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Welcome to The Goat Pen. It's a highly misleading name, I know. We don't have goats, nor do we write any of the site in pen! It's all done on computer! Can you believe it!? A website done entirely on computer! But enough joking around. The majority of the site is related to the Final Fantasy game series. It's a series I grew up with, starting in the 90s with Final Fantasy 6, or Final Fantasy 3, as it was renamed in the States. But we're pretending that never happened. ========== My first gaming system, ignoring my parents' Atari, was the Super Nintendo. I started playing when I was eight-years old and started with Super Mario World. I often rented games from either Blockbuster or a local store called Video City. Yeah, no Gamefly in the 90s. Back in the day, to rent a game you had to first convince your parents that they need a movie from the video store and perhaps groceries. And for your company to the grocery store, well heck, maybe while they're at the video store, they can rent you one of those damned-expensive video games. I rented a lot of games, but my Squaresoft addiction started pretty early. My first game, if I recall correctly, was Secret of Mana, or Seiken Densetsu 2 in Japan. This was a great two-player game that I played all too many times with my older sister. I think we rented it once, then bought it. It was our first step into role-playing games, and a good one at that since it was a nice midpoint from action/platformer to RPG. It had active fighting, but level-ups and a decent story, basic as it may be. I then went based on creator and tried out Final Fantasy III, which I'll from this point refer to as Final Fantasy VI. If there was ever a game that piqued my interest, it was this one. What a game! This quickly shot up my list of games I wanted. I'd probably have sold my soul for this game (not anymore, sorry, Satan). Unfortunately, nobody sold this game! Nobody! For at least a couple years, whenever I wandered into a store with a video game section, I checked for this game. I wanted it so badly! I must've rented this game about ten times. I played the beginning so many times. I had time limits for how long I could play video games each day, and based on my restrictions, I found that it was typical to reach the Floating Continent in that 5-day rental period (Remember: SNES games save on the cartridge, not a memory card). Most games ended near the Floating Continent. Once I rented it back-to-back and continued further, possibly beating the game (I honestly can't remember, but I think I did...). I once rented a cartridge of FF6 that had this mega-glitch that wrecked the save system. You could save, but once you turned off the SNES, your game had a 90% chance of being erased... Do you know how many times I've played the beginning of this game!? Seriously, I didn't care! I still loved it, even if I could only get as far as the fight with Kefka in Narshe! Another game I was dying
to own was Illusions of Gaia (Squaresoft, again?
Yes), but Final Fantasy III was probably the
biggest tragedy of my young life (yeah, not a lot happens
to me). Even the guy cutting my hair one day that recommended
Secret of Evermore (which I bought and am glad
I did so) could not get me through these dark times.
So dark... My soul forever stained...until! Angels
decended and spoke to me. Now, keep in mind that my soul is still stained by the loss of Final Fantasy VI, but now I had Chrono Trigger! If you were to ask me what my favorite game of all time is, I'd point you to this game. I rented it, loved it, and "bought" it (kids don't buy things. They just hope a birthday or Christmas is on the way). If you are curious, Tyrannodome. That's about where most people get in a 5-day rental period. Anyway. If you'll notice a theme here. I was very in love with Squresoft. RPGs in general, too, but Secret of the Stars and Breath of Fire II (to name a couple) just weren't the same caliber as Squaresoft RPGs. Not to say there weren't flops along the way for Squaresoft, but I digress. From here, I probably took the course of the typical Final Fantasy fan. I loved FF6, so I had to put Final Fantasy VII on my Christmas list. My older sister and I were so psyched when we got this game. Mom pulled a psyche-out on us when we didn't get it for Christmas, but we got it a couple days later from my grandparents (who obviously let my mom do the shopping since they'd never think to buy us Final Fantasy VII and Mortal Kombat: Mythologies). And so, we played it. It. Was. Amazing. I still remember a bunch of our first-time thoughts of the game, like when we believed we would get Cait Sith in Wall Market because he was a big kitty-thing and was in the instruction booklet, and Wall Market has a statue of a cat! It must be him! It wasn't until we were a good ways into Shin-Ra HQ that I realized it just wasn't happening... And so, my Final Fantasy love continued on for years to come. Final Fantasy X was and still is one of my top favorites of the series, but after that, things went downhill. Enix came in and Square just hasn't been the same. I hold strong for Final Fantasy XIII, but I'm not holding my breath. ========== With such a wonderful selection of games at my