#i figured this would be a good starting point but we can tweak/plot things as we go!

[immobiliter]

@orchideae sent a meme: "By all accounts, it doesn’t make sense." (To Navia? About Childe perhaps?)

       Navia glanced sidelong at her companion as she poured her own cup of tea, surrounded as ever with the opulence — and treats — of the Hotel Debord. She always asked the owner for a secluded table to talk business, despite the mounting costs involving with keeping up such appearances. The Demoiselle of the Spina di Rosula could not be seen to be lacking in mora, no matter the truth of the organisation's finances as of late. And besides, Navia's companion had more than earned a fabled meeting with her at the Debord; even if she hadn't done her research on Liyue's Ministry of Civil Affairs, Melus, Silver, and plenty of others at the Spina had become so tired of the woman's incessant questioning that they'd nearly begged Navia to arrange a meeting and lend an ear to what she had to say.

       “ The Oratrice's verdict was indeed a strange turn of events. Though, Fatui Harbinger or no, it would not be the first time that absolute judgement had been rendered at the Opera Epiclese despite opposition. ” Navia could not hide the bitterness in her voice. She did not know Childe personally, nor did she know why Liyue might be so interested in him, but she had been there for his so-called "trial". Fontainians from far and wide had seen her prove Vacher's guilt and solve the serial disappearances case once and for all. Why, then, did Monsieur Neuvillette allow the Oratrice's verdict on Childe to stand, even in the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary? In spite of his own judgement?

       Still, this conversation did not concern Fontaine's Chief Justice, who Navia was sure must have been this Yelan's first port of call when looking for answers. She hummed thoughtfully as she carefully placed her teacup back in its saucer. “ But, so far as the Duke is concerned, I'm afraid that part is less strange. I do admire you, however: considering the number of times my contacts in the Spina have seen you emerge from the Fortress as of late, it appears you are even more persistent than I am. ” The same could be said of her own organisation, too, though Navia was much more interested in whether Yelan had gotten any further than she in her personal enquires to the Duke.

[seismologically-silly]

so i've thought about the dr who 60th specials and wanted to write my thoughts down:

i had fun. there was stuff in each episode i liked, but stuff i think could have gone better. the concepts were there, but i think sometimes the execution was a little iffy. i'll detail how i would have done this in the readmore

first of all, we keep the practical effects. no pure cgi here no sirree.

(also) first, we'll start at the 13/tenthree regeneration: david wears jodies's clothes for his first adventure. non-negotiable. at some point he and donna have a trip to the tardis wardrobe and help him find his outfit (like ten but not ten. like this face! donna can keep her snark at his suit but it's more playful). not sure how we would do this without breaking the pacing of the tardis reveal/coffee disaster, but this is an outline i do what i want. no post-regenerative weirdness from the doctor, which is remarked upon.

the star beast: pretty good. i like the doctor saving the world with the power of transgender, so we're keeping that. we're taking out the "male-presenting time lord" bit though. donna and rose survive either by being two people and being able to take the metacrisis or by being human and letting it go. and we don't need rose to be deadnamed. rose is rose.

wild blue yonder: no notes! this was a good episode, i wouldn't tweak anything.

the giggle: the big controversial one: i enjoyed it when watching it. it had stuff in there that cater to me. reality-bending villain, shirley-anne bingham, the fifteenth doctor, all bangers. maybe we do something about the german accent though. on the subject of the toymaker: what was the point of these specials? to be the 60th, yeah, but like. all together? why are THESE the 60th? the toymaker comes from the dungeon dimensions (i've been going through discworld and that'll be apparent, sue me), and he's very likely bored there. he's going to want to play with the doctor again. maybe he sees dhawan!master committing regeneration shenanigans during power of the doctor and decides to take advantage. maybe he's the REASON dhawan!master is committing regeneration shenanigans. thirteen is talking to all those older selves anyway, maybe the toymaker wants to wind the clock back. play with one again (he misses and gets ten again, but he liked ten anyway and can work with that. he also liked ten's dynamic with donna. HEY WAIT-). it can't be that hard for the toymaker to make sure the tardis lands so the first person tenthree sees is donna. it'll be fun to see if he kills her, anyway. or maybe he's like us for the first two episodes and doesn't want her dead and is rooting for her to live. he could be more active and help the metacrisis stabilize or be us, doesn't matter. but then tenthree throws the salt and invokes a superstition at the End in wild blue yonder, and the toymaker can go from Audience to Participant FINALLY.

note: i'd probably split the giggle into two. we could have spent more time with john logie baird, more time with the toyroom, and DEFINITELY more time with Mel. i was overjoyed to have her there, but she could have been any other character and the giggle would have remained the same. if mel's going to be in this story, let's make her a part of the story.

mel works for unit, she's seen some amazing things with the doctor, and was a regeneration companion, she could be set in the toymaker's sights. he starts messing with her, and calls the tardis and tenthree and donna back for another game. let's make him more active in the plot. not sure how the tv storyline can stay, but if we're attached to it we can figure it out. anyway. plot ensues.

we keep the confrontation on the roof. tenthree is still killed by the toymaker. he regenerates into fifteen and things are amazing (ncuti is in david's clothes bc that's how this works after the harnell/troughton regeneration. i'm no unnaturalist but i INSIST on that). Going into the EU a bit to explain what i'm doing here: in Death in the Family, the Seventh Doctor faces a being not from this dimension who can rewrite the rules of reality. familiar? (not the toymaker) seven is killed. dead. no regeneration. but he's got some loophole that lets him be an echo and take his companions to different places and times so that can work on his vague plan to bring him back. shortly after getting them started, this echo fades away. i'm thinking we do something like that. whether because of the toymaker's influence, regeneration being Weird after the thirteenth even with the timeless child, or anything else, fourteen is around for a bit longer as an echo to help fifteen get his bearings. we still have our high-stakes game of catch, doing some character building for fifteen and trying to figure out what the hell just happened, and fifteen is the one who throws the ball outside of the toymaker's reach. he has his first "i am the doctor" speech and claims his prize as the toymaker's banishment. celebrations. we cut to tenthree so is smiling at his friends. he's partially see-through. the echo is fading. he looks at his future, secure. he looks at his friends, safe.

"Let's do this right, this time," he says, more to himself than anything. he turns to the doctor and straightens- it's obvious he's in a lot of pain, but he's steadfast. "This is my prize- i wish you to have a good future. have a good life, Doctor. Remember to tell your loved ones you love them."

He walks over to Donna and gives her the biggest hug she's ever received. He ropes Mel into it as well. And content in the arms of his friends his family, where Ten didn't want to go, Tenthree lets his echo fade peacefully.

The Doctor sees his friends struggling with having him fade to nothing in their arms, so he walks over and completes the hug. They don't let go for a long time.

Cut to the TARDIS. The Doctor is getting ready to go. Donna and Mel, and maybe Shirley-Anne and Kate are next to him. "Any of you want to come with?" he asks. "Big universe, lots to see. Another whirl?"

They look at each other, and with regret, shake their heads. "We've got to tell our loved ones we love them," they say. Fifteen deflates for a moment, before standing straighter and giving them a wink and a wave. Before he can fully disappear into the TARDIS, Donna grabs him.

"But you'll be coming round to visit though. Not letting you say no! Next Friday, 5pm, my house, okay?"

The Doctor laughs and gives her a big kiss on the forehead. "I'll see you then, love."

But first, off to Everywhere.

(we're keeping the jukebox)

[lorei-writes]

*clasps hands* To be honest, setting it as a goal for our September challenge may not be a bad idea. >:)

As for tips... Hmm... I may have some?

If you want to set a daily goal, set it low.

Ideally, I'd write between 800-1k words a day. That, however, is not always doable. My daily goal is 200 words (50 if it's a worse day). It is generally obtainable, and after I reach it? Nothing it stopping me from going on.

Sharing your progress with friends can help.

It's easy to get lost in your head. Showing somebody a couple lines can be rather grounding.

Inspiration is a feeling, and feelings are unreliable. They come and go.

To be honest... A lot of the time, I write when I'm not inspired ^^" It can seem like a crucial element to it, but writing can also become something of a habit -- if I know what I want to write, it's just a matter of figuring out how to put it down on paper. It's like playing with a puzzle.

And that brings me to...

If you can't write, it doesn't mean you can't do anything writing related.

Writing is more than just putting the words on paper. It's coming up with plots, metaphors, structure, sometimes choreography, and a clear way to convey all of that. What's often stopping me from writing is lacking the ideas for those.

So, the words don't want to come?

I tend to be fairly analytical, so I rely on that to help me out of struggles ^^" For example:

>What plot do I want to write?

>> No idea for plot -> What can I elaborate on? What can I develop? What context have I not explored?

What have I not considered yet? -> Modern AU, Esther x Chev -> What jobs would they have? -> Esther: kindergarten teacher; Chev: lawyer -> Those are very different. How would they meet? -> Legal struggle of some kind. -> That is a strictly professional setting. How do I make them meet under personal circumstances? -> Accident. -> What accident? -> Chevalier's car breaks and he has no reception. Esther's driving by and offers him a ride. -> Ok. But (going back), if she's hired him, they would still be bound by an official relationship. Is that the atmosphere we are going for? Chevalier is professional -> No. We need a different atmosphere. -> How do we get a different atmosphere? -> What if he declined to represent her/whoever wanted to hire him that's associated with her? -> OH. Then it'd be almost a fated meeting! -> What do they do while in the car? -> They can talk. -> [continue onwards once you write that far]

>> Plot -> What atmosphere am I going for? -> Whose perspective should colour the narrative to make that apparent?

For example: If I were to write the scene above closer to Chev's perspective, he'd be fairly annoyed, while Esther would find the situation amusing.

>What parts of the scene do I want to draw the focus to? Are they important because of the atmosphere, symbolism or foreshadowing? What images can amplify the atmosphere I am going for? Do I want to structure the fic in any particular way (story within a story, the first paragraph matching the last one, mirrored stories, etc. etc.)?

This process probably is different for everybody, but I think it's a good idea to think about all the other things surrounding writing! Maybe there's something there to spark the excitement >:)

And then, if you get stuck...

Figure out why you're stuck.

Is it a plot issue? Is the atmosphere wrong? Maybe you're unsure where to go next with the story and are searching for ideas?

I find it that more often than not, being a bit lost is fine. You just have to be okay with possibly going backwards. I scrapped around 10k words from a longfic and started over 3 times. It just didn't want to be what I wanted it to be -- it either focused too much on a side character, or it was humourous where it needed to be serious, or the plots I came up with to illustrate certain points were caricatural. But realising all those things and starting over was worth it in the end! I just needed to find the issue.

(To be honest, usually just a couple minor tweaks are needed. Benching 10k words right off the bat is a bit extreme, at leats for me.)

And then...

If the technicalities of the language are stopping you and you're second-guessing yourself, a quick grammar reference may be of help.

I would actually hit my grammar books (Grammarway 4... The other titles I don't remember) whenever I felt that I didn't really know what I was doing.

It may not be of use to everybody, but I find it that seeing a couple examples and reading a short grammar note can help put my mind at ease ^^" And then I can return to writing with more vigour.

Will you tell us more about Maeve's time as a priestess? <3

It's definitely in the plans!! I really want to work on a longfic about them both and ofc that's a great part of Maeve's story. I just need to find strength lol 🫠

But this is something I really really wanna do!

[astaroth1357]

Demigod MC Series: Athena

So. I have to deal with the virgin goddesses… By mythos, there really shouldn't ever be children of Artemis, Hestia, or Athena (yes, Athena was a virgin goddess). PJ got past that by making it canon that Annabeth and her siblings were born from cracking open Athena's skull (yes, that's also more or less the canon explanation). They gloss over it real quick but I remember, Rick. I've always remembered and that mental image has haunted me for years...

I can't, in good conscience, ignore the history around Athena's worship (call it an academic restraint) but I REFUSE to do the skull thing. So, since I make the rules here, I'm going with magic adoption. They still get magic powers, they're just more human than demigod. Cool? Cool.

Demigod MC Series: Intro, Aphrodite, Hermes, Hades, Dionysus, Demeter, Athena

Lucifer

The human that popped out of the portal seemed to have enough sense not to attack everyone in the room for a change, but even Lucifer could tell that was more of a strategic choice than for lack of ability...

Their very existence was highly unusual… and quite worrisome. He wasn't even aware Athena could have "children" of her own, but apparently she had been taking in some particularly bright humans to raise and train like her own...

Unbeknownst to him, a surprising amount of human scholars, diplomats, and generals have her to thank for their trade… and that alone should speak to the level of intrigue at play here. 

Was this an accident or Athena's attempt to plant an Olympian spy in the Devildom too…? Either way, he didn't trust them from the get go…

Look, Lucifer isn’t stupid. Athena is a goddess of Wisdom and War and war happens on more than just the battlefield… 

Since they've shown up records have been going missing, official documents keep getting misplaced, and he swears that there's some kind of bug in the student council room...!

It's infuriating watching the MC suck up to Diavolo when he's almost certain that they're running their own agenda behind the scenes! And he can't prove any of it!! They cover their tracks too well!

Lucifer has one of those corkboards covered in newspapers and string in a secret wing of the Castle - 100% dedicated to just tracking the MC's activities…. The longer they're there, the more obsessed he becomes...

He swears between Simeon, Solomon, and MC he feels like a shepherd wondering why the sheep are growling… The Devildom has never been in more danger than it is right now... Send help.

Mammon

To be honest, he kind of thought that they were just going to be Satan 2.0 but that's not really true.

They're more than just a book sponge! Though they do read, like a lot. Let’s just say from one schemer to another… Game recognizes Game.

They come up with plans and ideas soooo fast, it’s insane! Honestly, there are times where he has a new money-making plot and he just brings it to the MC first to run it over. 

Nine times out of ten, not only do they sniff out any problems but they have a solution for him in a matter of minutes! His scheme game has been on point since they’ve shown up!!

They’re also even better tutoring than Satan is, so he’s even managed to get a couple A’s for the first time in his life! Lucifer actually told him he was proud (which he secretly recorded and now uses as a ringtone much to his brother’s regret...)

So yeah, he likes them... buuut that doesn’t keep him from thinking they act a little weird sometimes... 

Mammon: *points to a unused tower close to the RAD building* Over there is the Tower of Sorrow. We use it for storage.

MC: Ah. Interesting… *starts writing in a notebook, muttering* It may need a few minor tweaks but the location is defensible...

Mammon: *stops* Ya say somethin’?

MC: *looks back up* Nope! Say, you’ve been to the Castle a lot haven’t you? Do you know any good ways in?

Mammon: Uhm… Why do ya want to know that…? *starts looking around for Lucifer*

MC: In case of emergencies. I like being prepared. 🙂

Mammon: Look, I don’t know what Lucifer might’a told ya…

MC: I’ll pay you a thousand Grimm for it.

Mammon: Well shit, ya want those maps with or without color?

... Yeeeah, that’s pretty weird… But it’s probably fine. I mean, as long as they keep giving him money, who’s he to complain? 🤷‍♀️

Leviathan

Also thought that they’d be a lot more like Satan but was pleasantly surprised that they were into more than books.

What else did they like exactly? Military strategy!!

It’s been a looong time since he’s been able to talk to someone who’s actually interested in all the battles he’s fought, both in the Celestial Realm and the Devildom, and their curiosity is kind of flattering...! Not a lot of people take his strategic prowess all that seriously anymore...

Plus, they are the BEST partner to have any turn-based strategy game. Hands down. He once got stuck on a level of D-COM for weeks until the MC walked in and mopped the floor with the AI!! They have a serious head for probability and tactics.

The House once made the mistake of letting these two be on the same team during a Hell Game and they absolutely demolished the competition. Mammon didn’t even get a single shot off before half his team was lost to a rigged paint grenade… It took a whole day to clean up… 

However, Levi’s also noticed some odd things about the human… He likes that they’re interested in his past but maybe they’re a little… too interested?

Levi: -and that’s how we defeated the Four Horsemen before they escaped from Purgatory. 

MC: Wow, Levi that’s seriously impressive!! *furiously scribbling on a notebook*

Levi: Well t-thanks… 😅 But, uhm... are you writing that down…?

MC: Hm? Oh no, just doodling. *they lift up the notebook to show a bunch of cute little sketches on the page… and not the magic-based invisible ink all over them…*

Levi: Oh you draw too? Can you do fanart???

MC: Eh, sometimes. But say Levi, can you tell me about your naval ranks again? I’m still really curious… *gets the pen ready again with a smile*

Satan

Oh, it's been a long game of cat-and-mouse between these two… and unfortunately, it’s been pretty addicting too.

He honestly had every intention of tricking the human into making a huge mess do he could bother Lucifer, but at every turn they proved just a hair too clever for him...

He once gave them a cursed book to “lend” to Lucifer, but they saw through it the moment they touched it and lifted the spell before handing it over.

He rigged a podium to spray glitter during one of Lucifer's speeches but the MC disconnected the trigger mic before he even got on stage. It was pretty dang frustrating...

At one point he got so desperate that, just as a test, he tried to trap them in the House's Music Room. Fortunately for them, it only took a few minutes to work out an escape. They even passed by him in the hallway with a wink!

It's confounding! It's infuriating!! 

...and it's so damn sexy... He should be furious but he’s just in awe!!

Add on that they know their art, literature, and multiple different crafts thanks to the tutelage of their adopted mother and that’s it. He’s finished. This boy is in love.

Truthfully though, a part of him is 90% sure that they’re also gathering state secrets… Like, they’re watching Barbs and Diavolo far too close for comfort - but he just can't bring himself to care. 🤷‍♀️

The MC could walk into his room one day and say, "Hey, do you want to help overthrow the monarchy with me?" and he dreads it because deep down he knows that he wouldn’t say no…

Take some notes, kids. Some bad influences get you to drink or do drugs. Others pull you into a centuries long conspiracy to destabilize and topple rival realms from within… But he has fallen for their brain hard. Devil help them all…

Asmodeus 

They’re pretty clever, he’ll give them that, but uh… Are they a little off to anybody else?

Asmo is a charmer by birthright so he has a bit of nose for when someone’s just a liiittttle too nice… Not much of a nose mind you, because he can be thrown off by compliments himself, but enough to think that the MC might be a little too… “kind” for their own good...

First off, who wants to spend that much time with Levi?? They don’t even seem that interested in anime! They just keeping asking him for old war stories…

Then all the sucking up they do to Diavolo and Barbatos? Look, he gets it. Diavolo is a delicious piece of man-hunk and his butler could give him a lesson or two in sweet-talk (and he has), but they seem to be just a little too… nosy.

Of course, Asmo’s suspicions disappear pretty quickly after they start to spoil him with spa nights and beauty secrets they picked up from “casual research” into the subject.

