Dear Yuletide Author
Oct. 7th, 2024 10:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
corpsebrigadierYuletide Letter for CorpseBrigadier on Ao3
Dear Author,
Hiya! Let me thank you for taking the time to write for me this fine Yuletide, and let me offer you my earnest congratulations on your great taste in 1990s interactive media. This is an exchange for which I have a great deal of love, and I am exceedingly excited for whatever it is you end up making for me. I've tried my best throughout this letter to give some prompts/ideas for a wide range of writing styles. However, I really want to emphasize that I'm very interested in you feeling free to flex your creative muscles. If the prompts listed aren't quite doing it for you, I am a genuine believer in optional details being optional, and I would love to see whatever creative production you are inspired to make out of these canons/characters.
Note: I am open to treats on ao3 and should have them activated.
[NOTE: This letter will be functionally complete at the time it is made public, but it may be tweaked through the end of sign-ups.]
General (DNWs, Likes, Opt-Ins) | Betrayal at Krondor | Final Fantasy VI | Final Fantasy Tactics | Mini-Challenge Specific Prompts
• ageplay
• omegaverse
• pregnancy-related kinks (ex: breeding kink, worshipful focus on pregnant bellies, etc...); narrative explorations of childbearing, pregnancy, and reproduction more than welcome
• scat/emeto (unsexy mentions of vomit and feces are okay)
Opt-Ins:
• all archive warnings
• epistolary fiction
• non-linear narratives
• whatever person/tense is your jam
General Likes:
• angst
• bittersweetness
• black humor
• character death
• complex family relationships
• hurt/comfort
• illness and injury (plague and head bashing in particular)
• incest where everything is maladaptive and bad
• fever dreams
• existential despair
• non-kinky explorations of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood
• stoicism in the face of terrible things
• surreal imagery
• torture; religious, mythological, and/or plant-based symbolism
• whump
Smut Likes:
• awkward, bad, or inept sex that's still enthusiastic
• blasphemy/sacrilege kink
• clothed or partially clothed sex
• drunk/drugged sex
• hate sex
• non-con/dub-con in general
• non-penetrative sex
• strangulation/breathplay
• violent sex
Yuletide-Affiliated Challenges I'm Up For:
• A Family Affair (Incest)
• Crueltide (Darkfic)
• Drabbles (for Yuletide Madness)
• Interactive Fiction
• Wrapping Paper (Art Treats)
• Yuleporn (Smut)
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Where to Find It (and Canon Review Resources): The game used to be legally free via Sierra's website, but this was back in the 90s. You can get it on GOG for $5.99 though. There used to be a very helpful website called BAK Help Web that contained numerous pieces of information, walkthrough materials, and NPC transcripts, but it is now offline. You can still find it in largely archived form here via the Wayback Machine. The "Text Web" section is very useful for finding story content.
Characters: There's a line in the original manual along the lines of Gorath being "as menacing as Owyn is innocent," and I really love the contrast between the characters and how much Owyn's dorky teenage naïveté and sort of snarky desire to impress people clashes with Gorath's somber, quiet badassery. The fact that the game does so much with such radically different characters and how they find common ground is a large part of what I found so endearing about it.
Ships: I'm obviously very game for Gorath/Owyn, although I'm also open to shippy examinations of the Delekhan/Gorath rivalry or an exploration of Ugyne's attraction to Owyn (It only comes up if you go all the way to Cavall Keep in Chapter I).
If you want to write gen: I am here to enjoy both the abject goofiness of this world's low-res polygons and the deep and angsty pathos that its top-notch writing nevertheless manages to convey. One of the best things about this game was the loving detail with which things like staying at an inn, badly playing a lute, or meeting a bunch of random enemies were narrated. If you want to trend towards lighter topics, I feel like there's room in BaK's world for introspective pieces of character exploration in the everyday video game grind of encountering weird townsfolk, having a rough time at the tavern, or trying to open one of those stupid puzzle boxes. Alternately, as an ardent lover of all things angsty, I've long been in love with just how grim and tragic this game gets at its darker points (Chapter IV of this game--in which Gorath and Owyn are captured, drugged, nearly executed, and then left to make their way out of a freezing wasteland--was very... formative for me), and I'd love to see takes on the miserable business of violence, trauma, and... betrayal that permeates the narrative.
If you want to write something shippy/smutty: Gorath/Owyn is perhaps one of my oldest ships, and I am happy to see just about anything imaginable for them. I'd love things that explore them as foils growing closer over the course of a shared adventure, stuff that looks to how the extremities of that adventure bring them closer together, and explorations as to how the two of them could navigate a dynamic that would feature a rather massive age gap and power imbalance. Beyond that, as mentioned, I'm also game for anything that explores some Gorath/Delekhan foe-yay or that teases at the Ugyne/Owyn implications in canon (with or without concrete Gorath/Owyn as a backdrop to these dynamics). Lastly, I'll be honest in saying that if you are the sort to enjoy taking the exquisite whumpage opportunities of Chapter IV into the realm of the pornographic, I am absolutely game for terrible things happening to Owyn in various captivity scenarios, while Gorath feels Not Great about it.
Canon DNWs: Material unique to Krondor: The Betrayal (the game's novelization); crossovers
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Where to Find It (and Canon Review Resources): I am not super up-to-date as to the best and most accessible version of the game these days, as it has been ported many many times. If you want a script refresher, however, there are a number of scripts up on GameFAQs (the SNES version being the one with which I'm most familiar). If you have an emulator and wish to skip to specific save states, somebody put together a nice collection of them here.
Characters: Something that has resonated with me more and more as I replay this game is how deeply concerned with parenthood/fatherhood it is, which... makes sense given that Sakaguchi has been very open about how his own introduction to fatherhood shaped the game. In light of this, I'd really enjoy a dive into this dad-filled game's most underwhelming dads: a man who abandons his partner (criminal), his partner (romantic), his child, and--with frustrating regularity--your party. I'm interested in Shadow as a character whose heroic participation in fighting the clowngod coexists with an aloof selfishness that he himself never really resolves (save--if the ending is to be believed--via death), and I'd like to see more explorations of the very fraught inferiority that the game gestures towards in dreams and flashbacks.
Ships: The Shadow ship that I really have the biggest thoughts regarding is Shadow/Cyan, as A] I think it would be incredibly distressing and B] I think shipping a ninja with a samurai and a bad dad with a sad dad is neat. I'm also very open to Clyde/Baram (or Billy if you aren't Woolsey-loving trash like me) and Clyde/Relm's Unnamed Mom. Lastly, I've seen suggestions in the past for Shadow/Sabin, and the concept of the pairing has definitely left me intrigued.
