Upcoming Story: Final Fantasy: Aleph Null · 4:00am Sep 7th, 2021
Question: "Can you synthesize the plots and lore of all the mainline Final Fantasy games into one large story?"
Answer: "Apparently, you can. The result is something I call Final Fantasy: Aleph Null. And I'm going to need some more help making it."
Final Fantasy: Aleph Null is a story Synthesized from the plots of most of the mainline Final Fantasy games. (II, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, XIII, and XV; I and III to a lesser extent; XI and XIV not at all). It is a story much like Worlds Apart, in that the chapters are relatively small and they all lead toward a single plot.
The world-building is done in the style of The Distant Princess, but unlike that one, I have an absolute ending in mind. As usual, it is written with the intent that anyone should be able to read it, even without Final Fantasy knowledge.
You may recall that I once spoke about this story being canceled due to me being overwhelmed. Well, I secretly picked it up again and have been writing pretty strong for quite some time. Apparently, I can't just let ideas go to die, who knew? I have 60 chapters written, and several are available publicly on the Discord server.
Come with me and read about some of your favorite JRPG heroes: Terra, Balthier, Galuf, Vivi, Yuffie, and many, many more.
I'm posting an entire blog post advertising this for a very particular reason: I've hit the moment in the story where I need feedback from multiple sources to go any further. My usual pre-readers aren't generally interested in Final Fantasy or have gotten too busy to keep up with everything. (I don't blame them—life changes all the time.) I'm putting this out there as a specific call for pre-readers to come and examine the story, make sure it's up to snuff, and to interact with me to determine what form the next part of the story will take—seeing as it's what I like to call "pseudo interactive." Please, anyone who's even mildly interested, don't hesitate to drop in!
As for when it will start publishing, I'm not sure. Technically I have way more chapter backlog saved up than I need to for it, but I'm a tad busy with Graduate School and all the other stories I'm managing. I guess if I receive a ton of comments about "release it now we wanna read it!" I'll release it sooner rather than later. But I'm still asking for pre-readers! The more the better! Come into the Server and have some fun!
Alternatively, if you don't like Discord/don't have Discord, the drafts are posted to this doc ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rMX9NcFjFEsg0D6XDGjgOc-JGCTGeEfdnO3RT5HiCtU/edit ) along with all my other drafts. You can keep up there. If you want to be an official pre-reader, be sure to read those drafts and comment on them using the Gdocs comment function—I'll give you the rest of the sixty chapter drafts if you still want to do it at that point.
Alternatively, I have just posted the opening here, if links are scary:
~000~
Opening
The trees of the forest rustled in the soft breeze, rousing a young woman—barely more than a girl—from her rest. Lazily, she checked to see if anyone had approached her position with a worthy challenge or something worth stealing. Finding nothing near her, she let out a mild groan of disappointment and let her eyelids rest once more.
The wind, however, only got stronger, buffeting the girl’s face until she knew it wasn’t something she could ignore. Opening her eyes, she was shocked to find that there was a squadron of airships flying overhead. They were brilliant, pointed creatures shaped like birds, though unlike avians their wings did not flap, and they had propellers instead of feathers all over their bodies.
Their crimson color signaled their purpose of war.
Instinctually, the girl grabbed her oversized shuriken and checked the armored guard on her other arm to make sure it was attached. Slinging the star-shaped weapon onto her back, she jumped to the very top of the tree and poked her head out of the foliage. The airships were coming in for a landing just outside the forest, next to one of the many nearby rivers.
Opportunity.
~~~
Elsewhere, another airship flew across an ocean, skimming the water. It, too, looked vaguely like a bird, though without the propellers, instead focusing its design on two circular discs on the bottom that held the ship’s power. It was a relatively small craft, with only a single main cockpit and a few engines coming out the back. The “wings” themselves were painted with artistic blue feathers, giving it a distant kinship with the birds of the air flying alongside it.
In the cockpit, a younger man with well-groomed hair and a stylish vest gestured out the window. He raised an eyebrow and gave his companion a cocky smile. His companion, to her credit, didn’t even smile at his antics, instead focusing her serious expression directly outside. She was a humanoid rabbit creature with massive ears, both of which were swiveled forward out of instinct—she could not hear anything through the cockpit with any clarity, yet poised the ears remained.
Looming in front of the ship was a large, intricate tower carved with many abstract designs. It stood at the edge of what appeared to be a hole in the ocean that gave way to massive waterfalls that fell down, down into the earth, shrouded by a layer of cloudy mist.
The top of the tower was heavily damaged; many of the highest stones having a black, charred color.
Exactly as they’d expected to find it.
