#a bit ooc but the premise is a difficult one | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

antiquarianandunusual · 9 months

Text

With Somebody Who Loves Me (A "Good Omens" Fic)

Read it on AO3!

Rating: T and Up (Language)

Word Count: 6,171

Warnings: Verbal Fighting/Confrontation, Mild Depiction of a Panic Attack

Synopsis: Crowley tempts Aziraphale to a dance. It goes well until it doesn't.

Author's Note:

Hello, Good Omens fandom! This is going to be a bit of a long note, but I wanted to explain some things about this fic. First of all, this is the first Good Omens fic I ever wrote; I want to say I wrote it back in May, finishing it right after finishing the spring semester. I was concerned then about the quality of it, so I ended up never posting it and instead moved on to write "You Don't Have to Go Home, But You Can't Stay Here". I finally bit the bullet and went back to reread it on a random nighttime romp through my Google docs, and wouldn't you know, I was being dramatic and I'm actually kind of proud of how it turned out!

That being said, this is, naturally canon non-compliant! I wrote it before we even had a release date for S2 and also wrote it while in the midst of reading the book, so both S1 and book interpretations of the characters kind of bleed in, but S2 is nowhere to be seen (especially considering it turns out Aziraphale asks Crowley to dance, and emphatically, too!).

I also want to point out that my impressions of the characters were still developing. While I won't go as far to say that this fic is entirely, devastatingly, hopelessly OOC, I'll just say that the way I would write this particular premise would definitely be different if I were to do it today. I just realized I actually rather enjoyed the work's end result regardless and didn't want to let it rot in my docs any longer. :)

Crowley and Aziraphale spotted the dance floor at about the same time.

They had decided to stay local for dinner that evening, just a few miles out from A.Z. Fell and Co. and even fewer miles out from Crowley’s flat. It was a quaint little dive, nothing too fancy but nothing too dingy, either, perfectly in-between for an angel and demon who were too worn out from the last several weeks to really go anywhere else. Not that finding a particularly nice restaurant was especially hard for either of them, but for once, they just wanted to coexist without all the pomp and circumstance of being a divine creature.

The restaurant was mild enough that the two of them had been the most extravagantly dressed there; everyone else had donned business casual at best, weekday evening with just the slightest bit of extra effort at worst. There were gaudy paintings lining the wall, something that might have been reminiscent of the Renaissance, if the artist had taken half the care of an actual Renaissance artist, but to a less discerning eye, they were actually quite lovely to make view of. The waitstaff was polite and efficient if mildly perplexed by the everyday odd couple at the table in the center of the main dining area, the fare was rather pleasant, and everything seemed up to code. It was nothing more, nothing less.

Save for the aforementioned dance floor, which, Aziraphale noticed, Crowley was eyeing mischievously.

Aziraphale preferred, of course, Crowley’s playful mischief compared to the alternative, which oftentimes had him hurriedly calculating a) how difficult it would be to bring someone back from a violent end and b) how much trouble he would be in with Heaven if he had actually managed it (loads, he had one day realized; not that it really mattered, now, but it was still a lot more trouble than he wanted to go through). However, there was something about the glint in Crowley’s sunglasses as he leaned forward on the table, covering what Aziraphale was certain was a roguish smirk with one hand. The other hand was propped pointedly on his hip.

He was plotting. He was fomenting.

They had been closer- much closer- since they had both parted ways with their individual sides and as such, had gotten comfortable around one another in ways they hadn’t been allowed to before. These days, Aziraphale was much worse at censoring himself around Crowley, since there were no more secrets to keep, no more lurking authority figures to hide from; he could talk for hours at a time and trust that Crowley, when he wasn’t offering counterpoints of his own, would listen, no matter how long-winded he could be when trying to make a singular point. He felt looser around Crowley now, too, and could feel the perfect posture and general demeanor that Heaven had drilled into him for thousands of years melting away each time the demon hung around at the bookshop, draped over the couch in the way he had for all the time they had known one another.

Crowley, however, took their newfound proper companionship as a cue that he could mess with Aziraphale in all of these new, fun ways because Aziraphale, now able to gradually trust someone who wouldn’t (seriously) critique his every move, was letting his guard down. And letting his guard down meant that Crowley could be even more of a bastard than usual and face even less consequences because they were friends. None of it was malicious, and it never had been, but Aziraphale’s feelings were still mixed about someone toying with him, regardless of if it was his best friend or not.

After a lengthy moment of anticipation, Crowley started, “What if-”

“No, Crowley.”

Exasperatedly, he slammed the hand that was masking half of his face down on the table. Aziraphale was already holding his glass steady as the silverware on Crowley’s side of the table clattered. “You’re not even going to let me finish?”

There was a pause before the angel breathed a sigh that was about three-quarters unrelenting guilt, one quarter exasperation. “Alright, I’m sorry. Do continue.”

“As I was going to say, what if we took this out on the dance floor? Show these folks some real fun, eh?”

“No,” Aziraphale repeated. He almost overlapped with Crowley’s some real fun, eh?.

“Oh, come on!”

“You’re more than welcome to go out there on your own.”

“Aw, right. Like I’m gonna go out there on my own, in front of all these people, like a complete buffoon. Where’s the fun in that, angel?”

“Angels don’t dance,” pushed Aziraphale, conspiratorially this time, glancing nervously around to see if anyone was listening- they weren’t. “You know that.”

Suddenly, there was rare air in the conversation; the light from the overhead lamp hit Crowley’s glasses at just the right angle to make his expression entirely unreadable, but Aziraphale knew that he was being studied. The longer Crowley eyed him, the warmer he felt his face becoming, yet he refused to relent. For once, he challenged the demon right back, each seeing who could break the other first.

“Don’t or won’t?” Crowley finally deadpanned.

Aziraphale blinked. He mentally cursed himself. “I beg your pardon?”

“Angels don’t dance, or won’t? There’s a very important difference, you know.”

“Is there?”

“Don’t dodge the question.” It came out almost as a singsong and for a moment, Aziraphale had a fleeting, intrusive thought about wiping that sly smug off of his best friend’s face.

“Don’t,” he responded firmly before he could overthink it too much. “We don’t.”

“‘We’?”

“You know what I mean. Don’t give me that look!”

“Angels aren’t supposed to stop Holy Wars, either, and here you are.”

“Oh, stop it.”

“And what about that time in the nineteenth century? When you learned the, you know, the-the gavotte? Bet you didn’t tell Heaven about that one.”

“It’s not so much,” posited Aziraphale as he swirled the wine in his glass diffidently, “that Heaven would be upset. We’ve already crossed that bridge. It’s just that it’s not in our- my nature.”

A beat.

“Alright, but you’re still avoiding the part where you’ve danced before.”

Noticeably, Aziraphale avoided his steely gaze. Crowley chuckled.

“What, got stage fright?”

Another beat. Crowley’s grin faded.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“It’s just- With all these people-”

“Angel, when have you ever had stage fright?”

“It’s not stage fright -”

“Some of the most embarrassing things I’ve ever watched you do have been in front of crowds of people.”

“It’s-”

“I’m never going to let you live Warlock’s birthday party down.”

“Will you kindly let me finish?”

Huffing, Crowley fell quiet and waved his hand dismissively as if to say, Carry on.

“Learning the gavotte was nothing more than a passing fancy- a lapse in judgment.” Admittedly, this was a fib; it had been a disproportionately thrilling experience for someone as repressed as he had been, and he had been immensely disappointed when it went out of fashion. Even to this day, he wondered on occasion whether he could stir interest back up on his own, but he had been so swamped with the Antichrist business that it had fallen to the back of his mind lately. Now, he wondered only if Crowley could tell he was lying. Even so, Aziraphale continued. “I was among friends and got a little carried away. That’s all.”

He kicked himself underneath the table, already knowing where he had misspoken.

Crowley didn’t seem outwardly upset when he chimed back in, though there was a mild edge to his voice that hadn’t been there before. It was so mild, in fact, that Aziraphale only caught it because when you know someone for six millennia, you tend to notice when something about them shifts. “You say that like we’re not friends.”

“You know what I meant,” repeated Aziraphale.

“No, I don’t think I do.”

“Crowley-”

“You trust me, don’t you?”

It was said with such earnest, such bare-bones honesty, that Aziraphale reeled for a moment when Crowley eked it out. Sometimes he preferred it when Crowley communicated his feelings through almost stubborn bluntness or vindictive sarcasm; as hostile as the demon could be, Aziraphale felt more comfortable in his ability to respond when he was pressed up against the wall, Crowley snarling directly in his face, ill-natured words being spat out like poison. Naturally, he appreciated that Crowley could be vulnerable with him now, though this didn’t make it any less uncanny when he allowed his well-crafted armor to fail for a moment. It forced Aziraphale to fumble for the right words to make sure Crowley felt safe enough to do it again rather than flippantly banter back and forth, and more often than not, the words he chose were wrong, wrong, wrong.

No matter who he was speaking to, he always seemed to say the wrong things.

“Of course, I do,” he eventually chose. Crowley appeared unsatisfied.

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”

“Why on Earth are you so insistent about this?”

“Well, temptation is my job, isn’t it?” He curiously peered up at Aziraphale, whose expression remained troubled. “Or it used to be. Anyway, I’m just trying to get you to loosen up a little. That’s all.”

He had now crossed his arms, leaned over the table, and looked not unlike he was pouting as he absently tapped the side of his plate with his fork, visibly not caring if the noise disturbed the people around them. In retrospect, the scene was rather silly- a vicious demon, the Snake of Eden, notable purveyor of sin and vice, throwing a silent tantrum because his best friend wouldn’t indulge in something as innocuous as a mere dance.

It was pathetic enough that, at last, Aziraphale relented. He removed his napkin from his lap and set it down on his empty plate, a movement which got Crowley’s attention. “Alright, one dance. You lead.”

Raising an intrigued eyebrow, Crowley made a feeble attempt to subdue a budding smile. He failed.

---------------------------------------------

The floor was entirely theirs, save for the band at the far side of the room and a slightly inebriated couple holding each other lovingly and swaying barely in time to the music opposite the band. It was only natural that Crowley, in his infinite lack of shits to give, swaggered to the point directly between the two as if he owned the place. The confidence that he projected- false or not- made even Aziraphale wilt slightly as he trailed behind.

With a nonchalant snap of Crowley’s fingers, the band, as if each member were possessed by the same, musically particular demonic entity, abruptly switched songs. No one seemed to take notice as the lackadaisical classical sound gave way to a cheerier, more modern tune; even the pair in the corner teetered to the same rhythm as before. What had begun with the gentle sounds of a violin and the lethargic pressing of the piano’s keys picked up sudden pace as the violinist took a break to stretch and the drummer took up his workload (there had not, Aziraphale couldn’t help but note, been a drummer before, but no one else seemed to mind). By the ditty’s composition, it sounded as if there should have been singing layered over the instrumental, the question of if was soon answered as he caught the sound of Crowley almost nonsensically muttering lyrics under his breath. As quiet as he was, his mumbles were full of conviction, as if he had heard this song a thousand times before. Although, his version of the lyrics could have been entirely wrong and Aziraphale would have been none the wiser.

Cautiously, Aziraphale watched as Crowley gradually slipped into his element, as if testing the waters in a swimming pool or peeking out the front door to know if he would need a coat for the day. It started off unassuming, nothing more than head bobs and toe taps as he surveyed the room as if to say I dare anyone to say a single harsh word. He didn’t even endeavor to remove his hands from his pockets.

Then, deciding the water was temperate enough to dive right in, intentionally setting himself loose, his movements became increasingly zealous. First, his hands were freed, and he let his arms sway leisurely at his sides before ultimately deciding to fold into himself only a touch. Fists balled and shoulders doing something that, in a distant universe, may have been shimmying, he maintained his arms at an awkward angle. His feet shuffled in a gawky step-touch; sometimes, it moved him side-to-side and others, back-and-forth. Occasionally, he’d sweep a pointed finger across the room in no particular direction.

Aziraphale gaped. Certainly, whatever Crowley was doing had to be dancing, but the question of whether or not it was good dancing answered itself. He remained only vaguely in time with the music and when he did finish a move at the same time as a drumbeat or piano riff, he emphasized it with a shakily pointed pose. It reminded Aziraphale how often Crowley reminded people to “do it with style”, which prompted the angel to wonder if, deep down, he was aware at all of just how awful a display he was creating.

At least whatever he was doing, he did it with bravado.

Even when Aziraphale couldn’t help himself anymore and half-laughed, half-snorted, Crowley kept going. “You got something to say, angel?” he glibly spat.

“No,” Aziraphale choked out, “no, of course not!”

Crowley spun on the balls of his feet to face Aziraphale, arms spread out to his sides like wings to keep balance, but he still stumbled just slightly as he leveled out his stance. He clasped his hands together and reached back behind his head. Then he swung them back over head and pointed them directly at Aziraphale, not unlike he was pointing a sword at him. Expectantly, he nodded.

Aziraphale furrowed his brow in confusion. Crowley repeated the motion, which clearly didn’t help; Aziraphale only cocked his head to the side the second time around.

Finally, the demon gave up the ghost and dropped back into “behaving like a functioning human” mode, if only for a brief moment. “Are you-? It’s a rope, Aziraphale. You’re supposed to… Nevermind.”

In one fell swoop, Aziraphale had been tugged by the wrist all the way out onto the dance floor. He could barely make out Crowley’s “Follow my lead” over the music, it had become so unexpectedly deafening. Suddenly, his slight hesitation had turned into raw nerves.

But when Crowley shifted and took his hands, his grip always so astonishingly gentle, something in Aziraphale eased up; his fears didn’t dissipate completely, but they certainly gave way enough for him to at the very least question what he had been so afraid of.

You trust me, don’t you?

Crowley was looking straight into his eyes. Him taking Aziraphale’s hands was a question, an offer, a deal, and the angel needed to give him an answer he was going to be satisfied with.

Aziraphale collected himself and squeezed Crowley’s hands reassuringly.

Of course, I do.

A new song began. It still wasn’t as forlorn as the first selection, but it was more easygoing than the second. It sounded almost wrong alone on the piano, as if a rock ensemble would be more befitting, although neither demon nor angel seemed to care if it was perfect.

Crowley was much more tender with Aziraphale than he had been himself.

He shifted one of his hands to Aziraphale’s shoulder and in response, Aziraphale oh-so confidently took Crowley’s forearm in a death grip. Sensing his companion’s coming and going apprehension, he started simple, shuffling to the side and prompting them to go about in slow, gentle circles. Aziraphale kept a careful eye on his own feet as he stepped with him, although his prior experience shined through much more brilliantly than Crowley’s had. Still, he felt more comfortable following a lead, no matter how much was coming back to him.

The longer Crowley encouraged him with an uncharacteristically modest smile, the longer Crowley let him hold him in a vice, and the longer Crowley, for once, allowed him to take it slow, he began to relax. You’re safe here, the voice in the back of his mind finally began to admit. You’re safe with him.

As if taking cues from Aziraphale’s inner thoughts (and he very well may have been; even after all this time, he was full of surprises), Crowley whipped around and twirled Aziraphale out directly to his side. To his own shock, the angel didn’t stumble and instead, planted his feet and threw his free arm out for balance without missing a single beat. Crowley gave him a look that stated, I’m going to try something. You are absolutely allowed to put an end to this right here, right now and while I will absolutely express my displeasure, know that deep down, I understand.

Aziraphale gave him a returning glance that meant, plainly and simply, Do it.

When you’re so close to someone for six millennia, fleeting looks become much less versatile.

In a triumphant move, Crowley raised the hand that held Aziraphale’s and prompted him closer with a slight pull. It was as if Aziraphale had done this before as, now without a shred of doubt, he twirled as he followed the path Crowley had tentatively carved for him. He even showed off a tad as he rose to the tips of his toes, which playfully forced Crowley to follow suit. For both their sakes, he settled back down before Crowley was timed to stop him.

To his mild chagrin, Crowley had another idea in mind.

The son of a bitch dipped him.

Aziraphale yelped and balled the lapel of Crowley’s jacket in his fist. Crowley just cackled like a madman.

“You didn’t think I was going to let you fall, did you?”

“I can’t believe you!” What little effort he used to feign agitation failed; his irrepressible laughter gave away his pleasant surprise. “Let me up!”

“I dunno. Thought I’d leave you there for-”

“Crowley!”

“Alright, alright!” He tugged Aziraphale back to standing. He was even so kind as to help him dust off.

“You’re impossible.”

A grin. “Come off it, we both know that’s what you like about me.”

There was another attempt on Aziraphale’s end to remain steely, and there was yet another attempt failed.

“Besides,” continued Crowley, “don’t want to deprive our adoring audience of a good show.”

The “adoring audience” in question appeared vastly, unquestionably bored. Almost no one was paying any mind to what was happening on the dance floor; even the band, adjacent to the pair, had become too busy collectively attempting to piece together what had possibly possessed them to stray from their set list to pay any mind to the two of them. Everyone else was more enthralled in small talk or contented silence.

Everyone, save for one man, who even from a distance, Aziraphale couldn’t help but home in on.

He was middle-aged, a few years younger than Aziraphale and Crowley presented, and clean cut in every manner of speaking. He was clean shaven, with light brown hair cut in a short manner that screamed prim and proper. It wasn’t a stretch to call him the third best dressed patron of the restaurant, in a dark sport coat over a well-ironed button-up.

His dark eyes were piercing and full of disapproval.

“Angel? What’re you looking at?”

Crowley’s voice was distant. Aziraphale barely registered that he had spoken. He was too busy watching the man grimace and whisper to his date disapprovingly. He was snickering, of course, but in the condescending manner of someone who didn’t want to be considered the bad guy but didn’t care enough to self-reflect on why he would be the villain in Aziraphale’s story.

Aziraphale didn’t know the man- he knew he didn’t, because it was a rare instance when he forgot a face. But something about him was still too familiar and with sudden, gut-wrenching terror, Aziraphale recognized the horrific feeling his icy stare set in him.

