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bugwolfsstuff · 1 year ago

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More W.I.Ps Yay

Psychopomp

Summary: Travis has psychopomp powers, Connor likely does too but no one knows other than Travis himself. Travis decides to summon Luke for some reason.

Notes to myself:

[the no good bad evil oneshot about Luke and Travis]

[Travis summons Luke]

[Make sure there has to be a lifeline that keeps Travis alive during the ritual.]

[Have his lifeline accidentally be Katie]

[Have Katie show up near the end]

[He compares the whispering to Katie talking so much, and that causes things to spitball and anchor his life]

["Great, just what I needed—Katie's voice in surround sound," he grumbled, a desperate attempt at humour in the face of the spectral onslaught.]

[Diaktoros- Guide, Messenger]

[Athanatos Diaktoros- Immortal guide]

["What are you doing?" Luke said

Travis rips the blanket off himself and throws it on the ground, suddenly disgusted by its existence.

"Don't throw my blanket".]

[Have Travis have a panic attack when Katie arrives because he's so scared of what she thinks]

[Have Travis refer to him and Katie as a demented demigod Persephone and Hades]

Small extract:

"Hey..."

"Mmm...five more minutes," I mumbled, trying to get at least a few more moments of sleep. The last few nights have been sleepless and filled with tossing and turning, nightmares and a bunch of other stuff I don't wanna talk about; sleep was something I really needed right now.

"Hey, Trav."

I shoved a pillow over my head. "Go away". I don't care if it was Cecil, Chris, or Connor—wow, there are alot of C names in this cabin. What is Hermes' deal with names that start with a C?

"Travis Thomas Stoll. Wake. Up. Now."

That wasn't even close to my middle name. I don't even think I have a middle name. But before I could even point that fact out, a small fist decided to acquaint itself with my stomach.

So it was Connor.

That little shithead.

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2. Who is the monster? the children?

Summary: Magnus Chase/Norse myth oneshot of Loki's 'monster' children being brought to Odin. From the third person view of Hel.

Notes to myself:

[F you Odin]

[Think of a nickname for Jormungandr because I ain't calling him by his full name for the entire shot.]

[Forgot Hel was the youngest midway through this, so let's pretend Hel is freakishly (horrible phrasing) strong]

[Technically, a monster isn't a bad thing to be. It just has bad associations]

[Fun fact: Monster derives from the Latin monstrum, itself derived ultimately from the verb moneo—to remind, warn, instruct, or foretell

[höggspjót—chopping spear. It takes its name from Old Norse högg, stroke, blow, slaughter, beheading and spjót, "spear]

[They are so gonna use that on the snake :(]

Small extract:

She assumes they must be young because they are only as big as Fenrir. Not as big as her mom or other Jotun.

Jormungandr hissed in her arms. She was playing with him when the warriors came with their pointy weapons and red faces, so he refused to let go of her. Even when the warriors pointed their höggspjót at him and

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3. Wine Child: chapter two draft 4? Fuck what number are we on?

Summary: Percy's pov of the de aged Mr D fanfic. Hebe shows up, dumps 8yr old Dio at camp. Ruins Percy's date. Dives into Dio's demigod trauma.

Notes to myself:

[Work on chapter title]

[Dio has a sword, where does he get the sword? fuck knows. Hebe gave the 8yr old a sword for funsies]

[He's wearing a girls outfit and has wild curly hair]

[make him punch Percy in the balls]—has been changed to Will now.

Small extract:

Did I mention that she's holding a very alive-looking, violently squirming gym bag?

"Well, it's a funny story, really." She said, which meant in god language: It was very much not funny, but you better laugh or I vaporize you.

She twirled the gym bag in her hand as she talked, pulling it up by the straps and tipping it upside down like a very angry yoyo.

Whatever was in the bag really didn't like that, which to be fair, I'd be pretty cranky if some goddess shoved me in a gym bag and then started playing with the bag like a yoyo.

"What I didn't account for was how whiney he was. So then I thought, hmm, where was the best place where he could learn to appreciate youth? Nowhere else but summer camp!"

#Wolffox's writing #pjo #wolffox speaks #percy jackson #percy jackson heroes of olympus #heros of olympus #magnus chase and the gods of asgard #fic writing #Only 3 w.i.ps cus i have lots of them but have been only working on these three for the past week

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rainbowdelicsunshine · 1 year ago

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desire and hate for piper!

Desire: What's one thing your OC wants more than anything in the world? Are they open with that desire? Why or why not? What would they do to fulfill it?

Freedom for her and her family to do as they wish and please with their life!

For example, Piper would love it if people stopped being judgemental about her relationship with Chucky and Tiffany (mostly the three of them being poly), OceanBerry (aka where they live) doesn't judge one bit but certain people in Hackensack (where Piper goes to work and where the kids all go to school) do judge quite a bit, especially older folks

Hate: What does your OC hate? Why? How do they act towards the object of their hatred?

Being human and her past life as a human, she hates it to the point that she rarely brings it up to anyone that she was even human in the first place

She only told Chucky and Tiffany anything about her past life as a human years later around the time Glen and Glenda were toddlers just so Glen and Glenda understood where their Mama came from like they did their Mommy and Daddy (as much as three to four-year-olds were able)!

A Small Summary of Her Past Life as a Human: She had a very shitty, cold, and distant family where she never was able to have a bond with anyone from her family, not her parents, not her grandparents, and not even her younger siblings really acknowledged their oldest sister's existence

In her teen years (around 14-15) to escape the monotony and feelings of fading into the background of her own life, she took the first chance she could to be whisked away from her dead-end hometown in Southern Oregon

Unfortunately, this job was to be a drug mule to various crime syndicates and drug cartels around the US (and sometimes Canada and Mexico), which lasted for a long time in Piper's life

After she had turned 18, she realized how dangerous and restricting this job truly was, she found the easiest way at the time to disappear to create a new and better name for herself, which turned out to be a knock-off Jem and the Holograms doll and a book of occult magic she had stowed away for years at that point

After transferring her soul into the doll, she staged her human body's "death", changed her last name to Vogal, and ran off into the night like she never existed

The first thing she did in her life as a doll was to receive her GED after missing out on the last half of middle school and the entirety of high school, which was when she began her act of telling people that she was a "little person" who had "major dwarfism", which oddly seems to work every, single, time!

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My gosh, there's so much that I've just spitballed about here, I really hope you don't mind that my good friend! This was actually a load of fun to talk about, hence the length!

Thank you so much again, I really hope to hear from you again soon, and have a fantastic day!!

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captain-kit-adventuress · 2 months ago

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I'm not a superfan of Andor--I still haven't finished the last two epsidoes, and I will, but I haven't yet--but I will chime in for the defence of OP's argument.

Week-to-week was how all television ever produced used to be. Streaming has induced the "bingeing all at once" brainrot and it's absolutely showing. And before anyone dismisses this as my being an old crank ranting about how things aren't the same anymore, let me assure you it's not about change. It's that how we interacted with television, and then each other, has completely changed in ways that people have forgotten to remember, or maybe didn't really experience, and it is killing us as human beings.

The waiting was part of the fandom. And in those gaps was where the community was built. The discussions, the art, the staying-up-late spitballing about crazy theories that were absolutely not true but fun to talk about, the in-jokes, all of that came out of spaces where the shows weren't.

Television does not work in the same way as films for a reason, and it's because their function is completely different. A film is to tell a complete story within a certain amount of time. Maybe there are more stories to follow, but each thing is a discrete unit. Most films never, ever got sequels, so they stood on their own. They had to, that's what film did. It was a place to tell a big, standalone story, and action is well-paced for that kind of storytelling.

Television is not like that. Television is where you can dig into characters and subplots because each week is a continuation of the story. It does not need to be discrete, it has the space to explore a different kind of narrative. You have to fill so many episodes per season, and you can't whittle the story down like you can with a film. You're not supposed to. It's supposed to be, ironically, the place to tell bigger stories because you've got the breathing room you need to develop those elements in a slower, but sometimes more meaningful way.

Money has corrupted the way this works. Now studios all want giant universes they can keep cranking out "content" for to sell to the fans. Movies are now made with merchandising in mind, and it's so fucking fitting that it's Star Wars where this mindset started because of its popularity. And now, studios want television to be the same thing but it can't, because that isn't the essential nature of television. Because what it all really leads to is more money for shareholders, that's the goal, and it has corrupted the storytelling to the point where the seams are showing. The money question will always be present in storytelling so long as we live under a system where capital finances art, but the seams used to be a lot more invisible. Now it's basically the equivalent of fast fashion. It's often low-quality shit that was not made to last more than a season (and is sometimes trashed even if it was decent) because, on to the next thing to get people excited about, because profits were just a tad too high last quarter and daddy needs that fucking fourth yacht.

Yeah, you can just not watch. But is everyone around you also not watching? Do you have to fully remove yourself from the small societies we create in our lives to make sure that you're not getting spoilers? That is actively destructive to building community, it's just another way to introduce even more loneliness into our already chopped up, isolated lives, and so, because we have so little other remedy, we turn to more and more media to feel some sense of connection, and we burrow deeper into asocial holes, with only the bright glare of the screen for comfort and company. It is not supposed to be like this.

Television did not work like this and it was never supposed to. It brought us together in ways we didn't appreciate until it was gone, and because there are too many people who don't want to understand that it was better that way, who want to live lives full of content instead of art, Disney and Marvel and Netflix and Amazon and all the rest are able to dig in their barbs a little bit deeper with each new series, to keep us divided and scared and reaching out to them instead of each other, in service of their own wealth and destruction of everything that makes humanity good.

This is not cynicism, this is what I have seen the world devolve into in less than forty years. Our lives revolve around these and other mega-corporations in ways most of us can't see, and certainly won't bother imagining. Andor being dropped all at once is just another symptom, and the complaining about people who want it spaced out is just more evidence that the corporate coup has succeeded.

Am I taking it too seriously? How many places in the vastness of America only have Walmart, and if they want something special, Amazon? Look at the dismay at Joann stores being closed, even though Joann started as a big box itself. For many people, now the only real alternative (if they weren't lucky enough to also have a Michael's, which is also rapidly closing stores) is Hobby Lobby, and shopping there either means being complicit in our own destruction or complicit in the destruction of our loved ones. Lots of areas now have nothing at all. The landscape for creativity, imagination, and art of all kinds has been decimated in the last forty years, to be controlled solely by megacorps who don't give a shit about art so long as we keep funnelling what little pittance they allow us right back into their pockets.