If you want to write gen: I would enjoy anything that delves into the numerous lacunae regarding Clyde/Shadow's story, from his personal history before his failed train robbing career to the particulars of his life in Thamasa to whatever it is he's getting up to in between bouts of ditching the other PCs. I love how much work the game makes you do to assemble his past, and I'd likewise love contained, teasing narratives that show us more about him without necessarily giving a full blow-by-blow of his life and motivations. There's so much room to explore this guy, and I'd love to have more revealed about him.
If you want to write something shippy/smutty: I mentioned above some of the ships that interest me, and if any of them interest you, I'd love to read about them at any rating. I'd be delighted to get shipfic or smut for any of the pairings I've mentioned. (Also, just to be upfront and throw it out there, for NSFW content, I am absolutely down for anything that plays with Shadow's mask as a way of conveying something about nudity and intimacy.)
Canon DNWs: Crossovers
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Where to Find It: If you haven't played FFT for a while or are unfamiliar with it and want to get an idea of what it's like, you can check out scripts of the dialogue here (PSX translation) and here (PSP translation). I also have a big, comprehensive list of scene-by-scene script comparisons on my personal website. There's also a very comprehensive Let's Play here (PSX translations). If you have an emulator and wish to skip to specific save states, somebody put together a nice collection of them here.
Note on Names: I mix and match PSX and PSP names for characters and places based entirely on what I think sounds cool, and I encourage you to do likewise and adhere to whatever orthography you like best.
Characters: Zalbag Beoulve has been one of my all-time faves for a while. I love him as one of the more frustratingly complicated characters in the game, given how a fair portion of the narrative's political plot hinges on both Ramza and the player not realizing how fundamentally different he is from Dycedarg until things are pretty irrevocably fucked up. I love him as a fundamentally imperfect avenger whose bid to right the wrongs within his household comes too late. I love him as somebody who just deeply enjoys narratives about undeath and lapses in bodily autonomy. In short, I'll probably love anything you can cook up about this fellow that looks to him as the complex, tragic character he is.
Ships: Wiegraf/Zalbag is my OTP, and I wrote a ship manifesto several years back explaining why I think the best character for this particular avenging war hero turned zombie to hook up with is a revolutionary Faustian sheepman he never actually encounters in canon. I'm also game for pretty much any ship an author feels they can pitch as interesting and that teases out anything about Zalbag's character. Feel free to go dark and/or incestuous if that's your inclination. Feel free to serve up an unintuitive crackship if it inspires you. I'm open to Zalbag/Just About Anybody.
If you want to write gen: I'm always interested in works that look into Zalbag's role in the tragedy at Ft. Zeakden, that explore his relationship to religion (the flavor text in the game repeatedly hammers home how pious he is even if it isn't instrumental to the plot), or that look to how he relates to any of the other members of his family. One of the things that needles me most about Tactics is that we never really see in great detail how the fallout from Zeakden impacted the Beoulves who aren't Ramza. There's no real sense as to how everyone functioned as a family in the aftermath, and when Ramza and Zalbag meet in Chapter III, the game doesn't have them discuss either Teta's death or Ramza's decision to murder a bunch of Hokuten and flee into the snow. Zalbag, in addition to having a wonderfully tragic character arc, seems like a superb character through which to explore this narrative gap.
If you want to write something shippy/smutty: As mentioned above, my attitude is that Zalbag Beoulve is a more than acceptable fandom bicycle, and I'm game to see any ship that fires your imagination. I'll also be upfront in saying that if your inclination is to go dark and write something Crueltide-appropriate, he is definitely a character where I am down to have dark things happen smutwise. In general, though, if you offered to write this character with any manner of ship/smut in mind, I will very likely dig what you had envisioned.
If You Want to Write a Crossover: Yasumi Matsuno seems to have a deep love for a few particular recurring characters and tropes, and "Came Back Wrong" is definitely one of them. If you are interested in writing something involving Zalbag and another of Matsuno's pious zombies with decided brother issues, I'd be intrigued by fics that bring him and Grissom from Vagrant Story together. While I'm fairly ambivalent on the idea of a unified Ivalice canon, in which VS is explicitly linked to FFT via some unwieldy series of exacting timelines and charts, the fact that both characters experience a howling swarm of taunting voices in undeath is an element that I feel could be used to link them together (Something, something... The Dark.) If you are interested in this particular combination of canons, feel free to get creative, lean into the weirdness of the metaphysics of undeath in both stories, and don't feel obligated to have the nature of the crossover make perfect logical sense.
Canon DNWs: n/a
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General Art Likes: I like things with dynamic poses; things that are cute/cartoonish; things that do something offbeat and a little bit exaggerated/surreal; and things that are a little over-stylized and dripping with symbolic imagery. Limited palettes and starkly inked black and white pieces are close to my heart, as I am a rotten colorist and have an affinity for styles I could conceivably emulate. I also tend to like things that are desaturated or a washed out looking. As with my general likes, I am always here for religious imagery and for anything cool involving symbolically important plants (significant uses of fictional plants like silverthorn and mosfungus are obviously cool, but if you want to do things with a floriography primer and real world plant life, please go wild)
Betrayal at Krondor: Anything involving Gorath and Owyn in the Northlands, possibly emerging from Sar-Sargoth or recovering from nearly drowning; mundane instances of day-to-day happenings on the road (healing cantrips, drinking at shady taverns, Owyn trying to busk for money); any images of Owyn interacting with Neville/Navon and Ugyne or images of Gorath in happier times in the Northlands with Cullich and all of his friends who had not yet died in Murmandamus' hopeless campaign. If you want to do something a little bit comic/cutesy, you could portray the characters struggling with one of those accursed puzzle chests.
Final Fantasy VI: I'd really love takes on Shadow as Clyde or Shadow in the process of becoming Shadow, and I'd additionally love depictions of him interacting with any of the characters mentioned in my writing prompts (Baram, Relm and/or her mother, Strago, Sabin, Cyan, etc...). Ship art would be a delight too if one of my ships appeals to you as an artist. In terms of style, feel free to imitate or not imitate Amano's artwork and its groovy, surreal flourishes. Lastly, I am 110% here if you want to do a piece featuring this gloomy loner man and his dog. Interceptor art is more than welcome.