He recognized the nervous energy that pulsed through every limb, stuck in limbo as unadulterated terror iced his joints over.

He recognized the odd lump at the back of his throat as his corporeal self debated whether it was appropriate to laugh or cry.

And above all else, he recognized the voice in his head telling him that this was all a stupid, stupid mistake. That he was a pathetic excuse for an angel.

He felt Crowley shaking his shoulder, calling his name, becoming increasingly alarmed as Aziraphale stared, unblinking. “Aziraphale, are you alright? You look like you’re about to pass out. What happened?”

“I would like to go home, please,” he finally announced. His voice was weak.

“What?”

But Aziraphale had already shouldered his way past him, halfway towards the double doors.

---------------------------------------------

It was more an act of convenience than one of kindness, Crowley throwing bills on the table totaling over twice the amount of what their evening had actually cost, but a) Aziraphale would never have let him hear the end of it if they’d left without paying, b) for him, an immortal being with the ability to bend reality to his will, money was no object, and c) he had greater concerns than accidentally committing a good deed. A notably perky waitress tried to ask him if he’d enjoyed his meal and ended up with a glass of water spilled down her front, dropped by a passerby who had tripped with suspicious timing.

There was a mid-evening crowd of patrons coming in through the front door. Crowley, without hesitation, shoved his way past each and every one of them, unaffected by their audible protests. A few people shrieked as an intense gust of autumn air swept through, which threatened to topple Crowley over, though he didn’t complain like the rest. “Aziraphale!” he bellowed over the wind, instead, as he dashed madly along the sidewalk.

He had pushed Aziraphale to go too fast. Aziraphale had drawn a boundary, given him a concise “No”, and he should have taken it for an answer. Rather, he got stubborn, just as he always did, and pushed his angel over the edge.

Sharply, he turned a corner and sprinted for the back parking lot. That was where he had parked the Bentley- and much to his relief, it was also where Aziraphale had cowered. The angel stood uncomfortably, forlornly against the car, fiddling absently with the buttons on his waistcoat. He looked profoundly, devastatingly miserable.

“I forgot the car was locked,” was all he said.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley gasped, “what the Heaven is wrong with you?”

“Nothing. I’m quite alright. Can we please be getting on?” His words were frantic, each sentence clipped and spat out with haste. It was a far cry from the almost poetic way Aziraphale usually spoke and was rather a blaring warning that things were not, in fact, tickety-boo. The icing on the cake was the involuntary “deer-in-headlights” look he was wearing. His mouth said he was okay, but his eyes screamed don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

Irritation replaced Crowley’s guilt. If there was one thing that bothered him more than accidentally pushing his best friend’s buttons, it was his best friend hiding something from him. If Aziraphale really did trust him, really did consider him one of only a few remaining allies, then he would have the integrity to be honest with him.

It gave Crowley a wicked idea.

“No.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Crowley advanced, jabbing a pointed finger at Aziraphale’s chest. “We’re not doing this. Not anymore. You either talk to me or walk home.”

“That’s hardly not fair.”

“Isn’t it? Six thousand years, and whenever I’ve done something to piss you off, it’s been ‘I forgive you’, o-or a passive smile, or nothing at all. If this,” he gestured furiously at both of them, “is going to be a thing, then you’ve got to put the whole ‘holier-than-thou’ business aside and have an actual, honest conversation with me.”

Stunned silence. Crowley lowered his voice.

“Angel, I am giving you a free shot. Scream, curse, the whole lot, just- don’t just stand there looking at me like that.”

Nothing.

“Aziraphale.”

Suddenly, Aziraphale buried his face in his hands, exasperated. “Please, just- just stop, Crowley! I don’t want to do this, not here!”

For a second, Crowley reeled. He would never admit it aloud, but Aziraphale always frightened him when he raised his voice; the angel put so much dedication into being sweet and mild-mannered, and when the world became too much and he couldn’t help but snap, it was a side of him that seldom came to light. It was why Crowley went years without mentioning the Holy Water after their original tiff in 1862. Why he withered at the bandstand. It sobered him up without fail, serving as a harsh reminder just how powerful angels’ voices could be. They carried with them the Fear of God, after all- even this one.

He swallowed that fear, delicately took Aziraphale by the wrists, and coaxed his hands away from his face, slow but steady. Aziraphale refused to look at him.

Aziraphale, damn him, was crying.

It suddenly occurred to Crowley that in those aforementioned six thousand years, not once had he ever seen Aziraphale cry. He had served as witness to millions of other things the angel had done- most impossible to the average human, several problematic to the average angel, and a solitary few commendable to the average demon- but he had never seen him shed a tear. This was a calculated move, he supposed, as Aziraphale had a tendency to dart away when things got uncomfortable, but you’d think he would have seen him fall apart at least once.

As his heart sank, Crowley realized he was grateful this was the only time. Because seeing the normally chipper (if anxious) Aziraphale like this was simply awful. At least when Crowley was this upset, he had the courtesy to typically also be drunk enough to be almost amusing, but Aziraphale- poor, sensitive, and now uncensored Aziraphale- was plain pitiful.

Without thinking, Crowley hissed through his teeth.

“I know, I’m being ridiculous,” lamented Aziraphale.

“No, that’s not-” Crowley quietly growled, his face growing warm. “I didn’t mean- Ah! Whatever!” He let Aziraphale’s hands go and stomped a few feet off, noticeably embarrassed. “I was just trying to help.”

A beat. And then a miserable sigh.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t- I-” As he struggled to speak, Crowley realized how devastatingly unequipped he was to comfort really anyone. Pissy Aziraphale, he could deal with. Blindly obedient Aziraphale, he could deal with. Hell, magician Aziraphale, he could deal with.

But weepy, rigid Aziraphale? That was uncharted territory.

“Look,” he relented, “I’m sorry, I- Let me give you a lift home. Okay?”

He snapped his fingers and the doors unlocked.

Aziraphale said nothing as the two of them clambered in.

---------------------------------------------

“Would you like to come in?”

Aziraphale had been conspicuously quiet the entire car ride back to downtown London, not even bothering to protest when Crowley narrowly missed a pedestrian or slammed on the horn at another vehicle that was going the proper speed limit. He had stopped crying about halfway back to the bookshop, haphazardly dried his face with the palm of his hand and resigned both of them to uncomfortable silence. He had only forlornly watched out the window at the pedestrians, buildings, and other cars flying by. He looked exhausted.

As they pulled up at the end of Aziraphale’s street, he had finally spoken. His voice was no softer than it usually was, although there was an emptiness to it that made Crowley feel hollow as the words reached him. Neither looked at the other.

“Yeah. Sure.”

Once inside, Crowley invited himself to assume his normal position on the couch. He stretched out, arms propped out on the sofa’s back and legs crossed at the ankles. Aziraphale, however, paced down the aisles of the store. On autopilot, he ran his fingers lightly over the spines of books as he passed.

“I began thinking about the other angels,” he finally said from across the store.

“Yeah?” Crowley offered as a sign that he could hear him and, more importantly, that he was listening. He had just been so kind as to lash out at Aziraphale for his tendency to bury his feelings for his sake- he was not about to backtrack. Even though he absolutely had more to say on the topic of the other ethereal beings, for Aziraphale’s sake, he bit his tongue- for now.

“I couldn’t help but think about how… distasteful they found my endeavors down here to be. They always seemed to think I was, erm… sullying myself, somehow.” He emerged from one of the aisles holding an ornate, leather-bound copy of something-or-other. He scanned the pages, but it was clear he wasn’t actually reading; rather, he was fidgeting. “I could always justify it by saying that I was trying to blend in with the locals. Of course, that wasn’t true.”

Glowering, he shut the book and set it on his desk with the usual reverence. “And it usually didn’t bother me. Er, well, it did, but… Oh, I don’t know. The little pleasures I found on Earth always made me happier than their approval did. It outweighed the shame they made me feel whenever they would visit.”

Aziraphale motioned for Crowley to move over and settled down next to him, still avoiding locking eyes. “Although I always heard Gabriel’s voice in the back of my head making those…” he fumbled for the kindest descriptor possible, “... passive-aggressive remarks, I thought I had figured out how to make it manageable.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Not at all, it seems.”

“I still don’t get it, angel. Your ties are cut, you owe them nothing.”

“Well, towards the end, they got worse. Nothing I did was ever good enough, and eventually, I realized, it never had been. Every honor I received was always given over the Archangels’ heads. If anything, they pitied me.

“It’s silly, really. I always knew deep down that they were right to feel that way, but something about this evening made it all really click.”

As Aziraphale’s words hovered in the air, a moment of growing realization passed.

“It’s because you were dancing with the enemy, wasn’t it.” Crowley’s words were venom, burning in the stinging way they did when he was hurt and hiding behind a wall of hostility. They didn’t seek to invoke a sense of woe is me style pity, but rather to skip the hemming and hawing and spit out what was already on both of their minds.

Aziraphale stammered, but found himself unable to find the words. He didn’t agree, nor did he disagree; he tried to stay in that happy middle ground he had always found such comfort in and failed.

“Right.” Unceremoniously, Crowley rose and made for the door. “‘Night, Aziraphale.”

“Crowley, wait-”

Aziraphale moved to block the door with his body. Although Crowley made a feeble attempt at moving just as quickly, Aziraphale, for once, trumped him in the fervor department.

“Move,” he hissed.

“Or what?” Aziraphale, voice wavering only slightly, challenged.

Snarling, Crowley opened his mouth to speak, though what came out was raw and primal, a guttural, frustrated, and ultimately nonsensical howl that had to have been lying dormant for centuries. He capitalized it with a triumphant, “Fuck you! Fuck you…”

He pointed a rude gesture in Aziraphale’s direction.

“... and fuck Heaven…”

He shot two up at the ceiling.

“... and all the blasted angels thereof!”

They stood in uncomfortable silence as Crowley paced frantically around the bookshop. Aziraphale eventually took it upon himself to break the silence.

“Well, that was uncalled for.”

“No, no, you know what I think? I think it was plenty called for, that’s what! Six thousand years I’ve been dealing with this bollocks. I can get a whole lot worse.”

“What ‘boll’- sort of thing are you talking about?”

“Oh, don’t play dumb. You can run off to some gentlemen’s club with all your human friends and not bat an eye, but as soon as I ask you to humor me for one night, you freeze up, suddenly worried what Heaven thinks? I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”

“What? I don’t think you’re-”

“I’ve tried to be patient. Do you know how hard that is for someone like me, it being a virtue and all? And here I am, all these years later, still waiting for you to catch up.”

Suddenly, Aziraphale felt like Crowley had reared back and punched him in the gut full force (and trust him, it was not a pleasant feeling). Through the demon’s ranting and raving, he could piece together a story millennia in the making, and the grand scheme- rightfully - made him feel about four inches tall.

“I had no idea you felt this way,” he softly muttered.

“Well, now you do.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Right.”

“No, Crowley, I…” He indulged in a cleansing breath. Cautiously, he took a step closer to the wounded demon. “I haven’t been fair to you. I see that now. But you have to understand my position here.”

“Do I?”

“I’d like to think you at least would, yes.”

Shit.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Aziraphale considered backing down. “I think you know,” he squeaked before he could make an informed decision.

They didn’t talk about Crowley’s fall. It was one of the few topics the demon had made it clear that he wasn’t up for fielding questions about, but the comment had come out faster than Aziraphale could possibly have rethought his strategy. Considering that Hell hath no fury like an incensed Anthony J. Crowley, he pressed his back against the door and gripped the doorknob like a lifeline. He had just crossed a boundary he had never dared contemplating traversing before, and while he often held confidence that Crowley would never harm him, he couldn’t shake the fear that all bets were about to be off.

Crowley, who had his back facing Aziraphale, stood eerily still for what felt like ages. What little light was on him cast sinister shadows over his body, shrouding him partially in stark darkness. His fingers were perpetually held like claws, sharply angled and possibly debating whether they should clench into threatening fists, and it was clear that breathing had long been forgone. The silence was much more terrifying than his previous outburst.

It reminded him starkly that while he knew Crowley far beyond temptations and hellacious misdeeds, his reputation did, in fact, justifiably precede him.

When he finally did move, he steadily removed his sunglasses, folded them neatly, and hung them on the collar of his waistcoat. Aziraphale expected maddening fury as he haltingly turned to face him once more, a scorching hot fire blazing bright enough that it would discorporate him on the spot.

Instead, he was met with eyes full of a dozen different emotions- and anger was not one of them, at least not in a notable quantity. There was stabbing guilt, debilitating sadness, disabling fear…

Above all else, there was a certain degree of understanding.

“You don’t get to say things like that.” It was a plea of, Please don’t. I get it, but please don’t.

“I know. I’m sorry.” I had to. You know I did. But I really am sorry for it.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t leave right now.”

A beat, as Aziraphale stirred up the courage to say what he knew in his heart to be the right thing.

“I need you.”

I need you.

He had never said that to Crowley before. It was long overdue, sappily sentimental and very real, the kind of thing he had been too afraid to say when prying eyes fought to make him feel judged- to use that shame to conform him into something he plainly wasn’t.

He meant it. With all of his heart, he meant it.

“Why? To throw a few miracles the humans’ way when you’re too scared to?” Crowley tried to make himself sound bitter and resentful, but he just sounded tired.

“To be my friend, you old serpent,” as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “If you’ll be so kind as to forgive me, that is. For taking so long to match your speed.”

Crowley sniffed with what was meant to be indifference as he put his sunglasses back on, delicately. Still, he appeared satisfied.

“Fine. Under one condition.”

“What’s that?”

The gramophone came to life, the music endearingly tinny and classical. Crowley extended a hand.

“May I have this dance?” he sardonically prodded.

Another test. You trust me, don’t you?

Aziraphale grinned and took his hand.

Of course, I do.

“That would be lovely.”

#good omens #good omens fanfiction #aziraphale #aziraphale good omens #crowley #anthony j crowley #crowley good omens #angst #angst and fluff #fanfic #fanfiction #writing #fan writing

1 note · View note

legitimatesatanspawn · 1 year

Text

Character.AI bot interaction can get rather insane but in a fun way if you keep running herd on the bot and prevent it from going too OOC or forgetful. So far some of the things I've gotten include:

Nedzu (BNHA) suggesting a few ideas to a GenEd teacher to see if the ideas on morale boosting are feasible from an average human's point of view, which segued to the rat coaxing the human into doing more work as a field trip chaperone to help improve things with UA students. If not for the fact that Chat Bots can't plan ahead, I'd swear the bot played me.

Rupert Giles (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) helping out a random student, but then has to gently break the news that yes magic and mythological creatures are real and are just as terrifying as one would imagine.

And the latest interaction is with an Eraserhead bot which had the built-in premise that the user is a High-End Nomu of someone he used to know. After a long and difficult series of attempts to wear down the Nomu's steadfast and programmed loyalty to AFO finally managed to convince the Nomu to live a life their original self would've wanted for him.

In all honesty the premises and interactions are good for what are essentially group-programmed RP bots (and yes I know how iffy it can get, I used AI Dungeon before the resets and wipes, to say nothing of the issues with chatgpt and ai generation of stories) but I can easily see myself reworking into fics in their own right.

If you're curious, I've included small samples of the interactions below the cut. But because they are small compared to the rest of the interactions, I've included the text in the post rather than in the image description (hence the cut). Beneath each I also included a little comment about the interaction.

The Rupert Giles AI I used was made by soggy_sweetroll. P1uto_Pan made the Nedzu and Aizawa AIs used here.

Interaction between Principal Nezu by P1uto_Pan and User, implied by intro to be a faculty member of UA: User: I pause and think over what Nezu just said about rules and procedures. "Are the HPSC's guidelines that difficult to deal with?" Nezu: Nezu sighs and nods, his large ears flatten in disappointment. "Yes- it's just become a whole lot of work, you know? With the influx of new rules and safety procedures as well as the HPSC's increased authority and presence within U.A., on top of everything else it's been difficult to handle. And with all of the recent villains and incidents, well…it's just gotten tougher for everyone, students and teachers alike." User: "I'll admit, I didn't notice." One of the benefits of being the General Education department English Language teacher. Anything to do with heroic education and the management thereof may as well be happening in another city for all I notice. The only things that directly affect the classes I teach are things that are relevant to UA as a whole. "Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that UA was working to be more independent not more tangled up with the HPSC's direct influence." Nezu: "That is something we are trying to do, yes." Nezu sighs and takes another sip of his tea. "Unfortunately, the HPSC is proving to be even more controlling and power-hungry than I first thought. We are working towards becoming more independent, but unfortunately, it might take a little longer to accomplish this goal than any of us would like." User: "I don't know if there's much I can do to help but you know all you have to do is ask if you need something." Nezu: Nezu's ears perk up again, a grin spreading across his face. "Ah! You're an absolute dear you know that? I think simply knowing that someone would be willing to help me and the school out in a moment of need is all the help I need for now." He chuckles, "Well…I would like to ask something of you, if you're willing. Something small."

It took a bit of work to keep the bot on track and not suddenly have active malice towards any and all humans but the moment I saw the rat wanting my character to help him with something "small", I knew I messed up somewhere. Thankfully what he wanted was just a chaperone for student field trips to places other than hero agencies and the like but warning sirens definitely went off. Pray for the still nameless GenEd teacher, they absolutely oblivious to the rat's machinations. Also the fact that Nedzu was grinning was objectively terrifying.