And you know, get a little Demonus in Asmo and start massaging his back? Oh, sweetie he’ll sing like a bird!! … with gossip. Singing with gossip.

Asmo: So I’ve heard that Lucifer has been spending more time at RAD than usual… His whole club is talking about it, they think he’s meeting with some witch!

MC: Hm, is that so? *works on a knot near his shoulder blades* What do you think?

Asmo: Ooh~! Right there, MC! *purrs and lays his head on his arms* Well come on, this is Lucifer we’re talking about! I’m sure he’s just working.

Asmo: Hmm... though come to think of it, I think I heard him asking Barbatos for the spare keys to the Tower of Sorrow…

MC: Oh really? Huh. *works out the knot and gets up* I just remembered that I left some papers with Satan... I’ll be right back.

Asmo: You’re going already??

MC: *waves him off quickly* I’ll be right back, Asmo. *hurries out the door to do totally on-the-up-and-up things… surely*

Beelzebub 

Honestly he doesn't like this one… But not for the reasons you'd expect.

He agrees with everyone else that they seem a little shady, but Solomon and Simeon are too so it's not like that's anything new... 🤷‍♀️

No, no. He dislikes them because they're the person who FINALLY figured out how to keep him from eating all the food in the kitchen!!

Turns out that the trick was to put a teleportation charm on the fridge door that would send all the food away if it’s opened after a certain time of night… 

And where does it go? The Purgatory Hall fridge. And where does the Purgatory Hall food go…? The HoL fridge…

It doesn’t sound so bad until you remember that it means half of their fridge is now Solomon’s leftovers…. 🤢

After they put the same kind of spell on the pantry, it was all over… He couldn't get midnight snacks from the House anymore… Everything was contaminated by Solomon…

The MC is a nice enough person, he doesn’t have a lot of complaints about them, but he wants them to leave. Now. This is inexcusable… He’s so hungry… and he doesn’t want to die by “goulash” or whatever Solomon calls his latest culinary catastrophe… He’s still too young for death… 😓

Belphegor 

In a way, he absolutely could not have asked for a better person to help him get out of that attic.

… In another way, he got one of the worst possible people to try and kill... Like. They saw through his scheme sooo fast…

How was he supposed to know that the human had training in body language and sniffing out lies???

Getting the door open was a piece of cake for them. They knew enough magic to undo the seals and just rummaged around Lucifer's stuff long enough to find the key to the door. He could not have found a more competent individual for a break out, really.

It’s just… well he didn’t expect to go from locked in a room like a prisoner to tied up in enchanted rope, still like a prisoner but now mobile. 😑 

They even used his own hug ruse against him! They caught his wrists when they got close and tied him up before he could shake them off...

Admittedly, it wasn't exactly the best look for them either - what with walking Belphegor downstairs to the others like a one-man-prison-caravan but they're as silver-tongued as they are sly so they talked their way out of it beautifully… 

And like hell was he going to trust them after that!! And not even Beel liked them so something had to be up...

Well, you want a detective? Look no farther than Belphie (no seriously, it’s in the canon). He can put things together pretty fast when he puts his mind to it and watching the MC for a while gave him enough proof to work off of...

He always knew that, humans were bad news and the MC just proved it to him all over again. They are bad news, bad bad news and they’re going to-!

Overthrow… Diavolo…? Is that what he is getting from them…? Huh…

Wait a second, MC. You might just have him interested… 😏

[iamnmbr3]

Hi. I've been reading threw a number of your posts related to Loki 2021 and the general impression your post give is that you don't like how Loki 2021 has been written and present (which I understand because while Loki is not a favourite character of mine, I want to see his character done justices). And I guess I was just wondering how you would have tackled Loki 2021, using the plot elements that have been established in the show, but with your own spin. Thank you :)

That's a great question! I think the premise actually had a ton of potential. @nikkoliferous and I often talk about all the really cool things that could've been done and why it's so particularly tragic that they wasted all that good story setup. I think there are 3 main types of directions the story could've gone in with this premise (and then a lot of variations within each type).

Direction 1 - A buddy comedy with a heart

So I think this is what they were trying to go for with Loki and Mobius's dynamic based on the narrative framing and how all the interviews have presented Mobius in a positive light. (Though that's not what they actually wrote at all).

The way to do this would be to set Mobius up in a more sympathetic way and put him and Loki on more even footing. They could've had Mobius be almost as much a prisoner as Loki. They could have started out with him being pretty indoctrinated into the TVA worldview, but also being considered expendable. We could've seen his superiors threaten him with deletion if he can't make things work with the Loki Variant. Maybe he even feels some compassion for Loki and convinces his superiors that Loki can be useful and shouldn't be deleted since he's powerless to do anything else and he figures being enslaved is probably better than dying. Loki could actually be in-character and question Mobius's world view etc. And Mobius could to the best of his ability treat him decently instead of smugly mocking and tormenting him.

We could have Loki escape early on and end up bringing Mobius along with him, either by accident or because he realizes Mobius will be killed for losing him and he feels bad about it. Then we have them thrown together by circumstances and they could slowly grow to trust each other over the course of the show. The series could dig into the parallels between them. Loki could point out to Mobius that he repeats the propaganda he's been taught but he's hardly less of a prisoner than Loki and his masters are hypocritical. This could also lead to Loki realizing that while maybe he wanted to tell himself that he was an ally of Thanos's the truth was anything but.

While they're on the run both could start to realize they're experiencing freedom from the first time. Mobius could learn to question the TVA and Loki could realize that maybe he can be himself and doesn't have to be a tool of Odin or Thanos. Loki could could grapple with how much control he had while attacking NYC (thus allowing Disney to leave that a bit open to interpretation without totally sweeping the torture and mind control under the rug) and Mobius could grapple with how complicit he has been in the TVA's horrific actions.

Rather than Loki "learning to be trustworthy" (smh) Loki could learn to trust someone else and that not everyone will betray him. Mobius could also be a stand-in for more casual viewers and slowly realize that Loki isn't just the uncomplicated villain he at first took him for. There could be a nice mix of substantive character drama and entertaining hijinks. And of course in the end they could burn the TVA to the ground and liberate all realities. There's so many variations on this and @nikkoliferous and I often chat about them. Because the show could've been so good! And yet. </3

Direction 2 - The TVA & Mobius are acknowledged as the great villains they are

This is kind of what they're making by accident without acknowledging it which leads to a lot of emotional dissonance in the narrative. In canon the TVA is a horrific organization and Mobius seems happily complicit. He doesn't seem to have any compunctions about supporting their agenda of using murder, genocide, forced labor, enslavement, torture, police brutality, sham trials without due process, and privacy violation to eliminate free will. He happily forced Loki to toil under threat of death, mocks and humiliates him, manipulates him, and participates in acts of torture. He is INCREDIBLY creepy and a great embodiment of the "banality of evil" concept. The TVA is also absolutely terrifying.

If the show actually leaned into that it would create a great sense of narrative tension. Loki has escaped Thanos only to once again fall into the hands of a horrifically evil and powerful enemy. And it's up to him to figure out a way out of this situation and a way to liberate all of reality from their grip. In this scenario it might be useful to introduce some other prisoner characters so that he has some friendlyish faces to interact with...and potentially an army to lead against the TVA after he's won them over and figured out a plan.

Mobius's parallels to Odin and Thanos would work really well here because having Loki eventually defeat him and tell him he doesn't get to tell Loki who he is or make him into a tool of evil would be hugely cathartic. We'd get to see Loki stand up to and defeat someone who parallels the two individuals who have most hurt and manipulated him and decide to make his own way from now on rather than trying to be what others make of him. It would be awesome.

Direction 3 - TVA are twist villains

Some people think this might be the direction the show is going. The problem is that if that's true it'll just fall flat because the TVA is already clearly villainous so there's no twist. In the first episode already we see them commit acts of murder, genocide (wiping out a whole timeline because they believe the beings in that timeline belong to a class - variants - that are unworthy of life), police brutality, trial without due process, privacy violation, torture, and illegitimate imposition of rule (they are not elected in any sense and yet they have appointed themselves the arbiters of reality) all in the service of eliminating free will. That is...not what heroes do.

However they COULD have been good twist villains with just a few tweaks. Maybe they approach Loki and play on his deep yearning to be viewed as good and worthy as well as his self-hatred and poor self image to convince him that an "evil" version of him is wreaking havoc and they need his help. Maybe they also sweeten the deal by offering him protection from Thanos and the Black Order since he has no idea they are dead in this timeline. (If you wanted to keep audiences more in the dark you could have them just talk about the Black Order so that audiences at first assume they are still hunting Loki even tho Thanos is dead and don't realize the TVA is manipulating Loki).

At first they don't do anything overtly evil. The authoritarian aesthetic would seem like a humorous parody of office culture. It would then take on a new, much more sinister meaning when the TVA get's revealed as evil later and we learn that they obliterate entire timelines, murder people for the slightest infractions, don't view variants as people, and want to eliminate free will. Mobius could either appear first as a friend and then get revealed as a villain or have a redemption arc where he ends up siding with Loki.

Also for all of these scenarios the script and characterization should be good. I should see Loki, not Larry his dumb lookalike cousin. The script should have Loki doing and saying things that are in-character. (Which certainly doesn't preclude humor since Loki's wit is one of his most iconic features!)

[ramblingkat]

Fic: Stars

This was encouraged by the UraIchi discord server. Basic concept: Everyone is born with a tail. If you live long enough, you get more. If you find your “soul mate” you get a new color on your tail. 

Here, Yoruichi noticed the new color on Kisuke’s tail. He had happily been oblivious. And has no idea who’s reiatsu matches that new color of fur on his tail.

Fandom: Bleach

Characters: Urahara Kisuke, Shihoin Yoruichi, Ishida Ryuken, Kurosaki Masaki, Kurosaki Isshin, and Kurosaki Ichigo

***

“You have gold in your fur.”

Yoruichi’s voice, deep and raspy, was a familiar one, and he knew she’d been sitting behind him for a bit, so Kisuke didn’t jump. Though he did pause, a cup of tea against his lips. Then he lowered it again, turning some to look over his shoulder at his friend. 

She was crouched next to his tail, eyes focused on the tip. Kisuke didn't actually look at his tail all that much, with it being out of his direct line of sight. Oh, he made sure it was brushed and neat enough, but it was just another limb. As long as it worked as he wanted, he never thought about it too much. 

Now he flicked it up, bringing the tip up closer since that was where Yoruichi had been focused. 

This was the only tail on display, as humans rarely lived long enough to gain a second tail, let alone a third as Kisuke had. The other two were hidden, as they had been for almost a century of hiding in the special gigai he had created. The only one on display was the same ashy blond as his hair, a sleek fox tail that had gotten him quite a few appreciative looks. And more than a few people asking for blessings. 

Apparently, pale fox tails were a sign of favor. Not something he had expected when he had first come to the living world. 

Shinji had laughed at him, the man’s golden lion tail lashing lazily behind him. Kisuke had asked how it felt to only have to deal with one rope instead of the multitude that the older captain usually had. That had lead to a spar, and gotten Shinji distracted. 

Now, however, Kisuke saw that there were fine golden hairs growing at the end of his tail. They didn’t stand out a great deal, not yet. But they were definitely golden. A distinct change from the pale fur they grew in. 

Yoruichi’s reiatsu, as muted as it was, radiated delight. Kisuke was feeling a bit stunned himself. 

“But,” he protested, voice distant in his own ears, “I haven’t met anyone new. Not for long enough to have our energies to click enough to bond.” 

There was a flat-out chortle from Yoruichi, and she rose up onto her back legs, resting her paws against the back of his shoulder. That let her get a better look at his tail. “You found someone to soul bond to and didn’t say anything.” She sounded highly amused and no small amount of pleased. “What have you been up to?”

Kisuke snorted. “Plotting and planning. The usual.” He flicked his tail against her face, then let it relax again. “I wonder who this is. I don’t know of anyone I’ve seen recently that has that color of reiatsu.”

He reached over and poked Yoruichi’s nose as she opened her mouth. “And don’t start on SoiFon. Right shade, very much wrong person.” He smiled faintly. “She’d murder me if we ever created some sort of spiritual bond.” Kisuke paused. “Though the way she hates me would definitely qualify. But the timing is wrong.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Yoruichi protested. Ignoring Kisuke’s amused, yet unimpressed, expression, the cat continued. “She’s just prickly about my honor.”

Kisuke snorted again, hand moving to rub his friend’s ears. “Very prickly,” he said drily. “If she could make me vanish, she would definitely do so.” He shook his head. “In any case, SoiFon’s disdain for me is not the topic here. I honestly have no idea why I would have golden fur coming in now. Everyone I interact with now are the same people I have interacted with for years. I doubt any of them have changed that much.”

“Something to figure out later,” Yoruichi agreed. “It’s not like your crimson isn’t a distinct shade.” She licked a foot, quiet for a moment. “Though now that I am here, how are things with Isshin and Masaki?”

Still absently petting her, Kisuke smiled faintly. “Going well. From everything that Ishida-san and I can tell, the baby is healthy and growing well. They are likely to have a mix of Isshin-san and Masaki-san talents.” Kisuke considered it a moment. “I believe, once the baby is born, they’ll take the hollow with them. That will be vital for their stability. They are so in balance at the moment that the loss of one aspect will likely prove lethal in the long run.” He considered that as fingers moving softly over dark fur. “Something I have impressed upon the parents to be. The hollow is sealed and will continue to be until we break it at some point, but the power it holds is present. So the baby will be…impressive.”

There was a snort from Yoruichi. “Maybe it’s the baby,” she teased, though there had not been any documented cases of soul bonding with an unborn child. “You do the impossible regularly enough. Why not do it again?”

Kisuke tweaked her ear, hand blurring as he dodged the slash of her claws. “I doubt even baby Kurosaki is developed enough to have a proper reiatsu signature yet,” he said easily. “While they have a strong presence already, it’s…malleable. Though I do hope that you’ll be in town when the time for the birth gets close.” He wrinkled his nose. “I am already noticing an uptick of smaller hollows. Masaki-san has been attracting quite a bit of attention from the wrong quarters. I think when it is time for baby Kurosaki to be born, they will lure in hollows for miles around. We’ll need to set up a protective line around them and deal with the swarm that is likely to descend on us at that level of power energy.”

A nod from Yoruichi. “Just contact me when it gets close to time. Though I don’t know if I’ll go too far.” Her tone went light and teasing. “After all, I have to find out who your mysterious suitor to be is. Only you could get a soul bond and not notice.”

That got her a sigh and a shrug. “It wasn’t like it was that big a deal,” he protested, giving his friend an over-exaggerated pout. “And I’ve been busy.”

Yoruichi perked up. “I have to talk to Tessai,” she warbled out, as close to singing as she got. Dodging Kisuke’s grab, the cat ran into the house, yowling out the name of their other friend, and Kisuke sighed.

Collecting his tea, he focused on that. No need to think about Tessai-san’s matchmaking urges now. He’d be dealing with them soon enough.

***

The stars looked amazing, and Kisuke found himself panting as he watched them decorate the night sky.

They weren’t as bright here as they were in soul society, but there was a great deal more progression in the living world, so bright it dimmed even the night sky.

Though all of his senses felt dimmed. The Kurosaki baby had come into the world, and he was grateful that Ishida had a charm that he and Masaki had put on the baby. It would allow more of the child’s reiatsu to release over the next year or so. Slow enough that they shouldn’t have a repeat of tonight. 

He was exhausted, and he was sure that Yoruichi was the same whenever she was at. 

The Visored had taken the outer layer of the patrol. Kisuke and Yoruichi had focused on the blocks around the roof of the hospital that the baby was being born in. And outside of all of it, Hachigen and Tessai had been working on keeping all of this under wraps. While he knew Aizen had an idea where they might be, they did not need the baby’s explosion of power to attract his eye. 

He was pretty sure they had dealt with every hollow from miles around, all attracted to the initial spike of power that the baby would have screamed out with their first breath.

That was something he needed to check on well. 

Pushing himself upright, Kisuke glanced around. It only took a moment to spot Yoruichi, leaning against an air conditioning unit a few roofs over. Waving to catch her attention, he waited until she nodded back, then he let himself drop over the side of the roof.

Ishida had given him a room number, and Kisuke had already scouted out where it was in the hospital. So it only took a moment to wrap a hint of reiatsu under his feet to slow and then stop his fall. He pulled a phone out and texted the man, making sure he was able to come in.

The curtains shoved apart, and Ishida was scowling at him. The man opened the window. “Get in here,” he muttered. “The sooner you make sure the boy is all right, the sooner you can leave.”

Kisuke smiled. “A boy? I am sure that Kurosaki-san is thrilled.”

“Isshin is being an idiot over it, and Masaki is pleased to have a healthy baby.” 

He shifted aside, letting Kisuke step through and land lightly on the floor, geta making only a small clicking as they hit the ground. Then Ishida continued. “They named him Ichigo. I assume you dealt with any outside trouble.”

Kisuke grimaced a bit. “After this, I think we’re all going to go find out beds now that the charm you have put into place has muted his strength. The area should be hollow free for a few months.”

A sigh. “That’s good,” the white haired Quincy said. “Hopefully they’ll be gone for even longer than that.”

Kisuke considered that. “If you like, I can set up patrol when your own child is born.” It was an honest offer, as he knew that the man’s wife had taken poorly to pregnancy. She was happy to be pregnant, but every time Kisuke saw her around, she looked exhausted and drained.

Ishida tensed, then made himself relax. “We’ll discuss that later,” he said, which made Kisuke smile to himself. That wasn’t a no, and it was nice to see how devoted the man was to his wife. He was as bad as Isshin was, if quieter about it. 

But he only nodded in response, quietly following as he was lead to the bed. 

There was Masaki, who was watching them, though Kisuke could see she was ready to go to sleep. Beside the bed was Isshin, whose tail was wagging back and forth like mad. And beside him, placed where both he and Masaki could reach, was a tiny little being. 

There was a tuft of dark hair, though he could already see strands of a paler color in it. Kisuke wondered if baby Kurosaki… Ichigo, his name was Ichigo, would have his mother’s hair? 

He was wrapped firmly in a warm blanket, swaddled quite tightly. Though he managed to get a foot and a puffy little tail out of the confines already. Kisuke smiled faintly, tucking the fluffy grey tail and the foot back into the blanket. “Already a trouble maker,” he murmured to the child, and then rested his hand on Ichigo’s chest. Closing his eyes, he focused, threading his reiatsu gently to make sure everything was still balanced. 

