#lightdancer's fanfics

[lightdancer1]

One of the bits I'm really enjoying with In the Company of Witches and Slayers:

The Tara Maclay of this AU does duplicate a few of Willow's canonical notes, namely the equivalent of Something Blue, and resurrecting Willow in the same way that canon Willow resurrected Buffy. I also, like in my other works, use the gift that Amber Benson left of the evil Tara with Andrei Kurgan's grimoire but in a way more like what canon thought it did but didn't quite.

Instead of the magic addiction thing Tara goes on the same power trip I treat canon Willow's Dark Willow phase as and from her POV she's a victim of physical abuse who gains the power to actually hurt Glory instead of being hurt by her (there's a bit of a theme that the two villains that hurt her worst in this canon actually vehemently dislike her AU counterpart because she actually literally hurt them and made them feel it). As with canon Willow her worst traits are the results of Black magic corrupting her and less as addiction and more like the One Ring.

This AU's Dark Willow, by contrast, is a long-standing problem of suppressed rage and a combination of multiple hits with a trauma nailbat for someone with reality warping powers which is an explosive combination....and in each case the idea that there ever really WAS a Dark Willow or a Dark Tara is rejected by both Willow and Tara for very similar reasons but staunchly believed by their friends.

And since it's an unreliable narrator effect here each is equally right and wrong. Black magic really is innately corrupting because it grants the power to twist reality on a whim without any concern for the consequences and as power tends to corrupt, absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. Does this have the equivalent effect of DID or Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk?

At least in my stories at a Doylist level, no, but in that Watsonian level the contrast between a very powerful sorcerer in full 'My Precious' mode with the One Ring and their ordinary selves is so much like it that people without the arcane knowledge to understand it can be easily forgiven for believing that's what they're seeing.

It's also that good old fashioned Scooby double standard, too. Amy Madison in particular is 'Willow if reality handed her only the bad cards and none of the good ones'. This AU's Willow recognizes that and has sympathy for her within limits and keeps trying to appeal to her good side, which is a note missed with the canon Willow where they just forgot that Amy was one of her closest friends who turned to evil. And until the Twilight war Amy is seen in-universe through Willow's eyes but after it she's seen through the eyes of other characters and she's a murderous evil witch who tries to wield human sacrifice, blood magic, and is every bit as power hungry, petty, and jealous as her canon counterpart.

Equally since this AU's Willow is invincible unless she's facing foes capable of using her weaknesses (which naturally I tend to do precisely to add creative tension) her standards of threats are skewed and what to her is a nuisance is an existential threat to everyone else. Amy and Tara, unlike in other cases, are by no means weak, they are exceptionally powerful. Since Willow is the most powerful being in the *universe*, mystically, everyone else is second rate. Second rate to the most powerful being in the infinite expanse of a single universe allows massive amounts of leg room and Tara is the second most powerful sorceress in the entire setting and Amy the third.

And Amy, if she's not facing Willow or Faith with a friendly weapon that nullifies magic like the Scythe or Olaf's Hammer, is a murderously creative juggernaut who can and does steamroll multiple enemies at once with trivial ease. This is for the villains is Buffy on hard mode, the villains that last are more badass than their canon counterparts by default.

And where canon only hinted at the worst things Willow did indirectly and in a way where people can ignore it, which was IMO one of the most foolish things it did, because if you're going to go there, go all the way or not at all, this show makes it explicit and in a way that parallels Faith and Tara just as canon pairs Faith and Willow.

And just as with canon Willow these particular aspects are explicitly a case of 'Dark Side brain rot' and very directly NOT what the actual Tara would do, and it's one of the things that haunts her most. Where canon Willow never really had to face the consequences of her actions due to the bullet (and that too is one of the best reasons for the Tara resurrection storyline) , this AU's Tara very much does face them and grows into fully being the person she could have been. Much like how canon Tara made major mistakes and was the rare Buffyverse character allowed to actually grow and become wiser from them.