And we wonder why we're so sad all the time.

every single time i see something about or think about the s2 release schedule it fills me with rage. every single time. i cannot believe people are okay with this

#i didn't mean for this to turn into a rant #but it's all so connected #why can't more people see how it's connected #why don't they WANT to?#why do they just want to be empty consumerist shells?#it's not living #it must be what bots would feel like if they were to ever develop souls

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prof-peach · 4 years ago

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So I have slept and awoke, and I still can’t think of anything else besides the time travel idea y’all handed to me yesterday. I truly think I could try to write something cool to match up with the new legends of arcaeus game coming in. Would this be something of interest here? Like a reasonably regular comic, I’ll do my best to tie it all to the plot of the game, and include characters that pop up. However the games story usually go down a heavily child friendly route, which I may want to swerve away from at points if it gets a little dull.

I am just spitballing this, but honestly I’ve not been able to think of much else.

Would you feel this comic writing is possible here or would it be too far fetched? I’m not sure if I’d be able to do it justice, or if anyone would be into it, but it feels exciting???

Idk man, I’m just a little stumped on what next and that feels really fun.

Things I’d love to include:

-Peach first hand discovering ancient regional Pokemon, realising that she’s been taken back in time, freaking out.

-Val was the only Pokemon who was with her when she got pulled into the past, and is the thread holding peach together for a while.

-Soft peach moments, where she misses grey, and feels hungry and tired and hurt, and just wants to go home.

-meeting key characters and potentially changing perceived notions about Pokemon.

-NPCs being old fashioned, cursing a naughty Pokemon to a painful end for a minor crime, peach steals the Pokemon and runs from the town, befriends it.

- does time move forward in the world she left behind? For ease probably not, but also imagine her coming back and everyone thought she died or something, it’s been months with no trace of her.

-great excuses to showcase physical peach tactics

-returning to her timeline would mean leaving behind the Pokemon she befriended? Not sure about the logistics of bringing them home.

-does she lose the memory of what happened once home? Val remembers but she doesn’t?

Feel free to add stuff? Opinions, thoughts, feelings, I just need to indulge a comic, and this has presented itself with enough time to start planning and sketching before the game comes out.

#guuuuuys I don’t know haha #I want to?#but the blog is care #and the comic is...well #it’s a comic #so it’s lots of stuff #do I run the blog normally while peach is gone?#pokemon #prof.peach

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nemesis-is-my-middle-name · 3 years ago

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Okay so I only just now found out about Nihilillie and I N E E D more interactions between her and Lillie and that seems to be a distinct possibility in your Hisui Fallers AU so... how do you think that would go?

nihilillie... i love that ghskjshsjh

so i think. at first when they meet mohn, the rest of the fallers are like, IMMEDIATELY aware that's a nihilego and not a human girl. the issue is they aren't. sure how to SAY anything about it? SHOULD they, even? like it doesn't seem to be hurting anyone, they both seem happy and at least it's some kind of link to a former life, and god knows the rest of them are... reluctant to take that away (...even if none of them are 100% sure the entire concept of mohn having a daughter isn't made up by the nihilego). and having some kind of pokemon/beast on their side is undoubtedly a good thing... and also they PROBABLY shouldn't piss off the extradimensional poison jellyfish, from a purely practical standpoint

obviously this all changes when Actual Human Lillie falls through a wormhole, and everyone quickly realizes oh shit!! lillie is real!!

i think maybe, by virtue of falling through a cosmog-made portal, lillie maybe retains a little more memories than the rest of them? some sort of like, shield. if they do exist they're still VERY muddled, though. actually the way i think this would go, and now i'm really just spitballing ideas, is that lillie doesn't necessarily realize oh that's my dad with amnesia and that nihilego is pretending to be me (especially considering the last time she saw him she was a baby) but she does maybe realize mohn is... a relative of some sort...? and at the very least someone she wants to stay near, so she sort of becomes. also mohn's adopted-but-also-actual daughter.

and at first nihilillie is a LITTLE weird, especially since IT knows exactly what's going on here, but eventually once it decides lillie isn't like, threatening its place here or anything, it warms up to her. so they do become sort of like... sisters? it's very protective of her, both bc her getting hurt would make mohn sad, and then because it just, likes her for herself too. i think by the time lillie gets there the Adults (excepting maybe looker) all have ultra beasts of their own and can protect themselves, but lillie isn't a battler even if she did have something to fight with, so.

and then what happens when mohn starts getting his actual memories back, hm... i think by that point it's been so long with both "daughters" being friends that it's sort of a water-under-the-bridge non-issue. mostly just... glad it didn't immediately lash out at actual-lillie when she showed up to keep her potentially ruining its lie.

this is getting way too long and i feel like i still haven't gotten to the actual point of the ask ghsksjhsh yeah though it's a fun interaction

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #ailingwriter #hisui fallers au

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artistic-mathematics · 4 years ago

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sentience in animatronics, particularly in sister location?

Major FNAF lore spoilers ahead. Also, this is a very long theory post. Consider yourself warned.

This is a list of the main animatronics that are possessed, or have sentience in some way or another. (This list might be a little shady, so bear with me):

Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, Golden Freddy (First Missing Children’s incident, FNAF 1)

Toy Freddy, Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica (Second Missing Children’s incident, FNAF 2)

Mangle (from the fruit maze minigame)

Puppet/Marionette/Lefty (for... obvious reasons)

Springtrap (also for obvious reasons)

Looking to each of their behaviors, it’s shown that the person who possess said animatronic (aside from Puppet) were stuffed into their respectful suit, which is how said animatronic gains sentience. For the Puppet, Charlie’s spirit kind of merged with the Puppet’s because the puppet wanted to protect Charlie, even after death (or something like that. That’s basically how MatPat explained it in one of his videos.) For this, we’ll kind of just... ignore the Puppet, because that’s clearly an exception and isn’t really useful here.

Now, if we look into everyone else’s behavior, we see the following. The main animatronics and the toy animatronics are weary of adults (including Mangle, btw!), especially night guard, because they look the most similar to William Afton (or their murderer). Springtrap is, well, William Afton, and he always comes back because he has the plot armor of every Disney princess ever. They all have a proper motive -- the children and the dog looking to avenge their own deaths, while William Afton murders more people and does more of his twisted experiments with souls and wreaks more havoc overall.

Sister Location is different. We know for a fact that Elizabeth Afton possesses Circus Baby, but even then, it’s an extremely fuzzy grey line. What was her motive in killing her own brother? Michael mentions that the Funtimes thought he was William, so actually, what was her motive in killing her own father?

For my fic (which is why I... started overanalyzing this to begin with...), I’ve written this off as the fact that maybe Elizabeth’s soul wasn’t fully merged with Baby’s yet. There seems to be a bit of a consensus on there needing to be time before a spirit fully merges with the animatronic, so maybe that is the case. Maybe Baby just had sentience and decided to do whatever it took to leave, despite knowing that he was Elizabeth’s father and her own creator.

We know that in FNAF 6, Elizabeth has some control or some say over Scrap Baby. I get that an animatronic literally made by William could call him “daddy”, but realistically, Elizabeth would be more likely to do so.

For the sake of this post, let’s just assume that Elizabeth had no say over Baby in Sister Location, but in part gave Baby sentience (because she obviously is sentient by then). The true motive that Elizabeth has, while actually possessing Baby, is to make her father proud, considering that the very last thing she did while alive was disrespect orders and disappoint him. She wants to make amends and make him happy.

We have all of these possessed animatronics with a clear end motive, one that relates directly to their death in some way. So what on earth is going on with the other Funtimes?

Let’s start with Ballora. The most commonly accepted theory is the theory MatPat proposed, that Ballora is actually Mrs. Afton (whose name has not been confirmed yet). The biggest issue I see with this theory, though, is the fact that not once does she actually display true sentience throughout all of Sister Location. Sure, she has a few lines that were definitely not coded in, but that doesn’t really determine anything. There is one major difference between Baby (who we’ve already determined to be sentient) and Ballora,

Ballora doesn’t learn. I don’t think Baby only meant that Ballora couldn’t learn to pretend in order to avoid getting scooped. When Baby first mentions Ballora, she simply tells you how to get past her. Ballora is predictable, and Baby knows that. She knows exactly what Ballora will do, because she doesn’t learn from her failures. You’d think, after being in an underground facility for so long, that any human (even a child!) would be willing to change their tactics. And yet now we’re talking about a fully-grown adult who’s possessing this animatronic? It just doesn’t seem likely.

I do believe that she is at least partially sentient, though, due to her voice lines and the ability to at least listen to Baby. She also has a less than fun reaction to the controlled shocks and is very, very hostile to you after that, showing that she has at least some capacity to understand that Michael hurt them. Also, if Ennard’s inner dialogue is to be believed in night 5, then I can see Ballora bringing up the fact that he had hurt them. (I do believe that Baby planned this whole thing out and told the other Funtimes to act hostile towards Michael, but uh, Ballora may have just held a grudge regardless.)

Another thing that’s worth mentioning is that it’s been generally confirmed that Circus Baby’s Pizza World opened after the first missing children’s incident. If this is to be believed, then William Afton would have already done experiments with remnant and whatnot. In this case, I think it’s actually quite likely that Ballora may have had Mrs. Afton’s remnant, but not her spirit. This would explain why she’s not as sentient as Baby, but is at least somewhat sentient. I think this was extremely deliberate -- I do agree with the part of the theory in which Ballora was modeled after Mrs. Afton in some way. He must’ve done this to honor her memory or something along those lines.

Now onto Funtime Freddy and Funtime Foxy. We know that the both of them are also sentient in their own way, considering the fact that they were also able to listen to Baby (while Funtime Foxy does have the same motives as Ballora when it comes to attacking Michael, Funtime Freddy does not. so I do believe that Baby must’ve talked to him beforehand to some extent in acting hostile.) My theory is that both Funtime Freddy and Funtime Foxy must’ve had remnants of other people, since they both also seem to have at least partial sentience like Ballora. But who, and why? It makes sense for Ballora to have Mrs. Afton’s if she’s modeled after her. But what’s the point of making these other two sentient?

The best solution I can come up with is to enhance the AI in them, so they do a better job of kidnapping and killing children... or whatever. I have absolutely no proof to back this up, though.

Then, well, Ennard happens. And the three of them vote to kick Baby out. While the three of them kinda just... let things happen in Sister Location, I think the reason for their rebellious behavior was actually due to Elizabeth being merged with them. I think that maybe she passed on some of that sentience to the other three, giving them just enough willpower to boot Baby. Do I have evidence for this? No. Is this entirely based off of headcanons? Yup. Honestly, I’m just spitballing at this point. I am so, so very tired of trying to figure out how sentience even works in FNAF at this point.

