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physalian · 5 months ago

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Segway Characters (Or when your protagonist knows jack about the story)

This is the protagonist of a sci-fi or fantasy world, generally a nobody who gets dragged in either by circumstance or by being the long-lost-something prophesied to save the realm. They know absolutely nothing about the plot, the other characters, the magic system, or the new world, the audience proxy that asks all the questions on the audience’s behalf.

I call them Segways (read; not segue) because they look dumb and you ride their ass through the narrative.

This is a very, very broad concept for a protagonist, everybody from a superhero origin story to Harry Potter, as opposed to a character like James Bond, an expert in their craft and a *seasoned protagonist*.

Segways usually aren’t a problem… until it becomes rather painfully obvious that they only exist to be the audience proxy to ask those questions, when another character could and should be the protagonist because they’re far more interesting, usually because the protagonist is way less cool and active in the plot than their constituents. Or, they’re a perfectly fine character, but the exposition dumping to them is sloppy and unrefined.

The difference between just a protagonist and a Segway is how smoothly they integrate into that story.

So.

—

Inception

I love this movie. It has inspired so much of my writing.

Ariadne is a poster child of Segway characters. Aside from the villain, Mal, she’s the only woman in the cast, and though Dom (DiCaprio) is the hero, Ariadne is his protege, the audience vector through which all the world mechanics and important backstory stuff is told. Every other character already knows how dream heists work and who Mal is, so explaining redundant information between experts would look weird—enter the Segway, Ariadne.

For what it’s worth, she’s not useless otherwise. She’s the new ‘architect,’ she builds the mazes the rest of the team runs through and is the innocent cinnamon roll dragged into problems that Dom created. Her name could not be a more heavy-handed symbol.

She’s active in the story and her perspective foils against Dom’s well enough, but Inception is a movie with layers and an infamous amount of necessary exposition to understand the story. Someone has to be there to ask all the questions the audience has. Ariadne unfortunately gets the lion’s share, instead of the script figuring out how to weave more of it into the interactions of the other characters. They spent so much time on the complex narrative it’s like they forgot about a layman audience and threw her in too late for a seamless integration.

—

Netflix’s The Old Guard is better than it should be, given its budget. I didn’t read the comic it was based on and have no idea if Nile’s character is the same in the original, but she’s another Segway with only one reason for existing in the plot otherwise: Andy’s got to pass the torch to someone.

Yes she comes to save them in the end and yes, her advantage in the story is being unknown to the villains, but she’s there, in this version of the story, so the other four heroes can info-dump to her about all manner of things from how immortality works to their backstories to the setup for the sequel the movie never got.

I just rewatched it recently and if the script just had two or three passes to tackle the exposition problem, it could have off-loaded some of the burden onto other characters, or better told it through action, and not just info-dumpy monologues. When the movie came out I remember a critic I like commenting that it could have been a more interesting story if it had been told from the sympathetic villain’s perspective (Not Dudley’s). As in, if he was on a mission with all his conspiracy-level research and dedication to track these people down, throwing out his own theories for them to then correct or something.

Like this, the story is just waiting for Nile to ask the right questions. Nothing is volunteered freely without Nile directly asking for it, because it runs into the same problem as Inception: Every other character already knows everything, and they wouldn’t exposit to each other.

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A lot of isekai anime also do this. I’ve tried getting into older, tentpole shows like Sailor Moon and Bleach and Yu Yu Hakusho and I don’t know what it is about anime pilot episodes, even modern ones but particularly the old ones, the exposition dumping is atrocious. To the point where it feels like they all know it and are like “listen just bear with us and we’ll get this done fast and sloppy and get to the good stuff later”.

I just can’t. I think I made it 15 minutes into Bleach before noping out of there years ago.

—

Obviously all these movies and shows have their fans, but if you’re a writer struggling with exposition or noticed this trend like me, here’s some suggestions to avoid the need to info-dump, assuming you do want to keep your Segway.

Try not to give all the exposition questions to one character, and don’t wait for that character to ask, out-of-character on behalf of the audience, what’s going on in the story. Instead, let it flow more naturally in conversation and let the more experienced characters brainstorm with each other, or let the protagonist uncover some of this information actively on their own through other means, for variety’s sake.

Figure out a reason why these questions are necessary to the story in this moment. Why is the hero asking now, as opposed to any other time? You can also let the hero draw their own conclusions and have the other characters correct their misassumptions, feeding that information in a more natural way.

Give the hero more to do in the story beyond being the exposition vehicle right from the start. I don’t care if they’re the chosen one and the plot just falls into their lap, why are they the chosen one?

Spread out the exposition to come only when it’s necessary. Front-loading it can tarnish the immersion and overwhelm the audience, especially if it’s complex, or if there’s a lot of it. You can pepper it all the way through the story if you want.

If you really want to front-load it, you can go to the extremes and slap in a prologue or meta-narrative dump that’s fun and entertaining from a third person omniscient perspective. First thing that comes to mind is the opening 2D scene from Kung Fu Panda that covers a lot of ground. Go ham.

None of these characters are bad, I just think with a few more rounds of revisions and forethought, they could have been integrated better into their stories.

#writing #writing advice #writing a book #writing resources #writing tips #writing tools #writeblr #character design #fantasy #sci fi #exposition #infodump

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randomthefox · 27 days ago

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https://www.tumblr.com/randomthefox/768599945857089536/httpswwwtumblrcomrandomthefox768227033026363

Okay, I see what you’re saying, but Amy still felt very dull in Frontiers to me.

I mean, she’s stuck on an entire island ALONE WITH SONIC, and you’re telling me she WON’T get all giddy or say something romantically cheesy?

Also, as I brought up before, he arc about her deciding to go out on her own to “share love with the world” is completely redundant, as SHE ALREADY DOES THAT! Literally, Amy’s whole thing since her inception has been exactly that! From inspiring Gamma to leave Eggman and strike out on his own, to helping a lost Flicky reunite with his family, to convincing the cold-hearted Shadow that humanity is worth saving… Is that NOT her sharing her love with the world??

And like I also said, the sudden hyper-fixation on Amy’s fortune cards feels stupid, unnecessary and extremely forced. It’s bad writing if you take away the item a character is iconic for (in this case, Amy’s hammer) and replace with it with something they’re not for the sake of funny references to a past game’s manual.

>I mean, she’s stuck on an entire island ALONE WITH SONIC, and you’re telling me she WON’T get all giddy or say something romantically cheesy?

I dunno man, read the room lol. They ended up on the island after a plane crash, and she was trapped in some kind of nightmare prison (actually what's funny is while Knuckles and Tails mention getting visions, Amy doesn't. Like I said, she just doesn't have any baggage like they do haha), and she spends the whole game in a state of ghostly half existence.

And she phases right through Sonic, in this state.

These islands aren't exactly a romantic dream couples retreat for them, given the circumstances. Seems natural that she'd be a little bit more focused. Even if that focus gets distracted by the whole little thing with the Koco's, because Amy is kind of a ditz =P

The point of the final scene with Amy isn't the "I want to share that love with the world" part. You're focusing on the wrong thing. The point of that scene was Amy saying she was willing to be apart from Sonic. That's also what Tails' final scene is about too. They both want to split off and go their own way and define themselves as individuals separate from Sonic for a little while. That's why when Sonic responds he speaks of their eventual reunion, and not about her desire to "share that love with the world."

It doesn't have any meat to it, compared to Knuckles and Tails. Because Amy just doesn't have any problems like they do. So her final cutscene is just being all like "well that was kind of depressing =/ I think I'm just gonna Go for a while, once this is over." Her being kind of bummed out about being swept up in trying to reunite those Koco only to watch them get genocided in a Kingdom Hearts flashback and deciding she wants to take a break and find herself for a while seems like a pretty fair conclusion to her chapter (such as it is) to me.

I think making out her fortune cards like they're a whole part of her personality, when before they were practically an informed attribute that only existed in paratext, is a little annoying sure. But I don't see how they're a "hyper fixation." They're only brought up once in the vanilla game, when Sonic alludes to them while saying the equivalent of "I'll be back in two shakes of a lambs tail." And they're no more prominent or significant in the FInal Horizons DLC than Tails with his INFINITE WRENCHES are. She interacts with them for a single cutscene, they're used for a useless melee attack (the DLC characters are not meant to be used for ANY kind of combat), and she rides them like a Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's bike for her final movement upgrade. That's it. And she still has the hammer, an upgrade lets her smash it on the ground making a heart shaped cyloop.

What's funny is Amy even complains that she can't use her hammer because of Cyberspace =P

Nothing's been replaced. And the "writing" didn't have anything to do with the GAMEPLAY decision to have her fling cards around as a melee attack instead of the hammer. They developed her as a playable character and decided on her movelist first, THEN the story was written.

#sonic frontiers #amy rose #sonic #sonic the hedgehog

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antimonyandthyme · 1 year ago

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martian inception au

In Seb’s notebook, in his scratchy scrawl Mark has grown very accustomed to reading:

Side effects – no dreaming

That’s it, no dreaming. Seb doesn’t write, Failure differentiating reality and dream, because any dreamer worth their salt should know which boundaries they strictly do not cross. They create and shatter worlds in their heads and the one thing they give up is the ability to do this without being hooked to a PASIV. That’s not too bad, considering.

