#I'll probably expand on this at some point but I don't have any particular plot in mind

[lasenbyphoenix]

A Storm in the Heavens

A character study of Bai Lin and his feeling towards Luohou Jidu. (Love and Redemption) also on AO3

............

It disquieted him, the way the Asura made him feel. The man was his equal, more than that he was his zhiji but the man was also an Asura, and that hurt Bai Lin to his proud celestial core. Why couldn't his zhiji be celestial too? How could the fates mock him so? 

Had it bothered him so, before the war began? No. Back then the demon clans didn't clamour to defy the heavens, back then they knew their place so extending an offer of friendship to their brightest star was a charitable thing to do. He hadn't anticipated the Asura to meet him step for step, and despite his better judgment he was compelled to invite him to the pavilion by the lake for tea, and above all, company. Bai Lin hated that he was lonely in the heavens without Jidu, as much as it grated him to feel the man's demonic aura near, it pained him more to see him depart. 

Bai Lin scowled, the grip of his fingers threatening the delicate structure of his teacup as his mind fumed in it's conflict. 

"You'll hate yourself if you break that." The causal timbre of his zhiji's voice came from behind him.

Bai Lin gasped in surprise, mentally scolding himself for being so distracted to not feel the demon presence approach.

"Luohou Jidu." 

"Bai Lin-xiong. That is a heavy scowl upon your face. Tell me what vexes you and I'll set to lift the storm from your heart."

Bai Lin barely suppressed a scoff. Lift the storm from his heart? The one Jidu himself had put there? Bai Lin shook his head, deflecting with an excuse about Heavenly business being on his mind. They poured their tea and toasted one another. Luohou Jidu smiled, the warmth reaching up to his soft dark eyes and Bai Lin had to blink and turn away lest he be caught staring. Luohou Jidu never remarked on how much Bai Lin stared, but Bai Lin was always acutely aware. 

That night, or what passed for night when all of heaven was eternally bathed in light, Bai Lin couldn't rest. Soft brown eyes and a warm smile filled his thoughts as his mind replayed the smallest of moments when he'd passed the cup to his friend and he could feel the fingers of the other man barely a hairs-breadth from his. He hated that he wanted to feel that touch, to grasp his hand and feel the heat and pulse of his aura come up through his skin. 

Bai Lin's own energy hummed within him, stirred by the intensity of his mind and heart and he pulled himself from his futile meditation like a mortal breaching the river for air. 

He cursed himself for his weaknesses. 

Heaven demanded more from him than to let him wallow in selfish desires. And the war surmounting between his heaven and the Asuras demanded his loyalty even more. 

[rwbyrg]

If it's alright, I'm just curious, do you have any thoughts of your own or theories about Oscar or Ruby or both of them in terms of v10? To add, do you have any theories for the merge and how it will end up for both Oscar and Ozpin? Like will it be a good or bad thing? Sorry if these questions seem vague lol

Of course it's alright to ask! I do have many thoughts and a handful of theories. I'll admit most of them are wishful thinking since there's truly no way to tell where the story will go until it actually happens. But if I were to distill it to the ones I'm most expecting and why, then I'd probably say:

Expansion on Ruby's solo arc that kicked off in V9

Acknowledging the setups (plural) between Ruby and Oscar's arcs

The merge-curse is eventually broken (blame the allusions)

I'll elaborate a bit below.

1. Expanding on Ruby's Arc

What we saw Ruby go through in V9 is very much not the end of that particular plot line, imo. We saw a bit of this in Justice League: Part 2 and the final ep of RWBY Beyond where she talks to Clark and Yang about her struggles a bit. Ruby needs to learn how to both ask for and accept help from those around her so the weight of everything she's carrying doesn't crush her. Especially now when they're down to the wire and she's come back as a resurrected martyr who's face has been used at the centre of the resistance movement she's now helping to lead. How will she live up to the expectations and pressures of that impossible pedestal when she's only a human girl with very normal knees who's barely keeping it together? Also, while I don't know exactly how they're going to address everything she experienced, and I struggle to imagine her speaking about Neo's Horror House to anyone directly... that sort of trauma doesn't just go away once it's over. So I would be very surprised if the effects of it didn't ripple throughout the remaining chapters of the show. Especially when every other member of RWBY has seemingly had the bulk of their main character arcs already. It's long overdue for Ruby to get that time in the spotlight. Which does sort of lead into my next point...