(Don’t even get me started on Bon Bon, the Bidybabs, and Minireenas. I have no goddamn clue how any of them even fit. The Bidybabs saying “She’s watching us!” or something along those lines just... my one braincell is crying.)

Anyway, please let me know what you think. This was long and convoluted and I want some opinions from other people, because I really am just overthinking all of this now.

PS. I have no idea how this remnant stuff even works. Couldn’t you tell? I probably should’ve researched it but I’m too braindead for that now. Literally putting this out there before anyone flames me.

#fnaf sister location #fnaf pizzeria simulator #circus baby #elizabeth afton #scrap baby #funtime freddy #funtime foxy #ballora #fnaf theory #my theory #william afton #ennard #mrs afton #fnaf lore

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space-writes · 15 days ago

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(replying on the Writing Blog cause that's where im keeping this wip right now)

okay! apologies for taking a while to get to this but these were all excellent questions for me to sit and worldbuild about so i didn’t want to rush answering

the grand script

currently my notion of the Grand Script is that magic is kind of a language, and in the world there is this perception of it that it’s one ‘great work’, and that by learning pieces of it and writing them correctly, you can use those pieces to alter the world around you. Learning to use it is like learning a language - so yes, theoretically anyone can learn to use the Script, but to cast strong, functional spells, you need to have a strong grasp of the ‘magical grammar’ essentially, and said grammar is taught (at least in the Solar Archipelago and Jheskam as i’ve worked them out) only to elites. So, the rich, the ennobled, and suchlike.

It has all the inherent difficulties of learning any new language, only the consequences of misspelling range from ‘spell didn’t work’ to ‘oh no i’ve been killed by a lamp i accidentally brought to life’ to ‘i’ve become a body horror because i miswrote a line on this tattoo’. I figure that some people, as in our world, have a more innate knack for picking it up than others, but yeah, anyone can learn it. I also think that regular people can and do use it, but there’s less complexity and academic history behind their spells; they’re weaker, shorter-lived, smaller in scope than the kind of magic Scholars have spent decades refining.

for actual casting, it’s wholly a written system - you cast a spell by writing on the thing you want to effect, or by having a written spell attached to the object. this is where the differing opinions on ‘correct/best’ use of the Script between nations comes in:

Illumin (so, Solar Archipelago lot, Otienne’s people) write directly onto the thing they wish to be affected. this makes the spells more permanent and harder to disrupt or remove. i have vague notions of magical tattooing as part of their ‘arcane culture’, as well as warriors that get infused with permanent magical blessings (that turn to curses because they can’t be removed)

The Jhesk favour writing onto paper or similar and attaching the spell to an object. this makes the magic more easily altered and controlled, but does mean it’s easier to disrupt or remove a spell. i have an idea of them having at some point an army of magical constructs that can be activated/deactivated at will by removing the blessings. also swords with like, blessings of fire tied to the hilt and suchlike

As for the deities being tied to the Script - i rather like the idea that it existed before them, that it’s the ‘source code’ of the universe, for lack of a better expression. and then the divinities are able to innately understand it - or at least understand it better and more easily than mortals - and can use it more freely, without decades of study to tease out a new phrase to use as a spell.

the scriptorium and gender roles

my delight at your questions about gender and culture is immeasurable. jumping up and down and Thinking About The Implications because of them. (caveat all this is pinch of salt bc i may change my mind, but just spitballing is so much fun)

the idea that magic is an inherently feminine practice is one i think i’m going to take an run with. it works so well, especially with Otienne being the way she is; so convinced of her own superiority. studying the Script being the highest intellectual calling for a woman would be a fantastic thing to put as a cornerstone for this culture im accidentally building behind my pornography.

‘men can’t possibly understand the intricacies of the Grand Script and its construction; their minds are more suited to earthly pursuits. they ought to work hard in the sphere of the physical, not confuse themselves with arcane grammar or disrupt their natural strength in an attempt to master the dexterity and grace necessary to inscribe spells.’

you know. that sort of thing.

and idk where to go with it, but generating some bio-essentialist gender nonsense with the Sun Queen and the Moon King…there’s something tasty there, I know it. some kind of astrology-type thing too ‘she was born at night under a full moon, which means she is more inclined to masculine pursuits: you should send her to apprentice as a blacksmith’. or like, ‘was he, you know born at noon’ meaning ‘is he gay?’ or something along those lines.

…women born at night being a coded thing for lesbians fits very nicely with my themes so far as well. chewing on this.

re: dragons

i just really like dragons. if i can find a way to put one in (have a star hatch and fall on Ihrone’s head or something) then i will. i just fuckin. love dragons, man. and the idea of the stars being dragon eggs just pleases me greatly.

and it lets me put dragon motifs as well as sun motifs all over Otienne’s palace.

re: The Girls

so, no, Osinyra cannot get Otienne pregnant. currently one of my notes for the loose first story has her explain to Otienne that immortals can’t get mortals pregnant - though she’s happy to try real hard if that’s what Otienne wants.

i do think that if Osinyra could get either of the girls pregnant, then she would, if only for the fact it would give her something else to play with. (and honestly if pregnancy wasn’t a squick for me, i probably would’ve made her able to knock Otienne up, because divine (maybe divine horror) baby?? fun concept. alas; pregnancy and babies make me shrivel up inside)

As for Otienne, “Does she just have that much megalomaniacal over-confidence” → yes. yes she does. she was fully convinced she was hot enough and smart enough to babytrap a god.

Ihrone is yet another of my ‘wizard nerds who love to learn things’, so her main goal is to just study the most interesting and esoteric areas of arcana she can access, and all the ‘good’ texts are hoarded in the Scriptorium. She could’ve stayed home, transitioned more openly, and worked just fine doing something else in Jheskam, but she just has that urge to know and understand. Hence why she had that bit of fascination at the end of Thief of Desire; even when she’s being assaulted, if there’s a hint of some deeper, more complex arcana, she can’t help but be interested in it.

perhaps if i write more i’ll uncover a deeper purpose she has for learning aspects of the Script, but for now i just like her as a curiosity killed the cat kind of character, who gets herself into hot water because she wants to know things - and to know if she can accomplish them.

(thank you so so much for asking about this wip, i love Thinking about it and rotating these kinds of concepts. they’re exceptionally useful worldbuilding questions)

So this morning before the last chapter of Obedience dropped, I was catching up on some other fics of yours I hadn't read yet and had a lot of fun with Thief of Desire and Bleed So Beautiful. Fascinated with these fucked up women. Can I ask for some more information or a little bit of background on Osinrya, Otienne and Ihrone?

i adored your comment on thief of desire earlier! they are truly some fucked up lil ladies

(for your perusal, should you wish, the wip tag is here)

so i'll take them in order:

Osinyra is the sixth of the Moon King's seven daughters. I wanted a devil-type character, so aesthetically that's what she is, with her horns and tail and claws and such. I don't have divinity specifics on how come the Moon King has daughters as-yet (idk if I will, having it Just Be is kinda fun), but they are minor divinities in and of themselves.

She lives in a palace on the moon, but is fascinated by mortals the way a human might be fascinated by a particularly interesting bug. She's a shapeshifter, in that she can alter various aspects of her appearance by using the Grand Script (the magic system of this story). She's like 7 and a half feet tall, technically immortal, and doesn't want to understand mortalkind so much as hold her magnifying glass over its anthill

Otienne is the heir to the throne of the Solar Archipelago - the capital island is Illumé. She's a conniving little bitch who loves playing politics and blackmailing people, and she's the reason Osinyra is down here playing with her and Ihrone.

Because with her royal line, the Sunblessed, she can only inherit her throne if she already has a child, an heir, so that the line is assured to continue. And Otienne, being Otienne, decided Go Big or Go Home, and got Ihrone to help her summon the Moon King to father her child. She got Osinyra instead and now they're being insane lesbians at each other.

Appearance-wise, Otienne is a pretty pretty princess. She's small and curvy with gorgeous tits and immaculate red curls. She likes expensive dresses and jewellery, and has a heart-shaped birthmark on her hip. She has golden eyes, which all the Sunblessed do; they allege it's a mark of their favour from the Sun Queen. Such favour is historically recorded, but kinda debateably Real.

Ihrone is the wet cat of the series. She's from Jheskam, the country on the mainland that the Archipelago sits off of, and an immigrant to Illumé. She wants only to study the Grand Script - and the Sunblessed Scriptorium is the BEST place to do that. Unfortunately, only born women are allowed to be there, and Ihrone is trans. Secretly. So secretly that only her parents back in Jheskam know - and Otienne, of course, who sniffs out secrets like a fucking bloodhound and uses this one to blackmail her favourite Scholar into doing whatever she wants :)

Ihrone is taller and slimmer than Otienne, darker skinned, with long, straight dark hair, like most Jhesk. Her heterochromia has her dubbed moonblessed, as you read in the fic, though i have yet to fully explore what else that might mean other than 'Osinyra Really Likes It'

She is built to be my 'no no no please don't (oh oh i like it)' character to inflict Suffering upon and so far she's doing a wonderful job <3

#wip: dark of the moon #should i start a taglist for this thing?

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rayveewrites · 4 years ago

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Ray Hijacks the Team ZIT Ghostbuster AU Again

So @shadeswift99 made a few posts a while ago about a Team ZIT(S) ghostbuster AU, And then I may or may not have hijacked the post to add in ideas for most of the other hermits because why not.

Now, back then I was spitballing ideas and making them up on the spot, which is admittedly my usual writing process, but hey.

That said, I've had more time to think about it, and then last night I blacked out for a few hours and came to with a Google Doc filled with short bios for all of the hermits and a handful of hermit-adjacents. Now, this rapidly turned into an urban fantasy AU in my hands, but hey. It's fun.

This is in alphabetical order, with alternate personas (EX, Helsknight, Beetlejhost) beneath their original counterparts when applicable:

Bdubs

Lives in an old mansion in the woods alongside Doc for reasons known only to them. Bdubs works as an interior designer, with a side gig as a freelance hairdresser. His eyes are unnaturally large, similar to Keralis’, and he is at least partially a plant. Completely feral and frequently gets in trouble for having knives on him at all times. He and Cleo have a thing called Knife Club which makes everyone else nervous. Nobody messes with Knife Club. It’s not worth it. Sunbathes frequently.

Beef

Is a perfectly normal human being. He works as a butcher with a side gig as a graphic designer specializing in album covers and spends his free time playing pokemon and dragging Etho along to social events. He was the first person to spot the cryptid, and the first person who Etho approached of his own accord.