Final Fantasy Tactics: Any illustration of the dramatic canon events with which Zalbag is entangled (Zeakden, the confrontation at Igros, the mosfungus scene) would be lovely, as would any art showing him interacting with the other members of his household (Absolutely game for him interacting with kid!Alma or kid!Ramza and I'm eternally here for Dycedarg + Zalbag + goat or Capricorn imagery). If you are inspired to do ship art or something that plays into one of my darker prompts, feel absolutely free to try these things out in a visual medium. Lastly, if you want to do something a little offbeat, things that have some sort of medievalish art style (illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, etc...) would be great for this canon.
General IF Likes: I really really really like IF, and I'm always happy when I see it in exchanges. I'm a Twine person myself. While I am admittedly not an expert in things outside of it, I'm eager to play any sort of interactive fiction you wish to create in any sort of medium. I'm good for both Choose Your Own Adventure Style games and things that employ a parser, although I'd greatly appreciate a walkthrough in the case of the second one.
In terms of what I enjoy in IF, I really appreciate things that take advantage of unique or innovative mechanics, and I have a soft spot for games that acknowledge the pre-determined nature of their narratives and don't really try to be "fair." Having decisions that feel meaningful but that won't save you from a bad outcome are really up my alley, as are choices you make that result in different outcomes than you might like. My ideal game in any medium is one that provides me with a sense that I'm not being given precisely what I initially want, but that I'm not being treated unfairly or having things made difficult for the sake of being difficult. Don't be afraid to make something where there are no completely satisfactory endings.
In general, though, feel free to use IF as a means to experiment and play around. I like IF a lot as a medium for fanworks because it can open up so many possibilities that aren't typical of most written or visual compositions. I'd love things that exploit the different ways one might feel when the medium forces a certain level of identification with a player character or that layer in ambiguity through multi-pathing and multiple endings.
Betrayal at Krondor: One of the things I like best about BaK is how much attention is given to the flavor text, and I feel that the loving care Hallford expended in giving you paragraphs of description regarding your trail rations purchases lends itself well to a tiny IF side quest-style adventure about the characters doing something incidental to the main plot. Given how gradually Gorath and Owyn become close, I feel like there are a lot of neat ways that you could use some canon-typical side questing to drive some development in their characters (perhaps some moment of cultural exchange or talking about their pasts/families). In terms of mechanics, I don't have a lot of particularly wild suggestions, although it might be cool to do something with Morhedhel script if you want to do something a little fancy/experimental with text (you can download the font here).
Final Fantasy VI: I feel Shadow, given his frequent shifts in and out of the game's main narrative, would be a great character to explore via interactive vignettes and side stories that delve into precisely what he's getting up to in between fighting the Empire and undermining the clowngod. Given how closed off he is in his interactions with other characters, shifts in perspective that allow key scenes to be re-negotiated from his PoV feel like a cool potentiality, and I think you could do a lot with the degree to which IF enables one to explore disjointed, non-linear, and divergent narrative elements with a guy so well known for his extensive flashback sequence. Mechanically, if you can swing it, introducing the game-play element of an independently acting interceptor could also be a cool move.
Final Fantasy Tactics: I've both made and received FFT IF in the past, and I absolutely adore using it as a tool to expand on untold narrative elements of the game--given that FFT itself is a story about lost history and who gets to tell what sort of story. Anything that looks to the inner working of House Beoulve not shown in canon, that plays around with character perspective for pivotal canonical scenes, or that uses the medium to explore Zalbag's agency/lack of agency in undeath would be incredibly cool. If you are absolutely intent on spoiling me to death, I would love you forever if you did something that imitated some of the elements of the Japanese in game sound novels (Accessible right now only via the Lion War mod and this archived GeoCities site).
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Dear Author,
Hiya! Let me thank you for taking the time to write for me this fine Yuletide, and let me offer you my earnest congratulations on your great taste in 1990s interactive media. This is an exchange for which I have a great deal of love, and I am exceedingly excited for whatever it is you end up making for me. I've tried my best throughout this letter to give some prompts/ideas for a wide range of writing styles. However, I really want to emphasize that I'm very interested in you feeling free to flex your creative muscles. If the prompts listed aren't quite doing it for you, I am a genuine believer in optional details being optional, and I would love to see whatever creative production you are inspired to make out of these canons/characters.
Note: I am open to treats on ao3 and should have them activated.
[NOTE: This letter will be functionally complete at the time it is made public, but it may be tweaked through the end of sign-ups.]
General (DNWs, Likes, Opt-Ins) | Betrayal at Krondor | Final Fantasy VI | Final Fantasy Tactics | Mini-Challenge Specific Prompts
General (DNWs, Likes, Opt-Ins, Etc...)
Do Not Wants:• ageplay
• omegaverse
• pregnancy-related kinks (ex: breeding kink, worshipful focus on pregnant bellies, etc...); narrative explorations of childbearing, pregnancy, and reproduction more than welcome
• scat/emeto (unsexy mentions of vomit and feces are okay)
Opt-Ins:
• all archive warnings
• epistolary fiction
• non-linear narratives
• whatever person/tense is your jam
General Likes:
• angst
• bittersweetness
• black humor
• character death
• complex family relationships
• hurt/comfort
• illness and injury (plague and head bashing in particular)
• incest where everything is maladaptive and bad
• fever dreams
• existential despair
• non-kinky explorations of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood
• stoicism in the face of terrible things
• surreal imagery
• torture; religious, mythological, and/or plant-based symbolism
• whump
Smut Likes:
• awkward, bad, or inept sex that's still enthusiastic
• blasphemy/sacrilege kink
• clothed or partially clothed sex
• drunk/drugged sex
• hate sex
• non-con/dub-con in general
• non-penetrative sex
• strangulation/breathplay
• violent sex
Yuletide-Affiliated Challenges I'm Up For:
• A Family Affair (Incest)
• Crueltide (Darkfic)
• Drabbles (for Yuletide Madness)
• Interactive Fiction
• Wrapping Paper (Art Treats)
• Yuleporn (Smut)
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Betrayal at Krondor
The Canon: This game was pretty influential in my youth, and the two main characters (Gorath and Owyn) were one of my earliest ships, even if they were visually portrayed by what seemed to be Dynamix office workers pulled aside to wear cheap Halloween wigs. I adore this canon's sense of an expansive, varied world, its focus on the growing relationship between two unlikely friends, and its willingness to brutalize the player with both unforgiving status ailments and a thoroughly crushing finale.Where to Find It (and Canon Review Resources): The game used to be legally free via Sierra's website, but this was back in the 90s. You can get it on GOG for $5.99 though. There used to be a very helpful website called BAK Help Web that contained numerous pieces of information, walkthrough materials, and NPC transcripts, but it is now offline. You can still find it in largely archived form here via the Wayback Machine. The "Text Web" section is very useful for finding story content.
