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The first two fics I wrote were mostly spur-of-the-moment projects. Planned over a few weeks, but written over the course of a few days. There wasn't much in the way of connections between the two, or of any overarching fic-verse. The third entry changed all that, while also growing into the magnum opus of the entire series.

Artistic Focus was first designed with a very specific purpose: to dig into how Melia's arts worked. The most logical setting for this was to look into the past as Melia learned them all. But as the fic continued, it became clear that if it were nothing but a training arc, the pacing would be bad. There needed to be not just down moments, but other events to show the progress of time. As a result, it ended up including much more Melia backstory than just combat training: public excursions, skill branches, rabid fanclubs, and a bunch of "missing scene"s from the game's story. And this being Melia, a healthy dose of terrible experiences.

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• FanFiction.net
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Notes & Trivia

• The cover art includes a fully custom HD model of the Protect Staff (long before DE was a thing), as well as both the Training Staff and Practice Staff.
• All numbers in the combat training evaluations are based on approximations of what Melia's stats would be at these low levels. They can only be approximations, since in-game she cannot go below level 23, and the level-up formula does not work properly in reverse.
• It wasn't planned, but the story ended up being divided into three almost-equal arcs.
  • Chapters 1 - 8: the basics, learning the arts Melia is guaranteed to have at the lowest in-game level, culminating in a terrifying fight
  • Chapters 9 - 20: the transformation, learning most of the rest of the arts, ending in a dramatic experience
  • Chapters 21 - 28: the mastery, veering into in-game scenes and finishing everything off
  • (Chapters 29 - 30: the epilogue)

Ch.03

• The art Head Rattle comes from the badge of the same name from Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door.

Ch.04

• Alvis pretends to age, die, and be replaced by his child. It's not an uncommon idea in the fandom, but I personally borrowed it from the Chee of the Animorphs series.
• Entirmina's hair being previously wrapped in "big frizzy earmuffs" was supposed to be a riff on Princess Leia's donut hair.

Ch.05

• The Lumian District is named after one of the very few historical emperors mentioned in the game.
• The Ike's fast food chain is based on Wendy's.
• The books mentioned here are all riffs on real books.
  • The Count of Mt. Kristol- The Count of Monte Cristo
  • Herman and the Fudge Factory - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
  • The War of the Worlds - (same name)
• Yes, Melia gives the goons the finger. If she knew what it meant she'd be mortified.
• Reddel gives Melia fudge to alleviate the effects of Shadow Stitch, just like Harry Potter is given chocolate to recover from Dementors.

Ch.06

• The phrase "one iota of evidence" is from To Kill a Mockingbird, used in a similar situation.
• The premise of Melia being able to roll through the ductworks of Alcamoth like Samus through Morph Ball tunnels was originally a joke idea based on "lol small bird lady", but I kept it in because it gave Melia a way to get around in secret (without affecting any game plot). That's why the thing that enables it is called the Chozo interface.
• It was at about this point in writing the story that I realised I was giving a lot of Homs-like names to the High Entia. While I don't think this is a huge deal for the general populace, I did start trying to be better with making more fantasy-like names for people of higher status.

Ch.08

• The fun part with having a character go "I'm not listening to this sentimental garbage" is that the author no longer has to write it.
• In-game, Spear Break is a typical physical art that does something other than break. The premise of what's going on here is that it's supposed to be a typical pink break art, but Melia is so bad at doing it that she's ended up creating a new version of it instead.

Ch.09

• I was originally unsure whether any other party members would feature in the story before the "present day". But I noticed there was an opportunity to put the Monado expedition in the timeline, and from there it was easy to insert a piece of Shulk backstory.

Ch.10

• Yeah the whole premise of "the palace gets evacuated and sealed airtight one day a year" is kinda silly. It makes for good drama though.
• Melia's name is said to come from "an ancestral word for the scuppertree". In real-world mythology, "Melia" originates from nymphs of the ash tree.
• Kallian being unintentional absolute chaos at the dinner table is a good running joke.