Biffa

Is a ghost possessing a robotic shell. Biffa is from the future. While initially his main goal was to get back home to his own time, Biffa has since made friends and settled down into a new life running a cafe specializing in a wide range of teas. He’s quite content with this, and has actually found himself far happier than he was in his own time. While his nature means he can see, hear and touch ghosts, his body was built specifically for a disembodied soul to be in the driver’s seat, and he doesn’t want to risk another taking control. Also, he has more important things to do than have fistfights with ghosts.

Cleo

Is a ghost possessing her own dead corpse. Her nature allows her to see, hear and touch ghosts. Can and will fistfight spirits. She works as a teacher, so she’s usually busy, but occasionally in really nasty situations the Beetlejhost will drag her in to break a ghost’s legs. Does sculpture in her free time, and is actually really good. The only one who can wrangle Beetle to any real capacity, and she’s learned to keep him on a fairly short leash. Housemates with Joe, and Keralis also pops in pretty frequently. Has Knife Club with Bdubs. Has an enchanted flower crown that prevents her from decaying further; a gift from Beetle. Recently started learning magic in the form of necromancy and illusions. Has an ongoing ‘feud’ with Zloy, in which she temporarily traps his soul in random inanimate objects every now and then.

Cub

A bit of a ‘mad scientist’ archetype, Cub’s experiments are not exactly the most ethical, though they’re at least more professional than Doc’s. Responsible for the creation of Jevin. Cub gets possessed stupidly easily- sometimes willingly- and can usually handle it himself but sometimes has to call for help. Has a magical method of communication with Scar for exactly this reason. Has a day job as co-owner of a business called ConCorp, which he started with Scar. Has probably broken the Geneva Convention.

Doc

Was presumably human at one point. Now an abomination. Repeated experiments on himself have resulted in a massively changed facial and foot structure, a body covered in mottled green scales, claws, and goat horns. He lost half his face in one of his experiments, and constructed a new cybernetic one. He lost his right arm fighting God. Killed said god and would do it again. Lives in a mansion in the woods with Bdubs, though nobody’s really sure why. Owns a casino because of course he does. Also a living crime against fashion, because the man refuses to wear anything other than his tattered lab coat, torn jeans, and crocs.

Ely

Runs the local radio station. Nobody’s ever seen him in person, and nobody knows where he gets people’s voice clips for his remixes. Probably a cryptid. Maybe a ghost. Seems pretty chill, despite the blatant invasions of privacy.

Etho

Is a cryptid. Lives out in the woods in an abomination that can barely be called a house. Has never been seen in anything other than full Kakashi cosplay. Tends to keep to himself, but occasionally lets Beef drag him along to social events, often with Doc and Bdubs. Nobody really knows what his deal is. Probably not human. Probably.

False

Used to be part of an illegal underground cage fighting ring, until she earned enough to buy her way out. Having grown up in said ring, she struggles to adjust to normal life, but living in a town where the barista is a robot and the local tailor has wings makes it easier. She now has a job as security at Doc’s casino, alongside Iskall.

Grian

Is either an angel or a demigod, but nobody knows which. Has wings. Is both a tailor and an architect. A complete gremlin who has elaborate masks of various birds and will wear them to commit crimes. Eats seeds. Messes with everyone else’s plants. Lives in Jungle Wood Flats. Volunteers at the local theatre.

Hypno

Has three eyes, but hides the third one under a bandanna at all times. Can see ghosts with it. Had problems with sections of plumbing randomly getting clogged and also making very weird noises, and eventually called Team ZIT when the plumbers couldn’t find the source. Was prepared for ghosts, but wound up with a slime creature instead. Works in a $2 store for some reason.

Impulse

Is fully human. The most sensible member of Team ZIT (which admittedly isn’t saying much), Impulse has a day job as a freelancer building custom PCs and fixing broken tech. Agreed to the whole ghostbusting deal because he was bored, mostly. Was the first one to meet Skizz face-to-face, and is the one to own that particular place outright. Gets possessed every now and then, usually by larger spirits. Used to run solely on caffeine and chronic anxiety until Zedaph started getting on his case about his sleep schedule. Now he runs on less caffeine, more sleep, and the same amount of chronic anxiety.

Iskall

Was part of a cloning experiment to create the ultimate hitman, and was the only known one to both survive and escape before the whole thing was shut down by the authorities. Their eye and arm were replaced with cybernetics in order to increase their already enhanced abilities, and they were chased by said authorities, eventually winding up on Mumbo’s doorstep and becoming Mumbo’s problem. Now works as security at Doc’s casino, alongside False. Lives at Jungle Wood flats. Occasionally volunteers at the local theatre. Does bonsai as a hobby.

Jevin

Is the slime creature in the pipes. Hypno lets him live with him under the condition he stops blocking the plumbing and making weird noises at 3 AM (Jevin still blocks the plumbing and makes weird noises at 3 AM, just not as much as he was). Has taught himself to take a humanoid shape, and likes having fingers. Sleeps in the bathtub because he can. Was created from a vat of chemicals in a secret lab underneath the house, which used to be owned by Cub. Doesn’t really talk to the man in question that much, but will occasionally refer to Cub as his father for the sole reason of watching him go through eight existential crises in three minutes. Has a glock.

Joe

Head librarian at the local public library, and has read a lot of books on Supernatural Things. Is a veritable fountain of exposition if you can figure out what he’s saying or have Cleo along with you to threaten the integrity of his shins. Has never been seen in the same place as the Beetlejhost. Are they the same person? Are they entirely separate beings? Is there a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde-type situation going on? Who knows!

Beetlejhost

Literally nobody really knows what his deal is. Nobody. Team ZIT ran into him on a call that they expected to be a false alarm and then he decided to follow them home. Spends most of his time being a minor nuisance in the most bizarre ways possible. Is implied to be responsible for the Ever Given getting lodged in the Suez Canal, but never confirmed. When he’s not bothering Team ZIT or getting them out of tight spots, he’s usually pestering Cleo, the only one who can keep him in line. It’s not really known if he and Cleo have a history or if they’re just Like That.

Keralis

Is a ghost haunting an architecture firm, and is mostly bound to the building, though he can travel to other buildings the firm has built, which is, uh, most of them. Initially only able to do small things- mostly writing notes or drawing diagrams- he eventually meets the Beetlejhost when the latter follows Mumbo to work one day for shits and giggles (he wanted to see how long he could mess with Mumbo before the man noticed. As it turned out, about a week, and by the end it was Iskall who noticed). After a couple of days in which Beetle teaches Keralis Ghost Things™, he scares half the office when he finally manifests for the first time. Has unnaturally large eyes and nicknames for most of the workers. Has no idea how he died or what his unfinished business might be. Very knowledgeable about architecture, and his input is usually very much appreciated.

Mumbo

Is a perfectly normal human being who does IT at Keralis’ architecture firm. Lives at Jungle Wood flats and spends most of his free time tinkering with tech and trying to keep Grian and Iskall out of trouble, which is a losing battle. Has a large, beating golden heart in his flat. He’s not really sure what its deal is, but if he feeds it apples it produces enough power for the entire building. Oh, and if he forgets to feed it for an extended period of time it starts draining his bank account. It’s really weird.

Pixlriffs

Was a perfectly normal human being until he died protecting a certain Russian zombie and became a perfectly normal ghost. Was a reporter in life and is a reporter in death. Runs a blog alongside Zloy about the local goings-on, supernatural or not. The blog’s the type where unless you live in/near the town you most likely won’t stumble across it, but they do have a small following of outsiders who assume the blog’s just a work of fiction. His unfinished business is to prevent Zloy from doing anything particularly stupid, a constant battle. Is able to go more places than Zloy due to being incorporeal, but respects people’s privacy. He’s bound to Zloy to a certain degree, not being able to go beyond a certain range of his friend. The range is pretty big, though, and he has plenty freedom of movement.

Python

Had a run-in with the fae as a kid, in which he accidentally pissed one off. In retribution, the faerie challenged him to answer a riddle or he’d be turned into a snake. Python’s answer was partially correct, so the faerie only transformed him partially. Python is fairly chill, though he strongly dislikes the cold and starts hissing if anyone disturbs him during Sun Time™. Sometimes Bdubs, being partially flora, joins Python for Sun Time™. He’s not venomous, because, you know...python. Also, he has a mildly disturbing habit of strangling rats and mice and then eating them whole, but he can’t help it and just tries not to do so when he has company.

Ren

Is a werewolf. He’s pretty chill regardless of form, though it’s only been recently he’s been comfortable enough leaving his ears and tail visible. He works as a lumberjack. One time Pixl introduced him to Monty Python’s Lumberjack Song and it quickly became his favourite thing. He spends most of his free time volunteering at the local theatre because Ren is absolutely a theatre kid and nobody can convince me otherwise. Gets possessed every now and then. Lives in Jungle Wood flats.

Scar

Works as a landscape developer. Gets possessed absurdly easily, though not quite as frequently as Cub. Has a magical method of communication with him. Technically co-owns ConCorp, but isn’t as involved. His cat, Jellie, is very obviously an eldritch abomination in feline form and he is comedically unaware of this. Lives in Jungle Wood Flats with Grian, Iskall, Mumbo, Stress, and Ren.

Skizz

Is the ghost haunting Team ZIT’s office. He was murdered by someone he’d thought was a friend who was trying to use his place to hide from the cops, and he’s stuck around, haunting the building. His unfinished business is to make sure nobody else uses the building for anyone shady, but the ghost rumours tended to chase most people off. Eventually he gets used to having Team ZIT around, and when Tango admits he doesn’t really have anywhere to go one day, Skizz eventually makes the decision to finally unlock the still-furnished upper floor for him. He’s bound to the building, but Impulse learns that carrying Skizz’s old vest with them allows him to leave. After that, Skizz sometimes accompanies them on missions and occasionally just hanging out. He’s usually more helpful than the Beetlejhost is.

Stress

Is a witch. Stress lives in Jungle Wood Flats and works as a doctor who specializes in supernaturally caused injuries- Team ZIT are some of her best customers. She also sells magic potions of various kinds, and has a side gig as a florist. She’s 90% of the Jungle inhabitants’ impulse control. Also has cryokinesis.

Tango

The Team ZIT member with a car. He gets possessed with frankly ridiculous frequency, but claims not to believe in ghosts for a long time (and keeps up the bit for even longer). Has developed various signals to indicate when he’s being possessed again. The strongest one, a rather nasty demon Cleo and the Beetlejhost had to team up on, left him with his glowing red eyes. He didn’t really have anywhere to go before Impulse bought the office, and tended to sleep on the couch or in his car until Skizz decided to let him into the upper floor, where he now lives alongside Zedaph and Impulse.