2. Acknowledging the Setups in Ruby and Oscar's Dynamic

For starters, we've got the merge and ascension parallels to address. Ruby and Oscar have always mirrored each other's issues around identity, choice, fear, responsibility, leadership, etc., and this buildup seems to be coming to a head following V9. From Oscar's "I'm just going to be another one of his lives, aren't I?" to Ruby's "What if you could be anyone?", and how the two of them will relate to each other in light of those contrasting - but similar - experiences. Especially with Ruby having just come back from the tree to find Oscar fighting against the merge harder than ever before. But we also have their attachments to each other to sort out as well. Ruby and Oscar have been watching each other's backs in different ways since V5, their reunion hug in V8 was interrupted where no other "pairing's" was, and they were the only "pairing" still to be split up between the Ever After and Remnant. Not to mention that, while they were separated, Ruby was pushed to a breaking point after being shown an illusion of losing Oscar, while Oscar was back in the real world eulogizing about how he lost Ruby. CRWBY doesn't setup relationship parallels and focuses as intensely and intentionally as this without pay off at some point.

Again, while the specifics are nearly impossible to predict, I'm expecting a bit of a Dojo Scene Reprise, heart-to-heart of sorts, and/or, something that puts those attachments to the test. My immediate thought is that this test will finally push Oscar to unlocking his semblance since getting shot, falling from Atlas, being kidnapped, and tortured were all not enough to make it happen. (Although my wishful thinking is that it unlocks in a happier moment, I think that's much less likely.)

If I were to engage in pure speculation on this, my easiest bet is that it will come at the hands of Tyrian. When our Little Prince was first introduced, it was almost as if he was waking from a nightmare of that villain laughing with glee at the opportunity to hunt down a certain rose. And with this being the Vacuo arc with Ruby and Oscar getting a lot of focus, and Tyrian already on the prowl within the kingdom, it would make a lot of sense. The little prince fated to have a confrontation with a venomous antagonist in the desert over his attachment to a rose is about as textbook as it gets. (I could also see it go to Cinder or being delayed until they follow through on the threat of Ruby being kidnapped by Salem, if that's the route they decide to take. But again we'll have to wait and see how it plays out.)

3. Oscar and the Merge

I'm not entirely sure where they're headed with this one between now and the resolution... but I do think the resolution itself will otherwise be a happy one, if not bittersweet. RWBY is a story about breaking cycles, and Oz has been part of one of the longest on Remnant since the very beginning. Pairing that with this show being, ultimately, a happy story, as well as a looking at two of Oscar and Oz's shared allusions, I can only imagine they will be separated by the end.

The first allusions to mention are from The Marvelous Land of Oz. Princess Ozma (aka Oscar) is the rightful heir to the kingdom and next in line to take over when it's time for the wizard to retire. It's very clear that - however this plays out - Oscar is the final incarnation. Typically, when one ruler leaves the throne that's it. They're gone. Oz has fiddled with Remnant's history for countless millennia now in his endless fight against Salem. When the dust settles and it's time for Remnant to rebuild, it should be up to the new generation to take charge without his influence from "the old world" in the mix.

From a Little Prince lens - for those unfamiliar with the book - the aviator (aka Oz) spends much of the story waffling about the little prince he is stranded with in the desert... only to be very sad when his new friend leaves him behind to go home to the stars. RWBY is already subverting this story a bit with Oscar being the one wanting to be rid of his pilot instead of the other way around. If I were to guess how the show will carry this further, it would be that Oz moves on, but perhaps with some lingering attachment on either (or both) sides. Maybe a bit of a "all this time I wanted it to end, but now that it's finally happening, I wish I (you) didn't have to go".