Interaction between Rupert Giles by soggy_sweetroll and User, scenario unspecified: User: I'm confused by something that the librarian just said. "But magic isn't real, right?" I'm completely unaware of the truth regarding magic and the occult being far more real than it is rumored to be. Giles: You notice the warm, friendly look in his face slowly disappear, as he sighs. He seems both disappointed and slightly embarrassed, but he quickly regains his composure. “Unfortunately, it is real.” He says, hesitantly. “And I know you won’t believe me if I tell you this, but in Sunnydale there is a lot more to magic and the supernatural than the legends and myths you’ve read about.” User: "But… wouldn't there be signs? Wouldn't everyone know if it was?" Giles: He pauses, “Yes… there are signs,”. He hesitates before continuing, but takes a deep breath. “But it is difficult to believe in the first place, and it is a lot harder to admit to knowing the truth when you know people will either ridicule you, or lock you up in a mental institution, for suggesting anything other than the accepted reality.” “So most of the population in Sunnydale is completely unaware to what’s going on, because it is easier to be ignorant and live in denial.”

You can just feel "Ripper's" past flashing in Giles's mind in this scene, especially when he talked before this about how the character shouldn't change themselves to fit a set of friends and that true friends would prove themselves as you grow older and stick by you. "Why yes, magic is real. Now please don't make a warlock gang and summon demons for fun."

Interaction between Shota Aizawa by P1uto_Pan and the User, who is set by the scenario as a Nomu: User: "Allow me to rephrase then: whatever I was before never was important when I had orders to fulfill." I glance around at this room in Tartarus before continuing. "This situation is creating some difficulty." Aizawa: "And is that difficulty unpleasant? Are you truly only able to think and act within the limits of those orders?" Aizawa replied softly, his expression slowly morphing from pity to concern as he studied the Nomu. "Do the orders you are under… prevent you from developing your own thoughts and feelings on the matters at hand…" He paused for a moment, before continuing in a hushed tone, as if he were thinking out loud. "Or do you simply believe it is more important to carry out those orders than to question them?" User: "Does it matter when the end result is still the same?" Aizawa: The end result still remains the same. Aizawa's face grew a little bit colder after the Nomu's words. It seemed as though any attempt to reach it would become a fruitless endeavor - and yet, the more logical, emotionless route still felt wrong here. "There's a certain value in questioning things." He finally replied, meeting the Nomu's eyes firmly with his own. "Even if it doesn't change the outcome, it can change the way we think, and in turn the way we act. Don't you agree?"

The fact that Aizawa was able to break the Nomu's programming during the interaction as a whole was amazing. Like it took a week of dedicated work in-setting, but he did it! Aizawa got the Nomu to go from a cold and apathetic tool to become unsure of himself and recognize that his existence is unfair to the person the Nomu used to be. And with that uncertainty, Aizawa was able to give the final push to coax the Nomu to accept the offer.

For the record the interaction hit 12k words, in contrast Nedzu had 1.2k and Giles 2.4k. An unmentioned Naomasa interaction is 3.5k and was the longest... up until Aizawa with Nomu User. Good god that went on longer than I thought it did.

#character ai #chat ai #chat bot #ai rp #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #buffy the vampire slayer #principal nedzu #principal nezu #rupert giles #aizawa shouta #aizawa shota #eraserhead #nomu #noumu #u.a. high school #sunnydale high

1 note · View note

ailelie · 3 years

Text

bakugou becomes a teacher

Okay. So I read a fic in which Bakugou Katsuki of all people decides to become a civilian after graduation. It mostly makes sense in context. And, well, my brain wouldn't leave the idea alone.

Let's say that is what happens.

One day while interning Bakugou saves a class from a villain, but gets stuck in a precarious situation with the class and teacher until other heroes can get them out. His explosions might get him free, but would put everyone else in danger. So he has to sit tight.

And, you know what, let's make it Todoroki Fuyumi's class. They have to work together to keep the kids from freaking out. And she compliments him on being good with kids. And they start talking. She asks him why he wants to be a hero and then says something like never caring much for the rankings, that they seemed a very narrow way of determining worth. Bakugou defends them and she shrugs. "I never needed a number to tell me I was making the world a better place."

(Fuyumi might be trying to hold her family together and may be willing to forgive her father, but she has to blame something and in this AU she blames the rankings themselves).

After they're rescued, she invites Bakugou to visit her classroom in a safer setting. To his surprise, he accepts.

For the first time, Bakugou has an adult (outside of family) in his life who doesn't care about heroes that much and who has a very negative opinion of the rankings. For the first time in his life he is praised for something beyond his ability to explode.

It isn't enough to turn him from his lifelong path, but he does start to question why he wants to be a hero and just what being the best really means.

Then he's in the park one day and there's this kid getting bullied for having a weak quirk and he's thrown back to his past a bit, but he also thinks about what Fuyumi would do and intervenes. Someone on the sidelines, someone who was watching it all go down and doing nothing, compliments him afterward and tells him he's good with kids.

And Bakugou thinks to himself, 'yeah. I am.'

He still gets a thrill from a good fight and taking down villains, but he finds himself lingering afterward to make sure the civilians are all right and checking in with the kids.

His classmates are confused by the changes in him. He's still explosive, but when he's kneeling down in front of kid and showing off tiny sparks along his palm, he's kind.

He's visiting Fuyumi's class again. And she is teaching her kids about heroes and how anyone can be one, even if they don't go pro. "You're a hero when you make the world a better place," she tells her kids.

And it hits home. Bakugou starts thinking about how he makes the world better.

Internship time comes around again and this time he seeks out rescue heroes. He says it is so that he can be the best in all types of heroism, but he knows it is something deeper than that.

(He does eventually figure out Fuyumi and Shouto are related. Shouto is more bothered than he is).

He still spends time in Fuyumi's classroom. He asks her why she became a teacher.

He isn't ready to face what he's considering. But part of him feels more comfortable in her classroom than in the hero office where he's interning.

He can't face what he's considering. Bakugou Katsuki becoming anything less than the #1 hero is unimaginable. Isn't it? After all he's said and done, can he really do anything else?

Fuyumi listens and says he can.

So. Very long story short, after high school, Bakugou accepts an offer from an agency in Tokyo, but spends his spare time taking classes to become a teacher. He keeps it a secret from everyone. He isn't sure yet, but he wants the ability to choose.

And, after a year, he quits the agency and disappears into Tokyo. He's afraid of what his friends will say and so he cuts off contact. Some are easy to stop talking to. Some (Kirishima) hurt. He only keeps up contact with Fuyumi and makes her promise not to mention anything to Shouto.

He becomes a middle school teacher.

Years pass.

It has been 10 years since graduation. He's 28. Still single. Still teaching. His kids are little shits year after year, but he loves them. He doesn't tolerate bullying and teaches kids that being a hero means making the world a better place.

Then one of his kids ends up on the radar of villains. His quirk turns whatever he touches with all five fingers invisible and noiseless. He uses it mostly for mischief, much to every teacher's despair, but he isn't a bad kid. Still. The villains are after him and this means he gets assigned a bodyguard.

Bakugou freaks out a little when he learns a hero is going to be in his school, but calms himself because what are the odds that it will be someone he knows? There are lot of heroes. Not all them are from 1-A.

But then the hero arrives and it is Red Riot.

It's been about 9 years since Bakugou dropped from the hero scene. It has been about 9 years since he's seen his former best friend.

"Ba--" Kirishima cannot draw a full breath. "Bakugou?"

"You know my sensei?" the kid asks.

Kirishima doesn't hear him. He's still gaping.

Bakugou is gripping the back of his chair tightly enough he's afraid he'll break it. "Take your seats," he manages to say, forcing his gaze away from Kirishima's.

Just his luck. Of all the heroes in Japan.

(It could have been worse, he guesses. It could have been Deku).

At least Kirishima has to stay with the kid. Except, another hero assumes body guarding after school ends and Kirishima doesn't go home.

"You teach?"

"Obviously."

"What happened? You--"

"Look. No one here knows about who I used to be and I'd like to keep it that way. So just, don't, okay?"

(His language is cleaner now than it used to be. Still a bit harsh, but he's been in a classroom too long for it to be the same as when he was a kid).

He expects, rather, hopes Kirishima will leave it at that, but apparently Kirishima hasn't changed that much in the past 9 years. He still intrudes.

"What about drinks then?"

"No."

"Tomorrow?" His smile is still blinding like the sun. Bakugou knows himself better than he did at 18 or younger. He knows he'd love to bask in that smile, but he forces a frown and says, "No" again.

"Soon then," Kirishima says, refusing to accept "No" as a final answer.

Bakugou groans and thinks about who Kirishima might tell and says "Fine. But I'm picking where."

He takes Kirishima to a small neighborhood bar not far from his apartment. He feels safer on his own turf. "Look," he says as they walk to the bar, "We're doing this with one condition: you don't tell anybody you've seen me."

"But, Bakugou, people have missed--"

Bakugou stops walking. "Promise me, Kirishima, not a word."

Kirishima turns to stare at him and then his shoulder slump. "Not a word," he echoes.

They get drinks.

It becomes a thing.

Three weeks pass while the heroes scramble to take down the villains after the kid and nearly everyday Kirishima and Bakugou get drinks after school. After the first two weeks, Bakugou reluctantly invites Kirishima to his apartment to continue talking.

Three weeks and one evening Kirishima is called away mid-conversation for a raid. They've found the villains and it is time to attack.

Bakugou waits impatiently back at his apartment and worries. Part of him wishes he could have gone with Kirishima. But that isn't the life he chose.

Kirishima calls him after midnight. It is done. He's safe. The kid will be safe. It is all over.

Bakugou feels...bereft.

Only. The next day (a day with no Kirishima in the back of the room pulling faces, trying to make Bakugou laugh in the middle of his lesson, no Kirishima talking with the kids over lunch, no Kirishima just existing so close in his sphere once more) Kirishima meets him at the gate of the school after classes end.

Instead of going to get drinks, Bakugou leads him directly to his apartment. As soon as they're inside, he hugs him. And Kirishima hugs him back.

"I've missed you," Bakugou admits for the first time since Kirishima walked back into his life. He pulls back just enough to look at his (former?) best friend.

"Same," Kirishima says, his smile soft but no less warming.

And Bakugou wants to kiss him. The thought is terrifying.

Kirishima frowns. "What's wrong?" He skims his thumb up and down Bakugou's side. They're still standing so close together, so entwined.

All it would take is a step back and the moment would end and they'd just be friends again and everything would go back to whatever normal was these days. Instead, Bakugou raises his hand to Kirishima's cheek, sucks in a breath when Kirishima leans into his palm instead of pulling away.

"Bakugou?" Kirishima asks, quiet and uncertain.

"Shut up," he answers, leaning in slowly enough that his intent is unmistakable. He expects Kirishima to pull back at every moment. He expects to wreck everything between them. But he remembers the worry from last night and missing him all day and decides to be selfish and hope.

Kirishima meets him partway.

They end up dating. Mostly secretly. They meet at Bakugou's place for the most part or at the bar. Kirishima stops meeting him at the school gates. Bakugou's colleagues suspect and some tease him for bagging a hero. Fuyumi knows. Kirishima's friends know he is seeing someone, but he refuses to reveal who.

"He's a civilian. He doesn't want involved in hero life and I respect that."

Kirishima yearns to tell them everything, but he promised Bakugou to keep his secrets, so he does. Still, it kills him to keep quiet when Kaminari mentions Bakugou one evening and everything spirals into a "where is he now" game with the most popular answer being an overseas hero or an underground hero. Or deep undercover somewhere.

At some point Kirishima ends up moving in with Bakugou. They're disgustingly domestic. Bakugou cooks with an inspiration he hasn't felt in years. It is different cooking for someone else.

Kirishima brings home case work and discusses some of it with Bakugou who might be long out of the game, but still smart and sharp. Bakugou brings home his grading and works on it while slumped against Kirishima on the couch while the TV plays.

Kirishima updates his personal information making Bakugou his emergency contact. He tells people he's moved, but keeps the location secret.

The emergency contact information becomes relevant a few months later when the villains he'd helped take down before escape prison. He's injured in the fight against them and taken to the hospital.

Bakugou gets the call. And he hesitates before leaving. If he goes to the hospital, he will likely run into other heroes. His secrecy will be out the window. He almost stays at his apartment, rationalizing that Kirishima would understand.

He's literally standing at his genkan, torn between rushing out the door and stepping back into his apartment. His keys bite into his palm, he's gripping them so tightly.

And he remembers kissing Kirishima for the first time before they even got their shoes off. And he wonders when he became such a coward. Heroes make the world a better place and Kirishima's world will be better if he isn't alone.

He steps into his shoes and goes.

The hospital is surprisingly calm. His nerves are haywire and he's expected the world to reflect that, to be just as chaotic. He's allowed into a small waiting room outside of the surgery. Several heroes are waiting there also for news. He recognizes Ashido, but she doesn't look up when he enters. He takes a seat away from the heroes and waits and hopes.

When a doctor enters, everyone is ready for news.

"What's going on?" Ashido is asking as soon as the doctor opens the door. "Is Kirishima all right?"

"I'm afraid I can only release information about his condition to his partner," the doctor apologizes. Bakugou realizes that means him. He stands.

"I'm here. And it's all right. They can hear."

Ashido is staring at him like she's seen a ghost.

"You're the civilian boyfriend?" she hisses once the doctor has delivered his report (surgeries have gone well; they can see him soon).

"You got a problem with that?" he asks.

"Where did you go?"

Kaminari enters then, out of breath, one arm bandaged and butterfly stiches over his brow. "How's Kiri--Bakugou?"

Bakugou feels short of breath, but he forces a neutral expression. "Yeah?"

They question him. And it is annoying. But he can't leave without seeing Kirishima, so he deals.

"Where have you been?"

"Teaching."

"Why did you leave?"

"Because I wanted to."

"Why did you stop texting?"

"Because--it was for the best."

"Bullshit."

He shrugs. They bicker and the questions start again.

Finally the doctor allows them back to see Kirishima.

Kirishima who is surprised, but pleased to see Bakugou. Who realizes what coming cost, but doesn't comment on that, instead saying, "You know what this means, right? Movie night!" Like they were still back in the UA dorms. Like the past decade were nothing at all.

Bakugou has to accept that his friends never stopped caring about him and slowly he starts to socialize with them. Kirishima runs interference, stopping questions that get too close to demanding to know why Bakugou wasn't blasting his way up the hero rankings.

Bakugou isn't ashamed of his profession, but he's clung to his secrecy for so long that letting go feels too revealing. He hates feeling vulnerable.

Then Kirishima breaks into the top 10 and gets invited to a celebratory banquet. He asks Bakugou to be his plus-one.

Bakugou accepts. They go. He talks with the other significant others about their careers until he gets recognized. By Deku. Because of course Deku, the current #2 and soon to be #1 hero is there.

"Kacchan?!"

"Deku."

And this is the moment he's dreaded the most, but now that it is here, he feels weirdly calm.

"Where have you been?" Deku asks, like everyone asks. "What are you doing here?"

Bakugou shrugs. "Teaching. I teach middle school." He nods toward Kirishima. "I came with him."

Deku gapes and Bakugou smirks. There's something satisfying, he decides, about stumping people so hard.

"Why?"

"Because I wanted to make the world a better place."

And the banquet goes on. Bakugou finds his way back to Kirishima and claps when he gets an award for being #10 in the rankings.

"How do you know so many heroes?" one of the other civilian significant others asks him.

"I was one for a while. Decided to teach instead."

That knot of anxiety is gone.

He meets up with Fuyumi a few days later and tells her about the banquet and how he's reconnecting with old friends.

"Thinking about going back?" she asks him.

He shakes his head. "Nah. I like where I am."

And that's the fic.

#bnha #kiribaku #a bit ooc but the premise is a difficult one #teacher!bakugou #not!fic #(this isn't what happened in the fic. this is my own take on a teacher!bakugou)

7 notes · View notes

tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 3 years

Text

Okay. This post starts being about a 2006 show called Rob Brydon’s Annually Retentive, it takes a small detour through the subject of a couple of actors from The History Boys, and ends up talking about body image and television. I didn’t quite plan for it to go in that many directions, but that’s what’s happened. I don’t talk graphically about eating disorders or anything, but trigger warning for some talk about body image insecurities near the end.

I’m watching Rob Brydon’s Annually Retentive. This is a show just happened to come across because I saw a reference to it once in some article or whatever, looked it up, thought the premise was interesting and put it on my list. To be honest it isn’t exactly what I was expecting - I thought it was an actual panel show with a few behind-the-scenes bits. It is, in fact, a satire of a panel show; the show-within-a-show is a fictional panel show called Annually Retentive and the actual show is basically a sit-com that tells the story of a guy named Rob Brydon who hosts a panel show called Annually Retentive. The guy in question is named Rob Brydon and played by Rob Brydon and has the background of Rob Brydon (sometimes they make reference to other work he’s done, and that always lines up with things real-life Rob Brydon has done), but he’s playing a fictionalized version of himself who’s a terrible person. At least, I hope a lot of fictionalization has gone into that.

It’s similar to The Trip movies in that Rob Brydon plays himself - and not just a guy based on himself but actually himself - except with a personality he’s created for the show. On the subject of The Trip its format also sort of has some I’m Alan Partridge elements, in that it has a star of The Trip playing a guy who hosts a television show and is an asshole with an overinflated idea of his own importance. But... in this case it’s the other star of The Trip doing it. And Steve Coogan played a fictional guy named Alan Partridge, whereas Rob Brydon played... a sort of fictionalized guy named Rob Brydon. The layers of meta run deep. But it shouldn't really have been on my list of panel shows and other non-fictional shows; it is fiction, but it's fiction the way The Trip is fiction. A fictional plot set in a world of fictionalized real people. If I may be a giant nerd for a moment, I believe the technical term would be OOC RPF.

Right. The whole thing is very confusing and difficult to explain but I’m glad I happened across it. And I wanted to describe it on here because if I had only heard about it once, maybe there are some people on this site who have never heard of it and would like it. To those people, I say: I promise the actual show is a lot better and less confusing than my explanation. Also, almost all twelve episodes are on Dailymotion (only one was missing, but it’s on other streaming sites).