TFC

A now-retired ghostbuster, TFC calls in Team ZIT one night when he finds himself in over his head against a ghost with a grudge. He winds up becoming a bit of a mentor figure to the trio, usually coaching them over the phone if they’re not sure how to deal with one of the stranger spirits. Lost his leg years ago in a fight with a poltergeist that could have gone better, and now has a robotic prosthetic made by Doc.

Wels

While Team ZIT was out investigating some rumour or another in the woods, they came across a large stone box. Following video game logic, I guess, they then decided opening this large stone box sounded like a fun idea. Well, Tango and Zedaph did. Impulse was a bit more hesitant. The box actually held a medieval knight who’d been put in an enchanted sleep for centuries by his demonic doppelgänger, and was very much not prepared for modern life. Team ZIT took him to Xisuma, who happened to live closest, and Wels is currently helping out on the farm and trying to adjust to life in the 21st century. He can understand and speak modern English just fine because magic. Volunteers at the local theatre quite a lot.

Hels

Is Wels’ doppelgänger. Technically a minor demon. Won a fight with Wels and sealed him away for centuries as a result. A recurring problem. His real motivation is that he really desperately doesn’t want to go back to Hell, but he’s too proud to admit it. Lives in the woods with EX, who’s basically his only friend, though the weirdo with the brown cardigan keeps pestering him about his backstory and feelings for some reason. Has minor pyrokinesis.

Like Biffa, XB is also a ghost from the future, though it seems to be a different timeline than Biffa’s. His unfinished business is preventing the apocalypse, but he has no idea how to do that, no idea if he’s in the right timeline, and is pretty sure he’s gone back a lot farther than he probably should’ve. Also, there’s the whole paradox issue, where if he prevents the apocalypse he never has a reason to go back and prevent the apocalypse, so he doesn’t prevent the apocalypse, so he has to go back and- he tries not to think about it too much. He mostly just hangs out in an abandoned house on the edge of town and vibes.

Xisuma

Is a beekeeper. Nobody’s ever seen his face; when he’s not in his beekeeping outfit, he’s either wearing a helmet, or (more recently) an extremely lifelike and detailed animal mask (is it a mask?). Actually a shapeshifting alien, he crashed down to Earth after a scuffle with his evil clone and was stranded because Earth doesn’t have the right tools or resources to repair a spaceship. These days he’s actually found he’s happier tending to his bees, selling honey, and helping his friends out, and probably wouldn’t leave Earth even if he could. It’s a simpler life, but a pleasant one. He bonds with Biffa over a shared love of tea and being stranded in a technologically inferior world and finding a home.

Evil Xisuma

Is Xisuma’s clone. Feels that if everyone’s going to call him ‘Evil’ he may as well own it. Shot his original’s spaceship down in a scuffle but wound up being brought down with him. Currently hides in the woods. Generally more of a minor nuisance than an actual danger. Used to spend his free time bothering X but has gotten put off by Wels, who has a problem when it comes to evil clones. His friends consist of Hels, who is a terrible role model, and Zedaph, who’s trying to help him work through his problems behind everyone’s backs. Can summon lightning because he deserves it.

Zedaph

Is the reason Team ZIT is ghostbusting in the first place. He’s a sheep shearer by trade, but that’s a fairly seasonal thing and ghostbusting is more fun anyway. Has somehow never been possessed, and claims it’s because he’s always standing next to Tango. He makes sure the other two gets enough sleep Because we all know they can’t be trusted to do it. Probably has some sort of really bizarre and situational magical powers he is thoroughly unaware of. Qualified to be a licensed therapist. Made friends with Evil X at one point, somehow.

Zloy

Like Cleo, he’s a ghost possessing a corpse. Unlike Cleo, there’s a good chance it’s not his corpse. Eh, it’s not like anyone else was using it. Runs a blog with Pixl, because why not. Was already a zombie when he met Pixl, who was still alive at the time. His body is a bit more decayed than Cleo’s, but it’s fine. His goggles are enchanted with the same preservation spell; it’s not really ever explained where he got them from. Has no regard for privacy but is fortunately unable to turn invisible or phase through walls due to inhabiting a physical body. Both can theoretically physically fight ghosts and has enough time to physically fight ghosts, meaning he would be a valuable ally if he could be bothered. Lives in a graveyard. Has an ongoing ‘feud’ with Cleo, in which he puts jabs at her on the blog. Once spent a week as a (very sarcastic) floating potato.

Hermiton

Is the name of the place they all live in/near. Located in an ambiguous location in an ambiguous country, Hermiton is technically large enough to be considered a city but has Town VibesTM. Supernatural going-ons are a fairly normal part of life, and a good number of inhabitants aren’t humans. Despite this, the wider world seems mostly ignorant of the existence of ghosts, magic, etc. I’m not too sure about geography, but it’s surrounded by forest in most directions and in a warm enough climate to not have snow in the winter (so Python doesn’t, you know, freeze to death). Most people don’t tend to bat an eyelid at strange-looking people walking down the street or serving them at the store; they’re used to it by now. There are several theories as to why Hermiton specifically has so much going on when it comes to the supernatural- ley lines, secretly the resting place of some long-forgotten god, et cetera- but it’s actually more of a case of ‘people who have supernatural traits hear rumours of a place where a lot of people have supernatural traits and go there in search of answers/a place to belong’. This doesn’t exactly explain where all the ghosts came from, but hey. Nothing’s perfect.

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catlady5001 · 4 years ago

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My submission for nana’s gen contest!!! @queenangst

Ao3 link!!

Full story under the cut!!

Izuku walks through the shining halls, one hand nervously holding his backpack. The other holds a map of UA’s campus, and it’s supposed to tell Izuku where to go.

He sees the general studies classes lining the hall on either side, the business course just behind him, but where are Izuku’s classes? He nearly gives up when he overhears a girl at the far end of the path asking a hero -Snipe, Izuku’s brain exclaims- where the support course is located.

“Just down that hall and to the right,” Snipe says with a vague gesture.

The girl smiles, “Thank you!” She heads down the hall and Izuku races to follow. She walks into class 1-H just as he turns the corner.

Izuku walks in soon after and he can’t help but cringe away from the noise. A pink-haired girl has somehow caused an explosion already, and another kid is scolding her. Two similarly-dressed students are arguing about who copied who. Powerloader (Powerloader!) watches it all with a resigned air.

Izuku looks around the room, trying to find a calm spot in the chaotic storm, and eventually he sees the girl from earlier, reading at one of the corner tables. He doesn’t know if she’ll let him sit with her but it’s worth a shot, right? She doesn’t even know he’s quirkless yet!

“Can I sit here?” He asks quietly.

“Hm?” She looks up from her book. “Oh, yes!”

“...thanks,” Izuku murmurs. He can’t believe it was that easy. He slides out the chair across from her and pulls out his own notebook. She looks at him for a second longer, then turns back to her own book. They read in their quiet corner of peace until Powerloader-sensei draws their attention, and class begins.

That afternoon finds Izuku sitting against a tree, pencil in one hand and an apple in the other. He glances up when the cafeteria door creaks open. He lets out a small, relieved sigh when it’s just Yaoyorozu. Out of all of his classmates, she’s the one he’s happiest to see, especially since Hatsume stayed behind at the lab.

He waves. She smiles, closes the door with a soft click, then walks over to Izuku, bookbag in hand.

“Good afternoon, Midoriya,” she greets. “Do you mind if I sit here?”

“No, not at all!” Izuku eagerly assures her. She’s been kind to him all morning, even after the disaster that homeroom had been.

He holds his breath for a moment, anxious that she’ll bring it up.

She doesn’t, instead leaning against the tree, halfway turned to face Izuku. “So, Midoriya…”

Izuku bites his lip and takes a small sip of water as she thinks.

“You’re interested in quirks, right?”

Izuku’s eyes widen. “Yeah! I’ve loved them for as long as I can remember. They’re just so interesting!”

“I agree. Do you know what my quirk is?”

“I know the basic gist,” Izuku says. He tries to tamp down his excitement, too afraid of scaring her off, but his anticipation shines through anyways. “You can create anything, right?”

“Kind of,” Yaoyorozu says. She’s grinning though, so Izuku can’t have been too far off the mark. “Anything I know the chemical composition of, I can make..”

“That’s so cool,” Izuku breathes. Yaoyorozu’s smile widens, somehow. “Can you show me?”

“Yes, but…”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s just that… well, I haven’t eaten since this morning,” Yaoyorozu starts.

“Is that what fuels Creation?” Izuku checks.

Yaoyorozu nods and rests her chin on her hands. “I meant to grab lunch but I would’ve had to wait around with our classmates.”

Izuku shudders.

This morning had been… it was bad. Powerloader-sensei has everyone introduce themselves. Name, quirk, goal.

It goes fine, for a time. Everyone seems cool, if a little eccentric. Some people -like Yaoyorozu- have quirks that stick out more than others, but they all seem nice. Everything is fine.

And then it’s Izuku’s turn, and nearly everyone has a sudden change of heart.

Yaoyorozu doesn’t, and neither does Hatsume, another girl.

Everyone else glares.

No one is too obvious about it, what with the hero in the room. In between classes, with the teachers gone and out of sight, classmates would jeer and throw spitballs.

Izuku has years of practice ignoring this, but it still hurts.

His classmates only stop when Yaoyorozu or Hatsume step in, but even they can’t do much. Their threats to tell the teachers are met with scorn.

“Izuku?” Yaoyorozu shakes him lightly, and Izuku jerks out of his memory with a start. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Izuku says. He smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Yaoyorozu notices, he can tell, but she doesn’t point it out.

Instead, she goes on to tell him all about her quirk. She even demonstrates it, once he offers her a bright green apple. Izuku is entranced by how cool it all is.

The pair stays out until someone sticks their head out the window to call them inside. Izuku doesn’t know who they are, but he sees the insignia on their uniform- they’re a member of the hero course.

Izuku turns away hastily and heads in after Yaoyorozu. He tries not to think of the hero course, to imagine what it could’ve been like if he’d been there alongside Kacchan. He doesn’t succeed.

The next three days pass quickly, blending into each other. It’s only on Thursday that anything important happens, and even then it’s scarier more than being fun or educational.

Yaoyorozu and Izuku are outside when the alarms blare. Izuku clamps his ears in a fruitless attempt to drown out the noise, but it still reaches deep into his ears and twists around his skull.

Izuku presses in tighter, and that’s when Yaoyorozu hits him with something. He looks down to see a pair of heavy-duty earmuffs on the ground, and he immediately grabs them, sliding them onto his ears. They don’t keep the sound out entirely, but they do a much better job than his hands did.

Thank you, he mouths at Yaoyorozu. She smiles slightly. After a moment, Izuku holds his arms out, a clear invitation for a hug. Yaoyorozu embraces him and together they wait for the screams to stop.