This was something he’d been doing since Isshin had come to tell him that Masaki was pregnant, in a near panic. There had been two pregnancies before this one, and neither had gotten far. The third time was the charm, and the balance of energies settled in ways to keep the boy from coming to harm. 

Everything still felt good, and he opened his eyes with a smile. 

“Congratulations,” he said, smiling at them. He knew they had been heartbroken the previous times, and having Ichigo here, all red-faced and scowling, had to be such a relief. 

“Masaki-san?” he asked, offering her his hand. She rested her fingers against his palm, and he did his own scan of her energies. 

Once he was done, he gave her hand a light squeeze and let go. “It’s as I thought. The hollow passed on to Ichigo, but the seal on it seems to be intact. Though he’s definitely strong enough to see spirits without much help.”

He smiled at the new parents. “You should have an easier time of things if you decide to give him any siblings without the hollow energies causing such distress on your own.” That was to Masaki, who looked relieved. He knew she had taken the failed pregnancies hard, but this should help her feel better about any future attempts. 

Moving away from the bed, Kisuke absently sealed Benihime back into a cane, nodding at each of them. “Now that everything seems to have settled both outside and in here, I’m off. Let me know if you have any other concerns that I might be able to help calm.” 

He went to perch on the sill of the window, then threw a grin back at them. “And, as always, come visit the shop and pick up a few items. I always have a wide range of stock for your purchasing pleasure.”

Ishida shoved him out the window with a snort. 

Kisuke laughed as he caught himself, and took off into the night. Time to find everyone and let them know that they could do whatever. The situation was done, and it was time for a well-deserved rest.

Besides, now that Ichigo was actually born, Kisuke had potential plans to adjust.

[mylordshesacactus]

Unasked-For Writing Tip Of The Day: Action Sequences

Fight scenes, chase sequences, etc. A bunch of people recently have said how much they enjoy me and @alexkablob‘s action writing, and frankly, when we first started writing together we both DREADED action scenes because we weren’t good at them and didn’t have any experience in making them good.

So, here’s the breakthrough we had, because I think it’ll help a lot of people.

If you think you suck at action scenes, what’s actually happening is probably that you’re not writing action scenes that interest you.

I’m serious. If you struggle to write an action sequence, it’s probably not that you’re just “not good at action”. What’s happening is probably that you got to the point in your script/outline/etc where you know there needs to be a fight scene and the only thing you have going for it is “right, I need....a fight scene”.

So here’s the solution: Make it more interesting.

This isn’t me being like....tough love or anything, either. This isn’t “make it more interesting to the reader”. Make it more interesting to YOU. Change something about the scene. If it feels like a slog to get through, if you’re confused or you keep losing track of where people are or you’re bored...change it. Make it not boring. Put a twist in.

Some of the most memorable examples of things we’ve personally done, to help illustrate this.

A generic chase scene through back alleys was going to get repetitive and we were inevitably going to lose track of where everyone was. Well...this was set in the Coruscant underworld. There was no reason to treat it like a modern city layout. We worked in 3D instead, and made it a chase sequence through falling-apart, rusty catwalks and fire escapes. It opened up infinitely more possibilities.

A generic dogfight in space becomes much more interesting when you made the decision earlier in the story to put the protagonists in a ship that doesn’t have any weapons.

At one point, we were going to have no choice but to just have a bog-standard 1v2 lightsaber duel in the middle of an open, featureless plain. So we had the protagonists’ crash-landing throw up a massive white dust cloud! Suddenly, an attack could come from any direction at any time; the featureless plain meant there was nothing for the protagonists to get their back to. Suddenly the miles of featureless grey dust that had promised a really boring writing experience became a) a palpable source of tension, and b) a fascinating playground for us as writers. 

I talked about this at length in another post but, at one point we were just...not really at all excited about the next chapter in a project. It was a 5+1 layout, so we had to get through #4 in order to get to the nemesis battle in 5 that was the climax of the piece; but chapter 4 was just not shaping up to be fun to write. We liked the symbolism of it, but it was going to be a long sequence of the protagnists slowly getting overwhelmed by swarming demons and it was so. repetitive. We knew we needed something to fill the climax of that chapter, and wanted a boss fight...but all the “boss fight” options from canon had been DONE in canon. Finally, we had the lightning-bolt idea of a giant demon walrus (this...makes sense in context). This also gave us the opportunity to figure out how a giant walrus would get into an ice cave, the answer naturally ending up “from under the ice, of course”. And then THAT gave us a pitch-dark ice cavern with a massive hole in the floor, covered in thin ice under which was the freezing black Arctic ocean...

What we’d dreaded as a boring filler chapter ended up being our favorite fight sequence we’ve ever written.

Once we needed to have a ship boarded by Klingons who would then be repelled. Writing a straight firefight wasn’t our idea of fun, and it also didn’t feel like a good payoff; we wanted the Klingons to feel like a genuine threat, and if the solution was “shoot them until they go away” then that victory isn’t satisfying. So we made the B-plot of that episode “the artificial gravity is glitching” and then, in the climax, had the Chief Engineer kill all the lights on the ship. We got a zero-G battle in pitch blackness and it was very, very cool.

You get the idea.

The point is, don’t write action sequences you don’t care about! If YOU’RE not interested in what’s happening...trust me, it always shows. If you’re writing a fight or any other kind of action sequence and you can’t keep track of what’s happening, people keep “teleporting” all over the scene (this is a HUGE PROBLEM in action sequences--you NEED to always be aware of where everyone is in relation to each other and the environment) or it just feels repetitive...change it!

Change things until you find that one little tweak that makes the scene sing for you.

(Fun fact: Literally every piece of “how to write an action sequence” advice also works for sex scenes. And, even better, vice versa.)

Because here’s the thing. When you find that one detail that makes you go “oh, fuck yes I want to see this scene” all the things you’re struggling with...just kind of go away.

Having trouble with blocking (keeping track of where people are in the scene in relation to the rest of it)? Not anymore. Once you get that lightning-bolt detail, the trick here is that the scene becomes cinematic to you. You can SEE what you’re trying to describe, this has suddenly become REAL and visceral. You don’t forget about major players and their locations because you’re equally invested in every part of the sequence--or else, change things until you are.

That repetitive slog and the difficulty conveying the action...well, the purpose of changing things around is so that it no longer feels repetitive. And actions you’re EXCITED about describing flow so much easier.

Basically...if you’re not invested in the action, don’t write it until you are. Find something that makes you suddenly interested. Change the setting, change the setup, change the resources the protagonist has access to. Have them break an arm in the preceding scene and suddenly have to compensate for that during the action. Use the environment to both help and hinder your protagonists--either is great, but BOTH is even better.

You’re not bad at writing action--you just need to write action sequences you like.

[bigskydreaming]

I agree with everything you said in the last post but especially the Damian part.

Like I don’t know why people treat it like Dick had to choose between two toys and he chose the shinier model. He was in a situation where a 9/10 year old child was going to go back to a murder cult if he didn’t find a quick way to sure he stayed. And no option was good if Damian left. It was either Ra is going to steal his body or would become a powerful supervillain who would resent the whole family and between that is a whole lot of child abuse. It not like Dick had all the time in the world to figure out a different way for Damian to stay he had maybe like a day. 

Also we never actually got to see Dick’s view on the situation only Tim’s because the only time we got to see that conversation was in Red Robin ( which might be wrong but I’m pretty sure I’m right). Tim was having a slight mental breakdown so maybe not the best narrator. 

Like, the ONE thing I'd love for people to keep more centered in the varying discourses about Dick, Tim, Robin and Red Robin, is that like.....

The writer himself had Tim and Dick reconcile and work together in the aftermath of Tim leaving because he was upset.

It really doesn't get mentioned enough IMO that at no point in the actual canon stories was Dick ever oblivious to Tim being hurt, uncaring of this, nor did the canon ever try to claim on Dick's behalf that he DIDN'T hurt Tim, y'know?

I talked earlier tonight about the importance of remembering that these are fictional characters who can not CHOOSE any actions for themselves, but rather are ruled entirely by what the writers choose FOR them.

And the thing is.....for all that Dick is often characterized in fanfics as being oblivious or uncaring to having hurt Tim, or say that he kicked Tim out of the house and the city, or that he called Tim crazy or that he chose Damian OVER Tim or all these other things.....

None of those things say anything about Dick or what kind of character he is, despite the fact that fanon and fics have made a huge deal OUT of running with the idea that THOSE acts in fact say a LOT about Dick's actual character or whatever.....

But like, the point is not just that none of those things say anything about Dick simply because they're not how the canon went....

JUST as important, IMO, is the fact that none of those things are even in the BALLPARK of saying anything about Dick's actual character.....

Because the actual canon was written the way it was for the sake of TIM'S story. It was never about trying to make Dick look good, the events played out the way they did because the writer INTENDED there to be conflict between the brothers about it! Dick didn't find some magical way of ensuring that he delivered the news to Tim in the absolute right way possible because he just didn't care enough about Tim's feelings to do so....Damian delivered the news to Tim in the absolute worst way possible BECAUSE the writer WANTED the chasm between Dick and Tim.

THE CONFLICT WAS THE STORY!

And just as importantly.....the same writer who caused the conflict also RESOLVED the conflict. In his own same stories. Tim and Dick may have never hashed over every single detail of Tim's issues with Dick, but there was CLEARLY a reconciliation. Tim showed his forgiveness, his understanding of why Dick had done what he'd done and the fact that he'd made his peace with it, in a variety of ways from telling Dick he still had his trust, joking with Dick in SPECIFIC ways that called back to personal in-jokes that they'd had since the 90s -

(and that in fact were originally written by the same writer....like, the Brady Bunch jokes are a SPECIFICALLY Fabian Nicieza thing, as in he's the only writer who has EVER had Dick and Tim having that particular in joke between them, and he established it when he first wrote Tim, when he and Dick were great during Tim's time as Robin in the 90s. Tim calling back to those jokes during Red Robin and specifically reinviting memories of some of his favorite moments with his brother HIMSELF, like was as clear a peace gesture as you can get, IMO.)

But point is....the conflict happened the way it did, because it was MEANT to happen. There was supposed to be conflict, so by that very token, Dick wasn't MEANT to find the perfect way to handle the Robin situation that made sure Tim didn't suffer any negative feelings about it.

The reason its lasted so long as discourse in fandom was that regardless of the fact that the writers and characters both showed a resolution to the conflict that was deliberately sown to BE a conflict in the first place....

Fans of Tim decided this resolution wasn't adequate enough.

And so the events of it have been tweaked endlessly, as has the fact that the brothers reconciled itself, in order to keep this conflict extended far beyond the parameters or duration of the ACTUAL canon conflict its based on....with Dick further exaggerated into this uncaring instigator because the conflict FANS wanted was one in which Tim was Dick's victim in a way that he was never intended to be by the initial source conflict, which wanted BOTH characters to be somewhat sympathetic but now turned into a one-sided thing where only ONE character is 'deserving' of sympathy.....

But the problem is....that wasn't the story. And this wouldn't BE a problem, due to it being fanfic and fanfic being innately transformative, if not for the fact that people keep trying to point to canon actions as the proof of conclusions they're drawing about Dick's actions in the FANON conflict.....when the only thing the canon actions are meant to serve as the foundation for, is the conflict which ACTUALLY happened AND was resolved in canon!

And the thing is, a lot of fandom have done a lot to compare this situation to Dick losing Robin in the first place, but without actually leaning into that comparison in order to examine how Dick truly felt about that then, and ACTUALLY make it the comparison they're raising it as.....

(people can't claim that they've done this if they themselves are calling the situations parallel and yet clearly holding Tim and his feelings as innately more sympathetic and deserving of understanding than they're willing to even retroactively apply to Dick in the very situation they themselves have invited comparisons to....like if you're STILL calling for Dick's head for what he did with Robin here in a way that you're not having any characters anywhere, even just in reference or passing say that Bruce deserves being chewed out for to similar degrees.....your comparison is rigged from the start, it just is)....

But ultimately at the end of the day, there IS an answer for why Dick wasn't more careful and studious in his handling of the Robin situation....and that answer, for better or worse, is that he wasn't MEANT to be. The handling exists the way it played out, because it was meant to engender a specific conflict, one that was then resolved to the satisfaction of the story's writer.

If that wasn't to the satisfaction of fans, that's understandable! No story ever satisfies all fans!

But the problem is, the transformative nature of fanfic cuts two ways. And this is what people so often conveniently overlook when they cite that you can do anything with fanfic and that its subject to everyone's personal wants and agenda.

Like this is all perfectly true. But what people CAN'T do, is forbid others from drawing conclusions based on what decisions you do and don't make with fanfic.

And the problem with the Red Robin discourse, is we have a conflict that was engineered from the start, and negatively impacted a particular character aka Tim.

And the resolution the canon offered didn't satisfy the itch a lot of Tim's fans had for that particular conflict.

But the thing is.....there's two entirely different ways to tweak a conflict with fanfic.

You can make it BETTER.

Or you can make it WORSE.

And nine out of ten times - with this being especially obvious when you keep in mind that the canon itself DID CREATE RESOLUTION TO ITS OWN CONFLICT - its very apparent that a lot of fans just were not interested in making the resolution of this conflict even BETTER than what we got in the canon.

See, because the reason it happened in canon at all was NOT in fact because Dick was just as uncaring and neglectful as FANON of this conflict makes him out to be....since the reason it happened that way at all was ONLY because the writer needed it to happen in SOME way that sowed conflict between Tim and Dick and sparked Tim's solo journey of self-discovery.....

The only real way to BETTER resolve the conflict of the Robin mantle transition...

Would be for Dick to specifically approach Tim in such a way as to take his feelings about the matter into account and make his argument for why he felt Damian needed this now.

And that's something that's ABSOLUTELY easy to do, because the only reasons things DIDN'T happen that way in the first place, was circumstantial! Because the story was PLOTTED to have Damian spill the beans before Dick even had an opportunity to talk to Tim one on one. Changing a story's direction born of circumstance is one of the easiest things to do with fanfic since all you have to do is write different circumstances! Nobody's character even needs addressing there, because no character is inherently flawed for that story happening the way it did....that's why the story WORKED, in canon! Dick just circumstantially wasn't given even an OPPORTUNITY to be as conscientious about the matter as we would have liked him to be.

Easy, EASY fix with fanfic.

But that's not what fanfic tends to do with this particular story point, is it?

Instead, we get constant worsenings of Dick's motivations, Dick's choices, Dick's reaction to Tim's response, etc, etc.

The slant is entirely one-sided, aimed at making Tim not just more sympathetic, but Dick LESS sympathetic. Making it a nuance-free example of not even two brothers fighting in the face of their mutual grief, but one being VICTIMIZED by the other's willful ignorance of their feelings and loss, while simultaneously demonstrating none of the same himself.

And that's a choice that tons of fanfic writers have made, and they GET to make that choice, but what doesn't get to happen is making everyone else pretend that this was the only way the story COULD have gone, the TRUE resolution it deserved and the thing that ACTUALLY said something indicative of Dick's character.....

When not only were there these other opportunities to resolve the conflict in ways better for BOTH characters....the resolution of the actual conflict is considered irrelevant even though creating a conflict that could be resolved in story was the ONLY reason for the characters making the specific choices they made in the first place!

The discourse is literally all just born of people using the slight against Tim's character as an excuse to make Dick's character look worse. IMO to distract from the fact that this happened at all, because the real gripe was with Tim not being Robin anymore but there was no way to unilaterally decry that WITHOUT making the case that Damian should never have been Robin, and most fans I think recognize that would have been a nonstarter, discourse wise. There’s no rolling the clock back on a new Robin EXISTING, that’s been proven conclusively in the past. Once a character has been a Robin, you can’t argue away their right to ever be one period. If it couldn’t happen with Steph, despite the shortness of her Robin tenure and the smaller size of the girls’ fanbases relative the various Batboys (and let’s not pretend a disparity doesn’t exist there), then it wasn’t going to happen with Damian. So fans made their displeasure known in another way - venting it on the character that precipitated the changing of this particular guard.

And the thing is, ultimately, for all the comparisons made to the Bruce and Dick Robin debacle, they all fall short of being valid given two fundamental differences:

1) Canon has one hundred percent refused to ever fully address the conflict Bruce created in story when he fired Dick or just gave Robin away to Jason, with the only time its ever really been addressed in the comics being when Dick came to confront Bruce about it and Bruce made no form of actual apology or recourse, but instead ultimately just yelled at Dick about missing him and then told him to go. Which umm. Yeah. Oh, the resolution of it all.

2) The other key difference being that while there are certainly fans who have used these story points simply TO make Bruce look worse, the same as I'd argued happened with Dick in the Red Robin scenario.....it is still undeniable that there are a sizable number of fans such as myself who have always insisted we only raise this particular story element because we WANT to see better or actual resolution of the conflict raised in story - aka Bruce firing Dick or just giving away Robin - AS WELL AS being very clear on a perfectly easy way TO showcase better resolution: just having Bruce fucking OWN HIS ACTIONS AND APOLOGIZE FOR THEM.

So even with the awareness that while ultimately both Robin turnovers only happened because the writers chose that conflict happen, they remain incomparable in my mind purely because only one of them was ACTUALLY resolved or treated as resolved in canon, and like.....the other one is the only one that actually has fans continuously making the point of what story actions can actually be taken in meta, headcanons and fics, TO create the resolution we want.....whereas the other conflict will never be resolved any better than it is in canon, because the people who keep raising the conflict don't even want to acknowledge that it even WAS resolved in canon at all, because that would defeat the entire purpose of continuously worsening the conflict specifically TO create reasons for a continued grudge against Dick's character.

And you flat out just can't ever resolve a conflict that people ultimately WANT to exist.

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

your posts slash rants regarding p3 at yukari and jupei being terrible friends to everyone and protag has me thinking about everything in modern new persona you're supposed to feel the teams are friends, but p4 investigation team is the only group i feel that are friends. sees was more like coworkers who do slowly become friends, granted terrible friends. and the pt were supposed to be friends but are actually coworkers and no one acknowledge it properly, in or out of universe. this make sense?

Yup you got it right on the money anon. Makes total sense. (more under cut it got long ;w;) (btw I’m mostly talking about vanilla vers cause that’s the foundation). 

P3 is supposedly coworkers to friends (I would extend that it's more there are more mini friend groups in there....and even then that's a STRETCH)

P4 is strangers/acquaintances to true friends (obvie you don’t know them the second they are introduced, and there can be a bit of a rough patch as everyone is sussing out how to interact, mostly early P4 pre-Rise, but they do develop into having a great bond).

P5 is suppose to be.....like P4, but instead they all sound like coworkers (all they talk about is work).