But if you bothered to flip the page:

Sub side effects

Entire paragraphs dedicated to specific complications for each role, extractor, chemist, architect, point man. Under forger:

Loss of self

The first time Mark realizes it’s happening, Seb walks by him in a dream. Seb walks by him and ignores him, as if Mark were merely a projection of the dreamer.

Bewildered and irrationally hurt, Mark goes, “Seb?”

His voice is the safety click off a gun. Seb flinches and looks around wildly. Projections aren’t supposed to speak.

It takes a moment before Mark looks down at his hands, and realizes they’re the wrong ones. He turns his back to Seb, and changes to what he assumes—hopes—is the appearance he should be wearing.

“There you are,” Seb snaps. He only gets like this when he’s worried. “I couldn’t find you.”

Mark makes up some ridiculous excuse. Got turned around in the maze, or something like that, as if any of them would ever get turned around in a maze.

Seb looks at him. “Don’t let it happen again.”

Mark doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t make promises he can’t keep.

Ironically, it’s Seb who notices last. He’s not being careless. His faith in Mark is just so unshakable that he doesn’t look back when he hears the fall of Mark’s footsteps behind him. Among the hardest things to forge is a person’s gait. Distributing weight and sound according to the target’s walking habits is an intricate and tedious task. Seb can always tell it’s still Mark, even when he wears a different face.

So Seb doesn’t look back.

Jenson does, though. Coming out of a dream, all of them nearing the final kick, and Jenson looks back.

Mark is wearing a stranger as his skin.

Jenson waits until Seb’s gone on ahead. And then he punches Mark so hard Mark will probably feel it for a week in reality.

“Are you trying to break his heart?”

Mark looks down at his hands again.

“Get your shit together,” Jenson demands.

Mark shifts back, and when he wakes, he places two fingers on his own face, and is surprised to see them appear correct.

He forgets his totem once. Forgets it, because the last person he was forging doesn’t have one. So he leaves it behind when he goes to get groceries. Chocolate chips and bananas, because Seb wants to make chocolate chip banana bread.

When he gets back, Seb is waiting for him. He has Mark’s swiss army knife cradled in his hand.

Seb knows every stitch of Mark’s totem. Seb helped create Mark’s totem, reasoned that they could custom the knife so elaborately that no extractor would be able to recreate the exact version which belonged to Mark. Sometimes Mark thinks his totem is better off residing in Seb’s hands. These days he shifts so often he doesn’t need it any longer. In reality his hands stay the same. In dreams, his hands change shape and size and colour.

There, no totem needed. Seb doesn’t even need to worry.

“Mark.” Seb’s voice is wobbly. He’s gone and figured it out. Because of course he has.

Mark places the grocery bag on the table. The veins running atop his hand are as unfamiliar as the hundreds of dendrites splitting out from the Indus River.

“Side effect,” he says.

“No more jobs until this stops,” Seb says. Mark can hear him trying to be authoritative, brave. Seb comes close, and wraps Mark’s fingers around his totem. “Don’t ever leave this behind again.”

Seb’s hand above his. Mark tries to memorize the image, but he’s not sure if it’ll take. Almost trickier than an Inception.

Jenson puts his research skills into good use, and finds an island off the coast of Victoria that houses a population of zero. He arranges transport and food and beer to last Mark a month at least. Mark spends the first two days drinking his way through the supplies, and considers radioing Jenson to send more.

He holds up his hand to the sun. It’s gotten severely tanner. Jenson forgot sunscreen. But the shapes are good. The knuckles aren’t sewn together by someone playing at god. The angles won’t cut him open.

Mark drinks away the sting of abandonment. The team’s in Toronto for a job. He wonders who their forger is. He drinks some more.

In the third week he dreams.

Real dreams—they’re confusing. There’s no story, no plotline. There’s no job. There's no point. Mark’s falling down a chasm of mirrors. The faces reflected back are not his own. Mark’s smashing every mirror with his bare hands. Mark’s watching the blood run down in rivulets, real enough to taste.

On second thought, maybe these dreams are the ones that make the most sense.

Even after an alcoholic induced state lasting three and a half weeks, Mark’s still capable if he wants to be. He finds a way to get off the island. And then he goes to find them.

More specifically, he goes to rescue them from some botched mission.

“I leave for one month,” Mark says. He’s allowed to be dramatic, and a little smug. He pulls them out of the third layer, and then the second layer, and then the first. Each time with his own goddamn hands. It’s as if he has the strength to bend steel.

Seb doesn’t let go. Refuses to let go even as they exit the dream. Mark looks down at their joined hands. Seb’s hand fits perfectly in his, as it has always done.

Yeah. That looks just about fine.

#athy texts #fanfic #rpf #martian #happy martian monday

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myhahnestopinion · 11 months ago

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THE AARONS 2023 - Worst Film

It’s a marvel this category isn’t filled up with superhero films after the year they’ve had. Here are The Aarons for Worst Film:

#10. 65

A Quiet Place screenwriters Scott Beck and Bryan Woods don’t knock it out of the (Jurassic) park with their subsequent Spielberg homage. 65 will have viewers counting down the seconds until they can go home. The science-fiction tale strands stars Adam Driver and Ariana Greenblatt in a B-movie bereft of a reason to see it. The fusion of futuristic tech and ferocious animals should have been easy fodder for frivolous entertainment. Instead, the sluggish pace of the film’s imminent extinction event suggests it wasn’t a meteor or da ice age that killed the dinosaurs; it was extreme boredom.

#9. Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire

Director Zack Snyder likes to paint himself as a rebel against a restrictive studio system while being constantly given new opportunities without cause. His latest big-budget misfire is a childish mash-up of Star Wars and Seven Samurai. Par for the course, the prosaic director copies his inspirations while completely misunderstanding their objectives. Already, the film’s awkward and abruptly-ended parade of thinly-sketched characters is being billed as another incomplete vision, requiring not just two parts but two cuts of each part to truly fulfill Snyder’s intentions. Maybe his hardcore fans will be pleased at the end of the prolonged journey; everyone else will be over the Moon long before then.

#8. The Exorcist: Believer

From the beginning, the involvement of David Gordon Green inspired little faith in Believer. Sure enough, the director of Halloween kills interest in his proposed trilogy one film sooner than his last. It’s unclear what exactly led the studio to release a sequel fifty years later that’s tamer than a TV edit of the original. It surely couldn’t have been the return of Ellen Burstyn in her Oscar-nominated role of Chris MacNeil given how quickly the film disfigures and discards the character. That said, it may be for the best that she could excise herself from the proceedings before its embarrassing ending. The franchise is no stranger to desecration but, even at its worst, it was never before this uncompelling.

#7. Five Nights At Freddy’s

Topping the box-office may have demonstrated audiences’ appetite for the haunted pizzeria franchise but, make no mistake, the film adaptation of Freddy’s is as run-down as its central establishment. The animatronic mascots at center stage only manage the most pedestrian of jump-scares; they’re far from the only ones just going through the motions. The script, written in part by franchise creator Scott Cawthon, stretches out its thin premise with banal characters and a bizarre child-custody B-plot. It might have been entertaining if it had been any more cheesy. Instead, Freddy’s only serves up an interminable runtime; five nights has never felt so long.

#6. Hypnotic

Hypnotic is aptly named; the thriller from Spy Kids director Robert Rodriguez certainly commands one’s attention. The plot, which revolves around Ben Affleck sleepwalking through a conspiracy involving dueling factions of psychics, is simply too inane to ignore. Rodriguez wrote his initial script back in 2002 but was clearly susceptible to outside influences; the film rips off several works that were released before and since, including the dream-like architecture of Inception. Although the director may pride himself on his low-budget prowess, even he can’t make those knock-off sequences look good (though they’re not the silliest instance of replicating elaborate scenery on a miniscule budget here). The film fulfills its intentions on one front: once it’s all over, audiences will have a hard time believing any of it was real.

#5. Children of the Corn

The latest offspring of the rotten franchise at least had a kernel of a good idea: the remake roots its characters’ motivations in righteous fury at environmental recklessness rather than strictly religious fervor. However, Children never develops this into any kind of sustenance. The horror here is as, ahem, corny as can be, particularly its stale translation of demonic entity He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Director Kurt Wimmer shows no growth as a director since his last film in 2006, the infamous Ultraviolet; the wooden child actors at least have their youth as an excuse. Sadly though, if ranked within the rest of the series, this one would still land in the middle of the row.

#4. Haunted Mansion

2023 was home to many failures for The Walt Disney Company, but none quite as ghastly as the new Haunted Mansion. It’s baffling how a film this overstuffed with actors (including Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson, and Danny DeVito among many others) could end up this vacant. Indeed, the biggest throughline of the theme-park adaptation is not its attempted reflection on grief but its pervasive and perverse product placement (One character’s tearful monologue about his dead wife comes complete with a prominent Baskin Robbins namedrop). It’s definitely haunting, just not in the way they hoped for.

