#iirc i was inspired by someone in the fandom a Long Time Ago that basically said darius as a grim reaper pls

[diavorchid]

[ Tears of Themis - Darius Morgan ]

is he a grim reaper in this au? a ferryman? you can decide

[strangerthings4theories]

Hello dearies <3 can't remember if you talked about this in some of your older posts (can't seem to find anything on your blog), but I was curious, if any of you read Runaway Max, what do you think about the *spoiler* dead cat on fire episode :o a long time ago someone (can't remember who, sorry) in the fandom said Billy might have had an episode of dissociation :o

I do talk about it briefly in this post discussing the similarities between Billy and the Demogorgon. This is a great topic though, so I'm happy to expand on what I said. It'd be useful to switch back and forth between Doylist (= focusing on the writer's logic/intentions) and Watsonian (= explaining it in-universe) interpretations here. Since my previous post addresses the topic from a more Doylist perspective, I'll tackle that first.

The Doylist answer:

I believe the Duffers had a discussion with the author of Runaway Max where they said, "Yeah, we want Billy to 'echo' the Demogorgon. What can you do with that?" Together, they came up with the idea of giving Billy a parallel scene to Dart eating Dustin's cat. After all, as I've mentioned multiple times recently, Dart is basically Billy's Demogorgon twin.

The dead-cat-on-fire scene was calculated to achieve the same thematic effect as Dart eating Mews. It's not truly horrific because the cat's already dead. Still, it's the moment Max realizes Billy is dangerous.

Intriguingly, the scene also calls back to El in S1 being asked to hurt a cat in the lab. She refuses, and Dr. Brenner has her dragged to the closet, where - in her panic - she kills the guards holding her.

So, as you can see, the theme of hurting cats links Billy with El and the Demogorgon. You could write an entire essay on what it tells us about them 😁 And that's no accident. The Duffers had to plan this out AND collaborate with the author to keep their theme consistent.

(See also: the book describing Billy's Camaro as an underwater creature, shark-like, etc, when the Demogorgon was inspired by the shark in Jaws. The Duffers had to tell the author to do this.)

Now for the Watsonian answer:

Yes, I could see Billy having a dissociative episode there. People tend to dissociate when they feel deeply threatened. If we study the scene closely, we can make the case that Billy does indeed feel that way.

When the scene begins, Billy's upset by his friend Sid besting him on a history paper. Or at least, that's what the dialogue suggests. Billy's not the type to care about grades, so the real reason has to be much deeper than that. My theory is Billy, the "king" of his friend group, has started to feel threatened by Sid. Previously his most trusted "advisor," Sid has grown disenchanted with his behavior and stopped listening to him. The history paper represents Sid's breakaway moment where, in Billy's eyes, he's making a bid for the throne. When you depend on the kingship to feel safe, like Billy does, losing it isn't just uncomfortable. It feels like a threat to your survival.

So, yeah. It's a great setup for a blackout episode.

Whether Billy blacks out or not, his end goal is the same: send a message to Sid. Let him know that threats to Billy's power will not be tolerated. And he succeeds because, iirc, we don't see Sid again. Only Wayne, the crazed hype-man, is present when Billy breaks Nate's arm. (Another scene where Billy probably dissociates)

Thanks for the great question! 😁✨

[whetstonefires]

hey for the 40 questions thing, 9, 10 and 28??

Okay first of all, massive props to you for sending a signed ask, that’s so rare, I did the hugest double take at your not being a Nonny. 😂💗 Anonymous asks are fine and all when people are being pleasant, but it’s always a little weird because my brain flips back and forth between treating all anon asks as being from the same faceless entity and being perfectly aware that the sender is a person, may or may not be the same person as any previous ask, and may even have a name I recognize. Internet gothic.

9) Which fic has been the hardest to write?

Oof. Quantifying that is...tricky, especially if I consider all my Cirque segments as separate fics. Disqualifying those, and everything that never made it to post-ready because it defeated me in the borning....

But A Walking Shadow is sort of Earth-3 adjacent but my battle with it is the battle with the compulsion to try to hew close to canon even after very deliberately tossing it out the window in chapter 1 on the grounds of ‘too goshdarn depressing, everyone is alive at all times.’ Stg the Titans death rate is so wild, after they got the go-ahead to start just making characters up they were allowed to kill people basically whenever, because nobody else needed them for anything.

And special mention should go to the 10k ‘chapter’ of my 5+1 AU collection fic that I finally posted just recently, after several years ago it decided that it wanted to be a full-length novel. But Self (I said) I Don’t Want To Develop An Entire Economy And Political History For The FFVII Setting So Cloud Can Make His Adopted Big Brother Be In Charge Of It! So that has kicked my ass pretty thoroughly. For about four years. 😂 I finally forced the opening (where Shinra collapses and small Sephiroth is abandoned in Nibelheim and Mrs. Strife finds him) to be done, and posted that.