Reporters, they’re told afterwards. Something about that seems off to Izuku, but he doesn’t question it. UA knows what they’re doing, right?

In any case, that Thursday ends with a feeling of tense anticipation hanging in the air.

The next day is stormy, thunderbolts and lightning raining down. Izuku has to be driven to school, and he steps out of the car just as Yaoyorozu’s pulls up. With a quick goodbye wave, he runs up the stairs, and a moment later Yaoyorozu’s steps slosh after his.

Izuku holds the door open at the top, and Yaoyorozu dashes inside.

“Thank you,” she says. Izuku waves it off and together they head down the hall.

It’s stormy, but today will be a good day.

It is not a good day. It was worse for everyone else, Izuku is sure, but still. In the middle of class, Powerloader answers a phone call, and then he puts Yaoyorozu in charge and leaves.

Everyone is confused, clamoring, but Yaoyorozu doesn’t know what’s going on any better than they do so she tells them to stay put. They don’t really listen, of course; too curious for their own good.

Several people leave the classroom, presumably to try and see what happened, while others stare out the windows. Hatsume works on her inventions with the same gusto as always (though there’s a slight shake to her hands that betrays her anxiety).

All they can do is wait. And it is maddening.

Yaoyorozu tries to make small talk with Izuku, but he can’t concentrate and eventually she too falls silent.

It feels like hours but in reality is only about half of one. The Pro’s return to school, though it’s grim when sirens are blaring in the background, an ambulance fading into the distance.

Izuku hopes that everyone is okay, but he knows even now that it’s too much to ask.

When they return to school on Monday, Powerloader-sensei glosses over the attack. He doesn’t even mention it, really.

Instead he starts talking about the sports festival. Izuku is surprised that it’s still happening. The show must go on, he supposes.

Yaoyorozu is brave enough to actually speak up. “Sir?”

“Yes, Yaoyorozu?”

“Why are we still holding the Sports Festival?” Yaoyorozu holds herself up tall, the picture of composure from the waist up.

Her fidgeting feet are the only thing that betray her. Silently, Izuku squeezes her hand, and she shoots him a grateful glance.

Powerloader sighs and draws a hand across his chin. “The school is trying to keep up morale; trying to show that we won’t be beaten easily.”

Yaoyorozu nods, but the second Powerloader turns away, it’s as if she’s a marionette and her strings have just been cut. She practically slumps over and Izuku scoots closer and hugs her. She leans her head back to rest against his chin.

Powerloader continues teaching in the background while Izuku and Yaoyorozu hold each other tight.

The upcoming Sports Festival is certainly going to be interesting.

“Hey, Izuku?” Yaoyorozu interrupts Izuku’s thought.

“Hm?” Izuku looks up from his notebooks.

Yaoyorozu bites her lip. “What do we want to do about the Sports Festival?”

Izuku tilts his head to the side, and she elaborates, “What’s our game plan?”

Izuku’s eyes light up, and he flips to an earlier page in his notebook. He scoots closer to Yaoyorozu and tells her all about his observations and the possible ways the Sports Festival could go, based on the data of past years.

At first Yaoyorozu looks a bit overwhelmed, but she eventually settles and together they come up with a (mostly) cohesive plan.

They sit for a bit once they’re done, relaxed since they have a fair bit until lunch ends.

After a moment, Yaoyorozu admits, “I wanted to be a hero.”

Izuku starts and turns to her with wide eyes. “You too?”

Yaoyorozu nods. Hesitantly, Izuku asks, “Why didn't you get into a hero course, then? You’re definitely skilled enough to make it in.”

Yaoyorozu twirls a strand of hair around her finger. “My family’s legacy is a support company. Create-It-Enterprise.”

“I’ve heard of them!” Izuku exclaims. “They’re a really big name- oh.”

“Yeah,” Yaoyorozu sighs. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” Izuku says tentatively. “I wanted to be a hero too, you know.”

“I’d kinda guessed,” Yaoyorozu says lightly.

“Am I really that obvious? Wait, don’t answer that,” Izuku says, remembering his analysis notebooks. Yaoyorozu chuckles and leans her head against Izuku’s (admittedly lower) shoulder.

“Either way,” Izuku says, “I like it here in the support course.”

“Me too. I’m really glad we’re friends.”

Izuku smiles. “Agreed. You can call me Izuku. Only if you want to, of course!”

“Izuku,” Yaoyorozu says, testing out his name. “I like it. Call me Yaomomo!”

Izuku sputters, then grins. “Gladly.”

Then the bell rings -loudly- from inside, and Izuku and Yaomomo stand up together.

Just as they reach the door, Izuku says, “One more thing.”

“Oh?”

“There’s almost always some sort of four person event, right?”

“Yes,” Yaomomo says. “We’ll have ourselves and I’m sure that Hatsume will team up with us, but what about the fourth person?”

“I’ve got that covered,” Izuku says with an uncharacteristic smirk. Yaomomo smiles and nods. Izuku revels in her trust. He won’t let her down.

It’s the final round of the Sports Festival. Izuku and Yaomomo are facing off. He takes a calming breath, then another and another until he feels ready.

He and Yaomomo planned for this of course, but Izuku had still had his doubts.

When the first round didn’t go exactly as they had expected, he was certain they were going to fail. But he and Yaomomo had forged their way past all the other obstacles, and it’s all led up to this moment.

Present Mic screaming overhead, Izuku and Yaomomo step onto the pitch.

“Are you ready?” Yaomomo calls.

“As I’ll ever be!” Izuku returns. They grin, a private acknowledgment of their shared plan, and then ready themselves when Midnight counts down.

“Three!” The crowd is chanting alongside her.

“Two!” Izuku digs his heel deeper into the ground.

“One!” Across the pitch, Yaomomo’s grin widens impossibly.

“Go!”

Yaomomo and Izuku race towards each other. The crowd calamors above them, eager for an entertaining battle. When they reach each other, the crowd gets even louder. They fall silent when Izuku and Yaomomo just. Stop.

The pair meet in the middle, clasp hands, and then walk out of the arena. At the same time, they step over the line.

They raise their hands in victory, and though the crowd is confused, they can still recognize what happened.

For the first time ever, U.A.’s Sports Festival ends in a tie.

And when each of them receives half of the first place medal? Their smiles become radiant.

#queenangst gen contest #Momo yaoyorozu #midoriya izuku #rarepair friendship #BNHA

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blooms-of-ice · 4 years ago

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Wyda is officially retired...for now. She had a good run, and I loved writing for her! GOD the existential dread I felt as I drew closer and closer to running the event that would end her.

Her story continues through another. Give a follow here! :D

I’ll be keeping this blog up as an archive, although I might still post every now and again. But since her arc is done, here goes! An unedited, unfiltered slurry of words-directly-from-brain-to-keyboard about Wyda! I’m warning you, this is true farm fresh to you stuff. And spoilers for many events in FF14. Read on if you dare.

Strap in, it’s going to be a long and bumpy ride.

Did I say that I love Primals?

Primal lore gives the FF14 devs a lot of creative freedom when it comes to designing bosses. Want the arena changed? Want something/someone to look absolutely wack? Want to spin up a threat without having a villain train for years prior? Bam, primals.

It also gives us, the players, the same creative freedoms when it comes to roleplaying!

The requirements to summon one are humorously low. At first, primals result from misguided and zealous beastmen shenanigans. Ifrit, Titan, Ramuh, Leviathan, Garuda...but then we get a bunch of weird summonings. Like when Ga Bu summons a funky version of Titan through his despair alone. Or when Yotsuyu brings forth Tsukuyomi because she really, really wants to see the world burn. Hell, Gilgamesh just thinks about his friend Enkidu in the presence of some crystals, and that’s enough to bring forth a primal. So I guess the only requirements for a primal summoning are 1) crystals and 2) thinking kinda hard? Strong feelings, especially negative ones, seem to be more effective but then again! What the heck happened with Gilgamesh? Who knows?!

But this is one of my favorite things in FF14. It’s a powder keg of a situation that will, and HAS, gone off multiple times.

Being tempered, meanwhile, is a fate worse than death. You’re forced to change sides and fight for the enemy. You don’t even find peace when you die - tempered souls linger in Eorzea thanks to how messed up they are by the process. But you don’t become a mindless servant either. *Points to Emet-Selch who is....kinda...on your side (???) but also on Zodiark’s side*

Things aren’t nearly as dark now that tempering can be cured. I’m very thankful, since otherwise my campaign would’ve had a very, very depressing ending. One that I originally planned for but STILL. I’m weak. ;_;

Riding off the Rails

Primal lore is flexible. In ARR, the rules are established, but later expansions took those rules and went “Well, what about this? And this? And this?” In other words, this is me admitting that I’m shameless and will stretch this lore until I reach the moon.

Developing Wyda was a ‘chicken first, egg later’ sort of situation. Though trite, I gave her amnesia in order to give myself an excuse for knowing nothing about FF14 lore (and because I was new to roleplaying). When I finally sat down to flesh her out, my mind kept returning to primals. I love ‘em and their potential for drama! So yeah, I was determined to make it work.

There were a lot of questions I had to answer. If Wyda is a primal, then why isn’t she tempering everyone she meets?! How is she getting away with being a ‘normal’ person? And how do I avoid power creep? I know, for a fact, that if I walked into an RP event and just said...hey. My character is a primal, are you cool with that? The answer would be a solid no. Nooooo! I’d tell that to myself! So I wanted to solve these questions in a fair way that would allow others (and myself) to remain immersed in the roleplaying world. Luckily, FF14 lore is like a bottomless chest of building blocks. It was just a matter of stacking them carefully.

Primals are summoned when someone thinks around some crystals (Ah, Gilgamesh...)

The primal’s purpose is based on the summoner’s desires, but with a monkey’s paw twist (Ga Bu’s Titan punching the other kobolds away is indicative of this)

The amount of aether used in the summoning determines how powerful the primal will be (Shinryu being beefy as hell)

Primals can be summoned out of thin air, or be channeled into someone’s body

When a primal is channeled, the summoner needs the Echo to resist (Ysalye and Ryne). Otherwise the summoner is tempered by their own creation.

Now, with those blocks in hand, I started spitballing...and it led me to this thought. If a primal’s purpose is to NOT be a primal, what happens?

Would they know that they’re a primal?

Can they still use their primal powers?

What happens when the primal is based off of someone who still exists?

For Wyda, I chose to swing this way.

Her memory is garbage because she’s a primal based on someone else. Even if you know someone really well, you can’t perfectly recreate/emulate them.

She’s normal-powered because all her primal magic is going towards suppressing her powers. Extremely inefficient. And she’s very human-like because she’s possessing someone else’s body, as opposed to being made purely of primal aether.

