Dee Moyza

Hey, remember this? Yeah, me neither.

10. Top three favorite fic tropes.

- Friends to Lovers
- Mutual Pining
- Hurt/Comfort

(Can you tell I live for the sexual tension?)

11. Three tropes that are fine but overrated.

- Enemies-to-Lovers (listen, there has to be some actual enmity here, not just "oh noes, we don't like the same ice cream flavor!")
- Grumpy/Sunshine (especially when it's always the heroine who's the Sunshine. It's not her job to fix you, you pathetic sadsack of a man!)
- Small-business AU (coffee shop/flower shop/bakery/etc.)

To be honest, though, I'm not really much of a trope reader. I generally use tropes to filter out things I'm not interested in reading.

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Full list of questions here.

Only four fics written this year again, but also again, I can't resist a meme! :)

( 2024 was a slow year for writing )

All right, let's get back to this!

4. Do you have any OCs? Do you have a story for them?

My only recurring OCs are Argider and Retta (and her family) from "Curious as a Cat" and my stalled-out "Esthar Chronicles" series. These characters are native Estharians in the FF8 world, and are shaped by the violent history and former isolation of their country. They are both warm and outgoing and incredibly curious, eager to meet people who grew up outside of Esthar and learn their stories. They both work in a public library in an older part of Esthar City that also houses archives and a laboratory for the study and development of Blue Magic skills.

Argider was born under Adel's reign, so he didn't know any other kind of life in Esthar. He excelled in his studies and was conscripted into the Estharian army when he came of age, where he discovered that he was a blue mage. After concluding his service, he continued to study the intricacies of Blue Magic, and still works closely with the Estharian government and the army to test for new skills and develop methods by which to teach them to other blue mages.

Retta, on the other hand, was a young schoolgirl when Adel took power, and so remembers not only the freedoms she had before, but also the terror wreaked upon any Estharians who refused to conform to Adel's wishes. Of particular distaste to Adel were the artists and other creatives of Esthar, and she worked hard to erase their history and silence their dissent. Passionate about history and mythology, and not terribly adept at mathematics and the hard sciences, Retta struggled to find her place in this new Esthar. She eventually became a professor at a local university, and, later on, was hand-picked by Argider to help him run the library. She was responsible for starting up the archives kept there by donating items her family had successfully hidden from Adel and the soldiers, and convincing others to do same.

Retta is married with two young sons, and often takes a maternal interest in younger characters, including Argider, Quistis, and Selphie.

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As for original fiction, I have written quite a few characters, but most of them are not recurring. (Except for my idea of Evalena Haven, the gunslinger, whose name I'm going to have to change because I took it for my own burlesque stage name. XD)

A few that stand out to me:

- Captain Ravosa of Drown My Soul in Sensory Pleasure, a cocky, headstrong pirate who believes she is immune to the charms of the sirens that have taken so many others. When her crew mutinies and abandons her on a deserted island, she will find she is not nearly as impervious as she believed.

- Esma Abaroa Prifti of Home is Where You Hold Me, a self-sufficient widow who maintains her family's lighthouse and rescues a sailor (also named Argider; no relation to the one above, I just like the name) from a shipwreck and nurses him back to health. As the two of them grow closer, she deals with her past and must decide whether to remain there alone or move into the future with someone new.

- Aurelia Morales (still in the idea stage) - the eponymous "Epistolary Killer" of this drabble, able to bend ink to her will, and as such, suffocate people with words. She is part of the one-day-I'll-write-it Evelena Haven "universe", where her skills will make her both antagonist and ally at varying points of the story. Damn, I should get around to actually writing that, huh?

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Full list of questions here.

In an effort to post here more often, I'll be taking an ask meme from Tumblr and answering one question at a time. I saw this meme here on my Network page a while ago, but can't remember from whom, and the original Tumblr post is gone, but the list lives on in reblogs! So, without further waffling, let's go!

1. Which of your fics would you keep the basic plot of but rewrite completely?

"Curious as a Cat," for sure. I love the story of Quistis finally breaking free from Garden and starting her own life, but I do think my writing has improved since then. Furthermore, I wrote this when the FF8 fandom on Tumblr was still going strong, and I infused this fic with the kind of silliness that was prevalent then (tbh, I miss that). If I were to rewrite this now, I would possibly tighten up the friendship portions between Quistis, Rinoa, Selphie, and Xu – basically, cut a lot of the irrelevant banter – and I would make Argider something more than a one-dimensional dreamboat (I really like the character, but I wrote him pretty thinly).

Full list of questions here.

Title: Call You Up in the Middle of the Night (4,829 words)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Final Fantasy VIII
Rating/Warnings: Explicit / Explicit Sexual Content
Characters: Selphie Tilmitt, Doomtrain
Relationships: Selphie/Doomtrain
Summary: Selphie was ecstatic to discover that a train GF existed. She would soon also discover that his voice, his questions, and his very essence would take her to brand-new levels of ecstasy altogether.
Notes: Written for rarepairexchange. Selphie rides the train, in a very different sense of the word.

