A series of video games by megalomaniacal multicorporation Square Enix which had captured me body and soul. My favorite era of videogaming is the hyperspecific period from around 1992-1995 that sees JRPGs like Final Fantasy VI, Secret of Mana, Suikoden 1, and Earthbound; the miniature but lovingly detailed sprites, the limited but evocative pixel backgrounds, the music striving to do everything it can with a tiny amount of storage space, all like little cloth puppets boldly narrating sixty-hour stories in vast, complex worlds.
Octopath feels EXACTLY like that except made with modern technology and storage space. I have played both OT games for three hundred hours respectively. And I've written some fanfictions about them!
I Know Exactly What A Person Like You Is Doing In A Place Like This: One of my favorite things to do with a fandom is something I call 'winning a rarepair.' How you do that is 1. become obsessed with a ship that has maybe three fics written about it (this happens to me naturally), 2. Develop a fever that can only be soothed by writing a 20-30k sexually explicit fic about that ship, and then 3. by virute of that one fic remain the most prolific writer of said ship potentially forever. This oddly titled fic was my attempt to win Olberic/Therion, a ship I came up with for no goddamn reason. The campaign's going pretty well.
Unnamed Erhardt/Olberic Fic: An Erhardt-centric fic about Olberic and Erhardt becoming involved as young knights, which was going so well I accidentally spun many of its ideas into original fiction instead and abandoned the fic. It happens!
Best Practice: I also wanted to be that person for Alfyn/Miguel, but despite a promising start I didn't get into the fic. Oh well.
Willfully Incorrect: Short and bittersweet oneshot about Temenos admitting he had feelings for Crick the night after Crick is found dead. This fic is mostly about the contrast of Temenos' religiously-motivated internalized homophobia contrasted with the easy and loving acceptance of his party members (here Throns, Castti, and Agnea).
Can you Believe This??: A longfic that is one of my personal favorites out of my own work. Castti/Throne that is told through a series of six connected vignettes that cover six of the canon minor character 'epilogues' at the end of the game. They are, sepcifically, six stories that felt gay to me, which I wrote textually queer versions of here (in order, the shaps are Alrond/Misha, Floyd/Thurston, Pala/Mikka, Temenos/Crick (and Ort), Dolcinaea/Vernoica, and a final chapter for Tanzy at the end).
Unnamed 'Ort Murders Kaldena' Fic: Inspired by the fact that I had now tagged two fics with 'Temenos/Crick' but had never actually written 'Temenos/Crick', I pursued an interesting idea about Ort and Crick joining the main party after Ort murders Kaldena in Stormhail (in order to save Crick's life). It was a good idea, and I think the stuff I did write for it is good, but I got distracted by a different story, as I do.