#3. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3

The Big Fat franchise became even more bloated last year with a picture that can most charitably be described as ‘an all-expenses paid trip to Greece for its cast’. There’s certainly no storytelling reason why audiences are still following the adventures of this extended family, which haphazardly include a last-minute wedding of two very minor characters to justify its title. Nia Vardalos finally receives the director’s chair in addition to her regular writing work just in time for there to be no fresh direction to take things in. If she tries to reunite everyone for a fourth go-round, they would be wise to divorce themselves from it as quickly as possible.

#2. Pet Sematary: Bloodlines

Bloodlines resurrects the series last seen in 2019; if this was how it was going to come back, it should have stayed buried. While Stephen King is an imaginative writer, trying to stretch a single chapter of any novel into a feature-length film is like getting blood from a stone. The zombie prequel stumbles its way from scene to scene in search of life, but Bloodlines has nothing for audiences to relate to. Even screen icons like David Duchovny and Pam Grier can’t rouse any interest. Exploiting known franchises may be easy, but, sometimes, making anything else instead is better.

AND THE WORST FILM OF 2023 IS…

#1. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey

Disney slowly losing their stranglehold on intellectual property is a bit bittersweet; Honey is bad enough to sour anyone on the idea of a public domain. The shoddy slasher film, which blustered its way onto the marketplace as soon as the filmmakers could profit from it, is barely recognizable as Pooh but unmistakable as crap. Making the lovable animal into a feral murderer may be legal now, but writer/director Rhys Frake-Waterfield didn’t think, think, think up any other ideas beyond just stirring the pot. Winnie is hoping to prey on one’s curiosity with its premise alone. Word of advice? Don’t bother.

NEXT UP: THE 2023 AARON FOR BEST DIRECTOR!

#film #TheAarons #TheAarons2023 #TheAaronsFilm #worst of 2023 #bad movies #worst film #65 #rebel moon #the exorcist believer #five nights at freddy's #hypnotic #children of the corn #haunted mansion #my big fat greek wedding 3 #pet sematary bloodlines #winnie the pooh blood and honey

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roosterbox · 1 year ago

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Don’t mind me, still brainstorming ideas for fics. In fact, how about this one? It’s a combination of two of my biggest fandoms.

Stranger Things/Inception AU

Richard Harrington has a reputation as a ruthless businessman. Anything he wants - sales, mergers, whatever the fuck - he gets. Even in situations where the other party is emphatically against complying no matter what, he seems to convince them… somehow.

But then, [X Business] comes into his crosshairs. Previously run by a guy named Al Munson, he has since passed away, leaving the business in the hands of his ne’er do well son, Eddie. His son, who surprises Richard with his resistance to corporate takeover, if not his actual business acumen. He’ll need to be dealt with. So Richard calls in his secret weapon.

Enter Steve Harrington, Richard’s long suffering son, who went into dreamshare at his father’s request - demand, more like - to give him (Richard) a leg up when dealing with stubborn people. If someone refuses Richard, he’ll just send in Steve, who’ll secretly go into their dreams and, after some adjustments, have them completely changing their minds about things. Steve is damn good at this, but he also hates it. The ruthless business side, at least. He’s often wondered if he might do other, more positive things with this job.

Eddie and Steve eventually meet in the dreamscape. And, surprise surprise, Eddie has experience with dream-sharing. And he’s smart enough to figure out that this Steve guy is not one of his own projections. But he strings him along a bit, because why not, right? He is fucking gorgeous, after all. They’re together for hours in dreams, but of course Steve is always long gone by the time Eddie wakes up. Steve, meanwhile, is STRESSED. No matter what he tries, he can’t seem to dig any deeper into what actually makes Eddie tick. So that he can work his magic, you know? And he’s worried about how his dad will react. Also he is absolutely falling for Eddie. Falling HARD. (Eddie is too)

Fast forward. They somehow meet IRL. Recognition. Confession. Smooch. (Maybe more than smooch, but I’m flexible on that part.) Maybe some angsty misunderstandings - does Eddie actually care for Steve, or is he just leading him on? Is this all part of Steve’s (really Richard’s) plan of corporate manipulation? - but they work it out eventually. They realize that, not only does Steve hate doing this constantly for his asshole dad, but Eddie isn’t even interested in running [X Business] at all - he hated his dad, and he just wants to be a musician. But he also doesn’t want the company to end up in Richard Harrington’s grubby hands. Which is fair. And so, plans are made.

Insert exciting plot stuff here. Steve tells his dad off, essentially that he’s either gonna have to actually pay a dreamshare expert to do his dirty work (unlikely, as he is a stingy fuck and dreamshare, even the more legitimate kind, ain’t cheap. The more underhanded stuff doubly so), or he’s all on his own, because Steve is OUT. Eddie gives complete control of [X Company] to someone else (Wayne?), who turns out to be EVEN MORE stubborn than Eddie. And then Steddie rides off into the sunset, happily dreaming together for the rest of their lives.

Alternate ending idea: Steddie turns the tables on Richard and incept him instead. Maybe inspire him to dissolve his company like Robert Fischer in the movie. A heist-esque story where the heister becomes the heistee. Either way, the important part is that Steve and Eddie are together and happy.

Needs work overall, of course, but I like the few seeds of idea that I have. Plus the world always needs more Inception crossovers. The world of dreamshare is a hugely untapped gold mine. Every fandom should have at least one Inception AU.

#stranger things #Steddie #inception #crossover #fic ideas #mind heist #Steddie bonds over their dads being jerks #still workshopping this one #but hey #i think it has potential

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wings-of-flying · 2 years ago

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8 riptide fics i want to write so bad but haven't by now so probably never will (it pains me to admit i won't write them). some have titles and full on plans, others don't. anyone can use these cause i definitely won't get the chance

1 - haunted by ill angels aka a riptide oneshot based on that hallucinogenic poison scene from s&b s2

They’re going through a dungeon thingie and go down two separate hallways. Jay ends up in a room with a window to Chip & Gill’s, with coloured glass vials of unknown liquids. Chip and Gill end up in an empty room, except for a conspicuous vent on the wall. Suddenly the doors to both lock and an orange gas sprays into Chip & Gill’s room, causing them to start choking and fall unconscious. A voice echoes through Jay’s room telling her that only one of the vials is the antidote. Chip & Gill end up having hallucinations while Jay tries to solve the riddle thing.

2 - because i'm the good guy aka gillion villain arc

Instead of choosing between the sea and land, he plans to pick both, condemning them both to destruction. Nothing Chip and Jay can do will convince him to change his mind. So they have to take another approach to stopping him.

3 - backstory switch

Albatrio become separated and experience each other's backstories (like that one episode of EAH)

Jay - Gillion's

Chip - Jay's

Gillion - Chip's (because I want to see my boy have a functional family then it be snatched from him)

They wake up without their own memories, but feeling as if something is wrong. They relive the worst parts of each other’s backstories (Gill’s banishment, Jay’s sister’s death, the Black Rose sinking) over and over until they start to remember what happened (they were cursed in the BLOCK when going to rescue Lizzie). They have to use the power of friendship to escape! No but seriously, they have to break the illusion by proving that they don’t belong there.

4 - Gill's nightmares get so bad he doesn't wake up. Cue Chip and Jay going into his head to try and bring him back.

The dream pretends Gill was never chosen as the champion and he lived a normal life. He moved up to the Oversea with Edyn. (Essentially that bit in OUAT when Emma goes princess mode and isn't herself at all)

5 - i fell for you like clockwork (repeatedly, easily, just as i'd planned) aka a birdbolt timeloop fic

Teleport machine malfunctions. Leads to timeloop >:D in which they have to keep fighting the house & ensa and jay are the only ones aware of the timeloop happening. They keep their memories and become closer, till they manage to fix the machine properly, end the timeloop and confuse everyone by suddenly being in a relationship

6 - let the birds sing (dilly dilly) aka jay has dream inception about her sister still being alive

Jay wakes from a nightmare. Ava is there to help her. Jay ends up realising this is a dream and wakes again, feeling alone and missing her sister.

7 - pistolwhip romeo and juliet

i literally had no plan for this one except a cast list, so here you go i guess?

Romeo - Lizzie; Juliet - Jay; Benvolio - Chip; Mercutio - Gillion; Tybalt - Ava; Friar Laurence - Niklaus; Nurse/Lady Capulet - May Ferin; Paris - Kira; Lord Capulet - Jayson Ferin; Lord Montague - Arlin James; Rosaline - ???

8 - another birdbolt oneshot

After 97, Chip & Jay brought Gill to Chip’s room to rest (not sleep, just rest) and Jay leaves for a breather. She goes to the kitchen to try and find something to temporarily help with Gill’s wounds and ends up bumping into Ensa. Cue awkward gay moments where Jay realises she totally has a crush. But then she leaves, v sad.