Primals temper whether they want to or not - aether leaks, and it corrupts. To solve this for Wyda, instead of leaking aether out of the wazoo...thanks to the nature of her summoning, she just leaks a tiny bit all the time. Not enough to temper.

But I also wrote myself into a corner. If Wyda isn’t going to behave like a primal, then how does she exist for so long? They need a constant source of aether to survive, and she’s not doing primal stuff since she’s too busy being human. And so...the answer is that she doesn’t. Once her aether runs out, then poof.

See? Fun! (But also pain. So much pain.)

Playing with Fire

Eorzea (like most fantasy RPG settings) is a nightmare factory. Most, if not all, who make their living ‘adventuring’ are scarred from what they have to face. For every success story (WoL), there are countless more tragedies (Avere). And even if you survive...who wouldn’t get trauma if you were an adventurer and it was normal for your buddies to be eaten by a beast, tempered by a primal, possessed by a ghost?

Which is to say, Wyda's scars run deep. Shit goes down.

To repeat that in slightly more words: Wyda is an accidental byproduct of Cravendy’s grief and longing. At her lowest moment, Cravendy (a Seawolf pirate) thinks of her friend Dots and the unfairness of it all. And oops, there are crystals nearby. So now, we got Wyda walking around in Cravendy’s body, thinking that she’s someone named Dots. By the way, Dots is still alive! Very awkward.

Wyda is a denial incarnate. She is Cravendy’s dream for safety, family, and happiness for Dots. But denial does not erase the past, nor does it change how you feel. By existing, Wyda suppresses those feelings for Cravendy and freezes the other woman in the past. With the both of them like this, Cravendy will never accept her trauma and Wyda will be plagued with a stranger’s guilt.

Primal souls are weird. I have no idea where they come from, but they seem separate from the summoner’s. So as Wyda’s influence wanes, Cravendy’s soul begins to resurface. This forces Wyda into a cycle of self-discovery and self-destruction that, unfortunately, convinces Wyda that she ought to disappear. It’s a tragic conclusion she reaches after having her worldview shattered. She’s a copy of Dots, she’s a primal. What’s real, and what’s not? What even matters?

The Power of Love

Love is a persistent theme for all of my characters. For Cravendy, love is why she hurts, so she would rather forget it than bear any more pain. But Wyda is the opposite - she loves too much. When all else is a sham, Wyda trusts that the love she feels is real. And ultimately, this love dooms Wyda and saves Cravendy.

Wyda’s fatal flaw is her self-destructive selflessness. Thanks to being mistaken for Dots all the time, Wyda develops a low sense of self. Then events of the campaign erode that into nothingness. She’s a second rate copy full of brittle memories, she’s a fake! And discovering Cravendy’s sleeping soul only pushes Wyda further into her flaw. Here is my purpose, she thinks! My original! And I’ll save her no matter what, because she deserves to live!

But it’s a mistake. Certainly, Cravendy is saved, but Wyda deserves to be saved too. Although she loves with all her heart, Wyda never learns to love herself and see her own self-worth. She doesn’t understand that her friends don’t share her view of herself - as a worthless copy that can only find value in saving another. Her selflessness loops into selfishness.

Maybe Wyda will come back...She certainly has a lot to learn still!

The TLDR version of all this is that I accidentally pulled a Kingdom Hearts plot with this character, and now I understand, Nomura. I UNDERSTAND WHY YOU BRING BACK YOUR CHARACTERS. ;_;

#Aiswyda Nuthalwyn #me as I got myself into this mess: pain #lots of pain but #but also very rewarding #I hope you all give Cravendy a follow!! lol I keep making new blogs for organizational purposes #ff14 rp #art

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kingburu · 4 years ago

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⭐!

Hades!Jason was/is probably the biggest struggle in dearly departed because compared to Nico he is not as well developed in canon; so his core here is his sense of duty, need to protect people, and his selflessness. The fun part of this though is when @ariihen and I were spitballing about Jason, we joked he’d be a lot like Steven Universe! A sweet kid with a lot of expectations thrown upon him but not really understanding what that means until it starts to scare him. He’s especially similar to Steven Universe from Future all the way to the “I’m a monster” because people view him in such a certain way and you can see it eating at him.

I actually have a hard time wrapping my head around godswap aus to begin with because I feel like there are changes to characters based on the circumstances they’ve grown up in and who their godly parent is, and the entire concept launched from me admitting I didn’t enjoy them too much because i view them as being too OOC (fun fact: siamo nei guai has three chapters of a sequel written but I stopped writing it back then because Pluto!nico’s core and his new environment were hard for me to marry in my head; maybe some day I’ll get back to it).

But! I really wanted Jason (and Nico) to still feel very much like themselves instead of “Jason would do this because Nico did this in canon,” which is why we went to Russia instead of Portugal right away. I think I found a sweet spot in Jason’s character in the following ways:

Canon Jason never wanted to be a hero. He talks about how he’s used to eyes on him as a “prince in waiting” and specifically how he tried to avoid it by taking all of the mundane quests and joined the Fifth Cohort/made friends with the “least popular” people (such a Troy Bolton reaction but ok rick lol; not to mention he apparently made this assessment at the age of 3) and was raised by wolves at the age of two. He also tried to weigh both sides of an argument to be an effective leader as well

Thus, Hades!Jason didn’t want to be the leader. Since he’s the only Greek big three kid, everyone already treats him like the chosen one for the prophecy and he latched onto Bianca because if she’s the hero he doesn’t have to be. And of course, monsters are probably one of his core changes; they were kind to him at the age of 2 and brought him to CHB, and he’s always in an exasperated battle of good monsters and bad monsters (this is supposed to reflect his need to see both sides)

My favorite change from canon Jason and hades!Jason is where his leadership got him. I think in a way both are willing to do what’s needed for a quest and are very pragmatic (to the point canon Jason voted against Nico in MOA and then realized how shitty that sounded and apologized), but he also has a lot of faith in his comrades (in HOH, hazel is very surprised at how sure he is that she’ll master the mist, Jason is already trying to befriend Nico before they find Favonius, and when Frank is antsy in the house of hades, Jason makes a point to stop everything and ask if frank is okay.) I think Hades!Jason also has that instinct, which is why he vibe checks Leo, Nico, Percy, and Hazel. I really didn’t want him to feel like a carbon copy of Nico’s situation while also trying to maintain the integrity of being a child of hades, ergo he’s willing to push himself into the River Styx and get the curse to help win a war but since the curse enhances demigod abilities, it ended up with him going a bit too far; so he’s making himself very accountable for this and still feels like this “selfish” of himself choosing not to fight.

And then the biggest change is the fact Jason doesn’t have someone in canon like Luke, and this was just a side effect of trying to create a set up for the Cupid scene—and boy howdy, am I happy with the results! I think it actually works to show how willing Jason is to put his feelings aside though, since he does a similar thing in TBM about piper breaking up with him for the sake of the quest!

This hasn’t been pressed upon too much yet, but hades!Jason also feels more compelled to uphold the rules of life and death more than nico (aka why he never tried to bring Bianca back to life and other than a gentle nudging about Luke, didn’t ask for him to come back to life either), so he goes into a high moral struggle over there.

The funny part is, Hades never held a grudge because of Zeus killing his lover, so dd!hades is a lot more chill and just wants to love on a boy

#dearly departed #catch me writing meta about my own story #I love my pasty son #I hope you all do too!!

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teruthecreator · 4 years ago

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what really pushed you to write SSOSS? :3 also how did you come up with the idea for the story? :>

UM so the first question actually comes in like, two different parts?? or i guess the two questions sort of overlap (jesus christ readmore i didnt realize i would talk this much LMAO)

so the concept of the on the run/western aspect of it came from a voice call in the friendzone but it was just me, matthew ( @accesscodex ) and corinne ( @maplekeene ). matt was just kind of There while me and corinne were spitballing ideas for aus that would be fun.

we thought of a western because it just seemed like an interesting route to take the characters in (also very heavily inspired by that one textpost thats like “it werent the whiskey what he were tryin to savor”, which ill get back to later). this was sometime after the episode where the thundermen fight the demons in last hope and escape by pegasi (i Think thats either ep 17 or 18), and i think i mentioned how it would be interesting if they took that moment to like. completely run away from the school. i dont think any of us really thought they would go back and talk to grey??? so we were thinking how the story could go without the school involved anymore, and so that’s where the on the run aspect came from. i then took the two ideas we were discussing (on the run and a western) and crashed them together to be like “hey! what if they ran away and then started new lives out west!”

it was never an idea i thought was going to be taken that seriously, but matt (as he always is) is an enabler with his art and he started drawing the boys in cowboy designs. This was the moment i knew i wanted to do Something with the idea, since it was hot on everyone’s mind.

the base idea (basically the first chapter) was based on a comic matthew would then post earlier in the day (on the day that i wrote chapter 1) that was based on the “it werent the whiskey what he were tryin to savor” textpost. i will link the updated comic here ur welcome matthew for not posting the older version bc i know you hate it now. this was the only reason i wanted to write ssoss. because i wanted to hurt matthew and, subsequently, everyone else in the friendzone.

and, honestly?? ssoss was only supposed to be about 2-3 chapters At Most. i Tried to do it all in one sitting, which is why the first chapter ended up being like 10k words!!! but i was getting burnt out and i got WAYYYYY too in-depth about How they escaped, so i felt having that short of a moment in the actual western part wasn’t enough. so then i announced in the notes of the first chapter that i would likely make a second and maybe a third chapter and have that be it. i had never written a really long fic before and i knew (w my history of unfinished but published wips) that i probably couldnt sustain myself for something longer than 4 chapters.

now, how the hell did i get here--8 chapters deep and over 100k words in the hole???? i honestly have no idea!!! the rest of the story has come from a number of places. the early plot beats were establishing moments for the characters on their own and together (some things i Did take from me and corinnes dms bc early on we talked abt it A Lot together, he knows what he contributed). i have trouble outlining things bc i feel as if it kills the motivation, so for the most part i would let ideas simmer in my head until i couldnt take it anymore and then write them all down. then, once i ran out of ideas (usually i come into a Writing Day with about 1-3 scenes thought of), i sit and talk aloud to myself about how the chapter should flow from there. one thing about me is i usually have the first and last scene Already decided when i sit down, so the rest is a matter of deciding how we get from point A to point B without making the whole chapter a wash.

i wish i could say there’s a method to my madness, but i honestly don’t know how i do it. since the moment i decided i wanted this to be way longer, i Have had a sense of the flow of plot. characters arcs i work on throughout writing (in fact i remember the day i had the epiphany about Argo’s epiphany, if yknow what i mean coughcoughchapter4endingcough, and how that ended up changing the rest of his following scenes).

also the ending i had No idea what it was going to be until LITERALLY when i was writing chapter 8. i had an epiphany and wrote down an outline of it so i wouldnt lose track of those thoughts. and the ending DID change because of actual graduation canon!!!! maybe one day i will reveal what the original ending was going to be, though i honestly kept my orig idea and just built stuff around it to make it work.

honestly, ssoss has been one of my greatest exercises in motivation and storyplanning. i don’t Plan much but i do think about the story CONSTANTLY, and it helps that i have a pretty decent memory!!!! there are scenes i’ve had to either cut or move because of either time (aka when its getting close to midnight on a writing day and im literally going insane) or just the scene no longer working w the flow of the chapter, which i’ve learned is par for the course!! sometimes ya gotta cut stuff.

also in terms of pushing myself to keep writing it? audience feedback/hype really does help me!!!! seeing my friends and random people freak out about updates is honestly like. the Reason i wanna write more bc it’s just so cool and humbling to see people appreciate my work!!!! i’ve never had like a “fandom famous” fic before, and tho i wouldn’t put myself at the level of fame Other taz writers have gotten, i’m pretty happy with my lot!!!!