But the thing is, neither of these would have expanded in the way they have and managed to destroy me so thoroughly were they not, in certain ways, extremely easy to write. So they seem like they can’t be the real correct responses.

So I guess the winner is that Red Hood And The Outlaws 10K fic I still owe to an anon whom I can’t consult about specs or anything because they made the request anonymously. Because I had to read Lobdell’s vol 2 run to fulfill the request and as some of you will recall, this process slaughtered me. I cannot with Lobdell. After great suffering I ran aground repeatedly on the shoals of Brainzarro.

NONNY IF YOU’RE STILL OUT THERE PLEASE CONTACT ME I’M VERY SORRY FOR BEING OVER A YEAR LATE, WE NEED TO TALK.

10) Which fic has been the easiest to write?

 Ooh, this is hard to assess for similar reasons. Sometimes stuff that took less effort wasn’t actually easier as-such, as a task, I just chose not to do it as well or as thoroughly; does that count?

Chaptered stories are inherently harder, of course, but generally the reason my chapter fics got so long in the first place was they were extraordinarily easy to write, and a great deal of them happened without too much suffering on my part. Either because the premise posed no significant complexities, or because I found it perennially inspiring.

Eventually that sort of progress always hits a wall, though, at least if you’re me. And you have to do the Work part. (This is pretty universal afaik.) I have several one-shot AUs to which continuations have been requested and in many cases sketched or begun, but not finished or posted because in addition to fleshing out the worldbuilding I have to grapple with questions like how much further I can take this concept without abandoning the particular tone in which I told the first part, and whether the tone or perspective I used is in fact the chief draw and so there’s no point.

This I eventually determined to be the case for ‘the tune without the words,’ the one where Jim Gordon runs into post-Under The Hood Jason at a bar, thinks he’s a traumatized veteran, and tries to recruit him to the GCPD.

There’s a plot there about Police Officer Jason, and the batfam reactions and interpersonal drama and whether and when and how Jason would fuck it up, and the identity porn of Batman knowing that Officer Todd Peters is the Red Hood and finding that telling Jim and not telling Jim seem equally unconscionable...but it’s not the same story as that scene in the bar. It’s the story that happens next, because of it. So I cut the bar scene loose from its hypothetical plot and posted it and it’s been quite well-liked.

But it’s certainly not the easiest, even though most of what’s in the posted fic went together fairly readily iirc, because giving up on making the subsequent story happen was such a fight.

...

What is ‘easy?’ What is ‘a fic?’ Watch me perish yet again at the intersection of epistemology and ontology. There are no simple questions there is only doom.

28) Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.

OKAY THIS IS A DIFFERENT DIFFICULT. At least I’m not being asked to pick my Most Favorite, I’m so bad at favorites, I have to deduce my own favorite tea from behavioral cues.

I’m in the for-me bizarre position that more than three people whose fic I really enjoy are like, friends of mine and might see this. I cannot say any of them, the ones excluded would be Excluded, which I cannot do. So strangers only! Semi-randomly selected from my catalogue of faves!

Okay, let’s see. First one...AO3 user elanor_pam. We technically share no fandoms but I read their stuff for some reason (someone’s AO3 bookmarks I’m sure) and they just. They have really good sentences. I wind up caring intensely about whatever the story is about even if I have literally no idea what it is. And dialogue that’s just that really sweet balance of stylized and naturalistic. 

I’m following their fantasy webcomic The Path To Timbala, which is really good so far and also I’m doing the art historian/birdwatcher thing I do with like astolat where it’s like ‘hmm, yes, I recognize that theme/story element/aesthetic preference/pacing trick from [fanwork], how interesting to see it unfiltered through anyone else’s worldbuilding!’

Second. Mm. Slightly arbitrarily and on almost opposite grounds, Persephone_Kore, who hasn’t updated in like four years but contributed to a majority of my favorite fics in the Girl Genius fandom, which is not a crowded one, and wrote a couple others solo. Good combination of humor with pretty faithful characterization. Good rhythm in sentence composition, which allows for humorous asides without breaking narrative flow.

Third...hm, I’m gonna pick metisket for the distressing ability to drag my guts clear out on almost any topic. But especially fullmetal alchemist. Mostly I like that one AU where Al is dead and Ed is homicidally insane. But like, constructively.

None of these people are still writing fic and the webcomic just went on hiatus for six weeks, I am useless as a source of recs, have a nice day. 😂💞