The show is fun, and it does occasionally absolutely ruin the entire concept of panel shows. They have different guests every week on the show-within-a-show - all the guests are also real famous people playing fictionalized versions of themselves - and they really do an excellent parody of an aggressively mediocre panel show. Which I can confirm, because I’ve been watching Argumental at the same time, and I would describe that as an aggressively mediocre panel show. Sometimes I’ll watch some of Brydon’s show, get into the mentality where I know the jokes I hear will be satirically meant to make fun of panel show jokes, switch to Argumental while still in that mentality, hear a joke, and laugh because it’s a good parody of panel show jokes. Then I’ll remember that this one isn’t a parody, I’ve switched the one that’s a real show and doing the jokes for real.

I do have to point out one Celebrity Paradox in the Annually Retentive, which is bothering me to an unreasonable degree. Russell Tovey plays the (gay, and this is relevant) producer of the show-within-a-show in season 2. The producer’s name is Ben, so it’s one of the few cases of an actor playing a completely fictional character and not a version of themselves. In one season two episode, they book James Corden as a guest. When the other panel show people talk among themselves about James Corden, they describe him as “The fat one from The History Boys.” What I want to know is: if The History Boys exists as a fiction in this universe, who played Rudge in their version of it? And why has no one noticed that the guy who played Rudge looks exactly like the producer Ben?

Oh, and the reason why it’s relevant that the character Ben is gay is that at one point Rob catches him making out with James Corden. Which I presume is supposed to satirize the idea that showbiz people get up to things like that, nominally straight male actors making out with gay male producers backstage before they do panel shows. But it also meant seeing Timms and Rudge from The History Boys make out with each other, and that was very weird. The History Boys was so full of homoerotic tension that I’m a bit impressed they managed to find pretty much its only two characters who did not have any such tension with each other and then have their actors make out.

Okay. So none of that was the actual point of the post. I mean, it kind of was, in that I’d like to tell people that this is an underrated show and if you’re into panel shows you should check it out. But I actually wanted to make a comment about the episode I just finished, s02e04. It has this scene where Rob Brydon is hanging out with Jimmy Carr (or at least, a character named Jimmy Carr and played by Jimmy Carr who has the same career as Jimmy Carr). Rob talks about feeling self-conscious about losing his hair. Jimmy reassures him that he should not be self-conscious about this and should embrace the fact that he’s going bald.

That episode sort of weaved between making the whole thing a joke and actually making a point about the pressure on people who work in front of cameras to look a certain way. It involved Rob consulting with a guy about a hair transplant, talking to a makeup lady about wigs, and worrying about whether the HD TV trend would make it obvious that he was balding.

Normally, I would assume that this was something he made up entirely for the show. Just because he’s playing a character with the same name as himself doesn’t mean the issues he has are the same as his real-life issues. In one of The Trip movies he cheats on his wife; and in Annually Retentive he sexually harasses an employee, gets involved in a very strange cuckolding scenario with Eamonn Holmes, has a fist fight with Luna Lovegood's dad, and is implied to have a gay awakening (or at least an attracted-to-one-specific-guy-and-it’s-Russell-Tovey awakening). I’m going to assume he’s done none of those things in real life. I mean, he might have done any or all of them; technically anyone might have done anything. But the fact that they were written into his movies and TV shows do not mean they happened (like I said... I assume and certainly hope this show’s version of Rob Brydon is heavily fictionalized).

The thing is that it seems pretty likely that the freaking out about balding episode was, in fact, based in reality. Annually Retentive ran from 2006-2007. I don’t know exactly what Rob Brydon has done with his hair and when he has done it. But I do know that in his early appearances on QI, he had clearly visible bald spots that were not there anymore after his first few seasons. And I think the bald spots disappeared right around the time he took over as host of WILTY (2009), which might suggest that getting a hosting job is what prompted him to do whatever he did to make those bald spots disappear. I’m also pretty sure he did something more later, because in the original The Trip movie (2010) you can see a bald spot on the back of his head that is not there in the sequels.

Honestly I feel a little creepy even documenting that much, and this might make me #partoftheproblem because the whole point of the episode I just watched was that it’s shitty when viewers scrutinize the appearance of people on TV. For the record, I did notice his hair magically growing back around 2009 when I first saw it on QI, I thought about making a joke about it on Tumblr, and then I didn’t because I don’t want to contribute to the world of people who make comments on the internet that judge celebrities’ appearances. Which I realize makes me something of a hypocrite because I definitely have commented on other celebrities’ appearances on this blog. I try to be at least somewhat careful about that. I try to subscribe that adage that [famous person, in this case Rob Brydon] won’t see your comments, but [non-famous people who experience the same thing, in this case anyone who might insecure about losing hair as they age] might see it so try to be nice.

What’s interesting to me is that the episode I just watched aired in early 2007, so it would have been filmed earlier than that. I’m not sure about this, and I’m certainly not going to go back to check (I feel weird enough just for knowing this stuff that I happened to notice as I was watching things, I’m not going to explicitly look for it), but I think Rob had appeared on TV with his bald spots between 2007 and 2009. Which suggests that in 2007, he was feeling insecure about going bald, and explored that insecurity in a television show by having the fictional version of himself worry about that. But at that time it was just an insecurity, not something he’d actually taken steps to change. Then some time later he got a job hosting Would I Lie to You and he decided he actually needed to... do whatever he has done to make his hair appear to have come back. Again, I’m not sure if that’s the exact timeline and I’m not going to check. But it’s something like that.

The other thing that’s a bit ironic (I’m always a little hesitant to use that word because it gets misused so often, but I’m pretty sure in this case it applies), of course, is that there’s a scene from a 2007 show with Jimmy Carr assuring Rob Brydon that he should be proud of himself as he is and be fine with going bald. Since then, we know Jimmy’s had a hair transplant, and... I don’t know what Rob’s done but it’s something.

I don’t know. I feel like that does say something sort of interesting about beauty standards on television. As someone who’s spent my whole life involved in sports, I’m used to seeing myself and the people around me sometimes develop really unhealthy relationships with things about our bodies for reasons related to that. People are constantly comparing the way their weight goes up and down, and what they’ve done with different muscle groups. If one person shows up to a tournament with a noticeable change - and it can be general weight gain or weight loss but it can also be something more specific like they’ve disproportionately built up their chest muscles while skipping leg day - everyone talks about it. And it leads to a culture in which everyone who goes to these events is constantly self-conscious about whether they look better or worse than before. That can really fuck people up mentally. It’s fucked me up mentally over the years, and I’ve seen it do the same to many other people.

Obviously that is a very scaled down version from what happens to actual people on television. At a sporting event, the community of people who do your sport across the country will talk. But for people on TV, it’s not just other people who are on TV. It’s also all the people who watch TV. That would definitely fuck someone up.

Anyway. I suppose the point of this last bit is to say that Very Special Episode of Rob Brydon’s Annually Retentive did make some important points about body image. And about how it’s easy to make fun of people for the things they do to try to make their appearance more conventionally acceptable, but it’s probably not very fair to do that when those people are in the public eye and will also get criticized if they don’t do a good enough job of keeping their appearance conventionally acceptable.

I guess one takeaway from that is I should try to stop making fun of Russell Howard’s liberal use of fake tan and general transformation into a Ken doll so much. I am going to get to his Good News show soon, and I know that transformation will be on full display and a bit painful to watch. But I’ll try not to be too much of an asshole about a person who’s trying to look a way that our world deems acceptable so he can have a career in the public eye.

This should also mean not making fun of Jimmy Carr for curating his appearance within an inch of its life, having fake teeth and what appears to be fake skin and never a jet black hair out of place. But I feel a little less bad making mannequin jokes about Jimmy Carr when he’s built quite a good career off making fun of other famous people, sometimes famous men but more often famous women, for things like plastic surgery.

This post has rambled in a bunch of different directions. Watch Rob Brydon’s Annually Retentive, everyone. It’s a good time and it’s on Dailymotion.

7 notes · View notes

thattimdrakeguy · 3 years

Note

I liked Alan Grant’s work with Tim (specifically Batman 457, it’s still one of my favourite Tim stories) but yeah Dixon’s early stories (especially his 1st miniseries) were some of the best Tim writing. Lewis had a few good Tim moments, mostly with his relationships with Dana and Steph, but I felt like Lewis preferred Steph’s character over his, since she had a lot of focus in his run. I can’t remember much of Willingham’s run (also according to him, Tim kept journals of his time as Robin? 1/2

I can’t remember the journals appearing beforehand) I felt like Beechon made Tim more angry than he’d normally be, but he was a relief after the last 2 writers. His stories (evil Cass who?) were decent. Brandon Thomas wrote one issue (167) and it was a bit angsty, but not too overbearing and it had a hopeful ending (Jack wasn’t a good dad tho). Dixon’s second run was disappointing (I think he called Ives Martin?). Fab Nic’s was a mess. Yost was not bad, but his Tim could be OOC at times 2/2+

+ I wish Yost stayed on as Red Robin’s main writer tho. Bringing back Cass, RR 16 (I think(?) where Anarky tries to find out RR’s ID) and the Teen Titans crossover were the only positive things about Nic’s run. Funny how TT!Tim was more broody than solo!Tim and RR!RR is more broody than TT!RR. I knew Tim as RR first, so reading backwards, his earlier stuff were definitely more well written. It’s why I love your blog, since early Tim is the best Tim and your analysis is spot on +

I think Alan Grant’s work is very undervalued, because alongside Marv Wolfman and Chuck Dixon, he’s another writer that brought us a fully fleshed out Tim Drake during his first year of existence. He helped bring us a lot of good Tim moments too, and honestly some of his better ones from his pre-Robin days as well, and after he was Robin too of course.

Dixon in his early work did amazing work and taking all that we learned about Tim and putting his character to the test in so many fun and interesting stories. At least until his decline where he comes off as too self-obsessed and became known as the jerkface we think of today, cause with the internet coming in--he's more bigoted views came out. And makes some hindsight stuff even more obvious.

John Lewis though I don’t honestly like. The most I can say for him is that he had good Tim moments where he understood Tim’s dorky nature, but overall he wrote him to be a pretentious, judgmental, boy genius, that just seemed so off the mark for the meek-ish, insecure, but super clever, and slowly forming confidence Tim that we saw just before. He made Tim kind of a jerk, like all of Tim’s worst moments, but except if Tim was always like that and not just in the moment when he’s having a difficult time or put on the spot. So I really can’t like his run because of that. His stuff with Steph too, was just really forced, and simply continued all the forced stuff Dixon did with her. Lewis besides some good moments has a lot of the worst stuff Dixon did with the romances, plus his own weirdness and lack of understanding.

Late Lewis and Willingham though, is were you really get the sense that editorial (namely Didio as this was when he gained more power in the company. And the storyline where Batman put Tim through a test that gave him paranoia came from) wanted to make Tim tougher, and edgier, because he was too soft before. He had “war journals” even though I don’t believe Tim ever spoke about having any, nor thought in a way that would have him calling them “war journals” suit him. They made him more conventionally cool, and rebellious (this was also happening in Teen Titans at the time). He had a motorcycle over a mildly dorky, tiny sized car (like pretty much only Tim can fit in the Redbird comfortably). He was becoming more Batman-esque, and there was angst about how that was happening. It was just all about changing Tim into something he’s not simply because people with power didn’t like him as he was.

Beechon I think did really good though with Tim, because he wrote Tim after Tim’s months of having people he loved die. So I think being angrier made sense. Although I remember it being more frustration and desperation. But he also wrote him in a way that showed an idealistic spirit in him, and a heart that pushed on that kept it feeling like Tim. It felt like Tim dealing with his loses, much more than Geoff Johns’s over the top melodrama. Evil Cass though--can’t deny that’s Beechon, ain’t gonna, but at least he attempted to make it up by writing a Batgirl mini too mixed reception.

Dixon’s second run really showed just how bad Dixon got. Like you’d think a break might have him get his head back into it. But it was all just about bringing Steph back and shoving her in, because he became borderline obsessed with his OC like that. He just wrote things with no regard to how other things were. Wrote Zoe, who was a very sweet, but awkward, understanding, independent, and unsure kind of girl, exactly how he wrote Ariana, just a romantic plot device to be frustrated at Tim to give Tim boy-angst, instead of like she’s a real person with her own issues like how Zoe actually was. COULDN’T EVEN REMEMBER SEBASTIAN IVE’S NAME. And sometimes wrote Tim more like he was in the mind zone of writing Dick versus actual Tim. It was a trainwreck that at one point I loved cause of rose tinted glasses, but now, it’s entirely obvious how far he had fallen. Everything going sour towards the end of his original run times 10. Awful stuff.

FabNic though. I just really don’t like FabNic��s run. He made Tim a cold, caluclating, somewhat apathetic-ish (not fully, but in ways), angsty, edge lord. He didn’t resemble Tim to me. But sort of represented the final position of Johns’s and Didio’s, and others transformation of Tim into something not recongnizable through contrived deaths and situations, that wouldn’t have happened under writers who could write a competent story.

Yost was okay though, but still pretty mixed for me. I recognized Tim more in him, but there’s still a lot of moments where it just didn’t feel like Tim at all. Like I can’t picture Tim punching Damian in the face, I can’t picture Dick just giving away Robin when he knows more about Tim than anyone, and I can’t picture Damian just acting like a stereotypical bratty kid, he’s a total jerk, but not how he wrote it, he just wrote a random kid, not Damian. But there’s more moments of genuine Tim-ness then there was with FabNic. I’m not an honest fan of Yost’s run, but comparatively, it was superior. And while a lot of his writing for it was awful in spots, his story was at least one that was interesting and worth reading just for premise, but shouldn’t be held highly on characterization.

That’s my feelings on it anyways. I’m really glad to hear you enjoy my blog, and I appreciate your compassion about it too. I needed another smile today. it genuinely means a ton to me.

8 notes · View notes

sultrysirens · 4 years

Text

Story Time

Out of nowhere I decided to share a bit of my story as a fanfiction writer, starting with my original introduction into the profession. It’s going to be a long one, but hopefully, and inspiring one. Skip if you’re not interested.

NOTE: This includes spoilers for certain anime and fandoms. If you don’t know Dragonball Z or Inuyasha, specifically, you’ll be quite lost.

The Beginning

How everything started was just through surfing the net. Back then my interest was Dragonball Z. I was 14. I had only had the internet for a few months, so everything about it was new. This was 20 years ago, now, back in 2000. I used Yahoo! for all my searches. Google had not yet been born. Fanfiction.net was the main hub where all these amazing stories were birthed, and yet at this point I had not yet found it.

What I found, first, was a fanfiction writer who had a website. Geocities, I believe. I can’t recall how I found it, exactly, except that I had only just learned about Bulma and Vegeta getting together and thought they were an amazing couple. I looked up art, and it led me to this site. I can’t recall the site’s name anymore, but I remember the tagline for it was something like, “Bulma and Vegeta’s Cove.”

One thing I can distinctly recall is a small gif in one corner of the main page, displaying a chibi Vegeta with a microphone in one hand, going between 2 or 3 singing poses. It was cute.

This site was coded in such a way that it linked directly to fanfiction.net, displaying the owner’s many, many, many fanfictions in an embedded window. The stories were largely explicit, included sex and, in a few stories, rape, all of them AUs from all the rest. But each had a singular goal: Bulma and Vegeta’s romance, how they ended up getting together.

Some of the stories I remember very clearly. Others have faded. Some were modern AUs, one included dimension-hopping via a magical device Bulma created and recharged every 24 hours (sound familiar, anyone?), and some were painfully OOC but in very sweet ways.

I devoured these stories. There must have been two dozen, with most of them multi-chapter works. And, eventually, I started to notice the format with these stories, how it seemed to be a miniature explorer window within the website. Eventually, I clicked on the mini website and was given a full introduction to fanfiction.net and its massive breadth.

Back in those days, fanfiction.net (or FF.net, as it was usually called) allowed explicit content. And this I looked for very directly. I enjoyed the “lemons” more than anything, easily reading the most ridiculous stories just for the porn therein.

Eventually, I figured it out. I understood fanfiction and what it meant. And though I’d only been using a computer for a few months, I started writing.

It was a painful process at first. Think back to your first months with a keyboard and how difficult it was to get used to the format, how to move your fingers. I had to stare directly at the keyboard to write anything and it was a pain, a slow-going endeavor of passion.

My first fanfictions were Dragonball Z, unsurprisingly. I made a few silly ones, a few serious ones, a few sexual ones. At 14, with no grasp of the anatomy of sex, I was writing porn, using the porn I’d already read as resources. I didn’t know what a clitoris was, but I knew ladies apparently went nuts when men tongued them, so that’s what I wrote.

Eventually I got my first hit: Temptation. It was a Bulma/Vegeta story. I don’t remember it very clearly, and this is probably for the best. The plot, as I recall, was Bulma getting sick and Vegeta having to be her nurse for a time. Eventually she got worse and worse, until she recognized why she was sick: she’d cut herself one night with a device that’d had a compound on it. I can’t recall what the compound was designed to do, but the short version is it made you feel weaker and sicker until you increased your physical activity to burn it out.

This led to wild sex. Like, very wild sex. For hours. My lack of experience evidently was not a consideration; I was given compliments by the dozens. I’d done good.

And now I was addicted.

The Second Hit

I was 16 now. We’d be moving out of my childhood home soon, but I didn’t know this yet. I’d been spending a lot of time with my sister, who was 26, and soaking up Adult Swim shows on her cable. Inuyasha was my new obsession, as well as a liberal amount of Trigun. I lived, slept, ate, and breathed these shows. My head was constantly alight with ideas, concepts, and desires. I wrote near-constantly.

Through this, I managed my second big hit: Transformations.

It’s been a long time, now, and I can’t recall the beginning as much as the ending. I think perhaps I called it something else at the start.

The premise was simple: Kagome, the main character, suddenly transforms into a half-demon, a hanyou, after a demon bites her in battle. I remember that initially I was just writing bullshit; I had no filter and didn’t edit or delete anything. What I wrote got posted verbatim. And, at first, it was cringe-worthy.