#jrwi fanfiction #idek how to tag this #it'll go under writing tag ig #albatross writes

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phlebaswrites · 2 years ago

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International Fanworks Day 2023: When Fandoms Collide

Happy International Fanworks Day 2023!

I've made two lists for International Fanworks Day this year and, just like last year, one is a list of my own works and the other is a list of works I'd recommend.

They're fairly long lists so I'm putting them under a cut.

My Stories

The Arrow Does Not Dream

The world doesn't need a hero.

It needs a professional.

A fusion with The Witcher.

Founders Fairy Tales

Fusions of various Disney Princesses with the Founders from Naruto.

Almost all the princesses are here, except for Pocahontas - because cultural appropriation - and Tiana - because I have never seen that film. I did Frozen instead.

None of the stories are more than 2,200 words and most of them are a lot less.

The Closing of Our Shared Narrative

A Jedi and a Sith can never be friends, everyone knows this.

Everyone is wrong.

A fusion between Naruto and Star Wars.

To Seek (and Find)

Kisame had a dream.

He’s determined to get it back.

A fusion between Naruto and Inception.

Created Monsters

To step into a Jaeger is to Drift.

To become one of two.

A fusion between Naruto and Pacific Rim.

Ring Cow Bell Ring!

Everyone agrees that Konoha Farms produces the best fruit, cheese, and wine.

It’s just their methods that are questionable.

A fusion between Naruto and Harvest Moon.

Waddle Giggle Gargle Paddle Poodle!

Sometimes, there are dinosaurs.

(Where you least expect them.)

A fusion between Naruto and Jurassic Park.

Senju Sauropods

Hashirama is not your usual dinosaur.

He makes a friend.

A fusion between Naruto, The Good Dinosaur and Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon.

The Secret Lives of Marilyn and Susan Short

Mary Sue Maybe.

A fandom crossing take on The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

My Recommendations - Naruto

Defense Against The Dark Arts With Professor Umino by AvocadoLove

Crossover with Harry Potter.

Book 5 AU: With no witch or wizard willing to take the Defense Against The Dark Arts job except Umbridge, Dumbledore is forced to look elsewhere.

He hires a shinobi.

Fire and Water by AvocadoLove

Fusion with Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Waterbender Sifu Iruka meets firebending Commander Kakashi during the Siege of The North.

oh, but the revelation of stardust by PandaFlower

Crossover with the Marvel Cinematic Universe

What is the world coming to when goddamn aliens give me sympathetic looks about paperwork? It was boggling. Infuriating. Maybe, a smidge validating. Nick Fury resisted the urge to swear and check over his shoulder in case Murphy was lurking.

Not that this Senju Tobirama was their typical extraterrestrial, oh no, guy had to come from a separate dimension in addition to being from a different planet.

My first introduction to Tobirama and I fell in love instantly.

Moon Fish and Qilin by Good_Grief

Fusion with Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Izuna has been hunting for months, following whispers of a legend. All of the stories have led him to this place where the Moon Fish resides, all he needs to do is catch it.

Idiots Of Unusual Size by Asuka Kureru (Askerian)

Fusion with His Dark Materials.

Madara's daemon settled early.

Hashirama's daemon did not. Momo-kun was not settled when they met and he did not settle when Hashirama was thirteen and getting caught at the river. He didn't settle when they were fourteen on their first real battlefield, either, and while Madara and Kuyuri felt relieved that they had thus far escaped meeting on the field of battle, they could not help a gnawing ache of curiosity. What was he going to be? A bear, dangerous but only in it for the honey? Some slow, well-natured, well-horned cattle? A squirrel?

"Not quick-witted enough for that one," Kuyuri would say sarcastically, "but otherwise!" and Madara would half-heartedly chide her.

My Recommendations - Inception

What Dreams May Come by MarbleGlove

Crossover with Highlander.

Methos' mind is not one you'd want to be stuck in, aka the inception team attempts extraction on Adam Pierson.

Thicker Water by pprfaith

Crossover with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Arthur and Natasha rarely make it to their Gamma's birthday, but business keeps them in touch.

In Duty Homeward Shall We Fly by toomuchplor

Crossover with 3rd Rock from the Sun.

Arthur had been on this planet for nearly fourteen years now and everyone still insisted on treating him like a child.

Lions and Tigers by Starlingthefool

Crossover with Calvin & Hobbes.

"What were you like as a kid?” Eames asks him.

“Quiet,” Arthur says. “I lived in my head a lot. You?”

“I did too,” Eames replies. “Only I was never quiet about it.”

A story about growing up, sort of.

The Boy Who Spoke With Ghosts by AvocadoLove

Crossover with The Sixth Sense.

No one suspects Arthur. He's too practical, too organized, too sensible to believe in the supernatural.

Based on the kink meme prompt: Arthur's real name is Cole Sear.

dream a dream (and what you see will be) by Mizzy

Crossover with Die unendliche Geschichte (Neverending Story).

Eames has always said Arthur has no imagination and should dream a little bigger. The problem is, Arthur's dreams might be the most dangerous place to be on the planet. And when their latest job forces them to recreate Fantasia, and Arthur's secret past unravels alongside it, Cobb's team might be about to find the answer to the Neverending Story...

Two-minute warning by Trojie

Crossover with RED.

Eames tries to warn Arthur there's a price on his head.

Skybird by windsweptfic

Crossover with White Collar.

Arthur and Eames adopt a kid and raise that kid into Neal Caffrey.

secretly a reef rat by templemarker

Crossover with Hawaii Five-0.

Arthur is Steve’s brother.

My Recommendations - X-Men

The People Who Stand By You by pallorsomnium

Crossover with Wanted.

aka "In which Charles actually has a twin brother, who now wants to kick Erik's ass"

Wesley didn’t want much out of life, but what he wanted the most was for Charles and Raven to be safe and happy.

So he was rightfully displeased when he heard the message left on his emergency line, and by someone distinctly not Charles or Raven.

From Westminster With Love by thehoyden

Crossover with Sherlock.

NATO intelligence says there’s an omega-class telepath who sleeps under Westminster. Major Erik Lehnsherr is about to find out the truth for himself.

I've only done lists for three of my favourite fandoms so feel free to hit me up if you want more recs!

#IFD2023 #IFDChallenge2023 #fanfic recs #OTW #fandom events #naruto #The Secret Life of Walter Mitty #Inception #x-men #Phlebas Writes #Phlebas blogs her writing #Phlebas Reads #Phlebas Recs

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themovieblogonline · 10 months ago

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Christopher Nolan Scores Big Pay Day with "Oppenheimer"

Christopher Nolan is the genius behind mind-benders like "Inception" and the epic "Dark Knight" trilogy. His latest movie, "Oppenheimer," just turned him into a Hollywood heavyweight with a payday that'll make your jaw drop. We're talking about a cool $100 million, easy! That's right, Christopher Nolan didn't just score Oscars (two of them, for directing and best picture!), he also scored a financial coup with "Oppenheimer." This historical drama about the atomic bomb might sound heavy, but trust me, Nolan knows how to make even the most complex stuff a box office smash. Here's the breakdown. The movie itself cost around $100 million to make, which is no chump change. But guess what? It raked in a whopping $958 million worldwide! That's seriously impressive, considering it's rated R and clocks in at a whopping three hours. Talk about attention spans, right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZxeT_WqUgY Here's the even crazier part: this makes "Oppenheimer" the highest-grossing Best Picture winner since way back in 2004! Remember "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King"? Yeah, that one. So basically, Nolan just crushed it at the box office, defying all the odds. And to celebrate? They're re-releasing the movie in theaters this weekend with its shiny new "Best Picture" badge. That means even more moolah for Nolan, potentially pushing "Oppenheimer" over the $1 billion mark! Cha-ching! Now, the big question on everyone's mind: what's next for Christopher Nolan? Will he tackle another mind-bending thriller or maybe even a remake? There have been whispers of him picking up the reins on "The Prisoner," a mystery project based on a classic 60s TV show. But who knows? Maybe he'll surprise us all with something totally new. One thing's for sure: with studios like Warner Bros. and Universal vying for his attention, Nolan's got his pick of the litter. He's basically Hollywood royalty now, the king of the blockbuster auteur! And hey, with a payday like that, who can blame him? So, there you have it. Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" not only dominated award season, but also the box office. This dude's officially a filmmaking force to be reckoned with. Now, let's just hope his next project involves explosions, mind games, and maybe even a cameo by Leonardo DiCaprio (a Nolan regular). A guy can dream, right? Source: Variety Read the full article