At least that's what seems to make sense to me, thematically speaking. Oscar will be irreversibly changed by these events even if he is freed from the curse, however. There is no question about it. Because that is what the Hero's Journey is all about.

The hero leaves their farm and they fall through a new world. It is both horrifying and exciting in equal measure. And throughout it all they are changed by the experiences they have and the people they meet - both good and bad, within their control and outside of it. And when the quest is finally over, there is grief. Because you are not the same person you were when you left home, and you can never truly return to what you had and who you were before it all happened.

This is also, coincidentally, just what it means to grow up. Which - while not the only one, and certainly not unique to Oscar's arc alone - has always been one of the loudest allegories hiding within the merge to me. We meet and know people, we don't always have a say in how long they can stay and how they change us... and then one day they are gone, but their influence and our memories of them stay with us. And then, as RWBY has taught us since the very beginning, we keep moving forward despite it all.

( @creatoriamari tagging you here just in case to make sure you get the notif because I don't know if it still works if I saved the ask as a draft. 🙇‍♀️)

[monitorchakas]

Odd question.

What hypothetical plots would you want to see tackled in future halo novels?

I’ve got a few which I’ll list numerically.

1. An Epitaph-style novel for Cortana. Sort of explains itself tbh. I think that would be QUITE interesting.

2. A novel focusing on Mendicant Bias, which I do think Epitaph is slowly setting up Tbf. Like I said.

3. Anything more that serves to continue the recent trend of following up on the forerunner trilogy tbh. (There will be some overlap). Epitaph, Renegades, Point of Light, Promises to Keep and that untitled story at the end of Fractures all did this. And I love seeing it.

4. A story detailing how Jun escaped from Reach and what happened afterwards. Maybe with a few allusions to A Fistful of Arrows too.

I can say this much.

Plus I think there ought to be another short story anthology book akin to Evolutions and Fractures. I have TONS of ideas for such a book.

What about you?

I absolutely love this question, thank you.

Loved all your listed plots, some of those definitely intersect with mine. Ill expand on some

I did some brainstorming here's what I've come up with so far:

1. Got to say I'm extremely biased and Spark still being my number one means I'm dying to know what happens next in Bastion. That "are you ready reclaimer, this is how my story begins ..." got me excited to say the least. Precursors!!!!!

I don't really have a particular order for the rest so Im bulleting it

• go way back and give us the nitty gritty details of Human forerunner wars (with UrDidact and Forthencho leading ofc) I know it's been touched on, but further develop it. Set the book completely in the past.

• more on Bornstellar's son. What happened to him? The one that has Chakas and Riser's straw hat 🥺 (Like you said continuation to Fractures)

• agreed we need Mendicant Bias to return

• who crashed on installation 04 in that one terminal from halo cea? What's their story?

• can we get another unggoy focused story like Dadab and Yayap? Doesn't matter when in the timeline. And make it funny!

• since we probably are not getting halo wars 3 I want to know what happened to Prof Anders

• continuation to ferret team (-1 😭) and red team at the ark

• whats happened to the infinity? Where's Palmer? Lasky?

• more on Castor and Gadogai especially now that Castor has been enlightened

• who are the other monitors? We have Guilty Spark's backstory fleshed out, give the rest a backstory, not just name drops. I'm directly looking at Abject Testament and his "we deserve to be forgotten" quote

• I'll take more stories with "the big guy" or how he's actually called, Spartan Novak. I liked him.

• kig yar focused story? I really liked Nor Fel and I forget the other kig yar ladies name.

• wasn't sure to include this because it's very self serving, short story on Chakas and Riser's adventures together before Bornstellar showed up.

If I think of any others I'll definitely include them 😊 I'm sorry my lore desires are very weird 😅

this was incredibly fun to write 💗

* I didn't mention our boys Rtas or Thel because I think they both will be in Empty Throne ofc

[horizon-forbidden-sheesh]

Writing Process: Drafting

Sooooo, I started drafting Part 2 almost immediately after Part 1 concluded—and by now I've abandoned my Scrivener file entirely and am doing everything in Google Docs. (I talk about my switch from Scrivener to Google, here. ⚙️)

This time, I didn't have all the journal entries to work from, either. I was starting entirely from a blank slate. So at first, I just let myself WRITE. All the scenes I was most excited about, in no particular order, just to squeeze all the juice out.