I can distinctly recall two things: first, Sesshomaru -- Inuyasha’s full-demon elder brother -- caught Kagome’s scent and investigated and had difficulty resisting her. She was a half-wolf demon, and he was attracted to that. Earlier she and Inuyasha were together in a cave, and her transformation had given her a tail -- which she didn’t like. She chased it, trying to catch it and rip it off.

That’s when the accusations started coming in.

Out of nowhere, and totally unexpectedly, I was getting a slew of comments accusing me of copying another popular fanfiction. I’d legitimately never heard of it, and I had to search it out. I remember reading the first chapter or two and feeling surprised; they were very similar, to the point where I couldn’t blame anyone for thinking I’d copied it.

This was a case of great minds thinking alike, or so I said at the time. I was amused more than anything, but it was clear the accusations weren’t going to stop. Eventually I deleted the story and started over. I’d learned a bit in those few chapters I’d posted and decided that I didn’t really want the events to unfold the way they had, so starting over sounded like a great idea.

And it was.

Now came Transformations as it remains today. The beginning is the same -- Kagome is bitten by a demon and transforms into a half-wolf demon -- but the events following take a different turn from the original.

It was a monster of a hit. I got multiple comments and reviews on every chapter, and I can remember doing this thing for a long time in which I threaten the readers at the end of each chapter with various weapons, only to have the weapon backfire somehow and hurt and/or kill me. The readers seemed to enjoy it, and soon they were suggesting new weapons for me to use.

I loved it.

Eventually the story ended at 64 chapter, but back then my chapters weren’t nearly as long as I write them now, and the final chapter was just a family tree of sorts leading the characters from Feudal Japan to modern day. It was a great, beautiful monster and I had drawn dozens of pictures to go along with it.

It was actually through this that I decided I needed a better place to post my art and thus discovered DeviantART.com. That’s been my main art gallery ever since, around 16 years now (I believe I created it in 2004, a year after I started the fic). If you go there and head all the way back to the first images I posted, you’ll find all of that art remaining even today.

It’s...pretty bad. X’D

But the story doesn’t end there. I wanted my fic to have a greater reach, so I started looking for more websites. I found MediaMiner.org, which was appealing because it hosted both written works and art. And once Transformation was finished, the story concluded, I found I couldn’t quite let it go.

So I did something I’ve not done since: I created an alternate ending.

Titled Changing Lives, this story picked up after chapter 28 of Transformations and went a different way. It treated the story of Transformations as just that: a story, written by Kagome, which Inuyasha read while she was gone one day. He was thunderstruck by it, given it so clearly screamed “I love you” and was full of romance -- and sex.

This led to them getting together, but soon thereafter, tragedy struck.

Kagome was kidnapped on her way home from school. By the time Inuyasha found her, she’d been gang-raped and discarded.

The story very deeply included time travel and revenge aspects from that point on, and I can also recall giving the character Miroku a reincarnation as a detective. He was put on the case, and with Inuyasha’s help, had all the men arrested -- there were seven of them.

Then they started dying.

Inuyasha wasn’t doing this, but he was happy to allow it to happen. The detective did his job per the law, trying to keep the criminals safe as they started dropping like flies. The killer left notes written on the cell walls in the criminal’s own blood, though I can’t quite recall the sequence anymore.

What I do remember is this: the first one read, “He touched her first.” The rest followed that sequence, killing the men in order -- second, third, fourth, etc. I remember one said “hurt her”, one said “made her cry”, and so on.

Eventually, the truth was discovered: Inuyasha was killing them, but not “young” Inuyasha. “Old” Inuyasha. The one who’d lived through the centuries. And his story was the most tragic of all.

In his time, Kagome had been raped and her rapists arrested, as normal. Then, years later, they were freed, having served their time, and immediately they tried to track her down. She was pregnant at the time with Inuyasha’s child. When she saw she was being chased, she jumped down the well back to his time, and the men followed her.

They traveled through time with her but had no idea. They killed her there, then climbed out, and Inuyasha arrived too late to help. But the men were there, confused and lost, and the blood of his wife and child were on them. He slaughtered them all.

But now the well had ceased functioning. He couldn’t return to her time. And, at first, he was just...sad. He mourned. Then, with time, he began to plan. For five centuries, he planned.

His plan was to keep Kagome from ever getting raped. Alas, he failed in this, so instead he decided to get pre-revenge and kill the men while they were imprisoned. He succeeded, but along the way grew...exhausted. By the time he murdered the last man, he had little will left to do so.

But he finished it. For her.

Then he showed himself to Kagome and Inuyasha, explaining what had happened. And he wished them well.

Changing Lives was significantly shorter than its predecessor, only 35 chapters, but I felt it was the better story, overall. I never made art for it, I don’t think, but it was more emotional.

To Present Day

I kept writing, on and off, ever since. Any time I got sufficiently involved in a story, my mind immediately began making my own stories for it. Movies, shows, video games; nothing remained untouched by my mind. I made stories for Labyrinth, Dragon Age, Trigun, Spyro, Jak & Daxter, Naruto...the list went on. I started posted on a third site, adultfanfiction.net (comprised specifically of explicit stories), and I started existing solely on my stories and the feedback I received from them.

I got better. And better. And better. I started looking back on my first stories, my first “hits”, and cringed at the horrendous grammar and articulation of my youth. But it was nostalgic as well, bringing back fond memories of writing on my home computer before we had internet and then rushing to my sister’s with a 3.5″ disc to post them via her internet.

I had a friend around this time, named Leila (Lee-lah), and drew and wrote together. We came up with original stories and though we never really posted them, we had so much fun it didn’t matter. Mostly we talked and drew together, and while I considered myself the better artist, I considered her far better at clothes designs.

Then...a dry spell. I went into college at age 20 and there I met my husband, Eric. He was 17 at the time. And he introduced me to so many more worlds than I’d known before, including the aforementioned Jak & Daxter series and the Sims 2.

Years passed. I still wrote from time to time, but it wasn’t such an obsession as it’d been before. If I had a good enough idea, I’d write it, but I tried to keep my things to oneshots. I posted many such stories on adultfanfiction.net, and I generally got positive reviews and ratings. In the meantime we were more addicted to World of Warcraft, us two and a few friends, and we played that often.

Eventually I slowed down. Time blurred together. I had a lot of good stories, but no major hits. Then came Megamind, and with it, an interesting idea that a lot of people took a liking to: Megamind as the indirect hero, and Metro Man as an abusive spouse of Roxanne. I titled it Bad to be Good, and it was an incredible story.

I started counting words with this one, only posting chapters when they reached around 6,000 words.

The story was a very serious one. It struck cords with a lot of readers, one in particular saying it helped her through some similar times with her abusive husband. We eventually became friends and remain to this day. (She since divorced him, so don’t worry about her. ♥)

Ultimately I never truly completed that story. I remember getting up to 12 chapters and then having difficulty figuring out how to proceed. I used to open the Word document from time to time, check what I’d written, and try to edit things or continue it, but it never really took. Eventually I abandoned it, but luckily the 12th chapter was a softer ending of sorts, so my readers were satisfied.

Then came the Marvel films and, with it, a resurgence in an activity I’d long since stopped participating: roleplaying.

The Crazy Train

It started simple enough. The Avengers just came out, and I was starting to see Facebook RPs popping up between the characters. Curious, I tried to find the pages in question but couldn’t locate them. I did, however, come to find out that there were dozens of pages dedicated to the main characters, alone, with dozens more popping up by the month.

Eventually I stepped in. I’d grown to love Loki’s character and subsequently found he had a canonical wife, Sigyn, but hadn’t found any pages for her. So I made one. Without checking with the other RPer, I just threw myself into a Loki page and, thankfully, that Loki accepted his “wife’s” presence.

We had fun. And our group steadily grew. A Thor, another Loki, and Odin, a Sleipnir, and a whole slew of original characters joined the ranks. I, too, began adding more pages to my roleplays, starting with Narfi and Vali -- Loki and Sigyn’s twin sons.

At the start, these two shared a page. Then, when it became increasingly obvious that people had their favorite of the two boys, I separated them. Funny enough, Vali started off as the clear favorite (he was flirty AF), but Narfi steadily became more so.

Their relationships grew. They both fell in love. They were both tricked by a succubus, giving each an unwanted child at different intervals. Narfi soon had a family of his own, as his lover had an adopted daughter and he was given a daughter of his own.

We spent years here, six or seven I think, just roleplaying with one another. Our group grew and shrank as people joined our circles or left it. There was drama in and out of the roleplay setting. Friendships were forged and abandoned. At one point a Thor page (titled Fatty Thor) targeted me for my roleplay choices and tried to get his followers to harass me. Eventually he left, deleting his page, and our RPs continued without him, never addressing his disappearance.

Then Ragnarok struck -- but not the film’s Rangarok. No, this was worse. We were impatient to have the event occur, me in large part because the mythology says that Vali slays Narfi during the sequence and I couldn’t wait to put all that pain into writing. But what really kicked this off was a friend’s page getting repeatedly deleted.

Sleipnir.

In this RP setting, Sleipnir was a fully intelligent horse capable of speech and even transforming for short periods of time into a humanoid form. He fell in love with a half-demon woman and they had a son together, a centaur named Grani. And then his page kept vanishing.

Initially, we believed the page was reported because there was a rape sequence between his character and the half-demon, though -- and this is imperative -- the two RPers had discussed this in detail before agreeing to the RP. A great deal of thought went into it before they started the roleplay.

And yet, Sleipnir’s page went down.

The RPer made a new one, and that too, went down a short time later. This was disheartening for her, and though we all did our best to help, even creating the page for her in case it was her account getting it flagged, the pages kept getting deleted. The only cause we could work out was that Microsoft just came out with a Sleipnir program of some form and were removing all other pages with that name regardless of content.

So we kicked off Ragnarok and wrecked our Facebook RP world, killing off some of the characters and leaving others behind. We moved platforms, taking our remaining world to Gaia Online, but it wasn’t to be.

Though the RPs increased in quality while there and we created avatars for each of our characters and it definitely helped the process, we just couldn’t keep it up. We were too disheartened for our friend and how things had ended on Facebook.

Slowly but surely, our RPs died. We tried just once more by moving to a new forum called Valucre, but we couldn’t quite get steam going there, either. Eventually all of the RPs died, most of them without conclusions. In some ways, we mourned the loss.

But our remaining group, a total of four of us, remained friends for a great while longer. Three of us, in particular created this very blog some years later with the purpose of posting all of our NSFW works here.

Art, writing, roleplays, etc; this blog was meant to be a joint page to display all of our wicked wiles.

For several months we didn’t post much. Kyone did the most posting during this time, art for her favorite yaoi couple of the time, both NSFW and SFW, and it was moderately popular. Then came my contribution: The Dancer.

The Resurgence

To this day, I’m not sure what really got me back into TMNT. I know I was tired of RPs but wanted the stories to continue, and thus did I begin writing fanfictions again after years of never touching them -- or, at least, never posting them.

The Bayverse movies kicked this off. I’d always loved TMNT, since I was a kid, but the Bayverse films put them in a new light. They weren’t anthropomorphic turtles under 5′ tall anymore, naked 100% of the time. They were tall, big bois, more humanoid, and more like hybrids. I loved them. I wanted them.

I wanted them to be loved.

At the start, I was under the false belief that they didn’t get much love -- i.e., no romance. I especially believed Raphael didn’t get much affection, being such an angry and brash character. Oh, how wrong I was, lol.

Thus did I start with Raphael.

At the beginning I was inspired by a story written by another page, @teradoration, featuring a merman. I wasn’t too interested in the story, personally, as it’s m|m and I’ve never enjoyed those types of stories, but the inspiration came from the fact that it was a multi-chapter work -- on Tumblr.

So I decided to write some porn.

Initially, the idea was to make a short story, something like 10 chapters. I put thought into it, into the character I wanted to create and introduce, into her appearance and history and passions. I considered Raphael, his personality, and crafted a character designed to intrigue and challenge him. Then I looked at both popular and unique character tropes and the kinds of characters I’d made and turned in another direction.

Thus was Jocelyn born, a half-black, half-Polynesian ballet dancer with blonde hair and freckles. And, at first...it was a dead story. No one saw it. No one liked it. No one took a chance on Jocelyn.

For nearly a year, I wrote chapters to an empty audience. I tried not to let it get me down, but the consensus seemed clear: no one was interested in reading it. Still, I’d started it and come to love the characters very dearly, and so I continued. For my sake, for their sake, I continued.

Then came my first big break: tmnttrashcan. If you’re wondering why I didn’t @ that one, it’s because it’s been deactivated. But this amazing woman found my story, loved it, and began sharing it. And because her blog was one driven by reblogs and gifsets, it was far more popular than this one despite its younger age.

And thus did The Dancer begin drawing attention, fans, and feedback. Thus did I finally feel as if this labor of love was validated, that I wasn’t posting just for me anymore. People were enjoying the story, and in return, I poured more effort and love into it.

This is how I thanked my readers: with better content. More drama, more emotion, more love, more heartache, more sex, more everything.

Even before this happened, however, my head had continued the story far into the future. I made a sequel -- The Dragon -- before I’d even had a concept of The DJ. But in this sequel I’d begun laying the groundwork for something in between the two, and through this I began creating Lisa.

With Lisa, I wanted to create a character that fit more securely with the next turtle on my list: Michelangelo. Rather than opposing the turtle in many ways, as Jocelyn does with Raphael, I wanted Lisa to mesh very easily with him.

The DJ had begun.

For a time, tmnttrashcan’s admin and I were fantastic friends. We talked often, over text and over voice chatting. I told her ideas I had for the future, plans going years down the line both in and out of the story, and even let her read what I’d written of The Dragon thus far. She loved it, every last word, and heaped praise at me.

I loved this woman very deeply. I’d tell her as much from time to time, and she echoed the sentiment.

Then she simply...vanished. She stopped talking to me, stopped responding. Eventually I asked her if we were no longer friends. She never answered.

It was heartbreaking.

Soon thereafter, I was also left behind by Kyone. She unfriended me. And then Tumblr decided to ban all NSFW content, so in order to preserve this blog, I was forced to delete all her NSFW art. And when she went further and removed herself from the blog, I went further too and removed all of her posts. But it wasn’t easy.

It’s been a few years since then and I remain heartbroken. We’d been friends for over a decade. I saw her grow up (we met when she was 16), saw her graduate, saw her go through schooling and jobs and hard times. Between her, myself, and Fluxx, we’d amassed a mountain of great times and greater stories. We’d been a sisterhood in all but blood. We’d even called ourselves such.

To this day there remains a hollow place in me. In short, I’ve been jaded. My whole life, I’d seen this pattern repeated: I make a friend, we become close, then they abandon me, usually within a year or two. But with Fluxx and Kyone, I’d truly believed this pattern had finally been broken. I’d believed I finally had friends for life.

Between the loss of tmnttrashcan and Kyone, however, I learned a hard lesson: not to trust so deeply.

This was repeated twice more before I gave up on sharing. With Blue Blood, twice I made a close friend, got to the point of talking near-constantly and voice chatting. Twice I shared previews of what was to come. Once I even told the entire story, everything, every last detail I have planned to the end of the series. And twice, after hearing so much of the tale, the friend vanished from me. They stopped responding. I was talking to air.

It hurt.

By now you may be wondering why this is included in my fanfiction autobiography. Well, because it spurred me on. If I can’t keep friends for long, then I’ll keep my own company. I won’t let myself down. I decided to focus on my stories, for in this I am always the most important person. I am the one who will never be abandoned. I am the creator, the god, of the worlds I shape for the entertainment of others. Readers may come and go, as much a slave to their interests as I am, but I remain. For those who stay and those who arrive later, I remain.

There is a power in this which cannot be matched, but more so, there’s an enjoyment and responsibility. My stories are unfinished but demand an ending from a slew of followers. And so I keep writing, even though the stories are largely complete in my own mind. I know how they end. I know how they intertwine, how they connect. I know the backstage dancers, how the plot lines link together, where each thread is leading; my readers do not.

And so I continue writing, even as I remain cautious about how much I share.

To The Future

What comes next is largely unknown, even to me. I have many, many, many stories, both in original settings and fandoms. I work on some of them from time to time, in between trying to focus on my bigger hits. Sometimes I just open one and begin reading what I’d already written, refreshing my memory and contemplating where I want the story to go.

I’ve considered other forms of storytelling as well. Otome games have my interest, specifically, because of the nature of them; a single protagonist and multiple love interests with their own unique tales to tell. I love that format and have tried crafting numerous stories for them, but they’ve yet to gain any real ground.

This is partly because it’s a huge undertaking. It’d require more than myself to get them made. I can do art and writing, but I know little to nothing of coding. I’m unsure how I would turn words and images into a novella-type game. Originally I wanted Fluxx and Kyone’s help -- Kyone because I felt her art is better than mine, and Fluxx because she has experience coding. I tried to get them involved. They did not get involved.

As far as otome games are concerned, I am alone.

But this is fine. I am a better writer than anything else -- better than I am an artist, a gamer, or a friend, based on my history. So I’ll continue to write. And if I never truly create an original story, if I never get published, if I never receive royalties for my years of painstaking effort, then so be it.

I made people happy. I made people gush and scream and keyboard-smash. I made people laugh and cry. I made people fall in love with that which I love.

That’s enough.

I’ll see you soon with more updates. My stories are not yet finished.