This is also why a couple of my other AUs hinge on 'Willow looks into the future, sees her canon path, goes 'Hell no' and rejects it and it turns out that rejecting it works but there are some steep prices for trying'. Essentially when the characters look at canon Season 6 they balk and go 'gross, no thank you' but this setting being what it is, it fucks them up with a different nailbat because it's the Whedonverse and his characters only get yea tier nice things.

[ultranos]

Hi Nos, I was reading the fic that LightDancer recommended the other day & I saw that 2 of the chapters had endnotes linking back to posts you had made, saying that they served as inspiration for some of the plot points/characterization that had occurred in those chapters. And so I have to ask, did you give them the ok to do so? And if yes, have you read the fic for yourself/what are your thoughts on it? Also, what is your policy on people using your posts to help make their own fanfic/fan art?

I know the fic in question. The author did contact me to let me know, which was cool. I pretty much have an open policy on people using stuff I post for inspiration for their own works. I appreciate a heads-up about it, but that's more so that I can check it out myself and post a link if people wanted than me granting any sort of permission. (I'm very much a copyleftist, really. Attribution and hat-tips are nice, but ideas are meant to be shared and built upon. So remix freely!)

As for my thoughts, I thought it was well-written, if dark, and a pretty good take of "reality ensuing" with logical severe consequences for the Gaang's characterization as presented in the comics. There are only so many ways things can go when some people are that high on their own self-righteousness as that characterization is, and this is a bleakly plausible outcome if consequences ever got involved.

[julietwiskey1]

Ursa is a great character for fanfics (as long as comics are ignored) because she has enough details to make her a complex character, but is vague enough to make her easily suited to any story.

We know very little about Ursa aside from what we can interpret from “Zuko Alone” and Azula’s hallucinations. From that we learn that she is would do anything to protect Zuko and that she and Azula did not have a great relationship. She is also the granddaughter of an avatar.

So it’s up to the writer to give Ursa a background and expanded characteristics. There are a few things that need to be kept in mind, but otherwise she is up to the writers to make her interesting with little risk of making her out of character.

That’s why lightdancer’s interpretation of the character feels just as accurate as the one from “Dominion”. Both very different interpretations that feel just as valid.

Ursa is by far my second favorite character for just how her relationships affect others and who she could be.

I think just by the reading fic's Ursa has become my second favorite character in ATLA.

[lightdancer1]

One of the running themes of my stories in both original fiction and fanfics is that simply having great power does not in itself equal wisdom or imagination in using it. The great and powerful step on rakes and the overpowered are prone to complacency. With my Sandman stories Death mostly avoids these pitfalls but Lucifer Morningstar at times isn’t so lucky. They are bar none the most powerful entity besides their father and their brother.

They are well aware of that fact. It leads them to outsmart themself at times from simple boredom. The other Endless are also prone to more deliberately monstrous acts at times when they interact with mortals because they spend almost all their time in their realms where their will is absolute and their power total. This invariably creates a distortion effect and a predisposition to hubris.

It is not that Death is morally better or superior, in any real sense. She’s, as I write her, more than capable of being petty and blinkered to her siblings, especially the twins and very much plays favorites. She is, however, immune to the “we have spheres where everything that is is us and we are it” syndrome and awareness of her limitations makes her smarter and more pragmatic than her siblings much of the time.

Add to this that her walking out on her job is in Endless terms the ultimate family failure and that she alone failed to grasp her duties in a way that nearly unraveled reality and she was very much humbled at the dawn of time in a way only Destruction comes close to.

In raw power terms only the Presence and the twins Morningstar and Demiurgos are true threats to her. She knows that but wears it lightly because she’s seen the hard limits of great power and what happens when those limits are hit. Almost nothing else like her knows this beyond an abstract level that could surely only happen to someone else.

[lightdancer1]

One of the most frequent motifs in my works, original and fanfic, is a mirror of the Talmudic tale of the four sages in the garden:

The original story speaks of four sages that enter the garden, Ben Azzai, Ben Acher, Ben Azomer, and Akiva. When they entered, Akiva said to them "When you come to the place of pure marble stones, do not say 'Water Water' for it is said that he who speaks untruths shall not live before my eyes."