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crehador · 2 years ago

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alphabet challenge 2023 round 2 final report

have made absolutely zero progress in cutting down my planning list (in fact i think it’s longer than when i started this round lol) but watched another 11 one-cour anime, 2 tv shorts, and 1 movie

full list with some thoughts here, three most notable series under the cut (beware spoilers)

actual best: gotta give this one to hourou musuko with the caveat that i do think it’s an imperfect adaptation, and i suspect it most shines in its original manga form (which i haven’t read yet but look forward to checking out one day)

it’s very possible i just haven’t read/watched broadly enough, but off the top of my head i can’t think of a more sincere and real portrayal of trans adolescence (or just transness in general, honestly) in animanga

i think in my notes i called it something like messy and clumsy, and i meant that in a good way; it’s messy and clumsy in ways that feel authentic and even deliberate, though for sure some parts of that are due to limits of the adaptation

the anime does imo get off to a somewhat disorienting start, we’re dropped straight into the lives of these kids who already have a deeply complicated past with one another, and it takes some time for that past to take shape

being told chronologically might have helped this story (and maybe the manga does do that) but it still felt like a very solid adaptation despite its shortcomings, and its strengths more than made up for its weaknesses (which i feel weren’t the fault of the story but rather the production, like with two of the final episodes being condensed into one for airing before being released in full as specials? yeah that doesn’t sound ideal)

personal fave: was pleasantly surprised and very entertained by id:invaded! it’s very inception-esque, and i don’t mean just because of the diving into someone’s (sub)consciousness and dream (well) within a dream (well) stuff

i’ve always felt like inception had a solid story but blank slate cast, as in its characters all filled specific functions and archetypes but weren’t really the most nuanced or... characterized, so to speak (and imo that’s why they were so easily fandomizable, so i don’t actually think it’s a bad thing that they just did what they were put there to do)

id:invaded makes me feel the same way, in that the plot itself is much stronger than the cast, though i imagine if it had been a two-cour series it would have used its additional time well and fleshed out the cast some more

it’s very easy to compare id:invaded to psycho-pass as well, and while i’d say in terms of plot/mystery/worldbuilding they’re almost on equal footing, psycho-pass does way more and way better with its characters (but of course psycho-pass had a lot more time)

that said, i did still like the characters of id:invaded, they were just fleshed out enough for you to start projecting your own ideas onto them, and the more they marinated in my head the more i enjoyed them (though for reasons that largely weren’t on the page tbh)

this one was honestly a strong contender for ‘actual best’ as well, because i think there are some things it did incredibly well, like not underestimating the viewer and over-telling in its writing

like you’ve got id wells (the pun of which, by the way, i felt the subs did a great job of explaining fluidly) and you’ve got kaeru-chan in the id wells, and the show never shoves the frog in a well imagery into your face, it doesn’t bother to go “you know *wink wink nudge nudge* like the proverb” it lets you put some of these things together yourself

(similarly, really loved that they didn’t outright say fukuda got all his piercings before putting a hole in his head, they let you imagine it yourself, how he must have gotten piercing after piercing and they never felt like enough, it’s just better to not have that stated outright, the obvious conclusions are obvious enough)

biggest disappointment: seikaisuru kado solely for the ending and i’m not even talking about the deaths or anything (ryo expy should kill akira expy after all) it was just a rushed and poorly written, poorly executed ending that brought an overall good series crashing down

#crab watches #various things #tl;dr hourou musuko and id:invaded were best seikaisuru kado was worst (only for the ending)#honorable mention to kanata no astra for being just so much fun

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pastxlscorp · 3 years ago

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Bully! Mitsuya Fanfic (pt.1)

Chapter I: Inception

✿ Word Count: 2.1k

✿ Pairing: Takashi Mitsuya x reader

✿ Topics covered: (Eventual) Enemies to lovers trope, Y/N POV, tsundere-Mitsuya, bully! Mitsuya, fem. reader, minor manga spoilers, Bully! Mitsuya headcanons from last post

He lifted his large palm, coated in silver and black rings to match his attire. He was wearing a black mock turtleneck that matched his jet black hair. In his youth, he had lilac-colored hair that was either in a buzz-cut or grown out to a mullet. Now, he sported his black hair in his college-years. He was studying to become a fashion designer, a dream he had since his youth after his love blossomed for sewing. It had begun as a chore in order to keep his sisters satisfied and happy, saving money from buying toys by simply creating them himself. As he practiced it more and more, he began to realize how intricate fabrics were. How beautiful colors could come together and form the prettiest structures and designs -- how even the ugliest colors would look elegant if you paired them properly with the right colors, or carefully took apart the threads to create something new. You on the other hand were not studying to become a fashion designer, but rather a photographer. In your youth, you were a free-lancer in art and a quiet overachiever. You had many different career options open to you, but nothing really opened you up in the way art did. You participated in many different types of art, you loved painting, sewing, embroidery, name it, you’ve probably dabbled in it. One day, your class was introduced to your photography unit and all the puzzle pieces fell into the designated places, the pieces being lost and untouched for years. Nothing brought you more joy than snapping someone’s photo on the street to surprise them with the way the sunlight beautifully encapsulated their figure. Nothing brought you more joy than taking an eerily aesthetic photo of the rain pouring on the people below your building as a lady frolocked in the rain below, eager to rejoice in mother nature’s beauty.

Truthfully, your relationship had not started out the way it was now. With his palm ever so elegantly shoving you to the floor, your photographs spilling out of your portfolio as you hit the cold tile floor, protecting your chest by landing on your elbow and knee. Snickers, chuckles, giggles-- they all filled the hallway after seeing you collapse. Only a select few actually took pity on you, including one of his loyal followers, Hakkai Shiba. Mitsuya was usually followed around by two close-friends, Yasuda-san and Hakkai. Yasuda-san was also a fashion major, while Hakkai was planning to become a model. Mitsuya was very well respected amongst the campus for many different reasons. Firstly, he was gifted with the intellect of sewing intrigue designs that made everyone sigh in awe. Secondly, pretty-privilege. You hated to admit it but Mitsuya was a very attractive-looking man, his hair was always fluffed to the right extent, he was well-dressed, and leading into the third reason, he was smart. Despite being a part of the Tokyo Manji Gang, otherwise known as Toman, as one of the second division captains, he was able to manage schoolwork as an overachiever and was known for his intellect. Not to mention, keeping his division in check along with his two younger sisters AND the sewing club that he managed at his school? It was no wonder he was seen as the perfect boyfriend, he had all of his together. This was the reason why his disregard of you was seen as acceptable, everyone assumed you must have done something wrong for him to treat you this way, right?

Incorrect assumption. You have never done anything wrong to Mitsuya-- in fact… you don’t really remember doing anything to him, period. You both met by chance in his home-economics club, which he decided to suggest to the college board upon seeing there was not a club that actively encouraged sewing. At the time, most participants on campus were graphic designers, artists, not really looking to take the fashion industry by storm as Mitsuya was. However, he was able to persuade the board and even got petition signatures to seal it all off. He was the president of the club and upon seeing the posters taped in the hallways, you instantly took the opportunity to get any extracurricular activities on your transcript. He welcomed you into the club but it wasn’t like you got that much of his attention-- after all, the club filled up quickly with Mitsuya’s admirers. Although, shortly before he began his cruel treatment and behavior towards you, it actually seemed like you two were becoming friends. He would begin to check on you a little more frequently than the rest, tapping your shoulder with a warm smile, asking you how your project was going. You would show him your small projects, nothing too big as it had nothing to do with your major, but projects that you enjoyed and had fun doing nonetheless. He seemed most amused by the sweater you created for your dog by letting out a soft chuckle. In return, he showed you the sweaters he made for his sisters, who were now teenagers. It became a routine for him to walk over to you after checking up on everyone else and talk until club hours were over. He’d find anything to talk about and it made your heart swell with how he actually took the time out of his day to make sure you didn’t feel alone. You were sure he had picked up on how you lacked friends in his club, he was clearly trying to make you feel welcome and you couldn’t help but begin to admire him even more than you once had.

One day, however, it suddenly changed. His demeanor was suddenly cold and unwelcoming to you. You noticed when you walked into his club as you normally did, taking your seat. He did not visit you within the 10 minutes it usually took him to check upon everyone else. It took much, much longer, so you simply assumed everyone needed more help than usual. However, when he came over to your table, his words startled you so much that you pricked yourself with your needle, rushing your eyes to meet his own at his sudden harshness.

┃ “Looks like someone isn’t paying attention.”

The venom in his words made your cheeks flush with a tint of red, noticing some of the club members staring at you, also in surprise of his harsh tone. You open your mouth, quickly questioning his behavior, all of your words coming out panicked, in fear you’ve done something wrong-- something to disappoint, or upset him.

┃ “What do you mean, Pres? My projects have never been an issue before.”

┃ “Nicknames are a privilege. Call me by my proper title.” He snapped, your peers widening their eyes, for he never required anyone to call him by his last name.

┃ “...President Mitsuya, I apologize. However, you can’t just--”

┃ “Look around,” he motions his arm towards the surrounding students working at their tables, sewing much larger projects and others measuring their models for their designs. Your right eyebrow began to raise in confusion, he had never minded your small projects. Yet, here he was, embarrassing, no-- humiliating you in front of your peers about how minuscule your projects were in comparison.

┃ “Your peers all have their mind set on a big project or several larger projects. Yet, here you are with your small little trinkets. They’re working hard, and you’re doing the bare minimum to have your work completed for this club.”

Tears began to prick your eyes, questioning what his true motive was here. Surely, the projects weren’t the issue. This… this was too strong of a switch-up. Something had triggered this outburst of his, but you weren’t sure what. He was always stressed, all the time actually-- had he perhaps overwhelmed himself and he was taking it out on you?

