?ve since improved in my writing but it?s not bad and I?m not about to rework 30k)

but in the meantime I read it over and I've been sitting on this scene all this time, and I think it's pretty damn cute, so even though I'm going to tweak it before officially publishing it to AO3 or wherever, I'm sharing (cross-posted to vfg because I can).  I almost never post to the fic board here.. maybe since I started a thread for this WIP it'll inspire me to ramble about it here - and talking about a project usually inspires me to work on it :p


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Tea was in the usual place in the center of the gardens, very near to the spot where the Knights always arrived. Fuu followed the small stone path to the long white table, sitting with Ferio on one side and Ascot on her other. Umi helped Presea serve, skipping her own plate as she passed around the cake. Cephiran cake was strange, almost spongy compared to cake at home, but much sweeter, too sweet for Umi. She took a honeyed bun instead. Fuu glanced at Ferio out of the corner of her eye. He?d had three pieces of cake.

?Mm, Cephiran tea,? Umi sighed, inhaling deeply from the sturdy cup in her hands. ?I miss it when I?m not here.?

?You should bring some Earth tea,? Ascot suggested around a mouthful of bun. ?We were just talking about that the other day.?

?Oh, that?s a good idea,? Fuu said.

Hikaru was sipping here and there at her tea, mostly staring into the cup. ?This cake would be good with coffee, though, don?t you think??

Presea tipped her head. ?Coffee??

Hikaru propped her chin in her hands. Fuu motioned for her to take her elbows off the table, but she didn?t notice. ?It?s a dark, bitter drink with a lot of caffeine in it. More than most teas.?

?It?s bitter?? Ferio echoed, raising an eyebrow.

?Well, we sweeten it,? she said, making a stirring motion with her finger. ?Milk and sugar, sometimes honey. My mom likes it black, though.? She grinned. ?I have to use tons of sugar but I like it that way!?

?Hikaru, should you really mix that much caffeine and sugar?? Umi quipped.

?Why do you ask?? Hikaru said, looking puzzled.

?Hmm,? Presea nodded. ?Guru, you could use some of this coffee, don?t you think??

?Sure.? Clef sipped at his tea, no pastries on his plate. Actually, Fuu noted, it was his second cup of tea already.

?Y?know,? Caldina said, tapping her chin with a finger. ?This coffee sounds a lot like raum, that we have in Chizeta. We drink it straight, though.?

Presea sat up straighter. ?Oh, I remember. The princesses brought it the last time they visited. Did you get to try any, Hikaru??

Hikaru shook her head. ?No. I?d like to, though!?

?Hey, Guru,? Caldina said. ?D?you think we could import some? I think Presea?s right. You could use it some days. Really perks ya up. And the Council?s been talking about starting to, like, import and export with the other countries.?

?Mm.? Clef nodded, polishing off his second cup. Umi narrowed her eyes towards where he sat, but she didn?t speak.

The conversation drifted to Hikaru?s dog, then to keeping pets in the palace, then onto speculations about a zoo. Fuu listened to Ferio laughing next to her as she sipped her tea and watched Umi across from her, who kept glancing towards where Clef sat at the end of the table. They had both noticed his especially dark mood. Ascot seemed to have noticed Umi?s glances and asked her what animal she?d keep in the hypothetical palace zoo.

?Sorry??

?I said,? and Fuu could hear him trying his best to smile. ?If we had a zoo, what kind of animal would you want to keep in it??

?Oh, well,? Umi stammered, trying to bring her mind back to the conversation around her. ?I don?t know the names of too many Cephiran animals.? She laughed. ?I always liked the little owl. Er, the night-time bird with big eyes and the spirally tail.? She drew a spiral in the air with her index finger. ?We saw so many of them when we were first here. They?re so cute.?

Ascot seemed to relax slightly. He and Umi slipped into the conversation at the table, but Fuu wasn?t buying it. Clef was more troubled about something than usual (Clef was usually troubled about something, but he could at least carry on conversation) and Umi was more concerned about it than usual. Hopefully things would blow over by their next visit. Clef really did need to learn to relax.

[Down]

See, this is cute, and then my brain goes BUT WHAT IS UP WITH CLEF (AND UMI???) and then I get distracted. XDDD

But heee~ thanks for sharing! Though I'm failing to think of cake spongier than sponge cake. ...They should bring some sencha. (Actually, Fuu has probably had tea-ceremony lessons, hasn't she? Quite possibly Umi as well - if they want a bitter drink, then matcha is - yes. XD And the 'sweets' you'd normally have with it are a lot less sugary-sweet than western sweets, so Umi's probably happier with those...)

[suzanami]

Clef is distracted by the overarching plot which has yet to be revealed and Umi is still in the ~unestablished feels~ stage of things.

I like to think that there's a lot of Cephiran foods that we might not be able to really duplicate (a spongier-than-spongecake cake, for example) because they have weird plants and animals and idk maybe they use milk from some six-legged bird to make this cake idek Cephiro is a weird place

[Milieva]

?I always liked the little owl. Er, the night-time bird with big eyes and the spirally tail.?

If it's the one I think it is...   That's the one I started calling a Foof. I'm embroidering one right now and it's kind of annoying....

