Frequently Asked Questions

  • Now that Sowing the SeeDs is finished, are you going to write another fic?

    Hopefully, but first we need an outline, some motivation, and a lot of Pepsi.

  • I didn't like the ending of Sowing the SeeDs.

    When you think about it there really wasn't any other way that it could end. The story is trying to 'meet up' with the game. It wouldn't do to have the Sorceress destroyed in the story when you know she's going to be back in the game. There's still plenty of stories to be told within the Final Fantasy 8 universe, trust me :)

  • What of the story is you and what is in the game?

    The answer to that is rather long if you wanted specifics. (I am working on a guide to sort it out, but haven't finished it yet). The short answer is that the concepts in the game were built upon with reasonable guesses. For example: Why can you only hold 100 of 32 of the spells in the game? A real life limitation could be the lack of pouches to carry them.

  • How do you make it seem so real?

    Think about it this way: You are living in the world of Final Fantasy 8. Visualize yourself standing in the courtyard of Balamb Garden. Look around you, look up, look down, observe the fountains, listen to their gurgling. Now do that with everything. Picture yourself in the battles, make reasonable assumptions about what you would feel. In short, think about the setting in a real world sense.

    This approach has affected how the story is told. The game itself is from a third person limited perspective. The gamer (observer) wouldn't know something until the story unfolds, but it could be plainly obvious from a first person point of view. An example of this are the Shumi Faculty. It would be pretty hard to hide their species if you were living there. Especially considering how given student bodies tend to be towards rumor mongering. But you don't learn about them (from the third person limited) point of view until later in the game.

    The other important factor is research. I've already provided a list of my sources. I don't even want to think about how much time all of us have put into learning the world of FF8 and other subjects which relate to it (martial arts and weaponry, for example). Seriously, my note files nearly match the story files page for page when it comes to length.

  • How long is the story going to be?

    I'll let you know when we're finished ;)

    Okay, okay, here's a better answer: Sowing the SeeDs is going to cover up until roughly a year before the events of FF8. If you're keeping up with the story timeline, you can make a reasonable guess about how much further we have to go.

    We do have some tentative plans to do a couple stories following Sowing the SeeDs, but haven't done more than preliminary outlining for them. More than likely, we're going to take a break after this one is done and catch our breath :)

  • Are you a group? / Who wrote what?

    We're a loose writing group. Actually, it's more like my drafting those I want into my pet projects and them indulging me ;) I developed the core outline with Corvus. Once the main outline was finished I began writing it. I realized that I wasn't doing certain characters / scenarios justice, and so I asked Chaos to help me out. He took the core ideas and fleshed them out, developing characters like Myn, Nym, and Enju.

    The first author listed on a file is the one who was responsible for writing that part of the story. The second listed (if there is one) is the one who assisted by writing / rewriting scenes or fleshing out the base story.

  • What's an omake?

    Chaos does a wonderful job of explaining omakes in the Obligatory Info Omake.

  • Why do you write them?

    To amuse ourselves and give our brains a rest. Chaos and I both have a history of writing comedy and drama. Unfortunately, those two genre don't often mix. We wanted to let our hair down and see the characters go nuts, but it would be out of place in the context of Sowing. The omakes give us an opportunity to explore that angle without ruining the main story.

  • May I post your fics on my website?

    Sure, just give credit where it's due, please, and thank you very much :)

  • May I join the SeeDfic Project?

    I'm sorry, we're not accepting applications at this time (geez, that sounds so formal).

  • May I write an omake / chapter?

    I have two answers to this, so please read them both before making up your mind.

    1) If you want to write an omake / chapter to go into the Sowing the SeeDs continuity (as part of the main story), the answer is no. We've written several months in advanced for both the omakes and the chapters. (I'm an outline freak, so sue me). It falls under my private pet peeve that one shouldn't write a fic about a game / anime that they haven't seen / experienced to its completion.

    2) If you want to write an omake / chapter that takes place during a portion of the continuity that's already taken place (such as Xu in Galbadia), I'm more agreeable to that. If someone does actually write a story that bounces off of Sowing, I'd like to read it :) And, if they grant permission, I'll establish a 'fanfanfic' section of the page like there is for the Fanboys!

    It's not my intention to discourage anyone from writing their own stories if we happen to inspire them. But I do ask a couple things:

  • Please don't write Sean / Xu, Kei / Quistis lemons >.<; If you want to write a Xu / Quistis lemon, I can't stop you since they're canonical characters, but Sean and Kei aren't. Please leave them out of your perversion.

  • Please secure permission to use any characters that aren't your own.

  • May I use your characters?

    I need to do some clarification just to be sure all my bases are covers:

  • Jen & Eileen belong to LeVar Bouyer and have been used with his permission. Thus you must secure his permission to use them in your story since he maintains the rights to them.

  • Kei belongs to Helen Fong. The same deal applies.

  • Enju, Myn & Nym, and Aucifer belong to His lordship Chaos. You get the idea, I'm sure :)

    The author omake avatars obviously belong to their real life personae. You'll have to speak with each author if you wish to use (and abuse) their alter-egos. But for the record, I'm agreeable to showing up in other stories as long as they're not lemons.

    Keep in mind that LeVar, Jessie, Eugene, Sean, and Kei are all loosely based off of real people. Treat them with a bit more care than your average red shirt, ne?

    Non-canonical characters that belong to me, you can use freely if you treat them respectfully. Meaning, please don't put them in lemons, going on murderous rampages, becoming child molesters, etc.

    You'd have to ask Square for permission to use their characters ;) But if you want to use the history / personality I've established for them (Xu using sai, for example), that's cool by me :)

  • Is Xu a reflection of you?

    God I wish I could be as cool as she is --; I bear a much stronger resemblance to Quistis than Xu. We're around the same height, same color hair, same glasses, fairly smart ( ^_- ) and we both tend to get our tails in a knot over the little things. In fact, we have so much in common that I've wondered why I have such a hard time writing Quistis to my satisfaction. You'd figure it'd be easy...

  • Is Kei a lesbian?

    Yes, without apology.

    Greenbeans - 07.31.03