┃ “(Y/N).” Your name so violently came out of his mouth, as if it had just crashed on cement. It wasn’t the silky and softer voice you were accustomed to hearing when speaking with him. “Get your head out of the clouds. Are you listening?”

┃ “Sir… I mean, President Mitsuya, with all due respect, you seem to be… unfairly targeting me. Some of these students are creating something as simple as a sweater for their friends, why is something for my dog any different?”

The rest of the club began planning your funeral. While never seeing him this upset on school grounds, they have heard about how foul he could get with his division members. Questioning him was bound to make him explode. They all froze, eyes drifting to Mitsuya for an incoming scolding.

┃ With a harsh grab, his fingers glide under your chin as he lifts it up to meet his face directly. “'You questioning me?”

┃ “N-no sir! I mean no disrespect, I just-”

┃ “You’ll be staying after club hours.”

┃ “B-but sir I have-”

┃ “I was NOT asking.” He half-shouts, dropping your chin from his harsh grip as he makes it back to the front of the classroom where he continues to work on his own projects. Your fellow club members pitied you at first, but after seeing how harsh he got later on with you as the bullying continued, they assumed this was the result of an external conflict.

You don’t remember what he told you after club hours. He was yelling something about how you were stupid, a dumbass, and well, you get the rest. Cruel words were thrown at you as if the day before he wasn’t so fondly helping you with the sweater for your dog-- helping you perfect the stitch of his name. Any time you questioned him or flat-out denied his accusations and heinous words, he would yank your chain and pull you so you were right in front of him as he stared down at you. It was enough to scare you out of ever providing a rebuttal, and you soon learned that as the bullying continued.

Now, here you are, on the floor, calmly collecting your portfolio photographs, not even phased by his now-normal harassment. Usually, a shove would be enough to appease him, but today it seemed like one of those days where he wanted more. He walked over to your kneeling figure as you collected your portfolio, your head turned away from him to avoid giving him any form of satisfaction.

┃ “What do you say after you bump into someone?”

┃ “I didn’t bump into you, dickhead.”

With a swift motion, he forcefully grabbed your chin and forced you to look at him, his lavender eyes piercing straight through you. He was clearly unsatisfied with your response.

┃ “What do you say after you bump into someone, skank?”

Every time you questioned him or talked back, you knew it simply made him angrier. You quickly learned that him acting out was his way of earning your attention, but for whatever reason it was, you couldn’t figure out why. What you did learn, however, from your many other incidents with him, is that he would praise you when you were obedient. Eager to get this over with and save yourself any more humiliation, you replied:

┃ “I’m sorry.”

┃ “I’m sorry…?”

┃ With a sigh, you continue, “I’m sorry, President Mitsuya.”

He smirks, now satisfied with your answer. He taps your cheek with his right index finger and replies:

┃ “Good girl.”

You swipe your face away from his grasp and continue collecting your photographs, along with your notebooks and planner that had slipped out. Mitsuya scoffs as you once more retract your attention away from him and walks away with Yasuda-sun snickering. Hakkai, however, stays behind and examines you for a few brief moments. He walks over to you and begins helping you organize your bookbag. You look up and smile-- despite his silence, his eyes offered every form of apology he could give you. You had learned Hakkai was afraid to speak up to Mitsuya because he was his best friend and was afraid any talkback from him would only result in a deeper hatred for you. You didn’t mind, however, you just appreciated how Hakkai kept you grounded. He helped you remember you didn’t do anything wrong, this was Mitsuya’s doing and his alone. Hakkai was always well-dressed as well, you noticed. He was wearing an incredibly long trench coat with beautiful shades of baby blue, ocean blues and a bright orange that made everything pop. It covered a black mock turtleneck that seemed to be matching the one Mitsuya was wearing and in fact, Hakkai also seemed to have an earring on one ear, similar to Mitsuya. It appeared that he deeply respected Mitsuya, his outfit seemed to be heavily inspired by his own. With everything settled in your bookbag once more, he offered you a pat on the head with a smile as you nodded and thanked him before running off to your first class of the day.

✿ a.n. // I finished this chapter while finishing my AP Psychology hw. I had started writing it and then idk why but I was re-reading the manga and went “wait, now what if we have Hakkai and Yasuda-san…” and ta-da, take my 2.1k words of pure a$$. If this chapter does well, I’ll be sure to upload it on my ao3, too. special tags for @the2ndl and @bren-heron because they both really wanted a fic out of this concept. I hope you enjoy loves <3

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space-clef · 3 years ago

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OKAY OKAY I NEED to get this off my mind bc it’s been tossing about in my head for YEARS and I must share it

Inception (Nolan, 2010) NEEEEDS to be adapted in some way into a TV show. This is a movie with one of the highest show-potentials I’ve ever seen - you have a universe that is clearly VERY expansive in terms of dream sharing, an intriguing practice with what is suggested to be a long complicated history, and so very little of that is explored in-film. There is already an extensive language of terms, symbols, practices, rules, tools etc that is waiting to be used and expanded on.

You wouldn’t even necessarily need to include the original film characters, save for perhaps a cameo or two or some other minor roles. It could exist completely outside the plot of the film. But literally believe me when I say the possibilities are endless.

-You could take the route of a prequel sort of thing, which explores the early days and development of dream sharing they mentioned briefly in the film as a military training program, and then branch out into the moral complexities of it and where things went wrong, why it became illegal, etc.

-you could have just an entire mystery plot like imagine a detective show but with dreams set in the inception universe like come on that would be freaking amazing

-someone with amnesia must search their own dreams and the dreams of others to solve the mystery of who they are, following a string of clues and recurring symbols within the dreams they walk in till they begin to uncover some huge very important thing they must do or stop

-you could simply separate it completely from the film and just focus on some other person or group of people who practice dream sharing

-Or do the opposite, and go explore the other characters from the original show. I’d pay good money to see more of Eames or Mal again honestly

-Have characters solve a huge long forgotten mystery

-Or save peoples lives

-Or focus on a slow burn arc where the protagonist begins bright eyed and wanting to use the practice for good, but slowly descends into madness and confusion and gets tied up in all sorts of corruption, and needs to find their way out before they lose sight of reality completely

-Perhaps a terminally Ill person lives out a second lifetime in their dreams

-Maybe have a plot where the audience starts out on solid ground, being able to clearly identify the protagonist's dreams from reality, and then by the end they are as clueless as mc as to whether or not they’re watching them dream or not.

-literally the possibilities are endless

Anyway that’s my Ted talk had to get that one off my chest lol thank u for listening byee

#inception #inception 2010 #chris nolan #nolanverse #inception film #inception movie #inception: the show #plsss I need this to happen #i have so many thoughts #like sooo many #leonardo dicaprio #Dominic cobb #dom cobb #mal cobb #eames #tom hardy #eames inception #Mal inception

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no-droids · 4 years ago

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The Secret

Pairing: Anakin Skywalker/Reader

Word Count: 4.2K

Rating: Explicit

Summary: On a dark and dreary night, Anakin tries to see if he can influence your dreams.

A/N: idk what in the hell this even is tbh I just started writing it two days ago idk what happened this is some inception shit but not the crazy ass mind bending plot twist part at the very end of inception but like just the cool middle part where you kinda get what’s sorta going on but not really okay anyways I gotta go

Warnings: There are DUBCON/NONCON ELEMENTS to this, smut/oral sex, a splash of m/m (sorta?), dark Anakin uses the force to mess with your dreams without your knowledge or consent so please read at your own discretion

***

Anakin knows it’s wrong.

It’s the middle of the night on a moon he never bothered learning the name of and Anakin knows it’s wrong when his eyes shift over to you for the fifth time in the past minute. Curled up with your back to him and the crackling firelight illuminating this tiny little cave, breathing soft and quiet through your nose as you sleep, the wind roaring monstrously outside. Anakin acknowledges it—the moral impropriety of even sitting here thinking about things he shouldn’t be with you so close by. It’s wrong, no getting around it.

But there’s also something inside him that… wants the wrongness.

He likes it. Anakin likes having secrets, he likes breaking rules even when nobody is consciously here to witness it. It makes him feel alive in a way that battlefields just can’t anymore, not after two years of constant conflict where the only enemies to feel his wrath have been comprised of nuts and bolts, their robotic cries never leaving him with any satisfaction anymore. At the start of the Clone Wars, sure, it was a thrill to slice through voice boxes and body parts, even if they were mechanical. But the droids aren’t afraid of death, they’re just programmed to stay alive. It’s like killing large, dumb swarms of bugs—it needs to be done for the common good but there’s never any true fulfillment in it anymore, it just feels like a task to be completed instead of an earnest, hard-earned goal.

He’s also been given direct permission to do it. He’s even been ordered to carry out enormous droid massacres on behalf of the Republic, but that’s the thing. Anakin isn’t looking for permission, see, it takes away half the thrill.