I mean it plays into it strengths. P3 chars are more independent, with independent arcs.....but it has a hard time coming together (I think it's possible but it needs tweaks). And, imo P3 is more plot driven, so the disconnect with the chars works with it to make the plot work (but to me, a lot of the chars just feel in service to the plot, they are still consistent but.....everything about them relates back to the plot, so they feel a bit flat).

P4 has short individual arcs that leads into a group dynamic. It sacrifices later independent growth to SLs, BUT it keeps the group in tact. This might be because P4 is more character driven imo, so it being focused on the chars the most works for it. (because of the focus on the chars, unlike P3, they feel more fleshed out, I know a lot more about them IN SPITE OF the plot).

P5......................................................it's wishy washy and tries (and fails) at emulating P3/4′s good parts (while only emulating it’s bad parts), and that's what P5 does best. At least you have one consistent trait ol' nemesis! :D I feel like it’s fighting to be both a character driven and plot driven story, but it’s always at odd with each other. I think on paper, PT is suppose to be closer than SEES, but the execution is....yeah off. It’s just......so bizarre. DX 

Like P5, it def tries to focus on the chars....but then instead of learning about them in depth like with P4, we instead only hear them talk about work (and unlike P3, there’s.....not a whole lot to be talked about). But then we need a plot point to happen, and all be damned if characterization stays consistent! 

Oh god...... I think I figured it out (sorry slightly off tangent but it does relate to why P4 works). P5 is what would happen if we only focused on the murder mystery in P4. Like, for the most part, P5 is mostly a group endeavor (Mako/Futaba both chokehold the game and have the most investment to the main plot, but there’s no vast amounts of individual char arcs happening outside of the group unlike P3), and that’s just like P4! But we don’t get the same character growth/interactions we do in P4. And it’s because they cut out all the “fluff/filler.” But....here’s the thing....that’s not really fluff/filler, that’s integral to the character driven nature of P4. It’s about exploring the dynamic of the characters, watching them grow and become closer. There’s usually some purpose to it!

Camp scene? It’s to get everyone to bond with Kanji. I know everyone focuses on the bad stuff, but let’s look at the purpose of it. At the start everyone is awkward around the big guy, but that wall really starts to break down fast after that scene (to the point Yosuke acts a bit like a big bro to Teddie/Kanji by the time Rise joins!). 

Omelette scene with Nanako? The game is trying to really get you attached because of what’s to come (and we can see how much Chie/Yuki have...not....grown with their cooking). Port Island? While also doubling as fanservice, but it gets us interacting more with Naoto, and it does start to push her character into the next plot point. 

Those scenes may not push the mystery along *all the time* (sometimes they do get the plot pushed forward, like Naoto related ones, we are pushing that char to thinking/changing their perspective until they join our team, their perspective being about us and the case), but that’s ok because the mystery is something that will take time. If anything, us getting close to the cast is supposed to help blind us to the big crescendo of the game. Throwing Namatame into the TV.

P4 wants us to be attached to the characters, to be invested in them and their relationship with one another. To be attached to their pain. To be blinded by their pain.....so that we have a hard time seeing the truth. 

It’s all only possible if we had spent time with all those characters. 

So anyway....The filler/fluff? P4 ironically “takes its time” (ironic considering P5-oh you get it XP), so it can build all of that. 

Now what if we removed all those fun scenes in P4? What if we just replaced all the silly dialogue with “let’s talk about the case” (even if, spoiler, we’ve already exhausted all we know for the 100th time)? Oh I’m sure everyone will like most of the jokes that have aged poorly to be cut out. But now what do we have? 

Scene 1: Ok let’s talk about all we know. Ok done? Alright scene over. Filler replaced 1: Ok let’s talk about all we know. *says the exact same as scene 1* Ok done? Alright scene over. Filler replaced 2:  Ok let’s talk about all we know. *says the exact same as scene 1* Ok done? Alright scene over. Filler replaced 3:  Ok let’s talk about all we know. *says the exact same as scene 1* Ok done? Alright scene over. Scene 2: Ok we got some new info, let’s compare it to old info. Ok done? Alright scene over.  Text convo 87: Let’s reiterate the exact same thing we’ve been saying in the past 86 messages. Filler replaced 4: Ok let’s talk about all we know. *says the exact same as scene 2* Ok done? Alright scene over. And so on. and on and on......

Sound familiar? Yeah that’s P5. Replace clues and/or “We need to figure out who the next target is” with “we need to find a new target to steal the heart of!” (god they really are so similar). 

You know what true filler is? Just absolutely nothing of substance? The Hawaii trip. Nothing really happens, and they just talk about work all the gd time. The beach thing is also pretty nothing, except maaaaaybe the end with the sunset. Everything else? Nope, hell they even speed run a babe hunt event. XP 

P5 has the true filler, because we learn nothing. “Oh they’re talking about PT stuff!” They’ve BEEN talking about PT stuff, nothing changed between this convo and last convo. Or at least, nothing of actual value (I hate the texts so gd much, they just keep reiterating stuff we JUST talked about too! DX *sobs*)

[beomglocks]

unlikely allies ; txt x reader

part: one ,, next chapter / previous chapter

plot: when a zombie apocalypse breaks out in your town, you're forced to team up with a group of boys from very different social standards in your school.

genre: fluff, angst, horror i guess?, not really that scary but alright, some funny moments

w/c: 3.6K

warnings: blood, gruesome scenes (kind of really detailed), cursing, everyone hates each other, definitely some major injuries, zombies duh, everyone kinda pining for mc

︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵

he sighs looking at the both of you. "if we wanna make it out of here alive...we're gonna have to fight."

silence. the room was engulfed in silence, save for the growling and moaning of the monsters outside the door. you and yeonjun stared wide-eyed at taehyun who was mirroring your expressions.

"excuse me what?" yeonjun blurted. "we don't even know what those things are and you wanna go out there and risk getting torn to shreds like the nurse? are you crazy?" all you could do was shake your head in fear. you were still shaken up from watching someone get eaten alive.

"s-she...i saw her get eaten and then she just s-stood up? she came back to life somehow?" you questioned out loud. the boys looked at you with fear in their eyes. yeonjun stared at your shaken state and frowned turning to taehyun. "see? if go out there we're gonna die!"

"well do you have any other suggestions? if we stay here we starve to death or something like that, it's better to go out looking for help and finding others before more of them corner us here!" taehyun was making a lot of points right now but going out there? where you just saw a woman die and come back to life? that would happen to you guys if you weren't prepared.

you tried to calm yourself by taking a deep breath, "ok i agree with taehyun...but we need to be really prepared. we may not be capable of murder at this moment but we can take them on enough to get away right?"

taehyun nods but yeonjun just paces around the room anxiously. "you guys are insane. i can't believe i'm gonna die here of all places." you and taehyun watch yeonjun tug at his blonde hair. he suddenly pauses. "i have an idea. what if we don't actually try to take them on." he looked at you both expectedly.

"what do you mean?" you asked. he rolled his eyes, "we could try to just trap them in here and make our escape." taehyun nods at yeonjun's vague plan, "i get what you mean. before we start though we should take some stuff with us. we got lucky that we're in the nurse's office, we can take stuff in case we get injured."

all three of you split up around the office to pick up anything that might be helpful. "its a good thing i brought my bookbag with me," taehyun chuckles dryly. you pack up all the stuff you grabbed and help him zip up the bag. "ok so here's how we'll go forward with the plan."

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

yeonjun sighs shakily as he crouches behind the door. "this was my plan so why do i have to be the one to open the door?!" he angrily whispers to you. you're hiding behind the nurse's desk which is right beside the door, glaring at him, "just shut up and wait for taehyun's cue. if they hear you, we're screwed."

"will you two stop arguing. if anything i'm the one with the risker job," taehyun glares at you both. he's standing in the middle of the office, just a little bit away from the desk. "let's go over the plan just one more time so nothing unexpected happens," he's nervous and you can hear it in his voice. he's trying to act brave like earlier. yeonjun starts, "simple, i open the door letting the monsters in. they won't notice me since i'm crouched below the window." you sigh, continuing, "once the monsters come running in, i pull the stethoscope attached that chair other there as hard as i can. they'll trip over it sending them tumbling."

taehyun takes a deep breath, "and i'll be standing here as bait. once i see that they're both down, that should give me enough time to run out and shut the door on them." yeonjun bites his lip, "i hope this works...my heart is racing seriously."

since taehyun is now visible from the one lamp shining down on him, the monsters outside now have new adrenaline in them, viciously gnawing at the door's window. you don't realize it but you all take a deep breath.

"3″

"2″

"1!"

as soon as taehyun yells, yeonjun swings the door open. the zombies pretty much bum rush through it to get to taehyun as soon as a slither of it was cracked open, effectively managing to swing the door all the way to the wall. you watch it hit yeonjun's arm roughly and flinch. he tries to hold back a gasp and squeezes his eyes shut.

you turn your attention to your task and pull on the stethoscope. thankfully it's stretchy enough to cause the zombies to trip over it. they tumble over each other and skid across the floor. you get up to run out the door and pull yeonjun with you who's clutching his arm.

however, when you look back taehyun is not behind you, instead, he's scrambling to the nurse's closet. apparently you overestimated the recovery time of a simple stumble to the floor. they managed to get up quickly enough to chase after taehyun who thankfully was also quick enough to notice a flawed plan. "shit!" you yell out before you could think. the zombies turn their attention to you and yeonjun who are standing by the door.

they come running at you but you slam the door shut in their faces. great, now taehyun was in there and you both were out here. not to mention, he's the one with all the supplies.

"damn it!" yeonjun kicks the door in frustration. the zombies are tweaking out watching you both from inside the office. thankfully they don't notice the closet door slowly creep open.

taehyun sneaks out of the closet in a painfully slow manner, as to not get detected. he ducks behind the desk, holding his breath. he waits a moment before rising from his hiding spot and hurling a pack of unopened pens at where the cots are located. you watch the zombies whip their heads toward the sound and clamber in that direction. taehyun crawls out from behind the desk and runs toward the door. the lunch lady, who is behind the nurse, notices taehyun and runs toward him and at full blown speed.

your heart is pounding so fast, it genuinely feels like time is going in slow motion. the monster is only like a foot behind the red-haired boy. you throw the door open for taehyun and he launches himself like the outside hallway is home base. you and yeonjun once again slam the door closed on the zombie who face plants into it with a groan.

you let out a breath you didn't even know you were holding. sliding down to sit on the floor, you glance at taehyun. he's recovering from literally upper body diving out of the room but you figure he's fine since he's used to it from playing baseball so long. yeonjun seems fine too since he's not holding onto his arm anymore.

after a moment, you speak up, "are you ok?" it's not exactly a question directed at either of the two boys. you kind of are just asking yourself that but yeonjun answers anyways, "i think i'm ok, my arm is aching though. the door slammed on me pretty hard but im ok."

taehyun backs himself against the lockers opposite from you too. "i'm fine too." you examine him though you can't see him from the distance and the dimming hallway lights. his face is riddled in sweat and you can kind of see tears running down his face but he notices you staring and harshly wipes them away. he sighs letting his head rest on the lockers.

"i thought that would be easier...i thought i was gonna die back there. thanks for not leaving me," you feel like he means that so you make a noise of acknowledgment. yeonjun also nods at him but doesn't say anything.

it's dead silent in the hallway and you hope it's because the rest of the school is hiding not because they're dead. if you don't think of the circumstances you'd think it's somewhat peaceful.

taehyun breaks the silence, "what if there are other people in here in that same situation." he's not looking at you, he's looking into the abyss of darkness that is your school's hallway. once buzzing with students who you wished would shut the fuck up and move to their next class is now a ghost town. it's eerie and it leaves you with an unsettling feeling just thinking about what hides beyond the darkness.

"fuck no," yeonjun says. he's calm and you hope he doesn't lash out at what taehyun's suggesting. "taehyun..." you mumble. you don't want to say it out loud because you hate how it will sound. well, yeonjun says it for you, "did you hit your head on the way out. you almost died, dude! i know you're having some kind of epiphany about helping others and what not but think about this: those two zombie things aren't the only ones in this school. we could really die in here so we need to get o-"

"shut the fuck up!" taehyun spits. you can tell he's trying not to yell just in case there really are other zombies out here. "do you seriously only care about yourself? what if there really are other people waiting to be helped? we can't just leave them to die in this stupid ass school!" he gets up with some struggle, clutching his wrists again.

"look im not saying you have to help them but it would be really cool if you did...the more people that are alive the more likely we are to survive," with that he starts walking down into the darkness of the hallway. yeonjun scoffs and looks at you. you bite your lip. "i know it's risky...risking our lives for other people but i would feel like shit if i just let people die here while i run off like a coward."

yeonjun watches you run after taehyun. he's now left alone standing outside of the nurse's office. the zombies haven't quieted down and he wonders how much energy they have. he sighs dramatically, running after you both, "hey wait up!"

•·················•·················•

"so where are we headed?" your school isn't that big but it isn't that small either. there are three floors in total but most of the important rooms are on the first floor where you guys are located. taehyun clears his throat, "i was thinking we should get some weapons just in case. the gym's locker room/storage closet is where the team's baseball bats are located, we should be fine against those things if we manage to snag the metal ones."

once he answers you the silence surrounds you three again. you had been walking quite slowly since you didn't know if you'd encounter another zombie soon. it would be better if you could see but the power in the lights seemed to have died out. the school really did feel scarier when the lights were off.

"isn't it still day time outside?" yeonjun randomly asks. now that you think about it, he's right. if you were thinking about the time you took yeonjun to the nurse's office it was around 2 pm. "wait you're right," taehyun stops and turns around. "it was last period when you guys got to the nurse's office."

"damn it, i left my phone in my bookbag," you mumble. you thought it would be a quick trip to the nurse's office so you left it back in the class. yeonjun pats himself down and grumbles, "mine must've fallen out of my pocket during the fight. man, i fucking hate soobin! if i ever see him again he's dead."

you ignore yeonjun and look at taehyun expectantly, "sorry mines dead. i was playing with it while i was waiting for the nurse to come back," he answers sheepishly. you sigh, "we could've called for help since it's not late we could've called our parents or better yet, the police."

"don't worry, i'm sure they'll worry that we aren't coming back from school yet," yeonjun reassures. "i had practice today and my mom doesn't know i broke my wrist so she won't be expecting me home until after practice so i don't think she'll be worried until then."

yeonjun suddenly grabs taehyun's arm. you look at him in alarm because that was really random. this boy has just been full of spontaneous actions lately. "if you had practice today doesn't that mean the team would've been gathered in the gym by now?" a look of realization hits taehyun but he masks it quickly. "they're capable... they wouldn't have been turned into zombies, i'm sure there are some survivors," he sounds like he's trying to convince himself more than you guys.

as you're growing closer to the gym though, taehyun doesn't tell you that he's the best player on the team. he doesn't tell you that none of his other teammates can properly wield a bat. yes, any idiot can hold a bat but to properly swing it for the hit to have an impact takes real practice, practice that his teammates just haven't mastered. he doesn't tell you that he really doesn't think anyone in that gym has survived.

"you hear that?" yeonjun whispers stepping closer to the gym doors. there it goes again, the unmistakable moaning and groaning of the zombies. the sounds are harsher and louder being that there seem to be a lot of people in the gym at once. "damn that must be the team," you mutter. "there's no way anyone in there survived."

"we-we have to try and find out," taehyun tries. you eye him. you really don't think you'll get out of this one alive but you don't tell him that.

"we can cause some kind of distraction like last time," yeonjun suggests. "yeahhh no, im not doing that ever again," taehyun deadpans. "i think he means like what you did with the pens. that seemed to work...i think they react a lot to loud sounds."

there's a moment of silence where you all are just thinking. "your phone!" you turn to taehyun. he raises an eyebrow at you, "it's dead y/n." you shake your head, "look since it's dead and you really won't be needing it, we can just throw it somewhere in the gym. the impact of the phone hitting the wall will alert the zombies and they'll move. then we can maneuver ourselves through the darkness of the gym into the storage room to see if anyone's in there!"

both boys are staring at you with a weird look in their eyes but none of them say what they're really thinking. "that's... actually not a bad idea. the gym is big so there's no way we'll run into one. and since it looks like the lights are off they won't see us if we keep close to the walls," taehyun reiterates.

"ok so let's just get this over with," yeonjun mutters. you look at yeonjun who's staring into the gym, "you didn't have to come with us." you don't wanna sound rude but if he's just gonna complain the whole time then you'd rather be with just taehyun. "yeah right as if i'd venture off on my own in a school full of flesh-eating monsters," he rolls his eyes. "plus i'm the one who comes up with all the good plans, you guys need me."

"whatever," taehyun answers dryly. he's already starting to open the door to the gym, telling you guys that that's your cue to shut up. walking behind yeonjun, who's behind taehyun, you all crouch in a stealthy manner. you wouldn't call yourself the most athletic person but damn, why are your thighs starting to hurt? yeonjun cranes his neck to look back at you and when he sees you struggling to keep up, he slows down.

"what the fuck are you doing?" he whisper-yells. you don't know if the zombies can hear him but that sounded quite loud to you. you glare at him when the groans in the gym increase slightly in volume. "my thighs hurt, just- just leave me alone and tell taehyun to throw the damn phone." you see yeonjun purse his lips but turn to taehyun, telling him to get on with the plan. taehyun looks over to you with confusion and ?concern? written all over his face and all you do is nod at him.

he gets up slightly from his crouched position on the ground, still kind of in a half squat. he lets out a breath, preparing himself to pitch his phone. you watch in awe as you see taehyun get in the zone. you know this is a serious moment and everything but he looks good when he's focused.his eyes are trained on where he's made a mental target to throw to. even in this weird setting of a gym full of zombies of his own teammates, you can see that his breathing is steady.  you wonder why you'd never been to any of the school's home baseball games when you realize that taehyun had somewhat of a cult following. right, just like yeonjun everyone liked him and you just figured it was for nothing or that he was overhyped but you can see why now.

drawing you out of your thoughts was the sound of taehyun's phone crashing against the gym's wall. at the moment in which you were daydreaming about him, he must've thrown it. "ok cmon we gotta hurry, that might not keep them that occupied," taehyun whispers. you turn to look at the zombies which, thankfully, fell for your trick. they were all gathered in the direction where taehyun had thrown his phone. you all rose from your crouched positions and ran the rest of the way to the gym's locker room.

once inside you all let out a breath. "i can't believe that worked," you sigh. "i'm glad it did," yeonjun also sighs. "ok let's go get those bats, once we have them then we might be safe," taehyun leads you both to where he knows they are. walking down the locker room's hallway is even creepier than walking down the normal hallway. there are no windows plus the lights are out so it's even darker in here. once again you're the behind yeonjun who's behind taehyun. you feel uncomfortable and almost feeling like there's an eerie presence behind you. you never liked to be last; the shiver you get through your spine from the mere thought of something following you was weird.

just then you whip your body around but you feel it before you see it. a zombie that must've been in the locker room before you got here hovering over you. you're not sure what happened but it must've flown at you hard enough to knock your body to the ground. it was snapping and snarling in your face trying to get a bite. your eyes were closed but all your other sensed were heightened and you could definitely hear yourself shrieking wildly. you weren't sure what taehyun and yeonjun were doing but you guessed they were standing and staring in shock and horror. you are surely gonna die here.

just then, the back of the zombie's skull was knocked in with so much force that it came out through the front, effectively landing on the upper half of your body and face. just like that, it was no longer trying to devour you, instead, slumping down onto you like a lifeless doll.

you wanted to throw up but you bit it back. you figured the image of you on the floor with blood and a bashed brain spilling out of a once alive human on you was enough. 

the body was thrown off you in an instant and there stood choi beomgyu looking over you with so much concern that you were scared you turned into a zombie and were about to suffer the same fate as the corpse next to you. "oh my god y/n," his eyebrows are furrowed and his mouth is agape. he kneels down to wipe the brain remnants off you but he does it hastily and not that gentle really. you flinch and he pauses, "s-sorry its just that...well i don't know. i didn't think anyone else was alive and then i see you but you're about to get eaten so i mean-." you cut him off with a shaky hand lifted when you realize he's rambling.

he wants to go in to hug you and shout for joy that thankfully his crush- i mean... thankfully you are alive but yeonjun steps in, "dude oh my god y/n, are you okay?" you don't turn around to look at him or taehyun because frankly, you're too shaken up to even stand.