Characters: There's a line in the original manual along the lines of Gorath being "as menacing as Owyn is innocent," and I really love the contrast between the characters and how much Owyn's dorky teenage naïveté and sort of snarky desire to impress people clashes with Gorath's somber, quiet badassery. The fact that the game does so much with such radically different characters and how they find common ground is a large part of what I found so endearing about it.
Ships: I'm obviously very game for Gorath/Owyn, although I'm also open to shippy examinations of the Delekhan/Gorath rivalry or an exploration of Ugyne's attraction to Owyn (It only comes up if you go all the way to Cavall Keep in Chapter I).
If you want to write gen: I am here to enjoy both the abject goofiness of this world's low-res polygons and the deep and angsty pathos that its top-notch writing nevertheless manages to convey. One of the best things about this game was the loving detail with which things like staying at an inn, badly playing a lute, or meeting a bunch of random enemies were narrated. If you want to trend towards lighter topics, I feel like there's room in BaK's world for introspective pieces of character exploration in the everyday video game grind of encountering weird townsfolk, having a rough time at the tavern, or trying to open one of those stupid puzzle boxes. Alternately, as an ardent lover of all things angsty, I've long been in love with just how grim and tragic this game gets at its darker points (Chapter IV of this game--in which Gorath and Owyn are captured, drugged, nearly executed, and then left to make their way out of a freezing wasteland--was very... formative for me), and I'd love to see takes on the miserable business of violence, trauma, and... betrayal that permeates the narrative.
Specific Prompts
• As I said, I'm very game for thoughtful, light-hearted pieces that mimic the attention to detail the game pays to the mundane every-day happenings in a CRPG. Canon-typical quirky confrontations with random farmers/tavern patrons/randos on the road, bits of banter and camaraderie between two very different individuals as their unlikely friendship blossoms, the actual human exchanges and frustrations one undergoes in having to endure one of those miserable puzzle chests: these are all things I'd love to see play out in fic form.
• If you want to go angsty, Chapter IV is rife with possibilities, and I'd love to see more elaboration on the inevitable moments of closeness and desperation between Gorath and Owyn as they try to escape enemy territory. I feel you can work in a lot of little moments where the two characters confront their very different pasts against this backdrop (with Gorath being reminded of the ties he left behind upon defecting and Owyn being made newly aware of how young and out of his league he really sometimes is in matters of war).
• While Chapter IV is definitely the part of BaK that seared itself into my psyche most dramatically at a tender age, Chapter III, and the subplot with Owyn's relations at Cavall Keep, comes in at a close second. I've always wished there was more fallout from Owyn realizing that his supposedly dead cousin is now the head of an assassin guild and is bent on avenging himself on the father who tried to kill him by courting and marrying his own sister. I'd love to see a deeper dive into the Corvalis family drama than what we get in canon, Owyn having to grapple more visibly with the realities of his bloodline, and Gorath potentially finding new cause for sympathy with a kid whose life has just gotten far less sheltered than they both initially thought it was.
• As I said, I'm very game for thoughtful, light-hearted pieces that mimic the attention to detail the game pays to the mundane every-day happenings in a CRPG. Canon-typical quirky confrontations with random farmers/tavern patrons/randos on the road, bits of banter and camaraderie between two very different individuals as their unlikely friendship blossoms, the actual human exchanges and frustrations one undergoes in having to endure one of those miserable puzzle chests: these are all things I'd love to see play out in fic form.
• If you want to go angsty, Chapter IV is rife with possibilities, and I'd love to see more elaboration on the inevitable moments of closeness and desperation between Gorath and Owyn as they try to escape enemy territory. I feel you can work in a lot of little moments where the two characters confront their very different pasts against this backdrop (with Gorath being reminded of the ties he left behind upon defecting and Owyn being made newly aware of how young and out of his league he really sometimes is in matters of war).
• While Chapter IV is definitely the part of BaK that seared itself into my psyche most dramatically at a tender age, Chapter III, and the subplot with Owyn's relations at Cavall Keep, comes in at a close second. I've always wished there was more fallout from Owyn realizing that his supposedly dead cousin is now the head of an assassin guild and is bent on avenging himself on the father who tried to kill him by courting and marrying his own sister. I'd love to see a deeper dive into the Corvalis family drama than what we get in canon, Owyn having to grapple more visibly with the realities of his bloodline, and Gorath potentially finding new cause for sympathy with a kid whose life has just gotten far less sheltered than they both initially thought it was.
If you want to write something shippy/smutty: Gorath/Owyn is perhaps one of my oldest ships, and I am happy to see just about anything imaginable for them. I'd love things that explore them as foils growing closer over the course of a shared adventure, stuff that looks to how the extremities of that adventure bring them closer together, and explorations as to how the two of them could navigate a dynamic that would feature a rather massive age gap and power imbalance. Beyond that, as mentioned, I'm also game for anything that explores some Gorath/Delekhan foe-yay or that teases at the Ugyne/Owyn implications in canon (with or without concrete Gorath/Owyn as a backdrop to these dynamics). Lastly, I'll be honest in saying that if you are the sort to enjoy taking the exquisite whumpage opportunities of Chapter IV into the realm of the pornographic, I am absolutely game for terrible things happening to Owyn in various captivity scenarios, while Gorath feels Not Great about it.
Specific Prompts:
• In terms of Owyn/Gorath, the line where Gorath affirms that he considered Owyn a friend as they enter the edge of Elvandar was something that always struck a deep chord with me, and I feel that this moment is part of a very well-wrought growing friendship narrative between the two that one could easily turn shippy with a little work. I can also see a great deal of potential for some tropetastic ship development as the two inevitably have to huddle together for warmth in the frozen wastes or console one another as they face the alien world of Timirianya.