Ch.11

• Wairuha District is named for one of the two Toa Kaitas of Bionicle. The Kapako of Kapako Park is an anagram of Kopaka, one of Wairuha's participants.
• The whole composition of Lemon Jam is a Team Fortress 2 reference. The nine members are based on the nine classes, split by offense (the "O" of "O-Zone") and support (the "Gear Up" of "gotta move that gear up"). The name "Lemon Jam" is based on one of the in-game poster overlays.
• Everything in the concert is game music that either fits the rock/metal theme or could easily be remixed as such.
  • Big Top Bop - first boss of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
  • King of the Kuppas - final boss of Paper Mario (64)
  • Metal Melee - vs. metal opponent in Super Smash Bros. Melee
  • Mute City - F-Zero series
  • Lightning Battle - chapter 14 of Kid Icarus: Uprising
  • Giga Baby - final boss of Yoshi's Island
  • The Rusty Bucket - Rusty Bucket Bay in Banjo-Kazooie
  • Native Phrygisian - vs. Rundas in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
  • Western Valley - Gerudo Valley in Ocarina of Time
  • 2 Wily 4 U - Mega Man 2 Medley in Super Smash Bros. 4
  • The Square of Zero - final boss of Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards
  • In The Final - final boss of Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
  • Intruder Alert - menu/promotional theme in Team Fortress 2
  • Castle of 8 - Bowser's Castle in Mario Kart 8
  • Taboo Emissary - final boss of Super Smash Bros. Brawl
  • The Chase - default music of the Rocket Range in de Blob 2
  • Together We Ride - recruit theme of Fire Emblem (series)
  • Fourth Destination - Final Destination (Ver. 2) in Super Smash Bros. 4
  • "the psychedelic experience" - Rainbow Road in F-Zero X

Ch.12

• Contemplation Park is in theory a counterpart to Outlook Park.
• The way the sun "rises" is inspired by Ōkami.
• The change from "Princess Melia" to "Lady Melia" was partly an accident. I'd already written a bunch of "Princess Melia" before realising that "Lady Melia" was the proper title as used in-game. Instead of going back to correct them, I instead decided this was a kid vs. adult thing.
• The ceiling of the banquet hall looking like the sky outside is taken from the Great Hall of Hogwarts.
• The holopiece of Melia is meant to resemble an amiibo.
• The book Heart of the Prognosticus is of Super Paper Mario.
• The tea hat Sorean gifts is supposed to resemble the Madam Dixie from Team Fortress 2.

Ch.14

• The cut rhyme of "witch" with Lorithtia in the room does not need an explanation.
• As a hockey fan I am obligated to insult football (soccer) and to declare that in this world they use a functional timekeeping system.
• Glenny Poller and the Alchemist's Stone, is a fairly clear take on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
• Bubba quotes the TF2 Sniper.

Ch.15

• The idea of the Mechon "actively ignoring anything they do not perceive as a threat" is supposed to match the Borg of Star Trek. (As they were originally intended, at least.)
• Mechon don't care for gold because it's all over them. It's not as rare a metal on Mechonis. (This would also explain why everything there in-game is so expensive - your money has little value there.)
• Many of the fanclub's wild speculations are sourced from xenobladeheadcanons.tumblr.com, some with a bit of spicing-up for comedy.
• I write here that "not even the mightiest heroes can have full comprehension of both staggering a foe and exploiting it afterwards". This is based on truth: no character in XC1 has both a break and a topple unless there is some extra condition required for one of them. (It's less true in later games, but you do at least have to switch weapons for it.) This is why Melia never learned Spear Break correctly - she is a toppler, not a breaker.

Ch.16

• According to wordcounter.net (the source I've chosen to use for listing the word counts on this page), both this chapter and the previous chapter have the same number of words. Weird.
• sebula nex
• The entire "get a rank 7 gem" subplot here is just setup for chapter 20. I had to pre-establish the ability to use elementals to remotely manipulate objects, so it wouldn't be a "new power out of nowhere" sort of situation.

Ch.17

• At some point, the idea appeared of mixing in the discovery of Melia's three default skill branches, "granted" to her by her parents and Kallian. It was obviously a bit tough to work in a chance for a dead person to provide the inspiration, so we have this letter.
• There was supposed to be a subplot about Melia starting out bad at chain attacks due to lacking friendship skills, but opportunities to bring it up never materialised.

Ch.18

• At first, the Ike's chain wasn't really intended to be a reference to Ike from Fire Emblem. But then I had the idea of slipping in his "prepare yourself" taunt from Smash Bros. as its slogan, and then it just had to be.

Ch.19

• The third-floor staircase being an antagonistic force is my favourite running joke.
• The premise of this dinner is to establish why there is a water elevator between Frontier Village and Eryth Sea, when otherwise everywhere on the Bionis can be walked to in-game. It ties in the cut path of having to pass through the right shoulder area.
• In previous chapters I said that Melia had no middle names, yet here I say there's three and reveal one of them, retconning that she just claims she has none. I don't quite remember how this discrepancy popped up - probably I just changed my mind on which path to take.