"thank you beomgyu," you whisper the expression and you kind of hope it sounds spiteful towards the other two boys for not really doing anything to help. taehyun looks down and bites his lip and yeonjun just looks at you. beomgyu smiles lightly and helps you stand and when you turn around you see the other two boys flinch at what you look like.

you know you must look horrifying with blood all over you and you want to cry. not because you look absolutely disgusting in front of the two of the most popular boys at your school but because you almost died in front of them. you let out a sob and taehyun steps forward but beomgyu is already ahead of him. "oh y/n... it's ok. look," he wipes your face with his shirt and you feel even worse. "we're alive, you're alive, it's gonna be ok."

✼ •• ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ •• ✼

taglist: @fxd-skz​ (send ask to be added!)

[pearlcaddy]

Hello lovely, just wanted to ask as I’m trying to write JATP fanfic, where do you get your inspiration from? I try really hard but then I worry with some ideas, will I be accused of plagiarism. One I’m thinking of has a similar beginning to We Found Wonderland, not entirely the same cause I haven’t read the whole thing yet but the beginning I worry with. Plus a few others, beginnings I’m good but it’s working out the middle right and of course a good ending. Just wondered what your thought process is. Thank you and I hope your keeping well.

Sorry this response is very late and got very long. Feel free to let me know if something doesn’t make sense—my brain’s been very mushy lately.

The honest answer to “where do I get inspiration from?” is… basically everywhere, to the point where my brain likes to constantly and randomly scream ideas at me when I’m trying to do literally anything else.

But I think that’s partly because, even though people tend to talk about “getting inspiration” as if it’s this random magical process that ✨just happens✨, it’s actually a skill that writers develop and hone over years. The more you write and develop stories, the more you learn how to find and recognize those raw seeds of ideas, how to flesh them out into concepts, and how to develop those concepts into actual stories.

(Continued under the cut, cause whoops, apparently I'm babbling tonight:)

And—crucially—you learn how to tell when a concept can be fleshed out into a fuller story and when it’s just a cool idea that doesn’t lend itself to an actual story. (@sanssssastark has a post about that here. The more you practice writing, the quicker you start to figure out when something is just a concept and when it’s an actual story, but unfortunately, you have to spend time honing that skill.)

So part of the answer to how you get inspiration is just to practice doing it. Which I know is an annoying answer when you want to be inspired right now, but it means it’s something you can work on and get better at. If you’re looking around at other people’s work and thinking, “Wow, I don’t think I’ll ever come up with those kinds of ideas,” know that you can and it’s just a skill that you want to strengthen.

As with basically every part of writing, the obnoxious answer to “how do I get better at X” is to write. A lot of learning how to tell a story is writing stories and figuring out why they are or aren't working. It doesn't need to be the more original, unique in the idea--it just needs to be an idea. If you’re stuck for ideas of what to write, you might want to try:

Prompt lists or events (there are a lot floating around on tumblr, and a lot of JatP specific ones on the fandom hub)

Finding a list of tropes and picking a couple at random and trying to figure out what story you could write to fill those tropes (the TROPED fanfic challenge has a thorough trope list you could reference)

Write an AU based on a favorite book/movie/TV show/game etc., which will give you a built-in plot you can follow (although it’s worth thinking about whether the plot of the AU you’re writing fits the JatP characters you want to write about, or whether you would want to tweak some plot so it makes sense for those characters)

Write one-shots. If one of your struggles is with writing longer stories, start by writing shorter stuff! Write a drabble or a single scene or a 3+1 fic. That lets you practice writing without getting too stressed about needing a big plot or elaborate narrative structure, and then you can build up to the longer stuff.

In terms of how I structure a story, I’ve written a longer post about my process here, but it boils down to me figuring out the tentpoles of my story: where I want my characters to be at the start of the story and where I want them to be at the end of it.

(A basic template that some writers use for this is want vs. need—your character starts off the story wanting something, but then they find out that they actually need something different. Take Luke in S1: he starts off wanting to play music at any cost—“that’s a gift no musician would turn down”—but by the end, he’s realized that he needs to make music with specific people or not at all. His want vs. need provides the tentpoles of his character journey for the season.)

Once I have those tentpoles, I fill in the middle of the outline by figuring out how to get my characters from the start point to the end point. What mini-steps do they need to take to travel from one end to the other?

In terms of having ideas based on other people’s fics, I think the worry should be less “will I get accused of plagiarizing?” and more “would I be plagiarizing?” Without knowing your ideas, I can’t answer that question, but I tend to think that if there’s a voice in your head saying, “Someone might think I’ve plagiarized this idea from this specific source,” it’s your gut’s way of telling you that the idea didn’t come from you. (sanssssastark has a post about the difference between sharing a general idea and plagiarizing a specific story here, and I have an add-on here.)

AO3 does have a way for you to formally give credit if you write a fic inspired by another fic, but you should always ask the original author first and get their okay before writing it. And I’ve noticed that some writers seem to get confused about where the line is once they’ve listed another fic as an inspiration—just because you list a fic as inspired by another doesn’t mean you get to lift whatever you want from it. So even if you give credit, you might still be plagiarizing. I think it tends to be less hassle to just… write fic based on your own ideas. It’s more fun and less stressful (with less potential to hurt the writer whose fic you’re riffing off of.)

The joy of fic is that it’s very low stakes! You can write whatever makes you happy, no matter how niche it is, and post it and people will read it. No one expects it to be perfect and it can be a great playground for learning some elements of writing and practicing the craft.

Sometimes people put a lot of pressure on themselves when they’re writing fic, and it’s worth remembering that this is a hobby! If you write something and it's not great, it doesn't matter! And if you want to get better at that hobby, the only way to do that is to actually write, and to give yourself permission to be learning and to not always be perfect at every single aspect of writing.

There are plenty of fics I love that don’t have super structured plots. I’m not always super fussed about plot when writing my own fics. That doesn’t mean people won’t enjoy those fics or that they’re bad. Those fics are just focusing on doing other things, like making me feel all of the feelings.

One of my fics is based on an incredibly specific place I worked (the Wizarding World theme park) and another is a fusion fic based on a TV show (Buffy) that objectively makes very little sense to pair with JatP! But writing them was super fun and I learned a lot from them, and I think the joy and enthusiasm I had for them turned out to be infectious with some readers.

So pick something you love, or a prompt, or a couple favorite tropes, and start writing!

[rallamajoop]

The Witcher: The Games vs The Books

Coming to the fandom this late, I can only assume the relationship between the Witcher games and the original novels has been long since talked to death by others. But I'm far too fascinated by the whole glorious mess that is this canon not to want to get down some of my own thoughts about how it all fits together.

See, on the one hand, the games (Witcher 3 especially) are arguably only too dependent on the novels to stand alone. They do a wonderful job of picking up a number of unresolved plot points the books left hanging, and a woeful job of explaining so much a player coming in cold would really like to know – Ciri's history with Geralt, Yennefer, her powers and the Wild Hunt itself just to begin with. This is an issue that only increases as the games go along: cliche as Geralt's amnesia may be, it's used to good effect to introduce the world to the player in the first game. By the third, Geralt has all his old memories back and two extra games worth of new experience, and good lord is it all alienating to the newcomer.

On the other hand, so much about the games (again, the third especially) contradicts the novels in painfully irreconcilable ways. That wouldn't necessarily bother me – adaptations are allowed to rework and reinvent, stories can and should evolve in the retelling – except, well, see point one above. So you're bound to come out of the games with a lot of unanswered questions if you haven't read the books, and just as many if you have.

Spoilers to follow, of course, for both the books and the games.

Here's one of the big ones: just how did the world – Ciri included – discover that one of her long-presumed-dead parents was actually alive and well and now ruling the entire empire of Nilfgaard? Fucked if I know. Neither the games or the novels have any explanation. In the novels, in fact, the world at large believes Ciri is married to the emperor of Nilfgaard. Naturally, this 'Cirilla' is a fake, but the scandal were the full truth ever revealed would redefine Emhyr's reign. Yet somehow, in the games, everyone seems to know he's Ciri's father, and that whole awkward incest angle is never mentioned. Continuity has been tweaked pretty significantly, and it's left to the player to guess how. If that wasn’t bad enough, the games apparently still included a Gwent card of the fake!Cirilla (artwork above) just to ensure maximum confusion.

Before I get too sidetracked with all that stuff that doesn’t add up though, there really is a lot to be said for what does work about how the games expand on the plot of the novels. The Wild Hunt itself is the big one. The spectral cavalcade appears several times through the novels and hunts Ciri across multiple worlds in the final book before apparently losing her trail and vanishing to make way for the 'real' big bad, never to be mentioned again. While TW3 left me pretty underwhelmed by the revelation that the spectral Wild Hunt were just a bunch of dark elves in skull armor, the books had introduced the Hunt and let us spend some time on the dark elves' world before we get the reveal that the two may be one and the same. So for all the ranting I could do about missed opportunities regarding the Wild Hunt, they're the natural candidate for the games to pick up on as their new big-bads.

To my surprise, Geralt and Yennefer's "deaths" and subsequent recovery in pseudo-Avalon also comes straight from the novels. That everyone thinks Geralt dead at the start of the first game isn't, as I'd first assumed, a convenient excuse to have him reappear with amnesia, but simply how the novels end. Why Ciri leaves them and goes world-hopping isn't clear, but "because the Wild Hunt was after her again" is as good a theory as any. So, another point to the games there.

And there's so much more. The Catriona plague has only just appeared at the end of the novels, but we know it's posed for a major outbreak – one that’s in progress by the time of the games. The second game in particular does a terrific job of taking the ambitions of the expansionist Nilfgaardian Empire and the still-relatively-new Lodge of Sorceresses and building an entirely new conflict around them – even taking two of the least developed members of the Lodge (Sabrina Glevissig and Síle de Tansarville) and expanding them into major players. Dijkstra similarly ends the novels on the run from those in power, and having already taken the same assumed name 'Sigi Reuven' he's using in the games – while the books assure us that prince Radovid will grow up to pay back his father's assassins (ie. Phillipa) and become Radovid the Stern.

The twisted fairy tale origins of the novels are something the games actually seem to have gotten better at as they went on: the 'trail of treats' to the Crones is the great example, the monster-frog-prince and the land-of-a-thousand-fables of the expansions are two more, and many more are hidden in sidequests. And I'd be remiss not to mention that in again asking Geralt to pick a side in the conflict with the Scoia'tael, the first two games not only recreate a scenario Geralt repeatedly deals with in the books, but a major theme. It's interesting too how much the broad structure of the third game feels like an homage to the books, with Geralt searching for Ciri, interspersed with sections from her POV. You can nitpick the detail of any of these examples, but the intent is unmistakable, and a lot of credit is due for it in the execution too.

Some of the detail that's gone into translating the world of the Witcher books into the games is just insane – not just in the geography and history of the place, but right down to the names of the wine you can pick up. There's the fact the Cat potion makes Geralt see in black-and-white, or the fact the basilisk and cockatrice monsters are clearly based on the same model, but the basilisk is reptilian where as the cockatrice is more avian – which is exactly how Geralt describes the difference between them in The Lady of the Lake. There's a point where Book!Regis recounts a detailed list of all the lesser vampiric species, ending with the only two violent enough to tear apart their victims: almost all can be encountered in the games, and the last two (Fleders and Ekimma) are indeed the most animalistic. This kind of thing is everywhere.

My favourite examples tend to be those that blend into the background if you haven't read the books, but will get a grin from those who have, such as a peasant in Velen who will call out to Geralt (paraphrased from memory, alas) "Sir, sir! We be up to our ears in mamunes, imps, kobolds, hags, flying drakes... oh, and bats!" – which is a lovely little reference to a couple of conversations from Edge of the World wherein Geralt explains that most of the monsters the locals want him to take care of don't actually exist. Or all those soldiers chanting "Long live King Radovid!" – natural enough, but it takes on a whole new life if you've read the passage in Lady of the Lake where the young prince Radovid grumbles internally about having to sit and listen to the city chanting 'long live...' to every other notable figure present except him.

Really, it would be faster to list the things the games introduced that don't come from the original source material in any obvious form, because it's a struggle to come up with very many. The villainous Crones of Crookback Bog and Master Mirror of the Hearts of Stone expansion are the biggest ones that come to mind, along with a great deal of the vampire mythology from Blood and Wine. To the witchers themselves, they’ve added mostly game mechanics: the use of bombs and blade oils, the names of most of the potions, and three new witcher schools (all with their own specialised gear). There are a number of new creatures and monsters – Godlings, noon-and-night-wraiths, botchlings, shaelmaars and so on – and though trolls are mentioned in the books, the games take credit for giving them so much character. Obviously, there are new characters, like Thaller and Roche – but not technically Iorveth, because a Scoia'tael commander of that name is mentioned in the books, if only in passing. And already, short of just listing off every new character the games introduced, I’m running out of ideas. Credit where credit’s due on that front: most of the new characters and locations they’ve created feel authentic enough that Kalkstein or Thaller would be right at home in the novels’ world.

But for all their dedication to the detail, it's hard to feel like the games have really managed to capture the spirit of the books in their storytelling: the mundanely corrupt bureaucracy that does so much to bring the world to life, or their cheerfully cynical sense of humour, or the flamboyant wonder that is book!Dandelion, or their enthusiasm for putting women in positions of power, or the bigger themes about the differences between the story that gets sung by the bards and what really happened – or so much else from the novels that came as such a surprise to me when I started getting really sucked in.

And if we’re going to talk about all the little things they got right, it’s only fair to point out there are just as many little things they got wrong, and sometimes pretty glaringly at that. "I thought you bowed to no-one" says Emhyr to Geralt – almost as if book!Geralt doesn’t happily bow in most every situation where it would be polite or diplomatic to do so. "This would never have happened if the council was still around!" says Geralt upon finding a sorcerer's lab full of human experiments – as if none of his experiences with Vilgefortz or the wizards of Rissberg ever happened, back when the council was very much still around. In TW2, he mocks the idea of a woman like Saskia leading a rebellion – almost as if women like Falka and Aelirenn haven't led some of the most storied rebellions in history (and we can't even blame the amnesia, because Geralt himself mentions Aelirenn later – oh yeah, this one annoyed me particularly).

 Book!verse 'Lady of the Lake' is basically just Ciri being surprised while bathing

Yennefer's studious aethiesm and willingness to desecrate Freya's temple is entirely in character – but only if we forget that she had her own personal religious experience with the goddess Freya herself in Tower of the Swallow. And then there’s the fact the Lady of the Lake is now a literal lake nymph who distributes swords to the worthy, as if no-one writing for the games ever got past the title of that particular Witcher novel (let alone got the joke). And the list goes on. It's easy to get overly caught up in contradictions like this – it's hardly as if Sapkowski's novels don't contradict themselves in places, as almost any long-running series eventually will – but it's going to stick out to those who’ve read the novels nonetheless.

While we're talking about how the games pick up where the books left off though, the big contradiction that has to be touched on comes in bringing Geralt back at all, at least in any public capacity. There's plenty to suggest that Geralt survives the novels' end and even goes on to have further adventures, but it's also pretty explicit that the history books record his death in the Pogrom of Rivia as final. The last two novels by order of publication (Season of Storms and Lady of the Lake) go so far as to feature characters far in the future with an interest in Geralt's legacy, and they discuss the matter in some depth. As far as the world knows, Geralt is dead.

  Book!Geralt fanart by Diana Novich

But it's hard to blame the games for ignoring this – true, thanks to Geralt's longevity, they could have set their conflict many more years after those future scenes – maybe even used Ciri's established time-travel powers to let you pop quietly in and out of the past (and, okay, now I've thought through all that, I'm kind of sad they didn't). But there comes a point where that kind of slavish devotion to preserving the source material really doesn't do a story any favours, and I'm not sure I could name any other successful adaptation that's bothered.

Besides bringing Geralt back at all, most of the bigger changes pertain to Ciri. In fact, as much as I'm about to get deep into the nitpicks below, you can make a surprisingly good case that the games have made only one really big change, and that's in simplifying the prophesies surrounding her. See, in the novels, all those world-saving prophesies aren't technically about Ciri, they're about her as-yet-unborn child. Who gets to impregnate her is the big driving force behind most of the villains of the books – one that all the main contenders seem to see as more of an awkward necessity rather than the inspiration for violent lust, but even so. To Emhyr, having to marry his own daughter is a bug, not a feature – but he's willing to do it to become the father of the savior of the world. But if Ciri is capable of fulfilling those prophesies herself, then Emhyr is already the father of the savoir of the world, and the revisions to his relationship with Ciri start to make a lot more sense.

Ciri's history with the Aen Elle elves seems to have been similarly revised – if not quite so cleanly. Avallac’h and Eredin are, naturally, both book characters – in fact, a lot of personality has been left behind in the books, since Avallac’h originally had a rather camp flair, and Eredin is less the power-hungry kingslayer you might imagine. When Geralt meets Avallac’h in the books – which happens briefly in Toussaint, for one of those "everything you're doing is going to make everything worse because prophesy" conversations – he's busy decorating a cave with fake prehistoric paintings in the hope of confusing future explorers. (Surprisingly, there does seem to be official art of this moment on one of the gwent cards – see above – though the Avallac’h who jokes about adding erect phalluses to the picture and admits his vanity won’t allow him to resist signing it hasn’t entirely survived the transition to the new medium).