• Owyn/Ugyne is a ship that's intrigued me ever since I got the harebrained idea to go in the opposite direction that I was instructed to go in Chapter 1 one play through and discover that there was--in fact--unique dialogue in which Ugyne admits having an earlier crush on Owyn if you undertake this completely unintuitive course of gameplay (Exact quote: "Father would have me married to some Vicompte somewhere spinning tapestries if he had his way but I'm a little too headstrong for the liking of most of my suitors. You know I've always hoped you would come up and sweep me off to some strange place."). If one wanted to take the already very messy/incestuous dynamics of the Corvalis family and have Owyn actually requite this interest (and possibly have things get even messier re: the confrontation with Navon/Neville), I'd be utterly game for it, and as in the more gen prompt for this general scenario, I'd love to see how Gorath reacts to seeing this level of dysfunction amongst Kingdom nobility.
• If you are here for dark smutfic, I would love any number of things that happen in Chapter IV (Drugging! Captivity! Threatened torture/execution! Schemes to sell your willowy nineteen-year-old companion into slavery for very important strategic reasons!) turn into a cause for non-con, depravity, and possible hurt/comfort.
• In terms of Owyn/Gorath, the line where Gorath affirms that he considered Owyn a friend as they enter the edge of Elvandar was something that always struck a deep chord with me, and I feel that this moment is part of a very well-wrought growing friendship narrative between the two that one could easily turn shippy with a little work. I can also see a great deal of potential for some tropetastic ship development as the two inevitably have to huddle together for warmth in the frozen wastes or console one another as they face the alien world of Timirianya.
• Owyn/Ugyne is a ship that's intrigued me ever since I got the harebrained idea to go in the opposite direction that I was instructed to go in Chapter 1 one play through and discover that there was--in fact--unique dialogue in which Ugyne admits having an earlier crush on Owyn if you undertake this completely unintuitive course of gameplay (Exact quote: "Father would have me married to some Vicompte somewhere spinning tapestries if he had his way but I'm a little too headstrong for the liking of most of my suitors. You know I've always hoped you would come up and sweep me off to some strange place."). If one wanted to take the already very messy/incestuous dynamics of the Corvalis family and have Owyn actually requite this interest (and possibly have things get even messier re: the confrontation with Navon/Neville), I'd be utterly game for it, and as in the more gen prompt for this general scenario, I'd love to see how Gorath reacts to seeing this level of dysfunction amongst Kingdom nobility.
• If you are here for dark smutfic, I would love any number of things that happen in Chapter IV (Drugging! Captivity! Threatened torture/execution! Schemes to sell your willowy nineteen-year-old companion into slavery for very important strategic reasons!) turn into a cause for non-con, depravity, and possible hurt/comfort.
Canon DNWs: Material unique to Krondor: The Betrayal (the game's novelization); crossovers
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Final Fantasy VI
The Canon: I have a deep and profound nostalgia for the final Final Fantasy before Final Fantasy VII (and all the changes it wrought), and I think it remains one of the strongest installments in the series. I love how well it combines hard-hitting character drama with the complete absurdity of RPGs in general, and I love its sweeping, poignant explorations of human relationships in equal measure to its willingness to embrace that sometimes those relationships are offset by a talking purple octopus.Where to Find It (and Canon Review Resources): I am not super up-to-date as to the best and most accessible version of the game these days, as it has been ported many many times. If you want a script refresher, however, there are a number of scripts up on GameFAQs (the SNES version being the one with which I'm most familiar). If you have an emulator and wish to skip to specific save states, somebody put together a nice collection of them here.
Characters: Something that has resonated with me more and more as I replay this game is how deeply concerned with parenthood/fatherhood it is, which... makes sense given that Sakaguchi has been very open about how his own introduction to fatherhood shaped the game. In light of this, I'd really enjoy a dive into this dad-filled game's most underwhelming dads: a man who abandons his partner (criminal), his partner (romantic), his child, and--with frustrating regularity--your party. I'm interested in Shadow as a character whose heroic participation in fighting the clowngod coexists with an aloof selfishness that he himself never really resolves (save--if the ending is to be believed--via death), and I'd like to see more explorations of the very fraught inferiority that the game gestures towards in dreams and flashbacks.
Ships: The Shadow ship that I really have the biggest thoughts regarding is Shadow/Cyan, as A] I think it would be incredibly distressing and B] I think shipping a ninja with a samurai and a bad dad with a sad dad is neat. I'm also very open to Clyde/Baram (or Billy if you aren't Woolsey-loving trash like me) and Clyde/Relm's Unnamed Mom. Lastly, I've seen suggestions in the past for Shadow/Sabin, and the concept of the pairing has definitely left me intrigued.
If you want to write gen: I would enjoy anything that delves into the numerous lacunae regarding Clyde/Shadow's story, from his personal history before his failed train robbing career to the particulars of his life in Thamasa to whatever it is he's getting up to in between bouts of ditching the other PCs. I love how much work the game makes you do to assemble his past, and I'd likewise love contained, teasing narratives that show us more about him without necessarily giving a full blow-by-blow of his life and motivations. There's so much room to explore this guy, and I'd love to have more revealed about him.
Specific Prompts
• I'm very interested in Clyde before he decided to become a Shadow and what he was like as a somewhat regular guy not yet sworn to hide his face and talk in ellipses. It would be great to get a glimpse of his not-yet-criminal life, chilling about in the region near Doma (where the train heist appears to take place) or recuperating at Thamasa. Seeing his relationships with the handful of people we know to be close to him during these periods (Relm and her mother, Strago, Baram) would be great, but really anything that just shows what this man is like outside of a mask and assumed name would be lovely.
• I'm absolutely down for angsty gen exploring the central trauma of abandoning Baram and suffering a life of nightmares for it. Shadow's departure from Sabin, Gau, and Cyan at the Baren Falls in particular is an event that has captured my imagination, after I realized that the base of the falls is where he last saw his friend and partner begging for death in the flashbacks. I'd love to see explorations of this central moment of guilt and how it manifests internally for Shadow in the course of canon.
• I'm very much down for explorations as to the insane awkwardity that must be inherent for Shadow traveling in Relm and Strago's company, and as I mentioned above, I'm very down for riffing on the dad-obsessed nature of this canon in relation to such a terminally bad dad. Moments of connection or unease between Shadow and the two party Thamasans would be fun to read about, as would his relationships to other characters in the party shaped by issues of parenthood (Terra, the Figaros, Gau, and/or Cyan).