Ben Azzai looked upon the Shekhinah and died, Ben Acher looked upon it and went mad, Ben Azomer uprooted the plants (became a heretic) and Akiva entered the garden in peace and departed in peace. There will usually be four characters at some point that fit into these various archetypes.

I like this for both the use of four as an arc number and since the original Garden is one of magic and mysticism, it works extremely well for specific stories about magic.

[lightdancer1]

New story up:

This story essentially uses one type of Season 6 Fix-Fic to merge its storyline with that of Season 7, using the Buffyverse's own version of the Multiverse and asking the question "So what happens if Willow does not cross the first uncrossable line at a personal level."

Resurrecting the title character of the show by definition is not that uncrossable line in-universe or out of it. This storyline also uses my patented deconstruction element of 'setting that is still true to itself but where, absent narrative contrivance the people are written like actual people and not plot devices intertwined with fetish fuel.'

Also features a multiversal version of Dark Willow who's actually capital E Evil and has gone very far into 'Beware the Superman' territory whose bid is ultimately grander than that of the First Evil and proves the Ganon who hijacks him, because even the capital E Evil Dark Willows are compulsive overachievers who do six impossible things before breakfast.

My first step into a fandom I've long read fanfic for and seen every season of Buffy, even the cringy last two, and my idea of a redo on those last two. Also featuring elements of the comics.

[lightdancer1]

The fact that I'm on this list for Azula fanfic and not for inventing literal smut tags for a character from the Sandman or writing works in the world where space fascism kills humanity by inches is what amuses me. I was prepared for Thanos jokes. Being 'canceled' for writing Azula as a human being and not a mindless force of evil?

Also having THE Lightdancer and not Lightdancer.

Putz.

Nichya, it looks like everyone's favorite busybody confession blog is attacking you and the Frenchie again (post/682208216828018688/honestly-why-should-we-care-about-the-opinions-of#notes).

Christ, so much bullshit in one single post.

Gotta love how they’re still insisting that we support rape just because we know the difference between kink and abuse. It’s almost as fun as when they say I was raped/abused even after I repeatedly said that shit didn’t happen.

And how in the fuck are all of these people suddenly endorsing everything I do just because they like some of the posts I make about Azula? And for fucks sake I’m pretty sure half of them never even talked to dragomer or interacted with him in any way - how are they “excusing his behavior”? They’ve interacted with me and the frenchie interacted with me therefore we’re all the best of friends? How old is this anon, five?

Saying “Don’t make shit up” (be it refering to the canon events of a cartoon or about real people) means “Don’t ever disagree with me” now? Since when?

[lightdancer1]

One of the things that I think about a lot, and use a lot with my Death stories:

"I shall put up the chairs, lock the universe behind me, and then I shall leave."

That is the phrase which hinges a lot of the questions of 'so what happens after the universe' and the different interpretations of that would hinge a lot of what happens with any given event. The most grimdark prospect that I have with that is my Death Cycle, where Death is locked in an eternal (at least seemingly so) set of timelines and after she's exhausted every prospect of her own destruction at her own hands and is forced to reckon with being both unable to die and to truly have peace from the ever-growing stage of memories things get much worse and darker there. Her abilities to cope with the details of life as an Endless and the truly endless Endless ebb and flow with change the cyclical nature of things.

Factoring in that the Endless experience time as humanity does it, that means she feels every single one of what can range from four billion to twenty trillion years, each second-minute-hour-day-week-month-year-millennium-million years-billion years-trillion years. She is exhausted and incapable of getting it to stop and becomes both immensely cynical and rather bitter not because she doesn't love each version of her siblings, but because she does and each time she loses them and has no ideas where they are, or what happened to them.

By comparison those 'Death actually can die' stories that I've done end up rather more lighter and softer than the ones where she can't. The challenges there stem from the exact opposite, that that which was theorized to be eternal, a comforting barometer that her siblings held true even after Despair's murder and depending on how close I go to canon or not the fate of Morpheus proves temporal, the infinite is finite, the endless ends. It becomes a much more existential terror and the only one who ends up coping well with it is Death herself as the very realization that her burden is not, after all, infinite and everlasting gives her a great relief that stands in contrast to shaken certainties.