I think I vaguely remember discussion of this scene at some point, because it feels familiar.  Possibly even something posted in chat? 

Still curious about it. Whee! Fic!

[Down]

I like to think that there's a lot of Cephiran foods that we might not be able to really duplicate (a spongier-than-spongecake cake, for example) because they have weird plants and animals and idk maybe they use milk from some six-legged bird to make this cake idek Cephiro is a weird place

THERE IS A MILK THING what is the milk thing WHERE DID I PUT THE MATERIALS BOOK- HAH it's the football-sized cherries :DDDDDDD they're milky white inside and they're okay to eat but if you squeeze them the juice is JUST LIKE MILK :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

......................given the only flour that's mentioned is made from grinding up nut-like shells instead of grains - heh, yes, their food is going to be WEIRD :DDDDDD

[suzanami]

WHY DID NONE OF THIS SHIT MAKE IT INTO CANON STUFF???  it's gold, I love it, I just love it all.

I'm picking some world-building from the games, too.  in the Sega (I think it was?) game (there's two, but I think it was the Sega one??) there's some flowers that smell like... car exhaust.  totally have those in my fic (they're Presea's favorite but the Knights hate them, obviously)

[Down]

THE GIF WAS MEANT TO BE IN A DIFFERENT THREAD BUT I AM EASILY DISTRACTED and hey IT WORKS HERE TOO ~CELEBRATE GOOFY NONSENSE LIKE GIANT CHERRIES WITH JUICE FOR MILK~ OR SOMETHING oops XDDDDDDDDDD

[suzanami]

so it's EXCITING TO ME ANYWAY but although a few things need tweaked, I've got ten chapters written!

they're short, averaging ~2500 words, but they're a comfortable size.  and I'd rather have smaller updates more often than publish four chapters and then disappear for a year, you know?

I want to get further along before I start posting though.  it's only about half done, I think.

[Down]

they're short, averaging ~2500 words, but they're a comfortable size.  and I'd rather have smaller updates more often than publish four chapters and then disappear for a year, you know

AHAHAHAHAAaaaaaa *whimper* I do not understand this ~short contained chapter~ thing what can you mean....

But that's awesomeness, yay!

(Seriously - I'm jealous. Chapters for PY are the most ridiculous of mine - I think I normally try to get between 5000-7000 words a chapter in other things, though if they want to be shorter I WOULD BE ALL FOR IT and I've got a few flash-fic type things which are whole at 750-2000 words, but PY the rule is 'between 7000 and 130000 and if they reach 14000 it gets split into two somewhere because that's twice the minimum'... And they certainly don't get posted regularly... FLURRIES, occasionally, but!)

I tried to get most of it written before I posted - I just had no idea how it was going to spiral out of control on me. XD MANY CONGRATULATIONS ON BEING A NICELY CONTROLLED WRITER I AM VERY JEALOUS

[suzanami]

yeah for my personal/original writings I usually have them ~5000 for a chapter.

130k jfc Down

even at my wordiest, really, I don't write a ton.  writing's not my "natural" venue of creativity like it is yours, it's quite a pain in the ass, really.  I have to make myself do it and more often than not I don't ~~feel like~~ writing.  it's definitely your Thing though, and I love how wordy you are XDD

but yeah forcing myself to get back into writing in this has been hard!  even though I love it!

[Down]

I MAY HAVE TYPO'D AN EXTRA 0 I just got home and it's very hot I can't take it XDD 13K not 130K!

PY in total is looking like it'll be 250,000 to 300,000, so - it would be only about three chapters then and I've got more cliffhangers than that in it XD (currently it's at 200,000 posted, with five chapters to go? ...Which might be short! THERE MIGHT NOT BE THAT MANY I AM HOPEFUL but I know how this goes when I'm the one writing so.)

.....................I love writing. I mean I hate it a lot of the time, too, but I love having WRITTEN. ^^ Art is the one which doesn't come naturally to me at all - I'm very rarely thinking visually. Even my dreams are in words! Though sometimes I do get a scene or a snippet of fic in what I think of as visual form - but usually it's the motion that I'm seeing, rather than the details of the characters or the background or whatever? And I can't create animations XDD (Like, for one scene the thing I got was Clef's hands shaking slightly as he reached out to take Umi's sword and the way he hunches in on himself slightly as he does it and the flare of Selece's wings about them mirroring that curve so what I REALLY get is a sense of drawing-in where Clef is with a close-up on his hands and a SWOOSH outwards about the edges of the image which is Selece's wings reaching about them. If that makes sense?)

[suzanami]

I may have not even remembered to post this here, as most of us are also on Tumblr, but What We Deserve went live for Fuu/Ferio week a couple weeks back! 

currently deciding if I feel like posting to FFnet.  I'd rather no comments than inane ones that consistently miss the point of every single thing that doesn't fly over their head :p  it's disheartening to have people say you did something wrong when it's something subjective and ugh not worth more attention, not worth it.

✿ What We Deserve on AO3 ✿

[suzanami]

I've posted four whole chapters now give me cookies made of that cherry milk thing

[umi ryuzzki]

really good I like I just love it it is really really good worki like