• I'm very interested in Clyde before he decided to become a Shadow and what he was like as a somewhat regular guy not yet sworn to hide his face and talk in ellipses. It would be great to get a glimpse of his not-yet-criminal life, chilling about in the region near Doma (where the train heist appears to take place) or recuperating at Thamasa. Seeing his relationships with the handful of people we know to be close to him during these periods (Relm and her mother, Strago, Baram) would be great, but really anything that just shows what this man is like outside of a mask and assumed name would be lovely.
• I'm absolutely down for angsty gen exploring the central trauma of abandoning Baram and suffering a life of nightmares for it. Shadow's departure from Sabin, Gau, and Cyan at the Baren Falls in particular is an event that has captured my imagination, after I realized that the base of the falls is where he last saw his friend and partner begging for death in the flashbacks. I'd love to see explorations of this central moment of guilt and how it manifests internally for Shadow in the course of canon.
• I'm very much down for explorations as to the insane awkwardity that must be inherent for Shadow traveling in Relm and Strago's company, and as I mentioned above, I'm very down for riffing on the dad-obsessed nature of this canon in relation to such a terminally bad dad. Moments of connection or unease between Shadow and the two party Thamasans would be fun to read about, as would his relationships to other characters in the party shaped by issues of parenthood (Terra, the Figaros, Gau, and/or Cyan).
If you want to write something shippy/smutty: I mentioned above some of the ships that interest me, and if any of them interest you, I'd love to read about them at any rating. I'd be delighted to get shipfic or smut for any of the pairings I've mentioned. (Also, just to be upfront and throw it out there, for NSFW content, I am absolutely down for anything that plays with Shadow's mask as a way of conveying something about nudity and intimacy.)
Specific Prompts:
• For Clyde/Baram or Clyde/Relm's Mother, I'm interested in much the same sort of content I'm interested in with some of the gen prompts above: examinations of a pre-Shadow Shadow and how he related to others. I'm also very taken with how ship-focused fic for either (or both!) pairings might add additional focus to the central issues of Clyde's abandonment of others in conjunction with abandoning his name and identity. (Also, if you want to go extra dark and add a little additional angst and/or non-con to the mix, filling in the gaps re: what happened between Clyde leaving the mainland and ending up injured in Thamasa, you could explore precisely what sort of treatment at the hands of Vector soldiers Baram was willing to die to avoid.
• For Shadow/Cyan, you really can just go any which way, playing up the thematic synergy between bad dad ninja and sad dad samurai and taking special advantage of the fact that the locations in Shadow's flashbacks could be arguably be used to read him as Doman. There is so very much potential for absolutely upsetting content here--opportunities for utter dysfunction and/or miserable hatesex abound. These guys have so many great ways they could bounce off of one another. They have clear shared issues regarding nightmares, parental angst, and train-related traumas, and I feel these could be spun into occasions for both deep sympathy and deep loathing. (Also, according to the Ultimania/Wiki, both men have as their most prized possessions pocket watches that contain family photos! What an opportunity!)
• While Cyan and Sabin are opposites in terms of their flavor of fatherhood and sense of obligation, Sabin and Shadow are opposites in terms of their overall temperament, with Shadow being a moody loner who conceals his dark past and Sabin being the earnest and straightforward human embodiment of a bear hug. This is one of the ships I've considered where I'm much more open and in favor of optimistic and bright outcomes, and I would love something that shows Sabin cutting through Shadow's aloof misery with his earnest and painfully sincere forthrightness.
• For Clyde/Baram or Clyde/Relm's Mother, I'm interested in much the same sort of content I'm interested in with some of the gen prompts above: examinations of a pre-Shadow Shadow and how he related to others. I'm also very taken with how ship-focused fic for either (or both!) pairings might add additional focus to the central issues of Clyde's abandonment of others in conjunction with abandoning his name and identity. (Also, if you want to go extra dark and add a little additional angst and/or non-con to the mix, filling in the gaps re: what happened between Clyde leaving the mainland and ending up injured in Thamasa, you could explore precisely what sort of treatment at the hands of Vector soldiers Baram was willing to die to avoid.
• For Shadow/Cyan, you really can just go any which way, playing up the thematic synergy between bad dad ninja and sad dad samurai and taking special advantage of the fact that the locations in Shadow's flashbacks could be arguably be used to read him as Doman. There is so very much potential for absolutely upsetting content here--opportunities for utter dysfunction and/or miserable hatesex abound. These guys have so many great ways they could bounce off of one another. They have clear shared issues regarding nightmares, parental angst, and train-related traumas, and I feel these could be spun into occasions for both deep sympathy and deep loathing. (Also, according to the Ultimania/Wiki, both men have as their most prized possessions pocket watches that contain family photos! What an opportunity!)
• While Cyan and Sabin are opposites in terms of their flavor of fatherhood and sense of obligation, Sabin and Shadow are opposites in terms of their overall temperament, with Shadow being a moody loner who conceals his dark past and Sabin being the earnest and straightforward human embodiment of a bear hug. This is one of the ships I've considered where I'm much more open and in favor of optimistic and bright outcomes, and I would love something that shows Sabin cutting through Shadow's aloof misery with his earnest and painfully sincere forthrightness.
Canon DNWs: Crossovers
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Final Fantasy Tactics
The Canon: This is a 1998 tactical RPG by Square-Enix that I just really really like. I love how immensely unrepentantly bleak it is, how it's full of Church-flavored horror, and how it is just filled to the brim with unhappy families. I'm entirely here for political backstabbing and endless misery, 24/7, in this sad little world of grid-based warfare. I love pretty much everything within it, and I would frankly be happy to receive almost anything for this fandom.Where to Find It: If you haven't played FFT for a while or are unfamiliar with it and want to get an idea of what it's like, you can check out scripts of the dialogue here (PSX translation) and here (PSP translation). I also have a big, comprehensive list of scene-by-scene script comparisons on my personal website. There's also a very comprehensive Let's Play here (PSX translations). If you have an emulator and wish to skip to specific save states, somebody put together a nice collection of them here.
Note on Names: I mix and match PSX and PSP names for characters and places based entirely on what I think sounds cool, and I encourage you to do likewise and adhere to whatever orthography you like best.
Characters: Zalbag Beoulve has been one of my all-time faves for a while. I love him as one of the more frustratingly complicated characters in the game, given how a fair portion of the narrative's political plot hinges on both Ramza and the player not realizing how fundamentally different he is from Dycedarg until things are pretty irrevocably fucked up. I love him as a fundamentally imperfect avenger whose bid to right the wrongs within his household comes too late. I love him as somebody who just deeply enjoys narratives about undeath and lapses in bodily autonomy. In short, I'll probably love anything you can cook up about this fellow that looks to him as the complex, tragic character he is.