SFW excerpt

Selphie hung back as the others made their way to the entrance of Tears' Point, turning the ring in her fingers.  A train GF!  Who'd have thought such a thing existed!  What would it do when summoned against enemies?  Did it bring its own tracks, or did it just barrel through the air, knocking over anything in its path?  Did it have its own personality, and, if so, would it get along with the other GFs?  After spending weeks listening to Shiva groan and complain about Siren's saucy comments, she could do with a little peace and quiet in her brain.

"Only one way to find out," she said, and slipped the ring on her finger.  Though it had appeared far too large for her, the metal constricted to a perfect fit.  Immediately, the smell of rotting flesh filled her nostrils, and the steady clatter of train wheels on tracks drowned out her other thoughts.

Mmm.  A deep male voice growled, low and sensual,  igniting Selphie's nerves and sending sparks to her most sensitive areas.  Oh, yes.  One as fond of destruction as I am.

"What?"  Selphie asked, only partially out of confusion.  No matter what he said, she wanted to keep this GF talking; the timbre of his voice alone made her weak in the knees, in the best way possible.

Don't play ignorant, girl.  I sensed it the moment we connected.  You crave violence.

"I wouldn't say I crave it.  It's just…necessary in my line of work."

You enjoy that it is, though, don't you?  She could feel Doomtrain swirling through her mind, taking his time to reach the same destination as her other GFs.  You enjoy chaos, unpredictability.  Yes, you and I… Doomtrain sighed, and the sensation tingled through Selphie's body, just beneath her skin.  …we are so much alike.

"I don't really think so.  For one thing, you're a train."

I wasn't always.  My current form is a curse from a crafty king.

"A curse?"

I was a warrior, once.  Strong, masterful, ruthless.  I cut down friend and foe alike, should any stand in my way.  On the battlefield one day—

"Sefie!"  Irvine's voice jolted Selphie from her thoughts, and Doomtrain receded with a growl.  "What're you doing, just standing there?  C'mon, or you'll end up a Torama's afternoon snack!"

"Oh, please!" Selphie called back, thankful to find her voice steady.  If only she could say the same about her body.  Her hands trembled, her knees were soft, and a delicate ache throbbed between her legs.  All this from just a voice?  What a special GF, indeed!  "Like I can't handle a few monsters on my own.  You're confusing me with yourself, Irvy!"

She jogged to catch up to the others, Doomtrain still trailing through her brain.  She'd have to make time to listen to his story, and soon.

Very, very soon.

❀ I added a little bit more to my exchange fic, to flesh it out and to enable me to share two versions of it. It's a sweet little story, I think, and I didn't want people to be deterred from giving it a chance simply because one single (gratuitous) scene became explicit.

❀ Still, judging from my AO3 stats, the NSFW version is the one people are clicking on! XD

❀ I signed up for rarepairexchange, but I'm considering withdrawing before the sign-up deadline. As of now, I think I might be matchable on all of one of my requests/offers. I just can't seem to keep up with fandom at large, these days. I like what I like, and it's just not what's popular anymore. Fine by me.

❀...because I still have Tumblr prompts from last year to fill! No, I haven't forgotten! It's just taken my brain forever to come back online.

So, whatever I decide to focus on for now, it will definitely keep me busy!

Total words added since last entry: 2,372
2023 YTD total: 30,555

Pros of exchange reveal delays: Yay, more time to edit this little mess into something legible!
Cons of exchange reveal delays: A rambling, 2k word sex scene.

❀ I mentioned needing to edit and expand my Heart Attack fic, and... well, I sure did. Added four chapters and almost 14k words to my original submission, most of which are pretty dang good, if I do say so myself. The last chapter feels a little looser than the rest, and I'm not in love with it, but I think it wraps up the story well. The only alternative would be to expand on that chapter, and I've neither the time nor the brain cells left for that.

I hope my recipient likes it, and I'm looking forward to seeing what I received!

❀ I'm seriously reconsidering Fandom 5k. I think this story might have just burned me out. Check-in ends on Sunday, so I'll have made a decision before then.

❀ I reread my old Auron/Lulu story recently and that makes me want to jump back in to planning an FFX-2 Lulu fic where she doesn't marry Wakka and have his kid, but instead travels with the girls and maaaybe gets the same choice little Bahamut Fayth offered Yuna at the end, winkwinknudgenudge.

But sure, Dee, just keep piling on to an already overcrowded plate!

Total words added since last entry: 13,994
2023 YTD total: 28,183

I actually did it! I completed my assignment for highadrenalineexchange! Just a little bit over 10k total, but the final chapter needs a boatload of editing. I will probably break up the concepts in the final chapter into two or three chapters on their own, pushing me well over 10k by the time reveals come around.

See icon for my current mental state. XD