~~~
A ship plowed through the ocean surface, cutting the seafoam aside with military precision. This was fitting, as it was a naval vessel filled with many armored soldiers. However, there was one individual who stood at the front who was different from the others. She had no uniform beyond a silver ring placed around her forehead. Her dress was simple and red, her hair a pale otherworldly green.
However, most disturbing of all was her completely blank expression. There was no emotion behind it. It was as though she didn’t understand the beauty of the ocean she was gazing at.
Onward the boat pushed, giving no concern to her.
~~~
An old man with a scraggly gray beard placed his hands against a trembling rock wall, grinding his teeth. Behind him, a blue light sparked and fizzled until it gave out, leaving him in darkness. Still, the trembling continued, showing no sign of giving up anytime soon.
“I’ve got to hurry,” he said, clenching his fist tighter. He gripped the wall as hard as he could and braced.
~~~
As the red airships set down on the riverbank for a brief rest before final preparations, the commander took a moment to stand at the prow of the lead ship while it searched for a suitable bank for descent. In his armored hands, he clutched a black blade tightly, its tip scraping the ship’s wooden deck.
His men couldn’t see his face, concealed as it was by his dark, horned helmet. They were all on edge, but none dared ask him how he felt. It was not something a soldier could ask a superior officer. They could only wonder.
Wonder what they were about to do would mean.
Even in their wildest imaginations, they weren’t able to come up with anything even close to the chain of events that were about to transpire.
Curious? The drafts await, in either the Server or the Google Doc
-GM, master of stuff.
I thought the answer was "No, I couldn't, it was absurdly complicated and I gave up after the first part but then it sat in my mind for several months until I simply couldn't take it anymore and started writing it again and powered through the entire second part in a few months because I'm insane." Coulda fooled me.
Anyway, yes, people, go read it. As someone who pre-read the first part back before GM iced it the first time, it's pretty good and sets up some fun twists if you know Final Fantasy. I haven't read the second part yet because I'm lazy and re-reading the first part intimidates me, so step right up, if you pre-read good maybe GM will let you pre-read for more things because I feel like I'm one of the only people pre-reading is original stuff and I want people to talk about it with who aren't scary SpaceBattles people.
I guess you're operating under the assumption that Squeenix itself will eventually go with Infinity? (Aside: my spellcheck actually recognizes "Squeenix" for some reason that I'm pretty sure doesn't involve having manually added it, and a quick Google shows that they know to redirect it where you want it to go)
5578897
Pfft Squeenix. My spell check got it too: reminded me to capitalize it. Heh.
Also, I just like Aleph Null as a non-standard number. I am trained in mathematics, I know a lot of strange numbers. Strange numbers are fun.
-GM, master of math.
Personally, I have a throwaway reference to "Aleph Flare" as a reference to the Mega and Tera variants from someone who isn't even actually using Final Fantasy's magic system. In the description (because DeviantArt gives you those for individual chapters) I then give the layman's explanation of the joke where I remind all the people who've never needed those prefixes what they mean and then blow their mind by saying that what they usually just call "infinity" is aleph zero. And that mathematicians do in fact go higher than that because
(but the Pinkamena face would have a background and neck because that'd be the version available to me there).
5578901
I don't know if nonstandard is the right word, given how it's used to describe numbers that fit into a model which are also transparent to that model (like the nonstandard naturals under first-order Peano arithmetic). I think you mean "non-real" or "non-complex" or "non-finite" or maybe just "unusual to people without a background in theoretical math".
5579136
...I meant nonstandard in a completely general sense. Like unusual when compared to what we usually think of when we think of numbers.
I was not even aware nonstandard was a technical definition for a type of number. Shows what my BS in Mathematics has taught me, I suppose.
-GM, master of blaster.
5579167
Yeah, it's pretty cool. Basically if you axiomatize Peano arithmetic with second-order predicate calculus, you can eliminate nonstandard models for natural numbers (all the models are isomorphic). But if you use first-order predicate calculus, while you do gain some things, you lose the ability to control the size of your model. Lowenheim-Skolem implies that iff there is any infinite model that satisfies a first-order theory, there is a model for every infinite cardinality.
For an example of two models of PA, both of which are countable but cannot be differentiated by any first-order statement, consider the normal model for the natural numbers (0, 1, 2 ...) and also a model that contains the standard part plus a nonstandard part where all the numbers are larger than any number in the standard part. The nonstandard part consists of many sequences of numbers ordered like the integers (they go in both directions forever and don't meet up); I'll call these "galaxies" of numbers. The countable model for PA that contains nonstandard numbers looks like a set of these galaxies ordered just like the rational numbers are ordered (the galaxies are dense within themselves, but countable). Addition and multiplication are well-defined, but it may not be possible to tell x < y for certain products.
There's also a nonstandard model for every uncountably infinite cardinality (upward Lowenheim-Skolem).