I did that for like a month. And then, when I had about 15-20k words of random bits and bobs, I started to put them in order, and develop a through-line. That's where the draft docs & trackers came in.

✏️ Away from Scrivener, I needed some extra organizational tools to house my more general notes, research, & scraps. So, I built this li'l cutie with easy links to all my Google draft files, and included a brief summary that helped me greatly when plotting out the next set 10 chapters for Part 2:

*The chapter titles were updated as my outline changed, but the summaries did not! The descriptor for Chapter 20 is now, like, Chapter 23.

Keeping the descriptors short really helps me stay on task. If I have so much I need to cover in a chapter that it drops my formatting to the next line, I know I probably won't be able to cover everything in ~3,000-5,000 words.

✏️ Now, that's just the first page of the "Table of Contents." As of today, it's 13 pages long, and it also houses a TON of notes and working drafts and snippets of dialogue that I am saving for future, as-yet-unspecified chapters.

It's really messy—and sometimes when I'm out & about and my service is shit, I whip open my old Notes app, just to get a thought down. Here, have a taste of what's been rattling around in my brain...

Dialogue often starts as just the dialogue. I layer in tags & descriptors later, during the editing process. Most of the conversations I've written started with me talking to myself alone in the car, in the shower, or while washing dishes. (This works for copywriting too. My best ideas almost NEVER come to me while I'm sitting-down-looking-at-a-screen. Of course.)

For instance, that same conversation made it from the Notes app into a Google Doc and has since evolved to:

A li'l somethin-somethin from the upcoming Scorcher Season's Chapter 24 🔥

✏️ Once I've got all the major plot points written, I'll go back and write the "boring" stuff in chronological order. Okay, it's not really boring. It's just the filler information that helps a reader get from point A to point B, and I edit as I go. This ends up being like half of the total word count for the full 10 Chapters.

I'm currently hitting this point in Part 3—and you can see below that just writing my favorite parts here and there gets me pretty far on its own. Over the last 3 weeks, I've nearly exhausted my imagination developing the general story arc. Next up, I'll go back and start fleshing out each chapters one by one.

Wanna know something CRAZY?? Over the last ~year, I've noticed that I tend to write nonstop during Mercury Retrogrades. Like, I don't want to do anything else. I'm learning not to schedule any major projects for these ~3 week periods, so I don't blow my deadlines on account of being too obsessed with my fanfic to bother. 😅

After my decision to expand to 4 Parts total, my original ToC Doc got a bit... top heavy. (Also, I got really tired of manually calculating all the word counts.) So, instead of continuing in Docs, I added a tab to my spreadsheet:

*Hiding my chapter summaries so as not to spoil!! 😈

As you can see, I fill in the links as I create the draft docs... and I've already had to split a chapter in half due to scale, so the untitled <Scorcher 7> dropped to Part 4. I'm hopeful I won't have to split any more, so I can end strong on 'Ten Days.'

I don't usually start the finale until the very end, because I've learned that the wonderful comments I receive will sometimes give me extra ideas that I want to ensure make it into the fic!

✏️ Around the time I've fully completed the first 5 chapters, I'll give myself the green light to start posting. That leaves me just enough runway to finish out the rest of the season, and posting on a timeline helps keeps me motivated & accountable!

This is getting kinda long, so I'll write about Trackers & Timelines I've developed along the way in another post.

Thanks for being here! 🖤

xo, Sheesh.

[tribaloflight]

((Just for my own personal satisfaction, I want to give some of my thoughts on Rebirth after having finished most everything in the game save for the superboss and some side stuff and dumping over 100 hours into the game. These are really in no particular order, but I'm numbering them out of habit.

Spoilers, naturally.

