I guess I didn't preorder so much as I did contribute & get a copy that way, buuuut here's my chance to type WORDS about this project where other people have to look at them, & you KNOW I'm not passing that up. > : )
The fanbook has been DISTRIBUTED, which means I finally get to talk publicly about how COOL my FIC LOOKS!!! LOOK at it!! I didn't do ANY of that; all I did was say "hey I have an idea for the like. the title but also kind of the lead-in for my thing; is putting a table at the top of the page something we can do?" & screenshot a completely un-stylèd table I made in libreoffice & then this happened, because apparently @rivulelle is some kind of graphics wizard. It looks so good... (Some of the other written works were done in a completely different style, too! So pro. They all look incredible; I'm never gonna stop being excited about it.)
The whole process of writing for this fanbook & getting to hang out with the other contributors & watch their pieces develop over time was So Much Fun. I especially enjoyed seeing @gardenofshadcws' Still Just as Lost as Yesterday go from good to delightful as details were added & phrasing fine-tuned, turning *Reiner's worldbuilding ideas about Lufenia around and around in my mind, finding out that @ciitrinitas also spends a nonzero amount of brain space reckoning with the Horrifying Implications of the Memory Stuff in SoP, finally hearing some of @villainshit's Astos headcanons (everyone should talk about their headcanon-scapes all the time!!), and witnessing the sheer force of *John's synthesis between SoP and FF1 come into itself as The Terror of a Promise went through its final edits. I also had the best time ever getting jumpscared by the sonnet @roseduskreverie added to A Stranger's Refuse a little ways in... (have you READ THE !! POEM !! YET?????!?!!!??!! BTW???? YOU SHOULD REALLY READ IT. or read it AGAIN, even.) (*no listed tumblr u_u)
For visual pieces, we got a lot of insight into the process behind @malaionus' art with the stained glass window in particular, which was really really interesting (& exciting; everyone went nuts over that art & they were so correct), and the sheer Amount of beautiful fanart never ceased to be A Treat to look at, but aside from that what I really want to talk about are the COMICS. When @linesonwhite added color to that tonberry comic, the Dynamism Multiplier of it all totally blew me away, & I never could've anticipated the lightly-somber sentimentality that sneaks up on you somewhere in the middle of @hogfriend's piece... I got to watch @2000sanimeop's (six-page, full-color) comic develop from the time it was a Mere Concept and I still can't stop looking at the expressions & the fine detail in the environments on every page. The plasticity of riv's process feels more like an elaborate magic spell the more I think about it, and the resulting work reads like a thesis statement on the subtle distinctions in tone that make Stranger of Paradise truly special... & the punchy bite-sizedness and bold color choices in @hoshizoralone's works are always so PRECISE. Everybody had incredible ideas from the get-go, and I'm delighted by the way those ideas were executed in the end. The entire book is DEEPLY swagful.
I already knew what the overall layout would look like (contributor privilege), but on holding the physical book & flipping through it in real life I was struck all over again by the way the works are arranged, and I noticed this page-turn in particular where I hadn't before. The color palette of 2000sanimeop's comic just feeds into the ones for @finalbiodevilhearts' beach-day art & @serenedash's portrait of Sarah and Mia so nicely... I know for a fact that the progression of colors from page to page in the comic was considered with Great Care (wife privilege), so there's something extra special about seeing the same element utilized deliberately in the layout of the book itself. (& don't think I don't see the way the paler, cooler tones on pages 1 and 2 match the previous comic, either!)
(Other places I particularly like include the Garland bookends on the first & final pages, The Terror of a Promise being the first thing in the book after @stellatiria's piece (the peaceful-yet-ominous, calm-before-the-storm tone of which, btw, is gorgeous—and matches the fic in more ways than one), Slump's and focara's wonderfully moody Jack Violence pieces being sandwiched between Cali's Jack Violence (gleeful) fic & Reiner's fic that ends on the Strangers having finally achieved happiness (by way of egregious violence, obv!)—(the whole end section of the book has a distinctly hopeful lift to it, which feels so perfectly The Same as the game itself)—the way Hyphen's chessmaster Astos art and @zabkazee's (finely-made!) Sophia cosplay appear right before APTITUDE, and @rinnuah's gorgeous art facing the last page of Rose's gorgeous poetry. The abrupt pivot into the sonnet GOT me the first time I read that poem, & I think the impact of seeing melodramatic face-touching and arm-grasping under that heavenly lighting—contrasted with the pitch-black of Astos' robe & the darkness pouring off of him, all set off by the bats floating delicately in the background and foreground—opposite it like that makes me feel something very similar. It's so impactful that it almost has a sound to it, & I hope it has GOTTEN many people, by now...