Ships: Wiegraf/Zalbag is my OTP, and I wrote a ship manifesto several years back explaining why I think the best character for this particular avenging war hero turned zombie to hook up with is a revolutionary Faustian sheepman he never actually encounters in canon. I'm also game for pretty much any ship an author feels they can pitch as interesting and that teases out anything about Zalbag's character. Feel free to go dark and/or incestuous if that's your inclination. Feel free to serve up an unintuitive crackship if it inspires you. I'm open to Zalbag/Just About Anybody.
If you want to write gen: I'm always interested in works that look into Zalbag's role in the tragedy at Ft. Zeakden, that explore his relationship to religion (the flavor text in the game repeatedly hammers home how pious he is even if it isn't instrumental to the plot), or that look to how he relates to any of the other members of his family. One of the things that needles me most about Tactics is that we never really see in great detail how the fallout from Zeakden impacted the Beoulves who aren't Ramza. There's no real sense as to how everyone functioned as a family in the aftermath, and when Ramza and Zalbag meet in Chapter III, the game doesn't have them discuss either Teta's death or Ramza's decision to murder a bunch of Hokuten and flee into the snow. Zalbag, in addition to having a wonderfully tragic character arc, seems like a superb character through which to explore this narrative gap.
Specific Prompts:
• Anything to do with Zalbag's relationship to and interactions with Alma (and possibly how both of them relate to Dycedarg) in the year after Zeakden would be great. While I appreciate that Ramza is the narrative's protagonist and that it makes sense to follow his adventures taking the world's most awkward gap year with Gafgarion, I'm sad that the game did not offer us any insight as to the intense domestic awkwardity that must ensue when one orders one's kid sister's bestie shot.
• I'd be fascinated to see more about Zalbag's actual role as a military leader in a civil war that pits him against his dead father's best friend (Orlandu) and the sort of issues with loyalty and obligation this brings. He apparently dashes off to fight Cid right after insulting Ramza's parentage, and it would be fun to see how that battle plays out. Alternately, I've long been curious as to just what Cid himself thinks of witnessing the confrontation between his departed comrade's two eldest sons at Igros.
• I'm absolutely always game for explorations of Zalbag's death and zombification, as the game very much seems to glide over him getting ambiguously vaporized at Igros and then just popping back to unlife with an insatiable thirst for blood at Murond. If you're interested in the dark and angsty (and I definitely am!), feel free to go very dark here.
• Anything to do with Zalbag's relationship to and interactions with Alma (and possibly how both of them relate to Dycedarg) in the year after Zeakden would be great. While I appreciate that Ramza is the narrative's protagonist and that it makes sense to follow his adventures taking the world's most awkward gap year with Gafgarion, I'm sad that the game did not offer us any insight as to the intense domestic awkwardity that must ensue when one orders one's kid sister's bestie shot.
• I'd be fascinated to see more about Zalbag's actual role as a military leader in a civil war that pits him against his dead father's best friend (Orlandu) and the sort of issues with loyalty and obligation this brings. He apparently dashes off to fight Cid right after insulting Ramza's parentage, and it would be fun to see how that battle plays out. Alternately, I've long been curious as to just what Cid himself thinks of witnessing the confrontation between his departed comrade's two eldest sons at Igros.
• I'm absolutely always game for explorations of Zalbag's death and zombification, as the game very much seems to glide over him getting ambiguously vaporized at Igros and then just popping back to unlife with an insatiable thirst for blood at Murond. If you're interested in the dark and angsty (and I definitely am!), feel free to go very dark here.
If you want to write something shippy/smutty: As mentioned above, my attitude is that Zalbag Beoulve is a more than acceptable fandom bicycle, and I'm game to see any ship that fires your imagination. I'll also be upfront in saying that if your inclination is to go dark and write something Crueltide-appropriate, he is definitely a character where I am down to have dark things happen smutwise. In general, though, if you offered to write this character with any manner of ship/smut in mind, I will very likely dig what you had envisioned.
Specific Prompts
• I'm a big fan of shipping as a means for character exploration, and (as my love of Wiegraf/Zalbag probably makes clear), I think one of the fairer pleasures in fannish life is to take two characters of interest and throw them together like two bugs you're shaking in a jar in the hopes they'll fight. Putting Zalbag together with somebody he doesn't necessarily interact with but with whom he has some narrative similarity (ex: Elmdor/Zalbag exploring parallels of pious national heroism, Balk/Zalbag exploring the dynamics of undeath in relation to social power) will always massively appeal to me.
• If you're up for writing incest, Dycedarg/Zalbag is definitely a pairing I enjoy, and I'm up for takes on it that range from a shippy extension of the dysfunctional family dynamics we see showcased in game to the extremely problematic demonic-goat-on-enthralled-revenant action. Feel free to concoct anything from narratives of subtle, non-explicit, more-than-brotherly toxicity to lurid non-con/gore fests if this is a pairing that interests you.
• As mentioned above, if you are here for writing dark ship/smutfic beyond older Beoulvecest, you should note that you have absolute permission to go wild with this character (DNWs aside). I am pretty happy to read virtually any series of unfortunate events one can imagine befalling Zalbag Beoulve that the human mind can imagine.
• I'm a big fan of shipping as a means for character exploration, and (as my love of Wiegraf/Zalbag probably makes clear), I think one of the fairer pleasures in fannish life is to take two characters of interest and throw them together like two bugs you're shaking in a jar in the hopes they'll fight. Putting Zalbag together with somebody he doesn't necessarily interact with but with whom he has some narrative similarity (ex: Elmdor/Zalbag exploring parallels of pious national heroism, Balk/Zalbag exploring the dynamics of undeath in relation to social power) will always massively appeal to me.
• If you're up for writing incest, Dycedarg/Zalbag is definitely a pairing I enjoy, and I'm up for takes on it that range from a shippy extension of the dysfunctional family dynamics we see showcased in game to the extremely problematic demonic-goat-on-enthralled-revenant action. Feel free to concoct anything from narratives of subtle, non-explicit, more-than-brotherly toxicity to lurid non-con/gore fests if this is a pairing that interests you.
• As mentioned above, if you are here for writing dark ship/smutfic beyond older Beoulvecest, you should note that you have absolute permission to go wild with this character (DNWs aside). I am pretty happy to read virtually any series of unfortunate events one can imagine befalling Zalbag Beoulve that the human mind can imagine.