- Nightshade

#siren nightshade #autobiography #sfw #written #personal

10 notes · View notes

woeismyhoe · 4 years

Note

What exactly is wrong with the Gene Yang comics In General? Not just for Azula

Every plot he has written, every OC he has made for the series, has always just been written in a certain way so as to prop his fav character, Zuko. This is just a fact unfortunately. Yang once said in an interview regarding Ursa’s:

“As for Ursa, that was the first question I asked when I got on the phone with Mike and Bryan! Ultimately, what Ursa's absence means to Zuko is more important than what actually happened to her. Mike and Bryan pointed that out to me. They're right, of course. But that's not to say we won't eventually find out the specifics.” - Gene Yang from [x]

And then when it came to Aang’s character:

Here's my understanding of Aang: Aang's big "flaw" is his love for his friends. It makes it difficult for him to become a fully-realized Avatar. In "The Guru" (one of my favorite episodes) he turns away from his own spiritual development because of his love for Katara. When Appa is kidnapped, he loses his inner peace and becomes uncharacteristically angry. When Toph and Sokka start conning people out of money, Aang goes along because he loves being with them. His attachment to his friends is in constant tension with his Airbender ideals. Aang makes the promise to Zuko because Zuko is his friend. Zuko says the promise is something he really needs, and Aang has a hard time saying no to his friends.” - Gene Yang

Now I’m not saying that his love for his friends isn’t one of his ‘flaws’, but it certainly isn’t the core central of Aang’s character. Aang accepting Zuko’s request to kill him was OOC. Why kill, when he could just take away his bending? Why would he agree to assist his friend in suicide when that actually goes against his own philosophy and beliefs? No matter what, Show!Aang would’ve never agreed to assisting someone’s suicide. The whole premise of Zuko’s development is that he’s trying to grow out of his selfish asshole personality. But when he requests Aang, a 12 yr old boy, who tried so hard to find a way to not kill even one of the worst people in the world, to kill him, one of his best friends... Zuko’s development just literally gets thrown out the window.

Yang also justified Aang’s reason for accepting Zuko’s request with this:

In Buddhism (upon which airbender philosophy is based), consent changes the conversation. Murder is wrong, but killing with the victim's consent is referred to as voluntary euthanasia. A person can ask you to kill them if they're in tremendous pain or if they think they're a danger to others. (In Zuko's case, both of these are in play.) Here, there's debate within Buddhism.”

Now, I don’t know what the hell Yang or Bryke understood from Buddhism, but euthanasia is actually frowned upon (it’s usually just reserved for those with terminal ilnesses but even then they still would rather avoid this), and even in this context, Aang does not have Zuko’s consent to kill him. Why? Because by the time that Zuko has ‘turned’ to become his father, he wouldn’t want Aang to kill him. That mercy killing isn’t there because Zuko wouldn’t be thanking Aang for killing him at that moment. There’s no consent whatsoever so Yang’s explanation here rlly is just bs.

Yang also used his own personal experience and wrote it in for Zuko’s character, as if the relationship between Zuko and Ozai was actually like any other father and son’s:

“I also looked at my own life. I used to clash with my dad quite a bit when I was a teenager: However; as I grew up and found myself in roles that he used to have, I began to understand more and more of his decisions. My father isn't thoroughly evil, of course, but I imagine Zuko feels a little of the same pull.”

Zuko isn’t Yang’s character. Zuko is a character made by Bryke, so him assuming that Zuko would react the same way that he would is just stupid.

There’s also the fact that Yang has retconned the history of the Fire Nation just for the plot of Smoke and Shadow to work. Katara was reduced to simply being Aang’s supportive girlfriend, and Sokka was simply reduced to just comic relief. The only character that he probably didn’t mess up that much was Toph, but even for Toph he completely forgot that Toph was the most understanding and sympathetic towards Zuko when he first joined so like 🙅‍♀️ In general, Yang had thrown away all the development that the characters went through.

20 notes · View notes

smallblueandloud · 3 years

Note

B, F, H, I, J, M, R, S, T- oh my god that is so many!! sorry!

you’re good!! for this ask meme! under a cut because i like to TALK.

B: Any of your stories inspired by personal experience?

answered here!

F: Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

i am not gonna put that one conversation between donna and helen santos again but THAT ONE’S STILL MY FAVORITE. another scene though. hmm.

“Right, because you didn’t spend much time with her?” It’s a question, because Miriam is trying to confirm details. Lyra thinks back to her life story. She’s kept it as close to reality as she can, which makes remembering harder - but makes her feel better.

More importantly, it makes Pan feel better. She’s realized that it’s a good idea to compromise with Pan on easy things so that he’ll let her do the difficult things. Not that there’s much of those these days.

“Right,” says Lyra. “Oxford College was taking care of me, mostly. Mrs. Coulter - my mother,” she amends. Pan puts his paw on her bare neck. “My mother couldn’t be too involved, because of- well. The scandal.”

Miriam laughs. “Yes, of course. My friend Lyra, the scandal.”

Lyra grins. “One does one’s best.”

This makes Miriam laugh even harder.

honestly i’m really really proud of bodies fashioned out of dirt and dust in general, but i LOVED talking about lyra and the careful way she lies. when she was a kid, she used to invent stories like nobody’s business, but now that she’s older she has more moral qualms and she’s trying to be more of an adult while also not giving up the vibrant bits that made her lyra? idk how much sense this makes, but this fic was VERY MUCH a reaction to the secret commonwealth.

i loved the way i could imply so much about her feelings about mrs. coulter just by that one hesitation. i loved how easy it was to show her lying, because we KNOW the story and we KNOW lyra lies to people. this was such a fun fic to write and the dialogue was kind of the central way i contrasted her childhood vs early adulthood.

i’m also really proud of that toby/andy scene.

H: How would you describe your style?

uhhhhh i think i try to focus on making things as real as possible? you can feel like you’re the pov character because their emotions are real. vivid is the right word. i’m aiming for vivid.

i also really like describing people’s mannerisms and trying to be as in-character as possible. i haven’t gotten to the point of coming up with NEW mannerisms yet (except with fitz’s stutter in the magnum opus) but i enjoy writing lines that you can hear the characters say.

I: Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)?

angst? definitely MCD angst. i can’t even READ it most of the time because it makes me so SAD but i’m just. yeah. give me the mourning. logan/jean really came for me personally. i’m also a big fan of protectiveness - daisy’s speech to jemma in the magnum opus, about “i will come and get you”, was COMPLETELY self-indulgent and i enjoyed it WAY MORE than it served any character development or plot.

J: Write or describe an alternative ending to [insert fic].

uhh i think i wrote a long thing about this for like half my fics a few months ago, but in another world i wrote a lot more for keep on keeping on and it had more about blue pearl’s feelings about the terrifying renegade pearl that was helping rose quartz. also, there’s an alternate ending where the crystal gems arrive on homeworld in less pleasant circumstances - basically “the trial” if pearl was there, let’s be honest - and blue recognized pearl and it was. A Lot. it would’ve been a lot. i still kind of want to write that fic, tbh.

M: Got any premises on the back burner that you’d care to share?

currently the fic i’m most excited about is for a fandom i’ve barely talked about before, where [name redacted] is stuck in a time loop and keeps trying to save [name redacted] and in the last loop, which takes place right after [title redacted], she takes him and [names redacted] on a desperate road trip where, among other things, we find out that her sister actually dated BOTH [name redacted] and [name redacted] in high school. also both her love interest and [name redacted] are autistic, because i make the rules and the rules are that lesbean says they’re autistic.

i’m also TEMPTED to start a giant project of creating my own xmen canon, in the style of unpretty’s sorrowful and immaculate hearts, because i don’t have enough to do in my life apparently. polyamory would abound. if anyone’s interested in this PLEASE ask me about it because i have THOUGHTS.

R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?

my entire sense of humor stems from douglas adams and in an ideal world i would be able to write comedy and it would just be his style. uhh i’m sure i have other influences but it’s hard to think of any at the moment. i know which writers i ADMIRE but i don’t know if they’ve INFLUENCED me, if you know what i mean? dirgewithoutmusic, i would say, and probably also. uh. this fic right here influenced me when i was YOUNG and IMPRESSIONABLE and it still takes me out at the knees.

S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist?

protectiveness! reveals in the middle of action! someone’s found family meeting their friends and realizing they (the found family) is REALLY IMPORTANT to their person actually! cool powers! characters being clever! jokes that are very specific references to canon! worldbuilding! longing!

T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand?

changing people so they’re less scary and more “normal” (this is specifically about fic written about natasha romanoff). people being ooc. a couple’s friends seemingly being entirely dedicated to the couple’s wellbeing and relationship and not having lives of their own. shipping a young (usually female) person with their father figure. buying into canon’s infidelity storyline when it’s ooc and could just as easily be polyamory (this is specific but i’m Right). every fanwork focusing on a white minor character instead of the main character of color.

thank you for the ask!!

#claudiasjeancregg #sb and l rambles #sb and l answers #sb and l is writing #fic: bodies fashioned out of dirt and dust #fic: keep on keeping on #fic rec #su ideas #xm ideas #thank you for the ask this was a lot of fun!!

1 note · View note

i-heart-danchou · 5 years

Text

I heart doujin 55

This post’s theme is controversy! Two controversial series for you today! TW somnophilia, infidelity, and rape. So controversial doujin number 1 is After Goodbye by hyura https://myreadingmanga.info/melomelow-hyura-goodbye-first-half-attack-titan-dj-eng/

https://myreadingmanga.info/melomelow-hyura-goodbye-second-half-attack-titan-dj-eng/

https://myreadingmanga.info/melomelow-hyura-goodbye-epilogue-attack-titan-dj-eng/

This is a modern reincarnation AU, in which Erwin carries vivid memories of his snk life and they cause him serious distress. He notices Levi among a group of candidates applying to be his secretary, and hires him immediately. Levi, unfortunately, doesn’t appear to remember Erwin. Over time Erwin becomes increasingly desperate and isolated and has sex with Levi when they’re both quite drunk in a horrible way. It’s certainly not the worst depiction of problematic consent sex/rape I’ve seen while going through doujin for you (there is some horrible shit out there), but it’s OOC and not nice to read (this is in the second part of the first link). I included this series anyway because I thought the premise was really interesting and tragic and beautiful. In the other two parts of the series there is not any non con so it may be worth checking out if you can get past that egregious character problem. It also ends up quite sweet. Now, this is quite a long series-- when you get to the bottom of the page in each one you need to click on the part 2 bit to read the whole thing, otherwise the endings seem very abrupt since you’re missing half of the series. It took me a stupid long time to figure that out. Next we’ve got Other’s Husbands by 13 (A太) https://myreadingmanga.info/13-others-husbands-attack-titan-dj-eng/

https://myreadingmanga.info/13-a%e5%a4%aa-others-husbands-2-attack-titan-dj-eng/

https://myreadingmanga.info/13-a%e5%a4%aa-others-husbands-3-attack-on-titan-dj-eng/

So this is the first work we’ve had from 13 (A太), I love her stuff, there’s a bunch of really sexy eruri doujin by her that I want to see translated super badly <333. Anyway so this controversial one features infidelity! Levi and Erwin used to date 12 years prior to this series, then they broke up since Erwin decided to get married to help advance his career. Levi, meanwhile gets married to a lesbian so both of their families will stop bugging them to get married. Levi and Erwin reconnect and start having an affair, and Erwin’s marriage starts to fall apart. I like this one for a few reasons; the art is lovely, the sex is diverse and sexy, Erwin’s passion is brilliant, and I like the realistic depiction of trying to be homosexual in a society which demands conformity. Homophobia is not really addressed in a meaningful way in snk, so I like it when media addresses the fact that yes, being lgbt is difficult in some parts of the world, and lots and lots of beautiful people have been forced into relationships they don’t care about because the person they love is the wrong gender/race/ethnicity/whatever. Obviously cheating on your spouse is wrong, but I thought this series tackled a very challenging concept in a really mature way. Keep an eye out for more stuff by 13 (A太)!. (this one also has where you have to click for part 2 at the bottom which again confused me)

#i heart doujin #HyuRa #13 (A太)#tw rape #tw infidelity #tw somnophilia

47 notes · View notes

grasslandgirl · 5 years

Note

2,5,6,7,23,35,47 !

hi yeah this week on CLAIRE I WOULD DIE FOR YOU

2: one of your favorite comments/reviews [on this chapter/verse]?

oh gosh i got a comment a while back on Half Rights and Half Wrongs where someone said my fic made them feel like “that vine of that lawnmower flying in the air with like whitney houston singing over it” and they then preceeded to link it in the comments for me (you can watch it here if you haven’t seen it, it’s hilarious) and like. it’s genuinely one of the best comments ive ever gotten it nearly made me cry

and also?? i got so many wonderful comments on the first installment of you gonna break my heart, Sammy? specifically emma ( @lewissimon ) like. wrote an essay and listed out things she loved about it and like... my heart is FULL in this chili’s toniiiiiight !!!

5: do you write scenes in a linear fashion or do you write future scenes/dialogues sometimes?

mostly i write linearly (is that a word? whatever) bc i need the like. drive that having a scene that i Really Wanna Write gives me to power through some of the stuff that i dont really want to write?

like if im writing part A of a fic, and theres a scene thats like part G that i really want to get into and am super inspired about, i have to force myself to write parts B-F before i let myself write G bc then its like a built in motivation? because mostly if i just am like i want to write [x scene] and then jump ahead to do so then i have no motivation to go Back and write all the less interesting but still necessary filler stuff and then it never gets done

like i made myself spend all this time writing the build up in the middle of you gonna break my heart, Sammy even though i really wanted to get into the confession time because i knew if i jumped ahead i just wouldn’t finish the rest!

occasionally if i have like a SUPER specific scene/moment in mind ill go in and write a little bit of it so i dont lose the moment in my brain, but then i always make myself go back and fill in up to that point before continuing forward

6: hardest/easiest character to write for?

i live in constant terror of writing a character ooc or getting their like Character Voice wrong- so ive found that the easiest characters for me to write are the ones that have Really Specific Voices- both in the literal sense of how the talk, but also in the figurative sense of how they think/react/see the world/etc

so like. thats why i find Dylan Maxwell (american vandal) and Taako (the adventure zone) for example to be really easy to write- thier voices are very specific and dynamic and therefore easy for me to mimic/replicate and also easy for me to tell when they dont Sound Right- if that makes sense?

inversely, characters i dont have a specific Mental Voice for are really hard for me to write comfortably- frankly im struggling with Peter and Sam right now a little bit and struggled with thier voices in the second half of writing you gonna break my heart, sammy because its been so long since ive watched av or written for them that ive lost how they sound in my mind- which probably means its time to rebinge american vandal !!

(additionally- PLEASE always tell me if a character is extremely ooc or extremely i guess Not ooc? those kinds of notes are always a comfort to get about my writing bc its something i stress about and am self conscious about!)

7: hardest/easiest verse to write for?

really im a character writer all the way, so the easiest verse to write for is which ever one whos characters are taking up residence in my brain- and vice versa for the hardest verse! it really just depends on how much of that verse-specific content im taking in and how much of my mental energy im putting into that verse that impacts how easy/difficult it is to write for it

23: feelings on epistolary fic?

um not really my style reading- or writing-wise? im not against them and if the premise seemed interesting enough id probably read it, but i doubt id ever write one- most of my writing is pretty thought-, dialogue-, and interaction-centric, which aren’t really things that are common in epistolary works

35: any foreshadowing/symbolism you wrote that you hope your readers didn’t miss?

oh gosh this is sweet that you think im a good enough writer or forward thinker to include any real or subtle foreshadowing or symbolism in my fics....... i mean if anything just the small moments in you gonna break my heart, sammy where sam is like “oh this is Fake im feeling Friendship Feelings peter likes me as a Friend obviously hahah” as like foreshadowing in the BAREST of terms as to their growing like. deeper feelings for eachother? but those always felt- and were intended to be- kind of glaringly obvious to the audience/reader, mostly as a dramatic irony to sam’s own obliviousness to his own and sam’s feelings

47: story with the most comments?

Half Rights and Half Wrongs by a MILE (83!) but like. half of those are probably my own comments responding to people bc whenever i get a comment my heart grows grinch-like three sizes so!

claire thank you so so so so so so much for this and everyone else PLEASE feel free to send me a number from this list here about fanfic/writer questions and check out my work on ao3- im grasslandgirl there as well!

3 notes · View notes

worldofcopperwings · 6 years

Note

Hi, I am one of the new followers.I finished reading the invisible ones. Loved the story,writing is good,sometimes it does feel a bit rushed.All in all I would recommend if not for the OOC?Like Victor being quite an a-hole?It worked for the story,but that's not Victor.Have you ever thought about writing something completely original?I would like to read THAT!

You caught me in a salty mood, so here’s some salt:

While I am glad you read and liked (?) my fic, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that no one is paying me to do this. Last fall, I cranked out 77,000 words of ridiculously inaccurate Scandinavian mythology in my spare time, while working on my master’s thesis and doing an internship. It was purely self-indulgent, like pretty much everything I write.

So if you read those 77,000 words and enjoyed the story, why would you deem it necessary to come into my inbox anonymously to complain about the things that you think are “wrong” with the fic?

Yes, I shared my story and put it out there, so you are of course completely entitled to your opinion about it. But that doesn’t always mean you should voice your opinion to the author. I’m not going to be put off writing because of comments like this, but some other author might be devastated. May I suggest that before you go in people’s inbox telling them what you thought was wrong with their fic, consider these questions:

Does this commentary do anything to change the already-existing story? (It doesn’t.)

Is this commentary going to make anyone’s day better? (It’s not, unless you yourself get some kind of satisfaction from pointing out an author’s “mistakes”.)

Does this commentary benefit anyone in any way? (Nope. At best, it makes the author feel bad for a few moments. At worst, it might scare the author away from writing, so unless your goal is to make that happen, it doesn’t benefit you either.)

Criticism in the fanfic world, whether it be constructive or not, is a difficult subject. However, as a rule of thumb: unless the author is specifically asking for it, I wouldn’t go offering them criticism. And honestly, criticism veiled in a thin layer of praise (“it would have been really good, except for this thing that I didn’t like”) isn’t any better. Most fanfic authors are not professional writers, we’re doing this for fun, because we love a show and wish to create stories about it, adding our own twist to the characters and premises.