First, I'm kinda disappointed Deepground didn't show up at all after being brought back in Integrade. I figured that if they were going to show back up in the plot, that Scarlet, Rufus, or someone would have sent them after Cloud and company instead of just constantly relying on Rude and Elena. Only time any of the Tsviets shows up is in yuffie's 'trial' at the Temple of the Ancients where she relives her trauma of seeing Nero murder Sonon. Really hope they actually use the Tsviets in the third game otherwise having them in Integrade was kinda pointless.

Second, the minigame overload. I obviously expected a lot of holdover from the original like the gold saucer, fort condor, etc. But they added a lot more and actually trying to 100% them with my mediocre skills became so tedious that I just gave up on it towards the end to actually enjoy the story. I highly doubt I'll ever finish everything with Johnny because of that. It's just way too much of a grind.

Third, their handling of Cid, Vincent, and alterations to story content. Being absolutely honest: Cid and Vincent feel totally wasted here. Not only are they not playable characters, they are barely characters at all here. I get with how the game being based around disc 1 of the original that wouldn't give them much time to be usable given how late in that disc they joined, but they feel more like props than anything. It doesn't help that they completely cut out Rocket town for Cid which helped establish his character. Currently, I'm not even sure if that part of his backstory is even still canon in the rebirth continuity. Another thing is removing most of the northern continent stuff. Sure Icicle inn and the glacier didn't do much for the story save for visiting professor Gast's old lab and getting the info about his and Ilfana's relationship/Hojo murdering them but it's still worldbuilding they dropped for reasons of pacing. And to that, it's also incredibly weird how they literally moved where the temple of the ancients was, changing it from an island in the southern sea to RIGHT OUTSIDE THE SLEEPING FOREST. If that doesn't scream 'convenient', I don't know what does.

Finally, the ending. It really reached Kingdom hearts levels of confusing.

I get Sephiroth's new plan. He wants to make a reunion of all separate timelines of Final Fantasy VII into one where he controls all. Clearly the efforts from the first game created a new one where Zack lived. Also from the scene at the capital, there's likely at least one where Cloud had saved Aerith from Sephiroth and she IS still alive. The only thing is whether or not it's in the current rebirth timeline. Yes it looks like she is probably dead given only Cloud can see her, but it's not like they haven't made retcons before. The entire beginning of rebirth was one to the scene from Integrade. The plot point for the final game is set: Zack is going to work to try and find a way into the Rebirth timeline to help Cloud and the others stop Sephiroth. Hopefully this includes bringing Aerith with him, because frankly him living and her staying dead really reads as a cruel joke. Same if he ends up dying in the next game trying to protect the others.

And that's my greatest concern for the sequel. They make all these overtures about changes and expanding the lore, only to have the end result still be the same? If Aerith and Zack are still dead by the end of the final game, then I can't see the trilogy as anything but pointless. They expanded the story so much only to reach the exact same conclusion. I would be fine with that, but if they were going to do that, they could have stuck with a simple remake and made it a single game, instead of a trilogy that spans what will likely be nearly a decade of game releases. There's legit potential here but if they play it too safe then I think it's going to rub a lot of fans the wrong way.

Finally, I am happy that they made Gilgamesh a big side character. He's a beloved series icon, one of the best parts of V and I've always enjoyed his involvement with Hildibrand stuff in XIV but I really don't like that they put his level at about 20 past what endgame was on average, meaning if I want to fight him I have to do an ungodly amount of grinding.))

[codenamesailordarillium]

The silliness of destroying the Dalek's casing with the microwave parts is pretty on brand for this show and I appreciate it for that reason, and also Ryan's dad jumping into action to suggest it in the first place.

And okay. I will admit, the stupid murder squid possessing Ryan's dad & Ryan having to save him got me teary-eyed. I've reached that point of adulthood where I get emotional over imperfect parents who try making it up to their adult children who realize they never stop needing or wanting them, even despite all the prior disappointment.

I feel like I've got a few apparently several things I want to say about s11 as a whole that I think I'm just gonna tack onto this post ..