#ignorance cloud on #ssoss #yeah ill put it in the tag why not #thank u egg!!!#i like how i answered this like i was being interviewed wow shes famous #anyways to make a LONG fuckin story short:#matt is an enabler and i let him and i have no idea how i got here #im just the wendys employee in the universes mental breakdown yknow #but its been fun!#mcnuggyy

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whirlybirbs · 6 years ago

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⋆ —-- CARHOP COOL, 2.

summary: you see steve at family video. it prompts some reflection, some questions, and some good ol’ memories of your time at hawkins high. you try to stay frosty but it’s hard when steve harrington is being so nice. pairing: steve harrington x reader, post season three word count: 1.7k a/n: here it is, folks! part two! we have a beach, a movie, and a lotta tension.

⤌ PREVIOUS ⋆ NEXT ⤍

It’s weird.

He’s weird.

Steve Harrington is weird and he’s changed and you’re not really sure how you feel about it.

As you pull into the parking lot of the Family Video in your beat-up, slate grey Civic Hatchback, you catch a glimpse of the high school legend in question through the front window.

He looks the same as he always has. Tall, doe-eyed, good hair...

Stupidly good looking.

Steve was a mythic figure in grade school. High school just... elevated things. It was like Senior Year came and a throne was vacated just for him -- he was the king of Hawkins High and everyone knew it.

Then, Nancy Wheeler dumped him for Jonathan Byers and everything changed.

His title of Prom King was snatched by the grubby, freckled claws of Tommy H. with Carol on his arm that fateful night, then Billy Hargrove walked on and booted him from captain of the basketball team, and then he was rejected by, like, every college he applied to -- or so rumor had it.

(Jenny Larson had told you all about it during the spring production of Oklahoma!... She was obsessed with him. It was like she’d opened his mail or something. You wouldn’t put it past her. She had crazy eyes. You and Robin were always a little freaked out by her. Eugh.)

And, so, Steve Harrington and his mighty hair faded into the yearbook pages of Hawkins Class of ‘85 as a fallen king.

And now, here he is: selling VHS’s alongside his best friend who was also your best friend.

(You wonder if that makes him your best-friend-by-proxy? You’d rather not think about it. Best friends don’t launch spit-balls at the back of each other’s heads during Spanish finals and laugh about it and never let it go. Best friends also don’t point and laugh at that DIY perm you did sophomore year, no matter how bad -- best friends, like Robin, help you slather your hair in conditioner and relaxers while you sob in your upstairs bathroom at your fried mane. So, no, Steve Harrington is not your best-friend-by-proxy.)

Narrowing your eyes, you drum your fingers on the steering wheel and snap your gum.

God, you really don’t want to go in there.

But, then again, you wonder what you have to lose. What, the approval of some washed-up cool-kid? Screw him. He’s dumb anyways. He’s... all hair.

Literally.

Cutting the engine (and subsequently the Donna Summer track playing on your radio), you haul open the door and decide to get this whole thing over with.

The bell above your head chimes as you walk into the Family Video and Steve Harrington promptly chokes on his can of New Coke upon realizing it’s you.

It goes up his nose.

Quickly, he tries to rebound.

“Hey! Hi!” he chirps in an uncharacteristically excited tone, “Welcome, uh, to Family Video!”

You freeze in the doorway and squint.

Steve’s been having some thoughts.

Wild, he knows, but Robin had keyed into how spaced out he’d been since he’d seen you the other night down at Roll-o’s and had decidedly not let it go -- “Just like you never let her whole perm thing go, Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington!” -- in a well-aimed play of well-deserved vengeance.

For the last three nights, he’s been beating himself up over the sudden realization that he’s got cold feet -- and even Henderson noticed it.

But, seriously? Could you blame him? He was a grade-A asshole for most of high school and now he’s a huge loser (self-proclaimed, despite both Robin and Dustin’s protests) and you’re super cool. You’re all frosty poise and pastel rollerblades.

And here he is, working part-time at Family Video, spending the rest of his summer indoors.

Steve Harrington, pale loser.

Not to mention, you had a lot of friends in high school -- maybe not swearing loyalty to any one group, but you fleeted around and blended in and you got along so well with everyone. Everyone knew it was you and Robin Buckley against the world.

Compare that to his own dumb ass and he’s the world’s saddest pale loser.

At least he has Robin. And you do, too.

Which is why you’re here. In Family Video.

Staring at him.

You pull your sunglasses down your nose, furrow your brow and speak slowly.

“Are you... okay?”

Steve plants his palm on the counter, a sudden flare of nerves lighting his chest on fire as he card a hand through his hair and smiles with the gusto of a man living by the motto fake-it-til-you-make-it. “Me? Yeah -- yeah, I’m good. How’re you? What’s up?”

You push your sunglasses up, snap your gum and shove your hands in the pockets of your jean shorts. Frosty.

“Looking for Robin,” you say curtly, shrugging a bit, “Is she around? She called -- we’re catching a movie after her shift.”

Steve deflates a bit. No invite. Understandable, but ouch. “Uh, yeah, she’s out back with Keith organizing the rental returns.”

You pull a face.

Steve sees it. He narrows his eyes, lips upturning a bit in curiosity. The expression on your face isn’t so frosty as you toe the carpet with your skate shoes and eye the display of comedies.

“What?”

“Hm?” you blink back at him, eyes wide, “What?”

“That look,” he says, leaning forward onto his elbows, “What was that for?”

It takes you a second to realize that Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington is trying to make conversation with you. He’s really trying.

You push your sunglasses back over your hair and move to eye around him. When you speak, it’s quiet.

“Y’know. Keith.”

Steve’s brows raise and he blinks fast. “Oh, yeah, yeah, he’s -- uh...”

He pulls his bottom lip in and waves a hand, searching for the words.

(They’re evading him because he’s seriously not looking to make himself look like more of an asshole.)

“Creepy?” you offer, turning over a copy of Revenge of the Nerds, “Mad creepy. I’m sure Robin is, like, two seconds from emptying a can of pepper spray in his face.”

“Does she carry pepper spray?”

You shrug. “It’s Robin --”

“-- Yeah, good point.”

“I mean, she could carry a taser --”

“-- And I wouldn’t ask a single question.”

... It’s not weird. Whatever this is isn’t weird.

The laugh you both share is short and quiet but it’s genuine and before the moment can bleed into something like non-verbal peace treaty between warring high school personalities, the girl in question bursts from the back with a big ol’ smile.

“Would y’ look at that!” she claps, “My two best friends! Talking!”

You toss her a wide grin, dropping your sunglasses back down to your nose and as she glides over the counter and leaps into the same handshake you’ve shared since the seventh grade.

Steve watches with a lopsided smirk. Goofballs. It’s cute.

“You ready for Phenomena?” Robin asks, waving her fingers and cooing like a ghost, “OooOOOooh! Bugs! Psychic powers! Horror!”

“Uh, try drive-in popcorn!” you snort, swatting her hands away, “Took you long enough. I’m starving.”

“You guys are seeing Phenomena?” Steve asks, drumming his fingers on the counter, “I heard it’s good --”

A light bulb bursts above Robin Buckley’s head and you swear you saw it, it was that bright.

“Steve!”

“Robin!” he says with a faux amount of excitement.

“Y-You should come!”

You blink.

Steve blinks at you.

Then at Robin.

Guilt flies across his face. He realizes he’s making you uncomfortable. From the way you tense up and look at Robin, he can tell you’re totally not into that idea.

So, he sputters.

“Uh... I dunno, Rob, I gotta close --”

You decide, in that moment, that Steve Harrington has changed and sure it’s weird but... you’re weird, too. And maybe he wasn’t so... terrible. I mean, he was still stupidly good looking -- and that’s why you’re so tense. Because the one thing you’d believed for all those years is being flipped upside down and you’re about to willingly spending time with The Steve Harrington.

“Why not?” you ask slowly, surprising everyone in the room, even yourself, “It’d be fun. Keith can close up.”

Steve jaw drops. “... Wait, seriously?”

Robin’s whole face lights up.

She blinks between you both.

You’re glad your sunglasses are on. You try to stay frosty. Can’t let the cool-kid know you have feelings.

“Yeah,” you say, trying to keep your tone even, “I mean -- if you’re gonna launch a spitball at the back of my head during it, don’t even bother, but...”

Steve’s face falls.

You see the real guilt there. It shocks you.

“Listen,” he raises his hands, “I was a dick --”

Robin quirks a brow. “A mega-dick, Harrington.”

“Right, a mega-dick. You... You don’t have to invite me. It’s cool. I get it. I’m, uh...” his words falter off, lost as he drops his gaze and pulls his lips tightly together, “I get it.”

There’s a pause.

And then you sigh.

“Stop looking like a kicked puppy and just get into my car, Steve.”

Brown eyes light up so bright it’s like you’re smiling at the sun.

“Seriously?”

You start for the door with a grin. “Did I stutter?”

Robin peels into victorious laughter as Steve scrambles faster than light, hucking his vest across the room and leaping over the counter -- he’s grinning as he does, pushing you and Robin out the door before Keith can protest from the back room.

You all pile into your Hatchback and the laughter that’s shared isn’t forced.

For the first time in a week, Steve Harrington hasn’t felt so weird.

For the first time in years, you’ve felt like you’ve peaked.

#CARHOP COOL #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington imagine #joe keery imagine #stranger things imagine #steve harrington reader insert #steve harrington x oc

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