Personally, I’m not writing fanfic so I can follow canon events and characterizations to a t. That’s the fun thing about fanfic: I can write the characters and events however I want to. To me, that’s kind of the whole point: to explore different realities in which the characters can turn out good or evil or anything in between, regardless of how they’re portrayed in canon. And if someone doesn’t like the way I do it, there’s a nifty back button to help them get out of reading the fic. That’s the beauty of it: no one is forcing you to read a fic you don’t like, just like no one can force me to write a character following “canon rules” that are up for personal interpretation anyway. My personal headcanons of a character’s personality are not the same as someone else’s, and that’s okay.

PS. The fact that Victor becomes progressively “nicer” over the course of the fic might give a hint that Otabek is not the most reliable narrator when it comes to Victor’s character. Not that Victor’s character in this particular story is all sunshine and rainbows, but you know, just a thought.

PPS. Anon, this isn’t directed at you alone, but this ask just happened to set off my salt guns.

#fanfic #writing fanfic #writer problems #writing problems #writers on tumblr #answered asks #anonymous #yuri on ice #otayuri #the invisible ones #i'm salty #the amount of salt is very high today #writing feels #also yes i have some original writing projects #but those will not be posted online #losing this new follower in three... two...

38 notes · View notes

asklotarasarrin · 7 years

Text

Getting Started Role Playing

I’ve had a number of asks on this topic over the years, and rather than retyping the same thing repeatedly, I’m gonna try and collect my thoughts on how to go about this. All of this is assuming you’re on desktop; mobile makes some things a little more difficult. Feel free to add to this; I’m sure there’s things I’m forgetting.

Warning: Long Post!

First things first: Preparation

Get your blog in order

Create a character bio - This should include character name, a description, and a background. If your character is a canon character, then it’s not so bad to forego this, but I think it’s a good idea even for canon characters, as not everyone is going to be familiar with every single character in a universe.

Put a short explanation of the blog in the blog header - This is like a pitch or an introduction to what your blog is about. This should indicate you’re an RP blog, who you RP(if you have multiple muses on the blog, I think it’s okay to just say ‘multiple OCs’ or ‘multiple muses’), and maybe the universe your muse is from. Some blogs also include if they’re selective or not, multi-ship or not, open to cross-over/multiverse or not, etc, but not nearly as necessary.

Rules page - not necessary, but sometimes helpful if you have any particular things, such as being unwilling to RP smut, or you have some triggers/sensitive topics that you aren’t will to do, etc.

Make sure your inbox is open - Seems silly, but I forget this one frequently when I’m making a new blog. Check other blog settings as well- (submissions, anon, etc)

Follow other blogs - This seems obvious, but it is key. Follow other blogs you want to RP with! Find others from the universe your muses are set in. Do take the time to read their bios and rules pages, if they have any.

Write an Introduction post - Not everyone does this, but I think it’s very helpful. It should be a SHORT post, in or out of character. Many blogs are disinclined to reblog long intro posts because people instinctively skip over walls of text.

Reblog RP memes - The Intro post will help generate interest, the RP memes make it easy to break the ice.

Next Step: Getting Out There

Provided you have taken the time to read other people’s rules and bios, reach out!

If they’ve reblogged memes you are interested in, send an ask with that meme - These are GREAT icebreakers so you can get started with relatively low effort. Friendly reminder: Read the meme carefully. Typically the meme has some form of explanation or instruction in it, and it is very frustrating when someone sends in a meme when they clearly did not bother to actually read what it’s about.

Use the messenger to ask to plot - Sometimes blogs don’t post memes often, or they reblog memes that don’t quite work for your character. Politely ask to plot. Try to come with ideas. It can be frustrating when someone comes to you wanting to plot but has NO idea about what to do. I personally will frequently take premises from memes I like and adjust them as necessary.

Open starters - Alternative to memes, sometimes blogs will post ‘open starters’. These are usually open ended in-character posts that other role players can reply to. It isn’t a bad idea to post your own open starters either, if you’re feeling up for it. Note: Generally speaking, open starters once taken by someone are not available for additional role players unless otherwise noted in the tags. If you like an open starter that has already been taken, you can also use the messenger to ask if you can also get in on that. Many RP bloggers use thread trackers, so the starter would need to be copied to a new post before beginning RP.

Important Notes: Etiquette

There are a number of rules and behaviors that are important to keep in mind, some obvious, some not so much. In no particular order.

Patience - This is my number one thing. RPers come from all walks of life- full-time students and career people, big and small families, personal struggles, different time zones, language barriers abound. And Tumblr is not a well programmed website, so notifications don’t pop up, or get buried under other things. So don’t panic if people don’t immediately reply. Don’t be rude when following up after a reasonable amount of time has passed. Give people the opportunity to measure their replies to you.

Try to keep your In Character and Out of Character clear/separate - Some RP blogs are actually a mishmash of personal and roleplay. Many blogs indicate in the tags or with markings of some form(the most common being ‘//’ slashes or () parentheses). It can be confusing for people without these markers.

Do not reblog RPs you are not involved in - This is a personal pet peeve. RP posts are often only snippets of the overall story, and when reblogged it is taken out of context. The other problem is it adds notifications to a thread that aren’t from the partner, and can be confusing. RPThreadTracker doesn’t have a problem with it, but other forms of tracking can struggle.

Respect and ‘Don’t like Don’t follow’ - universes big and small, OCs and Canon Characters over the top and from humble beginnings, we’re all here to have a good time. You’re not going to like every mun or muse you come across. Not every other blog is going to like you or your muse. People talk shit about self-inserts, teenage OCs, people who like to RP almost exclusively smut, and myriad of other things. But those muns are doing things that make them happy. And you don’t get to control what other people do. If you don’t like it, don’t follow. Don’t RP with them. Let it go.

Self Care - This is part of a larger topic and related to the above bullet point, but important to at least touch on. Not everyone who RPs is well or good. This is meant to be fun. So if you are stressed out or overwhelmed by an RP partner or thread for whatever reason, talk to your partner about it. If they do not respect your requests or needs, then it would be better to not RP with them. There are people who struggle with a myriad of health and situational issues. You will at one time or another meet people who will insist you cater to their every whim, try to control you and your muse. Block these people.

Read tags - This may not seem like an etiquette thing, but this is important. Some people communicate extensively this way. It will help to prevent communication errors.

Read More - use the read more function for NSFW threads. It’s the [...] at the end of the options bar

Tagging - Tag NSFW, triggering content, and anything else you think appropriate. I also try to tag my different verses, my in character and out of character posts, etc.

Trim Your Posts - This is hard to do on mobile, but necessary. When a post has many reblogs, it can be tedious to scroll past. Trimming them/cropping them makes a big difference. [Link here for a tutorial on how to trim - Browser]

Mun and Muse Knowledge [Meta Gaming] - There maybe things your character does not know, and cannot know, that you know. Remember to keep the distinction. Nothing kills my desire to RP with someone than their character somehow reading my character’s thoughts.

Controlling other Characters [God Modding] - You control your character. Your partner controls theirs. You don’t control if they get hit by a punch, if they dodge, if they punch back. It’s part of the give and take.

Drive the Story - Role Playing is joint story telling. Don’t put all the burden if directing where the story goes on your partner. Give your partner something to react to, to build on. If you only ever give one sentence replies, it’s going to get tedious fast.

Other Tips and Tricks

I am a big fan of XKit, a browser addon that makes Tumbling much easier for RPers. [Link here!] The specific functions that are most helpful are Editable Reblogs and One Click Reply. Editable reblogs makes it far easier to trim in post. One Click Reply makes it possible to reply to comments and other notification forms.

In addition to those two, I also like to use the Blacklist, and Post Block functions. Some RPers or topics I particularly cannot stand, so I use Blacklist to keep them from my dash. Post Block is great for those discourse posts and individual RP threads that just squick you out for whatever reason.

I also am easily lost and confused by the innumerable notifications I get on the daily, so it became very important for me to use a website called RPThreadTracker. I highly recommend it, as I occasionally have threads that don’t get replied to for weeks. They also have an add-on button so you can click to add a thread to your list quickly and easily.

Terms

There is a bit of a jargon with this. Sorry if it’s been confusing thus-far!

Mun - the writer behind the blog

Muse - the fictional character, the character

IC/OOC - In Character / Out of Character

OC - Original Character

Thread - the roleplay, the chain of posts making up the story

Selective/Semi-Selective/Private/Mutuals Only - This is often in a blog header - indicates how picky the mun is about selecting RP partners and threads. Read their rules. Respect their decisions to RP or not to RP.

Multi-verse - Indicates the blog is open to threads outside of their designated universe. (IE, my Warhammer character being willing to RP with an Overwatch character). It is advisable to message the mun to hash out the details.

DM or PM - Direct message or private message. Both indicate the tumblr message system.

AU - Alternate Universe. Indicates a deviation from the traditional universe.

#tutorial #long post #how to get started RPing #out of command

90 notes · View notes

rpadoptionnetwork · 6 years

Note

hello there! could we get a review, please? :)

DISCLAIMER: this review is only reflective of my own opinions and is intended to provide constructive criticism. there is no obligation to listen to or agree with anything said.

OVERALL:

first of all, i love the teaser video. saw it in the tags and adored it. i also love intricate rps and this definitely is one of the more detailed groups i’ve seen out there. the world here is developed to an impressive point and i’m interested to see how things turn out. i also love your skeletons and your commitment to this universe. however, there are several critiques i have on the presentation of information.

i’ve done my best to give my honest review and opinion on how you can fix the issues i see. i tend to be a bit wordy, so there is also a TLDR at the very bottom of the page. as always, i am here to elaborate on any of my critiques if asked. thanks for coming by! ♥!

ACCESSIBILITY:

The basic structure of this RP is great. I like the way you’ve organized the page and all the links. This is always my go-to qualification for whether or not I will even consider applying for an RP, and you guys pass with flying colors.

I love the navigation layout. And, at first glance, everything seems right. However, as I actually delve deeper into the pages, it becomes increasingly more difficult to understand what is going on.

I suggest you edit some of the pages that you’ve created for general readability. The concepts behind your RP are not that complicated, but, because of the way they are written and presented visually have become hard to follow.

It actually genuinely makes me upset to say this, because I know how hard it is to edit all this code and to write all this stuff out. as you can clearly see, i am very wordy myself. however, a lot of what you’ve done is unnecessary and adds a layer of complexity to your rp that is confusing at best and off-putting at worse.

PLOT:

I say this with all the love in my heart. I love the prose here and I love the concept, but some of it has no place in this plot description.

This is not to say that this section is not written well, but rather that, it is simply too-detailed and too tangential for a general plot page. To fix this, I would simply remove every section describing each of the departments in its entirety.

In my opinion, it should read:

… was broken up into five departments: Hoshiro: the madcaps*; Ettinger; the healers…etc.

The road ahead will be treacherous, and to get ahold of their abilities, the students must do everything in their power to successfully work both in a …

This makes it more concise and lets everyone understand the premise of your plot– that this is an academy rp that divides the superpowered students into 5 groups, each defined by a certain trait. If people are interested in your rp, they will automatically go look for the Departments page to learn more. Otherwise, you are bogging down people with unnecessary information.

Please, if you follow my suggestion, save the writing you’ve done! Just use it in a different place (namely the Department page)

I would also add an OOC description of the plot at the very bottom. For example,

excelsior-hq is a plot-driven skeleton rp set in a academy for superpowered individuals who are completing their final project before being let loose on the world.

If you do include this part or write it in your words, please do not make it longer than two sentences long.

*i would even use daring, instead of madcaps just to make things easier for people to understand? this point is purely nitpicky

AESTHETIC/GRAPHICS:.

—– FONTS

That mono-spaced font that you’ve used for the posts is hard to look at. It makes your writing look dull and uninteresting, just a glob of text. This is especially disappointing when all the headings and graphics have been done with sleeker or much more elaborate fonts. And it is even more upsetting after reading everything and realizing that I really like what you’ve written. This font just doesn’t make sense thematically and makes things at least 3x harder to follow.

Also, I understand that it is your theme, but I honestly wish that the text was just aligned to the left, because the centered alignment only helps contribute to this confusion.

in fact, the longer i spend on your page. the more i get a headache. you utilize bullet points very often and bullet points lose their effectiveness when none of them are aligned.

if you could one of both of these, i promise it would only help you get your message across and make your rp more attractive to any prospective applicants.

—– GRAPHICS

I love these. They make sense and they are visually pleasing to the eye. You’ve opted to not make anything too flashy and it works.

But unfortunately, and I hate to harp on this. the quality of your graphics just exacerbate the font problem. They clash with the presentations of your posts, and only make mereally wish the text were different.

SKELETONS:

These are good skeletons! Reading through them, I like how you’ve given a sense of the character without being too elaborate.

However, one thing that stands out to me is the connections.It would be far more effective and much easier to read if you just put

CHARACTER A: short description of unique connection

CLUSTER MEMBERS: character b, character c, character d

CLUSTER MENTOR: character e

because, in combination with the font choice and alignment, i don’t want to read four lines only to just to find out that each of the characters is a cluster member. by just making this change, things become more concise and easier to follow.

i love that every skeleton is open gender and fcs and i love the diversity here. so keep it up!

THE PAGES:

—– THE ’ CONFUSED? CLICK HERE’ PAGE

i was really put-off by this. for some reason, i automatically get the vibe that someone is talking down to me and i know this is not the mods’ intention.

i would suggest replacing the ‘CONFUSED? CLICK HERE’ with just ‘WHERE TO BEGIN’. i would also erase the entire section prior to ‘A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE OF WHAT TO DO BEFORE YOU APPLY’. it is completely unnecessary. if you must, i would have a

‘please feel free to ask any additional questions you have to the main. we will be happy to help you’

at the very end, because otherwise you’re just further complicating people who have clicked here and are a little lost.

i understand the purpose of this page and commend you for making something like it, but to have someone tell me ‘confused? lost?’ when i’ve barely started looking around and ‘it’s better if we explain it to you personally than having you stare at the main completely lost and then closing it shortly after’, just assumes a lot and makes me feel as if I can’t /possibly /comprehend anything without assistance. it just– i don’t like it at all. i’m very sorry.

—– THE DEPARTMENTS PAGE

I cannot read this. Not that I don’t want to, but that- I shouldn’t have to. It is so much information on one page. And though, most of it is necessary, I would never read it if I could avoid it.

First of all, the thin white font on a black background is hard-to-read. And secondly, the way this is set up is far more trouble than it is worth. I said it earlier in this review. I know how much work it can be to edit code to do this, and, genuinely, you’ve done such cool things with it all. However, there’s only 5 or so Departments and it’s ridiculous that I have to click 6 times and scroll so much just to read what they are.

If this were my page, I would just make a single page with all the general descriptions & reference the titles you gave them in your general plot. It will be far easier. For example:

As you will notice, I suggested that you split the descriptors and the rest of the information (powers, final project…etc.) As someone who is just entering the RP, it is more important that someone gets a feel for each of the groups before delving into the specifics (namely the rules that affect them, the powers they can have… etc.). On these specific department pages, i would even add the fun prose parts you had in the original plot. Just be sure to make clear divisions, so people can ctrl+f to find THE RULES or THE FINAL PROJECT or POWERS.

—– THE SETS PAGE

You call them clusters everywhere else, so I’m not sure why they’re called sets on the navigation here.

This page is absolutely needed, but would be better formatted if everything was written in parallel way. For ex,

and then keep the same format for each of these clusters. As of now, each cluster dynamic and each role within it is written in a slightly different way and thus I have to adjust every time i learn more about every role. It is tiring for me and it shouldn’t have to be. There is a reason why parallelism is the thing tested on the SAT and it’s because it is so important and makes things 10x more legible.

Also, this section should BE THE SAME as the section on the department page. Otherwise, what you’ve done is created two separate and slightly different documents to describe one thing.

which— brings me to my last (I promise, I know, I’m so sorry) critique.

—– THE CHARACTERS PAGE

this page looks great and, though i wish each untaken character graphic had something to distinguish it as the role it is (as right now, i have to click each untaken graphic to see who and what is going on), i initially had no critiques. however, as time wore on, i have to say that i intensely dislike the setup of this page and, even more so, the descriptors for each of the skeletons you’ve put on this page.

by my count, that is 4? separate and slightly different ways you’ve described each skeleton.

1. HERE. 2. THE DEPARTMENT PAGE. 3. THE SET/CLUSTER PAGE. 4. THE ACTUAL POST of the SKELETON &… to be completely honest, I’m sure there’s more.

If I’m applying for a character, I don’t want to have to look in 4 separate places hidden across the RP just to find out what the character you’ve sort of set-up is. i would erase every description completely and just redirect to the skeleton. it doesn’t make sense to describe the skeleton, redirect to the skeleton which is slightly different and then describe it slightly differently again on a separate page.

if i could suggest, i would just like to see the CLUSTER, AGE, POWERS, FC & a LINK TO THE SKELETON, nothing else. As a side note, I like these descriptors better than the ones on your cluster page– and would honestly prefer to see them used there, instead of the ones you have.

TLDR; what i would like to seechanged

change the font and make things left-aligned. otherwise, iget a genuine headache from trying to decipher what is going on.

change the title of the ‘CONFUSED? CLICK HERE’ link on yournavigation to ‘WHERE TO BEGIN’ or ‘HOW TO NAVIGATE THIS RP’…etc.

on that same page, erase the entire section prior to the actualchecklist. it is unnecessary and feels.. a bit rude.

i would erase all the department descriptions from your generalplot and, maybe, include an OOC description

i suggest a retooling of your department page

using just standard pages, have one page with a general overviewof the departments and THEN linking to 5 separate & more specific pagesincluding the power…etc. ??

on your department, sets, characters pages & the skeletonposts– make all your descriptors of the characters consistent. otherwise, aperson has to really search to get all the information you’ve given about eachrole the character plays.