So, I made the decision out of nowhere sometime during the past week to start catching up on all the eps I've been putting off from Jodie's era. Might be a misguided attempt to get up to speed for the 60th, but I've honestly done pretty decent enough. Thus far, I've basically finished off all the eps before we get to parts that I know are gonna piss me off. I think if there was any season/series of DW with Jodie that I was ever gonna have the potential to love, it would need to be this one.

I didn't really tho .. love it, that is. Like, I liked it just fine. Overall, I can say it was okay. Not bad by any means, but not giving me the same blood-pumping excitement I used to get from watching DW. I'm not tryna knock on it for no reason, it just didn't quite hit the spot for me like I really hoped it might. There's no one particular reason that I can zero in on as to why.

I feel like I do see some of the criticisms people were making back when it first aired. Namely character-wise. I guess the overarching arc of both the season and the New Year's special was the family conflict between Graham & Ryan along with the grief of Grace's death hanging over them. I really liked certain parts of it, like Grace's 'ghost' haunting Graham in the giant spider episode? I believe? But yeah, that. I kinda wish there'd been more of that during the season, I thought it was gonna connect to the fake mirror!Grace from the frog episode, but I guess not.

But obviously, given that there's so much of a focus on that particular family dynamic, it unfortunately leaves Yaz kinda getting the shaft. Yeah she gets her own whole episode to explore her own background, but the impact it has kind of seems to be contained to that one ep. There honestly could've been some potential for the Doctor to get caught for timey wimey shenanigans happening to her companion's family there. I really thought Umbreen was gonna have a moment to reveal to Yaz that she recognized her as being the same "long lost relative" that showed up on the day of her (first) wedding. We see the rest of her immediate family the next episode, and Yaz's mother is brought along for part of the adventure, so the way they might've reacted to it could've been a fun & interesting thing to get into.

(Also, just for the record, Demons of the Punjab was probably my fave ep of the season and Umbreen Yaz's nani actually means a lot to me; closely followed by Rosa.)

Maybe that's where s11 falls a little short for me. The fact that there are these plot threads just sort of built in but don't seem to get expanded upon. And I could be wrong, maybe some of it does in fact come up in s12 or 13/Flux. And of course, because I am myself, I can't help but see all the places in the story where there was a prominent space-haired shaped hole and how fun that could've been.

I don't really want to delve into it until later whenever I start watching s13/Flux, but the whole exploration of 13 having a potential queer relationship is um, certainly not really given any sort of room to grow in this season, or like exist at all tbh. I obviously refer to the absence of the wife she's literally already gay married to and would have been ready to go, but I'll also briefly touch on my thoughts regarding, well, y'know, the ship that's most popular for 13's era.

People are allowed to ship whatever they want regardless of reason, but nothing about the dynamic in s11 really spoke to me as being particularly indicative of romantic feelings on either side of the equation. And while that's what I'd prefer to an extent, I do think it bears some consideration why the first female iteration of the Doctor is no longer being lusted after by people occasionally, especially the girlies, and that there don't seem to be any/as many instances of kisses or the like that they would receive plenty of back when they presented as a man. Characters falling in love with the Doctor & expressing their attraction has been a staple of the show, technically even since Classic Who when 1 drank hot cocoa & accidentally got engaged. (Even Basil got snogged, if aggressively, by Missy, then proceeded to, much more gently, return the favor. And gazed witheringly at River's lips - yes, it still counts fight me.)

I guess since we are sort of skirting some of the nuances and issues of gender that 13's regeneration brought along, you could say they might've been concerned about depicting what potentially looked like harassment or assault of a female character. Which, I get, but there are ways of doing it without going that far. I'm also aware that people might not have trusted Chibby to be able to depict that well & thus prefer that he kinda just ignored it entirely. At this point, it is what it is, Jodie's no longer the Doctor, so the best I can hope for anyway is her getting to snog her wife in extended universe materials.

I think that's about it for my thoughts on s11. I'mma really have to gird my loins for s12 and the potential (proverbial?) headaches it's gonna cause me. That being said, I still want to see it for myself, if nothing else than to formulate all the ways I'll have to headcanon myself to death to reconcile with the parts of the story I still might vibe with a little.