Even those who despise her took a certain cold comfort from the understanding that the ways they viewed the world were true, one of which is the idea that Death in the end will turn out the lights. If that also becomes uncertain, a lot of other metaphysics gets shaken in its orbit just as much as if it were proven beyond all doubt that she absolutely cannot die (albeit the Death of the Death Cycle can and does get hurt and that badly, and then heals, sometimes with a growing amount of scars veiled behind a glamor that deceives even her siblings, most of the time).

And it is the version of the Death Cycle with her deep blend of bitterness leavened with aspects of hedonism and ultimately trying to make the world better in each incarnation when she reaches that point and trying to balance out the deep weight of grief and exhaustion with better things who makes periodic cameos in other works.

[lightdancer1]

*Me realizing belatedly that in between AO3 glitches and sleep deprivation I posted the wrong chapter to the wrong story*

Error corrected.

[lightdancer1]

A small scene from my as-yet future She-Ra AU:

Destiny hinged in manners none could have foreseen in what otherwise would have been one of scores, hundreds of interminable raids by the Horde on small villages. The squalid small change of war. The hindsight of the tragedy that began there, of the slow smashing of the lines between the cold and uncaring Galaxy and blissfully ignorant Etheria meant the tale was often told wrongly, magnifying events with a drama that was there, but unlike that of the actual event.

In the tale told often, it was two girls who stood with incomprehension and hate in their eyes, shouting and then the one who had never been chosen in her life, before, drew the blade and bellowed the phrase that changed the world.

In reality amidst a burning town and sounds of panic and fear there were two girls that stood with anger and tears in their eyes, the blonde falling to her knees in front of the brunette, begging her to change her path.

"Shadow Weaver is proud of you, Catra. You got what you always wanted. She respects you. You don't have to worry about being disrespectful anymore. I made that promise to keep you safe."

Catra shook her head with tears.

"You always needed to be the hero."

She sighed.

"Adora, I made my choice. I have explained to you why. You won't listen."

Her voice became softer. "I'm sorry."

The blade was in her hands as she looked at it.

The stories told of the transformation phrase being shouted as it had been in the clash with the strange creature from the Whispering Woods. It was spoken in a broken whisper, echoes of a dying dream and the birth screams of a nightmare.

"For the honor of Greyskull."

There was a blinding flash of eerie white light, inhumanly bright and with a strange warmth, a small Sun blazing uncaged. Adora put her hands in front of her face and yet she was sunburned as if she'd walked in the heart of the Crimson Waste. Her eyes opened, spots swimming for a moment and there it stood. The thing that took her....the person she'd sworn to protect over all else from her.

It was eight feet tall, claws digging into the ground in open-toed golden boots. Catra's rightful color of red changed for an eerie and unnatural white and golden hue, a new headdress and helm instead of her Horde-helm, the sigil of the destiny that could have been hers. She had been a cat and now she seemed a lionness, a queen among cats. Adora had always enjoyed her size advantage, one of the reminders of what fate and Shadow Weaver had decreed for them.

Now she looked at what the Princesses had done to her......her Catra, the woman she......the woman who was *hers.* With an angry shout she raised the stun baton and lunged only to have the being's vast hand catch her arm in a motion of speed that she couldn't quite grasp.

"I'm sorry," spoke an inhumanly clear and beautiful voice like a distorted mockery of her Catra's and then the hand let go of hers and she found herself flung into Lonnie and the others, who stared in mute shock at the being that began to move. In a span of three minutes a battle easily won turned at the presence of a white-clad superpowered entity of a nature that had not been seen in a thousand years.

From the command tank's door Adora looked at the transformed being with the look of utter hatred and incomprehension that set paths down their future destiny.

"They won't be allowed to keep you!" Her voice echoed, a cold and clear challenge.

"I'll get you back! You belong with me!"

The leonine figure rested her sword on the ground and her gaze was weighted with sorrow.....and then she turned her back on her. The hatred grew the greater.