...and, something else I'm only just now noticing, there's also the way the high drama of that particular juxtaposition is followed by riv's comic, with its more down-to-earth nostalgic melancholy, which feels a bit like sobbing on the kitchen floor until you get enough of the raw sadness out that you can reminisce fondly for a while instead.)
As for the merch, I'm not much for keychains or anything, but images I will absolutely put in frames + on my walls, so I got both mini-prints, obviously (more straightforward photo below, if you care to refresh your memory). Zabkazee's arcade print is one of those types of things I can't not get excited about; nil getting Way Serious about playing ~ff1 on the machine while astos stands there BEGRUDGINGLY is such a pitch-perfect translation of SoP into the chosen Vibe Biome, & the LIGHTING especially sells it so nicely. (There's also a holographic effect over the whole surface of the print, which A. complements the art Perfectly B. was ALSO a total surprise and C. looks GREAT.)
And then there's Astos & Id in the style of the Strength tarot card which, like. Nobody is surprised that I want this in my house, & not just because it's 2000sanimeop's art. I think often about how ridiculously Specifically catered to people like me the coeurl conversations in dlc2 are, and the way the blood runs all the way up to the edge of the page while the background gradient stops politely puts the Beast Rage of it all over the top. Please zoom in on that cat. This concept alone evokes the whole "Astos projecting his own desire* to be allowed to Forget Anything (*such as it is) onto a creature who's allowed to ACT how he FEELS" situation, but the composition & the weight on that paw in front / symmetry between the way the two of them are posed & the Beast Rage in the coeurl's big terrified smad tearful blue eye evoke it even harder. (The arcs of electricity around its whiskers are shiny, btw; both prints got some sparkle!)
& look at the lil thank-you drawings riv did for me... the one in color is sort of self-evidently an illustration set 20~40 minutes after the end of my piece (& I'm in love with it. why is Astos so TALL what's his PROBLEM), but please also know that "Astos & Sophia drinking wine about The Existential Horrors together" is also canon, as far as APTITUDE is concerned. And as far as the longer fic from which APTITUDE is but a little tiny snippet is concerned, too........ smile. 😈
Um. I had such a good time, and I'm so glad this book exists. Big huge infinite thanks to the mod team for wrangling us all, & especially to riv for getting this ball rolling in the first place & putting so much love into the details. Wow. This book is real, and it's in my house....!!!
APTITUDE will be posted to AO3 sometime soonish. I will also be hassling allllll the other writers about posting their works, if they weren't planning to already; it would be criminal to let any one of them slip away when everyone worked so hard ( @fracturefalcon!! I'm in your gdoc RIGHT NOW, admiring the kinetic weight in your fight scenes!!!). There is a corpus of literature for this fandom that mostly doesn't exist yet, and we just generated like 10 different pieces of it at once. They belong in the archive! (I don't know that anyone on planet earth enjoys the way that AO3 collections work, for fic, but it might be a nice idea to make a BOOKMARK collection for works that first appeared in this fanbook... so maybe I'll see about that, too?)... The handful of us who had more than one idea to begin with all seem liable to write & post our Other Ideas at some point, though, which is nice, at least. Although, maybe it wouldn't hurt to pry a little on that front, too? For all that we got along & enjoyed ourselves, everyone has been so reserved, compared to what I'm used to. If it were up to me, we'd be flipping over cars together in celebration right about now!!! ...But I suppose slow & steady will do. Or, I mean, it demonstrably Did. We did a really good job.
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vaporwave
stormborns
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yousharknotpass
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germansingergirl