If You Want to Write a Crossover: Yasumi Matsuno seems to have a deep love for a few particular recurring characters and tropes, and "Came Back Wrong" is definitely one of them. If you are interested in writing something involving Zalbag and another of Matsuno's pious zombies with decided brother issues, I'd be intrigued by fics that bring him and Grissom from Vagrant Story together. While I'm fairly ambivalent on the idea of a unified Ivalice canon, in which VS is explicitly linked to FFT via some unwieldy series of exacting timelines and charts, the fact that both characters experience a howling swarm of taunting voices in undeath is an element that I feel could be used to link them together (Something, something... The Dark.) If you are interested in this particular combination of canons, feel free to get creative, lean into the weirdness of the metaphysics of undeath in both stories, and don't feel obligated to have the nature of the crossover make perfect logical sense.
Canon DNWs: n/a
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Extra Challenges
Art Prompts (for the Wrapping Paper Challenge)
General Art Likes: I like things with dynamic poses; things that are cute/cartoonish; things that do something offbeat and a little bit exaggerated/surreal; and things that are a little over-stylized and dripping with symbolic imagery. Limited palettes and starkly inked black and white pieces are close to my heart, as I am a rotten colorist and have an affinity for styles I could conceivably emulate. I also tend to like things that are desaturated or a washed out looking. As with my general likes, I am always here for religious imagery and for anything cool involving symbolically important plants (significant uses of fictional plants like silverthorn and mosfungus are obviously cool, but if you want to do things with a floriography primer and real world plant life, please go wild)
Betrayal at Krondor: Anything involving Gorath and Owyn in the Northlands, possibly emerging from Sar-Sargoth or recovering from nearly drowning; mundane instances of day-to-day happenings on the road (healing cantrips, drinking at shady taverns, Owyn trying to busk for money); any images of Owyn interacting with Neville/Navon and Ugyne or images of Gorath in happier times in the Northlands with Cullich and all of his friends who had not yet died in Murmandamus' hopeless campaign. If you want to do something a little bit comic/cutesy, you could portray the characters struggling with one of those accursed puzzle chests.
Final Fantasy VI: I'd really love takes on Shadow as Clyde or Shadow in the process of becoming Shadow, and I'd additionally love depictions of him interacting with any of the characters mentioned in my writing prompts (Baram, Relm and/or her mother, Strago, Sabin, Cyan, etc...). Ship art would be a delight too if one of my ships appeals to you as an artist. In terms of style, feel free to imitate or not imitate Amano's artwork and its groovy, surreal flourishes. Lastly, I am 110% here if you want to do a piece featuring this gloomy loner man and his dog. Interceptor art is more than welcome.
Final Fantasy Tactics: Any illustration of the dramatic canon events with which Zalbag is entangled (Zeakden, the confrontation at Igros, the mosfungus scene) would be lovely, as would any art showing him interacting with the other members of his household (Absolutely game for him interacting with kid!Alma or kid!Ramza and I'm eternally here for Dycedarg + Zalbag + goat or Capricorn imagery). If you are inspired to do ship art or something that plays into one of my darker prompts, feel absolutely free to try these things out in a visual medium. Lastly, if you want to do something a little offbeat, things that have some sort of medievalish art style (illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, etc...) would be great for this canon.
IF Prompts
General IF Likes: I really really really like IF, and I'm always happy when I see it in exchanges. I'm a Twine person myself. While I am admittedly not an expert in things outside of it, I'm eager to play any sort of interactive fiction you wish to create in any sort of medium. I'm good for both Choose Your Own Adventure Style games and things that employ a parser, although I'd greatly appreciate a walkthrough in the case of the second one.
In terms of what I enjoy in IF, I really appreciate things that take advantage of unique or innovative mechanics, and I have a soft spot for games that acknowledge the pre-determined nature of their narratives and don't really try to be "fair." Having decisions that feel meaningful but that won't save you from a bad outcome are really up my alley, as are choices you make that result in different outcomes than you might like. My ideal game in any medium is one that provides me with a sense that I'm not being given precisely what I initially want, but that I'm not being treated unfairly or having things made difficult for the sake of being difficult. Don't be afraid to make something where there are no completely satisfactory endings.
In general, though, feel free to use IF as a means to experiment and play around. I like IF a lot as a medium for fanworks because it can open up so many possibilities that aren't typical of most written or visual compositions. I'd love things that exploit the different ways one might feel when the medium forces a certain level of identification with a player character or that layer in ambiguity through multi-pathing and multiple endings.
Betrayal at Krondor: One of the things I like best about BaK is how much attention is given to the flavor text, and I feel that the loving care Hallford expended in giving you paragraphs of description regarding your trail rations purchases lends itself well to a tiny IF side quest-style adventure about the characters doing something incidental to the main plot. Given how gradually Gorath and Owyn become close, I feel like there are a lot of neat ways that you could use some canon-typical side questing to drive some development in their characters (perhaps some moment of cultural exchange or talking about their pasts/families). In terms of mechanics, I don't have a lot of particularly wild suggestions, although it might be cool to do something with Morhedhel script if you want to do something a little fancy/experimental with text (you can download the font here).
Final Fantasy VI: I feel Shadow, given his frequent shifts in and out of the game's main narrative, would be a great character to explore via interactive vignettes and side stories that delve into precisely what he's getting up to in between fighting the Empire and undermining the clowngod. Given how closed off he is in his interactions with other characters, shifts in perspective that allow key scenes to be re-negotiated from his PoV feel like a cool potentiality, and I think you could do a lot with the degree to which IF enables one to explore disjointed, non-linear, and divergent narrative elements with a guy so well known for his extensive flashback sequence. Mechanically, if you can swing it, introducing the game-play element of an independently acting interceptor could also be a cool move.
Final Fantasy Tactics: I've both made and received FFT IF in the past, and I absolutely adore using it as a tool to expand on untold narrative elements of the game--given that FFT itself is a story about lost history and who gets to tell what sort of story. Anything that looks to the inner working of House Beoulve not shown in canon, that plays around with character perspective for pivotal canonical scenes, or that uses the medium to explore Zalbag's agency/lack of agency in undeath would be incredibly cool. If you are absolutely intent on spoiling me to death, I would love you forever if you did something that imitated some of the elements of the Japanese in game sound novels (Accessible right now only via the Lion War mod and this archived GeoCities site).
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