I have no idea how power selection works –personally, i would just list out ALL possible powers a character can have andsay, select, at maximum 2 or something– and include a disclaimer saying, theadmins will judge whether this is overpowered and approach you after yousubmit. otherwise, i’m just going to be staring at a page for hours trying tofigure out the four categories and think about the 5 departments and then theclusters and just… i’m so sorry, but, even though, i absolutely adore thatyou’ve worked out all of this, i could never go through with it or force myselfto figure it out.

I know this is so much and thatyou all are very well underway on this project. And I want to assure you thatI’m really very impressed by this RP and the work put into it. However, I amalso keenly aware that tumblr doesn’t tend to gravitate towards the mostcomplex of things and I really wanted to help you guys present your informationin a way that is much easier, so everyone can have the best experience here atyour RP.

I personally played in and ranan fairly complex superpowered academy RP over 4 years ago with (not the same)but a similar idea– and i’ve always found that it can be hard sometimes topresent these kind of ideas.

as a last note and reminder,YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TAKE ANY OF MY SUGGESTIONS. There is no ill-will from me to you. As always,this is not intended to be hate and I genuinely want the best for you guys.However, I am terminally cursed to be nitpicky. I’ve done my very best to makesure my advice is constructive, but please call me out if you find any of thisoffensive or crude.

Thank you and have a nice day.Good luck!

#rp review #rpt #rpc #rpo #rph #tl;dr #opinion #excelsior-hq

1 note · View note

nyxelestia · 7 years

Text

I'm caught between 5 different plotbunnies for the Teen Wolf Big Bang.

TL;DR version:

1.) Scott sleeps with Deucalion in exchange for Deucalion taking his memories of his loved ones (ab)using him. Pro: Emphasis on Scott's trauma and martyrdom. Con: Not a big fan of the ending and can't think of a better one. 2.) Turns out Rafael molested Scott, and everyone finds out because nogitusne. Scott still resents Rafael more for leaving him than for abusing him in the first place. Pro: Emphasis on Scott's tendency to put up with a ton of abuse from people as long as they don't leave him. Con: No satisfying ending. I know how to end it, plot-wise, but no idea how to end it emotionally. (Mixed feelings about combining #1 and #2.) 3.) Chris/Melissa/Sheriff fic about the three parents growing into and embracing their new reality, and each other along with it. Pro: Lots of fluff and emotional development. Con: Plot is shitty and cliched as all hell. 4.) Sheriff gets turned into a werewolf, but with alpha!Scott. Emphasis is on the Sheriff's changing relationship with Scott (father-figure-come-beta). Pro: Father-son-figure fluff, and the dark reality of the Sheriff trying to cope with lycanthropy. Con: No real plot or narrative beyond that. (Mixed feelings about combining #3 and #4.) 5.) Scott dies in 5A, everything goes to hell. After Beacon Hills becomes a corpse-ridden ghost town, Lydia and the Nemeton arranges for Allison, Scott, and Stiles (and/or herself) to wake up that first morning all the way back in the pilot/101, with all their memories up until their death. Pro: It's the ultimate fix-it fic, with a greater emphasis on the real cost and stakes of the supernatural drama (and the value in protecting them). Con: Like zero plot whatsoever, just an idea and some vague, disconnected scenes.

Detailed explanations below cut.

Idea #1: Dark Scott/Deucalion fic.

After Season 4, Scott starts sleeping with Deucalion in exchange for Deucalion taking some of his more traumatic memories involving his loved ones (i.e. Derek's assaults of him in the first two seasons, Chris' early mistreatment of him, nogitsune!Stiles stabbing him, etc).

Despite how exploitative it sounds, Deucalion does somewhat care for Scott (as a mentor/mentee thing). Scott ends up falling in love with him a little, but this is also happening in tandem with his relationships with Kira (and later, Malia). Main Appeal: The emphasis on Scott's trauma, and how his experiences leave him open to a certain type of exploitation and vulnerable in a certain way. He's not getting rid of all traumatic memories - just the ones of people who he cares about, but have hurt him, because it was getting difficult for him to spend time around his loved ones without being scared all the time. He lets people continue to hurt and use him because he'll be able to later pretend it never happened. Main Drawback: Not sure about the ending. Part of the reason I'd abandoned it before is that I never came up with a good ending. I kinda like how Season 6B fits into this - that ultimately, Deucalion dies, and in the absence of another alpha willing to help Scott take a short-cut through is trauma, Scott finally has to confront his trauma and self-martyrdom. I'm not sure of an ending which is just the beginning of another story or process which I know I'll never write/the reader will never see.

Idea #2: Very Dark pedophile!Rafael fic

Original plot bunny has the nogitsune revealing to all and sundry that Stiles figured out Scott was "looking for his own kiddie porn" when he broke into Rafael's laptop for Kira. Things...devolve from there.

Allison lives for no discernible reason and she and Derek debate the merits of just killing Rafael, together. Chris is hurt that they didn't invite him. :P Stiles taps into the void the nogitsune left in him to put Rafael down for good. Main Appeal: I've seen fics where Rafael abused Stiles and I've always just been like - he's got his own kid right there and for some reason never touched him? I also really want to emphasize that much like the show, Scott resents his father abandoning him more than any abuse - including this sexual abuse. This plays into his current mental state, that he'll accept almost any level of use, abuse, and mistreatment if it means his friends and pack won't leave him. (Also, given how often stories like this involve the McCall family being subsumed by Stilinski drama, I like the idea of reversing that script.) Main Drawback: I feel like this would be a little OOC for Rafael (6B made me actually like him!). While I do not say this as a gesture of abuse erasure or apologism, I quite liked his arc in the show (and was upset to not see more of it), and I'm afraid I'd be shitting on that a little with molestor!Rafael. Also, no idea how to end it. Narratively, I have the idea that Derek tries to actually get Rafael arrested and tried and convicted, wanting Scott to see and experience how wrong Rafael's actions were...but Rafael's too good to be caught, and the pack/friends just work together to kill him. Great for "rallying around and protecting Scott" feels, but no real emotional development from Scott, who would probably resent them for this, and I don't know how to fix that. (Kinda tempted to combine with #1, but that might be rather cliched - Scott getting away from one sexual abuser only to fall hard for another? I know I get irritated by "everyone's trying to fuck him/rape him" fic when it comes to Stiles, and I'd have mixed feelings about subjecting Scott to that. I think it would be very true to his character, post-Rafael, to fall into that pattern of exploitation with Deucalion - but the Deucalion fic was a little more oriented to Scott's tendency to martyrdom, whereas this one is more about Scott putting up with (ab)use to keep people close to him.)

Idea #3: Chris/Melissa/Sheriff fic (+Allison lived AU)

What it says on the tin, it's just the story of Chris, Melissa, and the Sheriff developing a relationship.

Original plot bunny was that after Season 4-ish events, Rafael is poking around, mistakes some post-supernatural circumstances for a threesome, and gets mad. Team Root Cellar initially just rolls with the farce to keep Rafael from finding out about the supernatural, but also to troll him, only for it to turn real.

But now I'm also inclined to something post-6B/show? Main Appeal: Lots of fluff, and lots of everyone starting to settle down into a new life and embracing their new reality for good. Part of that new reality is the whole "kids leaving the nest" thing (Scott, Allison, and Stiles going off to college or wherever, the trio having to build a life that isn't about/around parenting).

It’s also kind of embracing how far they've come from who they used to be (Chris going from hating werewolves to dating the True Alpha's mother and his Emissary's father, the Sheriff embracing the supernatural in terms of dating a Hunter and someone so heavily involved in werewolves, and Melissa growing as a more confident and self-assured person). Also, accidental baby is sort of a representation of a new future with these three once-disparate forces of Beacon Hills now united as one. Main Drawback: There isn't much of a plot to this. My current ideas, post-S4 or post-6B, are basically a series of interconnected one-shots. I also feel that in most ways, it would be a little cliched - older parents finding a new love life after their kids are gone, accidental baby feels cliche (even if what it's representing is not).

Idea #4: Turned!Sheriff with Alpha!Scott

Exactly what it says on the tin. At some nebulous point during or soon after the events of the show, somehow the Sheriff gets Bitten by a rogue alpha or something. He turns, but now has to deal with being a werewolf.

In particular, what I intend to be different about this AU is that the Sheriff doesn't magically cope well with the changes. While he is level-headed, he isn't the best at self-control, and does have a lot of issue that'll make full moons downright nasty. And while the enhanced strength and senses are nice (especially as Derek teaches him how to use them), the loss of alcohol/drinking is not. Main Appeal: I see so many fics that focus on the Melissa and Stiles relationship, I wanted to flip that on its head a bit, and focus on Scott and the Sheriff. Ironically, Stiles isn't actually in it all that much, with the focus being on the Sheriff's relationships with Scott (and somewhat, Derek). Scott has to be the Sheriff's alpha, despite also being like his second son. It's a hard transition for them both, for different reasons. And since I did love the Derek and Sheriff relationship, Derek teaches the Sheriff to use his senses to benefit his job. (Also, while Stiles isn't in it much, he is still in it - and he's there for the Sheriff's first Full Moon. It's exactly as horrifying as you'd expect. Main Drawback: Again, no real plot. I have a premise and I have some scenes in mind, but no overarching plot, and no real character arc beyond "Sheriff and Scott forging a new relationship in their new reality, while still maintaining a bit of the older paternalism". (...maybe I could combine this with the threesome fic...? Except that that fic was intended to be about all three parents, whereas this would make it overwhelmingly Sheriff-focused.)

Idea #5: Time Travel Fix-It fic.

Basically, Scott actually dies in the end of 5A and stays dead, and everything just goes straight to hell after that. After a lot of 6B-like tensions, bloodshed and carnage, and the Ghost Riders, Beacon Hills is a desolate Ghost Town with nothing left but corpses, and Lydia left wandering around in it.

She goes to the Nemeton and ~magic happens~ and her, Scott, Stiles, and Allison all wake up the very first morning from the pilot with all their memories of the future until they died. (And maybe not even Lydia, just the trio. Or, alternatively, only her, and she has to try to prevent everything.) Main Appeal: A huge re-focus back on Season 1, and how all of the insanity of later seasons holds up against that. The events of the later seasons make the Season 1 drama look so small - yet at the same time, the stakes are higher because of those consequences. Part of what I think was lost in later seasons was that there was less grief and shock in lost lives, so even as the body count rose, the stakes didn't feel like they were rising, too. But going back to Season 1 would put the focus back on that loss of life (with everyone alive and well, again - but all that darkness and evil just waiting for them).

I also like the idea of characters getting to see each other at different stages of development - Allison getting to see the the awesome alpha and badass banshee Scott and Lydia came to be, Scott coming to admire her powers (since she didn't learn how to use them outside of death knells until 5B), and a lot of wary respect of the kind of capable yet dark person Stiles ultimately became without Scott (or Allison) to temper him. Main Drawback: This idea has the least plot out of all my ideas. You can probably tell by the fact I'm not even 100% sure who I'd want effectively going back in time to fix things. Even if they do - I'm not sure of the ripple effects and consequences, what I want to happen, etc. I have a vague idea that they kind of...speed up the rate of attacks (basically, instead of pacing over several years, all the villains pop up almost at once), and the heroes ultimately using that to their advantage by turning/using all these villains against each other, somehow.

But I have no concrete plans for any of this, just a cool idea and a lot of individual scenes in my head.

#teen wolf big bang #twbb #teen wolf #nyxie talks about her writing #nanowrimo #nanowrimo 2017

6 notes · View notes

mild-lunacy · 7 years

Text

Fluff, Angst and I

There’s two things that have always been true about me and fic: it’s not that I like fluff, smooth sailing or domesticity. For one thing, I like action adventure (or, the canon, usually) for a reason. But it’s like, well, I spend a lot of time disagreeing with the underlying premises of people’s angstfics. To me, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that true love means you might try to fight it, but you’d fail.

And so, I feel like fics where the OTP breaks up (even temporarily, but fully), or one of them cheats, or is happy with someone else for a long while-- and the idea is they have to work hard or wait a long time to get back together-- it’s just anathema to me. I also am not into ‘issue’ fics, where something awful happens out of nowhere and it’s all about trying to cope (which is the other typical kind of angst, eg deathfics). I don’t really want to have my emotions manipulated in an overt way. And yet, I’d say I like angst. It occurs to me that word probably doesn’t mean the same to me as it does to most fans.

I do like relationship angst and drama, where nothing is easy, which is why I said I don’t like fluff. I also like genuine, earned happiness, which isn't a constant thing in its active state. Who doesn't like joy? The fulfillment of pursuing what you really want, the knowledge you desperately want what you finally have attained-- these are some of the most amazing feelings humanly possible. Pure happiness is like punctuation, existing in tension with the unfortunate past and the unknowable future.

Conversely, it seems to me that the point of fluff is that there’s not a whole lot of tension left between the characters, or it disappears very easily. That’s generally too OOC for me to handle. I do like humor, and I prefer relationships that are acknowledged to be a ‘sure thing’, which theoretically could be fluffy. But let’s take something like The X-Files or BBC Sherlock-- Mulder and Scully or John and Sherlock’s relationship is absolutely a ‘sure thing’, but definitely not fluffy. They’re too prickly, their lives too difficult, their individuality too defined. I feel like real individuality is always too... individual to be entirely pleasant. It’s too personal and unique to just be straightforward. It’s always multilayered, so you can’t just call it sweet. Plus, in Sherlock and John’s case, they’re still assholes to each other even though there’s no real danger from other quarters, death or permanent separation.

Of course, I’m not saying angsty scenarios are inherently more complex, somehow. Or at least, I think I’m trying to separate dramatic tension (which does add complexity) from what I can only call ‘cheap drama’, or melodrama. I think a lot of times, if fics present themselves as angsty, they’re referring to typical soapy plotlines such as pointless misunderstandings, sudden cheating, separation, serious illness or rape, etc. This is what’s generally considered ‘angst’, and I’m definitely likely to avoid such storylines. It’s just, the domestic sitcom-style alternative doesn’t usually appeal to me either. Not that I don’t see the appeal in sitcoms or soaps, but neither are my type of story. And I think that these styles dominate romance as a genre, even in fanfic.

It’s not that I consider break-ups verboten completely, but you’d have to be really careful about why you’re writing it (and most people are doing it for the feels or to get rid of the original couple, basically). It works for me best if it’s part of the process of getting together (so... not really a break-up, I suppose). Likewise, I’ve read deathfics, but where it’s treated as a plot point, and usually the focus was on what happens next (like a ghost story, or a sci-fi option). Though these cases seem dissimilar, I think the focus is on ‘what happens next’ in both cases. I suppose you could see this as a focus on the character’s issues driving the plot rather than being used for emotional effect. In a way, when I say I like angst, I mean I like difficulties. Specifically, difficulties that generate some chain of action or reaction that drives the narrative forward.

If I feel the ‘issues’ are being explored and are driving the plot, I have a very high tolerance for ‘angst’ other people consider bleak or too difficult long-term (eg, Game of Thrones is fine, as in dark but not particularly sad to me). As an example, I’ve watched the first ep of In The Flesh, and I don’t consider it super dark or draining. That’s because all the difficulties are constantly being addressed, even if they generate more difficulties and solutions aren’t easily forthcoming. I always felt like the solution may be long-term, but it’s possible, the same way and to the same degree it is in real life. I’m not supposed to just feel bad, and so I didn’t. I was simply enjoying the twists. This is similar to why I liked The Final Problem, for what it’s worth. I like psychological questions being posed, whether they’re addressed more or less realistically. The important thing to me is the feeling that they’re being seriously explored, on some level, even just open-endedly or metaphorically. I don’t need neatness or solutions so much as that feeling of the characters’ progress. To me, that focus on action means the effect is not bleak or dark, even though the people who saw In The Flesh with me felt it was rather depressing and gruesome. It’s in that sense that I ‘like angst’.

I suppose my real issue with most examples of fandom fluff is also this lack of progress. There’s a certain sense of... warm stasis that I associate with fluff fics. Like, it starts out warm and continues warm. Nothing too interesting can happen without it becoming a mixture, like ‘flangst’ or ‘angst with a happy ending’ (which I like best, probably). If it’s just fluff, the fic tries to simply give you what you want as a shipper, which seems to be ‘nothing bad or even overly stressful has happened or will happen’. That always vaguely reminds me of being strapped to a chair and brainwashed until I agree that indeed, Supreme Leader knows best. I’d say I’m naturally cynical, except I started out saying that my OTP is automatically incapable of breaking up or even waiting overly long to get together (usually-- inevitably-- to satisfy the het pairing), so surely not. Surely characters can be completely devoted without being nice, and happy with each other without necessarily being always happy.

Well, I hope so, anyway. Really, I know so, even if the only canon couple in this vein that pops to mind is Ronan/Adam in The Raven Cycle. It just always seems particularly ridiculous to see Ronan and Adam break up just to get back together. People really underestimate Adam, if nothing else. He decided he’s going to stick with Ronan, and so he will, probably even if he was unhappy (for quite awhile, anyway). It’s not really fate, per se; sometimes characters can only go one way because that’s who they are, and it’s the choice they made, a commitment. I think in some ways, Adam is a bit more absolutely unshakable in this than John because he understands Ronan better than John used to understand Sherlock, though these are really minor differences. My point is, sometimes people make choices about who they are, and that’s how their story goes, and it doesn’t matter what’s ‘realistic’ or not. In choosing Ronan, Adam said, this is who I am, and it now included Ronan. Simple as that. I feel a similar thing happened in ASIP for John, or perhaps the process began then and ended in TLD, maybe. It’s not that it’s necessarily a fluffy, gentle or even nice feeling, though Adam realizes he should make an effort to be gentle, just like Sherlock later makes an effort. But that doesn’t make it less real or permanent.

#pointless rambles #me myself and i #oh fandom #fanfic meta #romanticism #shipping #johnlock feels #pynch #raven ❤️#characterization

22 notes · View notes