Ch.20

• Unfortunately, the ability to summon her staff at range is technically a "new power out of nowhere". I tried to make it at least connected to the general ability to control it mentally, but I couldn't directly fit it in elsewhere.
• I had a side-scrolling beat 'em up in mind as this chapter as progressing.
• I wonder how many found the "Have a nice fall" pun against the "start-of-autumn feast".
• The fact that Melia gets her two other skill branches in back-to-back chapters is a reference to how characters start with them equally undeveloped, compared to the first one.

Ch.21

• A lot of players don't bother with the first art book for Summon Bolt, so Melia "gets" it in advance of the game actually starting. It makes more in-universe sense than the in-game mechanic of skipping it entirely.

Ch.22

• Melia's dream here is Banjo-Kazooie - specifically, learning flight in Treasure Trove Cove.
• "thirty went after it and four came back" is a Star Wars thing.

Ch.23

• The description of the "lesser theory of the afterlife" comes from Guacamelee.
• Blaming ether deficiency is an easy way to work around the question of "why do you still have to unlock the stuff you've been training in for years".
• I try very hard to avoid changing the actual game script. But in the case of reaching the Decayed Forest, switching around the placement of Melia's thoughts makes the scene flow better. And moving thoughts around is much "safer" than actual dialogue.
• Being able to use burst arts in cutscenes at will was always a bit annoying, since otherwise they do a good job at matching to gameplay. The good news is that all such cases are in emotionally-charged moments, which is a good explanation for it.

Ch.24

• Melia has to take the trial very slowly to give the rest of the party enough time to catch up with her. That's why most of it is just figuring things out and thinking "no it can't be that easy".
• Yes the advanced artbook for Summon Bolt is some variant of Marvel's Thor.

Ch.25

• The implication here is that the party has never gone backwards until this point. Perhaps not logical for the player to do, but nothing is missable before now, and there isn't much other reasonable way to skip travel in this world without a super-fast ship.
• The idea of an illusion that only exists for those who expect it to is taken from an old Bionicle comic of the Bohrok era.
• An "aileron roll" is mentioned specifically because everyone calls it a barrel roll.

Ch.26

• The idea with the Colony 6 reconstruction is that while you're collecting 2 things in-game, the party is collecting over an order of magnitude more in "reality". Having a ship for skip travel makes this viable.
• Strictly speaking, Tantrum shouldn't work against Mechon, because the attack usually bounces off and halts before the third hit can land. But logically, Riki's pounding the ground to create a shockwave rather than hitting the foe directly, and the game doesn't have a mechanism for "these hits should not rebound" or "move up the effects of the last hit if interrupted".
• The two known arts of Reyn's own invention are Bone Upper and Dive Sobat. Of all his stuff, it makes the most sense for those to not be standard-issue.
• The "what happened happened" quote is from The Matrix Reloaded.

Ch.27

• I have all the artbooks established, but these are the few that are mentioned in this chapter:
  • The Saga of Mata Nui (Smeg Farshtey) - Advanced manual for Elemental Discharge/general elemental control and tripling (Summon Copy isn't really a thing in my canon). Bionicle reference, probably covers from the beginning up to the Mask of Light.
  • Waker of the Winds (Nohansen Dragmire) - Advanced manual for Summon Wind. TLoZ Wind Waker reference.
  • Path of Radiance (Greil Tellius) - Advanced manual for Summon Flare. Fire Emblem reference.
  • Echoes of Aether (Adam Primus) - Advanced manual for Shadow Stich. Metroid Prime 2 Echoes reference.
  • Russwall (Methuselah Argulor) - Advanced manual for Summon Earth. Redwall reference.
  • The Thousand-Year Door (Yono Sishi) - Advanced manual for Power Effect (oof). Paper Mario TTYD reference.
  • Nightmare in Dream Land (Dirk D. Diropel) - Advanced manual for Hypnotise. Kirby reference.
  • Uprising (Dio Nosus) - Advanced manual for Reflection. Kid Icarus reference.
  • The Subspace Emissary (Masahiro Sakurai) - Advanced manual for Mind Blast. Super Smash Bros. Brawl reference.

Ch.28

• Is it really a Nintendo property if there isn't a "reflect the energy ball by hitting it with your weapon" fight?
• The idea is that all High Entia ships with a combat mode possess Overdrive. The rules would be close to XCX's, but not exactly.

Ch.29

• By forcing the party to defeat the superbosses before returning to Prison Island, we fix the problem of what to do with "postgame" content.
• The name "Ponspectors" was dropped in after FC. They were just unnamed Nopon map-makers before.

Ch.30

• This chapter was only written after FC. Its purpose is to explain why Melia can have 4 elementals at a time in its cutscenes.