No, he wants to feel wrong. He wants to wonder if he shouldn’t have. He wants the quiet guilt, the sparkle of holding a secret he’ll never breathe a word about, the addictive power trip from having real influence over something, something equally as real.

Technically, Anakin is supposed to be on lookout right now. He’s meant to stay awake and patrol the perimeter of the cave for enemy combatants, but he doesn’t even bother pretending to be diligent when it’s just you two here. It’s not necessary. He’d be able to sense another lifeform miles away in this secluded, barren wasteland; there’s no threat to be found right now. He can keep warm by the crackling firelight in this cave, sheltered from the dust storm that spontaneously broke out a few hours ago. He can stay awake without moving a muscle and listen to your slow breathing all night long, letting it fill him with shameful desires he spends the daylight hours fighting and suppressing.

He silently flicks his gaze over to you once more, blinking as he studies you. He can sense your mind becoming creative in its slumber, beginning to swirl into dreamlike possibilities around yourself, about to choose a path for your consciousness to follow tonight. Yes, this is what he’s waiting for. He can’t force you to dream—that’s beyond his expertise as a Jedi. But if he finds himself in the right place at the right time, he can certainly try his best to… give you a suggestion.

The wind whistles outside and the fire pops quietly and you continue to breathe. In, and out. In, and out.

Anakin closes his eyes, and begins.

He first maps your body with the Force, trying to understand it on a deeper level. Gauge it—its proportions, its ambience, the thrumming lifeforce flowing through your veins even as you sleep. He has to be careful—as a fellow Knight, there’s no guarantee you won’t immediately be able to spot him exploring your energy in this way, there’s nothing to stop you from suddenly rolling over and asking just what exactly he thinks he’s doing.

But Anakin is patient. It’s one of the only times he can remember truly exercising that untapped potential inside him, perfectly content to allow you to drift while he works to find his bearings with you. Minds are complex, especially when they’re unconscious. They’re finicky and never stay in the same spot for long—it’s not like they evade, necessarily, but instead, they just… float around. Pulsing. In and out of existence, hiding behind and under immovable things, no rhyme or reason for it, vanishing into uncertainty and nothingness as soon as he thinks he’s found it. Like trying to find a microscopic air pocket in the depths of a pitch black ocean. He’s not losing any oxygen by existing right at the edges of your sleep, but it takes hard concentration to stay here, hidden, not allowing himself to slip. He’s looking, he’s looking… but he soon realizes he just needs to wait longer. He needs to wait until you float your way back around to him, until you present the opening yourself.

So Anakin waits.

And waits…

And then suddenly—

—There. He locks onto a flicker in the Force and holds, finally isolating and breaching the surface of your inner subconscious. Anakin smiles softly, a bead of sweat slowly dripping down his temple at the effort it took to locate you without alerting you of his presence. There you are. Maker, it sure is pretty in here, isn't it? He has you, he’s cradling the buried, hidden, most fragile part of your soul as you slumber, not knowing any better.

His heart thumps with excitement even though he’s barely done anything yet. To someone without sensitivity to the Force, they might just think the both of you are asleep right now. Just the two of you sitting still in this relatively small space, eyes closed, neither of you are touching, nobody has said anything or made any substantial movements in hours, nothing has changed in this world. All of it is existing in another plane, a place most people wouldn’t be able to recognize unless someone informed them of its existence, and even then, it would be beyond understanding.

But he has you now. He’s there, and he’s not going anywhere. He can allow his focus to dip just slightly, knowing your mind will pull him along through the comatose current. He senses you already working through the beginning whispers of dreams, but they’re not the kind people can ever remember. These aren’t formed, there’s no substance to them—it’s just pure, abstract dreamspace for your mind to drift through while you slumber.

Finding your true consciousness through all the murky, shapeless slumber was the test in skill. Now comes the luck.

Very carefully, without arousing any suspicion or drawing undue attention to himself, Anakin begins to drag the tip of his tongue against the back of his teeth. He doesn’t open his mouth, he doesn’t move a single muscle outwardly—he just lets his tongue begin to flitter around slowly in its enclosed cavern as he breathes, making the movements as soft and hypnotic as he can, matching the aimless way you’re carrying your mind and his shadow through the darkness.

He’s tried this before. Once or twice, with a pretty Ambassador he was tasked with protecting for a few months at the start of the Clone Wars, but the results were always less than ideal. He could never seamlessly transfer his desires through her consciousness before she awoke, perhaps because she wasn’t Force sensitive. The dream would either never happen, or he would push too hard and it’d turn into a rabid nightmare that fractured her thoughts and made her terrified to close her eyes for weeks. Not this time, though, Anakin isn’t going to allow it. Not with you, not after all the unprecedented effort it took to even just get himself here.

He finds a bit more passion to put into his movements, his jaw beginning to work with more purpose. Stars, he wants this to work, and while it’s probable that there’s an easier way to accomplish it, this isn’t something the Academy trains for. There’s only so much he can do except just be patient and giving with his soft, muted thoughts, urging you to make use of them without ever saying them aloud.

And suddenly, like the dark waves of your sleep decide to illuminate for him all on their own, your subconscious mind responds to the gentle stimulus. It carefully reaches out and studies the suggestion he’s silently offering, having spent what feels like an eternity trying to entice your rawest, most fundamental being into going somewhere it normally wouldn’t go, all without letting you know he’s even there.

His tongue is still moving. With purpose, with a specific intent in mind, Anakin allows his head to slowly fall back as he lifts his chin up towards it, wanting it more and more the longer you take to consider it, as if your mind is actively trying to tease him by playing hard to get. He can feel you right there, feel you thinking about it, and the whole thing is almost like some elaborate courting ritual while he waits with bated breath for you to decide whether or not to humor him.

But then, just when Anakin fears you may be too strong to be swayed, too powerful in the Force to be tempted by an outside source, you abruptly snatch the idea from him and start to run with it.

Suddenly parts of your spirit begin illuminating that should be dormant right now, and Anakin follows you, wherever you’re leading him. He knows none of this is necessarily intentional on your behalf—nobody can consciously pick and choose their dreams, not even Jedi. But this endeavor proves that it’s absolutely possible to subtly inspire them in each other, regardless of the morality behind it.

The wind continues to howl outside the cave and remind him that an entire universe still exists beyond your beautifully soporose mind, but the dreamscape gradually begins unfolding around him without any further prompting, requiring nothing more than what he’s already provided. Anakin’s tongue continues to simulate and suggest regardless, only now he feels the ghost of it beginning to materialize somewhere else besides the roof of his mouth, the sensations appearing before the images can be conjured to fill in the gaps. His hands suddenly tighten on his thighs at the soft, enticing feeling beginning to take root in you.

And oh. It’s… good. It feels different when his own body isn’t really the target of the stimulation, when he’s doing nothing more than simply experiencing it vicariously. Anakin supposes he could’ve bypassed all this effort, just aimed the pleasure more directly from the very beginning instead of working to inspire and coax it out of your own consciousness, but that was never his intention and it misses the point entirely. Where’s the challenge in it? The finesse is lost, it doesn’t appeal to him. It’s brash and brutish and not his style. No, this is what he wanted. He wanted to get just close enough to plant the most basic, fundamental idea in your head and then witness the rest of it all play out as a phantom passenger. Step back, strap in, and see how you kindle and manipulate the desire yourself, exactly the way you want it.

Anakin starts to breathe a little heavier through his nose, shoulders tense as he works to ride the slow swelling of your own prolonged pleasure with you, not knowing if or when it’s going to peak. He’s never made it this far before, he has no idea what to expect. Your consciousness does all the heavy lifting for him, your floor muscles move and contract without him needing to do anything to encourage it, the dream he seeded now completely taking over and whisking you both away.

But then… then suddenly Anakin doesn’t understand. Because yes, your mind works exactly the way he hoped it would—everything goes the incredibly precise direction he intended, and yet the destination is somehow… here? Back at the very beginning?

You dream of a cave. It’s exactly the same as the one you’re both silently holed up in for the night, and no new faces have appeared. If Anakin fluttered his eyes open at this specific moment, absolutely nothing around him would change. Except, perhaps, the subtle glow around everything—the watery way the air seems to be moving, as if it can’t decide whether it wants to exist or not so it strangely succeeds in doing both at the same time. He’s not really here—at least, he doesn’t think he is, he’s just seated on the dirt floor, appearing as nothing more than an invisible witness to it.

No. No, actually, he takes that back, he… is here. It takes him a moment to see the full picture as you’re still putting the puzzle pieces together, but… that’s him. A projection of himself at least, looking only slightly different but recognizable enough. Dark robes, robotic right arm, steady gaze.

But where are you? Anakin looks around the empty cave, still trying to understand how you’re painting this, his conscious mind moving much more rapidly than your own abstract one and yet also somehow taking so much longer to catch up to you. You’re not here. Why aren’t you here? He’s getting stuck on the details, he knows he’s lagging behind.

It takes a moment longer. Just one, before Anakin suddenly realizes that… he’s not just an invisible witness, is he?

He looks back down to see his own head now buried between his thighs.