We also meet the former Alder King, Auberon, whose death we see in flashback in the game. (Fun fact: Auberon is actually blowing bubbles through a straw in a bowl of soapy water when we first meet him in the books, hence the straw in the illustration below. The books just have more whimsy than any of the games would know what to do with.)

Ciri spends some time in the final book as a prisoner on the world of the elves, who are as keen as everyone else for their king to father her unborn child. Avallac’h eventually convinces her that this is all for the greater good: her child will be able to open gates to allow the people of her world to escape when the apocalyptic White Frost arrives. But their king, like most older elves, is impotent, leading to multiple nights where Ciri allows him to take her to bed (in some of the frankly more disturbing scenes of the series) to no result. Eredin, moreover, doesn't appear to have intended to poison the king: the vial that kills him was supposed to contain some sort of fantasy viagra, and even Eredin seems genuinely shocked to learn its actual effects.

Regardless, Ciri eventually discovers that Avallac’h and the Aen Elle have deceived her, and intend to user her child's powers to invade her world, not save it. Neither world is threatened by the White Frost for at least several millennia, it's just a pretext to make her cooperate. And so she flees, and Eredin (already leading his Red Riders aka The Wild Hunt long before he was crowned king) pursues her.

With the books as context, why Ciri would ever trust Avallac’h is very hard to understand. It's a little easier if that whole awful episode with her and the former king is subtracted out – Ciri's child is no longer necessary for Eredin's goals. So it's odd that the game still references the deadly vial Eredin gave to the king. Are we to suppose the vial genuinely contained poison in this version of continuity? I'd rather it didn't – Avallach's ruse is far more interesting if he underwhelms Eredin's support by revealing a half-truth – but the games aren't telling us.

And then we have to factor in that one last detail I'd forgotten when I originally started playing with this theory: TW3 does contain one last, dangling reference to the time the old king spent trying to impregnate Ciri, when Ge'els very reasonably asks why on earth Ciri would ever trust Avallac’h now. It's a damn good question, and the game offers no real answers. So in Avallac’h, we're left with a character who is vital to the final chapters of the games, who comes out of nowhere without the books as context, but whose role makes no sense with that backstory in mind. Frankly, the writers would have been much better off avoiding the whole mess altogether and inventing some new character to take Avallac’h's place.

The treatment of the White Frost is even more confusing. The books are ultimately fairly explicit about just what the White Frost is: a ice age, most likely caused by the same mundane climactic factors that produced the real ice ages of our history. The only escape is intergalactic emigration, as Ciri (or her children) might some day enable.

In the games, the White Frost has instead become some sort of nebulous, free-floating apocalypse which will eventually reach all worlds, which is basically fine – up to a point. We briefly visit a dead world that the Frost has decimated, and even the Aen Elle are now supposedly planning to invade Ciri's world because it threatens theirs as well (I mean, apparently – their motivations are so underdeveloped you could miss them by accidently skipping just one or two lines of dialogue). When the Wild Hunt appears, it's always in a haze of cold. Their mages can invoke its power still more dramatically through portals which can freeze you in your tracks. So obviously, the Frost has already reached their world, and time is running out, right?

Well, no – you visit their world too (again, briefly – to meet a character who has never been mentioned before and won't be again, for reasons which have also never been mentioned before if you haven't read the books) – and there's no Frost in sight, apocalyptic or otherwise.

So why does the White Frost follow the Hunt around? No idea. It's never explained.

At the very end of the game, a second "Conjunction of the Spheres" occurs (possibly because of the Wild Hunt's appearance?), and the Frost begins to invade (or possibly Avallac’h summons it, so Ciri can go into it and destroy it?) It's all painfully unclear. The game is too busy pulling a bait-and-switch over whether Avallac’h's betrayed you to tell you what's actually going on instead.

But if Ciri could destroy the Frost completely (at great personal risk, but still) why is this not more clearly set up? Why did the Aen Elle think that escaping to another world (which will ALSO eventually be destroyed by the Frost) was a better solution than sending Ciri to face the Frost directly? For which matter, why do the Aen Elle need Ciri at all if sending enough ships to carry an army is no problem? Why does Ciri spend so much of the game questioning Avallac’h's true intentions, if they were ultimately so noble? When did he tell her the truth? If Avallac’h did summon the Frost, why did he pick that particular moment? And if he didn't, and it all just happened spontaneously, we're back to questioning why invading that world ever seemed like a good solution to Eredin – it all collapses in on itself.

None of these questions couldn't have been answered with a little creativity, but then the game would've had to dedicate some real time to explaining its backstory and developing its core conflict – something it's bizarrely reluctant to do. And if you think I may be drifting from the point a bit in the name of getting all my gripes about the ending down in one place, you're not wrong, but I feel Avallac’h and everything surrounding him is pretty much the ur-example of what doesn't work about the way The Witcher 3 depends on the novels: the backstory the writers are building on doesn't actually exist in any format available to the rest of us.

There are plenty of ways TW3 could have incorporated its backstory into its own narrative (yes, even excluding the method "by expecting people to read many many more pages of text from in-game documents", because that's bullshit and always will be). There are times it does this brilliantly, such as in the quest ‘The Last Wish’: everything you really need to know is covered in Yennefer and Geralt's conversation in the boat, and without ever making the dialogue sound unnatural. In fact, TW3 has even more options here than many works with the same problem, because Geralt is famous and people already think they know his story. You could have bards singing Dandelion's ballads, you could have characters confronting him with misunderstandings about his past to force him to correct them. You could also have Geralt visiting people and places he knows Ciri remembers fondly because of the time they spent there together, or include playable flashbacks similar to the time you spend playing as Ciri. You could stick chunks of backstory in optional sidequests or scenes old-school fans can skip through quickly. So many of my questions (how did Ciri get so close to Yennefer if they were never at Kaer Morhen together? Why has no-one tried training Ciri in her powers before? What does the Wild Hunt even do while it's not hunting Ciri? Why is Ciri princess of Cintra if her father is Emperor of another country altogether?) could have been answered so easily.

Seriously, summarising the Witcher books is not that hard. Lots of things happen, but only a fraction of it is really relevant in retrospect, and you could hit all the major plot beats in a handful of paragraphs. (Heck, I’d do it here if this post wasn’t already ridiculously over long.)

But then, TW3 has a bizarre problem with leaving so much of its best material off screen, even from its own story. It's criminal that we never get to see any of Geralt's time (or Yennefer's) with the Wild Hunt, even in flashback or dream sequence. This is material that directly sets up the relationship between the main hero and the main villain, and the most we ever hear about it is a few vague allusions to it being like a strange nightmare. Really? That's it? What was it like? Was Geralt in a trance, unable to control his own actions – was he brainwashed into believing he belonged there, or was he merely unable to escape? What atrocities might Eredin have forced him to commit? Did he visit other worlds? Was he paraded among the Aen Elle as a captive? There is no way this isn’t a part of the story worth talking about!

We never see the moment Ciri rescues Geralt from the Wild Hunt. We never see how Avallac’h convinces her to trust him, we never see the moment he was cursed, or any of her efforts to save him – all these big, story-defining moments are left off-screen, to be vaguely recounted to you later in dialogue. Then there's the entire political situation in Nilfgaard – you hear about it second-hand, and it's all resolved off screen. And the list goes on. Yet you and Ciri still have time to run around Novigrad so she can thank a bunch of throwaway characters you've never even heard of before, nor will again. The priorities on display here are baffling.

The Witcher 3 was such a wildly successful game that it’s obvious these sorts of issues didn’t seriously hold it back, and it’s such a big game that I could have sat down and written just as many words focusing only on the parts that do work without much difficulty. It boasts stunning visuals, addictive gameplay and some truly wonderful characters, and so many parts of the story work brilliantly in isolation that it’s strange to come out of it feeling that it ultimately adds up to so much less than the sum of its parts.

I’m glad TW3 exists – if it hadn’t been such a runaway success I doubt I’d ever have discovered Sapkowski’s universe at all, but for myself, TW3 will probably always be remembered as a somewhat-overlong introduction to the really good stuff, in the expansions and the original novels it came from. I looked up the novels after finishing TW3 in large part because I’d been left with so many unanswered questions – and I’m glad I did, but I’m honestly surprised more people weren’t turned off by TW3′s scattershot approach to its own narrative. You’re allowed to change and rework in moving to a new medium, but I can’t imagine it would’ve hurt games’ success to tell a complete story in the process.

[script-a-world]

Okay, I'm not sure if this falls into world building or characters, so if it doesn't fit world building just feel free to delete this! In my story there are dragons, and including some with silver and copper scales. Thing is silver tarnishes and copper oxidizes. Is there a logical way I could avoid this or maybe have a means or environment that could/treat prevent this?

Tex: A fairly reliable way to solve a problem like this - or at least figure out the first steps - is to break things down into manageable chunks. In this case, it would be working out the properties of the materials you’re working with: silver and copper.

I’m assuming that you mean for this to be actual, solid metal, so I’ll start there.

The wiki for tarnish is a little sparse, but it does give us some important information:

Tarnish is a product of a chemical reaction between a metal and a nonmetal compound, especially oxygen and sulfur dioxide. It is usually a metal oxide, the product of oxidation. Sometimes it is a metal sulfide. The metal oxide sometimes reacts with water to make the hydroxide; and carbon dioxide to make the carbonate.

In terms of metal mutability, this narrows down the list of research topics by a lot. The introductory paragraph of that same wiki tells us this about silver:

For example, silver needs hydrogen sulfide to tarnish, although it may tarnish with oxygen over time.

The wiki for silver, itself, has some more complex information:

Like copper, silver reacts with sulfur and its compounds; in their presence, silver tarnishes in air to form the black silver sulfide (copper forms the green sulfate instead, while gold does not react). Unlike copper, silver will not react with the halogens, with the exception of fluorine gas, with which it forms the difluoride. While silver is not attacked by non-oxidizing acids, the metal dissolves readily in hot concentrated sulfuric acid, as well as dilute or concentrated nitric acid. In the presence of air, and especially in the presence of hydrogen peroxide, silver dissolves readily in aqueous solutions of cyanide.[25]

The three main forms of deterioration in historical silver artifacts are tarnishing, formation of silver chloride due to long-term immersion in salt water, as well as reaction with nitrate ions or oxygen.

There’s some more context in the chemistry section, but what I quoted above is more or less the bulk of your starting point. As you can tell, it’s been compared to other metals - its comparison to copper is especially helpful in the context of your question.

What we can glean from this is that silver has very few things to react with in a normal environment, outside of “long-term immersion in salt water”, so ideally any silver-scaled dragons you have would avoid being in or around the ocean for extended periods of time.

Copper has been fairly well covered already by being used as a comparison to silver, but I’ll throw some more information out from its wiki so we can have a greater pool of information to work with:

Copper is one of a few metallic elements with a natural color other than gray or silver.[13] Pure copper is orange-red and acquires a reddish tarnish when exposed to air. The characteristic color of copper results from the electronic transitions between the filled 3d and half-empty 4s atomic shells – the energy difference between these shells corresponds to orange light.

As with other metals, if copper is put in contact with another metal, galvanic corrosion will occur.[14]

This bit is important for a couple of reasons - the first is that copper scales are very probably not copper-coloured, and the second is that pure copper is very unstable. I’ll get to both of those points in a bit.

Copper does not react with water, but it does slowly react with atmospheric oxygen to form a layer of brown-black copper oxide which, unlike the rust that forms on iron in moist air, protects the underlying metal from further corrosion (passivation). A green layer of verdigris (copper carbonate) can often be seen on old copper structures, such as the roofing of many older buildings[15] and the Statue of Liberty.[16] Copper tarnishes when exposed to some sulfur compounds, with which it reacts to form various copper sulfides.[17]

Here, this means that copper scales would be good for water-based dragons, which is the opposite of silver. That’s an easy point in the direction of your other question regarding environmental cues.

The alloy of 90% copper and 10% nickel, remarkable for its resistance to corrosion, is used for various objects exposed to seawater, though it is vulnerable to the sulfides sometimes found in polluted harbors and estuaries.[45]

I figure since we’re hopping outside the line of believability, we might as well toss in the idea of substantial amounts of nickel on organic beings without the ordinary toxic side-effects.

Copper is biostatic, meaning bacteria and many other forms of life will not grow on it. For this reason it has long been used to line parts of ships to protect against barnacles and mussels. It was originally used pure, but has since been superseded by Muntz metal and copper-based paint. Similarly, as discussed in copper alloys in aquaculture, copper alloys have become important netting materials in the aquaculture industry because they are antimicrobial and prevent biofouling, even in extreme conditions[120] and have strong structural and corrosion-resistant[121] properties in marine environments.

Tossing this quote out partially because I like Muntz metal (surprisingly also pertinent to the conversation), but mostly because this explains why copper works so well underwater without noticeable oxidation.

I’ll do a quick summary of the three Wikipedia articles I just poked, so we have them in one place:

Tarnishing is oxidation

Both tarnish to oxygen, and corrode to sulfides/sulfur

Copper likes water, silver does not

The one that stands out here is the reaction to sulfides and/or sulfur. Ordinarily, exposure to significant amounts of sulfur isn’t an issue in the majority of environments, so it’s a non-issue. However, since both silver and copper react so strongly to it, I figure it was pertinent to bring up (also because it’s cool, Rule Of Cool is definitely a thing when we’re talking about dragons).

From Wikipedia:

It is the fifth most common element by mass in the Earth. Elemental sulfur can be found near hot springs and volcanic regions in many parts of the world, especially along the Pacific Ring of Fire; such volcanic deposits are currently mined in Indonesia, Chile, and Japan. These deposits are polycrystalline, with the largest documented single crystal measuring 22×16×11 cm.[16] Historically, Sicily was a major source of sulfur in the Industrial Revolution.[17] Lakes of molten sulfur up to ~200 m in diameter have been found on the sea floor, associated with submarine volcanoes, at depths where the boiling point of water is higher than the melting point of sulfur.[18]

Native sulfur is synthesised by anaerobic bacteria acting on sulfate minerals such as gypsum in salt domes.[19][20] Significant deposits in salt domes occur along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and in evaporites in eastern Europe and western Asia. Native sulfur may be produced by geological processes alone. Fossil-based sulfur deposits from salt domes were once the basis for commercial production in the United States, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine.[21]

Given how popular dragon mythology is all over Asia (Wikipedia), I find it interesting that copper and silver - our earliest mined metals - would have realistically been inhospitable on a dragon in many of its purported native regions. But since this is worldbuilding, I suppose a prudent avoidance of volcanoes and ocean floors works out rather neatly.

Now that we’ve gotten the chemical standpoint down, it’s time to tackle the organic component.

Both silver and copper are toxic in sufficiently large amount (Wikipedia 1, Wikipedia 2), which is, unsurprisingly, a fairly negligible amount. One way to avoid this is to look at compounds (brass and the previously-mentioned Muntz metal comes to mind) that could be more malleable to the cosmetic look of your dragon scales - it’s less likely to be toxic, and you could fine-tune the colours you want more reliably, with some Handwavium to the actual biological aspects.

Another method would be to, well, apply some more Handwavium and just say that dragons have specialized cells that allow keratin to be embedded with metals like copper or silver. Keratin is a protein, so the logic would need a bit of finagling, but most readers would probably accept a surface-level explanation unless your plot demands a further level of development.

Another method would be structural colour (Wikipedia), and usually exists on things like fish and butterfly scales (Wikipedia 1, Wikipedia 2, Wikipedia 3). The reflective fish scales that I linked to in the first Wikipedia link could easily achieve that silver look you’re seeking, especially with minimal tweaking if you’re looking for things like tonal gradients and texture. The other two Wikipedia links, for the butterfly scales, can give you some idea on how to introduce colour while keeping many of the same properties.

Feathers can also achieve this structural colour, but since they’re constructed differently than scales, this would mean that you would need to contend with the disulfide bonds in order to keep either metal from breaking the feathers down. Whether or not oils from preening or powder down would have any impact on the refraction that could produce any colours of shiny variety is a toss-up, but certainly within the realm of fantasy.

Another option of note is to borrow from the scaly foot snail (Live Science), albeit it works with sulphur compounds rather than against it, even if it doesn’t have quite the metallic sheen you might be looking for.

[bluescluelessly]

Tossing the Script out the Airlock (and Good Riddance to it)

[Rating: Teen] || hurt/comfort, suspected infidelity, polyamorous relationships, made up Stewjoni biology because George Lucas didn’t say Obi-Wan wasn’t a little weird and if he’s gonna give his birth planet a stupid name then I’m gonna give him stupid biology tweaks, and use of Dai Bendu, the language of the Jedi (translations at the bottom of the post)

tw: mentions of grooming (because Palpatine)

Ships: Bail Organa/Obi-Wan, Bail/Breya, Anakin/Padmé

Palpatine tries to convince Anakin that Padmé is cheating on him with Obi-Wan. Anakin confronts his friend about it, finds out a bit more than he bargained for, and not at all what he was expecting to. 

°|●.*•

From the Revenge of the Sith Novelization:

“That’s why I put you on the Council. If the rumors are true, you may be democracy's last hope.”

Anakin let his chin sink once more to his chest and his eyelids scraped shut. It seemed like he was always somebody’s last hope.

Why did everyone always have to make their problems into his problems? Why can’t people just let him be?

How is he supposed to deal with all this one Padmé could die?

He said slowly, eyes still closed, “you still haven’t told me what this has to do with Obi-Wan.”

“Ah, that – well, that is the difficult part. The disturbing part. It seems that Master Kenobi has been in contact with a certain Senator who is known to be among the leaders of this cabal. Apparently, very close contact. The rumor is that he was seen leaving the Senator’s residence this very morning, at an… unseemly hour.”

“Who?” Anakin opened his eyes and sat forward. “Who is this Senator? Let’s go question him.”

“I’m sorry, Anakin. But the Senator in question is, in fact, a *her*. A woman you know quite well, in fact.”

“You–” He wasn’t hearing this. He couldn’t be. “You mean–”

Anakin choked on her name.

Palpatine gave him a look of melancholy sympathy. “I’m afraid so.”

Anakin coughed his voice back to life. “That’s *impossible!* I would *know*– she doesn’t… she couldn’t–”

“Sometimes the closest,” Palpatine said sadly, “are those who cannot see.”