disposal, I introduce The Goat Pen. The Final Fantasy games have such great characters and themes that are so dang fun to use in fan fiction. The site's original hit series was Bugging Sephiroth. It still is for a lot of people. A humorous story about Sephiroth and his odd attachment to his mother, Jenova. It takes place after the events of Final Fantasy VII, though follows no continuity since characters are all revived for some unexplained reason. It ended back in 2008, only to be picked back up, now taking place after the events of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. Again, it makes no sense. Good, mindless fun. If you're looking for my devotion to old Squaresoft (*sigh* and Square-Enix) games, look no further than The Amazing Final Fantasy Race. This is a cross-over putting Final Fantasy characters in teams of two to race through different Square worlds and compete for one-million gil. I love "The Amazing Race" and thought it would make for good fun. Season 1 was a hit, despite it getting off to a strange start. Season 2 started much stronger and is close to finishing now. The Squall Online Experiment started years ago. It started as a quirky storytelling through false e-mails to Squall from various Final Fantasy VIII characters. I eventually realized it was a golden opportunity to open my site up to some guest participation. This, in conjunction with the site's Forum started turning The Goat Pen into a more interactive experience; not just your average fan fiction site (or is it?). In the FF Extras section, you'll find everything you do expect from a fan fiction site. There are some hints for Final Fantasy games, though I try to stay off of hints because so many other sites have better information. I have reviews for the Final Fantasy games that I've played, which is basically everything except Final Fantasy XI, better known (by me) as Final Fantasy: Online. Sorry, too expensive for my blood. And then, yes, some straight-up Final Fantasy fan fiction stories. My favorite is a cross-over with Balamb Garden students and Resident Evil (one). Beyond the Final Fantasy, I only have two things in TGP Extras. First is "Super Really Old Man." I wrote it in high school for my Senior Project. It was fun to make, but I'm really not an artist, as you'll see. I mean, this is computer art (Photoshop and the like) and it still sucks. Not my fault though. I know I'm a horrible artist, but the jerks at school didn't approve the project when a friend and I tried to do it as a joint effort (he can draw dang well). So, the project suffered. Even the writing isn't my favorite since the illustration took so much effort. But oh well. It's there. There's also 1x2x3x4x5x6=720. Yep, I was destined to be a math major. I couldn't resist a spoof on Gundam Wing fan fiction. I...I refuse to explain further. It's explained in the TGP Extras. It was my first fan fiction ever. Crazy, eh? If you don't know about the slash fiction related to Gundam Wing, you really won't get it. And that's the extent of the site. I still actively work on the site, though I lose a lot of time to real life. I truly appologize if a series you want more of takes me long periods of time to update, but I've just run out of time anymore. I got married in 2009 and have been working hard (or hardly working) to make a living and stuff. But I do love working on the site and update whenever I can. ========== I enjoy writing all this Final Fantasy fan fiction for two reasons. For one, I love putting my work out there and finding people with common interests. Not only Final Fantasy, but my sense of humor, too. I highly enjoy situational humor, sarcasm, and self-mockery, which isn't common for fan fiction on the whole. I'm really a hypocrite on fan fiction. I don't enjoy a lot of it because it either takes itself too seriously or the humor just isn't my style. My favorite thing about fan fiction (this is reason number two) is that it's a great platform to learn how to write. My writing skills aren't top notch, but if you read through something like Bugging Sephiroth or compare The Amazing Final Fantasy Race's Season 1 to Season 2, you'll see that my writing has gotten better. Some is just because of the practice and some is the response I get from readers who are helping me greatly to perfect my personal style. With this, I eventually plan to write some of my own works some day. Will they get published? I'm not sure. Probably not. At least not professionally. But I love making up stories, and writing fan fiction is great practice. Squaresoft/Square/Square-Enix has given us some great characters and settings, and by using them instead of my own work, I can get past my shortcomings with descriptions and use existing characters and worlds to practice writing. And hell, if this site wasn't Final Fantasy fan fiction, would you have ever found it? Yeah, that's what I thought. Having the criticism and help has been wonderful and hopefully this site will one day be my springboard into something else. My skills in writing, website design, and computer graphics are so much more than they were. Thanks for checking out my site, sorry you had to read so much, and I hope you enjoy the site!
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