But they’re not his thighs, not really. They’re yours. He’s just seeing everything from your point of view, feeling everything you’re feeling from the small little space he’s occupying in your mind.

At this point, Anakin needs to anchor. He feels himself—his real self, the one currently stuck in a cave in the midst of an unexpected dust storm—curl inwards and clamp his legs together. This will work. If he focuses enough to pinpoint the way his knees feel pressed tight together, he can have a tether to separate himself from your dream, the way yours are currently… wide open. This is all too similar to your true surroundings—he didn’t expect this, he doesn’t want to get lost.

And yet… Maker, it feels good. His long curls feel so soft in your hands, his tongue drags slow magic between your legs. When Anakin first suggested the idea to you, he didn’t think you’d assign the role back to him. He assumed you had someone else in mind, somewhere else you wished to be besides this dull, dreary setting. He gave you just an inkling of a prompt, and this is what the most creative part of your mind created. Something he could be doing at this exact moment, if only he’d known you’d be interested.

Then again, Anakin thinks, you may have just recognized him subconsciously. You may have attached him to the idea already, if only because he was the truest originator of it. But it doesn’t matter now, he can’t process such complex thoughts while maintaining the suspended mental state he’s in—he feels like he’ll either completely fall into it or out of it if he tries.

But as your muscles continue to work and your pleasure continues to build, it becomes harder and harder to separate where he is in relation to you. Anakin clenches his legs tighter together as you open yours wider apart, the dream gaining more strength as it develops. Stars, it’s—it’s—

Anakin starts to lose it and he needs to tug on that tether to his surroundings again, but it’s way more difficult than it should be to recognize himself. His calloused fingers on his left hand tremble as he reaches up and uses them to cover his face, biting his tongue to stop the low rumbles of ecstasy that want to claw their way out of his throat. Maker, this feels so… different from the build he knows. He thought—if he was successful—that he’d be able to handle it as silently and stoically as he’s able to handle his own pleasure, but this is something else entirely. Why does it feel so… so spectacular? Maker, he never realized the sensation was all that different on the inside, much less that he was actually missing out by having a dick between his legs.

But then suddenly there’s a pause, a break in the way you’ve been rhythmically squeezing and flexing your body for him.

The dream adapts to it. Anakin looks down between your open thighs just in time to see himself pulling away from your warmth, putting two fingers in his mouth, before slowly easing his hand back down between them.

No, he thinks, a bright flare of panic sparking inside him as he immediately snatches and yanks the tether to reality, popping his eyes open and pulling away from your mind entirely, oh no—wait, that’s not what I—

But see. That’s the thing about being so meticulous about conjuring something that doesn’t actually exist. Once his brilliant creation decides to backfire on him—a fool-proof way to escape it doesn’t actually exist either.

He… he can’t wake up. No matter how much his body struggles backwards on the dirt floor of the cave, how wide he can feel his eyes are right now, how excruciatingly aware he is that none of this is real, none of this is actually happening to him, he’s caught in the dream he planted and you’re hauling him along for the ride. The closest he can describe it is like having footage play in one eye while the other can see perfectly fine. He knows where the line that separates reality is, but he can’t escape your consciousness’s crushing gravitational pull; it’s too massive and overwhelming now, he can’t gain enough velocity to get home. Real life exists but only through a window, and being stuck on the other side like this—knowing he’s dreaming but not being able to jolt awake when he’s very ready to leave—is suddenly more terrifying than any nightmare Anakin has ever experienced.

It also has unintended consequences. Clinging so desperately to his own body has made him completely aware of it in the purgatory he’s now trapped himself in, but the pleasure is still there so the source of the stimulation is still there. They’re not your thighs anymore, they’re his thighs again. But that’s also still him between his legs, continuing to ease his fingers forwards.

He keeps retreating back and away from them no matter what, but there’s nothing more he can do.

Anakin helplessly watches on as his own fingers slowly disappear up inside himself, and his eyes instantly lose focus and his jaw goes slack as he feels it the way you would. They’re not real, so there’s no pain, no true pressure or stretch, just… hard, unadulterated stimulation starting to burn up inside him.

He doesn’t realize his body kept moving until he suddenly feels the wall of the cave slam into his back and he has to brace himself against it, frantically shoving himself back into it as far as he can with his legs and digging his nails into dirt at the base, scrabbling for breath and stability. Anakin tightens up wickedly as you both bear down on the phantom intrusion, sweat beading at his hairline as he works to process the foreign sensation and you whimper quietly in your sleep. His cock is rock hard between his legs and he shudders to think that his mind will compensate for the difference and his alter ego will actually take it into his mouth—but no, the projection doesn’t change because it’s still coming from you, still being led by your own desires. Dream-Anakin’s mouth drops and his tongue comes out to keep licking your slit but to the real Anakin, it just looks like his mouth disappears somewhere near his balls, and then a magnificent swell of bliss suddenly kicks in before he can fight as savagely against it as he wants. He’d normally be repulsed, and maybe he currently is to some extent, but because your pleasure spikes so dangerously with it, his hips stutter into the sensation just as desperately.

He’s making noise, he knows he is—he can feel his throat working too hard for just air to be moving through. No, he’s whimpering, or moaning, or doing something but he can’t hear himself at all. His instinct is to yell as loudly as he can, to try and wake you up manually, but it doesn’t seem to work, you’re way too far gone now. He listens for the dust storm that should be screaming outside, the popping of the fire somewhere in this cave, but they’re suddenly nowhere to be found. He’s being dragged under by your enormous current that’s somehow still continuing to build in strength, losing oxygen by the second. He’s not ready for it, he doesn’t want it, he’s terrified, he needs to wake up—

Anakin slams his head back against the wall hard enough to make himself bleed and gasps raggedly as he loses his grip on everything, shutting his eyes tight with his fist shoved up against his teeth. Nothing exists at all anymore but the swirling typhoon that continues raging forth. Beyond purgatory, and then beyond heaven.

When you finally do manage to find the absolute peak of your climb, he’s sure he all but blacks out with it.

It’s pure, blinding rapture on all levels—physical, metaphysical, whatever else exists after that. It surges up with razor-sharp claws of merciless ecstasy and he’s just not equipped to experience anything anywhere close to it. The connection between your minds thrums and sparks violently; Anakin feels the way your body practically soars over top of the pleasure while his is just being ruthlessly pummeled into the ground by it. He’s not meant to handle this, he literally wasn’t made to survive the devastating anomaly—it’s as wicked and excruciating as it is dazzling, and he wonders if he’ll ever truly be able to come back from it.

Eventually, Anakin manages to find his way back to himself. Eventually.

His cock is throbbing, that’s the first thing he‘s able to notice. The dirt floor beneath him that somehow feels slightly different than before, the fetal position he’s assuming on top of it, the once sturdy wall now crumbling to dust against his back.

The next thing he notices is the utter, complete mess he made. Blood slowly drips in a line down his neck and more cum than he’s ever felt himself produce before drenches the front of his pants. Anakin slowly blinks his eyes open, trying to fight the vertigo and wondering if he might have a concussion right now. There are cracks and fractures in the ground that branch out from the small crater at his back, and the fire is completely extinguished now, charred logs splintered and strewn about like somebody detonated a bomb in here.

At some point, his gaze drags over towards you, and remarkably, you haven’t moved. Still curled up on your side with your back to him, still breathing slow and steady and undisturbed.

Anakin pants in exhaustion and waits for you to turn over to address him and what he did. There’s no way you’re still asleep, not after what just happened. Anakin couldn’t get through it without sending a giant shockwave through the entire cave and quite literally rupturing the ground beneath him, he’s surprised you even managed to stay in one spot the entire time. He doesn’t know if you feel violated right now and are refusing to acknowledge him, or if it’s just taking as long as he is for your brain to catch up and start functioning again.

That is, until he hears a small snore come from your unmoving body once more.

Anakin blinks.

No. You have to be awake, he figures, moving to prop himself upright and wipe the blood from his neck with the dark sleeve of his robe. There’s no possible way that the orgasm you both shared is actually… normal, no, the sheer power of it had to be influenced by his presence somehow. He must have… increased it, or something. Anakin doesn’t know how, but he knows he must be directly responsible, this had to have been the strongest you’ve ever cum in your life and you just don’t know how to confront him about it right now, so you’re pretending to sleep. Yes, that’s what it is, that’s what it has to be.

He’s not going to check, though. He’s not going to find any lingering energy left within himself to summon and look for the thick darkness of sleep still enveloping you, he’s not going anywhere near your signature right now. No, Anakin is fine just like this, exactly where he is. Instead of verifying or confirming his own understanding, he’ll just be extra confident in it, that’s always worked well for him.

So he just sits back and takes a deep, shuddering breath, feeling like his whole body is weak and trembling with fatigue. Maybe you are asleep, he shrugs. Maybe he’s wrong, and selfish, and an idiot. Or maybe.

Maybe you just like keeping secrets, too.

#anakin x reader #anakin skywalker x reader #anakin skywalker #anakin x you #anakin skywalker x you #Smut #reader insert #dark anakin #no-droids

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