Revenge of the Sith, Matthew Stover, p. 250

°|●.*•

This is it. Anakin is going to just… ask him. He’s not sure what he’ll do if he finds out Obi-Wan has been sleeping with his wife, but…

Well, he’ll figure that out if it’s true.

He went to Padmé’s apartment, felt for himself the evidence that Obi-Wan had been there.

Now, he needs the truth. He needs to be wrong.

“So… I heard you spent a late night with a senator,” he asks, trying not to sound overly accusing. Obi-Wan always gives him the benefit of the doubt.

Several emotions flicker across Obi-Wan’s face then. He eventually fixes his gaze on Anakin, a modicum of panic in his eyes. Anakin’s heart sinks.

The next words out of his old Master’s mouth, however, catch him by surprise.

“You… know about Bail?”

Anakin’s eyes go wide. No, he didn’t–

– but he can’t help thinking he knew it, it was a male senator –

– “Bail?” He blurts out, confusion showing. “No, Palpatine said–”

“– Palpatine saw me with Bail?” Obi-Wan asks, his voice rising an octave.

“No–” Anakin insists, hands going up in a placating gesture. “Not– I didn’t know about Bail. I uh. Palpatine told me he heard you were seen leaving Padmé Amidala’s Apartment.” He explains, and some of the worry drains from Obi-Wan.

“Oh,” he says, sounding infinitely relieved. “No, I, er. Well, I definitely haven’t been making ‘late visits’ to Senator Amidala.” He gives Anakin a curious sort of look. “I hear she’s spoken for, not that I would pursue her, in any case. It would be… awkward.”

“Awkward?” Anakin asks, feeling as if he’s missing something.

Obi-Wan gives a tired sort of smile. “Besides the fact that my preference is not for the fairer sex; she once made an advance, and I turned her down.” Seeing Anakin’s flaring temper, he is quick to clarify, “long before your knighting, Anakin. But, as I said, awkward.”

Anakin nods, appeased. Then, he remembers there’s a more important topic to focus on here. “So… Bail?”

The reaction is immediate; Obi-Wan’s face blushing a dark red as he looks away. “Yes, I– if you could keep that to yourself, I’d appreciate it.”

To hell with it, Anakin thinks. “Sure Master, I’ll keep your senator a secret if you keep mine.”

“The fact that you think your relationship with Senator Amidala is a secret is adorable,” Obi-Wan responds, a glint of amusement in his eye. “Half the council is still asking me why they weren’t invited to the wedding; I can’t give them an answer, as I wasn’t invited either.”

Anakin looks shocked by that information, which is truly endearing. “Wait, they aren’t mad?”

Obi-Wan shakes his head. “You proved to me that you could put responsibility over your wife on Geonosis. Relationships aren’t forbidden so long as there’s not an unhealthy attachment involved. Anyways, we’ve always bent the rules a bit for you.”

Anakin feels as if a weight has been removed from his shoulders. A weight that Palpatine put there, he thinks.

The old man has been wrong about the Jedi on two accounts now… why does Anakin hold what he says about the Jedi in such regard?

Perhaps he should fact-check more of the Chancellor’s absurd claims.

“Ah.” Anakin responds intelligently. “… so why does your, um, thing with Bail need to stay a secret?”

Obi-Wan’s red cheeks return once more. “Well. A… few reasons. Not that I think I’d be in trouble for it, but… I’d like to respect Bail’s privacy. He is, after all, Married.”

“Does Breha not know?”

“She knows,” Obi-Wan assures his former Padawan. “I wouldn’t agree otherwise. But that doesn’t mean they want the whole senate knowing about their … arrangement with me; or others.”

Again, Anakin nods to show his understanding. “The less people who know, the better. Right…”

“Exactly.”

“Still,” Anakin starts, bemused, “I didn’t take you for the 'mistress’ type.”

A complicated flurry of emotions cross his friend’s face. “… neither do I,” he responds, a little clipped. “I think of myself more as Bail’s type.”

Anakin realizes how insensitive that came off a bit too late. “I’m sorry–”

Obi-Wan waves him off. “It’s difficult to understand when I haven’t explained. Bail is Bi; he generally prefers men, but his heart belongs fully to Breha. I prefer men as well, and I have… a condition… so we came to a mutually beneficial arrangement, in which Bail and I enjoy one another while on Coruscant, as he and Breha cannot be together as often as they’d like to be.”

Anakin gets all that, he does. But one thing sticks out to him that he feels needs to be clarified. “You have a condition?” Is Obi-Wan sick?

If its possible, Obi-Wan grows more embarrassed. “Well, I’m from Stewjon.”

That clears nothing up.

At Anakin’s clueless expression, Obi-Wan sighs and explains. “Right, quick biology lesson. Somewhere down the evolutionary line, it was decided that Stewjonians need more incentive to reproduce. So, while it isn’t necessary in order to live out a full, average life span, our bodies naturally produce more beneficial hormones during sexual intercouse. This means, the more I…” he pauses, looking displeased by the verbal corner he’s painted himself into. “… get laid, the slower I age, the faster I heal, and the less sleep I need. All beneficial to fighting a war, yes?”

That’s all news to Anakin. Fascinating. “So do you have… other arrangements too?”

Obi-Wan shakes his head. “As of now, just Bail. I could, of course, visit the lower levels to the same effect, but I find it safer and more preferable to have intercourse with someone I like and trust.” Less likely to catch something that way, too.

Anakin nods, strange mixtures of relief and utter confusion swirling in his mind. At least he knows Obi-Wan has no interest in Padmé… but that doesn’t explain the way he felt his presence in the force, in her apartment.

“Okay. Uh.” He hesitates, knowing there’s no real, good way to word this. “Just… to be 100% clear, you’re not having secret meetings with Padmé in an attempt to overthrow Palpatine and the Senate?”

The look Obi-Wan gives Anakin would make someone think he had just grown a second head.

“… no, wherever did you hear such nonsense?”

Anakin rubs the back of his neck, feeling the last bit of worry ebb away. “Just rumors.”

Obi-Wan shakes his head. “Truly, the Senate gossip gets wildly out of hand. I’ll admit, I do on occasion have tea with Padmé, but there’s nothing treasonous about friends visiting one another and trading stories and doing each other’s makeup from time to time.” He pauses. “And while neither of us have very high opinions on Chancellor Palpatine’s term, there’s no plot against him, as far as I am aware. We are both just eager for this war to end, and for him to release his emergency powers so the Republic can return to democracy.”

“You think his rule is undemocratic?” Anakin asks, looking appalled by the idea.

“He’s been in power long past his elected term,” Obi-Wan points out. “A new Chancellor should have been elected already. Over this time, he has used the war to gain far more emergency powers than any one person should hold.”

Sensing Anakin’s impending argument, he continues. “… Of course, this makes it far simpler to fight a war; I simply worry that when the war has ended… he won’t give up his power so easily. He has resisted peace talks, and every other attempt to bring this war to an end sooner. So I… have concerns.” He gives Anakin a tired sort of smile. “But last I checked, he hasn’t yet made it treasonous for Padmé and I to exercise our right to free speech.”

“Of course not,” Anakin responds, sounding distracted. He’s always thought having one person to make decisions was a good thing… or, does he just think that because Palpatine has told him it’s a better idea so many times?

He has many things to question. But, more importantly right now, Obi-Wan mentioned make-up?

Anakin shakes himself from his thoughts, giving his friend a curious look. “Uh. Rewind a second. Did you say Padmé did your make-up?”

“And I did hers,” Obi-Wan answers easily. “We both had dates.”

That would explain why they were, in some cases, sitting closer than friends would; as far as he could tell in the force.

“Bail takes you on dates?” Anakin asks, curious but trying his best not to be pushy about it. This is something new, which he never anticipated learning about his Master… he wants to know more, but as a Jedi with his own secret significant Senator, he understands the secrecy.

“Not all of them are Bail,” Obi-Wan answers after a moment, as if weighing how much he should admit to. “But yes, he does. He’s quite a gentleman really; I do look for other potential partners, but I fear he’s spoiled me for most.”

Anakin can imagine; having a Senator as a partner is pretty nice. “The tea is that good?”

“And the company,” Obi-Wan agree, a crinkle at the corner of his eyes. “I’ll admit… I’m glad you know now. I don’t like keeping secrets from you.”

That warms Anakin’s heart, so much that he doesn’t quite know how to express it, so he deflects. “If you have pictures of yourself in that makeup, you better not keep them secret anymore,” he teases with a grin.

the teasing pulls a laugh from Obi-Wan, who shakes his head. “I don’t; but I’m certain Padmé has plenty. I think she even took a few of us the one time Bail stopped by her apartment to pick me up.”

Oh, he is definitely getting those from his wife later. “So Padmé knows about you two?”

“She introduced us,” Obi-Wan admits fondly. “I don’t share details with her, but she’s a smart woman.”

That she is. “Why am I the last to find out?” He protests, trying his best not to let it come out sounding whiny. 

“Because, my dear padawan,” Obi-Wan starts, gently ribbing him. “You are a dear friend, and an unparalleled partner in combat, but you can’t keep a secret to save your life.”

“I can keep a secret!” he argues! “I swear, Master, no one else will ever know. I only talk to you and Padmé, anyways.” He pauses, “Well, and Palpatine.”

“And he mustn’t know,” Obi-Wan insists, more serious now. “Bail is one of the leading senators advocating for clone rights and peace talks, Anakin. He is a good man. And, he disagrees with Palpatine quite often. I shudder to think what the Chancellor would do with this information, should he find out. I wouldn’t put it past him to use it in an attempt to not only discredit Bail, but to berate the Jedi as well.”

“But neither of you are doing anything wrong,” Anakin states, frowning.

Obi-Wan’s eyes close for a moment. “And it’s not wrong for a system to want to remain neutral and out of the war, yes? And yet, Palpatine did everything in his power to try to strongarm Republic forces onto Mandalore, even rushing a vote 3 days ahead of time, without Satine present, based on a doctored holorecording.”

Anakin doesn’t look at it that way… but he’s not going to argue with Obi-Wan where Satine is involved. Though he now questions how romantic their relationship really was, he knows they were, at the very least, close.

“Just please, don’t tell him, Anakin.” Obi-Wan persists, looking up at his friend beseechingly. “If for no other reason than Bail values his privacy.”

“Of course,” Anakin agrees easily. “Like I said, I won’t tell anyone. I just… nobody really talks to me about Palpatine like you are now. I guess most people know he’s my friend and are too afraid to say anything less than flattering… You’re giving me things to think about.”

“I try to be honest with you whenever I can,” Obi-Wan responds cautiously. “You aren’t a child anymore, and though old habits are hard to break, I don’t want to keep sheltering you as if you aren’t a capable adult.”

“I sense you have more to say,” Anakin prompts when Obi-Wan doesn’t immediately continue.

His friend nods, looking troubled. “I know he is a close friend of yours, Anakin, and one of the few people you knew and liked here, after leaving your home. Which is why I–mistakenly, I think–didn’t object to his interest in you. Initially, I had hoped another friend would make your transition from Tatooine to Coruscant easier… but… well. I find the way he treats you… inappropriate. In some cases, predatory.”

And with those words, Anakin suddenly feels on the defensive. No, Palpatine is his friend, like a grandfather to him. He isn’t… predatory, or–

Obi-Wan’s hands are up even before Anakin can think of a rebuttal. “I don’t claim to know all the details… but the fact that when you were younger, you didn’t feel comfortable telling me anything of your activities on your outings with him says quite a lot, Anakin. And more than that, when I started to suspect something was amiss, and attempted to join you on visits with him, or simply ensure you weren’t left alone with him, he used his position as the Chancellor to strongarm me into backing down. It was… is, concerning.”

And, that’s news to Anakin. He understands why Obi-Wan hadn’t told him sooner, too. He was a headstrong kid; any attempt to protect him, especially from someone he saw as a friend, Anakin would have just taken as Obi-Wan ‘controlling’ him. He knows better now; after years of being Obi-Wan’s equal. But then, it may have just pushed him away, and further from where Obi-Wan could attempt to protect him.

Still, he feels the need to explain himself. “It’s not– He didn’t do anything… like that…” He starts, floundering a little. “It’s just, I didn’t want to tell you, because he took me places I shouldn’t really be going, and I had fun, so…” might as well come clean now, it’s not like he can get in trouble for it anymore. “He used to take me on trips to the lower levels, like, clubs. And he taught me how to make a chance cube land on the side I wanted, so we would find corrupt senators, and cheat them out of their credits. And, Palpatine said he gave the money to charities, so we were doing good things, you know?”

Obi-Wan closes his eyes, and Anakin is reminded of when he tested his patience early on as a padawan, and his Master would silently count to keep himself calm.

He hasn’t needed to in a long time, not since well before Anakin was knighted.

And despite what the action reminds him of, Anakin knows his Master’s temper isn’t directed at him.

“… Anakin,” he starts, tone gentle but tight. “Please, just. For a moment, put Ahsoka in your place. If she was telling you what you are telling me now… what would you think?”

And Anakin’s gut does a flip, because deep down, he already knows.

He… he knows that Palpatine uses him, says one thing and does another, feeds him constant doubt about his friends, about the Jedi…

He knows this, and yet, no one before has had the nerve to say anything even slightly negative about Palpatine to his face. No one has ever dared do anything but say how great his close friend, the Chancellor, is.

Because like Anakin, people are afraid of him.

He feels a tremble start in his fingers, finally faced to acknowledge how afraid he is. How much it terrifies him to know that Palpatine holds all his secrets, that should Anakin ever be less than his enthusiastic friend, he could be ruined.

He, the hero with no fear… is afraid; a frightened boy in the face of a decrepit old man.

And only now can he show it, in the presence of the only person he’s ever known to have the courage to speak up about someone so untouchable.

As if sensing Anakin’s oncoming panic, Obi-Wan interrupts his thoughts, voice kind and sad. “Anakin, dear one, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He moves closer, and any restraint Anakin had breaks.

He feels 9 years old again, lost and seeking comfort in Obi-Wan’s arms. “I can’t say no,” he whispers brokenly. “Master– Jaieh, I’m terrified of him.”

Hearing Anakin call him Jaieh, like he hasn’t since he was young, since it was too hard for him to call anyone ‘Master’ without dredging up bad memories, Obi-Wan accepts Anakin into his arms, no hesitation or holding back.

Anakin needs support right now, needs to know that he isn’t alone in this, that if he asks, Obi-Wan would walk right into Hell with him. “Enoah foh bika, Anakin.” he promises him, reassures him. “Enoah foh mikeelal.”

“Paienoah kodaih bika,” Anakin says, but it comes out unsure, like he’s asking. Like he doesn’t know if he’s accepted, if he’s really not alone in this.

Obi-Wan’s heart aches, and he holds Anakin closer, pressing a reassuring kiss to his temple. “Haj Dai, Anakin. Paienoah kodaih bika.”

Anakin shatters then– or it feels like he does. So many doubts, so many fears, and Obi-Wan bats them all aside with a few words. Words said so easily, words Anakin feared shouldn’t apply to him.

He cries, his earlier suspicions and anger forgotten, absolved now, as he is faced with the truth that Obi-Wan cares for him; that his best friend is his truest ally, that Obi-Wan accepts him and will always accept him.

As he allows himself to acknowledge that Palpatine is a liar and a manipulator, and he is (and always has been) coming up with vile falsities in his attempts to drive a wedge between Anakin and Obi-Wan; the one person he can rely on absolutely.

And through it all, through his tears and his shattered sense of self, Obi-Wan holds onto him; not judgement or disgust, nothing but kindness and acceptance as he carefully picks up the pieces and helps Anakin piece himself back together.

How he could ever doubt Obi-Wan’s character… he would say he doesn’t know, but he remembers. He knows all the little things Palpatine said, all the betrayals he implied, the way he twisted Anakin’s thoughts to see himself pitted against Obi-Wan instead of regarded with him, as he should. They are a team, The Team.

He should have recognized long ago that their accomplishments aren’t a competition, they are an accumulation of the good they can both do, together and apart.

Anakin may be late, but late is better than never, and he recognizes it now, at his lowest and most vulnerable moment. A competitor wouldn’t hold him and build him back up, stronger than before. A friend does that, a friend and mentor and good person.

When he can speak, albeit in a watery way, Anakin wipes his eyes, face still hidden in his Master’s shoulder. “What am I going to do?”

The answer doesn’t come immediately, and that in itself is a reassurance. Anakin doesn’t want unthought-out platitudes, he wants honesty, and preferably, a plan.

“I don’t know what we can do right this moment, Anakin.” Obi-Wan admits. “He is still the Chancellor… and that won’t change until we end this war. But I can promise you this, my dear padawan, you will never have to go see him alone. You need only ask, and I will be by your side. And as soon as circumstances change, I will do all there is in my power to make sure he never comes near you again, Anakin.”

He sniffles, more reassured by the realistic response than he could ever be by promises that can’t be fulfilled.

“Then we’ll just have to try harder to end this war, huh?” Anakin goes for an optimistic tone, hugging Obi-Wan more snugly.

Another comforting kiss goes to his temple. Obi-Wan is frugal with his shows of affection, so it means all the more now that he is giving them so openly. “We will, Anakin.” He promises, and his voice is so steady, so sure, the rock that Anakin can always lean against. “Together, I doubt there’s anything you and I can’t do.”

“Together,” Anakin agrees, a knot in his very soul coming loose. 

Obi-Wan is right. They are The Team, and that isn’t just a title. Together, they can do anything they set their minds to.

They can defeat Sith Lords, they can end a war, and maybe, just maybe, they can even save Anakin Skywalker’s soul from the Devil.

°|●.*•

Dai Bendu Translations

“Jaieh” || ● Simplified Meaning: Master

Literal Meaning

roots: ‘je’- mystic, ‘ai’- mastery, non ownership. so ‘one who is a Master in the ways of the Force’, implying more like a teacher than an owner.

“Enoah foh bika, Anakin. Enoah foh mikeelal” || ● Simplified Meaning: I am here, Anakin. I am with you.

Literal Meaning

Enoah fo - I am (in a permanent state, not transitive) 

bika- here

[Anakin]

Enoah foh- I am (in a permanent state) 

mikeelal - comitative ‘you’/with you.

“Paienoah kodaih bika.” || ● Simplified Meaning: We are here together, now and forever.

Literal Meaning

Paienoah - We are (in a permanent state, and this has implications for the future)

kodaih - Exclusionary ‘We’ - all of us jedi (exclusionary, implying the inclusion of Anakin in the Jedi and alluding to the exclusion of Palpatine as not a Jedi)

bika - here. 

so essentially, “We are jedi, and we are together, and Palpatine is not, and this matters for the future.”

“Haj Dai, Anakin. Paienoah kodaih bika.” || ● Simplified Meaning: Yes, Anakin. We are here together, now and forever.

