#arghwrites

[softgrungeprophet]

it's still only like 7 here but i am definitely ringing in the new year the way i intend to spend it: writing weird edgy fanfiction

[softgrungeprophet]

taking a break from my monstrously large AU to work on a very self-indulgent fairytale oneshot ft. Kaine as a Rapunzel-esque figure and Ben as his (platonic) rescuer, because I made an offhand comment about Kaine's hair while talking to someone and was seized by the concept 😂

i'll post a snippet:

—

That night, Ben slipped away during dinner—wolfed his food down and excused himself to explore as the sun set and purple marlins swarmed the sky…

…except for the airspace around that strange bronze tower.

There was a man outside, across the field, silhouetted in the darkness. Ben crept low to the ground and kept his distance, careful not to be seen as he followed the stranger up the hill toward the tower.

He'd left his chatelaine inside, of course (no need for sewing scissors out in the fields, anyway) but the good luck charm Peter had given him, he'd fastened to his boot, a comforting little weight.

Just in case.

Up the path, to the gate…

Ben hid out of sight and peeked around the brambles to watch as the man he'd trailed up to the tower shed his cloak and—suddenly—was no longer a man at all.

The glamor fell away to reveal some kind of ogre or fae monster, with wide bat-like ears and long limbs; taloned fingers and clawed feet, green skin in the falling dusk almost the same color as the pine needles in the trees, strangely waxy.

The monster called out: "Kaine!"

Ben's breath caught in his chest, eyes wide.

It couldn't possibly be…

The monster shifted, tilted its head, and Ben held himself as still as could be,

A moment passed.

The tension dropped, and again—

"Kaine! Let down thy hair so that I may climb up!"

Above—a backlit outline against the golden glow from inside the tower—a figure moved.

The long braid that fell down from the window caught the fading sunset, highlighted in a flash of copper and fastened with a hook. Its bearer was silent, and remained in shadow as the being who must have been the Jackal—a boogeyman from Ben's childhood—leapt up and grabbed hold, using the length of hair like a rope to scale the smooth side of the tower.

Kaine's braid was unhooked and drawn up, and they disappeared from view.

The Jackal spoke some words, quiet and unintelligible from this distance, and even lower received a response, equally undecipherable.

Ben could feel his heart hammering in his throat, and slipped away.

—

the dramatic reveal lol

heads up, gang! it's that time of the week again. EF is as proud as ever to present WIP Wednesday.

we encourage our community's writers to reblog this post and tell us about your latest idea, show us a snippet of an upcoming work, write in a vague prompt that's eating you alive... we wanna hear it all!

excelsior!

[softgrungeprophet]

demeaning fictional characters by having people call kaine things like "the pink tarantula" instead of something cool like "egodeath"

[softgrungeprophet]

hypothetically if a fictional character was held and used for illegal human experimentation by the us military and then escaped by destroying an entire facility and probably killing everyone inside, do you think he'd be considered a wanted criminal or would they be like, no this was justified in the face of cruel and unusual treatment--

what am I saying, the government would assassinate him

[softgrungeprophet]

writing something dumb i mean self-indulgent for the flashkaine sickos, i guess

[softgrungeprophet]

Who wants to know about how Kaine's spikes etc. work—

it's 20 pages 💀

was chatting, realized i don't think i've really gone into how kaine's spikes work in windowverse stuff aside from some lines in the warren notes fic (i mean, tbf, when would i have?)

still not going to go into it unless i feel like busting out some of my notes in a reblog at some point lol but tl;dr is the spikes are made of the same thing as ben's organic webbing, just doesn't work right, can be removed or reabsorbed back into the silk-producing organs in his forearms, and require hand flexion just like the organic and mechanical web-shooters, but a different hand shape.

when i say "flicked out at high speeds" i do mean like throwing knives lmfao

[softgrungeprophet]

sometimes "the curtains are blue for a reason" means things like my deliberate decision to have dr. warren use latex surgical gloves vs donald using nitrile gloves

[softgrungeprophet]

i forgot about harry's mom........... he's supposed to be getting to know her in 2012.... oops

[softgrungeprophet]

windowverse houston fic pissing me off because i'm pretty sure it's like 50k but it's only half or maybe two thirds finished and full of all this pretentious prose i like a lot but can't post because it's not dooooone

[softgrungeprophet]

the real challenge of writing is stuff like trying to figure out ways to make "protagonist in the hospital" not boring

[softgrungeprophet]

took all day but figured out how i want to do power dampeners in scratchverse lol

[softgrungeprophet]

my wild, fun friday night reading

[softgrungeprophet]

i won't lie, there's been a certain level of both reassurance and self-consciousness in reading WIWV which is both that it makes me go, oh, maybe I don't need to think so hard or be so concerned about my placement of dialogue, or rather the way I tend to break it apart to go along with movement and so on and so forth -- and also that sometimes lately I do look at my WIPs and think about how fragmented into tiny paragraphs they are and how action-by-action, movement-by-movement they tend to be --

but of course, I'm not writing literary fiction, an I? 😂 I'm writing, essentially (whether fanfic or original) romance fiction and prose soap opera stuff eith some action, except for where some moments (mostly Kaine) veer vaguely upmarket haha

[softgrungeprophet]

thinking more about bad ending TJ/fleshing out some ideas... naturally i've spent the past several hours further detailing the vaguely medical technology relevant to my ideas

[softgrungeprophet]

apropos of nothing, windowverse peter's temper (and conversely him learning to chill out) really is like one of if not the main catalyst/driver for most of the plot stuff and character development lol

[softgrungeprophet]

windowverse 2012 clone fic would probably spawn a lot of ben (reilly)/harry shippers if it was a cartoon, huh