#empty virtue

Thanks for the ask! (From this fanfic ask meme) I’m sorry I couldn’t get an answer to you sooner, but I hope you like it now it’s here.

3. What is the last thing that a fic made you google when you were reading it?

Not quite googling, but I’ve been working my way through Operation VK and to help me keep track of the characters I’ve kept visiting the page of the profile pics for them, by @itsbenedict. It’s a great resource just for rejogging those bits of my memory I need to keep an overall view on everything going on.

4. What is the last thing that a fic made you google when you were writing it?

*Takes a deep breath*

*Takes a second - even deeper - breath*

So, The Ultimatum of Haruhi Suzumiya has been (or at least has felt like) a particularly research-heavy fic. Research for TUoHS tends to take one of the following forms:

Map-making (oh my god: map-making)

Checking up on the canon of Haruhi Suzumiya for details.

Seeing how the Danganronpa games did it when they were at the stage I’m writing.

Finding fiodder for my copyright infringement machines (You know what you did, Konosuke Kamio and Yayoi Mikawa. You know what you did.)

Since I’ve only just started writing the second arc, I’ve just come out of a sporadic but extensive series of analysing the backgrounds of Haruhi Suzumiya media. (One thing I realised recently, when my uni’s anime society started up again after the break, was that I’m now completely primed to hyperfocus on any background art of any anime school ever. :-/ )The most recent source I picked up on was The Reminiscence of Haruhi Suzumiya. It wasn’t quite the best thing for the floors I had to fill in for this arc, but it’s been extremely useful for contextualising all the other info about the school that I have,

With the new arc started, I’ll probably need to get back to researching characters for Yayoi to cosplay. Someone from Tales of Symphonia, maybe? That’ll be my next google.

9. What’s the best insult you’ve read in a fic?

I haven’t really kept track of good insults I’ve seen in fic. My first guess is from somewhere in Pedestal - it’s got some particularly sarcastic moments - and though I couldn’t find any good verbal insults from before the spoilers settle in there is the moment that the main character is kidnapped, tied up, blindfolded and deposited in front of Crasher Wake’s gym, because he’s been putting off going there with increasingly unbelievable excuses.

After all, he only needs his mouth to voice commands to his Pokemon.

(and then he loses...)

10. What’s the best insult you’ve written in a fic?

If I have one, it’s probably going to have been aimed at Dio in Empty Virtue.

*Ten minutes of ctrl+f later*

I checked out a bunch of places where I thought Dio had been insulted. But it looks like his downfall and embarrassment are always the consequence of his own actions.

Thanks for the ask!

23. Name a fic you’ve written that you’re especially fond of & explain why you like it.

It’s not published yet, but I could keep re-reading The Ultimatum of Haruhi Suzumiya again and again. Maybe it’s just that I’m thinking about it all the time at the moment as part of writing it; maybe it’s that it’s the first time the plot has really felt like mine. But there’s just some lines and sections and ideas in it that make me giddy every time I re-read.

28. If someone were to draw a piece of fanart for your story, which story would it be and what would the picture be of?

Hmm… Let’s see. As far as I’m concerned, fanart of Empty Virtue is really just fanart of canon VLR. So from what I’ve got published, probably the best source of fanart would be if someone doing fanart of the town where Tenmyouji and Quark lived took some cues from my headcanons about it. (Though really, that’s still ZE canon fanart.)

It’ll probably be easier to identify sources of fanart once I’ve published The Ultimatum of Haruhi Suzumiya. I wonder what fanartists would make of my OCs? And, what would be really cool would be fanart of the trial sections with my dialogue but as though it was an actual Danganronpa class trial. With, like, actual truth bullets.

32. Do you listen to music when you write or does music inspire you? If so, which band or genre of music does it for you?

I do listen to music when I write (mostly nightcore, sometimes Linkin Park, Non-Stop from Hamilton is highly appropriate) but it’s really just to have something in my ears rather than inspire me. And I’m not sure that it even helps, rather than just distracting me.

45. What is your all time favourite fanfic?

From the timing, I guess it was for this fanfic meme?

32: How do you feel about smut?

Eh: don’t really give a damn. I don’t come to fanfic for pairings, and smut just ends up being more-pairing/less-plot than even your typical fic.

33: How do you feel about crack?

There’s plenty of interesting ideas that come off as crack when you state them in one sentence. Hell, a lot of my ideas are just ‘Mash fandom A together with Fandom B until something sticks,’ whether or not they have any relationship or connection at all outside my subconscious. 

Even if the idea comes from crack, if you develop it properly you can make it something great.

38: Talk about a review that made your day.

So Empty Virtue is a fanfic in the style of the Zero Escape visual novels. Which is to say: highly non-linear. My patch for this was to have two different ‘playthroughs’ voted on by the readers. I can essentially work out a playthrough for any collection of choices you could make, but that’s because I know the entire structure inside and out.

Come my favourite review: over the course of several comments on the the first chapter of Empty Virtue, PsychedOut asked for advice on constructing a route for themselves based on what I’d published at the time and the flowcharts. And, from what I can tell, they did.

That’s dedication.

For this meme, I believe?

7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Tricky one. There’s a bunch of descriptions of Truth bullets from TUoHS that I can’t describe without spoiling, but other than that… I figure all my high tension moments will be dialogue for various reasons, not least because I can’t think of a good prose scene sans-dialogue.

8. Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Two options here. The first is a case where I was able to overcome my usual difficulties with low-tension parts of the interest curve: (From Empty Virtue - Aiice Route 12)

‘The Nonary Game was over, but Phi found herself optimistic. Of all the groups of people who could leave, this was one of the best. She was sure that Clover would do her best to rescue the five players trapped behind her. At the very least, Clover would be drawn back by Alice’s memory.Phi surveyed the faces of the remaining players for their reactions. Dio had retreated to the corner and was sulking, glaring out into the warehouse with pure hatred. Sigma was more subdued. He merely looked down at the letter that Quark had given him and wandered off to the lounge to read it. Phi didn’t follow him: what had happened between Sigma, Tenmyouji and Quark should stay between them, just as Phi had kept Clover’s secrets to the very end. Instead Phi approached K and Luna.“I’m sorry, K,” Luna said meekly, “I was there in the Ambidex Room when she chose ‘Betray’, but… I couldn’t bring myself to stop her. She was so… intense. But if I’d been more firm, if I’d stopped her, you could have left as well.”K lifted his hand and used it to mime a polite laugh, defusing the tension. “Do not worry. I do not hold anything against either of you. After I surprised Clover in her private moment, it is only natural that she would mistrust me.” Then K saw Phi approaching. “Ah, Phi! You were the last to speak to Clover both before the Ambidex Game and before she left, were you not? Did she say…? I don’t quite know how to ask.”“Then I don’t quite know how to answer,” Phi replied.K chuckled for real this time. “Fair enough. What did you intend to do now? Despite the end of the Nonary Game, I still believe it will be worthwhile to continue exploring the facility. There must be plenty of secrets here left to find, and it would be to our advantage if we have uncovered them by the time the rescuers sent by Clover, Tenmyouji and Quark reach us. Besides, I still want to restore my missing memories. Throughout the game, I kept getting… hints, you might say, that I was on the cusp of recovering from amnesia. Alas. I hope that searching the rooms unlocked in the third round might jog my memories.”Luna agreed. “I think I’ll search as well. I want to have a look around the Director’s office and see what it was that had Tenmyouji so spooked when he returned. Um, if that’s okay with you, K?”“Of course. I shall search security instead, then.”Having decided on a course of action, K and Luna left.

It was very comfortable to write this part and I was able to get some good K character moments despite the low tension of the plot.

I think I’ve brought it up here before, especially since I can’t really focus on any later events without spoiling, but this set-piece from The Ultimatum of Haruhi Suzumiya is about the only time I’ve managed a built-up comedy:

“Hey, Kyon! Get down here!” Haruhi called out, capriciously ending my time with Asahina. Once we’d walked down the steps to join her, Koizumi and Nagato, Haruhi waved a folded up piece of paper in front of my face. “Step one: someone has to hold the map. Kyon, that’s your job.”“Wait… when did we get a map?” I asked.Haruhi sighed. “It was right here. I picked it up before you woke up.”I grabbed the paper and unfolded it. It was definitely a map, and the title at the top said it was for the third floor of a south building. Before I could look at it in more detail, though, Haruhi gave another command.“Step two: we have to take notes of everything we see. If we miss any one clue, then Murphy says that clue would have been the clue to solving this mystery.” Haruhi twirled a pen between her fingers for a few seconds. Then she thrust it towards my chest. “Kyon. That’s your job.”Wasn’t I already in charge of step one? Also, who’s Murphy?“You’ve never heard of Murphy’s law? Anyway, you can’t write down notes with a pen unless you’ve got paper, duh. And the only piece of paper we’ve got is that map. That’s why the person holding the map has to be the one taking notes!”That at least made some sense.“Finally, step three. We have to bust down that door and get out of here!” Haruhi spun around and pointed straight at that door, hidden in the shadow to the right of the screen. She beamed confidently. “Kyon. That’s your job.”“Wha-?”So that’s how I found myself ramming my left shoulder into an obstinately locked metal door, tucking a folded up map and pen under my right armpit in a pretty-much-useless attempt to keep the map from getting any more tattered, while Haruhi Suzumiya stood to one side twirling her finger like a conductor’s baton but completely out of time with what I was actually doing.As I took yet another step back, Koizumi tapped me on the shoulder. “You’re looking rather exhausted. Do you need some help?”I very much wanted to decline, but my aching shoulder made it very clear that this door was too tough for me alone. We lined up back-to-back and charged once again. This time, it burst open, and Koizumi and I tumbled into the corridor on the other side.

16. If you only could write one pairing for the rest of your life, which pairing would it be?

No. Screw that bullshit. I had one non-canonical-ship once in my life and it was not only completely ignored it but instead immediately rendered untenable as quickly as I came upon it. With the typical trends of fandom shipping, I do not in any way expect to coincide with anyone else. So it doesn’t really matter.

in the even that some some supernatural force comes down to force me to choose, I’d at least like to retain the options for my own OCs. One of mine has a pretty-much decisive crush on another - and later events work out just so that typical tumblr shipping will inevitably pair both of them with characters they can’t stand - so if this option was in real life I’d choose to support them.

Thanks for the ask!From this ask meme.

13. What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

Trying to remember now. I definitely recall that the final push (the last chapter of The Spare, The Heir and all of The Miracle) was done in one manic overnight rush before the Zecret Santa deadline, so I don’t think I listened to any music during that to avoid annoying my housemates. What was I listening to while writing The Fire’s End? I’m don’t remember exactly anymore, but it was probably my normal mix of nightcore and amvs.