Literal Meaning

Haj Dai - literally ‘Force Wills’, a reassuring ‘yes’.

[Anakin]

Paienoah - We are (in a permanent state, and this has implications for the future) [italics stress is on ‘are’]

kodaih - Exclusionary ‘We’ - all of us jedi (exclusionary, implying the inclusion of Anakin in the Jedi and alluding to the exclusion of Palpatine as not a Jedi)

bika - here. 

so essentially, “Of course, Anakin. We are jedi, and we are together, and Palpatine is not, and this matters for the future.”

Thanks to @jasontoddiefor @ghostwriterofthemachine for the translations to Dai Bendu, their fancrafted Jedi Language!

[lucisfavoritedemon]

Accidental Attachment Part 4

Pairing: Steve x reader

Warnings: character death, talk of revenger, some fluff, little bit of angst, Tony Stark being friend of the year (yes it’s a warning)

Word Count: 2846

A/N: This is not beta read, so all mistakes are mine. I tweaked the plot of CA: TWS slightly. 

Enjoy!

I figured I would take this time while Steve was gone to hang out with some of the other Avengers. Though the only one I really “enjoyed” talking to was Tony. As much crap as I give him, he’s a really nice guy. He is like a mentor for me. He took on the challenge of helping me control my emotions to control my abilities. No one else was as kind to me as he was, well, minus Steve.

“Hey, where’s Rogers?”

“He left to go on a mission last night. He didn’t say where, but it seemed urgent.”

“Ah, probably Washington with Nat. She also left last night.”

“Probably.”

“So, did you two talk?”

“We did, and we don’t know.”

“What? Come on this has to be some sort of joke right? I’m being punked.”

“No. We both agreed that we would see how we handle being apart, and if we both feel it is difficult to be apart, then we know that it’s meant to be.”

“I see. Do you think it’ll work out?”

“I hope so. I really like him, Stark, and our coffee date went even better than I could have imagined.”

“You guys went on a coffee date?”

“Yeah, it was kind of both of our ideas. It was perfect though. Even better than I could have imagined.”

“I’m glad. I really hope, on a serious note, that everything works out for you two.”

“Thanks Stark.”

“So, since you are free till Rogers gets back, want to redo our dinner plans from the other night? No more surprise guests. Just you, me, and Mrs. Potts.”

“Okay. Just no more locking me in rooms. That was not fun for any of us.”

“Okay. I’m sorry about that, but hey, it kind of worked did it not?”

“I guess. Had you not done that, we wouldn’t have gone to train together, and we wouldn’t have gotten personal.”

“You two got personal, but you two aren’t a thing?”

“Not that kind of personal Stark. Get your head out of the gutter.”

“Oh you meant talking about personal things.”

“Yes.”

“Take that as a good thing he doesn’t talk about his personal life very much.”

“I’ve noticed. I shared some personal things with him as well. I felt it was only fair.”

“He really is missing out if doesn’t think you two would be a good match.”

“My worry is he’ll meet someone there, and forget all about me.”

“I don’t think that’ll happen. He really likes you. I know he won’t forget about you.”

“You never know Stark. There are many women out there much prettier than I.”

“Stop that. That is not true at all. He would be stupid to just toss you to the side, especially after you both made yourselves vulnerable in front of each other. If he doesn’t see your worth then he must be blind.”

“Thanks Stark.” I smile being genuine.

“Of course. Now, I don’t want to hear you say that ever again.”

“I’ll try not to.”

“Thank you.”

I excuse myself to go freshen up, as Stark walks out. I head to take a shower, and change. I had decided to stay in the tower while Steve was gone. I don’t know why, but I felt like it was safer than staying at my apartment. In a way it was. Stark had the place fully secured with alarm systems and cameras. I knew I would be safer here than in a place where nothing but a locked door was between me and a murderer.

I had just gotten changed and was waiting for a text from Stark when I got a call. I looked down and saw it was Steve, “hey there stranger.”

“Hey.” I could tell he was smiling.

“How has the trip to Washington been so far?”

“Good. Just got back from the mission. I wanted to call and see how you’ve been doing.”

“I’m doing good. You caught me at a good time actually. I was just relaxing after getting ready.”

“May I ask for what?”

“I’m going over to Stark’s for a redemption dinner, after the fiasco from last time, he wants to make things up to me.”

“That’s nice of him.”

“Yeah. I thought so too.”

“I gotta get going, but I’ll call you tonight, okay?”

“Sounds good. Enjoy Washington.”

“I will. Enjoy dinner.”

“I will.”

“Bye.”

“Goodbye Steve.”

I smile, hanging up. He was so sweet. I didn’t expect to hear from him for a while. I was glad his mission was over, but I hoped he would come back soon. I missed him so much. I knew though, that I needed to be patient. Things would work out exactly like they were supposed to.

I soon got a text from Stark saying I could start heading that way. I walk out of the building and go down to the parking garage. I get in my car, and head to Stark’s place. I park my car, and walk in heading up to his place.

“Glad you made it.”

“Thanks Stark. I hope this isn’t another trap.”

“You think I would tell you that Cap really likes you, then ask you to come here and set you up with someone else?”

“Now that you say it out loud, it doesn’t sound like something you would do.”

“See? Nothing to worry about.”

“I guess. I’m just still on edge from what happened the last time. Yeah, things have seemed to work out so far, but I still worry that maybe it won’t.”

“I know you are scared, but I know things will work out between the two of you. Just trust me.”

“The scary part is, I do trust you.” “Thanks. As much as that hurts.”

“I’m sorry. Do you blame me though? You haven't exactly been super trust worthy lately."

"She's right Tony. You did kind of pin her in a corner with her crush, and tried to force them together. They seem to have done just fine on their own. You just needed to give it a little time." Pepper spoke up, walking into the room. 

"Maybe the push was what they needed."

"Can we stop talking about Steve? I came here to take my mind off of it. Not get caught in this conversation all night. If we work out, great. If not, oh well. We'll still be really good friends and that's all that matters."

"See?" Pepper smirked.

"I think they're perfect for each other, and hopefully Steve will realise that."

"I hope so too Stark, but you can't just force it on him. If he doesn’t feel that way about me, it’s no big deal. We’re adults and we have to handle it like adults.”

“You’re right. You’re right. Come on, let's eat, and talk about business.”

“What kind of business Tony?”

“Fury asked me a while ago to modify these Heli carriers, but a couple hours ago he asked me to deactivate the boosters. I’m not sure why he would want to do that, but I want your help to figure out how to do it digitally without going in manually.”

“Seems easy enough.”

“So you’ll help me?”

“Sure. Anything to take my mind off Steve.”

We ate dinner, and afterwards Tony showed me what he was talking about. It didn’t seem too difficult to try and deactivate them virtually. That was till we got an error code, “this isn’t normal. It says we don’t have the authorization to deactivate the boosters.”

“On whose authority?” Tony asked JARVIS.

“Seems to be Nick Fury’s sir.” JARVIS answered.

“Something is not right. Either Fury did not give you those orders, or someone on the inside does not want these Heli carriers deactivated.”

“I may have a solution for that if something goes wrong. I had these made up in case the carriers were hijacked, and it looks like that may be the case,” Stark shows me these targeting chips, “these need to be placed in each Heli carrier for it to work, and the targets to switch.”

“You always think of everything don’t you?”

“I try. We just have to get these to Agent Hill, and get her to have Steve and Nat place them on those carriers.”

“I can deliver them to her if you want.”

“No. The whole point of him going on this mission was to test if you two could stand the tests of being away from each other, and still come back feeling the same way. So, you would compromise the test you both agreed to.”

“Fine. How is Hill going to get it then?”

“I’ll send it to her. Or more like JARVIS will.”

“Right. Do you really trust JARVIS to get it to her safely?” Just then my phone began to ring, so I excused myself for a minute. I looked down and saw that Steve was calling, “hello?”

“Hey, look I may be a little longer than I thought.” He sounded very shaken up.

“Steve, is everything alright?”

“It’s Fury. He’s gone.”

“What do you mean gone?”

“I mean dead, no longer alive, killed.”

My heart sank, and my stomach dropped at his words. Fury had hand picked me to become an Avenger, and now he was gone. I felt like this was a sign that he had made a mistake in the first place. Choosing me to be a part of this elite group of people, with me having little to no background experience with working well with others.

“Y/n, are you okay?”

“What happened? How did this happen?”

“An assassin shot him through the walls of my apartment.”

“Did you catch the person?”

“Almost, but he was a quick thinker. He caught my shield. He had this metal arm. I’m not sure if you could find anything on any record of an assassin with a metal arm, but whatever info you can find on this guy would bring us one step closer to catching him, and bringing him to justice.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes Steve.”

“Good. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

“Okay.” He hung up quickly after that. I walked back inside, and over to Stark. He could tell something was wrong, and I knew I didn’t hide that very well. I just couldn’t believe that Fury was gone.

“Is everything okay?”

“Fury. He’s...he’s dead…” I looked down as tears threatened to leave my eyes.

“Oh sweetheart,” Tony pulls me into a hug, “it’s gonna be okay. We’re here for you.” He stroked my hair to try and help me calm down.

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” I immediately stopped crying thinking about our previous conversation, “we have to get Agent Hill those targeting chips. We have to help them stop those carriers from launching, and we have to help them find the assassin who killed Nick Fury. That’s what I’m going to do. Do some research on the man that Steve described to me. I’m going to avenge Fury’s death.”

I walked out of there soon after. I headed home and began to do some research on the man Steve described to me. I had to find out who this man was. I called up every person I could. I worked well into the next day when I finally got a lead.

“We have something in the archives for you, but I’m warning you, going after him is not a good idea.” Agent May warned on the other end of the phone.

“Just lay it on me, agent.”

“He goes by the name of the Winter Soldier. He is credited with over dozens of assassinations over the last 50 years. He is highly dangerous, and I do not recommend going after him. No one really knows where he resides. You’re going to be chasing a ghost Y/n. I don’t think it’s worth it.”

“I’m going to do my best to help avenge Fury’s death. I will do all that it takes to find this elusive assassin.”

“Good luck then. Call me if you need any help.”

“Thanks Agent May, I’ll keep that in mind.”

I quickly hung up, and went to lay down. It had been a long day, and I just added extra work to my load. It was already almost 4am here, and I had yet to sleep. I closed my eyes thinking that I would only sleep for a little bit, but I ended up sleeping till 10am.

“Y/n! Where are you? I thought we were meeting for breakfast! It’s more like brunch now!” Tony shouted.

“Come on kiddo, where are you?” Clint asked.

“I’m in my room.”

I heard them both walk in, and sit on either side of my bed. I had completely forgotten about going out with them after Steve asked me to do some research on the guy with the metal arm. 

“Are you feeling okay?” Tony asked.

“Yeah. I just didn’t go to bed till 4 this morning. I just wanted to sleep for a couple of hours, but I guess that didn’t happen.”

“Why did you stay up that late?” Clint looked at me and Tony confused.

“Research.”

“For?” He questioned.

“Trying to find the assassin who killed Fury.”

“That’s a suicide mission.”

“I know.”

“Come on, get up. We were supposed to be at the restaurant 30 minutes ago.”

“Okay, okay. Let me shower, then we can go eat.”

“At a girl.”

I roll my eyes at Tony’s comment before shooing them away. I then go hop in the shower real quick, and get dressed. I do a simple makeup look before going out to my living room, “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

“That was quick.” Clint spoke, kind of shocked.

“Just because I'm a girl, doesn't mean I take ten hours to get ready."

"Let's just go before you two end up sparring in her living room." Stark spoke up, heading to the door. 

Clint and I followed him out of my apartment, and we headed to get breakfast. I let the two of them banter back and forth. I was still focused on this mysterious assassin. I didn’t touch most of my food, and that bothered Stark, or concerned him. Whatever the case, he stuck around my apartment afterwards.

“I sent those chips to Hill, so hopefully she’ll get them to Nat and Cap. You know, to stop the launch of those carriers.”

“Yeah. I just hope they’re okay. I can’t help but worry about them. I know that I’m not okay. Fury was the only reason I stayed, or that was till I met Steve. Fury took me in when no one else wanted me, and now he’s gone.”

“I know. I don’t know how to help you, but why don’t you come stay with me for a few days, or until Cap gets back. I think it may help you take your mind off things.”

“Thanks Tony, but I don’t want to intrude.”

“You’re not intruding. I insist. I don’t want you to be alone right now.”

I give a small chuckle, “is that worry I hear in your voice?”

“Laugh all you want, but I’m serious.”

“Okay, okay. Just for a few days.”

“Sounds good to me. Pack a bag, and let’s go.”

“Okay, I’ll just meet you downstairs.”

He smiles, and walks himself out. I grab a duffle bag and begin to pack a few outfits for the next few days. I was about to head downstairs when my phone started to ring. I picked it up quickly, not even looking at who it was.

“Y/n, it’s me.” A man’s voice spoke on the other end.

“Steve, hey. How’s it going?”

“Not good. Since Fury’s death, things here have not been going great. I wanted you to know I’m okay, but won’t be able to communicate with you until things get straightened out here. I’m so sorry. I wish I could say things will turn out okay, but I don’t know.”

“Hey, don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay. You get everything out there situated, I’ll still be here when you get back. Just to let you know I’m staying with Stark for a few days. He doesn’t want me being alone right now.”

“Thank him for me. He better keep you safe, and take care of you for me.” “I know he will. I’ll talk to you when you get back okay?”

“Okay. Please stay safe.”

“I will Steve. Plus, I’ll be with Stark. They’ll have to go through him before they get to me anyways.”

He chuckles on the other end, “I really needed that. Thank you. Talk to you soon okay?”

“Okay. Goodbye Steve.”

Our conversation ends, and I can’t help but feel there is more going on than what he is saying. I really hope everything is okay, and that he will be alright. I finished packing the rest of my stuff and headed downstairs. Stark sat in the car waiting for me. I just climbed in, and the car set off for the tower. I really hoped that things were okay back in D.C.

Taglist:

@soccer-100000

[mysticfyres]

Fixing SAO Season 1

{Disclaimer: This is just a collection of thoughts I shared with @alien-outpost about changes I would make to fix SAO season 1. Note that I have not read the manga, and only watched the anime through season 2 (which I mostly liked).}

My primary idea: Kirito and Asuna are both the main characters, and season 1 focuses on their journey together through the world.

Kirito and Asuna are given competing strengths and weaknesses, as hinted at in the first two episodes but not fully explored:

Kirito is a genius when it comes to video game knowledge, fighting skills, etc., but has absolutely no idea how to communicate effectively with others. As such he is horrendously bad at raids and boss fights, as well as coming up with any type of strategy that involves more than just him.

Asuna remains a video game newbie, and is near useless on her own, especially at the beginning. However, she has excellent communication and leadership skills that make her invaluable in any group or big fight.

Rather than Kirito being overpowered and Asuna being near useless, this division of expertise shows the viewers that both skill and good communication are important to success. Likewise, they are both forced to rely on each other to get through the world. Bonus points if they really hate each other at the beginning but their common need forces them to team up.

These competing strengths and weaknesses could also be emphasized for humor:

Kirito’s knowledge and superiority complex could be played up for laughs, as he overexplains things down to the tiniest details when literally nobody asked. Even though he remains amazing at combat, we also get to enjoy when he gets knocked down a peg every time he tries to talk to people and can’t string two sentences together.

Asuna’s total lack of game knowledge can also get used for jokes, both in situations where she can’t grasp even the most basic video game logic (something like standing at a vendor stall for 20 minutes because she can’t figure out how to buy an item), or where she manages to succeed at a seemingly impossible task despite her incompetency (like failing he way through a dungeon 10 levels above her own).

Along the way, both of their character flaws get acknowledged and challenged by the other:

Kirito goes into SAO with a huge, unwarranted ego that serves as a sort of parody of toxic masculine gamer behavior. Over time Asuna slowly breaks down that persona and convinces him that rather than life being about “being the best,” life is about the connections we form with others. Side note, all the side characters hate Kirito at first and he has to work on his personality to earn their respect.

Asuna goes into SAO with a huge bias about games, gamers and the merits of competition, thinking games are a waste of time, gamers are all rude sweaty men, and that people get too worked up over competitions that don’t matter. Over time Kirito slowly breaks down her biases by showing her that gaming has different facets which appeal to different people (ex. fishing guy), not all gamers are bad, and that competition can either be fun or a driving factor to progress (ex. escaping SAO).

Both Kirito’s and Asuna’s growth also gives us potential to explore greater messages about life, alternate realities, and video games in general. Among these are:

The potential for video games to help someone improve their relationships with others and help them grow themselves as a person, rather than just turning them into a toxic asshole.

Using the opportunity to start over in a new world/reality not to become someone entirely different, but to become the best version of yourself. (Self-positive anti-escapism)

And most of all, the idea that even in tragedy or unfamiliar circumstance, building relationships with the people around you, combined with inner reflection, is how you can not only survive but thrive (i.e. escape SAO)

Asuna and Kirito both get one final challenge to prove they have finished their growth as characters

Asuna’s final challenge comes first, when Asuna and Kirito’s roles are reversed in the final fight against Kayaba.

Asuna’s people skills help her recognize what’s up with Heathcliff, and SHE is the one who has to fight him.

The fight becomes much higher stakes because we’re genuinely not sure if our former noob has grown enough in fighting skill to win

She wins with specific advice she got from Kirito, not from hacks, and SAO shuts down

Kirito’s final challenge is documented in the second half of season 1, when Asuna gets captured.

Kirito discovers early on that the ONLY way to free Asuna is by getting the help of all of the clans, which he can only do by using the people skills he is only just barely developing.

The season documents him sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing at making these alliances, but finishing his growth as a good person along the way.

Then all the end of season 1 needs is some final tweaks to be a decent ending for the Kirito/Asuna arc:

To contrast the S1 twist villain, I would have Kirito know about the mind-control plot from the very beginning, but be unable to prove it to anyone.

We can throw away Suguha’s whole arc with Kirito, I think the same themes of using online communication to say what we can’t say in person get handled better later.

Nobuyuki isn’t a rapist, and all the cutscenes with him and Asuna are instead about them debating the nature of free will

Instead of being lame, the final fight with Nobuyuki can be a giant battle against a mind-controlled army that Asuna and Kirito participate in together along with Kirito’s gathered forces.

In the final battle both Kirito and Asuna get to show off moments of personal growth that demonstrate how much they have rubbed off on each other in the best possible way.

Kirito and Asuna escape Alfheim together and fall in love.

At least from what I’ve seen, pretty much everything else after the escape from Alfheim can stay the same. Let me know what you think, and thanks for reading!